Blue Bell Creameries

We went on a family outing today to Blue Bell Creameries in Brenham, TX. We met "the cousins" and Nana there. It was very interesting to see them making the ice cream. The tour was surprisingly inexpensive. Kids under 6 were free, kids 6-14 were $2, adults were $3. At the end of the tour they serve everyone a generous portion of ice cream. I had a new chocolate flavor, which I don't think has been released yet. Daniel had strawberry, B&J had mint chocolate chip, and L had the cookie dough. We weren't able to take pictures on the factory tour, but here are a few that I took outside, while we were waiting for our tour to begin.

L fell asleep on the way. That was probably a good thing as she was pretty well behaved.

Daddy and X, and Aunt M and X.Cousins posing on the cow statue.
My little ladies.

Ode to Comments

I love comments. I think (almost) everyone does. It makes me feel like I'm in high school again, and my popularity is determined by the number of comments on my blog. When several posts in a row get no comments, I wonder if everyone has stopped reading this silly little journal of mine. It makes me want to post something really inflammatory just to get the comments flowing again. I'm secretly jealous of blogs that always get a lot of comments. According to stat counter (though the counter at the bottom of this page disagrees) this blog has had 24,000 hits. Apparently my readers are not terribly verbose.

Some people do NOT love comments. Here is a funny blog post about one of those people. I laughed out loud, literally. Especially when I realized that this is indeed a "mom blog".

The Eagle Has Landed

Nana (the artist formerly known as Grandma A) arrived last night for her week long visit. She has been dazzling the peas with her game playing, piano playing, and book reading skills. We have a busy week. The ice skating rink was closed yesterday, so we have to do the final portion of B's birthday celebration this week. We will meet Daniel for skating and pizza probably tomorrow afternoon. We also have a visit to the Blue Bell ice cream factory planned for Friday. Then we will be going out to attend a baptism for one of "the cousins" on Saturday. On Sunday baby X will be having his baby blessing , followed by a small family get together.

Yet another recap...

What can I say? I'm a busy person. I'm living on 4 hours of sleep per night, and that doesn't bode well for my blogging prowess. How is a person supposed to think of exciting topics on no sleep? You will have to survive this extended period of pea related journaling, or go elsewhere for excitement. Here is our weekend in photos. Grampy and the girls riding the "spaceship" recliner on a journey through the galaxy. His comedic efforts are never lost on them. They find him to be absolutely hilarious.

B&L pretending that 2 pieces of styrofoam are boats.
Grammy and Grampy and a little baby girl..Wha? Whoa, wait a minute...no...it's my poor son wrapped in a pink blanket again. Sigh. That is what you get when you have 3 sisters. We own a metric ton of pink blankets.
B and Daniel examining some of the presents.
B blowing out her 7 candle. I know she's a big girl now because she requested the traditional adult birthday cake in our family...Oreo Ice Cream Cake.
Weirdos.

Preliminary swimming. They were getting annoyed while waiting for Daniel to finish mowing and take them to the pool yesterday, so they passed some time in the little pool.

I don't have any pictures of us at the Narnia movie...but I do have 2 quotes...

B: "Mama, my favorite part of going to the movies is the candy. No, the movie. No, the candy. Well, okay it's a tie."
J: "Mama, there's lots more boys in this movie than the first one."

Memorial Day Weekend

We're busy this weekend. Daniel's mom is coming to visit this week and we are trying to get things cleaned up and some projects finished. Daniel is currently cleaning the back of the house. Why would anyone build a house that in any way involves the color white in TX? It gets SO DIRTY! I am drowning in another sea of laundry. You know, the usual. We will be celebrating B's birthday this weekend. Pictures forthcoming. Have a great weekend.B loves to hold X. It's currently one of her favorite things to do. He's yawning in this picture, not just making a weird face.

???

On how many occasions in life is it socially acceptable to urinate on your loved ones? Not many...sigh.Please excuse the camera glare, and the the picture covering his man business. One handed bathroom camera work while covered in urine is not an ideal shooting situation.

She's in Love with the Boy

She can't keep her hands or lips off of him. Unfortunately, he is not a real big fan of her attention.

