Summer Time and the Livings Easy... said no mom ever.

Summer time and the livings easy... now you have that song stuck in your head don'tcha?  Me too.

So, I left off at the end of R's 8th grade graduation.  Which is the start of summer.  We started off our summer with berry picking!  It's my jam.  <-- see what I did there.  :p  The kids loved picking the berries.  What we didn't love was the fact that it was 7584758475847 million degrees outside.  So it last probably about 15 min.  But I think my kids have a bright future in being berry pickers, as it only took them this long to pick 5 lbs worth.  I was proud mamma.

You can't tell, but in that photo Sam is sick.  I swear he had a cold that lasted the whole month of June.  Not a fun way to start our summer vacation.  I actually think he caught a couple colds back to back.  That was loads of fun. That's sarcasm.  In case you are fluent in it. 

Here's another random photo of Sam.  Just because he's cute, ( duh) and everyone loves a red head, yes? 

Here's my jam I was talking about. Oh and dilly beans.  I've decided Im not a fan of dilly's.  They were quite gross.  

The jams I made were:  Strawberry, Blackberry, Berry Bramble, Blueberry, and Blueberry Jalepeno.  Not all are pictured. 

Next up.  Sam turned the big 1!  Crazy how fast a year goes.  We had a Sesame Street themed party for him.  

He also got his first haircut this summer.  By his papa.  

He did so good!  He didn't mind the buzz of the clippers at all.  But that sucker probably wasn't the brightest idea I've had, as he was a hairy sticky mess afterwards. 

Whoa.  Who are these kids?  Hubs and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary this summer as well.  And I was 18 in this photo.  I've been married half my life.  Freaky.

Next up on the birthday train is Miss. E.  She turned 7.  She's cute.  And her picture poses are awesome.  She really knows how to work the camera. 

For the kids birthdays this year we decided to take the to Disneyland.  Their first time.  It was a fun but EXHAUSTING trip.  

Disneyland or Bust.  We took the grandparents with us, for moral support.  

I just think this is one of the sweetest moments.  When one child is not talking, and the other one is making a kind gesture, of letting her little sister sleep on her shoulder.  Aren't they the sweetest?? 

We have arrived!!  The obligatory photo in front of disneyland.  Although, this one sucks because there was a long line to get photos taken, and I just wanted to get in and ride the rides. 

We arrived about 6pm in the evening.  It was actually amazing and we didn't have to wait long at all to ride rides.  It was perfect.  We stayed until they closed, and woke up and did it all again the next day.  Here we are getting a later start than we wanted too the next morning.  Everyone is well rested, happy, and ready to have some fun! 

A much better photo of my 3 mousesketeers. 

And on day 3, Peter Pan stopped by to say hello!  The kids were pretty excited. 

R got a selfie with him. 

At this point, it was the end of the day. And I was exhausted.  It was hot.  And we were waiting in line for Indiana Jones, for 60 plus min.  I was ready to go home.  But I didn't let it show.  I'm a trooper. 

We ended the last day earlier than the previous nights. We were all so exhausted and our feet hurt.  We ate dinner at Ruby's Diner, which is amazing by the way.  And then went to our hotel rooms and crashed.  This is what one looks like the next morning, when you're exhausted, sunburnt, and ready to sleep in your own bed.  I'm pretty sure that bed head could win an award. 

You know it's been a fun trip when everyone is asleep on the way home. 

I was so happy to get home and see this cute little face waiting for me.  Yes, I'm one of THOSE people.  Ms. Moo missed me.  I know she did. 

Which now leads us to Miss A's birthday.  11.  Sheesh.  Time flies.  This girl is hilarious.  She is the most quick witted kid I know. She gets that from her father. She knows all the words to just about every song, and she can ad lib if she doesn't know the words. I wish I had that talent. And she has jokes.  No really.  She has the best jokes. 

It's that time again.  A random cute photo of a cute little red headed boy.  

We were out driving around one evening withe the windows down, and he was loving the wind blowing in his face.  This is one of my favorite photos.  

