dealing with issues of ANGER!!

i feel like all i do all day long is follow my children around picking up after them. sure, i should have them clean up after themselves. but then i find myself stomping around the house screaming at them to pick up their mess because if i only tell them once it is not taken seriously, twice and they consider it something to get around to when they have the time, three times and they start hiding from me, by the fourth time they are wondering why i am screaming. so four times for each kid times five it means i am asking 20 times before it gets picked up. ACK!! this goes for brushing teeth, making beds, cleaning kitchen, laundry, getting dressed, feeding animals, picking up poop, going to bed, putting away bikes....as you can see the list goes on and on. so i feel like i am yelling all day long and picking up after them and still my house is a mess.

i told my hubby "I NEED A BREAK!" he told me i was not running the house efficently enough. so now he is on my list too. so here i sit, venting to a computer screen because it cannot talk back. and i seriously think if i hear the whiny word, "mother" again i am gonna scream and never stop. i mean i know it is bad when i wanna go around the house givin' them all the finger and yelling at them to "F"OFF! whew! that is not good. so i am left with no break, and a house that i am not running properly. i wonder if i burn it to the ground i will be able to just start over.

Bowling for Soup. (Okay not really. I just like that band)

So North Bowl participates in a Kids Bowl Free progam. if you want to find a bowling alley near you go to kidsbowlfree.com. it was great. the kids were busy for an hour and i only had to rent their shoes. now for the drawback.......

it took us a mere HOUR to finish 10 frames of bowling. Jakey, Anna and Maria are notoriously slow bowlers. there balls average a speed of 3mph down the lane. in fact even with the bumpers up Maria got a gutter ball. turns out she bowls alot like her mother. we also had a ball go so slow it came to a stop then started rolling backwards. both of the girls fell from trying to chase their ball down the alley. NOT RECOMMEDED! tears followed. we also had extreme abuse of the hand dryer.

Daniel was up on the scoreboard with Dan, Ike, Player Dater, Jakey, Sonic, Maria, Strawberry, Anna, Strawberri. Daniel and Ike went back and forth for who was in the lead. Ike won with a total of 97. Yup, it was a low scoring game.

will we go back next week. HECK YA!! like i said, "it kept the kids busy for an hour." hopefully next time i will be able to take a friend and her family with us. then the older kids can bowl on one lane and the younger ones on another.

Splash Pad

So if you don't know what a splash pad is, it is where they dug up a wading pool and put in a variety of fun sprinklers for the kids to run through. it is a new millineum kinda thing. a word that was not around when i was a kid.

The dee-lovely and dee-lish brinn.

got together with my girlfriend brinn, because our kids were both driving us nuts, and desided to head off to the new splash pad by our house. well sorta by it. the kids did have lots of fun and we wasted 2 hours of a hot day there. gotta love that.

what kind of father's day gift to you give to a redneck?

Why a custom paint job for his rig of course!

This is the nickname the kids like to call his truck.

No redneck's rig is complete with out shotgun holes.

two diffent tailgates. one for hualing and one for just motoring around town.

I had so much fun painting this for Vertie (my father-in-law) It was so fun to see the look on his face when he saw it. he had no idea what we were up to with his truck.

Daycare anyone?

So apparently i am running a free daycare. i did not realize this until a friend pointed it out to me yesterday. i had 15 kids at my house. thursday i only had 9. i currently have 9 but that is only because a few slept over. ( yes, i have problems saying no.) as i was cleaning my house at 10pm to get a jump start on the day i was surprised by how trashed it was. it never gets that dirty. then i started counting the kids that were here throughout the day. i am glad they all like to come over. i would rather have them here then out getting into trouble. they added on to the treehouse. it is looking rather nice i might add. they played in the pool so long that i can no longer see the the bottom of the pool. hopefully the shock treatment and clarifier that i put in last night will take care of that. and had some awesome adventures in the woods. (yes, i did draw the line when they asked for knives)

so i think i am going to start charging a "cover charge" for those staying more than 3 hours. i figure i should be making some sort of money off this.

