Livin' By Faith

Pull-apart Cinnamon & Sugar Pumpkin Bread Recipe!

2011-11-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post this since I already had it all written out :) I promise I'll try to do another post soon...I know it's been awhile!!

After all the inquiries, here is the recipe! Note: It is not healthy (quite a bit of sugar), but it is OH-SO-YUMMY! :)

Pull-apart Cinnamon & Sugar Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

Bread

2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

Filling
1/2 cup sugar (The original said 1 cup but thought that'd be waaaay too much)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
2 Tbsp unsalted butter

Glaze

2 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp milk
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Directions
In a saucepan over medium-high heat, brown 2 tablespoons of butter, letting it bubble up and turn a dark golden brown but being careful not to allow it burn (turn black). Once browned, remove the pan from the heat and carefully add the milk. Pour the milk and butter into a large mixing bowl (or a standing mixer with dough hook if you have one) and allow to cool so it is no longer hot but also not cool (about 100-110 degrees F). Once it has reached a warm but not hot temperature add the yeast and 1/4 cup of sugar and allow to proof (this can take up to 8 minutes, the top will look foamy and the liquid cloudy). Then add the the pumpkin, salt, and 1 cup of flour. Stir until combined then add the rest of the flour 1/2 cup at a time and knead for 6 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic and just slightly sticky. If the dough is too moist, add extra flour 1 tablespoon at a time.

Move dough to a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a clean towel. Allow to rise in a warm place for 60-90 minutes or until doubled in size.

While dough is rising, brown another 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix well. Making sure sugar evenly absorbs the butter. Set aside. Next, grease and flour a loaf pan and set aside.

When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down and flip out onto a clean floured surface and knead with hands for 1-2 minutes. Roll dough into a 20x12 inch rectangle. (about) Evenly sprinkle the dough with the cinnamon sugar mixture and press into dough with palms of the hand. Cut the rectangle into 6 strips. Lay strips on top of each other and cut each strip into 6 even squares (cut in half then each half into thirds). Stack strips vertically into the loaf pan. Let rise for 30-45 minutes.

In the meantime preheat an oven to 350 degrees. After rising in the pan bake for 30-40 minutes, or until top is a very deep golden brown. Turn out of pan onto a clean serving plate.

To prepare the glaze, heat the butter, milk, and brown sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to boil then immediately remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla and powdered sugar. Drizzle over baked bread.

Try to share with others :)

Enjoy!!

.

We're all settled

2011-09-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

So last week we packed up our stuff from the ~~nasty, dirty, smelly, empty, cold~~ trailer and moved a little more north to a resort on Cass Lake. We are in a small 2 bedroom condo but to us it's paradise! Okay, maybe not paradise, but anything coming from that trailer, would seem a little closer to paradise anyway.

Won't miss this! The HUGE mouse we finally caught in the trailer.

Yes, I can still fit 4 kids with car seats in here...pretty good huh?

It's fully furnished with 2 double beds in one of the bedrooms (which the boys share) and then a queen bed in the other (which we sleep in and ariella's pack n play fits nicely in the 'closet' spot). I am just thrilled to have beds to sleep on and enjoy making the beds everyday :)

The building is a four-plex with two condos on the bottom and two on the top. The two on the top have renters in and out, mostly fisherman, and the other condo on the bottom has one of Nathan's co-workers living in it. He has become great friends with Nathan and we've come to think of him more like family. The kids adore him (and he the kids) and he eats and visits with us every night. It's been a blessing to have someone else around that we enjoy talking with! And the cool part is that the rooms are actually connected so he can come over to our place without even going outside!

The condo

Living space & kitchen

Boys' room

Ariella's 'nook'

For the first 5 days or so that we were here, the weather was perfect. Mid to upper 70s and low 80s and sunny. Because it's a resort, it has a great beach that is just a few steps from our place. The kids and I spent most of the days swimming in the water and exploring for clams, shells, turtles and anything else that we could find that was 'cool' :)

The beach

Looks like she's having fun

There is also a mile long loop through the resort and the woods that we've been walking to get some energy out. Now with the weather cooling off in a hurry (this morning it was only 25 out!) I'm sure we'll be spending a little more time inside.

Ariella walking on the trail with her new friend "Mr. Weston" (Nathan's co-worker)

Nathan still is not working that many hours (usually around 50) so we are able to come home to the "house with 3 pottys" (as my boys refer to it as) fairly often. We are happy when we are there but also excited to find a buyer for it as we think about possible opportunities for the future.

Sure looks like paradise to me....

(we enjoyed a few quiet mins out here after the kids went to bed and before the mosquitoes ate us up)

Our date continued....finally!

2011-09-09T11:09:00.001-07:00

So, yeah....I kept you in suspense a tad longer than I had planned to. Guess that's my life right now so you'll just have to deal with it :)

So continue our date.....

Saturday we woke up and decided to get the cheapest thing on the room service menu since we've never had room service before...and now I know why we haven't ever had room service before...the bill was $25 for two small bowls of plain yogurt with a sprinkle of granola and some fruit! Whew!

After that was done we didn't have any plans for the day so I jumped on my phone and started searching for attractions in the cities. One site lead me to another and another and somehow I came across something that was called "Segway Tours". My scrolling stopped...wait...segway tours??? What is that?! I went over to their website, looked up the number and gave them a call.

I asked what it all entailed and if they still had openings for later that day. They did!! I signed us up and looked forward to 2:30 in the afternoon!

In the meantime we ate lunch at The Melting Pot downtown. We heard it was very good, and it was, but since I have fondued every year at Christmas for the last 29 years (or at least as long as I can remember) the "coolness" of it just wasn't there for us. I ordered steak and shrimp and Nathan fondued chicken, steak and shrimp. We were told that if we wanted the typical 4 course meal, that we should allow at least 2-1/2 hrs to eat. We didn't get that but it did seem like it took forever. We were one of two couples in the place since they just had opened for the day but the waitress definitely wasn't in any hurry. It seemed rather odd to us that it took so long to get our food because it's all raw! They don't even have to cook it, we cook it! So it should be all back there ready to be portioned onto your plate and brought out to you...but I guess they had to butcher the cow first before they brought me the steak ;)

We were going to have the fondue dessert but since we were running out of time and I didn't want to be late for our segway tour, we decided to bail. And Im glad we did because we were right on time for the tour.

So we got to the tour and before they even took your money, they made you try out the segway because some people just don't feel comfortable on it and therefore want to cancel their spot on the tour. We, of course, loved them and wanted to continue. They then told us to pick out our helmets and have a seat in front of the tv to watch a training video.

Nathan couldn't even look at me in my pink helmet because he burst out laughing every time. He said I looked like I was five....and he looked so much better, right? So we watched a 15-20 min video on segway safety and it was time to take them outside to test them out again. (The first hour or so of the 'tour' was training on how to ride the segway, get off and on, etc).

Do I look that goofy??

After training, we were on our way! There was about 30 or so of us, with 5 instructors. We drove mostly on sidewalks so we had to stay in a single file line. That was a lot of segways in a row. Most people that we drove past took our their cameras and snapped a few pictures.

The tour took a total of 3 hours and it was a distance of about 5 miles. We stopped at places along the way such as the St. Anthony falls, the Stone Arch bridge, Mill city museum (where we went in and had some refreshments), Guthrie museum, and a tour of Nichollet Island.

St. Anthony Falls

Stone Arch Bridge that was built by the railroad man James J Hill

Mill City Museum

Aren't we cute?!

Part of the line of segways going down the sidewalk

At one point during our ride we crossed this small street and I saw a few cars coming. They didn't seem like they were slowing down at all, and since I didn't want to get hit by a car, I slowed down and waited for them. In the meantime, Nathan, who was behind me, didn't see me slow down until it was too late. He turned at the very last second, went off the sidewalk into the grass and jumped the curb onto the street. He mangaged to do all that while staying on the segway and regaining control and really not missing a beat. On our next stop, one of the instructors came up to him and said "I just have to shake your hand, man...I've never, ever seen someone stay so calm and regain control of the segway during and after a situation like yours. Congratulations!" It was kinda funny :)

I was sad when we came around the corner and saw our starting point because we were having so much fun. I would recommend it to anyone! Their website is humanonastick.com Clever, I know :)

After that it was time to find another hotel (we needed to get out of downtown!) and found a marriott by the Mall of America. You remember that we are partial to Marriotts right? We only liked their beds so much that we ordered one and had it shipped to our camper...now you remember? Anyway, we took their free shuttle over to the mall to grab some grub and then back to the hotel to relax. We were upgraded to a king whirlpool suite because they ran out of kings, and we were happy to oblige.

Sunday, our last morning, we booked a brunch cruise on the Mississippi on the boat called Paradise Lady. It was a relaxing time and going through the largest lock on the mississippi was an experience. The food wasn't the greatest, but we could have probably guessed that before it started. After the 2 hour cruise was over, it was time to get back to reality and go pick up our kids. Ariella was the only one who seemed a little excited to see us, the boys were having too much fun with the other kids :)

Paradise Lady

Our table reserved for us...and the other couple who was supposed to share our table never showed up so we had it all to ourselves.

Smile!

Going down the lock.

At the bottom of the lock....and I've decided that I like going up rather than going down. It takes 8 mins both ways to travel through the lock.

Our food.

Our getaway

2011-08-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Wow...the weeks fly by...and the minutes now that I think about it. I sat down to do a post 'quickly' while I waited for my bread to get done and had 17 minutes to do it in. Then Ariella started crying. By the time I got her all situated for nap time, I had 12 mins. Then I jumped over to facebook quick to see if a lady I knew had her baby yet. And now I have 1 min and 58...57...56...seconds. Guess I'll be finishing this post when the bread is out of the oven. ahem.

So during the past couple weeks, I have been doing everything I can think of to make my extremely long week days go a little faster. Each week we've been able to make a trip to the Walker beach so that takes up a few hours which is nice. The thing I am mostly excited about though is that we are moving!!! Yes, AGAIN!!! But this should be so much better than where we are currently for most days during the week.

(The bread turned out wonderfully, by the way...I was kinda worried since it has been forever since I've made my loaves with the Bosch, I kinda forgot how to do it!...but they are wonderful...just so you know)

So where are we moving to? To a little condo in a resort up north. It's small (820 sq ft...please don't complain about your "small" house...we have 4 children remember and this will do us just fine, almost 3 times the sz of the camper!) but here's the good part....it's fully furnished! We will have a couch to sit on, a bed to sleep on, and yes, a table to eat at!! It's real crazy now when I feed the kids, I get their plates ready, set them on the floor and tell them to come and eat! I feel like I'm calling the dogs. I just tell them we are having a picnic for every meal and they could care less where they sit. But for us, it will be nice to have a table! The price also includes all the utilites so that will be nice to not have to worry about what the cost of heating it in the winter will be, etc.

We will be 'moving' there after labor day. And I saying 'moving' because we're not really moving...just moving to work...if that makes any sense...

Anyway....onto the fun stuff.....

Last weekend Nathan and I went away for a much needed date! Some friends of ours we willing to watch the kids for us for a few days while we relaxed and did whatever! We decided to go down to the cities to find some stuff to do there. Before we left, there were only 2 things that I had booked for us...1) a twins game and 2) a brunch cruise on the mississippi. The rest of the weekend we were going to take on the fly.

We dropped the kids off at about 9:30 Friday morning and headed down to the cities. We stopped first at the Christian bookstore in Maple Grove while we waited for Don Pablos to open :) Nathan bought a book about Tim Tebow (which he says is awesome) and a Tenth Ave No CD (which we will see in concert on sept 15!). After lunch, we were off to find the James J Hill mansion in St. Paul.

Wow! Is that place huge!!! 36,000 square foot house...can you image??? It was built in the 1800s which makes it even more amazing. The detail in the woodwork was phenominal and all the nooks and crannys...wow. It was definitely worth going to tour..and it's a guided tour so you learn some more stuff about how life was lived back then and a little more details about the family. For those of you who don't know, James J Hill was the founder of the Great Northern Railroad and a bazillionaire...the richest man in the world at his time.

Some of the interesting tidbits I remember from the tour:

1) The are 427 keys for the doors in the house
2) The built in organ in the music room has 1200 pipes.
3) There was a safe behind a secret door in the formal dining room.
4) All the dust collected by the women cleaning was put down a shute and taken out by the men.
5) There are 42 rooms (largest one being 1500 sq ft alone), 13 bathrooms, & 22 fireplaces.
6) It cost just over $500,000 to build (just under $1 million with all its furnishings and land, etc)....today that would be over $16 million. (After seeing it you would think it's even more than that)

There are really so, so many things and I could go on and on...you just have to go visit for yourself. You can go over to this link http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/55/v55i06p234-249.pdf and see a pic of the outside (and read the article if you want, actually I would recommend it as I'm reading some of it now...very detailed about the house and shows the floor plan as well) It really is amazing.

After the mansion tour, we were off to the zoo! We made a swing through the Como Zoo and enjoyed looking at the animals at our own pace instead of 4 kids pulling us in 4 different directions...it was a nice change of pace :)

After that we checked into our hotel....The Westin...in downtown Mpls...just a stones throw from the Target Field, to which we headed at about 6:00.

Since this hotel used to be a bank, which they converted in 2007, the bank vault is now a wine cellar.

The weather was absolutely perfect and I don't think we could have even asked for much better! The twins lost to the Yankees horribly but it was nice to see the new stadium in person. When the game first started, there were 2 completely annoying people in front of us...in 2 different groups of people. One of them was a 9ish yr old girl who kept screaming and demanding food from her parents and they left the game before the 1st inning was even over...yes, it was that bad. The other was a drunk indian who kept yelling obsenities and who was just obnoxious...and he got kicked out of the stadium. So after that, everything was clear sailing!

At one point in the game, we looked over and to our surprise, this camera was right in our face...uh...do we wave? Why is he here? Since we haven't been to a game before, we had no idea was the "kiss cam" was until the camera man came out from behind the camera, looked at us, and said "Kiss!" Ohhhh!!! ***smoooooch*** So yes, we made it onto the jumbo screen :) Guess the camera man knows a cute couple when he sees one.

After the game, we returned to the hotel to eat a burger and fries at the hotels restaurant....completely horrible, awful food. Shoulda complained but we didn't.

On a weird note...twice I found valuable stuff in that hotel that I turned into the front lobby. One was in our room, on the desk, there was this jewelry box sitting by itself with a note to someones name that was not us, with a silver pocket watch in it....the other time was a womans wallet (with a bit of cash in it) left on one of the chairs in the lounge area. Hmmm.....

...Ok, I was going to finish our whole weekend on this post...but I'm actually getting tired and I have waaaaaay too much stuff to get done this weekend for me to be sleepy, so I'm going to stop here and hopefully finish tonight or tomorrow. The best part of the trip is coming up next so don't miss out! What we did on sat was unbelievely fun...can't wait to tell!! :)

the beach

2011-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it's the weekend again...and again we are getting ready to head back up north to work. This will be a short week though as Nathan has class in the cities on Wed and we'll get to come home just after a couple days.

I'm getting more used to our 'cabin' but I'm not used to the packing and cleaning and unpacking and then packing and cleaning and unpacking and...and...and....and... Going back and forth, back and forth is a little challenging but what do ya do? I bring all the dirty clothes back with me to wash at home, and then when i'm home, I do all the shopping and meal planning and bring that back up there.

Last week I desperately needed something to do as the 14 hr day of sitting in the cabin was enough for me. I saw on the map that Walker had a city park. I had no idea what kind of park or how big it was or anything but I thought any park was better than no park, so even though it was sprinkling out, off we went exploring. Well, to my surprise, it was awesome! A huge city park with tennis, basketball, volleyball, playgrounds, and even a sandy beach!

I told the boys they could 'wade' in the water and not get wet. Well, that lasted about a whole minute and in the water they were! But, boy, was it fun!! I'm not sure if I've heard so many giggles come out of all my kids at the same time. It was super windy coming off the lake, which made for huge white-cap waves. They sat in the water and let the waves knock them over. Or they stood up and jumped over the waves as they rolled in. Because of the wind, they got cold quick outside of the water but we ended up staying there a good few hours, even had a picnic on the picnic tables!

(Sidenote about the picnic, I forgot to pack food for me (duh) so I thought I'd just go one block over from the park to the DQ and get a chicken strip basket. I pulled thru the drive thru and they say "We don't have chicken strips." Uh..... "Ok, just give me a burger." "We don't have hamburgers...we have hot dogs and grilled chicken." SERIOUSLY?!!? What Dairy Queen doesn't have hamburgers?!? So I kindly said "Thanks but I'm going somewhere else"..and drove next door to Hardees!)

Few quotes from the week:

"Mom, I almost sank but I saved the day myself."--Caedmon in the water at the beach

"Mom, I'm looking at the sun with my eyes closed." --Caedmon laying in the grass at the beach

"What are you going to make for supper in the morning."--Caedmon

And once Brayan realized that we were getting close to our actual house last week, he says very excidely "We aren't going to the house with the mouse poop, we are going to the house with three potties!!" --That just shows the tiny difference between our two places :)

Our "cabin"

2011-07-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well this past week has been interesting, to say the least.....

On Monday, I was starting the morning with my usually phone calls to any place that I could find for rent to see if we could find a place. I called one lady who had 2 rentals about 30 miles south of Bemidji. She told me right away that both of them are rented but asked if I would like to leave my name and number and if something fell through, she could call me. I declined and said that if I couldn't find anything in the next couple days, I'd call her back and check the status since I didn't really want to live there anyway because they were trailer houses. Well, she called me back a few minutes later (info taken from the caller id) and said that she called the people for one of the rentals and found out that they had broken up and didn't need a place anymore, so she had one available. I said I would come look at it.

Well, long story short, it became our rental. It's a older 2 bedroom trailer house. It's actually a bitter-sweet thing. It's exactly what we've been wanting and praying for...close(r) to Nathan's work show up, it's south so it's closer to home and shaves about 35 mins off our drive time (not to mention gas money!), and it has a large, beautiful, secluded yard for the kids to play in. The few things that it doesn't or does have that we didn't exactly pray for is that it seems to have a big mouse problem (which has been really gross), it's not exactly clean or even close to, and it has no air conditioning. But it does have a (modern) one stall attached garage with 6 huge windows in it which makes it great to play in when it's raining and it gives the kids a big extra area to ride their scooters. It also has a cement patio in the back with a big picnic table that we can use...which is on the side of the house that faces the yard and the woods, giving it a super peaceful feel out there.

When we moved in on Tuesday, I vacuumed and wiped down all the floors, counters, cupboards, everything with rubbing alcohol so I could feel a little disinfected. I actually felt a lot better before going to bed that night but then was very disheartened when we woke up to find mouse droppings all over the kitchen counter, two holes in our bread bag with 4 pieces of bread eaten from, droppings all over the clean dishes in the dish rack.....yuck! Well, we learned quick to put everything, even crackers, in the fridge so it is safe from the mice :) We set out traps last night where we thought they were coming onto the counters, only to find more droppings this morning so we think they are coming in through the stove. We rigged the whole place with traps and hope to find them all full when we come back after the weekend :)

We get a kick out of the landlord too. She's an older lady, I'd guess in her early-mid 70s, but sometimes I wonder about her. For example, when I was checking out the place, she was sure to tell me about the 2 switched on top of the stove... “One is for the light by the microwave and the other is a safety switch for the oven. The oven will not lite if this is flipped.” So making sure I understood her... “Okay, so all I have to do is turn the temp dial and it should turn on”. “Yes, and if it doesn't, it's because this switch needs to go the other way.” “Okay, got it.” Well, in the evening when I was trying to see if the oven worked, after I found out that the stove didn't work, I flipped that switch, only to find out that it was the oven light! Hahaha...ok, lady...safety switch...try oven light! :)

Another thing she told me was about this water softener that was in the 2nd bedrooms closet. She says “Oh, and we still need to plug that in...” But then later when her daughter was there (who also takes care of the rentals) says “Don't worry about that softener in that closet, we need to come and get that, but whatever you do, don't plug it in or it will clog up all the pipes.” Then the older lady pipes in “Yeah, and we think it's stolen!” Uh...ok....

Then, again when she was showing me the house, she notices this device that's plugged into the wall in the living room “What the heck is that?!?” she asks. “I'm not sure...looks like some sort of serge protector or something?” “Well, I'm sure it's Dougs (guy who lived there before us), I'll hold it ransom...he still owes me $100.” And then a different time she was over she asks “What is that?? We need to get it out of there.” I told her “It really doesn't bother me, it's fine if it stays.” Then when she was over (yeah she stops by a lot for various reasons) with her daughter, she goes, “You know what that is? (pointing to it) That's the thing that they use for the internet to go from DSL to whatever it is now. You know how I know??? Because I have one in my house too.” WHAT?! You just asked me for the last 3 days what it is and now you're saying you have one?? Ok..... :)

And then probably the funniest thing she said was when she was talking about how she doesn't allow animals in her rentals, cats especially (which is probably why there are so many mice!). So she says about cats... “Yeah, if you see one, and you're good with a gun, kill it.” Haha...just picture an old lady saying that...it was funny. :)

A few “incidents” already....
Not even 20 minutes after I picked up the keys and was unloading the van, I looked at my phone and saw that I had a voicemail from the landlord. I listened to it and she said that the neighbor next door had called her and said that some kids were trying to open her door and were playing in her bird bath in her lawn. Oh great! We haven't even been here a half hour and I'm already getting called about my kids! Well, it was Caedmon and Ariella who were the culprets and I think it was just that they figured that that was our place too, they were just excited to finally have some space! So after explaining that that was the neighbors and not ours, they haven't gone back over there :)

And yesterday, we were outside playing when I realized that Tiernan had gone in for something and shut the door behind him (which is ironic that I think of it because he never shuts the door at home and we are constantly on him about that). Well, they have those knobs where you can turn them from the inside but they are locked on the outside. And yes, my keys were inside. 2nd day, we were locked out. Thankfully I had my phone so I didn't feel completely helpless but when I called my landlord to come less us in, she wasn't home. Maybe she just didn't hear the phone? Since she only lives 2 doors down, the kids and I walked over and yes, she was gone. Hmmm....it wouldn't matter if Nathan got home because he didn't have a key anyway. What to do, what to do....I know! The windows were open last night...lets try them! No luck...front door locked, all the windows have screens on them and I coudln't get the screens out because of those black tabs were on the inside and I couldn't pop them out. Finally on one of the windows I noticed that the black tabs were on the outside, someone had put it in backwards! Yes! I whipped the screen off, only to remember I had locked the window in the morning after we closed it. Bummer!! After about another hour and lots of “I have to go potty”, I noticed that the window next to the window with the tabs outside that the frame on the screen was bent so I was able to get my finger in there and pop the screen out. Then I slowly tried the window, praying that it wasn't locked. And it wasn't! I slid it open a little and called for Tiernan. I lifted Tiernan up and her went thru and opened the front door. (Remember last time we did that in the camper?) I'm glad the neighbors next door had left, not sure what they would have thought about that!

