New Blog Address

We have run out of memory for our blog so we started a new one.  Here's our new blog address:

http://themancilfamily1.blogspot.com/

It is just a continuation of our old blog only with more memory this time.

Chaos, Cold, Knives

Noah has turned out to be one of our most observant children which can be bad at times. If I need to open a package I usually grab a knife and slice it open. Well monkey see monkey do--Noah wanted a banana and couldn't get it open so he grabbed a knife and started slicing. Good thing we caught him before he sliced his finger off!! However, this is not an isolated incident, though. If he can't get anything opened including Pop Tart wrappers he heads over to grab a knife. We have to keep an eye (or an ear) out for the knife drawer being opened because he is quite sneaky. He is getting quite good at pulling that 'what...me?' face as you can see.

After we built our house they never stained the stairs going from the back door into the garage. I was ok with it, but it has been bothering Aaron for a while. It became worse after the summer because the kids let their popsicles melt all over the wood and stained it all kinds of colors. Finally Aaron had had enough and sanded and stained it. The boys were really excited to help paint when they saw him get out the paint brushes. When we went to pick up the paint Josh asked me when Aunt Jill was coming since we never paint anything without her around. They were surprised when we said she wasn't coming, but we were still painting. Aaron got lots of 'help' during the job.

Last Monday (9 days ago yes I know I am severly behind in blogging) the kids had the day off from school. We met some friends at the Dinosaur Park and played for a few hours. It was nice to let the kids run off some energy and get some adult conversation in. Here's all the kids feeding the ducks and seagulls in the pond.

About a month ago during Sunday quiet time Josh dropped his ipod in his room and cracked the screen and shattered the corner of it. I don't think it would have broken if he had kept the case cover on it, but after multiple times of me telling him to keep the case cover on he still took it off and that's when he dropped it and cracked the screen and shattered a corner. It still works, but the more he uses it the worse the damage gets. We have told Josh we will replace the screen if he will earn the money to replace it with. He has been working hard to earn that money. Aaron even told him he would earn extra money if he changed one of Noah's dirty diapers. Aaron waited until it was a really bad diaper and then got Josh to change it. Josh wasn't excited about it, but that's what happens when you don't listen to your Mom!!!

Noah has turned into a little stinker lately. The other day for lunch I made a green smoothy. The kids drank theirs and asked for seconds. I poured them another glass and then went over to do some laundry. When I came back I found that they had poured out their seconds all over the bar and were finger painting with them. **Sigh** A Mother's job is never done, literally!! I feel like all I do all day is clean up messes. Good thing I love my kids because I would have quit this gig a while ago!!

Friday night was movie night, but the kids had had a fun filled busy day. About half way through the movie Noah noticed Sarah had fallen asleep. Being the good little brother he was he went over to crawl all over her. Thankfully when he did wake her up she didn't get mad at him she just gave him a love. I can't say that anyone else would have done that....

Saturday night Aaron and I got a mini date. We had football tickets and had arranged baby sitting two weeks in advance with G&G T for Saturday night. However, early that week my Grandmother (my Dad's Mom) had fallen ill and was taken to the hospital and it looked like she was going to pass away. Also my other Grandpa (my Mom's Dad) had broken some vertebrae in his back and was in the hospital as well. We had given up on going on our date due to the circumstances, but when Saturday rolled around my Grandma was still in the hospital with her condition mostly unchanged from her admission and my Grandpa had been transferred to a Rehabilitation Center. My mom was willing to sit with the kids after we had fed them and gotten them ready for bed so we could go to the game. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed over. Unfortunately there was a big snowstorm the evening before and they didn't clear the snow off the cheap seats. We froze. The game started at 8:15 pm and ended about 11:30pm. By the end we couldn't feel our toes.

We did get some hot chocolate and enjoyed a huge back of roasted almonds since we never get to eat that at home due to someone's food allergy. They were tasty!!

It was a nice date/break. However, my Grandma ended up passing away early this morning. I am sad, but glad to know she isn't sick anymore. My Grandpa is doing well and getting stronger. Hopefully he will be able to return back to his home soon.

Noah's been excited about seeing all the boys' snowboots. He likes to put them on and wear them around the house. It's funny to try and see him walk in them. He thinks he is big stuff.

