Sophia Gabriella - 1 Year

I thought I'd post a few pictures and show the change. She is looking so grown up. No one believes she's 12 months! I think alot of it is because of our kids and their fast growing hair. Here she is trying to put on her shoes...................
Walking around outside........
She's not a sitting kid usually so getting her to stay still for a picture is almost impossible.
Catching her off guard.....
Right now the big thing with Sophia is dancing. She loves the ICarly theme song. She hears that drumming and then "I know you see...." and she comes flying in the front room shaking her hips. It's hilarious. She's a very happy girl, claps at everything, but lately she's starting to throw toys, hit things, and throw herself on the floor when she's mad. Acting alot like Mia. I am really hoping it ends because I don't really want 2 girls that way. She still sucks her thumb which I really don't care about too much, until she gets older. Her favorite foods now are graham crackers, grilled cheese, mac n cheese, waffles, pancakes, strawberries, grapes, bananas, sweet potatoes, potatoes with gravy. She's a pretty good eater, especially after getting 2 bottom molars. She loves Dora. She loves to climb stairs now which scares me to death and I'm constantly stopping her. She loves to join in when everyone beats up on daddy on the floor. She loves to hang out with her sisters and brothers. She gets excited waiting by the door when a bus shows up to drop off either Damien or the other 2. She's alot of fun to have around and it's neat to see her do new things each day.

I Am Still Alive, I Swear!

Well my idea of posting more after the kids were in school went completely out the door. Having even just Mia and Sophia home half the day and trying to get other things done is a challenge. I do get online but usually it's 5 minutes here and there. I leave it on all day, just in case I can jump on.

Sophia just turned a year old last week. It's hard to believe it's went so fast. She surprised Dave and I by starting to walk at 10 months vs 14 for Mia. She's started climbing up things which has been really scary! The past year has been hard dealing with Mia and how she treats Sophia. She thinks she's doing good but hugging her in a choking position and pushing her while she walks are not funny or good things. I can't leave the 2 unsupervised for a minute in fear that she's going to hurt Sophia so I'm always putting her in her crib for safety if I need to go get the mail or whatever.

We've been really busy with activities. Dave is still working his crazy long days and most Saturdays too but we chug on. M-Thursday something is usually going on with 4-H, Girl Scouts, Awana, and Flag Football. I'm usually the one shuffling everyone where they need to go but if he makes it home before 7 he will help with what he can. Damien starts Basketball next month just as Football ends. This will be his first sport so it will be interesting to see how he does at it. After he's done then Dominic gets to play the next session of Basketball which he is so excited to play again. lol Alex enrolled herself in a slew of 4-H activities this year. She's doing Horses, Rabbits, Ceramics, Arts and Crafts, Foods, Buymanship, and Photography. Shoot me when the County Fair arrives. ;)

We added some new additions to our family this summer....

This is Romeo our new guinea pig. We got him in June, it's been about 2 years since we lost Vinnie and when Petco opened here, well I bought him. lol He's a sweet guy but very skittish which is opposite of Vinnie. Hopefully he's going to calm down as he gets older.

2 Jersey Wooly rabbits. The Broken Black/White is a buck, the Blue Otter is a Doe. We decided to try another breed for next year's fair. These are so much easier to handle than Mini Rex. Should be easier for Alex when it comes to Showmanship. We have yet to name them even though we got them in September. We are such good owners. lol!

I'm still doing Girl Scouts but decided to hand it over at the end of November right before the baby comes. Mainly because of the stress this new council woman is causing me but mostly because I need to take care of my own family and move on. December 1st is our scheduled C-section date. Everything so far has been textbook, no problems at all. Infact this is probably one of my easiest pregnancies. I have to wonder if this baby isn't as big as the last 3 because of certain TMI issues. But in general there's not much pressure, his kicks are not as high or hard, I can breathe easier. If he's bigger than Damien's whopping 9lbs 13 oz, I will be very surprised. It's hard to imagine that this could very well be our last baby. We've decided to wait on permanent measures but i will not be getting pregnant again at all or anytime soon. I need the break for my sanity. :) We have 40 days left as of today.

I'm back....maybe!

