The April fools fool

This morning I got the kids up at their regular time. Once they were all groggy and kinda sitting up I snuck in and called the house phone from my cell.

*stomping over to the ringing phone, annoyed*"Hello?? Yes. Yes I do. WHAT? OH my gosh. WHAT????? Oh no!! Is anybody hurt?? (covering mouth, totally hamming it up) OK. OK. Thank you for calling. OK. Thank you"

I look at the boys....."You guys, CTA had a huge fire. It is almost completely burned down." Sadie comes running in. "This is so scary. Your school is totally burnt!!!" Happy celebrating ensues. Arm pumping, Lots of yelling "YES!!" and "We don't have to go to school anymore!! YES!"


3 minutes later-"OH, wait, they told me something else, too. They said "APRIL FOOLS!" By this time I am laughing. But then I felt kinda bad when I saw their faces, I mean they fell for it HARD. So I'm laughing, they were good sports, all was OK. I go in and look at the calendar. Yeah, its March 31st. SO I'm a totally idiot and now I have to come up with something more elaborate tomorrow to throw them off. Something later in the day and more creative because they will be on to me now. It was REALLY funny though. I'm gonna do something tomorrow and put the video camera on this time. Their reaction was priceless!!!!

Thursday

Yup, thats it. Thursday. Trying to get back into the swing of life now that school is back in. I'ts always harder than I think it is going to be. I hate spending 20-30 minutes getting the kids out of bed. It is the worst. It means that I just have to get up that much earlier to get the process started. And I can only put them to bed a certain degree of early. I love that my kids are great sleepers, and will sleep in late on days we dont have to be places, but it sucks during school. And can you imgine 5 sleepy teenagers... Yikes! Not looking forward to those days. I can put a screeching alarm clock right on their pillows and they wil not even stir. Scary. Tonight I am shooting for a 7:45 in bed time with an 8 o'clock lights out. Luckily homework hasn't been too brutal this week, mainly Wyatt's has been the challenge, and everyones report cards came back great and with improvements. YAY!

Today I am spending at home ALLLLLL day (except the preschool run) and cleaning my house! It is terrible! It is so hard for me to accomplish housework when Mark is home on his days off. I just want to hang with him and take off from my chores too, so by wed night/thursday I'm wondering what happened to my house. Gotta go get my bedroom done and all stylin before Mark gets home this morning to sleep. Adios!!

Another Easter for the books

Well, Its an Easter for the book of stuff that was pretty uneventful. Of course I'd take that over the "Easter of the big accident" or the "Easter of the big catstrophe" So I'd say it was a success. My only regret was that I forgot to take pics of the kids looking so cute with their haircuts and whatnot. I got a stylin new dress and I didn't get a pic of that either. But we will look pretty much the same next week so I'll get one next Sunday. No big deal. And the boys room is trashed. Ugh. See how laid back and cool I can be when things aren't perfect?? LOL I even used cream of mushroom in place of cream of chicken in my scalloped potatoes tonight and it was fine, even though the recipe CLEARLY called for cream of chicken. Apparently nobody else on my street eats crappy casserole type food so I couldn't borrow any. :D It worked out just fine. I guess I need to update my style of cooking and be a little healthier. I also bought WAY too much pie. So I sent almost an entire lemon merengue to work with Mark tonight. I try to send in food whenever I can so that I will be the cool wife. :D Poor guy is sick, I doubt he will make it through his whole shift, he's miserable and overworked. A person can only work 60 hour weeks of the graveyard shift for so many months until it finally catches up with him, I think that is what happened.

I did get a couple of pictures of the Easter egg hunt that we had in the neighborhood Saturday morning. I LOVE our neighborhood, everyone is so fun. Eater egg hunting was pretty sweet for me, because I had the big kids do it all. They filled and counted the eggs, then Cade hid them all for me. I'm really loving having the big kids be more reliable for that stuff. I'm about ready to send Cade on his bike to Fry's across the street to pick me up some random thing I need one of these days. Not, now, but the day is coming really fast. ANYWAY After the egg hunt we colored eggs, then I chilled and took a nap and then played for a baptism and them went to the Easter pageant. It was really good. It totally put me in the Easter spirit. I wish Cade could have seen better, but he's too cool to sit on my lap apparently. He was frustrated that he couldn't see, which irritated me. But above all it was a great thing to do the night before Easter.

And best of all.......tomorrow is the last day of spring break, and I can get back to my regularly scheduled life. YAY!!!

