wubbanub

The other day my mother-in-law were talking about how Suri Cruise was still using a binky, and wondering why everyone else was talking about the same thing! When she mentioned that it looked like she had a fancy binky in her mouth. It got me thinking, are their upscale binkies that my babies have not used? It was time to Google! Upon searching I came across a thing called a "Wubbanub". They are cute little animals that hook to the end of a binky and allow the baby to suck on the binky without it slipping out of the mouth. Zachary loves to spit out his binky and then grunt that he no longer has his binky; doing so about 10 times a night at least, so I figured I would give it a try. Besides I needed a fancy binky for my baby too. :) I ordered the giraffe one, and received it last week, not only is it cute, it works! Zachary has been sleeping much more comfortably at night now and he looks so gosh darn cute using it too.

Singing in the Rain

The other morning I went to the grocery store with Zachary; leaving Derek to take care of the rest of the kids. While I was out, it started to pour down rain and drenched Zachary and I as we headed into the store. On the way home it was still raining hard, as I pulled into our cul-de-sac; I was surprised to see children outside playing, and thought to myself "who would let their kids play outside in this weather?!" Upon closer inspection I saw that they were in fact MY children!! They come running up to me, soaked. When I ask them why they were playing outside in the rain- the response... "Dad said we could!" Of course he did. So I had the joy of herding the kids inside, where muddy footprints filled my carpet, and stripped them naked and sent them to the shower. When I asked Derek why he let them play outside, he said " I always played outside in the rain when I was a kid, they were fine." Oh they were fine, but mom cleaning up the mess and doing the laundry was not fine. Why is it that mom always suffers the consequences? Next time , I will just turn the van around and hit the local frozen yogurt shop instead. At least that way I can come home with a treat in my belly.

Saying and doing

Lately I have been thinking about being more, to more people. I feel like I am stuck in a rut of superficiality. Maybe it is the whole facebook world, where you can feel like you are having a close relationship with someone via computers, and not feel like anything else is necessary. I want to get past that. I want face to face conversations. Maybe because I spend a majority of my life in my house with my kids, and crave grown up conversations.
I feel like I have become the person "let's get together sometime." Which I completely mean when I say, but never actually follow up on it, and I feel bad. This past week a guy from Derek's unit passed away suddenly. I had just talked to him a few weeks back about getting together for a barbecue, now that time has passed. How I wish we could have had that barbecue. And it made me realize I have so many people in my life that I rarely see or chat with only via facebook. A majority of them, happen to live thousands of miles away, but still I don't connect with them on any deeper level then a recent status updates. The friends who live around me, some of them I haven't seen in months, and we live within a few miles. I know that "life" gets in the way, but what is life? I mean what are we doing that makes us too busy to visit with people we care about?  When I say we, I mean me. I know people always say "you have so many kids, you are so busy" Which I guess is true, homeschooling sucks most of my time during the day,and kids' activities fill up more time, but honestly I have plenty of time to spend with people I care about if I tried.
I write this to inform my friends that if I have ever said "let's get together sometime", and I never did, let me know! Give me a day and time and I will be there. Hold me to it. I honestly want to be with you and spend time with you.
I want to look back and say "remember when..." not " I wish we got to spend more time together....."

And Jeremy Elmont, I expect a game night with some yummy barbecue when I get to heaven. :)

Olympic Peninsula

I had a dream the other night that I was at the Olympic National Forest visiting some of the places that Derek and I had gone on our honeymoon. I woke up with an ache in my heart for pine trees, ferns, crisp mountain air, and yes even the gray overcast days. It got me thinking about the fact that in less then two months Derek and I will have been married for TEN years. I am not surprised of course that we made it to ten years, just how far we have come in ten years. When we said "I do", we were young and naive. We had not experienced much in life yet, but we knew we were meant to spend the rest of our lives together. Now I am sitting here in my house in Hawaii watching my seven children play.What a decade it has been! I love my Derek now more then ever. He is my rock and comfort. I am blessed beyond belief to have seven children that are still happy to call me mom. (at least most of the time.) I can't wait to see what the next ten years have in store for us. More duty stations? More children? Only God knows, and we will faithfully follow Him to the end.

One of those days

Had one of those days today where you just decide to throw in the towel. Which I did at about 10am. I decided to call a mom day. Yes, I can have one once in awhile can't I? Sometimes trying to balance being a mom and being a teacher can be difficult. There are times where I can be yelling at the kids for not doing their chores, and walk into the homeschool room with a smile on my face and pretend I am seeing them for the first time that day. I have told the kids that I will do my best to separate home mom with school mom. I know that as kids it can be difficult to see your mom all day everyday, and not get a break from being in trouble. So I really do try to respect that, and if they don't do well in school that day then it won't affect them at home later. If they do bad on a test, or didn't do their homework. I try to give out school related punishments like write sentences, or clean up the homeschool room. And when school is over if they get in trouble, I deal with it like a regular mom at home and either send them to bed or early or they can't play outside. But on some days, everything just mixes up and I need a break from both worlds. So as I laid in bed and filled my brain with mindless reality programming I got the guilt of being a bad mom and a bad teacher. After calming down I go out to check on the kids, thinking that they might feel bad that their poor mom was having a breakdown. Oh I felt their suffering... "Mom, can we play video games?" "Mom, can we have a snack?" I turned around and went back to bed. I can live with guilt.

Disgusting!

I am usually proud of the fact that I can catch my kids doing things that they aren't supposed to. I feel like I am preventing them from thinking they can get away with things on my watch. (I know I am delusional to think I have a clue what my kids are doing most of the time, but bear with me.) So as I was leaving Derek's work with all the kids in the back, I saw the guilty look on two of my kids' faces.(who shall remain nameless) I asked them what they were up to, and I spotted candy in one of their hands. I knew that I had not bought them candy today, or any day lately for that matter;so I asked them where they got the candy. The reply "from the van seat". My response "You just picked that out of the van seat?!" "yeah". Now let me tell you about our van...... We have had it for six years now, holds 12 people. 15 kids if we pack them in. Has seen it's fair share of dirt, sand, candy, spills, stains, tears, blood etc. In no way can I say that van is clean, it is maintained to the point of not having animals nest in it. So to find out that two of my children actually thought that they should DIG candy out from the van seats, well that made me a little sick. I had to point out that they ate the candy where people sit, so they were in fact eating "butt candy" Got some laughs for that comment.Seriously, where would a child get the idea? I mean maybe if they were hungry, but I had just bought them lunch. Which also annoyed me that I could have just let them scrounge around for leftovers in the van instead of spending money for lunch. I told them that for dinner they can dig around on the dining room chairs for their meals.Ugh!