Lincoln wanted to just ride home with me so he got to make a quick pit stop at HyVee so I could pick up some stuff to make a dish to take to Andrew’s parents that night for dinner. I did all of my grocery shopping the night before but didn’t get the text from Mary about bringing something until I was unloading all the groceries from my car at home J. So that evening, after Jackson and Ellie got home from swim team, we headed out to the ranch. Mary did a dinner as a thank you for the different people that have helped them with their big cattle drives. It was a nice night and the twins even made it without any accidents for which I was grateful.
Tuesday morning Lincoln’s school had the Air Evac
helicopter stop by. So I took the twins
so they could see it land which they loved but they weren’t excited at all
about getting too close to. I thought
they would love it, but I was wrong.
They both cried when I walked away from them so I could get a picture of
Lincoln in the helicopter. They weren’t
the only kids scared of it though. We
waited around to see if we could watch it take off but it was taking quite a
while for the older kids to go through it.
So we headed home so I could get them lunch and get ready for a bike ride. Andrew offered to stay home a little longer at lunch so I could bike outside. I just went for an 11 mile bike ride but it was good to get out and not have to worry about who is fighting, does anyone need to go to the bathroom, does anyone have wet pants…And after I got home we even had success with Bennett doing his business on the toilet so he got one of the coveted monster trucks that were on display on our fireplace mantle waiting to be earned. Miles cried for over an hour until it was naptime because he didn’t get one. He even kept going to sit on the toilet in hopes that it would happen. No such luck-he was one dejected little boy.
So we headed home so I could get them lunch and get ready for a bike ride. Andrew offered to stay home a little longer at lunch so I could bike outside. I just went for an 11 mile bike ride but it was good to get out and not have to worry about who is fighting, does anyone need to go to the bathroom, does anyone have wet pants…And after I got home we even had success with Bennett doing his business on the toilet so he got one of the coveted monster trucks that were on display on our fireplace mantle waiting to be earned. Miles cried for over an hour until it was naptime because he didn’t get one. He even kept going to sit on the toilet in hopes that it would happen. No such luck-he was one dejected little boy.
That evening we had Ellie’s Parent Watch Day at
dance. She has her tap, ballet and jazz
from 5:15-6:45 so I had dinner ready early so we could eat quickly and just she
and I went to dance while Andrew stayed home with the rest of the kids. Mary joined us too. I do love watching Ellie dance and she has
definitely developed more each year. I
would love it if she sticks with it but it seems like so many girls drop out
these days in favor of the more traditional sports. We got to spend a little over an hour at home
before we had to go back for gymnastics and this time the whole family
went. It was only a half hour so we did
okay. My parents came too and the solo
room is pretty small, so it was kind of a tight fit. Ellie is a pretty talented girl though-again
I have no idea where her flexibility comes from but it is neat to watch the
different things she can do and the new things she is working on.
Lincoln’s fun at school continued on Wednesday when they
had firefighters, police officers and EMTs stop by the school along with their
vehicles. He loved showing off the
sticker badges he got from them. Andrew
and I worked on preparing stuff for small group-he the discussion and me the
house. We are also in the beginning
stages of maybe bringing a marriage conference to our church so we worked on
getting stuff ready to present that to the rest of the our group. And then Miles had a good day. After I got done with my cleaning I went down
to run on the treadmill. I reminded both
of the twins to go to the bathroom whenever they needed to and even turned on
the light to the bathroom in the basement and propped the door open. Part way through my run I heard Miles whining
a bit and I got off and ran to the playroom thinking he had probably pooped his
pants in there. But he wasn’t in
there. He was actually in the bathroom
and had been successful in making it to the toilet. He thought it was yucky and wanted to be
wiped. I was so impressed and he was one
happy boy when I got his monster truck for him.
After the twins went down for a nap, Lincoln really
wanted to paint. He first worked on
cutting out a few shapes and painted those and then just painted some different
pictures for me. He thought they were
beautiful and so did I. His all blue one
he called The Ocean-very abstract J.
Later that evening Molly came over so Andrew and I could
go to Parent Teacher conferences for Jackson and Ellie. We are so grateful that they are both doing
well right now. We know that may not
always be the case and it may not be that way with all of our kids but we are
proud of them. They both are
well-behaved in class and Jackson got straight A’s while Ellie got all V’s
(they don’t do actual letter grades so they are assessed according to Very
Good, Satisfactory, etc.) along with having great testing scores. Then we rushed home to get back in time for
small group. We did change our start
time to make sure we were back in time and everything was ready to go. Then we had a great small group and finished
up by discussing the marriage conference which everyone was excited about. Andrew actually got to talk to the lady that
schedules them the next day so now we just have to decide which route we want
to take with it as a group.
The kids were up and ready to go early Thursday. I think they were all up before seven (even
the twins) and the older ones were pretty much ready to go with chores
done. I got on the treadmill and Ellie
came down so we could do a practice spelling test one more time while I was
running-great multitasking J. So it was a good start to the day. Then I got the twins ready and we headed to
the fire station to meet Lincoln’s class for their last fun outing of the
week. Miles and Bennett were so excited
to see the fire trucks that they didn’t want to mess with the rest of the stuff-a
video on fire safety and a tour of the station.
