Ashley's Freedom On Wheels

Ever since Ashley starting crawling, I have to really keep a lookout for her. For several reasons. The boys running back and forth playing games throughout the house. I don't want to see her go flying because she's in the path. Also, she likes to put stuff in her mouth. She no longer likes her playpen or her stationary saucer since she's figured out how to become mobile. She's cruising! So we got rid of that stuff and got her this walker. At first she could only go backward and it was funny to watch. Now she follows me around in it. Ha ha! It's so much easier now not having to worry about her constantly. :D

Hell Hath No Fury!

This story is so funny, I had to share it with you.

"She spent the first day packing her belongings into boxes, crates and suitcases. On the second day, she had the movers come and collect her things.
On the third day, she sat down for the last time at their beautiful dining room table by candlelight, put on some soft background music, and feasted on a pound of shrimp, a jar of caviar, and a bottle of Chardonnay. When she had finished, she went into each and every room and deposited a few half-eaten shrimp shells dipped in caviar, into the hollow of the curtain rods. She then cleaned up the kitchen and left. When the husband returned with his new girlfriend, all was bliss for the first few days. Then slowly, the house began to smell. They tried everything, cleaning, mopping, and airing the place out. Vents were checked for dead rodents, and carpets were steam cleaned. Air fresheners were hung everywhere. Exterminators were brought in to set off gas canisters, during which they had to move out for a few days, and in the end they even paid to replace the expensive wool carpeting. Nothing worked. People stopped coming over to visit. Repairmen refused to work in the house. The maid quit. Finally, they could not take the stench any longer and decided to move. A month later, even though they had cut their price in half, they could not find a buyer for their stinky house. Word got out, and eventually, even the local realtors refused to return their calls. Finally, they had to borrow a huge sum of money from the bank to purchase a new place. The ex-wife called the man, and asked how things were going. He told her the saga of the rotting house. She listened politely, and said that she missed her old home terribly, and would be willing to reduce her divorce settlement in exchange for getting the house back. Knowing his ex-wife had no idea how bad thesmell was, he agreed on price that was about 1/10th of what the house hadbeen worth, but only if she were to sign thepapers that very day. She agreed, and within the hour his lawyers delivered the paperwork.A week later the man and his girlfriend stood smiling as they watched the moving company pack everything to take to their new home, including the curtain rods."

Kyle's Heartbreak

On Friday, as a family we all headed to mall. We had such a great time just browsing around and then heading to Gameworks to play games. Oh, that is just so fun. Anyhow, after we left the mall, Kyle said, "Someone stole my Bunny"! By then the mall was closed and there was no way we could turn around to get it. You have to understand. This is HIS BUNNY. He LOVES his Bunny. It's his big and floppy stuffed animal that he cuddles all night and during the day very often. When we arrived home, Kyle slowly climbed out of the car and looked up at me. He said, "Mommy, mommy.... my heart hurts!!!" I looked at him in alarm and I said, "how does it hurt???" With big tears, he started to cry and he said, "My heart hurts because it's broken mommy!" I just swooped him up into my arms and I just cried and cried with him. I told him how I understood the pain. I told him that when I was little, I also had a bunny just like him. Except mine was pink. But it was floppy just like his bunny. I told Kyle that I slept with it every night. I understood how much that bunny meant to him. I just held him a long time and I promised him that we would all go on a mission to find Bunny the next day. So, true to our word, the next day we all headed out. We all gathered together and said we were on a mission to find his bunny. We know he left it in one of those green rented strollers you can get. We checked, security, lost and found, checked the area where you rent those strollers. We even walked around and looked into the back (the best we could from a distance) with everyone who had rented one and walked past us. After almost and hour and a half of searching, we told Kyle we did everything we could. So now we're on another mission to find him a new bunny. Every night he says how much he misses his bunny. So sad! I'm hoping I get lucky because I know how much it means to him. My poor Kyle! I wish I could've gotten it back for him. :( See the picture? Mr. Bunny is even playing games with them! He goes everywhere with Kyle.

So Many Computer Problems!

