4 Moms Open House: Yard and Entry

I know I'm late on this but I just ran across this Open House Tour on Raising Olives blog and thought it was a neat idea. The 4 Moms are doing a month long Open House posted each Thursday and the first one is Yard and Entry. You can visit their pics back to the 4 mom’s here for Kimberly at Raising Olives, here for the Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room, here for Connie at Smockity Frocks, and here for KimC at Life in a Shoe.

We are a family of 10 that live in a 7 bedroom house (that sounds grander than it actually is, believe me) that was built in 1978. When we purchased the house in 1994, it only contained 3 bedroom. Since then we've made a number of renovations, the biggest of which was the addition over the garage that gave us another 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. Only 5 of the rooms are currently being used as a bedroom...one is a playroom and another is a den/office. We have 5 boys and 3 girls...the girls are all in one room, two boys (twins) in a second, our 2 oldest boys in the 3rd, the baby (he'll be 2 soon so not much of a baby anymore) in the 4th and us in the 5th.

The tour begins with a view of our house from the road...
and a side view. This is usually where our garden is at this time of year but the last couple of years have been so miserable and that combined with all the rain we had at the beginning of planting season, prompted us not to put one in this year.
Continuing around this side of the house brings you to our back yard. It includes a lovely pool for cooling off on the hot days that we have...

a trampoline to try and wear the kids out although at the moment it needs some repair work done to it before the kids can jump on it, a soccer goal and a small playground for the younger kids...

and a lovely chicken coop that houses some really sweet chicken and a crazy looking rooster. I should have taken a pic of him as he looks like he stuck his claw in an electric socket...he has feathers on his head that stick out in every direction...


This is a view of the back yard from our deck...

This is our deck, which is not nearly big enough for all the people we have running around on it. One of these days I would love to extend it to the other end of the house...

and last but not least, our entryway. This is the front entrance to our house. If you go up the stairs, you end up in our living room. That's our cat, Oscar, coming down the stairs. The doorway you can just make out in the upper right of the pic leads into our kitchen. If you go down the stairs, you end up in a rec room...but this is how we usually get into our house, thru the garage and into our laundry room...

Thanks for visiting!

Happy Anniversary!

Hard to believe we've been married for 21yrs. A lot has happened over those 21 yrs, good times and bad. Thankfully the good times have outweighed the bad. This is my favorite picture from our wedding day. Who would have ever thought back then that we'd be sitting here with 8 munchkins. Luv ya, sweetie!

Day Trip

Andy and the kids took a trip a tad south of us to visit Horn Point and the Salisbury Zoo. Andy interned at Horn Point one summer while in college and loved it. I ended up baby sitting his fish that summer. ;)

From what I understand, Tyler seemed to have the most fun...has Andy thinking Ty might decide to follow in his footsteps. Connor was disgusted by a conversation of how oysters reproduce...I'm thinking biology is the last thing that he will go into. LOL

After the morning tour, they all headed to the zoo. They are seemed quite taken by the alligators there...apparently they were up close to the fence so they got a really good look at them. I got to see a very interesting video of a flamingo eating...looked like he was dancing on his head. Was quite entertaining until he pooped at the end...was perfect timing on his part as he was spinning in circles and decided to do it right as his rear end was pointed directly at the video camera.

All in all, I think everyone had a nice day and I'm a little upset that I wasn't extended an invitation to go with them...maybe next time.

Crazy Week

Whew, finally time to take a breath. This has definitely been a crazy week. After getting back from the beach last week, I spent Monday and Tuesday in full day training at work, then Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday driving back and forth to Virginia to watch Kenzie play in a softball tournament and Friday I did a full day of work and then watched Tyler test for his orange belt. The drive to the games in Virginia ordinarily wouldn't have been that bad except we were having to do it in rush hour traffic...both ways. Ugh! Andy did the drive on Friday and the 1 1/2hr trip took him 3 hrs. No fun. During the first game of the tournament, we ended up in a rain delay for a couple of hours. It started raining during the first inning and by the second inning it was pouring. People were scurrying everywhere to get the equipment bags and such off the ground and under cover. I would have loved to have gotten a picture of what our canopy looked like...all the bags, chairs, people that were underneath it but my bag was buried underneath the pile. The rain finally slacked off some so we made a break for the car. Kenzie and I jumped in only to have me jump back out again. The reason for me vacating the car so quickly was because I'd looked down to see a yellow jacket walking down my shorts onto my leg. Thankfully it didn't sting me. We went back to the hotel, grabbed a quick bite to eat and an hour or so later were back at the field to resume the game. Amazing enough, the fields weren't in bad shape...which was totally surprising given that there were rivers running down them during the downpour. The girls ended up losing that game and Kenzie got hurt on the last out of the game. The first baseman really whacked her as Kenzie ran by trying to get on first. She was hit so hard she ended up flying over first base without ever touching it. Thankfully she wasn't seriously hurt but she did end up with a hurt wrist which kept her out of their second game until one of her teammates popped her shoulder out while batting. Kenzie ended up going in to replace her. Nothing like a hurt player replacing a hurt player. LOL She did great...ended up getting on base and then did a great job on first base which is a tough spot to be playing with a hurt wrist, which happened to be her glove hand. They ended the day Thursday with 1 win and 1 loss.