A few weeks after we took the trip to Disneyland, Hubs and I went back, by ourselves, without kids ( can I get an amen? ) and it was glorious!!  

This next photo, I wasn't feeling too good.  We went on the roller coaster California Screamin, and I'm not as young as I use to be, and it made me feel a bit quesey.  Which then ruined the rest of the day. So we decided to take a break and go back to the hotel and rest up for the rest of the night.  Me, sporting my minnie ears.  Which I had to have.  

After we took a short nap, we were back at it, and enjoyed the rest of the evening. It was a nice break to get away for a bit.  I missed my babies tremendously though! And I was so happy to see them and hug them.  

And just like that, summer was over, and school was starting already.  I can't believe I have a highschooler,  6th grader and 2nd grader. Where does the time go? 

So now I'm all caught up, and I can get back to my regular home decor blog.  But I think i'll be adding in more family stuff as well.  Be on the look out for my next post, hopefully soon! I have some exciting news to share!  

I'm Baaaa-ack!

So how do you begin a blog post when you have been MIA for almost a year?  Like, do you just say hello, and continue on like nothing ever happened?  Or do you start off with a long explanation?  I'm not really sure what is customary, so I'm doing my own thang.  Which will include maybe both.  Soooo..

Hello!  I'm thinking this post will be a catch up of the past year. So if you're here wanting to see home decor pics there really won't be any of those.  It's more of a " let me catch you up on my personal life, which was the reason why I stopped blogging" type of post.  BUT.  Lets pretend for just a moment that I am just ignoring the fact that I disappeared, and act like nothing happened.  The last post I wrote, I was showing you all our bathroom sink, which we decided to cement and the hallway cabinetry I was painting.  Those are all done now, so just incase any of you were sitting on the edge of you seat, DYING to know how they turned out.... Drum roll please...... 

I really liked how it turned out. Although if I'm honest, I have to say I'm not sure I've seen the bathroom this clean since the day this picture was taken.  I swear it gets cleaned and then 2.5 seconds later, it's gone to H-E double L and back.  Whatever.  I'm blaming the kids.  They're messy. 

And my hall cupboards.  I like how they turned out too. And those my friends, stay clean.  Ain't no kid touching them, smearing toothpaste on them, tossing toilet paper on them... see where I'm going with this?  So here they are: 

Ok. So now that, that is over with. I'm jumping into family life.  Just so you know it says I downloaded 71 photos for this blog post.  I some how have to whittle that down and catch up all up on the last year.  We'll see how that goes. 

So.  First up.  Lets begin with January.  January, my oldest had an appointment up at the Childrens hospital to have her back checked out.  She had scoliosis, and we knew it was severe, but I think I just didn't really want to know how severe so we kept putting it off.  I knew deep down inside she was gonna need surgery, but I still tried to tell myself, maybe it wasn't that bad.  We had taken her to her Ped and he told us it was just basically something she would have to live with.  So that just fed my whole " it's not that bad " thoughts.  Hubs took her to her appointment and he called me shortly after it was over.  Yup.  Surgery.  And fast.  It was quickly scheduled for March 1st.  Spinal fusion surgery. They had me at spine.  That pretty much freaked me out.  And I was trying to remain calm.  we were told her surgeon was the best in the area for this type of surgery.  Not that that really calmed me down that much.  I mean come on, this is my baby's SPINE we are talking about.  Her curvature was at a 72 degree curve.  Yikes.  Just so you can get an idea, here's what 72 degrees looks like.  

