If you read the title of this post and thought that you were going to be offered a great recipe or technique for creating a great homemade bubble machine … you were wrong .

I have always loved those little battery powered bubble machine.  They kick out tons of bubbles with little effort and it amuses the children to no end (well, almost)!  Bubbles are messy and when I’m blowing them the little ones want to have the wand … and the bottle … and it just gets messier and messier, you get the idea.

Today was a beautiful day!  I took the twins outside to play in the sand with all the older boys, and suddenly I was amazed to see a steady and heavy stream of bubbles floating by me.  Like a bubble machine!

I looked to my right and there was CJ, our 12 year old, just blowing away like a Bubble Machine!  Yup, I finally got one, a Bubble Machine all my own.  Though I think in reality he’s far more expensive than one of those little battery powered machines, after all he’s powered by food … and lots of it! 

But, I have to say it was a fun treat for the little ones and for me, since I wasn’t the one blowing them and having the littler ones hang all over me begging to do it too.  So, I’ll take the Homemade Bubble Machine I can call my oldest son over a store bought one any day! 

You can see each photo individually when you place your cursor over them

I know this is supposed to be a wordless wednesday post, but it simply can’t be wordless

I mentioned yesterday that one of our sons has a birthday this week.  The Salesman will be turning 10!!!  Two boys in double digits … they are growing up so fast.  He is our semi-dramatic one and though I haven’t noticed a huge change, he is living up to the status of a tween.  A smidge moody, a little more emotional, constantly taunting his older brother and having a couple attitude issues here and there.

Overall though, he is simple and sweet and just our boy!  I love that!  Fun loving, intelligent and social little boy … I hope these things never change!

Do you ever find yourself making a To-Do list that never ends?  I was an avid list maker all through my teen years and even into adulthood.  My mom was always commenting on my lists and my family all knew I kept them.  To this day if I sound like I’m out of sorts or confused my mom tells me to “make a list” LOL!

I still have many of the lists I made when planning my wedding.  Amazingly there are even small shopping lists from before the wedding that my sister and I were laughing about when we stumbled upon them as we were cleaning one day. 

Let me share one with you:

To Do

*Get marriage license stuff from apartment and take to church.
*Go to bank & deposit money.
*Go to drug store for eyeliner.
*Purchase shoes.
*Fix wedding program at work.
*Be at work for a meeting at noon.

We seriously laugh at that list now.  Oh, to be that organized again … that would be amazing and miraculous.  The details I kept as I made the list - I’m surprised I didn’t schedule in potty breaks as well LOL.  And for Heaven’s sake WHO ON EARTH ONLY GOES TO THE DRUG STORE FOR EYELINER?????????????

Good grief!  This was my life.  Even after we were married I kept lists, the house was always tidy, there was fresh baked bread in my hubby’s lunch every single day!  Seriously! Wow!  To be in that place again!  But the craziest part of all is that the list above is so super short even though it was made DAYS before my wedding day!!!!!

Now my To Do list would look a bit like this:

To Do AM

*Make Granola, Get kids up, rush them through showers, make their lunches, get them out the door for school.
*Find something to entertain the twins so they don’t kill themselves, all morning long.
*Do 3 loads of laundry.
*Feed little three lunch
*Get little three down for naps

To Do PM

*Clean kitchen, fill and run dishwasher, wipe down table, chairs, windows and sweep floor.
*Do three loads of laundry
*wipe down bathroom (boys miss … need I say more?)
*Get little three up from naps to cuddle for a bit.
*Big boys get home, start dinner.
*Prepare dinner, while filling the dishwasher again and folding another load of laundry.
*Create menu for following week and shopping list.
*Serve dinner to family and make sure no one has an event that evening
*Check all homework, clean up dinner, run dishwasher again, do another load of laundry
*Get kids to bed, work, blog and answer 50 emails.
*11:30pm - get to bed!

Sadly that doesn’t completely cover everything I really do.  Throw in there that I check email in the morning and work on design and blogging projects during naptime while I do several loads of laundry and then you’re getting a little closer to the reality of ONE DAY in the life of this mom.  Each day that list could change, but instead of getting shorter I forever seem to be adding more and more tasks to it. 

