Poison Salsa & Homemade Bread

In Samuel's Kindergarten class they always have a Fun Friday. Several months ago I decided we needed to do the same in our home because really who doesn't love Friday! As soon as Samuel gets home from school on Friday the fun begins. Yes, we clean the bathrooms every Friday to begin our fun. There was a time when I would clean by myself early in the morning or at night because lets face it - it was quick and easier that way. But then I realized I needed to be teaching my kids how to work and how to enjoy it. Yep, I actually like to clean bathrooms. Now the same can't be said about laundry, but I'm even coming around on that since I have redone my laundry room and moved all the kids clothes in there. So we work together first and the kids actually enjoy it. Their favorite part is spraying the mirrors. Everyone gets a bathroom where they get to individually spray and wipe the mirrors. They LOVE this part. If you ever look at my mirrors they're not that clean, but rest assured one of the kids sure did love trying to make it look really clean.

This little guy cracked me up when he said during our cleaning, "Give me the poison salsa". In case you're wondering

this is the poison salsa.

I'm not really sure why he refers to cleaner as salsa - and I don't know if I want to know why!

After cleaning and lunch we have our activity. One of these days I may post a few of our Fun Friday projects we really do have a lot of fun making all sorts of things. But this Friday we made 12 loaves of homemade wheat bread. It took us all afternoon - again a project that could have gone a lot faster without the "help", but then it wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining!

Samuel was so cute because it was his idea to make bread. I made homemade wheat bread a few weeks ago when my parents came for Jenna's birthday because I know my dad loves it. Samuel then told me this week, "Mom, you know how you made bread for grandpa. Well, I really like homemade bread too. So you can make bread for me next time, we don't have to wait for Grandpa to come." Now how could I refuse making my sweet guy homemade bread after a conversation like that!

And the hot bread fresh from the oven really was yummy!

It was a great day with poison salsa and homemade bread.

Helping Hands

This is what the kitchen floor looks like when the 2 year old decides he is going to help feed the 1 year old.

This is what happens when the 1 year old decides she is still hungry and opts to collect the almost empty cereal box from the garbage and see what scrapes she can come up with.

This is the sweet moment I love as a mom - watching my tough guy be so tender with his little sister. I seriously think Jenna my never learn to drink her milk on her own because everyone is always lending a "helping hand".

Hair Issues

Bella likes to fix her own hair and the other night before bed she told me she had rainbow hair.

In our family we seem to have hair issues. Chuck's is thin and balding, mine is thick but partially curly dotted with early greying (a not so great gene I got from my dad:). It seems like we have passed on some of our hair issues to the girls.

Bella really wants to have long hair. She asks me all the time when her hair is going to grow long. I don’t have the heart to tell her that she has her dad’s thin hair and it may never grow very long. Bella asked me the other day if I would cut my hair so it would be short like hers. My hair isn’t that long, but I am a ponytail girl. It needs to be somewhat long because the majority of the time I pull it back. I started this ponytail practice when I was in college. Then I had hair down to my waist, but usually only fixed it on Sundays for church. I always had a 7:30 a.m. class and I discovered that sleep was more important than beautiful hair. My mom was obviously worried about my hair because I remember coming home one weekend and she asked me if I always wore my hair in a ponytail. I think she worried I would never find a husband – good thing Chuck likes ponytails! I wasn’t sure what to tell Bella at the moment, but I know myself and right now I don’t have the desire for a haircut I have to actually do something with so at least for now it’s just going to stay the same. Who knows, maybe I'll get brave - but probably not!




Chuck keeps telling me that we need to shave Jenna’s hair off because it might help it get thicker. Jenna doesn’t have a lot of hair right now and it’s been growing for a year! If we shave it off she could be bald for a very long time and she won’t leave the bows in her hair anymore. In fact today I wanted to snap a quick picture of her in her dress before we went to church and she threw herself down, ripped off the bow and started screaming.

What’s a little girl to do if her parents shave her head and she won’t wear a bow? So I’m still up in the air with the hair shaving. One things for certain I'm definitely not doing it until I take her 1 year pictures.

I'm adding to this post because this afternoon I decided to look on the Internet and research shaving babies hair. Lots of contradictory opinions, but it seems the "experts" say it doesn't help. Hair thickness is all in the genes so I guess sweet Jenna gets to keep her straggles!

Bye Bye Binkie

Saying that Isaac loves his binkie is a vast understatement. He is addicted to the binkie. With the other kids as they got older I would only let them have the binkie during nap time or at bedtime. But with Isaac I was not as tough. Mainly because he has been a difficult 2 year old and the binkie would calm him when he was upset and throwing giant fits. The past month or so he has really grown up a lot and is no longer throwing such big fits - yeah!

