blake's basket

Here's the cute video of Blake playing with the basket. We were just finished with reading scriptures and about to say prayer but then we all enjoyed watching and laughing at Blake. I love having kids and I love being a family and I love making time each day to read and pray together.

My sleeping giant

The other night I realized that I never get to see Blake sleeping. We put him to bed awake and don't go back in until he is awake again. And for me it was really sad. He was such a hard baby that I wouldn't dare go into his room if he was asleep. Now that he's improved I've made a point of going in each night to look at him and last night I snapped a picture. He is wearing his actual pajamas for the first time and he looks so big in them. He just looks huge and old for being my baby. His latest trick is putting a basket on his head and laughing. He's actually easy to laugh which is fun. I'll try to get that video put on today.

I would LOVE to see your house messy

Whenever I have people over and haven't gotten my house quite as clean as I would like I always apologize because I can see on the dirt and food on the carpet that their baby may pick up and suck on later in the day and I want to apologize beforehand. Yet, every time I warn about my house not being up to snuff I hear "I would love to see your house messy."

(Quick side note-I french braided Daisy's hair and she looked so cute. I loved it!)

I try very hard to keep my house clean. I do it for a number of reasons. First, I like it like that. Second, should people show up unexpectedly I want my house to be presentable. Third, I firmly believe it makes children behave better. When my house is a mess my kids act crazier. When my house is clean they are much quieter, easier and just generally nicer to deal with. Kids need clean not chaos so I make sure our house stays clean so they don't go crazy. If they go crazy, I go crazy and that is NEVER a good thing. So, in order to keep my sanity and my kids well-behaved, I keep a clean house. But please, please, PLEASE don't think that we are always squeaky clean. We have our moments, and yesterday was one of them. I saw my house after running errands and thought "if only people saw my house now they would believe that my house is not always clean" So I took pictures. They may not seem to be all that messy but wait until you look at the details.

I am a minimalist in my life so there is not much to clutter up the space in my rooms (which helps to keep it clean and organized) so these may not seem bad simply because there is not much in the room. But here is the front room as you walk in. The princess tea set is strew all over the floor, including the plastic bag I had it in. Scriptures left from Sunday, paperwork all over the computer desk, my diaper bag on the couch instead of put away, and cars on the floor.

A closer look reveals the pillows that are falling apart and need to be re-done. I'm not planning on re-doing anything until we find out whether we are moving or staying. For now I just have to make sure I hide the pillow before anyone comes in. Then the next picture is Daisy's dirty underwear. Luckily it was not a pair that had been peed or pooped in but, nonetheless, there is her dirty underwear. And I'm not sure if you can really see it but her dirty underwear was sitting on top of a breast pad. Does it get any grosser than that?

Going into the next room you see the kitchen and TV area. I had just brought in the groceries for a RS activity so I have bags of extra things loaded on the washer, dryer and counters making it all cluttered.

Another closer looks shows my pajama pants from the night before that had pudding spilled all over them (thank you, Blake). They are still wadded up on the floor and next to some dirty tissues. And under the little kids table is a pile of food bits that need to be vacuumed. Right above my pjs is the kitchen counter/table with 6, SIX, empty water bottles, a cereal bowl turned upside down, a box of Gogurts, church papers, food on the high chair, food on the table, chairs all pushed out, food on the floor needing to be swept. Behind the table you can see the washer and dryer not only loaded with food but also loaded with laundry including the high chair cover. I pulled Blake out of the high chair hours before and had not realized that he was poopy. Later I changed him but didn't even think that he had gotten poop in his high chair. So for hours there had been pooped on the cover and I didn't even realize it. The laundry aslo included the last peed-in outfit of Daisy (I'm going to pull my hair out over this potty training!)

Then you move over to the sink where the sink is full of dish, the dishwasher needed to be unloaded, there are 3 cans of chili, 2 packages of butter, and a carton of eggs that had all been out for awhile. Even if they had only just been put there the fact that it is 3 cans of chili and 2 packages of butter is disgusting. Blake has pulled out all the hand towels and wash clothes, his daily routine, and moved onto the cupboard under the sink where he can just barely grab the plastic bags and rip them out. So yes, my 10-month old is playing with plastic bags. He was also successful in pulling the pine sol squirt bottle out enough to suck on the end of it while the rest of the bottle was still in the cupboard. And in the chair is my sweatshirt that I had taken off 4 hours before and just threw in the chair instead of putting away.

This kid is cute but pulls everything out!

