happy new year! this year, i resolve to:

• blog more.
• get a new blog.
• play more boy games (that include pretending to be a monster or a dog, playing Mouse Trap 10 times in a row, and making a bigger effort to play in the snow for more than 5 minutes).
• put more dinners in the crockpot so as to open up that time slot in the day when all of us are cranky (3:30-5:00). we'll spend that time playing to keep from yelling at each other.
• write about all the mistakes i make along with all the fun parenting things i get to do on a daily basis. because being a human mom means i make mistakes. a lot. see previous bullet point which alludes to the fact that yes, i yell at my kids.
• write down my dreams. not my goals, but my actual night-time dreams. i have some real hum-dingers.
• sew more. for other people.
• knit more. for other people.
• complain less.

wish me luck!

just before dinner this evening, i stumbled into a time in our family when two out of three children were in diapers, squinty eyes and a  big "CHEESE!" was the sound behind the still photos, and there was an actual, real live BABY in the house.

i can't believe that time was a full THREE years ago, and when i found myself there, i could hear the warnings of friends and family telling me to "hold on to these days!" and "they grow up way too fast!" although i heard them, took their advice to heart and thought i held on tight and savored those days as best i could (sometimes. sometimes not so much...), the boys all grew up way too fast. here i am with three NON-babies in the house, two of them who read words on a page, who use the bathroom like adults, and who ask incredibly important and complicated questions like, "will i be alive in 100 million years?" and who call me "mom" instead of "mama."

i was looking for pictures of pilgrim and indian hats we made our first thanksgiving in this house. what i didn't realize was just how...YOUNG the boys were until i actually found the pictures:

remember how red sawyer's cheeks would get in the fall and winter? and how stocky he seemed next to rowan?  that big toothy grin rowans always gave to the camera. they've both grown taller and slimmer, they speak words that everyone can understand, and....my goodness...who is that BABY:

i just assumed adam was there at the table with us making the hats, yelling for the giraffe-scissors and his own marker for the hat buckle. but look! he can't even sit up on his own yet!

it's amazing what time and busy-ness does to your already worn-out mom brain.

when i snapped back into this time zone, with demands of dinner and tired boys fighting over new toys, i couldn't help but think about the day, years to come, when i'll be getting dinner ready for only two again and how different the sounds of the house will be then. so i let them continue to fight over the toys without getting involved. i made dinner and laughed at their corny jokes (shhhhh! they think they're hilarious!), and took them upstairs WITHOUT making them clean up the toy room. 

because they're only going to keep getting bigger. and louder. and perhaps i'll look back on pictures of this thanksgiving in three years and wonder why i didn't stop and savor it more.

kenny and i met, married, and baptised our three baby boys in the episcopal church. for the entire time we've been a family, we've been liturgical. from the grace we say at our table before dinner every evening (from Kitch's "Anglican Family Prayer Book") to the books that i cycle in and out during the church and seasonal calendar, our home follows the rhythm of the Church year.

about 10 months ago, we stopped worshipping on sundays in our episcopal, liturgical church and found ourselves in a church at the opposite end of the worship spectrum: contemporary and non-liturgical. it was probably a "God-thing" that we returned a second week and have been returning each sunday since (as we never found ourselves returning to the contemporary services we were trying out at the time we left the Episcopal Church): the pastor invited all the children to the front and gave them each a Bible and told them that without them, our church wouldn't be there. that struck a chord in our minds: this church loved our children. not only because they are "the future" but because Jesus loves them, and instructs us to love them (even when they're not our own).

but that's not the point of this post.

even though we worship in a non-liturgical church now (and love this new church, by the way...), we still celebrate our liturgical family life. everyone can celebrate and find enrichment in their spiritual lives by following the liturgical calendar (even if they sing Casting Crowns songs on Sunday mornings instead of reciting the Eucharist from the Book of Common Prayer!).

and here we are in autumn, nearing the beginning of the church calendar: the time in which we prepare our hearts for our Messiah. we have already begun planning our advent observance. a few weeks ago, i ordered a book written by the authors of our spelling/reading curriculum called Advent Foretold along with instructions on building your own Advent Banner to be used with the daily readings. my sewing machine will get a workout this november!

i love st. nicholas day, and we plan to celebrate that the same way we have in years past.

along with our Advent Banner and daily readings, we'll light our candles on our Advent wreath every Sunday in Advent(that was a wedding gift...well used over the past 8 years!).

i love looking back on these posts from the past few years, seeing the advent and christmas memories we've been making as a family. i'm excited for this year's observance and celebrations! i know it's merely autumn, but there's lots to do to get ready for the season of getting ready!

i've always been a fan of this time of year...a new school year, new paper and freshly sharpened pencils....a new wardrobe all neatly laid out for the first day of school (what? you didn't lay out your first-day-of-school outfit the night before?).

we've been busy the past month nesting. i love to nest in august because it makes me feel as though i'm getting ready to go back to school again (bound and determined to get a straight-A report card!).

last saturday morning, we woke up and kenny decided to clean out the garage. that didn't sound fun to me at all, so i suggested painting our back porch. that didn't sound fun at all to him, so we went our separate ways...the three boys bouncing back and forth between his work, my project, and my parents' house. he was done by dinnertime, and i finished three days later.

in addition to painting and sorting out the garage, i've been organizing all our school supplies, learning areas, and planning lessons for each child. it's a bigger task this year as i've moved from a complete curriculum to different curriculums for different subjects. and i have two different "levels" as adam will be with us each day. this is his decision, not mine. :)

i've entered the "no more nap" era of parenting. i fondly remember naptime when both rowan and sawyer would fall asleep after lunch for two hours each (it took rowan two year to learn to love naps...he never took a nap in his crib until he was two years old). when they would slowly grow out of their nap, adam still took one or two a day. i would still have a few hours of free-time to spend with the two older boys while the baby slept.

and now, from 7:30 until 9:30, there are three boys underfoot...wild and crazy, active and ENERGETIC! there are days i don't know how i will make it until dinnertime. somedays i can't quite figure out if i'll make it until lunch! but through all of the craziness, there are several times a day i look at those three joined-at-the-hip brothers and can't quite believe there isn't a baby among them anymore. three full-on kids who talk, run, fight, laugh as brothers are meant to do. and in the blink of an eye, we'll be feeding three elementary-aged boys...and then three teenagers...and i don't want to believe it, but i have to: eventually all three will be out on their own. and i can only pray that i've done the job of a good and faithful servant-mother.

so...it's a new year: older boys, a busier homeschool, and dozens more memories to make over the next several months.

what does your new year look like?

our boys are 3, 5, and 6 - or will be by the time summer is over. none of them have ever had swimming lessons before and we keep meaning to sign them up for them. swimming lessons are in abundance here, but i can't quite figure out the system, or the ages, of when to introduce them to water-without-floaty-devices.

the logistics are enough to make me batty: if all swimming lessons are in the morning, i'd have to take all three boys with me to take one boys to his age group or water-experience lesson. what do the other boys do while while the one is having a lesson? what if i have to get in the water with the youngest? then what do the older two boys do while we're in the water?

we take the boys swimming as a family, and it's one of our favorite things to do all year round (the Y in the winter for evening swims, the outdoor pool for hot summer day swims). i couldn't take all three boys swimming by myself. they all have different swimming personalities: rowan is not a head-under-the-water kind of swimmer. sawyer can't wait to be underneath the water and adam loves the water, but can't quite figure out the holding his breath or blowing bubbles under water thing. they all want to be in different depths of water at the same time. this is why having two parents in the pool with all three boys is necessary.  they wear floatie devices when we go into a pool, usually. and i rely on them as much as they do. and that makes me a bit nervous - i never had a floatie device when i was younger, and i want them to be able to learn how to keep their head above water without the floatie, but we're not experienced swimmers ourselves (we can swim without drowning) so have no idea how to teach them that ability.

so what about you? have your kids have lessons? if not, are you planning on giving them lessons? at what age? if you're not planning on ever giving them lessons, why? and how will you teach them to swim, or at least to not drown?

i dream of the day when we can go to the pool all day long, all summer long, and i can relax and not freak out about...the unthinkable.

it's my least favorite area of our yard...the side "lean-to" of our garage.

the parade took place in a small town a few miles north of us. our house is just behind those hills behind me.

we've been outdoors more often than in. the majority of the garden is in (with the exception of the tomato and pepper plants that were eaten by a vole last weekend). we've had a long stretch of hot weather and no rain, so we've been watering the newly planted garden and flower seedlings every night as the sun sets. it's one of my favorite times of day - warm and heavy light from the western sky sun.  color is returning to the yard and so is my desire to redo the front of the house. we've already torn out 6 yew bushes (or evergreens) at the front of the house, and we dream of a big country front porch someday...but that someday is long off, and for now, i will make the front as lovely and welcoming as i possibly can. this year, we'll be planting some flowers on a newly dug flower bed that lines the front bushes:


here's a closer look. at the front left corner is a patch of day lilies and towards the porch is a big bushy plant of lavender. there is a smaller lavender plant on the other side of the porch and then pure dirt in which to plant more prettiness. one reason i don't like these yew bushes is that they house hornets nests each summer. and we like to use the front door quite a bit. we don't like being greeted by several hornets, however.


before moving here, i knew only about hostas and impatiens. i had no clue that there were amazing plants with gorgeous flowers that grew back EVERY spring and summer! yes, i was oblivious to perennials. and i was unaware at how many gorgeous ones there were. it's not a good idea to have a novice flower gardener buy a house with large perennial gardens. because to me, this plant looks like a giant man-eating weed.





when we do yard work, they hang out with us. normally they play on their bikes, or with sidewalk chalk, or run down behind the house to the jungle gym, so they're pretty tired and hungry by lunch on the days we work outside. today, rowan really did stay outside with kenny the entire time and helped him a great deal with the digging and pulling out grass and carrying soil to the new bed. it was fun for me to watch. at the end of their work, kenny let rowan "drive" (steer) the tractor around the yard. i think he was inspired by the 12-year-old boy driving the vintage john deere at the memorial day parade this morning. ahhhh... country-living. soon enough, prom day will be here and rowan will be driving his date to prom in our newly painted vintage john deere tractor.

and at the end of the day, this is what we look like. please tell me that others' kids look just as "rode hard and put away wet" as ours do right before bedtime (or in the case of the warmer months, right before showers and then bed)? they're dirty, wet, sweaty, ripe, but most importantly, worn out and tired.

ahhh...spring and summer. longer days, more energy, beauty, room to run, and happy boys (and a very happy mama!)

there's a new school update at our school blog.

