A morning in the life...

I only made it through half the day, but here's a little snapshot of a morning in the life of our crazy crew!

This week we had an extra member of our family, our friends' Great Dane, Velvet!

A calm and sweet morning moment...NOT! I think she got shot by a nerf dart.

We were reading and reciting their poems and he took the poetry book off to look at it. 

Some cereal for the one who didn't like the breakfast plans

"Puff Pancake" (Dutch Baby)

Oven to 400, grease pan (I usually use one 9x12 glass casserole dish) 

Place about 3T of butter to melt in pan in the oven

Mix 6 eggs, 1c flour, 1 heaping cup milk

Pour batter into hot pans once the butter is melted and sizzling

Bake for about 20 minutes!

Enjoy!

Leave a nice mess for mom! :-/

This year, MC usually does schoolwork in her room and Ellie usually closes herself into the schoolroom. Here's Ellie hard at work! They both also had online courses this day, which they do on the laptop in their rooms.

Katie's "work" this morning, putting all her baby dolls to sleep!

Piano time!

I think she was looking up something for a 4-H project.

Gotta keep it real here. I can never stay on top of the laundry. This is all clean clothes in our closet. Every day I say I'm going to tackle this, but even if I do, it's usually one or two baskets that are immediately filled with more clean laundry! We also need a dresser for Katie. Her clothes have resided in laundry baskets her whole life!

Time for Math with SJ. You can tell he's very focused on the task at hand.

Finally getting to work, and somebody else has joined on my lap!

Doing her own schoolwork! She was scribbling and kept saying "S!"

Trying on big sister's boots for the rodeo!

Now that the morning is almost over, I guess it's time to fix our hair!

Somebody else has taken over the laptop and my bed! She was listening to her history book on Hoopla (audio recordings through the library).

The little ones hard at play

Once Katie falls asleep for her nap, it's rollerblading time for SJ and me!

There was some kind of airplane simulator set up in the schoolroom under the table!

And we ended the morning decorating some candles with the Stations of the Cross images.

The next day would be a park day, praying the Stations with our homeschooling group.

And...that was our morning. The afternoon included more schoolwork and some house cleaning, followed by an evening at ballet class. Maybe another day I'll document a second half of the day!

So Much Crazy

 (I wanted everyone to wear their Easter clothes so I could take a photo, but only 3/7 of us ended up in the same clothes this Sunday! At least I got one decent shot and a cute one with the grandparents!)

This season of spring sports and finishing school and having colds and a teething baby and a traveling daddy is a bit rough. We've all recovered from the crazy Easter weekend and the latest cold viruses. We got to enjoy this past weekend together, with a busy Saturday including two baseball games, a ballet practice, and a trip out to the farm for the others while the baby and I rested at home with my parents and later with my friend Beverly.

Sunday mass was a bit reminiscent of the Easter Vigil due to another standing-room-only crowd for a group First Holy Communion mass.  Neither Steven nor I got a seat. The big girls sat with friends and Steven Joseph sat with my parents who came to visit the church. The cry room was total insanity with shoes and colored pencils flying, lots of loud talking, and a mic system that wasn't keeping up with the noise level! We retreated to the vestibule, but couldn't hear in there either. Thomas pretty much throws a fit before church every Sunday, whines during it, and Katie Grace is now loud and active, so I think this is going to be our Sunday mass situation for awhile.  It's all about the grace though; thankfully we get to receive Holy Communion, whether we can follow the mass or not!

On Monday, Steven headed out of town on a work trip, and we were back to school. I was saved by "my Maria" the cleaning lady, otherwise I think I would be losing my mind. I also started back with the Couch to 5K program this week, so hopefully that will keep my mental and physical health in check. We were triple-booked for evening activities with swim team, baseball, and ballet. We skipped swim team (after an attempt to at least buy his gear, but the one-day "swim store" wasn't opened yet), dropped the girls at ballet, and arrived at baseball practice just as the youngest two kids fell asleep. I figured I'd just stay in the car since I had a decent view of the batting cages. But the ending time for his practice came and went, and his team was nowhere to be seen, and I still had a sleeping preschooler. I tried a frantic text to some other moms on the team who I don't really know, but ended up schlepping the cranky, fussing 4yr old and hungry baby around the ballpark to find them practicing on the k-ball field. We got home at 8pm, and thankfully the girls had a ride home from ballet.

