I'm so tired!

This could describe how I feel right now and how Joshua feels in this picture. He started running a fever today - 102.1 and we think he has an ear infection. He is in pain right now and won't sleep. I gave him Tylenol but it only seems to help a little bit and bring his fever down. I thought I'd try loading a video onto my blog and this is a video I took of Joshua last night. We were trying to feed him his dinner and he was falling asleep at the same time. Hope this works. Enjoy! Ok this didn't work. When I tried to load, I found out that the maximum size of a video can be 100 MB. My video was 324 MB. So I'm going to put another sleepy video of Joshua from earlier this month that is only 63 MB. I'm too sleepy!

Shaggy, Our Hero!

In case your wondering, Shaggy is our dog. We have had her for about 6 1/2 years. We got her for free from the Walmart parking lot. The people giving her away said that she was an Australian Shepherd Mix. The mom was Australian Shepherd and they didn't know what the dad was. We are sure she is half weiner dog (dachsund) because her body is totally shaped like one. Anyway, I digress. She has been a wonderful dog for the kids. She would never hurt them. She has never tried to bite anyone or even growled - she'll just lick you to death. Rachel has even taken her food before while she is eating and she doesn't do anything. She lets Rachel feed her and pretty much do anything to her. I would have used the phrase "She wouldn't hurt a fly." but after you read what I'm about to tell you, you would disagree.

Let me set the stage for you. We say that our dog has jaws of steel and a stomach of steel. She can chew up anything and eat anything and it doesn't affect her. Scot put out metal ant stakes at our old house and she ate them. He sprinkled out ant poison and she licked it up. She also licks up fertilizer. And she never gets sick! Now to my story:

Yesterday Jacob and Jordan were on the back porch and I hear them saying (really loud), "Oh my gosh! Good girl, Shaggy! Good girl!" They come running in and yell, "Come see Shaggy! She's got a rat in her mouth!" I freak out and tell Scot to come too. Imagine my horror when I see Shaggy shaking the biggest rat you've ever seen around in her mouth like a dog toy! I was freaking out! Scot told her to put it down and when she did, there was no head! It's head was gone! So she either bit it off and tossed it somewhere or she ate it. I'm getting the heebie jeebies as I write this and think about it again! She's up to date on her shots and I was worried about her getting sick or getting a disease. Scot said, "This is our dog you're talking about. The one that eats bug poison and doesn't get sick. She'll be fine." She seems fine today so I guess she really is a wonderdog. The boys thought we should praise her and give her a treat because she saved us from the rat. I told them she already had a treat: rat's head.

4th of July Photos

Falling Behind Already

Well, I said I would try to blog once a week and I think it's been 3 weeks since I posted. So I'm going to give a little update about each of the kids and will try posting some random pictures. The next post will be blog-related pictures.

• First I'll share how excited we are that our 2 oldest boys finally learned how to ride a bike. My dad took Jacob and Jordan last Wednesday (July 16) to work with them for a couple of hours on riding their bikes. They came home disappointed because they hadn't made much progress and hadn't learned how to ride on the 1st day. My dad and I tried to explain to them that you don't learn how to ride a bike in one day and encouraged them to keep trying. So they decided to go again the next day. My dad took them again on Thursday and Jordan (my 9 year old) came back very excited because he had stayed up and ridden for about 25 or 30 yards. Jacob (my 13 year old) was disappointed because he had not made much progress from the day before and now Jordan could ride a little bit. Jordan wanted to show me so my Dad gave him a little push on the driveway. We expected him to ride off the driveway and pretty much stop right there, but he went all the way to the end of the street! He still had some trouble braking and turning, though. That would come the next day. On Friday Jordan decided to practice in our cul-de-sac and on our street to get better. He managed to learn how to push off on his own and turn - still needed some work on the braking. Jacob decided to take a break on Friday from practicing. Then Saturday Jordan was really doing awesome on his bike riding all around and guess what: he thought it was fun! We tried to tell them both over and over how much fun it is to ride a bike but they didn't believe us and said they didn't want to learn. By the way, all of this came about because we grounded them from all electronic toys (game systems and computer) until they learned to ride a bike. This might seem harsh but it was the only way at their age to motivate them to get out and learn. So Jacob became motivated on Saturday to learn to ride because Jordan was riding all over having fun and was ungrounded. So Jacob tried and tried and tried until he finally got it! So now our boys are finally riding bikes and enjoying it and we're all very happy!

• Random story: On Sunday at church the offering plate was coming down our row and when Jacob went to pass it to Jordan they dropped it (Jordan normally puts our check in the offering plate and he was trying to take it and put the check in it at the same time). Money and checks flew all over the floor and pew! It was so embarrassing! Jordan and I had the giggles for about the next 5 minutes.

