Random stuff

Emily had a science project, so somehow in that, we ended up with 2 guinea pigs. 

 Now that her project is over, I am not sure what we will do with them.  The got lots of attention the first couple weeks.

 Now no one wants to clean their cage which gets pretty smelly pretty fast!

 Our cat who still has no name besides Cat and Kitty, catches mice all the time. 

 He will bring them in and flip them around and catch it and bite it and then bat it again.  Yesterday he brought in two mice, one right after the other one.  They were not the same one, the first one was dead and the second not so dead. 

 It is kind of annoying when the cat brings the mice inside.  (I must admit I find it amusing to watch him play with it.)  Then I have to put the dead mouse outside.  What is really annoying is when he brings the mouse inside and it isn't dead and he lets it loose.  So far he has done this 2 times, and the mouse has gotten in a place where he can't reach it.  This morning our cat was standing guard in a closet.  I moved things around and the mouse ran out, the cat still was in the closet looking for it.  Last I saw the mouse, it ran into my laundry room.  By this time the cat was taking a nap on the couch.  Perhaps I need another cat. 

We sign up for Bountiful Baskets each week.  Each Saturday we go pick it up.  This week we got coconuts.  The girls were super excited to drink the liquid inside it and eat the coconut meat.  We drained the coconut.

 I smashed it with a hammer!  It broke right open.  On the internet it suggested smacking the coconut with the back of a durable meat clever knife.  I opted for the hammer. 

I took all the meat out of it. 

 And we were left with the shells.  The girls have several different things they want to do with it.

 Funny thing, the girls were so excited for all this coconut adventure, but no one liked the water from inside, or the coconut, and they even convinced me to make coconut milk, which no one liked.  We did make a smoothie out of the coconut milk, but only a few liked it.  I guess now I have a ton of coconut.  Perhaps now I really will make granola to help use up my coconut.  I love coconut, and have been eating the raw coconut.  I am the only one.  Oh, well the cat was eating some too. 

This is just a random picture of Samantha.  She still loves her blanket, and her thumb.  Unfortanetly, Amber is still sucking her thumb too.  I was so good at having my kids be done with bottles at 12 months, their pacifiers shortly after that.  In fact little Amber did have a pacifier and I took it away from her before Samantha was even born.  Then when Samantha was sucking her thumb, Amber picked it up too. 

Samantha loves her blanket.  I asked her what her favorite animal was, she said "blanket" which cracked me up.  My baby is growing up!  That makes me sad!  Wish I could slow the days down and keep her little.  All my kids are growing up too fast!

The eyes have it...

Pink eye that is. Poor Lindsey!

Clever Amber

 Amber seems to have a rapid growing brain.  She reminds me of Emily at this age, witty for her young age and understood joking around.  Amber will get Samantha to come over to me or go into the bathroom, whatever it is that I am requesting of Samantha, when Samantha isn't cooperating.  Amber will say "hey Samantha, follow me" or "Samantha can you catch me?" or something like that to get her to be tricked into coming to me.  Then of course, Amber walks right over to where I want her.  She helps me out quite abit in the day doing this, also asking Samantha to race her to get her pajamas on or her seat buckled, things that she isn't doing for me.  Amber is pretty clever!  I am afraid this cleverness will be not for my benefit as she gets older. 

One day I was in the basement going through totes and totes of girl clothes.  It seemed there were not clothes for Amber, so I went to look for the clothes I knew we MUST have in the basement, after having 3 girls ahead of her, and twins...  there had to be something more.  When I was getting all the clothes gathered I stumbled upon a pair of footed pajamas that were like size 14 or 16 in girls.  I thought they were the funniest thing.  I showed them to Amber and told her they were Emily's size.

