the dreaded day has finally come.
i've known it was coming.
i just wasn't prepared for how angry and sad i would be.

i have seen it happen to others and have always thought it was so funny when it was them. i have even greatly enjoyed retelling other people's stories about it.

I AM NOT LAUGHING TONIGHT.

my daughter chopped her own hair off. i'm sure you cannot guess which daughter.....
her beautiful, long, silky, blonde hair.







my plan tonight was to trim shaeya's hair.
i bathed tekoa first and then put her in a pull up for bedtime. it was while i was helping shaeya wash her hair that tekoa got out the scissors and cut her own.

i walked in on her doing it and let out a yell that could have probably been heard for miles.
i don't think i have ever been so angry at a child.

i had to give her an ugly short haircut. i hate it.
and i will be real honest here and say that it wasn't the gentlest haircut i've ever given.......



and while i was cutting tekoa's hair wren did this to herself-





then while i was finally trimming shaeya's hair tekoa did this-







and then this-



i probably don't need to say that it has not been a good night here.
lots of crying and not only from the kids....
and tekoa has been wailing, "i want my mooooommy" through it all.
like i'm not right here fixing her hair and scrubbing off her marker and cleaning up her cereal.

it's nights like these that i'm wondering where their father is and WHY are we building a house again???

oh, and also....remember those 2 cute kittens?
well, we have 2 kittens and 2 cases of extreme diarrhea.
ready to throw in the towel- anyone want them?
and a short haired little girl to go along???

TRANSLATION:
"mom, i lied to you. please do not get mad at me. shaeya."
she definitely knows how to work the system, doesn't she??

here's one of tekoa's finer moments. this is especially for you, grandma :)
she is such a beautiful little princess, isn't she??



thought you'd all appreciate me posting that picture. and by some miracle none of it ended up on her sleeve or my shirt...

so......i've been avoiding the subject of our cat.....i've been a bit too embarrassed to admit that we have lost yet another.
everything was going FINE until we left for gulf shores.
she was living in the garage with the door open a little so she could get in and out, and dave was coming home every night so i thought she'd be fine.
well....we left and then so did she. we haven't seen her since.
and IT IS ALL MY FAULT. just so everybody's clear on that.
i cannot convince my kids that cats are made to live outside.

but yesterday we picked up kitty #3 and #4.
we are giving it one more try. with 2.
(my aunt convinced me that if anyone needed a replacement kitty it was us.)
we made them a room in the basement and these guys will probably stay down there until we move.
and so far everything's going great. i've hardly seen my kids since we brought them home.







it's been a good thanksgiving weekend.
and it's been made even better by the fact that dave has had a few guys helping him out this weekend so there is a lot getting done on the house.
yesterday the shingles were delivered and they spent the day shingling and setting more windows. can't wait to get out there and see!

what a weekend. where shall we begin?

the fun started on wednesday with a trip to the mall to gear myself up for all that was to come.
i have not invested much time or $ in to my wardrobe in the last 10 years because i am one of those people who gains 500 pounds when i'm pregnant. so i've been on this up and down weight gain/loss cycle for a looooong time.
i've been every size on the racks over and over.

but now that we're pretty sure we're done with pregnancy, and i'm getting close to being where i think i normally am, i decided it was time. that and the fact that i had a big weekend to prepare for.

so i took my 2 little ones to the mall with the intention of doing some major spending. i walked into the first store and started pulling clothes off the racks.
i had a pretty good pile in my arms when i heard a huge crash followed by wails of pain. i looked up to see my baby still in her stroller but face down on the tile floor- somehow tekoa had pushed the whole thing over forward.
i quickly dropped all the clothes to run and help, but by the time i got there tekoa was already pulling on the stroller and wren was dangling by her buckle.
once i got the stroller upright and wren out of it both girls were sobbing and clinging to me. i sat there on the floor with them for quite sometime with clothes strewn everywhere and all the store employees trying not to look at us.
needless to say i didn't get very far that day in my quest for a new wardrobe.

