Why I Started this Blog...

For the question of the day I'm pouring my heart out...why did I start my blog?

I was thinking about that when my two youngest were eating dinner. My sweetie came home early today and made an amazingly huge pot of his famous meaty chili. As we gathered around the table, somebody was missing. It was Curly! He had gone with me on a Tupperware delivery and he fell asleep on the way home.  I lifted him from his booster seat and he snuggled against my shoulder. He is getting so big too!

I laid him gently on the couch and then headed for the kitchen to help my sweetie. At that point the only help he needed was tasting and I was happy to assist. As I scooped out big bowls of yumminess, I was grateful it was Monday. Monday is Family Home Evening for us and that meant everyone planned time at home.

After dinner I read the kids a couple of chapters from our latest book and then we all headed to the living room for a lesson prepared by Prima Donna. We were about five minutes into the lesson when Curly's sleepy head raised up from the couch. He was hungry and Dad's chili was his favorite!

I slipped quietly into the kitchen and scooped him a generous bowl topped with shredded cheese. I grabbed a package of crackers and a towel and headed back into the living room with Curly following close behind. I looked around for somewhere suitable for him to sit.

I finally grabbed an empty Girl Scout cookie box, tipped it over, and made him his own little table complete with a kitchen towel tablecloth. He was so excited! It wasn't long before Baby Doll decided to join his little dinner party. Remember, all this was going on while the rest of the family was focused on Prima Donna's lesson.

That's when I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a quick picture. And that's why I started this blog. For all the little sweet moments life has to offer. For too many years they have slipped by into oblivion. Now with the blog I find more reasons to try to record them as they come.

After the kids mostly headed off for bed, I parked myself in the laundry room and folded the half dozen batches I had washed today. Baby Doll came by for a minute and decided to help. Her idea of help usually means climbing in the baskets. This time she picked the dirty ones. That's when I saw it...another sweet moment that needed to be captured and shared.

Yeah, that's why I started this blog...it's certainly more rewarding that doing laundry!

Catching Up

I spent my day trying to catch up. The holidays had me behind almost everywhere…from laundry to paperwork to housework and I’m sure to several more “works” that I’m not remembering right now. I don’t even DARE show you what my laundry pile looks like this time.

We did manage to get the tree out and most of the decorations put away. The kids complained, of course, like they do every year. If I left it up to them, the tree would be in year-round. It’s not that I don’t love Christmas; we’ve been talking about that nearly every day this month, it’s just that my mom always left her tree in for the entire month of January.  It was often still there for Valentine’s Day. That was a little embarrassing when my friends stopped by to deliver their valentines. I just like to move on when it’s over.

Sometimes I feel like I’m caught in that movie, Groundhog Day. My sweetie and I were talking about it this morning. This January will be very much like the last 15 Januarys before it. We will ring in the New Year. The elementary school kids are off-track so we will get to sleep in a little more. The older kids will complain that the little ones got to sleep in more.

Mid-month means Girl Scout cookie sales and they will dominate until the end of January. I will have a birthday and so will my blog. I guess that’s actually a first. How do you go about celebrating the first birthday for your blog? For most of my kids’ first birthdays we have had a big party with the extended family. So you are all my extended blog family, what should we do? The Drama Queen is suggesting a giveaway…what do you think? I have until January 19th to decide, so send me all your best ideas so we can pick one…or two…or twelve…

Seeing Double

I’m so sorry about the laundry pics yesterday. We shouldn’t be airing our dirty laundry in front of you…

I also felt like it was a bit misleading, but it worked, my kids and I folded socks for about three hours this afternoon! Of course I did most of the folding while they watched a movie. That’s a typical sock party at our house. I had to run a couple of errands and when I came back, the Drama Queen had put in a new movie…with SUBTITLES! I just don’t see how you can fold socks and read the words on the screen at the same time although each and every one of them agreed that it was possible.

We have a rule at our house that once you get to middle school, you have your laundry banished to the basement laundry room. In theory, I don’t have to wash any of their things anymore. Sadly, life doesn’t always work out the way it’s supposed to. Teach is really stealthy about sneaking in her work clothes and an outfit here or there. She knows the perfect amount to toss in without getting in trouble. The Dog Walker and I have an arrangement. He carries all my baskets and I still wash quite a few of his things. I think I get the best end of that deal.

