Frolicky Friday

So it is a well-known fact that every girl *needs* a little Well, tonight Jayla and I had another Girls Only night. We ate at our favorite deli. Oh, it was ever so good! YUM! I get the same thing nearly every time, and it just seems to keep getting better! Then we went to a nearby store and went SHOPPING!

We looked at hair accessories. I let her pick out a few. (She is doing very good about keeping them all together now that she has her own room and a vanity to keep everything!) Then there were purses, belts, jewelry.....all the necessary fashion accessories. Next we looked at clothes. Then we went to a different area and looked at more hair accessories. I meant to go look at makeup and nail polish, but I guess it slipped my mind while we were caught up with all the other bling around us! We ended our shopping trip in the toy section after choosing two games and a pirate dress-up set for Jacob for his upcoming birthday.

I spent way too much money, but we had a great time together this evening. :) She was needing some alone time with me. She gets pouty every so often, mostly when she gets way behind on sleep, and it helps pull her out of her bad mood. LOL! She was especially excited to get Jacob some gifts, and she genuinely tried to choose something that he would like! She is the one who chose the pirate set! (She is going to be a great wife someday.....she sure knows boys! LOL!)

I wanted to say too that I didn't blog about Frolicky Friday last week. I can't remember the specifics now, but I know it was a busy day. I don't think we were able to play much that day. :(

And as far as *today* with the boys, well, I did play with the younger two a little, but we got up early and took Jonathan and my mom to the train station (to visit my little brother and his family for the weekend), so we got up very early (for us) and then took naps later! By the time I was fully awake, Myles was home from work. All we had done by then was cleaned out the van, and then Jayla and I went out. I'm about to post some pictures though of some other "frolicky" days we've had recently, so watch for them soon! :)

Kids' jokes

Jacob has been trying to keep up with his siblings in joke telling. Keep in mind he is all boy with an older brother! One of our family favorites (from a Rescue Hero cartoon) is "Hey, what's that under there?", and then when someone says "Under where?" we say, "Ha! I made you say underwear!" It's great! LOL! This one got it started this morning in the van:

Jacob:Mommy, I have a joke for you. Knock, knock!
Mommy:Who's there?
Jacob:Toot
Mommy:Toot who?
Jacob:TOOT! (then pretends like he is tooting......ha ha, hilarious)

Then, thinking I would introduce him to the classic "Why did the chicken cross the road" joke, I asked him and got this answer:
Jacob:Because he got runned over by a car! (much laughter)

Jayla:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get to its chicklings!

Mommy: But Jayla, they're called "chicks"
Jayla: I know, but I'm trying to make it funnier!
Mommy:Oh. Ha ha.

Jayla:
Why did the moose cross the road?
To get to its mooselings!

Why did the car cross the road?
To get to its carlings!

Why did the cat cross the road?
To get to its catlings!

Why did the smiley face cross the road?
To get to its smiley facelings!

Jayla: Why did the crow cross the road?
Mommy: To get to its crowlings?
Jayla: Oh, I didn't even think about that! No, to get the worm on the other side of the road!

Jayla:
Why did Jayla cross the road?
To get to my Jack Jack! (arms open wide....very sweet)

Jayla:Knock, knock!
Mommy:Who's there?
Jayla:Woo
Mommy:Woo who?
Jayla:I made you say 'woo hoo'!

More little Jacobisms!

Jacob (3) just woke up a few minutes ago. He rarely wets the bed now. It's been several weeks since the last time he had an accident. Well, he just woke up, and this is what he told me:

"Mommy, I'm all wet, but I didn't wet the bed, my bed got me all wet!"

Hehe....I think Jayla used to tell me that too. :)

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I've been meaning to blog about this too. A few days ago Jacob did or said something funny (I can't remember what it was, but that's irrelevant), and I naturally laughed at him. I don't try to hide it very often unless I think it will embarrass them. LOL! Well, apparently it made him mad that I laughed so he told me, "Mommy, I'm going to tell on you tomorrow, and you're not going to laugh at me ever again!"

My new haircut

It's been two weeks already since I got my hair cut. I plan to keep it short-ish from now on. It's just easier to take care of when you've got young ones! I've had long hair most of my life, and when I do cut it every few years, I usually let it grow back out long and then eventually cut it short again. Well, I'm just tired of it being long, so this is what it will look like now. For the most part, this is what it looks like when I wake up in the morning, so it's very easy! Oh, and yes this is all natural; the color, the curl, everything. Nothing artificial here, though I may occasionally get some temp color just for fun. :) No comments necessary, I just wanted to show everyone, and there's not many pictures of me on here.....by choice! LOL!

