Under Construction

While we were having Hannah's party the sheetrock guy was hanging sheetrock. He spent three days at our house and when he was finished the work he did was better than the builder of our house. Sarah spent the weekend playing photographer, Zander spent the whole weekend watching the work, Tanner and Brendan spent the whole weekend hiding from clean up duties so I got to spend the whole weekend reading.

Happy Birthday Hannah

Okay, so like a month ago we celebrated Hannah's 10th birthday but I'm a slacker and I'm just now getting around to blogging it. KK was in the middle of a move so we had her party at my house. The kids decided they didn't want to go home so it turned into a sleepover. It was a cousin only birthday so we only had 12 kids. I know what your thinking, HOLY COW 12 kids, but that's good for us and Sarah's sleepover last year had 28 girls and only 6 were cousins.

It was a twilight party and the kids all wanted to watch the movie. My kids and one of my nieces don't ever get to watch violent movies and the bedrooms scenes where a bit much for such a young group so I edited the movie and took out everything I didn't want them to see, which was almost half the movie, but none of the other kids complained so it worked out fine.

Puppies!!

All of my blog posts are gonna be out of order for the next few days so just bear with me and be happy your not still looking at Halloween. On December 15th our dog had puppies. I myself have never delivered puppies that has always been Oscars job. I have to say it was the most disgusting thing ever. Just the smell of her water breaking made me vomit and she had 11 puppies so her water broke 11 times. After that I was done. I had to call my sister and her best friend for help. They didn't mind at all and thought it was funny that every time I tried to clean up the birthing mess I had to throw up again. I should have made KK clean up after the dog since she was the one who let the dog get out in the first place but she was busy delivering the puppies and I couldn't stand leaving the mess for later. It has been 11 days and i still think my house smell like puppy afterbirth. I finally caved and gave them a bath today which has improved the smell a little. I know it's a little early but lets face it there was no way I was gonna wait 4 weeks with dirty puppies in my house. KK and Sandra named them as they delivered them. They all had vampire names in the beginning but the kids have renamed some of them with werewolf names. There is one that Zander is particularly fond of and he renamed it Sharla hoping that I wouldn't give her away.

Sleepover Rules

Every weekend we have cousin sleepovers at our house. This weekend Sarah decided she should go stay the night with one of her cousins instead of her cousins coming to her house. I don't usually let her have sleepovers on Saturday because we have church on Sunday but this time she had a plan. Before asking me she called my sister to make sure it was okay. Then she and Hannah called each other to discuss the details. After that she sat down and wrote a set of sleep over rules before coming down to ask permission. She came up with these all by herself so I hope this isn't the way she acts at other peoples house to make her think she needs rules for sleepover behavior.

1. be nice
2. be kind
3. don't say bad words
4. no junk food
5. no cartoon network
6. no nickalodien
7. watch my manners(something I tell her a lot lately)
8. no playing in the MUD(a standing rule for her no matter where she is or what she's doing)
9. no shoving
10. no biting
11. no punching
12. no smacking
13. no snacking
14. no chocking(choking)
15. no farting or burping in peoples faces(she has a cousin that does this)
16. no throwing your food across the room
17. eat all your food
18. go to bed at 8:00pm
19. don't stay up past 8:00pm
20. no midnight snacking
21. brush your teeth

She did get to go after explaining her plans and insisting that all the kids would fallow the rule so they wouldn't drive KK crazy.

Tanners artwork

At the fine arts academy they have what they call the art wall and each week they choose one piece of artwork from each grade to hang on the art wall. Tanner has been chosen twice. Then two weeks ago an artist came in and judged the paintings for his school and one of his paintings was chosen to be displayed at the wsisd winter festival. He was quite thrilled.

Matt's Kids

Almost every other weekend my Matt's kids come stay with us for his visitation weekend. The last time they were here Sierra asked if I could make a blog for her daddy with pictures of his kids like I do for my kids and their daddy.It was so pitiful and I didn't have the heart to tell her that her daddy doesn't have internet access on the base where he's at. Here's her slide show and I will be sending a dvd copy to him in a care package.

Letters from Sarah

Dear Moma,
Sarah and Zander & Tanner & Brendan are very, very, very, very sorry for our bad behaveyour and we are cleaning our rooms.

Now Sarah and Zander are done. We have to wait on Tanner.

Sarah and Zander are going to help Tanner clean his room now.

Brendan is done with his room now and he cleaned the downstairs bathroom. I am also done with my room and the hall bathroom. We only have a little left to put away now.

Now every one is done with their rooms and bathrooms
NOW ARE WE UNGROUNDED?
DO YOU EXCEPT OUR APPOLLOGY?

Love, Sarah, Zander, Tanner, Brendan

Happy Halloween

This year Brendan and his friend James decided they were to old to go trick or treating so Brendan invited his friend to sleep over on Halloween night.