So besides two laundry rooms in our house, we have several other things doubled. We have two pianos, two microwaves in our kitchen,

double ovens,

two completely separate kitchen sinks,

two cooking surfaces (the second one having a built in grill/griddle system. Two furnaces, two air conditioners, two family rooms (no, I don’t live in a mansion…) but we wanted a big house because as I told you before, we had always planned on a big family.

We chose a stock plan from the builder when we built our house, but we were able to make quite a few changes to tailor it to our needs. One thing we absolutely insisted on was two dishwashers. That’s why we ended up with two sinks in the kitchen. Each dishwasher had to drain to a different sink. Even with two dishwashers, it’s difficult to keep on top of the dirty dishes. Most days I run four loads of dishes and at least four or five loads of laundry.

During the summer I’ve been watching my grandsons while Bossy and Gamer are at work. That means 13 of us for lunch! I don’t mind cooking for dinner, but I don’t like to prepare full meals twice a day. It’s generally cold cereal for breakfast (except on the weekends when my sweetie does most of the cooking).

For lunch it’s usually leftovers, sandwiches (requiring more than an entire loaf of bread), something simple like Spaghettios (6 cans!) or soup. We cook most of our meals from scratch since prepared foods can be SOO expensive. The three big freezers make keeping extra meat and frozen veggies easy.

I’m not really a very good cook, but I have a few things that I have developed over the years that the kids like. Some of those, like Parmesan Chicken and Tuna Casserole I’ve shared on our Food for Thought Fridays. I also plan leftovers on purpose. If I need white rice for stir-fry, I fill the rice cooker to 10 cups and then use what’s left for a casserole or rice pudding. That cuts a little time from food prep.

There you have it, now you know all my secrets for taking care of a big family. OK, maybe not all my secrets. But if I told you everything, you might never want to come back…

Laundry...Again

The dirty laundry -7/31/2011

I think I told you a couple of days ago that I’m still inundated with laundry from our month of camping/vacation/playing before school starts. It’s SOO frustrating! I can’t seem to make any real progress on the unending pile. It didn’t help that Prima Donna and Sport both cleaned their rooms last Thursday.

The clean laundry-7/31/2011

I’ve been complaining about the lack of bath towels in my bathroom for a couple of weeks. After she hauled two baskets of laundry to the mudroom, the Prima Donna stopped by to chat. “You know how we haven’t been able to find any towels lately?” she suggested. I sprinkled the soap and closed the lid to the washer for the sixth time that day. “Yeah,” I sighed. “Well, I found 23 of them in my room!” She dumped them in my to-do pile. “I hope you took all of your clothes down to the kids’ laundry room!” I responded. I tried pushing the pile of towels into a smaller pile, one that didn’t cover half the mudroom floor. “I did!” she answered cheerfully as she headed back to her room.


Sometimes I think laundry is the story of my life. It doesn’t matter how much I do, it ALWAYS comes back again. Even if by some miracle I did get to the bottom of the pile, as soon as the kids undressed for the night I would have a couple of loads to do all over again. It hasn’t always been that way…I could have avoided laundry for most of my life except… Wait, let me back up a bit and I will tell you the whole story.

Picture credit

I’ve told you before that my mom was very frugal. Raising 8 kids on a teacher’s salary couldn’t have been easy. She pinched pennies everywhere she could, including laundry. I watched her perform this ritual many times. The washing machine was in our kitchen and the dryer was in the basement, but Mom rarely used the dryer. She put the clothes and the soap in the washer. When they were finished sloshing around, she stopped the washer and pulled the wet items out one by one, hand-wringing each piece and placing it in a bucket.

Me and Sweetie- Engagement picture

Then she added more clothes and turned the washer back to begin the cycle again. Since there was still water in the machine, she simply added more soap and it was off and running. She completed three washings in the same water, then transferred the clothes back in to spin. Then she took all the wet clothes and usually hung them outside on the clothesline if we had nice weather. If the weather was bad, she hung some things in the bathroom and some downstairs on the clothesline in the furnace room. She did laundry pretty much every day, and it forced her to stay near the washing machine all the time.

