Scorpions and Megadeth Concert

Mark and I haven't left the house alone together in almost six years.  THIS was the last time. That was back when Ami and Laura could come watch their younger siblings.  Now we have Ian and Genevieve (Shane was on a sailing trip).  Jason didn't make it easy for me thought.  In case you can't understand him in the video, he is saying, "Don't leave me!"

Last summer Mark bought concert tickets! Thinking about going to a rock concert gave us both anxiety.  He was worried about being late and navigating parking/seat finding.  I was worried about being boxed in by old pot-smoking rockers and getting trampled and maybe even lost!

Our first stop was dinner out:

 ...out as in a quick stop at the grocery store for healthy chips and Lara bars.  Nope, Mark will not sway from his healthy eating for a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I had a sandwich. With bacon.

Parking was easy, finding our spots was easy, and waiting for the concert to start was fun.  There were so many people to watch!  So many old rockers!

We were in the last row as far as you can get from the stage and there was no one next to us, no one behind us, and barely anyone around us.  We didn't even have to stand.  That made my night.

Megadeth isn't my favorite band (ahem).  They were loud.  The people were pretty well-behaved.  I guess when you are an old rocker, you are up past your bedtime and don't have the energy to cause trouble.  But I loved the Scorpions!  They played most of my favorite songs.

And now that we've done this once, we can probably do it again!

Knit Hats and Shane

One of my assigned jobs for co-op is to be a teacher's aid in the practical needlework class.  Jason will not let me leave him in the nursery and he isn't allowed in the classroom, so I haven't been able to actually go to class yet.  The teacher and I are friends and have first hour in the nursery together.  She asked me to help by creating and test knitting patterns! My favorite!

This is just a quick garter stitch hat knit flat on straight needles.  It's *almost* like the first hat I ever knit, only I was still teaching myself from a book and I didn't know there was a difference between knitting flat and in the round.  So my hat looked like this even though it wasn't at all what it was supposed to look like:

That hat has been the most awesome, long-wearing hat.  In fact, that baby in the picture-Shane-pulled that hat out of the box to take with him on his sailing trip this weekend. 

When Shane was about three years old, he had a hard time telling if his shirt belonged to him and if it was on right instead of backwards.  It caused him some anxiety, so anytime he got dressed, he asked, "Is-is-is this MY shirt? And does it go on like THIS?" If we didn't answer yes to both questions, he would cry.  I've used this story recently to teach Shane about being patient with annoying younger siblings.

So today, Shane pulled the hat out of the hat box and put it on.  He said to me, "Hey Mom, is this my hat?"  I turned around and said, "Yeah, but it's on backward. The seam goes in the back."  He smiled sweetly as he slowly turned the hat to face the right way... and he said....

...."Soooo.... Does it go on like THIS?"  I laughed and then I lost it and cried for awhile.  I cried again after I dropped him off for Sea Scouts.  In fact, I'm crying again as I write this.  It's a mom thing.  I love that boy, the toddler and teen, all in one.

B.I.

I started blogging in 2007, well after Ian, Shane, and Genevieve were born.  Their little stories will be lost to eternity if I don't write them down.  This is why I dreamed up the term B.I. last night.  This abbreviation means...Before Ian.  Before Ian was born.

Before Ian was born, technology was so different!  My goodness, we still used a film camera and cell phones flipped open and only made phone calls.  The digital cameras we had either attached to the top of a computer monitor that weighed 25lbs or were packed in a foam-lined suitcase the size of a footstool. I hand wrote letters to people to fill them in on what was going on in my life instead of updating my status on Facebook.  I even kept a journal.

I spent my pregnancy with Ian at graduate school.  Being married and pregnant at school is a much different social scene than being single and unattached. No one invites you to their parties for one.  And you don't have anything to talk about with the other students if you didn't go to the party.  So I stopped enjoying the social part of school and spent more time just being the studious one...when I wasn't napping. Or eating. And I did plenty of both in my "graduate student office."  Hm, I wonder if I ever cleaned out my desk? I know I never gave the keys to the building back.

My Master's thesis project was basically handed to me by the Whatcom County Conservation District.  I was going to study how streams that had had their meanders replaced by bulldozer compared to streams that were still channelized into nice, straight lines.  I was so naive.  What the heck was I going to do with the baby after he was born, stick him in a playpen on the side of the creek while I electrofished? Hahaha!

