Farrah Fawcett

We've been meaning to share this story for several weeks, but kept forgetting until now.  A few weeks ago, Amy was up in the lobby of the church talking to friends while Karis and the boys were downstairs.  Kaleb informed Amy from the bottom of the stairs that they were leaving, and Addison went downstairs with them.  A few minutes later, Amy finally began the trek out to the van and when she arrived, Karis said "Where are the kids, I only have Zachary."  So Amy turned out and began to walk back to the church when Kaleb comes running out of the church yelling "Addison is in the men's bathroom!!!   And she took off her dress!!!"  You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me.

So when Amy arrived, she cracked the door open enough to try and ascertain whether there was anyone else in the bathroom.  Sure enough, there was a man in the stall.  Great, so now Amy can't just walk in there and get her.  Amy sends Kaleb in, but Addison does not feel the slightest need to obey Kaleb and she has the hot air blower on full force, so the air is so loud that she can't hear Amy calling her.  This is apparently the longest hot air blower in the country, because what seems like hours crawl by with no stopping.  Amy finally decides to walk up again to the lobby and try and flag down a male friend......but there are no male friends up there....Of course there aren't, why would there be when you're in crunch time!???

So Amy walks back downstairs, and the little teenager checking in kids downstairs says "Someday you'll think this is funny."  Humph.  Spoken like a teenager who doesn't have children who may you pull out your hair!  (Just kidding, we can now see a glimmer of humour in the story ourselves, so she was right!).

The hot air blower FINALLY turns off, and Amy employs the sternest mother voice ever telling Addison to march herself out of there.  Addison strolls (and that truly was how she was walking) around the corner (again, naked with the exception of her underwear and her shoes) with her hair looking like Farrah Fawcett.....all wind-blown and bouffant and she says "Mommy, I was drying my hair!"  Yes, of course that is what you were doing, why wouldn't you do that naked at church!?

Amy was so aggravated by that moment that frankly, dress in one hand, Addison still naked in the other hand, just marched Miss Farrah Fawcett straight out to the car (while of course the teenager giggled as she walked by!!).  Addison, Addison, Addison.   Who said girls were easier?? :)


In another funny Addison story - one day Amy dropped the boys off at school and had Jennifer meet her there in order to exchange Addison while Jennifer dropped off her kids as well.  Amy and Jennifer were parked side-by-side and then Addison and Jennifer left, Addison commented on the fact that Amy had left already.  She then proceeded to tell Jennifer what she thought Amy did at work....

Jennifer texted Amy this video, which of course was a good laugh.  That night as Amy tucked Addison into bed, Addison (unprompted) then asked Amy if she got to have a hose and a jacket at work!  She thinks that Amy is a REAL firefighter!! :)  Ha ha ha



 Last weekend was Cole's birthday party, and it was a Nerf gun battle in their backyard.  The boys had a great time, although they realized that their 4-bullet guns were not going to be in the same league as some of the other kids that had 80 rounds in their guns!  Crazy-town!  Lots of fun was had though with both the boys AND their dads! :)

 

I think that this Dad is having too much fun....

 

 Doug had set up the back yard to have 'blinds' that they could hide behind as they tried to win against the opposing sides!

And afterwards a picture of the boys - with Kaleb on the ground with all of those guns pointing at him.  He had a laugh at being the one on the bottom!

The kids had a week off school, so Jennifer took them to the Science Center where they enjoyed learning about mummies in the Mummy exhibit.  Even Kaleb went and said that it was not scary and was able to tell Amy something that he learned!

At the end of the week, they went to a Pumpkin Patch where they were able to get some pumpkins to carve and have fun with the exhibits. 

 

Addison thought that it was GROSS pulling out the insiders of the pumpkin - she was not interested in the least!

 

Random pictures:

Karis pitching to both boys - Kaleb has really improved his batting!

 

Addison has largely taken over the green motorized car, and one day was driving Kaleb around.  Not sure why she was out of the car - but she was having fun chauffeuring him around that day.

 

Operation Back to Sleep

Last week's blog mentioned the fact that the family had been feeling under the weather with colds/fevers etc, so Amy's Mom came to the rescue and had the kids come for a sleepover last Saturday night.  Yippee!!  Date Night!  Adults Only!  Imagine the possibilities!  NOPE.  The picture below captures perfectly the state of the male Z from about 2P last Saturday afternoon until 6:30a on Sunday when he rejoined the land of the living.  Poor guy.  But, let's be thankful - we all feel better!

