Mom of HOW MANY???

It has been an interesting couple of days at our house. Thursday morning I woke up and headed to Pocatello around 8:15 am to go meet up with Amber (Justin's sister) and her kids. She asked me about 1 week ago if I'd be willing to watch her kids for about 4 days while she headed to Bear Lake to help out her mom with some organizing. I told her I would. I didn't really think it would be much of a difference for us. When you have 5 kids (that aren't quiet by any means), what's 3 more?

Dustin, Colton and Kylie couldn't wait for my kids to get home from school. My kids weren't in the house for more than about 2 minutes and everyone started getting themselves ready to go outside and play in the snow. I'm glad that all of them are old enough to get themselves ready for the snow by themselves. I did have to help Kylie get boots and gloves on but that wasn't so hard. Over the past 2 days, the kids have been outside about 4 times. They played well with each other and would stay outside for quite awhile.

Kenzie and Kylie were taking a break for a minute from their snow fort building.

Austin and Dustin had a good pile of snow to work with in our front yard. Austin loves digging in the snow. He started digging his snow cave Tuesday night for his campout with the scouts this weekend.

Madison, Braydon and Colton were across the cul-de-sac with a pile of snow there for their fort. I'm thinking they were planning a snowball fight with each other. They've spent the entire time though working on their forts. Maybe today the fight will happen.

A view from my front porch of the kids!

This was breakfast on Friday morning. It made me laugh to see this many kids around the table and made me think, "Some families get to do this every morning." I'm thinking that 5 is a GREAT number for us. Don't get me wrong. It's been fun to have these 3 kiddos here and the kids all get along great. It's just wearing on a person to have that much talk and playing and running around at the same time!

Kenzie and Kylie played Littlest Pet Shop, ALOT! Mayci kept trying to play with them but the girls didn't want that to happen.

This is what Mayci did instead...

She is a character! She tried to play the computer with Madison but wasn't allowed to do that either. She finally resorted to just watching her. Not until after she found this cute outfit to wear though!

I let my kids choose if they wanted to go to school on Friday. Austin chose to go to school since his class was going to the new movie "A Christmas Carol". I don't blame him! The other kids stayed home and got lots of playing time in. Not just inside, but lots of time outside too. I spent most of the day picking up snow stuff and making sure it was hanging up to dry so it would be warm for the next time they went outside. After Austin got home from school, we headed over to the church to play. The gal I run/walk with is the Bishop's wife and she has a key to the church. So she came, with her kids, and the kids got lots of energy out of their systems. I got my 3 miles in too. It was much harder to do my run in the afternoon and I think we'll stick with running in the mornings from now on. It was great fun for the kids though. They were tired that night. We watched 'Inspector Gadget' and it got over at 8:30. I thought that they would like to watch another movie. They all got up, brushed their teeth and headed to bed. I did a silent cheer in my head and a little victory dance as well (not in front of the kids, of course). I then found a great chick flick to watch in my own bed and got to sleep before 11 PM. The kids all slept in until 7:15 am and it was so heavenly!

8 really isn't that bad but this is temporary and so I think we'll stick with 5! It suits us best!