Sunshiney Days

 Summer days are loooong and fun and messy and loooong. I lack my usual energy to tote all these bodies around so we've been letting Dad take the car into work and just chillin' at home together. To keep the sanity, each kid has their allotted day where they get to choose a craft and an activity/game that we do as a family. It has made things pretty fun and aided some good bonding (to balance out the fights.)

We hit Questacon together a while back and they got a kick out of me doing the 360 Swing (you strap in to a contraption where if you pump just right you can do complete circles - which made me involuntarily grunt/scream, if you must know.)

I just love watching these three girlies together. What would I do without my two mini-mommies always ready to pitch in to divert a melt-down or distract a needy babe or put someone to bed?

I'm trying not to take them for granted so much - they are such sweethearts. And Summer copies exactly every single thing they do and say. It's heartbreakingly adorable.

Of course, swimming is often the choice of the day, but then there's taste tests, board games, science experiments, baking, pillow fights, and all sorts of stuff I wouldn't have dreamed up. They like taking turns at who calls the shots.


Summer's just beside herself having all these sibs around to play with every day. She's our resident plum-picker too. We scored big time with a bounteous harvest this year - they are seriously the best plums ever.

Boys are awesome. For some reason Will, in his boredom, thought it would be fun to crack eggs on his head - you know, throw them up and let them land on him, smash them in his face, etc. Why? Why not?? He even had to buy them off me - crazy boy. :)

catching some zzzzzzs

 Occasionally one or two of the kids will nod off before the rest and we'll have a little late night party with the others (don't worry - I keep it even) It earns me serious BestMomEver points that I'm certainly cashing in on when we get fed up with each other on these long days. Easy peasy since we don't have to be up early for school though!

 I told the girls they could take piano over the Summer (Sara and I are trading off dance lessons for piano lessons for our girls - win win) but thank goodness for their group lessons or they'd be pretttttty out of practice.

Meanwhile, the babies are growing up. Here are Des's first two attempts at solids. He's a fan.

Can't believe we only have a few days left of summer break. Super sad face here - 6wks just isn't long enough, especially shared with the holidays.

New Lease on Life

Coming up for air here.... Darren has been down and out for 8 days. EIGHT DAYS. Rotavirus is a wicked, wicked thing. Just ate his first real meal tonight and even tried to drag himself to work, but about fainted in his weakened, shriveled state. We'll try again tomorrow. 'Cause sick days are long gone and vacay days are running out...

Annie on the other hand has been thrilled with her new lease on life in the same 8 days. We were all in grand anticipation, counting down the minutes of her 9+ week hindrance (although she ditched her crutches the final two weeks and walked on that cast, oh yes she did.)

 Her leg had shrunk considerably - can't imagine what it would've looked like had she not even been putting weight on it.

could she be any happier?

 Seriously, grodey. She'd been plagued with itchiness at the end and I'd been shoving coconut oil down it, but we were all unprepared for the nasty, bloody, peeling rashiness that emerged.

She's doing great though. Definitely still crippled with muscle atrophy and her foot was set weird so she walks funny, but the bones look good and she's on her way to a full recovery. And she can finally join us in the pool!!!

 We had some surprise guests right as Darren got sick, who ended up pulling us through a crazy day of appointments and meetings I couldn't skip. Our sister in law's brother and his wife stopped in for a couple days. They got some sightseeing in, laundry done (they're doing as much of Oz in 3 weeks as they can) and received some very pathetic hospitality from us ("here's a recipe for pavlova - make it, it's the best - we can eat it when I get home late tonight after you put our kids to bed!") But we did get in some Tim Tam slams, bush fires, Weet-Bix, Vegemite toast and kangaroo bike rides, so not totally a bust. Here's our only pic (congratulating his sis, Aunt Leah, on their newest arrival - hooray!)

 So basically, what followed was one of the worst weeks on Mitchell record with Darren treacherously ill, all the kids home, trying to guess which ones might also be carrying the virus (keeping said kids sanitized and out of  pools), denying playdates, attempting physical therapy, caring for the invalid, cleaning up and disinfecting perpetual episodes of sick, laundry laundry laundry, shopping for obscure possible remedies like grapefruit seed extract, and to top it off - daily ant infestations.

Like ants everywhere, multiple times a day. Leave a dinner dish out, BAM, they're back. Spray 'em dead. Wash chemicals and ant bodies off everything. Open a cupboard, BAM, shelf crawling with them. Spraying frenzy ensues. Summer spits out some sugary nuts, BAM, the ant apocalypse. Spray, wash, sanitize, repeat. Crying baby. Ailing husband. Poopy toddler. Grumpy kids. Washing hands twelve hundred times a day. It has been quite the party 'round here!

