Firefox & Liz

I posted a few blogs back about how when I cleaned the fish tank I somehow killed Paityns fish. Well Clay took her a few days ago and got 2 more and one of those died, so I took her today to get another.

Side note: do not believe ANYONE if they ever tell you fish are the easiest least expensive pet to get!!! I can not even begin to tell you how expensive this has all become!!

Ok, excuse me, so today I took Paityn back to the store once again to get a new fish. Paityn has named them "Firefox & Liz". How cute is that. She and Carly swear one is a girl and one is a boy and they are going to have babies and live happily ever after! Where do they get this stuff??
These fish are called Albino, red fin sharks! After doing a little research on them turns out you are not supposed to put them in tanks together because they can be aggressive. (Someone better tell the store that because they had about 5 in one tank) The internet also stated that these fish are not ideal for the brand new aquarist.
Ain't that a hoot!!
Oh well.
What do ya do

Brilliant

Katrina Rose is Brilliant!!
When Katrina was a baby I bought into a Infomercial for "Your Baby Can Read" and I bought the complete set! She never really liked the DVDs but she LOVED the flash cards and would ask to do them on a daily basis.
She was talking early and putting sentences together early, so I figure I would start in with other things like letters, colors and shapes.
Let me tell you she picked up her colors and shapes in 2 days flat!! We are still working on her letters but she does know most of them and can even say what sound they make!!
This girl is amazing!!!
She reminds me so much of Carly!! Carly used to sit at the table while Jacob was doing his homework and trace letters!! She was only 3!!

This morning I decided to see what else I could get Katrina doing. I wrote her name large in all capital letters and poured a bowl of Cheerios in a bowl and asked her to come to the table. She did and sat right up and started pointing at letters. She got a couple confused and wasn't sure of a few others but for the most part she did great!! I asked her to place the Cheerios on the letter K and she did. Not along the lines but on the letter K. Then I asked her to find another letter and she did!! She is just amazing!!

When you ask her to count she typically skips the number 1 just like Jacob used to do but she can count all the way up to 16!!

I tried to think back to other things I used to do with Jacob and remembered how we put name tags all over the house. So I started writing things like DOOR and put tape on it and asked her to stick the word on the DOOR after she repeated each of the letters to me. For the most part she got each letter right, but she confuses little a for an o. 

The funny thing was when I wrote the word PHONE and asked her to stick it to the phone she did not want to put it on the house phone. She kept saying NO. I finally asked her "Katrina where is the phone?" to see what she thought a phone was and she went right to Abigails toy box and grabbed the Elmo phone!! It was too cute so I let it slide!!

Tough Love vs. Coddling

I believe there is a fine line between tough love and coddling.
Here is the story behind this post;
Carly and Paityn are both signed up in gymnastics. They both Love it!!
Recently for some strange reason Carly, after begging to be signed up for years mind you, decided she was no longer going to do it. When we would ask why we would get a different variation of "why" each time.
We would make her go anyways and sit on the bleachers and watch.
Here's a tidbit,  recently only Clay had been taking the girls instead of us switching off weeks. He drops Jake off at Football then heads to the gym with the girls for an hour then back to football while I stayed home with Katrina and Abbi and stick to their night time routine of bath at 730 then bed.
Back to the story. Carly has been sitting out instead of participating. I decided this past week to take the youngins and go see for myself what all was going on. When we pulled up Clay got out of the Jeep, came to the van and said Carly was sitting in the Jeep crying and did not want to go in. Clay also informed me that Coach Jo had also come out and tried talking to Carly. I sat there for a moment and took it in and pondered what to do. This is when I love my MOMSENSE from God!! I said "Ok, let her sit there and think about it for a moment. This is not a decision we can make for her. Lets just walk right in with the youngins and go watch Paityn while Carly has time to herself to think."
When we walked in Paityn was being walked over with Coach Steven to sit out. He informed us that she said she was not feeling well. I look over at her and she is now sitting playing with the toys. I told Steven and Clay that I thought it was a case of "big sister not being in there". So I walked over to her and told her to sit on the bench and watch her class if she was not going to join. She got upset about it but I did not cave! After about 5 minutes she asked me to walk her back to her class! I was high fiving myself and my MOMSENSE from God!! When I return from walking Paityn back to her group guess who is now playing with the toys and Katrina "Carly"! I walked right over to her and told her to get up and go to the bench, that she was not to play with toys but to watch her group.
She is one tough cookie let me tell you!
She sat on the bench and sulked and refused to go in. Clay sits down next to her and she immediately cuddles right up to him and puts on the fake tears and starts spewing out reasons as too why she is not going in. Again my MOMSENSE comes to play, plus being 1 of 5 and having parents that divorced I know a lot of tricks for getting attention, keeping attention and taking what I want of this attention!! So when I saw what was going on and how Clay was sitting there cuddling and quietly talking with her a MOMSENSE light bulb went off. I sat down on the other side of Clay and asked him to please walk away and let her figure this one out for herself. He listened and took Katrina outside to the playground. I too walked to where Carly couldnt see me but I could see her. She took her shoes off and put them in the cubby (YES!! I was patting my own back) then she sat back down (DANG).
I thought and thought.........
walked over to her and quietly whispered in her ear "You know I think you would be proud of yourself if you go back in" and I reminded her of how she felt last week after not participating. I also told her "Daddy and I would be so proud and come to think of it I was pretty sure Coach Jo will be proud to" and I got up and walked away again. Next thing I know she is standing at the little door playing with the handle (high fiving myself in my head again) and next thing I know she is walking by me towards Coach Jo with one of her little friends from class!! Coach Jo gave her a high five and big hug and off they went!!
I am so proud of Carly!!
She was so proud of herself!!
It turned out Great!!
Thank you God for my Momsense!!
Mom intuition + Common Sense= MOMSENSE 
Thank you MOPS

