Liam's interpretive dance

Liam's very favorite movie is Despicable Me. I think he likes the minions and how they talk. But, recently, he has also been mastering Gru's dance in the final scene of the movie. He does it without thinking, almost as if he is being controlled by the music. My favorite part? When Liam attempts the splits just like Gru.

back to work

Well, last night was my first night back to work in the PICU. I had a wonderful summer off and I loved being home. Kella has gotten so big! I hate how fast she changes. It was hard to leave the kids, but I knew they were in good hands with the sitter and Andy was going to be home early. Kella did great while I was gone-took her bottles fine and slept well. I had a decent night at work. I got floated to the general peds floor to take a pt assignment. Easy peasy-after my little baby pt finally calmed down, I replaced a feeding tube in another and my older pt went to sleep. All in a night's work. I got to sleep this morning on and off, too, so I'm not as tired as if I had to stay up all day. So, not too bad overall. I guess I could do this again. :-) I am still waiting to hear about a job that I interviewed for at another hospital. Should hear maybe on Monday if I got the job or not. We'll see!

first day of school

The boys' first day of school is today! Instead of driving them to school, I told them they could ride the bus the first day if they wanted to-of course they did! They almost missed the bus because the driver made it sound like she would be pick the kids up a little later than the time we were used to. Nope. At 810, the bus was coming down our street. We just had time for 2 pictures: 1 of me (in my jams) and the boys and the other of the kids right before getting on the bus. There are 6 kids on our street this year going to the elementary and primary buildings. The boys were excited to go! Can't wait to see how their day went!

the last road trip of the summer

I must be crazy. I decided to go back to Illinois for a quick overnight trip so the boys could go to their cousin's birthday party. We would also get to see my brother Joe, visiting from Texas. The best part-I would be taking all 5 kids back by myself.





Before we got on the road, we went to the open houses at Marcus and Cale's schools. This year, Marcus will be at the elementary school and Cale at the primary school (3rd and 1st grades, respectively). It's the chance to meet the teachers and bring their school supplies in early. Marcus has Mrs. Catlin for his teacher. There will be 26 kids in his class. She seemed nice and after seeing our entourage, said that she also has 5 children-4 boys and 1 girl. In all my anxiousness to leave at an early a time as possible, I totally forgot to take Marcus's picture next to his desk-oops. He didn't seem to care.:-)





Next, we went to Cale's room in the next building. He has Ms. Warning, who had moved to 1st from kindergarten. There will be 17 kids in his class, and Cale is excited that there are 4 other kids from his kindergarten class in his first grade class, including his little buddy Alex. I did remember to get his picture :-).



Then we swung by McDs to get some take-out and started our trip. We had to stop 3 times. The first time: to clean up Liam who got sick in the car. I blame the heat and possible too many french fries after eating apple slices and chicken nuggets. Thankfully, I had the forsight to pack and extra outfit for him. Liam was fine after that. The second stop: time for Kella to eat and to take a bathroom break. The third stop: time to get gas and Kella wanted to eat again. What Kella really wanted to get out of her car seat. She was very unhappy when I put her back in the seat and let us all know about it for the rest of the car ride, about 1 hour.

But, we made it to Decatur! We spend the night with Andy's parents and in the morning, Grandma Jean, Uncle Chris, Aunt Kim and the cousins came over to see us. It was nice to have them all playing together again.


Chris did an impromtu preformance of Bible school songs with Liam. Liam knew all the movements. :-)



After Decatur, the kids and I drove to Grammy Pammy's to meet there before Xander's birthday party. Uncle Joe was there along with Aunt Bitsy, Uncle Eric, Maddie, Abbie and Jacob. Grammy thought it would be fun to go out to eat for lunch. 5 adults and 8 kids-thank goodness it was a buffet. And, they sat us in a room all by ourselves.



Car seats are so handy! Jacob sat in his and Kella slept the entire meal away in hers.

Back at Grammy's, some of the cousins entertained themselves with the leapster/gameboys/ds.

A new picture of the baby cousins-Kella and Jacob

Kella met Uncle Joe for the first time...

...and Uncle Eric, too.

Then, it was time for the party. I missed Andy the most at this time. None of my kids had taken a nap (except Kella). Liam was borderline exhausted at the start. The bowling was fun, but loud. And, I felt like it took forever. I convinced Liam to put on some bowling shoes. He wanted to carry his own ball-8 pounds!

Marcus watching his ball. He warmed up that morning playing Wii bowling.

Ewan choosing a ball.

Cale had a crazy spin on his ball.

Ewan's technique was to go up to the lane and toss/drop the ball.



Pic of the Uncles-Eric, Joe and Jim

Aunt Eileen got to hold Kella a lot, since by this time I was dealing with a totally exhausted Liam. He had at least a 40 minute meltdown and just wanted me to hold him. He eventually fell asleep.

One of me and Joe and sleeping Liam.

Kella also got to meet Gram Cece for the first time too!

