Grandma Beve saves the day

Grandma Beve sent me the pictures she had of the party, unfortunately she was upstairs helping Jax dress and starting dinner so no pictures of that---But pictures yeah!

Noftle not dead......ALIVE

It's barely still Dec. 21st and my last post was Nov. 29th. Some of you probably were relived and others thought Michael had finally committed me. It was none of those things. The beginning of Dec. was crazy you know the weeks where there are five things a day scheduled and three of them are all at the same time? That was me -- but no biggy life happens and I sat down on Dec. 5th to download, (or upload I'm never sure which) pictures of Carter's "early" 3rd birthday party. We had it early because Michael and I were leaving the next day for San Diego. Some how, not sure how, never done it before, had the camera 2 years, yes years, I deleted every picture of his birthday. Just a second the pain is still fairly fresh and I need a moment.....o.k. moments over. I was physically sick over it---we don't let our kids have "friends" parties very often just a few special years and 3 is the first one. It was a star wars party and they did this obstacle course with their light sabers for Jedi training and it was hysterical---you should see pictures of it, oh wait you can't because Mother of the year deleted them. After Jedi training we sat them down to watch part of the light saber fight between Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker while the little guys were watching we had dressed Jackson as Darth V. complete with voice changing mask with preprogrammed sayings. So Jaxvadar comes downstairs and I start yelling at the 3 year olds, Jedi's it's time to fight and defend the republic get Darth V. Carter took one look and dove under a coach pillow, Kale went running to his Mom but luckily Tanner (Callahan) and Cooper kept their heads and started to battle. Once the boys had Vadar on the ground then Carter and Kale came out from hiding to help finish him off. Oops I digress I was actually telling you why I haven't blogged in so long---so physically ill over picture thing, go to California do lots of fun things, see Brenda and family, celebrate Michael's b-day and did not bring the accurssed camera. Came home and computer crashes when I open my e-mail --- that's it. No computer until today. I taught a year of High School Life Skills the year Carter was born. I took 6 weeks off for maternity leave and when I cam back one of my favorite students who lives with Autism kept repeating over and over (hundreds of times a day!) "Noftle not dead....Alive!" I loved it then and he still says it when he runs into me somewhere. Anyway thought it fit here!

Five Kids Just Weren't Enough

STOP IT---I am not announcing a pregnancy so everyone just stop the terrified screaming and take a deep breath. We have recently increased the size of our family however; by adding a kitten. After Matt and Courtney let Avery have 5 kittens, which they promptly killed and then they got her two more I couldn't take the peer(parent/peer) pressure any longer and I gave in. We put a dozen or so names in a hat and Ella won. So welcome to the family Ella. Carter constantly puts her food in the water dish, and sits in her bed(which is in a closet no less),Zoe lives to love this cat and is bothered by the fact I won't let her hold Ella while she is in the bathtub, and or adjacent throne. Sierra wants to dress her up in doll clothes and put her in doll strollers, and Sammi and Jackson are constantly yelling things like, "Mom the kids are rolling Ella up in blankets like five of them, Mom the little kids are carrying Ella by her tail, Mom Zoe is holding her by the paws and spinning in circles, and so on and so forth. To let the cat out of the bag (I crack myself up) I really don't like animals. I just like that someone else, besides me, is being harrassed and man handled constantly. Actually I am starting to feel a sort of sisterhood with Ella-you go girlfriend. If you can live through Sierra, Zoe and Carter you deserve all the Catnip I can afford. In fact I tell you what Ella, if you and I survive the three musketeers childhood we will have a spa date together. Just take it one day at a time Ella, one day at a time.

Syndrome Boy

Can anyone out there help me identify which syndrome Carter has? I know it's got to be something because no almost three year old I know is as random as he is. I imagine that perhaps my cousin Shannon ( love you Shan) was like this as a toddler, but I haven't done the research to find out if that is true. I asked Carter, "what are you doing son?" when I walked in the room and saw him. He answered, "these me eye stickers Momma son". Well, there you go Momma son, question answered. Syndrome boy also sat on my lap tonight, I should mention we had company over for dinner and FHE, and promptly pee-pee'd us both. It was one NICE touch, Carter. If nothing else is true about us, it is true that Royal City may be a little too high class for us'n Noftles. After all un such we can't even sees our ways to the indoor plumbing when company's a foot. And gull durn it all, couldna some such someone washin that there durn boys face ever?

