lammers

ashton has a beloved lamb he calls appropriately "lammers". it is dirty, flat, holy, stinky and gets worse with each washing. i found one on ebay and ordered a "back up" lammers.
don't you wish every thing you loved came with a back up?
lammers number two made the long trip from chicago and arrived at our house yesterday.

when we opened the package, there was this lovely, fluffy, soft, snowy white lamb like we used to have. funny thing is, ashton snubbed him and went back to old lammers. maybe replacements to those things we love isn't such a good idea after all.





the princess took a quick liking to him and has claimed the clone her own. not a single dollar wasted my friends. this little face doesn't really look like somebody who deserves a new lammers in my opinion.

goose bumps and a little bit of a black eye

i have such goose bumps right now and not the spooky halloween kind, but the holy cow what a miracle kind.
the gal i call cool mama had her baby! this was the little guy that doctors told her long ago was not a viable pregnancy and would not live to delivery.
well go see how he is doing!!
how can any body not believe in miracles?

now, another story.
for those of you who have been anxiously awaiting it, here is the picture of my big fat black eye.
you can giggle now, because i am ok, but it was not funny at the moment of impact.
as you know, i had strep throat last week. i was home alone with the children and starting to feel a little bit better so i got up to do some laundry. jeff was at carson's football game, i was a little woozy, and then i turned around to grab a towel and BAM. this nearly six foot tall girl dropped like a brick into the door frame. whoops. so now i am trying to get to and from schools, grocery stores, church, visiting with neighbors all the while hiding my boo boo.
as if the stress of the election wasn't enough to worry about.

try and look under the crazy large forehead and there you go. like i said, you can giggle now.

it will all be over soon

eight more days and it will all end. after that all of my political posts will be deleted, and the blog will return to a historical account of my daily family life, its true intention... really.

until then, watch this short tiny little video.

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=e46U8zvkuz

pretty eye opening.

so i can't tell you how to vote.

vote for the economy, vote for health care, vote for the war. vote for taxes.

i can tell you im voting for morality. the rest will fall into place.

pumpkin patch and strep throat

so i am down for the count with strep. can you remember how crappy that makes you feel? its a rare occasion that i haul my own self out to the doctor and i did just that yesterday after waking up with stridor due to my ever so swollen and bleeding tonsils. yuck-o. but i am going to give a "shout out" to the little walk in clinic at CVS. the nurse prac. who saw me had been a flight nurse for over ten years and was tired of the excitement of traumas, so shepou started working there. she was fantastic and i was in and out in about 30 minutes. granted, there were some interesting souls waiting with me, but still handy. then you just hop two feet to the pharmacy and get your scripts. ingenious.
so i went home armed with my antibiotics and lidocaine to a restful house where i could just lay around for days... resting and recuperating. ha ha.... well, close enough.
so with nothing really to blog about, i will just throw up some pics from the pumpkin patch. you definitely don't want to see pics of me at this point.

16 months ago today

here is a story some may know, some do not. i feel it is important to share, so that you never do it to your own child, or that you do not pass judgement on those of us who have.

my family has a long history of going to bennett springs to fly fish, and they were planning to meet there just shy of 6 weeks after i delivered baby maggie. we were itching to get out of the house, so it was pretty easy to be convinced to join the rest of my family there for a relaxing weekend.

it was hard managing all four of them, but when we drove somewhere down there i would be in charge of maggie and carson, jeff would take over molly and ashton. that way we each had one big, one little.

my mom was really good about watching maggie so that jeff and i could take the bigger three out to do stuff like walking, fishing, swimming, etc. on the second day we were there we loaded up and headed to the pool. it was hot and steamy that day, and looked like it could rain. a muggy miserable day. my dad told us there was a little nature center that the kids would enjoy and that would be something for us to do until the rain passed over.

we loaded up and went down the street to the place. we are walking around inside, enjoying the icy cold air conditioning, showing the kids the fish and things that live in a stream.

i remember it vividly.

jeff came around one of the exhibits and asked me "where is maggie?"

confused, i responded "i don't know"
i felt panicked, in a way i can't ever describe. panic in a way that eats through your heart like acid. i still can't find words to convey what my body felt at that moment.

