Finally Some Pictures

I finally got around to putting pictures on the computer, so now you all can see some if the improvements we've been making! We'll start with the carpet, which is berber.
You may be noticing our "bound" runner going from the kitchen eating area to the study (and basement), a very high-traffic path. This was a remnant from the installation, and we knew we didn't want to waste it. We also knew we didn't want to pay $2.00 a foot to have it professionally bound, so we did the next best thing: we used duct tape. Yes, this rug is semi-professionally bound with 3 layers of your highest quality off-white duct tape on each side! It certainly does the job. That was Elizabeth L's brilliant cost-saving suggestion, so if we had any kind of "Suggestion of the Month" award, she would definitely win!

And here we have the "powder room" on the main floor, with the new tile, toilet, vanity, mirror and light fixture. And the paint! We can't forget that! Actually, you really can't, because if you had seen this bathroom before, you would know that it was painted a light blue with some sort of sponging technique that sort of looked cloud-like. This very light tan paint color really makes it look totally different. We got the vanity and mirror as a set from Home Depot. I think they look really nice, although Bob had tons of troubles with the sink. He even had to return the first sink basin because the bottom part was crooked, so it would never seal right.

We really got fancy with the toilet, getting one that offers a "low-water" flush for "liquid waste", as well as a higher flow flush for those pesky solids. So far it is also doing its job, which is as good a report as one could for a toilet, LOL.

This is our basement storage room, which is under our kitchen and laundry room. It's the only unfinished part of the house. The past few months we had gotten really bad about just shoving boxes, bags of clothes, etc. in there willy-nilly. While the kids and I were in Ohio, Nathan had cleared a small space in the middle of it and set up our weight bench, but the rest of it was a real obstacle course. It took quite a while Saturday, but I can say things are back to being organized in there! This is where I let the boys play Lincoln Logs and army men. These 2 things go together, and they have a tendency to take over any room. At least in the storage room they can leave their elaborate battle set-ups and forts up and keep playing with them, except that lately there has bveen no room. As soo as I took this picture on Saturday, the boys immediately set up operations for WWIII in there, and the whole front space is filled again. The good thing is that they can disappear for hours playing in there, and it is so nice and quiet on the main floor!

I had wanted to take a picture of the whole family room, so you could see the odd spectacle of bare walls, but almost as soon as I had taken the picture of the carpet runner, Anna and Grace set up shop in the family room. I didn't feel like cleaning it up again, and I didn't particularly want to share all the clutter with everyone either, LOL. But I did take this small picture of Anna's "minivan". She and Grace are on this little phase where they move all the little chairs, strollers, baby high chair, etc. into a room, put them all together in lines, and then load their baby dolls up in them. That's because it's their minivan! Many years ago my brother Dan gave Nathan and Luke this "Tonka Joe" computer game, which had this totally cool dashboard/steering wheel thing that went over your keyboard for the game controls. Well, the girls aren't so interested in Tonka Joe, not that it would even run on our computers anymore, LOL, but they sure love the steering wheel part! And thiss minvan gets around too. They lug those chairs all over the place--dining room, play room, entry way, and of course the family room. Sometimes they have so much seating, it is more like a school bus.

I must confess the other reason why it's taken me so long to post these pictures. I have really wanted to start doing all my blogging on the laptops, but I have not been able to figure out the best way to do my pictures on them. On my main frame, I can upload the pictures from my camera using the Canon software that came with it (although I can't find any discs or anything to put it on the other computers). Then I use this HP software to crop, rotate, resize, etc. so I can blog the pictures. We have some HP software on the laptops, but I can't figure out to how edit with it. Totally not self-explanatory or obvious. So today I spent a good deal of time downloading Picasa on one laptop, since I know people use that. I put the memory card from my camera into the computer too, so all 1218 pictures from it are also on the computer. But they don't seem to be in any nice date-organized folders, and when I put them on Picasa, I could not figure out what on earth to do with them AT. ALL. I couldn't resize them, and I couldn't even figure out how to select more than one of them to blog, even though it said you could upload 4 at a time to Blogger. All I could do was rotate the pictures. Grrr. So I was very frustrated, and I went back to my very old, very slow, desktop computer, where at least I have a workable routine. There you have it--I'm not a technology lover. I guess sometimes old is better. I am, however, open to suggestions, tutorials, etc.

A Few Odds and Ends

First of all, I am sure you are all dying to know what was lurking in our dryer. As it turns out, it was nothing. Bob moved the dryer out and peered into it, but he could never see anything. When he looked into the hose leading out to the vent, however, there was a bunch of wet, stinky lint stuck in there. When we tiled the room, we switched out the outside vent and hose. It appears that the new vent allows rain and dirt to blow in, and then it just sits there and molders. So Bob switched out the vent again, and hopefully that will solve the problem. I think we were both quite relieved not to have to deal with the rotting remains of a rodent, LOL.

Secondly, it's still Christmas here at our house! I was browsing on Amazon Saturday morning, looking for some old movies to put on my wish list. When I was growing up in our TV-less household, we would rent a TV over the Christmas break and watch a bunch of old movies from the library. (This was back when libraries actually HAD old movies, and didn't pretend to try to be another Blockbuster). So I was looking at Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire-type movies when all of a sudden it dawned on me that I had ordered a DVD for Bob and the boys for Christmas back in October! I had been so excited about it, and it took several weeks to arrive, making me think it had gotten lost. But eventually it did arrive . . . and I promptly forgot all about it, even where I put it! I had to go up to my closet, which is where I always put gifts, and really root around in there for quite awhile before I was able to come up with it! It was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection (vol. 7)!

Back when Bob and I lived in Colorado, the cable company used to regularly (once a year or so)offer some deal to new subscribers--3 months free of something like that. I would regularly sign up for that, and while we got the cable channels, I would tape a bunch of movies. Then when our free time was up, I would cheerfully cancel, and we would have some movies to watch for the rest of the year. One movie I had taped was a MST3000 episode with the cheesiest black and white Japanese movie even made--"Prince of Space". It was funny and with no real innuendos, so the kids like to watch it as well. I wanted to get it on DVD, and I was happy to find it on the vol. 7 collection, along with 2 Hercules movies, and one more black and white movie, "Attack of the Killer Shrews". We haven't watched the last one, but from the picture on the box, the "shrews" are clearly dogs with masks. Should be funny! We watched the "Hercules Unchained" and "Hercules and the Moon Men" on Saturday, and they were both as cheesy and funny as they sound like they would be!

I am hoping to get some pictures posted of our renovations, but somehow, actually getting the camera card over to the computer and getting the pictures off of it has just seemed like too much work , so that has never gotten accomplished. I would say maybe later this afternoon, but the little boys did not get much schoolwork accomplished this morning. They did a little bit and then disappeared into our newly cleaned storage room to build elaborate Lincoln Log structures while I took a shower. They were playing so nicely and quietly that I didn't want to call them back upstairs. So our afternoon will have to include a lot of school before anyone can do anything extra, like mess around on the computer!

A New Post Just For Luke

Luke keeps bugging me to post something new. The fact is, nothing new is really happening, and I am too mushy-brained to think deep thoughts. Soooo . . . that leaves things a bit barren, as far as new post materials. I can say that overall things are going well. We're in a good homeschooling routine, and we're getting a lot done. We're in one of those nice periods where we don't have a newborn and I'm not pregnant, LOL. Since I was crazy busy with co-op responsibilities before the break, that means now I am a lot less busy, which is a huge relief. It's one of those things like the old Chinese story about the man whose house was too small. The wise man told him to keep adding more and more creatures into his house (while he kept complaining about how it was still too small). Then the wise man told him to put all the animals outside, and lo and behold, his house felt huge! So while I felt busy with all the co-ops before November, after all the extra stuff I now feel like it's all a breeze! Well, not really, but I'm definitely not as stressed or busy.

