Happy Holidays from the Browns

A happy holiday post from us...

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I needed this today....maybe you did too.

“Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with ‘Goodnight Moon’ and ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.” Then she goes on and talks about some of the mistakes she made while raising her babies. “…the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make…I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of [my children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”
--Anna Quindlen


I'm not good at this. I relish the checking off of my to do list. I love the getting done way way to much. (Not that I really get that much done in a day!) I look at pictures of times gone by and that is when I stop and sigh and think...I should have breathed in that moment longer. Made sure I was really present with my kids. I know it's hard sometimes. My kids can talk non stop and want every bit of my thoughts and energy. I just have to remember that they actually want to talk to me. I"m sure a time will come all too soon when I will be begging them to communicate with me. I need to get about treasuring the doing more!


Oh...and PS... I apologize for the lack of pictures. While my internet connections seems to be working better then before, it absolutely takes forever to upload even one picture. I'm gonna get some on here soon...some of the house..some of the kids...soon!!

Alive and Well!!

I chose this background of trees because it is my view when I look outside of my house. We have moved. We are alive. Getting internet service took longer than expected but hopefully we will be more up and running now. We did a great deal on the house before we moved in. We continue to paint and fix up each room to our liking or at least to what we can afford. We keep saying "man this would be a great house with another 100k in it. Note: Anyone with an extra 100k can please send it our way :)

It doesn't need that much work but you know if you are gonna dream...dream big, right?

We were in the house for about a month and then we took a trip out west. We had a family reunion for my side of the family in Utah and decided to drive out there making stops that were on my husband's bucket list of places to see in this life. To name a view: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Yellowstone etc. I also wanted to see some of Chicago since I've never actually been outside of the airport. We made all these stops and landed at The Sundance Resort for a week in Utah. It was wonderful. It was beautiful. There were no bugs. There was no humidity. There were 16 children (under the age of 11) and 11 adults and we played and played and played. My kids cried when we left. They don't get to see cousins very often and all and I think they really liked the idea of having the cousins around. I loved seeing my sisters whom I don't get to see often enough. We even got to sneak away one night to chat by ourselves over some treats from a bakery. One of the highlights of the week too was having an even bigger reunion with all our extended family at The Homestead resort in Midway. Thanks to my aunt Deb and Grandma T. we all had a fabulous time being pampered and spending time with loved ones. We even have great reunion t-shirts designed by my sister that my kids pretty much wear every other day. We miss all of people to pieces!!

Once we arrived home and saw the house was still standing, we took a big deep breath. It had been quite the fun trip but exhausting too. The kids actually did great. Little T didn't scream nearly as much as I thought she would and even the boys got along pretty well. I will say that after being in a mini van for almost 3 weeks, our house felt amazingly big and nice!

We have been home for a week, and my kids have already started school. Yep, this county starts school two weeks before Labor Day...crazy I tell you...just crazy!! It's made our summer seem too short. I have decided I will get into gear in September, but for now summer is living on in my head. Well, except for the whole getting my kids ready for a bus that picks them up at 7:45am and they don't get home from school until 4:10pm (long day huh?) but other than that....summer lives on.

I know K and I are having a hard time being off of vacation. Real life is just a bit too stressful so we may just hide a little more in our new home in the trees.

I love summer!!

I'm a summer baby. Maybe that is why I have always loved summer. I know it's hot and can get boring with no real schedule but I still love it. I love the pool and have slowly figured out ways to make that even easier and enjoyable. We squeezed in an hour of the pool yesterday from 7pm-8pm after working on the house all day. We had promised the kids that if they helped all day, we would go take a dip in the water. I braced myself for horribly cold water and crying children that would need to tell me how cold it was every three seconds. It didn't happen. The water was great! The baby loved it and looked absolutely adorable in her little swimsuit. (pictures to come). My husband and I enjoyed it as well and could relax for a little while. Ahh...gotta love summer! Too bad the kids have school for 3 more weeks!

