I never thought I'd get hooked.  It started with innocent curiosity.  I hadn't even seen a cooking blog before.  A thread on my favorite message board about hot sandwiches led me to her.  And I had to admit Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich sounded pretty good.  Of course once I was there, I had to look around a bit and take a glance at Marlboro Man's Second-Favorite Sandwich.  It also sounded good, but I knew that all that lemon pepper would never fly at my house, as Cupcake is the Queen of the Spice Wimps.  Sure, it sounded good, and what I saw was entertaining, but I could walk away.

And I did.  Never even considered visiting again.  Until someone had to go and bring her up again.  When I revisited the site, I read a little more and made my fatal mistake.  I began reading Pioneer Woman's story of how she met her beloved.  It grabbed me.  And now I'm in danger of becoming a Pioneer Woman groupie.  So now each day I have to check in and see what's up at the ranch or whether there's been a new chapter in her history of luuvvv.

But mostly I have to check the recipes.  Next time I'll talk about the only one I've actually tried so far.

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We have hired a professional organizer. (BTW, Shonda, I really will respond to your email about that sometime. Really! :D ) She's here today, and I had commented to her about how much I'm looking forward to my new dishwasher arriving, as I've been without one for a few weeks. She said she couldn't even imagine living without one. After all, their dishwasher is full and needs run almost every other day! Hmm. Imagine. (Dual income household with only one child.) (Okay, let me just add that when she looked at my face when she made that statement, she immediately said, "You're more like twice a day, right?" Yes, that's more like it. And she grew up in a household the same size as mine, so she does know what it's like. But the every other day thing just cracked me up.)

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Because my husband has been away quite a bit lately, he is taking the day off today.  The rest of the week actually, because he is very kindly sending me off to a curriculum conference for a couple of days and he wanted to give me some shopping time today. (What a man!)

Previously mentioned husband has recently begun using the P90X DVD workout.  Snickerdoodle (age 6) loves to do Daddy's exercises with him.  One of the components of this system is a yoga workout, and today's the day for it.  Eldest wandered by and got interested in it.

So I just walked by the living room and realized we had the three females around the table working on math and the three males doing yoga in the living room. Just another of life's little laughs...

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I try to be a good internet friend and not correct the grammar, spelling, or vocabulary of grown people on an internet board.  Hey, typos happen!  I make 'em myself.  I fall pray to using the wrong homophone from time to time.  I know I've got a few glaring mistakes in an entry about 2 or 3 down from this one that I have yet to go bother to go back and edit. 

But this one thing has been bothering me for a long time, and I'm going to rant about it in the near-privacy of my own blog.

There is no such word as Wah-lah!!  Not in English, not in French.  It is voila (sorry, I can't remember how to do the key controls to make the accents happen), and the /v/ is NOT silent.  Please use it. /vwah-lah/

Yeah, I know, if you haven't ever seen it written properly or heard it pronounced properly, how are you to know?  Imagine how I would appear if I attempted to transliterate Chinese.  All I ask is that once we know better, we do better.

Rant off.

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So after years of rewashing plastic drinking water bottles, I find out that you're really not supposed to do that.  Sigh.  All right, then, off to the good ol' WWW to find alternatives.  I decided that I would be more comfortable with the Klean Kanteen than with the SIGG bottle.  Now dh and I each have one.

This weekend he found these for the children.  Notice this is a set of 3.  We have 4 children.  Happily, Vision Forum had a big clearance sale several weeks back, and at that sale I picked up an army canteen which I had not presented yet to the children.  So I figured we're good to go.

Today the new colorful canteens arrived.  I brought out the army canteen and decided I would let Firstborn choose whether he wanted the army canteen or the other style.  Sure enough he was all over that army canteen like a junebug.

And the next step, of course, was for the children to all disappear so they could play camping with their canteens.  Don't you love having kids?

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My darling little Snickerdoodle turns 6 years old in 2 days. (Breaks my heart, but what can you do?)  Yesterday as I was desperately getting ready for company, I handed him a bottle of glass cleaner and a cloth and told him to wipe off the front of the oven.  Well, he set to with a will.  After a few minutes, he exclaimed, "This is fun!"  A few squirts later: "I'm going to make this my chore every day!"  And then to top it off, when he had finished, he came and gave me a gigantic hug and said, "Mom, thank you for making me do that. I love you."

What could be better than an adorable little boy who thanks you for giving him household chores?

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There are so many trying things as children move from that sweet, excited-about-things, eager-to-please grammar stage into the pert, argumentative, often-blase logic stage.  Firstborn is 12 and is fully there, and I’m pretty sure Muffin was born in that stage, so we enough argumentativeness to go all around here at our home.

