crazy wren...

we had some good cousin time last week when all of dave's family came home for mom n dad's 40th anniversary :)

koa playing by the lake at grandma k's after her doctor appointment.

i love the band aids and the muddy feet :)

on sunday we had a going away party/picnic for my aunt and uncle who live in haiti-

shaeya's vaulting team performed for us that night :)

then on monday disaster struck......

tyden had been mentioning that his head was itchy for a few days. i didn't think anything of it until we were getting ready to go for a walk on monday night.

the kids were jumping on their bikes, and tyden said he couldn't wear his helmet cause then he couldn't scratch his head.....

so we knew something was up.

we checked his head and found LICE.

and then shaeya said, "well my head has been itching too."

and sure enough she had some too.

we were so overwhelmed!!!!

i left to go spend our life savings on lice treatment while dave started taking all the bedding, pillows, and stuffed animals off all the beds in the house and piling them out on the back patio.

when i got back we stripped all the kids down on the driveway and started in on treating all 5 heads.

AWFUL!!!!

but the kids thought it was hilarious :) i kept telling them to sit down and be quiet cause i really didn't want to draw any attention to what we were doing.....

sigh......between that night and the next day we treated 7 heads, washed about 20 loads of laundry, vacuumed mattresses, took a shop vac to the couches, cleaned out and vacuumed the van, sprayed a lice spray on everything, and put all the beds back together.

this was not even half-

i was seriously exhausted. and maybe even a little cranky.

and then crankier yet when i woke up the next morning and 2 kids had wet the bed.

and wren's pull up had leaked. and then neiko pooped his pants. and threw his sippy cup of juice across the table and it exploded. and then i found banana smeared all over the couch and someone spilled a bag of cereal....

SO MUCH cleaning and bathing and laundry!!!!!!

but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right????

and WHY does my head keep itching?????? i KNOW i don't have lice but it's just itching!!!!!!

and then that afternoon i had a doctor appointment.

i have a milk duct in my chest that has been causing problems. i had some tests done last month and they found 2 growths in the duct that could be cancerous or could become cancerous and so the whole duct has to go.

so on top of recovering from lice and bed wetting that day i was also scheduling surgery for the end of september. :(

and later that night tyden had his first soccer meet.

i took him there to have "try outs" and then be placed on a team. he LOVED it. they got to play for fun for awhile.

and i was just trying to keep my eyes open.....

wednesday we spent the day and evening at the lake. it was rainy and cool but i was thankful for a little down time.

and then thursday i got a babysitter so i could go be with my sister at the hospital.

her baby was coming!!!!!

we spent most of the day just waiting. anxiously waiting. :)

and then sweet little treyven craig was born around 5pm.

9lb 2oz.

he is beautiful!!!!!!

everyone is already in love!!!!

especially his 3 big sisters!!! :)

and speaking of those sisters, they stayed with us last night.

things went pretty smoothly yesterday apart from tekoa having a little gum/hair incident.

but the real fun came at 4:45 this morning when our fire alarm went off.

it was SO LOUD. and it has this voice with it that says, "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!"

dave and i FLEW out of bed, and my first thought was that there were SO MANY kids to get out of the house!!!

but as we ran from room to room we realized there was no fire. just 7 crying children (seven because wren was sleeping i our closet and she slept through it all :)

dave disabled the alarm and we calmed everyone down, checked over the entire house, and then went back to bed.

and of course just as my heart rate was coming down the alarm went off again.

and all the kids came running and piled on top of me on the couch.

dave got it quiet and we started taking kids back to bed and it went off a third time. lots of tears.

so then he went around pulling every fire detector off of the ceilings :)

and after that we finally got to get back to sleep.

the kids are still talking about it all. it was quite traumatic, i guess.

but baby trey is coming home today and i can't wait to love on him :)

what a miracle!!!!

and they are all miracles, right?

beautiful little disgusting lice infested pants peeing mess making miracles :)

the start of an amazing story....

i am sooooo excited to be sharing this post with you all.

what i thought was a once in a lifetime crazy miracle is happening again in my family :)

i'd like to think that it kind of began with neiko (although i should really double check on that one).

when i got the call about baby neiko needing a home the third person i called was my sister. :)

and right away she told me that if for any reason it wouldn't work out for us to take him that they would be willing to help :)

which got them really thinking on this matter. they talked about it a lot and from there they decided to start the process of getting their foster licence.

they were feeling that God was telling them that their family wasn't complete. they have 3 girls- ages 6,5,and almost 4- but there are so many children out there who need a family- and they were willing and ready to add on :)

and then during this last year they put their house up for sale, sold it, remodeled and moved into a temporary home, and are drawing up plans to build on the property they are living on.

