Pictures!

Look how grown-up she looks! :) :( (Mixed emotions on that one!)


Haley at the pool in her little floatie!! She LOVED it!


Haley "sitting pretty" in her new dress from Nana!!


Jared helping build shelves in the girls' closet-what a man!! :)

Rain Rain Go Away

Come again some other day. Do you know how difficult it is to entertain 4 kids (used to be 5) and a baby when it rains all day?? LOL This is a problem I never thought I'd have living in South Texas. Usually we're in a drought-as in "don't wash your car, water your lawn or fill a kiddie pool unless it's your day"!! Now, it just won't quit. I do have to say though that our temperatures have been much more tolerable than our normal July ones! :) We've been mostly in the upper 80s, rather than mid to upper 90s!! So, be grateful for the small stuff, huh?

Well, my baby is now sitting up and putting herself on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. She's very intent on her "practice" too! The rocking is serious business-not just leisure activity! ;) She still has bouts of RBS (ok, honestly she exhibits definite symptoms most of the time) but is also soo sweet. Her hugs and kisses can feel quite rough, but she gives them freely :) Or is it that she's trying to tackle me and eat me?? I'm not sure...lol Another batch of babystuff ready for garage sale (when we have a break in the weather! and can have one) which is sad but happy-as we have very little space to put all of this paraphenalia.

Jared and Lindsay are doing good. I hope they're getting ready and excited about our new school year!! :) They don't seem as excited as me about the new curriculum books sitting in the living room...hmmm, go figure. They are getting so grown up in so many ways that it amazes me. It seems like yesterday that they were Haley's age...
:( What happens to the years??

Ok, that completes my rambling for today-stay tuned for more, if you can stand it! :)

PICTURES SOON!!!

This summer

This summer has drug on and on and yet it seems to be flying by too...We have one month left before our camping trip. (That is taking forever to get here) but Haley is getting sooo big, so it must be flying by, right? Haley-girl is now 5 1/2 mos old and is so fun (except the teething part). She is such a character and loves to watch her brother and sister-especially if they're being wild and crazy and on the verge of breaking something! She rolls everywhere, can sit up when she wants to and scooch-crawls (in other words it's crawling that involves rugburns on the forehead!) You almost can't hold her and do anything because she loves to grab everything! Plate of spaghetti?? Hope you have stain-remover! Sneak a bite of ice-cream out of the container? She's covered in ice-cream! Hmmm, how come all my things involve food?? Anyways, she's very grabby and curious. She wants to lick everything that she can reach with her little tongue! So cute-but so scary since we have so many little toys (legos, marbles, etc) all over our house these days!!
The kids are doing well. Our house has been in a state of upheaval this summer since I'm babysitting 3 kids (starting next week it's "just" 2 though) but they've handled it pretty well considering they're used to having mom all to themselves. Lindsay has lost her first top tooth (the bottom ones aren't so noticeable) so she's a little "snaggle-tooth" and Jared is getting so big and he has 2 loose teeth-but he could care less really! Isn't it funny how different kids are?? Linds can't stand the whole waiting game and Jared can't even remember which teeth to wiggle! :)
Our camping trip is planned for Aug 15th-19th but I made the mistake of googling "Water Moccasains"!!! :( They are apparently the only agressive water snake...so that's comforting. You'll know it's a water moccassain--as it's coming after you.!!! AAAAAHHHHH! I called the state park we're going to (Inks Lake-supposed to be gorgeous) and the girl that answered the phone said that in the 4 summers she's worked there although they do have them, there's never been an attack...yikes! What to do? I think I need to stay away from "google" as he is not my friend! Everytime I google anything I end up paranoid about something! I just keep telling myself that it willll be ok...really our odds are prob'ly pretty good...she said they don't usually hang around the swimming areas because of all the people-is that comforting? LOL Ok, I'm done babbling...here are some pictures I took of the kiddos on Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church :)
Lindsay was very proud of her new red dress...and Haley was wearing a "new" outfit. It's an adorable outfit that she's had since she was born (from Shelly) and hadn't gotten to wear yet!! The third picture is from sometime last week and true to form my son is picking at his nose (actually-he was scratching it but it sure looks like the typical picture where at least one kid is picking his nose, huh?)

Why?

I just wonder why children don't appreciate moms!? I wonder if God has some kind of plan in that...maybe we (as moms) are supposed to learn something from that. I know a lot of the things moms do are not "for" the children but for us (like mopping the floor-they could care less if their bare little feet stick in last week's kool-aid, right?) but they could at least see that we're doing it and CARE, right?