Baby Fat

My baby is fat. He nurses like it's going out of style, and he is developing wrinkles like a baby elephant. The other day I noticed a slightly offensive odor emanating from my beautiful boy, despite his regular bathing habits. I sniffed him all over trying to find the source. I'm a mom, that's what we do. Welcome to the animal kingdom. So anyway, as I suspected (because super fat baby B had the same problem), he had developed "neck rot" as I like to call it. This condition required me to carefully clean out all of his little wrinkles and crevices and powder them. Lovely, I know. So, now I have to add another time consuming step to his daily rituals. Here are the photos. You know I couldn't not take photos.Only a baby can pull off the neck fat look, and still be called cute.He also has armpit wrinkles that required attention. Where will the chub go next?

The sky is falling

Have you ever had one of those days where you think you are clearly about to die in some tragic accident, because ever single thing that can go wrong is going wrong? I'm having one of those days.

I had my 6 week post baby checkup today. Well, I was supposed to have it. X and L are tag teaming me today. I had to clean the bathrooms (it's been 6 weeks since they've been cleaned), yuck! I had to clean them with X strapped to my chest because he won't let me put him down. L has started potty training. She insists on being naked all the time now. Not good. She is also throwing tantrums involving throwing her naked 24 pound body on the ground and screaming for 5 minutes until she realizes I don't respond to tantrums. It really ticks her off that I won't acknowledge her until she stops screaming and kicking.

My Dr's office called a few days ago and asked to change my appointment time to 11:45am today. I had my mom come over, fed X, made B&L's lunches, and generally got everything ready. Left the house and watched several near accidents go on all around me on the road. When I finally arrived in the parking lot, a woman threw her car in reverse and started backing into my car to try and claim a parking spot which she had already driven 20 feet past. After waiting for 10 minutes in the waiting room they called me back...to tell me they needed to cancel my appointment! I had ENOUGH!!! After spending an hour round trip driving there and back, tolls and parking...they cost me $30+ to NOT have my appointment. Not to mention having to work around 3 kids and a nursing baby, and get childcare arranged. I've decided I'm not going back to reschedule. I already had my incision checked at 3 weeks, and I have not had any complications. No way am I going through that again.

On my way home I was cut off by a crazy woman who tried to jump into my lane with inches to spare. Next, a Uhaul truck right next to me blew out a tire which sounded like a bomb exploding. Then, I was so aggravated by the days events that I missed my exit, and had to u-turn twice on the highway just trying to get home. I think that I should just hide under the covers for the rest of the day. Also, since I'm not planning on rolling the dice with another risky pregnancy, I'm just going to find a regular Dr out here in the 'burbs. I don't need an OB anymore. Especially not one who is so far away, and is regularly needing to attend to births and cancel appointments. It is too much effort to get downtown.

Lucky 7

Me...April 2001.
My big girl turns lucky 7 today! I can not believe it has been 7 years already. If the next 7 years go by this quickly, I think I'll cry. As usual despite my asking at least a dozen times, she could not think of one single thing to ask for as a birthday gift. We are going to be celebrating on Saturday with her requested activities of ice skating and the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. I'm not sure how we're going to pull it off with the baby. But, we'll figure something out. L and X will not be able to attend the movie, so it will take some planning. Here is a little photographic walk down memory lane...New baby. May 19, 2001Crooked hat. Fall 2001.Baby B showing the camera who's boss. Summer 2002.B and J in our backyard. Summer 2003.Mermaid on the beach. Summer 2004.Our family at the top of Hurricane Hill Trail in the Olympic Mountains. Summer 2005.1st day of Kindergarten. August 2006.Brownie service for CASA. December 2007.

The best big sister a girl could ask for. April 2008

Busiest Weekend Ever

We were insanely overbooked on Saturday. B&J had their final soccer games at 8:30am & 9:30am at 2 different locations. Here is J posing with her soccer trophy. She got it at the game because we were unable to attend the 4pm party due to a conflict.
While L and Daniel were at J's final game...I was across town with X at B's final game. These blurry pictures make me want to cry. I NEED a dang wide angle lens...I need it bad! Daniel tried to convince me to go buy one yesterday, but I resisted the suggestion of spending so much on a lens. With 4 peas, there is always a more useful way to spend hundreds of dollars.