One thing we have learned recently is that Slovak and Polish share 75% of common vocabulary! Bob's mom is Polish, and his dad is Slovak. His mom bought Bob a life insurance policy through the "First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association" quite a while ago, although we never knew anything about it until this past summer, when she handed us a raft of papers about it. After we changed our address with the association, they strted sending us their little monthly magazine, which is quite interesting. In the back of one issue, there was a little blurb about the Slovak alphabet, along with some common phrases. Bob recognized a few of the words as Polish as well ("Dobre"="good"). Bob asked how something so long in English could be so short in Polish. For example, "What do you have?" is "Co mate" (there are lots of funny accent marks, which I can not hope to type!) I said it must be inflected, like Latin, where the pronoun and verb tense are included in one word. So of course we did some research on the internet and discovered that yes, in fact it is inflected, and in fact, as I found on this website Polish, like other Indo-European languages, shares some Latin grammar and vocabulary. There are 3 tenses (past, present, future), 2 numbers (singular and plural), and 3 genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). There are no articles but Polish, like Latin, is an inflectional language that distinguishes 7 cases, defining the noun usage in a sentence. This feature makes our mother tongue difficult to master and presents a lot of trouble to foreigners. So maybe Polish/Slovak will be our next language! Actually, there is a new family in our church, and the wife, Anja, is Polish (as in, born in a small Polish village, grew up there, went to university there, etc.). She is a lovely person, so maybe she could be our tutor. I'm not sure how I would do with the pronunciation though. The thing I like about Latin is that there are no Latins around to actually hear me speak it!

One new development is that we have a smell emanating from inside our dryer. A smelly smell, to be exact. I asked Bob if someone had dried a poopy diaper in there, because that is definitely the aroma. The dryer had a fairly long sojourn in the garage while the laundry room was being tiled. We also can definitely say that we had a mouse in the garage before we left for Ohio in December. The mouse has not been spotted recently, so one theory is that he climbed up in the dryer innards and got himself cooked. Or perhaps something climbed into the dryer via the dryer vent, especially since we had that terribly cold snap a little while ago. Anyhow, Bob is going to spend some time searching out the cause of the smell tomorrow. Fun!

Aaaaannndd, that's what's happening here, folks. I know, I know, you all envy me my glamorous and exciting life!

Time Capsule

We are finally getting the house back together again after all the renovating. Most of the "important" stuff is back where it belongs, which leaves the stuff that is not so important. The stuff I don't really care about, yet don't want to throw away. Some of those things were on this very top shelf in our laundry room coat closet. One of those items was a humongeous blue diaper bag--the very first diaper bag I ever had! I think I used for maybe a month or 2 with Nathan, back when I used to carry everything plus the kitchen sink around. I quickly graduated to a much smaller bag, and since then I occasionally used this blue one as luggage for Nathan on camping trips, or for when we were flying and I wanted to carry a ton of snacks and toys. It really is big!

The main thing I used it for was Air Force Academy football games. We would load that thing up with toys, food, sunscreen, and so on, and it worked well for several seasons of football! Now we haven't been to an AFA football game since the season in 2000, right before we moved to Ohio. And evidently I haven't used this diaper bag for anything else since that time, since it was a perfectly preserved speciman of game day preparation! I can't believe we moved it like that 3 different times! It contained:

--several granola bars of various types
--several strawberry fruit rollups
--an almost empty bottle of SPF 45 sunscreen
--several bandaids
--several Shout wipes
--a travel bottle of Motrin
--one diaper of indeterminate size
--a travel pack of kleenex
--chapstick
--a spanking stick
--one big green garbage bag, for use as an emergency poncho
--3 "Air Force" zipper pulls that were some sort of giveaway
--1 USAFA "terrible towel"
--2 USAFA blue/white little pompoms
--a small wooden spoon that I remember Nathan loving to play with and chew on
--this cute little airplane that is connected by a wire to a plastic "remote control". You can make it go forward and backward, but that's about it, and since it is connected by this wire, it can't get away from you! Nathan loved playing with this during games. Of course we had never taken out the batteries, so they were really corroded, but Bob was able to get the little guy going again! That REALLY brought back the memories for me!

We used to have such a great time at the USAFA football games! We would tailgate with the L's beforehand, and then we would pack up our leftover breakfast burritoes or whatever and eat those inside the stadium. I was not such a good nurser back then as I am now, so I would not have dreamed of actually nursing right there, surrounded by several thousand of my fellow Falcon fans. I would bring frozen bags of breast milk, and on hot days we would all take turns helping to thaw them by putting them on the backs of our necks, LOL. Refreshing!

Of course, that was all pre-9/11. Now they have really tightened things down, and you can't bring any food or drinks inside the stadium. You can't even bring bags inside! So the big blue diaper bag would be a definite no-no. When Bob was an AOC, we (well, he at least) HAD to be at the games. I feel sorry for the moms now who have to bring their wiggly babies and toddlers without a big diaper bag of snacks and toys to keep them occupied! Fun memories for us, though. I finally threw a bunch of stuff away, keeping the airplane, pompoms, zipper pulls, and terrible towel, of course, and the diaper bag is in the "donate" pile in the garage. Time for someone else to make some memories with the thing!

Witch Movie?

Anna: I want to watch the "scary witch" movie.

Me: Um . . . WHAT movie? We don't have ANY movies with witches in them.

Anna (emphatically): Yes, we do. I LIKE it, and I want to watch it.

Me: Ummmmm . . .

Anna: . . . with Lowly and the cat . . .

Me: (Aha!) Oh, you mean a "Richard Scarry" movie!

So now she calls it that "witch scary" movie.

Baby Steps

Lots of oppotunities for growth and change around here today . . .

1. Faith has taken several steps! She's done this several times today, walking 5-6 steps at a time! She's pretty proud of herself too!

2. Bob put in his retirement papers. He will retire on Aug. 1, 2010. I'm sad. Everyone says it's exciting. Guam would have been exciting. Staying here and finding a different job is not exciting. But it is what it is, so here we go. At least we should be able to go to Busch Gardens one more time while he is still active duty.

Crayfish Dissection

I'm a little behind in posting about this, but on Thursday we dissected crayfish at Classical Conversations. The actual CC plan calls for only observing the outside of the crayfish, but our director, Kim, thought that was a waste of all those crayfish, so she decided we would dissect them. I offered to lead the dissection for the 3/4 graders (which I teach normally) plus the 5/6 graders, since I figured I could add more for them then their actual teacher, since she isn't a biology person. Kim asked if I could just lead the dissection for the whole co-op, which was just fine with me. Everyone was all together for it. I think it would have been easier if it had been broken up into the older kids and the younger kids, but it went really well. With all the moms there to help, things went really smoothly, even with the younger kids. Everyone (well, most everyone--there were a few pale faces!) thought it was really interesting!
I dug the old lab coat out of the closet in Faith's room, where it has hung since we moved here, untouched. I wasn't sure how "juicy" these crayfish would be, and I didn't want to get stuff all over my sleeves! I started out helping the kids go down the classification of a crayfish, since they have memorized those divisions (the old "King Phillip Came Over For Green Spinach" mnemonic). Then we talked about the outside parts.

Once we actually started dissectiong, I had to run around a lot to make sure people at every table could tell what I was talking about. There is nothing more frustrating than staring at your speciman and not having a clue what you are looking at because nothing looks like what other people are describing! A mom asked me how many crayfish I had dissected, and I told her I really don't know. I think we probably dissected one in high school (does that ring a bell, Amy?!), but I'm not sure. So maybe none. I reread the section in my Vertebrate Zoology book about crayfish and other decapods, and I read some crayfish dissection labs on the internet. The thing is, if you have dissected a lot of different things, you at least kind of know what to expect as far as what parts look like what, even if they don't exactly look like a drawing from a manual! We were able to find and identify all the major organs with no problems at all.

Here is a closeup of a crayfish's gills. My friend Lynnea, and Kim, the director, were both kind enough to take pictures and then email them to me. I had thought about taking my camera but (rightly) decided that I would be running around to busy to take pictures (and would have hands that were too dirty, LOL). So it was nice to have these pictures from friends.

I love this picture of Jonathan! What a little scientist, with his magnifying glass!

This is Nathan and Isaac McC, with Caleb McC leaning in on the left. The older kids really did a great job with everything, and they were especially enthusiastic about the whole thing. Nathan and Luke thought it was "awesome".

