At the Butterfly Ball

The Boys' Natural History Museum

2012-01-04T17:02:00.001-05:00

Over the Christmas holidays the boys decided to create a natural history museum in their bedroom. Most of the things they have had in there for a while but the gifts of some gorgeous new playsilks from a dear friend and my mother-in-law's kind help in deep cleaning their room with them, fueled their choice to do something extra special with their space!

{Welcome signs and admission information as well as the Museum's curator's names. (I should clarify that the Natural History Museum was entirely Matthew's and Ethan's idea as shown by the bottom sign on the door. {see close up of said sign below, click to zoom on any of the pictures} Logan really had nothing to do with it, as in his very mature 14 year old-ness he was just happy not to be crunching 8 zillion legos underfoot!) }

{The ______ Boys Natural History Museum. Do not touch anything. 25¢ Please Knock}

(Family name blanked out to protect our privacy :-) }

{The two _____ boys, Yes Matthew and Ethan No Logan) {Matthew explained to us that this was to avoid any confusion over who was responsible for the Museum}

{Matthew said that this is their dragon who was discovered by some friends of theirs. It appears legless, but he further explained, that is only because it was caught while in flight! Dragon's legs apparently tuck up underneath them while flying!}

{Mexican Rose Knee Tarantula... yes this is actually living in my boys' room, in a tank on their nightstand... sweet dreams my angels! Better them than me, having that for a room-mate!}

*And for the record she has only escaped once. Back in 2009 when I was pregnant with Claire, Ethan had fed her some crickets and left the lid to her tank ajar... the next morning we realized she (the spider) was missing. Much frantic searching ensued with no luck whatsoever. After a few weeks we assumed she had died and forgot about her completely. Not terribly smart on my part... but you know, I was pregnant and had other things on my mind. One night a few hours after we put the kids to bed we went to bed ourselves. Rodrigo fell right to sleep but I decided to read for a while before going to sleep. I was laying there nestled all snug in my bed reading, the house peaceful and quiet, when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a huge shadow move up across the wall right beside me. I turned my head and crawling above me up the wall was a very hungry, very huge and hairy tarantula. Honey, you have never seen a pregnant woman move quite so fast! I am actually not normally afraid of tarantulas or any other spider... but this was the middle of the night and I was really startled! I woke Rodrigo up (by jumping completely over him and out of his side of the bed, while screaming!) and insisted that he catch that big hairy thing immediately, or I would never be able to sleep again! He did and she is happily back where she belongs~ bigger and hairier than ever!

OK now back to the tour of the Natural History Museum. ;-)

{A white tail deer drawn by Matthew.}

{Genuine Australian Boomerangs. A gift from the boys' Australian great-Uncle Magnus}

{Hammerhead Shark and Bottle-nose Dolphin drawn by Matthew.}

{A silk pirate's treasure map and the world's largest "diamond" which it led to...}

{The Native American Indian area. Complete with dioramas, ceremonial masks, arrows, shields, and various other artifacts, displayed on a new rainbow silk.}

{The Penobscot Indians, diorama by Matthew}

{Cliff dwelling Indians, Diorama by Ethan}

{Pretty! Matthew had asked for a Leopard gecko for Christmas this year. His grandparents got him this little beauty!}

{The Wall of Curiosities and Wonders. Top shelf: a handmade flute from a small village of river dwelling Indians from the Peruvian Amazon and Whitetail Deer's antler almost out of the picture. Second shelf: Drawing of American Goldfinch by Logan, and a wooden carving from Bali. Third shelf: a collection of skulls from our travels. Black bear from a friend here in the Tennessee Mountains, Dog Skull from the woods behind my mom's house, Agouti Paca Skull from a walk through the jungle in Guatemala, Raccoon skull from Kentucky, Wild cat (possibly Margay also found in the jungle in Guatemala, Coati Mundi skull found near Tikal National park Guatemala. And a real dart blow gun brought from Peru, by my parents for the boys. With real darts made of porcupine quills... it really shoots them. Thanks mom! Bottom shelf: Plaster casting of a raccoon's footprint, a raccoon skull, various seashells, and a cow's vertebrate.}

{Candles from Africa, shells and another plaster casting of a raccoon's footprint}

{Close-up of a few of the skulls... Why yes, that is washi tape holding the raccoon's lower jaw together... what would you have used? ;-)}

Merry Christmas! With our love!

2011-12-22T20:23:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas from our home to yours. May your holidays be filled with peace and love, and your New Year filled with blessings and joy.
Love,
Rodrigo, Rachel, Logan, Matthew, Ethan, Claire, and baby Emmett!

(My computer has died :-( I hope this post looks right because I am posting from a borrowed tablet and the posting format is really strange on this thing! I'll be taking tons of pictures but I won't be posting again until I get it fixed!)

Adorableness!

2011-12-16T08:17:00.002-05:00

I was astonished to realize this week that Emmett is now 3 months old! My goodness how time flies! I took these pictures on Wednesday afternoon. I was hoping to get a good shot for our Christmas cards this year... and yes, I do realize that pretty much everyone else has already sent out their Christmas cards and now the very day is nearly upon us. But I am a firm believer in better late than never!! ;-) I'll share the picture I chose for the cards in a few days.

This is my favorite picture of little Emmett! He looks so happy and strong! He is such a wonderful blessing for our family. He really is a joy to have around.

The shirt he is wearing has a special story too. It was handmade for Emmett's Daddy. When Rodrigo's mother was pregnant with him, she and her grandmother (Rodrigo's great grandmother) hand stitched these beautiful shirts for her baby. The embroidery and tiny little pin tucks are exquisite. I inherited 3 of these beautiful little shirts when Rodrigo and I were expecting our first baby and each our children has had a chance to wear them. But only for special occasions because I wold love to pass them on through the generations. Such a sweet inheritance.

Logan humored me by posing with Emmett and even dressing up for the occasion! He is growing so quickly into a man! Every morning when he comes out of his bedroom, I think he looks even bigger than he did the night before!

My boys... biggest and littlest. My heart is full.

The winner of my first Giveaway!

2011-12-11T23:37:00.001-05:00

Thank you everyone! What a great time I had reading all of your comments. Everyone had such nice things to say. I always feel a bit insecure about the things I make... what if no one else likes them? What if they aren't good enough? What if I think they are pretty and nobody else does?? It is nice to hear that you thought my little Angels were as pretty as I thought they were! Does anyone else feel that way about the things they make?

That is why I haven't opened an Etsy shop.. well truthfully I have opened an Etsy shop! I did it over a year ago!! I just have never listed a single item for sale, just too nervous I guess. Which is strange, because when it comes to just about anything else in life I'm really not very insecure. Well, I have moments I'm sure, but I try not to let it get to me! But I mean what if I put all of this time, effort and expense into making some things to list on Etsy, and then nobody wants them??? Uhgg! I think I'll just go ahead and try to get something made and listed on there in January sometime. If I could get the first thing put up there, I'd probably feel much better about the whole thing. But then I'd have to decide what to make... probably a doll or two.. but what kind? and size? and what about clothes? and hair color/style... see what I mean? The making of these decisions is driving me batty!

Enough of that! On to who won my little giveaway! I used random.org to help me choose the winner and it came up with the number 10! Which happens to be Sandra who said the following in her comment:

"Oh, my...they are beautiful beyond mere words! Getting one of this angels would be a real blessing for Christmas! And yes, please, open Etsy store!"

(Which was what got me thinking about opening an Etsy store again or rather stocking an Etsy store... since we've already been over the fact that I do have on open already!) Ha!

So congratulations Sandra! Please email me your address so I can get your little Angel shipped out to you! Hopefully she'll arrive before Christmas! atthebutterflyball (at) gmail.com

Thanks again everyone! I really enjoyed hosting this little giveaway and I can't wait to do another one!

A Choir of Angels and a Giveaway!

2011-12-06T18:51:00.001-05:00

I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people!

And a giveaway!

^{Luke 2: 8-14}

⁸ Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. ¹⁰ Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. ¹¹ For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
¹⁴ “ Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

I made these little angels for a swap I participated in hosted by the lovely Ms. Bloom of the blog We Bloom Here. I made them in the Waldorf tradition, using all natural materials and giving them simple faces. But since these were meant to be more for Christmas Decorations or for the Winter Nature Table I decided to add some sparkly beads to their gowns. I really do love making this type of doll. Every one is the result of a lot of hard work, but so worth it, as I think each one turns out beautifully! I love how they all look different and each seems to have her (and his) own sweet little personality!

The little boy angel I made especially for my children. I crocheted his hair out of the same yarn I used for the girl angels. I love how soft and curly he looks. Logan (my oldest son) laughed and said his hair looks like he has an afro... he is an afro baby angel according to him! I love my afro baby angel! And Claire does too! She has not left him alone since I gave him to them. I don't think the beads on his robe will last for very long though!

Just in time for Christmas and celebrating the announcement of the birth of Jesus the Savior of mankind, I am hosting my first giveaway! I've wanted to do this for a while, at first I planned on doing it for my blog's first anniversary, then I was going to do it for my hundredth post... both of those came and went, in a flurry of living a very full life. So now this is my 137th post, about time to have this giveaway already!

This sweet little Angel doll is looking for a new home. The giveaway is open to any and all around the world! The only requirement is that you leave me a comment on this post. If you want to follow my blog, or post about the giveaway on facebook, twitter or even blog about it, that would be great, :-) but not needed to win! Only one comment per person please! Just be sure to leave me a way to contact you, if your comment is not connected to a blog.

The winner will be selected by a random number generator on next Sunday evening December 11, 2011. I can wait!

Luke 2:15-20

¹⁵ So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. ¹⁷ Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. ¹⁸ And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. ¹⁹ But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

Doing "School"

2011-11-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

Doing "School" ~preschool style.

We are part of a weekly homeschool co-op that gets together every Tuesday for classes. Besides having a chance to hang out with a whole group of friends for the day, the boys have music classes, and art, show and tell (public speaking) and all kinds of fun stuff. The co-op is in addition to the regular school that we do at home, you know the "important" things, like language arts, math, science...

I often take the little girls to hang out and "do school" with the preschool class. At first both Claire and Little Miss H were shy and didn't really know what to do. But now after a few weeks they really enjoy spending and hour or two in there with the bigger kids (mostly 3 and 4 year olds) while I help out where I'm needed in the co-op.

Little Miss H can't play with play-dough yet. She just doesn't get it! She sees all of those plastic knives and cooking utensils, and hears the other children talking about making "cookies" and food and she just tries to eat it. No matter how many times I've explained it to her that we are just pretending, she still tries to eat it. Every. Single. Time. So, I just let her play with something else while the other children play with play-dough.

See those adorable hair bows? They are turkeys! My mom made them for the girls last week. So cute! They got lots of compliments on their hair bows this week at co-op.

Doing "School" ~a field trip.

On Monday afternoon I took the kids on a field trip to the Sequoya Birthplace museum. Matthew and Ethan are studying Native Americans. And Matthew needed to write a report on the first people in Tennessee. I went to this museum as a child... it is exactly the same as it was when I was in 6th grade!

I spent almost the entire time chasing the girls down, thankfully baby Emmett slept in his sling through it all. The boys enjoyed themselves and I think they learned quite a bit. Matthew and Ethan both chose to talk about the Indians the next day in their show and tell class at the co-op.

Forest Gnome Babies

2011-11-13T22:56:00.004-05:00

On Thursday afternoon Rodrigo and I were talking and we decided to take the kids to the park the next day since he would have the day off. That night after the little ones were all in bed I made gnome hats for Emmett and Claire. I have one in the works for little Miss H as well, but didn't have time to finish it before we headed to the park the next day.

