FINALLY, AN EXCUSE!

So I finally have an excuse! The other night the nightly news was talking about moms that give birth develop Momnesia. I TOTALLY believe it! About a month ago I called someone, can't remember if it was Jeanne or my mom, but I was standing in front of my car and COULD NOT remember for the life of my the code to unlock my doors. I have forgot the pin to my debit card. I have walked downstairs and started to stare around because I knew there was something I was going to do. I have drove all the way to Wal-mart and then once I got inside couldn't remember what the heck I had needed. Momnesia I guess is because a hormone imbalance and lack of sleep (Jackson still gets up every 2-3 hours). I think that my license plate could say "Momnesia" instead of "tmlrsn" because there are times I start to drive somewhere but forgot why it was important. And my kids don't help at all in the mornings. My kids are early birds. I mean, Madeline will be knocking on the door at 5 am (last night 4:30) wide awake. Most of the time by 6am there's in the living room fighting about something. The other morning when I got up it looked like a post-its tornado had come through the living room. Madeline got a huge stack of post-its out of the office and separated all of them. AND, she decided to unload the cups out of the dishwasher so Dora cups were everywhere. Good morning to me.

Bowling

On Tuesday we went bowling with some friends. I FORGOT MY CAMERA!!!AHHHHHHH!! So, this was pretty much the best that I got off my phone. It was a blast and everyone had a great time. Madeline loved it but when she bowled it would roll so slow that the machine thought that someone had forgot to bowl and would actually send the ball back when it finally got to the pins. It was funny.

On Wednesday we went back to Arctic Oasis with some of our friends. The kids had a blast and it was nice to just sit and talk to an adult for a while. After hours and hours of playing we finally took where able to pry them away and went to Burger King (yuck, not our pick but the kids). I swear that within the next couple years I'm going to have to add Caleb as category in our family budget. He's going to eat me out of the house! I noticed today that he must be going through a grow spurt because he's good 7 inches or more taller than Kali.

More spring break fun.

On Monday we went the Arctic Oasis on base. It's this huge free community center on base for all military families. It has a huge play structure, a work our facility next to it so parents can workout and watch their kids, a rock climbing wall, mini golf, virtual golf, an indoor skate park, pool, and a lot of other fun stuff. The kids love going there and we make the day of going there and just hanging out. This was my best attempt at a group picture because nobody wanted to stop playing to sit and smile.
When we came home that night there was a box waiting for us. It's was Grandma Nettie's Easter surprises inside. The kids always enjoy her packages. Thanks Nettie! I must say, my kids are so lucky to have some wonderful grandparents. I really never grew up with grandparents. My Nana, my dad's mom, died with I was 5 years old. I think if she would of lived that I would of experienced the joy of having a grandparent. My mother's parents are...well ,I'll just politely say that they were "non-existent. " The closet thing that I probably had to a grandma growing up would be my Aunt Rosie ( but she's like 20 years too young to be my grandma). She NEVER EVER EVER forgot our birthdays, graduations, etc. growing up. You would always see a card during a big part of your life. Still to this day my kids get a birthday card from her. She'll always be my favorite.

Just a little Alaska perk

I know earlier this winter that I complained about our washer and dryer being in the garage but I've found a perk with it's location. Now Moms, how many times have you started a load in the wash and three days later wondered what the heck that smell was and realized it was the load of laundry that was abandoned. Well, I don't have to worry about that in the winter! The big "plus" is that my garage is so cold that my laundry just freezes or stays so cold that there's no way mildew is going to form. WOO-HOO!

Day at the Imaginarium

Today was day one of our fun spring break. After we did our Saturday chores we went to the Imaginarium in downtown Anchorage. It's like a mini OMSI. They have cool science projects, marine life you can hold (star fishes), and animals. Here's a couple pictures of our day. Jackson's big enough to sit in the stroller our of his car seat (sniff sniff). He's getting SO BIG! He was such a trooper and just watched kids the whole two hours. Only at the very end during group picture time did he start to fuss.Here are the girls going down the slide from the rock climbing wall/ mountain. (Notice Kali had to wear her Wizard of Oz shoes outside and it's "break up" outside which means that water is EVERYWHERE. She said she had to be fabulous. LOL).They had this huge fan that you were supposed to put a ball over so that it hovers in air. Well, MY KIDS thought it would be hilarious to take off their shoes and see if they would fly. I turned around to see all these kids just staring at them. It was funny. They stuck their heads partially in and here's the pic.
One of the exhibits was on bubbles. Madeline had a blast getting all soapy. People were cracking up because every time that she would stick her bubble wand in she wouldn't stick it in just far enough and just enough to get the bubbles all over the wand. Doesn't sound bad but she's 2 so every time she went to go blow and had to put the wand up against her face and was walking around with a goatee of bubbles. In this exhibit the kids stood in this huge bubble wand and would pull the rope up to lift the hula hoop and make a huge bubble around them. Pretty cool. Here are some future Larsen aviators. This exhibit let you fly a huge model airplane. You had to use the hand controls and pedals to make the airplane fly straight in the wind. Both of the girls had a blast and I had to pry Madeline away after the line got too long.
Some baby chicks had hatched and the kids got a chance to hold them. Kali loves animals. This was her favorite exhibit.
As you can see from this picture, it was time to go. There were starting to get tired and hungry. As we were getting ready to leave this man gave us balloons because he had too many from this kid's birthday party. I wasn't sad when the balloons floated off to outer space after the balloon fight that went on in my car. It's hard to see with three kids jumping around hitting each other with balloons. I got hit a couple of times. Remember the movie Cheaper By The Dozen with Steve Martin. There's a scene where all chaos has broken out with their 12 children and he's talking to his wife on the phone but doesn't want her to know what's going on. She asks, "How are the kids?" At that moment a Chinese star goes through the closet door that he's hiding behind. He answers, "Oh fine, they're like kittens." LOL. I feel ya man!

