Survival

It's been an interesting few days, but I made it!  Well, almost.  Technically I have to get the kids to bed tonight before I can say "I survived!" 

J is on another business trip, exactly a month after the last.  When he is gone I struggle with the day to day scheduling of our life.  You see, J is the primary parent to our older children who are 6 and 8.  He gets them up in the morning, packs lunches, feeds breakfast, takes them to school, picks them up in the afternoon, AND makes dinner. So when he is gone I have to try to get 3 kids up, dressed, fed, and out the door by 7am.

This trip J left early on Sunday morning.  I was scheduled to work 10-6 an hour from home.  The older kids were going to Grandma's house and the baby was going to work with me. The older kids' bodies had other plans though.  They both woke with diarrhea overnight.  Since I didn't think it would be nice to send them to Grandma's house sick I ended up having to stay home from work.  We had a good day and fortunately the kids felt fine other than running to the bathroom often.  They both ended up having diarrhea for 48 hours.

They watched The Hobbit and then Fellowship of the Ring 

and enjoyed warm cinnamon sugar cresents.

  

On Monday I actually took the kids to work with me to make my life easier.  Adam had scouts that night and we had to be there by 6:30, in uniform, fed, and with his bike and helmet.  The day went smoothly and as planned.

It was a gorgeous 65 degree day with warm winds

   

On Tuesday and Wednesday I arranged childcare to pick the kids up in the afternoon from ...childcare.  LOL!  They are off track right now, but they are still at the school in the Intersession program all day.  I work till 5:30 and am 45 minutes minimum from home.  Childcare closes at 6pm.  Doesn't quite compute, does it.  I am very fortunate to have awesome family and friends who jump in and help us out when needed.

On Tuesday the weather messed up our plans.  We had a Blizzard Warning and every school district in the greater Denver metro area was closed.  So the kids got to go to work with me again.  The so called "blizzard" was a total fail, but the kids enjoyed getting to spend a 3rd day with me.  I finally hit my limit on Tuesday.  I was DONE!  Noelle was starting to get pissy and annoying and I really needed a break from the older kids.  (I'm used to having the baby 24/7.  I'm not as good with the older kids.)  I decided for all of our sakes to go to McDonalds for dinner.  That way the kids could run and play getting rid of all the stored up energy, and I could relax a tiny bit.

Colorado Blizzard 4/10/13

   

And that brings us to today, Wednesday!  Finally a day that is going as planned.  The older kids are at Intersession and will be picked up by one of our friends, Loren, who will take them home and entertain and bathe them until I'm home.  I get to have a normal day at work with just the babies.  Also, J will be back after the kids are in bed tonight.  Woo-Hoo!

Sanity time!

I am so thankful  to have the love and support of my Husband.  I CAN do this parenting thing alone, but I don't want to and thankfully I don't have to.

I LOVE YOU JUSTIN!

(Google Hangout with Daddy!)

Noelle's World

Noelle really seemed to enjoy Halloween this year.  And she actually wanted to dress up!!  She made an adorable little witch.  Justin kept asking her if she was a good witch or a bad witch, her answer changed daily.  It took her a little while to figure out the trick or treating thing on Halloween morning, but once she did she was having a blast!  She was pulling me along if I got too slow walking to the next candy station at Southlands Mall.

We didn't think allowing Noelle anywere near a sharp object was a good idea, so she did a Princess Pumpkin Head this year.  She also got to help me clean out my pumpkin.  She liked it as much this year as she did her very first Halloween in 2007!

Noelle LOVES to play in the snow and sled around the neighboorhood and in the backyard.  Fortunately for her we have had several feet of snow over the last month or so.

What's Halloween without glow in the dark vampire teeth!?!

Noelle always runs lots of errands with me, but a couple weeks ago I was asking a really lot of her.  Archiver's had special deals and FREEBIES going on two Fridays in a row and I took Noelle with me both times.  She did such a great job in Archiver's and then Ross that I got her this Dora bouncing ball.  Do you think she likes it??

Last week we went to the Museum of Nature and Science with one of my friends and her two youngest children.  We had 5 children 2 and under between us!!  Noelle had so much fun playing in the Discovery Zone, seeing the Dinosaurs, and pretending to be an Astronaut!  I'm sure we will be going back real soon.  The first pic has Audrey(2), Noelle(2), Declan(1), and then Zane(2).  I also had Lexie who is just 3 months old.

Silly girl!

She came to me this morning and told me she had her cape on.  LOL  She has jeans and a t-shirt on, then the flower pj's, then the blue pj's as her "cape".