My last quarter at school I was taking a class that I think may have been Advanced Stream Ecology.  My lab partner and I had to design a stream ecology project.  We collected water samples and macroinvertebrate (bug) samples from a few streams around Lake Whatcom and analyzed them.  By this time, my chest waders didn't fit over my baby bump, so I switched to my hip waders.  I was still scrambling up and down creek banks with a tote full of glass bottles and sulfuric acid.  My lab partner worked part-time with Mark at WDFW and he would ask Mark if I should really be clambering around like that in my condition.  I do remember the last field day before Ian was born.  I had a hard time getting my leg over the chain at the end of the road and decided to stay up on the bank and let my lab partner do all the work.  He said he was going to feel responsible if something bad happened to me.  The day before my water broke, I obsessively titrated water samples and counted bugs in the lab: the scientist's version of nesting.

Ian was born three weeks before the end of the quarter.  My lab partner and I still had to finalize our results and come up with a presentation for our class.  I look back now and think, "Good gracious, I actually functioned a bit with a newborn?"  Honestly, most of what happened in the weeks after Ian was born are a blur.  I remember needing extra time to get used to having a baby (ha. ha. ha. breastfeeding and waking up all night long? Hello???) and I remember sitting downstairs in front of my computer holding Ian when I was supposed to be writing my paper.  I know I didn't go back to any classes, but I did do my final presentation and take my final test while Mark stayed home with Ian.  Three weeks postpartum.

(The only picture that survived off my computer camera. Ian looks between two to four weeks old.  He must have been cold! Where are his clothes! What kind of a mom would take her newborn baby into a cold, dark basement with no shirt on???)

But once I held Ian in my arms, I knew I didn't want to go back to school and finish my degree.  I just wanted to be a Mama.  So I dropped out and never looked back.

The Year of the Rooster

With today being Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Rooster, I'd like to tell you a bit about one of our roosters.  His name used to be Roosevelt II, but we, just in the last week, changed his name to... Jerky.

Every time I go out to my van, he is waiting for me. Not Mark, not Genna. Me.  He lurks on the other side of the shed, waiting to hear the sound of my voice or the doors on the van being opened and closed.  Sometimes I have to quickly jump in the van with a kid under my arm and shut the door...and he is always waiting for me.

He won't be long in this world.

The Vanilla Lumberjack Guy

Just before Christmas I had to go to Costco and get a bottle of vanilla.  But guess what? Instead of the normal price (of like $7), the price per bottle was $19.99!!!!  I have never paid that much for Costco's vanilla, ever!  I went and found an employee to make sure the vanilla was labeled correctly.  This Costco employee was in his late 20's and was wearing a plaid shirt and had a full, nicely trimmed beard.  He looked just like a Millennial Lumberjack.  He checked the price and yes, that was the correct price.  I gave him a few of my thoughts on the matter and he just shrugged.  "You should see the price for butter," he said and he walked away. 

I must be getting old because that really steamed me.  You want to know what a REAL lumberjack looks like?

He's wearing plaid, he has a nicely trimmed beard, but you know what??? He actually cuts down trees.

Mark has been busy felling the trees that are dropping leaves into our pond and will be used as firewood the winter after next.

And check out his technique!  He is standing on a frozen pond, sawing a tree that fell in the water (but most was sticking out) and getting the wood in before the thaw that is coming tonight.  Sawing logs over liquid water is much harder because they....sink.

But to the child that thought throwing a piece of firewood out in the middle of the frozen pond... How are we going to get that piece back? The pond didn't freeze well enough to walk out there... I guess you'll be swimming for it!

I Think I Can

I haven't been enthusiastic about canning for many years.  I honestly can't remember the last time I canned seriously, but I'm pretty sure it was before we moved here.  Back then I mostly used pint and half-pint sized jars.  This year we have a bumper crop of apples and pears.

The Jonathan Tree

I've only cleared off two trees so far and we've frozen a few gallons (no, I'm not kidding gallons) of applesauce.

Toddler helper = bites out of each apple

 I filled three 5-gallon buckets with windfall apples and turned those into cider...

