Back to work, goodbye summer!

Welcome back to the school year crazies! My new Tuesday/Thursday schedule goes something like this.

6:30AM switch laundry and start breakfast wake up all kids and get them all dressed. Can't say what the estimated time for this is as it has not been accomplished successfully yet.

8:00 AM missed the bus. Drive Dallas to school by 8:35 (estimated drive time 25 minutes)

9:00 Stephen's school starts (estimated drive time from Dallas's school 25 minutes.)

9:10 AM return home to have potty break and pack a sack lunch for the four. (time:20 minutes)

9:30 leave for computer class. (Estimated drive time: 28 minutes)

10:00 The four's computer class begins.
read a book for my homework - 55 minutes available
11:00 class concludes. Be sure to have potty break! Time: 15 minutes

11:15 feed kids and drive to Grandma's house so she can tend while the rest of us go to the dentist (insert variable here - doctor/dentist/whatever could possibly come up)

get Dallas and Stephen from their schools (refer to drive times mentioned earlier)

Dentist appointment is at noon. Arrive only 15 minutes late :) appointment lasts approximately 1 1/2 hours.

Feed us lunch. Time should now be 2:30 if on schedule, but it is really 3:00.

Drive back to Grandma's house to pick up kids. Wish there was time to say hello, but it took 45 minutes to get in the truck and drive there. Take potty break! leave ASAP.

Remember to pick up prescriptions and a frozen pizza for dinner.

4:15PM Arrive home. Say hi to hubby - give instructions for kids homework and food.

4:30 PM leave for my school pray to be on time to class that starts at 5:00PM.

10:00PM go home (estimated drive time 30 minutes)

10:30PM try to convince Dallas to go to sleep.

11:30PM fall into bed

Goodbye summer. I will miss you!

Another mystery solved!

Come on! We're late! Hurry. Hurry. HURRY! Oh, wait. Where are the keys? Does anyone know where the keys are? Hey! I can't find the keys! (little to know response from children.) They are all finally in the vehicle, but the keys are missing and they won't help find them. Just as well, they would be making a bigger mess and start playing again instead of helping find them. Then I would have to get them in their seats again. I know I had them just a minute ago. I used them to unlock the door! What in the world could I have done with them?

I search the house, the yard, and check under the truck to see if I dropped them there. No luck. Nothing else is lost - except my memory. Kids are still in their seats waiting patiently. A miracle.

I return to the house and find the back up spare key. We leave - only two hours behind the desired schedule. But we didn't have a set time for meeting people so it doesn't really matter too much. Run errands for a few hours, talk on the phone several times to explain we are late because we couldn't find the keys, and so on.

Three hours later I am telling the kids how I wished we could find the keys. Little to no response from children again. They are relatively nice in the back seat so I figure they really don't know what happened to the keys.

Two hours later I am telling Daddy the keys are lost. Lily laughs and says she found the keys. I turn around just in time to see her enormous grin and her sticky little fingers pull them out of her pocket! She was so proud of herself. Now, if I could just find my purse...

Time flies!

So much has happened since the last post nearly a year ago. Stephen and Dallas are eager to return to school. Stephen's birthday is on the first day of school this year instead of during the summer. I should try to talk to the teacher about that before school starts. Stephen will be nine and has earned (almost) his wolf badge in cub scouts, along with several silver arrows, and one gold arrow. The pack meeting awards "ceremony" will be the day after his birthday. Not just another day for him this year!

Dallas has been doing much better after we found out he has an allergy of sorts to wheat, including products made from wheat like chicken nuggets. He has adjusted to being weird pretty good. I guess that is all he will be doing for the rest of his life - weird kid with a weird family. *sigh*

The kids are not going to kindergarten this year, thank goodness, because their birthday falls after the deadline. Brenden is a little awkward with taking directions and listening to teachers, although he can read small words like bus and stop.(He wrote stop all over the walls and his bed when he learned how) Evan and Marek would do great in school. Both have good attention spans and ability to take directions but Lily would not be ready yet.

She is not very interested in learning her letters, or anything else for that matter. When I wrote her name she started screaming and yelling, “NO!That’s not a flower! Then she promptly scribbled over her name.Yes, she is a diva. Just the other day her brothers were trying to tell me that I need to stop calling her “princess”. (Of course I was not the one who started this. Daddy did.)I asked the boys why.

“She thinks we are her slaves because she thinks she is a princess and you just need to stop calling her that so she will stop thinking she is a princess!” There was one voice speaking but they all agreed, loudly. When I reported to Daddy that night he turned to Lily and asked, “Lily, do you think you are a princess?”

“Yeah” giggle and a grin.

“Does that mean your brothers are your slaves?”

