UGH...It's Monday!

Usually I have really good Mondays and not so good Tuesdays. Well today was a not so good Monday, nothing major just nothing seemed to work out the way I had hoped. I received a letter that maintain will be stopping in sometime starting today to inspect smoke detectors and replace furnace filters so I set about completing the job the boys had not chosen over the weekend. While tidying up I remembered I haven't seen Jordan's school pictures in a while and started searching for them, I have been looking for them on and off for about 2 weeks. Soon my main focus was finding those pictures, because I should have spotted them while cleaning up. I have check (a couple times) in the usual places I put things for safe keeping and they still weren't there. Then I started looking in the most unlikely places, because that's where things tend to be. Soon I was tackling our dreaded "junk drawer" now that it organized again it was clear they weren't there. However I found a stack of mostly used gift cards and was surprised that some of them actually had more than a few cents on them. I decided to check the gift cards that were in my purse, and there tucked neatly next to the cards were Jordan's school pictures already cut and ready to be handed out. It never occurred to me to look in my partially hidden seldom used pocket of my purse. Why is it that my "safe places" for things are so safe that even I can't find them most of the time.

Okay, my Monday started out good but it started to derail when I picked Jordan up from school. When I got there a few minutes late due to the train that never runs at that time had stopped me, and there is my dear child standing outside with no bookbag and no coat. His reasoning was that he didn't think he would need it because he wanted to go to the volleyball game and could get them later. We went into the school together to find our when the games would end and to find out what time basketball tryouts were later this week. On our way to locate the coach we found his math teacher who had planned on calling me tonight because Jordan had gotten himself in trouble during class for mouthing off. *SIGH* Needless to say there was no volleyball game for Jordan.

We however did head over to get him his physical for basketball tryouts.Getting his physical ended up throwing the day off track. While we waited the over two hours for his five minute checkup, the boys became bored with what they brought and entertained themselves by annoying each other and being a live soap opera for everyone else in the waiting room. We knew it was going to be somewhat of a wait, but not as long as it was. Long waits at the doctor's leaves all four of us a bit on edge, especially when we end up pushing dinner back. So here it is 7:30 and I'm just now feeding the kiddos a chicken corndog dinner.

We were suppose to go shopping after the physical to get what they boys needed to make dinner tomorrow. They had planned to go big with making a Thanksgiving dinner (with all the trimmings) and had invited their grandparents over. We ended up having to reschedule, there just wouldn't be enough time to thaw the turkey. The boys were so excited about cooking a huge meal, and were really bummed about postponing it.

Thankfully none of the boys have school tomorrow and they won't have to rush to complete the evening routine. Also now that they are fed, they are done pestering each other. Hopefully we have gotten on not so good day out of the way and have a wonderful week.

Taking Advantage of Our Extra Hour

Day light savings time worked to our advantage and we made it to church. They redid the children's ministries and the children were asked to fill out a paper about themselves, after church Jacob shared his with me. He totally made my day when I got to near the bottom and read the his favorite role model is mom. My heart swelled with pride, I guess I must be doing something right when it comes to raising my boys.

Sundays we usually spend the day at the grandparents and I get caught up on our laundry. On the way down to their house Jordan read some more of our family book, we're almost finished with it. We spent majority of the day outside soaking up the sunlight. Joey got out the stilts that Papa made for the boys a couple years ago. After practicing for a bit he finally can walk on them. He can even get on them without leaning against something, before we left he was able to walk a good distance on them and could even walk a couple steps backwards. Jacob played soccer most of the day. Jordan and Joey started another bonfire around 2:30 and it was still hot after dinner and we marked bonfire and smores off our bucket list. Joey made toast using a camping pie iron, since he doesn't eat marshmallows (it's a texture thing). They sure know how to build a good fire, finally had to douse it at 7:45.  Jordan also tried his hand at being a blacksmith while tending to the fire by heating a piece of metal and banging it with a hammer into a shape he like.

I have been lacking with keeping everyone updated on how we have been doing with our 1000 Hours Outdoors. While I have not been posting we have been keeping track. Yesterday ended our 4th week into the challenge and we have accumulated 79 hours and 45 minutes outside. Not too shabby for how chilly the weather has been, and today we added another six and a half hours.

All in all, a nice end to our easy going laid back weekend. How did everyone else weekend go?

 

We Did Nothing Today (mostly)... It Felt GREAT!!

