We love mail!

My kids really do love mail, they fight over who gets to check the mailbox and if ever something arrives for one of them it is like Christmas morning. So you can imagine how excited they were when we got packages today.

Now imagine their dismay when it turned out to be school books and clothes.

The clothes were for Emma and Leah so they got over being disappointed pretty quickly.( well sort of, Leah still doesn't look too happy)

I got a great deal on these clothes at Lands End. Two pairs of jeans and four dresses and skirts. I got them all on clearance and then had an additional coupon for 30% off plus free shipping. I ended up getting the skirts for around $3.50. I love a good deal! When my girls were smaller they thought clearance was an actual store. They used to say " Mama, will you buy that for me at clearance".

Here are some cute pictures of my other girls:

Beautiful Betsy

Mahaley hates this pic, but I think she's adorable.

Rosie's "surprised" face, totally fake.

Emma's Birth Story

Emma had her birthday party over the weekend but today is her actual birthday.

Emma was due on January 10th, my midwife joked that maybe she would come early and we would get a 2000 New Years baby. Yeh right.
On January 24th I went to my regular appt. and told them that I could NOT carry around a two week old baby for one more day. My doc took pity on me and sent me over to the hospital. By 11:00 am I was hooked up to pitocin and on my way to being in labor. If I had known how long and hard contractions were with "the pit" I would have kept carrying around my two week old. By dinner time I was asking for drugs. They gave me an epidural, which never started working. By the time they realized the epidural catheter had come out and made plans to give me another one it was too late. I went from five centimeters to ten in 1 hr.
Emma Leann was born at 1:47 a.m., weighing 7lbs 6oz.
She came so fast that the doctor never got her gloves on, she covered her hands with her scrubs and caught Emma seconds before she would have ended up on the floor. Emma's entire face was bruised from the pressure of the quick entrance.
The thing I remember most is how amazed I was at how beautiful she was. I couldn't stop crying. I kept telling everyone in the room to "look at her, look how beautiful she is, look just look, can you believe how pretty she is".
 And she was. And she still is. And I can't believe how lucky I am to get to be her mama.

(And I'm really glad that she loves crab so that we get to have crab legs on her birthday.) Thanks baby

Things we love about Emma:

She has the biggest, prettiest eyes ever.
She is really sweet to Rosie and lets her play with her stuff.
She has a great witty sense of humor.
She makes charming miniature drawings.
She is very crafty, she makes awesome clay art and cool paintings.
She is really, really good at puzzles.
She loves to read.
She is talented at building with things like k.nex.

Nicknames we have for Emma:
Emmaboo
Miss Em
Emma jean
Emily ann
M
Boobaby

.

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated Emma's 11th birthday today! We had a simple birthday lunch of hot dogs, along with cupcakes and ice cream cake. Lots of friends and family came over. Emma got some great gifts including.....

Momo, the newest member of our family.

After the party we decided to have a "sleepover" night. All of the kids got to have a friend stay over. That means there are 11 kids in my house. It's going great, really it is. The Duggers have nothing on us. I could totally handle 19 kids:)

On Hold

Having no transportation is really getting to me. I feel like everything I need or want to do has been put on hold. I spent today van shopping with Wayne. Nothing good so far but we did get to have a nice lunch out. I have a couple of things to look at tomorrow, maybe I'll get lucky and then we can do something interesting so I'll have something to write about. In the meantime here are some silly pictures.

      Mahaley and Rosie

                                                                    Baby in a bag

          

Freedom!

We left the house today!
 We had a bit of slipping and sliding at the end of our driveway but everything else was clear. Wayne and I went shopping for a new van this morning, but no luck:(  In the afternoon I took the kids' friends home, Jamie went to his Uncle Jason's to play video games, we borrowed Aunt Kim's van and we girls had an evening out. Mahaley, Emma, Leah, Betsy, Rosie and I made a Target run and then stopped for Chinese. We were having such a good time that we spent two hours at the restaurant.
Now I'm off to hunt up some car ads, more searching tomorrow; wish me luck!

Day Three

(This was really written on Wednesday, I just got distracted when posting it)
I got to go to the grocery store today! Yay. The poor kids still haven't got to leave the house. Not only do we not have our van but I wouldn't want them to be out on the icy roads. They're having some friends over tomorrow, that should help.
It's supposed to be up to forty degrees by the weekend, we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Trapped: Day Two

We're suffering from a little "snow madness" which has resulted in lots of bickering and a few physical altercations. Soothing tempers with hot chocolate has worked so far.
 Food is still holding out but we might run out of milk and sugar if we're not rescued soon.
Laundry soap is GONE, toilet paper reserve is very low.

We might not make it.

Snowed In

 Day One:
  The snow is five inches and rising.
 We can't see our driveway.
No cars passed on our road today, leading me to believe the entire road is impassable.
 Our food is holding out, we are currently working on storing up enough body fat to survive. Biscuits, fried potato cakes, chips and cheesecake seem to be the best way to go.
The kids are foraging for clean snow to make snow cream, that should help stretch our resources.
 We are currently staying warm with lots of clothing layers and blankets, we should be ok if the laundry detergent lasts through washing the uncountable loads of snowy outdoor clothes.
Hope everyone else is having a great snow day!          

R.I.P

I took down our Christmas tree today and in my world that means the holiday are officially over. Goodbye 2010!  Also goodbye to my overworked, under appreciated van . I think it has gone to automotive heaven. I took my sister, Kim, to her neurologist's today and on the way home it blew a gasket or cracked a block or lost its head or something like that. We had to walk the rest of the way home, in the cold, after my poor sister got a bunch of needles poked into her head, ON HER BIRTHDAY. I'm so sorry Kim, Happy Birthday anyway.

Happy New Year!

We are not big New Year's Eve partiers, too old and boring I guess;) We are however big eaters so we spent New Years Day at Wayne's parents eating a traditional southern New Years Day meal. Collard greens, fried salt pork, black-eyed peas and corn bread. Yum! Brings you wealth, good health and luck in the new year. Happy New Year everyone!