April Fools!

Isn't this one of the weirdest holidays celebrated?  I do think so.  It's also one of the funnest.  

When I was young, my mom would get us good, and she has passed on the pranking gene to me.  I've done quite a few jokes, or pranks, for my kids the last few years and thought I would compile those into one nice little blog.  :)  

First off, the things my mom did that stand out clearly in my mind:

• One year my mom was painting the interior of our house.  On the front door she posted a sign that read: Wet Paint!  Use the back door.  When you got to the back door you saw a sign that read:  April Fools!  Go back to the front door!   Now this may not have been the most creative prank, but as a kid I sure thought it was funny!
• Little tiny styrofoam balls coated in chocolate pass off as really good Whoppers!   
• Divinity candy with cotton balls inside.
• Vaseline on the door handles
• saran wrap on the toilet
• Kool-aid made without the sugar

I have done many tricks to my kids, but I can't take all the credit.  I've got most of my ideas through the worldwide web.  :) 

• Muffins with cotton balls cooked inside
• sour cream dyed pink with food coloring to resemble strawberry yogurt
• "apple juice" made with water and red & yellow food coloring
• "grilled cheese sandwiches" made with pound cake, sliced & toasted, and cheese colored frosting
• a meatloaf layer cake frosted with mashed potatoes
• a 1 serving size chip bag, emptied and then filled with baby carrots and resealed
• oreos with the centers scraped out and replaced with mint toothpaste (don't do this if your kid likes toothpaste like mine do - not so effective. lol)
• frozen cereal.  The night before April Fools Day, partially fill a bowl with milk and put in the freezer.  (You can also put the spoon in before freezing for an even more dramatic effect.)  In the morning, at breakfast time, pour some cereal over the top of the frozen milk with just a little bit more milk added, so that the frozen milk can't be seen, and serve! 
• colored cereal.  Put a little food coloring in the bottom of the bowl, add the cereal of your childs choice, place in front of child at the table, and pour milk.  Milk will "magically" turn another color! 
• The kids love the apple with a small hole cut out and a gummy worm stuck in it.  Completely silly, but the kids like it!  :) 
• toilet paper stuffed in the end of their shoes so that their shoes don't fit quite right.
• carameled onions.  kind of like carameled apples, but not.  Get the idea?  ;) 
• a bunch of blown up balloons stuffed into a car.
• A screen shot of the desktop, and then used as the wallpaper.  Then hide all of the actual shortcuts, so that only the screen shot shortcuts (which don't actually work) show.  When the person goes to click on the shortcut, it won't take them anywhere. 

The Cutest!

I'm pretty sure that as his mother, I can claim Calum as the cutest baby ever!  Not only is he the cutest, but he is the best.  He is so well-natured.  He rarely complains, or cries, he loves to eat almost all foods, he's not demanding.  My only complaint about this baby is that he doesn't care much for sleeping. 

 Look at this guy! Is he not the cutest?!

Farmer Cade

Who knew that our abode was going to turn into not only a large collection of children, but also a collection of animals? 

Cade has been on some sort of farm animal kick lately.  Last fall he had one of his co-workers drop four chickens off (it was convenient that I was at school at the time) on our front porch.  One of those chickens was eaten by a stray cat, so we were left with one rooster, and two little chicks.  One of those remaining chicks turned out to be a rooster, which was getting attacked by the bigger rooster, so we ended up giving him away.  We were then left with one noisy rooster (that isn't aware that 5am is not morning!), and one hen. 

Fast forward to my birthday last month, and Cade buys me three ducklings. Don't ask me why. All I said to Roxie was that ducklings were much cuter than chicks. I never, ever said that I wanted ducklings. So, for the last three weeks we've been learning how to tend to ducks. According to Cade, it's too cold to keep them outside, so not only do we have a small farm, but our small farm is inside of our house. Not too thrilled about this information. At first the ducks didn't stink, but now they're like teenagers, and we all know how teenagers smell! 

I took these pictures of the ducks yesterday.

  I think they're about 2 1/2 weeks old...maybe.  I've sort of lost track.

Their names are Heloise.  All of them.

 You can't tell them apart, so for now they share the same name.

Guess what we're getting today?  MORE CHICKS!  yay.  Cade is currently picking up 25 more chicks, and I think, 5 turkeys (not sure what baby turkeys are called).  Now, don't get too excited!  We're selling 10 of the chicks, and all of the turkeys to Cade's uncle, so we won't have quite that many (much to my relief). 

