Layla Grace

Sometimes I find surprises on my phone.  Looks like Layla was killing some time snapping photos of herself.  They were already in black and white, and as soon as I saw them, they struck me as absolutely beautiful.

Crawling!

The Ruby girl is on the move.  She has been "getting around" and going backwards for a couple weeks now, but yesterday she did the full fledged, very proper form, crawl.  And she was quite proud.

Oh my, how my life is going to change again...

COLD days!

Wowzers, has it been COLD!  

Yesterday was a high of -8.

 Currently it is -3, but feels like -19.

According to the news, yesterday we set the record for COLD.

I haven't been to MOPS or bible study since the middle of December.

Maleah has had numerous late starts and couple days cancelled.

Dallas isn't able to haul grain.  

{The one time he tried, he gelled up, couldn't get ahold of me, and had to walk over a mile home. (whoops!!)}

But, I must admit: I am becoming more of a homebody all the time.  I secretly love snow days.

I must also admit: I'll be ready to see other adult faces!

We are hanging in there.  Actually, we are getting along quite well.  

Here's what we've been up to...

Ruby pooped in the tub!  This is only the maybe second or third time we have ever had this (with all four kids combined!).  The big three found it quite hilarious!

These two are seriously so cute together.  They play and play all day.  We have been resorting to running on the treadmill.  Hey, if you can't run around the house, you have no choice but to run in place!  As you can see, Charlie takes this as serious business.

Maleah is ready for a day of school (finally!).  With missing eight days from our trip, and a couple snow days since then, she is ready for "normal" weeks again.  I'm thankful she is so flexible.  Home/school; she loves 'em both.

There have been moments of pulling our hair out.  We've been together a.lot.

Overall, though, it's been kind of fun.

We certainly won't forget winter 2013/2014 as one of frigid temps, games, hot chocolate, reading lots and lots of books, and sleeping in.  :)

Clothes Management

It's Monday, which means laundry day around here!

Disclaimer: I am not the best housekeeper.  I wish I was.  It's never terrible, but it's never all great.  If one room is clean, another probably is not.  But, when it comes to clothes management (as I like to call it), I feel like I finally have a good system down.

Every Monday, I do laundry; front to top, beginning to end!  This means the complete laundry cycle, from washing machine all the way through being put away in their proper draws/closets.  I know...gasp!  Isn't putting it away the hardest part?  By the time I go to sleep at night, every dirty article of clothing in this home has been washed, dried, folded, and put away.

Why one day?  
- There is no more forgetting I had thrown a load in, therefore forgot it was in and sat in the washing machine for too long, requiring another wash.
- There is always laundry to do.  Always!  But, by doing it on one day, it feels like for a teeny bit of time, everything is clean and there is no laundry to do!
- I don't always have the task of laundry in the back of my mind.  I know I will get to it on Monday and will worry about it then, not until.
- I don't quit, because I have to keep it going, and will keep it going since it is only one day.  I continuously keep it rolling all day long.

Each child has about, more or less, two weeks worth of clothes (plus church clothes hanging up).  I don't want to deal with a lot more, and don't need to.  They (and I) wear our favorites anyway.  It's easy to manage, there aren't clothes laying all around, as we simply don't have that much, and it keeps things on a good cycle.

Every outfit goes together.  At the beginning of each season, I get out all the clothes and put outfits together.  If there are three stray pair of pants, I either get shirts to go with them, or get rid of them.  Every article of their clothing goes with something.  No strays.

Each Sunday night, I fill their "boxes" for the week.  This is a divider in their closet with six places.  I fill each compartment with socks, underwear, shirts, and pants.  Every night, they pick out their "box" for the next day, and bring it downstairs.  This helps so much!  By picking the outfit out the night before, the mornings are so much more peaceful.  It also helps to have the entire outfit in the box, as they aren't running back to their room for socks while we are trying to get out the door.  I also love that I can yell up the stairs, "Pick out a box!" and the entire outfit is done, decided, and ready to roll.  The boxes also help Dallas tremendously.  When I am gone, the outfits are already put together, eliminating stress for him and humiliation for the children.  :)  (totally kidding)

The "box" thing first came about when the kids were wanting to pick out their own clothes.  They would get out ten different things, pile them on the floor, and still look ridiculous.  I'm not for micro-managing them, but it became a battle on occasion, resulting in a huge mess.  So, by doing the "boxes," they still get to pick (I just picked first...sneaky!).

By doing laundry once a week and filling their boxes once a week, there is very rarely a time where we are scrambling around looking for something.  It works.  There aren't clothes laying around on the floor (if there are, they get collected in a big garbage sack).  I don't need a perfectly kept home, I don't.  However, I want to raise responsible little ones, not slobs.  Now, I do understand this could all change (cue: teenage years).  But hey, we are trying.

Every Saturday, I do towels and a norwex load.  Every other Saturday, I do bedding.

Like I said: this isn't the end all, be all, to laundry.  But for us it works tremendously.  Nobody asks me to do laundry, nobody has stray clothes laying around, and I don't think about laundry any day but Monday.  Yippee for a system that works for us!

Happy laundry! 

Oh, and remember, having clothes to wash is a blessing.  Bodies to feel them are a gift from God.  It's a chore that gets old, for sure.  But when they get old and our laundry gets few, I'll miss these days (so I'm told).