Trick or Treat, Smell my feet, No Weight Watchers till next week

Here they are in all their glory!! Carter, the Firefighter couldn't even lug his pumpkin towards the end because it was so heavy with candy (I have a horrible feeling that Mommy will lighten it up considerably). Good thing there wasn't a pressing emergency, people could die waiting for him, I know we almost did, in the car, out of the car, in the car, out of the car.... Zoe was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz right down to her sparkly red shoes which, I was happy (read "happy" sarcastically please) to notice Michael did not get in her pictures, sheesh whats the point of having sparkly red shoes at all? Grandma Louise made her dress, she looked so sweet in it ( amazing what costuming can do!). Sierra was....wait for it, wait.... a pirate. BIG surprise, I honestly won't be surprised if she does pilage and plunder for a career someday. Sammi looked hilarious in her Granny costume. She even had a great big Granny fanny. Note the "backside photo" please. And Jax was a "chick magnet" wishful thinking, I'm sure. That about does it---glad the kids had fun but I am partied out.

No Kidding He Does!

Yes it's true, Carter does still live with his parents. If he were the only one then there would be no problem. PROBLEM--a whole lotta other kiddos live here too. Not only do they live here, but they want food here, and homework help here, and laundry services here, and entertainment here, and transportation here... About three weeks ago I was asked to be Primary President and Sunday the 28th I was sustained. I can't tell you how much time I have spent dealing with that. I had to come up with new counselors, secretary and music person plus replace 6 of the 8 teachers. Consequently my blogging has suffered immensely, apologies to Brenda. If you want to try and get me excused from this time consuming ordeal please do. I am deathly afraid come this sunday Primary as Royal II Ward knows it will come screeching to a horrific halt. I am completly changing every schedule, sharingtime, classroom, etc... You can see how things might get a teensy bit, hmmm, what's the word??? Kerflummexed? You see all you people out in Blogville, Brenda has learned what not to do by reading my blogs. For instance she knows not to teach four preschool classes a week, volunteer in kids classrooms, hold two hour presidency meetings, have an oldest daughter come down with fifths disease (I should publish a picture of her RED face for ya all), have 5 children, a home, and a husband who is almost 80% decorative. Come November thru April (irrigation design season for you City folks) he is 98% decorative. How will Brenda know to avoid all those pitfalls without me blogging, how indeed. Good luck little sis you might be on your own. P.S. Do read twilight, new moon, and eclipse (ooops did I give away that I had time to read but not blog?)

I'm BAAACCCKKK

I know, I know how does one catch up on about 3 weeks of life? If I knew that my house would be clean, laundry done, children carefully, thoughtfully attended too and so on. Well let's see....tomorrow is Jackson's last football game, Sammi and Sierra's soccer season has officially ended. Sammi discovered a talent for soccer, Sierra not so much. I will include some pictures of Sierra a couple of them are blurry but that is because she is dancing. That is what Sierra did during her soccer games--it would crack Mom, Courtney and I up, and frustrate the heck out of Michael and Matt. I will also try to include a video clip of one of her games -- note the boy on the yellow team picks up the ball twice to get it in better position! Jackson just finished his first homecoming week in Middle School today they had a dance but he and his best buddy went home during that--not quite ready for the girls yet---THANK HEAVENS. Carter and Avery collided one night under Matt and Michaels care I might add (might and did) and Carter ended up with a black eye. At church people kept asking him what happened and he would truthfully say "Avery did it"! Courtney loved that. My peace and quiet has officially ended -- I know this because I can hear Carter yelling TOP it Zo, Top it now! (translated that means Zoe please desist from annoying me immediately) Stay tuned soon I may have time to blog about the Salmon run and the Trip to Boise--12 kids, two Grandmas, four mothers, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Game Anyone?

You may not hear from me this week....I may not hear from myself this week. Sammi and Sierra have 3 soccer games to be played on Monday and Wednesday. Jackson has football games in Ephrata on Tuesday, at Royal on Thursday, and during half time of the varsity game Friday , and then in Othello on Saturday. That pretty much sums up my week. Sometimes I think this is insane; why don't we tell our kids no to all of this, but I think I got my answer on Saturday. Jackson's team was winning 6 nothing with less than three minutes in the game, then the other team scored and made their extra point putting them up by 1. With a sinking feeling I watched the other team kick off to us. Tanner(Jax's bestest buddy since birth) caught the ball and started running to the left and the other team (HUGE freaks of nature trust me on this) went left charging Tanner down. One boy on our team, yells " follow me Tanner", and switches to the right and lead blocks Tanner 40 yards for the touchdown! So the kids are jumping up and down screaming when "lead blocker boy" comes up to Michael (yes he is coaching the team again after swearing he would take this year off) and says, "coach I am not an emotional kid but I feel like crying right now"!! The thing is this kiddo hasn't had the easiest life. In fact Michael has been his football coach since he was in third grade and he can be hard at times. Last year he watched his Dad break his mom's arm in a drunken rage. I quit thinking he was a turkey about then, and started thinking how easy it is to judge wrongly. His Mom counts on him for a lot, and now I think of him more as a little soldier in an unfair war. But Saturday he led another soldier to victory and he felt so good and happy he hardly knew what to do. If this little guy and countless others can feel success and pride in team sports, then that might be the positive they need to rise above whatever they have to rise above. I think I am pretty lucky to get to know my kids classmates in this setting---remind me of this next time I complain about seven games in a week.

