Sometimes it's good to be a FREAK!

The past couple of weeks I have been in a funk. Not a big one. Just a slightly overwhelmed and pretty crabby at times one. Most of this is due to lack of sleep I am sure. I had told my self a few days ago that I was over this and talked with Brett and had a good cry...really it was a good cry. I instantly felt better. Than I get to school one day with the kiddos and meet up with some of the greatest friends out there. Where I find out the kids Evil Principal was talking about me again!!!! Errr, that's a whole other post. Anyways, my shoulders slumped down and I dropped my head and said...I'm sick of being a freak! Everywhere I go with all 5 kiddos, I get. WOW, you're hands must be full...are they ALL yours? Don't you know how this happens? Are you done...NOW? and many more incredibly rude and personal questions. I usually have a pretty good attitude and just roll with it...but lately it's been getting to me. Luckily my friends instantly grabbed me and hugged me and told me I'm not a freak...then we all laughed.

-Mother's Day started on Friday for me. I went to a Mother's tea with Jillian. Giselle came too but Jakey went to my friends house....THANK YOU KATIE! * she has 5 kids too and of the group she has 2 sets of twins...so I really shouldn't be complaining*

The preschool did a great job with a yummy breakfast and cute flowers and even cuter songs. They also did a how well do you know your mommy paper...Always good for laughs. Jillian said I
was 53 yrs. old and 66 lbs...and my favorite drink is coffee....OK, nice since I don't EVER drink coffee and in my faith we don't drink coffee...so that one was the biggest laugh..for me!

Saturday is always a busy day but my wonderful husband let me slip in a pedicure with friends so now I have pretty toes! We then had 2 soccer games and then headed over to Brett's parents house for a BBQ. After that we went to a friends for cake for her daughters bday and then after that we put the kiddos to bed and Brett's dad came over and watched them while Brett and I picked out a firepit...YAY, we love it. We also did some grocery shopping....aren't we exciting!

Sunday- I stayed in my bedroom until 11am....SWEET!! The family brought me a wonderful breakfast with flowers and cards and tons of kisses...just what I needed.

We headed to church and Jakey did not fall alseep on the way..bummer, but the kiddos in primary sang to the mom's. Who cares if our oldest 2 daughters were fighting on the stand..I choose to ignore it and just listen! Giselle was swooped away by other wonderful mommys who needed some baby love.

After church we headed home where Brett grilled TONS of food. He made chicken and steaks and hot dogs...potato salad, watermelon, strawberries, chips and lots of drinks. Then a yummy cake and to top it off smore's off the new fire pit. We were lucky enough to have another super mom here with her 2 kiddos, since her husband had to work Brett didn't want her to have to cook.

The night ended watching Friday Night Lights.

Why did I write this all down? Well, this is like a journal for me and you know what...If this is what a freak does, than I think sometime's it good to be a freak.

There is a GREAT quote from the wife of the former President of our church:

This is how I feel about my job:

" I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed,and with long perfectly, manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someones garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheek and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here, and that I really lived." Marjorie Pay Hinkley

Mommy sit!

Lately when we leave the house or come home, Jacob sits on the bottom step and says " Mommy" and pats the step. He wants me to sit next to him and he points out all the stuff he sees. It is the sweetest little moment and I have to do it every time he asks me, even if we are in a hurry, because I feel these moments are too precious to miss out on!

Jolie's 9th Bday Party!

Jolie's party this year wasn't a themed party...the first one. It was all tween though. Pink and green and tons of fun. We got these fun lanterns and hung them from the tree outside. and had streamers on the island.

As friends began to arrive the energy also came in. I put Giselle in the high chair to protect her as much as possible. ALL the girls LOVED Giselle and I am pretty sure they all got a turn holding her.

We started out eating pizza, chips and fruit salad, with Pink Lemonade. Those girls can eat!

We started our first game which was Musical dress up...since I didn't have enough chairs we used a blanket. We used Selena Gomez music and when it stopped they had to sit on the blanket whoever didn't get a spot had to run over to the dress up bucket and grab something to put on as we all loudly counted to 10. Some conviently didn't get a spot on the blanket every time...Genna had a sad moment here and there...it's always hard when it's NOT your party.

