Happy Halloween!

The kids had a blast, I will post some pix. Hunter was Wolverine from X-men. Tristan was Batman, Alexa was a sparkly pink & black princess-witch. (Her description!) She reminded me all day..no, not witch, princess-witch! They remembered to say Thank You and Happy Halloween. Most of the time they said Trick or Treat. There were about 1/2 the houses that participated, and 1/2 who didn't. After making 100 goodie bags, we only had about 15 trick or treaters. We only saw 2 other families out in the neighborhood. Maybe there will be more next year. Alexa kept telling people.." I like you doggie, I like you kitty, I like you spiders (decorations), almost every house she saw something she had to tell them she liked. It was really cute. We had them take turns ringing the bell/ knocking on doors. Alexa kept track of whose turn it was. After each house she would say.."Everybody, everybody..it's My/Tristan/or Hunter's turn!" She kept it straight too. Tristan & Hunter were going a mile a minute and wanted more,more, more. Typical boys! I'll post the pix on the photo gallery and put a couple here. Brianne came over and had dressed up at work like a nerd..very funny and oddly.. believable! She taught Alexa a witchy laugh, but it came out more like a HeHeHe giggle. One of the neighbors took a picture of all of us, so if he emails it to me, I'll post that too. Hope everyone had a safe night.

Red Umbrella

Rain seems to be a metaphor for me alot lately with music that touches my soul!
Jodee Messina "Bring on the Rain", Cheryl Ladd "Lady Gray", and now Faith Hill's new song..

Faith Hill Red Umbrella Lyrics

Sometimes life can get a little dark
I'm sure I've got bruises on my heart
Here come the black clouds full of pain
Yeah, you can break away without the chains

Your love is like a red umbrella
Walk the streets like Cinderella
Everyone can see it on my face

(So) let it rain
It's pourin' all around
Let it fall
(No) it ain't gonna drown me
After all
I'm gonna be okay
(So) let it rain(Oh, let it rain)
(Let it fall)(I'm gonna be okay)
(So let it rain)

You can wear your sorrow like an old raincoat
You can save your tears in a bottle made of gold
But the glitter on the sidewalk always shines
Yeah, even God needs to cry sometimes

Your love is like a red umbrella
Always there to make me better
When my broken dreams
Are fallin' from the sky

So Let it rain
It's pourin all around
Let it fall
No, it ain't gonna drown me
After all
I'm gonna be okay
So let it rain, Oh let it rain
Let it fall, I'm gonna be okay
So let it rain

Let it wash my tears away
Tomorrow's another day
Yeah
so let it rain.....

Excuse her, she's "ill"..

I am sitting here listening to the kids play at the kitchen table, loudly! They migrate to where ever I am most of the time. Right now I am baking garlic bread in my"too easy to not make it" bread machine. There are pumpkin cookies in the oven, spaghetti sauce heating up and pasta cooking on the stove. (No worries, it is all on low and I have lots of timers set!) You would think with all that going on I would feel uber productive right? Well I don't. Most of it is practically on auto pilot. I have a kitchen to clean, laundry to do, laundry to put away. I really should vaccum and I don't feel like doing any of it! I am at the tail end of a stomach virus that I worked so hard to keep the kids from getting and now I got it. So to top it off I probably won't feel like eating anything I am cooking! I know... 1-800-waaaaaaaa. It just aggravates me.
I was talking to my mother the other day when I first got sick and she was so... not really patronizing, but too nice. She said she understood why I felt so bad since the anniversary of Kierra's death is coming up. I couldn't seem to convince her it was a stomach bug. Of course it is coming up, and yes, I think about it. But it really doesn't feel worse than any other day right now. I am sure on the day it will. It is more in my face that day. But right now it feels like it does every other day. Because it is always here, that ache, that pain. It doesn't go away and just come back on certain occasions. But if you know me, know how my Mom is, then you understand. At least she isn't explaining me away as being "ill". Well, at least not that I have heard of anyway!
So I will finish up all the goodies I am cooking, feed the horde, and see what else I can get done.
Be Well!

Learning to Improvise..

I improvised on another recipe today. I didn't have the exact ingredients, but I found suitable substitutes in my cupboard and it turned out quite well. It has been mentioned to me that I use to be an "all or nothing" type person. I guess in retrospect I was, and to be honest, sometimes I still am. But I have learned to improvise/ compromise alot the past couple of years. Both in recipes and life. There was a time I would either have gone to the store, or not bothered to make something if I didn't have exactly what I was supposed to for the recipe. There have been instances in my life where I would have stood firm with no exceptions or flexibility. I bend a bit more than I use to. I don't give in against what I believe, but I have more acceptance that others may not feel the same or see something the way I do. It doesn't change how I feel, but it is a broader view than I used to have. Imagine that, a leopard can change it's spots.. or at least rearrange them a little!

