“Not Me” Monday: Playing Catch-Up

It honestly is “not me” to be so far behind in everything, blogging and life lately.  I feel like I’m treading water, which is so “not me”.  Normally, I’m on top of things, on the ball, first done, etc – lately that has been so “not me”. 

Let’s see what am I behind in….

• Blogging: I have two more posts (not counting this one), that I need to write.  But I keep either forgetting to do them or something else comes up more blog-worthy then the others!  Which is normally soooo “not me”.
• Church: I’m the secretary of the Relief Society, and that comes with quite a bit of responsibility and organization.  Normally, I’m on top of it, lately I can’t seem to stay afloat.  We had a meeting today, I barely got the agenda’s done and to the meeting [barely] on time.  Both of which or “not me”.  I still have the weekly announcements email to put together and write up the post meeting notes. 
• Email: I’m so behind on my personal and blog emails it isn’t funny.  They just keep coming, and I am not doing anything about them.  Which is “not me”.  I normally respond to people within 10minutes, that’s “not me” lately.

I’m going to blame the sun for my laziness.  Yes, it finally arrived to grace us with it’s presence the middle of August.  It’s hot, I’m hot, I have no energy and off which is “not me”.  The weather is supposed to be returning to normal by the end of the week and hopefully I will too!

Since I’m boring you all with my lack of energy/need to catch-up/blah blah blah post, I wanted to include some photos from babysitting a couple weeks ago when we went to the Factoria Children’s Museum. 

 

 

Okay I feel a little bit better that I’m slowly getting caught up, because being so far behind is “not me” and really stresses me out!  I need to relax and enjoy the summer, before I know it school will be here again….then the real stress will be back!

Happy “Not Me” Monday!

Bouncy House Babysitting!

I was able to spend Friday & Saturday babysitting some wonderful kids overnight while they’re mom and dad went away for some R&R.  Miss L, Miss E and Mr. B have their own….BOUNCY HOUSE!  I packed up the kids, the bouncy house and we headed over to the triplets to play!  Oh.My.Gosh the kids had fun!  I’m now working on talking Kim into buying one for us [the triplets of course]!  It easily entertained all the kids for 3 hours, and let me tell you we [Jaime was working for Kim] had our hands full….an 8, 6, and 4 year old, four 3 year olds and two 1 year olds!  Yes it looked like a Jaime & I had a daycare, but honestly we do on most days!

Jack, Myself & Mr. B

The Babies kept fighting over the straw!

A whole lotta kids climbing in/out of the bouncy house!

Today the kids and I went to the Factoria Childrens Museum with Brandi, Ems and Madzy.  We had a blast!  I have to say I wore out those 3 kids!  The 3 and 1 year old were out cold when Mom got home!  Yep, I’m that great :) Haha!!  Brandi took lots of pictures, but she has those on her camera so you’ll have to wait until later to see them!

Alex & I are up in Camano tonight enjoying the company of Julia and her two new kittens, Cuddles & Catcher (Aiden & Connor named them!).  They are sooooo cute!!  Catcher is sitting on my shoulder right now while I am blogging!  So adorable!!

Never Ever Thought I’d Say This…

but I am soooooooooooo very thankful to my parents for moving us from Kirkland to Duvall when I was 13.  At the time, I seriously thought my life was over, I hated my parents and had a hard time adjusting to “country” life. 

Prior to Duvall I’d lived in the same house for 12 years, that’s where my friends, school and church was.  I was happy.  We were happy.  So what if we were growing out of our house.  I thought we could just sell or get rid of Kelly and/or Alex and we’d be just fine!  I mean we had survived just fine for the past 12 years…what was a few more right?

We moved into our house on the day of my 13th birthday, bad timing huh!  I started school a week or so later and survived.  Not only did I survive, but I thrived in school.  Don’t get me wrong it was super hard at first, I was so anxious I got violently ill over the move.  But once I finally got myself together and got healthy again it was all uphill.  My high school years were great, I felt I got along well with everyone, every clique, every group.  I’m lucky to have been born with a pretty outgoing personality and am willing to start conversations with anyone and every one.  (Hence the name of my blog….Cori’s Big Mouth….I don’t know how many times people have told me to SHUT MY MOUTH!).

