Just because I am a glutton for punishment..........

Meet our new family member. Little Lucy Bear joined our family on Thursday. She is a four month old Puggle. Half Pug half Beagle. Her owner had to get rid of her due to finances. She is sweet and the kids love her. Before you ask, no she is not potty trained, but we are working on it. She has had only a handful of accidents in the house. She doesn't really bark, and is an avid leaf hunter. LOL She is great with the kids and could care less about the cats. She just kind of goes with the flow if things.

So I have the fabric cut for my next quilt. It will be for Allison and I think it will turn out to be huge. LOL Oh well, then it will grow with her.

The very wrinkled khaki, I would have ironed it, but there was just too much of it.

The light green striped fabric.

Okay, do they seriously need to stamp their name on the fabric? I know where I got it from.

The pretty flower fabric and the tower o' squares. LOL

Now, I know what you are thinking, that isn't the same template, and you are correct! Good eye! This is a new larger template made from a heavy cardboard. Since the quilt was bigger I decided to make the squares 2 inches bigger. Stay tuned for more on this exciting turn of events. LOL

"All those kids."

That really seems to be the popular saying of late. It always irritates amazes me when people say this to me. The comments about how I must have my hands full are a tad annoying too. Yes I am busy, but that does not mean I want your sympathy because of it. I love my kids and if I thought my sanity and bank account could afford it, I would probably petition my husband for some more. I like to think that my hands are full of love as cheesy as that sounds. Seriously I only have 4 kids, I could see if I had 10 that people would say things like "All those kids". I just don't get why people would think 4 is a ton. Maybe it is because I grew up with three brothers that I don't see it as "all those kids". I mean geez, my brother has six and I still don't see them as having "All those kids!" So do me a favor next you are going to make a comment to people with more than 1 or 2 kids, think before you speak. Even if your comments aren't meant to hurt or be insulting, they just maybe.

One of my latest favorite sayings is "A Parent's love is whole no matter how many times divided."

One down!!!

Woohoo I finished up Alex's blanket this morning. I am not sure if I like it though. :~( I just don't know about the ragging effect. oh, well, it is done and pretty cute in my opinion. It isn't perfect, but neither am I. (just don't tell my husband. LOL)

Getting started the squares all sewn together.

And we're off!

I kept checking my bobbin, but imagine my surprise when I looked at the spool of thread.

This is all I had left when it ran out! 3 measly squares!

So, after deciding not to quit and go to the store the next day to buy more, I just used some yellow.

Quilt before "ragging"

All done!

As you can see, he loves it.

A close-up

Not too bad, if I may say so myself.

So I might have gotten in over my head.

Jo-Ann fabrics was having a pretty good Labor Day sale and I jumped at it. I have been wanting to make the kids rag quilts, but kept talking myself out of it because fabric is expensive. I decided this time though that I was going to do it. After all a blanket made by mom is way better store bought quilt. You know because of all the love put into it and all that jazz. Thanks to a friend showing pictures of her gorgeous quilt I decided that I could do it. So I went to the store clutching my $100 bill that I had found while cleaning out my husband's car (after all finder's keepers ;o) ). I was just going to get fabric for my two older since I will be repainting their room. So I picked out the fabric and took a number for it to be cut. I was a good 10 people behind and had a very antsy 2 almost 3 year old so I took him to pick out some fabric for his fire truck bed. Holy Cow! If I don't have a headache by the time I am done making his quilt I will be amazed, let's just say they aren't the calmest colors around. LOL In order to make myself get moving on these blankets, I am going to post pictures here of my progress. I decided to start on Alex's quilt first since it won't be as big as Allie and Nick's.

The fabrics

Getting started, I know you are jealous of my own homemade template. You too can have a jazzy one like that, all you need is an old plastic place mat. :)

All cut... or so I thought. I ended up having to cut some more.

Getting ready to sew. Little did I know my spool pin was snapped off.