Argh! I've just had so many computer problems. Sooo, I haven't been able to update my blog much. Today my computer decided to work so I'm writing a blog. LOL. I wish to visit some of your blogs but I can't even see my own. I can only publish and I can view your comments. Well, at times I can see blogs. I am in the middle of doing some major work on this problem so hopefully things will be good soon. :D

Ankle Was Worth It.. Ha ha

Here is the cute bunkbed I got from IKEA for my boys. It is a twin on the top and a full on the bottom so Ryan and Kyle can fit. There is actually so much room to spare. The picture doesn't really do it justice. This is what I was going to get the night I hurt my ankle at IKEA.

Sooo, the update is that my ankle still hurts really bad. It's more off and on. On Sunday my ankle seemed to be doing better, then on Monday it was hard to walk at all. I don't know what is up with that. They said I might need to see a specialist. I really don't want to. I don't know. IKEA is paying for all the medical. Charles lost a ton of work trying to care for me. He is a really good husband. I'm grateful he has a heart. :) My air cast really makes it feel better at times but sometimes I have to take it off so my ankle can breath better. Usually I don't need the Vicodin but last night I should've taken it so I can sleep better. ARgh. I hope this gets better soon. I need to be back to my old self so it's easier to get around with the kids and stuff. :) I miss being a hyper lady, running around the house and taking care of all sorts of things! LOL.

Ivy's Third Birthday

Sunday, July 20th, was Ivy's third birthday. We just did something small this year so we headed to Mcdonalds to celebrate in between church services. :D Here is a video of us singing to her. You can see me in the background trying to safely put out the match. After blowing it out, I always soak it with water before putting in trash. Safety sake! LOL! Whether the birthday was small or not, she loved it and loved her gifts. Thank you to my parents and Charles' parents. :D

VBS Week

Here is a video of my 3 year old, Ivy, running in the relay race. They had to put on a big hat and jacket to run. Also some pics of the last part of race and the teams who won. Chaz was on one team and Ryan was on another. You can see all my boys and then Ivy in it. :D

Sorry, I have been so behind! I usually blog about everything that goes on but lately it has been a little tough. Soooo, after the incident with IKEA, I had to miss the first day, Monday, at VBS. But.... I was excited to return the rest of the week. :) It was hard for the first couple of days on crutches walking around but when I was able to rid of the crutches, it was much easier. Ha ha! Especially because of the stairs. It was so fun and all my kids were on different teams, there were four different ones. I was wanting their team to win but then they were all rivalries with each other! LOL! Here are just lots and lots of pics.... I have so many that I mostly just put some that my kids are in but I have others on here too of workers and stuff. There is a picture of Machelle breaking up an argument between my son Kyle and his friend. LOL.. also them snacking, making crafts, the red team making a strategy, and a picture of some of the kids praying at the alter they have at the end everyday (you can see Ivy peeking over their shoulders). There is a pic of my nephew, Kelvyn, making a sword. This year the theme was Armor of God.

Mishap At IKEA

Well, all went really well last week with the kids we got to take care of. We truly had a good time and it convinced me all the more why I don't want to get my tubes tied! You never know when you might just change your mind. :D

