Missing: Pooh ***Found***

One of our bed time buddies - Winnie the Pooh - has gone missing. Last seen, in our rental car on Saturday, December 20th.

If you know where he may be, please let us know!

He was found today! Not sure how he managed to hide under the bed during fervent searches. Nevertheless, we have a happy guy though Pooh's companionship has not been as necessary in the past few months.

So I did write a Christmas Letter (de-personalized for posting)

Luke 2:10-11 "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

2008 Family News…

It's time to celebrate! We celebrate the birth of Jesus and fulfillment of God's promises of a Savior and celebrate our year's accomplishments. We have much in our family to celebrate and be thankful for this season. I know that there will be those reading this who are looking back on their year and not liking what they see. Our hope for you specifically is that 2009 will be a year filled with hope and love!

Before we jump into our year…here's a quick review of the last few years:

·        January 2006 – We were a happy family living in Kansas City. Hubby was a stay at home dad and part-time student.  Mommy was a product manager at Cerner.

·        July 2006 – Mommy resigns from her job; we sell the house; and move to Iowa City. Hubby begins working at CramerIT.  Mommy ends up staying at Cerner working 2 days/week from home.

·        May 2007 – We move to Rolla, Missouri. Hubby enrolls in University of Missouri – Rolla.  Mommy continues to work 2 days a week and soon after begins to home school the boys.

·        December 2008 –

Hubby has graduated with a Civil Engineering degree from Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly University of Missouri – Rolla)! We are waiting and trusting that God has a great job waiting, hopefully here in the Rolla area, for him soon. With his limited spare time lately, he enjoyed playing volleyball and doing jobs around the house.

Mommy is finally only a stay-at-home home school mom! She said good-bye to Cerner, again, in October after 15 years with great memories of a fruitful career. She is now focusing on her husband and boys and serving those around here where she can. Running in the mornings is her favorite "me" time activity. She also is enjoying baking and cooking more "from scratch".

Our number one son is now seven and has holes in his smile! He continues to love reading and spends hours doing that most days. When he's not reading, he's involved in Cub Scouts, AWANA, Home School PE, Soccer, T-ball, Odyssey of the Mind and taking Mandarin lessons. When we find time, we do get some school in where he likes history and hates writing anything. (After proofing the letter, he says he no longer hates writing.)

The second "prodogy" managed to make it to his fifth birthday this summer full of song and smiles. He loves his math book and is quickly closing in on his brother. Second to his math book, he loves to play with friends at the park! He gets to do all of the activities as his brother mostly participating and sometimes watching. He did get to do his own soccer and T-ball this year.

As a family, we are involved with a house church, Church Without Walls. We have made great friends who want to serve the Lord and others with their lives. As a church without a building or staff, everyone pulls together to make a service happen on Sunday and other service projects through the week.  Our house is a common meeting place and we enjoy being hospitable even though boys don't like having to clean all of the time!

May you have a very Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year!

and then there was one

Last September on this date I wrote a post about four people connected to me who were battling against cancer. In these last 15 months, three of them have went to be with the Lord. The fourth person unfortunately is in the hospital as I write this.

Cancer sucks. I hate that it takes away people from this earth too soon with such a physical assault on the body. Brittney was so young barely able to live any type of adult life, Gary wasn't able to see his first grandchild and Stef has left three young children with his wife to mourn him every Christmas. For each of these people, I was not close enough to be on the day to day details and progress of the disease. With Lisa, I have the privilege of being one of the many people to help serve her family. This Christmas will be really rough for them as well and who knows how many more will bring back these memories.

Our hope is in the Lord. I am comforted in knowing that all of these people did profess that Jesus was their savior and I will meet them in heaven one day! We can celebrate Christmas because He is the reason for the season! Jesus came to earth to be our savior for those who believe in him.

The end is here!

Yippee! The semester is concluding tomorrow and my husband will be finished with his degree. Congratulations to my budding civil engineer! I'm very proud of you in how hard you have worked on your studies as well as how hard you have worked to balance family time into the mix.

Your family has very much enjoyed the adventure that you have taken them on for the last year and a half. We are looking forward to where you take us next and also being very patient as you try and figure that out.

No, there isn't a great job offer waiting on the table. I appreciate that you spent time with us and serving your church family and finding the perfect job didn't fit into all of that. You made very wise choices for us a decade ago that puts us in a place where we don't need to stress about how the bills will be paid right now.

I'm so very proud of you! You went out on a limb and pursued something that you weren't able to accomplish 15 years ago. You are now here with a full-fledged engineering degree and on your way to being a professional engineer! Think of all of those experiences that you have under your belt now to take into your next career! We're with you all the way.

To write a Christmas Letter or not to write one

It's that time of the year for Christmas cards! I really like to receive them and enjoy reading the letters that people write about their year. I'm not a snob about the impersonality of these at all, I can't imagine writing or pretending to write a personal letter to everyone. It's fun to revisit the highlights of the year and figure out how to creatively put it together in print.

Last year we didn't send out Christmas cards. I did write a letter but it never made it beyond some e-mail forwards. (Maybe to a grandparent if they were lucky.) This year, I want to send out cards with a letter, but I feel like we have so much unknown in our lives that maybe I should wait before sending news to all of our friends and relatives.

Any thoughts? Do you want a review of our last 12 or 24 months with a paragraph about where we don't know we are going or should I just wait until we know more about where we may be living past January?

My son's lovely creation...

Many of my friends blog about the beautiful food that they create and I love to read those posts. This is not beautiful food in my opinion, but wanted to share my son's creation for breakfast no less from a few days ago...

Let me dissect this for you. It's the bottom half of a whole wheat hot dog bun (made by mom). On top is left-over cold cheese ravioli, Parmesan cheese and dill pickle relish.

The good thing about his creations is that he actually does eat them!

This creation was reproduced the following day for lunch with an additional ingredient - cold pinto beans! Yummy...aren't we all ready for this guy to be a chef? The boy can spot an onion a mile away and won't touch it, but he'll eat this!

Child number 1 had a sensible breakfast of cereal and toast.

