Christmas 2008

Christmas this year was a great day. It was the first time in many years that we stayed at home all day. The boys woke us up at 5:45 in the morning ready to open gifts. I cooked dinner for us and we enjoyed watching the kids play with their toys. I bought matching sports suits for the boys to wear and Hunter's was a little big, so his brothers thought it would be funny to put a fake necklace and a crooked hat on him and make him pose for the camera. The boys have also got Hunter into dancing. Any time he hears music he busts out in full dance mode. He had us laughing all day at his moves.The boys are growing up so fast that it was nice to be able to spend time with them and not have to go anywhere or do anything for at least one day.

Twas the night before Christmas

A good friend of mine sent me this poem today and I just wanted to share it with everyone. I know that especially around this time of year, I seem to get overwhelmed with to do lists and I forget what is really important in life.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the abode
Only one creature was stirring & she was cleaning the commode.
The children were finally sleeping, all snug in their beds,
while visions of X-Box & Ipod's flipped through their heads.

Yes, and dad was snoring in front of the TV,
with a half constructed bicycle propped on his knee.
So only the mom heard the reindeer hooves clatter,
which made her sigh, "Now what is the matter?"

With toilet bowl brush still clutched in her hand,
She descended the stairs, and saw the old man.
He was covered with ashes & soot, which fell with a shrug,
"Oh great," muttered the mom, "Now I have to clean the rug."

"Ho Ho Ho!" cried Santa, I'm glad you're awake."
"your gift was especially difficult to make."
"Thanks, Santa, but all I want is time alone."
"Exactly!" he chuckled, "So, I've made you a clone."

"A clone?" she muttered, "What good is that?"
"Run along, Santa, I've no time for chit chat."
Then out walked the clone - The mother's twin,
Same hair, same eyes, same double chin.

"She'll cook, she'll dust, she'll mop every mess.
You'll relax, take it easy, watch TV and rest.
"Fantastic!" the mom cheered. "My dream has come true!"
"I'll shop, I'll read, I'll sleep a night through!"

From the room a above, the youngest did fret.
"Mommy?! Come quickly, I'm scared and I'm wet."
The clone replied, "I'm coming, sweetheart."
"Hey," the mom smiled, "She sure knows her part."

The clone changed the child and hummed him a tune,
as she bundled the small one in a blanket cocoon.
"You're the best mommy ever. I really love you."
The clone smiled and sighed, "And I love you too."
The mom frowned and said, "Sorry, Santa, no deal.
That's my child's LOVE she is going to steal."

Smiling wisely, Santa said: "To me it is clear,
Only one loving mother is needed here."
The mom kissed her child and tucked him in bed.
"Thank You, Santa, for clearing my head.
Sometimes I forget, it won't be very long,
before they'll be too old for my cradle and song."

The clock on the mantle began to chime.
Santa whispered to the clone, "It works every time."
With the clone by his side, Santa said: "Goodnight.
Merry Christmas, dear Mom, you'll be all right."

Sometimes we need reminding of what life is all about.
Especially at times when the Holiday season shouts,
and all we do is clean, bake, and procure.
You get the picture -- I'm sure.

So stop for a moment and hug that little one so dear,
whether he is 2 or 22, or even older this year.
For they are the gift that God gave us from Heaven above,
and what a special gift to be treasured, with endless LOVE!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family. Hold your little ones tighter and love them even more, for that is what life is truly about. ~Toni~

All Things Christmas

Trimming the tree, decorating ginger bread houses, baking goodies, wrapping gifts......We have been busy enjoying the season of Christmas. Decorating the tree is one of the highlights of my year. In years past we have had different themes and color schemes for our Christmas tree, and this year I wanted red poinsettias. The boys are pretty good about letting me get my way with the tree decorations. It's about the only thing I get my way with in a houseful of boys. I did give in one year and let them decorate it their way, with every ornament we ever purchased and all those handcrafted goodies such as macaroni and construction paper ornaments from many years of school projects. But after that year, I decided to buy the boys their own tree and let them decorate it so I could have my "pretty" tree back. Don't get me wrong, handcrafted Kindergarten ornaments are precious memories to me, but I just don't want them on my tree. Tis the season.......

Gratitude

Thanksgiving is another one of my favorite holidays. I love this time of year because it gives me the opportunity to take time out and reflect upon all of my blessings, and to acknowledge and express gratitude for everything I have been given. Often times I get so caught up in day to day life that I forget how truly blessed I am. My blessing list is quite lengthy so this year I am focusing on my children. I am so thankful for my boys and I love each of them with all my heart. I could not have imagined 15 years ago that I would be the mother of 4 amazing, awesome, incredible, enjoyable, extraordinary, magnificent boys. They keep me sane and insane all at the same time. They teach me about unconditional love and they inspire me to celebrate every moment no matter how insignificant it may seem. They help me remember how to truly laugh and are my source of eternal joy. For this, I am grateful.

