OtterPops: Go Big or Go Home

I decided that "Go Big or Go Home" was our theme for April for a few reasons...to kick off the month we hosted the majority of the Otterstrom clan in our home for their Spring break and Easter. Kristina, Cam and their 2 kids were staying at Greg and Maren's but would join us for dinner and down time at our house. And, we were hosting the other 12 family members at our house (in addition to our own family of six). One night we even had Jared's Uncle who was visiting the area for Spring break come over for dinner with his family of 6 so we had 31 people here for dinner. Fun times! We had kids sleeping in every possible nook and cranny. Each family had a bedroom as their home base but it was pretty hilarious. We were using every spare blanket, pillow and sleeping bag.

All the kids were in cousin heaven. After having a relaxing Easter Weekend and participating in Claire's baby blessing with Greg and Maren we went on all sorts of local adventures with the family. We joined whoever was doing close and inexpensive activities and were able to spend time with pretty much everyone at some point or another! We went hiking in the redwoods one day followed by an impromptu trip to the beach (we weren't planning on it because it was raining when we left, but then brightened up) wherein all the kids stripped down to their underwear to get wet and play in the sand. They were pretty miserable on the way home but had fun while it lasted.

Grandpa and kids at dinner after Claire's baby blessing

The whole crew before our redwoods walk

Cait 4 kids in redwoods

Cousins in the redwoods

Rest of the crew taking it easy at the beach

Girl cousins at the beach

Jonas and Milo at the beach in (what used to be) their tighty whities

Picnic Lunch

We went to San Francisco (jared even joined us for that halfway through the day, but otherwise had to work most of the week) and the Children's discovery museum, swimming at the Rec Center while the other half of the crew went deep sea fishing. The deep sea fishers obtained a salmon that we grilled up one night for dinner-the obtaining part was a little sketchy since nobody in our group caught a fish but anyhow...! Some families went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, six flags marine world and the Egyptian museum. Overall I think everyone was able to go and do most of what they wanted to do.

Little family at Ghirardelli square for ice cream sundaes

Sister in laws (minus Maren and Kristina) at Pier 39

Visiting the Sea Lions

Taking a tour of the retired war ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien

Cousins at Golden Gate Bridge

Cait 4 kids Golden Gate Bridge

While visiting the golden gate bridge Jonas was looking at it for a while, pondering then turned to my MIL and told her "there is nothing golden about that!" He was thoroughly confused and disappointed on why it had such a misleading name. We were shopping at Target the following week and saw an iconic picture of the golden gate bridge so he turned to me and told me "look mom, there is the red gate bridge." He was having none of it!! Jonas loved helping baby Beckett feel welcome when he arrived early with the grandparents and didn't have his parents and older siblings here. In fact, one feeding Beckett only wanted to take the bottle from Jonas-not grandma! And, Jonas was thrilled to be one of the three musketeers again. Running around with Max and Milo was awesome!

Feeding Beckett

Superheroes to the rescue

Jonas Max and Milo on our redwood "hike"

Poor Emma was feverish, fighting a cold, and generally clingy the whole week. But, we were hosting everyone so I couldn't just cancel everything to sit down and hold her. I dragged her around on all of the adventures. By Thursday night I was up with her most of the night so I obtained a Doctor appt. for her the next morning to find out she had been fighting a double ear infection AND bronchitis. Poor baby! The second reason for our monthly theme. She couldn't have just had a cold. I totally won the mother of the year award for dragging her all over Northern CA for the previous 4 days :(. All told, I realized she had been a good sport all week. She had to follow that up with a week of nebulizer treatments and some hardcore antibiotics. She finally got the hang of doing the breathing treaments herself but it was a fight to the finish the first couple days.

