finally i can let the cat out of the bag and let you know that i've participated in something called NaBloPoMo - a cute way of saying National Blog Posting Month. the challenge was to blog at least once a day.

i didn't want to announce that i was going to participate way back on november 1, because that would just set me up to fail by the 3rd of the month if i admitted it out loud.

so this is the end of you hearing from my big mouth blog on a daily basis. it was a struggle some days to get a blog post in. kenny was extremely helpful, shuffling the boys into the living room and making up fun games to keep them distracted while i just needed 10 more minutes to blog...

december brings a lot of family advent and christmas activities. so the blog won't be as active. but i'll post from time to time to wish you a peaceful advent.

My brother Jonathan strongly recommended that I read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller a few weeks ago. I remember that my mom had a copy since she had seen Donald Miller speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College this past spring. So I borrowed her copy and read it in 3 days (mostly when the boys were sleeping!).

A few nuggets of wisdom that I really liked:
on community: "I was in San Fransisco recently staying at this bed and breakfast for people who are in the city to do ministry. It was a small house, but there were probably fifteen people living there at the time. The guy who ran the place, Bill, was always making meals or cleaning up after us, and I took note of his incredible patience and kindness.... One morning...Bill and I were having coffee...I asked him how he kept such a good attitude all of the time with so many people abusing his kindness. Bill set down his coffee and looked me in the eye. "Don," he said, "If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus."

on worship: "Here is what I've started thinking: All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship.... "Wonder" is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder."

I'd love to write a huge book review about it because I have a lot to say. Mostly, I'll encourage people to read this book who:
- have ever thought christianity was weird/hypocritical/worship of a mean God
- know christians and think they are weird/hypocritical/worship a mean God
- are christian and admit to not having all the answers, but are crazy in love with Jesus. who is God.

One minor thing I will say negatively about this book...the guy either needs an editor or if he has one already, he needs a new editor. There were more than a few misused words, or overused catch-phrases like "to be honest." BUT...it's totally a worthwhile read.

i can't tell you how many times i hear the comment, "boy, you have your hands full!" when i'm at the grocery store, the library, church, or any public place, really. they see me trying to balance three young boys and a grocery cart, or a stroller, or a husband (i'm kidding, babe).

i know what most of them mean when they make this comment. they imagine my days at home...trying to do whatever it is i do (clean, cook, or work an outside job, perhaps) all the while trying to make three boys who are three years of age and younger happy, fed, and sleeping well. yes, that sounds like a huge amount of work. and yes, it is a huge amount of work.

but i don't do this alone. i have a husband who is just as hands-on (if not more) than i am.

i regularly read a few blogs of women who have large families - 5, 6, or 7 kids and even more. one of my favorites of these blog is Owlhaven not only because i envy the blog name...but because Mary's posts on raising a large family are more than inspiring to me. her latest weekly question is this:

"When you think about enlarging your family, what are some of the questions and concerns that come to your mind? Was it or is it a difficult or an easy decision to declare yourself done with having children? If your family is already complete, feel free to share the questions you had as you faced the issue in the past. When you decided, did you decide once and for all, or did you find yourself revisiting the question over and over?"

it's an interesting question to me because it's a discussion that kenny and have a lot. and a question that a lot of people asked us after the birth of our last two boys ("are you done here? or are you having any more?"). and although i want to run and hide at the idea of having another baby any time soon...ultimately, is the decision REALLY, TRULY up to us?

coming into this marriage, we both wanted a large family - i actually told him i wanted 6 boys (we're halfway there!). but right now, the thought of having 3 more kids (let alone boys!) scares me. so although the discussion happens from time to time, right now, all we can do is discuss, and just see what God really wants for our family.

yes, our hands are FULL...our hands are full of blessings.

