Happy Halloween 2014

 I snapped a few shots on their way out the door for trick or treating.  Daddy was kind enough to brave the weather.  Crash and I stayed home. 

 This year's lineup:  Brutus Buckeye, Frankenstein's Monster, Dora the Explorer, a spider, and a Neanderthal. 

Closer up...

This photo makes it appear sunny outside.  I assure you, it was not.

As a matter of fact, it was snowing.  No joke.

And, for tomorrow, Happy All Saints' Day!! 

Just Because

Little Readers

Nurturing a love of reading in our kids is totally worth all the library fines!!  My favorite part of each day is reading aloud to everybody.  Love the series on this topic at this lovely blog.  Worth a click!!

We are currently loving Hilda Van Stockum.  We've read  Pegeen, and are in the thick of The Cottage at Bantry Bay.  My Irish accent is terrible, but keep trying I will do.  Arra.

Many thanks to the ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter for the book suggestions!  Love their Library Project!!

Also, because we spend at very least one hour in the car every day, we picked up Shoeless Joe Jackson and Me on audiobook from the library.  What a great book full of history - baseball and otherwise!! 

Have a happy day!! 

Heard in Our House

Yoyo:  daddy, if I just wanna have a bunch of kids and be a mommy, do I have to go to college?
Dad:  I think it would be a good idea.
Yoyo:  oh, dang it.

------------------------------------------------------------

Kid118:  going to the library and checking out books without returning any is like eating bread when you're constipated.

------------------------------------------------------------

Crash, from his high chair, to his siblings whom I am always correcting during meals:  you guys!  Sit down!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Spike, after dropping his water bottle under his wheelchair:  I laid a water bottle!

--------------------------------------------------------------

Joy....  Ok, this isn't something she said, but it's too sweet to leave undocumented:  she spent her Barnes and noble birthday gift card to buy a copy of jan Brett's The Mitten for Crash.  He loves it and loves his big sissy.  He often cries when I drop her off places.

Have a great rest of the week!

Vacation Times Two

I'm rewinding a couple months... forgive me.  I can hardly remember what day/season/year it is, let alone gather the wherewithal to keep the blog up to date with the family's current events. 

Anyway, for posterity, let the record show that we took 2 vacations in the course of a month. 

First, In August, we went about 3 hours north to the shores of Lake Michigan.  This has been a summer tradition for the past four years.  I could easily spend a month there... probably more.  The beaches are so pretty, we can walk to so many fun places, and, best of all... no sharks in the water!!  It's a wee bit colder than Florida waters, but, seriously, the kids do not care.  Much. 

And there you have all the pictures I took on that trip before my camera died. 

Exactly 3 weeks later, we went south.  This time, the trip was 12-13 hours on the road each way.  A bit more painful, but we've been wanting to hit Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown for several years now for their homeschool days.  They have some crazy good deals going on for that event and also several extra classes available.  Joy took a class in the print shop with Grandma, and the three middles and I participated in 'the Life of a Soldier."  Lots of fun. 

It rained a couple days, so we did the Virginia Living History Museum.  Really great.  Pada, Eustace, and 3 adventurous kids walked outside through their trails in a serious downpour to witness bald eagles, deer, foxes, coyotes, and a bunch of other wildlife I can't remember because I wasn't brave enough to go with them. 

We had a great time with my parents on both trips.  They even carted our whiniest child to Virginia for us.  God bless them. 

On trip number 2, I took exactly zero pictures with my camera.  I do have a few on my phone, I think, so I'll work on getting those onto this computer sometime in the next decade. 

Garden Report

So.  This garden of ours.  I'm not sure exactly what we did right this year, but it has been great fun to reap a bountiful harvest. 

We did do a couple of things differently.  I read an article about small space gardening (even though we actually have plenty of space) which advocated planting veggies and flowers in an intermingled fashion, sticking plants in and around each other rather than in rows.  I gave it a try.  The author of that article probably meant that a gardener should plan what each plant would look like in maturity when sticking stuff in the ground, which I did sort of and sort of not. 

