They All Call Me Mom

the reluctant purger

We have been preparing our upstairs for new carpeting. What a chore! Everything must come out of the closets, out from under the beds, and out of the dressers so that the installers will have an easier time moving the heavy furniture. Everything must go into boxes, packed away and labeled by room, as if we […]

Aria the Builder

The other day I brought some cabinets home from IKEA.  Well, you know how that goes.  They needed to be assembled, and my husband wasn’t home to do it. So I looked around the house to see who could build these things for me.  I asked my 16 year old son if he would build them for me. He […]

Pumpkin Patch 2015

Today we took some of the younger kids to the Pumpkin Patch.  Lucky for me it was a nice, cool day (for a change!) and so I was able to hang out longer than I would have had it been 90 degrees out.   These days this pregnant mama’s feet have been swelling, and I […]

communicating with my kids

Some parents complain about the “texting” era that our children are growing up in.  I, too, have my complaints, like when a teenager of mine won’t lift his head up from his phone because he’s too busy texting to talk to me on the car ride home from school.  Yeah, that doesn’t fly with me.  I have no […]

lunch bags and stuff

For Christmas Aislynn got a really nice lunch bag that she had been wanting for a long time. You know the kind.  They have zippers and pockets and the fancy matching thermos.  For months she would point it out whenever we were in Target and would say, “Mom…I really, really want this bag for my […]

BROTHER BONDING

Alex is my 13 year old who has been asking for another little brother for about five years now. It took a while, but we finally have one for him. With their age difference, there’s a good chance that Alex will be going off to college when Aiden is about 6 years old.  This thought […]

it’s just a baby tooth!!

The other night my six year old complained that he couldn’t sleep because his tooth hurt.  I asked him to point to where it hurt, and he pointed to his top left side, way in the back.  And sure enough, I saw a tooth back there that had a dark spot in it.  I thought […]

Homecoming Dance – Afton

Highschool Homecoming DanceAfton just attended her last high school Homecoming Dance.  Of course there are other dances coming up in her senior year:  Winter Formal, Sadie Hawkins, and of course Prom.  But this is the FIRST of her LAST high school dances.  Sigh.   I always like to get a photo of everyone’s shoes.  Afton’s […]

June

June already!I really dislike the month of June.  With all the end-of-the-year activities and parties and all that, it just makes for a very busy and hectic month.  Here is a little of what we’ve got going on this month:5th grade graduation “Beach Day” (Avery)End of the Year Violin Concert (Alex)End of the Year Choir […]

The Ref

These past few weekends my 12 year old has been the referee for my 7 year old’s soccer games. A few months ago, he took a couple classes and passed a certification test — then the association gave him that uniform and a whistle and now call him a “Ref”.  I’m still trying to get used […]

Rhino Noses

This week we are on Spring Break!  Yay!Are my floors getting done?  No!  Because the wood that we wanted isn’t available until April 26th.   Delays.  I hate delays!  So instead of doing our floors this week, we have pool days, park days, museum days, and zoo days scheduled.  Not my original plan, but it’s going […]

just like a three-year-old

We were passing the time at a soccer game this weekend, and I took some photos of Aria.  I told her to jump so that I could try to capture motion.  So she jumped.And instead if catching her image on the way down,  I captured it on the way up, which makes this photo look […]

naps are good

At lunchtime he got angry at his sister for turning the umbrella towards herself, leaving him exposed to the sun… so he flung her plate off the picnic table, spilling her sandwich all over the cement.  The dog quickly grabbed it and ran off.  Mom was not happy. During outside playtime, he got angry at […]

Birthdays and birth days!

A.J. had a great 9th birthday.  We surprised him with a night at The Medieval Times.  None of the kids had ever been there before, so it was a treat for everyone.  They are still talking about it, asking when can we go again?If we were living in those times, A.J. would have been a […]

My Little Daisy

This weekend I spent a lot of time with my #7.  She is in a Daisy Girl Scout troop and this weekend we had two events to attend.  Saturday we went to the Environmental Nature Center where she learned all sorts of things about nature; different types of plants, what they need in their environment […]

Birds fly. Fish swim.

Andrew’s preschool class has a bird for a class pet, and each weekend “Mike the Bird” goes home with a family so that he will not be alone in the classroom.  At the beginning of the year we signed up for the weekend that we wanted to take the bird home with us.  Well, of […]

My Elf on the Shelf failure

I’m sure most of you know about the popular Elf on the Shelf by now. He comes with a book that you read to the children, and the story explains how Santa sends one of his elves to “spy” on them during the day, and then at night he flies back to the North Pole to […]