This is Halloween....

That was actually for crazy hair day....I had to add it here somehow :)

Okay here is the group halloween pictures taken last night before the school Halloween party:


Not the most flattering pic of my munchkins...but it captured the moment well.




Here's the carving party:

Ian picked out mood music. He settled on.......
The Evan Almighty soundtrack????


Here are the costumes & pumpkins in no particular order

Sophie the Ladybug

Krystia the princess & her twilight pumpkin


Pirate Audrey & her happy pumpkin

Ninja Josh and his pumpkin (It has bullet holes and scars too...but it's still a jolly fellow)

Last, but not least, ninja Ian & his gourd of many faces



One last lady bug for the road.....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

A song for Christmas

Audrey has the opportunity to audition at the local high school for a solo part in the h.s Christmas concert! Her elementary choir teacher chose her and 2 other girls to go audition on the 14th of next month. So as she practices singing the song over and over and over the family will be in the Christmas spirit in no time! She'd sing a verse from Hark the Herald Angels Sing solo and then she'd sing a song I hadn't heard before with the rest of the choir. We all have our fingers crossed for her and we're happy that she has this opportunity. I have to say that she has confidence in her abilities. She told me, "I have a beautiful voice so I should make it." I feel like I've done a good job on the confidence factor for at least one of my children!

It's not Smurfette...it's Jack!!

So when I was 7...many moons ago...mt dear Momma let me have a birthday party. I remember a neighbor boy named Jimmy, I think, a friend named Heather Crow (how can I remember her name but forget where I put my wallet?) and some other kid all at my aunt Lisa's house. The highlight was the cake...It was SMURFETTE!!! I even got a smurf sleeping bag ladies and gents! That's the one themed birthday I remeber ever having in my life time. Well my awesome hubby surprised me for my birthday this year. The older 2 kids had parent teacher conferrences scheduled at their school that day. I had to meet with 9 different teachers in 2 hours. Well, when I left my sweetie pie was frosting a cake with white. I thought that was sweet and thoughtful. When I arrived home though I found this.....

In case you can't tell..here's the cake....


I had a Halloween birthday with my very own Jack Skellington cake!!! Did I tell you how awesome my hubby is??? He's a plumber as of late, an artist, and a cake decorator :)

I got some pretty cool gifts from the dad and the kiddos...a Sally plush, a mini Jack and Sally, a Jack and Sally figurine, a Jack night shirt AND the new CD from The Nightmare Before Christmas. So that was the highlight of my month and I think Halloween is now one of my favorite holidays!

Some of you may still be asking "What's a Smurf?" Well, I tried to upload a pic of one and it did not work..So go google it :) or find a cartoon on You Tube (it's not like I remember).

it's been busy, as usual...

The kids have been busy with all things school and church related. I shoulda been posting...but now that I have a blog I can't seem to think of anything to blog about. Go figure.

After my second post...about that mountain of trials we had faced in the not so distant past... we had the water heater go out, the cat get sick, and Trav had a flat on his way to work...Yep. We must have some sorta bad karma goin' on here. I'm not sure what it is. Is it something I did, Trav? One of the kids???? Seriously, I know this goes in cycles and I'd just love for us to cycle out of it.

Trav was tired of fixing things due to immediate need so he chose to fix all 3 bathroom sinks because he wanted to. Well, the one sink had a leak underneath and the other didn't work at all, and... let's just say it wasn't immediate...just needed to be done...eventually. So my handy man played the role of plumber today and did a great job!!!! We have 3 shiny new faucets that run both hot AND cold water with stoppers that work too!!! It's beautiful. I think I'll go fill a sink with some warm water now and...splash :)

That email blog from the summer

This was my living room...ahh the date...Sophie was 1 day late at this point. THANK GOODNESS!!! This really was a nesting, prego moms nightmare.

My familyroom...the furniture from the boys room had to go there...but then they had to break open the wall inthere too!!!

the boys room..you can see on the floor where they had repoured the cement and the patching on the wall

Here's that email I had sent to a few people that I thought would make a great blog post. I read over this and thought aside from my aunt passing, geez that week was nothing compared to what happened the following week! That's when we received a $500 gas bill and $300 water bill much to our bewilderment. Come to find out we had a slab leak and I had to have a plumber come in and jack hammer the boys floor open, punch holes in their wall and our family room wall and re-route the hot water line all while being left alone with a parolee (the plumber tells his assistant, "Hey John, your parole officer called while I was out, he needs to talk to ya.")

I've got pics of the disarray that I'll have to add here. Anyhow....I hope you can get a laugh out of some of this.


July 18, 2008
Freezers, Death, broken bones, birthdays, laundry& ants

That sums up my last 7 days give or take,,,

Last Friday: Enter garage to find a puddle at the freezer door. Much to my dismay the kiddos left the door open while getting out the otter pops!!! I had to throw away over $200 in food and quickly figure out what to do with the meat that had begun to defrost but was still in safe mode. I threw the turkey and chicken in trash bags to put in the house fridge and decided we'd be eating those for the next few nights...I rarely cook meat so I tried to turn this into a positive...it got me off my butt to cook a nice meal or two for the family.