i wish i had something to report orther than that, but it really does consume our days. in a good way, of course. all three boys are having fun (and so am i! i mean, it's kindergarten-level learning, but it's great doing it with your kids. talk about hands-on!).

school and soccer are our lives right now. when something else really cools comes up again, i promise to update this blog. sorry it's been few and far between lately. :)

~liz

birthday blessings to the boy with the million dollar smile...

and the best fashion sense...



we are so blessed to have a sawco in our family!!! happy FOUR YEARS!

this past weekend, we spent a lot of time on the road...but even more time with family and friends. my older brother and his wife live in Michigan, and my sister-in-law's family all have little trailers in a development called Sandy Pines, so we spent the weekend there.

this is not an ordinary trailer park. it's a park around a very large lake and the trailers are like mini beach homes with decadent decking, porches, landscaping and gourmet-ish kitchens. the place is a paradise for kids. the boys (and their cousins!) never stopped running, playing, digging, climbing, swimming, and boating (as you can see below). they couldn't even sit still for one picture (as you can also see below).

charlie (the youngest of my brother's kids) with adam. check out adam's cool shades!

one of rowan's favorite activities was taking the pontoon boat out on the lake. he even caught a fish!

the backyard to one of the cottages (rachel's parents') looks out onto the lake with a sand beach in between. it's lovely.

on our way home, we stopped in for a (much too brief) lunch with our friends from pittsburgh who recently moved to Michigan. we hadn't seen them since christmas. our kids played together since birth (rowan and bella are a few weeks apart and sawyer and sofie are a few weeks apart as well). here they are admiring a hay baler (baylor? bayler?).

the weekend was much too short, and we wish we could have seen more friends when out there (serina! you're first on the list to visit the next time we come up...it was just too packed and not enough time this trip. i'm sure you know how it is with kids and driving and stuff...). 

we have another trip coming up to hang out with kenny's brothers and their families. we're really looking forward to that trip to the poconos. we hope to plan another trip to see another one of my brothers (tennessee!) and his family. we have a busy fall planned...and we haven't even started school yet!

i hope to update our other blog soon with information on how we're getting ready for school, and how happy i am not to have to rush the kids out of the house in the morning. especially since we've all been sleeping past 7:00 in the morning recently.

after a very easy sunday evening meal (rotisserie chicken from giant eagle with mashed potatoes and fresh tomatoes and pickles, both from the garden!), we headed outside before the threat of a thunderstorm. kenny and i were able to throw the aerobie around for about half an hour while the kids ran circles around us and their jungle gym.

half an hour of frisbee is quite enough for me, especially after an afternoon of bike-riding, so we decided to sit and watch the boys run circles around us. within seconds of sitting, kenny spotted something that looked like a bee's nest hanging from one of the fruit trees just passed his hives. it turned out it wasn't a nest, but a ball of bees, or a bee swarm. and unfortunately, they were our honeybees. a swarm can happen at any time to any hive, and there are theories on why it happens, and you can try to keep your hive from becoming a hive that swarms, but sometimes they just happen and you can't stop it. fortunately, we were able to spot it before they flew off somewhere else to create another colony. kenny has a few empty bee boxes stored in our barn...we are learning that this is essential for any bee-keeper since emergencies such as bear-attacks and bee swarms can happen at any time, and you need to "save" the bees somehow. so he ran to get one immediately, stopping off at the house to get the cameras, a ladder, and his bee suit (just his veil and gloves).

i kept the boys at a safe-enough distance (apparently the bees don't want to fly too far away from their precious queen, so they were safe about 30 feet from the tree) while i filmed and snapped some pictures.

we have no idea if the hive will survive, but at least they're safe inside a bee box, inside our electric fence, with plenty of room to roam and waggle-dance and keep their queen happy. if this survives, then we've just added to our bee colonies, and hopefully this will produce more honey in a year or two (so far, we're not sure if we'll be getting any honey this year since we may need to keep what they've produced in the hive for their winter survival).

here's a video of our evening adventure, complete with me hollering "be careful!" every 3.4 seconds, and the boys playing and singing in the background. and kenny getting stung only 3 or 4 times!

since knowing kenny, he has introduced me to some of the better musicals out there, and i know i've mentioned this before, but this story has a different point, i promise.

one by-product of knowing a lot of musicals is the constant singing in our house. from kenny to me, to the boys...there is always humming, singing, wannabe belting (on my part, of course!). there is one song from Side Show that i sang to the boys a year ago and found a video of the song for them on youtube. within a day, they knew the chorus by heart:

...for leaving this blog home to many crickets over the past few weeks...but i've been literally experiencing blog-writers-block. i have no idea what to write about.

my online time these days has been focused on scheduling our semester and reading others' blogs and who was it who got me hooked onto facebook back in november? ugh! at least i'm reconnecting with people i haven't talked to in years, and that's been fun for this very lonely-out-in-the-country mama! :)

any way, here are images that encompass the majority of our summer evenings. i hope to be back to blogging more frequently soon enough!

soccer with daddy:

ice cream!

not that it's been horribly hot at all - it's been fabulously warm for a few weeks now. but today we have a very comfortable, sunny day. it's nice for a change, but a summer day does not go well with goosebumps, and that's what i have everytime i step outside into the coolish breeze today.

we are having a fabulous summer. our vacation to cedar point was just the beginning. i can't wait for the upcoming fun we have planned! here's a sneak peak:

• a visit to our family in Michigan, where we will, no doubt, have fun with water parks, camp out on front porches, cookouts and icecream. because what summer-family gathering is complete without a grill and ice cream????
• a visit to a cabin out east with the smith side of the family. this is still in the planning stages, so i forgot to add it to the list. i can't wait to post pictures of our gathering.
  
• the greater pittsburgh renaissance festival! the boys are still into all things dragons- and knights- and castle-related. i think a live joust just might be the coolest thing they've seen all summer!
  
• a trip to a close-by lake beach, complete with sand-building, swimming, winery-touring, and family sunset photos by the water.
• sawyer's birthday celebration! we're starting school after his birthday so we can concentrate on celebrating him before diving into school stuff. but...
• ...right as school starts, we're going to a local sheep farm (that mom and i recently visited!) to tour the barn, the spinnery, and stay in their guest house! i'm obsessed with raising sheep someday. and they have a bed and breakfast to boot! this place is heaven on earth, in my opinion.

in the meantime, i am spending a lot of time gathering information for our unit studies, organizing my teaching supplies, and then rowan and i get to go "school supply shopping!" i started a separate homeschool blog, and for the future, my homeschool-related blog entries will be posted there in full. this blog will continue to be what it's been for the past 4 years: pictures and stories from the house of smith. if you're interested, our school blog is smithically schooled.

we've returned, quite tired, from a whirlwind trip to the family-friendly Cedar Point where we stayed at the even more family-friendly Castaway Bay. the trip was chock full of twists and turns from our original plans, but it wasn't void of fun, activities and thrills for the boys. it was their favorite vacation yet.

Cedar Point was a popular park when i was a teenager, and that is the last time i was there. the park was fortunately full of activities and rides for the little kids to ride...except for kids adam's age/size. he was stuck with the space ship round-about and the merry-go-round.

the hotel we stayed in had an indoor water park attached to it which was perfect for our kids' ages. they all found a favorite part of the park and eventually got over some small fears of deeper water, or waterfalls and just had fun. our hotel had a private balcony that was completely screened in (with a gate to support the screen), so it was a great place for the boys to eat snacks or lunches (pictured below). it was also nice to have a place to drink our coffee when we woke up earlier than the boys did both mornings.

Pros and Cons of the Trip.
Cedar Point is definitely a great place to take a family for a short vacation. Even for kids ages 5 and under. I think it will be the perfect location in 5-10 years for boys who can swim on their own. I was mildly neurotic about all the water and way too many people at the outdoor water park attached to Cedar Point we visited the second day. If our kids were older, couldn't wander away, and could swim on their own, I'd have been able to let my guard down a little.

Pros

• the boys were never bored.
• the boys had a BLAST.
• they loved the rides and the lines were relatively short inside Camp Snoopy.
• TGI Fridays (attached to our hotel) was really good. Their menu has improved and their prices weren't high like the rest of the hotel.
• the awesome indoor water park

Cons

• even though it was a family-friendly resort, it was more expensive than it should have been.
• we love the beach, and the beach at Cedar Point wasn't all that great. We spent only 15 minutes there.
• we lost Rowan for 10 minutes inside the outdoor water park at Cedar Point. I have bad memories of that outdoor waterpark because of it. it was horrifying.
• no family picture on the beach coast during a gorgeous sunset.
  

Lessons Learned

• always take more cash than you originally planned to take.
• if a public pool looks and feels too crowded, it's not a good place for a family with three young kids.
• Snoopy is so much less frightening than Charlie Brown. It must be that big, round, bald head.
• apply your own sunscreen in the hotel room and not in the parking lot or near the outdoor pool/gate to the amusement park where the kids can wander and you have no time to apply it properly. kenny and i both got burned because we were slapping it on while the kids were way too excited to sit still until we were done!
  

we are keeping very busy being outside. depsite the recent raindrops, we've had some great weather days and have been enjoying some play and outside yardwork. we're FINALLY getting to the front door area that i can't stand. i hope to have before and after pictures eventually, but the work we're doing is minimal since i have big plans to add a big country front porch eventually.

i've been doing a bit of sewing. remember how i got into sewing just a year ago with these fun pants (that's three diffferent links) for our trip to the beach? i found a great tutorial online (thanks to polka dot creations) for bandana pants and i just had to try them out for rowan and sawyer. here is the finished product:

rowan and sawyer had their first, ever outside-the-home-without-mom-or-dad-hovering (well, sort of) learning experience last week in the form of a local Vacation Bible School program.

our church is too small and, well, let's just keep it at that...too small to have a VBS and the older two are finally old enough to attend, so i signed them up at the local church and i can't tell you how much they (and we!) enjoyed it.

i don't remember much about VBS, but i attended it as a student and a helper in my (Orthodox Presbyterian) church growing up. i feel as though i liked it because i couldn't wait for our boys to get involved in one. and i think VBS has changed quite a bit since i was a kid. the church used a VBS package curriculum that really (REALLY!) resonated with the kids. the church was packed with nearly 100 kids every day, and roughly 25-30 adult helpers. the church was barely bigger than our house, but it was doing big things for the families of our little town. i nearly choked up when i saw rowan and sawyer doing all the motions to all the songs the first few times i dropped them off. i think i was the only parent who didn't really drop off my kids: i walked them in and stayed for every opening, and got there early enough to attend the closing "ceremony" each day (like the geek that i am!). I couldn't wait for bible school. and the boys were giddy each morning as we drove the country road to the church. we have a cd of all the songs they sang throughout the week and it's playing nonstop in the house and in the car.

