we are at my least favorite time in a home renovation process: the beginning.

we are planning a big task...it involves our two biggest rooms (living room and dining room) and a high-traffic area (hallway). i am very thankful that we have a back staircase to use. otherwise we'd have to move out of the house until we were done. and it might be taking us a few weeks.

we are tearing up some old, old carpet, and laying down hardwood floors. we're also painting some dark colors in each room, so that means several coats on the 9-foot ceilings. it's going to be a big project, and although i want the changes in the rooms, it's just so daunting to start it. i want it to happen overnight, and we all know that doesn't ever happen. i'm a bit high strung when it comes to neatness, and i know (from experience) that house renovations mean a big old messy house until it's done. at least it's temporary (i keep telling myself that!).

and

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!

last week, we said good bye to our beloved cat, greymalkin. kenny got grey when she was just 6 weeks old. this year, she turned 17. it was her time, and it was harder than we imagined. she was very devoted to kenny, although recently she preferred my feet to his to sleep on.

it took us two days to tell rowan and sawyer. they loved that cat and loved to play with her (much to her...um...disliking). we told her the day kenny and the boys made a little stepping stone for her to put where we have her buried (it's so nice to have a yard big enough to bury your pets!). they took it a lot better than we thought. rowan's little bottom lip quivered for a minute, but then he recovered and the questions began: "is she with jesus now?" "is she going to wait for us in heaven?" "how old was she?" at least we'd been preparing them for this...telling them that she was very old and getting more sick by the week.

still...we've noticed her absence this week. we are not awakened by her meows for food at 6:00 (which is probably why we've been sleeping in until 7:00!!). and the boys haven't had their "pet" to chase around the house any more.

we do miss her, but we're more happy to have had her a part of our family for so long.

here was our dinner conversation last night:

sawyer: mommy, does everybody die?
me: yes, sawyer, we're all going to die some day.
kenny: sawyer, you may never die.
me: this is true. jesus might come back before you die. won't that be cool?
sawyer: what?
rowan: what?
we then chat about jesus coming as a baby, then dying on the cross, and now alive in heaven...so perhaps when he comes again we'll all still be alive.
rowan: (interupting me) how come when the earth spins around and around the food doesn't fall off our plates?
i think any mention of heaven, and his mind goes off into planets and the sun. smart kid. he's going to be too smart for me in a few months!

these are fairly typical conversations that we have daily. they're only 3 and 5 year old boys and are already asking questions that are hard for me to answer! they've been doing so for a while now. i hope they always ask the tough questions. doubting, wondering, questioning...these are some tools God has given us to uncover truths. perhaps we'll never get to the deepest mysteries of Him, but how much fun we can have along the way by digging deep into things with our minds!

we've had several days in the 90s. i'm LOVING it.

the first really hot day was thursday, and i basked in the warmth. by the second day (friday), i finally let kenny put the air conditioning on (i think it was the kids yelling over the monitor when i put them down for bed on thursday saying, "mommy, i'm sweaty!" a thousand times that did it for me).

we broke out a new wading pool (a frog!), kenny bought a new slip and slide, and by last night, the slip and slide fed into the wading pool. it's rowan and sawyer's new favorite thing to do.

our garden is popping up all over the place. all the beans popped, so far we have an 85% percent corn sproutings, and the other plants haven't burned up in all the heat. when the plants get a little bigger, i'll get a pictrure posted. now it just looks like black mounds and hay (similar to last year's garden, minus the chickens and the groundhog troubles, plus a big fence that kenny and my brothers put up last week).

and today, kenny purchased this book. are we crazy yet? :)

yesterday afternoon, as i was beginning our dinner prep (usually around 3:45....i know that sounds early to some of you, but i tend to take just over an hour to make most of our dinners, and we eat between 5:00 and 5:30. otherwise i have three crabby boys to contend with as well as make dinner...so i choose early dinners with happier kids underfoot), rowan walks into the kitchen holding my ring holder that was just moments before securely sitting on the back part of my dresser. this ring holder was holding a ring i wear on my right hand, and my wedding set and engagement ring (as i was gardening earlier and i don't garden with my rings on), however one of my wedding bands was missing.