For Emmett's hat I used a beautiful dark blue felted wool sweater and appliqued a little squirrel out of cream colored wool felt on one side and a pair of leaves and an acorn on other side of his hat. I then made a little running stitch with yarn around the brim of his hat and made the ties out of the same yarn braided. Claire's hat I made out of a warm fuzzy piece of dark grey polar fleece and trimmed it with bright red ric rac and appliqued a cheerful red toadstool out of wool felt on the side of it. The ties are also made out of the same ric rac trim.

I think the hats turned out absolutely adorably! The day was quite cold and windy and both babies' heads were kept warm and snuggly! The kids enjoyed playing in the fallen leaves, I enjoyed spotting the cute little forest gnome playing among the trees! And the puppies also enjoyed their first trip to the park. (We got 2 English Bulldogs puppies a few weeks before Emmett was born, back when we still had 2 more foster children. So there I was, 9 months pregnant with 4 toddlers under the age of 3, three big boys to homeschool and 2 puppies to house-train while Rodrigo was at work all day... I was really really tired! Which was why I didn't post much craftiness or anything else for a few months!)

I am hoping to post a tutorial of how to make a gnome hat like these in the next few days! It's really easy (even if you are a beginning sewer) and they are so cute!

Linking up at Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday, The Magic Onion's Friday's Nature Table, Fabric Bows and More and Skip to My Lou's Made By You Monday, and at Crafty Moms Share.

Light Show

2011-11-07T22:06:00.001-05:00

The boys were playing around tonight with a flashlight putting on a light show for their Dad. He grabbed the camera and took a bunch of shots of them and their homemade light show.

Light show by Ethan and Matthew, photos and editing by Ro{drigo}

Coffee with Claire

2011-11-04T08:34:00.001-04:00

Quiet times with my girl... Claire is my earliest riser. She is up by 6:30 every single morning. So while the rest of the house is still nestled all snug in their beds (Except Daddy, who usually leaves for work by 6:30!) Claire and I get to spend about an hour alone together. This morning she asked me for a cup of coffee, "I want coffee too please."

So what was a mama to do, but make her girl a cup of coffee! {No, I didn't really give my 23 month old a cup of coffee... I made her about an inch of hot cocoa in the bottom of a sturdy coffee mug. And sat with her at the table, in case she spilled, which she didn't.}

We talk about all sorts of things during these quiet mornings together, this girl of mine and I. Here she was telling me "I love it, my coffee." Then she giggled. We giggle a lot together, she is a very witty conversationalist.

I am so thankful for this little girl. And these moments that we spend just the two of us fill my already full heart to overflowing with happiness and gratitude.

Birthday at the Park

2011-11-01T22:33:00.000-04:00

Friday was my birthday (as well as our foster daughter's birthday, which we celebrated with her family). For my birthday I asked if we could get out and go walking somewhere to enjoy the beautiful Autumn leaves. But Friday was very cold and poured rain all day long. Saturday morning we woke up and it was beautiful, cold and sunny. So Rodrigo announced that we would go to the park and take a picnic lunch in honor of my birthday! What fun! So we packed up a quick picnic and headed out.

Can you find the two boys hiding in the picture below? Click on the picture to see it larger...

It was a happy birthday. I really love spending the entire day with my family!

Costumes and playing Dress-up

2011-10-31T23:50:00.000-04:00

My kids love to dress up! I mean they really love it. Matthew especially, there are weeks at a time that the child goes everywhere in costume, and not just in late October, but all year long! So when they announced in our homeschool co-op that this past Tuesday was going to be costume day the boys asked for new costumes to wear.

Matthew's costume started last Christmas. My mom made him and Ethan these really cool crocheted chain-mail helmets.

Matthew asked then and there if we could make him a knight costume to match. His Grandma obliged his request by making him this cool outfit. The tunic has a medieval lion embroidered on the front. The sword was one of his Christmas gifts that Rodrigo and I made for him last year. And he also requested a leather sheath for his sword... I had no good idea how to make one, until I remembered the old leather bomber jacket that I had saved to upcycle into something else. I was worried about sewing it with my machine, because I've never sewn leather with it before... so I simply cut a sleeve off of the coat and hemmed the bottom. I wasn't totally happy with how it looked, but he was thrilled with it, and that is what's important. He also designed his own crown.

Ethan asked me for a cape. He picked out the colors and I used the pattern for the reversible hooded play cape from the book "Growing Up Sew Liberated" (Side note, I am loving this book! I borrowed it from the library, but I might just need to get it for my self!)

If you click on the picture you can zoom in and see the button we used to close the cape. I made them from one of the sticks Ethan is constantly dragging home from the woods!

He went as a forest elf.

Claire found the wig that we were getting ready to cut and shape for Logan's costume. I turned around and she was standing in the middle of the table with this giant red wig on. Little Miss H was standing on the floor behind her watching the show.

Sadly, I don't have any really good pictures of Logan's costume. And it was really my pièce de résistance, I worked for weeks getting every detail just so...

He asked me to make him a Mad Hatter Costume! He went with me to the fabric store and picked out the fabric for his coat. We discussed at length every single detail of his entire outfit. His hat was also entirely handmade. He helped me make the costume, he strung the thread spool bandoleer, and helped decorate his hat. I'll try to get him dressed back up in it in a few days sans the makeup so I can get some better pictures of it. It was a lot of fun making this outfit, it really seems a shame that he will probably only wear it once... But Matthew already has his eyes on it! So all of my hard work wont have gone to waste!

Posing as a truly mad Mad Hatter!

It was very dark in the room where I took his picture, but he looked awesome! He won first prize in the costume contest!

My sweet little Claire and Little Miss H dressed up as Ballerina Fairies. I made both of their tutus. Rodrigo snapped some pictures of them in front of the house before we left. Claire was a red fairy.

Check out these dimples!!

Little Miss H was a white fairy. Their wings were store bought.

They were adorable! And they felt so pretty, both little girls kept twirling around in circle singing and giggling when I let them try on their new tutus. Claire kept saying "Pretty dress!" and "Pretty H!" and patting her foster sister's head. H just smiled and smiled.

Trying to fly...

I love making things for my kids, they really enjoy getting mama-mades. Those tend to be some of their very favorite things to play with and wear!

Little Miss H's second birthday

2011-10-29T23:28:00.001-04:00

Our own sweet foster daughter Little Miss H turned two years old yesterday! I loaded up all of the children Friday morning and took them to H's birthday party. Her whole extended family showed up, Mom, Grandmother, Great-grandmother, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins... they had planned a big party for her, she was one celebrated and loved little girl!

Opening presents with her Mommy!

Claire really enjoyed herself as well... new baby dolls to play with! Everyone was so sweet to her, making sure she had something to play with and even letting her help open one of Little Miss H's presents, so she wouldn't feel left out.

Emmett slept on me, in the sling or on my lap most of the time, the noise of screaming playing children didn't phase him a bit.

Little Miss H had a wonderful time! She is truly one happy, well loved little girl. We are going to miss her very much one day when she goes home. She and Claire have played Mommies and Babies non stop since her birthday party!

*(I asked her mother and her social worker for permission to post pictures of her on my blog, and they both said it would be fine with them... so yippee! Now I can include pictures of H here since she has become such a huge part of our family these past few months!)

one month

2011-10-13T07:29:00.001-04:00

Emmett at One Month.

He spends more time awake now every day, quietly watching me and the rest of this boisterous family. He rarely cries, and is such a peaceful and happy baby. Since he nurses pretty much constantly and he's now developed the beginnings of a very respectable double chin :-). We are all enjoying this tiny new life who is such a blessing to our family.

almost two weeks old

2011-09-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow my sweet baby Emmett will be two whole weeks old! It is hard to believe that so much time has already passed since his birth.

{Almost smiling... he smiles in his sleep all the time, especially when we kiss his cheeks or pet his downy little head. But I've had a really hard time capturing those fleeting expressions with my camera! He has the cutest little dimples in each cheek when he does smile.}

{Peaceful and quiet}

{big brother Logan, perfect for napping on}

{At 12 days old Emmett had his first real bath... I do love babies without all of their clothes and blankets on... so tiny and delicate and strong all at the same time, with such soft sweet skin. They are such perfect little miracles, aren't they?}

{After just a minute he decided that he really didn't mind the water at all!

{All tired out and sweet smelling after his bath. Claire was whispering over and over to him "I love you too, baby."}

I love him.

I am quite sure he is one of the most precious, perfect babies ever. I am enjoying this tiny little person so much. I really love having a new baby, there are so many things I don't want to ever forget. His breathy little sighs and sneezes, his smell, the softest hair covering his little round head. The way he grunts and squirms when he is trying to wake up. The funny little mewling sounds he makes. The way he looks up at me when I talk to him, and how he sleeps so peacefully next to me at night. I wake up just so I can rejoice in the fact that he is here, and healthy, and mine! I wish there was a better way to preserve this time in his life...the way he smells, sounds and feels, but for lack of a better way, I'll probably be posting lots of "baby" here over the next few weeks!

Welcome to the world my sweet baby!

2011-09-13T21:42:00.001-04:00

I am so very happy to announce the birth of our fifth sweet baby, Emmett Morgan! He was born last night. Well, early this morning actually, around 3:10am. Like we did with his big sister Claire, we chose to stay home and have him here instead of going to the hospital for his labor and delivery. Surprisingly he came a few days before his due date! That has never happened to us before, everyone else has shown up for the party late!

Important Facts:

Born: Sept. 13, 2011

Time 3:10am

Weight: 7lbs 10oz.

Length 19.75 inches

Head: 13.25inches

He is fat, with dimples in both cheeks, and he smells heavenly!!

He is our second post vasectomy reversal baby, and our second VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean-section) baby. And our second baby born in the USA. (Our first 3 boys were born while we lived in Guatemala.) Our fifth child, fourth boy! Have I mentioned lately how much I love my boys (and my girl <3)?

Claire is smitten with "her baby" as we all are! She asks to "hold it, the baby" constantly.

I might get back on here in a few days and post Emmett's birth story. But for now I am going to rest and bask in the sweetness of getting to know my newest little one!

Zipline Rules

2011-09-09T08:37:00.000-04:00

Matthew and Ethan decided to make a sign with rules for their Zipline in the backyard yesterday. :-)

My favorite part: "Hold on for Dear life." These boys of mine make me giggle!

{Click on pictures to enlarge for a better view}

Talking to her baby

2011-09-07T08:01:00.000-04:00

We've tried to explain to Claire that there is a baby in Mommy's belly. And she has seen many of the preparations we've made over the past few months for the soon to arrive little one. Of course she doesn't really understand the whole concept, being little more than a baby herself. However she loves to lift my shirt up and talk to her baby any chance she gets. She usually screams "BABY! HELLO BABY!" right into my belly button, and then giggles uncontrollably.

I snapped these pictures this weekend while we were sitting on my bed. I was trying to get a picture of her with her hair in pigtails... she was much more interested in chatting up her baby brother who was happily jumping and kicking her the whole time!

Playing in the Fountains

2011-09-04T23:30:00.001-04:00

One day last week I had to run a few errands for my husband in Knoxville. Since I had all of the kids with me, and they were being so sweet I decided to take them somewhere fun when we were finished with what we had to do. We took a picnic lunch and headed for the fountains at the World's Fair park in Downtown Knoxville. The day was hot and sunny, just perfect for playing in the water! Originally, I actually had wanted to take them to a nearby park with a big playground, but when we got there we discovered the park had been closed for repairs due to recent storm damage... oh well, contingency plan! Find water! The World's Fair Park and Fountains were near by, and even though we had not brought bathing suits to play in the water, I had enough extra stuff in the van to make do with what we had! A few towels, a few extra pairs of shorts for the little ones and Matthew and Ethan , and a swim diaper/panties for Claire... and we where good to go!

It was a lot of fun and because the new school year has begun we had the water almost totally to ourselves.

Matthew made a point of running over each and every fountain in the park. He wasn't still long enough for me to get a good picture of his face! But take my word for it... he had a great time!

