In the mix of my awful afternoon, I forgot to take a picture of this cute daughter of ours. She went to do baptisms for the dead for the first time tonight with the young women. It is bittersweet because this is her last activity with the Palmyra 4 ward girls but I'm also thankful she gets to experience her first baptisms for the dead with the girls that she knows and is familiar with. The second picture was taken when she got home a few minutes ago. She claims it was the most amazing thing she has ever done. I am so proud of her and the rest of the kids for their ability to jump right into our lives and faith and just accept it as theirs.

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I am totally guilty of this all of the time, especially the past couple of weeks since we are trying to pack our entire house. Like 1700 sq ft of house. We have had the 3 younger kids for 3 years and it amazes me the growth that has happened in that short amount of time. I was looking at some pictures the other day while packing scrapbooks and I almost started to cry looking at the pictures taken of our first weekend together. We actually went camping and they were so darn little. We have known Quynsie since the very start as well, so she amazes us everyday as well in her growth. 3 years have just flown by. I have every intention of paying more attention to the little things with the kids once we are settled into our new home.

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Apparently Carson thinks it's Nadia's fault he got on red and got in trouble at school.

He came out of school today and Nadia told me he landed on red, RED!!!! That is the worst he can go without going to the principals office. I had to call his teacher and apparently he had a rough day at school. He just could not keep his hands to himself today. It was from something so simple as just putting 2 fingers on another child's head to putting his hands around their necks and wrestling them to the ground. I am sure he did not mean harm by it and was just playing around, but that still does not make it ok for him to disobey and not follow instructions or the rules.

I so can not wait until we are moved and things settle down. We only have one month left of school and then the summer to settle down and get back into the grove of life.

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I can not wait to have 2 bathrooms at the new house. There is not a day that goes by without me being interrupted in the bathroom. There is always at least one little person that comes in to use the restroom while I am showering. I am hoping this will cut down on some of that a little bit.

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This box here contains two glasses I used to drink out of at my great grandma's and it also has my glass baby bottle I drank out of when I was a baby.

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Bye-bye front door. Getting my packing on again today in between taking kids to school raven to the dentist then taking her to school and then picking them up. Quynsie is going to do baptisms for the dead tonight for her very first time. Don't worry, it is not going to stay this way for long. We do know and understand that this is a fire hazard.

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This will be me once we are in our new house. Nobody got time for this right now.

 

Not only are we getting ready to move, we are also trying to plan Nadia's baptism. We have put it off because we were afraid that family would not be able to travel if the weather was bad, but then the weather was really good all winter. Then our ward did not do baptisms in March, so we had to push it to April. When we planned it, we did not know we were selling our house nor did we think it would sell as fast as it did either. No matter where we are living at the time of the baptism, she will be baptized in our current ward because this is where she is comfortable and where she has been taught about the gospel up to this point. She has such a great understanding as to what it means to be baptized that it just amazes me. These kids are like sponges when it comes to learning about our faith, our Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost.

What a morning. Carson choose defiancey this morning which makes for a long and challenging morning especially dropping him off at school. Once we got to school, I couldn't get him to get out of the car and go to the playground, so I parked and walked him across the street and to the sidewalk, asked him to go to the playground one more time, he still would not go, so walking him into his classroom I did. Pick your battles, right? I picked my battle alright. I walked him into the classroom, continued across the room, opened the door and walked him right out to the playground and I shut the door. He kept trying to get back in so his teacher had to lock the door. I told his teacher that if she had any problems to give me a call. Yep, I am that mom that tricked my son into thinking that he was going to get to stay inside for morning recess.

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I have to agree with Joe is a gift that I open every day. I love waking up to him next to me. Joe is an incredible husband. He supports me in all that I do and want to be. He works extremely hard for our little family and then comes home to deal with me and my craziness and the kids. He somehow makes it through my anxiety driven self and for the most part, he is patient and understanding about my anxiety, that at times cripples me. I love you babe!!!

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Speaking of anxiety:

