Life At The Circus

February is here.  I am happy to say I’ve finally put away all our Christmas decor and while it isn’t completely conquered, I have tamed the laundry beast and gotten somewhat of a grip on the house chores and school work.  For now So, with this new month, I’ve set some goals for some things I’d like to get done around the house.   And thanks to two different blogging friends, I have some accountability and inspiration.  Thanks Andrea and Becky !!    Andrea is hosting a sew along.  She’s been posting some adorable dresses and pants with pockets and all sorts of cute things she whips up in her “spare time.”  I typically look at them, drool, and think, “if only” and “perhaps I should forward the link to my SIL or my mom, people who actually use their sewing machines!”  But, then she introduced this concept of a sew along and I was intrigued.    This is her plan: Week 1: Know your machine- This is for abso...

My oldest two have gotten into the habit of “e-mailing” each other at the beginning of nap time.    And by e-mailing they really mean they are drawing pictures and writing messages back and forth to each other.  We’ve worked out a system in which they are allowed to e-mail for the first 30 minutes of nap time.  Then, they have to have quiet time in separate rooms for the remaining hour and a half.   I have become a huge fan of the e-mailing time.  It is quite precious as a mom to hear them whisper and slipping messages to each other under their doors.  It is the most peaceful, argument free time of my day.  And sometimes I permit the e-mail time to extend past the designated 30 minute time slot. These e-mails are not paper less however and quite a lot of drawings and messages are created each week.  I simply can not save them all as we’d be drowning in paper trails.  But, from time to time I set aside some gems that I s...

The other night as we were driving home from out of town friends, our youngest complained that her belly didn’t feel good.  A few minutes later I heard a cough and knew instantly what it meant.  We pulled over and began clean up.  For once I was thankful for our less than clean minivan as it provided numerous things for us to use as barf bags and clean up rags for the remaining hour drive home.  Once home, we got her clothes in the wash and got the kiddos ready for bed.  Scott and I began preparations with militaristic regime and efficiency.   We instantly had the kids get all of their beloved stuffed animals and blankets off of their beds.  Each kid was allowed to sleep with one blanket and their washable lovey.  I wanted to limit the amount of laundry that would need done if the inevitable occurred. We convinced my son not to sleep on the top bunk.  We gave each kid a bowl “just in case” and we braced ourselves for a long night a...

One thing my husband and I try to stress to our kids is that life is not all about them.   We love them dearly, and pour much of our time, love, energy and attention out onto them.   But, because we love them, we also try to teach them that life does not revolve around them. We are a family of 5  soon to be 6.  So, in a lot of ways this is a lesson that is taught early on out of practicality.  We just can’t meet everyone’s needs all the time right when they think they should be met.  Sometimes you have to wait.  And sometimes you have to go to places and events that you may not want to go to.  But, if you cry and throw a tantrum about either, you will calmly be told, “I am sorry you are disappointed and don’t like this, but life is not all about you.”  With this in mind, I thought it was so funny the other day when my almost four year old said to me quite out of the blue, “Mom, ya know, I wish life was all about me.”  ...

That’s right after her total regression back to diapers in August (after a completely embarrassing trip to the grocery store which involved my wiping pee up off of the floor--twice, the shopping cart, not to mention our groceries….I thought I would never leave the house with her in underwear again) but after Christmas we decided to give the ol potty train a  try once more.  My mom told her at Christmas it could be her New Years resolution.  To which she replied in her sing songy voice, “resolution?  I don’t have any resolutions!” She was ready this time.  We’ve been accident free during the day for several weeks now and this week we took the plunge and starting putting her to bed in her underwear.   It’s official folks…after 5.5 years…the circus is diaper free (for 4 months anyway).

January has been hard for me.  We have our Christmas decorations down, but still not put away.   There is a underlying sense of clutter and chaos lurking around the circus, rather than the clean slate, fresh start of a new year.    I long for a good, deep clean to get things in order, top to bottom and help me to feel on top of things once again.   But, it seems each day I am pulled by the more immediate needs of the day… sick kids… volunteering at school, entertaining guests, New Years cards (never got to the Christmas cards, did print New Years cards and really wanted them mailed before Feb), and school work.  At the end of the day, I am working on dinner and cleaning up dinner and then this pregnant momma has no energy to tackle the deep cleaning… or to be honest, even the laundry for that matter.  And so, I plop myself down on the couch and watch some of Lost season 5 with my hubby, before retiring to bed, hopeful that tomorrow will ...