then came thursday which was a day to remember. an all day long 30th birthday event for my friend abby. it was a surprise orchestrated by her husband that included a limo, shopping, pedicures, dinner, and a long lost friend from england. :)
so fun. a wonderful and much needed break for me.
and shopping advice from the experts :) thanks girls!

friday started with a thanksgiving feast at the kids' school. okay the actual start to my day was my wake up call from wren at 6:30. she was in her crib screaming, "LET GO!!!" over and over. i got up to see what was going on and discovered that she had both her chubby little thighs wedged in between the bars of the crib and was yelling at her crib to let go. :)

so thanksgiving at school, a little more shopping, and then my monthly girl's night out with my cousins.
let me just say that it's not easy to arrange for sitters for 2 days in a row. but THANKS to everyone who helped (there were 5 total.) it was so wonderful and i appreciated the break so much.

then came saturday. all i wanted to do was sleep but i dragged myself out of bed, got the kids up and ready and we headed to the new house.
and it was a really fun day. the kids were SO GOOD. the 3 older ones actually played together and wren took a 3 1/2 hour nap in the van.
the weather was perfect especially since we had a fire going all day, and we got so much done. i gave the house a good cleaning and helped put on tyvek and then we set 3 windows. windows!!!!!!

this is the house on tuesday-









this is saturday.
see those windows??



and see that plank in between those ladders? i had to sit on that plank holding the huge roll of tyvek while dave pulled the ladder and plank away from the house so i could roll the tyvek behind it. scary (SO much higher than it looks, okay?) but fun.



see the window on the left? so exciting- that is wren's room :)



well, i think that pretty much catches things up. looking forward to thanksgiving with dave's family on thursday- my family is in florida without us :(- and friday is an extra day to work on the house :)
let's get this thing done already!!!

it was crazy hair day today at gymnastics.
unfortunately i was the only mom who got this into it.



but i pick up my niece on mondays cause she goes to gymnastics too, and i gave her a quick crazy hair-do also so tekoa wouldn't be the only one. :)



let me just say that i think that crazy hair day is FUN. i think it's good for kids to learn to laugh at themselves and to be okay with making idiots of themselves in the name of FUN.
it makes you a much more interesting person to be around.....or read about, right?

i had a good laugh this weekend over a similar topic.
friday my kids were off school due to parent/teacher conferences. i got up early to give the house a quick cleaning and to put a little bit more time than normal into getting myself ready because we had a big day ahead of us.
starting with the conferences, then dave's 2 sisters were coming over for the day with their kids, i was babysitting my nephew for the evening and also having some friends over for dinner.
so i put on some nice jeans, a new shirt, and some boots and my day went on from there.

as i was making dinner that night, tyden came into the kitchen.
i was leaning against the counter talking to him when he suddenly looks me over and says, "mom, did you wear those jeans to my school today?!?"
with a look of utter embarrassment on his face.
and i started laughing. i'm still laughing.
here's the jeans-



"mom, they have holes all over them."
i laugh that this is when it starts. 3rd grade and your mom is an embarrassment to you.
i know, because i vividly remember being embarrassed of my mom and the clothes she wore to my school.
but the difference is that my jeans are cool, right?
i mean the stuff my mom wore was definitely worthy of embarrassment on my part, but not these jeans. :)


some of you may remember when i started this blog that the theme of most of my posts was tekoa and her daily disasters.
well, she has mostly outgrown all that. mostly. but baby wren is starting to take her place. to a much lesser degree, but still with just enough chaos/danger/messiness to keep me on my toes all day.

her latest being a climb onto the tank of the toilet to be able to lean over the sink just far enough to turn on the hot water and burn her hand a bit.
never saw that one coming. i should know better than to ignore her to try to cook dinner, shouldn't i?

