The view from my window.

Oh, how I wish I had my camera! The weather is just gorgeous here and since October was so dreary and drizzly, we are basking in the sunshine and warmth outside every scheduled minute we can :-). It's been so cute watching the kids play and I keep seeing moments I would normally capture with my precious camera, so since it is apparently gone for good and the budget doesn't warrant a replacement just yet, I'll give the you the best description I can.

Ashlynn has on a pair of red, comfy cotton cropped pants with tiny cream hearts all over them. She is wearing her tan Ugg boots with a multicolored pink long-sleeved shirt and a bright pink Green Bay Packers beanie. Seriously a photo-op for all times! She has the football in her hands and is running with wild abandon, giggling all over the back yard. I can see my carefree girl traveling the world and living at the beach one day!

Gage has on a blue pair of track pants with a t-shirt that has some sort of truck on it. I'm pretty sure there are no shirts without some sort of truck/motorcycle/dinosaur/etc available for three year old boys. He has a Cars beanie on his head and is chasing after Ashlynn, gets a hold of her for a moment and crashes down through the leaves like a linebacker who's missed his man. He doesn't even wince and gets right back up to chase again. He just might be a lineman one day, and the running back had better hope to have Ashlynn's luck!

Addie, with her tan coat striped cotton pants and sparkly pink shoes is plopped down in the horseshoe pit and methodically scooping tiny shovels of sand into the dump truck. She is very diligent in her work and has not missed the dump end once. The surrounding chaos doesn't even phase her........definitely a fourth child and an air traffic controller in the making.

Ryder, in his usual pair of shorts, t-shirt and flip flops, is climbing the swing set. He has the swings and ropes twisted into wild knots and keeps calling, "look at me mom!", while maneuvering jumping from one pole to the next. I will not be shocked if this kid climbs rocks for a living one day, though he might pursue that for a hobby and settle on engineering so he can challenge even the best builders.

Hopefully this will help me to remember what I saw today when I looked out the window, every minute that passes takes a little piece from my memory and there is no way to slow that down!

Scheduling, a dangerous job.

My dear, sweet sister sent me the coolest book on scheduling and organizing my household. She actually bought the book for herself and didn't see the subtitle (that was quite large:-)!) "A Practical Guide to Daily Scheduling for Christian Homeschool Families" and since she is not homeschooling yet, thought it might be good for me.

I read through the entire book in one evening.

It's like 175 pages of organization on steroids. I loved it.

I am not an organized person. Routine, yes. Scheduled, uhhhh...

The next evening I set out scheduling everyone's chart and what our goals for each day would be. It was akin to a really challenging math problem, trying to get all of the time slots for five people to mesh and become cohesive. But, alas, I came out the victor and our schedule was born.

Ofcourse, this all happened by Thursday night and I prepped the kids for it on Friday and let them know we would start Monday. Some of my kids fall into the type A category and begged to start at that very moment, so me being flexible said "sure, why not?".

I don't think that was part of the plan. Oops. Oh well.

Ashlynn started rinsing dishes (her new job) and Gage began to load the kids plates (his new job) and the next thing I knew.....water was all over the floor and Gage didn't realize the rack needed to be pushed in before the door was closed resulting in a broken plate.

Who's idea was this?

The rest of Friday actually went really well and all of the kids had quiet time (so did I!) and we all played together (scheduled now) read together (scheduled now) and made dinner together (also on the schedule). We spent Saturday really cleaning and Sunday was very relaxed. We are now in our official first day and it has been AMAZING!

Seriously, I am so not into schedules; I like to wake up and see where the day takes me. But we have not wasted a moment today, no TV, my house is clean, laundry is done (scheduled to be put away at 3:30), school is done, the kitchen is clean and I know what I making for dinner!

The best part of all, the kids love it. So thank you Nicole, now I'm sorry, but I can only call at scheduled times only.......:-)

What are the odds?

Nicole and I were talking on the phone last night and she got into this story about burning toast and throwing it outside so the house wouldn't smell like burned toast and we were laughing about keeping it away from their dog and how burned toast makes your house stink forever.

