Feeding the Robots

My daughter is on a Robotics Team this year. They're building a robot. It's part of the FIRST Robotics Competition.

They get their challenge and kit just after New Years and have something like 44 days to build their robot for competition. So during this "build phase" they're open every day after school and on weekends. The kids come when they can. So parents provide the meals.

This is my first time bringing a meal. 25-35 students and mentors. Mostly high school boys (who might eat a lot) but then again many skinny nerd boys ;-) (maybe they won't eat that much) ... are they picky eaters? Will bringing veggies be a waste? I'm told there was a plate of cut up fresh veggies that didn't get eaten, and it keeps returning, day after day, looking sadder and sadder.

I decided to bring a chili buffet. Three big crock pots of chili. Well, four, if you count the smaller one to feed my family, who happen to also need to eat tonight.

One Buffalo Chicken Chili (think hot wings flavor), one traditional ground beef & beans, and one white chicken chili. I've got three huge "family sized" bags of fritos, and all the extras to go with chili ... I've got a heap of two liters to drink, and I'm bringing about 7 dozen big homemade chocolate chip cookies.

I don't know if it'll be too much or not enough. I don't know if I should've had a heat-and-serve pan of cheesy veggies and one of mac & cheese. I'm told there's always peanut butter and bread for the desperate. Everyone I've asked has said, "Hey, if you're bringing free food, and people don't like it, tough."

But, still. I'm a little nervous about feeding so many robots.

I want to be on their good side if they ever take over the world.

Holy Moly I'm Behind!

Look at that picture up there! The one in the blog header! Not only does it have my old blog name, which I sort of changed but didn't really, but also ... the "baby" in the sling is now 4 years old!And not only that, but It's missing AN ENTIRE CHILD! A child who is about to turn one year old!

It's almost like ... I've neglected my blog design!

Oh, right, I remember. I was going to revamp the whole thing.

Until I remembered how much WORK that would be.

What if I just re-do the picture and ... hm. I could PAY someone for a nicer design. One that's less cumbersome to edit and more stylish. I could muddle through something myself, with my latent artsy fartsy abilities, but they're pretty rusty and when I go into creative mode I tend to forget everything else in my life. Which doesn't really work so well when there's laundry, meals, dishes, school, and children already on my plate. But it's hard to decide to pay someone for something you know you could do, if given the time and attention. Not that it's about the money, it's more about the CAN do thing.

But wow, is that picture out of date.

I should make a new picture, at the least.

Look for that in the next ... um ... few years.

yeah.

In the meantime, here's the baby, in the leaves, from a few weeks ago. 'Cause I'm a little behind.

oh, ha ha ha, funny story. At least, funny in the sense of "What a dork I am!" -- Just now, after posting this, I went to edit the picture and I found the Christmas picture I was working on two years ago. No, 2006 was THREE years ago. That I never sent out. All of you who didn't get our Christmas Card two years ago, or three years ago, and thought you were rudely omitted from our list? No, I just didn't send any out. And same thing last year, except for the part where I even tried to work on the picture. Maybe I should start working on Christmas '10 right now?

Ten. And a half. Months.

And counting.

I haven't had my camera out much this fall. I'm missing countless Autumn leaves, interesting frost macros, and of course the speed at which this baby is growing up.

This isn't the best picture photography wise, blurry and grainy. But it's good expression-wise.

Here's two more, a blurry peekaboo around the door, and one of her crawling. She likes best to hold fingers and walk about the house, and the's cruising on furniture, but I have no pictures of those things, yet. :)

Vacation, all I ever wanted

We went up to the U.P. over Labor Day weekend for an extended vacation with family.

We had wonderful weather and a wonderful time.

I put some of my pix - mostly artsy fartsy ones - on Flickr.

You'll have to go there to see the rest.

My Second Race - Look at me go!

Ta da! I finished my second 5K race! And even made it with a better than 10 min/ mile pace!

I didn't run with a friend this time, and there was no packet pick-up last night, so I got there early, and then wandered alone feeling kind of stupid, not sure what to do with myself. I tried to keep walking for a warm up.

It was hard work - I have yet to be running and think, "Wow, this is easy!" LOL ... and it was hard to find my own pace while surrounded by others. I tried to listen to my muscles and not worry about people ahead or behind of me. I hit the iPod Nike+ button to check my pace, but since it was set for a 5K it told me the pace in minutes/km which meant little to me, so I just kept running.

I tried to push myself at the end, but I was tired and it was hard. And I was busy looking for my family. :-) I am so thankful they were kind enough to come cheer for me and see me run!! I love my family, they're great!

I wanted to have a "wow, she looks great!" sort of picture, but oh well, I guess running is just plain hard work and I don't look so great. I can live with that. LOL

In the end I ran about the same pace I ran on Monday's practice run, 9'51" per mile ... I'll post my official time when they post the results. I was 4th in my age group (8 women) which was nice to see.

Here's a little link to a video of me crossing the finish line - that's me in the lime-ish green:

Tiny little movie of my grand finish

Oooh, and I won a "major award" and got to pose with Lou E. Loon! A $5 gift certificate to a ... local sports bar restaurant. Um ... yay!?

All in all, it was a successful morning, I'd say.

And now I'm pooped.

**Official, Posted race time: 30:17.02** - whooooo!

Monkey, Monkey, Yeah

I took these pix awhile back but didn't get them blogged ...

here's a monkey I knitted for the baby, with floppy knotted arms to chew on...

And with baby...

Um ... for want of a title

I better just post instead of trying to think of a clever title.

Here's a pic from yesterday, iliacat and Seven dozing in the hammock.

I am obviously behind in blogging. I can't tell you how many pix I've taken that were planned for the blog but never got here.

Which would you prefer (the 3 of you still reading, that is) ... more entries, less pics? Or an occasional post with pix? I know that waiting to crop and upload pix "until I have a moment" is part of what is holding up the blogging these days. That and how slow my MT talks to my blog host, for some reason.

Anyway ... gotta run, we're slated for the spray park this morning ...

Oh! And ...

Seven is 8 months old today.

Becoming a Runner - some rambles

So I hardly remember the last time I blogged. Is anyone still reading?

I said months back that I was going to run ... started the C25K plan.

Then I got discouraged and quit.

Then I decided to give it another shot, training outdoors. Found I like it much better.

So ... I ran my first 5K race at the beginning of June. I did not run to *win* but to *finish* and run the whole way, not walk it. And to not finish *last* :-) - And i made all those goals! My whole family and some friends came to cheer me on. That was good. People were all very encouraging. There's another 5K at the end of the summer and I plan to run in it, too.

I am not sure I'll ever be fast. I don't seem to be getting any faster. Faster is hard. Maybe I could go for distance, instead. Run a 10K next year. Who knows. But for now, I'm still becoming a runner. I even bought a running shirt and supportive undergarments. In case it's the clothes that make the runner. They seem to make me feel more serious about it, anyway.

I thought running through the winter would be the hard part. What with the ice and snow and treadmill. But now that it's early summer I'm not sure how I'll make it through the summer. I don't like being hot and sweating.

And yet, for now, I'm pressing on. Reading books. Trying to think of myself as a runner.

In other news, we went back out to CT for another week, to stay with my sister in law and take care of her. It's too bad CT is so far away, I wish she were closer. It was hard to leave, knowing that she still needs the support and help. Not that she won't be okay, I know she'll be okay in the long run. But I would've stayed to keep easing the transition if I could.

Remind me to take some pix of my little baby love for you, she's still the cutest thing ever. She's sitting on her own, now. Rolling and pivoting. Not quite crawling. Charming everyone she meets. We sure love her.

I guess I better go get lunch. I'm hungry.

Oh, one more thing. I'm actually, finally, in the "Normal BMI" range for the first time since ... I think since Noodle was born. The running and walking has helped. Healthy eating has helped the most. I find that the same weight looks less good at 40 than it did at 25. I'll need to do some toning up, as well as lose a bit more. I feel like I'm only 1 step away from my unhealthy habits.

Health takes perseverance.

Connecticut in Thumbnail

My eldest daughter, youngest daughter, and I flew out to Connecticut to be lovin' on Linda after her surgery. Here's a few quick highlights on the trip -- full size pix are linked via Flickr:

Baby meets Beach - and - Linda, Seven, and I on the beach:

Rock Climbing Girl - and - Girl Winking in a Castle


The Castle Tower at Sleeping Giant State Park

Barking Fox on a Rock
this is what we woke to this morning

Video of the fox, barking!!!

Belated Catch-Up Pix

Astute Reader Peggy alerted me that my blog had gotten so hungry that it ate my last entries. It does that if I don't feed it every two weeks.

Here are some of the pictures I've taken intending to blog them - click to head to Flickr and see them lifesize. And if you've already seen them there, sorry! I got nothin' new for you yet:

Seven at just past 4 months - cute as ever, I must say.

A few flower pix:

The Birthday of Sputnik

Sputnik turned 6 today.

There was much Bionicle rejoicing.

And a cake with a dinosaur

A close up of the fondantosaur. I need both a new recipe and more practice with fondant. This was hard to work with and not all I hoped it would be.

Happy Birthday, Sputnik! I love you, ya crazy kid.

In other news, his ear seems to be healing nicely and he has, amazingly, not split it back open in the last week since the stitches were removed. Phew!

Sputnik Crash

We had our first unexpected stitches yesterday.

Sputnik was running through the house (see why we don't allow that?) and crashed into a small shelving unit that was on it's way from one location to another. Somehow he managed to make a 1/2" cut straight into the side of his ear, so that the edge of his ear was gaping open about 1/2". Not the kind of thing a mom can apply pressure to or bandage *shut* easily.

So off to Urgent Care he went, with Daddy.

He was very brave. After some initial wailing and tears, he recovered and was in quite good spirits. Before he left he said very thoughtfully to me, "When I get back I think I'll rest my ear ... playing the wii."

He was brave and in good spirits for the doctor, too, and it all went very well. It looks like he ended up with 4 stitches. He gets them out on his birthday.

When asked what he liked best about the trip, he said sitting in the waiting room (almost two hours?!) because he playing with Dad's iPod touch.

To keep the ear safe overnight that first night, they put a pad over the stitches, then another pad over that, then a giant pile of gauze, then wrapped the gauze strips around and around and around and around. It looked much more traumatic than the original injury.

He looks kinda down in that picture, but he wasn't. He was very pleased with his giant head wrap. He was just very busy watching a video and playing with a bionicle. He proclaimed his ear "feeling much betterer."

Here he is this morning, all unwrapped, and still very pleased with the whole event. He got a new stormtrooper out of the ordeal.

Perhaps he's plotting future injuries in order to get more toys. He's already asked for extra wii and "marshmallow" time to compensate him. I think ... I hope ... he's figuring out that his pampering part of the ordeal is also over.

He's a little video of the grand ear unveiling, if you've got the bandwidth to play with it. It's 676K. Because what's a trip to urgent care without a stop action video to commemorate it?

The Unwrapping of Sputnik's Ear

Got a Whole Lot of Love

Some Valentine's Pix for you... 11 weeks old ...

I also celebrated my birthday with my family. Chinese food, yummy pie, and a whole lotta love. I am blessed. And four years old, now ;-)

The Things We Do For Love

(just had to put that song in your RIMH)

Shocking Image Caught on ... hey, it's not caught on film if a digital camera is used, is it!

I'm just posting this for those of you who know me well enough to be seriously shocked. Yes, that's me getting doggy kisses. LOL. No, really, we've had a wonderful visit with Linda and Bindi and wish they could come more often.

One and a half months

Or six and a half weeks. Either way.

Not the dare devil mom this year

Another family invited us sledding. My children have been saying all winter "I hope we can sled with our friends again this winter" so I could hardly say no. And so we went.

I did no dare devil mom antics this year, since I had a baby in a sling inside my coat. Baby did fine, dozed through the whole thing.

There's many more pix on my Flickr space, but Seven says I can't take the time to post them now. So if you want to see more, go visit my photostream.

Probably the tired talking

I think I'm stuck between worlds. My world has a bunch of bad measuring sticks.

Today's measuring stick is baby sleep. If I were a good mother, my babies would sleep. If my babies would sleep, I would somehow be able to do the things that are important in life.

On one hand there's the nice scheduled world were mothers help their babies to sleep on a nice, regular, predictable schedule. Some do it by a firm commitment to crying it out. Others claim they don't really need to leave the baby to cry, baby just settles in to settling themselves. Mine certainly don't lead themselves that direction. And due to some weight gain issues with my oldest and never having plump babies anyway, the cry it out and strict schedule will never be for me.

On the other hand there's the baby wearing, co-sleeping world, where baby is always content with mom or dad or someone ... which would be great if you don't need or want any longer windows hands free and unencumbered. Maybe I'm too selfish to be a true baby wearing mom.

It seems like there'd be a middle ground, but I feel like my middle ground misses the best of both worlds; I don't have enough structure and regularity to feel like I can get what needs to be done, but because I keep trying to put a baby down for a nap, I don't have the happy la la existence of contentedly holding baby all the time. Instead I'll walk/nurse/wear her to sleep, put her down, nervously sneak away desperately hoping she'll stay asleep, and return a little wearier in 7 minutes when she's fussed herself awake.

If you're thinking, "But have you let her fuss, see if she settles down?" - yes, I have. Once in a great while she does settle herself back down. Usually she works herself up to true crying. Quickly.

If you're thinking, "But have you put her down tired but not nursed/walked to sleep, so she can drift off herself?" - yes, I've tried. See the answer above.

If you're thinking, "But she's not even 6 weeks old, cut yourself some slack ..." - that's a nice idea, but in my experience we're not really progressing towards better sleep for many months. In the meantime, the school needs, the household needs, grocery shopping, meal and clean up, child training, etc. marches on ... or, in my case, flounders on. When you are not a naturally scheduled/organized person, you're already living dangerously close to chaos, there's not much room for slack cutting.

and, in a semi-unrelated vein ... If you're thinking, "Kim hasn't answered any of my emails or sent me my thank you note, or sent me a Christmas card or birth announcement, or even let me know that she received my card/email ..." - I'm sorry. I guess that's where I *am* cutting slack, even though I shouldn't. I've never been a good letter/card writer, although I used to be an excellent email reply-er ... but being tired and discouraged and behind, I don't have the emotional energy to do those things. I know that's lame, how much effort does it take? But, like I said, I'm floundering. I'm not trying to make excuses for myself, I feel bad and don't feel justified. I'm just letting you know the sad reality.