We had a little scare that night when SJ got out of the shower and showed me the GIANT bug bites all over his legs. He had about eight, and they were huge, hard, red, and hot. I got some topical creams put on him and hoped for the best (no big reactions, so I think he's okay). After an evening nap, I knew Thomas wouldn't be able to fall asleep with the others, so I let him stay up and watch some Netflix shows. The only problem was that I fell asleep around 11pm before turning off the computer. SJ woke up crying about his itchy legs at 5am, so I got some more medicine on him and went to make sure Tommy was soundly asleep in the living room. WRONG! Yes, I do win Mother of the Year! My 4yr old watched TV until FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. I think I probably shouldn't admit this, but oh well. He fell asleep immediately and slept until 10:30am.

Things could only go up from there, right? Tuesday wasn't too bad; I actually got a haircut! That is, I gave myself a haircut which had to be fixed by the 12yr old after she took a photo of it for me and I realized how bad it was. The haircut was done with dog scissors, because they're the newest and sharpest scissors in the house! We were about 10 minutes late to piano in the afternoon, but that was because I got a last-minute offer by a friend to keep Thomas and let MC come over to help. The teething baby would hardly nap all day, until right when I needed to take SJ to swim practice. I left the girls to watch her at home, and let the boys bike down the street while I walked. The lack of sleep started to hit Thomas while I was letting him ride his bike around parts of the pool parking lot (they're doing "dry land" practice). He wanted to bike around the parts of the parking lot where I thought there were too many moving cars, so he just cried and fussed for about 15 minutes and continued all the way home.

Tommy Boy had a dinner of strawberries while I baked a (frozen) lasagna for the rest of us. He fell asleep at 8pm, so hopefully he will catch up on sleep. Katie, on the other hand, would not go to sleep. I tried about three different times, tried the stroller, and tried letting her play. But it was after 11pm before she finally crashed.  Typical day-in-the-life, with maybe a little more crazy thrown in for good measure the past few days! We only have about a month left of school, so we are anxious to finish things up and have a nice summer break! Right now, though, there are quite a few things I need to get done, so here is my very-late-night checklist to refer to...

1. Two items to the tax guy
2. Locate math solutions manual and catch up on grading MC's math
3. Complete grading for last semester and mail the work items and report cards to the consultant
4. Make sure MC is caught up on current work that the grader needs
5. Three returns to Amazon
6. Two returns to local stores
7. Just noticed that I'm supposed to bring snacks to Wednesday game (if not canceled)!!!
8. Wednesday Noon Mass?
9. Friday 4-H and Park Day
10. Confession, Baseball, and Ballet on Saturday
11. Start making peg saints for the exchange!
12. Re-enroll with MODG for next year

And I'm finally posting this late Wednesday night/Thursday after about 24hrs of trying to get my computer to load the photos! It finally worked. We did make mass today, made it to the store for baseball team snacks, and Daddy made it home! Inching closer to the weekend and to summer break! Thanks for following along with my rambling.

And some snapshots from the past week...

Top row: watching another game as we left the ballpark, Katie loved the car at a friends', moms hanging out, and the Resurrection Tea we put together for their girls' club

2nd row: two photos of the lake at our friends', Katie enjoying some baby toys, and exploring nature outside the dance school

3rd row: Couch to 5K with Leo, mega bites on SJ's legs!, Tommy not happy during brother's swim practice, and Katie refusing to sleep

4th row: my trainer following me and encouraging me to run faster, MC's flower arrangements made it a week!, sleeping angel baby, and a selfie found of MC :)

Real Quick

I had to get out of bed just to write a little bit about what the insanity of our nighttimes are like at the moment. Here goes...

We ate a late dinner of grilled steak and chicken (thanks, honey!) after 8:30pm and finally started moving towards bedtime around 9:00. Katie was very overtired after going with me to baseball practice and ballet. But we kept her up through dinner and then I went to nurse her to sleep. Steven took the boys to their room and the girls went to bed too.  But Mary Clare came in to say goodnight to Katie and me, and she subsequently woke up the baby. There was no getting her back to sleep, so I went into the living room with her to let her "play it out" for a bit. Some people let their kids cry-it-out, but my strategy is play-it-out. I watched my latest Netflix obsession, "Parenthood," while she crawled around and bugged the dog. Parenthood has helped me survive the past week of craziness, which started exactly one week ago tonight with Thomas' ear infection.