Emma using the nebulizer

Hanging out Easter afternoon

Jared Diana and 4 kids waiting for Claire's Baby blessing

Finnley and Emma at discovery museum

Cousins at Discovery Museum

The third reason for the April theme "Go Big or Go Home" was the fact that the Saturday after everyone had left our house, Jared and I went to the temple early and came back to find lice in Jocelyn's hair. I had received the lice exposure notice from her class (which I knew to be her good little friend) the month before and we had been on the lookout. The girls were using Lice Shield shampoo, I had been braiding their hair back every day, extra hairspray and days between washing. ALL the things you can do. One day when Jocelyn scratched her head I checked her then had her go to the school nurse at recess to double check she was in the clear before company came. But apparently not preventative enough for those little buggars.

You can imagine the extent of my horror when we went on to find at least nits in my hair and Lillian's as well. Then I started to think about all the company we had hosted over Easter, all the carpools, classmates and friends we had been around for the previous two weeks. The damage was not pretty. I texted everyone that had been in our home or who had us in their home and luckily all of our friends were spared, but not the family. Jared's sister's family got the brunt of it. I felt like the worst host ever-Come visit us for the ~~lice~~ I mean NICE weather! LOL! We spent the next couple days in full lice removal mode. Jared was an amazing help taking multiple trips to the store, the laundromat, renting a wet vac, full cleaning of the car and every fabric item in the house being washed while I was folding laundry, spraying everything down, bagging all of the stuffed animals, lice treatment shampoo on everyone, olive oil all over the girls hair with a shower cap for the night, combing, combing and more combing.

After the company and running the laundry non-stop for the lice removal our PG&E bill was sky high. It wasn't enough that we had already had to drop several hundred on the laundromat, lice shampoo, combs, pillows, renting a rug doctor, etc. I had to be grateful for the fact that I am not working outside the home so my sole purpose in life could be ridding our home and its occupants of lice for a couple weeks. We did not go to church, my angel friends brought meals and groceries and a few of them (who had dealt with lice before) even came and combed/checked my hair for me for repeatedly to rid me of the nits. The end verdict seemed that the boys got off scot-free (but I buzzed Jonas's hair anyway), Emma had a couple nits, Lillian and I had some damage and Jocelyn was the main culprit. Yuck and uggh at the same time. Such a chore to run everyone's bedding and towels through the dryer every morning for the next month and boil all combs, clips and elastics we used EVERY single time. And, of course, in one of the super duper loads at the laundromat (despite me checking through backpacks and Jared double checking as he loaded them in) a green crayon got the better of all of the kids backpacks, dress-ups and a coat or two in the dryer. They were all things we normally would hang dry anyhow but to kill the lice you have to run them at high heat for 20 minutes. So much for the cute embroidered backpacks that we went through all of the effort to obtain in the first place!! And so much for the beautiful white snow princess dress up that the girls and their friends all love. They are now green-speckled. I realize there are ways to remove crayon but that is a luxury chore at this point, not a necessity!!

I tried to make the most of the fact that we were going to be home bound for the next week or so with all the kids home from school so we scheduled an oil change and all the tires to be changed on the Tahoe as well as attempting to potty train Emma. Both of those things went rather smooth but the kids definitely lost a million brain cells each getting screen time as a bribe to sit still while I literally nit-picked their hair and tried to contain them while my lovely neighbor came to nit-pick my hair. Combing through everything with a fine-tooth comb is an understatement. I read up online about everything that we should and shouldn't be doing, I talked to friends who had been through this before, including one friend who had hired a professional, and tried to apply everything we learned from those sources. When the kids finally went back to school (I had been picking up work from their teachers) and back to regular routines we still had a lockdown on playdates and carpools AND I was trying to fit in hair combings between piano practice, chores and homework. The kids definitely had to go through a detox the next week with screen time. I only let up one afternoon when I needed to nap for an hour and let them all watch a movie. I will be happy if I never see lice again in my life, but I know we are bound to with three girls...

And speaking of bugs, we had seen some evidence of termites in the master bedroom so Jared called in three different companies to come survey the damage and give us recommendations and quotes for removal. It turns out we probably need to tent the house for termites so we have that scheduled for this coming weekend. Which is super inconvenient with school ending the next week and several commitments we had already made, but if you wanted to take advantage of the memorial day sale it had to happen before the end of May. The things we do to save a couple hundred dollars!!