January

One single post in January. Ha. Maybe this will mean that I'll actually be able to keep up with transferring my blog to a hard cover book.  I'm still in 2010.  Still can't believe that even with everything going on, I blogged almost every.single.day.  Wowzers!  Makes for awesome memories though.

So how has 2013 been treatin' us so far?  Well...here's some of the recent happenings....

We have something going on real exciting here but Nathan doesn't want me to post for another couple weeks, so you'll hafta wait!

Tiernan lost another tooth...#6....and was super excited to get a lego guy under his pillow instead of money.

Jaeger and Ariella had a little bout with pneumonia last week.  Jaeger was worse. He was within about a half of a day of being hospitalized but thankfully the meds helped and that didn't happen.  Within a couple days of him going in, he was back to his normal happy-crazy self.  Ariella is better too!

Shortly after the new year, our friends' house burned down, almost a total loss.  I've been helping with rides, shopping, a place to hang out, etc.  It was crazy to actually see the place.  Not every day do you go inside a home where everything was black and almost unrecognizable.  Thankfully everyone is okay and they are making decisions about their future.  If anyone wants to help or see what things they could use, I helped make a website for them.  www.theforsmanfamily.weebly.com

Nathan is still working transmission, although we've been enjoying him home alot lately because of the extremely cold and windy weather.  He was home most of all last week and this week so far.  The only bad part about it is that he still has to go in in the morning so it makes for 4 hours of driving per day....good thing we have the civic!

We are still wrestling with what will happen next school year.  We might be taking the plunge and putting the kids in school.  We are finding out that that might be best for them right now but it makes me feel better knowing that we can take it year by year or sooner if change our minds or don't feel like its a right fit after all.  So we'll have to see what unfolds in the next few months.

I'm enjoying a relatively quiet morning this morning.  After RAD at church, I brought the 4 oldest over to my parents for a sleepover.  Since we needed to be at their house by 9am so my mom could teach them (they have school at my parents each thursday), I figured why not bring them the night before and then I could have some quiet time with just Jaeger before I go get them!  It was really nice to just put Jaeg to bed last night and to wake up and just make myself breakfast.  What a change in pace!  And Jaeger even slept thru the night which made Nathan and me sleep like rocks.  It was so nice!

I had my first public speaking experience when I spoke at the MOPS group in Foley.  I was asked in Dec if I would and I agreed.  I spoke on the topic of Home and Time Management.  Even though I feel really inadequate right now about that specific thing, I was able to share my ideas and what has worked for me while raising lots of little ones.  I think it went well and I hope I was able to give a few people some ideas about running their home a little more smoothly!

I've also been busy trying to turn this house into a home with painting walls and putting in shelving, etc.  My dad made an awesome cubby and coat rack in our entry hallway which has been so wonderful and I re-did our bathroom so it wasn't so blah!  I hope to keep painting as the rest of the white walls drive me crazy!


Bath before:                                                                            Bath after:

     Hallway before: (we had already put up shelves)         Hallway after:

 



 I'll try to post more pics soon....I need to get them organized first!

Christmas day

What a great Christmas day!!

We started the morning off with waffles made by Nathan and we had Nathan's brother Neil & family over to eat with us before they went back home.

Then we took some naps and went to ny parents for the rest of the day. Talk about some good food!! We had the traditional fondue with steak and fish (caught by dad in lake of the woods), twice baked potatoes and pina coladas. After clean up, we opened gifts, the highlight of the kids night of course. They were very excited. T got a fishing pole, C got walkie talkies, B got legos, A got princess stuff and J got some pjs and a toy.

We finished the night with snow on the mountain! It's been years and years since any of us had it but it used to be a tradition by my gma back when we were growing up. It's basically a pile of fruit and some cake topped w a bunch of whipped cream. Crazy to think we didn't like it as kids, what's not to like about that?!

We are home now and getting the kids snuggled in bed. We are so thankful for this time together as a family and are in awe of the Lord's goodness!! Merry Christmas!!

Enjoying Daddy's Time Off

The kids and I are thoroughly enjoying having Nathan home for a whole 12 days!! The first day consisted of opening presents with our family and making and decorating cookies. I am trying to get better at enjoying those moments instead of worrying about the mess that's being made, but I will admit that I still need lotsa work!

The kids kept busy the rest of the day putting together their Lego sets they got and Ariella was enjoying her princess dolls! They also enjoyed a game of Hedbanz together, which was hilarious to watch as they didn't really understand the rules but had fun anyway. Jaeger got a bunch of balls at I put in a pack n play but we still aren't convinced yet to keep them as they cause more trouble with the other kids :). Nathan and I purchased a iPad for the family so I am writing my first post on it! I hope it will come in handy with school as well.

