we love books. i come from a family that loves books. it's all i ever ask for when people ask what the boys need for christmas or birthdays...i point them to their amazon wishlist. i love going through bookstores browsing childrens books with amazing artwork and great writing. i think the artwork is important especially since our boys aren't reading themselves yet. i love glancing over at one of the boys sitting on the floor with a book spread across their lap. they'll usually stare at a picture for a few minutes, study each part of it, then bring the book over to me or kenny and ask a question about what they've seen in the picture: "mommy, why is that fish eating that other fish?"

we've hit the "why" stage with both boys. rowan recently (6 weeks ago) started asking a string of "why" questions. before we got to this stage with the boys - before they started talking - i wanted to make the effort to always answer their "why" questions. i know that kids go through the "whys" and i didn't want to just answer, "because i said so" because it was the easy answer to get them to stop asking. asking questions is how they'll learn. and i love that they want to learn (or that they're wired to learn already!).

but this is a lot harder than i thought it would be. sawyer, especially, loves asking "why?" he can ask upwards of 7-8 "whys" in one conversation alone. and each time it happens, it's based on different subjects, so i have no "canned responses" for him. i overheard a conversation between the boys the other day: sawyer was asking rowan a string of "whys" and by the second or third one, rowan asnwered, "sawyer, i just don't know. be quiet." i understood his frustration. because even i don't know the answer to some of his "why" questions!

i find that i'm ending a lot of these questions with the answer, "because that's how God created him/her/it/them." and that seems to be the answer that quenches their thirst for answers (albeit breifly). however, i want them to eventually ask "why?" when i tell them that God created something a particular way. because the answer to that will usually be, "i don't know." and i want them to know (and believe themselves) our belief in God as creator, Jesus as Saviour, and Holy Spirit as comforter. but we don't have all the answers. kenny and i want nothing more than our kids to know and receive the love of Christ. but we want them to come to that knowledge through Him alone, and not through keeping them from the world by building protective walls around them with bible verses plastered all over them. we'll work to the bone to teach them why we believe what we believe, and we'll eagerly pray for them everyday. but they'll only get to a deep faith by learning or wanting to learn it themselves.

so we trust that they'll get the right answers when they start asking the hard questions. when we can't be there to answer them. or when we just don't have the answers.

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!

Surprise!  I wanted your friends to see some of the life and times of Elizabeth (Laughlin) Smith.  Happy Birthday!
Mwa!
K.

i know that all of you are just DYING to know what we eat on a regular basis. i know that this particular piece of information is of UTMOST interest to all of you. so here you go:

monday: turkey lasagne and salad.
tuesday: crock pot pinto beans with ham.
wednesday: leftover lasagne and salad.
thursday: pork loin with baked sweet potato and pear.
friday: homemade veggie burgers (recipe below) on whole grain english muffins.
saturday: winter beef stew and salad.
sunday: baked chicken and ziti with winter vegetable.

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veggie burgers:
1 T. canloa oil
1/4 cup each minced onion, green bell pepper, carrot, and celery
2/3 cup drained cannellini beans
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs

in skillet, heat 1 tsp. of the oil. add onion, pepper, carrot, and celery; cook over medium heat, stirring occassionally, until vegetables are soft and moisture has evaporated, about 1 minute. Set aside to cool slightly.
using a fork, mash beans; stir in egg. add bread crumbs and vegetable mixture; mix until thoroughly combined.
shape mixture into 4 equal patties. refrigerate until chilled, at least 20 minutes.
in same skillet, heat 1 tsp. of remaining oil. add 2 patties; cook over medium heat, turning once, until browned on both sides and heated through. remove patties to plate; keep warm. repeat with remaining tsp. oil and 2 patties.
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for more menu planning ideas, go here!

also, rocks in my dryer is hosting a kitchen-themed Works For Me Wednesday this week, and i've actually had a lot of people asking me (about 4, total!) how i plan a month's worth of meals for us. it's not brain science or rocket surgery, but i'll share the method that works for me on wednesday.

yesterday God decided to act upon his sense of humor by sending us intermittent blue skies and cloudy, grey snow-filled ones. every five minutes. we would be looking at a blue sky with white puffy clouds and within seconds, it was dark with blowing snow so thick we couldn't see our trees. although we were stuck inside, the house smelled of guinness chocolate cake - my contribution to an Irish-themed dinner group at our friends' house.

let me tell you about this dinner group:

the food: mmm mmmmm! we've lost two members of our group since they abandoned us for sunnier skies followed a new job call to a different state, and one of those members was a professional chef. we had some mighty tasty appetizers, main courses, fondue dinners, and decadent desserts. we're all now trying to pull off professional level foods. yesterday's meal was pretty darn close.