I am in the process of getting a more organized cleaning schedule under control.  I have it printed out, just haven’t posted it yet, and as we all know if it isn’t posted somewhere very visible … it doesn’t exist!  So onward I trod, not looking back … except for today when all of you hopefully got a good laugh at the carefree To-Do list of a young woman.

*I’m updating this post to add a little note that my sis left in the comments - I think it should go here to round out the story LOL.  Scroll down to the bottom of the story for her little note!*

Not just any old mattress either … nope … a KING SIZE MATTRESS.  But I should start at the beginning ………

As many of you know we are trying to get the house organized, clean and otherwise prepared for the possibility of putting it on the market.  The problem is that in order to do that we have to overhaul our little house.  It was so bad I knew I had to enlist some serious help.  That help came in the form of my next younger sister who really is great at organizing and purging.

She’s been here many times, but one of the biggest projects was to switch our bedroom and the other front bedroom that housed 4 of our boys.  We had put this mammoth task off, and finally had to face it.  So we began, moving cribs, a dresser and a set of bunkbeds (plus all of the various oddities contained within and underneath) out into the living room - completely blocking off access to the kitchen and bathroom in the process, but oh well (LOL). 

Then we headed into the “Master” bedroom - oh BOY!  The fact that our bed never did fit in the room right and was crammed up against a wall with the door barely able to open on the other side was just something I had gotten used to.  Also knowing that 3 years of “stuff” had accumulated under and around the bed in unreachable areas was also something I knew existed.  I warned Sis … “remember, I cannot guarantee what we’ll find under here.”  She just looked at me and smiled.

We had to begin with the mattress … 2 women with 1 king size mattress that was truly almost bigger than the room.  Not only was it nearly impossible to get it off the bed, but how on earth were we to contort it to the point where we could squeeze it out of the door????  Well, with much craziness we did.

OK, Now what do we do with it.  Originally Sis had decided that we simply needed to find a place to stash it until Hubby got home.  Making sure that it was located where he would have to get it out of the house, but that we were still able to function for the rest of the day.  Apparently she had decided this was no longer an option - that we must get the mattress to the garage ourselves. 

Our garage is detatched … many feet from the house … down a grassy hill.  Do any of you have a clue how much a King size mattress weighs?????  Two women absolutely cannot lift one, we could push it but NOT lift it.  So how on earth did she plan to get it down to the garage?  Well, as we had been hauling other things down to the garage, she had spotted two of the children’s plastic sleds. 

Being a very original and creative thinker (she didn’t want to learn to drive because she was afraid she’d be driving down the freeway and see a bug on the guardrail and wonder if she could hit it … yup), she had decided that these two sleds were exactly what we needed to accomplish the monster of moving this mattress.

She entered the house with those two sleds in tow and I asked her “what on earth?” and laughed when she told me why.  I didn’t think she was serious.  Honestly.  This would NEVER have occured to me - too creative.

So, we drug the mammoth mattress over to her nicely placed sleds and heaved it onto them.  It was a little crooked and very cumbersome, so I began to have my doubts.  We slid it out the door - I was in front and Sis was in back.  I began to heave it down onto the grass from the front porch and suddenly it wasn’t moving anymore.  That’s when we ran into our first “glitch”. 

The mattress was stuck between the porch flooring and the roof covering it.  So we began zigzagging this lovely mattress to try and un-stick it :) .  Finally out it came and almost went down too!  With Sis hanging on for dear life to one side and me hanging on for dear life on the other, suddenly we were losing it.  The mattress was sooooo very heavy, it kept sliding off of the sleds and we still had at least 100 feet to go - OH BOY! 

We pushed and we pulled and we lost one sled along the way and were laughing so hard half way there I thought we’d never make it.  I mean the doubled over-laughing so hard you’re crying kind of laughing.  I can’t imagine the thoughts of the few people who drove by - “Oh my word those crazy women …” LOL!

