woo-hoo!!!

high school started off a little rough for my sweet girl. it took a little while to figure things out, and her grades suffered. buuuut, look at her now!!!

that's her english grade, baby!

all her other grades are pretty darn good too.

i knew she would get it!

a working day

today was a good day. 

a good, working day and nice end to a kind of 'bleh' week.

and a very 'bleh' night last night. i had a bad mommy night. i know they will come, but just knowing that doesn't make them any easier to take. how come parenting, and disciplining in particular, are so easy for me, and black and white, for the 2 and under crowd. but when it comes to the big kids, forget it! very little seems black and white there. it's almost all gray. i'm sure that's part of my problem, more needs to be black and white. we are in need of a serious family meeting and the setting of some new rules and the re-setting of some not-so-new-rules.

anywho, the rest of the week was kind of 'bleh' because we just got back from vacation and i gave myself full license to take it easy (code for be laaaaazy) all week to ease myself back into the swing of things. i maintained things all week, instead of improved things.

at any given time, i have a list a mile long of things to do, and another, equally long list of projects that need to be done. some projects are started, some not at all. for example, i've got my half done photo collage wall and my 7 full gallons of paint in the garage that i have yet to use.

today was good.

now there's only 6 gallons left.

matt was away for his navy weekend so i decided that today we were going to work. i layed down the law for the big kids and told them that if they wanted to do anything today, they owed me some working time. in exchange they would get paid, get permission, and get a ride to the fair tonight.

and they were so, so good! alexis took the babies to the park for 2 (two!) hours before naps, while christian mowed the grass, helped me prep the entryway for paint, and vacuumed. 

it was pretty rad.

i thought painting the entryway would be quick. yeah, not so much. i did have to take a break to put the babies down for their naps, take lexi's friend home, go to the store, (including a quick stop by bath and body works for a super cute free tote and 3 free items!) make pasta salad for tonights bbq, and do the laundry.

here are ma' paint shorts. 

everyone has 'em, right?

they started off as honeymoon shorts.

(meaning i bought them ((along with a few other cute outfits)) special and saved them to wear on the honeymoon).

but then matt hated them. 

so when we bought our first house and started painting everything in sight, they became paint shorts.

i think there's paint from every room we've painted on these bad boys.

 before.

 ugly scuff marks from the ugly, builders grade paint.

ugly.

 after.

 it came out waaaaay darker than i thought it would. am i ever gonna get good at choosing paint? at this point, i'm thinking no. either way, it's better than it was before. and maybe in a few years i'll muster enough willpower to re-paint it. we shall see.

 anyways, the kids continued to help all throughout the day. i, of course, got behind on myself. the bbq started at 5 and by 5 i still wasn't even finished painting. i didn't make it to the beach till 6, but it's all good. i dropped the big kids off at the fair and went to the bbq. even though i remembered to bring my camera, i didn't take any pictures. in my defense, i did have both of the girls by myself. even though sweet katie took frankie to the park and kept her most of the time. and even though sweet joseph took addie down to the beach and i just got to sit and visit with good friends. i couldn't be bothered with pictures. 

so there.

(in case your wondering, matt got home late and thought a quiet night at home ((washing cars and fertilizing grass, i swear that boy cannot sit still!)) sounded better than a fun bbq). 

 and that was the good end to a 'bleh' week. :)

neighborhood easter egg hunt

i thought addie was going to have to miss our annual neighborhood easter egg hunt because it was on the saturday that we left for spring break. but then i heard a lot of people were taking their kids to the friday night "flashlight egg hunt," so i decided to take her to try it out.

daddy had to outfit her with plenty of lighting.

i carried a big flashlight, she carried a little one, and had a book reading light attached to her basket.

she was excited at first, but it was cold and she lost steam quickly.

she was just as happy jumping off the curb onto the sidewalk.

when we got home everyone came to check out her loot.

