Tales of a Fulltime Mom

Free slurpee day at 7-Eleven on...7-11.

We had the pleasure over the weekend and beyond to spend more time with Angela and Alan, Elaine's sister and brother-in-law from England. We haven't seen them since we were in London in 2003 so we were certainly due! We could have spent the whole time just listening to them talk, especially Alan's stories, but we did do other things too. On Friday evening we went over to the Casselberry Food Trucks to give them a taste of this American phenomenon. We have only ever been to the Ocoee ones so this was a new venue for us. I found it to be a bit nicer...there were a lot of nice grassy areas with nooks and crannies to spread out a blanket and then I also found that they had different trucks which struck my vegetarian fancy (I had a watermelon, tomato, mint, and shaved feta salad and it was delish!). The only downside was the live band that was playing that made it a little difficult to hear but I imagine on the day that they had a jazz band playing, it would be lovely. We were worried it was going to rain but the weather held out and the evening proved to be very relaxing. The chocolate-strawberry-cream crepe didn't hurt matters either. I was glad the girls were distracted with some friends they had made so they didn't bug me for a bite.

We bring our own food for the kids to save shekels. Brady saw me pack this peach and all he could talk about was eating his apple. I kept saying "No, it's a peach" but he kept right on asking for his apple.

Who is that cute kid back there next to the fountain?

Saturday night we went over to Ron and Elaine's for another visit and also to celebrate Alan and Angela's birthdays. Alan had his several months ago but Angela had hers on the 7th so we thought it would be nice to do something to celebrate. Russ and Saray came over as well and Elaine made a great supper. And of course, we had cake. Alan had some more hilarious stories to tell (why is that a story sounds twice as funny when someone with an accent is telling it? In this case it was an English guy telling a story with a Swedish accent) which I unfortunately missed since I was tending the kids inside but I could hear the belly laughs. Duncan's middle name is Alan, courtesy of THIS Alan and I think it is fitting they share a name since they share the same sense of humor. We got home about 9:30 and shortly thereafter the verdict came back in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case so we were glued to the TV for the rest of the evening. I won't get into my feelings on that but I was not surprised that they jury found him not guilty based on the case that the prosecution presented. It has been an interesting week with all the fall out from the verdict. It reminds me of the Casey Anthony stuff that went on two years ago...which will be forever etched in my memory because the trial was taking place during the time Brady was born.

Let them eat cake!

A little gift from Uncle Russ.

They left yesterday so on Monday evening they swung by our house to say good-bye to Duncan. The kids and I ended up seeing them yesterday morning, before they left, because I dropped the kids off at Ron and Elaine's while I had my doctor appointment. As we were leaving, Alan pulled out some fake finger apparatus that made it look like his thumb was lit up red. Brady was intrigued and kept saying "Do it again." We probably would have been there all day if I hadn't dragged him away. Little mention was made of it that afternoon but that evening when I was brushing his teeth, he brought it up again. Brady HATED to get his teeth brushed and I would struggle mightily with the task each night. I almost thought I was going to have to get a straight jacket. I'm not kidding. It was that bad. Then, a few months ago, I came up with the idea of singing a song about his day to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb as I brushed. We do three verses and for each verse, I sing about something he did that day. Voila! No kicking or screaming now. As I was singing the first verse on Monday evening, which I think was about him swimming in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa's, he started saying "No, No, No" and stopped my singing and then said "THUMB!" It was an impressive looking thumb, I must say.

Speaking of my doctor's appointment, all went well. Only six weeks to go! We've had a lot of inquiries as to whether this little bugger has a name and the answer to that is a "NO." Duncan is getting the final say this time around and he seems to be taking his time pulling the trigger. A few weeks ago I went through his list and weeded out all those I didn't like and added a few of my own that he did like which has left us with a list of about 10 - 12 names. On the way home from church last week he presented a first and middle name that we both really liked but there's a little problem with the names going together so we don't think it will work. So we're still, or should I say, he, is still undecided. In the meantime, I decided maybe we'll just keep our decision a secret and announce it after the birth. This way there is still a little intrigue. Because you know, the reaction to the birth will probably be like "Oh, the Grodacks just popped out another kid. Whoopie." Now people can tune in and see if we name him something like North West Grodack...oh wait. That's been taken.

Sunday morning we went to a birthday party for Blake and Evan which meant being plied with fabulous goodies from Jennifier. She also served a brunch, a personal favorite of mine, so it was perfect. French toast to my heart's delight! It was a pool party and the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves as did Brady who spent a fair amount of time on Daddy's shoulders. My giant pregnant belly and I were happy to watch it all from the sidelines.

The theme was LEGOS, in case you can't tell.

Brady eating a lollipop shaped like a LEGO.

Allen led the kids in some pool games. Here they get ready to see who can hold their breath under water the longest. That's Calleigh in the goggles. She didn't win but what chance did she have against a 9-year old boy!

Most of the group of kids (sans Aubree and Brady)

Calleigh gets ready to throw a swimming noodle through one of the circles. Don't think she actually made it. Good effort though.

Sporting their LEGO shirts that they got in their party goodie bags.

The past few days (or should I say Monday & Tuesday) have seen a flurry of activity in our backyard. The landscaping/patio people came Monday morning to start on our patio. Most excitingly, they brought a tractor with them. Brady was all aflutter when he spotted it. We spent a good portion of Monday morning just looking out our window from the second floor watching the men and the tractor at work. Cheap entertainment. Or, when you think about it, not so cheap! The pavers aren't coming in until tomorrow so they spent the first two days just preparing the area and installing our three Japanese Blueberry trees. They weren't here today but they will be back tomorrow and Friday to put in all the pavers. Then it will be shopping time for us to find some outdoor furniture.

I'm not too pleased with all the marks on our lawn from this thing.

Our trees in the process of getting planted.

We were impressed to see them working in the rain.

This morning we hit up story time at the library and then paid a visit to our neighbor's, the Isidro's, for lunch and some backyard water activities. The kids loved it and it reminds me why we moved out here....just to be able to do things like this.''

Hurry it up Allen. We've got a big queue forming here. I thought I would say at least one British thing on here in honor of the departed relatives.

Allen made us smoothies. Gee, we need to do this more often!

Braelyn tried to teach Calleigh how to do a cartwheel.

She made it look so simple...yet, this is how far Calleigh got. I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer about the whole thing but kid, if you are anything like your mother, it's never going to happen. It's just not my thing.

A little Brady story before I end...this evening he took his little airplane and hurled it, on purpose, at Aubree's back which naturally made her cry hysterically. Duncan took him into our room for some very intentional punishment. Of course, within moments I heard some loud cries coming from the room and then Duncan left him in there for a few minutes to think about his actions and we could hear the sobs continuing as he sat there alone. After about two minutes, Duncan went in to get him (and to tell him to come out and apologize). The first thing Brady did was walk clear across the room to where I was cleaning the laundry room to tell me "I okay, Mom. I okay." And he gave me a hug and caressed my face. You could still see the dried tears on his face. It was just so precious. Now I know why the girls can't resist comforting him every time I reprimand him and he starts to cry. He always goes to them, all pitiful like, for hugs. And even if he just pulled their hair or scratched them or whatever, they always comfort him as if HE is the one who has just suffered some great tragedy. That boy. We're all suckers I guess.

I have forgotten to mention it but I am all but officially retired from my paying job. I am still technically an employee (I asked to still stay on for awhile in case Valerie needs help...that way I have access to files and stuff) but I'm not doing any work. Can I just say it is wonderful??! To be clear, I loved my job and honestly, I really had it made to be able to work from home like I did for the last six years but I'm so enjoying the extra time in the afternoons to get stuff done (or, sneak in a little tiny nap as the case may be. Don't judge me...Didn't I mention that I'm giving birth in six weeks?). On June 22, it was 15 years of employment at the hospital so I was glad to make it to that milestone. Here on out, no paycheck but it's so worth it! Thank goodness I have a studly husband who makes this all possible.

Two other pictures...

Snake picture from last week that I forgot to post. Thankfully no repeat sightings although I swear I heard the bags rustling while I was in the garage this afternoon.

It's baaaaack. We all joked about how we sang the theme song during Cradle Roll at Campmeeting like 10 times a day, "The Big Blue Ocean." Well, what do you know. It's the theme in Brady's Sabbath School class now. And this giant whale is one of the props. Yup, you guessed it. He had a fit when it was taken away about put back up front.

Have a great rest of the week.

We have had several projects going on at once in our backyard. Last week consisted of them planting our trees and putting in our new patio which fortunately wrapped up on Friday. We were a little concerned that it wasn't going to be finished since the brick pavers didn't arrive until late Thursday morning. They assured us, however, that they would have two teams working on it on Friday and it would be done. Well, on Friday I got home from yard sales at about 1 pm to find no vehicles of any kind parked out front. That was rather alarming. I went inside and looked out the back and it appeared that very little was done and although there were about three or four guys there (which was only one team, not the two they had said) they were just lounging around (perhaps on a well deserved lunch break but considering that there seemed to be a lot still to do, we weren't happy with this). I sent Duncan an urgent text. He was already on his way home anyway and called Andy, the guys in charge, to leave a message. We had never mentioned that they couldn't work on Saturday and then the community doesn't allow work to be done on Sundays so we wanted to make it clear that we expected it to be done that day. Duncan left a very stern message and Andy called him back about 15 minutes later and within a few minutes, the second team miraculously appeared. And it did all get done much to our delight. Eventually we want to put in a pergola, fire pit, and obviously some tables and chairs but for now, it looks pretty empty! But we are very pleased with the outcome.

Friday morning our new play set arrived which meant that Duncan's free time has disappeared for the foreseeable future. It took months to decide which one to get but then he finally picked one (Calleigh insisted on one with monkey bars) and it turned out that the best price by several hundred dollars was at Sam's Club. Even with the $45 membership fee, it was still worth it so now we have a membership there for the next year. I'll have to go at least once just to compare them to Costco. It was free shipping so that was an added bonus. We had ordered it a few weeks ago and the day it ended up scheduled to arrive was on Friday. Now, this play set has thousands of pieces and we weren't sure how many boxes it would be so we figured someone should be here when it arrived to tell them where to put it (in this case, the garage). When I found out it was coming on a Friday, this sent me into panic mode. They were going to give us a one hour heads up on its arrival but I was so worried that they would call at like 10:30 am which meant I was going to have to take a break from yard sales to come home...a major pain if I happened to be like 30 minutes away. On Thursday night when I saw there were a ton of good yard sales (not really common for July), I was REALLY worried. We got an especially early start, right after 8:00, and just as I was driving out the back gate, the front gate called to say there was a delivery. Major relief! It turned out to only be four boxes which took about five minutes to unload and we were back on our way.

Duncan did a little bit of prep on Friday and then the real work started Sunday morning bright and early. Allen was kind enough to come over early afternoon to help and then came back again in the evening and they worked until dark. The stinker was that Duncan left for Kansas City on Monday afternoon so he couldn't do any more work on it until he got home today...obviously he would have been at work during the day but there are still several hours of daylight after getting home. I would say he's like 75% of the way done at this point. The kids are just really excited about it while meanwhile, I'm already stressing about how I'm going to keep Brady from climbing up the rock wall or from falling down the ladder steps that will be out of my line of sight. Oh goodie. Hopefully he'll be contented to spend most of his time in the sandbox in the bottom part.

That table on the right is full of all the nuts and bolts. Millions of them it seems.

Brady and Maddy working on things on Sunday night.

What a cutie!

Helping Daddy this afternoon.

Looking for his missing ball.

He actually did help Daddy by handing him the appropriate boards.

Going back to yard sales...I was astounded at the number of good yard sales this week and even last week too. This is usually what happens in October, not in the heat of July. Now that we are starting homeschool in the not too distant future, there are a whole new array of items I'm looking for. And I struck it big. Most of the time I go to sales in Apopka/Maitland/Altamonte and on occasion over in Winter Park/Casselberry. Usually there isn't much in Ocoee itself. I had found a bunch in these towns and had them programmed into my GPS. At the last second, I found a really good sounding one but it was in Winter Garden, the opposite direction of all the rest. Did I really want to go at least 30 minutes out of my way? It said that there were a lot of school stuff at the sale and in the end, I went for it. Boy, was I glad I did! It was a jackpot. I got probably 100 easy reader books for $2, a US and world map for $.50 each (big ones that are laminated), and a ton of other books and odds and ends all for $18. The lady tutored out of her home and she wasn't even retiring...just decided she had too much stuff and wanted to get rid of some of it. I have to say, it was a major high! Kind of like when you get awesome coupon deals. I found a few other things at other sales so it was an altogether an awesome day. I'm sure if I had bought all that stuff new it would be hundreds of dollars but only $20 in this case.

Big stacks of reader books.

My haul.

Going back...last Thursday was the girls semi-annual dentist visit. All went very well. No cavities so I was very happy. I'm hoping they take after their parents in this category who didn't get any (and even then, just one) until adulthood. Of course, now that I say that maybe I want to take it back. I had braces for three years and that was the pits! Duncan, meanwhile, has had perfectly straight teeth all his life so now, not only do they all look like him, but hopefully they'll get his perfect teeth too.

Playing with the iPad in the waiting room.

Sabbath afternoon we headed to Aunt Wanda's house to have lunch with her and my cousin Heather who is in town from California. It was lovely not to have to cook and plus, Aunt Wanda always makes great food so it was wonderful all around. What wasn't wonderful was Aubree's fear of little dogs which is still ongoing. It's quite tedious, really. Hard to believe this kid grew up with two little dogs up until last year. You go through this quandary as to whether you keep the dog away, like in a separate room, or do you just make her face her fears? It turned out we did a little of both. Other than that, it was very nice to see Heather who we hadn't seen in a long time and she had bought the kids some Play Doh stuff and a couple of other things so they were thrilled. One funny thing was that Aunt Wanda makes this jello dish called "Seven-Up Salad" that the girls just love. It has whipped cream and marshmellows on it too so it's almost like a dessert although we do eat it with the meal. Duncan had told Calleigh that she had to eat her other food first and then she could have some of it. A few minutes later while Aubree was eating her food and asked to have the jello and I said "No, you have to eat some of this other food first." You should have seen Calleigh. Her ears perked right up and she looked at me with this smile and said "Wait a second. Did you just say SOME?" It was so funny.

Monday morning I had a dermatology appointment. I have had a mole on the bottom of my foot for at least four or five years. I've had it looked at before and there was no concern over it but I've noticed that it's gotten bigger. My regular dermatologist is in Oviedo, a good 40-minute drive, so I attempted to find a doctor closer. The key being "attempted." Some weren't taking new patients and some were but it was going to be a few months. When I expressed my disappointment that it was a shame that someone would have a questionable mole and have to wait several months (to be clear, though, I don't fault a place for being too busy to see me) to have it looked at it, they said they could get me in at the end of the month but they could ONLY look at the mole. They could not do a once over on the rest of me (a two-minute process). That just cracked me up. Sounded like a waste of time to have to go two times so in the end, I bit the bullet and just went back to my old doctor. I'm pretty used to the trip over to that area now anyway. The doctor looked at the mole and she still wasn't concerned as it is very uniform looking and all that but said to just keep my eye on it. The rest of me was fine too so happy times.

So for the last probably three weeks and then some, I've been working on trying to find someone to teach Aubree swimming lessons. Calleigh did private lessons when she was four, to great success, so I really wanted that for Aubree too. Calleigh's teacher, Zoey, was terrific but of course, that was at Ron and Elaine's pool so once again, here I was trying to find someone closer. I had gotten a few contacts on some possible teachers and about two weeks ago I had called one of them with my request for her to come to our community pool here. I wanted lessons for both girls and then also the Isidro kids were going to get in on it so I figured it would be worth someone's time come out here. Well, the girl hadn't called me back after like five days (after sounding all positive about it after our first conversation) so I called her back and had to leave a message. Then I sent a text messaging since the "younger" generation is so into that. She finally texted me back and we started to work out the details. But then it would take her several days to text me and only after I would prompt her. It because SO tedious but finally, it seemed like we had it worked out and lessons would start Tuesday (yesterday). When I texted on Monday afternoon to confirm it all and gave her my address, she texted back that it was too far to come and she couldn't do it. I was so annoyed. What a waste of two weeks. I know that I had told her at the beginning that we were in Ocoee. As I've said to a few people, this is Exhibit A of why texting can really stink. A second phone conversation would have resolved all of this in five minutes flat.

So back to the drawing board. I decided to just text Zoey (my usually mode of communication with her in years past) to see if she could do it and I didn't care if we had to drive back to Casselberry for it. It would only be like six lessons. She texted me back in about 60 seconds saying she was out of town for the summer and couldn't but gave me the name of a friend. I called that friend, Gail, shortly thereafter, she said she could and we could start the next morning. See how simple it all can be? Geesh. Not only that, but she's only charging me $16 a lesson as compared to $25 and since both girls are doing lessons, I think it's worth the drive.

We did the first lesson then yesterday at 9:30 and poor little Aubs was just shaking like a leaf when she was done. Even though the water temp was in the low 80's, the sun wasn't really out so she got cold in the water. Gail seems very nice and I thought the lesson seemed to go well, the few times I peaked outside to look. But then when we were in the car afterwards, she said she didn't want to go back to her lesson and that I should be the one to teach her to swim. I thought "Oh boy, here we go again." She is so different from her sister. The same thing happened last year after one lesson and I wrote it off as her being three. Shortly after her complaint, she did start talking excitedly about how she had floated on her back all by herself so I figured all was not lost. After a few tears this morning, I assured her I would stay out on the patio and watch her this time and that appeased her. Each time she would do something today, she would look over at me and I would give her a big, excited face and that kept her going. She did really great. She's already swimming a little ways by herself so I'm feeling confident that at the end of the six lessons, if not before, she'll be off on her own like Calleigh was. Calleigh, as expected, was super ecstatic about doing swimming lessons and afterwards Gail was like "Wow, she's a good swimmer. I would barely get the words out of my mouth as to what I wanted her to do and she was already doing it." She worked on her back stroke.

After leaving the lesson yesterday, we came back over here near home to meet with the second of two pediatricians that I wanted to meet. The other one was a week or two ago and as you may recall, I wasn't impressed because it was just him. This practice has four doctors, two male and two females which works out much nicer because I can just have them all in one place (I really want the girls to have a female doctor since this was a HUGE bone of contention for me when I was their age. I remember crying when I had to pull down my underwear for a male doctor when I was little). We met the one lady doctor and she was very nice so I'm glad that this decision is now made. I guess we'll be back there in a little more than five weeks to bring in baby ???? for his first appointment. As for the name, fortunately George was like 8,763 on my list so I don't have to worry about people thinking I'm copying the new prince for our baby name. I can't decide if that name reminds me more of an old man or a monkey.

Last night I decided to take a trip down to IKEA to check out furniture for our classroom. Since Duncan was not with us (in KC for work), I knew I wouldn't be able to buy anything because I didn't want to try and maneuver big boxes but at least I could look. I never have to convince the girls to go to IKEA...they are always so excited when the announcement is made. I dropped them happily off at the play area and Brady and I strolled around checking out all the desks/storage unit/bookshelves, etc. Decisions, decisions. I've found a few posting of classrooms on Pinterest that were almost completely furnished with IKEA stuff so I'm taking inspiration from them. After our stroll, I picked up the girls and we had supper there since it's Kids Eat Free on Tuesday nights. Dinner for four for $9 (including a dessert for me). Nice!

I've decided that Calleigh is not going to be a doctor or a nurse. Aubree suffered some minor injuries this week and I couldn't believe the hysteria coming from Calleigh. First off, Aubree got her fingers stuck in the back door. She wasn't even crying to hard but she came over to me to show them to me (which barely had a mark) but you should have seen and heard Calleigh. I mean, she was hysterical. She would not even came over near Aubree to look but fled to the other side of the room with tears pouring out of her eyes and said "Are her fingers still there?" Like, she really thought they had come off in the door. Then, today, while they were in quiet time, I heard Aubree crying upstairs. Not unusual in the least since I typically expect Aubree to cry at least twice while they're in quiet time (often, over really stupid stuff). But about a minute later, Calleigh comes down the stair, just wailing, "Something happened to Aubree's eye!!!" She ran into my room and I could hear her bawling in there as I walked up the stairs. I got to Aubree and sure enough, there was a tiny, red mark about her left eye where she said Calleigh had hit her accidentally. She was fine. I softly called Calleigh to come up the stairs (Brady was sleeping through all this..I have no idea how since he sleeps with his door wide open) and Calleigh was just beside herself..."I didn't mean to do anything. Is her eyeball still there?" It took me like three or four minutes to get her to finally calm down and come up the stairs and see for herself that Aubree was fine. Mercy.

A few other pics in closing...

Our curriculum came in the mail and Calleigh was excited to look through it all.

Meanwhile, Aubree and Brady were excited just to play in the boxes it came in.

Friday night was supposed to be food trucks but it was rained out so we took the show to Tijuana Flats. I hadn't eaten there in like ten years.

Sneaking into Daddy's bag to go to KC with him.

Last Wednesday, Elaine arrived back from Pennsylvania with Duncan's sister, Kristin's, two boys (aka, our kids' cousins). Derek is ten and Tyler is nine. We hadn't seen them in a little over a year but the girls picked right back up where we left off with them. We saw them I think pretty much every day (they left this morning) not only because we were doing things with them but also because the girls had their swimming lessons over there which worked out well with seeing them.

The girls got to do a few activities with them and Grandpa and Grandma. On Friday morning I dropped them off about 10 am and they all spent the day at the Brevard Zoo out in Melbourne. For whatever reason, even though that zoo is like an hour away, we've never gone. The word is that it is better than the one in Sanford....perhaps because it has a giraffe there named Duncan. We went to a few yard sales on the way and then it was just Brady and I for the rest of the day. Unlike the week before where we got a ton of stuff, this week we came up pretty empty handed although I did get a bulletin board for a $1 and Brady got a free pogo stick horse which made his day.

At the very last yard sale of the day, I pulled up and noticed a giant Barbie doll house sitting there for sale. It was one of those really tall ones, like four feet tall, and I figured they were probably asking like $40 - $50 for it. When I got closer, I noticed it was in mint condition and was only $15! The girls are not that into Barbie (much more into Polly Pockets) but I knew they would have a blast with it whether playing with Barbie, Polly Pockets, or whatever. There was no one else at the sale so I was looking at some other stuff and then out of nowhere, these two ladies suddenly appeared (on foot) and bought the dollhouse just like that. I was so disgusted with myself! Nothing worse then people buying stuff right from under you. I've had that happen a few times now.

Enjoying the zoo.

This is similar to the one for sale. A new one sells for $115 on Amazon! Major bummer.

Later in the day, when Duncan got home, he worked on the playground and Brady and I made the trip over to Grandma and Grandpa's to pick up the girls with stops at Publix, Walgreen's, and Costco..He and I both got a slice of pizza there for supper and I must say it was a lovely time with just the two of us. I do so enjoy that boy.

