Need to Christmas Shop?

I only have a few minutes, as we have a boy's soccer game, girl's drama practice, boy's birthday party and a trip to Urgent Care for Moriah's ear infection; yes, one of those days we drive two cars to soccer and then divide and conquer....Anyway, if you are considering Christmas shopping this weekend, first look at Linny's blog -

http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2010/10/shoppin-with-purpose.html

She has links for people that are making and selling items to fund raise to bring their children home. Nothing like helping an orphan make it home at the same time you provide meaningful gifts for your loved ones!

I'll be shopping after my afternoon marathon around town!

A Few Spare Hours

So, yesterday after school and before my soccer and grocery run, I had a few hours with many things competing for my attention. There was definitely many rooms that could stand a good cleaning, there was plenty of laundry awaiting attention and both girls need their hair redone. I decided upon cleaning the mud room, since it was at the level of causing me to sigh deeply every time I walked through. I started packing up the sandals and flip-flops in order to make room for mud and snow boots, when I realized that I would have to repeat all the work when I moved the shelves to paint the room. So, I decided to go ahead and get it painted, after all, I was initially waiting until we got the washer and dryer moved down-stairs and that was months ago.

I chose a nice, neutral, hopefully-hide-the-dirt-a-bit taupe.
So, today, I had a few hours between school and a retirement party tonight, so the boy's bathroom, right off the mud room, got the same green as the kitchen.

Once I paint the master bedroom and bathroom, this winter, I can retire my painting ladder for a few years! I don't mind painting though, it's one of the few things I do that actually stays done for more than a day!

The Great Flannel Hunter

Just as I discovered on December 23, 2007, that my modest wife did not fully and accurately recount the activities of that frightful Sunday morning, I have learned that her repost of her skunk tale, just a couple weeks ago, has again been told with somewhat less than all of the facts. Jen deserves far more credit than she attributes to herself. The post below was my innagural blog post, on that same December day, and I am adding it here for all to achieve the entire perspective. I hope that all who read appreciate my little local "Annie Oakley;" she is definitely famous at the Health Department here (maybe infamous). Anyway, I am very proud of her!

The Great Flannel Hunter

When Jen first called me at church, I had to temper my desire to laugh hilariously until I was sure that she wasn't going to get bit by the rabid skunk. Church is a great place to be at a time like this, but I chose not to march into the sanctuary to call everyone to prayer. However, since I was working the Toddler Nursery I realized I had a responsibility to let the head usher know the potential of me having to gather my family rapidly and run home to save the day. Of course, in recounting what I had learned of the situation from Jen, thus far, I was not tempered in telling the story and kept laughing long after he had returned to his many other duties. But I prayed softly and kept the faith that my family would be safe. In the interim between phone updates from Jen, I relived two flashbacks from my childhood.

The first, as my extended family can attest to this day, was this unquenchable courage that I had to hunt skunks, while I was growing up, when we were camping. I was convinced, and let my strategy be known to all, that if you could sneak up behind a skunk, grab him by the tail before he could lift it, that you would not get sprayed and could get rid of the pesty varmint. Although I'm sure I was told again and again that my idea had no merit and to not try it, I can remember many times that I snuck away from the campfire to go hunt the little Pepe Le Pews. I guess my saving grace was that I never ran across a rabid skunk as my Great Flannel Hunter wife did today.

This leads me to flashback number two, and more germane to the title and inspiration of my first blog. In 1973, I was nine years old and we were camping in Letchworth State Park, in New York State. This place was rife with raccoons and skunks and they had no compunction to enter the confines of our camp site and even to sneak into our family dining room tent. We were still camping in a Nimrod tent trailer that had survived the roaming bears of Yellowstone, the wild cats of Old Man's Cave, Ohio, as well as a variety of many other pesty camping buddies in a myriad of camping locations. This one evening, we awoke to the yelling of a man, very near our camp site, even sounding so close that he could be right outside of our camper. My "little sister" (in size not age) and I looked out of the screened flap windows to see a "Great White Hunter," who happened to be our dad in a white t-shirt and undershort briefs, chasing a raccoon with his golf club, who was attempting to open our cooler. My dad never truly bagged his game, either, as we both resigned our hunting passions to a more seasoned life of coexistence with natures camping predators.

