If I can't see you, you can't see me..

I had a funny experience with Samuel the other day. It was time for him to take a nap, and he really wanted to take some food with him to his room, but I said no, and put him down for his nap. I start cleaning up in the kitchen, and I see Samuel tip toeing down the hallway towards his food, and he is covering his eyes with his hands. He grabs his bowl of food, and starts to tip toe it back to his room. So I come over, take his food away, tell him I can see him, and send him back to bed. About a minute later I see Samuel sneaking down the hallway, this time with his blanket over his head, and he grabs his food, and quickly stuffs it under his blanket and starts sneaking back toward his room. So I pull the blanket off his head, take away the food, and tell him I can still see him, and send him back to bed. After another minute had past, I noticed Samuel again coming down the hallway, this time on his belly slinking slowly down the hallway with his body and face pressed up against the wall so he can't see me. This time I get to him before he reaches his food, and try to send him back to bed. He starts throwing a fit, and tries to get me to go to my room, so he will be able to sneak food without me seeing him. After this point it was no longer funny, but Samuel was throwing lots of tantrums and not taking a nap. But I couldn't help but laugh to myself the whole time he kept trying to sneak his food, and thinking that if he couldn't see me, I couldn't see him.

If You're Not In Love With A Soldier

I came across this poem, and really liked it. It points out that even though it is hard being in love with a soldier, we do get blessings along with hardships.

If You're Not In Love With A Soldier
author unknown

If you're not in love with a soldier, you can't know adventure. You don't know smelly gray PT uniforms that require a daily washing. You can't understand green and brown camouflaged bags flooding your bedroom floor.If you're not in love with a soldier, you can't understand the meaning of the phrase "going to the field" and the weeks you spend away from each other.
If you're not in love with a soldier, you can never imagine the hole in your heart when that phone call comes. "Honey, I am leaving tomorrow to go overseas. I don't know how long I will be gone or exactly where I am going, but I want you to know that I love you - always!"
If you're not in love with a soldier, you don't know what it's like to say that final good-bye. You don't know what it really means to be glued to the television. You don't understand fear and you can't possibly understand the sleepless nights of endless crying wondering if you will ever see the love of your life alive again.
If you're not in love with a soldier, you can't know the immense joy, the uncontrollable smile, or the butterflies in your stomach when you see your soldier march into the family waiting area upon redeployment. You can't understand the self-control it takes to stand on the other side of the room as some higher-up gives a seemingly endless welcome home speech while all the soldiers stand in formation. You don't know what it's like to have that second first kiss or what it's like to experience puppy love all over.
If you're not in love with a soldier, you can't truly understand how to make every moment count because you never know when that phone call may come again.
If you're not in love with a soldier, you can never really understand how very delicate life is!

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.

Fun things with Daddy home

Daddy and Samuel driving a cart through the Wal-mart parking lot

Daddy wrangling Samuel at the Children's Museum (I was so glad not to be the one doing all the chasing)

Daddy trying to catch children with big bubbles

Austin blowing me a bubble

Joseph really likes playing with the bubbles

Everybody playing with giant bubbles

Daddy riding the high-wire bike at the musuem (I did it too, but I had the camera, so no pictures of me)

