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.

This is why you listen to your mom

I tried to tell Caleb yesterday morning that you NEED a jacket when he's dropped off from school, but he's 7 and knows everything. I drop him off around 8:45 and the doors don't open until 8:50. I'm sure he wished that he would of put on his jacket when he got out of the car to a whopping -5 degrees. It was so cold the crossing guard looked like the Michelin man.

Sent from my iPhone

Just one more thing to do...

Today I FINALLY hung the tennis ball from a string to the windshield of my car. It only took me hitting the water heater TWICE this week. The last time I did it I panicked that we were going to have a gas leak and once the furnace turned on our house would blow up. There is seriously inches before I hit the washer and dryer and inches for the garage door to close. But it's so nice to get into a semi-not-so-cold car when it's 0 degrees outside. But I also have to say thank you to my husband because before we knew that the beast actually fit into the garage he put an auto-start on it for me so I could warm it up in the morning before getting in. So, one project done, too many more to name off to go. I'm motivated!

"Does it warm you up?"

Months ago Aaron set up our furnace's timer so it stays a constant 66 during the day and 64 at night. One less thing that I have to worry about. Well, tonight while I"m cooking dinner I start smelling something awful (No, it's not my cooking). In between phone calls and helping Caleb with homework while peeling potatoes I realize that only Madeline can produce a smell like that. I turn around and she's sitting in her little brother's little blue seat. This brings up the internal question that I would love to ask her "Honey, do you sit in it because it's too cold in the house and it's a nice little heater for the next five minutes?" I just don't get how she can sit in that diaper. I bent down and asked her,

"Maddy, did you go poo?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
She just smiles. Gets up and walks away. Ahhhhhh, can't wait for potty training to begin.

Besides that, not much of a day here. I finally got Kali's hair cut. She hasn't had it cut since I was pregnant with Madeline and the ends were starting to look horrible. Then it was off to the post office. I hate going to the post office. This is what usually happens. We wait in line forever. While we're waiting Jackson cries in his car seat, Madeline runs around and I politely try to coax her back into standing in line but whenever eye contact is made I make sure to glare. If that doesn't work I try to find whatever treat I might have stashed away in the diaper bag hoping that it's more appealing than the Disneyland mailing address labels that she has now just spilled all over the floor (usually the whole stack!). Kali is usually trying to help me by being the "little Mommy" and yell at Madeline how much trouble she's now in. Well, when it was our turn for the counter today I just grabbed Madeline and put her on it, talked around her, and rocked Jackson in his car seat with my foot. Kali saw someone from church in line and when I was leaving she got out of line and offered to carry Jackson's car seat to the car for me. (By that time I was carrying Jackson, Madeline, a box I purchased, and the diaper bag). I told her I had it under control ( HA HA HA HA, and Aaron wants two more) but she insisted and won. I hope she found a $20 bill later that day or Ed McMahon was waiting at her door when she got home. But on a brighter side, I was able to get out this weekend and go to dinner group. I didn't know what to do with myself since I only had one child with me. Dinner group didn't start till 6pm but picked up my sitter at 4 and roamed around Home Depot. Loved it! Bought myself a new pantry door.

It's FRIDAY!

I woke up this morning to this: lots of snow! You see, it's snows so much here that you have to plow the drive more than you mow the lawn in the summer. Of course the kids absolutely love it. In the middle of our circle is a grass hill and in the winter it becomes the neighborhood sledding grounds. Especially after they plow our circle because all of the snow is dumped on the hill. It's huge today and it still haven't had it's daily dumping from the plow.

It's amazing how little things make me proud of myself. And one of them is always stepping back and seeing a clean driveway that I plowed.
Okay, I'm sure the neighbors get a laugh out of me because most of the time I'm doing it after basketball so I just have gym shoes on and I'm sliding everywhere. Or the stupid thing just won't start. I kicked it a couple of times the other day out of frustration (still didn't start). Although, I need to mention that I feel so grateful for all the wonderful people who help me out. Countless times I have gone outside to find my driveway already plowed for me or caught someone in the act. Bro. Thurston has come over multiple times in the night and plowed it with his huge truck. Just today I heard someone on my front steps and looked out to find the Bishop and his wife clearing my deck. And lets not forget my living Barbie doll neighbor who does it but looks more prettier than anyone else I know while shoveling snow. I truly feel that the Lord put us not only in a great ward to watch over us while Aaron is gone but a wonderful neighborhood. It's a humbling experience when you know that the Lord was preparing a way before you ever knelt down to ask for his help.

Here's the story...

I decided on four specific tasks that I wanted to work on for my New Year's resolution. One of them happened to be writing in a journal once a week. I decided why not make this an online blog so that everybody can track our families progress as we spend this next year apart. So far we have been doing good. I feel like Aaron going to officer school first was a HUGE blessing because it prepared me for the next 18-20 months of separation. I can now admit, because my mom won't freak out and jump on a plane to come see me, that I was a mess when Aaron first left for Officer school. I found myself going through our dirty laundry just to find something with his scent on it and then sit in the bathroom and cry while sniffing it. It seems like this time I'm 100% better and right after he left I left myself have one good cry and then it was back to the "single mom" routine. I'm just keeping myself busy with house projects, basketball, gym, and ballet and karate nights. I think the kids have noticed a difference because bedtime when Dad was home was 8:30. Single mom's bedtime for the kids is 6:30-7:00 except for Fridays which I let stay up till when ever they fall asleep on the couch. Last Friday I painted the living room and entry way ceiling until midnight and they were on their second round of watch Hairspray. Gotta love Fridays, and there's one just 24 hours away.