• Seiuli, Tristan,  Alec and my dad are going to the Mavs/Laker game tonite. Tdog and my dad will be wearing Dirk jerseys while Alec and  Sei will have on their (*gag*) Kobe jerseys. I really hope the Mavs win!!!! This pic was taken at the American Airlines center after we went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert – which was rad!
• For Christmas I finally got what I have asked for since the 8th grade- Black Doc Marten boots. I originally asked for the 8-eye, but decided on getting the 6-eye. Sei (and by Sei I mean “I”) found them on eBay for $35. Can’t beat that!
• Tristan is ginormous.  That’s all there is to it. I mean, he ’s actually an average height- like 5′9″, but he is a SOLID kid. And considering he was shorter than me just 18 months ago… weird. His scout leaders told him he needed to wear his scout shirt. So, he tried it on… It’s a little small.
• Mary Kay is going well and I really enjoy it.  I never thought I’d do something with direct sales. But it’s been the coolest experience. Mary Kay is a company like no other. They are completely debt free and truly put God 1st, Family 2nd and career 3rd. It’s slowly helped pull me out of my “I am so depressed…” slump.
• We gave the kids a choice for family vacation this year: Sunny, Southern California or Utah. They all, in a matter of .00323184 seconds,  unanimously voted for Utah. They miss Utah a lot. I have to remember that they lived there more than 1/2 their lives. Texas isn’t “home” to them. Surprisingly I miss Utah a lot. I hate the weather and I never hiked or anything because I’m scared of mountain lions, but I miss my friends. I miss our awesome little neighborhood. I miss being 1400 miles away from certain people… Slowly but surely our home here is becoming the home to hang out at- like in Utah- with kids hanging out to play pool or air hockey or Playstation or football in the yard. Hopefully one day this will feel like home. I am thankful that Sei loves his job and that the kids have made good friends.
• It’s basketball season and I LOVE it!!! I love going to my kid’s games. My dad is coaching Isabel’s team this year- he coached Alec last year. Isabel is so much more confident this year and spunky. I knew it was in her!! No more pencil in the butt… Taj is signed up to play soccer which Sei is stoked about and Isabel wants to start gymnastics again. She was so rad, but got burnt out, not to mention we couldn’t afford it. But now she wants to try just tumbling- because that’s her fave event. There’s a tumbling/trampoline class/team here that I think she’d rock at!!
• I’ve lost 5 pounds in 9 days by cutting out sugar. It hasn’t really been that hard. Now if I can continue to lose 4-5 pounds every week that’d be awesome. I am an admitted carb-addict. I have horrible eating habits, so a very low carb diet is best for me because it helps me get my eating under control.

What’s been goin’ on with y’all???

Wednesday nite Taj, Livie, Sei and I were able to go to the circus in Fort Worth. And not just any circus- the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus! I had 3 tickets for Tristan, Alec and Isabel but they left town with the ex so my friend and her daughter came. It was great. The show was really amazing. It was 2 hours, which never seems like a short amount of time with Livie, but it went by so quickly.  The clowns were funny. The tigers were awesome.  The acrobats were insane!!!  Taj is still talking about “the Spiderman guy who walked on the ceiling…” But my fave part by far was the Torres Family  Motorcycle Mania. OMGosh y’all- they had  SEVEN motorcycles inside a 16 foot steele sphere- all at the same time. I was so STRESSED during their performance- but in an adrenaline pumping way. It was AMAZING!! 

Thank you Feld Entertainment & Mom Central for the tickets. The seats were awesome. We were 6 rows back from the floor. I couldn’t believe it!! It will be a nite my kiddos and I remember for a long time.

Really. They do. Bad. How do I know? Because while in Florida Isabel and Taj found a couple of crab legs. Not crabs- just the legs. So, what’d they do? They stuck them in 2 ziplocks full of water and stuck them in the bedtable drawer at the resort.  I’m not sure how long they were in there, but I walked in their bedroom and was nearly knocked out from the smell. OMGosh. Y’all- it was BAD. I searched the room trying to find what was causing the smell. The kids were oblivious… “It doesn’t stink in here…” I finally found the baggies and hurried them out of the resort room. I dumped detergent on the carpet and vacuumed it up. It helped some, but the smell lingered for quite a while. Kids are so weird. What exactly were they gonna do with 2 crab legs? 