But, the title of this week's post really deals with our frustration with Addison's sleeping (or lack thereof).  She has never been as good of a sleeper as the boys, and our hotel stays where she has been in the room/bed with us has made matters worse.  It has been escalating over the past several weeks to the point last Thursday where she literally got up 7-8 times between 10A and 6A.  We decided to take a firm stance this week, and rather than traumatizing her with locking her in the room, we decided to lock OUR door and then promise a goody-bag treat if she'd stay in her bed.  We are thankful to say that after 5 nights (each a little better than the last), she has now stayed in bed for 2 consecutive nights without getting up even once, AND is sleeping in until past 7A when the VERY dim light comes on from her light at 7A to let her know that it is acceptable to get up at that time.  YAHOO!  Now we just pray for a new long-term habit to be born....so we'll continue locking our bedroom door so that she can't get in.  The locked door sends her the message that she can't come in, but it also serves the purpose of Amy having to get up out of bed to deal with her so once you're up and across the room anyway, it isn't that big of a deal to just take her back to her room and tuck her in.  Maybe the Z-adults will actually get some good sleep!

On Sunday, Amy took the kids to Maddox's 6th birthday - complete with an Orlando City Soccer theme.  It was very fun, and the kids had a blast.  The weather is starting to cool down, so it is lovely!

While the little kids got their cake, the older kids decided to make good  use of the free soccer field to play their own game!

 Amy took Kaleb out on a date night (it was last week for Zachary when we went to Thai food) at Panera.  We had such a lovely time, talking about a lot of things.  It was so fun a picture had to be taken of this cute kid!!

This week was Bosses Day at work, and the teams put on a complete spread for all of the departments.  It was delicious, they went all out!

We believe that our children are all geniuses (tongue and cheek) but none more so than Addison who can READ at 3!  HA!  Good memorization skills there, but we have a good time listening to her repeat the book!

There was one evening that Zachary was at his football practice, and poor Addison must not have napped long enough that afternoon because she fell asleep in the swing and then when Karis picked her up, she continued to sleep another 20 minutes on his shoulder!

Phrase of the week:  Addison of course is with Evan each day at Jennifer's house while she homeschools him and she is quite attached.  Apparently almost daily now she will ask him "Evan, let's get married"  to which he always responds positively and then Jennifer heard Addi say "Okay, then let's go tell your mom that you're coming to live at my house from now on!"  Ha ha - at least she isn't so grown-up that she doesn't want to live at home anymore! :)

Down and Out

After two weeks of Addison being sick - first with Hand and Mouth, then with Croup...and getting very little sleep and being surrounded by germs, the Z-adults are now both sick.  Addison has decided that sleeping in her own bed is optional, so many a night Amy was doing the march back to Addison's room multiple times.  One night she broke Amy and in desperation they laid down together in the guest room....parenting mistake #1.  After that, of COURSE she decided that sleeping in her own bed was optional and it has been a struggle ever since.  This is all to blame on the parents we're sure, but we'd love to wave a magic wand and get her to sleep in her own room.  It wouldn't be such a big deal, but as we get up at 5:45 each morning, we don't want her up at that time so sleeping in our room is likely not a good situation.  We're going to give it a good ol' college try this week to rectify this situation and if that doesn't work, we may just see if she can sleep through us getting up at 5:45 and let her sleep on a cot in our bedroom.....not ideal I realize but don't judge us....we're exhausted. :)  I'm told eventually she'll go into her own room to sleep :)

We'll share the rest of our last week in pictures, forgive the lack of amusing stories but when your head is about to explode, there just isn't much in there! :)

We went over to the Hilliards for some fun two Saturdays ago, and had fun playing in the pool, cooking hot dogs over a fire pit and then singing Sabbath Songs for our worship.

So precious these three!

Cole, Zachary and Josh had fun doing cannonballs in the water!

The boys had their Adventurer Induction last weekend, and Kaleb was happy to be able to co-carry the Sunbeams flag with his friend Kieran!

Last Sunday, we had a doozie of a day that started off with football, then a birthday party, and ended with a Fancy Nancy play at the Orlando Rep.  The play far surpassed our expectations - it was super cute and had a good moral to the story!