Pirate Sierra pilages presents from Land Lubbers

Pirate Sierra has returned to these here ports. For her seventh birthday party my girly girl Sierra has requested a Pirate theme---AGAIN. I don't get it, but hey it's easy enough to pull off so "WHATEVER", as Sammi would say. I think my middle child (older brother and sister and younger brother and sister can't get more middle than that) had a pretty good day. I had preschool today so Michael and his faithful assistant Carter took treats to her classroom. I think she thought it was pretty cool to have her Dad come. Then tonight when Mom, Dad, Matt, Courtney and co. came over to do presents, dinner and cake the power went out. Pretty funny story involving Matt and Lisa Christensen but another blog perhaps. Anyways the birthday girl is tucked into bed and I am going on a search for that hidden bottle of rum......maybe it's the rum talking now but don't you all agree that Sierra is one adorable seven year old!! And despite the fact that Sierra is a dedicated Pirate lover, she has a very positive and happy attitude. Raise your glasses Matey's and here's to Sierra!

Sigh.....

Please sigh wearily because that is what my little sister Brenda is doing right now. Apparently I am elderly and need more help than your average bear. She has attempted once more to teach me how to post pictures so I will try again. Because that is the AARP motto, try, try again. No worries Melanie there are plenty of bad perm photo's of Brenda but I tried pushing them through my computer monitor and they wouldn't jump in?! Sigh again....

I knew she was out to get me

Brenda, Brenda, Brenda, someone out there will take pity on me and teach me how to really post pictures and then every bare bummed, drooling whilst sleeping, geeky prom date, photo of you is coming out. That otta learn ya ta mess with me.

SuperBrenda to the rescue

Brenda called tonight to figuratively hold my hand and teach me how to put pictures on my blog. Since my house is messy and I have 18 preschoolers coming over tomorrow; I have decided to spend my evening doing this. I am great at what I call "Scarlett O'Hara-ing". For those of you out there who may not have read the book 2 dozen times, Scarlett says more than once in "Gone with the Wind" , "I won't think about that now, I'll think about that tomorrow". To bad I don't have and 18 inch waist like her. Well here goes nothing---I will now attempt the triple sowcow (in blog world that means try to post a picture). Hope it worked. Don't know how to check without signing out....so if there is no picture we will all know that Brennie is trying to sabatoge my life. If it does work then I will finally know the reason for little sisters!! JK!(Mom--JK means Just Kidding--I'll try to make my blog elderly accessable)