We finally left around 530, after cake. I was dreading the, at least, 4 hour drive back home. I broke the trip up in my head into segments: Springfield, Decatur, Champaign (stop to eat/feed Kella), state line, Crawfordsville, Lebanon, Westfield and finally home. Kella fussed for the first hour and a half and then, after our dinner break, she slept the rest of the way. We went through 2 and a half movies (thank goodness for the DVD player-we watched Despicable Me both there and back-Liam's favorite movie) and everyone did pretty well. Ewan and Liam finally fell asleep. Marcus and Cale both got to pee in a cup so we wouldn't have to stop (the joys of having boys). It was 11pm Indiana time when we pulled into the driveway. Everyone was tired. I was glad to be home. I was also happy that we had made the trip. I'll probably do the same thing next year.

Kella's best friend

Here is a picture of Kella with her "best friend". Ewan loves, LOVES Kella! He asks to hold her several times every day. He is always giving her hugs. He loves to pet her hair and get right in her face. I find myself saying things like "back away from the baby" and "don't touch her while she's sleeping" often. Ewan's not detered. He keeps coming back to give her more love. And, you know what? I think Kella likes some (not all) of the attention. She smiles at Ewan and will watch him when he's talking to her. I hope this affection for each other lasts as they both get older!

going to the state fair

We took the kids to the state fair on Tuesday. It was a good day to go-nice weather, not too crowded (a lot of schools have gone back already, but not us) and $2.00 admission, midway rides and assorted foods! It was a rough start-Marcus DID NOT want to go! He complaned and whined and actually cried about having to go to the fair. Too bad, we're all in this together and he had to go. Guess what? He had fun-they all had a good time. I took a ton of pictures and probably posted most of them. Here we go...

We walked through the cow barn and the chicken/geese/rabbit barn. Our kids are "townies" and don't get to see farm animals up close too often. We had to get pictures taken in the second barn-first Cale and Ewan (look up) and then Ewan and Liam (look down).

$2 midway rides was a big plus. We bought tickets and let the boys each pick two rides. Marcus, Ewan and Liam (with Andy) went through this climbing house.


Wait, is this boy smiling? Oh, he's must be glad he came to the fair!

Here come Andy and Liam down the climbing house slide!

Cale and Ewan (and Andy) rode this ride next. They had a blast! Liam was very upset that he could not go on this ride with them.

If you look really close, you can see the guys-they are the only ones on the ride.

Liam got to ride this ride next. It was went in a circle and the bees went up and down. Liam was very happy :-).

The last ride was the kiddie coaster. The three big boys rode it. We kind of had to convince Cale to ride, but I think he was glad he did. They all rode with big smiles on their faces and even rode with their hands up in the air for most of it. Liam was unahppy, again, being too small to ride this ride.



Kella slept. She pretty much slept the entire time except when I woke her up to nurse her (yea! for the breastfeeding stations). There was a scale where I fed her. I weighed her-14 pounds.

After eating state fair corn dogs, we went to the FFA building. The boys got suckers=dessert, played in a play area and fed some animals.

Our last stop was to the DNR building for some target practice and climbing on a snow mobile and 4 wheeler. Even Liam got to sit behind a gun. I'm not sure if he actually fired a shot, but he got to be one of the big kids=happy.

playtime with Kella

Playtime can just wear Kella out sometimes....

best used toys ever!

I'm giving props today to Rescue Heros. They are actions figures that were made by Fisher Price, oh, I don't know, at least 10 years ago. I knew about them when they were sold in stores, but we didn't buy them until they were being sold in kids consignment stores. We have quite the collection-a small army of figure, a plane, tower and command center. We also frequently check the Rescue Hero movie out of the library. Yesterday, the whole crew made their way downstairs to have a live reinactment of the movie the boys had just watched. This kept them entertained for a while and all the boys played nicely with each other-so great! So thank you Fisher Price! I only wish they were still produced, they are still popular-even used!

it's starting to look like school might be starting soon

During the last school year, I think Marcus went through 3 or 4 backpacks. It's not that he was extra rough with them, I was just buying cheap backpacks. For this next school year, we decided to go with a little more $ backpacks that have some kind of replacement policy. We ordered backpacks for the 3 older boys from LandsEnd.com. I wasn't planning on getting one for Ewan, but he really wanted to be included, too. We even got their initials on the backpacks and Ewan also got a pirate on his-very cool. They were excited when the backpacks came and everyone, even Marcus, let me take their pictures.

Oh yes, everyone picked a different backpack. And, Marcus picked a different font for his initials. Cale and Ewan thought the diamond type was very cool and I think Marcus liked that his font was the "atheletic" font.

What about Liam? Well, he does go to preschool this year and will inherit this green backpack. For some reason, this backpack has survived 3 years of nursing school and at least 4 years of preschool for Cale and Ewan. Liam was way happy to have a backpack, too. He took a nap with it yesterday and it also had to come to karate with us!