Happy Halloween, Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day

(Oh - and President's Day too)

Apparently, I'm destined to continually be catching up with this blog. Heck - why not. Seems like that's how it is with every other aspect of my life.

Laundry, dishes, balancing checkbooks, showering (Ok - a little too much info??)

(just kidding... I never fall behind on the laundry)

So in one post I must cover Halloween, Christmas, New Year's, Valentines Day and President's Day!

Get Ready.

Halloween.

Sierra wanted to dress up as Ahsoka Tano (for all of you kid culture deprived people that is the warrior princess in Stars Wars the Clone Wars movie) Come to think of it, I'm not certain Sierra has even seen that movie, so don't ask me how she got the idea.


I'm not sure which task was more difficult - learning to pronounce the characters name correctly or making the costume.

Porter's costume idea changed daily through the whole month of September and October. Some of those ideas were quite abstract, but in the end we went for the no fail Mummy costume. It turned out pretty cute though.


Jeremy was extremely proud of his Nitanny Lion Jack-o-Lantern. (Make no mistake where our alliances lie.)


Next up... Christmas.

My goodness - what a wonderful wonderful time we all had this year! Jeremy's family (but unfortunately Papa couldn't make it) spent Christmas at our house this year.

There were 19 of us including 2 babies, 4 children, 3 teenagers, 2 newlyweds, 6 adults, and 2 "senior aged" people. Also 2 dogs, one lizard, and 1 cat. (okay so the lizard didn't really add much to the craziness.)

We spent our time skiing, sipping hot chocolate, cooking, EATING, shopping, sledding, hiking, Christmas light enjoying, Christmas story reading, sing-a-longing, Screwy-Lueying, hospital touring, giving, and getting. But most of all laughing! I just loved every minute of it.













I never tire of rehashing all the classic family stories, and even creating a few new ones... Kaiden you know what I'm talking about...

One of the greatest family stories includes the origination of the tradition of passing along the famous adult footed pink pajamas to the next anxious female in the family.



With 19 people, and the various gifts under the tree, it seemed as though Christmas really WOULD last forever!



Next up.. New Year's

Since we partied all night long and many awesome things happened, there is a ton to say about this....

Okay, just kidding - Jeremy went to work (for the 4th year in a row) and I watched Rockin' New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest or something like that with the kids.

There's always next year

Which brings us to Valentine's Day


We celebrated it with a heart shaped pizza on Saturday and on Sunday I left Jeremy to go visit my parents. (VERY ROMANTIC huh.) Actually, my sister and her kids are in town from CA so I had a good excuse to abandon him.

(Note: a separate post on my interesting hair color will be coming later)


Finally, Happy President's Day.
So - today is President's Day, and I'm not really sure what sentiments to say about it, except that it happens to be the day I'm posting this blog so I couldn't just IGNORE it now could I? That would be rude.

Sometimes being a mom is just plain gross!

Although I've always wanted to be a mommmy.

Although I try to always put my children's needs ahead of my own.

Although I love being a mommy.

Sometimes, being a mom is ...just plain gross...

Take today for example....

This morning Porter's first words to me are:
"Mommy, Lizzy pooped in my room."
(Lizzy is our pet Lizard - don't you love our original name?)

I answered: "You didn't try to clean it up by yourself did you?"

Thank goodness he hadn't. So I'm cleaning up lizard poop.

...gross...

Then I have to feed the Lizard and open her container of 500 crawly mealworms and tweeze 12-15 worms onto her plate.

...gross...

Ella had 3 poopy diapers before 2pm (not even diarrhea just regular poops, not sure why she was so productive today)

...gross...

Ella has a little cough and on the way to the movies tonight Ella got coughing and majorly threw up all over herself. Rather than disappoint the kids, I undressed Ella and put her in Sierra's jacket and we pressed on to the show.

Throughout the 1 hour and 21 minute long movie I could smell a hint of barf in the air.

...gross...

Ella must be allergic to her car seat because she began coughing again and threw up 3 times on the way home. Now, I know she enjoyed her soda pop and popcorn.

...gross...

When we get home, I have to unbuckle her amidst the puddles of "sweetness", undress her again, remove her car seat from the car, clean barf from the car floor, pickup the coats that were on the floor in front of her when she barfed, and wash them.

...gross...

I have yet to unpeel her car seat cover off and throw it into the laundry, but I'm sure it will be...