Sarah thinks she is big stuff, too. She is learning how to write her name in preschool and decided to practice on my dining table with green crayon.

Good thing I love my kids is all I can say.....

However, they can be cute sometimes. Today Sarah was boxing on the Wii with Matthew. Noah wanted to play so he just picked up a random remote and copied everything Sarah did so he could play, too. They both giggled and thought it was pretty funny. This almost made me forget about my 'autographed' table....almost...

 



Halloween, Maze, and More Embarrassing Moments

Well we found the Halloween season upon us sooner than we had planned for so we thought we had better start thinking up costumes for the kids.  However, Sarah just heard talk of costumes and she took care of her own.  She disappeared into her room and came out wearing this lovely ensemble:

 She heard costume and she just assumed it was her dance costume from last year.  She dug it out along with some tights and put it all on including her ballet shoes.  However, she did end up putting it on backwards seeing as it is quite immodest right now in the low cut front area that is supposed to be the back area....She thought she was quite lovely, though, and that's all that matters, right?!

Last week it snowed over night.  When the kids got up the next morning I have never seen them get ready so quickly.  It was nice!!  They got all ready for school very early so they could go out and play in it before they had to leave for school.  It's a good thing they did because it was almost all melted by the time they got home.

 Crazy enough we decided to go to the Syracuse Pumpkin Walk that night even though it was quite chilly.  However, the kids were excited to wear there cold weather gear as you can see:

 The Pumpkin Walk was so cold!!  I have pictures from the Pumpkin Walk, but I will have to save those for another post.  We came home and just had to have some hot chocolate!

 The three older boys slurped theirs down before I could get a picture with them in it!

Saturday morning we had some crazy times.  Aaron had to go and clean the church early that morning while I had to frantically try and get the four oldest kids up and ready and in Sunday dress so as soon as Aaron got home I could take the four oldest kids to the primary practice since our primary program was going to be the next day.  How unfair is that?!?  Aaron got to kick it at home with Noah and have some quality male bonding time for two hours while I had to go and wrestle all kinds of unruly children (most of them my own) during practice.  I heard no complaints from Aaron, however, he heard quite a few from me ;).   After the primary practice they had a pizza party for the primary kids.  I was a little nervous about that since pizza and church clothes don't usually go well together, so I had them wear polo shirts instead.  It's a good thing I did because if I hadn't we would have had some horribly stained church clothes!!!!  After the practice we came home and changed the kids into their Halloween costumes because the local grocery stores were having a local trick or treat party in the stores.  We dressed them up and took them out and around.  They were pretty excited about getting dressed up and getting more loot! We ended up hitting three stores all together.  Good thing we have that Dad candy tax at our house--that way Aaron and I got to enjoy some of their loot, too.  Here they are getting ready to run down the aisle to the next trick or treat station.  Watch out shoppers!!

Monday morning Aaron surprised me by taking the day off.  I rolled over in bed to find him still sleeping at 6:30am and I quickly shoved him awake since he is supposed to leave for work at 5:30am.  I thought he'd overslept (it wouldn't have been the first time), but he surprised me by saying he wanted to spend the day together.  I will admit it was so nice to have an extra set of hands that morning in preparing everyone's lunches, homework, back packs, etc.  After the three oldest were off the rest of us got ready and set out for a day of early Christmas shopping.  We did get the kids dressed and I was sad to see Noah has started outgrowing this plaid shirt.  It has gone through all four boys and miraculously it is still cute and in good shape.  I will be sad when he officially outgrows it which looks like it will be very soon unless I want him to be wearing a belly shirt....makes me a little sad.....

:

That afternoon when the kids got home from school and after the homework was done we took everyone to a local cornmaze for Family Home Evening.  Usually we go to Cornbelly's down at Thanksgiving Pointe on it's opening weekend because they run a special during that time.  However, this year we ran our 1/2 marathon on opening weekend so we never made it down there this year.  We went to a different maze this year and it was nice, but not as fun as Cornbelly's!!  This corn maze they had a tub of corn kernels with candy in it that you could find.  Of course my kids can't seem to pass up any opportunity for candy so they all hopped in even if it was only for ages 8 and down.  Oops!