and all that craziness has kept them from being able to finish their foster licencing as they needed to be living in a permanent residence.

so that means during this year i have listened my sister wonder aloud at what God could have in store, and heard her sadness over not being able to take in any children until her house is built.

until thursday......

my mom got a call about a pregnant girl wanting to give her baby up for adoption. she was called on thursday and told that the baby is due on tuesday.

they needed a christian home. and ASAP.

my sister and her husband said YES without a moment's hesitation. and the birth mother said she would like to meet them.

dave and i and our kids prayed for them yesterday as they met with this girl.

and it went perfect!

she is giving them her baby boy!!

he's due tomorrow!!!!!!

and he happens to be biracial :) which just really warms my heart :)

i'm so happy for neiko that he will have a cousin who is "brown" (as all the cousins call him)

like him!

so now my sister is in a whirlwind that i am very familiar with :)

birth mom had a sono today and baby is measuring 9lb 4 oz.

a big boy!!

everything looks great though and she is scheduled to be induced on thursday!

my sister went shopping today for all new everything for a boy :) soooo fun! :)

and of course i drug my kids to a store today too to buy him a few things that he will probably already be too big for :)

i didn't get the 9lb 4 oz memo until it was a little too late :)

and she is making calls to our lawyer and our caseworker.

THAT part is the worst of it but God is in control! it is HIS work and HE is faithful to complete it!

PRAISE HIM!!!

i could NOT be more thrilled!!

HE is SO GOOD!!!

His work is astounding and His WORD is so true!!

HE truly does and is soooo much more than we could ask or imagine!!!

please pray for birth mom, baby, amy and jared, and their 3 girls.....

i read online that the cure for green pool hair is ketchup. so we gave it a try.

tekoa's hair was a shade of green that i have never seen before. it seriously looked like i had put green highlights in it.....

but no longer!

the ketchup worked great!!!

while i was ketchupping tekoa, neiko kept asking, "ketchup too? ketchup too?"

and wren was saying, "i don't want to do the ketchup hair, mom."

but she was green too so she had to do the ketchup hair. :)

we all laughed quite a bit during that ordeal :)

but the girls' hair looked so pretty and blond that night- with just a faint ketchup smell to it....

here are some already pretty outdated pics from when we kept my nieces :)

gotta love the leotards! especially on emma and neiko!! :)

when i held the blue sparkly one up for neiko he whispered, "oh my."

he thought it was beautiful :)

thanks to my family we managed just fine at church with 7 :)

here is tekoa in one of her special outfits. she pretty much always looks like this.

and she can't understand why i don't want her to wear tights and leotards to bed.

but she really doesn't wake up too often to use the bathroom in the middle of the night so i've been giving in on that one.....

and a note i found in shaeya's journal. she would KILL me if she knew i read it and posted it, but i thought it was really cute :)

my kids are always trying to tell me that grandma is the boss of me so if she wants them to go to the lake then they have to go.

they'll try anything to get what they want, won't they?? :)

wren's hair is finally getting under control. i think this was the first day of her life that her hair actually looked cute, so i snapped a pic :)

she's looking waaaaaaay too grown up!!!!

neiko on the other hand.....

i know i need to cut it but i just don't want to!

he came in from outside looking like this one day and i had a good laugh. i'm sure my other kids thoroughly enjoyed holding him in one place and covering him in hand prints.

they mix sidewalk chalk with water and come up with all kinds of ways to paint things :)

last thursday all the lighthouse families spent the morning cleaning the school......it's all clean and ready.

but i'm not ready!!!

i'm kind of in denial. even though we had parent orientation, and tekoa had her kindergarten physical, and there is only 14 days left of summer..... :(

neiko's birthday.....he's 2 now!

and here's what the kitchen looked like the morning after neiko's birthday.....

just the sign of a good time, right?

and shaeya and her friend sarah making lunch for us all that day to take to the pool :)

i have to apologize to my blog readers because i'm fully aware that the quality of my blog this summer has been pretty bad.

i used to do such a better job at capturing the funny stories and everyday chaos, and now i'm just scraping by.

i'm hoping once school starts i can put a little more effort into it!!

i'm thinking with 3 in school i will have time for all kinds of extra things like planning meals, grocery shopping, cleaning, decorating, and sleeping.....

potty training is in full force.

neiko is still surprising me with how well he is doing, but he doesn't usually tell me when he has to go.

basically if i follow him all day and put him on the toilet every hour or so he can make it all day with no accidents.

but WHO has time to follow 1 child around all day???

