Dear Olivia,

This is why there won't be enough pictures of you in 12 years. Alli steals the camera, takes random pictures, mostly of herself. This unfortunately takes all the memory on the camera card. When I finally find the camera after a mad search of the house, and if there is enough memory, the precious "kodak" moment is long gone. Just know that we love you even if there is only one picture per year. Someday you, too, will be old enough to take pictures of yourself. These pictures speak for themselves.
All my love,
Mommy

Top 10 list of Top 10 lists

For some reason as things have progressed today I thought more than once "I could so make a Top 10 list for that". So at this point I have decided to just make a Top 10 of the Top 10 lists I would make. Here goes...

10. Top ten things I have learned about coloring my own hair in the last 3 weeks. As these lessons have quenched my thirst for knowledge, I have unfortunately learned them all on myself. My poor hair. wuah, wuah, wuaaah.
9. Top ten reasons to not have a 7 year old daughter. Please check me in to the next rubber room available.
8. Top ten worst ways to move.
7. Top ten ways to change a diaper on a wiggly 19 month-old who likes to touch her poopy bum.
6. Top ten ways to freak out to sufficiently scare your husband. I've had a few hard days.
5. Top ten ways to avoid real problems that should probably be dealt with umm...NOW. (Spoiler alert! Facebook and Blogging are 1. and 2. on the list)
4. The 10 worst ways to spend Easter.
3. The 10 cutest things Olivia does to remind me I do have a reason to be here. Collective "Awwww" would be appropriate here.
2. Top 10 ways to quickly, painlessly (with earplugs), completely tick your kids off...uh, I mean discipline your kids
1. Top 10 ways to completely exhaust yourself so that you have no sense of reason left. Is my room ready?

Just a thought...

I was wondering how much this bailout is costing every person in America. Including babies born today its up to $2289.15 and thats just the first $700,000,000,000 (seven hundred billion). That doesn't include the one that's up right now or the auto industry "stimulus", Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout. Why do we keep adding to it?
If they really wanted to stimulate the economy why not send a check to everyone? Why don't we just get a big giant toilet and flush, flush, flush. I'm sure it would get clogged and they could call all the plumbers named "Joe". Do you have any idea what I could do with the near $7000 my family would get? I do 12 loads of laundry per week and my washing machine and dryer are 10 years old and so close to kicking the bucket. We have medical bills up the ying-yang. We work so hard and can't seem to keep up with everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just saying "What about the little guys?"

Just Breath...

Well it seems that today for the first time in a LONG time I can breath. Yep, it was a usual Monday filled with busyness, cranky kids, lots to do and little time. But, for the first time in so long, I can't even remember, I can breath. I can deal with everything that has come up. The feeling is exhilarating and perplexing all at the same time. I'm not going to lie, I'm exhausted. I am not, however, overwhelmed. Honestly at this point of the night I am calling Sean urging him to come home as soon as he can, as if he weren't already trying. Tonight I'm not. What a blessing!

Megan: The Student

So for the first time in almost 10 years, I turned selfish. I am back at school, and I love it. I really never thought I would love school this much, ever. But, it makes a big difference when you find something you love. I am going for cosmetology and the more we learn about, the more I am totally loving it. We are 3 weeks in and so far in my cosmetology classes I have 100% and in my online human resources class I have 96%. So for any of you who don't know my history, I have sucked at school and was average at best, it was a really hard time in my life and I said goodbye in '99 and didn't really look back.
So what happened?
It all started around high school. My grandma was persistent in always telling me I should be a hair dresser and that thought stayed with me. Then Sean's brother married a hair stylist and we were really close for quite a few years (they were divorced, and while we always said we would be friends forever, things happen...i understand-sort of- and still love her). I learned a lot from her, and realized that I would really like to do that someday, I had young kids and just didn't think it was possible, so put it on the back burner.
Then last year after Olivia was born, I had a series of extremely difficult personal trials. After a lot of thought, and discussion, and more thought, Sean and I decided together that now was the time.
The week before school I was panic stricken, I changed my schedule 2x, tried desperately to find a sitter for the 2 younger girls and had every thought about how I might fail, I'm not good at being a student. The negative thoughts were overwhelming. Finally, the friday before school started I found a sitter, an amazing mom of 4 that has somehow found a way to love and care for my kids, too. (It's easy when they are your own kids, but every mother knows that other peoples children are harder to love and much easier to become annoyed with). Everything fell into place. I also ended up in a 7am class and I'm NOT a morning person. Now I have to get up at 5am, this has previously been completely unheard of for me. One more reason to fail, right? Well, so far I have proven everything I thought, wrong. I have only missed one day, and truly missed being at school, but my kids were sick and needed me. I have found out that I am eager to learn and willing to do assignments (in my h.r. class) that would otherwise be unappealing to me. I know the answers to questions and I have been open to learning the most tedious of tasks. I want to know the foundations inside out and backwards so that when it comes to the fun stuff I can be the best. I enjoy my homework and get it done early. I have become everything I wasn't.
The flip side of the coin is, that for the most part, I look forward to coming home. I still have my long hard and frustrating days, but I make it through and still look forward to tomorrow. I feel like I have more to offer my kids and I feel like I am being a great example to all of them. It has been exhilerating! I feel like a new person. Sean is happy with the change and has been supportive all along. He has encouraged me when I was frustrated and has been willing to do almost anything he can to help.
I feel so blessed!

It's sad...

When you thought you knew someone really well come to find out, they aren't who you thought they were.

Here are the Christmas Pictures (sort of)

So I thought I had more Christmas pictures! I will have to look through them some more. My biggest Christmas present was "The Wall" We had this archway in our kitchen, which was nice, but served no purpose whatsoever. My grand idea was to fill it in and put up cupboards, which pretty much doubled our cupboard space. The girls all left for a day to do last minute shopping while the boys stayed behind and got to work.


Surveying the project.



We left with the hole and came home to a new wall!



Connor took helping out VERY seriously!


Hanging cupboards!


L-R Jacob, Connor, Melissa, Alli, Nana, Darby, Aubrey and Sean.

After the work was done we all relaxed and hung out. Just watching movies laughing, a lot. It was so great...until Olivia passed around a stomach bug. Luckily by Christmas day everyone could get out of bed!