(ps. i can see my email inbox filling up with friends and family asking me, "are you pregnant?" so i'll quench that fire before it starts: NO!)

today is the first day of deer hunting season in pennsylvania. it's also the first year that i've actually known it was the first day of hunting season and that's because we live in the hunting mecca of western pa. there are woods all around us, and beyond those woods are the state gamelands. i can't tell you how much bright orange i've seen in the previous weeks leading up to today. not to mention the MANY guns fired in practice all around us.

when we had this house inspected a little under a year ago, all the inspectors could say was how much they would love this house to set up their hunting stance from the back attic window since it faces many acres of woods. too bad non-hunters moved into this house.

and it's not that we're against hunting. we just don't do it.

when we moved here in april, someone told me not to go outside on the first day of hunting season...which i thought was a bit extreme. it's not like we're living in the "little house in the big woods." there is civilization (and roads!) all around us as well.

kenny had one last day off of work today, so we spent it outside completing the outdoor christmas decorations, trimming some bushes, talking to neighbors. on our drive to the bank this afternoon, i noticed two women sitting on their front porch wearing bright orange hats. perhaps i'll get some orange hats on "clearance" in the sportsman section of walmart (which is really 99% hunting equipment and a few bikes) once deer season is closed. we'll all wear them if we get another spell of good, warm weather the monday after thanksgiving next year.

i guess we're slowly adapting to this life, where the first day of hunting season is just as big as thanksgiving. or christmas.

it's an odd phenomenon.

out here in the country, people put up their christmas decorations sometime in early november, alongside of their halloween decorations. the halloween decorations disappear sometime right before thanksgiving, and then the full-blown christmas decorations have taken up their temporary residence in people's yards.

and being the hardcore anglican that i've become, i think it's preposterous. it's not even advent yet. but when in rome....

today we started on our christmas decorations. one reason is that we have a HOUSEFULL of family coming for the most wonderful time of the year, and i want to create an atmosphere of cozy for them.

but the main reason we've started decorating 3 days after thanksgiving is because i have this need to teach my neighbors how to actually decorate for christmas. don't you wish everyone had the same taste that you did in decorating? let me rephrase that: do you wish the person who created those giant plastic snowglobes and gianter inflatable santas, reindeer, and worse yet...tigger (or fill-in-the-blank-disney-character) with a santa hat had perhaps invented them in guam or greenland instead of the US? i apologize if you are fond of these lawn atrocities ornaments. i just don't get them. but unfortunately, 90% of those who decorate for christmas, have purchased them and they've set up shop already on the front lawns of said 90% of americans.

so in protest of these plastic santas, we've hung our lights and wreaths and called it done. simple. elegant. very little electricity required.

...you pull out your old rusty push-mower to cut around the edges that your tractor can't reach and it feels wrong. it feels like you should be sitting on your lawnmower, not pushing it.

i have a secret crush on black friday.

there is something really exciting to me about waking up before the crack of dawn, dressing warmly and driving out into the shopping areas with other sale-seekers. maybe i should take up fishing or hunting for those reasons...they certainly are safer than braving some of the people who take advantage of the sales (rather than eating up the sales - a completely different approach to black friday shopping).

i woke up a little over and hour ago (6:00 a.m.) to the beckons of adam, our 6 month old, and i immediately thought of all those people out there who have already had an hour of shopping under their belt. i do understand that i have the better end of the deal, all warm and snuggly with my 6 month old who is smiley and happy to see me every morning. but i secretly wanted to be at the department store with all the other shoppers.

ironically, department store shopping is not my style. and the majority of the gifts that will be given by our family won't be coming from department stores. and i laugh (cringe, even) when the local news coverage of black friday morning is all about how full the parking lots are at the malls - oh, the praise and glory of america's consumerism.

to me, black friday has nothing to do with christmas. sadly, it does to the rest of the country. perhaps i'll post a separate blog about why christmas shouldn't be about sales and bargain-buying and knocking down the next person to get the very last cabbage patch doll on the shelf (am i dating myself there?).