My son always has tons of questions about the world around him and the way things work.  Most of the time, I am at a loss as to how to answer these questions.  For example, the other day he wanted to know about signals and how we could see them.  As in, radio signals or cell phone signals.  He wondered if they were like infrared light and could only be seen with special glasses or if we can’t see them at all.  I had no clue and suggested he bring the topic up with his dad b/c, “Daddy knows a lot about signals and things like that.”   I’ll be honest… quite often, I have to suggest he bring his question to Daddy b/c Daddy knows a lot about that subject.  Like how e-mails make it from our computer to Daddy’s work….or infrared light making the remote tell the tv to turn on…and countless other things. So, I found it particularly endearing the other night when the two of us were driving to catechism and he says, “Mom, what’s something you know about t...

I have found that by planning my meals for the month, I can drastically reduce our families grocery spending.   It takes time and a whole lot of effort though.  And to be honest the past several months I wasn’t so good about it.  But, then Scott and I sat down and took a look at our spending.  And we realized that we needed to be a whole lot better about sticking to our budget.  And so, the first thing I did at the beginning of the month is sit down with google calendar and plan out my meals.  I made my grocery list based on this meal plan.  Then I took a trip to Walmart to stock up on a months worth of groceries.  I kid you not three separate people looked at me and my overflowing cart and one actually laughed at it.  Some may think planning your meals out for a month isn’t flexible enough.  Basically, it is a rough estimate.  I can still switch things up a bit, but I know that aside from milk and produce, I have everythi...

Sometimes the music in my car radio really serves as nothing more than background noise to the chattering or squabbling going on in the back seat and the to do lists and other random thoughts going on in my brain.  One day though something about the lyrics caused me to take pause and listen.  I turned the radio up and even though I’ve heard the song countless times before, I listened to it for the first time. It was called “The Change” by Steven Curtis Chapman. Well I got myself a T-shirt that says what I believe I got letters on my bracelet to serve as my ID I got the necklace and the key chain And almost everything a good Christian needs, yeah I got the little Bible magnets on my refrigerator door And a welcome mat to bless you before you walk across my floor I got a Jesus bumper sticker And the outline of a fish stuck on my car And even though this stuff's all well and good, yeah I cannot help but ask myself ...

Didn’t take many pics around the circus this week, but when I downloaded pics off of my camera this afternoon,  I stumbled across this gem from last week.  Please help me pick a title.  My brain is a bit mushy this Friday afternoon.  Winning caption gets put at the top of my post!   I know that’s an honor your all scrambling to achieve, so please… tell me your thoughts and brighten this circus mom’s day with some comment love! And while your thinking, I’ll throw this one in for giggles as well.

This morning I woke to sounds of my daughter coughing…I stumbled into her room to comfort her and set up her nebulizer, thinking to myself that at least I had gotten 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Then my eyes focused a bit more and I took a second look at the clock.  It was 6:15, not 1:15! We slept through the night!  I felt much like a new mom the morning after her baby makes it all night without a feeling!  Instantly rejuvenated with the mere knowledge that I had a full night of sleep! More exciting that a full night of rest was the realization that the girls had made it through the night without any major coughing episodes.  My middle child,  who struggles with asthma and was diagnosed with pneumonia yesterday (that’s right she tackled stitches and pneumonia in the same week) had gone 11 hrs without needing a breathing treatment!  As I put the medicine in her nebulizer and set her up, I couldn’t wait to e-mail Scott and tell him our good new...

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Our little girl really is super girl and she proved it last night .  She is crazy tough.  So let me cut to the chase and say that her injury was pretty bad.  The need for stitches was obvious but even the doctor had not realized at first that it was so deep it would require both internal and external stitches.  My girl had been cut deep.  The coffee table/toy box had cut all the way to the bone.  What’s amazing is that the by the time I got home with the car she had stopped crying.  Blood all over the phone and table.  I felt like crying.  But my girl.  She’s tough.  I didn’t know fully how tough she was until Scott got home from their trip to the “boo boo doctor”and filled me in on the details of their visit.  When they got to the office, they filled out the necessary paper work and waited in the room.   This is her as she happily entertained  herself with a bag of cheerios and our phone.  Seriously, if ...

