This is so crazy....I have no words...

We went to a place called "Bouncing Off The Walls" last night for Family Fun Night. You pay one fee and the kids get to play on all of the "equipment" there, plus you get pizza and soda pop. Sounds like fun huh? They have a huge room - Lauren's old gym - with lots of those blow up mazes, slides and bouncy houses. Plus, lots of room to run and be crazy. Tucked back in the corner is their Velcro Wall - who knew it would induce so much terror into our lives that night....


We had been at the facility for probably 30 mins. The kids had been playing around and wanted to go back on the velcro wall. So, we suited them up. The way it works is they were velcro suits and there is a bouncy platform that they use to jump onto the well. Lots of fun and the velcro is super strong - it even held Jason up. Well, the kids were playing and Lauren caught a bad bounce which knocked her over the side face first. She kind of somersaulted off and landed right on her back. Well she was screaming so loud that I was sure her neck was broken. Nope, no injuries but we never expected what we had found...she had landed flat on her back, into a pile of velcro suits. So, her hair was sandwiched between the suit she had on and the suit she had fallen on and she was STUCK...seriously stuck. It took us nearly an hour to pull her hair out of the velcro, but I was dead set on NOT cutting it. She recovered fairly quickly and had a pretty good time. The owners felt horrible and offered to give her a free stuffed animal, so that seemed to help with things.

The second worst part of the adventure was coming the snarls out of her hair. It took the rest of that night and then some more time today getting the rats out. She lost about a hand full of hair, but I guess we are lucky we didn't have to cut it. Such a crazy, crazy thing to happen - it was seriously miserable for her (of course) and for daddy and I to try and comb it out. Here are some pics of the event:

Not a great picture, but it gives you an idea of what the wall and velcro suits look like:

Lauren, at home after we pulled her hair from the suit

Starting in the bath by trying to dig out the elastics, then pouring conditioner and painfully combing and picking through her hair

It all looks so easy here, doesn't it?

This is the SECOND day - daddy's still picking through it. We finally got them all out, but her hair is quite a bit thinner...I am so mortified!

Oh yes - another edition to our family...

We added a new member to our little family on Monday. I finally got a picture of him and am just getting around to posting it. His name is Cooper and he LOVES to play with the kids. He is quite comical and has been entertaining us since he arrived. As daddy says to Lauren "he's not a barbie doll - stop dragging him around!". So you can imagine our house is very busy right now what with getting him settled and with the kids learning how to treat and handle him. He is very sweet and fun and needed a good home. He is full grown, but quite a bit smaller than you would expect. I will write more and post more pics as I get them. But for now...introducing COOPER!

Just a little maternal panic...

As I was working today and noting dates on various documents it occurred to me that we had passed the half way mark on this year and then I began to panic...
It seems I do this periodically. If I think too much about how quickly my baby is growing up (that is; my baby who turned 5 years old this year), I begin to panic. Am I crazy or does every mother do this to some degree?

I always worry that I will forget the stages and ages of her life. Will I forget how small her hands were when she was little? Will I forget the sound of her voice or the way she pronounces certain words with her toddler vernacular? Will I forget how her hair smelled or the things she loved from day to day? With photos and camcorders; scrapbooking and baby books; journals and blogs I know I am capturing these moments (or at least attempting to), but it's just so different than the real thing to me sometimes. So I was a bit melancholy for a moment and I took some time to look through her baby pictures.

I just can't believe life is flying by so fast. There are so many things I want to do that I hope I can fit them all in and still be a good Mom, Wife, Friend, Daughter, Sister, etc. I'm sure it will all work out just fine...in the meantime I will still cry from time to time over these photos. (Oh yes, while speaking of time flying by...take a look at what I posted at the bottom of my blog page...yup, only 155 days left!!!!)

Truly, a thankless job

I don't know why, but I am always amazed at how thankless being a mother can be (and being a stepmother - even more thankless). I enjoy it immensely, but sometimes, some days, you just want to hear "gee, thanks mom for all that you do!".

So it's Monday, a day when the weekend is over and the long work week begins; a day when I am almost always a little melancholy.
To make a long story short, I am amazed at how daddy can sweep into the house and be the hero of the day while I am standing in the midst of settling dust, buzzing clothes dryer timers, scents of bathroom cleaner and piles of "to be done" laundry. I had spent the morning cleaning bathrooms, straightening up after kids, making breakfast for 3 (yes, a hot breakfast), starting 5 loads of laundry, vacuuming the house, making jello, brownies, lunch, clay for the girls because they were "bored", watering the flowers outside as well as our little garden, begging my 5 year old not to jump on the couch, putting her in time out, asking the kids to stop picking at each other, asking the kids not to jump with the balls on the trampoline, removing countless splinters from my 5 year old's fingers (cause she had to climb the fence to see what was on the other side)all of this while putting in a few hours at my full time job. Well, at 1:30 dad walks in the door and the kids all rave....."it's Daddy!". Now, he was very helpful when he got home, he got my 12 year old to mow the lawn - which was a great help. As the kids began to wander around they started in with the "I'm hungries". Really?? I think. I had made them lunch 1/2 hour earlier...and granted it wasn't anything great but sandwiches are a good lunch for summer days (especially when we have been eating out as much as we have). Well, I probably have two of the pickiest children in the world along with another child who eats barely enough to keep a bird alive so I don't know why I am so surprised when 2 of the kids didn't eat much of anything and the third picked at her food. But...I refuse to run an open kitchen for the picky and the disinterested, so they know it's eat it or go hungry until the next meal. But, dear old daddy (who was being very helpful) made them each a "peanut butter surprise" sandwich. What I established was that he put peanut butter on bread, poured on the chocolate syrup and the kids LOVED IT.
So, see what I mean. Daddy, the hero every time. All I wanted to do was make sure everyone had a clean home, clean laundry, healthy meals, yummy deserts for after dinner and oh yes, make some money on the side....Thankless, I tell you - thankless.

