3/17/07 Full Week

Our life was very full this past week.

Saturday was the kids' last archery class. It was a 14 wk course. Jonah won a first place trophy!!

Hannah didn't place, but she was ok with it-she just went to have fun and her best friend was in the class, too.

Sunday we tapped trees.

Sunday-Monday: we realized some issues going on with Hannah. It was a spiritual battle type thing and Pat spent part of one night praying about it and the next morning. I prayed, too, and had a talk with Hannah about it-and it went excellent & she understood without any anger the changes Pat had decided needed to be made. It was really amazing & we are noticing a difference already (very positive)

Jonah cut his hand on Tuesday with a pocket knife-but didn't need hospital attention.

We had beautiful weather Monday--Wednesday and got excited for Spring (knowing our winter surely couldn't be done) and now we're in the middle of a snowstorm with expected accumulation of up to 18 inches.

Quarterly reports were due yesterday and I spent all week working on them. Doing the reports is always stressful for me and takes up a lot of time. And this time for the first time, I lost Hannah's QR 3 times before I finally got it done & saved-once because the computer got turned off while it was open (my fault for leaving it up). Twice because of a game disc that got left in the driver and when I went to save, it wouldn't save. I also had no printer ink. The first time that happened, I didn't know what to do, so just hoped it got saved anyway. It didn't.

The next time, I copied & pasted it and put it in an email. Thank God I did because the saving process didn't work again.

Also, this week, my dh has come home early 3 times to work on window trim. All the windows downstairs now have their trim and it looks beautiful! Boy, did it make a mess, though.

Friday was Jonah's birthday-he turned 9. I always want their day to be special and didn't feel up to the task this time. But, it ended up going well.

The day before I kept telling him I was canceling his b-day so he would stay 8. LOL I got a picture of him in his bunk bed that night with his rabbit and will call it, Jonah's last day of being 8 yrs old.

I declared a holiday from schooling, took the kids (& the guide dog) to Duncan Donuts for whatever donut they wanted and hot chocolate. We went to the store so Jonah could pick out his cake, frosting & ice cream. (all year I make home-made, but on birthdays, they want box cakes or ice cream cakes).

He picked spaghetti & meatballs for his birthday dinner. He got several phone calls.

He got to make his cake with my help. People always comment on that when the kids tell them this (you had to make your own cake?? But, that's what they want to do!) Susanna got a headfull of batter as she really got into licking the bowl-literally.

We had family coming for the dinner, but with the snow storm, they couldn't make it.

He loved his presents and we watched a movie in the evening that he picked.

We had a bit of a clamor when it came time to eat the cake & ice cream. Apparently, Susanna (2.5) went on a stealth mission and pretty much ate most of the frosting off the cake & 3 fistfuls of cake were missing. LOL.

Jonah was a bit upset until I told him he did this to every cake he could get his hands on when he was a toddler and he STILL sneaks a lick from the sides of them.

I feel really bad that I didn't take a pic of the cake after he frosted it and put some cars on it. But, here's a pic of it after Susanna's finishing touches:

3/13/07 Got Our Trees Tapped

We weren't going to tap trees this year, but Pat changed his mind last minute. I'm so thrilled! He's in the background with a red jacket, if you can see in this pic.

Now, we check buckets every evening.

3/17/07 Library Nightmares & Spring Dreams

I had a bad dream. I woke up last night thinking my dh was going to kill me because in my dream I had late fees at the library that totalled $75.00!!

This morning I went to my library account online to check and I owe 13 dollars. I could just kick myself. I think the problem is I order books thru internet library loan and they never all come in at the same time, so I have several different due dates to keep track of-and I don't keep track of it very well. Arghhhh.

Here's Susanna helping me make french toast this morning. She follows me constantly now saying, "help you, mom! help you!"

I love having her help and she does pretty well (unlike Jonah at that age), but sometimes, I feel like I'm a secret agent in a "mission impossible" assignment -trying to make or do something undetected just so I can get it done quickly. LOL

We got more snow the other day-about 7 inches, but with the wind, the drifts in our driveway went over the truck. We all rode with Pat while he plowed our driveway, a neighbor's and then for a friend that lives 15 mins away. We ended up being in the truck for about 2 hours. But, it was fun talking. Pat is my captive audience when we're in a vehicle-LOL. It was fun talking about current events and our plans for the Spring and camping trips for the summer.

Even though we are buried in white and it's 20 below zero with wind chill factor, I am dreaming of getting into my garden. I am so itching to plant things again and see how my garlic & asparagus is. I have new goals for this planting season. I need to re-do my compost bin as the old one was left in the new cow pasture-and they demolished it.

I want to replant raspberry bushes for the same reason-they were in the area we had to use to enlarge the cow pasture.

My mil has raspberry shoots for me every year.

Another friend has rhubarb that we can have so I need to plant a new rhubarb bed (the old one was also in that cow area)

Our big goal is to line the side of the driveway with apple & pear trees. I don't know much about fruit trees, but will have to learn.