fortunately for a lot of people, that's not what christmas is about. and black-friday is just another exciting day of shopping. someday, when the boys are sleeping through the night and waking much later than 6:00 a.m., i'll find myself out braving the crowds while my boy-brood sleeps soundly in their beds.

until then, i'll find my bargain-buying online.

today sawyer found a noah's ark puzzle at nana and pop pop's house. he took the puzzle piece of noah and found a yellow dune-buggy car in a bucket of toys. he decided noah needed to drive the car (i guess the ark isn't good enough for sawyer's purposes of getting noah through his errands).

sawyer: "mama! yellow tar!" (that's "car" in sawyer's voice. and for some reason he always points out yellow cars on the road. it's a secret obsession.)
me: "yes...and is noah driving the car?"
sawyer: mm...hmmm (one of his many ways of saying "yes")
me: where is noah going?"
sawyer: ummmm...to church!"
me: "oh! to church. anywhere else?"
sawyer: "ummm...to the grocery store!"
me: wow. he's got a busy day.
sawyer: mm...hhmmm. ummmm....to target!

so now you know we go to church, the grocery store, and to target frequently enough that a 2-year-old knows the routine.

even though we're not in charge of the big dinner this year (whew!) we had our own thanksgiving dinner preparations today.

we've been reading thanksgiving-themed books with the boys (richard scarry, bob and larry...) recently. i can remember being in kindergarten and having a "thanksgiving feast" of our own. we made indian and pilgrim costumes and ate things like apples, raisins, and marshmallows around a big table. i think i might even have a picture of it somewhere. in these little books we've been reading with the boys, there is always a picture of a pilgrim hat. and rowan always asks about it.

so i decided we'd spend today making our thanksgiving costumes. this morning, all 5 of us trekked over the michaels and picked out the perfect felted material along with some feathers. this evening, we spent a good part of an hour putting together pilgrim hats and native american "hats" for the boys.

i do realize that the feast that the pilgrims and the indians had way back in the 1600s wasn't technically the first thanksgiving (although it makes for a nice, romantic story). and that it wasn't until late in the 1800s that lincoln declared the last thursday of every november to be set aside as a day of thanksgiving. so perhaps it's not "historically correct"...but it's just a cute way of making the day more tangible to the boys.

each day is a day of thanks for rowan and sawyer. in their goodnight prayers just before lights out, they each spend about 5 minutes thanking God for MANY things (including the maps on the walls, the colors on the maps on the walls, each of their aunts and uncles, their mom and dad, their brothers, their toys, their books...). but they can't WAIT to wear their hats to dinner at nana and pop pop's tomorrow,

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i know exactly what my mom is doing today. she has started on the thanksgiving stuffing for dinner on thursday. she might also be cooking up the sweet potatoes so they can cool properly for the candied yam dish that we all love (except i think my brother andrew is still not a fan). we like our stuffing simple: bread, sage, poultry seasoning, butter, onion, and celery. we don't like nuts and dried fruits in our stuffing. or sausage. or cornbread. although we are known to boil the turkey giblets and add them to the stuffing that's not in the bird for added moisture and flavor.

when kenny and i were first dating, he wanted to make thanksgiving dinner for his parents (i think to impress me?) and couldn't find a good stuffing recipe. i told him that i had the perfect recipe, handed down to my mom from her mom (and probably from a great-grand-mother to her). i guess it was my way of impressing him: entrusting him with a family recipe.

we bought a few loaves of bread and opened the packages a day in advance (probably what mom did yesterday) so it would dry out a bit (too moist of a bread would make for too mushy a stuffing). then, on the tuesday before, you cube the bread and put all the cubes into a big white trash bag, along with the melted butter, celery, spices, and cut-up onion. kenny is still a bit uneasy about this step. he has wondered from the beginning why we use a garbage bag. if i were to ask my grammy, i'm sure she used the garbage bag for our family thanksgiving dinners at her house as well. and the answer is: because it's the only thing big enough to put in all that cubed bread and mix it up with the onion, celery, butter, and spices. it's a simple solution.

that year, i had dinner with my family while he prepared the meal for his parents and one of his brothers. i joined them for dessert later in the day. when i asked them how the stuffing turned out, the whole room fell silent. kenny answered with a question, "how much sage was i supposed to add to the garbage bag?" when i answered a few tablespoons at most, depending on the amount of bread, the silence was met with laughter.

