7 Degrees to Sam Neylan's Blog

Okay, so at my church, there's a woman named Darla Maciel and she is like the Kevin Bacon of our area.  She's the type of person that makes friends at the super market when she's in line.  Therefore, she knows everyone, and is always willing to help connect you with a person that she's met that can fix your a.c, tutor your kids, or specializes in tile installation.  I'm amazed by this type of gregarious personality.

Well, I'm pretty sure that Sam Neylan is the Kevin Bacon of Master's College alumni.  My guess is that if you went to Masters sometime between the years of '95 and '03 or so, you've met her, or you know someone that's met her.  So recently I was reading her blog (which is like the mother of all blogs) and I noticed a quick connection.   She mentioned that while in Hollywood she ran into A.J. Tigner and his wife.  I thought to myself, hmmm, small world.  His wife (Stacy) is my pastor's daughter (Rick Anderson, shout out by the way, he's amazing, listen to his sermons online via fccoxnard.org)  I never see them, but just so happens they visited the church last Sunday night and then hung out with my neighbors Kat and Chet, so we saw them when we were out in our front yard measuring and arguing and daydreaming about landscaping scenarios.  

My point is I bet if you went to Masters and you blog, you could somehow connect to someone mentioned in Sam's blog or someone that's commented on her blog within the last 30 days.  I'm just saying, if you have extra time on your hands, or like me need a quick escape from talk of gas prices and your middle child's temperament issues, then well... have at it.

I'll Keep it Short

I'll try not to bore you and I'll keep it short and share some cool things going on right now:

1.  Every day stuff: Lorelei's taking swimming lessons, and our garden is growing like crazy.  It's so fun to have veggies pulled right out of your own back yard.  I take NO credit for this, Dan's done it all, he's the man (at least that's what's he's always telling me).

2. Stuff I'm learning: I read a little pamphlet, essay type thing that's awesome, called Tyranny of the Urgent.  Here's a quote, "The worst sin is prayerlessness.  We usually think of murder, adultery or theft among the worst.  But the root of all sin is self-sufficiency- independence from God."  Whew, hard for someone who considers themselves a "self-sufficient" person to hear, but such a good reminder.  It's a quick read about priorities, everyone should check it out!

3. Weekend Events: Went to Valencia overnight this weekend and got to take the kids swimming at the Hyatt, and my beloved sister took them overnight for us at her apartment while Dan and I went to Tricia Scheffer's wedding.  Tricia was one of my bridesmaids in my wedding almost 11 & a half years ago, so I was so happy to share in her big day now and see my old wing mates, Sandra Bonecutter and Sandhya Ayres.  

Home Again, Home Again...

Gotta admit, there's nothing better than coming home and sleeping in your own bed after a week-long vacation.  We just returned from what will probably be an annual road trip to Washington to see Dan's family.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. Morgan's Birthday Party - Grandma Luci (Dan's mom) and Brazilian Tia Sussana

and cousin Gloucia did a beautiful job creating a butterfly themed first birthday for my

little Morgan Paige.  Dehydrated pineapple slices decorated the cake and looked like 

flowers (that was Leah's doing, my sister in law), hand rolled Brazilian candies, multi-

colored butterfly nets and suckers for the kids, and the prettiest butterfly things they 

made and hung from trees outside.  Awesome!

2. Sharing a house with 16 people - Okay first of all 8 of those people were under

the age of 6, secondly a lot of Portuguese was being spoken, and thirdly I crossed my 

fingers every time I opened a bedroom or a bathroom door, and hoped that somehow

I would avoid a potentially awkward situation.  But hey, it's all in the family, right?

3. Reuniting - All 6 of the Dennis & Luci Leaman offspring were together for the first time in almost 6 years.  Four brothers, two sisters, 6 spouses, and yes, 24 grand-

children.  Let's just say, it's a Latin thing. 

