And a Couple of Random Pictures

Laura was on the floor next to me while I was cutting fabric to make the halloween costumes. Jack sat down next to her and talked and talked to her. She loved it and happily watched him play for quite a while!

Laura has been smiling and smiling at us this week :) I love it! She has the hugest grin, which I keep trying to catch on camera.

Finally caught it! My friend Karla Sue says it's bigger than Laura's face :)

A Long Time Ago . . .

In a galaxy far, far away . . .

R2D2 (Laura), Padme (Megan), Yoda - minus the ears (Eva), Obi Wan Kenobi (Kylie), Luke (Jack), and Leia (Beth)

And a full shot of R2's costume, plus Yoda as she saw me taking a picture and needed to be in it :)

Painting Pumpkins

Megan showing off her water that she managed to turn olive green, a color she informed the rest of the kids "is the most beautiful color in the world, although some people think it's ugly". 

Finished pumpkins!

Glad I took her clothes off first!

Love this shot of Eva!

Nailed It!

Pinterest is full of photos of perfectly made crafts and foods, most of which are supposedly simple to make. I think the women who make them have DNA made of ribbon and crafting glue. I love the posts made by people who attempted to copy something off Pinterest and totally messed it up. Usually those pictures are sarcastically captioned with "nailed it!" For example ~

Anyway, I try and get Laura and Eva to take naps at the same time each morning so I can nap too, especially as Laura has colic, which almost always hits around midnight and lasts for an hour or two. I always go into naptime with a Norman Rockwall attitude, picturing both girls drifting off to sleep happily, curled up against me. Unfortunately, the girls do not usually share my idea of a perfect naptime.

Today was a bit more challenging than normal. Laura was asleep, but when I tried putting her down next to me so I could cuddle with Eva too, she woke up and decided she was starving. Eva was exhausted and started drifting off to sleep, then Laura needed to be burped and that woke Eva up. As her tummy was now full, Laura was tired again, but random pokes and kicks by a tired and grumpy Eva woke Laura up. An hour after we first lay down, I was lying in bed with Laura squirming around next to me and Eva next to her (she usually wants to sleep next to Laura as Laura is her favorite person in the whole world), lying on her back waving her feet in the air chanting "bee-da-boo, bee-da-bay". It was not the nap I had hoped for. Eva rolled over and started trying to play with my hair and face and discovered that if she plinked my lips with her fingers, it made a very interesting (to her, not to me) sound.

At that point the picture I posted above popped into my head and I envisioned an image of the three of us sweetly napping, followed by an image of the current situation. Nailed it! Thinking that made me laugh, which did not help things. I love my little girls! I love that I get to spend so much time with them and get to cuddle them and laugh with them :)

***********

Tonight Jack earned the opportunity to go with me to Walmart to pick up the stuff we needed to make our Halloween costumes for this year (he finished his meatloaf first - the three girls were busy taking apart their green beans and eating each bean inside individually, which takes a while). He behaved really well at the store, so after we were done we stopped at Sonic to get a treat. Jack loves maraschino cherries and whipped cream, so he asked for a drink topped with those. I asked the guy taking our order which drinks were topped with whipped cream and ended up ordering Jack a cherry creamslush. I asked if they could please make sure to put a cherry on top. They must have heard Jack in the background, because when our server brought our order, Jack's little drink was topped with seven (!) cherries! :)

Jack's nonchalant response when I handed him his drink was "Mommy, I think that girl has a crush on me. Yeah, she in lub wid (love with) me." Classic Jack :) We're in big trouble when he gets old enough to date!

My Knee

Because I know all of you "knee-ed" (ha!) to see this :) Guess which knee I hurt? ~

6 Week Comparison

Laura ~ 

Eva ~

Jack ~

Beth ~

Kylie (I think - we didn't have a digital camera yet, so I'm not sure this is exactly 6 wks) ~

Megan ~

I think Laura actually looks the most like Jack, but she has a very similar grin to Beth's :)

6 Weeks Old

Family Fun

We finally made it to the little pumpkin patch at the farm we buy our milk, eggs, and meat from. The kids loved picking out little "pie pumpkins" for themselves and a big one for Rob to attack, I mean carve :)

Eva, Laura, and I have settled into a fairly regular schedule now. When we don't have anything else we have to do, we work on Starfall (a website that teaches the alphabet) for about 30 minutes after breakfast. Eva LOVES it! She even takes my laptop out and sets it up if I don't, demanding "appo!" (apple - the first picture used for the letter A). She's starting to recognize letters in other places now! Sesame Street was on this morning and she got super excited when the letter A came on the screen, happily telling me it was A and stood for apple.

She loves holding Laura and asks every few minutes. One of her favorite ways to hold Laura is lying down, with Laura resting on her tummy. I love how much she adores Laura! They are going to be such good friends :)

Eva does not like that I am the only one that can feed Laura. She has tried nursing Laura several times, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to work. She decided to nurse her stuffed frog the other day while I was feeding Laura.

