FHE

Last night for FHE we stole Stephanie and Michael's idea and we had a lesson on gratitude.
Everybody made a gratitude list. The kids were suppose to make a list of 5 things and Mike
and I did 10 each. So we have a lot of things to list here, the kids thought of these things all by
themselves!

Madeline:
-coloring pictures
-purple
-eating
-Mommy
-Lilah
-Daddy

Calvin:
-toys and trucks
-going to Disney World
-playing outside
-my family
-my cold blanket
-Crabby (the crab that 'grew' in water that his Grammy sent)
-snacks

Anna Elise
-going to Disney World
-family
-toys
-movies
-scriptures

Daddy
-Sally and her gifts and talents that allow me opportunities to pursue my investments
-The muddy glove Calvin found so my hands wouldn't get dirty
-Conservative talk radio and Newsmax.com so I can maintain perspective
-Right to vote even when we don't win
-Right to bear arms, gun shows to get arms, and Sally 'letting' me exercise that right
-Animals: they taste great!
-Fruits and Vegetables: They go well with animals
-Milk: especially when we have whole milk in the house for the toddlers
-Freedom of religion: it is a blessing to have the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation, and the restoration of the Church and fulness of the gospel
-Anna's imagination, Calvin's playfulness, Madeline's goofiness, and Lilah's continual smiles

Mommy
-my husband: his hard work for our family,he is a great dad, and he trys to be supportive of me
-the Gospel and the continual progression it enables
-my kids
-my job that can support our family and allows me to be at home with my kids at the same time
-prayer and communicating with my Heavenly Father
-my house, it's my favorite of the 5 we've lived in!
-spring, it's almost here
-my family, I love emailing my mom everyday and being able to see everybody once a year and to keep up with them and their lives and feeling connected
-the spirit, the guidance and the peace it gives me
-the support I have here: a few close friends, the branch that we attend, the familiarity as it begins to feel a little bit like home
-BLOGGING! I love it and it keeps me sane!

What a Week

We had a very eventful week and I actually took pictures too!

The kids had a tough week. We had rain for most of the week, if it wasn't raining, it was way to

wet to be playing outside. We were all a bit stir crazy. Here are the kids being bats, they were so cute hanging upside down.

Madeline is finally hitting the terrible twos. My other kids all entered that stage early, at 18-20

months. Although Madeline is by far my most mellow 2 year old, but we have finally hit that '2' stage now that she is 26 months. She is throwing more tantrums, saying 'no' more often, hitting more, being more independent, and desperately trying to get rid of her nap. Every time she goes to bed, whether for a nap or for the night she usually gets up wearing something different. She is much more imaginative, playing dress up more, singing, making up songs, yelling at Calvin for things he didn't do, definately getting older=-) She has had a cold (along with everyone else in the house) and is tired of having her nose wiped. I said 'Madeline you need your nose wiped, go get mommy a tissue", she replied with " No mommy I just need to lick it" and she did. She loves playing with mommy's makeup. Here she is with a rather scary looking make up job.

Calvin has had a tough month. He has started whinning. Calvin is not a whiner. I'm not sure what is going on, but the whinnign is driving me insane. I need my happy and laid back boy to come back! Here is what Calvin did all week: whinned,

made his sisters scream, put things in his nose and mouth (another new developement, since when does a 3 year old suddenly start putting everything in their mouth?),

and loved Lilah almost too much. He usually ends up unintentionally making her cry - but he does love her so much!

Anna Elise is getting more dramatic every day. I'm not sure how I got such a shy drama queen, but that is a good description of her. Today I asked her to pick up her clothes and she threw herself face down on the floor and sobbed. Poor thing. I asked her to pose for a picture and here is what I got:

Lilah has been growing up so much! She started eating cereal a week or so ago. She is doing very well with it considering how she eats. She is also playing with toys and interacting with the kids more and more. Her coos and laughs sound more like little girl giggles instead of scary growls and she still loves to smile at everyone.

My Saturday was a bit crazy. That morning I participated in a 10k. I beat my personal goal (I won't tell you what that was, it's pretty pathetic, but I made it). Mike took all the kids to Anna Elise's last ballet class - she is going to miss it. That afternoon Mike took off for the gun show (no comment from me). We met him afterwards and went and bought a couch. I know we both needed to be there - but four young kids in a furniture store is a disaster! I think we bought the couch just so we could leave and not have to go to another store! We've been wanting a small couch, chaise, love seat or something upstairs. However, we have very narrow stairs that turn after the first two steps and the door way to the stairs is pretty small. We thought we bought a small enough chaise to fit, but we thought wrong. First we took our front door off. Our stairs are right by the door and we needed to be able to use the front porch to get the right angle up. Then we smashed a hole in the back of my staircase, to get just a few more inches. That didn't work, so we took all the trim off of the stair entry. No, that didn't work either. So we took the 2 by 4 out and all the sheetrock all the way to ceiling. Then another 2 by 4 off the side and what do you know - it finally fit. I'm not sure what would've gone next. I didn't get a before picture and the pictures don't do justice to the mess that sheetrock dust can make. But the chaise fits nicely in it's spot and even though I don't care for the color, it is very comfortable.

Here is our psuedo before picture, Mike is holding up the trim so you can see where it used to be when we had more of a wall.

Here are Mike and his brother Sean almost done with the hole, there are still side pieces to be hacked off (notice the hole in the back of the stair well, next to Sean)

My front door, only not in it's usual spot!

Our new chaise! (not the best picture, but notice it is upstairs now!)

