Quick Takes Complaining Edition

Betcha can't wait to read now, with that captivating title. I won't actually complain for all of my quick takes, promise.

1. Stating the obvious, but it is too stinking hot. I will still take absurd heat over extreme cold and long winters, but that doesn't men I won't complain about it. The heat just started so early this year. We are on day 28 (I think) in a row of 100 degrees plus, assuming we hit it again (which looks likely). The high next Friday? 107! That is just dumb. So you can imagine how happy things are in my house. Swimming doesn't even really help because the pools all feel like bath water. The kids are getting restless of course and by the end of the day we're all a little strung out. Too much TV watching is happening, but I've made my peace with that.

2. My exercise mojo has once again abandoned me. I just can't get going lately. Today I am missing Zumba because Benjamin is in bed (he is waking up at 6:15 lately, which is early for us) and also cramps from hell (sorry for TMI). On days I don't have regular classes I have a hard time pushing myself. I'm doing a 5K in September (when it will probably be 108 degrees knowing my luck) and I am in no way ready. This is frustrating for a variety of reasons but I know that I'm the only one who can do anything about it. Ugh.

3. Okay, enough complaining. We're going to L.A. in three weeks! That should be pushing me to exercise more and it is definitely my light at the end of the heat tunnel. We're going to at least one, probably two Rangers vs. Angels games. We have a group of 25 mostly family members going to the game. It will be so fun. Travis and I need blue or white Rangers shirts for the games though, because the Angels wear red too and we wouldn't want to be mistaken for Angels fans. I want a shirt with this logo, but not the shirt in the link. We have free tickets to a game on August 8 in Arlington, so I'll be visiting the fan shop for sure.

4. Evidence of the kind of dorks we are: We have spent two date nights at Buffalo Wild Wing's watching the Rangers and playing trivia (I play, Travis assists). It is actually quite fun and relaxing. We talk when we want to talk and we play and we just enjoy not being needed by small people for a few hours. The food is good too.

5. I got some cute cuffed capris a few weeks ago. They are Hilfiger and a great fit and I just love them (and they were on sale!). So I want them in white but that is proving impossible. Boo. I might try Gap when I get a chance. Any suggestions on affordable white jeans/capris?

6. I bought all the school supplies for this next year! Well, I need a 2nd grade writing tablet, but otherwise we are done. I just bought everything at Target because I was already there with the girls buying some shorts and shoes for school. Technically we got the wrong spiral notebooks because they were supposed to have 100 pages and ours only have 70, but Target had no 100 page notebooks. I imagine they will get the job done. It is quite refreshing to have this task completed already. The girls need new backpacks, but we'll order those online. My MIL will buy Timmy his backpack, because it has become a tradition for her to take each child starting kindergarten out on a special lunch date before school starts. Timmy can't wait!

7. I'm reading a lot again and it is good. Mostly just silly YA supernatural fiction, but not entirely. I had gotten away from reading for too long. I need to read. It relaxes me. So read I will. What are you reading?

For more Quick Takes visit Conversion Diary.

Begging to be Shared

My girliest of girls, all tough. And you can't see it in the picture (that I didn't take by the way, Madeleine did) but her visor says "Boss Ladies" which was the name of one of her softball teams. Love it.

Vacation, Vacation

We went on vacation last week.

Most of the time it was this good.

We rented a "cabin" in Broken Bow, OK. We stayed in the Lone Star Lodge by Hidden Hills Cabins. Friends of ours had stayed there and loved it. We had 19 people in the cabin for 2 nights, 17 for the last night. My parents, my brother, my sister and her husband and four kids, our family, and my aunt and uncle. We never felt crowded. With a TV downstairs with satellite service, a ping-pong table, playset, and sandbox our kids had plenty to keep them busy. We're talking about returning next fall.

Because then we might be able to use this fabulous fireplace.

The great thing about this trip was we did some of the fun stuff of camping but could escape the heat when we needed to cool off. We swam in the lake two days, just floating around on noodles or in life jackets. Benjamin was not a huge fan but the rest of us enjoyed it. We made S'mores too. The first time we did a traditional fire in the firepit, but that was dumb. It was really too hot for it (not to mention risky). So the second night we roasted marshmallows over the flame of a hurricane lamp! I should have taken a picture.

One of my favorite things was a relatively short hike. I was a little nervous at times with Lily, because the hike took us past some steep dropoffs to the river, but we kept her on the inside of our path and really she was fine. I wore Benjamin on my back in the Ergo, so I figure it counts as a workout too.

