Fabulous Family!

This Thanksgiving, we took advantage of being close enough to drive up to my brother's house. We went, we stayed, we overindulged. We had a great time! Out kids got along nicely, I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with my sister-in-law, Kera and it was a really wonderful Thanksgiving. We hung out a few days and parted sadly. I am so glad we live close enough to do it again!

I will not bore you with all the things I am thankful for, but they are many. I will however, bore you with the pictures. Be happy; I have many, many more things I'm grateful for than I have pictures here!

With 4 adults and 11 children in the house, it was only minorly distressing that the dishwasher was broken. Kera put my kids to work with hers and I was amazed at how well they dealt with the mountains of dishes each day. Amazed, I say!

Hanging out, waiting for the feast.

Pre-turkey gobbling.

The wait was worth it, Thanksgiving dinner was divine.

And the pie..... ahhh, the pie!

Charlotte had her own way to eat it. Or maybe she just wanted a chocolate moisturizer?

How many children are in this tree?!! There are at least 4 in there. Unfortunately, in her quest to the top, Callie fell down and broke her crown. Well, she did fall from the very top and she did bonk her head. she's a tough cookie. She only fell because a branch broke.

Check it out, even Joshua was up in the tree!

Marian and Aaron played really well together. They were so cute on the front lawn doing whatever building project they were doing.

Something about Marian and trees.....

Joshua claimed he was so bored he didn't have anything to do except this.

The little kids never got bored! Check out how much fun a trampoline can be!

And I am at a loss to explain this. But I was in hysterics as I took the picture!

The DS was quite the entertainer. The kids were pretty good at sharing.

Oh yeah! We broke out the Apples to Apples and had a good time playing. I might have won had I not looked down at my pile and wondered why on earth I had cards there. I put them back with the other cards before realizing they had been MY cards! Oops.

We went out to the park and ran the kids around to settle the pie.

Not only do I love Rylee's face in this picture, I love that you can see Marian in the top corner.

Yep, she made it up there. and back down.

Delaney had fun. She always does!

Oh, and I had to get a shot of the pies. This was only half. There were 3 chocolate truffle, 4 pumpkin, 2 pecan, 2 apple, 1 each of lemon meringue, banana cream and blueberry. Oh, the deliciousness!

Grumble grumble

I want to blog. I really really do. I want to sit down and write all the posts that I have written in my head. Unfortunately, I can't get my life to cooperate. And I certainly can't get my children to cooperate. It is now 9:20 and I think the last child has gone to bed. The silence is glorious. I don't think I have had a moment today that was not filled with some form of talking, whining, crying, screaming, griping, howling or shouting- mostly aimed at me. Rylee is on some kind of grouchy streak, and when she's not screeching at me, she's demanding to be cuddled. If I'm not cuddling her, she's crying and pawing at me. She has also learned to pinch and scratch. You try accomplishing anything under those circumstances!

And I try to remember that she is more important than the laundry that is piling up and so very much needs to be folded. And I try to remind myself that her feelings are more important than ordering that Christmas present off Amazon right now. And I try to remind myself that her emotional needs should be more important than balancing the checkbook. And I try to remind myself that a good mother would hold her child rather than compose a nasty letter to the school that requires the right thought to get the right tone. Sigh. And that's just the one child! The others also needed me and today, the incessant cacophony of their demanding voices has about driven me to the brink.

Thank goodness tomorrow is another day.

And thank goodness for ice cream!

Kid Perspective

I got a lovely little kodak camera for cheap and it has been quite the handy little gadget! It has proven durable enough for the kids to use and it is simple to use. I like to put it on picture mode and let them play with it. Here are some of the shots the kids have taken.

Always adorable, and currently permanently attached to the binkey.

I think Delaney had the camera here.

Its my boy!

Could be a self portrait, could have been any of the other girls taking this picture!

My funny Callie.

Ah, Delaney's series of self portraits.

Delaney really really likes this little camera. It has provided her with many hours of fun. It gives me many, many pictures to delete.

Yeah, the camera quality disintegrates in poor lighting. This kid still has some awesome cheeks!

And she sure is a cutie.

Oh, look! A picture of me. This was one of the very few that actually had my whole face in it.

Marian from Delaney level.

Dan, by Callie!

A Zoo at the Zoo

For some unknown reason, the kids get the entire week off at Thanksgiving. I know, the whole week! So I took them all to the Zoo yesterday. It was a fantastic day. 80 degree weather was tempered by a lovely breeze, the animals cooperated, and the kids were surprisingly good. I was going to just put a few pictures up, but the kids were so darn funny and I had SO many pictures! So, um, there are a lot.

This is my favorite shot of the day! The kids are all sitting on the little duck family statues. And Joshua's heroic pose cracks me up. I love these kids!

