Introducing Oldest

Oldest is, well, my Oldest. My firstborn child. The first time in all things motherhood for me comes from her arrival. I know exactly when she was conceived and when I first suspected I was pregnant. From the time she came out of me, it has been a pleasure knowing her, watching her grow and continually being amazed at the things she learns and the stuff she says.

When Andrew and I talked about baby names, we didn't know if she was a girl or a boy. We wanted an old-fashioned name, nothing with crazy spelling (though there are some clever ones out there!) and something that hasn't been around for awhile, but people have heard of it before. For some reason, we couldn't come up with a boy name, but we had several girl names we liked. Then when she came out, we knew for sure what her name would be. Meet...

... Evelyn.

Our headstrong 7 1/2 year old girl.

Our whole world changed with her and we love every moment of it.

Evelyn is the ring-leader, usually, and does not like to be kept in the dark about things.

She'll investigate everything and our nick name for her is "the investigator". When we try to steal a moment alone in our room without the kids, within minutes, here comes the investigator checking up on us!

She is the one that sneaks candy out of the pantry, then forgets to hide the evidence. She is the one that rallies her sisters into doing something they shouldn't and when questioning her sisters, they almost always point at Evelyn and say it was her idea!

When she was a baby, she quickly figured out how to climb out of the crib so she wouldn't miss out on what mama and daddy were doing. Still to this day, we have to shoo her to bed several times a night and is often found awake long after she should have been asleep.

She lost her 7th tooth on the first day of this year. Lucky number seven.

My sweet Evelyn, how we love her so.

-

It's coming!!

Eeek! I can't find my 2nd photo album to continue the "Finding Myself" post!! I am hunting it down, it's gotta be somewhere around here! I just hope it isn't in the basement *gulp!* After we made room for my Mom's boxes down there, we sort of shoved our stuff to the other side, and haven't gotten around to reorganizing down there. Might be time to do that now... sigh. The kids swear up and down that they don't know where it is, and I believe them. They like to look through our photos, but don't usually put them back where they got them, so it might have gotten misplaced in one of our 'hurry-people-are-coming-over-let's-clean-up-quick!' cleaning sprees!

As soon as I find the album, and I cannot rest until I do, I'll continue where I left off. Thank you for all your positive comments. I enjoyed reading them and look forward to reading what you'll say on the next installment.

On a funny side note: I bought the Husband a bag of chocolate-covered raisins. It's sitting on the pantry shelf in plain view of the kids. Oldest asked me if she could have some, and I told her to ask her dad, they're his. So she bounds out of the room to find daddy. Hubby came out laughing, he said she asked him if she could have his "chocolate grapes"!!! He had to think about that one a bit before he realized what she meant! Don't you just love kids and how their minds work?? :o)

It's Definitely Fall!

I love the cooler weather we are having now. There have been a few days where we came close to starting a fire in the wood stove, but we held out. On nights where the temperatures dip into the low 40s, we have a little space heater we use in the hall, aimed towards the bedroom doorways and it wards off the night-time chill. Pretty soon, the wood stove will be fired up, I'm sure, but the longer we can put it off, the longer our wood will last.

It's been an extra busy week here. I took the remaining green tomatoes off the vine and turned it into green tomato salsa. Oh my! How tasty that was! I made a small batch first, to see if we would like it, and it was so good, that I made a bigger batch the next time, after buying what I needed to make more. I ended up canning 12 pints of green tomato salsa to enjoy during these cold winter months.

My Aunt and Uncle also brought us 150 pounds of russet potatoes! I took about 25 pounds and turned them into potato skins, loaded with bacon and cheese and froze them for later snacks/meals. All the potato that was scooped out has been turned into potato soup and mashed potatoes. Yum! We are a family of potato lovers and we definitely eat our fair share of potatoes around here.

Oldest was playing around with the bungee cords that we are using to keep the chairs with the table, to prevent Baby from climbing them (read previous post for more info). We tell the kids all the time not to play with them, they are like big rubber bands and they'll snap back and might poke your eye out or hurt you. Sure enough, Oldest hooked one end to the door knob, the other end to the sliding door handle and it popped off and clipped her in the eye.

