Kristy Dorminy

Just wanted to mention that Molly has been so wonderful the past two and a half days (but who is counting?!).  Seriously, I should have mentioned that she was so sweet to Ruby on her birthday in so many ways.  I am proud of her for letting Ruby have her time to shine on her birthday!  That isn’t always easy, but she pampered her and let Ruby feel special.  Just thought I should mention it…..And Molly has told me she loved me about a thousand times in the past couple of days.  She loves me.  How sweet.

And tonight after being away from each other for two and a half hours, Mack kept saying to me, “Wid me”  I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then realized he wanted me to sit down with him.  When I told him I would sit with him, he started telling me to “walk, Mama, walk.”  I think he was saying, ‘hurry up and get over here and sit down with me!’  I sat down with him, and he was happy as could be.  Sweet kiddos.

How can you go wrong with these two places and five kids?  We didn’t.  Molly made it clear from the beginning that she did not want Monkey Joe to talk to her, touch her or even look at her!  I told her that between myself and Mrs. Mary, Monkey Joe wouldn’t get near her (and then I prayed that there would be no dressed-up character at Monkey Joes to scare Molly…).

This was as close to the monkey as we got:

There was a whole lot of this going on:

And after Mack figured out how to get up the slide, (because those “STOP!” signs said something along the lines of mama’s cannot go up the slides because they just can’t)

he had fun, too…..

Though I think he would have preferred that I feed these machines with all my quarters:

These two were so cute on this double-elephant ride…you could see the love coming through as they went round and round and round….

Mack wasn’t so happy about having a group picture on this car though.  He was liking it much better all by himself….

After the Monkey Joes fun, we headed to McDonalds.  It poured down rain while we ate and then the kids went out to the play area.  Can you say dried, sweaty kids (from all the jumping at MJ’s) and then wet, humid, stinky kids in the play area = stinky, smelly kids?  I can say it.  They are my kids.  I rode home with them.

The girls enjoyed the ice cream, obviously….and these things (above) are the Happy Meal toys.  I do not know what they were exactly, but don’t they look like parts of a brain?  Yuck.  I plan to lose these next time we go through the car wash and clean out the car.  (that is, if it EVER stops raining here)

Here Ruby is apologizing to Katherine for squishing all of the roley poley bugs she found.  Ruby said to me, “Well, it’s my birthday and I don’t like Roley Poley’s on my birthday!!”  OK.  Makes sense to me.?  Poor Katherine was just trying to watch them roll around and squirm around…Ruby wanted nothing to do with it.  Right here Katherine is caressing a roley poley bug that “didn’t have a head, but that’s ok.”  

And a group shot of all the smelly, wet  sweet children that allowed Mrs. Mary and I to talk and talk and talk.  Adult conversation is a beautiful thing….especially when you are doing that instead of laundry and cleaning bathrooms.  

We had a very fun time!  There are more pictures, but I don’t think I have the time to post them all.  Besides, she is having a little friend party on Friday night.  Birthdays seem to linger around the Dorminy house.  Is that just normal?  It ends up being each person’s birthday WEEK.

(Here I go again, taking pictures of pictures….)  This is what I was doing five years ago!  Ruby Elizabeth was born weighing 8 lbs, 5 oz.  Sweet little booger that started the process of completely rockin’ my sleep world.  And I remember many things that day…not the least of which are realizing I wanted the medicine before the medicine before the epidural because I am such a wimp with pain, how good the McDonalds smelt while Josh ate it as I crunched ice waiting on Ruby to get here, pushing only thirty minutes, throwing up right after having her, mistaking my feet for the marshmallow man’s feet…who knew you would swell AFTER having the baby?!…BUT the greatest part by far was the second I saw her.  How amazing can child birth be???!!!  Such a miracle.  I can remember her tiny feet and hands, the way she loved laying on her Daddy’s chest each evening to nap, how I had to “coach” her into taking naps that lasted longer than 30 minutes, and how round and chubby her cheeks were from the very beginning.  I am amazed that five years have passed.  Ruby has been a big sister for most of her life.  She was 14 months old when we brought Molly home!  She is a great big sister to both Molly and Mack.  She has a fabulous imagination and is sometimes seen in restaurants using a spoon and fork as people.  They will have a full conversation, sing songs and more.  It’s hilarious.  She doesn’t like stray hairs…and so she doesn’t walk on my bathroom floor.  She will jump from rug to rug instead.  She can spot a hair a mile away and will holler for someone to come and get it.  If it gets on her, watch out.  She falls asleep very quickly and doesn’t suck her thumb or fingers or anything like that.  She is quite the compliant child–compared to Molly and Mack.  Her feelings get hurt easily, so I have to watch how I respond to her.   If she thinks you are laughing at her, she shuts down.  She rarely dresses in regular clothes around the house, but chooses all sorts of dress-up clothes (or less) instead.  She loves wrestling with her Daddy.  She is very competitive, too.  

There’s just a lot of change with her lately.  I think she has grown taller over the past month.  She has lost TWO teeth, turned FIVE YEARS OLD, and starts Kindergarten in just two and a half months.  Now I am not one to get mopey and sad about the little ones gaining independence…I have many times felt like I would never be out of this baby, needy, whiney, stage….but Ruby is my hope.  She is showing me that, clearly, they don’t always stay tiny.  Their needs change.  They can carry on great conversations, too.  I am very excited for her.  She is excited for her, too….all day long she has asked for special treatment because “it’s my birthday!!!”  Tomorrow will be quite a disappointment for her.  

This was her first birthday–she had hand, foot and mouth and something else.  Poor thing.  I guess the obscene amount of gifts made it bearable.  She was walking at 10 months and running by her first birthday.  I would walk around the house holding her hands for months because she never crawled, but wanted to walk and couldn’t yet.  It was tiring!  I can remember clear as yesterday setting her down in the living room with some toys one morning, walking into the kitchen to fix her bottle, then hearing something while I was standing at the sink.  I turned around and there she was in a white onsie with a HUGE grin on her face because she had walked all the way to the kitchen by herself.  That is a great memory.

Here she is on her 5th birthday!  Big difference.  

This is Ruby when she was about 4 months old.  Chubby. Cheeks.

This is her 3rd birthday.  She got her fish, Charlie–the one our cleaning lady (I miss her!!!) killed accidentally.

This is one of my all-time favorite pictures.  Molly is screaming her head off (obviously), and Ruby is just looking at her.  So funny.

All of these pictures were taken this evening.  We baked cupcakes and sang “Happy Birthday” to her.  The day started with doughnuts and balloons….sugar, sugar, and more sugar.  My goodness.  I made her run laps around the dining room and living room a little while ago.  She loved it.  I hope it helps with all the extra energy!  But a quick story about this morning…Ruby woke up and was excited to see her “surprise.”  I told her to come with me to see it, but she said that she wanted to wake up Molly so that she could come and see the surprise with her.  It was soooo sweet.  I am so glad that they have each other.

I will post some more tomorrow about our fun time at MONKEY JOES and MCDONALDS with Katherine, Ben and Mrs. Mary.  I have tons of pictures to share.  I also want to include Mack eating his cupcake.  He is so stinkin’ cute!  Ruby had a wonderful day…stay tuned for the details!  I am pooped and can hardly hold my eyes open.  It’s only 7:30 pm.  I am old.

(Molly just walked up and said, “Who is that with the cheeks?”  talking about the 4 month old picture of Ruby.  hahahaha!!)

 

We had a wonderful Sunday!  Josh taught a great lesson from John 15, then we served in the nursery…only had 14 two year olds instead of 18 like last month.  THEN, our friends, the Barsh family, invited us over with the Koester’s for lunch and just hanging out.  It was so much fun!!!  The kids are really growing up.  They just ran off and played and played. (They played so hard that on the way home everyone fell asleep.  Molly put up a fight though and was rambling horribly…”I want to stay at Gigi’s house forever and ever.  I really do.  I want to go home and have my white slobber pillow.  And I, I want, um, I want Ruby to sleep in my bed with me…and I want to stay at Gigi’s house forever…..I want to slobber….”)  The three of us ladies had great conversation with minimum interruptions.  It was really nice.  A great reminder that it is so important to open up our home to our friends.  

Yesterday, I went to a Baby Shower and then spent some time with Ruby at Wal-Mart.  She picked out a tea set and a book with the money that GG sent her in the mail for her birthday!  It was quite a decision, I must say.  She went back and forth between a Tinkerbelle doll, a play phone, an Etch-A-Sketch….and more!  Josh called and urged me to quickly help her make a decision because we had a picnic that afternoon with our Sunday School class.  The picnic was a lot of fun.  In between the little rain showers, the sun would peak out so that the kids could play and play and play….and play some more.  

Here are the kids with the new tea set.  They loved playing together.  We will be giving GG a call after Josh wakes up from his nap to thank her for the money!

Today, however, Ruby got mad at Mack while playing tea party.  She said, “No boys are allowed.  He is gonna mess everything up!”  And sure enough, he was knocking over cups, grabbing things and just overall not being very graceful.  He needs a brother, but I can’t help him with that.

Here are some pictures from our Sunday morning.  We had time to spare, so I wanted at least one picture of all the kids since they were all in red, white and blue.  I was, too!  Josh didn’t get my red shoes in the picture though…I don’t know what he was thinking.  But I must say that I rarely match all three of my kids.  It is just too much pressure.  I sometimes make sure no one matches so that it doesn’t look like I wanted to pull it off but just couldn’t.  We all just do our own thing, usually.  And even Ruby managed to put on her pink shoes instead of her cute red ones that I wanted her to wear.  And Josh, when asked if he was going to wear red, white and blue, asked me “Why?”  I said, “Because we are all wearing red, white and blue.”  He said, “That’s exactly the reason not to then.”  Love him.  Such a rebel.

Wish you could see my red shoes.  Ha!

 

I am just posting two older pictures because I don’t want my floors to be what comes up all weekend on my blog.  We are gearing up for a very, very low-key Memorial Day weekend.  Things have been busy and will be busy again, so we need some down time as a family.  We enjoyed the Outlet Malls last night.  Everybody got a little something, and I found bathroom rugs for the girl’s new bathroom and a pillow for our guest room.  Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

Cute Ruby-Doo in one of her many dress-up outfits.

Here’s to lots of sitting and relaxing this weekend!

Smooshed pancakes, drops of syrup…..

A lone goldfish and some crumbs or two or ten….

And this sticky-faced and sicky-handed fellow…

Is it any wonder I find a tribe of ANTS each day in my kitchen?  They can find a feast on my floors any day of the week.  I worked hard on the kitchen this morning….very hard.  And now it is clean.  Just for now anyway.

I even wiped down my refrigerator and got off this purple stuff.  I should have taken “after” pictures to prove myself, but I was too tired.

THE DISASTER AREA PLAYROOM:  before

THE PLAYROOM: after

Ruby was very helpful in the playroom endeavor.  Molly, not so much.  She likes to say, “but my arms are so very tired!!!!!!!!!!!”  If I push her to help she begins flailing her arms around and her body is like she has no bones in it as she lays all around on the floor.  Sometimes it is just easier to leave her out of the whole process.  I know, I know, she has to learn…and she will…eventually.  For now, my sanity is of utmost importance.

This week has been quite odd.  I am feeling not very “put together” and it is overflowing to my blog.  There is so much going on….so many pictures….so many stories.  I don’t know where to begin, so I am just randomly throwing this stuff out there.  

Only the girls hung around for all of the gift-opening and card-reading Mother’s Day weekend.  The boys were distracted and too busy.  I hope you have some sweet girls in your life that will watch you open your presents and “oooh” and “aaah” with you….nieces, daughters, granddaughters, cousins, friends,….

This is a piece of wood that a lady put a picture of my kids on for my Mom’s present.  It is much neater looking in person.  

Mack LOVES golf-carts.  He is content to sit on one all day long.  If anyone got on the golf-cart, he immediately started making his way over so that he could go wherever they were going.

He also loved this red & yellow car.  He learned this move from his Daddy….driving and talking on the phone.  

Mack was napping during this golf-cart ride.  They were all going to fish.

What a sweet little picture!  Vance is proud of the Mother’s Day present he made for her at Aunt Cacy’s house.  It was just precious watching him deliver it to his Mama.

Six of the seven grandkids are all eating together.  Somebody is going to have to scoot over when baby Rennison grows up!

Aunt Marcy and Aunt Cacy live on the same street as my parents, so this is how they got home that day.  It was very cute, and I assume everyone made it safely home.

 

Is that enough randomness????  I am going to get on with day and try to bring some order to it!  I can’t go on much longer like this.

Sunday morning started early…about 4:45am.  I went downstairs in search of coffee and my Bible while Josh got ready for his trip to Vegas.  Jeff was picking him up at 6am for their 8:30 flight.  ANYWAY, I got myself and three kids ready and fed and out the door by 7:40 (at breakfast Molly asked if Daddy was riding a camel to Vegas).  I valet parked at church because I wasn’t sure if it was going to be pouring down rain when church let out.  What a wonderful service that valet parking is!!!  I was thankful for it Sunday morning.  I took Ruby to her class first, and she immediately hollered out to her teacher, “My Daddy is on a plane to Vegas!”  It just didn’t sound very ummmm, wholesome.  The teacher laughed and knew that he was there on business, but still….it just didn’t sound right. After church, we ate lunch, took a nap, then got ready to be back at church for a 4:00 meeting.  Ruby had a certain outfit she had to wear because she was in the children’s musical.   She wanted to wear a navy headband to match her shirt, so I said ok.  I knew that it wasn’t the best decision, but I really was not feeling like fighting over her hair tonight.  We went to church in the rain, which is always fun when you are getting three munchkins in and out of a car and into the building.  I was seriously missing Josh at this particular point of the day.  Throw in a mean case of PMS and life was just lovely.

I kept Ruby with me until her 5:00 drop-off time, then I finished my meeting, then went and got Molly from her class because she wanted to see Ruby in the musical.  (In reality, she just wanted to sit in laps and eat crackers.)  Anyway, while walking through to get Molly I saw that Ruby’s headband was falling forward.  I asked my sweet friend, Melissa, to please go check on Ruby and make sure her headband was ok.  She fixed her headband and all was well….until I saw Ruby walk up on stage.  It was in the proper place while walking down the aisle, but then it slid.  It was at the place that it looked like a sweatband instead of a headband.  She should have been on a workout video from the 80’s instead of the Children’s Musical 2009.  THEN, in between two of the songs, she held herself because she needed to go potty, I reckon!  Good grief.  Then, my camera, my lovely camera was giving me grief.  It wouldn’t take a normal picture.  I have no idea what the issue was, so I just put it away and tried to enjoy watching Ruby sing and do her hand motions with her sweatband on her head.   I was glad when the performance was over.  We got out of there and came home.  I fixed the kids some pancakes for dinner, and then we all went to bed.  

Above is one picture of Ruby standing next to Katherine…as you can see, her headband is a little “off.”

This is a picture of the whole group.  There were a bunch of kids up there!

And here is a very blurry picture, but it is all I have!  

 

Today I got up and had to take Mack to an ENT appointment.  Y’all would not believe the wax that they pulled out of that boy’s right ear.  It was amazing….and disgusting.  We also did a hearing test and all checked out just fine, but we do have to go back in about 8 weeks to make sure the fluid that was on his right ear has gone away.   He was so good the whole time we were in the office.  He just sat in a chair next to me and watched every body.  He was adorable.  It wasn’t until the very end of the visit that he started saying, “Go, Mama, Go” and pointing to the Exit Door.  (The girls were at home with Mrs. Mary, Ben and Katherine…thank the Lord above for good friends!)

Tonight Ben and Katherine are spending the night with us. (Mary and John are celebrating their 13th Wedding Anniversary.)  The kids just had pizza.  Now they are playing some sort of game involving Sea Bears and a pack of penguins and all of my pillows from my furniture.  As long as they aren’t tearing the house down or hurting one another, all is well.  We will break out the popcorn and movie around 7:30 or 8:00, I suppose.  No hurry because I am doubting that sleep will be coming easy for any of them!

Are y’all keeping up here?  Because I am seriously providing all six of you with new pictures and stories at a phenomenal rate.  You can thank me later.  

Alrighty, let me start this post with pictures of the cousins (note the title of this post…I am so creative).

This is sweet little Kaybeth.  She is Cacy’s youngest daughter.  And she is just a darling little girl that totally gives Vance and Jud a run for their money.  She seems so innocent, but if you don’t watch her, she will have every toy around and leave the boys to whine and cry to their mama’s!  Ok, that is a bit harsh…but she is a pistol, and I think it is hilarious!!!  You would never, ever guess it about her if you just went by how sweet she looks and acts towards us adults.

This is her precious big brother, Jud.  He is very social.  I saw him run and hug Sweetie EVERY TIME  he saw her for the first time.  He also would walk up to each person and wave or say hi or something.  It was so cute!  He is all boy…just a very social boy.  He is built exactly like his daddy.  It is crazy how much they look alike!  He also stopped what he was doing and pee-peed in the yard at my mom’s house.  We aren’t quite used to that around here since only two kids are potty-trained,and they are both girls.  We sit on the potty—most of the time.

Now this is Vance.  He is Marcy’s oldest.  If you know Marcy I didn’t even have to tell you that, seeing how he looks approximately exactly like her.  He played so hard the entire time we were at Sweetie and PawPaw’s house.  He was sweating and red-faced and happy as could be!  He, unfortunately, is on the receiving end of Kaybeth’s attacks.  If he wasn’t so kind he might knock her on the floor.  BUT, his mother has taught him better than that, so he just turns away and looks for someone, anyone to help him.  He ate a ton of Sconyers and let me take a million pictures of him.  He is so stinkin’ cute and still very squeezable at the ripe age of  2 and a half.  

And this is baby Rennison, the last of seven grandkids.  Isn’t she so cute?!  She just lays around or sits around or lets anyone carry her around.  She didn’t even freak out (like my kids would) when the dogs just came up to her and took her cracker.  And she always lets Ruby and Molly hold her even in the most awkward of positions.  She is very sweet, and I can’t wait to see how she and Kaybeth end up bossing the boys.  That will be funny to watch.

 

My kids have such a fun time with all of their cousins in Augusta.  They cry and cry each time we leave.  I have more pictures coming in the next few days that will show some of the fun they had.  I remember growing up with lots of cousins.  On my dad’s side there were 9 of us!  And we always had so much fun when we were together.  In all the pictures of us we look dirty, unkept….like no one took care of us.  Now I know why that is!  We must have been like all these cousins—they just play and play and play some more.  No time for being clean and neat and taking pictures.  

 

On Saturday, May 9th, the girls had their dance recital at the church.  It was a so sweet!  We couldn’t take pictures during the performances because I can’t get the no flash pictures to turn out great when everyone is moving all around.  It was nice to just sit, watch, and enjoy!  Here are some pictures from before and afterwards:

PawPaw and Sweetie came to see the girls dance.  Gran and PawPaw wanted to be here, but they had just come the weekend before to see us.  Her chemo date changed at the last minute.  We were sad that they weren’t here, but they will see the video very soon!!

We went to eat Mexican afterwards, then we all headed to Augusta to spend the rest of Mother’s Day weekend.

Mack and Ruby ate some left over tortillas in the car.  It looks like Mack was making his into a baseball!  Crazy boy.  He did very well during the recital, though he must have eaten a pound of goldfish crackers!

This is a picture of Molly during the rehearsal.   She was about this excited during the actual performance, too.

You could tell this was Ruby’s second year of dance…check out that form….she was basically a professional!  ha.

And, evidently, brothers of dancers were to wear camo pants and orange shirts and play with cars and roll around on the floor.  Atleast that is what these two did!  Oh, and eat another pound of goldfish crackers.