Too Much Fun

I know a long while back I already mentioned this , but it's become second nature for me to hear my children laughing hysterically (not just a good belly-laugh, but complete hysterics) and immediately tell them to stop what they're doing, whether it's good clean fun or not. This is because the extreme happy emotions they're feeling generally turn to extreme angry emotions and become a fight. I took a video of this hysterical fun. Right before I grabbed the camera Alli was laughing uncontrollably, which toned down when I turned the camera on. And, in the video Evan is being a bit of a pain to Alli, and then she ends up getting irritated with him. The video is a little dark. I should've turned the light on, but I was afraid they would stop playing and I wouldn't get the full effect. Also, you can get a glimpse of my constant battle with laundry. The pile grew before it was all over, but I'm happy to report it's been folded and put away.

Drew's 8th Birthday

Drew turned 8 on Saturday, so we had a little family party at home for her. We had everyone over for dinner and grilled hot dogs, and then had cake and ice cream. I made the cake myself, and I was pretty proud of how it turned out. I even made my own homemade buttercream icing. Drew got lots of really nice gifts including some clothes for school, pajamas, a movie, some money, a new Webkin, and her very own ice cream maker (which I have to admit I was pretty excited about myself). We got her a new bike. Her old bike was out in the front yard close to the road, so Andy asked her to go out and move it and when she got out there, the new one was waiting for her. That picture is her genuine response, which I thought was great. We were unable to get all of her little friends together at the same time on a weekend, so we're having 2 little girls over to go to the movies and spend the night on Tuesday. I guess that's the advantage to having a summer birthday. We seem to always have trouble working around everyone's schedule on the weekends for her birthday (the disadvantage) so we usually end up doing something during the week, and her birthday seems to drag on for several days and several events. She loves it, but I worry about her becoming more spoiled than she already is!

The 4th of July...sort of

This year we did absolutely nothing on the 4th of July. We talked about it, but ended up just relaxing that day. We didn't feel too guilty about it because I had taken the kids the week before to see fireworks down the road from our house, and because we knew we were going out on the lake on Saturday to see fireworks. We had a really nice time. Andy's uncle and his wife went with us. His uncle isn't much older than him, so they have kids around the ages of our kids, so they were all excited about being together. Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't forget something, and this time it was my camera. We ended up leaving the boat at the lake overnight (Andy has a friend who lives on the lake) since there were quite a few people trying to load their boats on trailors as soon as the fireworks were over, so we went back Sunday afternoon to get the boat. The kids wanted to ride around again, and this time I remembered my camera. They all got a chance to ride on the tube by themselves, and then they all three rode together for a while, until Drew decided she'd had enough. They had such a good time. On Saturday they were a little nervous about it, and the water was really choppy from all the boats out there, but Sunday they were much more relaxed about the whole thing. Here are a few pictures of the kids on the tube (or tuba as Evan and Alli call it), and a little video clip.

Teach Your Children Well...

This morning as I was cleaning the kitchen, Evan came in and asked for some milk. There was just a tiny bit left in the container, so I told him to just drink it out of the bottle instead of getting another cup dirty, and then I immediately thought of the bad habits I was teaching him that I would have to deal with later. Of course, I wasn't bothered by it enough not to take a picture and think he looked really cute at the time. Oh, and that big red spot on his cheek is from him falling out of Drew's bed in the middle of the night and hitting his face on her night stand. It was fun searching for bandaids at 2:00 in the morning.

More Summer Stuff

Stephanie and Jose got Evan and Alli a 3-laned slip-and-slide type thing for their birthday this year, and we finally got it set up in the yard yesterday. We quickly discovered that we have to put it away every day because Daisy will definitely chew it up. She was very curious about the whole thing. Here's a little video clip.

Weekend in Alabama

We got home from Alabama at a reasonable 8:00 last night, giving me time to run to the grocery store for a few things, and still get in bed at a decent hour. Alli and I went over Friday with my parents to make it in time for the wedding rehearsal, and then Andy, Drew, and Evan came over later that night (arriving around 1:00 a.m. Georgia time). Drew had her end-of-season softball party where they got their trophies, and since she was the best player on her team (not my words - her coach told me this when we had to miss a game for Erin's wedding, although as her mom I completely agreed), we hated for her to miss it. We all had a really nice weekend, and I was happy for Andy to get to be around my hometown and old friends since we live in the middle of his and run into old friends of his all the time. We spent a lot of time with our old neighbors, who are the kind of neighbors people wish for. Andy kept worrying that we would be imposing, and I kept insisting that they didn't care. They're such nice people that at one point we were in their house admiring a decoration they had hanging on their wall, and Andy jokingly asked if they'd give it to us, and I told him they probably would if we asked for it. I don't know that they'd go that far to give us decorations off their walls, but they're just super nice people. I saw several of my high school friends at the wedding, and then we saw a lot of old friends at church on Sunday and had lunch with a few of them. So, it turned out to be a really nice weekend. At the wedding, the girl that did everyone's hair spent about 30 minutes each on Alli and Drew's hair curling it into ringlets, which they loved. Neither one of them has a bit of curl to their hair, so they were pretty excited about it. Here are a few pictures of them getting their hair done, and one with the bride and with Erin, who was also in the wedding.