Needless to say, when I got married, I was terrified of doing laundry! I was in college at the time, so of course I had to go to class. I couldn’t be sitting around all day watching the washer. Besides, the laundry room was several buildings away… It was a dilemma. But my sweetie jumped in and offered to be in charge of the laundry. He had been away to college on his own, so he knew how to wash his own clothes. I was so grateful!

In front of our first apartment

For almost a year, he faithfully executed his duties by taking care of all the laundry (at least the washing and drying part, I still got to fold it). I spent some time with him, just watching, because it didn’t seem like he was doing it the same way that Mom had. We didn’t even own a bucket! After a while I realized that there was definitely an easier way. Then one night when he had a late lab, I decided I could finally run a load on my own. I wanted to wear something that he hadn’t gotten around to washing yet. That was one of the dumbest mistakes I ever made. The chore that I had avoided for nearly a year suddenly became mostly my responsibility. Over the years I’ve done thousands of loads of laundry…but I still let him scrub the shower.

Sock it to me!

My sweetie says we talk altogether too much about disgusting things on this blog, you know…poop, vomit, torn pants, Justin Bieber…So at the risk of offending his delicate constitution, I’ve just gotta tell you about my week! You all remember that on Monday night at FHE Curly threw up over the Justin Bieber movie. That’s not really unusual because he has asthma so when he gets too excited, everything just comes out. 

Scout at Preschool Graduation

On Wednesday, I took Scout to her Preschool Graduation. (She was so cute in her little cap and fancy dress!) They served goodies there and we all ate way too many. The day was progressing totally normal with all the craziness of a typical day at our house. Then while I was loading the dishwasher after dinner, Scout walked right up to me and puked all over my socks, the bottoms of my jeans, and the floor. I helped her undress and sent her to the shower. At that point I still wondered if maybe the goodies and snacks were just not settling well in her little tummy. 

But later that night, after most of the kids were finally snoozing in their beds, Baby Doll started heaving. We spent much of that night cleaning up after her as she struggled to keep anything down. You know how little ones are, she wanted mom/milk to help her feel better, but that really just made her feel worse. Thursday dawned bright and early and I sent the kids to school as usual. I was starting to feel a little queasy myself. It was fathers and sons weekend, so the guys were planning to go camping with a group from our neighborhood on Friday. We also had a Girl Scout sleepover planned, so we needed the house cleaned and the quilt tops made for our service project. It was not a day to sleep in. 

The baby was still sluggish and grumpy, so it was difficult to get things done. Bossy came over to help. Taco is off track so he tagged along. (Big mistake! Huge!) He and Sport hung out after school and played until Bossy picked up and headed home. After dinner, it was almost like a repeat performance…Sport came in the kitchen and puked all over the floor (he missed my socks this time), but he managed to get half of it on the counter and the side of the cupboard. I sent him to the shower and cleaned up the mess. I still had a million things to do to get everything ready, but I crashed around 2:00 a.m and figured it would all work out. 

 About 4:00 a.m., we were sort of sleeping when Sport started yelling for his dad at the top of his lungs. Seems he had thrown up again in his bedroom this time. Most of it made the bowl so the mess was fairly minor but we threw him in the shower again anyway. I rolled over with the baby and went back to sleep. About an hour later, Crafty ran from her room into the bathroom and threw up in the sink. She sat in the shower for almost an hour before I was able to get her to go back to bed. It was time to cancel the Girl Scout sleepover. Bossy called to say that the boys would not be going to fathers and sons. Taco had thrown up several times during the night. Those who were feeling decent headed off to school. 

An hour later I got a text from the Prima Donna that read, "I’m not feeling well…" My advice? "Find a bathroom and hurry!" My sweetie continued with the plans for fathers and sons without the grandsons. By the afternoon, it seemed that everything had finally settled down. We got the guys off for their campout (at the last minute Bossy decided Burrito was well and there was no reason for him to miss) and we hunkered down to tie a couple of quilts for the boys. I got a call from my sweetie. Burrito was puking everywhere. Did I want to come and get him? After settling him down and convincing him that he was a pro at cleaning up after little boys who blow chunks, we watched a movie and finally headed off to bed. 