All of this made me think that if I can just survive the next 3 weeks, then we will have moved in. We will be down to just one house (can't tell you how great that will be!) No more workers coming and going at all times of the day. It will just be our house and slowly as we make it our own it will become our home and refuge.

The pool and all this thinking made me get excited for summer. We have been doing so much work and not really very many fun things since spring began that we deserve some serious fun this summer. Course I need to keep it pretty close to free fun with all the money going into the house but free fun can still be fun, right?

I was looking at a friend's blog and she had some cute ideas for keeping things fun but somewhat organized so you don't get the "what are we doing today?" chat every morning.

She follows this schedule:
Movie Monday (she also mentioned changing it to Masterpiece Monday if your kids like doing arts and crafts or science experiments.
Take a Trip Tuesday (like the park, zoo, bike rides, picnics, etc)
Wet Wednesday (anything water goes!!)
Anything goes Thursday ( this is where you work from a list of things you and kids want to accomplish during the summer)
Friend Friday (Everyone gets to have a friend over and that way you get the play dates done in one day and no one needs to ask the rest of the week!)

If anyone wants to join us on any of these days, just give me a ring! As my kids have been singing around the house lately " Schools out for summer."...i guess they are getting ready since they still have exactly 14 more days!

Strawberries and taking a little break

Most days I drop my two older boys off at school at 9am and go straight out to the new house. We have a routine now where I have the two youngest ones and we stay at the new house working on projects until 3:30pm when we have to go get the older boys. It still amazes me how fast that time can go. It amazes me how well C has done entertaining himself and even when he watched Cheaper By the Dozen three times yesterday he still didn't get bored....he just thought we needed more kids! It amazes me that even though baby T will do her fair share of crying and wanting my attention, she also will fall asleep in her stroller and then continue to sleep for three hours while I paint and get work done.

Today we took a little break though. I was in charge of preschool and there really isn't a lot of space in my house for five 4year old boys to play around amongst all the boxes. We heard about some other friends going to pick strawberries and decided to tag along. It seemed to fit the preschool theme for the week too since it was food and the outdoors. We traveled about 30 minutes to get to a very cute strawberry patch.

I will say I was surprised at the price. I thought if you pick your own fruit, you were saving money but when we got out there we found out it was 5$ a quart! It ended up being more than double the cost of the grocery store. Oh well, you go for the experience right?

I have to say I have been apple and peach picking but never strawberry picking. It's a lot of crouching down to look for those red things and you get all the prickly stuff on you and the gnats were flying all around my head. The thing that made it better was looking up at these cuties and their smiles ....can't get much better than that! ....

Progress and Finding the Beauty

There is progress being made on the house. We are about half way there ..well we have to be because we need to move in a month from today. A whole recording studio (don't ask!) has been taken out in the basement, old carpet taken out of all bedrooms and basement, new carpet put in. All bedrooms painted and most of basement has been painted too. Laundry room painted and waiting for pretty new appliances, overgrown ugly bushes have been removed, all bathrooms have been completely regrouted and look like new, siding has been taken down and house has been wrapped in protective Tyvek stuff. There is progress....

Then there is the list ..the long crazy insane list to be accomplished in the next month. The one that if I were to actually type it out on this blog, might make me hyperventilate. Both my husband and I have good days and bad days. Days where we get excited about the progress and feel like we will be ready to move in soon and then there are the other days. Days where we feel like selling it and running off to the beach and forgetting the whole thing.

Either way, not having two whole big houses to take care of will be nice. Not having to travel back and forth a couple times a day will be nice. Even when I'm working on a project in the house after we move in, at least I will be able to do it while the baby is taking a nap and not while she is screaming because she wants to be home in her crib. She has fallen asleep twice in the new house. Once I had her in the stroller with the seat laying back and she cried herself to sleep while I was painting. The other time was even more pathetic. I was vacuuming the rooms with all the new carpet. It was taking awhile because it had all those new carpet chunks that I was trying to get up. She followed me around crying from room to room. I would hold her and try and vacuum for a while but then my arm just couldn't take it anymore. We were finally to the last room which will actually be her room after we move in. I was almost done and I looked over and she had fallen asleep on the floor. Hmm...I'm really hoping this renovation period doesn't scar her for life.