Of course Josh can't pass up any photo op.  Here's Josh and Daniel posing in the photo op cut outs:

Matthew chose to stand in the witch one for whatever reason.  What a funny kid!

Sarah and Noah weren't quite tall enough so you can just see the tips of their heads peeking out.

Then we set off for the cornmaze expecting to be 'lost' for a while.  No such luck.  The maze was really tiny so it took us all of about 10 minutes to get all the way through it twice.

The favorite was the huge slides they had set up.  I went down with the kids because Noah needed help and the rest of them were too busy going down the slide themselves to help him.  Everyone waited and went down with me all at the same time.  We caused a slide jam.  Oops.

After much begging and pleading they got Aaron to take a turn going down with them, too.  It was fun, but I think next year we will be going back down to Cornbelly's.

Tuesday night we got around to carving our family pumpkins.  Josh wanted an Angry Birds one and Sarah wanted a pig one to go with it.  Daniel and Matthew just wanted tradition jack-o-lanterns.  Here's how they turned out:

Wednesday morning was Josh and Daniel's school's Halloween parade where everyone gets to parade around the school in their costumes for their parents to see.  Here's Ninja boy Daniel doing a ninja move for the camera:

Josh was a vampire boy who is going by so fast he only had time to give Aaron knuckles.

After the parade we headed over to the auditorium to watch Daniel's first grade Halloween program.  We were sitting quite far from where Daniel was sitting so all the pictures I took are blurry.  Here he is waving to the camera the Mr. Cheeseball:

Later that night the kids got dressed to go out trick or treating.  In getting dressed we realized that Daniel's ninja costume was all black and we figured it wasn't such a good thing since no cars could see him.  We talked to him about it and he changed his mind into being a dead football player.  Interesting choice, but he chose it and I wasn't about to argue.

Matthew was a prisoner:

Josh was a vampire and he insisted on wearing a wig even if it made him look like a vampire Elvis.  Oh well what can you do?!  Thank you--thank you very much....(use your Elvis voice when reading that last sentence)  I couldn't resist.

Sarah, of course, was a princess, but you couldn't call her Cinderella unless you wanted her to get very angry at you and yell, "I NOT CINDERELLA!!!! DON'T CALL ME THAT!!  I SARAH!!!"  After that we just called her CinderSarah.  She didn't like it much, but at least she didn't yell at us.

Noah was a frog.  The same costume that all the boys have worn.  However, Noah at so much candy on the way trick or treating that by the time he got back home it was red and brown all down the front from all the candy he had eaten and slobbered out of his mouth.  He did not want to get his picture taken and refused to smile as you can see the little stinker!!

Here they are before they set out:

Aaron and I argued I mean 'discussed' who was going out with the kids and who was staying home.  Luckily I won and got to stay home in a nice quiet house while I had to herd cats aka kids along the way.  It was great, but next year it will be my turn to herd cats.  I can't wait.....

Of course you can't have a normal family activity without something embarrassing happening!!  Aaron took the kids up to a lady's house who is in our ward.  She is a middle aged lady who is let's just say not stick thin.  As Josh was getting his candy he asked her, "Oh are you having a baby?"  She stared at him and said, "Nope I am just fat and I get reminded of it every day in the mirror."  About this time Aaron came to his senses after being shocked by the first initial comment and said, "Josh we don't say that!" as they were walking down the porch.  The lady's was still standing at the open door when Aaron said this.  Josh replied by saying, "What Dad?  She looks like she is pregnant!!"  Awesome!  I can't wait to run into her on Sunday--every Sunday from now on.  Times like this I am glad I am in primary and Aaron gets to face her during Sunday School hee hee.

Since the kids were out late last night this morning was not fun.  Everyone was ornery and being Chuckles in the worst way.  I was glad to get them off to school and I felt bad for all the teachers teaching today--the day after Halloween.  I did try to clean off all the makeup they wore last night, but it had stained their faces.  Oh well, what can you do?!  They probably already had bags under their eyes anyway.  The red gash marks were just bonus.  I guess that's what I get for buying cheap face paint.....After the three oldest kids for school left I had to get Sarah ready for preschool where she had her costume party today.  I finally sat down for a minute when Noah wanted wuzz (loves).  He grabbed his pillow pet and blanket and followed me around until I sat down to give him wuzz.  I'd rather have wuzz then clean up the major cyclone of what normal people call breakfast in the background.  How can you resist a face like that carrying his pillow pet and blanky, though?!