I hate the chaos of our lives right now. Our house is in total disarray. I hate that every thing that is not packed is so disorganized. There is no way of organizing it either till we empty this house into the uhal truck.
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Today has been an extremely hard day for me emotionally. My best friend has moved, we are moving and the house is a mess. Yesterday at church everyone kept asking when our last day was going to be in our current ward. It hit home that we only have one Sunday left. I am going to miss our ward family so much. This is the longest Joe and I have ever lived anywhere. We have been here 6 1/2 years. We have gone through 3 bishops. We have made so many amazing friends. We love our neighbors...Oh how we love our neighbors. Don, you will never be replaced. You have put the standards so high, I am not sure my kids will ever let another neighbor into their hearts like they have you. We are going to miss you so much. And then their is Nyla and Tom, they are like second parents to our kids. We have known them long before we ever moved here.
This is the home we brought all four of our kids home to. There is something that makes that special. I really hadn't thought about this until today while sitting at the school waiting for the kids to get out and it hit me HARD!!!! This is the place our kids consider home. Yes, they are excited about moving and having a yard to play in and a bigger home, but they still are attached to this house. It is the home where they have had the most stability in their lives.
Even though I am struggling with my emotions right now, we know this is what we are supposed to do. We know without a shadow of a doubt that we are meant to move on. It is going to be good for all of us to have a fresh start in a new place. It will be so nice to be able to send the kids outside in the backyard and not have worry about them running into the road and getting hit or an out of control car spinning out and ending up on my front lawn and hitting one of the kids. We will be in a real neighborhood where my kids can play with the neighbor kids without having to cross the busiest street in town.
Trying to stay positive.

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It's official!!!! My BEST friend has moved. I have no idea what I am going to do without her here. I miss you like crazy already Camillia. Come back...just tell them you changed your mind and you are staying!!! LOL...if only it were this simple.

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Hahaha....you know you are packing and moving when you don't even think about what you are writing on when you are on the phone scheduling appointments. Yes, I just wrote them on a box so I could remember what the date and time was so I could put it in my phone once I got off of it.

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Things are headed in the right direction. The buyers of our current home have now got their stuff off to the underwriter. Still waiting to hear about a closing date but we are getting closer

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Joe just sent Carson to timeout for climbing on the drawer handles and he said: I'm telling on you.
Joe: who are you telling?
Carson: your mom and I'm going to tell her you need to go to time out because you were mean to me.

Oh Lord have mercy.... This kid. I swear he was meant to be ours from the beginning because he acts just like my sister.

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Carson just asked for a snack and Joe said no you didn't eat your dinner and Carson then says just pretend I did.

 

Kid your killing me tonight

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We had our last family bbq at our old house. Looking forward to many more bbq's at the new house.

Yesterday after school Carson went up to aunt Britt's truck to say hi. He came back with a snack and I asked him how he always manages to get a snack from her every time and he said: because I'm her favorite and she likes me.

 

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Except for the kids school uniforms, this all of the clothes that I have allowed them to keep out. The rest are packed. I have to keep our lives simple right now and allowing them free access to all of their clothes leads to excess laundry and I don't have time for that right now. And Quynsie, being 13 and all, has a serious attitude about it. She loves her clothes. Is she really going to wear 10 pairs of pants and 20 shirts in the next two weeks? I don't think so, since they do wear a school uniform 5 days a week. Yes, spring break is only a week away, but they are most likely going to be wearing shorts for most of that anyway. I keep telling myself we only have a couple more weeks until we move (unless I get my wish, then we will be moving during spring break).

 

This makes me sad....not having our family pictures on the wall...this is becoming more and more real.

 

    

I think it has been a successful day. Plus Joe has been working on the laundry room, last night we packed most of the rest of the toys and on Thursday I packed the craft room.





 

After trying for 12 years to have a family, there is not a day that goes by that I do not thank our Heavenly Father for our four amazing kids. We fully believe that they were meant to be ours from the beginning, they just had to come to us a different way and endure many hard trials before coming into our home. For whatever reason Heavenly Father trusted us to raise these children and to take on their hardships. We may not understand why he chose us, but we are so thankful he did.

Our life is not perfect, but we love these kids to the moon and back. We would do anything for them. They mean everything to us.

This post would not be complete without thanking our kids birth mom and birth dads for the opportunity to be these kids parents. Yes, their birth parents made some major mistakes, but one of the best things they did was bring these 4 amazing kids into the world and we will forever be grateful for that one fact.

 

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This is normally true for our house. I clean the house while the kids are at school and 10 minutes after they get home, the kitchen looks like a tornado has gone through it. This backpack here and that one there and this homework folder on the floor and the other on the counter and so on.

 

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Here is anther good one for you: You know your a mom when your holding your friends kid and they are rubbing on your boob and you don't even notice until your friend tells their kid to stop.

This happened yesterday as a matter of fact. I am so used to Carson doing that to me from time to time, that I didn't even notice that her little boy was doing it to me.

 

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Raven called me from school today saying she didn't feel good. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she was dizzy, and her side and leg hurt. I reminded her what the rules are if she comes home from school. They have to stay in their bed, they don't get to play or watch T.V. They are too rest because if you are to sick to be at school then you are too sick to be playing around. She was fine with that (which if you know Raven, the T.V. is everything to her) so I went and got her. While I was there I went in and talked to her teacher and asked how she had been acting in class all morning. Her teacher said that she kept putting her off and telling her to wait until lunch to see how she felt. Finally at 11, her teacher sent her to call me because she could clearly see that she was not feeling well. Anyway, she stayed in bed all day and even slept for a couple of hours. Hopefully it goes away quickly because we don't have time for sickness around here right now. We have so much to get done around here in order for us to move.

