There's a Laptop Under My Table

There's a laptop under my table, it's true.  It was left there by the two little boys who made the tent.  They snuggled under it, as brothers sometimes do, to watch a movie together.  There are blankets left over from the tent, folded now, and laid neatly across the back of a chair--not put away but, waiting there, just in case another tent needs to be built.
There are sippy cups and bottles adorning the bottom of the sink and Valentine treats lining the countertops.  A thick layer of dust covers the piano top where at least a dozen family photos peek from behind one another reminding us of loved ones here and gone.  There's a lego guy stuck in that piano and half a dozen science boards tucked in behind it.  There are clothes on the stairs waiting to be put away and a stack of miniature clothing to be washed.
There are coffee, yogurt and cocoa stains on nearly every available surface--the latest one happened when the baby reached up to hug me and knocked my cup sideways!
Dotted around the house are little love notes, Bible verses and books on everything from Spiderman to parenting to quilting and beyond.  Vegetable seeds and pots sit atop the table waiting to be started.  A Bible lays open where our oldest boy last finished reading... Jonah and the whale.
Sucker sticks and Valentines, candy wrappers and Star Wars guys, boots, coats, hats and helmets.
At the end of the day, I'm picking up.  I'm putting things away where they belong--oh, but not everything!  Never!!  You see, the sucker stick reminds me of a little boy who curled up in bed with me but didn't want to leave the comfort he found there.  The Bible reminds me of a little guy who, although is often sidetracked, strives after God.  Headphones and glue sticks, hair spray and soda cans are all reminders of the "artist in residence".  Baby dolls tucked in under a blanket, a big fat cat asleep in the rocker.  Names carved into the table and a myriad of artifacts and tomes remind me that I'm home.  My family lives here!  What joy! 
Yeah, I put away a lot of things but, i would never choose to put it all away.  I love the evidence of a life lived and a life lived fully. 
So, yes, there's still a laptop under my table--just in case!  Just in case two brothers want to love being together again. 
Someone will clean my house when I'm gone.  Maybe then it will all get put away.  Until then, I'm happy with all of the reminders that my family is bigger to me than a well cleaned home.

Harder Than I Thought

"Mom, will you braid my hair?"
"Sure, honey."
And as I'm braiding, I'm thinkin', "Your days are numbered, mama."

My beautiful daughter, my first born, turned eighteen yesterday.  Like most moms, I remember the day she was born vividly.  They placed her in my arms and I just kept telling my mom, "Mom, I have a baby!"  I was so shocked!  Ha!
Never did I think I could love so deeply!  I found this whole new capacity inside me and it was bigger than I thought possible.  She was amazing.  Plain and simple, she became my world.  For eight years, she was our only child. 
Aside from a bout of terrible twos, she was, literally, the perfect child.  Oh, I know everyone says that about their kids, but Janie is different.  Always has been.  She's a gift from God and there's no mistaking it.  Why He entrusted us with someone clearly so precious to Him, I will never know.  We were bound to mess it up, after all.  I suppose, in the end, He knew that we needed her. 
Janie has taught me, on more than one occasion, to be a better person.  She makes me think.  She opens up her soul so easily and shares it so willingly... and that's where God is.  I hope that when I grow up, I get to be just like her.
Yeah, my days are numbered.  Not too long now and she'll be heading out on her own and building her life.  What I wouldn't give to turn back the clock and relive some of those amazing days when she was little again.  That's not how it works, tho, and, after all, I get to marvel at the woman she has become.  It's not without a tear and more than an ounce of regret, but God helped us raise a true contribution!  I could never take credit for who she is, I do so hope, tho, for many more years to come!
I love you, angel baby! xxoo

