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Hubby Missing; Hubby Returned

Why is it when the hubby goes out of town everything falls apart? That's why I haven't blogged in a few days! Monday B-boo had dental surgery, and well, we all know how that went! That turned into a fiasco of well, gross things, for the past four days. On top of that, the bird dog got into a bag of m & m's hidden in B-boo's room. Really bad. That made for a lot of gross things on my carpet…a mixture of peanuts and chocolate on a tan carpet is never good, especially when you have a daughter who has a fatal allergy to nuts. (And no, I don't usually allow peanuts into the house, but this was a sealed bag, in a closed room…who knew the dog would find them!) Literally, at the same time, we had a…er…clog in the toilet. Great, just great. Hubby goes out of town and I'm at home with, well, I'm sure you can figure it out.

And the week just kind of went on like that. I think those things happen so that I can appreciate my hubby even more, because if he were here, he would have been the one plunging the toilet and moving the furniture around for the carpet cleaner yesterday. Not that I mind doing it, but it's just one of those things I love about being married.

On the other hand, while hubby was gone, the Talented One started getting up earlier and having an omelet for breakfast and a cup of coffee with me. I realize he's only 16, but it's been fun to have my young man moment with him. We don't have those often. I used to make him breakfast every morning, then he stopped wanting it. I'm not sure what happened this week, but it's been nice to be able to share those few moments with him.

Which is another reason why I like to get up early and enjoy the shifts of the morning. It's nice to have a few minutes with B-boo and the Talented One before everyone else gets up. Our time. Then, as soon as I drop them off, I wake up the Smart One and he has his omelet and we spend some time reading a passage from the Bible and discussing it and talking about what the day holds. If the little ones decide to get up, they are to quietly get ready for their day upstairs and then spend some time reading or coloring in their room until the next shift starts.

Once I drop off the Smart One, the little ones come down.I then make them breakfast, share things with them, memorize verses, sing together, etc. and then we ship them off.

And then, it's finally the Drama Queen's turn! And we get a whole 2.5 hours together to homeschool!

Anyway, back to the missing husband. When he's gone, it's hard to function. He likes to call me supermom, but really, it's because he's my partner in crime! For instance, he always calls me and asks whom he is taking where. In a family of 8, that is very important! Wednesday night I had four different place to be at the same time! Needless to say, for the first time in 6 years, I missed open house and meeting my kids teachers. We've always done open house together, so he missed it, too. I had to call in recruits to help get the kids to church and back! (Thanks, friend!)

And finally, he came home..to a clean carpet and a messy kitchen! And he's so good, he didn't complain at all about the kitchen, but instead told me how much he liked the clean carpets. Oh, and he took his shoes off, too!

I think I'll keep him. 🙂

About that Reality TV Show

I debated whether I should blog about this or not. I really did. The best I could do was wait until today, because it was just too…movie like…not to blog about!

So yesterday B-boo had to have oral surgery. Not fun. The one and only time I had oral surgery was to have my wisdom teeth pulled. All four at once. I had just met hubby when I had it done.

I told B-boo, "Daddy stuck with me through that and I knew he'd stay with me through anything!"

I was so sick. Miserable, for a week! I vaguely remember lying on the floor on a bean bag and him walking in to hand me a stuffed animal before I conked out again. I wasn't just swollen sick, but I got physically sick as well. It was a total week of semi-consciousness!

Now it was B-boo's turn. Not for wisdom teeth, but because some of my children are blessed to have baby teeth that refuse to fall out. This makes it hard for the permanent teeth to come in. The Smart One had to have two teeth pulled last week because of this problem. Oy…laughing gas on the poor boy wasn't so funny after we started to drive home. At any rate, because the teeth can't move forward, they move backward into the jaw bone instead. This means that the surgeon has to go find them and help them come out. Ouch!

We She did fine during surgery and even managed to walk out to the van when I pulled up to the door. I didn't realize how out of it she really was until I started to drive home. I guess the first clue should have been the fact that she needed help buckling her seat belt. As I pulled out around the corner, she slid my way. I gently put my arm out and pushed her back into her seat. Then I called Dad to let him know we'd made it through and were on our way home. He was supposed to be heading out of town, but was still home. And a good thing, too!

As I went around the next corner, she came flying towards me once again. This time I was prepared and held my arm against her so she'd stay in her seat. Until the next corner, when she slid the other way, into the window. I immediately thought of "Father of the Bride Two" when Steve Martin takes the sleeping pill and his face slams into the window. Ok, her face didn't slam into the window, but she certainly went sliding into the window. I did a quick double check to make sure the doors were locked and drove slowly all the way home.

And then I called hubby. "You're still home right, cause I'm thinking I won't be able to get her upstairs." I glance at her as I am speaking to hubby and notice her left hand has flopped down in her unconsciousness. "Yeah, I'm definitely not going to be able to get her into the house."

As always, nothing happens in our house without it being a family event. That happens when you have large families. Grandma had come over to help get Chicken Noodle Butt to school and watch the Drama Queen because we didn't expect hubby to be home. In addition, we had two of the boy cousins over because the third one had an appointment.

