Happy Birthday Mikayla!

How on earth did my middle child grow to be 9 years old? Geesh. It seems like just yesterday I was holding her in my arms, yet I can't remember what my life was like without her. :-) She was so sweet today. She came into my room this morning to tell me she couldn't sleep. Apparently she didn't notice what time it was....10:15am...that's why she couldn't sleep. HA! She put on a dress, and her Cinderella dress-up shoes from Disneyworld. Too funny. I let her open her presents as soon as she woke up. We don't normally do that, but since her Dad is gone, it's not a traditional birthday anyway. First, she opened the presents from us...clothes and the High School Musical game for her Nintendo DS.

Becca and I are taking the girls to the new American Girl Bistro store in Atlanta, so she'll also get a couple of outfits for her dolls. The big gift of the day came from my parents. She absolutely LOVES it. She came inside several times today telling me how awesome it is.

She was absolutely awesome about sharing it today. Our rule is, if you get a gift, you don't have to share it for the first 24 hours you have it. They're quick to remind each other of that too. She was great though, and let each of her siblings take a turn or two around the loop. Since Liberty is too little, she let her stand on it with the kick-stand down. HA! She came to me several times today to thank me for everything, and to tell me she loved all of her presents. She had a fashion shoot with all of her new clothes so we can show all of her presents to Daddy. This girl LOVES clothes. When she was little, like 2 or 3, if we went to the mall, she would ask for a new outfit or a new pair of shoes. She didn't want toys, she wanted clothes. Crazy. She's the absolute opposite of her older sister, although Katie is starting to like clothes a little more than she has in the past. :-)

We don't spend a lot of money on cakes in this family. With the exception of a few times, I make all of the cakes. Mikayla wanted a princess cake. I don't know how to make Cinderella, but I can cut one with my Cricut Expressions machine. So, this is what we came up with. She was thrilled. Already has plans for either an Ariel or a Sleeping Beauty next year. The Cinderella and Prince Charming are stuck in the cake with a popsicle stick. She was happy, which is all that matters to me. :-) I have three weeks to plan the next birthday. Yee-gads.

Knitting news....I still need to knit the leg of the second sock. I started a top-down hat last night. So far, it's going great. I modified the pattern just a bit. It's written for double pointed needles, which I hate. So, I'm magic looping it. Devin is anxious for me to finish it. A few more days.

Amen to that!!!!!

Benjamin's surgery is FINALLY over. Amen to that! Dr. Lane said the hole in his ear drum was relatively easy to repair. We decided to remove his adenoids as well, since he was already under. Turned out to be a good decision, as they were pretty large. Benjamin was g.r.u.m.p.y. as he woke up. The first time I saw him, it kind of freaked me out. How come no one told me they look dead when they're in such a deep sleep? Devin never looked like that when he had his tonsils out. He was awake almost as soon as we got to the recovery room. Benjamin? Not so much. He.was.out. He developed a little bit of strider, which was pretty scary to me. He would alternate wheezing with holding his breath. Yee-gads. Freaked me out. I nearly lost it in the recovery room. I decided it's not much fun to have a child go through surgery when your husband isn't there to help.
I didn't get as much knitting done today as I would have hoped. I did re-knit the heel, so that's done. Wanna know why I didn't get much done? I forgot the stinkin' book at home! I brought More Sensational Knitted Socks, when I really needed to bring Sensational Knitted Socks. Hmph. My next pair of socks will be knitting 2 at a time on Addi Turbo's. I just need to decide on my pattern. Any suggestions? Oh, before I cast on for anymore socks, I MUST knit Devin a hat. Hold me accountable.
School....school, school, school. We had our ups and downs this week. The fact that it wasn't a normal week didn't help things. We ended the week on two good notes. Mikayla scored a 90% on her spelling test. Spelling is not her strong point, and she was really going down hill on her spelling tests before our break. So, for her to score a 90%, that really boosted her confidence. I added some things to her spelling workload...writing her words three times each, and choosing three words to use in a sentence. That was brutal for her, but I'm hoping it gets easier each week that she does it. The second good note? DEVIN SCORED A 97% ON HIS PRE-ALGEBRA TEST! I told him on Monday that he really needs to focus on making less careless errors. He did pretty well on each lesson. I should add, he completed an entire BJU Math chapter in ONE WEEK! So, for him to score a 97%, that's fabulous for him. I told him I think it's his highest math score all year. He quickly reminded me that he made a 100% on his first math test this week. HA! I rewarded his good work with a new book. Just a little something special so he knows I'm proud of him.
I exercised four times this week. Devin and I walked at 7am twice...when it was bone chllin' cold out. Remember, the term "bone chillin'" is a relative term. Heehee. Yesterday, the wind chill made it feel like 5 degrees. Boy Howdy. I plan to walk tomorrow as well, but it'll be much warmer out. Having to be at the hospital at 6am screwed my walking up, but I did jump on the mini-trampoline tonight.

