Micha is 6 Years Old

September 7, 2002 Micha Renee Fletcher was born to Michael and Christine Fletcher, and today we celebrated her sixth birthday in an all day event that started as we woke up and has just now ended. It was really nice having her actual birthday on Sunday, since we were both off of work we were able to devote the whole day to her and the events that we had planned. When birthdays fall on a weekday we do a little party with the family on the day of the birthday then another little party with family and/or friends on a weekend day. So today we got to combine all of them into one big event. The morning started with Micha getting up too early (for being up late last night) but she was excited and understandably so. I had plans on making biscuits and gravy for breakfast but in a little bit of a birthday fashion.   We all enjoyed the breakfast then it was time for getting ready for the day, and the party. Christine and Micha were going to Sam's to get the cake as I started to get lunch for the party prepared. Micha wanted BBQ for her birthday lunch so we made hot dogs, sausages, and Chicken wings (BBQ and Teriyaki). After everyone got home and we started lunch and the guests arrived. There were a total of 12 kids and about 15 adults here so we were glad to have the bigger house, in fact we used about every part of the house for one thing or another, the garage was a sitting area with outdoor furniture, the basement was home of the Rock Band game (mostly for the adults LOL), and the rest of the house was used for eating, sitting, and for the kids to see how many kids you could pack into one room at one time. After the playing, the fun, it was time for the best part for a 6 year old...the cake and the presents. We did all then then a lot more of the kids playing, and a lot more playing and finally a lot more playing until finally about 8:00 PM this evening the last guests left, and we were left with three very happy, very tired children, and two very satisfied parents. It was a great birthday that lasted for almost 13 hours and was worth every moment of it.

First Day of School

 Today we sent Micha off to school for the first time. She wanted to share some of her day with you all today so we made a little video to post. 

Painting Day

Well we spent today painting our new house. There were some rooms that we decided that we could live with for now, and there were others that we wanted to change as soon as we could. For starters we got all the stuff moved into the house and got the front room looking like we live here (That was my Thursday job). 

 

For today we were painting the kids room, the main bathroom. and the basement. Chris had some friends from work and help her out so we were able to get a lot more done than if it would have been the 2 of us. We got at least one coat on almost all parts of all the rooms that we planned on getting, we totally finishefinished the bathroom and almost finished the basement. We were not sure if we should stain the wood  that seperates the two colors in the basement or if we should paint it a dark color like maroon to being the walls and the carpet together?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe you can give some advise there.    

We Moved :) (almost all the way)

So it has been a while since we posted anything but that is because we have been busy this summer. A while ago Chris and I started to talk about how we needed to think about getting a place where we had some room to grow as a family. As our children got older there would not be a lot of room in there for things like friends staying over, the boys to have a place to get away from one another. Chris and I to get away from the children, etc. Additionaly I always wanted to live out of the city a little bit, not totally 'out in the sticks' but away from all the traffic, lights, people walking/driving by your house all the time. Just to be away when you are ready to be away. This summer we decided that we might look and see what is out there on the market and we finally found a place to call home. It meets a lot of the criteria that we wanted (two stories, at least 4 bedrooms (it actually has 5), out of town a little bit, big back yard, and not a lot of work to be done right away but enough that as we do it, we can really bring up the value of the house). So with this blog entry I have also included a 'tour' of the house for all of you that are too far away to come see it right now. Enjoy the show!!

Happy Birthday Caden!

Wow, our baby is 2! Where has the time gone? We celebrated his Birthday on Sunday. We didn't have a big party because we just did that with Logan. We had a few people over for a Barbecue on Sunday. It rained so hard Sunday morning, we were really bummed but by 1:00 the clouds cleared and we had a wonderful day................................................... I would say he has been 2 for about 6 months and he'll be 2 for about 18 more months.

His new thing is reading books. Lots and lots of books, we read and then he reads and then he runs for another. He also loves animals. Any kind of animal, I would love to get him a cat or dog but we don't have the time for them. (I want one for me as much as I want one for him, Mike does object)

I hope this next year goes much slower than the last, I need all of the baby time I can possibly get, he is the last one.

