Pretty (Princess' suggestion)

Princesses' family portraits: identified by initial. She's 'picking those flowers and Speedy is blowing bubbles.'
Whenever I pull the camera out, Honey starts running towards me. cute, but hard to get a clear shot!

She gives new meaning to 'leaving a paper trail.' After endless fussing and playing around last night, everyone else was in bed but her, so I decided to go ahead and take a shower. She quieted down, so I naively thought she'd finally crashed. I heard her fussing again when I was done and opened the bathroom door to find an empty kleenex box and huge pile of tissues. I was exasperated, then turned the corner of the desk and saw:
a trail back to her starting point at the piano. This doesn't really do justice to the number of tissues in the big piles. Annoying, but again, I just had to laugh and pull out the camera. :)

I'm trying to get all those 'one-year' things scheduled for Honey, immunizations, well-child, portraits. Hard to plan around sick kids. Plus, I just don't like the pressure of picking out the perfect portrait outfits! I want to do Speedy's 3-year pics at the same time to save myself a trip, but he REALLY needs a haircut, which is another event altogether.

Funny dinner conversation last night (you know, you're only half-listening to your kids conversing until something pricks your ear): Princess was talking about something she knew (I can't remember now, sharks, whales, something like that.) 'Speedy, did you know whales eat fish?' He replied, 'Yes, did you know that Lightning says Ka-pow?'

Wait 5 minutes

My fellow Kansans know the joke, 'If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.' It was beautiful earlier, sunshiny, clear blue sky, 56 degrees. I was thinking about spring and how lovely it is to be able to crack the patio door and let in some fresh air. And how long it seemed since it has been sunny here. How optimistic spring and sunshine make me feel. Well. I'm glad the kids went outside for a bit before nap, because now it's overcast, the wind picked up even more, and the temp already dropped to 48. Here's a spring-y pic of some tulips in the sun (that my sister brought home from work.)



Speedy has had a fever off and on the last three days--so sad, because he had to miss his best buddy and U. T's birthday brunch yesterday. Lots of crying yesterday, but okay. Honey had me up a ton last night, not sure what the deal was. She capped off being up and active for an hour or more by rolling all the way down and off the foot of our bed with quite a clunk.

Here's the little crayon cruncher caught in the act.

The kids are watching Strawberry Shortcake sing-along right now (I think Princess convinced Speedy to pick it for his BM reward.) Unlike those songs, here's a link to one that I enjoy listening to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYBLjEaDFDE&feature=related You'll recognize it from the new Mac commercial. :)

Just Thinking

For some reason during church yesterday, I was thinking about Valentine's, and the punch we had at dinner. Hubby swirled his around in his glass to mix it around and melt the sherbet. And a few minutes later, Speedy swished his punch around in his cup and onto the table. We just had to laugh. It's funny how your kids don't want to do what you TELL them to, but they are ALWAYS watching you and want to do what you DO. Made me think of this poem, I'm sure you recognize:

Little eyes are watching you

There are little eyes upon
you and they're watching night and day.

There are little ears that quickly take in every word you say.

There are little hands all eager to do anything you do;

And a little boy who's dreaming of the day he'll be like you.

You're the little fellow's idol, you're the wisest of the wise.

In his little mind about you no suspicions ever rise.

He believes in you devoutly, holds all you say and do;

He will say and do, in your way when he's grown up just like you.

There's a wide eyed little fellow who believes you're always right;

and his eyes are always opened, and he watches day and night.

You are setting an example every day in all you do;

For the little boy who's waiting to grow up to be like
you.

--Author Unknown

I feel very blessed, because I think my hubby is a pretty good example for my kids to be imitating. Even if there's occasionally punch spilled on the table and licked up. :)

The Shack

I finished another book last night: 'The Shack' by William P. Young. http://www.theshackbook.com/ My sister-in-law passed it on to me. Anyone heard of it or read it? I guess you'd call it sort of an allegory. I had a really hard time getting through the first four chapters (if you read the back cover of the book, you'd know why). I was wishing I hadn't started reading it, but felt like I had to keep going to get it out of my mind. If you can make it to chapter 5, you'll be okay, I think. It touches on so many aspects of Christian life and questions that come with the hard stuff in life. And presents such a loving, intimate portrait of God--the whole trinity, even--and presents the essence of each part with neat clarity. What's presented seems to mesh with the Bible to me, but I'm not an expert that can vouch for the soundness of all the 'theology.' This sounds cheesy, but the descriptiveness (of ch. 5 on) is also a 'feast for the senses.' :) All in all, it's a pretty thought-provoking book. If you've read it, let me know what you think.