Joseph playing with an air board at the musuem

Daddy helping Samuel engineer a marble contraption

Austin and Betsy playing with rubber tubing and golf balls

Austin and Betsy sitting outside the museum

All the kids got lollipops from chuck-e-cheese with their tickets

Travis came home for R & R at Christmas time, and we all had a blast, and had fun for 2 weeks with him home. He never told us exactly which day he was coming home, so when the doorbell rang, and it was Daddy, we were all exstatic! Everyone crowded around Daddy trying to get hugs, and time with him. We did lots of activities with Travis home and the kids out of school. We did our Christmas Caroling and delivering plates of yummy Christmas Cookies, that I'd spent weeks preparing. We had our Christmas presents to open Christmas morning, which was fun and exciting. Travis' mom came to visit for a while after Christmas too, so we got to have fun with Grandma too. We went to Chuck-e-Cheese, and the Incredible Pizza Co. they were both a ton of fun, and we all had a great time. We went shopping downtown at the flea market, and I got a new jogger stroller that I'm sooo excited about. We also took a trip to Albuquerque to go to the Temple, and really enjoyed going to a session together, and then afterwards going to this really fun Children's Museum, that was just amazing and had so many fun things to do and explore, I think this was everyone's favorite place that we went to. During the middle of this I ended up with a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) which resulted in a Dr. visit and was given the wrong antibiotics, so the infection moved up into my kidneys, and resulted in a hospital visit New Year's Eve, to get new antibiotics. I finally recovered but was very ticked off that I lost precious time with my husband and children being sick. We had an absolutly wonderful time together, and we were all very sad to send Travis back to Iraq.

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frustrating night

one of the areas after we scrubbed

I had a frustrating evening, and needed to vent so here it goes. My kids trashed the house we worked so hard to clean up, my stomach hurts, my printer broke and I really needed to print something out for tonight, so I had to come up with something else, I hurt my wrist, my kids were fighting and hurting each other, and to top it off, when samuel was supposed to be getting his shoes on in his room, he was actually coloring all over the wall, floor, and his body with black dry-erase marker, it took all five of us over 1 hour of constant scrubbing to finally get most of it off, and I'm not sure which looks worse, the wall with black marker on it, or the wall with the paint scrubbed off of it, and I've had it and just want to cry...so *big sigh* there it is, I got that out, now I can get over it and move on. Last Sunday my girls wanted to have curly hair, so we rolled their hair up in curlers for Church. Don't they look cute?

update

So, I haven't put anything on my blog in a while. We had some snow in El Paso, it was pretty rare, and the kids loved it. Samuel would only last for a little while, before he would get cold, but we still had a lot of fun, making snow balls, and snowmen, and throwing it at each other. We've been busy getting ready for Christmas. I'm finally ready, well all except for the clean house part. Samuel is so excited for Christmas, and is glad that he is a big boy. He has done a good job with potting training, and refuses to wear diapers at night, so I'm washing his bed sheets almost every night, hopefully the incidents will gradually get far and fewer in-between and eventually he won't wet the bed at night either. He keeps telling me that he is a good boy, and he even told Santa that he got him a gift for Christmas. I think Santa was pleasently suprised. The kids are out of School for the next two weeks, and Travis is supposed to be home for R & R by Christmas, so we should have a good time. I was also released from my calling as a primary teacher, and called to be the relief society pianist. I will miss the kids that I taught, but I'm so excited to go to relief society and be fed spiritually every week. Samuel has been sick the past week, but is gradually doing better, and I've been struggling to get the house clean, and get all the cleaning projects done that I want to do before Travis gets home. We've also been making lots of Christmas cookies and goodies to get ready for our Christmas Caroling we're going to do next Wednesday. Betsy and Austin continue to be my sweet helpful girls. They love to help me with my projects and baking. Joseph has been doing well in school, and we have fun playing games together. We're all looking forward to Christmas, and having Daddy home for a little while.

Samuel's Birthday!

Samuel had a birthday on the 17th. I can't believe my baby is 3 years old, boy time flies. Samuel started potty training a week before his birthday, and is now officially a big boy!!! Yeah! I've been changing diapers for eight long years, it is finally over!!!! So Samuel got to have a birthday party with some of his friends, and he had a blast. I made a balloon pinata that the kids had fun breaking into, and eating candy. Samuel loved the oreo cookie cake I made for him (he loves oreos) And he was super excited to open his presents from his friends. He had a great time at his party, and then after school was out he got to have cake and ice cream again and open his presents from his parents and grandparents. He was a very happy 3 year old all day long, but I think his favorite present was his new bike. He loves bikes, so he was exstatic to get a big boy bike! I love my Samuel, and I'm so glad he had a wonderful birthday!