Some sister love -- more like A LOT of sister love

For the first week of October break, my sister and her 9 month old Livy came to visit. I can't really recall what kept us so busy, but I seriously felt like I never sat down. So I guess the better question would be: what DIDN'T we do? Shower. Eat real food unless it was full of sugar or at a restaurant.

The poor diet started off when our fridge broke on Sunday. Monday was spent shopping for a new fridge instead of preparing for my sister to come, and the day she arrived we had both the old fridge fixed (for the garage) and the new fridge put it. Nothing to welcome you to your sister's like a ton of strangers, a mess in the kitchen and no food.

We did make it to Wal-Mart in an attempt to stock up on diapers and baby food for Livy, but unfortunately while we were there the 4 kids got a little distracted and we ended up getting stuck in a storm. Somehow we came home with these:
Ellie was so sad there weren't any matching jammies for her and insisted that she could fit in a size 5T. I made her go try them on and even then she promised me they were "so comfy." Now I'm making her wear them to bed every night of October.While Ellie's are a 5T, Sadie's are a 4T.

And there is no better way to start off a trip than by baking. We made peanut butter, chocolate chip bars which were so delicious that we ate over half the pan before I insisted Dustin take the rest to the church with him and hand out to whoever showed up for interviews (see -- it pays to visit the Bishop).

We also spent the night telling spooky stories with the lights off. My favorite was Nate's story, "Once upon a time, there was a spooky house. And in the yard there was. . .a tombstone. And. . . an R. . .I. . .P!"
Wednesday morning was spent shopping for food to fill our new fridge and feed my new family of 8. Fry's, Trader Joe's and Costco all in the same morning. My sister suddenly saw the appeal of food in bulk when she saw how fast our family can go through food. And Sadie and Luke barely eat. What will I do when everyone is a teenager?

We also celebrated Nate's birthday a little early since Lola wanted him to open up his AWESOME birthday presents from my Aunt and Uncle. When we were at the BYU bookstore this summer we told the kids they could all pick out 2 things. Nate was really stressed out because he couldn't choose. He got a few more things from his list.Luke seemed to want to take over all of Nate's presents. Either that or he was entertaining himself while we made dessert.

For his cake, Nate wanted brownies. Of course we had to do something fun, so we made them monster brownies.
Thursday morning we woke up and let the kids play for awhile. Luke and Livy were not big fans of each other at this point. Probably because Luke kept stealing whatever Livy was playing with.
Then I dropped Luke and Sadie off at Molly's, and Kathleen, Livy, Ellie & I met up with Karen and Chloe to do some shopping. We hit up Charming Charlie's, which is this cute new accessory store over at San Tan where everything is arranged by colors. Kathleen ended up with some really cute shirts on super sale and I got a hat and shoes. Then off for some more shopping where Karen and I took the fashion plunge and bought. . . skinny jeans.

After the mall Kathleen and I hit TJ Maxx because we just weren't sick of spending money yet. Kathleen got some really cute slub cardigans and I found the BEST thing ever. Well, Kathleen found it and I bought it.

When we were at Charming Charlie's, Ellie fell in love with this gray hat that she desperately wanted me to buy for her. It was $14 or something, so I told her maybe for Christmas, and I planned on going back to get it. The entire day she reminded me of what it looked like. So while we were at TJ Maxx, Kathleen picks up this hat and says, "You should buy Ellie this hat. It sounds just like the only hat, but it's cheaper." Well folks -- it was. . . the EXACT.SAME.HAT! For $6.99. So I scooped it up for Christmas.

Kathleen was really sweet and baby sat for us that night, so we went to Coup Des Tartes. YUM. Thanks sister for watching 5 kids. And not killing Sadie when she threw sand in Livy's eyes.Luckily she had the help of one awesome niece.

Friday we hit playgroup and then had to run out to buy some supplies for our super fun GNO. We thought it would be fun to do all sorts of things you did when you were a tween at slumber parties and I invited the few girlfriends left n town who actually know my sister (so please don't be offended that you weren't invited -- it will be repeated!)

First we went out for dinner at Pita Jungle. This is where Meredith, who had just been made over by Ellie, Lindsay and Caroline, totally offended our waiter by telling him he looked like Mose, Dwight's cousin on The Office.Lucky for us he had never really seen the show, but I'm pretty sure he spat in our food. It still tasted good.