"i guess i went a bit overboard with the sage." he admitted.

his dad said something about it tasting very earth-like (which is a nice way of saying that it tasted like dirt) and then kenny admitted to adding the entire jar of sage. which would be pretty potent. i was slightly embarrassed, but went out of my way to explain that it was kenny's mistake, and not the recipe itself that made it taste..."earth-like." yes, i chose to defend the family recipe over defending my boyfriend's culinary skills.

so there you have our traditional family stuffing recipe. i'll leave the measurements a secret for now. at least you know the secret ingredient: the garbage bag.

or is it the perfect amount of sage?

i've always heard about it, but it's never happened to me before. until today.

the boys have always been really well-behaved in the grocery store. i've never had any tantrum drama with rowan and sawyer demanding i buy a package of cookies or candy. thank goodness, because i'm just not sure i'd know what to do with them if they did that.

adam sits in his carseat in the cart and rowan and sawyer hold onto the cart while we walk through the store. it's a slow place, but it works because they're not running all over the place, and i don't spend my time tracking them down and telling them to stop touching everything (this holding onto the cart thing drives kenny crazy as it's too slow of a pace for him when he's with us). when i stop in an aisle to peruse, they let go of the cart and walk a few feet away, always looking at the merchandise on the shelves, but never going too far. (and usually never pulling things off the shelf.)

today was no exception. it was a typical trip to the grocery store. until we got into the car to come home.

rowan: "mommy, where's my spiderman?"
me: "what spiderman?"
rowan: "my spiderman in the cart."
me: (a bit dumbfounded) "i don't know, honey."
rowan: "is it in the bag?"
me: "how about we check when we get home?"
rowan: "oh." (his way of saying, "okay.")

i'd actually forgotten about this conversation until we were in the house and i noticed rowan rifling through the bags that i set on the floor and exclaims, "here it is!" as he pulls out a box of Kraft Spiderman Macaroni and Cheese. then, "oooh! another one!" and he pulls out another box.

i didn't pick these out...i didn't even see them in the grocery store. obviously they were at kid-level on the shelf as he (and probably sawyer as well which would explain there being two boxes) spotted them, grabbed one, and put it in the cart.

now i'm going to have to start paying closer attention. in the aisle and at the check-out! i might end up buying something for more than $.82 a box!

...that kenny and i were once on a cooking show!

the local PBS station runs many cooking shows in most of its saturday programming. at 10:00 a.m. , they run a local show hosted by our very own chris fennimore. his cooking is b-rated at best (he uses a lot of pre-packaged ingredients, and there's "nothing wrong with that" if you don't cook that way alllllll the time), but he's a personable and overall nice guy.

when they were running a promo for an upcoming cooking show they were going to do, i jumped on the request to send them a recipe. the topic was "hot and spicy" and kenny makes a great spicy chicken dish he calls, "rasta pasta" after a dish he had at a restaurant out west. it's your basic chicken and pasta dish with some added spicy flare. so, i submitted the recipe. a few weeks later, chris called us directly and asked us to be on the show.

the taping was a fun experience. we were on just after an authentic indian dish, and just before a segment for "jalepeno icecream." but we didn't get to be on with chris. we were on with his sidekick, nancy polinksi, who is married to a local news anchor.

maybe someday we'll make this dish when we have you over for a meal.
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for the lack of nothing better to do today (it's cold and muddy/wet outside, and the boys are getting bored of the inside of this house), we drove 40 minutes to the big mall to walk around and play on various toys. it was a cheap way to spend the afternoon - just a few quarters for the rides and a couple dollars for yummy coffee drinks for mom and dad.

