Vacation

This past week our family went on vacation.  We went all the way to Curtis (located in the Upper Peninsula).  It was a long drive, but all the kids were wonderful.  We stopped during our trip up there at Arby's.  Ross and I were kind of dreading to take all of our children in there, but every one needed a break from the long car ride.  Ross and the kids sat down (of coarse in the back of the restaurant) and I went to order and bring back the food.  They were well behaved.  As I sat down with the food, an older gentleman came over by us and told us what a lovely family we have.  He repeated it a few times and looked at each of the kids.  It meant so much to us to have a random stranger come up to us and say that!  Usually people say  to us, wow, you have a busy family.  It was so refreshing!!!  We know that we are blessed to have all of our children, but it made us feel even more blessed that someone else noticed.

Our week at Curtis was so much fun.  Scott and Shannon Denherder, along with their two little ones, Gavin (almost 3) and Alice (1 1/2 years).  We shared a large cottage and we rented a pontoon boat that needed two people to get it started (it was a pile, but a fun pile).  The kids played in the sand and played in the water. 

Gavin and Allison playing at the cottage

 

 

 

Ross and one of the babies (I don't have

a clue wich one it is)

The kids playing in the water at the cottage.

We went sight seeing every other day. If you ever go to the U.P.  check out Fayette (a place they used to mine iron ore).  It's a historical place with buildings set up with things of how they used to live. 

Clay and Leanne by a wagon wheel at Fayette

Seney wild life refuge is another good place to go.  Ross and I usually take the kids for a drive through there on Sunday.  It's a nice little drive through nature. 

Reed loved driving through Seney.  We let

each of the kids take a turn driving.  We start

them young.

 

Another great place we went and usually go every time we go to the u.p. is Kitchi-iti-kipi (palm book state park).  It is a natural spring that you take a slow moving raft across.  You can see the spring through the beautiful clear water.  Great big fish are usually swimming in the area too.

Some of the Big fish at the spring

The spring (it looks cooler in person)

Leanne and Clay looking through the glass

at the spring

Pictured Rocks are also a great place to go.  We usually bring our bathing suits and swim at Lake Superior.  We love swimming there.
This year, we also drove up to Munising.  We wanted to see the aftermath of the wild fire they had this past spring.  It was so odd to see all stumps of trees and charred trees. We drove by all these burned trees and Lake superior suddenly appeared out of no where. We stopped at the campground there and let the kids go out and play.  They gathered all sorts of beautiful rocks there.  Sparkly pink and orange ones, dark gray ones, ones with unique cracks in them. 

 

The loggers are starting to take down the

burnt trees.  You can see a stack of them in this

picture

 

 

 

There used to be an inn in this location.

The fire consumed it.

Family picture at Lake Superior.  Not

the best picture of us all, but we were

cold and the wind was blowing.

 

We had a wonderful time spending time together as a family and with our friends.  So happy that God gave us time to relax and enjoy His handiwork.

Got Eggs?

