A whole lot of soakin' goin' on

Well, I am entirely irritated with this blog right about now. I went to change my Christmas background and have ever since been unable to get a normal layout with the blog. My picture is gone, my blog links are stuck at the bottom as is my profile and I have searched the internet for answers but have had no luck so far. This irks me to no end. This has got to be something so simple and I cannot figure it out, so if anyone has the answers I need, please help a mama out! I've got enough going on right now. I need a cooperative blog! Really. In the meantime, I will just post as usual and try to grin and bear the fact that the blog doesn't look the way I want it to. Argh!

Let me just say that I am oh so very tired. We have had quite a little week here. This will be one of those posts with no pictures, but plenty to see. I started out with a chiropractor appointment on Monday where Micah and I both got adjusted. Micah has just been so whiny and crying all the time lately and it's been getting on my ever livin' nerves! She was colicky when she was a baby and so she has the propensity to get it even still. Later that evening, however, she was throwing up. It was unusual the way she was, so I chalked it up to the adjustment and the Dr. confirmed it probably was.

The next day was Tuesday and Tim and I went to see Wicked with Phil and Shelley for our anniversary. Yay! I was so excited. I put the kids down for naps at Erin's house, the boys got a ride there after school and Ruthie picked them up around 5 to take them home to feed them dinner. After that, dad came over and took over so Ruthie and Dave could go to Kinship (small group). Mom was supposed to come over too but she was sick at home. Very sick. Apparently she got hit with a bit of flu and guess who's house she was at the night before??? Mmm hmm.

After the show was over we realized we had missed a call from dad and we later found out that he was having an interesting time at our house with Titus who was getting the same sick mema had. When we got home, I found Titus' comforter by the laundry room, wet underwear in the bathroom sink (oh yeah, did I mention that this was the week I decided to start potty training Titus??? Nice one!) and very soiled sheets in the upstairs bathtub. Poor dad. He was flying solo with 5 kids, one of which was entertaining his poppy in a most unpleasant way.

The next morning we all got up and got breakfast and Tim took the boys to school on his way to work. Now, you know you can't have the flu and only "expel" from one end, right? Poor Titus had it bad and I found out just how bad shortly after breakfast; bad enough that I had to put him in pull-ups. Well, Titus was crying all during his cleanup and I must have been crabby because his crying was getting on my nerves and I just wanted him to stop. Well, stop he did just before he threw up all over me. What a way to find out that they had noodles for dinner last night. Mmm!

We were sitting on the living room floor and so my first instinct was to make sure absolutely none of it got on the carpet. I cannot stand stinky carpet!!! I made sure to catch it all in my lap and then I scooted over to the kitchen floor where I just sat, bewildered as to what to do. I'm soaked. My phone is soaked (it happened to be in my pajama pocket and the pocket got filled by Titus). Titus is standing in the bathroom still crying, but now because his pajamas are wet and then I look over and Micah is walking straight toward part of the mess which is now on the kitchen floor. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?

I start shouting for Eden to get Micah and take her upstairs because the moment I stand up, there will be puddles everywhere, but she doesn't respond so well and sure enough, as this day is starting off so wonderfully, Micah walked --barefoot-- through a puddle. I don't think I have even been awake for 2 hours by now. What kind of a "good morning" is this??? It's a flippin' nasty one, that's what. Am I the only one this happens to? Sheesh!

I needed a nap and I needed one fast. Once lunch was over I put all 5 kids to bed and I went to bed myself. It would have been glorious except that I was in jeans and long sleeves, in flannel sheets and under a blanket and our comforter and I was freezing. I couldn't get warm to save my life. Guess what that means? It must be getting close to my turn to get it. Well, I get out of bed and go upstairs to get everyone up as it was 4pm and we all slept way too long. I got into the girls' room and little Micah had gotten sick sometime during her nap and it was all over her and her bed.

