What exactly does a “Dude” look like????  Well, if you are anything like me and never had that image clearly defined in your mind, I’m here to settle that now once and for all .

Today I gave the three younger boys Summer haircuts.  I don’t usually do this by myself with this particular half of my children, but since I was doing the cut on the twinkies using only the trimmer I knew it would move quick enough to avoid too many issues!

In the middle of Monkey’s Haircut, Sir Lion declared that “he looks like a dude now mom”.  “Reeeaaaaly?”  I said, “Who knew?”.   So, without further ado, here’s a few “DUDE” pictures :).  (Bug was NOT a happy camper during the post-haircut photo shoot, so here are a couple of Monkey.)

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!

I had planned on getting back on track today … offer a deep and thoughtful Mommy Reality for you.  Mommy reality has struck me full force.  Nothing deep, nothing too thoughtful, just a lot of reality.

I woke up Sunday morning thinking that my lips felt strange.  I went into the bathroom and one look in the mirror confirmed that they were very swollen.  The only other time I’ve ever had swollen lips I also had hives all over … not so this time.  I took a little Benadryl, just in case, but all that ended up doing for me is landing me back in bed for a 3 hour nap.  Like I have time!

Once I got up instead of getting better, they were worse and now it was too late to go to the walk in clinic to get checked out.  How miserable! 

As we all know … moms are NOT allowed to have anything wrong with them.  It is an odd circumstance that a day will go past in the life of a mother where the housework still gets done even if she’s not the one to do it.  So a sick day often means that much more work in mom’s life the day she gets better. 

My husband is wonderful with the children but … well … that’s all he can handle.  I don’t blame him, if you don’t know the daily routine well or how to predict and (usually) thwart the twins’ mischief you can get in big trouble before you know it.  So he has learned his limits.  Even leaving the room to make a cup of coffee or a snack for them can be treacherous LOL.

So today instead of giving you an inspiring Mommy Reality lesson I simply have to tell you that due to my own reality hitting hard I will be making a trip to the walk in clinic and PRAYING that they can give me something … anything to ease the discomfort and let me feel halfway normal again. 

I won’t get into the pride that has me dreading the thought of going anywhere people can see me.  Nor will I talk about the fact that I can hardly speak nor can I eat anything without pain.  Oh, and I wouldn’t dream of mentioning that I have ten zillion loads of laundry to do today in addition to caring for my kiddos. Nope, I’ll just hope and pray that you have a NORMAL dose of reality today!

Blessings!

My new word - I invented it today and promptly bestowed it upon Bug when trying to find a food that would make this slightly feverish 2 year old Baby happy.  He wanted cheese and only cheese {well, for the moment anyway}, not the pretzels to go with the snack {apparently they hurt his mouth}, so he kept digging for it and saying funny things when he found a piece {”hungy mama, hungy”}. 

Let me repeat it SNOOGER!  Know what it is?  Take a wild guess!!!  Here’s a hint: only the most adorable, pip-squeakiest, persnickety little ones can be called this when they are being … well an adorable persnickety pipsqueak.  Let me tell you I have a few that fit the bill an awful lot of the time!

Then he must wear the title again when he incessantly hands me the tv remote saying “Wubzy, mama, want Wubzy nooooow” complete with whiney-cutesy-you-can’t-resist-me voice. He slept most of the morning and now it is naptime - the only time of the day that I watch a couple of food shows while I catch up on work and laundry.  So, he’s up and Monkey is down {Lion is rebelling against rest time too and being very naughty, but rebellion simply does not fall under the definition of “Snooger”}.  Do I turn on Wubzy for him?  Or try to get him to rest again.

Did you figure out what Snooger is yet?  No?  Ok, hint 2:  It is a combination of two words that most people probably don’t refer to their children as, but I often occasionally do.

As I type this the Wubzy conversation Bug is having with me has risen to a pleading and begging session which is scary-cute: “Pweeeeeeeaaaase, mommy, watch Wubzy peeeease, I wike it Wubzy mama, peeease”.  See scary!  So, now I’m off to give in to the adorable “please” of the slightly ill 2 year old {who, I’m sure will be forever damaged by my giving in to his whim - I’ll expect the blaming to begin later in his life LOL}.  Can I just say that the oddest part of this conversation is that they DO NOT watch the show very often AT ALL!  They just don’t.