Happy Mothers Day!!!

I wanted to make a special post for those mothers out there and tell them this...........

(Micha and I made that after the rain tonight)

My mother made such a difference in my life and I also know that my beautiful wife makes a great impression on my children. She molds and creates them daily into the wonderful little people that they are. Chris and I were actually talking tonight about how great our kids were and how sometimes we dwell on the the bad experiences but really overall the good times outweigh the bad days. For all mothers (pretty much Mom, Chris, Trace, Jay, and Lynette) I give you this bit of wisdom.....

Mom's smiles can brighten any moment,
Mom's hugs put joy in all our days,
Mom's love will stay with us forever
and touch our lives in precious ways...

The values you've taught,
the care you've given,
and the wonderful love you've shown,
have enriched my life
in more ways than I can count.

I love you all! Thank you for all the blessings that you have given me!

Tee Ball

  Micha has officially started playing Tee Ball. Which I think is more fun for me than her but she is still having a good time. I played Softball for a long time so I was super excited to sign her up. She has done really well. Its a little difficult for her and every other 5 year old in the world to get the basic concept and she does get a little bored on the field but finally this is all about her. With 2 little brothers who are always in need of something she gets left out in the attention getting department.  So everyone gets to come watch her play and I get to help coach so its great time for her and I. We aren't sure whether she will decide to play again next year but this year will be a new experience and fun for all of us!!!!!  Soccer may be more fun for her (Mike will have to Coach that one).   

Fun times at the Zoo

Last weekend we got the opportunity to go to the Zoon with Uncle Kenny, or Uncle Papa (not sure which one he is all the time) but it made for this realy cute moment that I wanted to share with all of you, so here it is!

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Happy Birthday Logan

It has been over a week since his actual birthday, but we decided to do his party a little later since my brother was coming down so that Sophia could come to the party as well, so this whole week has been Logan's Birthday Week. It started last week on his actual birthday we did a little family party.

Then following that we had a week of vacation from work, we did not do a lot on our week off of work other than hang around the house and enjoy spending time with the kids. We are not able to do that all the time between the hour that we are rushing to get ready in the morning and then when we get home from work it takes another hour and a half at least to make dinner and get everybody back into the swing of things, so by then it is like 7:00 PM and bedtime is between 8:00 and 9:00 so that does not leave us much time each day to watch them grow and turn from babies into little people. However this week we got that time.

Back to Logan' birthday though, yesterday we went Chuck E Cheese for his birthday party and it was a chaotic blast. The whole thing was so fast moving and a whirlwind. First of all the place was packed so it was extra insane in there with  all the is that we brought and keeping track of them all as well was quite a chore, trying to talk to the adults was next to impossible. The day was all together wonderful and, Logan had a great time as well. I think that after it was all over though I told Christine that next time that we go it will be a lot easier since all the kids will be 13 years old the next time that we go.

Happy Easter

Thought that I might share some of our easter day with you all.

Just a video

There is nothing special about this vid just the kids playing outside on a nice day that we had about a week and a half ago, but I thought that you all might enjoy watching the kids. The vid is not even all that great, there was a lot of wind outside so it picked up the wind noise a lot on the camera and I did not edit it at all just had taken it over from the camera and thought that I would send it out for all to see. We miss you all and look foward to the next time we can hang out.

A little hello from far away

The kids wanted to send a hello to Grandpa and Grandma so here it is.........

Snowball fight

I found this today and was playing with it. Even though it is about Christmas I think that we can still use it for winter, just turn it off before the end and you might not know that it was Christmas (and ignore the Santa Clause) anyway enjoy the vid.

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Merry Christmas

After a long time I finally got around to getting a vid from Christmas on the computer so that I could get it onto the blog. Hope that you get a chance to enjoy the short movie. By the way the cookies were not all that great after they got done. Nothing the kids did wrong just that I do not like gingerbread cookies all that much, but it seemed very Christmas-ie.