One of our black chickens all of a sudden developed a maternal instinct.  She has now decided that she will sit on her eggs and not get off them.  Before she would wander the yard with the other chickens, but lately she has become a home body or should I say a coop body.  Mind you, we do not have a rooster, so her dream of having baby chicks will never be.  When I was baking the twin's birthday cake, I ran out of eggs.  This rarely happens to me.  I usually have a surplus of eggs and I give a lot of them away.  However, this had to happen on the day I needed them the most.  I refuse to buy eggs (and I had little desire to pack up all 5 kids to go buy eggs) and I knew that our nesting chicken had some good ones laying underneath her.  I sent Leanne and Clay to go get eggs.  They came up with 2 eggs.  I was one short.  When I asked if they checked under the black chicken, they said no.  My kids do not pick up the black ones because the black ones peck at them.  The orange/yellow ones don't.  So I convinced Clay to go outside with me to try to gather the eggs.  I told him that maybe he could pick up this chicken.  As soon as he reached in there, it pecked him.  We both got sticks and poked her with them.  The chicken, in turn, pecked at our sticks.  I gathered beans from the garden, in hopes of trying to bribe her with food to move.  A yellow/orange one, gobbled it up instead.  That chicken was NOT going to move.  After some hem hawing, I decided to give up and wait till Ross got home for lunch to gather the rest of those eggs.  I really wanted to finish my baking.  Then my ever determined girl, Leanne, went back out there to give it a whirl.  She came back up with ONE egg.  She handed it to me and it was still warm (that's a little to fresh for me).  I asked her how she did it.  Leanne said she took a stick and lifted up the chicken's butt and reached under the chicken and grabbed the egg.  Then she proceeded to tell me that the chicken was in process of laying 2 more eggs.  I have yet to see a chicken lay an egg and I have little desire to see it.  We decided that the stubborn chicken needed a name and decided to call him Pesky. Leanne saved the day.  I love that girl so much.

Our first year

My twins turned one.  I can't believe it.  It went so fast.  This is a little recap on the babies first year of life.

This is the morning of the c-section.

my first time seeing the boys.  reed is by ross

my first time really holding them.

reed on left, luke on right

 baptism

first smiles

first time sitting in the bumbos

first time sharing

 first time eating baby food

Reed was hospitalized at 6 months for rsv and pneumonia. 

He was one sick little boy

We can push ourselves up

Yay. we can sit up

First bath time in the big boy tub

We love our daddy

Standing by our play table for the first time.

Luke left, Reed right

We love to play by our toy box after bath time

We are at the big table.  We steal each other's cups and food

Reed thinks his cupcake is yummy.  Happy first birthday Reed!



Luke thinks his cupcake is yummy!  Happy first birthday Luke!

Reed and Luke buried in all of their gifts

We are so blessed to have these boys in our life.  God couldn't have given us a more precious gift than our family.  Happy 1st birthday Luke and Reed.  Mommy, Daddy, Leanne, Clay, and Allison, love you!

daily living

8 am......Clay or Allison sneak into mommy's bed for morning snuggles.

8:30 am.... Everyone is hungry so time to get out the breakfast.  Get babies cereal and sippy cups ready and then head to their room to get them out of bed.

8:35am....bring both babies down the hallway and wrangle them in their highchairs.

9am.....breakfast complete.  phew, made it through meal number 1.

 9am through rest of the day.....check every few minutes to make sure that basement door is shut.  Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.  Yell, "make sure you shut the basement door.  We don't want the babies to fall down the steps."

9:30.....make everyone get dressed.  I don't care if they don't match, just as long as they throw some clothes on.  Help Alli get dressed (have to be careful with what underwear she gets.  It might "hurt" her)  Somehow manage to get both babies dressed (they like to roll and fight me until they are free to crawl)

9:45am....."We're hungry.  We need a snack."  Pass out granola bars.

10am.....Clean up all the cereal on the ground.  Dustpan full of fruit loops and cheerios goes into trash-how much even ended up in their mouths?  no one really knows.

10:30....babies crawl into the bathroom and get into the bath toys.  I run in to make sure toilet lid is closed.  It is.  back to cleaning up.

10:40am...find babies by laundry basket pulling out clean folded laundry and tossing it on the floor. 

10:45am.....Babies go down for 1st nap of day.  I clean like a mad woman.

11am.....Ross stops in to get something.  "did you call the window place yet?"  I look at him and say "I'll get right on that (insert sarcasm)"

12pm...Lunch time.  2nd meal of day.  Just got done putting away breakfast.  Kids at the table, babies in the high chairs

12:10pm....Everyone is done,except babies.  Ross walks in the door to eat his lunch (at least he makes his own). 

12:20pm...babies done with lunch, Ross is back at work.  Clean up every ones mess again.  Another dustpan full of scraps into the trash.  2nd meal complete.

