Responsibilities not Chores!

In an effort to help the kids learn more about reponsibility and that the have to help out with things around the house because they are part of the family we have intoduced the Responsibilty Wheel. I didnt want to call it a chore chart because I wanted them to feel like they are in charge of doing certain jobs and not like we were forcing them to do it. Does that make any sense? I am having a hard time explaining it!

Anyway, We talked about what responsibility is and then I found a game about family members reponsibilites in the family that fit right in! In the game you answer questions about how to help other family members and what certain family members are in charge of and along the way you collect your family! The kids totally loved it!

Then we introduced the Reponsibility Wheel.

All the wheels rotate so they wont be in charge of the same combination of jobs week after week. The were pretty excited so we will see how it works! I made the wheel so that all the jobs get done after dinner so the house is pick-up and clean ready for the next day. So the first wheel has the names of course, the second wheel is for the kitchen, the third wheel is for both bedrooms (Abby, Dylan and Lacey all play in each others rooms so with toys being taken from room to room I figured this would be the easiest for a quick evening pick up) the fourth wheel is thier Room of Resposibility-in this room they are in chare of making sure all the kid things are pick-up and put away and the trash is thrown away and the last wheel is for the bathroom. All the jobs are easy so all three of the kids can do them mostly by themselves. Obviously we will have to help Lacey on some of them! We talked about how if we all do the things that we are responsible for and work together that it would make the family happy. So cross your fingers and let's hope this works and the kids learn a little reponsibility!

Taking Pics

I have to say that sometimes I feel bad when I tell the other kids to get out of the way when I am taking a picture of Colby! Does anyone else with more than one kid feel that way?! I love to take pic of my kids (obviously right?!!) and they all love getting thier picture taken so they want to be in every picture. So when I want a picture of just one of them and have to tell the others to scooch over a little and they get all sad I feel a little mean! But I mean hey they all have individual pictures of themselves so Colby deserves some too right?!

Here is the Colbster at 4 months. That went by crazy fast!! He is getting so big! He can roll over from his back on the tummy and from his tummy on to his back! He only likes to be on his tummy for a few minutes and if we leave him there longer than he thinks he needs to be there he will lay flat with his face nose down on the blanket and cry while slowly moving in a circle. It is hilarious although I do feel a little bad because he is upset but it is funny!!

Valentine Time!

Since Abby was off of school we took advantage of ALL the free time and did her valentines for her school party! Plus it saved me from having to think of someting fun for her to do! We went for a conversation heart theme this year! We cut out hearts, wrote a little thing on the front, filled then with a little candy and a ring for the girls and a sports eraser for the boys and sealed them up and viola! Done! Abby loves them and they turned out super cute! She also has a little gift for her teacher staying with the conversation heart theme!!

Blizzard 2011

Well here are some pics of all our stupid snow! When all was said and done we got about 18 inches at our house. One of the snow drifts was 33 inches high! The snow depth in the backyard was all over the place because the wind was so strong it just blew that snow all over the place. We had a couple huge drifts in the backyard so we let the kids go play for a few minutes. It was really cold probably hovering around about 5ish or so and with the windchill it was well below 0 but I didnt want the kids to miss out on the fun fresh snow just because it was freezing so we let them out for seriously 5 minutes! Plus I knew once it was warm enough for them to go play in the snow then the snow would be a yucky and gross crusty snow! Abby and Dylan had fun climbing all over the snow and falling in it and all that stuff-Lacey was way to little to try to walk through the snow she she ended up crawling on top of the snow!! So anyway here are some pics! I know that spring is supposed to be coming early but I dont know if it will be coming to Iowa early with all this snow to melt!! We have gotten over 60 inches of snow this winter-twice what we normally get. Sooooooo not cool!!!

To read or Not to read

I will probably get in trouble by my friend for this but oh well! I am supposed to be reading The Host but I still cant bring mtself to do it! Everyone tells me that I will love it and that it is awesome. But......the storyline kinda freaks me out! I have read the prologue but cant seem to make myself read anymore. I just dont want to not like it! I do have it sitting out where I see it all day long and it stares at me begging to be read. So while I am trying to talk myself in reading the Host I picked up City of Bones. The cover always seemed a little wierd to me but some friends recommended it and I have to say that I really like it! It caught my attention right away and I cant wait to read the other 2 in the series! So I will get around to reading the Host.......sometime........maybe.........totally before the movie comes out!!

New Project!

Well, I really have about a bazillion projects "in progress" but this one I a super excited about! I scrapped these pages on one of my total fav sites scrapblog.com. I have a tentative idea of what I want to do with them, still working it out in my head but I just had to share them because I totally love them!!

One Project Finished!

I have had pictures up in the hallway for a really long time but it was always missing something. I knew I wanted to do some vinyl something but never could figure out what I really wanted. Then when I was searching for something to put with some other pics in the family room I came across this saying. I totally love it! But I did change some of the words and added a some of my own, I always have to change things just a little to make it more me!

It says,

in this Family, we do second chances, we do mistakes, we do hugs, we do i'm sorrys, we do prayer, we do laughter, we do loud really well, we do love, we do family

Anyway the wall is almost done I just have to get a pic of Colby developed and get a frame! I am so excited I got it done and I also have to give a huge enormous thanks to my mom who gave me her little Cricut when she got her new big one! Those things are awesome! So thats one project finished and on to another one!

Quick Update!

