Memorial Day Part 2 (One Month Later!)

Here are some photos of our second half of Memorial Day weekend.  We always visit my father-in-law for Memorial Day, remember Miguel's mom, and enjoy some crazy times with our wonderful growing extended family.  This usually means someone is playing the organ, someone is building with blocks or Lincoln logs, someone is holding the "kitty" (a really beleaguered looking thing, but they all fight over it), little girls concocting ideas and trailing around after one another as they implement said ideas, kids go outside to explore the barn or the sheep camp or to traipse through knee high grass, gingerly over-stepping animal pies, or just to watch a long-eyelashed jersey cow crunch down her lunch; the adults get in some conversation, fantastic food while my father-in-law is awake, junk food when he is asleep, some late night games.  We often go for a "picnic" in the mountains-- usually hot dogs.  And often we go fishing.  So nice to enjoy each other's company and a break from every day routines, as well as the beautiful rural surroundings.         

Sorry for the picture glut.  I just couldn't choose.

Sorry if this grosses you out.  The kids enjoyed looking at it.  Below, bro explains.

 I love how sweet his sister is being, too.

 Cousins!

 Looking up at some sort of bug.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!  That your summer is going well so far!  I may post more this week, because next week we are going on vacation!  Wahoo!

Some Goals

(I had nothing to do with this ^^^.  Love the innocence of childhood and love the times when they help one another!)

Okay, so I haven't really talked about goals so far this month.

So here is what I've been working on and how it's going:

1 - Patience.  See end of post.

2 - Foster friendships.  I'm trying to do a better job at enabling my kids friendships.  It's just so easy to let them play at home, with each other.  And I often wait to have friends over until the house is clean, but the house is never clean!  And when it's really clean, the last thing I want is for my hard work to get undone quickly by a herd of happy friends.  So I've decided two things.  One, that I never cared whether my friend's houses were clean or dirty when I was a kid.  I cared about my friend.  I'm so glad their mothers didn't wait for a clean house, or I would have missed out on a lot of great memories.  So I'm going to swallow my pride and foster friendships regardless of the state of my house.  So far, this is going well, I think.  And part of this resolution has included car-pooling to soccer.  I'm surprised that I'm a little sad to let go of all the driving, just as I had started to find ways to enjoy it, like time to talk with the kids and listen to books together.  But my son needs some more friend time, so we switched to a team with a couple of his friends and have been carpooling.  It has been so nice, from a time perspective, and from a friend perspective.  Though I miss him and our bonding time with the other kids.

3 - Encourage exercise and outside time.  Learning about ADD has made me realize that exercise is a lifeline that I can't deny my kids.  (I think my own ADD was subconsciously causing me to keep them inside more often, because it's mentally hard for me to keep track of kids spread to kingdom come, and hard for me to round them up when the time comes)  So I've relaxed about letting them outside.  They have been biking around like crazy.  It's pretty cute.  The only sad thing, is that the littlest boy, who has an adventuresome spirit, runs away!  I can't tell you how many times I have had to run like the wind, Tonto, to catch him, and he can run fast (he bolts even faster when he sees me coming)!  He is not afraid to run away from home (four times while I was making dinner the other night!  I had to stop what I was doing and go chase him down, I'm sure my neighbors are having a good laugh).  So I have to lock the other kids out, to keep him in (he even learned how to get out through the garage!  I'm in trouble).  It makes me sad that he has to be stuck inside when I can't be out with him, but it's for his own good.  We have also been going on summer bike rides and went on a hike yesterday.  I love time like this together. (also: after a long injury, I have been tentatively exercising myself!  it feels SO good!)

4 - Get up-to-date work charts and rule lists.  I did a mini refresher on The Parenting Breakthrough (translation: I do way too much for my kids!) and made a list of the things my kids should be doing at their current ages and will be using as I update chore charts and move to a new system.  Will also be starting allowance!  We'll see how it goes.  I've also been trying to translate my new knowledge about ADD into routines/work charts, for example, piggybacking certain chores onto others, so they are easier to remember (ie, making bed right when you get out of it).  This is taking me much longer than expected.  I've let the kids veg out more than I should in an attempt to get it done.  Next year I'm doing it before school ends.  Oh yeah, and we're working on our summer bucket list.  You know what?  It was a little overwhelming to write down all the things my kids should be doing at their respective ages, but it was also exciting!  I am excited for them to learn some life time skills (and it will reduce my load, too).