….So, where was I? Ah, yes… I was at the beach. Everyday. For hours. It was so wonderful. That’s what we did the entire week. The resort was nice with a little village that had a park with swing sets and slides. We did visit the Gulfarium one day which is like a very mini-Sea World. The kids- especially Liv- loved the dolphins and petting the sting rays. We also ate great sea food, but I don’t really like fish, so I got more chicken than anything. We went to this cool restaurant called Fudpuckers. Yeah, say that fast 3 times…  They had alligators in a swamp area right there surrounding the restaurant. Taj pet an alligator and then 6/7 of my kids and 1 sister got to take a pic with an alligator with Kelsea holding the head, Taj holding the belly and Isabel with the tail. It was really neat. Later Taj and Livie fed the alligators with a fishing pole. Most of the alligators were so stuffed they ignored all the dangling meat, but Livie and Taj actually had a biter!! It was really a fun nite at Fudpuckers…

I attempted to skimboard on the beach. Yeah… I suck. I tried though, even after biffin’ it good a few times. And I pulled my groin muscle too. One time I fell so hard that all the kids came swimming towards me “Mom are you ok?!?!” Soooo embarrassing – especially since I wasn’t even hurt. They all thought I hit my head, but I only hit my shoulder blade. Then I noticed the people sitting near us on the beach were being entertained with my falls. Not cool. I should have faked like I was knocked out and floated out to sea…  I didn’t do too badly a few times.

Sei already knew how to skimboard- of course- and was bustin’ 360s. Alec was awesome too. He skimboarded all week with Sei and by the end of vacation could do a 270. I LOVE watching them interact together. They are like twins in the personality department for sure.

And Omar- I already told you on Twitter, but I had to let everyone else know that you were remembered while on vacay. Tristan bought Crocs- and we all know how much Omar LOVES Crocs.  Tristan picked some out and said, “Now I can have Crocs like Omar…” Thanks for setting such a great example Omar by wearing, to use your phrase “The Mullet of Shoes.” (*rolling eyes*)

During all this beach and skimboarding and eating Sei called the hotel Biloxi where Livie left her blanket and spoke to a few different people. Finally a girl named Jessica took an interest and said she’d check with housekeeping and search in the dirty towels… More later… I still need to tell y’all the crab leg story too…

Our vacation to Destin was so great. I really don’t know where to start. We left on Friday to make 9 of the 13 hour drive. Driving with 100 kids wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. That’s probably because Livie rode with my parents over 1/2 the time and it was wonderful. We drove thru Louisiana Swamplands which Taj thought was the coolest and we crossed the Mississippi River.  We stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi for the nite. The next morning we visited a memorial park- I can’t remember the name. But it had the USS Alabama Battleship, Air Force helicopters and more. The kids LOVED it!!

After checking out all the cool stuff we headed on. We stopped in Crestview or some other town that starts with a “C” to eat and that’s when it happened… Livie asked for her blanket. I knew at the hotel she had insisted on carrying it along with her “Gameboy” (aka V-tech toy.) But I didn’t remember seeing her with it in the car. CRAP. I dug thru the suitcase. Nada.  Looked thru my Yukon, my parent’s van… nada. Livie started to cry. I started to cry. I cried because it had been “her blanket” since she was born. I cried because I had all of my other children’s “fave blankie” from when they were little, but now I had lost Livie’s. She was more attached to this blanket than any of my other kid’s had ever been. I cried because she was sad and now we were going to be in an unfamiliar place and she wouldn’t have her comfort. I sat at the table in Arby’s and tried not to look like a crying dork, but Sei even said, “Babe, everyone’s gonna think we’re fighting…” Sei called the hotel and the desk clerk didn’t see it anywhere.  I cried some more. It was horrible.

But we continued on… and made it to Destin,  Florida. I tried not to think about the blanket at all. We unloaded our stuff- which I must brag… I was able to pack for a family of 9 in ONE big suitcase and a big duffle bag. I pretty much rock. When you know you’re gonna be in swimsuits and have a washer and dryer there’s no need to pack a lot. Anyway… we unloaded at our fancy resort with walk in tubs, changed into our swimsuits and headed to the beach. White sand, clear water… I was able to stop thinking about the blanket for a lil while….  