"where the h#ll is maggie?" he asks again, calm but with anger washing over his face.

my mind swirled and tried to answer. think jen, think. where is your baby? i had no idea. wasn't she with my mom? was she in here somewhere? did i leave her in the entry way where we came in? where was she?

i had no clue. none what so ever. jeff looked panicked. pale.

i felt like i was going to pass out, the room was spinning. why couldn't i think?

he looked at the car keys i was holding in my hand. sh#t. sh#t. sh#t.

he said something about the van and i just threw the keys at him and said run.

hot, muggy. i grabbed the kids and ran out to the parking lot. in my head i was thinking, how do i resuscitate her? how long has she been strapped into her car seat suffocating?


my stomach started trying to empty its contents, my heart started racing, and my eyes couldn't focus. tears sat in my eyes but couldn't come out.

he opened the van door and all i could see was that her eyes were closed.

"she's fine" he said.

"are you sure?" immediately i fall over and sob uncontrollably. my breath is gone, i can't see and jeff is telling me she is ok. molly is asking why i am so sad.

here is the kicker. as i reach in to touch her sweet sleeping face, the van is cool. it is cool and comfortable, and she is sleeping and not the least bit hot.


we were parked in the blacktop parking lot, out in the sun, middle of a midwest summer.

the air is so hot and muggy it is hard to breathe kind of hot.


but the inside of the van is cool.

we drove back to the cabin, sobbing, shaking, and knowing sweet maggie has a guardian angel.

everyone makes mistakes, sometimes giant ones. the only thing that separates me from that poor dad who left his baby in the car at the train station is that i was given another chance.

the new debate

here is something new to vote on... so you think you can dance vs. dancing with the stars.
do you like the not so experienced celebrity dancers or the well trained athletic and young dancers?

the bulk of my friends think it is goofy and i am silly for loving it, but i am just geeky in that sense. the things that entertain me are a little dorky. that being said, this mom had a ball watching the so you think you can dance tour when it stopped in kansas city this week.

we started with floor seats, but had to move because my little ones couldn't see much around the people in front of us.

we went to ted's montana grill downtown for dinner where they give out these awesome little toys instead of crayons. they are called wikkistix and they bend and stick without leaving a mess.

ingenious!! www.wikkistix.com go check them out for hours of creative non messy, non toxic play. (i should be getting paid to say that)

here is a little clip from the show, one of my favorite routines this year, created for the choreographer's daughter who is severely disabled and will sadly not every be able to dance.




unknown to me, my sugar hound had consumed an entire bag of cotton candy during the show.
it was bigger than him.
he was a little out of it the rest of the night...

puddin belly

hmmmm..... this is what my husband was doing downstairs with maggie while i was upstairs feverishly trying to bathe the rest of them tonight.


he said she noticed her belly sticking out half way through and was trying to squish it back in.
nice.

dirty birdy

oh you dirty birdy... i think we should leave the acorns for the squirrels.
obama might be able to hide his dirty little friends from the media for the most part, but little bits are seeping out. what intriguing little juicy bits have come out recently.

lets see, how many dirty little friends does he have? well we don't know yet. we do know he is at least "acquaintances" with jeramiah wright, bill ayers, louis farrakahn, tony rezko, and many individuals involved with the ultra ethical group we know as acorn. why are there so many flies flocking around him?
now many of you know already, but for those who don't mr. ayers is the man who hates america, who is responsible for terrorist attacks on government buildings, who wears a ring made of a us plane gunned down over vietnam. he was released of criminal charges and said ten minutes later "guilty as hell, free as a bird. america is a great country" or his other quote i like a lot " i don't regret setting bombs, i feel we didn't do enough." nice mr. ayers, were any of your family members in there?
well they weren't that close you say? that is a bold face LIE. they worked together for years, he launched his political campaign from ayer's living room, (would you have your political coming out party at a strangers house?) and their wives even worked together!!

now, he says he didn't realize his pastor (for twenty years) was an anti american racist. lets see, the members of his church all swear by "the black values system". really scary stuff. down with the evil white man kind of stuff. wright feels that obama could be our messiah.
come on people use your heads!!! why would he attend church there for the better part of his life and subject his little girls to that if he didn't believe in him? are there no other churches in chicago? give me a break.

now, that brings me to louis farrakhan. lets talk about anti american racists shall we? obama's church awarded this scary man a lifetime achievement award!! are you serious? this man calls whites "blue eyed devils" and jewish people "bloodsuckers" there is a great youtube clip of farrakhan preaching about when obama talks "the messiah is absolutely speaking".
well i must say the god i pray to is definitely not for infanticide or teaching my 5 year old sex education.

