Children's Fair

I can't get my pictures and video to upload right now, so I'll come back and try again later. Since we had to send Travis back to Iraq again, things have been difficult around our house. Nothing seems to be going right, and everyone seems to be struggling emotionally to adjust to Travis being gone again. We've had problems ranging from the simple struggle to get kids to stay in bed at night, setbacks in potty training, to messes made around the house, spills, things breaking, computer issues, Children fighting and not obeying, to problems at school. Everything just seems harder, just the daily routine of things. We're adjusting and things are improving some, so yesterday we went to a Children's fair to have some fun. I decided to be smart, and brought our babysitter with us, and put her in charge of Samuel so that I could actually enjoy myself with the older ones. We had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed ourselves. There was a lot of
fun free activities for the kids to do. Joseph really wanted to go against someone in these inflatables, but the girls were too scared to go against him, but Samuel had no fear, and said he wanted to do it. It was so funny watching them go at it, Samuel would either run away from Joseph, hit the referee guy, or bump against Joseph's inflatable, once even flipping him upsidedown. The girls were silly when they did it. The girls would lightly bump into each other, and giggle. The boys would knock each other over. Girls and Boys are definatly different. They were also able to go fishing. Allthough it wasn't too realistic becuase it took them less than a minute to catch each fish. They had a big swimming pool full of fish. The girls thought it was cool, but didn't want to touch or go anywhere near the fish they caught. Joseph was more then happy to handle the fish he caught, although samuel was a little scared of it thrashing around. We had a great time painting, making purses, and being creative. We also did mini-golf, played with giant blocks, made big bubbles, and the girls got their faces painted. Joseph and Samuel also played ping pong, and when Samuel made a few good serves, the people at the booth were pretty impressed. That night I dropped the kids off at child care and when to a scrapbooking event for spouses of deployed soilders. I haven't done any scrapbooking since I was a teenager, so it was nice to do a few pages, and get a break from the kids. Last week I learned that Samuel is very protective of his siblings. Joseph was at golf, so the kids and I were playing at the park. Austin had found this big stick, and she and Betsy were making paths and playing with it in the sand. Austin set the stick down, and another boy, probably 6 or 7 picked up the stick and ran off with it. Austin started crying that the boy took her stick. While I was dealing with Austin's meltdown, and trying to explain that the stick wasn't hers, I realized Samuel had been chasing this boy down, and out of the corner of my eye noticed he had just about caught up to him. As I turned to go after Samuel, he caught the boy, and tackled him to the ground, and was pounding on him screaming at him to give back Austin's stick. I quickly reached Samuel and picked him up off the boy and went and put him in the van. After he calmed down, I had Austin come over and explain to Samuel that it wasn't her stick, and since she set it down, it was fine for the boy to play with it. Samuel said the boy was being mean to Austin, and took her stick, and he was just trying get it back. It took awhile but we finally convinced Samuel that what he did was wrong. I pity the boy or girl for that matter that does anything to hurt Austin, she has two very protective brothers. When she was little baby getting immunizations, Joseph tried to pull the nurse off of Austin when she was giving her the shots, because the nurse was making her cry.