7 things i haven't

for the past week, robin, haley (17) and nick (16) have been in vanderwagen, new mexico at broken arrow bible camp on a missions trip. they will be back in 2 days, so i thought i'd post a few things we haven't done/missed while they've been gone.

(picture of robin from the archives, playing family flag football at the park across the street from our house in tally. love that man.)

1.) i haven't grocery shopped. except for special treats for the 4 youngest. and milk.

2.) i haven't missed waking up to a sink of dirty dishes after i went to bed the night before with it clean :)

3.) i haven't put gas in either vehicle.

4.) i haven't competed for who gets to mow the lawn with the riding mower. karis and i are the only 2 here heavy enough, and she's busy working at her new job.

5.) i haven't done much wash. needless to say, we now know who makes the majority of our dirty laundry!

6.) i haven't gotten irritated with the volume of the television. because it hasn't been on :)

7.) i haven't enjoyed adult conversation (daily conversations with robin, sports talk with nick--haven't even watched sportscenter! and who's doing what with whom and why with haley).

i have missed them.
come home soon you three.
lots of love awaits you.

st patricks day

and yes, i know it's more than a month over due, better late than never.



this year we made more of an effort to go over the history of st. patrick and explain why he is worth a holiday (it's not just because march can be a dreary month and there's nothing else to celebrate. heh heh)

we also read the book 3 in 1, explaining the trinity using the analogy of an apple. we talked about how st. patrick used the shamrock to explain the same thing. so we did a shamrock "craft" montessori style.


and of course we had to make a green snack (the years of green eggs and ham are gone, as the kids now think they're gross and won't touch them). this year we did our classic christmas cookie, the spritz, and tinted it green with green sprinkles.

unity girls-march edition

our march unity girls (the middle/junior high girls club we started based on romans 15:5,6) was led by the incredibly talented mother of my co-leader. she has been making pysanky eggs for years. she promised it was not as complicated as it looks. i wasn't so sure.

you start by dividing a raw egg (farm raised is best, not processed. at room temp) with light pencil lines. draw in your design and then melt some beeswax in your drawing utensil (kitska). then you cover what area you don't want to be the color your dipping. you work from light colors to dark, add beeswax, dip, add beeswax, dip, etc. until you get the desired effect. olivia's was awesome. mine, well....

then at the end you melt the wax over a candle and wipe off with a tissue until the white and other covered up colors are exposed.

so fun. and mrs. schall gave a great devotional on new life and spring, and God's design for our lives. thank you so much mrs. schall and mrs. schall's mom!

letterboxing! and a magnificent obsession

on one of the first warm days of the spring, we went on a field trip. the fact that it was 2 miles from the house was besides the point. there is an old, former railroad track that they've turned into a nice bike trail. and that is where our adventure began.



it wasn't an easy one to find. there was still some snow on the trail, and the one main marker we needed to find had been knocked down flat. but eagle-eye nick eventually found it. but not before pete found this:


a large patch of bamboo. you see, pete has an obsession with pandas. he wanted one so badly last year that he got a small one, with a book. which led him to ask beg grandma to get him one for his birthday (which she abliged, with a video). but a bigger, stuffed panda wasn't what he had in mind. he wanted a real one. and he asked anyone to get him one for christmas. he had it all worked out. room to sleep under his bed or in his spare closet. lots of water. but we finally convinced him that we couldn't afford the huge amounts of bamboo a panda would need to ingest daily.

that's why when we came upon this patch of bamboo on the side of our letterboxing trail, he stopped dead in his tracks. and you could see the wheels turning.......

on our way back to the car, the firemen were out doing 2 separate trainings (we were really close and i was trying to be clandestine). the trail runs next to their training grounds. it was fun to watch.

fearless. or not.

mike, as our 6th child, has been the fearless one. during the summer olympics of 2008, we couldn't let him watch platform diving because after he saw them do it once, we caught him out by our pool stacking chairs/tables, anything he could find to make it higher for him to try it in our deep end. he will try anything once, and comes up with the craziest ideas.

except. when we lived in florida, he would not try to learn to ride a bike. not with training wheels, not with us helping him. we thought maybe he was afraid of the busy road we lived on, or the fact that he overheard our thank-God-jack-had-his-helmet-on story so many times that he was afraid that he, too, would take a bad fall going downhill and crack his helmet on the sidewalk.

fast forward to this year. now he is 7. and our neighbors ride their bikes to our house every day (they live two doors down). they had a few spare bikes, and offered him one. with no training wheels. he didn't need any instructions. he walked up our street (it has a gentle incline), balanced himself on the seat, and coasted down to said neighbor's house.



i could tell he wasn't fearless by how white his knuckles were from holding on so tight.
eventually, though, he got the feel of peddling and could turn around in our friends' driveway.
then he could turn around and ride back *up* the street.

and eventually he looked back at me as he drove away.
three cheers for you, mike.
we love you.

the day that ended the posting

this is it. it was a wednesday and we were scheduled to get our church pics done at 1pm. it was the only time we could get all of us together with karis' work schedule and other commitments.

have you ever read this book ? yea. well. it was worse than that. i came home and laid in the hammock, took that picture and thought of the blog post i would write. and when it came down to it, i decided sleep was more important. and i spent days after that just trying to keep my head above water. only with 7 kids and a husband, 2 dogs and 2 elderly in-laws across the street demanding vying for my attention, i got out of the blogging habit. i'm all about rhythm and routine. and lots of sleep.

fast forward 6 weeks, and i already regret not posting the memories my kids have made these past few weeks. some firsts for kids and us as parents, easter, letterboxing, quitting jobs, getting new ones....lots going on. we'll get caught up soon.

(not my original post. that one got deleted while i was out delivering girls to babysit. but now my brain is gone... so this will have to do)