Man, it feels like I haven't posted anything in about forever! I remind myself everyday that I need to put something up but I am wiped out by about 6pm! 4 kids is a lot of work! Thankfully Colby is a good baby-looks like fourth times the charm for us! I only wish he would sleep during the day but honestly I shouldn't be surprised because he is a Stoker baby and Stoker babies dont like to sleep. He is usually a happy little guy but likes to be carried everywhere so he can see whats going on so as you can guess it isnt easy to get much done during the day. I try to tell him that being the fourth kid he isnt allowed to be so demanding but he doesn't listen. He hits fussy meltdown time about 4:30-5ish-just in time for the dinner and bedtime busyness! He has great timing! One really nice thing although I will probably jinx it now that I am talking about it but he does have 1 good block of sleep usually about 5 or 6 hours starting between 6 and 8 where he will actually sleep by himself and then when he starts to stir and you hold him them he will sleep for a few hours longer. So that is way nice and something we have never enjoyed before! It has taken a while to get him to sleep by himself-he is a huge snuggle bug!

So anyway thats enough about Colby! Lacey has adjusted better than I thought she would! I was worried because she is totally a mama's girl! She is one funny girl! I got some pictures developed and in the 5 pics of her she had 5 completely different looks on her face!

Abby is an awesome helper with Colby although she thinks she is should be able to do more with him then I let her do. And Dylan is making plans for when he and Colby share a room! All 3 of them are dying for warmer weather so they can go play outside! Lacey was begging to go to the park we were like "sorry Lacey but it is only 5 degrees outside and the park is under about a foot of snow!"

Funny kids! anyway thats a quick update and since I am starting to get back into the normal swing of things I should be posting more stuff! And as I just noticed this I will try not to use exclamation points at the end of every sentence!

So here are a couple picks of the Colbster-

I love him in his coat-he is so dang cute!

Christmas!!!

This is Christmas so far at our house! The gifts from the grandparents far out do anything we got them this year and you can tell my parents managed to get the one thing they really really wanted!!

Merry Christmas!!

I knew there was NO way Christmas cards were going to get mailed out this year with a new baby and my address book disappeared!! So were are going cyber this year!

Colby's photo shoot!

We had a little photo shoot with our awesome friends at Butler Photgraphy! Jen and Paul are so amazing at what they do! I had a hard time picking which ones to post so you get a bunch to look at but thats o.k. for 2 reasons-1. they are awesome pictures and 2. Colby is just so dang cute!

Abby's Winter Concert

Abby had her Winter Concert on monday. It was also Grandparents day and since both sets of Grandparents were out of town I went to both the morning and evening show. I got the video of her in the morning and didnt take the camera in the evening but shouls have because we were able to sit on the second row right in front of where she was!! But oh well right! It was alot of fun because we only had Dylan with us-we dropped Lacey and Colby off with some friends so we were actually able to watch and enjoy the whole thing! Abby got to play the tone bars so she had to dress-up-she was so excited!

Tree Decorating!

Well we finally got around to decorating the tree today! It has been up with lights on it but none of the fun stuff!! We have a small tree with plastic ornaments and it will stay that way for a few more years until little fingers can learn to not play with them! We also went to a fundraiser the Scouts were having where they were taking family pics courtesy of Butler Photography-some of my favorite people!

Its just the kids this year-a pic of the whole fam will have to wait till the summer when all the baby weight is gone!

Catch Up Time!

Well now that I have a few minutes to stop and breathe!-I thought I would write about what we have been up to! Some of these pics and stuff are way over due but here we go! First off -one day when Colby was still in the hospitol I took Lacey and Dylan with me to go see him. While I snuggled with Colby, Dylan and Lacey played with file folder games I made-Lacey also spent time rolling all over the floor and playing in the curtain!

Back at the Beginning of September my Aunt Becky passed away so off to Ohio the kids and I went. My cousin Meagan (my aunt was her mom) her boyfriend and my Grandpa flew out from California and my sister and her 2 girls were able to be there also. Everyone but my brother Keven were there but Keven was there in spirit! As sad as the circumstances of our gathering were my family has always been able to find something to keep things on the lighter side.

My Aunt was alot of fun and always very sweet. I am really glad she was able to spend time with my kids-they totally loved her and everytime the see a PT Cruiser the say "thats Aunt Becky's car mom!".

My Aunt's passing was the 3rd in my family in just a couple of months we decided -as probably only my family can do-to have some laughs amid all the tears and to just really enjoy spending time with each other. Since Keven couldn't be there and we knew he really wanted to we had a photo developed and taped it to a tiki torch and took him with us! We then sent him the pics so he could feel apart of things.

Here he is hula hooping with Abby.

Here he is with my sister and mom and the flowers we all bought for her.

Here he is eating some tomatoes from the garden.

Here he is at the Air Force Museum.

We were able to there with my Grandpa who worked on the development of the SR-71 and the U2 Spy Plane. It was really pretty fun to hear all his stories.

(this is the one and only prego-pic you will see of me!)

Amid all the things that needed to be done for my Aunt we had to come up with things to keep the kids busy. We bought a roll of coloring pages from Micheals-it was awesome! We just taped it to the table and then the kids could color whenever they wanted and then we spent alot of time outside!

I know this ended up being long but I am covering a lot of time!! I am so glad to have my camera cord back!! Anyway I am so grateful for my family and all the time we have been able to spend together-it is a very rare thing that we can be together! And I was very excited that my Grandpa was able to meet his great-grandkids-Lacey totally fell in love with him and was his little shadow!