Oh the joys of the last days of April

The entire month of April is a crazy one as far as my family goes. There are somewhere around 18 birthdays!!!! Of those, we usually are part of 5 parties, 2 of those I get to play hostess (Ashtyn's and mine, which are generally celebrated the same day). Saturday was my birthday, Ashtyn's birthday party day and Jeremy's going away party night. Um, busy much?! Yeah. I don't do the one party thing anymore, all of our parties have become multi-party parties. But, anyway, Ashtyn had a blast, I enjoyed myself (Thanks for the Dos Equis Brucie) and Jeremy had a tough night, or should I say morning. My cake came out pretty good. I was killing myself trying to come up with decorating ideas. Shrek, Dora, Sponge Bob, My Little Pony, ZuZu pets, blag blah blah.... I'm tired of that kind of stuff. I like the self designed stuff better. If I'm making it then I want it something I made, not Disney or Nickelodeon made.


Sadly, pictures of the cake are basically all I have for photos. I was too busy running around and forgot to snag my mom's photos before she went home. I didn't even get a picture of the cake Sue got for me (which was awesome by the way, Thank You!!!)
Our "Night of Mayhem" was a lot quieter than expected but Jeremy did fire up his chainsaw at 1am to cut up pallets for our very little "bon fire" (I married a redneck). His little shindig was the usual crowd: Me and Jeremy, Brian, Sam (his wife Rene was here for a while and even got to witness me kick Sam's butt in a very random wrestling match....Sam won the 3rd round, but I won 2 out of 3 HAHA), Chris showed up and decided to be "smart" and not drive home...problem was he didn't call his wife to let her know...dummy, I told you so.....and then Jeremy's friend from work Chris and his wife Tracy, and "T-Bone" aka Mack (who "tackled" our F-350) came for a bit and Justin and Crystal. Its sad and funny, as I'm writing this and re-reading it I'm seeing how redneck we really are.....I'm not sure how that happened.....yikes. All in all it was a good night, and day, and I think the fact that about half of the people I invited showed up was actually a good thing. The little crew of us just sat around our mini bonfire and shot the breeze until we were too tired to speak and went to bed.
Reality set back in today and it was work as usual. My morning kid pulled a no call no show, so it was just me and my girls until my afternoon kid showed up around 3:30. Jeremy moves up to camp in 4 days!!!! I'm sad, scared, horrified, and hoping somehow this all works out. My house has yet to be shown, let alone sold. I don't do the two-weeks-without-seeing-my-husband thing. I'm not a fan of the idea to be honest. I only have to deal with it for 5 weeks......hopefully those 5 weeks fly by.

Just me

With the amount of time I spend online you'd think I might be posting more often. I feel as though my poor blog is neglected. Not that I have a huge fan base or anything but I still feel the need to keep it up to date. And I have sooooo much stuff going on to write about...and there is my problem. Too much going on. I've got another multi-party party on Saturday (Ashtyn's birthday was Thursday so her party is on Saturday, which is my birthday, and Jeremy's going away party) And cleaning, baking, packing, going crazy, stressing, more stressing, my kids, my extra kids, sick dog, neglected hubby, fundraising, Ashtyn's school stuff, blah blah blah...the list just keeps going. I'm going to have a book worth of stuff to write about this month..... I just need to find the time to do it. And now that I hear awake kids.... now is not that time.

I think I've found my Lady of the Lake

A few years ago, Jeremy and I were helping his Gram clean up her long unseen upstairs. Tucked in the back of the closet in what used to be Sue's (my MIL) room, were 2 fairly large prints. She said they were just old junk that were left in the house by the previous owners (Gram and Grampa bought the house in 52~ish) and we could have them since she just assumed put them in the trash. I fell in love with the frame of the Lady of the Lake print. Its covered with little horse shoes and the glass is so old it has that old waviness in it.



I just loved it. Of course we'd love to have them. So we ever so carefully brought them home.....finding out the hard way we weren't exactly careful enough.....some of the frame flaked off my Lady..... but we got them home and did everything in our power to find spaces on our 100+ yr old latted(?) walls that was strong enough to hang our treasures. We finally got them up and happy in their new locations and over time and many conversations we questioned how old these things really were. The Cows by the Riverside is copyrighted 1896 but there is nothing on my Lady. We checked out J. Hoover and Son in Philadelphia, who owns the copyright and found some info, but not our pics. And over time just kind of gave up on our quest and just enjoy knowing our little treasures are pretty and have been through a lot over the past 114+ years. Today I was looking at just how wavy the glass is on the cow print and noticed what looks like 63 or 65 after the name on the print so I decided to check online again.....still not much but I did find Chris Lane's blog which actually had a post about my guys, J Hoover and Son. And the first print on the page, the text looks almost identical to my Lady...... bringing me to believe that my Lady of the Lake is also a J Hoover print. And after reading about how Hoover started out by making "elaborate wood frames" in the 1850's and then looking at my Lady's frame.......

......I'm pretty sure I've at least finally found her creator.