Hunter & Cali 10/28/07

Hunter & Cali 10/29/07
Originally uploaded by mommanana

They were waiting to get their picture taken at the doggy Halloween party. Can you tell they are both tired of waiting?! Hunter at 6 years, (almost 7!) and Cali at 5 1/2 months.

We did have a good time despite gray weather and a few sprinkles. Cali got to run with the "big dogs" and socialize a bit. And Hunter got to have some quality fun time. All in all a good day!

Out of the house & happy!

I refuse to let this gray day drag me down! I am really tired of all the dreary rainy weather we have been having for weeks and weeks now. So right now I have fresh french bread being made. (Thanks to my bread machine via Nancy!) Then I am going to make bread pudding out of it. In the meantime I am going to take our new Great Dane puppy to a Great Dane Halloween Party at a local puppy park with Hunter. The twins are going to play at Kids By The Hour which is right down the street from the dog park. I don't want to try handling a young, but big, puppy, and the three kids on my own. Brianne & Chad are going to Orlando overnight to go to Universal's Halloween Horror Nights. Brian is working, so that leaves me on my own with the munchkins. Tristan & Alexa really like going to play at daycare and they haven't been there much lately. So this gets everyone out of the house and happy!

One Project Done

Yesterday was a very long & grueling day. I volunteered to help at the Fall Festival for Hunter's school. It started to rain, so it all had to be moved inside, which didn't seem to be planned for. We got a good spot in the cafeteria, and were one of the most popular booths. We had customers before we even got fully set up. It was a cookie creating booth. We had sugar cookies which they could put frosting and candy and sprinkles on. What a mess! Add a few hundred kids and their families and it was crazy! Hunter got to go with me and help and when we got a relief to cover the booth for us we had a chance to walk around and do some things. Neither Greta or I won his class pumpkin. All the classes decorate a pumpkin or a scarecrow that gets raffled off. Hunter's class made spiders out of their thumbprints and covered a pumpkin with their spiders and a web. We added little white lights under the web. It was too cool. A little boy won it and was thrilled to death, so I couldn't jump him in the parking lot to take it, however I did think about it momentarily! So this project is done.. Hurray! On to the next one..

Have you ever wondered?

I was talking to a friend today, (I actually got to talk to three friends today who don't live nearby, but their hearts are right here with me!) and we talked about what Brian & I have taken on and whether there was any real "deciding" about doing it or not doing it. I never thought about any other choice. It was the same when we took Hunter into our lives and took the steps to adopt him. It was never a "choice" for me. It was the right thing to do, it was the only thing to do as far as I was concerned. It was never an option for me to have someone else, anyone else, raise Kierra's children. They are my blood, they are a part of her, a part of me. The idea that they would live anywhere else is foreign to me. It is not within my range of thinking.
A comment was made to someone when Kierra died.."Will they want to give Hunter back now?"
Such a thought is so ludicrous to me. He is our son. He is our child.
I don' t think about what my life would be without them, other than wondering what it would be like if she were still here.
Yes, I have days when I don't want this to be my life. Yes, I have days when I wonder if I will ever have time with Brian without kids underfoot! But, No, I will not disappear one day and abandon my family, the people I love.
Honestly, haven't we all wondered what a different life would be like? Have you never thought what it would be like to back pack around Europe? To have no responsibilities other than yourself? I am sure the ones who have that wonder what it would like to have a van full of kids and a picket fence. That is human nature. Wondering isn't wanting. Wondering won't have me packing my bags. I want the people I love to live long lives and be happy. I think that is enough of a goal to shoot for. And I plan on being around to help them accomplish it.

Yada, Yada, Yada..

Yesterday I had my second epidural injection for my neck. He went in higher this time and OMG did it hurt! The first one was a breeze and I had some spasms/pain afterward for the day. This one hurt the whole time he did it, took longer, and I am still feeling it today! Yesterday was worse, so I am glad it is better today. The logic that something has to hurt this bad to make it feel better is beyond me. I have one more in two weeks, and the hope is that I will have about 6 months or more of relief from pain. At least that is what they tell me. At the moment I have less faith than hope. What doesn't kill me will make me stronger, yada, yada, yada!