Anyhow, on to the story. I went to IKEA to get a bunkbed for the boys we have been wanting to get for a long time. It holds one boy on the top and two, because it's a full size, on the bottom. We've been wanting it forever and since Charles got off work early on Monday, we headed over there. We got a heavy duty type of cart that is low to the ground to hold the heavy boxes we needed. I started to push the cart towards the registers but somehow it quickly went sideways where I was standing and into my ankle. It hit my ankle very hard, tore some of the flesh and quickly sent a cold rush up and down my leg. I didn't think it was much until the pain hit. Charles knows I get real quiet when I'm in pain so he started asking me questions. My dad was there too and he also kept asking me questions. I was in too much pain to talk and I was trying to hold back the tears. Right away I couldn't walk so Charles set me on the heavy cart alongside the bunkbed. While checking out, I just put my head down where no one could see and I let the tears come. I didn't even cry when I gave birth! That's just crazy pain. I was still quiet while giving birth but I think that pain was so bad I just was speechless. Ha ha! It's really just that I'm not very vocal when I'm in pain. So after he checks the stuff out and pays for it, he wheels me over to the manager. He sits me on a big couch and I'm just rocking back and forth in agony. While him and my dad are loading bunk beds onto the van, I tell the manager what happened. By then I'm just crying and crying, so I couldn't talk. Finally I was able to get story out. He gets the accident form filled out and puts me into a wheel chair. He tells me that IKEA has insurance and will cover all the medical costs. Sooo, he wheels me to the van and I get in. Still I am crying and crying. The kids are just really quiet in the van and telling me soothing things to calm me down. So cute. I was SOOOOO bummed because this is Vacation Bible School week and I am a volunteer!!!! Charles wanted to head straight to the hospital but I said no, no, no,... we have to take kids to VBS. THEN we can go to hospital. They are so excited about it I didn't want them sad. So we drop them off and I head to my favorite ER that rarely ever has a wait. Then start cleaning off some of the dead skin and put on a bandage. Then they wheeled me in for XRay after giving me powerful meds. It really worked because then I wasn't rocking in bed anymore from pain. LOL. The XRay doesn't show anything broken or fractured. Thank goodness! He said they don't have anything to show injury to tendons, muscles, or other things like that. He said the best he can say is it was a trauma to the ankle and foot. By then it was swollen really bad and it hurt all the way up to my knee. He gave me an air cast and crutches and said I'll probably be walking in 4-5 days. He sent home some Vicodin for the pain and to help me sleep. Me, being a cheapskate said, "I'll wait". I couldn't sleep the whole night from pain. So Charles went early in morning after the church prayer meeting and got the meds. By Tuesday, I still wanted to volunteer for VBS so I have been so far this week. Thankfully they have been able to find a useful position for me, registering the kids, but otherwise I feel useless! Argh! I have been taking a lot of photos for them along with some other people so that is nice. I'm just glad to be able to do something for God. It is always a privilege to help in any sort of ministry. Today I was able to move my toes a little so I'm excited. I cannot walk on it still. My hands and sides are bruised from the crutches and the Tetnis shot they gave me feels like someone beat the crud out of my arm! Ha ha! Charles has had to take work off because I'm not able to care for the little ones. He's got the whole week off. I don't know what I would have done without him! It's a big money loss for sure but it has to be done. Thankfully I have such a wonderful husband and he has such a great boss. :)

Baking for Breana

Breana and Debra wanted to bake for her birthday. They had fun studying the recipe book together and making their cake from scratch. I'm real proud of how hard they worked and how well it came out. :) It wasn't perfect but who cares? On top of it they made chocolate cupcakes and passed them around. We all sang to her, like three times that day! Ha ha. We sang to her when she woke up, then when the girls were done with the cake, and then when Charles came home later that night when we ate the cake. Generally, because of all the fun and "new things" that week, we all went to bed pretty late every night. It was okay though because we didn't mind the time spent together. In the last picture you see us singing happy birthday to Breana. I think baby Ashley was back sleeping in the bedroom.

I started thinking about people who have 10 kids and then I thought about all the ages that were in the house. If they were all mine. They ages were (counting the birthdays that are all coming this month and next month:

9 months, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12! I would have had to almost have one every year! Ha ha! Wow! I admire women who can do that. Amazing!

The Herd Getting Out

For Breana's birthday we took two separate vehicles to take her out some places. I guess more for us to all be able to get out and plus we needed to find her a gift she wanted. First we all went to the mall, the looks we got were pretty funny, with having all 10 kids with us. I guess you could say we looked like a herd. Hee hee. We kept counting the kids over and over so we wouldn't lose any. After the mall we spent some time at Mcdonalds and let the kids run some of their energy out. :D They sure did but they all still had lots to spare! LOL. While sitting at a table, the girls and I played makeup for 10 minutes, (that's why you see first pic of Ruthie with lipstick) then I had them wipe it off. :) After that we headed to Walmart because we found out that Breana really wanted the capri tights for her birthday to go under her skirts. Knowing how cute those look we definitely had to get a couple of them. We only spent a record time of one half hour in Walmart and headed out. Whoo hoo! :D We had to make a bathroom stop at a gas station since we needed gas. So once the herd all had their potty break, we finally got on the road. Then we finally headed home and rested a little (well, some sort of resting with the kids all having fun in the house or hosing off in the mud outside) before we started the baking.

