Missing Andrew

On Wednesday, Andrew went to San Francisco and was to return home Friday evening. But thanks to ARCTIC BLAST 2008, his flight was canceled and they couldn't reschedule until Sunday morning at 8:45. Well, it is now 11:20, and my husband still sits in his hotel room, waiting for a green light on a flight home. The airlines said they would let people know by 3 pm today, but I can look out my window and see that the likely hood we will see him today is very low. The roads a covered in snow with a sheet of ice on top. I bet he can get here tomorrow, but I sure miss him. This really stinks.

Snowy Weather...

What a week. It started to snow on Sunday, and hasn't let up much since then. The kids were out of school Monday through Wednesday, but today they got to go. I was so excited, I was gonna go run errands and to Target, but about 8:30, when the last of my kids was to step on the bus, the snow started again. Well, Isaac missed the bus, so I had to drive him, and if you know me at all, I hate driving in the snow. It really scares me. Ever since I totaled our car in the snow, I avoid it at all costs. But being the good mom that I am, I loaded Isaac up, and drove him to school. It was pretty slick and I was glad the school wasn't too far. But I knew that my plans for the day were over. I was pretty sure the schools would shut down early, and I was right. But the snow was perfect. Nice and sticky, great for making snow men and sledding. So instead of running around, I baked. And baked. And baked. Cinnamon roll wreaths, and 7 layer bars, and peanut butter blossoms, and tons of sugar cookies. Then I made chowder. This is not a low fat day. Pray for a school day tomorrow, cause I can only handle so much baking.

Girls Lunch

Last weekend, I had a few of my high school girlfriends over for lunch.  I made some yummy food and we were supposed to wear the ugliest Christmas sweater we could find.  But poor Angela was the only one to wear her fabulous sweater.  I ran out of time to go to the Goodwill, and I don't know what happened with the other girls.  So Angela was the winner.

It is pretty cool that we are still friends after all these years.  We try to have a get together every few months.  And it is so much better, cause there is no high school drama in the mix.  Thanks for the fun day girls.  

Absent Mom

This week is crazy for me.  It is the week of my Portland Mormon Choir and Orchestra performance.  I won't be around much in the evenings, and of coarse it all falls the same week as school concerts.  Ellie's Winter concert is on Thursday, and at the same time that evening, Isaac's band concert.  Who knows how we would have made it to these, even if I was around, but it is the night of my dress rehearsal, and I have to go to it.  So Ellie will not be going to her concert, and Andrew will go watch Isaac at his band concert, because I'm sure he is graded on it.  
This all makes me feel like a crappy mom.  Like I don't have my priorities straight.  But selfishly, I'm not gonna do anything about it, cause it is the one thing I do for myself.  I love singing in the choir, and we only have a performance 2 times a year.  I practice on Tuesdays, and not the whole year round.   So sorry kids, mommies gotta sing!

Bad Poster

I don't know what is wrong with me.  In the month of November, I only did 5 posts!  5 posts!  I don't know what has come over me.  I want to blame being busy, but that would be a lie, I could blame it on lack of anything intresting to write, and that would be true, but I don't really post anything intresting and that has never held me back before.  I'll just have to blame it on laziness.  So I'm sorry, and I'll try to be more on the ball this month.  

Dance Party

Check out the smooth moves from my boys!

Oh Christmas Tree

As usual, we put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving.  I didn't love the decorations that matched the other house, so I ran out and bought new ribbon to tie new bows.  I also got new ornaments to match.  I think it turned out really good.  It is a fun tree.  

Next year I hope to have 2 trees.  We put the tree up in the back of the house, where we spend most of our time, but not having a tree to see from the street makes me sad.  I'll have to look for great deals after Christmas.  

Thanksgiving

This year we had a blended family Thanksgiving.  Andrew's Mom and Step-dad came from Sacramento, and my parents, Leigh, Mike and Susie were here, along with Andrew's brother Brad and his wife Sarah, and their 2 kids.  Also, Lola's kids, Julius and Sydney.  That makes 20.  It was exciting to have Thanksgiving at our new house, and even with 20 people, it didn't feel too crowded.  

The dinner was fine.  Not one of my best, but not bad by any means.  This year I decided to try baking pies.  As I've said before, I'm not a baker, but I thought it would be fun to try.  I did pretty good, with the exception of the chocolate cream pie.  I did two pumpkin, an apple and the bitter chocolate cream pie.  It's too bad the later didn't turn out too well, cause that was the one I was looking forward to.  

All in all, it was a good holiday, filled with good food, fun cards, and great family.

Projects

I haven't posted in a while, sorry Janet, so here are a bunch of posts to catch you up!

