Slides, Slides,

and More

Slides

We decided to get Wet n Wild season passes this year.  Jaidyn had been 2 previous times with her cousins, since the summer began, and Isaac had gone once with Mike, but last Saturday was my first time and Kallie and Dagen’s first time going. 

What better way to deal with this hot 110 degree weather? 

It was so much fun.

Maybe an every Saturday activity from here on out.

A Fun Night

As a Family

Last week we saw Toy Story 3 in 3D with the kids.  Loved every minute of it and laughed my head off.  Kallie and I had seen it the weekend before while Mike took Isaac and Jaidyn to Wet n Wild.  Kallie had a bad sore throat and wasn’t able to go the waterpark, so I took her and Dagen to see the movie.  I was not brave enough to try 3D with Dagen though.  I think I liked it better in 2D than 3D.  Maybe because the second time I watched it, the kids were juggling McDonalds Happy Meals while they watched and Dagen kept fumbling with her too BIG glasses and getting ketchup and food and fingerprints all over them and dropping them and mine were falling off the whole time I was helping her.  And I was getting fingerprints on mine and man is it hard to wipe those prints off.

Maybe? 

Seeing My

Long

Lost

College Buddy

It was so fun to see Jessica and her kids last week.  I watched her kids for her Thursday and Friday for her while she had to work.  When she got off, her and Josh stayed for dinner.  I offered to make boneless ribs, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob.  I had never made ribs before, Mike had cooked some the week before and I had watched, so I thought it would be easy to do.  Turns out I pulled out a bag of ribs from the freezer along with some 4 or 5 very expensive steaks and boiled them all!

Ooops, my bad! 

Mike was a little bugged when he got home to come to the rescue and pulled the steaks out of the boiling water and clued me in on my mistake.

Ooopsy daisy!

They steaks turned out a little chewy but the ribs were amazing.

I’m a

Minivan Mama

I’m not a Sienna Minivan Mama, but an Odyssey Minivan Mama. 

Yep.  We did it.  We took the plunge and are now driving the decked out Touring and I can honestly say… I AM LOVING IT!  To have anything you need done with a touch of a button. 

“Kids, get in car.” (push a button) wah lah, doors come open.

Love the back up camera.

Love the adjustable gas and brake pedals for my short little legs.

Love the button I push to get the back to come open.

Love the roomage inside.

Love the navigation system, even though I’ve never used it and still don’t know how to use it… I still love it.

Love the air blasting hard in the back.  (Pilot had no a/c vents in the very back, so kids would be dying until the front vents reached the back.)

Love my sunroof.

Love the XM radio.  This was Mike’s Dad’s car and his XM radio is not up for the mth, so I’m benefiting from it as of the moment.  And I am hooked and want to continue this little luxury, ‘cause that’s what it is… luxury.  The spa station works like magic.  As soon as it’s on, it seems Dagen has no control and just doses off to sleep and sometimes some of the others do too.  Now wouldn’t that alone be worth the $9 a month?  My favorite stations are the 40’s and 50’s and Sinatra stations.  Oooh la la.

Love it, love it, love it.

… and I don’t feel as cool as the couple in the video when I drive it, but I am very comfortable and it meets every need of a mom with 4 kids.

ANOTHER

Trip to the ER

Yesterday was Dagen’s turn.  I invited Emma and Collin to come play and they had both just arrived.  And Sarah would be coming to play with Kallie any second.   I was looking through old journals of mine, Mike’s, and the kids, downstairs in the kitchen, when I heard Dagen screaming.  And that girl can scream like she’s dying and then just walk away smiling a second later.  But this time the pitch was a little different.  Scary different.  I screamed upstairs to Isaac, “Isaac, why is Dagen screaming like that?”

“Collin is changing into his swim trunks and closed the door so Dagen wouldn’t go in and she’s mad and he won’t let her in.” (I thought, could that be it?)

(while running upstairs as fast as my legs could take me) “But why is she crying like that?”

I went into Isaac’s room and found Dagen standing by Isaac’s closet screaming.  When I looked closer, Dagen’s fingers were stuck in the hinge part of the door and the door was shut ALL THE WAY!  I couldn’t see the rest of her fingers at all.  The parts stuck were gone, not visible at all!

Panicking and screaming myself, I opened the door and was afraid her fingers were going to fall off or break off.  So scary.  Poor baby could do nothing for that minute or longer sitting there in total agony. 