Sometime during the night Princess ran to the bathroom and in a very graceful manner (because everything she does is graceful), emptied her stomach. The boys rolled in around 1:00 in the afternoon. They were tired and my sweetie was turning green. I sent him off to bed for the rest of the afternoon. I still don’t know how his stomach fared. (I’m afraid to ask…) While unloading the van, the Dog Walker confessed that he threw up on Friday at school, but didn’t want to ruin anybody’s fun so he didn’t tell us. 
 
Then late last night, while Bossy and I were still working on the last of Sport’s new quilt, Curly woke up and ran to the side of the quilt. It was clear what was happening. I ran one way around and Bossy hurdled herself over the quilt frame (pretty impressive, huh?) and carried him to the kitchen where I held him over the sink for the first couple of heaves. **Editor's Note: I would've stayed to help but I am very much a sympathy puker and the last thing we needed was more throw up.  When I thought he was done, I set him on the floor to strip off his clothes. Then he proceeded to throw up all over my socks…

Sport's new quilt.

Baby, Baby, Baby Ohhhh....No

Every Monday night we gather our kids together for a religious ritual called Family Home Evening. It’s a good time for us to teach our kids all the things they need to know about our church, as well as a time for us to teach them skills that will help them be happy, productive adults. It’s also a good excuse to consume copious amounts of sugary goodies. Sometimes we just do something fun like play games or go out for pizza. My sweetie’s favorite activity is to put on a movie in his beloved projector room and enjoy each other’s company while we sit with our eyes glued to the screen. I’m sure we are teaching them something…I’m just not sure what.

These charts new come with enough name spots. Good thing Bossy can photoshop.

Today I took Teach with me to the grocery store. As soon as we got in the store she headed right over to the Redbox to look for a movie. Two minutes later she was back and she was snickering. "I’ve got a movie for FHE," she said. She slipped the Justin Bieber Movie into my purse. I rolled my eyes. "The girls will be so excited…your dad…not so much." We finished our shopping and headed home. I broke the news to my sweetie…gently. **Editor's Note: For previous Justin Bieber antics see here and here.**

"We got a blue-ray!" I said with maybe a little too much enthusiasm. It wasn’t often I suggested a movie for FHE.

"Yeah?" he asked cautiously. "What is it?"

I smiled, "The Justin Bieber Movie."

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes.

"Oh come on," I prompted, "the girls are so excited to see it…"

He shrugged, defeated, "OK."

I sent them all downstairs while I prepared strawberry shortcake for our treat. It was the least I could do. I heard the girls screaming right along with the ones on the movie. I could just imagine how my sweetie was faring without me. I cut strawberries a little faster. When I got down there, the sub was pounding and the kids were all singing along. My sweetie looked miserable, but he didn’t say anything. I handed out the strawberry shortcake and settled in to watch the rest of the movie.

Curly’s got the JB moves down. He was running all over, jumping off the couch and singing at the top of his lungs. The trouble is that he has asthma, so any time he gets that excited, he vomits. I should have gotten a clue when he stopped running and stood next to me with his hands over his mouth. I realized it about the same time my sweetie hollered over the music, "He’s gonna puke!" Wisely, I pushed him toward his dad (since I was holding the baby) and told Scout to run for a towel. Too late! He was heaving all over his dad. My sweetie is experienced in this sort of detail and he immediately pulled his shirt into a bowl to catch the mess.

Scout was taking forever, so I sent the Dog Walker after another towel. The way it was looking we could use both of them anyway. She finally returned with a little dishrag, but the Dog Walker was right behind her with an oversized bath towel. Together we stripped Curly down and cleaned him up. "See!" my sweetie hissed at one point. "JB made him throw up!" I scowled at him and then pulled out some baby wipes to scrub Curly’s pale little face. The music already had him pulling away to rejoin the fray.

Two minutes later he was dancing again (in his underwear this time). I couldn’t help but smile, he was so cute! Unprompted, he ran back to me and threw his arms around my neck. "Thanks for being a good cleaner-upper of my throw-up!" he said. I hugged him back, "You’re welcome!" I said. "Go tell Dad." He ran to my sweetie and repeated his gratitude. My sweetie glanced at me over the top of those blonde curls and smiled, "Where did he come from?" Yeah…he’s even cooler than JB.