So we are on the drive home, peace and cleanliness for 3 days, 4 nights...can't wait! I've never been so ready to take a shower! Yes there is a shower there but once you see my picture of it, you'll see why I just wait to get home...plus with no a/c we get all sweaty anyway.

I guess I'm starting to think of it as our own little cabin...we are there 4 days a week, and only 3 nights, we have to plan meals, put away our food so the animals/rodents don't get it, we go to sleep with the fan on full blast right next to us, it's up north in the middle of nowhere, it's by a lake (not on though), we live next door to some indians, we have no washer or dryer, there's poison ivy everywhere (which Brayan is covered in and Caedmon also has his fair share)...but the best part, we are all living under one roof. :)

Funny quotes from each of the boys at this place so far:

Brayan...”Mom, why does it smell like poop everywhere?” ...good question Brayan...

Caedmon to the landlord...”We don't really like this house because there are mouses everywhere.” ...couldn't have said it better myself...I was a little nervous once he started that sentence...didn't know where that one was going!

Tiernan...”One thing that's really weird about this house, there's no kitchen table!”. Nope, there's not. The kids sit on the floor and eat off of the top of the cooler and I stand, and Nathan sits on the cooler when he gets home. We have yet to eat on the picnic table but I'm thankful for it anyway!

So what do you think this week will hold?? Well, stay tuned and find out! :)

Yay! Internet Finally!

2011-07-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

I honestly can't remember the last time I sat down to write a blog post! Yikes! That must means it's been a little while....I know that we were in Blue Earth at that time so I will update it quickly from there.

By the way, I'm writing this in the car again (I'm not driving though...just in case you were wondering...I think that would be even worse than texting ;). It seems as though it is when I am forced to sit for an extended period of time is when I finally have time to blog.

So once we left Blue Earth, Nathan took 2-1/2 weeks off so we could be home and relax for awhile before moving again, this time up north! During those 2 weeks, we spent lots of time visiting with friends, getting caught up with some dear ones that we haven't seen for over 2 years! They have 4 children, 5 and under so with us together there is 8 children with Tiernan (6) being the oldest! It makes for a lively time but they all play so well that it really doesn't seem like that many kids most of the time.

All the kids...

The dads having fun on the scooters

We also were able to see some of Nathan's family we don't get to see very often...Sarah and her kids who we lived by in Virginia came to visit as well as his brother Jonathan and family from Texas. We got together with them a few times, at his sister's house for a meal and also at the splash pad to play. Jonathan has another foster daughter (Rita, 17..along with Alma, 16 who we met at Christmas) that is living with that we met for the first time during this visit as well so that was fun.

Rita with Ariella

Spending time at the park with Nathan's parents, his sister Amanda and family, his sister Sarah and family visiting from VA, his sister Maria & kids, and his brother Jonathan and family visiting from TX.

Nathan also spent a lot of time in our yard picking rock. Hours and hours and hours he raked, dug, picked up, and moved the rocks in our yard so when we seed, the grass will have a better chance of growing well. Although right now we've just let the weeds grow in the area that we didn't lay sod, and it actually looks kinda nice! They are thick enough that it almost looks like grass and when Nathan mows it, you can hardly tell the difference.

We spent some time at a "beach" on the 4th. It was this tiny little public access that had a ledge where you could put a chair and then a drop off to the rocks which led in to the water. Yeah, it wasn't exactly my idea...it was Nathan's. He bet me no one else would be there...and there actually was, so now that I think about it, he owes me a 30 min back rub...

So, after all that fun stuff was over, it was time to go back to work. That meant moving up to Bemidji!

He started this job, a line going from Bemidji to Grand Rapids, last Monday and it seems to be going alright for him...the only tiny problem is that we can't find a place to live!! This is my 8th or 9th time trying to find housing last minute but never had I had this much problem finding a rental, ever. Usually it might take a day or two of making a million and half phone calls but eventually we find a place. This is different. We have found nothing...zilch...nadda. I have been searching online, calling resorts, realtors, landlords, random people, banks, co-workers of in-laws brothers, you name it and everything is either 1) already rented, 2) too far in the wrong direction, 3) too expensive, or 4) requiring a long-term lease.

There was one place that we thought would be a good fit. It was in decent shape (horrible construction, but livable) that was a 1000 sq ft, 2 bed apt in a tri-plex that was made out of a pole shed....yes, fancy, I know. It was only 10 mins from Nathan's show-up for work, in the country, had great neighbors, and (relatively) inexpensive. I talked with the owner and everything seemed to be a go. He told me to fill out an app and we could move in the next day. Well, it was after I turned in the app that I didn't hear from him so I had to call him...not a good sign. “yeah, you have 4 kids?....Well, in my opinion it is not appropriate to have 4 children in a 2 bedroom.” UM, EXCUSE ME?!?! It's 1000 sq ft! Do you know how big our camper was?? Like 300 sq ft...I think we can handle 1000. Why don't you let US decide what's “appropriate” for our family?? I told the guy that we have a 3500 sq ft house back home and our boys still share a room, that's just how we live! So whatever, he wouldn't rent to us. So we were back to square one.

There is a slight possiblity of a town home in the city of Bemidji that would work out but again, I'm waiting for the owner to get back to the management to get back to me about when we could get in, etc. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm really hoping that it will work out because it's in a nice location, fairly reasonably priced and it's the only thing that we have on the table that the moment. I called a place yesterday that I spoke with the afternoon before who had a cabin south of town. We decided we would tell the guy we'd take it without even looking at it bc it had what we were looking for but once I called him, it had already been rented. So anyway, that has been and is our struggle with this move.

So where are we staying in the meantime?? At my cousins house of course! :) My cousin, Gina, and her family live in Bemidji and have been sooo kind and generous to offer us their son's bedroom to stay in while we look for a place to live! I seriously don't know what I would do if I had to do all this searching and being so stressed with finding a place if we were in a hotel...I would probably pull out all my hair. So it has worked out so nice. Nathan and I get the double bed and the kids all surround us on the floor. Gina does daycare during the day, which makes things even more fun :) The kids wake up in the morning, we eat breakfast and outside they go! She has 2 kids of her own...8 yr old Braden and 5 yr old Ava...and then anywhere from 3 to 6 daycare kids. We buy all our own groceries and Gina and I just take turns in the kitchen making meals for our respective children and families. It has worked out just great! And for some evenings we've had places to go....grocery store, resorts to try to find housing, etc, so it gives them time to themselves and then we go home on the weekends so they have some space as well.

And as of this week, Nathan said they are working 50 hours in 4 days, 12-13-13-12, so if we still don't have a place by the weekend, we'd at least be able to get out of their hair on Thursday night. :) The kids are really enjoying themselves and Gina and I enjoy the adult conversation we get during the day which neither of us usually have!

Oh! I almost forgot to mention too that our house is for sale!! Yep, that's right...as of last monday our house is officially on the market. We love our house but Nathan wants to be completely debt free and once we are, we will be able to move back and start our farm. We can't exactly start it with being on the road and he needs a job to pay for a house, so until it sells we are kinda stuck where we're at. So let me know if anyone knows of anyone who wants a beautiful, custom home on 5.1 acres in the country just 10 minutes from St. Cloud!

Being together as a family is the most important thing to us right now and we are obviously sacrificing a lot for that to happen but to us, it is totally worth it. I have a husband, my husband has a wife, and my kids have a dadddy. Nothing can beat that. I was given this quote my a friend of mine and I absolutely love it....

“Parents often forsake their children (or their spouse) for jobs, ministries, sports and pleasures, all of which pass very quickly. Men need to feel like what they do for a living is important. However, the reality is that many men soon realize that what they did for their company can, and will be, replaced shortly after they leave...We can all be replaced in the workforce, but NEVER replaced in the home. Whatever we may accomplish in our jobs is nothing compared to what we can accomplish in our homes. I understand we must work to live, but we do not have to live to work. I pray we will work for what will remain after we leave this life.” Jeffery A. Klick from the book called Generational Impact.

another ride & pics

2011-06-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's about that time again....to write another post in the car! :)

We are heading home (again) for the weekend since Nathan doesn't have to work Sat or Sun. I've been putting off getting groceries for the last few days since we thought we'd be leaving last night for good, but after him not working much this week due to rain and then wind yesterday, he needed to work today and tomorrow (so he thought). So I finally went to the grocery store to get a few things for meals and Nathan's lunch. It was about 4:00pm when he calls me and says “So you have the car packed?” I'm like “Uh, I'm in the grocery store and have a bunch of groceries in my cart!” He says “I know, I just found out. The job got done today and we can go home for good.” Yay!! So I tell the kids we have to hurry, buy the groceries, go back to the house, make supper, pack the whole house, cause we're going home! Once I had supper started, I went into our bedroom and started taking the sheets off the air mattress, getting all our clothes back in the suitcase, and I unplugged the mattress to let the air out. That's when Nathan comes in talking on the phone to someone and says “Can I come back here and work next week?” Uh...I guess so? And then he leaves. Okay...so I turn on the pump and fill the bed back up :) That's how things roll around here...never know what the day will bring!

So since he's got the weekend off anyway, we are heading home to spend two nights in an actual bed...and ours to be exact! Then the plan is that we will be back to work Mon-Thursday and then off for 2 weeks before he's transferred up to Bemidji! I'm a little hesitatant to say that we are going for sure since I know how plans can change, but for now that's what it's looking like.

So what do we bring for toys for the kids while we travel like this? Well, they each have their “backpack” which is actually a lunch bag and whatever they can fit in the bag, they can bring. (And I brought their scooters bc they fit under the seat in the van). Then when we were home last weekend, I went to a garage sale that had a whole free box, two actually, full of those McDonalds toys and little trinkets. I filled two bags full (the bags were in there too!)...maybe about 30-40 individual toys and kept them in the car. Once we got to our rental, I took them out and they kept the kids busy for days. It's so super easy to find that stuff at garage sales for free bc it's those kind of stuff that people want to get rid of. And it's awesome for me because 1) they are free, 2) if they get lost, wrecked, forgotten somewhere, it's no big deal and 3) I can throw them away or recycle them when we are done with them! I have done this for long car rides too....put some of these toys in 4 bags and give them to each of the kids during the car ride. It keeps them busy for hours and they can rotate bags if they want. Thrifty way to have some fun!

This is what can happen when you jump off the counters and the drawers have knobs on them...and yes, I stopped and took a picture before I helped him :)

Our rental house...

Tiernan havin' a grand 'ole time at the dentist

This is how/where we eat. Our landlords (friends) were kind enough to lend us their card table and 3 chairs and 2 little chairs and a left-over end table from a previous tenant! Yes, that's only 5 seats...I usually stand or sit on the rocker in the living room (which they also brought over for us!)

Tired kiddies

Ariella praying at supper time...this is her usual 'pose' during prayer :)

Our kids

2011-06-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted something about the kids and what they have been up to, what they like, etc so i'm going to take some time and go through them all!

Tiernan:
6 years old
favorite color: green
Loves to pull his ankle socks as far up his legs as possible so the heel part of his sock in in the middle of his calf...drives us nuts!
Just got his first tooth pulled out at the dentist...wouldn't stop smiling the whole time at the dentist, even during the procedure. We think he was liking that goofy gas :)
still steals food whenever he can, including eating the brown sugar directly from the container, leaving the cover off and spoon in it!
Is amazingly awesome at baseball, hitting to be specific and has been since I can remember. He will consistantly hit the (foam) ball with the (thin foam) bat when Nathan pitches it over-hand to him. He gives Tiernan a dollar everytime he hits it over the roof of the garage at our rental in Blue Earth. He's made a lot of money. Nathan walked it off and figured it's close to 90 feet.
He's best at math, making equations out of everyday stuff. ex) “There's 9 pieces left. That means there will only be 3 left after we all have one because there are 6 of us.” or “I have 6 sticks because I have 3 right here and 3 over there.” He also prides himself on knowing how many things there are without counting them but knowing what “5” looks like, or however many there are.
Reading doesn't come that easy to him but he is getting very good at sounding out the words
Goes to bed as late as possible and is up before 6am, everyday, never needing a nap...
Likes to ride his bike a lot, and more recently, his razor scooter (which, I might add, was a $2 find at a garage sale, probably the best $2 I've ever spent!
Is only in size 10ish shoe, although he can still fit into a 9
We still call him Biggie
Wants 3 dogs to name them Blacky, Sniffy, and Boomer

Caedmon
Age: 4 (will be 5 in 2ish months)
Favorite color: Red
Favorite animal: cat
hes in this stage right now where he talks like a baby with an accent, that's the best way I can describe it...drives us crazy.
He holds his left hand open with his fingers spread almost constantly...that also drives me crazy.
He LOVES to color and will do so for hours
Hes obsessed with anything 'pirate'...even though we won't allow anything with the whole skull and bones thing.
He laughs uncontrollably when he's overtired
He rides his 3 wheeled scooter so proud :)
Would eat only watermelon if we let him
sleeps with his soft blue blanket that gma barb made

Brayan
Age: 3 (will be 4 in 2 months)
Favorite color: Blue
Is still our 'tough one'...likes to box
will always get out of bed a few minutes after we put him in there and ask for a drink of water
Weighs the same as Caedmon, also wears the same size pants and shoes as caedmon....yes, I have my twins without actually having twins :)
sleeps with his blue fleece blanket

Ariella
Age: 2
favorite color: pink, of course!
Loves the doll strawberry shortcake
still naps about 2 hours a day if I lay her down, otherwise she won't.
LOVES her nuk, which will be hard to get rid of.
Also LOVES her pink fleece blanket we got from our friend & farmer in Seward NE as a going away gift.
She talks in full sentences and knows more words than we ever thought she would at this age, it makes us laugh everyday
She loves shoes and clothes and definitely has an opinion about what she wears. Once her outfit is on for the day, she needs to go show someone, either a brother or daddy.
Her hair is long past her shoulders in the back which has beautful natural curls. Her bangs are growing out, which I usually keep in 2 ponytails.
She eats a ton, ex) she ate 2-1/2 hamburgers, bun and all, when my aunt and uncle were over visiting. My aunt couldn't believe it!
She has been deathly afraid of ladybugs, even waking with nightmares that they are biting her. Being around her brothers that keep spiders in containers in the house has gotten her a little more used to insects but she still dislikes them, esp flies and ones that can land on her.
Even though she can say their names, she calls Tiernan “Nah-nah”, Caedmon “Yah-Yah”, and Brayan “Sha-bah”. She also calls a banana “bah-boo”.
Has been potty training herself...which I love! :)

Wrote this in the car :)

2011-06-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

What better time to write a blog post than when I'm sitting in the van on our 3 hour trip back to our rental! I figured I'd type it out in my word processing program and then copy and paste it on my blog when we have an internet connection tomorrow at the library! This way I have no (almost no...) interruptions and lots of time :) I even brought my adapter thing to plug into the lighter in the van when my battery gets low.

So we traveled back home this weekend since Nathan had a nice 3-1/2 day weekend! It was so nice to sleep in our own bed and not run out of dishes after one meal. Nathan hasn't been home in a month, and he was definitely glad to be back....although he wasn't too excited to see the sod in the yard :( As one friend put it, it looks like it has cancer. We are hoping that after the rains we had this weekend and Nathan pampering it while we were home that at least some of the brown patches aren't completely dead and that some of it will come back to life!

Friday we hosted lunch at our place, even though I didn't make any of the food. My parents, my brother and his family and my sister and her kids came over to visit! Leah is up for her annual summer trip to MN and it worked out perfect to see her since Nathan had this weekend off! All the grandkids were together once again, the last time was at Christmas, so a group picture was definitely in order.

Siblings: Dawn, Leah, & Darren

Top Row: Parker (5), William (6), Ariella (2), Abi (9), Brayan (3), Faith (7)
Bottom Row: Tiernan (6), Caedmon (4), Eliana (4)

After they left we got ready and headed to the park for a graduation party for some friends of ours oldest daughter. It was nice seeing friends we haven't seen in years and the weather cooperated wonderfully!

Saturday I spent the morning garage saleing! It just so happened to be the city wide sales this past weekend and since I haven't seen a garage sale since moving down south with Nathan, I was in dire need of one!! I found some sweet deals, including a lawn mower! Nathan told me in the morning before I left that once I got home he was going to go into town and buy a push mower since we don't have one. And can ya guess what happened? At the very first sale I stopped at, they had exactly what we were looking for! It was a craftsman 22” self-propelled bagger! It was fairly new and in great shape and we got it for a fraction of what a new one would be! How awesome!

Today is Father's day and we spent it running errands, visiting at Nathan's parents a bit and packing to head back down south....and driving ;) But the nice thing is that we will be back before the weeks over! The job that he is on is finishing up ahead of schedule and there are just cleaning up the job sites this week! Then what? Well, isn't that just the million dollar question!!

I wish I knew! It'd be a lot easier to plan...but I don't know so I try to remain as flexible as I can be and supportive of where my husband feels like he is being led.

Some of you may ask, why would you build your house if you weren't positive you'd be staying in the area for good? Well, first of all, does anyone ever know if they'll be where they're at for an extended period of time? Anyone who is employed can get laid off, fired, transferred, whatever at any time. But here is 'why' behind our decision...

Accepting the apprenticeship position gave us a 'ticket' back to Minnesota from Virginia and since he's chosen MN to be his jurisdiction, then all the work throughout the apprenticeship has to be within the state of MN or he doesn't have to accept the job. Given that, we knew that we'd at least be within the state. Nathan has had plan and long-term goal for years and that is to build houses on his land and the land his dad owns. He wanted to get going on that plan and building the first house would be the big first step! (Well, actually the 'first' steps were to get it all platted, surveyed, build the road, etc but that was already accomplished a few years ago :). By building the first house, he is starting to see his vision become a reality!

Another reason why we wanted to build was because we wanted a place to call home, a place to come home to on holidays and vacations if we were on the road, and one location for all our belongings! Granted we had very very little 'stuff' left, we did have a truck load in Nathan's parents garage and attic (although even though everyone was blaming us for taking up their whole third stall, when we got our stuff out, it was still half full! I think other people left things here and there and convieniently blamed us :) We also had a few things at my parents too...and stuff still in our camper. So to have everything in one place is a lot easier to deal with.

Another reason why we built was because we were (and still are) hoping that he can find line work close to home so we can live at home. There is a transmission going up from St. Cloud to Fargo and for him to get on that job would be such a blessing! So we are still hoping for that. In the meantime, we needs to keep going where they send him, as he doesn't have a say in the jobs as an apprentice like he did when he was an operator.

We had a very very very hard time making the decision for him to accept work away from home bc that left 2 options...1) he lives on the road and we stay home, breaking up the family which is no good for anyone or 2) we move with him, leaving behind our new house (btw we have people watching and in and out of there often so no one get any ideas :P). We have made the decision that he will never work on the road again, away from us, so where ever he goes, we go. It makes life exciting :) Guess it gives me more to blog about :) If he didn't accept the job to go down to where we are currently at, he would have to drop the apprenticeship and the goal of becoming a lineman would be no-longer. That would also mean that he'd have no job and we'd have no source of income. On the positive side, we'd have time to get a hobby farm going and we'd be challenged to find ways to earn money and quickly....we love us a challenge! :) But when it came to decision time, we figured since this job was only set for 5 weeks, we'd take it and figure out details later. Staying in this field at this time also allows us to continue with our financial goals of paying off our home and being able to build our next one without a mortgage. Did you know that it cost us like $8000 just to close on the loan?! That's ridiculous!! No more dealing with mortgages! :P

So which brings me back to the question of what are we going to do when this job is over? Well, there is a chance that he'll get laid off, in which case he would sign the union books and wait to get called to go out and work for a contractor anywhere in the state of MN, hopefully by home :) Or, he can get transferred to the next job with this contractor that he's currently working for, and that is to Bemidji. I have mixed feelings about both those options but I guess it's not really up to me! So a few days will tell where we'll be going or what we'll be doing...so stayed tuned! Will we be doing this forever? No. Actually, if he were offered a job close to home, even in a completely different profession, he'd probably accept it, giving us the opportunity to do what we really love...farm! Chickens, pigs, cows, rabbits, cats...can't wait!! All grass-fed and free-range, of course! We've been reading an absolutely outstanding book by Joel Salatin (remember him? The organic farmer who lives in VA who's farm we went to see on Nathan's birthday of 2010 who was interviewed in the movie “Food Inc”? Well, he's the guy...:) called “You Can Farm”....Man, is it good! Best quote yet “If you smell manure, you're smelling mismanagement” Amen! Anyway, time will tell and we'll continue to go where the Lord leads us.

quiet time

2011-06-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

....and of course I forgot my phone cord in the van that I could get my pictures from...

Well, we are sitting at the library in Blue Earth. We have been living down here with Nathan going on two weeks and, like all of our moves, its made for some interesting times. There is so many things I want to mention, mainly so I had record of it but I'm afraid i won't have as much time as I'd like since it's just me and the kiddos here and trying to keep a 2, 3, & 4 year old quiet and in one spot in the library while you're trying to type is not exactly easy! (the 6 yr old is pretty good at at least staying quiet :)

Here are a few "highlights" of our stay here so far:

Ariella was sick with the stomach bug starting the first night we arrived, lasting a week. I was next on the list, but thankfully it only lasted 3 for me. Caedmon had it before we left and Tiernan has been complaining of his belly hurting today. Apparently it's going through us one by one, on number 4...

The airbed that we are sleeping on has a hole in it, leaving us to pump it up 3-4 times a night in order for us to lay on it. Yeah...we haven't had too much luck with my parent's air mattresses! We borrowed their twin ones while we stayed in Jackson for the kids and the kids broke every one of them by jumping on them. This one is there's also...but we promise we weren't jumping on it!! Not sure how it happened bc it is a pin hole size hole on the top of the bed.