Science is supposed to take 30 minutes, and Kim had actually given me 45 minutes, but when I first looked up at the clock, I realized I had almost taken an hour! I apologized, but Kim said all the teachers had said they would rather have the kids stay here, because they were having such a good time and learning so much. Obviously I was having fun, letting time run away with me like that! And it was fun to do something that I really enjoy like that again, and remember that once I had a successful life that didn't revolve around kids, LOL.

De Ja Vu

Well, there's nothing like making a mistake, and then being reminded of it again and again. So I had my wallet stolen at the National Zoo back in July. After all the hassle of getting things replaced and putting a credit freeze on my name, we still were notified in early September that a new credit card had been opened in my name at Chase. Fortunately they sent me a letter saying if this had been opened fraudulently to let them know. We were on the phone right away, and that got closed up again real quick!

Then last week I got a thick envelope in the mail from the "Penn Credit Corporation". I sort of got that sinking feeling when I looked at it! Here's what they wrote:

We are writing to inform you that sensitive personally indentifiable information about you was accessed without authorization by two employees of Penn Credit Corporation . . . Once we learned of this incident, we ended the employment of both individuals. Please be aware that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is actively investigating this matter . . . In late October 2009 we were contacted by representatives from the Manhatten District Attorney's office concerning an ongoing identity theft scheme perpetuated by a group of individuals, including our former employees. A member of the group with no connection to Penn Credit would contact our two employees after acquiring personal information taken from pick-pocketed wallets. The employees would then, without authorization, use Penn Credit's computer resource to access the social security numbers and other personally indentifying information . . . Contrary to our company policy, those individuals would then share that information with the individual who contacted them. This individual, working with others in the scheme, would ultimately add this data to the information they had previously acquired so that they could conduct fraudulent banking transactions . . .

Wow, my name has been involved in a scam! Praise the Lord that the people at the company were caught. The good news is that Penn Credit has taken a bunch of steps to ensure one employee wouldn't be able to match people's info up like that so easily, and it is also paying for 2 years of credit monitoring through Experian's Triple Alert service, as well as a large amount of insurance in case something happens that doesn't get caught right away. Still, this doesn't give me much confidence that there aren't scrupulous people working in other credit companies. I guess this also answers the question of how a credit card could be issued in my name even after I had a freeze put on my name. Somehow these guys were able to get through that. Scary! I was also glad we switched around all our banking stuff.

I am also a bit worried about the kids. I had their SSNs in my wallet as well. This may seem crazy, but when we travel and need to use a military treatment facility somewhere, we need their SSNs, not just Bob's. I didn't have it when I took Grace in at WPAFB last Christmas for her ruptured eardrum, and it was a total hassle. I just figured it was more likely that we would need medical care than I would get my wallet stolen. Obviously I was wrong, LOL. Now they are all minors, but I am still afraid someone could just use their SSN with a fraudulent birth date. The lady at Experian wasn't very helpful about the possibility of this, other than to suggest we pay I think it was about $25 a month for a family monitering plan. Maybe these criminal guys have bigger fish to fry than worrying about this, however. I'm praying so.

Just one more thing to worry about! Actually, now that I have all this monitoring, I think I can worry less. The past few months I would stop every so often and wonder what was happening and if there was something else I should be doing.

New Year, New Paper

Well, so far this year is not shaping up to be a great one. We have been loyal subscribers of the Washington Times since we moved here. I love this paper! It presents so much more of a balanced viewpoint than the Washington Post, which is simply the mouthpiece of the Democractic party. I've always said that you could not pay me enough to get me to subscribe to the Post. I thoroughly enjoy reading the paper each morning.

A few months ago, the Times stopped delivering on Saturdays. It still published a paper, but it was only available online. I don't need more things to do on the computer, so I rarely read it there. Besides, Saturdays are made for relaxing with the paper, not staring at a computer screen!

Then several weeks ago there were suddenly no comics. Now, the Times never did have a great comic selection. I've read enough about the politics of the comic industry to know that only one paper in a town can have the rights to a syndicated comic strip, and sometimes a paper will buy up the rights even if they are not planning on ever publishing a strip, just so that a rival paper can't buy the rights. Sounds like the Post, which does publish several pages of comics each day. But anyhow, we wondered where the comics had gone, and we just figured it was too expensive to pay the syndication fee for any of them.

But then the week after Christmas, the Times announced that they were REALLY cutting back. They were only going to publish 2 sections of the paper, focusing only on international, national, and local news. No sports or anything extra. And no more print Sunday paper either. Just the online one. I'm so down! The boys are too--no sports! I enjoyed their sports sections because they had several good writers who had interesting human interest stories, as well as I just like to keep current, even in the sports world. I will really miss reading the movie reviews and the short blurbs about famous people. Even though I never watch movies, by reading the reviews, I could still converse intelligently with people who were only talking about movies.

I guess what is most depressing is that I can totally see the handwriting on the wall. Pretty soon there is not going to be ANY print Washington Times. Bob is already questioning the value of continuing to pay for our subscription, and I'm sure there are others who will too. Sigh. So the year is just starting off badly. The country is being pulled off a cliff, and now my paper is going away. Depressing.

Christmas Week Wrap-Up

The kids have thoroughly been enjoying all the new toys, games, and books they received for Christmas. My parents gave us a big red wagon (can you believe we have made it to 7 kids without ever getting a wagon?!), and the girls have been thrilled to be pulled around by their big brothers. They would ride all day, if you can imagine!

I am actually more in the Christmas spirit now, than I was before Christmas, and so yesterday the kids and I made peanut butter cups. I wanted to make caramels too, but I didn't have enough chocolate. I finally got around to ordering pictures to send out, so now all I have to do is write a Christmas letter to go with them! This WILL happen, if only because every year I put our Christmas letter and picture in my Christmas scrapbook, along with a few pictures of what we did Christmas Day, and I am just anal enough to want to ensure that there will not be a blank page for this year's letter! I love reading back over all the past years. It's such a good summary of our family each year.

We've all been enjoying the leftovers from our Christmas turkey. I made turkey pot pie on Monday, something I haven't made in years because of Caleb's milk allergy. When we were back in Ohio, Amy made a roast using Campbells golden mushroom soup. She said she had discovered this soup, which is dairy-free, acts like a cream soup in her recipes, and it goes well with beef or chicken. Mom made a roast for us using it and french onion soup mix for the gravy, and it was delicious. I decided to try out my old turkey pot pie recipe, which uses puff pastry sheets on top for the crust and could not be any easier, and use the mushroom soup in place of the cream of chicken/cream of potato soups. It was DELICIOUS! I was so excited! I love adding foods back into my repetoire! I also made a good turkey soup for dinner tonight. I roasted the carcass for about 45 minutes at 400 before boiling in water with herbs. I think it did add a good flavor to the broth. The recipe I used, which I found on the internet, also called for leftover dressing and gravy. Rice was called for instead of noodles, which I don't love in soups. So it was a lovely, thick soup, with a nice flavor. This was a good year for leftovers!

We started school back up again this week. We have been off since the week of Thanksgiving, so it was definiltey time. I really needed this break, though. It's been so refreshing. The kids have settled back into everything, and I was gratified, as always, to see that all their previously learned knowledge did not just fall out of their heads, LOL. In fact, Jonathan has really made big strides in his reading over these past few weeks, and now he can do all of his math worksheets without me reading the directions or the problems for him! Nice! Luke was quite concerned that he might have forgotten all his math, so we just did the past 3 tests, instead of moving ahead on new lessons. He hasn't forgotten, so that fear was put to rest, LOL. After the new year, Nathan is going to start doing a traditional logic program with Isaac McC. I bought DVDs, so neither Christine nor I will actually have to teach it. I am looking forward to seeing how that goes. Our country is in dire need of kids who can think logically!

With the laundry room finished up, Bob has turned his attention to the main floor bathroom. He just finished grouting in there tonight, so we will seal it tomorrow night. In an exciting and romantic date, Bob and I went to both Home Depot AND Lowes one evening and compared toilets. We were able to pick one that wasn't too expensive, even after all the very persuasive advertising ("Exceptional Bulk Flushing Power!") We did not consider anything under 5 stars (Lowes) or a rating of 10 ( Home Depot), so hopefully you will be assured that if you visit us, our main floor toilet will be able to take care of whatever you should need to flush.