Best Buddies

• Speedy found out yesterday that he got to spend his best buddy's birthday with him (which was today.) As soon as I told him he was going after he woke up in the morning, he said, 'no, I can't wait!' Last night he had trouble settling down to go to bed because he was so excited. During the night, he came to our bed (a nightly occurrence) and wanted to know if it was time to go play with his buddy. Later in the night (morning?) Speedy again asked Hubby if it was time. Hubby told him not till the sun was up. :) This was one of the first days I haven't had to fight him to get a coat and hat on, and he burst out the door when the suburban pulled in to pick him up. They had a good time playing, fighting over toys, and touring a caboose. I guess when Speedy was getting his coat on to come home, he asked A. D, 'When the sun peeks up, can I come back and play with my buddy?' It was surprisingly quiet and a little dull today without our Speedy around. He fell asleep with his headlamp on (on his head AND turned on) tonight. Doesn't sound comfortable to me...
• We did dress up and have a tea party this afternoon, which we usually don't do with Speedy (I get in enough trouble when he's wearing lip gloss or toenail polish). Honey kept hoarding all the tea spoons. We also played 'babies,' it's not quite as enjoyable when your real baby is being quite a fussypants and wanting to be held all the time. Princess is doing quite well coloring in the lines all of a sudden--today it was Larry the cucumber, neatly done, including eyelids of a different color...
• Honey had 2 greenish BMs today; with a chunk of turquoise in each...
• It was freezing cold tonight, but we had steak, grilled outside...

Tuesday Musings

We saw a Papa John's flyer with a heart-shaped pizza, so Princess wanted to try making one for our Valentine dinner. Wasn't too hard. She was also excited about our pink punch (1 c pink lemonade, 1 c raspberry sherbet, 1 can 7up).
Speedy has latched on to Sam the bear; Sam sleeps with Speedy; Sam is sometimes Speedy's pillow; Sam takes trips in the van with us; Sam even sits at the table during meals sometimes. (Yes, he's wearing his jersey again!)
Just a cute one of Honey and Hubby. :) Honey's latest exploits include still putting everything in her mouth, and passing some interesting things into her diaper; LOVES grapes; can climb onto the bathroom stool and reach onto the counter; very interested in everything in the bathroom--today was already seen dragging around the toilet brush, then the bathroom rug. She cried herself to sleep for a nap today...for the first time ever--usually I am her pacifier to soothe to sleep. She has never been interested in an actual pacifier for more than about one minute. She's waving, clapping, bouncing to music, putting phones to her ear, trying to run, and I'm pretty sure, has repeated a couple words. :)

Princess & Speedy always want to try yogurt, then don't like it, so there's all these partially eaten yogurts lurking. Finally, we discovered that they love the Yoplait Whipped yogurt. Especially the chocolate mousse flavor. Does that really count as yogurt??

Speedy was reading 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?' out loud to himself after lunch today. Very cute. And hard to believe he's growing up so much! He was helping me in the kitchen this weekend (he likes being close to the food, I think, and the opportunity for snacking). He was leaning over a pan just out of the oven, and I said "that'll burn your face, honey." He kind of glared at me and said, "I not HONEY, I SPEEDY!" Hubby agreed. :) Speedy has come up with his own word for when he toots--he calls it a peep. Like, 'I peeped' or 'I made a peep.'

We (the kids and I) started a new chapter book--Stuart Little. We're only on chapter 3. Need to enforce some bedtimes, I guess. I finally finished 'Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours' (I hear you snickering) by Kevin Leman. It was slow to start, but had some good points--main focus is 'reality discipline' basically letting logical consequences and your (the parent's) actions do the talking instead of arguing, wheedling, bribing, etc. Also had some pretty good chapters on single parenting and blended families. The verse it was based on was

Eph 6:4 "Don't keep on scolding and nagging your children, making them
angry and resentful. Rather, bring them up with the loving discipline the
Lord himself approves, with suggestions and godly advice." NLT

Also talks about how as a parent you want to aim for an authoritative approach, in between permissive (robs child of self respect and initiative by doing so much FOR her) and authoritatian (robs child of self-esteem and sense of independence by doing so much TO her). Interesting.

So Hubby thinks my blogging is kind of silly--I can't blame him, he actually gets to talk with other adults throughout the day instead of pseudo-conversing via a blog. :) It's also a good way for me to savor the everyday stuff, share info with others as I think of it (that I usually end up forgetting to tell them in person), and hopefully be an encouragement, or at least mildly entertaining to others. Time to end this long post that has only taken about 40 minutes, in between interruptions. One of which was Princess asking me if God and Jesus would take care of her if she didn't have a Mommy and Daddy in heaven. (sniff, sniff) Yes, Princess.

Fancy Nancy

Here's Princess in her girly skirt and tights, after PAT storytime on Wed. (she won this 'Sam' bear from 'A Snowy Surprise' in a drawing).