Andy's Photography Skills

It's likely that none of you realize what a master photographer Andy is. Here he is showing off his talents at Erin's wedding rehearsal.

Summer Festivities

We're back from the beach and not a moment too soon. Andy and I were discussing how temperamental we are, and whether it's a good thing or not. It's like we have this extremely find line dividing where we're having fun and where we're not, and we go along having a great time, and then all of a sudden it's over. Last year we stayed at the beach way too long, so this year we were planning on leaving much earlier. Andy was ready, but I was still having a great time, so we stayed one day longer, and that proved to be too long. But, we did have a great time for the most part. First, though, there was Erin's wedding, which, as I mentioned before, was just beautiful, and it was great to see so much family that I hadn't seen in so long. Since I have so much to catch up on, here are just a couple of pictures:

After the wedding, I had a week of post-planning and training on our new math program, and then summer finally started for me. I found it to be very stressful. I've been so high strung for about 6 years now that the sudden drop in activity has been difficult for me. I'm adjusting, though. I was able to relax at the beach and I'm really looking forward to lots of mornings of nothing, and now that we have a back deck, my favorite thing to do is get up before the kids and drink my coffee out there, usually on the phone with my mom, solving the problems of the world. Any ways, here are some pictures of the beach:

Above are the kids playing Bingo. I can't tell you how many games of Bingo they played, but I appreciate the game on a whole different level now. It's fun and competitive with such basic rules, anyone who can recognize letters and numbers can play.

Here are Drew and Evan collecting what they called "clams." I don't know what the proper name is, and they may be clams for all I know, but they're those things in little closed shells that dig down into the sand.

Here's Alli with a boogie board.

Here are all 3 of the kids floating, or "relaxing" as they say.

And, last, we had to take some family pictures on the beach. It was kind of funny. That evening everybody had the same idea, and there were tons of families taking pictures. It was really nice down there, but I'm glad to be home. We're now getting ready for our trip to Alabama for the kids to be in their next wedding. If anybody needs lessons for their kids on being in a wedding, let me know. My kids have been in so many that Andy's considering charging for their services.

Insert Creative Title Here

Ok, here's another boring post with no pictures, but I just wanted to update again. My laptop is at my dad's house having more memory added to it. I should be getting it back at some point this week, but until then, I'm stuck using Andy's laptop to post, and he refuses to let me put any pictures on his computer, with the fear that his computer will slow down like mine did because of lack of free memory. Anyways, Erin's wedding was beautiful, so I'll get some highlights of that up soon, and in 4 days we're leaving for the beach, as I said before, so I'm still promising more interesting posts to come. Just bear (or bare?) with me for a few days while I get everything together. I'm struggling with a sudden absense of things to do in a world where I usually have a zillion things to do. I forgot how to sit still and relax without sleeping, so I'm relearning while walking around my clean house looking for things to clean because I don't know what to do without a job, papers to grade, lessons to plan, laundry to catch up on, a messy house to clean, ball practice, etc. Pitiful, huh?

Update

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still around, and still busy as usual. The end of the school year is crazier than I realized, and I just haven't had time to take a lot of pictures. Plus, while I am really busy, life's just not that exciting right now. Ball has pretty much ended, so we're right now we're just working toward the light at the end of the tunnel, which is so visible I can hardly stand to get up in the morning. But, this weekend is Erin's wedding, so I'll have plenty of news there, and then 2 weeks after that we're going to the beach. So, there are exciting things to come!

More T-Ball

I took some video last night of Evan and Alli playing T-ball. Of course, there's all kinds of action throughout the game that makes cute video, but here are just a couple of minutes of it. In the first one, Alli is batting, and in the second one Alli is on 3rd base and Evan is batting. He actually hit a homerun, which I didn't realize until he got to second base, but you can sort of get the idea of how funny their games are.