The girls, checking out the elephants.

My two funniest children posing with the honey bear. The sign next to it says "How do you compare" to how big the bear gets.

Is that a monkey in the tree?! Nope, just Marian. She got bored when we stopped for a snack.

My 4 favorite girls! I had to stop them from climbing the pole. Silly pickles.

Again, these guys crack me up! They were quite cooperative in letting me take their picture, and in asking for pictures to be taken. I love their personalities.

Joshua is Peeking! Rylee nearly gave me a heart attack as she had to "Do it Self!!" to climb up on the rock. They thought that little snake statue was awesome. It was pretty cool.

Another picture that had me in giggles. I love that Marian is on the cheetah and Callie is on the gazelle. I did not encourage this! They did it and asked for a picture.

Callie had this face in a lot of pictures.

It was hot enough the kids were happy to kick off their shoes and go wading. Only 3 of them got saturated pants.

Yep, this was one of them.

I could not get Rylee to look at me. She was fascinated with the monkey behind her. I think it is holding a (fake) shoe.

Checking out the giraffes.

Enjoying the Mayan section of Jungle Junction of the Zoo.

They had this spot where you could dig up "artifacts" and stones from the Mayans. Let me tell you just how awesome it was to have children in wet clothes go in to dig. Ug. Next time we do the dig first and the wading next.

This sign was too great to pass up!

So, we had an awesome time at the Zoo. The kids got to use the little camera and I should post the pictures they took. The Zoo from their perspective was interesting and surprisingly full of good shots. But I think I have posted enough pictures for one day!

I report

We tried some new things this week. First off, I decided I needed to enjoy my children more. I really DO like being home with them and I really DO like them. I just get overwhelmed sometimes with their constant needs and wants and whining. I decided I wanted to have a better attitude, and I wanted to enjoy being with them more. So I worked on that. When Delaney came up to me wanting something, I tried more often to put aside what I was doing and take time to be with her. When Rylee needed snuggling, I tried to give her that lap time, rather than trying to distract her. When Marian wanted to talk about things, I tried to give her my attention and actually talk with her, rather than just inserting random "Hmmmm, how interesting"s.

How did it go? Well, there were still a lot of times where I was not thrilled with my children, but there were a lot of times they really were fun to be with. Walking home with Delaney and pretending with her was quite funny. She has a great imagination! Riding Marian's scooter was pretty thrilling, although I may be a little too old to be cruising around like that! I think I laughed more with the kids this week, and I do feel like I enjoyed them more.

I chose to be home with them. This is where I want to be. And If I am going to be here, I want to enjoy it. So I am going to continue to work on finding the moments that are great, and taking the time to enjoy being the mom.

Secondly, I finally, finally got a workable chore chart together. The kids are pretty good about doing things we ask them, but we felt ready to tackle a regular and consistent method this week. The results were good. It was nice to have a designated table-setter, and there was a lot less complaining about it getting done. The dining room was significantly cleaner this week, which was wonderful!! The sweeper, may not have gotten all the stuff off the floor every night, and may have simply swept it all into a pile, but at least it was a huge improvement. Plus, Callie was thrilled to do it and inspired her younger sisters to tackle the rest of the rooms in the house with the dust mop. Having a child designated to wipe down the table necessitated me getting all the dishes off said table and has kept the table much cleaner throughout the day. An added bonus was getting to see Marian with wet-wipes on her hands and her knees wiping down the table. I let the crawling on the table slide, since she WAS cleaning it thoroughly!

While Delaney may not have been the best dishwasher, she was certainly an enthusiastic one and the dishes were ready for the dishwasher when she was done with them. And she had a great time doing it. So I will say that the chore chart has been a rousing success thus far. I hope that when the excitement of a new routine wears off, that they will still have it as a habit.

It was a good week, and I'm sorry for the lack of posts. I was busy spending time with my children!

Weekend Bliss

I just wanted you to see exactly what Delaney's self-done hair do looks like. Between the chop job and her 2 cowlicks, she's got a little too much going on there. I took her to get it evened up and the lady did a great job shaping the hair and evening what she could. It was vastly improved, although you could still tell she'd done a hatchet job on it.

(This is the "Before" shot, by the way!)

(This is the "After" picture.) This is the only shot I have of the new hair. See, cute!

And yes, we went to the playground on Saturday. Yes, this was Joshua's attitude. He did manage to have fun, even if he complained and said he wouldn't enjoy himself at all. I love his face in this picture. Everyone else looks fine and he's making a doofy face. That's my boy!

Callie definitely had fun!

And Rylee had a great time on this teeter-totter. Her siblings were very good about bouncing her on it whenever she asked. It was really sweet to see them all play really nicely together.

This was also a popular item. Anything that can be vigorously abused is popular around here!