#whatwewreckedwednesday

I have a few friends that have super cute blogs (I'm looking at you Ashley and Angie) and I always see the equally as cute "What we wore Wednesday" segments on Ashley's blog, The Vanilla Tulip. It's adorable, even when her kids are in mishmash ensemble, they still look fab. I'm so glad I never get called out on a WWW Wednesday cause it would look like this:

   Well friends, today we have an interesting combination of last nights pajamas AND yesterday's clothes! That's right, Wylee is still in her pjs at 3 pm and Wyatt peed through his so he was just in a diaper until I realized I had less than 30 minutes to go get Jared's Pizza Hut lunch and have it at the school in time. So he's now in the closest outfit I could find, which just so happened to belong to yesterday! Russell is in a hit of a combo outfit and I myself put on a new tank top but my long sleeve shirt is from around 5 pm yesterday and the jeans are the same. And little Jared? Oh he's in SWEATPANTS and a Tshirt because he feels that's acceptable to wear to school.

So instead, I'd like to introduce you to my very own WWW Wednesday, also known as, What We Wrecked Wednesday. It's a delightful rundown of the things that my kids, and sometimes myself, have wrecked or ruined over the past week or so. I will also be including a list of things that my children are no longer allowed to receive as gifts. Because apparently there is a level of maturity that one must reach before they can handle being given SILLY PUTTY.

What we wrecked Wednesday includes, but in no way is limited to, the following:
1) This entire bullet is devoted to what they wrecked with Silly Putty (I'm lookin at you Aunt Becky!).
* Russell's Easter shirt, he matted a giant wad of ORANGE silly putty in the pocket. That stains.
* Several parts of the living room rug
* Wylee's pj pants (she fell asleep with it in her hand?)
* Wylee's blankie (see above)
* The butt of MY pj pants
* I keep finding it all over the hard wood floors in different rooms
* The love seat cushions
2) Broken cupcake Scentsy lamp
3) This bullet is dedicated to what we ruined with Nail Polish
* Wylee's carpet
* 3 out of the 4 souvineer shirts from the Masters (the 4th got scribbled on with marker, but not a Sharpie)
* Carpet  in our bathroom closet
* Carpet outside our bedroom door
* Carpet outside our bathroom but IN our bedroom
* Our sheets and comforter and pillow cases and quilt
4) The office, the whole thing, it's wrecked
5) Apparently someone scratched "Love" into one of the dressers, I can narrow that one down to those that can actually spell
6) A few cardboard boxes were chewed up
7) Major chased the neighbor's chickens and had a mouth full of feathers
8) Russell peed in the middle of the garage
9) An ornament got chewed up, and another smashed
10) My will to get out of bed in the morning
11) The dogs pulled the bread, brown rice, tortillas, and pumpkin seeds out of the cabinet and ate them ALL
12) The dogs also pulled my teal frosting bag off the counter and ran through it and then through the kitchen, but they did eat most of it.
13) A pull-up was shredded by the dogs (not used thank goodness)

And that's about all that I can remember right now. So there you have it!
#whatwewreckedwednesday

Oh yeah, and we gave a sweet baby bunny a heart attack and killed it the night before Easter.

Yoga Pants Joan

Right now I'm getting griped at for putting too many tortilla chips in Russell's bowl and at the same time Wyatt threw TWO handfuls of goldfish at my head. This won't be the last thing that is thrown at me today. And this surely won't be the last time that I have a child angry with me. This is happening as I rock Wyatt trying desperately to get him to nap. I. Am. Desperate. I want to fold laundry and clean the kitchen. I love rocking him though, he falls asleep to Paw Patrol and I get to play on Facebook and catch up on blogs.
 I read a blog this morning titled "10 Types of moms that suck". You can read it here if you want to. I get it. It's supposed to be funny. Parts of it were, but at the same time it made me cringe. Moms that suck? Ew. How rude. I'm sure I'm getting some eye rolls here and that's totally fine. My panties are in a wad because my gosh, can't we all just get along?! Can't we all just accept the fact that our creator made each one of us individually and we are unique and no two exactly alike?? My sweet friend Ashley has 4 kids as well, each one born not too long after each one of mine were born. We are VERY similar, yet so very different! She's homeschooling, I'm not. Big deal. Do we really HAVE to cut each other down for things like buying organic food and choosing not to breastfeeding, or driving through McDonalds and breastfeeding for too long??
Can we not just lift each other up instead? "Oh, hey Joan, I see you're wearing the same pair of yoga pants that you had on 2 days ago...kids must be givin ya hell, huh?  Drop 'em off at my house tomorrow and have a moment to yourself". Instead of calling up whatsherface and saying, "OMG, Joan is a hot mess. Yoga pants for 3 days in a row." Please. I've been Yoga Pants Joan before, defeated by my own family. I've also been the one calling Whatsherface and pretending like I haven't had a day where I can't even remember if my teeth got brushed and we ate lucky charms for dinner. And you know what, I always felt guilty afterwards. I'm ashamed. But hey, it was something to talk about so who cares, right? Joan cares! Joan doesn't need your judgments and back stabbing. Joan needs you to lift her up, recognize her needs and HELP HER. We are all moms and we are all different. Heavenly Father knew Joan before anyone else knew her and he gave her the same thing he gave you, and me, and every other mom. He gave us HIS children and has trusted us to bring them  back home to him. I'm sure I get judged all the time for having 4 kids, not to mention I had them in 5 years. That's a lot of kids! We must be insane. My sister in law has 7. I used to think she was nuts. Well, she is nuts, but not because she has 7 kids (lol, jk Ruth). Quit being pessimistic towards the mother that raises her family differently than you. She's doing her job the best she can, as I'm sure you are, too. So what if  she's fully dressed and looks great at drop-off and you're still in your pjs. Who cares? It makes you mad that she looks nice? That's not very fair, now is it? I could go on for hours, but that would make this a book and not a blog post. Now go watch this video, and thank your mother!

