Pests...I mean Pets

Griffin has decided that he has a new pet. A fly showed up in our home yesterday and he was thrilled that it landed on him. It is now his pet. He has really big plans for his new pet. They are going to go for walks outside and it will sleep in his room. Kenna was going to swat the fly and he was horrified. I love that boy. And we need to look in to getting a dog.
The twins restarted ISR swim lessons yesterday. Griffin was soooo excited to show Pam how he swims. Kenna was just pissed. Ms. Pam told her that it was ok to cry but not to scream at her. Ah. My sweet angel. Laney starts swim team today. We should be all ready to swim like crazy in Hawaii.
Laney is still having a problem at school. She just doesn't want to go. I'm thinking that her teacher might not be a good fit and we probably need to make some sort of change. She's too little to not like school! I just hate being "that mom" that is difficult. The pleaser in me doesn't like to make waves and be a pain. I am often doing the inner eye roll at other moms that are high maintenance. I guess it is my turn now. Queue eye rolls, mommy is going in...

Just When You Think You've Figured Them Out

I think it has been pretty established that my oldest child is what one would call "independent". She has always ventured bravely into the unknown without a backward glance. Until this week. This week we went to school and my daughter had a full out hissy fit. Begging me not to leave her. Begging to spend the day with me. I comforted and then detached myself and left a screaming child to her teacher. When I returned, she had spent the better part of her day crying. She went to the office to call down. She went to the bathroom to call down. When the teacher asked her about it, she told her "sometimes we have crying colds, like babies, and then we just need to cry". Mrs. Miller thought this was something invented by our family as opposed to something dreamed up on the fly by a dramatic child. ha. Mrs Miller also told me that she was deeply impressed by Laney's vocabulary. I guess not every 4 year old thinks her teacher is "tremendous." Laney has also been mysteriously possessed by a helpful, sweet nature. She's been cleaning house, helping me do things, and taking care of her brother and sister.
Griffin and Kenna have also been having adjustment issues. Griffin "Never" Phillips hasn't been listening to his teacher. Kenna has been attempting to boss other kids with limited success. I suppose we'll all be well adjusted by the time it is Fall break and they miss school for a week and a half.

Staying Afloat in the Sea of Domesticity

Blogging moms are cool, but every so often I read about everything they do (for example Pioneer Woman) and think: Crap. I really suck. Is this just me? Doubtful. But I'm having some serious pangs of envy. Somehow I need to figure out how to do more with my life.
And speaking of my life. What are my big wins of the day? Got bug guts scrubbed off my car and about a pound of kid snack efffluvia vacuumed out. Oh bliss. A clean car. Sigh...enjoying the moment. The sad truth is that I failed to adequatedly remove the remanants of whole colonies of insects that were smeared on the car on our trip north (ahem. yes. in May...) Drive through car wash proved inadequate. Full service car wash elusive. So. I made due and then we returned to AZ. And the monsoon rain did not wash it off either.
I also went to the gym and swam for the first time in a million years. I'm trying to get back into shape again after a long hiatus due to kids and RA. Yea me!
Kids went to school and then we came home and swam in the pool. Griffin can't float but has decided that he is a swimmer. He's swimming between the lagoon shelf and the steps. I think he's swallowing a lot of water while doing it. It scares the heck out of me since sometime he doesn't make it all the way and he flails around for the edge. Yikes! Laney also went to her swim team try out and got placed in a group.
This weekend I'm going to try to dig out from under the pile of "to do's" that have accumulated and get us back to being the well oiled machine of a family we are (ha ha ha).

Snow Day (old post. February?)

We woke up this morning to an inch of snow. The kids had fun playing in it. I was suprised. I thought we were supposed to get bad weather over night but had no idea we'd get real snow. I had trouble getting them all ready to go to church with the excitement of the snow. Charles drove up to Phoenix yesterday night and flew out this morning to Hawaii. I'm glad he didn't chance driving in the bad weather in the dark. Funny enough, my friend Richelle's husband Eric was on the same flight with Charles! It's small world.