Picture time

Jackson is so new, and young, that he hasn't had the privilege of his mom wearing out his smile yet. Actually, I haven't worn out any of my kid's smiles yet but boy do some of them hate it when I make them pose for pictures (mostly just Caleb. "Mom, only 1 more!"). I bought some black fabric today to make a backdrop and had fun with Jackson. He's just so cute and I haven't taken enough pictures of him lately.

Besides this we haven't been doing much lately. I caught some stomach bug on Tuesday and today was finally back into the swing of things. I went to my lifting class at the gym and thought, "Okay Jessy, here's the big test. If you can get through this first set of squats and nothing happens...then you're fine>" Nothing happened so I figured that I'm not sick anymore.

Caleb's spring break starts tomorrow. I'm now trying to think of things for us to do for the next two weeks to keep us occupied, and so the kids won't kill each other out of boredom. They started to fight over a banana (YES A BANANA) the other morning. I just asked Madeline to say the breakfast prayer after I was able to get the fight under control and this is how it went, "Ah...asdlkfsdlfkj......asdlkfjasldkfj....MY BANANA...Amen." I had to laugh because it was very funny.

Breast Milk Does A Body Good!

Aaron wanted to see an up-close picture of Jackson so this is what I took last night while I was holding him. It's a little blurry because I took it with my iphone but he was laughing. Breast milk does a body good!

"MORE BUTTER!"

I was making Madeline a little peanut butter and honey sandwich yesterday and became a little distracted. This was the aftermath of a couple minutes away from the peanut butter.She ran into the office and kept saying, "More BUTTER!! MORE BUTTER!!" It was quite comical.

Becuase Prayers are answered

I've found myself in a couple situations lately where it seemed that they only way to find my answer was going to have to come through prayer. Prayer worked when our family knelt down two weekends ago because I had messed up our electrical SO BAD that even the neighborhood electrician quit. Within ten minutes of that prayer I finally figured out what wires should do where and everything was restored to normal. Yesterday the school nurse called me and told me that Caleb needed to be picked up because he had a sore throat and was running a fever. I was stuck at gymnastics for Kali and her class was ending in 10 minutes so I figured that I would make him an appt at the clinic while we waited. Tricare said that no appt was necessary that the Pediatric clinic took walk-ins from 1-3 for throat cultures. Perfect. I picked Caleb up and we all headed down to the clinic to get his throat culture. I checked in a little before 2. At 2:30 I asked them how much long. By this time Jackson is crying, Madeline is just going nuts and ate like a whole tub of raisins that I keep in the diaper bag, Caleb is crying because he has a fever and doesn't feel well, and Kali is playing hide-and-go-seek with some kid in a clinic that is already too crowded. (When we showed up we were the only ones there). FINALLY at 3 they call us back. At 3:10 we are put into a room. I tried to keep them entertained with "I spy" as long as I could but after 20 minutes I lost their interest and they began to spin each other on the doctor's stool as fast as they could. At 4pm I walked out of the clinic with my ducklings following behind. I was a MAD MOM! They medic came running after me and I let him know what I thought of military care and this clinic. Kali had been begging to go to the bathroom and I took her down there but I felt so lost on what to do because Caleb was still sick. I called my friend, Shannon, and asked her if her husband was still at work. (He's an allergist and works in the same hospital). I explained my situation and she said that she would try to get a hold of Chris to see if he could help me. She called back a couple minutes later and said that he wasn't answering his office phone. (While I was on the phone I could hear Madeline and Kali just having a party in the bathroom. I wonder what it looked like when they came out). While I stared at Caleb I started to cry and said a prayer out loud, "Heavenly Father please help me help Caleb. Please send someone." We started walking down the hallway to the parking lot and when I turned the corner Chris was standing there with a big smile and a throat culture swab. A mother's prayer was answered. He took us back to his office and helped us. He even said that if Caleb's test came back positive for strep he would bring over the antibiotics for us. When we got to our car I lost it because I felt so overwhelmed with gratitude. God is so good. How humble I feel that it seems all prayers are answered; especially a mother's plea for her child.

