BTW

Hey, BTW, never try to import pictures to your computer while blogging in the dark. I accidently tried to put my media card into the slot under the right one and it was the much larger one. I no longer have a media card. It slipped into no mans land inside the puter. Hopefully Smart Guy will be able to get it out when he gets home tomorrow. I was gonna add a pic of the moon to my last post... guess that ain't happenin' huh!

The Hunters' Moon

It's 12:02. Since Smart Guy isn't here and the kids have been asleep for several hours now, I've been cleaning, doing laundry, talking to Ruby on the phone, and occasionally looking out the family room window into the backyard looking for who knows what! The last time I looked out the window, about ten minutes ago, I realized how bright the backyard was without turning on the flood lights. It looks like it's about 7:20 Eastern in the morning out there. I suddenly realized that it's about time for the Hunter's Moon so I googled it to see the precise date and time it will be at it's fullest and brightest... October 26 at 12:52 am... 48 minutes from now. That would explain why the world is so lit up tonight. If you've never noticed the brilliant light of a full Hunters' Moon, you've definitely missed something magical. Each year it amazes me more that nightime can be so brilliantly lit up that you can see everything. I'm so glad that circumstances arose tonight that allowed my mind to slowdown enough to see it, notice it, and appreciate it... which I'm not doing as long as I'm on the puter. Good night, y'all! I love you guys!!

The Sara Orange Gang

I tried to get a picture of The Sara Orange Gang while they were all having one of their story telling adventures, but no one would sit still long enough to get a clear one, so I thought I'd put them all on here. The stories she comes up with are hilarious. They usually involve the police, dinosaurs, and quite often lobsters. I don't know how she does it. Prophet says "Tell me a story Sara Orange", sits down in her lap, at ten he's gettin' kinda big, (especially for 5 foot tall Inkling), and expects a story to immediately be spewing from her brain. She doesn't just tell a little 3 minute tale either. They are long. Sometimes they'll last 20 minutes or so. It's hilarious. She's been doing this with my kids since they were about 18 months old, so they just expect it from her. I love the relationship the four of them have. She loves my small people. Other than myself and their grandmothers, there's no other woman on the planet that loves them more. She's the only person, not blood related to me, that can tell me my daughter's a brat and not offend me. It's okay, I know she loves her and mostly thinks she's precious. Somehow I think anyone who has Bee get right in their face first thing in the morning and wakes them up by animatedly saying "Sara Orange are you awake yet, ya wanna play pop-up pirate with me?" when it's technically only 6:30 am in her part of the world has earned the right to call her something other than Bee!!!

Strange Things, A Wiser Grace, Happy Girl

Hey everyone! Well, you all guessed it... it's a piece of pizza. As for where I found it? Under Smart Guy and I's bed. Yah, you read that right, under our bed. Why? Who knows. I have some theories, but the world may never know how a piece of pizza ended up under our bed. It was totally dehydrated and hard as a rock!

I have a scarey story to share with everyone. This has made me a wiser woman. Yesterday morning we planned to all get up and have breakfast with Inkling before the boys left for school. I got up at 7:00, took the cookie sheets and 9X13 Pyrex dish out out of the oven, placed them on the back left burner, turned the oven on to preheat for the bacon, and then crawled back into bed until 7:30. At 7:30, I got up, went into the kitchen, and began mixing my pancake batter. While I mixed it, I put the pan on to preheat. I turned away from the stovetop to measure something on the other side of the kitchen, six feet away or so, and 30 seconds later heard an incredible explosion. I turned just in time to have a sliver of glass cut my leg and see purple Pyrex glass slivered ALL OVER my stove, the counters, and the floor. My heart was racing and blood was dripping down my leg from the 1/4 inch cut from the flying glass. Apparently when I turned on the burner to preheat the pancake pan, I turned on the burner under the Pyrex dish. Ya know how they say "not for stovetop use" on the bottoms of those? They mean it. Talk about an adrenaline rush! I was shaking for an hour after it happened. Ruby called to talk to Inkling a couple hours after it happened and I was still on an adrenaline high. When I first saw all the glass slivers, I was a little overwhelmed. I thought "How am I gonna get this all cleaned up?" But I did and so far I'm the only one that has gotten cut. I have two cuts on my right hand from cleaning up. Inkling and I made sure the kids wore their shoes in the kitchen yesterday because we kept finding slivers and big chunks of glass all over the place. This morning when Bee pulled the bench out from the table for breakfast, there was a 1 1/2 inch long sliver on the bench where Prophet ate breakfast and dinner yesterday. How he didn't slice his little bahooney is beyond me. The lesson I learned..... Don't use the stove before you're fully awake in the morning. All I can think about is "What if I hadn't walked away from the stove and that glass had sprayed up in my face?".