just when you think certain behaviors have been outgrown, kids love to surprise you. i wonder if sometimes they just pretend to be a bit more grown up so that they can get a really good reaction from what you never saw coming.
yes, that must be it....or maybe you're just so busy building a house, getting the homework done on time, planning for and participating in the school fundraiser, changing diapers, and cleaning up messes that a 3 year old little girl has to come up with ways to get noticed.

which brings us to tuesday night.
while driving the kids home from school, i had this sudden urge to not go home. i just didn't want to face another night of the homework/dinner/bedtime routine with the same 4 to 1 ratio that i usually do.
i found myself driving toward dave and the house- even though i knew he would be busy, we had schoolwork to do, no dinner options, 2 little girls without shoes, and 2 in their school clothes.

i just forgot about it all and was having a great time chatting with my neighbor jody while our kids played in and around the house.
and then i realized that i had not seen tekoa for quite some time.
i asked the other kids as they ran by if they had seen her, and no one had, so we started searching and calling for her.

after awhile i heard a muffled reply and realized that she was in the van.

what could she possibly have been doing in the van alone all that time??
let me tell you.
she was hard at work. with a red marker.

that girl colored the ENTIRE inside of our van.
rear view mirror, touch screen, seats, headrests, armrests, ceiling, air vents, seat belts front and back, buttons, doors, cup holders....

how do markers even have that much ink???
how did she stay focused on one activity for that long??
what did she think was going to happen when she inevitably became discovered??

who knows.
i've been trying to see things from her perspective, and maybe, yes maybe, she had been a bit looked over in the busyness of things.

"i can only do the best i can do."
i repeat this to myself at least once a day. out loud. to myself.
it seems to help me keep things in perspective and to not get overwhelmed. sometimes i think about writing it down on a huge poster board so that i can read it everyday along with other important and noteworthy phrases such as:

"be a servant"
"kids before cleanliness" and
"do not buy any more little girl's clothes no matter how cute or on sale they are"

but dave and i both know how even big poster board notes can be accidentally looked over ;)
(love ya, babe :)

but getting back to my story.
i spent a considerable amount of time in the van the next day scrubbing. and scrubbing.
with success in some areas and not in others.
when i finally deemed my work good enough and repeated my "only do the best i can do" phrase, i came back inside and was greeted by little wren. with her arms stretched out to me saying "up please" which sounds more like "upease."

i picked her up and snuggled her close only to realize that she was soaking wet.
when i set her down, she led me straight to the bathroom to show me what a fun time she had been having in the toilet while i was hard at work....sigh.

another one of those behaviors that i thought had been outgrown....












still discovering more little scribbles everyday....

i'm sure all of my 5 blog followers have been anxiously awaiting more exciting stories and drama from the kellenberger house.
sadly there just isn't much to write about.

i spent the week swamped with laundry and make-up homework from the trip. and the kids' school has a big fundraiser coming up so my free time has been spent wrapping fake gifts and setting up and decorating our christmas tree for that.
also i've been working on booking our 10th anniversary vacation.
which is only 11 long weeks away.....

and then we had a really busy weekend.
which has left us all feeling like this today....



i finally have some updated pictures of the house to post. i've been so busy that i didn't make it out there til saturday. and so much has changed. dave has been working really hard to get the roof on before winter, and it makes everything look much more put together.

here's the kitchen



front door/entry



master bedroom



master bathroom w/ closet behind



wren's room



great room



tyden's room



shaeya and tekoa's room







people keep asking how we are doing, and all i can say is that we are managing.
we are both tired of the separation. the kids miss their dad, and i miss feeling like dave and i are a team.

dave's working mostly in the dark now in the evenings and it's getting cold.
i cannot keep up with all the housework and i'm lonely. i have no social life, i'm just home with the kids day and night.

but it won't be forever, and it will be worth it.
we've got 4 months down and probably about 8 or 9 to go.

and if i can just make it through the holidays alone then our vacation will be right around the corner.....