Spaghetti Night

Last night we had spaghetti night. But I think we are the only family who can have spaghetti night and not worry about a mess. Because of tomato allergy the boys just have plain meat sometimes with a little seasoning but I have learned they like it best with none.

Samuel is the funniest because he loves the noodles and just gobbles them up while Andy and Asher try to slurp them up. Andy would hold the noodles as far up as he could while he tried to get his mouth under it. Asher just loves playing with the noodles getting them tangled in his fingers.

Now Mommy she eats really funny and I thought I would attach a picture for you all to see.

Ashers Birthday Party

So on Saturday we held Asher's birthday party so that Mommy could be there for it. I invited over just a few people who had children my boy's age but it ended up that only people who had girls showed up and I got hounded for that.

Anyway I thought I would post some pictures of the party for you all to see. For my facebook readers if the pictures do not show up you can visit my actual blog at http://mrhousespouse.blogspot.com.

We have learned that Asher is different than his 2 brothers. Neither one of them liked cake nor liked making a mess but as you can see from below Asher did not mind as he was the only one to eat the majority of the cup cake. I guess most kids do not like Devils Food Cake Cup Cakes. :o) I guess I am going to have to learn how to make a cake mix by hand that does not contain milk or eggs because they do not like this nor the Strawberry very much.

Bacon

While running a few errands the other day Andy came up to me the other day and said Daddio I have 2 best friends. Which I replied with an astonished "Really who?" since before then he was always talked as if he could only have one. With an excited face he replied "My my two best friends are you Daddio and Bacon because he found my hat."

My Avon Boys

My boys think it is so much fun selling Avon. They love getting the boxes in the mail as well as going through everything with me and sorting it into bags.

Well this last campaign since Mommy was in the field all week everything was a little hectic and I was not paying attention to what the boys were doing to find out after the fact that they stuck a few items into bags that were not suppose to go into bags. When I went to fill the last few bags I could not find items. To find out they had stuck them into a lady's bag who is out of town until the 4th.

I guess I need to teach them how to read and go through the invoices to see who gets what. Once Samuel gets the hang of his bike I think I might just have him ride across post to deliver them too. Isn't it great having free labor, I mean kids. :o)

Asher and Allergies

So far Asher has not shown any signs of allergies like his brothers, especially to the things they are allergic to. But the last few days Asher has been eating Watermelon. At first he was eating it all non stop then a few days ago he would eat a little and throw the rest on the ground. Well last night he ate just a little and kept throwing the rest down. We did not think anything of it until last night when he decided to keep me up most of the night and then again for most of the morning. Early in the morning he had 2 really watery poopies while holding him and then while he was eating his breakfast he started crying really bad and I just thought he was being fussy from little sleep last night but when I got him out of the chair when he was finished I noticed his PJs were wet and when I went to change his diaper there was undigested watermelon in it along with a very very red bottom.

All in all Asher may be allergic to watermelon, which is not something the others were allergic to. But it is in the melon family just like tomatoes which Samuel is allergic to. I guess I will need to keep a closer eye on him.

Funny Short Story

So this week Mommy has been in the field doing training and when she got home at the end of the week, she got up with the boys on Saturday and made them breakfast. She was enjoying the time with the boys when Andy started crying and yelling No I want Thomas! So Mommy replied "Andy the Thomas cups are for Samuel." Which he replied "Mommy go back into the field." Then Samuel jumped in and said "Well Daddio gives Andy Thomas cups." And Mommy said but the Cars Cups are Andy's" to get bashed back with from Samuel "Mommy you need to go back into the field for 100 weeks."

To make a short story long, I had ran out of Cars cups so I gave Andy a Thomas cup the day before and they thought it was the coolest thing in the world, but now Mommy gets home and puts everything back into the normal routine.

Sad News

Today I had the boys in day care so that I could go get my eyes examined. Well to find out my eyes have gotten worse but not bad enough for glasses the doc said. My right is 20/50 and my left is 20/30 (used to be 20/40 and 20/10). Oh well, I guess I will save myself some money on glasses.