My mom is gonna get here tomorrow. She'll be here for over a week, then my dad's coming out next Friday thru Sunday and then they'll go home together. I can't wait for her to be here for a long time. I love having her in my home. I can't wait to show her around town some more. They were here less than 48 hours when they visited in August, so we didn't get to show them much. Smart Guy is in Indi tonight at an Emerging Church cohort he was part of when we lived in Indiana. They were having Doug Pagit speak, and his friends invited him to come back and for it. So he drove over this afternoon, and then in the morning Dad is driving Mom to Indi and Smart Guy will pick her up and drive her here. So, how many of your hubbies would volunteer to ride in the car with their mother-in-law for five hours? Yep, I didn't ask, he volunteered when he realized when we was gonna be there! Great guy isn't he!!!

Tomorrow's gonna be one of those days that wear me out! I have to walk the boys to school at 8:40 (at least it's not 7:40), then come home and try to get some stuff done around here before I leave at 10:00 to drop Bee off with a friend so I can go to the Community center at 10:30 for my training to start delivering with Meals on Wheels. (she said the people love to have little ones come to the door to deliver and especially love pictures that are drawn for them, but this first time needs to be childless), then I have to go home for an hour or so to hopefully get a little more done before Mom and Smart Guy get in, and then go to the boys' school for their "Fall Parties", (yah, whatever, just call it a Halloween party for cryin' out loud, who cares)with juice and M&M's in tow, and run back and forth between their classrooms the entire 45 minutes I'm there, and then run out to pick Bee up from school at 3:00, and then back into town to get the boys from school at 3:30. Around that time, Smart Guy and Mom should be pulling in and I should be able to sit down and rest and visit for awhile.

As tired as I'll be, I love days like that on occasion during the holidays. Yes, I consider the holiday season to be in full swing at this point of the year. Halloween starts it and New Years stops it! I love the last 10 weeks or so of the year!! I'm a happy girl! Of course, this year, I have to go buy a new 9X13 Pyrex casserole dish so I'll have enough dishes to cook the holidays away!! Oh well, at least I still have my eyeballs!!

What Is It?

Can you tell what this is? Take a guess what it is and what strange location I found it in yesterday?

She's Here

We picked Inkling up from the Cleveland airport around 8:45! I was so glad to see her redhead come down the escalator! Now we're back at our house visiting! Yeah!!!

Yum!

I made apple fritters tonight. I mixed the biscuit mix, the egg, the milk, the vanilla, the raw sugar, the cinnamon, lots of apple chunks,and something else that escapes me at the moment, fried 'em in canola oil, and then rolled 'em in cinnamon sugar! OH MY GOODNESS, THEY ARE SO YUMMY! They are made with whole grain biscuit mix of course and since they were fried in canola oil, they aren't as bad for us! Of course I ruined the goodness of them by dowsing them in refined white sugar! They still aren't as bad as they would've been if I'd made them with nasty, white flour.... right?

