Our Offer was accepted!

Last friday we got a lot of snow, and Samuel and Travis went and shoveled the driveway of our friends house a few street over, whose husband is deployed and is 7-8 months pregnant, but he got the wrong house, so they ended up shoveling another ladies driveway too.  That lady was so grateful, she somehow found out who they were (well Travis was wearing his uniform, so it had his name and rank on it).  She found me on facebook and told me how much it meant to her, and then brought us some homemade spaghetti for dinner.  Caleb loved playing in the snow this week, loved licking and eating it, and playing in it, but got cold so fast, and would come in and say "I'm sick"

We bought Travis a new car, a silver Chevy Malibou 2010, from the Colorado springs mission home.  He loves it.  We also made an offer on a house, and it was accepted!  Yeah!!  This in an older home, and needs some TLC, but has lots of space for us with 5 bedrooms, 2 other rooms, 4 full bathrooms, 3 levels, and 3300 square feet.    We are hoping to move in by Christmas.  The home was inspected on Monday, and we've got our list of repairs to make, but nothing too big.  Wednesday I spent from 5am to 12:30 in my "office"(bedroom) reading and e-signing 70 page documents, finding and uploading 19 documents, reading and signing 26 different documents, and uploading those, and calling and getting estimates for the repairs that will need to be done.  Plus, I took care of six kids (okay they mostly watched t.v. and the older ones helped with the younger ones).  Then after I finally got all that done, I took a break and took the kids to the park.  Then Travis got home, I planned Thanksgiving dinner, and sent him to the store for a few items, and got to baking.  I crashed about 6pm, and ordered pizza for dinner.  Thanksgiving day the kids and I spent the day, baking, and cleaning.  We had our friends the Snells over for dinner, and had a wonderfully delicious feast.  Joseph went on a temple trip with the youth on Tuesday and today (Friday).  The kids have been home this whole week with no school, so they all came with my to the new home for the inspection on Monday.  While I was sitting on the floor feeding Malachi, with Betsy sitting right next to me, Samuel came and jumped through us and accidentally hit the baby in the head.  He cried for a long time, and I had a hard time calming him down.  Luckily we left from there to go to Betsy's Chiropractic appointment, and the chiropractor checked Malachi out for free, and found a small bone in his neck out of place and fixed it.  Malachi was asleep when he was checking him out and fixing it, and he smiled in him sleep right as the chiropractor was fixing his neck.  Pretty cool.  Tuesday the kids all had dentist appointments, and hooray!! no cavities.  Joseph also had another neurofeedback appointment that afternoon.  The kids and I made pumpkin cookies, and Travis and Joseph took them home teaching that night, and also made dinner for one of his families.

Samuel's Birthday and new family pics

box baby

Caleb and Austin playing at chuck-e-cheese

Samuel earning tickets at chuck-e-cheese

Joseph's "tintin" hair-do

Attack of the tumbleweeds

sweet little Malachi

Family picture, it was really cold and windy, so the two littlest ones wouldn't smile

I love Samuel's expression in this one

I love Travis, so glad he is back home

Happy baby

What's in the box?