Her fingers looked so scary, I was terrified she’d broken them, lost all nerve damage in them, or worse, that they were going to detach, but I saw no blood.  They were literally crushed to the point that one finger looked like it was cut in two.  And two fingers had been crushed.  Her pinky and ring finger on her right hand.  The way they were looking, how could they not be broken? The look of them haunts me still.

The kids were all crying, ‘cause I was crying and screaming running around the house like a mad woman looking for my keys, while crying to Mike on the phone describing the horrible scene.  I left Emma in charge while I took Dagen to the hospital.  Dagen was crying the whole time even an hour after getting to the hospital.  She was in so much pain.  It takes so long to be seen by anyone in the ER.  And once seen, you have to wait even longer in the room they put you in.  Mike got there 10 minutes after I got there.  There was this sweet old lady that came to sit with me before Mike got there and saw my state of panick and grief and poor little Dagen sitting there on my lap crying her tired little eyes out.  She looked through her purse and found a mint and an Andes chocolate, but Dagen wanted neither.  She just continued screaming.  The lady hugged Dagen and rubbed her back while we waited.  She was so sweet.  An angel sent to help me.  I was still shaking and teary eyed seeing Dagen in so much pain.

Dagen’s fingers had swelled up a ton by the time we reached the hospital.  They looked way better than before, even though they were purple and swollen.

All she had to comfort her smashed fingers was a rubber gloved filled with ice, but her fingers were so hurt she barely could get herself to rest her fingers on top of it and get any relief.  After an hour had passed from arriving to the hospital, she was finally given Tylenol Codeine and she was all smiles soon after.  That stuff is GOOOOOD. 

Mike made her some funny balloons.  They were great for making her laugh.

 

The “sweet” ER copay amount

 

This was the same Dr that helped me get off the stretcher and checked me after my accident.  Funny.  She was Dagen’s Dr. yesterday. 

  

This was the lady that sat with us in the waiting room when we first got to the hospital.  Once we were in our room, she was put in the room across from us and kept coming in to check on us.  Her husband was in for what he thought was a kidney stone, but actually turned out to be a pulled muscle in his back.  She showed us pictures of her two grandbabies who the one that was Dagen’s age, looked EXACTLY like Dagen.  Seriously could’ve been her double and their birthdays were a couple days apart from each other.  She kept saying how her heart went out for poor Dagen who reminded her so much of her little McKayla.

 

It had been 3 hrs there and Dagen was getting ansy pantsy.  She kept saying, “I hap to go home.  I hap to go home, Mommy.”  and then she’d rub her head and say, “I can’t belee dat.  I can’t belee dat.” (I can’t believe that).

This professional drawing below, done by me, is pretty much how her two fingers looked like when I pulled them out of the door.  Add some purple coloring to the indented part and it’s a close match.

This was the door she smashed them in.

We later noticed Dagen’s little marks she left on the door.  The wood was dented in, can you believe that?

Dagen was pretty good at dipping her cookies in milk with her left hand last night.  We bagged her right hand ‘cause she was getting pretty messy. 

 

“Mommy,

  I Have a

Surprise

   For You.”

Yesterday, Jaidyn came downstairs all smiles saying she had a surprise to show me.  She was hiding something behind her back. 

“What is that?  Gross!”

“It’s an old banana Dagen left upstairs by the baby dolls.”

“Is it hard?”

“Nooo, (hee hee) it’s squishy.”

“Oh sick, Jaidyn.  Go wash your hands!”

Put Me In The

Looney Bin

Tuesday was a rough day. 

Sometimes I wonder how much a person can take before their brain bursts from too much craziness.  This was just one of those days.

I woke to the kids arguing and screaming at each other and Dagen screaming, “STOP IT ISAAC, STOP IT!  NOOOOOO!  LEAVE ME ALONG, ISAAC!” 

It’s the worst way to start off your morning, wouldn’t every mother agree?  But most mornings begin with a screaming Dagen and most of the time all the kids are up and at ‘em at 6am and I’m up at 7am. 

My kids know that if they want to play Wii first thing in the morning, they have to first do their routine, which entails:  brushing teeth, making their bed, getting dressed, cleaning up their rooms, combing their hair, doing their one chore they have for the day (garbage, sweeping floor in kitchen, or emptying dishwasher), and then reading for 15 min.  And you may be thinking, that’s a lot in their routine, but they know… until it gets done there’s no playing Wii.  And this routine began the first of the summer and surprisingly they all choose to get to it as soon as their eyes open and they finish it by the time I’m up at 7am.  Talk about a way to get your kids ready for the day…. all ya gotta do is use the Wii as an incentive!  It’s also a great consequence.  If there is any fighting/screaming at each other for any reason at all..