I'm almost excited to see the chicks.  They're so cute, and soft when they're babies.  Then, in only a few weeks time, they turn into nasty, ugly chickens.  Okay, not really.  Our chickens are actually quite pretty, especially the rooster.  Too bad the beauty of our rooster is far outweighed by the annoying sound of his crow in the wee morning hours.

 The yellow ones are the turkeys.  They're uglier than sin, and so gawky and awkward!

 All of the chicks & poults together.
We had to separate them. The poults seem to be a bit bully-like.

 These two were leaning on each while they slept.  I moved one, and the other tipped right over!

  I shall name this one Cleopatra.

Calum really loves them!

A Few Little Somethings

Finally, everyone is done with the flu!  With the exception of some lingering coughs & congestion, we're all feeling so much better.  It's nice to have that crap out of the way for another year! 

Not much has been going on (thanks to the lovely sickness, I've been a bit busy tending to sick kids), but I thought I would show ya'll the headband & bracelet that I made my for my sister-in-law.   

These are so simple to make, and I think they turn out so adorable!  I originally got the idea from here: http://bubblynaturecreations.com/2011/02/tuesday-tutorial-petals-and-pearls.html .  I expounded on the idea to make the bracelet. 

I used an old pleather purse (thanks for the donation, Marisa!), a hot glue gun, a headband, and some small metallic beads.  All of my items, except for the headband, were things that I had on-hand! :) 

I pretty much followed the tutorial step-by-step for the headband.  The first one that I made (back at Christmas time) took me about 4 hours.   Trust me, the petals DON'T have to be perfectly symmetrical, perfectly square, or perfectly glued!  Also, if you don't want to have a HUGE flower, adjust the petals accordingly.  I've made a couple of these big ones, and I made one that was a bit smaller.  For the bracelet, I made the petals considerably smaller.  In the tutorial, she uses elastic for the headband, but I just used a headband covered in some of the leftover purse material, which I hot glued onto it. 

 

Anxiety, bleeding hands, and fevers

The title pretty much sums up what is going on in our house right now.  It's like my worst nightmare, and apparently, I'm destined to have this same nightmare once a year.  It's weeks like this when I question my sanity, and my choice on not to vaccinate my kids with the flu shot. 

If you know me, you know I have an extreme aversion to germs.  Even on a "normal" day, I wash my hands 50+ times a day.  This past week I've gone through two bottles of hand soap, and these are by no means small bottles!  My hands are a disaster.  They look like they belong to a 70 year old woman -all wrinkled, cracked, scaly.  They could also be compared to turtle skin (turtle skin? do turtles have skin?).  Every night, before bed, I have to lather them up with a little lot of Burt's Bee's Hand Creme (best stuff ever for people like me!), so that my skin can regenerate before I wake up in the morning. 

Because of my germaphobia, my anxiety has been through the roof.  I'm pretty proud of myself though, I've dealt really well.  I haven't even had a single crying episode, although for one tiny moment in time I was yelling and kicking crap around, throwing a tiny little tantrum.  Then I got over it.  Last year I tried quarantining all of the sick kids to one room, and the healthy kids to another, but all that did was prolong the sickness for a month (see last years blog post).  This year I just let them all sleep in their regular rooms, in their regular beds.  I didn't freak out, washing toys & clothes that the sick kids had touched.  I figured that it was here, let them get it, and get it out of this house.

 Today is the tenth day since the flu presented itself here, and we only have 1 kid that is sick today, and 1 kid that hasn't gotten it.  Ethen was the first kid to get it.  I knew what it was the minute he came home from school with a cough, congestion & high fever.  He was fine when he left for school, not even a trace of a cough.  I took him to the urgent care that night to get a diagnosis and hopefully a prescription for some tamiflu (thinking that it would cure him faster).  We got the prescription, but after finding out it was $60 for one prescription, and that insurance wouldn't cover it, and that it only takes ONE day off the flu, I said "forget that!"  Can you imagine paying $60 x 8 kids just to lessen the flu by one day?! pffft.  Instead, I went to the health food store and bought Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic remedy.  It has worked fantastically, and I've probably spent close to $60 on it, but it's treated everyone! 

We were pretty disappointed that our Spring Break vacation from school was ruined by everyone having the flu, but at least the kids didn't have to miss school, and thanks to the Oscilloccinum, it's been pretty mild.   We had great plans to go camping and work on our yard, but I guess we will just have to go camping later in the season, and Cade & I can probably get more accomplished without the kids in the yard, than we can with them helping! ;)

33 years and counting!

Sorry about not posting those last Valentine's.  It's been horribly, crazy around here, as usual.  Last week was midterms, and that combined with "mom" duties, well, time just got away from me.  I will get around to it.