They were pretty good but they did let their impatience known a
bit. At one point during the video a
truck had to leave and they turned on their sirens a bit. Both of the twins jumped up yelling, “Fire
truck, fire truck!” They were so
excited, but then it was still a little while before we got to see them. I tried to get a picture of them in front of
one but they weren’t going to let that happen.
And my few other pictures didn’t turn out the best. Lincoln did have a fun time though.
We let Lincoln ride the bus back to school and finish out
his morning. He was excited that he
memorized his memory verse for the week, Genesis 1:1, but didn’t find anything
in the prize box that he wanted. The twins
and I ran to Aldi and Wal-Mart after our fire station trip. Then we stopped by Sonic to get them some
lunch and a surprise Cherry Limeade for Andrew.
He and Lincoln were already at home when we got done. That afternoon Jackson and Ellie had Little K
and then Andrew grilled some steaks when he got home. We actually got to enjoy a dinner
outside. It was a tad cool but a dinner
outside in October is awesome. Then
Andrew took the three older kids to the store to get some snacks and a few
other items for camping while I cleaned up and gave the twins a bath.
The next day began our four day weekend. The kids didn’t have school Friday or the
following Monday. Lincoln was up and
dressed by 6:30 though. You never know
with that kid. I was awake but still in
bed thinking maybe sleeping in a bit might be nice. So he joined me and the twins followed soon
after. But then the fighting started so
we got up pretty quickly. Lincoln and I
did have a cute conversation. He said,
“Mom, did you know that Mike LaBeth got a new truck?” And I replied that I did. So he said, “Yeah. I told Mike LaBeth it was awesome. But not a gazillion awesome because that is
what God is. Actually God is more than a
gazillion awesome.” Love that kid! And then he decided he wanted to be a vampire. He put on a batman cape and then wanted to change his t-shirt to a "church shirt", i.e. a polo, so he could flip his collar to look more like a vampire. Next up was the vampire teeth.
Then later that
morning we headed to The Paragon for Ellie to get her hair cut. The vampire even went with us. Andrew cut a couple inches off back in the
summer but she hasn’t been to see Kim since before last school year. This was her idea though and she wanted to
take several inches off. She ended up
getting about 6 ½ inches off and she loved it.
She does look very cute. Miles
and Bennett acted like they owned the place going from here to there. They weren’t too bad though and they kind of
buddied up to this trick-or-treater figurine in the shop.
After the hair cut I decided to treat them all to lunch
before we headed home to do chores. We
were going to pick up Andrew on our way but he had a client stop in. Ellie went ahead and waited at the office for
him while I took the others, made a quick stop by the accountants and then
headed to La Fuente. We had a pretty
good lunch with minimal messes and loud screaming-success. But then it was time to head home and do our
chores. And another success was that the twins were
dry when we got home from out little outing.
I put them in pull-ups when we leave the house and they were dry when we
went to switch back into their underwear.
That was not the case the day before but we were gone for over three
hours then. Andrew also asked the kids
to start getting stuff ready for their camping trip. Then he got home around 3, the loaded up and
headed out. I quickly went to work
trying to knock stuff off my to-do list of cleaning, office work, tax prep,
etc. I was just getting started when I
heard, “Hi Mommy.” Bennett had come
downstairs from his nap. They had only
been down about 45 minutes, so I gathered him up and took him back upstairs to
lay down. He actually calmed down pretty
quickly and went back to sleep-thankfully.
Then it was back to work. I
didn’t get a whole lot accomplished though because I got side-tracked
researching some Christmas gifts. Then I
loaded up the twins and headed out to the ranch to meet up with the campers for
a bit. They had caught some small fish
and filleted them and were just getting ready to start their camp fire. So we hung out for a bit while they worked on
that and setting up their tent and then we headed home. Andrew does a great job with their “adventures”
and they had a lot of fun with him. Ellie was the only one who ended up sleeping in the tent while the boys slept outside by the campfire which Andrew and Jackson kept going through the night. They even all ate some of the fish they cooked. Then they ended their outing with a bang by throwing a broken can of bug spray into the fire.
The twins and I ran by my parent’s house to drop some
stuff off there and visited for a bit before we headed home. I gave them some quick baths and put them to
bed then Leah and her mom showed up to borrow some stuff for Alex’s birthday
party on Sunday. He was doing a cowboy
party so I had a lot of stuff for that from Lincoln’s first birthday (and
third). I picked up things around the
house and was getting ready to settle in to get some work done when I heard
some noises upstairs. The boys were up with
the lights on and Miles even had his Cardinal’s cap on-backwards. They weren’t happy I made them go back to bed
but they settled down pretty quickly. It
was a late night but I was able to get some work done before I went to
bed. Then Miles came down around
five-with the baseball cap still on. He
eventually settled down in my bed and fell asleep. The campers all showed up a little before
eight. The kids worked on unpacking some
stuff and setting the tent out to dry while Andrew quickly got ready so he
could go to a breakfast for small group leaders at our pastor’s house. Then he headed out to the ranch to spend the
day stacking hay. It was a beautiful
day. So the kids got to go outside and
enjoy it. We did have to load up to run
a few quick errands though. The day went
by so quickly as I seemed to stay really busy.
