It's Not Wichita, Part II

Snow in October!!!!!!

Pumpkin Carving Family Home Evening

Things never work out the way you envision them in a family. I was excited to do our annual pumpkin carving with the kids last night. Because of some rather annoying work/financial circumstances (that I will blog about at some point) we have not done a lot of our usual fun stuff, like the pumpkin patch trip and all. When asked if I have been excited about Halloween my emotional response is generally, "NO, we have no money." But, John's parents gave us the pumpkins that grew in their garden and I had kept the fact that we had pumpkins a secret, so yes this time I was excited. I was excited enough to get dinner made and finished early, and to even load the dish washer for Ruth so we could get straight to pumpkin carving. At first the kids were like, "How can we carve pumpkins when we have no pumpkins?" I just sent them to do the chore of getting the pumpkins out of the car. While removing the pumpkins from the car, Ruth, Kate, and Johnny chose the ones they wanted with only a small tiff. Everyone seemed pretty happy. Since we only had 2 pumpkin carving knifes, John and I cut the tops off of all of the pumpkins. At first things were fairly calm. Joseph went to sleep, Rachel and Anya didn't seem to mind taking turns and everyone was intrigued with or disgusted by their goop enough to be pleasantly busy. We sang a couple of Halloween songs and, John got the camera set up on the tripod to take some pictures of our happy family. Not too long after that things started to slowly change. Anya took her diaper off and began climbing on the table. That led to some good, "don't try the lemonade jokes", but she started struggling and getting grumpy as John tried to wrestle a clean diaper on her. So our peace was broken up by a 1 year old's screams. Adam finished de-gooping his pumpkin first. He wanted to put a pattern on his pumpkin to help him carve a face, so I taped one on. As the other kids began finishing they wanted to tape a pattern on too. John was annoyed with this. Said he, "I like you creativity better!" I gave Rachel a pattern, but she just began bawling that it was not staying on, she needed more tape, etc. So now we had a 3 year old's screams added to the 1 year old's. John and Kate argued and eventually Kate decided to do what Dad wanted and created her own face. Around this time Ruth walked a round the table and stepped on a sharp cookie cutter used to clean out the pumpkins and gouged her foot pretty badly. John got a bandaid on it right away, but this put a definite damper on the fun. Because we only had 2 carving knives I decided it would work best if we took turns cutting out one feature at a time. Adam and Johnny did this very well, but Ruth and Kate did not. Fortunatley by the time Ruth and Kate were unhappily taking turns, Anya had settled down. Things were okay.

About the time I finished helping Johnny and Adam carve pumpkins,  Joseph woke up hungry. I took Joseph into the other room to feed him. While I was feeding Joseph, Anya came in, took off her diaper again and began dancing around naked. But she soon decided she wanted her diaper back on. She tried to put her wet diaper back on her bottom and when that failed she put it on her head. Okay so now a bath became a must. I finished feeding Joseph and put Rachel and Anya in the bathtub together. Joseph would not be out down, so I had to hold him or listen to him scream. I wanted to take a few pictures of this event (we hadn't really gotten to that much, and Ruth, Rachel, and Anya were all bathing--Ruth in a separate tub.) So John took Joseph while I tried taking a few pictures. While taking pictures, we heard some serious gagging coming from the little girls bath. John went to check and Rachel had puked in the bath tub. John was still holding Joseph. I put Rachel over the toilet, but their was still puke in the bathtub with Anya. I grabbed Joseph and put him down so he started screaming. Adam came into the bathroom (arrg) to check out the sight. But we kicked him out. I got John the cleaning stuff. He started the tub draining and the cleaning of the bathroom. Because we had already had two baths going and filled all of the way, we had to shower Rachel and Anya off in luke warm water. While I was showering off the screaming girls, John was trying to solicit the older kids to hold the screaming baby and clean up the huge pumpkin mess while he finished cleaning the puke mess. Kate picked up Joseph and he spat up all over her. We had to help her with that. Finally, we got Rachel and Anya in their pajamas, gave up on the kitchen/pumpkin mess for a time, and put Adam, Rachel, and Anya to bed. I then cleaned a bunch of the kitchen mess, but gave up on that as Joseph was still crying. I fed Joseph and read to the older kids, and John finished the kitchen mess, and then put Joseph in his bed for the night. Instead of a happy, fun family night. I think we were all just relieved when it was over, but disappointed that it was not fun. Maybe we will all be well and happy for trick or treating and have a great Halloween.

My Really Weird Husband

John wears his winter coat in the house almost every morning, but he never wears his coat when he goes outside. If I say, "It is cold. You will want to wear your coat, " when we are going out John will say, "I am not cold. I will be fine." (I usually say this when it is less than 50 degrees F out.) But every morning when I wake up and the house is between 68 and 72 degrees John is wearing his great big winter coat, two pairs of pajama bottoms, and his really big, thick sweat shirt. I think there is something wrong with all of this. Maybe John should jog for a half hour on the treadmill every morning to warm up :))!!!!!

