For Days When One Status Update Just Isn't Enough.

1. Coke Zero soooo does NOT taste like real Coke.

2. Metal Chipotle lids make EXCELLENT paint holders for kid crafts....or glue holders.

3. Boys are different from girls. It's not nurture. It's nature. They're just different. So far, in my house, a golf club has always been a golf club. A straw is a straw. And my son? Crawling out of sheer willpower.

4. Everyone thinks their children are brilliant. Mine actually are.

5. I have an issue with pride.

6. I put my son on the floor on his back. That gives me about a 10 second head start on whatever I need to do before he's gotten into something he shouldn't. (See #3)

7. Eating a Chipotle bowl with a fork is eternally frustrating. One really needs an over sized spoon to effectively shovel.

8. I've come to realize that denying that Mary was kept pure from original sin and made full of grace is to deny that Christ was fully human. In order to hold and grow Christ in her womb, she would have HAD to be fully pure because sin cannot be in contact with God.

9. My favorite quote these days goes something like this: When a woman looks at you and says "What?" it's not that she didn't hear you, it's that she's giving you a chance to change what you said.

10. See #5

Deep Thoughts...by me

Usually Bachmanfest begins with wagers of arrival times and a Euchre tournament…the first of several cut-throat Feats of Strength. This year, it began with multi-generational crafts, story time, some cooking, had a steady sprinkling of arriving family and culminated with the entire family (less the ones who are arriving this weekend) sitting around in a circle laughing at pictures of baaaad haircuts of the past, sharing Grandpa stories and reminiscing about Bachman weddings of the past while looking forward to the next wedding this summer. What a perfect day.


Most every Hollywood telling of the holidays includes a quirky (sometimes creepy) uncle, an overbearing mother (mother-in-law), an obnoxious kid and the one person that nobody wants to be around but you have to invite them because they’re family, after all. There’s always the seemingly normal couple (perhaps newlyweds or a dating couple meeting the family for the first time) who assure each other that they’ll get in and out as quickly as possible because we all know that family gatherings are torture and at best can only be tolerated….and for as short of time as possible. Sometimes they’re headed to a “better” gathering afterwards and sometimes they’re simply planning a quick, revolving door visit and then are headed back to their own….far superior…lives.


And my story could be that way too. (because of course, we are the cool ones, right? I don’t know about that…)


I could talk about passive aggression. I could talk about messing up my kids’ routines to satisfy other people. I could talk about the hassle of food issues and how unfair it is to my kid. I could talk about unfair, ever changing game rules. I could talk about driving from one end of the city to the other and back again in a car that may or may not make it to Sunday. I could talk about people we wish we were comfortable around but just aren’t….yet. I could talk about wishing we were getting together at a time/place/situation that wasn’t going to increase the likelihood that MY kid was going to be the obnoxious one screaming and throwing things.


I could.


But why?


Why wouldn’t I talk about special cookies made so that my Sweet Girl wouldn’t be denied? Why wouldn’t I talk about special aunts and uncles and cousins who make my little girls feel like the most important people in the room? Why wouldn’t I talk about the joy of spending hours preparing a bird so that someone else doesn’t have to (and the satisfaction of having it turn out sooo good! I know it’s not proper to toot my own horn, but seriously, it was good!)? Why wouldn’t I talk about dropping everything to make memories with people we only get to see once a year….or once every several years? Why wouldn’t I talk about teaching my children to look outside themselves and appreciate the gift of family…and what that means?


I choose to tell you about my amazing husband….who is here. Who is right now, holding a fussy baby so I can sit and get my thoughts down. I choose to tell you about my girls who have taken control of the (now clean, I promise) tub in which we transported the turkey yesterday. They took turns “cooking” each other and now, it sounds as though it has become a rowboat. Oh wait, now I hear, “Can someone come cook me? Um, Dad? Can you come cook me? Ok, then I’ll just cook myself!” I choose to look around the room and see seven couples (aka everyone in the room who has ever been married) who have been faithfully married for, all added together, over a hundred years. I choose to smile at five little girls dancing around the room with reckless abandon while Gramma plays “The Spinning Song” (for probably the fifty-third time)


In a few hours, we’re going to don our Sunday, er, Thursday best and head out for dinner (which is confusing the hell out of my little ones…..they had just mastered the idea that dinner was the evening meal). After that, we’ll slosh over to my parents’ house to wallow in our gluttony and spend more time together. Hopefully there won’t be too much laughing right out the gate or someone will bust a seam! Perhaps after a while, the Feats of Strength will begin and Aunt Petunia (names have been changed to protect the innocent) will break out the wine just to get through it. At some point the kids will cry and will be pushed so far past their breaking point they’ll be stooopid tired. There will probably be a scuffle over who has to leave the family funfest to deal with said crying child and it will take us weeks to get back on track (oh and then it will be Christmas), but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.


And then we’ll start all over again tomorrow.


At the end of it all, I have more loving family than I know what to do with. I have parents and parents-in-law who love me and my children. They support my decisions (sometimes with bitten lips, I’m sure, but nonetheless) and love my children even more than I do sometimes it seems.


While, because of my faith and my goal of getting my family to Heaven, I would say that Easter and Christmas are the most important holidays of the year, Thanksgiving is probably the one I most enjoy. What could be better than gathering with the people you love and enjoy and just loving and enjoying them?