We read our first 'Fancy Nancy' book this week--pretty cute. Princess' not quite as over the top as Nancy is, but I felt for her when we read this page in Fancy Nancy (they're trying to decide what kind of dog to get) "Too big. Too brown. Too plain. Sometimes it's hard being the only fancy person in a family." I'm glad she has her fancy cousin to hang out with.

February 14

Happy Valentine’s Day!
John 3:16

For God so loVed the world,
That He gAve
His onLy
BegottEn
SoN
That whoever
Believes In Him
Should Not perish,

But have Everlasting life.

'Mine jehsey'

If you haven't caught on, most of my pics of Speedy are in this shirt, his favorite shirt, his 'jersey.' His 'r's aren't quite there yet, hence the spelling on this title. This was one of Hubby's shirts when he was younger (or his brother's, or both), and Hubby is also quite attached to shirts of the jersey type with numbers on them. :) If Speedy spots this in the dirty laundry, clean laundry, anywhere, all of a sudden he just HAS to have his jersey on. He usually gets one arm in without any trouble, but then is looking for help.

Totally by accident, I got this great pic of Honey's sweet curls during her party. Awww.

'Max,' Ruby asked, 'what is in your pocket?'

We read Max Cleans Up by Rosemary Wells today, just TICKLED me! If you don't know, Ruby is the older, bossy, type A big sis and Max is, well, a typical little brother. She had helped him pick up his room, throw away some junk, etc. Then sees that he's been stashing it all in his pocket. I don't know why, I was just TOTALLY tickled by it! :)

Happy Birthday, Honey!

Hard to believe Honey is one already! We celebrated Saturday with family (20 of us!) and some good home cookin' (meatloaf, green bean casserole, fruit salad, baked potatoes, rolls, cake & ice cream). I made two cakes, just to be sure we had enough!

She had plenty of help blowing out the candle and opening presents, and seemed to enjoy all the activity. :) She has been walking for a couple weeks, now is starting to pick up speed, and LOVES being able to almost keep up with her siblings running around.

Eeny, Miny, Mo

Princess' version of the rhyme she's been chanting all week:

"Eeny, Miny, Mo. Catch a tiger on your toe. If you holler, let him go. I pick YOU!"

We've been trying to read from a 'chapter' (i.e. chapter book)each night at bedtime (when the kids are in bed by 9. Doesn't happen as often as one might think!) Anyway, This fall we read Charlotte's Web, then watched the movie. (In the past week or so, Wilbur has reappeared as a stuffed dog in our house.) Last week, we finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle (or as Speedy says, Prs. Wiggle Wiggle.) As soon as we finished, they were asking if we could go get the movie from the library. I can't find it!! A good picture book we read last week was Mailing May, true story of a 5 year old girl who was mailed to visit her grandma because train fare was too expensive. Neat illustrations, too!

Shenanigans

Oh, is it only Monday morning? How can three kids 4 and under have SO much energy?? They're very worried about the trail of ants along the hall--an after-effect of a pop incident on Friday--I dropped a can of pop, it must have hit a cabinet handle and was punctured, it started shooting out of the can and the can was careening and ricocheting all over the kitchen, spraying pop up to 10 feet away (I am not exaggerating, ask the kids!) Needless to say, even after wiping the floor several times, the ants have found some sugar I've missed. I squirted them with vinegar water. Honey was on her way to emptying a Kleenex box this morning; pulling TP off the roll in both bathrooms (we had them back on the rolls for company this weekend, and it only took her about 3 minutes to find it); chewing on the kids scissors; we're working on Valentines and Princess has been asking non-stop how to spell different names, including hers--she gets stuck on the G and H. I'm glad she's doing her letters, of course. :) And Speedy has been needing something or other all morning. He's very persistent, and impossible to distract. So it looks like if the only thing I get done today is the laundry, it will be quite an accomplishment! Although even that is relative: last week 2 pieces of double bubble went through the washer & dryer--of course I blamed Hubby, but he denied it. 3 days later Speedy was asking me for his gum from children's church, because he was ready to eat it. RRRRrrrrr. A different piece of gum caused a ruckus at lunch today. Speedy would NOT finish his PB & J for 40 min. or more, but didn't want to be excused because he wanted gum for dessert. He FINALLY finished his sandwich and put the desired gum in his mouth. 30 seconds later he was done with it and spit it out. Go figure. We're working on not lying with Princess right now. I think she knows exactly what she's doing. For example, after the bathroom, I'll ask her if she washed her hands. "Yep." "Okay, let me smell them." "Oh, actually, I forgot!" And she runs off to wash. I'm really liking our new house, it has more room. But I'm realizing it's a lot longer trip across the house when Princess yells, "Mom, Honey's about to play in the toilet!!" :)

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Luke 12:48

I am thankful for my 3 little blessings, I HAVE been given much! Sorry for this super-long post about relatively little, but I suppose there are some other moms out there who can relate!

