Playing on top of their house

"Would you STOP taking pictures?"
(He was already upset that I made him put on his underwear before he got up on the house)

Mommys have fun

I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but it went something like this:

Austin: What did you do today Mom?
Me: Laundry
Austin: Well that's not fun.
Me: You're right it's not fun
Austin: Well, Mommys have fun while we are in school. (laughing on the inside)
Me: No, Mommys don't have fun while kids are in school.

The only thing I can think of is it probably came from him asking to stay with me instead of going to school and my response is typically, "No, I have to work you won't have any fun if you stay with me."

But speaking of Mommys having fun....Tomorrow I am off to meet some other triplet and quad Moms that I have met on the internet. We are going to have a fun weekend! Ashley has already started crying about me leaving tomorrow. Pray for safety and pray for Greg and the kids! I'll be back Sunday night. :)

haircuts and tennis shoes

Yet again I get to the the computer so late that I can barely keep my eyes open. Today was a super super busy day. I got the boys hair cut. I took them to a local barbershop. 2 barbers worked on them at the same time. The boys didn't want to go, but they did great when they were in the chair. Mason's barber didn't listen to a word I said. He looks cute but it is way shorter than I had said. Austin's is cute.

So then I took them to KMart to pick out some tennis shoes. Ashley picked Little Mermaid, Mason picked Spiderman and Austin wanted Thomas but they didn't have his size. So off to Walmart we went to get Thomas shoes. Thankfully they had his size (actually 1/2 size too big), but he is super happy with them.

Then we came home and made cookies. Austin had me make a train out the cookie dough. He was excited about it, until they were cooked and he didn't like the smell. (eyeroll) This dough was in 4 containers with 4 bright colors. And the kids could play with it like playdough and make their own creations. It was pretty cute. I got a couple pictures but they are not on the computer yet.

I have a busy day tomorrow. It looks like it is going to be rainy. I better get to bed. Have a happy day!

layouts

The journaling on this layout is of a conversation with Ashley one night and the conversation went like this:
A: Mommy, I love you.
M: I love you too, Ashley
A: Mommy, I think you're pretty
M: I think you're pretty too.
A: You're Gorrrrgeous!
M: Aw! Thank you, You're gorgeous too.





Austin is obsessed with doors from Monsters Inc. You should have seen his face when I made this layout. Two of the doors open up to journaling. On Sunday, I had to make him some scrapbook pages with doors that open up too. I don't know if you can see in the picture, but Austin has a set of keys that he is playing like he is unlocking the doors with.


And here is a layout of the other day when we took our nature walk. I love the little picture of Mason on the left. I just think it is a cute pose and facial expression.

And that is all I got done in 12 hours of scrapbooking! HA! Actually that's not true, at the beginning of the day, I took about 2 hours to put many of my layouts in a scrapbook. I wanted to have something put together for my Mommy weekend this weekend.

little update

I must be trying to fight something. I went to bed at 6:30ish last night and slept all night. I kept getting hot and cold. Maybe I had a fever? But I just laid down for another 1 1/2 hours. I have so many things to do, but I can't get anything done if I sleep all the time. UGH!

Well I was going to put pictures on here of the layouts I did and the icon is missing. Blogger must be working on it. Let's hope so.

Anyway, Sunday night we got to go see the play On Goldon Pond. It was so wonderful! Jann got to go with us and that was such a joy. I loved being able to catch up and learn more about her outside of scrapbooking. She is such a neat lady! (the link icon is missing too.)She even bought our tea and dessert at Starbucks. Thank you Jann!

Ok I better get some things done before picking up the kiddos.

confession

I have a confession. You know those little "tag" games people send through email or blogs?

I purposely don't read to the bottom, because I don't want to be tagged.

12 hour Scrabooking is NOT enough

I had so much fun today! I got to go scrapbooking from 10AM to 10PM. It's funny how the day just seems to go by too fast. Almost always, we hope we could scrapbook 2 or 3 more hours. 12 hours seems long, but it's not long enough when you are doing something you just love.