All the girls dressed and ready for their fashion walk. I made them walk around the block all dressed up and then do a runway walk in the house.

Jolie luckily loved her cake. The wonderful Costco had one with roses so it worked out well. She told me later that her wish came true...that everyone would have fun at the party!

I didn't get any pictures of this but we played "I've never" with m&m's. That was a fun get to know you game, since we had both church and school friends there. After that we made flip flops. I got 4th of July colors and started cutting ribbon. The girls were very creative. Some wrapped it around the straps..some tied lots of ribbons some did just a few. Sooo cute. The whole time we were doing this Jolie had her CD player playing Selena Gomez and the girls were so cute. They sang along to every song...i mean it every word!

Some of the finished flip flops. By this time it was dark out..we did the party from 6-9pm. I had lots of fun with these girls and it gave me a fun peek at watching Jolie with her friends. Brett was cute, he was down there a lot but I have to say these girls are mighty loud, so he would sneak upstairs with Giselle just to give them both a moment of peace.

We love you Jolie and love watching you grow up!!!!!!!!

finger sucker!!

With all of my kiddos I have thought at one time or another that they are going to be a finger sucker. This one is the only one that actually does it on a consistant basis. She fell asleep the other day in the bouncer like this and I really don't think she meant to flip us all off...but the proof is in the picture!
Still, doesn't she have the sweetest face?

Domestic Diva's!!!

Sometimes all you need is some good food and some good friends!

I thought this picture was too funny. We had the camera on a timer and it was hard to get it just right...and somehow we got just our legs...but hey not bad huh!

These aprons are SO adorable. I LOVE LOVE them. Jamie...the red head on the left, her mother in law made them for all of us...in fact one friend wasn't there. She went to Boston for the weekend...not fair!! Anyways, I just think a cute apron makes cooking food that much more fun. I had this super yummy avocado dip the other night and LOVED it. I had to make it...so a play date with food is always a good time. Thanks ladies for taste testing for me. Here's the recipe...which by the way another friend gave to me....THANK YOU DANA!!!!!!

Avocado Dip

2 Haas Avocados, diced

1 medium tomato, finely diced

1/2 small onion finely diced

1/2 cup coarsley chopped cilantro

3 T. Fresh lime juice

1/4 teaspon crushed Red Pepper Flakes

1 t. kosher salt

In a medium bowl toss the tomato with the onion,cilantro, lime juice, red pepper flakes, and salt. Let sit for 5 minutes. Add the Avocado and gently mash with a fork....serve immediately.

Next time I will double it..because it was gone way too fast!

Rainbow cake

The blog idearoom.blogspot had a really fun cake called the rainbow cake. The girls all fell in love with it. I thought hey that sounds like fun. So over easter weekend we got together with Brett's family to celebrate all the birthdays that happened in March and April for a grand total of 5 people. There was a whole lot of Happy Birthday singing going on.

I decided to use yellow cake mix insted of white because that is what I had. It turned out ok, but next time I will go and get the white cake mix so the colors will be more vibrant. This was 5 layers...it was HUGE!!! I cut out little pics of the kids bdays we celebrated rather than try to write all their names..plus I have terrible handwriting. Then we put the amount of candles in front of each picture!

The top has skittles all around it...can you taste the rainbow?

Umm...so a little lopsided obviously...haha it was fun trying to keep it even. A little trick of frosting the cake...put the cake in the freezer for like 20 minutes than frost...it is so much easier that way.

White House Egg Roll!!!!!!!!!

A friend at our church sent an email out saying that the White House egg roll is doing a lottery this year and that if you want to go you have until this weekend to enter. I thought " I 'll try, but no way we'll get picked"....a few days later I got an email saying congratulations you were picked....NO WAY!!!! I was in Group B 9:45-11:45. We had 4 children tickets and 2 adult tickets. I immediately emailed them back and asked if Giselle counted as a ticket, since she is 3 months old. They said yes every child regardless of age HAS to have a ticket. Bummer!!!! So we thought a lot about it but decided it would be best to keep Jacob home. Luckily we live by family so Brett's mom watched him for us. We decided to do the Metro since we knew parking would be impossible, especially since the Cherry Blossom festival was also going on.
The girls were super excited to ride the Metro, and we found out age 4 and under is free...sweet! Jillian and Giselle were free. The novelty wore off pretty quickly and all we heard for the next 8 stops were....is this our stop..no we will tell you when it's our stop.