This past week had been a bit busy for us,  we're taking today as a lazy day. Everyone caught up on some needed sleep and overslept therefore waking too late to make it to catechism on time. We were actually double booked for a Saturday morning with catechism and a scouting event. Seems we weren't going to make it to catechism on time we were early to meet with the scouts. Our pack is handing out bags for Scouting for Food, the neighborhood assigned to us gave us just shy of 300 houses. We bent rules a little, our leaders wanted the boys to knock on every door and explain what the bag was for, seeing that all the important information was on the bag we just made sure they were secured to every door handle. It took us just over two hours, we would have been out there all day long if the boys talked to every house. Joey said it was just like trick or treating but backwards, we walked to every house in the cold and rain to leave something instead of getting something. They were doing awesome until Joey got spooked by a HUGE dog jumping at the closed door, after that he was leery about every house that may of had a dog. After we finished we went out for lunch to celebrate a great job done. Next weekend we'll head back to the same neighborhood and collect whatever bags were filled, then the pack leaders will take them to a local pantry.

When we got home I declared a pajamas day and everyone switched back into their jammies. We were chilled to the bone after being in the cold rain (again). Today was a do nothing day (and not feel guilty about it). We played a few board games one of our neighbors had recently given to us. We also played games on the computer and a few on the Xbox; which I'm told I'm getting better at, because now it takes longer for me to lose. By the time it finally stopped raining we were too comfy to go out to play and snuggled up to watch a movie. Oh yeah, and we pigged out on Halloween candy throughout the day.

After a crazy and busy week, we really needed a "chill in our jammies, do nothing day". Tomorrow we'll be productive, and prepare for our week. It feels really good to do nothing and just spend some quality time together after rushing around all week. Sometimes I forget that we are human beings and not human doings, and to stop doing things and just relax and enjoy being with the ones I love.

Halloween

We marked carve pumpkins off our fall bucket list. The first pumpkin we cut into had mold starting to grow (Gross!), thankfully it wasn't much and it was only the one pumpkin. Joey has never gutted his own pumpkin, its a sensory thing with him; after I cleaned his pumpkin the other boys figured I already had sticky pumpkin mess up to my elbows that I may as well clean theirs our too.  Once we got to the cutting, Jacob had a difficult time with our knives from the kits, he somehow snapped two of them and mangled the blade on another one. Jordan was not happy the way his turned out, it wasn't how he had envisioned the final product. Joey took the longest to complete his pumpkin; his fantastic imagination had him adding many details and as a bonus he created a boat from scrap pumpkin pieces. Jacob did all his carving on his own and was pleased with the outcome. Jacob is still working on making the "faces" proportionate to the size of the pumpkins. They seem to have a theme every year with how they decorate their pumpkins, this year it was toothpicks. Jordan used them to fix an eyeball, Joey added a Mohawk, and Jacob created an unibrow.



Jordan, Joey, William (friend), and Jacob;
ventriloquist dummy, Scream, Ninja, and Black Ninja
Matthew (nephew) was there but wouldn't have his picture taken.

Halloween night we were eating dinner before heading down to Grandma's for trick or treating, I went to toss the pizza in the oven a noticed sausage on it. I had grabbed the meat lovers pizza, we don't eat pork, so a quick chance of plans and it was hot dogs for dinner. We made it to Grandma's as kids were just starting to go door to door. Joey was so excited to finally hook the blood pump up to his mask, and it started leaking fake blood everywhere. We tried rubber banding it in a plastic bag.  A couple quick pictures and we hit the wet streets. At the third or fourth house Joey's mask started dripping again while he had a conversation with the homeowner and we had to ditch the mask. Poor Jordan everyone kept asking him it he was "that one guy from Walking Dead", he finally decided he's just tell them yes he was instead of explaining his costume (we have never seen Walking Dead). Jake was very enthusiastic and raced to each house, Joey on the other hand wanted to talk to everyone at each house. Jordan was a huge help sticking with Jake while I waited for Joey. We only walked two large blocks, but the boys decided they had enough and wanted to be done, time to dry off and warm up. There was a constant drizzle the whole time we were out and we managed to step in a couple deep puddles along the way. The boys did really good considering they were wet and wearing really soggy shoes. When we got back to  Grandma's they dumped out their loot and sorted what was to be swapped with me and what they could eat. My nephew had also been at Grandma's to trick or treat, although we didn't walk with them. My nephew is gluten free and we traded him our dyed candies we can't have for his gluten candies he couldn't eat. My boys were granted one piece of dyed candy if they wanted one (they did), and the rest was handed over. Their swap gifts this year were a pair of nunchucks for each of the younger two and a 3-D puzzle game for Jordan also the Monster U movie for them to share. I give them a bit extra because they turn over the candies and treats they also receive from their class parties. *They were granted one dyed treat during their parties also.

