Wee wee wee alllllllll the way home.....

Yup, that's my title and I'm sticking to it! Thinking we were going to just jump right into Monday after our vacation, it came as no small surprise on Monday around 10:00am when I started feeling kind of bad. I told the children to start school and make lunch and I was going to lie down. Well, what I thought was going to be a short rest became a five hour nap!! I was sick. By Tuesday I was feeling slightly better and back in the land of the living to a certain degree. I still slept from after lunch until around 3:00. But by Wednesday, I was a lot better and I had noticed something: (this is ironic because at one of my friends' blogs she is ALSO discussing potty training!!): everytime I turned around Beaker had a new set of clothes on. I know that Beatrice and Kristinie the Great love to change their clothes on a whim but this was getting ridiculous. As I was musing to myself, quite loud but definitely not yelling, well, I was really complaining, Maddie happened to hear. She said, Oh, that's because Grandma Blake put her in pull-ups all week!" Well, that explains a lot! So we had a little course in re-potty training last week. I thank the Lord it was not a long process but it did take a little "prodding" to convince her that it would be in her best interests to use the toilet. After that, she was fine. We finally left the house on Thursday, though I thoroughly enjoy being home. It is a lot of fun to spend time with the children when I am well, but when I am sick they get kind of stir crazy, even when they go outside to play, so they were thrilled to go out. We went to my mom and dad's and had lunch with Mom.

We celebrated our pastor's birthday last Sunday and here are two of the cakes we picked out. It was a fun time and it was great to have a Birthday party for him. 

It is ironic in this photo that Kristinie the Great has a pull-up on but it was Wednesday night and right before she was to go to bed. She is teaching Pat-Pat how to play Angry Birds! She is also using my Nook Tablet which for some reason has become not-my-Nook-Tablet! Everyone ELSE wants to use it. I highly recommend it. It does everything but my wash, the kitchen, and vacuum. I put my grocery list on it last week and it was great not to have to carry a pen and paper. I even managed not to get confused and miss things! I also had my Food Lion list on my phone so I could cross reference. I know, I'm just a nerd! 

Here is Maddie in Dagmar the Wonder Dachschund's cage. She thought it would be funny to be in there. Dagmar is my mom's and dad's dog.

Friday Frenzy came quickly last week due to the fact that we only had two days of actual days! Here is one of my friends' children after his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We're at co-op. He is so cute. He is one of Beakers' buds.

And here is what happens when you leave the house at 8:30am and don't arrive home until approximately 5:00pm. We start with co-op then have lunch except today I made the VERY BIG mistake of going shopping at Sam's. I say VERY BIG mistake because it wore the children out. Then we went to band, then art, back to band, then back to art. Don't I sound like a boomerang! It was a great day but clearly tiring. We raced home, I fed the children, we brought them to church for play practice, and Mr. Handsome and I got a date! And free babysitting! HA!

Saturday, Robert got to race in the regional pinewood derby for Scouts. He did not place but he had a great time racing. His car ran approximately 213 mph, while the fastest cars were going 118 mph and upwards to 221 mph!! We came home, I finished food shopping, then we got to have a great dinner. After being sick last week, (I did forget to mention that everyone else but Maddie was sick too, because I was too focused on myself.) we have ramped up our healthy eating. That is not to say we don't eat junk food. I have been trying to be sure that our main meals, especially lunch and dinner, have a lot of good healthy food. Saturday night we had a roast beef and blue cheese salad with parmesan bread and grapes, served up buffet style. Everyone LOVED it! I couldn't believe it. The purple lettuce was kind of bitter but everyone ate it. And I have decided to try to find a new vegetable to give them each time we go shopping. Everyone is pretty much on board now with brussels sprouts and asparagus, so I bought some sugar snap peas and they liked them. I did have to explain to them that they didn't need to take the peas out of the shells, though. I am glad that they are patient with me! Short post this week but hopefully we will have more excitement this week.