What a fun day!

This morning the kids and I went to the library for our weekly story time. I missed last week, and missed the message about kids wearing their costumes for a party at the library and trick or treating in the town hall (where the library is located). Darn! My kids went without their costumes.

It was still fun though, and they started the day off with a sugar high. I think today they ate more sugar than ever - we don't feed sugary stuff too much around here.

Afterwards we went to see daddy in the hospital. I let them wear their costumes up to see him and upon arrival we were whisked into the gift center by a greeter so the kids could pick out a halloween treat. We went to see daddy (and he was happily surprised to see them in their costumes). Once leaving, we were stopped by another lady who said the kids were so adorable, could we please go see her daughter she's been in the hospital for a week and will be in for probably another two weeks and she's making up bags of candy for kids. I said sure! Anything to brighten a patients day. So she took us around the corner and the kids each got another bag of candy and as we left, the woman thanked us and said it really made her day.

If I can remember what room she's in, I want to take her a thank you card tomorrow.

I ended up not going out to moms tonight, but I took the kids trick or treating in a sub down the road from my house. Bret really wanted me to take them out, and they had so much fun trick or treating in the hall this morning, so we did. I stopped in at our local grocier to ask if I could park my van there while the kids went out, he was fine with it. While out, I met up with another friendly lady who offered to carry Roo down the street for me because he was sooo tired and didn't want to walk anymore. I had him on my hip, Kaitlyn in my sling and my free hand holding two bags of candy and Alexis's hand. I was very grateful for a few minutes to get feeling back in my hand. She showed us a brand new and HUGE park they put in the subdivision... We'll be going there tomorrow. How awesome is it to have such a great park right down the road from our house. We had to stop going to our usual park (or at least limit the times we do go) because it was so far away. God is so good! This park is literally a few minutes down the road.

3 years on one costume...

I am loving how much use we're getting out of a single halloween costume. When my daughter was under a year, my mother in law bought her a unicorn costume. She fit in that the first year. The next year she STILL fit in it (it was a 12 mos. costume). The year after that (last year) her brother fit into it. This year Alexis will still be able to use it, so long as we add a long sleeved white shirt under it (the sleeves are a bit short). Andrew will be a lion this year (another freebie we got last year). Then next year, Kaitlyn can use the unicorn costume (and the year after that, the lion). Is that great or what? To top all of that use off (and still looking like new) the kids dress in them quite frequently to play.

I didn't plan on taking them trick or treating this year. For starters, I'm struggling with if it's really a good idea for a Christian family. Second of all, Alexis developed a fear of the dark after a scary set up last year while we were out. My moms church is putting on a friendly celebration of sorts - trick or treating from car to car in the parking lot, then a puppet show afterwards.

So, while Bret is away for a few days, the girls will play... My mom and I and the kids will have a sleep over at her house that night. Oh yea, with all the dogs. My mom has two, I have three. I haven't yet figured out the logistics of fitting cages, strollers, clothing/diapers and oh yea, the kids, in our van... I was considering bringing my pack and play for Kaitlyn but that's in the attic and I really need some help with that. So we'll all sleep on a queen size blow up bed my mom will have ready for us. kaitlyn will most likely sleep on my chest as she has been the past few weeks and a kid on either side (as we end up each morning, anyway!)

Crockpot duck?

Anyone have any good crockpot duck recipes? Bret brought home his limit today with duck, so we're going to plan a nice duck dinner for Sunday. Yum! I had no idea what time he was coming home today and I've already started a honey chicken dinner otherwise we would have had roast duck for dinner.

Alexis really took a liking to watching me pick the innards and prepare the ducks for waxing. She and Andrew actually helped Bret wax!

I would have taken pictures but my digital camera is on the fritz now and won't turn on.

What's been up the past few days.

I am proud of myself - I made a large pot of beef stock overnight. It's chilling now, I'll skim the fat and freeze for stew. The next time I cook another whole chicken I'll have enough bones for chicken stock, which needs to get done soon because I'm out of chicken stock! The dogs are going to LOOOOVVVVEEEEE the bones with the meaty parts still attached...

