One thing I'm thankful for

In recognition of this Thanksgiving holiday I would like to pay tribute to just one of the things that I am so thankful for. That would be friends. Great friends. The kind of friends who you can laugh with, cry with, go into battle with, and if need be, huddle together into the corner on the floor of your kitchen while you slurp down cold tomato soup in an attempt to hide from your children.  ...   So, this last weekend my very good friend, Ruth, came up for a visit... with her 3 children. Add that to my 3 and we had a very busy weekend with 6 children age 7 and under. It was fun and my kids enjoyed having some other kids around to play with. But anytime you get 6 kids together in a house for a whole weekend, things have a tendency to be loud and little chaotic. =) At some point around Saturday evening, I think, Ruth and I stopped really even trying to talk because we realized it was a futile effort that would result in being interrupted in exactly 3 seconds by some child who had been wronged, or hurt, or was about to be wronged or hurt. There are very few friends that are good enough to hole up with along with all of your offspring together. But Ruth is one of them. And I am thankful for those kinds of friends. At one point we had fed the kids their grilled cheese sandwiches and were out of chairs, so we sat on the floor of the kitchen and tried to have a conversation while the kids ate. Ironically enough, we were discussing how sometimes we felt that we had lost a certain sense of identity outside of being a mom. We love our children and are grateful to be able to stay at home with our kids. But there is a huge fear that we will have nothing to talk about outside of kids and mommyhood. Someimes you feel like you do very little of significance when you spend the majority of your day wiping bottoms and doing laundry. When we were young and we dreamed about what we wanted to do with our lives, we always knew we wanted to be moms and that we wanted to stay home with them.  But it never really dawned on us that there would be little else we would be able to do, at least for this phase of life. Motherhood is so all-consuming and sometimes you just wonder if making babies and taking care of babies was meant to be your whole exisistence. (By the way, your doubts, fears, and failures as a mother are also things that can only be shared with the dearest of friends. Just one more reason I'm thankful for the kinds of friends God has blessed me with) Anyways, We were expressing our deepest desires of taking a shower without having to jump out wet and naked to check on a screaming child, or of eating a hot meal, or finishing a conversation, or sleeping until 9am when Seth ran into the kitchen (yes, they had found us by this time) and announced with peals of laughter "Lilah pooped and it's EVERYWHERE! Is that so funny????" Ruth and I burst into laughter (mine might have been a little mixed with tears since the pooper was my kid), which Seth took as a validation that it was, indeed, so funny. In reality, that was the laugh of two women who had finally been driven past the brink and into the realm of insanity. I cleaned up the poop, we took the kids outside to play, and then made a trip to McDonalds for dinner before Ruth left for home. It was a great time with a "kindred spirit" kind of friend. That's a shoutout to Anne of Green Gables fans, which I am. If I am Anne Shirley, Ruth is my Diana Barry. If you have not seen Anne of Green Gables and have no idea what I am talking about, you MUST watch it. It's the best girl movie ever. So my kindred spirit friend and I survived, and 2 days, 3 boxes of mac and cheese, several pots of coffee, and I'll admit, one long island iced tea later, we are planning our next get together to be children free at a hotel in Toledo for some shopping and girl movies. =) Although, our kids barely survived, Malachi has a self-induced black eye from a bouncy ball and toy to the face, Seth has a nasty knock on the back of the head from a sword fight on the bed gone wrong, and Peyton has the winner of the hematomas for the weekend with a wicked goose egg right above her eye after falling between the benches at McDonalds. ouch... So here's to the many friends in life God has blessed me with who have been there, helped me create the best memories, and make every day more fun and survivable. Love you all!

Lunch with the kids

We are having kind of a lazy day today. Just playing and hanging out for the most part. So when lunch rolled around I had the time to try to think about a way to make a healthy lunch that the kids would eat. They wanted eggs so I decided to make them egg sandwiches. We had some steamed green beans for dinner last night so I chopped up the left overs and scrambled them into the eggs for the sandwiches. Seth HATES green beans. It's the one food we usually don't even force him to try anymore. So I was skeptical that he would actually eat this sandwich. He's not blind, afterall. It turns out he could be, however, colorblind. He gobbled down the sandwich. Loved it! Lilah even told him there were green beans in it. He said that she was not telling the truth and I just told him it was eggs, cheese, and mustard. And then he asked me what those "red" things were inside his sandwich. I said it was a vegetable and changed the subject. We have been looking for signs of color blindness in my boys because it is genetically very possible that they could be color blind, or more accurately, color deficient. All of my brothers are color deficient and the gene is carried on the x chromosome, so I may very well be a carrier. Seth's is not quite old enough to officially have tested for it, so we don't know for sure. But if red green beans are an indication... well, enough said. =) Seth and Lilah each ate an entire 2 egg sandwich, an orange, and then some pudding because they said they were still starving. They have grown into their big appetites for sure. Gone are the days of sharing food off mine and Josh's plates. On Sunday, they each ate a hamburger from McDonalds, 5 chicken nuggets and fries. On Saturday they each ate 4-5 pieces of apple breakfast cake and 5 sausage links. And we are cutting them off because they are constantly saying they're still hungry. It's crazy! So today I happily watched the kids scarf their sandwiches and orange slices and listened to them tell me stories about their imaginary pets. Seth has a pet lizard that peed all over the house yesterday and needs to be punished, apparently. And Lilah has a pet butterfly that poked her in the eye with a graham cracker and then climbed onto her sandwich, so she ate it.  hmmmm..... I just asked them to get better control over their naughty, invisible pets and dropped it. And just so that Isaac doesn't get left out... His newest thing is that everytime he wakes up in the morning or at naptime he lets me know by standing up in his crib and slamming it against the wall until I com get him. If Seth is the imaginative one, Isaac is his brutish, physical counterpart. Although he does seem to have something of a sensitive side because I often find him pulled up to the piano, playing the keys and singing along with his tune. cute. =)

