We have a moving date!!

YAY! Things have been up in the air trying to correlate the closing dates between houses. It now looks like we'll be able to close both houses on the 12th- and we'll pay to stay in this house one more day so we can actually move stuff. YAY!! I'm so happy not to have to move twice! After our busy wedding/family weekend next week we spend packing and getting ready to move. Then Monday we actually move! Wahoo!! I can't believe it's finally here. The fact that it's really only two weeks away is a little overwhelming to me. It seems to have snuck up on us.

Ashley started school yesterday. She loved it. She made one friend who she played with on the playground and ate lunch with. I asked her what her name was and she couldn't remember. LOL I told her that her assignment today was to find out her name and remember it.

School starts on Monday!!

School starts Monday, I'm not sure who's more excited, me or Ashley. Ashley is going to be a first grader this year- which brings us to the delima- what to have for lunch? Should she buy lunch or take lunch? Ashley desperately wants to bring lunch so that she can have a cool lunchbox.... I desperately want her to buy lunch, it's worth the $1.40 a day for me to not have to pack it. After seeing the REALLY long line to pay for lunches today I'm thinking that she'll be taking lunch for the first day at least. I'm hoping we can compromise and buy lunch some days and take lunch other days.

We met her teacher, Mrs. Gallineau, who seems very nice. We also found her seat and walked around the school a little bit. For the first couple of weeks until we move I'll be driving her to school. But once we get moved in then she gets to walk! That means that Megan, Annika, Corinne and I get to walk as well. I'm excited to not have to fight traffic at the school (which stinks- at least at her school last year it did). The neighborhood we're moving into has walking paths that connect the three phases of the neighborhood together- which end at the elementary school! Yay! So Megan and Annika can actually walk if they want and we don't have to worry about traffic. It'll be great.

Speaking of our house- it's almost done! YAY! The wood floors downstairs are in and the outside is painted. There isn't much left to do except for putting in the carpet upstairs, the front landscaping and then cleaning up the construction mess. Now that our house is sold I'm getting excited that we're almost ready to move. We've got my brother's wedding next week though, then we come home and start packing!! YAY! Well, not yay that I have to pack, but yay that moving into our new home is that close. I'm ready for more space for sure.

A couple good friends from Utah are coming down to help me pack for a couple days. So that will make it go faster. It also means we get to play in the evenings (YAY!)

Random Reviews

Essensia Salsa (Albertsons)
*Southwest= two thumbs up
*Peach/Pineapple= two thumbs WAY up
*roasted tomato= not sure what they were thinking (blech)

Hotel Rwanda (pg-13)= Best movie I've seen in a long time. I'd highly recommend it to just about anyone. True story about a man who saved the lives of over 1200 people during the Rwanda genocide in 1994. Will have you on the edge of your seat. Is pretty graphic (honest) about what happened and there is one "F" word usage. Worth renting the DVD to watch the special features.
http://www.mgm.com/ua/hotelrwanda/main.html

The kids at church today = 1.5 thumbs up. They were good until I left to feed Corinne, then they lost it apparently. But I didn't leave until the last speaker so there were 20 minutes left.

Corinne not tolerating me eating milk and chocolate= 10 thumbs down. Seriously sucky. Well, sucky that I can't eat it, but I guess as long as she's happy. I must have eaten something today or yesterday that she didn't like because she was a beast at bedtime tonight. I'm hoping she sleeps through the night.

Steve cleaning the house last night before he went to bed (after I was in bed)= 100 million thumbs up. Good job honey.

YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!!

So we are officially 'in escrow' which means that hopefully our house will be sold soon. I'm SO SO SO SO relieved. I feel like a 500 lb weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I don't think that I can accurately describe to anyone who hasn't done it before the feat it is to have my house constantly clean enough for visitors to walk into every corner of the house and look in every closet with four small children. (Remember 3 of them are under 3). Seriously- torture. I feel good to have the living room pretty picked up for unexpected visitors- but with house lookers even the furthest corner of my bedroom and the linen closet have to be clean and orderly... and those are usually the 'stashing' places. It helped to move about 1/3 of our stuff to my IL's spare bedroom (thanks guys) so there was less 'stuff' in general. But if you've met Megan and Annika you know that they can make a disaster out of nearly everything.