(Sorry there are no picture to go along with this post. I was a tad bit busy. I will try to do better)

whaddya mean school is out?

so apparently the last day of school is tomorrow and i am back being in charge of the children 24/7. in fact my freedom of just having the 3 kids home ends tomorrow at 11:45 am. not that i am counting down the minutes. i know, i know, what is just two more kids to the mix. let me tell you.....

i have a 13 yr old that CANNOT keep his hands, or really any other body part, to himself. he has to touch, smack, slap, flick ect. his sibling when he walks by them or they walk past him. he says he cannot control it. it is an automatic reflex. i think am going to show him MY automatic reflex too. then the 10 yr old who like to follow me around and remind me every 15 minutes when the last time he ate was and that he is currently starving but doesn't want any of the snacks i offer him. an extreme tax on my patience. i am not a patient person. then there is the 6 yr old who follows the 10 yr old and what ever the 10 yr old puts down the 6 yr old snatches it up and runs off to play with it. this infuriates the 10 yr old ( he has my patience) once he realises prized toy is missing he runs after 6 yr old and yanks it from his hands and usually doses out some phyiscal violence to drive the point home to stay away from his toys. the 6 yr old will not learn from this abuse. he will be back. he always comes back. and that will be just the first 2 hours of my morning.

so needless to say, i will be calling my dr. tomorrow and getting my dosage of anxiety medication bumped up. it is for the better, really, it is.

empty house+house key= naughty jenn

So my good friends ( at least they were when they left. they may not be now) asked me to housesit for them while they were in Hawaii for two weeks. then they GAVE me the key to the house. they just gave it to me. no questions asked. usually i have to break in to people's houses. this was a whole new feeling of freedom. it takes vandalism to a whole new level of ease. i dunno if i can go back to climbing through windows after this.

anyways, my goal for the next two weeks was to leave my mark but NOT trash the house. i mean seriously, these people know where i live. so it made me get creative and i think i got some of my greatest stuff out of it.
This is my take on goldilocks and the three bears. yes, that is a real bear that paulino shot. poor thing.

These are the batteries to all the remotes in the house. i wish i could tell you where the remotes were but i have sworn myself to secretecy (i butchered that spelling)

This room i t.p'd. this is the 14 yr old's room.

I got really creative with the mirrors in all the bathrooms. this project took the longest but i am very happy with the results. it says. "just think....this is plan "B". you don't want to know what plan "A" was.

Of COURSE i had to saran wrap the toilets. =)

This is the 15 yr old boys bed. i did not do anything else to the room because frankly, it frightened me.

This is in the parents bathrom.

This is the 7 yr old's room. i took a long time for Katie and I to blow up 100 balloons but totally worth it.

This is on the main floor's bathroom mirror.

And this is my favorite. it will be waiting to greet them as they walk in the door.

I think i am free clear of EVER being asked to housesit again. but if any of you are interested in still having me watch your home......i don't charge a thing. =) and i am available.

So long dear friends.

This is going to be one of my longer posts. Just to give you a heads up.

We have some good friends called the Galloway's. Monica and I loved to read books and then get together and discuss them. shopping for our books was the best. when her husband got a job in Texas this january i started having her and her kiddos over every tuesday to give her a break from making dinner and entertaining the kids. It quickly became known as "Felina Night" named after her youngest daughter. The girls came up with that name. we had great fun. in all those months i think we only missed one tuesday. not too shabby for 6 months. our kids had so much fun together. the girls all loved to play dress up and the daniel and brendon would spend hours trading pokemon. ike and kaedon and jakey had lots and lots of light saber fights along with other crazy adventures. when the weather got better ike and brendon headed up to the tennis courts to play before dinner. we traveled to lots of parks. play doh was also a huge hit. would keep them very busy for about an hour.

Brendon's favorite dinner was my homemade pizza bread.
Teona's favorite dinner was b-b-q hamburgers
Felina like the deli sandwich bar (all the kids got to make their very own sandwiches just how they wanted them, no questions asked)
Kaedon loved baby pigs in a blanket (pigs in a blanket but with cocktail weiners instead)


Keadon Galloway, Comstock Park

Brendon Galloway with Daniel and Ike. backyard

Teona Galloway, Comstock Park

Felina Galloway, backyard

The whole crew enjoying orange creamsicles. i always had a special dessert for tuesday night.

Our fairwell picture. they had so much fun together.

Monica and I. My gosh i miss her. with each friend that i have had move on me ( 14 to date) it just doesn't get any easier. I am really going to have a hard time this tuesday when it is not Felina Night. i know the kids will feel the loss too.

It's not easy being green. But it sure hides the dirt.

I painted today. I wanted a splash of color in the front room/ dining room. i found this is the "mistint" pile at homedepot. got it for $5!! i think it turned out great and i love how it makes the picture frames look. now to get new outlet and lightswitch covers.

A gift from Daniel and Isaac

Okay, so the boys were so excited to give me this "gift" that they found outside yesterday. of course they brought it to me and i set it down by my computer. Luckily i am not afraid of bugs. only slugs. (shudder) I should be more wary when the boys have a "gift" for me in the future. someday i will post about the slug they left on my pillow, only to have me find it as i was getting ready to lay down on it. GRRR!