The Mountain and Sea of Information: Introduction

So, here I go getting downright personal.  For the first time in my life, I've gained weight.  I hate it.  I went to the doctor.  Surely something must be medically wrong.  My thyroid!  No.  Diabetes?  No.  Not that I want to be ill, understand, there just has to be some reason for this weight that isn't actually MY fault.  After all, I've continued to do everything I've always done (which is next to nothing) and eat everything I've always eaten (which is nearly everything), how could my body "all of a sudden" change so dramatically??
Well, it has and that's all there is to know.  My doctor had a very informative conversation with me about diet and exercise and so I'm now heading down this new road of purposeful activity and careful eating.  Add to that the fact that a good friend just suffered a massive heart attack despite careful monitoring of his cholesterol and blood pressure and I'm totally on this new band wagon toward a slimmer, healthier version of me.  Since patience is not a virtue I seem to possess, I am using this blog to help keep me focused on my new goals.
In a nutshell (because nuts are good for you), I'll be blogging about foods that aid in weight loss and control and that additionally will help with my heart health.  I'll be talking about moderation and the definition of exercise.
Because I'll be learning so much as I go, I'm counting on you to correct and inform as you have information to share.  There is so much information out there and I know that some of it is conflicting, but I'll try to stay focused on the main points that are bound to help everyone at some point or another.  The information I give will only be from conversation with my doctor and research I've done on my own.  It won't be complicated because, if it were I wouldn't be following any of it.  I'll share successes, failures and stalls.  I'm counting on you to encourage me along to better health and hold me accountable.
That's it.  The next post will be about complex carbohydrates....

Life Update

Everything has happened so fast I figure I should start with an update...We purchased a home in town in May of this year.  It's a small farmhouse style home with three bedrooms and only a single bathroom!  We moved in shortly after June 1st after we refinished the floors and painted and did other small repairs.  The house is within walking distance to the library, the park, the store and the ice cream shop!  The back yard is large and fenced which is a relief to me.  It's such a cozy little spot and I truly love it.  This is a picture of our dining room.  We do most of our homeschooling in this room.  It's comfortable and feels very homey to me.
In July I surprised everyone (again) by going into labor on my own and having my baby quickly... something I have never done!  i was only in labor for a total of seven hours and was only in the hospital for about 4 1/2 before our baby bo arrived!

Joseph Boaz

Joseph Boaz was born six days early on July 16th shortly after 9am.  He was 8 pounds, 5 ounces and 21 inches long.  He did great from the start and is continuing to grow in leaps and bounds.  At two months he had already gained about five and a half pounds and grown four inches!  He's happy and smiley and he fits in really well with the rest of the rowdies that live here!
I am homeschooling all of the children full time this year and, I have to say, for my family this is the only way to go!  Mine and Mitchell's relationship has really grown and God provided us with a schedule that has been beneficial to us all.  We are really involved with other families doing co-ops and we're involved with the local homeschool group, too.  Janie sees a friend once a week to learn Spanish and my friend Jackie teaches her Geology while I do a craft and playdate with her kids.  Tomorrow my friend Jenni starts a cooking class that my kids will attend.  There are once a week field trips with the homeschool group and we're trying to wrap up our second unit study of the year!
The trial for my friend Lisa's murder will be held this month... 14 months after her death.  Jury selection starts next week and trial is scheduled for November 15-19th.  We'll see if it happens in that time frame.  It would be good to put this part of the trauma behind us so I'm praying that everything will happen swiftly.

Living the Life... Again!

What a long journey I've been on these past few months!  To say they've been trying would be an understatement!  Life is for living, tho, and so here I am putting my effort forward on the things that matter most to me.
I am 19 weeks pregnant now and morning sickness is finally over!  Everyone says our baby is most certainly a girl with all of the nausea I've had this time around.  We are hoping so but will not find out for sure until the doctor schedules an ultrasound.  I'm guessing we still have a couple of weeks before we do that.
                  Joe, working hard :)

Joseph is working out of town now.  He leaves on Sunday and returns on Thursday to spend the weekend with us.  We miss him but I like this schedule much better than "compressed halves"  where he works for 8 days and then is home for seven.  Hopefully his gang will move closer to home soon so our family schedule will be more normal and our expenses will be lighter.

Janie is such a blessing to me!  Where would I be without her?  She has been there helping out when I'm exhausted or sick to help with Max and housework and still manages to work on her schooling.  She attends afternoon classes at the high school and is a "straight A" student there.  Her artwork is improving and she is making a head and foot board for a bed in metal shop.  She finds that her favorite medium is chalk.  She takes a very hands on but short computer class and then spends time one-on-one with her computer lab teacher.