*The day after*

It gave her a deep little cut in her eyebrow and left a shiner the next day. I am SO relieved that it missed her eye. She had a very swollen eye for a day, and now she is left with what looks like a bad make-up job on her eyelid. I hope she has learned her lesson (a painful one at that!) and will not play with the bungee cords anymore.

There will be one more preserving of food for me before I can finally put away all my tools for the year-- pumpkin! I have no pumpkin left from last year and am looking forward to making pumpkin pies, breads, cookies, and more! Hope to get a pumpkin this week and believe it or not, I'm actually tempted to get another bushel of apples. Wait and see how busy it gets this week, before I decide to get more apples. I feel like I turned all the apples into sauce before we really got to eat any out of hand, so I am craving the crunch-crunch of apples and the juice dripping down my chin. Plus, I've never made caramel apples for the kids before, and I think the kids would love to try them!

Round 2!

Our yard sale was pretty successful! We made over $200 and sold quite a bit of stuff. We decided we are going for round 2 this weekend and gathering more stuff to sell. There were items we kept back because we didn't want to part with them, or we thought they wouldn't sell at higher prices, but after seeing some of our other "test" items sell, we decided to go ahead and put them out with higher prices and to our surprise, they sold at the prices we asked for. So, that was encouraging, and we'll be bringing out more stuff.

The girls picked and ate a few pears, then decided they were ripe enough and picked all the pears they could reach. sigh. They could have used another week or two on the tree. Now I have to hurry up and do something with them before they spoil. I hadn't planned on making more pear butter as I still have some left from last year, so I think I'll try my hand at canning pear halves. There should be enough here for at least a dozen pints.

The husband had the day off today and Oldest begged to go to the beach. We planned to do things around the house:: clean up from a weekend of neglect from being busy with the yard sale, gather more things to sell, take the trash to the landfill, stop at the store, etc etc etc... But it was hot and we really could use a day of relaxing at the beach, so off we went!

It was a good day for the beach, finally hot enough and the water felt just right. We had a picnic lunch and stayed for a few hours and it was just enough to recharge our batteries just a little bit.

Now it's back to the grindstone and we really need to get things ready for The Yard Sale: Round 2!

Fireworks and Rhubarb!

Hope you all had a good weekend! It was nice for us-- we had my mom, aunt and uncle here for Baby's birthday/holiday weekend. I always enjoy having them here and I love it when my husband says he loves having them here, too. I can tell he is genuine about his feelings and I feel really lucky when I can say that we both love each others' families.

My aunt's rhubarb patch is doing so well this year, that she can't keep up, so my uncle suggested bringing the surplus to me. I didn't expect the bounty that they gave me!

That was a lot of rhubarb! I chopped and froze 24 cups-- I didn't want to do more because I can't sacrifice more freezer space. I decided to make rhubarb juice with the rest. I'd heard of it and always wanted to try it, but never had enough or, actually, I never wanted to give up the pies for the juice. I made simple rhubarb juice, sweetened with sugar and oh my! It's like drinking rhubarb pie! So, so good! I got 6 quarts of juice out of the remaining rhubarb!

The next small town over was hosting the fireworks display, and I wanted to take the kids down to watch. So after dinner, we piled into the van and snagged a good spot to watch. Nothing like the Washington Monument's fireworks, but pretty good for a small town and just right for small children. I expected Baby to cry, but he didn't. He held on to me and watched.

We had a good time and maybe when the kids are a little older, we'll go earlier to enjoy the festivities and music they had earlier, before the fireworks. Pack a picnic dinner and mingle with the townfolk.

Oldest lost a sixth tooth tonight. She'd been worrying over it for a few days now, afraid it might come out when she slept and swallow it. She never let me get close enough to pull it out and I admit, it frustrates me a little when she wants me to do something about it, but won't let me do anything. Reminds me of when I got a big splinter in my foot and my dad tried to get it out and I kept whimpering and pulling my foot away just as he got close with the tweezers. Karma, eh? Anyway, she finally let me pull it out and that tooth just about jumped into my hand! She's happy now and anxious for the tooth fairy to come in the night.

