I don't know what to say

I still am in shock over the passing of the health care bill late on Sunday March 20, 2010. My husband and I are discussing this and it greatly saddens me. So many people have demonstrated that they were not for this bill and yet our congressmen and women ignored the will of the majority and brought this bill into place against us. Right now my husband and I are discussing ways to get involved in the tea party movement. Look into it and judge for yourself what should be done. Here's the link to their home page: http://www.teapartypatriots.org/

Lack of socialization or just plain shy

Katerina started gymnastics this past Saturday and it brought the oppurtunity for my husband and I to once again discuss how shy she is when she first enters new situations. Once she warms up to her new enviroment she does great but the first half and hour or so she is really scared. This is what happened at gymnastics. She just couldn't bring herself to participate in the beginning. I'm sure there were some people who would attribute this to the fact that she is homeschooled and not in public school. Yet really if you think about it this is just part of her personality. She eventually warmed up and then did fantastic! She really enjoyed the last half of the session and I hope she will continue to enjoy it as she goes through it.

Stress and life

I've been feeling very stressed tonight and lately. My mom is going through a lot right now and it's really hard on me, on top of just the normal everyday busy things that happen in my household. I ask for prayers for my strength to hold out and that God would grant me this strength and also the wisdom on handling this situation well.

On the positive side Katerina starts gymnastics this saturday and also on saturday is our first 4-H meeting.(Everyone will be joining) I'm excited about it and so are most of the kids. We are going to be getting chickens soon (and we've never raised them before) and we are all looking forward to spring hitting soon. The nice temps lately are really perking us up.

Rotten Spoiled

I love to hear stories of funny things kids say and I hope to preserve some of what my kids say here. So Katerina comes up to me and asks if I will make her some chocolate milk. Sure, I say. Then her comeback instead of thank you was, mommy, I'm rotten spoiled. This is all said with a big grin on her face. Oh how I love such sweet little ones. Thank you Lord for my many blessings. Please help me to raise them in your grace and will. Amen.

Different Attitudes

It's amazing to me how an event can be perceived by me. Take last night I went to Russell's blue and gold dinner for cub scouts. I only took him and the baby with me. While we were there Natalia was continuing her whiny baby stint and I was worried she was going to bother people. Instead the people I sat with doted on her, causing her to quit whining because she was interested in them and it caused me to have a wonderful evening with two of my children. It always amazes me when this happens because it seems like most people don't like children. After receiving such wonderful feed back on my children it made me feel so good. My personal reflection for this is that when I am out and about I need to watch how I respond to people and how I can uplift others to put them in a good mood too.

Birthday season

At our house we have birthday season. Starting in late Feb. we have 3 birthdays. First is Katerina's, then Savanna's is two days later. Then about a week later is James. Next is Mine which is in late March. Then we have MaKayla and Russell's whose are in the first week of April. It is a busy time of year but we love it. I like to make cupcakes for the kids to take to church or school for their friends but I got a shock this year. When I asked Savanna how many kids were in the youth group at church for making these cupcakes she found out the number is 75!!! Then there are about 5 to 7 adults. Wow that is alot of cupcakes!

Also going on at our house is Natalia trying to learn to say more and more. She keeps getting so frustrated because she doesn't get the attention immediately that she wants when she trys to tell me something so she whines. Poor baby. Oh and then my husband and I are starting to work out using the P90X tapes and we got a perfect pull up bar to do our workouts. All the kids wanted to try it. Then Natalia runs over to it and is motioning to me that she wants to try too. It is too cute.

How NOT to dye your hair.

Apparantly when you are an almost 5 year old and you see that your big sister got her hair dyed, you start to wonder how to dye your hair to be cool too. Katerina found a unique solution yesterday. She got some nail polish and put it all over her hair. I go into the bathroom to see what she is doing and there she is looking very unhappy (I guess it wasn't quite the look she was going for?). So then I'm trying to figure out how to get the nail polish out of her hair. I love the internet! After a quick search it seemed that if you put the child in the tub and get the hair wet, then apply a small amount of baby oil you can pull the nail polish out. It took a while to do, but hey it worked. Now that a day has past I can laugh, but oh was I not happy when she did it. LOL. Got to love kids.

Homeschooling

Yes some of our children our homeschooled. And I am excited about some of the things I have done to decorate our schoolroom/ youngest girl's bedroom. We've added the alphabet across the top in nice bold blue. We've also added a section to the wall that is a weather center to put labels based on the season and the current weather. I hope to add temperature charts and percipatation charts as the girls get older. Then we have our character trait papers. At the top of the wall we have the USA flag. Oh and we also have a section for hanging well done papers. It's really quite beautiful. Maybe one of these days I'll get the camera working to show you what I've done. I hope to add to this wall whenever the mood strikes me so we'll see how often that is.

PS I did go to CVS this past Saturday and when I find my receipts I will post my deals.