the fellowship: our very first dinner together was when sawyer was one week old, and also the day of the Pittsburgh flood of 2004. kenny and I didn't make it, because of newborn sawyer, and because of the flood. but "come hell or high water" (forgive the pun), the other folks in our dinner group met and partied away into the night. we even received a call from them around 9:00 p.m. asking where we were. this is how die-hard this dinner group is. you just don't miss a dinner if at all possible. i think the only other time we missed was just after adam was born. and i think we've missed more times than anyone else.

now the group meets and there are 6 little boys running around our ankles, pulling food off our plates, demanding to be fed THISVERYINSTANT and making it generally impossible to have adult conversation. but we meet, month after month, watching these babies grow into boys...into friends...and marvel together at the blessings we've been given.

it's chaotic, but we just learn to yell over the din, or take another sip of wine and nod/smile and pretend to actually hear the other person talking.

and if i were to ever go to seminary, i'd fail since i can't come up with a third "F" category to make this post stick in your minds better. oh well.

yesterday, kenny had a church meetin'. one of the benefits of going to a church that's fairly small is they tie you down and force ask you to be on the vestry your second or third week of visiting. so, kenny's been on the vestry a full three weeks and he's already been at a diocesan meeting. yesterday's meeting was in pittsburgh (monroeville), and it was an all-day event. the boys and i drove down with him, dropped him off and spent the day with my parents..."Nana and Pop-Pop" to the boys.

my mom and i have birthdays two days apart, so we usually have a dinner or exchange gifts or cards the same day, sometime around the beginning of march. (when she was pregnant with me, i was due on her birthday, in fact...and if i was born on her birthday, my name was to be natalie. instead, i came two days later, born at st. elizabeth's hospital in massachusetts. my parents claim to this day i'm not named for the hospital in which i was born). thank goodness for a spring-ish birthday. because there are spring flowers like hyacinth, tulips, and gerber daisies all over the stores right this minute. and even though today the sky is grey, snow if falling (again!!!), and it's a mere 30 degrees...it feels like spring because i have a gorgeous vase of tulips on my kitchen table.

Pop-Pop offered to hang out with the older boys so my mom and i could do a bit of "city-shopping" with adam. all i wanted to do was go to Whole Foods and Trader Joes. i wanted to look for whole grain goodness and organic coffee and avocado.  when mom told me there was a brand new Borders Bookstore RIGHT NEXT TO Whole Foods, i couldn't contain my excitement. you see, apparently, there isn't a market for bookstores in the country. not even little independent bookstores. i guess country-folk don't like to read, or tractor stores have taken the shopping district monopoly because there is "no room" for a bookstore.

it wasn't even 9:30 a.m., and we were browsing through Borders...through the aisles of cookbooks, teaching aides, books on faith, magazines, cds.... i told kenny we're going to buy a Borders franchise and open one a few miles from our house. i'm sure the township would be delighted to see one right in the middle of a cow pasture.

Whole Foods was crazy-crowded, per usual, at 10:30 a.m. Trader Joes was even crazier. Probably because it just opened a few months ago. Tulips adorned the entryway at Trader Joes...Gerber daisies welcomed you upon walking into Whole Foods. We picked up some springtime, organic goodies and headed home to very happy boys who ransacked my parents' living room with little cars that HURT LIKE CRAZY when accidentally stepped on.

They ate their lunches and had their own naps/quiet time upstairs while mom and I drooled over delicious food being served up by Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network. my brother recently blogged about how much his kids love watching the Food Network. If we had cable, I would be addicted to this channel. And our bellies would be a bit bigger for all the foods I'd want to try...yesterday Ina Garten cooked up an incredible breakfast for some friends - bacon and bread pudding and herbed tomatoes.

Kenny returned to us around 3:30 and we had an early dinner with my folks. We left with more stuff than we came with only because I'm always looking through my mom's bookshelves for books that have been either recommended to me, or that I'd seen her reading. I always leave with a few books and the latest copy of Books and Culture or Sojourners.

But now I have a HUGE stack of books on my nightstand table, and my time for reading is limited these days.  So...help me out. If you've read any of the following books, give me a review, please!

• Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter (I am already half-way through this one...so I should probably finish it).
• Joanne Harris' Five Quarters of the Orange
• Beth Gutcheon's Leeway Cottage
• Michelle Blake's The Tentmaker

In addition to these books, I also snagged a copy of a Thomas Merton book of journaled thoughts, and a collection of writings for Advent reading.