yucky week

Our kids have been sick, sick, sick this past week. We're pretty sure they have had croup. Fortunately, Isaac has not seemed to catch it. He's the one it would be most dangerous for. Lilah is still really sick. Seth is feeling better. This morning Seth got up, washed his face with soap and water, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and got dressed. He then chastised me for still being in my pajamas at 9am. Yes, he's feeling better. =) It's been a rough few days though. Lilah got sick first and has stayed sick the longest. On Saturday Seth was feeling really badly and developed a nasty conjunctivitis. So Josh went to get eye drops that we had in the cupboard to treat him. We put the eye drops in and Seth FREAKED OUT saying that they stung. We were only able to get one round of drops in each eye. So about an hour later we had to put in another round of drops. Seth went nuts again and we were like "why is he freaking out about this? These shouldn't really hurt?" So Josh put a drop in his own eye and said it was horrible. He took a closer look at the bottle and realized he had been putting ear drops from Seth's last ear infection in Seth's eyes. No wonder. oops. Way to go Dr. Vicena. We felt terrible. It was a Bausch and Lomb container and Josh just missed the little ear picture on the side. I don't think Seth will ever let daddy live that one down as he has told everyone in the family about it and still talks about the stinging drops that daddy shouldn't have put in his eyes. lol... Other than that, the weekend has been pretty uneventful and has mostly just been laying around watching movies. The one highlight was yesterday afternoon. Lilah was having a particularly rough day yesterday and really just slept on the couch ALL DAY. She only got up a couple times to vomit mucous from the coughing. Seth was doing better so he went to the store with Grandma to get more ibuprofen. He came home with pink carnations for Lilah and presented them to her with a smile and a hug. Lilah was thrilled and hopped up immediately to put them in water. She gave Seth a hug and a kiss and felt so special. She felt like such a little princess and I thought it was nice that her first flowers from a boy were delivered by her very caring and sweet big brother. Precious mom moment. =) So, today we are all staying home for one more day and resting and then I will be wiping down and Lysoling the entire house!

apple pie

We were having some friends over last night from Josh's residency program and wanted to make an apple pie to use up some of the apples we have picked. I didn't really feel like a crumble topping so I looked online for a good apple pie recipe without a crumb topping and found this one on allrecipes.com. It had almot 900 reviews and was rated 5 stars so I gave it a shot. It was absolutely delicious. The best apple pie I've ever tried. So here is the recipe and a pic of my pie. I use the store bought roll out pie dough to make it even easier but I'm sure it would be even better with a homemade crust. Just thought I'd pass it along. =) Also, I tried a hot apple cider recipe from allrecipes.com that was fantastic and here is that recipe as well. I didn't have any cheesecloth on hand or whole cloves and spice berries so I just put all of the ingredients directly into the cider and used normal clove spice and allspice. But it was still great.

Pie: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grandma-oples-apple-pie/Detail.aspx

Cider: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/hot-apple-cider/Detail.aspx

A serious medical problem

Ok, so I went to the Y to workout yesterday and took a cross training class which kicked my butt in an embarrassing way. I forgot to eat anything that morning so I got half way through the class and my blood sugar bottomed out and I had to walk out. Everything was going black and and I was dizzy and couldn't hardly hold my head up. A lady from the class had to run to get me a bag of fruit snacks to get my sugar back up. Embarrassing! Now you Columbus ladies who always wanted me to do Leah's class know why I wouldn't do it! But this is not my serious medical problem... Today my muscles are sore and I can seriously barely move. So I was having Josh rub out my back and the kids wanted to know why I was yelling (because it hurt so bad). Seth said, "Mommy are you ok? Do you need me to get you a Diet Pepsi? Do you need a snack?" (Can you tell my sugar drops freqentlyenough that my kids are trained to get mommy a snack or a coke when I'm laying on he floor?) I told him no that I was fine and just would like a hug. So he said, "Do you need a doctor? I'll be your doctor!" And he was off. He returned a few minutes later dressed in full dctor gear complete with his scrubs and little white lab coat and doctor bag. He asked me what the problem was and I told him that my muscles were sore. He scratched his chin and said, "Hmmmm... Let me check my patient schedule..." (which he did on his little clipboard and charts). Then he examined my arm and diagnosed my "serious medical problem". Apparently, I have eaten too many Twizzlers and one got stuck in my muscle. He put on his surgical mask and announced that he was going to have to give me a shot because this was major surgery. He performed the injections and checked to make sure they didn't hurt too badly. His bedside manner was outstanding I must say. He also checked my ears and said,"Oh my goodness! You have a Twizzler stuck in there too!" He got the Twizzlers out, thank goodness, and then checked his patient chart again to see that Pinkie Pie pony was his next patient. So, while I am very proud of Seth's doctoring skills... I did learn some disturbing things this weekend. I am out of shape and will embarrass myself if I attempt to excercise with people and I eat too many Twizzlers.