I do feel bad. I know we have abandoned so many of you. This has become an all consuming project that has meant not really getting to go to anything extra right now. We just don't have the time or energy. Having food on the table and clean clothes to wear are feeling like it's all we can do. It's half over though...there is a light at the end of the tunnel...yes a very very very long tunnel...but I see a light. I think I caught a picture of that light on my camera the other day when I was out at the new house. It was as though this flower sprung out from no where to say..."It will be okay...it will be home before you know it!"

Homeownership

We did it! We finally did it!! It's a long story. I won't bore you will all the details. Let's just say that the second house that got the all cash offer ended up back on the market again and we got it. We actually closed on the house a couple of days ago. We have about two months before we really move into the new home. Our kids will finish up school, we will fix up some stuff, and slowly make the move over to the next house. We are very excited but at the same time the closing was somewhat anti-climatic. Usually when we close on a house, we move into the house with in the next couple of days. This time it still feels like we are trespassing when we go over. I know it will take time and hard work to make it ours. I kind of feel like this house will end up feeling more like "our home" then any other house we have lived in. It will just take a little bit of time but I'm excited for the future...really excited!

Have you ever had a big project in front of you though? You know it will be worth it. It will actually be good for you and character building. You will learn a lot. Your family will become closer together because of it. The only problem is the project is big enough that I get tired and overwhelmed just thinking about it. I almost can't picture ever getting to the other side of the project.

Most of all this is a whole new world to me. It's a great house that just needs some love and attention. It's exactly what we were looking for and maybe even a little more then we hoped for. We just have to make it ours now. There is just soooo much I don't know about that it can be overwhelming...especially while continuing to pack up this house and continuing to do the normal daily stuff. Don't forget I have a 9,6,3 year old boys and 10 month old baby girl who seem to want to eat every day and wear clothes too. Crazy kids...don't they know my husband and I will be busy?...Doesn't eating in July sometime sound good enough?

So there you have it. We did it! We are excited. We find ourselves laying in bed at night talking about what colors to paint different rooms and where to put which furniture. It's fun...just a little exhausting without a fairy god mother:)

I'm sure there will be more updates posted as we change things up...stay tuned!

Our big H is the big 7!!!!

I can't believe it has been seven years since this sweet one joined our family. We were living in Redlands, California at the time. H is special in many ways!! He was our only child born outside of Virginia. He is our only left handed kid (so far anyway!) He weighed the most when he was born...a whopping 7 lbs 11 oz and seems to be my skinniest kid by far. He is such a big personality in such a little guy. I never know what he is gonna say or do. We will be driving a long and out of no where he will ask me these really thought provoking questions. He seems terrified of things that I wouldn't think would be that scary. However, when he sets his mind to do something he gets it done and pretty quickly for that matter with no backing down. He taught himself to ride a bike and tie his shoes all before kindergarten. He most recently decided that he wanted to bear his testimony and has done so twice all in front of 300 people walking from the very back of the room. He is a great brother and especially loves his little sister!

We love you H very very much and you add a whole lot of spunk to this family!!

Happy Birthday Big Guy!!!!

Easter 2010 part one anyway...

Yea I know it's not Easter for another week but with General Conference next Sunday, we decided today was the day we were gonna dress in our Easter outfits. We reused some outfits that were used for a wedding in September and I think it looked pretty good....especially since no one was in a "picture taking mood" after three hours of church AND I had just woken up the baby! This was the first time I have actually gotten to look at the Easter dresses in the stores and purchase one. Way too fun! Little T looked adorable and she even let me take some hundred or so pictures of her..hee hee.

Happy Easter and spring break too!