Saturday night we had the Isidros over for supper to celebrate the completion of the playground. It was finally finished! We told Allen we had a little bit of an ulterior motive to inviting them over because Duncan had him go with him to Lowe's to pick up a load of mulch. Meanwhile, back at home, the kids all played outside until probably 9:30 and only came in because the bugs came out.

In all its glory!

Mulch

We couldn't believe how well this picture came out. Every kid was looking at the camera. That happens like one out of every one thousand pictures.

Sunday morning was a baby shower for me. Seeing as this is my fourth kid and second boy, there really isn't much I needed and I didn't want to have some big shower or anything. Jennifer and Tangie still wanted to do something, though, so Jennifer had a small group over her house for breakfast which the two of them had made. It was SO good! Afterwards, some of us went to a nail place to have a pedicure and manicure (just me). Yes, I'm 37 and have never had a pedicure. Frankly, I don't like my toenails and haven't wanted someone having to deal with them (not that that they are terribly hideous or anything) but I decided to just go for it. Everything seemed to work out fine and who knows, someday I may get another one. My last stop was a spa where I got an hour facial and an hour massage. Can you say heavenly?? The only thing that was a little strange was that I had a male give me the massage. Not that I have many massages or anything but I've always had a woman. He did a great job but I would say you are a little more aware of what is going on (How far is he going to go down there? Is that sheet slipping off?) then if it's just a woman doing it and you can turn your brain off. Nonetheless, it was so nice to just lie there and do nothing.

I had told Duncan that since I was going to be busy with all this stuff until at least the mid-afternoon, I would like to just take the rest of the day to myself....figuring this was my last shot for a good long while. Once you have a nursing baby, gone are the days of disappearing for 10 or 12 hours. The only problem with my disappearance was that Duncan wanted to finish getting the mulch for the playground. He ended up having to do a Lowe's run early Sunday morning so he would be back with the truck in time for me to leave for the shower. It was a little hectic. Later in the morning, he drove out to the beach with the kids to meet up with Ron, Elaine, and the boys. They went to Jetty Park Beach near Cape Canaveral. He had never been there before so he didn't realize there was a $10 parking fee. Unfortunately he had no cash or debit card (he had left it at a restaurant in Kansas City and had to cancel it and the new one hadn't come yet) and they didn't take American Express so he was in a bit of a bind. Thankfully his parents where already there so he called his mom who trekked back out to him to give him $10. Crisis averted. It was a beautiful day at the beach. Duncan did report that Aubree did not go in the water which is not altogether surprising because she hasn't been a big ocean person to this point (may change with her learning to swim) but Duncan said that she seemed worried about sharks. Definitely a drawback of reading these nature books as we are on Book # 3, Sharks right now. After finishing the last book, Bears, she probably won't want to go into the woods either!

Duncan made them carry all their own gear. When I got home that evening I asked how the beach was and Calleigh says "I missed you Mommy" and I felt all warm and fuzzy. And then she said, "I like how you do the bags." Which meant, I like it when you are there because you don't make us carry our own stuff.

This means the beach was fun!

Meanwhile, my plan was to go to a couple of Goodwills, Lakeshore Learning Center, and Target. As soon as I got down with the spa and into the truck, it started pouring. And I mean pouring. Typically it rains down here for just a short amount of time but it decided this time to rain for a few hours. I had no umbrella and clearly I wasn't going to just sit in the car waiting for it to go away so I had no choice but to dash into the stores as I was. The stinky thing was that was feet still had remnants of lotion on them so I was slipping out of my flip flops the whole time I was running into the first Goodwill. Once I got inside, I realized I had made another mistake. I only had one contact in (long story but the bottom line was that I had cut jalapenos the night before and even though I had washed my hands several times, one of my contacts was stinging like crazy and I couldn't put it in nor a new one that I had just opened) and although it was fine normally to just have the one, when you're looking at clothes and prices, it doesn't work very well. I had brought glasses but they were back in the truck and I wasn't about to go back out there. So I just walked around, my feet slipping all over the place, soaking wet, with one eye closed so I could see better. Ah, yes. Fun times. I put my glasses on after that and took my flip flops off to run through the parking lot. I'm sure it was quite a sight, this very pregnant lady running around like that, especially when my dress started whipping up in the wind! But I did have a good time doing my thing.

Monday morning we were back at Ron and Elaine's so I could drop the girls off to accompany them to Gatorland. That was quite an adventure for them as Ron and Elaine thought Gatorland was east of the city heading out towards Coca Beach only to get out there and discover that no, it's down south, almost in Kissimmee. Oops. Then on that second portion of the trip, Aubree had to go potty when they were on 417 which turned into this big ordeal finding a bathroom. The topping on the cake is that Gatorland is mostly outside and it was like 500 degrees out. Never again, they said!! The girls had a good time though.

They came back here to eat after Gatorland.

Duncan had them all do push ups. Brady needs a little help with his form.

Meanwhile, Brady accompanied me to my doctor's appointment. Thirty-five weeks and growing..perhaps more than I want. I think I will exceed the weight gain I had for Aubree and Brady but hopefully not the 40 I had with Calleigh. The doctor wasn't concerned about it though. She did do a check on me just to see if anything was happening and thankfully, there is only the slightest dilation so there's no concern at this point that he is planning on coming early. She did feel his head so he's in the proper position although, of course, it doesn't matter due to the c-section.

Yesterday and today we were back to Ron and Elaine's for the girls' swimming lessons. Aubree shed a few tears about having to put her face in the water. The thing is that she does it all the time on her own but apparently it's more dramatic when someone else wants you to do it. She's been mostly doing well with her lessons and has been swimming on her own for several feet from the edge of the pool to her teacher and then back. I think all she needs is to just practice with Duncan for a bit and she'll just take off. Calleigh has been doing terrific and I swear, she's now a better swimmer than I am. You would think Gail, the teacher, and her were great friends or something because as I sat outside for some of the lesson today and she was talking to Gail about everything under the sun. It's a wonder she even had time to do any swimming. Tomorrow we have their last lesson, at least for now.

Tuesday evening we met Duncan at the Mall at Millenia to go to the Apple store. We both have the iPhone 5 and have had problems the last few months with the button that turns the screen off. It takes a bunch of presses to get it to go off and it has become quite tedious. Apparently this is not a problem unique to us and they said we could make an appointment to get them fixed. Well, I guess it's just easier for them to give us a new phone rather than fix them while we wait so they gave each of us a new one. We are both relieved to have that taken care of. After Apple, it was on to Ikea next door to get the schoolroom stuff I had been eyeing up the week before. We got a bunch of furniture...Duncan has a real back up of things to do, that is for sure!

In closing, here are a few snippets of conversations this past week:

Coming home from Grandma and Grandpa's on Friday night, I had Elaine lend me this knitted blanket because Aubree always asks for a blanket when she's in the car in the evening and she's tired.
Aubree (admiring the blanket): "Look at this nice blanket. Someone yarned it."

Aubree is sitting on the toilet and decides to make conversation as I sit there waiting to wipe her:
Aubree: "I don't like skunks because they're stinky."
Me: "That's true. They do get stinky."
Aubree:"You know who likes skunks though? Satan. He likes bad smells."

The girls are sitting at the table eating lunch and apparently Aubree hits Calleigh with something.
Calleigh:"Aubree! Don't hit me. Are you trying to be like Cain? That is SO cruel and horrid."
Aubree (in a bewildered voice):"It's cool?"
Calleigh (exasperated):"CRUEL. Not cool. That means it's bad."

Brady is up on the top of the play set with Calleigh. He's in a safe section so I tell Calleigh to watch him for a second while I run inside to get my sunglasses.
Calleigh (as I walk back out). "Don't worry. Your son is still alive."

Have a great rest of the week.

Last week at this time my heart was very heavy because I knew all of my relatives were packing up to leave or had already left to head to Nova Scotia. Oh, how hard it has been to be left behind for the first time ever. My streak of never missing a year, 37 years to be exact, has officially ended. This better be one very special little baby boy to make up for it! Of course, I jest. Obviously having a baby is much more important...I keep reminding myself.

I had originally thought that Duncan would take the girls up to Nova Scotia and Brady would stay here with me but then that just didn't seem like it would work because I knew in the end Duncan would feel terrible (as would I) for leaving him behind now that he is a real person and all. My mother's status was up in the air as to whether she would be able to go herself because of the state coming into her nursing home for their annual assessment of things (they came a few weeks ago so at least that part worked out). I knew Duncan taking three kids up by himself with my mother possibly not being there would be a very stressful experience for him. So we made the decision for the whole family to miss this year. That was really hard too because I had at least taken comfort in the fact that the girls wouldn't miss it. They were obviously disappointed when we broke the news, particularly Calleigh, but we at least had a replacement getaway in place, Redington Beach, with the Isidros. And they were excited about that!

I didn't want to travel too far, clearly, in my advanced state of pregnancy (36 weeks) so we settled on a condo at the aforementioned Redington Beach which is right near St. Petersburg and very close to Indian Rocks Beach where we have stayed in a condo before, ironically at 36 weeks pregnant with Brady. We wanted something right on the beach so we settled for a 1,200 square, 3-bedroom unit. It wasn't fancy but I thought the location worked out perfectly. We had the beach and pool right outside our first floor balcony.

Gorgeous!

We arrived late Saturday afternoon and the Isidros has already arrived a little before us. I told them to take the master bedroom to have the extra room because I was thinking that Braelyn, Calleigh, and Aubree would take the third bedroom and then it would just be us and Brady in the other one. The girls were all excited about the "sleepover" with Braelyn. The third room ended up having just one double bed in it and the floors were tile so I was a little puzzled how it was going to work out with the three of them in the room. Our room, on the other hand, had two double beds. It didn't take much persuasion for Aubree to decide she would stay with us and have her bed to herself. She quickly set up camp with her stuffed animals, toys, etc and was very pleased with it all. As it turned out, she did not sleep by herself. I don't know what exactly happened but around 10 pm, Calleigh came running into our room and said she wanted to sleep with us instead. I think it may have been because Braelyn had already fallen asleep (Calleigh had napped in the van on the way to the condo) and she had not. Regardless, the dreams of a sleepover ended up being a distant memory as both girls slept with their parents all four nights. Go figure! Maybe next time.

Our room.

Speaking of beds, as I sat down on both double beds in our room, I quickly determined that they felt like the equivalent of a rock. Not exactly what a pregnant lady likes to be lying on. Meanwhile, the bed in the "girls" room was as soft as could be. Thankfully Duncan switched the two mattresses out and I was able to lie on something comfortable for the duration. Despite that, I must say that I have started to have trouble sleeping. I'm a back sleeper and that has gotten too uncomfortable, at last, and so I have to keep switching sides. I guess it's the lessor of the two discomforts. But hey, not too much longer to go!

Sunday we decided would be a beach/pool day to kick things off. Right away we encountered some challenges as Calleigh would not go in the water and of course, neither would Aubree. I'm sure partly from that darn shark book but also because Allen and Tangie had run into a lady coming off the beach who had stepped on a stingray in the water...the second person that happened to that day. I think Calleigh had overhead this story being told and got worried (the way to avoid this is to make sure you shuffle your feet in the water and that scares them off). After a bit of work, Calleigh finally went in as long as Duncan was carrying her. Eventually the fear went away and she was fine. Aubree, not so much. Pretty much the whole time we were at the condo, the only thing she wanted to do was go to the pool. She and I spent more time at the pool, by far, compared to anyone else. Every time they went to the beach, we went to the pool.

Caught on camera! Throwing sand in Aubree's face.

Handling a fish on the last day...a lot had changed from the first day of not even wanting to go in.

I was happy about the pool situation because I know a lot of it had to do with her being excited about swimming. I was thrilled with how things went on this front. My hope was that with a little practice she would flourish and she did. She can now swim completely from one side of the pool to the other, jump in without assistance, and swim under water. She is just so proud of herself for it all and would keep saying things like "I want to show Tangie..." or "Calleigh, look how I can..." Sometimes we wouldn't come out of that pool for an hour or two and she would still want to be in there longer, just the two of us practicing. I had a good time with her.

Getting directions from Daddy on the side of the pool.

Sunday evening we went to nearby John's Pass to stroll the boardwalk and get some pizza.

And some ice cream. Calleigh was not happy because she was SURE that Aubree got more then she did. At $4.21 for a small, I made them split it. Bad decision on my part apparently.

Watching taffy getting made.

Not sure what is up with the parentheses around "please." Does that mean they don't really mean "please?"

Monday morning we took a break from the beach/pool to go to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. There was a Groupon a few weeks ago that I had snatched up knowing we would be in the area. So glad I did! The girls are very much into sea life right now due to our reading of the Whale/Dolphins and Shark book. The evening before the aquarium, I quickly read the highlights out of the Fish book so that they would have even more stuff to recognize. We were not disappointed. It was a really great time and the girls and even Brady were very engaged with all of the creatures. The neat thing was that it was, oddly enough, Shark Week, so there was a big focus on that. When we got there, they gave the kids a map that had outlines of sharks and shark relatives on it. As you walked around, you had to find the names of those creatures and write it down on the map. At one tank, there were three different kinds of sharks in a tank swimming around and Duncan and I couldn't figure one of them out and we couldn't find the sign. Calleigh finally saw it and said "Oh, that's a nurse shark." Sure enough, Duncan googled it and she was right! It took us a few hours to see everything and then we ate lunch in a restaurant there. I can honestly say I have now eaten the worst grilled cheese of my life. Yikes. At any rate, after lunch, the kids all played in the big splash playground area that they have just outside....an added bonus to the aquarium (part of admission) that we had discovered the day before.

This ray was the highlight. It was getting fed and we had a front row seat. Calleigh was captivated!

Watching the sharks swim by.

Aubree actually touched some stuff which I was surprised about.

I thought these signs were funny....The rest of them did actually see a bird poop on a guy.

Proof I was on the vacation.

Love these guys!

Tuesday we had another beach/pool day. I must say we had great weather the whole time as it didn't rain a single bit the entire time. That evening I was on cooking duty as Allen and Tangie had done Indian food the night before. I came in from the beach earlier than the rest, along with Brady, to prepare the meal. Of course, that left him to just wander around the condo looking for mischief which he found in the form of Braelyn's iPod which was charging on the end table. He called it Braelyn's phone and he picked it up to start talking on it. I told him "no" and put it up on a higher level and told him that he couldn't use it without asking Braelyn first. At that, he ran to the sliding glass door, which was closed, and yelled "BRAELYN, can I use your phone??" It was so funny. Of course, I had to tell him that she couldn't hear him and he would have to just wait.

Calleigh hates to have sunblock put on. Not sure why. Free massage I say!

"We boys have to stick together."

After the kids were all in the bed, I made Duncan, Allen, and Tangie play Dutch Blitz and Aw Shucks with me so I could at least make up for a little of the game playing I was missing in Nova Scotia. They were good sports and humored me. Good manners prevents me from saying who won. We also played Password which we found at the condo. We brought out some chocolate chip cookies at about midnight. Nothing like eating cookies and playing games. It was a lot of fun.

The girls played some games too although not at midnight.

Wednesday morning we drove into St. Pete to go to the Great Explorations Children's Museum. Allen had discovered that our Science Center pass would allow us to get in for free so we didn't want to pass up the opportunity. In fact, I had been so busy last week, that I almost thought I wasn't going to have time to make it to the Science Center to renew our pass but I didn't want to miss the chance so I squeezed it in on Thursday (the kids were so disappointed that we only went for the pass and not to stay). When we got to the ticket desk at the Children's Museum, the lady looked at the pass and says "Yeah, we don't accept these any more. The Science Center decided not to accept our members so now we aren't accepting theirs....but we'll let you in this time." That was a relief. Go figure. Allen had just verified it the week before too. It's not a big place...you certainly wouldn't spend a whole day there but the few hours we were there were just right.

Oh my word. Look at that huge pregnant lady. Wait! That's me.

Shopping at Publix.

A girl after my own heart. I've always loved to work a register. Must be why I became an Accountant.

The four girls doing the news. Only Aubree was talking. The other three just stared at themselves.

Although we had the condo through Thursday morning, we decided to head back early Wednesday evening since Duncan needed to get to work and I needed to get to my doctor's appointment. Calleigh was NOT happy that Braelyn was staying longer than she was but thankfully we were able to get away without any kicking or screaming. We left at 6:45 and Aubree fell asleep at about 6:55, slept the whole way home, walked up to her bed when we got home at 8:45 and fell right back asleep. All that swimming will do that to a person I guess! But seriously, the kids had a great time and so did we. We all joked as to whether we would still be friends after living in such close quarters with six kids for five days but really, it went very smoothly and everyone got along great. We would definitely do it again!

No sooner had we left than it started pouring.

We did have one little snafu while we were at the condo. Duncan has a Nike Fuel Band that he wears around his wrist that tracks his exercise, etc (similar to a Fit Bit). On Tuesday afternoon he asked me if I knew where the plastic Publix bag was that I had used the previous afternoon when we were at the beach/pool for the kids' snacks and my phone. I told him I had emptied that bag out as soon as we got back and probably threw the bag away. Unbeknownst to me, he had put his Fuel Band in there and I had not noticed it when I emptied out the contents. Unfortunately, since so much time had passed, we realized that the garbage that the bag would have been in had already been put down the garbage shoot that morning. It was almost 5 pm so I told Duncan to quick hurry down and see if someone was still in the office and see if they would let him in to where the trash all lands. But be careful! I had just read a story about a dude who got crushed in a trash compactor while looking through the garbage for his lost cell phone. Duncan came back about 10 minutes later with a garbage bag that we knew to be ours (we could see the packages of Indian food on the top) although the lady almost didn't let him in to get it. He went through it and...no luck. Devastating. Those things are kind of pricey. Fast forward to yesterday and as I'm putting laundry into the washing machine what should fall to the floor but his Fuel Band. Apparently it had been wrapped up in an orange shirt while in the Publix bag and stayed stuck in there when I had emptied the bag. Of course, the funny part is that Duncan said the band worked perfectly this morning and then mysteriously died during the day. Fortunately it's still under a one year warranty and Duncan found the receipt from the purchase. So this story may have a happy ending yet!

Thursday morning it was off to the doc with the kids in tow. I must say that Dr. Dukes (who helped deliver Brady) is probably my favorite out of the bunch that I see. He's very engaging with the kids and had Calleigh help him work the gadget to listen to the baby's heartbeat. She was just pleased as punch for getting to help. Everything is looking good...nothing happening as far as dilation or anything which is nice to hear. I barely gained a pound in a week in a half so that was especially good to see.

The doctor gave them each a glove which kept them entertained. But so did my phone and Brady was NOT happy when I took it to snap this picture.

Some extra time to stop at an old favorite park. Sorry Aubs. If I had known a playground was going to be on the agenda, I wouldn't have dressed you in a such a long dress. I'm sure no one looked at your boobies every time you stepped on your dress and the front came down.

This morning we were off to our yard sales...a slower week at last. We actually stayed right in our own backyard for once which rarely happens. I still found a few good deals and had a lucrative stop at CVS as well.

Playing with a toy at a yard sale.

He kept using his hand to make the thingy go up instead of hitting the little mole with the hammer.

Fill a giant bag with clothes for $3. I only wanted one thing but I filled it with a ton of stuff to donate to the Goodwill. Ka-ching come tax time.

A find for the girls' closet.

So you win some and you lose some. I was all excited about the CD set I found for $2. Turns out it's a DVD set...which would be fine except for when you read the fine print under the word "STORIES."

CVS has been rocking lately. All this for $17.11 to be exact.

Have a great weekend everyone!

This past week has been very busy with various Christmas events. I can't get enough of this holiday! Thursday evening we attended Holiday on the Drive which is on Edgewater Drive in College Park. They close down part of the road and have vendors, bouncy houses, singers, a train, etc. Because it's right near Duncan's work, it made no sense for him to come home so he just met us there. That seemed like a good plan at the time but trying to get everyone out of the house on my own proved to be a bit of a challenge. We were trying to get there between 6:00 - 6:30 and considering that we usually don't finish school until around 5:00ish and we needed to eat supper and I needed to nurse Colby, it was quite hectic! For the last 25 minutes before we left, Colby was screaming his head off in his bouncy seat. Sorry kid. I only have two hands. By the time we got in the car and were on our way, with Colby still screaming, I wasn't feeling quite as festive. Alas, a couple of minutes of Christmas music and a finally quieted baby does wonders.

Ron and Elaine, Jennifer and the boys, and Ricky and Ana met us there. The last time we attended a few years ago, I remember wearing cold weather clothes. Not this time. In fact, for the last week, it's been unseasonably warm with temps in the mid-80's during the day and low 70's in the evenings. Not exactly Christmasy but I know we have that coming so it's okay. We strolled from one end to the other coming upon a little kid train at the end. It had an engine and four cars and we got in line to ride it. As we waited our turn, the lady ushering the kids on and off started talking to us. After a couple of minutes she then started talking to Brady asking him how old he was and his name. Apparently she was very taken with him because she kept telling me how cute he was. Once the kids were loaded on the train, I stepped away to watch. Then, curiously, the lady pulled Brady off the train. I figured he must have started crying or something. But it turned out that she was taking him off so he could go and sit in the engine with the driver and "drive" the train. Sure enough, he drove by with a big smile on his face. Very exciting for him! When the ride finished and I went and got him, the lady told me "We haven't let anyone else do that." So I was quite honored that out of all the hundreds, if not more, of kids at this event that Brady was the only one who got to sit in the engine.

Having some Italian ice. Told you it was warm.

Sitting with the rest of the peons in the train cars before he was upgraded to the engine.

When we got home, I flicked on the TV to catch "The Sound of Music Live" with Carrie Underwood starring as Maria. I love the movie so I thought to give the TV musicale a try. I think we can all agree that Carrie is a singer and not an actress but I still enjoyed it. All three of the kids were glued to the TV and were so disappointed when they had to go to bed. I recorded the rest which they watched last night. Aubree totally cracked me up on that though. You can tell she isn't used to watching anything that has commercials because every time it would go to the commercials, she would say "But that was so short. Can we watch another one?" As if the show was over or something.

Saturday night we went to Light Up the Holidays at Crane's Roost. We first ate at the food court in the mall and I had the best Indian food which I keep thinking about. How weird is it that I love Indian food now? Or some of it, at least. We made it out of the mall in time for the fireworks display which we watched from a nice grassy knoll accompanied by Ron and Elaine and the Bergherms. I was waiting to see everyone's reaction on the fireworks and unbelievably not one of the kids were spooked. Brady was all smiles and Colby was completely nonchalant about it. We walked around afterwards and took in all the lights and sights and sounds before calling it a night. For whatever reason, Brady had brought has binky with him in the car but we couldn't find it any where. Unfortunately this was his last binky (he had like five a week or two ago. No idea where they all disappear to.) so we had to make an emergency stop at Walgreens where I had to pay $6.49 for some binkys without using coupons or register rewards. I had a bunch at home. That's a stinky feeling. But the binky crisis was averted so that was good at least.