Precious Cargo

Two gallons of cider are in the freezer for a special occasion (Christmas and Easter?).  One was happily consumed.  Nothing beats these Jonathan apples for fresh cider.  I may just buy my own press for next year (although it was kind of fun pressing with other people-I just don't like bringing my kids other places where I need to watch them, but I need to work).

When I unpacked my jars and realized I had less than a dozen quart jars, I had to go buy more.  With a family this size, there is no way a pint of applesauce will feed everyone.  Quarts or bust.  I brought home five cases.

The green jar is actually a blue jar with yellow applesauce

I broke one quart jar, so used the lid on a pint

Apple butter (brown) mixed with apple sauce (pink)

The real fun part is the different colors of the applesauce.  Each batch has its own ratios of Jonathan (red peels) to the other kind with yellowish/greenish peels (Granny Smith we think). As I run out of applesauce filling jars, I start another batch, so sometimes the jars have a zebra effect. 

So far, I have 30 quarts of applesauce and butter, plus more in the fridge.  Tomorrow I can pears.  I couldn't do a project like this if it weren't for the help I get from Genevieve and Fiona.  They took turns being buddies with the littles while I worked.  They also helped shake the trees and pick up all the apples (Daniel help too).  We truly have reached the Golden Age of Large Family FUNctioning.

The Day the Babies Crawled Away

Subtitled: The Day I Should Have Just Bought Myself a Latte Instead of Saving $4 by Bringing My Own Coffee

Today was art day.  A local art alliance has been offering free art classes for the KP Homeschoolers this year.  Fiona and Genevieve have really loved going.  I spend their class time wrangling little ones in our tiny children's section of the library. The children's section isn't any bigger than my living room and the whole library is smaller than my house.  When we are at the library, all the patrons know.

As the subtitle suggests, I left a little late because I decided to make a quick cup of coffee to bring with me instead of driving over to the latte stand after dropping the girls off.  I feel ripped off when I spend $4 on coffee.  Buuuuuut..... our pothole-y driveway plus an open beverage cup equals coffee splashed all over my cream-colored capris.  Nice.  It looked like a baby pooped on me, but I was late enough.  No one would care if I showed up to the library with six kids and coffee stained pants.  Everyone would understand.

The girls went to their class and I went to the children's section with Daniel, Lula, Heidi, and Jason.  Daniel and Lula each made a beeline straight to two of the four computers to play games.  Heidi ripped a pair of headphones out of a third computer and walked around pretending she was listening to something and grinning at me when I frowned.  But I was stuck with Jason, who couldn't be distracted with blocks when he could do this:

The title of the black books says it all

I took the picture above and quickly posted it to Facebook after picking up the books. I went to show the librarian because the title of the book was just too funny.  This is when the story turns bad.  This is when Heidi starts walking around whispering "ouch" and holding her bum.  I ask, "Heidi, do you have to go potty?" No.  We color a picture together.  She says ouch again and reaches back.  I ask her again if she has to go potty and again she says no.  I could have dragged her to the bathroom, but I couldn't just leave the other kids yet I couldn't bring them all without making a huge scene either...

(Did you know that Heidi is scared of the sound of bathroom fans? And did you know that the library's bathroom has a very loud fan that turns on with the light? And did you also know that the last few times we've used the bathroom at the library, Heidi screamed at the top of her lungs while sitting on the toilet and everyone could hear her all through the entire library?)

Jason starts crawling away again, so I follow him around making sure he can't pull more books off the shelves.  I see Heidi heading over to Lula's computer holding her backside again, so I decide to check and see if she had a scratch or something on her back that was causing her to say ouch.  Because she usually doesn't say ouch about anything.  Never if she has to go potty.  She just tells everyone she has to go potty.  But instead of seeing anything, I smelled something. Something awful.

So, to make a gross story short, the whole library could hear Heidi screaming in the bathroom as I cleaned her up with wet paper towels.  She screamed while I washed her purple boots.  She screamed when I washed her feet.  She screamed when I wrapped her undies in paper towels and threw them in the garbage. And as soon as I turned off the light in the bathroom, she stopped screaming.  Darn fan.

If I would have just left on time, dropped the girls off, and bought myself a latte to drink in the van in the parking lot, I could have had a different afternoon. Next time.

Winter Fairies

My camera and I went hunting for some winter fairies on a cold afternoon...