Round Two

Found another house. Liked it as much if not more then the last one. Made an offer. Both realtors signed off on it. House also needed signature from asset manager because it was a foreclosure. Spent another weekend wondering if we would get this house. Pretty much planning on getting this house. Kids called this house the fort house. It had a great tree fort/play set in the back yard. We were supposed to close on April 20th. This house had been on the market for 115 days with no offer until us. Monday night I get a knock on my door and it's my realtor to tell me that out of no where the realtor gets an ALL cash offer with no contingency...meaning no house inspection. This house was built in 1989...it needed a house inspection and who can compete with an ALL CASH offer. Mondays are quickly becoming my least favorite day of the week. They weren't ever too high on my list anyway but apparently all bad news regarding homes for us comes on Mondays. Homeless once again. Doesn't even seem like there are any houses on the market to go and look at. Sad...Mad..then sad again...now just tired.

Breaking up....

My friend put this heading on her Facebook account on Monday:

"Monday, I'm breaking up with you. I'm already thinking about Tuesday and dreaming about Friday!"

This past Monday I was SOOOO there. It was raining and dreary here. Day light savings always kicks my butt every time and it takes me forever to get used to it again. I woke up to the sound of my husband's cell phone going off down stairs. It's very loud. I hate it.

We had actually been waiting for it to ring all weekend long though. We had put an offer on a house last Tuesday, they had countered our offer on Wednesday, we had put in another offer on Thursday and were told that was exactly what they needed and we were as good as done. We waited though to get the proof of the contract back. I don't care what anybody says, I want it in writing. All day Friday nothing...ALL day Saturday nothing. All day Sunday ..nothing!!! We were going crazy but were told.."no worries, they live in the country and cell reception is bad but everything is still good!" We still worried but would find ourselves talking about which rooms we would put the kids in, what colors we would paint the rooms, what kind of riding lawn mower we would get (it was a beautiful house on THREE acres with a FOUR car garage next to an amazing horse farm. My kids were in wonderland and had told their friends they were moving to a horse farm!)


Then Monday came...then the phone rang at 7am....and that is when were were told in the darkness of day light savings...that our beautiful home had THREE other offers that came in on SATURDAY (wait..i thought they didn't work on Saturday..hmm?) and two were for 10k over the asking price and one had an escalation clause on it which means no matter what anyone else offered these people would raise their offer higher!

I was stunned and just sat there in the darkness and my migraine started....

So now it's Wednesday and we are trying to move on. We don't have time really to have a pity party because if we want to get the 8k tax credit we need to close by April 30! So we get back on the computer and stare at potential houses that just aren't as cool as our horse farm house and I feel like I'm going through a break up. I know my husband would laugh at me for saying that but I can't help it. That house had things I didn't even know I really wanted and so now I'm having the hardest time looking again. I know I need to have faith that things will work out and just like how the sun has come out this week to shine and warm us up...I know we will find a place to call home too.....but...we will..miss you...horse house farm......sniff sniff.....

February 2010

I'm not sure I will ever forget this month. Between the crazy historical snowstorms that shut us down for two weeks and all the other things we did in between, I'm not sure how we made it to March...but we did.

It started with my husband taking a trip to NY with his mom, sister, and brother in law to see their grandmother who wasn't doing so well. They were gone for five days and managed to get from here to upstate New York without hitting any major snow all while there were storms hitting the east coast. I still think that was a huge miracle for us. They got back just in time to get home safely before the two weeks of crazy snow. And I survived with a little help from my sister Tiff during the five days too!

Then it was my turn. My sisters and I decided to try and get together for our oldest sister's 40th birthday. She lives near Vegas and the idea of warmer weather and seeing my sisters was enough to get me on a plane. I had planned on taking the baby but in the two weeks time between buying the tickets and flying, she stopped nursing all together. I will say I was VERY nervous about leaving her home, and shed a tear more than once while I was gone. Something about being with a baby 24/7 and then not at all was much harder than I thought. She did great and has become quite the little Daddy's girl since then. I think he fed her chocolate every night I was gone...j/k!

Once I got over the initial shock of leaving the kiddos and hubby behind, I had a blast with the my sisters and mom. We got to sit and talk, hang out in the hot tub, go to get pedicures, went out for yummy Italian food, and even got to go see a movie called "When in Rome" (super cute movie by the way!) which was very fitting after the Italian food. The time went by way too fast and I'm already thinking that since we are all two years apart, this should become a tradition....Tiff you are up next!

