Caught Unaware

My Visiting Teacher stopped by today...I had totally forgotten that she was coming. The house was a mess. I don't think anyone has ever seen it quite like that (maybe not even Rene because I'm pretty good at doing a quick clean before he comes home). Lunch was still on the dining room table only because breakfast and school lunch makings were still on the counter. All cushions were off the couch and chair (she did sit on the one chair with immovable cushions). Toys were literally EVERYWHERE (I'm looking after a friend's kid this week so he'd been helping with that). Clothes were everywhere as the girls had decided to get dressed by the warm fire this morning. The front hall was full of hats/mitts/scarves/snowpants and other rejected winter items. I had to drive the girls to school this morning with 2 extra kids so the normal morning routine was thrown completely out of whack and I wasn't on top of them to pick up their own stuff. Bean bag chair, bouncy balls, books, laundry (clean and dirty), toys, food...it was all out.

As I saw her at the door and I realized there was no way around it I made a promise to myself to NOT apologize for any of it. She is a mom of 4 children and 10 grandkids so I know she's seen it before. And guess what, she didn't say anything! I did put the cushions back so we'd have somewhere to sit but I didn't clean anything else. IT WAS LIBERATING!!! I think I'm going to do it more often. I will always prefer a clean house over a disastrous one but I think we need to see more of each others' messes. Becca, don't take this the wrong way, but I love going to your house because it's honest - a busy family with kid lives here (along with other reasons as well of course). I have another friend who I know feels like her house is cluttered and messy but I think it's comfortable and lived in.

There's a balance. But I'm going to try really hard to not clean first (thus the blogging today!!). Normally I clean before I do anything else but usually it leaves me with a clean house and nothing else done. There are things I really want to do but never have time. I also don't think think the girls are going to remember what the house looked like but rather what it felt like.

The girls will still need to clean up after themselves. I will still do laundry and dishes and we'll still have Saturday chores (I'm not going to live in a barn!) but it'll be more the ongoing-all-the-time-picking-up I tend to do all day that I'm going to pull back on.

Here's to a new messier me. I will still pick-up before going to bed though - otherwise I might revert back into my midnight cleaning that Erica loved so much growing up.

Picture Dumping!

I just found these great shots on my camera from earlier in the year ('cause, you know, February is SO late...) - I think maybe our Christmas photos got dumped onto the downstairs computer? So I'll get around to sharing them....eventually.... O:-)

First, Adam's birthday party extraordinaire:

Evie, hamming it up...what else is new? ;-)

He wears that crown like it's a normal thing....Oy.

Partying hardy!

Even our baby had a blast! :-D

I have a picture of Addison JUST like this! Just a WEE little familial resemblance!

nom nom nom

Why eat the crust when you can eat the gooey stuff it frames?

I LOVE this photo. LOVE it.

My....somewhat scary?...handsome man!

Is it just me, or do Rene and Adam look super related in this picture? maybe it's the shorn hair and the glasses... weird. Either way, I think we have good taste in gentlemen friends. :)

hahaha she looks so grown-up to me in this picture

Happy birthday to yooooooooouuu!!

Such a SPARKLING personality! (Sorry, i couldn't resist!)

One of my faves - three GORGEOUS gals!

 Then I have a couple from Amelia's birthday:

Having fun is what we do!

Buds, yo!

I know I'm biased, but how can you NOT just adore this face?!

And that's all I've got for today!  Enjoy! Let me know if you need/want me to email anything for printing 'cause some of those are FABULOUS, if I do say so myself.  And I do. ;)

A Visit to the Dentist

The girls had their semi-annual trip to the dentist. I think I dread this more than they do because someone always seems to have a cavity...and today was no different. I had a little meltdown at the office (some may even say a mini-adult-tantrum). Seriously, I don't know what else we can be doing. We floss the girls' teeth every night, brush twice a day, have cleanings every 3 months, we don't eat a lot of sugar, juice only on weekends and special occasions, and almost no candy (usually just during the candy holidays and I do my best to make sure everything gets eaten fairly quickly, it's the least I can do). This is what I maybe a bit loudly recounted to the dentist. I didn't think I was that loud until someone at the front desk looked at me sympathetically on the way out and suggested I could try a fluoride mouthwash with them as well.

