What A Great Holiday!

It was so good that this is what it looked like in our house at 10:00 AM Saturday morning!













I was just going up to take pictures when Abby stumbled out of bed and beat me to the photo op. I was bummed because when I had checked on them just before grabbing the camera she was all catawampus. Ellie didn't make her appearance until 10:30.

That's what happens (with our kids) when you are up until midnight the night before! Spencer even slept in a little bit, but (as usual) not as late as Abby & Ellie did. He also went to bed a bit earlier than Abby & Ellie. The girls thought it was pretty cool that they were still up at midnight. We were sitting around the table eating cereal and I told the girls this was called a "midnight snack". We then talked about how they had never (outside of their newborn days) been up this late before!

We had a great 4th of July! It was really nice to be at home! We had some friends over and all the kids got along incredibly well (as we anticipated). All in all there were 7 kids from ages (almost) 2 to (just turned) 6. They enjoyed swimming, playing outside, playing inside, playing, playing, playing. While they played, we (the adults) hung out and talked adult talk. We had some incredible food. We lit off some spectacular fireworks. It was nice. It was relaxing. The only major downside was our neighbors, and that was huge. They behaved in ways we've never witnessed before, and it was shocking. This is just one more thing to add to our list of issues with them and something for me to look into should it happen again. Thankfully, despite all that, everyone had a fabulous time... and they keep telling us this days later. Looks like we need to do this again!

Unfortunately I woke up with a doozy of a headache Saturday morning, but thankfully with a bit of time, medicine, and caffeine I was good to go for the day. We all had such a late start that our day was so out of whack.

We opted to stick close to home and do some fun family activities. With the late nights and crazy schedules it was of great importance to us to get the boy his nap. He is an awesome napper and he (and we!) greatly benefit from his nap. He is flexible about it, but skipping it is just a bad idea and absolutely not worth it.

So, we ended up going to the Wildlife Safari for something new to do. The kids have been there before but they didn't remember their previous trip. They had a great time scouting for the animals, walking through wolf canyon, and then checking out the Aviary before heading out. After leaving the park we headed over to SAC Museum to check out the rockets on display in front of the museum, which received oohs and ahhs from the back of the van.

That evening we went to see the latest movie at the theatre. We were all looking forward to it but I think we all left greatly disappointed. It had great reviews, the kids loved the trailers, and it all looked perfect. All the kids ended up freaked out at various points and Carie and I are now thinking that our expectations for movies must be too high. Needless to say, we won't be buying this one when it hits the streets.

After the movie we headed over to some friends house to watch yet more fireworks. There happened to be a large display going off that night and they happened to have an incredible view. The kids had fun playing with various outdoor toys while we sat around waiting for it all to get started. Unfortunately, it was so darn late and we were just simply exhausted after our previous late night and our long day.

Oh, and we had to teach Sunday school for the pre-school crowd the next morning which meant no sleeping in for anyone. And, of course, we hadn't yet prepared our lesson, and not a favorite lesson at that! Nothing like doing that at 1am! Thankfully the next morning went off without a hitch and we enjoyed some down time that afternoon.

Happy 4th!!!

Happy Independence Day!

The kids have been really looking forward to tomorrow. It is funny, in the past they have never really been thrilled with all of the festivities that surround this holiday. But this year "Friday" can't get here soon enough! Spencer has been making his own fireworks out of everything, it seems. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the real stuff tomorrow night.

It's looking like it will be the perfect day for us... relaxing, adult friends, kid friends, relaxing, good food, cold drinks, fireworks, did I mention relaxing? The weather even looks like it will be perfect with a high of 80!

Is it too good to be true?

Independence Day Celebrations

As usual, our Holiday celebrations were fun filled and exhausting.

Though, Carie repeatedly proclaimed (under her breath) how much she dislikes this holiday. Her dislike for the holiday has nothing to do with the intended reason to celebrate, though that is often forgotten amongst all of the traditional hoopla. The dislike revolves around the extremely late nights, all the commotion and noise - omg the noise, and resulting kid exhaustion. Our kids thrive on their routines and sleep, especially sleep, and those seemingly go out the window during the multi-day celebration of this holiday.

