Rambling Woman Needs Coffee. And Maybe A Topic.

I feel like I should post something.

Something.

Anything.

Even if I got nothin.

NOTHING.

If for no other reason, than to just get back into the bloggy-swing of things. I miss blogging, and I think the month of August will bring with it lots of memories, photo ops, and hopefully very few opportunities for complete destructiveness of person and property by a certain two year old little girl.

I reminded Brandon again yesterday that I needed him to blog a bit about his Kenya trip, since, you know, I WASN'T ON IT. It's been a bit delayed because I have been parusing about 4000 pictures taken by other people on the trip, that have since been posted to Facebook.

I've been working quite a bit, and work has been going fabulous. As in, I haven't been this happy at work EVER, kind of fabulous. As in, I have to stop and think for several minutes to come up with a single negative thing about work right now. Smart doctors. Friendly nurses. Nicer than usual patients. Sonic ice in the ice machine. Free coffee. A good boss. Air conditioner set to 72. An ambulance company brought us carrot cake cupcakes the other day. It's like I'm working in a mythical emergency room, that you hear about but doesn't really exist.

We decided where we're going on our Family Roadtrip Vacation next month, and I'm pretty excited about getting out of town for a bit. Hopefully the kids will have a great time. It's a lot of time on the road, and I'm hoping that the lasting memory my kids have of this trip is not all the time they spent playing Nintendo DS in the back of the van.

I feel this is the opportune time to share with you a few random, blurry, overexposed pictures of my children on a swing set:

I'm sure this is enriching your day as much as it is enriching mine.

You thought I was kidding when I said "I got nothing." I wasn't.

I'm pretty sure, between the six of us, that we have spent more time in doctor's offices than outside this summer. And I shudder to think of the money we have spent on doctors, copays, and prescriptions. There's a certain opthamologist taking his kids to Disney World because of us. We've had corneal transplants, rabies vaccinations, a very sick Harper girl, 4 well child visits, and dentist appointments. Next week Aidan has to go in to get a "sugar bug cavity" filled at the dentist with Brandon while I am at work. He's getting laughing gas for the procedure, and I am very nervous about how it will go. Will he freak out at the laughing gas and refuse to wear the mask? Will he scream when he gets the numbing medicine? Will Brandon have to hold him down? Will he freak out when he hears the drill? Say a little prayer for the A-Man on Tuesday!

We've redone the kids' rooms a bit, and I keep wanting to post "before and after" pictures, but they're just not finished yet. We still need to get a few things up on the boys' walls, and just when I thought I had finished the girls' room, Harper ripped the curtain rod out of the wall and pulled some of the cute decorations off the wall, some of which we still can't find. How does one lose a big, pink glittery "E"? One day it was on the wall over Emerson's bed, the next day it was gone. Gone. Not on the floor, not behind the bed, not in the closet. It appears to have vanished completely. Hopefully sometime before summer is over I will FINALLY finish these rooms that I started working on sometime in June.

Maybe I can post "before and almost-finished" pictures.

I Feel Like This Is Part 2 Of A Very Unfortunate Series...

...called Things Harper Does to Drive Her Mommy Crazy While Her Daddy is Out of Town.

Brandon has been gone for a week and so far she has:

-Dumped 500 q-tips in the toilet.

-Thrown an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet. Still on the roll.

-Ripped her curtain rod completely out of the wall after being put to bed for the night.

-Woken up early and sampled some brownies for breakfast, before decorating herself with a pink marker I didn't know we had. Before church this morning.

Yes, she is wearing Emerson's panties over her diaper.

-Snuck out into the backyard with her sister (mommy was upstairs with the boys while the girls were watching a movie), stripped down to her birthday suit, and went skinny dipping in the plastic wading pool.

Definitely ready for Hot Brandon to come home tonight. I don't think I can face another naked, brownie-smeared, marker-colored Harper alone in the morning.

She's Here, She's Here!

Baby Nora has arrived!

My sister Lindy and her husband Andy welcomed Miss Nora Sloan on Friday, and she is beautiful and perfect!

And her parents? Well, her parents are a little bit smitten with her.
This past Sunday I loaded up Dane and Harper (my dad had taken Aidan and Emerson back to DFW with him after the beach day) and we headed up to meet the newest cousin. Dane proved himself to be, yet again, Master Big Cousin and Baby Holder Extroidinairre, while Harper just looked a little confused at all the fuss before becoming very interested in baby Nora's toes.

The following day, mom and I headed over to baby Nora's house to help her try on some of her fashionable headwear...

Congratulations, Lindy and Andy.

Enjoy your precious beautiful baby daughter.

Wrap her up in her blankie and hug her close.

Rock her in the middle of the night.

Put all the cute little bows and flowers on her soft little head.

But know, that in just two short years, she will be dumping 500 q-tips in the toilet just for fun.

At the Beach with Pappy

This week has been an interesting one, and downright educational for my father, as you will soon see.

Tuesday afternoon phone call:

Pappy: Hey, I'm coming down there and taking the boys to the beach tomorrow. I'll bring them back sometime on Thursday.