Logan helped me keep a close eye on all of the little ones... he is such a great help to me!

Ethan telling B. (one of our foster sons) how to run between the fountains.

H. (our foster daughter) running around the outside of the water. She kept getting close to the fountains and touching them with her outstretched hand, but she didn't want to run between them like everyone else... the water was a bit too cold for her!

The water temperature didn't bother J (our other foster son, B's big brother) one bit, thank you very much!

Meanwhile, Claire made friends with a nice Grandmother who had brought her 3 year old grandson to play in the fountains. The Grandma pushed Claire around on his little scooter for the longest time while her grandson played in the water.

After a while the big boys wanted to cross the street and play on the playground for a while, and warm up some. (The day was very hot... but the water in the fountains was really cold!) So we each grabbed a little one by the hand and went to play over there for a bit.

B going down a big boy slide for the first time ever! He was so proud of himself!

After a while we where plenty warm! So we wandered back across the street to cool off once again. At that point I was feeling much too hot, having sat in the sun for nearly 2 hours while they played! So I joined the little ones in the fountains for a few minutes to cool off my legs and feet! I noticed in this picture that my poor belly button has officially popped out now. I feel like the Thanksgiving turkey with it's little pop up timer, I'm about done! Just a few more weeks before we meet this little one!

Claire taking a break from the water.

My sweet happy Ethan.

H and B venturing back in.

Summer Fun on the Little River

2011-08-25T22:30:00.000-04:00

This week I managed to escape for a few hours with my boys for a little late summer fun on the river in the Smoky Mountains! We had a wonderful time, talking together, laughing, and playing! My mom came over to our house to watch the 4 little ones (Claire and our three foster babies) so I could take the boys swimming. We blew up the inflatable kayaks and headed out in search of the perfect spot in which to start our adventure.

{Sorry in advance about the crummy photos! I borrowed my Mom's waterproof point and shoot camera and left the settings on automatic. All of the pictures turned out very over-exposed... not sure why?! And I wasn't able to tell as I was taking them as the sun was so bright that I couldn't really see anything on the display. Besides, isn't that the whole point of "point and shoot" cameras? You just have to point, and well, shoot! But apparently not with this one, you need to take into account that its auto settings are set to over-expose every. single. picture. Uggh! Oh well, I am just very happy that I got any pictures at all, as I wasn't about to take my camera into the water with us! So over-exposed photos they may be, but we recorded our outing together for our collective long term memories, which is really the point of my taking a camera along anyway! So, I hope you all enjoy our over exposed trip to the river!}

Logan and Matthew preparing to set off.

Very pregnant me, paddling Ethan down the river. (Only about 3 more weeks to go! I'm getting very excited about meeting this little one!)

Ethan taking a turn with the paddling for a while.

Ethan and I made it down the rapids first, and turned our kayak around to catch a few pictures of Logan and Matthew coming down after us. {And before anyone starts to worry, about *very pregnant me* taking any undo risks, this time of year the rapids where only about 6 inches deep for the most part, and with me weighing so much now, I spent 90% of my time trying to figure out how to get us unstuck off of the rocks that I constantly scraped the bottom of the boat (and my bottom!) on.}

Here they come!

They didn't get stuck nearly as much as Ethan and I did! ;-P

Disembarking to explore a bit.

Searching for snakes and crayfish (or crawdads, if you're from around here!)

Skipping stones

Catching tadpoles

Trying on some scratched up glasses he found among the rocks. He told me he was very sorry for whoever lost them, as they must have had a terrible time getting home after that. They must have been quite blind!

And I found my little friend's shadow! Soon...

A playmate for my little friend

2011-07-27T17:24:00.002-04:00

I recently asked a dear friend of mine if she thought her sweet girls might each like a doll of their own. She said "Yes!" so I went to work. It took me quite a while to finish this doll, since life has become so busy around here, but I was quite happy with how she turned out.

This is the first of the dolls, and the only one I've completed so far. I gave her pretty curly brown wool hair, and bright purple eyes. I think she has the sweetest expression on her face. I made her several changes of clothes, which was it's own experiment. Since I had made up my own pattern for the doll, I also had to create patterns for clothes to fit her! That was one of the hardest parts for me. Hopefully when I get to that part of the process for her sister's doll, it won't take me nearly so long or be so difficult, now that I have made clothes patterns to fit this little doll!

Before she went to her new home she told me she likes to climb trees and...

search for frogs and goldfish in the pond!

Her new little mommy is also a little girl that loves to play outside, so they should get along just fine!

Linking up at Creative Friday! Made by you Monday! And Will See it Wednesday!

Christmas in July

2011-07-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

Last Summer I happened to find a vintage record player that worked. I bought it up and hid it away until Christmas, planning to give it to the children then. I actually ended up giving it to them for the first day of winter as a "Winter Solstice" gift so they could enjoy the Christmas records I bought for them at least a few days before Christmas day! I spent most of that summer on the lookout for records I thought they would enjoy, children's stories, Bible stories, Christmas music, folk music, favorite artists of the 60's and 70's, classical music, old TV shows theme songs, etc. The gift was a hit! They still love to pull out their record player and listen to it, especially while doing chores. (Folding laundry is a favorite time to enjoy it!) This morning Ethan asked if he could listen to Christmas music, "It's really my very favorite music, Mom!" So I helped him put on Christmas music and we enjoyed Bing Crosby belting out White Christmas while having our snack. And while the weather outside right now may be considered frightful by some, it definitely isn't white! It is exceptionally hot and humid!!

Cluck, Cluck, Cluck

2011-07-25T22:47:00.000-04:00

This morning I went out to check on the chickens and this is what I found!

It all started last week when the boys and I were outside clearing brush and gathering wood scraps etc. for a bonfire. We tore down a small pile of scraps and threw them into the wheelbarrow and what did we find underneath but one of our large laying hens setting on 18(!) eggs. Yikes! One of the eggs was cracked pretty badly when we moved the wood, and inside we found a nearly mature chick. The rest of the eggs survived but the mama hen ran off when we moved the scraps and joined the all the others that looked just like her! Now what?! We had a pile of exposed eggs in the center of the chicken yard, and no way to tell who mama was, plus it was getting ready to storm and we couldn't put the wood scraps back in a way that would be adequate to protect her and the eggs from the elements. We waited for a while hoping to see which hen came back to care for the eggs, but none did, and the sky was getting blacker and blacker and the thunder had started up in earnest.

We carefully gathered the eggs up and put them in Matthew's shirt, and he carried them into the chicken coop. We put the eggs in one of the nest boxes and grabbed a little bitty banty hen. (Side note: about 2 weeks ago we let one of our little banty hens go broody. She was setting on her 5 little eggs faithfully and we were looking forward to watching the mama hen with her chicks in another week. Her identical twin also wanted in on the action and sat in the empty nest box next to her sister every day even though I didn't leave any eggs under her, she still sat as if she had a bunch of eggs there.) So we placed the egg-less banty hen on top of all 17 large eggs and she was thrilled! She settled right down clucking and cooing to her new brood, gathering them carefully closer with her beak. She was so little she could barely cover them all.

We have no idea when these eggs began to be incubated, thus no way of knowing if they will all hatch at the same time. (For those of you who don't already know, chickens will usually lay one egg a day without trying to incubate them until they feel like they have laid enough to raise a good size family, then they will stop laying and begin sitting on them so that all of the eggs will hatch on the same day. That is called going broody. Usually 21 days after beginning incubation the eggs will all hatch within a few hours of each other. But if you have more than one hen (we have several!) they often lay eggs in each other's nests, so we have no way of knowing if these eggs are from one hen, or several hens, possibly laid long after the incubation process was begun on the initial batch of eggs.

When I snapped this picture this afternoon there where already 5 chicks hatched. And when I went out to check on them after dark there where 9 totally hatched and several more just starting to crack their eggs. I can't wait to see how many we have in the morning! Once she gets off the nest with the chicks that have hatched, I am thinking I might stick any remaining eggs under the other banty that still has a week left to incubate her eggs and see if we get any more little ones that way. I hate to just leave the fertilized eggs to be abandoned after being incubated for who knows how long.

The boys where thrilled with the surprise chicks! And now I finally know why I have been getting fewer eggs for the past couple of weeks. I thought it was the heat making them less inclined to lay, but instead they apparently had raising families on their little chicken brains!

Wooden sorting toys for the very young

2011-07-20T23:27:00.000-04:00

Lately I have been trying very hard to find a little time to make something creative, no matter how small or simple it is or how quickly it comes together. Making things makes me happy. The way I figure it is right now I could technically sweep the floor 4 or 5 times a day but it would still look exactly the same by the time dinner is over. So instead of spending every moment I'm not playing with or reading aloud to kids, or changing diapers and wiping rear ends, cleaning the ever messy house, I am taking a little time (at least every once in a while) to do something fun. And fun for me is making stuff! For the record, I do still sweep the floor at least twice a day :-) but I find that I can work myself to utter exhaustion and my house will never look perfect, it's just a small house filled with many small messy people. I keep it comfortable for our family with the big boys' help and try not to worry about the rest!

Now this is actually what I started the whole post to tell you about: First is the little wooden box I decorated to store the wooden sorting toys I made for Claire last week. I really like how pretty it turned out. The original artwork is from a very old children's reader from the 1920's. (I love very old children's books and keep adding to our collection every chance I get.) I drew it with pencil on the top of the little box and burnt in all of the details with my handy dandy wood burner and painted it with very dilute water colors.

Claire has shown a lot of interest lately in sorting and matching things. So I decided to make her a simple set of wooden sorting toys. She adores little wooden peg people, she calls them her "babies". So I painted up 2 different sized sets of them in rainbow colors. Then I painted little wooden pots for them to fit into, to match each set of her peg people "babies".

She really enjoys playing with these and asks for her new toys to be taken off the shelf so she can play with them every day. I keep them up high where she can't reach them by herself for right now since some of them are quite small. She does not put them in her mouth, however I only allow her to play with them when I can sit with her and supervise the entire time, as they are small enough to pose a choking hazard. Plus two of our foster children do put toys into their mouths constantly... so I keep these up and out of the way most of the day, for safety's sake.

She also enjoys putting the babies with their daddies. Matching both colors and large and small... she is the one that told me the big "people" were the Daddies and the little ones the babies!

Silly face. She was pleased with herself for matching them all correctly.

After playing she likes to put her babies to "sleep" in the box. She actually takes each one out of it's pot and lays it on the floor of the box and tells them "night-night" and closes the lid.

Doesn't that look like a better use of my time than sweeping the floor for the umpteenth time in a day?! I certainly think so. Plus the added benefit is that while she usually wakes up from her nap between a half hour and one hour earlier than the other little ones I can let her play with these at the table (or on the table like in these pictures) while I sew or work on something else fun beside her!

Our new family car

2011-07-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

I mentioned the other day that we had had to get another vehicle for our family as we had seriously outgrown our 7 passenger mini-van. It took a long time to find something adequate for us all! Rodrigo searched and searched online, and I called over 40 car dealerships in a three or four hour driving distance from our home asking about something that could hold a family our size. Most of the people I talked to didn't even understand what I was looking for. I'd tell them we had 7 children and another on the way (soon!) and they'd try to sell me another mini-van for seven people... "No that won't work for us" I'd explain. More than a few times the reply was "Well it'd be a tight squeeze, but you could probably fit that many people in a seven passenger mini-van... they are quite roomy!" I politely told them no thank you and would call the next one on the list. But inside I was thinking this: Um... yeah right! I thought, why don't you try to fit 6 car seats plus 3 other people in a seven passenger minivan and see how roomy it is, HaHa!. Apparently they have never heard of child restraint laws, or basic vehicular safety, you know simple stuff like one person per seat belt! After all they are only car salesmen, why would they know about things pertaining to car safety?!? By law here in Tennessee, children must travel in a car seat or booster seat until the age of 8 or until they reach a certain height and weight. Neither Matthew nor Ethan has actually reached the height or weight limit yet although Matthew is going to be 11 this autumn and Ethan just turned 8! So both of them still sit in a simple booster seat to make them a little taller and help the regular seat belt fit them better, and the 4 little ones have actual car seats.

