My Nutty Kids!

About the 3rd week in April, Chase checked the pool temperature and found the water to be 79°. She was ready to get in. Since then, these nutty kids have been swimming almost every day. I personally won't get in until the water is 90°.

By the time they get out, they're shivering and their lips are blue. So, of course, they have to take a "hot bath". This is what I found in the tub in my bathroom one night. This was Chase's creation made from her soap, face wash, shampoo, etc. The only problem is that Carys has eczema and is not supposed to use all that soap. Chase forgot about that. Carys paid for it for many days. They had a good time in the tub, though!

Carys Prays

Life has been busy. I've been reading others' blogs but not posting on my own. I've been thinking about this post for awhile since I read something on DeEtta's blog about one of her little darling's prayers.

Carys almost always wants to be the one who prays before meals now. This is how it goes:

"Dear God, thank you love for me." Interpretation - thank you for loving me. Then she begins to talk about whatever happened to her that day or whatever's on her mind. Last night she said, "Don't touch the stick. It's hard." She was trying to put the ClearPlay USB stick into the DVD player for the family night movie. She couldn't get it in, and we fussed at her and told her not to touch it. Some day it might be "I swing and slide." You get the drift. Then she finishes, "Jesus' Name. Amen." Sometimes she remembers to say thanks for the food, sometimes not. It cracks us all up as we try to listen closely and hear what she's saying. But I think she's right on target. She's just talking to God!

Carys' 3rd Birthday AND The Dangers of Efficiency

First - The Price of Efficiency - I have been digital scrapbooking, and my 40gb hard drive was full. So, Greg purchased a huge hard drive and replaced the old one on my computer. Ever since then, I cannot get Shutterfly Studio to work. It cannot find My Pictures on the computer. This has been a constant source of aggravation for me. I LOVED Shutterfly Studio for two reasons: 1) It worked with the way I already had my pictures organized (in folders by year and month and event) rather than insisting on organizing them some other way (as my camera software does). 2) It had a great Screen Saver program. I gave each picture I wanted as part of my screen saver the keyword "screensaver" and the program used only those pictures. I didn't have to use every picture in one folder on the computer. I have been unable to find any other software (especially free software) that would work this way, and I don't have hours to spend learning some new software.

Greg spent hours on the phone two different times with Shutterfly trying to get this to work to no avail. One thing we noticed was that the pictures seemed to be stored in two separate places on my computer, once in My Pictures and again in a My Pictures folder which was in the My Documents folder. Greg thought that might be what was causing the confusion, so he deleted one set of pictures.

Last weekend, I saw that the pictures were still in two places on my computer. What a waste of space! So, being ever organized and efficient, I decided to delete one set. Well, I guess I deleted the wrong set, because it deleted all the pictures from both places on my computer. I lost everything. They weren't in the recycle bin, and they were unrecoverable from the hard drive even though we tried two different programs that were supposed to recover them.

Thankfully, we had backed up the hard drive to an external hard drive on 12/26, and I was able to recover all the pictures previous to that date. I also had whatever pictures I'd uploaded to my blog since then - Carys painting her toenails, Winter Encampment, New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, I had uploaded the pictures from Carys's birthday to the computer, erased them from my camera, but not yet blogged about this event. Therefore, I lost all the pictures from her birthday! Sigh!

Two of my children had taken pictures from her birthday, and there were a few good ones. So, I'm grateful to at least have a record of this auspicious event. I think I need to be less efficient. :) On top of it all, I STILL can't make Shutterfly Studio work or find anything else that works like it did. :(

Carys's 3rd birthday was Saturday, 1/17. The boys were headed to a CAP field trip, so we needed to open her gifts early. The disadvantage to a birthday so close to Christmas is trying to come up with gifts, especially for the 4th child in a family. The advantage of a birthday at this time of year is that you can often hit the Black Friday or after Christmas sales for gifts. That was what we managed to do this year.

Gerren stayed up VERY late Friday night putting this train table together. We got it for an awesome price at Target before Christmas.


I had to use a birthday tablecloth to cover it up!


Carys loved it and has had a blast playing with it ever since.


Carys's other gift was also a pre-Christmas find. She loved it also but can't figure out how to turn the handles. When she needs to turn, she stops, gets off, and picks the Power Wheels up, scooting it where she wants it to go.


After the boys got home from their field trip, we headed to Tampa for Winter Jam. We had dinner at Tia's Tex Mex first. We hadn't been to Winter Jam in several years, since it moved from a big church in Lakeland to the Sun Dome in Tampa. We thought the bigger venue would be less crowded. No way! It was awful. But the music was good anyway. We saw Stephanie Miller, Pure NRG, Francesca Battistelli, New Song, Hawk Nelson, Brandon Heath, and Toby Mac.