Travis made his famous mountain man breakfast. That was just over hot charcoal, so not the same fire risk thankfully. We took advantage of the cool-ish morning to visit around the firepit while he cooked.

I really loved having my aunt and uncle there. All of my extended family lives out-of-state, mostly in California. We don't see them very often at all. So it was really special to me that my kids got to spend real quality time with my family. Lily was especially attached to Aunt Claire and Uncle Kevin by the time they left.

We played a lot of cards, we cooked our meals, we napped. It was wonderful. Relaxed and fun with no stress. Hopefully the beginning of many years of family trips.

So Much Cute

I've been a scanning fool yesterday and today. I still have many more pictures to scan in, but I had to share some. I have a bunch and I had a hard time choosing. So my advance apologies for making your eyes bleed with all the pictures.

So there we are, two college kids with no idea what was ahead of us.

I can't believe how young we look! That's Taylor, and Madeleine is in the giant belly you see me sporting.

Taylor is clearly not sure about this whole baby sister idea. But she'll grow to love it.

The above photos are just a few of the many we have of them together being sisters. Really I could do a whole post just on them.

I love this photo because Madeleine is sleeping on my pregnant belly, and so there is a smaller version of the same thing on the inside of me. Crazy! (also my house was significantly cleaner in those days)

And now there is a baby brother on the scene, clearly ready to be eaten by big sisters.

Well, I was going to post more but Blogger decided it hates my pictures. I'll post pictures of the other three kids next week. Thanks for indulging my trip down memory lane.

You Can't See This Far Ahead

I linked this post to Jen's Share Your Awesome linkup at Momma Made it Look Easy. You should share your awesome too! 

I've had this post brewing in my head for weeks now. I'm sure it will still not come out exactly the way I want it to, but I can't let it just sit in my head anymore. Maybe it will encourage you or make you think a little differently about family size, or just sigh with relief that this is not your life. I just hope it makes sense and that you'll stick with it through the end (this one's long folks).

I've been thinking a lot lately about how different my life looks, not only from how I imagined it would look back in my college days, but also just from a few years ago. I never imagined I would be a mom to six kids. Being a mother was never my passion growing up. In college I did realize that the life of a high-powered corporate attorney was not what I wanted, but I didn't necessarily see myself going so far the other way, so to speak.  It was more of a thought that sure I would have kids, because that's what you do when you get married, but nothing beyond that.

So by October 2003 when I had a 2 year old, a 1 year old, and a newborn, it would be accurate to say I was a bit shell shocked. People ask me all the time how I handled that, and I honestly don't remember much about the day-to-day life. I do think we had a tendency to treat all the kids as the same age as much as possible. We kind of kept them grouped together for our sanity. I know I went places with them, because I get major cabin fever. We were blessed with very easy-going children, so I suppose getting out wasn't too hard, except for the comments and looks I received on a regular basis. Also, my younger brother lived in town and he helped out a lot. The girls went to Mother's Day Out so that I could run errands with just one kid. And now that I think about it, I think I was actually pregnant with Timmy when they went. Still, I'm sure there were days when I felt like I couldn't last one more minute.

And then in September 2005 we became a family of six! Four kids! At this point I had been staying home with the kids for two years, since Caleb had been born. I had adjusted to my life as a stay-home mom. We had volunteered at church with the youth group for about four years but felt it was time to pull back when we had Timmy. We were so blessed by our church community. Free or cheap babysitting was available to us on a regular basis, which I am sure helped us get through those crazy years. Again we were blessed with an easy going child. Timmy figured out how to rock himself in his infant car seat!  Still, there were times when Travis and I would look at each other and wonder what in the world we were doing. Days when all four kids were sick or upset or unhappy and we were tired too. Add to that the stresses of one income in an industry that could be very unsteady (mortgages) and we could have easily fallen apart. We didn't. We kept going. One day at a time. God never failed to show up and meet our needs.

By the time Lily came along in February of 2008 we were somewhat used to living a life that was outside the cultural norm. Taylor was in kindergarten when she was born, so I got to adjust to life with a new baby and several other kids in a slightly easier way.  This is when I really began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, even with five kids six and under and the youngest being somewhat challenging.  Already my older kids could entertain themselves. They could be trusted to play in their rooms or in the fenced-in backyard with me just checking on them. And of course they had personality and interests and independence. We were seeing friendship develop where before it was just sibling presence. We were (and still are) immersed in our church community, so that we never felt alone, even if not a lot of our friends had as many kids as us or as young as ours. Kids could buckle themselves in the car seats! What a eureka moment!