The Festival

Since April is National Autism Awareness month, I wanted to share a little more about my Dog Walker just in case you weren’t aware that he is autistic. Sometimes I even forget he’s autistic and then there are other times…so yesterday he was participating in the Region Orchestra Festival. He plays the trumpet as part of our school’s symphony, getting up twice a week for class at 6:00 a.m. Now I am barely coherent that early (unless I’ve been up all night) and my sweetie takes him to school and then heads off to work. 

The Festival bus was scheduled to leave the school at 3:15. School gets out at 2:25 and we live less than a mile away. This is ample time for him to get home, have a snack, change into his concert attire, and get back to the high school in time to load the bus. It is NOT enough time for him to search through his entire bedroom and the pile of dirty laundry to FIND his concert attire. That’s why I had him gather all of his things including his black suit jacket and bow tie and place them on the pew in the living room (Editor's note* Yes, you read that right.  If you missed that story go here.). I figured that way he’d be able to come in the house, grab a snack, and change in a nice leisurely fashion. Things rarely work exactly the way I plan them. 

As I headed off to bed I checked the clothes and shoes in its haphazard pile, satisfied that it would ease the confusion and stress of the next day. Unfortunately, I didn’t guess that he would come back upstairs from his room and gather the whole works into a garbage bag. When my sweetie was ready to leave in the morning, the Dog Walker slung his backpack over one shoulder and the garbage bag over the other. "What are you doing?" he questioned. All he got back was "I have to take these to school." Not knowing any better, my sweetie shrugged and they headed off. 

One thing you have to understand about the Dog Walker is that he WILL NOT use a locker at school. That means this garbage bag full of his jacket and tie, a white button up shirt, black slacks and socks and his black dress shoes (that he walks around in…outside!) will be hanging out with him all day at every class and during lunch. When I hear the situation, I fire off a quick text, but he doesn’t answer me. Teach finally gets hold of him during his final class period. "I’ll pick you up," she texts. No point in him carrying all of the clothes back home again just so he can change. 

She shows up at the high school, but there are no signs of him so she heads home. About halfway there she spots him…without the bag of clothes. She rolls down the window and motions him over. At first he ignores her, but finally succumbs to her pleas and gets in the van. 

"Where are your clothes?" she asks. 

"At the school," he says.
 
"I thought you were going home to change," she says. 

"I can change at the school," he replies. 

By this point Teach is totally confused. "Then why are you going home?" she asks. 

"To get the truck," he says. 

"Why do you need the truck?" He looks at her like she is a total idiot. 

"So I don’t have to walk home from the school," he says matter-of-factly. She gets him home and he leaves in the truck. We hope he made it to the festival on time, but even if he misses the bus, he won’t have to walk home, he has the truck…and a change of clothes.

Spring Cleaning

In our house we have a little room just inside the garage (which doesn’t have any cars parked in it…ever!) that we call a mudroom. I guess the theory is that you come in from your car, take off your jacket and muddy shoes, and leave them there before you go into the rest of the house. Since we don’t park in the garage, that theory doesn’t really work for us. We use the mudroom to build a laundry mountain (because the room next to it is the laundry room), throw coats and backpacks, feed the dog, and pile things on the shelves we don’t want to put away. 

We have ten hooks in the mudroom, one for each of us living at home except that the two littlest ones have to share. So last week we celebrated the first official day of spring. For me that meant spring cleaning which mostly means I make all the kids take their heavy winter coats upstairs and hang them in their closets. We also pack up all the winter hats and gloves and scarves and store them in the garage until winter returns. 

The day after we "spring cleaned," Baby Doll started up again with the sniffles. Her chest got raspy and icky so I took her to the doctor. It seems we have another round of RSV on our hands. Then I was up half the night with Scout, she was complaining of similar symptoms. So we filled the humidifier, fired up the breathing machine and broke out the Motrin. And just in case I didn’t get the message, on my way home from the doctor for the second time inside a week, it started to snow. So much for spring cleaning. It’s still winter in Utah.

Revenge of the Quilt

*Editor's Note* this is the second post about laundry the first one is here.