• Rachel story: When we moved to our new house, we decided that we needed a cordless phone with several handsets. So we got one with a main base and 4 handsets. We have 3 of them downstairs and one upstairs. We can call from one handset to another to talk to each other. Well, Rachel quickly learned how to call from one handset to the other. She loves to call the boys upstairs and tell them to come down or to do something else. I'll randomly hear a handset buzzing and she has picked up the phone and calls. She'll say things like: "Mommy, will you come watch a movie with me?" "Boys - come down to dinner." "What are you doing?" etc. The funniest time was when she called Jordan upstairs and said, "Jordan, tell mommy to come fix my lunch." and I was standing right next to her in the kitchen. Jordan laughed so hard! She does the funniest things. The other night when we were eating dinner, Joshua was crawling through the kitchen and spit up on the floor. Rachel shouts out, "He spewed!"

• Random story 2: We were eating dinner at Chick-fil-A last Friday night and I had Joshua in the high chair to my right and Rachel was in the booth to my left. I was feeding Joshua baby food and eating at the same time. Scot was across from me and Jacob, Jordan, and their uncle Ryan were in the booth right behind us. Rachel wanted to go play on the playground so I told her she had to finish eating her chicken first. She asked me if I would "spin it" to her. That is her phrase for feeding her. Scot was on the phone so I will give my excuse now that I was distracted by what he was saying on the phone. I proceeded to dip her piece of chicken in her barbeque sauce and then put it into Joshua's mouth instead. As soon as I did it, I realized what I was doing and Scot saw me do it at the same time. We both dove for the piece of chicken before Joshua could even chew it. The look on his face was priceless. He opened his mouth as he had done for several bites of baby food before and when I put the barbeque sauce-covered chicken in his mouth, his look said, "Mommy, what are you feeding me? Have you lost your mind? Hmm...I might like this!" He couldn't even close his mouth around it or he didn't have time to because I grabbed it so fast. Scot said that he was about to say, "What are you doing?!" but I realized before he had to say anything. I wish I could have taken a picture of Joshua's face. It was hilarious! Scot and I were laughing so hard! One of those lose-your-mind-for-a-second moments! Thanks goodness it was only for a second!

• Random pictures:




• For my aunt Susan: picture of the outside of our new house. I'll add pictures of the inside when we have it all fixed and unpacked.

• Pictures from the 4th of July (on next post):




• Joshua trying to climb up the stairs:




• Rachel using the phone:

First Time Blogger!

Well, I decided to try and do this blogging thing that looks so neat when other people do it, so I'm a newbie at this. I have 4 children ranging in ages from 7 months to 13 years old. Blogging didn't exist when my 2 oldest children were younger. My only daughter is 3 and she says things that crack me up every day, so I thought it would be neat to keep an online diary of what she is doing as well as what my 3 boys are doing. I'm going to try to blog once a week. Once school starts back up I'm sure I won't have time to do it that often, but that is going to be my goal.

I know I need to put a picture on my page of all 4 of my children, but I didn't have a good, recent picture of all of them. The picture is of my 2 youngest, Rachel and Joshua. I will fix that soon.

Joshua started crawling today. He is 7 1/2 months old. He is very proud of himself. Now if only I can get my husband, Scot, to install our baby gate at the top of the stairs, I will feel much better. We just moved to a 2 story house and that is the only thing that scares me. All the other children love the stairs, even though I should be more worried about them getting hurt. They keep trying to play games on the stairs and we keep having to stop them. Jacob (my 13 year old) has twisted his ankle trying to see how many stairs he could skip at one time. Jordan (my 9 year old) apparently rolled down the top half of the stairs after a back roll gone wrong and got a bump on his head. We went with a floor plan that has a divided staircase for that reason. If one of the kids falls down the stairs, they only fall halfway instead of the whole way. And of course, Rachel (my 3 year old and only daughter) has fallen down a few steps from going too fast. So I'm going to try to protect Joshua as long as I can.

I decided to enter a post after Rachel left Scot and I amazed once again at something that came out of her mouth. She is very melodramatic about everything and as Scot always says, "She's such a girl." She has a roller coaster of emotions. Most of the time she is so sweet; sometimes crazy and funny; and sometimes very dramatic and screams and cries. She usually has a meltdown at least once a day about something that doesn't go her way. We kind of worry about what life will be like when she hits adolescence. Anyway, on to my story:
We were eating dinner at Double Dave's for their buffet night. When we were done and getting in the car, she asked us where we were going. We told her, "Home" but apparently that was not where she wanted to go. She proceeded to get upset and said, "We can't go home. We have to go somewhere." As the tears started to flow I tried to console her with something appealing. I told her that when we got home we could put Joshua in the stroller and go for a walk to get the mail and look at houses. Her favorite activity lately is walking through our partially-constructed neighborhood and walking through unfinished houses. Well, I guess this night it wasn't good enough for her because her next statement was (very matter-of-fact): "That won't make me happy." Scot looked at me and said, "Oh, boy. We're in trouble." As I'm forcing back my giggles, I'm thinking that her future husband will be in trouble.

Well, that concludes my first blog. I can see that this will be fun and improve my writing skills. Hopefully, I'll be consistent about posting. More to come soon!