Finally, still laughing we made it down to the garage.  We had one last tricky little maneuver to make though since the garage is about a foot lower than the grassy area (don’t ask ).  So we skipped it over the edge and onto the concrete floor of the garage.  Thankfully once it was there it was a breeze to slide into place. 

Shortly after we got the Beast into the garage, my sister made the comment (as we’re still laughing and crying), “Why do I get the feeling I’ll end up as tomorrow’s blog post?”.  I stopped short, looked at her and said “Sure, I actually hadn’t thought about that”. 

Now, the problem here is that my sister and her ultra-creative-I-thought-of-the-sled mind would have been the perfect person to re-tell this story.  But since she isn’t a blogger and didn’t take me up on my suggestion to be the one to write about it, she will now have to read this post and think of all the funny and interesting things I left out.  Well, I did my best

Just a word of warning though:  If you are a down-to-earth, logical type woman and happen to have a creative-thinking-off-the-beaten-path sister, DO NOT ASK HER TO HELP YOU MOVE A MATTRESS!  You could wind up in a pickle!

*A Note From Sis*

You did, as always, an amazing job retelling the story but you missed one little point. As the cars were driving by you actually said “maybe someone will stop and help us” and you sounded HOPEFUL!

I was mortified hoping and praying that we somehow blended into the landscape, or came across as 2 perfectly normal women doing a little moving. Not you, you were ready to flag down a innocent passing motorist. Have you no PRIDE?!

This experience has taught me two things; first, a kingsize matress has no backbone to keep it standing up straight on two sleds (the one flaw in my otherwise brilliant plan). Second, there is no one I laugh harder with than my sister! love you!

Happy wordless wednesday everyone, or in my case, not so wordless!  Many of you are aware that my “baby” is growing up.  I have very mixed emotions about that these days and I’ve held my piece as the moodiness began, even when he grew 2 inches since Christmas (and outgrew all of his clothes - grrr), but reality is setting in a little more each day.  I have been noticing over the last couple weeks that his voice is beginning to change (I’m just noticing it now, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been going on for a while) and tonight we took him to Jr. High orientation (they don’t start here until 7th grade thank goodness). 

This is my boy (not a great picture):

I have to show this next photo since it includes all three of the oldest boys: CJ is 12, Salesman is 9 and Tater is 8 and yes, there IS that much of a height difference (for the moment anyway):

This post has been given many titles throughout the weekend … seriously!  By the time we arrived at our cabin Friday night the title was Two Year Olds & Tradition by the time we checked out on Sunday the title had changed to What to Do When Tradition Goes Awry then upon return and having a moment of peace for the first time all weekend I realized that I had simply had A Little Two Much Reality. 

I can honestly say it was an adventure and a learning experience.  Outside of that I’m not really sure … tradition still rates super high in my book, but I’m the first to admit that your traditions still need to fit within the reasonable limits of your sanity. 

Friday night we made it about 2 1/2 hours without incident.  Dinner time rolled around as we rolled into the last large town on our way to the final destination.  One of the Twinkies was stinky, so we stopped at a family restaurant to have dinner.  It is always an eye opening event as the boys really do behave quite well when we go out to eat a nice sit-down dinner like this.  We don’t do it all that often, but it is nice to see them behave so well. 

Unfortunately things didn’t progress quite so nicely for the rest of the trip.  The Twinkies weren’t at all happy about being loaded back into the car and their little cups from the restaurant could only entertain them for so long … then the screaming began.  In order to help calm the chaos CJ would occasionally hand each of them a cracker, after a while though Bug was just D-O-N-E.  Problem was we were still quite a ways from our final destination. 

About a half-hour before we were there Bug got sick … Car sick … not just the turn green and need air type, the full out oh-my-goodness-did-he-really-eat-that-much kind!  Yup - that kind!  He was covered, it was so awful (side note: Monkey historically is the one to have car-sickness, but he was absolutely fine in that department, Bug has never gotten car-sick).  As a mom this was the last straw, my baby was so upset about being covered in “yuck” and kept trying to clean himself up.  It was the saddest, most pitiful thing I have ever seen and I began to cry!!! 