Me: Joel will be here Wednesday and Thursday too.

Pappy: Well, I wouldn't think of not taking Joel to the beach with us. We'll have a great time.

24 hours later...

The car is packed and loaded, boys are strapped into booster seats, an unsuspecting Pappy sits at the wheel. The mommy is on the driveway, with helpful reminders like "don't fight!", and "remember your sunscreen!" and "listen and mind Pappy!" Us mommies always get a teensy bit nervous when our babies are out of town without us, even when they're in the capable hands of their Pappy. I was looking forward to reassurances from Pappy while they were gone, happy text messages like "having a blast building a sand castle!", or "Dane volunteered to pray before dinner!"

The texts from Pappy started about an hour after they left the house, but they weren't quite what I had envisioned:

"3 packs of gum in 70 miles...Is that a record?"

"I don't feel so sorry for those boys at Normandy anymore. I went to the beach with Dane, Aidan, and Joel."

"What do you mean there were floaties in the bag?"

"Your son is a hound dog. Dane could not keep his eyes off a group of half-naked young ladies on the beach."

"I was questioned when I told Aidan to quit peeing in the tub when they were all 3 in it...but I didn't say anything when he put his pizza on the motel room floor between bites."

"The hotel manager called and told us that we were being too loud and needed to be really quiet so we didn't get kicked out of the hotel."*

"On the third cup, I tried to get him to switch to decaf, but they were out. On the plus side, you now have someone to drink coffee with."

"How, in Joel and Aidan's simple yet beautiful language do you say "don't put the snorkel you found on the side of the pool in your mouth"? So far, no luck with English.

"Aidan just nuked the 1/3 piece of pizza that spent the night on the floor. He seems to enjoy it."

"Does Aidan have any extra shorts? His got wet when he was peeing in the Gatorade bottle."

*Pappy had a pre-arranged agreement with the hotel manager. He requested the obliging manager call their room at precisely 9pm with a "stern warning" to stop being so noisy otherwise they would be kicked out of the hotel.

Sounds like the trip was, um, eventful and memorable for everyone involved. Thank you, Pappy for treating the boys to a trip they will never forget!

I've Been a Bad, Bad Blogger...

But I have some really good excuses.

Brandon got home last week, confiscated his smart phone from my grubby little Words-With-Friends playing hands, and forced me to get my own WWF account. OutnumberedMandy has been more than a little enthralled with the newest toy, and more than a little frustrated with what WWF does not consider actual words. Puker? Totally a word. I use it every day at work. Ga? Absolutely. Oz? Come on, now. Jem? SHE'S TRULY OUTRAGEOUS, PEOPLE!

When I'm not obsessively playing online Scrabble games (or doing productive things, like playing with the kids, folding laundry, feeding people, etc.), I have been feeding my other newest addiction: Friday Night Lights.

I would just like to take a moment and thank the good people at Netflix for having all 63 episodes of FNL available online for my viewing pleasure. Has anyone else seen this show? More importantly, WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS SHOW BEFORE?? I am in love with the entire make-believe town of Dillon, Texas. I want to move there, except it doesn't actually exist. Brandon refuses to watch a single episode. I don't think I sold the whole "Texas high school football show with bad accents and LOTS of cheesy plot lines" thing. I'm a third of the way through the series, and I am a Panther fan for life.

Harper girl has had a rough week. Tuesday she started having a nasty cough, and by Wednesday a 103 fever had joined it. Thursday saw us at the pediatrician, with an ear infection, bronchitis, and about 4 different medications, including breathing treatments. Friday and Saturday her fever persisted, and we were blessed with a couple of vomiting episodes and a very weary little girl. Sunday morning we took another trip to the pediatrician for a new antibiotic, a steroid, and another breathing medication thrown in. In between all the breathing treatments, the waking up in the middle of the night to feed Harper her Motrin without accidently choking her in her sleep, and the vomiting, we've been having lots of long days at our house, letting Harper rest and trying not to share her germs with all of our friends.

The glamourous life of a mommy of four.

On a completely unrelated note, my sister will be having a baby on Friday. (YAY!) I'm a teensy bit excited. She will need some help from you, dear readers, to name the blog that she will start. (Hey, Lindy. You have to start a blog now because I live so very far away and I need to see pictures of baby Nora on a near daily basis. Love you.)

Another thing I need some input on: We are taking a brief vacation (3-4 days) next month. We had thought about going to Great Wolf Lodge, but I'm having second thoughts. Not sure I want to spend so much money, and then still have to pay for meals. I'm sure the boys would L-O-V-E it, but I see myself spending the better part of three days sitting in a kiddie pool with my eyes glued to Harper and Emerson while the boys run around and play. Any thoughts from anyone who has gone before? Is it worth it? If not, what should we do instead?

Happy Fourth, A Day Late

Hope your Fourth of July was filled with
family
friends
food
some water
maybe a nap or two
more food
like maybe some ribs or a yummy cobbler
or one of those complicated desserts that looks like a flag
and I hope your swimsuit stayed firmly in place
the entire day
unlike some children I know who shall remain nameless.
God Bless America.