Not just an ordinary Sunday

I dread Sunday's as I have mentioned many times before and today was no exception. Another Sunday of thinking about taking four kids to church alone yet again. Today I just wasn't in the mood for church to be honest and so the simplest solution to this was going to be staying home. The morning was smooth sailing, and I was just enjoying a nice peaceful morning of doing absolutely whatever I felt like. That was however short lived when my little four year old starting asking about when she could take a bath because she wanted to be clean for church. I simply told her that we would not be going to church today, and you would have thought that I told her that Santa Claus wasn't coming by the look of her face. I replayed the past few Sunday's in my mind and still was convinced that there was no way that we were going to relive one of those today.

Kelsie got her bath and after she got out of the bath, I soon found her getting a dress down from her closet and preceding to get ready for church anyway regardless of what I was telling her. During this time my oldest daughter was in my room watching a slide show that she had found about Jesus. Kelsie soon joined Alyssa and the two of them were discussing the video.

Random thoughts were again running through my mind, and I couldn't help but marvel at these two little girls who were trying so hard to be obedient in spite of their Mother's stubbornness. I had a complete change of heart about church, and thought that if I didn't make it to church today, I would never in a million years live this experience down.

We quickly got ready for church and surprisingly everyone was in a good mood even me. Kelsie assured me that she would even go to primary today. She hasn't been now for several weeks and so I was excited to hear her say this.

As I walked into church, the spirit was so strong. I knew that I really needed to be there today. My babies weren't sure that they needed to be there as they cried throughout most of sacrament meeting but that's okay. I was so touched with the talks that were given. I was also touched as I watched the wife of a newly baptized member cry as her husband was blessing the sacrament for the very first time. I wondered how many times I had taken the gospel fore granted but yet for some people, they had been searching their entire lives for this gospel.

After sacrament meeting, Kelsie began to cry and I knew that again she wasn't going to go to primary. Quickly our bishop's wife came over and asked if Kelsie could help her in primary. Kelsie agreed and actually went with her to primary ALONE! I was so proud of her. More importantly, she stayed in primary without crying. MEREDITH YOU ARE AMAZING! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I am so grateful for the tender mercies of the Lord, and I know that he really is watching over us. Even when we think that we can't go another day, he is there beside us giving us that extra push.

I hope to be a better example to my girls, I really am going to work on that!

Kevin happenings

You know, this blog seems to always be about me and the girls so I thought that it's about time that I mentioned something about Kevin. More like Kevin, who's Kevin? We don't really see much of Kevin but when he is around we love it! Last we heard he was off fighting Darth Vader somewhere in the galactic empire, and he says that he's a doctor. (go figure)

Would you believe that intern year is almost over? As of the first week of July you are going to be seeing Dr. Kevin the resident. No more dealing with the crap work as Kevin so kindly refers to being a lovely intern. Just yesterday he was telling me about a patient who came in with a leg wound that was filled with maggots. Sounds like crap work to me. YUCK!

What a crazy year that it has been, and a very BUSY one as well. The first month on the job he worked a total of 341 hours. Kevin is paid salary, and when we did the math we were making a whooping $11.00 an hour. Pretty good for a family of six! NOT

Kevin had months where he was working in the ICU. He would be call every third night which meant that he would go in to work somewhere between 4:00-4:30 a.m. and then work until somewhere between 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. the next day. Most of these nights were worked without a minute of sleep. He would come home from working these shifts, sleep for a few hours, wake up, grab something to eat, take a shower, and then head back to bed. He would go to work for a regular shift the next day, and then would be on call again the next day.He has always been such a hard worker, and I appreciate his dedication to keep our family going. It's been important for him to make sure that I am able to stay home with the kids and don't have to work. He does a great job in making sure that things stay like that.

We love you KEVIN!

What can $100.00 get you?