And I can't help think that if I were a better mom, somehow, I'd have a better handle on all those things. I'd be showered and dressed before noon, for example.

Sleepless Nights

3 am, Seven was wide awake.

She napped well in the evening. I did not.

I'll let you guess which one of us is tired right now.

Sorry it's a little out of focus, I didn't use the flash.

Linda, she's snug as a bug in her Woof Zoot Suit. :) Thank you!

Now it's approaching 3:30 and she's fading a little ...

Gark Turns Twelve with Brownies!

Happy Birthday, Gark! Hard to believe you're 12 already! When did that happen?

It's a wise child who chooses a heap of caramel brownies instead of cake.

Although caramel brownies might just make the birthday boy a little logy. How many did he eat? And look at the size of that one!

they don't make you logy if you viciously attack them, though

whoops, my lame step-count is exposed! I better get walking!

For Linda

"Faces Of Seven"

She wouldn't smile for me, but she has a beautiful smile, her whole face crinkles up.

Color is off on the ones I didn't use the flash.

Click for full size

Big Brother Buzz

What's the Buzz all about?

Why is this any different than countless other happy big sibling new baby pictures?

Buzz hasn't wanted to hold Seven. He hasn't been acting jealous or angry or anything but pleased with her, he obviously enjoys her, but he hasn't wanted to hold her. Sometimes he's just been busy and indifferent, other times he's claimed he's too small, or she's too small. Once or twice when he's been curled up next to me I've moved her over so we've held her together, and he's been happy with that. But he's never asked, volunteered, or said yes when someone has asked him.

So this morning just the little boys were up and I needed someone to hold her just for a moment, while I grabbed something for them. Sputnik was busy and couldn't be bothered. I asked Buzz to sit in the corner of the Big Recliner, and tucked Seven into his lap. And the look of pride that lit up his face was delightful. He might not ask, and might not volunteer, but he was very very pleased to help out this morning.

It made my day.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful ...

Oh, the weather outside is frightful ...

But cookies are always delightful ....

And since we've no place to go ...

Let it snow,

let it snow,

let it snow ...

Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.

"Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
I get real frustrated and I try hard to do it and I take my time and it doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
It's like I concentrate real hard and it doesn't work out
Everything I do and everything I try never turns out
It's like I need time to figure these things out..."

So I've been working on a knitting project for months ... it started out with a concept for which I had no pattern and some changes I wanted to make ... I figured out in my head what I thought I wanted ... a long, tube-like stretchy knit "sock" with a hood, to snugly swaddle a new baby in.

My first attempt was a gift for my neighbor. I knit a 21" tube, then used short rows to curve around to the front for a hood. My initial big problem was that my binding off was too tight, not stretchy like the rib, and so the hood opening ended up being a non-stretchy face-sized hole.

Here's the first one, which my neighbor was gracious enough to put on her baby for a photo shoot as well as critique.

Here's my neighbor's Baby S. quite content and happy -- once he got into it.

In addition to the face hole being too snug, she also recommended making the body of it wider/stretchier, because it was a long way down the tube, a little difficult to get baby's head all the way into the hood. She admitted that it was difficult enough that she probably wouldn't put him in it again; I was thankful for the honest critique.

I had already started on Swaddle Sock 2.0 when she brought baby S. over in 1.0 -- and the 2.0 I was working on was stretchier, but with a much thinner yarn, so the overall circumference was less. (I thought I'd taken a picture of 2.0, but I can't find it. It looked like a very nice sweater sleeve.) I decided to put 2.0 on hold and start over again, with thicker yarn and more stitches for a wider-yet Swaddle Sock.

Which I finally finished, this morning.

I've been nearly done since a day or so after Seven's birth, but I was stuck on how to do a kitchner stitch graft at the end, to seam up the hood, if I was knitting in rib and reverse-stockinette. It took me a lot of searching and two sample swatches to figure it out. I'll post that discovery in another post, though.

Anyway, here's the finished Swaddle Sock 3.0

And here's little Seven, enjoying it muchly ... once she got into it.

The good news is that, once in it, she was snug and content and slept quite nicely.

The bad news is that, like version 1.0, even being stretchier and wider around, it was still a long squirmy road from the bottom end up to the hood. And newborn babies don't really like having their little faces covered up. As we struggled to gently pull it down over her and move her to the hoodie end, it twisted, so the hood ended up not facing front, so by the time we were all situated she was none to happy. Until I nursed her and she snuggled right down, quite pleased.

But if I can't figure out an easier transition to swaddled down in it, we may not use it much after all.

Maybe that's why there were no patterns online for what I thought I needed?

Baby in a Basket

Played with baby and basket and a camera for a little while today. Mostly to give it a trial run. I should probably give Seven a bath and some moisturizer and foof her hair before any "real" pictures ... some of the pix came out okay from a mom-taking-pix perspective, but grainy from a would-be-photographer perspective. I didn't try too hard figuring out and fiddling with settings, I took a bunch just on 'auto' today ...

Anyway, that's not the part you're here for, so I'll give you the important part, the best four pix. These are the little thumbnails from my flickr photostream, so click on them if you want the bigger size.

Love And Chicken

Pardon the belated entry ... my time at the computer has been one-handed and my brain is lagging about a week behind.

Friday was our anniversary. We'd already gone on our anniversary date a few weeks ago, just to make sure we got one in. But The Grand Lunar surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers!

Red tulips and deep blue irises (iri?) ... and an "I love you" balloon which almost got stolen as a toy, but i reclaimed as mine. :) The flowers came as buds, so it was nice to watch them unfold. I didn't take pictures of the unfolding, but I wanted to.

i am one very very blessed woman. I love you, Grand Lunar! Thank you for 16 wonderful years, 7 beautiful children, and a lovely surprise bouquet.

In other Love news, here's Tobi-wan holding his baby sister ... he's so gentle and attentive!

In "Chicken" news ... I have been thinking of trying to take some of those artsy fartsy sleeping newborn in a basket pictures. Only... I'm chicken. One, because I'm not really that great of a photographer, I don't really know how to deal with low light, no flashes, wiggly babies, things like that. And two, because I don't really have a photographer's studio type set up, with soft lighting, mysteriously blank rooms, and a plethora of baskets and fuzzy blankets. Plus our house is cold, and I don't want to freeze the baby.

Speaking of the baby, we're going the with blog nickname of "Seven" - since she's the seventh (of nine in our whole family, even) ... so ... if you happen to refer to her in your own writings or comments, if you would use her blog name rather than her real name, we'll keep her real name between those of us in the know, from now on. I'll be going back and editing out the real name from everywhere that's within my control.

Thanks!

Ain't She Sweet ...

You're probably all waiting for an update.

She's slept fairly well the last two nights. And pretty much all day. Sleepy babies are hard to wake. I remember Gark slept the 1st 2 weeks straight. I spent today nervously hoping she's getting enough to eat, with all the dozing going on. But that means she's also very content and pleasant these days. To the delight of those who adore just sitting and holding her. She does have some content alert times, too, just looking around at the world ...

Isn't she just the sweetest thing?

As for me, I'm still recovering. Hard to find the balance between returning to necessary real world tasks and not doing too much. It's tiring. But we're doing alright. :)

A quick link to pix on Baby Day

The Grand Lunar posted some very early (1st hour) pix

Sorry for the lag in updating here, I'm glad to see someone did for me :)

Welcome, baby 'Seven'

"Seven"
7:13 pm
7# 11 oz
19.5" long
and quite a bit of dark hair

Mom, Dad, and baby are POOPED. :) Baby quite literally as well as figuratively LOL

more news tomorrow.

Still with the labor

I'm not stalled, exactly, just not making progress much. What's up with that. It's like all my strong contractions are fake ones or something.

I've been here 24 hours (in the hospital) with almost nothing to show for the contractions I've had.

I got some tylenol for my headache, four crackers, and some more water.

We're starting a little bitty bit of cytotec orally to hopefully put a move on the contractions.

I am, otherwise, very very very tired of all this and if there were a way to *quit* I'd take it.

Still here, still waiting ...

ugh, it's the worst kind of report.

Yes, we're making a little progress.

No, it hasn't kicked in to high gear or started moving any faster.

We've tried walking, the shower, changing positions, lather, rinse & repeat. It's not like things are totally stalled. Just not really moooooving.

So ... that's all I've got to say for now. :) Thanks for your prayers and things!

We'll check in now and then. Writing "not much happening" reports isn't much fun, though. LOL.

The Last Pregnant Pic of the Season

BETTER be the last, anyway. 39 weeks, 1 day.

We have a plan now, midwife (she did start the mental clock after all) said she'd really like to seeeee me in by 4 pm, and we'll "see how things are going" which I'm sure translates to "we'll admit you and watch the clock" ...

So that's the plan. For now we're still piddling around. I did take a nice warm shower and maybe my contractions picked up some since then ... kinda hard to tell, sometimes, really. Certainly nothing I can't talk or type through yet. But there's some there ...

Anyway. Keep watching the tweets, I'll let you know if there's any news!

~~p.s. for the record, we'll have wifi at the hospital, so you may even get some pics fairly quickly, if all goes well and there's nothing too out of the ordinary after the birth.

I'm a little (or a lot) frustrated that things still aren't really moving, despite some hopeful times. Sure, maybe there's a lot of quiet work being done in there, but ... I'm not really feeling like I'm making any progress. So, as before, I'd still appreciate prayers that things would really kick in. I don't want to piddle all night through a slow labor ...

Shhhh let's keep it quiet for the moment

I think today might be baby day.

Wouldn't you think that after 6 other deliveries I'd really *know* ??

Two of my concerns are arriving at the hospital too soon and having to hang out while they "start the clock" because they don't like for one to labor on their time too long ... and also that them starting the clock will lead to the push for interventions.

I actually ran through a few scenarios with my midwife and was told they'd be okay with the fact that I'm not calling and rushing in right away ... so I'm not. I'm going to hang out here and keep an eye on things and wait for labor to progress a bit.

But if you happen to see this and would like to pray that things would move along in a timely no-intervention-needed sort of way, and that I wouldn't (ahem) wait TOO long to decide it's "real" and go in (who would do that?!?) I would appreciate it.

Don't worry, I'll keep you posted. At the very least, check the tweets over there in the little twitter box on the left. You can even go to twitter and sign up for the RSS feed. There's even away, if you're signed up there, to have any posts go to your cell phone. No, really.

Thanks!

