Tony is Just a BIG Tease

Here's my favorite "I miss my husband" picture for everyone to enjoy. :)

I'm coming home. I'm not coming home. When Tony calls, I'm never sure if it's from some far-off port or a few miles away. As faithful as I am, I still appreciate a little warning, so that I can take a quick shower and try to pull the house into some kind of respectable order. (I know...I should probably do that anyhow, but some days it seems more pointless than others.)

Today I was sure that he was calling to say that he had come home to find his truck had been towed after all...please come pick me up. No. It was to say that if someone walks into our house some night this week, I should call 911 after all, because it won't be him. (He didn't put it that way. That was my own translation.)
I guess the good news is that, although he still has to work this Sunday, we won't even notice. Poor guy.

Cheaper by the Half-Dozen

The Hooligans and I are really into books on tape right now.
It helps to fill all of the time we normally waste driving from point A to Point B, makes the kids much more willing to run errands with me (which they normally have to anyhow), and it cuts down on all of the extremely annoying imaginative play (there's cute imaginative play, but I think the kids who sit behind me are past that stage) and tickle fights that take place in the car.

Our current read/listen is "Cheaper by the Dozen". If you haven't read it, it is full of wonderful vignettes about a very large, fun, innovative family. At times it makes me think it would be a great idea to keep having children forever and enjoy the wild ride of a large family. Lucky for me, my current condition (the getting-as-big-as-a-house condition) brings me back down to Earth, and I remember...I already have a big, crazy family to enjoy....pregnancy (and all of the annoying things that go along with it) is not a state I want to remain in for the rest of my life...and my husband is too smart to go along with that idea anyhow. What a relief. I was actually getting a little tired just imagining it.

Mixed Blessings

To everyone who has been concerned and asking:
I passed my 3-hour (although it actually takes 4 hours!) glucose test with flying colors. Thank you, Allicia, for helping me interpret the results. I'm so grateful that gestational diabetes isn't one more thing for me to think about. Who has time for one more thing?
The bad news is that sitting in an uncomfortable waiting room chair for four hours has thrown me back into the vicious downward spiral of back pain. (The last time this happened, the catalyst was sewing cross-legged on the floor. I learned my lesson and was rescued by a sympathetic chiropractor. If I'm still this crippled on Monday, that may be who I turn to again.)
It seems like once this pain starts, it only gets worse. Laying down, sitting, and heat packs only make it angrier, once I muster the courage to change my position. Last night I thoughtlessly sat on the floor to help James reassemble his train tracks, and, when I tried to get back up, I made such pitiful, whining noises that Jonny asked if I was having my baby (actually childbirth involves much louder, more belligerent noises for me...but Jonny doesn't know that.)
So, true to form, I have fled to the refuge of my parents' home, where I'm being pampered beyond belief. Fed (without having to cook), helped (to catch a fast little 2-year-old who needed to be put to bed), and being driven to the store. (Being a passenger in a car is one of the things I miss when Tony is away. I hate always HAVING to drive.) It has been a lovely break from sitting around my own filthy house, looking at all of the things I'm not feeling well enough to pick up off of the floor.
I think this will tide me over until the cavalry comes riding in to save me...soon!

Ahh! The sweet, sweet fruit of my half-hearted labors!

I have been threatening to sew for at least a week now, but, between laundry and...well..pregnancy, I was having some trouble getting past the basic prep phases. One day I had time to get my fabric washed and ironed. The next day I got a few things cut out. I looked up the same zippered pocket tutorial at least twice, only to be distracted my some other task...or sleep. Well, last night it all finally came together and I finished something! (Actually, I think I just ran out of prep steps.)
Two cute little (seriously, they're very petite) clutches, complete with cute (and o-so-practical) zippered pockets inside. One was immediately snatched up by Annika (are you as surprised as I am that she wanted the gray one?), and the other is being thrown in a package for a far-off friend. If I had known how easy they were, I probably would have gotten around to making them ages ago.
I gave myself a big pat on the head for learning a new skill - the zipper pocket! Seriously, I hate learning new things. New sewing skills, languages, driving directions...whatever. I want to know how to do them, but the whole process is painful just the same, especially if there is no one there to walk me through it. I'm only comforted by the fact that Tony always thinks I'm putting things together incorrectly when I'm sewing. That tells me that, even for people with a great since of spatial reasoning, what I'm doing (correctly, I might add!) is just a tad counter intuitive. Then I don't feel like such an idiot the next time I spend twenty minutes staring at my newest project, trying to figure out the next step. It's either that or spend way too much quality time with my seam ripper!

