Winter Sadness

Tonight we are under winter storm warnings because of a big ice and snow storm. Though all other school age kids are jumping for joy because now schools are closed on what was to be the last day before Christmas break tomorrow, my little Owen is not as happy. When the public schools close so does his preschool and tomorrow was supposed to be his Preschool Christmas party and green day. He's been looking forward to it for a long time now and Raymond had his on Tuesday and it's all Owen can talk about, and now he won't get to have it! :(
I was planning my daycare Christmas party tomorrow so I am going to try and make it extra special for Owen so he doesn't feel like his missing anything. However, with that, I couldn't make it to Wal-mart tonight so I don't have all of the craft supplies I need for my crafts for tomorrow and I don't have any Christmas presents for my daycare kids like I always do. I love the snow in the month of December, but I just wish it worked out that it didn't screw Owen out of his party. I feel so sad for him.
Poor Tony has to get up and out in the thick of the storm at 4:30am to head to work. Since I can't get out of the house tomorrow I am sending him in our Suburban so that he will have a better chance of getting to work and home safe.
I wish I could post pictures of my kids because I have so many cute pictures of them to share. I have taken pictures of them decorating the tree and just playing around. Pictures of Judd are probably totally different than the last one's I posted on Halloween!!!! Oh my gosh!!
Keep your fingers crossed that I can get my computer back very very soon!

Christmas Good Will

Tonight I got to get out with my fellow church members and do some Christmas good will. It felt good, but it is mixed with a strange sadness for the elderly and a bit scary for my future when I too become one of the elderly.

Every year our women's group at church makes cookies then wraps them up and drives all over town in the church van (which is nice but the heat needs looked at, and not too much fun in -20 degree weather!) to deliver these wrapped cookies to the elderly home bound of our congregation. So we were making stops at assisted living facilities and so forth to do this. We took turns getting in and out of the van because it was so cold and there was ten of us crashing in on these places, we thought it best to only go with a couple at a time.

The only one I went into was to see this 75 year old lady named Carol at an assisted living nursing home. She has been living there for 10 years!!! She has MS, but not severe. She has four grown children (all live around here except her oldest son who lives in Pennsylvania), a slew of grandkids and she said two great grandkids. We brought her Sunday's alter flowers, cookies and a few Christmas carols to share with her. Despite her age and her MS, she seemed in a great condition, not necessarily unlike where I'd hope to be at 75 if I had to be in a nursing home. Then going down the hallway I see other elderly people in not such great condition. Needing machines to help them get into their wheel chairs, completely unaware of their surroundings or no ability to control their body. SO sad.

These people are just like you and me at one point and someday we will be like them, and I have to admit I am scared to death of being old and knocking on death's door. I consider myself a devout Christian, but death sometimes worries me to the point of hyperventilation.

Afterwards we went to Village Inn for dinner (9:30pm) and with only one other table in there waited a ridiculously long time for our food, so though we started at 6:30 and we only had five stops to make, I didn't get home until 11:00pm. Tony wasn't too happy. Sorry Tony! :)

So Frustrated!

I am still so very frustrated with this whole computer crashing thing. I have it being worked on by Verlyn, Tony's mom's husband, which I am SO thankful for. I just feel so lost without it. It has all of my daycare forms on it and all of my picture programs for downloading pictures. I feel so behind on downloading pictures and I have about 100 on my camera and most of those need to be shared!
I apologize if you are aching for updated photos of the boys, I am dying to share them with you. Please be patient and don't lose interest in the blog because I assure you that there will be pictures again someday!!! :)

Christmas Spirit

It's sad but the older I get the less "Christmasy" it feels this time of year. I recall as a kid that it was usually snowy and cold at Christmas time, there was an air of excitment that built up all through November and December and the anticipation was so high on Christmas Eve that I couldn't sleep.
Now, I feel like it is any other day. Last year I was way more excited than this year for some reason and I feel too organized, which also makes the season seem less "Christmasy".
Now that I have three kids they are the only ones I care about the season for. I want them to experience EVERYTHING to do with Christmas and I want them to get wrapped up in the spirit of the season. I want them to have exciting and fun memories of Christmas like I do. Tomorrow we are going to go shopping for Tony and it sort of seems like it will be no fun because it's supposed to be about 50 degrees and to me that is NOT Christmas shopping weather! :(
So in light of all of this I have decided to change my background on the blog into a more Christmasy theme! So enjoy.

