Dave's first day home alone with 6 boys.

So the fall out from my first night back at work and Dave's first day home alone with 6 boys was unexpected. It seems that the worst thing that happened was the 3 older boys managed to log into my ebay account using their computer and bid on 4 Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Fortunately they figured shipping into their bids and did not bid more than their combined piggy banks could afford, but I CANNOT BELIEVE MY CHILDREN WERE BIDDING ON EBAY!!!! So far they have been outbid on 1 item and are winning the other 3. Time to change the ebay password.

Success

I think of this blog as a way to remember our lives during this time. As it is fun to remember the humorous things, it is also important to remember triumphs. This is one I believe. The twins were assigned a math project at school. They had to create their own math game. Jace chose something like chutes and ladders where he created a board. You draw a card, and answer the math question on it. If you get it right then you get to roll the dice and move ahead. If you get it wrong then you stay where you are. It was simple and complete and he did a good job. Bren, however blew me away. He is so forgetful, fanciful, and distracted most of the time I often miss the elements of brilliance that make him my husband's son. His game is played with cards. There are roles, the banker and the players. Everyone starts with $2.00. The banker plays 2 cards that have numbers on them. The players get to look at the numbers and decide if they will play in that round. If they choose to play, it costs them $.05. They pay the banker and the first player rolls the dice. You have to roll one of the digits on one of the cards to get a chance to play. If you don't roll a digit shown then it moves to the next player who rolls. If you do get a digit then you have a choice as to what math problem you will do. You get $1.00 for adding correctly, $2.00 for subtracting correctly and $5.00 for multiplying. The banker checks the answer on the calculator. If the player gets it wrong, the remaining players resume rolling and answering until someone gets it right or everyone has taken a turn. If they get it right then the banker pays them their money and draws 2 more cards. When the cards run out, the person with the most money gets to be banker but no one can be banker twice in 1 game. When everyone has had a chance to be banker, the person with the most money wins. We played this game last night with the kids and had a great time. Bren and Jace were really challenged by the banker role, and Dave and I were challenged by some of the 3 digit multiplication question we had to do in our heads. What great fun. I hope Bren gets a great grade for this one.

Boys dancing

Seth and Bryce were showing me their "cool moves" yesterday. Here is the video.

BREN!!!

Thursday - Lost birthday frog. Thought he needed to stretch his legs so left him on the floor of the twins room with the door open, under a pile of cards. That was a good idea wasn't it? Anyway, did homework, when returned to room frog was gone!
Utter despair.
Friday - Frog found by Dad. Superhero Dad! Promises never to do anything like that again.
Monday - lost birthday frog. Left him on the floor covered by a plastic volcano. Forgot about frog and announced this to parents while in car to go to swim team practice. Volcano was kicked over by someone, no frog.
Monday 7pm - room searched by family
9pm - room searched by parents
10pm - room searched by mom
2am - room searched by dad
5am - room searched by mom
6am - room searched by dad
6:30am - frog found accidently by Bren
7am - parents regretting purchasing birthday frog for irresponsible 9y/o and threatening to take frog back to the pet store should ANYTHING like this EVER happen again.

Time Out

So I never thought that I would be one to celebrate a child sitting in a time-out chair, but we are. Seth managed to sit in the time-out chair for the first time this weekend. This is significant, because previously when he had to go there he would not stay in, he would scrape the chair along the floor, hit the walls, and attack the table that sits near the chair. We would eventually have to take him to his car seat. Now at our month anniversary he sat for the first time in his time-out. Progress!

How to write it all down?

I would love to catalogue these days, but I get up when the kids do and at the end of the day I fall into bed exhausted. I need to put in items of note though. These are things that have made us feel more like a family.
1) We went to see the Gleysteen's yesterday in Birmingham. Dr. John Gleysteen had done Zane's life saving surgery in Ethiopia last September. It was wonderful to shake the hand of the man who saved our baby's life.
2) We have gone 8 full days without a tantrum/time-out session with Seth. Last week on Tuesday I was talking to my mom and telling her that we were having a good week so far and that the only person who had been in the time-out chair was Bryce. Bryce stated loudly that Seth had been in the time-out chair as well. Immediately Seth shouted "Time-out chair NO!". I told him that he was right...he had not been in the time-out chair this week.
3) Bryce and Seth were outside playing and Bryce was coming in intermittently to tattle on Seth. Once Seth came in with a stream of words in his language. Bryce came in behind him and asked "What did he say?". We said "We don't know, but we assume he's tattling on you." Bryce then says "Don't believe anything he says!"
4) My washer broke Monday so we had to go out and get a new one. We bought a floor model so it could be delivered Wednesday. They didn't have all the parts when they delivered it, so they said it would be 7-10 days before they could get it all hooked up. Meanwhile, the children were in the backyard having a mudslinging contest and there I was without a washer.
5) Dave was ordained as an elder Thursday evening. Prior to our neighbors arriving to watch the boys, Bren's frog got lost, the little boys were forgotten strapped in the car, the pizza wasn't picked up and everyone was crying. God bless Cindy and Kimberly Merriam who amidst that bedlam allowed us to walk out the door and encouraged us to go out to dinner after the church service.