Loving Life

Today, I get to stay home for the ENTIRE day! What a treat! I've hardly had a chance to be at home the past three days with various appointments, meetings and taking kids to various activities. So today is a day to catch up a bit at home. On the agenda for the day is to get in a full, unrushed day of school, get the house clean and to deal with this pile sitting in my kitchen. In "Ideal-Land", I would get all of them dealt with by the end of today and have many quarts of nicely canned applesauce to show off from my labors. However, Ideal-Land rarely happens. I've been chipping away at this pile over the last week doing a small batch here and there as I have time. I love having a pile of apples to preserve in some way. I don't love the process, but definitely love the end result. I made a couple of apple pies last night for our small group. They were so yummy - unfortunately, Aaron ate the last piece as part of his complete nutricious breakfast. So there is no mor...

Yep, that's what greeted me this morning. I have an awesome hubby! It has been a super busy day that isn't over yet, so it pleased me to have a few quiet moments to myself before it all began. Yea for Aaron! Thirteen years of marriage has only made our marriage stronger and more filled with love. Okay, I'm done with the sap. Enjoy the rest of your day!

Things have been a little crazy around here lately. I feel like I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and relax for awhile. And I'm feeling behind on pretty much everything right now. I don't like that feeling. Makes a little stressed, which can make me a little irritable. So I'm working on getting things done so I can relax some and also trying to be realistic about what I can actually get done. Need to let go of my ideals of perfection on everything I do! Yesterday, the kids had their first game of fall soccer. David and Ana played at the same time yesterday, so I only got pictures of Ana - I told David I'll get pictures of him next week. I think they all enjoyed it. Ana is on the light blue team below. Throwing the ball in from the side. Abby got to play soccer too this year. She's having such a good year of getting to do "big kid" stuff finally after half a lifetime wait for her. She liked playing goalie because she got to touch the ba...

I did it! I completed my 20 mile run/walk. I am quite pleased with myself. The kids spent the night last night at my parents' house so Aaron and I could both run at the same time. We decided to do an out and back to my parents house, which is conveniently located 10 miles from us. It would provide us with a pit stop to use potties and refill water bottles. Aaron ran the first mile with me, which was fun. We haven't been able to run together much in the last 10 years since having kids. We used to do it more. Of course, Aaron is faster than me, so he took off after that first mile and ran his own pace while I ran mine. We knew we'd see each other again in passing once he turned around and headed back. But the closer I got to my parents house, he wasn't around. I began to get somewhat concerned and even wondered if I had somehow missed seeing him. That would be pretty much impossible, but it went through my mind. When I got to my mom's, there he was, sitting with ice o...

Two years ago, Abby became aware that she was "missing out". Our homeschool group offers several 8 week sessions we simply call "Friday classes". The kids are given the opportunity to get together with other homeschool kids and explore different classes of their choosing - sometimes more heavy on the learning, others more heavy on the fun exploration. I LOVE Friday classes! They give me a chance to send my kids off to someplace different where they will get instruction from a teacher other than me and learn to be a kid in a group of other kids. It's an all around win-win situation. Abby, at the tender age of two, realized that she did not get to do this amazing thing that her older siblings got to do. What sadness this caused! For two long years, she watched with longing and sometimes tears when we said good-bye at the door to David and Ana as they happily scurried off to class. Last year, they started offering Friday classes to four year olds as well. ...

When I married Aaron, I realized I had married a man who was addicted to books. This is not a bad addiction as far as addictions go. Through him, I learned that you can do all sorts of things while reading a book, such as play computer games, do the dishes, and even shower. Yes, Aaron reads in the shower. I tried it once to see what it was like. I don't recommend it. It's uncomfortable to hold the book out of the stream of water, very difficult to turn the pages one handed, and in the back of my mind I kept fearing I would drop and ruin the book in the water. Aaron, however has no qualms whatsoever about reading in the shower and almost daily uses up the hot water as he reads while showering. Here is an example of his amazing talent of reading while doing chores (don't worry - no shower pictures!). I also quickly realized that Aaron is the type of person who laughs outloud when reading a book. I didn't realize people actually did that until I married him. I would hear ...