Winter blues, winter flus!

Last week was so horrible. I hate when my kids get sick. I may as well be sick when they are because I feel like I suffer as much as they do. I anticipate their throwing up, I have to run with them to the bathroom, I get puke all over me as I help them clean up, I get no sleep because I am waiting for the next throw up, and I'm constantly on my feet trying to get everything cleaned up.

Let me start from the beginning. Wednesday night Raymond kept saying he had a tummy ache and needed to throw up. I kept kind of ignoring it because he jokes about this sometimes (I know), Owen is slowly wilting away meanwhile on the couch and getting warmer with a fever. We get them all ready for bed and Owen passes out on the couch and Raymond passes out on Tony's lap and then Tony shouts "Ah help". I knew it. I didn't even have to look I just whipped into action with my mom ability. I just knew he was going to throw up. He had started to throw up a little on Tony but I grabbed him by the arm and ran to the bathroom and shoved his head over the toilet just as he let it loose. Then in the middle of the night he threw up all night and Owen started throwing up. I had to strip beds, strip pj's and clean up faces and put towels everywhere all night long.

Thursday came and they were NO better. Raymond was going intervals of a few hours without throwing up, but poor Owen was running to the potty every 15 to 20 minutes all day long. That night Judd was SO crabby all afternoon. Nothing made him happy, not even me, which is saying alot. That evening I sat down to nurse him and not five minutes after he finished he sat up on my lap and puked all over the place. He was completely happy afterwards. He was laughing and smiling and crawling all over. This is the great resilience of a baby. He proceeded to throw up two more times, but was then done. They ate nothing and drank sips of water all Thursday. Same thing Thursday night. Friday came and they both stopped throwing up. They still had fevers and now a cough but the throwing up was gone. Then Tony took the dogs to the vet for a check up and Raymond REALLY wanted to go. BIG MISTAKE. Poor Tony ended up cleaning Raymond's throw up off the vet's floor.

They are much better now and we were in the clear over the weekend, but I am still exhausted from their illness. The nice thing is that all of my towels, sheets, and pjs are clean. Both bathrooms are totally disinfected and so are all of the toys in the playroom.
Tonight Tony is up in bed throwing up. I hope you all find yourselves healthy for this holiday season.

Many Thanks

While I am thankful for many things this Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for the news I just received stating that my pictures and files on my crashed computer are safe and not gone forever! You can't imagine the relief I feel. I feel as though I just won a million dollars or something. So what will I be doing this weekend? Can anyone guess? If you guessed that I will finally be burning cds of my pictures on my newly fixed cd rom, then you have guessed correctly!
Yeah!!!
Thanks for everyone's prayers, it could have been a REAL tragedy.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I will have a multitude of pictures to post this weekend too, so look for upcoming posts!
Love you all. I am thankful for YOU!

Computer Update...

First of all, I know it's two months later, but I've decided this is the easiest way to tell everyone since I've fallen so behind...Thanks to everyone for Raymonds birthday cards and gifts. I have thank you cards that I just have not had a chance to get written or sent, so I apologize, but I don't want anyone to think that they've been forgotten!

Secondly, we have been MIA for just over a week now because our computer crashed. Verlyn gave us a loaner computer so we could get on the internet, but I need everyone's prayers for the pictures on my computer. EVERY picture of Owen, Raymond and Judd are saved to the hard drive and I have not gotten them burned to CD yet so I would lose all three of my children's lives up until now if Verlyn can't recover them. It makes me want to throw up I am so worried about them. SO please think happy thoughts for me!!

I will post more later when I hopefully get my computer back and it works again and I have pictures to post.

P.S. Judd is now cruising around furniture, climbing stairs, pulling himself up to everything, eating table food (plus nursing) and has five teeth! He can now wave and clap and points to things. He is such a big boy!!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Bubble Yum! Bubble Fun!