The Man of the House

Caleb is such an awesome kid! I realize that sometimes in my blog postings he's not on here as much because more of the action happens during the day when he's at school. Yesterday we were able to have a couple of hours alone and went and grabbed a bit of Subway together. He insisted that he could go get the soda for us, and I let him. He picked out Dr. Pepper which I thought was funny because we don't buy soda and I thought that he would of picked out the orange stuff. I went to go take a drink and he said, " I just want to warn you Mom that it might make you burp for awhile." LOL. He's been helping me out with Jackson a lot lately. The other day I took Jackson out of the car and placed him in the entryway of the house and went back into the garage for Maddy. I came back in and took Madeline's jacket off and realized that Jackson wasn't where I put him. I panicked for a second and asked everyone if they knew where Jackson went. Caleb had carried him upstairs, took him out of his car seat, and laid him on the ground to play with his toys. WOW! I would of never thought that he could actually do that. He really takes "the man of the house" situation seriously sometimes. I'm so grateful that God has allowed me to be Caleb's Mom. He's an awesome spirit.

Playing Peek-A-Boo

This week when we were waiting in the car for Caleb to get out of school we let Jackson out of the car seat to play. It was so cute to watch him stand on the seat and watch his sisters. The seat was so wet afterwards because he just licked it so the whole time. It was funny because in the back seat you could just see these little eyes staring at you. What a cute kid.

GUILTY as charged

After basketball on Wednesday Jody gave everybody these yummy chocolates that her husband had just brought back from Hawaii. Well, Kali and her friend were at our house waiting for their ride to a birthday party. I realized after they left that it was really quiet in the house and I even did a double take to make sure that Madeline hadn't slipped out the front door. I started calling for her and found her in the office with this huge chocolate grin. She had ate the WHOLE BOX!!! Chocolate drool was running down her chin as she just grinned at me. The lid was partially on and I think she thought she was actually going to get away with it. Her face says it all. Boy, was it hard to keep a straight face.

Little Einstein

Every Saturday morning is reserved for cleaning. It's just a given in our house. Lately Madeline takes an hour long bath while I clean my room thoroughly and the office. Even after the water is cold she still refuses to get out. Today while I was vacuuming downstairs and cleaning the kid's bathroom I found that Maddy had made a nice little bed for her and her doggy (doggy is under her little silky on the other pillow). She was just talking away to the two of her babies telling them to go to sleep. She's just got the best imagination. It's so fun to watch her.

Just a little note to self....

Caleb does Karate every MWF night. Last night I dropped him off and thought that I would do a couple of errands. I went through the car wash and then picked him up. It was only 10 degrees but I didn't think much of it because I knew that I was going to park the car in the garage over night. Last time I got the car washed and parked it outside it froze shut over night. Well, LOL, I guess I really didn't think about it too much because by the time we got home the doors had froze shut, and we were inside still. LOL. I was able to get mine open but Caleb had to push from the inside while I pulled from the outside to get the passenger doors open. Lesson learned.

Thank You

I have so much gratitude for my husband and sometimes I feel like my cup over flowith. Honey, thank you for being an awesome man. You are amazing. My heart is full of thanks that you let me be a Mom all day, every day to our kids (I was just a frustrated Mom two blog entries ago. Don't worry there will still be 4 of them when you get home). I appreciate your support and love and I KNOW that you work your tail off for us and I'm so proud of you. Thanks for picking me to be your eternal companion. I wish that I was more lyrical and I would write you a song but all I can think of is some rhyme to Silent Night which is really bizarre. So just know this, I love you and I'm a very grateful and happy wifey. I love you.

Cinderella Dressed in Yella...

I have mentioned this before but every MWF I play basketball at church. It's a great workout. Last week Jody decided that after basketball we should play double dutch. Kali thought it was so cool and wanted to try. She hasn't mastered two ropes yet but it having a blast with one.

I put the movie Jump In on my Netflix list just so that I could get some double dutch jump roping cadences. LOL. You go girl!

Only someday (and it's not today) will this be hilarious.

I had to laugh today as I was looking at these pictures taken from last night. I posted them because I know SOMEDAY (maybe when the last one leaves the house) I know I'll be able to have a good laugh about this year by myself with four kids. Here's what happened: This picture is where Kali got a hold of my really nice camera and I didn't realize it yet.




This is me looking completely confused as to what is happening. I was waiting for them to finish brushing their teeth so we could say a prayer and go to bed. Talk about getting ambushed.