Blessings in a storm

Our new neighbors are now moved in next door! What a blessing to have four kids move in and not four big dogs! We are beyond the storm of the previous neighbor, and we have been allowed to see a blessing that has come from it based on a conversation between dad and second son. Dad was reading Ecclesiastes one recent morning and discussion ensued with the inclusion of the the song lyric "I don't want to gain the whole world, but lose my soul" (Toby Mac).

Like a good dad, they had a discussion about what the song lyric meant to gain the whole world. Dad asked son if he thought that it would be cool to have everything he wanted. The surprising answer was, "No." Follow-up question was about dad getting a great job where he could buy him anything he wanted and would he like that. Again the answer was, "No." Dads response was, "Why not?" Little guy says because of "Mike".

Mike is the guy who lived next door that had all of the toys and dogs...but he ended up losing his toys and his home and pretty much everything. We were so thankful that we able to make it through the situation without our children hurt, but had no idea that such a huge lesson would be learned by such a little guy. That lesson was not something that could be taught nearly as easily by words or a brief glimpse into someone else's life!

Thanks God for showing us this blessing as a result of a storm!

Fall Homeschooling Fun

How many earthworms can a robin eat in one day? We learned, approximately 14 feet worth. How tall are all of the boys put together? 14 feet 1 inch.













What to do with those jack-o-lanterns once November hits? Smashing Pumpkins!














Isn't he cute learning Spanish?






Finally, Tricorn Hats!

When did I not become the "typical" American?

My weekend realization was that we not a typical middle class American family. Until now, I kind of considered our family a pretty typical middle class family like most people consider themselves an above average driver. I now understand that we are atypical.

What makes us NOT typical Americans:

- We go to church almost every Sunday.
- We home school.
- We have no debt.
- We only own one motorized vehicle.
- Most meals are eaten at home and prepared here.
- We compost.
- We are ready to get rid of cable because we don't watch it!

I think there are lots of typical things about our family that still put us in middle class American and not an aberration of society. Like most people, I don't know that we are doing anything that would be considered outside of the "normal" or acceptable range of American life -- just a combination of all of these things does not make us typical anymore. The items on the list are a progression over the years and about half of these have sprouted or changed within the last two years. The list may continue to get longer as I look at the grain mill and whole wheat berries that are a new addition to our household as of yesterday!

So, what does this realization mean? I'm having a hard time putting those words together. But I do believe there is some significance. Mostly I think it means that I have probably projected my thoughts and perceptions on other people's situations too much in the past. Therefore, I need to listen more to other people and understand them for who they are and what motivates them!

You may be wondering what provoked this thought or then again, you may have become bored and not made it this far! Two different influences this weekend helped to provide perspective. One was a TLC show (for that 20 minutes that the TV was on this weekend) about a family with 17 kids and the other was watching Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled". The TLC show wasn't anything fantastic but I realized that I could relate to that family much better than to the shows that I have seen advertised on the major networks. (I have to say that I haven't watched any of the major network shows either, but the advertising of them didn't compel me to turn it on.) "Expelled" was extremely thought provoking. I really feel like my head has been buried in the sand about how American science has shaped our society. Now what I do about that now that I understand, I don't know yet.

Good lookin' cousins

The cousins where all a part of another cousin's wedding this weekend! This was the first time the boys have ever been this dressed up. Son #1 is now wanting to learn to tie his tie!

Contentment

I'm learning a lot about contentment right now and my boys are very much helping me in the process. It's time for me to be a stay at home mom and not pursue a career. The Apostle Paul says, "I have learned to be content in all circumstances..." I'm trying to have that decree as well.

As I'm learning to the content, a new word has entered our house "boring". For some reason this addition to the vocabulary has bothered me a great amount and is something that I don't really care to hear at all. I believe that you can be bored in any situation if you want to be bored. I realize that there are times when events are not exciting or don't do it for you. But, life is what you make it and you can learn to enjoy about anything if you put your mind to it. Oh, you can enjoy it AND be properly behaved! I don't know that I have equipped my children to verbalize and discuss better those times when they are "bored" but we'll work on that.

It's always good to bring a book too!

The new career has started

I survived my first week of being a full-time stay at home mom! It was a very busy week with lots of different people coming and going and keeping me on my toes with schedules...I don't know when I would have had time to work.

Lots of fun transition stuff on my plate this week - reducing our Internet speed, finding a cell phone for me, finding purple ties for the wedding this weekend and buying black shoes for the boys (for the wedding).

Church was really good yesterday! A couple who spent 7-8 months in Mozambique talked about their missionary experiences and the truly amazing miracles that they saw while they where there. Sixty-five people in our garage heard about it and what they expect to do when they return in a few months for the long hall! After three loads through the dishwasher the house is looking pretty much normal and clean at this point.

Three more working days and counting

One of those major things in life is happening that I have not written about it in the virtual world about yet because electronic messages can sometimes get in the wrong hands at the wrong time. As far as I know, all of my i's are dotted and my t's are crossed and it's time to tell the world! Our family has decided that the best situation right now is for me to be a Stay At Home Mom and not a "Mostly Stay At Home Mom". My official last day after 15 years is October 9th.

In my head there is a long blog post coming about what I will miss and what I won't miss. God is showing me how those needs that fall under the "will miss" part will be fulfilled in other means that don't include a publicly traded software company in the health care sector. It's really great to be leaving on good terms and not on a sour note at all. I've taken two years to transition from full-time to SAHM and the time is coming near. Next Thursday after our yearly Town Hall, my network access will be gone, my cell phone won't work anymore and my identify will not be as an associate.

Off to fulfill those other duties that will be coming on strong - Den leader for a Cub Scout Pack!

Ike in Missouri

The remnants of Ike ventured through Missouri Sunday morning! I was able to take full appreciation of what was left of the storm with wind and rain because I was running in the Lewis and Clark Half Marathon! Yes, while Ike was rumbling though the St. Louis area a bunch of crazy people including me and my friend Nikki were out running in it! For those of you who have been to races before, this was way different. Because of the storm is was darker than normal at 6am when we arrived to be dropped off. (Todd was a little apprehensive about us getting out of the car, but he wished us well and hung around for awhile in the car just to make sure.)

