Catch up post

I'm not such a good blogger lately....

Um... let's start with Alicia. She just made the jump rope team at her school. They practice everyday, and I think that they will go to competitions and stuff. Only 20 kids were allowed on the team out of the whole 5th grade. We are proud of her! Whoo Hoo! Here she is next to a donkey. I wonder which one is more stubborn. (probably the one taking the picture.) There's another one of her valentine for a soldier. Pretty cool, huh?

Mahala is our little singer and made it through final auditions for the Texas Girls Choir. She was very excited to be accepted. BUT... she is already in the school honor choir, and when she realized she'd have to give up her reading club too, she decided to cut back. She was a real sport about the whole thing. She's awesome! This picture is of Mahala and her cousin J on a midway ride. I think it was the Lady Bug.

Eli loves doing his homework on the computer. This makes Mommy happy because it doesn't take hours, and hours, and hours, oh, and hours to finish. He even does extra because it's so fun! I'll bet Momma wishes they had a pc when I was in 2nd grade. Were they even invented then? I'm old!

Parker is 4. I'm not sure if I have to say anything more about that! lol Actually, he is lots of fun when he's not spazzing out. He's always surprising me with his stories about his "dreams" and his interesting pretending games. He's a little, no, a lot small for his age, so the endocrine doc has ordered a growth hormone level test on him on April 20. I just know he's going to hate that.

Lily is a wily, independent, giggly, stinker, 2 year old. She's smart as a whip and loves to say EVERYTHING she hears. She follows her big brother around like a puppy dog, and copies everything he does. Her favorite thing to say is, "NO! I'M DOING IT!" She's working on potty training herself. I just finished (I hope) with training Parker, so I'm pretty much letting her take the lead on this one. She's just as adorable as always, and could probably get out of any trouble by grinning. Someday, I hope she grows some hair. You can see her showing off her pigtails down below.

Zoey is 5 months old. She can almost sit up on her own. She has the stomach muscles, but not enough control yet. We haven't found anything motivating enough to get herto roll onto her stomach from her back yet, but she is very good at rolling to her back. She always has lots of smiles, and has just started giggling when we tickle her. So fun! If you haven't already seen Paul's post on his blog, you might not already know that Zoey is a huge Led Zepplin fan. We use Stairway to Heaven to get her to calm down if she's screaming in the van. Yeah!

Paul is doing great teaching. He amazes me, because I would probably just lose my mind with that many kids everyday. It takes a really special person to teach high school. I can't tell you how many times he's told me stories that made me want to apologize to my H.S. teachers.

I am, as always, trying to find new ways to keep the household chaos to a minimum. I found some microfiber rags at Sams. (My mom told me about these before, but they feel weird, so I didn't try them right away.) I bought a mop that works great, and when I saw FlyLady promoting her purple ones, I decided to give them a try to see if I can save money on paper towels. I figured that at 9.88 for 24, it wasn't a bad deal. They work GREAT for washing dishes, cleaning that nasty greasy stuff that builds up on the hood above your stove, and for cleaning up spills. Mine are flourescent Lime green, so they are easy to spot around the house.

Also, I love spring. It may not technically be spring yet, but here it is. It's beautiful, and the weather is great. It makes me remember why I love to be outside.

And we went to the stock show on the last weekend it was open (avoid this if you can, all the animals are gone except for the 4H kid stuff). I saw this sow with her piglets. They were squealing like crazy. I know how she must feel! lol

:D