Double Digits

Cameron turned 10 years old today. He is excited to be double digits old! He also was hoping and wishing that the weather would be bad enough that he would not have to spend his birthday evening at his 4th grade music program (wish granted). He spent it instead at home having sub sandwiches on home-made french bread, and a cake which he insisted on baking himself, and playing with his new video games! (And doing one small science assignment for school of course). I have to share that whenever it is someone's birthday here they get to pick out their dinner of choice. This kid is so picky - so it cracks me up that of all the food on earth he wants sandwiches for dinner!!

We are very proud of Cameron. We love how he openly shares his feelings, and how passionate he is about things (especially any sports where KSU is playing). He is a great student, a wonderful brother, and an all around great kid! Happy Birthday buddy! We love you!

Scare tactics

When I was a kid, my grandfather and father worked together on the family farm. My brothers and sister and I used to think it was great fun to sneak up on Grandpa and scare the pants off of him. He was a very jumpy man. He would always tell us that we took years off his life, but it didn't stop us from doing it every chance we got. I feel kind of bad about it now, maybe had we not taken years from his life, he would still be here with us today!
In the past week, I feel especially bad about it since I have found that I definitely inherited his jumpy nature. I was using Jim' s car to take Colin to wrestling practice this week. I have not driven Jim's car very often, and was fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to get the headlights on. A friend of mine was over at our neighbor's house picking up kids for wrestling practice and she came across the street to see if she could give Colin a ride too. I didn't see her coming, so when she knocked on my window I came absolutely unglued! I screamed like one of the people out of those old awful horror movies. She felt terrible, and so did I - after all she was being nice and here I am acting like she was going to kill me!
Several weeks ago, Cam's lizard got out of his cage. We had given up looking for Jay Lizard and assumed he was dead someplace, or that one of the cats had eaten him. Today, when I was sorting laundry, Jay ran across my foot. Again, I screamed like a banshee on crack, and acted like that stupid 1/2 oz lizard would kill me. In fairness, I saw it move across my foot and thought it was a mouse, and I am terrified of rodents. I can't help but think about all the times I did this to my poor grandfather. I hope he is looking on and laughing at my expense now!

Trying to relax and catch up

Riding the sleigh with Santa. Mallory and Madison decided to ride too, mostly because there was a bag of candy for all who rode along!

The annual 4-H Christmas party was a pretty good time!

I got sick of trying fruitlessly to comb Quincy's hair every day, and trying to bribe her to keep her pony tail in, so finally we just cut it short. We think it is cute, but I must admit that the combing and keeping out of her face is still a struggle! If she was a boy I would shave her head!!!

We were supposed to have a Mexican dinner at church this weekend...however they are re-doing the plaster in the church and doing a bunch of work in the basement, so they cancelled the dinner. I was sad about the loss of a really good lunch, but not about having to spend the weekend cooking and serving food! Since this event was cancelled, it completely freed up our weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed watching several movies with the kids yesterday and just relaxing around the house. We also had no events today, so we went to Walmart for stocking up reasons. I am happy to say that we have baby diapers in the house now, so we won't be having to stop on the way home from the hospital! The only thing we are missing is a baby to put in them! In hitting the 9th month, my body is totally ready for this baby to be born. My heart is totally ready too. I know in my brain that the 9th month seems to go on forever, and then you are serving cake to a 1 year old and have no idea where the year went, so I am trying to enjoy this last few weeks, but waiting has never been one of my strong points!

Santa has been frequenting Overbrook a lot this week, and Quincy has used every opportunity she can to tell him "I am NOT on the naughty list" - I guess we have been telling her that a lot lately!

Cameron got news on his basketball team, and so that begins. Colin will have his first wrestling tournament the day after Christmas. Winter activities are going to be in full swing before we know what hit us!

No more mystery

I had a sonogram yesterday. My doctor thought that the baby was possibly quite big, and possibly breach. This baby was neither one of those things, but they did say that they think it is a girl. The lady did tell us that she was making an educated guess, so I guess that there is always the possibility that she was wrong. Our little girl looks very healthy and strong and now we are just waiting! I went in with the idea that maybe we should wait to find out, but once they started looking, I just couldn't keep from asking!

This actually works out very well, because I had given a lot of our baby clothes away, and the ones I have left are mostly pink. I had already warned Jim that if this baby was a boy, he would be wearing lots of pink. Real men wear pink though, so it would have been alright! We are thankful that everything with the little one looks good, and that I am feeling mostly good, and its just about waiting now!

