Hideously Cold Outside, Ridiculously Clean Inside

BRRRRRRR!!! It is so very cold today(-35 degrees windchill, I think), and the wind is just crazy, blowing and blowing as if it were the big bad wolf trying to blow our house down. After driving the kids to school, the rest of us hunkered down in the library (which I call the sauna room) with blankets and warm jammies. I was very thankful to be in our house made of brick!

The baby was in a fairly good mood this morning, and was content enough to play on the floor near me as I got to finally play with my new cleaning products. (Yes, I am so pathetically boring that I get excited over cleaning items and household tools. Gee whiz, what has happened to me?) With 3 kids having asthma, and Laura in a respiratory class of her own, I have been on a quest over the last year or so looking for products not laden with chemicals, but which also actually work to clean the messes we have. This has been a difficult task, not leading me to many positive results. The best products I have found so far relate to my baby and his very sensitive derriere which early on in his life led me to discover: Seventh Generation chlorine-free diapers and wipes, Burt's Bees diaper ointment and the California Baby line of washes and creams(including sunscreen). These have all been the best baby products I have ever used, and I would never give up or trade a single one. I wish I had known about them before baby #7!

Mixing my Shaklee products today, I tried to check my anticipation and excitement that has only led to disappointment in the past. Why would this stuff work any better than the other things I have tried? Certainly, coming from one of those pyramid scheme groups, this would just be another over-priced sham. I started with the window cleaner mix I had prepared: 2 little drops of concentrated cleaner mixed with 16 ounces of water. Two drops of cleaner? You've got to be kidding...clearly this was not going to work. To my surprise, it was fantastic!!! This stuff worked like a charm! Not a single streak was left behind, and no strong ammonia smell. My windows were simply clean! Windex does not even compare to the crystal clear sheen of my Shaklee cleaned windows. I was stunned.

After happily cleaning all of my windows and mirrors on the main floor with such amazing results(and the stubborn fingerprints on my grand piano which I have not been able to get off correctly for months), I was ready to tackle the next mix. The degreaser was the most concentrated~a whole 1-1/2 teaspoons in 16 ounces of tap water. Yeah, but is it going to tackle my microwave? Not likely! But wait! It is doing the job.....almost effortlessly! What seems to be missing? Oh...the strong cleaner smell and my reactive cough. Boy, I don't miss either of those things.

With the sun shining through my pristine windows on this cold day, and my microwave gleaming, I was now convinced that the third mix would work well too. And by golly, it did! The general cleaner easily wiped up our morning breakfast mess of dried oatmeal on vinyl placemats, and sticky spills of gooed up juice on my wooden table. This biodegradable, safe, earth/people-friendly cleaning trio has passed the initial try-outs I set before them. And what about the dishes I ran last night with the chemical-free detergent and mineral laden water(as our softener had not yet been replenished)? Not only are the dishes clean, there is not a single drop of residue~neither cleaner , nor food, nor mineral deposits to be found. Oh, and since my washer is broken, I sprayed a bit of the all-purpose cleanser on the baby's clothes from this morning's huge poop(he had been saving it up for 4 days), and wouldn't you know, it washed that yellow mess out without fading any clothing color. Nothing else I have can do that!

Not to sound like an infomercial, but I am hooked. Though I am seeing the huge difference looking around my house today, I can guarantee that Bob won't notice a thing. His idea of "clean" means "picked up". There could be 2 inches of dust on every surface and smears of doggie poo dried all over the tiled floors, but if all the toys are put away and things are off the floor, then our house is "clean" according to him. I like the house picked up too, but it is the filth that makes me crazy if it is covering my home, and that is always my top priority. I want my kids to at least be in a healthy environment, and for us, that includes free of so many chemicals. I am so pleased with these initial results, that my excitement to tackle the rest of my house is overwhelming. I can't wait to clean my toilets, and scrub my floors next. When my washer gets fixed, look out laundry, here I come!

Machine 1, Mom 0

Back to reality today! It started off great....a load of laundry in the washer, dishes cleaned and put away, and the bags from the weekend emptied and put away upstairs. We even made it out of the house this morning around 7:30am to get Jonny to school patrol on time.

