Such a big night!!!!!

It has been hard for Ruby to be the only one of all her friends and in her 1st grade class that had not lost a tooth, until tonight!

She had one tooth that was loose but still probably needed a few days to come out, she couldn't wait. About 40 min after we put her to bed she screamed "I lost my tooth" she came out of her room with a bloody tooth and lip and she was shaking she was so excited. We made a huge deal out of it, took tons of photos and let her check out her new look in the mirror. We put the tooth in the Tooth-fairy pillow and she went right to sleep.




Fyi- Ruby finally caught up on her sleep this weekend and is acting like her normal non-psycotic self again. Eric and Haley were away at Astro Science camp so our house was quiet and she was able to sleep in.

Poop...all over my house!

Ruby has been boycotting sleep. She stays up late in her bed singing and doing whatever it takes to ensure her body never stops moving and her eyes never shut. After several days of missing out on 4+ hours of sleep, she has turned psychotic. She cried and kicked and thrashed the living room for about 2 hours because the DVD player would not pause her movie. Fyi- It often is not able to pause her movie because the batteries are always placed backwards in the remote control. When she gets into this tantrum mode, there is nothing I can do to get her out of it. I just talk calmly and continue to say things like "Once you are back in control I would be happy to help you". Yesterday Eric and I had it with her psychotic sleep deprived behavior, so Eric gave her some Benadryl at dinner (supposedly for a small cut on her lip). She still did not fall asleep for 2 1/2 hours after she was tucked into bed.

So where does the poop come in? Before it was bedtime I noticed a couple of post it notes that said POOP stuck in the kitchen. I knew Ruby was mad and trying to get a reaction, so I ignored them. Then I went up stairs...they were EVERYWHERE. All down the hall, all over Ruby's room, in my bedroom and bathroom, seriously everywhere and Ruby was in her room crying because she did not want to brush her teeth.

I asked Ruby why she put POOP post it notes all over the house and surprise, she said it was not her. I thought to myself "Ya right it was not you" and continued to risk my life trying to brush her teeth. She told me again that she did not write the post it notes and that It was Haley. Haley, that had been sitting in her room quietly reading all afternoon. After a while of her Father questioning her, Haley admitted that she did put the POOP notes all over the house.

Haley?

My 9 year old!

You have got to be kidding. I'm still not sure if she did it knowing that it would get Ruby in trouble or if she just thought it was funny. Either way I need to figure out how to get Ruby to sleep and why Haley felt the need to put POOP all over our house.

So here it is 10:00pm as I sit here typing listing to Ruby sing her heart out trying to stay awake.

I can only imagine what tomorrow has to offer.



My personal favorite was the poop on the "Love at home" needlework my Mom Made.

Pinch me!

Have you ever had such an incredible blessing that it takes several days for it to sink in that it's REAL? We have, and I am still in denial.

We just found out that for Thanksgiving we are having a family reunion with my side of the family...on a cruise! We are so excited we can't stand it.

I had to pick my girls up from school and run to Costco to get the passport photos so we can get them back in time.



I have been showing them (on a blow up beach ball globe) where we are going, literally it's the islands all around Cuba. I am headed to the library to check out some books on these islands to show them photos and learn more about the area.

Pick up sticks

This is how my girls play pick up sticks with Grandpa John. They do not exactly follow the rules, but they have a blast doing it.

Birdie

Our Home teacher brought his daughter and her love bird named Birdie.


He talked about how it is his daughters responsibility to take care of all of birdies needs and keep her safe, like not letting her fly outside where she would probably die. He compared this to how it's Eric and my responsibility to take care of our girls and how sometimes they don't understand why we have certain rules but it is for their own protection and happiness.


I don't think our girls have ever listened so well to a lesson. They loved it!

1st impressions

I had a parent teacher conference with Haley's teacher. At the end of the meeting I said:

"Eric is excited to come tomorrow and give the bone and muscle presentation.",
The teacher looked at me and said "Is this a 2nd marriage?"
"Excuse me" I said
she asked me again if this was a second marriage.
I said "no... why?"
She said "You have a sparkle in your eye when you talk about him, you usually don't see that in 1st marriages"


The next day
I went with Eric to help set up his presentation for the class showing images of bones and muscles. Within minutes after we arrived the teacher was checking him out and said "Are you naturally this fit, or do you run". I actually saw Eric blush as he said "Well, I do some rowing". As soon as she left the room Eric said to me " Can you believe that? Would you ever consider asking someone that the second you meet them?

