Rollins style

Just a little video Josh captured the other night of the kids dancing to Gangam Style. Laila LOVES this song and actually asks for it by doing the little hand move. Sadly she wouldn't do it for the camera but the dancing is still pretty cute. Please excuse my sons inappropriate moves. He's a boy!

Records Day

It seems like we have had a lot of no school days around here lately. First it was mid winter break then a snow day and now this week we had records day. I'm not really sure what records day is all about, I just know the kids don't have school.

 

I tried to prepare myself for the day of craziness by locking myself in my room for a while to read but it was quickly interrupted by James who came in asking for that black marker you draw on your face with. After a minute or two of back and forth confusion I figured out he was talking about my eye liner. I wasn't sure I wanted to let him use it, but decided it would buy me a few more minutes of quiet so I handed it over. Five minutes later I was summoned downstairs for a front row seat to the Samm and The Lightning Thieves concert. Best. Concert. Ever! I was really sad when I took out my video camera and the battery was dead.

 

Most days Samm can only handle one group activity with the younger kids before she has had enough but that day the stars were aligned and after the concert she led them in a game of recycle ville. Basically they raided the recycle bin for cardboard and then made a little town for cars to drive around in. This was the just the beginning of recycle ville. I wish I would have taken a picture when it was all done because it really was quite impressive. What is even more impressive though is that they sat and played cars for FOUR hours! AND with only one little squabble at the very end.

 

And this is totally unrelated but I'm tacking it on anyway. Samm and Macy used to play dress up together all the time, but since Samm has outgrown it Macy doesn't play with the dress up clothes anymore unless a friend is over. One day last week though I went down stairs and found these two playing together.

 

Macy is laying on the couch because she was sleeping beauty and Laila apparently was channeling Michael Jackson. 

 

 

I'm hoping for a lot more dress up days still to come!

Where I've been, Josh turns 35, and take your wife to work day.

OK, I'm going to try and explain a little about why my blogging has been so scarce, but that's a little difficult right now. Keep reading and you will find out why.

So, the short (ish) version of why I haven't done much blogging is because I am just plain exhausted. After a six month break from exercise I joined the rest of the country this January in hitting the gym again. This time though I decided that I really wanted to get in shape. Something I have never done before. I was spending a couple hours in the gym 5-6 times a week and doing some workouts at home. Plus, I decided to take a serious look at what we were eating as a family and was honestly pretty disgusted and disappointed in myself as a mom. I had never really read any of the labels on the stuff my kids were eating and I discovered that I was stuffing my kids with sugar and mystery chemicals. Getting rid of processed foods though means more time in the kitchen making snacks I'm happy to serve my kids.

After so much hard work, here is what I was not prepared for. 1) like I mentioned before, straight up exhaustion. My body just could not keep up and I was literally falling asleep in church, which if you know me well you know I have trouble sleeping and that would never happen normally. 2) My kids rejected 90% of what I was making. It was so frustrating to spend hours planing and making food that no one would eat. 3) The amount of crap they were being given outside of our house. I don't expect them to never have candy again, but it seems like they are getting it every day from somewhere.

While I am super excited to report that for the first time in my life I have muscle definition (maybe someday I will be brave enough to post a picture), it's just not worth the sacrifices I've had to make for myself and my family (my house has not been really clean in weeks). So I'm cutting back on the crazy workouts (not giving them up completely) and buying some foods that come in packages (only short lists of ingredients with names I recognize) and hoping to find some balance.

And, speaking of balance Josh and I decided that even though we are eating healthy at home we still want to splurge for special occasions like birthdays and holidays. Last week Josh turned 35 and what he really wanted to eat more than anything was a Bloomin Onion. So, to Outback we went.

 

I caught her licking ranch off her plate with a huge smile on her face.

Free birthday desert that dad was nice enough to share.

I always forget a bib when we go out to eat. Fortunately this time most of it ended up on her face and not her shirt. 

And finally, today was a snow day from school. The kids were thrilled of course. Me, not so much, but I was going to make the best of it by doing some fun things in the kitchen with the kids. I was hoping that if they helped make the food, they might be more willing to eat it. Then I changed my mind though and decided I would rather spend my afternoon at the hospital with Josh. I'm not going to tell you what happened because I was told I need to come up with a better story. I will tell you though that I did NOT slice my finger because I used a very sharp knife to try and make the hole in the top of a very tiny essential oil bottle bigger. That would just be silly. 

 Josh was in surgery when I got there so I wasn't expecting him to come down, but I was very happy when he did. It's amazing how much more at ease I was having him making the call on my finger instead of an unknown ER resident.

 

In the end I just got a few stitches to close up the skin, but there was a lot of in-between stuff including an IV, tetanus shot, and having Josh shove needles into my hand to completely numb my finger so he could cut it open more to get a better look and make sure I didn't damage something important. He explained it to me several times and showed me diagrams but I could never explain it to all of you. I will tell you though that having my finger numbed hurt like hell! For women who have given birth, imagine multiple epidurals in your hand. I would not recommend it to anyone. They did give me quite the bandage for all my trouble and a pass from dishes for a whole week!

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If your squeamish like I am, keep scrolling really fast. For anyone who is interested though this is the nice little cut I gave myself. I sent Josh this picture after it happened. Actually I sent him a different picture first and he said "no I need you to open the cut and take a picture so I can see how deep it is." I am very proud of myself for not passing out while doing it, because I promise you I was feeling very light headed.

So here I sit with a very numb bandaged finger attempting to type. It's not so easy.

It's the little things

Winter has settled in to stay for a while, so were doing the best we can to make our days less blah.

 

She's 5!!!