That night I secretly got those pajamas with Amber and added them with her pajamas.  As I was putting on Amber's footed pajamas, Amber said to Emily, "I just love footed pajamas, don't you?"  Emily of course just responded, "yeah."  Then Amber said, "they are so warm, don't you wish you had a pair?"  Then Emily got sucked right into it, "Yeah I wish I had a pair, I just love footed pajamas!"  Then Amber asked her, "if you had a pair would you wear them?"  Emily was exagerating, "Yeah I would wear them every night and all day if I could!"  Amber quickly got up, grapped those big pajamas and threw them at Emily and said, "You do, here you go!" 

I was laughing so hard...  Emily got pulled right into it.  Amber did it all, she didn't need any help, she just suckered Emily into saying exactly what she wanted. 

So Emily humored Amber, and the rest of us, and put those pajamas on.  Too funny!

The next morning Emily was wearing different pajamas.  She said she got way too hot and had to change in the night. 

Emily is so good with Amber.  They both have such a bond and unique love for one another.  I love to watch them interact.  I hope they will always be close!

Valentine's Day

As Valentine's day approached, I couldn't help but to think of our Valentine's time 2 years ago.  You can read the post here about when Samantha had RSV and she was in the hospital.  It was just a day or two after Valentine's day.  At times it seems like so long ago, and yet also like just a short time ago.  How does time do that, seem both so distant and yet just yesterday too?  I read my post from two years ago and remembered all those feelings of how sad it was to listen to Samantha struggle to even breath, and Amber who was 2 was sick with it I am sure too, but she was old enough that you could hear her raspy breathing but she was strong enough to be okay.  I hated going to the hospital and holding down my sweet little 8 month old baby while they stuck tubes in her nose and mouth to suck out the fluids while she cried her little tiny helpless hoarse cry.  I hope I don't even have to deal with something like that again.  The twins even remember going to the hospital to visit her.  They remember the little kids hospital gown she had on.  It was blue with little bears on it.  It was way too big, but we just modified it a bit.  I had forgotten those details until they had said it.  I had some pics but they were on a phone that I had to replace and I lost the pictures.

On to better things...  this year I didn't do as much with the heart theme as I have before.  I tried to make heart cookies, but I think because they were store bought dough, they didn't turn out.  I have done it before with my recipe and it works so good.  So I ended up cutting the cookies a bit to make them look more like hearts. 

I had Samantha and Amber paint "love" pictures.  They were cute.  Then I just drew on some other  paper for placemats and added some candy suckers to the table.  Suckers seem to be a staple at our house sometimes.  You can see the pictures they painted under the little bottles.

The strawberries were heart shaped, the ice in the pink soda was heart shaped, and the pizza was heart shaped before I cut it.  We also ate heart candy too.  Oh, yeah the best part was Amber helping me make heart shaped breadsticks.  She helped me twist the pillsbury breadsticks from a can into little hearts on sticks and big hearts too.  I put some of the ones in a vase that were tall, but some of them just broke.  Oh well.  To my suprise the breadsticks were tasty.  They were the garlic kind.  I will probably buy them again.  I hadn't had them before, or don't remember it anyway. 

Samantha is "too big for her high chair now" or so she thinks she is.  She uses a chair now.  She seems to be enjoying her dinner.

Amber insisted on having her mouth wide open.  She is too funny!  Since she has been sick she has been working on eating all her food.  She actrually ate ALL her pizza but a little bit of crust, and 3 bread sticks.  You can see a little of the breadstick in her hand that was kind of shaped like a heart wand.

Emily is good with anything that has to do with pizza!  I lost count of how many slices she had.

Lauren was enjoying the meal, but seemed to have already filled her belly with candy at a friends house so she didn't eat much. Emily snuck into Lauren's picture.  (You can really see those genetic canine teeth of hers.)

This is the funniest pose of Samantha's!  When you tell her to say cheese, she squishes up her face and closes her eyes and says, "cheese!"  It really cracks me up!!

