ANN-A-VER-SA-RIES

Lisa, do you remember that commercial? Something about a guy talking about special events and the girl was in the background trying to remind him about one specific special day...ok, whatever... So, yes, today is our anniversary...6 whole years...date night was supposed to be tonight but may have to be cancelle. Chloe has had a fever for a few days and got her in to the doctor...she has strep...not fun. I just hope none of the other girls get it...or worse, Bryan. I think he is worse when he is sick than the kids are!!! EDIT: So we did go out...to a wonderful place called Texas de Brazil....wonderful all you can eat steakhouse, about 20 different kinds of meat coming around on skewers to your table, a little pricey, but totally worth it!!!

Hanging out

Hana and Maddisonwanted to take some pictures...They did pretty good!

Smores

We decided on Saturday to make a fire in the back and roast marshmellows. It was the girls first time. They helped daddy find sticks and wood in the afternoon/evening and couldnt wait till it got dark out. Daddy made little benches for us to sit on. Bubba was out with us for a couple hours and didnt run away! It was so much fun just sitting around being a family and talking, without having a tv on in the background. The girls loved it so much, I think we are doing it again tonight for family home evening!

Cousins

Lisa and her kids, Maia and Stella, visited for a few days. We all had a blast. It has been 2 years since we got together. Here are some pics from the visit. I have more from my other camera that I will post later.

We tried

The whole family was in Sarasota this year and Grandma really wanted family pictures taken on the beach, everyone wearing tan and white. It seemed like a big deal. I saw the other families pictures and they looked so nice! It was our turn, and we picked the windiest and coldest day of all. We could hardly stand up. This was our finished product. The girls and my hair is supposed to be down, but the wind blew it so it looks like its in a ponytail. We did it the other direction too, and our hair is all in our faces. Nice.

Just a day of dress up

The house

Just a few pics of the home. The one of Bubba laying in the grass is our front yard. Chloe loves to be out with Bubba and mommy...she loves to go let him out of his pen!

Man I am tired

She put her baby on one blankie and she layed down on her other one...they have to do the same things all the time!

Chloe wanted to help me clean today!

Flowers

Bad day yesterday. Then, I got flowers from dad. Thanks! Maddie said they looked sad. This morning they look happy! I need the name of the site you ordered them from. They were the freshest flowers I have ever seen. So fresh they still had dirt all over them!!

The floors

I decided to try to clean the grout in the house last night. They looked pretty gross. Wow, what a difference. It looks like we have new floors. In one spot, I thought the tile was supposed to be tan, in fact, after cleaning, they are white tiles. Nasty. The bathrooms too. They look great now.

The picture isnt the best, but you get the idea. The grout is white and look how black it used to be.

We are here

We are in the house. I sure hope this is the last move! The house is good, like I said before, it has potential. Easy to add on to. After moving, we realized the girls rooms are huge. They have twice the room than before. It is so nice. We are lacking storage space, bathroom space and there is no pantry. Bryan went out and bought a cabinet thing to put in our laundry room till we can afford to redo the kitchen and do a pantry. After moving, we realized also that there is only one phone jack that works, the bedrooms and office ones dont work. I was getting ready for church Sunday and the outlets in the bathrooms dont work and there are just a few that work in the whole house. Taking a shower...well, it has to be done in the girls bathroom, ours leaks, and you have to crouch down to get the water on your head. Dad, dont come visit till we take care of this!!! And, showers are limited to 3 minutes if you want it warm...luke warm. I tried to do laundry, they hookups for the washer are broken!! Man, I am glad we are renting for now! The plumbers come tomorrow, electricians some time next week. I have a feeling the whole house needs to be re-wired. But, the owner pays for it all!!!! The only thing we have to pay for is remodeling. The kids love it, except for the bugs. Cant wait to see my sister next week. It has been 2 long years!!! We are waiting on a few more things for the girls rooms and I will do pictures when they are done. Hope everyone is doing well.

Perfect timing

Or not so perfect. Bryans truck broke down the other day so he has had my car. Which means, I cant get to the house during the day to do what needs to be done. Plus, it isnt easy to move stuff in my car, so the moving has been halted till the truck is fixed. It is kinda hard for Bryan to go from a big F350 to a Jeep Commander...and for me to go from that to nothin! If only it was next week! Then, this morning, Bryan stayed home for a while so I could go grocery shopping...much needed when all you have in the fridge is butter and milk! On the way, Hana said her tummy hurt. All of a sudden I hear her throw up. All over the new car. Nice! I pulled over. Luckily, I always keep a towel in the car for emergencies like this, since the same thing happened when she was 2. We cleaned her up as much as possible and turned around and headed home. She took a bath and is now in my bed watching Parent Trap, her favorite movie. When I am not here at the computer, I am holding a can of Lysol in one hand and hand sanitizer in the other. I sprayed every toy I could reach and hopefully the other ones wont get it, or me!