September catch up

So it has been quite a while since I've posted on here. I guess it's time... We've had a busy few weeks. At the beginning of the month we went on a vacation to NY to visit my brother and his family. Let me just say, Thank God I am a parent in a time where we have DVD players in our mini vans! A 9 hour road trip with 3 kids is rough, but I can't even imagine having to do it with no form of entertainment. Here's a picture of Lilah on the road trip with her head phones for the movie, her sunglasses, and travel pillow. I think I took this during the only 20 minutes of the trip when she actually slept. =) We had a great time! The kids had soooooo much fun playing with the Newman cousins. They miss them a lot. We enjoyed lots of fun time outside and beautiful weather. We went peach and raspberry picking, played at the beach, and celebrated Lilah's 3rd birthday. Aunt Sarah helped plan a special dress-up tea party for Lilah with the theme that Lilah requested of butterflies and flowers. The kids got all dressed up and we set up the picnic table outside for the party. Unfortunately, it was at the end of a super fun and exhausting week. So Lilah was pretty much spent and had gone into child demon/meltdown mode by that time. She fussed about everything and was nasty and the party ended with Lilah getting a time-out and then being sent to bed for the afternoon. I have included a picture for your viewing pleasure. =) But overall, we had a great time and miss the fam so much.

After NY we came home and enjoyed a couple of fun days with friends from ORU for Labor day weekend. Adam and Kim and Violet came into town and Aaron and Angie came as well. We had a second little "princess" birthday celebration for Lilah that went MUCH better and she behaved much more like a princess than at her first party. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed a cookout with friends and then the"sapphire girls" got to ditch the kids with the dads for drinks and a chance to catch up. Although we very much missed the 3 sapphires who were unable to join us. Liz and I get lots of time together now and we loved getting some time with Angie and Kim too.

The other big event this month was Seth starting preschool. He is LOVING it! I knew he would because he loves structure and people. Both are in abundance at school. He's having a blast and thinks he's being punished the 2 days a week that we don't get to go to school. He's learning about the body and has proudly displayed his macaroni/bones picture in the house for the past week. Lilah is really wanting to go to school too and misses Seth. She'll enjoy it next year when it's her turn. I just can't believe Seth is getting so big! The kids also started their first YMCA class last week where they get to do an hour of gym time (soccer, gymnastics, yoga, basketball, etc.) and then an hour of swimming. They LOVE that and Lilah feels very big to get to do that along with Seth. And I like it because I get to work out then while Isaac plays in the child watch program.

We also made a quick trip to Ohio for the kids to spend some time with Nina and Papa while Josh and I attended the memorial service for our friend's sweet baby, Eva Genelle. It was very important to us to be there with Dan and Jessica to celebrate Eva's powerful little life. We feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to participate in Eva's life while Jessica was pregnant and then for a few weeks after Eva was born before we had to move to Michigan. I have posted a picture of one of the moments I got to cuddle Eva for myself when Jessica gave me the lucky job of holding Eva while she made a plate of food for herself. Jessica shared at the service about the significance of the butterfly symbol that she chose for Eva. It was very moving and I will, from this time on, forever think of precious Eva Genelle everytime I see the beauty of a butterfly. If you are not already on the site, I encourage everyone to check out the caringbridge site for the Clearfield family. It tells Eva's story and Jessica writes beautifully in a way that captures your heart. Please also continue to keep them in your prayers as the noise of everything is fading and life is settling in and they are needing an extra dose of strength and peace to handle the day to day right now.

That's all the big stuff this month for us. I will try to post a bit more regularly now. =)

pictures from last week

We've had a fun, busy week. We went to NY to visit my brother and his family. The kids had a BLAST with the Newman cousins and we loved getting to see Ben and Sarah. Ben happedned to be on a vacation as well, which meant we actually got to see him even though he's a first year ER resident. =) We went peach and raspberry picking, went to the beach at a fun park, had a cousin birthday party for Lilah's 3rd birthday and just hung out. Lots of fun. When we got home some friends from ORU came into town to visit so we had several days of fun time with college friends as well. We celebrated Lilah's birthday again with the second generation "sapphire girls" since this is actually the week of her birthday. Now we're recouping, getting unpacked, and have a busy week ahead with doctor's appointments and preschool orientation. Here's the link for the pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tojuls0/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCMmI2eC7z-yzfw&feat=directlink