Rodrigo finally found a full sized van online late one evening. I called the dealership the next morning to find out if they still had it... they did! So as soon as he got home from work we went to look at it.

It is a 12 passenger behemoth! But we all fit with a a little room to spare! I was a little worried that it would be difficult to drive. but honestly it's not that hard at all. The only thing I really notice that is different about driving it is the fact that it doesn't fit in the average compact car parking space easily. I can't just pull in without having to do some back and forth maneuvering a bit first.

* I had to cover the foster babies' faces for the blog, which was a real shame since they all had the sweetest smiles on their faces in this picture. Our driveway is quite steep, slanting up towards the road, so Rodrigo adjusted the angle of the camera on the tripod to make things look straighter for the picture. But it turned out looking like we are all leaning towards the rear of the van. It reminds me of that V8 juice commercial several years back... Looks like somebody forgot their V8!

As mayor of Munchkin City, I welcome you most regally...

2011-07-15T20:08:00.001-04:00

To my view of our little ones' room! We were brought another foster child last weekend, Little Miss H. So we are up to 4 toddlers now, 2 girls and 2 boys, our own Claire, Miss H and our two foster sons B and J.

We've had to get a bigger vehicle. We've moved up from a 7 passenger mini-van to something a bit more accommodating to a family of our size. I'll try to get a picture of that on here in a day or two!

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-04T15:37:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone in the USA has a wonderful 4th of July!!

A trip to the beach

2011-07-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to the beach. We packed up all 6 kids, and ourselves, and went on vacation with my Mom and Dad.

{Beach Baby}

I was honestly a little nervous about going on vacation (and the 8 hour one way road trip) with our new foster babies. I mean what person in their right mind takes 2 extra toddlers they barely know on vacation for a week? But we had already made plans, and we all agreed that we would just go and do our best to make sure everyone enjoyed themselves.

{napping in the van on the way to the beach}

I can honestly say in retrospect that we had a wonderful time! My worries were completely unfounded. Sure there was more "stuff" to take with us, and more food and water to carry down to the beach for snacks, but it really wasn't at all like I worried that it would be. There were no major melt-downs, no near death drowning experiences, no major problems of any kind. I did actually get to sit and relax (at least a little bit!) I had a chance to get in the water and swim... Rodrigo and I got to take a few walks along the beach at night during the full moon. It was really nice! It helped a lot that we had the foresight to bring a beach shade tent and 2 portable cribs with us. We set up the tent every morning on the beach and put one of the cribs inside along with a quilt. Claire would nap on the quilt and the little boys, B and J, napped in the crib together every afternoon for at least 2 hours. My dad likes sitting on the beach watching the world go by, so he stayed with the babies and I got to swim and play with our big boys! Mom and I took very long walks down the beach looking for treasures, sometimes the boys tagged along and sometimes they just stayed and played in the water closer to Daddy and Grandpa.

{Ethan hunting for crabs}

{Claire and B in the shallows}

{Matthew heading out to play on the boogie board, even I played on the boogie board a few days we were there... although there is no photographic evidence!}

{The toddlers playing together}

{Me watching the little ones}

{Claire fell asleep on her Grandma after a full morning in the sun and waves!}

{Matthew and Claire}

{Logan comforting Claire after she decided to go all the way under!}

{In the condo, packing snacks and water to take with us down to the beach}

{Rodrigo took Ethan fishing}

{His first fish ever! He was so proud!}

{Daddy and Claire}

{I love this picture of the two of them!}

{Our fearless baby girl! He tried pulling B and J slowly around, and they really didn't like it thank you very much!}

{Claire loved it!}

My dad invited Rodrigo and Logan to go deep sea fishing with him one early morning. They had an awesome time. Logan said he caught a ton of fish. He was especially impressed that his Daddy managed to catch a shark! As they were pulling it onto the boat out of the water the line snapped and it got away... oh well maybe next time! The bummer was they didn't get any pictures of the shark!

{Logan with his Grandpa on the boat}

{Logan and his Daddy}

{He caught 2 fish at once on his pole!!}

On our last evening there my parents met my uncle who lives nearby for dinner. Rodrigo and I decided to take the kids out to town and see what we could find to do. There is this fun place called "Broadway at the Beach" that was just the thing! Rodrigo spotted a museum featuring the work of Gunther von Hagens called Bodies Revealed. So he took the big boys there while I walked around the boardwalk with the little ones. The picture below is of the boys when they came out. Logan was calling me to find out where I was so they could come meet us and find a place to have dinner. Doesn't he look all grown up? It shocks me!

{we found a loud happy place to have dinner, 6 children fit right in with all of their noises and mess! }

{The big boys were given balloon hats...}

{chaos ensued :-)}

{Happy, goofy boys!}

Are they ALL yours??? Or where did those extra kids come from???

2011-06-20T00:16:00.002-04:00

Those are two questions we've been asked a whole lot in the past month!

The rambling story of how we became foster parents or: Why I've not posted on here in such a long time, Why my garden is knee high in weeds (it's really bad, trust me!), Why my laundry has doubled in the past month, Why even though my workbasket is full of half finished dolls, sewing and other crafts that I really want to work on, and my brain even more full of ideas for more crafts and blog posts... not much seems to be happening on the creative front!

{B and J}

A bit of quick background about us: My parents where missionaries. I met my husband while living on the mission field with them. Once we were married we decided to become missionaries as well. My husband is from Guatemala and our oldest three children were all born there while we worked as missionaries. We helped run a children's home there. In Guatemala there isn't a foster care system in place like there is here in the USA. Children that are removed from their parents for whatever reason are placed in group homes or orphanages instead of with individual foster families like they are here. So most of the kids in our "orphanage" were not actually orphans, (though there were several that were) most of them were placed in our care due to abuse or neglect by their birth families. At one point I had 9 babies under one year in age including one of my own (Matthew) that I was caring for! At it's fullest the children's home hovered around 40 children under the age of 12!

Rodrigo (my husband, for those of you who didn't already know) did laundry for all of the children and we didn't have a clothes drier there for years, so all of that laundry was carried upstairs to the rooftop and hung on the line every. single. day. (The washer was located in a tiny little wash house situated just outside of the main big house and the clothes lines were all on the rooftop of the big house as the land the children's home was on was shaded by huge trees and that was the only place that got direct sunshine) Oh, the rainy season was hard! Some days he couldn't do laundry at all because there was no way to get it dry between downpours! Imagine what it was like with 40 pairs of socks to wash, hang out and then get off the line and pair up and fold each and every day! Then of course there were their underwear, shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, and on the "Big Laundry Days" Sheets, towels, and blankets. Because we spent pretty much every waking hour at the home, we also took our own laundry to wash there so he dealt with that was well! So my poor man has done more than his fair share of laundry, these days I never ask him for help in that area! :-) I guess I mentioned this because today I have about 5 loads I have to wash! Laundry on the mind today!! I try not to let it pile up, but somehow it always does! Excuse me a minute... I need to go switch loads from the washer to the drier and put another on to wash! I do have a clothes line and I use it a lot! But I refuse to let myself feel guilty when I don't use it. We have a clothes drier for a reason, and getting laundry finished on a very rainy Sunday afternoon is one of those reasons! I do actually enjoy hanging clothes out to dry though! It's one of my quiet times... I get to be by myself for just a few moments in the warm sunshine, listening to the birds, thinking, being calm(!), and getting myself back focused on what's important. Many, many prayers have gone up while I stand before that little revolving clothes line, and by the time I am done, I am better able to deal with the many "challenges" that every mama faces throughout the day.

In the Autumn of 2003 we moved to the USA. Ethan our youngest (at the time) was just a baby of 4 months old. He has no memory of living in Guatemala. Matthew was about 2 and a half and Logan was 6 and a half years old when we came here. Logan was completely bi-lingual in Spanish and English and very much remembers living in Guatemala and playing with the kids in the home. Matthew pretty much only spoke a few words of English and Spanish at the time and really doesn't remember living there either as he was so little when we came here. Fast-forward a few years to March 2009 Rodrigo had his vasectomy reversed and in December of 2009 our little miracle Claire was born!

{Claire "eating" her deviled egg, nothing to do with this post... just thought it was cute!}

Since moving to the USA we have talked about becoming foster parents. Last year we began to look into it seriously, and began taking classes towards that end in October 2010. We had to attend 12 weeks of classes in order to become state certified foster parents. We filled out mountains of paperwork, had background checks preformed, paperwork was sent to most of our friends and family members asking lots of personal questions about us and what kind of people/parents we were. Great fun and lots of red tape all around! Our classes ended on January 3, 2011.

About two weeks later we found out that I was pregnant with baby #5! We were thrilled, but at the same time I worried that it might affect our chances of becoming foster parents (in the DCS's opinion).

We waited for DCS to begin our home study. And waited... And waited some more. Finally, about 5 months after our classes ended they began the official home study, we had been told during class that it is Departmental policy to begin all home studies within 30 days of completing the classes! HaHa... just a taste of the Department of Children's Services efficiency! Thankfully once they actually began, it really didn't take very long to complete our home study and become certified. Our case manager called us to let us know that we were state approved, and the very next day we were being called by the person in charge of children's placement with 2 little boys who needed a safe place to live until their case can be resolved, brothers ages 18 months and 30 months. So since the middle of May 2011 we have been foster parents to B and J. We suddenly had a house full of toddlers under the age of 3! (Claire is 18 months old now too!)

So for the past month, life has been full of doctor's appointments, therapy, visitations, and days spent at court with these little boys. We did take a vacation last week and took B and J along with the family. I'll post about that as soon as I get a chance! It was so wonderful to get away and not have to worry about referring to my planner several times a day, every single day! I knew it was going to be a bit more hectic once we had foster children, but some days the busyness feels almost overwhelming to this homeschooling mama that enjoys quiet days at home the best!

I plan on continuing to post on here as I have the time and energy. I am still planning lots of fun creative things to do with the kids and I've got about a million "crafty" works in progress right now, that hopefully I'll figure out how to finish now that we are so much busier with these extra little ones! And if I actually manage to find the time and energy to actually do something, maybe I'll even be able to find a few extra minutes to blog about it! I've been taking tons of pictures over the past month, but I have to be extra careful to protect these little boys placed in our care, so if a photo includes them either I wont be able to post it... or I'll have to figure out how to blur their faces. (Anyone have any ideas of how to do that? )

So for now I am trying to be more patient with myself and not stress the small stuff, and as much as I have fun posting on here, it is one of the much smaller things on my list of priorities right now, so I'll do it as I have a chance and not worry to much about it when I don't! I'll be online though, and I'll be sure to answer any emails that are sent to me! Comments too, if they need answering :-)

{The frog that lives in our lily pond}

A whimsy of Gnomes

2011-05-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

For the past month or two, in my very rare spare time, I have been working on a whimsy of gnomes. (Did you know that a group of gnomes is called a whimsy? Like a school of fish, a flock of birds, or a herd of elephants!) Well, my whimsy consisted of 7 little men gnomes and just a single little lady gnome. I made them life size, having read in a gnome "guidebook" that gnomes are about 6 inches tall. They are tiny Waldorf style dolls made with 100% cotton bodies, stuffed with pure wool, and wool and cotton clothing and wool hair and beards.

