Boot Camp Graduation

Today Aaron graduated and is officially a United States Marine.

I was in the Navy, I have brother in the Air Force and two in the Marines. Now I only have one to go. Wonder which service he will choose.

Took the youngest four kids to the ceremony and they did pretty good.

I took a contrast picture with my two "little" brothers - at one time I was taller than both of them!

I was wondering if Taniyah came up to Aaron's kneecap. She does but not by much.

The picture is Aaron 22, Taniyah 14 months and Brent 27.

Wednesday post

Rod went to his follow-up appt and just called me.

His right eye is worse than when they started yesterday.

Somehow the flap that they lay back down has wrinkles in it.

They are redoing the procedure and putting in a contact.

He will go back tomorrow to see if it worked.

If not then they will have to scrape off some of the epithelial cells.

Similar to a PRK which he didn't want done because it is VERY painful.

Like they give you narcotics painful.

Poor guy.

Eye surgery

Rod had Lasik eye surgery today.

He had a hard time seeing after it was done.

He seems to be doing better now although he says that his right eye is really blurry.

Something doesn't seem right.

He HATES the eye drops as he says that they really burn.

Not so much in the left eye but more in the right.

Hopefully everything is alright.

Five, Eight or Ten?!

Seven

I know I'm number seven,
but the fact you can't deny
is that God, Almighty Giver,
is the author of my life.

My soul is no less special
and my spirit no less great
than those that came before me,
be they one, or six, or eight!

So many eyes are blinded
by the whispers of this world--
to them, there is no miracle
in a human life unfurled.

A baby's just a plaything,
a burden, or a chore,
and we must proceed with caution
to prevent to many more!

Only a fool would trust the Lord
to give as He desires
and live a life of trust in Him-
whatever that requires.

A new car may be exciting;
a new house may be a prize,
but my new life is better
than anything that money buys.

So all the world may roll their eyes
when seven now they see--
But I can't wait until I meet
the fools who welcome me.

by: Jennifer Wilson

As you may have guessed by the poem we are expecting again!! The title of the post is as it is because this is our fifth birth child, our eighth permanent resident unless we are blessed to be able to adopt our two foster girls, then this will be number 10!

I was going to change the poem to reflect the number of this baby but I haven't had the time although I think that the poem rightly portrays people's ideas of large families adding ONE MORE!!

We are excited to be adding another baby to our family to love and enjoy although I have to wonder at God's timing on this one. I know that God's timing is always perfect BUT Rod is supposed to be in Bahrain when this baby is due to arrive Sept 12th. I hope that this is not one of those - husband goes off to war and baby is the last remaining piece because the husband dies. Can you tell I'm a little emotional?

I know that my hubby will return home to a beautiful new (well not exactly new but new to him!) baby and all will be well. Have to keep those thoughts out of my head.

So if you are reading this and have anything negative to say then just mosy on your way! Otherwise rejoice with us in the blessing that God has given us. If you are hesitant about rejoicing then let it sink in, pray about it and then rejoice!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAKKIAH!

Makkiah turns five years old today. We will be celebrating his birthday next week though since he seems to have a touch of the flu. No fun eating birthday cake when it just comes back up:-( Will post pictures of the birthday boy when we have his party. And I'll even attempt to write a longer post!

Support Group Meeting

I hosted my final support group meeting tonight. The college decided that since we haven't had 5 people show up in the last 5 months it was time to call it quits. Doesn't bother me as I have plenty of hours of training. It's to expensive to pay a trainer to come out for 1 or 2 people to show up.

So the decision was made.

And guess how many people decided to show up tonight?

NINE!!

Oh well.

Vocal Cord Spasm

Makkiah has been having these "episodes". He will look as if he is choking, drool, face turns red. Then he starts coughing and coughs up clear foamy mucous. Not a good thing to have happen and certainly NOT a good thing for a mother to have to watch.

I called his pulmonary specialist who says that it sounds like Vocal Cord Spasms. This is the only thing online that I could find on Vocal Cord Dysfunction and is not what I wanted to read about what my child might have. I'm choosing to think better thoughts - hmm - what better thoughts could I think about all of this? I need some help here!

They asked at school what they should do for him if it happens at school - all I could say was - "If he's having a hard time OR he stops breathing call 911!" They weren't to thrilled about that one and neither was I but honestly I don't know what to tell them. I'm at a loss.

Pulmonologist told me call him back next week and let him know how Makkiah's doing. If it gets more frequent or he has longer episode that's more scary than the ones he's had take him straight to the ER. OK so what do I do in the meantime?!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Parties, Candy and Cards oh my!

One thing about homeschooling I never had to worry about doing 20-30 cards for each class times 5 kids!

Can you guess how I spent last night?

Writing classmates names on fruit roll up and gummi hearts!

Got everyone sent off with the appropriate number of pencils and candy for their classmates, I hope and now get to sit back and enjoy the leftovers!!

Dolphin Encounter

Makkiah was invited by his pediatric pulmonolgist to go out and see the Navy dolphins. Unfortunately the doctor didn't make it as he was on-call at the PICU up at the hospital. We missed seeing him.

Another doctor came and took 3 families down to the docks to see the dolphins.

First they brought one of the dolphins up out of the water onto this large mat that they use to transport them out into the open water for training. Makkiah was the only one of the three kids brave enough to go into the boat and feed the dolphin. He even touched the dolphins tongue!

Then they put the dolphin back into the water so he didn't dry out.