I got her up and stuck her in the tub with Titus who really should have gotten in the tub after this morning's episode. No sooner had I got them out of the tub and dressed Micah (Titus was streaking the house) than I had to make a run for my bathroom. I tasked Elijah with clothing Titus who was so non-compliant that in between my 2 sessions with the porcelain god, I had to spank him. You never stop being mommy.

Thursday morning at 2:45 Eden woke me up crying with a bed full. Later that day it was Micah's turn. Friday was Tim's turn and today, Saturday, is Elijah's turn and Micah's second go-round. I have been washing the same sheets and pajamas for the past 3 days that I am up to my ears in normal laundry. I finally got one of the bathrooms cleaned today but am so overwhelmed and so underhelped that I don't know when I'm going to get caught up. It's pretty bad when the only person willing to help me is someone with sick kids of her own, thanks to ours truly. I pray that next week will be like turning over a new leaf, medically. Please oh please oh please!

Christmas at the farm

It's been a few days since we got back from the farm and I am just now getting back into the swing of things. I have not recouped yet from the holidays nor do I expect to anytime soon. Since we didn't put our tree up until the 15th of December, I refuse to take it down before the 15th of January, so I won't even have the decorations cleared out until almost February. Then I can start to recoup from the holidays.

I'm pretty sure that we are waiting for everyone to get in the living room so we can open presents. Naps are done and excitement is high. I should have fixed the girls' post nap hair, but didn't. Next to Levi is my sister-in-law, Shelley. Did you all know that there are 2 Shelley/Shelly Svobodas?!? In one family...how DO we do it?!? (Dolly, you like the deer head in the background?)

Eden and her friend Abby LOVE to play princess dress up. She isn't quite old enough to be responsible to care for these, but she got Sleeping Beauty with her prince and a horse and carriage. She can't wait to get back home to play with Abby.

Levi's a funny guy. Now you moms can't say that you never thought of REALLY using duct tape to get some piece of quiet...it crossed my mind when I saw Levi do this, but I've actually wrapped duct tape around my head before...when I was little. I don' t know what I was thinking. It is very strong and took a long time to get off of my hair. I won't do that to my kids. They haven't made me that nuts yet.

This is Micah's little baby boy. I thought he was absolutely adorable and had to get him. We call him Charlie because at the time I couldn't think of a cute baby boy name. Any suggestions? She hasn't really taken to him yet. She still loves her "Dolly" that my mom got her when she was born. Charlie may make his way into her arms one day.

The 'boda boys and their new Bears jerseys. Elijah and Titus got Brian Urlacher and Levi got Greg Olsen. I got John Paul and Sarah Olsen jerseys too. It was fun! Now Levi is excited to have the same as uncle John Paul. Aren't they a handsome bunch?!?

Our cutie Nadia Renee...couldn't you just eat her up?

Saturday night the boys got involved in a little nerf dart gun fight. Uncle Phil is hiding behind the chair and caught the boys off guard. It was funny. The darts stuck very nicely to the pj's they were wearing. It was fun to watch Titus run around and around trying to be like his big brothers. Some day little man.

Merry Christmas!!!

I should be taking a nap right now. Last night I went to do one of my transcripts and got a bit drowsy, so Tim got me a Starbucks to jolt me awake for the 3 hours needed to do my transcript. It was supposed to be done today, not started today. At 10pm I had a Triple Grande Vanilla Latte and 8 hours later I went to bed. Tim was going to have me sleep in today anyways, but little did he know. The "Triple" did it's job, but down at 6am and up by 9:30 makes for a very tired mama, ya think? But the post must go on!

