Finally the Weekend...

this is the first saturday in about 6 months where we are all home and have no sporting event to go to! it has been a nice morning so far, i made pancakes for breakfast, and we all took time out to just be with each other on the family room floor, just rolling, laying around, and playing. so nice.

not so good news- jay's dad (just had open heart surgery) has to have another angiogram. we are wondering how this is possible so soon after having a quadruple by-pass. we are not sure what is going to happen nex,t but God knows and He is in control...

i went to Bible Study last night. we just started a new book, "Becoming A Woman Who Pleases God" and though i think it is a great personal read, i think the chapters are too long for a study...we will see, i will just press on and do what i can. we discussed how i could get more studying done, maybe make the boys take an nap so i can read. the boys don't nap at the same times. maybe i should set that up, but the thing is that lately, everytime i pick up a book to read i start to fall asleep! oh well, i will do what i can!

carter is better, he has been fever free since yesterday. he pulled himself up to a standing position this morning for the first official time! he still is not crawling around on all fours, he just drags his body across the floor! my others all mastered crawling, sitting to crawling position and vice versa before pulling themselves up. he on the other hand is skipping a few steps! he still won't eat baby food and i'm not going to press it. he is totally ready, he just doesn't like it. he will eat a banana, fruit or veggie puffs, and cheerios or any other table food i give him. so different from the others!

well, i need to finish the wedding album i'm working on, so i guess i better get to it!

Time For Some Privacy

you'd think the bathroom would be the one place where i could go and be alone- so not true!!
my kids just walk right in like they are walking into a livingroom. heaven forbid the phone should ring while i am in the bathroom. the caller would receive an earfull of toilet flushing, and a little bit of yelling...

Photographer Wannabe

what a beautiful day it was for a wedding too! santa barbara is gorgeous! there is like a photo op at every turn! i want to take pictures of just all of the buildings alone! they are beautiful! i managed to get some pretty good pictures of the wedding. i know i must have looked so silly running around with my little camera compared to the photographer and her ginormous nikon digital s.l.r.!! that's okay though, cause someday, that'll be me!

my brother inlaw joel got married to his soulmate christine yesterday! they make such a great couple, i wish them all the best!  

Who Knew??

i took the boys to the dr. this morning and they have...get ready for this... strep throat!!!!!!!!!!!!
of all things!!! very painful and very contagious!!! they both have little sores in their throats, so they are on antibiotics. i, for one would have never thought of that. i thought they had a stomach bug, geesh! poor guys!

What's Going On?

my babies are sick and i don't know what's going on! keith started acting funny friday morning. he did't eat breakfast (unusual for him), and he took an early nap, way early like 10am. when i asked him what was wrong he just said he was tired. well he got up for a while, then found a nice cozy spot and took another nap, and then the same thing again later, by nightfall he had a fever. deacon awoke at 1am and threw up, and had a fever. i then gave him motrin, which he threw up, but his fever still went down. at 6am keith asked for juice, then threw up! the rest of the weekend they just kinda seesawed with the fevers. as soon as i get one fever down, the other one has another one. deacon really scared me with his 104 temp! with him i have to alternate between motrin and tylenol because he throws the medicine up! they are still sick and i am taking them in to the drs. in the morning. my inlaws are coming on wednesday, my brother-in-law is getting married on thursday, and we have varsity finals on saturday...hopefully they will be well and no one else gets it...

i scrapped!! gotta love dawn for her impromtu scraps and her sketches and color schemes!! she is awesome! 

Time to Take a Rest?