I have been better at getting school organized on Sunday for the week - now I need to work on figuring out a meal plan for the week so I don't have my 5:00PM panic over what's-for-dinner-because-Aaron-will-be-home-very-soon! Tonight I had a little more leeway on getting things done as Aaron is out late marking the cross country course for tomorrow's home meet. So since I have a plethora of volunteer squash, I decided to try out a few new recipes. I made some butternut squash fries. I love roasted sweet potatoes like that, so butternut squash was bound to be just as good that way. Yep, they were! I also tried out some butternut squash muffins with some of my squash. They too were quite yummy. Mmmm. Tasted like pumpkin bread, really. Today, I went out to the in-laws and picked some apples and pears, raspberries and tomatoes. All that will need to be dealt with now in a somewhat timely fashion before the swarm of fruit flies that has taken up residence in my kitchen continue t...

Q. How many days does it take our family to eat a half bushel of peaches A. 13 - only a few were lost to being rotten - all were eaten fresh, in their unaltered, unsugared state. Q. How many miles have I run or walked since January? A. 612 Q. How old does Abby hope to be when she dies? A. A billion. Q. How many times does Abby use the word "billion" in a day? A. A billion. Q. What is my favorite fruit? A. Pears... or strawberries... or muskmelon... Q. What do I wish I made more time for? A. Playing piano or scrapbooking or scrapbooking while playing piano Q. What is my favorite candy? A. Skittles... or reese pb cups... or anything chocolate Q. What are my least favorite household chores? A. Cleaning the bathroom and putting away laundry. Q. What is my favorite sport to watch on TV? A. Football! Q. Excluding fish, how many different pets have I had in my lifetime? A. 19 - I think. There are others in my life, but I don't claim them as mine. Q. How many c...

Our date night was quite lovely! We got a little bit of a late start since this is cross country season and practice ending times always vary. But by 7:00, we were nearly to town and would soon be eating at our new favorite restaurant. We decided to try new things on the menu and I was a little saddened by our choices as they didn't turn out quite as fabulous as I had hoped. But the company I had there was very delightful and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. We decided since we hadn't nearly stuffed ourselves completely full, that we had just enough room for ice cream - there's always room for ice cream in my book. So we squeezed some in along our way home. Since it was getting late, we decided not to visit the bookstore, but to go home and watch our movie that we had waiting for us from Netflix. We ended up staying until midnight so instead of an early morning run like I had planned, we treated ourselves to the luxury of sleeping in until 9:00 (an unheard of hour!)....

Tonight is Date Night with Aaron! I'm excited. We share a babysitting co-op type thing with two other couples where we take turns taking each others kids for an overnight giving the parents a chance for a date night. We're on a three month rotation where each couple gets a date night and a babysitting night during those three months. It works out well and the kids enjoy getting to spend time at each other's houses for an overnight. And best of all, it helps us busy parents to take time and be together as grown-ups. Our last date night was our fishing date to get us out of our dating rut. I think tonight will probably be a more traditional date - mainly because we have a new favorite restaurant we really want to go to without our kids! It's a Chinese/Thai restaurant - very delicious! After we stuff ourselves with amazing Thai food, we'll probably head over to the bookstore and try not to lose ourselves within the world of books too much. Then we'll mea...

I had quite the whirlwind of a day yesterday - hence no post until today. Today is a little more sane. Yesterday, I woke up bright and early for an early morning bike ride - we're giving our running muscles a break for a bit and doing some cross training. I, however, do not recommend biking downhill on gravel at dawn. It's very nervewracking trying to see where you're going in the pre-sunrise "light", trying to miss the loose gravel, and avoiding the enormously large and loud combine overtaking you from behind you. But I made it home in one piece. Once there, I got supper going in the crockpot for our small group later on in the evening, got things ready for school - which included waking up three very sleepy children. We did a quick morning of school, then off to take David to his science/writing class with other homeschool kids. I dropped my girls off at my grandma's house where they were to eat lunch before heading to Grandma Cindy's house (they "d...