Jacob is such a nut!

Here is what I do to Jacob when he disobeys.
Actually, he was laughing as I was taking this. He also was not dressed since he had just gotten out of the bathtub! Running around in a blanket (or nothing) is his favorite thing to do, but he's finally growing out of it, I think. I hope!

We have some generic Jenga blocks that the kids have been building with lately. Jacob has been building bridges, garages, gas stations....anything to drive a car in, under, over or around.

And here he was just being plain silly again. Jonathan dressed up in his super-hero costume and wanted me to take pictures of him posing, so Jacob copied his every move,laughing the whole time. LOL!

And I'll throw one in of Jack too. :)

Girls' night!

Jayla has decided she is going to form her own girl club, so my BFF Chrys jumped right on that and invited us over for a "meeting" last weekend! It was great! Jayla actually ended up spending the night (after staying awake until 3am), but I went home to sleep in my own bed and went back the next morning for brunch. :)

So, to sum up in words what we did together, we ate chocolate, painted nails, fixed hair, ate more chocolate, made Cocoa Rice Crispy Treats, did some scrapbooking, played Barbies, and ate more chocolate. :) Here are a few pics from our evening.

I just love her freckles!



Chrys was such a good sport. :)

Me, not so much. She kept pulling some tiny hairs!!! She was cute though. She kept saying in an adoreable little voice, "Isn't that so cute?" :)

Jayla did her own nails, but here Sammy is giving her a touch-up.

And here is Sammy with her new GIRL puppy. They spent all evening trying to come up with a name for her, and Sammy really wanted something Japanese. Some of the better ones included Puchi (little), Kibbles and, hmmm.....I can't remember any more of those Japanese words! Girls, what did you decide???



The boys joined us for much of the evening, as long as they were quiet. :) I love this picture of Daniel. He looks like he's three years old! And the one of Chrys and Patrick. So cute!

Finally, around 3am, she crawled into bed and closed her eyes!

It was a great night!

Still working with the pictures

Okay, see, I have Linux instead of Windows. I really, really LOVE it, but since everything is so Windows-friendly (an evil plot formed by Microsoft to increase their sales and dominate the computer world!!!!!), I am having a difficult time getting all my pictures onto my computer. That is why I haven't blogged about it yet. I have almost all of them on my computer now, but I need to clear up some disk space so I can edit and save them. (sigh) I am actually learning some technical stuff on the computer while trying different things to get my system to read the Windows Vista-saved CD. (I have learned that I have the problem because of Vista!!! Grrr!!!!)

So I know you are all just DYING to see our vacation pictures. There are some really awesome ones! It won't be much longer now. :)

Yeah, I know I'm weird.

I was in Jayla's class tonight at Girl Scouts. They were going through the alphabet thinking of "healthy" foods for each letter. (I wasn't really surprised that so many of them were meat and dairy. We haven't completely given up dairy yet, but that is next on our list towards a healthier lifestyle. Currently though, half of my family is meatless!)

So for the more difficult ones, I tried to come up with fruits and veggies or at least things you might find at a health food store that are not at most grocery stores, and I tried to think ahead. So when they got to D, I waited to see if anyone could think of anything first, and when they couldn't, I offered up durian. I asked if anyone had heard of a durian and I described the appearance, taste and texture (I forgot to mention the SMELL!). The leaders, Christi and Shannon, were intrigued. I beamed. LOL!

When they came to K, I mentioned kale. Very healthy indeed, and most little kids haven't heard of it.

Then they came to the letter M. Mangos are Jayla's favorite fruit, so I tried to give her a hint....she wasn't thinking along those lines, I guess, so I finally just said it. Another little girl came up to me later and said they were her favorite too. :)

So then it came time for the letter Q. That was a tough one! I asked them if anyone had heard of Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). Shannon couldn't take it anymore and just blurted out, "WHERE are you FROM???"

Frolicky Friday

Woah, am I sure late in posting about last Friday's fun! We went to a church function that was a huge outreach event. The kids had a BLAST! Well, I guess Myles and I did too. :) I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. A lot of what we did was not photographed though because we were having so much fun we couldn't get any pictures!!!