Noelle got her hair cut this last weekend.  We needed it shorter, even though it was not very long, because it is SOOO thick that it's impossible to keep it combed easily.  She never wants me to do anything with it either.  Before it was cut it was a great length for getting dirty from her food or mouth.  Now when she leans forward her hair doesn't reach her mouth or drag in her food!!  It's perfect and looks very cute on her!

I have some very sweet video of her but am having trouble uploading any videos to blogger.  I will pry end up loading the videos to facebook and then just linking them in another post.

What has Adam been doing?

Adam had a very fun Halloween!  We went to Malara Gardens in Arvada with my MOPS group to pick out pumpkins.  They also had a small hay bale maze that Adam really enjoyed.  He gets along really well with my friend Trish's 2 boys, Joshua and Jayden, so they had a blast, all 3 dressed up as some sort of Superhero, going through the maze again and again together.  The kids all got little pumpkins from the MOPS group to color and put stickers on.  We also purchased our regular pumpkins there.  Adam picked the biggest pumpkin of us all!  The total price for mine, J's, and Noelle's pumpkins didn't even add up to the $20 cost of Adam's!!

We spent Halloween morning at the Southlands Mall trick or treat event.  We had fun, but there were a lot of people!  Then we headed over to our friend's house for a little party and more pumpkin carving!  As per our normal Halloween routine we then headed up to the Cordova house for a Chili dinner with cinnamon rolls and then trick or treating.  Adam had a great time trick or treating with Jae, Justice, and Noelle.  (Not to count the 6 adults following along!)

Aside from trick or treating Adam's favorite part of Halloween has always been carving pumpkins.

He picked Iron Man for his pumpkin design.  Unfortunately the design was so intricate that J had to do the actual carving.  He did help to carve a second pumpkin at a party later on.

We have had a LOT of snow in the last month!  This storm dropped over 18 inches and caused a snow day for the whole family.

Even though he is in the PM Kindi class he attends Kindi Enrichment in the morning.  I joke that he spends 4 hours every school day doing arts and crafts (not that there is anything wrong with that!!).  He brings home a LOT of artwork though!! 

Because he is so advanced his teacher requires him to write a sentence on his artwork instead of just a one word label like the other kids do.

We actually did this leaf print at home over his 3 week school break in October.  He really enjoyed it!!

Adam's parent teacher conference was last week.  We have seen some odd speech patterns recently so we requested the speech therapist also attend.  Turns out that what we are noticing is pretty normal for HIM at this stage.  They are working really hard on R sounds while still reinforcing the s and z sounds..  He really struggles with the word "girl" in particular.  I guess the r-l combo is very hard.  His comes out more like "grul", but she said not to worry about it.  He had also been saying "say" and "said" weird, but of course said them perfectly when I had him read them at the conference.  I forgot to ask about about "saw", which he says as "sow".  His teacher had rave reviews of him and says she will be sending home extra work for him, especially in math.  She is allways having to find him new books to read as it is.  He can read a level 2 book pretty easily so we are working on the fluency of his reading now.  Check back soon to here about Adam's first "report" for school.  Hint - he picked "Bull".

First snow!

Okay, so it wasn't the "first" snow, that was actually near the end of September, but it was the first one that stuck.  J was such a good Daddy and took the kids out to play in it.  I wasn't home, but it looks like they had a good time.  He said they had hot chcolate when they came in.

Snow Day, Snow Play

We really had a great time playing in the snow on Friday. We originally went out to get the mail and so J could shovel the driveway. We don't actually have sidewalks on our street so he lucks out there. J put the kids on the sled and pulled them to the mailbox and they had such a great time that I took them in the back yard so they could go down our hill. We all had so much fun sledding and throwing snowballs at each other. Afterwards we went in and all watched Horton Hears A Who together and tested out the pretzel rods dipped in chocolate and sprinkles that Adam and I had made earlier in the day (they are for the party bags Adam will give his friends at his party on Sunday).

I love this one of them catching snowflakes!!

We had a nice packed sled run going down the hill (I went down a few times myself just to make sure it was packed well LOL).

Noelle and J with his giant snow ball.

Gotcha!!

We have gotten a lot of snow, at least a foot as of this morning (Sat.) and it is still coming down!!

This is the view into the neighborhood.

I was supposed to work this afternoon but we cancelled due to the weather. So instead I am going to join J and the kids for a birthday party at the WOW Museum in Lafayette. I am really looking forward to it since I wasn't going to get to go because of work. I think once we are out of the neighborhood we will be fine, even if it is slow going.

Hope everyone is warm and safe!!