At Esai's birthday party

This week, Jennifer organized a school fundraiser at the local Chik-Fil-A where the profits would go to the school (raising about $180 in that evening!)  The kids had fun being there with their friends....the Chik-Fil-A cow came out to visit and Addison had the chance to sit with him....In the 2nd picture, you can see that she's trying to both look at the camera AND at him! :)

During the week, a friend of Amy's texted her after school (intramural time) this picture with the phrase "you have a cool family!"  It warms Amy's heart to see Karis and the boys out there playing together.  What amazing memories for the boys to have their dad out there so engaged with them! We are one lucky family!  Zachary is in his "play ball" stance in this picture while Kaleb and Karis wait to try and defend the net.

Random pictures:

Is this what a pot belly looks like!? :)  I guess she was cold!

We have these bath tub color tablets, and Addison loves to play with them and she threw some into the water and let them dissolve without actually getting in, so the colors ended up creating a really cool kaleidoscope in the water

Phrase of the week:  "Actually....."  Addison has picked up the word actually and says it with the same intonation and tone as Amy does...It is so funny to hear her pick up the words that we say as adults!

This isn't a phrase, but Addison has a definite "tell" when she has gotten herself into trouble.  If she has eaten something, she will walk back into where you are with her hands both clamped tightly over her mouth.....you always know she has something in there that she is not supposed to have....  Dead giveaway kiddo!  Other times if she has a phone or something, she will hide it under a pillow and then look up at you and say "I'm hiding something!"  Ha ha - not the most secretive method!

Zachary this week had a funny phrase - Amy has been struggling getting the boys up and running in the mornings on time as suddenly after 9 years Zachary has decided that he CAN sleep in (great, but why now that the school year has started??) - so when she gets them up she usually has to keep prodding both boys to get going.  One morning, Zachary finally looked up and said "I don't think that I can get moving any faster....my motor is broken!"  Ha ha, sometimes we feel like ours is broken too! :)

Football Season!

Most folks realize that football season has started, but for the Z household when we say football season has started, it's not the TV games that we're talking about but the flag football games that the boys are in.  Yep, you read right....boys.  Kaleb decided this year that he wanted to join in on the fun so now we have two boys in the football league.   He has joined the Apopka SDA team the Hornets, and he's enjoying it.  The kids are really nice along with the coaches.  In his first two games, he captured a flag in each game and he got to run the ball on offense!  Good job Kaleb!

Kaleb standing in the middle beside the coach in the red shirt.

After the first game, he received the Sportsmanship medal from Coach Darren - good job!

Even Addison is getting in on the flag action!

Zachary is playing again with the Wolverines, although this season there is an older boy who is quarterback.  This allows Zachary to have fun learning the other positions, as well as taking some of the pressure off of the Z-family to NEVER miss a practice or a game!  Kind of hard when there was only one quarterback, but it was fun for him to experience that leadership role.  Good for handling pressure and thinking on your feet! :)  During a practice last week though, Zachary and Kaleb managed to run into each other and Zachary chipped his bottom tooth....not great.

Practicing with the Wolverines, although they were a man short, so Kaleb practiced as well.

Speaking of thinking on your feet...the kids have been having a fun time doing "gymnastics" with Karis.

Whoa.....mom is ready to dash in and grab Addison!

When we were up in Tennessee with the Hicks, they gave us these bath towels as their kids had outgrown them. Our little people have been enjoying them, especially Addi!  Thank you to the Hicks!

Zachary trying to maintain some modesty....

The boys did a hockey league over the summer where they actually had the fun of equipment, sticks, and actually playing the game.  They really enjoyed it (although good grief, how expensive can all of that equipment be!!!??).  They finished up a few weeks ago and had fun with the final scrimmage games.

The kids one day were feeling especially helpful, and decided that they wanted to help Amy make some of Addison's vegetable cubes. They did a good job filling the trays!  Yes, Addison still eats the vegetable puree cubes....seemingly without complaint and seeing as she doesn't eat the real-deal non-pureed vegetables very well, we have just kept giving these to her for a morning 'snack' at Jennifer's.  Whatever it takes to get the vegetables into her....

 These videos will make it clear just how much fun the boys are having in this house....and why on Sundays they get to wash little footprints off of our walls..... (they live in a work camp you know based on how much work they have to slave away doing on Sundays....) :)

The three kids weeding the flower beds in the back yard.....it is good to finally have children old enough who can learn the value of work ethic...although the whining and complaining is enough to make this parent want to pull her hair out! :)

 This video shows what Addison thinks that Amy does all day at work.....  that night after this video was taken as Amy was tucking her into bed, she looked up at Amy and said "Mommy, do you have a water hose and a coat at work too?" in such a serious little voice.  It was just so precious - she actually thinks that Amy IS a firefighter! :)