All Day With My Family

Yesterday the boys had the day off from school for teacher in-service days, so we kept Bee home from preschool and we headed out for an entire day out as a family. First we went to a local pumpkin farm to pick pumpkins! We walked the entire field looking for that "just right" pumpkin because none of them were the size Bee wanted. We had a big one in the wagon, but she just had to have that "one" pumpkin that worked for her. She'd see a good one, we'd walk to it, and then it wouldn't be "the" one when we got there. She ended up finding her favorite one on the flat of pumpkins that they had prepicked up by the barn. Oh well, it was fun walking around the field with everyone! After that we headed to a city nearby to look around. On our way, since we had no real plans for the day, we stopped at a "cheese house" that we say we're gonna stop at everytime we go by and never have. We didn't get cheese, because we didn't have a cooler to put it in, but we did come out with some really yummy pumpkin squares with cream cheese icing and walnuts! Then as we pulled out of their drive, Smart Guy noticed a sign down the road a little ways that was for a camp, so we drove down to check it out. Turns out that it's a small christian camp run by a Mennonite group and licensed by the Christian Campers Association. We drove around the camp and stopped in at the office to get some info. Maybe we'll try it out next summer for Prophet and D.K. After those two side trips, we finally made it into the city to do our little bit of shopping and looking that we can't do in our perfect little town! We actually lived in this city when D.K. was born, so we drove around a little and showed the boys the church we were at and the place we lived then. They were both little when we left there, and neither one of them recognized it at all. It was fun driving around the area again! After that, we headed home for about 30 minutes and then went to the haunted hayride where Bee was turned into a cat! I totally enjoyed sitting around the fire with my family while we waited for a wagonride thru the haunted hayride. Bee kept telling everyone that she was gonna have her eyes covered thru the entire thing, but she didn't. It was put on for children 12 and under and their families, so it was pretty tame. The boys kept saying "That wasn't scarey." The other parents kept laughing at them. There was one little boy who actually cried. He was probably in 1st grade or so. There were people running at the wagon with scarey masks on a few times and I think that's what scared him. After that we went out for pizza! We got home around 10:00 totally exhausted! It was a fun day with my family!!!


Pumpkin patch pics!! I'm not sure which one's the scarey one!

I'm thinkin' about using this for our Christmas cards this year!!

These horses have heads made of pumpkins! Everyone was very impressed!


The big brothers pushing the little sister on the wagon out to the pumpkin patch. It was fun until the boys got a little carried away on the ruts in the field and Bee started bouncing around too much! After that she walked with me!




The big pile of pumpkins up by the barn. I think I was more impressed than the kids were!

This was the coolest pumpkin. Bee and I really wanted it and we were so excited when we found it, but when we picked it up, it was rotten on the underside, so "she" had to stay in the field! (I kept referring to all the pumpkins as "he" and Bee kept correcting me and saying that I needed to call them "she") So, we took a picture for our memory!

For $10.25 we brought all this home! There are 5 gourds in the bag!! We are very excited!!

I took these from the car as we drove home from our trip to a nearby city to wander around Toys 'R Us on our annual "it's two months until Christmas, let's go take a look at the toys trip"! The sunrays thru the clouds were beautiful!


What every parent want to see when they look into the back seat while on a trip more than ten minutes long!! Prophet never sleeps in the car unless he has carsick medication!

We ended our day by going to a local pizza joint that everyone talks about, but we hadn't tried yet. They were packed, but we only had to wait about ten minutes and we sat down. It was delicious pizza. Definitely not Dominoes, Papa Johns, Little Caesar's, or Cici's. You could tell it was all fresh stuff and none of it premade. We ordered two large's and we had 8 big slices leftover.... translated this means that they were big slices covered with a bunch of stuff! My family never has 8 slices left from two larges, my boys are big eaters! Not cheap, but well worth the money!

Bad Mom

So I'm the world's worst mom! I feel so bad for my boys. Smart Guy left around 11:30 for the Ohio State football game in Columbus. The boys LAST soccer game of the season was at 3:30. My only job of the day was to take them to their LAST soccer game of the season. Because my keys are locked in the van, they had to miss their LAST soccer game of the season. Oh yah, did I mention that it's the LAST soccer game of the season!

We never lock our cars when they're in our driveway (I know we probably should, but we don't). Apparently when Smart Guy moved the vans around so the boys would have room to ride their skateboards in the driveway, he decided to lock them this time, and my keys were sitting in the center console. Dang it! Dang it! Dang it! We headed out the door at 3:15, plenty of time to make it to the game on time, when I realized my mistake. I'm just glad no one pulled the back door shut with it locked before I told them not to, or we'd have been stuck outside with no car to drive!!

