Im feeling better now....

I am now off my pity party. My nervous breakdown is officially over. I figure I should give you all a background to my little breakdown I had last week. So..... I got pneumonia. I mean I have been SICK. Still not quite over it yet. I was so sick my lung capacity actually went down to 60%. So you can imagine, I couldn't breathe, was exhausted, coughed so much my chest hurt all the time. Well, the night before, my new manager gave me a hard time for calling in sick for the next 3 days. She actually made me drive in to work at 11:00 at night with a doctors note.

So Saturday comes, and Aaron goes fishing for the WHOLE day. I was OK with that, he'd been planning this trip for weeks, but it was hard on me. My children could smell that I was weak! I lay down to take a nap with Shaun, and when I wake up, the girls had a food fight. They had ground popcorn and graham crackers into the carpet in the family room and the hallway and the kitchen floor had a fine powder covering it. OK, breathe deep, I don't yell, I just hand them the broom and vacuum and go downstairs with the baby to work on my blog. Well, then you know what happens, I lose it. Of course it only got better. When I got upstairs, the girls pulled every blanket, pillow, sheet, and stuffed animal off their beds and made a fort in the middle of the graham cracker-popcorn sand dune.

I ended up just sitting down and crying. McKenna just looked at me and said: "Oh, Dad's gonna beat our butts!" And suddenly they were furiously cleaning. I called Aaron and he came home early to help me out.

Of course, there's still no sheets on their beds. I haven't gotten enough energy to do that yet. The pneumonia is clearing up. Sometimes I have a hard time breathing. I'm on a lot of steroids to try to bring down the inflammation that has built up in my lungs. I tried to go back to work last night. That didn't turn out too good. I'm gonna wait till next week to go back.

So my house isn't perfect, but I'm starting to feel better. I'm no longer insane. And I don't cough so hard I puke. So it IS getting better. Hey, at least I don't have to mop Ike out of my house like some people I know. And Julie, Ruthie, you guys are in my prayers. At least your safe!

I give up

That's it! I give up! Maybe it's the fact that I am worn out from having 3 sick kids, or maybe it's the fact that this pneumonia has finally kicked my butt. It could be that my house is a complete disaster. Or I am tired of working full time and trying to be a mommy. All those classes and meetings work is making me take added to home work, dance, class projects, soccer, you know "family stuff." But I am POOPED. I mean lay on the couch and watch disinterestedly as the kids try to kill each other.
Somehow I killed my cute blog. The sunflowers stopped showing up, instead there was a stupid "Upgrade NOW!" I tried to fix it and got this all white beauty.
I tried to post a few pictures, and it will not accept the HTML from slide.com.
SO.......... I GIVE UP! I am done trying to make this piece of crap look cute. Don't know when I'll get pictures on either. Sorry folks..... too tired and this is one more thing taking up energy. If pictures get on here, it will have to be Aaron to do it.
As far as us being sick, we're OK, I promise. I'm the only one who got pneumonia. We think we figured out why Avery's getting croup and how to prevent it. And I am going to sleep for for the next year.

All in the name of Mommy

This is a funny story I just found. I thought it would be a fun one to post for the day......

My little guy, Cade, is quite a talker. He loves to communicate and does it quite well. He talks to people constantly, whether we're in the library, the grocery store or at a drive-thru window. People often comment on how clearly he speaks for a just-turned-3-year-old. And you never have to ask him to turn up the volume. It's always fully cranked. There've been several embarrassing times that I've wished the meaning of his words would have been masked by a not-so-audible voice, but never have I wished this more than last week at Costco.
Halfway, through our shopping trip, nature called, so I took Cade with me into the restroom. If you'd been one of the ladies in the restroom that evening, this is what you would have heard coming from the second to the last stall:
'Mommy, are you gonna go potty?
Oh! Why are you putting toiwet paper on the potty, Mommy?
Oh! You gonna sit down on da toiwet paper now?
Mommy, what are you doing?
Mommy, are you gonna go stinkies on the potty?'
At this point I started mentally counting how many women had been in the bathroom when I walked in. Several stalls were full ... 4? 5? Maybe we could wait until they all left before I had to make my debut out of this stall and reveal my identity. Cade continued:
'Mommy, you ARE going stinkies aren't you?
Oh, dats a good girl, Mommy!
Are you gonna get some candy for going stinkies on the potty?
Let me see doze stinkies, Mommy!
Oh ... Mommy! I'm trying to see In dere.
Oh! I see dem. Dat is a very good girl, Mommy. You are gonna get some candy!'
I heard a few faint chuckles coming from the stalls on either side of me. Where is a screaming new born when you need her? Good grief. This was really getting embarrassing. I was definitely waiting a long time before exiting. Trying to divert him, I said, 'Why don't you look in Mommy's purse and see if you can find some candy. We'll both have some!'
'No, I'm trying to see doze more stinkies.
Oh! Mommy!'
He started to gag at this point.
'Uh - oh, Mommy. I fink I'm gonna frow up.
Mommy, doze stinkies are making me frow up!!
Dat is so gross!!'
As the gags became louder, so did the chuckles outside my stall. I quickly flushed the toilet in hopes of changing the subject. I began to reason with myself: OK. There are four other toilets. If I count four flushes, I can be reasonably assured that those who overheard this embarrassing monologue will be long gone.
'Mommy! Would you get off the potty, now? I want you to be done going stinkies! Get up! Get up!'
He grunted as he tried to pull me off. Now I could hear full-blown laughter. I bent down to count the feet outside my door.
'Oh, are you wooking under dere, Mommy?
You wooking under da door?
What were you wooking at?
Mommy? You wooking at the wady's feet?'
More laughter. I stood inside the locked door and tried to assess the situation.
'Mommy, it's time to wash our hands, now. We have to go out now, Mommy.'
He started pounding on the door. 'Mommy, don't you want to wash your hands? I want to go out!!'
I saw that my 'wait 'em out' plan was unraveling. I sheepishly opened the door, and found standing outside my stall, twenty to thirty ladies crowded around the stall, all smiling and starting to applaud. My first thought was complete embarrassment, then I thought, 'Where's the fine print on the 'motherhood contract' where I signed away every bit of my dignity and privacy?' But as my little boy gave me a big, cheeky grin while he rubbed bubbly soap between his chubby little hands, I thought, I'd sign it all away again, just to be known as Mommy to this little fellow.