We were towing our fishing boat behind the Yukon and were in such a rural area there wasn’t even a side of the road, let alone anywhere to stop.  By the time we got to the cabins to check in he had fallen asleep.  As Hubby checked us in I quickly stripped him down to his diaper and asked CJ to donate his favorite Football Sweatshirt to the cause - he happily did, blessed boy! 

Whew, we were finally there, drama was dealt with and were into the cabin.  Now for the marathon of getting crazy-excited little boys to bed.  We let them explore the cabin and get the wiggles out for a little bit as they worked out the sleeping arrangements amongst themselves.  It was decided that CJ would have the downstairs bedroom all to himself.  I have no idea how he managed to get that, but he was thrilled!

The next morning the boys were up at the crack of dawn (literally) and I was exhausted.  It had taken a couple hours between hubby and me to get the babies to go to sleep.  But we got up, showered, made breakfast and were somehow out the door with everyone and everything in tow by 9:00(ish) am.  In “regular life” that would be almost a miracle, so I have no idea how we pulled it off there.

A quick stop at an espresso stand (thank goodness for something civilized) and off to the lake we went.  Hubby launched the fishing boat with CJ’s help and as soon as the car was parked he and the 4 oldest boys were off fishing in the lake.  There I was … all alone (well, except for my MIL) … with the twins … and my in-law’s rv. 

No toys to play on anymore, aparently the state decided it needed to be torn out, but I did the best I could.  I grabbed a couple of balls out of the back of the car, which entertained them for about 5 minutes - maybe 10!  That is all!!!  Then we ran around, but the problem isn’t that they are active two year olds, it is that they love to go the opposite direction from one another and they will NOT stop when asked.  We have worked and worked on this, even when there didn’t seem to be a reason to work on it, but ……… 

Anyway, I took them to the sand pit - another 10 minutes.  Then I decided to try snack-time, another 5 minutes.  Hmmmmm, considering that the other guys would be out on the boat for hours I was in a bit of a pickle!  So I contained them in the RV for a while.  Trying to get them to color or play with play dough or something.  Finally naptime rolled around and then I had another dilemma … I had been thinking I would take them back to the cabin, but with hubby on the lake and the boat trailer still hooked up to the SUV I wasn’t going anywhere.   OK, plan B (or K as the case may be) - put them to sleep in the trailer.  So, MIL kicked FIL out of the rv so that I could try and put them to sleep - it was a long and grueling process, but just as they were about to drift off to dreamland the boys came back in - ha. 

Which plan am I onto now????  Well, they did finally take their nap, the boys eventually finished fishing for the night (poor things, only Lion caught a fish and they all tried so hard) so we went back to the cabin for dinner and bed.  Things went a lot more smoothly Saturday night.  Our cabin was beautiful!  It was a little scary with the stairwell and the twins, but other than that I enjoyed it so much. 

The story to beat all stories is being posted very soon, but it will be protected so if you want to read it send me an email and I’ll give you the password

We made it home in one piece, but not without a few thoughts about future trips (I’ll share those another time too - no password required).  It was honestly the first time I had a chance to relax all weekend.  Not to say that it was absolutely terrible, but it was very challenging and I was on edge the whole time trying to anticipate (and thwart) any life-threatening decisions the twins made.  On the up-side, the older four were a dream (well, outside of the bickering in the car that is)!  Even LION - who still had to be watched like a hawk and is apparently smitten with 3 year old girls with curls - heehee!  He loves to fish with all the big boys and could be trusted to be in the boat or on the shore (with an adult nearby of course) without incident.

So here I am finally able to breathe and hoping you’re still awake as I am pondering my double dose of reality this weekend.   I can honestly say that I hope your weekend was a little less eventful than mine

More than a weekend away, this little mini-vacation we’re taking as a family starting today is steeped in tradition.  A tradition that my husband has been participating in for … well … basically his whole life.  This tradition takes place the exact same weekend of every year, in the exact same town, to fish in the exact same lake. 