Nighty Night

So I was just asked to "write a new blog post" my follower ;) ;) is sick of football!

the quickest thing I could come up with was our nightly routine since it is what I literally just got done doing!

I must admit this is one of my favorite but yet sometimes most stressful time of day.
I started a routine when Jacob was a newborn, and let me just tell you it was a LIFE SAVER!! Still is a Life Saver every day!!!
From the get go Clay has been in charge of bath time at 7:30 (precisely like I am Mary Poppins herself)
They stay in bath for about 15-20 minutes then get their pjs on.
When Jacob was a baby I would hold him in my arms and sing him to sleep singing "You are my sunshine".
After Carly was born Clay started reading Jacob stories after bath and I would sing Carly to sleep with "Silent Night" (side story for that song selection is Carly was due on Christmas Eve, she came 3 weeks early thank goodness)
When Paityn came along Carly moved up to stories with Dad and I would sing Paityn "Jesus Loves Me", as a matter of fact I think I can probably still to this day get Paityn to sleep if I sing her this song!!
When Katrina came into our lives I had just learned an awesome different sorta happy up beat version of "Amazing Grace" so that became her song. I sang it to her on the delivery table when she was placed in my arms for the first time. My doctor still remembers that.
Then came dear ole Abbi. I just recently gave the duty of singing Katrina to sleep to Clay before he reads stories to the big kids, while I now sing Abbi to sleep. I still try and get in to sing Katrina to sleep as often as I can but it is few and far between now. Back to Abbi's song; I am not sure of the name of the song I sing Abbi, and I am not sure of all the words but I love the verse/chorus I do know. It goes like this
        "Let the Glory of the Lord endure forever. Let the Lord be glad in His works. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my god while I have my being.".
I am still friends with a lot of my youth group friends from high school and they have told me the name and given me the words but this verse is most powerful to me so I just sing it over and over.
After songs I say the Lords prayer, which all of my kids typically have memorized by the age of 3 and can repeat it back to you. So awesome!!
Clay reads stories then sings the older kids each their song, says prayer and dream prayer (a little something I started when the kids started having bad dreams! Let me tell you it has worked like a champ! My kids hardly ever come down because they are scared or had a bad dream because of this DREAM PRAYER!!) before he walks out of their room.
With the kids being on such a routine at night I get time with my husband each night which I think is very important even if we are both conked out and vegged to the TV at least we are by ourselves and together. We do actually go outside each night for some quiet reflection as soon as we get the kids in bed! That quiet reflection time is a BLESSING!! but sometimes we both need a little reminder that we can not bring our phones out there!! We got a little addicted to Angry birds and I would always make him complete the levels I had gotten stumped on! Then he loved the game so much he downloaded it on his phone! For a few nights it was a bird throwing mess on the front porch instead of quiet relaxing reflection time!!
OK hopefully this was a long enough blog to satisfy my "sick of football" friend!! Love you!! You know who you are!!  Maybe I should add a Redskin Logo to the very beginning of this blog to throw you off!! HA HA HA HA HA
That made me remember something funny. 
I just signed up for MOPS (moms bible study at church) we just recently had a "kickoff meeting" for the study and we all met at church one night about a week ago. I walk in and to my surprise there was FOOTBALL decorations all over the place. I thought "How strange?". I finally asked towards the end of the night "Ok so whats the deal with all the football decorations and footballs on the table" and they all chuckled and said they wondered when that would be asked!! HA HA HA I am the sucker all the time!! They stuck me in a dunk tank and threw footballs and dunked me!! NO I AM SO JUST KIDDING!! Just making sure you are still on your toes and have not fallen asleep while reading MY BLOG!! The MOPS women did the football theme since it was a "Kickoff meeting" ....... ya it took me a while to put two and two together too!!