BAM… grounded from the Wii for the day.

 

Honestly… I wish Wii never had entered my home.  It was Mike that got it, Mike that wanted it, Mike that loves it for the kids. 

But since some simple rules have been set for it.  It hasn’t been too bad. 

Without the rules… AWFUL!

During the school year the rule was:  No Wii except on Friday and Saturdays.  Before the rule, the kids would get home, cry because they had too much homework and they wouldn’t have a lot of time to play Wii, “no fair, that Kallie gets to play anytime, no fair that Isaac finished his homework before me and I still have some,” etc.  There were a lot of breakdowns from these kids everyday as soon as they’d get home from school.  Everything in their thoughts seemed to revolve around the Wii.  So rule was NO Wii on school days. 

It worked and it changed things for the better.

Since the school year is over, things needed some changing.

Our loft/game room upstairs is long enough that I’ve divided it into two separate spaces.  There’s is now the Wii room and the toy room.  The kids have to play Wii on their own taking turns.  They each get 15 min at a time.  So I bought a handy dandy cheap timer from Walmart (those tick tick tick tick tick ones that you wind and it rings once it reaches the set time).  So if it is your turn, they turn the timer to 15 min and play ‘till the timer runs out and its NEXT!

The other rule to Wii:  No one is in the Wii room unless you are the one playing.  You may play in the toy room, but not the Wii room.  Lessened a lot of the screaming and arguing.

Oh man… Wii Wii Wii Wii Wii… why did you have to come into my life.

Ok… so back to my rough day.  The morning started off with Dagen screaming at the top of her lungs and it was 6:30am.  I got up figured out what the problem was and fixed it.  Kids are arguing about EVERYTHING and EVERYTHING is an argument.  Bickering, screaming, tattling, snitching, crying, arguing, yelling, etc.

Around 10am, I go to my bathroom and find my toilet clogged full of poo, of ‘course.  From on of the kids (of ‘course) and so here goes the plunging.  Except this time, I keep hearing a clicking sound inside the hole.  After I get most of the nastiness to go down, I find this surprise inside.

Rock in toilet. 

I confront Dagen about it.  “Did you put a big rock in Mommy’s toilet today?”

“Yeah.” (big smile) and then the big story begins unfolding in Dagen talk.

“I do it in morning and big rock inside and I couldn’t get out and it yucky poo poo.”

So had to reach IN, ewww, and pull the rock out. 

Then, later in the day, I could hear the toilet flushing upstairs and I asked Dagen if she was the one doing it.  “You go poo poo Dagen?” 

(screaming in panick) “Mommy come here!  Mommy come here!”

That’s never good!  So I ran upstairs and the water filled the bathroom floor and had just reached the edge of the carpet and when I walked in, I saw something like this. 

Dagen’s pooping and overflowing toilet

(I hope you all know I DID NOT take this picture!  Seriously… who would stop to snap a picture of this!  Crazy!)

It’s not very often I am brought to tears from all the craziness of my kids, but this was a teary eyed, frustrating, hellish day.

And to top things off.  While I was cleaning up the mess… I could hear Kallie and Isaac screaming and arguing from Isaac’s room.

I had had enough!  I put all the kids in their rooms and screamed out, “Grounded in your rooms for the rest of the day!  Get in your rooms!  No coming out except to go to the bathroom and when I call you down to eat!  Get!  I can’t believe you guys today!  There has been non stop fighting and nothing but rudeness and attitude and bossing around from all of you!  It’s going to STOP!  I don’t want to hear it anymore. All of you NOW have to stay in your rooms quietly ALL DAY!”

I’ve never grounded them into their rooms for the whole day before.  I think they were pretty shocked.  They’ve gotten a grounding to their room for, I think the longest, half hour.

That night, when tucking my babies in, I went over the day and asked them if they liked being in their rooms all day.  I told them that there better not be not negative or rude comment come out of their mouths when they wake in the morning.  That if I hear one yell at someone that that person will be grounded to their rooms ALL DAY AGAIN! 

I gave them my “serious/ angry” eyes.  And then gave them a kiss goodnight.  Phew

Update: 

No one has been yelling… well… except for Dagen. 

Very few arguments. 

HUGE improvement in attitudes. 

Much better days.