12:30pm....quick call window place to see if their in. 

12:35pm....find both babies in the other bathroom that we use for storage.  Babies decided that playing with vases sounded like a good idea.

1pm...One baby in the living room.  Where is the other?  "Reed, where are you?!"  He's found in the bathroom, standing next to toilet.  Look inside toilet to see he's thrown in a Piece of foam.  Look closer, the previous person (one of the kids) did not flush the toilet.  I fish out the foam and throw it in trash.  Reed then gets his hands doused with hand sanitizer. 

1:30pm...decide to make chicken salad for supper.  get going on that.  Not looking forward to chopping up chicken and veggies for it, but I'm excited about eating it later.

1:45pm...hear ripping sound from living room.  find babies with a psalter on the ground and they ripped number 33 in half.  take psalter away and place it higher.

2pm....put both babies to bed for second nap. 

That is as far as I got today. If I could look into the future the rest of the day would look like this.  Put out several fires (fights) between the children,  get babies up from naps and watch them like hawks.  I'm sure I'll pull some stuff out of their mouths that they're not supposed to have, and there will be several more times I check the basement door, and several more times they get into stuff they're not supposed too.  At some point we'll have dinner and then proceed for the best time of the day.  Bedtime.  I love seeing my children, but I always look forward to bedtime.


                                 Luke in green, Reed in grey. 
                                 Reed is using Luke to pull up to stand. 
                                  Luke isn't so happy with this situation.

Events of the Evening

Tonight was taco night.  I don't have a specific night for tacos, rather, we have them once every couple of weeks.  It's one of the kiddos favorite meals, but not my favorite to serve.  It takes awhile to get all the kids settled with their tacos with all the toppings on them.  By the time I get mine assembled, they are ready for another one.  I will not serve tacos if Ross has to work late.  I learned that lesson the hard way last year.  It's not only getting them all assembled but also the clean up afterwards.  Shredded cheese, lettuce, tomato pieces all over the floor and sour cream and salsa and bits and pieces that fell from their mouth all over the table.  During the meal we keep repeating "hold your taco over your plate."   After we finished our yummy supper, I had the bright idea of giving them a bar for desert.  I gave some to the babies too.  Let's just say it was a huge chocolate mess for the babies.  Into the tub we go.  Clay took off with Ross to do an errand, so I had the girls and the babies take a bath together.  Pretty exciting stuff over here when I let them climb in the tub with the babies.  The girls had fun spiking Luke and Reed's hair.  I always lay two towels out on the bathroom floor when I'm ready to get the babies out of the tub.  I usually take Reed out first and wrap the towel around him.  He's slower at getting out of the towel than Luke.  Then I take Luke out.  I hoist them both up on my hips and carry them to their room.  I plopped them down on their carpeted bedroom floor.  They immediately crawled out of their towels and, of coarse, crawl in opposite directions.  They think it's fun to crawl around in their birthday suits.  I have to decide who to diaper first.  I got to Luke first and scrambled to wrestle his diaper on.  He is the worst to get the diaper on.  Twisting and turning this way and that.  Amidst all of this, Reed was standing, in all his glory, by the toy box.  I knew this would happen to me at some point and tonight was the night.  He peed down the side of the toy box and onto brand new carpet.  "Reed, no no!" I exclaimed.  Of coarse, he looked at me with a blank stare and a quick grin.  He's only 11mo old so he doesn't even know he's peeing on the carpet.  I finally had the chance to wrestle his diaper on too.  Phew.  They are done,  I thought.  I decided to let them crawl around in their diapers for a little bit.  Now time to get the girls out of the tub.  At least that part was uneventful.  Leanne came back to me when she had her P.J.s on to get her hair brushed.  I sat by the kitchen table to untangle all of her hair.  Luke and Reed where crawling around the dining room as I was doing this.  I looked over at Reed to see he found a half eaten bar on the floor.  Oh no.  Not again. "Ross, can you help me?" (he must get so sick of me calling for him to help).  Chocolate all down the front of him again. Ross took a rag and wiped him up for me.  It was time to get their p.j.s on and do their inhaler treatments.  Ross took Luke and the kids downstairs for a few minutes and I was starting to set up the nebulizer machine.  I got everything ready to go and went to search for Reed.  I found him with his clean hands in the toilet.  He was having a good ole time splashing his hand in the cold water.  AAARRGGHH.  I promptly picked him up and rewashed his hand.  Ross and I took turns giving each baby a inhaler treatment and got those little rascals to bed. The older kids are now watching their favorite show, Wipe Out.  I decided to let Ross be on duty for a few minutes.  I need a break.