I'm too tired tonight to take pictures of what I did today, so hopefully tomorrow I will and put them on the blog. One of the layouts I did was of Aussie's obsession with doors. When he came to visit me at the store, you could see his eyes light up when I showed him the layout. He said, "Where are more doors with squares?" "Can you put a locker on Boo's door?" "Will you make me this door and that door?"

falling asleep at computer. Having hard time moving. Want to sleep...want to play......must go to bed. Tomorrow should be a fun day if I can make it to bed. nnnight!!

catchin up...theres pics at the bottom

Hey there! I know it's been some time...I've been busy.

We had a great day on Wednesday. I got a lot accomplished around the house. We had a good homeschool session and then we went to Dana's house for dinner. OH MY GOODNESS!!! She made steak that was fabulous! YUM yum yum yum yum!!!!! (Hey Mike...Go out of town again and leave steak in the fridge.) I can not stress enough just how good it was. Anyway, Wednesday was a good day.

Then Thursday- Oh lovely Thursday (sarcastic). The day started out well. I got the kids to school and I came back and got some more things done around the house. Then I went to Sam's and got some pictures developed to scrap on Saturday and some groceries. Then I came home. I started to put the groceries away. I opened the pantry. And guess what was staring at me? A mouse...right there on the 4th shelf...eye level to me. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I am such a wimp!!! I called Greg in a panic. He told me to put a towel down and maybe a heavy box in front of it. Shoot...I didn't even want to get close to the door. All I wanted to do was get out of the house!!! So I grabbed a beach towell and put 2 chairs up against the pantry and I ran out of the house as fast as I could. I was really glad that I was not wearing my, "You can't scare me I have triplets" shirt on. So I went to Kroger then picked up the kids and headed out to pick up my husband, who was not so thrilled that I was making him come home.

So I take him to his car and tell him we (the kids and I) were going to Target. I had planned to stay there as long as possible. I bought 2 kids books and we sat down in the cafe to eat popcorn and read books. The kids were having fun saying hello and waving to people out the window. Austin was so funny he was saying hello in Chinese. Greg taught him a few real Chinese words. And the other 2 asked how to say hello in Spanish. So I taught them 'hola'. They were just giggling and having a great time.

Meanwhile, Greg my hero, caught the mouse!!! Cooks came to our house and put out a bait trap. He told us that a mouse only needs 1/4" hole to get in. Hello? Did you hear that? ONLY 1/4 inch. Ay ay ay! So Greg put caulk all around the pantry. Ug! It just gives me the heebie jeebies!

Anyway, we had to warn our kids that it was possible that they could find a dead mouse and not to panic but just come tell mom or dad and we will take care of it.

So even though most of the night I had a restful sleep, I still dreamed that I would be picking up dead mice the next day. That was not a fun dream!

That leaves us to today. We had a good day today. The morning went by too fast. I didn't get nearly enough stuff done. Then we went to Dana's to have a nature walk and play. She has this really cool thing by Crayola Big Yellow Box that dries flowers beautifully in the microwave. So we took the petals and leaves the children collected and dried them. Then this is what Ashley made with her dried fowers. (I thought it turned out really cute.)
While the kids waited for the flowers to dry. They played in the sandbox and they played sing on the stage. Braxton must have been the rapper. (Check out the outfit he picked out.) I'm sure it was actually a coordinating thing. He wanted to still look like his brother and yet bring in some of the red from my children. LOL. Anyway, they played well. On the way home Ashley fell asleep and would not wake up for anything. So who knows when she will be waking up in the morning.

playing

Today Dana and her boys came over to play. The kids played well together. And Dana brought over her brand new DIGITAL CANON REBEL XLT something or other EOS with 10MPX. Oh it was SO fun to play with.

Thankfully I'm not jealous! She let me play with it and that was good enough.

This is just classic!

