The Holiday's are Flying By....

My nerves are on edge since I agreed to babysit for my nieces and nephew. I have 5 kids in my house today. A 12 month old, 18 month old, a 2 year old, 4 year old and a 5 year old. The 2 year old seems to have the hardest time. She is either getting picked on by the older two because they don't want to play with her or she is getting in trouble for being mean to the babies. The poor thing just can't win!!!

Can you believe it is November? What happened to October for crying out loud. I guess we have so many birthday's in my family in October that each week something is going on causing the time to fly by. Crazy!!!

Oh well now we will have Christmas sneaking up on us next. I keep saying I am going to start shopping now but I know me and that wont happen and I will be freaking out at the last minute as usual.

Have any of you started thinking about Christmas yet? Started Shopping yet? I know I shouldn't be asking this question, heck Halloween was just yesterday but we all know it will sneak up on us so fast.

Friday's Photo Finish Fiesta (Happy Halloween)

Join in the fun for Candid Carrie's Phriday's Photo Phinish Phiesta....

This weeks photo's are all about Halloween and I promised everyone that I would post pictures of my costumes. As you know if you read my post earlier this week about my Halloween Costume Crisis you know that I foolishly told my son we would make a Sponge Bob costume. Crafty I am not, detailed I am not, patient with crafty things I am not. So why I ever said we would make a costume is beyond me.

I went shopping with Luke yesterday and we bought everything to make the costume. My husband didn’t want me to do it with out his help. He is an Engineer and he is very meticulous about things. Again, foolishly I agreed to wait until he got home so we could make this costume.

Well instantly we are not getting along because everything I cut out is not good enough. I will admit it wasn’t perfect but Luke is 5 and he isn’t going to care. Mr. Engineer has his rulers, tape measures and templates for everything and this was no exception.

Well by 11:15 I had my fill of the “that doesn’t look good” or “do it this way” so I went to bed. I thought Luke can be the Transformer that I bought because I can’t deal with this anymore.

Again, patient I am not. 3:00A.M. and my husband still have not come to bed. I go down stairs and he is still working on this costume but was almost finished.

All I can say is WOW…. He did an amazing job and did so much better than I ever would have done. So I give my husband all the credit here for giving Luke such a great costume. Hubby got 2 hours of sleep Wednesday night before getting up and going to work in the morning.

Now I feel guilty for letting him do this great costume all on his own and staying up so late. I guess I should be thankful my husband loves his kids so much and is always willing to go that extra mile for them.

Aloha Friday #4

Play along at An Island Life for Aloha Friday.

In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that we take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response. If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link at An Island Life. Don’t forget to visit the other participants! It’s a great way to make new bloggy friends!

My question this week…..

Since today is Halloween and I want to know are you crafty and make your own costumes or do you buy them for the kiddo’s or yourself each year?

This year we made our Sponge Bob costume and the Tiger costume was given to us but was a store bought costume. See my post above (Photo Fiesta Friday) for all my costume making dilemmas and a couple great pictures of the boys all dressed up. I will say that from now on it is store bought costumes for me. HAHA I say this now and just wait until next year. Who knows what will happen.

Happy Halloween!!!!

The Mice are Taunting Me

The mice are taking over my house. Every year in the fall we end up with a couple mice. About a week ago I saw my first mouse. I was up at 2:00AM using the bathroom, lights off and a stupid mouse runs across the floor and under the dryer. If you shudder at this thought I feel for you but I have long gotten over that fear of the stupid little rodents. I am no longer scared of them because I have put up with this for the past 7 years so you get over the fear thing really quick. I go back to bed mad because I know we have a mouse but can’t do much about it at 2:00 AM.

I see my next mouse last Friday night when I flipped on the kitchen light and he goes running across my kitchen counter. Ok he made me jump but I wasn’t expecting him. I yell for my husband because the mouse is hiding behind a basket on the counter. Well while we argue over who is going to get him he comes running out trying to escape. Darn-it if he didn’t escape right down the hole in the grill of my stove. EWW… We lift up the stove cover and he was long gone down the back side of the stove and who knows where he went after that.

Now it is time to set a couple traps. So on top of paper my husband sets a couple traps. I don’t like doing this on my counters but it is a place we know they frequent so we do it. Well that night we got one of them. Yeah!!!

Don’t worry my counts get a good Clorox scrub daily if not a few times a day because they leave their nasty messes behind. YUCK! This is the part I can’t stand is finding little mouse poop everywhere and especially on my counters and other places in my house.

We got one of them but I know there are more. I have found more poop since then and then yesterday I am standing at my kitchen counter and I look down and there is all these little piece of wood and dust on the floor. I am thinking where did this come from? I start looking around and there is a really thick board between the stove and the dishwasher that helps support our counter tops. Well I find where they are chewing this board up just below the counter top and they have made a hole big enough for them to squeeze behind my dishwasher. Great my luck they will ruin my dishwasher that is pretty darn new.

