If you marry a woman with emotions...

... and add a pregnancy to those emotions...

... you may find that your house suddenly falls pray to her nesting/emotion combination...

... she may start on the closets...

... and then move on to the bedrooms...

... and even move into the garage... (where all of your beloved college boxes are, to which you have been attached since getting married)... and she will somehow convince you to join in the 'gutting' of the house and actually get rid of 3/4 of your collage boxes...

... and as she walks back into the house,  you may witness her having an 'emotion' over this...

... and as you calmly explain to her that getting floors redone is not, in fact an emotional experience (it's more of a financial issue...)...

... she may get a 'wee' bit more emotional as she explains 'ever so calmly' that floors can be and ARE, in fact, an emotional experience, and she needs them redone NOW!!!...

... so you will give her the go ahead to schedule a 'refinishing of the floor'... 

... which means your house will start to look like this...

 ... as you come home each night and find more things out of wack and get roped into some of the thousands of trips carrying loads of things down to the basement...

... and as you are both sitting, relaxing... she's going to look around the room and notice this...

... and declare that the walls need to be repainted... 

... BEFORE the floors get redone...

... which means, she'll need lots of paint...

... and she'll start painting...

... she may get carried away and declare that the trim needs to also be repainted...

... and then realize (after doing ALL of the baseboards), that there are many shades of white... and she chose one just a shade off the original trim...

... to which you calmly try to explain that it is close enough...

... but not close enough for her emotions...

... which means another trip to the paint store for 'creamy white' to, yes, re-do the trim (except for the baseboards... because even pregnancy emotion is not enough to get one back on her knees again)...

... and you will come home to her asking, "what do you think"...

... and you choose your words very carefully, replying...

"Honey it looks WONDERFUL - thanks you so much - for all of the much needed work" (even though you didn't really think the walls needed to be done in the first place...)...

... and even though that ranks right up there in the white lies category with "Honey, you don't even look pregnant!"... as she is going in to deliver twins seven years ago...

... you will truly earn the 'greatest husband ever!' award in your emotional/nesting/pregnant wife's world :)

Thanks, honey - you truly earn the gold star award for dealing with preggo/emotional/nesting wife syndrome!!!

If a picture is worth 1000 words...

Then this is my longest post yet!!

Summer Fun: Volume I

Dear Blogging Buddies:

For those of you more blog-smart than myself who have successfully put slide shows on your blog - how did you do it?  Thanks!!

signed,

blogging picture puzzled, MN

Blahs....

Have you ever had those moments?... 

Those moments when you just feel down

No real reason for it...

No big explanation...

You just can't seem to find any redeeming qualities when you look in the mirror?

I'm sure none of you have been through that...

But that's where I am right now...

Just ... well... Blah

Maybe it's my house - which truly is the bane of my existence right now:

Don't get me wrong.  I am grateful to have a house.  

I am grateful that it is not a bamboo hut with dirt floors 

located in the middle of Guatemala.

I love having running water and a roof 

that fits securely on the walls, 

leaving no gap for all of the little animalitos 

of the jungle to come in for a visit.

There... is that enough positive to be able to go on to the complaining part??

I am just so sick of living in 5o+ years of filth (yes, the house IS that old - built in 1952).

The FLOORS (which are all hardwood on the top floor, and I'm sure were pretty at some point in time) are now worn to the bare wood in some parts, which makes for interesting cleaning... (read - NOT ever clean!)  

The PLUMMING:  well - lets just say, I had a plummer come in to do a 'quick' walk around estimate of all that needed to be done... and I could see his eyes light up with dollar signs as I kept saying, "oh, and this... oh, yes, and this also... and this, too"  (yes, our upstairs shower has been unusable for over a year now.  I tried to use it this week, and the thing would not turn OFF... on the HOT water side - yep, just kept running the hot water until Jerry finally did some sort of voodoo magic to get it to stop).

The CARPET:  well suffice it  to say that white carpet in the basement + 4 active kids + one very rowdy dog + one only semi working vacuum =  not-so-white carpet anymore (seriously, folks... I can't even stand to go barefoot down there - nasty!!)

The KITCHEN:  where do I even start with this?... umm from the ceramic tile floors (which I am sure were beautiful for about the first 24 hours after they were installed... with WHITE grout), to the antiqued mustard yellow cabinets, to the disco ball cabinet knobs (yes, you did read that right... DISCO ball knobs - where do you even find something like that??)

Yep... that about does it for the house.... except when you add that for each step forward I take on the 'nesting' of trying to get it super clean and organized... I have a little 2 year old tornado that follows close behind, literally undoing all of the doing in record time.

Maybe it's the pregnancy...

Feeling like a beached whale with every ache and pain 

that I swear didn't exist with previous pregnancies...

Or feeling like all night, every night, there is a volcano of acid erupting in my throat,

 making for a very pleasant sleep - (maybe it's just a warm up for the 

many sleepless nights to come after this little one arrives).

