busy, busy, busy, messy, messy, messy

Caleb wanted to be in Daddy's uniform too

Tuesday, Chick-fil-A with Caleb, and shopping.  He had to take his bucket of cars everywhere we went and in the whole foods store, he had to put his bucket into a basket and push it all over the store.  I made the mistake of going to Costco hungry, and ended up buying way too much, included their freshly baked cookies.  Caleb was very happy about it, and the kids loved it when they had cookies and milk for an after school snack.  Samuel had soccer practice, and the field was really wet, so ten minutes after we arrived Caleb had found several puddles, and was completely soaked and ready to go home.  Samuel had a good time playing soccer, and just needs to work on not touching and pushing his teammates while waiting in line for his turn to kick the ball.
Wednesday, Samuel's IEP, playgroup, and lunch at our friend Leslie's house, Caleb absolutely loved playing with his friends Liam and Luke. I made Salmon, and squash croquettes for dinner, they were good, but my kids wouldn't eat them, so I sent them to give some to Leslie's family, and she texted me saying they were eating Macaroni and Cheese at her house.  Crazy kids, at least someone appreciates my cooking, I just wish it were my kids.  Although Austin did eat the salmon really well, she loves salmon.
Thursday, walk for the first time.  At dinner time,  Samuel wanted me to make him a smoothie, but I was feeding the baby, so I told him to start getting the things out, and I would help him when I was done with the baby.  This morning I had put a pound of butter in the blender to soften, so I could make better butter.  When I went downstairs, There was butter all over the floor, sink, counter, and garbage can.  Samuel had gotten it out of the blender, so I could make his smoothie and thrown it away, but since it was so slippery he kept dropping it, and wiping his hands on everything.  Well there went a pound of butter, I'm definitely not digging it out of the trash.  As I was starting to wipe up the butter, Caleb ran through the kitchen stepping in the butter and tracking it even further across the floor.  So, while I'm cleaning, the other kids are getting frozen mini pizzas (purchased when I went to Costco hungry) and heating them up, and eating them.  I make Samuel his smoothie, and go to the freezer to get out my veggie burgers, since everyone else has found something to eat.  My veggie burgers are not there, I ask the kids if they know what happened to them.  Samuel says when he got out the frozen blueberries for his smoothie, the box fell out, and he couldn't fit it back in, so he put it in the outside freezer.  I went into the garage to get the veggie burgers but they weren't in their either, so I ask Samuel to show me where they are.  He goes out to the garage and picks the box up off the floor.  He didn't put it in the freezer at all, he had just thrown them on the floor.  It's a good thing I was going to make one, otherwise those would have been ruined too.  So I make my veggie patty, and Just as it's done, Samuel says "i want that", so I give him my veggie patty, and make myself another one, I put cheese on it, and toasted two pieces of bread and made a nice sandwich, Joseph comes up and says he wants it, so I give it to him, and make one more for me.  As I'm sitting down to eat, Caleb is hungry again, so I feed him, then go back and eat my cold veggie burger.  As I'm cleaning up, and throw my paper plate in the garbage, I see the other two veggie burgers I made that the boys wanted in the garbage.  I ask them why they threw them away, and Samuel said he didn't want it without cheese and bread, like I made mine, so he threw it away, and Joseph said he thought it was a cheeseburger, and didn't want it, and threw it away too.  Samuel had soccer practice, and still struggled with waiting his turn appropriately, but is pretty good at kicking the ball around.
Friday, I came down the stairs, and saw a huge puddle of orange smoothie on the carpet, and on the floor downstairs, and there were a bunch of crumpled of papers next to it that were also covered in smoothie, I asked what happened, and Caleb says he spilled his smoothie and tried to clean it up with the papers.  These papers, I discovered were Samuel's completed homework that he has to take back to school on Monday.  He was not happy.  Poor Caleb, he tried to clean up his mess, and I tried to tell Samuel that if he hadn't left his hw on the floor, Caleb wouldn't have used them to clean up his mess. I finally calmed Samuel down, and told him I would write his teacher a note, explaining what happened.  Then I got to work cleaning the smoothie mess off the carpet.  I went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and Joseph was eating a cheeseburger, I looked at him and asked him if he made another one (He had one for dinner last night), and he said "no" it was the same one.  I asked him if it was in the refrigerator, and he said "no" it was just on the counter all night, but that it still tasted good.  