kenny and i wear antique rings as we're partial to the antique style. so we wear white gold, turn-of-the-century rings. my wedding set didn't come with my engagement ring, it went with another ring altogether, but we chose it because it also matched my ring. the engagement ring is worn between the wedding bands. and one of them slipped off when rowan decided to play with my ring holder as a "treasure."

first of all, how do you think you would have reacted to this? admittedly, i was angry. i made rowan retrace his steps, i made him sit on his bed while i retraced his steps, i told him never (EVER!) to touch the things on my dresser (this is a rule in our house and he knows it) and the ring didn't turn up. after about a half hour of searching, he knew it was serious. so then we had the conversation: about how this ring was very important and symbolic to me, but he and his brothers are more precious to me than anything, even this ring, and i forgave him since he apologized a few times while we searched for the ring. all was good again (to him), but my heart was sick at the thought of my wedding band had gone missing.

several hours later, after getting adam out of the bath and getting his pajamas on, i noticed he was holding something in his hands. i'm sure you know what it was: i looked at my left ring finger to see my engagment ring and the other half of my wedding ring, so he was definitely holding the missing part.

we heaved a BIG OLD sigh of relief, with much rejoicing, especially between rowan and i. probably because forgiveness (and in his case) forgetting had already happened.

so what's my lesson here?
a/ forgive your child for their mistakes and you'll get your way (you'll get the ring back)?
b/ huff and puff angrily for a while to get your kids to apologize?
c/ don't EVER take your wedding bands off, even when gardening/cooking with raw meat/bread/dough, etc?
d/ get those three rings sodered together?

anyone care to add any more?

this past week has been a bit of a challenge in the eating department. i struggle with getting food (any food!) into their mouths on most days, or getting quality food, even if it's not much of it on others. it's a new challenge every morning. but it's a learning process, and all of our food choices won't change overnight, i'm well-aware of that fact!

some things that we did this past week:

• after my mom read this waldorf eating entry last week, she showed up at the door with bags of veggies and a bottle of Trader Joes Goddess salad dressing, and that has been the boys' snack of choice for the past week: raw carrots, broccoli, and grape tomatoes in the salad dressing.
• i made homemade granola with dried cherries. mmm. but it wasn't my favorite recipe. if you have a favorite recipe for granola, please share. i've yet to be blown away by my homemade granola. and i do like granola! fortunately the boys loved it. and ate it with milk and over yogurt, or by the handful.
• i made millet bars, from the waldorf kindergarten snack book and it was a total flop. i can't even bring myself to eat it, even smothered with honey! blech. i'm "x-ing" that one out in the book.

here's another recipe i can share with you that was a total hit. whenever we are out at a restaurant, the only thing the boys ask to eat is "macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers with dipping sauce." they're palates have yet to move beyond that. but it's quick and easy and fills their bellies. good thing we rarely eat out any more. so, i brought their favorite restaurant food home, and found a great recipe for it that doesn't include frying in oil! the best part is that all our plates were clean - even Adam's (which is rare!)

Seasame Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
(I served it with sticky rice and steamed endameme)

1/3 cup stone ground mustard
1/3 cup honey
2 T lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 black pepper
1 lb skinned, boned chicken breast cut into strips
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 large egg whites, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together mustard and honey and set aside.
Season chicken with salt and pepper. Combine sesame seeds and breadcrumbs in a shallow dish. Dip chicken in egg whites, and dredge in sesame seed mixture.
Arrange chicken in a single layer on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray (or lightly coated with veg. oil). Bake 350 for 15 minutes.

*I also added some grated parmesan cheese and garlic powder to the sesame seed/bread crumb mixture.

Kenny: "Make it again!"
Liz: mmmmm.
Rowan: Empty plate with no bribing needed!
Sawyer: "Can I have some more please?"
Adam: He ate everything but the endameme. Because it was green.

