Modified Christmas

How do I put this.....I didn't take Christmas pictures. Erg, sorry. Mommy fail, well sort of. I'll start on December 23rd when the baby came down with a fever. Mr. Sloth and I were up all night with him. Unfortunately on Christmas Eve Mr. Sloth had some work that needed to get done so he was at the office until 1pm. Since I was up all night I slept in a bit which meant that I was seriously behind when finally did wake up. The house was a disaster and the kids were wild. It was not the Christmas Eve we had last year and it is definitely not what I had planned. Well part of the problem is that I didn't plan much this year. Advent kinda just happened, we didn't even have a wreath this year. Our fall was so busy and chaotic that I spent all of Advent just trying to survive. We never even finished decorating. The second week of Advent we bought a tree, but since we were having friends over for dinner that night we just  threw some ornaments on it and called it a day. Mr. Sloth never got around to decorating our banister but I did hang the stockings. Thank goodness Mr. Sloth is in charge of decorating the outside or that never would have happened.

We fell behind with our Jesse Tree. We started late and then started putting two, three ornaments on a day.Then finally gave up all together. Last year we did a Jesse Tree Tea for Christmas Eve brunch, but since we didn't finish the Jesse Tree and Mr. Sloth was working all day anyway, plus baby had been up with a fever two nights in a row, and don't forget I failed to plan it, so we just didn't do it all. Demand just remembered yesterday and is now making me feel guilty about it.

As we were running late for Mass (Surprise, surprise) I insisted we take pictures before we left. So I shoved the kids in front of the tree and yelled said "Smile! Quick! We gotta go!"

Here's a pic of the fab four. Poor baby had a fever from December 23rd all through Christmas and was not his usual cheerful self.

I love Pax's expression in nearly every photo of him. (He's saying cheese)

Great one of Demand. 

The Handsome Prophet Happy.

Miss Party-Over-Here

There's a better one of Pax.

Just after Santa arrived. All his gifts are in gold paper.

Pax digging into his blueberries Christmas morning. The last two years Santa has given the children each their own pint of blueberries.

New Years Eve

We had our first annual New Year's Eve Movie Night with the kids. Demand and Happy each received a movie kit for Christmas with a new movie, popcorn, sparkling juice, and candy. It was so much fun and the kids were surprisingly pleasant considering how late it was and how many sweets they had. We watched the movie we gave Demand, " The Incredibles". The kids seemed really engrossed in the movie Pax even cuddled with me for most of the time. Baby was already asleep by the way in case you are wondering where he is in the pictures.

Here are the kids getting ready for the show.

They are yelling "Happy New Year"

Here is the spread of movie snacks. Can you believe we had left overs of everything?

Happy and Demand digging in.

Pax hovering over the candy bowl.

I found this cute "milk and cookie" toast idea on Pinterest.

The kids enjoying their toast.

Happy talking about the movie.

The Freezer

You didn't think I could stop at the refrigerator did you? Having the fridge so organized has been great, and I feel like we are eating better and wasting less. Mr. Sloth took New Years Day off work so I had the rare situation of the freedom to go shopping during the day and it wasn't Sunday. We don't like to sop on Sunday so we rarely do, especially for non necessities.

I spent around two to three hours at The Container Store and Ikea. I had researched what I needed for the freezer but thought if I was going to be shopping alone anyway why not get stuff for the pantry as well. It was a glorious afternoon. Here is what I came home with. (Erg, ignore the laundry in the background.

Next I patiently waited until after dinner to break into the freezer and pantry. Thankfully dinner had been made on Sunday and all I had to do was heat it up and assemble the salad. We had pasta with sausage and spinach in a butternut squash sauce with a Greek salad on the side. It was food, healthy, and I didn't hear any complaints from the kids.

After a quick clean up Demand, baby (gosh he needs a name) and I started on the freezer. Guess what, it only took 15 minutes start to finish. We took everything out, wiped down the shelves and drawers, purged the mystery food, divided the food into groups and labeled the bins. Viola!

 We started the process all over again with the pantry. I'll save that for the next post. Demand had to go to bed before we were done and I promised she could help me label everything.Till then.... 

I took a before picture this time so you wouldn't be fooled into thinking I had my act together.

Mister-Mister helping me out.

My lovely and quirky assistant.

She is something else.

This is what came out of there. Yikes! 

Bins in and labeled.

Look how empty the door is!

A spot for any milk I may have pumped and a spot for all the kids freezer cups, 

and Mr. Sloths "Nice Cubes."

I know it seems dumb to label the ice, but a babysitter might not know there is ice behind that door.