4. Old School Fireworks - You know how Cosby used to say "When I was a kid, I 

walked 5 miles in the snow?"  Well, when I was a kid, I watched my uncles practically

light themselves on fire in their driveways and my mom had anxiety attacks over all of

us kids playing with sparklers.  Over the past 10 years or so all the fireworks thing has

been made illegal in these here parts, but ahhh, not so in Puyallup, Washington.  My 

girls got to watch their uncles practically toast themselves and it was my turn to pray

when my girls got a hold of their first sparklers.  All hair still in tact, thank you.

5. Family - Seriously, and I'm not just kissing up because the only people that read this are my relatives, I've married in to a family full of great peeps.  They're all fun and so warm and welcoming and totally hard working servants for the Lord.  My nieces all  helped a ton with my kids.  They were all great. 

6. Two Big Announcements - Doug and Leah are now pregnant with their FIFTH baby, the first members of the family to break the 4 kids mark, we all bow down to them and pay homage to their courage (while simultaneously thinking, shwew, not us)

Also, good news, the oldest of the 24 grandkids, Beau has just gotten engaged to 

Ashley and will be finishing his senior year at Azusa next year.

7. Dan, My Hero - My husband drove 15 hours straight while we all slept and he didn't fall asleep.  Though when I heard drumming on the steering wheel, I knew it was a desperate attempt to stay awake, so I opened my eyes for a minute and said, "hey are

you awake?" He mumbled, "barely" and I fell back to sleep again.  Good times. 

All in all, it was a great trip, some tough moments with toddlers who hadn't enough nap time and were hyped up on ridiculous amounts of Otter Pops, but other than that, not too shabby.

*By the way, the picture of my sister Beth has nothing to do with my Washington trip, I just wanted everyone to check out her bicepts, because she's super ripped these days, and still single so if you know any conservative, godly men who like to work out (but in a "I'm into being healthy way", not "I'm super vain" way) and also they have to live locally because she's never allowed to move far away from me, just send them to Whole Foods, she's there a lot.

Road Trippin'

Consdering I'm packing for a family of 6 for a whole entire week, I'd say I did very well. Actually, this doesn't include Dan's clothes and camera gear yet, so I'm not giving a completely honest picture of what lies ahead.  Anyway, tomorrow morning we'll drive to Visalia and hang there for a bit, before heading out for an all night drive to Washington state!  We figure 14 hours in the car with 4 kids will be much more bearable if they're all asleep while we drive.  We'll see how it all works out though.  Anyway, we're excited for several reasons:

1. Morgan turns 1 on Sunday and will get to have her birthday party with all of her cousins!

2. For the first time in almost 6 years, all 6 Leaman siblings and their spouses and their kiddos will all be together at once!  By the way each of the 6 families had 4 kids each, so go ahead do the math.... 24 grandkids including Lyla Marie who was just born last week to Dan's youngest sister, Sandra last week! 

3. We love seeing everyone, and it's somewhat of a break for me because my girls are so entertained by their cousins, they forget to ask me to play with them every 15 minutes.  (Which by the way, I'm a terrible mom because I really don't enjoy playing with them very much.  Playdough is messy and Polly Pockets are really hard to dress, but I do a fantastic wicked stepmother impersonation and they all have to be Cinderella and CLEAN UP!)

Well, better go help Dan finish packing... and by the way Jen if you're reading this thank you for the super cool Kid's party cookbook, I LOVE IT.  I'm so going to be Martha Stewart someday (after all the kids move out, and I have more time).

In Search of a Binky...

Okay, first of all you can't even begin to imagine how many binkies I've purchased in the last 5 years.  And what I've realized is this; binkies are like socks in a dryer --- they disappear.  I am finally down to one of my four children being addicted to a binky, so I feel there is hope for me on the horizon, but seriously, I had 5 or 6 in the "binky basket" on the dresser earlier this week.  Just now as I was trying to put Morgan down for a nap, I found myself crawling around searching under the crib, under Lorelei's bed, in the couch cushions, and finally I spied one in the basket of Polly Pockets.  I should think of it as a game, "Where's the Binky?"  I guess I could come up with a series of these games that moms spend hours playing to entertain themselves.  How about "Where's the clicker?"  or "Which one of you colored on the wall?"  or "How quickly can I fasten four children into four carseats without bumping my head against the ceiling of the van?"  

