Archive for Family Stuff

The Stupid Gene

Ok, I just want to clarify that this post is not bashing the male gender. As a matter of fact this blog title comes from my husband because he is the one who came up with it. So as I am sitting here holding go-go boy (our six month old), who just wants to chomp on anything, but mostly our fingers, unmentionable parts (of me!) and my laptop because his teeth are coming in. Then my two, almost three year old, is tormenting his sister by kicking her in the behind, pulling off the swim cap she is wearing (to keep her bangs, that we are trying to grow out, out of her eyes) and all I can think of is The Stupid Gene. I get after my two year old and he gets mad at me because I am getting after him?! Say what? All I can think of is The Stupid Gene.

The Stupid Gene is something my husband says boys have. He admits he has it too, but it is especially in little boys. They just do the most ridiculous things. Things that I should be able to laugh about most times, but more often than not their antics drive me to distraction. If you ask them why they have done something they can never answer. So when we find food spatters on the ceiling, or dirt piles beneath our hutch, they never fess up to it. But let me share a little secret, before we had boys there was nothing on our ceilings and there was definitely nothing beneath our furniture or hutches. Mostly because our girls were not like that, plus back then I was doing most of the cleaning. Now that there are ten of us, the work gets spread around a little more each year. However, it’s very hard to teach our boys how to do their chores (sweeping the dining room, putting dishes away, cleaning their room and more recently my husband is teaching our nine year old to do the boys laundry, so they are responsible for having clean clothes and not blame anyone else if they don’t because they were putting ALL their clothes in the dirty laundry pile. Yes, clean and dirty clothes end up in the dirty pile because they are still learning to put their clean clothes away too.)

Oh and my daughter just came in crying because one of my older boys was swinging a stick and bonked her on the side of the head. Ouch! Again The Stupid Gene reigns, he’s been told not to swing sticks, arrows or anything else for that matter around other people. Why don’t they remember?

Oh and my two year old likes to do somersaults on our bed over and over again regardless of where he lands. On me, on the baby, on the floor…actually he hasn’t hit the floor due to somersaults…yet. That really isn’t The Stupid Gene though, it is just waaaay too much energy bursting out in an odd way. I have another boy who jumps up and down. Yep, without watching so if we are all sprawled on our bed watching a movie, he jumps on us too. Our oldest boy does not really seem to struggle with an excessive amount of energy. He is just a big tease. Wonder what go-go boy will do, he’s already moving. He even squirms while he nurses…I hurt thinking about being treated like a rubber band….ouchie-pachowchie.

We may be in trouble. Help save us from The Stupid Gene!

Unfortunately my husband was not available to provide further inspiration or consultation during the writing or editing of this post. However, I may be appealing to him for ideas so that I can feature a regular Stupid Gene post.


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Review ~ Eardoc

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

This is an interesting product. We have used this a few times and in each instance my children have said that their ear pain has diminished using the product. I have not had any ear pain myself so I can only rely on the honesty of my children.

The product boasts the ability to relive ear pain immediately (which we did experience). It also states that it can be an alternative to ear tube surgery. This is a wonderful asset to the product because we went through this surgical process with my youngest and I wish there was a product like this out there when we were going through the process of ear infections.

How does the Eardoc work? “Ear doc treats an ear infection by naturally opening the clogged Eustachian tubes, therefore allowing drainage of accumulated fluids outside of the middle ear and relieving the associated ear pain.” ~ Eardoc website http://www.eardoc.info/

Basically, the Eardoc works by vibration…a vibration goes through the Eardoc and when placed behind the ear the vibration helps open the ear tubes. The vibration can be large or small, as the Eardoc has a mechanism on the side to adjust the vibration. The vibration is slight and does not hurt, even at the highest setting.

All in all, this is a unique product that actually works! I will continue using it and provide my children with a natural way of relieving ear pain!

n!


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Review ~ Eco Bling reusable shopping tote

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

I received the Eco Bling bag featured above to review. I personally LOVE the idea of reusable bags, not only are they eco-friendly but they are cute too! One thing that sets this bag apart from other reusable bags is the cute design on the face of the bag. Even though it is a “brand” symbol on the front it is much cuter than the grocery store emblem plastered across the front of many bags I own. I feel very stylish when I pull this bag out to carry goods home! The only downfall of the facial design is the color…white…white gets dirty very easily, and although the bag can be washed I find it gets dirty very easily.