...gross...

To all the moms out there who sometimes have to do just plain gross things in the name of being a mommy, (Including my sister who was recovering from a lice invasion for weeks.) My hat is off to you all!!!

From snotty noses, to barf, to poop and pee (from children and their pets), may we all cherish the moments that make being a mommy worth it.

October Trip to Iowa

Obviously I'm still playing catch up since I'm writing about an October event in January. All I can say is, thank heaven November was boring as can be, that will help me catch up on my blog history.

In mid-October we took a road trip out to Iowa to visit Jeremy's family (Papa, Shelly and family, and Cody)

We over-nighted in Laramie, Wyoming and drove straight to Kaiden's football game, stopping only to fill up our tanks and empty our other tanks :)

Fall was in full swing and the huge trees around Chris and Shelly's house provided for tons of inexpensive entertainment.


First, we would look out the 2 story windows and watch the leaves fall like rain. Then we would rake them or leaf-blow them. Finally, we would jump in them. Endless entertainment.

Let's talk a little about me discovering my hidden passion for leaf-blowing. Have you ever used a leaf blower before? MAN - it is FUN!!

I plugged that baby in and I was in my own little leaf blowing world. The hum of the motor, the dancing of leaves .... **sigh** And when I had cleared a patch of leaves, I felt immense satisfaction. I found myself saying to myself, "Ok, I'll quit after I clear just this one little area of lawn." But once I'd cleared the area I just couldn't stop. I was addicted to leaf blowing. Finally, Jeremy made me come in for dinner.

All I could think of through dinner was getting out there and clearing more leaves!!! I was lucky, because the sun was setting and I was able to use that as an excuse to resume my leaf-blowing activities immediately after dinner.

The following day it rained and I was unable to leaf-blow. :(



Besides leaves, there was another theme for our Iowa trip
***CATS***
Or better entitled ***Porter and Cats***

Chris and Shelly have two cats. One is a black cat named "Sunshine" (go figure) and the other is an orange and black cat named "Flash." Porter became obsessed with these cats. And you can only comprehend the deepness of the word "obsessed" if you truly know Porter.

Those poor cats never had a clue what was coming to them. Porter would wake up and hunt them down, rub his face against them, taunt them with string and other toys, and then torture them as much as the adults would let him get away with before being put into time-out. Then he would repeat, until it was time for eating or bedtime.

One particular morning he was experimenting (torturing) with the cats in Chris and Shelly's room. Little did he know that Aunt Shelly was still snuggled in bed watching his every move. Porter would pick up Flash and throw him towards Sunshine to try and get Sunshine to hiss at Flash (or something like that.) He repeated this several times until he heard Aunt Shelly's convicting voice from behind the covers, "Porter.. what are you doing."

Again, if you know Porter well, you also know he can be a pathological liar. Apparently, he is also a very quick thinker.

With outstretched arms, he dropped the kitty and continued extending his arms and replied, "I'm stretching my arms" Nice cover up kid.

So, the cat issue literally dominated our trip. But it didn't end with Chris and Shelly's house. We went to visit Uncle Cody and not only did HE have cats also, but he had THREE, (count 'em 1,2,3) KITTENS. Well, the intensity and obsession was just exponentially increased with those cute lovable, soft, kittens!

This is turning into a long post, but the other highlights of our trip included:
*Watching Kaiden's football game.
*Going to Reiman Gardens
*Playing with science at the science center in Des Moines
*Eating breakfast at a quaint restaurant in Plymouth, Iowa
*Eating an early Thanksgiving Dinner at Cody's house.
*Watching college football

Playing Catch Up Entry 3 - Porter's 1st Backpacking Trip

The trees were ablaze with color in October and Jeremy was aching to get in the mountains for a closer look.


He thought it was high time for some down and dirty father-son roughing it, so he took Porter on his first overnight backpacking trip. Since I wasn't there to witness the details this post contains mostly images.

But, I'm sure I can correctly conceive that Porter was in his element getting distracted by every crawly thing on the trail, and full of energy as they ascended to their campsite.

Cute little boy with his cute little backpack.

Playing Catch Up Entry 2 - Penn State Game

I'm sure Jeremy would be a better person to blog about this particular entry, but I'll try and do it justice from the less fanatical fan's viewpoint.

In late September Jer and I went to the Penn State vs Iowa game in Pennsylvania.

