Are they tired yet?

The third ingredient in creating some seriously exhausted kids is a bounce house. I can not even begin to explain how tired kids get when they jump around for hours and hours in the hot sun. You know it is working if the kids have to take their clothes off because they are full of sweat!

Directions Part 2

The second part of tiring seven kids out in a short period of time is as follows...

We took the whole crew to check out one of the new area spray parks and see if it measured up to all of the hype. And holy cow did it ever?!?!?

It was just about perfect. The spray park was based around a fishing theme with sprays of water coming out just about everywhere. It was adjacent to the parking lot so we were able to park right nearby. Al and I brought lawn chairs, sat down, and let the kids get to work. They ran and jumped and played for 2 hours without any adult help. Even Lucy and Shane enjoyed the water. The water was cold, but the spray park was connected to a very large playground so whenever the kiddos got too cold they could play on the playground until they warmed up again. There were picnic tables in the shade, so we were able to sit down with everyone and enjoy the picnic lunches that we had packed earlier in the morning. I couldn't believe how much fun we all had for FREE!!!!!!!! We will be going back to this park on a regular basis!

Directions

If you need to tire out 7 kids to the point of exhaustion in 18 hours or less here are some foolproof directions....

Step 1
Have them pretend to be migrant workers and pick 10 pints of 2 different kinds of berries in 85 degree weather

Step two to be continued......

The Darndest Things...

Yesterday the boys were playing with their cars in the driveway and Shane was watching from his nearby playpen. I ran upstairs to turn the oven on and when I came back down less than 3 minutes later the boys had taken Shane out of the play pen and loaded him into the back of their power wheels jeep. Obviously I completely freaked out and when I got done telling the boys how scary that was and how we never ever pick a baby up like that Wyatt said "But Mom, Shane really wanted to go on a ride with us. He's so happy now look.". And there he was sitting in the back of the power wheels jeep with a huge smile on his face ready to hang with the big guys.

This morning as I was cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast I could hear Wyatt saying "abracadabra" over and over again. Finally I looked around the corner and saw that Wyatt had the ram rod for my smoothie blender and was pointing it at Shane. I asked what he was doing and he said "Mom, this magic wand is not working". I said what is it supposed to do? and he said "Something magic with Shane." It still makes me laugh.....

Wyatt calls his eye ball an "eye drop" as in "Mom, Sam spit right into my eye drop"!

Wyatt also thinks that Shane's soy milk is "soil milk" and comes from the ground!

All of the little language imperfections in my 4 year old will come to an end soon enough and I know that if I don't write them down I will never remember all of the cute little funny things that I listen to every day. As they say... The days go slowly, but the years go fast!

Photo Magic

One of the best things about spending time with Aunt Al is that she can get my boys laughing and all looking the same direction for some great pictures.

Visitors Yipee!

Aunt Allison brought Jackie, Cameron, and Lucy to town for a visit. The kids had a great time together! My kids were so excited to see their cousins that you could almost feel it! Even Shane and Lucy bonded. We have some big plans for tomorrow so hopefully the kiddos sleep in past 6 am!

Lunch

Today we hit the Costco sample ladies up for lunch on the go. The boys got a healthy lunch of chicken strips, tortellini, chips, and juice all while we were shopping this morning. There was something from each level in the USDA food pyramid. I didn't even have to mess up my own kitchen and my kids were fed and ready for bed by noon!

Is it just me or do the sample ladies always seem mildly irritated with people that want to eat their food though? Does the food that they sample come out of their earnings? I read somewhere that sales increase 800% on foods being sampled that day in the store. Shouldn't they be happy about us samplers? I am confused.

On another note if somebody wants to get me a present I have an idea. I need three shirts that say "No, we are not triplets!" in sizes 4T, 4T, and 5. It would save me a lot of time in the store. I could avoid repeating myself 90 million times. Maybe a little shirt that says "Yes, I'm a boy" would come in handy too. I need that one in a size 2T.

Strawberry Time!

I took the boys to a local farm yesterday to pick strawberries. It was the first day since Memorial Day that it hasn't rained and we were out of the house before 9am! The plants were loaded with strawberries. I couldn't believe how many ripe berries there were. We ended up with 12 pounds of strawberries!

Sam was my best picker. He is practically a little migrant worker. He never stopped to eat any strawberries until his basket was full either. He only picked the really red berries that didn't have marks on them.

Wyatt and Jonah ate more than they picked and kept knocking their baskets over by accident. They picked white, green, and red berries too. I had to do some major purging of their berries before we took the wagon down to weigh our baskets. Afterwards Wyatt told me that he doesn't want to eat berries that we buy at the store any more because he only wants to eat the kind that we pick ourselves since they taste so much better.