Who needs a bookstore when you have a family who reads the same stuff you do? :)

Please join me at the Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom and meet many other bloggers, who, like me enjoy raising a family and blogging and meeting others who do! If you're visiting me from the party, please read the entry below - it's an introduction of sorts to my little family (of males, except for me and the two cats).

rowan (3 1/2 yrs.)is ready for school. he tells me a lot how he wants to ride a schoolbus, but that he wants mommy to be his teacher. that kids wants it all, doesn't he? he loves his puzzle of the united states and when a state is missing, he knows exactly which one it is. either he can read, or he's memorized the states and their location very quickly. and let me tell you, it's humbling being told you're wrong by a three-year-old when you tell him that a particular puzzle piece is kansas and not tennessee. i love how he calls idaho, "o-da-hi," but his pronunciation of "texas" is a little to close to "testicles" for my liking.

his love of knowledge is infectious to sawyer (2 1/2 years). sawyer is addicted to a dinosaur book, but would rather sit and draw pictures on his drawing toy for 30 minutes at a time. the kid can draw. i mean, he wows people OTHER than his parents on a daily basis. he's two! and can draw real faces. he's got his share of abstract faces (edvard munch would be so proud!), but he can draw a bunny with ears and a snowman to save his life.

adam (9 mos.)is busy learning all about the world of food. tonight's dinner of lentil and carrot soup was a success. i did not make it. :( but he loved my mashed potatoes! adam loves (LOVES!) to sit wherever his brothers are playing and watch them and play along. he talks to them through shrieks that send rowan and sawyer into hysterics. they shriek back at him and semetimes he's afraid, but most of the time he's amused, and continues the shrieking "conversation."

rowan and sawyer have come up with nicknames for themselves. sawyer LOVES it when you call him "soy-sauce" - a name affectionately given to him by his cousin, sadie. sawyer has dubbed rowan, "ro-ro-bean" since it's a food-nickname as well (and kenny's been calling rowan "ro-ro-bee" since rowan was a baby). they recently acquired the nick-names, "owl" (sawyer) and "chinchilla" (rowan). they learned all about the big eyes of a chinchilla from an episode of Diego and rowan later proclaimed it his favorite animal. sawyer has always been akin to owls, and he was excited to hear that owls have big eyes, just like chinchillas. last night, kenny set up a little art class for the boys and now, we have the most adorable art to hang in their room: a chinchilla and an owl.

this past sunday, we made soft pretzels with the boys (who love to help out with anything in the kitchen) since as we all know pretzel are a 1500 year old lenten tradition. :) who knows how factual that is, but it was actually amusing watching the boys knead, twirl the dough, and gobble them down once cooked. if you're interested, this is a really good recipe - it made 12 good sized soft pretzels (that need to be reheated the next day - but that's what toaster ovens are for, right?).


i think there is a break in the weather on the horizon. they're calling for thunderstorms tonight. i've never been so happy to hear the weather forecasters call for rain (instead of snow!).  there is still a good bit of snow up here. this pictures was taken yesterday...it's our back yard (even though it looks like the north pole).

this past weekend, kenny and i enjoyed a DATE! (i know you other parents of young children can't remember what those are. believe me, i had to refer to Webster's for a reminder of what a "date" was once myself).

fortunately for our babysitter, adam was asleep before we left (he enjoys a bedtime of 7:00 p.m.), so it was a relatively easy evening.

in these neck of the woods, it's hard to find a restaurant that isn't a 45-60 minute drive that's worth the cost of a babysitter. there are plenty of chain-restaurants and loads of bar-restaurants, but we hadn't found anything worth returning to yet. until last friday night. someone recently recommended a restaurant we had never heard of, so we jumped on the internet to find it. as is the case for most of the local restaurants that aren't a franchise, it didn't have a web site. it took a while to actually find it, but once we found a phone number for it, and an address, we were on our way.

the black forest inn (or was it lounge?) and beer haus was a welcome treat. it looked like a highway bar from the outside, but once inside, it was cozy and felt like you were in a mountain chalet, or ski resort restaurant. the menu was german. it was in english, but it was german food. the beer menu was impressive as well. i settled for a becks dark, and kenny had a hof-something-or-other-stauten. after an extensive study of the menu, i decided on a roast beef with onion gravy meal, while kenny, the more adventurous of us, ordered rabbit (or according to the menu, "hasenpfeffer"). we ordered side dishes that we'd share (potato pancakes and warm german potato salad) and settled into our beers while we contemplated outloud where the rabbit came from. was it local? was it from a rabbit farm? was it wild rabbit? we also wondered how german rabbit actually was. i know that "rarebit" refers to something from whales, but germany? (jonathan???)

the food came, and my beef was delicious. kenny dove right into his rabbit, which i have to admit, didn't look all that appetizing. or filling.  we ordered another beer to share (this time, our old summer favorite: yuengling lager) and half-way through that one, i was ready to give the rabbit a go.

it was amazing. kenny told me that it tasted like chicken....but it was the best tasting chicken i've had in a long time. it was tender...savory...just plain delicious. if it weren't for all the picking around the bone, i'd have ordered it myself.

so now we have a place to go to. the owner knows us now (we had a long conversation over coffee and a shared dessert of black forest cake), and it's only a 25 minute drive away.

and if you still haven't figured out the reference to laverne and shirley, go to the hasenpfeffer link above.

if you've recently had any trouble leaving a comment on my blog (especially since the redesign), please drop me an email: liz(at)smithical(dot)com 

i've recently had 4 people tell me they've left comments only to find them not being published.

thanks!