A lovely picture of "Aunt Sara". Myles' brother is the Children's pastor, so she gets to do all kinds of things. She's a lot of fun!

The event was filled with CANDY, over 15 inflatables, almost 10 rides, CANDY, food, drinks, CANDY, entertainment, giveaways, CANDY and lots of old friends. :)

Oh, and we met another Jayla! We were getting off the huge strawberry ride when another mom said, "Jayla, come here!" to get some candy (there was a TON of it, and we definitely got our fair share!) After realizing she wasn't talking to MY Jayla, I went up to her and asked "What is her name????" She said Jayla and I excitedly said, "That's MY daughter's name too!!!" She asked me if it was spelled the same, J-A-Y-L-A ? I said yes and then she said, "I thought I made it up!" I quickly replied, "I DID TOO!!!" LOL! The girls were about the same height, but the other Jayla was 4 years old. She was tall! So if anyone made it up, my Jayla was first! LOL! Actually, I did think I had made it up at the time, but shortly after she was born I googled her name and there are quite a few of them, actually! It's a really great name! :) Shoot, I should have taken a picture of the two girls together!

Letting God decide the size of our family

We are a quiverfull family. Most quiverfull families are large, but not all. Most everyone's first concern in having a large family is fincances. My basic answer when someone asks me how many children we plan to have is this: Money just comes and goes, and if God gives us another child, He WILL provide the means to take care of him/her!

When we were first married, I was on a chemical birth control pill for a month. They messed me up so bad emotionally (and who knows what else it did to me!) that Myles took the last one and flushed it down the stool and said "You're NEVER taking those things again!" LOL! It was bad! I was back to my normal self almost immediately.

It was partly that and partly just a gentle conviction after our first was born that we decided not to ever use birth control of any kind ever again (except we are open to considering abstinence, which is the most full-proof! LOL!) Right now Myles is not really wanting any more kids for two reasons; finances and because of all we went through with ds3 this last 15 months as well as the pregnancy! I can't blame him for feeling that way, but I do believe, and so does he, that we'll have at least one more child.....we're not done yet! We're both in our mid-30's, so we've got lots more time! :) And even though he says he doesn't want to *try* to have any more right now, we're really not preventing it in any way, so it's just a matter of time, IMO!

I'm sure it's much more difficult for men who are the sole financial providers for their family to really trust that God will provide all his family's needs. I know it seems harsh, but it really comes down to a matter of faith. Once a person realizes that God will indeed always provide for His children, then what other excuse is there? Also I believe that nearly all families could cut back *somewhere* in their lifestyles to be able to "afford" another child or two, but many don't want to give up certain things.

For us the problem is debt. With our house and van as well as a couple of credit cards, we would have another $1200/month if they were all paid off!!! That is a LOT of money for us, especially here in our state, where the cost of living is not very high compared to most places in the US.

I would guess the 2nd reason, at least among Christian families, for limiting the number of children they have is probably the health of one of the parents, usually the mom during pregnancy. My opinion is the same on that.....God will take care of you! Now, I don't believe you can just sit back and eat whatever you want and never exercise, and smoke, drink, etc. and expect perfect health and a perfect baby. I do believe though that everyone can always be healthier. Excess weight gain can be prevented. Gestational diabetes can be prevented. The HELLP syndrome can be prevented! (HELLP is what I had with ds3.) Now, though I do believe this, I also realize that we do not live in a perfect world, and things will happen that are beyond our control, but is that really any reason to say you'll never have another child ever again? You may not have the same problems with the next pregnancy! I know in my situation, I could have eaten much better and prevented HELLP, so I plan to do that next time and have already made improvements in my regular diet. (I ate almost 100% raw vegan the last week before he was born and my obvious symptoms were almost gone and my blood/urine tests were actually better....but still not good, so he was delivered that day.)

I'll shut up now, but that is my 2 cents. :) People with no kids or a limited number are just missing out! Hey! I am entitled to my own "opinion", right? :)

Letting God decide the size of our family

We are a quiverfull family. Most quiverfull families are large, but not all. Most everyone's first concern in having a large family is fincances. My basic answer when someone asks me how many children we plan to have is this: Money just comes and goes, and if God gives us another child, He WILL provide the means to take care of him/her!

