Wow! What a day.

It is 8:40 am and I am not looking forward to the rest of the day.

Since I went to bed last night, I awoke in the middle of the night to my daughter sobbing because she had diarrhea and didn't know what to do about it. It took a while to calm her down enough to get her cleaned up - then I had to spend some time cleaning up the mess off the floor. Needless to say, I was exhausted so fell back to sleep quickly - hoping for a good day, despite a potentially sick girl. No such luck. When I pried my eyes open at 8am the next morning, I heard my youngest daughter shouting, "I need to go Pobby!!!" rather urgently. I crawled out of bed and discovered that she was a naked poopy girl who was wanting to use the toilet that was currently occupied by first daughter who was attending to her business there.

Yup, Nikki had removed her poopy diaper and was gleefully running around, butt naked, shouting her favorite mantra these days, I quickly cleaned her up before she decided to make it worse while the "Pobby" was in use. I decided it was time for breakfast, so headed to the kitchen where I discovered mashed banana all over the counter. Actually, they weren't just mashed on the counter - somebody found a knife and SLICED them first, then carefully put the "evidence" away. I have no idea which child did it - but Tommy & Becky both claimed it was Nikki, so I'm sure that's entirely possible. They might have even caught her in the act and tried to help me by putting the knives away since they knew they weren't allowed to touch them. I sure wouldn't put it past her.

Anyway - I figured by this point, today was going to be an AWESOME day. Of course, with such an awesome beginning, why wouldn't it be awesome? So, for lunch I put the kids in the car so we could meet Daddy for lunch somewhere. I called him on the phone to see where to meet him. While on the phone with him, I realized that the road was especially rocky today. Like REALLY ROCKY! So I figured that it probably wasn't the road. I got out of the car and sure enough, it wasn't the road. The car had a flat. Tom told me I shouldn't have asked what else could go wrong. I laughed and told him I figured that with the morning I had, at some point it was bound to get better - and that I wasn't trying to jinx myself by asking what else could go wrong.

Thankfully he's a wonderful husband and father and suggested that instead of us driving to meet him for lunch, he would come home so we could have lunch together and he would re-inflate the tire to get it back home - and some other time we could get the tire fixed. Ahh - my hero! In so many ways. :)

Funny Kiddos!

My kids have been hilarious today. My morning started off with Nikki coming up to me and announcing "I kitty-cat. Meow!" then she pretended to lick me. I don't really remember the other two pretending to be animals like she is today.

Then later, I asked Tommy to choose 5 chores he wanted to do every day.  He told me. "I'm going to pick up my room, put away all my cars, build something cool for you, wash the table, and sweep the floor.

This is the "something cool" he made for me today. Pretty impressive for the first day, I think. :) Now, if he can keep this up, I'll be very impressed. 

Then while he was sweeping the floor, he asked me if he would still have to do his chores on Sabbath. I told him "yes, we do." Then he told me - "But it says in the bible, we shouldn't do any work on Sabbath!" Apparently his sabbath school lessons are finally sinking in! :)

Caught red handed!

Our youngest is our trouble maker. She manages to get into some amazing trouble without much trouble on her part it seems. Today as we were getting ready for church, she found a jar of red food coloring gel - and painted her hands and her sister's bedroom door. Of course, since she is also a thumb sucker, she dyed her lips bright red as well. So, I assume you could say that she was caught red handed - literally today. You think eventually she would learn, but I think she enjoys the attention. :)

March

I have found some blogs that I'm very very excited about. First - I found a blog on how to style girls hair: www.princesshairstyles.com. I haven't done much with my girls hair yet, because they are still fairly young and don't have a whole lotta hair yet, but SOMEDAY they will. and I'll be ready. With a hairbrush in one hand, and barrettes and hair-bows in the other. :)

Than I have found two sites that have wonderful information on diy house fixups and design ideas. Bower Power and YoungHouseLove are two wonderful sites that I'm falling more in love with the more I read about them. :) Soon those sites will probably have info on child-friendly decor because they are expanding. :) ha ha!

As far as my goals for this year, I've succeeded so far in at least exercising 3-4 times a week. For some reason I just can't seem to get that 5th day in yet - but I'm hoping. :) ExerciseTV.tv is a great place to go to find videos of workouts & inspiration. I'm also enjoying visiting Fitness Magazine's website as well. They have a really cool tool for logging your exercise & foods - to help inspire you. Plus a lot of great workouts to get you ready for summer. Yay!