It can't get you much these days it seems, but I was pleased with the deals that I found for the price. I went to an indoor yard sale on Saturday. The family having the sale had two children who were also a set of twin 3 year old girls. Oh, how I love rich people. Especially when I am the one who gets to benefit. They were selling pretty much everything you could possibly imagine. Of course the best deals of the day were the twin items that they had for sale. This is what I got for my buck:
2 exersaucer's in immaculate condition
Fisher Price pull train with all of the animals
2 Playskool pull puppies
2 Fisher Price kick water mats for the car
2 Fisher Price pull phones
12 pairs of shoes including 2 pairs of Robeez and 2 pairs of Nike's
4 burp cloths
2 pink Nike sweat outfits
2 jackets
12 dresses including Polo, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hillfiger, and OshKosh. (most of them had never been worn and still have tags)
6 skirts
10 pairs of pajamas
6 rompers
4 pairs of pants
4 shirts

Seems like a great deal if you ask me. If you ask Kevin, he will tell you that the best deal would have been not getting it in the first place. I tend to disagree. My girls are set for at least the next 18 months. It pays to be frugal

6 months and counting

We did it, we officially have survived the first six months in raising TWINS! What a journey it has been and yet it is a journey that we wouldn't have traded for anything except maybe for SLEEP!

You couldn't ask for better babies than Leah and Audrey. These two little girls are nothing but sweet. We have learned a lot in raising twins. We are still far from experts and are still learning things as we go along but it is definitely getting easier. Those first few months were a little rocky. I think now that we finally have their schedules figured out we are good to go.

I mentioned before that Leah is now the bigger one. At their six month check-up Leah weighed 16 1/2 pounds and Audrey isn't too far behind her, weighing in at 16 1/4 pounds. They are almost exactly identical in their length (tall like our other girls)
Here are a few random facts about the girls:

Leah

has recently discovered baby food and can't get enough of it. Eating has become her favorite pastime

Is not getting any teeth as of yet

can almost sit up

is pretty good at rolling over

mastered sleeping through the night at 2 months old. Sleeping from 7:00 p.m.-7:00 a.m.

is such a happy baby, she rarely cries and is so good to just play by herself

can smile and laugh

she has the cutest dimples and the cutest button nose

recently has discovered that she likes eating her toes

provides lots of entertainment to her family, and we love her TONS!

Audrey

What? big sister can almost roll over? Not me, I have no interest in that. I am busy with other things

also has mastered sleeping through the night at 2 months old, same schedule as her sister

does not enjoy baby food, and prefers bottles

loves to be held, and is highly jealous if you hold her sister instead of her

sucks her thumb

is getting her two bottom teeth

can smile and laugh

also provides a lot of enjoyment to her family.

We are so lucky to have these little girls in our family, we have been blessed in so many ways. It always makes me so happy to walk into the twins room in the morning when they first wake-up. They never cry and just wait patiently for me to get them out of bed. I love that! I love being their Mom!

rain rain go away

This Tennessee rain is getting so old not to mention the flooding that has been going on inside our home along with the rain. For almost three weeks now we have been dealing with flooding issues of some sort. First the downstairs family room flooded. We thought that we fixed the problem and were set. Then last weekend we woke up to another flood disaster. This time the downstairs office, and bathroom were flooded. Then we go outside and notice that the garage has also flooded, and not only did it flood but has 2 inches of standing water throughout the entire garage. I just want to pull my hair out. Dealing with flooding issues is not fun.

Kevin and I both cringe now everytime we hear the sound of rain. Today, as it started raining Kevin ran outside just to make sure that everything was draining properly. WE ARE PRAYING FOR IT TO STOP RAINING!

New carpet was laid in both the family room, and office so we are now in the process of trying to move all of our furniture back into our house. It almost looks as good as new!

I am so sick and tired of dealing with insurance people, talk about idiots! What's the point of having homeowners insurance if you aren't covered for most things anyway? I think though that we have finally reached a settlement with our insurance company which is always a plus. I also found out that we don't have flood insurance (that's a whole separate insurance from your standard home owner's insurance) but..... here's the kicker. Even if you sign up for flood insurance and you experience a flood in your home, the flood has to affect 2 or more lots which means: your house, and another house have to both be flooded at the same time. Does this make sense to you because it surely does not make any sense to me. Especially seeing how we live at the top of a hill.

Moral of the story is... THERE ARE ALWAYS STIPULATIONS FOR EVERYTHING!