we also knew that santa had already set up shop there, so we thought we could get a free photos of our boys crawling on his lap. although we secretly knew rowan and probably sawyer would want nothing to do with santa (not a big deal to us as santa will probably never be a big deal in our home).

santa was not a happy santa (as proven in the photo below). and why would he be at 2:30 in the afternoon on a slow saturday, a week before thanksgiving? the "elves" taking the pictures and moving the kids along weren't very efficient. santa grumbled a lot under his beard. when it was our turn to hop onto his lap, rowan ran the other way (who could blame him?), therefore sawyer did the same. adam is too young to know better, so he got the "honored" position of santa's knee. i snapped a few photos and we went merrily along our way.

but look at the photo. have you ever seen such a cranky santa? good thing we didn't see him when the mall was hopping with crying and crabby kids!

last year, in this same mall, we bumped into santa walking around (i think he was on his break). he asked if rowan and sawyer were twins (we get this question a lot). when i told him that they were 14 months apart and not twins, he monologued to me about how many twins and triplets he sees these days (in his role as santa). he THEN went on to explain that it was because more and more women were using birth control early on to prevent pregnancy so they could start their career. when they were ready to have a family later in life, they'd stop their birth control and their body needed to "play catch up" so it would release more than one egg at ovulation. thus, more multiple births. yeah, i was having one of those, "this is a surreal moment" realization when he was talking. who'd have thought santa would have such a strong opinion about birth control and ovulation?

the older two got their pictures taken on a much more friendly ride:
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when i was younger, i used to watch Bob Ross' painting show on PBS. after a few episodes, i realized that i would be incredibly sleepy when it was over. how can you not fall asleep, or at least become totally relaxed to the soothing voice of the "happy little tree" painter? if you don't believe me, try watching his show once.

yesterday, after playing in their room for 2 hours at "quiet time" (it's futile to call it naptime anymore), i brought them into the tv room to watch Bob Ross with me as i thought it might help calm them down at least. they liked the novelty of watching someone paint on an easel. but the excitement of it soon wore off and rowan was busy jumping and crawling on and off the bed. after about 15 minutes, i looked over at sawyer and he was staring, comatose, at the television...his head slowly falling...and falling. i pulled him close to me and he snuggled in and was asleep within seconds.

bob ross, the painter. he's still got it. :)

when we moved here, we found out that our property taxes aren't rolled up into our monthly mortgage payments. this can be tricky as we have to remember to set aside money each month so that we're not scrounging for a lump amount to be paid in november of each year.

this week, i wrote the check and looked for the address information on the payment stub so i could send it in. the directions said, "pay at my office at [this address] on each tuesday from 10:00-4:30." wow. i had to pay the taxes in person.

i wrote down the address, grabbed a map and headed out to drop off our tax check. to the tax collector.

(i don't know why, but that title just seems so archaic to me. couldn't it be more "modern" sounding these days...like, "taxes-r-us manager" or something? doesn't "tax collector" just scream "zacchaeus" to you???)

as i drove, the map and streets were looking familiar. we were heading to my favorite little produce stand down a back country road a few miles behind our house. but there were no businesses on this road. i looked at the address and found a mailbox with the same address...but it was a residence - a little brick house on several acres with its own barn. i was skeptical, but things out here just don't surprise me anymore. so i drove up the long driveway and sure enough, in the front window hung a small sign that read, "tax collector. office"

the tax collector of our township works from home. every day. and people are required to drop off their taxes to her house.

it just seems a little backwards to me. maybe i'll get used to it after a few years of paying our property taxes this way. in order to request a receipt, we had to include a self-addressed stamped envelope. do you think i should have asked her to drop it off to my house this friday between 10:00-4:30?

kenny and i spent many a lunch hour (when we worked together) at one of the lovely indian restaurants sprinkled throughout oakland. there were four within walking distance, so we had our pick. our favorite was the longest walk, but it's nice to walk back to the office after indulging in an indian buffet for lunch! we frequented the second-closest location the most only because we felt really bad for the owner, as we were usually only one of two parties for lunch.