Then back to my house for dessert, which Meredith so kindly made for us. It's cheesecake on top of a brownie with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and strawberries. Casey could stand to eat a few more of those.

This was followed by collages, which sound so juvenille (and they are), but holy cow we laughed so hard and had so much fun making them for each other.Plus we really know a LOT about each other now. This activity was followed by some low key mischief that involved me climbing over a fence and almost falling off of Karen's garbage can. People should not leave town the weekend of a slumber party.

When we got home we did some quick makeovers and then I sent everyone home, because honestly, it's not that fun to actually sleep at someone else's house when your comfy bed is so nearby.

You'd think by Saturday we'd be worn out from shopping, but we weren't. We hit up Anthroplogie for some birthday shopping, and then ran over to meet some of my girlfriends at another boutique. Then we hit a birthday party, the park and settled in for the night with frozen yogurt -- yes, I made my sister go off of dairy while she was here and she is so grateful to me for it.

Saturday was also the day we realized that Livy can get into a sitting position by herself. Too bad she would only do it at nap time and then cry because she couldn't get herself laying down again.

Sunday we entertained ourselves while Dustin was gone by baking more sweets (chocolate cookies with vanilla cream oreo ball centers) at the exact same time as the kids attempted to make a Halloween Gingerbread House (thank you Grandma Rogers!). This meant that there was flour and frosting everywhere and we pretty much used every bowl and measuring cup in the house. Oh, and I let the kids do this while wearing their church clothes. I am seriously delusional at time.At least the kids had fun -- and really, can you ever get tired of scary faces? Nate and Sadie mainly sampled, while Ellie did the work. I pretended to ignore the mess, but I was having a mental break down the entire time.

After I spent an hour cleaning the kitchen, I sat down and whizzed through a parenting book to help me regain my confidence. I'm pretty much a parenting expert now since I managed to speed-read that thing in just a few hours. Call me if you need anything!

We also got out the make up for another round of make overs. Lucky kids!
Livy decided she was far too busy to sleep by Monday morning, so I took her out around 5:30 to go for a morning run. My plan was to run 6 miles and have her sleep the entire time. By mile 4 she was still awake, so I thought I'd add an extra mile or two before we turned around to see if she would ever go to sleep. Instead she jabbered to me, so we eventually turned around and headed home. Right as we turned onto Pecos from the canal we saw a coyote. EEK! Luckily he was running across the street. I was pretty panicked, but Livy must not have noticed because she chose this mile to finally fall asleep. I think we were about a mile and a half from home by this point and going on mile 7.

We also attempted to mail 5 enormous boxes of baby clothes, baby bedding, winter clothes and Christmas presents on Monday. We loaded the back of the car up with all the boxes, 2 strollers, and got all 5 kids buckled in the car. Then we got to the post office and got Luke and Livy in the strollers, the kids carrying boxes and guess what. . . it was Columbus Day. So we loaded everything back up and went to the UPS store. Take that US Postal Service for taking off some made up holiday.

By now, we hadn't gone shopping in an entire 24 hours, so we were going through withdrawals and headed to another mall so Kathleen could take the kids to Build-A-Bear.Aunt Lola is so much more fun than Mom. Those bears even have underwear and accessories.

And of course while we were there we had to hit the GAP 40% off of everything sale. I pretty much wrapped up all of Ellie's Christmas list, but that place was CRAZY!

Kathleen and Livy got to watch Ellie's tennis lessons that night and then we rewarded ourselves for all our hard work by getting frozen yogurt again. Seriously -- shopping with 5 kids is hard work.

Tuesday was a sad day because it was time to say good bye. We started off the morning having co-op at our house with a total of 12 kids running around. Luckily the house was so trashed by this point that when they all left the house was actually CLEANER than when they came. Plus, the kids had so much fun with all of their friends.

By Tuesday Luke was officially obsessed with Livy
He wanted to hold her anytime he saw her and gave her lots of hugs and kisses. She was also finally warming up to us and let me hold her WHILE HER MOM WAS IN THE SAME ROOM.
We managed to squeeze in a few more games, like Guess Who, Crocodile Dentist and Charades. Some of my favorites:

Sandwich

A Ute

But then it was time to take her to the airport and this is how we all felt:

We miss you already! Come back soon!

And now you can see why I was so exhausted it took me a week to blog this.