January Randomness

We're starting off the new year sick again...at least five kids have succumbed and my throat is scratchy. So far it's only been moderate fever and lethargy, sore throat, maybe a bit of coughing... nothing compared to the nightmarish stomach flu that struck last month. Right, Kim?

I have no idea what's up with Natalie here... she slept for 14 hours straight, she's feverish and her eyes look all bruised, poor baby. We can't tell if it's from being sick, or maybe from an unobserved face-plant, or possibly an insect bite. You would think that after 8 kids we might have seen it all by now, but they always manage to come up with something new...















ps - two days later, the redness is subsiding, and it looks like she does have a bug bite under her eye. In January. Go figure. She's still feeling a little tender, though, as evidenced by the following pictures. Conor has been laid out by the fever for two days. He literally spent every "waking" moment on the couch today, dozing for most of them. At one point Natalie crawled up and snuggled down next to him:





















Her thing is to suck her middle fingers on her right hand, while holding her ear with her left. But sometimes, someone else's ear is just the ticket:















Conor was asleep during the whole thing.

















Sometimes it's just the sweetest thing to catch them loving each other.

Theresa is a total pain in the drain when it comes time for portraits. I have many examples of her hiding her face, grumping at the camera, or smiling weakly with a tear-streaked face. She just doesn't do well when you want everybody to say "cheese!" But when she gets a picture concept in her mind, she's ready and willing. To illustrate, I give you her latest composition:



That's Mousie in her clutches. Mousie's been her constant companion since she was 4 months old. Poor Mousie's seen better days, and her head is about to come off. She's been sewn back together so many times, and there's nothing left to sew onto. In fact, today we caught Theresa pulling out some of Mousie's brains. But Mousie is irreplaceable - we know, because we've tried. Sarah affectionately (not) refers to Mousie as The Green Disease.

Tonight Theresa spontaneously came downstairs in fuschia velvet dress and princess mules, with hair groomed. Being that she usually resembles a ragg mopp, I could not pass up the photo op:

not too dignified for whipped cream, though

I have a real lech for baklava and our grocery store almost never has it. Out of desperation, I bought some phyllo dough - I figured, dough, walnuts, honey - how hard can it be? So I watched a couple baklava-making videos on line (no kidding. I love the information age.) and picked a recipe at random. And it turned out that it wasn't too hard, just a little time-consuming. But it turned out beautifully (beginner's luck) and Oh. My. Gosh. is it yummy.


















Here's a shot of the two oldest doing what they do best. When they're not breaking my heart, they're pretty neat to have around. I stole this picture from her Facebook photo album, since though they take two-and-a-half-billion pictures of themselves, they're almost never around for me to capture.






















These are some ornaments I found last Christmas at a mall kiosk. With 8 kids, 10 total in our family, it's hard to find personalized ornaments that can accommodate all of us, so you can imagine how delighted I was to find these! I can't remember where I got them, but I found the same line of ornaments online here.

















Although I have to admit, when you enlarge the picture of the santa hats ornament, the faces look downright creepy...

















we're zombie peas..... join us... joooooiiiiiinnnnn uuuuusssss

that's weird...in person, they're really cute
















OH - and I could not resist putting this one up. If you want to know what it is, I recommend watching The Pirates That Don't Do Anything, the latest from VeggieTales.