our family

our family

Sunday, March 27, 2011

A pickle on a giant crap sandwich

Today was just one of those days; not to be overly dramatic, but it was one of those days that kept me constantly reminding myself of what I have to be thankful for because at every turn something was going wrong. Not much makes me more mad than seeing one of my kids get hurt, although seeing one of my kids act like an idiot ranks a close second. I realize this is not my typical blog fare, but it is what it is - it's where I am tonight. God is in control and I trust Him but today was a doozy.
Thankfully my oldest daughter and I usually turn on the tv on Sunday nights and chill out, and tonight "Secret Millionaire" is on which will help me put things in perspective.
I had to help Gabe build a simple machine project today and I am quite sure he's apt to get his first bad grade; my mechanical abilities are  non-existent, and I thought we were going to go up in smoke.  When he looked at me in the midst of my mental breakdown and said, "Ew, glue doesn't taste good," I knew I was in trouble.
But everyone is clean, safe, and fed, in a warm home with a mommy that although she may be overwhelmed, loves them very much.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Big Baby

Today was Rilla's four month check up - yes, a bit tardy, she is really a bit over four and a half months. Our pediatrician was highly complimentary of this beautiful baby girl, but honestly, who wouldn't be? She is just the best.
Weighing in at 17 lbs. 4 oz. she has gained almost ten pounds since she was born (7lb.14 oz. at birth) and grown a staggering six and half inches! (26 inches now, and 19 and a half at birth).  Yup, she's huge. Love it.
Like everyone else, the dr. mentioned how much Rilla looks like John.

Our Dictionary

Beset: bee-set, adverb: disturbed, agitated.  In a sentence: "I am very beset with him, because he is a bully."

Socks and Rock n' Roll: sox n rok n roll,  noun: all the bad kids think about. In a sentence: "All those kids
                                          think about is socks and rock and roll."
                                               

Firteen : fir-teen, numeral: the number after twelve. In a sentence: "It's my favorite number because it starts
                                        with 'F'."

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Saturday

Per our almost weekly ritual, we went to Nana's on Saturday and had a lovely visit with Uncle Mike and Nana. Our intention was to walk the trail and we did (although I left the camera at the house accidentally)but found to our surprise that it still had at least six inches of slushy snow in most places. Gabe donned his Indy outfit for the adventure, and I wrapped Rilla in the moby where she promptly fell asleep. Nana was willing to help Zach out as he slipped around on the trail, having worn the rain boots I was sure he would need, which have zero tread.
uncle Mike is always willing to hold Rilla for me, which she loves
Is it ridiculous that I find her newest trick, spitting, so cute?
Before we left for Nana's I put together the walker for Rilla (by put together I mean popped the wheels into place and attached straps but still - I am so glad someone finally realized that sometimes the Mom gets stuck assembling baby paraphernalia, so it should all be built as simply as possible).  She loves it already, and zooms around - backwards, of course - until she gets stuck, at which point she nicely lets us know she could use some help.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

An out-of-school surprise

My friend Laurie was given a whole bunch of free passes to the planetarium, so yesterday she picked Gabe, Rilla and I up (Zachy had school but Gabe was off - they are in two different schools which is a bit tricky and adds an extra hour of travel to our days) to spend part of the day there with some of our other friends. I didn't tell Gabe what we were doing, just told him to look out the window and let me know when the surprise drove up, which added to the fun.
Gabe spent the most time hosting his own weather show on one of those monitors that shows the child as the meteorologist on a tv screen - he kept going back to it and coming up with even more interesting storms to report and hand gestures to describe them.  His other favorite thing was the glass elevator that I let him ride with his friend Gavin WITH OUT ANY ADULTS.  (Probably the fact that it was glass so I could see them the whole time helped me offer that tiny bit of Independence, but hey, he loved it.)
We picked up an "actual" meteorite for Zach, which thrilled him, but which is already lost; he is currently storming back and forth between his (very messy) room and the living room as he reports his moment by moment attempt to find it.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Jake visits

Jake came by tonight for dinner, which is always a treat. We miss him so much; I can tell the kids are all excited because everyone is always very silly when Jake's here.