This is me smiling in the hopes that the camera chaos will stop. BUT, Madeline decided to take a stick and hit us.











And here I am forgetting every parenting book I've read to deal with a 2-year-old and finally giving her the "I'm going to turn into the Hulk and Super Nanny you if you hit me one more time with that stick!"

And of course, Kali got it all on camera.

Dr. Larsen

Last night after dinner Madeline and I went down to her room to clean up the destruction that was created when Madeline thought it would be hilarious to dump over all her nicely organized (that was my doing) bins of toys. Side note: Why do moms actually take the time to organize toys? It takes me 20 minutes to organize everything into perfectly labeled bins (thanks for the label maker Nettie). It takes Madeline 2 seconds to dump them over and watch my face as she laughs. Maddy's big job was to collect all the tools in the doctor's kit and put it away. I had to run upstairs to get something and came back down to see that Jackson was Maddy's patient now and he wears glasses.
I was laughing so hard that I didn't know if I would be able to get my camera upstairs before she took them off. Doesn't he look so cute! A little Harry Potter. Look at Maddy's face, she was laughing too. Clever little girl.

Just staying busy....

BEFORE
ALMOST AFTER ( need to finish)

This was my project that I did on Friday. I wanted my entry way to be bold, and I'm pretty sure I achieved it. LOL. I hung up some pics just to show the contrasting colors I'll be using. I'll post a pic when I'm done.

I totally hate my master
bathroom so I decided to do some remodeling.(By the way, I have to say that I have the BEST husband ever. He lets me do whatever I want to the house because he knows that it keeps me occupied while he's gone and he knows how much I love doing these things.) Our master has a door from the hallway going into it. A door from our bedroom into it. And a door blocking the toilet and the shower. I'm going to block the doorway going from the hall and I started tearing down the wall that blocks off the toilet and shower. This weekend my neighbor, Michelle, is coming over to move all the electrical stitches to the wall. I can't wait to get rid of that wall. It makes the bathroom seem so small. I'm not sure what I'll do after that but I''ll keep you posted.

I guess I'm not Tim the Tool Man Taylor. Oh, and it's cold!

It has been SO COLD the last couple of days here. Last night it was a whopping -23! This morning Kali still had wet hair when we took Caleb to school and it took a matter of two minutes for her hair to freeze just by getting inside of the car! And that's dangerous because your hair will break off. We live next to a huge mountain so in the winter we live in the shadow of the mountain. It's sunny outside but my whole neighborhood never sees the sun. (Notice the shadow of a mountain in the pic).
When our house was built 25 years ago someone thought that it would be a great idea to put the washer and dryer in the garage. HA HA HA HA HA! Now, I have to take some responsibility in this next incident, but really who wants to do laundry in a garage?! Our garage has this huge heater that hangs from the ceiling. Aaron unplugged it because we thought "lets save some money. Who cares if the garage isn't heated." So yesterday after playing basketball I left the beast outside and plugged it in ( anytime it's colder than 20 you need to plug your car in, Caleb thinks it's funny). I really needed to do some laundry and it had been piling up because who wants to dress like an Eskimo just do laundry in the garage? I set the washer for the cycle that I wanted and turned it on and.....nothing happened. I realized that my pipes must of froze. I turned on the hot water and after about 30 seconds a little drizzle was coming out. When it started running fine I switched it back to cold and it took awhile but the water did start to flow. Whewww, that was a close one. So I thought, "Okay self, stop being cheap and plug in the darn heater." I did and hopefully that won't happen again. A couple of hours later it was quiet time and Madeline and the baby were sleeping. I had just folded a load of laundry and was thinking of the next project I could do. I decided I would hang the new bi-fold door for the pantry in the kitchen. Easy, right? Well, after fighting with it for more than an hour I won, but realized that I only had 10 minutes to pick up Caleb from school. I rushed and put everyone in the car and drove off. I got to the end of the neighborhood and realized that I forgot to do something, but what was it? And then I realized that I had FORGOT TO UNPLUG THE CAR and had been driving down the road dragging an extension cord behind me. I kind of panicked out of embarassment and because I was late to get Caleb and backed up all the way to my house. (Just that move alone I deserved to be laughed at). Goodness. Today I decided that I was going to do a little project that wouldn't take so much time. That "little" project was to switch out an old switch to a toggle decorative switch. Easy, right? I turned off the power, read the directions, and reminded Kali that if I made a strange face and dropped to the ground to go get a neighbor and call 911. By the way, all through my switch switching project Kali kept saying "Are you okay? Should I call 991 yet?" LOL. So, I turned the power on and....nothing happened. I turned off the power and switched the wires , turned the power back on and...nothing again. At this very moment I'm sitting in my house that only has 1/2 it's power. I don't know what the heck I did. But don't worry, our neighbor who's an electrician is coming over in an hour.