first one down?

madelyn has had a sore throat the past two days.  i think she might have caught whatever matt has had - which might just be from the suddenly colder weather.  and she was out after school.  it will be an early night for this little sweetie.  love.

boys hanging out

i found the boys downstairs 'reading' books together.  they got a little excited when i came with the camera and closed their books.

manning has decided that he is big enough to walk down the stairs.  this would be fine if he would hold the handrail! instead he thinks that holding the upstairs floor as long as he can is acceptable.  fyi - it's not.  but look how happy he is.

while cleaning up, maddux found madelyn's dress-up heals and thought that this would be great footwear for cleaning.  the funny part was that he would quickly kick them off if i picked up the camera.  and then it became a game to see if i "got" him.

it is so funny that they were in such great moods today because last night they were bears.  everyone was in bed by 6pm because daddy had golf and mommy was done with the day.  what was even more amazing was that maddux was asleep at 6:15pm and slept all night!

it is reassuring that the worst days can be followed by the best.  love.

photo booth

mason's new favorite past time is "photo booth" on the computer.  he will just sit and take pictures of himself with all of the different effects as long as i will let him.  he found out about it when i had a whole bunch of kids on my lap while i was trying to work on the computer.

and then mason took over...

then he discovered that the countdown to the picture gave him enough time to leave the room so that he could take a picture of the office.  

and a new game was born...

they don't always get out in time.

this is such a funny past time and it helps me out sometimes but it has also tied up the computer!  oh well.  love.

ready, set, go!

i am not sure what i was thinking today, but i must have been feeling ambitious.  we started out early (as always) and i made packed lunches for the whole family while we ate breakfast and did the regular getting ready for school routine.  maddux insisted on wearing his shirt backwards because he liked the "picture" on the back better and wanted to be able to see it.  we put madelyn on the bus and then rushed to get to bjs and pick up a few things (i needed some milk for dinner).  i had a cooler in the car for the groceries so we wouldn't have to stop back by the house (there wasn't going to be time anyway) and told the boys that they can have no "show you something" stops.  then it was off to the ymca to check the boys in at child care for me to take my water class. 

after i was showered and dressed, i got the boys and we were off to the zoo for some fun and lunch.  we were super surprised to see the "boo at the zoo" sign was already up and mason insisted on getting a picture before we went in. the parking lot was more full than i expected with school in session but it was the least cars we have seen all summer.

it was a great day for the zoo and there actually weren't very many kids there - mainly older adults.  the boys were thrilled because it meant that they could go down the new otter slides as many times as they wanted!  i think i cut them off at ten since we did need to get manning home for a nap.

we usually wave hi to daddy when we pass the hospital on our way to the zoo.  the new exhibit gives a great view of downtown and the hospital.  (i think mason was the one who pointed this out to us.)  the first picture is without a zoom but the second one is zoomed in to show the hospital - the logo is on the shorter white building to the left of the cranes (the cranes are part of hospital construction).

i love mason's face in this one.

for the first time ever, we fed the goats.  each boy got a single cracker.  mason broke his up into dime sized pieces and fed most of the goats and sheep.  he didn't want any of them to be left out and he paces himself.  it takes a long time but he is just so sweet.  maddux on the other hand was a little frightened of the goats and took a different approach.

the thought with going to the zoo was to wear them out so that they would all nap on the way home.  they were up late last night because madelyn had soccer practice and matt had to take all four kids because i had a pto meeting. but then he had fantasy football draft once they got home and had to wait for me to get home to put the kids to bed.  so anyway - the kids were tired.  and our day wasn't' going to end after the zoo.  

thankfully the boys were all three asleep before i even got on the interstate so they all got a decent nap just on in the drive home.  maddux went back to sleep when we got home and manning stayed asleep when i moved him to his crib.

we got home around 3 and madelyn's bus comes around 4.  as soon as she got off the bus, we (all four kids and i) walked over to get another neighbor who is in 1st grade to come over a play until 5:30.  i made dinner while they were playing and then drove her home (the walking was way too far and took too long).  matt had come home early (and was sick) so i left the boys with him to free up a carseat for the neighbor.  then home to rush through dinner and take the big kids to church for the mid-week kids' programs that started tonight.

whew.

the kids weren't in bed until after 9 and all three have school in the morning.  as we were leaving, mason and madelyn noticed some dogs running on the baseball fields across the parking lot.  maddux started screaming and ran back towards the church.  he is that afraid of dogs.  and, yes, we have a dog.  i don't know why he was so afraid and it took a lot of convincing that the dogs could not reach him.

even with all of the things we did today, it wasn't stressful at all.  in fact, i would say that it was a pretty great day.  but i might have scheduled things a little too tight.  love.