Here he comes

He's a "Caleb" in the box 

Samuel getting a Kindle for his birthday

Samuel got some hexbugs

Daddy and Malachi

Getting ready to blow out the candles

This was a busy week.  Monday we spent all day getting free meals for Veterans Day, it was delicious.  We all ate way too much food.  We are still working on getting another car, so Travis had the car most of the week, so I didn't go anywhere, and had to cancel an appointment and reschedule another one.  Wednesday and Thursday Travis helped some neighbors/friends move, and they couldn't fit a lot of stuff in their truck, so Travis filled up our garage will tons of stuff, it took him several days, of reorganizing to finally be able to fit the car back in, and even then it is a very narrow opening, so you can barely get out of the car, and I have to lift the baby over my head (he is in his infant car seat) to get him into the house.  I am still not getting enough sleep, and two nights ago, I even dreamed about sleeping.  Thursday night we went out to our friends house for dinner, and they live on five acres, and have goats, chickens, and bunnies.  The kids had a great time playing there.  Friday after school, we took Samuel to chuck-e-cheese to celebrate his birthday, everyone gave their tickets they earned to Samuel, so he could get one big prize.  They all had fun, and Samuel got 1000 tickets and turned them in for a big nerf gun for his prize, then we picked up free pizza on the way home, and watched "tintin" the movie.  Saturday was a very busy day.  We went to the golden corral for breakfast.  (Samuel's choice), then we picked up our bountiful basket, and spent the next several hours, taking 6 kids through 8 different houses.  Yes, we are house hunting.  I had no thoughts of moving, but all the sudden felt prompted by the spirit, that moving into a house would be good for us, so we have been looking.  Everyone loved the 7th house we looked at, and kept saying since Samuel is turning 7 it is a sign.  The house needs some work, mostly being cleaned, painting, and having the kitchen remodeled.  But, has lots of space and a huge backyard, and it is 12 minutes from where Travis works.  We made an offer on the house last night, so we'll see what happens.  As soon as we were done looking at houses, we drove home and got ready to take some family pictures.  Unfortunately, it ended up being a very cold and windy day, but managed to get a few good pictures in, but couldn't get the two littlest ones to smile, because they didn't like the wind.   Then after pictures we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner.  We had four free kids coupons, but they only ended up letting us use one, so it was more expensive than we thought.  As we were driving home, the wind was pretty crazy, and tumbleweeds were flying everywhere.  When we pulled into our street, every house on the West side of the street was covered in tumbleweeds, it was "attack of the tumbleweeds", the next street over from ours was tons worse than ours, one house had tumbleweeds completely covering their house, they were 25 feet deep!  The kids thought it was awesome, and spent the rest of the evening with rakes, removing tumbleweeds from in front of people's houses in the dark.  Sunday we went to stake conference, and the kids were great.  We had them taking notes to earn treats, and they said it all went by so quickly, and they couldn't believe it when it was over.  Austin took 8 full pages of notes!  After we got home from church, we gave Samuel his presents.  He got a sensory swing from Grandma and Grandpa Hardy that he is excited to use, and a Kindle and some hexbug toys.  He is one lucky little boy.  We had friends over for dinner, and I forgot to take the bread out of the oven, so it burned, but everything else was delicious.  Yesterday we went and looked at the house again, and turned in our offer for it.  We also went to a Hail and Farewell, and Malachi was smiling and cooing and gooing at everyone there, he was so cute.

Daddy's Home!!!

Caleb after his bath

Daddy and Malachi

Daddy and Malachi

Travis, Caleb (his feet hanging down barely between Travis'), Joseph, and Samuel on the sky ride

Austin (far left), Me, Betsy, and the back of Malchi's head on the sky ride

Caleb on the train with daddy

Austin on the train

Samuel on the train

Joseph taking a picture of me, as I am taking a picture of him