The boys took it pretty well really. They didn't appear to be angry , just disappointed that they would miss their LAST soccer game of the season. We were supposed to take the snack for after the game today, but shortly after I had bought it, the coach called and said that another mom had called and wanted to bring a special snack since it was the LAST game of the season. So, not only did they miss the game, they missed the special goodies afterward.

Move on, Grace, there's nothing you can do about it now! I know, but I feel so damn guilty!

Meow

We went to the local Parks and Rec Haunted Hayride with our small people tonight. I'll post pics of our day today sometime tomorrow, but have a funny story about Bee. We stood in line to buy our tickets for the hayride and were on wagon #6. They hadn't even started wagon 1 yet, so we had a long wait. While we waited we played on the playground for awhile and then sat around the campfire they had going. As we sat, there was a woman dressed up as a witch, with purple hair, carrying a small vacuum cleaner, and topped off with the traditional black, pointy, hat! She walked up to Bee and "cast a spell" to turn her into a black cat when she wakes up in the morning. The witch walked away and we sat and enjoyed the fire. After about five minutes of thinking about it, Bee turns to me and says "Mommy, is she really a witch? Am I really gonna be a cat in the morning?" Since I'm the incredibly loving mother that I am, and because I never lie to my children, I very quickly responded, "Yes Bee, you will be a cat when you wake up in the morning, you better pick out a name for yourself while you can still talk." Her eyes got very big as she continued to watch the witch walk around the hay bales surrounding the fire while she "cast" various spells on the other children.

At first she was very upset about this. As the evening wore on, she seemed to become okay with it, and even excited about the prospect of becoming a black cat. Her name will be Black Midnight and her two best friends will be Tiger and Midnight, the two stray kittens that are always in our yard. She believes that once she is a cat, she will be able to convince the pair to come live in our house with us.

She made sure that I know her donut will have to be cut up into very small triangles for her to be able to eat it in the morning, and she has made sure that her brothers are willing to take her place on the soccer field since won't be able to kick the ball anymore!

She's gonna be disappointed when she doesn't wake up with a tail and the ability to purr in the morning!

Our Yard..... Do Over

This is blooming in my front garden (I use the word very loosly) right now. Now the newspaper said yesterday that things are blooming because of stressful conditions in the spring so they are compensating. I think that is giving plant life too much credit. I think the things are just confused because of the Indian summer. Do you have anything blooming in your yard?

That little red thingy in the picture is another sign of Indian summer. It's a wild strawberry. We have a bunch of them growing wild all up and down our street, but I haven't seen any for a long time. I just happened to spot this one on the side of our house.



Well, I've been telling a few different people that I was gonna post pics of the black squirrels we have here in our perfect little town for months now. Today, after I dropped Bee off at school, I headed out to the yard with my camera, and since I had no small child with me to scare them off, I got a few pics of them finally. These squirrels are actually black. I know some of you will think nothing of this, but those of us from the midwest and most of the south have probably never seen a black squirel. I hadn't before I came here. You see, we have a small, prestigious (read hoity, toity and expensive) college in our town, and rumor has it that years and years ago someone from said college smuggled in these black squirels to live amongst the natives. They have since multiplied by the 1000's. I have never seen an area with so many squirells. We have them all.... your basic red squirel, your basic gray squirel, your not-so-basic black squirel, then because of the call of nature we also have your basic red and gray squirels, your basic red and black squirels, your basic gray and black squirels, and your basic red, gray, and black squirells.

Here's pics of one of backyard buddies.





Here's our backyard, left to right. We have lots of trees for the squirels and other wild things to jump around in. Most of the time, if you look out our back windows, you can spot something climbing around back there. This may not seem that amazing to some of you to have all these trees in our backyard, but our house in IN was in a new subdivision and had not a single tree with more than about 50 leaves on it because they were all young trees. We love all the trees!

We've Done Well

Well, Smart Guy and I have apparently done our job of teaching our children not to talk to strangers well. I was looking out the front door to check on the boys, who were sitting on the porch across the street when a car stopped in the middle of the road in front of the house and a strange man that none of the kids knew got out of the car and started walking towards the porch where they all sat. My boys both got up and ran like they were scared to death. They were convinced they were gonna be grabbed. Ah yes, putting incredible fear into one's children is fun isn't it? Hey, it works. Ya can't be too careful! At least now I know that all my talk wasn't in vain!!