first day of preschool

to say that maddux was excited about his first day ever of preschool would be an understatement.  i have never seen him get ready so quickly.  he wasn't interested in any of his new clothes or his new shoes.  i did talk him out of the original shirt he selected since it was pretty ratty looking.  i could not talk him out of the tattered shoes - oh well.  they are his favorite pair.  i also could not talk him into taming his hair.  he wouldn't be 'maddux' without crazy hair so that was okay too.  we did get him a fresh bandaid for his knee though.

i tried to get a picture of all three school kids this morning but mason was not interested in pictures.

we waited at the bus stop with madelyn and once she was safely off to school, we hustled into the car and took the boys to school.  thankfully mason was willing to stand still for a few pictures once we got there!  maddux is holding a picture of the family.  his teacher asked for the kids to bring a "comfort item"to school today but he doesn't have one so we thought a family picture would work.  what i didn't account for is that mason would want one too.  i couldn't find another picture and thankfully he was fine with it.

the teachers were busy this morning so we just took pictures by their classroom doors.  mason was the more timid but no one cried or hesitated about going in.

i treated myself to a starbucks coffee on the way home and manning opted for a nap this morning!  (he hasn't been feeling his best and we went to a party at a neighbor's house saturday night that had him up way past bedtime.)  so i am sipping my 'fancy' salted caramel mocha coffee and enjoying some productive alone time this morning.

i can't wait to hear all about their first days!  love.

tuesday tip - cleaning schedule

i am not a cleaner.  there i said it.  i do like things super neat and organized, but i don't like to do the maintenance cleaning (dusting, vacuuming, baseboards, etc.).  i am a great organizer (and have been told this by other people, it is not just my arrogance) and have come up with 101 ways to keep the house clean (none of which actually factored in kids) and tend to be impossible in practice - either in completion each day or getting through the cycle fast enough that the cleaning on day one isn't totally undone by the time i get back to it. instead i tend to be the sort who will stay up all night scrubbing every square inch of the house the night before someone arrives.  so when one of my friends, who is a crazy cleaner, said that she had found a cleaning schedule that was super simple and "doable" on pintrest, i was skeptical but a few weeks later asked her to send it my way anyhow.

well, i have been doing this routine for about a month now and it has made a HUGE difference in my stress levels and the overall cleanliness of our house. i do have to do a few more loads of laundry and dishes than this recommends, but we do have six people in the family.  and, i don't feel like i am doing anything extra than i already was doing most of the time.  it comes from diary of a moody housewife and i just had to share it.

the tip? everything in moderation.  i tend to live in the extremes and this is a wonderful middle ground.

do you follow a cleaning "schedule"or are you a clean as it needs it sort of person?

love.

family bike ride

we have been talking about taking a family bike ride all summer.  well, today was the day!  we didn't start very strong.  mason's bike brake kept locking up his wheel and it took us about 30 minutes just to get that straightened out.  by that time, maddux was crying to get out of the trailer he and manning we riding in behind daddy's bike and madelyn just didn't want to be on the bikes at all.

so off we went with the promise of ice cream.

the ride actually went better than we had thought, once we got going that is.  madelyn and matt were a team and mason and i were a team.  we hadn't discussed it but it made it easier.  i was with mason because it was easier me to get off my bike to help him get going again after each stop that it was for matt with the trailer.

once we got going it was actually a pretty decent ride.  there are a lot of hills that even matt and i couldn't bike up so we kept having to walk our bikes and then get everyone going again but it wasn't as bad as i was expecting.  madelyn did pick up a little too much speed coming down a hill and wiped out on the next turn.  what was amazing was that she screamed and cried and then got right back up on her bike and kept going.  the kids were all rewarded with a cold, sweet treat.  they all agreed that biking was much better than walking.

maddux was thrilled that they had a orange option

they didn't have madelyn's favorite flavor, cotton candy, so she opted for a spider man popsicle 

mason and i almost split his ice cream cone because he kept asking for help with the drips

even manning got his own little cone

as we were finishing up the sky was quickly darkening so we decided we better get going - and quick.  the ride home was a little more exciting than the ride there.  there was a lot of crying (some injury, some fear and some exhaustion), there were a lot of bandaids used (thank goodness i decided to pack them to take with us) and we got wet.  but no one gave up.  all of the kids still thought it was a great time.  we look forward to many, many more rides in our future.

mason is so excited about biking again that once the rain cleared out he went out to ride some more.  maddux wiped out on the sidewalk while playing t-ball with madelyn in the yard and took a lot of skin off one of his knees so i brought him and manning in for baths.  when i was finished with them i went back out to call mason and madelyn in, but i found them and daddy riding bikes round and round the cul-du-sac or "the circle".  it was so cute to see the three of them that i decided baths could wait a little longer.  matt said that he had to practically pry mason off of his bike.

madelyn wasn't the only one with multiple bandaids, but she had the most so i had to take a picture - four on her legs and one on her thumb.