I went cheap, really cheap and just wrote Robert a little letter with some song lyrics from Matthew West, "Wouldn't Change a Thing" and what does he do... what he does everytime.  He gets me something way too expensive, something I wouldn't have ever dreamed of because it is out of what I would consider our price range....  he got me an iPhone.  We were getting ready to shut my phone off to save some money, but instead, he upgraded it to a new phone and got himself one too.  The phone seems pretty cool, but it will take me forever to figure it all out.  I had my iPod figured out, but now a phone was just added to it.  Yikes!  It will take me awhile.  Now I will get nothing done around the house for a week while I try it out and learn how to use it.  It will be Robert's own fault when he comes home and there is no clean clothes or clean dishes.  (okay not really)

A recap of the last few weeks

Friday after school there was a swarm of kids at our house playing.  There were a few of them playing on an old phone (one with a cord connecting the base to the handset) that I plugged in, they wanted to see how it worked.  Next I hear the words "911" and "dialed" which caught my attention quickly.  I informed them that it was against the law to call 911 if it isn't an emergency and that they could get in big trouble.  They hung up the phone.  I unplugged the old phone.  As I was putting the phone away and continued my lecture on why we can't call 911, the phone rang.  I wasn't for sure if they really had called 911.  I aswered the phone, and it was the 911 center.  They received a call from my house and wanted to know if everything was alright or if we needed help.  I apologized and tried to explain what had happened and that we were fine.  About 15 minutes later, a police officer knocked on my door due to the 911 call.  I explained it to him and assured all is fine.  He took my personal info anyway.  I guess I have a record now.

When the officer came, I was getting ready to walk out the door to meet Robert for a date.  We had a sitter.  When we came home we heard all about their eventful night.  The saw something out the kitty door in the garage.   Some glowing eyes (like cats eyes do) but it wasn't the cat.  Amber went to open the door and the sitter told her NO!  Then the sitter went to look out there, she found the return of the Racoon!  He hissed at her as he was going down the steps.  I guess the kids where pretty spooked and stayed in my room the rest of the night. 

We had an incident the night before of something that was in the kitchen and I thought it was the cat.  When Robert went to go check it out, the cat was in the loft.  The kitty door swished open and shut when Robert went in the kitchen.  As he came back upstairs the cat was still in the loft.  Same night, just earlier, the kitty door swished but the cat was laying in front of the door.  I thought it was maybe the wind.  I felt the cat to see if he was cold as if he were in the garage, but he wasn't.  I didn't think any more of it until later when we had other things.  I did notice the racoon tracks in the snow in January sometime.  We are blocking the cat door in the outside garage door so he can't come into our garage. 

I went shopping on Saturday... alone... but ended up coming back much later than I anticipated which made a frustrated husband.  I did get alot done.  I got some curtains for our bedroom since the stupid vertical blinds that are in there are falling down, getting broken and don't work.  I found some curtains to replace the vertical blinds in our dining room too that I want, but those will have to wait a bit longer.  I did a small grocery store trip and got some hardware for some misc. tasks around the house at Home Depot.  I got a book shelf for the little girls room and some little baskets to go with it.

Sunday we had Robert's parents over for dinner.  Technically, they brought dinner.  I made a new salad, with cauliflower, onions, brocoli, rasins, bacon, sunflower seeds.  It was SO yummy!  Robert made the comment, "how can you make something with so many vegtables in it taste so good?"  Due to the super bowl, we had some junk food too.  Emily ended up throwing up early the next morning and stayed home from school on Monday.

The curtains I got weren't the right color so I went back another day to exchange them.  The new ones were $10 more but I think they will be better in the long run.  I also splurged and got a little table and two stools for the little girls' room to go with the little book shelf and their new dresser. 