The Surgery

This is the final post in a 3 part series. So if you are reading this first, I suggest going back and reading "the campout" and then, "the injury" and then this one. Otherwise, you won't really know what I am talking about. Hey, I don't know what I'm talking about either so just go with it.

So after the campout, we get home and Kieth continues to go to work everyday for two weeks. He is in a tremendous amount of pain, but he has to wait until he gets home after work to take any medication because it makes him kinda loopy. In the mean time, the lump on his shoulder is getting bigger and we don't really know what else to do. Finally his appointment with the family doctor arrives and it's time to see whats going on with his shoulder. Me, always the optomistic one, goes in thinking he will have to wear the sling for another few weeks while his shoulder continues to heal. The family doctor immediately refers us to an orthopedist because the x-ray's do not look good. Fortunately, the doctor that fixed Riley's knuckle about a year ago was available and ready to see us. We went right over and he took one look at Kieth's shoulder and the x-ray's and started scheduling him for surgery. He confirmed that Kieth did in fact have a shoulder separation, but that it was much worse than the ER doctor had identified. Thanks to a rookie ER doctor, Kieth walked around for 2 weeks with the top of his shoulder blade not only separated from the joint and the collar bone, but basically just being kept in place by a small amount of tissue and his outer skin. That explains why the bump kept getting bigger. Oh Holy Cow!


Anyway, he had surgery Monday November 10. The doctor took out all of the joint tissue and drilled 3 holes into his shoulder bone. He then sutured his bones back together with 3 fiber wire sutures. He said he should be able to play ball again and regain full use of his shoulder within 6-8 weeks. He had to stay in the hospital for the day and night so the kids had fun in his room after school.


Hunter was curious about all that stuff on his dad's hand.


Hunter had breakfast with his dad the next morning. Kieth was so ready to get home because the beds are not made for tall people. His ankles hung over the end and kept falling asleep.


And here I am taking advantage of the morphine drip. He hates pictures and never smiles without alot of grumbling, so I snapped as many photos as I could while he was doped up. Speaking of doped up..... Now he is at home convalescing and boy is this another adventure. Kieth has never taken many medications so he just gets nutty on these pain meds. He is letting me read him the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, and for the last day and a half, he has been hollering from the bedroom for a credit card and the phone. I finally had to ban him from watching any more QVC, HSN, or any type of infomercial selling the next greatest invention or products you can't live without. Oh well, at least he is healing now and able to take off work. Things could always be worse. Three cheers to a day in the life.......

The Injury

After we got our tent set up and the fire started, Kieth decides to organize a football game with the kids, because after all, he is the biggest kid of them all. Everything is going great until Kieth tries to intercept a pass and inadvertently introduces his shoulder to the rock hard ground at full force.


He knew right away that he was hurt. He started getting nauseous and turning pale and green all at the same time. I was so upset that I couldn't even remember where we were. (Mostly I was upset that he was ruining my campout, but I've since apologized) Then I realized that we were a long way away from any kind of civilization. A couple of people offered to take him to the E.R., but he really wanted me to take him. So we left the kids with Wendy and Chad and headed off to the hospital.


Our E.R. experience was like most, I'm sure. There was no one in the waiting room but us at 7:00 on a Friday night and it still took 4 hours. The doctor came in and took one look at his shoulder and immediately said he had an Acromio-Clavicular Separation. She gave him a sling and told him that these injuries heal over time and to go see his family doctor in two weeks.
He is laughing here and I think the pain meds had already kicked in because there was an anatomically correct picture on the wall that he found hilarious. So after we went to Walgreen's and filled a pain med prescription, we went back to the campout. I was determined to have my hot cocoa by the fire, so at 11:00 at night I heated up water and made cocoa for everyone that had waited up for us. We finally went to bed in the tent around midnight. I did not have a sleeping bag, so Kieth and I tried to sleep in the same one. It would have been fine had he not gotten injured, but he had to sleep on his back and couldn't move or snuggle. So needless to say, by 3 am we had enough. It was uncomfortable and we were freezing. So we got Hunter and went to the van to sleep for the rest of the night. We woke up the next morning and had breakfast and took the kids on a nature trail. Then we broke camp and headed home. In my next post titled "The Surgery" I will tell you the rest of the story.