Then they showed the kids how to get the dolphins to do tricks. Makkiah had them spinning in circles, giving high 5, "talking", waving (this entailed getting wet!), jumping, touching his hand with their nose, and playing frisbee. To play frisbee Makkiah would throw the frisbee out into the water and the dolphin would bring it back to him! After each trick Makkiah would throw the dolphin some fish or squid. Sometimes the dolphins would say NO by shaking thier heads when you told them to do a trick!! So much like my children although I must say that the dolphins did listen so much better than my kids most of the time.

Makkiah even got to "pet" the dolphins bellies and see how they train them to do thier exams. It was definetly a fun experience and I'm glad he got to go do it.

I'm putting pictures in my Flickr account and will out a few video clips on Taniyah's page.

Sleep

The new topic of the week is sleep. I don't know about all the other large families but bedtime at our house goes something like this.

I lay on the couch eating bon-bons and get a massage from my hubby. I tell the kids to get ready for bed and they all go brush their teeth, take a shower, put on pj's and all are in bed by their 8pm bedtime.

Oh wait...that's just my dream bedtime. I guess you all want to know reality bedtime!!

All the kids brush teeth after dinner and do chores. This involves checking and rechecking until it's done right. Then showers for whoevers day it is to shower that day. Everyone gets pajamas on while I change babies and put thier jammies on. I also help Angie and Makkiah get into jammies.

At 8pm it's bedtime for all the littles -12 and under- and medication time for Makkiah who usually comes to remind me that he needs his evening meds.

Ellie gets put in bed, Angie to bed, Makkiah to bed, and Brayana,Destini, and Jaleel all comes give hugs and kisses before bed. Then Angie and Makkiah get put back in bed because they forgot that they didn't give hugs and kisses.

After the first 6 are in bed I sit down to nurse Taniyah and then put her to bed, usually by 8:30. In the meantime I've sent or taken Angie back to bed a handful of times and told her to stay there.

At 9 pm Tyreque and Ladaria go to bed and HOPEFULLY Angie and Makkiah are in bed and asleep by this time.

Everybody in my house sleeps all night and I have to make the rounds in the morning to wake everyone up. Thankfully ALL of my kids are sleepers once they stay in their bed for longer than 2.5 seconds to fall asleep!

Nothing exciting at bedtime here.

I'm usually in bed by 10 or 11 or I've fallen asleep on the couch trying to get in a whole, complete, uniterrupted tv program. I usually don't make it though!!

Organization

Chris and Carmen's question of the week on how we run a large family is on organization.

For some reason people seem to think that because you have a lot of kids that you must be very organized. That folks is just not true.

In theory moms of large families may have the desire to be organized but being the mom of a large family in reality means that you have more people who most likely do NOT have the desire to be organized!

My world functions better with organization- I'm happier, calmer and much easier to get along with when things are clean and organized.

You would think that this would somehow give the other members in my immediate (meaning those who live IN my home) the desire to keep things neat and organized BUT it seems to have the opposite effect on them.

In keeping with the theme of Chris and Carmen I will show you what I have done that works for our family and not all the things that I have tried that didn't catch on very well.

Not to say that what I have done that works was not accomplished without much screaming and gnashing of teeth. But hey, whatever works, right?!

My kitchen is fairly organized because I designed it and had all the cabinets installed where I wanted them. Thanks to my Mom's tips it came out better than can be expected. Now if I could just get everyone to stop using it to store their crap it would be great!

Laundry is fairly simple. Once you are twelve you do your own laundry and have your own laundry basket and your own laundry day. For everyone else there are two hampers in the hallway to put your clothes in and I wash them all. Fold them on the kitchen table thus forcing them to be put away before we sit down to dinner. Once you are six you put your own clothes away. Before that I do it and once you approach that age I start teaching you how to do it.

Clothes storage. We don't have any dressers in our house. They take up to much room and aren't as sturdy as they used to be. So all of our kids have storage things from IKEA and they are all in the same place. One whole wall and half of another house these. Bins are cheap to replace if they need to be and it's easy to put clothes away and out of rooms this way. Church clothes are hung up in your closet in your room.

Each child has a storage thing that holds 3 bins next to their bed which holds toys or whatever miscellaneous things they want to put in them. At least that is the idea. The only exception to this is the baby girls' room which has a bookshelf with blankets and toys in baskets. I can get them out to let them play in their room but mainly use them to store toys that rotate out from the coffee table.

In the kids bathroom we have two shelves with hooks underneath the bottom one. Each person has a different color towel that hangs on the hook. Each person also has a hygiene baskets that holds their toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, airbrush, shampoo, soap, face wash, razors, shaving cream, lotion and shower scrubby. These baskets are stored on the two shelves - bigger kids with things like razors on the top shelf and younger kids on the bottom shelf.

In the hallway we have another bin holder (these are all from IKEA) that holds a small bin for each child. This is for them to put homework that needs to be finished and their AWANA books. The idea is that they can easily find these items when they need them, again, this is JUST the idea!

Our coffee table is another storage area. The baskets on the bottom hold baby toys. This allows them easy access to their toys and maybe, just maybe I can teach them to be more organized than the others. OK I can hope though, right?! The top middle basket holds diapers, butt cream and wipes. The baskets on each side hold mail, magazines and whatever miscellaneous things get put in there. We also have end table with baskets that hold books that are being read, puzzle books and again whatever miscellaneous things are thrown in there.

Finally a picture

My Mom has been asking me for a picture of Taniyah with her birthday present that she sent. Since I'm sitting down in between loads of laundry I decided that I could upload some new pictures onto Flickr.

So the long awaited picture!


There are others on Flickr also!