indian food is our favorite. and we don't get it much anymore. i think the last time we ate it together was the day before adam was born. so we look for recipes that are easily made in our own kitchen.

one of my my favorite kenny stories is from his starving-artist days. he was a professional actor in pittsburgh and was eating 25-cent boxes of mac-and-cheese without adding the milk and butter (because they were too expensive) regularly. he thought that making his own indian food would give him the most bang for his buck, so he went into an indian grocer in oakland and asked the indian woman behind the counter for advice on what to make for dinner. she walked him over to the refrigerator section and showed him some frozen meal options. he said, "that's nice, but how can i make this stuff?" then she walked him over to the canned section and showed him the "ready-to-prepare" option of canned ingredients. he wasn't getting his point across, so he finally said, "what are you going to make tonight for dinner?" and then she gave him a cookbook and several real spices and ingredients and sent him on his way. since then, he (and now we) always have a huge collection of indian spices in our pantry. so recipes like these are easy since we need only buy the fresh ingredients.

so as promised (to a few of you who asked), here are two indian recipe faves at chez smith of western pennsylvania.

the first recipe i found while we looked through the "extras" on the Bend it Like Beckham DVD a few years ago. it's a great clip of the director, Gurinder Chadha, along with her mother (and aunt, i think?) demonstrating their family's recipe for Aloo Gobi. I copied down the recipe while we watched it and it's a keeper!

Aloo Gobi
1/4-1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large onion, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 large bunch of cfresh cilantro separated into stalks and leaves, roughly chopped
1 small can on green chiles
1 large head of cauliflower, cut evenly into eighths
3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 can whole, peeled tomatoes, grated (or chopped)
fresh ginger, peeled and grated (to taste...i used about 1-2 tsp).
fresh garlic, to taste
1 T. cumin seeds
2 tsp. turmeric
pinch of salt
2 tsp. garam masala

Heat oil in saucepan. Add onion and 1 T. cumin seeds. Cook until onions are transluscent. Add cilantro stalks, 2 tsp. turmeric, 2 tsp. salt. Add chiles and tomatoes and stir. Add ginger, garlic and mix thoroughly. Add cauliflower and potatoes with 2-3 T. water. Coat fully with sauce. Cover and simmer 20 minutes (until potatoes are cooked). Add 2 tsp. garam masala and stir. Sprinkle cilantro leaves on top. Cover and turn off heat. Let sit for several minutes, covered, before serving (we serve this over basmati).

Lentil Dahl/Dal
1 T. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 T. minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups chopped cauliflower florets
2 cups chopped tomato
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup dried lentils
2 T. fresh lime juice
1 T. minced fresh cilantro
3/4 tsp salt

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and next 5 ingredients; saute 2 minutes. Add cauliflower and tomato; saute 1 minute. Stir in water and lentils; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 35 minutes or until lentils are tender.
Stir in lime juice, cilantro, and salt into lentil mixture.
(Again, we serve this over basmati).

i'm blogging tonight with today's subject on my lap...so that means one-handed typing!

adam is adored by his big brothers. he is a sporadic sleeper (every night is different!) and he's just over 5 months old. he is sweet. sweet-smelling, too.

we feel so blessed.
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sawyer just got a big boy bed with his very own thomas the tank engine blanket and cherry red sheets to match. he loves nothing more than jumping off his new bed. again and again. and again.

he's one of those kids that makes you laugh hysterically. he dances like elaine from seinfeld, needs to be hosed down after every meal, and can giggle and laugh for hours on end. he's FULL of energy and won't quit until 3 seconds before he closes his eyes for the night.

he follows rowan around all day long. he LOVES his big brother and has almost caught up with him developmentally (save for the words that only momma and daddy can understand) and copies everything he does.