hm. I suppose I should use this time productively, if I'm not going to lay down and try to sleep more?

~~~~

8:30 am update

well, I've been up for more than 4 hours.
I'm feeling a little - or a lot - frustrated and discouraged right now.
My water broke this morning, for sure, but labor hasn't really kicked in in earnest. I'm certainly having some contractions - some strong, even - but not all that regular or strong or getting closer together. I suspect baby is posterior and not really settling down in or turning, yet. There's some techniques I could try, but many of them suggest doing something for 3 contractions, or 5, or 10, and that in itself seems kind of discouraging to try when the contractions aren't regular and close together.

So anyway. I don't know. Prayers that things would start moving, or that baby would turn, or whatever, would be appreciated. I really don't want to end up being sent in, do nothing, and be labeled "failure to progress" - done that once before.

Two Firsts of the Season

Two first on the same day, even!

The first snowman of the season, scraped up by Eminoodle off the deck last night. He's only about 4" tall, and this picture was taken this afternoon where he's been liberally re-dusted with poofy snow.

And Iliacat had her first choir concert of the season. Her choir sang with another youth choir, the High School Girls choir, and the adult Chorale to perform John Rutter's Mass of the Children. They all sang beautifully. She's the one with the arrow pointing at her. :)

The Suited Mover Takes A Picture

Remember the suited brooklyn treadmill mover? Or perhaps the well-dressed window installer? An amazing Jack-of-all-Trades, he's also come through with a picture of The Grand Lunar and I at the dressy gala dinner thingie we went to on Tuesday. A grown up dinner date was nice. The Grand Lunar in a tuxedo? Priceless. :) (Don't forget to visit his blog in that last link, and tell him how sharp he looks, and maybe follow his twitters, too!) For the official record, I'm 36.5 weeks along in this picture.

We had a lovely time. But then, again, I always do when out with the Grand Lunar. He's the best date evah. Since we drove separately, I also got to hear others raving about the entertainment he apparently unknowingly provided on the way down. I think it's sweet, not only is he very funny, but he doesn't even really realize how funny he is. I love that Grand Lunar.

I do have to say, though, that besides the great date with my spouse, the thing I enjoyed 2nd most of the evening was the guy sitting at the table next to us, who laughed genuinely and heartily at all the jokes. I don't know why, but he made me smile every time he erupted in laughter. I'm glad he had fun, too, whomever he was.

Anyhoo, take a jump over the Amazing DeMo's blog and thank him for accomodating us with a picture from the evening. He's a much appreciated mover, installer, photographer, and friend.

And, if you're so inclined, since you're blog-hopping anyway, you could also stop by The Other Suited Mover's Blog, and tell him that you heard he pulled off quite the shebang -- he handled many of the logistics and details for the gala event and did an amazing job. I was particularly impressed that, when the Big Event came, he glided around smiling, taking care of details, never sitting down, but if he was stressed about it he didn't let it show. Being one who reacts like a chicken with her head cut off under the least amount of stress, I thought he did an amazing job of coming across calm, cool, collected, welcoming, and helpful, not to mention all the work he did for the event itself.

And Then We Were Home

Well, our vacation is over.

We had gorgeous weather -- no small blessing, considering we're talking Michigan's U.P. in October, which could really go either way. We could've had all rain, all snow, nice weather, or a little of each. But we had 5 straight days of beautiful weather and wonderful fun with our cousins. I really must admit I didn't want to come home.

Most of the pix are on the Grand Lunar's computer, I did steal a few. Here's one my sister took of our family up at Gnome Rock, standing just behind the 6' or 8' or something drop off that we managed not to have anyone fall off.

And, for those watching/waiting for belly pix, here's one that shows my belly at 32 weeks, with The Grand Lunar and Sputnik ~ photo credits for both these shots go to my sister - Thanks, Kelly!

Of course there were many many more pictures taken. I just haven't had time to weed through them and send the ones I want to my computer.

Oh, 40winkzzz , I don't think I'm officially supposed to call the place we went what I called it on twitter ~ it's a little piece of privately owned land near the camp where we stayed, it's not really a tourist place to just go to ... but it IS like stumbling on a magical land. I'll try to get a picture up later.

Anyway. We're home. Yesterday when we arrived home I had good intentions of getting us promptly unpacked and back on track, but we're only muddling through those intentions, poorly, now that today is here.

Arrrgh, me comments be comin' an' goin' but I think they be back

Arrrrparently me comments war corrupt'd again. But methinks th' Grand Lunar put them to rights again. I be hopin' they don't get corrupted again.

Anyway, here be pictures of our piratey day. Me apologies for not gettin' a picture of me eldest, I thought I had, but she must've snuck away.

The wee pirate:

The fearsome Sputnik:

The Jolly Tobiwarrrrrrghn:

The bonny Emarrrrnoodle:

Gark The Terrible:

The gory wooden eye:

And, o'course, the galley wench:

And So It Begins ...

The school year, that is. You know I was in denial all summer. Yet here it is, upon us. Apparently denial does not change reality. Who would've thought?

I'd like to pretend I'm busy and therefore not posting. And I am busier than I was. Really. With school and extracurricular activities, and church choir, and still all the usual household things to oversee. But mostly I haven't been posting 'cause I've been tired.

Turns out that getting up early, staying up and working most of the day, and going to bed late make you tired. Yeah. I know. I should get some sort of prize for figuring that out. Who knows, maybe walking more and being almost 40 and pregnant factor in, too. You never know.

But I'm still alive, in case you were starting to doubt that. I've even taken some pix for the blog. Imagine them: The third day of school (yeah, I know, most people take pictures of the FIRST day, but we were just trying to make sure we HAD a first day, way back then) ... the nice family walk to the local nature center ... stuff like that. But I didn't get any of them posted.

Since you have to imagine them, imagine a picture of us all sitting around the living room, cozy, reading together. The young ladies are knitting while listening. The boys are playing with blocks, but oh, so quietly, while they listen attentively. It is clean and comfortable, cozy, and everyone is learning so very much, and asking insightful and appropriate questions. Oh, and it smells like fresh baked bread.

Oh, I'm not saying that's the way school really goes, here. I'd like it if it did, but it doesn't. But since I haven't posted pictures of reality, that's the way I'd like you to imagine it. You may as well imagine me thin, too. While you're at it.

Put one foot in front of the other ... and soon you'll be walking 'cross the bridge

Our Labor Day excitement this year -- Iliacat and I got up at 3:30 in the morning and left at 4:00 am to drive up to Mackinaw City and walk across the Mackinac Bridge for the 51st Annual Bridge Walk.

For those not in the know, the Mackinac Bridge connects Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas and is, currently, the world's 3rd longest suspension bridge, and the longest one in the Western Hemisphere!

The total length of the Mackinac Bridge is 26,372 feet (5 miles). The length of the suspension bridge (the span that's actually suspended) is 8,614 feet (1.6 miles).

We arrived in Mackinaw City after driving through a beautiful foggy dawn, around 7 pm. We found a parking space - a free one, even - and then stood in a long but well organized serpentine cattle line.

We bought tickets ($5 a head) to cross the bridge on a bus, in order to walk back across and return to our car. If you happen to have someone to drop you off in St. Ignace and wait for you back in Mackinaw City, they would pay $3 each way, but the walking itself would be free. We rode a school bus in a long line of school buses while the first of the walkers came across the finish line. At the other side we wisely hopped into another line - for the last set of PortaPotties - before the end. There are huge banks of PortaPotties, but not ON the bridge, so once you get walking you're out of luck if you have to, you know, go. CattleLine wait - about 45 minutes. PortaPotty wait - about 45 minutes. Total line time - over 1.5 hours. But relatively pleasant, for waiting in line, really.

And then we began walking around 9 am.

Here's looking ahead at the bridge stretching out before us as we just begin, and iliacat very early in the walk, just as the bridge begins to be built up over the water

And here's me, walking the wrong way. Not really. I ran up ahead and walked backwards, trying hard not to trip or walk into anyone, so you could see the bridge behind me.

We got to walk on the grate part and see down through it. It was neat to see the water way way below, but also hard to look down and walk. Seeing the shifting perspective of the metal beams below made us feel kind of dizzy and like we were stepping off and falling. So we walked on it but didn't look down a lot

Just about to cross under the first support

And nearing the middle point - about 200 feet above the water

Around 10 am they closed one of the two open walking lanes, to accommodate southbound traffic, and everyone squeezed into one lane, causing a bit of walker-congestion and claustrophobia, while buses continued to bring people northbound to walk just feet from us.

The crowd evened out after awhile, and it was smooth walking to the finish. At the 2nd support we could see the photographers from newspapers up on the very top.

And then we finally came over, down, and up to the finish line.

Where we continued to walk, because we had to get back to our car, a mile away. We stopped ate some lunch and did a little shopping once we were back to the commercial area. My pedometer registered almost 6 miles of aerobic (continuous) steps which included the bridge and the trek into town, and another mile or two of standing in line and wandering around town steps. We bought some fudge to bring home, and a few little souvenirs - many things are on sale up there at the end of the summer! And we did not buy anything from, but were amused by this vending machine.

And then we drove home.

It was a good trip. If I could make just one change I would make the bridge a lot closer to home.

Lake Huron Evening

Yesterday we took a trip to Lake Huron. We attempted to visit a Lumberman's Monument and interpretive nature center outside of Oscoda, Michigan, but the directions and maps I printed were useless and wrong. Also, our GPS died. So we drove several hours from home, then in a big lost loop around the former Wurtsmith AirForce Base (at least, I'm pretty sure it's just a former base now) and saw no helpful signs or anything, and decided just to head to the beach. Oscoda actually has a quite nice city beach, and we played there for several hours, before heading home at dusk and getting home verrrry late.

Here's just a few pix of the splashing, leaping, digging, burying, and swimming that took place:

When we returned home I found different maps and directions for the Oscoda attractions we'd intended to see, placing them in an entirely different place than the first website had, so we'll try that again another time. It turns out it was the perfect day for the beach anyway. Note to self: Next time leave a little earlier, it's a long drive.

As a bonus picture, here's me at the beach, with my 26 week belly:

Samantha

My eldest daughter, Iliacat, was in a local play, a production by a neat group of homeschooled young ladies. It was a back-yard production for which they practiced all summer and did nearly everything themselves, with very little adult help. She did a wonderful job in the lead role, Samantha (from the American Girls books), and I'm very proud of her.

Here she is -- on the left, in red -- with "GrandMary" and "Aunt Cornelia"

And here is is, again, teaching Nellie to do some math:

We had a lovely evening, and she not only did very well but had a lot of fun.

Moon Rocks

The Grand Lunar fixed my CAPTCHA issue this morning! He's so smart!

The Grand Lunar ROCKS!

Whooooo!

Thanks, babe!

You may all proceed to comment. :-D

Toothless Tobi-Wan

Tobi-Wan lost his very first tooth yesterday. It wasn't shoved out earlier because the big tooth chose to come in behind it instead of under it. If we did the 'tooth fairy thing' he might have to save his quarters (or are they dollars, now?) for the orthodonist.

He also got to go to his first ball game. Which was rained out.

But he got to keep his toothless smile. Cute, isn't he!

And Then We Went to the Pool

Yesterday I was insane, and after a busy morning in the hot sun at the spray park, I took everyone to the pool.

Last Tuesday was pool day, but it got rained out, so I said we'd go Wednesday. But then last Wednesday through this Wednesday we were busy with the Window Guys, and I didn't want to pack up for the pool when we'd be gone when they were leaving.

So yesterday was the first day we could really go to the pool since last week's missed days. I haven't been much of a "pool mom" in the past - something about watching many children who aren't confident swimmers, plus the whole swimsuit modesty issue - I've usually tried to avoid it.

Anyway, we went, with Moogie and Poppie's help, and had a good time, despite it being quite crowded. We only dissolved into tears of exhaustion a few times, and I won't say which one(s) of us.

In a rare show of dial-up-friendliness, I've smallified the pool pix but each is a link to the full size one.

Oh, and for the record? Yesterday's pool hair was AWFUL. So much for my theories that pool hair is good hair.

Big Kids, Buzz and I, and Eminoodle walking in flippers:

Gark practicing his floating face, Gark splashing down the slide, Iliacat playing with Buzz:

Sputnik braving the Mushroom, Sputnik Swimming, Tobi-Wan braving the shroom:

Poppie giving a swimming lesson, Moogie serving snacks to tired kids, Iliacat going down the slide:

That, plus my bizarre sunburn where I obviously applied my sunscreen erratically, is all the news from the pool. For now. Until we brave it again.

Spray Park Morning

What do you mean I took 111 photos at the Spray Park? That's insane! Here's just six.

20 Weeks

20 Weeks ~ official Ultrasound time.

Judging from the fact that the tech stayed chatty, never turned away the screen and never got real quiet, I would guess things are progressing fairly normally. Baby is quite wiggly, it's amazing how something so small can be felt squirming so much.

Here are some pictures for your ultrasoundly pleasure. A profile 'standard' picture of baby, a creepy 3D ultrasound pic, and a really grainy blurry bad one of my 20-week belly. I guess I could've asked someone to take a nicer one for me, but in the end the camera-helpers were out and I decided just to do it. Maybe you can petition me for a better one. Or maybe I'll keep the blurry one so I can blame any bad hair and blemishes on the grainy bad quality.

Still Pooped a Day Later

Yesterday we met some friends at a local lake. We went here occasionally when I was younger, but they've outfitted it with a nice spray park, brick and cement walk way, lots of tables, and a nicely combed beach (we got to see the beach combing machine, although why they waited until 10:30 a.m. on a hot day to comb it is beyond me. They had to comb around our spot (see mom station picture below)). But even better than the nice, improved beach was how much fun the children had.

Here's the mom station, sans-moms, before it became a well-used conversation arc.

I wasn't sure my youngest would really like the beach. But he loved every minute of it.

Sputnik also gleefully splashing:

Tobi-Wan showing his post-ball-toss-form (the ball was so well tossed it's out of the picture)

Noodle demonstrating the Reverse Watering Can Hookah Splash Phenomenon:

The boys participating in an Epic Water Battle:

Detail from above pic, Gark getting well sploshed:

Iliacat laughing at the antics of some of the boys:

There were also light saber battles, sand castles, plenty of sunscreen, trucks and toys and buckets, and lunch. What more could you ask for?

No wonder I'm still pooped, today.

Gooooin' to a Picnic and we're gooooonna take Coooookies

did you sing that to the tune of "Goin' to the Chapel" ? If not, go back and sing the title to yourself.

Okay, thanks for humoring me.

We're off to The Grand Lunar's work picnic, just as soon as I get the little boys all in the same color blue shirts and get their grubby little hands as clean as possible. How clever of me to let them dig in the dirt to keep them busy while I finished getting the cookies ready to go.