After picking up Crispy at the bus stop and Michael from band, I took the boys to our favorite hair salon in town to get haircuts. Crispy loves to get his hair cut really short in back~he likes the soft fuzzy feel of a new buzz. Michael is protective of his "hockey hair", and was pleased that he came away with a trim that made his hair look better, but not look cut. We then had lunch at a great little coffee shop in town, The Mocha Monkey. We discovered that in addition to great drinks and smoothies, they also have fabulous stuffed pretzels and pannini grilled sandwiches. This is one of the coolest places in town....the building is like a house, with many different rooms upstairs and down, comfortable seating and relaxing atmosphere. With all the places to hide away, I don't have to worry so much about the kids bothering the other people there.

The baby fell asleep on the short drive home, so I took this rare opportunity to play with Crispy and Laura outside before the weather was suppose to turn nasty. We built a little snowman that glistened in the warm sunshine of today. We topped him off with a party hat and blower....he looked quite happy...as he should be, being that it is his birthday and all. Laura insisted that we also make him a car with tires. I'm not sure where she thought he had to go requiring wheels! The baby woke up when I brought him inside, and was not a very happy camper. He decided to restart his relentless crying and fussing. Golly....

When Jonny and Melissa came home, I took the opportunity to hand the baby over to his favorite sibling and go upstairs to finally change my wash to the dryer. To my *delight*, the washer was broken and jammed. I spent 45 minutes emptying my front loader manually of the water (this is not a very mess-free task), and clearing the drain hose. Hmmmm....a little black comb had gotten stuck in the drain. It seemed to work placing it all on spin cycle once again, but not quite.

Meanwhile, Alex called and needed a ride home after his math league. We picked up dinner at our favorite Chinese Restaurant because it was clear that things were spiralling out of control at home. While we waited for our dinner, we ran over to the grocery store to quickly stock up on a few essentials (one being a new cell phone battery as mine only lasts about an hour on standby and 5 minutes if someboday calls me) so that we would be comfy, cozy, and well fed during this coming winter storm. Once home, we enjoyed an early dinner, and the baby that had been apparently fine for Jonny while we were out, started his wailing for me. At 6pm, reinforcement was welcomed in the form of Grandma Z......She said something about me looking terrible (or maybe just tired). I asked her to hold the baby for just a minute so I could change loads of wash. That "minute" translated into about 40 such minutes.....

After throwing the now mildew laden towels dripping on the floor into the washer, I discovered that nothing had been fixed, and once again found myself manually draining the machine. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS KIND OF THING!!!! With this many kids, my washer is essential to me...I use it several times a day. At this point, I was exhausted and out of ideas, all of my muscles hurt from bringing in 6 bags of softener salt from the car earlier, the baby was crying, Bob was working out of town until Tuesday night, and my good day had taken a turn. I think that I was most disappointed about not being able to try my new natural cleaners that arrived from Shaklee. Grandma Z was nice enough to bring Jonny to cub scouts tonight.....thank you! I do not think I could have done it tonight. I was ready to hand in my two weeks notice tonight, but my boss (me) refused to accept it. Now I have to go to bed, exhausted, and feeling defeated by my very own washing machine. *sigh*

Finally Home

One more hockey game this morning as we played for the consolation trophy. The kids made a valiant effort, but ultimately lost in sudden death overtime. This team is really incredible....despite so many losses, the kids never seem to let it get to them! They all walk out of the locker room just as they had walked in....still smiles, still witty, just happy that they got to play hockey. These kids all love the sport....it is fantastic!

We got home around noon, and were reunited with the other boys shortly thereafter when Grandma Z and Lyle brought them all back from church. By the end of these weekends, we are all so ready to be home and be all together again, even though we all had a good time doing our own different things. Two hours later, we were (except for Alex, Laura and daddy) out the door to hockey again....this time it was a practice for Crispy. Melissa has really been a great trooper through all of this as she really has no interest in hockey, but has now been to 4 events in 36 hours without complaining. What a good girl!

