Dead Wrong

Dead wrong, yup, I was dead wrong.  I didn't know I was wrong until we reached that point.  I thought it would be easier, but it's not easier, just different.  I'm no longer a zombie, but instead I feel haggard. The thing that I was dead wrong about is that I told myself, when I was extremely exhausted from sleep deprivation, that it would be so much easier when they turned one.  They, being my precious, mischievous, getting into the toilet bowl, crawling in sissy's room, taking things out of the cupboards, pulling each others hair, hitting each other, stealing each others food, crawling on the table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, standing up constantly in their seats, putting things in their mouths that are not supposed to be in there, crawling over the other one cause they don't realize they can go around, crawling crawling crawling everywhere, and forget about taking them downstairs, that is a whole new world down there.  Down there is a toy room that they shouldn't go into.  Down there are way to many little parts like, Lego's, Barbie accessories, little itty bitty toys that just do NOT belong in their mouths.  Down there are two more bedrooms they shouldn't go into.  But if they do get a chance to go down there and the room doors are open, they are in there.  Down there is another bathroom that is off limits, but we have other shorties that forget to shut the door when they are down there.  And between down there and up there are the stairs.  They know how to climb them, over and over and over and over times 2, but they can't get back down unless they use their heads as a cushion as they fall.  It's just best if we stay up here.  Who are these little adorable lovable, give me a 2 tooth smile and makes it all worth it? Who are the ones that giggle and hang onto mommy's pant legs while she's trying to make dinner?  Who are the ones that greet daddy with big smiles and drool?  I think we all know who the culprits are.  Why it's Luke Grant and Reed Lane.  Cutest twins ever.

Leanne turns 7

Leanne, my oldest, turned 7 years old this past Friday.  She is my helper and I miss her a lot when she's at school.  She is very good with the twins and has a take charge attitude. Her favorite color is pink and her favorite hobby is arts and crafts.  She hates dolls and never did like to play dress up.  She still likes Thomas the train and her other favorite thing to do is reading.  She's currently reading The Boxcar Children books. 

Here's a few pictures of her growing  up

Leanne when she was a baby

1 year old



Leanne, 2 years old, with her brother,Clay

Leanne's 3rd birthday

 

 

 

 

in Disney World

 

 

 

 

First day of preschool

 

 

First day of kindergarten

 

 

 

 

 

First day of first grade

 

 

 

 

Leanne is a good big sister

 

 

 

I can't believe she is 7 years old.  It went so fast.  I hope that God grants us many more years to be parents of this bright little girl.  Happy Birthday Leanne!

 



Brave

Brave.  Yup, that's what I was yesterday.  Brave.  I was going to go to Target before I met the school bus when I only had the four younger children, but decided against it when I remembered that Leanne needed to pick out her birthday treat.  Brave.  I picked Leanne up and then we were off.  I debated if I should take my double stroller or pile the twins and Alli into the cart.  The cart won.  Alli went in the front of the cart and the twins went in the big area of the cart. The older kids walked along side of the cart. Brave.  I've made a scene at the library before with the five, but this was my first time to go to a bigger store without Ross along for help.  GULP.  Since the twins were occupying the larger area of the cart, I debated if I wanted to take another cart or get a basket to put underneath my cart.  I opted for the basket underneath the cart since we didn't need many things.  We were off.  We got Leanne's treat and she had a big selection because the halloween candy was out.  That was the first things into the basket.  The twins heaved whatever was in their area over the side so I was thankful I chose to take a basket along.  Trying to act normal while people stare at you can be hard.  I try to ignore them.  We continue.  The twins are no longer sitting down, but standing up and holding onto the sides of the cart.  They were so happy!!  Go down another aisle and a lady exclaims "TWINS".  I smile and nod my head and continue on my way.  Get a few more thing and check them off my list.  Pass another lady in a aisle, she points and smiles.  I think to myself, I create a scene where ever we go.  I'm almost done.  I'm starting to get hot.  I can't wait to leave.  Everyone was behaving wonderful.  I even let them look at the toys for a few minutes.  The kids don't get out much.  We head to the check out.  While in line, a lady in the next aisle makes my day and makes the trip really worth it.  She says to me, "I've been watching you as you went through the store (who hasn't?), and you're twins are the cutest things I've ever seen.  At one point, one of them had his arm around the other one (I didn't see them do that, but I was very preoccupied).  Your kids did good in the store.  You're a good mom."  I think that what every mom wants to hear.  Thank you to that very kind woman who went out of her way for telling me that.  It truly brightened my brave day.  After that we proceeded to go out of the store and I got everyone in the car and went home.  Maybe when I get up enough courage and nerve, I'll do this again someday.   

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.