I made friends in school, but because of the distance I’d moved from my old house (about 2o minutes) I stayed in more contact with those friends after high school.  I’m great Facebook friends with my High School friends, but it’s those childhood friends that I hang out with and communicate with.  So those childhood friends I grew up with continue today to be my closest friends, pretty funny how that is the case.  Moving into a new home, in a new neighborhood brought new neighbors.  About 6 months after moving in I heard about a family in my neighborhood that had just had triplets.  I sought them out, got hired, and gained a second family. 

Finding Charity and her family gave me the opportunity to get involved with something I was really interested in …. multiples.  A few years after the girls were born Charity took over the local (and statewide) Triplets and More group.  Through this group, I met many, many other families of multiples, many of whom I went on to work for!  Who would have ever thought that a young girl, with an interest in multiple births would suddenly have the opportunity to work and help many families.  Off the top of my head I figure I have babysat/nannied for 5 sets of twins, 8 sets of triplets, 1 set of quadruplets and even a set of quintuplets!  So that is pretty impressive if you ask me!

With all that being said, I LOVE WHERE I LIVE!  I love my home, I love my friends, I love my church, I love my current and past job, I LOVE MY COMMUNITY! 


Thank you mom and dad for making the decision to move us here, even though I often complained….I can’t be more thankful!!  Love you guys!

QOTD 6/17: Have you ever been in the hospital and had to stay overnight?  Have you ever been super sick and ended up in the hospital? 

Come check out the Cori's Big Mouth Community, see what Liz of A Belle, A Bean, A Chicago Dog & Tiny Tots of Teaching Tiny Tots have to say and don’t forget to share your story!

The 3 Turn 3!

I got to work yesterday and was greeted by the triplets excited to show me their “birthday” (a box in the living room).  Kim & Mark were quick to tell me it was their gift and it needed to be assembled, would I mind putting it together.  Sure, no problem, I enjoy putting things together!  Little did I realize there were sooo many pieces, good thing was it took no tools, so it wasn’t hard, just difficult with the trio running around helping!

I’m with you Jack, I don’t know where to start!

But we did it!
 

This is such a fun little house, great thing about it is it stores flat and is made of Foam…then again that is also a downfall because the trio quickly started dismantling it!  Oh well, we had fun while it lasted!

For dinner we went down to Ixtapa for their ceremonial birthday celebration.  The trio did a little bit better with the attention then they did LAST YEAR when they were sang to! 

Get these hats off of us!!

Closest we could get to the triplets wearing the sombrero’s!


While the sombrero’s weren’t a hit, the sopapilla’s were delicious!! 

Jaime, Amy & I took the triplets, Ryan and the girls out to the Factoria Childrens Museum.  We took quite a few pictures, but I’m gonna wait until tomorrow to post them, so check back then! 

Day 6 - More WII

We played more WII this evening.  Tonight I played the guitar and did pretty good, I got 87% one time, granted it was on "Super Easy" and Brett played on "Expert" and got about the same!!  I may need to get one of these, they are sooooo much fun!!  My shoulder however is k-i-l-l-i-n-g me! 

Off to finish up my ice cream and then finish cleaning up the kitchen and getting the oldest three kids to bed.  Tonight I will be sleeping in my own bed :-D yay!!

Day 5 ~ WII Shoulder

After five days of playing the WII, I think I have "WII Shoulder" :-) Yes, I've played Rock Band, Lego Rock Band, and some Carnival Game.  It was in the Carnival Game, that I think caused the problems!  There is this one game where you have to swing your arm around and around in a large circle really fast to try and win!  My shoulder hurts.  My schoulder hurts real bad.  Not nearly as bad as the Great Shopping Incident of 2006 where I ended up tearing my rotator cuff, but still sore!  I'll take a trip to visit Dr. Metcalf tomorrow and hopefully will be feeling much better!

Today is almost my last full day with the Bostron's.  Kami & Jeremy get home tomorrow evening.  It's crazy how fast the week has gone by!  I've had a lot of fun with Logan, Brett, Haylee & Tyler, but have to admit am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed!  Plus this trip-job is one 'step' closer to the cruise!!  I have one more trip-job for the Munro's right before we leave....but it's getting close!  My handy-dandy ticker says we have .....

Carribbean, HERE I COME!!!

Day 4 - “The Spy Next Door”

This afternoon I took the kids to see The Spy Next Door at Bella Botega.  Kami mentioned the movie to me when we met last week, but I had never heard of it before or knew anything about the film or the cast!  It turned out to be a really cute movie!!