It's hard to know if it really needs to be filled or not. Dentistry is a tricky business. I would hope that ultimately they want everyone to have healthy teeth, but they make money on the unhealthy ones. I didn't even know that teeth can reverse cavities themselves until Erica was a dental hygienist. I always assumed they have to be drilled and filled. Also, fillings promote more cavities so it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Amelia has had over 10 cavities. She's at the point that she has them filled without freezing...brave girl!! I think this is Evelyn's first official one (the last one was probably more of a cracked tooth than cavity but was filled just in case).

I feel responsible for my dental hygienist's nieces' teeth. I just don't know what else I could really be doing.

I just really hope the girls all have Rene's teeth and mouth. He has perfectly aligned teeth with no braces or dental work at all (it was one of the requirements when looking for a husband...nice teeth and nice hair)

Amelia's Hidden Talent

Amelia has now been to a couple of Activity Day Girl Activities. It's a large group of girls, around 15 or so, and so far she says that she's really enjoyed going. I have a feeling she's still in her "observant stage". Ever since she was a baby she would sit back and get a feel for what was going on around her before jumping into any activity. When I go to pick her up she's been on her own but hopefully that won't last for long.

The one downside is that there are only 3 girls in her CTR 7 class and both of them have older sisters. She's not particularly close to either of them so she's going in without any pre-existing friendships. On top of that, as of the Ward split from last Sunday, one of the girls is out of our Ward and since the other is semi-active she's the only consistant one in her class. I think I might push to have her class combined with the Valient 8. I wonder if there is anything said to having a junior and senior class combined. Since Amelia's bday is in January and the other girl in February I don't see a problem. And maybe since I'm in the presidency I can do a little more pushing!! Plus, she would then be in a Sunday class with girls who are in Activity Day Girls and hopefully form some stronger friendships there.

Anyway, today's activity was a talent night. Amelia had been set on building a castle out of brownies for her talent. Over the course of 2 weeks I finally persuaded her that Rice Crispy squares might be a bit easier (another one of Amelia's traits, stubbornness!!). I finally prevailed by giving her the analogy that building with brownies would be like building with mud and Rice Crispy squares like Lego. Plus, she could make the squares almost all on her own with minimal supervision (I think that's what finally sold her).

At one point of her building it (I was trying really, really hard to stand back and let her do it on her own, after all, it was her talent night, not mine!!) we both took a look at it and realized it looked much more like a temple...so I pulled a picture of the Toronto Temple up and voilà, she created a Rice Crispy square Temple look-a-like, complete with flowering bushes! Once I get around to downloading my pictures off the camera and figure out how to post pictures to this blog I'll erase this sentence and replace it with a picture of the creation.

My favourite part (other than eating it) was seeing how proud she was of her project and taking in the compliments from the night. Especially when everybody kept asking me if I helped and I could really say she built it on her own.

Turns out she does have a talent of building with food...who knows how far that will take her!

Book Club

I finally did it...I started a Book Club - "Book Mamas". It was back in November but I'm still excited about it!

I've always loved the idea of book clubs but never knew how to find one. I have quite a few friends who are avid readers and often our girls night outs are spent talking about books we've read. It's very hard to talk about books without giving away crucial parts and rarely had any of us read the same book so we could never really get into it.

Tonight's meeting was "The Midwive's Confession" by Diane Chamberlain. There were 8 of us and what was cool was that I only knew 3 of them, friends of friends made up the rest. It makes for a much livelier discussion when we're not all from church, raised on the same values. Of course everyone has their own opinions but it's so easy to assume that they would all be similar to mine...which they weren't. I loved it!! It was such a great group of women that no one was there judging, just expressing and sharing. It was also great to talk about something other than kids and kids.

And what's even better is that I had each person pick a month. They were then responsible for picking the date of the book club that month, picking the book and putting together questions. As much as I wanted to start the book club I didn't want to have to be in charge for every meeting. I also didn't want to pick all the books. The cool thing about being in a book club is being exposed to books you wouldn't have otherwise picked up.

We're tentatively planned until August! Yay for book clubs!!