Carys is praising the Lord to a New Song worship song!

The Carys Chronicles

We moved bedrooms in our house over the holidays. We took Carys' crib down and moved her into Chase's room. Chase had been waiting impatiently for this day to come. She really wanted Carys to move into her room. Well, it hasn't been working out as well as we hoped. Believe it or not, Carys gets into Chase's stuff! That has bothered Chase more than us. What has bothered us is the fact that Carys does not go to sleep like she used to. Instead she cries, doesn't want to take a nap, doesn't want to go to bed at night without Chase, and gets up out of her bed when she is quiet.

Today I took Chase to choir practice after putting Carys down for a nap. Gerren went with us. I told Landon to sit close to the hallway in the living room, so he could listen for Carys to get up. I don't think he was listening. He finally went in to check on her around 5:00. He immediately tried to call me on my cell phone, but I'd put it on vibrate at the dinner theater Friday night and had forgotten to turn the ringer back on. I didn't hear it vibrate in my purse.

It seems like Carys decided to paint her toenails with Chase's nail polish when she was supposed to be sleeping. Didn't she do a good job?


She was banished to my room to sit in the chair until Daddy got home. Doesn't she look contrite?


Do you think Greg can get a second job working in a nail salon?

Learning to Ride

I had forgotten what a trick it is for little ones to learn the coordination of pumping their legs to ride a tricycle. Three of my children are short and have a tough time reaching pedals on top of the coordination thing. Carys is one of them!











As you can see, everyone had a try. So far, no good! :)

Carys Opening Gifts

I had to post a separate entry on Carys opening her gifts. It is SO fun to watch her. Every little thing she opens is a big deal to her. She gasps and says, "Oh... it's my fravrite!" (No, that's not a typo... just how she says it!)

Below is a montage of her opening a color wheel puzzle. First we wrapped it in paper. Then, we realized that some of the other kids knew we had purchased this puzzle and its shape. That would give away Carys' code name and help them toward figuring out everyone else's code name. So, we put the wrapped puzzle in a gift bag as well.

Promised Pictures

Finally some pictures! Chase's ballet costumes have made great dress-up clothes for Carys. Here she is "dancing".



In September, Chase's friend, Sarah, stayed with us for a few days while her parents were out of town. She and Chase had a good time dressing up their live doll!



You can see that reading comes naturally in our family. Carys is actually reading out loud in these pictures. She says, "Our Lord, our Savior, Jesus [babble, babble, babble]." Those are the only words we can actually figure out. We're studying the history of the church this year in school. I guess that's obvious! LOL!

The Funny Things That Carys Says, Part 2

While watching Fox News tonight, Carys says, "Look Dad--Obamama!" (which is exactly how she says it).

So, I proceed to brainwash her with our political leanings..."Carys, when you see Obamama, you say 'Boooooo!"

Chase adds, "Say 'McCain', Carys."

Carys responds, "Oh! John McCain?" in her sweet little 2-year-old voice.

Needless to say, we burst out laughing! She's paying better attention than we knew! :)

The Funny Things That Carys Says

Carys is cracking us all up lately.

Episode 1: I'm going potty in my bathroom at home. Carys is, of course, with me. I notice I'm almost out of tp, so I say, "Will you get Mama a roll of toilet paper out of the closet?"

She walks over the closet (it's right there beside the toilet), puts her hand on the knob, then says, "What say?" She says this a lot lately when she didn't understand what someone said to her.

So, I begin to say, "Open the closet door..."

She interrupts with, "Please!" I cracked up. She hears this all the time, too, when she demands something and we say, "What do you say?" I guess she learned that lesson!

Episode 2: We're driving to Sarasota to our timeshare. It's only a 2-1/2 hour drive, but we have to stop 3 times to go potty! Oh the joys of the newly potty trained! We go into a Hess station and Women's room is in use. I tell Carys we'll have to wait. She notices the Men's room and says, "Go in there?"

I say, "No. That's the men's room. Mommy's a girl. We have to go in the girl's room."

When she is finally sitting on the potty she questions me about the bathrooms again. I ask, "Are you a girl or a boy?"

She says, "I Carys."

I laugh and say, "Yes. You're Carys."

"I peoples."

"Yes, you're a people."

"I MEAHL."

She has it all figured out!

Episode 3: I cannot remember! I remember there were three funny things Carys said that I wanted to write down. But now that I get around to doing it, I cannot remember. Neither can anyone else! Hopefully, it will come to us later.

Cheese Butter?

Carys's favorite breakfast is a bagel with cream cheese, or maybe I should say Carys's favorite breakfast is cream cheese.