1 2 3 march

We woke up to a lovely sunny Saturday so after pancakes, bottles, three loads of laundry and dishes, I told the boys to get dressed. Zach came up with this (notice the socks).
Gabe came up with this.
We did in fact make it down to the Co-Op on Main Street, and there we found some yummy snack foods and some organic hotdogs for dinner. mmmm. Delish.
Rilla enjoyed the walk, and fell asleep on the way home.  I was glad because somehow the sun disappeared and it was windy and quite chilly, actually!
Zach found a "collection" along the way, looking for oddly shaped rocks, sticks, and branches.
And Gabe found his inner clown.
Now it is time for mommy to make lunch, and maybe do her hair. Yikes!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Gabe's Story

John just found this and I thought I should type it up. Gabe wrote this on the inside of a video game jacket, he must've taken the the paper out so it would have the cool picture on the outside. He did illustrate it, of course, but sadly I can't copy that. I will type it just the way he wrote it, spelling etc because IT'S AWESOME.

Chapter 1
INDY rode on a cart. SHORTY herd that the way out was to go rihgt! But they all went LEFT by mistake! MOLA RAM followed them left too!
Chapter 2! When they got off, there was a bridge half way, and then got surrounded buy evil bad guys, not only that , but the bad guys HAD SWORDS! INDY stole one of the swords!And with his sword, he cut the bridge in half!
Chapter 3! Alot of bad guys fell into the water and the water also had CROCODILES! MOLA RAM held onto the bridge, and so did INDY!
Chapter 4! In a jippy, MUTT was in his motorcycle, and flue in the air and, hit MOLA RAM and fell in the water. MUTT helped INDY get back up. INDY had the sankera stones for a villige.
Chapter 5! Evryone in the JONES and WILLIAMS family, and INDY'S father all had a celabrtion!
THE END!

dancin' days are here again

Today was the type of day that involved erasing and re-doing the schedule on the refrigerator white board  four times before I could make it work.  And tomorrow is shaping up to be a doozy as well.  Just when I start to get caught up on that mountain of laundry, I am befuddled by my ability to let an entire day go by in which I seem to get nothing done. Ah well; Ann  has told me that there will be days when at the end if I can say "everyone is fed, everyone is alive and safe" that will have to be enough. Guess that's today.
Katy had her first vocal rehearsal today and found out she will be involved in nine songs - hooray! We are all looking forward to the musical.
Gabe made up an entire story (which he did quickly admit to) in order to be allowed to call a girl from class - he tried calling her once before and we said no, sorry. The common thread for Gabe and this girl is their passionate devotion to The Polar Express.
Zacharoo had a tough night at Awana, not sure why, but Daddy handled it well and I thought it was all set when I got into the car, but Zach felt differently. "I love you, " I said, climbing into the front seat. He hung his head, but with a twinkle in his eye. "I am condemned to a life of shame," he sighed.
Jake got a new car recently - we are hoping to see him this week. Last night my friend Lara came over and started laughing when she saw in the living room that I had framed a picture of Jake and had a candle lit next to it. I didn't mean to imply anything, but I guess I must miss him even more than I thought!
Rilla has made it very clear that she loves bananas in her cereal - she seems to be teething already, although I remember that these first teeth take months to come in. She is the sweetest, smilingest baby.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The dictionary according to the Godseys

Hunormous: adj. hyoo-nor-mus   "huge and enormous."  Used in a sentence, "That cookie is hunormous."

Pimp: noun. pimp "a small amount. "   Used in a sentence, "This macaroni just needs a pimp of salt."

Jippy: adverb. jipee "quickly"  Used in a sentence, "Be there in a jippy."

