Tag!

I'm so excited! I can't think of a time I've gotten tagged by another blog, but Astarte at The Muddled Sage tagged me and I'm thrilled! YAY!


Anyway, here are the rules!

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share 6 nonimportant things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag 6 random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Okay, so 6 things about me...

1. I found my lost shoe. It was hiding under a bed at my inlaws house. Sneaky shoe! I know have it back and it has resumed favorite pair of shoes status. I almost through it's match away so many times I can't count, but something always stopped me!

2. I am not a morning person. My kids are morning people. It is not a good combination most days.

3. I used to hate being alone. Four kids later and I crave alone time. I don't even know when the change occurred. I still love to be around people, but the rare moment of quiet solitude is savored.

4. There is something cool (although really not important) going on today but I'm trying to keep it a secret until later. But it's been hard not to post about it... so I guess this is the "teaser."

5. I have a lot of insecurities about motherhood. I think I'm an okay mom, but I generally have feelings of I should do this better and often worry that others will judge me.

6. I LOVE reading blogs and writing this blog. It's so much fun!

Now for the part where I tag six others...

Mary Kate from "Makin' a Home in Georgia"
Katie at "Eberling Adventures"
Crisa at "Dear Lord"
"Thrift Store Mama"
Jenny at "Desperately Seeking Balance"
and
Melinda at "Urban Adventurers"

24 Things to Do on a Campout

1. Dig for gold!

2. "Sword" fight with a tree.

3. Play on the playground.

4. Put kids to bed and sit around the campfire roasting marshmallows and catching up with friends.

5. Survive the night despite the rain. Hope really hard the rain stops by morning (it did.)


6. Go on a super early walk with 7 kids and realize that we are the first ones up in the campground. Shhhhhh let's use quiet voices guys!

7. Eat breakfast.

8. Coin a new term "breakfast dessert" as we roast a few more marshmallows.

9. Collect leaves.

10. Go on a nature walk and collect items for project later on.

11. Look at a gopher tortoise.

12. Sit on a bridge!

13. Roll down a hill!

14. Fall asleep in a baby backpack.

15. Climb a rock wall at the playground.

16. Trudge across the playground when mommy forgets that the backpack she sent you for is pretty stinkin' heavy.

17. Stand on the picnic table bench (and fall off a few times.)

18. Make pine cone guys. My kid's finished projects over here.

19. Apple bobbing. We had to use a very little amount of water and the kids got them by the stems, but my boys have wanted to bob for apples for a long time, so we did it! It was fun.

20. Swipe other kid's apples.

21. Do leaf rubbings. On paper towels since someone (ahem, me) forgot to bring the paper. Still, it was a good five minute activity.

22. Crash out in a camping chair.

23. Make tin foil dinners. Daddies took kids on a hike while Mommies prepped dinner.

24. Roast marshmallows, eat s'mores and tell stories until kids start crashing and grown ups decide it's time to go home.

It really was a fun trip!

Because I Don't Waste Enough Time Blogging

After much thought and anxiety over how to control the influx of papers the boys bring home and want to keep I've decided to keep a blog of all their creative endeavors. The link is over there on the left. It's a work in progress, but I hope to keep it up to date and be able to recycle some of the paper they've used.

While they aren't quite convinced about the getting rid of the hard copy part, they are thrilled with the idea of a blog for their artwork. They've claimed it as their own and keep hounding me to "decorate" it since it is plain white right now. I'll get right on that as soon as I get the other thousands of things on my to do list done. Speaking of which, time to get to it!

Sketchy Details

A few weeks ago Eric brought home a paper from school... it was three boxes with pictures and words to describe the pictures. The descriptions said "I wuld get swshed" (squished.) "I wuld get poked with a pncil." "I wuld get bitid." (bitten I think) Kevin and I looked at each other with wide eyes thinking what in the WORLD was going on? Eric is a tame and timid child. Were these things he feared? Why would he write this. Fortunately, when we asked, he looked at us like "duh" and said "It was things that would happen if I was playdough." It relieved my fear because it is normal to squish playdough. And, probably less normal, but the kids often poke it with pencils to make little holes in it. Even less normal, but we have to work really hard to keep Ben from eating playdough, so that explains the biting. It just made me laugh that we were so concerned and it was such a simple answer.

I was glad that we got the details right from Eric, because it isn't always easy to get the whole story from him. This week I was talking to him about his day and he said "This kid was taking me to speech and there was a note on the door that said "no speech." My radar went up, not because there's anything wrong with a kid being in speech, but only that 1. I don't think he needs help in that area, and 2. I hadn't been notified by the school. I asked him why he was going to speech and he said... "I dunno." I asked if he'd been to speech before and he said, "nope, that was the first time." I didn't worry too much about this. Thought about sending a note to ask the teacher, and finally decided to ask at his parent/teacher conference.

At the end of a lovely visit with his teacher, I told her about the conversation with Eric and at first she looked puzzled, and then laughed. Turns out she was sending Eric down there to drop off some forms and come back. I cracked up because this is a prime example of not getting the story quite right. It happens frequently. I try to dig for the details but so often just can't get the whole picture.

Teeter Totter

This Sunday, after everyone was feeling a little better, Kevin decided he should do a project with the boys.



My husband amazes me with his ability to decide to do something, and then just do it.



Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (okay, in a town not so far away) the older boys had bunkbeds. Until one night, little boy # 3 who had just turned two, climbed up and fell off. It was horrific. Their mommy was so traumatized that she had the daddy take the bunk beds apart upon arriving home from the hospital in the middle of the night. She felt bad because he had built the bunk beds for these boys and the boys loved their bed. However, the daddy agreed that for safety's sake, they should be taken apart. So, they were left with a pile of wood.





This wood was saved for some future project. Eventually some of the wood was disposed of, but much of it was still in the garage.





This brings us to Sunday. I don't know why he thought to build a teeter totter. It never would have occurred to me. They went out in the garage and in a few hours we had...

The teeter totter (complete with "upholstered" seats) is now on the back patio, and they love playing on it. These are the times that make me smile!

The Post In Which I Use Blogging as Therapy

For me, blogging is therapeutic. I love having this outlet. It helps me think things through, find the humor in things like, oh let's see... every single member of my family acquiring strep throat. I could laugh at that. Right now I'm not at a point where I can laugh anymore. I'm not crying, but seriously... this madness has to stop!

In a house with four boys there is chaos. I try to control it and keep things at a low roar most of the time. I make an effort, in controlling the chaos, to still allow them to be kids. I try to roll with the punches and laugh things off and not get too mad when they color on the carpet.

All that said, I've hit a wall. Try as I might to stop, I keep banging my head right against that large brick wall. It hurts, but I can't quit.

So, what was the final straw that has me frustrated and anxious? On Sunday morning Kevin was sleeping in and I was up, but being really lazy. In defense of my laziness, I was tired. The kids are on an up at 5:45 kick and it's killing me. In fact, maybe that's why I'm taking all this so hard. I'm TIRED.

Continuing the actual point of the story... (sorry, but if you are going to be my therapist, you simply have to get used to my rambling, I'll get to the point eventually!) Kevin was sleeping and I was being lazy. I had put Ben in his bed because he was crying about everything under the sun and I thought maybe he'd sleep since he got up entirely too early. I was relaxing a little and Mark let out a gigantic scream. Really, more like a series of screams, with brief pauses for breathing. I jumped up and did my usual, "tell me what's wrong, use words please, I can't help you if you don't tell me what is wrong." He calmed down and told me that Zack stuck the thermometer in his ear.

I looked, saw nothing coming out of it, and decided to watch him & play it by ear. Ha! Pun not intended, but I did just laugh at it! Within five minutes he was just fine, playing, picking on his brothers and sassing at me just like always. So I forgot completely about the whole thing until this morning when he told me there was something that felt funny in his ear... and I looked and for crying out loud it was all crusty with dried blood.

We went to the doctor after dropping Eric off at school and she assured me that it was probably just a scratch on his ear canal. I was hopeful. Until she looked and said that his ear drum was, in fact, punctured. We got antibiotic drops and scheduled a recheck for two weeks. Apparently, it will "probably" heal up on it's own. If not, we go to an ENT. Apparently, when it all heals up he "shouldn't" have any hearing loss.

I'm freaking out. I just feel like I missed the mark so far on this one. Like, the mark's in California, and I'm still way over here in Florida. Although, taking him in to Urgent Care yesterday wouldn't have changed the outcome. He's not in pain. He seems to hear okay. So why can't I let it go. I just keep banging my head against that wall and asking HOW did I let this happen?

Don't Let Us Breathe on You!

Hey kids it's Saturday! Let's all go get our throats swabbed at urgent care!! YAY!! I'm kidding, of course. Kevin and I had already had this joy, me last week, him this week.

I had hung on to hope that my kids would not come down with strep throat, and my hopes had been rewarded by symptom free, normal acting boys. Until, this morning Ben was being kind of fussy and (oh no!) felt warm. We debated taking him in. Earlier in the week I had said if ONE kid gets this I'm going to ask for a prescription for ALL of them because for crying out loud I didn't want to spend all of next week in the doctor's office.

Just for funsakes I decided to peek into everyone's throat to see if I could see any evidence of illness. ACK! Zack's throat was red! Double ACK! Mark had white spots! For the love of Pete, Eric's tonsil is covered in some sort of yellowy GOO, what IS that? Oh, wait. He just ate a graham cracker (still, eww.) Ben's throat was suprisingly not red or problematic looking. After a glass of water, I rechecked Eric and while his throat was bright red and his tonsils were more enlarged than usual there were no white spots. Still, we got in the car and headed to Urgent Care.

We arrived just as they opened and were second in line. As we explained why we were there I noticed the lady in front of us who was paying her copay take a step back. That's right lady, we are the strep family, back off! I sure would!

We filled out forms for each of the boys and got called right back. Their tests came back positive right away.

Luckily, no one is acting sick. They are all slightly warm and thus being given Motrin. I'm obsessively checking Zack's temperature because I'm terrified of him having another seizure. I am hoping against hope, but not holding my breath, that since we got them meds before they were symptomatic that this will be mild. When I had it I was sicker than I've been in years, and Kevin was even worse off than I was. Hoping they fare better than we did.

Today I am washing everyone's bedding in HOT water. Toothbrushes will be changed out and we have Lysol-ed everything in sight. Bye bye streptococcus bacteria. Time for you to die!