• sawyer calls his stuffed frog, "booby." i have no idea where he came up with it, but they have crazy names for a lot of their animals...this one just stuck. funny.
• when we're listening to music in the car and it's turned down low, sawyer's way of asking us to turn it up is, "can you please low it up?"
• rowan still says, "todeger" when he means "together."
• adam is our first child that babbles. he has his very own language and way of speaking and it's clearly intonations that hears from our speaking. he does have many words, and repeats very clearly words that we say to him. but he chooses his babble talk over actual words all the time. for now, i'm not worried. if he's still doing this in a year...i'll begin to worry. i'm trying awfully hard not to talk for him. he is "the baby" afterall!
  
• the boys love our cat, greymalkin. they call her "pet" and follow her obsessively around the house, creating sleep ares for her (piles of blankets) and go through periods where they want to feed her 10 times a day. grey has had a lot of illnesses recently, and she's coming up on her 17th birthday. we're worried how they'll take her passing on.
• art time: how long does it last with other people's kids? we do painting, sketching and gluing (we had a bad moment with scissors the other day...sawyer's sworn them off after a small, but nasty, cut he got last week) and all of the art times last about 7 minutes. all that set up and clean up for 7 minutes worth of art? i know this is typical and generally it doesn't bother me...but i'd like it to last longer. eventually. to make the clean up worth it! i'll reintroduce more kid-friendly scissors to sawyer soon and then bring him back to his other scissors when i know he's over his new cutting phobia.
• speaking of art time, we made some lovely felt crowns last week. i still need to sew the elastic on them and i think these ones will be a proto-type to a better felted (real wool) crown we'll make later. hopefully when their cousins ramona and astrid visit later this spring. BUT...my sewing machine broke. and my other one? it's extremely fussy. i'm in need of a new one and i can't decide whether i will spring for a good one now (with tax return money) or save for 6 months and get a cheapo one now? advice?
  

at 7:19 a.m. this morning the phone rang. it was the post office in our small little town (since the general store closed down last summer, the post office and the methodist church are the only thing in town next to several houses).

10,000 honeybees were waiting for us and i don't think they wanted to wait until our normal 3:30 pm delivery time to get them out of their office. kenny and rowan hopped in the car and went to pick them up.

we've been spending the majority of our days on the outside of the house lately. it feels great to not need a coat, and to roam the yard again without heavy boots and deep snow keeping us from walking easily.

maybe it's because this yard has so much more foliage and life beneath the ground than our old yard did...but this year again, i'm surprised (by joy, of course) at the new buds forming on the otherwise dead-looking tree branches, and the bright green shoots sticking up out of the earth after a long hibernation. even though we're expecting it, it's always surprising that life returns after such a long, cold, dead winter.

i spent the day in the city on saturday. my friend serina and i (and her 5-month-old son, asher!) headed out bright and early to the salvation army fabric fair. we didn't realize just how nuts the fair actually is until we tried to maneuver our way through the crowds. i tried two or three times to browse through the patterns/book table, but the ladies wouldn't budge. these women meant business. we did score on some great new fabirc (cheap!) but made our way through as carefully as we could without getting hurt. :)

that afternoon, i met kenny and the boys (and my mom) at our old church for the shape note workshop i was so excited about. it was a lot of fun to sing in a group again (i rarely get this opportunity anymore since i'm not the singer in the family), and it was interesting learning a bit more about it. but kenny and i made the same observation about the actual singing: at this point, we'd much rather listen to it sung (by those who sing it a lot!) than to sing it ourselves. there was a huge need to pay attention to the line of music that you'd sing, and i honestly can't remember actually hearing the music being sung because i was too intent on getting the notes right. so i keep listening to the pieces from the Awake My Soul web site to get my fix.

in the warmth of the afternoon sun on sunday, we labored in the garden. now i know that this is (an example of) the type of work that God requires us to abstain from on the 7th day of the week...but seriously, is it work when it's so enjoyable? when it's all you've been wanting to do for the past three months of frozen temperatures? because it felt great to see the ground again, and to see the garden getting ready to be a bed of growth again. the boys helped us with their garden tools while adam napped. we breathed in the earth, the sun, the tractor diesel fumes....  if there is one thing i'd like to do away with, it's the tractor diesel. i wish there were such a thing as an affordable, green tractor that would make all the rest of our organic gardening and earth-keeping worth it. perhaps one day, the barn will be fixed up enough to house a few goats and sheep. because they're the perfect earth-friendly tractors around.