When we were first married, I was on a chemical birth control pill for a month. They messed me up so bad emotionally (and who knows what else it did to me!) that Myles took the last one and flushed it down the stool and said "You're NEVER taking those things again!" LOL! It was bad! I was back to my normal self almost immediately.

It was partly that and partly just a gentle conviction after our first was born that we decided not to ever use birth control of any kind ever again (except we are open to considering abstinence, which is the most full-proof! LOL!) Right now Myles is not really wanting any more kids for two reasons; finances and because of all we went through with Jack this last 15 months as well as the pregnancy! I can't blame him for feeling that way, but I do believe, and so does he, that we'll have at least one more child.....we're not done yet! We're both in our mid-30's, so we've got lots more time! :) And even though he says he doesn't want to *try* to have any more right now, we're really not preventing it in any way, so it's just a matter of time, IMO!

I'm sure it's much more difficult for men who are the sole financial providers for their family to really trust that God will provide all his family's needs. I know it seems harsh, but it really comes down to a matter of faith. Once a person realizes that God will indeed always provide for His children, then what other excuse is there? Also I believe that nearly all families could cut back *somewhere* in their lifestyles to be able to "afford" another child or two, but many don't want to give up certain things.

For us the problem is debt. With our house and van as well as a couple of credit cards, we would have another $1200/month if they were all paid off!!! That is a LOT of money for us, especially here in our state, where the cost of living is not very high compared to most places in the US.

I would guess the 2nd reason, at least among Christian families, for limiting the number of children they have is probably the health of one of the parents, usually the mom during pregnancy. My opinion is the same on that.....God will take care of you! Now, I don't believe you can just sit back and eat whatever you want and never exercise, and smoke, drink, etc. and expect perfect health and a perfect baby. I do believe though that everyone can always be healthier. Excess weight gain can be prevented. Gestational diabetes can be prevented. The HELLP syndrome can be prevented! (HELLP is what I had with Jack.) Now, though I do believe this, I also realize that we do not live in a perfect world, and things will happen that are beyond our control, but is that really any reason to say you'll never have another child ever again? You may not have the same problems with the next pregnancy! I know in my situation, I could have eaten much better and prevented HELLP, so I plan to do that next time and have already made improvements in my regular diet. (I ate almost 100% raw vegan the last week before he was born and my obvious symptoms were almost gone and my blood/urine tests were actually better....but still not good, so he was delivered that day.)

I'll shut up now, but that is my 2 cents. :) People with no kids or a limited number are just missing out! Hey! I am entitled to my own "opinion", right? :)

Frolicky Friday

Ack! I wrote this last Friday, saved as a draft and then just realized that I haven't added pictures and published it yet! Okay, here it goes!

***

Well, the last two Fridays we were on vacation. We definitely played a LOT with our kids! We had a blast!

Now we're back to our routines, and though we're not real busy people (intentionally), we do get caught up in the day to day stuff so easily! I have been purposing to play individually and as a group with my kids more, and it's been fun! But the *focus* day is Friday, so today.....

We had a picnic! Jacob decided he would be the photographer, but he didn't take pictures of people. Oh, well. I snapped a few.

That is MARKER all over his face! Ugh!

Just pizzas and Dr. Pepper....easy enough!

"What's going on up there?"

A couple of bees decided they wanted to try Jayla's Dr. Pepper. (The kids usually drink water or something non-caffeinated, but this was a fun picnic, so we all got one!) No one was scared, screaming or running away! I was so proud! :) The bees were friendly, we just left them alone and they eventually left the DP alone.

And here are a few pictures taken by Jacob and some OF him since he kept saying "Take a picture of me!" He's either hogging the camera or running away from it, there is no in between! LOL!

I wasn't feeling too great today, so I laid down with Jack for a nap. A little while after Myles got home, Jack, Jayla and I played Barbies for a while. Jayla is starting a new girls club since Jonathan is in a club with his good friend, Daniel. So I guess this was our first meeting, and Jack was our honored guest. :) Jacob came to join us eventually too. He just kept making his Barbie do flips. LOL!

The kids are all getting ready for bed now. We just finished playing some card games; War and Go Fish. I think Jonathan won them both.

That's about all I can take today, and I can't even sit here any longer, so I'm about to go to bed. We had fun though, and the kids want to keep playing! That's always a good sign. :) I think Myles may still be playing with Jonathan in the bedroom. Cool.