Miscellaneous Bits of This and That

First things first:
Congratulations to the Queen of Carrots and her family on a new baby boy!

Here's a link to a blog (Carmon, at Buried Treasure Books) I read today on libraries that I thought was very good. She talks about censorship and discernment in choosing reading materials. She is of the opinion that libraries are one area (of many) that should not be under government control. I have to admit, I have a sympathy with that viewpoint, even though we use our public library frequently. I didn't write to or call my congressman when the library asked us to contact them to raise public libraries' funding for that reason.

We just became charter members of the Creation Museum being built just south of Cincinnati. We'd been considering doing so for quite a while, but finally "took the plunge". Can't wait until it opens!

What we have watched over and over again for the last week: Underdog (a video we found for one or two dollars at some dollar store last week). Our 6-year-old always picks this when it is his turn. Our kids don't have a clue about what cartoons other kids watch nowadays (neither do I!), but they do know more than enough about several cartoons from the 50's-70's.

In the kitchen: I've started using a new bread recipe that I can mix up at night before bed, keep in the fridge overnight, and then bake in the morning. It sure smells good while it's baking! It's also almost applesauce time. I hope to make A LOT this fall. I still need to do a trial run with just a few apples in my new food mill to see if it is easier than peeling and coring the apples first. That reminds me, I'd better check to make sure I have enough jars...

We've been doing a lot of "fun stuff for kids" the last two weeks while my husband has been off work on vacation. This week we went to a great park, and also our favorite children's museum. We've also eaten out several times. Our new eat-out discovery: The Original Pancake House. Boy, was that a great breakfast! The pancake syrups were NOT sugar-free, but you could tell they were homemade with fresh fruit (they had blueberry, strawberry, orange, and also maple and cinnamon). YUM.

And last but not least, we have big family news. As in, next spring we'll be a bigger family. Baby number four is on the way. We are very excited, and I have already demanded that my husband buy me a new diaper genie. The one we have has been in constant (and I mean CONSTANT) use for 6-1/2 years. Yuck. My hope is that our youngest will be potty-trained before the baby comes so I might have a few months of no-diaper-changing bliss. That might be asking too much. :-)

Sorry for the long blogs, but I'm still having trouble signing in with blogger, so I have to go for it when I get the chance.

What's What (Again)

What I'm listening to: "Be Glad" by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir (2001)
There aren't many music CD's I can listen to over and over, but this is one of them (maybe one or two Rich Mullins and one of Phil Keaggy's). This CD has my favorite "day starter" song: "Be Glad". It also has what must be one of my top favorite gospel choir songs of all time: "He Reigns Forever". Let me reiterate: I LOVE THIS CD.

What's cooking: pumpkin seeds
Not kidding. It's after midnight, and the pumpkin seeds are a-roasting in the oven.

What we've bought recently: new shoes for two of our three children
They all three apparently grew two sizes over the summer, which is not noticeable at the time because they are wearing adjustable sandals during the hot weather.

My latest culinary (mis)adventure: (duh) pumpkin pie with pumpkin not from a can
I wanted to try out my new food mill. It's an old-fashioned type of machine. I decided to put the cooked pumpkin through it to take out the strings and little bits of skin. It took forever to do it, but it did work quite well. My husband said it seemed like too much work for such a small amount of pumpkin. He didn't realize I was actually playing, not working, with my nifty new kitchen gadget. Later, when I was mixing up the filling with the eggs, spices, etc., I had my "kitchen helper" helping me. She somehow opened the little tub of ground cloves and spilled them all over herself, her chair, and the floor. I am proud to say that I was the picture of calm motherhood as I cleaned up the mess. If I hadn't stayed calm, of course I wouldn't have mentioned it. :-)

After a Long Absence

I know I know, long time no blogs. Something's wrong with my computer, or with Blogger. Maybe both, who knows. I don't even know how I happened to get logged on correctly today. Hopefully all this typing won't be for naught.

Here's an update:
We've finished our second week of school. So far, so good. But I still don't have a Master Schedule in place. Generally we're going from about 10-1:30 (with numerous breaks, of course), and then from about 3-4:30. I'm thinking that this is still a bit much for first grade, so I'll probably scale back quite a bit. Particularly in math. We're doing fine in math, and I'm thinking that 2 lessons per week is plenty (right now we're doing 4).

