Five months of happenings

Wow, it has been WAAYYYY to long since I've been on here.   I actually think about posting stuff often and back in February, I actually had a list going of things I wanted to share, but I've found it hard to get the time to sit and post.   Well I will try and cover some of the things I've thought about over the past 4 months.   Readers beware... it's a long one

The Sofa

A while back we bought a couch off of craigslist.   It was already old and worn, but with our family of boys, it was perfect.   Just after a year of having it, one of the recliners permanently broke and was stuck open.   Additionally the fabric was wearing immensely and it just started looking bad.   I was sick of this old beat up couch in my living room so I decided to get rid of it.  There was just this one thing.... I had no replacement.   I felt like the kids had been mistreating the furniture, so we decided to move on and went couch-less for a few months.   At first, it was cool.  The living room was wide open and the kids enjoyed having tons of space.   After a while though, it got annoying.   My husband and I were sitting in office chairs to watch movies, and that just got old.    My parents had been storing two couches in their garage and offered them to us.   One is an all white Victorian style couch and the other was a recliner couch that the back had broken on one of the recliners.    Since all white did not seem like a good fit for our family and the recliner was broken, we declined their offer.   That is, until this whole situation really got annoying.   So we decided to move up the couches.   That same week, a woman from our church heard we were couch-less and offered us an old leather bonded couch that the bonding was coming off.  The couch had a lot of life left in it, but didn't "look pretty" anymore.   With the way my boys are with couches, I figured, hey worse case it would last us a few months.   We took that couch too and threw a blanket over it to hide the peeling.   So we went from no couches to three in the matter of a few days.  

Crazy thing was that same week someone offered us 4 bar stools for our kitchen counter.   I have been looking for years... yes literally years, for 4 matching bar stools.   Who knew bar stools were so expensive??  even used!!  I had bought 2 stools from a co-worker about 2 years ago and after bringing them home realized only the kids could sit in them because they were too high.   So imagine my excitement when we are offered 4 matching (beautiful, I may add) bar stools for free!!  I felt so amazingly blessed that week!   I felt like, okay God, I see that you know even the things I "want" and will freely pour out your blessings!!

Birthdays

We have celebrated 5 birthdays since I last wrote.   Yes our family birthdays are heavy on the first half of the year.   My husband celebrated his birthday fairly uneventfully in February.  Two of my children celebrate March birthdays.   We started a cake decorating tradition a few years back and much to my sweat and tears we've tried to continue it.   My son didn't have a specific request this year, but asked to be surprised.  So we made him a drum birthday cake.  Funny thing was I put an 8 on the cake (after this picture obviously).  Then I'm laying in bed and suddenly realized he was actually 9!!!   I had to run out in the middle of the night to change the 8 to a 9 so he wouldn't see the mistake in the morning.   It's truly amazing how time flies!!

 The cool thing about this cake too was that it was checkered on the inside.   My son had given me this kit to make checkered cakes for my birthday or Christmas, so this was the perfect opportunity to use it.

My daughter dances ballet and we were going to make her a ballet cake and at the last minute she decided she wanted a road with a car on it.   My daughter is a girly girl!!   We were like "what???!!!! a road???"  I think this was all triggered by the stop sign candle she found in the drawer with the other candles.   So we obliged her request.   My husband did a fantastic job in making a S7 cake since her name starts with 'S' and she turned 7.   Who knew??  I think we'll look back on this one and laugh some day.  

The other two birthdays were celebrated just last week.    My babies are 5!!  I am officially the mother of school aged children.   We spent the week in the Outerbanks of North Carolina.   The boys got to spend their birthday at the beach.  

 

Since cake decorating is a crazy undertaking ( and messy too)... we fore go the cake decorating while on vacation for them and just do cupcakes.   I think the trade-off is fair.  I'll talk about vacation a little more later....

