Kristy Dorminy

This Monday has been filled with lots and lots of laundry.  I had no idea how much laundry was stuffed into the clothes hampers in this house!  Whew.  I am not finished yet, but I am very close to being able to say that most of the clothing in this house is clean.  I have been packing some stuff today for our trip.  We are all very excited to see family very soon.  I got to catch up with Mary today, which is always nice.  The kids enjoyed playing with their friends, too.  Josh got home, and I was upstairs cleaning up some stuff.  He decided that a pizza would be good for dinner, and I agreed.  Nevermind the fact that the kids had cheese pizza for lunch.  Ruby said that the “other kind of cheese pizza is much better.”  In other words, she is over the store-bought pizza…bring on the Papa Johns or the Johnny’s Pizza.  Whatever!  So, at the table I caught some very crazy pictures of the silly kids.  BUT FIRST, let me tell you that Molly has learned how to put her hair in a pony tail and in pig tails.  She has done this countless number of times today.  I am thrilled!  What a great thing to keep her occupied, and she is so very proud of herself.

 

THE FRONT

THE BACK

And then the craziness ensued…..

Ruby would still rather not wear any clothes than wear clothes…even in really cold temperatures!  She is a mess.

So on this Monday before Thanksgiving, I will say that I am very thankful for the three little “turkeys” that are in my life.  Life would be so boring without them!!  Gobble, gobble.

Well, Thanksgiving Day is fast-approaching!  We have already started the festivities.  Ruby had a Thanksgiving Feast at her school today and there was a little play in her room right before lunch.  Gran and Paw Paw got to come up to be a part of it all, and we have had so much fun.

I volunteered to make Thanksgiving-themed cookies for Ruby’s class; I was so nervous because my first reply to the one who asked me was that I would order something and be sure to have it there.  I thought ordering something would be great considering that I would have made sure they were really cute and appropriate for the Feast.  I am quickly learning that homemade food is the preferred choice.  Sooooo, after doing a little google searching, I found this cookie:

I thought it was so very cute, but I was unsure of my abilities.  I am not, and never have claimed to be, Wonder Woman in the Kitchen.  I can get by, but I am not savvy at any of it.  BUT, these turned out great!  I was very happy that I had tried something I wasn’t sure I could do.  (even though I lost some sleep over it and when I was sleeping I was dreaming of all that could go wrong and nevermind the fact that I couldn’t find BRACH’S candy corns anywhere when I needed them……)

We baked the sugar cookies, then spread chocolate icing on the top curve and added candy corns to make the feathers.

Then, we used green icing and mini-chocolate morsels for the eyes.

The end product didn’t look exactly like the picture, but they did turn out adorable—in my humble opinion.  🙂

Gran and Paw Paw helped us make the cookies.  Paw Paw also had fun creating his own cookie.

Around 11:30 Ruby was having a play in her room before lunch, so we all headed up to the school.  We were all very excited to see Ruby!

Molly got all dressed up for the occasion.

Ruby, the pilgrim woman!  How sweet is she?

I could hardly stop taking pictures of her in that sweet little bonnet.

These were the Indians.

The pilgrim men

During class the kids had come up with their own Thanksgiving menu.  There were some funny items…nerds, frogs, and more!

Amazing Mrs. Honaker….love this lady!  Oh, and look…do you see what I see on the table????

Take a closer look over to the left….yes, right there.  The Turkey cookies some crafty mom made.  ha!

OK, back to the focus of this morning.  Ruby’s line was, “Mercy Me!”  It was so stinkin’ cute.

They had to hop up and down saying “pop, pop, pop!”  each time Mrs. Honaker said the word corn.

Then, one of the parents got to participate.  Lucky me.  It would have been much more fun to watch Josh with these other two dads say, “Mercy Me!” and hop up and down.

And now to the good stuff.  Mack was enjoying some mac-n-cheese.  The lunch was catered by Family Traditions.  YUM.