I hate to end a post on a negative note though, so I have to say that I am proud of my clean home, I am proud that my children have clean clothes to wear and that they get nutritious meals and that I am able to help provide for my family financially. I have happy, healthy polite and for the most part great children who I know love me and someday...someday, they will look back and see all that I have done for them. I wouldn't trade being a mother for anything else, no matter how difficult it can be.

Swimming and Yummy Kabobs.

We found a great swimming pool in Sunriver today. We have driven past it before, but have never planned the trip out there. So, we packed the kids up at about noon and headed over. We stayed for about 4 hours, it was a great day for swimming. The kids had a blast, even Lauren who is not a big fan of actually being in the water (which her picture will show). There is a "baby" pool though at about 1 foot deep and she played quite a bit in there - even by herself! The coolest thing about this pool is that every hour at quarter to the hour, the kids have to get out of the big pool and it's adult swim for 15 minutes. No kids, no splashing, no screaming and yelling...no extra shenanigans. So nice! We will definitely be going back soon. Enjoy some pics from our day and some yummy kabobs that Jason made for dinner the other night. They were so pretty that I had to take some pics.

Our family photos

As promised...photos from our family photo shoot. They turned out really great, I think. I have more to post later...

Thought of the day and a thought from my baby girl...

"We become what we think about all day long" Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was painting the girls toenails last night - the cutest summer pink. We are having family photos taken today and I we will all be barefoot so I wanted the girls to have pretty toes.

Anyway...Jason was taking the polish off of Lauren's toes and fingers from the 4th of July and little Lauren looked up and said "My toes look empty". Then when I had finished painting her little nails she said, "Look, they're not empty anymore. Now I'm pretty again".

She is such a doll and a little diva...

I'll post our family pics once we get them back...

Mini Vacation

We took off on Friday morning (ok, late morning) to head to the Oregon Coast. We ended up in Reedsport which is the southern part of the coast - somewhere we had never been before. Got a little hotel room there - it was about 7pm. We had some yummy seafood and then headed back to the hotel for some swimming. It was a fun trip over and evening as well. Jason and I left the kids in the hotel room for like 5 minutes just to run downstairs and get them a candy bar in the lobby. We came back to the hotel phone ringing...and I knew just what it was. Apparently the kids had been jumping from bed to bed (and I'm guessing landing on the floor in between)...we had a noise complaint from below. So Jason told them that the hotel was going to call the police if they acted up any more and that seemed to take care of it. It was hilarious though...I guess 3 kids can get into trouble pretty quickly...especially when they are as excited as they were.

Next morning we headed up the coast, stopped at "Winchester Bay" for a minute and eventually ended up in Newport. We grabbed a hotel room there and then headed down to the beach for some fun. Here are some pics of our adventure:

The beautiful Oregon coast...
Alex...

Kira doing cartwheels...

Digging in the sand with dad...

The baby....

Sand art by the kids..

Lauren drawing "Eve" from Wall-e...such a cute movie!

Sand sculpture by dad...the kids helped by adding the nose hair.

We also found some sea creatures on our adventure...some of which just had to make the trip home with us...a few sand crabs and clams (not pictured).

The crab in the red bucket is "cheetoh" as named by Kira...he was not feeling well when we got home so the kids were all worried that he was going to die.

The other crabs (horrible color, I know, but I still don't have my photo editing software loaded yet)...I think this is "pepsi" and the little guy on his head is "pringles".

I'm not sure these guys will last, but the kids are having fun with them for now.

We got home Sunday night at about 9pm - it was a great mini-vacation and we were all sad to leave.

We were really excited when we got home and found that our little spider charlotte had returned. If you remember from posts past, the story of our cat face spider family...this is the third generation "charlotte". You can see she is just a baby, but she had her little web spun and was quick to eat the tiny bug that Jason threw in her net.

We are hoping she will stick around for the summer, grow and have her babies here too. This all coming from the mom who hates spiders...but seriously, you have got to LOVE a spider who chooses to spend her life in your backyard and who's babies return to the same spot to live out their lives.

Oh, yes I almost forgot...on our way over to the coast we stopped to have a picnic at Belknap Hot Springs. There was a tiny little butterfly who was quite fond of Lauren...he landed on her finger and spent nearly the whole time there...it was pretty difficult to get him off when we were ready to leave. We'll call her the butterfly whisperer from now on.....