I groaned and explained to Joseph about how meat goes bad, and can make you really sick.  I thought he knew this, but apparently the other times I've told him, he wasn't listening.  Caleb woke up saying he wanted to play with "HIS Liam" (his friend), and started washing his cars, and drying them, and setting them up in the backyard ready to play with his friend.  He wouldn't let me shut the back door, because he insisted that his friend Liam was on his way to play cars with him.  It was wet and cool outside so Caleb even took a towel outside and was drying this off everything, including the grass, in preparation for Liam to come over.  I finally convinced Caleb that Liam would play with him later and we    ate breakfast, and then went on our morning walk. (the kids' didn't have school) By the time we left, Joseph said his stomach was hurting so he stayed behind and soaked in the bath.  It was pretty cool outside this morning, so I had Malachi wearing his hat his Grandma Hardy made him. (see picture below)  After our walk, I changed Caleb's diaper, and noticed a really bad rash on his bottom, hands, and feet, some were blood red, some were blistered, and some were pink.  He was scratching them and complaining about them hurting, so I gave him a bath.  And then since I was feeding Malachi when he finished his bath, he fell asleep on the floor waiting for me to be done (picture below).  After Caleb woke up, we went to a kids health fair for a couple of hours, they had a good time, making jump ropes, eating healthy snacks, playing with hula hoops, and spending forever inside the bouncy house castle.  They ran through the bouncy house over and over again, for over an hour.  They were hot and sweaty, and Samuel would lie down on the tarp (pictured below) to rest in between running like crazy through the bouncy house. We got home, and then went to the park with the Kelley's(our friends).  As soon as we got home from the park, we went to the Deployed Spouses potluck dinner, Joseph was feeling better, so he came with us. (he layed on the couch for over 8 hours groaning, and playing video games.)  The kids had a good time, but there wasn't anything Samuel could eat there, so he ate whatever he wanted.  Caleb loved playing with his friend Liam there (they got to play with cars), he didn't even eat, he was too busy playing.  We went home, and I put everyone to bed, it was a busy and exhausting day, but fun.
Saturday, started out with Joseph leaving at 6:30 to go to the stake center to get ready for the pancake breakfast.  The kids and I got ready and met him there at 8 am.  Joseph was in charge of cooking the pancakes, and he did a good job.  Caleb's friend Liam was there, and Leighton (Samuel's friend).  They had fun playing together.  The stake preparedness fair started after the breakfast, and the kid's played in the nursery, while Austin came with me and went to the first session, about 72 hour kits.  After the session, we left and went to our FRG  (family readiness group) at the park.  The kids played for a while, although Caleb just wanted to swing, and the girls would get him in the swing and then push him for a minute, and then run off, leaving him there in the swing, poor Caleb.  We left the park and went over to the old commissary where they were having a big garage sale, and looked around for a little bit, until Samuel through a big fit because he wanted a $200 jeep, and I said "no".  So we left and went home to eat lunch.  After that our friends the Kelley's wanted us to go to the park with them, so we drove to a park downtown and had fun playing for a while, then went to a yogurt shop for a treat of frozen yogurt.  Then I dropped the kids off at the Primary practice and pizza party, and went home and had Liam and his mom over for our own little pizza party. I went back and picked up the kids from the activity.  Man that was a busy day, the kitchen has been a mess, since Joseph was supposed to do the dishes, and hasn't, and I told him I wouldn't do them for him.  He also didn't do his chores this weekend, and neither did Samuel.  But we have had a very busy weekend.  Caleb's rash has been a little better, I talked to the Nurse about it, and she said it was probably just a virus, and would be gone within 48 hours.  Last night, Caleb woke up screaming and crying, and kicking and punching about 5 different times.  I don't know what his problem was, he would just scream, and cry for me for about 10-15 minutes, until he would fall back asleep exhausted.  I would try to hold him and calm him down, but nothing worked.  But he woke up happy this morning, so I don't know what was going on with him.  The kids had their primary program today at church.  They did great, and Malachi, Caleb, Joseph and I had a good time watching them.  Everyone had a great time at church.  Although Samuel has been complaining about his neck and head hurting since yesterday, and been much subdued because of it.  If it isn't feeling better tomorrow, I will take him to either the dr. or chiropractor.  