Travis and Caleb ready to ride the Himalayan ride

Caleb riding the rocket ride

Daddy and Caleb on the carousel 

Daddy and Caleb sliding down the slide

Caleb asleep in the swing daddy put up

Malachi happy to have a daddy

Caleb happy to have his daddy back home

So in the wee hours of the morning on Monday.  I woke up at 1am, fed the baby, and woke up all the other kids and we drove to the Special Events Center on fort carson, to welcome home Travis.  I really wish the army would time these things better.  Anyway we got there about 1:30 in the morning.  Caleb was not too happy, since he was still not feeling very good.  When we got there the bleachers were already full of waiting families, so we stood off to the side, and waited for Travis.  A news crew, came and asked me if they could film our families reunion and interview us.  I said "yes", so they put a mic on me, and asked everyone's names and about our family, the deployment, and Malachi being born without his Daddy there.  All the soldiers arrived right at 2am, and marched in, there was a quick ceremony, and they released the soldiers to find their families.  No one could see Travis.  So we walked from one side of the gym to the other side, then back to the middle, to wait for him to find us.  We still couldn't see him, and the gym was starting to thin out.  Several soldiers were also looking for Travis for him, and Joseph and Samuel walked outside to where the baggage was to look for him, as well as several other soldiers.  They finally told us, that he did indeed come in, but nobody could find him.  The camera crew gave up, following us around, and went and interviewed someone else.  Finally someone said they saw him walking home, so we got in the car and drove home, looking for him the whole way home.  A few minutes after we got home, Travis arrived on our doorstep, having walked through the park to get home, carrying all his bags, thinking we had decided to sleep instead of coming to get him.  We were sure excited to see each other, and took a while to get everyone back to sleep.  Caleb kept saying how "daddy was somewhere, but we couldn't find him, but now he is home".  Malachi looked at Travis as if trying to figure out how he got out of the screen he was used to seeing him on, then smiled and was quite happy with him.  This week has been filled with being together as a family, and as a couple.  Travis has been holding Malachi a lot, and changing some diapers.  Wednesday night, Travis and I went on a date, with just Malachi and had a nice couple of hours together.  Travis cleaned out the car, put a swing up in the garage, got all his stuff put away, and helped organize our bathroom.  Travis had to go back to work for a couple of hours on thursday, but then had the rest of the day off, and no work friday or today, due to the veterans day holiday.  Caleb has been sick with diarrhea, and stomach pains, so I finally took him to see the doctor on friday.  The doctor wanted to get some stool samples, so I got the fun job of scraping poop off caleb's diaper and into 4 different vials to be tested, and taking them back to the lab.  We haven't gotten any results yet, but Caleb is doing much better now.   On Saturday we went to the "north pole, santa's workshop" amusement park, and had a great time.  The kids loved riding the rides, and Caleb and Daddy rode all the rides together.  Travis and Joseph went to a Veteran's fireside together last night, and are officially home teaching companions.  Caleb has been making lots of messes, like a good two year old.  Last night, we found that he had taken everything out of one of the cupboards, and two of the drawers in our bathroom (the one we had spent hours cleaning and organizing) and thrown them on the floor, including over 200 q-tips.  This was right before Travis left for the fireside, so he told Caleb to clean it up, and Caleb spent the next hour picking all the q-tips up and putting them on my computer desk, and picking everything up off the bathroom floor and throwing it onto the floor in my bedroom.  He was so proud of himself , he came and told me "mom, I did it! I cleaned for you".  It was so cute, I didn't have the heart to tell him, that now my bedroom needed to be cleaned, I just told him great job, and thank you. We are so happy to have Travis home, it makes everything better!!