Thankfully I have a wonderfully handy husband who ran to Home Depot to get something to fix it. :)

The batting inside, I debated back and forth about having batting, but in the end I decided to just do it.

Sewing! now you can see why I said I may have a headache from this fabric. LOL

Stayed tuned for more progress on this event.

So I must have jinxed myself.

All of the excitement of school beginning jinxed me. I now have three sick kids thanks to school. Ahh yes, the back to school germs. #2, #3, and #4 are sick. I feel bad for the baby because there really is nothing that can be done. I woke up at 4am to feed her, only to have it all come back thanks to all the snot that was in her tummy. :o( I hope that this school year isn't as bad with the illnesses as last year, but it is not starting off so good.

I have been cleaning like a mad woman, perhaps that is why the kiddies are sick. Maybe I should have left all the cute little dust bunnies. Maybe I erased all the good germs and that left the kiddies susceptible to the bad germs. Hmmm, maybe cleaning really is bad for your health. LOL I want to paint frick and frack's room. Currently it is pink with princess murals on the wall. That is great for Allison, but Nicholas is really not liking it. Poor guy is sick of being in a pink room looking at "those stupid princesses!" as he puts it. So I am thinking either of green or a tan color to paint the walls, then I am going to try my hand at making them each a rag quilt. Nick loves anything military relates, so definitely camo and Allison is happy with anything girly, but not babyish because she is 7 you know. I will put up pictures of my progress to share with you, hopefully I won't drive myself too crazy. ;o)

Holly

So I am one of those parents.

I swore I would never be one, but I should know better than to say never when it comes to anything child rearing related. Yes, I am over the moon that today is the first day of school for frick and frack. I swear I thought I was going to lose my mind these last couple of weeks. All they did was fight and argue. I finally gave up and quit trying to break them up and you know what happened? They eventually stopped beating the snot out of each other and played nicely. It is times like this that I really miss my mom. I wish I could call her and ask what she did with my siblings when they fought. Today marks the fifth month since she grew her angel wings and I am actually doing good. It was raining this morning, perhaps it was mom crying because she wasn't with us today. My daughter thinks that when it rains it is because Grandma misses us.

I am very happy that we had no tears this first day of school. I was a little nervous because frack has to take a bus to his school, but he was fine. He climbed right up and sat down in his seat then waved with a big grin on his face. He really thinks he is something special because he gets to ride a bus everyday and his sister does not. Frick shed no tears either as she walked to her building. For Kindergarten it took over two months before she stopped crying in the morning, 1st grade 2 weeks, and now she is in 2nd grade no tears, she didn't even want or need me to walk her to the door. When I asked her if she wanted me to walk her, she just said "No mom, that's okay, I'll be fine." As proud as I am that she was okay, I think part of me misses the sweet little girl who cried when she had to separate from me.

Goodbye 0-3 months. :(

Sigh.. the time has come to get rid of most of Lauren's 0-3 month size. I know, you are thinking, geez, it is only clothes but it isn't. For me is symbolizes the last time I will ever have a newborn, the last time I will put on one of those teeny tiny onesies. I was just getting used to the fact that she was no longer in newborn size diapers (ok she has been out of them for a while. LOL) and now this. She is already able to get herself on her side, I can't believe how the time is flying by. I try to hold on it, but it just keeps slipping through my hands. I was talking to her last night explaining that she just had to slow down because mommy wasn't ready for her to get big and she looked at me, smiled and laughed. What a stinker. I cherish every moment I have with my children and hope when I am old and gray I will not look back to their childhood and think I should have... 

I am in awe at the amount of people who are amazed that I am a mother to four kids. I often hear, "I don't know how you do it." Well, the truth is, I don't know how I do it either. I just get through everyday the best I can. I have no choice I am mom, mommy, momma, sometimes I would like to change that name, but for the most part I hold those names close to my heart. Sure my house isn't as clean as I would like, there is a constant flow of dirty laundry and dishes, but what can you do? Unless you are lucky enough to employ a house full of workers to get things done, you just push on. 