In the hat, Grandma Hardy made him

So Sweet

Austin playing with the hula hoop at the health fair

Betsy helping Caleb in the bouncy house

Samuel resting in between running through the bouncy house

Austin helping Caleb in the bouncy house

Austin making a protective barrier so nobody can get to Malachi while I'm playing the piano

How Samuel fell asleep Saturday night

Austin ready for church

Samuel ready for church

Caleb fell asleep on my carpet, after his bath

Caleb ready for church

Betsy ready for church

His cheeks look so fat in this one.

Crazy week

Crazy week.  Last Sunday night, I couldn't find my cell phone after dinner, so I messaged my mom on Facebook and had her call me.  After calling me three times, I finally found my phone buried halfway down the garbage.  I don't know how it got there, but just glad I found it before the battery died.  I'm worried that my camera might have met the same fate, since I haven't been able to find it in over a week.  Monday the house cleaning lady came, so Caleb and I went to Chick-fil-A for breakfast with some other deployed spouses, and he had a great time playing for a couple hours.  Then we did our grocery shopping.  Tuesday I was getting ready to take Samuel to Soccer practice, and was getting his soccer ball out of the shed, I missed the step coming out and fell twisting my ankle and bruising my hand on the rocks. I thought If I just kept moving the pain would go away, but it didn't, so I layed down, put some ice on it, and elevated it.  Then I told Sam, that I couldn't take him to soccer, he was so upset, he finally calmed down enough to ask me if he could ask the Kelley's to take him (they are our friends on the next street over).  I told him he could, and he ran over to their house, and apparently blurted out that I was hurt, and demanded that they take him to soccer.  They were nice, and the husband took Samuel to soccer, and Leslie(the mom/wife) came over after he got home, and helped clean up after dinner, and put my kids to bed.  I couldn't put any weight on my foot, and it hurt so bad, I had to take ibuprofen.  So I scooted or crawled on the floor to get anywhere, and Caleb and sam (once he got home from soccer) would follow me around, scooting or crawling with me wherever I went.  Caleb kept bringing me cars, to make sure I had something to play with, and Samuel kept bringing me water.  All the older kids were next door at a birthday party.  Wednesday I could put some weight on it, but still hurt, so Caleb, Malachi, and I watched a lot of t.v., and skipped play group (Caleb was still coughing, so we wouldn't' have gone anyway.  I went to the Dr. after talking to a nurse (she said it sounded like a fracture).  I brought Caleb and Malachi with me, and the Dr. ordered an x-ray but said I couldn't take the kids, so I went on Thursday morning to get the x-ray done, after the kids were at school.  My friend Leslie was able to watch Malachi and Caleb for me.  I got to the hospital, and checked in at radiology, but they said the order for my x-ray wasn't in, so I called the clinic, and told them, and they said they would look into it.  After 45 minutes Leslie texted me to tell me Malachi was hungry, so I went back to their house to feed the baby.  The clinic called me as I got there, and told me the order was in.  So this time, I brought the kids back with my, and Leslie and her two kids, since Malachi hadn't eaten very well, and Caleb didn't want me to leave again.  So she watched them in the waiting room, while they x-rayed my foot. (Caleb was crying for me the whole time).  I still haven't heard the results from the x-ray, even though I've called them twice, so I'm assuming that my foot wasn't broken and was just a sprain.  It has felt better each today, and I'm walking normally again, it is just sore and achy still in spots.  Thursday evening my friend Janene took Samuel to soccer practice (her son has soccer at the same time on the same field, just different team), but it started raining like crazy, so she just took him back to her house to play, and eat dinner.  