Rainy Day

I can't sleep so I thought I would blog.



My boys like it when they look outside and see rain, because they know if it is warm enough, I will probably let them ride their bikes and play in it. I figured this was a safe activity after the spankings they got for wallering in the mud the last time, so I made it clear not to let that happen again and sent them out today. They were delighted to see Seth pull in the driveway, home early from work, because they knew he would be right there with them in it all. Then the Harrison boys began a mission of collecting worms that surfaced during the downpour. They collected them in their buckets and reported to me later that they had found about a thousand. Annabelle realised they were out there and made it clear to me that she wanted to go out too. I made her a makeshift poncho to go over her coat and sent her out to Seth. She had as much fun as the guys. I have a feeling that Annabelle is never going to be afraid to get down and dirty!




This a pretty pathetic video, but oh well. You can get the idea.





Completely unrelated to that, this is a picture Lorie sent me that Justin took of Annabelle at Christmas. I am not very good at photography so I rely on the skills and sweet cameras of others to capture pictures of my kiddos. She is in the wagon behind granddaddy's tractor in this one.

A nice weekend

Annabelle refuses to have a picture taken now. Like I said in my last post, she sees the camera and immediately runs to me to look at the back of it. It is pretty frustrating to have this cute baby doing all of these cute things all day and not being able to capture it for all to see on the blog. I have tried a few things to help the situation but to no avail so far. This too shall pass, though, and I will have some stuff for you to watch in no time. Here are a few pictures that I snuck before she realised the camera was out.




Notice how the pigtails are longer now.
















In homeschooling news, the light box plants are coming along quite nicely. However, I will need to give credit where it is due and say that Seth has been taking care of them more than me. He has always been into gardening (let's call it horticulture) and, in fact, had a garden voluntarily as a child. I told him that he should be in charge of science in our "school". I taught the Botany class on Friday and it went fairly well. I was a little nervous before class, but as soon as I got started, I thought, "why would I be nervous about teaching.....I have been teaching aerobics for 8 years now." It is definitely the easiest teaching scenario possible for kids of that age considering almost all of the moms are in there to assist with the lesson. We have about twelve kids and 5 or 6 moms in the class, yet sometimes it still feels a little chaotic to me! The boys are digging it though.


This weekend was just wonderful! Friday night my sweet Daddy watched the kids for me while Seth and I went to our music gathering. Then I spent the night with the kids and Daddy. Saturday morning was just about a perfect day for the boys. Granddaddy began the day by taking them to Ingles for some fresh donuts as breakfast. What a treat! Then he took them loafing around town; they went to Pawpaw and Granny's house first where Pawpaw was using his wood splitter. Dad said that they were extremely impressed with the machine and decided that Seth definitely needed one as soon as possible. Then they went to see the house Seth and Dana have been working on. After that they dropped by McDonald's for Happy Meals (what a healthy day!) and then stopped by the DIRT BIKE SHOP in Swannanoa to browse through the four wheelers, scooters and mini dirtbikes. Ahhh, heaven to a 5 or 6 year old little boy!

The first thing Caleb had said to Granddaddy that morning was, "Are we going to do some yard work today?" The kid loves working outside. And I mean truly WORKING.....not just playing around while the adults work. He will stack wood and gather sticks or spread mulch for hours. So they went on home and spent the rest of the afternoon picking up sticks to load into the trailer of the tractor and then taking turns sitting in Grandaddy's lap to drive it to the side yard to be dumped.

During all of this, I went to Becky's shower while Annabelle hung out at our house with Seth. Basically, I had the day off. It was so nice.

We enjoyed the weather yesterday and spent the day in the yard doing some stuff. Then a neighbor gave the boys a ton of Rescue Hero toys that their grandson had outgrown. They spent the evening playing quietly (a serious rarity) in the big room with them.

All cleaned up after a bath on Saturday night.
Caleb and Annabelle were making faces at one another.

This morning I came to a new conclusion about myself....a bit of self-realization I suppose. I was teaching water aerobics when one of the participants asked me if I had ADHD as a child. I thought about this for a moment because it is a type of question or observation I get often at the gym. (one time I was standing behind this girl in the childcare and heard her tell the workers that she was going to take the class from the "instructor who acts like she's on coke"....I took it as a compliment and she laughed when she turned around and saw me there) Anyways, I told the person who said that in my class this morning that, no, I wasn't a hyper child and, in fact, I am not all that energetic outside of teaching classes. I just really like being up in front of people (performing, you could say) and I get very excited and energetic when I get to do it. Plus, I think of the most important things an aerobics instructor does in class is to motivate others to get a good workout. So there is my analyzation (however that is spelled) of my energy in class; I am just very excited to be up there leading everyone.

I do believe that working out like that all through my pregnancies made my children psycho energetic though.