Clearly we have a teacher that makes interesting observations and conclusions with her 1st impressions. I'm wondering what she was thinking that she didn't say out loud.

My entropic life... and raspberries

Ok, so after a few phone calls and emails from people checking on me because I have not been blogging, I admit that I have been completely out of sorts for several reasons.

Our house was hit by several unnatural disasters. I had still not finished painting our popcorn free living room and my kitchen that has about 6 feet of counter space had 3 feet of painting supplies covering it. Eric put up crown molding in the living room so the garage was a disaster with tools, molding scraps and dust everywhere.

Then as if this was not enough, Eric has been working the night shift for the past three weeks. This is a HUGE deal when you are trying to keep 3 girls from death fighting over who gets the blue Polly car and playing handball on his bedroom door. How can one keep kids quiet all day. I realize it's impossible, but I still turn into physco Mom stressing out at every sound. I never realized how many tantrums Lucy and Ruby throw, and they are quite impressive. Our bedroom windows were draped with blankets to make the room dark and I moved all my stuff out of our bedroom/bathroom and into the girls bathroom. My make up in their bathroom, that's a whole different blog.

I am happy to report that Eric worked his last night shift Friday and the painting and molding in the living room is complete. The garage, kitchen, bedroom and living room are all back together again and all the children are still alive. I am starting to feel like I can handle life again.

So yesterday while Eric was sleeping, I drove up the mountain to take the girls to pick raspberries and pears. I found this great little farm (on line) and they were having a special Civil war day with performers and activities. Perfect. The girls were so excited to go that they were even willing to turn off Hanna Montana to go. That's huge because we don't have cable so Saturday is the only day they get to watch that.

When we arrived at the farm, I realized that this Civil war deal was a much bigger attraction then I had realized. The place was packed. We had to park really far away and hiked up a long dirt road. I started to feel that this was a mistake. I asked someone if they knew where we could just pick raspberries, and he told us to leave that farm (because it was so crowded) and go up the road to a different one. So we hiked back down to the parking lot and started driving up the road. The girls were all starting to complain.

We came to a raspberry/ apple picking field and parked, again kinda far away. I guess lots of other people had the same idea as us. The girls were complaining as we were waiting in the line to pay. When we got to the front I found out that they only take cash! Who ever has cash? Not me. So I explain why we need to leave this place too and my girls start into a chorus of "Can't we just go home?", "This is the worst day ever". As we got in the car I was feeling horrible and thinking that I had completely blown this trip.

We started to drive home and I saw another farm that had raspberry picking. We stopped and it was cooler then the 1st two we had stopped at, no hiking and yes they took debit cards! They gave us a box with 3 baskets (one for each girl) and I realized this was the perfect place for us. After just a few minutes of raspberry picking I heard "This is the greatest", "This is better then Hanna Montana" and "When can we do this again". We ended up having a really great time. On the drive home we talked about how sometimes you don't get what you want and you are disappointed, but then you realize that you got something better. Even though it was hard to hike to and leave two farms we all realized it was a blessing.

An amazing gift

Last year our quilt group did a block exchange using a daisy pattern. One of the girls that was in the exchange was living in Florida at the time, so after the exchange I mailed her 20 quilt blocks to her.

She never received them!

I had not insured the package so I had no way to track it. I decided to mail her my 20 daisy blocks because It as the right thing to do. I would have always felt guilty looking at my quilt knowing that she never receied her blocks.

Unbeknownst to me, some of my friends sent out an email to every one in the exchange and asked them to either make another one of their blocks for me or to mail them the fabric so they could make it.

They completely replaced all 20 of the quilt blocks for me. I know how much time and work this took and I am so thankful to have friends like this.

Now whenever I see this quilt I will think about my great friends and quilt group and feel loved.

Thank you!

Flag quilt photo directions

I made a flag quilt tonight and took photos of the process along the way. I hope this will make it easier for those of you that are new to quilting. If you use the directions already posted along with these photos it should help you out. The colors are not exactly as the pattern specified, but I did not have enough brown to do a full border out of it. If anyone has any questions please email me.

The new instrument

Haley came home very excited about the instrument that she choose to play for band. I was hoping it was the violin, flute or clarinet, but we were not so lucky. After Eric and I tried to subtly encourage her to choose a different instrument, she make a list of why this is the instrument for her.



Yes, we now have a very happy girl with a very loud TROMBONE in our home.