My husband has two weeks of vacation this week and next, and so we're going to try to do one week's worth of school over 2 weeks' time. It's very nice to look forward to having a week off once a month. It gives me hope that maybe I'll be able to stay caught up on the housework a little better than if we just went gung-ho with school until Christmas.

We're enjoying the new Whole Foods store that opened up in a city near us. My favorite food we've gotten there so far: a raw cow's milk cheese with rosemary in it. Very good on sandwiches (roast beef with horseradish and red onions). Yum.

Our young chickens that just started laying eggs a little over a month ago are now molting, which means no eggs for a while. I'm hoping that by mid-October they'll be back in action. :-)

If you were concerned about our tentacle problem, don't worry. My husband reached up on his tippy toes and took them all (I think) down sometime last week. So I think they were up there only maybe two weeks? or so.

Right now our family is abuzz with excitement. My brother the pilot just passed his instrument rating test. I guess that means he can fly in the dark now. Go bro! Congratulations! Not that he ever reads this. He doesn't even read THE E-MAILS I SEND HIM!!!!! I'm not mad, though. I'm hoping for some free tickets from a major airline someday in the future (someplace tropical, please).

I'm No Sports Nut, But...

just thought I'd brag about my favorite tennis player, Kim Clijsters, winning the U.S. Open tonight. It's her first Grand Slam win.

Yahoo! Go Kim!

I actually only follow professional tennis during the Grand Slam tournaments. Even then, I usually don't watch the matches on tv. I like to, but usually find that I don't have the time (or the cable) necessary to see the matches I want to see. Normally I just keep up to date on the internet.

You'll Think I'm Making This Up

We have tentacles on our ceiling. I don't think it's contagious. But they've been there for four or five days now, and they are NOT COMING DOWN. Should I leave them there? Or should I haul a chair around the house to pull them down?

My husband has been buying our children those 88 cent toys from Wal-Mart for treats rather than sugar. Among those purchases was one of those squirmy-wormy toys that look like a ball with a zillion little neon-colored soft rubber tentacles coming out of it. Our 6-year-old discovered that if you throw the squirmy-wormy (hard) up in the air, it will stick to the ceiling. That little squirmy-wormy has been losing its appendages all week. On the bright side: it's got to run out of tentacles eventually, right?

Breakfast Reform

We're headed into uncharted waters for our family: it's the reform that will take us from breakfast anarchy into breakfast dictatorship. Perhaps I should say a benevolent breakfast dictatorship. It's not that I want to force my children to eat what they don't want. However, I will no longer be the short-order cook, bread-toaster, fruit-slicer, and cereal-pourer on command that I once was. We will sit at the table while we eat, and the tv will not be turned on (sorry, Barney). We will eat what I fix and/or set on the table, and we will be happy. If we are not happy, lunch is just 4 hours away. :-)

Updates on Us

Well, I haven't blogged much lately - my husband has been off work and we have been in and out, here and there for the past week. We've had lots of fun, and done some more organizing. There's hope for that "walk-in" pantry yet! :-)

Here's a really cool store for people who like doing things the old-fashioned way. We bought a few things there this week. Among them: a food mill. I thought I'd try using one to make my applesauce this year. Before I always used my food processor (very small). I'll do a trial-run ahead of time to see if the mill will be better or worse.

We now have 21 chicks under a heat-lamp in the garage. We did have 22 (5 pullets), but wouldn't you know it, one of the pullets didn't make it. That's 5 less eggs a week we'll be getting next spring and summer. Wah. It wasn't able to stand up from the moment we got it. There seemed to be something wrong with its legs.

My husband did our first butchering today. We said goodbye to the rooster that was supposed to be a hen (we bought 4 "pullets" last March, but one was not a pullet). He did a good job, and now the bird is in the crockpot. Not much fat on that rooster, let me tell you.

We're starting first grade tomorrow. I'm ready for school to start, but naturally, I don't feel like I got everything done that I wanted to ahead of time. There's nothing like a LITTLE organization to help you realize how unorganized you really are.

Did I mention the kittens? We also have two kittens in the back yard now. The boys love playing with them, and I'm sure those kittens enjoy going down the slide just as much as the boys do. haha