No trick-or-treating

Caleb fell asleep in a nice comfy spot, with all the stuffed animals

Betsy with the butterfly painted on her

Samuel with the guitar painted on his cheek

Caleb with a smiley face on his cheek, which he promptly wiped off 2 seconds later, with his sleeve

Austin with a flower on her cheek

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The hula dancers

Caleb clapping enthusiastically for the hula dancers, he was absolutely fascinated by the dancing. 

Monday night I fed the four missionaries, and had forgotten until that morning.  So Caleb and I went to Costco and bought a huge chicken pot pie, and some rolls, and salad.  I had promised the kids we would go to IT'Z right after school (I had a groupon I needed to use), so we went, and my friend Janene came over and stuck it in the oven for me, since it had to cook for an hour and a half.  But we had a good time at IT'Z, and made it home in time to get dinner on the table, and make some homemade ice cream.  Tuesday night Samuel had his last soccer game, he had a great time playing, but it was dark and freezing, so we were happy it when it was done.  Joseph went with a friend to the 100 years of scouting broadcast, and came home and said "it was a great presentation, I wish general conference were more like that".  I watched it later with him, and it was a good show, and I learned a lot about scouting.  In particular I liked the song they sang about moms, and eagle scouts.  I'd like to say we were all healthy this week, but I'd be lying.  Caleb got a really bad cold.  Wednesday night, he was up a lot of the night, having trouble breathing, and he wouldn't let me give him medicine or anything, he was just miserable.  Finally, Thursday, (Halloween) he was so bad, just before trick-or-treating time that he allowed me to give him a breathing treatment, with the nebulizer, and he had a fever so I gave him Tylenol.  He finally fell asleep, and the rest of the kids and I watched "dennis the menace" on t.v. and had popcorn.  Joseph went out trick-or-treating with a bunch of his friends, and Austin went trick-or-treating with her "Big", but everyone else stayed home with me.  Samuel was the most upset about not going trick-or-treating, but he still enjoyed the movie and popcorn, plus I gave each of the kids $5 for their candy, whether they got any or not, so that helped appease him as well. Earlier on thursday I did take Samuel, Caleb, and Malachi to a special trick or treat for special needs kids, and he got to go to a building on post, and get some Halloween toys.   I spent the day on Friday, getting ready for a candy making class I was teaching for the relief society super saturday.  I made carmel, peppermint patties, chocolate peanut butter balls,  and raspberry cremes.  I also dipped some apples in carmel, and made some carmel popcorn balls.   Friday night Caleb was feeling a little better, so we went to a free military dinner put on by the YMCA, that I had RSVP'd for.  The kids enjoyed getting their faces painted, and painted ornaments to send to soldiers oversees.  The dinner was yummy, and went well, except Samuel kept whining and complaining about not being able to eat all of it.  After the dinner, the guy in charge said the kids could go play in their indoor playground, during the hula dancing.  Joseph and Samuel wanted to, so I let them, telling Joseph not to let Samuel out of his sight.  Caleb absolutely loved the hula dancing, he kept looking at me with shock and amazement on his face at the way they moved their hips.  He kept trying to imitate them while standing on his chair, it was pretty funny.  Part of the way through, a lady brought Samuel to me, saying he had pushed a girl, so he stayed next to me the rest of the time.  Then when it was over, we went to find Joseph, but he wasn't in the playland, so I let the other kids play in it, except Samuel, and we waited for Joseph to come back, since I didn't want to drag five kids all over the place, looking for him. After waiting an hour, Joseph finally came back.  I guess he got mixed in with a group that was being watched by childcare workers, and they wouldn't let him leave.  So we finally left and went home.  Saturday was the relief society super Saturday, so I gathered up all my supplies, and piled all the kids into the car, and we drove to the church.  We ate the breakfast, and I dropped off some of the kids at the nursery, I kept Austin and Malachi with me.  Austin helped me make the first step of the Orange cremes, since I had forgotten them at home.  Then Austin and I worked on making my menu board for the craft portion.  It was time for my candy making class, and after quickly changing Samuel's diaper got started.  It was fun teaching everyone how to make the different candies, and they all loved them, and had fun making them.  I had to hold Caleb for the first half of it, then Joseph was finally able to coax him into playing with him.  Malachi was being passed around to all the ladies, unless I had to feed him.  Everyone loves him.  I finally finished the class, and fed Malachi again.  I came back to clean up the mess I had made in the kitchen, and two ladies had put all my leftover candies in baggies, and were taking them home with them.  I was a little disappointed, I wanted to have some leftovers, but oh well, I guess that's what they were there for.  At least I had one batch still in the freezer, that wasn't done yet.  I cleaned up, and gathered up the kids and went home.  As I was driving home, I realized I had signed Joseph up for horseback riding lessons, and that they started in 45 minutes.  I hurried home, to grab the address and directions and realized it was a 45 minute drive, and in Peyton, CO.  So we drove all the way out to the middle of nowhere, and made it only 15 minutes late.  No on had any lunch, but we were 1/2 hour away from the closest city, so we ate all the snacks I had in the car, and the candies from the freezer.  Austin was able to get horseback riding lessons too, because one of the kids was a "no show".  Austin and Joseph had a great time, they said they loved every minute of it.  Caleb and Malachi were asleep in the car, so I sat in the car and read for an hour until they woke up.  Then the kids and I played on the Ranch and the swing set for the other two hours.  It was supposed to be only 2 hours total, but since they had a late start, the lady gave them a 3 hour lesson.  We bought a dozen eggs from her chickens and then stopped for dinner on the way home, we were all starving.  I tried to get the kids to do their chores after we got home, but I think they were just as exhausted as I was.  Today we made it to church, but soon after sacrament meeting started, Caleb started having diarrhea, after changing him 4 times in 30 minutes, his bum was incredibly sore, and I had run out of diapers, and Caleb was miserable.  So we went back home.  Caleb is still not feeling good, and is having a hard time, so I've been taking care of him, and not doing anything else I wanted to get done today, to get ready for Travis coming home.  Oh well, I know he'll understand.

more sickness

This is Malachi smiling as Travis is singing him a song over the phone.  He loves the sound of his Daddy's voice