Yes, it has been a very long time since my last post. No, I do not have an explanation other than I just didn't feel like blogging. To be honest, I still don't, but the pictures are piling up. Instead of trying to go all the way back and play catch up though I'm just going to jump right in on where we are right now.

And, where we are right now is that Macy is now FIVE! She told a lady at the store the other day that she turned five and the girl said "five? you look seven!" And it's true, she has always looked and acted so much older than she is that sometimes I forget that she really is just five. So, in honor of my big but still little five year old, here are five fun facts about Macy

1. Her nickname is Macy Face or just Face for short.
2. She LOVES sour cream/cream cheese/ranch/anything that is creamy and can be used for dipping, although scooping is more like what she does.
3. She loves to play board games and always asks me if I want to verse her.
4. She LOVES to win/ HATES to loose.
5. She always wants to sleep in bed with James or Samm, but she hates being touched while she sleeps (just like her mom) so I always find her in her own bed when I check on her.

Since Macy turned the magical five this year she got to have a family party and her very first friend party, and was incredibly spoiled!

Our family party was really just cake and ice cream with presents and Q tips because I always forget to buy candles. The Q tips were Josh's idea.

The one thing that Macy had been asking for forever is pink flarp. As you can see she was pretty happy that her wish finally came true.

She also got a bow and arrow set, because as girly as Macy is when is comes to painting her nails, she just isn't that girly when it comes to toys.

We just had Macy's friend party today and she was pretty happy about the whole thing. She has been planning her Dora party for quite some time.

As the kids were arriving we had them sit at the table and color Dora characters that we cut out and glued to brown paper. It really helped to keep the kids busy while we were waiting for those few last stragglers, and doubled as a table cloth when it was time for cake and ice cream!

The entertainment for the party was a carnival where they played games and earned tickets that they used to buy prizes at the end of the party. Macy invited a lot of kids so I came up with the idea for a carnival to keep all the kids having fun with games but not as one massive chaotic group. I wasn't quite sure if it would go as smoothly as I had planned, but it was a huge hit. Even James who insisted that he was not going to help with a Dora party had a lot of fun. He was in charge of the basketball game and was VERY generous with his tickets.

We had a little coin toss.

And a Boots the monkey banana bean bag toss. Sadly he had to be a hair-less Boots, but none of the kids seemed to notice.

Samm was in charge of a pin the mouth on Dora game. She drew it herself and cut out all of the mouths. Samm also did all of the decorating for me.

The big hit of the carnival was this fishing/ bow and arrow game. They got to shoot the arrow over and then it came back with a ticket attached. Macy invited our neighbor Jenny who is 11 and she was nice enough to sit behind the blanket and help out.

We did orange cupcakes with pink frosting and star sprinkles, since Dora wears orange shorts and a pink shirt. Those two ladies in the mirror were nice enough to hang out and help as well. Having the extra adults around was really nice.

So many kids!

So many presents! Laila thinks they are all for her. She still isn't talking much, but the word mine is pretty easy to understand.

Phew, shooting arrows is hard work!

Parties really are a lot of work, but it's so worth it to see how excited the kids get. Macy has been waiting a long time for this party and she was all smiles the whole time.

An original Samm Rollins Production

I meant to post this last week, but forgot. Christmas Eve seems like the perfect time for it anyway since we always had some sort of Christmas Eve production growing up.

 

A few things I should mention. 1. Please ignore the mess! There were a lot of projects going on last week. 2. Samm insisted that it be dark to be more like night time so sorry about the picture quality and the fact that you can't really see her awesome sheep on cardboard drawings. 3. Please know that we do not believe angels wear mini dresses. Samm came up with all the costumes on her own and was really proud of everything so we rolled with it. 4. I ask the kids to sing our new favorite Christmas song at the end, but didn't realize until just now watching the video how distracting James is. It is a really pretty song though called Could I hold the baby.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Laila and Baby

 

I finally have a girl that likes dolls!

 

 

We've had this doll for quite a while but she's always been just another toy in the box until Laila came along. Now at nap time it's baby and fuzzy or no deal! 

 

And for the non facebook crowd, I wanted to share this cute picture again that I took of her yesterday. Josh asked me if I stage these pictures of her and No, I do not.

 

 

More from Macy

"Look mom I'm Santa Claus!"

 

"Hey wait, why does Santa have a claw in his name?"

Kid Quotes

The best part of my day is when one of the kids says something so funny that I can't wait for Josh to get home so I can tell him. Sadly, I keep forgetting to record them here so that one day they can read them and laugh also. I'm recommitting myself right now to doing better, so here are a few from this week.
'

I was driving in Josh's car with Macy a few days ago when she said "Dad has really awesome music in his car, huh?"

I replied with a half hearted "uh huh"

And then she said "I don't like awesome music because it's too loud and screechy. I'm a girl so I like calm music."

Oh man, then I started laughing because she obviously has picked up on the fact that mom does not like loud music and dad does.

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Just this afternoon Josh walked in the door right after the kids got home from school which is very unusual. He mentioned that he had an hour before he was officially on call and when I asked what he was going to do with his free hour he said that he was going to bond with his son.

James was standing next to us and asked "what's bonding?"

So I told him that basically it meant that dad was going to rough him up a little and that he would cry, but that they would become better friends because of it.

Without even hesitating he said "But I'm already his friend!"

Another First

 

Since Samm is the oldest she gets the honor of doing most of the "firsts", and pine wood derby got added to that list last night. Yes, it's usually a scout thing, but we decided that it would be a fun activity to do with our activity day girls for recognition night. The girls loved it, but I think it will be a once every four years event!

 

 

All of the girls got a certificate, Samm's was for Most Dreamy.

 

Here is what we learned from our first Pine Wood Derby event...There are some very serious pine wood derbiers out there and we are going to have to seriously step up our game come May when James gets his block of wood!