Molly smiled for only parts of the lunch.  There was a person dressed as a Turkey roaming around and scaring her to death.  I told Josh that there is no way I am paying good money for Disney anytime soon with a child who is deathly afraid of “characters.”  I’d be forcing her to give Mickey a hug while she pee’d in her pants—-all because “we paid good money for you to have fun!”  No thanks.  We’ll just wait until she is 10 years old, I guess.  Maybe we will be forced to have all of our vacations take place at the beach until Molly can handle the costumes.  Hmmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all.

What a fun day!  I love Ruby’s school.  It is such a wonderful place to be.  I am so thankful that she gets to go there this year!

Mack is so sweet.  He can be a stinker when he wants to be, but for the most part, he is sweet.  He was forced to sit on the potty today because he is having some pooping issues.  He hates sitting on the potty these days.  I don’t know why.  Anyway, after many stories and lots of whining, I told him to lean over so I could clean his hiney.  He leaned over and said in a very kind voice, “Thank you, Mama.  Thank you for clean my hiney.”

Then, tonight when I was wiping his hiney and finding it to be raw from so much wiping because of the weird pooping issues, I decided it needed some cream.  Molly brought it to me.  I gently put it on his little hiney, and he sweetly said, “Oh, thank you, Mama.  Thank you for the cream.”

What a sweet little guy.  I hope he is always so polite.  He tells everyone when to say “Thank you” and “You’re Welcome.”  So funny.

Another story……Molly asked if she could put a movie in the other night.  I told her that she could, and then I heard a familiar voice (and when I say familiar, it isn’t because I have heard this voice recently…just at some point in my past) and wondered what in the world the girls were doing.

They decided that they needed a little exercise.  Pilates, anyone?

Crazy girls.

This is a picture from last Tuesday morning right before walking out the door to school.

This has been a full week!  I am looking forward to the Dorminy’s coming to visit for a couple of days.  I am also looking forward to Thanksgiving!  I can’t wait to go to my parent’s house and hang out with all of the family.

I do have this one issue I could use some input on….every single night I have a head ache.  I have stopped drinking coffee or any caffeine, really.  I got a clean bill of health from my doctor’s appointment—no sugar issues, no cholesterol issues, no thyroid stuff—-SOOOOO, do I need to get my eyes checked?  I am just wondering what could be causing a head ache each night.  Surely by now I am used to three rowdy kids and all that the days entail.  I have got to figure out what the cause is!  Let me know if there are other things I should check or if you know a good eye doctor in the area.

Ruby says so many things to her teacher and class about us, and I am not sure how it all comes across.  BUT, this time she shared what someone else said about their dad, and I know this person and had to laugh.  She said, “He said that his daddy cuts the heads off of turkeys and watches them still run around.”  What probably happened is that in an innocent conversation the dad of this little boy was telling him how turkeys sometimes run around even after they get their heads chopped off….but this little boy decides to say that his dad actually does this.  Because I know the family, it makes me laugh even harder.  They hardly strike me as the type that would do this for fun.  Oh, I wonder what all Ruby has said.  I remember asking my mom, “What will she tell her teachers?”  My moms reply was, “Everything.”

Great.  Let’s just hope Mrs. Honaker is very keen on how Kindergarteners can exaggerate or fabricate a story in all sorts of ways!

I am not sure where I should start considering I haven’t updated the blog in a few days.  I think I will start with Thursday night.  We gave a shower for our long-time friend, Stephanie Dutton, at a Mexican restaurant.  It was a lot of fun.  Then, I went and picked up a babysitter .  She spent the night with us so that Josh and I could go get a physical.  Go get A physical, like a doctor’s appointment.  Josh joked about the slight difference between getting A physical and getting physical.  Where did he make such a joke?  In Sunday School class in front of everyone.  Lovely.  Anyway, it cracked me up when he came out of his appointment with the doctor asking if I had to do ……… or ………..  I said, “NO!”  and laughed at him, thinking he was just trying to make a joke.  He was serious this time.  Poor guy.  I didn’t know what I was getting him in to!  But I am glad I didn’t have to do all of THAT.  The three years of going to the OB/Gyn is enough to last a girl a lifetime.  I did, however, have to get the flu shot, lots of blood drawn, AND  T-dap vaccination.  You know, in case I step on a rusty nail or happen to come across whooping cough.  All will be well.  I am still sore on the shoulder that got the T-dap.  Still.  It is ridiculous.  It seems to be right where the children like to tap me to get my attention.