We left hockey early to go to evening church. I had miscalculated the time it would take to get there, and we were 15 minutes late. Oops! Isn't that one of the reasons I have a GPS in my car? The kids still got an hour of rehearsal in, and Michael and I did not miss any of the message, so things ended up working out OK. Tubby was sad in the nursery~I think he just wants to be home. Ultimately, that is where we all finally ended up this evening by 9pm after picking up Alex at youth group. Whew....what a weekend for everyone. It is so good to be home!

What About the Rest of Them?

While we were away at the hockey tournament, the rest of our kids were back home busy with their own activities. Crispy had the pleasure of playing hockey at Mariucci Arena at the University of Minnesota. This is always one of the highlights of the year for these little guys as they get to experience what it feels like to play in a super-huge arena. They get to pretend that they are super hockey stars! Crispy said that the best part was playing "Catch the Coaches". All the coaches are wonderful volunteers (mostly hockey dads) who keep everything so positive and upbeat for these kids. It is no wonder that we have such a booming hockey program. Grandma & Grandpa C met Crispy at the arena to watch his practice. They then took him for the rest of the day, and he got to go to a special lunch at Perkins. They drove him home later in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Grandma Z took Jonny to his first real basketball game before she left town in the morning. Jonny said it was good. He was pleased to play at his best friend's house for the rest of the afternoon. Alex went to his girlfriend's house to hang out and celebrate her belated birthday with her.

My parents took Jonny and Crispy out to the Chinese restaurant in town for dinner before Jonny's second basketball performance of the day during the halftime portion of the WHS varsity basketball game. Though Jonny was nervous, and the gym was pretty well packed, Jonny said he had fun with that too. I think that both boys enjoyed spending some quality one on one time with Grandma and Grandpa today! I can't wait to see some pictures of all of the fun events!

Some Good Hockey!

Michael has been the checking force on his team for a few months, but it is time for him to step it up a bit. He has been a team captain, and he is a leader by example on his team. He has the checking part down without a problem. Now, he needs to act like he wants the puck, and then go get it!

After a night's sleep lacking a bit on hours, Michael was ready for that precise challenge today. He went out there and played like the great player he is. The most exciting was a breakaway he got where he skated the puck all the way down and scored a goal! Yay, Michael! The team lost, but they played well, and Michael was on fire the whole game. He was awarded the game puck at the end....a high honor, indeed. The girls were good sports during the game, and actually spent most of the time chanting Wildcat cheers (dolls included)they had learned at school. It was pretty cute.

Between games, I took the girls (Melissa, Laura, and the neighbor girl), and Tubby to waste some time walking the toy aisles in the Wal-Mart next to our hotel. Bob took a much needed nap, and Michael ran around the hotel with his friends. The second game proved to be as exciting as the first, and then even more so as we won! Our second win of the season! The kids played really well as a team....great passing, great hustle, great teamwork. Now that is something to be excited about!

We had pizza back at the hotel, and I brought the girls to the pool. Tonight there was a whole hockey team in there (not ours), and it was quite rowdy. My girls were intimidated by the atmosphere and only lasted a few minutes before wanting to go back to the room. Once back, they played with some of their recent finds from the earlier Wal-Mart trip. Laura showed us that she is a natural puzzle master as she did and redid a 24 piece Dora puzzle all by herself. She was so proud. Melissa was thrilled to share her new Littlest Pet Shop video game with the other hockey sisters. Bob made an appearance as our family representative at the end of the hall where the hockey parents from our team were hanging out in their makeshift bar in the party room(not my cup of tea). And Thomas learned a new trick.....the army crawl! He was keeping himself busy moving all over the floor and from room to room in our hotel suite. Golly....I can't stop him from growing up, can I? Maybe this will help to calm his screaming habit.

More hockey tomorrow morning at 9am as we play for the consolation trophy. Go Wildcats!

