Have You Ever..

Have you ever..

Thought about Home Schooling?  I have

Reached into your kitchen disposal to clean it out and pulled out a gecko? Yea, that happened to me.

Been trying to put your baby to sleep, and you end up falling asleep and then your baby crawls away and destroys the whole room?  Me neither.

Looked out your back window into your lake and seen 3 otters playing?  I did!

Tried to call your mom 6 times and left 2 messages, but she never called back, so you had to tell her to call you on your blog?  Mom, you should call me back sometime, no rush though:)  

Sand

Living by the beach we get sand pretty much everywhere. I will be finding sand in my car for years to come. Speaking about sand- you gotta hear about a recent doctor's visit. 

I took Kyle to the doctor - while we were there I asked him to look at Kyles ear, which had been bothering him.  The doctor looked in his ear and said "Well, it's not infected.  But there is a lot of sand in there.  Actually there is A TON of sand.  Yea, lots and lots of sand."  He told me to rinse Kyle's ear out in the shower when we got home.  So when we got home I was washing Kyle's ear and Ellie said to him, "See Kyle! I told you not to stuff as much sand in your ear as you can!"  Kyle replied, "But it feels so good!" 

It actually reminds me of when we first moved here.  When we would come home from the beach the kids would have TONS of sand in their swimsuits.  I overheard the kids talking and found out they were having contests of who could have the most sand in their swimsuits when they got home from the beach.  I put a quick stop to that!

So I guess that in the car is not the only place we will be finding sand for years to come. I am sure Kyle will have sandy earwax till he is married.

Baby Work

Did you know Gabe has a To Do list everyday? 

Wake up at 6:30 and scream until everyone else wakes up
Nurse and snuggle with mom
Crawl around on mom till she gets out of bed

While mom is getting the kids ready for school, open a tub a toothpaste and rub it all around

What? I am helping!

 Take all of dad's note cards out and spread them around the floor

And give mom a dirty look if she tells me to stop! I am trying to help dad study!

Open dad's drawers and pull everything out onto the floor and sit in it.

Go downstairs for breakfast

YUM

Climb on the kitchen table and explore a little. 

Have a snack

Do more baby exploring!

Help mom with lunch. 

She may say she doesn't want help, but all babies know that mom's love help.

Climb on the kitchen table and have a sword fight with Kyle using mom's nice paint brushes

Do a little yard work

Help mom plant some flowers.

Take a much needed break and watch Baby Einstein.

 Climb back on the kitchen table and help mom paint.

Get into mom's black paint

Take a morning nap. 

 He can't wait to do everything else on the list after his nap!

I have a To Do list too, but it seems almost everything on his list gets done, and I only get a couple things on my list done! I wonder why that is.....

Sunday

Well, that was a disaster.  Today is Sunday and I thought it would be nice to watch a church movie with the kids.  So I put on the movie, Legacy.  About 5 min. into the movie there is the scene where one of the men gets tarred and feathered- remember that?  Well Ellie and Kyle completely, and I mean completely flipped out.  Like crying, sobbing frantically screaming, "turn it off! turn it off!!"They both had tears streaming down their cheeks and were hysterical.   I turned it off and had to hold Ellie for 10 minutes just to get her to stop trembling.  It was really sad,  I remember being like that when I was little.  I literally felt like I could not handle hearing about any violence, or people being mean. 
  The same thing happened years ago when we took them to the Joseph Smith movie in Salt Lake.  At the part where they have to do the surgery on Joseph's leg all my kids were sobbing and they said they hated the movie and would never go again. 

So anyways, if you feel like watching a church movie and feeling the spirit and you have really sensitive kids, maybe Legacy isn't the best one to watch.

Lonely

Well, Darren has been gone a week and I have been pretty sick since the day he left.  I think my sickness is from being emotionally overwhelmed and sad he is gone.  You know how in college you would be so stressed for finals, and then when they were finally over you would get a terrible cold?   I think stress builds up, and then you get weak and finally the sickness wins. Well, that's me now.  I am lonely while my husband is gone for 6 weeks and was just gone for 4. I am lonely while my sisters are all in Park City having a girls weekend shopping at Restore.  Being sick with your husband gone is no fun.  I still have to take care of kids, run errands, grocery shop, take Gabe out, when all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch tv.  
But enough of the complaining. I am going to see the good. I am going to be grateful.  

Here is my gratitude list:
1. My husband is alive and coming back.
2. My husband is not at war or in the military.
3. My husband loves me a lot and is loyal to me.
4. I don't worry about my husband while he is away from me. 
5. I have 4 super, super cute kids.
6. I am safe here without him.
7. I have a nice house and good food.
8. I have great friends and neighbors that have been so helpful.
9. I have had 2 people bring me dinner. LOVE IT!
10. I have time at night to paint. 
11. I have air conditioning when it is like an OVEN outside. 
12. I have a totally snuggly bed and baby.
13. I love to nurse my sweet little Gabe.  It makes me so happy
14. My kids are just so awesome. 
15. Other than this cold, I have good health.  
16. I have great family I can call. 
17. I got a bunch of sweet stuff at Goodwill today, mostly a very cute foot stool that goes perfect in our bathroom. 
18. My husband is getting a great education and will be graduating in less than a year!
Well, that's a lot of good stuff.  Now I'll go to bed happy.     