In between snow, and trips we kept looking for a house which takes up WAY too much of our time ...and no, there is no good news on that front! I actually typed into the search engine the other day "houses that don't suck". Guess what, nothing came up! No surprise there! The rest of our waking hours have been taken up driving to and from basketball practices and games because both T and H have started basketball this year. Since I love basketball, I was really hoping that maybe they would love it to. It was a little slow at first, but once they got the hang of it, they both have done really well and seem to like it way more then they ever did soccer.

We ended the month celebrating C's 4th birthday. He had some friend's come over for some cake and ice cream, we went out to a great wing's place as a family and he had a Superman cake that we made. I told him a while ago that he couldn't play a sport until he turned 4. He got a thermos as one of his presents and he has kept that thing filled with water on the counter ready to go to soccer whenever it starts. I have to be careful about him because he takes things SOOO literally that if you tell him he gets to do something, he assumes you me RIGHT NOW! Another funny thing he has done lately is with his underwear. At Christmas time he got some new size 4 underwear. He wouldn't wear it because he said he wasn't 4. The other day I found some under wear on the floor and asked him why it was there. He said "Mom, it's a size 3 and I'm not three anymore!". I tried to explain that size didn't always mean how old you were but I'm not sure he believes me yet! Such a funny kid! Happy Birthday little man!!

Happy Valentine's Day

Little T wanted to wish you all a very Happy Valentine's Day!!!

(gotta say it's much more fun to dress up a little girl on these holidays! She has a different heart outfit for every day this weekend!)

Two hundered and Fifty Dollars Later!

So just a little update. We would still be trapped. K happened to be outside trying to dig us out when he caught a glimpse of a truck with a plow down on the road and started waving his shovel to get their attention. He went over to them and found out that they were supposed to be plowing the parking lot at Wegmans but when they got there the people said that they would get paid some time in the next couple weeks. The guys decided it would be better, faster money just going to the neighborhoods where people really needed the help. They were right. They ended up being our life savors because every one was SOOO exhausted from shoveling their own long driveways that by the time you hit the pipe stem you couldn't do anymore.

Well, K got everyone in the pipe stem to chip in 50$ a head for a total of 250$ to dig us out of the mess and it was well worth it. I just couldn't even believe that it took two snow blowers and a big plow truck a couple hours to dig us out. I thought it would only take a couple of minutes. Man, am I glad they came because we had made calls to other plow companies and NO ONE had returned our calls....have I mentioned that I'm pretty sure you should be moving south...like the Florida keys...ahh...warm...

Rethinking....

Snowed again...it snowed a lot. Maybe even more then it has EVER snowed in this area in such a short amount of time. It started about 9:30am Friday and kept snowing constantly until Saturday around 5pm. My husband and I decided the only way we would ever get out of our driveway is to keep up with the storm and go out every couple of hours to shovel. We took turns Friday night until we went to bed only to wake up Saturday morning with about 2 feet on the driveway. I shoveled from 10:30am to 3:30 pm and only got have of my stupid long driveway done. My body hurt. I was tired and hungry and just depressed that after all that, it still wasn't done. The funny thing is, even if we got the driveway done, we still live on a privately owned pipe stem. Translation: Ain't no body coming to dig us out!! No trucks! Nobody! It's up to all the homeowners to get together and dig themselves out of the pipe stem. We are just renting this house, but you would think that if you owned a home back here you would invest in a snow blower of some sort. No one has though. Ugh! And to add insult to injury, the plow that pushed snow off the adjoining street, left a huge wall of snow at the beginning of our pipe stem....awesome!

So I'm rethinking my idea that living on a pipe stem is great. Yes it's great for the boys when they want to ride their bikes because we don't have to worry as much about cars. In looking for a house, I have been looking for homes that sat back from the rode, had long driveways and big yards so the boys could have plenty of room to play. I'm rethinking this idea. Add snow to that dream and it becomes an absolute nightmare unless you have the big money to buy a snow plow or blower or unless you do like my college roommate's family did and just have your entire driveway heated....yep...I like that option the best.