4 legged children (part 1)

It just came to me that I have never mentioned our 4 legged children!

Smack on the hand! Bad mommy!

When I was about 8 months pregnant with Jacob, one of our 8 cats went missing. Yes you read that right, 8 cats! Long story for another blog post. Anyways Clay and I went to the Raleigh animal shelter to find the cat with no such luck BUT we did come home with an 8 week old puppy that Clay fell in love with. She was a German Sheppard mix pup and just as sweet as can be! On the ride home Clay said "She is so sweet just like a little Angel" and there was her name "ANGEL".

She was our little baby to squeeze and cuddle and love till Jacob got here. Once Jacob got here I was so over the dog factor. I will be completely honest, for a few months, well maybe years I really disliked Angel. It was like having another kid to watch all day. Clay refused to get her fixed so for 2 months of the year I had a baby to diaper and a dog!! She was like another kid, it was like I had twins. I had to potty train her and even got her so well trained she learned to only stay in our yard when out. Anyways she turned out to be an awesome dog! She would follow Jacob around the house and clean up after him, when I would let her out she would do her business then come right back! Oh she was such a good dog!!
One year she got out around Christmas and got pregnant. 60 days later she went into labor. Since she was 6 years old and had never been through the experience before she didn't know what to do. I stayed awake to help her. It was a crazy ordeal. To make the story as short as I can it was just not going the way it was supposed to. I had already given mouth to mouth to one wet and slimy puppy and revived it but I couldn't the next one. We lost 2 puppies that day, we took her into PetSmart to get the rest out. They were able to save 2, all girls! We named our 3 puppies Faith, Mercy and Grace. They were all so sweet and so totally different! After they were 8 weeks old we found homes for Mercy and Grace and kept Faith for ourselves. Faith was a crazy beast! She looked just like Angel but darker and two different colored eyes. Right after Katrina was born we lost Faith to Parvo. It was miserable for Clay and Carly to have to go through. I was in DC with my mom and Katrina visiting. I am honestly glad I was not here to go through it all. Carly still to this day has a hard time with it all.
Angel really was like one of my kids! She protected the kids and us and shared lots of LOVE with us! She would go to the beach house with us and spend our vacation with us. She would drive around with us and always get her own cheeseburger! God I miss her so much!
Last year we lost Angel to cancer. Angel had a mass in one of her tits, its a long story and still really hurts to talk about. There is nothing about it that can be changed now but I really wish we had done so much different. We should have gotten more opinions from different vets. We got the mass removed and everything went down hill from there. Before we had the mass removed she was still running around and fetching balls etc..... Once the mass was removed she went down hill super fast! It was like she just never recovered from the surgery. So we called another vet and took her in for a second opinion. Clay took off work and took her in while I stayed home with the 4 kids, pregnant with #5. When they got home I could read it all over his face. He got down on his knees and broke it to me. I cant say that I have ever cried so hard. I was loosing my first child. He told me she had lung cancer and at this point there was nothing to do but keep her pain free. Each day she just got worse. I took her out every day and bought her either chicken nuggets or a cheeseburger but it got to the point where she wouldn't even eat it. Then one day I was sitting here with the kids and she just started breathing real hard and she gave me this look. It was like she knew it was her time and she just let out this deep breath and laid her head back down. I called Clay he rushed home we all said our good byes and then he loaded her in the Jeep and took off with her to the vet. Angel never came back home. These pictures are our last with Angel.
The next day we put together a little memorial for her out front where she would spend her days.

RIP shimmer & shiny

RIP Shimmer & Shiny

Well I killed Paityn's fish :(

Their water had not been changed since we bought the darn fish, and for some reason I thought yesterday would be the day to do it.
So I prepped for this moment for 3 days in advance.
I saved big Gatorade jugs (we go through a lot of Gatorade in this house).
I filled them with water and set them aside so the water would all be the same temperature.
I used the drops to clear the water of whatever the freak those drops clean the water of. (Clean water? Really?)
I put the fish in a small bowl of their own water.
Cleaned the tank, cleaned the rocks, changed the filter, everything I knew to do I did it.
Put the fish back in their tank and with in 2 hours they were both belly up!
For some reason the sucker fish is still alive and doing fine but Shimmer and Shiny both had to be flushed to the BIG SEA!!

YUMMMMMMMMM

I owed a good friend a THANK YOU for forgiving me/Merideth is a dumb ass/APOLOGY!!!

I knew she loved Banana Pudding!!

I also knew I had never made Banana Pudding before!!
So I turned to my fb peeps,
got some recipes,
printed out the recipe,
went to store bought everything,
came home and started making it!!

YUM!!
It turned out AWESOME!!
It is delicious!!

I ended up making two batches, one as a gift, and one for my hubby and children. Looks like I will have to make it more often! I had no idea everyone liked banana pudding!