“YES!" Big smile and a laugh.Did Daddy correct her? No. Did I correct her? Not really. It’s hard to discipline when you are busy laughing.

I tried extra hard to be strict today. We have finicky eaters that won’t eat much if they don’t want to, and then they are hungry five minutes after we put the food away. (I am sure I am not the only one with this problem, or this reaction when such strictness is involved.) I made blueberry oatmeal pancakes for breakfast. Yummy, hearty, easy, quick, and wheat free. They had a bit of color in them from the berries.

“EEEeewww! What is that?!?!” Came the first voice.

“Oh Gross! I am NOT eating THAT!” Came voice number two. And so on and so on till voice number six agree that the pancakes were not edible. Around 11:30 they started getting hungry enough to try it – almost. I told them every time they asked for food there were pancakes on the table. If they would eat one bite they could also have a banana, etc. This was easy for me to monitor today since I was working on food storage and tamales.

Brenden won the stubborn war again and did not eat anything until about 3PM when I gave in and let him have apple sauce. The others tasted the “Miracle Pancakes” as I decided to call them. It would be a miracle if they ate them and hopefully with the extra oats in them they would miraculously not be hungry until lunch time if they ate them.

Dallas said, “Wow Mommy! How did you get something that looks so disgusting to taste so good? Make these every day!” My lesson for the day – don’t give up, it might turn out good. The tamales I made today were good to me. I left for school before they were tasted by anyone else. They are sure to look disgusting too.

There's so much more going on but my class is starting. I really should tell about our summer adventures. Hopefully it won't be so long between posts next time. Thanks for reminding me to post Karalee!

FOUR YEARS OLD!!!

As the dreaded birthday neared, I decided they don't make diapers for four year-olds. The end has come. We are in potty training mode now. We will have no more diapers on any bum in this house again. Since Friday, I have had four naked four year old kids going on the floor ten times a day, each. I have been getting my exercise for sure! Of course they all want to go at the same time. No, I didn't think to get the little potties all in a row until the first day was over. I thought they would take turns. Ha ha ha ha! We have four toilets, luckily. Not so luckily they are spread out over three floors of the house. I have been running - literally running- up and down those stairs every 20-30 minutes! Whew! I need to catch my breath just thinking about it....

Who would have known I needed to explain better than, "Put the pee pee in the potty or you will be wet. Stink goes there too, okay?"

"Okay mommy!" They all cheered in excited unison. "We're big now!"

Day two Brenden comes to me and says, "These pants are broken! They have a hole in them. I need new pants!" I change his wet clothes and we practice sitting on the potty again. Some time later he returns. "These pants have a hole in them. They are broken! I need new pants! I get wet. I need new pants!" I finally get it and tell him all the pants will have holes in them. He will get wet if he doesn't use the potty. He says, "I need a diaper. I don't want to be wet." (Insert picture of lower lip curled waaaayy out here.) Well, after we figured that out he has done much better. He loves to get treats!

The other kids are progressing alright. Evan is really good and will go without asking or telling me now. I just need to remind him he needs to put his clothes back on when he is done. I will find him running down the hall in the buff. "Evan! Why are you naked?" Thinking oh, no! Where is the mess he got himself out of? "I put pee pee in da podee" then he leads me to it and smiles! I would say he is about done. He doesn't needa treat everytime anymore. Marek can't figure out how to get there in time yet, at least not for the most important part. Lily is still content to sit in the yuck. Eeew!

I thought we had laundry before, ha! I am just glad we have enough toilets to have a spare!

Oh, their birthday was good too. They got lots of books, a great soap mold kit like playdo for the tub, and some puppets. Even though I said we didn't need any gifts. It wasn't too much though. Thanks everyone!

Steve has the day off work tomorrow to help finish off the potty training (hopfully it will be finished after one more day!) Stephen and Dallas have been helping remind the kids and taking them to a far off potty while I was with another kid already. What a lucky mom I am to have such good helpers! Of course, they got just as many treats as the kids did, after all, they went on the potty too!

8 years old and baptized!

This weekend my oldest son turned eight years old. We had Grandma Taggart fly in from Arizona for the big event - his baptism. She will be staying until Monday afternoon. It has been good for the boys to see her again and the little ones got to meet her and remember who she is. It's been about 2 years since we saw her last. Stephen was so excited to be baptized. I was sad it was on a holiday weekend and the bishop, his primary teachers, and others had other plans so they were not able to attend.

When we walked into the room for his confirmation it was just our family. I looked around and realized that there were no, none, nada, zero men there to assist in the priesthood blessing, confirming Stephen with the gift of the Holy Ghost. With only one member of the bishopric there, our circle of priesthood was nearly a circle of two. Then the other baptism from our ward came in with her family. They had the biggest group of people! WOW. We had a few of them help us, they were our friends too. I was sad that none of my family were there. But I am ever so greatful that they all have jobs!!! They all were at work. I am glad Stephen was happy and he knows he is loved anyway.