I think we're also getting 6 new chicks, too. A friend is ordering chicks and will add my order onto hers. I think we'll get 3 more barred rocks and 3 more buff orpingtons. We've decided not to butcher roosters this year much to my relief.

I don't know if we're going to be able to do our own maple syrup this Spring. The wood stove we use to boil the sap has a cracked door. I hope we can(and we'll have to decide very soon), because boiling sap make me feel like Spring is just around the corner. Plus, the kids & I love checking the buckets for sap and it's fun sitting around the stove chatting while it boils.

We're also planning to put in a big pond this Spring. My dh is going to demo a track-ho for a friend of his that owns a lumber company and we can demo it here, so we can dig the pond for free! ( My dh used to be a heavy equipment operator)

Ahh....Spring Dreams.

3/1/07

This week has been pretty uneventful. I wasn't feeling good for a couple days. We did manage to get most of our schoolwork done, though. School actually went pretty well.

The house doesn't look too good, though. LOL

The other night I woke up at midnight alert and wide-eyed. I wasn't even dreaming, but I woke up feeling panicked. The school year is more than half over and we haven't done as much as I planned for us to do.

For one thing, it is taking us forever to do the American Revolution unit-mostly because we are loving the topic so much. And because the book list to read is quite extensive and many of the books are long and my voice gets hoarse from reading out loud. I have Hannah take turns with me.

But, also it seems life gets in the way and my planning isn't always the best, nor my diligence in sticking to the plan.

So, I feel like I need to kick things up a notch.

In other news:

Jonah has taken up coin collecting. One of his uncles is into it big time and has given Jonah some coins and even dollar bills. Yesterday, Jonah ransacked the coin jar looking for as many coins from different states as he could. He found quite a bit and I even had a dollar coin with Sacagawea on it.

His looking for coins turned into a bit of history review. The Sacagawea coin got them talking about Lewis & Clark, the North Carolina coin got him all worked up about the Wright brothers and the kids remembered when we did the flight & airplane unit(about 4 yrs ago). It was so funny to see how excited and animated he got. His eyes get amazingly large. LOL

And then he started yelling when he found the New Jersey coin. "MOM!! They have a picture of the Continental Army crossing the Delaware river into Trenton!!!" (actually, they crossed the river, then marched 9 miles to get to Trenton)

I looked at it and asked him how he knew what river and city it was. He said because it was Continental soldiers crossing a river and Trenton is in New Jersey. LOL I thought that was pretty good reasoning.

Here's a pic of him on a snowbank wearing his camo coveralls about to snowboard down.

Hannah this week has been into painting beautiful backgrounds on poster boards because she and a friend of hers are having some kind of American Girl doll Gala.

I've also been having her cook more, much to her pleasure.

I want to get a blank recipe book and as she cooks new things, put the recipes in it for her to keep.

This week she has made banana-blueberry muffins, ginger bars, porcupine meatballs with sauce (it's beef) and quesadillas.

Susanna has been her usual silly, affectionate, dancing, naked self. Her new thing is that she loves to tickle people so they will tickle her back. She likes to play "timber" with Pat now, too. He holds her hands, she climbs up his body and when she says "timby!" he lets her fall backwards and catches her. He's usually sitting when he does this, but sometimes he stands-which makes me a nervous wreck and I can't watch.

I love it that she so snuggly and often tells me, "love you,mom."

Here's a pic of her having her first ride on a carousel: Hannah is standing next to her.

She has become quite the playdoh girl. I can barely keep her in playdoh-she goes thru it so fast.

Yesterday, Hannah showed her how to make balls. Susanna spent the day carrying around a dog dish full of playdoh balls and treating them like they were babies. She'd gently pick one up, saying it was cute, then kiss it and put it gently back. It was so funny.

She does the same thing with playdoh snakes, but to see her carrying around a dog dish of playdoh balls all day was just too hysterical.

Today the kids had gym class-which I love! I have so much fun visiting with the other moms. It turns out that on March 22 there's going to be Mother's Night out with a speaker or movie or something, tea, coffee and desserts. I think it sounds like fun and am looking forward to it.

Hannah found a home movie of her and Jonah when she was almost 3 and he was 8 months old. Oh my goodness-I laughed and cried. It was so sweet and heart-breaking at the same time. I know that doesn't make any sense. But, as I was watching Jonah trying to crawl and grab toys on the movie, I just longed to pick up that little baby boy. But, he's almost 9 now. And Hannah is 11. It was so funny watching her on the movie-she was a wild, sassy little thing-I don't remember that so much-I mostly remember her sweet, helpful self. I finally had to stop watching the movie-I was crying too much and getting all stuffed up. Isn't that wierd? I'm so glad Susanna is still little enough to pick up and carry around.

I feel so torn-I don't want my days of having babies to be done, but on the other hand, I don't want to be pregnant again. But, I'm almost 37 and I feel like time is running out and that we need to decide soon what to do. My dh isn't sure about having another one-and I'm not either. But, some days I long for it so much. And other days I remember how hard it was to get school done when Susanna was 4-18 months. I know we need to pray about it more.

