A sneak peek

This afternoon I had a blinding headache (probably from too much sugar due to sampling the goodies Emory wanted to bake) and I wasn't as quick on my toes as usual and here's just a little sampling of what happened...

Trinity is fussing, whining and occasionally screaming about not wanting to go to soccer practice, Addison is screaming in her bed and Emory is sitting on the sofa in a total trance due to her benadryl I gave her to try to help her nose stop running long enough to get a nap in. I finally go in and check on Addison and the smell of dirty diaper is overwhelming! I get her diaper changed and decided to start the dishwasher before running out the door to soccer so I don't have to listen to the girls whine about how loud it is and they can't hear anything while it's running, so I set Addison down on the floor so I can get all the dirty baking dishes out of the sink and in the dishwasher. Setting Addison down brings Emory out of her near coma state and down on the floor to play with "her baby". Addison, none to happy about her mommy leaving the room, starts crying and eventually crawls after me to come let me know up-close how upset she is with me. Emory being the incredible big sister and helper that she is, follows Addison and quickly goes to scoop up Halo's food and water bowls so Addison doesn't take a detour for her daily feast. In Emory's incredibly helpful attempt she stacks the food bowl inside of the FULL water bowl and water goes everywhere! I lunge for kitchen towels to throw on the growing puddles before Addison crawls through them, then reach for the bowls to unstack and set aside. In the few seconds it takes me to do this Addison has not only crawled (she's still army crawling, so her entire body is on the floor) through the puddles, mopping them up for me but she is also heading straight for the dishwasher, which has HUGE knives with in her reach that I left open in my rush to save her from the puddles. While I'm racing over to save her from the knives and save the dishwasher from Addison, I slipped on puddles left behind by Addison's soaked dress, caught my balance and still managed to scoop her up. Now that I have saved all of this and us from total destruction I try to process what all Trinity is yelling at me about "hating soccer" and respond to her, start the dishwasher and run get Trinity's clothes for soccer to get her changed into since she is obviously not going to do it herself. I set Addison back down on the floor so I can hopefully get through these things more quickly and I return to the living room to try my best to encourage Trinity to be excited about soccer- it was her last practice of the season after all. Just as I think of a good, strong point to make I hear Emory start yelling at Addison and hollering for me...from the bathroom. I ditch my conversation with Trinity and run into the bathroom where Emory is washing her hands (which in her world means she is getting hand sanitizer all over the place to make sure not only her hands are clean, but so is everything else in the bathroom) and Addison is settling for an afternoon treat from Belle's (the cat) food dish since Halo's was so rudely taken from her. I scoop her up from this, bail the food out of her mouth and set a SCREAMING baby down on the floor to try to continue to reason with Trinity...only to find she has escaped as well! I find Trinity in the play room and get her ready for soccer, all the while she and Emory are fussing at each other about...actually about nothing (I think Emory was trying to figure out why Trinity was so grumpy and Trinity kept telling her something about Emory wasn't her parent and wasn't in charge of her so she didn't have to tell her...I think) and I manage to get that done and get everyone's water and snacks for the park and practice and still get out the door on time. By this point I'm so tired of hearing everyone gripe, fuss, whine, yell, and just be rude and disrespectful that I make a "complete silence" rule for the car on the entire ride to the park, it's about 20-25 minutes! Then, just as I'm settling into the silence my phone rings...so much for that!

Anyway, the silence did the girls a little good and their moods changed a little bit- not a lot, but at least the move was in the right direction!

I think my mom said the moon is full tonight, let's hope that's what the problem was because I CAN NOT handle another afternoon like that one! Now I'm happy to say everyone is FINALLY in bed and sleeping- i think, so I can laugh about it! Yea for laughter, it sure does make things right with the world!

Addison has six- yes six teeth poking through and she still manages to laugh a lot, so surely I can manage it from time-to-time! I really do love my life and wouldn't want to change it for the world! A terrible, awful day of chaos at home is still a day I got to spend with my girls and I will take it anytime I can get it, as long as that chaos does not include any major injuries or illnesses!

Laughter is the best medicine!

Proud Mama Moment

As you know, Trinity is in kindergarten this year. She is young for her class (September birthday), so she will be repeating kindergarten next year at another school. There are some kids in her class that are more than a year older than her! So I guess I should get to the point of this post; today Trinity received her very first report card (they operate in quarters, not six weeks like I'm used to)! Being in kindergarten they don't receive A's or B's or anything like that, not even numbers/percentages, they just receive one of the three following marks: Student has met the standard, Student is making progress, and Student requires support. There are 34 areas in which they received performance reviews and of the 34 areas 21 were marked "student has met the standard" and 13 were marked "Student is making progress"! Wow! These are standard on which they are graded on from day one of kindergarten and are expected to meet by the end of the year! Wow! I am so proud at how well Trinity is applying herself and how eager she is to learn! She is going to be SOOOO ahead of the game next year, let's hope she doesn't get too bored:)

Okay, I know she's going to kill me when she's a teenager and reads this, but I just had to write it down so she knows how well she's done since my memory tends to fail from time-to-time.

There is also a hand written note on her report card that says, "Trinity is doing great. I'm very pleased with her progress. Mrs. S"

I'm so proud!!!!!!! I love my princess and am always proud of her, no matter what!

Hinckley-Abbott Family Reunion

This weekend we drove down to Houston (well, actually Spring) and had our annual get-together with Greg's aunt and all her kids and grandkids. It was such a blast! There were 11 kids there total and Trinity was the second oldest! It was hard to walk anywhere without almost stepping on a little one! The girls all had a really great time! There was only one girl other than our three, so they got to play a lot of things they don't play at home and the other folks were exposed to a lot of Barbie and Princess stuff they don't normally see (of course the girls had to take a huge suitcase full of Barbie and My Little Pony stuff). The weather was so great (or should I say so HOT) that the kids actually got in the pool...HELLO, it's mid-October! It was amazing to see all those Abbott kids swimming! The two year olds didn't even need floats or anything and they would swim down to the bottom of the pool or from one side to the other...holy cow!

Pops with his baby girls

Trinity and Emory in pool

Emory and Aunt Mary

Nana and Aiden

Uncle Matt and his Ballerina Barbie

Trinity, Cade and Cory

All the beautiful children!

(Trinity, Emory, Aiden, Cade, Cory

Reid, Clark, Brennan, Addison, Drew, Taylor)

I really enjoyed visiting with Greg's cousins and their spouses, it's been way too long! We all get along really well and have a great time together! Every time we see each other we talk about needing to take a vacation together or something and it never pans out. I guess with six individual families and all the kiddos there's just too much going on to really coordinate schedules. We hope this year we will actually be able to pull it off.

and the chaos continues!

What a fun and crazy evening it's been around our house! You'd think we'd each had a Jolt Cola or something tonight! For those of you that don't remember Jolt, it had twice the sugar and twice the caffeine, it was before all this Red Bull and crazy energy drinks. So during all the fun times this evening we've discovered a new trick of Addison's and we wanted to share it with you.

In Greg's defense, they'd been at this for quite sometime before I got the camera out, so his arm was really tired!

You got it dude!

We are so grateful to have my sister in our lives! There are some things she feels obligated to teach the girls, Greg and I don't see them as necessary lessons however. Something about "her right as a Nini"? She would never teach them anything bad or something they SHOULDN'T know, just things that...well they're typical Nini. Here's one example for you, Emory started saying this in the middle of dinner, so I grabbed the camera to record these fun moments:)



What did kids do before digital cameras?