Josh and I enjoyed our time together.  I told him to take off a Friday more often just to spend with me, and I won’t be forced to schedule doctor appointments to have some time with him.  It will cost him a lot less, too.  We went to Cheesecake Factory to eat lunch.  It was so nice to just hang out with him and talk.  And eat, of course.

I took our sitter back home, we all took a short nap, then went and got Ruby from school.  We went to the church park to enjoy the weather.  Everyone seemed to have fun.  We picked Wendy’s up for dinner, so ALL day Friday I didn’t cook one single thing for anybody.  It was soooooo nice to not spend any time in the kitchen.

Saturday was an awesome day.  I was sad that we weren’t in Augusta for Jud’s birthday party, but we will be going to Augusta next week for Thanksgiving, so we decided to stay home.  We cleaned out our garage, got my car and Josh’s truck all cleaned up, I took a nice long walk in the gorgeous weather….and the kids and Josh played outside all day long.  The kids went to be really early, which is always nice.

Sunday was great!  We went to 8:00 church service first, then went to Sunday School at 9:30.  I think I am really going to love that schedule.  We are used to going to Sunday School first, so it was nice to do something different and not feel so rushed in the morning.  We are going to figure out Care groups this week so that we can start them this Sunday.

So, we have had a great few days, and I am looking forward to a fun week.  We accomplished a lot this morning during school time.  I am about to feed these little ones some lunch, then put Mack down while I clean up!  There is a ton of laundry to fold and put away, a lot of hardwoods to sweep and mop, and several beds that still need to be made!  At lunch time I wonder if I should just leave them unmade?   I mean, it’s not that long until they will be climbing back into bed!

The Dorminy’s are coming to visit later this week.  Ruby is performing in a Thanksgiving play on Friday, which should be great.  Her line is, “Mercy Me!”  She says it very cutely.  I am excited to see her in her classroom with her friends.

Ok, let me leave you with some pictures since I have rambled lots of random information your way.

As promised, here is a goofy picture of me from our “Would You Rather…?” game that we played at the Ladies Sleepover.  🙂

I made these cute little Indians for our Thanksgiving Dinner at my parent’s house.  I made enough for all of the cousins to have one.  They turned out super-cute!

This is what is waiting on me.  Fun, fun.

Ruby played a cute word families game with Turkey Feathers this morning.  Evidently it was “Backwards Day” at home school Kindergarten because she insisted on wearing her clothes inside out and backwards during school.  Who says home-schoolers can’t have fun?!

Molly and her endless art project.

The mess Molly left from her endless art project.

Molly hiding from the mess from her endless art project

Mack playing with puzzles.

Ruby writing a story about a word that starts with the letter A.  I tried to help her come up with something really creative during our brain storming time….I told her she could have THREE “A” words and tell a story about leaving Alpharetta to go to Augusta to see Sweetie and Paw Paw, then going to Albany to see Gran and PawPaw.  BUT, she had a grand idea of writing about a very creative “A” word–Apple.  She told of picking an apple that was juicy, then taking five apples home to make an apple pie.  Oh, well.  I tried.  It is HER story though.  🙂

I hope everyone has a great week!

Last night I was changing Mack’s diaper.  I asked him when he was going to start using the potty like a big boy.  He said, “I like diapers.”  I told him how gross they are…the nasty tee-tee and yucky poo-poo….”A dirty diaper is so gross!!!”  His reply was, “Yes, it is!!!”  And he had a big smile on his face then said to me, “Don’t tell me that, stinker bear.”  He is crazy.

