2nd Christmas card

Oh my goodness you should see how hard we are laughing!!!
If you click on it and nothing comes up, go back to it, it means someone is looking at it! Keep on trying!! One more note, sometimes it shows faces other than ours, you should be seeing our family on it, if you don't try again!!! Sorry, wish it was more direct!

http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/preview/b5bG03cIbztBHtepQbOVziiP

A fun family Christmas card

This is soooooo funny!! It only fits a little more than half of our family, sooo more to come!!
Sometimes you have to click on it two or three times back again before it works, I think it gets stuck if other people are looking at it, just my guess.


http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/preview/QXqzNig2gRFyUCUqAHyjLU8N

Swiss Turners Gymnastics

Thought you might enjoy these two videos of the Swiss Turner's boys team. The first one is the last meet they had and the second is video of practice at the gym. I feel proud just watching it!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=a_mf3Ew9PEU

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YI94K2q2PPI&feature=related

Two more finalists!

click on it to see it larger

I am so excited that two more photos of my most willing subject made finalist on Betterphoto.com!

Chula Vista

O.k., onto why I did not get any sleep last night... Mark's mother is generous enough to take all of the families to a waterpark every year right around Christmas time and this year it was at Chula Vista waterpark! We all were looking forward to this very much and with Mark's sister Laura helping us out we made it work! Thank you so much to your brothers and sisters, they all were very helpful, but a special thanks to Laura for missing out on some extra fun and sleep!:) Anyways, everything was going well until 1:00 am when P woke up with a very high fever. Of course I had not packed medicine (why would an experienced mother of six do that?), so I went down to the bar with my sick baby to find out where I could get some. A WalMart 10 mns away was the only place, thank goodness Laura was there to stay with the children. After getting the medicine, P and I hung out on the couch in the lobby all night, seeing as she would not sleep and I did not want to wake the others. Hey, that night guard and I had some great conversation!! As much as the little voice in my head kept on telling me I needed sleep, I couldn't help but savor that time for what it was. Quiet, peaceful time, holding my baby on a soft leather couch in front of a cozy fire, soft Christmas music in the background. In the end it was a blessed time of peace and prayer I otherwise would never had found the time for. God is good!

Christmas Program

As I am writing this I am working on 2 hrs of sleep, (I will explain later), but I wanted to post some pictures from the Mercy Academy Christmas Program. M made a great king and was so excited to play this part, I wish you could have seen his grin!! This school means so much to our whole family and we ask for your prayers that it may continue in its great mission in forming minds and souls. The pictures are a little blurry and noisy as I am not used to shooting in low light, but it gives you an idea of what our school is about!

The Bell Choir

Thank yous!

Thank yous can never get old, because it only means that so many caring people are extending themselves to our family. I am so touched by the amount of kindness we have been shown. We have received some wonderful meals from genrous people. Every single meal has been a sigh of relief for me, and a comfort! I am able to spend time with the children, or get caught up on cleaning because of the meals. Some recent people I would like to mention are:

Julia Westphal, for doing SO MUCH!! She has extended herself so much for us, starting out with a wonderful meal she brought from her sitter and some yummy doughnuts on the side! Thank you so much Julia, your kind heartedness has been so heartwarming!

Girl's club from Mercy Academy , brought over cookies that they baked for us and that wonderful JS added some yummy berries and a take home bake pizza. That JS always comes through and my goodness she is about to deliver a baby in about a week and she is thinking of us!

Uncle P did me a humongous favor by taking M to his basketball on Sat. Not only was it snowing and I would not have been able to get up the drive, but this allowed me to keep the younger ones napping! Thank you P!

Mary Forecki called to say she overbaked, (this is good since she is a very good baker), and would I like some cookies! I gladly accepted, because in a household of six children you honestly can eat up Christmas cookies fairly quick. She also brought us some homemade chicken soup, I know this will come in handy this week for meals, thank you Mary!

And to finish the weekend off, two women from the greater Milwaukee Republicans, Luonne and Marilyn, dropped off a cozy meal of Tater tot casserole (yum~) and salad and dessert. I guess I am not sure who is enjoying all of the treats coming into the home, me or the children? I'm telling you, I am not losing any weight, not even close!!

O Christmas Tree

We broke all of the traditions today!! It definitely was not the same putting the tree up without you! You are always so good about going out and making sure you get a real tree (even if it ends up being the "Charlie Brown" Chrismas tree every year from our local Steins or Home Depot!). This year we broke in the "pretend" tree. The children were not too sure about this idea, a tree from a box? How could we!! Anyways, after successfully putting it together and pulling down the branches to make it look like it was a healthy, perfect Christmas tree, Mom plugged in the one simple plug and Voila! Christmas tree in a couple of minutes!! This was Mom's idea of a great new tradition to be started in the home, I was smiling just thinking of the time that would be saved because of this modern convenience. Well, the children were not so sure..., they started commenting on how it didn't really smell like "Christmas" and how there are no needles on the floor. Starting to feel bad I sprayed a little holiday Febreeze (the limited edition that is supposed to smell like winter pines), thinking that would ease their discontent. Of course, their reaction was "P.U., what is that stinky smell?"