Wordless wednesday

I survived.

Well, I survived. Barely.

I had to go to town to drop off a meal for a family from church and do a couple "simple" errands that shouldn't take that long.  And no, after almost 8 years of being a parent, I apparently haven't learned that NOTHING is simple and quick with 5 kids in tow...especially our kids.

The kids are crazy in the van...crazy AND loud and I knew that the store wouldn't be much different.  I drove into Walmart parking lot and drove right back out.  Nope!  I don't like Walmart.  I don't like Walmart with all my kids and I especially don't like Walmart with all my kids and lots of people. 

Next up, Home Depot.  I needed 3 things. Hinges, poly, and sandpaper.  Should only take 5 mins, right?!  Nope. Kids are touching everything. Everything. Ya know all the little cubby things that all the knobs and hinges are held in. Yep...open, close, open, close.  Wrestling on the floor, ninja acting in the aisles, pulling the cart with Jaeger in it away from mom. 

We finally leave.

Next up, Coborns.  Between getting a few free kids videos to bathroom breaks to forgetting something and going back after paying for everything else, we finally made it out of there.

7pm and we haven't eaten supper yet.

Get home, put supper in the oven (thankfully I had already put it together this afternoon!) and finally finish supper by 8pm.

I'm wiped.

This is when we were heading to the checkout and I finally got them all rounded up.  And, yes, the cart was heavy and hard to push.  By this time I didn't care about how heavy it was, I was just glad that they were all in one spot!

kids update

You'd think I'd realize that if I did a quick post everyday or every other day then it wouldn't be something that hasta take forever when I finally get around to posting!!  Maybe I'll learn one of these years....

So here's what's up in our world these days...

I have been in paint mode!!  This house has WHITE walls and it was really starting to get to me.  I broke out the paint that was left over from our other house (yes, I brought it with us) and to my pleasant surprise, it is almost an exact match to the 3 walls that are already painted in this house (which is the only color in this place).  So I finished one wall in the dining room, the entry way and the other wall in the kitchen.  It feels soooo warm and inviting now.  We totally have the itch to do the whole house...but I think I'll wait til Nathan can help me with the big parts, esp with the kids here.  Today though I painted the main bath and was done with 2 coats by 2:00 this afternoon AND I had all the kids here to boot!!  Although...next time I'll wait til Jaeger is taking a nap.  Not so confident in Tiernan's ability to babysit for me.  The first part went great until Tiernan "made lunch" (pretzels, cheese, granola bars) and left Jaeger...who made his way over to the Christmas tree and when I went to check on him, was wrapped up in lights he pulled off the tree and had a pipe cleaner in his mouth.  Yeah....

But the bathroom looks so nice!  Once I have everything done in there I'll post before and after pics.  Still need to paint the cabinets.  It feels like I'm in a different house with color on the walls!  Love it!

Tiernan, Tiernan, Tiernan....We are definately looking forward to the time when he matures into the natural responsible leader first borns are "supposed" to be.  Wait...will that ever happen??  He's by far our most mischievious child, which is kinda frustrating for me since 1) he's the oldest and the other kids look up to him and 2) he knows better!  When he's not cutting himself with dad's pocket knife that he's not supposed to have, eating brown sugar out of the container, sneaking any food he can get his hands on, or cutting holes in the bed sheets, he's probably planning on doing one of the above :)  He def loves science though and lately is most favorite show has been Myth Busters.  He learns so much on that show it's incredible.

Caedmon cannot get enough of coloring and crafts, definately our most artistic child.  Brayan loves legos more than anyone and will work for HOURS putting sets together.

Ariella is so darn funny, I can hardly contain myself.  She's so smart and witty, her comments just knock us off our socks!  I'll hafta get better at writing some things down she says. She's a whoot!

Jaeger is finally sitting up by himself!!  Which is funny to say since most of the kids (besides T) were WALKING at 10 months and at 9+  months, J's just starting to sit up and scoot himself across the floor.  I don't really mind though.  With all that goes on around here during the day, having a stationary baby has been helpful :)  He's also just cut a couple teeth and a couple more are visible under the gum.  Won't be long til he's got 4 chompers!  And this kid LOVES to eat...oh my goodness.  Give me food!!!  That's his motto!!