Easter prep

Why do I always forget about Easter?? In the religious scope, it is just as if not more important than Christmas. I don' t know if it is because I have so many other activities at this same time every year but it always seems to sneak up on me. And this year it is so early, whereas last year it seemed like it was practically summer. I never even decorated or anything this year. Well anyway I clued in and I am on schedule to have a fabulous, peaceful, fun and lovely Easter, IF I can manage a very late night tonight. And IF I can stop blogging tonight (I already checked in on everyone, so I'm good for now). We have a packed schedule but it will be fun if I can do all the prep tonight and not be rushed. 4 hours. I just need 4 productive hours. That puts bedtime at 3 am. Cool.

My birthday babies!!

I cannot believe that within the last week my 2 littlest guys turned 5 and 6! Wyatt turned 6 on the 12th and Dayton turned 5 on the 17th. With all the new babies being born on our street it just makes me realize how far our family has come. And I would love for just a day to have each of them back as a little 2 month old just to cuddle and smell and coo at. But since that isn't possible I'll just have to coo at the pictures......

Dayton

Wyatt

And now they are spending their birthday money on their own, quoting lines from movies, and cracking me up with their jokes. They are the sweetest little guys, with that boy streak that makes it interesting. I just love these two to death, and I'm so glad they are the best of friends.

The TMNT boys

And everyone knows that I have been living in a Spider man obsessed world for the last, oh, about 10 years now, so I can't birthday post my guys without a theme song or 2........oh yeah.


Happy Birthday guys, I love you to pieces!!!!

*HUGE SIGH*

I cannot believe I have survived the last week. I was talking with the kids about all we have done and it is mind-boggling. Starting with the Ostrich Festival, then we went to Thatcher for 1 day (thats a 5-6 hour drive round trip)





At the park in Thatcher with my mom



then home, family b-day party for Wyatt and Dayton, (more on the b-day boys later) then 2 days later a trip to San D, (more on that later once I get more pics from my mom) then home, CRAZY primary on Sunday(but I have the best job as chorister) then today, Monday....


We had the second party for Wyatt and Daytons b-day. Daytons actual b-day was today so I switched babysitting co-op with Maddy so I could kill 2 birds with one stone (and since the kids were out of school anyway) We had the mother of all birthday parties. I couldn't even count them all, because nobody was still enough to make sure I got it right. Well, I finally figured out that I had 19, yes 19 children between ages 2 1/2 and 11 at my house from 10 - 1. Yikes. Oh yeah, and it was just me. Until finally while desparately trying to cook and serve pizza, Sadie and I were too overworked so I had to wake Mark up (yes, he was actually sleeping through the maylay) and he came and helped (sorta). We played basketball shootout, ran races, duck duck goose, red rover, and jumped on the trampoline (eek) Ate pizza, opened presents, whacked the pinata, then had cupcakes and it was over. The kids had a great time, even though it was a weak theme and really casual. All they want to do is play outside and play with the new toys anyway. I think it was a success. I would have liked to take more pictures, but it was hard because there was just so much going on that I hardly had a moment to think straight to get the camera out. I did snap a few and I got some video too.





Right after the party I had all 5 kids scheduled for the dentist, so we scurried off to that, it went well and no cavities. YAY! Then we hit the chiropracter and home to get ready for the Church FHE party we were in charge of. We hit a few frustrating snags with keys and such, but I didn't have to do very much (thanks, Kat and everybody who brought stuff!!) and also in the process I left Marks debit card in the ATM so now I'm in the doghouse, but in my defense I was a little brain dead from the party. Come ON!! The pizza party was fun and we just got to chill and chat which is what we like to do best anyway. And it was COLD! The lowlight of the party for sure was Cooper being kicked in the stomach and crotch by another kid, which I am getting more and more furious about as the night goes on. BAH! I can't go into it, but I don't feel like I did the right thing by not doing more about it after the fact, whether it would have done any good or not, I should have said more but I let Mark talk me out of it. Thats all I can say about it, I'm just really mad.


As for the rest of spring break what do I have scheduled???? N O T H I N G.

We're BACK!!!

Did you miss us?? We had a great time. I'm tired, we just drove in tonight but unfortunately I had to hit the ground running due to my planned activities for the next couple days. Sea World rocked, it was kinda cold and really windy, but I'll take that over scorching heat any day. 8 kids at Sea World makes for a pretty long day, but they were champs! We drove over thursday, Sea Worlded on Friday, then went to the beach for about an hour this morning before taking off for home, so it was a quickie trip. The kids really want to go back when it is warmer. They just went in the water fully clothed....YOW! They were frozen once they got out in the wind. They had never seen the real ocean before, it was great. We were at Mission Beach. If I had a couple extra million bucks lying around, I'd definetly consider a pad in Mission Beach.