she's a sweet sharing girl. we went through a few eggs and then packed the rest away for our trip.

it's fun to have a neighborhood with traditions and get togethers. they have hunts for all ages but the big kids declined to come. at least next year we'll have 2 little ones to go!

what's that?

frankie's new favorite thing to say is "what's that?" she says it all the time, all day long. it doesn't ever get old!

ps - sorry the video is so dark, it was bedtime. :)

addie the ballerina

i was playing with addie on the computer awhile ago and we found a dora ballet site where you can dress dora and pick different ballet moves and put them all together to make a ballet performance. addie liked the game well enough, but since then she has been doing ballet all over the house. when matt gets home she commands him to play music for her (he only knows one song on the piano, but she doesn't care) and she dances her little heart out. before we left for florida, i had moved the table out of the dining room so i could shark it and addie loved her big dance floor.

she's holding blue play-dough in those jazz hands.

and this way...

and now the other way...

i really like this move.

and twirl!

and fall.

maybe when she turns three we'll start her in ballet, but for now we're happy with our 'nastics and ballet around the house. :)

day 7 - leaving orlando and day 8 - HOME!

saturday brought another sloooow day. we thought we had set a realistic goal to be on the road by 10, but that time came and went and we hadn't left yet. then right before we did, addie threw up the apple i had forced her to eat. (i felt sooo bad!) then when we drove up to the registration office to turn in keys, we found that we had left a movie in the dvd player at the apartment and then addie started throwing up agian. by the time the car had stopped and i'd gotten back to her, her eyes had rolled up in her head and she was limp.so, so thankful that i saw her when i did! we got her cleaned up and changed, went back to the apartment for the movie and then off to fill the tires that matt had noticed were low. while we were dealing with addie vomit, mindy was dealing with jack's sunburn and blisters. you gotta love traveling with kids!!! addie threw up again at the gas station, so we got to fish another new outfit out of our suitcases since we had already used the spare from the diaper bag. it's so hard to see your baby sick and not be able to hold and cuddle her! but we had no choice and she fell asleep by the time we'd made it to the knock-off disney store. i stayed with addie while everyone went in and was taking sicky-poo pictures of her on my phone to send to auntie henna. here was the first one.

we had given her a bucket to use in case she felt sick. so after the first picture i took of her she held up the bucket like this. i thought she was playing with me, you know like "no more pictures!" i even said to her, "oh you're done with me taking pictures of you?" it took me a few seconds to realize that she wasn't playing, she was throwing up again! i felt so, so bad! and she is such a good girl, she got it all in her bucket!

 she took a long nap after that, and when she woke up she felt better. and thankfully that was the end of the throw-up. that was also the end of the pictures that i took that first travel day. we ended up leaving orlando at 1. we drove pretty fast all day, until about 8 that night when we hit traffic. we had talked about getting up early to try to beat the north carolina/virginia traffic, so that's what we did. i called choice hotels and found a good priced room and we got to our hotel by 8:30. the kids went swimming and i ordered food. 

the next morning we were up by 5 and on the road, with breakfast, by 5:45. we made suuuuuch good time! everyone slept and we were able to drive for a long time with no interruptions.

the way we roll.

i hurt my neck before we had left for the trip and i felt stiff and a little bit sore all week. then that morning i woke up and was in some serious pain. i couldn't even really lay down without severe pain. so i made myself a neck brace so i could sleep without pain.

gheeeeto.

and north carolina has some awesome wig billboards. some day i want to stop and check out those there wigs!

we were making such good time that when mindy asked if we'd like to get some cracker barrell before heading home, we said yes! i had ulterior motives though. we never did have a nice birthday dinner for matt, so i made sure to get the message to our servers that it was his birthday. only a week late, but whatever. :)

the 2-year-olds were restless while we waited, so someone showed them how to get sugar out of the packets. 

yay! more sugar!