The getting better organized thing is still a work in progress too - I'm reading a great book called "The House that Cleans Itself" and I love what I've read so far. Now if I could just put into practice the things that I'm learning from this book, my MOTH book, and Flylady - Tom would be thrilled and I would be ecstatic! I know that someday I will have the house kept the way I imagine it looking in my head - so I keep plodding away. Some days are wonderful - tommorrow should be one of them since we're having family visit so that means the house will be much better. Still not as perfect as I want it to be - but I haven't given up yet. :)

I've also planted some seedlings for this summers "small" garden. I'm hoping to have better luck with some of the vegetables this year - Earthboxes are wonderful - I just wish I had better access to the sunlight.

Well - I've got a busy day tomorrow - lots of cleaning/sweeping/dusting & putting away of items left out. Wish me luck! :)

Starting the New Year off right...Hopefully. :)

I've decided on my New Years Resolution.

1. Exercise. I have too much fluff around the edges. Yes, I have had 3 kids close together, but that's no excuse now. :) We have a family membership at the Y and everybody really seems to be enjoying going there. I hope we can keep the membership because it seems to be a really good fit for us in that it gives the kids a chance to play with other children, while giving me the chance to get some physical exercise for myself and "free" time too. I've enjoyed taking one class at a time to see what class I want to get into and how often. So far I have tried pilates, yoga, cardio dance, and basic step. I still want to try the cycling, bosu/strength, Body Sculpt, and Buns & Abs classes. I thought I wanted to try the stability class, but it turns out that there is nobody under the age of like 70, and its mostly men. Not that I mind them, but I think there are other classes that fit my needs.

I've also tried doing 60 minutes of aerobic exercise in the fitness center. I went with Tom last night and worked for the entire hour on the machines he usually uses in the morning - and boy are my legs hurting now. :) I'm pretty excited about everything though.

2. Get Organized. I've created a schedule based partially on the MOTH (Managers of Their Homes - get it at Titus2.com) handbook and partially on the FlyLady (www.flylady.net) thing. Combining the two should help me get my act together so I can learn how to keep my house looking great - right? Once I get my schedule figured out I'll try to post it. I'm pretty excited about it because I've got it in my google calendar and with chrome, I can have a link to my calendar to know what I'm supposed to be doing right now instead of playing on the computer. :) Wish me luck in my endeavors! :)

Chore Packs

List of places that have great pictures of chore ideas for my kids. :)
Chore Packs

Trip out West

Can I just say our God is awesome? We left on our trip out west late friday morning, April 10. We had planned on spending the afternoon at Tom's aunt & uncle's house before catching our flight out of Nashville. About 30 minutes into our drive, Becky decided she needed to use the bathroom. Being that we were trying to potty-train her and she almost NEVER asks, I asked Tom to go ahead and stop at the next area so she could go. Tom hates stopping when we're trying to get somewhere fast, but since he was on the phone, and I insisted since we were potty-training, we stopped. After taking Becky potty, we continued down the road. We started getting into some really nasty weather - it had been overcast all day, but by the time we got near Murfreesboro, it was really bad. So bad that I started looking at the sky and thinking to myself, "Wow, that cloud sure looks tornado-ish." Before I could say anything to Tom, we both saw the cloud sweep across the interstate, a couple miles away. We didn't realize how close we were to it, until it took about 5-10 minutes to reach the area where the Tornado had just hit. That was just about the same length of time that Becky used to go to the potty - a request she did not make for the entire rest of the trip. I am so thankful our God watches over us - even when we least expect it.

So the second awesome thing God did for us on our trip was when we visited Arches National Park. We decided to check out another unpaved road of the park that looked like it might be interesting to see. We saw a sign that said "High rise 4-wheel drive only" and decided that since we had 4-wheel drive, we'd try it, not really knowing what High-rise would qualify as. We got a little ways down the road when we discovered it meant big rocks in the road and we had to turn around. So we did and went to see another part of the unpaved road that didn't require 4-wheel drive. When we arrived, we couldn't see the arch because it was still at least a mile and a half hike to the overlook and we had 3 fussy/sleepy kids. Again, we turned around and drove back out. About 1/2 way back on the dirt road, I again decided to do something out of the ordinary - I asked Tom to stop the car so I could get out and take a picture of the mountains ahead. When I got out to take a picture - I heard a soft hissing sound. I stopped to listen and it sounded like it was coming from the tire - and sure enough it was. Tom got out to start fixing the tire and "surprise, surprise" didn't want me to try to get some help. Men! :) I was pretty upset, so I started praying that I'd calm down to be a help to him. Around that time, another vehicle pulled up - remember we are in the middle of the dessert on a dirt road - and asked if we needed help. Tom said we just had a flat and should be ok - and the man AGAIN offered to help, saying that he owned an auto repair shop for about 30 years and would be happy to offer assistance. How can you turn down a God-send like that? Those two people were so friendly and helpful - the man helped Tom unload the car to get to the car jack that was underneath the kids car seats and his wife helped me entertain the kids while the two guys changed the tire. I am so glad to be serving a God who cares about the little things too!