Happy Birthday Alexis

Some pre party pictures!!!

Wow am I tired. The party is winding down (it is actually Dec 31st now) and most the girls have been picked up. I would say it was a success. We started by going to the Creative Spa nail salon. The only bad part of the night was having to wait. The girls were getting a little antsy. I felt bad for anyone trying to actually enjoy their pedicures/manicures b/c there were 11 loud little girls running around. They each got their nails and toes painted with snow flakes painted on thumbs. Not sure I would do that again with such a large group but whatever. We came back ate pizza. Next was cake and presents. Alexis got some fun toys. I really couldn't get any good pictures b/c the girls were nearly sitting on top of her while she opened presents and tissue paper was flying all over. They had fun. Finally I put a movie in and we decorated bags. Other than scrapbooking I am not at all crafty so other than me trying to keep the mess contained and my carpet from getting ruined they were on their own. The rest of the time was play time. Our house is much like a toy store so nobody lacked in things to play with. I would say Alexis' bars were the biggest hit. The big kid play area in back part of basement (which I spent forever cleaning yesterday) is now covered with a film of chalk (for the bars). I could hardly breathe back there. Around 11:30 I attempted to get the girls to wind down. I was not successful! Every half hour for the next 4 hours I got up and went out to plead with them to go to bed. Finally at 3:30am I told the last 2 girls standing they had to lay down. I thought their parents were going to want to kill me today. We got everyone up this morning at 8am and fixed breakfast. Overall, I think Alexis had a great time and felt very special. That was the point!  I told my kids were are not having another kid B.D. party for at least 3 years! Alexis' birthday gift from us is yet to come. We are redoing her room in a more big girl theme. I will never again have to have a pink princess themed room in my house..whoo hooo!  My mom is buying her a new desk for her room. That is something she wants. I'll be back gotta send last girl out the door!

I wish I could say aahhhhh peace......but I still have 5 kids here that aren't going anywhere (b/c they are mine)!  Once again, the clean up begins. I feel like that is all I do. Get the house in order for something and a tornado comes through so I get to do it all again. So what fun things is everyone doing for New Year's Eve? I would argue I have the best plans ever...NOT. I am on call all weekend. I made this trade for one earlier in the month when I thought I would be on crutches (that I was never really on), so I can't complain (too much). Clark is also on call so no toast at midnight. Not that we would want to anyhow. We are kind of annoyed with each other. Kind of might be an understatement. We are both just stressed I think. We won't be back in sync with each other until he gets back from Dallas. Until then we will just try and stay clear of each other. I will try and do my New Year's resolution post later today or sometime tomorrow. Need some time to come up with things.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's. Drink a few for me!! 

Recap of Christmas 2010

Considering the fact that our tree is down and most the decorations are packed away this better be my last blog about Christmas. I will write about it tonight and hopefully get pictures posted on facebook tomorrow night. As much as I love Christmas I am very glad it is over. I am simply exhausted. The last 5 days were a bit of a whirlwind.  I had 2 nights of no sleep due to vomiting all night and 1:30am trips to Toys R Us. Then Christmas Eve I got only 2 hours of sleep just to pull it all off. After all that, was it worth it......YES!!!

So Christmas morning I went to bed at 3:30 and was up at 5:30 showering for the day. I had a hard time sleeping even for 2 hours b/c I was so excited to see the kids get excited. I woke everyone else up at 6:45 b/c we had to be dressed and ready to go to my mom's early. I thought we would just get through a few gifts and then finish the rest when we got home. We actually made it through all the gifts before having to leave. The kids loved it. We went around letting them pick which package to open. For example for each round they each had a gift wrapped in same paper. I never repeated paper for any given child. We open one round at a time but not one person at a time making it go much faster. I think everyone loved the gumball machine which was not wrapped. Alexis loved her bike which was a cool hot pink and black. I would say her other favorite gifts upstairs were all the American Girl stuff and her Hermione wand. Nick's favorites were maybe some Legos and 2 large nerf guns. Ryan sadly opened the 2 things he asked Santa for (hockey figures and star wars figures) as the first 2 gifts. He spent the rest of the time waiting to open more of them despite me telling him over and over there were no more. I promised to order him some more and that seemed to please him. Landon loved everything. Adam liked all his Thomas.