Evan and Alli's Birthday

Yes, Evan and Alli really are 5 years old. When I think about Drew turning 5 she seemed so grown up to me, but Evan and Alli still seem like babies. They're so little. Another thing that I keep thinking about is when I was 28 weeks pregnant with them I was put in the hospital with contractions 8 minutes apart. It was such a stressful time because I was in the hospital for a week hearing nurses whisper in the corner that I wouldn't be leaving the hospital pregnant, which worried me to death. I remember my doctor reassuring me that he saw a patient of his that day who had premature twins that had just turned 5, and I thought about how lucky she was to have her babies grown and healthy, and that seemed so far away for me. Of course, I did leave the hospital pregnant and held on for another month, and here we are today, with 5 year old normal, healthy kids. I know, the sap is overwhelming. Anyways, back to the birthday party. We took them out to dinner on their actual birthday because they wanted to go to a restaurant where they sing to you. And then we had the big party this past Sunday. It went really well. Of course, nobody knows what RSVP means these days (I myself am as guilty as the next guy), so we had no clue what to expect. A whole bunch of kids showed up. Twins means double the kids and double the presents, so we had a garage full. The rain showed up before the party, and it ended up pretty nice. The ground was wet and soggy, which was why we moved everything into the garage, and the kids still played outside with all their little friends and got nice and muddy. They got a crazy amount of gifts (lots of much needed clothes and several not-so-needed, but much desired toys). I think more than anything they were just thrilled to have their friends at their own house. And, Andy and I were pretty excited about getting to show off the house. It was a really nice day, lots of family and friends around, and a few strangers, including one very odd mother - nice, but odd. Here are some pictures:

Also, here's a little video clip of Drew hitting the ball at her last ball game. Of course, when I thought to get up and take video she hit the ball straight to the pitcher and got out, but she hit it pretty good anyways.

T-Ball

I finally have some pictures of Evan and Alli playing T-ball. I don't know what the deal is, but for some reason the week's forcast is beautiful every day except for Saturday around here. It has seriously rained every Saturday for a while now. In fact, at this game in the pictures, we were sort of misted on the whole time, but they've cancelled so many games I think we all knew the only thing that would stop us was a terrential downpour. And, this week's forcast is the same. Sunny, sunny, sunny, and then rain on Saturday and Sunday. I think it's raining on Sunday just because we have Evan and Alli's birthday party planned for that day and we were going to grill outside. It's me. I'm cursed. Anyways, back to the T-ball games. They're so cute at their games. They look so little after watching Drew play. They're doing so good and are really having fun. T-ball is so nice and so unstressful. There are no outs, and everyone bats and plays the field and we don't keep score, so it doesn't matter. It's just all instructional. Their coaches are 2 girls that I work with, and there are 2 other teachers' kids on the team (which makes 5 of us altogether), so it's nice that we can all go to the games together. So, enjoy the pictures. And, stay tuned for birthday party highlights (and pray that the rain stops before the party).

On to the Bathrooms

First of all, I realize that most of you probably aren't used to me posting this regularly, so if you haven't looked at the pictures of the kitchen, make sure you scroll down and look at that, too. On to the bathrooms. I rarely take baths (meaning, of course, that I always take showers - not that I don't bathe), except for when we go on vacation and stay in some really nice place that has a TV and a bathtub in the same room. It's just really hard for me to shut my mind down and fully relax without thinking of the 10 million other things I should be doing unless I have some distraction, which is what the TV does for me. (Like it or not, it's true. I thorougly enjoy TV, and even use it as my friend to keep me company when I'm alone.) So, last night when I got home from the grocery store, Andy had run wire to our bathroom and hung a TV on the wall for me directly across from the bathtub! I was so excited! There was no electrical outlet on that wall, or cable, so he had to wire all that stuff, which is second nature to him since he works with electricity all the time. He's just so handy to have around! I mean, he's big and warm and makes me laugh, and on top of it all, he's handy! Talk about a bonus! Here's a shot of it from in the bathtub, which I layed in fully clothed (no water of course) just to take a picture for the blog.

Here's another picture of the bathroom. You can see the reflection of the TV in Andy's mirror. My sink is there to the right. You can see the corner of the counter. The shower is directly across from my sink, and then the toilet is in its own little closet next to that.Speaking of bathrooms, I was upstairs cleaning the kids' bathroom today, trying not to vomit from how nasty it was. I clean it as often as I clean the other bathrooms, and it's always exponentially worse. I have a good friend who has 2 kids right around the ages of mine and we've discussed how gross the kids' bathroom gets compared to the adult bathroom. The toothpaste caked on the sink is 100 times worse. Not only do they spit right on the edge so that the toothpaste runs all the way down the sink and most of it doesn't get rinsed off, but they also inevitably spit one big glob that apparently never gets touched by the toothbrush right where water doesn't hit that sits there and dries overnight. Yuck! Also, my kids play outside a lot, and they always seem to get covered in orange mud, which then floats on the top of the bath water in a yucky orange pool of suds, and then when they drain the water, the residue sticks to the sides, so I always have a nice orange ring around the bathtub. I won't even bring up the toilet. What's sad is that I cleaned it all today, and the kids spent the night away last night, so they took a bath over there, but tomorrow as soon as they take their bath, it'll be nasty again. Such is life. I feel the same way about laundry. As soon as I get it all washed and folded and put away, it's time for bed and the kids change into their pajamas, and the 3 outfits they were wearing make half a load already. This is why my laundry gets so piled up at times. My mind goes on laundry strike and I can't make myself get motivated to do it anymore, until we're all out of socks and underwear, and whether I like it or not, it must be done.