Night Owl

I reverted back to my younger days--staying up till too late last night finishing another George MacDonald book, The Shepherd's Castle. Not as good as the first one I read, this one was a little dark--hidden chambers in a castle, a drugged madman of an earl. It did have some truth in it, but I had to finish it so I wouldn't be too creeped out to sleep! :) (and I didn't get my 2 scrapbook pages done, either!)

and a little more today...

So there's another little girl in PAT with the same birthday as Honey. Found out today that her mom went to school with Hubby K-4th grade. Funny! Not as funny: last night I couldn't find my toothbrush. I had 2 suspects in mind, woke one up and he hadn't moved it. The other had spent a little too much time in the bathroom before bed. She (Princess) was the guilty party, I found out this morning. She had 'hidden' my toothbrush in a different cabinet. So I've got 2 girls working against me--one who thinks it's funny to hide things, and the other who just likes putting things in crevices and trash cans. Scary.

I thought it'd be a fun time to post some of our favorite/most used recipes, so here's a start:

Peanut Butter Snack Mix

Melt 1/4 c margarine, 1/3 c PB and 2T brown sugar on stove.

Stir well. Pour over 7c of bite size cereals and mix well.

Bake on cookie sheet 45 min or so at 250 degrees.

Let cool on wax paper. Add m&m's and raisins, if desired.

CORNFLAKE TREATS

½ c light corn syrup

¾ c sugar

½ c peanuts (optional)

¾ c peanut butter

½ tsp vanilla

2 c cereal (we often add more)


Mix corn syrup and sugar in large saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir until mixture comes to full boil. Remove from heat and stir in peanuts, peanut butter, and vanilla until well mixed. Fold in cereal flakes until completely covered. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls on waxed paper. Refrigerate 5 min. or longer before serving. Serve at room temperature. Makes about 30.

LASAGNA BAKE Freezer-tested; Kid-approved

1 lb. Ground beef

¼ c chopped onion

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper, divided

1 lb medium shell pasta, cooked and drained

4 c shredded mozzarella, divided

1 carton (24 oz) small-curd cottage cheese

2 eggs, beaten

1/3 c grated parmesan

2 Tbsp dried parsley flakes

1 jar (26 oz) spaghetti sauce


Cook beef & onion until meat is no longer pink and onion is tender; drain. Sprinkle with salt and ¼ tsp pepper; set aside. In a large bowl, combine pasta, 3 c mozzarella, cottage cheese, eggs, Parmesan, parsley, and remaining pepper; stir gently. Pour into a greased 9x13x2 or shallow 3-qt baking dish (or two smaller dishes—then put one in the freezer to cook another day!) Top with the beef mixture and spaghetti sauce (dish will be full). Cover and bake at 350 for 45 min. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella. Bake uncovered, 15 min longer or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Let stand 10 min before serving. Makes a LOT!

YEASTED WAFFLES

1 ¾ c milk

8 Tbsp butter or margarine, cut into 8 pieces

2 c flour

1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 ½ tsp instant yeast

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract


Heat milk and butter in small saucepan over med-low until butter is melted. Cool until warm to touch. Meanwhile, whisk flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in large bowl to combine. Gradually whisk warm milk mixture into flour mixture until smooth. Whisk eggs and vanilla until combined, then add to batter and whisk until incorporated. Cover and refrigerate at least 12 and up to 24 hours. (or less, it just gives it time to rise). Heat waffle iron. Whisk batter to recombine. Bake according to waffle iron instructions. Makes four 9-in squares or seven 7-in round waffles.

Laundry Detergent (NOT edible!)

1 bar ivory soap, grated

1 c Borax

1 c baking soda (or washing soda, they're not the same thing, but I've tried both)


Mix together; use 1-2 Tbsp per load of laundry

It's too late tonight, but maybe next time I'll get the play-do recipe I use on here. :) And I see that this shows up on the blog all condensed, not nice and neat like the preview shows. Something to tinker with later, sorry!

Good Intentions

Funny, I thought I had so much that would be interesting to put on a blog, but once again, it seems like my good intentions have been squelched by the actual number of minutes in a day. It would be nice to be able to drop everything and run to the computer when I had a thought, but, not going to happen. Oh well.
Here's a pic of the kids and I with the snow cheerleader we made. See the pigtails? I need a snowman tutorial or something, I guess, I looked out the window about an hour later and she had already fallen down. Unless that dirty dog is the culprit--the black one that's always running at large through the neighborhood--I thought it would've been a K-state fan (it has a purple collar!) but apparently not.



I think Honey's going to have a lot to say when her voice starts coming out in understandable words!

Go here and scroll down to see what my kids called the 'scary wasp' http://www.fredoniaks.com/High%20School.html

I've made a new goal to finish a 2-pg scrapbook layout each night before I go to bed--that should get me caught up in just a few months. ;) We'll see how long I can keep it up.