The Campout

Camping in October sounded fun, so we decided to pack up the kids and go camping with our church group to the Fred Berry Conservation in Yellville. I really wanted to go and so while Kieth and the boys were at work and school, I worked hard to get everything together that we might need. By the time I finished packing up the van, the muffler was dragging out of the driveway. (Not really, but we absolutely did not have room for one more item)
The temperature was supposed to get down into the 30's overnight and I wanted to be extra prepared. In fact, it got so cold that night that we had ice on the inside of our tent the next morning.


Kieth and Hunter worked on getting a fire started in the fire pit when we got there. Hunter wants to do everything his dad does.


Here we are very happy because I was having visions of hot cocoa, smores, and scary stories by the fire. Little did I know that the fun was about to come to an abrupt end. In my post titled "The Injury", I will tell you all about it.

Halloween 2008

Halloween this year was a ton of fun. We went to the ward trunk or treat and chili supper. It is always a great event because the kids get to safely trick or treat up and down the entire parking lot either until the candy runs out or the bags bust at the seams. I'm sure my kids collected at least 10 pounds of candy between them. It's a good thing we have dental insurance. This year I went as Cleopatra, Jordan was Dash Incredible, Riley was an outrageous Cowboy, and Hunter was Elmo. Dakota was all dressed and ready to go as Dewayne Wade (NBA Player) but decided to change at the last minute and go as himself when he saw that his dad did not dress up. When I got home, I realized that I did not take very many pictures. I guess I was sidetracked watching the boys have fun. Hunter was so precious tonight. Halfway through the trick or treating he looked up at his dad and said, "dad, this is so much fun, thanks". But his thanks is more like phanks. He can't quite get the th sound. His lingo is pretty funny, but I'll save that for another post.


This is my favorite of Elmo and Cleopatra. Isn't he adorable!


This one is too cute. His face says it all.


Riley loves being a Cowboy.


Elmo is ready for candy.

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween, and I guess I passed this love down to the boys because they love it too. I have been sorting through old pictures lately and found some of past Halloween's. I know I have more, but they will have to wait til next year. This first one is last year at our Halloween Party/ Baby Shower for Gina. She also loves Halloween so much that she wanted to have it as her baby shower theme. (I know, I know, we're all a bit loco).



The top two pictures are 2003 at the trunk or treat. I think this was one of the last years I could get the boys to participate in a family type theme. As you can see, Jordan and Dakota were Dorothy's tin man and lion, while Riley, forever the defiant one, insisted on being the Hulk. The next picture is Halloween 2006.



This was Halloween of 2001 at Lesli's garage party. This was one of my favorite years. The boys made adorable dwarfs for Snow White. I love Jordan in the first picture. Although he was only 2, his personality was captured quite accurately.

Getting Prepared

It looks like winter is right around the corner. The leaves are falling, the nights are cool, the days are getting shorter, the spiders are weaving Taj Mahal webs, and the persimmon seed reveals a spoon, which according to folklore, indicates a heavy winter of shoveling snow. Our family motto this season is to "be prepared". Unlike in years past, when we found ourselves foraging for kindlin and sticks of firewood in the snow and ice, we have been cutting and splitting firewood like busy little ants this past week. Everyone took a turn operating the log splitter, even Hunter.



Jordan is a worker. He ran the log splitter most of the time.


When it was Hunter's turn, he had to make sure Dakota was doing it to his specifications. He just likes things to be done his way.


Riley ran the chainsaw and helped cut up the huge logs. This is his kind of work, rather than splitting and stacking.



Hunter was hamming it up for my camera, so I just kept taking pictures. Right after these shots, Riley accidentally rolled a log over on him and gave him a nice goose egg on his forehead. After the crying was over, he needed an icepack and a drink break. Poor kid. All in all, we got a lot accomplished and if all else fails, we will have a cozy fire to sit next to this winter.

Milestones

A milestone can be defined as an achievement, a successful completion, or a significant moment. Throughout our lives, and especially as mothers, we will personally experience, witness, and perhaps even record many milestones. First steps, first words, trading the bottle for a cup, finally giving up the pacifier when the kindergarten teacher takes it away, a bike ride with no wrecks when the training wheels are removed, the first visit from the tooth-fairy, feeding the pets without being nagged, the first girlfriend and the devastating first break-up with said girlfriend, and, well, the list just goes on and on. However, there comes a time in every mother's life when certain milestones are more monumental than others.