You can't put up banners and those nice balloon arches in 20 mph winds and driving rain and expect them to stay. The normal sound systems that would be used to communicate to 5,000 people don't quite work in those weather conditions either. Everything was very unassuming all around us with most people wearing trash bags. We honestly had no idea where the starting line actually was until we were there, we were a herd of people lining up (there were pace signs so we knew that we were somewhat in the right place.). There wasn't even a clock at the starting line that we could see. You will often see people wearing trash bags before a race to keep them warm to be discarded at the starting line. In this race, most people kept them on. I had a rain coat and a hat so I didn't do the trash bag thing but was still easily soaked through after a couple of minutes outside.

The first mile was pretty much into the wind and rain and running by cars with people who hadn't made it the starting line yet. I mostly remember feeling it pounding on my lips and some wind gusts that felt like I wasn't moving forward. When we were running with the rain it was quite bearable especially after being soaked completely already. The temperature was about 70 which wasn't bad because we were moving. We changed directions quite a few times through the course and so we were with and against the rain off and on and exposed and sheltered from it. It was very much about putting one foot in front of the other. The people manning the aid stations were wonderful mostly because of their cheers! I didn't know the course well enough to know that we were cutting off three miles because that loop was getting flooded by the greater amount of rain fall than we expected (about 5 inches in a couple of hours). They cut everyone (marathoners and 1/2 marathoners) off at 10 miles because of flooding and other deteriorating conditions.

It was kind of disappointing to not do a complete race, but because of the conditions, we have more of a story than a running race on a nice late summer day! The race was scheduled to start at 6:45. We started late and we finished after running about an hour and a half. By the time that we showered, there were sunny skies and it was a very pleasant day and Ike had moved on to visit my family in Ohio! So, we didn't have a full fledged hurricane force storm, but we did have a named storm here in the middle of the country during a memorable moment! I'm sorry that my cousins weren't here to experience it all with me! Hopefully our next race will be much better weather or another experience to share!

Some pictures of me are here. http://www.backprint.com/go.asp?38298957

Some great u-tube coverage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63jy8ihP0xc showing the conditions when we were getting out of the car!

Yet another...why we homeschool

We started home schooling a little over a year ago. It was not in the master plan at all, but it ended up being the right decision for us at the time. The year was good so we have decided to go for it again this year.

There was really one reasons that we chose this route over public or private school - his reading level was slightly above anything that the classrooms were ready to deal with and we didn't want him to learn to be complacent in his learning.

After making this decision, there have been more and more reasons as to why this continues to be a good decision for us right now. I was forwarded this article that I found interesting. http://www.newsweek.com/id/157898/page/1 "The parents of nearly one of every five boys in the United States were concerned enough about what they saw as their sons' emotional or behavioral problems that they consulted a doctor or a health-care professional."

Since we have not been in the school system, I cannot comment on how we would deal with the situation. I do think that I agree with the author that the kids need time to play. We get together with other families frequently and our boys still love to play together. It's really wonderful to see 7 boys out running around in a yard with some made-up game that they are playing!

On a day to day basis, we definitely have more play time at our house than school time. I honestly cannot imagine that we could do the number of things that we do if school was an all day thing. I applaud our neighbors that do send their children to school for limiting the number of activities that their children can be involved in so they can have more unstructured and family time.

A Lovely 15 years

Not marriage yet, but years with my current employer! It was a month ago that I passed this milestone and at Cerner the longevity is reason for celebration. About the time of my anniversary I received an e-mail that asked if I wanted a surprise or if I wanted the details. Being that I like surprises, I passed along my husband's contact information.

He set Friday night at "the night" for the big event. I knew a little, but was excited about what the evening was to hold. My little guy runs in the house as I was getting ready and said your "Stop" was here. I still don't know what he meant, but this was waiting for me...

As I finished getting ready, the neighborhood kids were taken for a spin but then it was our turn. Next we to a friend's place. Before heading one we went into their house where I was presented with gifts from Cerner that my husband chose. My first gift was a new suitcase. I was in need a of a new one of those because the ball bearings on my current one are shot and the wheels are really loud!


My next gift was a major splurge! An Automatic Composter! Yes, we are gadget people and this is a green gadget!


We then went to Sybil's for dinner and had a lovely evening - a nice bottle of wine, spinach artichoke dip, gnocchi and peanut butter pie. There was enough time left on the limo that he even took the babysitter home in style.

I am very appreciative of my 15 years at Cerner. It's been a great career and afforded me experiences that I could not have imagined. It was a very nice evening to celebrate my anniversary!

Mmmm Apples

We were invited on Friday to pick apples with our dairy farmer!

I said that I wanted a lot of them and I came home with a bunch after picking for a little more than an hour.

Last night we washed about half of them. We quartered apples until we had filled our largest four pots that we own (large pressure cooker, small pressure cooker, spaghetti cooker/stock pot, and a regular dutch oven). After cooking them down, we ended up with about 3 gallons of applesauce. It's in the frig this morning waiting to be canned for enjoyment for the next year.

Our three gallons of applesauce is about 1/3 of the apples that we picked!

This morning will be canning the apple sauce and making fillings for apple pies. It will be an apply fall for us!

Happy Birthday little guy

So, now that you are 5 years old, what do you want to be when you grow up?

"A fireman, or maybe a police man. I may want to be a computer guy like Mr. McClanahan used to be [notice not like mom or dad!]. Though most of all I want to be a dad!"

You are a great guy and we love you very much!

Your older brother piped in that maybe he would like to be a recycle guy if it wasn't too stinky!

How often does your smoke detector go off?

After a funny event this week, too many times would be the answer in my house.

My husbands alarm went off on his phone. It's not a sound that we are familiar with hearing and my husband didn't happen to be around his phone at the time. The boys and I start looking around.

I was trying to figure out what the sound was and I turn around and see my darling younger son looking around for something. It's an alarm sound but not terribly loud. I watch him procure a pot holder and begin waving it under the kitchen smoke detector. It was very cute to see this little four year old waving a pot holder not anywhere close enough to the smoke detector to make a difference...and to boot it wasn't the smoke detector that was making the noise!

Obviously from seeing his reaction to the noise by attempting to clear out the smoke detector, he's seen the drill enough times that it was his first reaction!

My brain is overwhelmed

It is so beautiful! I don't have enough words to explain. Yesterday I took to the rails and road from Anchorage to Seward. The railway meanders slowly through the mountains and by glaciers to be able to drink in the view!