I then suggested making holiday ornaments out of cinnamon, allspice, cloves and anything else I could find that smelled like "Christmas". Off to the kitchen we went and well, by the time we were done the kitchen was one enormous mess! Never mind the fact that all day I was taking great satisfaction in the fact that I had cleaned it from top to bottom this morning. Oh yeah, and never mind that "time" I was supposed to save. We ended up having a great time together and we have some new stinky ornaments on the tree to show for it!



I was playing around with texture on this Chrismas photo

Dancing Turkey!

The kids got such a kick out of this, I thought you might enjoy it too! It is from a friend's blog called Studeo, lots of great information on homeschooling and family life! She's the best when it comes to this topic!

Dancing Turkey

make sure and Choose a Destination!! :)

Ugh! More sickness!

As if the flu bug were not enough, now M has strep throat, 'tis the season! I have to say I am very grateful that it is all happening before Christmas! M has had a great attitude about it though, thought I would share his latest masterpiece with you!

Brrrr...

It's cold here, but that is not stopping the children from enjoying the great outdoors!

She can wave!!!

Click on picture to see enlarged

She is waving bye bye now!!! And she waves hello and says "hi"! Can you believe how fast it goes?!

Snow Day!

The children had off from school today due to the snow, what great fun for them!!!

Just something about "J"

This is our wonderful neighbor who has been a great help with watching the children so I can run some children to activities and not have to take all of them! There is something about J, the children absolutely love her!!! Thank you J for all of the help!

A thank you

A thank you goes out to two women from the greater Milwaukee Republican women for bringing us wonderful meals!


Stepanie, your Chicken Divan was divine! And the chocolate cake, wow, (I'm embarrassed to say I have never made chocolate cake from scratch) it was the real stuff and soooo good!


Karisue, again wonderful homemade food, enough chicken soup to last us a while. When they came to drop this off her husband exclaimed that it was the best chicken soup ever, and well I would not argue, it was wonderful! And the homemade brownies were a hit!

Now, I thought I was supposed to be losing weight when a husband is deployed, not gaining it!! :)

Thank you also to my very good friends J and C for the meals they sent home with me. These were completely unexpected and so needed! It saved me last week when things got really hectic around here. Love you guys!!

Swiss Turners Gymnastics

A heartfelt thank you to the BBC for their generosity and support for our family during this time. Swiss Turners has always been about the whole person as well as an awesome gym, that is why we have been there for 7+ years! We appreciate all of you so much!!

The fun things she says

Our little C has a knack for mixing up words, to the amusement of the rest of the family. One example was when we recently visited a local water park, Country Springs, she kept on calling it the "crunchy springs hotel". Some more recent ones are:

"Mommy, is my Daddy in the army right now?"

"Yes, honey"

"And he's in the airplane wearing his unicorn, right?"

After M's meet I had picked up some gum at a store. When I came home C asked,

"Mommy, did you get that gum at the meatball place?"

G the fixit man!

A has really taken to fixing things around the house. He has changed all of the batteries in the toys, tightened the handles on the cabinets and put the vaccuum together (above). He seems to feel pretty good about taking this position while Daddy is gone.

Her First Christmas

This will be the front of our Christmas card this year! I finally finished them!

Crazy Weekend

Do you know how normally when you come home you are greeted with my lengthy narrative about my day's events? I know you must be missing that quite a bit, so I thought I would fill you in on the weekend's events:


(Take a deep breath)



O.K., it all started on Friday night I picked up the kids and went to Little Flowers group and then got a movie for movie night and cooked dinner while I disciplined B and held crying P and then Sat morning we went to Mass, the kids were so tired, then to gymnastics and then right after that to Uncle P's house for pic's, then the girls went to a play (I was late for that) while I went for M's basketball pictures and practice and a game then onto home and then had to clean a bit and make more dinner, thank goodness C made us a wonderful chicken pot pie, she really makes the best you know, but still while holding crying P, but thankfully not disciplining B, and then worked on some pictures, then Sunday I had to wake up early for M's first gymnastics meet far away, he was so nervous, but did o.k. and oh yeah, I almost got lost, then came home and made lunch, thankfully P was sleeping, -hey hon, are you listening to me?- and had to shovel the driveway from the small amount of snow that fell so it would not be slippery for when we had to go to a birthday party, right after that we went to Mass, because we could not go in the morning because of the meet and really the children did a great job, I was so proud of them!!!!