Or feeling just plain tired and irritated at every little thing,

 and then feeling guilty for feeling irritated at every little thing,

 but by then I have irritated my hubby, 

who is then irritated at me for being irritated at everything...

Maybe it's the midwest... and feeling so completely alone at times that it hurts, as I know that my family is all getting together and cousins are playing with cousins, and when we return (in who knows how many eons of time), we'll have to re-introduce our kids to the concept that yes, they do, indeed have an extended family full of cousins, aunts, uncles, grammas, and grampas who all love them immensely and they aren't really strangers who just come up and give them hugs and pinch their cheeks.

... Maybe it's that I have over scheduled myself to the point that I don't know how I am ever going to get things done before the baby comes.  I have two presentations to give in October - one of which is a 2 hour presentation at a big convention 10 days before the due date.  Seriously??!!  Where was my brain on THAT call??!  And one scheduled over the holidays, which when I made it, I thought, "Oh, it will be far enough that I should be recovered by then"... REALLY??!!  Did I learn NOTHING from my past two recoveries... which put me out for at least 6 weeks??!

...Maybe it's that as the baby has grown, my heart has shrunk two sizes, and I just can't seem to find it in me to look on the bright side of life.  I know, I know, 'this too shall pass'.  I know all of the things to do to get out of the funk.  And I will... I'll bounce back and get back into the swing of things... but not right now.  Right now I just want a moment to be able to sit in the corner and wallow.  A small moment, but a moment nonetheless...  

The First Day!!!

I know, I know, for the rest of the regular world, you are midway through your first semester by now... but here in the good ole' midwest, we like to start 'em late because we just 'love' going to school until the middle of the summer...

So without further pause, here are our [ever so late] first day of school pictures (because I know you have been on the edge of your seat with anticipation!!!)...

Ben was totally bummed that he had to wait a WHOLE DAY after the twins started before he FINALLY got to go to his OWN school...

Seth and Sarah in the typical 'line up for pictures' shot... (notice the 'oh so cute matching camaflauge pants'... which were mom's pick... [in my defense, he did ask me to help him pick out something for him to wear])...

(... and Seth's reaction to mom's 'helping him decide what to wear'... outfit #2...)

I love that smile!  He couldn't wait to get out of the car and get to school :)

Sarah just out of the car...

... and before the car door closed, she saw a long lost friend  (oh, those 

LONG summers of missing your classmates!)...

... and about 10 steps away she was immersed in her little 'girl pack' from the last school year - with each one talking about 10 miles a minute to catch up on the latest happenings...

... and true to form, Seth was ready to line up about 5 minutes before the bell, just to make sure he was in the right place at the right time...

... as Sarah came galloping up with her friend as the bell rang... without her backpack...  (must not have been the right shade of pink to blend with her outfit...)

... as for mom... well this year I made it through the whole ordeal 

with only getting choked up, no actual tears shed - 

which is saying a LOT with my pregnant-hormonally-raging body nowadays!

And now that we are back in the swing of things, I have to say, it is nice to be on a routine again, and getting into fall, and all of the festivities that come with it - yippeee!!  Let the harvest decorating begin!!!  

I think I'm in big trouble...

... so when August started, Jerry gave the kids a goal to read 5 books every day until school started.  They each got to pick something they really REALLY wanted for a prize when they completed the goal.

The boys picked transformers helmets to go for.  Sarah wanted 'that thing where they do your toe nails at the salon'

Today was the day... the big 'completion of the goal'.  So daddy dropped the girls off at the salon, and took the boys to the store...

... And Sarah was officially introduced into my secret world of pure paradise (aka Pedicures)

Where they also did her nails...

...and I had to relinquish my parental need to control every aspect of life as she reached for the BRIGHT BLUE polish and would not be 'casually persuaded' into any other color...

... and when she started making conversations which included, "the next time we come..."  

and "when we come again..."  I realized I was in big trouble.  I think she's hooked.

The boys... they were as happy as can be in their transformer (aka human bobblehead) helmets

That Waskiwy Wabbit!!

I was so excited this year for our garden - we planted a bunch of sweet peas (yummm... nothin better than eating sweet peas right out of the garden!!), a bunch of corn, and a bunch of carrots, among all of the other things, but those were the three I was most excited about... 

And one by one, they all met their demise... when the corn first popped up, it had the misfortune of looking just like the weeds I had shown Sarah when we were weeding in the early weeks.  One day, she came in so proud to tell me that she had just weeded a whole bunch of 'weeds' in the garden...  

I have to give her credit - she was extremely thorough and got every last one...

We also have a little rabbit colony somewhere in the neighborhood, but I haven't done much rabbit protection since we have our own little rabbit chaser in Bailey, who has pretty much kept our backyard clear of our long-eared friends...

That is... until we decide to leave on a mammothly long cross country trip, and board Bailey, leaving the backyard wide open to a rabbit feast...

... and feast is what they did... first on the carrots...

... and then on the peas...

... the squash did survive the rabbit frenzy (I guess they don't like squash any more than I do!), as well as some peppers and basil.  

Where is Elmer Fudd when you need him??!