Please Election Day, come soon

I'm so, so, so, so tired of all the election stuff. I was tired of it a year ago. Now, as we are down the those last few days, I am (as I'm sure many are) getting bombarded by ads, phone calls, people knocking on the door telling me what bad things the other guy is doing and how I should support them.

Yesterday I got five glossy political ads in the mail. Today I got five more.

Well, if these guys didn't send out all these dumb ads, they would save a few trees and be more "green" as it is popular among politicians to be and the money they would save on paper, printing and postage could be put towards this struggling economy they say they care about and really boost it.

I'll just be so glad when it is all over next Wednesday. I have my pick, but really, I just want to see it end. I want to see them quit talking and start doing.

And please, stop sending me ads!

Getting ready for the upcoming craziness

Holiday season has begun. I just love fall. It is a holiday to me the first time you have pumpkin bread and hot chocolate for breakfast. I usually go pumpkin crazy in October, but this year, I'm trying to clean out the pantry and I only had one can of pumpkin. One can, so many baking possibilities. I made bread.

Our church had their Halloween carnival (trunk-or-treat) already. It was lots of fun, but a bit disorganized. The kids just loved running about in their costumes. There were 5 Indiana Joneses. I brought three of them - my two older boys and a friend. My youngest son refused to wear his costume, that I sewed for him! What gratitude, I must say. Well, that's a two year old.

Speaking of the two year old, who I have referred to as Toddler on this blog will be turning 3 in a few weeks. Toddler no longer fits him at all, I really need to think of a new blog name for him. Maybe I'll just call him Whiner since that is what he seems to do a lot of right now.

Something funny right now, my oldest son has a cough and Peanut thinks it is just hilarious. She is squealing with laughter every time he coughs. It's pretty funny.

Halloween is coming up, then a couple of birthdays, the Primary Program and finally, we'll move in the end of November! We don't have anywhere to go and this might be the dumbest thing in the world, but it seems no matter what I choose now, it doesn't seem right. So, we make a choice and go with it. It's crazy.

odd

So, several nights ago, Peanut woke up and started screaming from her crib. The room where my eight year old sleeps is right next to Peanuts. As I go to get Peanut from her crib, I see my eight year old laying on the floor in the doorway fast asleep. Odd.

The next morning I asked him why was he sleeping on the floor? Did he wet his bed? Did he have a bad dream? No, he laid across the threshold of the room to keep his sister from coming in. Hmm. I don't know when she was trying to get in and I'm not sure if he stayed that way all night long. Why do we even bother buying beds and keeping clean sheets on them if he is going to sleep on the floor.

Well, Princess got told the next day to please stay out of the boys room at night. I don't think there has been a problem since.

mind fog

Wow, I had something I was going to blog about, but then when I sit down to do it, my mind goes totally blank. Hmmm....

Hats

My two oldest boys have decided they want to be Indiana Jones for Halloween. Cool! The costume is harder to find than I would have imagined though. I'm not buying an Indiana Jones (IJ) costume from the store, but I'm searching thrift stores for possibilities. Well, I did come up with the hat,and that is the most important part of the costume. I found them at the dollar store on Friday. My boys have not taken off those hats since I got them. We went to a church activity on Saturday, they wore their hats, when they both came down the stairs this morning for breakfast, they were wearing their hats. My oldest son is 10. He is on the verge of leaving childhood. He wants to be treated older and I'm kind of sad to see him grow out of this stage of life. I'm excited for the young adult that he will become, but part of me just wants to keep my first born a kid forever. But this morning, when he came down in his IJ hat, my heart lept. Part of him is still a kid! Then again, part of me is still a kid, too.

kids

Kids are:
amusing
gross
funny
frustrating
messy
mess makers
helpful
not-so-helpful
stinky
sweet

They make me:
laugh
cry
shout
smile
giggle
tired
dance
worry
very happy

No Sleep

I'm so tired. Peanut isn't sleeping well, so neither am I. She wakes up countless times. I must see every hour of the night at least twice. I'm not getting any sleep, so I'm a witch during the day. Appropriate for the season, I guess, but it isn't helpful to our already stressful situation of preparing to move. The realtor is coming Friday to the house for me to sign the million forms needed to put the house up on the market. Hubby left yesterday for New Mexico. He stopped last night at my sister's house. She lives just outside of St. Louis. We won't see him again until we sell the house and move ourselves. So, no help at night is available anymore, and if Peanut keeps this up, I might be insane by the time we head west.

There is no where for her to sleep where she won't disturb everyone else. Everyone in this house shares a room, except for the oldest, but he is the lightest sleeper in the house. Peanut only has to cry a little and it wakes him. I take Peanut down stairs and she still disturbs him. Once downstairs, there is no room to put her in to let her cry or sleep alone. The entire downstairs is an open floor plan - no doors to shut (unless you include the garage). Maybe I should sleep in there.