One little gnome stayed home to play with my children. The rest were carefully packed and sent on their merry way to travel all over the US and Canada as part of a craft swap using natural materials. This time the theme was "gnomes, mushrooms and hedgehogs". I chose to make gnomes! This is the first time I have participated in an exchange with this group and I'm excited to see what we receive in return. I had such a good time creating these little dolls! It was a nice diversion as life has been so full of emotional ups and downs lately!

Make a Weaving Loom with your Kids!

2011-05-14T18:49:00.000-04:00

Today (Well, it was supposed to be yesterday, but... Blogger had issues yesterday, so...) I have a guest post over at HomeSpun-Threads! She is hosting a Summer Soiree, a craft camp for kids, with a new idea every day this month to use over the coming summer. We made homemade looms for the kids to learn how to weave. They had a great time and have asked to use them over and over again! Be sure to pop over to HomeSpun-Threads and check it out!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

2011-05-12T09:20:00.000-04:00

Joining in today for the first time with the gals over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for their weekly {Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} posts.

~Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life~

{Pretty}

Robin's nest in our backyard with four perfect blue eggs.

{Happy}

I was taking a picture of the roses and peonies when Claire wandered by the window. She was just thrilled to find me standing there! That smile always makes me happy!

Big brother Matthew taking his baby sister out to play. I love seeing them like this, the boys are so gentle and sweet with her.

{Funny}

This is what I walked in to find after I asked my 13 year old to please sort and fold a basket of socks... There were socks spread out everywhere! I couldn't find an angle that actually managed to capture them all!! Sock Art he says...

{Real}

Some brother, who shall remain nameless, left the pantry door open and Claire found a bag of flour... When I came into the room this is what I found! (I'd like to find whoever it was that told me while I was pregnant with Claire, "Oh, you'll have it so much easier now with her. Girls are so much cleaner and less destructive than boys..." HaHa! This little girl makes more messes than 2 boys combined! Maybe not more than all three boys though...)

My Grandma and Mother's Day

2011-05-10T11:11:00.000-04:00

Mother's Day was hard this year.

My mom is wonderful! She is (and was!) a great mother, we talk every day. She lives close by so we see each other often. She is the person I talk to and share the most with in the world. (Other than my husband of course!!!) I consider her my best girlfriend!

My children honored me and hugged me and loved me all day. They usually do that everyday. They are such sweet, loving kids. I really enjoy spending my days with them. They each surprised me pretty handmade cards, full of colorful hearts and flowers and butterflies and lots of "I love you Mom" and "Your the best mom" in careful little boy handwriting.

My Grandmother Sadie Mae at Thanksgiving 2009

Mother's Day was hard this year because my Grandmother passed away very unexpectedly this past week. My Grandma was a wonderful Godly woman. She loved to sing and praise God, and could often be heard singing hymns while she worked. She prayed and read her Bible every. single. day. without fail. Her relationship with Him was the single most important thing in her life! She was a sweet lady who loved everyone she ever met. (Well, everyone except my Dad when she first met him maybe... he was a Yankee (a Northerner!) you see and every good Southern lady knew you couldn't trust those Yankees! :-) She got over that soon enough and spent the rest of her life loving my dad like he was her own son. ) She loved gardening and crafting and sewing, and more importantly she loved family. We were always very close. I loved when my brother and I got to go spend time at her house as children, we would play and explore. She would let us help cook, and garden and craft with her. She taught me to sew when I was just 6 years old. Every year she had a garden and canned and preserved much of their food for the coming winter months. She believed in being as self-sufficient as possible.

This past week she was outside pulling weeds with my Grandpa, when she started feeling very poorly. by the time they got her to the hospital she had had several massive heart attacks. She lived for a few hours more, time enough for my parents to get to her bedside. I didn't quite make it before she had passed away, although I was able to talk to her over the phone, and tell her again how much I loved her. They lived in a neighboring state about 2 and a half hours from our home.

Grandma holding newborn Claire, her first great-granddaughter! She loved her great grandchildren.

We had her funeral service yesterday. It was a celebration of her going home, to be with Jesus. For the most part it was a joyful service in memory of a life spent giving of herself to others. Family and friends came from all over the United States and talked about how much she had meant to them and how she had touched their lives. She had prayed many times with each and every one of them, invited them into her home for a warm home-cooked meal and some company. She was a much loved lady, who will be missed by everyone that knew her.

Answer to the question of the day...

2011-04-29T21:50:00.001-04:00

Everything went very well at the doctor's this morning! The baby is just the right size and spent most of the time staring straight up at mommy's belly button! (See first picture below... sweet baby profile!) They said the baby looks perfectly normal! The doctor assured us that having another VBAC was definitely possible! (Which made me and Rodrigo extremely happy!!!)

Originally I had been asked to leave everyone (except Rodrigo, of course) at home or in the waiting room for the ultrasound, but we took the kids with us today on the possibility that they would have a chance to meet their newest sibling ahead of time. The ultrasound technician was very nice and allowed all of the kids in the room with us anyway. They thought it was wonderful seeing their new baby!

And the picture that answers the question of the day...

A pretty clear shot...

It's definitely a little boy! Everyone was thrilled to hear the news! Even little Claire clapped and cheered. Of course she had no idea what was really going on but everyone else was so happy that she had to share the joy! I haven't stopped smiling all day! Another sweet baby boy!!! I do enjoy my boys so much!

Boy or Girl???

2011-04-29T08:09:00.001-04:00

Well today I am going for my 20 week ultrasound scan. We are hoping to find out what our newest little blessing will be! (Along with all of the other important information the doctors want to find out during the scan.)

From the very beginning of this pregnancy I have felt like it must surely be a little boy. It just "feels" like a boy pregnancy to me! After all I have had 3 of those already and only one girl pregnancy to compare it to! With the boys I never had any morning sickness at all, nor did I really have any other "pregnancy symptom". When I was expecting Claire I felt nauseous for the entire first three months! I also was completely exhausted the first trimester with her. Now with this baby I did feel really, really tired the first few months (I feel pretty much completely normal now, Thank God!) But I never had even a moment of morning sickness. So based on that, I am guessing that it is a little boy that I am carrying now! I am also guessing that the tiredness I have felt during the last two pregnancies can probably be chalked up to my "advanced maternal age" after all, I was pregnant with the 3 boys during my 20's and with Claire when I was 33. And that was just over a year and a half ago!So maybe that has something to do with the first trimester tiredness.

I'll let you all know this evening sometime what we find out! Did any of you ever "know" what you were having? We are really excited about finding out!

*For the record... I've never been right about the sex of my babies before! With the first three I had no idea what I was going to have until their ultrasounds, and with Claire I was positive she was going to be a boy! By then I figured whatever girl making parts we had must not work! When the ultrasound technician told us she was a girl I didn't believe her! I made her check again!!!Ha! When we decided to have his vasectomy reversed and have more children I just figured we would be one of those families with 6 or 7 boys before it was all said and done! You know, our own personal soccer team! As it is I haven't had to open a door for myself even when my husband isn't around for the past 6 or 7 years, with all of these little gentlemen. They are always racing to the door ahead of me to hold it. Claire indeed is a blessed little girl to grow up in a house full of such good boys!

I'll update you later!

Snapshots of our Easter Week

2011-04-28T22:54:00.000-04:00

The eggs we dyed this year. We made stickers from low-tack painters tape and craft paper punches.

Then we dyed the eggs with the stickers on.

Once the eggs were dry we carefully peeled the stickers off and revealed the pretty eggs!

Hunting eggs at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Sunday afternoon.

Claire enjoyed her first egg hunt.

We made it challenging for the big boys!

She soon discovered that the reason some of the eggs rattled was because they were filled with CANDY! A very rare treat for my children!

Our Easter Garden

2011-04-18T21:36:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I stumbled across a blog called Embracing the Now. The writer, Erin, had a sweet idea for making an Easter Garden. I thought it would be a fun thing to do to give the kids a visual while we read and talked about the events that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus this week. I had everything on hand that we needed so we got started after we had church on Sunday morning.

Jesus and the Angel standing by the empty tomb.

{*We have church at home usually. Rodrigo leads us in prayer and worship and we take turns reading a selection from the bible that we have chosen together earlier in the week to share with the family. We discuss it with the children, asking them questions to make sure they understand what we have read and allowing them to ask any questions they might have. We also try to have family devotions after dinner every night, but some nights I serve dinner too late, or life just seems to "happen"! But we do try! This week our after dinner devotions have a distinctly seasonal bent to them, as we discuss Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey and the people laying branches in his path and singing psalms in his praise, then his dealings with the Pharisees, his parables, his late night vigil in the garden of Gethsemane, his arrest by the roman soldiers, his trial, crucifixion and death and last but definitely not least his glorious resurrection. Which is the basis of everything we believe as Christians!}

The boys loved Embracing the Now's peg people Jesus and the Roman soldiers. So we copied them! (Why mess with a good idea?!) They helped make them and within an hour we had most of the important players for the week! (I ran out of peg people so I'll need to go pick up some more peg people so they can have a couple of Pharisees and Pontius Pilate and any others we come to think we might need.)

Jesus with 2 of his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus's arrest in the garden by the Roman soldiers.

The angel telling the two Marys of the empty tomb and our resurrected Lord.

Complete (so far) Easter Peg People Cast of Characters.

The adorable reason one of Roman soldiers has a bent sword!

At 16 months she is still too little to understand the meaning behind the story, but she loves the new "babies" and the little garden to play in with them! Several times a day I hear the gleeful cry of "Babies!" and turn to find her like this... :-)

Home-made Play Dough Color Theory

2011-03-31T10:11:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I realize that something I have covered long ago in my oldest children's homeschooling was never a topic we went over with the littler ones. Color theory was one of those topics! So yesterday we remedied that little oversight. It wasn't that Ethan (my youngest boy at 7 years) had no idea about what happened when you combined colors, but I wanted to be sure he had a firm grasp on the concept before we moved on to our next (exciting!) art lesson.

First we whipped up a batch of homemade play-dough using the following recipe.

3 cups flour + a little extra for kneading
1/2 cups salt
2 tbs. cream of tartar
2 tbs. vegetable oil
2 cups boiling water

Mix the first three ingredients in a large heat-proof bowl. Boil the water and oil. Slowly add the water with oil to the dry ingredients mixing well. (I often use my large stand mixer for this part... it goes faster!) Once your play dough is smooth, soft and elastic remove it from the bowl and divide it into 2 or more parts to be colored. This time we divided it into 3 balls and used paste food coloring to make our primary colors. You may need to add a tiny sprinkling of flour if it becomes sticky or tacky.

Our three primary colors: Yellow, Red and Blue

Ethan mixing his first two primary colors... So excited! (*Excitement is probably partly due to the fact that this was the first time in his memory I've encouraged the mixing of play dough colors... I'm not sure why I've never really encouraged it. It's not like it is expensive or hard to replace. One of those ingrained things from my own childhood I guess. I remember always being told not to mix my play dough colors... they would get ugly and muddy looking, but boys like muddy and ugly looking sometimes don't they? Plus our mixed colors turned out pretty for the most part. See purple below... not so sure about that one!)

His secondary color emerging...

Primaries and Secondaries

See what I mean about the purple? We tried mixing equal parts red and blue, more red and less blue and vice-versa. But they all turned out weird! My husband thinks it is because our blue looks more turquoise than pure blue... maybe he is right. But still it was purple enough for Ethan to understand the theory of red + blue = purple. And that was the important part, even if it wasn't a very pretty purple!

See our rainbow of colors emerging? Aren't they pretty? Ethan had so much fun making all of these colors! Color Theory concepts learned! Success!

All of the kids enjoyed (re)learning about color theory. Afterwards we all played with playdough for a while!

Claire had never played with playdough before. She was thoroughly impressed! She only tried to eat it a few (dozen!) times. She did have lots of fun playing and squishing it through her fat little fingers.