Eleven Weeks

This Bouncing Baby Boy is due in 11 weeks.  That means I have only 11 "Bless this Mess" days.  And 11 weeks to finish up everything on my list of things to do before the baby is born.  For a homeschooling mom of seven, this List is quite the thing to behold.  But you can't see it; it is all in my mind.

The Weekly Schedule-for now

The most important thing that I'm working on is school.  Homeschooling five kids is a major undertaking, which is probably why people say, "I don't know how you do it!"  And truly, what I manage every day is so complicated I don't even want to type it all out.  But I have a daily schedule that changes based on the day and little tricks that keep things streamlined.  I'm thinking ahead to the next school year and making my plans for curriculum and such.  I have so many decisions to make about books and money, but I'm leaning toward another Parent Partnership Program. And switching math curriculum for Fiona. (I never though I would be the mom that owned four or five different math programs-why oh why do my kids have to be so different?)

My take on the Workbox system.  Everything in one box. One box per person.

We are going to continue to school through the summer simply because we started late and took a lot of time off.  Some subjects are finished (Ian is done with History and Lit and Shane is done with math) but some, like Fiona and Evie's Language Arts, need way more attention.  Daniel started kindergarten work not too long ago, so he is plugging along nicely.  It only takes about 30 minutes to get through his school work.

Last Day of Math!

Daniel totally surprised me with his attitude toward school.  I'll write about that another day.

Works in Progress

I'm knitting and sewing whenever I can because I know that 1) it will get too hot to knit soon and I won't have time in the fall to make them and 2) once this baby is born I won't have time to sit at my sewing machine.  I just won't have time for anything but feeding eight children, school, and diaper changes.  I'm knitting a February Lady Sweater (Google for images) out of yarn that I have had stashed since Fiona was a baby.  I'm afraid the moths will eat it before I can actually use it, and it is the nicest yarn I have ever purchased.  I only have 1 1/2 sleeves left.  I'm also knitting a plethora of winter wool pants: something not pink or purple for the baby and something not shorts for Heidi.  I'm taking existing pants that still fit around Heidi's skinny middle but are too short and adding length.  The moths ate all of Daniel's hand-me-down wool.

Twelve diapers waiting for sewing (and a whole pile of fabric waiting to be cut out)

Maybe next year I'll have time to sew the requested nightgowns and pajamas for my older kids.

Fifteen diapers needing snaps

I'm also crazy busy in the kitchen.  Mark and I are on another Whole30 for the month of May.  With Whole30, there are very few convenience foods that are approved.  Think about that for a moment.  Almost nothing you can buy off a store shelf has ingredients that aren't hormone disruptors or bad for your gut or not inflammatory.  Too many double negatives in that last sentence: I'll try it again... Almost everything commercially available contains ingredients that are bad for you in some way or another.  This means we have to cook everything everything from scratch.  We mostly eat sautes that are light on meat and heavy on the veggies, so we do a lot of chopping.  The kids aren't on Whole30, so we are actually cooking/preparing six meals per day.  I've only gained 16 pounds with this pregnancy and can still wear my regular clothes from last summer.

Two days these towels sat in the washing machine and two days they spent on the line

I have midwife appointments an hour away every two weeks.  I take the kids to the YMCA twice a week, which is a good three hour chunk each time. Tuesdays we are on the road all day for dance and Scouts.  I'm battling the insurance company to pay for the genetic screening test because I don't really have $8000 right now.  The sun is shining on a regular basis so I'm back to line-drying our laundry.  I've stopped going to my women's groups because I need that time in the evening to make dinner, catch up on missed school due to activities and appointments, and take a big fat nap that I totally deserve.

...it took me three days to finish this post...Down to 10 1/2 weeks....The clock is ticking...

THEY ARE TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!  (Practicing their topiary skills. That bush is now a turtle. Can you see it?)

And did I mention that I love my life? Like crazy? And I have the best job in the whole world?

The Perfect Tree

I really struggle this time of year.  The way Christmas is celebrated offends me.  If everything were up to me, we would attend church every weekend, my kids would know all the Christmas songs, and they wouldn't ask for Christmas presents.  There certainly wouldn't be people inviting me to parties and people wouldn't buy presents for my kids when I specifically asked them not to.  There would be no cookies or candy tempting me either.  And I wouldn't have to come up with a dozen white elephant gifts.  But I felt like I hit a wall when the topic of The Tree came up.

