Except for the screaming SERIOUSLY

This is how I wish our family was all the time


In reality, this week feels like a constant headache as The Quiet Man (ironically not so quiet) and The Hulk have perfected a form of scream fighting that makes my eardrums ache and my blood run cold.  They are healthy, at least.  Judy Moody has her first piano recital next month, and I am so excited ahe will be playing REAL songs w/ both hands!  She has been really self motivated and my heart could burst w/ joy as 2 and 3 are NOT self motivated so much, and The Hulk is self motivated...but to my detriment.  Come what may and love it?  I'll miss these times?  Too many people have said that for me to question that it will happen someday, but each day my heart yearns for more love and less quarreling in this house and for some occasional peace and reflective time.  I can't always go to the temple, but it seems the only way lately.  Remember What About Bob? W/ Bill Murray?  That, my friends is my family.  I WANT, I WANT!  I NEED, I NEED!  I love them (even if Judy Moody and her friend decided 58 degrees is perfect swimsuit weather), but being a mom never ends, let alone trying to be a really good mom.  How does an introvert successfully pull this off?

And in my health news, does 4.5 days of healthy eating and exercise combat a day w/ a big bit of work/kid related stress eating?  I sure hope so.  I will be good for tonight and all,of the new week though...promise.

SPRING!!!

Ah, this week is looking amazing weather wise.  Strongly encouraging (never nagging) my husband to get our fence in.  The children are DESPERATE to be outside lots, and I have a strong desire to preserve them from being road kill.  We had a fun family bike ride last Saturday and a good walk today.  These family outings are fascinating case studies of human behavior.  Judy Moody (so extra moody this week) is speedy and always thinking of what she wants to do next, so she go, go, goes and is hearing challenged.  Obi Wan (on the 7th HP book) is ALWAYS last and that is w/ much encouragement to keep up so the wolves don't catch him.  Tonight, he was contriving plans for his Minecraft world, brows furrowed as he tortoised along behind us.  The Quiet Man (set up for preschool to help w/ his speech development next school year) runs ahead and lags back and visits w/ everybody.  He was determined to push the Hulk's stroller a good ways tonight, but I have the sneaking suspicion if I had let go he would have pushed it straight into the road.  competition is stiff between those 2 .  They will seriously just sit, both holding on to the same object, scream, cry, and slap/hit/pinch each other for long periods of time if I don't intervene.  Wow.  The Hulk, displaying his softer side, has attempted a little sharing and a lot of hanging out w/ Daddy this week.  He may give bite marks and concussions, but beneath it all lies a caring, compassionate person...right?


We are happy and blessed indeed, and w/o FB, I have no idea how so many loved ones are doing.  I hope very well.

Jolly Good

It has been a funky week-much better than last week as we haven't been on the verge of death by infection, but I had a lot on my mind and did take a few too many hours to hide in the world of my anglophilia.  Let me tell you, I LOVE BRITISH TELEVISION.  I especially love the series where there are a million stunning views of the countryside.  My biggest costs a lot of money dream (which I am not a materially lustful person and normally just want the basics, except for a bit more travel perhaps) is to go to the British Isles for a month or more, tour Ireland, Scotland, England, tons of ruins, tons of history, tons of set jetting (I just learned that term this week).

BUT, until I have $10,000 burning a whole in my huge old granny purse that I will have someday, I LOVE BRITISH TELEVISION...and movies.  Heaven, I tell you, heaven.  So clever, so beautifully done, so suspenseful, and, this might sound weird, but they all have "normal looking" people as the actors.  In British television, a chick that looks like me *ME* can be considered eye candy.  And great actors/actresses can be old and fat with swollen legs and they are totally appreciated for their acting skill and not their perfect, surgically altered or extremely diet and exercise sculpted bodies.  Aside from the scenery and humor, that is my favorite part about these shows.

Some of my all-time and recent favorites:

One that has kept me company this week.





Doc Martin is much anticipated.  Oh the awkwardness of the romance and, well, everything about him.

My old friend Monarch of the Glen.  I can just run this for hours.  Love the scenery, love/hate-in-a-good way all of the characters.

Wives and Daughters.  Interestingly, I had seen this 1 advertised at the beginning of my Monarch DVDs for years and was never interested until this week, and I'm glad I got to enjoy it.  Felt a little like a Jane Austen.

Yes, you can't beat British stuff.  I am a little choosy, because often you can get nudity and no-no words in shows from over the sea, but there are so many, like these, that just aren't skanky.

So many shows I love, that make me feel at home and happy.  I haven't mentioned Downton Abbey, but I'm a fan of that club too.  I love the BBC Jane Austens from the 90s, and I could list 30 more shows I like, but it would get to be quite a long blog.

