New Years 2010!!

We are officially lame old parents :) We don't have any exciting plans this year, well I guess what some would consider exciting plans!! We will be staying home this year, putting Max to bed and playing games with the kids until midnight!! The kids are a little bummed about not having our annual New Year's Eve bash, but with no basement I'm not about to have 15 kids over for a party!

2010 was a great year for us, here are a few of the highlights...

• Max is potty trained, and really starts communicating and talking :)

• Had a great Disney family vacation!

• Actually had many vacations and getaways, I do love the beach :)

• Spent our first full year as NC residents!!

• Jack went to Middle school!! (yikes)

• Olivia gets the Omnipod, life changing...such a blessing!!

• Harrison has made such great friends this year, you can't keep him in the house!!

• We find out we're expecting #5!!

• Tim and I had a chance to have a getaway just the two of us to SF!! (hence the above blessing)

• Tim's personal business is flourishing, I'm so proud of him!!

I feel like this year we grew a lot, as a family and as individuals!! Moving here and dealing with all the new and the change, has really made all of us do a lot of thinking about what is important in life!! As long as we're all together we are okay!

I often have to remind myself that although these days feel crazy and stressful, these are the days I will long for when I'm older!! To have little kids running around happy, playing, fighting, whining..it's all good!! So for me this coming year I hope to embrace the craziness I call my life a little more, breath it all in, be okay when milk is spilled for the 3rd time at dinner, and know I'm blessed to have all these little crazies to call mine!!

Happy New Year's everyone!!

New Years fastly approuching

Everything is such a blur lately, and we're busy trying to soak up some family time, I know more company will arrive shortly!! Tim's parents will be arriving on Sunday to spend a week with us, it will be somewhat difficult because the kids are suppose to go back to school on Monday!! Anyways we're used to spending our New Years Eve in MI, this will be our first down here, so I'm hoping to make it fun for the kids and to maybe start some new traditions!! I really just realized it's in a few days and I better get going on that!! Any ideas, or fun things you do with your kids for New Years??

Every year I always have a list of things I'm going to do or change, they never seem to get done though :) I guess it's always a work in progress, always busy trying to better yourself and your family!! Hopefully this year I will attempt to once again work on doing these things :)

At the moment as sappy as it sounds I just feel blessed!! Olivia is doing great on the pod, and her life seems much closer to "normal" than it has since she's been diagnosed, this is a huge blessing for our family!! The boys are great, healthy, happy and adjusting really well this past year!! We also feel blessed that we have this "surprise" of a new little lady coming to our home in the spring, although I'm sure this summer is going to be crazy it will be wonderful at the same time!! I've been working on changing how I think of things a lot this past year, I'm defiantly a negative thinker. I need to start focusing more on the positive, and let a lot of stress and anxiety go, it at time consumes me and eats me alive!! So this year I'm just going to try to focus on the feeling of being blessed :)

Then there were 5

As most of you know we are welcoming another little baby to the family, which we recently found out was a little girl!! To say the least we are over the moon!! My due date is confusing, by my last period it would be May 12th, but by ultrasound they want to go with May 22nd!! I won't be induced at 38 weeks this time around, the doctors down here think it's unnecessary, so I will be induced at 39 weeks instead! I've been feeling great, the first trimester I did have some serious fatigue, but that has subsided for now and all in all I feel great!!

So I'm around my 19th (or 21st) week, I've gained maybe like 2 pounds and for the most part I'm still wearing all of my normal clothes. The only maternity thing I wear right now is a pair of maternity skinny leg jeans, I can't wear my normal ones of those anymore for some reason.

I didn't really think about girl names, because I thought a chance of that happening was slim to none :) We're thinking of Stella, Gracie, Macy and Lucy right now, but I defiantly need some help in this category!! So we have a Jack (Jackson), Olivia, Harrison, Max (Maxwell) and.......??

We've already been busy buying up some pink things, and since we sold all of our baby things when we moved I think this little girl is going to be all pinked out :) I'm so excited to buy little cute dresses, hats, bows, shoes, socks, really you name it I love buying little girl clothes!!