Finally, a Normal Day!

Whew! 2009 has been our busiest year yet. When my mom's home caught fire in January, the insurance people hired a fire damage cleaning company that will come in the home, pack everything, clean anything smoke damaged, store your items and clean the home before the contractors come in and rebuild. Mom has a lot of stuff, I think I mentioned she is a pack rat, so there were a lot of boxes packed and stored in their warehouse.

Mom's home is almost completed, and they were about to put all of Mom's things back into the home. Ack! No! No, no, no, we want to sell the home and keep it empty! So Husband has been making calls to find storage space and moving vehicles. We explored several options-- buying an old trailer and using it for storage: kind of pricey but it's a permanent solution; buying and building storage sheds/buildings: pricey, plus we just don't have the time to build them and didn't know where we would put the sheds; renting storage space: none of the local storage places have available space and unlike commercial storage places in the city, these local places don't have a whole lot of choices, plus that's a lot of monthly payments to store those things long-term.

Finally, the Husband and I talked and talked and we agreed to put her stuff in our garage and basement. We have a big enough house that we don't really use the basement for much-- mostly it's a catch-all for things and we already decided that we were going to eliminate the play area for the kids. So we cleaned up a corner and moved all the toys and stuff to the other side of the basement. We cleaned out the garage and moved out the truck and van. Then we made the call and they delivered Mom's stuff for a fee (wayyyy cheaper than renting a truck and they also unloaded it, so we saved our backs!). There were 5 truckloads of my Mom's things. Holy cow, what a lot of stuff.

One truck was mostly furniture. Those went directly into the apartment. 3 trucks were filled with boxes, and those all went into the basement and the garage. Totally filled up the place. A fifth truck was maybe half-full, a mixture of boxes and some odds and ends that didn't fit in the furniture truck. It was nice that we didn't have to rent a truck and do it ourselves, which we were prepared to do, but dreading. We would have also needed to drop the kids off at the grandparent's house and that would have added onto the driving time as well. All in all, it worked out. With Mom's stuff here, I can go through her boxes and get a head start on sorting it for her, and selling some of the extras at yard sales or in my etsy shop.

Today, the Husband is off and it's so nice not to have to go anywhere or do anything except just regular stuff-- I'm working on the cherries we picked and he's doing yard work. The kids are playing outside, begging to use the slip and slide. They're pouting because we said no, the ground is still soggy from all the rain we've had, but we have something up our sleeves for tomorrow. If it's hot tomorrow, and it is supposed to be, we are going to the state park where you can swim in a mountain-fed lake! I'll pack a picnic and everything!

And because I don't like posting without pictures, here's a couple of pics taken recently...

Here chicky, chicky, chicky! Come and hop in my frying pan!

Oldest found a four-leaf clover!! What good luck!

Life in Sentences.

I let the housecleaning slide a little bit, we've been way too busy and I have to pick what's more important:: cranky me cleaning a house or having a little fun with the kids with a crumb-y floor? I chose the crumb-y floor, but then I also chose the cluttered counter tops, dirty dishes in the sink, messy bedrooms and dirty laundry in the hallway.

Why is it when my house is messy, that's when I have strangers come by-- the phone company guy to replace the modem on our computer and carpet people come and install new carpeting in the apartment. I was embarrassed about the mess, and apologized, then kicked a toy under the hutch and picked up a few torn scraps of paper off the floor. I know there's nothing I can do while the guy is standing in the office, waiting for the computer screen to warm-up and all he can see is the mess in the house. sigh... Let that be a lesson to me:: it's OK to let the housework slide, but not too much!