Today my friend Katie and I refurbished an entertainment cabinet I have that I want to be a bookcase in the boys room. We cut the wood for new shelves, put a new back on, took off the doors and filled the holes with wood putty and painted the whole thing red. I think it turned out really good.


We ended up with extra wood, from the 3/4 MDF plywood I bought, so we are making a table to go in the boys room. We aren't finished with it yet, but I will make sure to post a picture when I'm done.

The Many Faces of Gavin

Just some cute shots of the Gav. Most of them shot by the kids.

Twister

For family night, we bought the game Twister. My kids had never played it and they had a blast. The best part was Gavin. He was the spoiler. He would try to knock the kids over by pushing them and tugging on their clothes. He really wanted to play with us, so he would try to stand on his head. Pretty funny.

Trouble Maker

The other day my house was really quiet. Too quiet. I was in the kitchen and Gavin was in the family room playing with toys, or so I thought. He was in the family room, but instead of toys, he had emptied the box of wipes and fell asleep among the disaster. Only one other time has he fallen asleep while playing. It was so sweet.

Family Cards

The other night we played a rousing game of UNO. This is my kids favorite game, and they ask to play it all the time. Between me and you, I get pretty bored with this game. So much so that I decided to change it up. It told the kids that if anyone says the words NO of KNOW, they have to draw 2 cards. You don't realize how often you say those words, especially playing with kids. No kids, be fair; no, it's Isaac's turn; no I don't. We ran through the deck of cards really fast, and we laughed so much, I loved it. Jackson didn't cry once that he had too many cards, since he saw that we all did. So the next time you're playing Uno, try the NO rule. It really wakes up the game.

Trick or Treaters

We had some cute trick or treaters this year. Check them out.

All the kids on the porch.

Gavin the Pirate. Too sick to go out, but he had to dress up.

Ellie the cute Witch.

Jackson the scary Grim Reaper.

Jonathan the Zombie.

Isaac the Joker.

All the cute kids.

Poor Sicky Gavin

The last 3 days, Gavin has run a fever off and on, and has not been as active as usual. It wasn't that big of deal, he still was good natured and was playing with the kids.
Well, this morning, things changed. I was giving him a bath when I noticed that his little chest was going in and out so much and fast. He was working so hard to breath. And his breathing was so loud and raspy.
So I immediately called the doc and got him in right away. When they first examined him, they thought his lungs sounded clear, but could hear how hard was breathing and could see how much he had to work at it, although his oxygen levels were great, almost 100%. They decided to give him a nebulizer treatment. Boy did he hate that. He screamed the entire time.
After the treatment, he didn't improve at all, so they told us to go and get x-rays of him. Have you ever had to get chest x-rays of a baby? It is terrible, and oddly funny. They set the baby in this little tube with their arms above their head and they are trapped like that. Think of Gustaf Club, in Willie Wonka, stuck in the chocolate tube, but with his arms above his head. Gavin screamed and screamed, he was so mad, and I felt so bad for him, but I was laughing too at how funny he looked. The x-ray tech said she's never had a mom laugh before. I said cause none of them have 5 kids. I've seen everything.
So after the doctor read the x-ray, she said that Gavin has pneumonia. Suck. But I guess it's viral, so no anti-biotics. He is doing a breathing treatment every 4 hours. The doctor said it could take a long time till he gets better. Poor guy.
So Gavin and I are home while Andrew has taken the other kids trick or treating. Luckily Gavin doesn't know what he's missing.

Pumpkins

Yesterday we carved our pumpkins. Something I never look forward to. It is so messy, and I didn't want any pumpkin goo anywhere in my house. Luckily it was a beautiful day so we headed to the front lawn and carved. The mess stayed outside and was such an easy clean up.
Having to carve 7 pumpkins means mom and dad have to carve the majority of them. I ended up carving 4 while Andrew help the others with the stencil ones. Mine were all originals. The turned out pretty cute.
If you can't tell what these are, it's a cat, a cyclopes, and a spider.

Halloween Party

Friday was crazy. The day started off with me waking up, barely swallowing. Not a good thing when you have 35 people coming over that night. I madly ran around, cleaning the house, wrapping little smokies, making pasta pesto pea salad, and decorating. Luckily my friend Katie was there to help out.
I also had help with the food. Katie supplied the veggie tray, caramel apples, and caramel corn while Tanya made the cutest cupcakes.


Andrew and I dressed up as Fred and Wilma Flintstone. I think we were pretty cute.



