I survived!!

Christmas is fun and a great time to celebrate Jesus' birth, but it is definitely one of the most stressful times of the year!!!  And unfortunately, a lot of the stress falls on mom. :(  I tried to explain this all to Matt one night who didn't have to buy any presents or get any meals ready. He asked me what would happen if I didn't get everything done like I wanted, and I responded, "We will have some very disappointed kids!" 

But in the end, Matt and I went on a two hour shopping spree on Saturday morning and finished everything up! I was very thankful!! The hardest thing to do is to buy presents with four kids in tow. I try to buy a lot online, but then I have to stay up late and order what I need. And with Micah not going to bed until 10 pm, I was up late a few nights this last month!

But it is all over now! (Actually we still have one more party next Sunday and I have three more presents to buy.)

We are taking the week off of school, so I am going to have to find something for everybody to do, especially Christian. I thought about going to down to the Children's Museum one of these days.  The girls are actually going shopping with grandma today, and I thought about taking the boys out somewhere, but it is supposed to be -8 degrees windchill all day. That may not be worth it! I think we could clean Christian's room instead!!!

I am not sure about next week. The public school kids don't go back until January 8th, but I don't think we need two weeks off. I am thinking we can go back next week some time.  The more I get done now, the less I have to do in the summer. :)  Plus we are at the end of some of our curricula, and I am anxious to move on to new stuff!

Why does he need so little sleep??

Why does my two year old need less sleep than the rest of us?? Seriously!!

I wake this boy up at 7:15 am every morning. If we are home all day, he usually does not take a nap.  Sometimes if this is the case, he is tired enough and is in bed by 8 pm. But lately, he has not been in bed until at least 9:30-10 pm!!  Like today, we were home all day and he did not take a nap.  I just got him in bed at 9:45 pm!!

It is funny because I wake the older three kids up at 7:30 pm and Courtney and Christian are already  asleep at night before Micah goes to sleep. He is two; they are 7 and 11! How do they need more sleep than he does??

Last week, Matt and I concluded that if he had any nap at all, he was up later.  The nap could be five minutes or it could be 90 minutes, it didn't matter. We were up until 10:30-11 pm a couple times last week. ("We" as in Micah and I. Matt puts the older three kids to be and then goes to bed himself. He gets up at 5:30 am every morning.)

My older three kids always took a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Megan would take three hour naps! It is so weird when I am talking to moms of other toddlers and they talk about them taking a nap. I forgot what it is like to have to stay home in the afternoon and base the daily schedule around nap time. I love my freedom during the day, but how I wished Micah would nap!! (not really, because then we would be up until midnight!)

It would be nice to have a break too. Right now, I need to keep a close eye on him because he climbs everything, pulls kitchen utensils out of drawers, pulls everything out of our game closet,  pushes keys on the keyboard of our computer, gets out markers, etc.  And we can't forget all the fighting Micah and Christian do. It would be a nice break from keeping an eye on him 24/7/! My first break from him is usually at 10 PM, and by that time, I just want to go to bed myself!

Crazy Day!

This week is just crazy. It is our last week before Christmas break and not only am I trying to get school wrapped up, I am trying to get shopping done.  Today, I managed to get both in PLUS Megan went over to a friend's house, which threw some more excitement into my day!

Megan met this girl through homeschool teen serve, and she called last week and asked if Megan could come over this week sometime. I told her Tuesday would be fine, so I took Megan over there about 3 pm. The thing is though that she doesn't live by us! I though I could either take Megan there and spend 2-3 hours doing errands or I could come back home and Matt could go get her after work.  Well, I picked the first option.

After dropping her off, I took the the three younger kids and we spent over an hour an Hobby Lobby. I love just walking through that store! We found quite a few gifts there PLUS a new white board for school! The kids will be thrilled!

After we had enough there, I went over to Wal.Mart. Again, this is not one of the stores that I usually frequent, so everything was turned around! Again, I found some more gifts here and managed to deal with two disobedient boys. :(  After we were done there, I headed back over to Megan's friend's house and picked her up. It was about 6:15 at this point!

I chatted for a bit and about 6:30, we all got back in the car and headed back home. It was about 20 minutes until we got home, so Megan and I decided that we needed to go out for dinner. We swung home and picked Matt up and headed to Paradise Cafe. Kids eat free every night from 5-7 pm. :) Perfect!!

Once we were done eating, we walked over to Scheel's to check out the trampolines. I think our boys need one to wear their energy out this winter!! We have one picked out on Walmart's website, but wanted to see if Scheel's had any to look at. Unfortunately, they only had an 11 foot one set up inside their store and it was $2000! Not exactly what we were looking for!! On our way out, we bought Courtney some new basketball shoes because her feet apparently wanted to grow two sizes in the last month!!