I'm feeling a lot of movement, and Tim and the kids have been able to feel her a couple of times. During the ultrasound she kept kicking the want, I think she's going to be quit fiesty like her sissy!! During the entire ultrasound she was folded in half, like her knees were touching her forehead :) They did find that her kidneys had some extra fluid in them so it's something we'll keep our eyes one, it looks like what Harrison had when he was a baby :( I'm okay with this, with all we've been through in the past I'm not going to fall apart because of it!! She looks healthy and that's all that matters!!
So here is my 19 week preggo picture, crappy as it is it's all I have right now!! I took this yesterday, and it was a dark gloomy day, and I'm too lazy to edit it so it's what it is!! This whole taking a picture of yourself in the bathroom mirror is harder than it looks can I just say that!! So there is defiantly a undeniable baby bump there!! I'm starting to feel huge, but I know I have a long way to go and HUGE will come soon enough!!

Christmas Eve

We are enjoying a lazy Christmas Eve this year, my parents just left this morning and we are going to spend the day laying low!! We're skipping the traditional Christmas eve dinner (fish, blah, blah, blah) and are going with Mexican pizza, and bean dip...weird I know but sounds easy and casual!! The kids will exchange their gifts to each other tonight, and then maybe a Christmas story and book and off to bed they will go :)

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!

The list is long...

and I'm talking crazy long, and it just seems to multiply by the day!! Every year I have big plans, to be all festive, bake daily, take many Christmas outings, and fill this house with the Christmas spirit. Ugh, it seems like every year I fail at this hope, or should I say dream. In reality the stress of Christmas is overwhelming, the many school Christmas parties, remembering what kid needed the cotton balls, the ornament, or the nine bags of M&M's, choosing which extra parties we can make it to on the same night, it all seems to get the best of me. So I baked cookies once, made rice krispies once and that summed up my baking so far for the holidays :( There are cranberries in my refrigerator waiting to be strung with popcorn, projects that I planned one doing with the kids, and many cookies recipes waiting for us to bake. On top of all this I wanted the older kids to do some kind of community service, which unfortunately doesn't look like there will be time for. All of this leaves me feeling like a failure!! While I would love to say I have time to squeeze in the last this last minute Christmas cheer feeling, I don't! Let me give you the rundown on my next few days...

Today-Christmas party for Olivia, decorating for Olivia's winter wonderland Birthday party tomorrow, grocery shopping, making cake pops, and Olivia has a Christmas play tonight.

Friday-Dr. apt first thing in the morning, Harrison's Christmas party, setting up the finishing touches for Liv's party, party from 3-6, Liv has friend spending the night taking them down to Charlotte to ice skate at the outdoor ice rink, Jack has his first dance, shew I think that's it!!

Saturday-Sqeeze in some of that Christmas fun, Christmas party, and taking the kids to drive through the lights and ice skate.

Sunday-Liv's B-day!!! She wants to go see Tangled!! This day will be filled with trying to please the Birthday princess!!

Monday-another Dr. apt, and my parents show up..ahh!!

On the positive side, my Christmas shopping is done, the goal of a "smaller" Christmas was thrown out of the window by my husband once again this year!! The sucky thing is when you have older kids you can spend a LOT of $$$ and they still only have 5-10 gifts to open.

Hope everyone else is fairing a little better in the whole Christmas cheer thing, I have to learn to just make it happen and find the time!!

On a side note I stress so much over Olivia's parties, she is very hard to please!! Last year I transformed my front room into a spa, and I thought it was adorable, well she didn't agree! This year we're going with a winter wonderland party, she only decided on this party on Sunday, so I've been running around trying to buy up all the snowflakes I can find and stressing about giving her the perfect party!! Then I think this child is going to be 9, she is way too demanding and hard to please!! She should just be happy she's having a party, right??

Spinning out of control

I almost feel as if I'm some sick kind of ride that won't let me off!! I hate to complain about my children all the time, but really that's life!! It's not even really the kids, it's the constant long list of to do's that makes me crazy!! Let me just bullet style some of my frustrations here...