even though we plan to start homeschooling in the fall (with curriculum...a lot of homeschoolers say that they homeschool from the child's day of birth, so i feel the need to clarify), i love how much they loved this experience.  i loved how it changed their "God conversations" just slightly. the theme of the week was God's power, so they were all about how much power and strength God had. i have their daily papers hung up in the kitchen and i plan to go over their daily lessons from last week. am i a homeschooler or what??? :)

one thing i didn't groove on was how much i actually missed them! no doubt the first day was nice as adam and i had lots of quality time together, but by the second day we were both bored. next year, all three boys will attend. if adam ever decides he's not a baby. :)

here's a fun little project that rowan, sawyer, and i did over the past week. homemade (washable!) placemats!

i found this project idea in amanda soule's the creative family and it turned out to be ideal for rainy summer days (of which we've had plenty over the past few weeks, along with those few days in the 90s). we were goign to do it when ramona was visiting, but were having too much fun outside! instead we made one for her after she left and we'll send it to her.

our friends just bought a new house, so to help make it a home for their 1- and 2-year-old boys, we made them their own placemats for their kitchen table. the material is canvas and i just bought a cheap canvas drop cloth from lowes for $9. i'll probably get several placemats out of the amount of canvas the drop cloth provides. it's inexpensive (much more so than buying it by the yard at a fabric store) and i love the feel of the canvas for the finished placemat.

you need a sewing machine to finish, but if your kids like to color or paint, this is an ideal proejct. we used fabric markers, but you can use fabric or acrylic paint as well. i'll venture into that when i have the patience and energy for a big clean up! :)

happy birthday, little adam!

you are the first smith boy to have a second birthday and NOT have a younger brother in the house. your big brothers adore you, look after you, include you, and can't remember life in the house without you. even if sawyer wasn't so sure about you at first:

we are very possessive of our sunny days here in western pennsylvania. we squeeze in as much outside time as we possibly can, until that last bit of daylight slips under the horizon. and it's been sunny for 8 or 9 days straight!

we were also having too much fun with two of my brothers and their families AND my grandparents in town (we missed you GR guys!). so i collapsed into bed each night and my laptop was unopened all week long. we were far too busy, cooking, birdwatching, tree identifying, tree planting, vegetable garden planting, tractor riding, fort building, bike riding, eating, museum going, icecream eating, hockey watching, beer drinking, more eating, wading pool swimming (the littles, not the adults), plant buying, pie baking, more hockey watching, more bird watching, obstacle course building (kenny) and running (the littles), treasure hunting (the littles), cookie-baking, more eating and we found time to sleep in between.

pictures to follow. some day. i'm still recuperating!

i missed yesterday's t-ball festivities, since i was at home waiting for the game commission to drop off a big old bear trap, but more on that later...

sawyer's three-year-old t-ball team meets indoors. thank goodness for that as it was cold and rainy again yesterday. i sent kenny and dad away with camera in hand and told him not return without a good set of pictures. i look at these pictures and want to just squeeze the little guy. how cute is he????
the three-year-olds did a lot of obstacle courses and running around. and of course sitting in circles and waiting. he learned to step with his left foot and throw with the right arm. they didn't do any catching or even hitting the ball off the tee. and he still came home saying how much fun he had.


i'm excited to join him next week. so far it's been too cold to hang out outside and "practice" with them. but i'm sure the weather is bound to break eventually and we'll be outside throwing grounders, pop-ups and hitting off our target-bought t soon enough. and...in a week, two of the boys' uncles and aunts and cousins will be in town for a week. there's bound to be lots of "uncle daniel! uncle andrew! aunt laura! aunt kara! please can you play tball with me?" 

i might even get their great grampy to throw a ball or two with them. :)

when rowan was born, kenny and i sat up at night staring at our sleeping newborn dreaming about all the adventures we'd get to take with him. we dreamed of his baptism, his first steps, meeting his future sibling, "going off to kindergarten," and all the fun sports, or arts teams he'd be a part of (his parents are of the artsy persuasion but we do know the importance and fun of being involved in sports. i was a cheerleader, afterall, so i know all about team S-P-I-R-I-T!).

tonight, rowan had his first t-ball practice. (sawyer's first practice is this saturday - stay tuned!) i thought for sure it would be canceled because it was cold and rainy. and his team is comprised of 4-5-year olds. we showed up, the rained slowed to a steady spit, and the wind kicked up a bit. the kids were all split up into teams (rowan is a marlin!) and practice started. the rain got heavier and steadier and the wind got stronger, so sawyer, adam, my mom and i headed to the car only after 10 minutes. kenny stayed with rowan who was oblivious to the rain and the cold:

the boys have been asking about visiting their grandma and grandpa lately. so a few weeks ago, rowan called them up and told them that they were on their way. fortunately, he made the plans to visit on the same weekend that our state's homeschooling convention was taking place just half an hour away from grandma and grandpa's house, so we all drove out there last week, dropped the kids off with grandma and grandpa and had ourselves a mini-vacation!

the morning we left for the convention, the weather turned cold and raining. we got lost on the way, but eventually made our way into the exhibit hall, only 20 minutes later than we had intended. we were wet and cold, but excited to get our hands on the curriculum we've been looking at online for the past several months, and find some more fun gadgets to use as teaching tools. for the two days we were there, we walked up and down the aisles several times, chatted to countless moms and dads who are currently home-educating their children, found some really great stuff, walked out of some really bad presentations, but were overall encouraged, overwhelmed, and excited. we've toured a local montessori school and will look into the public kindergarten, and another private one for comparison. so far, homeschooling has been our favorite option (it's FUN!), but we're exhausting all our options while we still can.

here we are filling out the evaluation form:

please join me in wishing our beloved chickens a happy birthday today! a year ago on this date, it was frigid...20 degrees and windy and we bundled up and headed west to pick up a small box of squeaky chicks. today, not one of those chickens would be able to fit into that small little box.

we've lost only two chickens in one year, and that is remarkable. the other day, rowan asked me, "will the 14th and the 15th chicken that got taken by the hawk and run over by the car turn one this week too?" and then sawyer asked if we stay with jesus forever in heaven when we die, and then the conversation got way too complicated and difficult for me to continue on a 3- and 4-year-old level, so i quickly changed the subject and decided it was lunchtime at 10:30.

any way...

we celebrated today with homemade BBQ sauce over baked chicken (ha! get it?!), rice, and green beans. we have cupcakes to eat and share with the chickens tomorrow. they love leftovers, those chickens!

we recently got ourselves into a lot of trouble, kenny and i. we made the big mistake of purchasing two packages of playmobil knights and swords for rowan and sawyer's easter baskets. 

it was a bit of an embarrassment when they kept calling the swords, "pokey things" and kept asking what to do with the shields, and wondering just why they needed "metal" armor on top of their clothes. we made an even bigger mistake by then getting the take-along playmobil castle complete with 84 more knights, 115 swords and shields, and one horse.  when they opened this up, the questions kept coming: "what does this pokey thing do?" "why does this man have a feather in his helmet?" "is it cold out? is that why they need these big hats to cover their faces?" "why do they have to protect the castle?" "what princess?" "what bad guy?"

i think it's time to introduce our 3- and 4-year-old boys to knights in shining armors, princesses-in-distress, and real-life heros like st. george. fortunately, we celebrate this day on the 23rd of this month. i just found a half price copy of St. George and the Dragon (even though it's a fictitious story of the actual St. George, who I'm learning is not actually British!), but i'm hoping it will enhance their castle-play at the very least.

are there any other recommendations for knights and castle and medieval stories for young children who don't know that a sword isn't really an inch tall and made of plastic?

i've been neglecting this blog. the boys (and kenny) have been fighting small colds over the past 3-4 weeks...and i seem to have developed a knack for getting sinus troubles for the first time ever. not fun at all. it's a good thing i only have a handful of blog readers and i'm not paid for blog advertising. because once life gets busy, or filled with sick days, the blog is the first thing to be neglected.

is anyone else finding this st.-patrick's-day-during-holy-week a bit...well, off? this week is so full of big things...st. patrick's day today, the first day of spring on thursday, and then all of this smack dab in the middle of Holy Week! if it were up to me, st. patty's day would be a celebration in its own week, a few weeks later, we could celebrate the first day of spring (like we did last year) and then a few weeks after that, celebrate easter. it seems weird to have spring and st. patrick's day celebration during the somber Holy Week.

even though it is a holy week, we will still observe all of it:

• today is all about st. patrick! i'm making traditional corned beef (a recipe from my friend amy), boiled potatoes, carrots, and whiskey cake for dessert. the boys will have pistachio pudding (green!) with whipped cream and green sprinkles since the whiskey isn't cooked off on the cake (it's poured all over with melted butter!). i was just reading this interesting fact about the color of st. patrick. i prefer blue as none of us really have any green clothes. or orange clothes, if you're protestant. or conservative. or...dad? jonathan? help me out. why orange?

• thursday is the first day of spring and last year we made a big bunny cake (see link above). it took over the kitchen, and we're hosting an easter dinner on sunday, so i think something on a smaller scale would be better. i'm thinking easter-egg cupcakes or these cute birds nests?