It's off to Gma Barb's tomorrow for school!  So blessed she is willing to teach the kids for 3 hours every Thursday morning.  The kids love it and mom gets her teaching fix :)  I try to get some work done on my albums but most of the time I'm still busy feeding Jaeger and playing with him.  I'm a little past due with my albums though.  I put all our family pics in albums by year instead of getting the pictures printed.  It'd prob be easier to print them but I like the albums once they are done.  Plus, I print out my blog by year but I'm also way behind on that..still working on 2010.  They take f.o.r.e.v.e.r to do but once they are done, it is awesome!  The kids love looking back.

Another thing I'm working on is finishing my certification for placenta encapsulation.  I'm learning a lot!  And try to write my essays for it on Thursdays but that doesn't always happen either. Tomorrow I will be helping my dad work on my coat rack/cubby thingy we are making for our hallway!!  I'm super excited bc 1) we NEED a place for our coats, shoes, etc since I turned the hallway closet into a pantry/storage area and 2) it will look SO cool!!  I'll post pics of that too when it is done.

Well, I have a few things to do before bed so I'm going to check out.  I will try to do a quick(ish)...you know me...post tomorrow and see if I can keep up to date so they aren't as lengthy!!  Oh, and I'm bringing back Not Me posts!  I figure there's too many funny things not to write them down :)

Thanksgiving break

Ok, so it's been a month.....seriously, a month.  That's horrible!  Time.just.flies.

So, Nathan had 5 days off over Thanksgiving and here's the recap of what we did!

Wednesday: Hung out at home, cleaned the basement (Nathan did so much work down there, I'm so thankful!  He moved the beds, vacuumed, and went through boxes with me.  It looks so nice now!), and went over to Jonathan and Becky's to grill since the weather was so nice (in the 50s).  The guys played football outside and after a few hours we went home and spent the evening watching movies and hanging out.

Thursday:  Thanksgiving at Amanda's house.  Six out of the 11 siblings were there so not as roudy as it could be but still a good time.  Amanda had crafts for the kids to do and a few of us adults played some board games.  The weather took a turn for the worse during the day as well and ended up snowing! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday: Started out very early for Nathan since he went Black Friday shopping at 4:30am with his brother Jonathan.  They headed over to Home Depot to score some deals on tools for Nathan for work.  (Funny thing is that I think he's returned most everything he bought there because we've found it much cheaper other places!)  Then we had Thanksgiving brunch at my parents.  We got there a little early so mom could play games with the kids for school and they all came upstairs with birthday cards for me!  How sweet.  Then we had some awesome quiche (and I don't like quiche so that's sayin' a lot!) and hung out a couple hours before heading home.  That evening Nathan went out to eat with his friend Scott and his brother Jeremiah.  It's tradition that they take each other out to eat for their birthdays and this time it was Scotts.  A trip to Olive Garden it was, and after 4.5 hours of sitting at the restaurant, they were kicked out.  No, I'm kidding.  But they did stay 4.5 hours.  Nathan said they coulda talked even longer too.

Saturday:  My 31st birthday!  My parents came over at 9am to watch the kids so Nathan and I could run a couple errands and then go eat lunch.  We even left the baby with them so it was truely a date!  Lunch at Mexican Village was nice and quiet and we were home by noon.  After my parents left, we had planned on getting a Christmas tree but since we started cleaning and rearranging our house, we left that task for Sunday and decided to stay home.  We were also expecting company later so we wanted to keep picking up and I wanted to start getting supper ready.  Our friends Guy and Cassie (and their 6 wk old baby James) came over at about 3:30 to play some games and eat supper with us.  We played a game of Say Anthing, Hand and Foot, and Farkel.  They left about 9pm.  It's always a fun time when we hang out.

Sunday:  Sunday school and church in the morning, lunch at Gma and Gpa Legatts after, and then to the tree farm to get the Christmas tree!  It was different than I remember growing up.  I remember walking out to the trees from the parking lot and finding the perfect tree.  Here you just drive up and down the aisles of the trees until you spot the right one.  Nathan and the kids jumped out, cut down the tree and was dragging it back to the van before I even got out!  Well, that was quick!  We brought it back, got it all loaded up and then checked out the fun things they had for the kids.  A horse ride (they loved that!), a petting zoo with calves, goats and sheep, Santa sitting on a sleigh, a big bond fire, and we went on a hay ride pulled by 2 big horses.  Sunday evening was spent doing laundry and getting ready for Nathan to return to work today.

 

Seriously...look at this girl's face.  Do you think she was liking it?? :)

Decorating the tree....

 

A game of Go Fish and a cup of hot chocolate *with* marshmallows to end the evening.

 

It was a nice time having the hubby here for 5 full days....now we can't wait til Christmas vacation!