memorial day wrap-up

we spent a wonderful weekend being very busy with some very wonderful people!

the only bummer is that i never brought out my camera... not even once... the whole weekend!

this makes me sick to my stomach!

friday-- first dark party of the weekend! full of friends, neighbors, sister and bro-in-law-- we ate drank and were very merry!

saturday-- second dark party of the weekend! full again of friends, neighbors, sister and bro-in-law-- we ate drank and were very merry!

sunday-- house guests leave and we have the third dark party of the weekend! full again of friends, neighbors, and neighbors friends which are now our friends.... we again, ate drank and were very merry!

monday-- the bummer comes... i watched jon and kate plus eight and i am now offically heartbroken for those two! oh, and the kids!

but really our weekend was busy, but it went by slow enough that we felt like we had a whole weekend! we loved having kels, jopo, beau, kendra, weiss, farley, sandler and plus 1 at the house! arnold, shonna, kaylee, and renna... next time you will have to stay the night!

thanks for all that came and played at the house!

in need of a pity party

so... i am having a rough week... i don't know what's up... but here are the things that are going on...

- the kids don't listen to me or chris
- when we need to come inside the house at night they start screaming, kicking, throwing themselves on the ground, and acting like we are crazy people
- bubba is still limping-- he is fine, he doesn't have a ruptured ACL, he just likes to limp (i'm convinced of this)
- the house is staying a mess
- i have no motivation to clean, keep up with laundry, i hate unloading the dishwasher with a passion-- i can load it like a champ
- gracie and her ruptured ACL
- fisher keeps yelling at me "no momma!"
- ella won't stop back-talking
- chris is snoring at night... so i am moving to a couch at 3-4am every single night
- the trim still needs to be painted
- i feel like a crappy momma b/c i don't to art projects
- ella needs to start preschool this fall... i haven't the slightest notion to enroll her or even look at possible schools
- i have my praxis test coming up and i am scared out of my mind that i will fail it!

okay... i think that's it.

my poor gracie

last night we were all in the backyard trying to be all "family" like... chris and i were talking about gracie's weight and how much she needed to start getting rid of the extra pounds. chris and i think up this fantastic way that he and i are both going to make efforts to get gracie slim and trim again... so our plan involves of course the kids to stop feeding her from the table, me running with her in the mornings, taking evening walks, and chris throwing ball with her at night in the backyard. we also were talking about getting the dogs and the kids back out on the lake this summer... the dogs always went till we had kids...

so, after all the chatter amongst us, we were throwing ball with gracie and on the last throw of the night... she stops using all four legs and goes to three... remember bubba all of three months ago???? and she cannot walk. she is in really horrible pain. chris has to carry her into the house and up the steps. i take her to the vet this morning... she has ruptured her ACL. surgery required. pain meds and low activity for the next few days. and then next week we need to start getting the extra weight off of her by taking her swimming in the evenings...

chris and i are so heartbroken! she was our "first baby" and i started thinking of all the horrible things that could come from the vet's appointment this morning. my biggest fear was that there wouldn't be much that they could do with her being this overweight (she's 60lbs and needs to be about 45lbs) and that she would have to be put down. but, she doesn't and we are just hoping that we can get some weight off of her before her surgery. we are thinking that she will need surgery in the next couple of weeks... keep her in your thoughts... thanks!

random-ness

we seem to have been keeping ourselves really busy... doing a whole lotta nothing!

i love this time of year where we aren't scheduling things in or friends to come over or weekend getaways- our backyard and cul-de-sac seem to be working pretty darn good on their own.




there isn't an evening that goes by where there aren't kids in the circle, parents watching, people walking, neighbors out talking, it's been a great place to live and have our kids growing up. we like all of our neighbors. we have actually befriended all of them quite nicely. i never wanted to live where we didn't know our neighbors, or where all we did was wave. i want to really get to know the people around us, for our kids sake, as well as ours. we have been so lucky to have neighbors that really care about us, our kids, and our family... as we do theirs.