Top shelf is a flex shelf and right now is holding two ice packs.

Vegetable and Ice Cream bin.

Meat Bin.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Before I fill you in on our Christmas I will indulge you in today's project. Mr sloth started cleaning out the refrigerator after Mass. I, being in a super organizing mood, jumped on the "Lets clean the fridge train".

We took everything out, purged, and washed every shelf and drawer.

"And that's where I come in." *

I designated areas, grabbed two bins from other parts of the house, and grabbed my new loyal label maker. (Mr Sloth gave me the label maker for my birthday.) A wonderful afternoon followed. It all looks so pretty and well organized. So the top shelf is for eggs and bread or overflow. Next shelf is for condiments. For this I used a bin, this way little jars and bottles don't get lost. Below that shelf is the "sandwich drawer", here I have cold cuts, cheese, flour tortillas, etc...below that drawer is the shelf designated to leftovers/dinner prep shelf. Having a designated shelf for leftovers should help keep track of them. Below that is the snack shelf. again i used a bin here so things wouldn't get lost. It's also accessible to the kids if I don't have time o make the kids a snack. Next are the two drawers for fruits and vegetables.

Then there is the door. Butter and yeast in the top, then overflow storage, the milk, then salad dressing. The fun doesn't stop there. I then made all of our dinners for the week.

Pork chops in a white wine mushroom sauce, pasta with sausage,spinach, and butternut squash sauce, zucchini lasagna, along with some prep work (aka chopping for salads ). Mr Sloth made a huge batch of pancakes for the week. Aside from a meatless Friday meal, all the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners should be ready to go.

It may not seem like a relaxing Sabbath to you, but for me, "Ah. It feels good."

*"and that's where I come in!" Is an inside joke from our Italy trip earlier this year.

Best Laid Plans

Last week I decided to try preparing all the meals for the week in one night and see if it made life easier during the week.  I only really need three meals as we usually eat left overs on Thursday and Meatless on Friday so we often get pizza.  Making or assembling meals on Sunday night is so much easier anyway because I have someone to distract the children, we aren't waiting for a meal to eat, and it makes for only one real mess for the week. Here's what I came up with for my first attempt.

Rotissere Chicken with Mashed Potatoes and gravy, and green bean casserole.



Pot roast with carrots and mashed potatoes.

Dijon Chicken with corn and mashed potatoes.

It only took me around two hours to assemble everything and about 45 minutes to clean and I think that included a break to nurse baby.  So ideally I would  just have to empty a freezer back into a crock pot or roaster and/or put something in the oven every night for dinner.

It worked out fairly well except for the minor detail of me losing the Dijon Chicken. I remember assembling it and I thought I remember walking it out to the deep freezer, but it was never seen again. I was talking to my brother on the phone while I was cleaning the kitchen on Sunday so I may have thrown it out. (I've done it before)  Thankfully I had some fajitas in the freezer and we didn't have to do take out or anything. I had made them a month ago trying out a crockpot meal. It's boneless skinless chicken, salsa, and bell pepers, and taco seasoning, cooked in a crock pot. Just serve over rice or on flour tortillas. It made so much I froze the leftovers for an emergency meal. I'm just impressed that I was able to identify it and use it as an actual meal.

Mr. Sloth and I finally got out do to some Christmas shopping. It was the first time we've been to the Mall of America by ourselves for a long time. I know it's been a long time because we couldn't find any of the stores we were looking for.  We spent two hours there and barely bought anything off our list. We got the number one thing we came for though, and that's what's important.

Before I talk about today, let me just say that every night I say that I'm going to get up at 5:45am and every morning I say I'm going to go to bed earlier. Neither dream ever comes true. I woke up at 5:45am once last week and it was great, but it was only once. Today I woke up at 5:30am after nursing baby. I put him in his swing and said, "Just ten more minutes". I woke up at 8:00am. Grrrr, so close!

So I woke up and quickly assembled a list of what the kids and I were doing for the day. First I was going to shower, then we'd shop for Mr. Sloth's presents and spend the rest of the day working on our homemade gifts. Plans changed. Mr. Sloth called while I was in the shower to let me know that the four digit deposit that he made on Monday only went through as a two digit deposit due to a bank error and we were therefore significantly overdrawn until he could get it figured out at the bank.  Blah!

It could have been worse. Thankfully Mr. Sloth discovered the problem when his check card declined getting coffee and not when I was out with all four kids in 9 degree weather because the first thing I had to do was put gas in the van and it would have been a nightmare. One of the downfalls of not having credit cards is not having back up in case of an emergency. (I'm very happy not having credit cards though)

So poor Mr. Sloth spent the morning in the bank looking for his lost money, days before Christmas like he was George Bailey, and I stayed home until the issue was resolved.

