Ready, Set...GO!

Ready, Set...GO!

Well, we are all better...I'm sure it's just temporary so I'm not getting my hopes up. David is back from his training. Thank God! That was the longest week of my life. The boys didn't sleep. I didn't sleep. We where all sick as dogs and miserable. Now all seems to be calm. I'm hoping just to make it through the holidays without any relapses.

The baby is running around like a mad man. He is getting into everything. The triplets refuse to leave the gate closed so he pretty much has free run of the house. God help us if he discovers the stairs!

We have been busy getting ready for Christmas. I put up the tree finally, only to plug it in and have SPARKS shoot out!. I immediately unplugged it and ran to tell David. Truth is, I wasn't that upset that the old tree finally gave out. I wanted a new slim line tree anyway. Let's just say WalMart saved the day. I quickly ran and bought a new tree just in the "NICK" of time!

Ho Ho Home for the Holidays!

Ho Ho Home for the Holidays!

Let the craziness begin! So here we are again. The hustle and bustle of the holidays. The revolving door of visitors will begin soon and just on cue we have a winter cold. As usual there is SNOT EVERYWHERE! The kids are their normal miserable self. That seems to come with the territory when they don't feel well. Griffin hasn't slept more than 2 hours at a time in days and seems to have the worst of it. I myself have been under the weather and have had a battery of tests to rule everything out. After a few very stressful weeks my tests came back ALL negative! Thank you GOD! It turns out I had "Mononucleosis". Mono as it is most commonly called is known as "the kissing disease". This is a name that came out of mostly teenagers becoming effected after swapping spit or smooching in the hallways of schools. I most likely got it from a restaurant or shopping cart. That's what sucks about being the mom, when I'm sick I still have to take care of the family. To make things worse David is off to a training seminar in South Carolina. This means just me and 5 sick kids, UGH! Of course my wonderful Deb is here on occasions to relieve some of the pressure. Thank God for her!

This week on top of not feeling well Austin had Floor Hockey. He insisted on going so who am I to complain. If you look at all the kids they all had snot hanging from their noses and bright red cheeks. This was the first time I saw him play and I was quite impressed. He kept to side while playing defensive and even got to play goalie for a while. He looked so cute in all those pads and helmet. He could barely stand but was able to prevent 6 or so goals. He did allow 2 in but hey, it was his first time! Good Job Babe!

Like I said the triplets weren't feeling well. We kept everything at home very low key the whole week. We watched movies, ate Christmas cookies that they helped make and drank cocoa. I think they like this every night routine. They are going to be so disappointed when all the Christmas specials end. So will I!

So, Griffin is walking! Let me correct myself, RUNNING! He is "Super Baby". I am so impressed. I think he just had enough of the bigger kids getting around faster than him! All though he was sick, he managed to get around fine. Let's hope it all clears up for Christmas next week!

Look Who's Walking Too!

Look Who's Walking Too!

I would just like to make a small announcement that my amazing, incredible, handsome, sweet baby boy Griffin Henry Michael is now walking. Over the last few weeks he has been taking steps from here to there. We thought for sure he would walk a month ago when he started to free stand but he waited until today. After much anticipation little Grif stood up and walked with no assistance. Not taking just one or two steps but 20 and more steps. He walked from the kitchen door to the sink, from the couch to the toy basket from Austin to me and everywhere in between! 11 months and 7 days old. I am very proud and scared to death! THEY ARE ALL MOBILE, GOD HELP US!!!!!

....now if he would just sleep through the night!

Here comes Santa Clause!

All my sweet angels watching Santa Clause is coming to Town! Check out Austin's SNUGGIE!

Here comes Santa Clause!

Well, the holidays are upon us. As I said in a previous post, I am almost done shopping and am looking forward to Christmas with the boys. It will be the first year they may actually know what's going on. Austin is so excited. He has made his list and sent it off to Santa. We are doing advent calenders to count down the days. The boys love that they get a small chocolate treat everyday after dinner. It's our little routine and they get such a kick out of opening the little hatch and finding out what shape they candy is today. I think it may be our best holiday to date. We are looking forward to our open house and welcoming family and friends as always. I'm not sure when I will find time to make Christmas cookies but I'm sure they will get done as always!