Then the bedrooms were just as bad. Kaylee's has two big garbage bags of stuff that we are not taking when we move that had been sitting in there for the last four days and the kids were taking the toys back out again. There was a dirty diaper on Blake's changing table and his clothes thrown all over the floor.

Heidi had actually cleaned her room decently but still there are pancake chunks from Blake. I still haven't vacuumed and that was all yesterday morning. I didn't take pictures of my room but the bed still wasn't made, the hair bows had been dumped on the floor, and my clothes were in a pile by the dresser. So there you have it folks! Yes my house is messy, gross and embarrassing. I just had too much work to do for an activity that ended up being cancelled and I had to let the house go. I did get it cleaned up as fast as possible so that I could re-dirty it by making a huge batch of cookies for the cancelled activity.

Totally Random Stuff

This post has no real reason except that I'm ready to change my blog and have a few oddball pictures my mom might like. To begin we had Heidi's birthday party for her school friends. I don't like birthday parties because of the presents they recieve so each year I try to find another way to celebrate without having a party but since this is possibly Heidi's last year at Altruria I wanted a chance for her to have over. Her party idea, which was pretty awesome, was to make the longest picture in the world. So I bought a roll of paper 4 yards long and they spent the party just coloring. It was pretty cool and her picture is now hanging on her two walls in her bedroom. She loves it!

We had snow last week (and it's snowing again today...school got out early even). The girls went out with Ben for about 15 mins before they were all too cold. They came back in, dumped their clothes in a huge pile for me to do. I think that picture of Daisy is pretty cool though.

The other fun thing my girls like are the icicles. We had a HUGE one right out the door. It goes up to Kaylee's shoulder! They love eating them and I let them.

And then this happened last night. Blake was reading in the wagon while Heidi pulled him around. It was cute and I love that Blake play with his sisters so much. He really loves following them around and just playing with them. It's really sweet.

So that's all we've been up to. It's snowing so that means Heidi is out of school tomorrow and I'm not going anywhere. No way I'm going to load up 4 kids and haul them around in the snow. Hopefully next time I post I'll have something interesting going on.

She's 7!

Heidi had her birthday! She's been super excited about her birthday. This year we're letting her have a real party with her school friends and she hasn't talked about anything else. She wants to draw the longest picture in the world like on Ramona and Beezus. She is pumped! She loves being artsy. But that isn't until Saturday and yesterday was her real birthday. She wanted donuts with sprinkles on but they didn't have any so Ben improvised with also getting Little Debbies (GAG!!)

Opening her gifts-boots, shoes, a globe, chalkboard thing (that she loves) and a bracelet. (Not pictured are the calico critters that she bought with her birthday money. She loves them and even took them with her to school so they could enjoy a ride in her backpack.)

We spent the morning getting her all cute and ready for school. I curled her hair in ringlets and she wore her new sparkly silver shoes. She looked so cute. I wanted to get a good picture before she left but turns out that when her ride showed up she just LEFT while I was still doing kaylee's hair. I didn't even realize she'd left until I called her to get a picture and she never came! A little unsettling to think how easily one of my kids can leave without me even realizing but Heidi is just responsible. When I told her to always be ready, waiting and go as soon as her ride showed up she obeyed. I wasn't able to get a picture until lunch time when parents can eat with their kids (I LOVE that about this school!!) She is such a nerd but it's also what I like best about her.

After school we went with friends to buy her critters and have birthday snacks (the Little Debbies...I had to get rid of them. I don't even like having them in my house!) For dinner she picked her favorite meal-spaghetti and meatballs! Then we finished off the cupcakes leftover from school. We put the kids to bed and let Heidi stay ip talking to all her family that called to skype. She had a blast talking. It was actually really cute to see her laughing with my parents. They were cracking her up and it was so funny to watch.

Each of my kids making a mess with the cupcakes. I love Daisy's face.

Heidi really wanted black boots. She had to wait until Friday to wear them so today she got dressed in this outfit. I would have stepped in and probably said no except that she said, while assembling this outfit last night, that she has dreamed of wearing this outfit with black boots. She was going to put on a show at school with this outfit. I'm a little worried about what kind of "show" she is planning but she said it was a 'rock-out' show. (Rock-out is her word for cool...she gets nerdier with each passing year). Here she is playing her air guitar in her outfit.

So now she's seven. We were talking about all the changes that will take place while she is seven. She will finish first grade, start second. Possibly be at a new school, definitely move out of our current house to a new one, move either two blocks away or across the country. Dad will get a job which will begin a long road of getting out of our student debt. And she will get ready to be baptized in a year. How weird that one of my kids will be old enough for that!