Grand Slam!

I joked the other day on Facebook that we call it a "grand slam" when all four kids are crying at once.  It's rare, but it happened this weekend!  It had a pretty good cause though:  Sophie and Josie were sad that my dad, brother and sister had left and the boys, well, they were just screaming.  Sophie's tears were quiet but Josie went to sleep sobbing "pawpaw! pawpaw!" into her pillow.  As sad as that sounds, in hindsight it's pretty darn cute.  I love that my kids have young grandparents to play with.  My dad wrestles and chases just like he did when I was a kid.  He says he's turned grumpier with age, but I just don't see it.  And Caitlin and Jacob are the most loving aunt and uncle, even at the ages of 11 and 8!  Wonderful visit, wish it could have lasted longer.

After they left we tried to make it for "Dollar Day" at the Texas State Aquarium yesterday.  We rushed to get up and it only took us a short TWO HOURS to get everyone fed, dressed and loaded into the car. It's like watching clowns pile into a clown car.  I'll take a pic next time we load  Josie in through the hatchback of our crossover SUV.  Anyway, we were there only a half hour after they opened and the line must have been a mile long OUTSIDE.  It's relatively warm here right now, but I don't think any of us would have enjoyed standing in line for an hour.  Next we tried to head to the Corpus Christi Science Museum, but it was closed!  Who closes their museum on a school holiday?  I bet they could have made a killing.  After all the effort to get out of the house there was no way I was headed home without doing something, so we went to the mall.  In the end, I think the kids preferred playing on the indoor playground and riding the mall train more than they would have liked the aquarium anyway.  All in all, not a bad day.

Lots more visits coming up before I head back to work.  My mom and Aunt Pattie are coming to visit this weekend and we're headed to Fort Worth to visit Chris and the Meeks' the weekend after that.  I should have some pretty good pictures to put on the blog soon!

Ideas on how to become independently wealthy...

1.)  Have some sort of celebrity type scandal and write a book about it.
2.)  Have at least ten more children and a reality show.
3.)  Invent something.  I don't know what, but something...

Obviously independently wealthy isn't happening for me anytime soon, which makes me pretty darn disappointed.  I was talking to my dad tonight about how I'm sad that this is the number of children that we can reasonably afford.  The boys will be six weeks old tomorrow (can you believe it?!) and I head back to work in only two more weeks.  This realization has gotten me pretty down today.  These are the last few days I'll ever stay home with a newborn baby.  I don't think I wish that I could be a stay at home mom, though.  I find my job very fulfilling and genuinely enjoy what I do.  I'm what the military folks might call a "dig it".  I guess it's pretty hard to put all of my feelings about this going back to work situation together, but I know I need to focus on enjoying this last two weeks.

On a much happier note, this has been a really great week!  Sophie was learning about rocks in school and she really enjoyed telling us about the petrified turtle poo her teacher brought in.  Last week was recycling and we got chastised all week about our light bulbs, so rocks made for better conversation.  Josie started talking in sentences and I really think she has an awesome sense of humor.  She spends most of her time yelling at the dogs, but every once in a while she fake sneezes and then tells herself "Bess youuu!".  Mitchell is fattening up so well I think he's got a second chin and poor Cal has lost all the hair on top of his head! 

Randy and I spent the week trying out some new recipes to add to our dinner rotation.  The worst idea, by far, was linguine with collard green pesto.  It's now official that I don't like collards, at all.  I think the best of the week was either a fresh cod recipe we found or the tasty ground turkey meatballs that went with the gnarly collard pesto.  A few more weeks of watching food network all day and I might actually become a better cook!

Here's Cal taking a nap under his new blankie that my best high school friend Randi made!

Josie playing Mr. Potato Head for the first time:

Mitchell hanging with Daddy:



Coming out from under our rock!

The boys are really settling in to more predictable routines and I finally feel like we're coming up for air!  Mitchell and Callum hit 7 and 8 pounds, respectively, this week and now eat every 3 or so hours instead of every 2!  I feel like a new woman.

So far this weekend, we went to Peter Piper Pizza (we're calling it the "cheap Chucky Cheese"), organized all the junk I had let pile up in the nursery, purged the playroom and found some new recipes to eat healthier.  Have to fit back into my ODU pants in only three short weeks!  There's something to be said about getting up off your butt and just doing stuff.  I feel great and I think the whole family does.  We really get into a rut of saying "I'm too tired" or "Maybe later" and forget how good it feels to accomplish something.  On that note I'd better return to the mountain of laundry I vowed to tackle today.  You would never believe how much laundry a family of 6 can produce!

Here's the girls enjoying some nutella and banana sandwiches today.  The lady in the Nutella commercial says they're healthy and I'm going with it!

Wait a minute. I'm raising adults?

I cried like a little baby last year on Josie's first birthday and Randy had a talk with me about the fact that we have babies to raise adults, not to play with babies.  Pretty hard pill for me to swallow because man do I love babies. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy everyday that I watch Sophia and Josie grow and learn new things, but it's never really hit me like it did today.

In that first picture my first baby is reading a book to herself.  With chapters.  As I took that picture of her I was nursing Mitchell and Callum, who don't even make eye contact with me yet.  Then it hit me that in six relatively short years Sophie had gone from picture two to picture one.  Amazing. 

We're done adding babies to our family and I'm a little sad about that, but it's fun to think now about how many cool things I'll get to watch my kids learn.

And for a little gratuitous humor:  Josie has decided that dog hair is gross.  That's too bad for her, considering it's impossible to keep dog hair off our floors.  Today while she was holding Dottie, our little dog, she was pulling hairs out of her coat one by one and saying "eeeww" and "groooosss".  Poor dog's going to be bald soon I'm sure.

I'm not much of a blogger, but here goes...

I'm one of those people that usually makes fun of random blogs.  There, I admit it.  When I think of blogging it brings me back to when livejournal was the "it" place to share teenage angst. Which reminds me... Livejournals delete after a while of inactivity, right?  I should look into that. Anyway, this blog won't be particularly witty or even interesting, so kudos to you for reading it.

Mainly, I'm writing this for my mom.  Hi, mom.  You see, she's not into social media.  I'm guilty of posting all of my cute pictures and funny little anecdotes to Facebook, where I'm sure random high school friends are not interested in hearing about Josie pooping in the potty.  (If you've posted about your child pooping on the potty recently, I enjoyed the post!  Honest!  Post more poop stories!)  My mom is the type of parent that kept every single little memory from my childhood.  I'm sure she could show you my first picture I colored on my first day of school, right Ma?  On the other hand, I'm a purger.  I'm guilty of throwing school work away.  I probably won't keep Sophie's first lost tooth.  By the way mom, you can get rid of those.  Gross.  And I'm really, REALLY bad about taking pictures of my kids.  Poor middle child Josie hasn't had a portrait done in a year.  I'm vowing to change, though.  Someday my kids will look through my attic and wonder where their memories are.  In the spirit of technological advancements, welcome to my new attic.

So here's my blog.  It's a New Year's Resolution.  I resolve to take more pictures of my kids, to share our daily lives (even when it's not interesting) and to at very least take pictures of Sophie's first lost tooth.

And if I hear you placing bets about how long I'll keep this blog up, I'll take half your winnings.