happy mother's day to me!! it has been one full weekend! i had to hire a sitter saturday morning just so i could do most of it and not lose my mind (or a child)! jay had to be at the track by 9:30 to set up and he took keith with him. drew had a soccer game at 12:00, but had to be there at 10:45, so i left deacon and carter here with the sitter and took drew and the girls and dropped him off with his soccer coach, then took the girls to the track where daddy was for their track meet, grabbed keith from jay, went back to the house to trade the sitter- carter for keith. jetted back over to the soccer field by 12:oo to watch drew and his team win their first game in the Strawberry Cup Tournament Soccer game!!! with carter in tow, hurried drew into the van to change out of his soccer uniform and into his track uniform and got on the freeway to get him to his track meet (where the girls and daddy are). jet back home to relieve the sitter who has now been there 4 hours, got all three of the boys down for a hour and a half nap. while they are sleeping, i can't resist the urge to get on the computer to check out what is going on at SBB! uploaded a pic for the photo challenge, and go into the chat room to see what's going on. how time flies when you're online!! at 3:30 i wake up the boys, change diapers, and get them into the van to go back to the track to pick up drew, who, by the way, ran the mile and won, and also ran the 4x100 and got first place! into the van to change back into his soccer uniform and head back to the field, this time carter, deacon, and keith are in tow! drew's soccer uniform: red shirt, black shorts, red socks. coach decides to change to the alternate uniform because the opponent's team colors are too similar. back to the car to get the alternate uniform: white shirt, white socks. they win the second game of the tournament then it's back to the van to change back into the track uniform and head back to the track where he runs the 200-this was an important race for us- and wins by a hair!! of course i MISSED it because i was in the bathroom with keith! i caught the tail end of the girls running the 400, and camryn is crying at the end because she wasn't fast enough, poor baby... the track meet finally ends at 8pm. as we are packing up the kids into the van, jay and i go back and forth about who deserves the hot bubble bath! finally home to stay, but there is still the issue of dinner- what to have? i contemplate pizza over mcdonalds as i draw jay a bath. pizza wins out. after dinner the girls get their bath, i fold a load of laundry while the boys play all around me and jay is on the phone with his mom filling her in on the days events- from his perspective of course!
on sunday, drew had two more soccer games. they won the first, lost the last one- second place in the tournament!

oh, if i could talk less about my troubles and just sing and praise more!! i was reading my devotional today and it really hit home. i am so quick to rant, vent and complain when i should be singing. how much more enriching and joyful my life would be if i just took my experiences, lifted them up, and praised God for them. pray for a change... 

Time to Be Thankful

i went back to the dr. today. i do have hypothyroidism and i will have to take meds for the rest of my life. i will stay on this medication(a low dosage right now) for 6 weeks and then retest to see how my levels are and then adjust the dosage accordingly. i am okay with this and i am thankful actually. i didn't realize how thankful until we went over the numbers on my lab results. i don't have diabetes, my cholesterol is excellent, my liver and kidneys are great and i have an athletic heart! i am as healthy as a horse, even though i don't always feel like it, i am. oh! and i am not pregnant!! lol! i didn't think i was, but had them check anyways. so yes, i am very thankful that hypothyroidism is all i have, and that it is easy to manage.
there was one other thing, there was a high level of protein in my blood. on the one hand, he didn't seem to be too concerned about it, but then being the over and above dr. he seems to be, he wants me to have more blood work done tomorrow...

Time to Get Real

flashback to when i was pregnant with carter... i went in for routine blood work. i got a call back from the ob's office that i needed to see my regular dr. right away because my thyroid levels were way high. i always thought it was a fluke. but went on the meds anyway. after a month on the meds, i started running out, wondering why i was still taking them since they seemed to make me feel worse than i did before taking the meds. i actually felt fine before the meds, which was why i thought it was funny when my dr. told me in a few days i would start to feel so much better...better than fine? i was all over that!!! so i stopped taking them when i ran out. i asked for another blood test and guess what? my levels were normal!! i then let my dr. know that i had stopped taking the meds, and that they made me tired and sluggish, the opposite of what they were supposed to do. he told me that if i felt better off of the meds then i shouldn't take them. but my ob said that i should definately do another test after the baby was born...carter is now 7 months.

for a few weeks now i have been having weird things going on with my heart. a weird pounding, or sometimes fluttering. so i went in to see a new dr. on thursday. first thing is he thinks it's my thyroid. i got sent to the lab to get blood work done on friday morning. monday afternoon the dr. calls to tell me that my levels are way low! so he prescribes me the very same meds that i was on before that made me tired. i told him about that, and he says that it would be in my best intrest to take these meds as my levels are the lowest he's ever seen and if i don't start the meds soon i could slip into a coma and die. DIE???!!!!! WHAT???!!!! i feel fine! i'm only tired now because i don't know how to go to bed at a decent hour like normal folk, and my heart keeps doing this funky thing, but otherwise i feel fine!! jay thinks i should retest, but i don't know that i will since this has happened before, i go back again to see my dr. on thursday and i'll be armed with lots of questions, but for now...off to get my meds!!

this is my latest layout that i did for a circle journal on what i love about being a girl. this was a fun one! 

drew and deacon at chuck e. cheese 

our 10 year old!!! 