I've entered the phase of life I hit everytime at this year of being in a love/hate relationship with my garden. LOVE: I LOVE the fresh eating that goes on with the garden produce. Yesterday's meals included tomatoes, beets, red raspberries, green and red peppers, and two acorn "trash" squash that volunteered from my compost pile (still have about 12 more to go!). You really can't beat all that produce for the cost of seeds (or free in the volunteer cases). So healthy and so yummy! I love making a meal and seeing that a lot of it has come from my own garden where I know what is on it (or what isn't on it, to be more specific). I love the creativity of seeing what's ripe in the garden and figuring out what you can make with it. THINGS I DON'T LOVE SO MUCH: Once school starts, much of my time is consumed with everyday schooling. I no longer have the time to go out and weed my garden. It starts to look quite unmanagable, messy and overwhelming...

Last week, we studied a bit of ancient Egypt history. We'll come back to it a little later on in the year as the Egyptian history unfolds through the course of time. The kids read several books about pyramid building and then built their own pyramids out of marshmallows and/or sugar cubes. They greatly enjoyed it. Ana and her finished product - along with the Sphinx - unfortunately, it doesn't show up well on this picture. David's sugar-cube pyramid. Abby ate more marshmallows that I care to know about. I did draw the line at eating the sugar cubes, though. Besides, the pyramid laborers do need to eat something! Ana wanted to see how many marshmallows she could cram in her mouth - I think it was over 20. We also made a small Nile River two weeks ago and planted grass along the banks. Every week we flood the Nile to water our grass. This is a highlight of the week for them. I think trimming the grass will be fun for them too - as long as there is no fighting over...

Sorry to those of you who hate running because here's a post all about it! For those of you new to my life, about a year ago, I started training for a marathon. I had a bump early on in the road as I dealt with the swine flu and the bronchitis/pneumonia that followed. But once I had finally kicked that away, training went quite smoothly for quite some time. Then about 6 weeks ago after a big week of mileage increase, my foot went on strike. I'm not exactly sure what's wrong with it, but there's a spot under the little pokey bone that sticks out on your ankle (how's that for a medical term) that got super painful - so painful that I couldn't put much weight at all on my foot for almost a week and was hobbling around on crutches - we were fearing a stress fracture. Talk about sadness! But after two weeks of total rest and several weeks of partial rest, it was feeling better. Not at 100%, but I was able to run on it. My marathon hopes had revived enough to make me ...

We've had a good week of food. Some weeks I do really well with making good, sound meals. Other weeks feel more rushed and make whatever comes off the top of my head type meals which are sometimes suspect. Ideally, I would plan a week or two in advance of meal ideas for a few weeks at a time and then I would just pick what I feel like making that day. That helps with my 4PM oh-no-what's-for-dinner angst. Plus I can do my grocery shopping excursions around those meal plans and make sure I have everything I need. I usually go grocery shopping once every two or three weeks - so I have to plan well in advance! Having had numerous gatherings last week and this week helped me be a little more organized in the meal planning so here are just a few of the highlights... Ana always wants to be in on the food action, since she wants to own her own restaurant someday. So when I was busy making food for various gatherings, she was busy scouring her cookbooks for ideas of things she c...

I had such a busy weekend this past week, that I didn't have time to adequately prepare for school this week. So each day is feeling like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. It's definitely not what I had envisioned happening this early in the school year. Usually that happens more towards May when all I want to do is be done with school and be outside puttering in my yard and garden. So I have skipped a few things here and there this week that I just haven't prepared and it filled me with some anxiousness. It's not that I'm worried about my kids being left behind in their education. In all honesty, they are quite ahead in just about everything. But the things I have skipped this week are the things I have been striving hard to add back in (art, music, more science and history fun). These are the things that will help round them out as people instead of just focusing on the head knowledge. So we started piano lessons last week and they did really well an...

Today is day number eight in our schooling. It's starting to feel a little more comfortable. I'm getting the hang of the various new things we've added and it's starting to feel more routine. I'm continually tempted to skip things and make our day shorter, but I just keep telling myself that it is not allowed. Attitude with one certain individual continues to be a struggle. I'm trying to find ways to combat that. Today I had a spray bottle of water and would squirt the offending bad attitude anytime it reared its nasty head. That usually got some giggles going instead of whines and fusses. Does anyone have ideas on how to help motivate a child who is grouchy about doing pretty much anything I ask for school? I'm open to all suggestions! We enjoyed our night last night reconnecting with friends we don't see very often. Our one friend is in the Air Force and was back in the States for a small time. We always love when he gets to stop by for a vi...