• there are several church services this week, and it's nearly impossible to take 3 boys under the age of 4 to all of them without upsetting their sleeping schedules. especially since we're still recovering from daylight savings last week! i made the realization this week that our boys have never done an easter egg hunt. and...I have never done an easter egg hunt as a child. it's not my parents' fault. i think my church thought easter egg hunts were of the devil or something, so there was never an opportunity for us. my parents did hide our easter baskets on easter morning, though! and there is one at our church this week after the easter service, so they'll finally participate. here's the problem: i have a tendancy to be very competitive, and i'll want to dive into the church lawn and gather up as many eggs as i can possibly find and give them all to my boys. but the cute little kids in our church are their friends, and those kids' parents are our friends. so i'm not allowed to be competitive during this easter egg hunt. something about losing friends and minding my manners...you know. what adults are supposed to be like. i'm a little worried about my participation in our boys' involvement in organized sports.

happy st. patty's day! happy first day of spring. but most importantly...a blessed Easter to all of you!

i've got some great jokes for you. so next time you're in a joke-telling situation around the water cooler, at a playdate, or where-have-you, you'll be all set.

it all started last night at the dinner table:

----------------
rowan: mommy, can you tell me a joke?
me: (i didn't even know he knew what a joke was) um....um..
kenny: i've got one! why did the skunk go to church?
rowan: (laughs hysterically)
kenny: i haven't gotten to the funny part yet.
rowan: oh. (still laughing)
kenny: to sit in his own pew!
rowan: (stops laughing...) (gotta love a 4-year-old's sense of humor). i've got a joke! why did the hurt bird go to church? to sit in a pew! (more laughter)
me: how about this one - why did the chicken cross the road?
rowan and sawyer: (laughs hysterically)
me: to get to the other side!
(no laughter)
sawyer: why did the bird cross the road? ha ha ha ha ha!
-------------------

so there you go...jokes to impress all your friends!

i'm really enjoying all the resolution and non-resolution promises i'm reading in blogland today. so much so that i feel as though i don't have to do my own list. (whew!)

we spent the eve of the new year with friends. today, we spend it in our pjs (still! it's 2:00 pm!), with family, over a grilled pork loin and traditional saurkraut (and mashed potatoes and applesauce - a very bland looking but delicious meal!). it's snowing outside - we're supposed to get a few inches by tomorrow. i resolve to be more happy about the snow. because it makes the boys so happy and excited.

the house has been used so much since thanksgiving. it needs a total spa treatment. although yesterday, after a quick vacuum of only two of our rooms (as opposed to a deep clean vacuum of all of the rooms), i was a sneezy, wheezy mess from 4:00 until 10:30. i had 1.5 benedryl early in the evening and was out cold by 10:45. it was almost worth missing the new year just for the relief (i also learned to snort salt water!). i guess i have a slight allergy to dust. that's a great excuse to get rid of all the carpet and go to hardwood, right? i guess i should resolve to start a regular cleaning schedule, and not just a clean-when-we-have-guests schedule.

favorite smithical posts from 2007
a re-blog of the i am from "essay" i did. hey - do your own now if you haven't already! blog it!
helping hands (and feet!)
a birthday surprise from my hsuband!
my first (and only?) works-for-me-wednesday contribution
cute easter sunday pictures
i'm already longing for spring as i re-read this one
the beginning of my new-found love of sewing
ahhhh...relaxing!
i think i really am going to miss these "baby" days!
the beach!
my niece sadie guest-blogs

happy new year, everyone. may 2008 be chock-full of goodness, comfort, and joy for all of you!

snowplay is not one of my favorite things. but it's something the boys love to do. every once in a while, you'll hear rowan say, "i LOVE the grass! where's the grass? i miss the grass!" and i couldn't agree more. but they are all over running around making tracks in the snow, eating the snow, packing the snow into snowballs, eating the snow, throwing snowballs, making snowmen and EATING the snow.

if i had my act togehter, this would be our christmas card picture this year. they all climbed up on the table without me asking. i grabbed the camera and snapped this. sawyer looks like quite the ringleader in this photo!

this year, we're really going to observe advent. we talk about it every year and last year we got somewhere with some of our traditions, but this year, we're really going to observe advent, and celebrate christmas on the twelve days after christmas, culminating in a 12th night celebration.

i am noticing a lot more talk of "getting presents" between rowan and sawyer this year. they're getting more and more excited about christmas, and while i don't want to steal their excitement in the giddiness of receiving, i want them to also begin to get excited about giving. i know they have it in them. this year, i made a raggedy ann doll for my niece ramona, and the boys fell in love with her as she grew from fabric in a bag to torso with a face to doll with hair and clothes. they constantly asked to play with her and did everything they could to keep raggedy ann a secret from ramona until we opened gifts on thanksgiving night. i think it was sawyer who just couldn't wait any longer and told laura (ramona's mom) about the doll the day before thanksgiving. but when it was time to give the doll to ramona, as she opeend the present, sawyer stood over her dancing from one foot to another, totally giddy to see raggedy ann in her new owner's arms. when she opened the present sawyer scooped up the doll and held it up high for her parents to see and then finally gave it to ramona.

so in advent, we will prepare our hearts from the coming of the chirist child and His return. i am looking into some celebrations for the different days in advent (the four sundays, st. nicholas day, st. lucia day, etc..). i'll share what we find and what works and flops this year. i have a feeling it will take us a few advents to figure out what traditions are good for our family. but i can't wait to see what takes shape as we learn how to prepare our hearts for the coming of the King.

every night, we are asked the same question by rowan: "how many sleeps until ramona gets here, and then how many sleeps until sadie and gabe get here?"

today, ramona and astrid and their parents (my brother andrew and his wife, laura) arrived safely here in our little neck of the woods. we enjoyed a big dinner at mom and dad's house across the street while sawyer found his wrestling match in ramona. the girl can body-slam like hulk hogan. they wrestled and played, giggled and ran around. tomorrow, the rest of the cousins arrive. sadie and gabe have a little baby brother, charlie...but last time rowan and sawyer saw him he was merely a baby blob. they probably won't remember him until he's old enough to wrestle either.

as i type, our three boys are snuggled up sleeping soundly ready for the big day before thanksgiving: when everyone is here, we get our turkey, and the house fills with smells of apple and pumpkin pies.

this evening, my mom and i shopped for all the ingredients for our thanksgiving meal (except for the turkey...we pick up the bird tomorrow or wednesday).

earlier in the day, i watched a segment on some news program about how to cut back the calories in your thanksgiving meal...something that i'm not too concerned about with the thanksgiving meal since it's only once a year that we get to eat it.  any way, from this segment i learned that the typical caloric intake in one thanksgiving meal is around 2100 calories. per plate. including dessert. then they gave some pointers on how to cut the calories. for instance:

• eat only white meat. if you insist on eating dark meat, don't eat the skin (i can't stand dark meat)
• give yourself only 1-2 tablespoons of gravy on your potatoes (i normally skip the gravy, but i'm going to try it this year, since it'll be made from a fresh bird)

there were others, but i got distracted and was gloating in my ability to only eat a 1400 calorie thanksgiving-day plate already instead of a 2100 calorie plate.

now, i'm off to make some butter and shortening crusts for the pumpkin and apple pies. and i'll leave you with the simplest recipe ever for something our family calls, "stained glass window cookies" (although it's a candy, and not a cookie!), my brother andrew's favorite (so it's always included in holiday get-togethers). The original recipe calls for sprinkles of coconut on top, but we're not coconut fans.

Stained Glass Window Cookies
1 12 oz. bag semi sweet chocolate chips
1 bag of colored marshmallows
1 stick of butter

Melt butter and chocolate chips together over low heat (or double boiler) until melted and blended. Remove from heat and let stand five minutes. Add entire bag of marshmallows and stir until completely covered.

Pour everything onto a large sheet of waxed paper. Using sides of the waxed paper, shape into a log. Tape waxed paper over top to hold shape and refrigerate until hardened (several hours).

kenny and i are hosting thanksgiving this year. i am very excited about this as i've only hosted the big turkey meal a few times in my short life, so i'm not jaded about how much work it involves. yet.

the majority of my remaining november daily blogs will be about preparations for the big day. this means that if you are coming (and you know who you are) there should be no surprises when you get here. you'll know the meals you'll be eating, the rooms you'll be staying in, the projects i have planned for our kids.  those of you who aren't coming (and that makes the majority of you, my blog readers) can join in on the fun online. i might even get to post "during" and "after" pictures..

so...be prepared for lists and menus, shopping excursion stories, craft-project-trials, and pictures of preparations in the coming days. i might even share a family recipe or two!

by the way, this week, my brother andrew and his wife and one of my InRealLife friends both had babies. andrew and laura had a second daughter, named astrid millay and serina and jason had their third, a son (they have two daughters), named asher jase. a lovely fall week to birth a baby! and i never did announce the birth just over a month ago, of our new niece, jada. she lives all the way in seattle and i'm going to bug her parents (ahem...wayne!) for more pictures since she's all of 5 weeks old now and we've only seen birth pictures! i'm so impatient.

to add to the baby excitement, two of our friends have announced new pregnancies to us this week! it's an exciting time to be birthing and growing babies. except for me...this post is not a foreshadowing nor does it in any way mean that we are pregnant. i'm just really excited for my family and friends!!!

i leave you with one more halloween picture of the only one that would smile for the camera! after looking at this photo, i am not surprised that he is mistaken for a girl more often than not. must.cut.his.hair. :)

today is All Saint's Day, the day after Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve. We have a strong pull towards anything liturgical, so we acknowledge these days as well as have fun with some of the other, mostly commercial, holidays.

i'm happy to say that we spent $0.00 on the boys' costumes this year - and all of them dressed up! so we didn't fall for the commercial aspect of the day. except for the hording and hiding of candy from the boys. we were able to walk faster this year, which means we hit more houses, which means we have more candy than we've ever had. i pulled the bowl out of the cupboard from last year and noticed one lone piece of bubble gum from last year's stash. we got bad candy last year - lots of dum dums and bubble gum and hugs drinks. this year, we got chocolate - peanut butter cups, M&Ms, and snickers.

i will be so sad the day when the boys trade in their adorable and cuddly costumes for the death and grisly ax-murder ones that we saw all over last night. that biggest head-scratcher for me was seeing a barely-13-year-old girl in an extremely provocative costume all the while smoking a cigarette. i'm such a mom. if she came to my door, i'd give her nothing but a lecture!

after returning from our trick or treating walk through the local (three miles away) neighborhood, we had a quick bute of dinner (chicken sandwiches this year), and it was past everyone's bedtime. but the boys needed to wind down. normally this means snuggling up with books and a soothing voice to read them. but last night, we snuggled in the guest room and watched the Peanuts Halloween special. something i always looked forward to as a kid. and now my kids laugh at all the silly snoopy parts. and kenny and i snicker at them giggling away.

this year's quicky costumes...a tiger! a bear! a bob-the-builder! (one is blurry, one isn't...)

i've been a few-and-far-between blogger these past few weeks. but take heart! that will change in just a few short days as i will, again, be participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). which means that I will have to come up with fun and interesting thigns to write about at least ONCE A DAY. that's a bit daunting. but i'm giving it another shot.

if you're interested, you can find my month of november 2006 postings here.

for today, i leave you with a list of good things. and if you're reading, i tag beth (a mama's musings and meditations), april (salt for the spirit), and heather (daley ponderings) to do the same in their blogs! (no pressure! in your own time...)