Where did the summer go?

Well, We have been so busy that I haven't blogged much. I have thought of it often though, believe me! Our summer has included fun things like having a visitor from Germany stay with us for 5 weeks. We went swimming, drove to the arches national park, hiked a bit, camped in mountains, went to Lagoon (local amusement park), saw a natural geyser, went to the zoo, the dinosaur museum, lunch at the park (many times). We attended the free movie almost every week, had playdates with friends, went bowling (yes, all of us - well, not Steve he was working) and more.

Here is a picture of Goblin Valley in Southern Utah Sabrina (German friend mentioned earlier) is in the background. I finally have a decent picture to put on facebook, if I can figure it out.


Here's a picture of Steve with some of the kids in Goblin Valley

Yet, when someone asked Dallas if he had done anything fun this summer he said, "mmm, no not really. But we ordered a swing set!" We have indeed ordered a swingset, but what about the entire summer? Oh well. It will get here in a few weeks.

This is what happened today. Of course they saw the camera coming and got their smiles on. I can't believe Lily was still clean even when I dressed her in a white shirt today!






Brenden was in on it too, but you can't tell because it's all on the back of his head. i took the pictures, then hosed them off outside, stripped them to their diapers then let them in the house. Then I decided that Brenden was still too dirty and took him to the shower. He still got a bath at bedtime for, as he said, "I am a dirty boy! I need a bath." He speaks the truth!

Whatever will I do next week without a vehicle? I guess there's enough dirt to keep us busy...and that ever elusive potty training... nah, why waste time for fun? Besides, we wouldn't want Daddy to miss all the real fun! He will be going to Colorado for high adventure mountain climbing. Wish us all luck!

Swimming?

How about taking six kids ages 7 and younger swimming, with one adult? Even better sounding when four of them are three years old right? Well, my sister called me yesterday morning and suggested we go to the pool. Would she help keep track of the kids? yes? Ok, but how much would it cost me? I never did find out and we didn't end up at the pool.

I spent hours looking for Lily's swimsuit. They were interrupted hours, but still, she has been carrying her princess suit around nearly every day since we bought it in May - just before the rains started. Now when the sun shines I can't find it? You've got to be kidding me! So My sister, Lacey, decided to buy her a new one - only $7, cute blue and pink striped with a flower and butterfly- so that was nice. Between this and trying to get all of the kids in their suits with sunscreen on, waiting for so and so to be able to go, call them to see what's taking so long/what time they are available- oh! They decided not to go. Thanks for telling us, blah, blah, blah - our attempt at going to the pool at 1:00 turned into running through sprinklers at 2:30. This wasn't as exciting as Lacey had planned (kids were still looking for snails and bugs. You should see our collection!) so she went to the store and bought a slip and slide.

We waited for the set up and waited for our turn. While Lacey was out shopping, she got more kids and we ended up with ten kids there. Boy were my kids mad at me when I said it was time to get dry and go home for dinner! This process took me close to an hour. I can not believe how time consuming this simple fun was. I feel like I wasted a good amount of day trying to figure out what we were doing - oh, the pool ended up being closed for maintenance when I called to get the cost. Then we drove by the pool, and it really was open. The kids could see other people in there playing and I was in trouble once again.

I refuse to be in trouble today! I will clean the house: dishes, laundry, bathrooms, vacuum the floors, get the guest room ready, take the kids to the park for lunch, do some homework (I finished a class yesterday except for the final), pull the weeds, harvest some strawberries, mow the lawn, read with the kids, have an art project with them, take them to the library, make a batch of cookies.... well, maybe I won't do ALL of that today.

But I will not give the kids expectations that can't be met today. We will most likely spend the day watching TV while I clean up and get ready for our visitor. We will got to the park because it is chicken day. I found out yesterday they are cutting back their menu options because of the economy. This means they have five things to rotate through the entire summer. Major bummer since my kids will not eat three of them EVER, and the other one they are 50-50. They like the chicken sandwiches.

Thursday our visitor will get here from Germany. Sabrina will stay with us for about a month. We are very excited! She is 17 years old. She teaches swimming at home and will help us learn while she is here. Maybe after she leaves I will feel better about taking my kids to the pool. What is American that we should share with her? We are thinking of taking her to the Arches and Zions national parks, a BBQ, fireworks and parade. Any other ideas?

Definitely a TV day. Dallas just came and told me he doesn't feel well today. I will not be in trouble today - no expectations to let down!
We love each other and we are sick today - Oh wait! Was that the camera?


What can I say, they take after their mother.