I hate painting

All the rooms in the house need to be repainted. Did I mention I hate painting? Hate it. Love it when its done. Chloe's blue/chocolate room is DONE! Maddie and Hana's pink/chocolate room is DONE! Bryan is in charge of the rest, which wont get done before we move, I will be surprised if it is done this year!! Plus, he decided to spend a fortune on tons of paint to paint the whole house, and started a little bit in EVERY room, bathrooms, hallways, living room, kitchen, master bed, and I hate the color!!! Nice. I guess its ok for the living areas, not the kitchen and definatly not the bathrooms. Its a beige color, which I think looks green and ugly. Oh well, the bathrooms are small enough that I can repaint them. I just think bathrooms need to be bright and colorful, not drab and blah, which is how I feel when I see the color. Pictures to come....

Rodeo

We took the kids to the rodeo here in town last night. It was late, 7pm, and when you have a child that goes to bed at 6, it gets hard when it is 9 and the rodeo is still going on. Chloe didnt know what to do with herself at times, but she was good. The girls loved it. They thought it was so much fun. I didnt know what to expect. I thought it was just a hometown rodeo with local competetors. Nope. People from all over, even Australia, were competing. PBR announcer Mike Mathis was the announcer and the PBR bullfighters and Barrelmen were there. It was so funny. At one point, the bullfighter got inside the barrel and the bull came up and tipped it right over, upside down. Hana was laughing hysterically. She loved the bulls. One man got trampled pretty bad and had to be taken out on a board. They had bareback bucking broncos...crazy! Lots of roping and Hana's favorite, barrel racing. She asked me why the girls and boys in the show were dressed up like cowboys and cowgirls, I told her they were real ones. She could not believe it. We had a great time and hope you can enjoy the pics. They dont do it justice and wish I could have taken more, but most of the time we were juggling the kids!

Preview

I always wanted a little old farmhouse to fix up. Be careful what you wish for! We got it alright. The new house is cute and has potential...which is just a nice way of saying its a dump! We have 2 weeks before we move in and a lot of work to do. For starters, I took some before photos and will share after when the time comes. Here is a preview...this is the horrid bathroom that I told you about, Dad...love the colors! The photo actually looks good. But, in real life, the tile is all moldy and falling out, the floor is brown and gross, the walls are 3 different colors, the crown molding looks like it has been up there and not painted for 20 years. As far as the other bathroom, the shower is mustard color and the walls are seafoam...tell me when that went together. The master bed is decent, same with the living room. The kitchen has its original cabinets, and who knows when those were put in. I thought I would take out the shelf liner and put in new stuff...I started to peel it out and found 6 layers of it...all the way to some that had to be from the 60's. Hana and Maddie's bedroom was alright...a tan color, with holes and dents all over the walls. I painted 2 walls Chocolate today and later will go back and do the other 2 a light pink. Chloes room is a pinkish lavender with butterflies painted all over. It was cute, but so worn out, it needs to be painted. We did under the chair rail the same chocolate that was done in the other room and are going to pick another color for the top. There is so much more to be done, little by little. Our funds for this are limited each month, so we will do one room at a time. We are renting with the intention to buy in a few years and possibly add on to it. The owner said he would gut it and redo everything. Bryan would rather do it himself. He doesnt want to try to buy it in a year or so and have the man say, well, I did put $50,000 into it....instead, maybe he will see the work Bryan did and take off the price...plus, he wants it done his way!!! More pictures to come!!!

Packing

Chloe thought it would be nice to help me pack! What a lovely thought!

