I have my costume for Halloween, in fact it's already on.

This is actually a 10 year old picture but I didn't want to take a picture of what I actually look like right now because it might send readers into a panic, worried for my sanity. Last night was one of those nights that serve as excellent birth control. Unfortunately it is too late for that for me. I had been up with the kids a lot the night before and had taken a nap with the two youngest in the afteroon. Well of course this gave me insomnia so I didn't fall asleep till 1:00. Then the fun started. At 2:30 Mia woke up coughing and crying so I went in and comforted her and gave her more tylenol. Then at 4 Liam came up and told me that Brock's foot had fallen asleep. I thought it was morning and he was looking for an excuse to wake me up so I said "sorry, I hope it feels better" and went back to sleep. Then a couple minutes I woke back of and realized that it was still night and I should check on Brock. He was downstairs in their room crying because he had woken up with a horrible headache (I think he got my migraine gene) and couldn't get back to sleep. Don't ask me how Liam translated that to his foot falling asleep. So I took care of him and went back to bed. Sometime between 4:30 and 5 Evie threw up. Even more fun she was in our bed. She had been crying off and on in her bed and I was too tired to deal with it any other way than by putting her in bed with us so I woke up to wretching right next to my face. After we got things cleaned up she didn't want to go back to sleep and a half an hour later, when I got up to take care of a crying Mia again, she followed me around talking and chatting as if it was mid morning. I took her back to bed and was tired enough I have no idea how long it took her to fall back asleep.

Needless to say, I am a zombie right now. I need a super hero like this:
to come save me.

Why I don't like reporters.

Just kidding, I do like reporters, I just don't like when they are reporting on me. Something I didn't take into consideration when I decided to run for city council was the possibility of being interviewed. I am really self conscious when it comes to that kind of thing and always feel like an idiot afterward. So I have been interviewed twice now (well kind of). The first was a girl from USU who came to the house, taped the interview and took a picture for their "Hard News Cafe". I was nervous, especially when the tape recorder came on, and even though I had thought about what I wanted to say before, it didn't seem to come out right. I read her story and it wasn't what I would have wanted highlighted but it wasn't all that bad.

The second interview was a guy from the Herald Journal who contacted me by email asking for a statement (with my professional background and reasons for running) and picture. I seriously considered ignoring the email but decided that wouldn't be fair/responsible so I wrote a short statement and sent a picture. The reporter then called me and told me he felt my statement was too short and the guys running for mayor had much larger statements than me and the other woman running for city council. I informed him that it was probably because we were running unopposed while the men were running against each other. He conceded my point and left my statement as it was. Anyway, I am totally running on but the profiles were in the paper yesterday and he made me look like a total idiot. This was my statement: I graduated in 1999 with a BA in English and have been running a rapidly growing organization (the Redman family) ever since. My family moved to Millville in 2007 and plan on staying for years to come. I am running for City Council because I want to do my part to make sure Millville remains a great place to live.

This is what he wrote (without the bold): Redman graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in English. "Since then I have been running a rapidly growing organization (the Redman Family) ever since."

So he said that I had a degree in English and then in the next sentence made it look like I said "since then...ever since". Now I am not a grammar freak, in fact my grammar is quite lousy at times but I felt like I looked like a total idiot. My only hope is that nobody read the article.

I am probably blowing this way out of proportion but was so nervous and hated the idea of being interviewed in the first place and now I feel my fears are justified. So I will bank on the hope that I won't be interviewed again unless I run for city council again in 4 years and if I do I already have my statement ready: If you like what I have done the past 4 years vote for me again. That's it.

Family pictures, and oh, what a family.

We finally did the family photo shoot that we have been planning to do for over a year. My extended family has started using a photographer named Amber to do pictures for engagements, weddings, babies etc. and I have wanted to get family pictures done for about 18 months now. Last year I was going to do it but didn't get around to it and suddenly it was winter and too cold with babies. So then spring pictures was the plan with pretty spring flowers in the background. Well that didn't happen either. Neither did summer pictures. What can I say, I may have bitten off more that I can chew with that last baby. Anyway, one of the things that kept me from making the appointment was that I wanted coordinating outfits and i was never getting around to getting them so I just decided to make the appointment first and then figure out the appointments. Anyway, long story not quite so long, I made the appointment, I found the outfits (all found in the closet or at DI except for 2 shirts, $3.50 each), and we did the photo shoot. I am really happy with how the pictures turned out which is good since I opted out of school pictures this year. I have a couple group shots here and I have decided to blog about one of my kids each week and post their individual pictures then. I meant to write about each child during their birthdays but it didn't happen so will hopefully make up for it.

Almost a Tragic Headline

Last night was one of those times that you say an extra big thank you prayer. I was out with the youngest two in the jogging stroller and it was getting dark so we were headed in. I saw Mia's trike in the driveway so I walked up the slight hill of the driveway with both the stroller and the trike to where (I thought) it was flat and then put the trike away. I turned around to get the girls out of the stroller and it had started rolling back down the driveway toward the road. I chased after it and caught it and we skidded to a stop right as it was about to roll into the road. Right then there was a loud noise and a woosh as a big truck zoomed past us. It must not have seen us because it didn't even slow down but 2 more feet and we would have all been hit. The kids weren't strapped in because I had only been in the driveway so there is no way it could have ended well if we had been hit. So thank you, thank you, thank you to Heavenly Father and to guardian angels for keeping my babies safe ( by the way, they were facing toward me rather than the road and had absolutely no clue that anything was wrong). We had a family lesson later about turning strollers parallel to the road. I think I have learned my lesson.