sawyer cole. you can watch him for hours and never tire.
ETA: second thumbnail is video for Jen's viewing pleasure...(with backup dance provided by master will blake)

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rowan loves to say his full name. and he's taught sawyer how to say his full name. he loves to play with sawyer, but he loves time alone with his parents, especially his daddy.

kenny took rowan to his first movie on saturday. he lasted 45 minutes and then wanted to leave. not because it was too dark or too loud, but because he was bored. they went to see Open Season, and although kenny said it was funny ehough, the humor was way over rowan's head.

when they returned home to a very bored sawyer (sawyer lives and breathes for rowan), adam and me, rowan was full of explanations:

"i went to a movie!"
"it was dark in there!"
"i wasn't scared."
"i was too young for that movie."

the last line we think he overheard when kenny was talking to me on the phone on their way home from the theatre. or he's just brilliant in his observations. :)

rowan's favorite dinner is "chicken chicken masa-lala" which is his way of saying, "chicken tikka masala," a dish that kenny makes for us when we're craving our favorite indian restaurants from the city. and rowan does inhale it. here is a picture of our dramatic-poser, rowan tucker eating chicken chicken masa-lala:

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this conversation always comes up when kenny and i have pizza. the difference in our pizza dinners isn't in the toppings, or in the manner of actually eating the pizza (although these are big differences between us!), it's what is eaten/drunk along side of the pizza that is the biggest difference.

forgive me, babe, for calling you a "typical guy" in this. But seriously, your choice of pizza cuisine screams the stereotypical "guy." kenny likes his pizza with a cold beer and a bag of potato chips. it's his ideal pizza meal.

to be fair, i will call my preference, "weird." i like my pizza with a nice green salad and a glass of wine. usually white (cold rather than a warm glass of red wine).

i can appreciate a slice of pizza with a beer and some chips every once in a while...but if given the choice, i'd take a glass of pinot grigio with my gourmet pizza and caesar salad any day over the greasy chips and beer.

last night, we made pizza for dinner. as i poured my glass of white while kenny sat at the table opening his beer, we heard rowan say, "i want some milk! no, i want some wine! and beer!" someday, in the not-so-distant-(18 years ahead)-future, he'll make the choice to eat his pizza with wine or beer. i'll bet he follows his dad.

(having just gone back to read this entry, i think i sound like such a wine-snob. really, i love my beer. i love dark beers and homemade brews, but i'm just sort of on a wine kick right now.)

as i type, the boys are in their room for "naptime." the only one who actually sleeps these days during naptime is adam (who is in a separate room than the older two). even though i leave their room after having tucked them nicely in their beds with their new favorite books, by the time i'm walking down the stairs, they're already out of their beds, playing.

i love this time of the day. not only because i get to sit and blog, or read, or whatever, but because they don't know that i can hear every word they're saying. and what they're saying is perfectly adorable.

their latest game is to hide under their sheets on their beds and talk to each other. this was yesterday's conversation:

rowan - "you okay under there, sawyer?"
sawyer - "yeah! you okay, ro-ro?"
rowan - "what? oh, yeah! i'm okay!"

today, they've added to their conversation. it started out the same way, but they are (at this very minute!) talking about a parade:

rowan - "you okay under there, sawyer?"
sawyer - "yeah! you okay, ro-ro?"
rowan - "what? oh, yeah! i'm okay! where are you going, sawyer?"
sawyer - "church!"
rowan - "oh! church!"
sawyer - "where going ro-ro?"
rowan - "to the PARADE!"
sawyer - "oh! a parade!"
rowan - "there's a monkey there!"

at this point, they have emerged from under their sheets and are walking around the room singing in high-pitched voices about the parade and the monkey. i know where this image comes from. rowan likes reading a "daddy book" about what makes daddies special. and one of the pages says, "daddies take you to a parade and gives you the best seat" and there is a picture of a little boy sitting on his father's shoulders watching a parade go by. in the parade is a monkey.