We finally arrived home about 8:45 pm! Time for bed!!

Tomorrow is another crazy day. Megan has her last class at the homeschool learning center, I have a doctor's appointment, all of us have dentist appointments, and Megan has youth group.

I am looking forward to my break next week!!

Finally!

I finally consulted my super-smart computer-techy husband and he was able to get me logged back onto my blog! Yay!! Apparently google does not work well with Internet Explorer (even though I have had NO problem for years), and now I need to use Chrome to blog. Oh well! At least I am back at it!

Courtney uses google all the time for her YouTube videos, so she is always logged in. For some reason, it won't work anymore for me.

It is Sunday night, and we are getting ready for the week. My family is watching "The Lion King" while I grade papers and get things ready for tomorrow. We have one week of school left before we take a break! This week will be touch and go because of Christmas next week. I told the kids that I intend to have school, but if we need to take time off, we will. 

I am also not convinced that we need a full two weeks off. The public school kids get out on Friday and don't go back until January 8th. I don't think we need to do that! We can have next week off, but I don't think think we need to sit around the whole next week and do nothing. I think we can go back the 2nd or 3rd. :) My kids are not very happy with me!!

I figure we need to keep plowing ahead in our schoolwork! I am not as far as I would like to be in our schoolwork. We started a couple weeks later than I intended due to our trip last summer, and I am not sure how far we are going to get this spring.  We will just keep moving forward and go to school in the summer if we have to!  I have to have Megan ready to start high school in the fall! YIKES!!

All clear!!

We had a great day yesterday, even though we were up until midnight the night before cleaning up Christian's mess.

And I am soooo thankful nobody else got sick!

This is so weird. Courtney threw up once and was done. Micah threw up once and was done, and now Christian threw up once and was done.

I can handle this.

Now to find something to boost my children's immune systems, so we don't get sick all winter!! (Even though my kids LOVE getting out of school!)

Follow the Rules!!!

Awhile back, I mentioned that we have ONE main rule here when it comes to throwing up. That rules is stay off the carpet!!! Seriously!! You can throw up in your bed, in a trash can, on the tile floor, in the toilet (best place!!), but anywhere but the carpet.

Guess what happened last night?? Christian broke the rule. :(

We had no idea he was sick. Matt had just put him to bed, and I just got Micah down. It was almost 10 pm, and everybody needed to get to bed.  I walked into Christian's room and said good night to him and then walked into the girls' room and said good night to them. While I was standing there talking to Courtney, I heard Christian gagging and throwing up! I ran out the door, and he was standing outside the girls' room and holding puke in his hand! I said, "In the trash can!" which was right there in the hallway. He got some in there, but then I looked back towards his room. Seriously, he had trailed it from his doorway all the way to the girls' doorway. Did he forget the rule?? Don't puke on the carpet!!!!

I yelled at Matt and he came running with a container. I said, "Too late, look!" He actually got kind of mad! Christian said he was trying to run to the bathroom. Matt said, "No, stop, just puke in one place!!" 

While this was all going on, Micah woke up screaming! And the girls weren't asleep yet, so here all six of us are still wide awake. I have one screaming kid, one sick kid, one mad husband, one girl who is absolutely disgusted by it all, Megan, and myself. 

Courtney ran downstairs to get away from it right away, and I sent Christian into the bathroom to stay put!

Matt and I had a mess to clean up. :(  He went downstairs to get the spot bot (a little vacuum cleaner that is AWESOME for this), but as he went down the stairs, he noticed that there was throw up on the stairs! Matt started cleaning that up first while I started on the hallway.

Two hours later, the floor was clean. Megan had rocked Micah back to sleep, and we all ended up turning a movie on while Matt continued to vacuum upstairs.

When it was done, we were heading back upstairs to go to bed, and we noticed the wall along the stairs. It had splatterings all over it too! What in the world?? More disinfectant wipes!!

It was about midnight when we got everybody situated back in bed. Courtney stayed downstairs and watched a movie because she couldn't sleep. She does not like germs or puke or anything (really, who does??)

I didn't hear Christian get up during the night, so I am assuming he is feeling better.

I am letting the kids sleep in a little bit this morning, but I do need to get them up sometime.

Hopefully this will be the last of this for awhile! And yes, Christian got a lecture on what to do if you feel sick. First of all, you tell your parents that you don't feel well so they can get you a bucket!!!! Second of all, don't get it on the carpet!!!

(That section of hallway is probably the cleanest section in the house right now!)

Children!

Sorry that I have not updated my blog in awhile. Some child (Courtney!) is always signed into google accounts and for some reason, it would not let me log in lately. I finally had to go to the help page to get in!

Now to find something to write about. :)