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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Nine

I'll never forget seeing him standing there at the end of that aisle, waiting for me to join him so we could vow our lives to one another in front of God, our family, and friends.  I'm amazed at how fast the time has gone by, and though I know we've disagreed and argued, it's been the best ride of my life and I pray for a lifetime of memories with this man I love with all my heart.

Taken the day before he proposed!!
Happy Anni-grocery-store, sweetheart!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Little Bit of a Getaway

We've never been to the beach as a family.  Sarah Grace has been and last year, Joshua and I made a long weekend together, but as a family, we've never really taken any kind of vacation.

It's kind of hard to do when you add to your family roughly every 12-18 months.

And so it is that we have three of our five children who'd never played in the ocean.  Criminal when you consider we are within easy driving distance.  6 hours.  That's it, folks.  Six measly hours.

With five energetic children.  Which means more than six hours.  How much more depends on your level of preparedness and how many meals you have to work around.  We managed to stuff six hours of drive time into only eight hours.  I'm pretty proud.

But I don't want to write about this trip.  I just want to post pictures.  They say so much more than I can.


LOVED every aspect of the beach!

Who knew she was dealing with pneumonia?

Thomas - usually tail up because the kid loves snorkeling!

Hated it, dealt with it, loved it.
Master castle builder, shell seeker, and wave jumper.
Forgot a family picture
Until next year...



Monday, October 15, 2012

It Was Almost Beautiful

Soooo.... you know how you make a plan and you've got it as finely tuned as possible and you're all set to implement that plan on Monday morning?  You know how you think you've planned for the crazy that is bound to happen?

Yeah, I was prepared.  I mean, Boy Scout prepared.  Except that I wasn't at all prepared.  Isn't that the way it goes?

Y'all, I'm spoiled.  We're a homeschooling family and there aren't many things that can convince me to roll out of my warm bed much before 8AM.  It's one of the major luxuries of my job.  Once upon a time, I was more of a morning person, but I'm over that now.  The problem with me lazing about in bed so late is that my children aren't necessarily reveling in their extra snooze time the way one might think, and so they find themselves confined to their rooms until Mommy gets up.

Which has only worked so-so for quite some time now.  Finally, I took the bull by the horns and put some concentrated effort into making their mornings productive without me having to be out of my bed yet.  Joshua and I sat them down, explained the schedule they were to follow, posted all the appropriate signage to be sure they didn't forget the plan, and we were off.

The quick version of the plan is they're allowed out of their bed at 7:15, makes beds, get dressed, brush teeth, go downstairs for breakfast, clean up behind themselves, and then the older two head to the school room to do school work that doesn't need my supervision while the younger girls go to the living room to read quietly or play with their doll house until I show up about 8-ish.

Nobody touches the baby.  He's much nicer if he gets his beauty rest and I like my babies nice, don't you?

It worked out beautifully.  When I descended this morning, everyone was doing exactly as they were supposed to be doing!!!  I grinned, gave myself a mental back-pat for a job well done, and proceeded to get the Anna and Daniel dressed for the day.  By 9AM, we were all dressed, the girls' hair was all done, everyone had on shoes, and I was ready to do math with the school age kids.  Except first I needed to call the doctor for our Anna, who's been under the weather a bit.

"Yes, ma'am.  We can be there by 10."  Again with the mental back-patting.  We were ready to walk out the door, no big deal.  Dude, I'm good!

Well, ready to walk out after I extracted the baby from the mirror he'd managed to break while I assured the nice lady on the phone that I could be to the office in less than an hour with five children in tow.  I sent the kids out to the car to get strapped in while I grabbed a broom and haphazardly swept broken shards of mirror together.  Since I couldn't find the dust pan and there wasn't going to be anybody to step in the glass anyway, I left it and headed out to the van with the kids.

The whole way to the appointment, I giggled at the thought that my not-quite-eighteen month old had just cursed himself with 7 years bad luck.  I tried to explain that to him at one point, but he just yelled and grinned and clapped his hands.  I guess he's not superstitious?

Now, our doctor's office is pretty efficient.  I anticipated only a small glitch in my carefully worked out schedule.  We'd be home by 11;15, no problem.

You're convinced she's unhealthy, right?

"Pneumonia."

"Chest x-ray."

Joshua had met me at the doctor's office to keep the hale and hardy members of the family.  When I found out we were going to have to have a chest x-ray, I almost called them all in to view the films afterward.  Except, honestly, at that point, I was looking at a set of lungs that I knew were not looking like they should be.  Too bad, though, it would have been a fun mini-field trip for science!

After stopping to pick up antibiotics, we were home by 12:30 with hungry children, sleepy babies, and me trying to cover all my bases in cancelling piano lessons and play dates and calling in help for the follow-up appointment later this week.  

Which is why, on the first day of my well thought out, carefully laid plans, we didn't finish school until three hours later than the schedule told us we should.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The Time Has Come

It's been a while since I've really felt like writing.  I can do it in my head, in the middle of making dinner or folding laundry or bathing a kid.  But by the time I make it to a point where I can sit and breath and write something down, I'd rather do something else.  I'd rather curl up with my husband or read a book or spend time with friends.

At first, I felt guilty about this.  Blogging, once a cathartic activity, had become something I felt I had to do.  People fussed at me when I didn't post regularly.  I was trying to please those people because I'm an oldest child and I want to promote harmony, but I'd lost the joy writing.

One day I found myself sitting in the middle of a blog conference surrounded by women who were concerned about 'branding' their blogs and should they monetize or not and how could they attract more readers and keep those readers loyal and blah, blah, blah.... when suddenly, I realized I just didn't care.  It was freeing to simply sit and allow my blog to stagnate.

And I lost the coveted 'readership' only to realize that I was okay with that, too.  I was investing my time into people and growth, even if I didn't want to write about it. 

For quite some time, I've just been trying to document the milestones, achievements, the silly stories that I know I'll forget.  I've tried to capture some of the joy and the heartache, the pride and the frustrations or both my children and this role I find myself in as a Mommy to Many.

Now, though, it's time to write again.  The words are back, the stories are begging to be put down.  The ones my children will laugh at themselves over in years to come.  The ones my heart is working through.  The ones that are sculpting my today and my tomorrows.

Monday, October 01, 2012

Fairy Dust & Sunshine

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth bounced down the steps with a grin on her sweet face and excitedly told us about her new surprise: Her first loose tooth!  At the forefront of her mind for days afterward was her barely wiggly tooth. 

But it fell off our radar.  She lost interest in the tooth when it didn't fall out immediately and I, being the the Mother with the incredible Memory, forgot about it.

Until today. 

I was sitting on the couch reading Seven when Elizabeth came bounding through again.


"Mommy...I've got something that fell out for you."  Huge impish grin from my sweet little Sunshine child.

I looked at her with caution as she held out her hand.  (I'm always a little afraid of what my children might drop in my hand!)

I looked at her shining eyes and she shouted right in my face "IT'S MY TOOTH!!!"

I giggled and hugged her tightly and peered in at the hole in her mouth.  Then she proudly recounted each wiggle of the last few moments.  She's so excited about her Tooth Fairy coming tonight!  She deliberated for a while over who her Tooth Fairy would be.  "Well, Thomas was my first Tooth Fairy..."


"I want Sarah Grace to be my Tooth Fairy because she's a good Tooth Fairy, I think."

I love these milestones!