After the games, we returned home for a quick hour. Daniel cleaned up the garage and I vacuumed out the car. Then, we were off to B's soccer party at noon. I didn't bring the camera! I forgot it. We had pizza and swimming and whatnot. B's trophy is a cute bobble head girl soccer player. She got the "best ball handler" award also. The girls loved soccer and are adamant that they want to play again next season.

We got home at 2pm and put L down for a 2 hour nap. At 4pm we left for Daniel's annual work picnic. We brought Grammy and Grampy along. It was awesome to have one adult for each pea. We got home around 9pm. It was a very long day. We are beat...as evidenced below.My boys taking a nap after church today. Before you yell at me for letting my baby sleep on his stomach...he loves it, it helps a TON with his gas, and I only let him do it during the day when I can supervise him.

Simple Pleasures

After another sleepless night of nursing punctuated by L waking up at 5am, I was feeling low. She and I went grocery shopping together at 6am. After dinner, I gave a hysterical screaming X to Daniel and put my pseudo Ipod on loud. Sometimes you just have to claim a little tiny bit of peace I suppose. A little Johnny Cash, Radiohead, and Ray Lamontagne later...I'm feeling much better. I'm a musical schizophrenic. Seriously though, Ray Lamontagne could save a girl's life/sanity on some days. Days like this. If you don't own the album Trouble...you need to own it. Trust me.

Preschool Graduation

Today was J's last day of Preschool/Graduation. Isn't she cute? The lighting in the "sanctuary" was awful. I don't do well with difficult shooting conditions. I need to read my camera manual. They read a little thing about each of the children. Out of the 22 or so kids, about 20 said their favorite thing about Preschool was Water Day. J said her favorite thing about Preschool was homework. I thought that was cute. As for her career aspirations...librarian.

Ugh...I look like I weigh about 40 lbs more than I actually do in this picture. This is not a ploy for comments to renew my confidence. I just have to state the facts. The facts are...I look darn pudgy, maybe my scale is broken it still says 109. Maybe my camera is broken. Maybe my kid is just so small and cute, that by comparison...I look like Gigantor.
J grew up a whole lot this year. She has gained so much more confidence from school and soccer (she scored 2 goals last Saturday). She is such a special little pea, and I am so happy that she belongs to me. The words that best sum up her personality are: deep thinker, kind hearted, sensitive and serious. She gets the serious from her daddy. Congratulations J!

Fraggle Rock

My brother emailed me THIS. What can I say...he gets me. Speaking of which, he was here a few weeks ago, and I have absolutely no photographic evidence of this. It's awful. Come on, you know you want to dance your cares away, down at Fraggle Rock.

It's like 1984, I'm 6 years old again...chillin with my salami sandwich in my Grandma's TV room. And SNAP, it's 2008, and it's time to hose down 3 kids and crack the whip on homework.

My Daughter Hermione

B is out in the backyard speaking in an impressive British accent. I notice she is calling her sisters Ron and Harry. I think J.K. needs to come up with a series featuring more female characters. In a game of pretend with 3 sisters, the oldest will always get to be Hermione.

My Nemesis

No, this one is not my nemesis. This is just a cute picture of L eating her PB&J with watermelon yesterday while she stares at Elmo. She just discovered TV exists about a week ago, it didn't register on her radar before. Just another thing I get to monitor her consumption of. This picture is just to distract you from the ugliness that follows.
Laundry...my nemesis. I hate the laundry, and to be honest...I think it hates me too. I do passive aggressive things to it, like refusing to separate my colors, and leaving it waiting to be folded for days at a time. I do these things to show it who is in charge. As with most passive aggressive behavior, I'm really only punishing myself. Let's just face it, keeping up is much less painful than catching up. It's true with laundry and most other things in life. I spent 6 hours doing laundry yesterday. When I look at the 4 kids baskets, waiting for a million little tiny pieces of laundry to be folded into them, it makes me nauseous. Then, I think about my mother-in-law, who had 8 children. Poor, poor woman.
This pile constitutes about half of the laundry that I have to do every week. It's a cruel joke. This folding job was piling up for 3 days. I'm sure Daniel appreciates rolling into work with his shirts looking like he just rolled out of a dumpster. I never claimed to be uber-domestic, and he married me anyway. I say that makes him the guilty party. He is welcome to use those 7 free hours between 11pm and 6am ironing if he really cares. Or maybe he could fire up the power tools and finish my dang wall project that is 18 months into its de-construction.
Here is the remainder of my giant slice of Black Out Cake, from the Cheesecake Factory. I added some vanilla ice cream and went to town. You know...to ease the suffering of my laundry induced Carpal Tunnel symptoms. I love how the enormous size of the Cheesecake Factory containers makes it look like a small portion. Trust me, it's a bald faced lie. The pile of ice cream that I added didn't help either.

