Bath Time!!

well there is nothing like a long hot day at a festival to make you want to come home and take a nice long bubble bath. the kids loved it minus the bubbles. i wont be making that mistake again. they kept rubbing them in their face and that's no fun. but they did like them at first. and no the water isnt so hot that their faces are that red. i'm just a bad, bad mother. they are sunburned from the "festival" today.

this is the only face shot i could get of the boy. he didnt want to stop what he was doing to look at me long enough for a picture. and he screamed when i got him out. but i made it up to him. we had strawberries with caramel on them!!




i'm just going to list all of the adjectives that come to my mind about this girl in this picture. beautiful, fun, wild, voluptuous, innocent, happy, wet, .... the list is long. she was playing with her barbies and having a ball. what a great way to end the day.

I Hate Festivals!!!!!

i absolutely hate going to festivals, harborfest, theme parks, zoos, ...basically anywhere in the hot sun (even though i'm partial to summer), where i have to push a double stroller and stand around waiting while everyone else has fun. did i also mention that i have really bad arthritis and it kills me to walk around these places. i have already taken pain killers and my back is absolutely gone. i feel like an old woman. i need one of those walker canes with wheels on it at this point.
anyway we went to the Pungo Strawberry Festival. The highlight for me was saying hello to Thelma Drake and kind of making the guy - Glen Nye, who is running against her in the Nov '08 congressional election, squirm just a bit. he doesnt want a smaller government, just a more efficient one. pray tell, HOW?? umm...... uhhhhh........ welll........ but anyway, back the the festival.
the kids had a ball. they got to see animals and ride A ride (it was $20 for 20 tickets and most rides were 3, 4 or 5 tickets - so split that up between 4 people). The parade was nice - minus a lot of the Khediva crap (the Masons - immensely dislike that crap). They had horses, which all the girls loved. And i believe David Asher clued me in to his pleasure at the drums. he LOVED the drums in all of the marching bands - i mean LOVED!! which that makes me happy that he is thrilled with something! He also liked it when the police/sheriff/fire departments turned on their lights and let their sirens go!
We stopped after the parade for some fries and some lemonade. Needless to say the little ones got the lemonade. But I was smart. i made them drink out of the same cup - so out of the 2 - $4 lemonades they only contaminated 1 with their backwash!! GOOD TIMES!!! Elizabeth looking so happy to be there.

Abby guzzling lemonade.
Rachel being Rachel.
Asher getting his turn at the lemonade.
Obviously Abby milking a plastic cow. DUH!!!!!!
Well DUH again, Eli milking a plastic cow!
From happy to sad in no time flat!
dont you just love the smirk on abby's face behind david asher? like he is annoying her. well let me tell you that boy was being so awesome. we were sitting in the 4H tent while they announced the Grand Showman in the Pungo 4H Club. We had the privilege of watching 3 young people prance around a ring with 3 sheep, 3 steer, & 3 fighting pigs (well 2 kept fighting with each other). And the smell from those animals were ungodly.

This is Abby pretending she is driving a HUGE, GIGANTIC Armored Military Vehicle. She was so pleased with herself. I bet she will go military! Marines only though. But i dont think i like that for my girls.
she was very pleasant when it was time to get down. that almost never happens because she usually isnt done when i want her to be done.

And of course i couldnt not add this picture. when abby saw the rides she started screaming that she wanted to ride the roller coaster. well she meant the ferris wheel. and of course the princess got her wish. now eli doesnt look thrilled but my baby girl was in her element. plus she got her way!


now i am home and getting ready to give baths because we have church tomorrow. what i find completely fascinating is that around all those animals today none of us stepped in poo or got poo on us. we only had to smell it in the animal tents.
well we got home and played outside and david asher fell in dog poop. what a great world.