Watching the fireworks. Love the girls. Colby doesn't seem to know he's supposed to be looking up.

Blake and Evan wrestling. The picture is blurry but Calleigh and Aubree cracked me up in the back ground. I think Calleigh was trying to protect Aubree or something.

Sunday morning we had some time to get things done at home and then David and Yully came for lunch. They are in town for the weekend since they had some travel vouchers expiring. It was good to see them back in their old stomping ground. They stayed to watch the Patriots/Browns game, of course. The game took a nasty turn when their best player besides Brady, Gronkowski, blew out his knee. I felt any hope of anything disintegrating away. We had to leave at 4:00 to go to Sea World and at that point they were losing by like 12 points with a few minutes left but I didn't even care. What was the point? But then, just as we were getting to the park, Ricky texted me that they had pulled off a miraculous victory while scoring two touchdowns in like the last minute and a half (they got the onside kick). So there is still a little hope I suppose.

We met up with Jennifer and Evan, Ricky and Ana, and the Z's. Aubree was so excited to go on the roller coaster this time (after not going on it last time). She went the first time with Duncan and then insisted I go on with her the second time. The nice thing about going in the evenings like this is that the linrrands es for rides are very slim so you can do a lot of stuff. We had contemplated going to the ice skating show at 8:30 but instead opted to go to the new penguin ride/exhibit since the line has been so incredibly long at other times. It was a good move because we waited for like two minutes and it was a really awesome experience. I didn't get to go on the ride because of Colby but I did go in the exhibit and you are basically face to face with the penguins. I could have watched them in there for hours but it's kept at 32 degrees so you're pretty chilly in there. The kids loved it.

In the penguin exhibit.

In other news, I'm officially revoking the title of "easy" baby from Colby. The first few months might have been pretty good but things have gone a bit down hill the last few weeks. The big thing, besides the problem of waking up in the middle of the night, is that he's getting a little hooked on being held. This is particularly true in the late afternoons/early evenings after he wakes up from his nap. What it means is that about 80% of the time I'm cooking supper to the tune of him wailing. This also means we are more excited than ever when Daddy gets home! He is making strides in other areas though. He's now reaching for things and holding them and trying to put them in his mouth. And he's still cute so we aren't holding his "issues" against him.

Conversations this morning with Aubree:

Aubree: "Are you going to have any more babies?"
Me: "Nope. I'm going to just stick with the four."
Aubree:"Why?"
Me:"Because they are expensive."
Aubree:"Noooooo, Mommy. You just go to the hospital and they get the baby out of your belly."

Me:"Aubree, I didn't realize we don't have a coat for you. We're going to have to go to Old Navy and get you one tomorrow."
Aubree: "Do they just have old stuff there?

A few more pictures. I've had a problem getting my pictures to come over from my phone to my computer because I changed my AppleID password. So frustrating. I had a lot more but this is all I could get for now.

For school we had to cut up various fruit and count the seeds. This grapefruit from Lolo and Lala Isidro came in handy.

Working on math. She has declared that she does NOT like doing subtraction. Only addition.

Supper with Isidros and Bergherms at Winter Garden Pizza Company before we part ways for Christmas.

Calleigh spent a few nights on the top bunk much to Aubree's chagrin. This night, Calleigh was back on the bottom and this this is how I found them. I think Aubree was hanging on to her to make sure she didn't leave.

The next night, it was Calleigh's turn.

Have a great rest of the week.

I just wanted to take a moment and let everyone know I'm still alive. I haven't written on here in nearly a month due to being gone two plus weeks to Boston for Christmas, then having my brother and his family here for a week afterwards, and then just trying to catch up on everything the last week. Someday I will catch up on it all!

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by how far behind I am on here. So this may be broken up into two parts if I have that in me. Can't say I'm getting a ton of sleep these days but I may be getting ahead of myself with that statement.

Christmas vacation started Thursday, December 12 when we departed at 8:45 pm for Boston with a stopover in Washington D.C. Ron and Elaine were up in Pennsylvania and decided to drive to DC with Derek and Tyler for the weekend and asked if we wanted to stop on our way through. I thought it was a fantastic idea because A) I've never been to DC during Christmas and B) Stopping there would allow us to break up the trip into two segments both of which entailed driving mostly during the night which is very appealing with a 3 1/2 month old infant and finally C) It's always nice for the kids to spend time with their cousins.

The ride up was pretty uneventful. Duncan drove until about 2 am. Up until then, I was salivating at the thought of allowing myself some Mountain Dew which I hadn't had since Colby's birth. Since Colby could possibly need to eat a few hours from my drinking it, I was a little concerned but after some research, I discovered that only about 1% of the caffeine gets into the mother's bloodstream and MD has way less caffeine than coffee to begin with (which many nursing mother's drink in moderation). So I felt like it was okay. It was indeed glorious. Some people may wonder how I can stay awake for so long at night but honestly, get me in a quiet car, my headphones tuned in to Dr. Laura, sipping on my Mountain Dew and the open road in front of me and I'm a pretty happy camper. I've never had a problem with nodding off or anything close. However, come around 7 - 8 am when we stop for breakfast, I'm ready for Duncan to take over when we resume the trip. The kids were great in the car with Colby waking up only once at about 4 am to nurse.

We didn't rush things in the morning because we didn't want to try and check into the hotel too early. It was about noon when we finally did....a Residence Inn in Alexandria, Virginia. Ron and Elaine and the boys arrived a few hours later. The plan was to take the train to downtown but first I wanted to stop by Walmart or Target to look for some winter gear for the kids. Some years I've bought boots, snow pants, etc ahead of time only to not have any snow which is frustrating (often buying them used so it's cheaper but then they can't be returned). This year I decided to hold off any buy it up in Boston if the weather called for it. Well, as it turned out, the weather was going to call for it right upon our arrival and I didn't want to have to hold the kids hostage in my parent's house waiting for me to go buy them boots. Unfortunately, driving three miles away to a Walmart when you are in a city it just not a good idea. We took some wrong turns and all said, the round trip took like 1.5 hours. It was ridiculous. What's worse, I paid $35 for a pair of snow boots for Calleigh at Target. Oh, how the thrifty person in me just about had a heart attack over that but what can you do? I wonder if the hackers were laughing over my purchase when they were stealing my data.

We finally got rolling on our trip to downtown DC on the Metro. Ron and Elaine had brought our double stroller up with them in their van because obviously we did not have the room ourselves. This was very helpful because Aubree is a pathetic walker and Brady, at age two, can't last that long either. We had the Bjorn for Colby but he switched back and forth. Our ultimate destination was to see the National Christmas Tree and catch a glimpse of the White House. Next to the National Christmas Tree they have trees from each state (although I'm not sure if they are literally from each state) all decorated. Frankly they all looked the same so I'm not sure what the deal was with that. But the biggest highlight for me was when we were leaving the area and came across a family of singers...a dad and four children singing Christmas carols. The mom was standing nearby with the two youngest children. As you know, I love Christmas music and to hear that in such a beautiful setting as our country's capital was quite an experience. They even sang "We Three Kings" for us which is Calleigh's favorite Christmas song.

When we finally made it back to our hotel room, we made the decision that we weren't going to stay overnight after all. The plan was to stay in DC all day Saturday and leave at bedtime Saturday night to arrive in Boston on Sunday morning. But a snowstorm was due to hit the eastern coast starting late Saturday morning/early afternoon and we did not want to get stuck there. So despite the fact that we had driven all night Thursday with minimal sleep for the non-driver, we went to sleep at 10 pm and woke up at midnight for the drive up to Boston. When I checked out, the hotel clerk was clearly confused but I managed to ramble out an explanation. Trying to get everyone to the car was a little adventure. Clearly we couldn't carry everyone out together and it's not like we could take one each and then go back for the others. We had to wake up the girls and have them walk and that was no easy feat. You may have noticed that children sleep VERY heavily at night so we had to shake them like five or six times very forcefully to get them to wake up and then after they got their shoes and such on they would keep falling back onto the bed like dead weight. They were total zombies. But somehow we made it to the van.

Even thought this segment (about nine hours with a nursing baby and no traffic) of the trip is much shorter than the first part, it was obviously more challenging since we had limited sleep and some snow started falling in Connecticut. Boy, were we ever happy when we pulled into my parent's house. They were waiting to take the kids to church so we could sleep. Thank goodness that I had brought my pump because I was able to quickly pump a bottle to send my mother off with Colby too.

It indeed snowed and honestly, my whole trip was made when I saw the joy the kids had in the snow. It's just wonderful. They really couldn't get enough of it, especially the girls, and most of Sunday they spent outside.

Here are some of the other highlights of the trip since I'm not going to go into great detail on everything we did:

Tuesday we went to the Natick Mall so we could go to the American Girl doll store. This was the big thing on the girls' list this year thanks to seeing friends at church with them. People without girls may not realize how pricey these dolls are but they are about four times as much as a comparable doll at a department store. You are paying for the name but I do think they are probably better quality and the hair is definitely better. Not only are the dolls expensive but the clothes and accessories are just ridiculously priced. Hey, if people pay the prices I can't blame the company for selling them for that much but I certainly have no intention of buying the clothes from them. The dolls will fit any brand of 18-inch doll clothes so you can get them from Target, Michaels, on eBay (which I did) etc. for WAY cheaper. Afterall, who is about to pay $30 for one measly doll outfit?? Anyway, as we browsed the aisles and the girls ooh'd and ahhh'd, we smiled to ourselves that was had already gotten the dolls and were waiting for their arrival from the store.
Also on Tuesday, my brother Shawn, Camille, Camden, and Acadia arrived from Maine. Yay! Let the real fun begin.
Wednesday morning we attempted to get a family picture for our Christmas card in downtown Norfolk (where my folks live). This proved to be VERY difficult as it was FREEZING outside and Brady was in a completely foul mood. We couldn't take off our jackets and we never did get Brady to smile but you work with what you can get I guess.
Wednesday afternoon we left for Newport - - our third year in a row for going down there with a good portion of the Latimer (my mom's) extended family. As before, Aunt Lori and Uncle Charlie were able to get us some rooms because they have a time share. It is really a fantastic time especially since we hadn't seen many people since June due to our non-attendance in Nova Scotia this year. There were 32 of us there which included Ricky, Ana, and Aunt Wanda who arrived Wednesday night from down here. But via plane. Lucky ducks!
Thursday was a gorgeous day in Newport and we had a lovely stroll around the downtown where we were able to get a second picture that I liked better for our Christmas card. That afternoon I spent hours, HOURS, trying to get a card together. Usually it's a snap because I can get it done in an hour at Walmart but this time they were saying they needed 24-hours. Since it was Thursday afternoon and I wanted to mail all the cards by Friday afternoon in an attempt to get them to people before Christmas, that just wasn't going to work. I tried CVS, Walgreens, Target. I could not find a single portrait layout card that I liked so I had to use the original picture from Wednesday that was a landscape shot. Honestly, that whole thing was an extremely frustrating experience (websites weren't working or were really slow, etc). The final product ended up being from Target and Duncan didn't even like it. Again, hopefully the hackers enjoyed all that. I suppose this is what happens one waits until the last second!
Friday morning, we headed back to my folks but without Calleigh. She went with Ricky to watch the guys play hockey and then she and Camden went with my dad to answer some questions about Christmas on his radio program. He has a show he does each Sunday and surprise, surprise, this week's segment was about Christmas. We weren't sure how the kids would do but they did great and we got to listen to them Sunday morning when the showed aired. Calleigh apparently wasn't nervous at all. I can't remember what she said though or I would report it here!
Saturday we were at church, obviously, and then Saturday night the three of us siblings and our spouses left the six kids behind with the folks and headed into Boston. It was the first time we had ever gone out just the six of us so that was a real treat. We drove into the North End where we had reservations at an Itailian (duh) restaurant called Antico Forno. The atmosphere was a little loud as the tables are pretty squished in but honestly, it didn't bother me a bit. It was just fun to have some time with adults only. After a great meal (So I heard. I only had Caesar salad so I can't attest personally as to how good the real food was) we went and hung out at Faneuil Hall Quincy Market for a bit. A lot of the shops were closing up but we were able to get a couple of treats and then saw a light/music show involving the huge tree they now put up there. This is the first time we had seen it and although I know I am biased, it put the National Christmas Tree to shame. When we arrived home, the kids were all asleep but Colby had been a little pill crying for quite some time. I felt pretty bad about that.
Sunday was Pops day. As is our tradition, it starts with a meal at the Cheesecake Factory at the Prudential Center, a post-meal stroll around the Prudential Center, and then we walk over to Symphony Hall. Sometimes those can be very cold walks but this year it was fairly warm and no precipitation. As is also usual, I gave the attendant who takes the tickets a dirty look when I had to hand over my ticket for Colby, you know, my infant that sits on my lap but nonetheless is required to have a $33 ticket. Just ridiculous. Said infant was fairly well behaved but I did have to do a little walking, standing, seat shifting, nursing to keep things quiet. Brady was also a challenge but we got through it with nary a dirty look and I did get to hear most of the program which is always a pleasure.
Monday night we had planned a trip to Edaville Railroad but alas, Mother Nature had other plans. It was a rainy day so Edaville was tabled for this year. Nonetheless, we still drove over to Carver because David and Yully bought a house nearby and we wanted to check it out. They served us lunch and gave us a tour of their very lovely house. Afterwards, we drove a few miles away to Boomer's Playland which is a play space with ropes, balls, an arcade, and all that. I had found a deal for it on Living Social a few weeks back where we could get four kids in for $20, normally a $40 price. When we arrived, what do you know, they were having a special of $5/kid. So yes, if you are good at math you can see that the Living Social deal turned out to be the same price as the special they were having when we arrived so it didn't feel like I had gotten this special deal in the end. The kids had a blast though. Bruno ended up being there too and they probably could have closed the place out but after a few hours we had to move on. We capped the evening with a stop at Jordan's Furniture to see the Enchanted Village. They also have a Polar Express "ride" there but it was sold out unfortunately.
Tuesday was Christmas Eve so this entailed some last minute shopping. I, like most people these days, did a lot of shopping on-line but there were still some in-store shopping that I had to do. I'm sure I've mentioned in previous years on here but I LOVE Christmas shopping. In fact, this is why I usually procrastinate so much with getting it done because I don't want it to be over. If I didn't have kids, I'm sure I would do way more shopping in actual brick and mortar stores because I love the excitement of the crowds, the lines, the Christmas music blaring over the speakers. There's just something about it. But alas, when you have small children, there just isn't much time to soak all that in any more.
For Christmas Eve we had, thank goodness, our usual people of Aunt Lori, Uncle Charlie, Kelly, Steve, and Caleb over. Cassy (our pediatrician friend) and her family also came by and joined us for supper and the games that I put together. It was lots of good fun with the victory going to the team of Uncle Charlie/Steve/Shawn. It was a little harder to keep score this year though because of my own stupidity. I had left my laptop on the floor and had discovered on Monday morning when I went to open it that someone had stepped on it or something (we think Aubree) and there was major screen damage to it. Lesson learned. I don't know what I was thinking to leave it out like that...This year was also the first year that I had actually wrapped most of the gifts in advance so I wasn't up until all hours of the night wrapping them all. Wrapping is another thing that I love and usually save it for the end but sometimes I'm up until 2:00 or 3:00 getting it all done. Not good.
It was a wonderful Christmas day. The kids were super excited, obviously, but so was I! It's the best day of the year. It took us about two and half hours to open all the gifts. Some people had reduced spending budgets but because we have so many people, there are still plenty of gifts to be opened. My mother hands out the gifts and then we wait for the person to open it before going on to the next one. So it's a longer drawn out affair but that's just the way I like it. The kids get pretty antsy though waiting for their next one to open. Not sure what age this starts to dissipate! The girls were thrilled with their dolls and Brady did well in the gift department with a bunch of cars, motorcycles, planes, and trains. You know, boy stuff. We had a fabulous brunch (some say the best ever) and just relaxed the rest of the day. Shawn and family, however, left mid-afternoon to head to North Carolina and ultimately here.

Thursday was a packing day for us and then departure was Friday morning at 11:00. We really weren't sure what day to leave. We had to be back for Monday for Duncan. We didn't want to leave the day after Christmas because of traffic and then Duncan didn't want to leave Saturday and get back Sunday afternoon with not much recovery time before work. So Friday it was. Unfortunately others seemed to have this same idea because there was still traffic. Why am I not surprised when it comes to the doggone state of Connecticut (and New Jersey). It was awful, as usual. We had to seek alternate routes which actually would have been quite lovely had there not been a wailing infant in the background. This was a common theme for a our trip back. Colby has a severe dislike of his car seat which makes driving at night especially appealing. No such option on the way back so we had to just deal with it. I had set up a DVD player for him even but it did no good. Poor Duncan. It bothered him way worse than it bothered me. Thankfully he did sleep fine at night but the daytime hours were less than ideal. All in all, it took 27 hours which I think is a record for the longest trip. Without kids and traffic, we've made it in less than 20.

A few other notes from the trip:

This was the first time we had been my parent's house since they purchased it and did all the remodeling. It looked great even the wood floor which I wasn't all that excited about since I'm a carpet lover (so much cozier). I was so excited because I was just SURE this would eliminate my allergies but nope. Within about 10 minutes I was sneezing. This time, I took Claritin and it did help things a lot. But still, the mystery deepens as to why I'm allergic to my parents house.
Other than the first couple of nights, all six of us slept together in my old room which now has a King sized bed. It went really well mostly because I let Colby sleep with me when he would wake up which was at about 2:00 am every night. More about my problem child later.
We got caught in the UPS snafu in which they didn't deliver some packages on Christmas Eve as scheduled. The biggest item was a new laptop Duncan had ordered special delivery for me to replace the broken one. But...it was all a moot point anyway. As Duncan talked to Steve who knows how to do anything and everything, he found out that you can buy replacement screens at a cheap price and just switch them out. So for $40 and 10 minutes of labor, Duncan fixed my lap top when we got home. New laptop got returned to Dell even without the box it came in for a full refund (Honestly, I couldn't stand Windows 8 anyway. It was driving me absolutely bonkers).
We didn't end up with a white Christmas despite the good bit of snow that fell when we first arrived. We did, however, get to hear White Christmas (a family favorite) at the Pops since they played it for the encore this year unlike last year.
Can I just say that I don't know how northern moms deal with all the gear that living in cold weather with four kids entails? The jackets, snow pants, mittens, hats, scarves, boots, and other paraphernalia is just TOO much. We were forever misplacing someone's something or other. It got so bad that we got to the outlets on one particularly cold day and discovered that neither of us had brought Colby's hat or snowsuit so Duncan had to drive the fifteen minutes back home to get it. But yeah, most of the time Colby went without a hat because I was always forgetting it. And yes, I did feel like a bad mother. I couldn't wait to get home and say "Grab your flip flops and let's go."

Okay, I'm going to stop and pick up back here at home after Christmas on my next post. I'm also having problems with my pictures so hopefully I'll have those next time too.

Of course, I'm sure there is much I've forgotten since we've been back from Boston. The things you do while on vacation tend to stick out more in your mind than the things you do at home in your normal routine.

Nonetheless, I will try and remember what I can. I'm not one of those people that writes things down for later but maybe I should be! Oh, who am I kidding? That's never going to happen.

New Year's Eve is when we typically do Christmas 2.0 which is Christmas with Ron and Elaine. Traditionally we do it in the evening although I'm not quite sure why. Duncan is always off on that day anyway. Because Shawn and Camille were going to be arriving in the early evening, we decided to switch things up by doing Christmas in the morning which I think worked out perfectly. We got to Ron and Elaine's around 9:30, had a fantastic breakfast, and then opened gifts. Aubree cracked me up though. The night before when she was getting ready for bed she mentioned something that she wanted and then says "I'll just put it on my Christmas 2.0 list." I'm like, "Ah, Aubs, that's in the morning. I'm pretty sure Grandma and Grandpa are done with their shopping." There were a bunch of things to open considering that Ron and Elaine had brought back gifts from the aunts, uncles, and cousins in Pennsylvania and also from Angie and Chuck.

Gift from Grandma and Grandpa

Opening stockings

We had plans to go to Allen and Tangie's for a New's Years little get together but first we were waiting on Shawn and Camille to arrive to join us over there. They were coming from Chattanooga and made great time and got here in time to attend the festivities. It was nice to be able to introduce them to our friends since they hear so much about them. We didn't stay too late because the kids had to get to bed. Also joining us back at the homestead were Eric and Jeff Badillo who were in the area visiting a sick uncle with their parents. Their uncle didn't have enough room in his house so they stayed here with us. Not sure how crazy they were about that idea once they learned we lived in Ocoee on the other side of the city compared to our old place in Winter Park. Their uncle lives in Winter Springs which is right near Winter Park. Sorry! At any rate, we had a fun evening catching up on all the "gossip" as we've known Eric and Jeff since we were little kids (they live in California).

At Isidros

The guys playing Trivial Pursuit the next morning.

The reason Shawn and Camille were here is because Shawn had a booth at the General Youth Conference (GYC) being held at the Convention Center here in Orlando. The booth was for the Northern New England Conference so Shawn and another guy from his church volunteered to oversee it. There was an obvious perk to that plan! The only downside was that Shawn was often at the GYC rather than spending time with us but I guess that's how it goes.

Some things we did while they were here were go to the Orlando Science Center (I had some passes from renewing our membership), dinner at Sweet Tomatoes with Aunt Wanda and Aunt Shirley to celebrate Aunt Shirley's 80th birthday, trip to the mall playground, and most fun of all, Sea World! Ricky and I had been lamenting that it was too bad that they couldn't somehow get to Sea World but considering the ticket prices, we knew they weren't going to want to go (I definitely wouldn't!). Well, low and behold, we find out that Sea World has come out with a special for the month of January. All annual passholders can get a person in for free! Couldn't have worked out any better. We decided to go Sunday afternoon. I waited until the last moment to get the tickets on-line (you have to register and print the tickets out before you go) just in case plans changed. Big mistake. Their website was absolutely horrendous in finding where and how to register. I think my blood pressure most have gone up about a hundred notches. And, of course, it's not like you can just pick up the phone and just call them. You have to go through their whole system and wait for an eternity so I didn't even try. To top it all off, our printer was only printing the top part of the ticket and not the bottom. Needless to say, things did not get off on the right foot. Fortunately they did improve from there. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time. The girls were so excited about taking Camden on the Shamu roller coaster and indeed, he did say in retrospect that it was his favorite thing about Florida.

Hurricane simulator. Not sure where Calleigh's head is..

Sweet Tomatoes

Play Doh

Painting

The mall

Aubree, Calleigh, and Camden hung out in the bathtub for like an hour with their bathing suits on.

