That's not salsa!

Today I gave Charlie a little bowl of chips to keep him occupied while I did the dishes. I turned around to start the water in the sink and then looked back to check on Charlie. Seeing he had wandered into the bathroom, I went over to make sure the toilet seat was down (it wasn't) and to make sure he wasn't messing with the toilet water (he was).


Unfortunately, I didn't make it there in time to stop him from dipping his chip into the toilet water, but I did make it there in time to stop him from eating it.


He seemed to think I was being totally unreasonable to take away his chip and make him wash his hands. It's moments like those that make me wonder how often I do something that makes God think, "What are you doing???? Don't do that!!" and, like a 1-year-old, I come back with "What's the big deal?"

Germany Trip Installment 1: The Jet Lag

I was really nervous about dealing with the 7 hour time change going to Germany and back, but the kids adjusted surprisingly well.  Our initial flight to Chicago was delayed 7 hours (or rather, it was delayed "a bit longer" about eight times). Fortunately we just made the best of it and had fun in the Sioux Falls airport. By the the time we left, it was late and we were exhausted. Charlie slept through all three flights (we were detoured through London due to our missed connection). By the time we got to Charlotte's it was 10:00 and we all just crashed for the night and woke up ready to go the next day. 

Coming back was more tiring for me even though it was a shorter trip. Charlie took a little longer to adjust, waking up at 2:30 the first morning (then going back to sleep at 3:00) and 5:30 the next.  But between the jet lag and days filled to the brim with sightseeing, walking and visiting, we were all pretty tired by the end of the day throughout the trip...in a good way, though. Here are a few shots of the kids in various stages of passed out (and one of Charlie wide awake long past his bedtime).

Hallo!

We are back from our two week trip to Germany. We had a wonderful time visiting Natalie and Charlotte's families. They were all so welcoming, and we loved being able to see the girls again. Although, now in addition to missing the girls, we are missing their families as well. The kids even had German grandparents (Oma and Opa) to spoil them while they were there.

We also started back to school this week so I haven't found the time to sort through the 1000 or so photos we took. I'll just share a few for now and hopefully before too long I'll be able to share some more detailed stories of the trip.

Checkpoint Charlie! 

Bottle cap eyes! (with Natalia)

Overlooking Leipzig

In Grimma with Charlotte

Having fun at the playground with Tobi

Getting ready for their first train ride with Steffen and Bianca

Meeting Natalie's Oma and Opa (Natalie was unfortunately sick and missed out on a few days)

Our last night in Germany with all of Natalie's family and Charlotte

Natalie's family very generously offered to let Charlotte come and stay with us at their place for our last day so we were able to get a family photo with all of our kids :) The only drawback was we waited until the last minute and the kids were not entirely cooperative that late at night.

This was our first attempt. Charlie is actually crying - Sam is just intentionally screwing up the picture, which seems to be his trademark lately:

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Summer Highlights

I've clearly been falling behind on keeping this thing updated, and I don't see myself catching up anytime soon. So for now, I'll just share some pictures to show a few things I've missed over the past 5 months.

St. Patrick's Day!

Walking in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We covered almost all our nationalities that have been mixed in with our Irish blood.

After playing hard all morning one day, I came into the living room to find Ian and Sam both out cold.

We had Dominic, an exchange student from Austria, stay with us for a couple of weeks in May while his host dad was on vacation. He fit right into our family. This is not the best picture, but I love how Sam is giving himself bunny ears in this one.

Here's a better picture of him with the kids.



Watching the fireworks on the 4th of July

Enjoy the Concerts in the Park - Charlie absolutely loves listening to the band. If we get there early, he plays on the playground until the music starts. Once he hears the band play, he runs over as fast as he can to listen and dance.

Sammy lost his first tooth!

In July we had, Clem, a girl from France stay with us for a week. She was a big help with the kids and we were sad to have her go so soon.

I think Clem regretted starting this game where she pulled the kids around the trampoline on a sheet. They (along with the neighborhood kids who inevitably came over and wanted turns) sure loved it, though.

Barn Dance on the Callens Farm

Sam caught a fish all by himself - something I have never even done. (It would probably help if I tried)

Charlie may be our first child who has a tendency towards cleanliness.

I put a very heavy emphasis on "may" because as soon as I wrote on here about how great of an eater he was, he quit eating 3/4 of the food he previously seemed to love. He has discovered his favorites (mostly kiefer, raisins, Mexican food, meat and chocolate to name a few) and it apparently dawned on him that he doesn't have to eat everything we stick in his mouth.