Andy went to the game Friday, which they won. Yay! He left after that game so he could make it home in time to watch Tyler test for his next belt. You'd think leaving at 2:30 for an hour and a half drive would give you plenty of time to make it home for a 6:30 exam. Ha! It took him over 3 hrs to get home but thankfully he did make it home in time to see the exam. It was our first time watching a belt exam...it was very cool! Ty ended up getting his new belt. Way to go!!

I went back to Virginia on Saturday...the girls needed to win 4 games in a row to make it to Sunday to have a chance to play in the championship game. They ended up winning their first game but lost their second. The girls had a good season, won 41 games overall which is a huge improvement over last year. They now get the month of August off and then it will be back to practicing starting in Septemer.

Back to Work

The first day back to work is never easy but I guess today could have been harder. I was in training from 11 - 4 today so really only had to work for a few hours this morning. I'm in training again tomorrow, then off for two days, then work from home on Friday. Guess I'm kind of easing myself back into the work world. LOL

I could have done without the traffic on the way home. I was already running late because the training let out later than I normally leave...then I ran into wire repairs on one of roads that was left over from the storm that came thru yesterday...then hit a big backup at the bridge. I'm not sure what caused it but it tied me up for almost 40 minutes. I just missed getting Tyler to karate class but I did go over to watch after Andy dropped him off so he could come home to make dinner. Tyler got his first invitation to test for his next belt this Friday...should be fun to watch.

Stripes

Tyler has been taking a karate camp this week, and has been taking actual classes for a couple of weeks now. Through the camp, he was able to earn 4 stripes on his white belt. He has one more to go before he can move up to the next level. I'm very proud of him, he really seems to have a knack for this, which is good cause I told Andy that he wasn't allowed in the house today after camp if he hadn't earned at least one stripe. He blew me away with 4. Way to go Ty!

We're heading to the beach for a week. I took off work today so that I could get all the packing done. It took me all day but I finally got all the clothes washed and packed. The only thing left to do is get everything packed into the vehicles which we'll do after Kenzie's softball tournament tomorrow. This is her last regular one of the season...all that left after tomorrow is Nationals which are 7/28 -8/1 in Virginia.

Freedom

As of 3:30pm today, I am officially off work until Monday 7/26. Ten wonderful days of not having to hear...that data is wrong, can you get this for me, when can you have this done, can you check that out, can you tell me why, etc. Ah, bliss! Can you tell that I'm really not in a good work frame of mind right now. I don't have a lot of patience for the requests coming in and I'm really tired of the unrealistic expectations where projects are concerned (just got another one today). Hopefully the 10 days will do me good and I'll be ready to face the work world again when they are up. We will be heading to the beach for a week with my parents and my sisters family...it should be interesting to say the least. ;) The week officially starts on Saturday but most of us will head down on Sunday because Kenzie's last softball tournament is Saturday. Alex has a drs appt first thing Monday morning to check out why his shoulders are popping out so he and I will be heading down to the beach Monday after the appt. Hopefully nothing serious is going on with him and that the problem can be corrected with exercises. I have to get my act together and actually start packing for the trip...haven't even begun to do that yet but I took tomorrow off just for that reason so I'm sure I'll be able to get everything done. But for now, I'm heading to the river on a walk with the girls and Adam.

Unwanted Visitor

I was working this morning when Kenzie comes running into the room (Weds & Fri's are my work from home today) talking about the fish and frogs going crazy in our pond. When she went to investigate what the problem was, she found out that a brown snake was swimming around in the pond. While she watched the snake slithered out under our pool deck. Nice! NOT!