Sometimes it seems like all I do is laundry! I either have a big pile of clean laundry to fold and put away or I have a big pile of dirty laundry that’s waiting to go into the washer. Sometimes I have both, particularly on a Saturday afternoon when the kids clean their rooms. That is when they gather up every stitch of clothing they own, clean or dirty, throw it in their dirty clothes hampers and deposit it haphazardly on the mudroom floor. Assuming I can climb my way through the maze of socks and underwear, I am rewarded with the privilege of doing their laundry. 

You would not believe the things that come out in the wash. I told you a couple of days ago that I hate it when the dog pushes her food bowl into the dirty clothes. That means picking mushy bits of dog food out of the washer before I can put in the next batch. But the worst thing is when a diaper or piece of toilet paper gets washed. Little pieces of cotton and paper cling to everything! No, wait, the worst is when a crayon gets washed! I never see it until it has run all the way through the washer and the dryer. Then I have to check each and every piece of clothing for crayon marks. I’ve even had to throw things away when the crayon insists on clinging to the fabric. 

The absolute worst thing I ever washed was a beautiful denim quilt my mother-in-law made for us. It was pieced from old pairs of jeans that were stitched into squares with a red flannel back. The edges were fringed and the quilt was wonderfully warm. My sweetie is always at least 10 degrees warmer than me, so I put that quilt on my side only and then I don’t freeze to death when he wants to keep the temperature in the sub-arctic range. Anyway, because this quilts lays at the foot of our bed for just such occasions, it is always accessible when a kid is in need of comfort. 

Dryer Lint Monster courtesy of Aurora4298

One night we were busy soothing a sick child in just that way when he (who shall remain nameless) heaved all over me and my favorite quilt. It had never been washed before, but there was no way it could be sponged off. I drug it down to the washer (of course it was about 3:00 AM) and threw it in. I was still bleary-eyed in the morning when I lugged it into the dryer (I swear it weighed a hundred pounds wet), but by the time it was dry I was wide awake. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The dryer was stuffed full of little pieces of denim and flannel that used to be fringe. I kept pulling it out of the lint trap and out of the sides of the dryer. It took me about ½ an hour to get it all cleaned up and even then a bunch of it reappeared in the next batch and the next…. I vowed never to wash it again! 

So today I was putting in a batch of laundry. My little two-year-old Curly was in the bathroom right off from the laundry so I could hear him in there talking to himself while he was going about his business. I pulled wet clothes from the washer and tossed them into the dryer. There were a few candy wrappers that must have been in someone’s pocket and I tossed them into the garbage. I couple of shirts later I noticed three $1.00 bills (Score! Sometimes I do get paid to do the laundry). 
 
Then I pulled out a pair of jeans and heard a thunk. I fished around in the bottom of the washer. What was that? My fingers touched hard plastic and I pulled out a PEZ candy machine with a BYU football on top. "Curly!" I was definitely annoyed. "I washed your PEZ!" I heard him shut the lid. "Thank you!" he called back cheerfully. Maybe laundry isn't a thankless job after all.

Attack of the Clothes

People ask me all the time how I stay on top of the laundry…it’s easy, the piles never get so high that you would actually get hurt if you fell off. Badaboom! Seriously though, laundry is an issue. 

Baby Doll was born 4 ½ weeks early and we had absolutely nothing that would fit her. She weighed in at a hefty 6 lbs 8 ozs for a preemie, but all the newborn clothes we had were way too big. So while I was still in the hospital, Teach took off for my favorite store (Kohl’s again) and picked up some little preemie things. 

These tiny clothes had a tendency to get lost in the laundry pile. I think she only wore a couple of the shirts once before they were too small. I was sorting through her stuff earlier this week and pulled out a pair of pink flowered stretch pants. It was hard to believe they ever fit over her chubby little thighs. Dance outfits and soccer shirts also tend to get lost in the pile. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a bit smarter and I pull them out and keep them safely stashed until game day. Then we aren’t madly throwing clean and dirty clothes all over the place 15 minutes before kickoff. 

I also have one laundry basket that is constantly devoted to socks only. About once a month we take the whole basket into the family room, put in a movie and have a sock-folding party. The kids remember this activity fondly because usually it ends up with them matching a pair or two and then getting lost in the movie while Mom folds the rest of the basket. At least they think they are helping… part 2 here.