Alexis' and Nick's big gifts were in the basement. Nick the laptop and Alexis had the gymnastics bars. The babies had this huge megablock Thomas thing (that was my 1:30 am Toys R Us run when I was feeling guilty for not having big gift downstairs for them). Anyhow, I was not planning on doing anything to get the kids down to their playroom in basement b/c I just wanted them to find it on their own. I knew however that once Alexis got a bunch of American Girl stuff she would likely want to go her her doll Kit to show Kit all her new stuff. Kit was in the basement. It worked like a charm. Actually it was perfect b/c she was looking in the triplet/main part of basement for some crazy reason and called up that she could not find it. I asked Nick to go help her find her Kit doll and that probably it was in the back part. I so wanted to see their face when they saw the big gifts but I also wanted her to believe I knew nothing about it so I stayed upstairs and played dumb. It was priceless....priceless!!! They came running up the stairs screaming at the top of their lungs that we HAD to come downstairs right away and see what Santa had left and that we were NEVER going to believe it. I have never seen my daughter this excited....EVER!!! She was in heaven with her bars. Screaming while twirling around the bar that she LOVED Santa and over and over saying this was the best Christmas ever.

Nick loved his computer which I would love to write all about but my computer just died and while I was getting it back to life my mom called to say she was coming over. So I gotta go but I will come back later if I have anything left after dealing with my mom.

Clearly this blog is going to have to be continued tomorrow as I am even more worn out now that my mom has come and gone. Have I mentioned how much I love being in the same room with my husband and my mom. It is great! I almost think Clark says stuff on purpose to cause issues for me. He antagonizes her. Maybe she deserves it but come on, I don't deserve it. My mom bought us a big rug for under our table. We were trying it out and ultimately are going to exchange it. We had to roll it back up and put in this double bag thing. It was a pain and I was trying to help Clark hold this huge heavy rug with my legs so it would not slide. He of course said (in front of my mom) said that I was worthless. Thanks! My mom shoots back that he could give me a break b/c I did just have surgery and he was about to throw my hip out. He then wants me to move back all the chairs, etc and is complaining b/c I was not efficient in doing so. His comment was that it was MY rug. It might have been one of my Christmas presents but it was for OUR house... jerk! With his last comment I was done. No more help from me! I could see my mom smiling as she left with my decision to stop helping if he was going to treat me like that.  See I do nothing to create this drama that occurs when it comes to those two. All I want to do is go to BED!  Good night. I will continue Christmas tomorrow I guess!

Hoosier Dirty Girls

If you are one of my facebook friends you already know what my title refers to. If not....too bad for you! NO just kidding. Today I signed up for a mudathlon in Anderson, Indiana June 25th. There are several of us girls doing it and this was the name that one of our friends came up with for our team. I think it is the perfect name!! This is going to be 3 miles of a very muddy obstacle course. I am the team captain, not b/c I like to run things but simply b/c I offered to pay for the work girls until they had the money to pay me back. I am sooo excited about this. Getting dirty (talking mud here people) is totally something I will love.

Ok I gotta say having a blog where I don't know who is reading is starting to freak me out. I can't see who reads this but I can see which posts are viewed and someone today is reading only my posts where I am clearly mad about something. They are looking at all my mean or bitchy posts. As long as it is not my mom (who I hope never finds out I have a blog) then I guess I don't care but still freaks me out.