More Florida Fun!

Other than our Disney day, beach day, and Homasassa Springs, we didn't have much planned.  We wanted to spend a lot of time relaxing, playing games, walking, and seeing what Papa and Nana's life down there is like.  It was a great combination; busy one day, chill out the next.  We even took a couple naps (all of us!), stayed up late eating ice cream and playing games, and got crazy on the game courts.  Fun times!

Look at all the golf cars.  So fun to see them cruising all around!

Saturday morning farmer's market.  We got some wonderful fresh fruits and veggies!

One day the guys took off to putz around in the golf car and get hamburgers at Five Guys, while the girls...

Went and got our toes pretty and had lunch at Panera.

We all met up at the movie "Frozen."

Sunday morning we had a delicious brunch!

Papa and Nana with the kiddos!

Ice cream before bed.

Every night after the kids went to bed, we had snacks and played Rack-O or Wizard.  We laughed and laughed, got a little competitive, and had tons of fun.

One afternoon was almost warm enough to swim.  The guys were gracious enough to meet the requests of the kids and just dive in.  What troopers!

Our little fish!!

Playing football in the backyard.

Another evening in the town square.  This night, we left about as fast as we got there.  We weren't too crazy about the music, and the crowd was a little "eh."  So, we packed back up in the Suburban and headed to another town square.  By the end of the time, we called it "goin' burban."  Meaning, we would roll down the windows in the Suburban, do a drive by and listen, and decide where to go/what to do.  We cracked ourselves up.  :)

Good morning!

I know I sound like a really proud mom.  But I am.  Ruby was seriously so awesome!  She was so flexible, missing naps, sitting in her stroller for hours, watching the day pass by, and smiling while doing it all.

Bocce ball!

Shuffle board!

Pickle ball!

More nighttime entertainment.

So cute to see all the "older" couples dancing.  Seriously.  What's better than being under the night sky, hand in hand with your love?

Our trip was absolutely wonderful.  The weather wasn't "ideal," but we didn't care (it was still so refreshing, better than here!)!  I kept telling Mom and Dad that we didn't go for hot weather (although that was a bonus!), but we went to see them.  I feel we did well using our time seeing the sites and exploring new things, yet using our time off to really take the time and rejuvenate.  It was so great! 

Right before leaving, I got a heavy duty cold.  Having dealt with bad ears my whole life, still getting ear infections as an adult, I was so bummed to have to fly with all the sinus pressure.  But, what do you do?

After meeting up with Jillian and seeing her place at Pioneers (beautiful!), we grabbed some lunch and headed for the airport.

This time we had about thirty minutes to chill out before boarding.  On the way to Florida, we literally walked right onto the plane.  So, we watched airplanes, watched people, and did jumping jacks.

The germs at the airport, oy, there has to be lots of them.  But I finally let the icky thoughts leave with the breeze, and let Ruby sit on the floor and play for awhile.  She spread lots of joy in that place.

This kid was OUT most of the plane ride.  I have never seen the kiddos so tired.  Maleah fell asleep on the way to the airport, Charlie slept most of the flight, and we woke Ruby up at 10:00 the next morning (11:00 her time) to take off for home.  Exhaustion.  That means it was great fun!

After already descending into Minneapolis, we had to "hold" in circles for about thirty minutes at a terrible altitude.  Kids were screaming (thankfully ours didn't say a peep or seem to mind) with ears hurting, and I seriously thought my head was going to explode.  I couldn't even touch my forehead with my finger.  It was horrible!  We landed about forty minutes late, and wow was it COLD.  After going to the wrong parking lot, going back into the airport, getting to our freezing van that sat outside (unlocked) with no cover for eight days, and paying an arm and a leg for parking, we were finally on our way.  We knew everything at home was cancelled due to frigid temps and blowing snow, but decided we would see how far we could get.  You know when you are so close to home, you just want to be there in the worst way?  Yeah, that was us.

My headache just got worse and worse, and after throwing up on the side of the road, we decided we couldn't do this for three hours.  So, we stopped and slept at Rod and Bonnie's Minnesota house (thank you!!!!).  It worked perfectly!  Everyone slept in, Dallas grabbed doughnuts for breakfast, we woke the baby up at 10, and headed for home.  There's no place like it.

Vacation 2014 is in the books.  And golly, I am so thankful.  It was great.

Beach Day!

I love the beach.  It's so grand, with water as far as the eyes can see, waves crashing, white sand, a beautiful pier, and boats sailing by.  It is beautiful.

Our ride to the beach was gorgeous; over the long Tampa Bay bridge and riding along the coast for miles.  We got out of the Suburban, and it was so warm!  Lovely!  We got settled into our spot, and about thirty minutes later the sun went under and woofta, it was chilly.  Everyone started to leave.  But us Iowans?  We are tough.  The kids, especially, couldn't care less!  They were happy as clams playing in the sand.  It was a great day.  The first time our children saw the ocean.  Awesome!

Oh, this man.  We loved sitting back and watching our littles play together.  Everyday is truly a blessing, but days like this, you sit back and realize your dreams are unfolding right before your eyes.  I love doing life with my best friend, my husband.

It was another wonderful day of vacation.