One plus to this bag is that there is a little pocket on the inside, which can fit keys, credit cards,  or a wallet. The pocket is a very handy feature. The bag is also very large …the height of the bag is wonderful; it far surpasses the height of my other bags, making it very deep. It can easily hold a large cereal box or two with room to spare! However, I do have to say that the width leaves something to be desired. I personally like wide box bottom bags, but this is a personal preference …the eco bling bag is the standard width of most reusable bags …so if you have never experienced the luxury of having a wide box bottom bag…you will not miss the feature! I also wish the handles on the bag were larger so that I could throw it over my shoulder…as designed it has to be held in the hand or over the elbow.

Overall, this is a delightful bag, one that I will definitely add to my stash of reusable bags when I go on a shopping adventure! Kudos to Eco Bling for making a fashionable shopping tote!



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Wordless Wednesday – Snow Bound


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Wordless Wednesday – Curly Top


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Children’s Book Review ~ Moon Dreams

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Moon Dreams

Moon Dreams is a delightful children’s story with beautiful illustrations! The story takes the reader through the mind of “Luna” and her ponderings about where the moon “goes” to when it is daytime! I like that the book lets children think about where does the moon really go when it is daytime? Why we only see the moon at nighttime? It even lets older children realize that even during the day the moon is still there somewhere! This really is a delightful book…and although the author does not present the reader with aspects of faith. I feel that this is a good sounding board book to have a discussion (after reading) with the children. The last page quotes “ Luna knew know that the moon was always there, far away in space, watching over her…” my family had a great conversation about God and how he watches over our family. Although this is not a religious book per say I was able to incorporate thoughts of God and his loving peacefulness into a discussion after the reading of the book!


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Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Remembering the reason for the Christmas season:

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=2007134554829&source=jl999


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Wordless Wednesday – Our Little Tiger


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Ughhh….WordPress

Ugghhh, it’s been a while since I looked at the home page and tonight (or this morning, as it is 1:30AM), I was working on something and happen to discover the blog all out of whack. I think I know what happened….a certain helper has been using Visual and not HTML mode while editing and working on posts. Ugggh….Wordpress. So
I apologize for our distorted look, but we will be working to return it to it’s normal state.

For those of you not familiar with the admin section of a WordPress blog, usually when we write our posts we use HTML (it’s a code with letters and gobbly gook symbols – how’s that for a technical explanation!) because the distorted look is not likely to occur as often. Working in Visual mode creates the distorted look when we cut and paste into a new post, add images there etc. And it is usually more difficult and more time consuming to fix, unfortunately.

This is not what I had planned for the weekend. Nor did I plan on having a bunch of sick children either. 🙁 So if you don’t see our regular posts, that will be why.

We thank you for your patience as we clean up our dust around here. We look forward to your visits and comments.

Take care and have a great weekend! I was hoping to finish up some work so I could take most of next week off to do family stuff, doesn’t look like that’is going to happen. Sigh. Be thankful, be thankful……(a children’s song that I cannot remember the rest of the words to except those…so very hard to keep a thankful heart when things continue to go wrong. Ahhhh yes, I am indeed human).


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Monday Motivation

Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done. Didn’t get much done at all in making a dent with the house.

~ Swimming. Got to the Y three times and hoping to get at least that many trips in per week.

~ Field trip to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Lovely day in the city. Only got to see one floor so we hope to go back again soon.

~ Lunch with Friends. This was canceled due to my friend’s youngest having a cold. 🙁 We are rescheduling.

~ Getting rid of a mouse critter in our garage! One of the girls spotted it this morning….eeeewwwwwwww! We set traps and caught two, so we are hoping to get anymore that might be out there as well.

~ Regular every day stuff – refereeing, teaching, training children to be the best they can be with God’s help. This is never ending in our family. We have lots of room for improvement!

Hope you all are staying motivated as we head into winter. I’d love to hear some of your ideas for staying on top of things and keeping your motivation running so you remain an effective mommy/parent/friend/sister/daughter etc.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done.

~ I start a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) course this week and have a few meetings away from home. Thankfully, my husband’s work schedule is flexible that he is able to be with the children while I am gone.

~ Finish up our business plan finally and finally submit it.

~ Get to the Thrift Store.

~ 77Kids holiday charity event! Looking forward to that! Thanks to The Motherhood and 77Kids.


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