As my backup plan I decided to work on some of the homemade gifts with the kids. For some reason my ambitious side kicked in and I thought it would be a great idea to reorganize all of my baking supplies which includes bins of candy and sprinkles. Yeah, that was fun. I thought Pax was going to have a seizure trying to convince me to give him some of the candy. We barely made any progress on the gifts when I had to stop to make the kids lunch.   Mr. Sloth came home and let me know that our check card wouldn't work yet but he brought home some cash to get me through today.

So at 12:30pm, I started to load a crabby two year old, a four month old, a three year old, and a six year old into the van and head out into 10 degree weather in the busiest part of town, at the busiest time of day, during naptime. Bad idea. We get to Kohls and load up the triple stroller, get inside and grab a cart with a childseat in it. I now have two carts full of kids in a surprisingly packed department store. (Demand can push one cart by the way in case you are wondering how I pulled that off. Kohls is not triple stroller friendly by the way.)  I knew the stores would be packed tonight, and definitely tomorrow which was why I braved heading out at this time in the first place, so I was surprised to see it so busy.  I'm sure people were annoyed at me and my cart/strollers but deal with it people. My real problem was that Pax was screaming nearly the entire time for whatever toy he wasn't currently holding and Happy who was supposed to be picking out a toy for baby (whose name he drew in Christmas exchange)  was in fact picking out gifts for himself. And anytime I'd mention that we still had to get Daddy a gift he would suggest something he and Daddy could share.  I finally conceded to a failed attempt at shopping. I picked out a toy for baby, bought two boys neck (clip on) ties and a pair of dress pants for Happy and we left.

So now the plan is that I order pizza for dinner and Mr. sloth is coming home a bit early to take Demand and Happy to the Christmas Parade (It's a nighttime lights parade). I was going to stay home with Pax and baby and then get groceries later tonight. And while I love this time of year because I can do my grocery shopping at SuperTarget close to Midnight, I'm now trying to convince myself that tomorrow I can get up early and go and miss the crowds instead of heading out tonight after Mr. Sloth gets home.

Let's hope the upcoming Christmas plans go better than this past week.

Why I hate McDonald's (Oh, and I'm back)

It's a been a year. No way of getting around that fact. Clearly a lot has changed. I've been tossing around the idea of blogging again to maybe keep me more accountable. Then there's the fact that I feel guilty that I have virtually no record of our children's existence as and fear one day my children will be that adult that has seemingly no past but just magically appeared as adults one day.

Today is the day that did it. This afternoon needed recording if only for the ridiculousness of it all, if not for my paper trail of beatification. So without further adieu...

Why I hate McDonalds.

I picked Demand and Happy up from their Good Shepard class today at 11am. I had to drop one of their freinds off on the way home first and thought, "You know what, I should stop at McDonalds for lunch". I NEVER....NEVER stop at McDonalds. McDonalds creeps me out.  I thought, however, that if I picked up McDonalds my kitchen wouldn't be as messy and I would have a smoother afternoon. I was wrong.

Why McDonald's, you ask? Because Wendy's is on the other side of town and McDonald's is just down the street and it was well past lunch time for us. So we bring McDonald's home and eat. The kids eat everything. I only bought two kids meals because they usually don't eat everything but today they ate it all including half of my meal which I had no business getting in the first place. 

Next it was naptime. I have had cronic neck pain for nineteen days now most likely due to nursing but today was really bad because last night I was up half the night with the baby which is rare. So I desperately needed a nap and as we would be out late, it being Religious Ed night, I decided we should all nap.

Everyone headed to their prospective resting places.

We've been having problems with Happy, who is now almost four, staying in his bed for naps on the rare occasion we actually make him take a nap. So I threatened him with a time out until Mr. Sloth gets home if he gets out of bed. That was a mistake. I wasn't in bed more than three minutes when I hear him whimpering at the door that he had peed his pants. Not wanting to disturb an almost asleep baby I whispered to get changed and come back. Keep in mind it takes him at least ten minutes to dress on any given occasion. Next I had Demand at my door informing me that there was pee on the bathroom floor and she needed to use the restroom. Again, trying not to disturb baby I motioned to use my bathroom but be quiet and not flush the toilet. Twenty minutes later Demand is still in the bathroom and I open my door to now see Happy back the toilet. Pax is now screaming that he wants to get out of the room too. I reprimanded Pax for screaming and headed back to my room. By now, Demand is done going to the bathroom, Happy is not, but I head back to bed anyway. I didn't so much as lay down when the doorbell rang. That blessed doorbell!  Apparently packages can only be delivered to our home between the hours of 12:30pm-and 3pm. And if you aren't going to grace me with actually handing me the package just leave it on the doorstep, don't ring the doorbell. So now I have to go and answer the door because if I don't the kids will. As I walk out of my room I now find Demand on the kids bathroom toilet and Happy pant less next to her seemingly waiting to have it back when she is done. At this time I will remind you that there is still a puddle of urine on the floor. A problem I solve by merely throwing a towel over it for the time being.