Back to the Old Grind

Today was our first day back at school since before Thanksgiving. I would like to say it went smoothly, but it did not. Benjamin is having surgery this week, and we had pre-op stuff at 9am. I tried to make sure the kids knew exactly what they were supposed to do while I was gone, but apparently they didn't. Mikayla has forgotten how to subtract, but she did remember what a verb was. :-) Devin had way too much free time after he was done with his work. Me thinks I need to schedule more. Katie thought that doing everything but write a thank you note and read was acceptable. In her defense, she did ponder the lay-out of the thank-you note. Benjamin came home and declared he didn't have to do school because he went to the doctors. He did complete handwriting and two math pages. Atleast we made some progress, eh? I don't imagine we'll be back into the full swing of things until next week.
I've done much thinking about what I want 2008 to be like for us. I can honestly say, good riddance to 2007. Not that some wonderful things haven't happened to our family this year, I'm just glad it's done. It'll be nice to not have to say that it'll be next YEAR before my dh comes home again. :-) I want this to be the year of the Happy House. I remember my Grandmother telling me she loved the house my parents used to live in so much, because it was the "Happy House" to her. She said that was the only time all of her kids got along. Of course, if you ask my Dad, he says it's because they were all toddlers/babies when they lived there. heehee. Anyway, I want this to be the year of the "Happy House." I'm tired of fighting kids all.the.time. I'm tired of no one talking nicely to each other. I'm tired of the selfishness. I guess I'm just plain tired. So, in order to get the changes I want, I need to focus on Character Training. I'm including myself in this, because I can see where I definitely need some character training. This is the book I'm thinking of purchasing. I'm waiting for dh to check it out before I order it. Knowing him, he'll say, "It looks fine Babe." :-) One more thing I'm going to do is put a lot more focus on Bible work in our homeschool. I'm currently trying to design a Bible Notebook that'll work for us. Stay tuned on that. :-) Of course, I've got the ever popular "lose weight" goals too. Who wants to hear about those though. lol.
Knitting....I have started the heel on the second sock, finally. I will be spending about 6 hours at the hospital on Friday, so maybe I'll have a nearly finished or completely finished sock by then! I have a couple of larger items I would like to knit this year, but I'll save that for another post.

Hallelujah, it's over.

This may sound horrid, but after two Christmas celebrations, I'm glad it's over. It was fun while it lasted, but bring on 2008. :-) The kids had a fabulous day though. They enjoyed all of their gifts, loved hearing the Christmas story, decorated cookies, made gingerbread houses and all of that fun jazz. Speaking of gingerbread houses, we are finished with kits. We had such a hard time getting our houses to stay together this year. Next year, we're either doing graham cracker houses or a lincoln log house. :-) Liberty was so excited to finally get her Dora's Talking Kitchen. This morning, she was sitting on the couch watching TV and said, "Dora's Talking Kitchen here I come!" Silly little girl.
Mike has finally made it back to his FOB. He sat at Baghdad International Airport from Saturday until yesterday. Nice, eh? He's getting back into the swing of things. They already shipped him out to the out-post. He wouldn't have it any other way though. Sitting in his room would drive him crazy.
I'm anxious to start a new knitting project, but first I have to convince myself to turn the heel on the socks I've been working on. Also, in order to start the new project, I have to do a guage swatch. I loathe having to swatch. It'll be worth it though, as I totally LOVE the new project I'm going to start. :-)

Bring Him Home Santa

I'm not fit for human conversing right now, but here's a song that brought a tear to my eye. OK, it brought more than one tear. Go have a listen.