Tonight is one of those nights when I am extra thankful that God has given me a helpmate in life.  And not just any helpmate, but one of the best. My three year old was getting on the couch this evening, and if you know my girls, you know that they do this with much exuberance, so somewhere during the twirl she slipped and fell back, hitting her head on our toy box/coffee table. I was out at the time and so I received a call saying I needed to come home with the car b/c our daughter needed stitches.  I was already in the car and ready to head home, so I continued on my way. My son and I prayed for his sister as I drove home.  I can honestly say I wasn’t panicked though.  Because I knew Scott was home and in control.  If anyone else had been with her, I know my Mommy heart would have been breaking.  But, I felt complete peace knowing that Scott was home managing the situation.  As I got close to home I called to let him know and to see if we w...

Last night I finally got around to updating my circus cast page ….it was LONG overdue and quite outdated, not to mention incorrectly formatted!  Take a minute and let me know what you think of the changes!  I had my youngest as the mime b/c when I first created the page, she wasn’t yet speaking.  I am considering making number 4 my mime instead, but don’t know what circus role to give to my third child.  Any suggestions?

BABY!!!!! This morning we had our sonogram appointment.  While it is our fourth pregnancy, I try as hard as I can to not take anything for granted.  I don’t think I realized how much I was “holding my breath” so to speak before the appointment.  Words can’t adequately express the feelings of thanksgiving that overwhelmed me when the tech and then the doctor told us that everything looked healthy and normal.  As if that wasn’t blessing enough, we were blessed with an amazing, go the extra mile, super kind tech.  We brought the whole circus with us.  She let us point out things to the children.  She then printed a picture of the baby waving for each kid and even typed their names on each picture so that they each got a picture of the baby saying hi to them.  This totally melted my mommy’s heart. And the baby completely cooperated put on a show for us.  The baby waved, put his her hand on his/her face…grabbed his/her feet… and even yawn...

This year we celebrated New Years in two parts.  We did a family fun night with the kids concluding at 8 with followed by a date night with the two of us to officially ring in the new year.  Here are some pictures of my son cutting it up on the impromptu dance floor in our living room.  He was having a blast, as I am sure you can tell. Visit here or here for more picture fun!

Vacation was wonderful. Honestly, it was more of a “staycation” and stay and cation I did. Scott redid all the plumbing in our house this past week.  He also used his new Christmas gift-a smoker to make us dinner twice.  I, on the other hand, staycationed . And as I surveyed the house this morning, boy did it show. With Scott plumbing all week, I actually had a reasonable excuse for my laundry neglect.  And you know me, all I need is an excuse and I am good to go… hence the GINORMOUS piles of laundry lurking in the hall, the kids room, our closet, the work room, the guest bedroom… Today, Scott went back to work and so did I.  Cleaning the house, doing laundry, finally getting around to taking down the Christmas decorations… Note:  If you cut your tree down right after Thanksgiving and then leave it up till after New Years, you will have a canister and a half of needles to vacuum up!    It was also back to school time.  And no...

I was so excited at the end of the year when I checked my earnings report from Amazon.  Since my last update on Nov 8th, we earned $89.32 more! Thanks to all of you who clicked through my site first when doing your Christmas shopping at Amazon this season.  I was so excited to make a donation to World Vision’s Sudan Food and Care fund for $180!  Combined with the previous earnings , we have worked together to send $280 to aid the refugees in Sudan.   Remember this was money raised simply by shopping at Amazon.  It didn’t cost you anything, other than a quick stop by the circus, before heading to amazon.com.  Remember the money we’re raising goes to help the refugees in Sudan.  Read what World Vision’s website says about the Sudan Food and Care Fund . 300,000 people have been killed during the ongoing conflict in Darfur. And across Sudan, more than 360 children lose their lives to hunger, disease, and other causes every day. Your ...

As 2009 came to a close, we spent some time as a family discussing the highlights.  It really was a wonderful year!  I feel so blessed for the many opportunities for family fun that we had in the past year. In January Scott and I were able to go to a Steelers  home AFC championship and watch them beat the Ravens and make it to the Super bowl.  Shortly after we hosted a Super bowl party with our family and watched our beloved Steelers bring home a 6th Super bowl victory.  What a way to start the year! This past spring we took a family vacation to Texas .  We had a wonderful time visiting family and spending time in God’s magnificent creation. Our son was able to play baseball this spring…a dream come true for him!  We also got to go and see the Baltimore Orioles play twice at Camden Yards.  Scott and I both turned 30 this year and we celebrated by treating ourselves to a weekend away in Washington DC .  We both enjoyed the time awa...