We go next week for my son's testing and hopefully some sort of diagnosis. Things with him haven't been too bad, or perhaps I have just grown numb to his issues. I'm not in denial of the way he is, I am just worn out. The constant fights and arguing leave me completely exhausted by the end of the day. He would make a great sales man. We are constantly bargaining with him If we say two cookies, he asks for four, we say ten more minutes of play, he says 20. It can get frustrating, but at the same time I find it somewhat amusing. 

BTW, I can not believe that it is already July 11th! This summer is flying by fast, good because the kids will both be in school full time come August, but bad because that means my husband will be back to work. I wonder how clean my house will be with two kids gone all day...  Ha! Who am I kidding? 

Happy Anniversary to me.

well I guess and my hubby. :o) It has been 8 years, the time has really flown by. Obviously by our brood we have been busy. ;o) My husband is a great guy and I'm not just biased. He tries to do anything that will make me happy. When I am down in the dumps, he tries to make it better. I don't know what I would have done without him these last six months. He truly is my rock. I wish that everyone could know love like I do. I'm sure I don't tell him enough how much I love him and how awesome he is, but do we ever tell those that mean the most that? 

Lauren's baptism went well. She was the only baby that cried. I probably could have stopped her by whipping out one of the girls, but I was uncomfortable with showing God and the rest of the church my goods.  LOL I had it together until we were on the way to the church, then I started thinking about my mom. I thought I was doing good, I had tears rolling down my face as we walked into church, but I thought I could compose myself. HA! That was until I saw my oldest brother, then the flood gates could not keep shut anymore. I cried while he held me and told me it was okay. I know she was there with us, it was just hard. After I got it out of my system, everything went well. The service was nice and we went back to my parents for a small impromptu party. 

Wow, June 20th already?

This year is passing on by fast. Little Miss is almost 11 weeks old! Tomorrow is her baptism. She will be baptised in the same church I was baptised and in the same gown. It is the church I made all of my sacraments, where I got married, where my other children were baptised and where we had my mom's funeral service. The last occasion was not a happy one, so I want, no I need to have a happy memory there again. I know my mom will be there with us, watching over us. The days are getting better. I still have pretty rough ones, but the images of her sick in the hospital and ultimately dying, are fading and being replaced by memories of Christmas, birthdays, and camping. I remember her teaching me how to make kolacki in the kitchen. I remember going to midnight mass at church with her and her having to wake me up at the end of service because I fell asleep. I hold onto these memories like cherished stones and I pull one out and hold onto it whenever I need to.

We will be bringing Thing 2 back on July 14th for testing to see what his diagnosis is. I do know that we are probably looking at a diagnosis of O.D.D and who knows what else. You can go here to find out some more information about it. http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_with_oppositional_defiant_disorder

The description of this fits him to a "T" he has every symptom. I love hm to death, but some days it is very hard. I know God gave him to us for a reason, perhaps he thinks we could handle it or maybe he just thinks it is funny. What ever the reason, we will keep pushing forward and helping him as much as possible while trying not to go crazy ourselves.

2 months, 1 week and 1 day

since I lost an important piece of me. I forget sometimes and pick up the phone to call and talk, yet you aren't there any more to answer. You are on my mind constantly. My thoughts keep racing from the last conversation we had, to the last time I saw your smile, to the last time I hugged you. Did I let you know enough how much I loved you and how much you meant to me? Was I a good enough daughter, did I make you proud? I miss you so much sometimes that I physically hurt. It is not fair, I still need you. I know it wasn't your decision to go, you were needed elsewhere, but couldn't that have waited just a little longer? I am not angry that you are gone, just confused why it had to be so soon. Surely I could have had a little more time. Why couldn't you have held my baby in your arms and told me how beautiful she is? I need my mom to talk to about my little boy, no one else will do. Am I doing the right thing? Will it get better? I need to hear you say "This too shall pass." I just need you.