LIFE! Does it ever mellow out?

OK, so a quick update. I know I haven't posted in a million years. We have been BUSY the last bit of summer. We went camping at Currant Creek, 2 days later we went to Bear Lake (Lauri and Toni eat your hearts out ;) THEN we went to Mom and Dad's for a week and a half. We got home in the early morning on Thursday, I had a meeting for work Thursday afternoon. Had to work Fri, Sat, and Sun. Avery had a soccer game Sat morning, afterwards we went school shopping. And school just started on Monday. And of course add to that our normal life of soccer Tuesdays and Saturdays and dance on Thursdays.
I will post pictures bit by bit of our vacations. I am willing to bet that by the time I post about California, it will probably be snowing and cold. But, hey, maybe that will be a good thing. And GINGER that stink, those pictures were from my camera, and she had to post some of my favorite ones! So, don't be surprised if you see them again! :o)

Guitar Hero

I am finally getting this blogging crap right.
So, we bought a Wii. And it was a GREAT idea. We spend quite a few nights having Guitar Hero and bowling championships. McKenna kills us all at bowling and Avery is quite the good guitar player. I thought I would give you all a glimpse at one of our competitions. It is so fun watching Avery's intensity as she's trying to "kill' Dad. (She doesn't have to worry about me, she wins every time.) McKenna loves to rock out and ham it up.
For your listening pleasure I have also included one of their favorite songs to play!

Live concert

NOW WHAT?

OK..... one of the things I liked about a blog was I liked the idea of changing my background to suit my mood. I do, and I lose a bunch of stuff from my blog. So, why did I lose my play list and side elements when I changed the background? And how do I keep it from happening again? HELP before I give this whole thing up!

Let's try this again

I thought technology was supposed to make my life easier!

I had taken these really funny pictures to go with that really funny story of Shaun being systematically turned into a girl. And, here I am, feeling so clever about myself. I know how to work this. Blogging is easy. I hurry and download the pictures from my new camera to the computer. They are so cute. Do I want to burn a copy of the pictures to a CD? my computer asks. No, I am IT savvy, I can do that later. Then I write the blog, oh everyone will love the story! I post my blog, then go to post the pictures. AND THEY ARE GONE! I can't find them when I browse under blogspot. I click back to my desktop, and somehow my pictures are lost in the circuitry of my computer. I swear, I was just looking at them. So, at one in the morning I am screaming curse words at the computer and am so glad my children are asleep and cannot hear. Finally I find the @#^^%#$#!#& pictures, who knows where. OK, I found them, so now I will copy them to a file that will be easy to find. Click, click copy. I am back on track. I close the photos and there is my desktop. Covered in over 400 labels for my pictures. Not only did the pictures go to the desktop, they multiplied from 60 to 400. And of course, I cannot find the 2 pictures I want to post. So, if at 2 in the morning you thought your ears were burning. That was me verbally abusing the spawn of Satan in metal form sitting on my desk. So, here I am days later, with a blog only partially completed unable to fix the mess. Every time I sit at my computer I now repeat my mantra......"I will not club the computer to death with the camera."

Oh....... and eventually you might get to see those pictures of Shaun

Oh, my poor boy

So..... the Sother day, I hear the girls just CRACKING up. I mean cackling with laughter. And I can also hear Shaun complaining. Not crying, not screaming, just complaining. Now, this is usually fairly common in my home. The girls will take him away to some corner of the house to play together. But, this time, I thought I would see what was going on. So, I find the kids all in the bathroom together. The girls had gotten earrings on him. And were trying to pin him down to put make up on as well. Lucky for him he almost weighs as much as McKenna. Avery made him happy again by giving him one of her toys to play with. He is going to be lucky to make it to manhood with any semblance of dignity intact....