Finally to top off my morning I find mouse poop in the baby’s high chair seat. I am not happy about this either. I keep my house very clean, don’t leave dirty dishes out, scrub down the highchair after every meal and so on because I know we can easily end up with mice and I don’t want them in my house. I don’t want to be a mouse killer but I will not have them in my house and I am going to let them know this.

Since the first mouse sighting we have put out 4 traps every night before we go to bed and we have caught only one of them. We only set our traps at night because I don’t want to see them dead. I am so afraid of seeing them dead that I will not go downstairs to pee at night just because we set traps on the bathroom floor and you go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. I make Eric get them each morning and we put the traps up. I can’t have traps out when the kids are up and the dogs are also an issue with this. Poor Lexis (the dog) would have her tongue stuck in a trap because she wanted to lick the peanut butter off of it.

This year I think the mice are wise to my slaughter plans and they are taunting me big time.

So tell me do you end up with rodents in the fall? We have an old house so there is just no way around this one for us. Do they scare the day lights out of you or are you more like me and just get mad over the whole thing?

Halloween Costume Crisis….

I have lost my mind. My son Luke wants to be Sponge Bob for Halloween. Well just as I do every year I wait to long to get a costume and I can’t find Sponge Bob anywhere. I even remember this year in early September telling myself that I need to get the kids their Halloween costumes soon so I don’t scramble at the last minute like I do every year. Well so much for telling myself because it didn’t do me any good. My poor kids are going to have to deal with my procrastination every year.

We started the costume hunt and Luke settled on an Optimus Prime Transformer costume. Way to expensive for something he is going to wear two times and then I will give away. I need to start some type of Halloween costume recycling program where people exchange costumes so they get more than one use and people don’t feel like they just wasted all that money. Something to think about…

Poor Luke settled on this costume but really wants to be Sponge Bob. Since he was so disappointed I told him maybe I could make him a Sponge Bob costume. At that moment my mouth spoke before my brain actually was thinking. Luke got so excited at the idea of making a costume. Crap!!! What did I just get myself into? Ok this wouldn’t be to bad if Halloween wasn’t 3 day’s away and I was a crafty person. I am horrible at craft projects and often don’t know where to start.

Now this is where I am recruiting all of you lovely talented people. I need your creative brains to give me some guidance or some ideas on how the heck I am going to pull this one off. Here is my plan so far.

I have a box that makes a great rectangular sponge bob shape. I might have to make it a little thinner so Luke can move his arms more but I think it would work. Then I will cut holes for his arms and head and the bottom would be open for his legs to stick out of. Seems pretty simple so far….

I thought about buying yellow felt fabric to wrap the box. Then use yellow and black paint and a sponge to sponge it and give it that sponge effect (this will be where I mess it all up).

Then buy colored felt to make the face on the front.

Some how I will make little black boots?

And Luke has some bright yellow jogging pants that he can wear I just need a yellow long sleeve shirt for his arms.

Now see it sounds like I know what I want to do but I guarantee you I won’t find half of what I need and I will mess it all up. Don’t worry; I bought the Optimus Prime costume just in case.

Don’t be surprised if come Friday you don’t see photo’s of Halloween and poor Luke is Opimus Prime or some sad resemblance of Sponge Bob, and believe me it will probably be a sad image. I know Luke will love it regardless and that scares me the most because I don’t want to make something that is going to look bad and he will wear with such pride until the first kid says something and then it will be over.

HELP!!!

Babies First Birthday (The Big # 1)

Yesterday my baby turned 1. It was a wonderful first birthday and this is my tribute to his special day.

Your brother was the first one to tell you happy birthday and it just melted my heart the way Luke ran into the room and said happy birthday to you. We then went to church where everyone sang happy birthday to you and you just smiled and had no clue what was really going on. All the older ladies ooh and awed at the fact that you were already a year old.

That afternoon you had your first birthday party. Mostly family and a couple friends were in attendance. We tried to keep it small but that is hard with the size of our family. You had a little anxiety at first and wouldn’t leave my arms but you eventually got over it and were off playing with all the other kids.

You tried to stick you figures into the large cake long before we gave you your little cake. You dipped your head down into the little cake and made everyone laugh. You came up with a big smile and then were afraid to do anything else with the cake. It didn’t take long and you dived right in and loving that sweet stuff.

We opened present and you were not very interested. I believe you were a little confused by all the people watching you. All the bigger kids were stealing your new toys right after you opened them and you were getting a little mad when something seemed fun and then it was being snatched from you. It wasn’t long and they all went home and you and your big brother tested out all the new toys and were having a good time playing together.

The part of the day I loved the most was that today, on your birthday you decided you were going to walk. For the past couple weeks you have been taking two and three steps at a time and falling down. You were never really determined to walk because crawling seemed to do the trick for you just fine. But on this special day you were taking many steps all around the house. Rarely did I see you crawling anywhere because each time you fell down you got back up to try again. It was one more sign that I new my baby was turning into a toddler and growing up way to fast.