Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day. To assist in making this an enjoyable day for Me, I spent most of yesterday cleaning up. Unfortunately, Adalyn woke up this morning with some kind of tummy bug and has already thrown up twice :-( Oh well, at least Ryan is trying to help a lot with her, washing her bedding and just keeping her company so she will rest. The rest of us made it to church and at least through Sacrament Meeting, after which I brought Austyn home because he is coughing with a runny nose. I gave him some allergy medicine this morning, hoping to help the symptoms, but without much improvement. We have a Mother's Day picnic in the park planned for this afternoon with Ryan's mom and sisters, but now it looks like we won't all be able to go. I am still debating whether or not I want to be the one to go. I am not as excited to go without Ryan and Addie, but I guess it will be better than the continuing clean-up of a sick 2 year old. So I probably will take advantage of having Ryan home to help this afternoon, as it will be all me come Monday.

We were able to get a good hold on things with the overtime work last weekend, so no mandatory extra stuff this weekend. However, things were a little too crazy on Friday, so I still have a couple hours of work to finish from then. I had a couple extra kids that day, as well as Austyn's kindergarten program, visiting teaching, Ashley to a birthday party, Andrew & Ryan leaving on a campout, Alexia to piano lessons, then to a sleepover. I also somewhat cleaned out the garage as I was looking for a few things I wanted to sell at a fundraising yard sale on Saturday. Ryan was a little surprised that I chose to give away the crib, but after 12 years and 5 kids, I don't think we will be needing it again. It was still in good shape though, and had a newer mattress, so hopefully they were able to sell it.

Saturday morning I was awake at 6:30, for some reason, so I decided to get up and get started on my day. The yard sale wasn't supposed to start until 8:00, so I went to WalMart to pick up a few things. Once I was able to get my stuff dropped off for the yard sale, I came home to take the kids to the Mother's Day breakfast down at our church. We had a couple pancakes there and some almost cooked/semi-burned hashbrowns. They also had fixins for an omelet, but those were being cooked one at a time, so I was not going to wait around for that. I did, however, get a cup of the fixins (mushrooms, green onions, ham, cheese) and brought them home and made my own omelet. It was Yummy!!

Ryan came home from the campout late Friday night, as another leader showed up and he was given the choice to stay or go. Saturday morning, Ryan took Austyn to see the new movie Iron Man, then out to Burger King for lunch. Austyn really had a good time and really liked the movie.

Saturday evening my sisters, and their families, came over for a Mother's Day barbecue. We had fun visiting while the kids played.

Ryan finally came around on the idea of getting another dog. I spent a couple of days of looking at the online classifieds and even going to a couple local animal shelters, hoping to find a dog that was already trained and good with kids. Saturday I found "Harley," a beautiful black lab, who was in need of a loving home. He is already 4-1/2, so a little older than I had hoped, but everything else fit just right. He is house trained, in fact he prefers to be in the house most of the time, so we are trying to get him used to being outside more. He is very gentle and great with the kids. Addie's only worry is getting hit in the face with his wagging tail. He also enjoys playing fetch, which the kids are all excited about. He doesn't dig or chew up stuff and he doesn't shed much either. He is all up to date on his shots with a clean health history and a microchip. He follows me around the house and will even wait outside the bathroom for me to come out. It is a bit of a relief when the other kids are home from school, as he will then follow Ashley around. He does bark a lot more than Oakley did, so we are working on that as well. Every time the doorbell rings he barks and runs for the door. Addie is excited to have him around and will climb on him when she finds him sitting or lying down. He doesn't seem to like this kind of attention much, but he's great with her and tolerates it well.

Ryan's sister Kelsi is getting married later this month and the girls are really looking forward to being flower girls at the wedding. I was able to find a couple cute "flower girl" dresses on ebay that will need only minimal alterations to fit them just right. I was able to find some ribbon that matched the "wedding colors," so we will probably use that to add a little color to the white dresses. I will definitely take some pictures of the final look, once we get it figured out, and post them when I get a chance.

I'm still waiting for that "stimulus" money to show up in my bank account. I am not exactly sure how much we will getting back, but I have a growing list of things we may put the money toward.

Austyn and Ashley each received a glow-in-the-dark Garfield shirt as a reward for a recent fundraiser, so a big thanks to all of you who helped contributing to this. I figured this was a pretty simple and no pressure type of fundraiser, so I agreed to let the kids send out postcards to several friends and family members. I hope it was not an annoyance to anyone on the list. :-)

The kids have exactly 4 more weeks of school until they are out for the summer. Alexia's birthday will also be coming up that first week in June. She will be 8 and will be baptized soon after her birthday, though we are not yet sure of the exact date for that. The next Stake baptism, after her birthday, will be July 5th, but Andrew and Ryan may not be back from Boy Scout camp until the afternoon of the 5th, so that day won't work. I am looking into scheduling the building for just Her baptism, possibly that first weekend in June. I'll keep you posted.

The girls will have their spring dance performance on June 14th. Then, my sister Marianne is expecting her new baby girl around the 17th of June. We plan to finish off the month with Andrew and Ashley's piano recital on June 26th, which is a Thursday, then start off July with a week-long Boy Scout camp for Andrew. So far it looks like most of July will be wide open for a possible camping trip, but as it's only May, I can't really start planning that yet.

Today was a beautiful, but very windy, 75 degrees. The temps should be dropping overnight, though, with rain tomorrow and only a high of 53 in the forecast. However, it is uphill from there and we are looking to be up into the 80s by next weekend. Looks like summer is just around the corner.