Plus I drink a lot of coffee before I head to the gym.


I am SO glad it is March!

Annabelle Sweetness

My mission today was to get a cute video of Annabelle saying some of her new words. This proved to be much more difficult than I expected because as soon as she sees the camera, she wants to come sit in my lap and look at the pictures on the back. This was as well as I could manage for now.



She is sitting in my lap during this one so you have to just listen. You may have to pause my awesome music so you can hear the videos though.



It is so wonderful now that she is well and happy. I had almost forgotten what a jolly gal she can be.




Enjoy!

I always have heard that tattoos are addictive, but I didn't realize it was true for temporary ones as well. The guys figured out how to put them on themselves and got a bit carried away during our flu time. Don't their little eyes look sickly in this picture?



We celebrated our health on Sunday by going to the Waynesville pool with Em and Tay again. It was lots of fun! I just sat and read magazines the whole time........what a pleasure!

We are FINALLY well! It really seems like we were out of commission for longer than two weeks, but that was about it. Seth got sick 2 weeks ago yesterday and we all followed a few days after one another. Spring is on the way and I will be so happy to get out of this house and into some fresh air. We got a bit stir crazy during our quarantined time, so we were delighted to meet Jonathan, Beth, Moma, Daddy, Lorie, and Kiah out at the Fiddlin' Pigs Barbeque place on Saturday evening. That place is something else! They have a bluegrass band with square dances and cloggers on the weekends. I just love cloggers! They are so cute. I wish the boys would learn but I don't see that happening......EVER. Unlike their mother, Caleb and Adam have NO desire to perform (maybe if it was some sort of dirtbike stunt) They had a good time watching Kiah, Annabelle, and me dance from the sidelines. I didn't take my camera or I would post pictures. I have got to be more prepared!

The other night Jonathan told me about these adopted triplets on his baseball team at North Greenville and how he wished so badly that Mom and Dad had been the ones to adopt them. I agreed with him and lamented over the fact that I only had one brother for a while that night. This has lead me to ponder the idea of siblings for the last couple of days. More specifically, I have been thinking about how much I love siblings. I wish I had some more. I wish I had a couple more older brothers and a couple of younger ones too.....and some more sisters......Sisters are wonderful. But mainly I just wish for more brothers. Instead of all of this idle talk, I would like to formally thank my mother (and dad too) for having lots of kids so I could have my siblings.

However, this makes me feel so disappointed in myself for only having three kids. I always wanted 4 or 5, but it is just so much harder than I had imagined. Also, and more importantly, I am tired of being pregnant. I am tired of having c-sections. (though the doctor gave me the go-ahead for more) So, maybe we will adopt in a few years, but that always seems like it would be expensive.

My moma always says, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." We are suffering through the 2 week flu bug, and I can't seem to think of anything nice to say, so I just changed my layout instead.

We are in survival mode.

I will post when/if I ever feel better.

Well, folks, we are celebrating Valentines Day this year with a crappy case of the flu in the Harrison abode. Yep, the boys have a virus that should "make them feel really bad for 3-5 days, but they won't be back to normal for at least 10 days, if not 2 weeks". That was the diagnosis from the doctor yesterday. I am trying to stay positive and look at the brighter side of this: I did get a lot of cleaning done yesterday since the boys stayed on the couch bed the entire day. We also got a ton of Botany done. I had the boys cornered so we read our chapter and discussed pollination. I have never enjoyed science too much, but I actually found this interesting....... Those are the only good things I can come up with right off hand. Of course there is that Annabelle and I seem to be fine thus far and hopefully won't catch this. If she doesn't get it, she will prove to have one of the higher immune systems of anyone I know. On a few occasions I have made a mad dash across the living room to snatch the boys' cups from her. Also as I was brushing my teeth yesterday, I looked down to see that she somehow got a hold of Seth's toothbrush and was doing the same with it, and Saturday morning (right before Seth realized he might have a fever) he said she was all but making out with him as they wrestled around in the bed.

By the way, this all started while I was at the womens retreat. (which was wonderful- the message definitely hit home and I had a great time with everyone there and...especially my dear Moma-I got to have her all to myself that night) Meanwhile, Seth spent Saturday morning crawling from the bed to the bathroom to puke until I arrived around 2:00. While I was praying that they would have a peaceful morning at home, Annabelle was banging the lid of the toilet on Seth's head as he vomited his guts out. The boys kinda took care of themselves along with some help from our neighbor, Taylor. I think God did answer my prayer because at least no one got hurt (aside from Seth's head).




Was that what we could call TMI (in the words of Micheal Scott) "too much information" ?