Time to Celebrate!

today is drew's birthday! and what a day he has had! he got to do whatever he wanted today and so we went to chuck e. cheese, then he went off on a big bike adventure with his dad and they had a blast! we are so blessed to have this child in our lives, he is the sweetest boy. his heart is so big and he loves his siblings so much! today at chuck e. cheese he got to play all the video games he wanted. when he ran out of tokens he came to me to ask for more. i was holding on to one last token which i had been saving for myself to play skiball(love that game) but i gave it to him 'cause it's his birthday and all ya know...there was a video game he wanted to go play. instead of going off to play it, he decides to hang out with deacon a bit. deacon is afraid of mostly everything at chuck e. cheese, and won't ride anything but the carousel. the next thing i know, deacon is on the carousel going for a ride. i ask drew where deacon got the token to ride the carousel, and he replied, "i gave him mine". it was so sweet! but that's the kind of boy drew is and he does things like that all of the time. i can't believe he is 10 already! double digits!!!!! he is growing up to be so responsible, i know he won't give us any problems as a teenager, but it still scares me. it's just a whole new playing field...i don't even want to think about it- so i won't! i will just thank God for the 10 years He has blessed us with, and enjoy the boy with the big heart and beautiful smile...

Time to Eat

we are starting solids. carter hates this rice cereal mess! he won't eat it! now what? i always start the babies out with rice cereal...none of them had a reaction like this to it. sure, they made yucky faces, but once they got the hang of it, there was no going back! carter won't let me feed him, he turns his head,he grabs the spoon, he just won't eat it. oh well, let's see what happens tomorrow...

i was so happy to scrap something today! it's a simple layout, but it's something...an idea just popped into my head, with a little help from tonight's inspiration at sbb. i was not even supposed to be there, but dinner plans fell through and so i attended the crop and i am glad i did. anyway, i had to get a 6 month layout of carter going...he is growing so fast! he is 7 months now and so smart! i keep underestimating how smart he is because he is just a baby ya know? when it is time for bed, as soon as we get to the door of his bedroom he arches his back and starts freaking out cause he knows where he is ending up- in bed! lol! he is getting up on his knees and trying to crawl, oh Lord help! i am not ready for him to go mobile yet! lol! but he sure is! 

Time to Let Go

okay, i gave in! i hired someone to come clean my house. jay had been on me for months to hire someone, but i wouldn't. i said i could keep up with the kids, homeschooling, laundry, cooking, and the cleaning myself. i just kept telling myself that i could do it all and that i didn't need anyone's help. well, now i have come to the realization that i do need help. i can not do it all. so she came in and cleaned for 4 hours straight. she was able to get to the things that i just could not, and i felt bad about it at first...why couldn't i do that? but then it hit me. when she is here, to clean is her job, it's her only focus and she can do it with little to no distractions. that is not true for me. i can only get bits and pieces done at a time and then the room is only clean for 5 mins afterwards! i didn't know how to act, knowing she was coming so i was running around the house trying to clean, so she could do that very thing! everything looked so nice when she finished, it was so freeing to have every room in the house clean all at the same time! very relaxing to me, and the children were pleased also. so i think this will continue bi-weekly for a while...we'll see how it goes!

Time to Reflect

i have had quite some time to think about all he had to say on our date and have come to the conclusion that i might be spending a little too much time on the internet. (notice i did not say computer) since then, i have been trying to limit my internet time and it has paid off so far...i got three layouts uploaded this week! i have gotten more schoolwork done with the kids (i don't know if they think that's a good thing) and i have done a lot more laundry. oh! and i even got to watch 7 episodes of the first season of ALIAS! now that's a show for ya- i'd never seen it and wanted to see what all of the hype was about so i rented it and wow!!! where was this show before we nixed cable????

the track meet this past weekend was brutal, we had very high winds (about 40mph, but felt like 80!), and so it was cold! my poor babies were running out there in that mess wearing those thin suits and no sleeves! but that didn't stop them, they ran like maniacs anyway. jay video taped and i took lots of pics for the scrapbook, though they will probably never make it there since i have the hardest time making layouts dealing with sports. this photo of devyn goofing in front of the camera during a break more than likely will end up in a layout. this is her personality all summed up in one photo!