Trying to get it all done

It is so hard to keep up with a busy household such as ours, but there are definitely some things that can be done to make it work out better. Getting the kids to help out is one of them, but also making it a game. Making it fun. So today I am focused on trying to get the housecleaning done and clipping coupons all while having fun with my kiddos.

Meanwhile I cannot post a lot of photos on my blog of my one stepdaughter at the request of her mother. So if you notice a lack of photos of all my children, or you come up with less than six kids it is because I am honoring the wishes of her mother.

Also, I am going to try to get back into couponing and blogging about it. So we'll see if this helps with keeping me blogging more.

Swimsuits

I don't know why I put myself through such torture every year, but I do it. Every year my daughters need new bathing suits and every year I arrive home frustrated at the lack of selection. This year when I went into my rant, my husband said, "You can't be the only one fed up with this, we don't you blog about it." And so here I am. First I went into Walmart. After finding success with two adorable t-shirt/shorts combos for my two youngest I was on to find something for my older two girls.

This is where I started getting mad. I think I saw one, yes ONE one-piece. That's it. And the cutout for the legs looked like it was meant to show off far more than I want to think about my girls showing. Then I thought well maybe a cute two-piece that covered everything. Nope. Aparently two-pieces are created to show off everything but what legally has to be covered. And this is in the 4-16 section! Why do we as a society think it is cute to have our little girls look like...well you know. I found a single pair of shorts bottoms at walmart and scooped them up like gold. Then I went to target where I scored cute outfits last year. They had two styles and had only one matching set in a size I needed. But because I had grabbed the shorts from walmart I was able to pair it up to a t-shirt style top and voila. We have swimsuits for the year. (Or at least until someone grows out of them.)

Now if only I could find a good bathing suit for myself. Sigh. Maybe I'll have to look into ordering them online next year.

Learning to blog better

I'm thinking about how I can blog on a more regular basis and about how I can help people with the things I know. Sometimes it's hard for me to put anything out here because I assume that anything I have to say is boring, or just already known by others. Yet there are so many good blogs out there that seem to just put out there regular thoughts and feelings. They say what they feel like regardless of how boring or whatever else it might be. So I need to just start getting my thoughts out there. Any advice would be helpful.

More pics of the kids coming soon

It's been incredibly hectic around here lately as we are getting ready to move in a few weeks (we bought a repo that was basically guted and we've been working hard to get it fixed up so we can move in, more to come later). Also our van broke down and we may have to scrap it and buy a new-to-us one. Once we move and are settled in I am hoping to get into a new routine of blogging much more regularly.

Russell

This is Russell. Of the kids I gave birth to he is my first born. As with any first born he was the one I knew nothing about birthing but has been my guina pig (at least until I married Steve because now I have my step-children who are allowing me to learn parenting skills with them! :) He is such a happy kid. He is into Hockey (as the goalie!), Cub Scouts, and is in T&T in AWANA. Russell is always trying to build something whether it be a contraption on our wagon to hold a fold up chair or just playing with his legos, he loves to build. Right now he is wanting to get into wood-working/carpentry. Maybe someday I can have my little guy build me a nice set of bookcases.

Pics of the kids: Katerina

First of all let me say happy birthday to Katerina!! She just turned 4 a few days ago! It always amazes me how quickly the time seems to go as the kids grow. Of the babies I gave birth to Katerina is the one who made me wait the longest to meet her. I tend to have my babies on the early side and she waited until 38 and 1/2 weeks before she made her appearance. She is deffinately one who likes to do things in her own time. She thinks she is so much older than she actually is which is just funny. I like to joke that she is 4 going on 13. She is also excited because she is starting gymnastics in about a week. Katerina just can't wait! So here are her pics.

Some pics I like of the kids: Natalia

I want to start adding more pictures of the kids so I will slowly work at putting more pictures on my blog. First here are some that I like of Natalia. The pic on the left is from about a month ago. The other two are from when she was only a few days old. It's amazing how big she is getting! She is so full of smiles and is just such a calm, happy baby.

Life lessons

There are some moments in life where we need to step back and evualuate what we need to be doing in our lives. We recently had to start getting up earlier due to a change in Savanna's bus schedule and it's started me thinking about all the things I need to start doing at home on a more regular basis. So I'm trying to get into a good routine with housecleaning, homeschooling, and just basic life schedules. Yet I still need to remember to step back and laugh as well. Yesterday was a long day of taking care of sick kids. Katerina just wanted to be held all day and when she would let me I got a few things done as fast as I could, well last night I found that there was a perfect pen made handprint that Katerina had managed to put on the couch. All I could do was laugh. What else can you do in this situation? So today I encourage you all to look at the things you need to do and come up with a good plan, but then to also remember to smile!

God's blessing on us!

Yes our God is an awesome God who answers prayers! And he has answered our prayers of a house. We currently live in a single-wide mobile home, with 6 children. It was getting just a bit cramped but in His perfect time He has supplied us with a house! It is a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house which sits on almost a full acre of land! I can finally have a garden! Now, it is a repo which basically means that we have a lot of work to do, but that's all right by us. Thank you Lord! Thank you!