I know that as babies start crawling and walking, they sleep less. Peanut is a first class crawler now and last night when she woke up screaming in her bed, I found she had crawled into the corner of her crib and her head was crammed into the corner. I don't know... I'm just hoping a miracle night will come eventually, and I'll get a few hours in a row of sleep.

I did discover last night (or about 3 hours ago) at about 4:15 that Facebook has some fun groups in it. If you have a favorite movie, actor, book, game, whatever, it has a group you can join. Not my favorite way to spend time at four in the morning, but hey....

I just need some sleep.

Bracelets

Bracelets are my new favorite accessory.
I got into beading a few months ago. I haven't done much and what I've done isn't very good, but I have fun. My bead collection is small and mostly made up of the tiny seed beads, but back in August, I had the idea I wanted something fun for Halloween.

I checked out the local craft stores and really couldn't find anything I liked. I couldn't even find orange beads. So, I get on ebay! Isn't that a fun place. I found the greatest skull beads and a collection of 100 orange and black glass beads of various sizes. I thought about those bead for months and decided I wanted to get them and make a really great Halloween bracelet for Princess and myself.

The beads came two weeks ago and I made some really cute bracelets. I love wearing them. What do you think of my nifty crafty work?

Don't you just love the skulls?

Peanut doesn't let me do much. It took me a while just to make these because of Peanut's constant need for attention. I'm thinking now to Christmas. I may have to get back on ebay and find a selection of red and green beads.

Things are crazy!

I love a quiet life. OK, as quiet as you can be with 5 children. I don't make phone calls unless I absolutely have to. I don't get many phone calls and I'm good with that. I don't like a whole lot of extra people in my home, unless they are friends who come to chat. I prefer quiet days in the solitude of my home. BUT, with this move, I'm getting countless phone calls a day. I'm setting up all sorts of appointments for people to come to my home and I'm not liking it much.

Today, we had a handyman guy come to evaluate a few repair jobs that we would like to have done, the movers came to evaluate our household goods, and several phone calls about and to Realtors. Tomorrow the bug guy comes and two Realtors in the afternoon. My house is a mess and I have all these people over to see my house! I'll be glad when this is all over and we are settled in a new home. Then, I can get back to my quiet, kid-filled life.

My niece has just joined a Daisy Scout Troop. I'm happy for her, I love the Girl Scouts. She called me today to sell me cookies. Can I just tell you how happy I am to support my niece in Scouting? Yes, I'll buy some cookies to support her. I guess I can sacrifice for her. Yeah! It's Girl Scout Cookie Time!!!!

Back to the bunk bed, after we rescued the one son from underneath it, hubby put his shoes on and at 9:30 at night, he was hauling pieces out onto the street. Thank goodness today was trash pick up day. It worked out nicely in the end.

Peanut is crawling now. She is quite slow, but very mobile. She has gotten under foot more than once. Our computer room is about 3 inches lower than the rest of the house, so there is a funny little step to the computer room. Peanut is learning to get up and down that step. She was so pleased with herself today when she finally made it up the step. I'm amazed at her determination to move.

Well, I guess that's all for now. It is late, Peanut is sleeping in my arms and I'm going to head to bed.

To be continued

Thoughts a million have been floating through my head lately. Some of them good, some not so positive. Hubby leaves in less than one week to go to our new town. He will leave and the kids and I won't see him again until we sell the house and make our trip west. I'm feeling overwhelmed at the idea of all that is going to have to happen and we want it all to happen within a very short amount of time. The quicker we can sell the house, the less money we pay on mortgage. We can't figure out how to pay for the house here and get a place for Hubby to live in NM. The movers came today to evaluate our household goods. We'll know more about that in a day or so. We still haven't heard from the Realtor and we are getting quite stressed about that. We had a handyman come to the house today to look at a few repairs that we feel are out of our skill range. There is only three things, but it would cost us over $600. Way more than we have at anytime to do anything. Ahh! Less money + moving = STRESS.

One of the pieces of furniture we decided not to take was the bunk bed the boys are on. It is really squeaky, big and we just did not want to deal with it. We would get rid of it before the move. Well, last night the boys in the bunk bed were arguing. Hubby went in there to tell them to be quiet and just as he was walking out, the bed tipped to the left and collapsed. Hubby grabbed the top piece and I ran in to help and we were able to lift it just high enough for our younger son to get out from under it. Luckily he suffered no injuries other than a bumped wrist.

Be back later.....