I'm quickly feeling overwhelmed with the amount of files I have for homeschooling on my storage drive. Thousands of files that are for the most part organized but many which are not. I'm weeding out what I think I'll never use as I go, but man you can accumulate far too many files overtime. It's nice to have a huge library on nearly every topic imaginable though. I'm trying to make a mental list of the different types of activities and printables I have on hand, printing some things I think I'll use soon, and making the most of what we do have considering I have three children right now who will be using the materials. Many of the writing/tracing type sheets are being laminated, and all of the printable activities are being laminated in hopes of them lasting through the children.

In a few days I will make a few different patterns for our flannelboard and start using it more. I'm also going to make a individual flannelboard for each of the kids, and talk to my local store about getting some clean pizza boxes, cover the lid with flannel to be used by each child and use the box to store the pattern peices!

Yay for my hunting hubby :-)

My honey came home with a couple ducks this morning and is going to go out again tomorrow. So long as the season is open, he'll probably be going every weekend so we can maybe stock our deep freezer for a few months (or at least provide some different meals during the season as we'd prefer to eat duck fresh as opposed to freezing it first). I gave Bret a nice foot massage as a thank you :-)

I rearranged the living room a little. I created a little office space in the living room with my computer desk and work desk (which is actually our old kitchen table that was too big for our kitchen, I use this for the many projects I am working on). I moved all of my computer and office equipment to the kitchen table, then pulled the desk out from the wall and stuck one of the desk ends against the wall instead of the whole back of it. I pushed the desk up against the chaise, and the way the desk is put together allows for the chaise to actually be a chair up to the desk. There is enough legspace under the desk - so with an actual chair on the opposite end both kids can work at the desk and I can sit there with them, or if they're doing well on their own I can work at the computer for a little bit. I think it's a nice arrangement.

My bug for organization is spreading. I really want to organize all of the files I have on my storage disks and drives for homeschooling. I have probably a thousand or better files I've downloaded from various places, all freebie type worksheets and activities for preschool and kindergarten. I'd like to organize them better. Somehow. I don't really know how. As I go through them I find activities I'd like to do with the older two so I print them out and set them aside to laminate if necessary, or I put it into my homeschooling binder to be used later. There is so many cool things online it's unbelievable. I doubt I'll be buying a curriculum for quite a few years as there are so many resources to utilize online (and the library of course). Then again if/when we buy a curriculum, I'll be able to re-use it on the following children if they are able to learn with it. Who knows! all I know is that there are endless options and opportunities.

Pictures of Andrews new 'do!

Andrew sporting a new mommy-made 'do! Kaitlyn is growing! 2 months old on the 14th!
The kids!

So exciting! He signed!

While my daughter has picked up on sign language really well (using signs *I've* forgotten about - she reminds me, and she's always right!) my son signed for the FIRST TIME TONIGHT!!!!! He's two, and still non-verbal. He has his own way of communicating, he hears fine, obeys, etc. he's just too busy being a boy to care about talking right now. hehe. I started working on sign language a few months back in an attempt to give him another way to communicate to avoid frusterations. Tonight was the first time! He signed please (for more cheerios) and thank you once he got them. Later on that night upon refilling his cheerio's he signed thank you again! Yay!!!!

I have to stay up until midnight tonight to I can turn the crockpot on and have spaghetti sauce ready in time for crockpot lasagna tomorrow. I have everything ready to go in the pot (and it already smells yummy).

We tried a beef and lentil crockpot recipe today and while the kids and I ate it and were ok with it, my husband didn't like it at all. I guess it's a recipe to take out of the "to try" section of my master cookbook and send it to the paper retriever....

Well it's nearly midnight, so I'm gonna go turn the pot on and hit the hay!

Fun day at the library

Today was the lap tots reading program I usually try to get the kids to each Wednesday at the library. We missed last week - they had a little birthday package for Andrews birthday! I thought that was really neat. The kids had a lot of fun - Alexis especially - I enjoyed watching them participate. Afterwards, Andrew was busy with a truck book he found and wanted to check out, and Alexis wanted to look at the books she picked out, so they sat at a table while I looked at books nearby. I found another book on crockpot cooking, some craft books for the kids, and another firetruck book for Andrew. I love the library!!! Kaitlyn slept the entire time in the sling.