The 27th was my birthday -33 years old!  Cade asked me if I felt old.  pfft.  Old! Heck, it's only been 3 years since I turned 30, and I didn't feel old then.  Why should I feel old now?  Couldn't be because I've started college in those 3 years, or the fact that we've added four additional children to our family in those 3 years, or that we're all packed in this house like a bunch of sardines.  Nope, don't feel old at all!

We had a little celebration, in my honor, at the in-laws on Sunday evening.  Cade roasted a big prime rib ($100 sucker -that's how big!) for dinner.  I must say, it was divine.  Sitting around the dinner table, everyone was trying to convince me that I was really turning 34!  How rude -adding a year on.  As if 33 isn't old enough! 

If anyone knows anything about me, it's that I don't like cake.   I don't care what my birthday dessert is, but it better not be cake.  My sweet mother-in-law made me two pies (one peach, one apple), and she was so kind, and only stuck 5 candles in it (that almost made up for her accusing me of being 34). 

We celebrated my birthday on Monday evening, at my parents house.  Mom made me her home-made fried chicken and mashed potatoes, just as I had requested.  She also made me pie for dessert!  See, my family knows me. 

Presents consisted of $$$ (which I had asked for -have some things in mind that I would like to buy), and ducklings.  Yes, ducklings.  Cade said he was "listening", and heard me say that ducklings were cute.  Being the thoughtful husband that he is, he went and bought three of them.  Now, let me tell you, I was only telling Roxie that ducklings were much cuter than chicks.  Not that I, in anyway, desired to own ducks.  The ducklings will be here March 9th, so we have approximately 9 days to figure out a pond situation, and how to keep ducklings warm, and in our yard. 

The girls were overzealous (the word "excited" just didn't quite explain their emotions) to give me the gifts that they had made for me.  You have to love the creativity of kids.  They had made these gifts about a month ago, anticipating my birthday.  Every few days they would say to me, "Mom, how many more days until your birthday?", and I would tell them.  They had these things made, and wrapped in gift bags awaiting the day that I could open them. 

The first item I pulled out was a popsicle stick wrapped in yarn.  That's it.  I don't know what it was, and no one else seemed to know either!  The next item was a popsicle stick with blue flat marbles glued in a line down it.  Cade suggested that maybe it was a back massager, and Roxie (who had made the stick with marbles) ran with the idea.  She even started giving me a massage with the marbles on a stick!  Roxie had also made me a necklace that was made from a piece of ribbon with each end glued to a single circle of green paper.  On the green paper were little buttons, which she had also glued on.  It was beautiful!  I also got a bouquet of flowers, which was made from pipe cleaner and pieces of artificial flower.  I was honored to wear the matching bracelet, also made out of a pipe cleaner and artificial flower.  Kelly made me two books marks using two popsicle sticks and markers.  The last item was a friendship bracelet (although Ethen says I can't call them that, because it sounds too girly) in my favorite colors, from Ethen.  As you can see, I made out!  Who could possibly ask for more?  Not I. 

It's Saturday. My Valentine week is coming to a close.

I still have Roxie & Colby's Valentine's to show you, but first, you get to see mine! Yes, even I had a Valentine, or two, to hand out.  I did a Valentine exchange with a group of friends, and remember those marble magnets that I made a few weeks ago?  I found a good use for them!

I ended up ripping off the lace on the edge of the tin.  Cade said that it looked "90's", so to the trash it went!  Unfortunately, I forgot to take new pictures with no lace on it.

Materials used:
Marble Magnets
Empty Altoids tin
Spray Adhesive
Scrapbook paper
hot glue gun

For the top of the tin, I traced around the tin on the red scrapbook paper, and cut it out.  After I made sure that the edges lined up nicely, I took the tin outside and sprayed the top with some spray adhesive (be careful! This stuff is sticky!), and stuck the red paper on.  I had some scrapbook paper that had the hearts already printed on it, and that is what I used for the To & From tags.  I applied them to the top using hot glue. 

For the inside of the tin I used more scrapbook paper, which I had printed the words on, and again, traced the lid of the altoids tin, and then cut it out.  I used a few dots of hot glue to keep the paper in the top of the lid. 

Then I placed the three magnets in and it was ready for it's recipient!


I made something similar for my sister-in-law's, and the kids teachers, but I used this template that I made:

I printed the template on red card stock, cut out the heart shape, and using a glue dot, I attached a magnet to each one. 

Stay tuned tomorrow to see my final Valentine's for the year!