Liz's current Good Things

• one-on-one time with the boys: it's weird. they're completely different boys when i'm with them alone. rowan usually carries the conversation when they're together. but get sawyer alone and he'll talk your ear off! he's super sweet, despite being the dare devil in the bunch. and rowan is at an age where he's constantly questioning why things happen or why they work. it makes for interesting topics of conversation! adam is snuggly and lovey all alone. and he's found the art of wrestling, AND he's discovering books! all of these traits make for fun times.
  

• a campfire anytime: yesterday was gorgeous. sunny skies and in the high 50s. we were running around outside with the boys and rowan asked for marshmallows over the fire. ahhhh...a fire to keep us warm. the fire was roring in less than 5 minutes, and we sat around with hot chocolate and roasted marshamllows. then we went back to running around, all smelling like campfire.
  

• crafting. making. knitting: i can't get enough of it! i finisehd a par of slippers for kenny last week, and i'm already alsmot done with a hat for him. also, i have 3 sewing projects lined up (i can't display them as they may be gifts...if they're done in time for thanksgiving and christmas!) and a few others brewing in my head.
  

• home-delivered milk: every monday morning, we get three gallons of milk delivered to our door. it's nice not to have to lug three gallons in from the store every week! and...i needed buttermilk today for a recipe, and the milkman always has extra "goods" in his truck...so i just asked him for a quart and nw i don't have to run ot the store with the boys just for buttermilk!
  

• the few hours kenny and i have together after the kids go to bed, and sometimes before they wake up: uninterupted conversation or just plain silence. it's golden. especially over a cup of morning coffee, or a fire in the fireplace with my knitting in my hands. we love spending time with our kids, and we love "family time" which is the majority of each of our days. but this time is also precious.
  

adam's favorite spot on tractor rides is up front. he's a bit spoiled that way. he always gets the front. he chatters throughout the ride, talking, chirping, clapping. he is 100% pure country boy. he knows exactly where we keep the tractor and if we're outside walking around the yard, he makes a mad dash for the barn. he's happy enough just sitting on the yellow seat (and now he's discovered the tractors at lowes...just as his older brothers grew out of their fascination with them!).

our life with chickens seems to stay so similar from day to day until something exciting happens - like a blue-green egg! and then i'm reminded just how fortunate we are to be living with these fowl.  i discovered today, that it is our beloved araucana, bettis (named for her thick neck, like the beloved, retired steeler, jerome bettis), that is producing the blue-green egg. both my mom and i discovered her in the nest box today, around the time the egg appeared. here she is in all her thick-neck glory:

when beginning our research into raising chickens, kenny and i fell in love with all the characteristics of the Buff Orpington. So far, our Buffs won't let us near them, and we are not sure if they're laying yet - two opposites of what we were expecting of them (very friendly, and good layers). But they sure are beautiful!

now, when i refer to our chickens as beautiful, i know that some of you are rolling your eyes or laughing thinking, "beautiful? i think NOT!" i know i'm in the minority. and this is a picture that doesn't flatter our Golden Buffs...and i agree, these chickens aren't necessarily beautiful. but they're our current fabulous egg-layers, and we're thankful for our eggs!

here's another beauty. am i the only one who is reminded of george washington upon looking at these silver laced wyandottes?

every evening, our boys love running around with the chickens. a few of them usually hang out with us when we're outside at the jungle gym in the evenings. rowan usually ends up picking a few of them up, while sawyer tries to, but freaks out at the last minute. adam is also very fond of them - as they are of him. they walk right up to him and peck his hand, his fingers, his feet.... he laughs and "yells" at them.

on one of my first visits to kenny's parents' home (when we were dating or engaged...i can't remember which), i remember spotting something hanging on their basement wall that caught my eye. when i asked kenny about it, he told me it was an embroidered version of a painting he did when he was about 5 years old. his grandmother recreated one of his paintings with yarn. i fell in love with the idea and tucked it in the back of my mind.

a year or so ago, kenny's mom gave him a thick envelope filled with paintings and report cards, drawings and notes that he had done as s child. i think he was ready to throw it out, but being the nostaligc type, i opened it and examined each picture, read each note that he had written to his parents or grandparents, and put the envelope on a shelf so he couldn't throw it away. why throw away such treasures?

it wasn't until early this summer that i put two and two together and realized that in that envelope was the original "kenny smith painting" that his grandmother reproduced. and i'm now honored to have both!

the first month we moved into our new digs here in the country, i took a composting class hosted by an environmental group in allegheny county where we were given a brand new composter (which is serving us well...we've been composting green and brown materials now for 16 months and it's only 1/3 of the way full). the class took place at the rachel carson homestead which was the original home of who is known as the pioneer of the environmental movement, rachel carson.

i found out that she wrote a book called silent spring in the 1960s which is known as an attack on the newly developed insecticides and other chemicals for use in farming and suburban gardens.

then i had a baby and forgot all about her. until just last week when i came across an episode on our local PBS station of "On Q" that focused a bit on rachel and her local homestead. i found that she wrote more than just one book, so i requested a bunch of her books at the library last week and brought them home just yesterday. Silent Spring is one of the books i requested and can't wait to read, but one that i'm totally stuck on and in love with and now want to buy for all my friends who are parents of young ones is the sense of wonder. it's a remake of an old pamphlet that she wrote just before her death. the copy that i have includes stunning nature photos by nick kelsh among the words of her original pamphlet.

one of my favorite quotes:

i think i like that one so much because she has described who i am NOT...but who i want to become for the sake of my kids. when the fireflies were out in june and july, rowan and sawyer couldn't wait to chase them. that usually meant it was close to dark, which was closer to 8:30 or 9:00 - well past their bedtime. initially i was concerened about them being overtired, but then i realized that you're only their age once. and their minds are beginning to retain memories (i have memories from when i was three, so i know at least rowan will remember these times).

my favorite memories of our mini-vacation to lake erie this summer was playing on the beach at sunset. normally, i'd do my best to keep adam out of the water since he was in clothes and not a bathing suit, but it was at least 45 minutes until sunset and he wasn't happy unless he was at least ankle-deep in the water. so he splashed around, got completely drenched, and loved every minute of it.

i am becoming less tightly wound as a parent watching my kids take it all in for the first, second, and third times; seeing the wide sky over a big lake, or hearing a rain storm fall so hard it's hard to talk over its din.

reading this book comes at a time in my life as a parent when i am realizing how amazing the outside world is to a young child. all summer i've watched adam transfixed on ocean waves, staring up at our hemlock tree blowing back and forth on a windy day, watching rain fall from the sky. this summer, the older two boys have become more independent in their outside play and adam is learning how to navigate the yard, the pine trees, and the outside toys by playing with them. summer is the perfect time to soak it all in, and winter the perfect time to reflect on the outside from the inside warmth of a fireplace. spring and fall are perfect for both.

in the meantime, i'm excited to watch adam see and feel snow for the first time. i can't wait to see what next summer brings to us. i promise to let them all stay up a bit later, get a bit wetter and messier and enjoy every minute of it.

and here's our big three-year-old today. our rough-and-tumble yet super snuggly sawyer cole. we love you, sawco! happy birthday!

adam seems to have found the snack drawer already. and he's already helping himself to his favorite snack (graham crackers). and i guess the quarter-of-a-sheet-o-crackers-at-a-time just ain't cutting it for him. i should have known that he prefers to put four whole sheets in his mouth at once.

rowan took one look at this photo and said, "what a troublemaker." he's wise beyond his years.

this weekend our beloved pool closed. we hadn't been in over a month due to traveling and cold days, so we spent a good two hours there on friday evening soaking up that 90-degree weather and sunshine. today, we met friends at the local lake beach for picnicing and swimming. the air was comfortable when the sun went behind the clouds, hot when the clouds disappeared, but perfect for sitting in the sand with toddlers and babies. kenny always swims with the older two while i frolic with adam in the sand and ankle-deep water. today it worked out nicely since i was able to chat with my friend jill who we met at the beach.

jill and i are friends (roommates, in fact!) from college, and two summers ago, she and her husband and then 2-year-old son, noah, moved from st. louis to a small college town about an hour away from us. we've gotten together several times since they moved here and it's fun to see our boys play together. since they arrived, adam was born, and they have a daughter now, ellie, who is 9 months. jill married joel, who i also went to college with. when we get together, i'm sure kenny tires of our "michigan" and "calvin college" conversations. but he's a good sport about it.

although tomorrow's high is 85, tonight's low is 55. this makes for chilly mornings and evenings. as i type, i'm sitting near our enclosed back porch (which leads to the deck) with a heavy, hooded sweatshirt (grey, not red, for you adam sandler fans) on and i'm still cold. i sense we're nearing to the winding-down part of summer. schools start back up this week, and summer adventures are done. we'll use up the warmth out of every day as best we can, and then i'll be ready to dive right into my most favorite season of all (although summer is soonly becoming my most favorite season...watch out october!). i will want to be indoors more, which might lead to more sewing. i have several projects lined up for fall...after i finish my first quilt (pictures after it's finished and after it's gifted).

on the chicken-egg front...the chickens escaped their pen today, so kenny secured it even more this evening after we returned home from the beach. we did find two fresh eggs in the pen and in one of the nesting boxes in the coop, so they've been washed and refrigerated (did you know you don't have to refrigerate eggs if you never wash them? unfortunately, the two we found were also quite near a bunch of chicken excrement, so we washed them and they're in our fridge). we also found another nest of about 11 eggs on the opposite side of our house. so more than two chickens, at least, are laying. we'll see how they do tomorrow!

we're back from a short trip out east where we had hoped to visit a few more people, but couldn't since:

a/ traveling in the car for more than an hour and a half at a time doesn't make three boys very happy.
b/ traveling in the car with a very sick little baby doesn't do a mama's nerves good.

we did, however, get to visit with kenny's parents, sail on their sailboat, visit with my grandparents, and ride a merry-go-round (which always makes the boys HAPPY!). and adam is feeling MUCH better as of this morning (i still kept him home from church as he needs his morning nap today, and he usually misses it on sundays).

more to come...

a mixture of rain and high heat and humidty has kept us indoors for the majority of the week. this makes a mama of three boys a bit ancy...

the jungle gym misses the little climbing feet that it's used to in the late afternoon/evening hours with daddy as mama gets dinner ready/cleans up from dinner. my row of zinnias hasn't been cut back in ages...maybe tomorrow? the blueberry bush out back was suffereing from not-being-picked-enough this morning (so i picked and baked blueberry muffins before rowan and sawyer awoke).

and now, an ode.

an ode
the pool!  the local beach!
oh, how we miss you!
the smell of chlorine or
small lake seaweed.
the sandy toes and sun-s.w.a.k.ed faces,
greasy hair from an over-obsessive mama with sunscreen...
will you return to us, sunshine and heat...
days of sandbuckets and shovels?