We will be staying in a rental that is larger than our home and as I mentioned earlier I am SUPER excited.  But more than that I am happy to finally be back, celebrating this wonderful tradition with all of my boys again.  You see, we have taken three years off. 

Three years ago we moved into this house after having lived with 4 sons in a 30 foot RV for 3 months … I was DONE with camping or even the remote idea of spending any time in a campground!   Then the following February 1st we had our Twinkies … 6 weeks early … 2 weeks in the NICU … major risk for RSV.  There was NO WAY I was taking those little ones that far away from home, but no way I wanted to be left alone for even a weekend either.  So we didn’t go.  Things weren’t a whole lot better the following year with the variety of ages, so here we are - seriously needing to redeem ourselves.

Traditions are something that I strongly encourage other families to make and keep!  We have been so blessed by the traditions we have and the wonderful security and passion our children have toward them.  You hear it often, but the years truly are fleeting.  I am amazed as watch our 12 year old young man now.  Thankful that we have instilled what we have in him, but wishing I could have done more.  A normal reaction I know, but I don’t want to wait until it’s too late to recover our lost traditions. 

So I’ll be away for the weekend, busy with our excited half-dozen sons as they get to go fishin’ - some for the very first time in their young lives.  This ought to be fun :)  Wish me luck … or better yet, pray hard for me!  And remember to take advantage of the little opportunities to create a tradition with your children.  We only have them for a few short years and we have to make the most of it!  Be blessed this weekend ladies

That’s right! This is a super fun concept of hosting a HUGE shower online!!!! It is being held today over at 5 Minutes for Mom today for both Janice (who delivered little Olivia on Friday) and Susan who is due (with little Sophia) on October 13th! Taking part in this fabulous event (yes, fabulous is my word of the month LOL) is done by playing baby shower games on our own blogs. There are tons of great prizes to be won, so if you haven’t already done so, be sure to hop over there to enter! I have donated a Blogger Blog design through Sweet ‘n Simple Design, and you can enter here to win one too (see post below this one or click on Contests).

First there is the belly bump pictures to show off (haha). I had to go to the archives of the boys’ scrapbooks and pull out pics of me preggo with baby 4! I truly do wish that I had pictures of myself with the twins, but we didn’t expect them to come as early as they did and even though we had our camera at the hospital, things got way too intense way too quickly for any photos to be taken. Believe it or not though the picture below was taken a FULL MONTH before the baby (Son4) was born!!!!!!!

Then we are supposed to share our most, er, greuelling (greusome?) labor and delivery story. The only problem is that I have given birth to 6 Sons . . . . I don’t have a clue where to begin. So I’ll do it this way:

• My Longest Labor: (definitely won’t win ANY records!) 9 hours (Son1)
• Longest time spent pushing: 1 & 1/2 hours - again Son1.
• Biggest Baby: 10 lbs (Son 1 AGAIN, but Son 4 was 9 lbs)
• Longest Pregnancy: Son 1 (apparently he takes the cake) was 9 days overdue.
• Craziest delivery: This one is tough - Son 2 was induced because of a leakage, but delivering the twins was an unbelievably fast and crazy experience (by the way, you can read all about my twins’ delivery on their blog!)
• Most weight gained: Son1 actually takes the cake here! I gained an incredible 47 lbs with him. I think I only gained 35lbs with the twins.
• Quickest Delivery: Hmmmmm - Son2 was 3 1/2 hours after labor began, Son3 was 2 hours after labor began, Son4 was 3 hours after labor began and TwinM was 2 hours after labor began with TwinE following almost an hour later.

To go with all of that, I again went to the archives to find pictures of me after giving birth, I refuse to post the one taken of me after the twins were born, but here’s one of me after giving birth to Son2 - where apparently the little guy was far more tired than I was - goodness look at that huge yawn (no, he isn’t screaming LOL)!

I actually firmly believe that my hubby should get the prize for the most exhausted parent after delivery (heehee)!!!!!!! Believe it or not, he actually looked like this after, well, pretty much every birth (this pic is of him after Son4 was born though) - eek!

