Great quote

I know a family who cruise out of Sydney often and they always book the YHA at the rocks. They get a family room and would never consider staying anywhere else. Don't think YHA think, comfortable hotel without all the unnecessary trimmings. They tell me the view from the rooftop is the best in Sydney.

 Think of a youth hostel as a hotel without all the trimmings.  Genius!  Hats off for the spin.

A surprise

Teddy's grandmother sent me this.  It was so kind of her and it was sweet that she even thought of me and sent it.  He looks happy.  Look at those football hands and the man boobs, he has and it's only nine months in this pic.  Look at that gorgeous, dimply smile.  Oh, my Scandal baby.  You are loved, missed, and prayed for.

Where my boys at???

Here's Teddy and Jory on St. Patrick's Day.

 Here's Jory with the adorable three-month-old who doesn't want his picture taken after church.  I love him to death, but Teddy is ruining my pics where my boys have matching outfits on.  God bless you, Sears!  Now I know our first stop next year for Easter is going to be Sears so Jack and Jory (and yes, that is intentional.  They'll have all the same initials, mostly, too.) can match.  God bless the buyer at Sears who understand that sometimes a ten-year-old and his one-year-old brother should be dressed alike.  I might do something crazy next year, like buy the boys' outfits first and then get the girls' dresses in coordinating colors.  I am so avant garde, it scares me.

Teddy was the only one of my kids to give himself a bedtime.  No later than 8:30, he was knocked out.  This night before school started, Jory fed the sleepy Teddy bear, who is rockin' a pj outfit Jory had worn nine years earlier.

My boys on Easter Sunday, but for the life of me I couldn't get my Teddy bear to smile.  Notice the matching tie and shirt.

The First Shots and the Last Ones

These pictures were taken three hours after Teddy arrived with a baby bag, a capless bottle with an ounce of some unknown type of formula, some clothes, not all seasonal appropriate, and no white onesies.

His look is I'm tired, where's my Ma, my aunt, my cousins, who are you people, why don't you smell like anything I've known, what in the world is going on....

And these photos were taken on Sunday after Teddy's first church service at AWANA church as the kids call it.  Layla was rockin' crazy bangs because someone who will not be named but goes by the name of Aunt Lala was too busy to cut the poor baby's bangs.  A tragedy the baby and everyone who saw her had to live with for months, but I digress.

TTT are rockin' their Easter 2013 clothes and Teddy is rockin' his new outfit that Aunt Peggy and Uncle Ric bought him.  He was celebrating his two month birthday and it was Super Bowl Sunday.  And this was one of the only times he allowed me to put him down, his terrorism had begun I just didn't know it.  And on this Sunday I literally held him for eight hours.

This poor baby had lost everything he knew and then thrust into this life with TTT.

These pictures were taken minutes before Teddy went to go live with his maternal aunt.  While he wasn't smiling at least he was rockin' those two teeth that took three months of drooling to get here.

They are sitting in Jory's car that taught me after the 23rd, Toys R Us doesn't answer the phone, and had me spending my birthday at their store at 2AM to see if the shipment really had this car on board, it didn't.  And I was there on Christmas Eve too, to check too.  People recognized me when I cam in the store, just what you want at Christmas time.  This car is staying in the house so my grandchildren can ride it for all the effort it took for me to get it.
 

Teddy was at home with Oma with...

hand foot mouth viral infection that he got from another kid under the age of five.  I think he got it playing with the toys in the visiting room when he had his visit with grandma.  These pics were taken when he was on the mend, so Teddy missed VBS.  He stayed home and was held by Oma and when I got home held by me.  The first night we probably slept in one or two hour increments.  Sometimes I couldn't remember if I had even slept or if I had just closed my eyes for a minute or two.

The blisters on his body, tongue, back of his throat, on his palms, the bottom of his feet didn't itch, PRAISE GOD, but didn't look comfortable either.  The ones in his mouth made it so that he didn't want a spoon or a bottle in his mouth.  Poor Teddy.  This of course sent Happy and Oma into a tizzy.  Having older wiser BTDT moms in your life is good, except sometimes I think they forget they were ever parents and they just start freaking out when illnesses come.  

I tried to explain that like us Teddy is human and when we get sick sometimes we don't eat and we don't starve to death and neither would Teddy.  We just had to keep him hydrated.  Neither liked that answer and I'm pretty sure neither believed me, so I had to call the doctor.  And the doctor said, if we had to put some water or sweetened pedialite down his throat with a syringe.  Hearing this made them feel better, and Happy discovered Teddy was quite happy to suck on a Popsicle.  And although half the content landed on his bib, he could drink out of a cup.