Well we started school actually a few weeks back but I've still been quite busy with the girls in the morning and unable to get on here. Our summer in a nutshell went well. I think having 5 kids home all summer long was pretty much a shell shock once it started. June I felt like it was impossible to get anything done. I cleaned 24/7 constantly cleaning messes and straightening everything. Sophia is into everything too so she is dumping Xbox games everywhere and throwing toys out of containers just to throw them.

We planted our garden in May and it has done really well. With Dominic in 4 H as a Cloverbud we decided he could do Horticulture as a project however we didn't have much ready in time for the mid July County Fair. We entered 2 freak cucumbers and a plate of beef steak tomatoes, that was it. It seemed shortly after that though we had cantaloupe, tomatoes, peppers and everything else starting to appear. Now with September here, I am ready to till up and be done with it. I hope the frost hurries. lol We had a lot of grasshoppers this year and we grow organic so we had to already take out the corn. Our pumpkins died off this year from rabbits which was really sad. They ate the vines.

Kids had swimming lessons in June which they love every year. I was really worried Damien wouldn't get in and the first day he wouldn't so I got in with him but after that (and promising him a hotwheel car lol) he decided to hop in with his teacher. Alex and Damien have to retake their classes next year but Dominic the fish is on to Level 3.

I don't know how well I had talked about it in the past on here but when pregnant with Sophia at the very end my OB announced she was getting out of OB and just going to be doing GYN. I really hadn't planned for us to get pregnant when Sophia was only about 4 1/2 months old so I was upset she was quitting but not really worried. Well she kept me as a patient until I had my 20 week and sono and then told me I needed to transfer. It's been pretty scary considering this lady has done all my surgeries and i've been a patient of hers for 10 yrs now. I did however transfer in August, meeting my new OB a week ago. I went ahead and went with another woman and she is really nice. She spent a good 30 minutes with me talking about this 6th C-section and trying to ease my mind over all the fears. He will be making his appearance in 13 weeks. I'm pretty sure December 2nd will be the delivery day but the nurse has to call back with the time. I'm praying first case in the morning so i don't have to suffer for hours with no food. lol

Mid August as soon as the kids get back to school I start planning for Girl Scouts and this year was no different. I called our council to find out about sign up, get trained to lead Juniors and find out about our fall sale and talking to one of the newer ladies discovered that one of my troop kids' mom started up a troop over the summer. She plans on leading the same age group as I already have been. Brownies and Juniors. The thing about this lady is if you remember Mrs. BetterthanU who've I've discussed, well it's her. She absolutely hates me and apparetnly this lady at the council was doing something at Walmart and Mrs. BetterthanU came up and council lady asked if she'd like to lead a troop and she jumped on it. It is quite upsetting but 2 weeks later I'm getting more at peace with whatever happens will happen. I then found out a few days back that another girl's dad is helping Mrs. BetterthanU and taking his daughter from our troop. It's really sad because these kids have their friends now in 2 troops and it's not right. I expressed this to the council and they really didn't seem to care. What it boils down to is this newer lady at the council is dealing with Mrs. BetterthanU and I have been dealing with ladies that have been there for years. I don't even think the ladies I talk to even knew this was going on. Mrs. BetterthanU did the sign up night alone because I told Di, the lady she is in contact with, that I couldn't go because I didn't want to deal with Mrs. BetterthanU's smart remarks or comments. So we wait and see what happens to our troop since I didn't see any of the enrollments. I was planning on starting meetings as of next Tuesday but am afraid it's not going to happen.

Around the same time this mess happened my sister decided that a stupid joke comment I left of facebook was too much for her and called me up going off. She had switched her relationship status from single to engaged for the 4th or 5th time so I told her "you're getting really good at this." Sent her in an uproar and I heard a 15 minute session of how her life was so much better than mine. My husband is so unhappy and we never go out, he is trapped because of our kids, we live in a shit hole, my kids are deprived, oh and I'm on welfare supposedly. lol! She filled me in so well on things i had no idea on. lol! When she started in on our relationship saying we don't have date night and you have to have date nights for a relationship to thrive I said "how can you tell me how to run my relationship when you have date night all the time ditching your kids on people and you are constantly kicking him out? That's working well!" I really didn't get much in because she was spitting venom so quickly. I'm not really worried about her, she'll get over it eventually.

I haven't posted pics for awhile so I'll end this long post with a few!