Actually, this probably isn't 72 degrees.  It's probably less.  This is when I first really noticed it was bad. She was always a private person.  But we were at Target one night trying on bathing suits and I was tired and wanted to sit down, so I forced my way into the room.  I was pretty shocked when I saw her back was curved like this.  It actually freaked me out. Anyway.  Moving on.  Surgery.  There are no words out there to describe the fear of having your child have a major operation.  I was a wreck.  And having a hard time holding it together.  I would find myself crying often and at the weirdest times.  But my daughter, she was brave. Or clueless. One of the two.  Clueless in the sense she had no idea how major this was, and she thought she would bounce back right away.  But I was thankful she didn't really know the seriousness of it.  I think it would have stressed her out even more.  March came super fast.  Isn't that how it always happens when you don't want to do something?  We had to be at the hospital super early in the morning.  That whole morning was just a mess.  Sam was sick, and was only wanting me. He was sleeping almost thru the night at this point and only waking up once, but the morning of the surgery, he decided to wake up at 4:30 and not go back to sleep. he was miserable, and I was still nursing, and he wouldn't take a bottle.  Talk about STRESS. I needed to be in 2 places at one time.  Which wasn't possible.  To make a long story short.  It some how worked out. It wasn't the type of work out that went smoothly, but it worked out.  Here she is all gowned up, before they tried to stick a million IV's in her.  

Shortly after this photo was taken, they came in to put in her IV. Only she had to fast for so many hours, and that made her veins hard to get too.  So after about 3 painful tries, they decided to just do it while she was under anesthesia. Which worked out better, for obvious reasons. 

The surgery itself I believe took 5-6 hours.  I was so thankful to hear everything went great.  The surgeon met with us and said he was able to get her curvature to just under 20 degrees.  As my middle daughter would say... NOICE!  :) 

For your view pleasure here are a few pics of her during recovery.  Being wheeled to her private room right after surgery. 

Sleeping Beauty.

Still sleeping.  Making sure that Morphine button was ready to push.  And holding the sweet little lamb her daddy bought for her.  She's obsessed with stuffed animals.  One can never have too many, no matter what your age is. 

This is the next morning.  What a trooper.  Managed a small smile and a thumbs up.  And check out that back!  Nice and straight!  

First time sitting up. 

First time walking. 

And a little before and afters. 

I still can't believe how straight it is sometimes.  It's pretty amazing what Doctors can do now days. And I am so thankful God gave us an amazing one.  

And here she is on the day she went home.  She was in a lot of pain in this picture.  She had been weaned off her morphine and was definitely feeling it.  Poor thing.  I'm so glad this is all in the past now. 

Full recovery is 6 months. Which it will be 6 months on September 1st.  Yay!  She can pretty much do anything she wants now.  She does have some limitations when she bends over.  She keeps her back super straight.  But I think that is mostly from fear/habit.  

Moving on.  Is there a limit on how long a blog post can be?  This might beat a world record.  And I realize not everyone will read all of this. But i'm ok with that.  

Easter.  I think Easter is when she started turning the corner in her recovery and was starting to feel semi normal again.  Here's a pic of all the kiddos.  Thanks to my BFF and her hubs, who just opened up a photography studio here locally.  

So with all my energy focused on R for those 6 weeks that she was out of school, and me playing nurse, my other sweet babies got neglected.  So I decided to take E out to see a movie ( A had already seen it with a friend, thus no photo of her. ) I love this girls style and sass.  She's got the moves. 

Next up.  These 2 cuties are apparently blind and needed glasses.  They got to pick out their own frames. Which E was a little bummed she's not blind.  She tells me often she thinks she needs glasses.  

Next up.  A decided she wanted her 2nd holes in her ears.  So of course I had to document!  

She was so nervous.  But handled it like a champ.  Love this kid.  

And can't forget Mr. Sam.  Here's a pic of him just because he's cute.  And I know you want to see him. Who wouldn't? 

Oh. and then this happened!  Happy mothers day tooooo meeeee!  This is my 5th 

err... 6th baby.  I'll let you figure out who my 5th is.  And if my 5th is reading this, I love you very much and i'm totally kidding!  

And here is a photo of babies number 1, 2, 3 and 6 photographed together. 

Actually this was the day of R's 8th grade graduation... but it was a nice lead in right?  

A few pics of her at graduation.  I think she was a tad excited to be done with middle school.  

And a rare photo of us all together.  I hate photos of me in it.  So you won't see me in many. 

And NOW.  I've caught you up to summer vacation.  Maybe I should just start a new blog post. I think I shall. Because this one is getting really long.  If you have stuck with me this far.  You're are probably family.  And you have to read this far.  :p

Stay tuned.