Was a nice day with all the rain showers that came thru...third day in a row that we've had rain..and things actually cooled off some this afternoon, contrary to what the weather forecasters were predicting this morning.

Andy came running in this afternoon as I was just about wrapping work saying that he was going kayaking because the wind was whipping up some pretty good waves in the river. He knew this because he'd just come back from a walk by the river with Adam. He heads out with Kenzie but they actually don't stay as long as I would have expected. Kenzie isn't quite as fearless as she lets on sometimes and didn't really like the waves trying to overturn her kayak.

Almost Empty

Almost all the kiddos are out of the house right now...how often does that happen? Tonight is Kenzie's softball practice and 5 of the 8 kids went with Andy to the practice. The 6th is at work... so that just leaves 2 in the house with me. I've been enjoying a nice quiet evening playing with Adam...Connor will pop in every now and then. Been a lovely, relaxing night but could have been better if this darn headache, that I've had since yesterday, would go away.

Can tell already...

that it's not going to be a good day. I woke up with the same headache that I went to bed with last night. :( I also didn't sleep well, partly because we had a big thunderstorm come through in the middle of the night that woke me up. Walked outside at 6am to leave for work and could already feel the humidity...blech, I so hate that! I'm still having to take medicine that is making me feel sick...nothing like a constant reminder of a bad thing. :( Thankfully I will take my last dose tomorrow morning.

Tyler is participating in a karate camp all week. He seemed to enjoy his first day yesterday and loved his class last night. He could have tested for his first stripe but I think he's still a little shy and nervous about things. I think wants he gets the first one under his belt, he should be okay.

The kids are certainly enjoying the pool...Bekah is like a little fish and you literally have to drag her out at the end of the day to get her to go to bed. Keari is also enjoying it more now that the water has warmed up...she loves to show me her pruny fingers and toes when she gets out now. LOL

Just Those Few Weeks

For those few weeks -
I had you to myself.
And that seems too short a time
to be changed so profoundly.

In those few weeks -
I came to know you . . .
and to love you.
You came to trust me with your life.
Oh, what a life I had planned for you.

Just those few weeks -
When I lost you,
I lost a lifetime of hopes,
plans, dreams, and aspirations . . .
A slice of my future simply vanished overnight.

Just those few weeks -
It wasn't enough time to convince others
how special and important you were.
How odd, a truly unique person has recently died
and no one is mourning the passing.

Just a mere few weeks -
And no "normal" person would cry all night
over a tiny, unfinished baby,
or get depressed and withdraw day after endless day.
No one would, so why am I?

You were just those few weeks my little one
you darted in and out of my life too quickly.
But it seems that's all the time you needed
to make my life so much richer
and give me a small glimpse of eternity.

- Susan Erling Martinez

Happy 4th Everyone!

Crawling Baby

It's taken 9 months but Adam has figured out how to crawl. He's been scooching around the room on his butt for months now but now he is actually up on all 4 fours. Oh boy...here we go again. LOL

Discerning Direction

Alex had the opportunity to attend Discerning Direction at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. 4 students from SSPP along with one of their religion teachers made the trek to Massachusetts for the 2 day conference. Alex really enjoyed himself and I'm thankful for the opportunity for him to have him attend. Next up on his traveling agenda is a missions club trip to Gallup, NM in June.

Surprise Award

Tonight was the Spring Sports Banquet. Alex likes to attend to show his support for all the sports teams at school. This year was a little tougher for him sportswise because we made him miss the last few games due to not turning in class assignments on time. It was a nice evening with good food. All the spring teams were recognized. It's wonderful to see how many students participate for such a small school. When the baseball team was announced, Alex was totally surprised when his coach awarded him the Most Improved Player award. He went from only playing a handful of innings last year to being their starting 3rd baseman.

Happy Mother's Day!

A Day at the Park

Alex had to be in Easton early this morning to help work a yard sale for his missions club. I decided to the little ones to Tuckahoe State Park for the couple of hours that he was working instead of going home. Here's some pics of our time there...

A New Baby

And no it's not mine ;) My sister had her second son on May 6. Liam Joseph was born at 9:27, weighed 8lbs 8oz and was 20.5" long. Welcome to the world, Liam!