My other thought is that maybe she is finally feeling anxiety about the move. This is the only place they have lived and had the stability that they need. This is home to them, and so leaving this home is stressful for them.

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One last haircut for Carson before I pack my hair cutting supplies this weekend.

 



Next time Carson tells me that he is going to throw stuff at me, I am going to use this on him.

 

I'm not used to this. Joe is seriously going crazy. He is more stressed about things and this move than I am. This is new territory for me. I'm used to him being the calm and collected one.

 

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I have been laughing about this all day long and every time I think about it I laugh.

 

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So i find it very hilarious that the appraiser is going to get a whole lot of pictures of boxes laundry (clean and dirty) dirty dishes and a very messy house because let's face it we are moving and there is no way to clean it up without hauling our stuff to the new house. It is taking everything I have just to wash the laundry dry it and pile it up on the couch. LOL ♡♡♡♡because that how we roll around here with 4 kids and 3 of which are girls.... But don't you worry I did manage to separate the kids clothes and put them in their basket to fold later when they get home from school.

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So something that Carson would do.

 

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Last night my brother in law Matt was at our house picking up his kids from karate and was teasing Carson. He scared Carson so bad and Carson kept coming back for more. Anyway Carson started talking about the UTES gymnastics meet we went to this last weekend and my brother in law says the UTES suck to which Carson responded: NO they don't they just won the pac-12 championships against 7 other teams. They are the best uncle Matt.
Nikki and I laughed and laughed because that so was not the answer we were expecting. He has these sophisticated answers that are beyond his years. He is one smart boy.

 

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Joe teaches karate on Wednesday nights and Last night after karate class Nadia was trying to hug her cousin Kaden and he was not having it...LOL..he even gave her the face to the hand. Nadia is the only one of our kids that is doing karate at this point. Raven was but decided it just wasn't for her. Quynsie has not wanted anything to do with from the beginning and Carson, well he feeds off of his cousins and tends to play around more than focus on karate so we are waiting until we start up a second class this summer (hopefully). Anyway Nadia is doing awesome. She can count to 10 in Japanese and say other Japanese words. She is well on her way to getting her white belt in the next couple of weeks.

   

March 25

Listening to my kids play house outside and I hear raven say to Carson: I adopted you k?!? I love that they are not afraid of adoption and THEY talk about it. We don't tall much about it anymore except when they bring up the topic.

 

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This is Nadia all of the way. She makes and keeps friends so easily. She is our little chit-chatter.

March 24

Parents if you are going to send medicine with your kids to school please be sure and explain to them and make sure they understand that the medicine is just for them even if it is just cough drops. Carson has been coughing for a couple of days and apparently one of his little friends gave him cough drops today. OK so that may not sound to harmful but you never know if a child is allergic to something. Thankfully Carson is not but still.

 

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Oh heaven help me!!!! Carson didn't like the sandwich I got him for dinner and he told me he was going to poop his pants in his bed on purpose and when I told him he gets to clean it up he said no I'm going to throw paper at you and give you paper cuts and other dangerous stuff and make you clean it up. I bet you have no idea how fast that boy was put in time out.

 

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March 23

I just went downstairs to start a batch of laundry and I found a bunch of Ravens clean clothes that I helped her fold last night back in the dirty clothes. I'm really irritated right now. I guess when she gets home from school she is going to be doing a lot of laundry and maybe she will think twice the next time she doesn't want to put her clothes away and puts them back in the dirty clothes. She is 9 years old and very capable of putting her clothes away.

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Appraisal done on the new house... check
Buyers Inspection on our current home... check

Things are moving right along. I'm getting eager to have it all done and over with and settled into our new house. Except that I'm really going to miss our 4th ward family.

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March 22

I can totally see our kids doing this, especially right now with all of the chaos going on with the move and everything else.

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Raven: can I have a donut because they are just sitting there?
Um no you have already had 2 this morning.

 

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Packing more of the kids books and clothes from their dressers. I needed to go through them anyway and get rid of underware that don't fit and things like that. When we unpack they are going to think it's Christmas.

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Yep this just about sums it up!!!!

 

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It's becoming more of a reality that this school year is almost over and with that comes our last kindergartner graduation. I think I might cry. I'm not sure I'm ready to be finished with this stage yet.

 



March 21

Pac-12 Championship Gymnastics meet:
   
Spaghetti factory for dinner in between gymnastics meets. We are celebrating spring break early today because we will be doing our final push of packing and gearing up for Nadia's baptism during their actual spring break in April.
 
This is how we keep track of our children. One hangs onto mine or Joe's shirt, and then so on. It works for us, but makes others mad because they have to wait for our train to end before they can cut around us.