Greg went to buy parts for the sink yesterday so it would stop leaking. He took the downstairs sink apart so he could take the peices to the store with him (I assume). So one thing lead to another and he didn't get it back together. No big deal, I didn't even know it was apart. So this morning I told him that our friends Braxton and Dalton were coming over to play. So he asked if I wanted him to quickly put the sink together before he went to work. I said, yes since that would be the bathroom they would be using.

SO...He is dressed for work and he reaches in the pantry and pulls out one of my aprons and puts it on. He said, "I don't want to hear anything about me wearing an apron, I just don't want to get my work clothes dirty." I said, OK. It didn't bother me and I probably wouldn't have said anything anyways.

5 minutes later...Mason comes downstairs and sees Greg. He said, "Hey you're wearing a GIRL apron."

Greg said, "yah yah yah" (Renee' forgive me I don't remember if I should use yeah or yah here)

I just busted out laughing!

That is just classic!

little stories of the day

Hello friends and family!

Austin for quite some time came up with this word that he sings quite often. It is the cutest sounding word. He sings "daddadoo daddadoo" when he is happy and playing. And I grin everytime he says it because it really is the cutest sounding thing! So today we were in the car and he said it and Greg asked him, "So what does daddadoo mean?" He said, "It's the chinese way of saying it's play time." ROFLOL!!!!

So this is the CHINESE way of saying it's play time? And he said, "Yes, it's like hyper time and 'heh' (another high pitched sound he makes when he's happy). The 'heh' and 'daddadoo' are chinese."

This boy makes me laugh!
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Ok so a few days ago Ashley was reading my Bible to me and out of the blue she said, "OK, find the ducky." LOL!!! She has 2 Usborne books where a duck is hidden on each page and you can find it as an extra thing from the story. So she insisted for me to find the ducky, so I just pointed to some words and it made her happy.
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So I've decided I really need to work on Ashley's whining. I just didn't know what to do. So I talked to a friend tonight and I have decided to really work on Ashley this week. So prayers please! This might be a tough week. But I did explain to her tonight that starting tomorrow there was not going to be anymore whining. I asked her what it was and she was able to kind of demonstrate it to me. So when she did it (not intentionally) I piped up and said, "Good job Ashley that is exactly what whining sounds like". You could see it in her eyes like she just figured it out. So I asked her how the right way to say it. So we are off to a good start.
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I need a Mason story. Mason has been so sweet. He comes up with inventions that he is just super excited about and wants to show us. And usually it is something like balancing a ball on top of something or a building he made. He has so much joy and you can really see him living his life to the fullest. He just gets so excited over the smallest things.
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I was really convicted by something someone said in small group tonight. It's kind of difficult to explain without telling the whole story, but the point is I am going to better myself in some area of my life by at least an inch this week. And that we should all have a plan to live by. If we don't have a plan we could be like we are today or worse 5 years from now. So I need to make up a plan of where I want to be in 5 years and start working toward that goal.

Timing is Everything

Yes timing is everything! This morning we took the kids to Radnor Lake again. This time we went right after breakfast. It was a beautiful day.

We took a wagon with water in it. We had 3 people tell us we should be selling them. (So that gave us the idea for the triplet water wagon for the next time we go.)

At first Ashley and Mason pulled the wagon and Austin held my hand and walked several steps behind. I actually really enjoyed that time with just Austin. We talked about leaves and vines and how we can find out how old trees are. We looked at the pretty spider webs and we had such a nice time together.

They walked a good long time until they decided they wanted to ride in the wagon. So we tried to put all 3 of them in it, but it was just too crowded!!

So Greg ended up getting a really good work out. On our walk we saw 6 deer (too far away to take a picture- I tried). And we saw turtles sunbathing.

So after a nice trip around the lake we went to one of our favorite resteraunts. We went to Ginza! YUM YUM YUM! I always love watching my kids use chopsticks. Ashley would be a pro at it by now if they would have never given her the kid chopsticks. She was doing well with the adult ones 2 years ago. And now all the kids use the kid ones. Oh well no big deal I guess.