Caleb threw up Monday and Wednesday several times, but was finally feeling better by the weekend.  So I spent most of the week home with sick kids.  On Wednesday Caleb, Malachi and I dropped off the car to get an oil change, and then walked to our friends house for an LDS chaplain spouse get together (it wasn't far), and while we were there, I got a call from the school saying that Betsy had thrown up.  I didn't have a car, so one of the nice ladies there, gave me a ride to the school to get Betsy and bring her back, than stayed with her while I got Caleb and Malachi from the friends house and walked home (again not far).  Caleb was so mad at me for taking me away from his friends house, that he sat down and refused to get up.  So I ended up carrying the both of them back to the house.  Thursday the evening was crazy, Caleb was still throwing up in the morning, but felt better the rest of the day.  Both Austin and Betsy went with their "bigs" to carve pumpkins, Samuel had a Soccer game, and Joseph had a psychologist appointment.  So I asked my friend's husband to take Samuel to his game, and I took Joseph to his appointment with Malachi and Caleb.  I had put chicken and rice soup in the crock pot that morning, and offered to bring dinner over to my friend, since her son was sick too.  I decided to make some rolls to go with it, so I looked up a recipe that was fairly easy and fast and started making them.  I realized soon after starting that this was a huge batch.  So I decided to make on large cookie sheet full of rolls, and the rest into cinnamon rolls.  I ended up being able to make 2 more large cookie sheets full of cinnamon rolls, but they were absolutely delicious.  the recipe is on my kitchen blog, if anyone reading this wants the recipe www.kayleykitchen.blogspot.com under potato puff rolls/ maple cinnamon rolls. Also the crock pot went crazy, and tried to explode, I was moving it out of the way to roll out the dough, and it sparked and made a small explosion sound, and half the outlets in the kitchen stopped working.  So I went outside and flipped the circuit breaker, and looked at the crock pot to see what was wrong, but couldn't find anything so I tried plugging it in again, and the same thing happened again only a little louder.  Once again the outlet's stopped working, so I flipped the circuit breaker again, and but the outlets in the kitchen still wouldn't work, I hit the reset button, nothing.  So now only half my kitchen works, so I've moved some of our appliances to the hallway so that they will work.  I put in a work order, but haven't heard back from maintenance yet.  I also finally realized what happened, when I checked underneath my crockpot, and saw the wires exposed in the cord.  I really liked that crock pot, I'm going to try buying some electrical tape, and seeing if I can fix it.  So I was crazy busy getting everything ready, but we made it, and I got everyone off.  The only hiccup, was when we were coming home from Joseph's appointment, we hid bad traffic, and Samuel had to stay at his friend's house until we got back home.
Friday, Joseph had another appointment for neurofeedback, I don't remember if I have mentioned this before in my posts, but the results of his testing found that the front region of his brain is constantly on high alert and agitated, which makes it almost impossible for him to handle stress without anger, so he is going to these neurofeedback sessions to train that region of his brain to calm down, to help him get his anger under control.  I also delieved all those cinnamon rolls, I made up 9 big plates with the extras, to all my visiting teaching families, and serveral friends.  I also had a Samuel's friend's father come and tell me about some inappropriate behavior from Samuel, and asked that our kids stay away from his kids.  These were really good friends of all of ours, so it has been a very difficult weekend for me emotional, dealing with what Samuel did and helping him understand, and teaching him, so it does not happen again.  It has taken several days of study, pondering, and prayer, but I have come to a feeling of peace, that I am doing what is right in helping Samuel, and everything else involved.  I love being able to receive guidance, from a loving heavenly father.  Saturday we spent the day doing chores, and that night went to our ward potluck and trunk or treat.  Joseph wasn't able to come because he did not complete his chores.  Austin and Betsy both dressed up as angry birds, and Samuel and Caleb were each spiderman.  The kids had a great time.  Caleb managed to get a hold of a bright purple frosting cupcake, and was eating it when it slipped and got smooshed all over his front and arm, and of course the floor.  I grabbed all the napkins I could, and a bunch of wet wipes and cleaned him up, but not before his friend Liam wiped some frosting off of him, and licked his finger and said "yum".  That made us all laugh.  I had to go feed Malachi when it was time for the trunk or treat, so Austin and Betsy took Caleb around, and Samuel went with his friend Leighton.  They all had a great time, and were very good, and it worked out perfectly, because I finished feeding Malachi right as they were done, so I walked out, as they were walking towards me, and we went to the car.  They each gave me all there candy, and got to keep there non-candy items and I payed them for their candy.  I was so happy Sunday morning when I woke up, and no one was sick.  We got ready and went to church, it was great.  The kids were pretty well behaved during sacrament meeting.   Samuel's friend Leighton sat with us, and so did his younger brother, and Caleb's friend Liam.  I must have looked quite a sight, with 8 children surrounding me on our bench.  We almost didn't make it, because Malachi woke up not long after the meeting started, and I new he would be hungry, but I didn't see how I could leave to feed him, and getting up and walking out with 8 children, would have been very disruptive.  Austin did take him out once, and change his diaper, and I just let him suck on his little fist.  Of course, the meeting went long, and Malachi was not putting up with just his fist anymore, but we just barely made it to the end of the meeting.  Later the Mom who had been sitting in front of house, told me how impressed she was with how patient I was with my kids.  The kids and I made up a song to sing for Travis when he gets back.  Were down to the single digits now, and getting pretty excited.