The doctor said it was contangious, but mainly to children five and under.  Man was I never so happy to have a six, seven, and nine-year-old.  And he said it would last a several days.  A sick Teddy isn't a happy Teddy.  Poor chunky monkey.  He just wanted to hold him, which made it impossible to get dressed to go to work.  I didn't want the kids to touch him, just in case they got it.  Cause while dealing with Teddy was difficult, if one of them had blisters and couldn't eat, particularly Jory or Layla, it would have been a complete disaster.  Yikes!  I don't even want to imagine.

Thank God for understanding bosses during hell week.  I got to work by 10, on good mornings I got there by a quarter to 10, and left by 4.  Teddy just went to Happy's in a onesie and blanket.  On Wednesday my sleep deprived self wanted the week to be over, but we pushed through and made it to Friday.  Yippee!!!  Hopefully next year VBS is a little less stressful.

So Teddy missed his first VBS, but he was able to come see their final performance and make it impossible for me to eat my chili hot dog after their performance.

You can tell he is feeling back to his old self because he's drinking out of a bottle and holding it himself.  He was a champ through his first illness.

While TTT was doing VBS.....

VBS aka hell week.  Such a torturous week for me.  Getting off early, picking up the kids, rushing home to eat dinner, put on VBS t-shirts, head out the door, thankfully drive against traffic, struggle to find a place to park, drop them off, then relax, eat dinner, and wait the two hours for it to be over.  Pick them back up, get in the car, drive home, take showers, put pjs on, then try to get them settled into bed.  So tiring.

But this was the final night.  I got to see their grand performance singing songs about what they learned.  This year's theme - - Agency D3.  As special agents, kids examined eyewitness reports, physical proof, and  Biblical accounts to uncover and defend the truth about Jesus.

It would be nice if they would just put my kids' in the same area.  So one shot would get all three.


 

 The boy child is in the third row, right above the baby.

Here's a video of their performance.

These performances, what they are learning, makes it worth the week of hell it puts me through.  And this church had 135 volunteers, practically the whole church volunteering in some aspect to help pull off VBS, I'm always in awe of them.

Aunt Connie and Uncle Dave

Aunt Connie and Uncle Dave bought Teddy this cool swing, that plays classic music, has a mirror so he can see himself, a safari theme, and makes animal noises.  He loves it for like five - ten minutes at a time.  I think he would like it for longer periods if little people didn't harass him and make him think life outside of the swing was better.

That's sort of smile while enjoying his favorite past time - - eating.

Bigs and Littles

Jory is rockin' his - - Big Brother, Super Hero t-shirt......Rowan is proudly rockin' her Big Sister t-shirt, Layla rockin' her Sisters Rock & Rule one....  They look very cute.  Whoever buys their clothes not only has great taste, but is a genius.

An unintentional moment of genius, last year's Easter picture of the terrific trio is right behind them.  GENIUS!

I was feeling lazy and didn't feel like finding Teddy's shirt.

But I did.  He's says Little Brother courtesy of Aunt Suzanne.

And then he wouldn't smile and he started drooling on it.  The clean shirt, he wants to drool on it.  Seriously dude?

Easy like Sunday morning....

Back from church and taking a few pics.  The girls look so cute in the matching dresses we got for them on the last cruise.

Teddy not being a good participant in picture taking time.  And really, neither is the baby.  Teddy look so cute in his three piece suit.  Five-months-old and he looks so good you can eat him.

AWANA Grand Prix

I'd heard about the AWANA Grand Prix for years and wasn't quite sure what it was.  Well this year we found out, Jory got to design his own car and watched as it was shaved into shape.  Then he got to paint it or color it, whatever he wanted to do to it.  I now realize we could do more than we did with it.  Good to know for next year.  The following week was race week. 

 There were many races configured by a computer generated system, so everyone had a chance to race everyone else.  Jory's car wasn't a winner.  He was knocked off in the second rounds of eliminations.  He didn't seem to mind.







The boys admiring the trophies.  I was worried that Jory might get an award just for participating.  I didn't want him to be that kid, that got trophies because he showed up and participated.

He did end up with a trophy for most aerodynamic car.  I found that wasn't a give away award since one kid won around three awards for his car.

And there's Jory's blue car trailing behind in a race.