He Sleeps Like a Log

We had a bug come through our home this week. Poor Audree got it first and spent about 4 hours "puking up in a bowl" (her words if you ask her about her experience!!). The poor thing. The funny part, loosly classified as funny of course, was the first incident. We were getting ready for bed and heard Audree start to cry. This isn't highly irregular so we let her be figuring it was just a dream and she'd settle. Then I heard "the noise of puke". So I ran into their dark room, went to her bed but she wasn't there. I shout to Rene, "Where is Audree?" and he yells back that she's in Amelia's bed, top bunk, against the wall, as far away as possible from the ladder. I switch on the light, climb up the bed and she's throwing up on her pillow about half a foot away from Amelia's face...who is still sleeping. Since there's no easy way to get her down without making a huge, gross mess I just try to contain everything onto her pillow while holding Amelia down so she doesn't flail a limb into it...who is of course still sleeping. Once the worst is over I pass Audree over the railing to Rene and deal with the pillow. Luckily only a tiny, tiny bit got on the bed so we covered it up with a couple of towels so Amelia wouldn't roll over it as she's STILL SLEEPING!!! Surprisingly, Evelyn is also still sleeping on the bottom bunk. We clean the kid up, put her in her bed until five minutes later we go through almost the same thing. Back and forth, light on and off and the other two girls are still out. I wish I could sleep like that!! They definitely have their father's genes.

Rene took the first hour shift...I've never seen him jump out of bed so quickly after every whimper that came from the girls room. In fact, I didn't think he could hear anything from there (more on that later). After it became apparent that this was going to go on for awhile at close, regular intervals I took over. I'm not the one who has to operate heavy machinery all day and risk cutting off appendages or digits. It was a long night but we survived and all was well...until Thursday night. Evelyn's turn.

This time she started middle of the night. My Mom-radar picked up on it pretty quick and we both got to the bathroom at roughly the same time. 7-10 times later through the night, plus Lucienne waking and crying (she had a bad cold all week and was still congested), and an Andree coming into our bed (with her pillow, which you know means she's ready to stay all night) Rene doesn't even flutter a sleeping eyelid. I, on the other hand, have been dealing with sick, waking, crying children a few times every hour, all night, and barely slept at all. Around 5am Roxy gets a hold of a plastic bag and starts to play with it outside our room. Well, Rene is up in a heartbeat scooting her downstairs. Really? That wakes him up? Really? A bag? Thus my theory that he can't hear beyond our bedroom. But, when he's on the ball, boy can he move fast to the rescue.

And we're done our Birthday marathon...yay!!!!

What a wonderful 2 weeks of being reminded of the amazing children I birthed 8, 6 and 3 years ago.

So, I had a mother-of-the-year moment this morning. I kind of forgot it was Evelyn's birthday. I came down, the girls were already up watching some t.v. (so that I can get a little extra sleep!!) and I started right into the morning routine - change Lucienne's diaper, get breakfast on the table, make lunches...when Evelyn asks very politely if she could please open one of her birthday gifts. Ahhhhhhhh!!! It's her birthday TODAY!!! Right, I actually did know that but looking back at the past three days that held three birthday parties for her I kind of forgot. I hope the next 5 minutes of complete exuberance and hugs and kisses and birthday dancing made up for my foggy morning forgetfulness.

So, this kid had 4 birthday parties and I'm not sure how to change that in years to come. It sure is handy when their birthday is actually on a weekend but when it's not it's hard to co-ordinate. On Friday she had a couple of friends over for "theatre a la Lalonde". We borrowed a projector from Mom's work and after collaborating with Uncle Adam finally managed to get a cinema sized movie projected onto a bedsheet hung from the ceiling. Amelia and her friends (invited because the "theatre a la Lalonde" from her birthday party the weekend before was a bust due to increment weather preventing Aunt Erica from bringing the projector up to Orangeville) made tickets and signs, coordinated seating and helped arrange the theatre. After my hours of frustration setting the movie part up (couldn't get anything to play on our laptop) it sure was nice having them here to take care of fun little details. We had pizza, chips, popcorn and juice...only one cup spilled which is a pretty amazing feat considering the audience.