AND...we lost another chicken today. it was one of the black and white ones (silver laced wyandottes) - the ones i call george washington (they look just like him!). we believe she was hit by a car as she was lying, wings sprawled, in our rock/shrub garden. we're not sure it was a natural landing that put her there, or if someone put here there after doing the damage. she's had a proper burial and yes, we told the boys. and this after we were just telling someone how we've never lost a chicken to traffic, even though they freely walk in the street on a daily basis (cars normally slow down, honk, or stop). this puts our daily egg count down to about 10-11. thank goodness for friends who readily take eggs off our hands.

My brother recently posted about the things that are always in his fridge. It wasn't a meme, but i'm going to give it a go as well. And now he can have an opportunity to harp on something that I have in our fridge like I did with his diet coke. :)

So...what is usually always in our fridge/freezer:

4 gallons of milk delivered each week. It's hormone-free, but not organic. It's a price thing.
Mayonnaise. Except we're currently out. But it's Kenny's favorite. For sandwiches and fries.
Yogurt. A lunch-staple for three boys who don't share with their momma.
A big ol' chunk of cheddar cheese. Adam and Sawyer prefer the extra sharp.
Endameme. (freezer) Rowan and Sawyer beg for this. It's such an easy snack, but they love eating it alongside of macaroni and cheese. It's a dinner we have at least once every other week. Usually on nights when a babysitter is coming and Kenny and I are eating out! I'd love to grow it in our garden...it's all over the corn fields here in late summer!
6 empty mason jars, no lids. (freezer) the perfect glass for an icy cold beer or water on those hot days.

so there...nothing earth-shattering. this used to be a question asked in a celebrity interview section of the LIVING section of the weekend paper. and i loved the "fridge-lists" that i felt matched the celebrity's personality. for instance, you'd probably be able to visualize the interviewee when they answered, "perrier, prawns, and pate" or "beer, mustard, and yesterday's primanti's leftovers."

so i'd love it if you, readers, either left me a comment with things always found in your fridge (we can limit it to 3-4 things if you want), or blog about it yourself and let me know that you've blogged it.

i love pancakes.  we eat them so very often in our house for breakfast because kenny is the king of pancakes. he makes them from scratch and that has turned me into a pancake snob: i don't like pancakes from a mix. we eat them pretty bland as well: just butter and maple syrup.

last night, shrove tuesday, was the pancake dinner at our church...a tradition that dates back hundreds of years in anglican/episcopal churches. we had more than syrup to pour over them. we had whipped cream and chocolate chips, bananas and strawberries (i forgot the blueberries...and i heard about it from four people!). cinnamon rolls and orange juice, and sausage links rounded off the breakfast-feast. it was truly a fat tuesday, carb-heavy, un-lenty meal.

i like what i read on a blog earlier in the week to describe the contrast of "fat tuesday" and ash wednesday:

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!

i've been blogging here at smithical for a little over 3 years - when i was still pregnant with sawyer! when i first started, i only read mommy blogs. all i cared about in this world was raising my kids, so that's all i wanted to read about - other mothers and their experiences, trials, and joys of raising kids.

not that that has changed much, because i still crave the presence of other mothers, love to glean advice and support from other mothers, and still read several blogs dedicated to blogging. the next year, my blog subscriptions changed a bit. i added friends and family blogs, as they started their own, or i finally discovered an old blog of theirs. i read blogs from cooks, blogs on reading, and blogs on hobby farming (specifically chicken-raising).  and now? my blogline feeds are about 75% crafting blogs. this may sound corny, but i specifically love the crafting blogs dedicated to family living. two of these that are GOOD stick out in my mind: i have to say... and soulemama. these two blogs have really influenced my desire to make and create, and mostly for the sake of my family and friends. "i have to say..." has another blog called me and my girl in which she reports and demonstrates sewing projects (and other crafting) that she does with her daughter. soulemama is in the process of writing her second book and has one to be published this spring. go to today's post: she has a great list of lovely winter books - some of which we own, some are already on our wishlist!

i learned a little from blogging every day this november: mainly that i like to put words out here in cyberspacae and sometimes i care if i get comments, other days i forget that i've blogged and when a few emails pop into my inbox telling me i've received some new comments, i'm pleasantly surprised.

thanks for reading along every day this month. i'll be back - but not as often - in december!