I am trying my best to keep up with the postings here on the blog, but as the boys get bigger they are much more demanding of my time. I send a lot more time playing and they spend a lot less time sleeping. So needless to say my time is limited!

I have begun preparations on Griffin's 1st birthday extravaganza. We are looking forward to celebrating with all our loved ones. We are hoping the weather holds out. We will see. Invitations go out in the mail this week, if I can find time.

I must get back to my boys who are very sweetly and calmly watching Santa Clause is coming to town.

Let's Get Physical!

mmmm Thanksgiving!A new stuffing.

What's Grandma doing???

ahhhhhhh, that's what she was doing!

My lil' cutie!

Thanksgiving breakfast. Emerson ate 4 bowls of cereal.

Stinner Family Fun Night this week was Twister. Believe it or not, I am under that pile of kids. They thought it was fun to pile on mommy!!

Thanksgiving and More!

Before the holiday we needed a week of catch up. I finished with the boys physicals. They now have all had their flu shots and everyone is healthy. We of course did not need the H1N1 vaccine because we assume we are immune. We where hoping we are immune. I have talked to quite a few people about the swine flu. I explained that we had it and we survived. I heard stories of people driving across state lines to try and get the vaccine. One woman in the doctors office told me I should write a letter to an online blog about my families experience with the swine flu, since we had so many levels of the sickness. I am in the process of writing it and will send the link when it is complete. I personally think that people are freaking out for nothing. OK, if you are immuno-suppressed or have severe underlying conditions like a recent surgery, chemotherapy or a staph infection than by all means protect yourself by any means necessary. But if you are healthy, contracting the swine flu will be like any other flu you have had before. So calm down.

Thanksgiving was wonderful as usual. We had a lovely meal with my family. The kids ran around and played while the adults enjoyed dinner and talked. At one point I did see my mother giving the children "spray whipped cream" by directly spraying it into their mouths. This is very typical of her. She's such a kid at heart. I realized we have so much to be thankful for this year. We have 5 beautiful, happy, healthy children. We have family that loves us unconditionally and we have removed negativity from our lives and vowed to replace it with love and happiness. Life is good.

The holiday shopping season is upon us. I myself am done shopping. I try to finish in advance so I am not scrambling around trying to find impossible items. This year I went out on black Friday. I leisurely got up, had breakfast with my kids, cleaned up, showered and left around 9:15am. I only needed a few things and didn't feel like getting up in the middle of the night to fight with people. I surprisingly got everything I needed with no hassle. I wasn't out for the big ticket video games or big screen tv's so I had no issues. The stores where unbelievably dead. I had no line at Target, Kohl's and Home Depot. Kmart was a little crazy but it was close to the 11am deadline. I was home by 11:30am and enjoyed the rest of the day with my boys.

At this time of year I can't help but miss the people I have lost. I spent the afternoon with my Grandpa today and reminisced about my Granny who we lost in August. I realized I wouldn't get that sweet handwritten card from Granny this year and it made me rather sad. I can't imagine how he feels. I am missing my other grandmother who has been gone almost 3 years and I realized how fragile life is. You can be called home at any time. So this holiday season, love your family. Show them they are important to you. Life is too short!

Family Fun Nights!

Griffin ready to play Waxk a Mole

Austin pouting.

WACK A MOLE!!!!

Dinner before Family Fun Night!

The Boys on their new bench. They are shirtless becuase there was ketchup involved! Good looking out , daddy!

Family Fun Nights

The kids had a great week. Everyone is healthy and happy. Griffin is teething like crazy and has decided to only sleep 2 hours at a time. It's terribly frustrating for me but eventually he will be in his own room and I can get some sleep! The 2 year olds are good. Emerson and Maxim had their evaluation for speech therapy this week. Within the next few weeks they should be starting. Although they are delayed in their speech quite a bit, they now seem to be talking more and more. I am also looking into music classes for the boys. I would love for them all to learn an instrument. They LOVE music. We sing and dance all day. Between my mother and myself we have gotten them all the First Act instruments. I can't wait to get a drum set. I always secretly wanted to be a drummer! Austin is amazing. David and I had our first teacher conference this week. His teacher said he is a smart boy. He is the best reader in his class, reading at a 2nd to 3rd grade level. He is having some issues in class with talking. I guess he's like me and a bit of a class clown. He also is having issues with writing. We are not sure if it's his poor eyesight or a concentration issue. We've decided to get him a tutor for a couple of months and than move on from there.