Thankful for our insanity

We are having a great, but insanely busy Thanksgiving weekend. We started out on Wednesday with me having a doctor appointment, and while I was gone the kids started cleaning for Thanksgiving dinner. They did a pretty good job while I was gone. My doctor appointment went OK, but my doctor has decided that he thinks the baby might be a little bit big, and a he is pretty sure it is breach. He has ordered another sonogram for next week to check the position and size of the baby. I can't help but wonder what difference it makes if the baby is breach or big since I am having a c-section, but he just said he wants to know what he is dealing with before he starts cutting. So we will have another opportunity to see if we can find out the sex of the baby. The kids are pretty excited. I am sort of torn, because at this point we don't have much time left, it might be nice to be surprised in the end. I am fairly certain I am going to be overruled on the surprise option!

We had a great, Thanksgiving dinner. It was a quiet day and very relaxing.

Friday we had a visit from Jay who is up from Kentucky with his new girlfriend. The kids, I must say were pretty well behaved considering how Uncle Jay usually gets them all wound up. We enjoyed the visit, it is always great to see Uncle Jay.

After visiting with Jay, Mallory, Madison, Preston, Quincy and I were treated to Disney on Ice from our neighbor as our early Christmas gift. She has also purchased the Colin, Cam, and Jim Harlem Globetrotter tickets and they are excited about that. I must say that Disney on Ice was wonderful. I loved seeing the costumes, and there really is something magical about Disney stuff. We even managed to carry in candy and drinks so we didn't have to buy the $10 snow cones or $20 cotton candy!

While I was enjoying an evening with Disney, Jim was home with Cam's birthday slumber party. His birthday isn't until December 8, but I was worried if we waited to have his party I might just go into labor with all those boys here. So we decided to do it a little bit early. He had a great time, and the boys were all well behaved, although they were extremely loud! They finally crashed out at 4:30 this morning...and although there might have been a day when I could stay up late, those days are definitely over for me!

The slumber party crew didn't get to sleep in very late, as we had to decorate the 4-H Christmas tree in Overbrook this morning. I have to laugh every year, because where I grew up, a red cedar tree was nothing more than a noxious weed, but when you are in our 4-H club, they suddenly become a Christmas tree! It really does look pretty nice, and the kids had a fun time decorating it.

We spent the afternoon getting baby supplies out of the attic and washing them. I am feeling pretty ready for our new little arrival.
Having been incredibly busy hasn't stopped me from being very thankful for all I have been given. I know I am blessed immeasurably!

Happy Birthday JIm!

It is Jim's birthday today. He was treated to an extra special day - complete with working at the city's tree dump, working to set up the school carnival, and then spending the evening at the school carnival. Top it off with KSU losing to nebraska, and I am sure it was his most perfect birthday ever! He was a very good sport though! He took Quincy to the tree dump, and they found a whole bunch of caterpillars, so she was completely and totally impressed. He said he had fun playing games at the carnival with Preston and Quincy.

I hope it was a good day for him, he is a great husband and father, and we are very lucky to have him around us!

Wednesday with the mid week blues

My usually very happy little girl is sick. She started out the day by begging me to "stay home today" I suppose one of these days I will learn to listen. I just thought she was having a hard time waking up! She was going to a doctor appointment with me, but we never made it that far. Suffice it to say that her car seat has been washed, and she has slept most of the day. She did keep down a little sprite and some noodle soup a little while ago, so perhaps she will be better by tomorrow.

We attended family math night last night at Cameron's school. I have never played multiplication baseball before, but it was fun. The school has gotten a new math curriculum this year, and I have to admit that it has challenged my patience and made me wonder what in the heck we are thinking- can we not just teach a kid to multiply anymore? Do we really need to introduce new ways to do it? Do we need lattice multiplication systems? Are kids today so intelligent that they need to learn 3 or 4 ways to simply multiply? I have no idea. It seems to me that I learned one way to multiply and I am still using it today, and I have functioned just fine. I guess this is why I am not in the education field!

Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor since I had to cancel today's appointment. I seem to be battling carpal tunnel syndrom again this pregnancy. I was hopeful that I could escape it. It isn't near as bad as when we had Preston though, so here's hoping that it will be minimal.

We are gearing up for the school carnival this weekend. I will be extremely glad to have this huge project off my plate. I feel bad since it is on Jim's birthday. I have offered to buy him dinner, but it will be either a walking taco or a hotdog! Poor guy! I guess I will have to make a good cake to go with it!