So anyway, she started getting fussy and I decided it was time to try to put her to sleep again. She was in that half-asleep stage when Thomas started wailing. I had to locate Steven (husband) who was asleep in Ellie's room. (It's often like "musical beds" around here!) I asked Steven to stay with Katie so she wouldn't crawl off the bed while I went to check on Thomas. Thomas obviously had some ear pain going on due to his ear drum rupture last week, and it was draining again on the pillow. I made him go to the bathroom (always my first line of attack for nighttime wakings), got him some water, and then tried to convince him to take an Advil chewable while I wiped out his ear a little. I wasn't successful at getting him to take the pain med, but he ended up in our room trying to fall asleep with his head on the dog on the floor! I got him set up with some pillows and blankets by our bed, and then went back to work on getting the baby to sleep.

Finally I succeeded in getting Katie to a deep sleep, and then Ellie came in crying. She sometimes has nightmare sleep-walking episodes. She had one a couple nights ago while Steven Joseph was also having crazy fever-induced hallucination-type things and the baby was hysterical (Steven said he felt like he was in an insane asylum!). Tonight I convinced her to go back to bed if I went with her.  After a few minutes she finally stopped crying and shaking and fell asleep watching Lennon and Maisy YouTube videos on my phone.

Cue Steven Joseph's coughing attack. He has been having coughing attacks the past few nights. Thankfully it isn't the croupy kind like last week, but he is still very uncomfortable and crying. I sent him to the bathroom and got him some water. I tried unsuccessfully to get him to agree to some cough medicine, and sat with him while he fell back asleep in his bed. (Don't worry, I'm sure he will be in our room at some point before daylight!)

Katie again! Baby started fussing for Mommy and I had to go nurse her back to sleep. It's at this point that I realized just how utterly crazy these nights can be and that I should write it down for posterity's sake. Most of our nights aren't this insane, but with a week filled with fevers, ear infection, teething, headaches, coughs, and nightmares...this past week has been quite a doozy! Now it's midnight and I'm hoping for some good sleep, and hoping that we don't have another night like this for a long while...

My Birthday Week

(plus lots and lots of pictures from the past couple weeks)

I had lofty plans for my birthday, including a big playdate with my favorite cake and ice cream and a family dinner out with friends. On Monday I started to sense that some sickness was starting. Several of our good friends had been sick the previous week, and after a ballet drop-off and a crazy grocery trip with the three littlest kids, I came home to make dinner and then hunker down for a rough week.

Katie's fussiness started last week. She's really not happy in the evenings and has a very hard time going to sleep, probably due to teething and now this virus. Thomas started with an earache Monday night. Over-the-counter pain meds didn't help much and after a few hours of crying and writhing, Steven opted to take him to the ER at 1:00am. Tommy wasn't keen on this and threw a royal fit about getting into the car, which resulted in a neighbor's call to police. Steven was surrounded, one cop came to the door, but after a few minutes they realized that all was okay.  Still more drama added to the otherwise rough all-nighter.

Katie wasn't doing well the next day, so I took her to the doctor, and then went back the next day with Thomas after his eardrum ruptured and he spit out most of his medicine. I had an insurance fiasco with the pharmacy, and sat in a lot of traffic. Now Steven Joseph appears to have croup, so I imagine it'll be another full night. There have been continual fevers and ibuprofen-administering, faucet-noses, and tissues all over the house. My clothing has been covered in child-snot all week long.

Tomorrow I was supposed to lead our first 4-H meeting at our homeschool park day. Piano lessons were rescheduled, then canceled. Our new swing set hasn't been touched all week. My days have been spent trying to appease the baby and make sure the sick children are comfortable. I have a stack of bills that haven't been opened. I've been wearing yoga pants and no makeup all week. Even my "big" jeans are feeling tight. So much for the step counting on my FitBit.

But being forced to have a quiet week at home caring for kids is really what my birthday is all about. It's about being given the best birthday gift ever...a wonderful family with a great husband and five beautiful children. What better to do than to spend the week focused on them and not on silly old me?   What better way to thank God for my life than to offer back to him these precious souls he has entrusted to me.

I can still hope for a happy weekend and a new week filled with healthy kids for Valentine's activities though! May his healing presence be with each of my children, and may they always know my love and His love. Thanks be to God for 37 happy years of life!

And here are some photos of happier days, since I'm not sure when I'll blog again...

piano lessons

goddaughter's skating party

fun times in the backyard

around the house

her first Shipley's donut

and at the park for a friend's birthday