This thing is HUGE! dan won't touch it. still has flashbacks of the cockroaches in Japan. look at it little beady eyes. pure evil

It was dead. and looked like it had been dead for a very long time. it is now in the trash because last night i kept having dreams of gigantic cochroaches climbing all over the place. Daniel and Ike will just have to be happy with the photo journaling.

once there was a snowman....

Do the snowmen in your front yard look like this..............


Or this?

lets just say we did not get any mail for a week after ike builth these. i was very proud.

Maria, Maria....

I always think of two songs when i say Maria's name. First of course is from west side story. the second being from sound of music.

anyways to get on with the story.

Yesterday at church Maria was playing during sacrament. she came over to me, grabbed my arm, and sneezed in my elbow. YUCK! she looked up and me beaming and said, "See mommy, i sneezed in your elbow." i told her she needs to sneeze in HER elbow. she responded, "Why? That's gross and i will end up with buggars all over my arm." and then trotted off to go play with her sister.

oh hum...

it is saturday night.....i am home......in front of my computer..........just taking a moment out from reading a book............my gosh i am a boring person.

i think back and wonder...........was i always this boring..........and i hear regina's voice in my head screaming,"YES!" i did have a life at one time. i know because i have a photo album hidden away from prying eyes that tell me so.

so now i have to put together the puzzle so i can find out when did this happen. hmm.....

5 childen...........exhausted by 4pm and counting down until bedtime, never getting invited over to friends house anymore, too much of a liability. noisy dinner with alot on whine. i never thought i would be one to want to drink at dinner time, but man.........

3 children..........exhausted by 6pm and counting down until bedtime, but still going out for friday night dates with hubby. yummy krispy creme runs, still able to afford Papa Murphy's pizza,

2 children............tired by 8 pm. went for bike rides everyday, still running races, getting together with friends alot. a four door car.

1 child.................up til 11 am or midnight. hung 0ut alot with friends, game nights, movie nights, bike riding, quiet dinners that were over too fast, living in the slums of spokane watching crack deals outside apt. window. always a good fight to listen to late into the night and the occational police escort out of apt due to hostage situations. good times.

No children............Date night whenever we felt like it, road trips,sleeping in on sundays reading the paper, showering every day. ( i never thought of that as a luxury. i should have) vaccuming the carpet and have the vaccum marks last all day. ( i dunno why it mattered but it did)

Single..............well we won't go there. that is why i have the photo album.

so there we have it. the puzzle has been put together and the mystery is solved. so how do i get back to having a life "with children" there has got to be a happy medium. i just need to find it.

Blow Much?

After Aunt Katie blew up this toy.......

She started on this toy at which point Maria got concerned. she went up and asked Aunt Katie, "Are you gonna run outta blow?" Silly girl. Aunt Katie has lots and lots of blow.

I took over after Aunt Katie looked like she was about to pass out and blew up Sharkie. Mommy has lots and lots of hot air.

how much chlorine is too much chlorine

I have a pool. nothing big but it keeps the kids busy. anyways....how much chlorine must be put in to keep the pee level safe for others swimming in it? i mean, when you have 5 boys and 2 little girls swimming is a bottle a day too much? i opinion is that there can never be too much. ever.i would like it not to look like 6,600 gallon toilet. is this asking too much. so what if their hair is turning green, or their swimming suits are bleeding out. i would rather have their eyes sting from chlorine instead of pee. so if you come over this summer to swim in our pool rest assured it is clean. and if i poisen the kids doing it then all the better. the little buggars. =)

That's Stupid

my friend Monica came up with title for this post after she saw what ike did. he filled a glass cup with water, put in a starfish and put it in the freezer. we all know what happens to water when it freezes but for regina's sake i will explain. IT EXPANS! and in this case, shattering the glass. luckily the frozen water held it together so it did not make a mess in the freezer. why did he do this? i dunno. i am trying to figure that out. but there is really no figuring out ike. here is a kid with a genuis IQ. and i have teachers asking me what it is like to raise him. I should say it is alot like this.

Reasons I don't want to do anything today.

1. it is monday so the house is trashed from the weekend

2.something in the dirty laundry pile growled at me when i approached it

3. it is just gonna get messy again.

4.i am tired

5.i am lazy

6.i wish a had a great book to read.

7.i wanna sit and watch jane eyre. (pbs version of course)

8.i am waiting for katie to call so i can hear how her golf date went.

9.would like to go shopping instead of cleaning. ya, it is that bad.

10.to lazy to come up with a number 10.