Blood, Sweat, Barf and Glue

I have had one of those days that is complete frantic from the beginning. I had the alarm set for 7:00 to get Magnum to the vet to be neutered. I woke up at 6:50 and was attempting to get in the shower before anyone knew I was up. On my way, Julia came in to tell me that Tori's nose was bleeding. This was one of her worst - there was a trail of blood from her bed to the kitchen with an entire puddle in the hall. It took about 15 minutes to get it to stop, while I cautioned Julia and Elijah to "get away from the blood trail" 100 times. Once I got it stopped, I had to clean the floor (thank goodness for the new hardwood floor), clean the bedroom carpet and strip her sheets; I then had exactly 15 minutes to get four kids dressed, fed and out the door for the 30 mile trip to the vet. 

I skipped the shower (and the makeup...and the hairbrush) and piled the kids and dog in the car, complete with bananas to hold them off for breakfast. On the way, I remembered that I had to have cash, so I pulled into the Sheetz ATM. While I was in there, Magnum threw up all over the seat and James. We attempted to clean the seat with napkins and set off again. Once we got Magnum dropped off (late), we rushed home in order to have a full 20 minutes to get to the elementary school open house; we had not dressed appropriately, eaten or gotten the school supplies together that I was supposed to take. I woke up Alyssa to compile and label the school supplies while I took a two minute shower and threw on whatever clothes were abandoned on the edge of the bath-tub (yet clean). 

The news is that I am sending Tori  to school with Julia for this year. In my attempt to do what I think is actually in each child's best interest, balanced with the reality that I am going to spend the majority of my fall at doctors with the new girls, it did not seem wise to try to cram in Tori's schooling. I feel like Tori has really been academically slided in the shadow of James and Ben for the last few years. I keep the boys on track 95% of the time, because they really require it for peaceful living, but Tori is not very academically motivated, yet plays nice and quietly, so there is just too much of the time that I realize she is not reaching her potential. I made a huge attempt last year to prioritize her education and she still did not receive as much of my time as she needed to excel, so I'm being realistic that if she didn't get it last year, it's not going to happen this year. Depending on how well Selah and Bella adjust, this may be the only year Tori goes to school. If she does really well, and I can get her with the 3rd grade teacher that I know and love, she may go two years. I am really not open to leaving either of them beyond 3rd grade and hope to be exclusively homeschooling again in a few years. A tough reality for me is that no one can successfully home school children that are home when the mom/teacher is not and adopting special needs preschoolers from Africa isn't going to allow me the luxury of being home a lot this fall. 

My plan for the boys is to weigh how long I am going to be at each appointment and how far I have to drive appointment by appointment to determine if they stay or go. It may be worth taking them on the highway trips so that we can listen to CDs and do drill work; other than that, there is a lot of school work they can actually do without me being present and I can go over with them when I get home. Beyond them, I have Moriah and Alyssa as home school students, although Alyssa receives a lot at Classical Conversations and Moriah is attending Algebra and Honors English at the public high-school, still listed as a homeschooler. 

I feel good about my decisions for this year, especially in light of my feelings that I wrote about HERE when I first sent Julia to school last year. 

Shopping Room

 I am driving the largest reasonable family vehicle on the market. The problem is my 15 passenger van has zero cargo room, unless you take the back seat out; and with my family size, I have to have the back seat in at all times. The shopping room answer thus far was been to move the booster kids to the back and pack the front seat or two with groceries. I don't move Elijah because it's too difficult to buckle his car seat in way back there. My new issue will be Selah and Bella will both have Elijah type car seats and there won't be near as much packing room around them all, (and they step on the food getting in and out.)

Yesterday I took only half my children on my Walmart and Commissary run. Here's the front seat  packed at the Commissary.

Seat #2 packed at Walmart - there are also bags on the floor. 

Seat #3 and 4 - Tori's seat was packed also and let me tell you, it's not exactly convenient to load and unload from the back, back seat. We had the little back cargo area filled by only two cat food bags and the stroller. I now understand why Michelle Duggar takes her vacation trailer grocery shopping. It would be much easier than packing around the kids in the van and having them step on the bread. I'm only about a month away from leaving the kids at home or shopping that way. I'm pretty sure the base police will make me pull over, open the trailer and make me answer lots of questions for security purposes before they will even let me on the base - that will be rather embarrassing. 

How do other big families do this? I'm thinking most must leave the little guys at home, but mine love to go and yesterday they were all so good for a full three hours of food shopping! (No, that isn't always the case!)

Mountain Scare

I never updated the blog to let you all know that I headed to PA with my husband, because his mother was admitted to the hospital and not doing very well. We packed and headed out of town in only about an hour on Saturday. Thankfully, Aunt Deb was back in town and already babysitting for a marriage conference we were attending at our church when we got the call to come. We headed home, threw some things in a suitcase and set out on the six hour drive to PA. All was well on the trip up, and Grandma is doing much better after strong IV antibiotics. Thankfully, they even pinpointed the root of the infection and have a plan to prevent it in the future; her immune system is still weak due to Chemo drugs. 