Anyway I got home about 20 minutes before I needed to pick up my boys so I was going to relax without my boys around for 10 minutes when all the sudden I hear a knock at my door. As I go to answer it there is a soldier standing there to inform me that my wife died by a mortar round during their training today. Then she proceeded in to take a shower since she was all stinky from the field. As I talked with her I learned that they first thought it was from a sniper but realized that was not realistic for a S1 to die from so they changed it to a paper cut then to a mortar round. Yes the soldier at my door and now taking a shower at my house was my wife. She was sent away from their current training for a few hours to see how the unit works without its top people.

Anyway to the sad news. right after she arrived I received a phone call from the day care center informing me that Andy has had a reaction on his arm and is having big blisters forming on it. I informed them that I would be right there which turned out to be a good thing. Backing up a few months, we had to spend 3 months getting all this stinking paper work done so that the boys could get back in the day care center and we had to get Epi Pens and doctor prescribed benadryl and now have to do monthly paper work just so they can stay a few hours here and there when I have a doctors appointment or teaching for AFTB.

Ok back to present day, because of all this ridiculous paper work the people there started to go crazy and had given him the benadryl and it was not immediately working. Luckily I was just a mile away so I came up there. When I got up there one of the people said that they were thinking about using the Epi Pen if I was not going to make it soon!!!!!!!!!!! First with that you got to bring them to the hospital not to fix the problem but to counter the Epi Pen side effects. When I got up there and looked at it I just smiled and asked if they tried washing his arm with soap and water, which they had not. So I brought him in there and explained a basic skin rash and how washing the area effected with soap and water fixes the problem. Once done a minute later the "big white blisters" as they put it were gone and he just had a red area were they were at. With an allergy skin rash you just wash the skin with soap and water to remove the irritation.

Andy was just fine with it but the people were then going crazy trying to figure out what caused it. Most likely a child did not wash their hands when they got there and had drank some milk or eaten peanut butter and then touch a toy before Andy did.

After all this the sad news is that in the midst of this and now my blog writing I missed lunch!

Mission Update

Mission Update:
Date: Saturday Aug 15th 2009
Time: 5:10 PM
Place: My front Porch

We just got all the boys down for bed except for Asher, mommy went to take a nap and left me with him. Finally he got tired and went to sleep. Excited I set to rest just to be interrupted by a tap tap taping on my door. When I got up and looked out I saw no one... at first. But as I opened the door I saw a short MP (sorry Bacon it just put some spice to the story) standing on my front porch.

As I stepped out he said, "I am glad I found your house." You see Bacon used to work with my wife but now he drives one of hte undercover cars on post. We played Baseball together which he as good at catching and I right field but about 1/4 the way through the season the coach started having me catch and he play right field. Drove us both crazy. Anyway back to the story.

He then reach behind his back and pulled out..... a hat and said "I heard you are looking for this." To find out his wife works up at the PX and heard that the boys had lost a train conductor hat and she had just kept an eye out for it for 3 days and then she found it! The funny thing was Anndea had gon back up there Saturday morning asking around again and she said people were getting a little rude to her about it saying stuff like "A guy already came here asking about it 2 weeks ago" but with the rude girly voice and head move. Well maybe not the head move but rude voice.

It was so exciting, but when Andy woke up from his nap the first thing he said to me in a pittyful crying voice was "I want my train haaaaattttttt." With tears rolling down his eyes I said "Don't worry Andy come here I got something for you" and proceeded to give him his at. A big smile appeared on his face and the joy and excitement that has been missiong for 3 days started to return, well at least for 3 seconds before Samuel came in and yelled "HEY THATS MY HAT!" and started to charge over to Andy and rip it out of his hands.

It took a few seconds to convince Samuel to give Andy his hat back so we could go looking around the house to find were he last placed his.

