Happy birthday to the oldest of the Lange Gang!

It is my oldest brother Mikes birthday.
Let me first describe the pictures; the first is of Mike in his rock band stage(he is the singer in the background) He was blessed with every talent imaginable; singing, playing the piano, sax, trumpet, writing music, artistic and much much more. My brother Mike and Bret had so many trophies, sometimes taking 1st 2nd and 3rd in the same competition.
In this picture you can sort of see his hair.... I remember my brother begging my mom to give him a perm, they were the "in" for boys that age. Anyway that is how I remember him in his high school days.
The second picture is him as a referee at a powder puff game. He looks official doesn't' he, especially with his short shorts!!
I am thankful for my brother Mike. I am sure being the oldest of 7 kids must have been difficult. But he set a great example and is still setting the example in raising a wonderful family.
The fondest memory I have of my brother was just this past year. I watched as my brother came to my dieing mom's bedside. Right away he kissed her forehead and cheek and knelt down beside her. He held her hand, smoothed the hair off her forehead and even wiped the blood from her nose. I was a mess, but my brother just knelt beside her to pray. I will never forget how strong he looked as he told my mom that it was ok to go. I know some may think that is a weird favorite memory, but it touched my heart forever. Thank you for being my big brother, I love you Mike!!!

Goodbye sweet Lynn!

Today started out pretty good, the kids were ready on time and I had showered before noon! Yeah! I decided to drive Samuel to the bus stop and then head off to do my errands. As I was putting the baby in the car Timothy runs in the garage from playing in the snow. Immediately he starts to climb over the baby getting her and everything else wet. Right away I start to chew him out for not getting in the car when I told him to. If you know my kids they like to talk(just like me:) so as I am chewing him out he keeps trying to interrupt me by saying "but mom" over and over. After we are settled in the car and I start to back up I finally ask Timothy what he wanted to tell me. This is what he said...."Mom is that bird dead?" . "What bird, I don't see a dead bird. The only birds I see are flying around. " Again he asks, so to get him to be quiet I just tell him that it is probably playing dead. I had already fed the birds earlier and knew they weren't around trying to get in our garage. So I proceed to back out and feel a bump. Weird. I thought that Guy cleared all the big snow chunks off the driveway. I didn't think anything more until I come home and pull in the driveway. AAAGGGGHHHHHH!!! We have neighborhood pigeons that we have been feeding for years. Most of our neighbors don't like them because they poop on their houses and cars...not us. I tell them if you feed them they respect you. We have loved these birds so much that we buy 25lbs of bird feed at a time and have named all three of them. Last year one of the birds went missing and Mitchial cried for days thinking that our neighbor shot it (I won't name names Chris:). I finally convinced him that it flew somewhere else. So anyway I am pulling in to our house and see Lynn squashed!!! Lucky for me the snow was covering most of the crime scene. I immediately backed out and drove to our friends house crying that I killed our bird. I pleaded to my friend that her husband had to go over and scoop up the remains before my kids see. Lucky for me I have great neighbors! So I wait in the car and decide to call Guy and let him know the bad news. Of course by time he answers I am crying so hard and telling him that there has been a accident and someone died. I was trying to talk in code so Timothy wouldn't hear that I squashed Lynn. Meanwhile Guy is only hearing a few words like accident and die so he begins to panic. After explaining to him that it was Lynn and we were fine he said, "that's it, the bird" . This brought on more tears until he explained that he was upset at our loss but glad that it wasn't a human that died.
It still made me mad that he wasn't more concerned until he told me that he was in a meeting and everyone was hearing our conversation and that we should talk later. Great now everyone at Guys work knows I am a killer.
After I get off the phone "Kevin" comes to tell me he did the best he could. There was some remaining evidence on the driveway but he assured me he stomped snow down on it so you couldn't see the coloring. :( I slowly drove home and Timothy immediately tells me "Mom the bird was playing dead because it is gone now". I couldn't even talk I was so sick to my stomach. Later I find out that the bird was dead before I ran over it. Not that it would have made me less sad but I wouldn't have been praying for forgiveness for murdering our pet.

The haunting of the "8" balloon!!

For the past week I have been followed by this 8 balloon. Seriously. It started the first night after Guy left out of town, I woke up to feed the baby and caught a flicker in the doorway of my room. I went about taking care of Bella when something flickered and moved in my doorway. Ok I knew it wasn't my moms ghost because she wouldn't be so shiny. As I tried to calm myself the heater clicked on and the stupid balloon started to move into my room. Holy crap!! I was sitting up in bed with this thing floating toward me...not good. By the time the balloon came into the light from the night light I was ready to run. I think I hollered out loud, "Not funny balloon". Since then the stinkin thing has followed me from room to room. I turn around in the kitchen....it is there staring at me. Bella loves it but not me. I punch it into the next room. Slowly but surely the thing finds me again. Tonight it scared Samuel as he was going to bed. I am such a mean mom I laughed. I thought about tying it to the end of his bed so when he woke up it was looking at him. Don't worry I won't.


You were probably wondering why we had a huge 8 balloon. Mitchial turned 8 on Saturday and was blessed with the balloon after the great to be 8 program. Next time we won't accept left over decorations! Happy Birthday Mitcharooni!