Then, this morning at the breakfast table, I was going over Ruby’s Sparks Verse and Molly’s two Cubbie Verses.  They did very well.  Mack, feeling left out, said, “My Puggle verse is…PUGGLES.”  And he smiled really big like he had done something great.  We all smiled back and told him how smart he was.  What a funny boy.

Besides no one sleeping very great, our ladies night sleep over was a lot of fun.  Just not enough time to talk.

We started by meeting at the house, then going to a local Mexican restaurant that didn’t have our call-ahead written down.  13 of us were there, 2 were on the way….we ended up leaving and going to another restaurant down the road.  We laughed and ate and had fun there.  We came back to my house, changed into pajamas and played “Would You Rather…?”  It was hilarious!  Here are some pictures from the night.  I will do my best to explain them.

This is Rebekah during one of the “challenge” rounds.  She had to choose between six or seven really weird things to do.  She chose this one.  She had to sit there for quite a while with a spoon in her mouth.  She tried to talk at different times, but we couldn’t understand her.

Melissa and Christine were on the same team.  One time Christine had to be quiet for several rounds, which was difficult for her, but she did it.

Angelique had to put into a pose and stay that way for two player rounds… she completed her challenge.

Mandy and Laynie performed a rap, after we begged them.

Melissa didn’t care for her challenge options, one of which was to “get on all fours with your behind to the group and bounce and wiggle to the beat of a song for 60 seconds.”  I offered to play “Walk the Dinosaur” for her, but she just wouldn’t do it.  She rapped a NKOTB song for us.  Pure talent.

And though there were no behinds bouncing to the beat, she did provide a few moves to keep us entertained.

A shot of this side of the room

These are all the girls who were here.  Julie and Coleen slept in the girls beds and were comfortable.  Cindy was on the floor in that room on an air mattress and said she was comfortable, too.  Rebekah, Angelique, Melissa M. and Laynie all slept on air mattresses and said that they were freezing all night long, but didn’t want to wake anyone up to try and turn heat up.  I have since learned that air mattresses can make you feel cold because the air in them is cold.  I didn’t know that.  I felt horrible.  Next time I have 10 ladies spend the night, I will make them bring their mattresses a couple of days earlier, blow them up and let the air get the same temp as the room.  Christine and her sister, Genavive, stayed in the guest room downstairs. Melissa and I shared the master.  She thought she was keeping me up if she moved, but she wasn’t!  I just couldn’t sleep very good.  We were both up bright and early.  I don’t know if it was because we were ready to start the day or just ready for the night to be over! ha!  We all needed more time to let our Mexican food settle so that we could stay up longer, eat more dessert, talk more, sleep later, etc, etc.  BUT we did have a fun time, the short time we were here.

I was SERIOUSLY about to upload the last picture and tell you that it wouldn’t be fair not to post a picture of me doing something goofy during the game…..but I PROMISE I tried and I have used all my upload space!!!!  Now I have to start paying or create a new blog.  🙂  I am not kidding either.  I promise I will post it on the next entry I make after I buy some more space.

The Ladies Conference was good.  I loved hearing from Angie Williams in regard to God’s Grace.  If I had the time, I could probably write a short story on how amazing God was to me over the past few weeks.  They have been rough, and I just about had a breakdown when the “break” I was soooo looking forward to fell through last weekend, but from my perspective now I can see how the Lord was working all of those things out to bring me to the utter end of my self.  I will just say for now that I am thankful for God’s faithfulness in my life, and I am looking forward to seeing how He works through me in the days ahead.  What I have been doing isn’t working, but I am sure His ways will work very well.

Ruby’s Kindergarten class went to Cagle’s Dairy for a field trip on Thursday.  It was a lot of fun.  Mack enjoyed feeding the goats the most.  Molly enjoyed hanging out with Mrs. Walley’s older daughters the most.  Ruby liked running everywhere she went the most.