My Yard

Well, I just went out and took pictures of my backyard and the wierd things going on, but blogger "is aware of the problem" and won't enable to load up any pics that I took! Oh well, I'll try again later!

A Box of Fun

I just looked outside to check on my small people. They have plenty of toys to play with outside. What do you think is their favorite thing out there right now? The cardboard box that Smart Guy brought up from the basement this morning full of coats. I emptied it and they immediately took it out and started using it for various fun things. Right now they are collecting leaves in it. Earlier they were trying to snare a poor, little kitten in it because they're afraid it will get cold in this weather. At one point the boys were chasing Bee and the neighbor girl all over ours an her yards trying to "capture" them. I heard the annoyingly high-pitched squeal that only my sweet little daughter can make and went out to check on them just as the girls came tearing around the corner of the house with the boys in hot-pursuit, box in between them, right behind them. They all put on the brakes when they saw me. Bee immediately starting spewing horrible things about how awful her brothers were and the boys were grinning from ear to ear because they, unlike the girls, were having a blast torturing them.

Good grief!!!!

This Morning I Realized....

...that Inkling will be at my house in less than two weeks. I knew the dates she was coming, but it hadn't occured to me how close it was. That means that I will have seen both of my best buddies in less than three weeks time. I'm a happy girl.

I'm Back

Geez, it's actually been over a week since I've posted anything. I never would have dreamed back in January when I was posting up to five times a day, that I'd hardly ever post anything now.

Well, I had a really good trip last week to see Ruby and her family. That's Ruby and myself in the picture up there. Yes, I'm short, but she's 5feet 6, so she makes me look even shorter. It was very relaxing trip. Since I had no children of my own to take care of, I was able to totally enjoy her little people, Missy Moo Moo and Bagyra. I never got to see Missy Moo Moo when she was a baby, so it was fun to see Bagyra at only 8 months old. She, like her big sister at the same age, looks like a little "michelin tire girl" with rolls all over little body. Her little wrists look like they have rubberbands around them from her rolls. She is perfect. Rolls like that amaze me because all of my babies were skinny as they could be. You would never know by looking at Missy Moo Moo now that she was ever a "chunky monkey" as they're mommy affectionately calls them. I got to see pictures of Ruby at the same age as Missy Moo Moo now, 5 years, and was amazed at the sight. It was like looking at faded pictures of Missy Moo Moo. They are identical. It's pretty cool. I have to admit, I was infatuated with Bagyra. I held her alot and toted her around on my hip quite often. The awesome part was that she let me. At 8 months old, many little ones are getting that stranger anxiety thing. There is not a shy bone in that little girl's body. While we were eating Chinese one afternoon, she put her arms up to the waitress from her highchair. So she held her at our table for a little while. Missy Moo Moo is such a big girl. She's a fun combination of quiet and dramatic all rolled into one small body. She recently got a new kitten when she quit sucking her thumb, and was eager to show her off to me. As long as Missy Moo Moo sits in one place, that little cat will lay in her arms and purr. When Ruby and I were sitting in the family room after everyone was asleep, the crazy cat jumped back and forth between us about 20 times. She's nuts!!

Well, there's really nothing earth shattering to tell about my trip. It was quiet and relaxing and I liked it that way. The biggest thing that happened was getting my gate changed in the Atlanta airport 20 minutes before the flight was due to leave. If you know anything about the Atlanta airport, you know it's the busiest airport in the country, maybe the world. Not only did they change the gate, they changed the terminal. So, in the country's busiest airport, I had to race down a very long terminal, get on the train to another terminal, and race all the way to the end of that terminal. Needless to say, I was the last one on the plane, but I made it and that's all that matters!! After that, the rest of the week was slow goin', just the way I like it!!

It was awesome seeing Ruby for four days and getting to talk face to face when ever we wanted to. Thanks for the vacation Ruby. We'll have to do it again sometime!! Next time, it's your turn!!!