On the way, I decided to take a boat trip in Seward to view wild life and calving glaciers. I met another female traveling along and we had good conversation and were able to enjoy the trip together!

The train ride back was just as beautiful. The skies had cleared and we were able to see some moose closer!

I know that I could not capture the beauty that God gave to us...but here are a few pics!

On the way to Seward it was very cloudy and the tops of the mountains were not always visible.

We saw seals in a couple of different places. I did see four humpback whales including one beautiful tail in the air. I enjoyed the moment for what it was instead of attempting to take pictures.

Alaska Arrival

I need to go to bed, but thought I would add a blurb beforen the sun goes down, whenever that may be...

This afternoon I arrived safely in Anchorage, Alaska, making this the 46th state that I have visited in my lifetime. The trip was smooth sailing, but it was very apparent to me that the life of a road warrior is not where I need to be right now. I reminised about my days on the road and all of the great places that I have been blessed to go and experience. My realization though that this is the phase of my life where I am very fortunate and happy to focus much more on my family than a career.

Alaska has been very nice so far. I had a great dinner of seared fresh Ahi tuna at a place called Ginger. I walked along a wonderful trail in 60 degree temps (close to 100 at home today). Tomorrow I'm off on a train ride to Seward and everyone tells me that it's beautiful.

Obama's visit to Rolla

Barak Obama made a visit to Rolla today in a tour of a few rural Missouri cities to try and change some red counties to blue. We went to see the show and what all may or may not be going on around the visit.

The newspaper is reporting that a presidential candidate has never made a stop in Rolla before so this is a big opportunity for us. Yesterday people stood in line for hours in the 90+ degree heat to get tickets for the town hall. I wasn't quite up for that yesterday. I was interested but the boys wouldn't be...Instead of watching the speech the boys and I (and our babysitter too) went down to the area of town where he would be speaking to see what we could see.

The anti-abortion picketers were out - that was the first thing that we noticed and the fact that we would get really close and find a parking spot very easily. Believe it or not, we seemed to know most of the people holding signs. (Yes, it is a small town.) I was really surprised at the extreme lack of people hanging around though! We were there 30 minutes before he was scheduled to arrive and there were only a few people milling about on the streets. We weren't being shooed away either.

We didn't see Obama...his buses pulled to a back entrance of the building and he was whisked into the building. Of the 6 other people around us trying to catch a glimpse, one said that they saw him put on a jacket and was girded by police officers walking in a door 10 feet from the bus. No waving or greeting people...but really there weren't very many people to greet! We saw a ton of press though!

There were about 8 different stands selling different Barack Obama stuff - t-shirts, buttons, bears - near the public entrance. Everyone was getting checked by a metal detector that had a ticket before they could enter. One poor lady had a ticket and portable oxygen and they wouldn't let her in because you weren't allowed to bring in a bag!

We listened to his stump speech on the radio. He said it was a town hall, but he talked for an hour and then took questions for 15 minutes. Seems a lot like a corporate meeting than a town hall:) Unfortunately the visit wasn't as big of a deal for the town that I thought it would be. I was hoping that there would be some more hype and more fanfare. Instead it was three big buses and about 9 other vehicles pulling into town. He was prepped well because he at least pronounced the name of the town correctly. Clarie McCaskill has been by his side a bunch so I'm sure her aides were there to help with that!

We did look at a TV van for a few minutes - I guess that I could count that as a field trip for school! Unfortunately the engineers weren't interested in talking about anything that we were seeing though they didn't seem to mind us watching. We did see a clip of Obama getting on the bus at the last stop and talking about John McCain (based on a question).

That's my view of our presidential hopeful visit. No hand shaking or waves or anything...just a big black plain bus that was watching CNN on a huge flat screen as they came into town. The end result for me was not what he was after - he didn't secure my vote in November.

Grandma's Angels

Here was one fun toy from Christmas in July...

Yes, my parents did in fact purchase cap guns for all of their grandchildren!

Chinese Lesson today

Today's Chinese lesson is all about naming relative's titles. So, if you happen to see my boys this weekend, you'll have to ask them your relation to them in Chinese...It may help to figure it out in English first :)

Such a busy month

I've been thinking about blogging all month, but haven't taken the time to sit down and do it. No great wisdom and deep thought.

Last week was a great week though very very busy! I had a chance to help in the kitchen at Camp David of the Ozarks for three days. This camp is for boys and girls who have a parent in prison. It's the 5th year for this camp but the first time that I have had a chance to volunteer. My hubby has done some construction work there so I was familiar with the location - about 8 miles outside of town.

It was wonderful that my boys got to go along as well. They have "Green Team" staff that volunteer to take care of children of those volunteering. So, I volunteered and my boys got some camp experience as well. Boy were they tuckered out! They got to do camp things though not at the same time as the campers. The family who runs the place have a son who is in-between my boys and so they had a great time together! (He has a bunch of sisters so he doesn't feel like he gets too much boy playing time!) On Tuesday, even though they played all day (we got up at 6am to get there), they wanted to go fishing after dinner. I was happy to do my regular job on Wednesday and not do long hours again, but am very admirable of those who did cook 5 days in a row and did all of the planning!

What I learned from the week is that I worry about small stuff too much. These kids have gone through way too much for not even being a teenager yet! I get on my boys because I want them to use the hose in the grass and not on the driveway. Talking with one of the boys gave me a greater perspective this week which I really needed.

Tofu trial number 2

About 6 years after my first attempt at tofu, I got the courage to try again tonight.

A little background on try number 1 - I think it's the only meal that I have every prepared in our 9 years of marriage that my husband would not eat. So I've been a little gun shy about trying again. Honestly I've not been that huge of a fan of the stuff but I know that it's good for us (me especially for the protein). P.F. Chang's makes an awesome vegetarian lettuce wrap with little tofu cubes that both of us really like so I knew that it can taste good.

Today I tried again and all four of us ate it with stir-fry. My wonderful husband's response was that it was astonishingly better than the last time that I tried. He preferred to have it in the stir-fry as compared to sans any protein source but not as much as he would like chicken. It was definitely a complement since he rarely gets any other form of protein in his stir-fry beyond shrimp.