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.

it's late-ish night, and i'm about to have a late night bowl of cereal. is anyone else a cereal-at-night snacker? i actually prefer it to morning...

today's entry is is short. it'd be sweet if i didn't choose raisin bran for my bowl-o-cereal choice for the night...so it's just short. we still have a housefull of guests, and we're all in zombie-mode. :)

g'night.

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).

we've got ourselves some new neighbors in these neck of the woods. today, two large moving vans and four movers walked furniture and boxes into the newly built, freshly painted home across the street. fortunately, we know that these neighbors will not be raising a loud ruckous on a nightly basis. these new neighbors are my parents.

a few hours ago, as we were putting the boys through their nightly bedtime ritual, my dad called and wanted to know how much we could see from our house into theirs. they have no curtains yet. i looked out our window and told him i could see him standing in their living room window. the house is still fairly far away, and there are several rows of trees that separate us, but since all the leaves are down, the trees don't cover much.  so he and i played the "can you see me now?" game as he darted from room to room. i advised that they get at least sheers up sometime if they want to use their bedroom as a dressing room eventually.

pictures to come, but we're a soggy, muddy mess here in these parts. and they've got boxes and stuff all over. but the house is lovely...furniture that filled a room in their old house looks so tiny in their new house. i think my mom is here to stay...leaving my dad to commute back and forth to work and stay in their semi-empty house down in the big city. and i think they'll be moving up here fulltime sooner than they had originally planned.

but don't tell them i said that. ;)

back in june of this year, kenny and i were all set to order a few (four, tops) turkey chicks and have them sent to us to raise for the 10-12 short weeks that they have before taking them to a local slaughterer for a fresh turkey thanksgiving dinner. free-range, mostly naturally-fed turkeys for a grand total of $6-8. plus shipping and handling.

when we went to make the order, the nice people at the hatchery told us that we had to order a minimun of 15 for shipment.

so, we decided against it as we had no room to house 15 turkeys. and we were trying to live a normal life of a family with three kids, 15 chickens newly released into their outdoor coop, and a huge garden with huge groundhog problems. we didn't need 15 more little headaches. (oh, that made it sound like the three kids are headaches. if i have to be honest, sometimes they are. but that's my fault, not theirs!)

so today, kenny called a local turkey farm. we ordered a fresh 18-20 pound local turkey for our family thanksgiving meal this year. we had a hard enough time finding a local turkey farm, let alone finding an organically raised, free-range one. the one we found keeps their turkeys in open-aired coops and are fed natural food and do not use growth hormones on their fowl. that's enough for me. especially since the USDA definition for free range does not mean pasture-ranged.

we are set to pick up our fresh bird the week of thanksgiving.

kenny has been very busy over the past few months preparing for something that began last night, and that we hope continues and grows on into the future.

with the help of friends and other church members, we started a saturday evening service for church members and anyone outside the church who wants to check it out to worship. the service is based on "an order of worship for the evening" so communion is not included. however, the service concludes with a free meal for everyone, so communion happens, just not Holy Communion.

we honestly had no idea if anyone would come, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the faithful worshipers from a typical sunday morning service come, and a few others.

i can't describe the service any better than kenny already has at the service's web site. please check it out. and if you're local, come visit! and if you think of it, keep this service in your prayers.

i leave you with an image of my favorite poster we've hung up in stores in the area.

if the devil were ever a true part of halloween, it was today.

it started off great...the boys awoke in good moods and we were dressed and out the door by 9:30. we drove to Lowe's to pick up kenny's birthday present (which would still be a surprise had it not been for the rest of the days' events). the boys were excited talking about and planning his birthday events...but to them, it's all about the cake.