Here goes...Christmas Eve is always spent at Grandpa's house. This year aunt Barbara, uncle Jim and Jimmy came up from Florida to visit.
***TANGENT***The night before Christmas Eve (I think) we were all at my parents house and we ended up playing a dice game called Farkle. If you find it on the shelves, you might not be too impressed, and I don't think it thrilled poor aunt Barbara who couldn't score to save her life, but it's a pretty fun game. If you can believe it, we even got grandpa to play. You tell your grandpa that you have never played a game with him and he tends to get a little soft. I'll bet none of you Rebers knew that your papa had hot hands for throwing dice. At the set out of the game, he was having unbelievable beginner's luck. He even started snapping his fingers and pointing at the dice and then calling his numbers. It was fun and funny! Thank you again, grandpa.
Back to grandpa's house. I am not sure how I missed it, but I didn't get a picture of grandpa at his post on the piano bench, but rest assured that he was there handing out presents in true grandpa fashion. "To the gift giver!!!"
Here we are in the back room waiting for Santa to come. I think there are try-outs for the role of Santa. John Paul tried it last year and I think Joel got roped into doing it this year. Eventually someone will fill the belt.
Titus isn't sure whether he is to be scared or bold enough to march right into the living room to see what all the commotion was, which he about did.

Just before we began the Christmas story, we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Levi who turned 6 this day. He air guitarred the whole song. Yep, he's 6 alright. (That's Suzanna's boyfriend, Jeff, on the left.)

These are my precious pumpkins during the Scripture reading. Are they il-mannered or what? Eden has half stripped off her clothes making her look like a raggamuffin and Titus is stealing Eden's dolly and making her fly into the presents. Would someone please take control of these kids?!! Wait! That's my job. (That's Joanna's boyfriend, Nathan, on the right.)

***

On Christmas morning we got up, got ready to go to Tim's parent's house for the day and then sat under our one-presented tree to see what we got. The boys were shocked and quite thrilled to see a Wii under the wrapping paper. I wonder where my camera was for all that? Oops.

We got to grandma and grandpa's house for a wonderful brunch cooked up by Shelley and assisted by Phil. Regardless of what Shelley might say or think, it was delicious and great of her to do it all for us. Thank you!

When present time came, the kids all planted themselves one of the couches while I managed the cameras from the other end of the living room.

Micah thinks she is so big now that she can climb into this chair all by herself. Now, can she get down? I think she is asking grandpa for help.

Nadia Renee's first Christmas. I can't speak for everyone, but I am thrilled to have her in our family and am glad that we get to see them a bit more regularly for a while before they head out to Indonesia. She is learning to sit up by herself and I got a kick out of the head-to-head she had with this dog of hers, so I started snapping pictures.

Her dress was so cute. After the second kid, I don't think I remembered to get "First Christmas" outfits. Certainly nothing cute like this doll is wearing!

That night we played games and ended up staying the night because I didn't want to load everyone up in the cold to go home, plus I was tired. The next morning we got out the door fairly quickly (the kids insisted on eating breakfast...what's up with that?!?) and found that all surfaces in NW Indiana were covered in at least 1/4" of ice, if not more. It took us almost 1 hour and 20 minutes to go what normally takes around 20 minutes to drive. It was insane how often we ourselves almost crashed into other cars. The highways were closed and we were plain nuts for being out in that weather, but we needed to get home.

***
Mema's house is where we went Friday night.

Friday night we all spent the night at mom and dad's so we could have our Christmas breakfast nice and early to get a start on opening the mound of gifts under the tree downstairs. This was the best shot of the kids we could muster. Levi and Eden had me cracking up with their sibling pose. Elijah was all about anything Chicago Bears. He was thrilled to get this football because besides it being the right colors, it was just his size so he could actually hold it and throw it right.

Levi was all about his buddy Toby, or as Titus calls him, "Toby tobe." Levi wants a dog so badly, but mommy's not ready for another kid right now, let alone one that poops and pees on the floor. Do they think functions like that take care of themselves??? I don't think so.

Eden got a Madame Alexander doll (much like the American Girl Dolls) and she named her Rebekah. You wouldn't tell it to look at her, but she is our girly girl princess. So NOT me in that respect.