Shane ate Teddy Grahams and watched us all pick while he sat in his stroller. He really enjoyed the wagon ride up to the strawberry patch and jabbered away and pointed at everything we passed like a little tour guide. He didn't seem to like the taste of the fresh picked strawberries though and kept throwing them on the ground. Maybe it is an acquired taste?

Now I am scouring through strawberry recipes in my free time. I bought canning supplies so that I can make some strawberry-rhubarb preserves this weekend. I need to use up these berries before they go bad!

Everybody had a good time because today the kids wanted to go back strawberry picking again! I told them that we would have to wait a few days before we hit the strawberry patch again. Mommy's got some canning to do first!

Sleep Antics

Jonah and Sam have been sleeping in big boy beds now for almost 1 month. It has been an interesting process to put it mildly. I could write an entire blog about these two and their bedtime antics.

For the past few days they have been wearing a different pair of pajamas every time I come into their room to survey their sleep progress. The old pajamas are nowhere to be found and when I ask them about it they act weird and confused...

Me: "Where are your pajamas Sam?"
Sam: "What?"
Me: "I said where are your pajamas?"
Sam: "What???"
Me: "Pajamas! Are you wearing new pajamas again?"
Sam: "Huh?"
Me: "Never mind. Go to sleep!"
Sam "O-tay, Mom"

Every morning Jonah is sleeping on a big pile of underwear! He acts equally confused and perplexed when I ask him about it. So I have finally given up trying to figure out why they are doing what they are doing. I am picking my battles.

So, yesterday morning when I got up and the boys were all talking about this "big mess" in the bathroom I had to go check it out! Shocking! There were towels dripping wet in piles on the floor and I am still not sure if it was sink or toilet water on them. The hair dryer was on the floor plugged in to the outlet. The toilet was clogged with toilet paper. There were several bottles of liquid soap on the floor. And there was poop in the toilet! I picked that battle! Hopefully the boys will think twice before trashing a bathroom like that again anytime soon!

And just when we thought things couldn't get any stranger when John went to check on the boys tonight he found Jonah and Sam like this...

Change of Plans

This weekend didn't go quite how we planned it....

First there was the computer virus that consumed everything. Our computer was at a complete standstill. John spent all of Friday night working on the problem. He didn't make any progress until he called our brother-in-law Marc on Saturday to help walk him through a fix. Even with Marc's help it took until Sunday night to remove all of the garbage that managed to get past our firewall. It is hard to believe that some people have so much free time on their hands that they sit at home and make up viruses to infect total strangers computers!

Then I accidentally backed the van into the car in our driveway. That was super fun! The best part is that when you finally manage to forget about doing something so colossally stupid, the kids will bring it up again and again and yet again. "Mom, why did you wreck Daddy's car?" "Mom, why didn't you look before you backed up?" "Mom, are we getting a new van now?"! The studies that show the dangers of driving while on the phone have clearly never looked at the dangers of driving with children that just will not stop TALKING!!!!

Next on my fun list of "don't try this at home" was giving Shane cocoa. Apparently he is allergic to Cocoa powder which is made from ground cocoa beans. We figured that out after giving him a single bite of a cookie containing cocoa. He ended up vomiting and then had diarrhea for the rest of the night. So now we have to stay away from milk, peanuts, and cocoa powder. The good thing is that Shane hasn't let his food allergies keep himself from being the chubbiest guy we know. I am convinced that he is approximately 70% body fat!

We also had some garden casualties this weekend. The deer got ALL of our cucumbers, squash, and melons. Even with a fence they leaned it over and ate the tops off all of our little 6 inch plants that were started from seed! We were not happy. I went out tonight and got a deer fence to lay across the top and then I bought new seed to replant the deer food. If that doesn't work I may have to see if I can round me up a hunter to get rid of the problem once and for all!

I have been doing some research lately and I am 100% sure that the rash I had a few weeks ago was poison ivy and not from the laundry detergent as I previously reported. With the good soil and all of the rain that we have had it turns out we are quite successful at growing poison ivy in our garden right along side our rhubarb. It appears that the source of the poison ivy in our garden is a 40 foot vine growing in the apple tree in our neighbors yard that is only a couple of feet from our garden. So, now that I have it all figured out I am petrified to go near the garden at all! I see leaves of three in my sleep. Why can't the deer eat that?

So there it is. Our fun filled weekend highlights. I don't want a repeat of that anytime soon....well most of it anyway.....

Little Frog

Guess who learned to swim without a life jacket when we were in Michigan? It might not be perfect form, but it's a great start!