She, however, calls it cheese butter. Huh?

Potty Training

When Landon was 2 years old, I found a book at a garage sale for $0.50 called Toilet Training in Less Than a Day. I bought it and tried it out on Landon when he was 2-1/2. It worked like a charm! I used it to potty train Gerren as well.

By the time Chase was ready to potty train, the boys were 5 and 7, both doing school. I did the one day of potty training, but had very little time to drop everything and run her to the potty the next day. After 4 or 5 accidents, I put her back in diapers. A few months later, she was asking to use the potty all the time, so we went back to underwear with success this time. However, on that day after potty training when she was having all the accidents, I said to Greg on the phone, "If we have any more children, you're potty training them."

I reminded him of this, and he agreed to potty train Carys. He read the book and set aside a Sunday for the big event. I took the rest of the kids out of the house (once they got their lazy bones out of bed). Before they did I managed to snap this picture.

You start the day by "teaching" a baby doll that wets to go "pee pee on the potty".


After the day was over, Carys was potty trained! Here she is in her big girl underwear.


As a side note, she was terrified to go "poo poo" on the potty, however, and would only go in her underwear. After three weeks of despair, I tried leaving her bottomless, so to speak, for the entire day. This has worked like a charm, and we plan to continue this until she has many days of success!

The Carys Chronicles

I'm stealing this title from my friend Lisa in Jacksonville who published pics of her little sweetie and calls them the Sophia Chronicles. The word "chronicles" just goes so well with Carys. Don't know what I'll do about the others, but for now I'll post this miscellaneous pics of Carys.

Gerren had the balloons out for a science experiment and Carys was thrilled! Hasn't anyone told them balloons are a choking hazard for toddlers? Where is this child's mother?


Chase has had a good time watching the DVD the boys gave her for her birthday and learning how to do Liberty's hair. However, she made the mistake of stepping away for a minute, and Carys quickly took over!


Chase was getting out her math book and thought of getting the refrigerator magnets out for Carys to play. They provided a little distraction for awhile anyway. Of course, I think Chase and Gerren were just as distracted as Carys!

Day 17: Vicksburg

We spent most of the day in Vicksburg. The Vicksburg National Military Park was awesome. If you've ever been to a large Civil War battlefield, you know that all of the states with soldiers who fought there will put up a large monument as well as many smaller ones at the spot of any major action during that battle. The large monuments are incredible. The Illinois monument was the largest at this site and was modeled after the Parthenon. It was beautiful. You could actually go inside, and this seal was on the floor. I took this picture since I am originally from Illinois.




The state of Kentucky dedicated its monument in 2001. It is pretty neat. Both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were born in Kentucky. So statues of both of them are part of the monument (along with a few other people???).


The cemetery in the park contains the gravesites of the Union soldiers who died at Vicksburg. Interestingly, the Confederate soldiers were buried at a private cemetery in the town. There are both flat and tall markers. The flat stones mark the graves of unknown soldiers.



This picture was taken from Fort Hill, which was such a formidable Confederate stronghold, that the Union forces never attacked it. The scenery throughout the park--hills and valleys and trees--was so beautiful!


The park also contains the U.S.S. Cairo Museum. The U.S.S. Cairo was a Union ironclad ship which was the first ship ever sunk by an explosive mine. It was resurrected from its watery grave exactly 102 years, to the day, from when it was sunk. You can walk right onto this ship. It is incredible!




There were some nice picnic tables outside this museum where we ate lunch.


Before leaving Vicksburg, we drove a mile or two to the Beidenharn Coke Museum (I hope I spelled that correctly). This was the first place ever to bottle Coke. Yes, it was first made in Atlanta, but Mr. Beidenharn, a candy shop owner, had the idea of bottling it. When he asked for permission, the Coke company gave it to him thinking that it was a hairbrained idea. Before too long, they realized their mistake. However, it took them a long time and a LOT of money to buy the bottling rights back! Ah, the power of a good idea!

Gerren and Chase look at the machine that bottled the Coke.


The boys pose in front of a 1902 soda fountain.


Carys "smiles" in front of the high chair.


There wasn't much to this museum, but it was a fun diversion. After leaving Vicksburg, we drove 4 hours to Daphne, AL, right outside of Mobile. We had dinner at a great place called Baumhower's Wings. There are 7 of these restaurants all over Alabama, and it was wonderful!

Well, it is hard to believe, but we are headed home tomorrow. We have a 6-hour drive ahead of us, not including stops. We also lose an hour going from Central to Eastern Time, but we hope to get back in time for Landon to go to Civil Air Patrol at 6:30pm. This blog will be awfully silent when I get home and have to catch up on everything! LOL!