So on Halloween night after trick-or-treating, the boys decided to share their candy with Daddy, and since we don't let them have gum, they decided that Daddy should put all of it in his mouth and try to blow the biggest bubble around.
The boys were cracking us all up because Owen kept saying things like, "Daddy blow it up so it smacks Raymond in the face and sticks everywhere" or "Pop it all over the room daddy". I think the boy has seen one too many cartoons! -HA

They were getting so excited watching Tony and I have to say, that Tony makes bubblegum blowing look extremely painful. He looked like he was straining on the toilet rather than blowing as simple bubble, which added to the hysteria! Below is just one of the many bubbles that Tony attempted that night plus a video of the boys getting so excited about the bubbles. The video is terrible to see. It's way too dark, but you can listen to the boys' excitement and Owen saying "ooooooooooo", which is supposed to be the sound effect of Tony blowing up the bubble. Then at the end out of nowhere Owen turned to us and says "This is a toilet" holding a toy in his hand. It was pretty funny. I wish you could see the video better because you could see Owen wringing his hands like he has since he was a baby when he got excited about something!

Haaalllloooweeeennnn!

We made it through! YEAH! Every year we have had something going on that this was the first year that the boys have actually been trick-or-treating. Owen's first year, he was too young so we didn't go. The next year Raymond was in the hospital at five weeks old having stomach surgery. Last year we didn't go because we went to Trunk or Treat at the church so we decided there was no point in taking them. This year, no excuses and they were old enough to understand what they were doing.

Owen went as Optimus Prime (the semi Transformer), Raymond as...you'll never guess...Buzz Lightyear and Judd as a bumblebee, costume courtesy Mom and Kelly. They looked cute. First we decided to go to Holly's neighborhood because they live in a nicer subdivision, so more kids and trick or treaters. The boys held hands going up to the first house with Tony and it was so cute. They got a TON of candy, so I had Tony take most of it to work with him to give to co-workers. They ate more candy that night than they have probably had in their lifetime because I am not a supporter of giving young kids candy and pop, like some parents. My kids only get juice as a treat maybe once a month or so. It just doesn't occur to me to give them that stuff because I just assume they don't need it. But on Halloween night after their hard work, they probably both ingested about 6 or 7 pieces of candy and they were on a sugar high. It was funny.

So without further ado, here are our Halloween pictures 2008. Enjoy!

Pre-Halloween

Of course Halloween is over and I am behind on putting pictures up, but before I post the cute Halloween pictures I wanted to post a few pre-Halloween pictures. So enjoy. Not much to tell in this post. The pumpkins up above are as follows...Owen's, Judd's on top, Tony's is the big one, and Raymond's is the one in front of Tony's. I carved all the boys' and designed Tony's face that I opted not to carve my own this year. Besides which my pumpkin was a Hollywood pumpkin...perfection. The pictures below are of the boy's costumes, carving pumpkins, and a few miscellaneous. The Halloween post will be seperate. Enjoy!

My Three Sons...

Here are just a few pictures of the boys lately. Also I have included a video of Raymond making Judd crack up the other night. Please also notice I just posted two other posts before this one, so check them out! Have a great weekend. I'll have more pictures after today because I am taking the boys to "Trunk or Treat" at the church where they can trick or treat out of the church members cars in the parking lot and have games and stuff inside. My Pumpkin Heads! :)

Juddy Bug!

Okay, this is another new post on the littlest monkey in our family...Judd Bug. He is already becoming a little joker and enjoys doing silly things to make Mommy and Daddy and his brothers laugh. He is growing like crazy and I am shocked to say that he will be 8 months old on the 5th of Nov. already!!!!! CRAZY!!! SCARY!!! Time has flown by. He is a very active little boy and is not satisfied playing by himself or playing with his "baby" toys. He wants Raymond's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle car to play with because he sees his brothers playing with it and thinks he should too.

He crawls all over the place and follows me now into the kitchen and bathroom and everywhere. If the daycare kids and his brothers are in the play room he will crawl around the corner to find them. He laughs all the time and working on his third and fourth teeth. He's been able to sit up for at least two months now and he can now get into the sitting position from his belly. I think his hair is turning a little more red, but it is still too dark to really tell. He does have more hair than any baby his age in the world I think, and people have jokingly commented how it looks like he might be wearing a hair piece. The pictures below are of Judd playing with his toys and looking too darn cute!