However, one thing that I really do like about this stage is seeing their senses of humor develop.  Granted, we have some training to do about the difference between using sarcasm in humor and using it as a weapon, but in addition to all the sarcasm, we do see real humor development, including puns and word play. 

Muffin has had two examples lately that tickled me.  We had been shopping at the big W and passed by the $5 video bin. We spied a Rin-Tin-Tin collection, and I thought that might be fun to have around, so in the cart it went.  Muffin always like to make sure I give credit where credit’s due (nice to know that she does in fact still like to please me) so she asked, “Mama, are you glad I saw the Rin-Tin-tin video?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Mama, were you glad I saw Rin-Tin-Tin in the bin-bin-bin?”  That struck me funny, and she was please.

Same child has not been well lately.  She’s been battling low energy and headaches and yukkiness.  Sure enough she has a strep infection.  She was complaining of more headache even though she had taken Mortin.  I gave her a hug and then was headed upstairs for something.  I hollered, “Sarah needs to go visit the yodeling veterinarian of the Alps!”

Her instant reply:  “No way, Jose!” 

It’s fun to have kids with a quick wit.  (Most of the time.)

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Various and sundry of my children have been involved in YMCA sports over the last 4 1/2 years.  We are halfway into the spring soccer season, and I noticed something this season that I was aware of but hadn't truly considered.

Our Y has three fields, and in keeping with the Y motto of building strong bodies, minds, and spirits, these three fields are called Spirit, Mind, and Body. 

Now, I've known this all along, but just recently they've put signs up indicating which field was which.  Before that, you just had to know that the Spirit field was the ones where the little kids play, that the Body field was in the back, etc.

Now with the signs up, every time I pass by the field that the U10 and U12 kids play on, I am confronted with the fact that my daughter is playing soccer on the Mind Field.  Say it out loud.  Mind Field. Now really, don't you think this would be a sign worth sending to Jay Leno?

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It's just one of those days where I think I really wish I could have some help. Some of it may be that this is the first Monday in 2008 that I've had 4 kids ready to school. First-Born wasn't with us for the first few weeks in January, and then the day he came home, Muffin got the flu. The next Monday Cupcake had the flu. Actually, last Monday no one was sick, although Snickerdoodle had been sick the few days prior to that. But the house was in pretty good shape because my brother-in-law had been in and out a few times over the weekend. And today starts a new soccer season. Today the house is not in horrible shape, but it's about one day away from it. So today I feel like if I could just have someone to sit on First-born to keep him on task, then I could take care of the others and the house. Or if someone could just drive Muffin to band so I could make FB finish his work. Or if someone could take Cupcake and Snickerdoodle to soccer so I could shop, make supper, and do housework. And make FB finish his work. But that's not happening. So it's time to dry my little PMS-ing eyes and get these people ready to leave the house. How did a homebody like me get involved in all this gallivanting around??

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Where is she?  Where is that homeschooling mother that is teaching her 6 or more children well, disciples them thoroughly, never yells at them, maintains an orderly house with the assistance of her cooperative children, cooks healthy delicious meals, leads her children on nature walks and provides other forms of good exercise and is fresh and available for her husband as well as contributing to the life of her church and wider community, and possibly even running a home-based business as well?

In my head I know she can’t possibly exist, but it sure is easy to think she does.  I think as we read things our internet friends post, we form this conglomeration into her head.  Ann always posts such great pictures of their lapbooks and notebooks, and Betty has mentioned how they always have chores done before 8:00 a.m and that it’s easy to maintain as long as you get it done early.  Carrie has mentioned that no matter what else they do, they spend an hour in devotional time each morning. 

Deborah has a 6 week meal plan, cooks everything from scratch, raises chickens, and has a dairy cow.  Ellen’s stories about their nature walks and pictures of their journal’s are positively inspirational.  Faye’s maintained her size 8 figure since before her first kid, and Gigi’s weekly date nights and twice-yearly weekends with her husband are practically carved in stone. 

Hayley is the children’s ministry coordinator and Ingrid has her family working at the food pantry at least weekly once they’re through with their Meals on Wheels run.  Joanne’s part-time job has enabled them to finally work through all the debt.

And then there’s me, sitting on my computer (again) in my messy house trying to figure out how to get my 12 year old to do 2 hours’ worth of work in less than 8 hours.  The meals taste fine, but are often woefully short on vegetables because I would have had to plan ahead and I didn’t and I’m not about to drag these people to the store again.

I wonder how all these other people manage to get it all done.  I ignore the fact that I am taking the best of what I’ve seen my friends talk about and rolling it all together.  I forget that the lapbooking queen only has 2 kids and they are both girls.  I forget that the efficient housekeeper mentioned just last week that she’s apparently just as frustrated about math as I am.  I forget that the wife who goes on dates with her husband lives 10 minutes away from grandparents instead of 11 hours away. I forget that all these people have areas that they feel like they are falling short in.