I must say, I loved having parties for the girls this year that involved them only inviting 2 friends. In the past we've done the invite-all-the-girls-in-your-class kind of parties and it's 2 hours of stress and mayhem. It's over in a blur, nobody got to play with the presents (of which there are way too many) and I'm exhausted at the end. Two friends meant two presents (reasonable), they stayed for 4 hours, opened the gifts first so they could play with them and ran around having fun, entertaining themselves. I loved it! Originally we were going to take them to the movies but nothing is playing for kids right now except a re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D which neither of the girls had any interest in going. I'm kind of glad we did it at home anyway. It was more relaxed, we could pause the movie for pee breaks and they could move around to stay comfortable.

Next came the King family birthday party on Saturday and the Lalonde Sr birthday party on Sunday. Then, her real birthday party on Monday. If forgetting in the morning wasn't bad enough, apparently the dinner I made in the evening was worse. I thought she liked ham and yams but she does not. Usually I let them pick their birthday meal but she had already picked Friday's and Saturday's so I just did something that I like and thought she liked. Strawberry shortcake for dessert because we're all a bit caked out and she only ate the strawberries because she doesn't like whipped cream (crazy, I know!) or sponge cake. So, in summary, she had bread with butter and strawberries for her birthday dinner. I can't force a kid to eat the "good" stuff on her birthday!!

And her gift...Rene took the initiative this year and bought the girls' gifts. For Amelia it was a remote control helicopter which she LOVED! Audree was a Barbie and doll stroller which she also LOVED! And Evelyn was a remote control car that could go up to speeds of 30km/hr and was for ages 12+. I didn't realize this until wrapping the gifts Monday afternoon so when Rene got home I suggested he quickly go to WalMart before dinner and pick up a more age appropriate car (the gift idea itself was great, just not the actual gift) with the goal of going to the gym at the chapel after dinner and everyone could play with their toy (the 12+ car now being Rene's...which might have been his plan in the first place). He was going to take Amelia with him (to buy a replacement helicopter with her birthday money as she devastatingly flew hers into the woodstove and melted off a propeller), then Evelyn wanted to go, then Audree wanted to go. He decided that if Evelyn came she could pick what car she wanted and what's one more so Audree went too. Evelyn came back with a stuffed horse, Audree came back with a remote control car and I've now added WalMart to the list of places Rene should not go unsupervised (Home Depot and Canadian Tire already being on the list).

After dinner they went to have a blast at the chapel and I stayed home to put Lucienne to bed. I was upstairs when they came home and could hear the girls chatting excitingly while taking off their coats when Audree says "Oh no, Mommy's going to kill Daddy". She was genuinely worried. In my mind I'm thinking fender bender, speeding ticket or injury. She comes slowing into my room and asks with her sweet little Audree voice and big blinking eyes, "Are you going to kill Daddy?". I told her I didn't think so but needed to clarify with Amelia and Evelyn who were coming up the stairs. Bracing for the worst I asked how the night was and they ask, "Are you mad for us being so late?" (it was only 8:45ish). Apparently Rene didn't realize it was so late until they were in the car and said something like "I can't believe it's so late, Mommy's going to kill me." Note to self, three-year-olds take things very literally. I'm glad they had fun!! And I'm glad Rene didn't get a speeding ticket racing back home.

So, we're done until May (March if you count Grandma but I don't have to do too much planning for that!). I might re-wrap the car for Rene...or maybe just let him keep it for being such a great Dad to four beautiful girls!!

Recharging with the Fam

So, yesterday, you few readers may recall, we got together to celebrate some more of the MANY early-year birthdays in the family.  (It's going to feel like family famine now that we don't have anything to CELEBRATE in the next couple of weeks after all the fun and partying we've done the last couple of months! Yikes!)  And we got talking about my STILL being in school and my reservations about graduation and registration examinations and blah blah blah....

And I just have to tell you, that the automatic and complete assumption/belief that DUH this is going to be EASY for me to accomplish was just...well... fabulous. hahaha

And you're right - I DO have a degree. I DO have a leg up on other people trying to become an RMT.  I AM going to be awesome.  Even though the registration exam scares the bageezies out of me...I can totally do this.

So, thanks for that.  I came home last night and said to Adam, you know what, they're RIGHT.

Anyway, I'm at school now between writing a test and class starting so... that's it for now.  Thanks for believing in me and making me feel awesome.

Cheers!
Rebecca