On the way home all of the kids fell asleep in the car. They had a nice long nap. Which means it's 9:00 right now and I know they are going to have a hard time going to sleep. But we really want them to, because Greg rented a movie that we are really hoping to watch tonight.

One more post for today

Today is a GREAT day!

Thanks to everyone I have talked to about homeschooling, I have finally made my decision on what curriculum I will be purchasing for next year. And I have also found someone who is going to let me buy part of the curriculum from her. WooHoo! That will be a HUGE savings. I will be using Abeka for Phonics, Math and Handwriting. And I will be using Little Hearts to His Glory for the rest. I am so tickled with LHHG. It's the first curriculum that jumped out at me and said this is what I need to buy...This is it! I'm so tickled with it that I have decided to try out their preschool curriculum. So I ordered that today and thanks to the consignment sales, I have a little extra money so I could do that. YAY!

THEN...My MASK came today! Hip hip hooray! I can start getting some sleep again. I've been without my mask for a week and a half now. Oh what a happy day!

Then...I received our TPAC season tickets in the mail today. And I even have a babysitter lined up for the first show.

OH I hope today continues to be this good!!!!!!!! Off to pick up the munchkins and get a haircut. :)

Scrap It and School

I love it when my kids come to visit me at Scrap It while I'm scrapbooking. You would probably think otherwise. But scrapbooking is typically when I'm happiest with my children. It's because I am scrapbooking some of our favorite moments together. So when they come to visit me, it puts a big smile on my face. They like to come visit too. Mainly because they know they will probably get a cookie and they can sit over in the corner and watch shows they don't have at home. Ann and Bill giggle over the fact that they get the chairs right up by the TV. I thought Greg dressed them so cute on Saturday too.

And this picture is taken today right outside of their school. Poor Ashley needs a haircut. We are going today to get it cut as well as mine. Hip hip hooray! Oh speaking of haircuts...

The other night I was lying down with Ashley and she said, "Mommy, you are so pretty." I said, "Thank you Ashley, you are so pretty too." Then a few minutes later she says, "Mommy, YOU are GORRRRGEOUS." As I melted I said, "Thank you Ashley! You are gorgeous too." Then she said, "Mommy are you going to get your haircut." I said, "yes, I really need to." Then she said, "Don't get your haircut, I like it just the way it is." Oh isn't that so sweet?

I just love their preschool class this year! Mrs. Sheila is their teacher and she is excellent. They are coming home and singing new songs and I think they are really enjoying it.

They are learning how to write numbers. So they learned 2 songs that help them learn how to write them.

"Pull straight down and that is all...and that's the #1"

"Make a curve and then straight back...and that's the #2."

I love to actually see them learning something. Up to this point they already knew everything that was being taught in MDO. It's refreshing to see them actually learning again.

Aussie Attends Evil School

This entry is from Greg:

9/12/06: I was washing dishes when Aussie came up behind me. I turned to him and he gave me this strange look - stern, angry, and a bit disturbing. I said, Aussie, what's wrong? Are you angry? He said matter-of-factly, No, that's my evil face. I said, Wow, that's a really good evil face. Where did you learn to do that? Again, very matter-of-factly, Aussie said, In Evil School. That's where teachers teach us to make evil faces.

They keep me busy

I love my children! Boy have they kept me busy today!

I don't know why Austin excludes himself from playing with Mason and Ashley. But most of the day Austin wanted {demanded} me to play with him. So we played "doors". Which means I draw more and more doors from Monster's Inc. and then we play with them. Austin has 52+ doors, but everyday he wants us to make more. He is so pitiful when he is trying to describe how he wants them drawn and we just don't get it.

Well today, I decided to make a matching memory game with the doors. I put uppercase and lowercase letters under each door. Mason and Ashley wanted to play too. So we played this game that seemed to go on for hours. By the end I was saying..."hmmm...I think the other Y is under a yellow door over here by my foot." Or sayinng..."We know this is a Z and this is a W so we won't look under there (for the umpteenth time) for the N". What was I thinking doing the entire alphabet?

