Merry Christmas 2013

Today, we are very blessed!! We have spent a fantastic day together!

Our morning began with a treasure hunt for the children. Since Santa labeled all of their gifts using a number system, they had to complete the treasure hunt in order to crack the code of the present labels. In the end, they found that their gifts were labeled using the number of the month that they were born in. Their treasure hunt led them upstairs, downstairs, outside and they even had to make a phone call to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I will post the treasure hunt a bit later to show you what they had to endure. The teenagers were dragging their feet at first

but the other three kiddos were eager to get the next clue.

After presents were opened, we went through our stockings that were hidden away. The house was full of playful children, toys, laughter, giggles and yes. . . even some arguing. What else is expected when you have six kids gathered together! We have played with remote control cars, sang some tunes on the karaoke machine, played on the Kindle, laptop and video games, snuck in way too many chocolate treats, and had a delicious chicken dinner. Jacob has managed to sleep half of the afternoon away. As much as a nap sounded like a good idea, I just couldn't miss out on all of the fun!

We wish each of you a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Traditions

The house is quiet. Too quiet. Moments like this are rare here. The house is usually filled with hustling children, their giggles and even their arguing. So when silence fills the air, this Momma becomes a bit restless. Extremely restless.

My kiddos have been gone for the last four days. While it has given me some time to finish up some last minute things for the holiday it has also made me very sad. Holiday's always tend to be difficult for me because I am forced to be away from my kids at a time that I really want to be with them.

Today I have thought about my childhood memories of our Christmas traditions. Christmas Eve was spent next door at my Grandparent's home. Christmas Day was spent at home and Christmas night was spent at the other Grandparent's home. Of course after I had a family of my own, new traditions were formed.

One of the many traditions I began with the children is a treasure hunt to locate their stockings. I found it to be slightly frustrating to have put countless hours into choosing, wrapping and preparing for Christmas morning only to have the children rip through their gifts in 3.7 seconds. I wanted to savor the time with the children and so the tradition began of creating a treasure hunt for the children to find their stockings. After stockings, we then begin opening the gifts.

Today I carefully created the clues and placed them where they belonged. The trees are both decorated and twinkling. The presents are all wrapped and placed beneath. The stockings have been filled and delivered by Santa and are waiting in a secret hiding spot. The house has been cleaned. Laundry has been washed and put away. The big surprise is ready for the reveal. The animals await for their little humans to come home...and so do I.

Nine o'clock Christmas morning can't come soon enough. Children usually have trouble sleeping Christmas Eve because they are awaiting Santa's arrival. Tonight, I'm having trouble sleeping because I'm waiting for my children to arrive. :)

May you enjoy and cherish every moment, every day.

From our family to yours~
Merry Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas

It's almost time!!  Merry Christmas Eve.

Short & Sweet

Icy conditions still continue!

Thankfully we have power back.

I have spent all afternoon taking care of some last minute surprises for the children. My body hates me right now for it too! Hopefully the children will enjoy everything. I am missing them so much tonight. I can't wait until they arrive Christmas morning. We have a great day planned.

Stay warm, my friends.

Ice puts a stop to everything

Late last night, the freezing rain began to fall. As it fell onto the branches of the trees the temperatures dropped and the trees, bushes and any other items our in the elements became giant icicles. The steps were serious threats that caused me to slide down the railing to avoid falling. On the way to work I was surrounded by true beauty. The trees were sweeping the ground with their ice covered branches. We are all safe and our power was just restored! Amen!

Don't forget the batteries

It never fails. I start on one task and end up on a totally different one. Of course, in the end, I end up accomplishing more than I had originally planned; however, it's certainly not accomplished using the most direct route. For example, tonight I decided that I would wrap some of the last of the Christmas presents. Before wrapping electronics, I try to make sure batteries are installed, if required. Not only does it reduce disappointment on Christmas morning in the event that you don't have batteries for the gift but it also allows us to make sure the object even works! Before I could wrap anything, I had to move the laundry along first.

Headed downstairs. Sort laundry. Look around for the pair of missing shoes that Jonathon has lost. Laundry moved to the dryer. Another load of wash started. Finally take the clean clothes upstairs and place on the table.

"I'll fold them in a bit" or so I thought.

I gather the tape, wrapping paper and gifts and take them to the dining room. Shoot, the laundry is still there. I slide the laundry over and place everything on the table.

I wrap two gifts successfully without issues but the next gift requires batteries. I just purchased batteries today so I was sure this would be smooth sailing. I open the gift and realize it has been opened previously. This is not a good sign but I'll give it a shot. This particular object requires five batteries....and two different types! Shoot, road block #1. I only purchased one type of battery today.