How could we have known that his future daughter-in-law and my wife, would vindicate our failed attempts to protect our family, so many years before? Now, I've read my wife's blog and I think she has been rather modest regarding the skill that she exhibited during today's hunt. First of all, she has the tenacity like that of a barracuda, if it is reasonable to use a fish metaphor for a ground kill. Below is a map that depicts the path that my wife used on our land to stalk the skunk and to prevent him from escaping.

Although Jen doesn't put any stock in the old hunter adage "one shot - one kill," one cannot challenge the overall effectiveness of her efforts, when you consider the end means versus the means to an end. I am proud of her! I have been waiting patiently for her to allow Gabriel and me to begin hunting so that our family could be eating leaner, more healthy meat, and now that the starting gate has opened who knows where it will lead? Also, I've looked forward to lining our family room wall with the taxidermy prize of our hunting efforts, but I could never have foretold that the first showcase would be the one that is pictured below.

The race has begun! To the victor comes the spoils. May the best spouse win!

All Boy

Elijah may wear Julia's purple plastic shoes on occasion, but he's really all boy! There's nothing he'd rather do than work outside with his Dad; of course, riding the tractor is the ultimate. Here he is explaining to Julia that the back of the truck filled with rocks is his domain.


He wakes up in the morning asking for a tractor ride. Thankfully, he understands that I don't know how to drive the tractor, so he has to wait for his Dad. Once JD makes it home, the topic comes up many times! Elijah now asks, "Dad, please ride the big blue tractor ONE MORE TIME," or "Dad, please ride the tractor FOR JUST A MINUTE."


It's been so fun to have a little boy again!

Bye-Bye Exploder

I try to not attach to material things, but I tend to be overly sentimental. I never value things based on their worth, but more based on their memories. We recently passed on our Explorer, nicknamed the Exploder, but it was rather hard for me. First of all, we bought that bad boy way back in 1997, when I was pregnant with Moriah. It has been the one vehicle that we've had for years and was also the vehicle that we used to teach Gabriel to drive. Since we bought Alei the grey car, way in the background of the picture, we really didn't need the Explorer anymore, but we knew a family that did. So, I set my sentimentalism aside and handed the keys over.

Here's the kids cleaning it out before we delivered it; I hope it continues to run as well for them as it has for us all these years.

People, not things, are what really matter.

Teenager #3 - Moriah's Birthday

It's been a whirlwind weekend, primarily due to Moriah's 13th birthday. Instead of a party, she wanted to go shopping at the outlet mall on the outskirts of D.C. with a few friends. So Friday night, I loaded the van with seven girls to go out to dinner and shopping. We had a great time, and I got some sweet deals, but I was exhausted by the time they were lowering the bars on the store fronts.

Saturday morning, JD made his famous "potato throw-down" and I hauled 12 children to the boys' soccer game only to discover that we weren't blessed with the revised schedule and arrived an hour late at the end of the game. It turned out to be a fun and productive day, nevertheless, and we managed to check a few more things off my mental "to-do-outside-before-winter" list.

Sweet little Tori bought Moriah assorted candy for her birthday.

We enjoyed our normal loud present opening session.

Remember Moriah's early birthday gift, Gus? He's been with us a week today and starting to play with the little dogs, which is entertaining.

My sister officially committed to staying with my children for the Mid-Atlantic Orphan Summit the beginning of November, so we booked ourselves for the conference and a hotel. I am so excited!

Gabriel Update

It's so nice to see Gabriel on occasion, over on Linny's blog -

http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2010/10/over-here-at-our-home.html

I'm so thankful that he is doing so well, although Elijah has studied the pictures and is concerned about Brother's boo-boo on his arm. Somehow, Gabriel has severe tendinitis and is wearing a restrictive arm-cast for a few weeks. If that doesn't work, the next option is cortisone shots.

Fun Fact

Here's a fun fact about my life. I really think there have only been about 10 mornings over the last 18 1/2 years that I have taken a shower without someone yelling something at me through the door. The average is two people a shower; this morning I had three separate people yelling three separate times about a dead chicken. Once I made it out of the bathroom, dressed, I asked them, "what one earth do you think I'm going to do about the dead chicken while I'm in the shower - don't you think it could have waited while I finished my shower, (I mean where's a dead chicken going to get off to while I take a seven minute shower!) One of them said, "well, we just thought you'd want to know."

