Cousins Visit!

A couple of weeks ago we had Mike's sister and her two kids visiting.  It was awesome to have them here!

In fact, Kira will still occasionally break down crying for Annika!  It was as close to having a big sister as she's had in recent memory and she LIKED it!  :)  Annika is a super sweet girl and Kira misses having her around.

The boys had some good video game time with Quinter, but it wasn't very cute, so I don't have any pictures of that.  :)  We also played a couple of board games with Quinter and Sara.  Also not as cute.  :)

Our big outing for the week was taking all of the kids (my big boys didn't go...  they had band camps, diving practice, and well... Zach is 17) to the local children's museum.  This included Kira, Annika and Quinter, and John and Kristin's four kids.  We had three mom's and seven kids.  It was an adventure in herding most of the day!  :)  Here are some cute pictures:

Everyone together before we went officially inside the museum.

Sweet Cousin time.

Cool bird flight simulator.

Cute girl enjoying the outside play area.

Isaac having WAY TOO MUCH fun running through the water!!!  :)

He got soaked.  So Kristen had to put him in this dress.  It didn't go over well with him, so I gave him the extra clothes I brought for Kira.  They were thankfully fairly gender neutral shirt and shorts.

The next day we all just spent the day together at the house.  I know we were all tired.  Sara got packed up for her Northern journey home, Jacob and I got packed up for his Southern Regional Dive meet, John and Kristen and their kids got packed up for Libby's Eastern birthday campout, and Mike, Kira, Zach and Cole also packed up for Libby's Eastern birthday campout.  So by Friday morning, we were spread out and gone.  It was an awesome family week!

Our One Yummy Watermelon

We've had lots of watermelons growing, but they would all get stunted. This has been our sole watermelon.

And it was YUMMY!

A few photos

Life is super crazy. Kira is becoming more difficult to deal with as she approaches three years old. She's been making me crazy. I actually had the thought the other day, "I wonder if I had another kid... would it make raising her easier?" HAH! You know it's bad if I'm thinking that.

And just FYI... the answer is NO! NO! NO! So don't get any ideas about that.

Anyway. Tonight Reid was washing the car, so I caught a nice picture. Then I went and took a couple of pictures of my garden.

I knew working at Waffle House would pay off...

Aside from me being a great short order cook, I finally found another benefit to having worked at Waffle House...

The worst part (to me) about making weiner schnitzel is the egg dip. You have to deal with the egg whites and their slimey parts dripping everywhere and the bread crumbs who don't stick to it very well. Icky!

I've thought about the solution for years. Why did it take me so long?

At Waffle House, when someone orders an omelet, they put the eggs in a blender to make them puff up and be smoooooth.

So I finally stuck my eggs in a blender when I made schnitzel on Monday for Mike's belated birthday dinner.

Wow. Wow. And Triple Wow! It was soooo nice!

No icky egg whites. No drippy muck. No gooey blobs in my breadcrumbs. Just smooth, clean schnitzeling!

Woo Hoo!

Thank you, Waffle House!!!

Single Parent Camping

I'm heading out with the kids in a little while to Eisenhower State Park on Lake Texoma. Mike is in Boston. I'm taking them alone.

Oh my. I hope I live to tell the tale.

Bedrooms

Here are the pictures from the kid's rooms.

View from Kira's bedroom door. She has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my bedroom for the past few months, so having her on the trundle frame works out well for now. The futon is in transition... not sure were it will end up. (This used to be Zach's room.)

The view from her bed to her closet. She was so excited to see all of her clothes hanging up in her closet. It was really cute.

Zach and Cole's room. I decided to put the bookshelf between their beds like this to help them feel separated. We'll see if they like it after a few weeks. Cole's bed is the one in the "nook". Zach didn't want to be back there, but Cole seems to like it. (This used to be Reid's room.)

View from the door/hallway into Reid and Jacob's room. Jacob is sleeping on this twin bed. It's the day bed part to Kira's trundle bed. (This used to be Jacob and Cole's room.)

View from the foot of Jacob's bed. This is Reid's queen size bed. It's really nice that this room is big enough to accommodate his bed.

I think the boys are reasonably happy with these arrangements. Reid and Zach previously had their own rooms... so they're not *happy*, but they seem to be alright with it.

Kira has been a bit freaked out in the middle of the night. The first night she totally freaked out when she woke up. Then last night, she stayed in her bed, but was calling for "Daddy". Hopefully she'll get used to it soon. I know I'm enjoying being able to get up in the middle of the night to go pee without worrying about waking her up! :)

Whew.

Today I rearranged all the kid's bedrooms. I had been planning the moves for a while because I wanted to get Kira out of our bedroom.

As a baby, she slept in her crib in our closet (it's a big closet). Then a few months ago, I took down her crib and she's been sleeping on her crib mattress in the corner of our bedroom. Recently I put a twin size mattress down there for her (she is a restless sleeper, so I wanted her to have a bigger bed).

My biggest decision was whether to put her in a room with one of her brothers, or to put her in her own room. I finally decided that she needed to be in her own room.

That meant that Reid and Zach would have to share a bedroom. They've each had their own rooms since we moved into this house. However, they both said they'd rather share a room with Kira than with each other.

So... my final decision was to put Reid and Jacob together, and Zach and Cole together. So that's what I did today. Reid and Jacob are in the biggest bedroom. Zach and Cole are in the next biggest and then Kira is in the smallest (but still quite large) bedroom. The furniture arrangements seem to be working out for now. I'll take pictures tomorrow after I get everything completely done and post them here.

My biggest concern with this arrangement is that Kira will be upstairs. Mine and Mike's bedroom is downstairs. This really only concerns me because she does tend to wake up at night. Not nearly as much as she used to, but I worry. I think for the first few nights I'll sleep on the couch in the game room so I can try to teach her to stay in her bed.

We'll see how it goes.

All the furniture moving today has just about worn me out. But I'm really happy with the results. Hopefully Reid and Zach won't harbor too much resentment for their mother because she's taking away their private mini-palaces. :)