I pause and check the drawer where the extra batteries are at.

...looking into drawer...

...Toss this to the side. Move that over..

Canning rings
Cup lids
Measuring cups
Straws
Pieces that I have no idea what they go to
Plastic shot glasses
Medication dispensers
A Sheep bottle nipple (yes, really!)
Numerous packets of Taco Bell sauces and salt packets
Various hardware, tools, plug ends and other rarely used objects
Tea light candles, frangrance oils, a lighter and even two flash lights...that work!!

However, still no battery found for this gift!

...sigh...

No better time to organize the drawer, right? I mean, I'm already here. And so I did all while thinking, "This would be something to blog about."

And so, here it is nearly 1:30 A.M. and I'm still not any closer to wrapping this particular gift. On the plus side, I'm thankful that I ran into this road block because it may have ultimately avoided some serious heartbreak on Christmas morning. I am positive I wouldn't have had the correct battery for it and I'm not sure there would be any hidden away in other electronic devices that are here in the house either. So, I'll add batteries to the shopping list for tomorrow.

For now, I have a few more gifts waiting to be wrapped, some laundry to fold, another batch of laundry has finished and keeps buzzing at me and I have basketball practice for Jonathon in 8 hours.

Now only if I could find his missing shoes...

Until next time,
Rebecca

Another day closer to Christmas and this Momma is pretty excited about it! I am anxious to watch my children open the gifts that we have carefully chosen for each of them. I am also thrilled that they will be back home and spending Christmas Day with me. I must remind myself that these times of them being away are only temporary. I know that they need time with their Dad too. It just breaks my heart to have them gone over the holidays. What parent wants to spend the Holidays without their kiddos?

Speaking of the Holidays, I have a few more gifts I need to wrap. This year, I used a "top secret" method of labeling which gift belongs to which child. We all know how nosey children can be. I certainly remember wanting to look through the gifts to see which one was mine or how many I was getting. My children are no different.

The weather here is pretty miserable right now. I've spent most of the day battling a migraine headache which is not ideal when the kids have a snow day. Many of the area school systems were cancelled today too. This morning it was quite foggy and we were expecting freezing drizzle during the day. I'm not sure we actually had any during the day but it is certainly possible this evening. We have another Snow Storm moving in this weekend. It looks like we will have a White Christmas this year after all. :)

Much love,
~Rebecca

Just around the corner

Christmas, that is...and the children are patiently waiting to see what special goodies they are going to receive.

Be patient, kiddos.

Mom loves you!

Because they said so...

It has been brought to my attention that my chidren are quite interested in reading their Mother's writings so I've been asked to resume writing again. As some of you have known, I have written online journals for many years. After many weeks of prompting, I have decided that as a Christmas gift for my children, I will begin writing once again.  I truly hope it is everything that you anticipate it to be. Remember that some days are easy going and other days can be rougher than the roughest sea. We just must learn to go with the flow and keep our head afloat.


Welcome back to those who have joined us before. Perhaps you were with us on www.parentingwithwhine.blogspot.com for many years. That journal was written about the chapters in my previous life. The ups and downs of a marriage when I believed I had a worthy, honest, respectable husband but was later informed that I had been cheated on for many months before my 15 year marriage was finally over. The father of my five children, left us to go start a new life with his lover and her children. He has since married her and while I hoped that would bring some kind of relief to the situtation, It truly has not. It's still a nightmare to coparent with either one of them.


Back to my previous journals, most of them entailed the journey of motherhood, the ups and downs of parenting, the heartbreak of a bitter divorce, finding our new normal once again and the everyday life events that were happening within our family, picking up the pieces of a shattered world with five young children and starting over to create a new and improved life. A new career. A new purpose. And best of all, it is has been completely successful in all ways!! The months that followed were painful for both myself and my children and the raw emotions are all laid out on the pages. One can't hide that type of pain and brokenness. It's real. It's overwhelming. It was shocking and left us extremely broken. It came to a point that I could not associate myself with that blog on a regular basis any longer due to the pain it was inflicting upon us. So it was decided that I would conclude that blog and start another new chapter to document the positive changes that have been revealed to our family after leaving behind the ones who attempted to shatter our worlds and break us down. With Gods grace, they were unsuccessful and here we are, stronger than we were ever before.


So I welcome you to:
Mommy Emergency!! Parenting with Whine II
With much love,
Rebecca

Just another Mommy Monday

Another day has come and gone.  Although the weather didn't appear to be very favorable at first, it turned out to be a pretty amazing day.  One of the crew was home sick today with weeping poison ivy.  Poor kiddo was pretty miserable.  Thankfully the benadryl kicked in and some topical ointment helped bring a little relief too.  Just after lunch we donned our outside clothes and went to work.

