Birthdays, Sickness, Organization and Vacation Time!

Phoenix with all his Bday gifts!

So things have been pretty boring lately. We had Phoenix's birthday..it was the first time we had hosted a birthday party in about five years as we went to family trips after Chelsea's last sleepover..12 girls one house= yuck!!!
This party went off without a hitch, there were 13 kids total including our three, a friend of Tristan's and a friend of Gryphen's. We had it at the Jolly Roger which was great! They did everything for us and the kids had a blast..Phoenix made out like a bandit too...tons of great toys and books it was great!

Since then we have been back to normal most of my time spent volunteering at the school or hanging out at home. There has been a pretty nasty bug going around the school and it hit our family Thursday night with Gryphen waking up in the middle of the night throwing up, he was sick all day friday and then woke up good on Saturday just to have Tristan, Phoenix and I all feeling under the weather. Sunday we all woke up well except Brandon who was REALLY sick! Then Sunday night Gryphen threw up yet again...not a fun weekend, we kept Gryphen home from school again today but he seems to be fine today and will be going back to school tomorrow pending of course how tonight goes! Everyone else seems to be over it.

In addition to the fun around here we are really working at getting our house organized, we have alot of stressful things going on in our lives right now and our house is a big part of it. We have a plan of action but haven't really had time to get started on it, hopefully will start to put a real effort into it after our vacation.

I really want this! Actually several of these..one of course for crafts but I think it would work great for so many areas!

Speaking of which it is almost here! We leave friday morning for our week in Devon and I am SOOOO excited!!!

My CJ entry for this month...It is for my favorite place...one of the pics is from our last "real" vacation to Snowdonia!

So that is about it...check out the few pages I have gotten done this week....

Just a picture of Brandon and Phoenix...they are so much alike!

The earliest known Halloween picture of me...I did this for the October Challenge on UKS...the challenge was to use non-traditional colors and metal. I don't love it but it fits the rules at least!

shopping, stash and suspicious packages.

So we are back from our trip to Lakenheath...it was a stressful trip to say the least! The trip started with us leaving about 2 hours late making us miss the antique bazaar! We had some time to hit the BX and Commissary and bought Brandon two new pairs of jeans, two shirts, a new pair of running shoes and a new pair of casual sneakers. We went to bed rather late as we were all wired and finally fell out about 1am...now here is where the real stress starts! 6AM an alarm goes off, I was thinking it was Brandon's alarm clock until I saw the flashing lights...it was the fire alarm...there was a man outside yelling at everyone to get out and directing a line of sleepy, half dressed, freezing cold people through the parking lot, it was a "Suspicious package"; EOD (explosives ordinance disposal) and the fire department were on their way but we all had to get out right away, so Brandon and Chelsea had time to put on shoes and jackets while I grabbed jackets and the little guys, Christopher, both younger boys and myself went out without shoes and joined the people across the way, within a few minutes a large group of men in uniforms told us we had to move again and led us several blocks away to the dental office where we were ushered inside and squashed together in two small waiting rooms, there were well over 100 people of all ages and stages of dress, hungry kids and everyone was freezing. We finally were allowed to return to our rooms and of course we have no idea of the outcome but for 30 minutes after we returned to our rooms the alarm was still going off. When everything finally settled down Brandon went to his orthodontist appt while the kids and I got dressed and packed up. We went to the BX where we loaded up on makeup, new shoes for Chris, Bra and Panties for Chelsea and birthday supplies/gifts for Chris and Phoenix. We then went to the craft store where I breezed through $200 in stash (see pics) onto the toy store where we finished the birthday shopping and then to taco bell for lunch. The trip home was congested both in the car and on the road, it rained the whole way and the kids were fussing and loud...but we are finally home, Tristan is picked up and I am going to spend the rest of the night stroking my stash!