The Book Challenge for 2009

From Kristin's blog:

Jen J for *Navigating the Waters of Infertility and Beyond posted about setting a concrete goal to read a specific number of books this year. It can be any type of book. She said, "I'm going to try to mix mine up between easy reads and thought-provoking books. Also a good mix of non-fiction and fiction as well. It will be interesting to see if I can do it." The whole goal is to make sure you keep reading. And, rereading books is definitely allowed.

I read a number of books throughout the year and was already planning how many I read this year, so I'll join in. I think I will also set my goal at 70. We'll see how close I get. Who wants to join me? You can set the challenge at whatever total you want.

Kristin is offering a contest for anyone that wants to join. Please go here to join in. =)

Drs Appt

Adam has his 4 month check up today and is doing great. He weighs 16 lbs 3.5 oz and is 24.75 inches long. Nothing really exciting about the appt other than the dr is now saying that he will most likely has the lump on his head forever which totally irritates me. First it was a few days, then a couple weeks, then a few months, then it'll be gone by the time he's a year and now it's that he will have it forever. Grr! And I really still do not understand why he got the cephalohematoma in the first place. We've had other kids that the vaccum was used on and they never ended up with one, so what was done differently with him?? Poor little guy is going to have a lumpy head for life all because of me. :(

Clutz

I should have known that it wasn't going to be a good day when I tripped going my front stairs on the way to work. I then proceeded to trip walking down the hallway once I got to work. I was careful when I walked down the stairs mid morning and made it down without incident. I then took another walk down the stairs mid afternoon without mishap. But wouldn't you know it, when I was leaving for the day, on the very last set of stairs before reading the garage, I would trip. Thankfully I was being cautious and had my hand on the railing otherwise I would have ended up on the landing in a very ungraceful way. As it was, I ended up kind of upside down and in the process scrapping my shins up pretty good and twisting my back and neck something awful. Needless to say it was a painful ride home.

Naptime

I guess when you are tired you will sleep anywhere. LOL This is a picture of Kearsyn sleeping on the floor in front of the sink in the kitchen.

Friendship Bread

One of the presents we received from my mom this year was some Friendship Bread batter although we have since renamed it Enemy Bread. LOL We made up our first batch a couple of days ago and I couldn't believe how many different ingredients it takes plus just the pita factor of mixing it altogether. We figured you can give it to your enemies and while they are engrossed in finding and mixing all the ingredients, you can attack them and they would never know what hit them. The bread is delicious once you persevere, though. I made up another batch today and this is the result (I forgot to take a picture of the first batch we did). It's so dark because the recipe we have calls to add a box of pudding in it so we decided to try chocolate pudding. We made our first batch with vanilla pudding and I think I like that one the best so far. I think next time we'll try lemon pudding although Kenzie is trying really hard to talk me into making one with cookies n cream pudding. Somehow, I just can't get into that one.

Happy Boy

Adam sure looks happy here.

Now we know

We always speculate that washing machines eat socks...last night we actually were able to get proof of it. That's a picture of our washing machine filter with 3 socks stuck in it. One really has to wonder how they got there. Hubby has the full story on his blog (and I stole the pic from him) ;)

2009

New Years Eve

I can't believe that it's almost time for a new year to start already. This year has just been crazy...between work being nuts, all the kids sports/activities and having Adam the year has just flown by. I wonder what the new year has in store for us?

I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year!

Merry Christmas!

May everyone remember the reason for the Christmas. God Bless!

New Glasses

Keari has decided to follow in her siblings footsteps by being the latest one identified as needing glasses. So far, 5 of the 8 need them. Here's a picture that was taken of her in the drs office. Soon after the picture was taken, she broke the sample glasses by snapping off one of the arms. I don't think this is a good beginning to her glasses experience.

Happy Thanksgiving

Last Week

This is my last week off from work. Hard to believe it's been almost 12 wks already. I'm not looking forward to going back into the office. While I do miss the interaction with some of my coworkers, I really hate the travel but what are you going to do...it pays the bills. Of course, my hubby would say that I can do my job from home so there's no reason to go into the office at all. This is mostly true but the VP, while a very nice guy and would do just about anything for me, is still of the old school that thinks you need to be physically in the office to do your work. I was able to get another day at home out of him so I'm up to 2 at home and 3 in the office so I can't complain too much. That's more than most people in my department get. But I sure will miss being able to get up at a reasonable hour, roll out of bed and walk to my computer to go to work. Next week, I'll be up at the crack of dawn trying to stay awake while driving in the dark again. Blech!

Tag...I'm it...

Martha so kindly tagged me...