Not having a toilet on the main floor (or a hooked-up washer) has given me the excuse to not work any more on Grace's potty training. She has not shown any signs of wanting to do it herself, and I showed no signs of wanting to run up and down stairs to empty a little potty (or wash out underwear, as would have most likely been the case). So now we will start back up with our 2 co-op a week schedule, and it will probably be spring break before we have any news on the front. Oh well. When you have been changing diapers for 12 1/2 years straight, what is a few more months of changing 2 people's diapers?!

As we look towards 2010, it is looking more and more likely that we will just be staying here in D.C. AFPC has given Bob a new assignment down at USJFCOM in Suffolk, VA, by Norfolk, and orders are in the works. Funnily enough, when this whole thing started back in July, that is really where we wanted to go--it wouldn't be that inconvenient of a move! But now, after thinking we were going to Guam and getting all excited about that, moving 3 hours away just doesn't seem that worth it. The housing program has been extended, so we would still qualify, but I guess I just don't feel any real call to move down there. I really felt like God was telling us he wanted us in Guam, and then He slammed that door shut suddenly, so who knows exactly what to think now, you know? It's hard to know what the right decision is. But Bob can retire, so he's thinking that sounds attractive now. I'm still not excited about staying here in all the traffic and expense, but I am trying to have a good attitude. I do really love our friends and church here, so it's not all bad.

Tomorrow night we will be celebrating at the traditional party over at the L's house. This is quite the highlight for the boys, and it's a good thing they are so generous about hosting it each year! We always have a great time, and we are looking forward to it! Happy New Year!!

A New Laundry Room!

The laundry room is finished!! It looks so nice! Here is a picture of the tile, so you can admire the lovely job Bob did in laying them and grouting them. Before you ask, no, he is not planning on going into the tile business after retirement. It's hard on the back and knees!
We used to have a utility sink next to our washer and dryer. It was next to useless because it didn't have legs, so it just hung from the wall. This meant that over time, it sank lower and lower in the front. When I would try to use it, if I didn't wipe the water completely out of the front of the sink, it would just stay there and get mildewy. Nice! So eventually I just started tossing things in there, things that were fairly light, but nonetheless, it was obvious I wasn't planning on using it anymore. We needed more storage in the laundry room, though. Along the wall opposite the washer and dryer we had 1 large shelving unit and 1 smaller one. I used these as an auxiliary pantry, because the one we have in our kitchen is not nearly big enough for the amount of food I get at our every-6-week trips to the commissary for a family of 9. Bob had the bright idea of not putting the utility sink back, after they took it out to paint, and instead getting some sort of cabinet. We went to Lowes last night, and lo and behold, they had one that was premade and already stained! Bob had thought he would be making one, and if so, we would have made it higher to match the height of the cabinets already there about the washer and dryer, but oh well. This saved a ton of time and work for Bob, and we can start using it immediately! We're hoping it will replace at least the bigger shelves, which will make it less crowded in there.

Here is a picture of the laundry room where you can see the wall that the shelves were against. The shelves completely blocked the door, which was fine because we never use that door. But it did make there be very little room for the multitudinous luandry baskets coming in and out of the room! The very best part of the picture, however, is that it shows the washer and dryer in good, working order! In my very own house! After 2 weeks of having to truck all of our vast quantities of laundry over to the L's house, it was like heaven to do it without setting foot outside! A modern Christmas miracle!

Random Thoughts. . . With Jonathan

When we traveled to and from PA last weekend, Jonathan elected to sit directly behind the driver's seat, right next to Faith. Caleb sat next to the other girls in the next row, and Nathan and Luke hung out in the back row. One nice thing about the big van is having some flexibility in seating arrangements!

This gave Bob and me some time to listen to Jonathan. And he certainly has a lot to say! For example, he has an unending collection of original jokes (maybe "riddles" is technically more accurate). Some are very, uh, cerebral, and all of them definitely bear the inventive mark of a 6 year old boy! Here are some examples:

Q: How does a snail ice-skate?

A: He turns over and puts a skate on his shell.

Q: How does a house drive?

A: On its chimney.

Q: How does a red light cross the road?

A: It just goes across.

(Me: But won't the other cars run over it?
Jonathan: It's a RED light. They have to stop.)

So you can see how the miles just fly by when you are cogitating on a constant stream of these!

Jonathan also just chatters away, on whatever random thoughts cross through his brain. Here is a small sample of this, where Jonathan is talking about future plans to build a car wash:

"I think I'll build it out of sticks . . . and I'll attach it together with glue . . . but the glue might melt . . . so maybe I'll attach it with sticks . . . or eggs! I could use eggs . . . Look, there's a castle! . . . Or maybe I'll build it out of rocks . . ."

Bob and I were about hanging our heads out the window, but we never could see what castle Jonathan was talking about! Maybe it was only in the land of Jonathan's mind . . . driving on its chimney . . .

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful celebration of Christ's birth today! We did, starting with a beautiful candelight service at church last night. We are now meeting for morning services at a neaby middle school, and we just haven't been with it enough to go to the evening service lately, so it had been a while since we were in our lovely old little church. It is the perfect place for a candlelight service!

Actually, yesterday was a good day all in all, in that I finally really made noticeable progress in getting the house back together again. All the books are back in our 3 double bookcases in the the study, and the dining room, while still filled with laundry room stuff, is a little mroe organized. I got a box for shoes and a big box for coats, since we have no place to put them, and that has helped keep the entry way passable. I find I am better able to get in the Christmas spirit when the house is not a total wreck! I made some stuff for today's dinner yesterday, and I also baked some cookies. Of course, Bob and I stayed up way too late wrapping presents. I greatly dislike wrapping presents, and I had not wrapped a single one, even though I had finished my shopping for the kids back in Ohio. Next year I am resolved to wrap presents as they come in! And maybe I'll lose those 10 pounds too . . .

This morning, Bob's sister Ann, her husband Wally, and their adult son Matthew drove up from Richmond to spend the day. We had a great time! Our family opened stockings first thing and then ate breakfast. The kids played while I showered, and Ann and Wally got here around 10:30. Then we all opened gifts. We really don't get the kids much--2 gifts each, one of them being a book--but it sure looked like a Walmart had exploded in our living room! They got a lot of very nice gifts from relatives, and they all spent the rest of the day happily building Lego sets, reading books, wearing Star Wars Clone trooper helmets (Caleb and Jonathan), wearing princess jewelry (Anna and Grace), and getting into things (Faith). Ann teaches cake decorating at Michael's, and she had brought some of her cake decorating stuff, plus a bunch of cupcakes. She taught the kids some decorating techniques and let them practice on cupcakes, which they really enjoyed. Actually, their absolute favorite part was eating the icing, if you can imagine that.

We ate our big meal at 3:00, and we had our birthday party for Jesus later in the afternoon. Then we played a game of Apples to Apples, which was a lot of fun. You need a game that is not too mentally strenuous after all that food! By then it was raining/sleeting, so Ann and Wally needed to get back on the road before things got too messy. We were so glad they came up though!

This year, I tried a new turkey recipe. Several weeks ago, I roasted a chicken using a recipe from my Dining on A Dime cookbook. It was sooo good--like Boston Market! The recipe said you could use it for a turkey, so that is what I tried. Let me tell you, it really turned out well. Probably the best turkey I've had! It was very moist and flavorful. So as a Christmas present to you, I'm going to give you the recipe:

Roast Sticky Chicken or Turkey

4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. white pepper [I don't have this, so I don't use it!]
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 large (10#) whole chicken, chicken parts, or 20 # turkey (double spices if using on a big turkey)
1 cup chopped onion

Combine all the spices. Remove innards from chicken (or turkey). Rinse chicken. Rub the spice mixture into the chicken both inside and out, making sure it is evenly distributed and down deep into the skin. Place in a 9x13 pan (or a turkey roasting pan), seal with foil and refrigerate overnight. If using chicken parts, just rub over both sides of parts. When ready to roast chicken, stuff cavity with onions. If using chicken parts, place on top of onions. Roast, uncovered, at 250 degrees for 5 hours. Roast chicken parts 3-5 hours. Roast a turkey 8-10 hours. After the first hour, baste chicken with pan juices every half hour to 45 minutes. If you don't have enough juices to baste, you can add 1 cup water to the pan. The chicken will be golden to dark brown with carmelized juices on the bottom. Let the chicken rest about 10 minutes before carving.