They played video games and passed out candy but I think they ate more than they gave away.

Zanders (Black Spiderman) friend Craig is James' little brother and Zander and Craig were upset because their brothers were having a sleepover without them so Craig's mother invited Zander for a sleep over and trick or treating. Zander didn't make it through the night though, he never does, but he tried.


Saturday afternoon Tanner's best friend Rylee called and invited Tanner (Grimm Reaper) to a Halloween party.

So that left Sarah(Alex Russo) with nothing to do and no friends to come over at the last minute.

But it turned out okay because we made it a girls night. We went shopping to by her a new outfit and went Trick or Treating, just the girls.

The Mitchells also stopped by after their night of mayhem.

Maddy(Supergirl) couldn't take anymore excitement and crashed.

Hannah (Batgirl) was her usual self with plenty of attitude.

Trey's costume fell apart so he pulled his pants down and turned his hat sideways and went as a skater.

This is Karian's best friends daughter Hayley (Thumbalina). She insists that she is a Mitchell and doesn't understand why she can't live at KK's house. Everywhere the Mitchels go she has to go to.

And of coarse Maddie's baby Annabelle. She treats her like a real baby and insists the everyone else in the family does the same.

Under Construction

Having the house remodeled is very entertaining for Sarah and Zander. They try to fallow the boys around the entire time they are here asking questions and taking pictures. I'm sure it's annoying for the boys but they aren't annoying me so I'm not so concerned at this point. The slide show is our house under construction from Sarah's point of view.

Not Sleeping

I don't sleep a lot when Oscar isn't here so i sit in my big comfy chair reading until I fall asleep. I'm okay with not sleeping, I function better with less than 5 hours of sleep but I think my bad sleeping habits are rubbing off on the kids.

Zander's a daddies boy so when Oscar is gone Zander can't sleep. He gets up to wander the house at night and sneak a little TV and then everyday when I wake up I find him on the floor next to either mine or Bobos bed.



Sarah can't sleep without Zander so now when she wakes up in the middle of the night she goes to find Zander.




Sometimes I catch her looking for Zander and i send her back to bed. instead of going to her own bed she gets in Zanders and reads until she falls asleep. i have no idea how long she stays awake in there but at least she isn't sneaking TV.


I've also been finding Brendan still curled up on his closet floor reading when I go in to wake him up but he's still awake so i can't ever get a picture. He says he sleeps a little and then reads a little but I'm not sure he isn't staying up all night.

No More Dog :(

Our bad word neighbor called the city to complain about the dogs so many time that the city deemed the dog a neighborhood nuisance so the dogs had to go. They gave me a ticket for $6000($2000 per dog) and told me to deal with the dogs because if he called again the would be back to give me another ticket. I did call the courthouse and explained the whole neighbor situation, they never came out to give me a warning, and that the dogs were no longer living at our house and got them to bring the ticket down to $265. It's very odd to not have them here so in December I'm gonna bring one of the dogs back and we'll just see what happens.

Puzzles

Our new Saturday activity when we don't have babies and there isn't construction going on is to hang out in our pj's all day and do puzzles.

Tanners pieces that almost fit together perfectly and the pictures line up exactly, but they don't actually go together.

Brendan doesn't really like to do puzzles so he takes pictures and makes lunch while the rest of us work.

Tashas Shower

I was supposed to host the shower for Tasha but Oscar called Thursday just before midnight to tell me he was flying out Monday and he wanted me to fly to Mississippi in the morning to spend the weekend with him so I did. I made the cake, threw all the food together and stuffed it the freezer, put out all the decorations and party supplies, and called my sisters and told them they were on their own for the weekend. I flew to Mississippi leaving them to fend for themselves. I only felt a little guilty for missing the shower that i was hosting and dumping everything including my ids and mom on KK but they took pictures and Sarah and Hannah had plenty of stories to tell when I got home.

It all comes out in the wash

Well, sometimes it doesn't but he just has to keep scrubbing until it does.

I always complain about the laundry, the 3 loads a day, the stains, the clean clothes that I am rewashing, the markers Sarah leaves in her pockets, etc. but I'm so glad that my husband is now doing his own laundry. His uniforms are so dirty at the end of the week that I would just throw them out and send him to buy new ones. He doesn't though, he washes and scrubs until they look like this -

Trees

After the hurricanes Katrina and Ike a lot of the trees that were still standing along the coastline were either damaged or dead. The is an artist that is going around the coast of Mississippi carving the trees into sculptures. I wish I could have brought one home because they are amazing.






The big owl in this picture was about the length of my van.


Some of the trees had roots that were so strong they couldn't be ripped from the ground. They were strong enough to withstand the winds but didn't stand unchanged from them. The swirling winds from the hurricanes twisted the trunks of these massive trees.They will forever be a reminder of what happened there.