Silly Sophia
Alex's Slumber Party ~ 10 little 9 yr olds~ Daddy left me this night for a guy night out so I had 14 kids all by myself. Scary! lolAnd VBS- Damien on the right in front, Dominic 2nd row in the red, Alex has a candlestick behind her. lol

Expired

Well as of today, I am no longer licensed to do daycare. We chatted it over and just doing it here and there for people is not worth the paperwork and money to keep up my license. Mainly I held onto it because if he lost his job, I wanted to be able to start earning us some money. I'm not sure if I'll go back into it or not. I figure 2 years would be the soonest if I did. I haven't had a full time kiddo since Mia was born which was about 2 1/2 years ago. So today we take down and send back my license and hope Dave never looses his job in this crazy economy. lol

The Lie

Ok so I lie. It's usually fun when I take them all to the grocery store, it's just hard for me to concentrate on deals and keep them all quiet so no one stares.

You Know Me

I get sad when I stop getting free things in the mail so I hunted for some new freebies today. :)

Free sample of Total cereal
freesample.totalcereal.com/

Free formula
http://www.parentschoiceformula.com/ImmuneSupportSurvey/

Free emergenc drink
http://www.emergenc.com/

Free diaper sample
http://www.huggiespureandnatural.com/freesample.aspx

Free Purevia sweetner
http://www.purevia.com/FreeSample.aspx

Free Pads
https://www.stayfree.com/wm

Free tampons
http://www.playtexsport.com/Demand-It.aspx

Gain laundry soap sample
http://www.ilovegain.com/febreze_freshness_sample.do

Free baby formula
http://www.membersmarkformula.com/free_sample.aspx

Free Ensure drink
https://ensure.com/registration/register.aspx?s=sample

Can't Wait Till He's Here!

We found out Monday that we are indeed having a boy! I really thought for sure we'd have 4 girls but we seemed to have this trend. Girl, 2 boys, 2 girls, then back to a boy. I wonder if we went for #7 if it would be another boy? lol! Anyways we finished up with the 4 H County Fair yesterday so I am finally going to have some computer time and will be posting some pictures of his little very obvious wienie. lol It still really hard for me to believe when we were there seeing this baby doing all these things on the screen that he was in me. This has been a very easy pregnancy and I just don't feel pregnant except for this huge gut getting in my way and some little squirms here and there. I think with how busy life is it's just so easy to forget he's in there too.

Dave took off the week to help with the County Fair this year. It's really hard hustling these kids around to Judging and then dealing with the other 3. Alex is in her 2nd year of 4 H and Dominic is in it as a Cloverbud meaning he participates but he doesn't get any money for his ribbons. As his first year he did Plant Science/Horticulture since we grow gardens every year I knew I would have something for him to enter. If he wasn't a Cloverbud he would have taken home a Superior Purple on some JetStar Tomatoes. He got a First Place on Open Class for Largest Cucumber and a 2nd on Freak Vegetable which was a cuke that actually twisted and grew a tail! It lost to a twin cuke that looked like a a Popsicle Twin pop missing the sticks. Alex did awesome this year, several purples and one of her rabbits was a Reserve Champion of Best of Show and as far as his Variety he was the Champ.

I will try to post pictures later. First I have to get around for the day. It's been nice sleeping in till 8ish however August 19th starts school here and I am really worried about starting to wake up daily at 6 am again! The bus is here by 7 am and Damien's by 7:30 so there is no sleeping in when school starts! I however can't wait to have my computer time again, be able to visit blogs daily again! It's so hard because my daughter, now 9, is constantly peering over my shoulder on the computer saying "what are you doing??" She is so nosey! Hate it!

Hope everyone else is doing well this summer!

I Was Wrong

I had the sono date off by a week. I'm pretty sure the receptionist had called me and rescheduled but there was so much going on that I forgot to change my calender! The new date was at the same time as a 4 H judging event Alex is participating in so I moved it to the 20th at 1 pm. So alittle bummed but we'll live. I'm 18 weeks now and I'll be 20 then. I have to say this pregnancy seems to be at a stand still on the time factor. I feel great though and that's all that matters. No morning sickness really to speak of and everything seems to be going well. I forget I'm pregnant half the time until I take off my shirt and see my huge belly bulging. We bought a nice 18 ft above ground pool for the kids and I put my suit on last night barely able to get the tankini part to cover my belly. So here we wait for another 12 days.......