We let the kids trade their binkies in for any toy they choose and have been talking to Isaac for awhile now about it being time to trade in his binkie. We got him all excited and today was the day. After bowling, we went to the store and roamed the toy isle. He finally found 2 toys that he wanted and we let him get both. On the way out of the store, he dropped the binkie in the garbage. Now Chuck and I are bracing for a couple of rough nights!

Weekend Fun

We love the weekends because we try and always do at least one fun activity with the kids. This long weekend it was cold so instead of our typical outdoor fun we had to head indoors.


One of our Valentine's traditions is to get the kids new swimsuits. We finally got to try them out this weekend. Isaac used to be so afraid of the water he wouldn't even venture in, but he has finally decided the water is fun. Jenna at first was a little unsure, but she quickly decided she also liked the water. Samuel and Bella are like fish.



We were really surprised when it started snowing on Sunday. Since snow is a rarity we decided it was okay to let the kids enjoy it even though it was Sunday. I was just glad Chuck was home and got the kids all bundled up and went out to play with them. I just snapped a few pictures from the patio and was so glad that by late afternoon all the snow had melted.



Had to get this picture of Bella. I think she's wearing about every color in the rainbow.


Chuck had President's day off from work so we decided to take the kids bowling. Hard to believe, but this was our first family bowling trip. It was fun, but a supper slow affair. It took us over 1 1/2 hours to bowl one frame.

Samuel declared he had wanted to go bowling his whole life.
Bella bowled one frame and then was bored. She would lay on the ground and help Chuck roll her ball down the lane.
Isaac had us laughing when the ball was going so slow it hit the pins, but instead of knocking them down the ball literally bounced off them and started rolling the wrong way back up the lane. Now you know the ball is going slow when that happens!

There was a dad with his four sons right next to us and they were pretty serious about their game. I'm sure they were supper excited when our crew showed up right next to them. During one frame the dad sent the ball flying down the lane and the bar unexpectedly came down. His ball crashed with a lot of force right into the bar. He turned around and wondered what happened. I sent my ball down right after and the same thing happened to me. Only my ball was going just a tad slower:). I turned around to notice that Isaac was pushing the reset buttons. The other dad was still confused until I told him our 2 year old had pushed the buttons. Let's just say he was not amused. I was just really glad the machine decided to give him a strike and it gave me a spare, my best round of the entire frame.




These pictures are actually from our last weeks adventure.

Bella is our crazy mountain goat. The rest of us were coming down from reaching the top of the hike and I turned around to see Bella scaling another rock all alone. I don't usually get too worried about her, but this did make my heart skip a beat or two. Because as soon as she reached the ledge she took off running to the other side to get to the top. Bella is fearless, but she is also very accident prone and falls a lot. I was holding my breathe the entire time praying she wouldn't fall as she darted along the ledge and scampered up on top. Don't worry Grandma, I grabbed the baby from Chuck and quickly sent him to watch her come down.


Bella posing after she conquered this rock all by herself.

The Midnight Circus

If you’re reading this post you must read the post prior to this first.

Sometime after midnight Isaac started crying. Chuck and I have a new deal now that I’m not nursing the baby during the middle of the night. He takes care of the baby when she wakes up and I get the rest of the kids. So I drag myself upstairs to see what all the commotion is about figuring he’d just lost his binkie. Much to my surprise, he had his binkie but was crying saying “it hurts, it hurts”. I tried to get him to tell me what hurt, but he was only getting more upset by the minute, thrashing and kicking around. I could see I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him so I went and got Chuck to try and help him while I climbed back into bed. Several minutes later, Chuck came back into our room carrying Isaac and saying the poor kid was really in a lot of pain.

Now my sleep deprived brain started going crazy, after all he did jump from the slide bed and belly flop onto the floor about 12 hours earlier. Sure he appeared to be okay after some intense crying, but some injuries take awhile to show up – like for instance a vital organ being injured and slowly internal blood pooling to the point it’s now causing extreme abdominal pain. Yes, this had to be the reason and I told Chuck just what I was sure had taken place.

Now I couldn’t see Chuck’s face very clearly, after all it was dark, but as soon as I uttered what I was sure was the problem it was as if I could see Chuck giving me the “you’re not serious are you” look. Chuck then replied, “Actually I think it’s just gas. He’s pretty stinky.”

I wasn’t so easily convinced he hadn’t sustained a life threatening injury but after Chuck laid him in bed next to me I could smell Chuck was right. Oh great I thought, now I’ve got to try and sleep next to the thrashing stinky kid! Luckily he only stayed put for a few minutes and then decided he wanted to sleep on the couch. What luck, the night would not be a total loss!

So I drifted off to sleep only to be awoken again after what only seemed like a few minutes – who knows how long it really was because lots of time I try not to look at the clock during the middle of the night because it causes me grief. This time it was Samuel standing next to the bed complaining that his knees hurt. Again I thought, really - yeah continually jumping off the slide bed may do that to you! Out of bed again, this time to administer a little Tylenol it works wonders every time.