Okay, sure, many of them probably do have it more together than me, but if I think about it, I've seen most of them write about areas they've had to let go in order to succeed in other areas.  It's the rare woman indeed who has it all together.

To be continued.

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My littlest one is 5 1/2 now.  I've been in a period the last few days of just being enthralled with how sweet he (usually) is and appreciating how young he still is.

Saturday at his b-ball game, he looked over at me while he was playing and I gave him a thumbs-up and his face just lit up.  It made me realize that I still have his heart.  I think I have my 10 yo daughter's heart, too, but she would prefer if I never came to her games. :roll eyes:

He has been in a phase of being rather forgetful about how we ask Mommy for things.  It occurred to me that I had never read him the story found in the Book of Virtues about the Pleases that live in people's mouths.  If you don't know this story, get acquainted with it at once, please -- please.

So I found our Children's Book of Virtues and read it to him just before supper.  Sure enough, every request at table was so very polite.

After reading the Please story, I thumbed through to see what else we could read quickly.  I selected the story about Frog-child and Snake-child.  In this story, these 2 animal children who didn't know they weren't supposed to be friends had a grand day playing together.  Among their adventures that day, Frog-child teaches Snake-child to hop.

About half an hour after we read the story, Snickerdoodle came to whisper in my ear, "Mom, I don't really think snakes can bounce."  I'm so glad I still have one little one to make me smile.

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Today during my five year old son's Upward basketball game, one of my life's ambitions was realized when I achieved the goal of becoming a Barbie styling head.

My eight year old daughter was sitting behind me and began to attempt to braid my hair.  Her friend whose dad coaches this team (another HS family by the way.  Too bad those HS families don't get involved in the community.) decided to join in.  After watching their attempts for a few minutes, my 10 yo girl, who was beside me, decided to join in.  So there I am having my hair gathered, pulled, braided and broken by three girls during the middle of a basketball game.  Am I pretty now?

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10 yo Muffin can do just about anything independently in the kitchen.  She's still shy of actually putting things in and taking things out of the oven, and I wouldn't put her to chopping an onion yet, but she can do lots, and I let her.

This has resulted, apparently, in her assuming the role of queen bee in the kitchen.  Today 8 yo Cupake has a Halloween party at ballet, and wants to make cookies.  Muffin said she would make the cookies. "No, Cupcake wants to do it herself." 

Huff.  "Well, Cupcake, here's the recipe you should use."

Cupcake replies that she'd like to look around at some other recipes.  Muffin huffs again, and goes to the pantry and gets the bag of chips, which she has now hidden!!  Good grief!

Well, Cupcake finds the recipe she wants to use, and we discuss when to bake them.  Muffin calls out to Cupcake to set the butter out to soften.  Cupcake replies that this recipe calls for melted butter, so it doesn't have to soften.  Muffin huffs.  Someone's obviously feeling more than a wee bit territorial. 

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 A poster left a comment on an entry down a little that I didn't see until long after she had left it.  (I didn't see yours either, Oney, so I didn't end up playing tag.  Thanks for thinking of me.)  The entry is about "my staff", and here is my response to Michele's comment. I don't know if she'll ever see it, but at least I'll have it off my chest. ;)

I'm sorry if you felt the K12 remark was a slam at K12, because it was purely intended to fit in with the tenor of the post, which was intended to be humorous. 

I think it is beyond wonderful that there as many ways to educate children as there are families.  I am thrilled that there are so many options.  I am glad that there are options for kids like my eldest who needs hand-holding all the way, and I'm glad there are options for families who need the children to be as self-directed as possible.  I hope I will never criticize another person's curriculum choices.  Certainly we will all be enthusiastic proponents of what has worked for us. We should be!  And some times our enthusiasm will spill over and inspire someone else to try something that's different for them. 

But enthusiasm for one style does not mean antagonism toward another style.  The more options the merrier, and the more families hsing, in WHATEVER way is working best for them, the better off we all are.  I hope you will be able to perceive my heart on the subject.

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In the last year I have been plagued by the ever-changing hormones that seem to run so much of a woman's life.  I have sought some medical assistance, and decided to go ahead and follow the doctor's recommendation in the area of natural progesterone cream.  This is first month I'm trying it.  I'm mostly after some improvement in some physical symptoms, but I guess I'd better be hoping to see some improvement in emotional symptoms when PMS time rolls around again, as evidenced by today's spelling lesson.

I was doing Cupcake's Sequential Spelling lesson with her this morning, and the final word today was "moody."  She came up with her own example sentence. "Sometimes you can be a little moody."