I'm working on deep-cleaning our bedroom, and changing things around in the kids room a little more. I need to put away the boy-ish hooded baby towels I had out for Kaitlyns birth (not knowing if it was a boy or girl, I had both boxes of newborn girl and boys clothes down, pulled out boy and girl recieving blankets and towels, and just haven't had a chance to get the boy towels and blankets put away just yet). I am going to wash the bedding in all of the bedrooms today, vacuum the floors, and in the kids room I want to move things around from one dresser to another. I have two dressers in their room - a typical 3 drawer dresser I used to use before Bret and I "upgraded" our bedroom set last year, and a dresser that I *think* is supposed to be an entertainment center. :-) It has three drawers, two shelves above it, 4 shelves encased behind a wooden door on the left, and an open-ended 3 shelf end that opens to the right (instead of at the front). I use the shelves behind the wooden door for things that belong in the kids room but I don't want them to get into (I installed a lock on the door to keep them out), the shelves above the drawers for books/toys, and the other shelves for toys. I'm going to move the clothing into the bigger dresser because they are getting too many clothes to fit well in the drawers and now the bottoms are bowing from being stuffed all the time. I'll move the spare blankets and sheets into the shelves behind the door on the other dresser (and move the stuff from there into a tote and move it into the closet shelf), then put the toys that have a lot of excess parts in the drawers (we have a bunch of little people sets that will go in one drawer, a lot of kitchen/food for another, and trucks/cars for the last one). This will clean out the toybox pretty well so we can close the lid and actually use the toybox for it's double purposes - as a sitting place and a toy storage place.

I'm hoping that all works out. Now that I've thought it through, I should actually get started DOING it and get my buns off the computer chair. I've thought out a plan to re-arrange the living room to try and maximize our space but I doubt Bret will go for it. He HATES when I get into these re-arranging moods, so I try to keep it to the areas he won't be hugely affected by - the kids room, closets, rearrange the cupboard contents, etc. The living room will be a stretch, but if he won't let it happen that's alright too. it doesn't NEED to get done, I'd just like to do it! :-)

What a busy day!

I'm thoroughly exhausted, or at least close to it!

I planned two weeks worth of meals Sunday evening. We are trying a bunch of new recipes that sound good, but they don't use any ingredients we don't normally use, so we aren't spending much more on groceries but we get to have some new tastes in the house!

Sunday evening I checked out all of the sales flyers for the local stores I shop at. They have their circulars online so I made a list of what I need, where it's on sale. I'm slowly creating a price book for our commonly bought items so I know who has the best prices and I can really stretch our dollar. I'd like to get the newspaper on Sundays for the coupons but honestly I'm not sure we'd use enough coupons to pay for the subscription and then some so its not worth it! We don't really buy the type of food or items you can easily find coupons for.

Anyway, we started our day of shopping at 10:30am. We shopped at 5 stores for various items, then got home around 3. Diapers had to be changed, Kaitlyn was hungry and I had to put the food away. Thankfully I have dinner cooking in the crockpot.

Then I rearranged the kids rooms. I don't know why, but I have to rearrange things every few months. I like the change.

Last night I made/froze two apple pies and canned apple butter so my kitchen is a mess from that. I'll be canning more apple butter and applesauce tonight or tomorrow, and freezing more pies.

Kaitlyn has started cooing a little bit, and she tries to immitate what you do with your face. Tonight as I was singing to her, she was watching my mouth intently, then started moving her lips as if to talk, then started cooing a little bit.

Hard time cleaning with kids around?

Enlist their help!

I feel as soon as a child can make a mess, they're ready to learn how to pick up after themselves. This of course can (and should) be made fun for them. Encouraging them to help you around the house will eventually teach them good houskeeping skills and eventually put you out of a job :-)

For a while I was wondering "how in the world will I keep up with housework when our third is born?" The answer was "include them more during the day!" If they're helping me, they're having fun and learning and best of all - they're NOT making a mess somewhere else. Granted, sometimes when they help me they do make a bigger mess and it does take longer to complete the task but that's alright.

