Birthday Week

So my sister Tricia called me to see if I would be willing to watch her kids the first week of July while her and Dan took a much needed vacation. She said she would understand if I didn't want to do it because it would mean that I would be away from my husband for the 4th of July and my birthday. However, let me take a moment to explain the way our life has pretty much been for the last two months. Tanner wakes up and leaves the house by 6:30am, returns around 6pm. Eats dinner with us, and either continues to study or zones out doing something else. I'm sure a lot of you might be thinking, uh yeah, that is how it is when your husband has a full time job! And I realize that, but there is something that is different about this whole bar study thing...he breathes, sleeps, and eats it. And while some of you may be thinking that your husbands also breathes, sleeps, and eats their job, Tanner isn't really like that. He likes his down time and his relax time, and stressy is not one of the words I would ever use to describe him. But the bar exam IS the culmination of the entire law school experience, and he does have to pass in order to actually be a 'practicing' lawyer. He has been doing a great job studying, and I really feel badly for him. When I mentioned that Tricia had asked if I would watch her kids for the week, he said that it might be a good idea. He felt badly that it was during my birthday, but luckily, I have never been a huge birthday fan in general, so I wasn't heartbroken.

So off I went to Tricia's for the week. K, first of all, 5 kids under the age of 6 (and a half! ;-) is a little crazy, but the older three, Courtney, Carter, and Jonah can pretty much take care of themselves. I would just have to break up the occasional disagreement and make sure they were all fed. Having Clark (20 months) and Bella (12 months) was a little more dicey, which was compounded by the fact that Clark went from having zero siblings to have 4. He especially didn't like it when I would pass him on the stairs carrying Bella. I knew he was thinking "Why does SHE get to be held? And I have to get up these mammoth things all by myself! You used to carry me ya know!" Some things were easier than expected and some things were harder. But we had fun, and that's all that matters. I did want to make sure that we had an especially good time on the 4th of July. I printed off American flags for them all to color. We had a water balloon fight in the back yard, and I even hauled them all into downtown Charlotte for fireworks in the park. I made brownies for myself, lit the candles for myself, but the kids sang so cute for me and Jonah blew out my candles (on accident...or maybe not). Then we had root beer floats. Before you think too good of me, I have to admit that I was exhausted, and the next day I was a bit of a raunch since we had to clean up and get ready to go to Florida. But it didn't matter, after a day like we had, I could pretty much do no wrong in their eyes.

Some of my favorite and not so favorite sayings from the week were:

Courtney: "Chez, you are like a real baker!"

Carter: (yelling from upstairs) "Chez!! Jonah pooped in his underwear!"

Jonah: saying something completely unintelligible.
Me: Jonah, you need to speak more clearly, I can't understand you.
Jonah: I SAID I want cookie crisp for breakfast (in completely perfect English).

Carter: "I want my dessert RIGHT NOW!"
Me: "Is that how you talk to me?"
Carter: "Chez, may I please have my dessert now"
Me: "of course you can!"
Carter: "Thank you Chez"

Courtney: "Carter, come here so I can smash this balloon on your head!"
Carter: "OKAY CORK!"

Courtney to Carter: "Carter, you color every other stripe red and leave the other one white. There are 13 because there were 13 original colonies." (that girl is seriously smart).