We are finally home

Well last week was an adventure for the whole Fletcher flock, for the second time in a year we had to move out of the house for a week and put life on hold for an ice storm. I was telling Christine as we were at the house packing up that we should not have to do this twice in a lifetime yet alone twice in the same year. By that I meant we should not have to move out of the house because of the weather ,with two really little ones, and try to entertain 3 children without any electricity. There was some good that came of all of it and I will get to that in a little bit. However for those of you that have not heard it the story goes like this. On Sunday morning we got up for church and there had been a little ice fallen overnight. It was enough to cover all the trees and make for some really pretty landscape but the roads were fine and everything looked okay at the time. As we headed off to church then for the weekly trip to WalMart to fill all of our needs for the week we went home to find out there was no power at the house. We did not even take our stuff in the house we just ventured off to Chris' parents house to sit out the power outage there for a little while. A little while turned into staying the night there so we set up camp and went to sleep. As we woke up the next morning they too did not have any electricity, so our escape house had become just as our own house was. It did stay a little warmer in there than it was in our house so we decided to stick it out there during the storm until our house got back up. Going outside Monday morning was an eire feeling. There was no noise outside at all. Not the hustle and bustle of people going to work as most everything was closed because of loss of electricity. It was just quiet, calm and about every 45 seconds or so you could hear a large limb breaking off.

For a couple of days we had to continue to try to keep our routines as we still had jobs to go to, but we also still had children to take care of and a daycare that did not have electricity either. Stephanie watched the kids though, she has a fireplace in her house and I felt so bad for her having all those kids stuck in one room for the whole day as the fireplace only heats the one room comfortably, but I was also really grateful that she still took care of them because we still had to be at work so I am not sure what we would have done.

On Thursday Chris' parents got their power restored but we were not as lucky. We had to wait until Sunday to move back into our house, but we finally got to and it was great to get back to the routines for us and the kids. I did say that there was one good thing that came out of it and that is we realised that we could live without TV and since we have been home the TV has been off more than it was before. It is still on sometimes but not all the time. On Tuesday night this week I am not sure that it was on at all until late in the evening right before Chris and I went to bed I watched a little. It was really nice to take the time to talk to one another and entertain each other. Playing cards and memory with Micha, just having time to talk to Christine, playing with Logan and Caden. We all enjoyed the time and are going to set back 2-3 times a month that we have family time with no electronics and just enjoy each other.

On another sad note because of all the time we lost in a season that you can never have enough time we lost a lot of critical Christmas preparation time and something back out that I swore would not come back again......

For those that might not remember last year I accidentally got this 'Charlie Brown' tree that I swore that I would not put back up ever again, and here it sits in my living room. (See: http://fletcherfive.blogspot.com/2006/11/i-pulled-charile-brown.html ) We were going to get a real tree this year but with all that has happened and time running out till Christmas, this last weekend after getting back home I reluctantly went out to the shed and pulled the tree out while grumbling to myself, "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Browniest".

Merry Christmas and we will post more as Christmas come upon us.

Cadens Knock Knock Joke

My Turn..........

Ok so I don't know 10 people that blog and the ones I do know have been tagged. I know that takes the fun out of it but I will post 10 things about me. Thank you to, Marianne and Tracy for making me step outside of my box today.



1) I love to write poetry. I had a poem published when I was 14 or 15 but haven't seriously wrote anything for a long time.

2) Music has a lot of meaning to me. I could think of a song for almost any moment.



3) I never have liked to read very much. Lately, I can't put books down.


4) I really like coffee. Mostly iced. I had an espresso in Sicily that was so good! (Thanks for that one Bob!) My stomach doesn't always agree though.



5) My favorite time of year is definately summer, no coat, just slide my flip flops on and I am out the door. Although fall, is just so beautiful, I am not sold on the whole wearing socks and a coat thing.



6) I take my job way too seriously. Therefore often times my mind is preoccupied with work.



7) On that thought, I take everything way too seriously, I think everything out. Sometimes I think about conversations I have had with people over and over just analyzing myself. That sounds kind of weird I know.