Meanwhile the ants invaded again, even after the exterminator had come 10 days prior. I noticed them coming out of that little overflow drain in the 2nd sink in the master bath. So the kid in me comes out and I take a small dixie cup of water and pour it down that tiny little hole. BIG MISTAKE!!!!! They literally poured out of that tiny hole and the main drain! I cloroxed and used hot water thinking all would be okay. DH gets home and uses the "big spray" that I absolutely hate using indoors. Before he sprays he says "What are they attacking on the counter?' I tell him I've cleared EVERYTHING off. Turns out they were building a freaking nest on my counter. So I have a nasty pic of them carrying their eggs, larvae etc.. just so the exterminator would believe me when he came back. DISGUSTING!!!

Move on to Sunday....I decide it'd be good timing to cook that turkey now mostly defrosted in my fridge in the trash bag. Well....now it was time to clean the fridge..it had leaked turkey blood through the bag ALL over the bottom shelf and into my newly filled crisper drawers. I had to toss ALL OF MY PRODUCE!!! I cried about the lettuce and grapes. Poor DH offered to run to the store and buy more..very sweet considering we don't shop on Sunday's. So now I have a twice defrosted freezer (purposely defrosted it 5 days before the otter pop incident) and a sparkling clean fridge. We proceed to cook the turkey (it's about 100 degrees outside) and what was supposed to be a 3.5 hour cook time took 6 flipping hours! We were eating dinner at 8. Unheard of in our house. 1/2 the kids are in bed by that time!!!!!

Move on to Monday..new call from my mom about my alcoholic aunt...she's not doing well. She puts the phone up to her so I can "say my good byes (can't travel there..over 2,000 miles away) and all I can hear is her labored breathing and moaning. Totally lost it!

Tuesday I get the call that they are unplugging everything and that she'd slip away any day.

Wednesday morning, just as the kids are all piling in my bed and ready to send daddy off to work my mom calls to let me know that my aunt is now gone. I actually did really well with this because I know she's soooo much better off.

Wed afternoon...we go to get more otter pops out of that twice defrosted freezer to find what????? SOMEONE LEFT THE DARN DOOR OPEN AGAIN!!!! All that was left were otter pops and 1 bag of meatballs I had moved out there..but still..So I grounded our family from otter pops for the summer. I refuse to buy them! They've cost me way over $300 stinking dollars in 1 week alone with all the food gone.

Wednesday night...DD #1 is getting ready for a church activity...I asked her to find her phone. She jumps over her brother who's lying on the floor and she trips over him and lads on the floor by catching herself with her right arm. I knew right away it wan't good. She turned greyish and cried and cried. Poor brotehr kinda got kicked in the tummy..but he's all good. So off to urgent care we went, instead of church. The dr see's her gets xrays, sees nothing broken and says it's a sprain. We go home with it wrapped in an ace bandage.

I started having painful contractions and then panicked at all I have to do..including laundry!

Thursday...we have a movie/shopping routine for thursday that we do. Plus it's DS 11th birthday! FuN!!!
On our way home from the shopping trip (had to buy food to restock that poor freezer!) I check my home messages and there's one from urgent care saying I need to call them. Well, I call when I get home I cal and they say.."oh the radiologist read the xrays and says your daughter has a fracture. We need to see her so we can splint her arm" WTH???? Call DH who insists on coming home to watch the other kids do DS doesn't have to spend his b-day at urgent care with his sis. So now my DD has a splint from finger tip to arm pit! The u/c dr today was amazed she has a fracture because she can mover her arm with no problems. they called over and had the orthopedic surgeon double check and sure enough it's chipped near her elbow.

Tonight we went out to eat for my sons b-day and I started to double over from sharp cervical ( I thought) pains. I barely made it through dinner and DH is all excited thinking this is it. I'm telling him no..not contractions..just a little girl who like to use my cervix as bongo drum. Finally get home, had several urgent BM's (sorry tmi) and I'm all better, to my families dismay.

However it's 1:00 am I'm wide awake, sorted and folded a ton of laundry. I have that stain remover I so desperately wanted to buy Wed. night when I thought it might be time for baby and have a pile of clothes soaking in it now. While I was beginning to type this DS comes in to tell me he had an ant on his bed!!! AAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! We stripped his bed down and aside from the 10 books and other misc. items in his bed there were no ants. *sigh of relief* I concluded it must have been his imagination since he and his big sis had just watched Harry Potter 2 and they have that yucky spider scene. He now has my mag lite in his bed and is cozy and secure. Actually he's been asleep for well over an hour.

I've arrived

Here I am. Entering the blogging world. I actually wanted to do this months ago. My first idea was to create a blog titled "Transformation of a Crappy House Wife" and document my progress around the house and with all things domestic. You see how far that got..and if you've been by recently you'll know that not much transforming has happened. Shoot.. shoulda took a before pic of my bathroom counter and corner...(okay I'm getting side tracked)

My other burst of blogsperation came when I was 9 months pregnant with munchkin # 5 and our house was falling apart among other things. It was a laugh or cry kinda situation and I did both. I wrote down all the things going on, emailed it to a friend, and thought "this would make a good post on a blog." I think I will search my emails for that one and post it here.

I think I'm gonna like this....once I figure out how to customize my template, add pics, etc.... But for now I have lunch waiting to be eaten, laundry to be folded and put away, lists to be made, emails to reply to, and teachers to call.