alas, mine eyes deceive me (yeah, I need more sleep)

I just put Tanner down for a nap. My usual MO is to read him two books and then tell him my eyes need a rest and then he falls asleep. The problem today is I couldn't even get through two books. As I was reading the first book my eyes began to get heavy, heavy enough that when my eyes closed I was seeing words to read and when I woke up I realized I was in the middle of a sentence that had nothing to do with The little engine that could. This happened three times before we got to the last page-it would be liberal to say I actually finished the book. Tanner then handed me another book. I only made it two pages before Tanner just took the book from me and started looking at the pictures. At some point he fell asleep and I woke up and here I am. Luckily Heidi has been busy creaing Mii's on the Wii and did not get into any trouble.

As the laundry turns

I know that my new years credo was to increase the amount of sleep I was getting. So far it has been a bust. Things that have been keeping me from getting to bed at a reasonable hour:
-dishes, lots of dishes
-cleaning my house in preparation for the babysitter coming. If you have not done this before you either don't have kids or don't go out. My regular day care provider just had a baby so we had a back-up coming to our house. As we were cleaning we were singing the praises of Amanda. Bad juju. We found out today she is moving. All I can say is San Antonio is getting a jem and we are totally bumbed.
-laundry-which is what is going on tonight so my kids have something clean to wear to school tommorrow. I usually stay up folding, but I haven't washed anything for 8 days. My kids were starting to rifle through the dirty clothes for necessary items. My bathroom was starting to stink from wet towels. It took me 30 min just so sort the laundry, how did I let this happen?
-American Idol-the people who sing badly make me feel better about myself. Not because I can sing, but because I have people in my life who love me enough to tell me I can't.
-Biggest Loser-best quote "Between them they have lost 93 pounds. That's a Nicole Ritchie." This show proves that diet and exercise work. It also shows you it is hard work. It is a lot easier watching other people work out. You have to really want to lose weight to go on national television wearing lycra (whose idea was that anyway?)
-Wii Tennis-this had become a favorite stress reliever for Reed and I, or it was until today when Reed started actually winning. I am not sure what happened to my game, but I gotta get it back. Reed is working on annual reviews for his employees right now (I am glad I don't have to do that) and has as a motivator that he can play a game of tennis after completing two reviews. I don't know that I am going to be able to make it through all 8 reviews with him, what is taking the dryer so long?

We tried to set goals for family counsel today. Zoe was highly motivated because she had just come from her 8 is great fireside and was jazzed up about reading the Book of Mormon. Everyone else, not so motivated. Molly decided she just wanted to play, play, play. We decided we should redirect her energy to play-ing the piano. Heidi wanted to remove her eyeballs. We suggested perhaps not teasing would be a good option, which she agreed to and which lasted as long as an Isreali cease fire (3 minutes.) I made Reeds goal for him-he is going to break Tanner's sleeping dysfunction by not falling to sleep with him every night. And Reed decided my goal should be to exercise every day. Does Wii tennis while I am waiting for the laundry count?

disconnected

Last week I was unable to connect with the internet. It was not some type of fun experiment. Reed inadvertently changed a firewall setting so that everything was percieved as a threat and the computer wouldn't even let me connect. It took a few days to get it resolved because the server still worked and Reed was unaffected on his laptop. I am not sure what spurred him to action-my pathetic moping because I could not look up trivial things, or his lack of access to napster. Without the internet I seemed to have more time to get to tasks that I had been putting off. At the same time I spent more time looking up recipes and doing homework the old fashioned way.

One of the last things I looked at before my world wide web went dark was the ill effects of sleep deprivation. I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish for the new year. Much of that has been condensed to a simple "get 8 hours of sleep per night." Turns out it is harder than I had anticipated. I have given up on clean up fairies coming to tuck me in at 10pm with the promise they will finish my domestic chores for the day, so I have to figure out some other way. I am open for suggestions.

So for presidents day yesterday I took my kids, plus 2 cousins (Tess and Brynn) to the Phoenix Zoo. It was a beautiful day and the zoo was full to the brim with patrons. I was going to take lots of pictures, but the batteries in my camera died. So the memories are all in my head. Here are a few:
Heidi at the petting zoo being so excited and then screaming when a goat started walking toward her. We sat on a bench to watch from a safe distance and one came up and tried to nibble the straps to my backpack-while she cried. She eventually calmed down.
Asking Tanner what animals he saw at the zoo "sharks and walruses" (we don't have those at the zoo.)
Watching Tess and Molly get so excited to dig in the dirt at the childrens farm just to have the other boy at the table announce that there are worms in the dirt (it was a composting exhibit). They gave each other a funny look, slowly put down their shovels and walked away.
Trying to convince Brynn and Zoe that they were not too tired to walk and they need to get out of the wagon (tough to pull with 4 kids, but easier to keep track of heads).
We went to the McDonalds drive through on the way home for lunch (in lieu of a carosel ride). When we arrived home Tanner woke up and screamed "I want to go inside!" Fortunately he was amenable to a picnic instead.

because I am a mom...