We sold our Odyssey last weekend. We were sad to see it go; it's been a good car for us. We were glad it was finally sold though. It took us almost a month for the people who wanted to buy it to finally do so. We celebrated by telling the kids we could go out to dinner somewhere. They all decided of all the places we could go to, Burger King was their choice, so we went to BK. The kids loved playing on the play structure and Rob and I got to sit and talk for a bit. We decided we really should go to places like BK more often when we want to take the family out rather than trying to go to a sit down restaurant. The kids enjoy it more and we don't have to worry about them being quiet. We also discovered that BK's ice cream cones are half the price of everywhere else :) Bonus!

The kids thought it was the perfect family night :) To top it all off, as we were driving home, we happened to pass the center of our town just as they set off fireworks ending the town celebration that was that day! It was one of those Norman Rockwell moments - all 6 kids were happy, we had just spent the evening together doing something fun and everyone behaved and no one was hurt, and we got to watch fireworks in the autumn sky as we drove home :) I love moments like those! Beth said it was the best night ever :) We quickly snapped a picture of the kids in their BK crowns when we got home before the kids jumped in the shower (do you know how many germs are in those play areas??? :) ).

Every other Monday, Eva, Laura, and I go grocery shopping. Laura hangs out in the baby carrier and Eva gets the car at the front of the cart all to herself. Last time we went shopping, Eva threw a fit (for the second time ever, so I guess that's a pretty good record!), and we had to leave early (I don't like forcing other people to listen to my child scream). This time I came prepared with a lollipop. We buy our lollipops in bulk off Amazon and they are made of organic juice, so I have no problem letting my kids eat them :) Eva started getting restless about halfway through shopping, so we pulled out the lollipop. Three minutes later I noticed her feet were up on the wheel and she was kicking back as we finished shopping :)

Things have been a bit busy lately. I've had some issues that took a bit to get over. Among other things, I discovered at my chiropractor appointment last week that I broke or bruised my tailbone when I delivered Laura. There's not a whole lot that can be done for it; I just have to wait until it heals on it's own, which takes quite a while, often up to a year. Another issue I was dealing with cleared up last weekend and I was finally feeling better on Monday. Then I went walking with some friends on Tuesday morning and slipped on the sidewalk (it was wet and had some lyme or something on it as well), landing on my right knee. Initially I thought I was going to have to have someone go get a car and drive me home, but after a few minutes I was able to stand and walk home. By that evening, my knee was swollen to about twice it's normal size and I couldn't walk on it. Rob stayed home and took me to the doctor on Wednesday morning. The doctor said I was very lucky and had only sprained my MCL, even if it did look like "a fricken watermelon" :) He wrapped it up for me, telling me to keep it wrapped 24/7 except when icing it. He told me to use crutches for a few days, but then to walk on it. It's gotten significantly better each day and the swelling is starting to go down as well :) Apparently it will take about 6 weeks to get back to normal, but as long as I can walk on it, I'm happy. I had forgotten how hard it is to walk with crutches, and try adding in carrying a newborn and chasing a toddler around and it's impossible! Betsy has been walking the kids home from school and Rob's been skipping his usual morning overtime to get them to school, so I've had lots of help :) Betsy even brought over dinner the day after it happened :)

********

I discovered a couple of pictures I forgot to post ~

Eva now is very insistent that she picks out her own clothes. Here is an example of her fashion choices ~

State Fair '12

We missed the state fair last year and I think it's been 3 years since we went as a family. We promised the kids we would make it this year. Rob discovered a few weeks ago that he still had 6 vacation days left for the year and was not allowed to use them in Nov or Dec, so he took a few days off this week. Yesterday we kept the kids home from school and had a daycation :)

We started the day by sleeping in and having raspberry and cheese sweet rolls for breakfast. Upon coming downstairs, I was greeted by this note from Beth ~

How do you not have a fabulous day when you start it with a note like that? :)

We ate an early lunch, then headed off to the fair. Rob's allergies really flared up and he was not feeling stellar, but he was a trooper and doped himself up on dayquil as he didn't want to miss out on the day.

Our first stop was a drive up ATM, where I, for the first time in my life, managed to scrape up our car by hitting the post on the side. It was super narrow, so as I was trying to back out to prevent further damage to the front, I hit the other side and even got stuck for a second. It was not good. With images of the side of the car peeled open like a can that has been opened with a cheap can opener, Rob and I bit our tongues and tried not to be too upset about damaging the car we bought a month ago. We checked the damage when we parked at the fair and it wasn't as bad as it sounded. There's a scrape on the front about 6 inches long that can probably be fixed just with paint and there's a 3 foot long scrape along the bottom of the other side, but you can't see it unless you get down and look under the side door. It's all cosmetic damage, so we were lucky :) Neither of us swore or yelled, so we did pretty good I think!

The kids all had free tickets from school and we had looked up discounts and knew to bring cans for the food drive in exchange for hugely discounted admission. I love that the TX State Fair does that! We took a picture just past the ticket booth. Eva insisted on wearing her purple tutu over her outfit.