Since the children are getting older(I know 10 months, 2years and 6 years isn't "older", but bare with me), we've decided to have "Stinner Family Fun Nights". These are evenings we either go out, shopping, dinner, sight seeing etc... or we stay in and bake cookies, pop popcorn, watch a new family friendly movie, make a craft or play games. We are hoping Santa (wink, wink) is bringing us more little person friendly games (they are on the lists) so we can expand our horizons a bit. We started on Sunday and the boys had a blast. There were occasional frustrating points when someone didn't want to follow the rules of the games but all in all the kids laughed while catching butterflies with Elefun, laughed while slamming furry creatures in Wack a Mole and saw who was faster in putting the game pieces in Connect Four. I think this weekend may be "COOKIE BAKING". I can almost imagine the mess now. It doesn't really matter what we do as long as we do it together. I love this phase of our lives. The kids are so interesting.

Ready for Anything!

Grif eating like a big boy!

Mmmmmmmaxim!

Alex looking less than impressed.

Emerson looks like a big boy with his hair cut!

Is this kid gorgeous or what?

My big boy showing off his new glasses.

and than, his new Transformers costume!

mmmmm...carrots!

This is what happens when Emerson finds the bag of chips I left on the counter!

That's right...you spill it, you clean it! Child labor laws do not apply in my house!

Ready for Anything!

Now that we are feeling better our life is finally returning to normal. We spent the last week getting the children physicals and catching up on other doctors appointments. Not only did I need to make sure my children where over their recent illnesses but I realized with the busy summer we had, we completely forgot about yearly physicals. For the first time ever I decided to split the children up and only bring them one by one to the doctors. This is so we keep everyone straight. It's hard for me to take 3 children at a time by myself anywhere let alone hold them and let the doctor examine them, not to mention comforting them after shots. Most of my friends and family know I am not a huge advocate of childhood vaccinations. I think immunities came from actually contracting childhood diseases. I mean, I didn't die from the chicken pox! My mother contracted mumps and measles and went on to have four amazing children(good job, mom). I am very selective about the shots my children receive. In fact I opt out of several mandatory shots. I only allow my children to receive the ones that are absolutely necessary and they NEVER receive more than two shots in a sitting! This is a a well thought out and researched decision that my husband and I have come to. We do not in any way advocate that other parents refuse to immunize. So please don't think that is our motivation or agenda.

We have been having several repairs done to our house lately. It seems the lightening that struck our home in August did some major damage to our roof, chimney and electrical system in our house. This is frustrating. I cringe when I need to flip on a light and it flickers. It's unbelievable how powerful that one bolt of lightning was and what an enormous amount of damage it did.

Since we purchase our home in 2007 our family has grown considerably. We actually found out we where pregnant the day we put our first bid on the property. In no way did we imagine that we had three little bundles of joy on the way let alone a fourth to follow just 16 months after! Now here we are less than 3 years later and we have seriously outgrown our home. We have children and their paraphernalia EVERYWHERE! We have begun looking to the future. Eventually these 5 little men that we have been so blessed with will be 5 teenagers. This house in it's current state will not be enough to sustain our growing brood. We are weighing all options including selling, buying a preexisting home in another suburb, adding an addition or building a brand new home. It's frustrating the thought of packing and moving with 5 little ones but we are just seeing what's out there before we make any haste decisions. If I had it my way we would build elsewhere. But we love the neighborhood and school district where we are. We have commissioned an architect to draw up plans for an addition but with the current economy we may be better off just moving to a new neighborhood and starting fresh. We will see what happens. I have been praying that God will lead us in the best direction for our family. We are the Stinners 7 strong and we will be fine no matter where this new adventure takes us, we are ready for ANYTHING!

Happy, Healthy & Halloween!

All my boys!
Griff as a skeleton/Woody

Austin IS BATMAN!

I couldn't resist! Griffin is the happiest baby EVER!
Emerson as the Alien from Toy Story!

Griff as Tigger

Alex as Buzz, Em as the Alien and Max as Woody! The dry run before Halloween.

Happy, Healthy & Halloween!