Confessions of the candy bootleggers

John took the day off yesterday so he could attend the Disciple concert that was coming to a local church (which, btw, he said was ok - Disciple was great but there was this other band with a fifty year old lady wearing leather pants and playing a tambourine...?), so in the afternoon he took the boys to go see "Rango." Being a huge fan of Johnny Depp myself, like all other breathing females between the ages of nine and ninety, I really wanted to go, even if it is only a cartoon lizard with Johnny Depp's voice (wow, doesn't take much). However, I figured Rilla wouldn't be as into it as I was so she and I went grocery shopping, which is  far cry from going to the movies - so I snuck in a visit to Old Navy on the way. Just can't seem to get enough tiny cardigans.
Like we always do, earlier in the day we picked up some candy to take into the movie, and I filled up the boys water bottles before we left (cheap much?), but since John can't imagine going to the movies without buying popcorn, they stopped at the concession counter on the way in. John ordered a small popcorn for the boys to share (I prefer the term "thrifty" I guess) and some fruit bites for himself. The lady asked if they would like any other candy and BOTH boys piped up, "No, Daddy already brought some. It's in his backpack." Embarrassed, John followed up with ,"So then, just the popcorn and fruit bites..."
This reminds me of the time about a million years ago when Elisabeth and I were teenagers and we went to go see a movie at the very same theater; even back then I balked at the exorbitant prices of the movie theater candy, so on that occasion we stopped and I bought what could only be referred to as a value pack, family size, three pound bag of Twizzlers.  Nonchalantly I folded my coat over my arm and tried to stuff three pounds of twizzlers underneath it, struggling under the weight, I'm sure. Elisabeth was not as penny pinching, so she made a stop at concession, and I was standing behind her looking for all the world like I would never buy candy to eat during a movie, when PLOP, the bag fell out from under my coat and landed on the floor two feet in front of the counter.  Although I tried to be quick as I stuffed it back under my jacket, I'm sure someone saw me.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Just can't help it

I have to post about this, even though it's a little "inappropriate."
At the lunch table the boys were being their usual manly selves and seeing how much toilet talk I would listen to before sending them to their room. They finally seemed to get their conversation out of the gutter when it took an abrupt downward turn. It started innocently enough, when Zach brought up "kidney pie" which he had heard about on a 3-2-1 Penguins episode, and Gabe (who LOVES to inform Zach of any minute fact he can get his hands on, presumably to remind his little brother of the proper order of things) told Zach that kidneys are human body parts.
I butted in quickly, visions of cannibalistic tales reaching Mrs. McGahan's first grade class on Monday, telling the boys that kidneys belong to ALL mammals and if they wind up in a pie they must be from a cow or something.
"Oh," said Zach, " Are kidneys those little round things that hang down behind the doodle?"

This, of course, led us back down that road, which led to Gabe's announcement that when he was a grown up his doodle would be the size of the universe.

I'm done.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Bean Town

This morning after what felt like an awful lot of preparation we left at quarter after eight to spend the day in Boston; John and I took our three youngest to the Museum of Science, and Katy brought her friend Bahar, a German foreign exchange student and one of the sweetest girls ever, to walk around the city while we were there.  It was fun for me as a parent to know how much fun Katy would have - that feeling of freedom and Independence that comes from your first day in the city.When I was her age Julie and I would go down to Boston, one of my favorite memories of high school. How is she old enough to do this?!
Although we expected Zach to fully appreciate the museum, Gabe surprised us by saying, "This is better than I thought it would be." He really enjoyed the planetarium (Rilla and I caught the first five minutes and then made a rapid exit in the dark when she realized what was going on), and Zach's favorite was the butterfly garden. John kept taking pictures of inappropriate signs ("Uranus:spinning sideways") and texting them to his friends. Ahh, marriage. He also managed to spend TWENTY DOLLARS at the salad bar- it was one of those pay by the ounce situations, and since we have been doing weight watchers salad is our go to meal, so admittedly he did pile up the plate, but seriously, twenty bucks? I'm just glad he didn't scrape the ranch off the broccoli and plop it back on the salad bar right then and there.  While he enjoyed his meal the boys ran up and down and up and down and up and down those really fun musical stairs, which was as fun for me to watch as it was for them to do.
heading down to Boston
Zach says the butterflies are cool but their distracting moves freaked him out
Z

Gabe ran this race against lights on the floor about 25 times
Rilla slept in the moby wrap, not at all preturbed by the giant dinosaur behind us
We went right from there to Bible Study, so it was a very long day but all the kids were terrific. Now for a small (4 point!) glass of wine and hopefully a footrub (I can always bring up the salad as leverage if John puts up a fuss).

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

just keep swimming

Rilla's first swim
these two are already great swimmers
she seems to like it!
My friend Cheri at work told me we could go swimming at a local hotel for only ten dollars (!) and so today, we did.