I'm trying to get remotivated today. I started the year out feeling pretty motivated but this last week I've been really bleh. Tired and just not into doing anything. At all. Except eating. So I'm attempting to recharge the motivational engines this week.

The kids are sitting at the table with me right now. We just finished playing "dragons" and "baby birds". Our living room nest is still not picked up. I caught K giving Laney's stuffed animal a hair cut. Now they are all chopping away at the newspaper and practicing using scissors.

I saw Rorie's mom at Target yesterday. She told me that Rorie recently changed her plans to marry her older brother's friend and she's planning to marry Laney instead. LOL.

I think the kids are attempting to chop up the table cloth now. Off I go.

[Found this in my drafts for some reason. So here you go. A post from last winter.]

Back in the Saddle Again

We made it home without any major hitches. Griffin puked in Deer Lodge. We'd stopped the car and he got up, then puked. I'm pretty sure it doesn't count if we don't have someone throw up once. It is almost guaranteed if we feed them something pink first. I took the twins into the bathroom and to buy dramamine and this old lady gave me a hug in the bathroom. I thought "weird" but I went for it anyway. Never pass up a hug.
We always dress for AZ on the way home and then freeze to death on the way there. Montana is always cold for some reason. It actually hit 32 degrees going through St. Regis. On Labor Day weekend. I guess things warmed up again later though.
It was HOT in Tucson (suprise) and I'd turned our AC off after I got my last bill ($235. Seriously. And we weren't there). I asked Ernie to come over and turn things on before we got there, but it was hot in the house. I couldn't figure out why it was taking so long to cool downstairs until the next day when I realized I hadn't turned on the AC compressor online.
The kids started school and were just thrilled. The twins marched in to Mrs. Wallace's class and started playing and didn't even blink when I left. Laney is in love with her new teacher, who is new to St. As and pretty young. She pronounced Mrs Miller to be "tremendous!" after school. I was nervous because I'd heard some dissatisfied reports from other moms.
We also restarted play group. I need to get my playgroup hat back on and come up with some ideas. September is one of the hardest months because we're all busy and it still really hot out so outdoor stuff is difficult. I think I'm going to have to do one more lame date to give myself some prep time and then we'll be back in action. I'm considering making ice cream in the park--I saw a cool idea for making ice cream in ziplocks where the kids throw them around. Fun, right?
We've also returned to church again which makes me really happy. I like to go to church and I like that it is something that we share as an entire family every week. I missed it over the summer.
We were looking at the tiny amount of photos we took over the summer and realized that we didn't take "after" picts of the house! I'm going to have to con someone into doing that for me.
Today is dentist day for the kids and errands errand errands.

How Moose Make the Trees Grow

We were on our way up to Sandpoint yesterday to go huckleberry picking and then to my Aunt Kelsey's 80th birthday party in Clark Fork. Laney suddenly brought forth this nugget of "wisdom" gleaned from who knows where (nature shows gone awry?):
Moose make the trees grow because when moose die, the other animals eat them and then that makes trees grow.
[our response: ???!! What?]
Because moose eat trees and when the wolves eat the moose, then the moose don't eat the trees. So then the trees grow.