The movie starred Jackie Chan, with George Lopez and *gasp* “Hannah Montana’s Dad” (Billy Ray Cyrus).  When Billy Ray Cyrus first came on the screen all the kids in the theater really did *GASP* and start wispering, “oh my gosh it’s Hannah Montana’s dad!!”  That possibly was the highlight for all the kids :-D

Plot Summery below and above photo for The Spy Next Door is from IMDB.com.

Former CIA spy Bob Ho takes on his toughest assignment to date: looking after his girlfriend's three kids, who haven't exactly warmed to their mom's beau. And when one of the youngsters accidentally downloads a top-secret formula, Bob's longtime nemesis, a Russian terrorist, pays a visit to the family.

This is a fun movie, very slapstick (I mean c’mon it’s Jackie Chan), but fun non-the-less!  It’s not Oscar quality, but a great family movie (assuming you’re not my mom who hates this type of movie :-D).

Sunday tomorrow, that means church in the afternoon, and then I’m onto my last night!!

 

Day 3 ~ Oy Vey, What A Day

Today started out not to bad, it was a no school day for the kids, so we all ‘slept in’.  We watched some Price is Right and then got ready for the day.  Jaime & the girls came back over to play with Tyler & Haylee.  It all started out so innocent enough….

Brett, Haylee, Tyler & Madison went to play outside since it was a beautiful day outside.  All things were going well, kids were playing happily until I hear a strange noise and screaming followed by Haylee running to the door with her finger bleeding.  Apparently she smashed it in the gate, and cut it up really bad.  Jaime and I got her finger cleaned up and realized it was pretty swollen and Haylee was in a lot of pain.  So I decided to take her into the doctor to make sure it wasn’t broken.  Luckily it wasn’t, just pretty cut-up and swollen.  They cleaned the wound and then re-bandaged it.  I’m suppose to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get infected. 

After getting home, Madison, Haylee, Emmalee and I all played in the hot tub.  Emma LOVED the water, and I kept sitting her on this seat and she’d immediately belly flop into the water!  Apparently she felt she could and would swim!!  Haylee and Maddie had fun splashing around and dumping water on each other! 

About 4:30, I got ready to go pick Brett & Tyler up from the Lamb’s house, got in the van and it wouldn’t start.  Completely dead!!  Jaime drives me to my house so I can borrow a car to at least pick up the boys.  Nobody’s home…no cars in the driveway.  No big deal, Jaime says I can use her car and she’ll swap cars on her way home.  She asks me to help her carry her things into the house.  Sure no big deal. 

Except that the front door is locked so I, go through the garage…LOCKED!  We are locked out of my house, I have like 15 minutes before I have to pick up Brett & Tyler, no car, no keys, nothing!  Luckily Grandma had a spare set and let us in.  Right as I’m walking to get in Jaime’s car, Dad shows up.  So I was able to just take his car to pick up the boys and go home.  Of course, I couldn’t find the Lamb’s house, had to circle the neighborhood a couple times, until I realize it’s the house that had a car parked in front of it blocking the house numbers.  Pick up the boys and head home.

Get home, call AAA and they say someone will be there in an hour.  Hang up call the pizza place, they say delivery in 35 minutes.  Perfect!  Like pizza place said they were here on time, except they forgot the pop.  So the lady promises to go pick up and bring it back.  Shut the door and throw the pizza down just as the doorbell rings again this time AAA to jump start the car.

The mechanic/toe-truck guy, quickly gets the car to start and runs a full-diagnostic on the van.  Bad news…battery probably won’t last.  So he tells me to leave the van running for an hour get it to get the most out of the charge.  I was certain I would forget about the van and a) leave it running all night until I ran out of gas or b) the car would be stolen…that’s just the luck I have been having today.  But luckily I remembered to turn the car off. 

It’s now 7:22pm, it’s almost bedtime, we’re watching Mall Cop the kids claim it’s the funniest movie ever.  I have to admit I wanted to see it while it was in the theater, but surprisingly it’s NOT that funny…kinda stupid – LOL – Oh well, I guess that makes it funny :-)  Oh….the kids just informed me “those guys [have guns] are bad guys and are trying to take over the mall”….gotta love little kids :-)

Here are the two layouts I did yesterday:

So Pretty
Emmalee found this magic mirror at Kim’s house and LOVED looking at herself in the mirror!

