The Family Calendar

Yesterday, I decided to pull the family calendar off the wall and add all the things that are now a part of our schedule for the next month.

I could not believe the things that we have going on. One day alone included, play practice, colorguard, preschool, a doctor's appointment, and baseball practice. Just about everyone had something that day. I can't wait until summer gets here.

Wait, did I just say that?? Because with 7 children all at home, all day long..... UGH!!!

It's not that I don't love my kids, I just get tired of all the mess that come with having everyone home.

All day.

Everyday.

I get tired of the fights over whose turn it is to play the computer, who hasn't practiced their piano, who's watching TV and shouldn't be, and the biggest one: "Mom, I'm bored".

This phrase at our house isn't said often because with it comes an "I'm bored job". What is an "I'm bored job"?? It's all those jobs that don't get done on a weekly basis at our house. It could include, washing walls, scrubbing baseboards, or vacuuming the cars.

Although, this backfired on us one time.

Janelle, our oldest of the oldest, one day said she was bored. So I handed her a cleaning rag and told her she had to wipe down all the baseboards. It wasn't too long after that she came to me and said she was done and that "that was easy". Well, her dad heard her comment and gave her another job: vacuuming the cars. So, she went at it. And after she was done she made the comment that " it was fun".

I guess if Janelle says she's bored this summer, her "bored" job can be watching the youngest ones.

Outside. (I think it has been confirmed that this is her least favorite thing to do.)

My husband suggested that maybe instead of the office size calendar that we currently have on the wall that we should invest in making our own wall size one. Then maybe on those crazy days when it seem like everyone has something going on, we can at least mark it all on the calendar. Along with that, maybe we can make a running list of all the "I'm bored jobs" that could be done this summer.

Please let me know if I'm not the only one whose calendar is overflowing with activity. I'd also welcome any ideas on those "bored" jobs.

Construction Zone

We decided a while back that we wanted to add on to our house.

For the most part our house meets our needs with a few exceptions. The biggest one being our kitchen. It is not functional for a family of our size. There is very little counterspace and few cupboards. With a family like ours that likes to bake, cook, and hang out playing games at the kitchen table, the kitchen is our hub. We needed to do something that would make our kitchen more workable for me and for our family.
So my husband, the engineer, came up with a design that would add a 14x18 addition to our kitchen. Along with that we will be bumping out our garage by 7 feet. We are taking the back 6 feet of our garage and enclosing it to make a food storage room (an expanded pantry). That will necessitate us reconfiguring the back entry. So we'll make a mudroom complete with "locker" like cubbies for the family.

No more having to climb over backpacks and coats in the laundry room to get to the laundry equipment.


We are also widening the driveway to allow us some more room to park the boat during the summer months and still have access to the garage so hopefully we can actually put cars in the garage. (What a novel concept, huh?). These 3 kids have been pretty good at staying out of the way while construction has happened. The day this picture was taken, the cement was being poured for the expanded driveway and they came out to watch "the show".

And finally, we are adding an attached storage room. Although for right now it will only have outside access. We are hoping to clean out some of the stuff from the garage and put in this place. With 9 people in a 4 bedroom house, there's got to be some place to put all the "stuff".

I've been told that the hope is to be completed by Christmas. By Christmas!! you might be saying. Well that's what happens when you have a husband who wants to do it himself. Although about a week ago, my wonderful father-in-law took 10 days to come out and help us. That's when the walls started going up and the sawdust began to fly.

Spencer loves it all!! It makes me wonder what he will be when he gets big. (I can't say grow up because his daddy says that boys don't really grow up they just get bigger.) Spencer wakes up every morning wanting to go "owside" and asking where daddy is. He's carried around the tape measure, (We're still missing one.), written notes on scrap pieces of wood with a carpenter's pencil (I saw him try to put it behind his ear the other day.), and he loves playing in the rocks and sawdust that come with the construction.

As of today, the walls are almost all up and there's only 1 more roof to put up, it finally looks like we're doing something instead of just making a mess.

New York, New York

Last month I got to go with Rachel and her middle school choir group to New York City. I admit I was a bit anxious about going to the "Big City" (It was the small town girl in me coming out.). But what an experience we had while we were there.


We stood in awed and humbled silence as we looked out over Ground Zero. This picture was taken from what is called the Winter Gardens. The roof of this building is all glass and when the towers went down the glass fell onto the marble floor below. A polyurithane coating was put on the floor after 9/11 to show the damage the falling glass did to the floor.


We saw 2 Broadway plays. This one was by far my favorite.


We walked through Central Park. This picture is in a part of Central Park called Strawberry Plains. It is maintained by John Lennon's widow. This is Rachel at the memorial just inside the park. Also on our walk through Central Park we saw a guy get a ticket for not having his dog on a leash. Just thought it was funny.
We also got to see the city at night from the top of Rockefeller Center, tour Radio City Music Hall and meet a real Rockette dancer. We took a boat tour on the Hudson where we got to see Lady Liberty from the water as well as the place where the plane was landed on the Hudson after losing both engines.

Some interesting things I learned while there:

• The 7 spires on Lady Liberty's crown represent the 7 seas as well as the 7 continents.
• There is a church that sits right across the street from Ground Zero and when the planes crashed into the towers not a single window in that church was broken. There also was no structural damage to that church. And it was right across the street from the towers!!
• New Yorkers call it Grand Central Terminal because it's said that all tracks "terminate" their run there.
• Wall Street was once called Canal Street.
• Never pay full asking price when shopping in Chinatown.
• The Lincoln Tunnel sits 80 feet below the Hudson River. (We went through this tunnel everyday to get into the city)
• The Giants football stadium appears to be in New Jersey.
• The dock where the Titanic should have docked upon arrival to New York City is still there along the Hudson. No one uses it.

I got an official I "heart" New York t-shirt, bought a name brand knock off purse in Chinatown(ask me about that another time), ate in a pizzeria that was once a church, sat in a pew in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and froze my hind end off on the boat tour. But I loved it!!

Next time, (if there is a next time) I'd prefer to see New York a little later in the spring so it hopefully would be a little bit warmer. But that's all part of the experience, right?

The Mastermind

This is the face of the Mastermind
of the April Fool's joke.

Retro post to April Fool's

I'm still new to this whole blogging thing and really need to get better and blogging things when they actually occur rather than looking back thinking I should blog it. So there may be a few more that will be a "retro blog" so please bear with me.

This one I remembered after reading a friend's blog and thought I should share it because it is one to remember.

For several days leading up to April 1st, the infamous Disney Channel (which my kids would watch all the time if I let them) would have mini commercials and give ideas for April Fool's jokes. Since the house rule is that the TV is NOT suppose to be on after school during the week, I'm still not sure how the idea was hatched. But anyway on to the story.....

Todd gets up around 5:15 during the school week so he can exercise and shower before 6am. I however, am NOT a morning person and love to lie in bed in that semi sleep state just enjoying the warmth of the covers a little longer while he goes through his morning ritual. So I was lying there half asleep when Todd comes bursting out of the bathroom doned in a towel grumbling quite loudly how the last child to use our bathroom took the body wash out and didn't bring it back. So he has to go find another bottle (in his towel). He came back with one and proceeded to shower.

At breakfast the truth came out.....

Russell had snuck in the night before and removed the bottle of body wash as an April Fool's joke from the shower.

He was so happy that he had pulled one over on us.

I thought it was funny as well.

This all from the mind of a 7 year old.