Stinking Day of Rest AGAIN

It's been a week since the last bloggy thing. I can start to remember now why my last journal entry ended with "big deal I'm engaged" or something like that. The only reason I am blogging right now is Courtney started her new blog and I couldn't get on it. I struggled with that for 15 minutes before I figured it out. Hey Court it's TheAndersen4.blogspot.com NOT @blogspot.com. Jeez....So when I finally read it I wanted to comment. Apparently to comment you have to know your user name and password--let's not make this complicated or anything. Tried 10 different things and could not get it right so I decided to click on my blog to see if it held the keys to the universe or at least my username and password and I saw that people had left comments for me---little ole' me! Very exciting so I read them and felt like I had left you all hanging for a week. So let's see--Monday played basketball with 6 other ladies who have been doing it together for two years. The last time I played was 9th grade and that year I fouled out every game but two ( It was then I decided to move on to cheerleading before I morphed into a life of gangsta' ing (?)).
Luckily Courtney was driving, because her fancy new car has a built in oxygen bar, which I badly needed. Besides needing oxygen my legs completly seized up on the way home. Pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to switch from the gas to the brakes. Wow, looking back on it she saved my life, and 5 beautiful children from lives as orphans! Orphans you say, but what about Michael? Trust me if I died and he was left to care for those 5 beautiful children he'd go all Owen Wilson on us (as soon as football season was over, also you would have had till said season was over to attend my funeral because Hubby and my parents would have waited till then to bury me). I think we should all say thank you to Courtney. By the way Owen I really am rooting for you--hugs and kisses. That day also included Two soccer practices, Sierra and Sammi, one grid kid football practice which involves oldest son and loml (love of my life (aka Michael) or Loser on my list, depending on his most recent behavior) two clogging practices, Zoe and Sammi, and a trip into Othello to decorate Dad's classroom bulletin boards for FHE. Don't even get me started on that-- Matt is highly competetive when it comes to bulletin boards, who knew? I have been digressing to much, I'll never make it to today if I get stuck on Monday, then when tomorrow comes where will I be? Pause to consider that. Ok -- Tuesday two preschool classes with 9 students in each, violin practice, Sammi , Grid kid football, Jax and Loml (pretty sure that day was loser on my list day) Carter takes GIANT step backwards in potty training. Luckily for you all I'm too much of a lady to go into detail about that. Think of me as Melanie Wilkes from Gone with the Wind if you will. Wednesday I went to Tri-Cities (75 min. drive) to shop for Sierra's upcoming b-day, and for food for people who keep asking me to fix it for them. They also keep asking me to wash their clothes and clean up their messes, and drive them places. I need new people. We were gone until 6:30 then it was eat dinner, wave to loml as he and Jax walked out of the door for mutual, leaving me to unload the van. Oh yeah, Soccer practices again today---I did nothing to facilitate so I'm not sure it counts. Thursday, preschool field trip to Jenks Bro. Apple shed. Nothing like taking preschoolers to a factory where there is mind numbing noise and tons of opportunities for little fingers to get amputated-- good one Mrs. Becky. Grid kids, planning with Sammi and her friend because Fri. night they are watching 11 little kids at my house during the Royal, Connell football game. That should be interesting. Friday, we are going to pretend Friday never happened this week, if you listened to Michael's webcast Friday night you'll know why. If not, just know that ignorance is bliss. No FRIDAY this week it never happened--there I am much happier. Saturday, house work, yard work -- loml (love this time) got the broken piece (a piece is defined as "hunk of tree bigger than my outdoor shed) of pine tree that fell off in the huge windstorm in FEBRUARY. Actually it should be loser on my list , not love of my life, why did we deal with that since FEBRUARY? Loml took me to Wal*Mart, dinner and a movie Sat. night. No date is every complete for us crazy kids unless it includes a trip to Wal*Mart. Good evening ---kids only called like 13 times..... Here we are on today and all I wanted to do was comment on Courtneys blog. Can you see why I never accomplish anything I am highly distractable-- that reminds me of a student I had once...... Stop Becky, just Stop.

Day of Rest

If I had the time to read scriptures on Sunday maybe I could find out who falsely advertised this whole "day of rest" thing. Perhaps I am doing something wrong but my Sunday's are far from a day of rest. Get up at 7ish and get myself showered and hair "done"(that's for another blog--if my hair were "done" then I wouldn't have to mess with it every day, would I?). Then I make my first wake up pass of the house, hit the husband , open the kiddos bedroom doors with a sweet sounding "morning baby girl", or "morning baby boy", depending on what lies beyond that particular door. Then back upstairs to start a pan of cinnamon rolls. Then I go to the still snoring husbands side again and shove a little harder and give him talk 336 B which in a nutshell ( oh did I mention I shelled walnuts today?) is "Sunday should be a day to sleep in for me too and maybe if you would get up and get ready and help with the kids a little more....yada yada yada"....you get the idea of 336 B. Then I go downstairs and stick my head in the same bedrooms and say a lot less sweetly "come on it's Church Day get up and get going". Back up stairs to get the cinnamon rolls out of the oven and frosted. Back downstairs to bribe with the afore mentioned cinnamon rolls, always works on Zoe and Sierra, and 90% of the time on Jax and Sammi. Back upstairs where my future dock worker voice comes out on the husband which invariably wakes up the two year old who is usually in my bed on my pillow, but on the rare occasion just across the hall from my room anyway. Throw cinnamon rolls and milk at the kids, put on church tights, negotiate church outfits, (these are serious negotiations by the way), threaten the husband with serious bodily harm, do hair on three girls and two boys, beg five children to brush teeth and get their church shoes, pack snacks, and coloring books, and quiet books (HAHAHA), potty training emergency supplies, primary lesson paraphanalia, load kids in car seats, run back in to military march the husband down to the car. Get in the car intervene in half a dozen arguments on the way to church and then realize while walking into church that I forgot somehow to put a bra on today. The Husband says "how old are you" and the kids laugh and say "what were you doing all morning Mom jeez". Haven't even entered the church yet but there is no way this is a day of rest!

New blogger

O.K. Brenda and Shannon this is for you. I have preschool in less than an hour and I am setting up a blog. Who came up with that name anyhow. Blog, rhymes with bog, as in why am I bogging myself down with a blog. Maybe this will relieve some of my guilt on my recent departure from journal writing. The last entry was "yipee I am engaged" some 15 years ago, feels like only 150 years ago. Well---thats' great already I forget I am on the world wide web and start letting all the dirty secrets out of the vault. This is a grand idea Brenda!!