I haven’t blogged since November 3rd and that happens to be the day that Ryan and Tara found a place to live and started moving to the house in American Fork. They moved most everything on that Wednesday and Thursday. I had sick kids so I stayed home and helped with kids and cleaned what I could here. It was an adventure having another FULL SIZE family living with us π We have had several live ins and we love it. It is like extended family vacation and that is how I feel now. I feel like I am trying to RECOVER from vacation. Lots of late nights and games and kids running around and non stop playing and toys and traffic and double the cleaning and dishes and mess. It was a Fun but Crazy 4 months. The good news is… we now know that this house can be home to 12 people! If you had asked us 5 months ago we were a little worried about squeezing the 7th member of our family in, but now we have no worries π I have a bad case of the cleaning nesting organizing bug, wanting to get all of my closets and book shelves de-cluttered and usable, so that’s what I’ll be doing in my FREE time for the rest of the year.
Now on to the pictures… what we’ve been doing in the last 2 weeks without our live in house mates to entertain us…
November 3, 2011
We are still obsessed with Plants Vs Zombies – the kids have spent hours playing with these cones. It’s one of those natural toys that I know I should go hide them back in the garage but they are played with daily by all of the kids so I keep leaving them out.
November 6, 2011
This is where I found Cali on a Sunday night after I had sent her up to get her pajamas on. When you zoom out you will see that she took off her church clothes, pulled out her jammies, removed her diaper and then somehow ended up asleep in the nude, in the closet. This is not a normal occurrence – she and Rose both got thrush under their tongues from the amoxicillin so they didn’t eat while we waited for it to go away = hungry, grumpy, tired girls for a few days.
Zoomed Out
November 7, 2011
Rose has found her voice and is constantly yelling and grunting and trying to get us to read her mind and do what SHE WANTS. The girls finally got over their tongue issues and that same night Packer claimed that his tongue was hurting. He had not been on antibiotics so I knew it couldn’t be the same thing that Cali and Rose had but he was worse off than the girls. He stopped Eating and Drinking Completely and then he stopped talking because it hurt to open his mouth. I finally took him to the Dr and he was diagnosed with canker sores – yep, regular old canker sores right on the tip of his tongue so we just had to wait it out again. We forced him to eat and drink enough to keep his energy up but he was out for almost a week.
November 7, 2011
Sicky Boy Packer
November 8, 2011
Hide and Go Seek Time
When the cousins moved out I had to give Benji a big lecture about not getting to play with a cousin EVERY day and that he would need to play with his brother and sister and have more family time. He didn’t love that news BUT he had a good attitude about it and we have had some fun family time and I have enjoyed watching them have brother and sister time again.
Brother Time
Sister Time
Daddy Time
I Found Him
November 9, 2011
Still Recovering from the Sore Tongue
Every November we get to clean up the leaves from our massive tree. We usually pick a night and invite some cousins over and have a big leaf jumping party BUT this year we were heading out of town on Friday and our ward was doing a pickup that Saturday morning so we had to do a quick Friday afternoon clean up. Packer and Cali still got to enjoy the leaves but Benji actually cried when he realized that he would not be leaf jumping this year.
November 11, 2011
Packer Flying into the LEAVES
Cali getting some Air
Ben's turn!
Jana's turn!
I did not do any leaf jumping this year. I was exhausted after doing my part of the raking. Baby number 5, or Clyde as we have been calling him, is due to be born in 3 months from this day. I feel like that is still far away but it is also coming fast. After Benji got home from school on Friday we loaded up the Dodge Grand Caravan and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to spend the night at a cabin with the Nettesheim Cousins!! It has become tradition to kick off the holiday season with family and plan our Christmas Traditions and just enjoy each others company. This year we stayed at Bear Trap and it was AWESOME! I have a few pictures from that so I think I’ll post those separately.
November 13, 2011
Marlee and Rose!
We had our weekly Robertson Family Sunday Dinner… Marlee was excited to play with Rosie, she carries her around and takes her wherever she goes. She and Rose are buddies. We ate Pizza and actually got a few games in after the 49er game (can’t believe they are having a killer season). Than and Sam Hancock stopped by so that was fun and My siblings were being crazy and wouldn’t go home until after midnight – I kept telling then that this pregnant sister can’t stay up all night but they didn’t care π ΓΒ and… Benji was up all night throwing up. The first one was bad and it was dark so he missed the toilet but after that he was a perfect sick guy. He counted 6 times that he threw up, a few of those he handled completely on his own. We kept him home from school on Monday but he felt fine all day and just played with his siblings. In fact everyone was full of energy so we headed to the park for the afternoon.
November 14, 2011
perfect park day
Monday night we invited Ben’s parents over to watch the Green Bay Packers beat up the Vikings. The Packers are amazing this year and it was fun to watch with Grandma and Grandpa and eat some Pumpkin Pie at halftime. I love November just for the pumpkin Pie! Today is a good, normal Tuesday. We are healthy. I went on my morning walk. Ben is working. The boys had school. The Girls had cousins over to play and I am finally blogging π “Vacation” is over and now I think the hangover from the 4 month “vacation” is also over π
November 15, 2011
She Can Stand Up Now - only about 20 seconds on her own but she is definitely in stand up mode.
Cali wanted to invite Anna and Mia over to play. When I signed Packer up for afternoon preschool I was thinking that would be the perfect nap time for the girls BUT Rose takes 2 naps still and is never napping when Packer has school. So it has turned in to Cali’s play time. She often gets to play with her cousins for those hours during the week and they seem to love it.
Anna, Cali and Mia
Christian came to play today also and he and Rose followed the big girls all over the house.