So I drive up to hubby waiting in the driveway, cause he's just good like that. I tell him to be careful opening the door because I don't want her to fall out of the van. He quickly sees what I am talking about and realizes he's going to have to carry her up the stairs.  I run ahead to clear a path, kind of like in the Princess Bride when the Andre the Giant clears the path before storming the castle. The cousins want to see what is going on, of course, and so wont' get off the stairs and out of the way…until my charming, sweet voice convinces them to do otherwise. I'm just nice like that.

I won't go into details of the rest of the day, let's just leave it at a mouth full of stitches and nausea don't go well together. Needless to say, she gets to stay home from school for an extra day. If she ever regains consciousness, I might even be enticed to watch a Reality TV Show movie with her!

Cousins

These days, whenever we can, we take the time to relax and spend time with someone we love. Imagine my glee when I found out yesterday that my sister-in-law was not working and we had nothing to do for the afternoon! That meant a day of relaxing by her pool, letting all the cousins swim while we relaxed and enjoyed some free time. Ahh…I could just imagine the taste of lemonade as the children swam happily, played Marco Polo, and left us alone; every once in a while asking us to look at how wonderfully they were playing, leaving us alone to just be.

Hello, wake up! This is our family we are talking about!

A) There was no lemonade. Water by the jar is our way to go!

B) Kettle popcorn…need I say more?

C) I brought five of my brood, two of whom can't swim, so life jackets are a necessary thing. She has three of her own…all boys…very much boys.

D) There is no relaxing poolside, cause, well, you get splashed..a lot, so you might as well just jump in the pool!

E) It's great to hang with her, because we share our worlds. She has adopted a child out of the foster care system and I have two that I am fostering. We do not have *normal* families, and while so often others may sympathize with what we are going through, it's great to be able to be yourself and KNOW that the other person really KNOWS what you're family is going through, because well, until you've walked this path, it's hard to imagine sometimes.

So, our afternoon consisted of swimming, splashing, dunking, dodging, and throwing children large inflatable balls. For a while we begged them to stop splashing us, but they just couldn't help cannon balling into the water to soak us; in groups. When they weren't practicing their cannonballs, they were plunging over the giant inflatable ball! Frankly, I'm surprised there was any water left in the pool after we left!

Finally, we gave in to our own childish whims and challenged them to a game of volleyball…with the giant ball. We're not one for tradition, which means we don't play by the rules either. We ended up dividing into two teams; boys vs. girls…and the girls ended up on the deep end. Not an easy task when you're only 5ft! The Drama Queen quickly came up with a plan. Whenever the giant ball would come flying our way, she'd jump from the edge of the pool into the ball, slamming it back to the other side. This meant wet fun for her and near drowning for her boy cousins. Comments like, "Don't drown your cousin!"  and "Do you think the ER would give us a 2for1?" were a common theme throughout the day! B-boo wasn't swimming yesterday, but she made sure to get into the volleyball fun. There's nothing like your older cousin, a GIRL, yelling at you to hit the ball when she throws it at your head! Poor little Chicken Noodle Butt tried his hardest, but he was having enough problems trying to stay afloat in his life jacket, let alone smack a giant ball zooming towards his head! This went on for a good hour before the adults tired the children out and they gave up on us. A job well done, in my opinion!

We moved on to poolside popcorn while the younguns' continued to swim; hopping out to open their mouths while we tossed popcorn at them, before jumping back into the pool. We laughed so hard, we actually decided that we'd make a great reality tv show. I heard they make $20,000 per episode…sounds good to us!

About that time a friendly spider decided to visit us me. We'd finally reached the point of relaxation when I felt something crawling…well, in a place where nothing should be crawling! I looked down, saw the little eight-legged creature, and proceeded to jump up and scream. I had enough sense to turn my back to the pool before tearing my swimsuit top apart, but jeesh! Succeeding in getting it gone, I sat back down to try and relax, but sister-in-law was a little on edge since we couldn't figure out where the little critter had been thrown to! You know, it may have been tossed into the pool for all I know; we never did see it again! There was a comment about that making the episode worth than a lot more than $20,000 though! At one point, I turned to her and asked, "You moved back for this?"

I tell ya one thing…those kids sure did sleep good last night!

Please read this

Some of you may laugh at what I'm posting, but this is serious business! I logged into my blog tonight, not really planning on posting anything, because quite frankly, my brain is mush.

But then, it said my page views today are …well…666

And we just can't have that now, can we?

So, could you all please read this so that number will change?

Thank you for doing a good service to your crazy blogger friend!

Laughable Moment #20

Having a serious conversation can be hard at times. Especially when it involves spinach.

Tonight is the season premiere of Bones. Yup. We finished Alias just in time to focus on Bones. My good friend is coming over to watch it with us; after she runs three miles. I thought I'd make a nice dinner in celebration.

Baked Salmon

Caesar Salad

Little slices of bread with spinach dip

Cookies

And something else, but I'm not sure what.

But then, B-Boo enticed me into the kitchen.

With little slices of bread and spinach dip.

She took a bite as I spread dip on mine and proceeded to have a conversation with me. With her mouth full of spinach dip and bread.

The thing is, I could understand her. So I did what any reasonable mother would do and told her to stop talking with her mouth full of food.

Not!

I proceeded to put my slice in my mouth and answer her.

We went on like that for a few moments.

Then I couldn't take it anymore. She had spinach in her braces. That's just gross. So I told her so.

And burst into laughter.

It's good to have these mother/daughter moments that we'll always cherish.