I had to laugh because after such a long day I came inside and put warm cozy pjs on. We were making pancakes and it was about 8pm at night when we heard a knock on our front door. Now you have to imagine how surprised we were because we knew the front door was pretty much blocked with snow so whoever was knocking had to have climbed through 3 feet of snow to our door. We have a screen on our door that swings out so we couldn't even open that. When we opened the regular door we saw that it was the missionaries. Yep, those silly 19 old men who will climb through just about anything for service. We somehow pushed the snow and got them in the house for a minute...me in my lovely pjs....and chatted for a bit. Then they asked if they could go work on our driveway for a bit..such nice guys..but they could only make a path in the snow...well folks see you in March!

Help.....

I need help. I need to figure out how to teach my kids that they CAN do hard things. One child in particular is so good with his avoidance strategy that I got to have a lovely parent teacher conference today. His teacher said he is behaving fine but when he reaches a problem or a word he can't immediately figure out, he starts doing anything and everything he can think of to get out of doing the problem. Apparently he has become quite the story teller!

I started thinking about how the life they are growing up in has instant gratification written all over it. Technology is great but it has made so many things seem so easy to my kids that I think they think life in general should be that fast and easy.

I guess I'm wondering how to reteach the joy of a hard job well done to my kids. How do I teach that even if something isn't easy at first, you take a deep breath and keep on working on it until you get it. Giving up isn't an option. Avoiding it will only make it harder in the long run. These ideas seem completely lost on this child.


Any creative ideas out there that have worked for you guys with your kids?

Distractions

I watched a program yesterday about driving while talking on your cell phone or texting and how dangerous it really is. They are saying driving while talking on the cellphone is the equivalent of drunk driving and texting is ever worse. A doctor from University of Utah did studies that showed our brains actually block out things on the road because we are concentrating on texting or talking on the phone. I think of how nervous I get driving on New Year's Eve when I think the potential for drunk driver's goes way up. Now when I'm driving around I notice just how many people are talking on the phone or texting.....it's almost EVERY car!! I don't text hardly at all...I don't really have the phone for it so I would never do it while driving. Talking on the phone is a different story.

I remember when cell phones were just really getting popular and how much I loved to talk on them in the car. If I was ever talking to my grandparents and they found out I was talking while driving, they would immediately say goodbye and hangup. I thought "oh how behind the times they are!...that's what a cellphone IS for!" I loved the multitasking I could get done by doing it. Just think, I can be picking up my kids from school AND get return phone calls done at the same time! Love it!....uhh...until I saw that report. I don't even want to pick up my cell phone now while I'm driving. I want to yell at people who are doing it. One lady's mother was killed by a guy texting in his car. She went and got a bumper sticker that said "My mother was killed by someone texting" just so she could spread awareness.

Driving around today I realized my life has enough distractions. I am almost never in the car by myself. I almost always have some little people with me who are yelling for me or crying for attention. I don't need to add to the distractions by using my phone too.

I'm nervous for my children. We continue to create a world so crazy full of distractions that they are never getting any down time to just hear the quiet. Kids today always have earphones in, or tvs playing a movie in the car or cellphones to talk on. My NINE year old wants to know when he will get one. I think I told him 30.

I used to think I'm so glad I wasn't born in the pioneer days....I wonder if they look down on us and think I'm so glad I wasn't born during these days.

Put down the phone....the conversation can wait...safe a life.

Confessions of a 4th Time Mom

So several months ago I was in a waiting room with my then 1 month old baby girl. I was sitting next to a lady who had a baby boy. We got talking and she mentioned her boy was about 5 months old and wasn't sleeping through the night. It was her first and she looked exhausted. I smiled and told her to hang in there.