The rules…
Find the 6th folder in your pictures directory and post the 6th photo in it.

So here are the instructions:

* Go to your sixth picture folder then pick your sixth picture
* Pray that you remember the details ;)
* Post it on your blog
* Tag 5 others, leave a comment to let them know they’ve been tagged


This is a picture of some of our chickens playing around in the leaves. They are silly creatures.

I'm tagging Bre, Margaret, Meari, Tammy & Velda.

Ferris Wheel

One of the gifts that Tyler got for his b'day yesterday was a Kinex Ferris Wheel kit. He spent most of last night and this morning putting it together. He loves these kinds of things. The only problem with them is that he tends to obsess over them and wants to put them together all in one sitting. He does are really great job with following the directions and only needed minimal help with this one. He was especially excited when he put the batteries in, turned it on and it started spinning.

9 Yrs Ago

Hard to believe that 9 years ago, I walked into the hospital as a mom of 3 and within the span of 7 minutes later that afternoon I became a mom of 5. We like to tease Tyler that he kicked his brother out so that the could have all the room for himself...he turned breach and didn't want to come out once his brother was delivered, hence the reason for the 7 minute delay. He really hates that story!

They started out like this...


And are now this...


Happy 9th Birthday Taylor & Tyler!

Dreary Day

Just a grey, blecky day here. And of course I had to go out in it today because I had an eye appt this afternoon. The good news there is that I didn't need new glasses. My prescription barely changed in the last two years. Yay!

I've been working from home one day a week for about a year now and my boss just approved me to work another one from home. I guess her boss wasn't too thrilled about it but was willing to give it a try. He's from the old school where he thinks everyone should be in the office all the time. I can do just about everything I need to from home and most meetings I attend are by conference call so the need to be physically in the office is minimal. Maybe one of these days he'll get more telecommuting friendly but for now I'll be happy with the two days.

Veteran's Day

Drs Appt

Adam had his 2 month checkup this morning. He's doing great...now weighs 13 lbs 12 oz and is 23 1/4 inches long. He ended up getting 4 shots and an oral vaccine today. Poor munchkin is a little cranky now. And it didn't help that one of the needles came off the syringe and got stuck in his leg. With all the vaccines that our kids have gotten, I have never seen that happen before. He sleeps 7-8 hrs a night...such a good baby which is such a switch from Keari who was up every couple of hours til she was almost a year old. He still has the hematoma on his head which the dr says has now calcified and will eventually smooth itself out...in about a years time. Guess he's going to be lopsided for awhile. And now he has a couple of hemangiomas on his head too. Those will eventually go away too but right now the poor guy is just a mess up there. LOL

Fall at the Mall

Connor, Kenzie and Taylor had a piano recital at the Annapolis Mall on Saturday. When that was finished, we then had to run to the soccer field for Connor & Kenzie's soccer games. At least the schedules allowed them to do both events...I hate when they have to chose between the two.

If you are interested in hearing them play, click here...Andy has clips posted on his blog although I took the video as he so kindly pointed out. ;)

Our Day Off

A few pics from our day at Terrapin Beach yesterday.

A Day Off

Since it was such a beautiful day today, Andy decided to let the kids have a day off of school. This picture shows how Connor spent some of his morning. LOL Actually, he was helping me out while I did a little work. After lunch, we all headed to Terrapin Beach and spent some time playing in the sand. What a gorgeous day to be outside! Hard to believe it's November and the temps are near 70 degrees.

We received Alex's first quarter report today. He did great...made 2nd Honors with 4 A's & 3 B's. It was touch and go for a while there with his Chemistry grade but he was able to squeak out a B. ;) Way to go Alex!

Last Lesson

Alex is off with his driving instructor getting his last lesson which, among other things, is teaching him parallel parking. That should be fun as most people don't enjoy parallel parking. I haven't done real parallel parking since I took my driving test umpteen years ago with a spot that was big enough to parallel park a limo in. LOL If I can't pull into a parallel parking spot, I don't park there. ;)

Alex had a pretty easy day schoolwise today. His class had a field trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. On display there now is Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered. I'm sure he had a good time although I haven't heard about it yet since is instructor picked him almost as soon as he got home from school.

Election Day

I hope everyone that is able to vote did vote. I went in the afternoon and the polling place was pretty empty which was nice because then I could just run in, vote and still be home in time for Andy to leave to get Alex from school. This is definitely going to be a history making election, regardless of which party wins. Will be interesting to see the outcome.