Mother's Day make-over

I got the cutest invitation for a make-over from my little seven year old. It said that I could come to her school today and that I would be pampered by a professional. Well pampered I was. I got a pedicure, manicure, massage, make-up, the cutest piggy tails in my hair, and refreshments. All courtesy of my own daughter. It doesn't get any better than that if you ask me. The best part of the whole morning was when I recieved this cute little Mother's day card that Alyssa made. It's everything that Alyssa knows about her Mom! I will even type it exactly the way she wrote it.

My mom's name is : Trisha
My Mom has: brown hair and green eyes.
She weighs: 25 pounds
She is: 5"4 inches tall
Her birthday is on: March 8th
I like it when she wears: her pretty pink and white and black and white and red poke-a-dot dress.
Her favorite holiday is: Mother's Day
Her favorite color is: pink and white and purple
Her favorite place to shop is: J.C. pennies and target and walmart
Her favorite thing to do is: go shopping she goes shopping a lot
My favorite thing to do with my mom is: watch movies with popcorn especially at the movie theater
My mom is really good at: counting back-wards from 100
She's not so good at: juggling and climbing really high she is afraid of hieghts me too.
If I had $100.00 I would buy my mom: a really really really big castle and a pink unicorn.
My favorite food she cooks is: lagsania chocolate chip cookies and ravioly
I love my mom because: she is nice and she said maybe we can have a ginnypig ora hampster probably hampster but I want a ginnypig.

Talk about sweet, I am glad that I impress her with my backwards counting. I must be amazing to be able to count backwards from 100.

Thanks Alyssa for a great day!

When it rains it pours.....literally

The last few days it has been raining cats and dogs. I enjoy the rain but I am not sure that I am enjoying this much of it. I am especially not enjoying the aftermath that the rain caused in my basement.

It started out simple, I noticed that it looked wet underneath our rocking chair. I just assumed that Kelsie had been playing with water, and that she accidentally spilled some. Oh, how I only wish that could have been the case.

As the day wore on I couldn't help but notice more wet spots in the carpet. Not having any shoes on, I also started noticing that footprints were indenting in the carpet everytime I took a step. When I put two and two together, I figured out that this was the beginning of a flood. (homeownership stinks as I mentioned a few months ago as we were dealing with frozen pipes) Anyway back to the story. So, I had no idea who to call, what to do, where to start in even attempting to get this problem taken care of. It dawned on me that maybe I should start with my insurance company. After talking with several agents and wasting too much time on the phone it was apparent to me that we were on our own with this matter. Our insurance policy does not cover flood damage, and as one of the agents nicely put it. "this damage was caused because of normal wear and tear." Normal wear and tear? I don't think so. Our outside storm drains were backed up, the drains weren't draining properly to begin with, and this is just normal wear and tear? I was so annoyed, and then to top it off, the insurance company sends over a restoration company to see about drying the carpet to see if it can be salvaged or not. What a waste of time that was. After two men show up from this company, they let me know that it will be an estimated cost of $2000 to dry out the carpet, run a de-humidifier, and pull up the carpet if they need to. I nicely sent them on their merry way home, and told them that I would go ahead and fix the problem myself. I headed over to every woman's favorite store Home Depot and rented some carpet dryers, and purchased a shop vac to see if we couldn't get some of the water up from the floor.

I was driving home it was still raining very heavily, and I was so stressed out with the whole day of unfortunate events. Kevin of course was still at work, and I was trying to deal with this problem on my own. It was a pain in the butt to say the least.

Kelsie had been over at one of her friends houses playing, and as I arrived to pick her up my friend mentioned to me that her husband may be able to come and help me clean up some of the water. I thought that sounded awesome, and headed home.

As I came in my house there was a message on my answering machine from another guy in my ward who said that he was also on his way over to come and help as well. I couldn't believe my ears. I had only told one person abouf the problem and now more help was on its way.

I had four people who gave up their Friday night to come over to help me. I couldn't believe it. Not only did they help fix the drains outside, they helped pull up the carpet, they helped get water off of the floor, they helped move furniture off of the wet carpet, and just went above and beyond the call of duty.

Kevin has been working like a mad man, and finally arrived home after a long day of work. I felt bad that he had to come home to a flood instead of being able to sit and relax . I was so grateful that he didn't have to deal with this problem on his own.

I can't say enough about this ward, and they really are like family. A special thanks to Blake, Caleb, Joel, and Brants. You guys are awesome!

Now onto searching for carpet deals, anyone know of any?