I really really hate spending money on a Christmas tree that gets burned on January 2nd.  I hate budgeting that much money when I could be using it to buy something useful...like books or something for the homeschool.....or even a chub of ground beef (have you seen the price of ground beef lately?)  In a fit, I suggested buying an artificial tree.  Mark responded that he didn't want to have to stuff it up in the attic each year, besides, wasn't I the one that wanted a cut tree each year?  A few weeks later, he saw my logic and actually looked at artificial trees at the store, but of course I had changed my mind.  What the heck is the point of Christmas if everything, including the tree, was plastic???

And then I heard a voice...and those who know This Voice know what I'm talking about.  That still, small voice? Yep.  I know my path for salvaging my Christmas.  I'm taking my leap of faith.

Today, we went to pick up a tree.  There is this cute little place near our home called Noble Farm.  Nothing is near our house, so we were happy to contact the owner and support the local economy.  The man who grows the trees loves his trees and has been growing them for decades, based on the size of a few of them (taller than his two story house)!  Unfortunately, a blight came through this year and some of the trees are too diseased to sell.  We found a tree that would fit our living room, but it had several blighty branches.  He looked so sad when he touched the branch and said that he was going to have to burn all the diseased trees.  He is also getting old and is thinking about being done with his trees in a year or two.  We then went on to look at some beautiful, perfect trees up on the hill, but I just couldn't shake a feeling.  It seemed a shame that this tree grew for so many years to become a beautiful tree, just to get a blight and get burned and never see a happy child's face or a string of colored lights.

Maybe I've read too many fairy tales.

As we walked back to the house, the man told us about his dog and how she had been a rescue dog.  She was a little jumpy and nervous, but even with these flaws, she was still a good dog.  We have a jumpy rescue dog too and he is darn good at chasing off the coyotes.  In fact, some people I know have been Rescued and are still jumpy.  We came back to the diseased tree and I realized that I wanted that tree and I wanted it badly.  "This tree? With the brown branches? I guess you can cut them off and it will still be okay..."  Nope.  I wanted it as it was.  Because that tree was the perfect symbol of Christmas.  Aren't we all flawed?  Don't we all carry evidence of a fallen world?  And without that, we wouldn't need Christmas or a little baby born in a manger.  As Mark went to bring the car closer, my mouth ran with this message that could only be from Someone else.  Because I'm a Scrooge and a Grinch, not a shining star leading the way to Bethlehem.

Waste

I consider myself to be pretty crunchy, earth-friendly, resourceful, and thrifty.  I pinch pennies, don't give in to my children's whims at the store, and accept hand-me-downs.  I keep things because they are good toys and can be used by all ages and genders.  I hang on to Hot Wheels tracks just in case Daniel develops an interest in cars.  I appreciate the things we are blessed with because I know our lifestyle is different from other people and I don't want my kids to look at our family and feel resentment toward each other for hogging all the resources.  But I can't keep everything.  I can't.

People think that I take cast-off items because "I have such a huge family and could probably use it."  I know their giving is an act of kindness, but it kind of isn't.  They bought into the consumer lifestyle.  Their kids didn't appreciate their stuff.  They don't have any younger siblings to hand it down to (or they don't want to keep their childhood treasures for their grandchildren), so they send it to my house.  Your treasures come here to die, did you know? That puzzle lost one piece the first day it was here.  And I burned it with the rest of our paper garbage.  That paperback book series you laboriously taped back together when the glue started to get brittle and the pages fell out?  They will also be destroyed.  I will find a chunk of pages and toss the whole thing.  It's so wasteful, but that is our culture.  I hate it.

But I don't think my kids get it.  I think that because they get so many hand-me-downs, they feel no need to conserve what they have.  Who cares if the dog chews up a My Little Pony? Someone will want to offload a whole bag on them in a few months, probably, and if not, they can always find one at the thrift store for the price of a tooth.  Mom says, "Pick up all these repositional stickers NOW or they are going in the garbage!"  Who cares? They can just ask for more for their next birthday or Christmas and since there are so many birthdays around here, they can just gang up and get group presents.  "Pick up your clothes and stop putting clean clothes in the laundry for me to wash or I'm going to pack them all up into trash bags and then we'll see how you feel when you don't have anything to wear!"  Oh, Dad would never let Mom keep their taekwondo uniforms and who ever heard of a naked ballerina?  Mom and Dad paid for those lessons; they aren't going to keep them from their dance clothes and shoes and waste their money.  And they don't really care if their clothes are stained and have holes-they're homeschoolers and no one sees them, right?

