An outing

Tonight, I decided it was high time to take a couple of my daughters out after the little kids were tucked in. These two fine young ladies babysit every Tuesday and Thursday night while I and the two oldest girls go to our martial arts class. E has been traveling the past many weeks, otherwise he is here when we go but they still do the majority of the work when we are gone to class.

We had so much fun tonight! We first went through MacD's drive-through and ordered small peppermint hot chocolates for them and a peppermint mocha for me. Mmmmm. We just sat in the parking lot in a toasty warm car, reminiscing. They remembered many things, "Remember when I ran away, Mom?" Me: "Um, which time?" "The time you had to call the cops to help look for me." Me: "Uh...yeah, I think I faintly remember that! Yeah, I very clearly remember that!" Also, "Remember when you climbed up on the roof and put Christmas lights all along the eaves of our house?" Me: "Yup. I remember that. I loved our house that Christmas." Fia: "I so badly wanted to come up there with you!" Me: "Yes, and I remember clearly fearing you would. You were a kind of fearless little gal." Fia: "Remember when Dad made you hot chocolate while you were up there?" Me: "Yes. And I scooted over along the roof to that skinny kitchen window and you guys handed out the hot chocolate. Then we drank our hot chocolate together, me outside the window, you guys inside. It was a very chilly evening and my hands were really cold. That hot chocolate was perfect!" Fia: "I so badly wanted to climb out that window and come up on the roof with you and help you with the lights." Me: "Yes, and I remember clearly fearing you would. I half expected to see you climbing out that window once you realized you could. And I remember you begging Dad to come out there."

Then, we took off for a little drive around town. We ended up slowly lally-gagging through this most amazing, idyllic neighborhood with houses that look like giant dollhouses and wonderfully landscaped front patches of yard...almost every house with a darling set of porch rockers or porch chairs on their beautiful porches. So then we dreamed of getting either into a larger house or a place with some acreage to roam...and to have a dog...and chickens...and gardens...and apple orchards. Mmmm, dreaming!

Onward to talk of IF we get another puppy, a Golden Retriever/Husky mix. They are called Goberians, I think. From what I read later, they would be very, very good personality dogs for small children, all people, other animals, etc. THey just require very good exercise or they can be very hyper. We plan to have it as a running companion and a sled puller in our yard in the winter, just to give it "work" to do (pull kids in sleds). We dreamed, we schemed, we planned, we plotted. Mmmmm, dreaming! :)

Then we came home to nearly everyone, including the big girls, sleeping!

What a good outing!

Out of the mouths of....Princesses!

Izzy (lying on the bathroom floor as I was getting ready to go to our martial arts class): blah, blah, blah...lying...blah, blah. And you can't lie, right? Cause that's hell, right? When you lie, that's called hell...right?

Me, suddenly tuning in: Uh...oh, you mean lying is a sin, right?

Izzy: Yeah, it's a sin...and blah, blah, heaven, blah, blah, you can burn there, right?

Me: Oh, you mean if you go to hell instead of heaven, you could burn there. Yup.

Izzy: And there's that Level that lives there. It's that Evil Level guy that lives there, right?

Me: Yup. It's that Evil Level that lives there....

End of Discussion

Someone had a deep discussion with her, I guess.

Well, what do you know?

I'm on a roll. Two days in a row of blogging. I think I will give myself a Diligence Award!

What can I say about today? Hmmm...we currently have some logs being sawed by a few people in this house. I do wish I could join them. I am tired.

Well, tomorrow is going to be a busy day, like usual for Thursdays. I guess it will even be busier than usual. We have PT for Baby at 1pm. That means we need to have this house in presentable shape by then. THat can be a feat in itself. We also need to work a little harder on some of the exercises with her because I don't want the PT to feel like it's a waste of her time to be coming out here.

Also, we have our usual Ao Denkou Jitsu class at 5 but tomorrow night I need to pick up sparring equipment for our karate class and help run the beginners' class as well as our intermediate/advanced class that our girls are in. That means I miss ADJ again....but am still running the girls there, dropping them off and a sis-in-law will pick them up afterwards. From there, I run to another town close to ours, pick up the gear and paperwork, and run to the town we have karate in, set up, run the two classes, get the paperwork together afterwards to send with one of the adult students that lives near our main instructor...

Then off to bed so I can get up early FRiday morning for work....I have a 12 hour shift Friday. Then I'm off for the weekend! :)

Well, I'm being beckoned to help go through some pics my oldest is going to edit.

Ta-da!

Oops! I forgot!

I was supposed to blog every day! I've probably thought about it every day but never realized so many days have slipped by since I blogged last.

Hmmm, so much goes on in this life but when I sit down to write about it, my mind flat-lines.

I was knocked down flat the other night and all day yesterday due to a stomach ailment of unknown origin. None of my kids were sick so that should rule out any tummy bug 'cause I just don't get sick unless I've had all 8 kids rotate through some nasty bug 3 times each, taking turns at it for a week straight, ill with ill symptoms day and night...then finally, after enduring all that goes with tending to children that are ill with ill symptoms, not sleeping a wink for 168 days (as it would add up if each of the 8 children was ill for a week straight then repeated the rotation 3 times..), I finally collapse and get ill, with ill symptoms myself...Since all THAT didn't happen, I wonder if it was a food-borne illness.