Movie Audition

Another exciting thing that took place was that one of my twins auditioned for a movie.   I saw an ad for blond haired, blue eyed boys ages 5 - 7 on a local news website.   I thought what the heck, let's try it.   At first I assumed they were filming the movie in Cleveland and looking for a local boy to fill the main role.   Then I found out the filming was in Canada and they had already done some auditions in other cities.   I figured we'd still go for it.  So one Sunday in April we headed out to Olmstead Falls to audition.   He had to learn some lines, which he did quite easily and the first verse to Amazing Grace.   The song was the hard part.   Try teaching a four, almost five year old, words like 'wretch'.   We played the song over and over and over for 5 days straight.    Everyone in the family was singing Amazing Grace quite regularly.   One comical thing came one day when I asked my son to sing it for me (hoping he finally had the words down).   He sang:
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a witch like me".   Of course I started chuckling, when up pipes his twin brother in the back seat... "it's not witch, it's wench"  Oh man, did I lose it.   Too funny!!!

So we went for the audition, figuring there was a one in a million shot at getting it anyway, but what an experience.   Afterwards, I found out it was a nationwide search for the next "kid star".  Ha!!  Yeah, no way we're going to get that!!!!!  But like I said, it was an experience!

Here he is right after his audition.

Rabbits

Back to the birthdays for just a moment.   My oldest son had been asking for a while for a rabbit.   We really didn't want anymore pets (we already had 2 dogs, a hamster, and a bird), so we kept pushing him off without really putting down a firm 'no'.   When we got to my daughters birthday, she also had been asking for a pet - none of the ones we have "belong" to her.   My oldest son has been extremely responsible (of which I am super proud) for his bird and has regularly paid for its food, cage stuff, etc out of his own money.   For whatever reason I gave in to letting him have a rabbit since I figured he would take equally good care of it.   We decided to get him one (he was actually due a partial birthday gift from his birthday) and his sister one for her birthday.   We got 2 female rabbits and one cage with all the accessories.     Shortly after getting them, my daughters rabbit, Snowflake, started getting very aggressive.   At first she was aggressive with the kids and after a few days she was aggressive with the other female rabbit.   When she started biting Twitch, the other rabbit, I thought that was strange and wondered out loud if she was pregnant.  My husband thought I was crazy.  One week, on a Thursday, Snowflake bit Twitch enough that it actually injured her.   We decided to get another cage.   We looked on craigslist and one had been posted THAT morning.   We called and picked it up that afternoon.  Talk about another blessing from God!

A rabbits gestation period is 30-31 days, so when we hit four weeks (28 days), I thought my worries were unfounded.   This is the Sunday after buying the new cage.   Then it happened.   My son came into my room early on April 15 and said "Snowflake is acting really weird.  She's pulling out her fur and it's in her mouth."   It sounded to me like she was nesting, so I quickly grabbed a cardboard box and went to put it in her cage.  Sure enough, she was acting VERY weird.   She was running all over the cage in a frantic way and pulling out her fur.   By 12:30 that afternoon she had given birth to 4 baby bunnies.   Wow did we get a little more than we bargained for!!!!   the babies are now 4 weeks old and SO DARN CUTE!!!!  Of course the kids want to keep some of the babies... yeah, we'll see how that goes.  

Here they are at 2 weeks old

Vacation

Okay, lastly, vacation.   Last year, we took a trip to the Outerbanks, NC and had such a good time that we decided to do it again this year.   My parents treat us by renting the house big enough for multiple families.   This year my sister, her family, my family and my parents went.   We go early in May since it is off season and much cheaper.   The weather can be a little iffy since it's still spring time.   We were supposed to have rain for three of the days, however, God blessed us again.   The "big storm" ended up splitting around us, so we only had an occasional sprinkle here or there.   We did get just enough rain one day to have a beautiful full double rainbow.  

We were snapping away with pictures when I grabbed my niece and said lets drive down to the ocean to get a picture with the water.   The double part of it was gone by then, but we did get this great shot. 

 We had a great time relaxing at the house, frolicking on the ocean and cruising the beaches looking for wild horses.   We rented a jeep the one day to go off road on the beach.

 My husband drove all 15 of us in shifts down the beach to look for horses and enjoy the unpaved part of the Outerbanks.   Unfortunately, my shift (the first one) was the only one to not see any horses.   I have seen them before and didn't think the twins would remember too much anyways, so we just left it like that.   He did get some pretty pictures of them on the beach however.

 

Here's my sister and I



So hopefully I've caught you up on our first half of 2013.   I hope all is well with your families and I look forward to seeing or hearing from you soon!

Peace out!
Oats