Sounds like my kids got just a little spoiled, doesn't it?

And it sounds like it is time to do some extreme decluttering.  We have until the end of November to find out if everything in this house actually has a place.  We have six short weeks to find out if we own more things than we have places for.  If I don't have a perfectly clean house by the end of November, Christmas presents will be cancelled!  Oh, we'll have a tree and candy, but no toys.  No toys, no clothes, nothing with parts.  No "consumable" craft projects (because the end product isn't consumable-it's more junk), no art supplies, no science kits.  No games for family night, no critical thinking solitaire games, no self-contained learning activities.  Nothing.  This mom is DONE.

My Whole30 Story

My Whole30 experience is over and I am amazed at the change in myself.  This wasn't a weight loss diet, but a change in eating habits.  Weight loss was a side effect of choosing better foods.  And not just what was on my plate, but how I consumed it.  I want to show you a picture of what I had for breakfast this morning, but remember, I am not a food photographer.  You are not going to see a plain white backdrop and perfectly arranged food on a shabby chic table.  Because guess what? I'm not a professional anything and I'm not perfect at anything.  My eating habits reflect that, both before and after this Whole30 experience.

I also want to share my own personal experience with this program.  Everyone is different and has a different lifestyle.  Parts of the Whole30 program were easier for me to "get through" and that probably ties into the huge success I've had.  I didn't have to go work or homeschool or even leave the house for more than a few hours at a time.  I could really just focus on the basics around here plus eating.  For thirty days, I said no to grains, cereals, seeds, legumes, sugars, oils (with exceptions), and some other stuff that I can't remember now.  I ate eggs, vegetables, some fruit, a few cashews or almonds, and meat that looked like meat (like not lunch meat or cured meat).  I didn't worry about whether or not my meat was grass-fed or organic, but I did have to worry if it was cured or prepared with sugar.

Does it look appetizing? Ummmmm.... the jury is still out on that!  Satisfying? YES. I was full after eating only half.

The first five days were uncomfortable.  I would say "hard" but the creators of the Whole30 say that fighting cancer is hard, having a baby is hard, but quitting sugar is not hard.  I've had seven babies, six of them au natural, so I knew I could quit sugar.  Quitting sugar is very uncomfortable!!!  The easy part for me was 1) I already drink my coffee black, so not putting cream and sugar in my coffee wasn't a habit I had to break  2) I don't drink alcohol, so quitting alcohol for 30 days was not a problem 3) I already can't have dairy, so I had already quit cheese and yogurt and other creamy goodness.

The habit changing part is what blew me away...  I stopped eating mindlessly in front of the computer.  The rule about sitting down in a chair and looking at your food while you eat it was a real eye opener.  I found that I stopped eating earlier when I could see my food instead of a screen.  I always ate my breakfast and lunch in front of the computer.  Now I don't.  The other bad eating habits I had seems to slip away as I started eating food that left me satiated.  The snacking stopped when I realized it was okay to be hungry between meals.  And then I stopped being hungry between meals.

The thought that I didn't have time to chop vegetables went away when I realized that I actually have more time in a day now that I'm not peaking and crashing on sugar all day.  I'm not eating for as long during the day; it really only takes me about 15 minutes to eat, so my meals take less than an hour for the entire day.  I wake up with more energy so I don't have to linger in front of two 16 ounce cups of coffee each morning.  It really did take me one whole hour just to wake up each morning before I changed my habits and started chopping vegetables for breakfast!  And now I'm good on 8 ounces of coffee with none in the afternoon.

I no longer get immediately crazily hungry.  Now I feel a subtle signal that tells me I will be hungry in about an hour and it is time to start prepping.  I've never ever felt that signal in my life.  It was almost as awesome as when I first felt the urge to push when Fiona was born.  It was a sign that my body was working the way it was created to...wow!

I used to gag when Mark and his dad ate something weird for breakfast.  Tamales, chili, leftover spaghetti... what the heck? Normal people eat eggs, oatmeal, pancakes, and muffins for breakfast!  This morning I had leftovers for breakfast.  And it was leftover lunch from yesterday mixed with leftover dinner from last night.  And it was gooooood!  Imagine starting your day with tomatoes, red peppers, onions, mushrooms, green zucchini, yellow squash, eggs and ground beef. 