Caleb had fallen asleep early, so I sent Joseph to get Samuel from their house about 7:30, he didn't want to go in the pouring rain, but he owed me, since he forgot to take out the garbage this morning, and I had to do it with my hurt foot.  So he went, and the poor kid got so drenched, Samuel borrowed a broken umbrella from his friend so he didn't get too soaked.  When Joseph got home, dripping water everywhere, he looked at me and said, "we are SO even", and then went to take a hot bath.  We got 10 inches of rain in 4 hours, the park near our house turned into a lake 15 ft. deep.  Our power went out for about two hours, after I had put kids to bed.  Joseph and Malachi were still awake, so Joseph and I were looking for flashlights, I have spots for flashlights all over the house, but either they were all missing or the batteries were dead (darn kids), I finally found one in my underwear drawer that worked, so we had some light.  We got some water coming in through our back door, but not too much. The next morning I sent the kids off to school, and 5 minutes later it started pouring down rain again.  My neighbor stopped by and said that both of our kids got completely soaked going to school, and we needed to take them dry clothes, and Joseph called saying he needed his binder, so Caleb and I gathered up a change of clothes for everyone and took them to their schools.  Poor kids were indeed soaked, and very grateful for dry clothes.  Samuel brought me a note from his teacher, saying they were having ice cream sandwiches for a treat that afternoon, asking me to bring some Samuel could have.  So, Caleb, Malachi and I went home, and make homemade ice cream and cookies that Samuel could have, and put them together for ice cream sandwiches.  We did chores after school.
 Conversation with Caleb today in the bath
Caleb: where are the ducks?
Me: I don't know
Caleb: are they lost?
Me:yes
Caleb: oh no! What are we going to do?!?
He thinks for a few seconds then looks up, smiles, and says "alpha pig will find them" (from the cartoon "super why")
Saturday we went to an event at the focus on the family bookstore, and Joseph went paintballing with a friend.  We stayed at focus on the family for about four hours, the kids had a great time playing with their friends, and sliding down the slide they have there.  We came back and the kids played outside for a while.  We invited our friends over for dinner, since I made way to much for dinner. Conversation with Betsy:
I am peeling a cucumber and Betsy says " mom why are you peeling the cucumber?"
Me: well I usually buy the little cucumbers or the English cucumbers, and I like to eat the skin on those ones. I don't like the skin on this kind of cucumber, so I am peeling it.
Betsy: oh! Is that a Spanish cucumber?
Lol! My kids crack me up : ) Joseph went with his friend to the YS for a dinner and dance, he had a great day!  After dinner Betsy started complaining of a sore throat and mine was hurting too.  We all woke up this morning not feeling any better, and Caleb is still coughing and sounding pretty congested so we stayed home from church again.   The first part of the day was great, we played games together, and wrote letters, and had a good time, but the last half of the day was rough. The girls wanted to make brownies and ice cream. Betsy put in 1 cup each of oil and water, instead of 1/3 cup of oil and water so we had to triple the batch. Austin put in an entire bottle of doterra peppermint oil in the ice cream instead of 1/2 tsp. Still haven't fixed that one. I was letting a gallon sized bag of frozen homemade spaghetti sauce thaw out, becuase it was frozen stuck to the ice cream bowl, and Joseph opened the bag and filled it with hot water and dumped it down the sink. As Caleb was jumping off the couch into Austin's arms, Samuel grabbed his legs and yanked down, making him fall hard face first to the floor (luckily no stitches required). Every room in the house is a mess, and the baby is crying.  I Cleaned downstairs for 15 minutes and got the living room pretty good. Then I went in the kitchen and Caleb had gotten a bowl and broken playdough  into 