Merry Christmas?

Today was Christmas at our house! Dh is leaving on Thursday, so we celebrated Christ's birth early! We had a fabulous day. We played games with the kids, I made a yummy ham dinner, complete with the Pioneer Woman's squash, much to my children's dismay. However, Mikayla loves it, which is why I requested it. I figure if my 8 year old requests squash, I must oblige her, eh? :-) We have lots of ham left-overs, so I doubt I'll have to cook tomorrow.

We let Devin sweat a bit. We're horribly mean. His gift cost over $200. With 5 kids, our Christmas budget has to be kept under control. So, we couldn't afford to spend anymore $$ on him. The other kids had opened a few gifts each, and he was starting to get fidgety. He said, "I wonder if I have any gifts under there?" HA! Finally, we gave it to him. He was in total awe that he got a Sony PSP. He didn't think there was any way he was getting one. It's nice to give Devin gifts...he wears his emotions in his shirt sleeve, so you always know how he's feeling. He is often emotional over gifts, which is nice...makes you feel like he really appreciates them. Some of my other kids are non-responsive about gifts. Namely Benjamin and Katie. You can never tell if they liked what they got or not. lol. Anyway, the bad thing about celebrating Christmas early? I am itching to take the tree down like nobody's business. But, I can't. The kids are opening gifts from family members on the 25th, so I have to keep it up until atleast then. I'm guessing I will be ripping it out of the living room on the 26th.

I have been knitting. I finally bound off the sock I started when I went to see the Yarn Harlot, and cast on for the match. I'm nearly ready to start the heel. Something tells me I'll be knitting lots by the end of the week.

Welcome Home!!!!!

So, as most of you know, my dh is home. He's sitting on the couch watching football, America's favorite past-time. :-) We picked him up at the airport last Saturday. His flight landed around 6:45am, we finally saw him around 7:45. Thankfully, I didn't get to the airport until 7:30ish, so we didn't wait long. I made sure to tell the kids just because they say someone in ACUs, they shouldn't assume it was Daddy. I was afraid one of the kids would go nuts and have it be a complete stranger. HA! Mike doesn't like to draw attention to himself, so as soon as we saw him, he wanted to get the heck out of dodge. I was able to snap a couple of cute pics though.

After we left the air-port, we headed to Cracker Barrel. We were all starving. Imagine our surprise when we went to pay our bill, and someone had already taken care of it! :-) After breakfast, we drove another 2 hours north to Greenville. It was Mike's Step-Mom's 60th Birthday. It was a pretty big deal. Lori flew in from Vegas, the boys drove up from Atlanta, etc. So, how could we miss it? Many thought we were crazy, including myself, but we went anyway. lol.

This week has been great. It's been so nice to talk to Mike in real life, not on the Yahoo IM. I'm so thankful we are able to have internet communications while he's gone, but the real thing is much better. :-) So far, he's taught a certain 3 year old to ride her bike, he's hung Christmas lights, he's played Army Men and we've went to the Zoo. He's also done a boat load of laundry, but that's no fun, so you'll see no pictures of that. Oh, I forgot we celebrated a birthday too! My baby boy is six now!

So, there's our week in pictures. That picture of dh with his feet sticking out of the window cracks me up. He didn't end up hanging any lights up there, as we had no idea how the heck I would get them down once he left. But, I had to snap this picture. It reminds me of the Pooh-bear episode where Pooh gets stuck climbing out of the hole and they have to push him out. HA! Tomorrow, we're taking a little trip. I can't wait. I had better pack something, eh?