Our crises happened on our trip home in the mountains of West Virginia. We had on and off rain on the trip north and south and took the mountain drive to avoid the DC belt-way, as well as enjoy the pretty view. We were coming through a pass in West Virginia; it was a narrow two-lane highway, complete with a drop on my right (as a passenger) and a mountain on the left. It had been raining, but had recently stopped and the roads were still wet. Although we weren't speeding or didn't swerve, one minute we were just driving and the next minute the car was spinning. While it was all over probably in a few minutes, it seemed like an eternity and many things logged in my brain. I realized the second spin that the car was picking up speed and heading in the oncoming lane towards the mountain. I was actually praying to hit the mountain because it seemed like such a better scenario than going over the guard-rail on the cliff side of the mountain. In that few moments of complete out of control spinning, I really didn't think we were going to come out of it alive and my only thought was despair at leaving the children parent less. I remember thinking that this must be what happens that causes the little crosses you see along the roads where people die. The spinning ended when the front tire hit the small ditch about a foot from the rocks of the mountain and just stopped; I braced for the air-bag to hit me in the face and it didn't even go off. Within seconds, I realized there was a car coming straight for my door, but it swerved and went around. Before another car even came, JD got the car out of the ditch, across the street and down a bit to where there was pull-over room. We just sat there and then I sobbed; we both really didn't think we were going to live, much less walk away uninjured. We are feeling incredibly blessed today!

Julia, Clothes and More

Yesterday, I loaded the six "younger" kids at home and headed to the Chick Fil A that is half way between Wendy's and my house. The goal was to retrieve Julia, who had been there since Saturday, and pick up clothes that Wendy is donating to Selah and Bella from Esther's collection.

Elijah was so happy to see his friend Esther - 

Julia, who is Julia, was happy to see us but also pouted that it was time for her adventure to end and come home. She refused to join her friends in this picture.

This is Alyssa with her beautiful friend, Elizabeth, and baby Levi - 

We always have "business" to attend to in the parking lot. We usually have at least one person ask if we are a day-care. I always wonder who runs a day-care with several teenagers during school hours, but I just answer that we are just two families meeting. (I really enjoy the astonished looks we get, and Wendy likes to throw in that only six are hers.)

"Have no fear, Wendy is here" is the reality of my little girls clothing situation. Since I have given away all of Tori and Julia's clothes as they have outgrown them, I had nothing for Selah and Bella. It is such a blessing that Esther is also wearing a size 3 and Wendy is willing to share them. Wait until my live models come home to show you how cute little girl clothes can be! Alyssa folded and put them all in their dressers last night. 

Love, Love, Love This Age

I love the age Elijah is; he can be exhausting, but he's such good entertainment! Here's a glimpse...

Yesterday we walked in the kitchen to see Elijah like this - 

When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that Kylie wanted his do-nut, so he was keeping it safe. 

Later in the day, Elijah was wearing his dinosaur suit and making mischief of one kind and another (remember Max in Where the Wild Things Are?)

He told me to snap a picture of his creation.

 Unfortunately, even a little dinosaur gets tired.

And even when we wake him up after two hours, he falls back asleep.

Today, Elijah told me that he was adopting a baby (note his pregnant belly), which proves the whole pregnancy/adoption thing isn't completely clear in his mind. 

He then whipped it out of his shirt and told me that he loved his new baby. 

He has also transformed into a dinosaur again, but now he is a fire-fighting dinosaur that can squirt water with his tail.

Unfortunately, he "broke" his leg fighting the fire and required a "cast". 

Now he is off at his friend's birthday party with Gabriel and it is rather quiet here. (He helped Moriah draw the card.)

The entertainment is only going to triple with Selah and Bella!

Finally

 I have had some serious computer problems for over a week. The last few blogs, it worked long enough to download my pictures and then blog from the lap-top, but yesterday it wouldn't do anything. JD spend last night scanning and deleting things and once he cleared the cookies attached to Internet explorer, it seems to be working fine. I hope so...we have dealt with a constant stream of broken things that are fairly new that shouldn't be breaking!


We held our cook-out, swim party on Sunday for Julia, Elijah and Elijah's little friend, Kole. The kids had a great time and the weather was wonderful for it. 


Kole and Elijah - 

With my demanding weekend, I don't know why I agreed to decorating a cake for each of them...but I did. Julia wanted a watermelon cake and it was pretty easy. 

Elijah saw a dinosaur cake in a kid's cook book that he wanted. I figured if I kid could do it, so could I. WRONG - you would have to have a boy genius to make that cake. First of all, they tell you to cut the round cake into eight pieces to form the legs, etc, but don't really lay out how to. Secondly, it just doesn't work to frost butchered cakes - that's why they sell the cake pans in shapes (Duh, I knew this but blindly followed the book that is on its way to the thrift store). 


Once I frosted the mess of a dinosaur and the cake was flaking up into the frosting, Elijah said, "but I didn't want it speckled with chocolate." Neither did I, Buddy, but that is the reality we are looking at for your 4th birthday cake. 


It doesn't look too terrible from this angle - 

But, now, you can see it's face. It resembles something that was hit by a car. Nothing like a road-kill dino to ring in your 5th year of life. 

We sang, we ate, and everyone had a good time. 

This picture is tacked on because Elijah ran to me yesterday yelling, "Mom, come see, get your camera, come on, it's going to be so exciting." The great excitement is that he can sit on the scooter that we were just given without falling, thanks to the kick stand he discovered. Now I need to look into buying a battery for it so it can move as well as sit. 

My 100 pounds of tomatoes are coming in this morning, so I will be busy making salsa today and tomorrow!