Seriously, I need to pause life

Everything is flying so fast I barely have time to think about it, let alone write about it. Last Wednesday, Taylor took her first digger. The 3 kids and I were getting ready to run away from the house for a little while and Taylor was last up the (cement) stairs..... suddenly my dog decided she wanted to go back outside.... Taylor going upstairs + Dog RUNNING down stairs = bump and bruise on forehead and road rash on the nubbie. The even more cruddy thing about it is: if she had her prosthetic on, she would have caught herself, therefore not smashing her poor little face and nub. She started acting shy about her nubbie lately so I decided I'd give her a couple days without her arm to "gently force" her to not be embarrassed or whatever about her arm..... nice idea that worked out horribly. So I called down to Shriners and talked to a couple of the OPD crew and had my thoughts confirmed.... no arm until its healed.
A little while later my so far lousy day got better. I received an email from a guy named Jim who saw my Tabs For Taylor ad on Craigslist .... and to my surprise.... this email wasn't spam.... he informed me he had a 5 gallon bucket full of tabs that I could have if I knew a way to get them from him in Rochester..... no problems there thanks to my Aunt Lisa who went and picked them up for me. So that made me pretty happy.
Then, Little Miss Chaos, broke her nite-lite. SCREAMING, bleeding EVERYWHERE, more screaming.
"Where is the glass honey?"
"I broke it in the kitchen"
"Well if you had broken it in here there would be more than just the one piece that was stuck in your finger"
"I brokted it in the kitchen!"
This goes on for 5 minutes while I run frantically around looking for this glass before either of the 2 little ones find it. I then get her band aided up and continue my hunt. I can not for the life of me find it anywhere. She laid down and watched some TV while I continued frantically searching for the pieces of light bulb. I blocked the little ones in the living room so they can't get into the kitchen and find the glass for me..... another couple minutes go by and I hear it. The sound of a little metal pan from the kids kitchen set falls to the floor and lands on the itty bitty pieces of glass. And where is this glass? RIGHT WHERE THE LITTLE ONES ARE PLAYING!!!!! There was a baby doll outfit on top if it so I never saw it. What a monster. Thank God neither of the little ones touched it. I grabbed them and put them into the glass free kitchen and vac'd it up. Once Ashtyn woke up I found out she was trying to hide her nitelite so I wouldn't be mad. She failed, but she won't be touching glass again anytime soon. So my day was kind of back to not great. The phone rings. My father in law is calling to let me know my dog ran away and is at their house. Once the kids all wake up from their naps, we walk down to get her (they live 3 houses away). Taylor and my "borrowed kiddo" are in the stroller and Ashtyn's holding onto the stroller with me and the dog is practically glued to my left knee (the one closest to the road). We get about 30 feet from the end of the side walk where we would cross the street to my house and SQUEEL BAM YELP This idiot hit my dog. The dog limps over to the house and lays down in the yard. I'm standing there stunned thinking: A) my kids are watching their dog die, B) they're going to see me kill that moron and C) they're going to see me die when daddy gets home and finds out "his baby" is dead. I hurry across and check her out and she's okay, just really scared. The 90-someodd year old guy huddles over and asks if she's okay. Once I tell him she's alright he starts going off on me. He's lucky I was the one he dealt with and not Jeremy.
Long story short: Wednesday wasn't a good one, aside from the tabs.
Saturday the kids and I went with Grammy and Grampa Precourt to Yankee Candle and Ashtyn got to make a jarred candle at their wax worx station. She thought that was just the best thing ever. And then we had an awesome lunch at Chandler's (the restaurant at Yankee). Sunday was Ajlyn's birthday party so we hung out at Sam and Rene's house from 11:30 until around 8. We brought up the tractor to do some work in their yard so I got to "play" with the 'bota for a little while which is always fun.
And now for this week: Ashtyn's learning to ride her bike (finally). The little one is just too little for her and we still haven't found (or remembered to look for) the itty bitty inner tubes for the little bike....so I brought down her big one. She did awesome! She went all the way down our street and around the round-about-thing and back up the street a bunch of times. She loved it. Other than that its been normal craziness: getting ready for the birthday party/going away party on the 24th, getting ready to move Jeremy, Ashtyn's school stuff and all the last minute stuff for my Shriners fundraiser. Oh I can't wait for August. I'm not doing ANYTHING! (I hope)

Had to put this one on.... gotta have my princess dress on with my muck boots to play in the mud..... that's Mommy's girl.

Happy Easter

Bektash Shrine, Concord, NH

Hopefully the weather (and girls) cooperate tomorrow so I can attempt to get some better pictures on our way home.

The pictures I took of Jeremy and Taylor came out pretty good, with the exception that neither of them were smiling :( The sun was being kind of evil though....it was blindingly bright.

SHrINE ON 2010~ Walk for Shriners Hospitals for Children

The info, fliers and sponsor forms are now posted on ShrineOnSpringfield.Blogspot.com Drop me an email or RVSP on facebook so we know who is coming. Thank you to everyone who is supporting Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Happy Birthday Jolene!

Ha ha!