• I want to write this really nice blog post with pictures, but Max has issues with me doing something other than entertaining him 24/7!!
• Jack is part of this robotics team in Middle School, it's fine and dandy, but the parents feel like they need to send 20 emails complaining about moving the competition to a much smaller one that yes, is a little farther away!! Get over it people do what's right for the kids, and suck up the rest of it!!
• I have no food in my house, I have to go grocery shopping asap!!
• I have like 6-7 loads of laundry to fold on my couch in my bedroom...no joke!!
• Max won't nap for the life of him, and wakes up at 5:30 every morning...ugh!!
• I guess that Harrison has some big project due on Friday at school, that Tim forgot to tell me about!! Please stop taking papers out of his folder if you're not going to tell me about them!!! I had to email his teacher, with the whole "um, I have no idea what project this is could you send me the info, sorry". Nice!!
• I suppose I'm going to have to start to pack for FL sometime in the near future.
• I have a girl scout meeting on Wed have no idea what I'm going to do, I really hate doing this!! On the other hand I'm glad I could do it for Liv, but it's going to cost me a small fortune and I defiantly don't have the time for it!!
• I'm suppose to set up a photography table at MOPS this Friday, have no idea how I'm going to pull that one out of my a**!!
• My house is a pit, literally needs some help, preferably by someone other than myself!!
• We wanted to decorate for Christmas before I left for FL, don't think that one is going to happen!!
• I need a break, Tim has been working the past two weekends, and honestly I'm more than burnt!!
• Do Mom's get breaks?? Why doesn't the government give us some free childcare for like a month out of the year?? Why is nothing available to stay at Mom's, I think that sucks!!
  
• I'm sick of family nights at school, with three kids in school I could eat out at one of these family nights almost every other night..enough!!

I think I may be a tad bit crabby today, but really I feel like I'm spiraling out of control, not good!! Tim is so busy with his side business, which is a huge blessing, but it leaves me with almost no time to do anything I need to do!! It's times like these that I miss having family close by to help out!!

Still determined to do "the post" tonight though!! And just to clarify how I'm finding the time right now, well yesterday's and today's post were typed with Max hanging on my legs while I bounce him...fun!! So no, I don't go back and read this, I'm sure there are many typos and things that don't make sense, but I'm sure you can all figure it out!!

FAILURE

Yup, I guess I knew it would never happen even as I typed the desire to do so!! Blogging everyday is/would be a HUGE challenge for me, but really I'm going to to try harder!!

So my kids are spoiled brats, thought I'd just go ahead and just blurt that out! :) I've realized it this year, I have failed in that part of parenting and have defiantly overindulged them with "stuff"!! They have so much, too much, things that are still unopened from last Christmas...just plain sad!! So I sat them down and told them that this year was going to be different, it wasn't going to be I get everything on my list kinda year!! I told them three gifts from Santa, and of course some gifts from us, but not a ton!! They are not liking this idea, they each had their own mini break down, and I thought to myself "what I have done"!! How did I raise these kids to be so greedy and unappreciative?? In my quest to make them happy and give them everything they hearts could desire, I've turned them into spoiled, bratty kids...YIKES!! Example: We asked Jack to mow the lawn and do the dishes, we offered him a allowance of $10 a week, so $40 a month, I didn't think that was a bad deal!! He asked if he could just not do it and not get the allowance!! Really, what 12 year old passes up $40 a month to do barely anything?? He gets asked to babysit (where he gets paid $10 a hour mind you) and he passes because he doesn't feel like it, shit I'll do it for $10 a hour!! So things are going to be changing in this house, quite dramatically for my children!

I also told them they are going to do some charity work this December, I'm thinking soup kitchen, homeless shelter, taking gifts to children, do you guys have any ideas?? I really want them to get a idea in their head this Christmas about something other than receiving 100 gifts!!

(So I'm posting my "big news" tomorrow, which all of you already know for sure!! But I'll tell you the story, which most of you know anyways, but I'll still do it!!)