We hit the livestock area first. We watched a demonstration about horseback riding for a while, saw what I'm sure is the largest pig in the universe (it was easily 6-7 ft long and about that big around), and checked out the farm animals. The kids had to take pictures at the farm cut out board of course, even though the top hole was super high and there were no hay bales behind it to stand on, and there were only four holes. We made do :)

We were quite impressed with the size of this bull! Rob made sure we took a photo with it ~

We went through one of our favorite parts of the fair - the animal pavilion that allows the kids to get up close and personal with various animals. This is one of the few places where we actually spend any money. We always buy food for the kids to feed the animals. This year we bought a huge family sized cup, but got individual dixie cups for each kids that we could refill from the huge cup, which turned out to be a good thing as a couple of cups got spilled.

We took a picture with the baby giraffe ~

Most of the food went to the animals in the big middle pen, primarily the goats.

Beth, Kylie, and Eva got to feed some weird looking bull-like animals that Rob thinks are related to Indian cows.

Megan and Jack were about a pen ahead of us, so I didn't get many pictures of them. Beth, Kylie, and Eva stayed with me. They got to feed the dromedaries (which they called camels, but I almost never remember which are which, so I didn't bother correcting them).

After watching a couple of teenagers feed the adult dromedary, Eva decided she wanted to try. Unfortunately, her arm wasn't quite long enough and the fence was too high for the dromedary to reach down to her cup. I love that she saw something and wanted to try it, even though the animal was so big! She's never been one to let fear of the apparent impossibility stop her from doing something she wants to do :)

Kylie even got to scratch the dromedary's neck ~

We also got to see porcupines, zebras, alpacas, llamas, African deer, and several other animals. My favorite was the 4 horned sheep ~

When we walked through the livestock section, we discovered the Kildares performing on a rotating stage. The Kildares are a Celtic rock band that my brother loves. Rob likes them too, so we decided to take a break and listen. We found an empty picnic table over to the side and let the kids run around a bit. Rob watched the kids while I ran off and found some cotton candy (the one fair food the kids really, really wanted), smoked sausage, beef jerky (for Rob . . . and the kids), and a soda. I fed Laura while we ate. I love that you can nurse in public in TX and no one gives you weird looks :) We saw several other moms nursing their babies as well.

As we watched the show, several young men dressed in the clothing worn by Hasidic Jews danced to the music. I thought it was interesting that the only people free enough to dance with abandon were those who might be viewed as having the strictest lifestyle.

When the concert was over, we headed off around the Cotton Bowl (the huge stadium in the center of the fair grounds). We found a fountain that the kids splashed in for a few minutes ~

We planned to go through the aquarium, the Chinese lantern display, and a couple other buildings, but each was charging admission, which adds up quickly with 6 of us to pay for, so we stuck to the free displays. The kids discovered another photo op and took turns being butterflies.

Beth and Kylie ~

Jack and Megan ~

Eva ~

Kylie, Eva, Jack (at the bottom), Beth, and Megan ~

Rob was about to take a picture of the kids and me when a nice passing fair employee offered to take a picture of all of us ~

Meg lost a tooth as we walked!

Rob needed a bit of a break by this point, plus the kids wanted to see the Birds of the World show anyway, so we found seats near the back of the amphitheater where Kylie, Jack, and Eva could run around without disturbing other people.

We finished off the cotton candy ~

How Laura spent most of her time at the fair ~

I was surprised by how entertaining the show was! My favorite part was when they called up a volunteer from the audience and the bird he was supposed to help train ran straight at him, causing him to fall backwards into the small pond. It was so well done, Rob and I didn't even realize that it was a planned part of the show until the guy came back out and was chased across the stage again by a different bird. 

We told the kids before going to the fair that they would only get to go on one ride each, but could pick any ride they wanted (although we altered that by vetoing the ferris wheel once we saw how many tickets it was). We found a nice spot to rest, a picnic table on a fake grass display (no fire ants!), where the kids could play. Rob stayed there and I took two kids at a time to go on rides.

Beth picked the ladybug ride and LOVED it ~

After seeing how much fun Beth had, Megan decided she wanted to go on that ride too ~

Jack and Kylie were next. Jack, of course, picked the motorcycle ride ~

Kylie picked a roller coaster with cars that spun. Fortunately there were three other little girls who wanted to go on that ride too, and the operator put them all together so they wouldn't slide around as much ~

We finished off the day with freshly made chicken tenders (they battered them as we watched), fries, a turkey leg, nachos, and powerade. As we were eating the turkey leg, Jack asked "Mommy, can we pretend this is the wild?" Following my affirmative answer, he grinned and said "Great! Can I have more of that big bug?" pointing at the turkey leg. We may need to cut back on the number of survival shows we're watching! ;)

We stopped on the way out and let the kids play a game to earn some small stuffed animals. We were disappointed to learn that we only got two stuffed animals as we thought each would get one, but the man gave us an extra one and the kids seemed fine with it :) All of the kids were amazingly well behaved, so we stopped on the drive home and got ice cream cones at McDonald's :)