The weather is all over the place this time of year. One day you're out in the yard playing in the sprinkler while the next you could be donning your jacket and a hat.

Building a gingerbread train. Sure, this is the type of thing you usually do before Christmas but I couldn't resist the 75% off price at Walgreen's.

Doing the offering on Sabbath. This time Aubree didn't have to go potty right beforehand. Not sure why she wasn't happy.

Now that's a happy face! These two really love each other. They could be twins if their birthdays were five days closer and, you know, they had the same parents.

Aubs was thrilled to have him in her Sabbath School class.

The Bergherms came over for supper on Saturday night.

The ropes course

Watching a show with Uncle Ricky

This is blurry but I love this shot of these two. This is at the Shamu show. We were just about to leave and a I guess they were both tired, hence the binkies.

They left for home (some of them reluctantly) on Monday morning and it was back to regular life for us. But not before Calleigh, Aubree, and Brady shed some tears on their departure. Calleigh squeaked out amongst her tears that "I wish we could move to Bangor and all live together." It all sounded nice until I checked my phone for the forecast and saw temperatures that only contained one number. I'm good!

My cutie pie 4-month old

Later Monday morning it was off to the pediatrician for Colby's four month appointment, albeit a few weeks late due to the holidays. I was curious to see all of his stats because he seems so huge to me with his chunky legs and all. Funny how your perspective is tainted by the smaller babies that came before him because despite the chunkiness, he's only in the 50th percentile. He is, by far, the largest four month baby I've had. Most importantly, though, he's in great health.

Weight Height Head

Calleigh Don't have (10th) Don't have Don't have

Aubree 13 lbs, 0 oz (40th) 25 (75th) 90th

Brady 12 lbs, 10 oz (10th) 23 3/4 (10 - 25th) 16.0 (10th)

Colby 15 lbs, 13 oz (50th) 25 1/2 (75th) 16.75 (50th)

I don't remember much else that happened last week for Tuesday - Friday. Could be because I started sleep training with Colby and I was in a sleepy stupor. Not completely unlike a drunken stupor I suppose although I suppose with a drunken stupor you're at least happy. I decided that I needed to "lay down the law" as far as the sleeping at night. Due to being on vacation and having people in the guest room (which is across from his bedroom), my hands have been tied because I didn't want him to be crying and keeping people up. So basically he's carried on as he's carried on for the last at least six or seven weeks which is that around 2:00 am, give or take, he'll wake up and end in bed with me where he eats somewhat at his leisure for the remainder of the night. Definitely NOT the ideal. Definitely not something I'm accustomed to with a baby this age as my other three were most certainly sleeping through the night at this juncture. Oh, to have one of those type of babies.

It's really not gone that well, to be honest. The first night or two it wasn't too bad. He woke up a couple of times, cried out, and I'd go across the hall from my bed in the guest room and put his binky back in. Back to sleep he would go. Well, Friday night was the worst. I went to bed at 11:15. At 12:30, Brady woke up and cried for his binky and then at 1:20, Colby woke up and cried for his. Thereafter, Colby was literally up every hour after that. He would go back to sleep pretty quickly each time so at least he wasn't crying for minutes or hours or anything but seriously, how much quality sleep does one get when one is awakened that often? We had guests over the weekend so we backtracked a little but we've been back at it the last two nights and it's seriously gotten worse. He's been breaking out of his swaddle so I sewed some socks into them as had been recommended by some friends who it worked for. No luck. He broke out of that too (I may have done it wrong for all I know). So tonight I decided to lose the swaddle all together and move on to the sleep sack. And, here it is 11:07 and he's been awake crying for the last ten minutes. Ahhhh! This kid is killing me. If I had him somewhere else in the birth order there's a chance I wouldn't have four children!! Next time you see me you may not recognize me because of the puffy bags under my eyes and my sullen expression (although if it's after this Sunday, it could also be because the Patriots lost to the Broncos. That's for you, Allen!). I'm open to any and all suggestions on how to improve this situation including, but not limited to, purchasing some of those fancy Beats by Dre headphones I saw everywhere at Christmas, a nighttime nanny, and sending him to military school.

Friday night, before that worst night of sleep, we had some friends over for dinner. Ron and Sherrie (sp?) Pelton were in town because Ron was running in the Disney Marathon. They were staying at one of Duncan's colleagues/friends at work, Terry Owen, whose home we had been at for Sabbath lunch a few months ago so we thought it would be a nice time to reciprocate and have them come to our place which they did. A nice time was had by all.

Sabbath it was on to church, where as the morning progressed, I started feeling worse and worse. I finally decided that we needed to get home because my stomach was feeling pretty queasy. I hadn't eaten any breakfast and I didn't eat any lunch. During my much needed nap, I started to feel really cold and that's when I got scared that I was coming down with something. I jumped into the tub to warm up and soon after I threw up. I haven't been sick to my stomach (other than pregnancy) since 2004 when I had the horrible flu for a week and I was petrified it was going to turn into that. Or worse, I was going to give something to Colby or the other kids. Aunt Toni and Uncle Terry were down in Avon Park bringing Terry's mom back to Florida but came to our house Sabbath afternoon for the next two nights. Ron, Elaine, Ricky and Ana also came over because we were all watching the Patriots playoff game against the Colts. I had been SO looking forward to the evening and this illness struck. I did watch the game but I visited the bathroom a few more times and I was not feeling comfortable whatsoever. No fever though. Just chills and a bad stomach. Uncle Terry suggested I take some of my Zofran which I gladly did and then I started praying, pleading that I would be well in the morning. And I was. What a blessing! I wouldn't put it in the category of a "blessing" but we were thankful that the Patriots beat the Colts 43-22 to move on to the AFC Championship game against Denver. My stomach will be queasy for different reasons this time!

Go Patriots!! Duncan dressed all the kids in their Pats gear and took them to First Watch on Sunday with Terry, Toni, and his parents so I could sleep in. What a guy!

Camille's brother, Garrett, his wife Jenny, and son Thatcher (almost two) came by to watch the 49'ers/Panthers game. They came in from Chattanooga for Garrett to run the Disney Marathon. They stayed elsewhere but stopped by to say hello and see the game since they are big Niners fans. Jenny is having a baby girl in April.

Aunt Lori, Uncle Charlie, Kelly, and Caleb arrived on Sunday afternoon as well to spend the week at Bonnet Creek Resort with Uncle Charlie's parents. We tried to get a picture of the group of kids but it was hard.

Some quotes from the kids...

Last week I looked out the upstairs window and saw three cop cars parked in front of our house and the neighbor's house. The cops were talking to our neighbor. I didn't see any sense of urgency on their part but I was a little worried that there might be a safety issue or something (the backyard is fenced but still..) But I was also wondering if it was possibly a domestic situation. When the cops were leaving, I asked one if I should be worried and he said "No." So I told the kids (since they kept asking what had happened) that there wasn't anything to be worried about and that maybe they had gotten into a little disagreement next door or something. Fast forward a couple of days and our Friday night guests are leaving..
Calleigh: (running outside to tell them goodbye): "THAT'S THE HOUSE WHERE THEY HAD THE FIGHT!!"

Aunt Toni and Aubree are upstairs talking on Sabbath afternoon:
Aunt Toni:"So your mom isn't feeling too good. I hope she'll be okay.
Aubree: "She'll survive."
Full disclosure, I had said those words to Aubree not too long ago but Aunt Toni was a little taken aback to hear them!

Calleigh went on a bike ride with Allen and Braelyn and Allen overhears this:
Calleigh: "Braelyn, I wish my mom was married to your dad so that we could be sisters and share iPods."

No mention on whether she also wished that her dad and Braelyn's mom were married.

Brady does something to Aubree causing Aubree to cry.
Me:"Brady, tell Aubree you're sorry."
Brady:"I can't."
Me:"Why not?"
Brady:"My tongue is hurting."

I was reading a book to Brady and suddenly Calleigh and Aubree run into the room. I could tell there had been some kind of incident.
Calleigh: (with such indignation and disbelief):"Aubree! Why did you hit me back? Why did you hit me back???"

I should think that answer would be fairly obvious.

Since Calleigh now rides the two wheeler, her old bike was much too small. Duncan surprised her with this bike a couple of nights ago. It even has gears so she's pretty excited!

Calleigh's talking about her new bicycle.
Calleigh:"Mom, now you need a new bike...(thinking to herself)...Do you KNOW how to ride a 2-wheeler?"

A couple more pictures...

Last bike ride on her old bike. She loves to go riding with Braelyn.

And then there's this guy. Looks like the balance bike is finally fitting him.

We go over the date every day at school and on January 8 I mentioned my grandfather would have been 96 years old if he were still alive. Calleigh responded that we should have ice cream. So we did in Pampa's honor!

I didn't post any pictures from Boston for Christmas because my pictures weren't loading on to my computer from my phone. Technology!! Fortunately I have a very clever technology guy that lives with me who was able to uninstall the new version of iCloud and reinstall the old version of it and voila!, back in business. So here we go.

View from Ron and Elaine's hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia. The girls were very excited to be reunited with Derek and Tyler!

Waiting for the Metro

Ron and Elaine brought up our double stroller for us. Having a stroller while on the Metro proved to be a pain in the neck because we had to switch trains a couple of times and they make you go WAY out of your way to get to the elevators.

If you squint your eyes just right you can possibly, maybe make out the White House in the background.

The National Christmas Tree. We decided that it totally looks fake because of the way they decorate it.

The family of singers.

Sabbath morning on the way from DC to my parents. We noticed it was getting a wee bit chilly.

The view from my parent's front window. We were so thrilled to have snow this year and the girls LOVED it!

Papa and Calleigh

My parents and Duncan took the kids tubing the day after our arrival.

Warming up inside...working on an activity book.

American Girl store.

These ladies were standing around waiting to do your doll's hair for $20. What a racket!

Newport

Our 3-bedroom suite. My parents and Shawn and Camille stayed with us.

Mac & Cheese for lunch

Comparing Shannon's son Griffin with Colby. Griffin is eight weeks younger but is a little smaller (you may not be able to tell that here but he weighed 15 lbs, 3 oz at his six months appointment compared to Colby at 15 lbs, 13 oz at his four month).

The cousins of the ten cousins (in age order): Mia, Calleigh, Aubree, Camden, Tyson (not in picture since he was having a melt down), Acadia, Brady, Finley, Bode, Westin, Caleb, Griffin, and Colby. Missing: Zasha and Luccia. Also in picture was friend Hannah.

Warming up by the fire after a swim in Newport.

My studly husband and I in Boston. The evening before our 11th anniversary, in fact.

My brothers, their wives, and us. First time out together!

Now that's a tree! This is the one from Quincy Market and it puts the National Tree to shame.

Meanwhile, Gigi had the kids busy doing crafts at home.

Cheesecake Factory before the Pops

The stroll from the Prudential Center to Symphony Hall

Our view. When we sat down in our seats, Brady asked me "What movie are they showing?"

David and Yully's house. It was lovely.

Hanging out at Boomer's Playland in Carver.

Fun times.

Ice skating at Patriot Place (this is next to Gillette Stadium)

Christmas Eve kid games. Picking up marshmallows with a straw and putting them in a cup.

Building snowmen.

Horseplay with Steve.

Our annual Christmas card contest. We judge all the cards sent to my parents and pick a winner. It's always very controversial.

Before things got under way. We have a lot of people Christmas morning, hence all the gifts.

And it's on!

Wearing the same Santa outfit Brady did on Christmas Day two years ago.

Steve and Caleb with Duncan and Colby.

Christmas brunch is always one of my favorite things.

Christmas caroling around my parent's neighborhood. (This happened the Friday night before Christmas but I missed putting it above.)

Aubree and Penelope

Calleigh and Olivia

Bowling the night before we left. So nice because they have the little balls instead of the big ones.

Heading home.

We made it!

We've been pretty busy over the last week. Last Thursday, Aunt Lori, Kelly, and Caleb came to visit us for a few hours before Kelly and Caleb departed for home. They had spent the week down at Bonnet Creek Resort. Not exactly the warmest weather for hanging out a resort but I suppose what we have down here these days is still much nicer than the temps up north. They ate lunch with us and Aunt Lori brought some chocolate covered bananas for a dessert. I have never had one of those and I must say it was quite delightful. Before they left, they went on a (chilly) walk with the kids save Brady who was down for his nap. Upon their return, Colby took a two hour nap which I was so excited about. If only I could somehow duplicate the exact circumstances that precipitated that.

On Friday we went to one yard sale. January is the slowest month of the year for yard sales, unfortunately. I guess it does give us an extra day to get other stuff done like go to Costco. Incidentally, if you ever ask Brady what we did that day, he will pretty much always answer "We went to Costco." And sometimes he'll add in "And got samples" for good measure. He seems to have a special affinity for going there or something.

Sabbath was as usual. Saturday night we went Family Fun Night for the Adventurers at the church. The girls had been looking forward to it since the announcement was given at Adventurers the week before and the words "outdoor scavenger hunt" were used. However, I wasn't as excited because Saturday was a cold day and as the evening hours neared, the temperatures were down in the 40's with a little wind. It was cold! Thus began my frantic search for jackets, hats, mittens, etc. I was thinking that perhaps the scavenger hunt wasn't going to happen but if it was, I needed to be prepared. I had figured that we weren't going to be needing that kind of stuff back here at home so I hadn't been really careful where I had put stuff upon our return from Boston. I knew I had washed Aubree and Brady's coats but for the life of me, I could not remember where I had put them. I looked everywhere and could not find them. So frustrating! While I was upstairs looking for all this stuff, the kids were outside and Duncan was in the kitchen. Suddenly, I hear Brady crying and it sounds like a more serious cry. I ran downstairs and sure enough, there was Duncan with his hand full of paper towels up against Brady's eye (same one that had the stitches) and he's muttering, "We might have to go somewhere." Ughh! I mean, really. How can one kid get so many injuries? Neither of the girls had seen what had happened and Brady was too upset to tell us. The girls were going bonkers. They were wailing and hugging me as if he was dying. I think they were worried his eyeball had popped out or something since they have an obsession with that. At this point, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the girls do not have careers in patient care ahead of them.

Duncan investigated closer and determined that it wasn't deep enough for stitches. Sigh of relief. Eventually we figured out that the injury had something to do with going down the slide. It's pretty fast and we think maybe his face hit into the ground or something. Who knows. However it happened, he's been sporting a pretty nasty shiner.

The band-aid covered most of the damage.

Putting frozen peas on it the next morning.

How it looked two days later.

We did make it to the fun night and it was indeed very fun. The scavenger hunt ended up being indoors, glow in the dark, and was a blast. All my efforts to find warm clothing were for naught. Incidentally, I found the jackets a couple of days later. I had put them in Brady's empty laundry bin to take upstairs. Duncan had taken it up and didn't remove the jackets and then dirty clothes got thrown on top. Mystery solved.

Getting their scavenger hunt instructions. Aubree told me Jennifer's team won but that her team was the "second winners." I guess that's what we say these days instead of "losers."

They made marshmallow shooters.

Sunday was the big day. The Patriots vs. Denver Broncos for the AFC Championship. I surprised myself by agreeing to have non-Patriots fans over for the game. Namely, the Isidros and Bergherms. The Isidros being Denver fans, of course. The game was at 3:00 so up until then we got a few errands done (Brady got a haircut) and prepared some food and then it was game on. Now, I will say that I had low expectations for the game because the Patriots have had a slew of injuries this year and that they even got this far, was really remarkable. So I really didn't have any big illusions that they would win this game. Good thing because it basically wasn't even close. They lost 26-16. We did have yummy food and thankfully Allen was a good sport about it all and didn't rub it in our faces! But that said, go Seahawks! I really have no interest in watching the Super Bowl now but I will admit that I'm partially intrigued to see how Richard Sherman does. He had that crazy interview after the Seahawks victory over the 49'ers and now people are making him out to be this horrible thug and villain...which I don't agree with at all (although obviously he needs to work on him public humility). Check out my brother's blog here to see his perspective on it.

Trying out a new bike which Daddy didn't buy. I guess two new bikes in one week was enough.

Strolling through Publix

I actually bought a Denver balloon to be fair. It disappeared during the game or else I probably would have stabbed it with a knife afterwards!

Allen bought face paint and was really, really good at it. I love Calleigh here. Perhaps praying about the Pats, who knows?

And how about Aubree here. I guess she was getting tired of waiting!

The finished product.

I forgot to mention that the Hazens also came over. But they're Pats fans so we welcomed them with open arms. Calleigh was happy because Lindsey Hazen is the one who inspired her to get the American Girl doll and she wanted to show Lindsey hers. And then we found out that Lindsey has eight of them. Yes, eight!! Great. Just great.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day so Duncan was off work. And so was I! That was always the busiest day of the year for me when I was working because we have audit during the month of January and it's crazy. I seriously keep thinking every day "Thank goodness I'm not working any more!" It is such a good feeling. Since Sea World/Busch Gardens was having their "Annual pass holders get a guest in free" thing going on, we decided to go to Busch Gardens. Duncan and I actually have passes to both although the girls don't (Sidebar: we do the Easy Pay which is a monthly fee. The price never changes even as the cost of a ticket goes up so when I called to cancel the Busch Gardens portion, the price was almost the same as just having Sea World because the cost had gone up so much since we signed up). We haven't been in almost two years so I must say I was excited about it even though I'm generally not a big theme park person.

Ricky and Ana have passes too so they met us down there and we went in a little after 11:00. It was a truly gorgeous day with a temp in the mid 60's and no clouds at all. The park was a little more crowded than I would have preferred and the waits for some of the coasters were over an hour. Unfortunately, I had made the blunder of telling Calleigh that she was tall enough to ride the Cheetah Chase roller coaster and she become obsessed with it. The wait was 95 minutes when we first got in so obviously we weren't about to wait. At the end of the day, it was still 55 minutes and there was no way I was doing that. She was so disappointed though and kept talking about it all the way home. Despite that, we had a great day looking at all the animals and going on all the rides in the Sesame Street kid area. The girls went on the roller coaster there several times. During that time, we took Brady to see a little bit of the Sesame Street show and to meet Big Bird. He was completely freaked out about Big Bird but has kept asking me if I remember all the other characters...over and over again.

This was as close as Brady would get.

Brady loved the swing. Aubree was just a little too big to ride it. I thought she would be upset but she seemed pleased that she had to wait on the sidelines with Calleigh.

The skyride.

I don't think we had been into the bird habitat before. Birds would just fly all around and land on you. It was really quite something.

Calleigh really wanted to hold one.

Success!

Aubree was a little less than thrilled.

Last ride of the day and the binky is out.

We took in a few sandwiches for the kids for lunch but they since they were having a special of 30% off all food for pass holders, we bought lunch for Duncan and me which was actually pretty tasty. We started rolling out of the park around 5:30 and I told Duncan that it would probably behoove us to leave for home when it was Colby's bedtime so we didn't have to listen to him cry the whole way home (we made sure it was his nap time on the way there which worked out perfectly). The trip is about an hour and fifteen minutes. So we ended up stopping a nearby Chick-fil-A for supper and then leaving about 7:00 for home. It worked out as planned and we didn't hear a peep from the back seat. All in all, it was a great day. I must say that Busch Gardens seems to have a lot more to offer than Sea World but maybe that's just because we've been to Sea World so much.

On Wednesday the girls had a dentist appointment. I walked in and the waiting room had one mother in it. Apparently this is a slow time for going to the dentist. The girls waited about two minutes to go back. But then when they called them, Aubree started fussing that she was too tired and didn't want to go. That's her usual excuse when she doesn't want to go somewhere without Duncan or me. I pushed her out the door though and it went fine. The great news is that the girls are still cavity free. When the hygienist called us back, she started talking about the status of their teeth and turned to Calleigh and said "Really great job with the brushing. We didn't find any plaque." And then to Aubree "We found just a little plaque in the back." I piped up and said "So, I guess that means I do a better job brushing Calleigh's teeth than Aubree's." I thought it was a bit odd that she was talking to them as if they brush their own teeth considering they say for an adult to brush until age eight. At any rate, it made me feel good that their teeth are in such good shape. And truth be told, I only brush their teeth before bed and I don't even use toothpaste. We tried that for a little bit but then they would spit like every two seconds and brushing would last for 10 minutes, each kid, so I said enough of that. As we loaded into the van, I expressed my pleasure to the girls with how things went and that they didn't have cavities and Calleigh says "Well, it's a good thing Aunt Toni doesn't brush our teeth or we would." Apparently Aunt Toni had attempted to brush Calleigh's teeth when they had been here a week or two ago and it was not the effort that Calleigh was accustomed to. Sorry Aunt Toni!

Brady playing on the iPad at the dentist. With his luck, I was worried he would fall off the chair.

On to my problem baby...Colby has been making some improvements. Of course, as I write this at 12:08 am, I hear him crying through the monitor. So there is still some work to be done, clearly. Last Thursday night was my first night with the sleep sack rather than the swaddle. It actually improved things somewhat. Then, Friday night I had Duncan do a shift in the guest room. He had the monitor so I was able to close myself off from everything down in our room and just sleep. Heavenly. Duncan brought Colby into the room at 7:25 to eat and I asked how it went. He says, "It was a little rough. I had a tough time getting comfortable in the bed for some reason." And the kid? "Oh, I didn't hear a thing until I just brought him into you now." Son of a gun. So now Duncan thinks I'm making the whole thing up! As you can probably guess, this phenomenon of sleeping the entire night has not been repeated. On the plus side, for the most part he's sleeping all the way until about 5:00. I let him cry for a bit and then eventually put the binky in and then he'll sleep until 6:15 - 7:00. I don't feed him though until close to 7:00 so that he doesn't get used to eating earlier than that. I'm still swaddling him for his naps.

Aubree's still pretty crazy about him.

School is...going. It definitely has its ups and downs and times when I question whether I'm doing a good job. I suppose that's normal. We are in Week 15 and it's becoming apparent what the favorite and least favorite things are. The top of the lease favorite list would be writing followed by subtraction. Each week we have a memory verse to learn and she has to copy the memory verse onto a lined page. Watching it can be described as torturous. After some complaining, she'll finally start to write. She'll write two letters, stare off into space, write one more letter, twirl around in her chair a few times, write another letter or two, stretch her legs and pick her toes, and so on it goes. Of course, I keep reminding her to just concentrate and get it done and so I start feeling like I'm just nagging her. Yesterday we seemed to make a little breakthrough when she kept complaining that she didn't like how the pencil felt (she's said this before). I had an epiphany and I got out some mechanical pencils (which I personally hate because I'm always breaking the lead) and that has been much better. Things that she enjoys are science, learning the books of the Bible, and anything that has an activity to it. She does like math to an extent but not the subtraction piece. During supper, I typically try to get her to go over things she has learned for Duncan. The other day he started asking her math problems like 20 + 5, 10 - 5, etc. I told Duncan that we hadn't gotten to double digit problems yet (beyond 12) but she still knew some of them and was answering correctly. But then he asked "25 - 6" and she responded "That, my friend, I do not know." It was just so funny the way she said it.