I'm also studying geography and history of the UK too, but that is going to be a pretty big thing.  I made it through 700 years of the monarchy and well...I'm a nerd about all this.  It is kind of my hobby at present.  Escapism at it's finest, but some day I WILL BE THERE, soaking it all in, and until then, I am soaking it in vicariously.

Enough about my personal obsessions.  To catch you up on my fabulous family, The Husband has been doing some crazy pricing changeover stuff at work (still have no clue).  Judy Moody is still making me smile with her piano.  She has her first recital 4/12, so cross your fingers for her.  Obi Wan is on Harry Potter Book 6, and he has yet to ask me what Damn or snogging means, yet I know he gets the plot because he talks and talks and talks about it to anyone who will listen.  He has no problem being a walking spoiler for any plot lines.  The Quiet Man seems to be getting a little more frustrated about having communication challenges.  He is improving but it is slower than he and I would care it to be.  I love him so much.  I am doing an SLP program with him that I need to redouble my efforts on, and I found a great articulation app (if I haven't already mentioned it), that gets him saying all sorts of words correctly.  Love it!  The Hulk has taken over his brother's Hulk action figure, oh-so-appropriately, and he and The Quiet Man fight and fight until I feel quite batty.  BUT, The Hulk has been a sweet little cuddler at times this week, reminding me that he is still my baby, and he feels so perfectly chubby and heavy and sweet in my arms.  I love the kid.  I have grand bike riding schemes for our whole family, if I can get my resident bike expert/repairman on board.  We need a bike seat for The Hulk and some new helmets as the little brains are all growing, and in our old neighborhood, we had a serious goat's head problem, so many bike tubes need to be replaced.  Hopefully it happens soon if I bat my eyelashes enough.  That's plenty of sharing about thing I LOVE for now.  Will write soon.

Often, on Rare Occasions, I Cry

Sometimes, it is just nice to not make sense.  Really quick catch up (which is better than nothing, right?) is that we had the official, terrible, hideous, plague-like flu at our house this week).  Shout out to Judy Moody, presumably, for introducing it into our house.  You know it's bad when on day 5 you are still not 100%, though improved from day 1 when you were thinking of what you should have included in your will.  Obi Wan and The Quiet Man escaped this one...I hope, I hope, I hope.

But about crying, work just made me cry.  Doing medical transcription, I hear all kinds of "stories" about patients' lives as they are treated, and it is ALL CONFIDENTIAL, so I will do no details, but a little baby fighting hard to survive who didn't make it just made me feel so sad.  I can imagine a little how hard it must have been for the mom, and it makes me want to complain less about my glorious little minions as they have all been so healthy.  This also hit home when The Hulk was sick earlier in the week.  Sometimes, watching the house get destroyed every day and constantly having to try to teach the right things to do and fix all the messes gets a little old, but seeing him look and feel so horrible makes me think a messy house with healthy kids is better than a sick smelling house with sad kids.  Less complaining, more gratitude Anna!!!

I don't know that I can think of any exciting stuff since I was just trying to recup most of the week.  The kids enjoyed Valentines.  We got those lovely taxes done--The Husband did it actually while I was gravely ill, so I didn't participate at all.  What a man!!!!  Obi Wan is being tested for a Challenge program at his teacher's request, which got me thinking, after I asked him what he wanted to read after HP, that I need to stimulate the poor kid with some nonfiction reading material.  And now we have a beautiful Saturday.  Got the Christmas lights down; it is over 50 degrees (but I'm working :(  ), and we get to have some stromboli in 2 hours.  Lyfsgud as one of my favoritist people would say.  I hope that each of you loved ones and the liked ones, and most of the not liked so much or unknown ones, have a pleasant rest of your weekend.  Remember to enjoy and treat wonderfully those you love.  You never know and regret bites.  BUT the promise of eternal families makes many of life's unfair and tragic events more doable for sure.

My Precious

I have no idea why, but I love this picture!!!  It totally reminds me of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or something else fantasy/sci fi, and, again, I have no idea why.  Hehehehe!

Today, I learned that The Quiet Man has an DOWN escalator phobia but not an UP escalator phobia.  On that same note, did you know it is really embarrassing to take young ones to the mall who have never been before.  They made several sweet, elderly mall walkers nearly break their hips, running here and there, paying no attention to what was going around them.  The Hulk screamed and arched his back every time I tried to carry him down some stairs (as we couldn't ride the escalators due to above phobia) because he wanted to do it himself.  Keep in mind he is 18 months, so it is a slow and laborious process, but so let it be written, so let it be done...and it was...so slowly.  The Hulk managed to open a package of girls undies and scatter about various other lingerie.  I hate the mall.  All I wanted, all I really wanted, was to just find a dress that would go to or past Judy Moody's knees.  She's tall but not like freakishly tall, so what's the deal.  Does it cost that much more to add 6 inches of skirt to a dress, so a girl can feel a little more comfortable.  RI-DIC-U-LOUS.  It truly was, especially trying to find this dress with a little boy with phobias who also liked to take off his shoes and pretend to sleep on the floor whenever I stopped to measure dress lengths, as well as an even littler boy who was determined to see if mannequins work like dominoes.  As I said, I dislike the mall, loved it as a teen, hate it now, but Hulk and Quiet really upped that disdain for me today.  