Flower Pounding Card Tutorial

2011-03-24T21:44:00.000-04:00

Flower pounding is one of my favorite spring crafts to do with the kids. (Of course you could do it year round but my favorite flowers to use are in bloom during the spring and early fall.)

First you have to gather your supplies. You’ll need paper or something else to use as your background. We were making cards so we used heavy card stock. I wouldn’t recommend normal copy/printer paper as it is probably too flimsy. You can also pound your flowers onto plain white cotton or unbleached muslin and frame your picture.( I’m sure there must be a way to fix the color well enough to become wearable, washable art but I am not sure how. I know that some of you ladies out there, who regularly dye your own wools and fabrics using natural dyes, must know of a way to fix the color, but I just haven’t learned how to do that yet. If anyone knows how I’d love to learn! )

Paper or cloth for the background
Hammers (one for each person who wants to pound if possible!)
A hard flat surface (that won’t be damaged by hammering on top of it)
A basket (to hold the flowers you gather)
Scissors (to help remove stems and pick flowers)
A small scrap piece of cotton fabric (to lay on top of your flowers while you pound) We used an old scrap of a threadbare sheet. You can also use tissue paper or paper towels in a pinch, but the fabric will hold up better to repeated pounding with the hammer.
Flowers and leaves!!! (Flat open faced flowers work the best. Pansies and yellow daisies are my favorites. You can experiment with all types and colors of flowers; you might be surprised at what works and what doesn’t. Fern leaves are also beautiful to use in this craft. Colorful fall leaves look gorgeous when pounded too.
Pencils, markers, crayons, etc. (to draw and write in your cards)

Now go outside with some enthusiastic children and gather your flowers and colorful leaves. Get lots!

Make sure you take time to smell the flowers and enjoy being in the sunshine with your precious little ones. Enjoy the feel of the dew wet grass tickling your toes. I always try to remember that I will have these sweet boys under my care for such a short period of time, there is so much fun and learning that I want to share with them before they grow and start families of their own! I want them to have happy memories of their childhood that they will want to recreate someday with their own children.

Once you have a bunch of pretty flowers gathered in your basket you can set to work.

If you are making cards like we did, then you’ll need to fold your paper in half and decide which side you want up and how the card should open. Then lay your paper our flat and carefully place a flower face down in whatever position pleases you the best. If the flower you’ve chosen has a large stem on the back or a very juicy part where it connects to the stem you may want to carefully cut that piece off. I find it easiest to do this by laying the flower where I want it and holding it’s petals in place with my left hand and carefully cutting the juicy part off with scissors in my right hand.

Then without disturbing the petals as much as possible lay your tissue paper (that’s what we used) on top of the flower holding it in place with one hand while you lightly tap on top of the flower with your hammer. Little ones may need your help holding the flower with tissue paper over it while the tap with the hammer. Tap all around the flower, hitting it with your hammer as flatly as possible.

Once your tissue paper looks wet all over on top of the whole flower carefully peel the tissue paper back and peel up the pounded flower.

And there you have it! Your flower should have transferred all of its pretty color onto your paper. Continue adding more flowers and leaves to your art until you are pleased with the outcome! You can add stems to your flowers by pounding or drawing them on with colored pencils. This craft is as much fun in the making as it is enjoying the final product!

A new dress and sunbonnet

2011-03-22T20:06:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I found an adorable vintage pattern for a little girl's dress and sunbonnet. I made the dress for Claire this past week and finished up the sunbonnet on Friday afternoon.

The size 1 pattern was still too big for her, but it was such a simple dress to make that altering it to be a bit smaller to fit her now was easy-peasy. She really liked her long dress and kept twirlling around and playing with the skirt. When I showed her the sunbonnet for the first time she exclaimed "Hat!" "Outside!" She loves going outside and has gotten so used to being bundled up to venture out of doors that anytime she sees a hat she thinks it should be put on her and then be allowed outside to play!

She wanted to go visit the chickens.

I carried the basket to collect the eggs, but she insisted on taking one egg back up to the house herself.

This is the pattern I used. Simplicity 7573 size 1 from 1975! So cute! I will definently be making her more of these! It was fast, easy and turned out oh-so-sweet! Perfect for a little farm girl this Spring and Summer.

Spring Weekend Happenings

2011-03-21T23:54:00.000-04:00

What a wonderful weekend we had! Spring was evident everywhere, the sun was warm and shining, the flowers were blooming, we played outside and had fun together!

We made several small trips around town this weekend. The first was to the Fiber Arts Festival. I've been waiting for this to come around ever since I found out about it last year!

Such lovely, yummy wool everywhere!

Tunis sheep waiting for the beginning of the herding dog exhibition to begin.

Matthew spent Saturday morning building a pirate ship out of legos. He got out the encyclopedias and looked up a pirate flag (the "Jolly Roger" he informed me!) Then he set to work designing one for his ship.

On Sunday afternoon we took a trip to a local science museum. The boys experimented with everything there at least twice!

If you look closely at the picture below you can see a little white dot just past the second light fixture next to the dark ceiling. It was a rocket that Matthew and Rodrigo made and were experimenting launching towards each other using a hand powered air cannon.

The roadsides of the highway we travelled to get to the museum were absolutely covered in daffodils and redbud trees. On the way home we pulled over and snapped some pictures. There were thousands of flowers everywhere. We were in awe at the sheer numbers of flowers planted along the roadside. We decided with the children that every year we'll try to plant more daffodils so that eventually our yard surrounding the house will look like this! Simply beautiful!

Claire wanted to smell ALL of the flowers!

We are rejoicing in this new season!

Song of Solomon 2: 11-12

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land;

Kissing Trees at the Park

2011-03-05T09:52:00.000-05:00

I am sure you are probably wondering why it looks like my children are so intent on kissing this tree at the park... A few other park goers seemed to be wondering the same thing! Well... it all started like this...

We were walking through the park and Matthew wandered over to a tree and put his hand against the trunk to lean on it. "Mom, this tree is all wet!" We looked closer and found all these little rows of holes with fresh sap running out. I told him that it was a maple tree and he asked if the sap was what they made maple syrup out of. I assured him that it was the same, so he asked if he could taste it. I told him he could, one thing led to another and by the time I turned around all three boys where there tasting the sap that was flowing down the trunk of the tree! We talked about how maples are tapped for syrup production up north in New England and in Canada. The said the sap tasted like maple syrup but more watery and less concentrated.

See the little rows of holes in the tree's trunk? The row on top is the freshest, it isn't wet with sap yet, the lower rows are dark and wet with sap running down. Below is a picture of the bird that made all of those holes. A few minutes after we discovered the maple tree with it's rows of holes we spied this bird busily tapping holes in another maple nearby. It's a male Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. I couldn't get a better picture of him because he kept circling to the back side of the trees when I tried to get in a good spot to see him clearly.

After watching the Yellow Bellied Sapsucker for a while the little ones ran over to the playground to swing and play.

Ethan Played with Claire for a while on the teeter-totter. She loved it!

Meanwhile, Logan wandered around nearby searching under the trees for owl pellets and other interesting things.

He didn't find any owl pellets, but he did spot this. A beautiful Red Shouldered Hawk. He was picking at this nest, we watched him for a while trying to decide whether it was an old squirrel's nest he was tearing at, or if he was busy prepping a nest of his own for the coming breeding season. Last summer we watched a pair of these hawks feeding their young in a nest built directly beside the playground! We never did decide which of the two it was.

Back on the playground Matthew was busy taking Claire down the slides.

She liked it so much that after he was done she kept trying and trying to figure out how to climb back up there on her own.

Before we left we all played on the swings together. Ethan snapped this picture of Claire and me.

Early Morning ~ School Time

2011-03-04T09:29:00.000-05:00

Claire has discovered the joys of sitting at the table with her brothers doing "school". She'll sit for 15 to 30 minutes and draw quietly while they read and write. I can't believe how big she is getting already!

Big, of course, is relative. At 14 months old she is really such a tiny little person, her pediatrician told us she's only in the 20th percentile for her age! All of my children are quite small for their ages. I was a very little child as well.

Work in Progress Wed. and a very important Announcement!

2011-02-16T14:29:00.000-05:00

I posted a while back about the Seed Exchange that I am taking part in... Well now it is time to actually send the seeds out! Originally I had planned on hand painting the front of each seed packet, but that idea flew out the window for a couple of reasons! #1 Time and Energy (or lack there-of!*) I am sending out more than 50 packets... that would be a lot of painting! #2 I decided that those seed packets where too small and I couldn't get enough info on them. So I opted for a simple template that I could put all of the seed's info on directly in Microsoft Word, and just printed out the number of packets needed. Then it was a simple matter of cutting them out, gluing them together and filling them with seeds!

To seal them I used my new Japanese Washi Tape! Rodrigo got it for me for Valentine's Day! Wasn't that a sweet surprise?! It's so pretty! I had been admiring it for a long time online, but have never bought myself any. I think these are just perfect!

And in other news I have been working on this sundress for me. I am making it out of some quilting weight cotton that I've had in my stash for a long time. I found this free pattern online from the fabric designer Heather Ross. (I love her fabrics... so cute!) I liked the pattern because it is so easy to make, even the shirring is simply done using elastic thread, and because it has pockets! I love a dress with pockets! It still needs to be hemmed and to have the shoulder straps attached. I think I'll make a few more of them and maybe a couple for Claire as well... matching sundresses for Mama and tiny girl!

But most importantly I liked the pattern because it will work for me throughout the coming Spring and Summer with my rapidly expanding tummy!

I am very thankful to be able to announce to you all that we are expecting baby number 5 to join our family this coming September! Such exciting news, and truly an important "work in progress!"

* lack of energy... that has been my main pregnancy symptom so far. I am just so tired all of the time! I am 9 weeks along right now, so I should be feeling a bit more like my normal self in a month or two. But for now, this mama is taking things easy.

Valentine's Day Card Exchange

2011-02-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

Here are pictures of the things the boys received from participating in the Valentine Card Exchange over at The Fantastic Five.

First to arrive was this sweet little painted box. (Along with 3 bags of Valentine M&Ms for each of the boys, which were devoured before I got a picture of them!)

Inside the boys found these adorable handmade magnets with their initials on them... 'L'ogan, 'M'atthew, and 'E'than!

Next they received these sweetly hand stamped heart cards from some very young and hard working "Valentine" friends.

They also received this beautiful heart transparency card from our sweet friends over at The Forest Room!

They really enjoyed participating, and Matthew and Ethan are already talking about what they would like to do next year. Maybe little Miss Claire will be big enough to enjoy participating next year!

xoxo

Books should be free!

2011-02-09T11:37:00.000-05:00

Our family loves audio books! We listen to them while we do chores, in the car, the boys listen to them while playing with legos or coloring. Rodrigo likes to listen to them while working sometimes... if we are not reading, we are often found listening to books!

Most of our audio books we pick up at the local library. But yesterday I found this website through a fellow blogger and was so excited about it I just had to share! It is called Books Should Be Free. They have have hundreds (possibly thousands) of 100% free audio books from the public domain. I have found them very easy to download directly into my itunes, but you can download the mp3 files directly to your computer if you don't use itunes! This is a great resource. I can't wait to listen to so many of the books, old favorites from my childhood... stories that I want to boys to hear... the possibilities! The hard part is choosing what to listen to first!

(*All of the pictures used in this post are from Books should be free website*)

Another of my very favorite websites for free audio books for kids (especially the younger ones) is Kiddie Records Weekly. Kiddie Records has hundreds of free mp3 files that can be downloaded. This is from their website:

"Kiddie Records Weekly began in 2005 as a one year project devoted to celebrating the golden age of children's records. This period roughly spanned from the mid forties through the early fifties and produced a wealth of all-time classics. Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions and featured big time celebrities and composers.