What did I do? I got extra firm tofu. I drained the liquid and then squeezed out more moisture between two towels with a plate and heavy canned veggies on top. I made it into small cubes (about 1cm cubes - the size of a Miquon 1 block) and fried them in peanut oil and soy sauce. I'll do it again sometime.

Popsicle ingredients

I'm not sure if I've gone too far or not...

I was walking towards our neighbor's house today to talk with them and my youngest lovely boy came running towards me with a Popsicle in his hands. It's 11 o'clock in the morning and not really a time that I would want him to eat such a thing but other kids were eating them and I didn't want to be that mean of a mom.

So I thought he was just going to ask me if he could have it. Honestly if he wouldn't have had it in his hands, I would have said no, it can wait until after lunch. But it was there and it was small and it's summer. I think I'm being a nice mom.

The next thing that comes out of his mouth is, "It doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it. It has has nutrasweet in it, it's sugar free. Can I have it?"

Major dilemna for me. We don't do nutrasweet and that's a pretty easy one to ignore in our diet. High fructose corn syrup is a little harder to avoid, but we try our best. So, he asks the neighbor to read the label of the popsicle box for him because he knows the one thing he can't have. We just avoid nutrasweet completely so he doesn't know.

My wonderful husband happened to be with me at that time and mocked me about what I was going to do.

He got to eat it and he was happy. Now I have to figure out how much additional education I want to do or let it slide!

Seven Silly Eaters

I'm gathering the library books that are due today and just had to share a book that my family, especially the four year old, has fallen in love with. The book is Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman. For our school this last year we read one of her poetry books that we really liked - The Llama who had no Pajama so we went on a search for more of her books. We requested it from our library and read it over and over again for four weeks on inter library loan. I then asked them to buy it since we loved it so much. Every time we go to the library they want to check it out but we do need to share so it will go back today.

Enjoy!

Dangerous Animal Appeal Hearing

Yesterday was a big day for our neighborhood. The city held the Dangerous Animal Appeal Hearing concerning the dogs next door. Eight "good" neighbors, three police officers and two animal control officers were present before the decision board which consisted of the Chief of Police, the Mayor and the City Administrator. We had a court reporter to join as well for the minutes of the proceedings.

Our neighbor and his former girl friend were there as well though we did not see our neighbor. He met with the board separately and was not willing to face the neighbors. We were told he was not willing to be in the room with us because he was afraid he would yell at us because he was too mad. The former girl friend stayed for awhile but then left part way through the comments.

Two of the three dogs that live next door are deemed "Dangerous Animals" by the city now. They can only be in the city limits if they meet a list of criteria and one of which is believed to be impossible to meet. The first criteria is a 100K liability insurance policy and they don't know that anyone will write that kind of policy for that type of dog. One of the dogs was already banned from the city and another one was banned yesterday. We shouldn't see him anymore after today but interestingly enough he did get out today!

We really don't think that this is over and we really don't want it to get personal. We want our children to be safe playing outside and now we feel that they are with the dogs gone. We just don't want to be concerned about their safety from other actions though.

I won, I won!!

I won a new bike! How exicting is that?

Would you still be excited if I told you that it's a 20 inch pink and purple bike with a great bell and streamers? Yes, I was the proud winner of this bike last night at the Family Bike Ride. You should have seen my boys eyes looking at it...the cogs were thinking just like mine, what in the world are we going to do with that?

I was ready to be very generous with my bounty but there were only two little girls there who would be possible recipients. One had her name drawn already and was told by her organizer parents that she wasn't really eligble to win (and I'm sure that her bike was much nicer). And the other girl of appropriate age had a brand new bike already!

It's really really girly and not something that I can pass off to my boys even with spray paint over the pink and purple. So, what are we to do? I was told that it was donated by the only store that I boycott and that I should try and exchange it there. We could use that size bike at our house next year so an even exchange for something a little more manly would be great. But, am I willing to go to that place I avoide for that or do I donate it somewhere else? If I send my husband there, is that really still boycotting the place? The distirubtion center is who actually made the donation so I don't really know how that translates into what the big box actually carries and how that will fair in an exchange.

But still, I won!

Why don't I ever learn to read the labels?

Pretzels strike again...unfortunately. I bought a bag of plain pretzel sticks the other day for an easy crunchy snack. Why I didn't read the label before I bought them, I don't know, but I didn't until just now. That pesky "partially hydrogenated" word appeared on the label! Yet, another item to cross off the list of available products to buy at the store!

We had fallen in love with some Honey Wheat Pretzel braids from Kroger that we bought based on my husband's suggestion. (He had something similar from a vending machine.) We ate them, all of us, and really liked them. Well after eating about 10 bags of them (they were $1 a piece so the price was good too), I decided to actually read the label. Guess what, partially hydrogenated stuff AND high fructose corn syrup were in those. So those have been stricken from our regularly scheduled shopping tricks.

So, what am I eating now? Celery sticks. I really need to stick with things that God made Himself when snacking! A lot less reading is involved when I do that.

Garden Notes

I'm the worst at writing down those things that you always want to know next year...so I'm going to add some stuff to my blog. I'll probably bore the very few people that actually read this occasionally! (What is so strange is that my mom is the best at writing down everything, I just didn't pick that up from her.)

We ate peas this week for the first time...we've had a couple of pods Thurs, Friday and today to eat fresh out of the pod. Yum, yum, yum. There are lots of pods on so hopefully we'll get quite a few. It was really really hot today and will be again tomorrow so that's not so great for peas though.

We saw the first tomato actually on the plant today too! I never know how long it takes from the fruit coming on until they are ripe so here's my documentation! The plant was the cherry tomato so those typically grow the shortest amount of time.

This week we have been eating lettuce and some radishes from the garden too. They were planted in February and we are finally eating it! I can't believe it's taken so long to get to a place to eat them but it rained, rained, rained on the area and it was so cool for so long it's really amazing that in the end it's growing.

I have pumpkin plants growing multiple places in the yard that grew from compost and at least 20 volunteer tomato plants growing in the garden. I haven't had the heart to pull up the tomato plants just in case other things in the garden don't grow so well. I have pulled up a ton of what I believe to be cantaloupe plants that I expect have sprouted from compost. They could be cucumber as well, not sure. I just know that 20 of them can't grow in a space of 3 inches! I have a very nice looking tomato plant growing by the compost pile that we use during gardening season!