We went to the Fairmont days, watching a water skiing show (the boys got bored quick although I thought it was pretty neat!), a petting zoo that consisted of a calf and a goat...not exactly thrilling, and then a parade. Since we were there for most of the day, I was able to find a parking spot right along the parade route and we set up our blanket before we went to the petting zoo. Once that was over, we walked back to the blanket and patiently (or not-so-patiently) waited about 2 hours for the parade to start. The good thing though was that nathan was off at 6 and got there about 10 minutes before the parade started! That was a treat having dad there!

Another super cool thing was that a dear friend of mine from back in 'the day' when Nathan and I just met was there too! Her and her husband and family live an hour and a half away but happened to be in town for the parade. And the cool thing? They set up chairs right across the street from where we were! So here we both were, in a town that neither of us live in, at a parade, sitting across the street from each other....and it had been 6 years since we saw each other! What a blessing to see Amy again and met her kids!

Well, this is exactly what I was talking about...I need to go already. Although this time it's not because of the kids :) nathan just called me and he's on his way home (it's only 4:15pm and he was expecting to work 14 hours today so I'm not sure why he's off...) But he said that I need to come home because someone at his job site kicked up rocks with their truck when they were leaving and shattered his back window in his car. He would like me to take it someone to get it vacuumed out. So, since I finally took the time to sit down and do a post, I have to leave :)

More to come soon hopefully....along with some pics! And some good news about us coming home later this week!! Yippee!!

On the road again!!

2011-05-25T17:01:00.001-07:00

Yep! You read that right! Next week we will be heading down to southern MN, Blue Earth to be exact, to live for 4 weeks! I'm trying to think of it as an extended vacation...in a small town...and an empty house...with my husband working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. What a great vacation! ::ahem::

This is the "joy" of the apprenticeship...not being able to turn away any jobs, even if they are far from home. And we just cannot go without Daddy here with us, so we are packin' up and going with him! Although I'm going to to try and NOT pack. I'll be taking as little as possible. One van full...that's it, and with 4 car seats in the van already, that doesn't leave much room. No beds (besides an air mattress for us), no tables or chairs, no couches...just clothes, whatever toys we can fit, and some food...and probably a pan or two!

We'll be staying in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house on a double lot that some friends of Nathan's parents own (and rent out). The tenent that is in there now will be moving out in a couple days, just perfect timing!

So I'll be keeping you updated with that! (Oh, and when the 4 weeks are up, I have heard that there is a 'great possibility' that we will be moving to Bemidji MN for 15 months. Yeah, great...I know. I'll keep you posted with that too! I just figure all this stuff gives me even more to blog about :)

In the meantime, I was going to plant a garden. Nathan got the hole all dug with the skid steer...nice and deep so we could fill it with black dirt and allow the roots to grow til their heart's content. Except for the fact we couldn't find anyone to bring us some black dirt before it rained....and rained.

So now we have a 2-1/2 foot swimming pool. It's nice and organic, including a nice mud floor. ;)

The only problem is that it's really hard to keep the kids from going 'swimming'....naked.

(Check out the wall hanging right next to Brayan's head..."Simplify" HAHA! We laughed so hard when we saw that...right next to Brayan standing in his 'simple' bathing suit! :)

long time, no see

2011-05-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

This computer has been sitting next to me with a blank screen for a good half hour now and I just can't think on how to start this post. There have been and are so many things going on in our lives right now I just don't know where to begin! In my whole 'blogging life', I haven't gone this long without a post so it's about time I did one! Plus, I have the night 'off' since I've been fighting a headache so I figured this would be a great time to write one. So this is what's been goin' on...

***Nathan got a call last Friday afternoon from the union hall to start work on Monday (today). Only it wasn't in the location we had hoped. It's for down in southern mn again. We had a long and hard weekend thinking about what the best possible solution would be for our family. If he turned down the job, that would be the end of the apprenticeship...but on the flip side, it would be the start of another adventure for us, finding out what the Lord has in store for us besides line work. We decided that he should go down for the first day of training and actually see what the job involved, how long it would be for, etc. The blessing was that after he went to the cities this morning to get his ticket for work, they found out that the union hall messed up the dates and that work doesn't actually start until next monday! That was such a blessing bc he gets to finish the landscaping outside! He was really disappointed that he'd have to leave that half finished but now he can finish it! He's been out there all day watering the sod, laying down poly and rocks around the house, movin' dirt...just having a grand 'ol time!

Here's the house thus far....The stucco was just finished last week and the stone right before that. We laid the sod last wednesday.

**Our adorable children :)

**We said 'good-bye' to our camper a couple weeks ago. After having it on craigslist for 5 days, we got an email from a couple who was interested in looking at it. They came two days later to look at it and wrote us a check on the spot! They waited a couple more days and a week ago saturday, they hauled it away! It was bitter sweet watching it drive away as that closed that chapter in our lives but Nathan was pretty happy...ok, very happy...to see it go!

**Nathan shaved his head...which I LOVE...so we just had to get a picture of him next to his brother Keith, which whom Nathan resembles the most. (Although he's growing his hair back out, despite what I think!)

**SOOOO glad to finally have some grass (even though we can't walk on it yet bc it's too wet!) I was/am so sick and tired of the mud! This is what I look at out my window and guess what the kids go in several times a day?!

**Nathan's birthday present from me.

Previously, he had all these weights in our 3rd stall in the garage. There wasn't much room for anything else. I asked him why he doesn't want them downstairs and he said that it would be too much work to move them. So while he was gone working, I had his brother and a friend move them! I bought all the flooring and they helped install that too. When Nathan came home, he walked up through the garage and stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn't figure out where his weights would have gone since surely I couldn't have moved them. Needless to say he was very shocked and never expected anything like it. He says that he loves it!

**We've started our business, which has been interesting thus far :) The part that we are trying hard at now is just getting the name out and what we do. Our website is www.atyourservicemn.com

**I'm going to bed now. I'll try to post again, sooner than a month :)

surprise visit

2011-04-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago we went to go visit Nathan where he lives... yes, for the last, almost 3 months, Nathan has been working on the road, only coming home late Saturday night and leaving during the middle of the night on Sunday. It would be an understatement to say that it's been tough on everybody. The kids miss him terribly. I miss him terribly. And he misses us.

Along with the grace of the Lord, the only way I think I have been able to half-way cope with him being away for so long is because of Ana, by sweet helper...my live-in nanny, who comes to stay most weeks from Wednesday to Saturday. It is such a blessing to have someone to help with dishes, bake bread when I don't have time, and to be here with the kids while I run an errand.

But here is the good news....as of today, Nathan is laid off!!! That means that he's coming home (in a few minutes!) and he will be here INDEFINATELY!!!! He will no longer take over the road jobs as we feel that family is much more important. We are all so super excited about that!!

So back to the reason for the post....ahem....a couple weeks ago Nathan wasn't able to come home because he had to work Sunday, so I packed the kids up and took a trip down to Jackson (yes, he was still in the town where we had our apartment) but here's the thing...he didn't know we were coming!!

He lived at a bed and breakfast in town and the owner had me park in their personal driveway instead of the lot where the customers park so Nathan wouldn't think much of it. He drove to work with a co-worker and I guess when they pulled in, nathan says to Tim "That looks like my wife's van" Tim says "well, maybe it is" Nathan replys "No way! There's no way that she would drive 7 hours round trip with the kids to come see me." (he knows how much I hate driving in the car...) So he called my cell phone as they pulled in the driveway. What?! You can't be calling me! I can't lie! You'll ask where I am!...so I didn't answer! And he called again....and I didn't answer! Finally I walked outside and was greeted by his co-worker so coaxed nathan out of the car to come in. The kids came running around the corner and then he saw us. :)

The Old Railroad Inn

Nathan cook?

2011-04-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is apparently what happens when Nathan takes over the cooking on the gas stove....

...fires start!

Nathan was making something one of the first days we were in our house and he had his back to the stove. He said that the warmth of the stove felt good and that he probably got a little too close :) Ya think?! He turned sideways and I saw flames coming up his back! His dad (who was over) said "You're on fire!" and I yelled "get outside!" (Don't want to burn our new house down!) So he raced out to the garage where we whipped off his shirt and stomped on it to kill the flames. Needless to say his shirts went to the garbage. I haven't let him cook since. (just kidding...but I do remind him to be careful :)

Family Picture

2011-04-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Aren't we cute?!

My co-op order

2011-03-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Since this picture was taken a few weeks ago from my last co-op order, I had meant to do this post before....but that seems like it's the theme now-a-days so just bare with me :)

Some people are curious about what exactly I get from my co-op (Azure Standard)....well, this is exactly what this post is about!! Here is a picture of all things I ordered last month...

And what exactly is that?? Well....8 lbs of frozen strawberries, 10 pounds frozen blueberries, 10 lbs of oatmeal, 20 pounds of oranges (.40/lb!), 18 pounds of apples (.63/lb organic!), 15 pounds potatoes (.69/lb organic!), bag of onions, 2 bags of celery, 3 whole chickens, banana & cherry flavors (natural) for my homemade yogurt, & 3 containers of spritzers!

I just put in our order yesterday for this month and I'll be getting that order Thursday of next week. My orders tend to be a lot of the same things...always order whatever produce they have available...apples, potatoes, etc, and then I'll get most other things every other month or whenever we need them. For example, last month I didn't order wheat berries because I had some left but this month I need them again so that was on my order (although they were out and I need to find somewhere else to get them!) another thing is honey. We usually order a gallon of it every other month or so.

The things on my order for this month were....

8 lbs frozen strawberries (gotta love those things for smoothies and snacks!)
1 lb organic raisins
big container of real sea salt
parchment paper...yep, they have non-grocery items too!
aluminum free baking powder
one container of spritzers
50 lbs of wheat berries (that isn't coming...humph!)
10 lbs froz blueberries...these things are awesome to eat plain or in muffins!
5 lbs oatmeal
10 lbs free range chicken
3 lbs whole wheat pasta
5 lb organic carrots
15 lbs organic potatoes
25 lbs no spray oranges (which also aren't coming...bummer!)
fresh organic cauliflower
fresh organic brocolli
bag of organic lollipops...husband loves these almost more than the kids! And NO dyes! :)
quart of organic pure maple syrup
3 lbs organic onions
1 bunch organic celery
big jar of safflower mayo
almost 7 pounds of sprouted wheat tortillas
20 lbs of organic apples

And the cost??? $200.56

That's a lot of food....and a lot of it is at real good prices (like the organic produce mentioned above!) Some people think that eating healthy and organic is expensive and it is if you don't know where to shop or how to make stuff from scratch. (Like if you go and buy the "organic" frozen dinners each week because it makes you feel better because they say organic....yeah, that's not saving you any money. But if you spend a little time in the kitchen, you'll be able to keep a LOT of that cash in your pocket!!

My baby's TWO!

2011-03-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Today is my baby's birthday! Sweet Ariella turned TWO today!!

We hurried out of the house to go bounce at the Bounce Depot today with some friends! I figured I would use the birthday as an excuse to get out of the house and do something fun :) I thought the boys would like it more than her, but I'm pretty sure she did the most playing, going around and around the "Crazy Mazy" for the younger ones! Ana got a great work out too trying to keep up with her the whole time :)

Probably the funniest thing about her whole birthday celebration was the fact that she was the ONLY girl, the rest were boys....10 of them to be exact, HA!

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" was what Ariella was saying during this picture! She is usually a ham for pictures but for some reason she didn't want to stand by all those boys...guess I don't blame her :)

So who were all these boys?? Well, our 3 of course...then our neighbors Weston (4) and Walker (2)... and friends from church we just met Eli (5), Sam (4), and Jonah (2)...who brought their cousins Nick (7) and Ryan (4). So, yes...10 little boys and 1 little girl. But ya know, I don't think she even noticed. In fact, I don't think she's ever played with a little girl before, besides a few mins with her cousin.

The plan was to get to the Bounce Depot at 9. We got there first and realized it didn't open til 10! Ah! It was one of the first times I ever planned anything with friends outside of my home and I had the time wrong! Go figure! So with a couple phone calls, we decided to just meet at the mall and play on the little play things there until it opened. It worked out just fine :)

We bounced until shortly after 11, stopped at picked up some Legos at Toys R Us for the boys, swung by the grocery store and made it home for lunch! After some pb&j and grapes, Ariella went down for her much needed nap and she is still sleeping as I type this...(it is now 4pm :)

We will have a nice relaxing evening, probably snuggling and watching a movie. Aren't birthdays when you are two a blast?! :)

Pic of Ana and I before church on Sunday

Biggie's 6!

2011-03-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

This post is well over-due (as are a lot of other posts!) but I wanted to show what a fun day we had celebrating Tiernan's 6th birthday!

Since his birthday fell on a Wednesday and Daddy wasn't going to be home until Saturday, we decided to wait until Saturday to celebrate. We had both sets of Grandparents, my brother and family and our neighbors come celebrate with us, along with Ana and her Dad who came a little later.

Tiernan was so excited to learn a couple months ago that Ana was planning on making him a special birthday cake when it was time! She asked him what his favorite things are and he said 'sports!' So she decided to make a baseball birthday cake!

"Hmmm...how exactly am I going to make a round cake from a rectangle pan??..."

Stack it very carefully...

Adding grass around the 'dirt'....otherwise known as crushed oreo cookies :)

Making the stitching perfect, even getting the diagonal of the stitch correct...

Voila! A baseball cake on a layer of dirt surrounded by grass!

Blow out your candles from so far back!

Lotsa little boys

He received some awesome gifts including legos, tic tac toe bean bag toss, train tracks, clothes....and a bike!! This was pretty special since Tiernan has never owned a bike, nor ever tried to ride one! There were no training wheels on the bike and we figured that after a few months of practicing outside when it gets warm, he'd get the hang of it. NOPE! He immediately went downstairs to practice and within the FIRST DAY, he was riding unassisted!! He even started himself from hanging onto the wall and then giving himself a push! After the SECOND DAY, he was starting with one foot on the peddle and swinging his leg around the back of the seat to the other peddle. So, after 3 weeks or so, he's pretty much a pro and rides like he's been at it for years. Way to go Tiernan! We are so proud of you!!

How I Cut Our Grocery Bill in Half!

2011-03-03T19:53:00.000-08:00

....Yes, IN HALF!!!...and we eat a lot :)

I am so absolutely excited about this that I'm pretty much exclaiming it to anyone who will listen! Because not ONLY did I cut our bill in half, I spent a whole 15 mins in 3 different stores buying a months worth of groceries! How I did do that, you ask?! Well, LET ME TELL YOU!!! :)

I planned ahead.

With a little planning, and a little time set aside dedicated to making my lists, etc, I was able to save hundreds of dollars and hours of time!! (not to mention tons of gas money driving to town week each for groceries!) Here's how I did it!.....

First I made a menu for the whole month...Breakfast, lunch and supper, along with any special snacks, desserts, or foods that we always want on hand, otherwise known as our "staples" (which I have written on a list so each time I make my grocery lists I can just scan the staples list to see what we need instead of trying to remember everything and then realize when we get home that I forgot something!). After I have a menu made, I make a grocery list of everything that I would need to make all my meals for the month. Next, I categorize my lists into my 4 different places I will get the groceries.

1) Azure Standard, my buying club/co-op that I order from once a month. They usually have some great deals on produce (.64/lb for organic apples, .69 for organic potatoes, .40/lb for oranges, those are just an example of a few from this month).

2) What I don't get through Azure I will get at Coborns b/c they have a large organic and natural selection and that is usually our first choice.

3) What I can't get at Coborns or what I want to get a better deal on I will look for at Sams Club. (Example, I buy huge bags of frozen fruit that I use almost daily for snacks or to put in smoothies).

4) What I don't get at any of the above places, I will pick up at Walmart. I only had to buy 6 things at Walmart this month...awesome!

And Walmart took 15 of my 20 total minutes of shopping. So how did I do the other 2 stores in only 5 minutes?????

I ordered online and picked it up at the store.

What is this sooooo awesome?!? Well, 1)You save a ton of money bc we all know that we WILL find something that we just HAVE to have while we are in the store that wasn't on our list, thus we end up spending more than we planned (esp if you are in Sams bc everything in that store is at least $10 and 2) It saves a TON of time in the store. Yes, you do have to shop online which takes time, but I would MUCH rather shop in my pjs, sitting with my feet up, after my kids have gone to bed than shop IN the store, with all my kids, with all the other people, waiting in lines, etc. Anyday.

Sam's Club has a 'click n pull' program where you just go to their website, log in with your membership card info, do your shopping, choose your pick up time and place your order. You go into the store, walk up to the membership desk, tell them you have a click n pull order, they ring you up, you pay, they give you your cart--all full with your groceries you've already ordered, and you walk out of the store in 2 mins flat. Awesome.

Coborns is the same way...you shop online, choose your pick up time, place your order and they have it ready for you at the store...BUT there's MORE!!!...with Coborns you don't even need to go into the store!! You just pull through the parcel pick up line, tell the guy that you have an online order, they call the service desk to verify which one is yours and they place it in your vehicle for you! WOW!

Do you see how much time this saves?!? Plus, you know you have all the food you need to make your meals so there's never any last minute eating out bc you 'have nothing to eat' AND it takes all the stress away bc you know what you're going to be making!!!

(And my co-op order is obviously ready for me...I order that online and just pick it up from the truck that it's delivered on)

So that's how I did it! And, honestly, the total for my groceries this month was HALF of what I normally spend...and it was all meals, and I didn't hold back :)

HOW AMAZING IS THAT?! :)

Another fun week

2011-02-19T07:07:00.000-08:00

Oh where does my time go?! This week has actually flown by and I can't believe that it's already Saturday!!

We are loving the fact that now that we have a place of our own, we can finally have people over for food and fellowship! Last week Ana's family was able to stay for lunch on Wednesday and Saturady! Then last Sunday we had a busy day with company...one of Nathan's sisters and family out for lunch and to show them the house. They left around 3:30 and then our neighbors came over around 4:30 and stayed for supper and left around 7:30. After putting the kids to bed, we went straight to bed ourselves since Nathan had to be up at 3:00am to leave for work.

Ana came again this week to help me, from Wednesday til today! I know I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again but I just feel absolutely blessed that she is willing to come to help!! This week I was able to take a little snooze on the couch and a couple nice showers without worrying about what my little kiddies were in to! She also allowed me to sit on the couch and snuggle my kids after supper while she did the dishes!! She also allowed me to go out with a few girlfriends after the kids were in bed one evening! And right now she told me to go "rest or blog" while she makes some graham crackers because I've been fighting a lost voice and a headache :) What a blessing!!

Out with the girlfriends! (which I haven't done in the evening since I've been married!)

It's not exactly easy to bake when you have a 4 year old on your back!! But Ana seemed to do it well! She made caramel pecan shortbread and another awesome crazy cake this week!

It's kind of hard for Ana to eat since the kids want to sit so close to her...she can barely move her arms! :)

Caramel Pecan Shortbread

Homemade hot chocolate with homemade marshmellows! yum!

Tiernan helping Ana baking...

What were they baking? Banana Bread...but they also made White Chocolate Cranberry Blondies :)

Ariella and Ana reading

The kids with Ana

We were actually able to get outside this week for a few mins since the weather was in the mid 40s for a couple days!! On one of those days, I decided to wash the van...bad choice. I mean, it looks nice now but with how flithy it was combined with the fact that we don't have a hose or anything outside yet made for a LOT of trips back and forth filling up a bucket inside....but I got it done! The kids also had fun playing outside in the mud. They were actually sliding and rolling in it, not even kidding! It took me WAY longer to clean their coats, snowpants, and boots than it did for them to play outside, but I guess what do I expect when my yard looks like this??

I think we'll wait until we have grass to really play outside!

The kids saw Grandpa a couple days ago for the first time in awhile...they all missed him!

Miss Ana comes!!

2011-02-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

Well today was the first day with my wonderful help, Ana!! She came around 11am today with her whole family (who stayed for a great lunch and visit and then left) and will stay at our home until Saturday afternoon!! I can't believe what a blessing and help it is to have an extra set of hands to help with everything!! She made cookies with the boys this afternoon, helped with supper prep and the meal, did the dishes, brought a great movie about animals for the boys, helped me take the garbage to the end of our (long-enough) driveway in the freezing cold...how wonderful!!

The boys love her...Caedmon wanted to get out of bed to go give Miss Ana a hug and kiss, Brayan insisted that 'Miss Ana brush my teeth!' and even Ariella wanted a good night kiss! Tiernan wanted to show her everything and anything he could, especially his camera and his "Wild Kratt" game on the computer. I am loving the company and the extra help!!!

This is a pic of Ana making cookies (molassas chocolate chip) with the boys. It was funny because she had 30 little fingers trying to steal cookie dough, lick the spoons and bowls, taste this and taste that...she had a few more distractions than she probably was used to :) But the cookies still turned out excellent!! Brayan was crying in the pic because Tiernan got to stir the bowl but he later made up for it by shoving a golf ball sized chunk of cookie dough in his mouth...guess that showed us!!

The result...

Yes, I am going to be spoiled for the next few days....and ya know what??? I LOVE IT!!! :)

Ariella's hang outs

2011-02-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

Well, Ariella is definately enjoying the new-found freedom!! By the time she could crawl and get around pretty well, we were living in a camper that didn't have much room to roam. Then we lived at the 2 bedroom apartment, which we felt was like a mansion coming from the rv, and she enjoyed running around that....but now??...I think she's liking the house :) Here are a few 'positions' I have caught her in the last couple days...

Just checkin' out her strawberry shortcake DVD cover on the laundry room floor, with her blankie and little doggie of course...

Happily snacking on a waffle while holding her toothbrush on the kitchen counter (and no, I didn't help her up here...she's just as capable of climbing just like her brothers :)

Chillin', reading a book in mom and dad's walk in shower...

She speaks for all of us in these pics...we are all enjoying it here :)

We are HOME!!!!!!

2011-02-04T18:02:00.000-08:00

We're home, we're home, we're home!!!!

It was a loooooooong month wait after we last saw the house at Christmas, but it is over now and we are all moved in!! I have only 2 boxes in the garage that need to be put away and everything will be in it's place!