They like to do each other's hair.

Brady hiding in the closet so he wouldn't have to take a nap. Of course, when he does get into his crib for his nap, he's asleep in like a minute so I don't know what the fuss was about.

I'm battling a head cold and at this moment, a headache, so I'm going to try and make this fairly brief.

The highlight of the last week was my 38th birthday...if one can count getting older a highlight. Saturday night Ron and Elaine came over to babysit while Duncan and I joined Russ and Saray at Bosphorous Turkish Cuisine in Winter Park. We both had gift cards which made it all the nicer. This was the first time I had been there and while I found the appetizer really good (which was Lavas bread with a bunch of dips like Humus, etc), the lentil soup and falafel I thought were just okay. But no matter, it was a nice time out with those guys since we haven't seen them without kids in tow since they moved here several years ago (or ever, for that matter).

Not the best picture ever but you can at least put some faces to the names.

The real excitement for me, however, was on Sunday, my actual birthday, when I spent a good portion of the day alone. I always feel bad writing that, as if I don't like spending time with my family or something. I left the house about 9:15 and started my Goodwill circuit over on Curry Ford Road. For whatever reason there are many more Goodwills on the east side of town than over here on the west side. I begrudgingly pumped a few nights beforehand so that Duncan could give Colby a bottle mid-morning and then another one mid-afternoon. The plan was for me to meet them at Ron and Elaine's for lunch so I could nurse him. I did NOT want to bring a pump with me and since Ron and Elaine are over in the general area, I figured that would work out. Which it did although I was not too happy when I had to leave the new (and very large and nicely organized) Goodwill in the Waterford Lakes area to get to their house for 1:30. I would have had longer there but I made a big rookie mistake. I knew there was a new Goodwill near Waterford Lakes but instead of looking it up ahead of time, I just told Siri to direct me to the Goodwill at Waterford Lakes. What did she do? Take me to the administration office of the Waterford Lakes shopping center. By the time I figured out that I had been led astray, I had wasted a good fifteen minutes. So disgusted with myself. But mostly at Siri and when I told her so she informed me that she was doing her best. Not good enough missy!

Colby chilling with Daddy on the hammock while Mommy shops.

Meanwhile, I was just astounded, ASTOUNDED, that no one had swiped this up yet from the Goodwill racks.

I did find some great deals including dresses for myself, shirts for Duncan and stuff for the kids. I also found some stuff I'm going to try and sell at the consignment sale coming up in March. I found some items for less than $1 (like Gymboree and Gap) stuff that I think I can make a profit on if I re-sell it at the sale. We shall see.

I was wondering what Duncan would be doing for supper. My mind was put to rest when I got a call from the front gate that Papa John's was trying to get in for a delivery. Mystery solved! I got home about 6:30 and I was ecstatic to find my house clean, jazz music playing in the background, Duncan's special soup he makes (which I love) on the counter along with my favorite mix of salty and sweet kettle corn. Ricky and Ana arrived shortly thereafter with a cake. It was a lovely conclusion to a great day. Oh, actually the best conclusion was that I got an incredibly sappy card from Duncan (which made me cry, of course) and also a special coupon. I am one very blessed lady, for sure.

Best gift ever. He was funny though. After I opened it, he reached to take it and says "Well, thanks. I guess this covers today."

There hasn't been much else in terms of excitement since then...just trying to get over this little cold. I happened to stumble across some article that was helping people determine if they had a cold or the flu. I don't have question on it but I noticed they had a list of things to do to help cure a cold and the first thing was "get plenty of rest." Hahahahahaha. I figure I'll have this thing until March. I did attempt an early bed time last night (10:00) but I was awoken by various children four times over the next six or seven hours and really don't feel like it was of any quality. But you know, it is what it is. So far only Calleigh has gotten a few sniffles herself but hopefully we can keep it away from the other guys.

Colby did hit a milestone today, finally. This seems a little slow but he finally rolled over at the ripe age of five months. I was sitting on the living room floor reading a book to the kids and I look over and see Colby on his belly. So yes, he rolled over since I figure that's the only way to get from your stomach to your back without assistance. As for his sleeping. not much changed. I'll tell you what also hasn't changed is the poop blowouts. Seriously, this kid has wrecked more outfits than all three of the others combined. I have probably tried at least seven or eight different brands of diapers in various sizes and STILL, we have a poop blow out practically every day. And that yellow baby poop is hard to get out. I read somewhere where someone said they would put it through the washing machine and then let it dry out in the sun and the sun bleaches it out. I probably have like 25 items that I need to do this with so I hope it works. On the positive, at least I don't have another kid that I need to pass these clothes on to so there's that. If any one has a magic formula for these kind of stains, please let me know.

Right after he rolled over.

Proud of himself. Sorry for the blur.

I forgot to mention this in my last post which is hard to believe because I was so excited about it. Brady ate a vegetable!! This was indeed a significant event. If Colby is the worst when it comes to stuff coming out, Brady is the worst at putting stuff in. Definitely my worst eater of the bunch. He ate vegetables just fine when he was like fifteen or sixteen months old but since then, it's been a no go. He won't touch them. Oh, I serve them every meal but they go untouched. Occasionally he would eat cucumbers but that's it. Well, I've been trying different things and I discovered these carrots that are cut like potato chips. So I got them and low and behold, he ate them. I was astounded! Can we cut any other veggies in the same shape I wonder?

After that, I was feeling inspired. If I could just get him to try something, I know he would like it. But he won't even try. Well, I was finally getting sick of having to give him something different than the rest of us so when we had Indian food one evening, I told him that he needed to take at least three bites of his lentils and rice (not spicy and the girls both like it). He adamantly refused. Now, I may be in the minority here but I'm just not one to force kids to eat stuff. I don't want to get in an epic battle with a kid and tell him he can't leave the table until he eats his peas. For the girls, since they're older, I do say they have to take a certain number of bites so they can at least see if they like it but after that, they don't have to continue. Calleigh hates broccoli and I don't make her eat it. But she will gobble up corn, lima beans, peas, carrots, etc so I really don't see the point in forcing stuff she doesn't like. At any rate, back to Brady. I say I don't force kids to eat but I thought maybe I needed to here since he just won't try new stuff. But he would not take a bite no matter what we did or said including that he couldn't have anything else and would go to bed without supper. In the end, he never had supper. Oddly enough, it didn't phase him in the least. He never said he was hungry when I put him in his crib or anything and he hadn't even had a snack in the afternoon. But I'm left thinking that I didn't do the right thing. I don't know. Food/mealtimes is really one of my least favorite things about kids.

This is longer than I wanted to be on here so let me just get to a couple of things the kids said.

Calleigh: "Dad, can we ride bikes tomorrow?"
Duncan: "No, I have to go to work."

Calleigh: "I wish you were a preacher."

Duncan:"Why?

Calleigh: "Because they don't do much work."

I have no idea where she got this idea from because as a PK, I can say first hand it isn't true.

We were doing school discussing how Adam and Eve's children had to marry their brothers and sisters since there wasn't any one else.

Calleigh:"When I grow up I'm going to marry Bruno. No wait! I'm going to marry Elijah because I'm in love with him!!

This is the first time I've heard her use the words "in love with." Scary. Also, never heard of this Elijah character but apparently he's in her Sabbath School class. May have to check him out.

Tuesday evening Allen and Braelyn came over so that that Allen and Duncan could talk bikes. Later, Brady was praying before bed.

Brady:"Thank you for Mommy and Daddy and Colby and Calleigh and Aubree and Mommy and Daddy and Daddy and Mommy and..." Pause. "What's Braelyn's dad's name?"

Me: "Allen."

Brady:"Thank you that Allen put my helmet on."

I just thought it was funny that he couldn't remember Allen's name but he said "Braelyn's dad" so perfectly.

Okay, I'm off to bed to get in a few zzzz's before someone wakes up.

Colby sitting in a big boy chair at Sabbath School.

Goofing around at Walgreen's.

Helping me check out books at the library.

Aunt Lori has been staying here this week to attend some health classes.

Ana volunteered to come over and give the girls some Spanish lessons. Hopefully she wasn't too discouraged after Lesson #1 which was animal names. They did pretty well although when Aubree couldn't figure out what el elefante meant even after hearing it a few times, I will admit I was a little worried.

I thought it was neat that we saw this rainbow across from our house the very evening before we read about Noah and the flood in school.

In the last post or two, I was lamenting about how I was frustrated at times with how school is going. This week has been so much better! I swear, it all comes back to that mechanical pencil. Such a little thing but it seems to have worked wonders. This is going to sound really bad, I'm sure, but I've actually been erasing for her any time she would mess up a letter because she said she hated the feel of the eraser when she was erasing. She would practically cringe. Is that a real ailment? I don't know. Anyway, yesterday she used the eraser on the mechanical pencil for the first time and it's like a whole new world. She is erasing her own mistakes! Yippee.

Every week we have a memory verse to memorize (is that redundant?) and then she has to copy it down in her best handwriting (usually I would spread this out over two days). Prior to the mechanical pencil, this task was met with sighs and complaints. This week, when I gave her the sheet of paper, she didn't say anything and just started writing. She got about halfway done and instead of stopping she said "I think I'll just finish it so that I don't have to do it tomorrow." I know that seems like a little thing but I was so excited.

While she may lack enthusiasm for handwriting, she at least is excelling at memorizing the books of the Bible. We are up to Isaiah and she can rattle them all off from memory like nobody's business. I got a good chuckle a couple of days ago when we were talking about Ecclesiastes. I read the description of it in the teacher's manual which said "Ecclesiastes talks about how your life will be empty and meaningless if you don't have God." Calleigh quickly responded "Well, that't not going to happen to this girl!"

It's often the small things that make this homeschooling thing fun. We have these cards of paintings/art work that we look at and discuss for Art and today it was a picture of the Mona Lisa. The girls were both looking at it pretty skeptically and the first thing Calleigh says is "I could do a better picture than that." Then one of the questions was "What do you think Lisa is thinking about?" And Calleigh says "Why am I in this painting?" For what it's worth, I've never thought it was all the impressive either! But then, I'm not an art connoisseur.

This week has been remarkably quiet. We did enjoy our time with Aunt Lori and Uncle Charlie (who arrived Saturday night). They left Sunday morning for a cruise out of Tampa...those stinkers. Since Sunday we've been pretty much home bodies, except for a few minor errands, which is verified by the fact that I haven't filled up with gas in almost two weeks. Yes, that means no yard sales. We got rained out last Friday and it's not looking too good for tomorrow either.

Doing Aunt Lori's hair on Sabbath afternoon.

Since yard sales didn't happen, we had to find some other things to make up for it...bringing out some Christmas presents we hadn't used it. This is Calleigh's rock decorating kit.

Brady's Thomas set. He was quite pleased.

Making bowls out of Perler beads (you melt them in the oven)

The finished product.

Colby has shown small, SMALL, flourishes of improvement in the sleep department. Last night he slept straight until 5:45. He went back to sleep for a little bit and then was back up at 6:15. Starting last Friday, he didn't take an afternoon nap for three days and I was getting frustrated to no end. When that happens, you ask yourself, "What can I do differently? What isn't working here?" So I had to tweak things. I had been swaddling him, nursing him, and then putting him into his crib after he fell asleep while nursing. Apparently this was no longer working out because he would wake up about two minutes after I put him in the crib and he wouldn't go back to sleep. Now, I feed him at about 1:30, he snoozes a little but then he wakes back up when he's done eating. The kids go up for quiet time about 2:15 and I have a half hour or so before schools starts to clean the kitchen, pick up, and have a little after lunch snack (frozen blueberries - - ever tried it with a little whipped cream? So GOOD!) and a cup of tea. During this time, Colby is awake. I then put him for his nap right before school starts and that way I know we hopefully have at least an hour before he wakes up. So far it's been working. He's been going right to sleep and today even took a two hour nap. Boo-yah!

Speaking of Colby, poor Calleigh was on the wrong end of some serious spit up the last couple of days. On Tuesday she was holding him on the couch with him facing her, bouncing him around. In the blink of an eye, he had spit up all over her face. Literally. It was on her lips, her cheeks, everywhere. Yikes. She said she wasn't going to hold him any more but of course she forget about that within a few hours. Then, yesterday, I was holding him and when I leaned over to wipe Calleigh (that's a whole other discussion) while she was on the toilet, Colby spit up at the exact moment that I was over her bent head and the spit up all landed in her hair. Geesh, kid! You sure know how to pick the most inopportune times to spew. Fortunately, it has not permanently soured her on him. In fact, not at all. When I finish feeding Colby first thing in the morning, I lie down next to him in his room while he "plays" with his toys. I always know when the girls are up because you can hear their heavy footsteps as they both race full speed to his room so they can be the first one to get into the room and shout "CAN I HOLD COLBY?" I kid you not, this happens EVERY morning. And usually a fight will ensue. "You held him first yesterday.""No, you did.""No, YOU did." Of course, I never remember because my brain is still in a stupor from waking up too early and too often.

I'm going to wrap up in a moment but a couple of things the other kids said. Yesterday Aubree cornered me in the bathroom to explain to me each person's roll in the household which I thought was interesting:
Colby (wasn't mentioned)
Brady: "He's the one that always gets hurt."
Aubree: "The one who helps in the kitchen."
Calleigh: "The one who takes care of Colby."
Mommy: "The one who I help."
Daddy: "The one who works on his iPad."
Not sure how loosely she was using the word "works" here in this description because I'm pretty sure he isn't actually working on the iPad per se. But it's funny to see her perspective on the people in the family.

Sunday morning Duncan was gone on a bike ride and I was serving the kids breakfast. Brady had already eaten something and asked for a yogurt.
Me: "Brady, you already ate something. If you take that yogurt, I know what will happen. You'll take like two bites and not finish the rest."
Brady: "Puh-lease Mom."
Me: "Okay, but you have to eat it. I don't want it to be wasted."
A few minutes goes by and I mosey over to where Brady is actively NOT eating his yogurt."
Brady (pointing to his yogurt): "Daddy doesn't want me to have this yogurt."

Nice try buddy.

Have a great weekend.

Friday night Duncan offered to take a Colby shift. Since our guest room was taken (I didn't want Duncan monitoring the monitor in our room because I wouldn't be able to NOT listen to it), Duncan decided to do a camp out in the girls room. I happily served them hot chocolate.

His tent

Sunday afternoon yogurt treat with Daddy.

A stop at the splash playground in Winter Garden.

Practicing sitting up. Going pretty well.

For math this week we've started to work on telling time. One of the activities was to make a cream cheese fruit pizza in the shape of a clock. Only problem is that Calleigh doesn't like raisins. Hence we couldn't make the hands or numbers. So it was a numberless clock. Still tasty though!

We got a "Johnny Jumpup" for Colby. He lasts approximately 45 seconds longer in it than his exersaucer before getting fussy. So that's about 1 minute and 15 seconds total.

It was game day this morning. Poor Aubree was getting frustrated. You're supposed to use the tool in her hand to "shoot" the little disks onto the board...which she was doing perfectly. Brady couldn't figure it out so he would just put the little disks on the tool and dump it right onto the board instead of trying to shoot it. "It's okay. It's okay," he would say.

It has been a bit of a long absence from blog writing as my parents were here for and I thought it would be rude to be typing on my computer rather than having family bonding time. But, they have left and now I am back.

I don't remember all that has gone on over the last two and half weeks so I'll just focus on the highlights. My parents arrived on Tuesday evening, February 11 and left this past Tuesday evening. Yes, my dad was in Florida for eight whole days. That does not happen all that often! In fact, has it ever happened now that I think about it? It was a blast having them here, of course, and I was able to get a few mundane things out of the way due to their presence including a dentist visit (nine months since the last one which is six months longer than usual for me), a doctor's appointment (my OB), and even a haircut (also been like nine months. When I left the hair cut place, the lady said "Make sure to come back in about four to six weeks for another deep cleaning treatment." Yeah, right!).

First thing we did upon my parent's arrival was celebrate Ana's birthday who had turned 30 on the 10th (day before).

A walk to the playground with Papa & Gigi while I was at the dentist.

We also had Evan Bergherm with us that first day because Jennifer was getting some of her kidney stones removed.

Picnic at Winter Garden Station with Gigi. She was really into it, I swear.

A stop for frozen yogurt after our picnic at JoJo's in Winter Garden. Now we have her attention!

Working on the human body that they got for Christmas. This thing is really cool with organs made out of rubber and can be removed. It's a little disconcerting though when you hear Aubree yell to Calleigh "Come on Calleigh. We need to do surgery."

Game time.

Papa with two of his three grandsons.

Can you see the attitude?

My dad and his three sisters in St. Augustine...Wanda, Mary, and Shirley.

Out to eat at Crispers with Perky, Aunt Wanda, Aunt Shirley, and Uncle Dick (in orange). The neat thing is that Uncle Dick is two years and two days older than my dad just like Calleigh is two years and two days older than Aubree.

We did have some fun activities though too. The highlight was a big trip to Sea World on the Thursday. I say "big" because there were 25 of us that went. The whole Terry and Toni Copsey clan came down for the week due to the memorial service in Avon Park for Uncle Terry's dad who passed away in November. Obviously the reason for their visit was quite sad but we were nonetheless happy to spend time with all of them. They rented a house in Davenport for the whole lot of them (eight adults and seven kids) so they didn't stay with us but we got to see them a couple of times. Anyway, since we have annual passes the neat thing was that we were able to get everyone tickets for half off so that worked out very nicely. What isn't nice is that doggone Sea World website...I had to go on it to purchase everyone's tickets. Seriously, if there is ever a time when you wished you could let some salty language fly out of your mouth, it's dealing with that website. Worst. Ever.

The day was a little on the chilly side but better that than it being too hot so I didn't have to hear my dad complain about the Florida heat! When we go we usually only stay for a few hours and mostly do the rides but since we were with people who had to pay to get in we made a day of it and hit a lot of the shows...it was kind of nice we hadn't been to them in a while because it was a whole new experience for the kids who barely remembered them. Also, whether it was the weather or just the time of year, there were hardly any lines and we only waited about five minutes to get in the penguin attraction (it's new so the wait is usually like an hour). As a testament to the coldness, though, at the sea lion and otter show, I had to sit in a different section than everyone else because Colby was asleep in his stroller. It was at the very top and there was some wind whipping through and I could barely feel my fingers as I was typing on my phone. How often do you get to say that down here?

The crew heading in to Sea World. We met the Copseys in the Wawa parking lot and had the girls go into their cars with their annual passes so they could park for free. As we drove in, I commented to my parents "Look at these idiots walking in with their t-shirts and shorts. Hel-looo!" And then, we parked and out of the cars hop Heath and Sean...in their t-shirts and shorts (at least Sean had a jacket with him which he is wearing for the picture just behind me.)

The Brace contingent. We missed Duncan who was the only one among us that had to actually work.

Brady fell asleep at the 4:30 Dolphin show. He sure loves his Uncle Ricky!

This one fell asleep intermittently throughout the day.

Shannon feeding Griffin.

Thought I would throw this one in. This was 11 months ago at Sea World with some of the Copseys. That is Don Copsey, aka Papa, on the far left who passed away.

Griffin and Colby hang out in the Frost's double stroller. Griffin is eight weeks older but they are almost identical in size.

Shamu Stadium is closed so no whale show but you can go out back and see them swimming in their tanks.

Brady hadn't been on this ride in a really long time. He just laughed and laughed through the whole thing.

Riding the teacups with Mia.

A good time was had by all...at least until the sickness struck. Unfortunately Westin Edwards (my cousin Alison's 15-month old), had started throwing up when they were boarding the plane to fly down here. From there, it started spreading through the camp and as luck would have it, his 3-year old brother, Tyson, got it mid-afternoon at Sea World and threw up in the middle of the kid's section. Poor thing. They ended up leaving early. Over the next few days, more and more of the family succumbed so we made sure not to get too close to any of them and we cancelled a trip to their pool at their Davenport rental. Fortunately we didn't get anything. The sad thing was that Tyson had been sick at Busch Gardens last year too. I want to point out that it is NOT Florida's fault since Westin was sick BEFORE they boarded the plane to come here.

A sick Tyson and his, uh, mess.

Sabbath we went to church as usual while the rest of them went to Avon Park (we didn't want to spend any more time down there than necessary). The memorial service was at three so we headed down after a quick stop at home for lunch. It was a beautiful service and I have to say that it is so uplifting that, despite the sadness, we have such hope that this isn't the end. It's always so nice to be reminded of that. Afterwards, they had on the program that there would be refreshments. I was thinking there would be a few cookies and punch but when we got into the fellowship hall, there was a giant potluck of food. A very nice surprise. What was also a surprise was when someone whispered to me "That's Uncle Dan over there." Anyone who has grown up an Adventist surely knows who Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue are from Your Story Hour. I grew up listening to it and we have the CD's for the kids. So this was like meeting a famous person for me. Oddly enough, his name isn't even Dan. Who knew? Also, oddly, he is an Abraham Lincoln impersonator. I went and talked to him and Calleigh was a little awestruck to meet him. He was really, really nice. It turns out that he lives in North Carolina half the year and then the other half of the year they live in Avon Park, which is where is wife is from. So there you go.

Uncle Dan.

Megan, Tiffany, and Shannon together again. Miss having you here, Shan! I call Tiffany my cousin but in reality, she is Shannon's cousin on her father's side while I'm Shannon's cousin on her mother's side. But I figure it's close enough!

Another picture with their favorite cousin.

The Copsey family after the service.

Since my parents left, we haven't been up to a whole lot as far as leaving the house. We did go to some yard sales today which turned out to be interesting. At one particular house in Apopka, I was rifling through some books and came across a Ben Carson one. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if these people are SDA's? A quick glance at them did not dissuade me from that notion. Then I was a book called "52 Things To Do With Your Teens on Sabbath" and I was just about positive. Then I opened it and saw a stamp on the inside that said "Seventh Day Adventist Church, Framingham, MA." I asked if they were from there and they said yes and I said, "Oh, my dad is the pastor of the Braintree church." And she said "Bill Brace?" Sure enough, they knew him quite well. Her name is Lisa Simons and they moved here three years ago. What a small world. The other thing was that I was able to buy from them some kid's books originally from the ABC (for when Calleigh is at the next stage of reading) for only $0.10 a piece. Very happy about that.

