we survived

the first day of school went off without a hitch. as excited i was about all of them going to school prior to today...i cried after sending off each of my boys on the buses, and again when dropping off katie at pre-school. i even yelled after the 7 year old that i loved him as the door was closing on the bus and all the other children were sitting staring at me.
how embarrassing.
everyone came home, happy as can be and when asked what the best part of school was our 7 year old said "i get three recesses" the 9 year said "you get choices at the lunch line." and the 11 year old said "my history teacher is awesome, she said if we go on vacation we just need to tell her ahead of time so she will make sure not to give us homework."

okay well as long as we walked away from school with the important things to be excited about, i guess we can move on and have a great rest of the year. :/

uh no picture...cause i was apparently bipolar with my emotions of excitement and crying...but i do have this more recent picture of the kids taken by this gal

and i'm also here to say starting tomorrow im no longer in summer mode and i'm opening up comments. oh and i made something. nothing huge. but a good little warm up tutorial.
welcome back to our regularly scheduled program...whatever that means.
we'll talk soon :)

V and Co: home

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!
we are moved in.
we are eating, sleeping, and pooping living in our home. (oh you know i had to throw that in there...its been too long since i said that word on here.)
it feels good. and comforting, to finally have things settled.
some of the small details that made it in the move and into this house are finding new homes.

the animals are calming down, children are adapting to "new" things like fire flies and humidity.

that first day we rolled into town, i guess the midwest was having a really big heat wave which includes a LOT of humidity.

we had to spend the night in a hotel till we signed papers on the house, so we got to the hotel and we all (we, meaning husband and i and the 4 kids and the big huge dog and the angry cat) were trying to get inside into some air conditioned air and quickly at that. once we were inside and settled i passed the mirror did a double take and yup sure enough i came face to face with:

alice cooper
i turn around to jake and say "really? you weren't going to say anything about my makeup and hair?"
he answered: "what? oh yeah your hair's doing the angry squirrel thing."
i stand there staring at him not understanding so he continues: "you know cause it looks like it's screaming at you."

so i turn to facebook yet again. and yes you came to my rescue (apparently no ones make up was staying on for a few days) but i was given the suggestion of mineral make up to keep stuff on, thankfully i had that on hand and now no more alice cooper face (or hair! i got stuff for that too!)
soooo....
even though i've only put up one frame on the wall (see first picture)and we've been here only a week and 3 days... i feel like this is finally becoming our home. and i feel really comfy here. iowan's are SUPER nice. seriously!

there is one major purchase i need to probably look into, and soon...couches, so we can stop this kind of behavior. seriously he does somersaults and hand stands whenever he can. so next on the list: couches and gym classes for kyle. :/

V and Co:driving across america part 2

day 1

day who the heck knows

sorry i meant to do my part two sooner than now. BUT, we've registered kids in school, we've unpacked most of our boxes, we've figured out most of the roads and places we need to get to...and we are adjusting quite nicely here in iowa. so week one has gone by great. long, but great.
we did hit one major milestone today: we mowed the lawn, and started our saturday routines. it's huge because we've not really had that normalcy in so long...i think we were all craving it.

okay so i mentioned in my last post that jake and i got walkie talkie's for our trip. well, they play a major part in our second act of "driving across america"
someplace in the middle of the united states (nebraska maybe? i can't remember) we stop at a gas station and it aint no ordinary gas station, no it's one of those gas stations that has showers and all the works for all the truckers traveling on I-80.
jake and i take turns going to the bathroom with boys going first and then katie and i going afterward so we can get drinks for everyone as well.

katie and i do our thing and then proceed to roam around the food mart area, all of a sudden my ears perk up because i think i hear in the faint distance:
bleep bleep: "siraco taco jr, trying to contact big mama's car...do you copy?"

me: what? no. wait...what?
i move closer to the counter area where i think i hear the chatter and yup sure enough:
bleep bleep: "hehehe this is big mama's car we copy! over!"

oh.no. apparently the gas station has radio frequency that they can hear cv's and in our case our walkie talkies.

i want to run and tell the kids to stop because EVERYONE in this food mart is listening to siraco taco jr, and big mama's car chatter about who knows what... but i already have half the drinks in my arms and i look around and scurry to get the rest of what i need, only to start hearing the "bleep bleeping" going off like every other second.
by the time i get to the counter my children are literally arguing over the walkie talkies
bleep bleep: NATE! dad said to quit playing on the walkie talkie!"
bleep bleep: whatever, you always try to get me in trouble!"
bleep bleep: NATE! STOP IT!"