Why?????

Why is it that whenever we have boys come to our house to play, they leave with the entire downstairs torn apart, and when girls come to our house to play there is usually no visible difference?

Why do my kids eat all of the erasers off of the pencils, chew the plastic on pens, chew up their shirts, tooth brushes, and all nerf balls, but hey will not eat things like eggs, beans, rice, cheerios, hotdogs, and hamburgers etc.?????

Blog Title and Big Families

I have been unsatisfied with my blog titles for some time. But I think I have finally found one that fits. We will have to see. John didn't like toomanykids because while he knew that I meant it as a joke and a reference to all of the people who tell me that I have too many kids, he didn't like me using anything negative. I went with Hope while we were selling our house in reference to hoping this ends soon. Then I could not think of a good title so I stuck in All my little ducklings until I could think of something better. I have now thought of The More the Merrier in reference to how I really feel about my children. and how both my husband and I felt about growing up in big families. Having said that, I want to say a little bit about big families. Some time ago I thought it might be nice to join an internet group of moms with lots of children. I never did, but I did read a lot of articles on big families and I started following the TLC Duggar family some. (Now that we have cable with our HOA fee, I  watch their show faithfully. I really think they are a light to the world.) But because I read a bunch of stuff I got to learn a bit more about what other people besides the other Target shoppers think. From them I get things like "Don't you know what causes this?" to "Why did you do this to yourself?" or "Your hands are full." But in reading about the topic people tend to say things more like  "How can anyone who cares about the future of the planet go about brazenly overpopulating it like this?" And a lot of other mothers of big families typically do not like the religious stereotype portrayed by the Duggar family. Anyway,  I thought I might list some of my reasons for having a big family. Like the Duggars, having a big family was very religiously motivated for both my husband and I. Without our religion I cannot honestly say that we would not have gone with the social norm and had no more than 3 kids. However, we feel like the commandment God gave to Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth is still in effect today. We have made covenants in the Holy temple to multiply and replenish the earth as well, and we take this very seriously. We do not want to get to next life and find that we did not have all of the children God wanted us to have because of our choices. The second reason would be that while every time we get pregnant with another child we are very nervous about how to fit one more kid in the house, the car, and the budget, as soon as we have that little one home we just can't see how life was ever good without him or her. We really and truly love each of our children, and God has always made a good way for us to take care of our childrens' needs. Of course it is a lot of hard work, but I can't think of any good thing that doesn't come from a lot of hard work. That also tells us that if we decided to not have any more children because most of the people we know think that we should not have anymore children, we may miss out on another precious child. The third reason we have chosen to have a big family is that we both grew up in big families and we loved it. Our siblings are our best friends now as adults, and we had a lot of fun with them as kids. Our kids love, love, love all of their aunts, uncles, and cousins, so we want to give to our children the same thing that our parents gave to us. Of course, I understand that choosing to have a big family is NOT for everyone. There are a lot of people who really and truly cannot handle the chaos that comes with having a lot of children. Some people have genetic issues that makes it so they cannot have healthy children, and there are a lot of couples that would like to have large families that have just not been able to have them. I am not trying to judge the choices of other people for not having a lot of children or not having any children. I am stating why John and I have chosen to have the large family that we do. I think that God has blessed us tremendously with my healthy body and the 7 smart, healthy, and good children that we do have. We are very lucky to have gotten such a fun, big family and I love it everyday. I would not go back in time and have less children or space them farther apart. i am very satisfied with the choices we have made as well as the surprises we received from God. I think we are perfect, and yes we may have one or two more.

Budding Talent

Johnny beat his New Super Mario Brothers DS game that he got for his birthday in less than a month, and
Kate drew these pictures of Calvin and Hobbes free hand.

All of the Recent Funny Things

1. Kate made up this great song to the tune of the theme song in "Enchanted". It goes like this:                      I've been dreaming so sincerely of a  Prince with a Master's Degree. When we asked her why, Kate said she wants to have a lot of children and to stay home with them, so she really does want to marry some one who has done what he needs to to make enough money to pay for a big family.
   
2. When Rachel sings the song "Families Can Be Together Forever" she sings, "famwees can be forgether toever".
3. Whenever Joseph starts feeling unhappy or hungry he sticks his bottom lip way out in a perfect pout. It is soooo darn cute.
4. My mom cut my hair. When kate came home from school she said, "You cut your hair!" I said, "Yeah, do you like it."  Kate said, "This is how it is: your hair looked really good. I think this is a BIG STEP DOWN!"