we may be hearing more about obama's neighbor and friend tony rezko. tony is a real estate developer who was convicted this past june of using his clout with the governor of chicago to get 7 million dollars in kickbacks on dirty little schemes and firms doing business with the state. rezko has raised over 100,000 dollars for obama's campaign.
now these guys were buddies, when obama bought his house the rezko's bought the lot right next door on the same day in a planned arrangement.

and finally we have acorn. this is a democratic group which supports very low income people.
great you say? no, not great. dirty little birds. and lets see.... who worked together to fund this group hundreds of thousands of dollars????? hmmmmmm.... now who could that be?
oh that is right, obama and his pal bill ayers. they worked on a second little board together, just a touch corrupt.

now lets see, all these voter registration frauds we have going on in thirteen (mostly battleground) states.... lets see, oh shocking they are democratic voters 4:1. that is odd isn't it? it is also odd that obama has funded this corrupt little group with $800,000 bucks. you have acorn people busing in low income people from the inner city and taking them to register to vote, sending in voter registration forms and now we are realizing, hey these are not real voters. a lot of the people acorn helped get sub prime loans are realizing they have to make their house payments? what? you mean i actually have to pay for that loan you gave me? funny thing is, these are the same people blaming the republicans for getting us into this mess.
sorry charlie why don't you ask your "messiah" to help you out now.

how many dirty little friends does one need to have before they are considered dirty themselves? i mean, how many of your close friends have ever said they hate america? have bombed federal buildings? state they hate the white man? i don't have any and i bet you don't either... not very many of us do.
you know what, if obama hussein pulls this off, if people are really such flippin followers they can't see through him, then you get what you ask for. what other countries must be thinking of us right now.

Carson

my baby

camping

we were inspired after watching jon and kate where they had a fun filled family camp out
in their back yard. after lots of preparation, shopping and a stroke of luck which found me off on a friday night, we were able to pull it off. the princess pictured above was going to have nothing to do with sleeping outdoors, per mom's request... aren't i clever?
so dad and the big kids put up the tent, built a fire and slept the ENTIRE night outdoors.
i was amazed they lasted, well almost... ashton found his way into my bed around 10:30.





fyi - the little glowsticks from wal-mart for 88 cents each are extra bright and much better than the dollar store necklaces.




warning: 3 year old + hammer = danger






ahhhh, the wilderness.




late night poker tournament in the tent with the neighbor friends.



the fire pit purchased with the one purpose of making

smores.... my favorite treat.

passing judgment

holy cow i am a horrid, judgmental person. i really mean it. i judge people like im getting paid to do it. take my neighbors for example. this is when i really got struck in the face with my own hatefulness.

we have three families on my cul de sac so far. myself, my neighbors adjacent to me and a young couple we call the dinks. double income no kids. they are cute and young and seemingly wealthy, they never come out to socialize with me and my circus of children. the girl is skinny, pretty and trendy. she always looks very professional and drives a nice shiny new car. not a dusty minivan. she does not walk around in sweats with a sloppy pony tail. when she goes for a jog she is all cute and matching and she can actually run. unlike myself who probably resembles a stuck hog trying to get back to her trough.

so do i like them? no, i always assumed they were way into themselves. today their little cute dogs got loose so she yelled at me and asked if i had seen them. i had not, although my children had been poking things at them under their giant beautiful fence as recently as yesterday.

tonight i saw her pull in and i asked if she had found them, yes thanks she had.

then i started making small talk.

thats when i got slapped in my demon mean judgmental face.

she just got approved to adopt, they had to pay a fortune through a local company. they are out of savings now because they have spent everything on IVF cycles which proved unsuccessful.

she has been married two years and has spent about a year and a half of that time desperately trying to have a baby. she is sick with wanting children. she doesnt care now if they are biological or not, she just wants to become a family, like me.

ummmmm..... yikes.

i just got back from culvers with all four (and my husband to help thank goodness) while they were tossing drinks on the ground, slopping up ice cream, giggling, just being a family.

im currently getting ready to throw my dusty sticky children in the tub and tuck them into their beds, kiss their sweet faces and say prayers.

and then i will say my own prayer to thank god that i so easily had a family and to help me please please be less hateful and much more kind.