We have now been in the house for a week and absolutley love all the space we have (esp compared to the camper!!). And I love that there's a place for everything! We even have high speed internet ;)

Nathan was going to just take the weekend off for closing and help get settled those first few days but it turned out that right before we left for home, his foreman said that everyone had to take a mandatory week off due to this section of the job being completed! Therefore he had this whole week off! What a blessing that has been! With all the stuff we needed to buy for the house (sheets, mattresses, silverware, garbage cans, decor, towels, etc, etc, etc, etc), it was super nice having him home with the kids so I could get all that accomplished. (And now I'm all shopped-out!)

I've included a few pics of the house and I will include more once I get some taken during the day light hours. Seems as though when I try to take them at night, I can't get my camera to adjust to the lightening and the colors look really weird :) But I didn't want to keep ya hangin'......

My favorite room....the kitchen! It turned out exactly how I wanted it and exactly how I envisioned it!!

The dark color and wire mesh are in place now in preparation for the stone and stucco going on in the spring

Back of the house

Entry way

That's all for now (gotta start our taxes...) but since we now have 1) a new computer and 2) internet that works, you can be sure you'll hear from me soon :)

bummer.

2011-01-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

I know...I'm horrible...

And now I have bad news....

My computer doesn't work :( Let me rephrased that...neither of our computers work. can't get internet on either...so I'm at the library.

That's one nice thing about small town living...the library is always 2 blocks away! I actually came here tonight to figure something out for Nathan. He was here earlier trying to do his books for class and he couldn't figure out how to turn off the ad blocker so he could see his study guide. And since I didn't know how their internet was set up here, I couldn't tell him through texts, so I came to check it out and then tell him when I get home :)

In other news, we are waaaaay excited for next week!!! Although I'm running out of things to do. I have most everything packed, which isn't much, and since all the kids' toys and everything are boxed up too, we've been watchin' lots of movies...which also gets old. But I'll try to hang in there for another week or so, and then it won't be boring for awhile :)

Kids are doing well. Tiernan calls Caedmon "Martin" and Caedmon calls Tiernan "Chris". Ariella won't stop playing on the counters and in my chapsticks and is still playing with the contents of her dirty diaper every chance during nap that she gets. And Brayan likes to gather all his toys in a cardboard box and carry them around the apt like this (even though he only has a few out).

There's more I want to write about but I'll have to take notes and do it another time. I have to get home to help put the kids in bed. Hang in there while I'm on computer hiatus!!

not tonight

2011-01-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

Here's the deal....

I sat down at the computer...well, actually I sat on the couch with the computer on my lap...and I had the greatest intentions in the world to do this great post with pics (if my computer would cooperate) and all the to-dos of our family, but after checking some emails, and replying to a few, I have run out of time!!

Nathan was home today due to the cold weather. I think it actually was an excuse though bc he said something about the 'guys' not wanting to work today so they can work Sunday. Sunday is double time. So anyway, he was home today, which gave me some time to bring my loads of stuff to the thrift store to get rid of it! Well, you know me, I cannot bring stuff to a thrift store without actually looking a little, so I did some browsing and found a book for Nathan!

I brought it back to the apt and he quickly swiped it from me and started to read it. (Ted Dekker). I haven't seen him since. Well, he did come out for a little while to peel the potatoes so I could continue making homemade eclairs! Yeah, they were awesome. (That's coming tomorrow). But anyway....

After supper he said that if I took care of the kids and put them all to bed without his help and he could just go to our room and read, then he'd rub me. He says those words and I'm in...I will do anything for a massage.

So there you have it. He's done reading and I needa get the kids in bed. So no time to post...except for this...so I hope you enjoyed! :) I will try my best to post all about everything tomorrow!!

it's not just me!

2011-01-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

Because I have been getting more and more passionate about these kinds of things, I thought this too important and shocking to most, not to share!

I knew artificial colors were bad for you and and at home we avoid them as much as possible, which is quite easy to do if you cook from scratch, but if you don't or if you use a lot of pre-packaged stuff to cook with, you might find it a little harder to avoid dyes. But I think, especially after reading this, it's so worth it to your health, and your children's health, to avoid them at all costs!

I was searching through this blog "Food Dye Diaries" about a mom who's learned the hard way about what dyes can do to the health of your children and her research she's found to support her views.

She says:

"In case you are new to my blog I have to break it to you. It's not just the sugar that is making your child act "that way." It's the coloring. REALLY! Don't just take my word for it. Look at all the research articles I've found on the right hand column. Food coloring causes all kinds of behavior problems and even serious health problems in some people. Moms have written to me from all over the country describing hyperactivity, asthma, motor tics, hives and other issues that are probably diet related."

"Would you feed your child chemicals that would cause them to be hyper, moody, or distracted? Of course not, no parent wants that. Well, this blog is to help parents understand that your kids probably eat foods at every meal that could really keep them from being their best. It's time to get the word out."

"Wonder why your kids have a hard time listening, behaving, or keeping basic self control? Does your child get hyper, defiant, or have lots of tantrums? It could really be the foods they eat."

Here is a little about a few dyes that I thought were incredible!.....(She said she found all this info on the site:
http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/food-dyes-rainbow-of-risks.pdf)

RED 40
Acts like a neurotoxin and excites the brain.
Causes hyperactivity, mood swings, irritability
It’s hidden in everything from vanilla ice cream, mayo, chocolate, brownies, cake, bread, yogurt….
It’s not just the really red foods like strawberry, blueberry, or fruit punch
They use this chemical to mask when they’re too cheap to use real fruit/berries or real food

RED 3
SHOWN TO CAUSE CANCER
Yet it’s still often in candy and sweet treats
It’s in fruit roll ups and Kid Cuisine
Found in lots of other food marketed to children
Banned from cosmetics, but we still eat it?

YELLOW 5
WANT SOME PETROLEUM IN YOUR FOOD?
(yes! Like feeding your kids a little gasoline)
Causes hyperactivity, mood swings, irritability
It’s in your pickles, ice cream, candy, mayo….

YELLOW 6
It’s in mac and cheese, dressing, sauces, popcorn, cakes, cookies, pickles, frosting, etc.
Some studies show chromosomal mutations
Can cause sudden severe allergic reactions

BLUE 1
HOW MUCH PETROLEUM DO YOU EAT?
Linked to tumors and neurotoxicity
Studies showed inhibition of nerve cell growth
It’s in your marshmallows, candy, sport drinks
Face it, bodies weren’t meant to eat bright blue

Wow! She has another post on some alternatives to buy if you want some candy for example but don't want the dyes that go with it. There are actually a whole bunch of options. Looks like we will be saying 'goodbye and farewell' to foods with these colors...don't worry, we won't miss them (or their side effects!)

Christmas trip

2011-01-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

(I will try to do another post with more pics but it's always a guess if it's going to work!! :)

We are back in Jackson and all unpacked. Today is Nathan's last day off before going back to work to start 2011! I am super excited about this year as I think that it's going to be super exciting for us!! Life really just keeps getting better and better. It seems as though each year is filled with fun and surprises! I didn't think last year could be beat as far as 'exciting' goes...I mean, what's more fun than living with 6 people in a camper on the east coast? But I really think the Lord has a ton of stuff in store for us in 2011 and we are eagerly looking forward to it!!

While we were back home, our friends Scott and Angela were going out of town during the same time we were coming in and offered their home to us!! It was SO nice to be able to stay in a house where we didn't feel like that we were encroaching someone elses space. We could leave the hussle and bussle of Christmas parties and go to our own space. It worked out very well. Thank you again guys!!

What did we do on our stay? Well, we started by seeing the house first thing...you didn't expect anything else, did ya? We drove directly there, where we had a super nice surprise waiting for us! Our builder, Steve, hung Christmas lights on the outside of the house...but that's not all. Once we walked inside, we saw a Christmas tree, lit with lights, with 4 stockings hanging on it with the kids' names on them! The tree was sitting in the living room with lights hung around the windows as well. The kids were super excited as even the stockings were full of little gifts for them! I could not believe it! Talk about going above and beyond?? It made the home feel so 'homey' even though construction dust was spread about :) What a special surprise!!

Here are some "sneek peaks" :)

We spent Thursday moving our belongings from Nathan's parents garage to our garage. There was more stuff than I thought packed away in the attic...boxes and boxes of books took a majority of it, not to mention about the same amount of boxes of Nathan's baseball cards. Have a ever said how much I hate baseball cards?? Now once closing comes, we will just have to move the stuff from the apt to the house and everything else will already be at the house waiting.

We celebrated Christmas with the Legatt family on Christmas Eve. 9 of the 11 siblings were there which made for tons of people and tons of laughs! Most of the night was spent taking pictures as it's been awhile since that many siblings have been together at the same time. All 5 boys were there and then 4 of the 6 girls. Naomi even surprised everyone with a flight in from DC and we were super happy to see her!

The "Irish twins" Second Generation...Nathan's siblings, Amanda and Keith are 11 mos apart and so are Caedmon and Brayan!

This is an example of how much fun we had at the Legatts :) Nathan and his youngest brother Jonathan have a good laugh.

Then Christmas day was spent at my parents where all 3 of us siblings were together which has been had to coordinate in the last few years with us moving around and my sister living in Arkasas...but this year it was accomplished! The cousins loved to play together and had a great time building tunnels in all the snow outside!

Gma and Gpa with their grandkids

Our time in St Cloud also consisted of a couple sledding adventures, both of which I spent sitting in the car with the little ones. The second time was just me and Ariella as Nathan took a 3 boys sledding. Nathan's bro Jonathan came with his family and they had a blast. Although someone had the bright idea of letting Tiernan go down the hill on the huge sled by himself. (He was sledding by himself on the smaller sleds and he would always stop at the end of the hill). This sled was bigger and thus carried Tiernan farther....a little too far and he ended up smashing into the chain link fense at the bottom of the hill. I looked out the window and Nathan was holding Tiernan who had nothing but blood on his face. He brought him in the van and since I couldn't find a tissue or anything to put on his face, in a hurry I grabbed a clean diaper, unfolded it and placed it on his face. Worked like a charm :) After we got him all cleaned up, I put a couple bandaids on his cuts and over his huge lip and through the tears and while still crying he said he wanted to go back out on the hill!! So once he got his composure back, he was back up on the hill! Tough as nails that kid!

On Monday, Nathan and his brothers surprised their dad with a 'boys trip' to Millacs Lake to go ice fishing. They left at 4:35AM and got back around 7PM. They caught 3 perch and threw 1 back. In other words, it wasn't a very successful fishing trip, but the guys had fun. While they were fishing, I went selection shopping for the last time with Steve. We picked out the tile and design that will be on the backsplash in our kitchen. The trip also made for a stop at the furniture store where we picked out our couch set!

Once we got back to our apartment, we walked in the door and Tiernan says "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet home!" It was well said :)

sleepin' boys

2010-12-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I am packing again!! Tomorrow we will travel back 'home' and stay for about a week to visit family and hang at our house! Speaking of house, it's coming along great. Paint is finished and they are starting on trim! i will try to sneak some pics on here to give you an update once we see it, it's going to be so nice!!

In the meantime, I am busy packing and cleaning. Nathan and I were talking last night about where we've been in the last 4 years and how much our lives have changed. Then we talked about what we did and didn't like about moving around and if we'd do it again knowing what we know now. We agreed. We'd do it again. It has been such a blessing meeting the people that we have during our travels. We wouldn't trade those relationships for anything! Even being close to people we already knew, like Nathan's siblings in VA, was such a blessing because we got to know them so much better and build memories with them. Nathan said he'll never forget going to the quarry with our niece and nephew and Nathan was the last one to jump...our 13 yr old niece was the first...go Kelly :) And I said that I'll never forget doing my laundry at Sarahs and cleaning out my van...two things she always helped me with and spending the weekend with Naomi in DC doing 'girl stuff', I will miss those things!

One thing that we thought we might not choose to do again would be to live in the camper :) Not that I didn't like keeping tupperware in the bedroom, fruit in the shower, or batheing the kids in a tote....ahem... But I will always say that it was a great learning experience and it refined our character. I mean, I learned that I could can a whole trees worth of peaches in the camper, that we could live 3 days without water & electricity in the camper, and that Tiernan could fit through the window if we really needed him to in order to unlock the door and get out our 16 mo old who locked herself in.

And the one thing that I disliked the most about the last 4 years....PACKING! I hate packing, although I have to say that I'm pretty darn good at it by now! We agreed that we should have ditched 90% of our stuff during that first move, but as we kept moving, we got smarter each time, getting rid of more and more stuff. The move to the camper really didn't give us any other option than to give most of our stuff away. So now, moving to the house will hardly be any effort because we don't have anything to move!! :) There is some stuff that we have kept at our parents' houses...Nathan's weights (biggest item), some gargage shelves, boxes of books, etc but besides those things, we won't have the typical box after box of stuff to move. So anyway, I'm packing again and hopefully this will be the last time we'll have to stay at someone else's house for a long time!!

Here is how the boys' sleep in the same room with no beds...pretty much any way they want! :)

content.

2010-12-15T08:52:00.000-08:00

"...for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." Phil 4:11

WOW!!!!

That hit me right between the eyes when I read this a few nights ago. Be content in everything...that is what the Lord is calling us to do. No matter what situation you find yourself in, be content knowing that the Lord's plans are always perfect and he knows so much more than we could ever imagine!

We have been challenged by this verse for the last few years. There were days during the past year that we weren't so content, living with 6 people crammed into a camper in a campground that was run-down, in a town a bazillion miles away from home. There were times when we didn't have power or water to the camper for days at a time due to the crazy Virginia winter weather. Days like that we didn't feel like being content.

Lately the challenge for me has been to be content while knowing that our house is so close to being completed. Days like today where I have 2 children sick causing dirty little laundry to pile up that I can't wash because someone else has their stuff in the washer down the hall. Days where I can't seem to find what I'm looking for because we don't own a dresser and have everything in totes knowing we'll be moving soon.

It's during these times that I keep this verse in the front of my mind ...."in whatsoever state I am"... that doesn't say "except this" or "except when this happens". No. It's "whatsoever". Wow.

May we all learn to be content with where the Lord has us currently and enjoy the days he has blessed us with!

(Just while writing that last sentence, my *sweet* daughter came up to me completely covered in the contents of her dirty diaper! She's been finding a way almost every day lately to either sneak away or during nap, to empty her dirty diaper and smear it on herself and anything close by...ugh...that is something my boys never did!!)

Content, Dawn, content :)

One benefit of not having any neighbors across the hall...Nathan can leave all his dirty work clothes in the hallway :)

Since I can't put pics up of the house, here's a sneak peak of a part of it. can you guess what this is?!

one chicken to last 5 meals.

2010-12-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Really. I'm serious! I cooked a chicken and it provided the main part of each meal!

Here's what I made from one chicken:

1) BBQ chicken sandwiches
2) Chicken dumpling soup
3) More soup that went into the freezer
4) BBQ chicken wraps
5) Mashed potatoes with gravy

Here's how I did it....

First I cooked a frozen chicken in the crockpot with about 2-3 cups water until done (about 5 hours). Took the chicken out and poured all the liquid in a bowl to cool. This liquid is the drippings I used to make my gravy.

Then I de-boned the chicken, although this wasn't very difficult as most of the meat slide right off after being in the crock pot. I seperated the meat into 3 bags, adding homemade bbq sauce to 2 of the bags (ketchup, few shakes of liquid smoke, pinch of brown sugar, and you could add some minced onion but I left that out this time).

Then I took all of the bones from the chicken, gizzards, fatty parts, etc and put them into a stock pot with a bunch of carrots, celery, onion and parsley and water til covered. Simmer this for 6 hours of more. Then strain liquid and discard the solids. The liquid is now your homemade chicken broth! I used this as the base of my dumpling soup, along with the bag of non-bbq chicken.

Whole wheat hamburger buns....

Yummy yummy yummy!!!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

So I begged and begged Nathan to allow me to post the newest picture of the house on here and he denied me. Therefore, you'll just have to wait to see pictures either until it's finished or Nathan gives in :) But I will tell you that it's looking awesome...the windows are fixed so the front of the house now looks as what as were expecting it to, the garage door is on, the siding is on (the stucco will have to wait until spring but I think stone might go on this winter still), they have sheetrocked, mudding and taping should be done, cabinets are underway, appliances are ordered...it's coming together!!

Speaking of appliances....we found out that the frig we originally had picked out doesn't have the right side dor swing that we need and that model doesn't have the option to change the hinge so we need to pick out a different frig. The only problem is that we are limited to a counter-depth frig because of how our kitchen is set up which wouldn't be a problem but we wanted an freezerless frig so we could have more space for our hungry family! The choice is limited now but we think we might have found one that will do. Its not what we had in mind, but it's still a nice looking frig.

What made the search for the new frig a little more difficult was the fact that I was using our "old" computer (the same as I am now) because my sweet little 20 mo old daughter dumped a glass of water on the keyboard of our other laptop. The keyboard is non functioning so I bought a different keyboard..got it to work! Only to find out that all the programs on the computer are all messed up! I click on one, a different one opens! So, since I haven't been on top of my game and have all my pictures on cds, I am at the risk of losing my last couple years worth of pictures! I'm hoping my brother will be able to salvage some for me over Christmas!

My sweet angel that spilled the water....just readin' a book...lookin' all innocent :)

Some people have been asking how I fit all my kids in our 2 bedroom apartment and I was going to show some sweet pictures of my little guys sleeping and how they all work in the same bedroom. I'll have to see if I can get some pictures either off my camera or the other computer...

For now I am going to enjoy the rest of the evening with my hubby as he doesn't have to go to work tomorrow! The weather was predicted to get really bad tonight so they have already canceled work for tomorrow. Hopefully I can keep up with this computer and

black friday

2010-12-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

Last week was my first "Black Friday" shopping experience and I might just hafta say that it was also my last!!

We put the kids to bed and Nathan and I ventured out to Walmart about 10:45pm to get to the midnight sales. So since I've never done this before, I figured we could pick up the stuff we needed, put everything in our cart and just check out after 12. Well, little did I know that you can't touch the stuff on sale until exactly midnight! So it seemed as though everyone that lived within St. Cloud's city limits and then some were also at Walmart waiting for the deals. At one point I asked Nathan if he wanted to ditch our cart and leave because it was getting that crazy. A couple hundred bucks is not worth losing your sanity over!! But we decided to stick it out and see what happened!

We were planning on walking around the store and doing other shopping until 12 but since people kept flooding in and standing on top of the things they wanted to grab first once midnight struck, it was getting harder and harder to move in the store, much less with a cart! If you can see the people in this picture, you can get an idea of just how crazy it was. There was people like this in every aisle and any space there was in the store. NO getting anywhere fast!

Well, midnight happened and you would hear a sworm of busyness start! We picked up the things we wanted to get ie: Shark steamer for $36, Kitchen Aid mixer for $146, some toys over 50% off, and a 14' trampoline for $145! While we were on the way to the check out we noticed that every cart we saw had at least 2 or 3 shop vacs in them so we decided to get one too! Must be a good deal, right?? :) It was a 5 gallon for $15.

So we made our way to the check outs and they had all 30+ lines open with each line crossing the once wide open space and going into the clothes section so we just picked a lane and waited. We were in line at 12:11 and got to the car about 12:50...not too bad but of course we had to be in the slowest line possible! Plus what made it worse was that I start getting really hot standing in line and then I started thinking about all the people there and about how I was hungry and then I thought about how I passed out 6 years ago when I was pregnant with Tiernan and all of a sudden I became dizzy...NOT good I thought! So I whipped off my coat and scarf and told Nathan to hold my purse (he loved that) and I headed to the restrooms to get a drink of water and get out of the sea of people. That helped and was good to go after that.

One thing that we couldn't believe was that the police were outside towing peoples car that weren't in an actual parking spot. How would you like that?...You had a cart full of stuff, it's 1am and you go outside and your car is gone! I'm sure there were a few angry people!

After we got back to Nathan's parents house, I went to sleep about 2am and Nathan's mom woke me up at 2:45am to head out again! This time it was Herbergers which was hardly better than Walmart, with every woman in town at this store! I don't think I'll go there again especially when I could order the deals online with free shipping! that's too crazy for me!

After there we hit up Toys r us...didn't buy anything though. Then over to the grocery store...And then over to Kmart, which I also came out of empty handed. But the interesting thing about Kmart was that we got there 5 minutes before it opened at 5am and there was a line of people about a block long and 5 people wide flowing out from the doors waiting for it to open. There was no way I was going to wait outside in close to below 0 weather for it to open so I waited in the nice warm car and once they opened the doors, Mary brought me up to the front, I got out of the car, walked right in and I was out by the time some of those people waiting in line were even in the store! I'm amazed at how some people think sometimes!!

We made it back about 5:30am and Mary made me an omlet before going to bed. I slept from 5:45 to 9:30 that morning. And that's enough Black Friday for me!!

point to ponder

2010-12-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

Chocolate??.....What chocolate???

That actually wasn't the 'point to ponder' but she is so darn cute, isn't she?? :)

Here's the real question....

"Would you hire you to manage your money?"

If the answer is "no", then there's some work that needs to be done but the great part about it is that getting on the right track is just ONE DECISION away!!

Are you ready to change?? Are you ready to take control of your finances instead of letting your money control you??

It may sound like a daunting task, but let me assure you that it is not! The hardest part of making a budget, sticking to it and knocking out debt like its a disease is deciding to get gazelle intense about it and letting NOTHING stand in your way! But watch out because once you are on a roll, you won't be stopped!!

Dave Ramsey is having a Christmas/End of the year sale on all of his books, etc and most of you know that we are huge Dave fans so I'd encourage you to go over to his website and check them out.

Also, I am always available by email to answer any questions that you may have on the road to becoming debt free! My email is dawnlegatt@msn.com and I am LOVING the emails that are still coming in from my last post I did on budgeting way back in the summer....when we lived in the rv...in a campgroud...yeah, remember those days?...yeah, me too!

Another thing that motivates us to stick with our budget and to 'live like no one else' because "if we live like no one else then we can give like no one else"...and that has to be the greatest blessing...to be able to bless others! It is so rewarding to take the focus off yourself and to give to help others, it truly is wonderful!!

So go ahead, make a plan for the new year and kick it into action! The only thing getting in your way is yourself!

Birthday

2010-11-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

Birthday Date!

I got to my parents house on Tuesday and with the winter storm coming, we weren't sure what the following day would hold.

We were wanting to spend the day at the Mall of America, just Nathan and I, while my parents watched the kids, but with freezing rain and snow expected, we didn't think the trip to the cities was worth it.