If the phrase "pulling my hair out" was literal, I would be bald.

Sunday we had a family talk about respect and appreciation. I have felt very unappreciated and the kids have shown very little respect. Today I saw how much they listened and learned from our discussion. I can't find a library book. I hate it when I can't find library books, it is probably a sick source of pride that I keep track of 50+ library books and am relatively good at getting them back on time and not losing them. I regress. I couldn't find a library book and it was due today. It was one of Mia's books (the title is "what color should I be. Cute but elusive book). I looked for the book for about 1.5 hours but was unable to find the book. When the kids came home I asked the to help me find the book and we all looked for about 5 minutes before the complaints started. Well Brock and Gwen complained, Maddie, Liam and Mia just stopped looking except to pretend for a second when I was reminding them to work. Here is a sprinkling of what I heard from the older two for the next 20 minutes. The complaints were pretty constant the whole time, many repeated over and over.

"Why do I have to look for this book, I didn't check it out"

"Maddie isn't looking as hard as me"

"Why should I have to look in my bedroom, I know it isn't there"

"Mia should have to find the book, it's her fault"

"I am tired of looking"

Why do we always have to do whatever you want us to"

"I already looked why should I look more"

"Why do we have to work all day every day"

And the clincher, this one send me over the edge:

"Mom probably wouldn't have even given us anything if we had found the book. She probably would have just said thank you and not even given us a skittle. She never gives us anything."

I pretty much spend my life doing things for them. I volunteer in 4 different classrooms every week. I have spent more on each of my children for clothes/shoes in the last year than on myself in the last 5. But none of this matters, all they see is me doing what is "owed" to them and not even getting that right most of the time since every night I cook a dinner that at least one of my kids hates and they don't have nearly the toys/games/fun their friends have.

There are wonderful things about motherhood and I find that I appreciate my 6th child so much more and enjoy my role but there are also some major downers and this is one of them.

The honeymoon is over

After 11 years I can finally say I have been on a honeymoon. I joined Aaron for the last two days of his latest conference in Baltimore, went to Ocean City Maryland for 2 days, then went to DC for a day.

Our honeymoon top 10:


10. Eating meals I didn't have to cook

9. Walking around museums with Aaron (without kids!)

8. Going to an amusement park (without kids!)

7. Parasailing

6. Playing in the waves at the beach for hours (without kids!)

5. Not having to worry about my kids while I was doing all of these fun things. Thank you so much Mom for making their week as fun as mine (well almost).

4. Did I mention that I got to play with my husband at the beach for hours without having to worry about kids drowning, getting sand in their eyes, getting kidnapped or lost, annoying other beach goers, etc.?

3. Lazing around the hotel room in Baltimore for 1.5 days while Aaron was at his conference (without kids!)

2. Coming home to my kids. The only time I have left them in the past is to go have the next baby so this was a first for me and though I wasn't nearly as sad to be away from them as I feared I would be (I know, I'm terrible) I was literally bouncing in my seat excited to see them when we got back.

1. Spending 5 days with my sweetheart enjoying each other's company and remembering what it was like long ago when all we thought about was each other.

Thanks for the perfect honeymoon Aaron (I have started planning for our second honeymoon. I want to go to Hawaii this time. It should only take another 11 years to save the money for it.). YBEG

Those with dentist phobias should not read this post!

Those of you with real problems shouldn't read this either since there is way too much whining involved. What can I say, a little self pity goes a long way.

I need to post about Liam, Brock and Evie's birthdays. Instead I will post about poor pitiful me. I will try to make sense through the pain killer haze in my brain.

So yesterday I went in to the dentist for a root canal. It was my second and the first wasn't bad at all so I was trying not to worry. Everything went fine throughout the appointment till near the end. The dentist was putting something into the tooth that smelled strongly of chlorine bleach and then suddenly there was a burning sensation that started in the tooth but then radiated to the rest of my face. It started to burn in my nose and down my throat. I made some grunting sounds to show I was in pain (I try to be brave at the dentist but this went beyond that) and he started to work faster and start sucking stuff out while asking if it burned in my nose and throat. Long story short they put this heavy duty disinfectant in the root of the tooth (I told him it smelled and felt like bleach and he said it is very similar. I don't remember this from my first root canal) and apparently my root went into my sinuses so when they put the stuff in it went into my sinuses as well. The dentist was as close to freaking out as I have seen a dentist and kept saying "this is not good, this is not good". So apparently my sinuses are kind of fried. He put a shot of steroids into my face to help the inflamation, gave me prescriptions for more steroids, antibiotics and painkillers and pretty much told me to stay on the painkillers because I would need them and made an appointment to finish up on Tuesday (he couldn't finish the root canal because of blood coming from my sinuses out my tooth). So why do these things happen to me? I am trying to count my blessings because my family is really pretty darn healthy but come on, I feel like someone shot acid into my face. I'm not sure if there will be any lasting damage and I will admit it feels better today than yesterday though now my tooth hurts a lot as if there is lots of pressure inside. So poor poor me, how tragic how sad. Everyone get out your little violins and play a sad sad song for me.