I put together a dresser, a book shelf, a little table, and two stools.  I organized the little girls' clothes and got rid of stained or too small ones.  I moved two older dressers to the basement to make room for the new dresser.  (I am excited to have those in the basement to one day organize some things down there.)  I also debunked the bunk beds in the twins' room.  That was tough.  It would have been quite the sight.  I had four 8/9 year olds helping me stablizing one end of the bed as I moved the other side.  I even had Emily on the bottom bunk to kick the top bed up at one point.  I rearranged the twins room so that they could have their beds both on the ground.  I think Lauren was tired of being on the bottom bunk.  Their room is a little tight, but it will work. 

I also got a book shelf that about did me in when I carried it upstairs, I was thinking I was pretty wimpy until I looked on the box after I got it upstairs.  90 lbs, no wonder it was feeling so heavy.  Ugh.  My muscles were resisting when I put the back seat back into the van after carring the book shelf in it's box all the way upstairs.  The book shelf will hopefully be better for the books and toys so we can get rid of the toy box bins.

On our drive back home from getting the book shelf,  I was telling Amber that she couldn't have chocolate milk because of her cough.  I was trying to tell her that we didn't want to give her something that would make her cough more than she already was.  I started out with "you can'tt have things that will make you..." and I was trying to think of ways to complete it.  I didn't want to tell her she couldn't cough, so I was trying to choose my words.  Amber then finished, "make me die, right mom?"  I told her that was right (since that is all you can follow with when she uses that right mom phrase).  Then she was quiet for a moment.  Then she said, "Jesus probably really loves having a dog and a cat now."  It kind of caught me off guard, I had to have her repeat it.  The thought of her dying made her think of Jesus and that made me feel great that she put those two together.  She use to say things like, "if I push my finger in my eye I will go live with Jesus."  It kind of freaked me out alittle.  She would say things like that when she was going to bed about going to live with Jesus and dying.  I was always wondering, is she preparing me for something?   The reference to the dog and the cat that Jesus has is from our cat that never came home fearing his fate was death and a dog we had before she was even born that had to be put to sleep.

Oh, did I mention I also got a flat tire?  I found a crack in the sidewall of the tire on my van.  I heard this loud gushing when I was taking the seat out of the van to get that whopping 90 lb book shelf.  I could feel the air wooshing out.  I filled up my tire with air from our compressor and prayed it would make it to the tire place.  Would you believe when I got there, the tire was still fully inflated, I couldn't see the crack at all.  The two little girls and I sat in the waiting room while they replaced the tire. 

Emily had a science fair that we went to.  She did it on the diet of guinea pigs.  She got two different kind of food and fed one to one and the other to the other.  Then she put them through mazes to see if the time was better one way or the other.  She was checking to see if it one food effected their intelligence or activity level.  She didn't think she collected enough data to really tell one way or the other. 

Rob's mom went to the ER for a kidney stone and a UTI.  They admitted her for a procedure to flush the stone out, she had complications with blood pressure and has stayed this whole week.  We took the kids to see her the first night, but she was in ICU so the kids weren't able to see her.  Poor little Amber wouldn't leave, she said "I'm not leaving until I see Grandma!"  Even in the parking lot she was pulling back and telling me she came to see Grandma and she still wanted to see her.  It was pretty funny. 

Since then, Amber has came down with a cold accompanied by a fever so we aren't able to go see her until Amber gets better.  Amber looks so sad, her little eyes are all red and watery even.  One night I heard her crying in her bed, I went in her room.  She had turned the light on and was looking around in her bed.  I asked what she was looking for.  "I was looking for you!" she cried.  She must have been looking for her blanket and shirt or water or something.  Poor thing, she is just out of it. 

Lindsey and Lauren both have DEAR today, Drop Everything And Read.  Lindsey also has her RAD kids graduation.  I feel bad I will be missing it all.  Amber still isn't feeling great.  Robert doesn't feel like he can miss any work since twice a week he goes to physical therapy and leaves work early.  I wish there were someone to go to it.  I feel aweful I am not able to be there.  Lauren wants me to come help with her Valentine's party on Monday, but it will have to depend on how Amber is feeling.