And this is how we celebrate our big Pack 12 Championship win!!!! GO UTES!!!!!!

March 20

I have a feeling that my kids are going to be upset when they find out I packed all but a few of their dvds. I kept a few out just to keep them entertained between now and when we unpack at the new house. Oh and can I mention Nadia and Carson might be even more upset when they see they only have 1 coloring book a piece and a baggy of crayons. The rest I packed. Yep I'm that mom. The mom that only leaves as few things out as possible but yet still keep their interest. This packing thing is moving right along. I'm getting more excited as the days pass.

March 19

Quynsie just told Carson to be patient ands Carson said I don't want to be patient. I just about died laughing.

 

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We had a bit of a hiccup on the sale of our house but things are back on track. Thank goodness we have an amazing Realtor and his assistant.

 

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When we ordered our appraisal on our current house it was nothing to serious. We had nothing to lose. We were renting at the time. This time we have 4 kids and we own our current home. It is much more scary watching $400+ coming out of your bank account for an appraisal on a new place to live. We are pretty positive that things are going to work out but it is scary thinking what if it doesn't and there just went 400 bucks we could have used else where. Thinking positive thinking positive thinking positive!!!!!!

 

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We are slowing getting closed in by boxes. Before I know it the day will be here. I hope since I have started so early packing that we will be completely ready because we only have 24 hours after closing to get our stuff out. Eeeekkkkssss I'm so excited for this new chapter in our lives but also nervous

 

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When did this happen? I'm not sure I'm ready or old enough for an 8th grader. I thought we had a few more years to go, but it snuck up on me.



March 18

Today was not supposed to get worse. It was supposed to be better. I woke up around 3 this morning throwing up. Also after leaving my van on the battery charger all night it still wouldn't start. I have to jump start it to get kids to school and then take my van to kia for an oil change and for them to figure out why an 8 month old battery won't charge. I guess on a brighter note I'm not feeling as quezzy.

 

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Well that's a bummer we have an 8 month old battery and it is bad. It has a short inside of the battery.

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Why don't they teach patience as a young women value? It would have been helpful to learn this skill when I was 12.

 

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Watch for future announcements on the next karate class starting up. It will be after we move but if anyone is interested we would love to start a waiting list. The more interest the better. $35 a month and the first month free.



March 17

I have decided I shouldn't have to justify or explain away my child's behavior. If you want to know why he/she is acting the way they are just ask otherwise ignore it. We are raising traumatized kids and they are testing us to see if we are going to leave them just like everyone else before us have done. They want to know that they are loved no matter how rotten they are behaving. There was something that was said to me yesterday by our family doctor that made something in my head click. No I'm not sure what it was he said because he said a lot of things. I just know this is going to be years of them realizing we are here to stay. It may not be until they are in their 20s to figure it out and that is ok.

 

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I love this time of the year when I can use the clothes line. It saves on the electric bill and since my washer goes faster than the dryer it also helps me stay on track and I don't have clothes sitting in a laundry basket waiting to go in the dryer.



March 16

I can't believe there are only 40 more days of school this year.

 

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This purging of stuff is kind of refreshing. I just got rid of half of Carson's clothes as well. Now onto the girls clothes

 

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Oh boy I have this feeling my kids are going to be really mad at me or at least the of them will be when they get home tonight. It wasn't that long ago I went through their clothes but they were home and wouldn't let me get rid of much so I took this time of them being in school to do it. They will have no clue what I got rid of our boxed until we get to the new house. Sometimes it's fun being a mom. .... haha. ..lol

 

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People think we allow Carson to disrespect us but what they don't know or understand is that he is a special needs child and cannot control himself. It is going to take years of Joe and I reassuring him that we love him and no matter what he does we will still be here for him. He is purposely pushing our buttons testing us to see if we are going to leave him. After all these kids have been through it is a wonder how they survived in the first place. Our kids blame themselv...es for not being with their birth parents. They think their behavior is the reason for not being with their birth family. Yes as adults we think logically and know better but as children they just blame themselves. So the next time you see a child disrespecting their parents don't be so quick to judge. Take a moment and think maybe this child is special needs and nothing is going to fix the behavior except years and years of reassuring that child that they are loved and wanted more than anything in this world.



March 15

16 boxes of just mine and Joes books. But at least they are all packed. Still got lots to do but we are making progress.

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Tons of spring/moving cleaning going on at the Davis house. I refuse to take all of this stuff. I just got rid of half of my clothes.

 

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Packing and de-cluttering is stressful and a lot of work but I know it's going to be so worth it when we are in our new house. Today we tackled books and my clothes in the closet. Yes Nyla you would be amazed that I got rid of half of my clothes. I don't have a fancy schmancy walk in closet at the new house.

 

March 14: Pics of the new house