Anyway, he does seem to enjoy putting things in their rightful place, which is a completely new phenomenon in our house. He will find Sam's clothes on the floor, carry them up the steps and put them in a laundry basket. He puts scattered shoes into the shoe basket - not a lot, but once in awhile. If he spills a bowl of food, he picks up the pieces and puts them back into the bowl. And when he finishes a drink, he won't set the cup wherever he happens to be; he walks over to the kitchen and tries to put in on the counter. He grabs a cloth and wipes up spills and wipes his face when he's done eating. One day, he climbed up a chair and got a knife we had put in the center of the table thinking he wouldn't reach it. When I saw him come into the kitchen with it, I headed towards him to take it, but before I got there he had opened the silverware drawer and put it away. And the last time he pulled out all the pots and pans to bang on them, he actually put them all back into the cupboard when he was done.
Here he is helping Sam put away the dishes. (And yes, that is Christmas music in the background. Elena seemed to think July was a good time to pull out the Christmas CDs)

On the flip side, he is still equally good at making messes. You may have noticed as soon as the dishes were put away, he started to pull them back out. This evening he drug the garbage can into the living room without our noticing (we had it out to throw out all our cucumber peelings and hadn't put it away yet) and dumped the contents onto the carpet. The other day I left the breakfast table to grab something and came back to see he had dumped a box of cereal all over the newspaper and was topping it off with my coffee (don't worry, it was lukewarm, which seems to be the only way I drink my coffee since having kids). Of course, he did follow it up by running over to the laundry, finding a cloth and attempting to wipe it all up. Here he is all proud of himself after using the stool to reach the cinnamon and dump it all over  the kitchen.

Hablas español?

I hope I still do! After 7 years of staying home, I've decided to take a job teaching Spanish at the high school in Minneota.

I don't know if I'll teach more than a year, but it should be just right for this year anyway. It's really the ideal job for me as a mom. I get all the same vacation days as the kids (including snow days). Elena and Sam will be in school, and I should be done by noon most days so Charlie will only need to go to daycare about 4 hours a day. (Please pray for him - so far he does great at daycare for about 2 hours, but anything past that is pushing it). To top it off, my wonderful, amazing, generous, loving husband has agreed to take charge of getting all the kids ready and off to where they need to be in the mornings.

I've been going back and forth between feeling excited and wondering if I've completely lost my mind. But mostly I'm looking forward to it. I guess we'll find out at the end of the school year whether taking this job falls into the "good idea" or "bad idea" category. Remember these? I'm not sure how they managed to get less funny since I was 10, but it's still fun to reminisce:

I'm pretty good at overwhelming myself with "to do" lists.  Sam actually noticed me crossing something off one of my lists the other day, and he said, "Whoa! Mom. Is that your chore list????"  The kids each have 5 things on their chore list every day (and on of those things is brushing their teeth so that doesn't even really count). Shocked by how long mine was, he started to go down the list counting how many chores I had. I didn't correct him when he started counting every individual word on the list rather than each task because I figured that would give him a better picture of how many things I really do need to get done in a day. "Wow! Elena! Guess how many chores Mom has on her list...47!!!!"

But as much as I sometimes can't stand how busy I make myself, I've come to accept that it's a part of my personality from which I will probably never get away.  Even with a million things running through my mind at any given second, I'm happy with my life and all the things I do. And I know that if I ever start to get to a point where I feel caught up, I will inevitably find something else to fill up my time. Apparently just to make sure that I never quite make it to checking off the entirety of my never-ending to-do list.

Maybe this year of teaching will be what I need to finally realize that I have to start cutting back. But I doubt it.

(Note to any future students, co-workers or employers who may be reading this: Don't worry. If I start to go nuts half-way through the year, I'm quite sure all the craziness will be in my home and not in the classroom.
Note to Seth: I apologize in advance for losing it at home occasionally in the coming year.  If and when that happens, my advice to you is to remove yourself and the kids from my presence for a bit. Ten minutes should do it. That's like an eternity to a mom with small children. Or if it's easier, just stick me outside and let me know when I can come back in.)

At the playground, Elena says to me while swinging on the monkey bars, "Look, Mom! I'm breaky-eighting."




At least, that's what I thought she said at first.


After having her repeat herself 3 times, I finally figured out that she was saying "brachiating." (For those who don't know, to brachiate is "to progress by swinging from hold to hold by the arms")




That's not exactly a word I would have expected her to have in her vocabulary. Way to show up your mom, kid.


She always has had a big vocabulary for her age.  It's looking like she might pass me up before she's out of elementary.

Shelter in the Storm

Charlie has gotten into the habit of staying awake at 11:30 every night, which is starting to get a little old. So yesterday I finally got him down for an early nap so he was able to fall asleep at 9:00. Yay! Seth and I were looking forward to 2-3 whole hours before bed to just relax (and fold laundry).

But of course, of course, a storm had to hit shortly after he fell asleep, waking him up. I got him back down before 10:00, but then we were behind in getting Sam and Elena to sleep. After we got Sam to sleep and just as we were about to tuck Elena in, a tornado warning hit and we had to grab all the kids and run down to the basement until 11:00.