NOT ME. so he has accidents. but i remind myself that every time he pees on the floor he is learning! :)

now what happened at nap time today was different. maybe a bit more intentional.

i put a diaper on him and then put him to bed.

and when i went to get him out of his crib he had at some point taken off his diaper and then peed and pooped in his crib.

i'm telling myself though, that he really wanted to take that diaper off so he could go use the toilet.

i'm SURE he was trying to tell me and i just couldn't hear him......

he turns 2 on thursday. bittersweet. funny how you can long for something and yet dread it both very intensely.

i'm very ready to be done with diapers, pacifiers, high chairs, car seats, and cribs. but i'm a little torn about being done with my babies.

especially after keeping my nieces for the weekend.

little emma (who is almost 1) is so very sweet and cuddly. she fell asleep in my arms and i could hardly bear to lay her down.

i forgot how much i missed holding a sleeping baby.

it was definitely busy around here with two more little ones, but it was fun. and i miss them.

it was great to see my kids all helping out with them too.

shaeya was in charge of livie (who is 2) at night. it was actually pretty funny.

shaeya would come stumbling down the stairs in the morning and say, "i'm exhausted....livie kept me up all night long." or "livie fell out of bed last night" or "livie was crying in the middle of the night so i climbed in bed with her and she just kept talking and talking."

and i would laugh. i was just so glad it was her and not me :)

you know, she can take naps in middle of the day to make up for it......

and once again, we felt the need for that conversion van.......sigh......

while i was writing the above paragraph neiko threw a ball under my chair. he went under there to get it and decided to shut the computer down as well.

i've always wondered why they have to make the power button so appealing.....so round and pushable and with such a pretty blinking green light.....

dave and i had our 12th anniversary yesterday. and thanks to dave's sister maria we had a WONDERFUL night out. it was sooooooo nice.

and we bought our first piece of furniture for the house.

so now we have officially started decorating and now i feel pressure to dig through the rest of our boxes. the ones with all the decorations from our first house that i haven't seen since i boxed them up over two years ago.

something tells me i won't end up even using most of them but maybe there will be a few surprises in those boxes.....

but that's a good WINTER project, right?

and anyway i've got potty training, school orientation, kindergarten physical, school supply lists, birthday parties, and family reunions to keep my mind occupied.

oh the end of summer. always very tragic.

just 3 weeks left of life with no schedule and no alarm clock......

i may be setting my self up for disaster here but....

i actually had a full day home last week and decided to try putting underwear on neiko.

of course i realize that he is a BOY. and he is too busy to be terribly concerned about where he pees.

but my other kids were all potty trained before they were 2. okay i know for sure the girls were, but my memories of potty training tyden are a bit blurry. it was maybe shortly after he turned two.

my mom tells me that since neiko wasn't with us for his first 8 months that i should expect him to be about 8 months behind on some of these things.....

so i'm not entirely sure if i'm fully committed at this point but he's really not doing too bad.

we are about 4 days in now, and he is telling me some of the time when he needs to go, and he usually goes when i put him on the toilet.

i haven't had to change a poopy diaper for 2 days now so i'm pretty pumped.

so we will see.....

it would sure be nice to have him completely trained before school starts and the craziness begins!

he loooooves to watch daddy mow. he talks about mowing all the time.

he is obsessed with other little boys' toy lawn mowers, so i bought him this one from a garage sale but the wheels don't work.

it doesn't seem to bother him too much though :)

bunny is still alive- even through the heat- and even though he doesn't look very alive in this picture.....

wren is still talking about this day-

it was one of the highlights of her life.....

this cracked me up :)

they were being ninja warriors.

so i went to iowa with shaeya and her team this weekend. it was a new experience for me.

i do not love horses but i am learning to love them because i love my daughter.

she loved every minute of being in the horse barn, helping with ribbon, practicing on the barrels, sleeping in a camper, hanging out with her teammates, and having her mom all to herself for 3 days :)

and their performance went great.

http://youtu.be/UF0VZngQGWE

waiting for the awards at the end. she was pretty exhausted. and HOT.

and the team with their ribbons after it was all over :)

and i had fun too. because i was a tag-a-long.

i had only 1 child and no other responsibilities.

i sat and relaxed during the 5 hour drive.

i sat at the campsite and chatted with the girls and played on my ipad (i had no idea that campsites now have wifi- too funny!)

and i sat and watched the competitions and read a couple of books.

i can't remember the last time i sat that much. it was heaven.

......apart from the heat and the flies and the horse smell..... :)

but i was glad to get back to the rest of the fam. i missed them.

even the two that keep me from ever sitting-

.......and even when i'm driving i can't just sit :)

you never know when someone's gonna pee or puke or spill.......or get their finger stuck in their straw hole.

and then you have to take a picture and then rescue them :)