Then as I was clipping coupons- which I am now going to attempt to do on a regular basis (so you can send any coupons you don't use my way).

Ashley said to me proudly, "Did you see our lists?"
Yep there on the Foyer wall was several pieces of paper GLUED to the wall.
She and Mason were so proud of themselves. I had to explain to them that we don't use glue on the wall. Ashley tried to say, "but I heard you say use glue on the wall." NO I'm sure I didn't.

I thought I was going to get a lot done today...because I feel better than I have in the last few days. But no it's 4:45 and I've only done 1 load of laundry and folded 2 (which are still on my bed).

Well back to loving on my children. I think I'll go read them a book.

Austin reads a book

Today is a BIG DAY!!! This is a day I need to mark on the calendars and scrapbook about.

Austin read a whole book by himself!

I knew he could for sometime, but this is the first time I actually picked up a book and asked him to read it to me.

He read Hot Dog by Nora Gaydos.

I am SO proud of him!!!!!!

todays ramblings

What am I going to do with Austin? He insists his name starts with an "O". I told him sometimes the letters "au" makes the short "o" sound. But he says, "Well MY name starts with an O."

He recognizes his name, so I think he is doing this just to bug me.

After talking about the 4 and 5 year olds in his class, he informed me that God was 22,006
and that he was VERY L O N G.

They like their new teacher, Mrs. Sheila. She said in a few weeks they will start bringing home homework. Can you imagine at age 4? I'm kind of tickled. I'm excited about all they will learn in this class. This teacher is really good. She is going to work on them with writing. I'm excited because I really didn't know how to help them with this. Also, she sent home a note on all of them saying they were really good. She had an extra note on Austin's to work on staying on task. HA! I'm hoping that's a note to herself and not to me. I've been working on that for 4 years and it's nearly impossible.

Oh by the way Hollye and others---The consignment sale this weekend is at Lakeshore Christian Church on Anderson Road in Antioch. It is called Butterflies Consignment. Come out and buy my things. :)

So who is going to Scrap It! this weekend? I get to go on Friday night and Saturday. Who's going to scrapbook with me?

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow (I hope)

What a day! Whoa! Glad it's almost over!

A couple of nights ago my mask broke. So I am waiting for a replacement. It will take at least a week.

Anyway, last night I was finalizing things to take to the consignment sale today. My drop off was at 10:10am today. So I stayed up until 2:30AM working on it. I put everything into my computer and planned to print off the tags. Then I would put them on in the morning. WELL...my printer ran out of ink! Where can I get ink at 2:30 in the morning? So I was in panic mode. I IM'd Dana, who is also consigning and was up late tagging. I begged her to print my tags and bring them over in the morning. I didn't get a response so I reluctantly shut down the computer to got to bed instead of waiting for her to come back to her computer. So I went to bed. I tried to duct tape my mask so I could use it, but I ended up holding it to my face all night. Yah I got some good sleep (eyeroll). So when I rolled out of bed in the morning I turned on the computer to see that Dana was able to print my tags. I was going to write Dana "got me covered", but I thought that sounded funny with me rolling out of bed in the same sentence. (wink)

So I rushed and I mean rushed around the house trying to get the stuff sorted and in the car. By the time Dana got there I was a sweaty mess. She said she knew I felt gross, but I didn't look it. So I just thought ok and went along with my business of getting those things tagged. We worked hard for 45 minutes, while our kids ran around in the house getting into everything. We bribed them with everything! We told them we would take them to Bounce Factory if they were good. So we dropped off our stuff at the sale. And I took at least an hour getting all my stuff in there. It took MUCH longer than I expected.

Then we took our kids to The Bounce Factory to play for an hour. It was nice. Not too crowded! I felt like I had a handle on all 3 of them. It was nice, except when we played the skeeball game. Everyone else's kids came up and kept stealing the balls and none of the parents would do anything about it. Problem was I knew these people! The kids had never played skeeball before, so the balls were going all over the place. I was afraid one of the other kids who were leaning over the game was going to get hit. Talk about FRUSTRATING!