Robert's physical therapy has been going good.  It is funny, our insurance approved him for 6 visits.  The dr. recommended twice a week for 12 weeks.  Our hope is that the insurance will still cover the other visits.  Oh, and did I also mention when Robert was thinking about this surgery he asked them how much it would cost.  The amount they gave him he thought was total before insurance, so he was thinking we would pay like 20% of that.  The price they gave him was AFTER insurance.  That made for a nice surprise.  He has started lifting weights with his arm at PT.  At first they were just using the weight of his arm as weight.  Now he is up to a 2 lb. weight.  He said it about killed him.  It will be nice once he has full use of it, so I don't have to do it all.  Book shelfs and dressers, Christmas trees, gargbage cans, snow shoveling, moving furniture, putting up curtains.  There are hundreds of things (or it feels like) I have been doing that I think it would be nice to have help with or for him to do it.

I got a call from a research place a week or so ago.  They wanted to know if I would be interested in coming in for a control panel, I think is what they called it.  It would take about 2 hours but they would give me $75.  I thought, sure!  I took the girls to Grandma's and went for the panel.  Turns out they always overbook, so I sat there for about 20 minutes then they told me I wasn't needed, so I got $75 anyway, and they will call me again since I didn't get to really do it.  I was excited!

The same day Emily had her science fair, Lindsey had an appointment with her orthodontist.  She scored another A on her brushing and flossing.  That put her name into the monthly drawing and she got to put a sticker on her picture.  Her picture had 5 stickers on it already so this made 6.  Every 3 stickers you get a gift card to a local business.  She last time got a walmart $10 gift card.  This time she chose Cinemark.  She was really excited!

Samantha's new thing is "in-a-men" which means in a minute. I am sure that is a phrase she hears me say often.  I will ask her to come here to put her pajamas on or get her shoes on.  She will tell me, "in-a-men" and she will continue doing what she is doing.  Funny girl!  She also does this cute thing with her eyes.  When she is telling you something that maybe might be a bad thing she will squint her eyes up real tight.  For example, "I just spilled a little bit" or like when Grandpa asked if she wanted some of his cake.  She said, "no I have my own."  But then she came back and said, "Maybe just a little one" with her eyes all squinted and her fingers showing how little of a bite.  She is so cute!

It is amazing how much you can accomplish at times and yet other times nothing gets done.  The master bathroom has been on my to do list for weeks.  Yet I can never find time to do it.  Although I did find time to rearrange 2 bedrooms, put together furniture, and organize the loft which was a 2 day project, and I cleaned the car out.  The car was a nightmare in itself.  We also lost one of the remotes and I had a hunch the couch ate it.  I turned the couch over and sure enough, the remote was there along with tons of other little pieces of playsets and some other unknown things and lots of crumbs from snacks and popcorn.  That couch is the worst at eating things!  Although we still have a remote we lost around Christmas time that has never surfaced.  Strange. 

There is always lots of things going on.  I saw a paper announcing sign-ups for spring soccer.  Amber is old enough this season.  She will be so much fun.  But I am not sure about 3 practices and 3 games each week.  I am sure I have forgotten some other things from the last few weeks.  Since it is Friday, it is my laundry day, so I must get on it or laundry will never be done this week.  I am hoping to get my curtains up too, but I have been hoping that for half the week.  I also want to put together the new shelves too.  I am not sure my day is long enough. 

Finally, all about Christmas

I was hoping to have this post done before it was 2011, but I guess Febuary 1st is good too.  I really should be doing dishes, but here I am instead recording history right? 

We have started having annual Christmas family parties since Robert's parents moved back to Utah.  We all get together, or all those that can.  Santa seems to have time to stop by for a visit, we have finger food type dinner/snacks and have a small gift exchange using the "Wright's Christmas Story" where you pass your present to the left or right/wright everytime the story says those words.  It is lots of fun. 