Coming up the stairs, I find that the doorbell had in fact woke the baby, but Pax seems to be asleep now. So I grab a pillow and blanket and tell Happy to sleep in the hall when he is finished.  I then dash downstairs to search for baby's pacifier. As I frantically searched for it I notice how completely destroyed the kitchen is and wonder why did I bother going to McDonald's if not only my kitchen is a mess but my children's digestive tracks are a mess as well? I came upstairs empty handed of a pacifier but found the hall way and bathroom empty.  Happy had ignored my instructions and gone back into his room where I found him standing by Pax's crib! Good grief! Get into bed child!  I then head into my bedroom and close the door behind me. I climbed into bed with my sweet little bunk mate but find that I can't sleep after ten minutes of thinking what a great blog post this would be. I finally decide that baby is asleep enough for me to sneak out.  As I head downstairs I realize that the ten minutes I had to lay down actually made my neck more stiff and painful than if I had decided to not lay down at all.

I blame McDonald's.

Run Down

Wonder if I'll ever finish that Christmas post I started.


To serve as an excuse I will give you a run down of the past three weeks.

Week 1: Kids get fevers so we stay home all week and kids get cabin fever two days before Christmas.

Week 2: We have a lovely Jesse Tree Tea on Christmas Eve day. Next  day is Christmas full of presents, birthday cake, candy, cousins and plain ol' excitement. The next day some relatives come to stay for 48 hours, we spend much of those 48 hours at Grandmas house for some serious cousin time. Wednesday after Christmas we spend 12 hours out of the house. While we are supposed to drive 6 1/2 hours on Thursday I do no preparation due to my exhaustion. Thursday we wake up throw random stuff  the van and drive to Mena and Papas. The non-routine/spoiling continues for three days at Mena and Papas until we can take no more.

Instead of stopping at sister in laws on the way home we cut our losses and retreat for Christmas Detox.

Week 3: One of the better decisions I made while planning the holidays was NOT to do school this week. I had a feeling we would need a week to recuperate and that we sure did. Even though Demand has been curious as to when we'll do more school it's been nice to have some down time, regular naps and meals and time to get the house back in order. I mean, I just caught up with laundry today. Jeepers-Creepers! We did have swimming and Religious Ed this week but it's nice to gradually get back into the swing of things.

So the house is in order, meals are planned for the next week, and school is planned for next month. I've even started reading the book for this months book club two weeks earlier than I usually do,yay for me!

We are all excited to get back into the full swing of school again. We starting the next level of Math which I think might be second grade, but I'm not entirely sure. And we are starting "All About Spelling". I've only heard great things about this program. Since Demand is already reading I've heard this is a great next step. Speaking of reading Demand is enjoying "Book-it". Remember "Book-it"?? Well you can do it even if you homeschool. The "teacher" sets the goals and sends out the coupons a head of time for the free personal pan Pizza-Hut Pizzas.  I set the goal of Demand reading 10 books to get one coupon. Turns out, that is an easier goal to attain than I realized.  Demand has gotten to go twice. First off, it is HARD to find a sit down Pizza Hut these days! This last time we went the day after Christmas. The rest of us had Pizza Buffet and she got her personal pan. Next time I think we'll spend the day at the indoor pool at our gym and then head over for Pizza since they are fairly close to one another. Hows that for an inexpensive day of fun??

The next exciting news is that we are moving Happy into Pax' room. We knew it had to be done,and fairly soon but Pax is such a great sleeper we didn't want to ruin it. While at my parents we had no choice but to have all the kids sleep in the same room and by themselves. Something that's never been done before. For the first time in 6 years not on of our children screamed themselves to sleep at  my parents house. It was lovely!  Happy was  in an inflatable big boy bed he got for Christmas and was King of the World for all he knew. He was a little rambunctious at bedtime but Demand and Pax were tired and kept him in line. So it's very hopeful for a smooth transition. This will be stage one of the Great Happy Potty-Training Adventure.

I'll post Christmas pics when the children aren't eating chalk and harassing Mr. Sloth while he makes dinner.