Here is where the confession comes. In my head I was kind of thinking that it was her own fault because she hadn't set that baby straight and let him cry it out in the middle of the night. I was thinking that I would never be in that position because this is my fourth time and I know what I'm doing. MY baby would be sleeping through the night at 3 months at the latest. Not because she was some dream baby but because of my crafty mommy skills that will gently show her how it's gonna be in our house.

Fast forward several months and now my little girl will be seven months on Saturday. (I know ...hard to believe!) And guess who isn't sleeping through the night yet...???? Oh yea and I'm eating my thoughts this time. She did sleep through the night for a little while around 3 or 4 months and I must have thought I was done. Then slowly she would get a cold and want to nurse in the middle of the night and so I did. Then I started to notice that I could almost set a clock by her wake up times...in bed by 10pm ..awake at 2am on the dot and then again at 6am. Um...not a good schedule for me little missy!

My words and thoughts about that other mother were starting to haunt me (not to mention the lack of sleep totally starting to bug!). So I told my husband 3 nights ago that I was gonna let her cry it out and since he is slightly wimpy when it comes to that (he would give in ... hates to hear them cry) he better go sleep in the basement. Well she cried at 2:30am alright and kept going until 4:30am!!! It wasn't terribly loud but man oh man I couldn't believe it was two whole hours. I didn't cave though. No sirree bob! The next night she slept from 10pm to 8am with not one peep. What can I say she was completely exhausted. I was some what hoping that she would have the system down and just sleep through the night forever more but last night she woke up again. At least this time it was more like 35 minutes. We are making progress.

And to that lovely first time mom that I so shamelessly thought I could do this better than you....I sincerely apologize!

Where's the Line to See Jesus?

Where's the line to see Jesus?



My mother in law sent me this clip from You tube. I love it and thought I would pass it on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPViKJRHyZo

Sorry I don't know how to actually put the video here. any tips?

We forgot to get our house mom...

We have six months to find a home. 2010 could be interesting. We say to our kids sometimes that we have to be more gentle with the house we are in because we are renting or borrowing the house. This has disturbed my 3 year old to no end. He often asks out of the blue "Why are we borrowing our house? Where did ours go?" I think the older two have remembered the long hours we have spent searching for homes in the past so nothing phases them.

This past Saturday we went about 30 minutes from our current home to check out this house we had seen on line. I have a pretty particular idea of what I want in a house. The picture above is just a picture of some house not close to me that I found on the internet. It's the type of house I would like though. The problem is....they don't really make too many of them here. I really want a big rambler house with a basement. I'm tired of being on the main level only to have my boys jumping around upstairs and it sounds literally like they might come through the ceiling.

We went and peeked in the windows but couldn't really get a good look. We finally got a Realtor to open it up for us and it actually had some really nice features and I could totally see us living in a house like this. Only problem...not enough bedrooms. They said it had four but the 4th is in the basement and I'm not ready to send my 9 year old to a different level. We will keep it in mind but we will also continue the search.

A couple of days have passed and we really haven't talked about the house since. I was driving to the store when my 3 year old yells from the back of the van:

C: Mom, we forgot to get our house.
Me: Um, what do you mean we forgot to GET our house?
C: The white house we went to....the one that was empty..we forgot to get it?

I tried explaining that we will be looking at tons of houses before actually deciding what to do but that poor little boy had already picked out his room and where he would put his toys in the new house. I know I have a hard time looking for houses because I get way too emotionally involved in it. I guess the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree after all.

Catchin up...Part 2

We actually had 3 Christmas Celebrations this year. On Christmas Day, we opened gifts and enjoyed the morning all to ourselves. It was lovely. Later that afternoon my mom and sister came over for dinner to celebrate.

The next day we drove about an hour away to K's family for the Brown celebration. We ate and played and ate some more. Soooo yummy!!!. H who is somewhat terrified of dogs only took the entire day to warm up to their dog but by the end of the day he was the one following the dog around. We call this dog therapy! Thanks Mal and Chris!!

The next day we headed to my parent's house for a yummy dinner and games. The boys were playing b-ball in the basement with my dad's new hoop and he was giving them Grandpa pointers left and right. They loved it but I think my mom is rethinking that gift. I don't think she thought boys could be SOOO noisy. With three boys making shots, it shook the kitchen upstairs!!