Cat food and Macaroni

So you know you're a parent when...you look in the cat's bowl and realize there are uncooked macaroni noodles in it. So as a good animal caretaker you pick all the noodles out. Then you ask yourself how the noodles got in there in the first place. It really is a valid question, especially when you realize that you were the one to just refill the cat's bowl. After closer inspection of the box that we keep the cat food in I realized that my 3 year old had decided to add a decent amount of macaroni noodles to the cat's food. It's funny now that I think about it, but this morning as I was slowly... slowly working my way at picking all the noodles out it wasn't that funny.

What we've been up to at our house.

It's been pretty busy around our house lately. Between the round-the-clock nursing and hockey and AWANA we always seem to be doing something. And to top it off there is Christmas to think about. My sister and I made quilt with mine and my siblings names and birthdates and all of my kids names and birthdates. It turned out so pretty. I was really quite impressed with the two of us. We've never done something like that before and it was really refreshing to see something like that turn out so well. Meanwhile I thought I'd put a pic of all the kids on here. This is my dad's staircase. We were trying to play with different poses. Enjoy!

Announcing....Natalia Joy!

She's here! I know it's been 3 weeks since she was born, but hey it's hard when you have a new little one. So here is her birth story: (written from me to her)

Okay so on Monday I thought my water had broken in a trickle so I called the Midwife, Pat, and she said to come in and get checked. My water had not broken and I was still only about 2cm and not very effaced, but very soft. I asked her if she would strip my membranes and she did. It hurt but I figured that was a good thing. The rest of the day I had contractions off and on. Aunt Vickie and I walked around Walmart in the evening and I had good contractions but by the time we got home and I got settled for the night they were gone. I woke up at about 4am with little tiny twinges but they weren't too bad. By 5am I realized that these might be decent contractions because they were coming regularly. By 6am I realized that they were about 4 minutes apart. I woke your Daddy up and told him that I thought this was it because it felt like my other labors once they were nice and established. So then he showered and by 7am he was off to vote. A few hours later we could tell that this was going to be it so we called Aunt Vickie to come watch the other kids so I could go vote and so that she could be here when the baby was born. By this point labor was starting to get strong so we asked Daddy's cousin across the street, Chrissy, to watch the older kids so that I could vote before we got too far into labor. When we arrived at the polling station the lines were kinda long but everyone was so nice when they saw me and realized I was in labor. I went straight to the front of the line and they let me vote really quickly, then I had a whole gym of people congratulating us! It was great. I started to tear up pretty good and Daddy thought that was cute. So we got home and labored some more. By this point Aunt Vickie was here and her and Daddy did basic things around the house while coaching me during the contractions. (They had spaced out to about 5 minutes but were getting stronger and longer). By about 11am I thought it might be time to go, but Daddy read through the bradley book about emotional signposts again and said he wanted to hold out until 12, maybe 1 o'clock. By this point I was pretty much tuning everyone out during contractions and in between. By noon we thought we should go in so we called the Midwife, Pat, and she said yup come in. (Daddy made the receptionist laugh because when he called she said "can I help you" and he said, "Yes, I'm in labor." She laughed pretty good.) On the way to the hospital with Aunt Vickie, Savanna, Russell, Katerina, Daddy and I, we got a low tire. Daddy pulled over and then announced it wasn't low enough to stop him. ( I think he was worried he'd have to deliver you), then he was talking to family members on the cell and missed our exit to the hospital. Looking back it's pretty funny. During though I was kinda spaced out and didn't care too much. After we arrived Pat said I was 5cm, 80% and nicely established and so we walked, and rocked in a rocking chair and stood. By this time we had Grandpa Clare, Grandma Allison and Aunt Shirley join us at the hospital so it was like a party in the room. While standing I suddenly felt weird so I thought my water was breaking, when the nurse got me on the bed I started trembling really bad. All of the sudden I knew I was in transition and I kicked everyone out of the room (except for Daddy). The nurse checked me and said I was at 8cm and fully effaced. Daddy says that she seemed to panic a little and ran off to call Pat back. It seemed like only a minute and Pat was there. When she checked me she broke my water. Up to this point I was doing great without any pain meds, but once she broke my water it got much harder to tolerate it. She kept asking if I felt like I should push yet and I kept saying I wanted to push, but wasn't sure if I should yet. Finally after throwing up 3 times I felt a tad better and she suggested trying to push. That hurt! (at this point I let Grandma Allison, Aunt Vickie, and Grandma Lila in the room to see you be born) I backed off from it for a second until Daddy and Pat said they could see your head. Then I opened my eyes and 3 more pushes later you were here! You were born at 4:14pm. You weighed in at 7lbs 9ozs. And 19 inches long. You had such a big thick umbilical cord that it was hard for Pat to get the clip on it. Your birth was beautiful! I've never used a Midwife before and I've never gone totally natural before but this time I did both and it was absoutely awesome!