Tomorrow Hannah is going to be gone all day. She is going to my MIL's to help out. It was her idea as she felt that with Bumpa being so sick, Grammy could use help with dusting, vacuuming and laundry. My FIL's prostate cancer has come back and migrated somewhere else and he has aspiration pneumonia.

Well, I need to go. Hannah wants to make her banana blueberry muffins with her friend Danielle to take to Grammy's house tomorrow and she can't find the recipe.

2/25/07 So Thankful

Susanna & I had a day to ourselves this week-and what a blessing it was! Pat took Thursday off from work to take Hannah & Jonah skiing for the whole day.

So, little miss & I went to the post office. She loved hopping on the steps and waving to everyone when we left. We went to JoAnn Fabrics and I got her some new watercolor paints. We went to P&C and I let her pick out a donut to eat while she sat in the shopping cart. That's not usual, so she took quite some time to pick one and then sat staring at it for awhile before eating it-LOL! She picked one with white frosting and colorful sprinkles.

She helped put the items on the conveyor belt and was friendly with the cashier who gave her stickers.

At home, I made us some soup for lunch, we painted, then played with playdoh. Then we got cozy in a chair, read her favorite books and she went down for a nap. And so did I.

I got up before she did, did the dishes, cut out some fabric, etc.

When she got up, we went outside for a walk down the driveway to get the mail-I pulled her in the sled. I was trying to get her to catch snowflakes with her tongue, but they kept landing on her eye lashes and making her laugh with her saying, "snow tickle me!"

I wish I could convey with words how I felt all that day enjoying all the simple things in life that bring so much joy to a toddler. I loved having this special day with her and giving her my full attention.

I especially had so much fun putting my head back and catching snowflakes with my tongue. I can't remember the last time I did that.

The weather outside reminded me of my favorite poem by Robert Frost.

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep."

"But, I have miles to go before I sleep. Miles to go before I sleep."

On our way back up the driveway, I got this pic of our house.

This scene just made my heart fill up with thankfullness for all the blessings in my life. I stood there for awhile just looking at it.

We worked on making a snowman once we got to the top of the driveway and then Pat and the kids came back. They decided to pick us up and take us to dinner at the local fish fry place-that was a lot of fun, too. The huge hit there is their big fish tank along with their great food.

It was great to hear the skiing stories-the kids did great and Pat has decided that next year we'll get season passes because they had so much fun. I was so thrilled to see the camraderie the 3 of them had together after this shared experience. ( Pat loved it so much, he took them again the next day-he got off work early and surprised the kids.) I've noticed that the glue that holds us together is shared work and shared play along with lots of prayer!

It was a wonderful, wonderful day. And I'm so thankful.

2/20/07 Wonderful Family Time

We had such a fun family weekend! The kids had archery class and here's a pic of Jonah shooting with a few of his friends. Jonah is in the beige shirt-he already shot his bow. They were playing tic-tac-toe with their shots. Other things they do are hitting balloons, shooting at dollar bills, etc.

Pat and the kids went snowmobiling later that afternoon and some of the neighbors ended up coming for rides. Here's Hannah driving the snowmobile with someone riding.

Here's a pic of Susanna all suited up so she could ride with my dh. She loves the snowmobile!

Sunday was even better. Pat and I got up early and prayed together in bed. I wish we were able to do this every morning.

We had more snow during the night, so Pat plowed and then he and Jonah fixed the brakes on my vehicle. He let Jonah do as much of it as he could. That was one of things we prayed about-that Pat would have patience, that it would be a bonding experience-a heart string tying kind of thing. And it was!

I made bread and cookies and got caught up on things in the house. Susanna played with playdoh for 2 hours! She figured out how to use the press thing and made a whole ton of "snakes" that she hugged and kissed. LOL

Then we went bowling with friends of ours and had so much fun!! It's not something we do much and Susanna had never been. We've decided that our 2 families need to do this more often. We really enjoyed ourselves. Here's a pic of Susanna watching her ball roll s-l-o-w-l-y down the lane with Hannah. Thank goodness for bowling bumpers. She got so excited every time her turn came.

We all went to Friendly's after that. Then we parted ways and our family went home and watched a family movie and hung out.

2/17/07 Diamonds are beautiful to some.....

But chicken broth is beautiful to others. LOL!!

I made some broth this morning from 2 chicken carcasses. We raised these chickens. They are a bit on the anorexic side, but they're ok and they make a GREAT broth!

I doctored it up with every veggie I had in the house, added celtic sea salt, peppercorns, garlic cloves, etc.

When it was done, it was a thick and dark golden. I got enough to freeze 8 cups of it and with the other 8 cups I'm making Italian Wedding soup-Jonah's favorite soup.

Anyway, I was showing my beautiful broth to Pat and he said, "diamonds are beautiful to some, but broth is beautiful to you. Strange-but I'm glad!"

I also made bread this morning. A friend of ours just had surgery, so I brought her one of the loaves with a card. Two of her boys are here now playing with Jonah in the mountains of snow we have.

The kids had archery today and Pat ended up not having to go to work, so he took the girls with him to do some errands and the boys are all outside.

I have the whole house to myself!! It's so deliciously quiet.

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