A Pirate Carnival!

Yesterday we celebrated Mario and Gabriel's [his cousin] birthday. By the way, I'm sorry Leah hope your not upset, it was just family this year. We planned it last minute, anyway it was a lot of fun. We turned the kitchen into a concession stand, and the house into a carnival, they had to have yum yum tickets to get a popcorn a hot dog, or a lemonade, cost one ticket each. To get their tickets they played all kinds of carnival type games. They could choose a ticket or a piece of candy. They chose tickets first, once they ate it was all about the candy! After all the games we had ice cream sundaes instead of cake. They got to pick any topping they wanted. We had chocolate syrup, sprinkles, gummy bears, jelly beans, crushed oreos, cherries, and whipped cream. They all pretty much chose everything! Yea, we were totally moms of the year yesterday. Oh, and just so everyone knows Mario and Gabriel totally beat me and Kelly in the three legged race. We kept falling, it's been awhile since we did those kind of races. Yea right we just stink at it. Plus the boys were practicing for a long time, they were determined to beat the moms! LOL! Gabriel got Mario a fire belly toad, he's pretty cute for a frog. The vet at petsmart told me he's depressed, so were going today to buy him a friend and some more crickets. Oh, Mario named him Freddy. It was a great party. Mario was still smiling and raving about this morning.

What a Day!!

What a day today was. I swear it was one catastrophe after another. About lunch time the kids were playing outside and I hear a faint eeee!!eee!! So I think to myself Kalin must have locked herself in the bathroom again, so I go to let her out to find her not scared but screaming with delight. Kalin and Elijah had a tube of bright pink lip gloss, they were squeezing it out into the sink while the water was running. It was eveywhere. I scrubbed and scrubbed the sink but it is still died a light pink. Plus they both looked like clowns for a good while. Later on in my day, I go to get a glass of tea to find 5 raw eggs floating in it! Gross! I dumped that down the drain. Another hour or two goes by, now it's time to start dinner, While I'm getting everything going Kalin busts open 3 tea bags all over my floor plus some sugar to. Then she decided that looked good so she licked it up! I still need to mop. In the midst of all this Kalin kept ending up naked. Another ending to another delightfully crazy day. I think I'll have a glass of wine and then mop. Urgh!

Fridge Magnets

I do not like fridge magnets. More specifically kids fridge magnets, you know it's the whole alphabet on your fridge including numbers 0-9. I bought these once when Mario was 3. They never stood there and played with them no, they would see who could knock off the most the fastest. Now you've got magnets all over your floor and your the putting them all on the fridge, you even take time to spell a few words thinking they'll get the concept. Yeah right! This goes on for a few weeks until one day you sweep them all up and throw them in the trash. Peace and order is restored back to the home. And then you notice they don't even miss them! You think I could have done that a long time ago. Well, a couple of weeks ago Mario Sr.'s cousin bought our kids, you guessed it FRIDGE MAGNETS.AAAAAhh!! So I patiently left them on there. The older kids spelled words a few times, but the younger played the o so famous game of who can knock the most on the floor. Yeah, I'm getting quite annoyed. So, yesterday I swept up a bunch of magnets and in the trash they went. We are down to about six letters and four numbers. Peace and oreder will soon be restored yet again to our home.

Ian's Learning to Read

Ian's learning to read! I'm so proud of him. He's really proud of himself. You should see the smile on his face when he gets it. First of all I have to say I love leap frog. I had bought the Letter Factory, he learned the phonetic sounds before the names of the letters. That was awsome, it was much easier getting him to understand putting the sounds together to make words. now we have letter cards, we build the word and then read it. He loved it. He read his first book today.! It was called Al Can. It goes a liile something like this. Al can tap. Al can tap on a mat. Al can rap. Al can rap in a hat. You get the jist. It was great. I love when their whole face lights up after they accomplish something. It makes it all worthwhile. Anyway I just had to share todays excitement with all of you.

Mario's 9!!

I can't believe it. My baby, my firstborn is turning 9 today. How time has flown by. I feel as though I will turn around and he will be 18. I'm so proud he is my son. He is so sweet and gentle. He respects people around him. He is funny and smart and loves to make you laugh. He loves to help, especially with the babies. He comes and helps me in nursery a lot a church. He is also very shy, large groups of people freak him out. He gets that from his daddy. Sometimes he's overly sensitive he gets that from me. I'm excited to watch him grow into a young man. I wonder who he will be when he is a man. If you ask him now what he wants to be when he grows up he will tell you an Architect or a Inventor. He has big dreams! By the way I love this picture of him he looks so handsome. Happy Birthday my boy!

Happy New Year!

Another year, it really feels as though this year went by really fast. I remember last new year's eve desperately waiting to kiss that year good-bye. That year was so long and horrible. But God's grace held onto us. This past year has been good, I know worldwide things have been not so good, okay bad, but personally in our lives I have seen God do so much in our family. It was a year of healing and and learning to trust beyond what we're comftorable with. Now that the new year is here I'm in expectation of what is to come. All that being said we totally didn't do any kind of celebrating. The kids were in bed by 9, I was in bed by 10, I'm sick!, Mario was the only one that stayed up until midnight. I heard what I thought was knocking at the door so I jumped up thinking Mario had locked himself out, just to realize it was fireworks. Mario happily says to me, "happy new year!" I just rolled my eyes and went back to bed. I felt like crap, I was in no mood for happy. So today I feel a little better, but still not great. I hope everbody's last year was good and that this one will be wonderful filled with blessings and joy.

2012,end of the world??

Okay, so I've noticed half the world is a bit freaked out about 2012 and the Mayan calenders and all. So I've been reading and researching to see what I think on this matter. On one hand history says The Mayan calender is the most precise calender, only being 3 seconds off. That's pretty amazing and pretty freaky all at the same time. On the other hand the Mayans were some messed up people. Have you ever seen the movie Apocolypto? It shows how the Aztecs were, well after all my reading you see the Mayans and the Aztecs were very much alike. They believe their God came down to make them in their image, and then thought themselves to be gods. They werer hugely into human sacrifice, because they believed they had to put blood back in the earth. They worshiped a lot of different gods for different reasons. Anyway you get the point, the were not living as God created us to. People throughout history who have studied them, some of them believe they were an alien race living among us, and thats why they knew so much. In conclusion to my deep thought there are other prophesies about 2012 that leave you a bit puzzled, But the Word says no man knows the day or hour the Son of Man will appear, if it's all gone what is he coming back for? Just some random thoughts. If this be true or not we as Christians have our hope in God not in the Mayans calender, so we will just wait on the Lord and see.