Mitchell started second grade full time last month.  It was a really difficult and painful decision but he is glad to be so occupied during the day.  It has taught me a lot.  We are working on his behavior now from a different angle.  Mitchell seems to require lots of attention... this we've known for a long time... and he will get it any way that he can.  I find that I need to "beat him to the punch", so to speak, and give him the opportunity to receive positive attention before he creates havoc and only gets negative attention.  Negative attention is exhausting for all of us!  We started with chores and small expectations.  Since he normally throws a fit about doing his chores, I've given him a daily deadline to complete them and if he completes them by this deadline for two days then he gets some special time with just me.  He finished his first two days today and we went to the library together.  I'm hoping that the extra attention and the reward for good behavior vs. consequences for poor behavior will make a difference for him and for our relationship.  I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Max is becoming a potty-trained little boy!  Hooray!  I always fuss about potty-training with every child only to realize in the end that they will train themselves when they are ready.  As long as he's wearing underwear instead of a diaper he will ask to use the bathroom almost every time.  He's such a cutie and a huge blessing to me.  I am really grateful for his loving and snuggly self on days when life gets hard.  His new thing is to pat his belly and say, "See my baby?"  Crazy boy! :)
All in all, life is getting back on track.  We are grateful for Spring and that it reminds us that life is full of new beginnings and there is hope in that.  Hoping for you and yours that your Spring brings the opportunity for your own budding and blooming and reminds you of the only hope that is everlasting... the hope that comes from God.

Brrr....

I'm ready for the snow.  Snow means it should warm up a little!  This morning when Joe left for work it was -3!  Janie went out to defrost the chickens' water and twenty minutes later it was frozen again.  I worked in the hen house this morning spreading a new bail of straw and defrosting the water more thoroughly.  Some of the hens even had frost on their feathers.  I felt so bad for them that i locked them all back in their house to dig through the fresh straw--a favorite pasttime of theirs--and, hopefully, stay warmer.  Back in my toasty house I'm thinking of something cozy to make for dinner and maybe some gingerbread men.  I'll add the new recipes to the blog today.  We're praying for Joe who has to work outside all day.  I'll have to have a hot cup of tea waiting for him when he gets home.  Hoping you stay warm wherever you are today!

Surprise!!

Well, yesterday I got a little curious and decided to take a pregnancy test.  No big deal, I keep a spare in the house just to reassure me when i get to wondering.  I always "fail" the test.  Yesterday I passed.  Yikes!  I've never had a baby that I didn't plan!  The control freak in me kinda went numb.  I was thinking about having another baby.  Maybe we'd work on that this summer.  God, apparently, had other plans.  He has pressed us into a position where we must let go and trust Him.  Financially it will be a challenge.  Physically it will be a challenge.  Emotionally it will be a challenge.
All that said, we are excited despite the hurdles that will need to be overcome.  Everyone thinks that it's time for us to have another girl.  I'd like that.  So now it's on to eating more healthy, exercising with purpose and getting things organized for a new baby.  Wish us luck!

Peace in the Valley... everyday life

The last few days at our house have been so peaceful. I find that, that peace brings me hope. Joe stayed home from work feeling a bit ill the other day. Seems like everyone has come down with a little something lately. It was a great day, tho. We did science experiments and read in our history books. Janie and I corrected her algebra test and Mitch and I played a game of fraction bingo! It's the time of year when we always have a fire in the woodstove and everything feels so cozy and comforting. It was lovely to have everyone in the house for the day.
Yesterday we went into town to my great friend, Jackie's house. She helped me with some homemade sausage that Joe and I had taken too much fat out of. She is really smart and I'm lucky to have her as my friend. She took Mitch and her kids to the library for homeschool story time while I took Janie up to George and Lucy's for her weekly Spanish lessons. George and Lucy are friends that have adopted my children as their very own grandchildren. I picked up Mitch from the library and we went up to enjoy their company one last time before they head to Arizona and Mexico for the winter. George made balloon animals and did magic tricks and made us lunch as the snow started to fly outside.
It's a snowy morning today and the fire is burning hot. I finished up some sewing and made a special breakfast for my family. Janie is snuggled up on the couch feeling a little under the weather... is she really sick or is it that she doesn't have her Israel report finished? Hmmmm....
Well, greetings from the mountain! Hope your day is as cozy as ours promises to be.

