Dollhouses

Violet will be 3 next week. We decided to buy a dollhouse. We thought of everything as well as one that fits barbies to ensure many years of play. What I failed to think of... There is one bedroom. Now this is a huge dollhouse and it only has one bedroom with one big canopy bed. This makes for one big fight between my girls. Have you ever noticed that if you buy the people that go with the dollhouse they come in a perfect set of Dad, Mom, boy, girl, maybe a pet. Well I propose a new kind of dollhouse.... An authentically Catholic Dollhouse. This would come equipped with features such as dad, mom and 4 or more kids. It would have 2 or more bedrooms and probably some broken furniture and of course some graffiti on the not so clean walls.
I am not sure this would be a big seller but I promise this... It gives hope for an extremely happy future!

Merry Christmas

Christmas is a time we should be rejoicing in the coming of the Lord.
How come December seems to bring the most stressful time of the year? We blame commercialism, flu season, visiting relatives. The  stress is different for all of us.
As for me....
I don't get all caught up in these things. I go into the season with respect for what Christmas really stands for. However bad news finds me every December. I am not sure why it happens like that. Deaths, stomach viruses, colds, etc...
I just want a healthy Christmas for my family to really enjoy the season but yet another year of disappointment..
Really 2013 was fine until December which brought an unexpected miscarriage as well a tooth implant gone bad for Joey. Sadie's retainer was chewed by my mother's dog yesterday. Oh yeah and Violet has a fever and cough.
All of these things combined will not stop my family from heading to church tomorrow to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus. Of course we will also be praying that next December is finally the one that brings a stress free holiday. One can only keep hoping that the bad luck of December passes from the Golden house one of these year.
Merry Christmas my dear friends and Good blessings for 2014.

A great loss to our family

How can you love someone you never met? Well it happens.
Everyone likes to joke around about how many kids we have. Letting everyone know there is another one coming gets many replies? Most are "Is this it?". Once the critical time of the first trimester passes along with the blood work saying all is fine and "It's a boy" we feel pretty confident shouting it to the world.
Yesterday at 15 weeks at a routine appt we found that out precious baby had no heartbeat. A sonogram confirmed it and like that it was over.
No matter how many children we have this is awful and sad and we are devastated.
Then we had to tell our kids, another gut wrenching event. Off to the hospital we went and before they can even get me into surgery my water breaks and labor begins.
This was a truly horrifying experience for Joey and myself. Our love and our strong faith in God will get us through this.
I wanted to share this with all of you so that if you ever experience a similar situation know that you are not alone and it is okay to love and grieve someone you never met. My baby is in heaven with my family that went before us and I hope he is loved as much as I love him.

Food for Thought

A leopard doesn't change his spots

We hear that, we believe it and then we think somehow we found an exception to the rule. I think the real meaning to this quote is that some people suppress their behavior, hide their behavior even can go their whole lives without repeating the behavior but....
Somewhere deep within them the evil habit lies and if given the opportunity, BAM. It creeps out and hurts someone who actually was dumb enough to believe they were exempt from said behavior.
Don't get me wrong I think there are a lot of success stories. The husband who never cheats again, the alcoholic that never drinks again. The drug user that never uses again. This is amazing and should inspire people to forge ahead to achieve greatness.
I just also think there are people with good intentions but they are weak and give into temptation. The alcoholic who drinks once in awhile and knows their actions will hurt their loved ones. The husband who cheats again even though he loves his wife. These stories are sad and split families and friendships leaving us with the question...
How do you help someone who won't help themselves? Do you throw in the towel or continue to live in fear of the repetitive behavior? Do we feel sorry for these folks or do we often say " You made your bed..etc".  Do we offer forgiveness at the expense of our own feelings?
It is hard to separate the heart from the mind. Good luck to all those struggling during this holiday season. May you find peace and happiness.

Elf on the Shelf season of torture

Maybe the dinosaur will eat him and I will no longer jump out of bed and run to move Chippy before the kids wake. I am sure Ms. Carol Aebersold is laughing all the way to the bank now that her Christmas tradition has thrown up all over America. All you new parents out there.... go ahead and try to not participate and I guarantee you will lose that battle and next thing you know some little boy or girl elf will appear and you to will be scrambling for new places for a month to put the dumb elf. In my house there is no avoiding the little ones touching Chippy so he always has to be up high or tears will flow as Jillian bites his head and the others believe he loses his elf magic.  Thanks to Pinterest (sarcasm) you can find new and exciting ways to pose your elf.  Some not so g rated though( maybe that is facebook). Now my kids are saying "Why doesn't Chippy respond to my letter? My friends elves write back.") Really??? I told them maybe our elf was dumb and never learned to write (True story, bad mom moment). Inevitably our elf forgets to move at least one or two night during his stay. When that happens I tell my kids they must have been bad so he decided to sleep instead of travelling to his home for the night and Santa knows if the elves don't come there is no good news to report. Their behavior throughout the day never seems threatened by the elf anyway. And btw it was my kids that were not even clever enough to come up with a new name for the elf. Sadie says she dropped the E from his name to give him his new identity. Well here's to twenty more days of jumping out of bed!

Simplifying clutter

As I was doing my normal daily routine I started thinking...
Why can I not keep my house clean?  Why is everything always scattered about? Why are there always loads of laundry to be put away?
Then I thought... Why am I asking myself these questions?
I mean a lot of kids live here, that is the answer. So then the next question was... How can I make this clean up thing easier?
Well I have the answer......
Instead of saying "NO" about 100 times daily I need to re child proof.  Yes I know the old school moms out there that say " I never moved anything when my kids were little." Well here's a news flash... If they made child proofing kits you damn well would've used them and stopped smacking hands.  Times change and by the way... now we don't smoke around our kids either. Oh and kids ride in car seats too...
So as I was using the magic eraser on several drawings on walls in a few or more rooms I decided that either I move the pens to a remote location like my make up which now lives in the top of my closet. Or I can yell at my husband until he puts new latches on every cabinet in this house!!!
Now let me say if you are a mom who can not child proof and just say no my hat goes off to you. However, 3 kids 4 and under and lots of mess from the older kids is leading me to reevaluate!!!
Oh and for the record, the kids always break the latches so we are on our 3rd round of latching again. I have tried to impose the no kitchen rule unless I am in there but it never works. Now if I could only find a way to keep them from climbing on the counters.

Simple things are so important

Listen up....
                   To all you people who want to be parents... Your responsibilities do not end when your kids turn 18 so don't even have them if you think that happens. Also, you have to still take care of your kids after they stop pooping in their pants, stop needing their shoes tied and food cut up. You have to take them to the doctors, make sure they do well in school, take them to the dentist every 6 months. As well as cleaning their clothes and being their personal chauffeur you also have the responsibility to guide them to be respectable citizens. 18 comes quick and no one wants another loser lurking around so you have to make sure you have what it takes to do all you can to ensure you are not adding to the welfare society. Hey, sometimes good people have bad kids. It happens and we all feel for them but let's be honest.. that is not the norm...
               However once in awhile great people are born from bad stock and they overcome their situation and never go back. These people become successful and good parents. God must know they are special so they grow up and the things people take for granted are things they never miss. Simple things like taking their kids to the dentist regularly and making school and church important.
              I know someone that special and happy to have that person in my life..