We waited until wednesday morning to decide and I actually thought that we were not going since we could have done it on Saturday if the weather had stopped us on wednesday. But at the last minute my dad suggested that we just go and have our fun. So we left home about 6am, stopped at the granite place to get a better idea about our granite selection that needs to be made on Monday and then we were off to the mall!!

The weather was still clear on our way there and we made it to the mall in an hour..not too bad! We walked around for a few minutes until the stores opened and then pretty much headed right to Nickelodeon Universe to start on our rides! It's been a loooong time since I've been on rides and I think my body knew that! After several roller coasters, log chutes and looping rides, I had a headache and it was time to stop and get something to eat!

If anyone's been at the MOA, you know it could possibly take all day to decide where to eat in that place! We finally decided on a restaurant called Cadillac Ranch. It's an American Bar and Grill that had real yummy food! During lunch, my dad called and said that the weather was taking a turn for the worse and it had been snowing up there for quite a while. We decided that after lunch we should wrap things up and think about leaving the cities since the roads could be bad.

We walked past the rides and decided to go on the log chute one last time.

That was a bad idea.

I sat in front and while on the ride, a huge wave of water came up and over the front of the log and all over my legs and lap! It was freezing and I was soaked! We actually went up to a store and looked for a new pair of jeans that I could buy off the clearance rack but we didn't find any. i went to the bathroom to try to dry them with the dryer, but that didn't work either. Oh well. I'll just walk through the mall and out to the freezing cold car with wet pants that were soaked from my hips down to my ankles in the front and then all around the butt! I actually made Nathan walk right behind me so people didn't notice as much....how embarrasing! The longer drive on the way back (due to weather) gave me more time to dry my pants on the heater in the van...hehe :)

We stopped at the furniture store on the way back and checked out tables, couches, chairs and the like. We found some nice things and it gave us a better idea of what we need for the house. After that we went to Mexican Village to eat to get my free birthday dinner and that concluded our wonderful date day!!! It was definitely a very special time for me!!

On our way to our date!

My desert at the Cadillac Ranch....mmm....

Homemade Poptarts! (Take flaky pie crust, roll out, cut into rectangles and slather some jam in between two pieces and bake!....great snack!)

Sneak peak of a part of our house ;)

Decisions, decisions, decisions
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_J7D3GTjb05k/TPGTg3_nLEI/AAAAAAAADaU/FL9F2_4Z-kg/s1600/006.JPG">

eek!

2010-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

I'm counting down the days til we go back 'home'! 2 days!!

It's been hard not being able to put up pics like I would like to on here...our internet is too slow :( So once I get to my parents house next week, I'll be glad to update y'all with some pics! Although I'm not sure if I'll be able to post any pictures of the house. Nathan has told me that he doesn't want me to post any more pictures so everyone will be 'surprised' when the house is done :) I'll ask him again next week and maybe he'll change his mind.

They are still crusin' on the house...the septic is in, well is in, electrical is finish, framing is finished, plumbing is finished, retaining wall is built, backfilling is done, lp tank is buried (yes, buried...we got an underground one...much better than the ugly big silver tank sittin' in the yard!), siding is delivered and will start whenever crew is ready, insulation starts Monday and sheetrock gets hung next Friday! Whew! I am meeting with the builder one more time a week from Monday to finish and finalize selections for granite, tile, cabinet color, cabinet hardware, etc. I'm so excited!

Other than being excited for the house, we are soooo looking forward to our date at the Mall of America, just hanging out, shopping, walking and going on the rides! It's been a loooong time since we were at the MOA and we haven't been there without the kids since way at the beginning our of dating days. I can't think of a better way I'd want to spend my (29th!!) birthday! It should be a great time!

I bought a Dyson last time I was in St Cloud and LOVE it!! Thanks to the 15+ people I talked to that have one before I got it. They all said they love theirs and that I would too, and they were right! I also bought a Shark Van then Steam at the same time but I will be bringing that one back. I love the steam part of it but the suction on the vacuum is way in the back and therefore doesn't vacuum up stuff close to cabinets, etc. Therefore, I will bring this back and get just the steamer!

Better get going for now...my 3 yr old is begging me to grab his "school work" off the shelf for him!

hot cocoa

2010-11-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

What a nice relaxing weekend! I thought I was going to be at my parents place through the weekend since the Ymca was having a 'free day' including a free zumba class that I wanted to go to but since the weather decided to get icky and snow, I figured I better make it back here before the snow. So Friday afternoon I left and came back...and I'm super glad I did because that night it started to snow here and the wind was a-blowin'! We ended up getting about 6 inches over night and the next day. Enough to make a mess and enough to keep Nathan from working on Saturday! He left for work at 5:30 and was back in bed by 6! He didn't even get a few miles down the road before he figured that he wasn't going to be making it any further. He called in and the foreman said that they'd be calling it off for the day anyway. So he had Saturday with us and today as well since they aren't working Sundays for the time being.

The kids had fun in the snow, spending as much time outside as their little soaked mittins would let them! They even got to build a snowman.

It was also a wonderful weekend to drink some hot chocolate! Here is the recipe I used for my hot chocolate!

1/3 cup water
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup sugar (you can use rapadura or sucanut to make it even more healthy!)
5 cups whole milk
1 t vanilla

Stir together water, cocoa, and sugar in saucepan and heat until boiling. Add milk and heat again til very hot. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Enjoy!!

While I was at my parents house, I spent most of the time making selections with our builder! The first day I was in town was the same day Nathan had class in the cities. He ended up leaving class by 1:00 and coming up to do the electrical walk-thru with us! It was such a help having him their for some decisions because I had no idea about some stuff but I knew Nathan would have an opinion. He spent the rest of the evening with us (checking out lighting, tile, stone) and then drove back down here that night.

The next day I met with the builder again for most of the day and went to lots of places and had LOTS of choices to make!! We checked out cultured marble, visited our builders house for ideas (for those of you who don't know, our builder just happens to be Nathan's first cousin...so it's nice getting to know him better! And he builds beautiful homes!! :) Then we checked out granite (wow, lotsa choices!), picked up our flooring samples, went home to pick up the kids and to take them to my brother's house so my sister in law could take over childcare for awhile, met back up with Steve (builder), checked out laminate counter tops, lighting, and tile.

The next day I was able to run some errands (like to pick up my Dyson and Shark vacuums!!) and then to met with Steve again for stain and paint colors, lighting and more countertops! Whew!

It was actually really fun being able to visualize some stuff that is going in our house. As of now, the shingling is done, framing and plumbing are almost done, and the electrical and heating is part way put in. This week they should be install the septic, hooking up the electric, digging the well, siding, and continuing to work on the inside! They should also be fixing the front window situations, getting those to be the right size.

We cannot wait until we can move in!!

We will be back there next week over Thanksgiving so I will be able to update more then. We will be going to my parents next Tuesday and Wednesday is my birthday so Nathan and I are going on an all-day date to the Mall of America! We are both super excited to spend some time together!!

house!!

2010-11-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Here is our house!! I was out at the site today and when I pulled up there were 10 trucks outside! The plumbers, electricians, framers and shinglers were all workin' hard! And the thought did cross my mind "I am paying ALL these people to work right now! yikes!" :) It was SOOOOO fun to see the house inside and out and see our dream coming to life! There was a mistake with the windows in the front by the lumber company and the top window in front will be changed to a smaller window since it is now 22" too long. See how it is right up against the roof? Yeah, it's not supposed ot be like that. But once that is fixed, it should be good to go!

The other thing that the lumber company added to the plans that weren't there before was vaulting our front bedrooms! It actually added some character to the rooms, making them seem much bigger than they are, and at no additional cost to us since it was a mistake, we'll take it!

I'll have more pics of the house in the next couple days since I plan on taking more and blogger's being difficult again! :)

Our kitchen when we got home from St Cloud last time....CLEAN!

3 mins after we got our stuff out of the van and into the apartment...not even kidding you. How in the world does that happen?!

Marker fun....uh...maybe I forgot to give them a piece of paper?!

Typical scene at our house when Daddy comes through the door after work...

This is just one reason why I'm so excited about the house being done...I can finally have a dresser and closet space to put the kids' clothes!! I try really hard to keep their stuff organized but when you have little kids dressing themselves, throwing what they don't want to wear aside, etc...you get this...

There, that's better....

School time...

Brayan fell asleep at the table...that rarely happens!

Tiernan with his puzzle...

I found this with Caedmon behind the couch....

...it's his yogurt. He dumped it into his bag to eat later. Once he realized I saw him behind the couch, he gives the bag to me and says "I don't want this bag anymore." Ya think?? Gross! It went through the wash and then he was happy to have it back :)

muffins

2010-11-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Why didn't I get all caught up on my blogging while I was at my parents house with internet that actually works??....I have no idea. So I'm trying it again today with posting pictures. It's loading as I type this, but it might take forever so I might have to wait until I'm back at my parents next week. Blogging is a lot more fun when I can post pictures :)

We spent the week last week at my parents house. We visited with my Grandparents, who met Ariella for the first time! She loved them and put out her arms for Grandma to pick her up right away! She also loved to bring both of them books so they could read to her. We also spent quite a bit of time out at the land, watching our house go up and meeting with our builder to do our selections (which I posted about last time). It was nice to hear this week that we were "under budget" with picking out our garage door, our flooring, and our appliances! You don't hear those words together too much when you are building a house, especially when unforseen things start happening like you need to do a mound septic system instead of a natural gravity one, which doubles the price of the septic system....or when the water level is too high for your basement so you have to raise the house up, causing you to lay more block. So it was real nice to be able to stay within our budget on those areas :)

If I can get blogger to actually upload my pictures I will post one of the house that our builder sent to us yesterday. The roof is almost done! The house really looks like it's coming together now and we are actually seeing our dream that has been on paper for so many years become reality!!

In other news....well, there really isn't any other news. We've just been hanging out and looking forward to the next couple months! I made my own pita pockets the day before yesterday, yum! I will post as soon as I get the pics to work. After I made those, I made a loaf of bread and then some breakfast burritos for supper and when Nathan got home, he walks in and says "It smells soooo good in the hallway" (of the apartment building). Thinking he'd say something about the smell of the bread or compliment me on supper, he follows it with "The neighbors are making blueberry muffins!" I guess ya can't win 'em all :)

I will wait for a few more mins for the pics.....no luck...sorry, will have to wait til next week! :)

selection day

2010-10-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

Here is what we did today:

Started at 8:30am with a meeting at the plumbers place to pick out tubs, faucets, sinks, etc.

To cabinet guys place to discuss cabinets, colors, style, etc.

To flooring place to pick out carpet, laminate & vinyl.

To the lumber company to pick out siding-soffit-facia colors, door styles, front door, other exterior doors, trim size and style, railing, door knobs, and shingles.

Drove around to check out homes to get ideas on colors for stucco and stone.

Went to pick out our garage door and opener

Went to paint place to pick out stain color for doors and trim and look at paint color options

Went to appliance store to pick out appliances--fridge, range top, oven, microwave, dishwasher, washer, dryer, & a chest freezer

Drove out to land to check out the house and see if the guys made any progress!! Here's what we saw.....

Front of the house....Nathan's standing in the garage.

Our view out of the window in the living room

Looking at the master bedroom

Back of the house...getting dark out!

View into living room, dining, kitchen area

grasshoppers

2010-10-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

(My pics for this post are not loading...surprise, surprise...so I will continue to work at it and when they do, I will be sure to share! So sorry it's not as 'exciting' without pictures...haha :)

Sorry, sorry, sorry!! I do have great intentions to blog more often, it just doesn't seem to happen!! For example, last night I was all ready to blog. "I'm going to get caught up!" I thought. Well, when it was time to sit down, I started helping Nathan with his workbooks and an hour and a half later, it was time to go to bed! So I didn't get any blogging done but I can identify and name most all of the lineman's tools! :) I do have to say that he got a score of 100% on both sections I worked with him on...so I might just have given myself another job each night :)

So obviously the big thing around here still is the building of our house!! It is hard to be away from the construction site, only because we cannot see it whenever we want to! Our builder does do a great job of sending us pictures, almost everyday so that has been awesome. My dad was also out there the other day and he took a few pics so they were nice to see. The process has been going great, only one surprise so far. The water level in the ground was up a lot higher than we had expected and that left us with no choice but to raise the level of the house. They hardly had to dig at all to make our look-out rambler, which means they will have to fill in a ton in the front of the house to make the front of the house underground. For example, when looking at the block on the front of the house, you can see an opening that a window is supposed to go in. It looks as though it would be the level of a normal window, but that specific window is an egress window!! We are super excited to go and see it next week!..it should be mostly framed by then!

The kids and I have been loving the beautiful weather as we try and make it out on a walk every day. We usually walk to the grocery store or the dollar store, which are right next to each other. It's fun to just walk through the dollar store but I did have to threaten yesterday that if I heard "mom, can we get this?" one more time, we wouldn't be going back to the store for a long time. :) In order to get to the store, we need to walk through town and then we take a walking path which takes us almost right to the grocery store. While we are on the walking path, we usually see tons of grasshoppers. Yesterday the kids decided that they wanted to catch the grasshoppers so we brought a glass jar and caught about 8 or 9 grasshoppers! They saved them until Dad got home and then they let them go outside :)

Puzzles are another thing we continue to keep busy with! The kids LOVE puzzles! Tiernan will sit for hours and put puzzles together...yes, my Tiernan :) Brayan can do 25 piece puzzles without help, Caedmon has 'graduated' to doing 100 piece puzzles by himself (a Toy Story one in particular :) and Tiernan flies through the 100 piece puzzles, even putting together 200 piece ones with little supervision! I love the kids loving puzzles!...great eye-hand coordination skills, attention spand skills, trial and error skills, and they are QUIET! But the down size is that they are a pain if they don't get put away properly. Just a minute with a little sister playing in the puzzles can create a days worth of work putting them back in their correct boxes and counting all the pieces, esp if you have over 20 100 piece puzzles...not that I would know anything about that!! ;)

Nathan fixed the other side of our couch...remember the recliner on one side didn't work? Yeah, it works now! So our $50 couch from the garage sale has 2 recliners and we love it!

I am almost done building my website for my business and once I think I have it mostly complete, I will share it with you! We are super excited about it and we hope to be a blessing to people! Along those same lines, I am still sooooooo excited to go to Dave Ramsey's counselor training one day. It didn't work out this fall to go b/c we up-and-moved right before the training and since we live a little farther from Tennessee now and I can't just drive there as quick as I could before, it'll take a little more planning. But I WILL GO! In the meantime, I continue to help and advise those to contact me through email and once we are settled in our home, I plan on being able to meet with them as well! I get so excited when I see people starting to win with money, it's such a blessing! By the way, I think I've mentioned it before, but if you have an iphone, you can get Dave's free app and listen to certain calls and get your daily fix of 'what would Dave do' without having to listen to his radio program :) I love it!

Next week when we go home, we will also be winterizing our camper and putting it in storage for the winter time. Come spring, we will take everything out of it (because we'll finally have a place to put everything!), clean it up real nice, and will be putting it up for sale. If you, or someone you know, is in need or want of a super nice 5th wheel, let me know!! I seriously have not seen another camper with as nice of a layout as our camper! I've looked at a lot of them online, even the brand new 2011s and it seems as though most of them are still made with the ugly blue and gray typical 'camper' decor! I can't believe it! Ours is beautiful neutral earth tones! Another thing is the height of our ceiling. Most campers have a lower ceiling, making it feel a lot smaller inside. Ours has a super high ceiling, making it feel really spacious! And one last thing that I think is truly unique with our RV is the kitchen layout. The campers I see online or in person always have the kitchen sink in the corner with about 3 inches on one side of it and then the stove on the other side, leaving you with ZERO counter space. The way our kitchen is with everything along the wall leaves you with a ton (in rv standards!) of counter space on the end! So anyway, if know of someone who is interested, let me know! :)

Well, it's time to make lunch....ya know because it's been a whole 14 minutes since my kids have eaten...and they are starving!

construction zone

2010-10-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

The start of our home!!

Can't wait to see it in person!

cops were called

2010-10-11T19:19:00.000-07:00

So I figured it was about time I made myself do a post :)

It's not that I don't want to do a post, it's just that I seem to never have time to do one. And when I do have time, I have better things to do...like sleep :) Plus I have a horribly slow connection so it makes for posting pictures etc a struggle because I have to wait forever for them to load. So anyway, that's why it's been so long.....sorry if ya missed me :)

So LOTS has been happening lately around here....Here is the low-down....

1) OUR HOUSE IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING BUILT!!! YAY!!! FINALLY!!! We broke ground last Friday and construction is under-way! When I go home in a couple weeks, I'll be sure to take picture of the progress thus far and post them. We are so excited to have our house, it's still weird to think that it's actually happening!

2) Nathan is getting more used to his work. He is learning alot and after working 98 per week, they have decided to "drop" the hours to "only" 7 days a week, 12 hour days....instead of 14. 12s is still alot, but WAY better than 14. Instead of 6am to 8pm, he is now working 7am-7pm. It helps that it's light out when he starts working. He's got his first class tomorrow that he needs to drive to the cities for. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.

3) Here's the story of our first run-in with the police because of our kids... So a few days ago the boys were playing outside on this giganic pile of huge boulders they have behind the apartment building. Since I don't really like them on there because Nathan hasn't checked out the safety of it yet, I went outside with them to tell them to come down until Daddy says it's safe. They said okay and came down and we went to play by our patio door. While I went inside for a couple mintues, I heard a car door shut. Since we live on a dead end road, there is no reason for anyone to park outside our door so I immediately went to the door to see who it was. A cop. A police car was parked outside with a policeman walking up the grassy area to our patio door. I went outside to greet him and he said he got a call that some kids were on the rock pile. I said they were mine and that I told them to stay off until Dad checked it out. He didn't really care about the kids being on there, he was just answering a call. As we were chatting, a lady drove up, got out of her car, walked up, introduced herself to the cop and said she was the one that place the call and then looked at me and said in the nastiest voice "That is a dangerous place! They could loose their leg...or die!" And then she walked away! The cop looked and me and shugged his shoulders. He waited for her to leave and then said "I think she was a little more upset about it than I am". I told him I would keep the kids off but they were just being boys who like to climb anything high. He answered me "Oh, I hear ya...I've been there. Have a good day". So yeah...my 4 and 5 yr olds are already getting in trouble with the cops...it's definitely time to be out in the country! (To add to the trouble the kids are getting us in...the manager said today in passing that she's heard from the main guy that the guy who mows the lawn keeps mowin over rocks that are outside our patio door and it's ruining his equipment!. Oh geez...well, pick up the rocks first! What can I say...My boys like to climb and they like rocks. I guess I will have to keep them inside....Is our house done yet?! :)

4) We were getting closer to telling people that we were expecting our next child but last Thursday night I miscarried baby #6. It was early in the pregnancy, only in the start of my 6th week. Everything is back to normal and I feel great so that is a blessing. I was a little disappointed though as I was looking forward to having an late spring/early summer baby! Plus, my good friend Meggan is also pregnant and our due date were only 11 days apart. But we can rejoice knowing that baby #6 has joined our baby #2 in the presence of the Lord and that we will meet both of them one day!

5) There's also been something else that I have been working hard on but I'm going to keep it a secret until it gets a little closer. I'll just say that it's a business that I am going to be starting once we have the house and it's our hope that we can one day get "Daddy home" so he doesn't have to work on the road! So more to come on that later!

Well, I think that's all for now. I'm watching the Vikings, kind of, in the background as I type this but it's pretty pathetic. We now have Moss back on the team so they were supposed to do so well with Favre, Moss and Peterson but it's 9-0 Jets....not lookin' so hot for the Vikes. Nathan's going to bed so I better head too. Hope to update sooner than later and with some pics next time!

tub time

2010-09-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here is the pic that I tried to post last time about the kids doing their school work :)

And Ariella thought that she should play in the tub....with water in it....with her clothes on.... I remember that there is a picture of myself about her age sitting in the tub, with the water, with my pajamas on....guess what goes around comes around, huh?? :)

98 hours

2010-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband who is willing to work hard to provide for his family!! This job that he is currently on has the hardest hours he's worked yet, and if you've been following my blog for quite some time, you'd know that he's had some tough hours before! This job is schedule for 6 days a week, 14 hours a day. If that wasn't enough, he said last night that he heard they were working Sunday and could be going to 7 days. That's 84 hours a week currently and 98 hours a week if he works Sundays too. That's two full time jobs and a part time one to boot! They start at 6am and get done at 8pm. He's got just enough time to get home, shower, eat, read the kids a story (the ones who are still up) and get to bed. Oh yeah...but then there is all his books, workbooks and exams to study for. Ugh..good thing it's supposed to only go until February!

Here are some pictures from recently:

At the hotel

The poles and building at Nathan's climbing school

Snugglin' with Gma Barb after bath

The moving trailer, which had tons of room left inside...and the kids helping unload it

Family picture on Saturday

The $50 garage sale couch

All doing some school work yesterday morning :)

new home again.

2010-09-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry to keep everyone hanging!! We survived the last day at the hotel and traveled back up to my parents house for about a week. Then we moved where Nathan is working.....in....southern MN! We are just minutes from the Iowa border where he is working in a substation for the wind towers. Since it is a little over 3 hours from our 'home', we decided to get an apartment down here so Nathan could be close to work and so we could live with him while our house is being built.

So here we are, in a brand new apartment building in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment. Yes, it's only a 2 bedroom and yes, they 'broke' the rules for us, but to us....it feels like a castle!! It's AMAZING how much space we feel like we have! I can't even imagine what the house will feel like! I LOVE LOVE LOVE how much space I have in my kitchen and CANNOT get over how much room I have in my fridge! I could actually get ALL the groceries I wanted (or needed) at the store without having to think about if it would fit or not! ie) I could get the BIG container of the sour cream rather than the little tiny ones all the time! :) It's the little things that like that make me excited :)

We are on the main level, with a patio door facing no neighbors. All our other windows face the river, and the apartment across the hall is vacant. It actually is a nice set up.

Again, my parents helped us move and get settled. I'm not sure what I would do without them when it comes time to moving, they've always been such a big help. Thank you mom and dad for all your time and hard work!! Each time we move, our trailer/truck that we move in gets smaller and smaller. This time we used a 5x8 enclosed trailer and we had a ton of room still in it. All we brought was our bed (box spring and mattress) and then a bunch of totes...not much of anything else. We use a card table and chairs for our dining room table, ariella sleeps in a pack n play, and the boys are each on a blow up mattress we are borrowing from my parents. Works out great!