It's a Country Sort of Day...

It's a busy day here! The children woke up to their mama gently coaxing them to get out of bed and put on their best lumberjack gear! We were going to cut firewood! We set off with a mug of coffee, a pitcher of milk and some yummy doughnuts! The kids were great helpers. I kept reminding them how lovely it will be to wake up to a warm fire on those fabulous but cold winter mornings in Eastern Oregon. We were able to get a cord today and will head out to get another one tomorrow. Our permit allows three cord so we'll have to plan another day to get the last one. Due to the fire season we aren't allowed to use power saws in the woods after 1pm so our time is limited each day.

Once we got home, the kids and Joe unloaded the truck while I started on lunch and got a couple of loaves of bread started in the mixer. Within a short while everyone was eating, the bread was rising in the bowl and I had a load of clean laundry drying on the line in a gentle breeze.
I called my Mom and she stepped out to the garage so I could hear the "sideways rain" that they were getting at her house! I'd like a good storm here, but I'm not over-anxious for it just yet.
Joseph worked again at trying to get the crab apple, hot pepper jelly to set up to no avail. We've had the worst time with that sort of thing this year. He had doubled the batch which probably wound up being the issue. There are plenty more crab apples to attempt another batch.
Joe made dinner tonight which is always a special treat for me. He made stuffed green peppers. All ingredients came from our garden save the rice and the beef. Don't know that I'll ever have rice patties but growing miniature herefords is something that's piqued my interest of late, I have to admit.
As is my habit, I called my Mom as I went out to do the evening chore of putting the chickens "to bed". No eggs tonight but I noticed that Janie had gone to check for some earlier today and brought some in. The chickens seem to be noticing the cooler weather and the shorter days already. Four of the seven are more than a year old... middle aged for a layer, I suppose. Seems there are fewer and fewer eggs every day. Won't be long til we're putting a light on a timer in the hen house to maintain some level of production!
I pulled the last of the clothes off the line in the dark and brought our old kitty, Cali indoors for the night. Tonight the low is supposed to be near freezing and her old bones just can't handle that kind of cold anymore. Hoping my tomatoes make it through the night...

Our Weekend

Mom and Dad have been here this weekend and will stay all week. We're having great fun! We started the weekend with killing roosters! Turns out that every chick we got this Spring was a rooster! Joe was teaching Mitchell how to shoot them.
In the meantime the rest of us were harvesting and canning all weekend. We processed corn on the cob, green beans and tomatoes. I made huckleberry/cherry/raspberry jam yesterday.
Janie volunteered during the "Fun Run" on Saturday for the annual Cove Cherry Festival. We all went down to the parade and then over to the Ascension School Grounds for the festival. There were bagpipers and a kids train ride, flavored lemonade and spinning wheel demonstrations. Janie ran around with her friends and met up with us around lunch time.
Mom and I chased chickens, cleaned the hen house and bought a laundry basket and more clothes pins for the wash we've been putting on the line. We dreamed up all kinds of plans for the day when we own lots of acreage of our own. We've pet horses and cats and collected eggs. AND we discovered that the skunks are back! Sigh.
We went to church on Sunday and my parents were able to visit with the friends that they've met here. We made plans to have dinner with a family at the end of the week before my parents head back for home.
Mitchell's best friend, Clancy, was here all day... Janie was babysitting while his parents are working out of town... and Janie's best friend, Kimi, was here for a few hours this afternoon.
Tonight we went for a walk only to have the cutest puppy follow us home. We're pretty sure he belonged to our Mennonite neighbors so we packed him up in the bed of the truck with the kids and tried to run him home. He was so cute and wanted to come home with us. Everyone wanted to keep him and Mitchell cried when the dog didn't wander his way back to us despite the fact that none of the Monnonite neighbors were home. (we joked that they'd probably been raptured) :)
It's getting late and time to put the tired kiddos to bed...