Wow, this post has taken too much time because I wanted to make a video link of Micheal moments. There were some really good ones. Wow, funny stuff. If you need a good laugh, click on my links......the second one is the best......if you have that type of humor.........if don't like the office, don't bother watching.....there you go guys TMI. last one


Lastly, I will leave you with pictures from Kiah's sixth birthday party on Sunday. Lorie told me that she hates when I post without pictures. I won't take that as she is bored with what I have written, but instead as a compliment to my lovely pictures. So here they are: It was cowgirl themed.

The kids played in the tent from Mimi and Granddaddy.

Kiah was very appreciative of her gifts. She loved her ring from Aunt Carolyn.

Annabelle showed the others her favorite seat in a timber frame home.

New Bloggers and sickness

I am pretty excited right now because my friend, Tracy, just started a blog. This is good news for the blog world because, let me tell you, she will have some good stories to tell. She has a five year old little girl named Riley (who is sweet as can be) and two twin 3 year old boys (who will provide all of the entertaining stories) The twins, Grayson and Garett, remind me so much of Caleb and Adam when they were that age. They are what some would call "all boy" and others might call "wild". Tracy is such a great mother for them because she is very laid back and lets them be boys.....dirt, fights, four wheelers, bikes and all of that stuff. They love being with my boys. Obviously, my boys gravitate towards Riley a bit more (cause she is older and cute or something) but they love hanging out with the McCurry family as a whole! So, hopefully Tracy won't mind me telling y'all to check her blog once in while. It should be great!







OK, I wrote that yesterday.......today things are not as great here at the house. Adam and Caleb both have fevers. Adam has a horrible cough and sore throat while Caleb threw up most of the night. We are heading to the doctor this afternoon. Maybe they will give us some miracle cure and this will be over tomorrow.

Seth had this on Saturday and still doesn't feel too great, though he has managed to work everyday. He is one of those really tough sick guys. You know what I mean?

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I jumped the gun with yesterday's post. How could I have known what was in store for today? (I should have known) I needed to practice music for the womens retreat so I put Annabelle down for an early nap, gave the boys an umbrella, and set up to sing in the garage. I know you are thinking, "Are you crazy? You sent your boys out in the rain to play!" First of all, I am crazy and second of all, I wasn't thinking too clearly. I thought they needed a good ten minutes or so outside so they could get the wiggles out before we sat down for school. (but their wiggles are never out)
ANYWHO!!!!!!!

This is what I found when I turned the corner to check on them!




It's all good, though. They are happily in the shower as I type, getting cleaner than they have been in a while.

It could be way worse, I tell ya. When they were 2 and 3, they pooped in the middle of Adam's room and smeared it all over the walls and floor. I can never be as mad as I was at them that day!

Picture Post

There is a good chance we are referred to by our neighbors as the "Clampett Family". My kids rarely wear shoes or shirts, we play very loud music on many occasions, and I find myself screaming for the boys from the porch at least once or twice a day. Then there have been the times with the firetrucks and the list could go on but I won't overly embarrass Seth............ I just tell everyone that we try to keep it exciting around Justice Ridge.

Anyways, speaking of no shoes, Caleb and Adam were ecstatic about the warm weather today. I agreed to no shoes, but this is what I found a few minutes later:



























Yes, they are wearing swimming trunks. We can't get to the summer clothes right now and they HAD to have some shorts! Caleb looks like he might be cold by the way he is standing, but I assure you that he was just fine, and, in fact, he asked me repeatedly if they could play in the sprinkler! He is always hot.







In other news, Lorie gave Jonathan a sweet haircut the other day that I think just suits him:

And we had a fun music gathering last Friday:

And the boys are getting haircuts tomorrow. Maybe I could convince them to get mohawks like Uncle Jonathan. That would be the cutest thing ever!

Super Bowl

Did everyone enjoy the Super bowl last night? Actually, I didn't watch it, except for the halftime show and the final 24 seconds of the game. I enjoyed that thoroughly. Tom Petty was my favorite halftime show ever. Can that dude write a good song or what???!! Also, I was happy that the Giants won because it is always good to see an underdog do well, but mainly because I think those Manning boys are just about as likable as two guys can get. Can you imagine how their Mom felt last night? Pretty proud, I would assume! I didn't even watch the commercials, though I assume they were pretty good considering I could hear Seth laughing obnoxiously (and I say that affectionately) at them all the way upstairs.

You know, it is not as if I hate sports or anything and you might be surprised at my knowledge of the rules and all. I always enjoy watching them when I sit down and just do it, though I get VERY worked up about the game and tend to cry if my team loses. In fact, I still hate the Steelers because they beat the Colts in the AFC championship in 1996 or something. I am too 'passionate' to watch sports......or too much of a crybaby.

However, I LOVE to watch my loved ones play sports. TV sports take up too much time. I think an hour ballgame would be sufficient.

Sorry Dad and Jimmy....and Jonathan and Heath.....and all of you other sports fans......I could go on and on........
Happy Monday morning y'all!