Molly has been coughing a lot-she and Tanner are still battling lingering colds. She got to coughing so much tonight that she threw up. So I tried to gently coax her through it while trying to give a tutorial on the proper way to throw up. She thought I was crazy when I told her to kneel by the toilet. When she asked me why I wanted to tell her it was so that the phlem she was coughing up didn't end up all over the walls and floor, that kneeling was closer to the fetal position we all want to take when our insides are being wretched out, but managed to just say it was so that if she got light headed and fell over she wouldn't hurt herself. I got her tucked into bed and proceeded with the cleanup. The bathroom needed to be cleaned anyway. I have lysol at my house. I am not a clean freak and I don't use it a ton, but everything got a good spray down tonight. Luckily Molly is now sleeping soundly.

Tanner, however, is not. The kid will only sleep in 60 min intervals even when he is healthy. He wakes up to check where dad is. He won't get in bed with us, he only ever wants Reed to get in bed with him. This is a habit we need to break. So, Tanner woke up about 10 min. ago walked out in the hall and laid down to cry for his dad-this is the routine-at which time Reed scooped him up and tried to figure out why he was up. He thought he might have a poopy diaper so he called for me to check while he was holding him. After I put my fingers down his diaper and confirmed that he was clean I walked away and contemplated the grossness of what I would have run into had there been something in there and I wondered to myself why I do all this crazy stuff.

The answer...because I am a mom.

Good Times

A few tidbits.
On Saturday we went to the Fiesta Bowl parade. Tanner threw up on me before it started. We went to see Tess and Brynn Mix dance in the parade. They were very last. The parade was three hours long. We had a good time anyway. Good thing it was a beautiful day.

On Sunday we tried to talk with the girls about setting goals for the new year. Reed asked Zoe what she wanted her goal to be.
Zoe:"Make everyone smell my armpits"
Mom:"How will that make you or the world better?"
Zoe:" It will give everyone a better sense of smell."
Reed told Heidi that her goal was to have one hour of tutelage from her Mom and Dad per week.
Heidi quickly assumed he meant "toot-ilage" and questioned why she needs practice gassing. The other girls quickly decided they wanted that as part of their goals also, followed by much giggling.

Monday school started. Hooray!

Gingerbread beat down

Reason’s why I love the New Year:
The holidays are over
A new year with no mistakes in it
The end of the gingerbread house
To officially end the holidays we packed the kids and the gingerbread house and several instruments of destruction in the back of the van and headed to the edge of civilization (the reservation).

Our first drama-I handed Heidi’s gingerbread house to Molly to carry and she tripped on a bush and the whole thing went crashing to the ground. Hearts were broken, tears were shed.

This ritual is all about shaking off the old and ringing in the new. It didn’t take long to realize that there was destruction to mete out and there was no time for a funk. So Heidi snapped out of it.

Here are the others at work: Tanner took a few ceremonial blows but quickly lost interest. He sat in the dirt and kept saying “I want to play baseball.”

Molly and Zoe picking through the debris to find anything that is edible. This might be a good practice for surviving in an urban jungle.

Reed preparing for battle, Wade Boggs style.

Office Space style beat down.

This next picture is our favorite as the Schultzie tree takes a death blow.

And then it was over.

Until next year. And yes we cleaned up our mess.

Happy New Year and a baked bean recipe

The holidays have been a whirlwind. My whole family has been in town so we have been driving back and forth to Gilbert a lot. We have all had a good time, but we have also had a lot of illness-two trips to the emergency room is way too many (one for croup and one for walking pneumonia). This is the first year I have had my girls vaccinated for the flu. I am glad I did. I wish I had done the same for Tanner.
Some highlights of our family gathering were a trip to the Phoenix Children's museum, the McCormack Ranch railroad park, and Rawhide. We were able to accomplish a family photo. I am not sure what one should expect with 40 people in a photo where half of the people are under the age of 10, but I am confident that you can never make everyone happy. We had a good time. A picture of that magnitude is not about capturing images but about capturing the feeling and the memories and knowing that for a few moments we were all together and we had a good time.
Feeding a crowd of this size is no small feat. We are not going to win a James Beard award or anything like that, but no one went hungry (if they did it was their own fault). Reed and I had volunteered to have everyone here for dinner on Monday after Rawhide. As we thought about it on Sunday night we realized that there was no way we had room. We decided that it was time to call in the resources and we moved the party to the church. This was a good idea. The kids had room to run around and make noise. All the adults could sit and eat and visit and see their kids running around. We had family home evening and then introduced everyone to office chair hockey. Good times.
There have been many requests for the baked bean recipe-so here it is:

1 can pork and beans (recipe calls for 16oz-I routinely use 28 oz cans)

1 can lima beans, drained (use frozen if you can find them)

1 can kidney beans, drained

1 can butter beans, drained

1 onion chopped

1/2 lb bacon

3/4 c brown sugar

3/4 c water

combine beans in crockpot

in skillet saute onion and bacon until tender.

Add brown sugar and water, simmer 10 min.

Add to crockpot. Stir. Cook on Med/high for 6 hours.

Can also be baked in 9x13 for 2 hours at 350 or can be made stove top-bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer about 1 1/2 hours-stirring occationally.