Over time these forgotten treasures slipped off the radar and it has become our mission to give them a new lease on life by sharing them with today's generation of online listeners. Each week throughout the year we added a new recording and before we knew it, our one year project turned into a labor of love now in it's sixth year!"

My little boys love listening to these old record stories and songs! There are many stories found on this site that I listened to as a little girl on my record player. Such fun memories! There are lots of classic Loony Toons and Disney stories throughout the site as well as tons of dramatized bible stories. I'm sure if you take a few minutes to look around you'll find something your children would love to listen to!

Will you "Bee" my Valentine?

2011-02-08T16:43:00.000-05:00

First off... Thank you to everyone who commented and emailed us during our recent bout with the flu! We are all right as rain now! Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement!

This year we signed up to be part of a Valentine's Card Exchange. The kids were really excited about making their own handmade Valentine cards to send out to "new" friends in blogland. So I thought about it for a while and we bounced ideas around and finally decided to go really homemade! We would make our own paper! Seed paper to be exact, so that our new friends could plant their Valentines and watch pretty flowers grow all summer long!

This is our seed paper. We made it pink by adding red tissue paper to the paper pulp. Once we spread the wet paper pulp onto the screens to dry we sprinkled it generously with flower seeds. We chose cosmos seeds because of how easy they are to grow! Even the littlest gardener can grow lovely cosmos!

Then we cut out a simple flower shape from our homemade seed paper.

I found a cute clip art bee and printed out several on card stock. We cut those out along with flower stems from green card stock. The boys glued everything together and we wrote on each valentine:

"Will you "Bee" my Valentine?"

On the back I included a little folded note explaining that the paper flowers could be planted, grown and enjoyed all summer long!

Valentine flowers for all of our new Valentine Friends!

Confessions of a sick and tired mama

2011-01-27T14:10:00.000-05:00

As I sit here trying to force my fever impaired brain into forming coherent thoughts, I am surrounded by a cacophony of coughing! Last week my youngest two boys, Matthew and Ethan came down with high fevers. They changed overnight from normally very active, loud and rambunctious boys into sad little things that cuddled up together on the sofa, or in bed and didn't move all day. Two days later Logan started showing the same signs. So 3 of our four children were miserable, high fevers, body aches, sore throats and coughing. Pretty soon I was feeling poorly as well. We have spent days watching videos, cuddled up in the living room or in bed napping.

Now Claire has it too.

I took her to the Dr.'s to find out if there was anything I could give her for the coughing, and they ran a test... it came back positive for the flu! Yuck! They did give me a prescription for her to fight the flu, so we stopped by on the way home and picked it up. The doctor warned us that there were quite a few side effects and if we felt that the side effects were not worth it we could simply stop giving her the medicine at any time. (And even knowing that I still blindly trusted and got her the medicine!) I came home (crawled back into my comfy PJ's) and rested for a while, then jumped on the Internet to find out a bit more about the side effects of this medicine. They include the following:

rashes
dizziness
vomiting
diarrhea
hallucinations
aggression
encephalitis
anger
insomnia
nightmares
delirium
confusion
and in Japan, there were 12 deaths in pediatric patients taking this medicine, although the FDA 'can not conclude that there is a causal relationship between this medicine and the reported pediatric deaths.' (* note, well it must be OK, right??? After all the FDA still says it's fine to give to children over 12 months in age in our country, and they wouldn't lie to us would they?! )

So yeah, we did NOT give any of the medicine to Claire! I am just treating her fevers when they get really high and trying to keep her hydrated and comfortable as possible. The same as I have been doing for the rest of us.

As for everything else... I am just ignoring all of the housework, since I barely have the energy to get out of bed and to the kitchen to make sure we have food or warm drinks during the day! Possibly even worse than letting the housework go to pot was this: one day we actually had ramen noodles for lunch! I just couldn't muster the energy to do more than boil water. Normally I shun anything not cooked from scratch from real whole food ingredients... but I have been wiped out!

Rodrigo was off yesterday from work and did all of the cooking for us then, and made tons of herbal tea for the rest of us, he still feels fine! But yesterday was his only day off, and he went back today... so chores are pretty much shot right now! We are making sure the animals get fed and watered, and after that everything else will get dealt with later. Laundry is piling up around our ears, and the floor really needs to be swept and mopped, but those things are just going to have to wait!

I had big plans for a couple of fun projects I was going to post about this week. One of them would have been our homemade valentine cards for a swap the kids are part of... but as of yet those are still just a concept in my head! Hopefully next week, once we feel better, we will get caught up on everything and I'll have a few fun things to share with you then!

And now for something completely different...

2011-01-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

I know, I usually post about my kids and the things we see and do together or about the things I am doing for my family, such as the many homemade Christmas presents I posted about occasionally through the Autumn and early Winter months. But today I wanted to share one of my favorite foods with you and how I make it!

(Don't you just love this cute old plate? I found it in an estate sale and knew it needed to be hanging on my kitchen wall, above my counter! And yes, now that you ask, that is a pumpkin sitting on my counter in January... I'm going to cook it soon, I promise!)

Kimchi! I love kimchi! I remember the day I first had kimchi, I don't have any idea what else went with the meal but I remember the kimchi that was served! Rodrigo had taken me out to lunch to a Korean restaurant and they served little side dishes of all kinds of yummy pickles and treats to go along with the meal. One of those dishes contained kimchi... and the rest was history! I go through gallons of the stuff every year!

Kimchi is a naturally lacto-fermented pickle made from Napa cabbage, garlic, green onions, and diakon radishes primarily.It is kind of like an Asian version of Sauerkraut. Many other veggies can be added as flavoring or even used on their own as different versions of kimchi. (Cucumber kimchi is easy, super fast and really yummy too!)

Here is what I use to make it:
1 medium head of Napa Cabbage, 1 cup finely grated carrot, about half a cup diakon radish (that's a large white radish, I have a hard time finding them here sometimes in our small town so I use regular little round red radishes sometimes!), one bunch green onions (today I was out so I used half of a medium onion finely chopped... this is a very easy recipe to make substitutions in), 3 or 4 cloves minced garlic, 1 tablespoon sea salt, and one tablespoon fresh grated ginger (Rodrigo likes it less gingery so I used about half that amount, you can also use dried ground ginger). And you'll need about one teaspoon red pepper. I use red pepper flakes, and I add a little paprika just for some extra color without adding any more heat since kimchi is traditionally red-orange color from so much chili powder!

(*Note* the chili powder used in Korean kimchi is pure powdered chili peppers, no cumin or anything else added like American chili powder used in Chili (the stew) or taco seasoning, it is also quite a bit milder than the pure powdered chili peppers you can find around here, even though it does pack a punch, they use a ton of it in traditional kimchi to turn it orange and it is spicy, but not too spicy! That is why I only use a teaspoon of red pepper flakes and about a teaspoon of paprika for color!)

Chop up the cabbage into large bite size pieces. The little inner leaves you can even leave whole if you want. Shred the carrots and radishes ( I love to use my vintage saladmaster... a birthday gift from my mom! It chops things so much nicer than my regular food processor and it is super easy to use!)

Don't the carrots and radishes look pretty coming out?

Next finely chop the onion , grate the ginger and mince or chop up the garlic. Add everything else to the bowl and then the real fun can begin!

Put your hands down inside the bowl and start mixing! You really want to squeeze the veggies to get their juices flowing! I usually do it for at least 5 minutes!

Once everything is very juicy and well mixed, the contents of your bowl will seem much more compact as you have really squished everything together! (Is "squished" the correct technical term???) The salt will cause the juices to be released from the vegetables with the "squishing".

By this time it will smell pretty yummy and spicy-garlicky! Pack your kimchi into a jar leaving at least an inch of head space for it to expand during the fermentation process. I used this jar since I made more than a quart but not enough for two jars...

Pack everything down tightly so as much of the juice as possible comes to the top of your kimchi. Then put the jar on your kitchen shelf, or in the corner of your counter and let it sit and ferment for a few days. 3 to 5 days usually does it for us! I like mine pretty sour tasting so I usually leave it for 5 days if I can resist it for that long! When you are happy with how fermented it tastes you can put it in the refrigerator and eat it!! Mine never lasts very long, but it should be fine for a couple of weeks in the fridge at least!

If you've never tried it before you should! It tastes great and because it is naturally fermented it is loaded with all kind of beneficial things that do wonders for your health!

Snow Days!

2011-01-11T23:18:00.000-05:00

To think that just a few days ago it was warm enough outside for the kids and I to be out there in nothing but our shirtsleeves! (See previous post here)

We spent this past weekend in happy contentment never leaving our house. The boys played games with their daddy, while Claire and I deep cleaned (she was sooo helpful! ;P) In the evenings we had dinner early and then spent hour after hour playing the new game Logan got for Christmas called The Settlers of Catan. (By the way in case anyone wonders, it is a super fun game- I was very pleasantly surprised! I found this one over the summer along with the expansion pack for 5 to 6 players both new, still sealed in the boxes for a grand total of $2.00!!! I was thrilled, I had been planning on getting it from amazon.com for Christmas this year!! Sometimes going to garage sales really pays!) We never turned on the TV once all weekend. We rarely do, we don't have cable or satellite TV although we do have an antenna that allows us to watch local channels, we just never bother... This was one time it might have paid to watch TV!

We went to bed on Sunday night, and woke up Monday to a world of white!

Here I am heading out to feed and water my chickens early in the morning.

Our little country road, the county never bothers to salt or plow it.

Our driveway was an icy mess! We have a rather steep drive straight down hill from the road to our house. Since we didn't know that the snow was coming, Rodrigo didn't bother to salt the drive (no matter- we didn't have any salt on hand, having run out last time it snowed and I forgot to buy more, even though Rodrigo had put it on my list to get more...ooops!)... So, even with 4 wheel drive we couldn't get out on Monday morning, so he had an extra day off!

This morning he went to work, and the kids and I enjoyed another cozy day at home! Early this morning we watched a couple of videos on youtube, of how to build an igloo out of snow. Logan decided that he could do that, so after breakfast the boys dressed up and headed out the back door to play in the snow.

Logan set right to work making his igloo, the littler two boys lost interest rather quickly and pelted each other with snowballs and took turns sledding down the hill.

I didn't get any pictures of the initial building stages because Claire wasn't feeling the best and was having a hard time falling asleep for her nap. She's working on some teeth right now that have made her rather grumpy the past couple of days... I didn't want to take her outside with me for very long since the wind was howling and it was very, very cold!

I did get a few pictures of when he was almost finished with the igloo:

Here Ethan is checking out the inside...

Logan showing me how he can fit through his arched doorway...

After he packed more snow all over, covering up the cracks and smoothing things out...

Self Portrait, taken inside his now completed new igloo!

My van is still under a good five or six inches of snow, and more is falling as I type this... we may be staying home for a good long while yet! Yay! Here's to cozy, snowed in days with all of my favorite people!!!

The last day of the year

2011-01-01T01:47:00.000-05:00

Today turned out pleasantly warm and even a bit sunny... So we spent lots of time outside playing together. The boys brought out some of the new toys we made them for Christmas and had a great time playing and practicing with their new things!

Claire enjoying the sunshine on New Year's Eve!

Practicing with the whips I made for them for Christmas. They were really easy to make and best of all they really crack! I made one for each boy.

Matthew trying to get his whip to wrap around their zip line so he can swing on it "Like Indiana Jones!"

Sir Matthew with his new sword and shield. Rodrigo helped me make these... they turned out beautifully! (My only complaint is that with very rough play the cross guards are breaking off... next time we make them I'll choose a harder wood that should help prevent breaking along the grain of the wood at the cross guards. These are made of pine. But the boys love them, and that is the important part! )

Sir Ethan showing off his sword and shield too!

His sister's brave protector!

Claire was fascinated with the remnants of Christmas day's now melted snow fort.

Ethan helping prepare for our family's New Year's Eve "party".