Still wondering where Snooger came from?  Well, let me tell you, it’s a combination of Snot and Booger - there you have it!

Although this would be a very appropriate title as my boys play outside most of the time hunting creatures and seeking adventure and imaginary enemies (LOL), I am actually talking about the show on the Discovery Channel. Survival shows are all the rage in our home.  The Discovery Channel has plenty of them throughout their family of channels (mainly on The Discovery Channel and Discovery Kids), primarily on Friday and Saturday nights.

We only get sattelite service where we live and that means we have to watch many shows 3 hours early or 3 hours late - even though we’re pacific time, we get many channels on EST.  Believe it or not, this can actually be a good thing in our boys’ opinion since it gives them more opportunities to catch up on the latest episodes.

Man vs. Wild is always the favorite around here though they have just discovered another show called The Alaska Experiment.  It is funny to me how some of these “similar” survival shows can be so different.  Man vs. Wild is all about the adventure and shock factor whereas Sirwhinerman Survivorman is more about the endless days and nights and all the drama. 

For Heaven’s sake, how many crazy things can one man (ie: Bear Grylls) do, eat and see in one episode?  For instance, Friday night there was a new episode of him in Zambia and here’s a run down of the “adventure”:

Things He Did:
~ Dropped off into raging river from a helicopter (on a body board no less), climbed at least two slippery sheer cliffs (called one of them “irresistible” LOL)
~ Poor man, I’ll list the things he ate in a moment, but the last “lovelies” that he consumed apparently sent his body over the proverbial edge because he spent much of the rest of the show miserable with diarrhea.
~ Built a pyramid fire to signal the helicopter that was picking him up
~ Exited the area by hopping onto the landing gear of the helicopter and hanging on as it carried him out heehee.

What He Ate:
~ Catfish (caught amidst Hippos and Crocodiles)
~ Grubs - not just any grubs either one of them was ginormous, but I’ll spare you the GORY details.
~ A Bullfrog - can I just say EWWWW!  It truly was nasty!
~ “Chargrilled brightly colored worms” - he got sick after eating these so they obviously should have been avoided.
~ Because of his poor stomach he filtered some of the local water and made a charcoal tea to soothe it.

Things He Saw:
~ Hippos
~ Crocodiles
~ Elephants - this was TRULY AMAZING there was a herd of over 80 elephants right in front of him!
~ Leopard prints and kill
~ Hyena prints
~ Many Many Critters ‘n such

There you have the show (can I emphasize here again this was ONE EPISODE) in a nutshell.  Sometimes I just feel like saying “holy cow man you are a little nuts” even if he DOES have a fully equipped camera crew with him.  But I love his truly genuine regard, appreciation and amazement at the beauty around him throughout his “adventures”.  But I’m also always hanging on to the edge of my seat and covering my eyes. 

For the boys it’s all about the gross things he eats.  Believe it or not they actually do have their limits, on one episode he ate a tree frog and that was completely over the top in The Salesman’s opinion, but they love seeing him do crazy things and truly enjoy getting grossed out by his “food”.  If you’re looking for enough drama for even a teenage girl, watch Sir-whiner-man Survivorman.  I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate some of the information and tips that he shares, but he stays in the same place night after night, monologuing about each and every detail about everything around him and what he’s doing and the show is a little like this sentence, going on and on instead of really getting anything done.

I have to say though that these men are probably living the dream of every (almost) little boy.  Life is full of reality each and every day even for children, so it is truly amazing that “reality” shows (we all know that much of what happens on them is edited and staged for entertainment value, but still …) can put a whole new twist on said “reality”. 

What if we looked at our lives through the eyes of a reality show?  We’d see the adventure and take it - we’d notice the incredibly amazing beauty around us and be so thankful for the opportunity - we’d try new things that may not turn out very well, but we tried them anyway and lived to tell the tale.  I think we’d appreciate everyday life and the blessings we’ve been given just a little bit more. 