Funny Kids

It has never ceased to amaze me that the emotion of being happy is something children are born with. It's so funny that even babies know how to make a joke and be silly and they quickly learn what to do in order to entertain the adults and give us a show. Even as toddlers and preschoolers the kids still amaze me at how intentionally funny they can be. Yeah, sure they say funny things because they don't use words correctly or don't know the meaning of a word they use, but those aren't intentional things. The intentional things I am speaking of is what the pictures I will post will portray.

I LOVE having kids close in age. They play together, they are learning about the same things and they are very close developmentally so that they can interact together. They are each others very best friends. They have their little secrets and they go off and play while Tony and I get stuff done. Owen and Raymond are two of the funniest jokers I have ever met. I don't know where they get it from but I can only assume that it is a hereditary trait given to them from the Sears sisters. :) If you are a Sears sister, you know what I am talking about! The boys do things that we used to do and it CRACKS me up.

The other night Tony and I were lazily watching t.v., I think the last Presidential debate, and Owen and Raymond had occupied themselves playing in the playroom. I believe we had told them to start getting undressed because it was bath night, then we ignored them for a few minutes. Next thing we know, Owen and Raymond come laughing hysterically out of the play room and they have no shirts on and they had taken their jeans off and put them back on backwards. They thought it was hysterical and it was! I mean they are 3 and 4, what do you think happens? Who came up with the idea and what were they thinking when they did this? Now you all may not think it is as hilarious as we did, but let me assure you, it is a phenomenon how children this age know they did something funny and they came to show us what they did so we could laugh too. So enjoy the simplicity of childhood and the comedy stylings of Owen and Raymond in the pictures below!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Wow, 28. I can't believe that I am so old! I feel old lately. It has been a crazy few years! In five years I have had three beautiful baby boys, married an awesome husband, who I don't tell enough how awesome he is, had three different jobs, owned two different houses and moved three different times.

I can honestly say that I am not at all where I'd be or what I'd be doing at 28, but that's not to say that I am unhappy. I am very happy with my family. They are the best things EVER! My regrets are not finishing my bachelors degree when I had the chance and moving out of Wyoming. That's pretty good if these are my only major regrets.

My birthday was a pretty great day. The older I get, however, the less it feels like my birthday. I guess you could say that that old excited anticipation is gone. I now have that for my boys' birthdays.

I spent the morning at the pumpkin patch with the boys for their preschool field trip, then finished my work day, then we went to the China Buffett for dinner with Holly and Verlyn, and came home and Tony iced my strawberry birthday cake with strawberry icing and him and Owen (the only two still awake at this point) sang me happy birthday and shared a slice with me.

I didn't make out too bad either on gifts...though of course they are never needed or expected. I got $50 from Mom and Dad and a $50 gift card to Old Navy, which I already spent! Then I got $40 from Tony's grandma and grandpa Blain, nice cards from a lot people, $50 from Holly and a $25 gift card to Target and a nice dinner from Holly. Thanks everyone! I love it. Plus of course I got an awesome picture taken by Tony of my precious boys at the park and a nice frame to put it in! I LOVE it!

So here's to 28 years....hopefully at least 28 more! :)

And the Winner is.....

I recently talked Tony into being more involved in church by signing up to make chili in the first annual chili cook off. After much consideration, Tony got excited to cook in the cook off and hoped that his efforts of throwing together a Hodge podge of chili together would pay off. He didn't care about the community or church participation, he was in it to WIN! He said so. On October 12 we arrived at church with our crock pot of chili, boys in tow. Tony set up his crock pot with the other 13 contestants and readied himself for the testing to begin. Each cook had to serve someone else's chili, so the audience didn't know whose chili was whose. There were five judges not from the church but included notable people such as a former Mayor, a well-known channel 3 weather man, and a city council man to name a few. They took a long time working their way down the line, tasting and analyzing everyone's chili and making notes on papers. When they were done they conferred and decided upon a unanimous winner! The church lady announced..."And the Winner is #2"..."Tony Coffey!" I looked up in surprise to see Tony just as flabbergasted as myself. Then after the initial shock wore off he went to claim his $25 prize. The judges stated that his chili had great texture and flavor and that the spicy kick didn't come until the end, which was unusually great. Funny. We don't have a recipe for this famous chili and doubt we can ever duplicate it exactly, and we will always wonder what made Tony's chili special compared to the other 13 chili's there, but that's for another day. Today Tony is basking in his glory, he thinks, as the new hero of the church..... (no, really, he really thinks this!) :) And now he is a self-professed chili expert and his head is so big it can no longer fit through the front door.