Lost & Found

I have been hunting through the house looking for our 2006 tax paperwork. I have found all kinds of other things, but not that! We had them at the rental. All our other tax stuff is in a portable file. Why this folder didn't get back in there, I don't know, but it is driving me crazy! In the meantime I have found all kinds of things I hadn't seen in a while. Photos, journals, all kinds of stuff. Some made me melancholy, and some made me smile. It is crazy how much mess you have to make to truly go through a box, or a closet, to reorganize it and sort through what to keep, what to trash. I amaze myself when I see something and wonder why didn't I throw this away when I was packing it? What made me decide then to keep it and now not to? It will all get done, slowly but surely. Of course the tax papers, like all lost items, will be in the last place I look!

Yay! They did it! aka Poor Chad!

The kids use Chad as their personal jungle gym on a daily basis. It is fun to watch them tackle, tickle, and team up on him. Yesterday they were having a wrestling match in the living room when the two of them combined their efforts and pushed him off the couch. They immediately turned to each other and did a High-5 slap high in the air and yelled "yay, we did it!". I hadn't seen them do that before. They were laughing so hard, they almost fell off the couch! It even caught Chad by suprise. They sure make everyday an adventure.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRENDA!!

Brenda with T-bone
Originally uploaded by mommanana

It was actually yesterday. I meant to blog this when I blogged about the p-nut butter pancakes.. but as usual, I was distracted!! Hmm maybe by the 3 little Gremlins I have running around here! Brenda knows all about that! So if you didn't give her a shout out yesterday, click on her link on the right side of my page and give her a holler!!
Love ya girl..

Just one more way..

Last night I spent some of the time waiting for Brian with a couple other police wives. They are always friendly and talkative until they realize I am the "one whose daughter was killed on JTB". I try to assure them it is okay, and talk about other things, but usually the conversation fades and they end up walking away. I try not to bring it up, but one of them mentioned it. It is definitely a mood breaker. I am considered an outgoing person, but I really am not. I rarely fit in with any of the people I meet or socialize with through the kid's groups, school, etc. I end up on the outer edges. Doing what I need to do, but not really connected. Just one more way I am not who I used to be...

A Working Date..

Brian was working "Caring Chefs" last night at the local mall. It is a fund raiser for The Children's Home Society. (It's on Sunday night so the mall is closed.) They set up tables throughout the 2 story mall with food and drink from almost 50 local restaraunts. For 2 1/2 hours you walk around sampling it all. They give the officers that work it an extra ticket. I had heard of it before but never attended. I had to hang out a bit until Brian got a break, then we got to walk around for about an hour. Then I sat near where he was stationed and relaxed and people watched. We discovered quite a few places not too far from where we live now. He claims it covers him taking me out to eat for at least a year, since he took me to all those restaurants in one night! NOT. We didn't even get to most of the upstairs. It was too much food! But it was nice to spend time with him no matter what we did!

P-nut Butter Pancakes..

Well, the menu choice this morning was pancakes. last time I made them I made pumpkin spice pancakes. The time before that it was banana. I only make them every couple weeks or so. Today it was peanut butter pancakes. Then the boys, Chad included, wanted chocolate chips too. So I made a couple plain peanut butter for our picky princess Alexa. Then I added choc. chips for the rest. I liked them better without the chocolate.. how wierd is that?! I think it was too much sweet for me with the p-nut butter and chocolate. Of course Brian had apple butter on his, which to me is ewwwww! I like apple butter on plain pancakes, and I like to put apple butter in pancake batter, but not with p-nut butter and choc. chips!

To Be or Not to Be.. a Morning Person!

Hunter wakes up bright eyed and bushy tailed early most mornings. Tristan wakes up at the butt-crack of dawn cranky & demanding right off the bat. If Alexa gets woken up before she is ready she drags herself and her blanket to the couch and vegetates until she is fully awake.. which sometimes takes a while! And it is well known that during her "waking up" time she is best left alone!
I must say I am not usually a morning person. Especially at the butt-crack of dawn to whiny children! I have no patience or tolerance that early in the morning. It doesn't help if I have only gotten a couple hours of sleep! On the rare occasion I wake up on my own, which usually only happens on my horse ranch weekends, I think I am generally in a good mood. Not chipper, but not cranky.
So, do we inherit our morning moods? What determines our body's timeclock? Can it be changed? Is there a magic happy pill for cranky morning children?? Ok, I know the likely answer to the last one, but couldn't resist slipping it in there!!
Last Saturday morning I woke up in the hotel room near the horse ranch and realized I was all by myself. It was a bit disappointing that I woke up much earlier than my alarm! I actually had to sit there a few minutes and try to figure out what to do. That may sound strange, but most days I wake up to demanding children. I start my day doing for them, putting anything I want at the bottom of the list. Some days I am lucky to think about getting a cup of coffee. Even luckier if I actually remember to drink it! I usually take someone to the ranch with me. So I am thinking of what they may like, or what our schedule needs to be. Greta and Randy went with me, but they had their own room and were spending the time with Katie & Cody. So I was almost at a loss as to what to do. Riding my own horse by myself gives me the freedom to go and ride whenever I want, not just when the ranch has their set times to ride. It is a habit for me to ride during those times, so I set my schedule for then. It just took me a few minutes to decide what I wanted to do since it is usually dictated by the kids!