But if I’m going to show a picture like that I’m going to HAVE to show a nice one of him too (I’m going now to dig in a scrapbook, hang on I’ll be right back) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Good Grief that took me a long time:

I guess that I simply cannot resist a couple more photos - I’m getting all nostalgic now. I could go on and on all day, but I think I’ll end it with these two last photos: The first photo is of all 4 of the boys not long after our 4th son was born, The second one is of hubby and me with baby number 3.

I absolutely cannot resist taking a brief trip down memory lane today. Ever since we lost so many photos from this year I am finding myself treasuring all the pics we do have. Happy Wordless Wednesday!

I have a highly imaginative sister and when she first saw the photo above she told me that Drama Baby (left) looked like he was saying “come to me my jungle friends” (LOL) oooook ((shrug)) (honestly I am rather used to her though heehee), but then I say that Sir Sweetie (right) is saying “Oh brother here he goes again!” The funny thing is that would be a pretty good look into the personalities of myself (reflected in Sir Sweetie) and my sis (reflected in Drama Baby).

Below is a pic of the whole gang (wow they’ve grown since then - sigh) and as you can see little boy on the far left was in a far less than cooperative mood.

My Sweeties - 4 mos old (also in top photo)

It’s been a while since I have actively participated in Tackle It Tuesday, but I think I figure that I have too many tackles each day and week to list just one LOL! Plus they always seem to be the same which ends up being boring for my lovely readers.

This week though we tackled the apple tree. Well, not the tree exactly, the apples on the tree. You see, we have a grandaddy of a big old apple tree out in one of the fields and it produces pretty well each year. Because the weather has been a little cooler this year, the apples weren’t ready until last week (some still aren’t ready), so I decided that Sunday was the day to pick the apples. There were quite a few and most of them were huge! So exciting!!!!!

So out we all went (babies too) with the apple picker and a small bowl. It was apparent right away that we’d need a far bigger container for the apples, so we had to send Son1 in to get one of our big 36 gallon garbage bags. This worked very well (we ended up having to double it up though because the apples were too heavy for just one) as long as we could keep the babies from getting into it . . . “BALL!!!” - thud (you get the idea).

I truly wish that I had thought to take some pictures There were so many apples my sink was overflowing. We “processed” them all that night - peeling, coring and slicing every single apple. I ended up freezing 3 gallon size bags of sliced apples and making 7 quarts of applesauce that night. It was a little ambitious and I was getting a bit burned out by the time the last quart of applesauce was finished, but it was SOOOOO worth it!!!!

Overall, the resulting amount of uses from these apples won’t last long, but the memories will. The boys all joined me in the kitchen for the “processing” and got very involved in helping this year!!!! In the past they would just watch me for a little bit and then go merrily along their way anxiously awaiting the prize at the end of the day (apple crisp and/or warm, fresh homemade applesauce). This year Son1 went straight for the “Apple-Peeler-Slicer-Corer” thingy (which I am sad to say has seen it’s last apple season and I will have to figure out how to replace it) as I began cleaning the apples and getting out the knife, regular peeler and cutting board and began preparing huge bowls of lemony salt water to put the slices into.

As we began, one by one each of the other older boys came in to see what they could do to help. Donald Trump WannaBe (Son2) came in and was given the lovely job of picking up and throwing away all the scraps as we went along - a job he was thrilled to peices to have and he was very serious about it. Then in came Mr. Instructor (Son3) asking what he could do (and ready to tell us all how it should be done), he ended up with the job of doling out the apples . . . give Big Brother the medium round ones and give mom all the huge and/or irregular ones. Even The Rock (Son4) came in to “help” and was given a little task to keep him happy.

There was lots of joking and talking and even a little competition here and there, but it was fun. I look forward to moments like that, memorable but completely spontaneous. They did get the ultimate reward - in addition to the great memory they made that night they (of course) got their coveted Apple Crisp. And tired as I was in the middle of making applesauce still I couldn’t help but smile as I heard the “Thank You mom”s and the “Oh this is so good”. Things really do taste sweeter when you have worked for them!