The Pit Bulls Next Door

I never expected to be so chummy with the local animal control officers, but since they are in the neighborhood all of the time, I guess it's inevitable. The pit bulls next door are now deemed "dangerous animals" by the city. This means that they have to be secured at all times either in the house or in a pin with certain specifics like a top and sides buried 12 inches into the ground. The process to get this distinction has taken a lot of effort on the part of the Animal Control officers because the neighbor will not talk to them, answer the door or answer the phone.

I feel bad for the dogs, it's not a very nice existence for a big dog to spend all of your time in house but I feel much safer to be in and around the neighborhood. I was actually able to trim the fence row between our yards this weekend without being barked and snarled at! We had added some additional fence to their chain link fence that we may be able to take down now so I can protect the garden from the deer.

That's the excitement in the neighborhood...I feel somewhat like a busybody but we also want to be safe hanging out in our yard. The dogs have become more aggressive in the year that we have lived here and recently got out and approached a different neighbor. A formal complaint was filed based on that incident which was the same day that we were in the process of finding out how we could get them removed. Our biggest concern now that the dogs are inside all day is that the dogs will get out of the door when someone comes or goes from the house which seems to happen frequently in the night! Since they have been deemed a dangerous animal, they can be shot if they are out of their yard. Animal control is still trying to remove them so we may all be able to breath a big sigh of relief.

I'm ready to fight...

The little one came upstairs this afternoon and said, "I'm ready to fight!". It's quite the variety of items that he has chosen to be ready for battle. My favorite is the hat. Those green things are the handles of a little bag!

Hostess with the Mostess is taking a break

Sunday morning I woke up very relaxed and relieved...it was June which meant that 40-50 people were not going to arrive at my house within hours. I love having church at our house, but by the end of the month, it's time to move on to someone else's house! May was a very busy entertaining month for us. I had lots and lots of fun, but will be happy to not be doing dishes for so many people so frequently! Between, church, weekly Bible Study, a wedding shower, women's retreat and dinners during finals week we had lots of people in and out of our house. I don't know how many times I washed plastic cups and the "church" flatware. I can't bring myself to use everything disposable so we wash! Now it's June and it's on someone else's conscience and time to prep and clean!

One of my Gerber daisies finally decided to look stunning...now that people aren't walking up the steps constantly!

Enjoying Spring

I haven't put much in here lately because we have been enjoying spring so much. I just about put in "too busy" but that's not the case at all. We are enjoying spring but not being too busy...priorities have been on trying to spend time with my family and not at the computer.

Peas are blooming in the garden and everything else seems to remain alive. Flowers are planted and blooming around the house - I lost count at the number of different color of iris that have bloomed. The curriculum for home school has been finished. Finals are over for my wonderful husband. I haven't had office hours for the last two weeks. All of it has been really great! One more week and we have to come up with routine again :(

Making ketchup is the next thing brewing in my head. I'll let you know how that goes...As for my list of homemade stuff, I created it but it didn't paste into the blog well and I haven't messed with it more.

Congratulations Big Guy

Today my older son had two really cool things...

He rode his bike without training wheels basically the first time that he tried. (We took the wheels off a couple of weeks ago and the pedals too to get some balance - the pedals got put back on today. One trip with mom and he was off!)

At the AWANA awards ceremony he was given the Outstanding Clubber award from the K'ers! That was a fun surprise. One of his best friends also received the award to from the 1st grade class. It's great to have a good kid.

End of bragging now!

Quotes of the week

From the budding vegetarian upon mom (the vegetarian) having him try some sloppy joe she just made, "It could use some beans." (Using up all of that venison that we acquired in the fall.)

From the one with the budding hair-do when I commented that he was putting his shoes on the wrong feet, and his response was, "I guess you are good at a logical survey." (Age 4)

What do people do all day?

I don't know what we would do without books...



This was NOT staged, they are enjoying the book together!

Homemade vs Convenience

It's been a few weeks of being brave and making much of our food "from scratch" The advent of the raw milk has now put fresh cream at our disposal. Not wanting to be wasteful, we have had to put that cream to good use. Tortillas have been on my list for awhile to attempt and we are in process our second batch of those.

Now we have home made ice cream and packages of beans (black and pinto) in the freezer, fresh butter and buttermilk in the frig with the tortilla balls waiting to be cooked. I'm really evaluating how much "from scratch" should/can I do and when do I buy some of these foods from the grocery store already made, like refried beans. All of the things that we have made from scratch have been quite yummy and nothing is particularly hard either but there's a huge time element that is creeping up on me. I don't feel like I have known where the last three weeks have gone. We've made butter and home made ice cream. We've made tortillas. We've made multiple different kinds of beans from dried beans. So, we've spent a lot of time in the kitchen, that's for sure! But how many times did I tell my family, "Not yet, let me finish [fill in the blank]"

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the rest of the 40 tortillas made and some in the freezer for later. Then I really need to re-think our menus and what I am and am not willing to purchase from the store and where my kitchen time is best spent. I really have loved making all of these things, but I'm at the point of evaluation...is it really worth the time savings, more healthy choices? If I am going to do this from scratch thing which I really believe is much healthier for us, I do need to come up with simpler menus that can reuse a lot of the time consuming elements. I haven't given up or don't plan to give up making our bread...and feel like I need to start getting good a buns now that grilling season is here. Oh, that's just more time! My next post may be more of my notes and thoughts around some specific foods...be forewarned!

Spring time find

You know the excitement of finding money in a pocket of a coat the first time you wear it for a season? Well, we had a great spring find at our house yesterday that felt kind of like that. I was clearing off the excess compost from the garden to plant some peas and found our orange peeler! Those peelers that you get from Tupperware that score the oranges so they are easier to peel - one of those. There it was sitting in the mulch. It must have been mulched with the peelings sometime over the winter. We can now peel oranges easier again, yippee.