And now we have six kids. They are 9, 8, 7, 5, 3, and 1. Whew! Benjamin has been an easy baby from day one, thankfully.  The last two school years we've had three kids at school and this fall we'll have four in school and Lily in MDO. So of course that has made the days easier in a lot of ways, although homework and extracurriculars add to the craziness.  But on a near daily basis, I marvel at how much easier this is in some ways and how far we've come. My three big kids can make sandwiches for themselves and their siblings! They can read to themselves and each other! Clothes get put on and shoes tied with no assistance. I can just walk out the door if I'm going somewhere with just the four big kids. When you're at home with four kids all still in diapers and crying and whining you feel like you have signed up for a life of drudgery, at least on the bad days.

I couldn't see the beauty of watching my 9 year old daughter soothe her baby brother. I couldn't see the joy in the eyes of a baby adored by his five older siblings. I had no idea how humbling this parenting experience would be for me. I couldn't imagine the feelings I would experience in a day filled with triumphs and struggles that ended with a willful 3 year old insisting on lots of hugs and kisses before bed. Who knew I would laugh at jokes that made no sense, just because they were delivered by an eager little boy? I had no idea I would have a son that would give me play-by-play details of a baseball game we were watching together. I couldn't see the day when we would sit at the dinner table and take our turns saying what we appreciated about our family.

When we are in the midst of a bad day or an extended period of stress we cry out to God asking why or for help. It is in our nature. I think it is an important part of our spiritual growth.  I think it is okay that we can't see so far ahead, because we might miss the right now. And the right now can be pretty good too.

P.S. Come back tomorrow for lots of pictures from those crazy days.

Summer is Almost Over!

Okay, maybe not almost over, but also going faster than I expected. We start school on August 22 here, so we are just a little over a month away. That is crazy. Next week we are going to Broken Bow, OK with my family for a little vacation. I'm sure to post pictures when we get back, so you know you can expect at least one more blog post!

So what have we been doing this summer? Sometimes a lot and sometimes nothing. Which is the way summer should be, in my opinion.

We have a little Friday routine going. I go to Zumba at 10:00 and then we go to the library after that. Some Fridays we go swimming too, if our sweet neighbor girl is available to babysit Benjamin. I can easily manage the five older kids, even to the point of sitting on a lounge chair and watching them play some of the time. Not quite ready to take a book and read, but getting closer. 

This past Friday we changed things up a little bit. It was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A! CFA is such a friendly company.  If you came to the store dressed as a cow you got free food. They even provided a printable costume on their website. So we went to Zumba and then taped cow spots and tails and ears and noses to our bodies so we could get free food. Six free kids meals and one free adult meal was totally worth the effort of cutting out all those spots (which the girls did for me). I had to tape Ben's costume to his stroller since he kept pulling it off his clothes. Such a fun surprise for the kids.

Yes, I had spots taped to myself too, including my sunglasses. But you don't get a picture of that. After eating free CFA we came home and got ready to swim. Our neighbor watched my TV while Ben slept and the other kids and I spent a couple of hours at the pool. We had it almost to ourselves, the only other people there were older people sunbathing mainly. 1:00 might be the heat of the day but it is a great time to get he pool to ourselves. And my sweet husband heard my cry for relief and delivered an unsweetened iced tea to me! I was going to show a picture of the tea and sparkly pool but it won't load.

We finished off our Friday with a night out for Travis and me. I love my kids and doing things with them, but by Friday afternoon I needed a break. So my sweet neighbor came to our rescue again and babysat with little notice. What did we do? Since we are awesome we went to Buffalo Wild Wing's to watch the Rangers and I played the trivia game. Aren't we exciting? It was fun though. We got chips and queso and a drink to start and took our time waiting to order our dinner. It was great to not be rushed and to not worry about our kids making people crazy. We laughed and talked and played trivia. I think we will be doing it on a fairly regular basis actually.

So how is your summer going?

Works for Me Wednesday: Tents and Stuff

I'm linking up with Works For Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.  I can't get the button code to work.

It is hot here in Texas. I can't send my kids outside to play for very long. It is too hot to stay outside and one of my sons has respiratory issues so he is extra sensitive to the heat (and of course he is the one kid who wants to be outside the most). So we are always trying to think of fun things to do inside.