when we got home, kenny had an errand to run, and i jumped at the chance to run it for him. adam and i took off around noon to a Kinkos (the closest one is 45 minutes away!) to pick up a poster for something i'll blog about in the future...but it was important that we pick it up today. adam fell asleep about 20 minutes into the drive. i noticed that we were getting low on gas, but wondered whether or not i should just fill the tank once i reached the Kinkos since it was around more gas stations. at the very last minute before passing up the last gas station before getting onto the highway, i decided to fill the tank then. so i get out quietly (as not to wake a just-fallen-asleep-adam) and start to fill the tank. around $5.45, i noticed something leaking from under our car. i peer underneath and surely, a pinkish liquid was POURING out of the front section of the car. i stopped pumping immediately and got back into the car and pulled it around to the station. i checked again under the car and it was still pouring out. in fact, i noticed that there was a line of liquid on the ground from the road and into the gas station, so it had started to leak before i actually got to the station.

to make a long story semi-short, i had a guy from within the shell station look at the car and he said that it seems one of my heating lines rusted through and anti-freeze and water was draining out of the engine. he recommended not driving it. i called AAA, and told them i was stranded with a 16-monht-old (by the way...if you are ever stranded with young children, you should mention that to the AAA folks as they make an extra effort to get their faster. apparently.). they were there within 40 minutes.

the tow-truck driver was a hoot. he had a double cab, so i felt comfortable putting adam face-front for this one trip (even though he's just over 20#, he's still rear-facing and i'm not really in a hurry to switch him around yet). adam had a great time watching out the windows all around him and sitting next to me. we had the van towed to the neighborhood mechanic: you gotta love the country. this guy lives next ot his garage and has a few goats penned up in a small shed a few feet away...and it's not junky. he's in an "upscale" section of the neighborhood - a newer build area (well, newer-build as in 1970s instead of 1890s!) who fixed the line for us in less than two hours. i think he heard kenny and i trying to figure out how to get the kids trick or treating tonight without the family car (and three car seats!). once again, gotta love the country - you have to drive to get anywhere to trick or treat!). i had to pull kenny's gift out of the back of the van and put it in the truck to take home - so he got his brithday present early!

all in all, it was a HUGE pain in the butt, but we see God's hand of protection in so many parts of the day:

1. i thank God i stopped when i did, otherwise the car could have overheated and done more damage.
2. i considered canceling our AAA membership back in april. thank God i didn't.
3. the mechanic is usually backed up with a lot of work (we recently waited over two weeks for our truck to be inspected). today, he turned our van around in a few hours.
4. adam, who has been on the cranky side lately, was a pure delight to hang out with at a gas station today. he laughed, played with my cell phone, said "hi" to strangers and didn't fuss once.
5. the boys didn't miss out on trick or treating - something they've been talking about since last january (they still talk about how fun it was to trick or treat with uncle wayne and aunt amanda last year!)
6. when we got home from dropping the van off at the mechanic, i was able to run back out in kenny's car to pick up the much-needed poster while adam napped the entire time i was gone.

i'll post pictures and a play-by-play of our trick or treating events later.

tomorrow is the start of National Blog Posting Month. see you back here tomorrow!

(for those of you non-pittsburghers out there, "n'at" is the only proper way to end a sentence here in western pennsylvania.)

sunday morning, we woke up to one of our garbage bags strewn across the front lawn. kenny noticed rather large teeth holes in some pieces of garbage. we weren't sure, but we considered that it was was one very large raccoon.

until today. we came across this:

would you believe that we had another trip to the ER this week? it was sawyer this time, with a minor head injury. and it all happened right outside the trader joe's.

i drove the boys down to pittsburgh for the night yesterday, and i thought i'd stop in at trader joes to get some coveted kefir (you can't get it up here), full-fat yogurt (another thing you can't find in stores here - they're all low-fat) and yummy snacks for our day.

so the three boys and i piled out of the car, as we always do...rowan first, then sawyer, and then adam. as we stepped onto the sidewalk, rowan began running towards the door, and as usual, sawyer followed. at which point he fell and his forehead met the pavement for the very first time (please, let it be the last???). screaming ensued...a nice woman gave me a tissue and then left...and then i didn't know what to do.