Notes from me: My oven doesn't go down as low as 250, so I roasted at 275. The chicken I roasted was done in about 3 hours. I roasted a 19 pound turkey, and it took 7 hours. I tented the top with foil after the first 3-4 hours, because it was getting dark brown. I worried that the turkey would be dry after being in the oven for so long, but it was so very moist! Delicious! Merry Christmas!

Snow in VA

Here are a few pictures from the big snowfall of the past weekend. THe first picture is looking out our front door at Bob's van, which was parked on the street. It is so buried! It's going to take forever to dig it out! The snow is even higher than the doors on the other side, where the snowplow pushed snow! The government was basically shut down to day, so Bob didn't have to go in this morning. Yay!

Here is the driveway, with my minivan, and the big van beside it. The boys and I did manage to dig out my van, so I'm thinking that's what Bob will take in tomorrow. We also shoveled the walkway.

The boys spent the rest of the time making elaborate snow forts and paths throughout the front yard. Here is Caleb in one of the forts.

Faith watched forlornly all day from inside the glass storm door. This afternoon I got her all dressed up and took her outside. She was not a fan, LOL--not of the snowsuit, the mittens, the snow, the cold--none of it! But she looked cute!

Here are all the kids, all dressed up! They can't wait to get back out there tomorrow!

I spent my time putting books back on the bookshelves in the family room and study. You'd think I'd be done, but I'm not. I should have taken a picture before I left, so that I would remember how everything went! It's taking me forever to get it all right again.

Bob has spent his day finishing tiling the laundry room. All he has left are the ones that go around the edge, and he is cutting them now. Then they have to cure for 24 hours, after which he can grout. That has to dry 36 hours. I am looking forward to getting my washer and dryer back, but it is all looking so nice in there!

Early Christmas in PA

Friday afternoon we left to drive up to PA to visit Bob's family. We didn't leave until 3:30 because I just couldn't get it together any sooner. When it took us an hour to get to the outskirts of town, we remembered why we prefer to drive up Saturday mornings, LOL. A big blizzard was forecast (how often are they right about those things?!), so I guess there were a lot of other people trying to get out of D.C. before it. We made it to Bob's parents' house jsut a little while before his sister Rose and her 2 girls, who were coming from NE PA, and his brother Paul and his son Brandon who live nearby. The cousins had a wonderful time together--and only part of it was that Brandon shared his PSP and Maddie and Amanda shared their (pink) DSs with the boys!

We all got to bed at the hotel late Friday night, so we just relaxed Saturday morning. We all went swimming in the hotel pool, which was nice. This was Faith's first time in a pool, and she loved it! She also looked adorably cute in her little pink swimsuit with a ruffle. I think she is one of the few of our kids who have loved the pool the first time. Most take until they are about 3 to enjoy it, LOL.

Then we headed back over to Bob's parents' house. It snowed in PA too, so Bob had to get the big van brushed off. We have snow scrapers in both minivans, but nothing in the big van. I guess we really weren't expecting any snow! The other cousins had gone sledding at Paul's house, and the boys were so disappointed that I had not thought to pile all of their snow stuff in the van! Oh well. Meanwhile we watched the Weather Channel and saw how VA was getting walloped with snow. Luke especially felt we should be at home, watching it all come down! He could not believe that so far VA has had 2 snow storms, and we have been out of town for both of them! They had to console themselves with more video games on their cousins' machines.

Faith enjoyed the attention of everyone. Here she is with Bob's mom and sister. Bob's brother-in-law Terry and sister Jane came over Saturday afternoon, along with their son Franklin. We had hoped that Jane and Terry would be able to convince Faith to walk, since they have worked their magic on some of our other kids, like Jonathan, but no such luck. She is really standing steadily on her own, but she will absolutely NOT move her feet one tiny bit.

Maddie and Amanda were so sweet in playing with Anna and Grace. The girls had a great time! Nathan played a rousing game of pinochle with Bob's other relatives, which he won. This was the point where Bob's parents got a little fiesty and tired of all the commotion, so we all beat a hasty retreat back to the hotel.

Grace was sleeping in a sleeping bag, but she is still too wiggly, I think. The first night she wiggled under a chair a few times, and I had to keep rescuing her. She didn't wiggle as much the second night, so maybe she was getting used to it, but she was very stuffed up, so she still didn't sleep very well.

Sunday morning the kids swam again with Bob, while Faith took a nap and I showered. Then we loaded up and headed back over to the house. There we loaded up the amazing haul of presents we received from all of Bob's family. We really had to shoehorn it all in there, but we managed to make it fit! We left around 1:15 because we were concerned about the roads. They were really pretty good, especially the big ones like the turnpike. But I-70 was already backing up, so we got off and went some back way. It was really pretty, with a lot of neat old houses. We got back around 5:30. Once we had learned how much snow VA got, my big question the whole weekend was how we were going to get into our driveway and house. It turned out I was right to be concerned, but I hadn't taken into account our wonderful neighbors! One of them had obviously snowblowed our driveway for us! What an incredible blessing, because I can't imagine shoveling out a driveway full of 2 feet of snow with tired kids waiting in the van! All we had to do was shovel a path through the great mound of snow plow snow in front of the driveway, and that took long enough! SO we had a good weekend, but we were really thankful to get home safely.

A bonus picture: Faith was enamoured with the cute baby on the other side if this glass all weekend long.

Home Again

We made it home safely on Tuesday, in time to drop Luke off at his Upward basketball practice and catch the last quarter of Nathan's game. So far, Nathan's team won the games we missed while we were in Ohio, and lost the 2 games since we've been home. Hmmmm . . .

We came to home to an echoing house because the carpet for the family room, study, basement stairs, first room in the basement, and the back stairs was coming on Wednesday. All the furniture from the main floor rooms was in the play room and dining room, along with all the food that was in the laundry room, which had also been emptied out. The family room and several other rooms had been painted, and Bob is in the process of laying tile in the laundry room and the main floor half bath (another empty room).

So Wednesday the kids and I hung out at the L's house, while they were at Great Wolf Lodge. I did 4 loads of laundry, since we are without a washer and dryer for the next little while, until the tiling gets finished. I also baked some ginger snaps and made some peppermint bark, since the thought of baking in my kitchen, where tools were covering pretty much every flat surface, was too much to think about! The carpet guys came, and the new carpet looks great! It's a berber, and we hope it will stand up to the wear and tear of 7 kids for a long time.

Today the kids and I ran to the commissary to get our Christmas turkey. Tomorrow we are leaving to go to PA to visit Bob's family for the weekend, including his sister Rose and her 2 girls, who are also driving in for the weekend. It will be great to see everyone, but it is a little hard for me to leave when there is so much to do to get the house in any semblance of order before Christmas, not to mention extras like putting up the Christmas tree. It's a good thing our Christian radio station plays Christmas music all the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas--otherwise I would not have any Christmas spirit at all!

When we come back, I think the focus for me will be on getting the family room back in order. Then maybe I'll feel better about putting up the tree, which the kids are really wanting to do. I guess it's good we have kids, because otherwise I would cheerfully just not worry about it at all! I had planned on starting school again when we came back from Ohio, but that has not happened. I'm not even sure where all the school books even are! Hopefully I'll be able to get the study back in order by the time January rolls around.

Church Thoughts

We're still here in Ohio, although we are heading home Tuesday. We had a fun time Thursday over at Amy's house (and no one got sick!), and then Friday we spent the day with Beverly and her family. She has 5 kids, and all 12 kids got along very well and played very nicely together so that Beverly and I could spend a long time talking and catching up! It has been 5 years since we've actually seen each other, but it didn't seem anywhere near that long with blogging and Facebook. We have a lot in common, so it was fun to talk about homeschooling, having more kids (or not), and other things.

Today the kids and I visited a different church. Often we go to the base chapel, which is where my parents go and where Bob and I got married 16 1/2 years ago. A lot of retirees are still there that we knew back then, so it is always fun to go back there and see everyone. When we were stationed here last time, however, we actually attended an off-base church. That church now has a new pastor, who is a bit of a cheerleader, rather than someone who really digs into the Word each week, which is one reason we wouldn't attend there again if we ever moved back.

