I know, I know

I'm no good at blogging! I would be good at keeping up with it if it didn't have so many pictures involved but then who would really like it as much right. Or it needs to have a faster, easier way to load the pictures so my kids can't completely destroy my house in the time it takes to keep up with this.

So we have been busy as always with regular old life. We have done a lot of fun things but I'm not going to go into detail, I'll just throw in a lot pics to update. I will give a little bit more detail about Emmie's birthday though.

It was her first friend party so we decided to have a theme. She's kind of a tomboy and chose to have a pirate themed party. I made message in a bottle invitations. I dyed the paper with coffee and burnt the edges, rolled them up and put them in glass bottles that had sand and shells inside. We started out the party with everyone getting into their pirate gear, bandanna, eye patch, tattoo, necklace and red sash. Then we decorated treasure chests with glitter paint. We played games like musical islands, pin the X on the treasure and my favorite, sink the ship. We made cannon balls out of crinkled up newspaper wrapped with electrical tape, we split the kids into two groups and had them throw the cannon balls back and forth (dodge ball style) until we said stop, then we counted the balls and which ever side had more balls, their ship was sunk. We had gold pirate coins that we gave the kids when they won the different games and I had a friend make Emmie's cake and loved it.

I actually really enjoyed having the party which I didn't think I would. That sounds bad but the idea of 12 kids going crazy in my house just didn't sound too appealing but it was actually pretty fun to play with them all. I'm so glad I waited until she was 5 to let her have a friend party and will keep that up with the other kids as well. I liked that they were all old enough to actually play games and listen.

I haven't taken many pictures since November since our camera went kaput and now I only have our old one that takes really crappy pictures but I will be remedying that soon with some Christmas $$$. I included a couple Halloween pics, Emmie was a monster bride, Allison was a bee and Eliza... I guess we can say she was a ballerina or something. I made her a tutu and called it good since I didn't want to waste money on a costume when she couldn't even go trick or treating anyhow.

"Whittle my Middle"

I don't want to post pics and stats on my public blog so I'm using my old pregnancy blog to do a fun "whittle my middle" thing (working on strengthening our cores) that I'm doing with some girls. So go check it out and join up with us! If you don't have an invite to that blog just email me Tracijohnson@hotmail.com and I'll send you an invite. I don't care if I don't know you well or not I'll still send you an invite. I just don't want creepy weirdos on there, so as long as you don't fall into that category you're ok by me.

I know I'm lame but I will be posting pics from Halloween and Emmie's birthday hopefully tonight. Our camera crapped out on us so it's taken me forever to upload them onto my computer. Anyone have any suggestions on a good camera to buy? I want one that I don't have to edit the red eye out of every picture. I want a good one this time around, not just a cheapy one, but at the same time I don't want to spend a ton.

K need to get dinner on but hopefully I will have time to post again tonight

Feeling loved, the circus and relaxing

Don't you love when husbands go above and beyond and do those nice extra things for you. Darren has been so awesome lately being extra thoughtful and helping out so much more than he already does that I just want to squish him. He was sweet and brought me home a treat in the middle of the work day the other day. It just makes you feel that much more special to know they were thinking of you. And mmm fruit and chocolate, can't go wrong with that combo in my book.


















Emmie and I went out on a date last night to the circus and it was so fun. I've never been before and either has she so Darren told me he'd put the other girls to bed if I wanted to take her. I loved seeing her so excited to do something special with just mommy. She is such a crazy kid but when I get to spend some one-on-one time with her it just makes me appreciate and love her so much more. She's so smart and witty and cracks me up with the things she says. On a day to day basis it's so hard to be able to pay enough attention to all the things she says because she talks nonstop and I have 2 other kids to deal with so it's nice to get these hours with her that she knows she's number one and gets your undivided attention.
































































































So I have needed to start relaxing a bit as a mom and I'm still unsure of how I feel about it so give me some opinions here. I think I have been more of a helicopter parent with Emmie just because she's my first and so everything is always new but she has gotten to where she is very friend oriented. I don't care that she loves playing with her friends because she is very social and always has been but she ALWAYS wants to play outside with them and I just can't be out there every second. So before I was always telling her no. We would have friends come over but not play out front much. There are a ton of kids her age who play right out in front of our house everyday and I was always feeling bad that she would stare out the window begging to go out to play. So finally one day we reiterated the whole stranger danger talk, went over where her boundaries were on the street and how she can't go into anyone's houses and what not, and I let her out to play. The first day I was looking out the window every 5 seconds but now I look out about every 5-10 minutes or I will let her play out there for a bit while I'm finishing something up and then go out and sit out front while she plays with the other kids. I know I was roaming the whole neighborhood alone at her age but I just feel like she is so young! So am I doing an ok thing here even letting her go out to play by herself for short periods of time or do I need to shorten the leash for a while until she's older? I'm so paranoid of protecting her but at the same time I don't want to be the overbearing crazy mom who never lets their kids out of their site and stiffles them. She's so dang cute with her little buds though. I snuck this picture through the window of her and a few of her friends the first day she went out to play. haha I'm a nerd I know

Emmie's crush and other stuff

So Emmie has a crush. I wont say it's her first crush because she has told us for a while that she is going to marry the little boy across the street, but it is the most talked about crush. She can't stop talking about this little boy at her school. They were in class together last year at a different school and as fate would have it ;) they are in the same class again this year at this new school. In class they had to draw a picture of their favorite thing and this is what Emmie drew....