Drifting off again only to hear the baby crying sometime later. Oh good I thought this is Chuck’s problem now! But I didn’t get off so lucky because Chuck couldn’t get her to settle back down and the sheets were off the bed in the guest bedroom so he brought her in to lie between us. I do not sleep well when the kids are in bed with us, in fact we try to avoid it unless it’s an extreme case like you really just need a little rest for your eyes.

Now I would like to say this is an extreme night, but for some reason the past several months it’s been more of the norm. So sleep would be nice, but resting eyes will do! Just extremely grateful I didn't haul the kid to the ER thinking his spleen was ruptured only to be told, No it's just a little gas pain!

A Delightful Discussion & Life in the Circus

I had another delightful evening with the mothers from my Power of Moms Learning Circle. There’s something truly fulfilling about discussing with other women ideas on motherhood. We based this month’s discussion on the article from the now infamous Tiger Mom. While we all agreed that her measures for producing success in her kids were extreme, we also agreed that kids need to be challenged and they need to learn they can do hard things because hard things will be required of them. We talked about kids working to master talents and ideas for directing their interests. In our group, we have different parenting styles but we all worry if we’re doing our best. Are we staying close to the spirit so we will be directed to know what is best for each of our children? We also talked about how this applied to us as mothers – we are required to do hard things on a daily basis (speaking kindly to our kids when we haven’t slept in who knows how many days). We must stretch ourselves to master important character traits such as patience and charity. Wonderful ideas, wonderful mothers a fascinating discussion.

I typically get home late after a Learning Circle evening, but usually find it hard to fall asleep because of all the thoughts floating through my mind. But I always wake up vowing to try harder, implement new ideas…etc. The same was true this morning. I woke refreshed because I actually slept for almost 5 hours with no one waking me up! I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been able to get a 5 hour stretch of sleep. It lead me to fantasize about how amazing it would be to actually get a whole night’s uninterrupted sleep – but the thought was such a distant memory I just can’t really imagine how wonderful it would feel. I digress, so yes I woke up ready to conquer the day. Then reality hit that sometimes life in our household is a three ring circus. Case in point.

I decide I’m finally going to make my traditional Valentine’s Mississippi Mud Cake. Yeah, I’m a few days late, but I felt like I was on death’s doorstep this weekend! All the kids were gathered round “helping” me and Jenna was crying because she wanted in on the action. So I put her chair in the sink and asked Bella to help her with her bottle of milk. (Another digression, I was still exclusively nursing Jenna until this weekend when I got so sick that I literally had no milk to offer her. She can technically drink regular milk since she’s a year, but was refusing. After much weeping, wailing and fit throwing she finally succumbed to taking a bottle of milk from Chuck. It was her first introduction to a bottle so she doesn’t really understand how to hold it yet or more likely she just wants someone to feed her. She’ll drink water out of a sippy cup, but refuses it with milk. It’s been bittersweet that I now only nurse Jenna just before bed, just lost the milk supply so quickly when I couldn’t keep any liquids down.) So while Bella’s helping Jenna, we get most of the way through the recipe when I realize I’m about ¼ cup short of flour. I run downstairs, but I’ve already used up all my supply of white flour, even the flour I’d canned. I guess I have too many incidents of unexpectedly running short of flour! It would be wonderful if I had a neighbor to call for flour, but such is not my situation. So much to the dismay of the children, the project has to be put on hold until daddy can bring us flour during lunch.

So it's on to the next task - making the kids lunch. I take Jenna out of the sink, but now she’s really upset because she wants me to hold her and she’s hungry so she starts crying. Then Bella finds out I’d put her special pink plate in the sink and she’s storming around crying and in tears too. I try to tell her I’ll wash it, but she’s not going to be consoled at the moment. Then I hear Isaac start to cry as well. I think to myself well, at least it’s not all 4. I figured Isaac and Samuel had just got in an argument about something so I just let him cry while I was still trying to take care of the crying girls. Then Samuel is at the top of the stairs trying to talk really loudly over Isaac’s crying. I finally make out the words, “I told him not to jump”.

Through all the noise I finally gather that Samuel had been jumping off from his slide bed and Isaac decided he wanted to try it too. Samuel said he tried to warn him he shouldn’t do it, but he tried it anyway. Now Isaac can’t jump very high, he’s a rather big kid, so he didn’t quite clear the “safety” bar. So according to Samuel’s vivid description and reenactment of the event Isaac basically belly flopped right onto the floor. I’m just really hoping it hurt bad enough that he’ll think twice about trying that again!

So yes, sometimes we have to do hard things – juggling the kids without losing it. But I must say the day got a lot better, in fact it was actually quite pleasant, we finished the Mississippi Mud Cake and it’s absolutely delicious!