frankie was itching to get down, so while i was ordering (and not really thinking about it) i let her down and she crawled underneath the table and over to brytana. when she picked her up, frankie had something in her mouth. it was a piece of food from under the table!!!

eewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

these friends got along the whole trip! they did a lot better than i thought they would. :)

the whole gang.

and finally, a little birthday celebration!

we got home at 5 o'clock and it was such a beautiful day! we unloaded the car and went for a walk. we got everyone to bed early and tried to be ready for the next day.

we had a super fun vacation! on a scale of 1-10, we both rate our vacation an 8.
you can't get much better than that, right?

day 6 - celebrating easter and cocoa beach

mindy and i went out for virgin pina colada's on thursday night. i know, part-ay!!! when we got home (after midnight, big time part-ay!), we put together the kids easter baskets. so that morning we celebrated easter. :)

we got addie and izzy both "tangled" barbie dolls and mindy was sure that izzy was gonna freak out. as it turned out, izzy didn't really care about hers, but addie loved hers. i'm so excited, i think i just got my barbie player! alexis never (ever!) played with barbies or any kind of play dolls for that matter. but addie, she's my girl. she loved that doll! yay!

barely awake and twinsies, lexi and sydney.

jack was the only one willing to search for eggs. you go, jack!

playing with her barbie on the way out to cocoa beach!

all matt really wanted to do in florida was go surfing. so of course, friday came around and he still hadn't been surfing. we had originally planned that we would all go to cocoa beach, but then mindy and i got to thinking that maybe matt would like a day to himself. cause a day with no kids is like a little slice of heaven. (so is a day with kids though, right?) so then he decided that he would go alone on friday. but then when the kids woke up and we told them we weren't going to the beach, they all protested and were all "but you promised we'd go to the beach!" and so even though it was an hour and a half drive, they all wanted to go. i'm so glad we did, it was so fun!

another reason for going - ron jon surf shop!

can you see the billboard?

after tons of traffic and a small detour by the kennedy space station to try for an alligator sighting (we didn't see any), we finally got to cocoa beach. we parked and walked to ron jon where matt and lex got shirts and we all got body boards.

silly surfer girls!

mindy and i got mcdonalds for everyone and matt and ben went to go see about renting surfboards. after eating our sandy lunch, it was down to the beach we went and it was gorgeous! i should have taken a picture of the beach, it looked so cute with all the rainbow and bright umbrellas everywhere. addie and izzy loved running in and out of the water. matt, ben, and jack went out to catch some waves with their body boards

addie would find a spot, sit down, and wait for the waves. and then she'd act super surprised when the waves came! so funny!

matt and jack got super sunburned, so they both wore shirts at the beach.

daddy rides.

and izzy's turn.

 frankie still hated the water.

  she was happy just cuddling with mindy.

sweet baby.

she was done.

then after awhile, izzy was done. and then addie was done.

matt finally rented a board and this was the one good picture we had of him.

lexi, brytana, and i went out to catch some waves and while we were heading out, i got to see matt stand on his board. he didn't know i was out there and i was cat-calling him and whistling. then when he saw it was me, he paddled over and we shared an atlantic ocean kiss.

these 3 chicks swam all the way out to the buoys. twice! it was so. much. fun!!! we were dodging waves and getting dunked. i don't ever want to grow up!!!

on our way! notice i strategically cropped our nether-regions. ;) it's better for all of us. trust me.

there's my mans hat. can you spy him?

ben.

cocoa beach was seriously fun! we had sand in every crevice and nook and cranny of our stroller, towels, and bags. sand everywhere is sooo summer!

we stayed until after 5 and then mindy and crew had to rush to try to catch their movie at downtown disney. (matt and i stayed with the babes). they ended up missing the movie, but enjoyed a nice stroll and dinner at carraba's. i would have gone, but was starting to have anxiety about alllll the laundry, cleaning, and packing that needed to happen before the voyage home. so that's what i did and it was a perfectly happy ending to a perfectly happy vacation day.