Good News, Pumpkin Patch, Juice, Chaos

Well just a quick catch up....While Aaron and I were running our half marathon together there was no one to take pictures during to race except the race photographers.  So to prove to our posterity that we ran it, we ordered a picture of Aaron and I running together on the causeway out to Antelope Island.  We got it in the mail this last week so now we have one of us actually running while we were together. 

 This past couple weeks Aaron has been working late so that means I get to handle the after school tornado of three kids all trying to get their homework and chores done at the same time while trying to cook dinner and keep an eye on Sarah and Noah.  It has been utter chaos if you want to know the truth.  Each kid needs you to be right with them to make sure they get their homework done the right way.....the first time around.  Josh was supposed to work on a water cycle project--you know precipitation, collection, evaporation, etc.  I let him get started on that while I tried to listen to Daniel and Matthew read at the same time.  When I had a chance to finally check over Josh's work this is what I found:

Hmmmmm........Josh had friends waiting to play when he got started on his project so he hurried as fast as he could so he could play and didn't worry about the quality of his work.  When he finished he dropped it in my lap while he was running out the door to play.  Seeing as I couldn't quite tell what I was looking at, I made him come back and redo it--only with my supervision this time.  He was NOT happy about that, but to justify my point when Aaron got home from work and I showed him Josh's project and asked him what he thought it was.  Aaron told me he thought it was a picture of sheep.  Josh just rolled his eyes.  Josh redid it and it looked A LOT better the second time around.  However, while I was reading with Daniel and Matthew and Josh was doing his project with markers, Sarah and Noah decided to do their own art project while taking advantage of my inability to watch five kids at once.  Contrary to popular belief some mothers don't have eyes in the back of their heads unfortunately!  For Sarah and Noah's art project Sarah used paper and Noah used my dining table as his canvas--DOH!!!!  

Too bad these aren't the washable markers, either.  Double DOH!!!  Can I cry, yet?! Needless to say  I have been driven crazy these past few weeks.  I wish they could clone a couple of me to help each child when they need it, but, alas, I will just have to do my best and settle for a few project re dos, not very precise piano practicing, burned dinners and some lovely permanent artwork all over my table instead.  **SIGH** At least do I get an 'A' for effort?!

However, kids can make parenting worthwhile when you catch little snip its like this: 

 I went to tuck in Noah for bed when I found him reading his baby a tory (story) which is what Noah calls a book.  What a sweet guy--even if he colors all over my kitchen table with permanent markers!

This past weekend was Fall Break so the kids have Thursday and Friday off from school.  Since Daniel was pretty sick Wednesday and Thursday we stayed home and didn't do a whole lot.  By Friday Matthew was going stir crazy and starting to get into mischief and picking fights with his siblings.  He is one kid that does not like to be idle at home.  He likes to always be out doing fun things.  Thankfully Aaron only had to work a half day on Friday so when he got home from work we got out of the house for a bit.  We headed over to a local nursery who does a FREE annual pumpkin patch hayride that we like to go on every year to pick our pumpkins.  The only rule for the kids (now that there are five of them and only two of us) is that they can only pick pumpkins they can carry themselves because we cannot carry 5 of the biggest pumpkins while trying to wrangle five kids at the same time.  Here they are trying to pick the most perfect pumpkin.  It took them a while, too!

 They finally chose one and were proudly showing them off.  Noah was excited he could actually hold his, however, his is so small it will be interesting to see what we can carve into it for a jack-o-lantern.

 Here's the actual hayride:

 All of us had fun.

 After the hayride we weren't ready to go back home so we went for a drive and headed down to go and see G&G T.  We got to their house a few minutes before they got off work so we played around in their back yard since it was such a beautiful day.  Aaron started a dog pile war.  Noah and Matthew are among the mix somewhere even if you can't see them in the picture.  You can tell Sarah only has brothers because she is one tough little girl who was not afraid to be dog piled on, either.

 When G&G T got home they took us out to their garden and gave us some carrots and potatoes.  When they dug up the first round of carrots we were surprised about how BIG they were!

 The potatoes were pretty big as well.