My kids have always helped with my duties around the house, but since Kaitlyn has been born they're both capable and interested in helping out more. Every day they help me clean certain parts. They LOVE to spray things down and rub them down. My chest freezers, fridge, washer and stove have never been as clean as they are now that I have two kids who love to rub them down! If I'm doing something that doesn't really require their help, yet I want to supervise them (in the process of staking my tomatoes) I'll give them a bottle of our non-toxic all purpose spray and let them spray away! The cleaner we use is called Basic-H which comes highly concentrated. Only a few drops of this to a spray bottle of water is all we need for an all purpose cleaner. I also use this non-toxic and organic cleaner for carpet and floor cleaning, window cleaner, cleaning our fruits/veggies, washing dishes, washing the vehicles, cleaning under the stovetop, you name it, it's been used on it! It's great to know it's nontoxic when the kids get into a spraying match...

Anyway, today we all took turns vacuuming and scrubbing the floors (with a mop, and then on our hands and knees getting all the corners and un-mopable places). The kids did a great job rubbing down the cabinets, deep freezers, fridge, washer and stove. We cleaned off the top of the deep freezers and the fridge, the kids took items I'd hand to them and put them where I told them. They thought it was fun being sent to different places in the house - many places I don't allow them unless I specifically tell them they can go. So it's fun when they are trusted enough to go there!

I took inventory of our large chest freezer. We recently bought 6 whole chickens, 40lbs of chicken breast and 70-80 lbs of beef (roasts, ground and steaks). I'm going to keep track of what we have, when we use it, and what dish we made it into, so the next time we buy our meat in bulk I know what we'll make the best use of. We don't normally eat steaks that often but we got a bundle of them with our last purchase but if they aren't eaten quickly enough I will know not to buy them again (maybe only buy when we know we want to cook 'em instead of buying a bunch and storing them) and instead spend our money on ground beef or roasts. I rearranged everything to see how much room we have in there - there should be enough for a deer or two and/or plenty of rabbit and duck. I'm kicking my husband out to do a lot of hunting this year (can you hear him saying "oh, darn!"). I told him to get me a deer for our anniversary on November 19th.

Next year we're still seriously considering starting to raise rabbit for meat. I recently learned we can use a gun to dispatch the rabbits (it seems all of the information I've accumulated have instructions on how to dispatch a rabbit by breaking it's neck or knocking it out - things I just am not comfortable doing incase it's done wrong and I cause the animal pain!). At first, Bret will be doing the butchering but we'll likely have to dispatch the litters we breed maybe 4x a year or more depending on how many does we breed and how many litters we plan. Bret isn't always going to be home for that with his work schedule. Using a gun, where I can restrain the rabbit and know for sure it's not going to be injured/feel pain before it's killed I feel much more comfortable. The actual butchering process after that I can handle... It's just the killing part that I had trouble with. I still will, I'm sure, for a while but it'll be a little easier knowing I dont have to risk hurting the rabbits and having them die a painful death.

We had a fun day today - I cooked a big breakfast and set the crockpot up for a meatloaf and veggie dinner. Then once Bret got back from helping a buddy, he took the kids and I to the Toledo Firefighters Museum. Today was actually fire safety day for the kids so there was a lot of activity and fun things to see. Once we left there, we stopped at the orchard down the road and got two bushels of apples, 30 lbs of potatoes and some acorn and butternut squash. I can't wait to make and freeze some apple pies!

Oh - we had my 6 week appointment with my midwives and Kaitlyn was just under 11lbs. She's gotten so big! I know it happens but it's a surprise every time! :-) She's almost outgrown her newborn outfits. She still fits in 0-3 but it's obvious that won't be for too much longer. She's not really getting too chunky outward but she sure is growing long!

A great review on my book!

I'm happy to read a review from Natural Birth & Baby Care please do click on the link and see what the writer had to say about my book, The Cloth Diapering Handbook

Today was a really easy day. I think the part that made it so easy was the fact that my oldest daughter, Alexis, was such a huge help. She helped pick things up off the floor, sort them into their correct container, and even cleaned up things without being asked. As I was putting Andrew down for his nap, she took it upon herself to clean up all of the play-doh accessories from the table! Maybe that was what made today so easy... Almost ALL day the kids played with play-doh!