Sunset

This past week I've been playing quite a bit on the piano.  The babies love it.  They rock back and forth to the music.  Anyways, I started playing some hymns and it brought me back to the time I was a resident aide at Sunset Manor and Village (retirement home).  I loved my job taking care of the elderly.  I was 18 when I was a RA, but I started at Sunset when I was almost 16 working in the kitchen and as a waitress (not my favorite).  Being a RA included giving baths, making beds, and helping the residents get ready for the day.
We would also do juice.  Juice is in the afternoon a hour past lunch time.  We would load a cart up with different kinds of juice and a snack.  Another resident aide and I would go door to door to all the residents and give them a snack and juice.  This was really a time to socialize with them also.  I loved talking to Ruby.  She had a thick dutch accent and was hilarious.  Another one of my favorites was Cora.  She had tons of pillows on her bed and liked them lined up, it didn't matter what order just as long as it looked nice.  Then there was Andy.  Everyone knew Andy.  He would grow tomatoes outside by his room and he had so many he gave many away.   Helen lived on the second floor.  She was a quiet resident but she was probably my favorite.  She reminded me of my piano teacher.  I would sing "you are so beautiful to me" to her every time I entered her room.  And she would giggle.  Then there was the other Helen that would give you a kiss with her wet lips every time you saw her.  I would make sure her kiss would end up on my cheek and not my lips.  Occasionally I would work in the dementia unit.  It was a small unit.  Probably about 15 people lived there.  I really liked working there.  For the most part, they lived in there own little world.  They lived in yesterday, when they were young.  I used to make peanut butter cookies with them and we would sit around the table and talk before it was time for bed.  There was one lady (I can't remember her name) who had a piano in her room.  I asked if she would play it for me and she did.  When I gave report at the end of my shift, the regular workers told me that she hadn't played that piano since moving to the unit.  I don't know why she played it that day, but she did.  There was a assisted living unit upstairs that consisted of 6 or 7 residents.  These residents required a little more help then others.  The other Helen with the wet kisses lived here.  It was not my favorite place to work but I still enjoyed it.  Whenever I would work, I would gather the residents and bring them down to the sitting room and play the piano for them.  They would request songs (some I could not play at all)  and we would sing.  That's why when I played some older hymns it brought me back to sunset.  I'm sure that all the residents I wrote about have since passed away, but they will be forever alive in my memory. 

Family Night

Our family attempts to do one special night a week at home.  We usually make pizza from scratch and let the kids pick a movie to watch while we eat it.  The whole family looks forward to, what we dubbed, family night.  We eat together every night, but this is our special night. 


                                                    Homemade pizza dough

                                                                   Allison kneading the dough

                                                         Clay's turn kneading the dough

Leanne's turn

While we let the dough rise, we usually try to get all the kids bathed.

They love to press it in the pizza pans

                                                                 Yum Yum, mozzarella cheese

                             They all get to put toppings on.  This requires a lot
                               of patience on my part.

Our finished pizzas

Family time in the basement.  Even the babies get to be part of it.

Our kids love family time.  If we have to miss it because of other things going on, the kids are very disappointed.  I'm happy that they love to spend time with mom and dad.