I'll miss these days when they all get big enough to go 10 minutes without talking to me - I'm sure I will.

Kitties and Kids

Meet Leon Guster -

Although Elijah is holding "Gus" in the picture, he is actually Moriah's early birthday present. Gus is a special kitty, since he gets to live in the house and sleep with Moriah. Moriah's last indoor cat was a rescued feral kitty several years ago. Angel was gorgeous and spent the entire month of December sleeping in the Christmas tree. Although she lived in the house a full year, she chose the life of a wild cat and currently sleeps in a wood pile that we need to burn. We see her streak in and out of the barn for food, but won't let anyone near her. It seems you can't really take the feral out of a cat, so Gus came from friends and was born in a house!

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The humorous (now, not Sunday) Gus story I have involves Julia. We surprised Moriah after church on Sunday by taking her to their house and letting her choose the kitten she wanted. After stopping for kitten supplies, we brought Gus home and everyone competed to hold him. After a bit, I took the little guys out with me to help spread grass seed and straw. After a while, Tori came in to get a drink and left the front door open. Seizing the opportunity, Julia came outside and announced that Tori let Gus out and he ran in the woods. I started the woods searching party, but also sent Alei and Moriah to search the house as it seemed unlikely that he would actually tear across the yard into the woods (since he was born in a house!) Moriah was near tears as came out to announce that they couldn't find him in the house. While the kids and I were searching, JD was questioning Julia, since she has a habit of doing unpredictable things and not necessarily answering questions honestly. She stuck with her story, UNTIL Alei found Gus locked in her closet. Then the truth came rolling out...It turns out that Julia decided that if she hid him, and told us that he was in the woods, she could keep him for herself and not have to share him. She actually planned to just keep him in the closet, no food, water or cat-box. It seemed like a good plan for a four year old.

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Julia instead got dinner, a bath and an early bedtime. As of today, she is allowed to hold Gus again. Never a dull moment with her!

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We hope that Gus turns out as cool as our favorite cat, Hunter. Hunter spends a lot of time outside with the kids and dogs, but makes the rounds in the evening to see who'd like to hold and pet him.

Sometimes it's a challenge to see the book I'm trying to read.

Alpaca Trip

Due to my over-loaded brain, I realized yesterday that I scheduled an Alei doctor appointment and an alpaca field trip both for 10:00 this morning. Thankfully, JD moved his Monday meetings to Tuesday, so he was able to take Alei for me. The really great news is that Alei has been free of back pain since she got cortisone shots about a month ago.

The youngest six kids and I headed to the alpaca farm. They had different stations with different activities, but the kids still worked in a little running and playing time. Julia can run and run; seriously, she runs by the big kids when they ride their bikes and doesn't struggle much to keep up.

Elijah heard alpaca farm and thought "back-pack" farm. He's been asking for a back-pack for at least a month now and thought we were going to pick one out on a farm for him. Wouldn't you know that the thrift store had two darling little girl back-packs and not one fit for a boy. (They are hiding in the closet until I find one for him, so he won't have a jealousy issue.) Anyway, the alpacas were exciting enough to distract him from the lack of back-packs.

There was one sweet baby alpaca that enjoyed the children's attention.

There were also alpaca items to purchase. Elijah, as many of you know by now, has a bit of a fetish for gloves. Check these bad-boys out, made from alpaca fiber, with pictures of alpacas! He was one happy boy and only took them off to eat dinner. They are super soft, but I'm quite sure they aren't designed for the wear and tear he has already inflicted on them just today.

Tonight he told me that he wanted to go back to "paca" farm and buy two brown ones. He always points out that we need to buy two.

The kids got to work with some of the fiber. It made me wish I knew how to knit, until I thought of all the other things I'd love to do if I had more time.

Last, but never least, Elijah got to sit (and stand) on the tractor. It's amazing how a tractor is always a thrill!

Aside from the alpaca farm and school, I actually managed to re-do Tori's hair and finish the summer/winter clothes change-over. Now I'm going to work on a list of who actually needs what to survive the winter. I think I'm taking several girls shopping at the outlet mall this weekend in honor of Moriah's 13th birthday, so I can work on my list!