It was looking like we were going to be in a tornado watch almost the whole night so we decided to set up beds and sleep the night in our (cement & furnitureless) basement rather than have to wake the kids up at 3:00am and run them all down.

I wasn't able to help at all as I was stuck holding Charlie, who was still asleep, in order to keep him from waking up and deciding he wanted to party for a few hours. Fortunately Elena stepped in to help. While Seth set up the mattresses, she must have gone up and down the stairs 20 times.  When she was done bringing down the blankets and pillows we needed, she just kept going with anything she thought we might want throughout the night.

I've heard that when facing a task, men generally focus on the destination, while women tend to think of all the details of the journey. That's why when families are getting ready for a big trip, the man is often in the car saying, "Let's go!" and the woman is packing up all sorts of last minute items.  And then when someone gets a cut on the trip, she's ready with disinfectant and a band-aid. I know that's not true for all couples, but it's certainly true for us.  Elena appears to be following in my footsteps. Every few minutes she came back upstairs saying things like:

"I'll bring down some board games, just in case we want to play something."

"I'll fill up a few bottles of water to bring down in case anyone gets thirsty."

"I'd better bring down the Bible in case we want to read it...and a few rosaries."

"I'll get some extra diapers for Charlie and his wipes."

"I think we'd better bring some extra blankets down just in case we get cold."

"I have an extra candle and an extra pillow!"

"I brought down an extra pair of underwear in case I pee my pants." (She has never been a bed-wetter so we were venturing into some pretty big "just in case"s here)

"I've got a couple of nose-warmers to keep our noses warm!"

So just before midnight, we blew out the candles and settled in for a night of "camping in the basement" as the kids called it.  It actually turned out to be a pretty fun night and one I'm sure we will remember for a long time to come.

Here is the little sanctuary Seth and Elena set up for us - I was pretty impressed:

You know it's bad when....

Sam has about 9 pairs of shoes. Not counting flip-flops. Most of them have been given to us either as hand-me-downs or from my mom who found a good deal.  8 of these pairs are in excellent condition.  1 pair looks like this:

Yes, tops are completely detached from the bottoms in the front. Of course this is the pair he wants to wear all the time. (I figured out last week how he managed to destroy them so quickly when I saw him stopping himself on his bike by dragging his toes along the ground).

This weekend we went camping, and our trip ended up landing on a very wet and cold weekend. It had been hot when we were packing so we had limited warm clothing. Elena accidentally packed capri jeans instead of full length so she had to wear a pair of my socks up to her knees all weekend to keep her calves warm. Did I mention they were bright blue socks with polka dots? Sam didn’t care so much and continued to run around in shorts.

So when it came time to go to Mass Saturday evening, our warm clothes were looking pretty grubby and most of our church clothes were not going to keep us warm enough.  So we sat in the back and tried to remain inconspicuous. I did manage to get Sam dressed in a nice outfit, but I failed to tell Sam to put on his nice shoes for church and did not notice that he wore his hobo shoes.

At the end of Mass, an older lady approached Seth and shook his hand. When he looked down, she had put some money in his palm and said, “I hope you won’t be offended if I give you money so you can buy your son some new shoes.” 

Seth started laughing and said, “No, I wouldn’t be offended, but we really don’t need it. We’re camping this weekend – that’s why we look like this.”  He talked her into taking the money back, but talking Sam into wearing another pair of shoes has been another story.

I told my mom the story the next time I saw her, and she started laughing. Apparently, that’s the exact same reason she has been giving us so many shoes for Sam. I’m starting to think it might be easier to make him a shirt that says, “Thank you, but I don’t need more shoes” than it would be to get him to stop wearing them.

What the heck?

It's 2014. We were married in 2004. Meaning today is our 10th anniversary.
That number looks even bigger now that I've typed it.

I remember Seth introducing me to his brother and sister-in-law, Jason and Tina, when we first started dating. He told me they had been married for 5 years, and I recall thinking something to the effect of, "5 years? Wow, they've been married a long time." (Keep in mind I was 18 at the time and still kind of an idiot.)

So how is it that we've been married 10 years - appearing I'm sure, like an ancient couple to all those youngins out there - and I still feel like we're newlyweds?

Thanks for the best 10 years of my life, Seth!

I would put up a picture of us at our wedding, but any pictures from before mid-2011 are all on my old computer and I'm too lazy......busy, I mean! We'll go with busy...to boot it up and transfer them. So here are some pictures of us at other people's weddings along with some various ones from over the years that I was able to pull off of Facebook.

At my cousin's wedding

At a friend's wedding party (we missed the actual wedding, which was in Ireland. I thought I would clarify that in case any of you were tempted to lecture Seth on appropriate wedding attire the next time you see him)

After  1 year of marriage

After 3 years of marriage

After 6 years of marriage

At Seth's cousin's wedding

At a friend's wedding