Happy Sweet 16 Ian!! This is Ian in his cool new jacket (or maybe he is just mad:) I can't tell) Ian and Mitchial celebrate the same birthday 8 years apart. We like it because that means we get 2 cakes to eat! Yeah! Ians picture with his super duper chocolate cake didn't turn out because there was so much smoke!! All you could see was a cloud. Funny! We are so blessed to have Ian and Mitchial in our family. Love you boys!

If you can't laugh at yourself, who can?

For months I have said that I was going to be thrifty and patch my husbands work jeans. I was embarrassed with his holey pants, so today was the day. I practiced with camouflage patches on Samuels pants and was quite pleased. I didn't make fancy cutout's like my Mom used to, but Samuel didn't care. After "testing" the patch area to make sure it stuck good, I was ready to move on to Guy's jeans. I found the first pair of jeans a bit difficult because of the location of the holes. :) After 2 tries of getting the patches to stick, I quickly moved on to the 2nd pair of pants while the first cooled. The 2nd pair was a piece of cake. One big hole on the knee and a small one on the pocket area. I knew the color of the patch was darker than the jeans, but since being patches I thought they would be ok. After finishing the 2nd pair I stepped back to look at the good work I did. AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!
Guy came home to find me looking at my patching job, and just smiled. After a few moments of laughing at myself, Guy asked why I didn't just put the patches on the inside of the pants then you wouldn't have to worry about "seeing" the patches. Good question. I think the patches are more embarrassing than the holes, because don't people pay lots of money to have the worn look? Oh, well. Now he has some durable yard pants!!

Sing like angel....Dance like a superstar!

As I was searching for pictures of my family dancing, amazingly enough this picture came up :) Ok, not really. Our family was not blessed with the dancing jeans, but we have fun. I didn't really think we were a silly family until my neighbor was telling me how my kids behaved at her house when music came on. She was laughing so hard it took her a few minutes to collect herself. She described my kids "spazing" out, only we don't call it spazing, we call it dancing. I think the boys were offended when she asked what they were doing. The story got even better when she told me Mitchial started singing. What can I say, I teach them early.
Some of my fondest memories are of my Mom and Dad listening to music. They loved music, therefore I love music. I was raised listening to Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Barbara, Johnny Cash, Elvis, the Carpenters and of course the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I grew to love all but the Mo Tab. One summer my Mom played the 4th of July Mo Tab tape over and over and over. I am sure the neighbors knew it by heart just like us kids. That summer we didn't invite our friends over much:)
In high school my Dad could be heard in the halls surrounding his class room. He loved to sing and even dance while he taught. It didn't matter what was happening in my life, whenever I heard my Dad singing, it made things seem alright. I remember sitting on his lap while he drove listening to old 8 tracks. Whenever he got to the melody he would squeeze me tight. Good times!
So, I am following my parents and surrounding my kids with "good" music. My music. My parents music. They already know the words of almost all the songs I put on my playlist. I know my brothers are going to give me a hard time, but I post them proudly. :)

Super no more!

I will never again brag about being super. I promise. I should know by now that as soon as I say "look at me" I fall on my face. Last week after calling myself super I slipped and fell at the the mailbox. I wasn't even trying to show off or do fancy foot work, I just turned around and boom. It was terrible. It was one of those slow motion falls that hurt not only my hands and knees but my pride. I had to hurry and get up before the garbage man got out of his truck to help. You should have seen his face....it was a look of do I laugh or be concerned. Luckily he just drove off. After I got up I quickly scanned my neighbors houses to make sure I hadn't been seen. So far the only 2 people I know of to see me fall were Timothy and the garbage man .
Ok, no more bragging about cooking either. I don't think I have made a decent dinner since my last post. I am afraid my kids are going to turn the color of macaroni and cheese. Please tell me the noodles are vitamin fortified:)

Super mom....for a day!

Yes this was me for a day! I did take the cape off to clean the bathroom. I don't know if everyone feels as inadequate as me, but there are some days I look around and it looks like I did nothing. I know I did but why is the house a mess? I had a rough start to the week. Getting used to getting the kids to school on time was a tough one. I enjoy my sleep so when I have to wake up to a alarm...I am grumpy. Well yesterday I started the day off early with a diet coke. I was peppy, dressed in real clothes( no jammies for me). I had makeup on and dangly earrings. I was looking and feeling good. The kids had a real breakfast, no chips or corn dogs. They had a real lunch, again no chips and corn dogs. I started my bills and finished sending our "holiday" cards. By time the kids came home from school Timothy was up from a nap:) I had homemade brownies in the oven and was starting dinner. I had vacuumed the front room and hall and had the kitchen clean and had folded and done 2 batches of laundry. Yeah and it only gets better. I cleaned the bathroom and put Samuel in to soak while dinner was cooking. By the time Guy got home, all the kids were bathed and fed with veggies and all, and they all had their jammies on ready for bed. I think the fun thing was not only did I feel that I accomplished something that day, I actually had proof. I enjoyed my day as a mom. I had fun. Not everyday is "fun" when your a mom. Now my goal is to have more than one "super" day a week!!