Life at the Ozbirn's

I know I have been really bad about posting lately. We brought Grandma Jackson home with us from IL when we went so our days consist of just hanging out with Grandma pretty much. She usually goes with to take and pick up the kids from school, or if by some miracle Maddi stays asleep in the morning Gram stays home with her. It's only happened a few time and Maddi was not happy with me. Gram said she would hide under the table and cry. One day I did go to the kids' school in the afternoon for halloween parties and Gram stayed home with Maddi and she was great. I did have to sneak out and Maddi asked where I was a couple of times but never cried. Maddi is warming up to Grandma now. It all depends on Maddi's mood! One minute she will tell Grandma she doesn't like her then the next minute she is telling Grandma she loves her and hugs and kisses on her. Grandma is just getting a kick out of Maddi's faces (if looks could kill...) and moods. We took the kids to the dentist the other day for cleanings and Maddi was not in a mood to sit. I kept getting on to her and there was an older man waiting for his wife and he either said something to me or Maddi (I can't remember) and she stuck her tongue out at him. I smacked her in the mouth and she did it again. So I smacked her mouth again and she did it again! So I finally took her outside but when we came back in she wasn't any better. Thankfully the man wasn't offended by it. He was telling us he had a little grandaugther about the same age and she was the same way.

We got report cards yesterday and were very pleased Laura is bring up her grades and we are very thankful for that. She has been staying after once a week for tutoring with her teacher and her Daddy has been able to help her with her homework every night, one on one, so I think that has helped a ton. Her attitude is better but still not anywhere near perfect. Kenni's report card was all O's except for handwriting was an S. That was the case on his progress report and the teacher said he was doing really good with handwriting after I told him Mrs. Lukens said he needed to do better. Kenni's teacher just loves him and he thinks she is really awesome too. Whenever Kenni brings a treat in his lunch he always has to bring extra for Mrs. Lukens. He brought in some banana bread this week and for some reason didn't bring any in for Mrs. Lukens. She told him she wanted some banana bread next time but she likes the kind with nuts in it (I don't care for the nuts so we usually leave them out). I told Kenni next time we would make Mrs. Lukens some. He's always talking about Mrs. Lukens and how she does things in class and what not so Maddi has picked up on it and she is always talking about Mrs. Lukens too. Maddi just calls her Lukensthough. It's really cute. Little Man's teacher forgot to put his report card in his backpack yesterday but she is always telling us how great he is doing. At the last conference she insisted that we get James tested for the gifted program. I wasn't sure if I wanted to because we already have a ton of work to do between the 3 kids after school. We decided to do it and he made it. I don't know what his exact score was but he made it in. I'm not too sure what it all consists of either but it's going to be an after school thing and today is his 1st day of that.

We haven't really been doing much of anything lately. Our weekdays are really crazy after school and our weekends have just been relaxing. All of us (but Gram) have all been trying to catch some kind of sickness. Coughs, sore throats, sneezing....the norm I guess for fall/winter colds. No fever though and it's severity goes up and down. James Sr has it the worst of all right now. It didn't help any that he worked extra last weekend at the Pinal County H1N1 shot clinic. He was part of set up/break down and traffic control on friday night and all day saturday. It wouldn't have been bad but it finally decided to rain here for the 1st time in months and boy did it come down good! We sure needed the rain but we sure had a good flood. A couple of weeks prior we had the worst dust storm in a long time and Gram could not believe it and then the rain came down in buckets and our yard was completely under water and the kids were all screaming and yelling and carrying on. Gram couldn't believe how excited these kids got over rain. That's what happens when it only rains once in a blue moon!

The boys, well all the kids have been fighting/arguing non stop lately. The boys get physical though and someone always ends up crying. One day last week they were fighting and James hit his chin on Kenni's head. The next day that thing bruised up like you would not believe and Kenni's head didn't have a spot on it. We always say he's got a hard noggin but from the look of James' chin I thought for sure Kenni's head would be bruised too. James hit his chin so hard it almost busted open.

Now this week we are just thinking about getting prepared for thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to that for Grandma. In IL it's always so freezing cold. Here we eat out in the backyard!

So that's the last few weeks in a nutshell. Sorry for the long read! Maybe if I was better about updating then they would be shorter huh?!?