Thinking of compost, God really did create an amazing planet for us. We have been putting our kitchen scraps in the garden all winter. And as I dug through all of the compost on the garden to plant, there really was very little that was identifiable except egg shells. All of the carrot and potato peelings and apple cores were completely unrecognizable and turning themselves back into quality soil for growing more stuff. Really a very cool process. I know it makes "trash" at our house more complicated (trash can, recycle or compost bucket), but composting a great way to reduce the junk that goes to the landfill and we don't have to buy more stuff called fertilizer.

Raw Milk and farm fresh eggs

Have I just moved to the country or am I'm being influenced by all of the chemical additives propaganda?

We are on our first gallon of raw milk this week and about our 4th dozen of brown eggs straight from the farm! Most of our friends around us are doing the raw milk thing, so I thought that we would give it a shot. The milk came in a glass gallon jar with a large layer of cream at the top. I skimmed off the cream and hope to make some ice cream tonight with that or some butter.

It took Todd and me a day to actually try it. We weren't really quite sure what to expect. Drinking it by itself or putting it in something, I really can't tell that much difference. Both of my boys have asked for milk from the grocery store this morning! I think that's just familiarity thing versus not liking the taste. We are used to skim milk at our house and they don't really care for 2% or whole milk when we go somewhere. So when they heard cream, they weren't too keen on it. After they tried it, I think they are good.

So, here's my thought. I'm still not all quite sure about disease kind of stuff in raw milk. I'm also getting less comfortable with all of the "things" that we do to milk that we buy at the store. I know where this milk is coming from. I know lots of people who have been drinking their milk for a long time. I have been contemplating going organic on the milk thing anyway but at twice the price, I wasn't jumping at it. So, here's my jump in for change - the raw milk is a slightly higher price than grocery store milk for a gallon which will end up being less than a gallon of milk and a couple of cups of cream but still not twice the price. The downside is that I have to drive somewhere else to get it which is not the grocery store.

The eggs are a no-brainer...they are a great price and they taste good. Good thing that they are at the same place as the milk so it's only one more stop. (They have free duck eggs right now - we'll see how adventurous I'll get. Boy this is a long way from my previous professional world...)

6 minutes faster

Sunday was my second 1/2 marathon race in 8 months at GO! St. Louis. My cousin and I did this together again along with a friend of hers. We finished 6 minutes faster than we did in Chicago (2:04:54)! It was a perfectly beautiful day for the race and we had a great cheering section!

Not sure what my next adventure will be...but I'm ready to hit the road again in the morning. I'd like to get to under 2 hours sometime soon I think.

Venison anyone?

I'm sure that I posted in the fall that someone "gave us a deer". To be quite honest, my family hasn't been terribly impressed with the meat so far and the ways that we have attempted to fix it. But we have kept trying every once in awhile.

For some reason in the last couple of weeks I have been itching to eat out of the freezer/pantry and not buy more groceries until we eat what we have. (Probably Dana's inspiration from her Battle Dish Month.) Well, that meant a whole turkey last week that was a gift from a neighbor, complete with all of the Thanksgiving trimmings, sans the pumpkin pie. This week I tackled the two hind legs of the deer that were occupying a shelf in the freezer (and ways to use the left over turkey).

The first step in tackling these hunks of flesh was thawing them - where do they fit and not spill their juice everywhere? Then my husband had to get the power tools out and saw off the end of the leg bone so this hunk would fit into the oven. Me, the non meat eater, really had no trouble handling the carcass and preparing it to be cooked. I guess, it is a challenge to see if I could make something that my family would really eat and realize that I hadn't spent any of the grocery budget either.

To figure out what to do next, I pulled out the recipe book and found a marinade that required 24-48 hours. I had two thawed hunks of flesh and I really didn't want to wait that long so one of them got thrown in the oven and basted with the marinade. The other did soak in a mixture of red wine, vinegar, vegetables and spices for about two days and I put it in the oven today.

My husband was kind and cut up the thing today and we now have a lot of cooked venison in the freezer. (I did the majority of the carving with the first leg.) We cook and eat very little beef at our house - I haven't eaten it in almost 20 years and my husband doesn't like the smell of ground beef cooking. So, I am somewhat perplexed as to what to do with all of this roast beast that we have. I continue to be up for the challenge though.

Earlier this week I made a bean soup (a mix that was a gift at Christmas - more pantry cleaning) and put some meat in part of it. First son did his usual budding vegetarian eating and ate around the meat. Second son did eat it well in the soup, but he really liked the emu too! There's a crock of soup in the freezer for another meal at some point (though there isn't any non-meat soup left for me) when I'm having another clean out the freezer type of week. I'm sure that I will be bringing a lot of meat dishes to our potluck at church and my cooking ability will be broadened!

We have agreed if there is ever a next offer of a deer, it will very politely be turned down. Until then, we'll be thankful for the food and the experience. We still have some of the backstrap that hasn't been cooked yet, maybe I'll try and figure out how to make jerky...(for those who really like the meat, I know that this seems like a big waste but at least we are using it and not letting it go to waste).

Next race, 1 week away

My next scheduled half marathon (not a full, just 13 miles) is next Sunday in St. Louis. I'm excited for race weekend because my cousin is coming with some friends and we have made plans for Saturday. I have had some serious training motivation issues lately. My hubby has been on spring break the last week and the week before spring break was very challenging for him. I got out of my normal schedule and just had a hard time getting over the big weeks! I have only skipped a couple of work outs but it's definitely been a mental challenge to get them in. I also wanted to put in some more mileage than the training plan called for which meant that I was running two more miles on the long run.

Today I went to run outside and it was sprinkling. It was only about 40 outside so I running in the rain was not very pleasant sounding. So I decided to go indoors - the thought of 8 miles on the treadmill is not really fun for me. We have a great rec center but I still get bored running inside. My husband suggested that I alternate treadmill and the 1/10mi track. I didn't quite do that, but I did do two miles on the track and the other 6 on the treadmill. It became a mind game to get through the run as best as possible so I tried increasing my speed the last 1/4 of every mile and doing fun stuff like that and I made it through!

This week I am looking forward to new shoes and a lighter running schedule and then race weekend!

Happy Easter

Easter is such a great time to reflect on our lives and realize what Jesus dying on the cross has meant to each of us! I hope that you can take some time to ponder that. I picked my first daffodils from the yard yesterday and it's a great reminder of new life! Now I hope that they don't all bloom while we are gone for the holiday!

