Creepy

Okay, I REALLY hate snakes. This one was slithering across the driveway when Nathan and I were taking the trash cans up to the road. Then, he got up in a tree. (Nathan wants to know how I know it's a "he.") Our good-for-nothing cats were calmly munching their dry food all the way back at the house. He (or she) was about 3 feet long.

My skin is still crawling.

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Mommy, you have to put this on your blog!

"Mommy, you have to put this on your blog!" That's what Nathan said as he marched triumphantly away from his gymnastics fun meet, proudly waving his certificate with six blue ribbons on it.

The fun meet is an annual event for the gymnasts who aren't on the teams to show off their skills. The older (non-preschool) kids get scored based on their performance, and then get a corresponding colored ribbon. Blue is the best, and Nathan got all blues! He was so excited.

We had a great evening. Evan and Justin participated with the preschool club, and they were adorable. (Carsten is too young, and Megan is on the Level 1 team, so she will have her first competition sometime in late summer.) All the younger kids got medals. Justin told me before the meet that he was going to get gold, "because silver is just a loser!" Not sure where he heard that. Maybe he's going to be competitive.

At any rate, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a VIDEO, well, that's hard to calculate. Hope you enjoy the latest thing we're trying out on the blog- Live Action!

Hello Again!

Well, the long silence following my last post makes it seem as if I've been buried under a great mound of laundry. Almost true, but not entirely, I promise!

(I am currently typing with one hand while nursing baby Steffen- every capital is a sacrifice.)

So here is what has been going on around here in short form:
Feb. 27th- Megan turned 7!
March 15th- Justin turned 4!
March 29th- our home Passover Seder with just one other family- a really fun evening
March 30th- church Seder with over 200 people!

We also wrapped up Classical Conversations for the year, took a trip to the symphony (Evan recognized the French horn and identified when the different instruments were coming in- yeah CC!), and the two older kids went with some friends to Enchanted Rock. Then, of course, there was gymnastics and school and church (Our Awana program just finished for the year) and all those other things. And I forgot to mention the Keepers at Home mother-daughter sleepover and the Contenders for the Faith father-son fun night.

I'm not just behind on laundry and blogging- Steffen is 3 months behind on his check-ups (he looks healthy to me, and I've seen lots of babies) and I've realized that I really need to schedule next year's school (I placed the curriculum order today.)

I do plan on getting a few pictures up soon, so don't give up on checking in entirely! ;-) And look for an update on the laundry soon- I think we may be coming up with a solution!

Laundry

Since it is ever so much more fun to blog about laundry than to actually do it...

Our laundry is endless. This is, in fact, a true statement, because at any given moment, clothes are either in the washer, dryer, hamper, or on bodies just waiting to be put in the washer, dryer or hamper. Usually, there are clothes in all four places. Truthfully, the hampers are winning the "most clothes" contest.

Now, not all of these clothes in the hamper are dirty. Many are washed and just waiting, very patiently, to be folded. Herein lies the problem. Clothes are patient. They just wait, quietly, without any fanfare until someone needs them. They know that they are needed, so they don't make a fuss. Because of this, they get overlooked. Now, if clothes whined and demanded attention, they'd be folded and put away promptly.

Back many, many long ages ago, when I only had 2 children, I ran across a message board devoted to large families. One of the questions posed was this: What do you do if you haven't sorted socks in awhile? Isn't that silly? What kind of a question is that? You just sort them and put them in the drawers by the neatly folded underwear and PJs. Now, though, I know. I know all about that question. And I have the answer: Let them sit in a basket and everyone can just grab two of the same (relatively same) color.

Of course, this isn't a REAL answer, but it is the current "system" in place at our house. It doesn't stay like that, I assure you. It goes in cycles. I get them sorted and folded and put away. (I have long since given up on putting socks in drawers- they go in a bin by the shoes and all the kids guess at which ones fit.) Then, more socks appear out of nowhere and invade the laundry room once again. Now, before you get judgmental, please remember that our family can go through 98 socks in a week. (You can check my math!) And that doesn't include the kids taking off their socks and losing them somewhere in the house, thus necessitating the wearing of a new pair.

Well, that's plenty of blogging about laundry. Now, I must go and fold 8- yes 8- loads of laundry.

And I still won't have finished it all...

Nathan's Birthday

Nathan is 8! And for the second year in a row, his birthday party had to be delayed due to sickness. (We were all down with bad colds.) But we had a fun time the next week. He wanted a chess theme, so that's what we did. Those are chocolate and white chocolate chess pieces on the cake (made with a candy mold.) Almost all of his friends were able to come, and they all played and played. They were having so much fun that we didn't even interrupt them to play the "planned party game." It couldn't have been as exciting as running around outside and playing tag in the dark. We did give them glow-in-the-dark necklaces so that we wouldn't lose them.

Happy New Year!

We've been down with bad colds the last couple of weeks, so this is a little tardy, but...
Happy New Year!
We had the pleasure of having my aunt and uncle and their 3 kids, as well as my mom and dad and my 3 siblings come over for New Year's Eve. It was great fun. We ate very unhealthy food and engaged in dangerous pyro-maniac behavior- all the things that make New Year's Eve what it should be.

Daddy and Bryan got lots of good pictures...

Steffen got to know his Tante Marina.

Opa got attacked by his boys.

The girls sprayed their hair bright pink for the occasion.

Samuel and David treated us to a fireworks display. We let them (with a little supervision- or was it encouragement?- from Bryan) handle all the dangerous stuff while we shivered under comforters. It was about 34 degrees and very windy.

Steffen kept warm, though.

And Carsten kept the fire going.

We came inside and rang in the New Year. There were all sorts of noisy and mess-making bright colored things. And we sang Auld Lang Syne, with "da-da-dums" where the some of the words should have been.


(Yes, it took about two hours to clean everything up the next day. I thought about using a shovel and hose...)
The cousins had a good time seeing each other again.


And, although the adults aren't as cute as the kids, I'll stick some pictures in here just for Mutti, who always complains that we're never in the pictures:



Finally, this shot of Justin, with his crooked hat, dirty face, and full glass, just seems to epitomize the end of a very fun New Year's Eve.

Why I Never Get Anything Done

Many days, I find myself wondering where the time goes. I get up in the morning with a mental to-do list, and by the end of the day, I find myself surrounded by dishes and laundry and generalized "kid mess." Why can't I ever get anything done?

Well, I now have it all figured out. I do get things done, but the kids are getting things "undone" even faster. As a result the done/undone equation always turns out with the undone being greater than the done.

Case in point: We took last week off of school to do some much-needed organizing. One of the things that desperately needed attention was our puzzle and game cabinet. I got all four of the older kids involved, putting pieces where they belonged, checking to see if there were missing puzzle pieces.

In the meantime, THIS is what Carsten was doing:

That stuff in his hair is a variety of different hair care products. I'm not sure if he was trying to straighten, shine, or add body to his hair, but apparently, he had enough products out to do all three. So, THIS (and a hundred other incidences like it) are the reason I never get anything done.