In Colby news, he had a few firsts this week. No, he didn't go a whole day or night without crying because that would be absurd. But he did ride in the front seat of the shopping cart at CVS. He also tasted his first bit of fruit or should I say the juice from fruit. We are still almost a week away from him turning six months and I have waited until that milestone before starting the other three on solids. If, for no other reason, than it becomes more work to have to feed them rather than just nurse them. But, on Wednesday he was doing his usual fussiness while I was preparing food in the kitchen and I was like "I've had it! We need a distraction." So out came the little contraption netty thing that you stick fruit in and they suck out the juice. I have no idea if it's bad to start a kid on strawberries before anything else but that's exactly what we did and he loved it. We've also done watermelon and darn it, if all that juice going all over the baby and the highchair isn't a major cleaning endeavor but it is totally worth the 5-10 minutes of virtual silence. Tomorrow I'll probably start him on rice cereal. The sooner we can get rolling with all of this, the sooner he can start snacking on Mum Mums and other baby snacks so we can get a little peace around here.

The sleeping has improved a little since my last posting. A few nights here and there he will go all the way until six before awaking. Occasionally, he will wake up and cry for two hours which was two Friday nights ago. Mostly, he will wake up at say, four and five and I go put the binky in and he goes back to sleep. Man, these six a.m. morning are a real pain. Maybe it was the same with the other kids and I just don't remember. But goodness, I'm looking forward to it expanding until at least seven. He goes to bed about 7:45 so it doesn't seem too greedy to ask for eleven hours but maybe it is. Anywho, one of the nights my parents were here I felt really, really bad. Since they are in the guest room, which is right across from Colby's room, I was back sleeping in my own room which is downstairs on the opposite side of the house (I've remained there since my parents left). I definitely need the baby monitor because we can't hear anything upstairs since we use a noise maker. We have music playing in both Colby and Brady's room (the monitor rotates through each of the three kid rooms) and I always listen for that music in the monitor to know it's on, it's working, etc. The battery doesn't last all night so I'm always diligent in making sure I plug it in when I go to bed. One morning I wake up and I think to myself "Wow, I'm so attuned to waking up this early that I'm waking up before Colby even wakes up in the anticipation." I look at the clock it says 6:30 and as I listen for the music coming from the monitor, I notice that there is dead silence. I look at the monitor and I see it's dead. Aghhh! I had forgotten to plug it in. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could and as expected, Colby was awake and screaming. He usually wakes up just shortly after six so most likely he had been screaming for 25 or 30 minutes. And then if that wasn't bad enough, when I reported this to my mother she tells me "When I woke up at 2:00 to go to the bathroom, I heard him crying." I had my parents put on the box fan in their room so they wouldn't hear him crying since I let him cry it out for short periods of time. Of course, she thought it was one of those times and didn't give it a second thought when she heard him at 2:00. That made me feel a hundred times worse. Who knows how many times he woke up and how long he cried. Bad Mommy. Bad. But he survived so I guess it ended okay.

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to a lady's book club in my neighborhood that a neighbor was starting. My first thought was that I didn't have time but on more reflection, I decided it would be a nice way to get to know my neighbors and of course, I do love to read (although it has been pretty limited of late). We met last night and it was really great. There were probably 15 ladies there ranging from 25 to 85. I met all kinds of interesting people including a teacher (who I already told I would be looking up at the end of the school year to review my homeschool portfolio), the woman who moved in a few months ago who told us her husband bought the house without even telling her (they are newly married. Not sure if that's a good sign), and also a lady, Rebecca, who has a son three days younger than Brady. Her house is a few doors down from us but is still under construction. I talked to her some more after it was over and discovered that her son, Dylan, had been diagnosed with cancer at fifteen months. Boy, if that doesn't put your baby/toddler problems in perspective, I don't know what will. Fortunately he's in remission although he's lost a kidney and his spleen from the process. I'm sure we will get to know them better once their house is done. Anyway, as for the actual reading part, my greatest fear was that we would have to read Harry Potter or something similar. I have ZERO interest in those sort of books. And Harry Potter was briefly discussed and raved over but thankfully we settled on the book "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" which is set in China. We will meet next month to discuss. Should be fun!

Some other pictures of things we've been up to...

Two weeks ago we had Family Movie Night at the church. It was supposed to be outdoors but weather was not permitting.

Calleigh rough housing with Blake. What's new?

Brady coming to the realization what hot chocolate really is. He though it was whip cream because that's what he gets at home but there was no whip cream at the church just...hot chocolate.

Aubree organizing toys by groups. All smiles until she had to clean it up. Does that seriously not occur to them when they take it all out?

Practicing his swing. Notice he's a lefty batter. I'm so excited that he is a true lefty. He doesn't just eat and write lefty. He throws, bats, and does everything with his left hand. Just like his mom!

Colby enjoying a beautiful day outside.

Ana has been consistently coming each Thursday afternoon to teach the girls Spanish. How great is it to have someone in the family that speaks another language?

All smiles as she finished lesson 100 in the "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons book." Success!

This is what she's reading now.

Her first sentence that she made up all on her own. Each day we read a Bible story and each day, she begs me to keep reading when the story is over.

As I've lamented on here, a quiet school environment is a foreign concept for us. Between Brady's rambunctiousness and having to attend to Colby who makes his presence known from time to time, there are constant interruptions. It's true that Calleigh mainly seems to work through it but it doesn't stop me from wishing that things were just a little quieter. Plus, there's the fact that our mornings are pretty much shot. By the time we get up, eat, feed Colby, have worship, shower, feed Colby again, and then have school, it's almost lunchtime. This leaves basically no time to get any errands done because after lunch, it's nap/quiet time until about 4:30 - 4:45, feed Colby, and then get ready for supper. When do I get to Publix, Costco, the library, etc? With some inspiration from my mother, I decided to make a change. School would now be in the afternoons during quiet time.

I had originally thought this would be how the schedule worked but then I always hear "kids are fresher in the mornings and better able to learn." So I went with the morning school schedule. But I really just don't think that works best for us. On Wednesday, we switched to starting school at 3:00. The kids eat lunch around 1:15, go up for nap/quiet time by 2:00, I feed Colby from 2:00 - 2:30 and then I have 30 minutes for a quick cat nap. It's only been two days (we don't have a regular school day on Fridays) but I can say that it worked SO much better. The mornings are much more relaxing and we were able to go to Costco yesterday without having to rush, rush, rush. The main upside is that we can have school without Brady and Colby (who also takes a long afternoon nap). It was blissfully quiet.

We are still doing a few things in the morning like reading books (I try to do at least three library books a day - 15 minutes of reading time) and also Calleigh's reading lesson. I haven't mentioned it on here before but to learn to read, Calleigh has been doing a book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." It was recommended by a friend of mine. I actually had gotten the book a few years ago but we just never got around to doing it. I finally started it with Calleigh in June and we just finished lesson 69. It really is remarkably easy and she's reading great. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to teach their kid to read. Aubree is very interested in it too and I had started the lessons with her but decided it was just too much to be doing both girls so I think I'll start her when Calleigh's finished...if she's still interested.

One of my favorite things about the fall season (although...is it really fall? Couldn't tell today with the weather in the upper 80's) are the fall festivals. On Sunday we headed over to one in Apopka with the Isidros (minus a working Tangie) and the Bergherms. They had a hay ride, maze, and a bunch of bouncy houses. Unfortunately everything cost money and not just a little bit. The bouncy houses were $10 PER kid. I made a small gasp when I saw the price and muttered to Duncan that maybe we shouldn't have had so many kids. Fortunately they didn't charge us for Brady or else we certainly would not have participated. Needless to say, we did not partake of any of the other items that cost money.

Watching the animated scarecrow old man.

Later in the day, Ricky came over so we could watch the Patriots (4-1) vs. Saints (5-0) game and then later on the Red Sox vs. Tigers in Game 2 of the ALCS. We started the Patriots game late and when I hit Play, it turned out it hadn't recorded. I had set it up to on one of the football Sunday Ticket channels without realizing that it was on one of the local channels and thus was blacked out on the Sunday Ticket. Shoot! So we missed almost the first half of the game. We were pleased that the Patriots were winning but then as soon as we started watching they started to stink it up....which included blowing a lead and going behind in the final minutes of the game. Brady threw an interception with like two minutes left and I was so close to turning the game off but we kept it on. And what do you know, they scored a touchdown to win the game with five seconds left. Very exciting! We did realize that we have to watch what we say though because after Brady threw the interception I said "Come on Brady!!" in disgust and my Brady was like "What?"

Oh, the Red Sox, the Red Sox. My how things have changed in the last six or seven years. I recall with fondness the times (decades, really) where I would watch every non-Sabbath game. And now, I hadn't watched a single game all year until they got to the playoffs. That's what having kids does to you I guess. No time to watch a 162 game season. They still have a few players left from the last time I watched fairly diligently in 2007 but the rest of the guys are strangers. And what's with the beards? I guess that's a thing. Anywho, the Sox were down 5-1 in the 8th, getting completely dominated and Big Papi hit a grand slam to tie the game and then they won it in the bottom of the 9th. One could say that this was one of the more exciting days in Boston sports in quite a while. As I write this, the Sox are playing in Game 6 and are winning 1-0. If they win tonight, it's on to the World Series.

One of my big activities of the week was preparing for and shopping at the two consignment sales that come to the area twice a year. Since the baby shop is closed, I decided to sell some of my fall/winter maternity clothes. At these sales, you set your own prices and tag your own clothes and you get 60% of the sales price. It's a bit of work preparing everything but hopefully it's worth it. I don't know that it will be in my case though because I set my prices fairly high. If you don't, you'll make less money than just donating it to charity and taking the tax write-off. We'll see how it all pans out. At any rate, Duncan came home a little early on Tuesday so that I could go drop the clothes off and then I went to the other consignment sale. Colby, of course, accompanied me on both missions and did great in the Baby Bjorn.

The rest of the week was pretty routine. Today we had church as usual. Aubree stayed in her Sabbath School class by herself this time which I was very pleased with. For lunch, one of Duncan's colleagues, Terry and his wife Sussie, invited us over to their place for lunch. Their boys are all grown up but they have grandchildren so they had some great toys for the kids. We had a lovely meal although, as I suspected, when I put the food on Brady's plate he said "Yuck. I don't like this." I had to keep shushing him. At least you can excuse a 2-year old for embarressing you. Calleigh, on the other hand, as soon as she finished eating, loudly asks "Are we going to have dessert?" I guess these are the risks you take when bringing your children out to social engagements outside of your usual circle of people.

Terry holding Colby

The only downside was that Brady had to use Steelers stuff. Oh well. Since they're 1-5, it's not so bad.

This evening we went over to Ron and Elaine's for supper. I had a secondary purpose though too. The consignment sale was having the 50% sale and since it was pretty close to their house, I was able to leave the kids, including Colby, at their house with Duncan and go by myself. That worked out quite nicely for me. The visit was nice though too and it was good to see Russ and Saray. Ron and Elaine had gotten a ride on Jeep and some other toys at a yard sale last week and Brady, especially, was very excited with these acquisitions. His face just lit up upon seeing them.

Aubree gets the old Jeep to herself now.

I scored this for Brady at the sale. Should make Shawn and Camille happy.

On the Colby front, things are pretty much the same. If I wake him up before I go to bed (around 11:30) and feed him, he goes until between 4:00 - 5:00 until he eats again. I'm somewhat impatiently waiting for this to get expanded. He's still sleeping in the swing. I'm considering moving him to his crib once Duncan gets the camera set. I would sleep in the guest room. But I'm not sure if I want to be in a separate room at this point. We'll see. I guess I could also try putting the pack-n-play in the guest room too so at least I'll be sleeping in a bed. He mostly does fine in the swing other than when he wakes up to eat but sometimes he'll start crying out a little. As soon as I turn the music back on, he's fine. Let me just say that the whole music thing really ticks me off. I specifically got a plug-in swing because I was under the obviously mistaken impression that if you had a plug-in vs. a battery operated swing, the music would stay on continuously. Clearly, I was wrong. Very annoying since the music is like magic. I got the bright idea to put his music/noise maker on next to his swing so that the music could just stay on but then this didn't seem like such a grand idea when I realized that it plays the one same lullaby in a continuous loop. Of course, I'm usually asleep in 3.5 seconds myself so maybe it's not that big of a deal.

The real problem at night has been Mr. Brady Breton. I don't know what's up with this kid but he has a had a real problem the last few weeks with waking up during the night or early morning hours. Sometimes its two or three times a night/morning that I have to go up there. Usually he settles down once I put his blanket back on or give him a new binky or make sure he has a drink. But it's waking me up during a time when sleep is very precious. Between him and feeding Colby, I'm awake nearly every hour. Alas, this won't go on for ever, I know, so I will just grin and bear it.

Thursday I finally started my exercise regimen. I'm doing a program on the Xbox four days a week. It's intense but at least pretty interesting. My old program (post Aubree and Brady) was a 12-week routine of doing weights and the treadmill. Hopefully this will be adequate replacing that. So yes, I'm sore but it's worth it if I can shed this baby weight.

Quotes from the kids...Calleigh and I got into a chat somehow about getting married...

Calleigh:"I'm not going to get married because I don't want to have a baby."

Me:"You can get married and not have a baby, you know. Some people do that."

Calleigh (incredulously):"But what happens to the baby then?"

Me:"Oh wow. Look at the nice day outside."

I'm not ready to get into these discussions yet.

I was changing Brady's diaper on his changing table when I started giving him kisses.

Brady:"No, don't kiss me!"

Me:"But you're so cute, I can't help it."
Brady starts to sit up and for a second I thought he was going to kiss me or turn his cheek to let me kiss him but instead, he reached past me, grabbed two clean diapers, and used it to wipe the kiss off his face. That bugger!

And the Red Sox are going to the World Series!! Have a great week.

Duncan put out stone walkway in.

I had every intention of posting an entry last night but then after the horrendous night I had with Colby on Thursday night, my bed was calling me at 9:30 and that was that. This evening I have a headache but after drinking a caffeinated tea at 10:00 pm (probably a huge mistake on the sleep front), I'm plodding on.

Our highlight this week was the Central Florida Fair which kicked off on Thursday afternoon. It goes for 10 days or so but the first day is really the only day we can afford to go since it's $1 to get in with a canned good and the rides are only $1 a piece as opposed to $3 - $4 a piece otherwise. If you have three kids at those prices, well, I'm sure you can do the math. You can get a wrist band for $25 for unlimited rides but seriously, do people spend $75 just for their kids to go on rides? Nuts, I tell you. Of course, I suppose in our case it would have only been $50 because as it turned out, there were no rides that Brady was technically allowed to go on. There was a height minimum of 36 inches and poor kid is only at about 34 inches. I found it quite ridiculous that some of the exceedingly tame rides wouldn't even allow a kid under 36 inches to go on the ride even with a parent so I told Jennifer (before Duncan arrived) and then later Duncan to just pick him up and carry him on the ride and maybe they wouldn't say anything. It did work and thankfully he got to do a few things. I felt so bad because we had been talking about the rides for weeks and then for him not to be able to go on them while the rest of the kids did...so sad.

Getting ready to ride the roller coaster....or at least the fair version of a roller coaster.

Poor Brady could only watch. Look at that little face.

He did get to ride a motorcycle at least.

Anywho, the Bergherm crew joined us for the fair festivities and we had a good time. It seemed less crowded than the year before but maybe that's because the weather was somewhat questionable although it turned out just fine. We went to a sea lion show, a circus, and the pig race and then obviously the rides. The most fun I had was when I was nursing Colby and I got to watch and listen to the dude that tries to guess people's birth month, weight, or age. He was terrible at it and people were winning prizes left and right. I did notice that no women tried to get him to guess their weight. Shocker! I did think it might be interesting to try and have him guess my age just to see what a stranger would guess. But then I was like, what if he guesses older than I really am? That would be majorly depressing.

Watching the sea lion show.

The acrobat performs in the circus. It's hard to tell but this lady was at least 200 pounds. I was a little astounded since I thought circus performers of such events were usually smaller, petite people. I guess not.

Watching the pig race. I thought it was funny that all of their mouths are slightly agape.

Petting a baby hen.

Earlier in the day, it was off to Colby's six month appointment. Yup, my little guy is half way to one, that magic age if only in my mind. I had weighed him last week and noticed that he wasn't gaining as much weight lately. I'm sure this is partially due to the fact that the milk factory is now closed in the middle of the night. It turned out that he had gained exactly one pound in the last two month which apparently is normal since he's still in the 50th percentile for weight. The doctor noted that he was sitting up very well and he predicted that he would be walking before a year. I am curious to see how that turns out as none of the other three did.

Six months

Before long they'll be playing together.

I also had him look at Calleigh's eye...she still has a lump on her right eyelid that she's had since at least Christmas. He diagnosed it as a chalazion which is a cyst caused by inflammation from a blocked gland. It doesn't hurt her or bother her in any way fortunately. We're hoping it will heal itself with a little rubbing and some warm compresses (which we haven't done!) but if it doesn't help, they may have to do surgery to fix it. We shall see.

Colby Brady Aubree Calleigh
W 16 lbs, 13 oz (50th) 14 lbs, 0 oz (5th) 14 lbs, 8 oz (25th) 14 lbs, 5 oz
H 26 inches (50th) 25 1/2 inches (10th) 25 3/4 inches (50th) 25 1/2 inch
Hd 17.5 inches (75th) 16 3/4 inches (25th) 17 inches (75th) 17 inch

Colby had some shots at his appointment and while he acted fine during the rest of the day, I can only attribute the shots to the truly horrible night he had that evening. I rank it in the top three of worst nights in his short six months. He went to bed as normal but then around 10:30 he started crying out every little bit. I made a few trip in to put back the binky. Then, I went to bed myself around 12:30 and that's when the fun really started. He couldn't seem to go more than 30 minutes without waking up. I nursed him at 12:30 because I felt so bad for him (thinking he hadn't eaten much when I nursed him at the fair and knowing that he had the shots) but that didn't really seem to help. At about 2:00 I gave him some Advil thinking he must be in pain. That didn't help. Finally after about my sixth trip up the stairs, I decided I had had enough and I was going to go sleep in the guest room...only to quickly recall that the fire alarm at the top of the stairs needed a new battery and was literally beeping every 60 seconds, and we had no new batteries. But when you're REALLY tired, you can almost get past it. I eventually had to just bring Colby into the bed with me (which I am adamantly opposed to after kicking that habit) but I was out of options. He didn't really want to nurse and the only way I could get him to stop crying was to lie him on my chest like he was a newborn. Boy, it was a long night. I obviously must have dozed off from time to time because I awoke with a start and looked over at the clock. It said 7:53 and I forced myself to get out of bed because we had a bunch of yard sales to get to and I like to leave the house by 8:30. I was kind of surprised the other kids weren't up yet but considering they went to bed late from the fair, apparently they were tired. I went in to Colby's room and plopped down on the rocker, looked over at the clock and it said, 6:55. Son of a gun! Somehow the clock in the guest room was an hour fast! I was so disgusted. I have no idea how that would have happened because I am almost disturbingly particular about my clocks being EXACTLY correct. The only good thing about the rough night is that he at least slept for a good portion of the yard sale outing.

Other things we've been up to...On Sunday Calleigh, Colby, and I (the three "C's" as I like to call our trio) went to a birthday party for Lindsey Hazen who was turning eight. It was a little shop that has painting classes and such. It was closed for the day but the owner does birthday parties there and so all the kids were able to paint a picture. The theme was Disney's Frozen which was mostly lost on Calleigh as she hasn't seen the movie. But she enjoyed herself. On the way home, we made a stop at Hoover's which is a health food store. I was on a mission to get some Worcestershire sauce without anchovies. That's right folks. Unbeknownst to me, I have been eating fish for years. Your run-of-the-mill Worcestershire sauce that you get from the grocery store has anchovies in it and every time I've been using it to make homemade Caesar salad dressing, I've been eating those nasty little buggers. This really throws my story of the times I've eaten meat by accident (that I know of) into a lengthy story as we move from two times to countless times. I did find some anchovy free sauce so never again!

What color should I do next?

Finished product.

The birthday girl.

Another gorgeous Jennifer cake.

Face painting

A few conversations with the kids:

We have been enjoying a box of chocolates that Aunt Wanda gave us for Valentine's Day that the kids get to have every now and then. One evening as I was preparing supper...
Brady:"What are we having to eat?"
Me:"You can either have Quinoa chickpea burgers or some choplets." (These were leftover from the day before.)
Brady:"I can?!! Choplets!"

And with that, he climbs up onto the table, opens up the candy box, and starts taking one out. And then I realized he thought I was talking about the "chocolates." Poor kid!

One afternoon we were driving in the van and Calleigh says to me:
Calleigh:"If I do something that I'm not supposed to, don't spank me or put me in time out or take something way from me. It's my brain that is doing it. It's not me."

Home schooling at it's best!

Then there was this evening as I was changing Brady's diaper and putting on his pajamas.
Brady (with his hand on his private part): Daddy has one of these."
Me:"Do you know what it's called?" (I am one of those people who likes to teach the proper names)
Brady:"Bingo. Because see, (demonstrating with his hand as he flicks it around), it goes 'Bing, bing, bing.'

I hear it's normal for little boys to play with this body part. Right? Right??

Here are a few more things we've been up to:

First time in cart at Publix. We've started on the Mum Mums!

First time in cart at Costco. Aubree now has to walk. Look at Colby's feet. Love it!

We've still had a few chilly nights here. Not sure who Calleigh was pretending to hold on to.

Someone was selling a bouncy house at a yard sale yesterday. No, we didn't buy it but she let the kids jump in it.

Braelyn feeding Colby his bananas last night. They had us over to meet some new neighbors that have six kids which they home school!

Cooking hot dogs

Last week at church with the triplets and Sarah Hazen.

This week at church playing around with Price.

Girls did the offering today.

We finally had the Ottatis (who live in our neighborhood) over for a meal. They now have two girls and a boy but apparently are stopping there. Boo!

Duncan took the three older kids to Chik Filet on Tuesday night since they were having a special family night. Meanwhile, this little guy stayed home with me and played blocks.

This is what I had to do one evening to cook supper...put him in the backpack. He wants to be held every evening between 5:00 - 7:00. So it's cook listening to screaming or wear him on your body. Usually it's the Bjorn but tried to go a different route this time. My back was killing me after about 15 minutes though.

Allen took the girls on a bike ride this afternoon. Photos courtesy of Allen.

These two get pretty silly.

A few weeks ago I mentioned all the yellow pool stains on Colby's clothes I couldn't get out. I had read to put them out in the sun. By golly, it worked! I soaked the clothes for a few days in cold water, put them in the wash (without any stain remover on them), and then laid them out in the sun for about 24 hours. It was a miracle!

Evidently I am just as bad about getting the girls haircuts in a timely manner as I am with myself. I started thinking about it a few weeks ago...thinking, it's probably been a good nine months or more since they got a haircut. They are probably due. And then I kept putting it off. Finally, on Monday, I decided it was time. Now, we have a Hair Cuttery right near our house but there are two problems (1) They don't have any coupons and (2) You can't make an appointment and who wants to wait there with a whole gaggle of kids? The solution is Fantastic Sams which is a little farther away (12 minute drive) but it's cheaper and you can make an appointment.