Almost

My life is ALMOST better. It's been a really rough month trying to recover from that awful week and all the new things that have popped up. We have tenants in our empty rental! It's ALMOST fixed and the tenants will move in next weekend. Mike has ALMOST figured out his paper route. There are still issues. His supervisor was out on disability when he started and his substitute supervisor wasn't really supervising...his real supervisor is ALMOST done with her leave, she will be back late this week. NHance is ALMOST making money this month. That will be a first in a really long time. I'm ALMOST getting some sleep and adjusting to my new schedule - I'm giving myself one more week. The kids ALMOST had a whole day with their dad on Saturday, but he ended up working, they were happy with the few hours they got. I'm ALMOST ready to get back to being a real mom instead of that crazy lady who is frantically trying to get everything done! One more week and maybe my ALMOST's will be done! I'll let you know =-) I'm determined to make April a good month!

You're Ruining My Life

Anna Elise is in her room sobbing. It's pretty forced by this point. She is having a hard day.
She yelled at me "Mom, you are ruining my life...you really are" as she stormed off to her room.
It's snack time and we are having left over whole wheat muffins from breakfast and she wants something different and I said no. I really thought these kinds of statements came a little later. What is she going to come up with when life gets harder and I get meaner?
Check out the couple of new Calvinisms on the side bar!
Madeline is talking more and more and I really want to do some "Maddie Lines" for her. We'll
see.

Lovely Little Lilah

Lilah went in for her 4 month check up a couple of weeks ago. The nurses fell
in love with her. They all held her and passed her from nurse to nurse while I took
Madeline across the hall to get her blood drawn. Both did so well at the Dr. Lilah
weighs 14 and a half pounds and I can't remember how long she is. She is in the 95
percentile for length and 75 percentile for weight. So she is a big girl! She is still
a happy and patient baby. She loves attention and loves to watch her siblings. She
laughs and giggles all the time. She smiles at anyone that is talking (she LOVES RS
where she thinks everyone making comments is talking to her). She likes to be sung
to and she loves 'peek a boo'. Her newest trick is that she has learned to roll over
and does it often - especially in bed. Lilah's favorite thing to do is sit in her walker.
I started putting her in the walker in January, just as a place for her to sit and watch
everyone. Her little legs grew so long that she was soon moving herself around. Now she
goes from room to room, following the kids. She circles around the dinning room table
while we eat and visits each of us. It's incredible to watch her go. We did get a not very
good video of her kind of moving in her walker - it doesn't do her justice! I hope to get some
better pictures or video of her and more of her new tricks!

CRAZY

I've had one of those weeks that make you wonder what in the world you are doing. Everything went wrong. By the end of the week some things were right again. I had to wait and blog about it now so that I don't cry or explode while posting. It's almost funny now!
First the weather was crazy. A week ago we had upper 60 degree weather - amazing. Sunday night it started snowing and didn't stop for 18 hours. It dumped about 8 inches of snow here. For those of you out west who are wondering what the big deal is - we don't get snow here. It hasn't snowed and stuck since the first winter we moved here - that was seven years ago. Everything shut down. Everything except for
the newspaper. Mike got up and went for his first day on the job. He was suppose to meet his supervisor to get trained. He was almost there when he noticed something
on the road. Because he was driving in deep snow he decided that braking or swerving was not a good idea. He slowed down and ended up driving over it. It popped his tire. 2 hours later he was back home, very cold and very tired with a broken car and hadn't delivered a single paper. That was dumb. He spent all morning trying to get it replaced - but everyone was either closed or didn't have the right tire, he finally got it replaced that afternoon. It really took ALL day!
Anyway, other things that happened: Anna's school was closed both days. Schools were actually closed for 3 and a half days! Not necessary! Our pipes under the house froze - I had no water for a day, we ended up going out for dinner that night, we drove there during rush hour, got the kids unloaded and on our way in, realized that we didn't have our wallets - we drove home, Madeline was not happy, she doesn't understand about money yet. The furnace in one of our rental properties died (yes died) and we had to put them up in a hotel since it got down to 10 degrees that night. It took 3 days to fix the furnace! We had tenants move out of a unit and totally trashed the carpets - the house needs new carpet, paint, trim, everything it's just awful, I had a pinched nerve for three days - so I had intermittent chest pains under my ribs when I breathed, the snow melted after three days and now there is mud EVERYWHERE - in my house, all over my car, the kids clothes - I did a lot of laundry this week. Oh, and Madeline ate a cube of margarine. How gross is that? She walked by with it, unwrapped and in her mouth. I said 'Madeline' and by the time I got to her she had found the wrapper and was trying to wrap it up again, but still eating it. I can't even remember what else happened - lots of little things that are usually fine, but not welcome when dealing with disasters like no water or no tire. The weather has warmed back up - it was 80 degrees today. Where else do you get 10 degree lows and 80 degree highs in the same week? They say in Richmond if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, it will change! I've included some pictures of the snow and the margarine eating incident. I hope you all had a better week then I did! (Note to Mom: I'll be doing a Lilah post on Monday, I promise!)

Paper Boy

I now live with the 'paper boy'. Yes, Mike picked up a paper route this past week. Don't worry - we are fine, I still have my job. However, our business' don't really bring in an income. Our rental business is done for equity and our NHance business isn't even 2 years old yet, so we can't expect to make a profit yet. Mike decided he wanted to do something that he got paid for. That makes sense to me. So he delivers USA Today to hotels, gas stations, and those little paper stands. He works from 2:30 until around 5:15 ish AM. We've both been going to bed earlier and then he goes back to bed when he gets home. I get up with the kids and try to keep them quiet so he can get a little bit more sleep. It's been a rough week but I feel like we are going to be able to adapt and we'll get used to the new routine. The nice thing about USA Today is that it's not a daily paper - it's only delivered during the week so Mike doesn't have to work weekends. Mike says he doesn't love delivering the paper, but he does like listening to some crazy radio station in the middle of the night and he does buy himself a drink without any hassling from me.