Yesterday I happened to stop by a garage sale and at the last second I saw a couch they had for sale. Long story short, I bought it, we took it apart, put it in the van and brought it home! It's super comfy, matches well, and has 2 recliners on the end! (although we still need to get one to work...stuck or something) but for $50 it does the job well. Then I picked up a lamp at Walmart and a little tv stand at family dollar and our place is furnished! :)

No pictures this post, I need to load them off my camera. Just wanted to update everyone saying that we are here and that yes, we did survive the flooding down here. Although my parking spot right outside our patio was taken when I got home from the store by a sandbag and plastic wall...but thankfully it was never actually needed. The water started going back down today.

Anyway, all for now!

one. more. day.

2010-09-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

It's finally Friday and we have one...more...day...here at the hotel. Whew. At least we've been getting a good nights sleep since we feel like we are sleeping at home. If you remember that we stayed at a Fairfield Inn hotel on our way out to VA last winter and slept so well that we bought the mattress?? So we have a marriott mattress in our camper, which is the same mattress that we are sleeping on now...so no waking up all sore and tired from the hotel beds!! sweet deal!

What we've also enjoyed here is that we are right next to the airport, which makes for some pretty sweet looking take-offs and landings. Watching planes has got to be one of my favorite things to do...always has been...just don't make me get on the plane :)

Nathan passed climbing school yesterday which was a huge relief to him so he didn't have to think about it anymore. The only test he has left is passing pole-top rescue which didn't seem like a big deal to him. 3 out of the 10 guys in his class are gone due to 2 dropping out and 1 getting injured the first day of class. So today is the big day that we find out where he will be working next week!!

Will it be in southern mn? Will it be around the cities? Will it be around our 'home turf'? My Grandpa thinks he'll get sent up to Baudette since there are some lineman working up there, but Nathan says he'll quit if he's sent there...hehe...just kidding, he probably wouldn't quit...but Baudette isn't exactly where we want to live. I would just like to keep Baudette in my mind as a nice little town we'd drive through on our way to Grandmas and Grandpas :)

So for now I sit and wait for the call or text from Nathan telling me of our next location....

With all that said, we still are pretty sure we are going to be building our house this fall regardless of where the job is. This will give us a central locale for the family and by the time the house is finished Nathan will probably be on a different job anyway. Plus it gets us started on our dream of getting the development going. So needless to say, we are very excited and can't wait to finally be in a house that is ours!!

So sweet...when they are sleeping :)

Ariella's First Year

2010-09-15T12:48:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: Realized that if you click on this link you'll be able to view the book a lot better :) Then you can give me your feedback...

Please check out Ariella's book I made using Mixbook.com!! Tell me of any errors you might find before I print it! Thanks!! (I noticed some of the page is cut off of the slide show...but you get the point :)

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

room #2

2010-09-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought I would say that yesterday actually went really well. And, it did, for the most part. But there was this tiny thing that happened during the afternoon...

The two youngest were playing in the bathroom. More specifically, the toilet.

I didn't actually see it happen, but I'm pretty postitive, based on previous experience, that when Caedmon went potty later and said that "the toilet has a lot of water in it", it had something to do with Brayan and Ariella playing in there eariler.

I tried flushing and sure enough...clogged. I called the front desk who brought me a plunger. Plunged it...nothing. Nathan plunged it...nothing. Still clogged. We told the front desk who kindly gave us another room. I asked for one on the first floor (we were on the 3rd) and there was one open right across from the dining room! perfect!

What wasn't fun as moving all our stuff! Toys, food, refrigerator, clothes, papers, computers...everything needed to go. We loaded up the wheely-thing they have to help move your stuff and made a couple trips downstairs. After we got settled in here, there was really no time to do anything else....we went to bed.

But before all this happened, I took the kids outside while housekeeping cleaned our room. Holy smokes did that make a big difference! I don't know why I didn't have them clean it the first two days, I thought since we were staying there we didn't need it. But she vacuumed, clean the bathroom, etc and pyschologically it helped so much to have a freshly cleaned room! So we stayed outside and walked down the street to look at some worm things the kids found. It kept them busy anyway! What will today bring?? I'm kind of afraid to ask....

Checking out the worms

Where's Ariella going?

Too bright out!

second day.

2010-09-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Well, thankfully I can actually say that I think yesterday went better than the first. The initial excitement of the hotel stay died down a little bit and the kids weren't as wild. I even ventured downstairs with all of them to get breakfast in the morning and they did extremely well...just sitting at the table patiently for me to bring them all their stuff. I even had a guy comment this morning on how well behaved my kids were...haha, if he only knew! :)

I really wish we could open the window in here more than an inch though as it's starting to get really stuffy in the room. I've had a headache both yesterday and today and I think it's because the air blowing into the room from their ac unit smells like really stinky feet. Not exactly a smell that you want blowing in your room for hours on end...or days on end for that matter!!

Meals have been going really well though. With a little preparation before we left, I figured out 2 meals a day (since breakfast would be provided by the hotel). The first night I made tacos. I just browned the hamburger before with taco seasoning and then put them together when we were ready to eat them, complete with soft shells, hard shells, sour cream, olives, refried beans and cheese. (we have a fridge in our room). Yesterday we had chicken, rice, celery & carrots in chicken stock in the crock pot. That was yummy! Just throw in the stuff in the morning and ready for supper! Tonight I am making pork roast in the crock, along with potatoes and carrots. A few more meals I have planned are quesadillas, chili in the crock, and sandwiches. Not too bad for staying in a hotel if I do say so myself! :)

Trying to 'wind-down' before bed with a little movie...

They ate their lunch in the 'fort'.

And as far as getting those darn knots figured out...Nathan figured them out last night. He called me on the way home yesterday and says "I have bad news."...then continues to explain that he has to tie 4 more eye splices and then has to tie back slices. I'm like, okay...we are staying in a hotel, our camper is sitting at a friends house, we don't know where we will be moving and we are waiting to build our house....please don't start a sentence with "I have bad news" if it only has to do with knot tying!! But he came home, got right at it, and figured them out with no trouble. Whew! I wasn't too excited about staying up late again staring at a piece of yellow slippery rope!

Well, I think we are going outside for a walk, although I did just realize that Nathan has the van, which means he also has the stroller....guess we won't be going too far!

first day.

2010-09-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well the first full day at the hotel is over...but I'm not sure if I will be able to handle 6 more!!! I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking and I probably should have taken my Dad's sugestion to stay at their house while Nathan's at climbing school. But, I'm here with the kids and now we'll just have to make due!

Nathan came home last night a little exhausted with all the material that he received. We spent the whole night, until almost 1am, trying to tie eye splices. That is a kind of knot where you have a 3 strand braided rope which you loop around and weave it back into itself...if that makes any sense. Anyway, we did that until late and then we were up at 6am tying more, trying to get it down-pat.

Supposedly Nathan has to climb a pole 65 ft in the air, then tie the knot while he's up there and can only come down once the knot is tied....so we practiced, a lot. The only problem was that sometimes we tied it just perfectly and other times we messed up along the way but weren't sure what we did...so it got kind of frustrating. Nathan was second-guessing his decision to join the apprenticeship, to which I just smiled because in the past he has doubted himself in the first few days of something new (which almost all of us do!) but then he ends up being real good at it. For example, when we first started on the road he was driving semi. He had never driven semi or shifted a big truck like that. He didn't think he'd be able to do it. Well, guess what? After a few days, weeks, he could drive and shift that thing in his sleep. Same goes for being an operator. Once he started operating the "big stuff" (cranes, dozers, etc) he had second guesses...now, he can operate pretty much anything and the lineman who he's operated for lately have said he's been the best operator that has work for them before. So there ya go. He'll do fine...it might just take a few days to get the confidence level up.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel.....here are a few pics of the day yesterday...

two 3 yr olds

2010-09-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

So this is a couple weeks late (big surprise, right??) but I wanted to post a pic of my (then) 2 three year olds!

And last year, this was my then two 2 yr olds....they grow fast!

And I thought I had a pic of when they were 1, but I guess not! :)

For now we are staying in a hotel in IA while Nathan is at climbing school. Today is his first day so we'll see how it goes!....and we'll see how we held up in a hotel room all day. Hopefully it'll be good seeing how I have 6 more days of it!! yikes!! More to come soon since I have nothing else to do this week! :)

birthday party

2010-09-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Since hurricane Earl put a damper on going to the ocean on Saturday, we decided to make a trip to the DC zoo for Caedmon's birthday! It was PERFECT weather...upper 70s, sunny, and a cool breeze! Naomi met us out there and we checked out the animals....well, that is as many animals as we could see. A lot of them weren't outside or they were huddled in the corner in the shade or something...it could have been a little better in that way, but I think the kids still had fun!

Here are some pics from our day....

We are now at a hotel in Crawfordsville, IN after a LOOOOOONG day in the car. (And you know it's been a long day when you have to ask the lady at the front desk of the hotel which time zone we're in. And to make things even more weird, her answer started with "I think we are in....". Excuse me?? You THINK??) We drove for about 11 hours, 12 hours time. We stopped once, after 5 hours and 45 mins. Pretty good seeing how we are driving in 2 vehicles and have a gazillion kids under 6. But like I have said before, our kids are THE GREATEST car riders, not hardly saying a PEEP the whole time!! I had to keep checking to make sure Caedmon was still in my van b/c he was so quiet!! NO complaiing from them the entire time, it was grand!

Anyway, I'm off for now...time to LIE DOWN and get off my backside...i've sat on it enough today!! :)

mn or bust.

2010-09-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

Sorry for keeping you all guessing.....but YES we ARE moving....and MINNESOTA is the state!!

We don't know where yet, we will find that out in about a week and a half. So here's the scoop...

Nathan will be changing careers so-to-speak and going from being an operator for the lineman to being one of the lineman! He got called to join the lineman apprenticeship program (he was interviewed for it etc about 2-1/2 yrs ago) in MN. Which means that for the next 3-1/2 to 4 years he will be working only in the state of MN, doing work for different contractors so he can get all his required hours in.

What this ALSO means is that we are going to BUILD OUR HOUSE!!!! YAY!!! Even if we move around in the warmer months in our camper if Nathan's on work that is not within driving distance, at least we will have a warm house in the winter and a central locale for everything.

We are WAY excited!

There are MANY many many unknowns...for example, we don't know where, for how long, for who Nathan will be working for...whether or not we will be able to travel with him (which we will make top priority)...heck, we don't even know if Nathan will LIKE the apprenticeship....but I guess it's better to find out that he doesn't than to wonder for the rest of his life 'what if?'

We plan to leave on Sunday, making the trip back to MN. We will be there a few days and then travel to IA for training for a week....yes, me and the kids will get to stay in a hotel for 7 straight days...yippee :)...and then we will travel back to MN to where ever his job is located by (hopefully central MN!) and hope to find a trailer court or somewhere to park our RV until it's too cold to live in it (or until our house is done...whichever comes first! :)

Which, speaking of weather, did you know that today it's 95 degrees out here and in the 10 day forecast in MN TWICE it said a HIGH of 64?!?!?! Are you kidding me?! That's 30 degrees difference! Looks like we will say 'goodbye summer, hello winter' and skip fall all together!

So with that said, we will be busy packing and getting the camper ready (but NOTHING compared to getting the whole HOUSE ready! Nice!) so I will try to update soon (as I do still have lots to blog about from this past week) Time just slips away....

Minnesota or bust!

Moving??

2010-08-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Could we be moving in a couple weeks?? We know the state but wouldnt know the location or city until we move. Nice huh?? Stay tuned to find out!! We need to give a decision by 10am tomorrow. Eeeek! Exciting!!

stuff.

2010-08-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

I just gotta say this quick before I forget.....THE best thing that happened to me during my dreaded trip to Walmart with my sister-in-law (I just don't like Walmart)....I WAS CARDED FOR BUYING A RATED R MOVIE!! LOL! Yes, that's right. When the guy rang it up at the counter (it was one of those $5 movies), the screen on the cash register was flashing and it wouldn't let him scan another item until he answered the question. It said "Is the customer 17 years of age?" He read it, looked at me and then said "Can I see some ID?" Hahaha... Sarah says "She's got 4 kids!" And apprently I can still pass as a high schooler. We laughed and the guy made a comment about how he goes hunting in Ely Minnesota. :) It was a good time.

Now back to my original post......
___________________________________________________________________________________

We were looking back on our blog books last night (I make my blog into a hardcover book by the year using blurb.com...LOVE it, it makes for an awesome journal!) and I realized that I wrote a lot more in each post than I do now. I would write about what the kids were doing, what we were doing in detail, along with posting pics and descriptions. I just don't have that kind of time anymore! I wish I did as I want to keep as many memories written down as I can, but it seems as though as soon as I do have time to do anything, I'm so wiped out that I'd rather do my reading with Nathan and go to bed!

My day starts at 6:00am when I get up and shortly after, about 6:30, is when the boys wake up. 6:40 Nathan leaves for work and I start making breakfast for the kids. From then on it's constant running, cleaning, cooking, baking, shopping, wiping butts, refereeing, teaching, disciplining, playing, reading, and on and on and on. At about 9pm the kids finally settle down and (mostly) stay in their room and drift off to sleep. Then I finish any picking up or cleaning the kitchen that still needs to be done and it's my "free time". Well since it's after 9pm now, I don't have much energy to do anything. I manage to either read, spend time with Nathan, or just go to bed. All to start it over again in the morning!

Some might say "well, at least you have nap time!" HA! Ariella does nap, and that is nice to have one down for a couple hours but the boys rarely nap, usually only when daddy's home. So anyway, all this to say that I know I'm 'behind' on my posts (as I do have a gazillion of them floating around my head!) but hang in there with me, I will try to eventually post it all :)

Well my last post was about the peaches that we got from the neighbors tree and how I thought we were going to be dehydrating them all...but I was wrong! We canned them! That second batched that I picked quick with the kids I ended up freezing. Which was funny in itself because our freezer is not big enough to set a pan in it so we can flash freeze them before putting them into bags. So I ended up putting them on regular plates lined with parchment paper on top of all our stuff and freezing them that way. It's a good thing we didn't have a lot otherwise we would have never been able to freeze them! We got a few quart bags full.

Then came the fun part. We went over to the tree one night after Nathan was done working and picked the whole tree. It wasn't a very big tree but we got a good amount of peaches. (I completely forgot to take pictures while we picked...I was probably more concerned with not getting stung by a honey bee as they were sworming everywhere and there were some peaches that had 20-30 bees on one peach!)

I read about canning and what I needed to get (I have never canned anything before, except jam twice...which, by the way, the stuff that I did the other day is AWESOME!! SO yummy!!) so I went and bought the right equipment and I was set. The first day I did 3 quarts of peaches canned in honey water!

The next day we were going over to Nathan's sister's house to hang out and do some laundry (which is a WHOLE 'nother post soon! :) so I decided to bring all the canning stuff over there since she has a WAY bigger kitchen than I do! So away I went canning with some help from Sarah and the kids were occupied with their cousins. I canned another 6 and a half quarts! We are so excited to actually have real fresh peaches!

The next thing I tackeld today was canning tomato soup! I got the tomatoes from some people at church and took on the project in the camper. I have to say that it is THE best tomato soup I have ever had!!!!! So good I wanted to share the recipe with you in case you (or someone you know!) has tomatoes growing out of their ears that they don't know what to do with! It's sooooo simple and it has ZERO sugar in it, making it EXTREMELY healthy for you! And even though it doesn't have sugar, it is still super sweet and sooo good!

Tomato Soup:

5 lbs chopped tomatoes
1 large-ish onion
2 stalks chopped celery
5T butter
1-1/2 t salt

Put all ingredients in pot and simmer for 2 hours. Put in blender til smooth. Strain through strainer as you pour into clean jars to can. Hot water bath for 30 mins! Voila! You have awesome tomato soup! (It made 2 and a half quarts)

Our next dilema is what to do when we run out of room to store our jars after we can everything! We still have a few feet of room at the top of our slide, but once our neighbors pears are ready, we might have to rent a storage shed! :)

Who woulda thought this could be used for storage?!? Works for me!

____________________________________________________________________________________

Nathan was trying to do push-ups....the boys thought he needed an extra 97 pounds :)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Watchin' the horses....

peaches.

2010-08-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Moving to a **HOT** climate has some advantages...like being able to see a peach tree for the first time in real life! And even more exciting is being able to EAT peaches straight from one of those trees! Our ever-so-generous neighbor (who has the horse farm) has said that they don't use any of their peaches so we can have as many as we'd like. We've been waiting in anticipation as we checked on them every week or so. Yesterday we found that they were actually ready to eat! We picked some that we thought looked good...and OH they were SO good! Plump, juicy, mmmmmm.... We would love to freeze a whole bunch but since our freezer can hold about 3 things, we decided to dehydrate most of them so we'd have a load ofpeach fruit snacks in our pantry. And I am again amazed at how much smaller a dehydrated piece of food is verses it's hydrated counterpart! But it's perfect for us because we have very limited space!! Bring on the peaches!! (And today we picked a whole 'nother bucket which I plan on dehydrating again! (Or I'll make some jam...which I did this morning with strawberries! 11 jars! Yippee!)

What we brought home last night....don't they look amazing?!

Ready for the dehydrator...

This is what is left after dehydrating....this is a quart size bag.

Off subject, but this is a little glimpse of what my kitchen looked like yesterday when I got home from the grocery store while trying to get the kids fed for lunch. Disaster area!

Ariellas first word

2010-08-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I just have to share this super cute video!!! Ariella has said her first word & I was able to catch it on tape!! Since she's our first little girl, I've been looking forward to her saying things like "baby" and "doll" but that hasnt't happened yet. Do you know what her first word was?! None other than the 3 syllable "basketball"!!! Do you think she's got 3 older brothers or what??

The video catches her saying it quite a few times, in which she usually says something like "glah blahg laga basketball" so it sounds more like she's trying to say a sentence :). Right at the end of the video she says it the clearest after I ask her what this is. She says "bah-sket-ball"! :). Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWrixAkeFMY

date night.

2010-08-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Whew!

Well, lots has been going on, but for this post I will focus on the highlight of the weekend....we went on a kid-less date!!!!!!

It was the first time we have ever hired a babysitter to watch our kids, ever. We've left them with other moms so I could run to appts and Gma and Gpa have watched them on occasion and we did go on a date back in April when Nathan's sister and family was kind enough to watch the kids for us, but other than that, we haven't actually paid anyone to watch them...that is, until last Saturday!

A super sweet 18 yr old girl from our church was going to be house-sitting at the same house that we stayed at for a week in July and we thought it would work out perfect to bring the kids over there instead of them having to stay in the camper. So that's what we did! And actually, since Nathan's sister Naomi was coming over in the morning, we brought them over there for a few hours during the am so that Naomi and I could run errands kid-free! We couldn't believe all the places we were able to run in and out of, and in record time!

We picked up the kids around noon, brought them home, put Ariella down for her nap and then once Nathan got home from work (he got off a little early), we brought them back over around 5 and we were FREE!! :) Besides the one time we left ALL the kids with Nathan's sister back in April, we had not been on a kid-less date since BEFORE Ariella was born! (She's 16 mos old!) So it was about time!

But it was so weird bc we didn't even know what to do! We started by strolling the downtown area of Culpeper. There are cute little shops and lots of restaurants. It was a beautiful night out, a lot cooler than it has been, so it was great just walking hand in hand. There was actually a time where we found ourselves just staning in the middle of the sidewalk, not saying anything and not moving. We really were just in awe of the fac that we didn't have 4 kids pulling us in all different directions and having to keep them off the street, etc. So we just enjoyed that peace and stood there quietly for a few mins :) Although we checked out some of the restaurant menus during our walk, we didn't find anything that grabbed our attention. A lot of those places serve greek/mediterranean/european food and half of the stuff we had no idea what it was so we were thinking somewhere "American" would probably be better :)

We ended up at Ruby Tuesday. Which, by the way, is a restaurant that neither of us had been to! And the funny thing, right under their "Ruby Tuesday" sign was the phrase "Fresh, Simple, American Food" HA! Perfect! Just what we were looking for! :) I ordered the spinach and artichoke dip for an appetizer and then a shrimp alfredo pasta thing for my entree. Both were amazing. Nathan ordered wings and steak. Typical.

After that we ran a couple errands...went shopping for romantic stuff like, ya know, toilet paper, laundry soap and sandwich bags. What? That's not romantic?? Well, it's necessity, I guess! Then we went to a clothing store that I never shop at bc it's way to expensive (I prefer the cute thrift and consignment stores!) and we spent and hour and a half there were I tried on a gazillion different outfits that Nathan was picking out for me! It was so much fun, and we stayed until they closed. We ended up leaving with $160 worth of stuff (holy cow!)....ONLY to have me go back the next day and return $105 of it :) It was still fun.

We left there and went to the new cold stone creamery that just opened in town and shared an ice cream while sitting outside in the beautiful weather. By now it was 9:30pm and it was time to head back to pick up the kiddos. When we got there, Ariella was sleeping in her pack n play, brayan was zonked out on the couch and Tiernan and Caedmon were still up watching Tom and Jerry.

They missed us and we missed them...kinda :) But it was sure nice to have some time to spend with my husband alone. I didn't even mind the $10/hr it cost us to hire the babysitter, it was well worth it...and I'm sure we are going to be calling her again soon.

Just as a last note...I talked with the dad of the girl who watched the kids today (they are friends from church) and he said that the first thing she said about the kids once she got home was that they were so good! I'm like..."huh? MY kids?!" :) We'll see if she still thinks that way once she watches them at the camper. It's a lot different when you are at someone else's house who has a bazillion toys that you don't have! But she did say that they obeyed and cleaned up real nice, stuff like that. So that's always nice to hear. Makes the 'date' that much better!!

__________________________________________________________________________________

Random pics.....

While we were at the grocery store, I told Brayan (who was running around) that he better come back and sit down with his hands on his lap. Of course I was meaning ON the cart (they have a bench that the kids sit on) but being the little stinker that Brayan is, he just sat down right on the ground and put his hands in his lap. Well, I guess he listened since I didn't specify where to sit...but he was still doing it in defiance bc he knows where he should sit! It was cute though...I had to chuckle!