pieces in it and added water, as I walked in, he tripped over his bowl and spilled it all over the floor. I looked in the 

pantry and he had dumped out all my gluten free pasta and poured milk over it. While I was cleaning that 

up, he went into the living room and dumped out board games on the floor and spilled juice on the carpet.

Spiders, peppers, things breaking, and more

Caleb loves Malachi

Malachi at one month

Malachi in Daddy's ACUs

The past two weeks have just flown by in a blur of changing diapers, bathing kids, feeding baby, and other kids, trying in vain to sleep, and cooking, cleaning, and helping kids with homework.  I asked the kids to help me remember what happened the past two weeks, and this is what we came up with.  When Grandma Stevens was here we found a huge spider, tarantula sized (it scared everybody), and Grandma killed it!  Then I called and got pest control to come out a spray for spiders.  On Saturday, the 24th, we went to pick up our bountiful basket, but I ended up going to the wrong site, and the site I had clicked on online was about an hour away, so I thought I was going to lose my basket.  We headed to the Golden Corral for Betsy's birthday breakfast. As soon as we got there, the bountiful basket people called and said they would wait for me to come get the basket, so I dropped off Grandma and all the kids, but Malachi, and went and picked up the basket.  I got back to Golden Corral to pick them up, and Samuel and Joseph came running out.  Joseph tells me that Samuel ate, 2 helpings of pudding, 2 pieces of cake, and had been drinking from the chocolate fountain!!!  I looked at Samuel and sure enough he had chocolate all over his face and shirt.  I could tell that Samuel was starting to go a little crazy from the sugar, so we got everyone in the car, and drove home, and Samuel took a nap.  The nap helped, but Samuel still had a rough day, but we made it through.  We went to the America the Beautiful park hoping to play in the splash pad area, but the water wasn't on.  The kids had a picnic lunch and playing a little bit, but it was quite hot, and with no water to play with, went back home.  Grandma and I cut up a bunch of hatch chili peppers we got in our basket, and they were really strong.  We both were coughing, and hands tingling and burning, and everything we touched on our face started burning for a long time, it took two days for the sensations to finally stop.  I learned to wear gloves the next time I'm cutting up peppers.  I threw away the peppers we cut up, I thought something was wrong with them. 
I made it through our first Sunday with no Grandmas with no major incidents.  We didn't arrive early enough to sit in the soft benches, and Samuel refused to sit in the hard chairs, so we sat on the couch in the foyer.  During sacrament meeting I gave Caleb and Samuel each half a granola bar.  Caleb said he wanted the whole granola bar, and Austin said "you're too little to have a whole granola bar".  Caleb said "I'm not little, your CRAZY"  everyone laughed and Austin said "Mom, you should put that on your blog", Caleb said, "I'm not a blog, you're funny."  Then Caleb took off his shirt and ran around the foyer.  Silly boy. 
This week was the week for things to break.  The couch legs broke off, two bikes broke, pieces of the refrigerator kept falling off, the shoe tree fell and broke twice, and the girl's bunk bed broke.  I also put together my new stroller, well tried, some of the screws won't fit through the holes, and I can't figure out how to fix it yet.  I was able to fix everything else, but the bunk bed was not safe anymore, all the welded parts started coming apart.  (not good), Austin almost fell out of the bed once in her sleep, and Caleb fell off the ladder, when it came apart.  I took the beds apart, and completely rearranged their room, to make everything fit.  I had almost all the kids helping to lift and move stuff, but we finally finished. 
We went on several "Caleb Hunts" this week.  Caleb loves to sneak out of the house, with one of the other kids, and then go hide.  When I discover he's missing, I call all the kids together, and usually a couple neighbor kids join us, and tell them we're going on a Caleb hunt.  We all search for Caleb, and find him hiding in some random small space.  He grins and tries to run and hide again as soon as we find him, but I take him inside and talk to him about only playing hide and go seek when we tell him it's time to play.   Once he was in the neighbor's back yard, hiding behind a chair in the corner, another time he was hiding in the corner of another neighbor's front porch,  another time he was in the garage. 
My parents are paying to have someone help me clean my house once a week, until Travis comes home.  The lady is awesome, she came on Tuesday, and cleaned from about 10-3, and did an amazing job.  My house was so clean, the kids came home from school and kept running through the house, exclaiming how awesome it looked, and how clean their rooms were.  Now obviously it didn't stay that clean, but it has been a lot easier to keep it fairly clean, and the kids did the chores on Saturday without any complaining (well except for a little complaining from Samuel and Joseph)
I started teaching piano lessons again this week, I have just three  students right now, and maybe one more starting next week.  It worked out really well, two of them are homeschooled, so they came while the older kids were at school.  Caleb watched a movie, and I held Malachi while teaching. 
My friend, Leslie and I took two boxes of tomatoes, and made a bunch of spaghetti sauce to freeze on Thursday, it was nice to talk to her for a while and get some more spaghetti sauce.  We also went out to dinner the week before, while Travis' mom was here, and we had a great time laughing and talking. 
I started doing some dancing on the Wii, and when I turned it on Caleb started singing "body rock" and dancing.  He was pretty funny.  There is a Justin Bieber song on there "Beauty and a Beat" and has the lyric "body rock" in it, and Caleb picked up on that.   I lost my camera again, but as soon as I find it, I'm going to try to video tape him.
Friday night we went to a Deployed Spouses potluck dinner.  The theme was "breakfast" so we brought crepes.  They told us while we were there, that if our kids had to go to the bathroom, we needed to go with them, since a few weeks ago they had left it a mess.  I realized how sleep deprived I am when, Samuel and his friend Leighton had to go to the bathroom, and I took them to the men's bathroom and then followed them in.  There was another boy, probably about 10 years old, in there, and looked quite shocked to see me in there.  The kids had a good time laughing at my blunder.
Caleb has gotten clingier and clingier, he won't go to childcare, and has a hard time with nursery, or being dropped off at anyone's house.  I have free childcare hours, but I can't even use them, because Caleb freaks out if I try and take him there.  He won't let anyone do anything for him except for me.  He also started coughing yesterday, and got worse today, so we stayed home from church.   
These are some pictures I took with my phone during the past month.

Caleb playing bowling at IT'Z

Samuel falling asleep in the car

The view from my hospital window, where workers kept climbing up and down

Malachi at birth

Austin was trying to prop Malachi up on the couch

picnic at the park

Samuel spinning at the park

Caleb trying to stay I the shade

The girls having their picnic in the shade

Betsy with her "ham" toungue

Malachi's first bath

Betsy holding Malachi