A Martha Moment!

It must be the fall air, or maybe a shortage of air?! I was fixing the kids lunch and got the whim to make their sandwiches into ghosts and pumpkins. They thought that was the coolest thing! Last weekend Randy talked about making hot dogs into octopuses. I tried that the other night and they thought it was great! Sometimes the simplest of things can put a whole new twist on things. I'll have to be careful though.. princess Alexa may decide she prefers her sandwich without the crust!

Gremlins?

We must have gremlins in our house. (Besides the obvious three!) I just spent over an hour going through all the kids DVDs. I have several empty cases with no movies. And another stack of movies with no cases. Where do they go? How can they just disappear? I have checked behind beds, in toy boxes. All the places our little houdinis could manage to hide them. None, nada. I have moved the kid's DVD collection to inside the bottom of the entertainment center and put all my photo albums in the side section on the shelves. I got tired of them stacking stuff to reach the movies and the constant state of disarray the shelves were always in. I am not sure this is a foolproof way of keeping the area organized, but what the heck, it's worth a shot! I have been feeling very unmotivated about keeping the house clean. It seems just as fast as I clean it up it is trashed again. I am sorting through and getting rid of any broken or unnecessary toys. I will TRY to get them to keep more of their things in their rooms. They prefer to play in the living room so they can be near me when I am cleaning or doing things in the kitchen. But it would be easier to keep things picked up if I could get them to help! It is hit & miss, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Today I seem to be more motivated, so I will make the most of it!

Presentation, or Potato Chips??

I was making meatloaf last week. You know, the ordinary kind with ground beef and ground pork. I put it in the bowl, got out the eggs and some worcestershire sauce, when I realized I had no bread crumbs. I thought about my Grandmother's meatball recipe that used corn flakes, but I had none of those either. Then I spotted a container with the small smashed bits left over from a bag of potato chips. I put 2 cups of those in my food processor. Then I thought of the durkee fried onions in the cupboard and added a cup of those. (Chad hates onions so I usually omit them from recipes. This way I got the flavor without the fresh onion!) I gave them a quick grind in the machine and voila.. filler for the meatloaf! I was a bit unsure how my new recipe would be received, but they loved it! Alexa, the picky one, ate 3 servings! They all asked for more. I used 1 1/2 lbs beef and 1 lb pork, so it made a big meatloaf. I cook it in a square cast iron skillet in the oven so it makes quite a bit. There were no leftovers!
I used to have quite a hard time getting the older kids to eat meatloaf when they were small. I could use the same recipe and make meatballs, no problem, but the word meatloaf immediately brought groans and complaints. Then someone told me to cook it in a bundt pan, which leaves a big hole in the middle. Then you fill the middle and pile it high with mashed potatoes, like a mountain. The finishing touch was to pour cheese sauce over the top.. like an erupting volcano! It worked like a charm. I quit using the term "meatloaf", although I continued to use the same recipe. Whenever they asked what we were having and got the response "Volcano", they couldn't wait for dinner. Sometimes it's all in the presentation, other times, it's the potato chips!

I feel for you..

I do. My grief, and my situation with the kids, doesn't prevent me from feeling and having compassion, empathy, or sympathy for everyone else. If you all worry it will be too much for me to handle... please! If I was going to crack up or jump off a cliff it would have happened by now! I am not so fragile, so emotional, that I can't handle bad, or even sad, news. I feel like I am stuck in a plastic bubble sometimes. No one is sure how to touch me or be near me. I rarely get calls or invites anywhere. I am told it is because they all figure I am too busy with the kids. How will you know if you don't ask me? I may not be able to drop everything right this second, (although in an emergency I would!) but I can plan ahead or rearrange if needed. I know I am not always a bundle of fun to be with, but I am trying! No I am not the person I used to be, but am I so changed that you don't know me anymore? If so, take a chance, spend a little time with me, I am still in here somewhere. So pop the damn bubble already!