Ariella in the "bath"...which she actually likes now, took her awhile!

Look at how long this girls' hair is!! It's a good ways past her shoulders when it's wet and I comb it out...so much more fun than the boys' hair! :)

yellow squash, anyone?

2010-08-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a bunch of yellow squash and had NO IDEA what to do with it?! It seems as though a LOT of people plant this in their garden, and then give most of it away because they have so much and don't know what to do with it! Well, we would LOVE to have that problem, but since the campground doesn't exactly have ample room for a garden, we'll have to wait to plant our own. BUT..we were blessed with a WHOLE bag full of yellow squash from a friend from church! Now, before I would have been thinking 'uh...what in the world am I going to do with this?!' but since we've been living our 'no high fructose corn syrup, no artificial colors, no msg, no packaged anything' lifestyle, it's been so fun to incorporate different veggies in mostly anything! Here is what I did with the yellow squash....

Added it to:
1) Lasanga--just chopped it up and put it in the sauce
2) Pizza --sliced it and placed it on homemade pizza as you would with pepperoni
3) Speghetti --same with lasanga
4) a Mexican style skillet--with chicken, onions, peppers, garlic, and salsa.
5) Alfredo--with brocolli, green onions, tomatoes and angel hair pasta...mmm...

6)Sauted it with onions, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes...yum!
7) Ate 'em fresh like a cucumber

8)and my favorite....made BREAD! Here is the awesome yellow squash recipe I came up with that we think is soooooo yummy! You can also use zuchinni substituted for the yellow squash.

Yellow Squash or Zuchinni Bread

3 eggs
2 t. vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 c honey
just under 1/2 cup coconut oil
just under 1/2 cup olive oil

2 c whole wheat flour
1/2 t. baking powder
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
1 t salt

2 heaping cups (peeled) shredded yellow squash or zuchinni

Directions:
Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl. Set aside. Mix next 5 ingredients together in small bowl. Add small bowl to large bowl. Mix. Stir in yellow squash/zuchinni. Bake at 350 for 50 mins. I make this into 2 smaller loafs (in regular size loaf pans, just doesn't get as high) and keep it in the fridge. LOVE this bread cold! Freezes AWESOME!

Enjoy that yellow squash!!

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Here is a couple things the boys like doing outside.

Playing in the itsy bitsy sandbox I made. Remember this pool? It's the one Ariella brought to the beach! Well, not the exact one, but for $1.88, we got two :) Plus some sand for $2.50 at Lowes and it makes for hours of fun! (Minus when they track it inside all over the camper...then that's not so fun for mom!)

"Painting"

We bought a pack of cheap paintbrushes (3 for $3) at the dollar store, gave them a bucket of water and a board and away they went! They love to "paint"...and mom loves it too! No mess!...except when they dump the water...but let's not think about that!

one of those days.

2010-08-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of day I've had, just so you know......

Yesterday I went to Nathan's sister's house to visit, vacuum out my car (it's tradition to do that while I'm there since I can't here!), let the boys play on the trampoline and with their cousins, chat and watch movies, and do some laundry!! Doing laundry in a 'normal' washer is, like I've said before, sooooo incredibly amazing to me!!! I brought all my sheets and blankets over and made up the clean, fresh beds last night before we tucked the kids in.

Today Caedmon napped in our room and today he peed during nap. Which meant our clean fresh sheets were not so clean and fresh anymore. He even managed to get it on our top sheet and it went through to the mattress pad...nothing I could even salvage!

Then after I finished cleaning the dishes from supper, I went into the boys' room where Ariella was and saw that she had dug into her poopy diaper and smeared it all over Brayan's (clean) sheets! She actually took a monster truck and drove it through the poop and then drove the truck around his bed, over his blankets and even on his pillow case! Are you kidding me?!?

Ugh! So after getting her cleaned up, I ripped off the sheets, blankets and pillow case and threw them in the tote in the shower. I couldn't put them in the washer yet since I was waiting for our top sheet to get done drying. Then after the top sheet was done, I needed to put the rest of the clothes that were in the load with it back into the dryer for them to dry since I can't dry them all at the same time or nothing gets dry since the drum is so small! So basically I need to wash one sheet at a time, then dry it (which takes about 90 mins in my dryer) and then start another one!

I called Sarah (Nathan's sister) to tell her about the little episodes and she says "So what you're saying is that you're coming back over tomorrow to do laundry!" HA! I am actually considering it since my day seemed to go much smoother and faster when there was 1)other adults to talk to and 2)5 other people to help watch/entertain my kids!! Love you guys!!

So anyway, that is why this post is nothing more than a whiny post I guess....it's just been one of those days! (But I do get to spend the rest of my night helping someone with their budget...I'm so blessed!!)

beep beep

2010-07-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so apparently NO ONE wanted to guess at Brayan's sentence, so I will just tell you. The literally translation was:

"Mom, sorry night night car."

What he meant was "I'm sorry mom for falling asleep in the car."

He was apologizing to me and it was so stinkin' cute! :)

He says "beep beep" for car and the crazy thing about that is that Caedmon called them the exact same thing! But Caedmon stopped calling them that before Brayan was old enough to actually pick it up so where they got that, I have no idea!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

And about the deodorant....I still like it!! I purposely didn't shower for a couple days to try it out and even went to the gym and worked out during that time and NOTHING! So I'd say if it keeps this up, it's a keeper!!

____________________________________________________________________________________

I've pretty much figured out my favorite thing to do while working out!....listen to Dave Ramsey! He's got an app on the iphone which has different calls from his show highlighted and you can listen to them. I just turn it on, plug in my headphones and away I go!

And it seemed like there was a few other things I wanted to say, but I can't think of them right now! So i'm going to put the computer away and snuggle up with my honey and watch a movie! G'night!

can you guess?

2010-07-29T03:40:00.000-07:00

Do you think you can correctly tell me what Brayan was telling me when he said this..???

"Mom, saw-yee nah-nigh beep beep."

I understood him immediately because obviously I know his 'language' but just curious to see if anyone else could guess what he was saying!?

Answer to come shortly! :)

deodorant.

2010-07-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

I made deodorant today!!! Yes, you read that right...deodorant! And I used it today and so far I like it! There was a heat index of 106 today and I was out in it several times and I don't even stink! :) Quite awhile ago I read this post about natural deodorant and thought I would give it a try after reading all the comments people wrote about how well it worked and how wonderful it was. And get this...it has only 3 ingredients in it!! And NO chemicals, NO harmful anything! Actually, you can eat this if you want! Here's how it works:

1/4 cup arrowroot powder (the heathly equivalent to cornstarch)
1/4 cup baking soda
6 Tablesoons coconut oil

That's it!

Mix the arrowroot and baking soda together and then add the coconut oil until it becomes a solid paste. You can add more arrowroot if you need it thicker or more oil if you need it thinner.

Then you can add it to a short wide-mouth jar and apply it with your fingers or put it into your old deodorant container and use it like that!

If you go with this option, as I did, you'll want to keep it in the fridge (esp in the summer) though since coconut oil has a melting temp of 76 degrees. But once it hits your skin, even right out of the fridge, it will slide on smooth.

Give it a try!
____________________________________________________________________________________

Ariella took the ponies out of her while she was taking a nap. This is how she looked when I got her out of bed :)

And then she took them out again while she was eating supper and started getting antsy to get out and wanted her bib off. This is what she looked like then...

Then I got her to smile.

(sorry the pics are so grainy...for the last month or so I have only been able to use my iphone to take pics as our camera has gone ka-put!...and we haven't bought a new one yet.)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

During school today, I gave Caedmon copies of the math work I did with Tiernan yesterday. Since Tiernan knew the directions because we had done it yesterday, I told him he could be the teacher to Caedmon and explain to him what to do. It was so cute having Tiernan lead Caedmon like that! And they both did a great job!

curtains

2010-07-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago our blinds by our table came unscrewed from the wall on one side and instead of screwing it back in, we decided to take them down. Why? Well because where they had it originally screwed in was right in the way of the seat being able to come up for the storage that's under the benches. Nathan at one point said "get someone to come out here and put in another blind" Yeah right! Do you know how much they'd charge to come out to us to do that?! There's got to be a better way. And I found it! I was just going to make one! While on my way to Wal-mart to check out all 6 pieces of fabric they have, I made a quick stop at the tiny thrift store in town (along with all of the kiddos who can hardly all fit into the store) and I happen to find JUST what I was looking for!! Instead of fabric, I found 2 twins sheets, not even from the same set but matching that I bought for $3/ea and decided they'd work perfect! I brought them home, called mom to ask her how in the world I measure to make curtains and I went to work! A few hours later I had them hanging up with a tension rod, and I think they turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself! And all for $6! And it even matches...double bonus!

Here is the pic I blogged about before about asking who else gets to make a cool bed out of their dining room table to watch movies on?!

And, by the way, the 2nd day of school went good as well! We did school in the afternoon today while 1/2 of the kids slept (kid #2 and #4) because we went to the gym in the morning. Love the flexibility! Tiernan is rockin' at it and he is finishing all his work with no problems, especially flyin' through math and numbers! Way to go Biggie!

AND it was actually BELOW 90 degrees today!! Making it to only the mid-80s, it felt like a down-right cold snap! I even heard Caedmon exclaim when he walked outside this morning "oh, it's willy code out here!" :) I wouldn't go THAT far Caedmon...

Not Me, Beach w/ a great idea, & First day of Kindergarten!!!

2010-07-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here are my "Not Me"s for the week!

Living in a camper does not take some adjusting and you don't find out some different ways of doing things, especially when it shakes and moves a lot. For example, I did not find myself starring at the clothes in my closet in the morning to see if they were moving. And if they were moving, that does not mean that my kids are up and out of bed.

In the same manner, I did not look at the towel hanging up in my kitchen to check to make sure that the washer was still running.

I also did not actually say the words "I'm cold" after getting out of the water at the beach when it was 100 degrees out!

And I also was not super excited when I bought a pair of pants yesterday in a size that I haven't bought in years and years and years and years... And those same pair of pants were not on sale at Goodwill, making them only $2. Nope!

(Not Me, Monday is a blog carnival created by MckMama.)

THE BEACH

We went to the beach yesterday. No better way to spend a 100 degree day! It was about 45 minutes from us and well worth the little drive to get there! We arrived around 10:30am when we realized that the beach didn't open until noon. We hung out around a picnic table in the shade and were able to eat our picnic lunch before the beach even opened! That worked out great though so we didn't have to worry about taking time out of swimming to eat sandwiches that would have probably gotten all full of sand anyway!

The boys had a blast and Nathan and I swam too!! And I was SO glad I came up with this SUPER idea!!....I brought along this iddy biddy pool I found at Wal-mart for $1.88 that I had lying around. I originally bought two of them to fill up with sand for the boys but we had only used one so far. So I brought the other one, blew it up while we were waiting, and let Ariella play in it while we swam in the lake! It worked out SOOO awesome! We didn't have to worry about her falling over in the water and drowning or anything and no exclamations that sounded like "Where's Ariella?!" We knew exactly where she was and was content playing in her little pool! Right before we were ready to go she did want to venture out into the lake so I took her out for a little while but it worked out so well that I would recommend that to anyone looking to occupy a little one at the beach!

After sitting in the water for awhile, she soaked up most of it in her diaper. I guess this gives a picture to the saying "Junk in your trunk"! Before I took it off, she would try to walk and would literally waddle or fall over. She even tipped over backwards when the wind blew! hehe :)

Naomi with the kids walking into the grocery store. It was so cute!

FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN!!
Well, I'm offically a "homeschooling momma"! I started Tiernan this morning with his first lesson in Kindergarten! It went great and we got everything accomplished that I set out to do! I was busy last night making copies out of the books for him to work on (since I want to keep the books for the other kids) and last week I got the schedule with which pages I want to work on out of which books, etc.

Here is what my week at a glance looks like:

Our toy cupboard got converted into my school cupboard!

And here was our day:
We did bible lesson and verse memory right away after breakfast with all the boys. During this we talked about the lesson, repeated the memory verse and did a little project. This took about 20 mins.

Then we went to phonics, letters and reading where we learned (reviewed) the letter A and E. This included a worksheet and a page to color. (The little boys went to play outside :)

Next up was writing. Tiernan practiced writing lower case a's and upper case A's.

Then on to numbers, math and shapes. We reviewed numbers 1-10 and he completed 4 worksheets that had various counting and number excercises.

We then learned about God's world during Science. We learned that George Washington was the 1st president during History and learned and colored pictures about police officers and laws and rules during Social Studies.

This completed our day! All this done before 9am! What will tomorrow hold?!

mud

2010-07-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

I thought maybe since she was a girl, she'd stay out of the mud.

Boy, was I wrong!

dog days of summer.

2010-07-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

**First I just want to say that I am so excited about all the emails that I have been getting about budgets and questions! I LOVE it! Please keep them coming!**

Ah, yes....it's been HOT here! Last time I heard on the news, last year at the this time there were 12 days that were into the 90s, this year? 43!!! Yikes! A little hotter than 'normal'. But remember, we are used to 'record weather' following us where ever we move! In Iowa, it was record flooding; in Nebraska it was record snow; and now here in VA it's both record snow AND record heat, great!

Where is the only place to go (besides sitting inside with the a/c on) when it's so hot out?! To the pool of course!

We went with some new friends of ours. One of Nathan's co-workers families came to visit from Georgia and we got together almost every other day the whole 2-1/2 weeks that they were here! It was so much fun having another mom to hang out with and our kids got along so well! They had 2 girls, 6 and almost 3 and then Wendy is 8 months pregnant with their little boy!

It was almost weird how much Wendy and I were alike...we had the same taste in clothes, food, parenting, etc. We will for surely be life-long friends! I just can't wait til she visits again with that little baby of hers!

Here are some pictures of our time at the pool with them.

Ariella was getting tired and when Wendy lifted her up, she told Ariella that there was a baby in her tummy. Ariella layed her head right down on her tummy and fell asleep! How precious!

Not Me! Monday!

2010-07-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

So here is the return of Not Me Monday! Actually, I usually just forget to post it so I realize it's been quite awhile since I've done one. But here's this week's.....

There is no way that I stopped by the gym 20 minutes before the daycare center closed for their lunch break and dropped the kids off just so I could run in and take a shower quick. Nope, that would be ridiculous! I mean, who in the world doesn't just shower at their home?! So I certainly didn't do that! Nope! Not Me!

And upon returning to our van after grocery shopping, I did not see that my 5 yr old forgot the close the door after getting out, realizing it was wide open the whole time that we were in the grocery store! Nope! Not Me!

When driving home from the said grocery store, I did not hear this banging sound on the side of my van, only to figure out that I hadn't forgot to put the gas cap back on and close the tank door! Then, before I could pull over at an exit, I did not get flagged down by the nice lady next to me who was frantically trying to point and yell at me that the gas cap was off. And then it did not take me 2 times going up and down the exit ramps to finally find a spot I could pull over without other traffic so I could close it. Nope! Not Me!

And there's no way that I locked my 2 little boys in the shower stall while they were taking their bath so I could get some relief from chaos while trying to get supper ready! I mean, I'm always calm and patient and never need to get my toddlers out of my hair while I'm trying to get something accomplished! (And that is not the exact same thing the boys did to me one time while I was taking a shower! Good thing Tiernan listens some of the time when I told him to unlock it so I could get out!)

What haven't you done this week?

Not Me Monday is a blog carnival created by McKMama.

Pie in a Cup

2010-07-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

This morning I came up with a smoothie recipe that tasted exactly like coconut cream pie! Seriously, it was so yummy!

Coconut Cream Pie in a Cup
all the meat of 1 young coconut
a cup of raw milk
2 T pure maple syrup
tad bit of vanilla
a banana
a scoop of good tasting vanilla protein powder
(if you don't have protein powder, just add a tad more syrup)

Whiz in blender until smooth and enjoy drinking your 'pie'.

We enjoyed this smoothie along with my homemade zuchinni bread (made with honey, coconut oil, vanilla...mmmmm) and fresh cherries for breakfast. Oh, so good!!

And just in case you were wondering what fun it is to have very limited counter space along with lots of kids and no dishwasher while making homemade cinnamon and sugar chips....I'll give you an idea...

(That's Brayan, in his underwear, stealing some food off the counter and feeding it to his little sister...)

Messes like this one occur several times a day...doesn't take much to get my kitchen full of stuff!

my passion.

2010-07-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

There are a few things in life that get me totally excited and that I am completely passionate for. I could talk for hours about these things if the subject comes up and they all are things that are incoorporated in our lives daily in one way or another.

One of those things is helping people create a budget and get out of debt.

Some of you may know our story, some of you not. Here it is in a nut-shell.

After going through lay-offs, job losses, trying to pay 2 mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc all while trying to provide for a growing family, we knew there had to be a better way to be doing things. We participated in Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University" in 2004 and loved what we heard. (Which I would recommend to anyone in a heartbeat! & his book "The Total Money Makeover") It took awhile to "sink-in" and since we didn't have any accountablity, we didn't follow what we were taught.

In 2007, Nathan was laid off for the winter and not called back in the spring. It was then he got the opportunity to take his first "on the road" job a few hours away from home. We decided to go for it and within 3 days he was working. We moved with him 4 days after that. It was at this first apartment that everything changed....

....Dave Ramsey's radio program was on the radio.

It was the first time we were able to listen to his show since it wasn't available on radio where we lived before. (We now know you can listen where ever you are right from his website....). After a few days of listening to him at work (Nathan was driving truck), Nathan came home and said "Take all of our money in savings (we had a few thousand in "special" accounts...vacation, etc) besides a $1000 emergency fund and put it all towards our debt." It took me a few minutes to comprehend what he wanted me to do since I liked the "security" of some money in the bank. But I listened to him and that's when it started. We became what Dave calls "gazelle intense".

We wrote down goals. We created a budget. We got rid of all of our credit cards. We started knocking down the debt. And let me tell you, once you start seeing those numbers go down, it's addicting! We wanted to keep at it! We were so tired of being "slave to the lender" (prov. 22:7) and wanted to live differently. (We really should probably get Dave's bumper sticker that says "Debt is normal, be weird!" :) Our house finally sold in Dec of 2007 (it had been on the market for over a year), and even though we lost about $30,000 on it, we got some money back that we had put down on it. In January 2008, we used that money to finishing paying off our debt and we fully-funded our emergency fund!! (step 3 of Dave's 7 step plan).

We were officially debt-free!!!

And we've never looked back!

Actually, we have. But only for it to be a lesson at what not to do and for it to be an example for others to see that we've "been there, done that" and like it this way better!

You don't have to let debt control your life or work day in and day out just to send all your money to someone else in the form of a payment. THERE IS HOPE!!!

I have had the privelige to sit down with 3 different people/families lately, look at their budget, payments and spending, and create a personalized budget for them so they can see how easy it is with just a few small changes to have money left over for getting rid of debt! One of them is even getting "gazelle intense" and I'm so excited! They are already starting to reap the benefits of being in control of their finances and telling their money where to go instead of the other way around!!

So here it is....this is my passion...one day I want to travel to Brentwood Tennessee and get trained by the "head honchos" of Dave's Team on how to counsel people with setting up a budget and getting out of debt!!!!! Some may ask (like my husband) "Why wait? Why not book your flight and do it now?" Well, you see...I have these 4 little people who live with me that have no one to watch them during the day while Nathan is working. That is why I think my dream of being trained by Dave's staff will have to wait until Grandma and Grandpa are a little bit closer :) Plus, I want to take Nathan with me, so finding someone who wants to watch 4 kids for a week isn't exactly an easy task :)

But let me tell you, it WILL happen. And I WILL get more training so I can help more people. And it WILL be so rewarding! I CAN'T WAIT!!!

So I leave you with this quote "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else" --Dave Ramsey.

p.s. If you want help setting up a budget or even have questions on getting out of debt, please email me at dawnlegatt@msn.com and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to help! I want to help so much that I am thinking about making this a part-time business! eek!...I LOVE IT! (or dave's site has lots of info too!)

father's day.

2010-07-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

It seems as though I have way more ideas and intentional posts for my blog than I do time!! Every now and again I get reminded by someone that I was going to do a certain post and never did! If ever I say I'm going to blog about something and you never see it up here, please let me know and I'll do my best to post it. :)

So remember me saying that I had a chance to get away for a day over Father's Day weekend? Well, I'm finally getting around to blogging about it!

The saturday before Father's day, Nathan's sister came over in the morning to hang out and then once Nathan got home from work, we left for her place in Arlington, VA! We both drove until about half way to her place and then I parked my car and got in hers. There is no extra parking by her place and if you remember, I don't exactly have a great track record for finding my way around DC! Anyway, once we left, we made a couple stops at Target and Old Navy before ending up at her apartment. Once we were there, we settled in and watched a movie (until late I might add!...This momma isn't used to staying up that late!...sheesh!)

Naomi (little miss "i'm going to sleep in") was up by 5:30am and already showered etc before I woke up. I was up by 6:30 though but glad since we wanted to get in as much in the day as possible! After showering, eating, etc, we went for a walk from the apartment thru the Arlington cemetary to a bridge where we could watch the airplanes coming in from the DC airport. Since it was already a gazillion degrees out and super super humid, we were both drenched in sweat only after about a mile of walking.

During our walk...

After our walk, it was time to go lay by the pool! I made it out there for about an hour before I said that I had had enough! It was SOOOO hot I couldn't stand it anymore!

After the pool....

Then we went up, had some lunch, watched another movie, and we were off running some errands! We stopped at Target, a couple goodwills, and then went to check out her new apartment. She moved this past saturday to a place in Alexandria, just another suburb of DC. She went from a studio apt to a nice 2 bedroom apt (with a roommate) and a gorgeous view for quite a bit cheaper!...I think it was a great move!

Her new apartment building

After that she treated me to supper at Applebees and we went back to the apt to hang out a bit before it was time for me to leave! I had such a great time and it was soooo weird to be able to move around so fast from place to place without having to do and undo carseats 36 times! Of course I missed my kids but I knew they were with dad and mommy needed a little vacation :)

So how did Nathan fair with all those kids by himself on Father's Day? Pretty good I guess! He took them to church by himself, to the park and said he had a great time! (minus when Tiernan fell off the monkey bars at the park and hurt himself and then Caedmon started sympathy crying all while Nathan was trying to get Brayan to stay close and telling a crying caedmon to go get Ariella who was running away...and then trying to get them all herded towards the van) But while he told me that, I just smiled and said "welcome to motherhood" :)

movie time.