My kids are so much fun and so easy to make happy! I just make a bunch of fun finger foods, use special glasses, light a few extra candles and have some nice jazz music playing in the background and they call it a party! I have memories of many such parties from my own childhood. I know these simple family celebrations are things that they will always remember. That makes me happy!

Getting the table ready for our party...

My beautiful handmade Christmas Present... This table and a wonderfully long bench made to match just for me by my loving husband! I had been wanting a bigger table for years, but especially since our family was really outgrowing our other small table. We filled it completely and there was no room for any guests or (hopefully) future family members! So my sweety made this table for me! These pictures don't do it justice... it is really gorgeous! I am so happy with how it turned out, and now we have room for lots of people!!!

Claire playing with a music box that Grandma got her for Christmas.

The boys goofing off...

Happy New Year! We have so much to be thankful for. This past year was filled with many blessings and wonderful memories for our little family. We pray that this coming year is filled with many blessings as well! There are so many new and exciting things that we are looking forward to in 2011... I can't wait to share them with you all! I pray that God places a special blessing in each of your lives and draws you closer to him through out the coming year!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T23:33:00.000-05:00

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

Double Digits!

2010-12-11T23:48:00.000-05:00

My boy... Matthew is 10. Double Digits! Wow! That went by fast!!!

So Creative, Imaginative, Constant, Enthusiastic, Loving, Affectionate, Strong, Smart, Happy, and Loyal.

He began life with us so very tiny, under 5 pounds even though he was born several days "past due"! Now growing so big and strong. Hurtling towards manhood so quickly it makes this mama's head spin, yet thankfully, still such a happy innocent child. Small enough to love dressing up and pretending, mature enough to be logical when problem solving, and always thinking outside the box! Oh my sweet, sweet Matthew!

This was Matthew 10 years ago. See his sweet dimples? He was born with the most perfectly round little head. (Oddly enough, considering the perfect roundness of that head, he was my easiest birth by far!)

Big brother Logan meeting Matthew minutes after he was born... Looking at this picture now, it almost looks like Rodrigo had a harder time at that birth than I did!

And now 10 times around the sun later... Getting so big and see? He still has those adorable little dimples!

We enjoy this kid so much!

Building a toolbox with his Daddy. He is such a hard worker!

Last weekend we had a birthday party for him and had 10 boys (counting our 3) here for a birthday/slumber party! Such noisy fun!

Happy Birthday Baby Boy! We are so very thankful for you and love you so, so much!!!

Seasonal Handmade Exchange Part 2

2010-12-10T23:08:00.001-05:00

Yay! Today we received our package from Jen for the Seasonal Handmade Exchange. What fun! There wasn't much light in the house as the sun was already sinking in the sky when we open it, but I still managed to get a few pictures of the items she sent us before it set completely.

In our package we found five sweet little wool heart ornaments made from upcycled felted (fulled) sweaters and stuffed with wool...

And my favorite item... a delicate roving angel. She is so pretty on our Christmas Tree right now!

The boys thought it was such fun getting these things in the mail! I can't wait to participate in another swap sometime soon!

Seasonal Handmade Exchange

2010-12-10T08:15:00.001-05:00

I just participated in my very first swap ever! The Seasonal Handmade Exchange hosted by Jen of Sewn Natural Studio and Rae of Morning Sun Rae. The idea was to swap a handmade item for one's nature table crafted from natural materials. Jen turned out to be my swap partner. It was pretty exciting to get paired with someone known all over blogland for her creativity, but a little bit intimidating as well! I had just designed these cute little wooden snow babies complete with a sled to pull each other around (or even to give their favorite snowman a ride!) So, I decided to make those for her, and make another set for us later.

I waited to post pictures of them until she emailed me that she had received them. I wasn't sure how long shipping would take all the way to Canada from here, but it wasn't too bad actually. Aren't they cute? I was pretty happy with how they turned out!

Rodrigo (my husband -for those of you who haven't been reading my blog for long) keeps trying to get me to open up an Etsy shop and sell my little wooden creations, because he thinks they are adorable... that really intimidates me! (The opening the shop part, not that he loves my little wooden toys!) I feel like "What if I devote all of that time and energy and love into making sweet little things and then no one wants them?"

I got as far as signing up, and choosing a shop name... but still haven't listed anything. Someday... maybe...

Recap of the past few weeks

2010-11-28T23:07:00.000-05:00

OK, OK. I realize that I just disappeared from blogland for the past few weeks without so much as a by-your-leave or any word of explanation. Honestly I didn't mean to be gone that long... but life happens! It isn't that there was nothing blog worthy happening around these parts, rather there was so much happening that I barely had a chance to sit down, much less time to compose a nice coherent blog post about everything that was happening! While I am making no claims on being coherent, here are a few highlights from the past few weeks. :-)

The Niña and the Pinta (of the "Christopher Columbus discovering the New World" fame) came to town and we got to go on board for a tour with our homeschool group.

We went to the zoo on a beautiful warm and sunny autumn day. Rodrigo had to work so I was alone there with the kids... normally that would not be a big deal, but the zoo here has a free admission day once a year and I think the entire population of the city we live near showed up that day!!! It was a bit overwhelming, so I didn't get many pictures, since I had to keep such a close eye on the kids, I didn't feel comfortable with the camera stuck to my face the whole time!

We found Logan's "Secret Spy I.D. card" from when he was 6 years old... wasn't he a cutie?!? Still is I think!

Family came over one evening for Guatemalan Tamales and Ponche Navideño (Christmas Punch, hot, spiced and heavily laden with fruit!) and a bonfire.

This picture doesn't really do the bonfire justice... it was huge! The flames easily reached 15 feet into the sky!

We have been busy crafting for Christmas! Making gifts and ornaments! These pictures are of one afternoon we spent over at my mom's house working on ornaments.

I have been working on many of handmade gifts for my loved ones, I'll try to take some nice pictures of those to share with you all tomorrow when the sun is shining again. But some of my favorite things that I have been working on I can't share here... those are gifts for family members that read my blog, and I don't want to spoil the surprise! So you'll just have to wait until after Christmas to see pictures of those!

Warm and Wonderful Gifts in the Mail!

2010-11-11T09:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday there was a box waiting for us in the mail with "New Zealand Post" printed on it! What a fun surprise! It was packed full of adorable gifts for us from dear Marie of Softearth's World. I began following her blog right about the time I first started my own blog. She is a very talented wool needle felting artist with an Etsy Shop full of beautiful needle felted treasures! (If anyone is looking for something beautiful, natural and handmade to give as Christmas Gifts, be sure to check her shop!)

She is having a giveaway on her blog this month for a beautiful Nativity Scene. So be sure to go over there and leave her a comment so you can have a chance at winning!

You should have heard the boys' excitement as we opened the box. Speculating as to what it could be inside... all the way from New Zealand! That phrase was repeated about 50 times, while Ethan had to get a map and look and see just how far this package had come to make it's way to our home.

The boys loved these sweet Toadstool Babies! She sent us 4 of them, so now each of the children has one! Aren't they adorable?! They are on our nature shelf right now, and will probably stay there for a long time. :-)

We also discovered this pretty little snow white bird, and a tiny wee baby nestled in a soft little cradle of her own. Ethan said he would let Claire play with the baby as soon as she's a bit bigger... And the bird he informed me will have to "nest" in our Christmas tree, "so we can remember the nice little lady from New Zealand who sent us all of this fun stuff!" as he put it.

Marie also included several lovely photos and postcards of her work. My favorite one of those is this print of the Nativity scene she created.

Thank you Marie, for sharing such lovely gifts with our family! We will enjoy them for many years!

P.S. Everybody make sure you do go to Softearth's World and sign up for her giveaway! It is such fun to get things from far off places in the mail!

WIP Wednesday ~ more handmade presents

2010-11-03T23:46:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to share the sweet little needle felted terrarium I made for my sister-in-law for Christmas. I found this adorable apothecary jar one evening when Rodrigo and I were out on a date and knew as soon as I saw it, what I wanted to use it for! I finished it up last night... what do you think?

The boys and I dyed all of the wool using Kool-aid and food coloring... I love how many of the colors turned out mottled looking with different shades running all through the wool. It made for lovely moss and rocks!

I decided to make my terrarium look "realistic" (well, if of course you can consider a tiny wee rabbit inside a terrarium realistic!) So I added dirt under the moss, as well as several wool stones.

The following is the project I spent all of my free time working on today: A little cape for Claire out of the same fabric as the one I am making for me. The closer I got to finishing it the bigger it seemed. I don't have much experience sewing for baby girls, and the patterns have different sizes than I am used to seeing for baby's clothing... The pattern was for toddler's sizes 1/2, (one half), 1, 2, and 3. I was assuming by the measurements on the back of the pattern that 1/2 was equal to a 6 month size, and size 1 was a 12 month size. Here is the cape nearly finished, it still lacks the closures ... Since Claire is nearly a year old (!) and wears a size 12 months clothes I used the size 1 toddler's pattern.

And here is the cape being modeled by Ethan who is 7 years old!!! It's huge!

There is no way my poor little Claire is going to be able to wear this any time in the next 2 years (or possibly more!) I really can't figure out how this happened! The size 1/2 wasn't that much smaller (maybe an half an inch shorter, or so.) They don't make patterns in size one tenth.... so now what? At least it went together quickly, during both of her naps today! And someday she'll be big enough to wear it...

Spontaneity

2010-10-26T22:19:00.000-04:00

Last week(on Thursday), we where sitting around our kitchen table having lunch. Rodrigo had the day off and we had just found out that he'd have off the next day as well. Why don't we take the family and go to the beach, he asked.... Hmmm.... why not indeed?!?! So we threw some clothes and food in the van and we where off!

We went to the beach in South Carolina. It was lovely! The days where warm and the evenings cool. The water still held enough of summer's warmth for the boys to spend hours playing in the waves.

When they started feeling cold they joined us in the sand to warm up and play for a while in the sunshine.

Logan and Rodrigo went to the salt marsh and explored for hours. They collected all sorts of interesting creatures from the tidal flats.

Sometimes the best things happen when you don't have a plan!

Seed Saving ~ Let's share seeds 2010

2010-10-18T00:07:00.000-04:00

For the past few months the boys and I have been saving seeds from our garden to use again next spring and summer. Then in July I joined Earth Mama in her 2010 Seed Share. What a great idea she had! We would save our seeds (like we always do...) and send some of them all over the country to new friends who would do the same thing and send some back to us! (Sadly we can't send them internationally, I guess customs frowns on things like that.)

This afternoon while everyone was busy playing I sat down for a little while and made some seed packets for our seeds to go traveling in!

I used a simple template for my packets and painted a flower or vegetable on each one.

Wild violets. Local wildflower, one of the first to bloom each spring.

Purple flowering sage. Bumble bees love this stuff! So do I!

Sweet William, a lovely little biennial flower that smells very spicy-sweet!

Ruby Queen Okra. Nice and tender and soooo yummy! Prolific too!

Orange cosmos..self sows in my flower beds and in the veggie garden. Very cheerful and attracts lots of good bugs!

Mullein, a local wildflower (introduced here from European settlers in the 1700's) it is a great medicinal herb... good for coughs and congestion.

Calabaza Squash... a very yummy Guatemalan winter squash, not very sweet, excelent in savory dishes!

Guatemalan seeds brought to me by my mother-in-law several years ago! We save seeds for these mild chilis every year! Guatmalan Chili Dulce.

Hungarian bread seed poppies... I don't have seed packets made for these yet, but we do have the seeds saved!

My larkspurs, they are some of my favorite spring flowers. They self-sow every year and are so easy to care for!

We have several more types of seeds saved that I might be able to share, so I am hoping to get some more seed packets made up soon! I had fun messing around with the paints this afternoon, and before long the boys had abandoned their own projects and where seated at the table painting with me!