It. was. horrible. To say the least. I woke up at about 1:something a.m. with knife-like stomach pain that would double me over. I went to the bathroom and emptied my insides of a pure-water-like-substance...multiple times... I went to lie down for a bit only to have to make a run again for the bathroom. By this time E was up, getting ready to run out the door to the airport for his 4th week in a row work trip. He sat and rubbed my back as I was lying on the couch, groaning, then holding my breath, then groaning, curled up in a ball as wave after wave of knife slices went through my stomach.

Well, to make my long story short, I was curled up in a ball all day yesterday, sleeping, groaning and sitting on the toilet.

Today proved to be a much better day, provided I didn't try push my luck and eat a tiny dabbling of ice cream (that brought on the knife pains again, just not as severe).... I sat out of my martial arts class and watched and learned (a lot, I might say) from the sidelines since I was so wiped out and still had water-like stool throughout today.

That's all I have to say about my stool-laced adventures! :)

Our house is a disaster zone! BUT, I've finally decided that, since it's gotten considerably worse since I've started working again but our finances have finally started to get considerably better, so that we are finally getting caught up again after 2 months of me working again...I'd much rather be losing control of the house than losing the house due to lack of finances. This is a much better option. AND, guess what! I work ALL day shifts now!!! Can you believe after all those years of working nights, I work days? I just got onto that schedule where I work every Friday, 7a-7p and every other Saturday and Sunday, 7a-7p. Then, I have another client that has 8 hour shifts that has many openings every week that I can pick up shifts with the weeks that E's work in slow and he's in town. So, as much as I resisted going back to work, it's actually going pretty well...the kids seem to understand that it's essential and are being pretty good about doing their jobs while I'm gone too. It's just that certain tasks, like dishes and laundry are my jobs while they pretty much cover the rest of the main living area...so my jobs, if E isn't around, get left undone. Usually E is home Fridays, so that's why I've chosen to work them. Then he can help with the homeschooling a bit, although I try to plan most of our work M-TH, with Fridays being independent work day...I assign them Math and then whatever they need to catch up on...usually handwriting and maybe Science.

Homeschooling has been getting more and more random, which makes me nervous at times, but at the same time, I notice a lot of the informal stuff we do has actually lots of learning laced into it. And the girls seem to be loving it and I see a big inner shift in a lot of them when we are homeschooling. Very good character building, self-motivation, leadership skills, self-discipline, super good interpersonal skills have been developed between all of them....all those good things that they actually work on in school. And this is in a very natural, real-life situation where emotions and tempers can oftentimes run high and uninhibited, unlike in a school setting, where most nice kids are on company-behavior mode (and not-so-nice kids aren't).

I've seen a lot of maturing and confidence develop in these guys. And we still have a lot of time to cram in the academics once the snow flies...which we tend to do.

Well, now, off to bed.

The End

This is it! I'm going to blog EVERY day!

Well, I will try to anyway! :) I got woken up this morning by little J, crying and thrashing and so on, at about 4:something a.m. He fussed and thrashed off and on until I finally got out of bed at 5:something a.m., then he quit! He was feeling cramped in MY bed with ME in it I guess!

E is out of town and all of us last night could NOT get our beloved Izzy to sleep after hours of trying. She, as a result, kept the other Littles awake with her noise, and her whispering, and her restlessness. I finally gave up thinking I will stay up late and clean...and tucked the Twins (Izzy and Yodie) in bed by me. Well, I guess there were too many in our bed for Yodie's liking so I had to go! And, I figured, that was fine 'cause now I could clean in a peaceful house....except the minute I start cleaning in a peaceful house, my rustling wakes the Littles up again, no matter what time it is. I decided I would find a quiet activity to do so they wouldn't wake up. THat can't include sweeping, cause they are all sleeping downstairs and you can hear even a crumb crawling up here from down there. I decided I would wash walls...but first need to look up dimensions on a cabinet from Ikea....started reading a blog, and decided it's time I blog again. Well, in my defense, it IS a quiet activity....and not one Little has woken up! :)

Yesterday we had troubles with a syrup jug. We buy almost all foods in bulk now. Including syrup, of course. Well, I opened one of the huge jugs of syrup on Monday morning. Tuesday morning I was juggling jugs of milk around the "milk shelf" in the fridge to try make them all fit and then put the syrup on the front of that shelf, hoping no one would knock it out of the fridge the next time someone came to get milk. Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened! About 5 minutes later, someone went to get milk and knocked the syrup onto the floor. That's no biggie usually, except this time I heard a bit thud, then a, "OH NO!" and a, "Quick, Mom! I need help!" I went in to see one of the big girls holding up the jug of syrup that now was sporting a large gash across the middle of it....syrup just chugging onto the floor. We got it to chug for a bit into a large bowl, then escorted it to the sink, where it continued to chug. BIG cleanup job ensued. Well, The Syrup Story Part II: We went to Ao Denko Jitsu (I KNOW I spelled that wrong but am too lazy to get up and see how it's spelled on my certificate) class, came back and walked into the kitchen to have my feet STICK, STICK, STICK to the floor....my slippers were staying on the floor with each step! That syrup jug had gotten left in the sink and one of my babysitters that had stayed home was kindly doing her dishes turn, took the jug out, walked absent-mindedly around the kitchen trying to find a spot on the counters to put the big jug, not realizing that the whole time she was walking, the jug was emptying onto the floor.....and the mopping job that ensued! ANd she was home dealing with our highest maintenance kids at the time...I don't blame her for not getting all the stickiness. I mean, I had to super-slop-mop it about 4 times before that layer of stickiness came up...and still there are little spots of stickiness my slippers are finding this morning!

Well, that's the end of my story telling!