I have no immediate plans to return to easy eating.  I'm not quite sure that I would just slip right back into my old habits.  Sure, beans can't be too bad for you and I love chili.  But I don't like chili unless I add some grated cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and dip it all out with chips.  So I'll just not eat beans.  It would be easy for me to say, "Oh a little sugar in my teriyaki can't be too bad..." and then find little excuses here or there to keep slipping sugar into my meals.  I'm just like that.  I'm good at bending rules.  That is why Weight Watchers never worked for me; there were too many ways to break rules and cheat/reward yourself for your good eating by getting to eat badly.  I'm not going to be "Paleo" because there are way too many dessert recipes with Paleo-friendly ingredients that are still not good for me or my eating habits.  So for now, it'll be just meat that looks like meat, veggies, and fruit.

Daisy Day

Boys and Daisy Day.  Start HERE, in 2010, to see what Daisy Day is all about.  And then you can visit 2011 and 2012 and even 2013!

Looks like someone still loves me, although his love sounded a bit like a gruff, "Your Mother's Day present is me smiling on Daisy Day."  Good enough for me!

Shane didn't even bother picking a daisy.  He just held it.  He doesn't like letting the girls pick the daisies because he likes the way they look in the pasture.  They are pretty!

The two older boys had to get all this daisy picture stuff out of their system by running and wrestling.

I noticed that Ian managed to keep a hold of his daisies while he was giving Shane's face a grass bath.

But on closer inspection, you see that Ian was just holding on to his eye spliced rope with the monkey's fist knot at the end.  Ian has become the troop's knot-tying expert.

He is even making up his own knots!  (Go back up to the wrestling picture. You will see lengths of rope hanging out of his pocket. I love that. And now, a side story about knots: Evie and younger were playing parade with their stuffed animals and various wheeled toys we have.  They were having trouble keeping everything together, so Ian lashed all the stuffies in place and connected the cars using the proper knots.  He said Ami used to do thing like that for him when he was little, but she didn't know the right knots.)

Daniel enjoyed running around with his brothers and got in on the grass throwing too.  I had to trick him into smiling for this picture.  When I told him that boys who love their mama smile for Daisy Day, he threw his flowers on the ground and stomped on them:

I know he loves me as much I love him.  Which is so much our hearts hurt when we think about it.

While the boys were struggling with their kinder, gentler sides, the girls were happily weaving daisy chains and being agreeable:

They really are a nice balance.  I'm not saying that the girls are better than the boys though.  I celebrate every unique bit about them all.

Even our deer skull got in the spirit of things.  I've become quite fond of this skull.  Just finding something like this is rare.  But finding it TWICE?  Yes, it disappeared one night.  Right off the T-post for the clothesline.  I thought perhaps a cat knocked it down and then Jack reclaimed his bones and chewed it up.  Jack loves bones.  A few days later, I happened to be awake in the early morning and saw Jack prancing across the pasture with the skull gently held in his big pitbull jaws.  I called him to me and got the skull back!  I don't think he is going to fall for that trick again!  I think I'm going to hang it from the clothesline and use the antlers to hold socks or other delicates...wouldn't that be funny?

But where were the babies on Daisy Day? Both were sound asleep in their cribs. I probably should have been taking advantage of nap time to clean this place up; it often looks like a bomb went off in here.  But Daisy Day comes once a year and there will come a time when certain parties cannot be bribed to pose.  I plan to take advantage of every moment I can and enjoy the relationships I have with each of my kids.  The stuff will be on the floor when I get back!

Guardian Angels

I'm certain Daniel's guardian angel works overtime.  In fact, I'm certain he has a whole flock of guardian angels that work vigilantly twenty-four hours a day to keep Daniel from serious trouble.

"Is spray paint poisonous? I'm I going to die?"

How else can you explain the window not breaking when he threw a rock at an ant crawling on it? And that he didn't spray paint the house and chose instead the bush next to the house?  And he happened the lock the car door before he tried to open it while I was driving yesterday? 

Thank goodness I discovered The MOB Society.  I'm off to charge my Kindle and start reading my new book!