It's hard to believe that an entire week has passed by now. The only thing I have to show for it is that I have such a large pile of laundry to do that I can't even walk in the room. We have played, we have shopped, we have been mostly healthy (which is a miracle!!) and it's been great.

To finish out the week we decided to do something a little different for New Year's Eve. For the last several years, we have had family and friends come over and play and eat all night until about 1am. It's been fun but somewhat exhausting when it is all said and done. This year we decided that K and I would go out to eat on a date for a couple of hours (while Grandma watched the kids -thanks mom!) and then we would get the kids and head home for a little party with the kids until midnight. I have to say that it turned out great. We got to do something festive and fun and still be in the comfort of our own home when the ball dropped. (I have NO desire to hit Time Square on New's Years Eve!) I'm thinking we are gonna have to repeat that one.

Happy Holidays Everyone!! Bring it On 2010!!

Catching up...Part 1

During the holiday season, we always try and make it up to see the temple lights in DC. We decided to meet Mallory(K's sister) and Chris up there one Friday night at 6pm. We could do this. We wouldn't hit traffic. It's the holidays....we are invincible!! Well....THREE hours later when we arrived we realized that maybe this wasn't the best idea after all. The lights were beautiful though and we even got to see most a a performance too. Mallory had made us some yummy treats so we headed home snacking on them, thinking we might miss the snow storm on it's way. Boy oh boy did we drive right into the middle of a blizzard! We had to stop at my parent's house to pick up my car too so I got the lovely bonus of driving in the mess without four wheel drive, in the dark, and with four very cranky kids. It took us TWO hours to get home and no there wasn't any traffic. At one point all I could see was K's car in front of me and snow all around us. It looked like we were the only people in sight in the middle of the blizzard.

When we woke up the next morning, my kids got the chance to go and play in the snow. Now I know I already posted about the snow but I thought I would add these pictures and this lovely story. That Saturday when we were watching the snow coming down, we got a phone call from a neighbor asking if we wanted a snow plow to shovel our driveway. We jumped at the chance and thought we were home free. When I looked outside later I realized that the snow plow had really only shoveled a pathway on our driveway and actually dumped a 4 ft wall of packed snow on it. My husband needed to go to work the next day and just had a procedure done on his back so I knew I had to get out there and shovel some snow.

I cleared a good path so he could get his car out the next day but never even made it to my side of the garage because my whole body was hurting from shoveling K's side. Not to mention I was up most the night holding our baby who was sick. I was beat but still needed to get out to the store for some last minute Christmas preparations. I was desperate so I called a neighbor kid to come and help me shovel and told him I would pay him. I told him he didn't need to do the whole driveway (we have a long one!) because I was afraid he would say no. I just asked him to help me so I could get my car out and that would be enough. We got out and loved seeing life outside our house for a couple of hours. It was me with the four kids so it wasn't exactly a quiet trip (more like complete chaos!) but we were all happy to see the sun.

As we pulled back in my driveway, I wondered if I would have enough space cleared so that I could actually get my car back in the garage. I pressed forward thinking I would just take it slow but would be able to pull it off. Remember how it's the holidays and we think we are invincible? Yea...well it didn't work on the way to the temple and the traffic and if didn't work with me pulling my car in the garage. Let's just say that I pulled it in part of the way only to realize that I needed to back up some to get a better angle and that's when I realized that I pretty much had my car STUCK on the side of the house. I had to either back up or pull forward but either way I was going to scrape up the entire passenger side of my car. Oh ho ho ho ....merry Christmas eh? I would include a picture of the car but my husband went and had it cleaned up a bit so now all you see is the lovely dents. I think he was a little bit embarrassed to be driving the thing around. I told him I wasn't too proud. I would drive it. I dented it so I would have to drive it! Yep yep..that is what I said even though I was already thinking of ways to park it on the good side so no one would see the lovely dent of shame! Thanks hun for making the car pretty again!