Who needs nice carpet anyways?

Well, let's see here...
Jared went on a "business trip" (I use this term VERY loosely) to Georgia Friday morning. They stayed in a rented house and got to go to the Masters on Saturday! It was a business trip people, he had no choice. I honestly feel really bad for him  when he HAS to go on these types of "business trips". Working on a Saturday, no thanks. The nerve...but we did get to watch Frozen 3 times on Friday before returning it. Which leads me to my next question.
Do you want to build a SNNNOWMAN? I bet Jared laughed just now. I really loved the movie. So much that I downloaded the soundtrack on my way to my AdvoCare training on Saturday. I asked the kids nicely to just not tell daddy that mommy downloaded it. You know what? It wasn't even a full day before baby Jared ratted me out! AND he threw in how I said, "Don't tell daddy cause he'll be like 'you spent money on that!?' And be grumpy about it". He made that last part up himself. See if I trust him with anymore secrets! Every time Jared got frustrated last night I would sing that song, I even changed the words to "do to want to put your pants on" as I chased Wyatt down the hallway at bedtime. He did NOT want to put some pants on, and he did not enjoy my modified version.
  But back to my Friday. My sweet friend Lara has a dog that manages to escape the yard for a bit but always comes back. Honey escaped Thursday night and didn't make it back home. I kept feeling prompted to go look for the dog and we had to go return the movie anyways (plus I really wanted a bigmac) so I decided I would act on my feelings. We ate dinner in the car while we drove through a couple of neighborhoods in their area. Little Jared kept snapping at me that I wasn't going the right way and demanded to know why I was choosing certain streets to drive down, I suppose he has stellar directional skills for a 6 year old (eye roll). I told the kids how I had said a prayer that Heavenly Father would help us to know the right way to go so we could take Honey home to our friends.  Their job was to holler at me if they saw a dog that was Honey's color. I said another prayer and kept feeling like I should roll down my window and ask people that were outside if they had seen her. Friends, not a single ounce of me wanted to do this. But I did, and you know what!? After talking to 3 different complete strangers we turned the corner and there was HONEY!!! The couple that found her were taking her for a walk and they were so happy that I knew where she belonged. My kids are SO young and I don't always know that they understand us when we teach them about The Lord. They understood this one!! It was an amazing thing, Russell was grinning ear to ear telling me that Honey made his heart happy and that we made Heavenly Father happy. I'm grateful to have the Holy Spirit in my life and I'm grateful to recognize his promptings. I'm thankful that my kids got to help return a friend's sweet family pet and experience the joy of doing service for others.  It may have been a small victory but it was a victory none the less!
  Their Daddy made it home REALLY late Saturday night. I decided kn Sunday to put on my big girl panties and take all 4 kids to church instead of leaving Wyatt or Russell at home with Jared.  We made it through the opening song, sort of made it through prayer and about a verse into the next song before I had to take all 4 kids to the foyer. We sat on the couch for the rest of sacrament. I almost broke down and left but I didn't. Russell cried and threw fits for the next 45 minutes. I almost cried, but I didn't. I almost LOST MY MARBLES, but again, I didn't. I said a prayer for patience (I was teaching 6 3-4 year olds alone) and he FINALLY  quit making a scene. Then Wylee had an accident so I threw in the towel, lol. We went home a bit early. We got some awesome shirts and it only took 2 hours for Wyatt to find a green marker and scribble all over his  arms, hands, and new OFFICIAL Masters shirt that Jared brought him from the ACTUAL Masters. It took another hour and a half or so for Russell to ruin Jared and Wylee's Masters shirts with fingernail polish. He tried to paint his toe nails but ended up painting his toe nails, his toes, part of his shin, his hands, the carpet in Wylee's room and the kids shirts (which I still don't really understand). Somewere in that time a tube of Chapstick was apparently smashed into the carpet. In 5 different places.  I highly recommend cleaning with Goof Off. It gets the job done and by the time you're finished you've inhaled so many fumes that you couldn't care less about the mess in the first place :)  I'm only kidding.........