On and On it Goes

Today was once again filled with the now usual barrage of screaming and crying each time the baby was put down. It must be a bad habit. It made packing for our weekend hockey tournament challenging and gruelling. This time, the girls get to come with us. Unlike the boys, who I can just ask to pack their things, the girls need a bit more help. If the boys screw up and pack things that really don't make sense, it doesn't really matter....they are boys, no one cares how they look. If the girls pack something odd, not only do they look strange, but they themselves notice, and will be bothered. This really is not such a hard task, but doing anything in this screaming house of horror has been rather difficult lately.

Bob was not impressed when he came home at 5:30 and we were not immediately ready to walk out the door. The screaming baby excuse doesn't work for him, nor does he understand nor believe it. Though I do have resident witnesses who will vouch for me! We finally left sometime after 6pm, and got up to Litchfield by 7:45pm.....time aplenty for the girls to do a little bit of hotel swimming. They had been looking forward to this exact moment for 2 weeks!! Thomas enjoyed kicking his feet in the water and being part of the group. He is trying so hard to grow up! At about 9:30pm, I brought the girls back to the room to get ready for bed. Unfortunately the wireless internet service was down in the room, so that made for an even more irritated daddy.

Nighty night, sleep tight....lots of hockey tomorrow!

CHUCKapaloosa!

Another day of screaming and crying, compliments of my baby. I do not know what is wrong with this little boy. Bob has checked him over and says he is fine with the exception of his new cold. I am starting to think that this screaming garbage is now just a nasty habit. One thing is very certain: Michael, Crispy, Laura, and I are all sick of it. It only makes our days noisy and very stressful.

Thankfully, I was able to leave the house again tonight. This time I took Jonny to the WHS varsity basketball game. I had a two-fold purpose: to listen to Alex play in the pep band, and to get Jonny some more exposure to his current sport of choice. This was the first time we went to a game for the sake of going to see the game (i.e.instead of waiting for Melissa to dance at halftime). It was surprisingly a lot of fun. I'm not sure it was the $9 entrance fee worth of fun, but it was fun nonetheless. The pep band played very well, reminding me of all the marching band parades last summer. They were much better than the high school pep band that I use to play in. Jonny and I ended up sitting right in front of the cheerleaders...it was funny how most of the cheers were still the same as they had been 20 years ago when I was cheering at basketball games! I think I finally bridged a crossroads tonight and realized how very glad I am to no longer be in high school. I really felt comfortable being one of the many "old" parents just sitting in the stands. It is nice to just be blending in without superficial worries.

Alex practiced in the music room with a friend for an audition tomorrow as Jonny and I stayed to watch the second half of the game. Jonny helped me to learn some of the rules of the game and some of the calls that the refs were making. Waconia lost. Oh well. We are use to that this season since our hockey team has lost almost every game too.

We got home a bit after 9pm. I made some kettle corn for our CHUCKapaloosa fest we had been planning tonight. We have all been having CHUCK withdrawal since the show took a break over the holidays, and we have been impatiently awaiting the new episodes to begin. We are thrilled that we will have 2 new episodes to watch! Michael is also recording a WILD hockey game, so we have to wait even longer to watch our shows. We will not get to start until 10pm, so we will probably only watch one show, and now we have finished eating our popcorn. It looks like we are just going to be having a mini CHUCKfest tonight.

Time Out to Play

Today was one of those wonderful days where so much has happened that it seems like three days were packed into one. Unlike our Sundays which seem to always be over packed with too little time, today was full of fun activities at a nice pace....so though while busy, it felt relaxing and wonderful.

We visited my friend Mary, and all of her little munchkins after Crispy got home from Kindergarten. We planned this really well over the lunch hour so that Mary could make us good things to eat. Michael had a special request for homemade tortillas, so Mary made us plenty. And they were really good! We also had brie cheese and crackers with apple cranberry chutney....fantastic! The kids were so excited to see each other....it has been more than 2 months since they last played. Laura fits right in between the twins and Zoe, so it is always a little girl party when we get together. Crispy and Henry (exactly one month apart) were playing big kid video games while the girls ran around giggling. At one point, Mary was frustrated with Henry as he kept interrupting Crispy's turn with the game and she told him to stop bossing Christopher. He replied, "I'm not, Mom! I'm telling him what to do!" Don't you just love it!! Michael did his homeschool as usual, but appreciated the change of scenery.

