Pictures from Eldora!

I forgot about our trip to Eldora in September! It was nice to get away from reality for a week and Maddie was able to go to her first race the night we got there.

Has it really been 3 months?

Wow! Time flies when you're always on the go, go, go! I can't even remember what's been happening over the past 3 months.

School has started up which means I have a full house pretty much every day now which is nice. The older three all seem to be doing well in school! Lexi's about to send us to the looney bin if she doesn't learn to control her mouth. She definitely says what's on her mind, but she needs to learn to censor herself most of the time. She gets her bottom braces on next week and has been doing a great job of brushing and taking care of them. Kiegan's grades have really been improving which is awesome! His teacher this year is so unbelieveably fantastic that I wish he could just have her every year. The school is looking into purchasing an auditory learning aid for Kiegan to use. It's a device that will help him to block out extra noise in the classroom so he can focus on what Mrs. Robey is teaching. We still go to Blm. 3-4 nights ever week - he has started on the 4th grade reading level so as soon as he gets through that and the 5th grade reading level, we will hopefully be done. It really wears on me being gone so many evenings. I don't know how parents do it that have multiple kids in multiple activities! My house is so unorganized and my countertops look horrendous and I'm falling behind in everything that it drives me bonkers. It probably doesn't help that I always have a house full of kids every day either. Oh well - that's life, right??

And Maddie - oh Miss Maddie - she runs this place! Hard to believe that she will be 2 years old in a couple of months. She tries to repeat most of what we say and sometimes it comes out so funny! She's also quite the dancer which is hilarious. I'm having a heck of a time finding diapers for her though. She's in size 7's which is the biggest they make diaper-wise and I have to order them off the internet b/c stores don't ever carry that size and it takes a week for them to be delivered so I really have to be on the ball about her diaper inventory! BUT even the size 7's are stretched to the max on her so I think I need to buckle down and work with her even more on potty training. She still goes every morning and when she wakes up from her naps, but it would sure be nice for her to go more often than that! Clothes are another story.....she's in 4T's and at first I thought that 3T stretchy pants would be ok and then get 4T in jeans, but that's not so much the case. I think she needs 4T stretchy pants and NO jeans or pants of any kind that snap/buckle at the waist. She's just too big!!

What else....oh yeah - we have a couple of new family members: Joe & Lola our goats! They are SO cool! I love them.....Joe isn't exactly the most friendly, but Lola likes it when you pet her. Travis is talking about getting some more and also a donkey b/c you have to have a donkey when you have goats to keep the coyotes away! It's gonna be Sancken Petting Zoo over here!

We went camping last weekend for probably the last time this camping season. It was ok....it was a large group of us and Friday night all of the adults decided it was a good idea to party all hours of the night between our camper and Pfaff's camper - the two campers that have little ones sleeping! I was NOT a happy Momma. Now I don't have a probably with having a good time, but when Maddie's with me I just can't bring myself to do it. All I think about is how awful I'll feel the next day and how useless I'll be to her AND I think about how much crap I have on my to-do list for that next day and I know none of it will get done if I've drank too much the night before! They all partied it up Saturday night too (minus Travis who was in bed by 8:30), but this time they did it away from our campers. They're all good people and I know they were just having a good time and like Travis says I should probably just toughen up and come out for awhile, but I tend to just avoid it all together (I'm an avoider by nature anyway!).

Halloween is this weekend! We get all the kids this year for trick-or-treating so that should be fun. Maddie is a spider witch or something like that (basically a costume I bought on clearance), Lexi is a ghost, Kiegan is Darth Maul (Star Wars of course!) and Patrick is Popeye (ironic, right?!). The store have the BEST candy this time of year and it is so not good for me to have around the house b/c I snack on it constantly! I tried a Take 5 candy bar - possibly my new favorite......

Kiegan's birthday is coming up here in a couple of weeks - 11 years! A commercial came on for a new Star Wars Wii game so that's what we will probably get for him. Those games are expensive, but the boys play the heck out of them! Next up will be Christmas for all of them - I love to shop for them, but it adds up for sure. Travis already gave me my birthday gift - a chest freezer. I love this thing! Now I don't have to haul myself ALL the way out to the shed to the standup freezer where I can't see what's all in it. This one has dividers in it and sliding racks - it is all so nicely organized! I could just stare at it I think....I'm definitely a wanna-be organized mom.

I'm sure tons more has happened since July, but that's just too much for my old brain to think about. I'll go through and see what pictures I have to put on here in another post....