****Crazy moment of the day*****
We made the mistake of sitting in the backyard this evening. We'd had dinner out there and Megan and Annika went in the house. For five whole minutes we sat on the swing before I sent Ashley in to see what havok they were wreaking.... They'd decided it'd be fun to empty an entire container of parmasan cheese throughout the bathroom- fun for them- not for me. When will I ever learn? The good news? No one is going to call to see if they can see the house in 15 minutes. (See- there's a brightside to everything!)

Is it reinforcing bad behavior to take pictures?? The funniest thing? You get out the camera and they say....

cheese! (Really, this is as exciting as my life gets...)

Here it is. The first cake that I've made and gotten paid for. The mom of the birthday girl gave me this napkin and wanted a cake to match... this is what I came up with. A fun, whimiscal, colorful cake covered in marshmellow fondant. (YUM!) It was fun to make and experiment with, I'm hoping for lots more orders.

We got a pathetically low offer on our house yesterday. We countered last night. I'm hoping they accept the counteroffer rather then countering back. We really need to sell, but we need to sell for what it's worth. We should know by tomorrow if she accepted it.

Potty training totally sucks. Seriously. Megan will be 3 next month and really has no desire to wear underwear. Well, she wants to- but she doesn't want the inconveinence of using the potty when she's playing. Totally frustrating that when she decides to wear underwear that she can stay dry for hours at a time- but then when she wants to pee puts on a diaper (yes, she puts it on herself). I think when we get to the new house and unpack that we're going to 'run out' of diapers and she and annika can potty train together.

Annika has started throwing a fit when it's time to put a diaper on, and if I don't put a shirt that snaps at the crotch on her then she rips her diaper off every time she pees. Lovely. So I've been letting her wear panties occassionally. She quite enjoys that, and the days that annika wears panties Megan wants to also. Bonus. Worth cleaning up the pee if it encourages Megan to wear panties and use the potty.

I want to get a kid sized toilet in our new house. One like they have in the nursery at church. So far the cheapest I've found is $250 though. But I'm going to have potty training kids for the next 3 years at least- it'd be worth it right?

So I like to decorate cakes. I do it for birthdays and I'm doing my brother's wedding cake- but that's all for fun. Anyway, I'm doing my first paid cake for Wednesday. I'm way excited-but a little nervous. I'm not sure why. Here is the cake that I did for this ladies friend- I'm pretty darn proud of it:

We're trading hours. She's an interior decorator and so she's coming to help decorate my new house and I'm going to be making birthday cakes for her kids. But she's very outgoing and tells everyone how I make cakes and they are so good and stuff. I guess the best advertising is word of mouth huh? I swear the writing on that was straight- but the picture makes it look like it's a funny angle for some reason.

I"m doing a cake for tomorrow for a party of a good friend. I'm making the cake as a birthday gift for her, but also for exposure. Selfish? Eh, not sure. But I think she'll like it either way. Apparently she loves strawberries. So I made a strawberry cake with a strawberry cream cheese filling and I'm going to frost it with whipped cream frosting. I made a bunch of flowers to put on it tonight. They're kind of wild colors- but I think it'll be fun.

Let's see- what else... my life really isn't very exciting. I wasn't the best mom today, I think my kids are getting sick of summer. I know I am. I'm ready for Ashley to go back to school and to be in our new house and get into some sort of reliable routine. I also feel like I can't really potty train Megan since we're going to be moving here shortly. But she's so ready. SO SO SO ready. This week she's started changing her own diapers if they're just wet. She takes off the old one, wipes, rolls the wipe up inside the wet diaper, throws it in the trash then puts on a new diaper. She is so stinking stubborn though! Drives me insane. If I ask her if she wants to wear panties she says no, if I put them on her anyway then she refuses to use the toilet. It's just not worth fighting about currently.

Anyway, that's my boring life, I'll post a picture of my latest cake tomorrow.

Being sick stinks... it started last week with Ashley getting the sniffles, before I knew it she had a full blown cold. Of course then Corinne starts to get all stuffed up as well and by Saturday Annika was hacking and miserable. I thought I was avoiding it- I guess I didn't knock on wood because I woke up this morning feeling like crud with a sore throat and stuffy nose. WWWWAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Our house still isn't sold. We lowered the price yesterday hoping that would help. We put ourselves just lower then the lowest person in the neighborhood. We did have a family come and look at it last night- we need it to sell this week! Even then I guess if we sell next week we can push for a fast closing.

I can't believe it's getting so close. We put money down and started building in January! Here is the last picture of our house:

I didn't take a picture last time I was out there since it was dark, but the drywall is now up and the doors are in and it looked like they were about to stucco any day. I'm ready to start decorating and getting new furniture. I know, how could I want to replace these beautiful couches?