Mission Satus: Complete

The Mission:

Yesterday Mommy had the morning off so she took the boys to Walmart, the Donut shot, the Clothing and Sales, and the PX mall and somewhere in there Andy lost his Train condutor hat. He was super upset about it so at noon the boys and I packed up in the car ands tarted to back track. We went to the PX (which hte boys said they went to the toy section but once there I realized they did not and jsut tricked me. We checked the 3 lost and founds there and then started to walk the mall area of the PX going from store to store asking if they have seen the hat. One lady recognized the boys and remebered exactly what Andy was doing so she looked all throughout the coats hanging on the wall but no hat. From there we went to the clothing and sales and looked throug hit and under the shelves, asked 2 different lady's who both had different locations for hte lost and found (for such a small story). But no luck there.

So we head to Wal Mart were we combed the store visited the Customer Service twice, the dressing room and even some guy in toys went to look in the area were they put items with no tags. After $66 later and some lunch we headed home. We ended up searching for 3 hours and the majority of it the boys were good. Needless to say they all took a good nap.

Love's a One Way Street

So yesterday I learned from my oldest son that Love is a One Way Street with only one destination and not multi destinations. I guess this means that any postal worker cannot have love. :o)

Mommy did something for Samuel so he ran over to me and said "Daddio, I do not love you any more, I love Mommy instead." So I asked if if he could love us both to get pounded with a sharp "Nope."

On a side note children are mirrors, lately if I start noticing an attitude in Samuel I just look at the people around to see where he got it from. Recently he was constantly giving me this frowning look with his eye brows pointing downward when he wanted to do something or get his way. I kept telling to stop doing that because it does not look nice but then the next day I learned were he was getting it from. When I would get onto him I would get this mean face and typically they would do what I wanted so Samuel decided that it was the face so if he made the face I would do what he wanted. But I guess it does not work the other way around.

So to stop it I lightened my look and started smiling at him when he did it to me.

Correction of last post

In the last post I wrote work alcoholic which I meant work-a-holic. Non of the people who stayed with my wife are alcoholics.

Slumber Party

Ok so this week has been a crazy week. Wednesday I took My boys and the 2 girls to VBS and when it was over we headed home while Mommy x 2 tried to get some work done before their wonderful (no non existent) 4 day weekend. On our way home I called to see if I should just drop the girls off at their house but found out they were still all at work. So I told Mommy to order some pizza and we would pick it up and bring it to them at work (since work-a-holics forget they are hungry :o)

To my surprise they ordered 4 boxes and a drink, which the pizza place was so kind to carry out to my car, while driving I was trying to figure out how to get it all into their work when I realized that I had been blessed with 12 hands! So each child carried a box of pizza into work and an MP gave me a ticket for child labor since they were all 5 and younger (not really but it sounded fun). So even though the kids had already eaten they wanted some of the good stuff so we ended up taking one box back to the house with 2 extra girls again.

At 10 I called to see if it was ok if I laid the girls down to sleep since one was already out on Samuel's bed and the other wanted to have a Slumber Party with Samuel and Andy on the living room floor. Given the ok we pulled out the mat and started to make the bed with 3 kids trying to help pulling the covers every direction except for the way they needed to go.

The night ended with Samuel and one girl on the floor and Andy in bed with me. He was toooooooo tired to go to sleep since it takes just a little effort to keep your eyes closed for 10 seconds.

When Mommy x2 came over I just told the extra to go and enjoy a nice long sleep which she replied back with "I will be back at 8 for them." which I replied back with "No Rush" since I did not want to have to wake up at 8, I needed to sleep in too. Needless to say they did not wake up until around 9 and Mother x2 did not show up until 9:30.

Anyway it ended up that both got called back in on Thursday because someone (not them) did not do the paper work write so they had to go and check the corrections and then wait until every signature was back on it again (which means that they had to call a lot of people back in from their day offs). When Mommy got home Samuel wanted to have a Slumber Party with her and not me :o( So Mommy and Samuel had a wonderful night but since Mommy turns a lot I kept on being woken up to the squeaky guest bed, now I know why Gege and Nana want to get hotels when they come to visit. :o)

Well that is a quick update of the past 2 days since I was not able to update it sooner.