Eating Time for 12!

So in one picture I'm showing you how cute it is to have 9 plates together with heart shaped sandwiches for lunch. For breakfast, that you see in the other pictures, we are all gathered together for pancakes and eggs. I always love Better Homes and Gardens for their recipe. The pancakes come out so fluffy! Once the batter was put together, Debra was cooking them for us and making all kind of interesting shapes with cookie cutters. :) The kitchen was always pretty packed as we were not used to housing 10 kids! Ha ha. You can't see all the kids in the picture. I think there is only 8 you see there. Michael was hiding behind Charles and baby Ashley was hard to get in picture. Mealtimes were always a loud and fun affair! It was a nice time working together on meals and talking with each other. Once meal time was over, everyone scattered to either play Hide and Seek, skate on all the tile, read books, or just generally run around! :)

Game Night

The kids left today that we were watching so I'm gonna do a couple of blogs about what we did. :)

Game night was especially fun just because I'm a big fan of board games. More than I am of video games because board games you actually talk to each other. We had a game night and the girls all played Life. (Remember how fun it was to say you had a job, kids, and all that money? Hee hee). The little kids played a Spongebob game. In the little kids picture you can see how the two little girls always hang together. Elizabeth and Ivy. :) They just had loads of fun together. For Breana's birthday, older girl on the right pic in dark blue shirt, we picked her up to come stay with us for 3 days. She is friends with the girls I was watching. So then we had 10 kids! It was a lot of fun. Oh, and loud. :D

Water Fun in Desolate Backyard!

We are having fun with all nine kids running around here. Right now they are playing Hide and Seek and it is quite wild. Most of the time though, they are all just doing there own thing somewhere around the house. Reading, playing VFlash or VSmile, or just talking to each other. It is fun watching them all interact. They are having so much fun with each other. Anyhow, our backyard is so desolate and we have so much work to do on it. While they were all playing in the water outside, I was pulling "pokie weeds". The ones that hurt real bad because they had thorns. On top of it all, it's real muddy so I had mud all over me and kids kept spraying me while I was working. Ha ha. So here is a pic of some of them playing. Debra, the bookworm, was reading inside the house. :) Once they leave, I will be planting grass seed and all that so hopefully we'll get more than just a few patches of grass that we have.

Jack is Back!

Do you remember how I said awhile back that Ryan's rooster, Jack, flew over the fence you see in the picture and died? Well, we believe he was attacked by our Great Dane Daisy. We think. There were no signs of foul play. Anyhow, so we were sad because we lost our "only" rooster. You know, when they are baby chicks, it's kind of hard to tell between a rooster and a hen. Well, the other day my husband woke me up real early and said there was a funny noise out by the chickens. He said it sounds like one of them is trying to crow. Um.... okaaaay. I thought we only had 3 hens left?? Later when I got up in went into the kitchen, I heard some funky crowing going on. Ha ha. I had heard it's pretty funny sounding when they first start out. The kids were just laughing and laughing everytime they heard it. The white one we know for sure is a hen. Jack, in the middle of the second picture with some black and cream feathers, is the rooster. I am suspicious of the other cream colored one to the right. I really, really hope it's a hen. Oh well, I'll find out sooner or later. Either I'll find out by it trying to crow, or the two roosters will fight. I'm really hoping it's a hen. When I ordered them, I ordered 3 hens! Ha ha!

Adventures with 9!

This week I get to watch my friends four kids while they are off to a conference in a different town. So I will have a total of 9 kids from Monday-Saturday! So far we are about to play a huge game of Hide and Seek! :D It truly is fun. Still, I can't believe I only have HALF of the Duggar family. They will be having 18! This is so much more fun than I thought. It's loud at times but as long as you take aspirin and drink coffee, it's good. Ha ha. No seriously. Here is a great pic of all the cuties. We just had to have a round of baths after my daughter Ivy went around and poured chocolate milk over all the little one's head. Including herself. After one of the older girls told me, I went to check on Ashley in her high chair. She had chocolate milk running down from the top of her head onto the tray and she was just smiling. She was playing with the milk in her tray. I was like "oh my goodness". LOL!