I'm in a glass case of emotion!!

April 10th, 2014- I can't even process my feelings right now. So here's how this is gonna go, I'm just gonna type. Let my fat little fingers fly. My brain is jumbled with feelings of excitement and nerves and I'm scared and anxious and happy and sad and you're gonna get a glimpse of how my soul processes feelings. I'll give you a hint, it's unorganizedv in there. Just ask Jared.
  Wyatt Lee Ricker, our last born child, our baby, the book end of our family....as of 7:36 this morning, he is two. TWO. On Jared's second birthday, Wylee was almost 8 months old. On Wylee's second birthday, Russell was 4 months old. On Russell's second birthday, Wyatt was 3 months old. I haven't been pregnant for 2 whole years!! That's a record.

  Wyatt makes the best faces, he always makes me laugh. Unless it's 3:30 in the morning and he has me in the living room watching Paw Patrol which will cause me to sleep through my alarms which will make me wake up in a panic and feel disoriented which will cause me to frantically shove Jared out the door and send him to the neighbors house without checking his backpack or making his lunch.  No one was late, I'll let it slide.
  2 years old, I'm happy. I'm healthier than ever (I think). We're eating pretty clean and it has really sunk in! Eating clean has REALLY made me feel great inside. Not being pregnant means my body is mine. I'm not saying being pregnant isn't healthy, but for me it wasn't. I used pregnancy as an excuse to eat like a pig. I don't regret that though. Totally worth it :) but now I'll have to be healthy and get in shape because my kids deserve a mom and dad that can keep up with them!
  Time is going by quickly and not fast enough all at the same time. Today is also Wylee's  Kindergarten Roundup! What?!?! Kindergarten?? Down to two kids at home during the day? I have mixed feelings on this subject. (Time is passing too quickly) Happy sad happy sad...changes every 5 minutes. But wait, Russell starts right after Wylee. Then before I know it, it'll be Wyatt's turn. I'll have the house to myself all day and maybe it'll stay clean for longer than 5 minutes!! Tubs of toys won't be dumped out for no reason at all. I won't have to listen to "I didn't make that mess" Everytime I say clean up. (Not. Fast. Enough.)
  I recently read a blog post about how sometimes parenting is a big F you. It's true. It's not always like that, but it is lots of times. It's what I was made to do though, big F you's and all. Parenting isn't really even all that rewarding right now. It's so hard and it's always the same craziness and chaos but things DO somehow change every single day. And just like child birth, I forget most of the bad stuff by the time I fall asleep.  That's why I have 4 kids. You forget.  I didn't end up with 4 kids cause I love birthday cake and parties. It's why I was born. My official calling in life. I want to soak up every single small medium and large F YOU that motherhood throws my way and I'm gonna find a way to forget it by bedtime (it usually vanishes sometime between my bluebell and Blacklist). Someday when my nest is empty and there are 100 dogs hangin in my living room with me I'm gonna look back and think, "I did that. I was tough and weak, I worried all the time but still let them figure most things out for themselves. I held them, I taught them, I laughed with them AND at them  (hey, nobody is perfect). I cleaned up poop and pee and puke and spit up and lots of spilled milk which is, in fact, worth crying over. I did the best that I could. They know of Heavenly Father's love for them and they know how to get back home. We taught them how to pray and when and why, and that's important stuff! I hope I did it right." Then I'll spend a few hours talking to my 100 dogs until Jared gets home from work. I'll probably dress them up in people clothes too.
  So Wyatt is two, Wylee gets her first official taste of Kindergarten, and I'm gonna enjoy it even though if you were to be a fly on the wall of my van in the pick up line at school RIGHT now you would hear a crying 2 year old, a tattling 5 year old and you'd be watching Russell clean up all the fries that he threw and the to go box that he shredded.
  Happy birthday Wyatt. We all love you so much and you are the perfect ending to our reign of newborns. Your favorite show is Paw Patrol, you don't want to drink anything but chocolate milk and you LOVE sleeping in bed with mommy and daddy. You like doing our workout videos with us and you adore your big sister. Ryder still calls you Baby even though he's only 2 weeks older than you, and I like that :) You'll have to get used to it cause Baby, you're always gonna be OUR baby!!! I'll spoil you and let you get away with lots of stuff that the others didn't because that's how it works :) we love you Wyatt Lee!!