However, we begun our trip in the usual Franklin standard of excitement that happens whenever we fly, and we missed our flight.

Although, there were many reasons we missed our flight, one of the reasons was because Jeremy had to send out a last minute trash talk email to his Brother-In-Law (a huge Iowa fan).

We finally arrived in PA after some difficulties but Jeremy managed to get a free upgrade on our rental vehicle and it was a match made in heaven!


Just look at that gorgeous navy blue car. Even though the soft top was a little noisy on the interstate it was well worth the fashion statement.


A run to Wal*Mart the night before to get some car markers would have made it even better. Except it was raining. So we had to take pictures of the car before we drove it out in the rain.


Rain would be the theme of the day. But it didn't stop us from having a wonderful day!


We shopped around at some clothing stores on campus to get geared out for the "whiteout."


Then we hit the bleachers. Thank goodness we had ponchos and such, because the rain didn't let up until the VERY end of the game.



We had tons of fun watching the Nittany Lions play. They came out roaring and scored a touch down on their first possession of the game. Unfortunately, the roar turned into a little meow and very little offense took place the rest of the game. Even though Iowa won, we had the best time watching our team lose in the rain than we've ever had!

Playing Catch up entry 1 - Porter's Birthday

Man, has it really been 2 months since I've last made an entry! I'm not even sure I remember how to blog! I'm going to travel back in time and make an entry about Porter's awesome birthday!

Porter's Birthday September 18th

Since Porter is obsessed with bugs we threw him a bug party.

...With a frog pinata (no bug pinatas in town apparently)


He loved the dirt cake I made him.


And we went all out on the cheesy birthday decorations!


Finally Introducing the newest member of our family...

Lizzy



It's been Porter's dream to have a lizard ever since he saw one for the first time in Arizona. Lizzy is our cute little bearded dragon. We did lots of research in order to find a reptile that would tolerate being held a lot, put onto toy tractors, housed in Lego-made buildings, and toted all over the house. Bearded dragons are the best. Mom even likes to hang out with Lizzy sometimes after the kids go to bed and watch "So you think you can dance?" with her.

Check out this video with all the little boys huddling around Lizzy. I think it's so totally CUTE!

The Busy Person's Best Friend

At first I was going to title this post:

"The Busy Woman's Best Friend"

But then I thought it might not be politically correct so I titled it:

"The Busy Person's Best Friend"

But if you ask me it doesn't have the same impact.

"The Busy Man's Best Friend" would have been equally as impacting, but also politically incorrect... I suppose... and not as relevant since I am obviously a women.

So the best friend for a busy person is a TO DO LIST

I don't do it if it's not on a list.
I don't buy it if it's not on a list.
I don't cook it if it's not on a list.
I don't go to a store if it's not on a list.
and so on...

Some people keep it in their phone, some on their hand-held devices, some on their computer.

For me, it has to be a piece of paper, because their is nothing so satisfying as crossing off a task completed.

But, I can't completely black it out because I'll forget I accomplished it as I continue to look at the list in the coming days.

I will add to the list as I think of things I need to do. When I run out of lines on my paper, I transfer all the undone tasks to a new piece of paper.

Sometimes the unthinkable happens and I do things that are not on the list at all. So, I add them to my list and cross them off immediately just so I can have that immense satisfaction!

Here is a picture of my current to do list. I thought it'd be interesting to post.


There was a certain task that was literally on my to do list for nine months.

Nine months, I kept transferring this task to my updated to do list.

Nine months, the task glared me in the eye and said "Do me, Do me"

Today I finally can cross it off my list!!! Victory!

The task was to make these little puppies....



You may be asking yourself, what in the heck are those things?

They are eye patches for Sierra to wear over her glasses, for her vision therapy of course!

Sierra has been wearing one since she was five years old for 4 hours a day, doctors orders. "It helps my bad eye get stronger," she says to people when they ask her about it.

For years she has worn this patch.


Not a very glamorous accessory to be wearing four hours a day if you ask me!

It's been lost a bazillion times. Sierra has hidden it another bazillion times. So I always meant to make more. (She hates having to look through only that "bad" eye.)

I hoped by making some new, more fashionable fun ones, she'd be more compliant to her vision therapy.

I bought the fabric back in December and it's been on my to do list and today I finally accomplished it!!!!!

(A little side note: it looks like I need to go back to preschool because I wrote the "S" backwards on one of her patches. "Doink")