Here's a quick update::

The garden is growing,
the kids are thriving,
the chickens are establishing their pecking order,
the dog is chewing up barbie dolls,
the husband is still working his part-time job,
the baby is soon a year old,
Archie the cat has a tick on his eyelid,
the cars need inspection,
the van needs new tires,
the garage needs a new garage door opener,
Lucy the cat catches and kills voles,
then leaves them near the food bowls,
the pears on the pear tree are the size of walnuts,
the chicken coop still needs finishing touches,
BC the cat still doesn't like the dog,
the mulberries are ripe and ready for picking,
my canning jars are washed and ready,
I'm itchy with bug bites,
we need to have a major yard sale,
I just picked up a sweet sewing basket at someone else's yard sale,
I have more pee-pee sheets to wash,
Baby's rash is better,
Youngest is getting a heat rash,
Oldest just had a growth spurt,
Middle wants a hair cut,
Husband is smelling mighty fine,
my heart goes pitty-pat when I see him,
I finally loaded the photo program,
the printer and the computer are not speaking to each other,
I have 37 missed calls on my videophone,
Husband found 'Papillon' at the used dvd store,
Baby is walking,
no talking yet,
something is munching on my peas,
I forgot the blanket drying on the line outside,
it's after midnight and I am ready for bed,
Good Night.

Seven!

Oldest is 7 today!

My little firstborn is now a big girl!


May you celebrate many more birthdays, lovey!

Future Surgeon?

As any busy mother knows, or rather, as any busy frugal mother knows, the sewing repair pile, well, piles up. At any given time, I have several pairs of ripped pants, torn dolly clothes, frayed hems and holey socks to fix. Once in a while, I'll also have a teddy bear or a dolly to fix, too.

*

One of the girls' cloth-bodied doll had a ripped gut. I put it in the repair pile, but as usually happens, it doesn't start high on my priority list every day, so I admit, it sat in the pile longer than usual.

*

"Mom, when are you going to sew my dolly?" I'd hear at various times and my standard reply was, "Soon." Apparently, soon wasn't soon enough and the question changed to: "Mom, can you teach me to sew it myself?" Well, of course I can!

After I started it and showed Oldest how to sew it up, she took over with gusto!

Just look at the concentration on her face!

And that tongue! I just love when the tongue comes out when they don't realize it. I do it, too.


Not too shabby, eh? Pretty good work for a first time repair job. The operation was a success, but definete scarring.


I'm so proud of Oldest and I know she is proud of herself, too. Good job honey!

Testing Her Limits

Oldest is my, well, oldest. She is 6 going on 16. No, really. Her behavior lately has been putting my patience to the test and I have moments where I just might explode with frustration.

How can a girl with such lovely blue eyes and the sweetest smile make me want to pull my hair out? She is kind and helpful one moment, then defiant and mean the next.

I hope it is just a phase, and she is testing her boundaries and limits, poking and prodding to see how much I can take before I snap. Like a dog testing the invisible fencing, crossing the line and getting shocked back onto the right side of the line.

Maybe she is checking to see if I am being consistent in my rules and what I allow them to get away with.

With 4 children, I sometimes have to pick my battles and I let some stuff slide, choosing to deal with the more serious offenses, which, really, aren't that many. But now and then, it seems like they feed off each other and they all go crazy at the same time and Oldest is the ring leader. Middle and Youngest see her do something, and they follow.

sigh.. Monkey see, monkey do.

My biggest issue these past few days are the older two girls telling me "No" when I tell them to go and do something. And they say it in such an irritating tone! The body language is strong, too.

"Pick that cup up and put it in the kitchen, please." No.

"Give me the bag and I'll put it away." No.

"It's almost bedtime, go and put your jammies on." No.

Or, I ask them to do something and they completely ignore me! Hello! I actually start wondering if I need to get their ears checked and see if any of them have a hearing loss (they could, since it's hereditary for me).

Thank goodness Spring is just around the corner and we will all soon be busy in the garden, tilling, planting, weeding. I'm planning to keep the kids busy all day long and by bedtime, they'll be too pooped to say "No."

We also have a surprise in the works... I can't tell you now, but they'll be here in a week! Yay!

::30 Days:: Day 15

This is the tooth that was loose.

This is the tooth that was loose that came out.

This is the Tooth Fairy that is going after the tooth that was loose that came out.

This is the Tooth Fairy that got the tooth that was going in to get the tooth that was loose that came out.