Okay, on the patience thing, don't ask me why I saved this for last.  Just a little observation.  I used to think that patience was something someone either had or didn't have.  A quality, not a skill.  And while I do think that biology and nurture do make patience more difficult for some people than others, I now see it in a new light.  I think it is also a skill to be practiced, honed, and bettered.  And a habit to make or maintain.  I suffered from some moderate depression in the spring, as I found out about my diagnosis, and the possibility that several of my kids suffer from ADD as well.  As I've read more about it, I've found that post-diagnosis depression is very common (all the doomsday forecasting in the ADD books doesn't help!  you will become an alcoholic!  you will go to prison!  you will get in lots of car accidents!  your relationships will suffer!  on and on.  not exactly encouraging sometimes, though there are some rays in the clouds I'll relate when i get around to it!)  Back to the subject.  I was down, and I let myself get more snappish with the kids.  I am not normally like that.  But I let myself.  And let me tell you, it's not just a matter of telling yourself you are simply going back to the way things were before, there are now impatient habits that are hard to break!  So....just something to think about...patience is a habit.  It is also a skill we can practice and acquire, not just something we are or are not.

Happy Wednesday!

Not Much of Anything?

I was about to write that last week was a whole bunch of nothin'.  But then I looked at the photos and realized that by nothin', I was remembering how I hadn't combed anyone's hair or even insisted that people wear pants or use utensils.  Sometimes it's nice to have a break from things like that.  Enjoying having my kids home!  Here goes our scraggly week in photos. :)

Some gardening and weeding action (desperately needed!) and some strawberry picking and spontaneous jam making (SO good!).

 Lots of sleeping in and snuggling.

 My girls made cupcakes on their own.  I found this little boy cleaning up the leftovers (oops)-- he told me, "Mom, I'm just wickin' it!"

 So much bike riding that this little girl has been wearing her bike helmet to dinner.  And the aforementioned no utensils.

 Some band camp (a sibling shot).  Maybe jr. high isn't going to be as bad as I thought-- it's been fun getting him ready.

 Someone doesn't want to feel left out on the band action.

 This one still adjusting to having sibs home all day.  Mostly good, but sometimes frustrating.

 Not happy that I wanted to take another picture.  I just had to get the snow boots/swimsuit/underwear combo.

 No utensils or hair combed or pants.  Again.

 Sleeping out in the back yard in the tent we gave to my hubby four years ago for Father's Day-- just using it for the first time.

Father's Day dinner-- since we hadn't used utensils all week and since I don't cook roasts hardly ever anymore, I was proud of myself and had to take a photo.  We had a great Father's Day-- pampered my husband (I think he enjoyed himself) and visited my dad, too!  So nice to go five minutes away and then come home and put the kids to bed!

Sorry I've been so neglectful.  So busy for some reason!   I hope you are having a wonderful summer so far!

back tomorrow

:)

Moab Part One

 

(this from the end of the hike) ^^

Some photos of our hike to Delicate Arch.  I was really proud of the kids-- I thought this was a pretty difficult hike and they were troopers, including little Miss M., who woke up with a lot of ear pain (no instacare or docs available on a Saturday, I tried several), but seemed okay once she was on some Motrin.  Looking back at these photos, she was not fine!  She looks miserable to me.  The hike was sure beautiful and memorable, on several fronts!  There are some pretty big drop-offs near the top, which didn't worry me with my older kids, but did with the youngest two (because they still like to bolt at unexpected times) :).  I made my husband promise to hold that little boy the entire time-- he thought I was a little crazy, but I don't care.  Protective or over-protective?

If you like travel, check out my sister's blog.  She has been pretty much everywhere and I'm jealous.  But I can live vicariously through her blog, right?  It's called A Hat of Sky (based on a poem by my favorite modern poet, Billy Collins (whose work she introduced me to!  So gorgeous.  Something to aspire to).