Seriously though, I'm hoping to get out of the 'early 70's to late garage sale find' phase of decorating. I know megan looks naked in that picture, but I swear she's wearing a diaper! That kid is hard to keep clothes on, it's not worth the fight unless we're going somewhere.

Hello, welcome to my life. I'm the head crazy here- well, I guess there are two head crazies, but I'm the one that's writing the blog so I get to be the top crazy of the moment.

That's me.. Okay, that's what I aspire to be when I grow up... I mean really, too be confidant enough to make that sort of a fashion statement?

Okay, here we are for real. Minus the smallest member of our tribe. Well, she's there- she'd just 15 weeks gestation so you can't see her yet.

So my life. Well, there it is. Steve is my partner in crime (poor guy) and together we're trying to raise four girls to be competent adults. It's no easy task. I attempt to feed and clothe our kids on a regular basis, Steve goes to work to make money so I can do that. Then he comes home and tries to keep me from going insane...

Ashley is six and will be going to first grade in a month (yay!!) She knows pretty much everything (just ask her) and usually is extremely helpful. She's also the town crier- if someone is doing something she's yelling from across the house informing me of their every move. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's not, usually always it's annoying. She's in her third week of swimming lessons this summer. I'm amazed at how much she's progressed in such a short time. At the beginning of the summer she didn't want to swim without floaties- on Friday she was diving off a diving board, swimming across the pool and was tossing things in and diving to the bottom to get them! She was also doing summersaults and handstands under the water. YAY!

Megan is completely Megan... and if you've met her you know what that means. She'll be three Sept 5 (wow!) and is a very indepentant, freethinking kid. Most everything she wants to do herself ("I do it!") and can usually figure out a way to accomplish whatever it is that she wants. Of course, the one exception seems to be potty training, I've decided just to wait until she decides that she wants to do it because quite frankly- you can lead a kid to the potty but you can't make them pee. Megan is fun though- even if she is getting in to trouble the majority of the day.

Annika is Megan's partner in crime- or her punching bag- depending on the moment. I don't think anyone has informed Annika that she's younger then Megan and that she can't do everything that Megan does, cause she tries. Annika is 21 months, she'll be two in December. She is a smart, smart kid. She astounds me daily with the things that she comprehends and does. She's at an age where she spouts of a handful of new words every day.

Corinne is the baby. Here's a picture:

She's pretty cute. She looks nothing like my other girls as babies. She acts nothing like them either. They were all mellow, easy going kids, she's pretty much the opposite of mellow and easy going... She is pretty onery most of the time and is rarely content. The pediatrician suggested eliminating dairy and chocolate from my diet to see if that helps her- fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) it seems to be working. The last week that I've been dairy free she's had fewer 'freak out' sessions and they've been shorter. She's also sleeping longer (YAY!!) It's a lot easier to enjoy her when she's not screaming at me. Funny how that works huh?

I'm the mom/wife. Recently when filling out forms asking for my occupation I put 'domestic goddess'. I know it's not a new thing, but I figure if I can keep four kids alive, my house clean enough for people to come see it (did I mention we're trying to sell our house?) and still do other random things then I'm doing pretty good. (Not to brag or anything). I enjoy the internet and have several different discussion boards that I frequent. I find it's a good outlet to 'talk' to other adults about common interests and just life throughout the day. It's really quite addicting and I've even done the unthinkable and have met many of them 'IRL' (in real life). Steve thinks I'm weird, but he's finally met a couple of them and has decided that they're normal people. I enjoy reading most anything I can get my hands on, I like cake decorating and am doing my brother's wedding cake in September (YAY!) and I'm a member of Weight Watchers. I lost 40lbs between my pregnancies with Megan and Annika. Now I'm back on the wagon working on getting rid of pregnancy weight from Corinne. Maybe when I'm braver I'll post pictures 'on the way down'.

Steve is the Dad/husband. He's a hard working man. He works as an accountant for a construction company here in town during the day and then has a 'side' business doing taxes and other accounting things that he does other random times. He also takes care of our girls and is a 'hands on' dad. The girls like him better then me most days.

So now you know more about us. Don't you feel lucky? My goal is to keep track of daily things and journal our lives better. I think I'll do a better job of that if I think I'm writing for someone to read now rather then for some future person to pick up and read after I'm dead. So yay!

-Amber-