i have also a slew of girlfriends that don't live around us that are really important to me as well. the little girl and boy are drew and eli-- drew and fisher were due on the same day-- drew came 10 weeks early... but you wouldn't have any clue-- she is cute as a button! fisher really took to little brother eli and i was glad to see ella like him too. she is usually funny about babies-- nice turn of her personality.








we also had a really hot saturday! we got the slip-n-slid out, sprinkler, and a couple of baby pools... it didn't look dangerous enough so we also put the kid slide into a pool... that's just how we roll.

fisher, who doesn't seem to fear much, took to the pools, the set up, and the danger like a pro- full belly sliding, jumping, and running from one end of the yard to the other-- ella was cautious, but really is doing much better this year. she loved the water, the hose, and the slip-n-slide as well. we had molly come down and play for a while as well.

chris took a break from mowing to come and slip-n-slide for a minute too.

there isn't anything that i love more than this little family of ours playing in the back yard.

the rest of my mother's day

so my mother's day i wanted to keep pretty slow... no plans, no dinners, no dresses, no nothing... a day to relax and clean up from painting the kitchen and family room (kitchen is now ivory and family room is a slate blue color)
so that's what we did! it was really nice- the kids took a wonderful long nap that allowed chris and i to catch a little extra zzzz's as well. we ordered pizza and had a picinic in the yard. shawn joined us- it's always nice to have extra's! and then we all went on a walk. we are still rehab'ing bubba's leg- so walks are essential to his days-- we met up with some of our neighbors while we were walking and our walk turned into 5 adults, 4 kids, and 2 dogs... no strollers! fisher rode emmie's bike (while she is in canada... we don't want it rusting out!) and ella rode hers... it was not the relaxing walk i was going for... but it was fun.



there is a creek that we walk over 3 times on our walk. the last part we let bubba and gracie get in the creek... the kids loved it-- it took more time than we would have wanted- but it's so hard to pull them in when they are all having a great time! gracie especially! she sticks her entire head underwater! i love it-- the kids love it and she seems to be able to do this for hours on end. i love being a momma and i love all of our neighbors. we missed having jenn and emmie around- that would have finished us off for sure! i adore my kids... but i especially adore my family. chris and i are so lucky, blessed, and i couldn't have had a better day!

we've got ourselves a big girl

we went to dinner on friday night with some good friends of ours... during dinner chris asked me what i wanted for mother's day...

besides the trip that i wanted to take to florida-- that ended up being more than we could manage at the moment... (i said moment-- we will make it down there) i said that i wanted to paint our kitchen and family room.

chris couldn't argue... he asked.

so after dinner we went to look for paint (i already had colors picked.. hahahaha) and we ended up at walmart for a couple other things we needed.... we left with a big girl---

i had been wanting the kids to have bikes for a while now. i know that i was riding the neighborhood without training wheels, up and DOWN hills without a helmet by the time i started kindergarten. well, ella is no where near k-time... but, we thought that we would try anyway. she is our resident chicken of the family... we didn't think much about it- till she wouldn't get off of the bike! she rode the bike all around walmart till 10:00pm! we had to get the bike! it was cute, cheap, and she loved it! fisher ended up with another blue truck-- happy as a clam to boot!

now, excuse the outfits, it was early and i wasn't about to get them all babyGap'ed for a bike riding, lawn mowing, saturday!

while she was riding her bike through walmart... she looked up at me and said- "momma, i think that you were right... i am a big girl!"

damn facebook

i haven't been blogging because i have been facebooking...

i cannot seem to master both-- so i will now pause facebook and come on over to blogging...

our new addition

let me start by saying that i am not a "bug gal" not an "insect gal" not even a "rodent gal" but... i do love a good caterpillar... better known around this house as a "palacor" well... we found one last night and we have a new member of the family-- let me introduce... ankee or jake or jakie or ankieeeee (she changes his name quite often) we have almost killed him only 132 times in less than 12 hours-

it's may!

i love may! happy may to everyone! yeah! may! whooohooo!

really... i do love the month of may- only one more month till my birthday, cinco de mayo, memorial day, warm weather, hanging baskets can finally be hung, windows open, green grass, walks outside! whoohoo! love it!

have a great weekend!