I made an appointment for 11:30 for both girls. I got everyone out of the house in a timely fashion, pulled into the parking lot, and walked into Sam's at precisely 11:30. I don't like to be late! As we walk in, I see two gentleman literally sitting down into chairs with two hairdressers starting to put capes on them. I see no other employees. Hmm, I say to myself. Surely there are other employees in the back who will come out to help us. Afterall, we have an appointment. But then one of the ladies looks at me and says "Are you the ones with the appointment?" Yes, I say. "Oh, have a seat. It will be about 10 or 15 minutes." And she finishes attaching the cape of the guy that just sat down in her seat. I felt my blood pressure go up a notch (thank goodness I have very good blood pressure) but I very calmly said, "So there isn't anyone else that can do the haircut now?" That would be a no. I smiled through my teeth and said "Okay, we will go over to Publix and be back in a few minutes." No way was I about to sit there and do nothing. Meanwhile, I have to just add that when the kids heard we were going to get haircuts they were all excited because they would get a lollipop which is pretty standard fair. The salons dole them out. In fact, Brady wanted a haircut just to get one but I assured him that he could still get one without an actual haircut taking place.

We got a couple things at Publix and it was back to Sam's. As suspected, they were nowhere near done with the two gentleman. So we sat and sat and I kept getting madder. What is the point of a reservation if you can't KEEP the reservation?? I felt like I was in a Seinfeld episode. Of course, I wasn't about to say anything at this point because I was about to place my daughters in the hands of people with sharp pointy scissors. An inch could become five inches. Finally, at noon, yes, 30 minutes after our appointment, they finally got Calleigh, at least, into the chair and Aubree a few minutes later. All went well with the cuts and I was perfectly polite. But as soon as they lady checked me out and had accepted my coupons, I said very sweetly, "Just for me own information, I take it there isn't any point to making an appointment?" She responded, "Well, we wait but then if somebody doesn't come, we move on to people who are waiting." I said, "But we were here at 11:30." Her response? "Yeah, we messed up on that." During this whole
frustrating conversation (a "sorry" would have been nice), Brady is pulling on my leg and whining "I want a lollipop, I want a lollipop." The lady looks around, opens a few drawers and says "Sorry, I guess we're all out." Oh boy. Wait for it. And there it is. A big scream goes up. I don't know who this Sam character is but I'd like to get a hold of him and ask him just what's so fantastic about his establishment. And while I'm at it, tell him thanks a lot for those horrendous perms back in the late 80's.

So then we had to walk all the way back to Publix so the kids could pick out a couple of candies to make up for the lollipop fiasco. When we got in the car and were headed home, Brady said disgustedly, "Those ladies ate all the lollipops." All I can say is - - "Fantastic" Sams...you're FIRED!

I think Aubree's hair my officially be longer than Calleigh's.

The $0.54 of loot from Publix to make up for the lollipops. He sure does love the "Hand on the hip" pose. Jennifer must be teaching him a thing or two!

This week my big activity has been getting ready for the Just Between Friends Consignment sale. I'm trying to sell all my summer maternity clothes, some kids' clothes I've picked up at yard sales, and also some baby equipment that Colby has grown out of. At the fall sale, it was such a nightmare picking the stuff up that I decided this time it would all be donated so I don't have to deal with it. Anywho, quite a few nights I worked on entering the tags in the system, attaching the tags, and steaming (I got a "fancy" new handheld steamer) the items. Duncan pretty much scoffed at me saying was it even worth my time. I guess we'll see. My goal was to sell as much money as I spend. But truthfully, I actually don't mind doing the work because I enjoy seeing what sells. It's all electronic, of course, so you can go on the website at the end of each day and see what has sold. As of now, I've sold quite a few things that I bought for dirt cheap so I have made a little profit, not counting my time, of course.

The drop off day was on Wednesday and obviously I didn't want to take the kids with me to do that (you have to put all the stuff on the sales floor) so I left the four of them with Ron and Elaine. Fortunately the drop off process was pretty quick and painless although I did have an "oops" moment. I was selling a bouncer/rocker type thing which retails for about $60. I wasn't sure what to price it at but landed at $19. When I placed it on the floor, I noticed two of the same ones priced at $35 and $40. So yeah, I guess I under priced mine just a teensy bit. And yes, I definitely sold it on the the first day!

When I got back to Ron and Elaine's, before I even got to the front door I could hear Colby screaming inside. Yup, he was pretty much doing that the whole hour I was gone. I don't know what is wrong with this kid but he has a problem. None of the other kids were like this although Aubree did have some issues of not wanting to leave my sight but that was when she was like a year or older and she was never that way when I would leave her with grandparents or whatever. He is in this stage (at least I hope it's a stage) where only Duncan or I can hold him. Thank goodness he's at least good with Duncan or that would be a real killer.

Yesterday the sale started so I left Duncan with all four kids at 5:45 and I was off to shop alone. Bliss! I noticed, however, that there was a lot less clothes this time around. Maybe people got mad about the bad pickup from last time and stayed away? Who knows. At any rate, I got a few things including some underwear for Brady that he's excited about. However, I have no desire to start potty training yet but it's at least something for him to think about. Maybe at the end of the summer...So far he has shown no signs at all of wanting to go on the toilet. I am in no rush.

After the sale, I stopped at Target (they had a $20 off $50 purchase of household cleaning/laundry/paper products coupon out that) and Bed, Bath, & Beyond. I also stopped at Taco Bell and got a couple of Seven Layer Burritos. I've only had them once before and I seemed to recall that they didn't have anything in them that I found offensive. But then when I went to put some hot sauce on them I looked closely and was like "What is this green stuff on here?" Yup, guacamole which I just don't do (let's be honest, I really don't know if I like it or not. I think avocados are slimy looking and refuse to put one past my lips and by default, guac gets the same treatment). I wasn't about to go through the drive-through again to get new ones and throw these two away so I sucked it up and ate them. I could barely taste anything out of the ordinary but really, who is surprised. Back in 1998 I ate half a Mexican pizza with meat on it because it was so well disguised by everything else on said pizza. But no worries. The free $0.69 cinnamon twists they gave me for the inconvenience quickly made up for the trauma of eating meat for the first time.

Today the kids were off to Legoland. They get in for practically free with a homeschool group and so the group all headed in today. Ron and Elaine were kind enough to take Calleigh, Aubree, and Brady and they all had a great time with the whole Bergherm and Isidro clans. Meanwhile, Colby and I bundled up (it was cold again today with a brisk wind and no sun. I only mention this so that my northern family won't feel as jealous) and hit the yard sales. We had a good, productive day.

The group. Photo courtesy of stealing off Allen's FB page.

Brady watching a ride he couldn't get on.

This one.

Jennifer took him on a ride. At least, I assume since I wasn't there or anything.

He snuck on this ride which was supposed to be for kids 3+. Sorry, he doesn't know how to read signs yet.

He crashed in the Isidro's "wagon" when they stopped to get supper.

Last week in my post I mentioned that terribly horrendous night that Colby had after his shots. Thank you Lord it has not been repeated. In fact, the two night after that, he slept right through until morning (although I wish his morning did not start at 6:00 am) and besides that, he pulled out some long naps including a 2.5 hour afternoon nap one day. Whenever he does that, I start thinking, "Would I prefer he sleep until 7:00 and take a short nap or would I rather he continue awaking at 6:00 but take long naps?" Hmm. Food for thought. If only I got to choose...

Recently when we were at Costco they had a Vita Mix demonstration going on which happens pretty frequently. As you may recall, we got a Vita Mix last year and love it although we really don't use it as much as we should. This particular day the demonstrator was making vanilla ice cream and it is SO good and easy that I have to share the recipe here. And I don't even like ice cream that much. I've made it several times now and Duncan and I were in fact gobbling some down this evening before the kids got home from Legoland!

-6 oz whole milk (I use an organic brand with DHA added so I think it's pretty good for you).
-2 tablespoons of agave (this is a natural sweetener sort of similar to honey. I buy it at Costco but I think you can get it anywhere.
-2 teaspoons of Vanilla
-Handful of spinach
-1/4th of an avocado (yes, I know, incredibly ironic but you can't taste it)
-2 handfuls of ice.

That's it. Just blend and voila! Try it. You won't be sorry. I'm guessing you can do it in a blender and not just a Vita Mix.

Before I close, I have a few quotes to share. Actually, these ones from Brady aren't meant to be funny but I just wanted to have them down on the record to remember later. These are two things he says a lot:

-When asking a question he always adds "Or no?" to the end. As in, "Can I have this fruit snack, or no?" "Can I look at pictures on your phone..or no?"
-Another favorite question is "Would that be a good idea?" As in, "Mommy, I'll put your phone right here. Will that be a good idea?" or "I want to give Colby this toy. Will that be a good idea?"

Then I had this comment from Aubree. Duncan had taken Calleigh to get her bike tuned up and then to his work for a little while before dropping her off at his parents to join us on Wednesday. While there, Duncan's colleague was telling Calleigh how his son, Dylan, had caught a shark. Calleigh was then relaying this tale to me.
Calleigh: "Dylan caught a shark!"
Me: "Oh wow. Really?!! What, was he fishing?"
Aubree: "No, I think he was sharking."

A few more pictures and I bid you adieu. Have a Happy Sabbath!

Frozen yogurt at JoJo's on Sunday and then on to the splash playground.

Colby's first solids. This was actually from last week but I didn't have the picture from Duncan.

Science experiments for school. What floats, what doesn't?

Posing with his backpack.

Calleigh waits while her bike gets a tune up.

Duncan is practicing his swimming for a triathlon this is taking place in a few weeks. I'm pretty sure the water is freezing but the girls have been going in.

See? It's really warm, right Aubs?

This past Sabbath was Duncan's 36th birthday. The original plan to celebrate was for Ron and Elaine to watch the kids while we went out to Indian but after seeing Colby's outburst when I left him at their house last week, I quickly revised that plan. No way would I enjoy an outing as I was sure to be thinking about whether Colby was screaming his head off at home. I was going to just let Duncan go with Bruce, Jennifer, Allen, and Tangie but he said he would miss me too much (awww!) so in the end, we ended up leaving the three bigger kids at the Bergherm's house with the babysitter and took Colby with us. What a little bugger. His being there scared me for a second though. When we arrived, I went looking for a highchair with him under my arm when an older gentleman with a British accent stopped me as I walked by his table. "You can't have him in here!" he said. I stopped quickly thinking to myself, "Is there some rule about babies being in here in the evening??" But then he continued on, "He's too young to get hooked on curry!!" Whew. You got me.

Fortunately Colby was very good and now that he eats solids, at least we were able to pass some of the time feeding him. Meanwhile, I had something called malai kofta which is sort of like a meatball made out of cheese and vegetables. I'm always so nervous about ordering something and not liking it but honestly, I've been dreaming about having it again ever since. It was so good. After the meal, the guys left to go back to our place to watch a movie while the ladies came with me and we were off to the consignment sale which was ending that evening with the 50% off portion. I found a few good deals and then later that evening checked my account for how much I sold...looks to be about $125 so I sold more than I bought. I'm happy with that. The maternity stuff was a dud though. I only sold like 5 out of 45 items. Clearly people aren't looking for maternity items there.

Colby is strategically hiding behind Jennifer.

Not the greatest picture but let the record show we did give Duncan a birthday cupcake and sang happy birthday.

Saturday night was the start of Daylight Savings time so I was curious to see how that would all play out. When Colby awoke, I joked that it was the first time he had ever done so with a "7" as the first number. Right after that, I thought to myself, what if I don't tell Colby that the clocks sprang forward an hour? Maybe he'll just sleep until 7:00 every morning. Intriguing thought. Usually I start the going-to-bed process (changing him and nursing him) at 7:15 because frankly, he's grumpy and tired by then. But that timing is sometimes a hassle because we don't really eat dinner until between 6:45 - 7:00 and I feel rushed to get the kitchen cleaned up before putting him to bed. And plus, we are sometimes out and about on the weekends. Putting him down at like 8:00 works out better anyway. So that is what we've done and it's worked out quiet nicely. We had another 7:00 wake up on Monday but now it's gone to about 6:40 but I'm still happy. The other three adjusted just fine back to their 8:30 bed time/7:45 wake up. It's all hunky dory until we have to fall back (or when we go to Canada in August and go forward another hour).

This week my big accomplishment was getting my taxes done and filed. I actually had them done weeks ago but when I ran the error check on TurboTax, it came up with an error in the charitable contribution section where I had listed everything I gave to Goodwill. At first, I spent a bunch of time trying to fix it thinking I had indeed made an error. But after about 20 minutes, I gave up and did a search on whether other people were having an error and sure enough, it was a known error....with no solution. I had recently joined Twitter, basically for this exact purpose - - to contact a company when I'm having a problem. So I tweeted a message to TurboTax asking them when this would be fixed. The next day they tweeted back and said "It's been fixed!" I was all impressed with their speed of resolution until I clicked on how to fix it and it said "The software has been updated. Please go to the charitable contributions section, delete what you put in, and re-import it." Uh yeah. I didn't import anything. I entered it all by hand. So the only solution was to delete and re-enter everything. What a pain. I literally had hundreds of lines I had to enter because each and every clothing item (of which there are many) has to be put in. Thanks a lot TurboTax! My feelings of ill will towards then were at least tempered by the fact that we are getting a nice refund this year after having to pay last year.

We had a pretty quiet week this week. School is going decently. Calleigh has finished memorizing the Old Testament books and has moved on to the New Testament. She makes me chuckle though. She can get through all of those Habbukuk, Haggai, Obadiah, etc. books with the such ease but we're a few books into the New Testament and each time to start out with, she has to sit there for a minute and think "What's my cousin's name? Oh yeah. Matthew!" Apparently easy ones are harder to remember. We are in week 22 of 34 for school and as I project it out, we will be done in mid-June assuming we don't take any breaks. I was thinking we would be going until July so that is good news!

March is one of my favorite months when it comes to yard sales since the weather is just about perfect and people really start to get going with the sales. Today was one of those days. It was 75 degrees out with no clouds...a perfect day to be driving around. For all the complaints about Colby when we take long trips or sometimes even ones over an hour, he actually is really good in the car during yard sales. He sleeps for an hour at the beginning and then once he wakes up, I usually get him out at each stop. He doesn't usually cry as we drive from place to place. Anyway, at one stop this morning, I had him under my arm and I noticed a slight odor coming from him. Time for a change when I finished up. A minute or two later, an elderly lady who was running the sale stopped to admire him and asked if she could hold him. I happily handed him over...and then, as I was now looking at his back, noticed the shadows of something on his shirt. A big shadow. I looked down at my WHITE sweater to see it covered in yellow poop. I hastily grabbed him back mumbling an apology over my shoulder as I dashed to the van. I took down his pants and poop pretty much went all over the place..him, me, the van, the pants I was about to change him into. You name it. You couldn't have done this at home, big guy? I used up my very last wipe getting it all taken care of although a bit later when things still smelled I did notice more poop on my pants and no wipes left. Oh well. That's having a baby for you! Afterwards, I went back to the lady to say sorry again but she was wearing all black and I don't think any got on here and regardless, she scoffed and said "I'm on old grandma. Don't worry about it." And as luck would have it, she was selling a bunch of Gap boy pants size 6 - 12 months for $0.50 so I guess it was meant to be. I bought a bunch and threw a pair on him.

Part of our route today took us to a the Boutique for a Week consignment sale where we ran into Magally Putt with her boys Mateo and Cruz.

A few quotes...

Duncan had taken the kids down to the pool on Wednesday for a quick swim but they came back after a few minutes because our key card wasn't working for some reason. This was the conversation on their way back.
Duncan:"Sorry guys. I guess it wasn't in God's plan that we go swimming today."

Aubree:"If only Adam and Eve hadn't sinned."

Calleigh was miraculously helping me in the kitchen (this is usually Aubree's forte).

Calleigh: "I can't wait until I'm a teenage and I can do everything for you."

Me: "I know. Me too! That will be so great."

Calleigh: "You'll be old then."

Well, at least I'm apparently not old now. So there's that.

There was one thing of Brady's that I forgot to put down in last week's post. It's what he says when he doesn't know an answer to something.

Me: "Brady, how old are you going to be on your next birthday?

Brady:"You do it."

Me:"Brady, what color is this shirt?"
Brady: "Say it."

At first, you would think he's being polite and letting you give the answer but then you realize the he doesn't know. He never,ever says "I don't know." It's always one of the answers above and he says it with a little smile on his face.

Some closing pictures.

Beautiful day at Chapin Station yesterday.

Tia Ana came over for a spanish lesson and play time yesterday.

Just chillin'.

Playing baseball with Uncle Ricky. She was hitting off the T here but then Ricky switched to just pitching it to her and she was doing well.

Trying to make Aubree into a lefty hitter as my dad did with my brothers even though they're all right handed.

Have a Happy Sabbath!

Brady is at it again. At least he's trying to even his face out in terms of injuries. Up until now, all injuries had happened to the right side for whatever reason. This week, the left side fell victim. It was the classic case of disobedience and a black eye was the result. I took the kids to Chapin Station playground on Wednesday and Brady wanted to go up this ladder thingy. I thought it was a little sketchy for him to go up without supervision so I stood there for a good ten minutes, with Colby in the Bjorn, while he went up the ladder and down the slide. Again. And again. After at least a dozen times of this I told him that he needed to go find another place get up, like some stairs, because I was going to put Colby in the swing. I turned my back - - I should have known better - - and no more than 30 seconds latter, Brady is screaming. Evidently he completely disregarded my instructions and must have fallen on the first or second rung and banged his eye off the bar. I'm so glad I didn't see it because it is ugly looking and I can only imagine seeing it at the time of impact. As luck would have it, I had Colby's binky in my pocket so a quick pop of into Brady's mouth and a little cuddling on my lap - - as far as it is possible to do so with a baby strapped to your front - - and he was good to go. This time I made him go with me to the swings. I put Colby in and in between pushes, I typed up a text with a picture to send to Duncan on what had happened to Brady. Just as I was about to push SEND, I hear another big scream from Brady. This time, he was lying on his stomach on the swing and pushing himself with his feet and somehow tipped himself over so that he flipped off the swing, head first. Aghhh!! Fortunately there was no blood and so with that I announced, "We are OUT of here." I couldn't take it any more. Please Colby, oh please, be the calm/cautious one. I don't know if I can stand two of them.

The scene of the crime.

Right after.

How it looks today...along with some other junk on his forehead and next to his mouth.

Our week ended last week with a birthday party for Braelyn who turned seven on Sunday (16th). The gathering was at the Isidro's and the bigger kids first went on a little bike ride and than all convened in the backyard to run around and play on the playground. We had a delicious meal of pizza and salad (during which time I chit chatted with some adults about how this time of day was such a bad time for Colby but of course, he just sat there perfectly behaved through it all) which was followed by cake courtesy of Jennifer...which goes without saying, obviously. The theme was Frozen. Hmm, why hasn't anyone else thought of that? Ha! That is clearly the birthday theme of the year as this was the second one this year. It just came out on "video" (at least, that's what we used to call it but I don't know what you call it now...it just came out on streaming??) so it worked out well with showing it at the party. My kids have not seen it, maybe the only three in Florida to claim that. I am not a big fan of Disney, as I'm sure I've mentioned, and I personally think some of their movies are a bit questionnable for little kids, but other parents raved about this movie and that it was fine. Evidently it left an impression on them because Brady has been singing "For the first time in forever..." over and over again all week. I did not watch the movie with them as I was putting Colby to bed at home and then when I came back I was talking with the ladies but I do know enough to know that the main character is Anna (or Ana, don't know). Brady will sing that line and then a few minutes later he'll forget it and he'll say, "What was that song Anna was singing?" and I'll have to tell him the words and then he's off singing it again. But only those words. He doesn't know the rest of the song. I don't know if they're even the right words. Oh well. I've been enjoying hearing his little voice in song.

Amy with Colby and Jennifer with Addison (Amy's daughter)

All the kids.

Birthday girl!

Watching the movie. Brady seems happy.

Sunday was Duncan's big 100-mile bike race, the same one he did last year. It's the Tour de Cure which is a fundraiser for Diabetes. It started at 7:30 so he was out of the house bright and early. Also joining him this year was Elaine who had thought about doing 100 miles but then ended up doing "only" 70. How many ladies do you know at the age of 68 who can ride 70 straight miles? I would be so lucky to do a third of that. Since Duncan had a new bike this year and he's ridden a lot more in the last year, this year was considerably easier than last. However, the one thing that stayed the same was him having to dial 911 again. At about mile 90, a guy he was riding with (but didn't know), took a tumble and Duncan had to call for an ambulance. The guy is okay but it was just crazy that Duncan had to deal with a medical emergency this year like last year. Shortly after that, Duncan caught on with some other guys that he was following and what do you know but they didn't know where they were going and went the wrong way. So in the end, he did 110 miles rather than 100. Oops!

The rest of the week has been the same old, same old. School, Publix, playground, consignment store. Oh, and a trip to CVS. I was so ticked when I left there. I was buying laundry detergent which was Buy 1, Get 2 Free. I was using a coupon for $1.50 off two bottles. Now, some of you may say that it can't be done since I'm getting two free but I assure you, it CAN be done. I've done it many times and it is, in fact, in CVS's policy. Nevertheless, the cashier, who I think may have been one of the managers, wouldn't let me use it. And since I had four noisy kids, three of which were already re-arranging all the packs of gum, I couldn't stand there and argue (if only I had the policy on my person!). So I - - gasp - - bought the bottles of detergent without the coupon since I needed them to get up to the $25 threshold to use my $5 off $25 coupon. It may be only $1.50 but it makes you feel just dirty, DIRTY, to not use a coupon when you know you should have been able to. Hehe. Dirty. Get it? I was buying detergent. Okay, it's obviously getting late here.

Moving on. So I feel like Colby has turned a big corner with his sleeping situation. Honestly, this Daylight Savings Time thing was the best thing ever. Ever since then, he hasn't woken up once during the night (not counting the wake up around 6:00, binky goes back in, and he sleeps until 6:30 - 7:00). But not only that, his naps are amazing. He's sleeping at least 1.5 hours, sometimes 2.0 or 2.5 hours, for both his morning and afternoon naps. Who knew going to bed an hour later would be this magical? Of course, a few other factors changed about the same time. Last week I got rid of the swaddle during naps since he kept breaking out (he's been using the sleep sack at night for about 6 weeks) and then he's also upgraded to the bigger sized binky. So who knows the real reason but whatever it is, I'm loving it. I wish I could say this extra sleep was improving his disposition in the late afternoons but I fear that it isn't. I'm still wearing the Bjorn to make supper. Elaine was holding him over here a few evenings ago and he wouldn't stop crying. I finally took him and it immediately stopped and he gave her a look that could only be interpreted as "Nah-nah-na-nah-nah, (said in a sing-song voice), I got my way!" But you know, you can deal with things a lot better when you at least have a baby that sleeps.