Jackson had a few bumps in the road during the day. We had decided to trade in his Kindle because
it kept shutting off and restarting. He
wasn’t too excited about trading it in because he had a few games that he hated
to lose all the work he had done with them.
We were able to figure out how to transfer his Minecraft stuff which was
the most important, but we weren’t able to figure out how to transfer a couple
other games. He said he would rather
just keep the old Kindle and deal with it turning off and on but I told him we
really needed to trade it in. After
taking a few moments to sulk about it in his room he came out to apologize to
me. He told that it is hard to let go of
something he has worked so hard on. Even
though I am not into video games, I did feel sorry for him. Then later that night he discovered that the
twins destroyed a few more of his Lego creations-he was so defeated. Sometimes it is just hard being the oldest.
But overall the day was good. Andrew ended up getting home around
five. We were happy he was back but he
was frustrated because he was back early because he had a breakdown that would
have to be fixed later. So he went out
to play with the kids and put away some of the camping stuff they had put out
to dry out while I worked on dinner.
After another lovely dinner outside, I cleaned up and did some grocery
shopping while the rest of them enjoyed the last light of the day. Andrew had asked me to pick up a Halloween
mask while I was out. I wasn’t sure why
he wanted it but I picked out a cheap old man mask. He had decided he wanted to try to scare the
kids. He tried Jackson first but it didn’t
work. Next up was the twins and
Lincoln. He thought he would do it in
their room but I decided it would probably be best not to scare them in the
room they sleep in. So he hid behind the
bed in our room and was successful in scaring them but they recovered quickly
when he took it off. And Ellie was
pretty funny too. She had dozed off on
the couch so Andrew got face to face with her and then woke her up. And then it was time for everyone to head to
bed with sweet dreams.
Andrew went for a bike ride the next morning and then we
went to late service. One of our old pastors,
Ryan, was in town for the morning and sent out a text that he would be at late
service. Then it was home for lunch and on
to take Lincoln out to Jackson’s Stables for Alex’s cowboy birthday party. Leah had it decorated so cute and the weather
was just perfect. Lincoln had picked out
his outfit earlier in the morning. He
had a certain shirt he wanted to wear that he thought looked like a cowboy and
then he made sure to wear his boots and hat.
They got to ride a mule, roast s'mores and shoot a bb gun among other fun things.
Lissy called when I was on my way home and she was in town. She tried to go by my parents but they were gone and the house was locked up so she came by to visit us for a bit. Bennett tried to convince her he was Miles-he thought he was pretty funny. Then Andrew went to the office for the afternoon and got home in time to grill some hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner. We ended up having my parents, Lissy and Molly over for dinner too. Nothing fancy, but it was a beautiful evening to eat outside. The kids ran around grabbing a bite now and then. Ellie and her friends put on a little performance for us too. Then it was time for the s’mores. It appeared the kids didn’t have time to roast the marshmallows and just wanted to eat all of the chocolate. So while they played we just sat around the fire and chatted. Then after my family headed home Andrew started working on carving the pumpkins. My dad brought over his jigsaw for Andrew to use which always makes things easier. Ellie was the official pumpkin guts cleaner while Andrew was the carver. He pretty much just free hands all of it. He did a ghost for Ellie, a Minecraft sword for Jackson and a spider for Lincoln. I didn’t realize it until he was all done and everything cleaned up, but he didn’t do anything with Miles and Bennett’s pumpkins. Plus I realized I didn’t have any candles.
While Andrew did the pumpkins, I cleaned up everything and did the baths. Then we all sat down to watch Top Gun since the twins are going to be Maverick and Goose for Halloween. It was evident pretty soon that I forgot how much cussing goes on in the movie. Jackson looked at us each time someone said something bad. We ended up not watching the whole thing but I think they got a good idea of who Maverick and Goose are and didn’t have to see that Goose actually died. I did end up looking into these online program called VidAngel where they have different movies you can choose from and they mute cussing and remove suggestive/violent scenes. It is definitely something to look more into.
Well then it was off to bed and I guess at some point in
the middle of the night the twins started crying. Andrew went up to check on them on they were
both out of bed, lights on, books destroyed and Miles had his diaper off in
which he had pooped. So Andrew cleaned
him up, put a new diaper on him and put him back to bed. He said he wasn’t sure if there was poop
anywhere else. So I went up in the
morning and found that there was poop on his comforter but I didn’t notice it
anywhere else. So I stripped his bedding
to wash it and put him in the shower.
Bennett wanted to go in to so I just washed both of them and got them
ready for the day. The other kids got
up, got ready and did their chores (they couldn’t believe I was still having
them do them on their day off). Now we get
to see where this day takes us. I have a
list of different things to get done-put away some patio furniture, put up
Christmas lights, etc. I’m not sure if
any of it will get done but we’ll try.
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