Clerk 1 says to no one in particular: "okay kids move your jibber jabbering someplace else. quit taking up the air space."
Clerk 2 (the one helping me) says back: do you hear them? they're arguing now.

me:(nervous high pitch laugh)"HAHAHAHAhahaha! yeah, KIDS." (scoff) "seriously? whoskidsarethoseanyways?" (talking really fast and garbling my words together) i mean, where are the parents? or say the one parent left behind in charge?! that's just obnoxious! HAHAHahahaha!

they both stare at me for a moment and give me a weird look and then continue to do what they were doing.
i give the clerk my money and grab katie's hand in one hand and mumble something like "those kids need to learn to shut their mouths."
well apparently katie heard that and yelled as we crossed the parking lot to the car and moving van "BOYS!!! SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!!!!"
i stop dead in my tracks. look down at her, she smiles up at me. i roll my eyes and proceed to walk briskly to the car, open the door and catch nate in mid sentence:
"siracoooo.... ooooh hey mom! i was just..."
"give me the walkie talkie."
"but..."
give.me.the.walkie.talkie."
he hands it over, and it takes me a little bit of time to make sure the redness of my face goes down, and i calmly explain that i and EVERYONE inside the food mart and who knows how many truckers heard them siracco taco-ing and big mama-ing on the air waves.
"OH. i see. oops."
yeah ooops.
jake of course is finding it hilarious and laughing...which i in turn start laughing as well, but when the boys start laughing i give them a dirty look.
they quickly quiet down.
that's right.
big mama knows how to bring it.

ps i'm going to bring out the sewing machine again soon. i have a couple of things to show you that i've worked on throughout the summer...and with kids going back to school soon, i'm going to have the little bit of time to do it again...
and yes, i'll be opening comments again...but it's been a nice break from needing to leave comments right? or do you like to comment? hmmm that is the question.

V and Co: driving across america

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

well. we made it to our new home state. oh crap did we make it. what a ride. we're here but still under a mountain of boxes and trying to figure out our life...and eating out almost every meal because we have no refrigerator. it comes tomorrow thankfully.

on our first day my wonderful husband turned 36.
and i completely forgot till about 10 am to wish him a happy birthday.
we had been up since 3:30 am so seriously 7 hours of being around each other awake, and i totally missed the mark.
but i had good reason.

our day went a little like this:
3:30 wake up
4:00 kids all awake and jake and i chasing the cat down to get a liquid pill of bendryl in her mouth to help her be "calm"
4:15 jake holding down and being mauled by the cat's claws as i squeeze the pill in the cat's mouth
4:16 all of us watching with open mouths and in awe as the cat foams from the mouth and transforms from a happy patient cat to an angry feral beast of a cat trying to get the "poison" out of her mouth.
4: 20 giving up trying to get her to eat anything with benedryl in it or even getting close to her to try to give her more...and literally stuffing the cat inside the cat crate as the husband gets new gashes up and down his arms trying to get the cat in.
4:30 get the kids the dog and the last luggage in the car...gingerly place the angry, still foaming and growling cat in the cab of the truck.
4:31 drive away and test out walkie-talkies
4:32 husband decides we need road names, he picks "siracco taco" and he assigns me "big mama"

span forward to about 10 am "siracco taco" walkie talkies "big mama" that we need to let the cat and the dog do some business. we roll into a pet friendly rest stop and i park next to the moving van and look over only to see the cat pop its head up over the window from the husband's lap. he looks at me and explains "yeah, at about 7 i couldn't take the meowing anymore, so i let her out of the crate, and well i've basically been wearing her as a hat for the last three hours."

10: 05 place the cat in a cat harness with a leash attached to it (yes, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds) and place her on the ground next to the cat litter only to find out that the harness to our cat equals the same as being scared to the fainting goats.
never heard of the fainting goats? need a visual of our cat? watch this to get an idea:

literally she went stiff as a board and fell on her side refusing to move. so we waited and sat and watched and nothing. we did laugh though.
so...
10:25 we pile in our car, and jake the cat and nate pile in the moving truck, leaving the cat out of the crate and bringing in the kitty litter in the cab of the truck just in case she decided to go.

as we leave i kept thinking how much i love laughing with that man. how much we have fun, and how often he makes me feel better. and just like that a light bulb went off.
10:26 "this is big mama to siracco taco, do you copy?"
"go ahead big mama"
"hey, happy birthday...sorry i forgot to say that till now"
"thanks"
"i love you"
"yeah i love you too"
"big mama over and out."
oh and yeah
12:25 "sirocco taco to big mama do you copy?"
"big mama to siracco taco i copy go ahead"
"somebody went tinkle!!!! over and out."

the cat spent the rest of the 2 day trip on jake's lap.

siracco taco, sorry your birthday sucked, next year we'll have to make it better.
big mama over and out.

V and Co: summer pics: bubbles

for the summer months i'll be blogging here and there with a few pics of what we're up to. i'll be closing comments so that i can focus mainly on my family and this special and rare occasion of having my WHOLE family at home. you can still contact me via email, facebook, or twitter. please feel free to! and we'll "talk" more on the blog after the summer months! thanks so much!

bubbles:



we're enjoying our last 5 days here in utah.
but i'm really looking forward to moving on and FINALLY getting back to some kind of normalcy...even if it will be a new normal.
i'm.so.ready.