i love being privy to their brother-only playtime.

thanks to the little old lady in line in front of us at Aldi this morning, rowan and sawyer are now the proud owners of a 6 oz. box of Mike and Ikes. each. 6 oz. of pure sugar may not seem like a lot to you, but to put it in perspective, the box is about half the length of their arms!

i'm not going to be one of those moms who doesn't allow their kids to eat any sugar...filling their lunches with carob chip (blech!) cookies and serving them nothing but homemade, sugarless ketchup. they already have their fair share of sugar in some of the foods they are allowed to eat...but this is just a bit much.

i couldn't say no to her. she had just given me a sob story about how her grandchildren were in texas and california..."too far away to spoil regularly." and i was going to try to sneak them from her and into the grocery bag before the boys saw...but she just had to be the one to give it to them personally.

and the looks on the boys faces. they shook the boxes and jumped for joy and actually said, "thank you!" several times. i'm not sure they knew exactly what these boxes were (except noise makers!) because they were just as excited to put them into our grocery bag all by themselves.

and they've only asked for them once since coming home. i diverted their interest in it with their favorite yogurt for lunch.

i do sound like a carob-only momma, don't i?

I received this email from my friend, Julie, and feel as though all parents should read it. Since the majority of my blog-readers are parents of small children, I want to share this with you! If you have grown children, but are a grandparent, please pass this along to your children (in that "i'm-staying-out-of-your-parenting-but-i-love-you-and-your-kids kind of way. :) ):


Hi friends,
I’ve been researching info on a new car seat for Jon and have become much more informed on the whole car seat thing than ever before. A lot of the information is frightening and to be honest, something I never really read a lot about before. I had always tried to get a safe seat, but never thought about some of the issues mentioned below.
I wanted to share it with you too because I thought you might not have known it either. I hope this isn’t offensive to anyone, but I felt so moved after reviewing and reading that I want to tell as many people as possible.
To summarize, I started pursuing this issue because a lot of car seats only harness kids until 40 lbs. Jon, is already 35 ½ lbs, but is WAY too young to move to a booster/ seat belt car seat! So I started looking for a car seat that would harness him longer. While researching this, I found a significant amount of evidence that kids should be in a harness seat as long as possible, well past the point that they can technically move to a booster/seat belt car seat. This video shows an example of a kid in a booster/seat belt verses a kids in the 5 point harness. In addition to all that I read, this video convinced me on the importance of using a harness as long as possible.
There are a lot of companies who make harness seats that convert at 40lbs. to a booster/seatbelt seat. But, there are only a few companies who have seats that harness a child above 40 lbs. They are Cosco Apex 65, Fisher Price Safe Voyager (made by Britax), SafeGuard Go, Sunshine Kids Radian, and Britax Marathon and Britax Regent. I hear that Graco and Evenflo are trying to come up with an option like this, but do not have one out to date. All of these mentioned above, let you harness a child up until 55-80 lbs. For those of us with tall kids, these also go up to 50-70 inches.
You may not want to watch this next clip, as it made me cry, but it’s about a 3 year old who was killed in his booster/seat belt seat when the seat belt didn’t work right. His sister was also in a booster seat, that worked fine and she is okay.
Finally, I read a lot about the value of keeping kids rear facing as long as possible. It’s such a pain that I know we moved Jon the moment he turned one. But, again, there is some convicting evidence encouraging it longer. The next clip shows a visual.
After watching these, I decided I couldn’t watch anymore because I was getting paranoid and too nervous about the “what ifs”! We know our lives are in God’s hands and I have to rest in that…no car seat can alter God’s plan, so I need to trust and not worry….but, I will still choose a different car seat than I might have without this info. I know some of you aren’t at the point of getting a new seat, but if you are as uneducated about it all as me, I would encourage you to read some of what’s out there before you decide on your options for the next purchase. I found http://www.car-safety.org/ to be a helpful site.

Thankful our lives are in HIS hands!

Much love,
Julie