She was making the toast because she was short on breadcrumbs.

Hmmm, funny I was short on breadcrumbs last night and made toast too.

She said it was mostly going to be flaxseed meal.

Hmmm, mine was going to be the same.

"Nicole, would you be making breadcrumbs for chicken tenders? The same chicken tenders we just finished eating for dinner?"

Two sisters, two thousand miles apart, both making chicken tenders for dinner, both burning toast trying to make breadcrumbs that we were out of. Seriously, either our menu needs to be expanded or we have some kind of crazy sister mind reading stuff going on!!

It fits, well....sorta.

Ashlynn has been feeling lousy the last few days and just needed a nice soothing bath before bed tonight. After she was finished and I had washed her hair that is so long now, when it is wet it settles in the bath water when she is sitting in the tub, we ran into a little problem.

I had already put Addie to bed.

Addie and Ashlynn share a room.

I had not taken any jammies out of the room for Ashlynn.

With all of our kids, except one, we have been able to traipse into their room and just short of vacuuming, nothing would wake them up once they were down for the night. Can you guess who the exception is?

Addie.

The girl jumps up like she's be lying there waiting for the moment you creak the door handle. And if you actually make it a couple of steps in the room she really lets you have it.

No problemo, let's just get you something of mine. A t-shirt and pair of shorts will do, just need to roll up the waistband a couple of times and we're good to go.

Wait a second. Did I just put my clothes on my daughter and they're not falling off of her? She proudly pointed them out to Ran before sneaking into bed and he just looked at me in shock....and told Ashlynn she must quit growing this moment.

So many people told me/tell me/will tell me how fast time goes by with your kids, but every single day the speed amazes me. There are moments I want it so desperately to slow down, but then I sometimes think about shoes (& my love of them) and the fact that I have two daughters and maybe there's a chance we could all have the same shoe size one day.....soon.

They know who Mr. Darcy is.

Addie was up most of the night with an earache and I woke up this morning with a sore throat. After I made breakfast I plopped myself on the couch and closed my eyes for a second..or two...or three. The next thing I knew, Ashlynn assumed the role of mommy. She was dishing up snacks, lunch and refilling sippie cups. She made sure the boys played in the basement and kept Addie entertained. After lunch I put Addie down for a nap and put Pride and Prejudice on, nothing like a little Jane Austen to make you feel better. Ashlynn snuggled with me and before I knew it both boys were in my lap watching too.

Maybe I won't mention that part to Randy.

Pretty soon they were neck deep in the plot and wanted to know "why is she crying", "do they have swords", "is he riding his horse to a fight", "where'd Mr. Darcy go?", etc, etc.

Yes, included in my three and five year old boys vocabulary are Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennett. Hey, at least they were asking about swords.....

Cool it off mommy.

Gage suddenly kicked the habit of sucking his thumb right before I left for San Diego. It was such a shock, I mean this kid loves his thumb like I love chocolate chip cookies. The day I flew home, however, he had picked it back up-apparently he missed his momma!

In an effort to recreate the success, I started applying the no bite nail polish to his thumb to "remind" him not to put it in his mouth. This has been interesting to say the least.

Every few hours he runs up to me, "Mommy, it doesn't taste icky, put the icky on!"

The best was when he got out of bed last night, "Mommy, put the icky on, put the icky on, it doesn't taste icky!" I applied the "icky" stuff to all of his fingers (he insists on this as he started substituting them for his thumb) and then he said, "Cool it off mommy, cool it off!" This was, ofcourse, his way of asking me to dry the stuff.

Evidently he associates everything with food!

Soooooo excited!

We are taking off tomorrow for San Diego and Mikey's wedding! It's just the girls this trip, the boys will be "roughing it" without us.......they'll be camping for the weekend and bow hunting for the big bucks.

I've made lists of what there is to eat, the boys' clothes are washed and put away, the "just in case" meds and measuring spoons are on the counter. If I missed something, they will survive, Randy does run into burning buildings and save lives for a living, so surely he can handle it.

BTW, my camera is totally MIA and I'm trying not to cry about it. Hopefully it will turn up by noon tomorrow......