I had my first baby when I had just turned 19. Coming from a family of 10 children, I thought I had it all figured out. My mom made it look easy, in fact, I never hardly heard a baby cry in our house. So when I gave birth to this crying, colicky, 24-hour breast-feeding, alien-looking bundle of joy, needless to say, my world was turned upside-down. Kieth would drive back and forth down the street in front of our house in his old broken down pick-up just to get him to calm down. The motor in our vacuum cleaner eventually burned up from running so much, and we would purposely put the television on the wrong channel in hopes that the fuzzy white noise would give us a much needed moment of sanity. In the end, the only thing that really worked was putting the baby in bed between us and snuggling. Kieth also worked the night shift, so it was much easier to have the baby in the bed. Little did we know that the decision to create a "family bed" would stay with us for the next 14 years. When Riley was born 2 years later, he secured his position in the bed. Dakota eventually moved on to the couch in the living room. At this time we lived in the long mobile home and the kids rooms were all the way at the other end. Kieth also still worked the night shift. So, it was just more convenient and safer to have the kids nearby at night. When Jordan came along precisely 2 years later, Riley found his sleeping arrangements moved to the living room as well. Most of the time, however, I found myself waking up next to a newborn, a two year old, and a four year old in bed with me. And so it was. But somewhere along the way, Kieth went to the day shift, and now we had him home every night, and we also had 3 kids in our bed every night. So when we decided to build a house, the first priority was making the kids bedrooms so awesome that they would want to sleep in their own bed. In fact, we built the entire upstairs solely for our kids. They have huge bedrooms with comfortable beds, a bathroom, and a playroom. But, do you know where Riley and Jordan sleep about half the time......on the living room couch! We are working on getting them to sleep in their rooms full time, but life is a work in progress.

Now, I realize I got off track a little with my original story, but I felt like I had to give a little background so that everyone would understand the significance of the milestone our family has just experienced. After Jordan was born, we thought we were finished having children. After all, we had three boys, what more could we ask for. But for some reason, about six years later, we felt like we should have one more baby with the hopes of having a daughter. That's when little Hunter came along. And, as if he knew exactly what to do, he claimed his place right in the middle of the family bed. So for the last 14 years, Kieth and I have both clung on to either side of the outer edge of the mattress while our 4 children have blissfully slumbered away in the middle. Even when we were able to upgrade to a King-size bed, somehow it just made more room for the kids, not us. I don't even put my gum on the nightstand anymore because that's where I always seem to have my head when I wake up. Especially if Hunter has had a dream. But, this is where milestones come in.



Last night Hunter put himself to bed. He was falling asleep on the couch and suddenly got up and said he was tired and went to his own bed. We bought this bed last year and I have been trying to get him to consistently sleep in it for a long time. We have moved the bed all over the house, in many different rooms and configurations to determine what location would do the job. In the end, my bedroom was the winner. (Hey, I'll take any victory, no matter the size). This is the second night he has slept in his bed. The night before last as we were getting ready for bed, Hunter crawled into his own bed. Kieth, not being used to this new turn of events, said, "hey buddy, come up here next to daddy and sleep". Hunter turned to him and in his delightfully husky three-year old lingo pronounced, "that's okay dad, we can still talk to each other". We were floored. After months of reassuring him he could sleep all by himself, he turns around and reassures his dad that he is right there and they can still talk to each other! What an angel.



So even though we have experienced the milestone of successfully getting children out of our bed many times, the accomplishment of getting the last child out of the bed is much more significant. It means that, except for the occasional bad dream or illness, Kieth and I can reclaim our bed. No more sleepless nights with cricked necks and sore backs. No more tossing and turning and somersaults and waking up in the middle of the night with feet in your face. It will take some getting used to, but this is one milestone that was 14 years in the making and I'm enjoying its outcome.

Annual Yard Sale

I love shopping at yard sales. But more importantly, I love having a yard sale. Sure, it's a lot of hard work, and most times the monetary payoff is not what you put into it; but there's just something wonderful about getting rid of stuff you don't want anymore and seeing someone else be able to put it to good use.




Here is what Lesli's front porch looked like. We had clothes hung up the entire length of her front porch and half-way down the other side. You will also notice two large tables sitting in the yard with clothes piled high on them. We had another table of treasures in the yard and miscellaneous stuff displayed on every surface imaginable. It was quite the production.

Jesse, Hunter, and Harley had a great time playing dress-up. They all took turns being batman.



They also made lots of beautiful music with the drum set. Too bad we sold it at the end of the day! Sorry, there are just some things you wonder why you ever bought. All in all, we had a great week. The weather was beautiful, we met lots of interesting people, and best of all, we got our houses uncluttered. (Well, I actually just made room for more thrift store treasures and finds, but don't tell Kieth, I'll just have more stuff to sell at next year's yard sale)