So. There you have it. Kill the moose, grow a tree.
We went up Schweitzer Mountain to go huckleberry picking and tried to find the spot that my cousin Brian told us about. I think we started counting switchbacks before we should though. We found huckleberries, but they were already picked over and at the end. We needed to go a little higher. But by the time we had hiked up the hill and through the brush for a while, we weren't in the mood to stop again and repeat. We ended up with about 1/2 gallon of berries. Which is not too bad considering we were picking with three toddlers. For those of you not in the know about the huckleberry: it is not a cultivated berry, grows at high altitudes, looks something like a blueberry but it is a lot better tasting. Berry picking involves hiking around in the forest and, since bears including the grizzly also enjoy the berries, we go armed. It adds a certain something to the process. Honestly though I've been doing this for my entire life and have never seen a bear (up close). Kenna was not at one with nature yesterday so she was just cranky about everything. We had a very edifying moment in which we all learned the fine art of peeing in the woods. Girls pee facing uphill, boys pee facing down hill. After picking berries we drove the rest of the way up to Schweitzer ski resort for lunch. The view was great but I shut Griffin's finger in the door of the car so that wasn't so awesome. I couldn't believe how different it was up there. I haven't been up there in a really long (ahem. decades) time and never in the summer.
We went to Uncle Phillip's house to rest and recoup before heading on to Clark Fork. Another place I haven't been to in a long, long, long time. Clark Fork is situated where the Clark Fork river enters lake Pend Oreille. We met up with all of the Hatcher clan at their family home in Clark Fork. I guess Reno's mother owned this little log house there. It's a funky little place and very filled with Hatchers. My aunt Kelsey is my grandfather Phil McNearney's little sister. She married Reno Hatcher and they had 8 kids. Who all had lots of kids (or adopted lots of kids).  Between marriages and adoptions they are sort of a mini UN.
I'm torn between having Charles help me remove doors to paint or taking the kids to Art on the Green today.

August Already?

It's been a difficult summer. Dad went in to the hospital the day we left Tucson with pneumonia and he didn't leave again until last week. His pneumonia led to a heart attack and then on to pulmonary edema, kidney failure, a tracheostomy, medical coma, a series of stents for the arteries in his heart that were blocked 99% (and no bypass surgery because he couldn't survive it), bacterial pneumonia, staph infection, possibly another stroke in a series of strokes, a rehab center, a recucitation, ICU again, a rehab/extended ICU hospital again, another rehab center and then home to my mother's 24-hour care. He was brought back from near death 3 times. He lost so much weight I could see the outlines of all of his bones. He had ICU induced psychosis. Let's just say that it wasn't the summer that I thought it was going to be.
So I haven't written much in my neglected blog. Somehow I need to get back in to the habit again. I'd post pictures, but my camera broke too.
Anyway, enough of all that. What else have I been doing this summer? Yes, I have done other things besides sit in a hospital. I'll give a quick run down of the high points and then I'll try to go back to fill in with more detailed posts.

• We built a chicken coop! My hubbie did a great job and we built the cutest little coop that is just perfect for our two borrowed chickens. The kids named the two hens Peach and Boy. The saga of chicken keeping is worthy of a whole post of its own.
• We painted our house (and are still painting it). Ourselves. Specifically mostly me. I even tore down the old gutters myself and boy was Charles impressed with me climbing on to the roof and banging the gutters off. Not only did we paint it, we painted it black. Ok. Not exactly black. It is a very dark grey/brown called Ebony Field. Yeah. I know. This is also worthy of its own post. And pictures!
• I've made jam like it's a calling from God. Seriously. We went out to Green Bluff with the kids one afternoon and picked strawberries (they taste amazing when eaten in the field) and then made jam with mom. I think we made 24 or so pints that day. Then I got crazy with my bad self. I picked our raspberries and made jam. I picked Dana's cherries and made jam. I'm going to pick huckleberries and make jelly. I bought my own canner this year. I'm officially a grown up.
• We went camping for 6 days over the 4th of July.
• I planted my first garden. It was sort of late since we had to deal with tilling issues and weather, but I put it in and have eaten things that it produced. My first vegetable garden!!
• I made curtains for my living room. Mostly.
• I hosted a pampered chef party and a book club party.

I have a whole list of stuff that I'd like to do before we head home this fall. Some things are little and some are bigger. I want to go huckleberry picking, go to the fair, go kayaking, go to Art on the Green, take the kids hiking on Tubbs hill and to the beach, take the kids fishing, host a cowboy themed birthday party for the twins, drink a few really excellent lattes, maybe make some applesauce, and start to remodel my bathroom. I've got 4 more weeks!