Broken Foot

Kyle was running on our tile floor when he hit some water and slipped and hit his foot on the corner of the wall.  He would not put any pressure on it, and it was swollen and bruised.  I was thinking, it has got to be broken.  This happened Saturday night, but I didn't want to go to the ER so we waited till Monday.  So I took him to the doctor and they took an x-ray.  They said there was no break.  The doctor told me not to send him back to school till he could walk on it. So Kyle spent the entire week doing this.

Sitting on the couch and being cute.

 Finally on Friday, I thought, this is ridiculous, the kid still can even put ANY pressure on it.  The foot has got to be broken.  So the doctor refered me to a speciallist.  They said the x-ray did not show a break, but that is common in little bones in kids feet and it is broken even though they can't see it.  They said however, they will be able to see the break on the x-ray after it heals. (or is it heels?)

So here he is.  He has to wear his cast 2 1/2 weeks.  No swimming, no beach, no playing outside when its hot.  It's been a little rough, but he is so cute with it on!

Kyle was home with me all week.  He is such a clever character!  Some of the things he said,
-mom, why are baby bums so cute?!?!
-he also decided he was a caveman and started talking like one, "Uggh, woman, peel me orange!"  LOL go peel it yourself kid!

I love being one on one with my kids.  You get to know their personality's so much.  Kyle is pretty cool!  He says funny, clever things.  I love this boy!

New Easter Traditions

Typically I insist that we celebrate holidays ON the holiday. But this year I decided Easter is going to be the exception.  This year the Easter Bunny came on Saturday.  I liked it.  That's what we are going to do from now on.  It will help us so we can concentrate on the real reason we have Easter on Sunday.  That's how it should be.
Our Saturday Easter was great.  The kids helped out and I hardly did a thing.  (If you know what I mean).  We had Easter basket's Saturday morning while Darren was at work.  Then we went to the church's Easter Egg hunt and breakfast.  It was fun, but I forgot my camera.  So here are the only pictures of Easter.   It was really simple and fun and mostly consisted of large amounts of sugar.

Look at the camera and smile

Ellie- quit it!

LOOK at the camera!! Notice how Paul is obeying in every picture?

Come on kid!

There we go!

On Sunday we went to church, and they had split our ward.  So we only went to Sacrament Meeting.  One hour of church is so easy! We went to the Klepko's for Easter dinner and the kids put on a play of the Resurrection.  It was great.  I missed my mom's grand Easter dinner with 30 cousins running around like crazy and the marvelous table setting's that my mom always does.  

Yes, that is a cast on Kyle's leg.  I'll tell you about that next post.

Painting

I have doing a lot of painting lately.. and not the house kind.  This kind...

Yes, this is my palate and I love it. It makes me happy.    Right now I am liking the painting I am working on- so I am pretty happy about that.  But Darren leaves on Saturday, so I am pretty sad about that. 

Anyways, I am working on a series of paintings.  Of which- I am not going to put online till I have 6-8 of them done.  Then I plan on making prints of them and selling them on Etsy.  I am wondering if people will buy them, or I am just wasting my time.  I guess I love painting, so it's not a waste of time either way.  I hope to have them done during the 6 weeks Darren is gone. 

Just so I don't leave you empty handed, here are some other paintings I have done recently.

Baby Food

Does anyone elses husband steal all the babies snacks?  I buy these yogurt snacks that melt in the babies mouth.  And Darren loves them.  I found him watching TV with a bag of them in his hand eating them like popcorn!  Then he would keep a bag in his night stand and eat them before bed.  For a while I tried to hide them from him, but that didn't work so I have stopped buying them completely.   I just bought some fruit leather strips, and am a little worried about how long they will last.

Completely random- the weather forecast says it is supposed to rain 1-8 inches tonight.  Yea! I can't wait.

Spring is in the air

Spring in Naples is fun.  The stores are full of sun burned Europeans.  They are everywhere, but typically they can most easily be spotted at Walmart.  They are easy to spot, besides the purple skin they are usually all together as a family.  They all have on tank tops and shorts over their wet swimsuits.  They have sand on their legs and flip flops. And their hair is still wet.  Usually they are buying sunscreen.

Going Away

Well, just when I thought I couldn't take it another day with Darren being gone he came home.  He was 3 hours away for 4 weeks.  We went up and saw him halfway between the 4 weeks.  That's when we went to Disney together.

 We just found out his next rotation is 7 hours away for ...6 weeks!  AHHHH!! It is going to be hard.  Especially for my poor kids!  Little Kyle cried, "I just don't know how I can take it!"  over and over again.  It makes me so grateful for a dad that my kids love so much.  We have a week and a half together before he has to leave. So we will be spending lots of time together- when he isn't working and studying that is.  We are going to miss our man.