Make no mistake, we are country bumpkins.  The entire crew would spend all day long outdoors playing hard, getting dirty and creating some kind of masterpiece for all to view.  They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and in this case, the saying is true.  Both Mom and Dad are outdoors lovers.  It's certainly a trait that was passed down to them.

Today our day consisted of finishing up the chicken run and chicken coop.  We wanted to move the "girls" (aka, chicks) from the house outside to their coop.  As of this evening, I'm happy to report they are doing well and thriving in their new digs.  They even had a few table scraps of green beans.  I'm not sure that they will enjoy them much but we will see in the morning.

The coop ended up being a cobbled mess.  It's difficult to convince a teenager that a chicken coop does NOT have to withstand the force of an elephant.  Nor does it have to be 100% square, level and perfect.  I love the boy but to work with him can be extremely frustrating sometimes.  I tried to explain to him that our goal with the coop is to keep predators out and chicks in.  He also has the concept that anything can be "approximate" and therefore some of the cutting he did resulted in pieces that were "too short".  Measure twice, cut once!!  Even so, Lord knows I love the boy.  He's certainly stubborn and thick headed.

I was able to get the garden staked out.  Last night I plotted on paper what I wanted and today it became a start to another season of gardening.  The children all picked out certain veggies that they wanted to plant nearly a month ago.  We went to our local dollar store and found seed packets for $.25.  We started some of them two weeks ago and have watched the starter plants grow over the last 14 days.  It has been so awesome to watch Jonathon check them every day to see which ones have gotten bigger. 

I also took on the task of cleaning out the fire pit.  Whomever had lived here previously made a burn pile (aka, fire pit to them) within steps of the back porch.  After cleaning it up, it was obvious that they had no discretion on what went into that pit either.  Literally, anything they could light on fire went into that pit.  I was lucky enough to have the displeasure of cleaning that mess up and removing it from my yard.  It was an awful eye sore.  Hopefully as the weeks progress, I will be able to get it transformed into a more desireable and functioning bon-fire pit.  The kids are looking forward to many evenings out by the fire.  Momma is waiting to lay on the blanket under the stars and watch the shooting stars fall.  I can picture many summer nights of late bedtimes in our near future.  (At least they will be home with Mom and not out running the streets with some punk kids causing trouble).

Along with the chicken and garden tasks, I tackled another section of the lawn.  As a part of teaching the kiddos responsibility and hard work, we have been sectioning off our 2 acre lawn and mowing daily...with a push mower!  It's great exercise and I don't mind doing it.  The kiddos; however, have been pretty unhappy when it comes time for them to mow their section.  They are learning that there is always work to be done and there are certain responsibilities that you must take on in order to get what you want in life. 

The kiddos love living in the country.  They love having space to run, ride bikes, build contraptions only they can identify, raise animals and just be carefree.  I love it too!  For the last three years, we have moved five different times.  I can finally say that where we are now feels like home.  It fulfills so many desires that each of us had in our hearts.  It helps us build back up so many of the things that were lost and broken along these years.  Each of us are happier and I can't wait to watch the kids enjoy all that this home/location has to offer them. 

Along with the outdoor chores came the indoor responsibilities.  Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming and laundry all made the list tonight.  Dinner was cooked by the amazing Miss Kate (Stuffed chicken with broccoli & cheese, green beans and chicken noodles).  Dishes were washed after dinner.  Showers were taken.  Homework was completed.  School clothes and backpacks were prepped for the morning and the kiddos were all snuggled into bed for a peaceful nights sleep. 

I'd say it was a pretty successful day here.  I hope you all had a great day as well.  I'm headed off to bed shortly.  Sweet dreams my friends.

~Mother Hen

Gary Allan - Every Storm (Runs Out Of Rain)

[Lyrics] Gary Allan - Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain)

I patiently wait for this to happen... 

Happy New Years!

2013  Can you believe it?

Today was a pretty awesome day!  After a week of being gone, my precious crew returned home.  What a relief it was to see them walk through the door.  It's always difficult to have them away from home.  The extended time away makes it even more difficult.

Once the crew was home, we spent the day snuggling, playing, eating and sleeping.  Unfortunately, Emilee and Jonathon both came home not feeling well.  Austin followed behind with the coughing fits.  Jacob and Katelyn went straight to bed because they were exhausted.  Jonathon's fever is back.  It looks like we will be returning to the doctor again this week. 

Even with the yucky bugs that are floating around, I am incredibly thankful to have the joy of watching these five blessings grow into amazing young men and women. 

I hope your start to 2013 was a positive one.

Until next time...