My younger three girls are all sick again. It’s sort of a coughing cacaphony over here. Anika (age 5) came down with croup on Saturday (while at my parents’ house no less!), and had to come home early from her play weekend with Grandpa and Grandma. She was so sick when I picked her up that she didn’t even complain despite the fact that Trinity, who was spending the weekend there too, got to stay an extra day.

Ani was fine on Friday, but woke up at six in the morning on Saturday barking like a seal and wheezing. Lucky Grandma! Actually, my Mom handled everything great. She steamed up her bathroom and let Anika sit in there while Mom called the advice nurse who told her to go steam up her bathroom. Guess my Mom passes the Grandparenting Minor Medical Emergency test. Way to go, Mom!

So now the croup seems to have mellowed into a more normal sounding miserable cough, and the fever petered out a couple of days ago. Apparently feeling left out, Kyra and Faith both decided that coughing would make a nice addition to their vocal ranges and started hacking away as well.

After I dropped Georgie and Trinity off at school this morning, the three little girls sat in the backseat and coughed in unison (or pretty close) all the way home. I think I need a HazMat suit now… So charming, being in a small, enclosed space with your darling children when they are actively spewing germs at the back of your head at ninety miles an hour! In case that weren’t enough to make everyone around here happy to be alive, Faith (our one year old) picked this week to attempt to sprout four new molars. Let’s just say that the tone of our week has been more strident than melodious.

In the plus column, however, we took the kids to the Portland Art Museum on Friday to go look at the Egypt exhibit. I wasn’t sure how they would do since they would have to quietly mill about looking interested at what small children could conceivably construe as several thousand year old junk; but between a shameless bribe of two tic tacs to anyone who behaved themselves (yes yes, Mommy=cheapskate) and the childrens’ surprising knowledge of Egyptian icons due to watching “The Mummy” way too many times, they were all fascinated and enjoyed themselves very much.

We did have to explain once or twice or ten times that the mummy in the museum was, in fact, not going to come to life and that scarab beetles do not actually eat people from the inside, but we covered those important points before we even left the house so as to have a minimal amount of screaming in terror whilst actually touring the museum. Seemed to work well.

Actually, even the trip to the museum was interesting. We got in a fender bender when the guy two cars in front of us inexplicably stopped in the middle of the highway and the motorcycle behind us ran into our new and now dented van (interesting may possibly be the incorrect adjective there…). No one was injured and the damage wasn’t that much either (the motorcyclist was able to drive away as well).

Okay, so that wasn’t the paragraph I was thinking of when I said “interesting.” That would be this one. The museum is located in the Park Blocks of Portland up by the university, and the streets run along on either side of a park area (hence the not terribly creative name) with statues of presidents. When we drove past Abraham Lincoln, Trinity shrieked “Look! It’s President Lincoln” much to my surprise (she’s six); and when we drove past Theodore Roosevelt, Georgie pointed at him and announced that he was “the twenty-sixth President of the United States, but I can’t remember his name.” (Georgie’s eight).

When I stopped laughing, I pointed out that he was Theodore Roosevelt and asked how he knew who he was. From “Night At the Museum,” of course. Apparently they watch too many movies. On the other hand, it’s difficult to complain when they pick up educational stuff like who the past Presidents were and Egyptian history (in between all the silliness of live mummies and feuding dioramas). I suppose that’s why we do things like take them to museums and actually talk to them: to help them decipher what’s real.

Well, I’m off to enjoy another sleepless night of Faith screaming (last night she ended up coming to bed with me at 3a.m., and I spent the following delightful five hours trying to snooze while being repeatedly kicked in the head by a squirrly baby). Hurray for Starbucks! And Disney. Hurray for Starbucks and Disney! Thus ends our product placement portion of the story… Now if I could only get Starbucks and Disney to give me a little kickback for the mention… Ahhh, what’s life without goals?

Have a lovely weekend! Say hello to Dreamland for me…

Rachel

We’re back from our forty-eight hour escape to the beach, and it was great! The weather was horrid, but that didn’t really bother us because then we didn’t have to feel guilty for lying around watching movies in the hotel room all day. Hehe. Oh bummer!