 3 Mon
Emmalee’s 3-month photos!  Madison too!

Tomorrow’s another day :-)

 

Day 2 of Babysitting & some Scrappin'

Completed my second day of watching the Bostron Kids.  They had school today, so I was "free" from about 9am-3pm.  I ended up going to lunch with Jaime at Ixtapa and then we scrapbooked the afternoon away!  I completed 2 layouts (3 pages), so I was proud of myself!  I got them scanned in, but was having problems with the coloring and stitching, so I'll work on that tomorrow, maybe!

Madison had fun playing with Tyler & Haylee once they got home.  They played on the swingset, trampoline and then in the hottub for quite awhile!  Emmalee even got in the hottub for a bit, and she seemed to enjoy it (Jaime may claim differently lol).  They were really cute playing in the hottub.  Madison could touch all the way around, but occassionally would 'panic' and think she was drowning until Jaime I reminded her "STAND UP MADISON", oh yeah!  LOL!  She'd stand up and be just fine!  What a goober!

There's no school tomorrow, so we'll get to 'sleep-in', wonder what time that will be??  Oh well im sure it'll be better then 6:30 am when I was up this morning!  I think the plan either tomorrow or saturday is to go to see a movie.  Madison wants to come back and play again tomorrow, so we'll probably do that too.  Nothing overly exciting planned! 

Another Long Babysitting Job

This afternoon I started a 5 day babysitting job wih the Bostron kids while Kami & Jerry go on a cruise.  Today was pretty easy.  I arrived at about 3pm and waited for Logan (13) to get home and then Tyler (4) to be brought home.  Haylee (8) and Brett (11) came home about 4:00 from school. 

This afternoon the kids played outside for awhile and then we bonded over watching game shows....I think we're going to get along just fine!  We first watched two episdoes of Are You Smarter then a 5th Grader and now are watching Family Fued while I make dinner.  After dinner we're going to watch Daddy Daycare and that should take us to bedtime!

Tomorrow I am 'free' from 9am-3pm, where [I promise Amy] to watch Biggest Loser and get caught up on last nights episode.  Amy (and I quote her IM) "there is so much to talk about. lol" so I cannot wait to see it!

High-Tech Kids

Today, I'm watching Jordyn & Camryn, Amy's girls, while she's working!  Camryn wanted to have a playdate with Madison, but Madison is home sick.  So they had a 'virtual' playdate via Instant Messenger Video Calling!  Maddie thought it was really cool, especially being able to talk and hear us.  Camryn was a bit unsure and just sat there staring at the screen!  Emma kept waving to us, and Jordyn kept trying to type messages!  It was really funny!

Us on IM....to bad you see my phone taking the picture!

Maddie LOVES sending "kisses" (aka send 'winks') to people.  She thinks they are sooo funny!!  She kept sending us "kisses" and we would send them back to her!  The girls thought this was fun!  Jaime & I finally had to just shut off IM because the girls wouldn't stop! 

One of the "Kisses" that we were sent!

Camryn’s 3rd Birthday

Yesterday we went to Chuck E Cheese for Camryn’s 3rd Birthday!  Ryan & Madison had a great time!  Maddie quickly learned the joy and fun of tokens and happily took her cup of tokens and went off to play.  Ryan was a bit overwhelmed and wanted to do everything all at once!  He ran from one ride, to a game, the climber and then around in circles! 

Cheating Playing Skeeball

Even though they cheated they still had a really hard time getting the balls in the holes

Kim assisting Maddie

 

Ryan & Maddie riding in Chuck E’s Car

 

 

 

Ryan & Madison playing “whack-a-letter”

       Camryn playing Music                Madison playing basketball


 
Ryan LOVED this rollercoaster ride, he kept signing “again, again”!

 

Emmalee getting in on the fun, she liked sitting at the top of the slide!

   

Madison was addicted to this game.  You tried to catch bees in a net and then dump them into a honey pot. 

She wasn’t very good at it, hardly got any bees in the honey pot, but got LOTS of tickets by playing it non-stop for 30-minutes!

VERY proud of her ticket train!!

  

Amy and Jordyn

 

 

Yummy cupcakes!!


   

 

 

Adults get in on the fun!

(Jaime & Kim)

 

Jaime & Amy

This game was a TON of fun!!!

 

Amy & Cori (plus all the little kids who wanted us to get off so they could play!  Tough luck!)



Another LONG post of photos!!  What fun we had though!  Last night Amy & Jaime came with me to Kristin’s to hang out.  Madison & Ryan took a long bath and then went right to sleep!  They were so tired!!  The three of us then just vegged and watched television!  We were exhausted and could hardly move!