What an awesome weekend we had! It was full of old friends and new friends. I got everything done that needed to get done so that I could relax and enjoy the weekend. We had some really good, insightful talks with the couple that was staying with us. They brought some fresh perspective to our lives on a few things we've been wrestling with. Keith also was able to preach at our church on Sunday and had a great sermon. He talked of maturity and how really, life is not all about us - though we often think it is. So true! I think I'll spend the week digesting all the good things I heard. Other fun things we did - eat yummy food, eat cheesecake (cheesecake goes above and beyond yummy food and gets its own separate category), play table ping pong (David beat everyone but me, so I guess that officially makes me the best player around - oh yeah), stay up way past our bedtime, tour Wellman (didn't take long), and eat ice cream (also gets its own separate category). There are three p...

I have an hour and a half before we leave to go pick up our company from the airport and only a few small last minute things left to do (get clean sheets on the bed, sweep the floor, and do breakfast dishes). Yea! My house is not spotless (probably never will be), but it is still pleasing to me. I got my run in last night. It took me awhile. I ran 12.5 miles - half of that was straight into a very heavy wind (steady around 25 mph according to the forecast, with gusts up to 35-40mph). I thought it was mainly coming from the west, so I ran that way first while I was still fresh. But later on in my run, when I turned north, it felt like I was running straight into the wind again. Argh! So apparently it was a NW wind and it felt strong in both directions. But I got it done just as it was starting to get dark. I came home to find that while I was out plodding along Aaron had taken the kids to the little family diner in town and then gotten ice cream afterwards. No fair! At least...

Panic Mode for house cleaning is settling down. Our company comes tomorrow morning when we pick them up from the airport. So I have most of today to finish a few things up. I am pleased with my progress and deep cleaning. Yea! Aaron is home today too as today is his church work day. So he said he can help with a few things later on today. I'm starting the day off with a dentist appointment. It's been awhile. I'm trying out a new dentist (student dentists) through the University. It's cheaper than normal dentists, but it does take longer. We'll see how much longer! But while I'm in town, I can run a bunch of errands that I need to get done for the weekend instead of having to make a special trip to town just for that. Also, due to weekend activities, I will be doing my long run tonight once Aaron gets home from CC practice. One of the plus things about this is that I will be able to sleep in a bit on Saturday morning. It's hard to remember the la...

I got a weird craving for hummus last night. Not sure why. I usually don't like it because all the stuff I've ever tried taste like... well, bland, pureed garbanzo beans. I decided I can make it better and to my taste. My beans soaked overnight and this morning I went to work. I looked up a few recipes for my base to start from and found the components I thought would make it better. I'm more of a "bit of this, a bit of that" type cooker anyway, so that's what I did - no measuring, just tossing. Things I added - 3 cloves of garlic, cumin, salt, olive oil, lemon juice and a garlic/chili paste I found in my condiment section of the fridge. Pureed that in my handy dandy new food processor and had a taste. Yum! That's what hummus should taste like (for me, at least!). I wonder if Aaron would like it. He despises all things garbanzo. He might actually like this if I can get him to give it a try. Right now, I have some pita bread dough rising in the oven. I thin...

Things are moving along here in panic mode of house cleaning. It helps that tonight I have our small group meeting here so I can't keep putting off the things I don't want to do (like clean the bathroom). So I will be getting a lot done this afternoon once school lets out here. Speaking of school, yesterday wasn't the best day for school. There were a lot of bad attitudes all around which made it hard for me to keep a good attitude as well. I was seriously daydreaming about sending the kids to public school yesterday. Mr. Fleming, the principal of our school, had a talk with the main bad attitude offender last night and this morning has been much better - I made sure to compliment the improved outlook on life once math was done. I was able to run 8 miles this morning before everyone awoke. It was a long run and I was tired. Had to get up at 5:30 to get it in. I don't normally enjoy waking up before 6:00 if I don't have to. Only six and a half more weeks of ...