But another reason is that they have sort of gone a different direction than we are, in terms of youth stuff. This is an area that we hadn't considered until the past few years when the boys started getting older. We started getting a lot less comfortable with the way that a lot of churches send the youth off doing tons of super fun and exciting things during services . . . until all of a sudden, the kids get too old and have to start sitting through church. Then they find it dull, and the church often responds by jazzing up the background behind the pastor, adding tons of video clips and drama segments, taking away any significant time really spent in corporate prayer (because that is really boring, and surely you can just sing more worship songs for the same effect . . .) And still, studies show that a lot of kids who grow up going faithfully to church very frequently turn away from church altogether when they reach college.

As it turns out, the Christian walk is not all excitement and goofy songs and games. It actually involves discipline, and I don't think the churches are often doing a good enough job of balancing that. I especially think that kids need to see their parents worshipping, and be a part of that as well. The church we go to in VA does have children's church until 3rd grade, so I'm not saying I'm totally against ever having your children be separate. But I do think it is very important for kids to start worshipping and learning how to sit still and reverently listen before they get into high school! And if the pastor is really good, then they might even choose to sit in the service before 3rd grade! Caleb and Jonathan both choose to sit with us in service, and Jonathan has even told us recently that he feels like God wants him to be a pastor, like Pastor Mike. We discuss the sermon together, and the kids often sing the songs we sing at church around the house.

Well, all that to say that it bothers me that, should we move back here, I don't know what church we would attend, so when we are back visiting, I like to try different churches. This time I googled "reformed baptist" in this area, and I found 3 churches, one of which we tried today. I must say we really enjoyed it! As we were driving there, Luke talked about how nervous he was, and how he didn't like visiting new churches. Me either! But as we drove away from there, he said, "Those people were all so nice!" And they really were. Everyone we saw engaged us in conversation, even more than just the surface chit-chat of "Are you a visitor? New to the area?" The families who sat in front of us and behind us both talked to us for quite a while. The family in front of us had 10 kids, so we didn't feel out of place, LOL.

This church only has nursery up to 2 years of age, and after that, everyone is in the service. There were quite a lot of kids, and when someone was loud, the parents just took them out, dealt with them, and came back in. So nice to see! There was also a nice mix of ages represented in the congregation. It definitely didn't have a showy worship leader or anything, and I am just fine with that. We even sang songs out of the hymnal! That is what I really miss, now that our church back home meets for morning service at a middle school. All the songs are on a screen. I used to love flipping through hymnals when I was little, and I think it helps keep kids engaged in the song when they can follow right along with the words right directly in front of them. So I liked that a lot. I liked the pastor as well. His sermon was on part of Luke 5, but I couldn't tell if he was preaching expositorily through Luke or not. I definitely prefer that style of preaching, verse-by-verse exposition.

So to sum it all up, I would definitely go back there! The people were just so nice, and the preaching was good as well. And they seemed to line up with what I am looking for as far as kids. No youth group mentioned!

Still On Vacation

The kids and I are still here in Ohio. I didn't bring any schoolwork, so it has been so very nice to be completely on break. So nice, in fact, that I am hoping I can scrape together motivation to ever start again, LOL. Unfortunately, we must return home next week, so all good things must come to an end.

We have not been too terribly active. It's been cold and gloomy, and we've mainly stayed inside the past few days. Yesterday Mom's group of international wives came over. I had made cut-out sugar cookies yesterday morning, and the ladies decorated them in the afternoon. they made these intricate and delicate works of art. After dinner, the kids decorated the rest of the cookies. They made frosting-heavy works of sprinkles. And a mess--they also made a huge mess.

My parents have a Korean lady and her daughter living with them right now. They used to be stationed here, when the husband was getting his master's degree at AFIT. Now he is back in Korea, getting his PhD, and his family is here so he can have peace and quiet to work on his dissertation! Amy, the daughter, is 4 years old, so she, Anna, and Grace have been having so much fun playing together. She has several "princess" dresses, which her mom picked up very cheaply at a garage sale, so each evening all the girls get dressed up in their princess finery.

Work is progressing on our house back in VA. Painting has begun, and Bob has finished getting the trim around the hardwood floor in the kitchen. Much drywall was patched. They are also going to start tiling the laundry room floor.

I am still dealing with the news that we won't be moving. I'm having a lot of trouble processing it, to be honest. It seems so capricious that God would work things so that it looked like we were supposed to go, and then at the last minute take that all away. He could have stopped things back in September, and no one would have been as disappointed. Now I have to accept staying in Northern VA for good, and I'm having a hard time with that. When we moved there 5 1/2 years ago, I can clearly remember thinking, "Well, it will only be 4 years." But now it's forever?! Bleh. I hate the idea that the girls will grow up never having lived anywhere else but there. It will be nice to have the house finally be a little nicer, but since that comes with the knowledge that we are stuck with it, I'm not as excited as I thought I would be. I guess I'm just a little depressed. It's nice to be here in Ohio, where at least there is some distance from it all.

Here in Ohio

We've had an unusual past few days! The kids and I left Monday to drive to Ohio. We had a good trip, although we did have some rain and even snow. Faith was fussy in the morning, but eventually she resigned herself to her fate and wasn't quite as loud anymore. We shoveled a bunch of snacks her way as well, which didn't hurt, LOL.

Yesterday Nathan and my dad drove back to VA. They are going to work on our house, and there are certainly plenty of things to do! Right now they are working in the family room. The guy we bought the house from was an electrical engineer who loved wiring things, and there was a huge rat's nest of wires behind our couch, where they had their entertainment center. You really can't imagine how many wires were back there! He also had plastic plates on the walls ALL. OVER. where he had wired for speakers. My dad cut off all the wires, took off all the plates, and is patching over all the places! It's going to look so nice!

While they were driving, the other kids and I went over to Amy's house. We were supposed to spend the night because Amy's husband was out of town. We had planned a nice night of scrapbooking and talking! Alas, it was not to be. Caleb had woken up that morning not feeling good, and he basically didn't eat any breakfast or lunch. He felt better then, so we went ahead over. Around dinner time, Luke and I both started feeling really, really nauseous. It hit so fast! Neither of us ate dinner, and we just sort of laid on the couch, hoping it would all pass. Eventually I threw up, and we decided it was the better course to head back to my mom's house. This turned out to be a wise decision, as Luke threw up 4 times once we got home, and Anna and Grace both starting throwing up around midnight. Anna threw up 3 times, and Grace 4. I had to change the sheets and their pajamas many times. It definitely made for a sleepless night for me, but thankfully I never threw up again. Everyone is feeling better today, but I have a huge headache, probably from my choppy night.

The other odd thing thaat happened is that we heard again from AFPC. Bob talked to them on Wednesday, and they surprised him with the news that the people in Guam were thinking about filling that IG job internally, as they had 3 top people leaving, a big inspection next summer, and they wanted some continuity. So they were going to move one of the people supposed to PCS over to the IG job. We found out today that they definitely are going to do this, so we will not be going to Guam. I'm disappointed! I was really looking forward to the slow-paced island life and meeting the people I've been corresponding with by email. This does explain why we hadn't received orders. We were wondering what was taking so long. Soooo, now we don't really know what is happening. One thing we were hoping to do by taking another assignment is sell our house and take advantage of the military homeowners assistance program. Well, right now that requires a report date of 29 Feb., and the jobs they are talking t Bob about don't have report dates until May or June. Congress is talking about extending the program, but again . . . you never know with them. Certainly not something you can count on! So once again, we are back at square one, as far as assignments go. It's been the weirdest thing.

Well, that's where we're at now.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We have had a lovely Thanksgiving this year, and it all began on Wednesday! Bob got off work early, so we met him at Olive Garden for a late lunch. We were seated at a long table, and there were some booths across from us. About halfway through our meal, a family with 3 teenage boys got up to leave. The dad approached our table, and I figured he would say something about the kids, because that actually does happen fairly frequently. The kids really are usually pretty well-behaved in restaurants, and people come over and comment on that. He did compliment us on having a lovely family, and he also thanked Bob for his service (Bob was still in his uniform). Then as he was turning to walk away, he put a pile of bills on the table, telling us it was to pay for our meal! We were so astounded--it was $60! Amazingly, that was almost the exact total of our meal. Since we are now a "large party" all by ourselves, most places automatically include the tip, and the grand total was $59.17. Isn't that cool?!