Happy Birthday Roo-Roo!

Andrew as a newborn Alexis with her new brother
Andrew today!
I didn't have time to make a cake *darn!* but we did find a perfect one for him at the store...

My son turns two today. We celebrated with my father and family yesterday with a corn maze/petting farm/hayride and cake, and today we are celebrating his birthday on our own. I took the kids up to the store and let Andrew pick out a few gifts he'd like and he is happily playing with his new set of little firetrucks, ambulances, 'coptors, police cars, and construction vehicles. I also bought the kids a wooden block playset and a little "activity pack" for playdoh that has a rolling pin, cookie cutters, scissors and other things made just for the play doh.

I made a present for him also - a book about trucks and tractors. A few years back my husband worked for a trucking company that gave out truck cards (think baseball cards, with a truck on the front and owner/truck info on the back). He collected all of them and I was thinking at first i"d make a matching game for the kids out of them because there were a lot of duplicates. Then I decided I'd just laminate 6 to a page (setting out the duplicates, not sure what I'll do with them yet), and use last years firestation calendar (laminted and cut to fit), then I went through the catalogs/magazines we have set aside for our ABC scrapbook and I cut out all the trucks, tractors and other transportation and laminated a sheet of them. Then I comb bound all of the pages. The lamination SHOULD hold up to my sons abuse... He has been in love with this. My family got him a lot of truck/vehicle activity books also, so now he'll have something to "do" while i'm schooling Alexis. He REALLY wants to be a part of schooling and is not happy unless he's at the table doing something with us :-)

I had to stop by Once Upon A Child to get my son some shoes (and I was hoping to find some gifts there also, but didn't see anything he'd like). I made a SUPER find on some shoes for him - FIRETRUCK sneakers that are black and white with firetrucks on the side. They're velcro to boot, so he can put his own shoes on now :-) One thing I didn't realise until after I left the store was that they're the kind that light up when you run around. I'm not a huge fan of them, but I'll deal with it because my son is in love with his shoes that feature his passion. And plus, the light up portion includes tiny lightbulbs where the lights on the firetruck are and it does look kinda cool up close.

As I think any mom does on the birthday of her children, I've been replaying the labor and birth and early postpartum hours when he was born. He was born before 6am, at home. My husband caught him with my midwives here to help. Alexis once again slept through the birth and woke up around 8am or so. I was already in bed with my son when she woke up and the look on her face when she saw her new brother was amazing. She didn't really understand what was going on - she was about 18 months at the time - but she knew there was someone there smaller than her and she liked him. She took to him right away! I thought the early days were kind of rough because of the two being so close in age, my daughter being needy, and my husband having a hard time playing Mr. Mom. I look back on those days and can't imagine how I could think it was so hard, considering now we have three under three and a half - it must have been a bigger adjustment going from one to two, as opposed to two to three.

Time goes so fast. I can't believe my son is already two years old and is such a big boy. I am truley thankful that my husband keeps me home to be with the kids while he works. Not only because I feel that I am becoming the wife and mother God intended for me to be, but because I can be with my children every day and watch them as they grow. I have no regrets about wishing I could spend more time with them. This is time going by that we'll never get back. Each day comes and goes, and all we are left with are the memories. I pray that the memories my children have growing up are good ones, and I pray I can lead them on the right path as they grow up, being able to say no to evil and having the wisdom to know what is good and bad. Most of all I pray they come to know God, truley know Him, as a result of how Bret and I are raising them. I pray we are giving them the knowledge and tools that they need to develop their own relationship with Him - the belief that Jesus is their savior and this world isn't, a love for His word, a desire to talk to Him, knowing that all decisions must first be discussed with Him and ears and hearts must be open to listen for the answer, the strength to say no to things that go against His word and the ability to stay strong in faith when Satan sends non-believers their way. I pray they are a blessing to everyone else as much as they are to me, and that they make a positive difference in this sometimes dark world.