I could soooo be a beach bum. Totally. I’ve always believed this, but it was confirmed this past week. Sei and I took the 7 kiddos to Destin, Florida. My parents and little sister went as well because they have a timeshare and let us use some of their points to get a condo for our family. THANK YOU AGAIN!!!! Our resort was awesome. Our family had 2 bedrooms and a sofabed, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, washer and dryer… PER.FECT. And the beach… oh, the beach. In Destin it’s white sand and clear water. BEA.U.TI.FUL. I would have posted while I was there, but I didn’t bring my laptop. I will give a ton more details in my next few posts- I took notes on things to blog about. But I will say that I am brown, except for 2 huge places on my back that are peeling. (Yuck.)  And I have a pulled groin muscle from attempting to skimboard. I pretty much suck. I also wanna give a SHOUT OUT to Jessica at the Best Western in Biloxi, Mississippi for going above and beyond in her search for Livie’s lost blanket. That’s a whole post in itself, so stay tuned…

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My kids are funny. They are. They so totally rock and I love being with them. Alec is a lot like Sei. He’s very social and funny and sensitive. I love it. Last week he got to give a talk during church. When Tristan spoke last year we had the BIG DARE where we dared Tristan to use a Napoleon Dynamite quote during his talk. He is awesome and did it, of course. This time was Alec’s turn. He SOOOOOO did it. He even talked LIKE Napoleon. He started his talk with a (true) story. He said, “I went to scout camp this past week and it was pretty much the hottest week of my life. My lips got really chapped so I was digging thru my bag hoping my mom packed me chapstick. I found a ziplock bag that had this Napoleon quote written on it: CAN YOU BRING ME MY CHAPSTICK?… BUT MY LIPS HURT REAL BAD! “   It was rad and everyone laughed. So cool. I, of course, was the dork who wrote that on the ziplock that I packed his chapstick in. Yesssssssssssssssss.

And then today at church there was a special musical number this lady and her daughter were singing. The prelude music for it totally sounded like “The Rose” by Bette Midler. Sei leaned over and said, “I thought it was The Rose.” Then I look over at Alec and he’s doing his hands like a butterfly…. like at the end of this video (around 1:00). He had me rollin’…

How’d I get such rad kids???

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A couple of months ago I won a 16×20 poster print of any picture I wanted. I chose a picture of Seiuli with his surfboard in Hawaii. It turned out so great! I just told Sei the other nite that when we take pictures on vacation I want to get a few enlarged. I am so excited!! I think the summer is one of the best time to catch great pictures. I know I’ve already caught a few:

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So yesterday after I was done watching the kids I babysit we took the kiddos (all 7) + my lil sister (not so little- she’s 15) to the lake to swim, eat pizza, hang out. On the way there I was controlling the music because that’s what I do- control things. I love to play songs that drive Tristan, my 14 yr old, crazy. Which songs would that be, you ask?

• Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• The Thong Song by Sisqo
• Simple Kind of Life by No Doubt
• Summer Girls by LFO

WHY do these songs drive him crazy?? Oh, because he was just the cutest stinkin’ 5 year old back in the day that didn’t know any better than to “raise the roof” when The Thong Song came on. I’d look back in the backseat of the car and he was just ajammin’ away in his lil booster seat. SO.CUTE. Simple Kind of Life was a fave of mine and for some reason I made my poor kiddos act out the video. Hey, I was a weird, newly single mom. Acting out videos with my kids was entertainment to me. lol  And Tristan was so cute doing it!  Summer Girls… I think he just hates that because it says “New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits. Chinese food makes me sick…” The lyrics are so dumb, but I like it. My personal fave line “When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet. Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole buncha sonnets…” Ahh yeah…  Californication is a pretty cool song. Tdog is just embarrassed because when he was like 7 he’d say “Oh yeah Californication! This is my favorite song!!” and now, I tease him. That’s my job.

Some of y’all may be strokin’ out that I had my 5 yr old listening to The Thong Song, but we all know Taj can sing “Low” by Flo Rida and now Liv can not only sing “Teenage Dirtbag,” She also sings “Gives You Hell.” I should say what Isabel’s stepmom told her, “Are they cursing at us? That is NOT appropriate!” after Isabel told her “Gives You Hell” was a fave of mine. The stepmom promptly switched it to a Christian station. But you know… I’m good. I couldn’t call myself a brat if I did that.

Go ahead. Let me have it. Tell me what a bad mom I am…