Woo-Hoo for Payday!

Payday! Woo-hoo! We went to Target and blew it all. Not really, but I did spend eighty dollars on rain boots! It was only going to be one pair, but it kind of snowballed. Jonny cried and cried when I threw away his stinky, holey ones a couple of weeks ago, so I promised to get him new ones on payday. Then James kept doing the sign for boots and was clearly excited for a pair of his own. (They both got froggy ones.) At the store, Annika spotted the Hello Kitty boots on the shelf above the froggies (and is probably thrilled that she can now avoid shoe-tying!) Sofia just didn't think it was fair if everyone else got a pair and she didn't. I'm not even sure she wanted or likes them. Typical.

Luckily Anthony is over that kind of thing...I think. Maybe he just wasn't interest because they only had froggy and cars boots? And I had to get church-worthy shoes (ie. not froggy boots) for both little boys, since they've outgrown all of their other ones! Jonny could barely get his on if there were socks involved. Sarah and I used to think having kids wasn't that expensive, but we've definately changed our minds!

My goal of being mean and making children go to bed on time is going pretty well...except for James, who began his 7-9pm nap while we were running errands. Bummer. Part of me was just so grateful that he was sleeping the whole time I was at JoAnn's! I've made the mistake of waking him up at a craft store before, and the screaming is so not worth it. It is so much harder to ignore screaming in public...and not look like a terrible parent and an annoying person. Of course, now he is happily watching Blues Clues (answering Steve's every question...so cute!), so what am I complaining about anyhow?

Our Extended Stay

One thing that I love about living in Kitsap is that it is such a short drive over to my parent's house (with nearly all of my siblings settled nearby). We're so near that we don't need any big excuse to make the trip and come enjoy our family, even if it's just overnight.
Wednesday morning we woke up and decided to come help celebrate Aunt Becky's birthday - no big deal - hang out and be home in time for dance and scouts the next day...or so we planned. Clearly I don't check the news often enough, because I figured "no snow, let's go!" It didn't even occur to me that the warmer weather and continuing precipitation was going to mean widespread flooding!
So, here we are in Snohomish, hoping that today there will be a clear route back to our house in Port Orchard. We've already missed all of the obligations we were hurrying home for, but we're running out of clean undies!
Thanks to Kathy for the pictures of the kids in front of the overflowing Pilchuck River (which you can't usually see from the road we were standing on). And on the other side of that road, there was the flood from the Snohomish River. Craziness!
If you'd like to see my pictures bigger, check out my Mom's blog (Grandma Linda). I'll try to fix mine when I get home! :)

Christmas cookies! Yes, I'm a little slow.

I'm just now starting to do a bit of Christmas baking (I was too busy sewing before Christmas). Better late than never. When I found my long-lost crystallized ginger on Saturday, I knew just what I was going to bake first - ginger snaps!
Some of the kids like crystallized ginger, so I decided to just chop it up relatively small and not advertise that it was in there. If they begged me, I could always tell them my secret ingredient later.
Annika helped me make roll the dough in sugar, and as she watched them in the oven, she sighed, "they're like glittering balls of sugar!" Yep. Pretty much. Sugar, spice, and everything nice.
Everyone loved them. James tried to horde them all until his 3rd cookie, when he bit into a pretty big piece of ginger. After that, he let us have them!

Polling data shows...

Tony has decided to go on vacation without me again, so now I have plenty of time to add to my blog and agonize over curtain fabric. You're so lucky - I'm going to include you in both!
So...all of my long-distance friends, which fabric should I use to make the girls their long-awaited curtains? I bought fat quarters of each of these. We've been holding them up in front on their window and pondering for weeks now. Please help and vote in my poll!
Yes, I already tried just finding a set to buy, but they were all ugly or heavy or boring...and Amy Butler fabrics are so cute! Do you think it is bad that they aren't "matchy" with the bedspreads?
If you can't figure out which fabric belongs to which name, well, they're in the same order in the poll as they are in the pictures. If you also leave a comment, I'll throw your name in a drawing for a give away! (And no, it won't be all of the losing fabrics...but close.)