Whew!!
THERE! I feel a whole lot better, do you?

He is all the way on the right



Good job on the L hang buddy!




The pictures are a bit blurry and a little out of focus, gosh I knew I could find a reason to need a new telephoto lens!! :0) (you're not smiling are you Mark?)

High bar 7.5

Pummel Horse 6.5

Rings 7.0

Vault 9.2

Parallel Bars 6.6

Floor Routine 7.6

Three crazy monkeys jumping on the bed...

Sweet Cheeks ll

Just thought you might be missing these cheeks too!! (She is really not going to like me for this one when she is older!) :)

What happens when you don't have TV...

I swear this is not posed!! This happens a lot in our house and if Mark saw this he would say to me, "See what happens when you don't have a TV? " Just made me think of you when I saw them like that!

1st Day of Piano

J started piano lessons today, she was so excited!

Sweet Cheeks

Just thought you might be missing these sweet cheeks and lips!! Love ya!

Oh St. Nick!

Well, it wasn't as creative as you, but they seemed happy enough! The only thing they did not like was the Pop Tarts and fruit snacks (CC), what is wrong with our children!!? Anyways here they are after finding their stockings...

Here she is wondering, "what did Santa do with

my stocking?"

Oh thank goodness he did not forget!

St. Nick done Mom's way ;)

Starting off with a bang!

I can't believe how many major things have happened in the short time that you have been gone. Things that make me realize how much I miss you... here are a few to share...


1. M lost his tooth, I was so glad to be able to speak to you about the name of his tooth fairy. You are the one who makes up the great names.;) I was just glad I remembered to put the money under his pillow (even if it was 3:30 AM when I remembered!)


2. The girls realized that Santa Claus is not who they thought he was. This was the discussion you had all planned out and were supposed to have with them! You knew exactly what you were going to say! Oh well, I did the best I could and think I did o.k., but you have a way of keeping things special, whereas I just kind of say it for what it is.


3. Um, six kids throwing up all at the same time, literally starting within minutes of each other? We do not have that many toilets! IT WAS NOT FUN!!! I had to leave C (our 2 yr old) alone with a bowl to fend for herself so I could help P(our eight month old). As you can imagine A (our 4 yr old)was as dramatic as could be about it all and M and B just did their thing without any help. Surprisingly J (10 yr old) worked it out on her own, I'm sure knowing ther was no alternative. The next day I had them spread out on the living room floor in their sleeping bags,(most of them still throwing up) and they spent the day there moaning and groaning. At one point, M asked aloud, " Mom, why did God do this to us!!!". I didn't have much of an answer as I felt myself coming down with it too. I was so worried about P, she was getting so dehydrated! The next morning, our pediatrician's wife ( and very good friend) dropped off a bag full of supplies for just this type of sickness, some recommended by the doctor (Pedialyte, chicken soup) and some recommended by mothers (popsicles, jello, and a bag of chocolates for when all is well):) Thanks J!!! I appreciate it so much!!


Here is P two days later, not fully recouperated but much better! (notice the pajamas?)

Shovelry

Our faithful neighbor came through again today for me! I had not realized our anonymous donor had donated the full season of plowing for us and so had some men on call to maybe help with yet another snowfall (howcome whenever you go out of town it snows-a lot?). But before I could get to him our neighbor was out there working hard. I ran down to tell him he needn't feel he had to do this, I had people I could call. His answer was just the sweetest thing ever!

He said, "I guess I am old-fashioned and I believe in shovelry!" Ha Ha!



Anyways, here he is working away! He has always been there for us! Thank you so much G!

A Hard day...

photo by H.Marc Larson/Press-Gazette

I am going to start with the day you left, Nov 29th. That was difficult going up to Green Bay to say goodbye, there were so many emotions to sift through afterwards. I am so thankful your mother came with me and the children to help and support us! I am so grateful for everyone's prayers!

Below is a link to an article about it and the second link is a video of the send off. I will post more pictures of our family with him later.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071129/GPG0101/71129111&located=FLASH

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071129/VIDEO0301/311290088/0/theme

My First Post!

So it has happened, I am entering the wonderful world of blogging! I am starting this blog as an easy means to keep in touch with my husband while he is on his tour in Iraq. I want him to be able to see the events of our day on this blog and feel connected by seeing his six children grow through the pictures I will post. I will also be posting pictures about some ways that people have helped during this time. We have been so blessed with generous friends and family, I thank God for their support!! I could not do it without you guys!

I am going to start with a practice posting of my two youngest daughters. The other day my two year old was telling me that I never take pictures of her anymore, the poor thing :)

This is my youngest taken almost a month ago! (click on picture to see enlarged)




and some of my two year old...