_____________
i've been having fun organizing some crafty things with my needles, fabrics and threads,sewing machine, boys' drawings, patterns for more pants (how do you dew a jersey t-shirt neckline?)...more posts on those when they near completion. at least the rain has allowed for some major painting/marker/crayon drawings from the boys for me to frame/file away. bursts of creativity from all members of the family is always a good thing.

i think the sun is returning tomorrow. with less heat. perfect for swimsuits.

tonight, i got to spend time alone pouring over patterns and materials, floss and frames...all by myself! sadly, we only have joann's and michael's, but i am determined to find onlines sources for cheap but lovely materials.

i am starting small, but planning BIG. when i returned from my shopping, kenny and i were chatting about how i can make the boys' halloween costumes this year (!!!). so i asked rowan what he wanted to be for halloween...bad idea. because now, he thinks halloween is tomorrow. or in "two sleeps or four?"

however, we have some big time creative challenges ahead of us as sawyer has announced that he wants to be...the SKY for halloween.

love that. though i am a bit fearful that i'll fail at his concept of what the sky would look like worn by a 3-year-old.

...for a trip to the beach! we're a few hours from lake erie, one of the "great lakes," so the beach is similar to the ocean beach, without the fear of sharks. or crabs. or the 12 hour drive!

there is nothing like a vacation around the water with the sand. i don't know what it is, but me and this "getting old" thing is making me long for many more hot days. i'm afraid i'll be looking up retirement villages (Del Boca Vista phase II, anyone?)  in a few years for our "golden years" (remember...i do day-dream of this time in our lives) and i'm not about to wish autumn upon us anytime soon by waxing nostalgic about the cooler breezes we're heading into. last winter was way too long for me, and i'm sucking the marrow out of every summer day. i'm already planning our week-long vacation to the beach next year. (and everything is washed already so that if it's hot again tomorrow, we'll head to our local lake beach!)

the boys loved the sand the most. adam felt as though the lake needed more of it so he spent his time picking it up and throwing it into the water. sawyer loved the first day of "mini-waves" but was fearful of the windy second beach day. so we spent that day at the tip of the peninsula, where the water is stinky calm. rowan could care less where we were as long as there was water for him to play in (although for the record, he loved the big waves!).

we drove home much later than we had expected, smelling of sunshine and suncreen, in a car full of sand and damp, dirty clothes. but more importantly, tired, happy boys with a full two days' worth of pure fun behind them.

digging was really the best part:

the sunset from the west side of the peninsula. this was my favorite part of the trip...letting the boys wade in the shallow bits and play in the sand...adam couldn't stay dry or clean for very long:

these next three black and whites will probably go in their memory book, or hung in their room:





i love this picture. it looks like a religious moment, when really he's standing there flinging sand into the lake all the while yelling "ahhhhh ahhhhh!"
hmmm...perhaps it was his religious moment. :)

back to life...and to the sewing machine!

it was a dark, thick-with-fog-kind-of morning: perfect for sleeping in! after a late night sharing munchies, fabulous red wine, and microbrews with old friends (on our deck!) we were blessed with three boys who slept in until 7:15!  as we crawled into bed at 12:05 this morning, i was so worried about how tired i would be at our normal 6:03 a.m. wake up call from adam. it was a pleasant surprise that we awoke before the boys did and just waited in bed for them to wake up. at 7:15, sawyer came tromping in demanding some cuddle time on our bed. three minutes later, adam began talking in his crib no doubt waking up rowan who stumbled into our room rubbing his eyes. i went to get adam and we all snuggled in bed for a glorious 10 minutes before descending upon our morning in typical fashion: first stop, the coffee pot to fill with black gold; then milk in cups for the boys while we clamored around getting cereal bowls filled and bananas cut up. kenny and i chatted about what we were going to tackle on our "project plan" list of yard work. we decided to scrap the work and instead found a new place to hang out with the trees and birds of the wild.

we took our time getting dressed and packed a few snacks, camera, binoculars...we were off by 9:45 a.m.

the hiking center we found had a great little welcome center with a classroom, bathrooms, and an office stocked with all the pamphlets you could ever dream of about the wilds. the two older boys trail-blazed for us, finding all the bridges to cross over and any flowers in on the sides of the path. here, they are demonstrating....well...they are demonstrating nothing. they're just fabulous, crazy boys:


we did find a passive wetlands treatment center that was supposed to have tadpoles and frogs, but we saw none. nor did we see the rattlesnake that was said to live in the park. the boys did discover their first cattail:
 

on the way back to the car, the boys were lagging behind, so i reached deep into the backpack and found a hershey bar. i broke off of few pieces and gave them to the boys telling them they needed some energy to walk back to the car.

it's so funny what we, as parents, remember of a particular activity or outing...watching your kids discover and find, run and be crazy. we think that they'll remember the cool cattail they felt, or the crazy red flower they discovered.

at bedtime or sometime during dinner, kenny or i always ask the boys what their favorite part of the day was. tonight's question was answered enthusiastically by rowan, "i liked it when we ate energy! i need some more"

and finally...deck pictures! the photos don't do it justice. but that just means you have to come out and enjoy it yourself! you can see the before pictures here of our 3x7 foot "deck" (which we would have kept for a few years if it wasn't falling apart making me nervous everytime the boys ran up and down). here are the after photos...16x16 square of outside heaven:







i plan to landscape flowers and green shrubs around the base either in the fall or early spring. but right now, we're already getting started planning next year's vegetable garden!

i never posted about adam's first birthday (almost 2 months ago!), here are pictures of his "day of birth" and one of his first birthday. after three kids, it's still incredible and amazing to me to see their growth and development in the first year of life! he's been walking from room to room for about a week now. he was taking steps here and there for a while now, and then all of a sudden decided that this week was a good one to begin walking. he won't stop walking.

adam's hospital photo (24 hours old)...and going home (2 days old):


well, okay - he's 13 months old in this photo! it was taken on rowan's birthday:


a picture of rowan's 4th birthday cake. it's a design copied from Family Fun magazine - a great family magazine given to us from our friend Heather.


a few weeks ago, my brother (andrew) visited with his wife and daughter ramona. we met them at church down in the city. this is how sawyer, our free spirit, warmed up to his cousin. he loves to dance. and he has a very unique dance that he only does when he's happy or excited about something. here, he demonstrates for ramona:


and here, ramona's got the dance moves down:


after church, we headed over to a local outdoor merry-go-round and had lunch. the kids enjoyed two rides thanks to pop-pop! merry-go-rounds are rowan and sawyer's favorites:


"we all fall down!"

**PHOTO UPDATE** - i don't know how i managed to forget the highlight of sawyer's afternoon yesterday - the boat ride! our friends, dave and sharon (the parents of "big adam" and sophia), have a canoe and dave and kenny took the older boys "out for a paddle" towards the end of the day. sawyer has since instructed me to go to walmart and buy us a boat. photo attached below...

a few pictures of our day sunning, grilling, fishing, swimming... is there a way to make the summer last well into november, and then let it be cold for thanksgiving and christmas, and then have the spring and summer start the first of january until the following november? (if you tell me that's how it is in florida or georgia...since i know some of my  readers live there, we'll be planning our early retirement in one of those states, i promise. except you're going to have to do something about the palmetto bugs before our arrival).

we enjoyed dinner with my dad and some friends on our deck saturday...but the pictures didn't turn out. one of these days, i will post official deck pictures, since it is completely finished now.

we met some friends at a local state park yesterday. rowan and sawyer and their friend "big adam" (as opposed to their baby brother adam) roasting marshmallows:
 

"big adam" caught a small-mouth bass...kenny's de-hooking it for him:


rowan caught a sunny:


this is rowan holding sawyer's fish. sawyer reeled him in and then dropped the pole and ran away. he thought the fish was going to eat him. oh, the mind of an almost-three-year-old:


sawyer only posed for me once his fish was back in the water. proud little guy:


adam, posing as if he's the bathign suit cover model. what a little ham!


the canoe ride:


it was a bit chilly for a july day, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
bring back the dog days, please!!!

i don't think it's a coincidence that since my last post about having moved to the "unknown countryside," that beautiful things have happened.

i made a roast turkey for dinner on tuesday (remember? it was on my monday menu planning list!) and our house was filled with that familiar culinary smell of late-november. for the first time in i-don't-know-how-many-years, however, it did not make me long for the cooler days of the fall, the golden colors on the trees, and the promise of christmas right around the corner.

we've been enjoying the hot days at the pool with the boys so much that it's all we want to do. and you can't go swimming under a hot sun in november. and despite our bad luck with the ground hog in our garden, we are enjoying fresh flowers EVERY DAY from my zinnia row, along with parsley and rosemary as fragrant fillers in our bouquets. the tomato plants are tall and bursting with tons of green fruit, some starting to turn orange; and our pole beans have been strung up on poles to show growth! you can't enjoy the fruits of a fresh harvest in november...unless i can/freeze/build a greenhouse (which is hopefully in our not-too-distant future as well!).

and it's not that we couldn't enjoy these things elsewhere...it's just that its what we've got here now, and didn't have at "our old house."

i'm extremely sentimental. i still get really nostalgic for our old neighborhood and our old house. i get REALLY sentimental about our previous church. when you have deep roots somewhere, it's hard to uproot and leave them exposed. but i'm also getting really attached to our new home. this is the only place adam knows as home. and our parents are going to retire here with us (well, across the street...but that's a whole 'nother blog post!).

so now i have more to add to the what i love list...taking away some more "power" from the what i miss list.