The Morning After

The morning after the sleep was a moment to remember. The night however was different. Samuel tosses and turns a lot more than I remember. Anyway he woke up some time around 7 AM and looked straight at me and his yawn became a big smile. In a soft tired whisper he said "Daddio did you sneak Mommy last night?" With a smile I answered back " Yes I did and I got in trouble when she woke up this morning." He let out a soft laugh and then plopped an arm on me, closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

A little later Mommy came home from work and was amazed that he was still asleep but it was because he was enjoying his sleep over with me. Andy had gotten up and was excited because he got to choose what bowl he got to eat from instead of getting whatever one Samuel had left.

Later today we set off to VBS and the boys helped me song lead a few songs like the Hippo song and The Lord's Army "Texas Style." It was Samuel, Andy, Asher and I on this since Mommy had to work late because of our recent trip. The ladies in the church stepped up and helped me out with it all. One held Asher and then after class during dinner one even started making plates for my boys. The lady did her best to not get him allergies but with the items in bowls it was hard. When she left I had to clear off half the things in Andy's plate but it was ok since Asher eats anything now. Don't tell Mommy but he is eating things that the other 2 are allergic to. She would kill me if she found out but I have noticed that he has not had reactions like the other 2 did at his age to simple things as touching.

The Moments that Touch Us Most

Just a heads up we are back from our trip and I look forward to writing about it in the upcoming week.

Throughout our lives there are moments that touch us, moments that effect they way we live, they things we do, or the future of how we act. For some it is a big event like 9/11 or the Oklahoma City Bombing; for others it is the giving birth to a new life or finding that right person who changes their life forever. These can be big and small, they can be events that most everyone else sees or little things that you may not even realize at first.

The past few days before our little trip Samuel has asked me and then Mommy if "Daddio can have a sleepover" with him. Tonight Samuel asked again but this time added "my best friend Daddio" and Mommy said no because I was going to stay up and work some. I did not hear this but tonight 2 hours later this conversation hit me like a wall of bricks.

For the past 3 years I have partly dedicated my life to raising my boys, as many of you may think that I do a great job at it, it is actually a very hard and exhausting job. In fact there are times when I feel like I am not doing anything right. I have tried to teach Samuel and Andy and build their imagination but all it has turned out to be is me sitting them in front of the TV in the morning while I constantly clean, take care of Asher, check email and Avon stuff and try to wake up until lunch time where I prepare and force my boys to eat while I set my internal clock to count down til nap time.

So many times they have asked me to help them build a Super train track but I answer with "Later" or "Not Right Now." So many times they ask to go play at the park but I give them an excuse that begins with "Asher..." I have lost it and yelled at them for no reason and then tried to cover it up with a no good reason that just leaves them confused. But through all these mistakes I have made they still see me as an amazing person, a great father, someone they want to have a "belly like when they grow up," a miracle worker who can heal boo boos with a kiss, and a best friend.

I have let the world control my thoughts of "being successful" and have forgotten what I have always preached of what "being successful" is. It is not money, it is not a 5 to 9 job that pays well, it is not the car or nice house, it is not a tower of Christmas gifts but instead the job or your family and the happiness from a simple life.

In my eyes I sometimes see a failure because I have not taught Samuel Calculus yet, pushed Andy on his colors, built a super successful business (web hosting, Avon, travel, etc...). But in my boys eyes, the eyes that really count, I am their best friend. Looking back to some lessons I used to teach as a youth minister I remember speaking of being like children is what God wants. What he wants is for us not to think of all the worldly things but to be like children and find joy and happiness in the smallest with no worries over this or that which we have no control. The mirage that hit my life and actions will be no more.

Tonight at 11:50 while sitting on the couch watching "Bed Time Story." Samuel's comment hit me 2 hours after it was said and this little so called insignificant moment which I was not even there for has touched my life. Tonight my life has changed, my focus is changing and Samuel will wake up in the morning to a Daddio having a sleep over with him.