Tag Archive for Family
The Guys and Spring
Just wanted to update you on our Wordless Wednesday. This was one of the days we made it to the park last week. The guys were enthralled with the pee wee baseball practice going on behind the playground. They should have just turned around in their swings and they could have been swinging while watching the other boys and their dads/coaches practice!
A cute thing happened this week when our two-year-old came up the stairs with a milk crate of clean cloth diapers, without being told! We wouldn’t ask such a little tike to do a job like that anyways. His big brother helped with the last step but other than that we had no idea he was dragging up the crate. He barely made a sound while doing it. Then once he had it in our room, he proceeded to start folding diapers! How’s that for training? Just by watching others do it he figured he could too! Truly a precious boy.
This week has been cold, wet and rainy. We had to cancel our appt. to see the farmland and will reschedule on a nice day next week.
Yesterday, I had my first midwife appointment. I am 20 weeks and 2-4 days. Baby wouldn’t stay put for very long when the doppler was used, but at least we did get to hear his or her heartbeat. My blood pressure was good, but my iron is down a bit. That was odd for me, mine is usually higher, so I am going to try and up my iron intake. Technically at 28-32weeks it is suppose to have a healthy, expected drop, but we don’t want mine to drop we want it to remain the same.
Tomorrow Milwaukee Zoo is having a free day if anyone is near that city and interested!
Spring is Here!
I have several reviews to get posted, but am finding it hard to get them written up amidst everything else we are currently involved in! We have been having gorgeous weather – 70-80 degrees most of last week. This week we were expecting some of the same this week, but it’s been raining with thunderstorms most of the time.
We had an “episode” last week, our two year old son gave us a scare with DeCon. My husband had brought home his mom’s shop vac, which she keeps in her garage where she puts down DeCon to control the mice population. There happened to be some on the shop vac and my husband found the DeCon on our floor beside Noah after bringing the shop vac into the house. It was a scary few days, but we are thankful to report that he is just fine. Whew. My poor husband was kicking himself, but it is one of those things that happened…and put our hearts in our throats and our emotions on our sleeves just thinking about losing Noah.
Then we were fortunate to come across a free upright freezer, which my husband and his brother picked up and got set up in record time in our garage. Now we have two upright freezers to help store food for our growing family.
We also came across some farm property for rent. Just land for rent, no house as it is already rented out, but if we were to rent a couple of acres we’d be able to put up a huge family vegetable garden to help feed this crew of ours. We are going to see the property tomorrow, which is fairly close to our house. So I am in “farm mode” again as I try to finish up our online farminars with PracticalFarmers.org, set up our mentorship through our Farm Beginnings facilitator (for those of you unaware, this past winter we won a full scholarship to Stateline Farm Beginnings for beginning farmers and those interested in farming).
So, if I you are wondering why I haven’t posted, you now know why, as this is all in addition to what I do at home for our homeschool and for our clients! Plus, we began our deep cleaning of our garage which desperately needs finishing so we can make room for this new little person growing inside my womb – he or she has begun to make more movements that are more noticeable to me! It is such a wonderful feeling! The weather and my husband’s health has not been very cooperative this week to get the garage done. 🙁
When Your Hut’s On Fire!
When Your Hut’s On Fire!
The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him.
Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.
Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions.
One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst seemed to have happened, and everything was lost.
He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, ‘God! How could you do this to me?’
Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him!
‘How did you know I was here?’ asked the weary man of his rescuers.
‘We saw your smoke signal,’ they replied.
The Moral of This Story:
It’s easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn’t lose heart, because God is at work in our lives, even in the midst of our pain and suffering.
Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning to the ground, it just may be a smoke signal that summons the Grace of God.
Author Unknown
This was passed on to us via email from a friend.
Did You Participate in Earth Hour?
Just wondering if anyone participated in Earth Hour on Saturday night? We did, but we were late starting because we were watching the movie, Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog, and with only 15 minutes left we opted to do our hour from 8:45pm-9:45pm. By the way, good movie!
I had grandoise plans for our family, but I guess I should have shared them with everyone before hand because while Earth Hour was spent in the dark, it wasn’t anything like I was expecting!
First, Robert was not feeling well. Second, I had pictured all of us crowded in our bedroom with perhaps the flashlight, (I considered candles but with so many bodies in one room decided for the safety reasons the flashlight was enough) and we’d get some discussions going.
Well, when you put a sick husband, seven children and a wife/mom who wants to talk in a dark room for an hour what do you get? Giddy children, grumpy husband and a disappointed wife/mom!
I am sure our children will have fond memories of our hour of darkness because they played and goofed around, while my husband asked them to tone it down because he had a headache and I bemoaned that this is just not what I pictured us doing.
Result? Happy children, tired, sick husband and disappointed wife/mom. But we did conserve energy.
How was your Earth Hour?
Life with Boys
I am reading a new book, just started it actually. I cannot say anything yet, as it is for a book review for April, but I will say that I knew from the moment I got the book pitch that I was going to need to read it and enjoy it when did….and I was right. As the title of this post indicates, it is a book about life with boys – the wilder side.
Those of you with sons know that life takes an adventurous turn when they come into your life, especially if you weren’t an adventurous person to begin with. Or if you grew up in a family of all girls, like I did.
I thought my three girls were active, but they were truly nothing to what their two brothers are like when they came along! We went from having a neat organized house and yard to having a beat up house and yard the older the boys got. It doesn’t help that we now have seven children living in our house, trampling the grass, digging, pounding and exploring either.
The thing is boys gravitate towards dirt, trees, building something out of nothing a lot more than the girls. Not that our girls didn’t do some of that, they did and still do. However, more often than not, the girls were/are usually outside with a blanket and their baby dolls having picnics and playing house – anything family related. The boys on the other hand love anything to do with wars, fighting, protecting and all that goes with those things.
The wilder side of boys is precisely the reason we desire to get out of a suburban, townhouse community and into the country where our children, our boys especially, can run, explore, create ugly, but ingenious on ugly creations, patchy lawns and definitely don’t want children climbing their trees! In the suburbs, neighbors shake may their heads, avoid you and your projects and if they don’t complain about you, they are certainly tempted to! In the country, neighbors offer to help you make your ugly projects!
Life with boys can be exasperating if you don’t have a sense of humor or you are worried about finances -the cost of re-drywalling, repainting, or wallpapering walls just to hide the gouges in them from who knows what kind of play went on behind your backs, the cost of re-seeding or re-sodding the lawn, to replacing blinds, screens and doors because of rough use. This is especially true if you are hoping to sell your house sometime in the future! The author of this new book seems to have a balance perspective of life with boys – One that I hope to learn from since I tend to find life with boys more exasperating and worrisome than humorous. It has been a goal of mine to make our children’s hearts matter more than material goods…let’s just say it is a journey and I have yet to arrive at my destination.
Stay tuned for the real book review…
How Safe is your Neighborhood?
Do you know how safe your neighborhood is? I am not sure how safe ours is, but I know that cars have been broken into. I also know that we have forgotten to lock our car doors, we have occasionally forgotten to lock our house doors and have even left our garage door up ALL night!
Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Yesterday morning, when my husband went to leave for work and went out to our mini van, the sliding door was wide open! There wasn’t a lot of valuable stuff in there, but a few things someone could have taken off with. We think we must have a guardian angel watching over us, which wouldn’t surprise me since my husband prays every night for a hedge of protection to be around us.
I am thankful that our neighborhood is relatively safe, as is our small town, but I am most thankful for the protection God gives, even when we are forgetful humans.