My kids love a sheet tent or fort. What kid doesn't? But I would get so frustrated because a sheet would fall every five minutes. So the kids would come whining to me to fix it. The tent proved to be more trouble than it was worth. Until I discovered Husband's heavy duty clamps in the garage. He only had four though, which wasn't enough. So I went to the dollar store and bought six more. Now our tents stay put. I use the clamps to hold the sheets to the tops of the chairs we use (tall kitchen chairs) and the kids can play for hours. I even let them sleep in the tent when Husband was gone on a retreat a few weeks ago.

Another fun activity that gets the energy out is to let my kids pile up every sheet and blanket and pillow in the house on the floor in the girls room. I let them jump off the bed onto the pile as much as they want. The beauty of this is that I can close the door to the room and they can be as noisy as they want. This is a real sanity saver in those late afternoon hours when everyone is getting a little grouchy (including Mom).

 Finally, the dollar store is a great place to go for cheap fun. I bought five hula hoops and five spray bottles there and let the kids loose in the backyard. They made up games and cooled off at the same time. I bought cheap flashlights (no batteries though, oops) so the tent fun could last into the night. We'll make it through a long, hot summer with these activities.

Quick Takes Friday

Holy Cow, where did June go!?

I have a post in the works that is not a list of random things, but I want to make it good, so it is not ready yet.  So quick takes it is.

1. I think I will be letting Lily take a bath just for play every day the rest of the summer.  Yesterday she painted for a bit and got really messy of course.  I put her in my bathtub with lots of water and bubbles.  She played in that bath for at least 45 minutes and only got out because we were getting ready to eat dinner.  She was happy, no one was bothering her, she wasn't bothering anyone, everyone was happy.  I just sat at my desk in our room so I could keep an eye on her.  I knew she liked baths, but as the summer wears on and the heat keeps us indoors this is a good option for entertainment.

2. Here's a tip for you.  We saw CARS 2 this week (hilarious and charming and well worth the money (we had gift cards)).  We bought a large popcorn and two large drinks for sharing. The kids shared fruit punch and Travis and I shared Coke Zero.  We got larges because refills are free. Sharing popcorn can be messy/tricky.  But, I took along six of our snack bowls from home (yes I carry a ridiculously oversize purse) and just poured the popcorn in the bowls.  When a kid needed a refill they could just pass the bowl.  This was way neater than using napkins or the tiny courtesy cups you can sometimes get at the theater.  Also, a large popcorn came with free refills too.  Since we only take the kids to one or two movies a year, and then usually have gift cards, we always indulge in the popcorn and drinks. It is part of the novelty of seeing a movie at the theater. So my tip: take your own bowls to share the popcorn.

3. Hey, another tip. If you find yourself needing to give a gift to a family, especially a large family, but don't know what to get, here are some suggestions. Movie gift cards, Chuck E. Cheese gift card, bowling gift card, family pass to local museums, state park pass if they are a camping family, tickets to a sporting event if they are a sports family, restaurant gift cards.  See, a large family likely has a lot of toys.  And they probably like to do all the things I mentioned but find it difficult to do when things are so expensive.  We have started asking for these kinds of gifts at Christmas especially, rather than individual gifts for each kid, because it is far more useful.  Even if you only need to give a gift to one kid in the family, consider two movie tickets so they could have a one-on-one outing with Mom or Dad. It might not seem as personal, but I promise most families would welcome it. Large and average size families alike.

4. I am happy to say I have exercised for an hour every weekday since last Wednesday.  It feels good to be moving again. Also, I somehow lost weight, even during my ten day break, as I finished June about 2.5 pounds lighter than I started it. I know what I am capable of and I am determined to get back to the fitness level I was at before I had Ben.

5. A local movie theater is going to show Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I immediately before showing Part II, all in 3D.  The nerd in me was very excited about this. But the old lady in me quickly realized that I would never make it.  It starts at 9:00, which means not being done with both movies until something like 2:00 a.m. I can't be up that late on a weeknight! Also, no real desire to see it in 3D. Still would be cool though.

6. I'm on the hunt for dresses, especially before I go to L.A. in August.  Frustratingly, too many dresses are empire waist or baby doll style, which don't work for me.  I know I've mentioned it before--they make me look pregnant, which is just the opposite of what I am going for. So if you know of some good places to look let me know.  I need dresses.  It is hot here in Texas and I get tired of wearing shorts.

7. What are your holiday plans? We're spending Sunday with extended family, swimming and eating and playing.  On Monday we'll likely stay home all day.  Our kids don't dig fireworks, so we'll have to watch on TV. I wish we were going to a Rangers game, but we haven't done that in years because of the kids. I might try a couple new recipes on Monday, just for fun.

Happy Holiday Weekend! For more quick takes, visit Conversion Diary.