Yesterday we had our big meal over the L's house with 3 other families. I think this is the absolute best way to do it--all the great food, but no one person has to do that much! ed smoked 3 turkeys, Elizabeth made the mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy, and the rest of us filled in with side dishes and dessert. I brought cran-apple-pear sauce, sweet potato casserole, sweet potato biscuits, a chocolate Snickers cheesecake, and banana cookies. We all ate a ton and had a great time visiting!

Faith got to eat her first Thanksgiving meal up in Theodore's high chair. She was a big fan! She is at the point now where I can just put a bunch of food on her tray, and she will feed herself everything. I gave her sweet potatoes, a little bit of turkey, a sweet potato biscuit, some green beans, and the cranberry sauce, which she loved. She chowed down while I helped everyone else get their food, and then she got down and played while I ate! She did one funny thing while we were all sitting around talking. She was playing with this set of juggling stick-things that Ed has, waving them around. They are long, sort of like batons. Somehow she got her arm over one end, and the other end was on her neck. The harder she pulled down her arm, the harder the other end was on her neck! She pinned herself down with a stick! It takes some skill to be outwrestled by yourself, LOL.

After we got home last night, we all wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. But we knew the cleaning lady was coming today, so we had to finish getting ready for her! We have been furiously decluttering all week long, and the rest of the house was really looking fairly good, but the kitchen was still a problem. After washing all the dished, I finally just got a box and put everything on the counters in it. Problem solved! If looks great! If only we didn't have to actually live here! So the lady and another lady are here right now, cleaning away. I feel odd, like I should be doing something helpful instead of sitting in the computer . . . Bob took the other kids out to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch and playing, to get them out of the ladies' hair. Having a clean house is going to be so wonderful! I am so thankful for these ladies!!

Down Time

We are officially on our long Thanksgiving break now, and it couldn't have come at a better time! I really felt like I had no margin of patience whatsoever, and by the end of each day, as kids were crabby and loud, I was having a very hard time dealing. But we've all been sleeping in yesterday and today, and yesterday I had a massage! It was at a new place, Massage Envy, which is a franchise place for massages. Who knew?! They were running a special for first time customers--$49 for 1 hr--so that's why I went. I booked the appointment for 2:00. This is really the first time that I have actually booked something, knowing that I would just be going off and leaving the kids by themselves, and I must say that I did struggle with a lot of guilt as I drove off. It all seemed so frivolous and spendy and just selfish! But I tamped down the guilt and went on, LOL.

The place was really nice and relaxing. When I made the appointment, the girl asked me what kind of massage I wanted, and I said "deep tissue", since I have some specific problems in my shoulder and hip that I am always looking to address. I didn't really feel like the therapist did much deep tissue work--it still was mostly Swedish, with the long strokes. That feels great and is very relaxing, but I had high hopes for more kinks to be worked out of my hip and shoulder. Oh well. I told Bob that I really think you get the best massages from students doing their practical work at student clinics. There they want to practice what they've been learning and actually try to fix your problem! At a place like this, they just want you to come back (because the regular price of an hour massage is $98, unless you become a "member" and pay $59 a month, which entitles you to one massage a month!).

I did notice later that night, however, that the massage really was better than I gave it credit for at first! Everyone was fussing at each other again . . . but I was floating above it all! Really, I felt so calm and unbothered. The difference was truly amazing.

I also had some time to finally look at another nagging problem of mine Sunday night. I have had this very sore spot on the side of my right middle finger, not too far from the bottom of the nail bed. Some of you may remember my nightmare finger problem back in March 08, where after we all had strep and pinkeye, I got a staph infection in a hangnail, which had to be lanced, etc. Well, that was also in this same finger, in almost the same spot. What is up with that?! It has been very painful to the touch for a little while now--I can't remember when it started--and lately it had gotten a little raised bump there, like a callus or wart or something. I wondered if maybe it was a plantar wart, which I have never seen before, but Ed L. looked at it after Bible study and said it didn't look like that. The bump had what looked like a tiny black spot in the middle of it, so finally had the brainstorm that maybe, possibly it might be a splinter. I soaked it for a long time Friday night, and by Sunday I got out the tweezers. After some digging, I finally successfully removed a very thin thorn-like thing that apparently went straight down into my finger some time when I didn't even notice it! I am still running my finger over the area in amazement, as it no longer hurts! It's interesting to consider what you will eventually accept as normal when you really don't have time to investigate something that is wrong, LOL.

So I am feeling much better and healthier after just 2 days of my break! Imagine how great I'll feel in 2 more weeks! : )

Faith is 9 months!

Faith had her 9-month well-baby appointment today. She was 15 pounds, 1 ounce, and 28 inches long. This keeps her solidly in the 2nd percentile, so she is still a peanut. The doctor was okay with that, as long as she doesn't drop anymore. She said that Faith was advanced in many ways for 9 months, and she has some rolls of subcutaneous fat on her legs and arms, so she is obviously healthy!

Faith is turning out to be a great eater! She is really coming along with table foods. I usually give her some baby food at the beginning, just to make sure she gets enough, but she finger-feeds herself the rest of the meal, whatever we are having. She has 6 teeth, though, so chewing is not too hard! I haven't given her just plain meat, but anything in a soup or casserole I give her, as well as plain vegetables.

She pulls herself to standing all the time, and she will even stand by herself for a few seconds if we let go. She creeps along the edge of chairs or tables, so maybe walking is not too far off? She is a very speedy crawler! If I put her down in the family room and walk back to the kitchen, it's just a few seconds before she is right back under my feet and pulling up on my legs, like in the picture! That view is one I get quite a bit! Her new skill is climbing stairs. I'm working with her on turning herself around to go down them backwards, but she definitely hasn't mastered that yet! We are having to be very diligent about guarding the stairs!

I have started bringing a bottle for her the past few weeks of CC, so I didn't have to take time out to nurse her. She doesn't love the bottle, but she will drink enough of it to hold her off until lunchtime, even without a nap. That has been nice. She will drink water from a sippy cup, but I haven't tried anything else. I just gave her regular formula in the bottle, and she has tolerated that. I was a bit concerned, since she is an odd-numbered baby, and our odd ones (LOL) tend to be more allergy-prone. So far so good, however.

So at 9 months, Faith is a happy, active little baby who loves all her siblings, and is adored by them in turn! What a life!

Whew!

Finally I can take a little bit of a breath! I am done with co-ops until after New Year's! I have really enjoyed CC, and I know the kids are learning a lot (even Anna walks around the house singing the history songs), but it has sure taken a lot out of me! Technically we still have 2 more weeks of our other co-op after Thanksgiving, a fine arts unit, but we are just skipping it. In fact, most of the kids and I are going to Ohio to visit! A vacation!! I say "most" because it looks like Nathan is going to stay here, and my dad is going to come here, and they are going to work on some painting/projects around the house while all the rugrats and anklebiters are out of the way. Oh, I hope they can get a lot done! There sure is a lot to do.

Originally the plan was that we would drive 2 vans out to Ohio, with Bob towing a trailer of stuff that we didn't want to store. But now he has dithered around to not being as excited about PCSing, so it looks like that plan is not going to happen. We have not gotten official orders yet, and so Bob hasn't had to make a formal decision, but if he were to have to decide today, we wouldn't go. Sigh. It's all been stressful. I guess I'll say more when we know for sure.

In the meantime, I am REALLY, REALLY looking forward to seeing my mom and Amy, and just relaxing, without having to be somewhere and preparing stuff all the time.