Blueberry cookies? Who ever heard of such a thing?

And yet, that's what I made.

No one was allowed to taste them yet, so I can't tell you if they're wonderful yet. But the dough was wonderful (although I'm not saying how I know) and they sure smelled good.

We'll keep you posted.

'Cause that's my fun day ...

Everyone once in a while we do something just for fun. The whole family.

Today we went to Pizza Hut to use the library prize coupons the children had earned. The best part of that - even more exciting than the coupons - was the fact that the TVs in Pizza Hut were OFF. Blank. Wonderful! I hate those things. The worst part was that I came home to look up the nutritional information for what I ate, and apparently our Pizza Hut has some secret unpublished underground menu. Either that or what I ate does not exist and I'm soon going to wake up with a hankerin' for Pizza Hut. I should've known by the TVs being off that it was just a dream!

But wait, there's more!

After Pizza Hut (apparently I dreamed?) we went to a nearby town to play miniature golf on a lovely outdoor course with waterfalls and water hazards actual grass and rocks and landscaping between the holes, not just different colored astroturf. The children were amazed. Not that we golf at the other kind much, but that's all they could recall. We really rarely go miniature golfing.

With eight balls in play, and no phenomenal players, we did not move through the course very quickly.

Some people behind us swooped around, while many other times we sat out and let someone else go ahead. It started out breezy and overcast, and by the end was breezy but sunny and noses were beginning to turn pink. I hadn't thought to bring sunscreen, for some reason.

Here are some highlights from the event:

The Grand Lunar helping Buzz putt:

Buzz accepted this help exactly twice. Thereafter he exercised his Rights As The Youngest to hit his ball his way, carry it to where he wanted, and, place it right next to the hole to putt it in. Which, actually, moved the game along a little faster, so none complained. Here he celebrates his excellent putt:

Eminoodle, also celebrating an excellent putt:

The Grand Lunar showing us proper form and follow-through with one of his many excellent putts:

Here's where I made everyone line up and squint into the sun for a picture:

Being the camera-carrier, there are no pictures of me. Which, today, was a good thing, because windy miniature golf courses are quite the opposite of pools in their toll on curly hair. I left the house this morning with pretty good hair going on, but a few hours in gusty wind with unsecured hair did not make for a good hair day in the end. Here is a picture of my hair doing it's best Heat Miser impression, as seen in my shadow. Whether the wind is blowing it, or it's just stuck up like that from all the wind, I'll leave you to guess.

The Day Of Too Many FIREWROKS Pictures

Ahh, the Fourth of July. Independence Day. The Grand Lunar declared, somewhere around noon, that he would stay in his robe today, declaring his independence from clothing. But he did not stick around to be photographed.

Later we enjoyed dinner with Moogie and Poppie, complete with grilled burgers, potato salad, chips, cucumber salsa, corn on the cob, finger-food-veggies, and watermelon. I totally forgot to serve the popsicles!

Then we walked down to the local FIREWROKS* and played frisbee and hung around listening to the band and the singers until the show began.

Then I took too many pictures, as usual. I managed to narrow it down to just 11 to show you, and you don't really have to look at all of them I'll post the little Flickr thumbnails and you can click on the ones you want to see bigger or to go to the whole set of 11, bigger. Some of them aren't great but I liked them anyway, for one reason or another. Some of them you might not be able to tell why I liked them from the tiny preview, but that's okay. Maybe you'll never figure out why I liked them. Maybe the title of the photo will give you a clue. You never know! Some of them I took, some the Grand Lunar took. I can't give him credit for his, though, because once you come home, they all look the same.

*FIREWROKS! - There's place in town where a trailer pulls up, year after year, at the edge of the gas station, to sell fireworks. Only their big banner, hanging on the side of their trailer, for several years in a row, said FIREWROKS. You would think, with a fancy printed banner, that they could've insisted the printers do it right. But then again, maybe once you pay for it, it's yours, and they figured they better get their money's worth, reusing the misspelled banner, year after year. This year I kept forgetting to check and see if it still has a typo.

72 hours until I can pass out ...

Today is Eminoodle's 9th birthday!

Lemon Poppy Seed bread for breakfast

After making breakfast I ran out before lunch to pick up Iliacat from her play rehearsal, a few groceries, drop some breakfast bread off for the Grand Lunar, then home for a quick lunch, then out to see our cute old house, which is on the market with a sale pending and I asked a Realtor we know if I could maybe, please, please, go through and see it one more time. I don't know if it's been sold to "real people" or to the Powers That Be That Tear Down Old Houses Downtown To Turn The Area Into A 'Green Belt' and I didn't want to risk it being suddenly gone without one last good bye. My spiderwort and transplanted lilac we left in the yard were doing well. I loved that old house.

Anyway, I hurried home to make Eminoodle's birthday cake according to her quite specific instructions. Right down to candle placement. See the little diagram she made for me?

Then we had a hurried dinner (for Gark and I, anyway) - Aunt C handled chopping up all the fruits and veggies, which was wonderful. Then Gark and I were off for his opening night and my chaperoning duties. The first night went very well, from what I could tell backstage. If you're local, check Thursday's paper for a little blurb and some pictures! Unfortunately they don't post the pix online, but here's one someone else took -- Gark as Augustus Gloop, up on an 8' platform:

We made it home just before 10 to serve cake to Eminoodle and let her open presents. Managed to whoosh everyone into bed by 11 pm. Here's noodle with two of her aunts, C and L!

Three more nights, four more performances, and then I plan to collapse. Although my sister & her children are coming to town on Saturday, so I can only collapse for a little while, since we definitely want to play with them. I'll be glad to be off theater duty for awhile. It's been a busy last few weeks, at least for us. I can't believe there's people who are busy and running all the time like this!

And I suppose, on that note, I really ought to get some sleep.

Beauty In The Little Things -- An Entry In Two Parts

The First Part:

I have to confess, I have another blog - a new blog - with a very narrow focus. I haven't shared it with you because it's very new, in part, but also because ... hm. It's kind of hard to explain. I didn't really want it "out there" where people were surfing to it and stuff. Why not? Mostly because I don't want people to get the wrong impression. You see, the point of the new blog is sort of like a journal and idea place for myself. Trying to choose to put little bits of beauty into my home.

I spend a lot of time trying (badly) to clean and tidy. Hopefully you all know me well enough to know that. And of course you know my decorating skills leave much to be desired. The end result is that my house is far from "House Beautiful" and always will be. But I wanted to focus not on the BIG things like picking up toys and scrubbing spots on the carpet (not that I do that) and decluttering, but on the little extras. "Curlicues" that add a little whimsy or something special to the every day stuff.

BUT the result of blogging just those things, as a little inspirational and putting-into-practice journal for myself, is that it's a blog where you won't see as much of the REST of me. You'll see my nicest picture of by flowers on the table, or plant cuttings in water. I will have carefully cropped out the pile of blocks on the floor beneath, or wiped away the standard cheerio coating from the table. Because I want to focus on and remind myself of the little extras, not just get bogged down in the daily stuff which sometimes consumes me. But if you were to just stumble across my blog, you might think I had it all together, and my house was all picture-perfect artsy-farsty. I don't want to deceive anyone or inadvertently discourage anyone by only showing my well-cropped good side. I've read too many well cropped good side blogs, myself, and know I am often discouraged by them. And I'm not putting them out there to show off that tiny part of myself, but more for myself, as journal and inspiration. Working on the little things also reminds me to do the daily things -- flowers on the table don't make a lovely home if lunch is still abandoned on the table, you know?

But then I don't want to hide those things from my family and friends who do know me and might enjoy the 'curlicue' journey with me, by keeping the blog a total secret. I'm too much an extrovert for that.

So. If you're interested, pop me a comment that includes your email address, and I'll let you in on the Top! Secret! Blog! -- just don't go thinking I'm all artsy and decoraty and got it all together.

And on to Part Two:

Beauty in the littlest things of all:

The Newest Addition to the AndFam collection, shown here at almost 13 weeks on May 29th, due to arrive in early December. You can't tell here, and I can't tell yet, but it proves to be a very wiggly addition.

Violet Jelly

Eminoodle and Moogie saw great potential in our yard-of-not-grass. Each spring our yard turns into a violet field. Moogie mentioned to Eminoodle that they should make violet jelly with all those violets, and Noodle was off to surf up a recipe and pick a heap of violets.

Here are the results of our first small batch.

We don't know how it tastes yet, but it sure looks pretty!

There's a few more artsy fartsy jelly pix at my Flickr photostream if you want to see more.

Turning Three

Today my youngest child turned three.
I've never been able to say that before!

We had a wonderful day with chocolate chip peanut butter muffins for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and McDonalds with the PlayPlace for dinner. Buzz had never been there as a mobile old-enough-to-play child (deprived, I know) so he was thrilled. I think he might have been intimidated, were it not for four very enthusiastic older siblings.

We wrapped up the day with gifts and ... what else? ... monkey cake for my monkey boy. Well, one of my monkey boys, they're all monkeys, really.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Buzz! We love you!

And The Boy Turned Seven

I think I've done a poor job getting birthday news and pix to the blog this past year. Of course we did celebrate and take pictures for each child's special day ... I just don't always get them to press ...

anyway, yesterday was Tobi-Wan Kenobi's seventh birthday. Hard to believe it's been so long!

His day started with Strawberry-Banana bread* with white chocolate chips. Mmmm nummy!

And ended with some presents (cool Spiderman skateboard not pictured) and cake ... a robot cake!

I stumbled across the cake at Instructables.com -- I wasn't familiar with the robot, but he was cute enough and easy enough. I did take some artistic license with him, but less than I usually do.

*The Strawberry Banana Bread with White Chocolate Chips was a hit, so here's the recipe for you ...

Strawberry-Banana Bread with White Chocolate Chips

modified (of course!) from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Strawberry-Bread/Detail.aspx

INGREDIENTS:
1 pound fresh strawberries, sliced -- about 3 cups
3 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 bananas
1 cup butter, melted (hey! it was a birthday treat!)
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cups white chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter and flour two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans (I used one 9x3 and one 8"x2" heart pan)
2. Slice strawberries, and place in medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle lightly with sugar, and set aside while preparing bread mixture.
3. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and white chocolate chips in large bowl: mix well. Blend banana, then add melted butter and eggs, then mix in strawberries. Add flour mixture into wet ingredients, blending until dry ingredients are just moistened. Divide batter into pans.
4. Bake for 35 to 50 minutes, or until tester inserted comes out clean. (Heart pan was done in about 38 minutes, 9x5 pan cooked 50 and fooled me, it wasn't quite done) Let cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn loaves out, and cool completely.

Mmmmmm it was very tasty

if I were to do it healthify it, I would probably reduce or even eliminate the butter and add more banana, halve the sugar (bananas sweeten it, too, it was quite sweet), and maybe use half white whole wheat flour. :) And substitute flax for the eggs.

Maybe I'll even do that on Monday.

April Fools Food!

A few years ago my friend Katie introduced me to the April Fools Food ideas at familyfun.com ...

So this year it was "apple pie" for dessert -- you won't find that one at the above link, I made it up -- and spaghetti & meatballs & garlic bread for dinner. Or wait, the other way round. :-)

The Main Dish:

Apple Pie made with chicken and potatoes. It looked amazingly realistic, if I do say so myself. I made a clear gravy sauce. The only thing that didn't turn out was that I couldn't get the pieces out in neat picture-perfect pieces (I have that issue with real pies, too) so I don't have a plated with mashed potato "ice cream" topping to show you ...

And Dessert:

The meatballs are chocolate covered donut holes. On hindsight reflection, I wish I'd gone with the chocolate *flavored* clear glazed donut holes, instead, because these were too dark. And I'm not totally happy with the transparency of the jelly spaghetti sauce.

Like other years, the meal was quite a hit for novelty's sake, but not so much for enjoyment. The Grand Lunar assured me the pie was actually very good, but the kids, being NOT-fans of potatoes, weren't so impressed. Sometimes you have to sacrifice happy palates for the art of foolery.

For anyone interested in making such things:
I used regular store bought pie crust, cut up poached chicken pieces, cut up canned white potatoes, and a cornstarch-thickened gravy for the pie. It would've been much better with homemade crust, but I was in a hurry.

The spaghetti has a single layer cake cooked in a bowl (for the mound shape) covered with round-extruded frosting, with the donut hole meatballs and mostly strawberry jelly (I added a little apricot, and a little food coloring, to bring it closer to what I'd envisioned). I was going to make cocoa-cripsie "meatloaf" meat balls from the other familyfun.com recipe, but didn't have time. I really should plan this ahead a bit more. Shopping the afternoon of April 1 limits my creativity a bit.

The garlic bread is sliced pound cake with yellow-tinted frosting and some green sprinkles mixed in before spreading.

Next year I should really do it on March 31 or something, since the children have come to expect it and were hoping to be food-fooled.

Old but colorful news

We went to the butterfly exhibit the 2nd day it was open. Most of my pictures are just like everyone else's, so I spared us all the cropping and posting. But I will share a few.

I did get this pretty cool closeup of a Buckeye that perched on Eminoodle's hat:

click on it if you want to see it even closer up at flickr ...

Buzz liked them - except when they landed on him:

And, while this isn't a dazzling photo, it was exciting ~ one landed on me, way down here by my thigh, and worked its way all the way up to my shoulder, over my back where I couldn't see it.

on the way out, the girls and I - who were walking home - jumped off the ledge for awhile. I really wanted to do this on LeapDay, but was a bit late.

I should jump more often, I like mid-jump hair. And do you like my new "girly" coat? And how it matches my boots? I'm quite pleased with them. :-)

Last colorful news doesn't fit with the rest, it's the old "hack it into the same blog entry or it'll never get posted" routine.

WAaaaaay back in 4th grade we had a chalk drawing assignment. It went to tour somewhere, as Elementary school Art is known to do. There wasn't a mall in town way back then, so maybe it was the Big City Mall a half hour away, or maybe it was one of those cool Mezzanine Library Art Shows I always loved. But anyway. After it was gone, my art teacher said someone contacted her because they wanted to buy it. As a budding artist, I was thrilled. She helped me set a fair price, and I never saw the picture again. I didn't forget about it, though, once in awhile something reminded me of those old days when I thought of myself as an artist, and that I had actually SOLD a work of art.