 We have been eating soup all week with all our veggies and it has been yummy!

Saturday we came into 2 1/2 bushels of apples--SWEET!!  Unfortunately, Aaron had to clean the church Saturday morning and help someone move so I was left alone to try and manage juicing all those apples while trying to keep the kids out of trouble.  Things went smoothly enough.  Luckily, they found this old Batman mask that kept them entertained for a while.

 I was glad when Aaron got home, though because I was able to finish the juicing a lot more easily without being interrupted or needing to break up fights.  We ended up getting 9 gallons of juice.  I froze two gallons and bottled the rest.  I think we are set for juice for bit--don't you?!

 This upcoming weekend is Syracuse City's pumpkin walk.  We have gone to this every year as a family and enjoyed all the carved pumpkins.  To try something new Aaron wanted us to carve some pumpkins to enter in the pumpkin walk this year.  That is what we did for Family Home Evening last night was carve our pumpkins to enter.  The kids all picked their designs and I tried my best to carve it into the pumpkins with lots of help from little hands as you can see.

 Aaron and the kids scooped out the pumpkins and I carved and Josh took the pictures.

 Here's the end result: It goes from left to right Matthew, Noah, Josh, Sarah and Daniel.

Hopefully they last through Saturday because the pumpkin walk is from Thursday to Saturday.  We did coat them in Vaseline so hopefully they won't shrivel too much.

This week is Red Ribbon week at Josh and Daniel's school.  They wore red shirts yesterday and today was crazy hair day.  Daniel and Josh begged me to let them color their hair and I finally caved in and let them do it.  Unfortunately after I painted their hair blue I noticed that it was SNOWING outside--DOH!!  I ended up taking them to school to try and keep their hair dry so it wouldn't drip on their clothes and turn them blue.  Hopefully it won't be snowing when they come home from school!!

In other things Daniel is learning the art of blackmail.  He likes to collect dirty information on Josh and then when Josh won't cooperate according to Daniel's wishes Daniel spills the beans.  I have found out quite a bit through this little system I must say.  The most recent knowledge came out a few days ago when Daniel told me that Josh eats his sack lunch every morning before school starts in the mornings.  After hearing this I went and asked Josh about it and he confirmed it.  I asked him why and he told me it was because he wanted more time at recess and if he doesn't have to eat his lunch, then he has more time to play.  Really JOSH?!?!?  I then tried to explain why he should wait to eat his lunch at lunchtime instead of in the morning--something along the lines of keeping his energy up and feeling better if he doesn't go all day without eating, blah, blah, blah.  We will see if he actually listens to me--probably the next time things don't go Daniel's way--**SIGH**.  Daniel is not as innocent as he seems either.  Last week I got a nasty gram from his teacher telling me that Daniel has not handed in any of his math homework since the beginning of school.  What?!?  I know that he brought a Math packet of homework home every Monday and we would work on it.  What I didn't know is that he never handed the finished work back in on Friday.  Sure enough I went over and looked in his home homework bin and there were all four completed Math packets sitting inside.  We then called his teacher and told her that he had done the packets and for whatever reason he hadn't turned them in.  That's when he told me that when his teacher asked him where his math packets were he just said that his mom didn't tell him to turn them in.  Thankfully his teacher was nice enough to accept late work so he went and turned in all his late assignments that were done.  What a crazy kid.  What kind of kid completes their homework, but doesn't turn it in and then says it's their parents fault they have late work?!  Gotta love parenting!!

I am happy to report we got Daniel's allergy blood test results back and I almost cried tears of joy when we learned that his egg allergy has almost disappeared according to the blood tests.  The next step is he has to clear the skin prick test next March and if that comes back negative, we can do an oral challenge to see if he really has outgrown the egg allergy.  I can't wait until March.  Hopefully by April we will all be eating omelets, scrambled eggs and quiche for every meal!!!!  Keeping our fingers crossed til March!!  YAY!!!!!

Some more good news happened at Noah's last Early Intervention visit--we found out he is caught up to his age group and won't need services anymore.  YAY again.  He only has one more music group class and then we are done with Early Intervention.  I must say he has progressed into a chatty Kathy.  He follows me all around with his non stop chatter.  I love hearing all he has to say--even though it took a while for him to start saying it!!