immediately, the nice man from one of TJ's registers came outside and asked if there was anything he could do...at which point another patron of the store offered me her cell phone. i called kenny who was only a few blocks away at work and told him that we'd be making another trip to the ER. another TJ employee came out and asked if there was anything sawyer would want to make him happy...the only thing that came to mind was chocolate milk - a favorite rare treat for them these days. she came back out a few minutes later with four containers of amazingly yummy chocolate milk...sawyer rejected it. sawyer rejected chocolate milk! but rowan got his own and he was done with it in 2 mintues flat.

at this point, the bleeding was stopping, so i though i'd pile them all back into the car, pick up kenny and head to Children's Hospital (thank God we were so close to Children's!) if he thought it needed a stitch or two. another patron came over and told me that she had three (or was it two?) boys of her own, now grown, and she'd been through this a few times in her day. she offered sawyer a brand new container of chocolate peanut butter cups...he rejected those as well! he just kept crying and saying, "but it HURTS, mama!" poor, sweet thing. it must have hurt for my little sugar-addict to reject two chocolatley treats. just an hour previous to this incident, on our way down in the car, he was looking at a book that had a picture of jelly beans in it and told me he wanted a jelly bean pie. (how's that for a sugar high?).

the hospital stay was much more brief than rowan's, and kenny got the honors while i hung out with adam and rowan at the nearby (BIG!) library. he was all smiles when i picked them up a few hours later, sporting a bright yellow (green, maybe?) bandaid on his forehead. no stitches needed - just a cleansing and glued shut (two deep holes, not wide enough for stitches or staples, but deep enough to keep closed). he then downed the entire container of chocolate milk he was given by the nice people of Trader Joes. they didn't even charge me for them...and they lost my business that day since i never stopped foot into their store!

have i mentioned how nice the employees of Trader Joes are, yet?

as kenny and i drove back from church the other night, we noticed the moon. it was just a sliver but it was RED. dark red. blood red. i thought that was the stuff of ozzy osbourne songs...but they're real! and a bit creepy, especially on a coolish autumn night.

for the past few weeks, i've received the following SPAM email from "GhostCentral" which i find quite funny. it reads:

Three houses in your neighborhood have had high amounts of spiritual activity.  Our instruments show strange energy radiating directly from your home.

Please dont wait until it is too late!

Click Here to find out if your house is Haunted.

i wonder if anyone has fallen for it yet...clicking on the link provided only to find some scam or virus taking over their computer. what is funniest to me is the line: "our instruments show strange energy radiating directly from your home."

i've never blogged before about the haunted rumor about our house. probably because i don't quite believe in ghost hauntings, and we've not experienced anything "supernatural" in our home, and we don't really expect to. but the story behind our house haunting is rather sad:

the original owner/builder of our house had a wife named sadie (her last name is the same name of the street on which we live). rumor has it that she was locked in the attic by her husband for days on end because she was crazy. the previous owners of this house raised three boys (like us!) and the one son tells us that there was a strange occurance in the room that houses the door leading up to the attic when he and his brothers were sleeping one night: the attic door flew open rather loudly.


on the other side of the staircase is a picture of a flapper-type woman with a name and date (1938?) written next to her.

the previous owner says they were there when they moved in back in the 60s. why wouldn't they have been drawn by sadie? the really odd thing about the first drawing is the area around her belly: it looks as though she was trying to demonstrate that she was pregnant. hopefully the baby was delivered and had a happy, healthy life...but one never knows when stories are only rumor.

i apologize to my faithful few who check in on me and worry when i don't post! we've had quite the week with two sick boys - one with pneumonia (rowan) and one with molars cutting through gums AND the same virus that rowan had (adam). we (rowan and i) even had a fun trip to the ER complete with a ride in the ambulance! perhaps more on that another day, but i'm ready to let that day go....

i can't stress enough how well we all are now...we're all a bit tired and maybe cranky due to a very difficult toddler who complains LOUDLY when he's ill (he takes just after his daddy momma!).

and we're not even into flu season! does anyone out there give their children homeopathic remedies to stave off illness, or at least shorten them (the illness, not the child)? i'll do anything (short of boiling deer urine, of course) to keep them healthy throughout the winter!