Well, God is good! We are healed! That was the longest two weeks of my life. We are ALL feeling better. The swine flu has officially left our system and are finally returning to our normal routine. The kids came through like champs and just in time for Halloween.

As I've said before, we don't do the traditional Halloween celebrations. We omit all the death, terror and ghoulish parts. Instead, we carve happy pumpkins, dress in positive costumes, occasionally go door to door(to our immediate neighbors and only people we know) and use the opportunity to go see family. Unfortunately this year Halloween was freezing. Not only that we had 40 mile an hour winds. At one point I think I saw Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz fly bye...Auntie Em, Auntie Em!!!!!!!!! We had to rearrange our plans a bit but we had a great time. We took the kids to the Kenmore Halloween party. This was a little difficult because of the weather but we got them balloons and snacks all while walking around admiring all the costumes. Aside from some vampires the costumes where fairies, monkeys, super hero's and the occasional spider. I didn't see too many that where really scary! We headed home after only a short time because the wind kicked up. Later that evening we dressed the boys up...Emerson as an Alien, Maxim as Buzz and Alex as Woody from the Toy Story Movies. Griffin was Tigger and Austin donned his best Batman! They all looked so cute. We had done a "dry run" a few days before to make sure the boys would tolerate being in a costume. Aside from 1 minor mishap(Maxim would not keep the cowboy hat on for the Woody costume)it went off without a hitch. At my mom's house the boys got visits from their Aunts, cousins as well as their Papa and his wife Robin. It was nice to see everyone and the kids where nice and toastie instead of freezing and blowing down the street! It was another successful Stinner holiday, now bring on the turkey!!!! Thanksgiving is right around the corner!

H1N1...WHAT???????

H1N1...WHAT?????????

Have you ever made the statement "it won't happen to us"? Well so have I. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Over the past two weeks I have been sick. Very sick. The kind of sick that renders a person unable to talk, walk, stand or take care of my own kids sick. It was the worst I have ever felt. It started out as what I thought was a sinus infection. Stuffy head, congestion and all the classic signs of a fall cold. Than it took a dangerous turn. About a week into my illness I realized I wasn't getting better. In fact I was getting worse. My muscles where fatigued, my extremities swollen, my chest congested and a raging fever. I was unable to stand for more than a few seconds and the coughing was...unbearable. The doctor sent me in for tests thinking it was a respiratory infection that manifested into pneumonia. Nope, no such luck. in the mean time the children, who have been on antibiotics for ear infections, began falling ill. First Emerson. His fever, like mine rose above 104. He was lethargic and groggy. Several times I had to put him in a cool bath to lower his body temperature. We where both just so sick.

I came to the realization that we had contracted the flu while at the hospital. You see Emerson was playing in my room a few days prior to getting sick. He was on my bed while I was putting away laundry. He started throwing pillows off my bed, which only meant one thing. He was going to jump on them. This is standard practice in my house. They all do it. After throwing most of the pillows off my bed he jumped, and missed! He landed on his ankle and immediately began screaming. I thought for sure he broke it. Within a few hours I took him to the ER. They where wonderful. They saw to him rather quickly and we where out of their with a diagnosis of a sprained ankle. Although I was sick at the time. I had no idea what was in store for my little family.

Within a few days we would come to realize, we had the flu....THE SWINE FLU! We all tested positive! Not us! Not my little family!

Within days of this visit we all started falling ill. First me, than Emerson, Max and Alex followed quickly as did Austin, Griffin and David. The pain was horrible. Muscle aches like I have never had and lets face it, my pain tolerance is HUGE! I did carry 3 human beings inside of me after all! I knew the flu was terrible but I never imagined it being this terrible. The doctors started my family on Tamiflu. This is really the only flu treatment out there. Within a few days my family was feeling better. Thank God. I on the other hand am still under the weather. I was unable to take the Tamiflu because it was not discovered I had the flu right away. Now here we are over a week since our flu symptoms started and we are on the mend. The fevers have all broke and the body aches have started to subside. There is still evidence of sickness through the debilitating coughing and congestion but we seem to be healing slowly and surely!