To reward myself for the heinous crimes committed against me earlier, I pulled out my NEW sewing machine from Christmas and fixed some tank tops and also made Judy Moody a skirt and belt, so we can make her wardrobe last while I try to figure WHERE IN THE WORLD YOU CAN GET A KNEE LENGTH DRESS??? for a sweet little (actually super tall) 9 year old.  I was SO happy sewing with a machine that gave me no grief.  JM wants me to teach her to sew soon, so, um, that sounds like a good challenge to help me work on that patience thing.  Such a good skill to give the girl, so I better man up, I suppose.  

In other news (oh yes, there is always other news), Obi Wan is now over half way through with Harry Potter Book 5.  I laugh at him inwardly when he cries as his sister calls him a bookworm.  He is, he totally is, and of all the things to be called, a truer name has never been called, maliciously or no, and dude, trust me, Tub of Lard, Fatso, and Gimp are way worse things to be called than Bookworm--not that I would know that personally, but I wear the name bookworm like a badge of honor and so should my little Bookworm. :)

Oh, I love my little brood, but I don't love every little bit about them.  It has been an introspective week for me, trying to figure how I need to change some major behaviors that have been detrimental to my progress, and I'm not even talking about eating, nope, something different, so I suppose always having the distraction of my little nutters can be a good thing, so I don't torture myself with my own problems and can focus instead on the fact that Quiet Man poked Obi Wan in the eye after hitting him with his Thor hammer but before slapping The Hulk.  Still, when they are all older and mostly capable of taking care of themselves, I am off to Scotland/Ireland/England for a month to fulfill the dreams I am building in my head.  Peace Out!

Quick Catchup for the Week

Wow, another post with no pictures-LAME.  I do want to update on what we've been up to.  It's been a week of ups and downs-that's life.  We got good news, as good as we could hope I suppose, from the doctor, so we are all healthy and well.  Judy Moody is practicing being a teenager 3 years too early, but when she sets her mind to being helpful and good, she is a lifesaver!  Obi Wan just finished the fourth Harry Potter book.  I'm positive at age barely 7, I could not read a 700 page book, so bravo!  The Quiet Man turned 4 and has kindly given us some hope that he will be talking more.  He is saying short sentences that the 3 adults in our house can understand, and that feels great!!!  I purchased an SLP therapy course with a ton of handouts and am taking matters into my own hands in teaching him.  His SLP is awesome; however, how much can a kid soak in 30 minutes once a week-not a lot IMO, so we are hitting it hard at home.  For anyone else who has a child who is taking their time or has some speech challenges, iPad has some amazing articulation apps.  TQM loves them and will actually practice on his own, thus making me very proud.  The Hulk (ironically TQM got hulk fists for his bday) continues to do wall artwork whenever one of his siblings kindly leaves any writing instruments around.  He has torn apart only 1 roll of toilet paper this week, has thankfully been prohibited from playing in the toilet for the first time in I don't know how many weeks, and he continues to be obsessed with pulling eggshells out of the garbage and crushing them all over the floor.  Did I mention he is cute and cuddly in the morning before he starts his daily rampage?

The Husband and I have made big (for us) plans to run 3 races this year, 1 of them being a dirty dash which is more about crazy, dirty, messy fun than actually running, as far as I can tell.  Otherwise, we are just thankful to be healthy and have all our needs and some of our wants taken care of.  We are so thankful to have Heavenly Father in our life, so thankful for the power of prayer, and we are ever grateful for the Savior's Atonement.  Boy, it is good to know when a royal mess up has been committed  or when our hearts ache or when we just don't think we can do what we need to do, He is there, A-L-W-A-Y-S.  With the Savior and my family by my side, I can do anything the Lord asks me to.  Now to learn to handle all this chaos with more grace.  I am always striving for more grace, but it is elusive, I tell ya.

The Family That Shreds Together

Disclaimer:  It should be noted that with the shredder turned off and unplugged, I made sure there was no way chubby little fingers could get stuck in the mechanism, and aside from taking the picture, my hands were right next to theirs.

They thought what I was doing was so fun they wanted to join in.  If only I thought shredding 1000 pieces of paper was as fun as they seemed to think.  Silly, silly little boys.

In random news (which I'm so GOOD at), I have Chitty Chitty Bang Bang songs stuck in my head:  P-O-S-H-posh, the traveling life for me.