Robby.

I have to say I've seen the boy and he's pretty cute so she shows some good taste, but I don't know if I'm quite ready for this chapter in her life to begin.

We've been having a lot of fun lately just hanging around doing our day to day things with some fun outings thrown in there but have been slacking on bringing our camera so here are some shots of the kids around the house. I liked the ones of Lyza and Emmie looking at each other because Lyza kept trying to do what Emmie was doing with her mouth. And as you can see in the last two pictures Allison is pretty much a mountain goat and climbs everything. I don't know what I'm going to do with that child, she keeps me super busy with the crazy things she does but her hugs and kisses make it well worth the other bad things she does.



































































































































P.S. aren't you proud, 2 posts within the month so far, woohoo I'm on a roll!

How do you do it?

So as every mom I'm sure does at one point or another, or in my case it's done on almost a weekly basis, I have been trying to figure out the best way to get the best bang for your buck, so to speak. I'm always trying to figure out how to fit everything in to mine and my kids lives that is the most useful and helpful to our needs and I seem to always have to go back to the drawing board since I don't feel we are getting enough. Talk about tiring. I want to make sure they are getting enough mommy time to feel fulfilled as a little person and that they can talk to someone who is listening. I want to make sure they are learning something everyday that is useful and important. I want to make sure they are clean and taken care of hygiene wise with their baths and teeth brushed, clean clothes... I want to make sure they are getting good healthy meals. I worry about where their food is coming from and that it doesn't have harmful hormones or additives. I want to teach them important lessons of appropriate behavior, manners, sharing, how to ask constructive questions, not to judge people, not to make fun of people who are different, stand up for what makes them happy but without hurting others. I want to make sure they are getting a good healthy amount of physical activity. Learning responsibility. The list goes on and on for my kids but also for myself as a mother and wife.

It all seems so easy to do in theory but man it's hard to find what needs to fall by the wayside to make room for the important things. It doesn't help that I'm anal about things like dishes never being left in the sink, a clean house and other time sucking, necessary things. I seem to over analyze things and try to bite off more than I can chew but hate to not finish or succeed at something. I hate feeling like things aren't done. Every time I'm in our garage I cringe at the thought that we have unorganized boxes sitting on the shelves. When I get clothes out for the girls in the morning I'm totally bugged about the fact that I have clothes that they have outgrown still hanging up and not put into bins awaiting the next kid to wear them.

So where is all this going... well this crazy mind numbing stuff seems to be just the tip of the ice burg of my life and why I don't blog on a regular basis. I would love to sit at the computer for hours and show pictures of my adorable babies and talk up how great my kids are, since I think they are the most awesome thing out there, but I just get so sucked up in living my life that this just seems to be one of the things that I drop the ball on since it seems like a less important thing. Even though I say that I still think it is a little important since this is how I keep family and friends who live far away updated on our life and show them how big my babies are getting. I think family and friends are very important in life. After all who's there to help you up when life is kicking your trash, certainly not your clean house or dishes.

Although I don't have anymore time to write more about what's going on with us since I have stuff to get done before the youngest ones wake up from their naps I'm going to try to do short little snip its from now on. It might just be a short little blurb with maybe a picture or two but that is the compromise I have come to with myself to not totally neglect my family and blogging friends but also not neglecting my crazy busy life and kids.

Here's Allison on her 2nd b-day, Eliza jamming in her Bumbo chair and Emmie all ready for her first day of school, can't get past how dang grown up those kids look in those uniforms!

Getting caught up with Pictures!

So I have realized that I don't think I am cut out to be a blogger. I have been getting into facebook and find it a lot more user friendly for the type of quick tell ya how I'm doing and find out real quick what you're up to type of stuff. I can leave my computer on and just check it out at my leisure when the kids are being good. So I don't know how good I'm going to stay at posting on here but I figured I'd give it another shot and try to catch up. But if you're on facebook look me up on there in case I give this whole blogging thing up so we can still keep up on each other.

A few random ones







































































4th of July Street Fair




















































































































Fireworks with the neighbors



































































Picnic and sprinkler out back



















































Emmie's new haircut. I didn't take a before picture but we cut over 6 inches off!!! I was actually going to have them cut it shorter and stack it in the back but I chickened out.