Tuesday evening (the 3rd) we went to Lincoln so the kids could celebrate a bit with their cousin and watch my brother set off his fireworks.
He had some day-time fireworks that the kids enjoyed (mostly) and then he brought out his stuff (I call it the boy stuff) that sent Ellie inside quite fast.

Throughout the night our kids alternated between being inside and watching them through the window and being outside to watch them.

I had suggested, requested, pleaded that he start with his tame stuff, and I guess his missile launcher was tame for him. Spencer exclaimed that it was too loud!

Near the end of his show we got all the kids jammied up and ready to go. They, and we, were quite tired and ready for bed. Thankfully they all fell asleep on the way home and they all transferred easily once home. Thankfully the next day was a day off!

Wednesday started off a bit slow. Thankfully all the kids slept in! Once we got going we headed downtown for a picnic lunch at Gene Leahy Mall. The area is an "urban playground" running through the downtown area. We setup our picnic under a nice big tree next to the water, ate lunch and fed the swans, ducks, and fish.

Then we enjoyed the "big big slides" for a bit before heading home for nap time.








While Spencer was napping I took Alex and Ellie shopping for Alex's birthday present. We scored on some great deals and Alex ended up with some nice stuff. We then headed over to the mall for a bit. We like to go to the mall, but I struggled with understanding the draw the mall has to an almost 11yo. I was happy to take her to the mall but I never figured out what she really wanted to do at the mall.

Then it was time to head home and figure out our evening plans. We wanted to go to Lincoln (again) as we were invited to Carie's sisters house to celebrate with them. But, given the next day was a work day and given how out of routine we knew our kids were and how out of routine we expected B&B to be, we also wanted to be home for bedtime with high hopes that it wouldn't be a late night for our 4. The next day wasn't looking so good for Carie! I was lucky and got to go to work while she navigated the day with 6 over-tired kids.

With Spencer not waking from his nap until 5:00ish and with our desire to be home before bedtime, it didn't seem possible to make the trip to Lincoln. So we stayed home and still managed to stay up extremely late. The kids had nothing to do with going to bed with all the excitement and noise going on outside. I was quite impressed with how well our kids tolerated the noise. It seems that each night was an improvement over the previous night. As usual, there were quite a lot of fireworks going of throughout the neighborhood. A couple of our neighbors had quite a stash and lit them off well into the night. And of course, our kids had no interest in calling it a night until they were completely done!

Overall I'm glad the nights filled with noise are behind us and we are in recovery mode. I'm also quite thankful that we and the people we know had a fun and safe holiday.

What Happened?

I was looking forward to today, Monday, being a down day.

Work was a bit crazy and I finally returned home just in time to throw dinner on the grill. All the kids were hands on with the dinner prep. So many bodies in the kitchen! Dinner was delicious and everyone cleaned their plate. Well, wouldn't you if it meant s'mores!?!?!?

After dinner we were treated to s'mores. Carie picked up the fixings at the store recently thinking it would be a fun treat to make while the coals on the grill were still hot. It was a great idea and the kids had a blast. I think Carie, I & Alex actually enjoyed them the most. Spencer was confused by the mess and just wanted the chocolate; he is all about the chocolate. As we went to assemble his s'more he shouted "stop it". Clearly we were about to harm his chocolate! Abby tried, liked it, but had a fair amount left. Her reasoning was that it was too sticky. Ellie pretty much devoured hers along with us older people.

We then headed out to get some fireworks. We thought we'd try out some at home tonight to test out Ellie's comfort level with her earmuffs. We are trying to decide what we are going to do over the next few days and having a better pulse on how she might react to the fireworks will be great help as we firm things up. We ended up doing fun daylight stuff; multi-colored smoke balls, snakes, poppers, ground bloom flowers, and a jumbo parachute thing that spit out tons of parachutes onto the neighbors house. We called Beth & Ben to come enjoy the parachutes with us and all six kids had fun.

Overall Ellie did remarkably well, far better than she's done in the past. Granted, everything we did was pretty calm. But, she stayed outside with us from beginning to end without any signs of needing to go inside. That is a huge huge step for her.

I think the earmuffs help in more ways than one. I’m positive that they do reduce the noise for her, but I also think they give her pieces of mind and some control. She was even giving Beth tips on what noise it would/would not make and how it would be okay.

This continues to look promising.