Anyway, the kids were hungry. I had NO food in the house. So off to McDonald's we went. The kids played and I sat there listening to a very high energetic sales person from Avon. They were having a meeting in McDonald's playarea. I have nothing against Avon...but that is not what I wanted to hear at the moment. I learned if you ask a Avon rep how much she typically makes...their response should be well how much would you like to make? (double eyeroll) I just wasn't in the mood. I kept thinking that they were going to gang up on me and have me practice their speil. (sp?)

So then I hit my tired point! Whoa- I was tired. I took the kids home. And I did something I probably shouldn't do. I put the alarm on the house. I put on a movie for them to watch (which they didn't) and I tried to go to sleep. I had not been that tired in a LONG time. It wasn't good sleep, because I constantly had one ear on call. I asked Dana and Greg to call me, so I could get up and check on the kids. They were fine, despite destroying the house.

Now it's 10:00 and the last one I think has finally fallen asleep.

Oh oh oh forgot one little point. When I took the kids to McDonald's I went into the restroom and I saw myself for the first time of the day in the mirror. What is that on my face? It's a piece of duct tape! Yes, lovely. Went to the consignment sale, the Bounce Factory and McDonald's before noticing I had duct tape on my face. Hello? It's not like it was not noticable!!

I think I've gone on long enough...there is one other thing, but I'll save it until tomorrow.

I MUST SLEEP!!!! Goodnight y'all!

Friday Sept 1. (going backwards a bit)

Friday I met with some of my Marvelous Multiple Moms. All of us went through the Marvelous Multiples class at the same time and we have kept up with each other. Can you believe they are ALL 4.

Top 2- Austin and Briana Doyle- their mom had another baby 1 year ago.

Top Right- Jake and Jonah Patton- their mom is pregnant with one right now.

Bottom 3- My trio- their mom is NOT pregnant

Bottom Right- Drew and David Porter- their mom just had a baby 2 months ago.

(It kind of looks like it is my turn....But probably not. Who knows I'm selling off my last crib this weekend. So isn't that the saying? Once you get rid of all your baby things that is when you get pregnant?) Some days I really would like to have one more (especially for the long run) and other days I am happy happy happy with just the 3 I have.

It was really nice meeting up with these friends!

I had a hard time getting a good picture. The 2 Austins didn't want to cooperate. This is the last picture I took and at least I got all the faces. But in some of the previous pictures everyone is smiling and all you could see of the Austins were their behinds.

Labor Day


Well back to blogger....I just didn't feel secure on that other site. Sorry it's been so long!

Anyway, Greg was off work today and we went to Radnor Lake. Greg is an idealist and I am a realist, so he thought that our little children would be able to walk around the entire lake. I knew otherwise. This was their first time going. I remember it being long for me to walk, I knew the kids wouldn't be able to handle very much of it.

But we had a nice start!
I caught a butterfly. It's the first time I even tried. I was a little nervous about it getting on me, but I did it and it wasn't bad. Austin wanted to hold it so bad. I tried and tried to get the butterfly on him, but it just wouldn't go. Then Austin said, "that butterfly just doesn't love me." Oh how pitiful!


Anyway, we ran into one of Greg's workmates and talked a long time with him and his family. While I talked to his wife the kids threw rocks into the lake. They were having fun. I found out that she homeschools, so I got some tips on how she does things.

So back to the lovely walk around the the lake. We started walking and did not get very far, when Austin said his cheeks were getting red and that he wanted to go home. Then Mason said he was tired and wanted to go home too. This frustrated Greg, but we turned around to go back to the car. Then Ashley had a meltdown. She did not want to go in that direction. So we ended up carrying Ashley and Mason back to the car. Thank goodness Austin continued to walk!

So that was our fun labor day...How about you? What did you do?