Titus was just about tearing stuff up. Everything. Everywhere. Tear, tear, tear. At least this time he is tearing open his own present. His "bestest" toy was his planet hero figures. He loves them!
Micah was oblivious to what was going on, naturally. She did manage to find Eden's necklaces and bracelets and rings and put them on herself so elegantly. She was a natural. Uh-oh, 2 princesses in the house? Can we handle that?

After yesterday's freeze, you can imagine what our weather was like today. Or can you?



It was a high of 67, I think, so these crazy guys took advantage and played outside. Aren't they hot? No, literally!



The boys thought this was so fun, and yes, that's dad on a lawn chair.



Even the dogs got out on the ice for a little romp. All the girls were too chicken.
That evening the worst wind storm passed through bringing on old man winter again. There was a wind advisory and you'd have though the house was not going to make it, it was so bad. When we got home, this is what we found.



I couldn't believe it. I think we managed to salvage most of it, but that could have done some damage to people's property and boy are we lucky it didn't!!!

I don't know about you but I think that's about all the crazy weather I can handle for one holiday, but there's more to come, I'm sure! Stay tuned.

Elijah's Christmas Program

I love my kids' school. It's a private school and I love pretty much everything about it...except for these goofy Christmas programs. You remember how Levi's was just way too late at night? Well, this one was supposed to start at 7pm on a Tuesday night. Despite the blizzard we had to drive through to get to the program, we had school the next day and 7pm is too late, on a school night, to start an elementary Christmas program. It was a disaster waiting to happen. I think a lack of planning and strong directing was part of the problem. Here we are packed like sardines in the hallway of the local public High School, an apparent last minute change of venue, waiting to go into the auditorium as the kids inside are practicing a couple of the numbers. Titus just wanted daddy and he was fine.

The program itself could have been cute, but as is the case with most private schools that aren't rolling in the dough, it wasn't equipped with all the proper tools. The music was played from a boom box through the auditorium speakers. Tim, being a sound professional, was going nuts! The kids with speaking parts spoke too fast and not into the mics, so we couldn't hear anything they were saying. The songs were great. That was the best part of it all, but the speaking parts, the parts that contained the bulk of the message, was just background noise. Oh well, the kids looked rather cute and were singing their hearts out!

The kids were all asked to make their own shirts. Of course, I waited until the last minute and 4 hours before the program I made Elijah's, but it was fun and he really liked it! It almost made me want to make all the kids a shirt of some kind, but I didn't want to waste all the white shirts.

Getting the tree up...finally

Ok, first of all, I know it is December 29th and I'm just now posting about our Christmas tree...but sometimes I can tend to be a bit anal about things that don't matter; Having my blog show ALL photographed events in chronological order is one of them. I am going to spend the next few posts catching up on my blog. Fun, I know. So, the tree. Well due to who knows what, we didn't get a tree up until the 15th, but fear not, I will have it up until at least January 15th to make up for lost time. We managed to get the tree up, but that was just about it. Once it's the middle of December, it seems to be too late to drag it all out. Maybe it was just me, but I didn't desire to do it all. Here, the kids are all helping to fluff those lovely branches on the artificial tree. (I only went back to re-fluff a few)

In the Svoboda house, whatever night is chosen to put up the Christmas tree is also a night that we will get Dairy Queen. It's a bit of an odd tradition, but it's our tradition you could say. The kid's loved it and I will have to say that my Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard didn't disappoint!

Once I finally drudged through the lights, and the ones that all of a sudden don't work and the half lit strands and all that rigmarole, we put the ornaments on. I am lucky that none of the ornaments got broken the way these sugar infused maniacs were going through my box and in the end, it was a very cozy looking tree! I love a dressed Christmas tree!

There are no presents yet, but that's mostly because we only got one thing for the kids and us and that was a Wii. Everything else that we got for everyone else I am taking to mom's for a wrapping party as it will all be opened there. Besides, with Titus around, do you think it wise to wrap a bunch of presents and leave them enticingly under the tree??? No, I didn't think so either.