Maddison has been sleeping in our bed since she got out of the hospital when she was 5 weeks old. She goes through spurts where she will sleep in her room, all night, without getting up. It usually lasts for a week. Then, its back into our room in the middle of the night. And when she is in our bed, its not like she just sleeps in between us. She has to have my arm around her and cuddled as close as possible. I always just related it to the fact that she loves to cuddle. Last night she started it up again. I put her to bed and she wants me in her room. I told her I would stay for a few minutes and then come back later when Bubba is in his bed. I sat next to her and she said she wanted me in her bed. I told her i was too big for her bed to which she replied "Then I cant feel you" "What do you mean you cant feel me?" "When I sleep, I have to feel you, or else I cant sleep" So, I put my arm around her, she grabbed my hand, put it under her face with her hand for a few minutes. Then she told me "You can put your arm wherever you want, as long as I can feel you" So sweet! I left a few minutes later, thinking she was asleep, and went to do some laundry. I heard some little footsteps, and she was in my room. I asked what the problem was and she said she couldnt feel me anymore! I went back into her room, and was with her and asked why she had to feel me when she slept. She told me "Because I love you so much" Melts a mothers heart. That is why I am a mom! Chloe is starting to talk a little more. Just a few words here and there. She said baby today, mama is her new word...she says it way too much!! I am still worried that she is behind in her speaking. She does babble a lot! She has her own little language and will come tell a story and you do not know a single word she says...and she will tell her sisters off! Hana is just growing fast. She loves going to church and going to primary. She loves her teacher there. When we get in the car to go home, she is always telling me scripture stories and what she learned. In our church, when you turn 8, you get baptized. Only because they feel that 8 is the age when they feel the kids are old enough to understand the meaning of it fully. So, Hana turned to me the other day and said "I cant wait till I turn 8. I get to be bathtized and then I am clean of the bad things I did and I can be like Jesus. He was bathtized" She is always surprising me with the knowledge that she has, and she isnt even in school yet!

Thanks for all the prayers. We made it through the tornados. The worst of it was about 1 hour north of us, but there were a couple just a few miles from us. We had lots of warnings, severe storms, but none hit us. Bryan had the opportunity to go with 500 other members of the church to help out on Saturday. They said they were the biggest church group, and only really, there. They felt like they didnt do a whole lot in comparison to the amount of destruction, but I know that just being willing to help made the people feel good. They cleaned up homes and helped elderly look through the rubble for salvageable items. He said it was real sad to be there among the distruction....worse than what it shows on the tv. He was also able to fill up trucks from our church with over $40,000 worth of food for the people, and tonight, more trucks will be filled from the storehouse here. He told me saturday morning that he didnt want to go. He was looking forward to spending the day with the family. I told him to go, cause if it was me, I would want someones husband helping me out. News at home, we are moving, even though Bryan has not talked to our landlord to get out of our lease. We have 2 1/2 weeks. I have a feeling that he is going to tell me after I have packed that we will wait till the end of March! Anyway, yes, moving again. We found a home that is a little smaller, but on 5 acres, much better than the 1/5th we are on now! We will stay there till Bryan can build a home for us. We may end up building on this land. We will see. I am just ready to have no stairs again and to have the dog outside!! The girls all woke up yesterday with colds. Hopefully it wont last long. Maddie gets so sick. Last night she was up crying because her nose was stuffy, which makes it worse, and when she cries hard enough, she always throws up. So, midnight, I am giving her a bath...she didnt sleep well. I went to the store and got her some new medicine so hopefully tonight will be better! Thanks again to every prayer! Sorry about the loss last night!! I fell asleep after the 3rd quarter...it was hopeless!

Its been a busy couple of days. I am trying harder to post more often, but not sure how long that will last! Thursdays a friend of mine and I switch off every other week watching each others kids so that we have a couple hours to ourselves to do whatever we need to do. Well, it was my turn this week to go out! We had to do it Wednesday, cause she had an appt. yesterday. So, I dropped the kids off at 10, went to Target and bought some clothes for the girls...they have all hit a growth spurt and dont fit in their clothes anymore. I went to a few other places, stopped by and said hi to Bryan, got a snack wrap at McD's...not a big fan of that place but I was starved!!! and then headed back to pick up the kids. I really didnt do a lot, but it is nice to get out without tugging 3 little munchkins along! In the afternoon, we took Bubba to the park for a long time, had dinner and then went to Orlando to see a friend who just had a baby. He was adorable! Yesterday, I watched my friends daughter while she took her son to the doctor. We played, made choc. chip muffins, colored, and then went to the playground and played...had a picnic and played some more! Two hours we were there...it was such a beautiful day. My children are so happy outside! Chloe loved the fact that she can climb up the playground and go down the slides by herself. When we got home, it was her bedtime. She slept for 2 hours and then we went back to the park with Bubba. The girls played and met some new friends. It started raining, so we had to go. We had dinner and then I took Bubba, and Maddie, for a 3 mile walk. It rained some more and when we woke up we found out that tornados ripped through just north of us. It is devistating. We got some pretty bad storms this morning, but its all good here!! So, today, we are staying in. I have lots of laundry to do. Lots of vaccuming to do! We will probably make some cookies, go to the park, hopefully find out about our lease and if we can get out. I will keep you posted on that too!! Go Bears!!