FIFTEEN YEARS!

Yesterday Jim & I celebrated 15 years of marriage. I was hoping to do an interview for you blog readers. Kind of the John & Kate style where we sit on the sofa and talk about our lives & marriage, etc. Which is good in theory, but that would require us to actually spend time together to accomplish that. Didn't really happen that way yesterday. In fact, not counting our sleep time, we spent maybe, about an hour within sight of each other. Not to be confuse with actually spending time together. That would literally only be about 10 minutes. I'm serious.

It was just one of those days. Wednesdays are always a very busy day, especially after school & through the evening. Not only did we have our regular business going on, we had 3 extra kids in the house. 3 extra kids that I fed supper and played taxi to, in addition to our own 6. Yep, that'll just about tie up all my free time.

Jim was in anticipation of this & took Tuesday afternoon off and swooped me off to Peoria for lunch and time with just him. We stuffed ourselves with Olive Garden and Baskin Robins/Dunkin Doughnuts and returned just in time to get the kids from school. That is actually getting a lot for my anniversary. We had no idea 15 years ago that getting married at this time of year would actually be the worst time for us to celebrate. And that has nothing to do with the 6 kids & no time & no money factor to the whole situation.

So....15 years. Wow! That's getting close to half of my life. Wow! Ahhhh, but I/we love it. Really, what else can we ask for when we have each other.

Happy 4th Birthday Andrew!

This was suppose to post yesterday on Andrew's actual birthday. I've been having some technical difficulty loading up the video. So I finally deleted the original post and started over again today. Just so you know....I WAS on the ball with the whole bloggin' thing. (I get extra points for that or something, right?!?!)

I want to start something new for each of the birthdays coming up in the next year. Ideally (meaning in my OCD little mind) I'd start this at the beginning of the year and do the same thing for each birthday during that calender year. Every now and then I like to throw caution to the wind and step out of my little OCD box. (I know, what I rebel I am)
So Andrew will be the first to kick off our birthday interviews:

Tanner's Apple Orchard

We take a mostly annual trip (there have been a few years that we skipped) over to Tanner's every fall. It's full of lots of fun things for the kids to participate in. Best of all is their apple doughnuts & other treats that we buy & indulge in. We got there kind of late in the afternoon this year so we were not able to ride out into the orchard to pick apples or pumpkins. We still hung around until well after dark to get the most of our trip.

Pony rides:


Barrel rides:


A mini maze of hay bales. They have a real corn maze that takes a hour, if not hours, to go through. We've never done the big one.

We had another family go along with us. They are new to the area so not as familiar with these types of locations. This is Khristina, my new friend (you NEVER get too old to make new friends).


On the playground:

Gotta have a family picture:

Ladies Retreat

I was blessed to able to attend our ladies retreat again this year. I have attended in years past and always have a great time. This year they had a special spa theme. We had an over abundance of interest in people attending this year. In fact, we had some people sleeping on mats on the floor. No one seemed to mind. The food, fun & fellowship made it worth every moment. Not to mention the wonderful speaker they brought in and the time of music worship lead by some of our own women from church. The weather was perfectly fall like on saturday. We spent plenty of time outside inbetween sessions and walked through the trails and just enjoyed our time friendship.

Here I am getting a little spa treatment. I also had my nails done, my hands waxed and massaged & a mini chair massage.
I actually had a horrible time picking out what pictures to include. So I decided to go simple. This is the group of ladies who sat at my table. We had a lot of good discussion following the speaker. And, of course, plenty of giggles & laughs along the way.

Here is a group picture. Although that doesn't include some women who had to leave early or who could only attend on friday night. This is the biggest group we've ever had at the retreat.

Yeah.....baby!

Ok I did not go overboard this year and take pictures in the store when the Peppermint Mocha hit the shelves. But that is about as good as I was. I have, at least once, bought all the bottles off the shelf at the store. And they are neatly organized in my freezer. And I did call several girlfriends squealing of my discovery. You would have thought that I had just seen Tom Cruise walk in the store, but no....be still my beating heart.....it's just my peppermint mocha!!!!

Muskie 5k

It's still racing season, although the races are far & few in between. I raced the Muskie 5k trail run. The race took place on the actual cross country course that the boys & girls use from the high school. I ran an ok finish time. It was my first race post ankle injury. I had my brace on. There is no way I can run on a flat surface without my brace, let alone a hilly, curvy & slippery course.

Despite my "ok" time I still managed to place at the top of my age group. So I can't complain too much. I can complain about the weather. Although in hindsight it was quite amusing to have it SNOWING in October. Big, huge fluffy flakes heavily spit at us as we participated in the race. If you have snow, then of course, you have freezing cold tempatures. Brrrrrrr!

The picture I chose to post is not a very good one. I wanted you to see the snow & racing conditions I'm talking about. Please also note that I am sporting an authentic retro 90's Muskie warm up uniform. This suit is the exact suit I wore when I was in high school. And my hat is the original hat I bought in school and still wear on occasion from time to time.

Mt. Laundry

At the beginning of each month I strip the beds of their linen and give it a washing. It's a chore I really don't like doing. Not so much the stripping or washing, but the chore of getting it all done and the beds remade before the kids need their bed that night. We won't talk of the countless impromptu "slumber parties" we had cause I wasn't on the ball & got the chore done in a timely matter.

As I was stripping away last month (ok, I know how that sounds....but you know what I mean!) I noticed how big my pile was amounting to. I also realized that this pile only consisted of the kids bedding and that it was still warm enough that they had very little to no blankets on their bed. Once I had it all piled into the dining room it came almost to my hips. Granted I am not a very tall person (not even close), but that is still a big pile! So in regular Carmen fashion I thought....hmmmm, that might make an interesting blog post. Not that my laundry is interesting. But one of the reasons behind our blog is to give you all a glimpse of our little zoo and the every day ins & outs of our family life.

I did manage to get this pile done & back up on the beds all in the same day. It took about 8 loads of washing & drying. And probably a good 45 minutes to get the beds all back & assembled for sleep that night (although I took the time to get out the big comforters since the weather is turning colder). All done....for now!
I do train them young! At Carmen's age she's eager to help.