So today I’m wishing you all a little adventure, maybe even a little drama.  A renewed outlook and amazement at the beauty around you - blog about it, turn your life into a reality show for one day and see if your perspective changes just a little. 

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

Snow . . . in April . . . crazy!  I thought it was seriously nuts that we had snow over my hubby’s birthday the end of March, but now here we are a week and a half from my birthday and we have snow again!  Crazy weather!

But it definitely affords young men the opportunity to stretch some seriously creative muscles .  Here’s a few examples of that in two snowmen that CJ constructed.  He calls the one with the sunglasses “New Guy”, the first photo is the one he created first and it’s name isn’t nearly as creative - First Guy LOL! 

That’s right, I relish obscurity!  Having words like unnoticeable & unexceptional attached to my humble little self isn’t completely horrible in my mind.  I’ve never loved standing out in a crowd, in fact I’ve spent a lot of time over the years simply trying to make sure I blend in. 

Hubby and I went out on a date last weekend and it was lovely.  Finding childcare for 6 children is definitely a challenge.  Our oldest feels he’s too old to be “sat”, but he’s waaaaaaaaaay too young to handle all his brothers.   So if we are ever presented with an opportunity where someone is willing to come in and watch them all, let me tell you, we take it and RUN!

We ran a few errands and went to a very nice dinner on the waterfront.  It was so nice to have time to ourselves without kiddos hanging on us, whining at us, yelling in our ear for attention or having to instruct them the whole time.  A nice, quiet, civil meal. 

There were many celebrations going on in the restaurant we ate at and there was a hubbub all around us.  As we were waiting for our dessert I suddenly turned to my husband and said, “Obscurity really is highly underrated”.   He wore the same quizzical look you probably have on your face right now too . 

You see, after a whole entire lifetime spent trying to be relatively unnoticed in public I am now a spectacle anytime I go anywhere with even a portion of my children.  Even going out with just my three youngest can turn into a spectator sport.  I went against the norm by having 6 children - I understand that and don’t mind, but it does present a unique set of issues when going out in public. 

Just having 6 children inspires the “are they all yours” and “how do you feed them all” (like I’m going to pick one and say it’s their turn not to eat LOL) questions.  Add in the fact that they are all boys and then you get the “wow, you have your hands full”, “are they all boys?” and “were you trying for a girl?” comments and questions.  Then you get to top it all off with the fact that the youngest two are twins and that has a whole set of crazy questions all it’s own.

I do try to be nice, but to be honest with you sometimes the questions and comments can get down right rude not to mention the fact that (remember my love for obscurity here) it steps way over my comfort zone for appropriate conversation and stranger involvement.  It is very odd to have someone you have never seen before in your life, boldly approach you and ask “so, are you done yet?” - Just sayin’!

There’s another interesting side effect to knowing that you’ll stand out like a sore thumb in public - as a mom I intensely feel that they must always look and act perfect.  I have 6 boys ladies!  It’s extremely difficult to get every single one of them out the door with clothes that aren’t filthy by the time they get into the car that sits 6 feet from the front door, let alone have all of them sparkling with every hair in place.   Yet I feel the unnerving need to always present a certain image in public. 

Everyone wants a well-behaved, clean-cut clan, but when we only had three children it never occurred to me to go over each child 2 or 3 times before they met with approval.  A simple trip to the grocery store was exactly that . . . simple!  Throw on some shoes, hop in the car and get the groceries.  I honestly never thought twice about it.  But when you know that every eye in the store, museum or restaurant will be on you . . . whew!  It makes me sweat just thinking about it.

I would like to think it is all in my head - the judgement, the looks, the whispering and pointing.  But it isn’t, it is very real and I feel that I must present a good image for my family’s sake, other large families’ sakes and for the sake of Him who blessed us with all these boys. 

So enjoy your obscurity if you happen to have some and don’t take it for granted.  And if you ever see a harried mama with 6 boys in tow at the mall (Heaven help her), send a smile her way and continue on yours.  She’ll love the smile and adore you for leaving her to a teensy bit of mental obscurity in such a public place.