Meanwhile, it's seriously hot outside, so hot, my DVR box overheated and died.  I've now been without the ability to pause, fast forward, and rewind my TV shows for less than 24 hours and I have to say, I feel a very great loss. (and yes I know, I watch too much TV, but believe it or not, I like background noise in the background of the four screaming kids).

Here's some random, but recent pix of the girls...Seriously, that's the only one I could find of Noelle, it's difficult to get her to remain still long enough for a picture!

New Kids on the Block?

It's Saturday morning, Dan just took his truck to help someone move, and the girls are in their room playing barbies and putting on bathing suits so we can go to the beach later this afternoon. It's all June gloomy outside, so I poured myself a cup of coffee, and flipped on the T.V. 

Now I feel confused.  

There was a music video playing on VH1 and I was about to flip the channel, when I stopped and had to do a double take.  Was that Jordan Knight?  Wait, is that little Joey singing to a bikini clad beauty about summetime?   Wait, don't tell me.... yep, that's Donnie Wahlberg.  Oh my word.

New Kids on the Block have reunited and released a new album.

I loved them in 6th grade, and just so you all know that was in 1988, TWENTY years ago.  I really believed then, that if I met Joey, he would love me, and put me in his videos.

So the question is this, what do I do now?  How much time does it take to get a "I had four kids in four years stomach" back to music video bikini babe material?  I mean, I think this could be my second chance.  Hmm, I think I'll go have a pop tart, and reflect on all of this....

What Were We Thinking?

Okay, so we sort of forgot that we have four kids under the age of 5 and we bit off more than we could chew...

1. Thursday - Lorelei turns 5!  Bring homemade cupcakes to preschool, she wanted them to look like apples with gummi worms coming out, half a bottle of food coloring later, they still weren't red really......whatever.  The pretzel stem was convincing, *note next time use regular gummi worms instead of sour patch worms for a more realistic and disgusting effect.  Also the batter included apple juice & applesauce for a more apply effect.

2. Thursday Night: Pizza Party, highly recommend having kid's birthday parties not at your home.  Also next time I will be sure not to pass out gift bags with plastic ear piercing whistles (now I know why they were so cheap).  Then we drove home, opened gifts, and then loaded the kids up and drove 3 hours to Visalia.

3. Friday Morning: Drove 2 more hours from Visalia to the mountains to spend the day with my parents and celebrate Lorelei's birthday with them again.  The kids saw deer so that was really cool, and got to swing on a giant swing, they loved it.

4. Friday Evening: Drove another hour from Mineral King cabin to Three Rivers cabin, checked in and took 2 hours to get the girls to sleep.

5. Saturday Morning: Went to quaint breakfast cafe, went to cool Doll collector store where I saw price tags for dolls for 2000 bucks, so I spent entire time with the girls there saying, don't touch that, please don't touch that.... don't .... touch, no, don't ..... accumulated 2 more gray hairs.

6. Drove back one hour to Visalia (took scenic route) to Liam Oswald's 1st birthday party!  (See my fellow bloggers links)  Super adorable little boy, the first kid I've seen at a 1st bday party more interested in the candle on his cake than the cake itself.  Girls had fun, good food, good weather, cute cake....

7. Drove back to Three Rivers (another 35 minutes) went swimming for a few hours, wore kids out.  Went to dinner.

8. Sunday morning: Drove another hour to see the Giant Sequoias.  Who knew big trees wouldn't be very interesting to 2 and a half year old girls. (I did, but I'm not going to say I told you so Dan, because that would be petty).  Then drove back to Visalia, took almost 2 hours.

9. Saw my dad's cool new dental office.  

10.  Drove home (3 more hours). 

Total in van time: about 14 hours.

Guess what I did this morning?  Went to get car washed.  Very necessary.  

In all there were intervals of fun, and lots of intervals of crankiness, irrational crying, splinter removals, more irrational crying, mom yelling, dad yelling, mom and dad yelling, mom and dad laughing because if they didn't laugh, they too would join in with the irrational crying.  Hey we tried, but now we need a vacation from our vacation.