In other news, our digital camera has died. I'm so thankful that it waited to kick the bucket until after the Egypt 5th week! I had a lot of trouble uploading those pictures onto our computer, so I'm wondering if it wasn't in the death spiral then, so to speak. We got it the Christmas before Anna was born, back in 2005. I was not excited about it at.all. because I knew we'd never get pictures developed from all the images we would take, just like everyone always complained about. But then Dan and Melinda introduced me to Snapfish, and that hasn't been a problem for me! Last week I was going through stuff in my desk, and I found our old camera. It was on pictures number 22, so I took a few more pictures of the kids to finish out the roll of film. The little ones (Caleb and younger) were confused that you couldn't just see the picture immediately ("Where's the screen?"), and when the film was rewinding, they were quite amazed at all the noise! Now I need to get that film developed. Anyway, I finally did consent to start taking pictures with the digital camera. Now I guess we need to look for another one. I abhor shopping for technical things, because there are so many different options out there, all of them expensive, and it is so hard to tell which features really add value (especially to a non-technophile like me), and which ones just sound impressive (but we would never use). Maybe a camera will be this year's after-Thanksgiving sale purchase? Bob had cracked the code on that--shop the internet! Same great deals, no standing in line with crazy people! He's been able to get great deals on internet things the past few years, so we'll see what this year brings.

Ancient Egypt 5th Week Activity

The grand finale for our Egypt unit at co-op was this morning. It was a lot of fun, but I think I can speak for all the teachers when I say I'm glad it's over, LOL. Above you can see 4 ancient Egyptians, come back in the flesh! Luke's tier painted these cool collars. The rest of the tiers colored ones made out of paper from Oriental Trading Co., but they were stiff and uncomfortable, so I came home with a bunch of them.

Here I am in the mummy room. I spoke for about 10 minutes, talking about the process of mummification. I welcomed the kids to our embalming shop and said I had heard they wanted to be my apprentices. I talked about the natron we used ("finest in all Egypt"!), and what the salt did to the body. I showed the mummified, but unwrapped, chicken that you can see me holding in the picture above. The kids were fairly impressed by the chicken, LOL. I let them all smell him, and many, especially the boys, also wanted to touch him. On the table behind me you can see some "canopic jars" that another lady made several years ago. Her kids are all grown out of TNT, so she let us borrow them. King Cluck's golden coffin is on the other side of me on the table.

After I talked, we let them practice their emblaming skills on bananas. They split the left side with a plastic knife, and then scooped out the innards with a plastic spoon. They placed the goop into their dixie cup "canopic jars". Then they taped the slit with white waterproof tape, and wrapped the banana with toilet paper strips. Above you can see Luke and Caleb McC with their finished products.

Nathan was my able assistant, and here you can see him standing with King Cluck in his golden coffin, ready for his journey to the next life. They are next to a mummy that we also borrowed from Joy, the one with the canopic jars. It was technically a Halloween decoration, with spooky green eyes, that you were supposed to put batteries in so that it would light up and make spooky sounds. We did not do this, LOL, and in fact, we re-wrapped him so that the eyes were covered up, and so that he looked more like a recently mummified body, as opposed to one stumbling out of a tomb 1500 years later. By the end of the time, his strips were sagging, however. He was an impressive ornament for our mummy shop!

Another mom was in the room with me, and she did yeoman's work, keeping up with the demand for toilet paper strips and pieces of tape! We had a lot of fun together! Neissy also did a wonderful job decorating the room with pictures, and even a huge poster of Isis that she drew and our kids colored! Her daughter, who is about the same age as Anna, was also a great helper, passing out cotton balls and toilet paper strips.

There were also 3 other rooms that the tiers rotated through. One of them was an excavation lab, so the kids could see what archeologists do. They had a great time brushing of artifacts they found in their gridded areas. Jonathan was excited to find hieroglyphics on a piece of pottery! Here he is with Pharaoh Daniel McC, who is sporting the double crown of unified Egypt, of course.

Another room was the food/music room. There the kids got to sample pomegranete seeds, dates, grapes, and flatbread. Then they learned the motions to "Pharaoh, Pharoah", that old camp classic, which they then sang.

The other room was a tomb room. One part of the room was darkened, lit with little lamps,a nd they talked about tombs and treasures. Then they heard the story of the discovery of King Tut's tomb, and they went through a little maze. There they saw the "treasure" that was left in the tomb, drew some hieroglyphics of their own on the "walls" of the tomb, saw Tut's sarcophagus, and played the Senet game which was left in the tomb. Pretty cool!

So all in all, it was a great day, and the kids had fun! I think they all learned alot about Ancient Egypt over the past 5 weeks, and I am sure they will remember a lot! I'm tired though, and so we're going out to Chik-Fil-A for dinner tonight! Yay for modern conveniences!

Still Alive . . .

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have made it through my 2 weeks of teaching at co-op! I think the lessons went well. The first week was about hieroglyphics, and for the second week, we talked about the Egyptian religion, specifically the 10 plagues of Egpyt and how they were attacks on 10 of their gods. It was really interesting for to learn about too! Now we just have the 5th week activity, but I, in a fit of rare inspiration, have already typed up everything I'm going to say for that! I still have to finish painting the cardboard mummies, and make the coffin for King Cluck, though.

Next week is the last week to teach tin whistle at CC also. Amazingly, I already have my lesson done and hand-outs ready for that too! That is not due to any foresight, however. Today at CC we had a special guest speaker (a man from South Africa who is also a missionary there--fascinating man! I wish he could have spoken longer!), and so we were running short on time. Also, the tutor who has been teaching tin whistle to the little guys was sick, so I would have had to teach all the classes together. I can't even fathom how that would have worked, so I told the director I wasn't interested, and could we just skip it for today?! Thankfully she said yes, so now I'm all prepared for next week! Whew!

I'm so tired now, though. We've been busy cleaning and organizing as well. Bob had off Wednesday for Veterans' Day, and we really got a lot done (not that there isn't tons more to do, LOL). Hopefully this weekend will also be productive. We need a few nice days' of weather so we can finish up some outside stuff. Wednesday it poured down rain steadily, so that was not that day. We did throw away a ton more things.

We've also been giving back things to people as we find them. In our shed we have the smallest size of boys' bike, the one that all our boys learned how to ride on. It was actually handed down to us from the L's, after Anthony and Zachary had used it. I must say it has served faithfully! Anyhow, now the L's have Theodore, and while he won't be riding a bike for a few more years, it would certainly be fitting for him to learn to ride the same bike that his brothers both learned on! So we have given that back to the L's.

We're still dealing with this little 2-day fever sickness thing that we've been struggling with this season. We all went to church 2 Sundays ago, and then Grace got sick again Saturday. And then Faith, and then Nathan on Wednesday and Caleb today. Nathan and Caleb had to stay home by themselves during CC today. Grace and Faith are still really snotty and snuffly. I'm ready for us all to be healthy!

Right now Bob and the kids are making pizzelles, a crunchy cookie from Eastern Europe that you cook on a pizzelle maker, which is like a little waffle maker. They tried a chocolate variation, with chocolate syrup so Caleb could have some, which were quite tasty. They like to bend the hot pizzelles under a little bowl to make it into a bowl shape. These are delicious as ice cream bowls, and that is what is being planned for later this evening!

Happy Birthday, Caleb!

Caleb turned 8 on Thursday! He got to bring Laffy Taffy candy for the kids in his Classical Conversation class, which he really enjoyed. He also got to pick his dinner, and again he picked "tuna pockets", which makes me laugh, since that is something I make when I am stretched for time and need something easy! Hey, it's a favorite. We had garlic stir-fried green beans too.

We gave him a Redskins jersey, which he was really thrilled with. We all know the Redskins aren't very good this year, but he really wanted a jersey of some kind, and well, Redskins ones are what they sell around here, so he was quite happy.

He requested an F-22 cake, which I made today and we took to Bible study tonight. It went together fairly easily, although I was worried about the tail fins, since they are at an angle. As it turned out, I should have secured them with skewers because the left one did topple once we got to the L's house. Oh well. We put a toothpick in so we could take pictures there! Can anyone guess what I used for the nose antenna? It's not a pretzel, since I didn't have any little sticks, only huge pretzel rods. It's a . . . .

. . . piece of dry spaghetti! It worked out just fine!

The reason the frosting is all mottled is that the real planes are painted in 2-tone gray like that. Radar-deflecting and all, you know. We got out several books from the library, even some specifically about the F-22, so I know of what I speak, LOL.


At home, Caleb laid out how he wanted his candles to be positioned. He had the clever idea to put 2 sticking out from the engines, like afterburners. It did make for a cool effect!

Happy birthday, Caleb! I hope this next year is a wonderful one for you!!