When Jonny did not call me at the regular time of 3:03pm, I began to worry that the inside garage door had gotten locked before we left. Time kept ticking away, and still no phone call. Michael and I began taking turns calling the house, encouraging Jonny & Melissa to pick up the phone. I am not sure why I thought this would help, since it was now 3:15 and they were obviously not inside the house. I felt very helpless as we were 45 minutes away, driving home, and the temp was barely 2 degrees. I imagined 2 little popsicle kids frozen on the porch by their very own tears....3 once Alex arrived. I was beginning to get a bit panicked. At 3:25, I called a neighbor that I knew would now be home, and she calmed my nerves with the news that they were all warmly in her house, having a little snack. The OUTSIDE garage door controls had frozen, so the kids had no way to get in the house. After 10 minutes, Jonny thought well enough to take his younger sister to the neighbors. See, there they are, the neighbors bailing us out again!

This evening, we left the baby home with daddy, and went to Open Skate at the ice arena in Chaska. It was Melissa's first time, and she was a champ! After the first 2 minutes, she came off the ice complaining that it was too slippery. With some coaxing, she went back out and skated for an hour and 20 minutes. At one point, I was helping her stay balanced by holding one hand and she said to me, "Thank you for taking us to so much fun, Mom! At first, I thought~What am I doing out here?~but now, this is AWESOME!" She was very excited and proud about her first skating accomplishments, as she should be. Laura had fun pushing and riding in a little green chair. She remembered somewhat how to stand up on the ice. Jonny was thrilled that he remembered how to skate....he had not been skating since quitting hockey 2 years ago. Crispy had fun skating around with so many siblings to play with on the ice. Michael cruised around with his friends and fellow hockey team members. I enjoyed getting out of the house again and away from my crabby baby...it was also lots of fun to skate. When I was a kid, I met my friends at the outdoor rink almost everyday, many days even twice! We did not get home until nine, but everyone had had such a good time, that they were all still in good moods. Everyone should sleep great tonight, and we shall see how the moods range tomorrow morning!

If You Buy Your Son a Gatorade.....

Get me out of here!!! That is all I can think about today. The baby screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed all day. Psychotic. Not fun. Really not fun. Seriously not. While he screamed, and I tried unsuccessfully to keep him from screaming, Laura took the opportunity to be naughty. Very naughty. All day. With no end. One naughty thing to the next. Because she could. Doubly not fun. Bad. Yuck. Can't take it. I want to get out of here.

Jonny had basketball tonight, so I got my chance to leave. What a relief that was! Jonny forgot his gatorade on the way out, so after dropping him at the gym, I went to buy him one at Holiday. When I pulled into the parking lot, I decided I did not want to spend 5 times as much on gatorade at the gas station, so I went to the grocery store to pick him up some to drink now, and more for down the road. While at the store, I decided to pick up some milk, and bread, then eggs, and pasta, some cheese, pop, more cereal, some toilet paper, a few snacks for school, a couple loaves of everyone's favorite cinnamon bread, tomotoes, and a few other things. Before I knew it, that little bottle of gatorade now was costing $217.00! Kind of funny! But I was super excited to have gotten a power grocery shopping trip accomplished in about 25 minutes, and now have food enough for homecooked meals the rest of the week!

I got to watch the last 15 minutes of Jonny's game.....poor kid looked a little red in the face. He mentioned something about being a bit thirsty........

So Big!

Thomas turned 10 months old today. He is hardly my little baby anymore. He just wants to grow up and be big....you can see it in his sparkling eyes. You can see it in his proud smile when he does something new. He is so proud of himself when he stands like a big boy.....he loves to stand up by the couch, even though it is only momentarily before he accidentally lets go and plops down on his butt. His clapping little hands now make real clapping sounds. He is almost able to sit up from the floor. And tonight he accomplished the forward creep! He finally figured out how to maneuver himself forward by pulling with his arms and pushing with those little feet. I'm in trouble now!