I know we contracted it while in the hospital. Our immune systems where compromised due to sinus and ear infections. It's a scary thought since we have read the papers and seen the news like everyone else. It's a horrible flu. The worst in history and we survived. We owe it all to our wonderful doctors and the good Lord above that saw to it that we survived. Thanks to all our friends and family who where concerned and who prayed for us. We will be back to our normal crazy Stinner Family antics in no time! Remember, don't say it can't happen to you. It can, and it might. Take all the precautions you can. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS FLU! We where lucky. None of us where hospitalized, none of us died. That doesn't mean you can't get it worse than we did. Stay safe everyone and be proactive!

Pumpkins

Look what I grew!

Carving pumpkins!

ewwwwww

Almost done.

Up to no good!

Happy Stinner Pumpkins!

Pumpkins

Everyone knows that this year was the first year I planted a garden. I did this to prove to myself that I could. Unfortunately it was such a wet gloomy season that we lost a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers. We had a great season for green peppers, yellow squash, zucchini and of course pumpkins. This was exciting to me. I always wanted my own pumpkin patch and trust me that's just what happened. What I didn't know is that pumpkins take over EVERYTHING! They grab a hold of all your other vegetables and lay on top of them or strangle them to death. Needless to say by mid September the Pumpkins had morphed my garden into a pumpkin patch.

The kids had a blast scooping all the "guts" out of the pumpkins. Alex kept saying "swimey". Max tried to taste it and Emerson just wanted it off his hands. Austin however, was superman. He reached right in and scooped out pumpkin guts like that was the best job in the world. We carved our pumpkins with happy faces, since they where happy to give their pumpkin lives for our enjoyment. After some intense cleaning we roasted the seeds and tried them. The triplets didn't get it and Austin pretended to like them but they just weren't big enough to really enjoy. Oh well, maybe next year. We'll have to grow one of those 2000lb bad boys that win all the awards every year! HAHA, wishful thinking!

Now it's time for Halloween. We have this discussion with people every year. We approach Halloween differently than other people. We don't "celebrate" it as a holiday but rather embrace it as a day of fun and games for our kids. We allow them to dress up in fun, non-demonic costumes. Last year they where all animals and Austin a character from Star Wars. We are not real big on trick or treating, so we travel to friends and families houses for treats. We know we can not completely shelter our children from the evils of the world. So we choose to teach them right from wrong and turn something that might be harmful into something fun and innocent. I know not everyone will agree with me. Most Christians choose to ignore Halloween like it doesn't happen. But I choose to let my children enjoy the day and ignore the gore!

Our 1st Vacation!

The Great Wolfe Lodge

The Lobby. Animiatronics. So cool! The waterpark.

Alex on our balcony.

Austin on the balcony.

Maxim on the balcony.

Emerson is a big man in Daddy's shoes.

Max & Alex on the walkway above the pool.

Ut oh...dumping water!

My little Jedi's having a light saber war in the room.

Griffin made himself at home!

So did Austin!

Our 1st Vacation!

OK, it's not OUR 1st vacation but it is our 1st vacation with 5 children in tow! Anyone with several kids can tell you it is INSANE to travel with small children let alone 5 under 6 years old. It requires an immense amount of prep work, and when you get to your final destination you realize all the things you forgot. I was fortunate to not forget much. However, it's always the truly vital things that you seem to leave behind. In this case, the bottle washer. Yeah, yeah...doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Well, you travel with 4 bottle dependant kids(the triplets only need one for nap time and one for bed)and only 6 bottles. Do the math! It's tough to wash these fancy schmancy Dr. Brown's bottles with no brush. Being the MacGyver mom that I am, I bought an extra tooth brush in the gift shop and fashioned a bottle brush! Oh yeah, who's cool and genius now?

So anyway after a week of preparation we where off. We packed our van so full I was afraid the children weren't going to fit. Well, we all fit. Barely! There where bags in every nook and cranny. Off we where to The Great Wolfe Lodge in Niagara Falls, Canada. Seeing that we live less than 30 minutes(not including the wait time in customs) I figured we would be there in less than an hour. It ended up taking us a little longer than that since my hubby pulled a "I know right where it is, I don't need no stinking directions!" on me. HAHA, OK enough harping on David. We only got a little lost. After a quick stop for some more accurate directions we made it there after an hour and a half.

