Sick week

The past week has been spent dealing with sickness. Two of our kids had the flu and one a fever and an earache. Mild sickness and one child at a time, I do have that to be thankful for. It breaks my heart though to see my kids sick. Yesterday my 3 year old ball of fire wanted to do nothing but sleep and lay around. He'd be up for a bit, cuddle on my lap and then say, "I think I need to sleep now." and he'd walk off to bed. It made me want to cry, the poor guy. Daddy got to be the hero though, he stopped and got Tylenol on his way home from work. In about 30 minutes the little guy was up playing tag with the rest of them. :)

It's amazing what a little bit of medicine will do.

I do like the cuddles though. I just wish he'd sit still like that when he's not feeling icky.

We've yet to see if it's going to go around the whole household, hopefully it won't.

On another note, I'm supposed to be going to this cookie exchange thing later this week. It's going to be my first introduction to a bunch of other home school moms here...anyone have a great cookie recipe that would just make me look impressive??

This and That

My son brought me this picture earlier today and said, "Look Mom, it's Larryboy's new arch enemy!" I thought it was pretty clever....

Any thoughts on what to name him? We were thinking something along the lines of The Trouble Corn only in spanish like Le Maiz Problema or something.

And on a completely different note...look who's 7 months old and finally sitting up on his own!

The things you find...

The house we moved into didn't come with a washer and dryer set, so first thing after we moved in we bought a used pair. The thing about buying used is that it's always a bit of a risk as to whether the things will actually work or not. They got put into the laundry room and hooked up and I threw in the first load. I stayed around and watched the washer....seemed to work just fine. Phew! Then I transferred the clothes to the dryer. I waited a bit then opened it and the clothes seemed warm so I turned it on for longer and walked away. I checked about an hour later. What did I find? Hot wet clothes. I thought well, I'll give it more time. Another hour and still the same. Bummer. We tossed around ideas as to what the problem could be. I even called a repair guy to ask questions. He said to check the vent, maybe it's clogged. Alrighty, I can do that.

I removed the foil hose thing and looked into the wall side of the vent. It looked like a big lump of lint. Yeah! I found the problem. So I went and got out the vacuum and stuck the hose down and the lint thing stuck to the end. I pulled it out and ....


it wasn't a lint ball....

it was a dead bird!

Ewww!!!

So, I put that in the trash and stuck the hose down the vent again. (Yep, I'm crazy I know)

I proceeded to find THREE more dead birds.

At this point I was officially freaked and grossed out so I called the landlord. They called a repair guy and he came out. He used a big long wand thing and cleaned out the whole vent. He found one MORE dead bird! Now at least I know it's clean and clear.

But can you believe there were 5??? Any guesses how that happened?

I am happy now as the clothes are drying properly :)

Our House

I want to give you a little tour, so first we'll start with the outside. Here's the front of the house...

This is the deck and back view.

The kitchen and dining area

The master bedroom (including a baby on the bed)

One of the bedrooms is for the two girls and the baby,

and the last bedroom is for the four boys. One of the bunkbeds is finished and shown here and one is still in the garage waiting for me to apply stain. So the toddlers are in the playpen and one is still sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor. :(

Downstairs there is a family room,

and the other half will be our school room.

I think it suits us well.

Some of the rooms are a bit empty looking still, keep in mind we didn't bring much. Almost all of the furniture is stuff we've acquired since we got here.