Playing Catch Up

Silly Goose

It's Tuesday. I have not posted since Saturday. I know that if I hadn't physically seen my mother Saturday, Sunday, and Monday...she would have thought me dead with the lack of posts.

*Warning...long boring recap ahead. Feel free to ignore the remainder of this entry.

Here are the highlights...

Saturday: 2 soccer games, Daniel mowed the lawn, I took care of the little guys, and did a little cleaning, Daniel took all 3 girls to the pool/water park, and then went out Mother's Day shopping for several hours, while X and I nursed incessantly and watched a Top Chef marathon. Sunday: We all went to church together, but L, X, and I all have a small cold. So, I took them home after the first hour so that L didn't spread her germs around the Nursery. I cleaned up a little bit, and we had Grammy/Grampy over for dinner. Now for the awful part...L made what seems to be her 20th escape from the house this week while I was bringing a couple of bags of mulch from the front porch to the tomato patch. She snuck out the gate and headed straight for the main road at full speed and we couldn't find her. While we were walking all around the house (inside and out) and yard calling her name, she was progressing quickly into the road (she was probably heading to the park across the street). A woman stopped and picked her up, and brought her to one of our neighbors houses. They didn't know who she belonged to, but then heard and saw us all walking all over yelling her name, and figured that she belonged to us. It was pretty much the worst thing that's ever happened to us. We felt like the worst parents in the world. She just keeps breaking out of the house though, no matter what counter measures we try to enact. So, I'm ordering her a child distance monitor, and making her wear it all day at home, and in the yard. I can't take the chance of her breaking out again. We set the alarm at night so that we can be sure she hasn't escaped. I have never had a child who did this before. I just don't know what to do. She has no fear, and when she gets away from you she runs as fast as she can because she loves to play "chase", even if you aren't aware that you are supposed to be playing.

Monday: X and L put me through the ringer all day as usual. They are so much to handle between his unending need to be held 24 hours a day, and her path of destruction and attempts to break out of the house. I washed a veritable mountain of laundry that still needs to be folded and put away. I wish I had a wand like the fairies from Sleeping Beauty to do all this housework. Then I picked up B from school, dropped all 3 girls at my mom's house, and met Daniel at Cheesecake Factory for one of our occasional mystery visits. He was late. Which made me late to pick up the girls and take B to soccer practice. I let B&J play at the park next to the fields. When we got home, it was non stop busy until bedtime. While everyone else in the house was unconscious, I had to enter in the info from our dinner visit, and print out pictures and diagrams of seahorses for B's school project. She didn't have time to do it before bed. So, YES I did it for her. I know, shame on me. It's not like I did the project for her though, she's doing it at school. I just looked up and printed out the pictures and diagrams she needed to bring in.

Tuesday: Finally we're caught up to today. B barely got to school on time. J had Summer Olympics water day at preschool, which required a mandatory run to Target (for Daniel) on the way home last night to get "closed toe water shoes". Don't you love the endless school requests? L and I spent all morning cleaning and taking care of X. She was a good helper. Well, except for when I was vacuuming, while wearing X in his sling, and she became obsessed with the "wind" blowing out of the front of the vacuum. Every time I would move she would run in front of it and stand there motionless, while the "wind" blew her hair. We are trying desperately to get the house back on track, because dirt and clutter makes me depressed, literally. I feel like I need to be medicated when my environment stays in a state of filth for more than a few days. So, I had better get back to the cleaning, because I have a teleconference tonight at 8pm.