We shopped at the tiny little collection of stores that masquerades as an outlet mall, and went to see Music and Lyrics. That actually wasn’t too bad. Hugh Grant does his usually Hugh-y thing (yes, I admit, I’m kind of a fan of the Hugh-ness), this time playing a has been rocker who was in a hit band in the ’80s. The music video from the band’s big hit runs through the opening credits, and Hugh Grant doing cheesy 80’s dance moves is worth the price of admission. I laughed the whole way through. The rest of the movie was mainly just fluff, but nothing too revolting.

We also watched the old Brando classic, On The Waterfront, which neither Hubby nor I had ever seen. Wow, is that a great movie! Sometimes those old films everyone raves about don’t seem to hold up so well, but this one really does.

I got all caught up on sleep for the first time in a year and a half, and was delighted to discover that this made the dark circles I keep covering up with foundation disappear. How cool is that?? I told Hubby we need to escape more often because it’s good for my skin. That’s the most important thing, right?

Well, that’s about it for around here. Have fun shopping!

Rachel

Hubby and I are leaving town today to go to the beach, and we won’t be back until Friday. HURRAY!!!! Oh, did that sound overly excited? I’m soooo looking forward to it. Last time we got away for a couple of days was when I was pregnant with Faith (about a year and a half ago) and I had morning sickness. We basically spent two days sleeping. Actually, we’ll probably do that again this time. The really disgusting thing is that both of us think that sleeping for two days sounds like a great idea. Man, we’re old.

Faith has passed the one year mark now and has apparently developed to that lovely point where things such as strewing the contents of cupboards all over the kitchen floor is high entertainment. Right up there with the very exciting toilet water! I spend half my day chasing her all over trying to keep her out of whatever she’s decided to make a mess of now.

The other half, of course, is spent trying to keep Kyra out of whatever she’s decided to make a mess of or breaking up the fights that ensue when Kyra nonchalantly swipes and/or breaks whatever her brother or sisters happen to be playing with. It’s been awhile since I’ve had two in this delightful demolition stage at the same time.

It’s exhausting and my ears are tired from everyone crying because they are constantly being told they can’t get into/play with/eat/steal/ or break whatever they’ve latched onto as their new favorite toy. Faith thinks that the dishwasher is a giant toybox and Kyra spent most of Monday getting into everyone else’s chocolate that my parents gave them for Valentine’s Day. That meant that the older three kids were all hollering at her and/or crying over their half eaten gifts and Kyra was crying because she was in trouble. I fished her out of candyland three times and practically every time I turned around she was still covered in chocolate. Not so stealthy, that one… Anyway, I’m reeeeeeeally excited about escaping for a couple of days.

One of my closest friend’s husband is going out of town for two days, so she told me she decided she was going to come over and watch my kids so we could escape. I spent three hours bouncing around the house with a Joker-sized grin on my face. She told me this in the middle of our regular card game and I was so distracted after that, that I lost miserably (she was sort of the hero of the night for that). Anyway, my computer will not be making the trek with us to the beach, so I will be answering emails again after Friday. Have a wonderful weekend, remember that the Baby Sale has been extended through the 19th, and have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Rachel

Another goofy week over here. The U joint was replaced on our van on Saturday, so we thought we had dodged a huge, broken-van-shaped bullet (the universal joint was a $10 part). We all piled on into the car for church on Sunday, and all the way there it kept making the same weird noises. We drove it down to Hubby’s parents’ house for the Superbowl, and our mechanic friend was there too so he and Hubby drove it around the block. Well guess what. It really does need a new transmission. Oh the joy!

Monday we started looking on Craigslist, and last night we bought a new van. You know, Craigslist is wonderful for all those large items that eBay isn’t so great at. I think every scrap of furniture in our dining room and family room we found there and now we have an automobile we found there too. Brilliant! (I feel very British when I say that).

The new van is a Dodge Ram eight passenger behemoth like our old one except it’s a bit longer. It’s also seven years newer and only has 90k miles on it. And the paint isn’t peeling off the front in a successful effort to imitate a leper like our old one either. It seems to be well taken care of and has a perfectly clean history report a la Carfax.com (another one of those terrifically useful sites), so hopefully this will do us for awhile.

That’s about all the news around here for now. Hope you enjoyed Superbowl Sunday (or at least your Husbands did…), and have a great week.

Rachel