It Doesn't Have to be "The Perfect Halloween",to be the perfect Halloween

I love Halloween!! It's a day everyone gets to be someone or something else for the night. A season to watch creepy movies and scare yourself silly. I like watching neighborhood working together decorating their houses. It is one of my favorite holidays. I even worked in a haunted house when I was younger. I want to pass on the fun and love for this ghoulish holiday to my boys.

The other night I was starting to become very overwhelmed by what still needed to be done for Halloween and projects the boys had due the day after Halloween. Two days before Halloween the pumpkins weren't carved, I had no clue what peanut free goodies I was going to send into school with the boys, I still had one more candy swap gift to buy, and Jordan still wasn't sure what he was going to dress as therefore still needed a costume. I also learn that evening that the younger two still had spelling test the day after Halloween along with a book report. The with energy of the Halloween in the air, my boys have been less than compliant. I was not feeling the love for the holiday, I started thinking "Let's just skip Halloween this year", there was no way I was going to be able to give them the perfect Halloween. Of course, I knew that the things that had to be done would get done; they would take costumes to school for their parties and they would go trick or treating. There was so much I wanted us to do to celebrate and we weren't going to have enough time to do everything.

My kids weren't going to enjoy this holiday, if the memories are of how mom rushed them through carving pumpkins, burnt the pumpkins seeds because she was setting up Halloween Bingo, and had demanded that they "Just pick something to be". Those aren't the memories I wanted them to have. Yesterday, I decided to just let some things go. If the pumpkins didn't get carved it wouldn't be the end of the world, we could still set them out as decorations. No one ever said pumpkins had to be carved before Halloween. Jordan could pick through our box of past year's costumes and create something to wear. I already had my main swap gift, I didn't have to run to four different stores looking for the extra little ones to give to the boys, they would still have a large portion on chocolate candies they could eat. 

It took a lot for me to let go of the "perfect Halloween" and embrace the Halloween that it would be.
I let go of stressing over everything and focused on one simple task at a time. A friend had stopped by with some games for the boys, and it turned out one of the games was perfect for the swap gift I needed. When the boys got home from school and homework was completed we started gutting the pumpkins while I quizzed them on spelling words (I'm a mom, I multi-task). Dinner was ready by the time the pumpkins were cleaned out, so we ate then carved them. During dinner Jordan finally decided what he would be, we already have face paint on hand so he's going to be a ventriloquist dummy. We had about an hour before bed that Jacob worked on his report and finish it except for a bit of coloring that he did this morning on the way to school. Joey had turned in his report last week and hadn't thought to inform me of it. I also chose not to send in any treats this year, the kids never know who brought in goodies and who didn't, plus they will all get lots of goodies when they go out tonight. (This was a really hard thing to let go of, I usually try to make a different creative treat for each boys to take in.)

By letting go of my image of the perfect Halloween and just letting things play out, it all worked out and everything that I wanted to do is done. (We played Halloween Bingo a few times last week, so that counts, right?) If I had held more tightly to when and how everything was done, I would have had myself so stressed out that I would have over reacted when things weren't going smoothly. I know when I'm stressed, I stress my kids out; you can't have fun when you're stress. By letting go of all the expectations I had placed on myself, I was able to share my love and excitement for Halloween with my boys.

Bucket List and Birthday

This week ended with celebrating Jordan's 13th birthday. He and I attempted to watch scary movies Friday night, but 45 minutes into The Messengers we decided it was a bit intense to watch after 9pm and switched to Beatlejuice followed by The Mummy. After staying up late watching movies I was blessed to witness the joy of having a teenager sleep in, Jordan slept in until just about noon.

After everyone was finally up and moving we set out on our pumpkin count walk. We have noticed the last few weeks that many people in our neighborhood didn't have pumpkins on display, so we headed over by the boys' school to the neighborhood behind the school. This is a neighborhood Jordan I walk just about everyday while we wait for the younger two get released from school. I downloaded an app to see how far we walk. It only took us about 45 minutes to walk a little over 1.30 miles and we were able to locate 163 pumpkins; Jacob says he spotted 164, we must have missed one. The boys were not shy about walked up  someone's driveway to get a closer look at the pumpkins to make sure we got an accurate count.