So let's all give Tony a big round of applause on his big win!

Pumpkin Patch Time!

This Sunday as I have stated, we went to the Pumpkin Patch and had a ton of fun. So much fun we decided to stay for six hours! It is like a huge amusement park for those of you wondering if we just frolicked through a field of pumpkins for six hours - though I could see myself doing that! Ahhhh Fall.....my true love. I love the pumpkin patch, I would love to live amongst the pumpkins. I don't care how weird that sounds, it's true. So to all you other crazy Fall lovers out there, please enjoy my family pumpkin patch slide show! Also, there are three fun posts below this one that I just added tonight too. So check them out! Happy Halloween everyone!

Raymond's Guitar Solo

Here is Raymond playing his new guitar. Read the two posts before this one, they are both new.

Raymonds' Birthday Party Slide Show

Here is a slide show of pictures from Raymond's birthday. Enjoy. P.S. Read the new post below this one!

So many updates and so little time!

My poor poor kids!

So where to start. I have not posted in so long that I have a mound of pictures to post and a bunch of news, so lets see...

First of all I guess we can say that Raymond had his third birthday on the 24th and had a Buzz Lightyear party on the 27th of Sept. He got lots of cool stuff and had lots of fun. I made iron on t-shirts with Toy Story pictures on them for Owen, Raymond and Judd to wear to Raymo's party. I made an impromptu birthday cake that didn't turn out too bad. Raymond got a guitar from Me and Tony and he is so cute playing it. It is a real acoustic guitar, child sized, and he loves to play it. He nods his little head keeping time while he strums away. I got a short video of him playing it that I will try and post, but this post might be too big by the time I am done!

I of course have been going absolutely crazy around home trying to keep on top of things. I have kids all day and all night. I am loading up seven kids two times a day into my suburban to take and pick up Owen and Raymond from preschool, and that's getting a little old. I can't seem to keep on top of chores and little things like paying bills, maybe that's a big thing, or balancing the checkbook or getting Raymond's thank you cards for his birthday sent....which by the way should be out this week because he got his three year old pictures taken.

Sorry if this post seems breathless and rushed, I just want to try and get everything out, because I have no idea when I'll get a chance to post again!

On Sept. 19th my best friend Sheila had her baby, her third son, named Aaron. I am so excited that we share having three boys in common, it gives us a lot to talk about. Sept. is a VERY busy month with birthdays. We had three including Raymond's just in the weekend of his party and me and the boys were exhausted afterwards.

Judd is army crawling all over the house, nothing is safe! He is totally bored and way too good for baby toys now that he is seven months old too. He wants to play with Hot Wheels and Owen and Raymonds' big boy toys. He will be in a pile of his toys and look utterly bored. Then I'll look up and he has army crawled down the hallway and found his way into the playroom to find Owen and Raymond. It is the cutest darned thing EVER!

Owen and Raymond spent the night at Grandma Holly's for the first time last Friday. They did really well and slept in their Lightning McQueen sleeping bags all night. Tony and I did nothing but sit and watch one of three DVD seasons of Scrubs. BORING - we are so dull. Judd was rather sad that night because he missed his older bros.

This last Sunday we made our way to Vala's Pumpkin Patch which is more like a huge theme park than a pumpkin patch, but it is so much fun. They have a very large petting zoo, bonfires, pumpkin cannons, pony rides, two haunted houses, places to buy yummy fall treats, trains, hayrack rides to pick out your pumpkin in the field, and more! We spent six hours there and the boys looked like ragga muffins by the end of the day. I swear they were the dirtiest they have EVER been in their lives. They had dirt smeared all over their faces, all of our clothes were covered in inches of dust and dirt, and we had dirt in our eyes and mouths and noses and ears. I gave the boys a bath that night and by the end the water was black. NASTY! Oh well, we had fun.

Now we are getting geared up for Halloween, my birthday next week, the many Halloween parties, and pumpkin patch field trip for the boys' preschool, my school, AHHHHHHH! I'm going crazy! :)

Enough about my posts....I am an avid blog reader and I know what you all really want....pictures. So enjoy! In case I don't make it back on in time, Happy Halloween everyone. I want to see pictures of costumes on all of your blogs!