Sporting his bigger binky which has caused Brady to steal Colby's EVEN more since they are now the exact same kind of binkies as Brady's.

So..I would be potentially be getting more sleep but this whole Malaysia Flight 370 thing has me completely hooked. I've always loved a good mystery or true crime story and this is it. I don't need a movie or a book because this is real life. I find myself checking my phone the very first thing when I get up to see if I got an alert during the night that it's been found. I tried to go to bed early on Wednesday night, I really did, but just as I was about to go to my bedroom, I got the alert that Australia had identified some objects that could be the plane so of course, I had to stay up so I wouldn't miss anything. As we know, they STILL haven't found those objects. I know CNN is getting some flack for their non-stop coverage of it but I, for one, have been very appreciative because I've been watching it. I will go on record to say that I think the plane is somewhere in the ocean, which I thought before this possible sighting, and is not been hidden in some remote location for future nefarious purposes. But why it is there or who did it, I can't figure out. As I told my family during one of our marathon texting sessions one day on this topic (we are all news lovers), if nothing else, this has helped me brush up on my geography. I think we're all pretty clear where Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc, are now. That sounds very callous, I realize. Obviously this is a terrible, terrible situation for those families. I kind of block that part out so as not to feel too sad.

Time to wrap up but I wanted to write down a couple of quirks about the older kids.

Brady: He twirls his hair with his finger. He's done this ever since he's had hair to twirl I believe. It seems like he does it more when he's tired but even other times too. A few months ago I saw Aunt Shirley do the exact same thing and it was like "Ah ha!" Apparently this is a Brace gene.

Aubree: She will not go upstairs by herself. I know it's a big house but still. She has never said what she's afraid will happen. If she needs her shoes or something, she'll recruit Calleigh to run up and get them. And if that doesn't work, she makes Brady go up there with her. You know how helpful those 2-year olds are when a boogy man jumps out at you! Brady, for what it's worse, goes up by himself all the time.

Calleigh: One of her favorite things to do is get her Primary Treasure, fold it over to a page, hold it in her hand, and read a story. Except she isn't really reading one. She's making up a story that she's pretending to read. We have old Primary Treasures all over the house because she'll go from room to room "reading" these stories out loud to nobody in particular. I remember as a kid making up stories while I laid in bed at night - - telling them to myself in my head. Always looked forward to that when I went to bed. So maybe she gets this from me.

Yes, that is a curler in her hair. Her new thing is to put curlers in her pig tails even though they aren't heated.

A few quotes from the kids:

Calleigh was very frustrated with Brady because he was wrecking some toys of hers.
Calleigh: "Brothers are the most annoying creatures on this earth!! Now I know why people say 'Oh brother' when they get frustrated about something."

We were doing one of our art cards for school which is where you discuss a picture of a piece of art. This one was a self-portrait (take note of that) by Frida Kahlo. You can see it here.
Me:"Aubree, what do you think of this picture?"
Aubree:"Well, she wasn't a very good artist. She put the eyebrows touching each other."

A few more pictures...

Working on some science experiments. That's a magnifying glass in his hand.

Never to early to start wearing deodorant.

The thing on Calleigh's eye. Hard to see which is a good thing, I suppose. It actually hasn't gotten smaller so I'm not sure how long we'll be waiting until we go back to the doc.

My little monkey trying to play with the water. That's my strainer in their bathroom sink. Seems like an obvious place to drain spaghetti.

Working on the letter "F." We are doing no formal curriculum or anything with her but we've picked various things up at yard sales and she loves to work on them. She gets really mad if I ever say that I can't help her because I have to help Calleigh with her school work because Calleigh's the student. "I'm a real student too" she insists.

I was letting them watch a movie we got at the church yard sale on Sunday. It's the Scholastic movie of "Goodnight Gorilla." We've read the book a thousand times but Brady saw an advertisement in the DVD case for another movie with a monster and he freaked out when we tried to put "Goodnight Gorilla" on thinking it was that movie. "I don't want the monster movie. No, no, no!" But Calleigh had me sneak it on (since it was not that movie) and he freaked out.

I know it's really mean that I took a picture of him crying like that.

Scored this Lego table at a yard sale table for $10 today. It also has a covering you can put on it if you want to just use it as a table.

With the time change, we can now do the food trucks! Colby has apple/blueberries on his upper lip in case you were concerned about the mustache.

Love these two.

Nothing quite says brotherly love like a big 'ole lick.

This week the big excitement was the birth of my niece, Winslow Eve. My brother Shawn and Camille had their baby girl in the wee hours of the morning on Monday (26th), a few days late. She weighed 8 lbs, 13 ounces and was 21 1/2 inches long. Everything went very smoothly and Winslow is perfect. My parents now have seven grandchildren with four girls and three boys. And the ten cousins now have sixteen kids between them although, alas, nobody is currently pregnant...at least that I am aware of. Who will be next?!

Going back...we had a nice Sabbath last week that culminated with a trip out "west." By out west, I mean that we traveled west about 10 or 15 miles to Clermont. During Duncan's bike rides on Sunday mornings, he has passed this lovely park/beach next to a lake in Clermont and wanted to take us over there to see it. I don't like to take many leisurely drives because of Colby but we went for it. We haven't explored very much to that side of us so it was nice to see some new things. And believe it or not, there are actually hills/small mountains to be found in Florida.

This contraption went up and down like an elevator and Brady couldn't get enough of it.

Sunday morning we had to be up and at 'em. The girls were participating in the Miriam Kittrell 5k and Fun Run event at Forest Lake Education Center (FLEC). Their race (which is for like kids ages 4 - 7) started at 8:30 and then the 5k which Duncan participated in started at 9:30. The girls had to line up by ages and sex and then started about every 60 seconds with the second grade boys going first and then the pre-k girls (which would be Aubree) started last. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that Aubree did it all by herself. I was concerned that she would want one of us to run along on the side or stand with her at the start line or something but nope. Hopefully this means she's getting over that - -she's actually stayed at Sabbath School by herself for the last few weeks so we're making progress. Their run was only about a third of a mile or maybe a little more. I don't think they ran the whole way but they were definitely running at the end and really enjoyed themselves. They give them a number at the finish line in the order they finished and Calleigh was # 69 and Aubree was # 133 out of 142 I believe.

Lining up to start the race. She was number 56.

Duncan did great in 5k...way better than he had done in it two years ago when he last ran it there. He's been running a lot over the last year so he's gotten a lot faster. He did it in about 22 minutes and finished 40th out of 442. Some of those kids amaze me though. It's amazing how fast some little kids can run. But the real tough thing to swallow was when we saw a lady running in pushing a stroller...and VERY pregnant. That was very sobering for this non-runner.

Waiting for Daddy to come by.

There he is!

Uncle Ricky came to watch and that added to the fun. The school had a $4 breakfast which we enjoyed before hitting the playground for a bit and then heading to Costo for a few things. We ran into Rob and Lisa Deininger there after seeing them at the race and chit chatted for a couple of minutes before they moved ahead of us to go into the store at which Brady exclaimed "They're going to beat us!!" Apparently he had racing and winning on his mind.

Brady didn't put up a fuss about not being able to run with the girls but he was a disappointed. As if to prove that he is fast enough to participate, he's been running non-stop all over the house all week. This is how our first conversation went:
Brady:"Want to see me run really fast?"
Me: "Yes!"
Brady:"Okay, do to the count of three."
Me: "1-2-3, Go."
Brady, "NO. Say on the COUNT OF THREE."
Me: "O-kay. On the count of three."
And off he went.

We told him yesterday that he'll be doing a fun run up in Maine during campmeeting and now he's running with more gusto through the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

After some shortened naps, we were off again this time dropping the three kids (you didn't think I'd actually leave Colby somewhere, right?) at Ron and Elaine's while Duncan and I attended a baby shower for a friend of his at this boss's house. We had a nice time talking to Duncan's colleagues whom I really like. Duncan was lamenting to one of them about how difficult the swimming portion of the triathlon is that he's doing when the colleague's wife piped up that she had just recently done a 12.5 miles swim around Key West. A few minutes later when I was getting some food, I was standing next to the lady and happened to look down to see a prosthetic leg. So even more impressive!

Colby sitting with Melissa Keller, who coincidentally was the organizer of the race earlier in the day. Look at his face. You are NOT my mommy!

Awww, man. Wouldn't you love to have this pool?

Sitting with Daddy. Much better!

Wednesday evening found me attending Adventurers with the girls. Normally Duncan goes since I have to put Colby to bed but this was our week to teach the honor for Aubree's Little Lamb class. I had put Duncan down to teach it but he really didn't want to so I finally relented even though it would mean I would have to pump which I hate. I already had some milk saved but of course since I missed nursing him before bed, I had to pump that evening. Inevitably, I'll always forget and then at about midnight I'll remember. Ughh! Anyway, I teased Duncan that he can speak before big wigs at work but he doesn't want to talk to a few 4-year olds? Wimp! But I actually enjoyed myself. The topic was health which is really easy to find stuff to do. At one point I was talking about eating sweets and having a sweet tooth and one boy commented that he didn't have a sweet tooth, he had sweet teeth which I thought was pretty cute. I also come to the realization that Aubree is much better behaved than most of her class although maybe it was because I was there. Lest you think I'm tooting my own horn, I'm pretty sure I can't say this same thing for Calleigh.

Thursday morning we had to head over to other side of town for Colby to get his second part of his flu shot. Half my trip was pretty disconcerting. I couldn't get my seat belt to buckle. I didn't have time to stop and fiddle with it since I didn't want to be late for our appointment. Have you ever driven without it on? It's a very, very weird feeling. I kept looking in it to see if something had fallen in there but didn't see anything. Meanwhile, Aubree was freaking out in the back seat although I wasn't clear if her concern was for my safety or that we would get pulled over and given a ticket. While I was driving, I made a call to the dealership to see how easy it would be to get a replacement. While I was on hold with them and at a light, I looked over at the passenger seat belt and saw a little plastic piece in the holder portion that I didn't see in mine. So I wiggled the release button and voila!...the plastic piece popped into place. Phew. I was already imagining having to skip yard sale day to take the van in. A nightmare for sure!

On Friday I took the three older kids - -I need to come up with a catchy name for the three of them so that I don't need to keep calling them "the three older kids" - - to Ron and Elaine's. Elaine was taking them to the see the play "Busy Town" at the Orlando Repertory Theater. Jennifer and some other home schooled kids were going and they were able to get a cheaper rate because of being a school group. It was somewhat crummy weather so there weren't many yard sales on the docket. Fortunately since I only had Colby, I was able to go to the Salvation Army when I ran out of yard sales. I picked up a couple of Safari themed items for his room which is still largely undecorated. Poor fourth kid. Actually, sometimes I wonder if I should even bother because I figure in a few years he'll be in Brady's room and then Colby's room will be up for grabs for something else. But then, I feel bad looking at the blank walls so we shall plod on.

This week, a miracle happened. Seriously. Brady ate a vegetable other than a cucumber. We have cabbage planted in our garden and over the last month or so have been enjoying it in my favorite soup recipe. But then a distant relative of Duncan's posted a recipe on Facebook for roasting cabbage in the oven like you do with broccoli, cauliflower, etc and it looked fantastic so I made a batch of it up. I pulled it out of the oven and set it on the island to cool. The kids all flocked over to see what it was and you could have blown me over with a feather when Brady took some off the tray and started downing it. All three of them did, in fact. Just wow. Here's the recipe in case anyone cares to give it a try.

Garlic Rubbed Roasted Cabbage Steaks

1 (approx 2lb) head of organic green cabbage, cut into 1″ thick slices
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 large garlic cloves, smashed
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
spray olive oil OR non-stick cooking spray

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 400F and spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. Pull outer leaf off cabbage (it’s usually dirty and nasty looking), cut cabbage from top to bottom (bottom being root) into 1″ thick slices.

2. Rub both sides of cabbage with smashed garlic.

3. Use a pastry brush to evenly spread the olive oil over both sides of the cabbage slices.

4. Finally, sprinkle each side with a bit of kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper.

5. Roast on the middle rack for 30 minutes. Carefully flip the cabbage steaks and roast for an additional 30 minutes until edges are brown and crispy. Serve hot and Enjoy!

He really seemed to like the parts that were burnt looking.

Sorry Colbs. All you get is a single leaf to suck on.

For at least the past week, I've been having problems with Brady waking up a lot earlier than I"m accustomed to. Typically the kids wake up about 7:30 - 7:45 but for whatever reason, Brady has been getting up at 7:00 and it's been getting progressively earlier. This morning it was 6:37. Now, I'm already up with Colby so it's not like he's waking me up but I usually I'm still half asleep sitting in the rocker in Colby's room nursing him and I'm jarred back to consciousness when I hear Brady yelling "Get me out of here." It's those same five words every morning. And then what to do with Brady because it's still dark out and I'm not about to turn the light on in Colby's room. He doesn't want to stay in his room and plus, I don't want him to be loud in there when Calleigh and Aubree are still asleep in the next week (although Aubree wakes up pretty much every time anyway). This morning with the 6:37 wake up was particularly bad because he got upset about something on the way to church and literally cried the whole way there. So that was fun. He ended up starting to fall asleep next to me during the church service so Jennifer took him and he slept the whole time on her lap. Anyway, this evening I decided we had to have a serious talk about this problem.
Me: "Brady, you need to stay sleeping until it's light outside. No getting up while it's still dark."
Brady: Just looking at me.
Me:"I don't want to hear you yelling 'Get me out of here.'"
Brady: "Okay, Mom. I'll just say "Don't get me out of here!"
Oh boy. But seriously, I think I need to put that light up clock I had gotten for the girls in his room.

Some other kid comments this week:

Me: "Brady, go get in the shower with Daddy."
Brady: "I want to take a tub with Colby."
Me:"No, Colby is going to go in the shower with me."
Brady:"Oh, a baby shower?"
I thought this was funny because we had gone to the baby shower and I wasn't sure Brady knew what we were talking about.

Brady: "Can Colby have one of my fish?"
Me:"No, he isn't big enough to have that yet."
Brady: "Yeah, Colby eats baby food and I eat guy food."

Aubree comes downstairs after quiet time while I'm working on something.
Aubree:"What can I do?"
Me (in a distracted voice) "I don't know. Why don't you go twiddle your thumbs or something?"
Aubree (in a serious voice): "Can you show me how to do that?"

A few other pictures...

Watching the laundry in the washing machine.

Caught him chewing gum and chased him over here where I found the incriminating wrappers.

Another shocking find at a thrift store. A bunch of Justin Beiber shirts!

Made a halfhearted attempt to get Brady to go # 2 on the potty. Fail!

The end of an era. Our Indian is officially dead.

The girls and their friends diligently working on their church handouts.

This evening we went to the Z's for supper and fellowship. Addison seems pretty fond of Colby.

She's not shy a bit. Climbed right up into my lap. But then I realized she was trying to get to my phone that I had left sitting on the table!

Enjoying some ice cream.

That's a wrap. Have a great week!

This week started off very early Sunday morning, at least for Duncan, when he participated in his first triathlon which took place in Ocala (an hour and fifteen minute drive). It started at 7:00 am but he had to be there early to get things set up so he left the house at 4:00 am. Needless to say, we did not go up to watch! It was a swim-bike-run event and he did very well. The swim portion was in a lake and he had a bit of a bloodied foot afterwards from hitting into something near the start of the race. He didn't stop to see what it was but of course, the kids had a great time joking that it might have been an alligator. Personally, you will never find me swimming in a body of a water that an alligator could be lurking in but that's just me.

# 1140

While Duncan was busy with that, the kids and I went to a few yard sales around here (since I only went to a couple on Friday due to bad weather) and then after nap time and Duncan's return, we went over to Winter Garden Village for a little shopping (finally getting around to buying letters for Colby's name but alas, couldn't find a "B"), a haircut for Brady, capped off with a stop at Five Guys for supper. They have a veggie sandwich there that I've heard is really good but upon inspection, it was a no-go for me. I'm the worst vegetarian as I don't like mushroom, onions, or my peppers grilled. Just give me cheese, lettuce, tomato, and some mayo and I'm a happy camper. Seriously, I could eat that every day and probably never get sick of it.

Found these matching dresses at a yard sale for $.75. It's a size too small but Aubree insisted on putting it on.

Monday was a "clean up the house" kind of day as we had company coming for supper. It was Ricky's birthday and the Rondinelli's are in town for a few weeks so we all gathered along with Aunt Wanda and Ana's cousin, who is also visiting, for the birthday festivities. Calleigh was happy to be reunited with Bruno...I need to check and see if she is still saying he's the one she's going to marry.

Thirty-seven years young. My bro and I are 14 months apart which was so nice growing up.

As for the rest of the week...Tuesday was a Joann's (to find the missing "B" and glue to put the girls' patches for Adventurers on their sashes) and Costco run while Wednesday we joined Jennifer, Evan, and Addison at Chapin Station for some playground activity. Oddly, Brady started bugging me to leave after about 20 minutes. I'm not sure if he was recalling he got his eye injury there or what but he didn't really want to run around and play. Or maybe he's used to being the top "boy" dog and Evan was there to steal his thunder. Who knows!

The boys did get in some swinging time together.

Thursday we made a trek back over to the pediatrician for Calleigh's eye. It was actually a wasted trip because they just referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist. I figured they would refer us elsewhere and that they didn't even need to see her again but I didn't know if the doctor would just give us that information on the phone. So, we just went. It was a quick visit, obviously, so we had some extra time to stop by at Minnehaha playground over in our old part of town. But yeah, as far as her eye goes, the lump on it is getting bigger although it's still not bothering her at all. We have tried rubbing it and doing compress treatments but clearly that isn't working so I think they're going to just have to drain it. Calleigh seems completely unphased by this but I'm wondering if she isn't comprehending that that is going to involve a needle. No point emphasizing that yet I guess!

Minnehaha

Yesterday was a great day of yard sales as several communities in Winter Park were having a community wide sale. One of them had a map of all the houses that had sales and these really professional looking signs at the end of the streets. They must have a really great HOA! At one sale, a lady had these laminated fruit and veggie cut-outs with the English and Spanish names for the fruit on the back of each one. I showed Aubree them and she started rattling off the Spanish names for them and I was just so proud. The lady made an attempt to say orange in Spanish, which was a very poor job, and then Aubree said "naranja" in this perfect Spanish accent. Thank you Tia Ana! Your lessons are paying off. And the reason that Aubree and Calleigh know naranja so well is that they eat SO many of them. Clementines to be precise. Honestly, Calleigh probably eats like seven or eight of them a day. She will not be suffering from scurvy any time soon.

I'm happy to report that after my strict talking-to with Brady last week about his early morning waking habits, things are basically back to normal. He's been sleeping until at least 7:30 again and when I come in to get him up the first thing he does is point to the window and say "See, it's morning out." That reminds me that when he goes to bed either for his nap or at night, he calls it nap night. I guess it's a combination of the two words.

Brady rarely wakes up during the night but every once in a great while (maybe once every few weeks), he'll cry out because his binky has fallen out of his crib. A couple of night ago, it was probably about 3:00 am, I was awoken by such a cry. Colby hasn't woken up during the night in weeks so I've gotten quite accustomed to not having my sleep interrupted so I made a big groan as I dragged myself out of bed. As I started up the stairs, low and behold, I could hear Colby screaming...and it wasn't a scream that had just started. It sounded like it had been under way for awhile. That's when I realized that apparently the monitor had only been on Brady's room and wasn't rotating through the three rooms. I couldn't believe I had messed that up again after the incident where I didn't have the monitor plugged in and it died during the night. I put Colby's binky in his mouth, ran down to put Brady's in, and then headed back to Colby's room where I was figuring he would need some therapy after being deserted by his mother...or at least some cuddling for a few minutes. But no, he was already back asleep. Phew. Note to self, check and double check monitor before going to sleep. How hard is that? Bad Mommy.

A few anecdotes from our school days...We don't start school until about 3:00 pm and because of this, or maybe just because I'm dealing with a kid, Calleigh is often droopy when she comes to the table to get things going. She will lounge around with the worst posture, her head resting on the table. Of course, I always I tell her to sit up straight and she'll moan and groan. One day, as she's holding her neck as if trying to keep it in an upright position, she gives me a big sigh and says "I wish my esophagus would just stay up." I briefly lamented with her and then it was back to work. The next day, we go through the same thing again and this time she says, "I wish I could just attach a rope to the ceiling and then put it around my neck so it would keep my head up." Have mercy! Perhaps if you wanted to end it all you could do this! I didn't want to get in to details about how to kill yourself so I made a brief remark that we don't tie anything around our necks and moved on.

For our Bible class we've been reading about the children of Isreal the last few weeks. As you know, they wandered around in the desert for forty years and ran in to many challenges that had them seemingly constantly lamenting that they should have just stayed in Egypt. This week, one of the readings was about how they were complaining, even now that they were in the Promised Land, that they didn't have a king like other lands had. Aubree looks at me and says "Boy, there was a LOT of complaining in the Bible!"

I just had to share this because I think it's a hilarious. I just went to a website I hadn't been to in awhile and had forgotten my password. It sent me a link to reset it. I tried to do just that but every password I put in it would say it wasn't good enough, that I needed to use more special characters. Nothing was working so I finally saw a button you could press called "password generator." I thought maybe it would adjust the password you were putting in to better meet their criteria. Nope! It creates a completely random password for you. What was it, you ask? This: jsWKPaCKx&nnJZPSXnWgb3%V4. No joke. I'm speechless.

Some other pictures...

Aubree helped me try on all his hats. This week I moved him to 6 - 12 month clothes.

Also this week the kids discovered making mud in the sandbox with the hose. I hate how dirty they get but it occupies their time so I say "go for it!"

Little bro has to just hang in the swing for now.

Colby was playing with these beads on my dress while he was nursing and Aubree got all excited, "MOM! They put baby toys on your dress!!"

I just love all his expressions. He was mad about something and sat at this table to sulk.

Aunt Wanda was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday and got out today. I took Calleigh to visit her last night.

Playing...

Went swimming and to the playground with Daddy yesterday and ran into Isidros.

A little photo session with Daddy.

Last uniform Sabbath of the Adventurers year.

And finally...this week I got in the mail what I've been longing to get for years. A jury summons. Only now I can't do it because of the kids. Yes, I'm one of the few that would actually be happy to be on a jury. I guess it's all the true crime books I read (or used to read before I had an infant in August).

Have a great week!

The English Relatives

Home Improvements

Cousins

Redington Beach

Christmas Festivities

Happy New Year!

Christmas

Christmas 2.0, the Shawn Braces Visit, and My Problem Baby

Christmas Pictures

Busch Gardens, Another Brady Injury, & End of Football

Birthday

School Improvements

Papa & Gigi Visit and Other Happenings

Schedule Change

The Fair and Six Months

Haircuts and Legoland

Duncan's Birthday & Sleeping "In"

Another Week, Another Black Eye

Winslow Eve Brace

First Triathlon