2010-07-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

We FINALLY got some rain here yesterday, after about 2-1/2 weeks without any and temps well into the 90s and 100s the whole time. Some relief, finally!! And with that rain, came a rain day for Nathan! I'm not even sure where the idea came from, but I ended up taking the 2 big boys to the movie theater!! It was their first time and they were so excited! We went to see Toy Story 3. It was a cute movie for the most part...although there were some 'suspenseful' scenes where Tiernan was fidgeting and Caedmon buried his head in my armpit :) But all in all we had fun! It's been a LONG time since we've been at a movie theater and I forgot how ridiculously expensive it is! The tickets were $7.50 per person and that was the matinee price! PLUS, popcorn was $7!! I think the kids can stick with rented movies from now on and we'll save the theater for a date night :)

But don't they look so excited?! (This was right before we went in)

On his day weekend off, Nathan decided to make a pull-up bar. We have a few days left in our family membership at the gym but I think for next month, it will just be me and the kids. Nathan has concluded that he doesn't like to work out with other people...and he likes his own equipment. I guess I can't blame him though, it's how he's used to lifting and how's he always lifted. So building a bar was super exciting for him.

I think he did a pretty good job!

Nice work, honey!

And this is completely random, but this is what I saw when I cracked open an egg the other day....

...a little chicken! I guess you'll have that every now and again when you get your eggs straight from the farm! And no, we didn't eat him :)

hot.

2010-07-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

It was hot here today.

And this wasn't even taking into consideration the humidity and the heat index, which pushed it well into the triple digits. Plus, this was taken at 5pm. Yikes!!

quote

2010-07-06T18:00:00.001-07:00

My favorite thing I heard Tiernan say, unprompted by me....

"Caedmon, you pick up while I vacuum."

Ah....music to my ears!

pics of last week

2010-07-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

it's home

2010-07-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

(So I finally got my cord for my computer and now blogger won't let me post pictures...oh how frustrating! Well, pics will soon follow :)

Well, we are back from our 'vacation'. We stayed at a friends house while they were away, house-sitting for them. It was definitely a great time and the kids had a blast playing with all the new and different toys and having room to roam!! But that is exactly what we missed about the camper...we never knew where our kids were! Are they upstairs? Are they downstairs? Maybe they are outside?

We kept busy on our little vacation with a little cleaning (I cleaned their fridge, organized their tupperware, cleaned their laundry room, etc), weeding the garden (I will soon have before and after pictures...it was a jungle!), cooking with fresh veggies from the garden (LOVED that!), laying outside in the sun (Nathan is still trying to get his stomach and legs to match his arms and face :) and grilling!

The kids kept busy with playing, playing, and more playing. They also loved taking a bath in the HUGE tub and splashing in the small pool outside.

And I did a LOT of laundry! And I just hafta say this....if you have a 'normal' size washer and dryer and they are both in working condition, you have NO REASON to complain about doing laundry!!! I could not believe how much laundry I could get done and how QUICK it goes! Remember that in the camper I have an all-in-one washer and dryer so it switches over to dry the clothes after it washes them...BUT I have to take almost 2/3 of the clothes out of the washer first otherwise none of them will dry. And the drum is VERY small, letting me only wash and dry a few things at a time. So when I had the privelage of using a big washer and dryer for a week...WOW, what a difference!! So no complaining from you 'normal' folks, got it?!

But even though we had a great time over there, we could not wait to come back to the camper. I think the Lord is really teaching us contentment, especially Nathan. He didn't think in a million years that he would be desiring to come back to the camper but...this is our home. And it's always nice to be back home. Our own space, our own stuff, our own bed (even though the king size was nice!), and we always know where our children are!!

Yes, we have to stand sideways in order to walk around our bed....yes, our children bathe in a tote....and yes, I can vacuum my whole home from one outlet....but it is our home. It's where daddy comes every evening after work, it's where my oldest will start kindergarten in a couple weeks, it's where our 3rd became potty trained and where our 4th learned to walk, it's where we sit and read stories as a family at night...and yes, it's a camper. But to us, it's home.

And, plus, who else can make a cool bed out of their table in order for all to be able to snuggle up and watch a movie together?!

So we continue to learn to be content with what we have. We are blessed to have a home, blessed to have this camper, blessed to have a healthly family where we can all be together, and blessed to have a Lord and savior who provides for us. And we are finding out that that's really all that matters.

big gulp, huh?

2010-07-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

"What are you looking at??"

ps...she doesn't even know how to use a straw and the cup was empty ;)

Cruise control

2010-06-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

Im set on cruise control. No slowing down & definitely no stopping! Im still waiting for my cord for my computer so i can do an actual post with pictures :) this Iphone is super hard to type on.

Just know that we are basically on a 2 week vacation staying at a friends (huge) house with a (huge) yard while they are away. And, by the way, we are ALL loving it!!

camp.

2010-06-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

A couple posts ago I mentioned that we spent the day out at Shenandoah Springs Camp because our church held a baptismal service out there. Well I finally got a new cord for my phone (more about that later!) so I am now able to get the pics off of it to put on here :)

The road leading to the camp. It was actually pretty freaky driving on this road. It was wedged between two steep ditches and obviously only one lane (though, thankfully we didn't meet anyone trying to go the other way) and it was also real curvy, as is everything in Virginia!

Here is how the kids sat during the service, which last a good 2 hours.

But...the kids did get somewhat antsy so Dad took them aside and threw them around for a little while, literally! We can't blame them for getting antsy though, most of the adults were too given the fact that it was only in the 90s and super super humid. It felt like we were standing in an oven. Aren't dads always so fun?!

This is the lake where the baptisms were held.

After they finished, we swam in the lake and Nathan even played a nice game of sand volleyball. Go Dad!

Needless to say, this is the way the kids looked on the way home :) (Take note of Ariella in the mirror...sleeping beauty too :)

Fun day!

And I was going to post about my amazing Father's Day weekend, but that will have to wait until next time. I'm extremely tired from staying up way too late the past couple nights and it's already getting late, so I'm off for now!

huh?

2010-06-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

Can anyone guess what is going on in this picture???

Yes, that is Caedmon and yes, he is sound asleep, and yes his pants are pulled down. But why you ask? Well, he got hurt outside (of course!) and came in crying. I told him to sit on the couch with a paper towel layed over his thigh (where he got hurt) and he fell fast asleep. :)

We even spiked his hair and one of his siblings threw the remote in his lap but he didn't move an inch. What a sweet kid....but it did make for a funny picture :)

mom's the teacher.

2010-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we had a special church service out at Shenandoah Springs Camp to hear testimony's of those who were being baptized as believers in the Lord. (I have pics but since my phone cord melted, I need to get a different one to upload the pics to my computer!) It was a great time hearing what the Lord did in these peoples' lives and then after the service we had a pot-luck lunch followed by the baptizms in the lake. When that was done I took turns taking the boys for a swim in the lake. (Nathan watched the other kids since he, for the time being, has Sunday's off again!!) It was a sweltering day reaching 99 degrees and super humid. The lake felt amazing!!

While we were standing by the lake in the shade trying to figure out our next plan of action, a lady probably in her 60s started a conversation with Tiernan. We stood back smiling, wondering how he was going to answer her questions since he is such a story teller. Here is about how it went....

Lady: "So are you going to be starting Kindergarten in the fall?"

Tiernan: "Yep. After we move and then come back, then I will go to Kindergarten."

Lady: "Oh, so maybe you're going on vacation and then when you come back, you'll start school?"

Tiernan: "Yeah. We hafta move to Colby's house for a while first." (We are house-sitting for some friends for a couple weeks while they go on vacation.)

Lady: "Which school are you going to?" (She named a couple but can't remember names)

Tiernan: "Yeah. I'm going to Kindergarten. And it's called homeschool. And Mom's the teacher."

Excellent Tiernan! Well said!! It was so cute though because when he said "and mom's the teacher", he tipped his head towards me and stuck his hand out towards me...it was so cute! She proceeded to say that she was a kindergarten teacher at a school in town so she's quick to pick out the 5-6 yr olds.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I've done a lot of looking at curriculm and researching different methods and approaches to homeschooling and here is what I've decided to do for this year anyway....

First, I've decided to homeschool year-round. I (we) decided this mostly for me. I know that once I am in a routine and have things down-pat I want to keep in the swing-of-things. If I were to take a 3 month vacation from school and get into another routine and let my kids get into another routine, I will be much less likely to get motivated to get into that routine all over again. I'd rather keep the routine going all year and take mini-breaks. There are a few different ways that year-round schools operate and after looking them over, I think a 45 day learning time (not including weekends) and then a 10-15 day break (not including weekends) is what we'll end up doing. I actually don't even see my kids wanting to take that long of break (since they LOVE to do school stuff) so we'll see once we start. Being flexible is one thing that goes along with homeschooling. You have to be flexible. Stuff happens, babies cry, lunch needs to be made, kids need naps, butts need wiping...all this has to be flexible in order to fit into a schedule. And some days maybe we'll just feel like skippin' school for the day and having an "eat homemade popcorn for lunch and watch a movie" day. And that's just fine by me!

So what do we plan to do exactly? Well, like I said, it's flexible and we'll have to see once we actually start how things will go but here is what I have so far.

Tiernan is obviously the one I will be focused on as far as 'school' goes, but since I have an almost 4 yr old and an almost 3 yr old that wants to do everything Tiernan does, I will have to have stuff planned for them as well. Here is what I have for Tiernan.....(times are approx but a guideline)

10 min -- Bible and verse memory
10 min -- Phonics and/or reading
10 min -- Writing
10 min -- Numbers and math
15 min -- Science, history, animals, colors, weather, telling time, money, anatomy (will rotate)
20 min -- Activity time -- crafts, dramatic play, music

And one day per week I will do a theme day where everything for that day will revolve around the theme. Ex) Theme could be 'trees'. So everything from math to science to crafts will be about trees.

Curriculm:
Last year I ordered the K5 curriculm from Abeka. They are a Christian based curriculm, supplying private schools or homeschoolers with all they need to teach for the school year. There are some other books I will suppliment with, including Discovery Works, Scholastic, and misc ones that I have found at garage sales and through my mom!) The money and budgeting tools I will get from Dave Ramsey which is called FPU for Kids. Super excited about that!

I will do what I can in the morning since that is our most productive time and things that are a little more in-depth, I will probably do during nap time so Ariella at least will be sleeping so I can focus a little more. The other boys don't regularly nap so this is where file folder games and activities come in real handy! There are a gazillion things you can do with file folders and you can make them for any age group. For a few examples, visit here. .

I also will keep in mind the learning that takes place doing everyday activities such as cooking. Explaining the steps and why we do what we do and how food affects our body and 1/2 cup plus 1/2 cup equals what, etc....all this can be taught and learned just from makin' lunch!

By the way, school starts July 12!! You might ask why then? Well, frankly, I don't want to wait until the end of August and I figure a month is not going to make a difference....plus my kids are begging to 'do school' every day....why not officially start?!

when the cat's away, the mice will play

2010-06-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when we take a nap on a Sunday and choose not to get out of bed when our kids do.

It's a tough choice but I'm not sure the few minutes of undisturbed rest was worth all the clean-up time. But at least the kids had fun!!

locked.

2010-06-10T06:01:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in a couple posts ago that we saw family and friends over the 5 day-off break that Nathan had over Memorial weekend. Let me tell you some highlights of that weekend.

Friday--We were hanging outside when Ariella ended up being the only one inside. Not a big deal since we kept the front door open so the kids could come and go as they please...but since Nathan was working on the side of the camper, he needed the door to be closed. After closing it, I walked over to the door and AS I was saying "We should keep this open because Ariella will end up locking herself in", we heard the lock latch. "CLICK" Uhhhhh..... I tried the door, locked. I tried to open it again, locked. And again, locked. (For some reason I thought the more I tried it, maybe it would just magically unlock...didn't work). So here we are, all outside, except out sweet 14 mo old little girl who has just locked herself inside along with our phones, keys, and every window that is CLOSED. Sooo...we tried to think of everything. Check all the windows, try to coax her to unlock the door, climb on the roof to see if a vent would open, which window should we break that would cause the least amount of damage, everything. Nothing worked. At one point, a frustrated Nathan (frustrated because he found more damage on our camper than he thought was there) said "whatever...she locked herself in" and he went back to working on the camper....as if she knew what she did and was doing it in defiance! ha! So long story shorter...we were able to pull a window open enough (while waiting for it to bust!) to get my hand through to reach the knob to open it big enough to shove Tiernan through it. Then he ran to the door and unlocked it. No damage and we've learned to ALWAYS have our keys with us when we are outside!!

Then Friday evening was finished with a picnic at our friends house.

Sunday we enjoyed the company of Nathan's sister and family with us at church and then after church out brother in law and Nathan left for hiking and camping in the mountains. Nathan thought the ideal trip would consist of a 3 or so mile hike into the mountains, set up camp, and then next morning hike back. Well, it was kinda like that except they hiked over 10 miles one way!!! Sheesh! Which made the round trip about 20 miles...hiking..rocks..hills..trails..and bears. Yes, bears. At one point they were 20 feet away from a black bear. They didn't see it until Nathan looked at what was 'rustling' in the bush next to them. It was walking away from them but stopped and looked back at them. Jack said they better keept moving...thank you Jack for saving Nathan's life. He would have probably been eaten by the bear since he wanted to 'see it closer'. 20 feet away is close enough for me!
And after 20 miles of hiking in the mountains, he came home with a very sore knee. It'll be awhile before another 20 mile hike! :)

While he was hiking, we went to his sister's house and played!! The kids of course love it at "Jack Austin's house" (their 14 yr old cousin) and I was able to do a little shopping kid-free, clean my van (thank you sarah!), give the kids an actual bath in a tub rather than a tote, and do big loads of laundry!! It was a great time!

_________________________________________________________________________________

A few days ago we made a quick trip to my friend Meggan's campground. It was the first time we've made it out there since they moved from here. It was a super hot day (in the 90s and humid!) and their campground has a pool! We hung out and enjoyed the sun, pool, and fun times with friends!

Here is what our camper and site looks like when there's not 3 feet of snow on the ground....ugh, I don't even want to remember that!!

ring around the pole.

2010-06-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

who needs toys when you have your brothers and a random pole in your yard?!

space.

2010-06-03T04:45:00.000-07:00

My husband had 5 days off last weekend. It was great! We spent time with family, friends, and each other. Now it's back to reality!! Good thing that most of the time 'reality' is pretty nice!!

The other day I thought that I would put some water in a tote to let the kids wade in a little since it felt like a bazillion degrees out with 100% humidity. Well, we don't exactly have the cleanest or clearest water here.

So that idea was scratched. And don't worry, we have filters...lots of them! This was right from the water faucet outside. From the other side of the faucet is where is goes in to our camper and we have a filter out there before it goes through the hose. Then once it gets inside, we have a filter under our sink before it comes out of the kitchen sink and then before we drink it, we filter it through the Berkey Light, which is an AMAZING filter that makes the water crystal-clear, sediment and chemical-free but leaves all the good minerals in!

And here is the typical view in front of our front door. It's a constant battleground with the shoes and socks. I try to keep just one pair per person out, but still that ends up to be 12 shoes in a very little area.

I've been trying to re-organize and de-clutter stuff again. This time in Ariella's room. I would like to get it cleared out enough that instead of using the bunk beds for storage, we can actually use them as beds! We are thinking of putting Ariella in the bottom bunk with a bed rail and Tiernan in the top. That way the 2 little boys don't have to share a bed anymore. They often complain about the other one kicking them :) I think their legs are getting too long!! BUT, that means that I need to either 1) get rid of a bunch more stuff or 2) find another home for all my stuff that I have in those bunks!! Well, I've been doing some of both! Yesterday I did figure though that we have too many books.

And this was AFTER I got rid of a huge garbage bag full of books a few weeks ago! I figure that we have "camper size" everything else, we should have a "camper size" supply of books too, and this doesn't look like it! So I went through the books again....threw away the ones that had several pages missing, put some aside that we love and want to keep for our kids' kids to show them what mom and dad read when they were little, put some in storage for long car rides (like if we ever make it back to mn), and then donated the rest! We now have about 15-20 books. Perfect! One tote down!

And speaking of totes...the idea of trying those 'space storage bags' for our clothes finally 'clicked' to me! So I went to the store and bought some. They are SO AWESOME!!! I would recommend them to anyone that has lottas clothes/blankets/anything that can 'squish' easily and limited space. I had 3 totes (one 31 gallon and two 18 gallon) full of winter clothes, winter coats, snow pants, and hats/mittens, etc. I ended up with this when I was finished.

I was amazed at how narrow the bag got with all our winter stuff in it! Wow! What a help! Now instead of those 3 huge totes under our camper, I just have these bags and TONS of space!!...something always needed when you live in a RV :)

a complete meal.

2010-05-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

So two days ago I made a scrumptious supper which got ravenous reviews from my husband! (And yes, he WILL tell me if he doesn't like it...he is very outspoken like that.) And the kids liked it too :)

I just realized that I didn't take any pictures though, shucks! Here is the menu plan:

"Even good cold" Meatballs
Chateau Potatoes
Cucumbers & cream
Mint Patties

Meatballs:
2 lbs ground beef
1 cup quick oats
1 cup milk
3 T very finely diced onion
1-1/2 t salt
few dashes of black pepper
1/2 c flour
oil for frying

Sauce:
1 cup ketchup
2 T sugar (or brown sugar)
2 T Bragg's liquid aminos (soy sauce)
few shakes of dried minced onion

In bowl combine first 6 ingredients for meatballs. Roll into golf ball size balls. Preheat oven to 350. Heat oil in pan. Roll meatballs in flour and lightly brown meatballs in pan on both sides. As they brown, place them in baking dish. (mine filled a 7-1/2x11 pan and an 8x8 pan.)

Mix together sauce ingredients and pour evenly over meatballs. Bake 30-45 mins or until hot and bubbly.

Chateau Potatoes:
(I know I have this recipe somewhere on my blog but since I can't find it, I figured I'd post it again!!) These are super easy and by far Nathan and my favorite way to eat potatoes...a Legatt family recipe!

6-7 large potatoes (you wanna shoot for about 6-7ish cups of mashed potatoes when you're done)
1 container small curd cottage cheese
3/4 cup sour cream
1-1/2 T very finely diced onion

Peel potatoes, boil until soft, mashed them in large bowl, stir in rest of ingredients and beat with mixer until well combined. Now most of the time we just eat them right from here because they are still warm but if you are not eating immediately or they have cooled off a little, pop them in a 350 degree oven until hot.

Cucumbers & cream:
cucumbers (I usually get those super long ones wrapped in plastic at the store. They are usually more expensive but the taste makes up for it! They taste as if they were straight out of the garden!!)
a large dollup of mayo
salt and pepper

Dice the cucumber. I usually slice it the long way a few times and then rotate it and slice it again a few times, then start at one end and cut the other way so I get little squares. This is very important as they don't taste the same if they aren't cut this way...Nathan is VERY picky about this! :) Once you have your cucumber cut up, throw a little mayo in...maybe start with 2 tablespoons. You can always add more...you just want enough to make a nice dressing, nothing too over-done. And trust me on this...it WON'T taste like mayo, esp if you use the right amount. I do not like mayo, but this is the only way I prefer to eat my cucumbers! So mix in the mayo and then add some salt and pepper. I heard it once from a very seasoned cook that she added "a little bit of salt and a whole lotta pepper!" You do what you want. And this is a perfect side dish for almost anything!! Also it makes for a GREAT gravy-type thing to put on top of mashed potatoes!! Yes, you read that right! It was nothing that I had heard of before until I married nathan and he suggested I would make cucumbers and cream to go on top of the 'taters, and it is OH SO YUMMY!! (And please don't ruin this dish by adding vinegar...yuck!)

Mint Patties (for dessert, of course!):
4 oz cream cheese
1 tsp mint extract (this is 1/2 peppermint and 1/2 spearmint...SO good!)
4 c powdered sugar
1/4 c milk choco chips
1/4 c semi-sweet choco chips (if you only have milk chocolate, that's ok, just do all milk choco)
2 T butter

beat cream cheese and extract together, gradually add powdered sugar. Taste mixture, if you want stronger flavor, add more extract. Shape into balls. Size is up to you. I made some larger and some smaller, but most ended up about the size of the store bought little peppermint patties. 1/2 inch to 1 inch ball is a nice size. Place on waxed paper and flatten into patties. Cover and refrig or freeze until firm. Melt chocolate and butter on stove. Cool slightly. With back of spoon, smear some chocolate on top of patties. Cover and freeze until hard. Place in plastic bag and store in freezer.

Whew! And remember, if you have left overs, this is a meal that is SOOOOO easy to heat up the next day for a simple meal!! Nathan even took some of the meatballs to work and ate them cold for lunch...he said they were perfect!

And it seems as though a lot of my posts have been about food lately so if you're not into food as much as me..sorry! but it's pretty much because food is my life right now!....and lotsa kids...and lotsa dirt...and more dirt. But pretty soon the official "Legatt Elementary School" will be in progress so I've been busy researching and studying and looking at different options, etc so soon I'm sure I'll be posting more about that!

inside fun.

2010-05-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's been interesting around here.

Rain with some more rain makes for a lot of mud. And seeing how I no longer let my kids play in the mud (I know, what a mean mom I am!), it makes for an interesting time in the camper. Also, the kids broke our table base, leaving Ariella with having to eat up at the kitchen counter, and before we put her there, she was sitting in the recliner...which she did surprisingly well at!

Also, we ran out of vacuum bags for our central vac, so I haven't been able to vacuum going on 3 days...yeah, NOT fun! Esp since I rely on that thing several times a day! I hope they get here soon!!

So what exactly do you do with 4 rambunctious kids who can't go outside to play? You play inside! This is what they boys have been doing lately.

Building forts

Doing flips from the dining room bench onto the couch

Body surfing on pillows

This was fun until Tiernan kept sliding once his pillow stopped and he scraped his lip on the floor...ouch!

And they have also been taking paper after they color on it, wadding it up into a ball, and throwing them at each other like dodgeball but calling them "fire balls". Whatever.

I have been doing the usual, which includes going a little crazy with having them always on top of me and each other all the time! But I have tried out a few new recipes lately such as potato leek pizza and blueberry cobbler!