Basically, I planted plants and seeds with an idea of how big things would get based on how our garden has done over the past decade.  Which is to say, I expected at least half the plants to get eaten by deer and/or rabbits, another third or so to either dry up during a drought or get choked by weeds or who knows what.  We've never had a majority of plants survive the growing season. 

What a difference this year.  I planted marigolds anywhere I had a little bare patch and covered the beets (which always seem to be the first plants eaten by animals) with a garden tent.  The only plants that were not successful were the kale.  They were growing just fine, but we had a wee Japanese beetle problem, and by 'wee' I mean it was like a plague.  So, not much kale for us.  Who cares? you might be thinking, but I have my kids brainwashed to think that kale chips are a treat. 

 

 

We also added garden manure pellets at the beginning of the summer, and the weather was primo.  Not super hot, not super wet.

Possibly the most exciting development has been the pumpkin patch.  It has long been my dream to plant pumpkins (aim for the stars, right?).  We actually tried once before and had a yield of exactly one small, wimpy gourd.  Check out our results this year:

This is about half of our yield.  Jack-o-lanterns for everybody!!  Plus the neighbors!  Just kidding.  I'm not sharing.  :)  In the foreground above, you'll also notice the remains of a fairy garden house constructed by Joy.

We also have tons, and I mean tons, of spaghetti squash and butternut squash.  Makes me happy.  Our green peppers and cucumbers did pretty darn well, too. 

So, this is the 2014 summary of our little plot of agriculture.  It may always be remembered as the year Mom actually kept the garden alive. 

What They See

On my wedding day, I was 5'8" and weighed 125 pounds.  I worked as a physical therapist in a physically demanding job and worked out just about every day.  I taught group exercise (aka aerobics - dating myself here) classes and ran regularly, among other forms of exercise.  I thought I had fat thighs. 

Fifteen months later, I gave birth to our first child.  Almost instantaneously, I became less concerned about every little imperfection on my body.  I looked at myself and thought I resembled the women in renaissance paintings - curvy, maternal-looking.  Did I mind?  No.  Kind of liked it, actually. 

For years prior, the thought of anyone catching a glimpse of what I considered a less-than-ideal rear end in running tights (or whatever form-fitting pants I occasionally wore) was horrifying to me.  I always wore a sweater or shirt long enough to cover that.  All of a sudden, I had curves and some extra lumps here and there, and I really did not care who knew it. 

My whole concept of what my body was for had suddenly changed. 

My husband, God bless him, tells me how pretty I am no matter what state of pre-, post-, or right-in-the-thick of pregnancy I happen to be. 

I'm not advocating a just-let-yourself-go mentality here.  Staying healthy is important!  What I'm suggesting is that motherhood drastically changed my perception of what my body should be and what behaviors in me were most important to the well-being of my family.

My first child is a girl.  Do I want her to grow up thinking that her most important attribute is her outward appearance?  Do I want her to think physical perfection (who even knows what that is!) is something she should obsess over?  Do I want her to torture herself by comparing herself to airbrushed models in magazines?  Absolutely not.  I realized early on that the first person she would learn that stuff from is me. 

So, I exercise as much as I can.  We eat pretty healthfully around here.  I try to teach my kids about good nutrition and the pitfalls of too much sugar.  But, do we enjoy treats and hit a drive thru now and again?  Heck yes. 

When my 6 year old jumps in my lap and squeezes me around the neck, does she care that my belly is more round than it used to be?  When my 2 year old looks in my eyes, smiling and singing, does he care about the crow's feet and laugh lines? 

My husband, who cares about my health and longevity, makes sacrifices so I can get away and exercise.  He rejoices with me when a few more baby pounds melt away and I can get into smaller pants.  But, does he make me feel less attractive when I am in the process?  No. 

I am blessed with such a man. 

I hope when my kids look back on their childhood, they remember a mom who smiled and laughed and hugged them a lot.  I hope they learn that exercise and nutritious food makes a person feel better.  I'm pretty sure they won't consider whether what size of jeans their mom was wearing when we went to the beach or decorated the Christmas tree.  Lots of love - that's what I want my family to see in me.  I hope they do.