I didn't write yesterday b/c really nothing to say. Work was busy but I think both Kristen and I were very happy that it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. I think I saw 30-32 patients yesterday and 27 today. Today I was happy to have no babies to round on. That was great b/c it was really Rob's day to round, but he is on vacation. I am taking his call tonight, so I won't be really excited about my work week being over until the morning. Today at work I got into a little tiff with my nurse and friend Amanda. I think the problem is we are too similar and very very very very stubborn. It got a little testy. I just watched the nurse manager look at us while we were saying not so nice things back and forth and making comments about who can hold their own more. I am sort of a fanatic (ok maybe no sort of, maybe beyond crazy) about patients being taken back in a timely fashion. I want them back instantly. Sometimes my expectations are unrealistic and I need to chill out (as I am told a lot by the nurses). Not sure what exactly set Amanda and I off but that had something to do with it. Good thing about us is that we quickly got over it and actually had a good rest of the day working together. I am fairly certain we are both too stubborn to say sorry, but she'll know that is how I feel. Not sorry for my craziness about the patients b/c I think we both probably have valid points about that but more b/c we sounded a little like we wanted to step out back and kick the shit out of each other with the way we were talking. That I am sorry about. She reads this so she will know:)

As for kid news, I feel like they are never going to get over all these illnesses. At 4am when I was up calling the hospital to see if I had any babies to round on, Alexis came out saying her belly hurt. I told her to come to bed with me.  I was thrilled to have no babies b/c I was going back to sleep for an hour. That excitement was killed when she got out of the bed 5 minutes later saying she thought she was going to be sick. Let's just say she did not make it to the bathroom before vomiting all over my carpet. Gross. Then she got it all over my  bathroom. No back to sleep for me. When I got to work I called to check on her and she was begging me to let her go to school. It was the Christmas party. She said she felt better (although the babysitter was saying she looked horrible). Being the stupid hardcore mom/doctor I am, I said she could go (with strict instructions to not mention that she vomited a few hours earlier....I know horrible but that is what I did). My nurses thought I was crazy! Well, she didn't even make it off the bus before she started vomiting again. Stupid stupid stupid me. She got sent straight to the nurse where she continued to vomit. I had to scramble to find someone to pick her up. Jessica came to my rescue for the millionth time. Huge thanks to her. Alexis made it home and spent the rest of the day in bed. I just want everyone better by Christmas. It has gone thru everyone and is starting over with her!

Well, I am too tired to countdown anything tonight. Nothing more I care to talk about. Good night!

A Look Back

So I decided it was time for me to learn how to post pictures on this blog. Better late than never I guess (if I end this at the end of the year). Since Christmas is only a week away that is what is on my mind so I decided to post pictures from years past. I guess we went digital in 2004 b/c I only have online pictures dating back that far. I am going to try and limit it to 10 per year. I mostly wanted to post my mom's amazing display of presents b/c it is one of my favorite things she does. I think I have written this before but again she has a different color theme every year, and we never get to know what it is until we all come up or down depending on where we start in her house all at once. I get to be a little kid every year. I love it. I love the way the room looks when you enter it before all the madness starts. LOVE IT! I never ever want to know the color early. We will be going backwards instead of forward in time b/c I screwed up how I put the pictures in!!

Christmas 2009

Our house

 Waiting to go downstairs

 You will notice a theme for Nick in every year. Always gets Star Wars!

 My mom's color theme! This is adult gifts!

Grandkids get a separate theme in sunroom! Every paper or bag had a candy theme

Christmas 2008

 Our house (not quite like my mom's)

 Star Wars

 2008 color theme for adults

Grandkids with blue and white snowman theme

Christmas 2007

 Our house

 Those who know my favorite color...know this was my favorite year!

 Grandkids with red/white/black Disney theme

 Star wars

Had to throw in a picture of Clark

Christmas 2006

 Our old house

 Me pregnant with triplets

 Adult color theme

Grandkid red/white santa theme

Christmas 2005

 Our house

 Star Wars

Clark and I at my grandma's house

 Grandkids were just traditional color theme

Christmas 2004

 Star Wars

Not enough grandkids to get separate room

Adult gifts

 So that is a very brief recap of what our Christmas has looked like over the years. Obviously I have hundreds of more pictures from each year of the kids but could only put a few on here. Since this has taken me 2 hours to do I have no energy left to write. Clark is driving me crazy about explaining the card so I will do that in the morning. I so feel it is self explanatory but whatever.
Goodnight
7 days left to shop
15 gifts wrapped (sounds like a lot but only 3 gifts per kids....lots to go)
75 days until my PT lets me run (or so he says right now)
Weight 130 (which my PT thinks is an XXL in clothes)