Kitchens and Softball

In my last post I forgot to include a picture of the outside of the house, so here it is:

Also, we got our new pretty granite counter tops, faucet, and tin backsplash, which Andy finished today. We also switched out our appliances. We got new ones at the old house about a year ago, and this house had decent ones, but they were all white, so we decided to switch them out to update everything. Here are a couple of pictures:

Here's an upclose shot of the granite and tin, and my pretty new teapot that Andy got me to match the counter tops (the black and brown one).Also, last weekend Drew had her first softball game. She's playing coach-pitch this year, which is why she's standing on the pitcher's mound next to a coach in a different uniform. She played the pitcher position because she's so awesome at stopping the ball, if I may brag on my child a little. The majority of hits go toward the pitcher at this age, and she dives for the ball and lets it hit her and everything. She makes me proud. Evan and Alli's T-ball games start this coming Saturday, so I'll have pictures of them up soon.

Updates

Hooray!!! We finally have the internet hooked up! We can be such procrastinators. Actually (and my mom can vouch for this) we're just too busy to breathe. On top of moving, and both of us working full time, we now have entered softball/T-ball season, so life has gotten even crazier. Evan and Alli have practice Monday night, Drew has practice Tuesday night, church is Wednesday night, Drew has practice again on Thursday, and they all 3 have practice on Saturday. Aaaahhh!!! is all I can say. I love watching them play, though, and they love it, so we can't make them quit, and I'm told that this is everyone's life these days, so I guess I can suck it up like the rest of the world. So, we finally are starting to feel like we're sleeping at home and not in some vacation house. It's amazing what a new house will do for motivation. My house has stayed spotless for almost a month now, and laundry has not backed up once. Those of you who live near me know what a miracle this is. I just love keeping it clean because it's so pretty. Can you tell I'm a little proud of it? We still have several bare walls, but we plan on being here a good long time, so fully decorated walls will come. The kids are doing great sleeping in their own bedrooms, and since they get the entire upstairs, I've only seen 2 or 3 toys in the living room the entire month! We were just all right on top of each other at the other house that everything bled over into everything else. Daisy is also enjoying her new, huge space with no visible cage. The invisible one is much less forgiving, though. I would recommend an invisible fence to anyone, but I recommend it with a huge warning that nobody gave us. It's absolutely horrible the first time the dog hits the line. The people that lived here before us love their dogs and everything, but they were fine with letting them get shocked. Andy and I almost gave it up after about the second time it happened to Daisy. In fact, we took it off of her and decided she could just live in the garage. But then, the next day she escaped, which motivated us to try it again. We put the collar on her and she completely froze. She wouldn't move at all. I pushed her over to her dog house and her food to show her she was safe, and then she wouldn't move from there. She's totally used to it now and it's great to have, but it was rough for a couple of days. Anyways, with all the pictures this is going to end up being a really long post, but it's long overdue, so here are some pictures of the new place.

Here is the breakfast area. We're getting new granite countertops Monday, so I'll post pictures of the rest of the kitchen later.

Here's the dining room.

Here's one angle of the living room.

And another angle of the living room (Yes, that's Remember the Titans).

This is a shot of the upstairs from the downstairs. The recessed lights you see are over the couch, and then the rest of the living room is open to the upstairs, which is great for the kids to be up there in their own space and I can still hear everything they're doing.

This is the kids' playroom, which was painted by the previous owner.

Drew's room, also pained by the previous owner. The colored polka-dots go all around the room, which is bigger than it looks, but because of the slanted ceiling it just looked like a long tunnel in the picture, so I got a little closer.

And Evan's room, which looks a little sterile in the picture. The first owners didn't have any boys, so this was an office. No fancy painting in here. :( He's up there sleeping in the top bunk, otherwise I would've made the bed all nice and neat.

Here's Alli's room. That's her also sound asleep in the bed, and this was already painted this way as well. Nice, huh?

And last but not least is our bedroom. It was hard to get a good picture of the whole thing, and it's over twice the size of our old bedroom, so we still have a good bit of space to fill.

So, that's it. We love it. On top of everything is only about a mile from Wal-Mart (which I may have already mentioned). I'm glad the whole moving part is over. I have some pictures of that, too, but I figured this was enough for now. Oh, and I can't forget the kids at Easter! Here they are all nice and pretty: