Christmas Eve 2015

Talk about crazy...  made my first pizza dough today, in fact, made 4 batches today, or really, 2 double batches.  I think we made 4 pizzas for less than 20 bucks, in fact, I THINK it was less than 15.  I'm super excited.  I used a beer pizza bread machine recipe I found on allrecipes.com.  I made the first double batch at 10:30 this morning, and we ate at 2, made the second batch at 4:30 and we ate at 8, lol... it didn't need to take that long, but no one was really hungry.  So the first batch we did personal pizzas, and ended up over cooking them.  The second batch DH made the actual pizzas, and he did a fantastic job.  The dough itself...I'll never use another dough.  It was PERFECT.  So good, and very forgiving of the over cooking.  Next time I may turn down the oven though, because the bottoms got pretty browned, while the tops were less so.  But it was really good.  I could probably make this cheaper by not having the beer, but it was SOOOOO good, and cheap beer isn't terribly expensive anyway.  It adds pennies to the cost of the dough when you're feeding that many people, and this actually fed us lunch AND dinner.  I think I will put this into a regular rotation so that we can have pizza more often for less money.  Yes, it was fairly time consuming, but it was fun.  The kids loved the personal pizzas.  And I think now that I've FINALLY made my first pizza dough (been meaning to FOREVER), I'll invest in a couple of pizza stones.  They're cheap at Walmart.  I am so excited about this.  The oldest daughter has a bread machine, so I am thinking I'll make bread or rolls weekly instead of buying them, and that will help save us some money.  I've been working lately on ways to save money on things, since as a large family we have such a large out go.  We need to reign some costs in.  But I hate to sacrifice pizza, lol... so here we go.

So we opened some presents tonight, and by we, I mean the kids, and the kids only.  The adults got so few presents (save Jerry, because I am always on the lookout for stuff for him.  I think I get shorted at Christmas... but oh well.  I seem to be getting a lesson from the Universe on materialism anyway, so I guess I'll just be glad I get anything....  especially this year since I picked what I wanted from Amazon.)  The girls were pretty happy with their gifts.  Lily's kids are here, except for 2, and one of them we've never met, she lives with her dad in Hawaii...the other one left this afternoon to spend Christmas with her dad, so she got to open pretty much everything.  Almost all the girls ended up opening some sort of Lego, so they were pretty excited about that, especially Shabree.  My box from Amazon actually ended up arriving today, so I am hoping it has everything I ordered in it, but I thought one item was backordered til today, so that one may arrive sometime next week.  Supposed to be a hula hoop, weighted for exercise, and over the ear bluetooth headphones (in purple no less!) with microphone so I can use them with my phone.  I'm pretty excited about them, since earphones hurt my ears.  And these are noise cancelling, so should be pretty comfortable.  I'm excited about them, for sure.  Hopefully I can lose some weight with the hula hoop, since I'm probably not going to get my gym membership I was hoping for....

Ok, I have some presents to wrap, so will post.  Sorry for the 4 year wait.

Just out of curiosity, how does TWO YEARS go by so quickly?  I didn't realize it was two years since I last updated this thing.  Really, I'm probably one of two people who CARE (Hi Kimmie!) but still....   I could definitely be writing more often.  In point of fact, I started writing a book of short stories, and my coach has been after me for "her pages"... she reminds me of the kid in Better Off Dead, the newspaper boy, always after his two dollars, and the family NEVER has the two dollars, and one of the last scenes is this kid on his bike, screaming "GIVE ME MY TWO DOLLARS!!!"  Funny stuff....  So yea, I'm not writing for nothing, it seems, and I should be.  Of course, this blog is supposed to be about family stuff...not "Sarah stuff"  So Sammi and I went to the Pumpkin Patch this morning... see if I can post some pictures of that where they post to the RIGHT SPOT...

Ah...there we go.  The first time I tried to post this picture, it posted at the top... where it meant nothing.  Cute, eh?  Ok, let me see if I can post one of her with her pumpin... I'd like to post the entire class, but I don't think that would be appropriate.  Not everyone wants their kids pictures on the internet!  Ok...

Yes, she IS a cutie... No, I'm not prejudiced ;).  Now, a picture of her grooming a horse.  Yeehaw!

Good, the other little girl's face is sufficiently obscured.  It's not that I am focusing on Sammi, more that I am trying NOT to violate other people's rights... but enough of that, lol.  This blog is NOT a political statement :).  So anyway, that was my morning... time well spent. 
In other "crazy around here" news, have been trying to potty train Miss Alex, and it is NOT going well.  Not well at all.  That child is... well, I have a friend who said she's a stinker, and that about sums it up.  Little girl's got attitude to spare.  I love her to death, and she absolutely does drive me up a wall when she simply refuses to do something I ask, which is often enough.  I've been putting her in her room, which she hates, so it's effective.  The corner is NOT effective, and of course, we don't spank (though I have my moments when I wonder if that would work on her!  She does tend to be the most defiant of all the girls)  It's gonna be interesting to see what she's like as a teenager considering what she's like as a toddler.  She's a sweetheart though, and very, VERY funny.  If she sees you in pain, she does what she can to comfort you.  Oh, and she's incredibly protective.  I once had a woman screaming at me, and Alex stood up and told her to stop it.  Sammi and Shabree were just too scared to do anything (which is what I would expect actually).  So her attitude has its pros.  She speaks her mind!  She's not going to be a person that lets herself get walked all over :)  That's a good thing if you ask me.  She may need to temper it and learn how to effectively rebuke people in a "nice" way, but she's not going to be a "too nice" person.... she will stand her ground.  I stand my ground, but confrontation leaves me shaky, I hate it.  I do try to avoid it, if possible... but I am not going to let people abuse me, or dis-respect me, or walk all over me.  It can be hard though to do that.  Sometimes it's just easier and perhaps better to let things go. 
What else is there?  Shabree and Sydni are off at Carroll's Fall Festival.  I can barely believe that Shabree's in the 4th grade and Sammi started Kindergarten... ouch.  That just leaves Alex.  People STILL ask me if there are plans for another, and my answer is always the same... I have my moments of wanting another, but I quash them like a bug and remind myself that I am 41 years old and 5 children is PLENTY!  Even if I only gave birth to 3 of them... Alex's pregnancy was hard on me.  Plus, I am SO glad to be done with baby-hood, which is just time consuming and exhausting.  It's a little hard to watch them growing up and know there's not another one behind, but I'll bet within 10 years or so, Bec or Syd will gave a child.  Though I'm still not convinced that Bec should have children... maybe she'll be better with her own, she's awfully hard on her sisters, to a point where Alex wants little to do with her and she's managing to alienate most of them.  We'll see.  She's just not very loving or affectionate, or patient.  Of course, she's 16, so that can ALL change.  When I was her age, I loved being around little kids, but maybe it's different when they're your sisters and often you're thrown into more of a parental role.  However, Becca is parental with an edge to her.  One day a week or two ago, I came home to 3 of the 4 younger ones crying... Alex is generally "too tough" to cry, so it was Sammi, Shabree and Sydni, and I think perhaps Alex was yelling, but don't quote me, I can't remember for sure.  Becca had managed to hurt Shabree and Sydni and scared Sammi into tears with her yelling.  Now... I know I've yelled in the past, but I told Bec the difference between me and her, is that I'm TRYING to get a hold of my yelling (and I'm doing a good job of it too... though I get Sydni when I've barely raised my voice telling me to stop yelling, which is actually her way of trying to control me.  Irritating)  I think if Becca has kids, she should really wait til she's much older and wiser.  The way she is now, I think her kids would wonder if their mommy loved them or not.  I can see her taking care of them in a perfunctory way, but not a loving way... again though, this IS based on how she treats her sisters, and I may be completely wrong.  But she's not really affectionate with ANYONE, not even her dad or mom.  Now Sydni, she'll take a hug or a kiss from any of us, and she IS affectionate, and I can see her raising her kids in a way where they WILL feel loved.  Shabree too, though she's going to have to force herself to change diapers, lol... kind of funny, of those three... I think Syd would probably make the best mom for her blend of lovingness but ability to get things done when she wants to.  Bec gets things done, Shabree doesn't.  Shabree is loving and affectionate as well, but she will more than likely struggle to keep a house up... following in my footsteps there, though I hope NOT.... she could certainly take after Jerry there, that would be good. 
Sammi is reading me a "My Little Pony" book...we've got to work on her sight words while off-track, along with getting rooms cleaned up, and the house looking MUCH better.  I've almost got the laundry conquered, though I haven't done any in a couple of days, which I am going to regret...maybe I should go put in a load now.
I'm getting kind of tired of writing anyway, so will go do that :).  I'll have to write about myself, but that is going to need a different blog.  Crazy Around Here is supposed to be family oriented....  bye!

Ugh. Yes... it's been crazy busy around here. I exercise an hour and a half to two hours most days, Sydni got her school stuff from K12, so we started in on that... big disaster. I hope "actual school" goes better. Actually, Syd is really far behind, and her reading is testing at about a 4th grade, second month level, and her multiplication tables need a lot of work, so last night we started working on her 6 times, and we'll do one a day, and test her, and she'll get them. She's really got the 6x down today. I was proud of her, since we only worked on them for about 20 minutes last night. I am thinking we'll work on 7 or 8 tonight. I need to print her out a multiplication test, timed, and have her run through it and let her see herself getting better day by day. I was just really concerned about her, because when we did the first test, she insisted that she had to have a times table, that she always got one at school, and that she didn't have to memorize them. That sent me over the edge a little bit...well, that and her snotty attitude. Did NOT appreciate the snotty attitude. Jerry and I had a good chat with all of them about attitude, and acting like we're going to do home school like they did "regular" school. We aren't. And I don't know if they realize, but the expectations are probably going to be higher. I plan on working with them all extensively in their spelling, as it tends to be a weak subject with all of them (seems like anything that requires memorization is!) I thought we'd work on it firs thing in the morning for about 10 minutes, and last thing in the afternoon, for another 10 minutes. And maybe another 10 minutes before they go to bed (because that will cement it in their heads as they sleep) I have been working with Shabree on her times tables as well. She loves being ahead.
Sammi hurt her knee last night. We have a 12:30 doctor's appointment, because it STILL hurts this morning, and she's having trouble walking on it. Some kid slammed into her in the jump house, or on the slide, not sure, I wasn't there to see it. Last night was National Night Out, and the local park was having a BIG celebration, but I was just SO tired, I just took Alex home and rested. Actually, I started cleaning out the office we're going to use as a school room, so it wasn't THAT restful, but I got to open up the new computer we got from the school, and while it's not assembled yet, I took it out and had a look at all the pieces and parts, which was FUN.

Ooh... Alex just crawled in here, and I can smell... be right back...

Okay, that's done. You gotta love it (not) when a 14 month old lifts your shirt to help herself to your milk supply.
Sammi had speech therapy today...she's getting MUCH more understandable these days, and she has a ton more words in general. She said McDonald's yesterday clear as a bell, it was kinda funny actually. But we ended up eating at Burger King instead anyway, and never did make it to McDonald's. Maybe today (IF we don't buy any food! The fast food places are KILLING my budget!)
I gotta get some shopping in today as well. We need food.
I had to buy a new battery charger for my really good camera. I haven't been able to locate the charger in months, and I HAVE looked. I finally decided it would just be easier to buy a new one for under 20 dollars off Ebay than to deal with not having it, plus the new charger will come with an extra battery, so that'll be handy to have. I've lived with only one battery, but it's definitely nicer to have two. It should be here in a few days, hopefully by the weekend. I've just been taking pictures with my little camera, which does an okay job, and is better for taking places anyway. But I do miss my big camera, especially when I want to do something staged, because it does take nicer pictures overall. Anyway, it'll be nice to be able to use it again. I'm fairly sure that battery charger is probably in the desk out in the living room... but I haven't been able to find it when I've gone looking. I should have known better than to take the charger out there in the first place!
Looks like Shabree might finally be registered for home school, though I've gotten no messages about receiving her things. I'll be pretty excited when those arrive! Syd's boxes were pretty cool (and heavy!) There was a ton of stuff for her AND me in there. I just wonder if we should be looking at putting her back into fourth grade maybe? Though she was doing all right on the 5th grade stuff she was doing... I've got to go to Wal mart and get a wireless usb card for that computer so it can connect to the internet.
Well, I am going to get going, to take Sammi to the doctor. Her knee doesn't look swollen, but she can't walk on it, so thought it would be prudent to have it looked at. Hopefully it's all right.

My apologies for the long period between posts. I've been so busy with the kids, though Syd and Shabree have been in school this past week... though we DO plan to home school them this year, in case that didn't go through (we are going through www.k12.com) we wanted to make sure they didn't fall behind in school, should they end up going there instead. Jerry was kind of hoping they'd want to go to school, because it gets him up earlier in the morning, and it's so much more quiet without them here. But they all continue to want to home school, so home school we shall do.
Shabree's birthday was pretty good. She bought a bike with her money, she got a bike she can grow into. It was a little more expensive, but I told her that it would last longer. She was really nervous about spending 80 dollars on a bike, instead of 50. However, she LOVES her "big bike" It's a 22 in bike, so it IS big. Syd is riding Shabree's old bike (because she busted up the tires on her bike) so I expect that Syd will also get a new bike for her birthday... as well as Sammi. Sammi's doing pretty well on Shabree's old bike...except that it falls over occassionally because the training wheels are too large for it and "Jerry rigged" Actually, we bought some training wheels from a garage sale that should work (but then I think the old bike might need new tires, not sure though... I guess we'll see... Jerry needs to put those training wheels on). We didn't do much the day OF Shabree's birthday, because we'd gone on John's on Jerry's birthday on Monday, and then on Saturday we were planning on going swimming, though it turned out that there was a swim meet, so we went on Sunday instead. On Friday, Shabree's actual birthday, we went up to Lodi to see Kim, and Shabree got her birthday presents from her, and then from us at home. We also had Shabree's favorite food... hot dogs, and she wanted chili, so we had chili dogs. Shabree had FOUR hot dogs! And THAT is why we don't normally buy hot dogs, she eats too many of them at once. She had two before we went to Lodi, and two after we came home.
Swimming on Sunday was fun... oh, I almost forgot, we went to Hometown Buffet for dinner on Saturday, it was only 20 dollars for all of us because we had buy one get one free birthday coupons, WHOO, and the kids were 99 cents each. YEA! So we saved a lot of money. We actually did that about 3 times this month, but since it usually costs us around 50 to take everyone to dinner, we did really great only spending 20. Like 3 dinners for the price of one! LOL.
I'm trying to think what else happened this month. Except for the birthdays, it's been fairly quiet around here. Fairly! I got a Wii from my mom for my birthday, and the Wii Fit from Jerry, so I've been using it to help me lose weight. I'm down about 15 pounds from where I started back when Jerry was diagnosed with diabetes and we decided to go on a diet together. Of course, HE loses 3 pounds a week without exercise, I have to work my butt off to get 2 pounds a week off. Sigh. Men. They don't know how good they have it! Anyway, he only has about 15 or 20 pounds to go before he gets down to where he wants to be, 175, where I still have something like 60 pounds to get down to the 150 I want to be, and the Wii says I should be 140! I haven't seen 140 since I was about 12 years old! The last time I saw 145, I was 18... so I think MAYBE I could get down to 145, but I'm FINE with 150. I thought I'd ask the doctor what she thinks.

Well, I left the computer for about 3 hours, guess I should post.

Jerry's birthday

Okay, so it's the 6th of July, and Jerry turned.... FORTY! Whoohoo. So I got him a bike for his birthday... and it matches my bike, only it's blue instead of purple. Same brand, guy bike though, not a woman's... obviously. MINE is a woman's bike, because they simply don't make guy's bikes purple.

Anyway, we went to John's Pizza for dinner, but I FORGOT the camera, so I took no pictures at John's. We went to the Roseville one for various reasons, but the biggest one was that the last itme we were there, with mom, she bought us a "buy one, get one for 5 dollars" token card worth 65 tokens. So we used the one that night, and then still had this one left over, so we used it tonight. We went before 3 for lunch pricing, Jerry and Shabree were free, as were Sammi and Alex (whoo!) so for Bec, Syd and I, it was 20 dollars. We went to dinner on Friday night for 20 for all of us too! YEA! We are spending so LITTLE on dinners out, it's awesome. So a good time was had by all, though Bec and Syd used their tokens (15 of them) in like... 10 minutes. They came back fast. We had gotten a coupon for buy one get one free bumper car ride, so I gave that to Jerry and Shabree as a birthday present, and watched them while they did it (wishing I'd remembered my camera the entire time!!!) I played a game that's easy to get tickets on, and gave all my tickets to Shabree, who's decided to hang on to them until she gets 1000 of them so she can get something good (only 60,000 tickets for a Wii!!!! LOL... of course, I might have been able to get one by now if I'd saved all the tickets I ever got...) We had a REALLY good time. After that, we had a little more to eat (it was 5:30ish by this time), and we left around 6, to get home by 7. I never did have a chance to make a cake, but Bec and Syd had enough dessert at John's, they did NOT need cake. Sammi would hardly eat anything "good" for her, she just wanted ice cream, and to PLAY... "Play... play." She played. We all had a good time, as I mentioned, though maybe not Becca, because I made her watch Alex and Sammi while I played, and watched Jerry and Shabree. Though Bec was not doing a great job of watching them, because I was able to come and snatch Sammi away while she was looking away, and she never even knew I did it... well, until later when I told her yea it was me who took her. God, I hope Sammi would scream bloody murder if a stranger ever did that to her. She probably would, she doesn't like strangers much.
Anyway, we came home around 7, and around 7:30, finally gave Jerry his bike, and about 8:30 or so, finally took our first bike ride as a family. We also gave him a bunch of handmade cards, mine was given to him before we left, everyone else gave theirs to him when we got back (Bec hadn't quite finished hers when we left for John's.)

4th of July

I have too many pics of Alex, but I couldn't resist this one... TOO CUTE!

Shabree's swim test... she passed.

The girls took pictures of the ducks. They saw some ducklings but couldn't get a good pic.

As it was getting dark, I took pictures of the girls, who were sitting on our "blanket"

We had a really good 4th. Obviously, we went swimming first. Jerry ended up having to do something for work (which ended up NOT needing to be done just then, darn it!) so we arrived an hour after they opened. We took sandwich makings and crackers and sodas. We ate around 2, and then I went into the "big" pool for probably something close to an hour, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Then I took Sammi and Alex into the pool where it's zero depth entry, so that Alex could crawl around and Sammi could run in and out as she likes to do. Sometimes it's hard to keep an eye on that girl. When I was in the big pool, she would come dangle her feet in the pool, then all of a sudden, get up and go to her daddy who was sitting by the snack shack. Shabree passed her swim test the first time around, but is definitely not as confident in the water as she used to be. She was MUCH better in years past. After we went swimming, we went and picked up more sandwich stuff, and headed for Elk Grove regional park. Jerry dropped us off then went and parked in a nearby neighborhood to save on parking (which was 10 dollars, and it was nice to be able to keep it.) We got a GREAT view of the fireworks, this time I made the sandwiches before we left so we didn't have to make our own. They were really good. We also took some fruit and more crackers. Jerry was feeding Alex and I cherries (without the pits to Alex) We also got to enjoy one band, a Christian jazz rock kind of sound. Little odd, but ok. As I said, we had a great view of the fireworks, and the show was really good, quite enjoyable, much more so than last year. We were by the lake, so the girls got to see the ducks, and there were ducklings as well. And this year, we sent the girls to the bathroom WELL in advance of the fireworks so they wouldn't be saying "I have to go to the bathroom NOW" when they started (which has happened to us in the past! Esp at Disneyland!) We all got a LITTLE too much sun, just pink mostly, even Alex's shoulders were pink. I could feel it on my back when I put my backpack on. We're going to go swimming again next Saturday for Shabree's birthday, and will hopefully make it by 12 this time, and not miss any of the fun. I'll have to get sandwich makings again. That was nice, having lunch there. The last time we'd gone swimming, we only had trail mix, and it was okay, but we were kinda hungry when we got home.

Some pics of Alex

I'll spare you the breast feeding pictures (though there's REALLY nothing to see!)