So anyway. Back in the dead of winter '08, on some bitterly cold day, I got a phone call. Some lady said she had just talked to my parents, and had been at an antique show / flea market. Well, if you know my parents you would have hung up right there. We all know they weren't at a flea market or antique sale. But I didn't hang up. Turns out SHE was at a show, with her friend, and her friend saw this framed chalk drawing. And looked on the back. Where it still had the original school art display sticker, with my former name, address, and phone number. So the lady bought it, took it home, and sought to reunite it with the 4th grader who made it. Fortunately for me, my parents still live at that phone number, and gave her mine. She gave me the drawing for free, happy to reunite it with it's owner.

So here it is! Are you so curious?!?!

I'm sure some of you are struck by the smudgy nature of chalk, some of which was at the advice of the art teacher, as I recall, and you are thinking, "messy."

Others of you, surely, are struck by the delicate artistic balance and signs of budding genius (like the clever signature, complete with exclamation point!) Uh huh.

And the rest of you are stuck thinking, "What IS that?!" because you want to understand and it looks a little abstract, which bothers you. Right?

It's skunk cabbage!

Skunk Cabbage!

nifty, eh?

So now you know a famous artist.

Er. An accomplished artist.

Yeah.

As a result of the return of this work of fine art, I will in the future need your decorating advice. But not today, all this typing is too much for my poor weakened state.

Not So Good On The Swish

I went to the dentist today. You'd have thought it was my first time or something, I was such a dental-doofus. We had a new hygienist, and she was very nice. But she'd squirt my teeth with water and I'd close my mouth to do the swishy thing and *glorp* I'd somehow spew water all over. Not once. Not twice. Not even three times. I lost count of how many times I spit - not dribbled - trying to close my mouth.

I'd think maybe she underestimated the volume of my mouth, but ha ha ha ha we all know that's impossible. I have a very big mouth. People have been telling me that for years.

So anyway, when you're sitting tipped back in a dental chair and you spit, it does not dribble neatly down onto the paper bib stylishly clipped around your neck. Rather, it splatters you in the face as if to say, "You really ought to know how to swish by now."

And then, when the dentist came in to poke and prod at my teeth, he said, "How are you today?" just after she filled my mouth with water. Did I wait to reply? Oh no. I politely responded, "glllrrrlrrgg" and spit more gurgled water around the room. And quite possibly nearly drowned, I'm not sure, I was too embarrassed to notice.

I'm sure next time they'll make me wear an extra big bib with "DentalN00b" emblazoned across it.

Doesn't "No Bake" mean "Easy" ??!?

I've operated most of my adult life under the mistaken assumption that because they're "no bake", No-Bake Cookies must be easy.

Why else would someone invent cookies that you didn't need to bake, if not to make life easier on the cook?

I held that believe until I tried to make them.

Because, like brownies from a box, it turns out no-bakes are one of The Grand Lunar's favorite treats. And I figure a good wife ought to, at least occasionally, make her husband's favorite treats. Right? And what could be easier than no-bakes?

Turns out they're not called "Easier Than Cookies Because You Don't Bake Them" for a reason. They're not baked, but they are cooked, on the stove. And they're actually trickier than cookies. At least for me they are. Maybe I'm a mutant.

The first time I tried to make them, they didn't set up. They ended up floppy, gooey, barely-holding-together blobs of chocolate syrup and oatmeal. Some friends sent me recipes and suggested it's all in the timing of the boiling. So I've been very careful ever since. And, usually, they turn out okay, but they always make me nervous. Like I'm making some tricky fancy gourmet thing that only accomplished chefs can handle. I'm always relieved and immensely pleased when they turn out.

So last night I decided to make some more. They might not be easy, but I had shown myself to be an accomplished chef who could handle them. Or so I thought.

It was looking fine right up to the very end. When I dumped in the oatmeal. And then - SHAZAM! - for some unknown reason the chocolatey syrupy part seized up and crystallized into a crumbly lump. Almost like dryish chocolate granola. Which isn't a bad idea, but wasn't the plan. In desperation, I tried to press it into a 9x13 pan, hoping it would hold together better if pressed down, since dropping into cookies was clearly out of the question.

The result was ... crumbly chocolately granola like stuff squashed in a pan.

What EVAH.

Apparently I am not the accomplished no-bake chef I fancied myself.

But, being the crazed mad-scientist chef that I fancy myself, I do have crazy half-thought-out plans to rescue them. We'll see if I can do it. I'll let you know. And, for the record, they do taste just fine. Which is, really, more important in the long run, isn't it?

In my defense, also, the low fat, whole grain banana bread I made this morning turned out quite well.

phew!

Same Snow, Slippery

Well, it's been bitterly cold, but the public school kids have today and tomorrow off, and the neighbor was going sledding, so we joined them for awhile.

These two still pix are compliments of my neighbor -- excellent work, Susan! I wish mine had turned out as well. I was busy taking videos, and didn't get in many still action shots before cold little ones and a head bonking sent me home with 2/3 of the children. My mom stayed with the other two for a bit more fun.

Susan's pics ~ Eminoodle going over the drop, and Iliacat in action:

If you want to see some video, here are YouTube links to:

Gark from above, going over the drop (5 sec - 228 K)

Gark from below, going down the lesser drop (5 sec - 220 K)

Iliacat going down the long run (8 sec - 360 K)

Me, going down screaming (8 sec - 328 K)

The Mom's Eye View of sledding (10 sec - 420 K)

Hard Hats Not Required - Now With Ham!

My mom had a neat idea while we were at their house yesterday.

Her mini marshmallows were just a little stale, and she had appropriated some of Poppie's toothpicks from a project he'd done with a Youth Lay Speaking retreat. We modified the project to suit our group.

Our assignment: Build things out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

This was one of the days where the candid pix delighted me even more than the posed ones. But here's a little of both:

Tobi-wan laying on the floor next to his self-made Tobi-Robot:

And Buzz wanting in on the floor-laying-photo-shoot. Would you like a little ham with your tower?

Mom and I took up the challenge to see how tall a tower we could make.

Here's mom after adding the final spike to hers. Where do those kids get their hamminess from?

The marshmallows made it tough to build very high before things got wobbly. Originally we were trying to beat Poppie's claim that the youth could only build about 1' tall ... as we worked, Poppie came through and mentioned more and more ridiculous rules they'd used that we hadn't. Like only using your 'other' hand (left if you're right handed) ... and working in teams ... and only having 15 minutes.

I was glad we hadn't started with all those rules, I would've quit before I started. Using both hands, not having to coordinate a team, and having as much time as we liked, Mom and I were both able to make structures around a foot and a half.

And then we piled her structure on my structure.

Look, it's as tall as my extended fingertips!

Yes, Yes, I know I look like a dork in that picture. Apparently hamminess does not skip a generation. Why am I doing that next to the tower? Because I'm mimicking this picture from my past!!

This is Randy-the-neighborhood-kid and I with our very tall block tower when we were 4. Nice outfit I'm wearing, eh? It was purple plaid.

Okay, really, ours wasn't that tall, I'm squinched down and it's on the table. Here's me leaning to get out of the picture before the tower tips over. I'm not pregnant, and not fat. Well, not that fat. I'm leaning. Leeeeaaaaning.

But really, the combined tower held up pretty well, even when iliacat carried it around the house, balanced on one hand. Can you spot the ham in this picture?

Or the ham in this picture?

Does it look like Buzz is building in the background of that last one? Look closer. He's just eating the building materials.

When we were all done, the marshmallows were divided up amongst cups of cocoa. A good time was had by all!

Thanks Mom!!!

Building A Habitat for Monkeys

Today we built a monkey habitat!

Here's the sweet 'n sappy version (the one I made):

And here's the wacky quickie version (the one The Grand Lunar made):

And here's the boring static final-result images for those of you unenthused, unwilling, or unable to view the movies:

And, lastly, the link to the teeny weeny soundless quick version for the DialUppy Friends (348 K)

6' Dome Kit from www.domeclimber.com

Sledding on Christmas Eve Day

We had just enough snow in the wee hours of Christmas Eve to make for good sledding on Christmas Eve Day ...

the kids had rolled and abandoned a snowball the week before when we'd gotten a heap of snow, and it ended up being perfectly placed for a ramp ... subsequent melting and refreezing made the ramp solid and strong for even the parents to jump the ramp ...

All these pictures are compliments of my sister, Kelly ~ thanks, Kelly! They turned out great!

icat hitting the ramp:

eminoodle going down on the ancient plastic roll-up sled:

tobiwan on the slopes:

sputnik going with me:

sputnik alone:

me going over the ramp:

And, if you realllllly want to, you can see the little video of me going over the ramp...

Let's see if I can embed it!

Oh, and last but not least, our Christmas Eve picture...

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!!

First Performance of the Season

Today was the first performance for the girls' Youth Honors Choir season!

click for larger picture

Iliacat performed both this year and last year with the Ensemble, which is the middle group in the age range, 5th - 7th graders, in the royal blue shirts.

Eminoodle performed this year, for the very first time, with the Singers, the younger aged group for 3rd to 5th graders, wearing turquoise.

if you'd like, here are two short clips of each choir singing. The Grand Lunar took these from quite a distance, so I was pleased with the sound and video quality over the distance:

Noodle's choir - click for a link to the movie:

Iliacat's choir - click for a link to the movie:

The Fourth Day ~ And Meanwhile ...

Today was OrgoDay4 ...

but lest you think all I've done is work hard (well, I think you all know me better than that anyway!) I threw in some more of what's been going on.

Yesterday it was leaf-heaping:

Tobi-Wan floofing leaves on himself:

Low in the leaves he lay, Garkie the Jedi, waiting the coming Sith, Garkie my son...
Up from the leaves he arose! With a mighty triumph o'er his foes:

Three Monkeys in a leafy nest:

and tonight was Tent Night:

A tent in the living room? How can that be?

They even get to sleep there:

Um ... except they're not sleeping. Yet.

But you're still wondering about OrgoDay4, aren't you?

Today we moved on to the family room and living room. I decluttered quite a few videos (after beginning the morning explaining why I didn't need to get rid of any, ha ha) but I didn't get pix of that. I was supposed to do a filing cabinet, but we moved on to toys and that took longer than we imagined.

The toys. Oh, the toys, toys, toys, TOYS!!

Too bad I didn't have a picture of the cabinets before.

Hollie began by ... *gulp* having the children DUMP all the toys into a huge heap.

A huge freaky heap of all kinds of toys, mixed together. This is just a small piece of the heap.

We even brought up some of the toys in the basement, and the toys from the kids rooms, and put them in the heap so nearly all the house's toys - and all the upstairs games and puzzles, were out on the floor at once.

Here's the cupboards, emptied, with their contents barfed out in front of them:

It brings to mind the near-end of Cat in the Hat, where the children say, "This mess is so big, and so deep, and so tall, we can not clean it up. There is no way at all."

So little Buzz took a SpiderMan break, and I took a PhotoOp break. Since he was leaping the whole time, none of the pix are great. Here, he leaped right out of the photo frame.

So anyway, the toys. She wanted us to take that giant heap and to sort it into bins, and then declutter.

The worst part was that the decluttering was slow, and Hollie had to revive me twice, plus give me several pep talks on the value of decluttering and a sparsely-toyed home. Which was fine, but then we ran out of time. And she had to leave. Before the mess was done. Leaving me to do some on my own.

::blink blink:: did you catch that? On. My. Own.

It was too much for me.

Okay, I'm half kidding. We got through the toys, and she really didn't want to leave without it being done, I could tell. But she needed to and I boldly reassured her that not only would I not die, but I would sort through the puzzles and games returning odd pieces to their games and making sure puzzles have all their pieces and stuff like that. I decluttered some, and then neatly put away all the things that weren't quite done that we could finish tomorrow.

So, even though it's not Hollierginized, and it's not done, it looks pretty good, don't you think?

Maybe there's hope for me after all.

One hat, two hat, green hat, blue hat

I've been knitting some hats, LittleD (didn't we say we were going to find him a new blog name? Hmmm) asked me to knit him one, and my dear friend Robin (hi Robin!) had sent me some beautiful blue and green yarn. So I found two patterns (because I can't knit just one!) and I got started. The first hat turned out to be too small for LittleD but I was hoping it would fit Buzz, rather than frog it and start over. And it does. Barely. So I started in on a 2nd, bigger one. Which might be a little big. But the boy's head will grow, right? Apparently I really really don't like to frog.

Oh, I forgot, the yarn & pattern info. I can't tell you the yarn because it doesn't have it's wrappers but it's a worsted weight variegated color yarn, and I'm pretty sure it's acrylic.

The base of the hats are this pattern: Maggie's Rags Tassled Hat
But instead of two points, I decided I wanted to try three, like this pattern: Iceland Printed Wool Baby Hat

So I followed the first pattern as written, or at least I thought I did, but when I was almost done and re-read it I realized I was doing the waffle stitch wrong - I somehow didn't process row 3 and 4, so I was just doing rows 1 and 2 - so instead of my knit-into stitches alternating their position, they lined up, making fatter lines. Which I like, so that was cool. But on hat #2 I did decide to try it the right way. Oh, and the first hat was a little too small to knit on circular needles, so I ended up needing to learn the two-circlulars thing, which worked out well, but I like the larger hat on one set better. I could do the two-circulars to make socks or something, but I am pretty sure I'd prefer the 3-4 dpns for that, having done that already.

Then, when I got to the end of the hat, instead of stitching it across into 2 points, I divided it into 3 and kitchener-stitched to 3 of the end of each point, then did the icord thingie as listed.

Both hats look chunkier in their pictures than mine turned out, despite using worsted weight yarn and the same size needles. On the 3-pointed picture I think it's because their hat was tinier yet. Anyway, I like how the hats are turning out, and fairly pleased with my combining of the two patterns.

So anyway, here are the two hats together, the finished and the half-done larger one. Note how differently the yarn lines up on the 2nd hat, it must be just the right circumference for the striping pattern. Funky.

one hat, two hat
green and blue hat,
this one is a little small
this one's in a big big car

Yeah, I really held up the blog entry an entire day to put all those pics together into an animated gif. Excellent use of my time? Perhaps not. That's Buzz in the little hat, enjoying it in the car on the long and bouncy ride back from Wisconsin. Which, for those of you who might not know, is pronounced Wis-GAHN-sin. Anyway, I hope that picture doesn't give anyone a seizure.

Holding up the blog entry wouldn't normally be a good deal, but yesterday I was flying high on paranoia, having read my wonderful friend Face to the Sunshine's blog (isn't that a great blogging name?!) about occasionally cleaning up her links and how we shouldn't be offended if we got cut, and it struck fear in my heart, I was sure she was preparing me for getting cut. Which, really, is fine, because everyone should have the right to change their links as they see fit, I agree wholeheartedly with that. But still don't want to know I'm being cut, LOL. But today I see that I'm almost tenured there, LOL! So I'm safe. Now if I could just shake all the paranoia and anxiety clouding my interpretation of the rest of the world, I'd be all set.

I still have something deep to blog about, but that'll have to wait, so the hats have their moment of glory.