8) My all time favorite movie is My Best Friends Wedding.

9) My favorite days are the ones filled with nothing. Just hanging out at home enjoying my family.

10) I have always wanted to be a cosmetologist. I could still be, one of these days I'll just have to do it.

It took me a few days to come up with these things. Nothing too interesting, just me.

I guess that I got tagged

So my sister decided that I am playing this game where I have to say like 10 facts about me that other people do not know, or something of that nature, then send it to 10 people to do the same. As I do not have 10 friends with blogs in fact she named all the peoples blogs that I looked at in her list I will try and at least come up with the 10 things so that I do not get 'a harpoon in my chest'.



Top ten things that people might not know, from the home office of Sioux City, Iowa.



1. Fall is my favorite season, as we are approaching the time of year with snowmen and mistletoe, turkeys and leaves falling are the predecessor to that joy of Christmas therefore as the grass browns and the leaves start to blow I cannot help but be memorized by not only the beauty of the changing season but also I enjoy being able to again wear layers.



2. I love Rachael Ray, I know that might seem manly if I was saying just saying that Rachel Ray was sexy but I am saying that I love Rachael Ray's magazine, cookbooks, and TV shows. This makes it not near as masculine as I can make it sound.



3. I want to be in a band. Like a heavy-ish, ska-ish, punk-ish I really do not care how I would fit into this band but I also know that I want to learn how to play the guitar, I am not the best singer, and drums really do not interest me all that much, so I am thinking guitar is it. I played Guitar Hero and was not all that bad but I am thinking that the actual thing is a little more difficult.

4. I am, well we are a 'Van Family' now. We took the plunge and decided that that family is not getting any smaller and 2 row seating was just not cutting it anymore so last week we went and got a Honda Van.

6. I like people as individuals but not these same people in society. It is really hard to explain There was a line in Men In Black and I do not have it memorized but it is something like, "A person is smart but people are stupid, panicky, and neurotic. From a psychological aspect I enjoy people but from a sociological aspect people annoy me.

7. I love court television shows. I find my self watching as many as I can each day, and I am not sure why? There are about 10 different shows on each day each with different judges that act different to the people but really there are only also about 15 reasons that people sue each other and about 5-7 of these reasons show up all the time (i.e. ex boyfriend/girlfriend, landlord vs. tenant, contractor vs. customer) so I cannot figure out if it is pretty much the same show over and over why do I have to watch them all the time.

8. I do not have to talk, I would be perfectly fine just not saying anything, but my ability to do this makes it difficult for me to meet new people. When I am around people that I am just meeting I am not sure what to say to them, what questions to ask or what comments to make. When I am around people that I do know then I just feel okay not talking and those people usually know that I am okay with that.

9. I miss twizzlers. Yes the candy. It is not that they are not available anymore just that they are not available for me. I had to totally rule them out when I started my diet I used to eat A LOT of them before I started my diet and I bet that I could have lost weight by only ruling out this item.

10. I skipped number 5 on purpose. I only had 8 things then I ran out of creativity. I guess that is another interesting observation of mine I have little creativity, but I realised the way that the school system works is that they spend the first part of your education teaching you creativity growing your mind to many possibilities of correct answers or behaviors (you can color that tree any color that you want), and the last half teaching you that there is only one right answer to everything which takes away from you ability to think creatively (What color is the tree and how did photosynthesis play a part in this?) I am not knocking education just that I think that becasue I think more logical or mathmatical there is only one right answer to things.

There you are 9 1/2 things I guess about me. I know that Christine said that she was going to work on this sometime as well.

The Fletcher Five are still here

I know that has been a really long time since out last post I am not all that sure that I should be on here late tonight either becasue I have to work early in the morning but I wanted to share the last couple of days with you all, if nothing more in pictures. Not sure that I will have enough time to really get into all the stories. We had a super hero Halloween, as you can see above we had a Batgirl, Batman, and Robin, that went out and trick or treated for candy. This year was the best one that we have had yet. Logan really really liked to trick or treat. As we would go to one house he would ask every time, "Can we go trick or treating again?" All the kids had a blast. Christine did an exelent job picking out the costumes this year (I am so proud of her) and now evenyone is sound asleep with LOTS of candy on the table for them to pick into all day tomarrow.