Present at our party this year was our family of course (since it was at our house), Robert's parents, his grandparents, his sister's family which includes their daughter's family, and we missed Robert's 3 other siblings and their family that live out of state. 

The girls seemed to like the food and most of all the good stuff they got from Santa when he brought their stockings full of goodies!

Samantha sitting with Santa getting her stocking.

Lauren telling Santa how good she has been this year so she can get her stocking.

Amber wasn't too sure about Santa after her mall trip that she decided she didn't want to sit on Santa's lap even for a sucker, but she did okay this time.

Lindsey sitting on Santa's lap excited for her stocking of good stuff.

Emily didn't look my way to smile for the camera, but she too sat on Santa's lap.

Grandpa even got a turn.  Sanata made him in charge of collecting garbage.

Here is the wonderful Grandparents of Robert.  The girls love their Great Grandparents!

This is Robert's neice and her family.

 Funny thing about our family party was Robert was still healing from his surgery and then his sister's husband just had knee surgery.  The two of them sat next to each other on the couch.  Santa commented on the two of them.  We made several jokes about it. 

On Christmas Eve, we were invited to go to the Johnson's family party.  We enjoyed pizza and made some candy sleighs in groups that we then raced each other to see whose was fastest.  (My team won!)  Then we did a little gift exchange with the "Wright Story" and passed our gifts around.  We also put together some hygeine kits (I think that is what they are) with toothbrushes, wash clothes, combs, soap, toothpaste.  Our church participates in humanitarian aide, and that is what these kits were used for.  My girls love doing it, they always ask if we will be doing it again when we go to the Johnson's party.  I guess I need to get more involved and get some kits for us too to do. 

Finally came the day of Christmas.  The kids were so excited.  Amber was asking for days, is tomorrow Christmas?  I had to keep telling her no and showing her the calendar so we could count the days.  It was kind of a bummer, I had not wrapping help since Robert was in his sling.  I started early wrapping presents and then the big night of Christmas Eve, I wrapped maybe 5 presents, came down stairs with all my boxes of wrapped presents.  Robert was pretty surprised I was done already.  He at one point said, "when are you going to wrap presents?"  I kept putting it off and putting it off.  I think he thought I might be wrapping presents until the time the girls woke up. 

I wish I would have gotten pictures of what Christmas looked like.  I got it on video but no still pictures and I am too lazy to get them from the video right now.  The older girls all got new bikes, Samantha got a baby stroller, high chair, and little bed.  She LOVED it!  Amber got a little barn set with animals and tractors and all. 


I somehow with those little girls seem to always have smudges on my lens.  Lauren is opening up a present here, and Robert looks a little sleepy still.



Emily wanted to try to guess what each present was as she opened it, so many times she would not look until she could guess what it was.  Oh, and look, Robert looks a bit sleepy again.

Amber opening one of her presents.

Lindsey was always cracking jokes, "yeah it's a box, I love it!"  She is the life of the party.

Samantha worn out from Christmas morning.

Poor Samantha was so worn out, she fell asleep without her blanket or sucking her thumb.  She is wearing a dress up outfit that Amber got for Christmas.  It was too funny to watch, little Samantha just kept bobbing her head, then she would sit back up and start bobbing all over again. 

That was a short version of our Christmas.  The girls got lots of stuff, Emily got a TON of books.  I don't recall too many toys.  Mostly the toys the girls got came from what they bought for each other. 

That was how are Christmas went.  It seemed like it came and went too fast.  Every year I feel like we need to have more Christ in our celebrations, every year I try to do it and yet every year I feel like we didn't do enough.  I heard of a family that doesn't do Santa.  I kind of like the idea so that Chirst is there instead of Santa, but I feel like it is too late for that.  I will just have to try a little harder next year.  I think with Robert's surgery and all, it made things so crazy and fast paced, we waited till the last minute to do many of the things and that always makes it hard for me to feel the spirit and enjoy the season of the birth of Christ.  (sigh)  I will do better next year!