 

kenny should really be the one writing this post, but he gave up blogging for Lent a while back and just never got back into it (actually, it was around the time sawyer was born, 2004, when he gave up on blogging).

he's the mastermind behind our next big project, which kicked off officially today: beekeeping.  we spent the morning making sweet and sour meatballs to take with us to the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association's Summer Picnic/Potluck. we were expecting there to be perhaps 10-15 folks there sharing our meatballs, perhaps a few bags of chips, some warm soda, and maybe a cake in the shape of a honeybee complete with "honey" icing while the beekeepers chatted about their hives.

fortunately, it was nothing of the sort. we were one of 50 families (maybe more)...totalling a few hundred people with hot dogs and a TON more food to share. there were activities for the kids (the boys made "kite" honeybees and tree-branch name plates) while kenny listened to a few of the experts talk about the recent bee colony collapses. he also got to "schmooze" or "network" with several beekeepers in our area (one lives just down the street!).

these beekepers know how to throw a family party.

they do get a bit corny with their "Honey Queen" contest where they nominate some floozy woman as the "Honey Queen" for a year. as i was passing her wearing her tiara and sash, i asked her just what she did to received this title (yes, okay, i was taking notes so I COULD BE THE NEXT HONEY QUEEN)...and i made the mistake of referring to her as the "queen bee." she corrected me immediately and told me that she wrote an essay on the health benefits of honey and the judges interviewed her. she said she won based on the combination of her interviewing/speaking skills and the uniqueness of her essay. i was hoping it was a baking contest so i at least had a chance for next year. but speaking skills? writing an essay? PUL-EASE.

our neighbors donated their old beekeeping equipment to us complete with bee suits for kenny and i and a little-itty-bitty child's suit for the boys. rowan and sawyer tried theirs on this morning.

i'm now really excited about this: the benefits of local honey (i mean, a few yards away local!), honeybees for our garden and our neighbors' gardens, and learning the incredibly complex ways of the honeybee are just a few of the things i'm excited about. we order our bees sometime in january and we'll receive them late spring, 2008.

this photo is not staged.

every so often, the three boys eventually migrate towards one another. a few minutes ago, i left adam with his new favorite toys (the little people garage and city-center). the older boys were painting with their new water colors. i went to the kitchen to start on lunch, heard the older two talking to adam and came out to find them showing him how to make the city-center street move. they later started playing peek-a-boo with him because they know that makes him howl with laughter.

even though they don't take up the majority of the day, moments like these make it worth the crazy chaos of having three boys so close in age!

happy birthday rowan tucker!

four years ago today at 9:41 pm, you were born! you instantly brought a whole new meaning to the words "amazing and awesome," to your daddy and me. and you continue to makes us incredibly proud.

we love you to the moon and back!


love,
mommy and daddy

we seem to have been swallowed up in this deck project. it's a huge project and kenny is a one-man worker. he had help the first day for two hours setting up the thingy-ma-jig that holds the deck to the house. (i know the actual word, but it's 8:29, i've been up since 5:00 this morning, and it's escaping me at the moment.) i actually helped him one day by laying the decking and putting in all the screws.* i have to finish that up eventually and will once the railing is in place.

our yard is suffering. the garden needs to be weeded, the grass needs to be cut. but we're keeping our head above water until it's finished. and it will be very soon. hopefully this weekend. hopefully.

this is the first big project where i was able to actually help out. since having kids, i do a lot of cheerleading on the sidelines of these projects. it feels good to get back at it and actually help out when adam naps and the job doesn't require a whole lot of muscle.

sorry, no pictures (mom!). i have taken a few, but the pictures don't do justice to the deck. i'll take some real pictures once it's completely finished.

so besides the deck work we've been busy entertaining the boys to keep them out of the construction area. last night, kenny found them a frog. rowan loved it. sawyer wasn't so sure. he didn't want to touch the thing, but he was very excited about trying to feed it a worm. after noticing me take a few pictures of the frog in rowan's hands, sawyer demanded i take a picture of his little "wormy." the picture below makes it look more like a cut on his finger, but really, that's the worm. and the camera actually focused on sawyer's sweet face rather than the worm. smart camera.

and what is a week or so without a picture of one of the girls? look! they're beginning to grow their crowns!!! they'll be 10 weeks old on monday.









*i worded that purposefully to make it sound as though i layed all the decking myself. i wanted you all to think i was some strong, do-it-yourself-er. but really, kenny brought each piece up to the deck and helped me with a crowbar to get the wood to lay flat. all i did was screw each piece into place. so it wasn't really a lie. and most of you won't even be reading this...so most of you will think i did do something really important in the building of this deck. besides keeping the boys from falling off of it. which really is the most important in the grand scheme of things. that and building it to make it sturdy and safe. and believe me, it's sturdy.

but it includes the boys!

it's monday morning. the boys and i are waiting for adam to wake up from his morning nap (his longest nap of the day!) and then we're headed to the library to sign up with the library summer reading club.

and then i found this (left) fun little book challenge (complete with an amazon gift certificate prize!) at a great blog. i'm looking forward to a few lazy afternoons on a blanket in the back yard with the boys...a few rainy days on a blanket in the living room...and many new adventures and stories shared. won't you join in?

i want to wish all the dads in my life a very happy father's day. we had a fantastic day except for the...devastation.

here is another picture from the series of photos i took in the garden JUST LAST NIGHT (by the way, that's mud on adam's rear in the previous post...not chicken poop. there seemed to have been a bit of confusion amongst some of my readers - ha!). this is a photo of the row of lettuce and broccoli (the broccoli is toward the back...all you can see is big, beautiful leafy greens). they were my favorite plants in the garden: a blue-ish green leaf; thick stalks and growing up as well as out.
 

this photo is 10 minutes old. taken just 25 hours after the photo above. the lettuce in the front is gone...the lettuce in the middle is mowed, and the broccoli? sticks. broken sticks. the gorgeous leaves now being digested in the belly or bellies of the three groundhogs that live in our yard.



lets take a closer look at the lack of broccoli in our garden:



they've also munched on our beans and cucumbers.

i know you are all shaking your heads as you read this thinking, "why haven't you gotten that fence we ALL told you to put up as soon as humanly possible?" why didn't we listen to all your advice? because...because...we have no excuse. we're still researching the most effective and cost-efficient (that's my new phrase) fence. and our garden is being eaten from under our noses by the burly little hogs that i have no sympathy for anymore.

another reason we haven't put up a fence yet is because the previous owner, who still lives near us, swears up and down she never needed a fence. they grew tomatoes and other veggies and never had a fence. we believed her. now we're not so sure.

i'll leave you with an image from happier times earlier today. what a great dad kenny is: he hardly got a chance to use his father's day present (a 30-year anniversary edition shakespeare ugly stick, for those readers who are also fishers) today since the two older boys seemed to want to do all the fishing. after the fishing, we ate our grilled burgers and then swam in the lake. all three boys are fishes. we couldn't get them out of the water.



HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DADS!

since i post a lot about the gardens and gardening that we have, i get asked a lot, "how do you garden with three little boys?" first, a disclaimer: our gardening isn't extravagant. remember those perrenial gardens i post a lot about? they're mostly weeds with a few gorgeous flowers here and there. we just don't have time to weed those beds. at least not this year. we do put time into the vegetable garden.  the day we put in the garden, we worked while adam napped. the older two boys love to help us, or walk around the yard making sure all the chickens are still alive (rowan especially), or play in the sandbox. so it's easy to work with them. it wasn't so easy with a baby who wanted to be held constantly. but recently, he's learned to crawl, has taken a few steps and all he wants to do is be on the ground moving around himself.

so before baths tonight, we decided to do a bit of weeding and watering since it hadn't rained in a few days. we also spread some straw around the tomato plants and caged the rest of them. we continue to harvest leaves from the lettuce bed nearly every night for salad. the leaves seem to grow overnight from a harvesting. everything else is still growing, getting flowers or small buds of fruit.

here's our little helper. he "weeded" (or picked newly sprouted lima plants - oops!):


...and was very helpful chasing the chickens out of the garden:


and for the record...i'm the only one around here that doesn't go outside without shoes. i slip on my crocs every time i leave the house. the chickens are everywhere. and so is their poop. nobody seems to mind this but me. i love those chickens. i don't love their excrement.

me: "rowan, father's day is on sunday - what special thing should we do for daddy?"
rowan: "um...i think we should get him a present."
me: "that's a good idea. what do you have in mind?"
rowan: "um, i think he needs....a new car!"
(and he's never seen a episode of the price is right in his life!)

later that day...after me suggesting we buy daddy a new fishing pole...

me: "so rowan, would you like to go fishing with daddy this weekend?"
rowan: "yes! can sawyer come?"
me: "yes, but you'll need to share your fishing pole with him."
rowan: "okay. but not with adam."
me: "i can stay home with adam while daddy takes you fishing."
rowan: "no, i think adam should come with us to go fishing."
me: "okay. then can i come along with you guys?"
rowan: "no. you can stay home. you can stay home and make dinner."

i guess i know my place.

it's the spring/summer edition of smithical. after several technical difficulties over the weekend, i believe we're finally re-launched! we still have a few minor kinks to work out, but they really are minor, so we're back...minor glitches and all.

more later, but we enjoyed some spring thunderstorms driving home in the car from a pig roast last night. yes, that's what they do here in the country for big parties...pig roasts and corn mazes. okay, we didn't have a corn maze, but the pig roast was fantastic. the boys enjoyed looking at the pig roasting (rowan: "i saw his teeth!") and they even enjoyed the shredded pork (sawyer: "i ate pig tonight!").

thanks to the tip from jack in the comments section way back on this post, i was well aware of the fact that i was missing out on a live performance by martin sexton. but we had a great time celebrating the 40th birthday of a good friend. one of these days i will drag kenny to see martin sexton.

enjoy this day of rest.

as i predicted, the warm air and sunnier skies have kept me (and the entire family) outside instead of inside reading and writing. and i find myself having a hard time finding something to blog about. so...do i leave the blog alone for a while and let it grow cobwebs until the cooler air returns, or do i just write about what has been keeping us busy? because what has been keeping us busy is basically what i've been blogging about for...oh...the past five entries.

are you sick of hearing about the gardens and the chickens and my boys? if you are, you are invited to read the next highlighted blog in your bloglines account. because this entry will be no different than the past few. if you're still around, i'm flattered.

last friday afternoon, friends of ours from pittsburgh took time out of their busy lives to come to our home and help us figure out just what we have growing in our gardens. the perennial gardens just have us perplexed. our friends gave us amazing advice on how to treat and relish and enjoy our bushes, gardens, and trees, and identified many of the gorgeous flowers growing in our beds. we feel so much more confident in our ability to keep our grounds watered, fed, and beautiful in the years to come now that we know what we're housing in our soil.

several colors of foxglove, purple miniature iris, white iris, lupin, poppy, and jack-in-the-pulpits are our strongest plants, and are becoming my favorites. i'm waiting for the poppy to break open its bloom...but everything else is opening up. i honestly don't remember half of these flowers in the garden last year.

and our row of peonies? there are literally hundreds of bulbs bending their stems over to the ground, covered in ants. i read that you can cut them when their bloom is full, but not-yet-opened, so i cut and brought a few inside (after is hook out all the ants). they smell incredible. and they are slowly opening up now that they're in a vase.

i am enjoying a rare moment...a cup of HOT black coffee first thing in the morning.

because of a long and exhausting (but oh-so-much-fun) day the boys had visiting with their grandma and grandpa at a local state park yesterday, all three of them are still sleeping. it's 7:22 a.m., and there is not a peep from their room.