On the way home from our walk we stopped at the store to gather what we needed to make gingerbread monster cookies. Luck was not on our side as there was no gingerbread cookie mixes/dough to be found, we opted for sugar cookies instead. The boys chose some chocolates to use to decorate with and some frosting tubes; as we don't have any dyed frosting at home and our dye-free sprinkles/food dyes are expensive. Once home we realized the gingerbread man shaped cookie cutter is at Grandma's house, and switched to using Halloween theme cutters. They cut their own cookies as well as decorated them. Anything went, they wanted to stack chocolate and then coat the chocolates with frosting...sure, they wanted to load their cookies with icing...sure. It was their creations they could add whatever they wanted to them, with the understanding that whatever they put on them they themselves would be willing to eat. The boys did great and used just about all the frosting and their cookies were very creative. Some of them looked so sweet, you could have gotten a cavity just by looking at them.



He received some Aero shirts,
pajama pants, cologne, iPod charger,
& a gift card for Barnes & Nobles

Saturday evening Jordan headed out to stay the night at his cousin's house, Joey built a Lego rollercoaster, and Jacob and I played board games.

Early afternoon Sunday we went to pick up our store bought cake to take to Grandma's and were surprised that is wasn't even close to what we had ordered. We had ordered a basketball themed cake, what they tried to give us was not only the wrong team, but wrong colors, and the wrong size. We have order many cakes from them before and have never had a problem. Needless to say we didn't take the cake.
*The store called me and will be giving us a gift card for their mistake.

Sunday was our birthday celebration with Grandma and Papa, although we did not indulge in any of the birthday cake we did finish off all the cookies we made the day before. It was a really low key celebration, Jordan opened some presents and the boys spent most of the day outside playing (burning off some of their dye induced energy from the cookies). Joey and Jacob preformed a birthday song outside for Jordan with the use of a guitar and some "drums"; Papa helped them construct a stage to preform on. Jordan, Grandma, and I did some shopping and exchanged some of Jordan's birthday shirts. Mostly I spent the day in the basement clearing out some of the stuff the boys and I have been storing there. We ended the day with a bonfire that the boys had split some wood for before heading home.

Clearing out some of our storage has me motivated to tackle the boys rooms and move some furniture around and go through the toy boxes. That's my plan for most of today. Also trying to figure out were we can rake some leaves so we can jump in them, we have mostly pine trees around us.

Today I Offically Have A Teenager!!

He's a fan of Minecraft, so I made him a creeper cake.

Today I officially became the mother of a teenager. It still feels like just yesterday they placed my 9lb 6oz baby in my arms. I'm so very proud of the young man Jordan is becoming. Although 13 is a big deal, we're keeping things simple. We usually keep birthdays small and make sure to incorporate our birthday traditions. We started the day with donuts for breakfast (this is a tradition Grandma started when we lived with them), we do this for all the boys birthdays. Every year I bring the boys something special to school for lunch and  have lunch with them. This is one of my favorite traditions we have, it gives me time with my birthday boy without the other brothers vying for my attention. This year I was a bit worried that Jordan would think he's "too cool" or "too old" to have his mom sit with him for lunch, thankfully that wasn't the case. I was able to meet some of his new friends while he shared his pizzas and cupcakes with them. It's kind of funny how many people suddenly want to be your friend when you have a couple pizzas sitting at your table :) Jordan loved the attention and pointing out only his buddies would be joining us.

We had a small party just the four of us with dinner of his choice (more pizza of course), a cake made my mom (and ice cream of his choice), and opening presents from us. Part of his present from me is visiting a haunted house, since last year's gift of a haunted hayride was a flop; but we have to wait to have a babysitter before we can go. I pulled out the scrapbooks (the ones I have finished) and flip through them and I told the boys what Jordan was like when he was younger. He's gets to stay up late and watch a movie (of his choice) with mom, I think he's going to make me watch a creepy, scary, things that go bump in the night movie (I don't do well with spooky movies).  Maybe we'll watch Friday the 13th, seems he's 13 on Friday :P

We'll have another small party over the weekend with the grandparents and a store bought cake, ice cream, and of course more presents.



2 Rick Riordan books
The Kane Chronicles

Sketch pencils, charcoal pencils,
 sketch pads, and art portfolio.

Duck Dynasty Fuzzy PJ pants.