as a side note: I want to make one of those little sidebar thingies that measures the progress of my knitting projects, but I really want to re-do the entire blog, and that's a big undertaking ... ramble, ramble ...

So ... back to LittleD, who originally requested the hat that started this post. What should we change his blog name to? It's the 50th anniversary of Sputnik's launch this week, should we change him to Sputnik? That would put him in space with The Grand Lunar, and he does barrel around like a frantically launched rocket sometimes ... what do you think? Does it fit? Or should I hold out for a better blog name?

While We Were Gone - part 1

so we were gone, on a trip to Wisconsin

we saw family, friends, and other friends

it was a good time, but tiring. I crammed a lot of plans into a few short days. And bookended it with all-day driving for the other two days.

One of the things we did was meet some friends for a cornfield maze at Treinen Farm near Lodi, Wisconsin.

We arrived before most of the group, so the children played in a big "sandbox" of dried corn. It had a big corrugated plastic slide which apparently was really cool.

Some of the children in the corn:

Buzz in the corn:

The corn maze was 15 acres !!!! In the shape of an enchanted castle! Pretty gihugic!

The above picture was taken from the tower at the edge of the maze. You could climb up and look down on the maze. They had big flags on poles that you could carry, to look for your color nearby if you were separated from the group. We didn't take a flag. But we didn't lose anyone, fortunately.

They gave us one portion of the map, and there were places marked on the map to find another piece of the map. They also gave us an emergency map that we were not supposed to open, and you'd get a prize or something if you found all the pieces and didn't open the emergency map and found your way out. It was pretty neat. We let the children read the map and lead and they did very well! Better than I would've done. Once you were in the middle of the maze, the corn was tall and the maze walls were "thick" and you really couldn't tell - without the maps - where you were.

Here's the Grand Lunar, as seen through the corn.

The cell phone service was poor out in the cornfield boonies, but the child-signal was a strong 6-bars. I really wish this picture had come out better, but oh well. Maybe someday I'll get some artsy fartsy group portrait done like this.

Anyway, it was a nice visit, I'm glad we went. I had a lot more pix but I don't want to bog people down. Plus, I'm tired. So maybe I'll do another installment later. We'll see.

addendum, at Karen's request ~ yes, we survived! We had to backtrack a few minor times, but were never lost and never had to open the emergency map. The prizes were confusing, there were extra secret spots where you could get hole punches and if you got all the maze pieces and the punches you got some other-other prize, and we were sort of confused at the end because we survived but had no extra punches. So ... maybe we could've claimed something but didn't? I was just glad to emerge with the same number of children I started with, no more, no less.

I'm such a doofus

So you might be wondering, what is Kim doing blogging on a Sunday morning?

Well, here's the thing.

First, we decided I should only take the children to 2nd service. The Grand Lunar is running the Big Screen, so he's always up early and long gone and unavailable for directing traffic and getting kids to their proper classes and all that on Screen days. And then our church is doing some sort of ... family adventure ... today.

Do you ever have an idea that you think would be really great ~ say, for example, a day (or month, or season, or long-term plan) where your family not only worships together in the service, but also has a class all together, geared towards whole families?

And then you hear that other people would like that, too.

And then you hear it's actually in the works -- just one Sunday, sort of as a trial.

And then you hear that ... the plan is ... to have a whole bunch of different classes and 'adventure activities' and that during the Class hour you'd choose not one class but three separate activities and shuttle your entire family from class to class not just once but three times? In busy hallways filled with other entire families doing the same thing?

And then you read the list of adventure opportunities and find that, for the most part, they are either entertainment-geared-for-little-ones, games, or lessons geared for older children. You can't find three that seem to be good teaching times geared for the whole family.

So anyway, between being one-parented for the day and also having two extra whole-family-shuffles to do, plus not really feeling the need to go to church to be entertained, you decide just to go to second service ....

Although I do feel kind of bad, having advocated for the family-integrated class idea, and then bailed out on it when it is being attempted. But, to be honest, getting everyone to church and keeping them paying attention and trying to teach them to delight in it not for it's entertainment quotient, but for the value of the Word and the Spirit in our lives, is difficult on a normal Sunday. I just do not have the energy to add complexity and entertainment to the mix.

Aaaannnyway, that part doesn't really explain why I have time to sit here blogging. Because, in any normal given case, if we don't have to be there until late, we'd sleep in, dawdle, scramble, and still be late.

Which is what I thought we did.

Somehow I got it in my head that something-fifteen was when the first service/classes ended, and that we should arrive around what became, in my head, 9:30 so as not to be late. And of course we had no time for that. The last minute scramble, as usual, put us about 20 minutes later than I intended to be getting in the car, and despite the extra whole service we'd had, we were buckling in late, with only 8 minutes to get to church and settled in.

Until iCat came in and said, "if second service starts at 10:45, why are we getting ready to leave at 9:40?"

huh.

good question.

Turns out that running 20 minutes late isn't bad when you're a whole HOUR early.

Of course, once buckled in, Buzz was not happy about not getting a car ride out of the deal, much less leaving his beloved bag in the car. So I bribed him out of the car with a short video, and ... here we are.

Seems like I could do something productive with the time, but that risks being actually late, as well as late for a second time in one day.

So I opted for blogging, instead.

How's your Sunday?

Weekend Rambles

Here's a little report from our weekend ...

Saturday The Grand Lunar (that's Particle Man to some of you lurkers - feel free to say hi) and I went down to Ann Arbor to pet the new iPhones at the grand opening of the newest Michigan Apple store. It was a fun date-day, we listened to 80's tunes and sang and laughed all the way down. The iPhones were fun, although it would've been nice to play with them longer ... we also petted several of the other sleek Apple products, such as the very nice 30" monitor. Ooooooh.

Here's the pix we took of each other with the iPhone cameras ... I forgot to do my cheesy camera smile, and am not fond the the pic, but oh well. I was listening to Particle 'splain stuff. I'm showing you because I thought the quality of the pix was great for a phone! Even at the full size 640x480 they looked very good, I was quite impressed. We took them and emailed them from the iPhone to ourselves from the store, that was fun. Notice I'm wearing blue. ;-) It was a nice date day.

Today the kids wanted to camp out in the back yard. They didn't seem to want or need parents actually camping, which is good. So my contribution was to put up the tent and photograph the event:

Here's a dorky pic of putting it up ... not my weekend for pix. Also, here's Buzz watching: He wanted to be nearby but not stay IN the tent. Not that he had that chance, overnight. He went down in his own bed nicely. :

Eminoodle and Tobi-Wan trying out the tent before bedtime:

The big kids peeking out:

It is now 11:30 and we've only had one tearful temporary visit from a camper who was scared, but not scared enough to be the only one to come in. I'm guessing they must be asleep now. And, although I'm not sleeping out there with them, I'm still staying closeby, I'll sleep on the futon by the back door with the screen door open, just in case.

Hope your weekend was as fun!

Long Long Ride

Iliacat loves bike rides.

Long ones.

We did 10 miles recently. She remembered our long trip a few years ago and wanted to outdo it. You might or might not remember that I overdid that long trip a few years ago, paid for it with my knees, which are not at all "bad knees" but perhaps are predisposed to become so if I don't take some preventative action. But since I'd been walking regularly since last August and doing some other strength/alignment/flexibility exercise I thought it would be okay.

So here's the start ~ we joined the path 1 mile from it's start, but it's also 1 mile from home, so the mile markers matched up nicely:

And the route:

We rode down the Rail Trail past Sanford, over the cool Railroad bridge:

Looked down and saw a bike in the river:

Detoured through the Arbutus Bog path

Past the bad pun:

Out so far there was only cornfields, path, and sky:

I pretended to be dead upon reaching Coleman (20 miles out) - but I'm not sure Iliacat appreciated it. :-)

We ate lunch in Coleman and turned back. Shortly thereafter I realized 20 miles without working up to it was perhaps too much for my knees. :-( I was frustrated because I still had energy and wanted to go the whole way, but the previous knee ordeal made me wary. After a few miles Iliacat decided she was, also, getting sore and tired. So we called for the troops to bail us out.

We stopped at the Sandford trail head, 12 of the 20 back, and waited for our ride. I felt a little bad bailing out - especially when my knees felt okay after we stopped riding. But tonight they have the same achy burning feel I remember from last time. So I'm glad we stopped when we did. :-/

Maybe next time we'll work up to a long ride slowly, like smart people would.

Doing my homework ... er ... our ... her homework

SO Iliacat had a little project for her literature group, to make a family tree

she asked if I knew the names of some relatives, and I said that one of the Grand Lunar's relatives is a genealogist, so I went off to dig for the sheets we'd been sent.

And to surf the web trying to find obituaries of my relatives

and I hit TWO jackpots, one on my mom's dad's ancestors - we went back 11 generations (from Iliacat) to the 1600's ...

and then on the Grand Lunar's grandmother's ancestors - I haven't counted back the number of generations, but it goes back to the 1500's in England! Totally cool!

So now I'm taking all that info and ... er ... copying and pasting it into a nice looking but totally useless (unexportable) form.

Someday I'll get be a real program and copy and paste it in a way that would be useful to future research.

But for now ... I'm still in my jammies at 11:30, digging into my children's roots.

For, uh ... our assignment.

Today it's been two years

I can't believe it.

Even looking back at pictures, I can't make sense of it.

It's been two years since Little Buzz was born. Two years, today.

Here's a pic I'm stealing from the old blog:

Me, just a few days before, not expecting to go into labor early (only 2 days early, but I usually go late)

Here's a link to a very late "Baby Buzz Birth Story" blog entry. 48 hours? What took me so long?

Thanks again, Betsy, for your thoughtful bagels and visit that day (mentioned in the previous link). What a wonderful memory, today, thinking, "Hey, this is about when Betsy dropped by!" -- and what a surprise for you it must've been!

A pic taken not-by-me moments after he was born, and then a short time later with me and with The Grand Lunar:

And, lest you forgot, a mere 8 days after he was born our local paper did a story on us, the nerdly family who named all their children after Star Trek (um, if you're confused, that's because their blog nicknames are NOT after Star Trek characters) and came to my HOUSE to take the picture. The goofy "please look like Star Trek Nerds" picture. In my house. 8 days after I'd given birth. (Can you tell having strangers in my house 8 days postpartum freaked me out a little? Not the germs. The cleaning and tidying required.)

Do we not all look pretty goofy? Good thing you know we don't usually look like that. The things we do for fame.

Here's a few recent pictures, so you can see how he's grown! In the first one he's pretending to be blind. It's one of his favorite games.

Happy Birthday, Buzz! I still can't believe it.

A Happy Sock Post

I finished my third pair of socks today! A pair for little Buzz that I started last Friday while lounging up north.

Buzz was very very pleased. Click here for a little video of him showing his socks and pointing out that he has "two-uh" of them.

And here's a picture of Iliacat from last night at her concert, in her tux shirt, tie, and cummerbund. I didn't get a good picture of the whole choir, which is too bad.

Doesn't she look nice?

Fooled You! One Day Early!

Ha Ha!

What's the best way to pull off an April Fool's gag? Do it the last day of March!

Okay, actually, I'm not sure I fooled anyone. Whenever the children are shooed out of the kitchen they know something's up. And obviously some of them remembered our first annual April Fool's Dinner, last year.

This year it was cake for dinner:

It's a two-layer meatloaf baked in round pans, frosted with fat-free refried beans and decorated with colored shredded parmesan sprinkles and piped spring green sour cream.

I will say that the bean frosting and hot 'cakes' were pretty slippery, it started sliding before I served it and was slid into quite a mess by the end of the cutting and serving. But the children all agreed it tasted good, there was less complaining from the potato haters than last year's mashed potato frosting.

And you know it's a special day when you get dessert around here:

The giant hot dog cake is courtesy of Family Fun's April Fool's Pranks ... as were the fake fries. I did not use the cake's fries because I couldn't find a pound cake, and used a purchase strawberry jelly roll cake as the bun, instead.

And, although they're not pictured, there were vegetables served with dinner. No, really.

Giving credit where credit is due, I never would've thought of this had not Katie introduced me to the idea last year. Maybe since this is my 2nd year I could take credit myself, but really, I thought of Katie the whole time. Thanks again, Katie. You sure are fun! And from you I'm learning that even I can afford to be fun once a year.

And by blogging it tonight, I've left you time for a late-night-run to the grocery store, so you, too, can prank your children! Quick, get them tucked in and make your plans!

Get Out The Math Tiles!

One thing my little boys love to do is get out the math shape tiles.

I have a bucket from Nasco of Plastic Pattern Blocks that we got, long ago.

Yesterday, for the severalth day in a row, they boys wanted the math tiles out.

Do you think they are learning all kinds of good mathematical concepts using the tiles to make Bionicle Adventures?

Here's the primary builders - note how in this picture the Visorak "caughted the disc in his claw!":

Is this how math works in other homeschooled homes?

A Day at the Nature Center

Today, in anticipation of mid fifties and sunshine, I decided we'd go to the local Nature Center for school.

Not only did we get to cash in on the field trip groups, by sneaking into the sugar house between BIG groups, we got a small private explanation of the syrup evaporation and we also got to wander and do our own things. The best of both worlds.

Here's the 1870's Sugarhouse:

And inside, learning about the evaporation process:

We also saw both the modern metal collection buckets, and the recreation of the Native American methods with a wood spigot (they have some other name, though ... I can't recall at the moment) and birch bark collection bucket.

We walked along the river trail to get to the Sugar House, which at one point was literally both river and trail. Fortunately it was right near a path to the road, and we circumvented the underwater part.

We also took notebooks, in which the children wrote down the things they saw, sketched pictures, and took notes.

Even Buzz got in on the notebook action:

Whooops! I almost forgot my favorite picture from the day ~ a lucky shot macro of a teeny tiny spider. It was only 3-4 mm and I wasn't even sure it WAS a spider until it moved! I spent the latter part of the afternoon trying to identify him.

If you click on his photo, it'll take you to my flickr photostream, which have a few more nature-y pictures of our trip today (I didn't want to overwhelm my dialup friends), if you like that stuff.

All in all, it was a very nice day.

Choir Concert and the Sock

I finished the first sock!

As I was nearing the end I tried it on ~ I will spare you the pictures of my unattractive naked toes sticking out the end, through the needles. It was scary.