Friday Night Blues

i hate friday nights. i have nothing to do. i'm sitting here typing in a blog and i have nothing to talk about. i cant decide if i want to share this blog with the world. i mean who really cares right? it's kind of pretentious too - the more i think about it. my sisters would probably think i was being uppity. but truly i think it is an easy way to let people who care know what is going on with the kids. i think i will just post here and when people ask where the emails are i will have them check it out and really not worry about what they think.
tonight was good. i took a bath with my 2 babies. man i love naked babies. especially my own. their butts are soooooooooo beautiful. when i got naked abby grace, the 3 year old, smacked my naked butt and it hurt. she made it sting and of course she added "mommy you got a big butt!". it's not like it's a j-lo butt. but it is out there i guess. it's bigger then hers. and then she starts shaking hers and telling me i cant get it. and of course david asher wants to get in on the action so he starts shaking his. so we have some butt shaking going on.
the boy had cookie crusted to his face. it was nice cleaning him up. it's like he went from this dirty canvas to my sweet little prince again. but he is cute either way - cookie laden or sparkling clean.
and what is amazing to me still is how much different he is then the girls. i mean i know he is a boy but......it's so ingrained in him to be a boy. abby picks up her 2 barbies that stay naked in the bathtub and started playing. asher grabs the shaving tool (it has no blade - it's like a minature scqueegie that you use with nair that removes the unwanted hair) and starts pounding the water like a mad man. he would look up ever so often and blink the water out of his eyes and just smile that smile that let me know he was having a ball. and it also meant "hey mom arent i the cutest thing you have ever seen?" and of course he was right.
and what is so totally awesome is they both love the being naked part after the bath. oh i love that. and what i love also is that rachel & eli both like seeing their babies naked too! they start chasing the 2 little ones to get a pinch or two on those little butts. oh i love that.
so now they are all in bed. rachel, being the young teenager that she is, tries to find any excuse to stay up longer. eli complains EVERY night of some ailment and she always tries to leave her door open - which is forbidden in this house - in case of fire.
and the 2 little ones went to bed - seemingly readily. the boy in his crib and the wild girl in her bed. all abby demanded was of course her "songs". the boy laid down and crash landed. abby put her thumb in her mouth and then crash landed herself.
so now i am sitting here wasting time.
i love my babies.
oh man i was so emotional today. oprah was a rerun but they showed these 2 families who had tragic accidents happen to them. one little girl was decapitated in a car accident (friggin' drunk driver) and her mother was the only one able to walk out of the car accident and when she did all she had was her daughter's head in her hands. the impact was so hard that the seat belt severed the 7 year olds' head. so not only was i crying at that point but they went on to tell how a grandmother backed over her 2 year old grandson in an suv. she couldnt see him. man it was bad. you would have to bury me with my babies. any of them. i cant imagine how a mother or father or grandparent survives the death of one of their babies. i'm not that strong.
on that note.....later.

Getting Mad, Breaking Light Bulbs & Little Books

man today is really sucky - well it started out that way. i lay in bed this morning wishing that the alarm clock would just shut up. but alas, it didnt. i kept telling myself that i needed to get up but i didnt. i also kept waiting to see if my husband would actually get up and attend to the crying boy (he had been at it for about 30 minutes so i know that the whole house heard him). not only that but elizabeth had to get up and get ready for school. why is it my job to get her ready? fix her breakfast? fix her lunch? make sure her teeth are brushed? why? do i ever get a day off? well yesterday she went to school with her mickey mouse tshirt on backwards and i didnt realize it until she got home. if you know elizabeth you have to know she was mortified when she got home almost to tears.
anyway back to this morning. i was already a bit peeved over the "anniversary" conversation clay & i had had the night before (about gifts and it's just ridiculous that anniversaries and birthdays and special days result in major dysfunction between he and i). but i got up with a slam of the door as i walked out of the bedroom (yeah take that!). i got elizabeth up and went and got david asher out of his crib. got his milk warmed up. sat him down. got eli's (short for elizabeth from here on out!) lunch made and helped her with her morning meds & her breakfast. then i just started my day of animal responsibilities.
i let lily (the 4 mth old mini-schnauzer) out of her kennel to potty before greeting the family. i fed chickens and got their cages set up this morning. (long story but I have some (3) in the garage living in rabbit cages, some (14)outside living in a huge, ghetto rigged, wire dog kennel, and some (9) out in the backyard coop.)
then i go in, fix some coffee, watch eli get on the bus, go back in and start washing clothes. well shuffling clothes from the dryer to a laundry basket, from the washing machine to the dryer, for a overflowing hamper to the washing machine. well miss abby grace has a wonderful habit of really messing up her clothes so i went in the cabinet above the washing machine to get the bleach stick out to put on 2 of her shirts and when i opened the cabinet the - like 10 year old - cardboard box of crap we never use - no exaggeration - foam door insulation (cant think of the proper name for it), 2 old vacuum cleaner belts (i dont think we even have those vacuums anymore), some white supposedly filter material to go in the air vents/filter that has been in the box for years and never opened, light bulbs, an old bike tire pump, miscellaneous adapters to some obsolete pole that is suppose to easily take light bulbs out of the sockets in the high ceiling fans, and an old night light. basically crap we never use)..... it all fell on my head. and also a white camping bucket (that you wash the dishes in) that had a wire heart egg collection basket in it fell too. man i went bananas. i threw the box and all of the lightbulbs shattered. but it felt so GOOD!!! i have a scratch on my forehead.
did i mention that the whole time i am doing the clothes that david asher is in between my legs, holding on to me, eating dryer sheets, touching buttons on the washer.... you know, just in the mix?
well i had to put him behind the gate in the living room so he wouldnt get cut on the glass and he screamed. then clay just quietly started cleaning up the mess which then proceeded to peeve me off a bit more. he was so quiet doing in. man i just wanted to fight.
but i didnt get my way.
sometimes i wonder how clay puts up with me because i can be a real bitty.
anyway i'm sitting here in my pajamas of choice - a wife beater & xxl men's boxer shorts - not wanting to do anything else today but sleep.
while i have been sitting here i think i have been disturbed no less then 5 times.
abby has these little books that she carries around and if anyone gets them then she goes bananas. they are both my books - one is a new american standard version of the bible & the other is a spanish/english dictionary. Needless to say, David Asher as the only boy and baby wants those books too.