Happy Father's Day weekend everyone!  

Rocky Mountain Horror Show

(I found this sight after climbing out of a ten minute shower one day....hard to see, but a little girl had snipped her hair-- evidence at the bottom of the photo, and a little boy had gotten into my makeup, including sticking his whole hand into the Vaseline jar....but it got worse....a few days ago, I emerged to find Vaseline everywhere, all over the carpet, and laundry strewn across the room-- the work of a few minutes!  I'm still learning you see :) )  Good thing they are so adorable!  And I'm thankful its a sign they have a healthy dose of curiosity and energy!

We've had one of those weeks.  Not a bad week, per se, but a very interesting one.  It has been so fun having the kids home from school, and we've had a couple of adventures so far (on Monday, we went to Epic, and on Tuesday, we went to a reading thing at the library with a friend).

But laced among the adventures have been some, well, adventures.  Adventures with bodily fluids, mostly.  I have two kids with sinus infections, who have been coughing so hard they throw up.  One of them, in the car on the way to the doctor's office, in his cupped hands.  I was summoned to the bedroom of an entirely different child in the middle of the night to clean sheets and carpet from another such accident.  An hour of cleaning later (and multiple dry heaves suppressed), I went to bed, not thinking much of it, only to witness her have a similar accident all across the kitchen floor first thing this morning (sorry this is so graphic).  When a four year old recognizes she is having the urge to throw up, there is no running to the bathroom, it is happening NOW.  Poor girl.  She keeps asking me how she can make her tummy feel better.   Aw, so sad that the revelation there is nothing to be done for stomach bugs comes so young.  A different child has started getting sudden bloody noses in the night.  Since she lives on the top bunk it is also hard to get to the bathroom, so her bed cover and sheets looked like WWIII.  She slept with half a roll of toilet paper, all balled up, as a preventative measure last night.

Crazy Funny Girl

This little girl cracks me up.  She really keeps life interesting.  I either feel like giving her a bear hug or strangling her, and it varies from one minute to the next.  She is like a little loaded spring, full of energy.  On this day it was her idea to put on the goggles (which she did herself, as you can see).  The light was so beautiful and she was so cute that I ran and grabbed my camera, sure that I'd probably already missed the moment.

Here are some funny things she has said lately:

1)  In a hot car: "It's sweatin' hot in here!"
2)  Eye level with a watermelon in the store, her chin resting dreamily on her arms: "It feels like I'm in love."
3)  "Mom, can we buy that smell?"  (upon entering the grocery store, she meant for me to buy whatever was making that smell)

Even though she is going through a fairly severe separation anxiety stage and tries to sneak sugary goods from the pantry all day, I wouldn't trade her for anything.

 Preparing to take the plunge.

 We recently made a trip to Southern Utah-- it was gorgeous.  I think we got there right before the real summer heatwave.  I have more photos to share another day, here are just a few.

My husband told everyone to "pretend that you're hot and tired!"  After which Ava said, dumbfounded, "why would I want to pretend that?"  "I AM hot and tired!"  Now that I see this photo it is even more funny.

One more funny thing, just for good measure: the little boy, who is still nursing, exhaled a happy sigh afterward nursing one day and told me "that's a good drink!"  Lol. :)

Happy Monday!

P.S.  One thing I'm working on this month is patience.  Normally,  patience is not something I struggle with.  But I've had a hard time with it the last couple of months, especially as the strain of my anxious little girl has frayed my nerves and put extra pressure on me at most waking minutes of my day (not only does she panic over any type of physical separation, even as small as my going to the grocery store, but she wants me to be with her wherever she is in the house, including bathroom trips and small incidental times like that....sometimes she follows me around so closely that she bumps into me if I stop).  I know she'll grow out of it, I just need to be patient!  I'm trying to pause a little and take, if nothing else, a mental deep breath.  Update: 12/31/13: the separation anxiety phase didn't last much longer after I posted this, both of us going back to our more normal selves.