So now, I'm optimistic that it's a new lease on life for us too, as we emerge victorious. Every nook and cranny is sprayed, one final disinfectant push tomorrow and hopefully, we'll be out of the woods. Because if not, I might just crawl into a hole and die. We are both so thrashed. Poor Darren, he's been totally incapacitated. Brutal.

But thank goodness for prayer and ipods and blessings and the wii and friends and good weather and nice neighbors with pools and semi-self-sufficient kids. And bless those books. What a different summer this would've been without my strict "one hour of reading per day" rule. These guys are flying through series and absolutely jazzed about it. Books cannot be overpraised.

(Makes me remember fondly those childhood summers when I'd spend hour upon hour, nose in a book, swinging in our hammock on the deck, listening to the stream below. "Go out and play soccer or call a friend or something" my mom would gently urge, but man, nothing beat reading the day away.)

So thanks for the prayers and kindness. I literally just smashed a spider on my face. That's my cue - it's over - I'm going to bed now. I reached the end of my rope tonight and absolutely hate putting kids to bed in tears, but tomorrow's a better day. I bet we won't get ants. Darren will probably make it back to work. And I might even get to sleep in my own bed again (been keeping nursing babe far away from the sick bed.) And hey, we dodged all the bush fires! Things are looking up.

Noel

Christmas is finally packed away again (why does it take forever?) And now we're in the full swing of summer break, so blog posts may be light (somehow the "longer days" don't translate into "more time.") But I had to post the highlights of our very sweet Christmas. We have a shot of every one of our babies' first Christmas in this stocking. Can't wait to put them all together and compare someday.

 Christmas Eve day was so relaxing. We lounged about, did festive pancakes and Darren almost proved me wrong by finishing up our "too-easy Christmas puzzle" in an hour.

Annie was so sad to see Fizbo go, but he left nice goodbye notes

My mum sent us some great "snow" in various forms. The powdery stuff is awesome - kinda like nappy/diaper filling - it absorbs and expands instantly to an incredible degree.

And the edible stuff was even more awesome (thanks Mindi, for the snowman marshmallows too!)

 We spent the afternoon at a neighbor's pool party, which was a real switch on the ol' Christmas Eve. Then headed out to find some Christmas lights. It was much harder than you might imagine, but this one house made up for all the slackers (us included.) They had lights cascading down their whole house, it was awesome. Then we settled in at home for our traditional egg nog, music, nativity reading by the tree.

 My highlight: Darren joined me this year by assisting in all the wrapping up, laying out, stuffing, assembling and arranging. Hooray!! So much more fun with two! And earlier to bed! And despite Santa's sour milk fiasco I hope it's a new tradition!

 Christmas morning enthusiasm - The Best. They even slept in until almost 8am. Poor Will is in the background there trying to choke down some toast after being on death's door with rotavirus for the previous 7 days. Honestly, he didn't eat for almost 5 days and only stopped vomiting after I put him on some Zofran I had left over from my pregnancies. It was truly awful and he missed the last week of school parties, but at least strengthened up by Christmas.

Christmas Day was spent with our good friends, the Sorensons, and would you believe it, not a single picture! I spent 4 hours frantically pulling off the most speedy yet successful Thanksgiving fixings (homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, jello, veggies/dip, custard pie, and berry pie) because we'd both missed celebrating it this year and I didn't even document the end result.

Jeez, it's like we were tired or something. It was a beautiful and tasty meal and a delightful way to spend the day. We all marveled at how great it was that D felt so comfortable in their home that he fell asleep for 3 hours on their loveseat, too. Hahahaha.

Must be where this girl gets it from - D snapped her in for a "pre-bed snack" and came back 5 minutes later to this scene.

New Year's Eve was fun for the big kids. We stayed up playing Settlers of Katan and any time one of them would get sleepy they'd run out to their "Refresher Station" and dunk their heads. Did sparklers after the countdown and they slept in a tent in Will's room that night. Bye, bye 2012! Hello, 2013!!

 New Year's Day we were invited to a lovely brunch by some new friends in the ward (who are good friends with my cousin, if that isn't a small world.) While Will was enjoying intense Nerf gun fights, and the girls were hanging onto the cute teen girls, Summer just climbed up in between this couch full of handsome young men and handed them a book. Then she proceeded to commandeer the bowls of M&Ms laying about and distributed them among the guests, one by one. She is so loved, that little gal. As we sang along to the many guitars and ukes being strummed, we looked around at our kids all so happily engaged with their friends, and Des being snuggled by our big, sweet professional footballer, we felt so grateful to be among such good people who have embraced our family like their own. Such beautiful, wonderful people we have grown to love here!