Finally we made it to the White House. We had to wait in a long line to show our ticket. Then wait in another LONG line to go through secret service...the most thorough check of my diaper bag ever. 30,000 people came that day to the egg roll!

When we finally made it to the grounds there was so much to choose from. I wanted to go see Reese Witherspoon read a story but thought they we should do the egg roll first and get that over with. We took our time walking over there looking at all the various characters there, like Spongebob and Super Why amongst many many more. We stopped for a quick sec and took a pic in front of the white house, which we weren't supposed to do...oops! Then got in the line for the egg roll. We got up to the front which didn't take long at all and a lady asked if I wanted to keep my girls together, of course I do so I said yes. She said ok one sec and then had us follow her over. She put the girls on the line and we went to the other side where the parents stand. We were standing there for a while when a volunteer next to me says...hmm something big must be happening if we are just sitting here waiting. I turned to her and said have the Obama's been out yet? She said nope and it's getting late, he still needs to go to the National's to throw out the first pitch. I was like oh my gosh I think he's coming to our group. There was another lady running around kinda like she was important, so I stopped her and asked if the President was coming out to our group. She looked at me and gave me this look like yes but said I don't know very much like Yes he is but i'm not telling you he is. OK now i'm like no way this is crazy..... We waited and waited and waited. I couldn't believe how patient all the kids were. We probably sat there for at least 30 minutes.....but it was worth it!

Brett and I got our camera ready- and sure enough they come right down to our group. It was the craziest thing. Brett leaned in to shake his hand. President Obama was walking around talking to all the kids completely relaxed.

President Obama blew the whistle and they took off...it was pretty close between Jolie and Genna but in the end Genna triumphed! She was super excited for winning, which by the way they didn't get anything for winning, but we didn't care. It's been super fun to watch the girls on all the local news stations and a few national stations as well.

We told Genevieve to go up to him and shake his hand. He was very nice and she was very excited...it's not every day you get to meet the President of the United States.

Jolie went up next and shook his hand. We printed off this picture and Jolie took it to school. Her teacher thought this was really neat and kept it in the classroom. I am so glad they are old enough to really remember this.

Jillian on the other hand didn't understand the importance of meeting him and wouldn't shake his hand, she was way more interested in twirling on the grass!!

I couldn't believe it when he walked up to us and started talking to me and Brett. He asked who this cute baby was? We talked for a minute about the kids.

Brett asked if he could take a picture with him. He said sure...then Brett told him this is for his facebook page..the president laughed.

Michelle Obama was super nice and asked me about all the kiddos. I told her I had one more that wasn't here. She asked if we had all girls and I told her no we have one boy...she goes oh my we will pray for him. I laughed and said he'll need it. She actually stayed for a few minutes chatting with me...it was all so crazy that I can't even remember what we really talked about.

Malia was so nice to the girls she shook their hands and told them that she really liked their dresses! This is who the girls really wanted to meet...beside there dog, which we didn't meet the dog.

Afterwards we walked over to the play with your food station and got a bag of fruit and fruit smoothies...by now we are really hot and it's been a long day. We stopped to take a pic and a nice volunteer offered to take our picture. Right afterwards a lady walked up to me and told me she saw me talking with Michelle Obama and thinks that my girls look really pretty. I thanked her and thought oh yeah I guess people would've been watching us.....Crazy!!!

The very last thing we did was watch the cast of Glee sing....They are SO good. I loved it. I felt bad for those in sweaters and jackets because it was HOT out. This is Mr. Shuster and Puck singing over the rainbow. I really need to get their CD's, because they rock!!

I know how incredibly blessed we were to be picked to go and then to be in the right spot at the right time to meet the President. Something our family will remember for the rest of our lives!!