Talent Show

Tonight for Family Home Evening we did a family talent show. It was so funny. First up was Toddler (2 1/2 years old), he very quietly sang the ABC's, but he got distracted about half way through and started looking at the Halloween box in the living room. Next up was 8 year old son. He did some flips on the trampoline. Then was Princess (4 1/2 years old). She sang "Bop to the Top" from High School Musical and she danced. Her dancing is mostly spinning around. Then it was Hubby's turn. He typed. His typing speed is 86 wpm. He is very fast and pretty good since he hasn't practiced that much in a while. Next was the 10 year old son. His talent was to eat an entire pizza (a small one) as fast as he could. He did it in 3 minutes. It was kind of gross. He had never done that before, but he was confident in his ability to eat one quickly. He found out that eating as fast a you can is trickier than it seems. We decided one day, we'll have a family pizza eating competition to see who can eat their pizza the fastest. Last was me. I had to prepare mine in advance because my talent is making tasty treats and I made some super yummy Oreo bonbons. Mmmmm.

We talked about how our different talents can help us in life and how God blessed each of us with talents. We aren't sure how eating a pizza in less than three minutes helps us in life, but hey, it's fun to try!

Friendship Bread is taking over my hosue!

Have you ever had Amish Friendship Bread? It is very tasty. We really like it in this household.

I don't know how friendship bread begins. Most people don't. All I know is that a "friend" gave me a loaf of sweet bread and a gallon size bag filled halfway with a cream colored goo. I was given the instructions that I was to mush the bag everyday for 10 days. On the 5th day I'm to add some stuff and mush the bag. On day 10, I'm to add more stuff, and divide the goo into three parts. One part I keep, one part I bake and the last part I pass on to another friend. Well, it only took a month and every woman I know had her own bag of friendship goo.

Our family loves the bread, but what am I suppose to do with it all? My very smart mother-in-law suggested I put the extras into the freezer. Then, I can pull them out anytime and make more bread. What a great idea! So, I've been doing that. However, now I've got 4 bags of bread goo in the freezer, and today is day 10 and I need to bake the bread, which will give me one more bag to my freezer.

Friendship bread, it's everywhere!!!

Good thing we like it so much.

Busy days

Today is Hubby and I's 12th anniversary. I remember when we went to church the first time after we were married. There was a girl there who had been married 9 whole months. I couldn't imagine what that must be like. I had never kept a room mate more than one semester, they would drive me crazy. I wondered, will I still like my husband after three months? Well, I did and still do. There have been many ups and many downs and some times it seems that time has gone so quickly and other times it seems that the time has gone very slow. The year Hubby spent in Korea was a very slow one. Still, through it all, it has been 12 years now. I was looking in the paper at some couples celebrating their 50th anniversary and I thought we'll celebrate that in the year 2046. That seems impossible, but at the beginning, nine months seemed impossible too. I can't wait to find out what will happen in the next 36 years.

Life has been so busy and crazy since getting married. We've moved countless times and have lived in many states. We've welcomed 5 babies into our family and usually we manage to move those same years we have a baby... We moved in 1998 and two days later, our oldest was born. We had our second in 2000 and moved in December of that year. We moved in 2004, 4 months after I had baby number 3. Then, we moved in 2005, and 2 months later we had baby number 4. Now this year, we welcomed baby number 5 and we will be moving again before the year is out. This time, life takes us to New Mexico. Hubby will be moving there in less than two weeks. The kids and I will join as soon as we sell the house. There is so much to do, it is crazy to think about. With all that needs to be done, Peanut has decided this week that she is no longer sleeping. She won't take her long, lovely morning nap. She wakes the moment I lay her down. She cries all day, except when I'm holding her, but she doesn't want to be held either. She squirms to get down and then screams when I do. Today, after many hours of listening to her scream and cry, I looked in her mouth and saw tooth #4 making it's painful appearance. Poor thing. I feel so bad for her. So, a little Tylenol later, she is napping, in my arms, while I type.

With Halloween approaching, my kids are very excited. My oldest has come up with all sorts of costume ideas. Now remember, he is 10 years old, and his latest idea is to dress up like the Pink Panther (the pink cartoon character) and wrap himself with toilet paper so he can be the Pink Panther Mummy. I don't get it either. He also had the strange idea of being the Red Baron Pizza Delivery Man. He likes Red Baron pizza. Now, he really likes Narnia and he loved the Prince Caspian movie and book. I suggested that he be Prince Caspian, but he said he isn't tall enough or have dark hair like Caspian. And I'm thinking: but your tall enough and have a pink full-body suit to be the Pink Panther?

There is so much more to say, but Toddler just woke up Peanut with his whining (he is whining and crying non-stop these days and I just don't know what to do with him.) Well, I had better get Peanut back to sleep.