We did our pumpkins last night and it was one of the best times that we have had as a family doing pumpkins as well. I guess as time goes on you just learn the little tricks that make things easier and with things that you only do once a year it takes a while since you do not do them all the time to have all the trial and error. Anyway this year we decided that the designs would be simple. The kids got to paint thier pumpkins this weekend however they wanted to then Tuesday night we carved them then we watched Great Pumpkin Charile Brown. Micha did such an awesome job cleaning out her pumpkin almost all by herself. Logan was not all the intrested in doing it at all really, he wanted to be a part of it but realy did not want to touch any of it. Then there is Caden that was just really busy 'hamming' it up (as you can see in the picture, he did that all on his own) but he is being silly most of the time anymore. He really has taken on this really super comdeic personality.

At the end of the night we ended up with three beautifully simple jack o lanterns that the kids loved becasue they made them.

I am sorry that we do not sit down and post as much as we did at one time, it is not that there are not stories to tell, and things to share with those that we love from far away. I think that right now we are just enjoying our time as a family and then the day runs out but I would not ever trade that time at all. From time to time we will keep getting on here and posting new information and pictures and we will try to at least be better about getting the pictures up. I think that I am about due for a movie to come out as well staring the Fletcher children. I hope that you all had a great Halloween as well and we would love to hear about it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHA!!!!!

To start out I did not even realise that it had been since July 19th since I had last posted on the blog. I guess that I am turning into somewhat of Jessica as of late. It is just that summer was so busy and fall is on the horizon and it is is not looking like it is calming down all that much. Tonight however I did finally come back to the blog because I wanted to share some of what happened on Micha's Birthday and the things that are in days to come.

Our original plan was for Micha to have a sleepover for her birthday with her friends and Chris was going to take all the girls out to watch Brats the movie, but that fell through because her friends were not going to be in town so we were going to have a special family birthday this year. She got to pick the plans, she got to pick the dinner for the night, and she got to pick her cake.

For dinner at first she wanted corn, potatoes, peas and bread. Then I told her that she could have anything that she wanted and the included going out for dinner and all the sudden she wanted Outback. I am not sure why she wanted it but when asked she did know what and where it was. She told me, "It is that place that you and Grandma and I went once then another time we went with Grandma and Grandpa." (Her mind is soooo like a sponge) Yet as I picker her up that night she decided that she wanted Backyard Burgers. Again I was confused because we do not eat there all that often but it was her call this night so we ate there.

On the way home she told us that she wanted Apple Pie for her birthday and again it was her call on this so we were okay with that. The only disclaimer that I had was that she remember for her whole life that it was her choice to have apple pie because I do not want her to be 16 and see pictures of her 5th birthday and think that we would not get her a birthday cake, so I told her to remember this conversation.

After the dinner we came home for a very 'High School Musical' birthday, with a Troy and Gabrila doll set, a card that sang some High School Musical song, and Logan and Caden really, really, REALLY mad that they were not getting presents as well (more Logan than Caden but that was the best picture that I got of that time).

So for the rest of the very special family birthday we were supposed to go to Silver Dollar City tomorrow but it is supposed to rain all day so we changing plans right now but not totally sure where those plans are going to change to. I talked to Micha today and told her that we most likely would not be able to go to Silver Dollar City because of the rain and asked her what she wanted to do. She told me that she wanted to go to Tulsa, I am not sure for what but I think that we are going to Springfield for lunch at Incredible Pizza and I am not sure what else but we want to find another fun thing as well.

So that is the Fletcher this week and I am sorry it has been almost 2 months since I posted I will have to get better at this if I plan on keeping it up. I will make my New Years resolution to post at least once a week but that is like 3+ months away so I have 3+ months to get ready for it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!