I like to get shots of Mrs. Honaker in action.  She is so sweet.  I know we couldn’t have hand picked a kinder, sweeter, more loving, compassionate Kindergarten teacher for Ruby.  I could learn a few million things from her!!!!  And for the record, Mack calls her “Mrs. Hon-ker.”

These girls were so sweet to Molly.  You’ll see later that Molly ends up wearing one of their coats!

Sweet Kindergarten friends…and some siblings

These cows were eating hay out of our wagon ride!  They got super-close.

All the kids and adults got chocolate milk at the end of our tour.  YUM.

Got Milk?

Not sure why Molly was looking so sad….

Overall, a fabulous field trip.  Kindergarten is fun!

No pictures this post, but I had to write a bit about our quick trip to the horses.  We made this quick trip because we couldn’t make a longer trip to Kirklands.  I wanted to go and meet Josh there, but as I continued to repeat myself and ask the kids to do the same things over and over, I decided I was finished.  Finished taking them places until they start obeying.  Until they stop huffing and puffing at me.  Until they stop rolling their eyes.  And I told them that I could hear their apologies, but I really didn’t much care for them (the apologies) at the moment.  Once actions matched their apologies, we could move on….until then, I will try to stay out of public with these three.  We’ll settle for hanging out with “wild” animals as long as that is what they act like.

SO, our horse trip.  The kids rode in the very back of the Volvo station wagon.  They got out and watched the horses.  Ruby was feeding them some grass, very carefully!  They were amazed at the amount of poop that was lying all around.  I got sidetracked just looking at how beautiful everything was out there—the trees, the horses, the landscape, the barns, just everything is gorgeous!  Anyway, when I snapped back to it I saw that Molly was staring almost nose to nose with one of the huge horses.  I watched for a minute, then I got scared.  I asked her what she was doing.  She said, “I just want to watch the horse,”  without even once blinking.  The horse twitched and stomped.  I demanded that Molly stop staring down the horse unless she’d like to get trampled by it.  She moved on and said, “There is some pink on her nose.”  Ok.

Mack, in the mean time, found a plastic stick-thing and was pointing it at the horses and saying in a growly voice, “You better get back to ‘dat barn, horsey.  Get back to ‘dat barn.”  Easy to act big and bad safely on the other side of the fence.  He is so funny.

And before you knew it, we were back in the wagon headed for home.

And that was our fun today.  Stay tuned—you never know how much fun we might have here at the Dorminy house.

I don’t think I will ever refer to myself as “normal” now that I have three kids and am home schooling.  Not that I was really “normal” before, but these couple of things just plunge you right into crazy-world.  So, now that the kids are no longer infected with strep, we are sort of back to a routine.  Sort of.

Routine.  That’s another word that I am slowly learning to take with a grain of salt.  Nothing really goes the same twice here…I mean, I can always expect poopy diapers, expect hungry children at least three hundred times a day, expect a headache, but they all come at their own time and in their own rhythm.  I am in control of nothing.  nada.  zilch.  goose egg.

I am also NOT in control of little Mackie-boy’s chattering.  Goodness gracious!!!  From the time he woke up this morning he has NOT stopped talking.  He talked the whole way to Ruby’s school.  He talked the whole way to Molly’s Art and Music classes.  He talked the whole way to Hobby Lobby, the whole time in Hobby Lobby and began more talking once he got in his carseat to head back and get Molly.  I asked him if he would just be quiet for a little while.  “No.  I ount like bein’ cowet.”  (I don’t like being quiet.)  I told him that Mommy does like quiet sometimes, so maybe he could give it a try.  He waited at least three seconds before whispering, “Mama.  Whaccha’ doin.?”  Have mercy!

He then told me he was calling me on his fake phone and told me to pick up my phone.  “Wing,wing.”  “Hello?,” I answer, holding my phone up to my ear.  His reply?  “Me.”  I said, “Hey, Mack!  What are you doing?”  He says, as if I should know!!!!, “Me in the car, driving…..Hang up.”  I put my phone down only to go through this several more times.

If he wasn’t so cute, who knows what would happen to him!