Ostrich Festival

Well if you are heading out to the Ostrich Festval hoping to see an ostrich, well, I'm not sure what to tell ya. LOL I'm sure they have them there somewhere, just not where we were. Once the kids saw the carnival rides, they didn't care what the heck festival it was anyway. We had a good time. I was by myself with the kids, but it was fine, they were really good. Cade and I rode the Kamikaze, the one that criss crosses itself upside down in a full circle. It was crazy!!! The little kids rode a couple things, Cooper and Wyatt went on the Gravitron (PUKE!!) the one that is the round room that spins you and sucks you to the wall. Yuck, no thanks. And Cooper and Sadie went on one that goes upside down, it was the Inverter or something. The other favorite was the big dragon boat thing. They are all so brave, they love the scary rides. They are gonna be FUN to take when they are all big enough to go on the big stuff.

After the "circus"

Can You spot Cade and Sadie??? Too cute!!

Describing the feeling inside the Gravitron

Ready to ride the roller coaster!! Wooo hoooo!!


Really fun times!!!

Blessing #7-MY job

I love my job!! I do hair for people at home and almost all the time I love it. My friends and family come to my house and we get to chit chat and laugh while I make them look pretty and then they give me money. Perfect!!! LOL Back in 2000 about the time Cooper was born, I was getting reallly really busy, a little too busy, but then I moved to UT. Now since coming back I've gotten a few clients back and networked a few new ones and it is just about right. There were times in past years when we pretty much lived on what I made. Now my income is for extra stuff and whatever I might be needing at the moment, or just to put aside for later. It always coming in handy though. I am so blessed to have the skill that I can do at home for hardly any overhead and be with my kids. And it makes me feel good that I can charge so much less than a salon so that people who otherwise wouldn't be able to have cute hair can come to me and we both benefit. It works out well.

Blessing #6 DVR!!

Anyone who uses DVR or TiVo knows......once you've had it there is no going back. Its like cell phones, how in the cotton-pickin world did we survive without it?? I love the pausing when you have to deal with a kid, the rewinding live TV when you missed what they said, fast forwarding the commercials, and the fact that an hour long show only takes about 35 minutes to watch. No more looking for blank tapes, trying to figure out the stupid recorder on the VCR, hoping you're not recording over something you needed or hoping that the timer worked if you have to leave or hoping you had enough tape left. Oh yeah, then what do you do with all the tapes you recorded after you watch it?? That was like the dark ages!! LOL I tried to watch AI the other night in real time and I couldn't fast forward the commercials, and I swear I was having anxiety attacks having to wait through the commercials. I would NEVER try to watch Lost in real time, I'd be a basket case (more than usual) by the time it was halfway over. DVR rules!!!!!

WOW I am way behind on blessings!!! I better catch up this week!

YAY weekend!!!

No football this weekend, which makes my day so lovely. All I have to do today is go to a b-day party in Casa Grande but Mark is going to go which I am so happy about. I probably would'nt go if he wasn't going anyway. It has been a pretty nice week in all. Quite boring, but I like that much better than stressful. The next week will revolve around getting things ready for my mom and grandma to visit from MN/MT and getting ready to take the kids on a mini-trip with my other mom the day they leave. Its a seret, but Cade and Sadie know(everyone else would drive me completely crazy till the day we leave) but my mom, 2 sisters, my kids, neice Ava and my Aunt and her 2 grandkids are going to Sea World in 2 weeks. It is gonna be a blast!! It will be the perfect thing to do during Spring Break. My kids have never been to the beach so it will be fun to take them.

Weekly TV wrapup.....Lost was CRAZY!!!! I loved it. I need to go check out the forum and get some answers (or new questions, you know). The one I usually go to is thetailsection.com and there is always interesting conversations going on about the show. AI was good, I thought Amanda Overmeyer ws horrible, I thought for sure she was gone. I could not believe Alaina W. reacted so bad to getting voted off! I guess Simon was right back at her first audidtion that she isn't as good as she thinks she is. Shoot. :D There are really only 6 or 7 people on the show that are really awesome, so much for this year being the best ever. After last week I really only like: David Archuletta, David Hernandes, Chikeze, Sayesha, Ramiele, Carly, And Brooke. I think Aisa'h can reedeem herself.


Side note: Mark came home before I finished my last paragraph so I was in the other room talking to him and Cooper came in the office to play on the computer and read my blog about Sea World. So now he knows too. Dang! Its OK, he won' t tell but thats just not cool. Sometimes I'm still adjusting to how grown up and capable they are!! I gotta get with it!!! LOL