It was a little overwhelming at first. Everything is huge and there are people everywhere. The kids where relieved to be in our suite at last. They immediately began running from end to end checking out all the cool stuff. Their little area had bunk beds. Every wall was painted to look like the inside of a log cabin. There was raccoons and bears painted everywhere and of course wolves. They spotted the fireplace and banged on that. They climbed up on the tables and banged on the walls. They explored the bathroom and than discovered the safe. Let's just say it had buttons and made a cool beeping sound. I doubt if anyone will every be able to get it open again. The boys made that priority one!

We headed to the water park shortly after arriving. They where a little overwhelmed, OK a lot. There are tons of people. There are pools and tubes and water slides and geysers everywhere. The water is shooting out from all angles, the walkways overhead had cannons and hoses and a huge bucket that dropped hundreds of gallons of water on those below. Not to mention that the noise is just deafening. Alex loved it. He put those floaties on and off him and Austin went. They where looking all around and splashing up a storm. Max was OK, but a little apprehensive and Emerson wanted no part of the water at all. He just clung to my chest and wouldn't let go. I know my poor little man was just freaked out by the whole thing. Griffin on the other hand was a fish. He tried several times to dive out of mine and David's arms to get in. He would splash and laugh.

After an hour or so we headed to the room and got ready for dinner. This is a huge undertaking with 5 kids. Swimmy diapers off, clean diapers and clothes on. Mommy get dressed, daddy get dressed, Austin get dressed. Get sippy cups ready, get diaper bag packed. Everyone back in the strollers and head to the elevators. Now breathe! Briefly.

Can you imagine the look on the waitresses face when we said "A table for 7 please, with 4 high chairs." It's the same look we get everywhere we go, utter confusion. The boys don't eat out much but they seem to like the immediacy of buffets. David arranges everyone while I get food. By the time they sit, VIOLA, food is served. They are not used to having to sit stationary and eat. They do a free range thing in my house because they escape anyways. So after some minor melt downs they settled and ate. This was pretty much the same routine for every meal.

We got a ton of comments. Mostly, are they triplets? I got a "Are those quaDROOPlets?"(misspelled just like she said it). I answered everyone kindly and got a lot of "God Bless You". I even met a man in the elevator who also had triplets age 4 and a 5 year old. I was happy to be able to relate to someone even if it was only a 45 second elevator ride. We smiled sweetly when exiting feeling each others angst. Mostly people just stared and quietly counted to themselves. It's almost like "do my eyes deceive me? I must count!" HAHAHA! Yes there are 5 kids...all boys!

The second day we went to the water park several times. Emerson decided he wasn't afraid and that he too was a water baby. By the end of the day we almost had to fight them to get them out of the pools. They loved it! All 5 kids just splashing away, smiling, laughing and enjoying every moment. They loved running up and down the long walkways up above the park. They spilled water on people heads and took getting hit with water cannons with a grain of salt. We even got the huge bucket of water dumped on our heads several times and they just laughed and ran except for Griffin who smiled and splashed in a big puddle of water!

The 1st nights sleep was a little stressful. Alex was awake most of the night. I'm not sure if it was because of the new surroundings, the excitement of the day or the fact that he kept falling out of bed! OK, so they are definitely not ready for beds yet! It seemed every 5 minutes I was picking someone up off the floor. The next night I got smart! I pulled the mattress off the pull out couch, put it on the floor and surrounded it with pillows. We even pulled the mattress off one of the bunk beds to block off the stone fireplace. It was a make shift floor crib. Anyway, it worked out great and the boys, David and I got a good nights rest.

The last day was uneventful. After a hearty breakfast, of which most of it ended up on the floor if the restaurant, we packed and headed to the water park. The kids splashed and played for a couple of hours. Austin even made a friend that he was swimming and playing around with. The boys swam until they just about passed out. We changed everyone fast and by the time we headed out of the park area 3 of 5 where snoring! We grabbed some lunch to go and headed home just this afternoon.

I am pleased to say we made it over the bridge and home in less than an hour. Good thing since the kids where all exhausted and I seem to have contracted a terrible head cold. All in all it was a wonderful three days. My boys where amazingly well behaved and we proved to ourselves that we can still go out and have fun with 5 kids. Now for some much needed relaxation, and who knows maybe we'll tackle Disney next time....MAYBE!