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My little 5 year old boy had been down in the play room this afternoon. When he came up, he came and asked, "Mommy, are you drunk?" ??????? Happily, by this point in my parenting career I have at least learned enough to know to not overreact to questions from young children. (For the record, though I have godly people near and dear to me who choose to drink alcohol in certain situations, I myself am a lifelong teetotaler and intend to keep it that way.) So I stare at him a second and let the wheels in my brain spin. Finally it came to me. "Snickerdoodle, what do you think being drunk is?" 2 or 3 shrugs. "I don't know." "Are asking because you heard it in The Magician's Nephew? When Aunt Letty says she's sure that young woman (the witch) was drunk?" "Yes, that's what made me think of it. Are you drunk?" After assuring him I was not drunk, we had a beginning little talk about the effects of alcohol. I'll be interested to hear what else he picks up as we read along in the Narnia books!

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Oh, the power of incentive!

My house is not clean.  My house is never clean.  So when a sweet friend indicated she'd like to drop by when she was going to drop her daughter off across the street, we went into hurry up mode.  Now my wonderful capable Muffin bounced into action solely because she wanted to see our friend, who we haven't seen in a year.  She did a great job of getting the visible parts of the house picked up while I worked on cleaning the floors, and she also got a batch of cookies mixed up.  She's really awesome. 

Once that was done, she took on some other task, and it was one I'd normally pay for.  When it was completed, I asked her if she'd rather have the money or have me go buy a Klondike bar (she had been eyeing them in the freezer case the day before).   She chose the Klondike bar.  Immediately First Born asked what he could do to get a Klondike bar.  I told him he could clean the island.  He did.

Well, of course Cupcake and Snickerdoodle wanted in on the action.  Since someone had spilled something in the pantry that morning, I told Snickerdoodle he could earn his by taking everything out of the pantry floor, and then Cupcake could earn hers by cleaning it up and putting everything back in an organized fashion.  She bought into it. 

The bars were very tasty indeed!

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Six years ago, August 2001, I officially began our homeschooling career as First Born reached kindergarten age.  I had done a few Five in a Row units earlier that calendar year to assure myself that homeschooling was feasible for someone so disorganized as myself.

I thought that it would be poetic to begin his "real" kindergarten career with the FIAR title The Very Last First Time. So off we went to Ungava Bay to hunt for mussels, look at Inukshuk, and practice calm thinking in emergencies. 

As we went through those first days of kindergarten, I became I aware I wasn't feeling so well, and by the end of the week, I headed out to buy one more pregnancy test. It was positive. (The others I had pulled out of my cabinet and taken were negative.  Never use an out of date pregnancy test!!)

Today I declared the first official day of kindergarten for that little life that was just beginning to flutter within me when his brother was the one standing there having his picture taken.  And though I did not choose to use that particular book to open the year (because I think a 5 year old boy just really needs to do Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel), today really is the very last first time.  The very last first day of school. And soon enough it will be the very last first book he reads by himself and the very last first lost tooth. 

What a blessing to have a fourth chance to experience all those firsts.  How will I learn to live without them?

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Today is the first day of school in our public school district.  My little Snickerdoodle turned 5 a few months ago, so today could have been his first day in school.

Today I could have had all of my children out of the house by about 7 in the morning. 

Today I could have had a quiet peaceful existence for about 8 hours.

Today I could have run errands without having to fuss at people about buckling or fuss at them about their fussing.

Today I could have perhaps taken a radical step and called someone and gone to lunch or something.

Today I could have made a healthy salad for me and only me and begun a new, non-kid-friendly way of eating.

But no.

Today I'll lug my 4 children to my GYN office so I can sign a paper. 

Today I'll lug them all to an office store to make some copies that would be too many for the printer.

Today they'll argue in the car about who sits where. Just like yesterday.

Today I'll hear, "I'm hungry," "What's for lunch?" and "What's for supper?" at least 12 times. Just like yesterday.

Today I'll hear "So-and-so called me such-and-such!" at leat 4 times. Just like yesterday.

And today I'll have my 8 yo come rub up on my arms because she likes the way they feel cool. And today my 10 yo will do something that makes me wonder how anyone ever gets along without her.  And today my 11 yo will make some smart-aleck pre-teen remark that cracks me up and shows his developing wit.  And today when I rolled over at about 8 a.m. because I stayed up too late AGAIN, my 5 yo little boy snuggled up closer.  Just like yesterday.

And just like tomorrow.

Praise the Lord!

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There is some sort of misting leak in our garage.  I love the fact that I can take a picture of the site of the leak and email it to my husband who is in Missouri (we live in AL) and give him some idea of what's up.  Now really, how cool is that?  All that and Amazon Prime, too!! I love the internet.

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