In the end the party turned out great, but I felt so crappy that I didn't take any pictures of the kids, and didn't do any of the kids games I had planned. But I think people had a good time and when they left, I crawled in bed and didn't come out till Monday.

El Gaucho's

On Wednesday, Andrew had one of his biggest clients in town, so he had to take them to dinner. He took them to this high end place called El Gaucho's. I guess it is supposed to be really good.
There were 7 people at dinner. Andrew had the rib eye and plenty of diet coke. The other guests consumed a lot of wine. Like 400 dollars a bottle wine.
Andrew believes that he alone had about $130 bill. Remember, he had no wine. The total for all 7 guests? $3900. And that isn't including tip. I know, you read that right. $3900.
I see that number and think, that could furnish my empty rooms and then some. Yikes.
All in the name of business. So ridiculous.

Halloween Help

On Friday I'm having a few friends over for a Halloween party. By only inviting 5 families, it gives us 22 kids. It will be a bit crowded. I wish I could have invited more, but I've run out of room.
My question to you, dear readers, is what fun things should I do with the kids. I have a few ideas, and have been online looking, but wondered if you had something original for me that doesn't require a lot of work. HELP!

Isaac's Day Off

Monday was Columbus Day, but Isaac was the only one who didn't have school. So I asked him to pick where he and I would go to lunch. I told him he could pretty much go where ever he wanted. So he says to me, "is KFC too expensive?" I was totally laughing inside, cause of all the places I'd pick, it would never be KFC. So I told him it wasn't too expensive but was he sure that was his choice? In the end he picked Wall Street Pizza, which is way yummy, especially their garlic rolls. We had a great time, we had great pizza and Isaac got to play video games. After lunch, I drug him to run errands with me, but he survived and I think had a good time. It is fun to have one on one time with Isaac. It doesn't happen enough.

Directionally Challenged

Yesterday Isaac's football game was in Colton. Where is Colton you ask? Pretty stinkin' far away, especially if you go the way we went. Colton is just east of Mollala. About an hour from our house. Or it should be an hour. It took us a good hour and a half, because we tacked on an extra 30 miles to our trip.
When we discussed where the game was, I heard it mentioned that it was past Aurora, where a recent game was played. So when we got in the car to head to Colton, we just headed down I-5. Once we approached Aurora, I mentioned that we better check out the address, so we didn't miss the exit. Well...., we found out that we didn't know where the heck we were going. Turns out that Colton isn't very far from where we live. I mean, it isn't close, but no where near the area we were thinking. So after we had already been heading southwest for about 45 minutes, we turned east and went another 45 minutes to our destination. If we had just headed southeast, we would have made it in 1 hour. But that would have put us there early, and then what would we have done. I like to think that this way, we had a beautiful drive and a fun time with the kids.
Sometimes we are really bright!

A Baker?

When I got my bigger kitchen and more room to store things, my mom brought over her bread machine that she never uses. I have friends who use theirs to make dough, and then bake the bread themselves. I thought this sounded like a good idea cause every time the bread machine would bake it, it was always doughy in the middle.
I have started using my machine, and boy, am I using it. I have baked and baked. Cinnamon rolls, rolls, french bread, and yummy bread for soup. It seems like my machine spends the day mixing. I love it. It is so easy and I love Andrew coming home from work to the smell of bread baking. Happy baking.

The Hallway

We have a rather long hallway and I haven't known what to do with it. I felt that if I put a bunch a pictures down it, the kids would just brush against them and bang them up. It would have been nice to have a huge picture, but I didn't have the funds. So to solve my problem, I put a huge saying in vinyl down it.
I think it turned out great. Andrew is not too sure. He thinks it looks like an advertisement, but it is growing on him. I think it is an inexpensive way to fill this space. What do you think?

More House Pictures

So I thought I would post some more pictures of the house and see all the cute bedrooms we've finished. Or almost finished.



The house with my cute red door. Above it is our Batman Family sign. I wish you could see this better.The kids bathroom. Not too exciting, but cute enough!

Gavin's room. It needs more work but it has a cute curtain.

Ellie's bedroom. She still needs a headboard, but other than that, I love the way it turned out. I love her huge name above her bed. It is a room she can grow up in.
Ellie's curtains turned out so fun. And very inexpensive.

Jonathan and Jackson's room. You can't really see how cute their curtains turned out, but don't you just love the vinyl. I think it turned out so cute. The kids haven't seen that yet. I put it up while they were at school, but every day they've been asking if I finished their room yet. The will be so excited.

This is Isaac's room. He is a big football fan and he will be a Barlow Bruin when he is in high school. So we ran with that and once he is done with his football season, I'll hang his jersey on the wall. It matches and says Batman on it.