My pondering time will be the 14 mile run that is on tap for this weekend. I want to push my body over the 13.1 mile mark so in two weeks I can finish strong. My motivation to run has been lacking the last few weeks but I only two weeks left until race weekend.

Spring on the horizon

Ah, spring is finally on the horizon. Today was the first outside day we have had in a really long time. Chalk drawings all over the driveway, bikes to get put away, really good stuff for a Saturday! I was brave today and planted some seeds - lettuce, radish, spinach and some cilantro. They were all seeds that I had from last year so we'll see if anything grows. I usually like to plant something around Valentine's Day and I've moved some snow to plant, but this year I couldn't move the slate of ice covering the entire ground!

There are daffodil little tips coming up in many different places in my yard too! So fun finding out what will spring look like in my yard...today is a good day to remember that it's coming! (and I'm blocking out the snow in the forecast for Monday)

Now, I really need to get to planning my garden space!

U2 - Classic Rock?

K-Mart's ad for this week had some "Classic Rock" specials. Now I wouldn't typically pay too much attention to this but one of the selections didn't seem to make sense. We could have played "One of these is not like the other one". There are four choices: AC/DC, Guns N Roses, Def Leppard and U2?!?

What has the meaning of classic rock come to? Just because it was popular in the 80's doesn't mean that it's "Classic Rock" does it? U2 is so not a black concert t-shirt band of the 80's. I agree that once you are out of the era, there become fewer and fewer classifications of the music, but does U2 really have to be called Classic Rock?

I guess that this just makes me old, but I so was not a hair band (Guns N Roses) or a black concert t-shirt person. I was much more of the punk bent and so seeing my favorite bank labeled as "Classic Rock" just hurts! I'm definitely going to have to put some U2 in the CD player and listen to some "Sunday Bloody Sunday".

Sock Bingo

You read all of those parenting articles about motivating your kids and they say to make it fun and make a game out it. I usually don't feel that creative to come up with some game to get a task done. But it keeps rolling around in my head because I want to try and motivate my children without being angry at them.

So today, we played Sock Bingo. It wasn't really bingo but it was a sock matching game because they weren't getting socks matched just by me asking them to. We split the socks into three groups. I held up one of my socks and they tried to see if they could find a match. Who had the most matches in the end won...

In the end they didn't win anything tangible except they won a happy mommy instead of a nagging mommy and the job was completed with some fun.

We also did fractions with tater tots today, that was a fun one too. Just shows me that I need to take a deep breath and enjoy life a little more and not just demand to be obeyed! (I can't believe that I'm teaching my kids about fractions...and how do you teach a 6 year old to figure out how many 3/4 of 8 hats is? The teachers "lab notes" aren't terribly helpful.)

That tater tots were quite yummy!

Do I have to change clothes?

So as I am trying to get my little guy to change clothes this morning, I have been pondering how often do we really need to change clothes, especially in the winter.

I am wanting him to change clothes and for what reason? I'm not really quite sure. It's very cold outside and so he's not getting hot and sweaty. It's taking my energy to motivate him to actually change clothes. Finally, I'm just generating more laundry for me to do by having him change clothes!

He's had on the same t-shirt for two days straight, so I think it's time to take it off, but how much do I really need him to change clothes? Less laundry sounds very appealing!

For me as well, I'm trying to not generate as much laundry. I'm not in high school anymore, I can wear the same clothes two days in a row and it doesn't really matter what other people think...as long as I don't smell.

Training Again

April 6th is the next target for a 1/2 marathon! We are 11 weeks again and the training program that Becca arranged for us this time is 12 weeks long...Week 1 went well and starting on week 2 this week. Yard work today is my cross training as well as some riding bikes up and down the hill with the boys!

I'm looking forward to this training and hopefully getting a little faster. I am in much better shape training for this year's race than last year. We ran a 10K in April last year and that was a long race...this year I am running a 10K without too much effort. I am watning to try and make 2 hours this time.

As I officially start training again, my challenge this time is motivation. It's not motivation to actually get out and run, it's more of what is my motivation for getting out to run and is the time the best way to use my time for my family. I usually pick races to motivate me to exercise, but I'm starting to get to where running is more of my identity and that's not really what I want it to be. So, I'm trying hard not to set a goal that pushes running too high up on the priority list of life. If this is my personal time, is this what I should really be doing with my time and I shouldn't be asking my family for more just me time if I'm spending hours away from them running.

Visit from the Tooth Fairy

In the span of 8 days, we had two visits from the Tooth Fairy!

Mom is really happy that those two teeth have finally been pulled. In November, we figured out that Andrew had a loose tooth. A few days or weeks later I realized that his adult teeth were coming in behind his baby teeth even though the baby teeth weren't out yet!

We were in need of seeing the dentist anyway, so off to make sure that we weren't in an orthodontic situation that was going to cost us lots of $$! We were reassured, that this was pretty normal and the tongue was going to push his teeth forward when the baby teeth came out. Our instructions were to wiggle the teeth and work on getting them out of there but they didn't have to pulled.

Andrew wasn't really that interested in wiggling his teeth so I did that for him! My husband thought I was crazy! I pulled the first tooth but Andrew pulled the next one by himself though I kept threatening to do so. The second tooth was almost sticking straight out - the other tooth was so tall and close that it couldn't even push it back upright anymore.

Thankfully, the permanent teeth have really moved a bunch since the other teeth have moved out of the way.

Contenders Ready?

The newest fascination at our house is "American Gladiators"! Remember that show through the 80's and 90's with the professional body builder types beating up on the guy from the local gym? It's back and on prime time with Hulk Hogan as a host. My boys love it and we have even created an "Eliminator" course in our house! JL's favorite Gladiator is "Woof". It's a great winter activity to keep their little bodies moving.

We have found that they have full episodes online http://www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators. There are commercial breaks but each episode is sponsored by only one company and the same commercial is played only a couple of times through the entire show. We (mom and dad) love that we can watch it anytime. Therefore it is a great incentive in our house to be able to watch it! Also another reason why we don't necessarily need cable anymore...but golf season is getting ready to start.

Contenders Ready? Gladiators Ready?

Some smiles, goofiness and tradition...