But the fact was, the sock was nice, and I *could* get it on, but it was stretched unhappily wide. I realized that, while I could continue knitting to make it *long* enough in the foot to fit my feet, that I would never *love* my first knit pair of socks (assuming there's ever a *pair*) ...

The pattern I used only started with 40 stitches, and my yarn, although labeled worsted weight, seems to be thinner than average, and my needles were slightly smaller than the ones listed ... and yeah, yeah, maybe I should've done a swatch for the gauge. Live and learn. Truth be told, I've never knit a swatch and aren't really sure how to measure and count or how that little doo-dad thing comes in .... I bought one, am I supposed to somehow use it?

And so, anyway, I decided to stop, make the toe decreases, and give it to Eminoodle, whose foot was more it's size.

So here is the finished sock:

And here is my covered-for-your-sake-toes inside the sock, which I could still squeeze my foot unattractively into, so you can see how it was too over-stretched even though I could get it on, so you can agree it was best to give it to Eminoodle.

Here it is on her lovely, petite foot:

What do you think of my first sock? Is it a good first sock? Does the heel turn fall in the right place, or was it supposed to not go around the corner but be AT the corner? The pattern said to make the heel flap 2.5 inches, but I wasn't sure if it was supposed to stop at the sole of the foot, or supposed to round the corner with it's reinforced stitches. But the actual "turn" of the heel comes past where both my heel and Em's heel turns.

Does my knitting look terribly uneven? I think my sock looks fairly lumpy and uneven. Maybe I don't like the fact that it's fairly fat yarn/stitches, compared to tidy store socks with tiny thread, I guess. So I can't tell if it's good.

Here is Iliacat's first non-baby sock, which looks to be a more reasonable size than mine was. Hers is 60 stitches and I think it's sock weight or baby weight yarn or something. I don't know. She started it last Thursday, isn't she amazing?

And here's one pic from the choir concert. I guess The Grand Lunar shot some video of me leading the Bible Verses part, but I didn't digitize that for you. But he did, so now it's a link to his blog, go check it out, LOL.

I must confess, I'm glad choir's done for the year. I have to decide whether I'll help again in the fall or not. I really enjoyed teaching the Bible Verse part. We did motions to help remember it, and it was fun to see all the children recite long passages (Psalm 24 and Psalm 8) with the motions. But only a little of it was *real* sign language, and I'm wondering if it would be better to do it with REAL sign language, instead of just made up motions to jog memory.

Anyway, that concludes my partial report of Sunday Afternoon And Evening.

Can it be Four, already?

Four years ago today I'd been up most of the night.

Giving birth.

But by early morning the hard work was over and we had a sweet new baby boy.

How do they grow so fast?

When did my baby grow to be such a big boy?

For his birthday breakfast I made a yogurt-chocolate chip breakfast cake.

On fancy plates. :-)

It was quite good!

Not super healthy, but not too bad.

Birthday Yogurt Breakfast Cake

Ingredients
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ripe bananas
2 cups non-fat yogurt
2 large eggs (I used Ener-G egg replacer)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 scant cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven 350 degrees F. Spray 9x13 inch pan or line with a Silpat liner (recently on sale at Meijer for the 9x13 pan size!).

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Blend banana, yogurt, egg replacer, and vanilla and beat for 2 minutes. Stir in chocolate chips. Spoon batter into the prepared pan. Bake about 35-40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Serve warm or cool completely before serving.

Happy Birthday, Little D!!!

Bring On The Mud

My good friend Rosanne said, yesterday, that she would rather have snow and ice than mud.

Oh, no. Not me. Give me the mud, any day.

Why? Because it means it's melting.

I like winter, when it first begins. But oh, do I love the Spring when things begin to melt.

Even before the first sprouts peek up, fighting their way through mulch and mud, just the sound of dripping water, and knowing that Spring really is, finally, coming, is all I need. Although the sprouts are good to see.

I am kicking myself for not planting the winter aconite I promised myself last Spring I'd plant. This fall, Kim, even if it threatens to kill you, order and plant some winter aconite. And snowdrops. And glory of the snow. Trust me on this, Kim. It will be worth the effort, come next Spring.

But you'll be pleased to hear that 40 degrees and melting was enough to actually get me outside today. Yes, I am not kidding. Me. Outside. And not just to get to the car. I stood in the snow and saw the sun. Really. Here's proof:

Of course, the children went out, too. They sledded, stomped, knocked down fort walls, climbed, swung, and painted the fort with pine branches dipped in puddles. It doesn't get much better than that.

Here's Buzz discussing shoveling, and Little D scaling the fort wall:

Here's Em and Ilia braving the Sled Ramp:

And Tobi-Wan on a big snowball:

And last, but not least, a picture I shall title: Gark: Self-Portrait with Runny Nose

Oh, and if you like the sprout and icicle pix, there's a few more of those at my Flickr space. Click those words, or one of the pix, or even the little badge to your left. There's so many roads that lead to my Flickr.

Breaking News!

Before you hear it on the grapevine ... hopefully ...

The Grand Lunar and I would like to announce Andfam v. 7.0 to be released mid-October!

Yes, that's right, a New Baby is on it's way! A Valentine's / Birthday surprise for us!

I am a little bummed that I won't be losing the rest of my weight first, but I am praying the Lord will allow me to really stick to the Healthy Eating and exercise we've been doing, and not slip into junk like I have done in the past. I hope to at least finish this pregnancy a little lighter and healthier than in the past, and feed my family well throughout.

My Oreo Friend promised she'd be running over to the blog to see recent pics of my children, especially to see how Buzz is big enough to become a big brother, since he's only a month younger than her youngest. So I figured I better have a new picture for her!!! Friend, this one's for you!

So ... stay tuned for many exciting future posts about being tired and feeling yucky!

He's going to make a great husband someday

I gotta admit, I love LittleD. He'll be 4 in a month and a half. His speech has been rather slow to develop and still fairly difficult to understand, at times. But he's really taken off talking in the last 6 months or so.

One thing I love to hear him say, though, is his sweet, enthusiastic "thanks!"

He's got big old shiny brown eyes, the color of melted chocolate. And when he gets dressed in the morning and finds his Mickey shirt in his clean clothes he'll exclaim in delight, "You washeded this? Thanks, Mama!" as if my washing his shirts is the most wonderous gift I could give him.

(I really do move clothing through the laundry and back to his room fairly quickly, these days, so his delight is not solely in the novelty of clean and folded clothes. Really.)

Last night I made a rice soup for dinner. I liked it. Most of the children (and the Grand Lunar) politely ate their allotted portion, but I suspect no one was terribly excited about it.

Except LittleD, who exclaimed, in the same delighted and awestruck voice, "You made this soup?! Thanks for making it, Mama! I like it!"

Of course, he stopped short of finishing his small allotted portion, causing me to suspect he didn't really like it all that much. But I'll still take the compliment. Especially one with so much shining enthusiasm.

Last night The Grand Lunar picked up a rebounder mini-trampoline. We had been talking about how much fun it might be to exercise to 80's tunes with a little bounce, and we read that even NASA loves them and makes the astronauts use them. Who can argue with astronauts?

So this morning LittleD spotted it immediately and tried it out right away. When the Grand Lunar walked past, he was busy jumping, jumping, jumping.

"Daddy! Mommy boughted this!" he exclaimed.

"Actually, Daddy bought it for us," I replied.

"Thanks, Dad!" he said, glowingly.

He's a keeper, I tell you.

On a side note, the rebounder trampoline is right next to my desk. Now that the big kids are up and jumping I'm realizing that, if it continues to be a major source of entertainment, I'll be online a lot less. The wobbling of my desk puts me in danger of a clutter avalanche, and the shimmy of my monitor is going to make me seasick very soon. Very soon.

How has it been 10 years?

It's been TEN years since my first son was born.

It's hard for me to believe. He's a whole decade old!

I was reading on a blog not to long ago and the writer was talking about a great family trip and said, "These are the things you'll never forget!"
or something like that.

But you know ... life goes by SO fast. And there's SO much going on.

Take pictures. You can never have too many reminders.

Here's just a few ...

Still likes playing in the snow:

Still likes cake and computers:

Still climbs trees, still a great big brother:

Still a cute, happy, great to have son:

Happy 10th Birthday, Gark!!!!

I love you, my boy.

Merry Christmas! Have a Card!

Well, I still haven't done my Christmas Cards yet.

So Here's the Christmas Card you didn't get.

I got this far, I made this picture:

I thought I sent it to The Grand Lunar for his approval, but I think I sent it to his work email while he was home, so he hasn't seen it yet? Or he hates it and is too polite to reply.

My original plan was actually a real-cartoon hybrid, with our faces in the cartoon pic, but that takes a fair amount of time which I've squandered on knitting. :-)

Then we took these two real pictures yesterday at mom's. They're not bad.

So there you have it. The closest I've come this year to any Christmas Communication with the outside world. It's not quite the same as stamped and mailed, but you have to admit it's better than nothing, right? Just be glad you're a blog reader, or you'd number yourselves among the many who wonder what's become of us and think we've fallen off the face of the earth.

And if they happen to ever become REAL cards, and appear in your mailboxes, it'll be a bonus, eh?

Someday I will be a better communicator.

No, really. I'll send cards, maybe even on time. I'll not only remember birthdays (which I do now, most of the time) but also get gifts and send cards out in a timely matter. 'Cause what good does it do for me to think fondly of you if you never find out?

Okay, okay, enough of that.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

As you enjoy the time off this holiday, do remember the reason. For God so loved you, that He sent His one and only Son, that if you would believe in Him you would not perish, but enjoy eternal life with Him. For while we were still in rebellion against Him, and didn't even want His love and mercy, He chose to act to save us, to reunite us with Him, because of His love for us.

May His Name be glorified in all the earth! Emmanuel, God with us.

Have a wonderful day.

Pride cometh before a fall ...

Get a load of this quote from an email I sent to my friend:

We’re down with the Tuesday-after-the-Sunday-nursery barfs. Buzz started throwing up Tuesday morning, and Tobi-Wan chimed in tonight (Wednesday). I’m just waiting for the other 4 (5 if you count The Grand Lunar. 6 if you count me, but I don't, 'cause I don't get sick.) shoes to drop. GL went to bed early.

... I’m up late to fold laundry and make sure I’m ready with the towels and rags and carpet cleaner and new jammies and blankets and all the rest that comes with potential-to-barf children. I’m proud of myself, I packed a big bowl with rags and cleaners and placed it on a big towel so I’ve got a kit by the stairs, should someone need it. My guess is that Tobi-Wan will be throwing up in the night ~ hopefully he will wake and grab his bowl, but I’m not counting on it.

Ahhh, I was so proud of the bowl and cleaners.

Then I heard Gark sputter. I was already on my way up the stairs when he came down, to tell me he felt sick, I guess. Threw up ALL over the stairs and wall.

"Get! to! the! bathroom!" I hissed. Lovingly. Urgently.

He turned and ran back up the stairs to the bathroom doorway (which is, coincidentally, right next to his bedroom.) And threw up all over the bathroom.

"Get! to! the! toilet!" I hissed again, helpfully. Poor boy is standing with his toes in the hallway, trying to projectile vomit past the floor mess that he won't step in, to the toilet.

I looked down at my woefully inadequate little packed tote. Started trying to clean up the carpeted stairs while he finished his business.

What in the world was I thinking, suggesting we order **pizza** for dinner when I knew we had a bug in the house with the potential for spreading? Man, there's nothing worse than cleaning up regurgitated sausage pizza, I tell you. I'm proud of myself for not barfing all over the steps, myself!

So I get the carped wiped and scrubbed and re-saturate it with carpet cleaner for good measure, and start on the bathroom. I needed several more rag runs. And discovered that regurgitated sausage pizza clogs the puny bathroom sink drain. So I had to fetch the drain cleaner, too. I wiped and scrubbed and bleached and lysoled everything except the post-drainO sink when I heard Little D start to barf.

Little D's barfing woke Buzz, who - while no longer sick - still is feeling tired and crabby. He was very not happy that I was puttering around the room not snuggling or feeding him. So I got LittleD's bedding and jammies changed and wiped up and gave him the bowl and instructions. He's 3.5, here's hoping he listened. And then nursed Buzz for a bit. I had to stop when I heard Gark barfing again.

Cleaned up the bathroom and bowl for Gark, and heard Little D calling - he wants it to be morning. He hates sleep, he says. He wants some cereal. And juice. And his tummy's hurts. That's how he says it. "My tummy's hurts." So I explained that it wasn't morning, that he was sick, and needed his rest. And his bowl. While Buzz cried - again - because I was back in the room.

I think that went back and forth a few times, but in between I folded laundry in 5 minute spurts, and re-piled rages and cleaners and bowls.

I was just sitting down to start blogging this - because it's funny, right? - when Iliacat came down to inform me that Eminoodle had barfed.

In her bed. All over her blanket, sheets, pillow, mattress pad, dust ruffle, bedside, wall, under the mattress somehow, and all over the floor. In the corner behind the bed. Soooo I removed all the bedding, got her into the bathroom, instructed her to change jammies, piled up dirty laundry, washed the mattress, bed, wall, and floor, remade the bed, called for her to get out of Gark's way so he could barf in the toilet, and tucked her back in bed.

I just took her bedding down to find that the lint sock had filled up too far and sprayed water all over the part of the basement that I *didn't* mop earlier. What is it with me and lint socks?

So I replaced the lint sock and set the washer to spin again.

And hurried here to blog.

Because, really, I don't know if it can get any funnier.

There's only 3 of us left untouched. Well, untouched if you don't count getting barfed on. That would be me, the barfed-on one. I'm guessing Iliacat will come up barfing yet tonight.

The Grand Lunar? I don't know. Here's hoping he's at least able to make it to the toilet.

Do you think I should give the bathroom near our bedroom a preemptive cleaning, so he has a fresh, sparkling place to vomit, should he need it?

**Bonus Tip**
If your children are barfing on bedding faster than you can do laundry, and you are scrambling, between barfs, to keep up? It helps to turn the dryer ON.

Then & Now - Finally

Finally!

Then & Now pictures.

It took me awhile to get around to scanning them. And we took an impromptu "now" picture. Not dressed up or nothin'. The real deal.

Here's the then ~ 14 years ago:

Us, one of my favorite pictures. My friend Bill Brown took it. Bill, whatever happened to you? Bill's sister Becky was my bridesmaid, and my sister Kelly was my maid of honor. I didn't make them wear foofy sleeves. Our wedding was fun.

Still us, this time gazing lovingly at each other:

More us ~ I included this so you could see my excellent foofy dress.

Us on our honeymoon in a waterfall, one of my favorite pictures:

Ha ha! It sounds like we took our whole honeymoon in a waterfall.

Well, maybe we did! Why not? We could have! For all you know. I'm just sayin'.

And now:

Hey, we're kinda cute! Just call us Salt n' Peppa

What else was I going to tell you? Oh, I'm up to 460 miles for the year! Only 40 more to go! Yeah! I can't believe I almost gave up!

What else? I've still been knitting. But I can't detract from excellent mushy gushy then and now pix with lame knitting so you'll have to wait a few days, LOL. I've got two dishcloths going and that poncho, still. I discovered "real" knitters have several projects on the needle at one time. LOL.