Yesterday Lindsay and I had a big to-do over homeschooling. They need to finish up a few little things (easy, fun workbooks I bought at Wal-Mart) to be ready for next year's curriculum...Well, she fought me every step of the way!? What in the world is the deal with that? I'd have loved those workbooks when I was a kid-I'd have finished the entire thing in a day or two! :p But I guess I'm a nerd. LOL Anyways, she fought me and fought me. I "threatened" to send her to public school **gasp** and she cried and cried ("You don't love me, you're screaming at me [I wasn't by the way] and you want to send me away to school"-Like I was sending her to a boarding school or something! LOL The drama in the life of a mama!) So, when Harold got home we talked about it with him and she finally came to realize (I think) that I'm doing this for her-not to her. I could easily and "cheaplier" send her to school. We told her of all the things I could be doing during the day when I'm choosing to try to give her the best I could (like relaxing, playing w/ Haley, going shopping, etc) and she seemed to get that... The funny thing is, she didn't want to watch tv or something, she wanted to read a library book. That's fine and good, but you have to know math too!! She already has a VERY HIGH reading level (I was reading over her shoulder one day and she was finishing pages before me!!) so I think her practice needs to be in other areas occasionally!!

Ok, I think I'm done with that rant! :) Here's a new picture of Haley-girl that I took yesterday!

Our **almost** all fun day!

Yesterday (July 8) we went to Fiesta Texas (a Six Flags theme park) with some friends-the people I babysit for. During this trip we found out that
A. Haley does not like long car rides
2. Jared does not like spinny, twisty roller coasters

We started our trip out at about 8:15 am (actually the time we'd planned on leaving! Woo hoo!)getting on the road with little trouble or fanfare. We stopped for breakfast at a fly-ridden McDonalds-which is why we ate very quickly (pretending it was a picnic-hey, those have flies, right??) and ran out of there-ewww...We'd wanted a real breakfast anyways, but there's not much between Corpus and San Antonio, so McDonalds it was. Then, Haley begins screaming as soon as we get back in the van. :( I finally nursed her while we were driving-a feat which my entire family thinks is hilarious as I have figured out how to hang my boob over the carseat-MOOOOOO! ;) During all this Jared and Lindsay were very happy watching their new Tom & Jerry DVD (except when they took a break every two minutes to ask why we were not there yet and were we aware that the day was half gone!?-ok, they get that from me as I don't like to "waste" time) We finally used the old stand-by "Don't make me turn this car around..." line that we were sure we'd never use when we were parents. So, because the ride was so enjoyble and gas is so cheap we took the long way **eyes rolling**. We finally get to the park and get parked (we've taken the opportunity of our long scenic drive to go ahead and eat our sandwiches so we don't have to get a $26 hamburger in the park) and go in. Now, at this point we have joined up with the other family and we now have 5 kids, a baby and 4 adults. (Our friends were so sweet to get us in free-with their season passes-and then insisted on paying for our drinks in the park! very nice of them!!!!) Cindy and I take the kids (all of them) to the kid area of the park and we let the men go to ride the big coasters (which I used to luuuuuuv but now have no burning desire to ride-ever. Another side effect of motherhood??) The kids were loving riding the smaller rides and on the rare occasion when Jared was too short to ride I told him since he had such a good attitude I'd give him a quarter for every ride he was not allowed to ride, I know silly, but he was so sweet about it... Then we meet back up with the men and decide that all of us except the other dad and Haley of course were going to ride the "Tony Hawk Big Spin"...this is touted as a family coaster (and each car even had 4 seats) so we took Jared and Linds and strapped ourselves in...for one lonnnnng ride (I'm sure in actuality it was only a minute to a minute and a half-but when you're watching your baby look very terrified and green it seems much longer) Poor Jared was absolutely terrified-and once it started there was NOTHING I could do. I don't even remember the ride really except that my baby boy needed me to get him off and I couldn't. :( :( :( I'm so surprised he did not throw-up or pass out. Poor baby thought they were going to make him ride it a second time because before they unload you they move your car all the way to the front of the line...He couldn't have taken it-I'm sure of this(and the pictures/video they take durning the entire ride confirmed I was not exaggerating how he looked during the ride) I guess I should say it was a full-fledged roller coaster with all the dips, hills, drops only the car also spins while you are going. The momentum of the ride makes it spin-uncontrollably. Phew...that was over and we headed for the water park (which by this time we needed) where we spent the rest of the day. Cindy and I took Haley and the men took the kids this time. :) All in all it was a very fun day. Haley was incredibly, unbelievably good during all this (except the driving part) and Linds had fun (although she didn't enjoy the Tony Hawk thing either-my impression of her experience is not as dramatic b/c I couldn't see her face) Harold definitely had fun...and we got home at 12:30 am-after eating at Taco Cabana on the way yome-yum!!!