i tried to get a cute "mother's day family picture" taken at the end of our time at the park, and i guess we're at the "sticking out my tongue 24-hours a day" stage with the boys. so this was the best of the lot:

during snack time this morning, rowan looked at me and said, "are you hammered, mommy?"

all i could do was laugh. when mama laughs, everyone laughs (which is probably why when mama is cranky, everyone is cranky!). and then after about 2 minutes of hearty laughter, rowan asked, "why did you laugh, mommy?"

back up a few hours when i was getting the boys dressed this morning. i was leaning over our bed, dressing adam when rowan started walking around the bed hammering imaginary nails with an imaginary hammer into the perimeter of the bed. when he got to me, he "hammered" my legs to the bed and i pretended that i couldn't move. i told him to use the back of the hammer to "un-nail" my legs from the bed. he thought this was hilarious.

so i guessed that was what he meant. i answered his question: "i just thought your question was funny because clearly, i'm not stuck to the bed right now!"

to which he answered, "that was funny mommy! you were hammered to the bed!"

eventually he'll see the other funny side of the story. but not for a long time, i hope.

it was FREEZING yesterday. add to the cold, it was WINDY. when we ordered our chicks back in early march, it was 60 degrees. i imagined us picking up our chicks donning shorts and t-shirts, sunshiny day and all. the sun met us in ohio, but pennsylvania was hidden under stormy clouds all day long (and we were in ohio all but one hour).

so it didn't REALLY take 10 hours. but we left at 10, met kenny at 12:15, and were on the road by 12:30. it took us over two hours to get to the hatchery in polk, ohio, which was really quite nice and not at all what i expected. we parked the car, got out and stood next to a penske delivery truck with literally thousands of chicks in boxes inside, waiting to be mailed. it made me happy that our little chicks were to be riding home with us, and not the noisy 1000-other chicks in the truck.

it was a long day, but totally worth it. the chicks are loving their new little home in their brooder in our laundry room under warming lights. the boys step up on their stools to be eye-to-eye with the chicks and they all run over to the glass to see the boys.

a few things we've learned about chickens from observation already:
 - when they are one-day-old, they suffer from narcolepsy. they walk from the water to where the light is warmest and stop mid-step, eyes begin to close and then fall flat on their face. or they fall asleep with their head still in the food dish. it was really quite entertaining for kenny, my mom, and i to watch after the boys were in bed last night.
 - they'll peck ANYTHING. they especially like to peck at harder things, like wedding bands and screws in the walls of their brooder.
 - they've stopped chirping so much and now when we hear them chirp, we wonder if something is wrong.
 - today, they all seem to fall asleep together, for about 45 seconds each. they've all had about 89 naps already since this morning.
 - just as a newborn infant, they'll keep you up all night. kenny came down to check on them (and their temperature) at least three times last night.
 - three brooder lamps shorted on us last night, even after checking them out last week. we have two normal bulbs in there now, keeping it at around 85-87 degrees (it should be close to 90 the first day, and down a few degrees as they grow).

adam, sitting in the middle seat with me:
 

the boys, with their new chick friends in between them in the back seat:




rowan, gazing into his new little friend's eyes. his friend wondering if he's her mother?


kayle, the tabby is "interested"


where the boys went the minute they woke up this morning:

what a day. i have NO energy to blog about our 10-hour trip to ohio...but my goodness, are these chicks freakin' adorable. seriously, it's like the energy and exhaustion right after giving birth.

i'm off to bed, but here is a few pictures of our baby egg-layers. :)

on the other hand...i get tulips, hyacinth, dandelions, and little purple flowers picked just for me each and every day. straight out of our flower beds. and the boys, with a little help from daddy, bought me an easter lily last week.

so there is definitely sweetness, and not all potty humor, in raising boys.

what is it with boys?

for the past few days, i think i've heard the words that describe bodily functions or body parts more times than i care to hear outloud. even if they are coming from my innocent children's mouths. and not once or twice a day...more like 3 or 4 times an hour.

i am told everytime they toot. today, as rowan sat on my lap while we were driving the tractor around the yard he told me "i tooted on your leg!" followed by an, "is that okay, mommy?"

i've overhead conversations between rowan and sawyer:

rowan:"do you smell something bad, sawyer?"
sawyer:"yes!"
rowan: "i just tooted."

and then...

sawyer: ooooh! i p**ped in my diaper! i'm STINKY!

and even...

sawyer: my toot didn't make any noise, mommy. why?

and at a restaurant, when kenny came back to the table from using the facilities, rowan said in his VERY loud voice, "did you already pee, daddy?" and when his question wasn't met with an answer (we were trying hard to tell him to quiet his voice) he repeated it and we tried again to "shush" him to no avail. the waitress laughed, poured our coffee and said, "i remember those days."

there are a few other contexts in which these subjects have come up. but i'm almost embarrassed to blog about them, so they will remain in the family. like what sawyer was saying (yelling!) over and over and over as he was jumping on the bed. and the hysterical laughter that happens when these boys say a particular word.

who taught them this???

perhaps we'll tape record them and make their future girlfriends listen to them over and over and over.

...for the wintertime blues?

ours? one part gin to two-and-a-half parts tonic and a slice-o-lime. on ice. with dinner. it's only the classic summer drink, and if it doesn't feel like summer outside, we can make it taste like one inside!

is anyone else suffering from "this-winter-is-getting-OLD" syndrome?

this morning, as we trolled the aisles of the grocery store, rowan looked up at me and said, "mommy, i'm SO happy it's spring!"

perhaps it was because i told him we were going to buy some ingredients for a special cake we were going to make together to celebrate the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! and any mention of cake, rowan is on-board.

last week, we had snow. then a day of rain. here are a few pictures of what that leaves behind.

at least the snow is melting and not lingering for weeks on end. the first picture is our back yard, which faces north. the mist is just above the pine tree-line. the second is of our barn, which faces west - therefore, a misty sunset. the most important part of these pictures to me is the green in them. since early january, we've had snow on the ground, and although that sounds like a lot of fun when you have three young boys, it isn't when the temperatures are in the single digits, or the youngest of those boys just doesn't want to be out for much longer than 5-10 minutes. we are ready to get outside and enjoy our yard again!

fortunately, the first day of spring here was 60 degrees. the warm air was so welcomed, and we celebrated!

our "first-day-of-spring" bunny cake...an idea i got from a blog i read sometime ago - i wish i could remember who it was! i wanted to decorate with fresh whipped cream, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries...but that cake will have to wait until mid-summer when those berries are ripe (and in our backyard!). and a walk outside..without bulky, winter coats!





and here is a haiku that perfectly describes the beauty of the transition from winter to spring.

now that i'm sure i got your attention over there in Arizona....

today we picked up a box of Cheerios. the name-brand kind, not the store-brand, or the natural brand (although Cheerios is sold in Whole Foods, so "it's got to be good"). because when it comes to Cheerios...the name brand is the real deal. i just can't eat, or make my kids eat, a different "version." it's like reading cliff's notes for a shakespeare play. or worse...baking with sucralose.

so we picked up a box of Cheerios because they are adam's favorite finger food these days. they wrap up a meal well for him...he likes to delicately balance a cheerio that is stuck to the end of his saliva-ed index finger, and pinch it closed with this thumb and s-l-o-w-l-y bring it to his mouth. it's quite a sight - and very different than sawyer-at-9-months who took a fist of cheerios and jammed them into his mouth like cookie monster (complete with cheerio crumbs flying everywhere).

the boys (and i!) were excited to see eric carle's "very hungry caterpiller" gracing the front of this particular Cheerios box (sawyer kept saying, "looks like MY book!"). eric carle is donating 100,000 copies of his book The Tiny Seed to the state that answers (and votes for!) the most correct children's book trivia questions.

so...only those of you who live in MY STATE...go to www.firstbook.org/carle and have fun answering some children's book trivia (i didn't get that many correct, but i did find new books to add to the boys' wishlist) and vote for our state to be the recipiants of his book. we already own this book, and it's actually a favorite of rowan's. and the artwork doesn't disappoint (especially if you're a fan of carle's illustrations).

while you're online, hop on over to carle's other great cause at www.picturebookart.org. there's some fun artwork to look at, booklists, and activities.

and no, eric carle or General Mills is in no way paying me for this post. i could only be so lucky.

the other day, the older two boys and i constructed simple snowmen made of cotton. it's just too cold to be outside in the real snow, and i think sawyer's having a hard time with the fact that real snowmen melt. he has a hard time saying goodbye. this way, he'll have his snowman with him as long as he wants. if i can convince him they're NOT marshmallows, therefore are NOT edible.

i started off showing them how to paste the cotton onto the paper. then the "sticks" onto the paper. pasting the eyes and buttons were a bit tricky, but i let them pick out which type of decoration they wanted for the eyes, mouth, and buttons.


it seemed like a simple project...i was proud of myself for being creative using grape stems for the arms: i'm NOT digging in the snow for real sticks. the boys loved eating the "jimmies" i found on my christmas cookie decorating shelf a bit too much. we ran out of jimmies before they were able to paste on their own buttons:



here is where i question...do i need to worry about sawyer's artistic vision? i don't think he meant to make his snowman demon-possessed. but it ended up that way, and now i'm afraid to be in the same room with his little creation:

thanks SO MUCH for all of your birthday wishes. man, do you guys  know how to make a girl feel special.

and my husband certainly knows how to love on me (and embarrass me at the same time! that picture is the ONLY time you'll see me in a swimsuit on this here blog) and make my birthday one heck of a fun day!

kenny and the boys went out for a "secret ingredient shopping" spree yesterday afternoon. last night, they all made my birthday cake - chocolate with chocolate icing. two layers and everything. this morning, i proclaimed today "cake for breakfast" day and we all ate chocolate cake for breakfast. then...

kenny surprised me with my present (and i thought the cake and my day off on friday was enough, really!) - an ipod shuffle! we've been having fun all day listening to and figuring out how to download music. i'm all thumbs working with this mini-music-technology.

(kenny and i snuck in another piece of cake for lunch...while the boys had quiet time. it's not that i'm not a sharing momma...it's just i couldn't bring myself to force this bad habit onto my children!)


we're hitting the hay early tonight: we've both been awake since 4:30 a.m. due to a cry-out from a bad dream from sawyer that woke up adam for the day. we're tired...and that event might repeat itself tomorrow morning. and my tooth has been KILLING me all evening. i'm scheduled for a root canal in a few weeks...i hope i make it until then...YOUCH!