Oh, I see my camera is done importing the now pix, so I'll fix them up and post this, I don't want to keep you up all night!

P.s. -- still caffeine free!

Lunar Love and Poncho Frog

First things first, a health update:

several of you have asked how we're doing. The Grand Lunar recovered fine from his stomach pains. Only to get a bad headache, today. :( But I think a little extra sleep and he'll be fine. He's sleeping now. Shhh.

And me? The children asked me, today, "Why are you talking like that?" I've got a combination of a husky Cyndi Lauper and a squeaky Bobby Brady going on. My coughing fits, they come and go. Some are fast and some are slow. Some are loud and some are soft. Each one of them make sure I've cough't. Oh, sorry, I was lapsing Seussian on you.

I drank my weight in hot tea today - no small feat, I tell you. (Actually, my feet are small. Size 6!) but I have to admit to stalling about going to bed. Not looking forward to laying there coughing and wishing I was asleep. So I'll have another cup of hot tea and blog awhile first.

Lunar Love:

Today's the Grand Lunar's Twelvity-Tooth Birthday (minus 80 or so) and we celebrated yesterday at my folks'. But to make today special, I baked him this:

I might do really poorly in speaking most of the Love Languages, but I do okay speaking food. Nothing says love like apple pie, right?

Some website told me to sprinkle sugar on the crust to make it sparkly. It didn't say how hard it would be to sprinkle lightly and decoratively. Oh well. It was still a tasty-good pie. Special thanks to my long-lost friend Jodie Out West for the crust recipe, and for Christine to my near-West for looking it up when I'd lost that same recipe.

Good night, Poncho. I'll most likely frog you in the morning:

It turns out my "to frog or not to frog" dilemma has been solved for me. You might recall that I didn't really learn to knit in the round so much as fumble through it on the fly. I thought to myself, "how hard can it be?" -- and since I managed to knit round to where I'd started, I thought I'd figured it out.

I knit many more rows today to see whether, as it grew, I would like the pattern and all. And when the stitches went round and round and the length grew and I could see the knitty side and the purly side I thought I had it made in the shade.

Except for that pesky problem of not being able to untwist the loopy needles to get a good look at it. I blamed the extra loop from being wound in the package. Until I looked closer today. And found an irreconcilable loop. Yes indeed, the hanging edge of my knitting, the one that started it all, with the cast on stitches, must've been twisted on the needle when I started. So my knitting goes up and over the loop. I'm knitting a permatwist in it. There is NO WAY to fix it other than to frog bag to where I went wrong. Which was, of course, the very very first row. Ta da! I'm so clever.

So here's a picture of it, so you can say goodbye to it. It'll probably be frogged before you see this. Yes indeed.

If you're watching the score, that makes: Poncho: 0 - Frog: 2

Tour of Homes - Get Real combo

BooMama is hosting a Tour of Homes (the actual list of participants is at that link, the image links to the explanation of the Tour) which sounded like fun. What is more fun than visiting other people's homes? So here is my (typically overly verbose) entry.

But I have to admit, artsy-fartsy as I may be, I don't have the knack (or the decisiveness & need for closure) to decorate, so my house is, really, undecorated and I'm not sure what to do with it. The artsy in me would like to decorate it, but I never make any plans for what I want. (I'm hoping Tracy, my SILLY (LOL that's a joke just for her) might step up to an over-the-net decorating job?) ANYWAY ... I forgot to take these pix when the house was cleaned up, and then discouraged to think I'd have to clean before taking pictures, and that today was the day to post them, and if I started cleaning-to-welcome-guests I'd never get around to POSTING ... So I decided to be brave and do a "lets get real" home tour.

What would you see if you dropped by this morning?!

I used to have CHAOS - Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. I used to suggest people call, maybe months in advance, to give me time to clean up. You know what? No one ever came by. When someone DID come, I would, seriously, take DAYS getting the house ready. But learning to practice hospitality has been important to me, and so ... I'm learning!

So what you will see today ... well, by the standards of many of you might look undecorated and untidy. And ... it is. But it's much better than it used to be, LOL. And I could whip it into better shape in just an hour or two, which is much better than my former DAYS. And, believe it or not, it's less cluttered than we used to live. I really am making progress. And we DO have people over, and I DO invite them in now. So to me that's important progress. So grab your cup of coffee, and do come in.

Have I put enough disclaimers in here? LOL! Okay. Here we go:

#1 Coming up to my front door:
Take note of the flowers I haven't yet killed, hanging on the gate. The front door is tucked off the side of the house in a little nook, across from the garage. I think it has a little of a cottagey feel, and someday I might try to figure out how to paint & plant so that my house looks like a little cozy cottage. At the left edge you'll see a corner of our cool mailbox and a funky number 8 -- two small bits of very slowly making things "ours".

The front door itself (bonus picture):
I especially like the big glass window of the storm door, so we can see out towards the road. It lets a lot of light into the front hall. I would like to replace the solid front door with a paned glass door, to let light in even when the door is shut. In the winter I have a nice Christmas wreath to hang on the door, but I haven't figured out what to hang there in the summer to be "welcoming" ~ the potted plants on the gate were my attempt this year. Note baby Buzz in the doorway, angry at me for momentarily abandoning him while I took the picture. The right side window looks in to out front hall and you can see the edge of the stairs if you look close.

I put the pictures in the Tour of Homes order, but if you came to visit I'd bring you in, through the kitchen, to the living room. :)

#2 Where I Blog:
As you can see, i didn't tidy up my blogspace for you. To the left of my desk (which is in an armoire purchased with the hopes that I could make it tidy if I wanted, by closing it, not anticipating my piling junk on TOP) is the kids' computer desk. See the top of little D's head, there? Here you can see my Messies tendencies thriving, what with the stacking, piling, and stuffing.

#3 Main Living Space:
This is our living room. I love that it is large, bright, with wood floors and built in shelves. Although you can, again, see my tendency to pile and stack and stuff. The windows at the upper left of the picture have sheer curtains with little flower appliques on them, and those make me happy. The TV hides in the big armoire. We no longer have access to "real" TV (no cable, not much for local reception) but we watch our videos here. I fold laundry on the futon to the left, and dh and I sit on the dark blue love-seat-recliner on the right. The other chairs, the black ones and wicker ones, are light weight and move around a lot. We tidy them all up for when our small group Bible study or other company comes, but on any given day they are sort of pushed around willy-nilly. We can pull them close around the fire for cozy reading in the winter, too. Someday I plan to decorate this room, but ... I have no idea how. That's my 9 year old son peeking out at the lower left. The living room is also the main indoor play area, at this time, and I'm pleased to see the toys are mostly in their "home" (I used to not get the idea that everything should have a place). They live in the cupboard in the corner to the right of the armoire, under the bookshelves.

#4 My Kitchen and Dining Room:
While we didn't do a "full renovation" this is the room where I've left my mark. I worked hard (over several years, I'm a slow worker) to paint over all the brown and beige. Can you guess what colors I like? I really like the bright colors now. As you can see, I have not cleaned the kitchen yet this morning. At the time I took them, the children weren't done waking and eating, it's a slow day. The mixer isn't usually out, but we made brownies last night. The dining room has a bay window with a window seat, looking out into the back yard.

#5 My backyard:
We really have a great back yard. It's fenced, it has about 10' deep "woods" where the children can explore and play, it feels private, and it's very kid-friendly. There's even a cement pad (put down for a future garage?) with a basketball hoop, which we mostly use for bike riding and chalk drawing. On the deck you can see my tomato plants which, miracle of miracles, I grew from seeds. Although, if you do your garden math and realize it's the end of July, you'll see will never be big enough for tomatoes before it gets cold in Michigan. So sad.

So! That's my "Get Real" tour of my house as it looked during breakfast, before chores, this morning. We are blessed and thankful for God's provision of a house with plenty of room for our growing family, where we can live and play and grow! Thanks for coming!

Katie and the Copy Kim

Once there was a girl named Katie.

Katie had a lot of good ideas. Katie listed many capers Katie's blog, often with links.

One day Copy Kim went to Katies post about a funny caper. Kim clapped her hands and laughed. Kim liked Katie's capers. Kim decided to copy Katie's capers.

Kim took pictures. Then Kim procrastinated a very very long time.

Then Karen (who should maybe get a blog, hmmm, Karen?) reminded Kim to post copies of Kim's Katie Copying Caper. So Kim complied:

April Fool's Day, 2006

Cupcakes for Dinner?

Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting. (Note to self: Next time frost using the pastry bag with frosting tips) -- (you must imagine Gark's dismay at finding them frosted with mashed potatoes, the poor child. But true to form, the meat he liked)

Chicken Pot Pie for Dessert?

"Chicken Not Pie" contains pudding, dried apples, and a lot of carefully shaped candy under a real pre-baked crust. VERY convincing looking. (Note to self: Next time prepping all the candy the night before would be wise, it will take longer than you think.)

Thank You, Katie, for your excellent holiday traditions, and taking the time to post them - with links - on your blog. And Thank You, Karen, for reminding me I hadn't posted them!

Thirteen

Today is our Thirteenth Anniversary!

Thirteen years ago we met, mid-morning on a snowy day, at the church, to get ready. We hadn't planned on how to handle lunch, with an early afternoon wedding with no meal, only treats and cake at the reception. By lunch time we were hungry, and sent the bridesmaid's future husband out to get McDonald's for us. I ate a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in my wedding dress, and thankfully I didn't spill any ketchup on it.

Lunar's mom was upset that we didn't have a big dinner for the reception, or even cold cuts. She figured people would be hungry and expect a meal. She took everyone in the wedding party out for Chinese after the reception. That was bonus fun.

We went on a cruise for our honeymoon, with stops at Cozumel Mexico, The Grand Caymen Island, and Ocho Rios, Jamaica. We saw the Mayan Ruins at Chichen Itza, and swam in the brackish water. Some irritating cruise guy fed the fish in the water right near me so the fish were swimming all around me and nibbling near me. I had to pose as if it was funny, but I was really freaked out.

The cruise was a funny thing for us. We don't drink much, don't smoke, don't dance (it's not that we're opposed to dancing, but we just aren't that coordinated) and don't gamble. Well, we did gamble away the $0.75 we took into the casino. Lost it all. We aren't big Vegas Style Show people. We're not really bask in the sun and get tan (or burned) type people. And the pools were really too crowded to Swim. We were excited to see that there was Scrabble in the Ship Library - until we found out that the Ship Library was only open when the ship was docked at port. And when the shop was docked, we wanted to go off and see exciting new countries. We saw things we'd like to go back and see again, but we probably won't go on another cruise again, unless it's a Star Trek and/or Macintosh Nerd Cruise. And we hadn't thought to bring Scrabble. But we had plenty of fun anyway. It being our honeymoon and all. Nudge nudge wink wink. Other than the Smoochers on the plane.

Anyway, it's been 13 wonderful years and we still are in love and make each other laugh, 13 years and six children later. We still watch Star Trek together and prefer each other's company to almost everyone else's. Truly, we are blessed.

Inspired by Janne

Mmmmmmm Thanksgiving! Janne posted her menu complete with all recipes! I'm not a recipe gal, but I can post my plan ... (I'm really not a plannin' gal, either, but sometimes I gotta do what I gotta do). Not much fancy or clever here, really. It's all the "recipe off the can" type stuff, LOL.

My parents are coming over here, and our 4 student friends from Sri Lanka. I've got a 19+ pound turkey, so that should be plenty. I'm getting sleeping just thinking about it ...

Something along the lines of Alton Brown's Brined Turkey ~ never brined a turkey before, I'm excited to try.

Stuffing ~ Stove Top. It's what says Stuffing to The Grand Lunar. And the kids.

Mashed Potatoes and gravy

Green Bean Casserole ~ yeah, the French Onion kind. But with cream of chicken soup instead of cream of mushroom.

Fruit Salad ~ a lot of canned fruit, a little canned smooth cranberry jello stuff, and a little marshmallow creme. I'm winging it.

Cranberry "sauce" ~ technically canned cranberry sauce, the kind that's jelled all can-shaped. LOL!

Fresh Veggie Salad ~ compliments of Mom

White & Wheat Rolls ~ also compliments of Mom

Pumpkin Cheesecake ~ my own invention, although since inventing it I've seen it elsewhere, LOL. I made up my first one all by myself.

Chocolate Peanutbutter Marbled Fudge ~ ok, I've never actually made this before. We'll see what it actually turns out to be. I might have to change it's name if it doesn't work the way I plan, LOL.

No Bakes

Do you remember when I found out that The Grand Lunar's favorite dessert-snack was brownies from a box? An astoundingly simple way to make him happy!

I'm pretty sure I asked him, at the time, if there were any other "childhood memories that make me happy" and he couldn't think of any, but I recently discovered another: no bake cookies.

We were at a dessert going-away party at church and he came back with a plate of cookies and exclaimed, as if he'd discovered gold (or a free iPod nano), "Look, no bake cookies!"

I've tried to make these once before. I did something wrong and they were sort of soupy, never really set up right.

I guess I'll try again. If I can find a foolproof no bake recipe (and they're supposed to be foolproof, aren't they?) he'll be happy, and I'll be happy to be able to make him happy.

Happy happy. Joy joy.
From a simple No Bake.

Indy Fun Recipe

Take 9 moms ...

6 dads:

Somewhere around 32 children:

Mix and enjoy.
Caution, vigorous mixing may cause bruising.

Email me if you want links to the larger pics, I don't want to post them publicly.

Two Sisters Simple Supper

If 6/7 of your solids-eating family likes dinner, that's a success. (Especially if the reluctant 1/7 hates just about everything else, too. But we won't dwell on the negative today.)

I decided to call our dinner Two Sisters Simple Supper.

Sister #1. I have been wanting to make cucumber salsa since Kelly blogged about it. The recipe originated with me but she turned it into a real recipe (I never make it the same way twice) and reminded me how much I like it. Today's version was:

• 3 cucumbers from the neighbor's yard, peeled, seeded & diced
  
• 1/2 a medium red onion
  
• one large clove of garlic, minced
  
• one cute little hot red pepper from Poppie's garden, minced
  
• a large splash of lemon juice
  
• ground cumin
  
• a sprinkle of dried cilantro for the pretty green color
  
• a sprinkle of salt
  

Sister #2. The cucumber salsa was served over a modified version of Lunar's sister Linda's rice and bean dish, which she introduced us to at her home in Connecticut. Today's version of this ... (ok I admit, I never make ANY recipe the same twice):

• 2 c. white rice
  
• 4 c. water
  
• 1 T. chicken bullion
  
• a small handful of dried onion flakes
  -- simmered together until the rice is done
  
• 1 can black beans, rinsed
  
• a small package of goat cheese (that Linda also introduced us to)
  
• ~1/3 c. parmesan cheese, shredded
  
• ~1/2 c. cheddar cheese, shredded
  

The nice thing is that it's so versatile. You can make your favorite salsa or use a fresh salsa from the store. You can make it spicy or mild. You could make it ahead or throw it together with cooked rice and canned beans. You can use brown rice or white. I think it will become and AndFam staple meal.

Thanks, Linda and Kelly, for being the inspiration for a great meal.