We’ve had one hell of a year…and it’s not over yet. But it’s in times of trial that your strength is exposed. In all that we’ve gone through this fall, one thing has stuck with me. Ben’s Uncle Tim wrote this to me a few weeks ago:


“This morning Greg and I were talking about abandonment to God will as I drove him to school. How we have to abandon everything, everything. And some people have difficulty accepting this death to one’s own view, desires, objects, etc. They are afraid of losing something, as if God does not have the capacity or desire to bring us joy. Yet, God rarely takes everything, in reality we are most often left with most everything and God carefully prunes where necessary, to help us examine ourselves, to rid us of that which would destroy us, to strengthen us, to lighten our load for some new adventure.”


When I am able to come under the mission (submission) of the Will of God…when I am able to put others ahead of me….when I am able to let go of the “perfect”, “superior”, “better”, “more thought out” whatever plan of how things should go, that’s when I’m able to see the richness of my blessings in their entirety.


Happy Thanksgiving.

When What I Really Want is a Pity Party.....

I look back at what I wrote yesterday....I told you it was more for me than for you :)

When 64 Colors Aren't Enough

So in my former life, I was a teacher....I spent the majority of my career teaching Language Arts (reading, writing...grammar when I could sneak it in) to 7th and 8th graders. Actually, not a lot has changed....I'm still teaching a lot of L.A. and the maturity of 2 and 4 year olds *is* a lot like that of 12-15 year olds :)

Anyway, while I was teaching the writing process, I was known for some....out of the box ways to combat writer's block as well as editing and proofreading. One of my favorites was to tell 15 year old boys to lay on the floor and write in crayon. Yep...crayon...worked every time. Well, every time they were willing to try it. There is something paralizing about holding a pencil and staring at a blank page. But while holding a crayon, they're so focused on how rediculous writing with a crayon is that they forget they were stuck and the ideas FLOW!!

Apparently it's the same with little kids. Not so much from a writer's block perspective, but from a it's-really-the-same-activity-but-because-we've-changed-one-thing-Mommy-buys-herself-more-time-to-cook-dinner perspective. My four year old has been coloring and making cards in the afternoon all week. She just made her umteenth card for Daddy, but I wasn't quite finished getting dinner in the oven and I didn't want to turn on the TV for them......so....

Black construction paper and yellow chalk! A whole new world of coloring discovery.

It's the little things.

To steal a line from one of my favorite blogs: "It's great to be a homeschooler." :)

Oh, and sorry there are no pictures of our latest art work. My camera is MIA and my Droid has gremlins...grrr...but that's a different blog post.

When You.....

This is more a reminder for me than advice for any of you amazing mommies out there. Heard a song tonight while I was sewing wet bags. My girls are up stairs asleep....and my little man is in the other room with his daddy....most likely tummy down in the crook of Daddy's arm as Daddy paces back and forth trying desperately to keep Lil Dude quiet so he can hear the baseball game.

So I was sitting at the kitchen table sewing wet bags (furiously...and continually kicking the dogs out from under the table....we've already had one bag with a doggie assist...I don't need any more!) listening to Pandora. A song I'd never heard before came on....which almost always means a check in the "thumbs down" box....I'm not much for branching out. Then the lyrics caught me.

(if I was fancy and tech savvy, I'd post the song here for you to listen to as you read....if you know how to do that, please let me know....otherwise, you'll just have to use your imagination. Ya know, like if you're in hypnotherapy and the shrink tells you to imagine yourself on a beach or something like that)


"Sacred"
by Caedmon's Call

This house is a good mess
It's the proof of life
No way would I trade jobs
But it don't pay overtime

I'll get to the laundry
I don't know when
I'm saying a prayer tonight
'Cause tomorrow it starts again

Could it be that everything is sacred?
And all this time
Everything I've dreamed of
Has been right before my eyes

The children are sleeping
But they're running through my mind
The sun makes them happy
And the music makes them unwind

My cup runneth over
I worry about the stain
Teach me to run to You
Like they run to me for every little thing

'Cause everything is sacred?
And all this time
Everything I've dreamed of
Has been right before my eyes

When I forget to drink from you
I can feel the banks harden
Lord, make me like a stream
To feed the garden

Wake up, little sleeper
The Lord, God Almighty
Made your Mama keeper
So rise and shine
Rise and shine, rise and shine 'cause

Everything is sacred
And all this time
Everything I've dreamed of
Has been right before my eyes



(me again)

When you can't stand to do the dishes, offer a prayer for someone who doesn't have enough food.

When your baby wakes up crying in the middle of the night, offer a prayer for someone who wants desperately to have a baby and cannot.

When your toddler whines all day like she's expecting an academy award, offer a prayer for someone who's baby died.

When you just want to go to a movie (or the bathroom) by yourself, offer a prayer for someone suffering from lonely depression.

When the bills are due, offer a prayer for someone who lost their house.

When there are more dust bunnies than living souls in your home, offer a prayer for a true hoarder.

When you don't want to part with whatever toy or outfit or *thing* you just put in the donation box, offer a prayer for the mother who hasn't enough money for a birthday gift for her child (and then put the thing in the box!).

When it's raining for the 39th day in a row, offer a prayer for someone who's home was flooded.

When it's over 100 degrees for the 5th day in a row, offer a prayer for someone who works....or lives....outside.

When you're at the grocery store and all of your best methods of confinement and bribery have made no difference in their behavior, offer a prayer for the woman who believed abortion was her only choice.

When they've asked you "why?" for the three thousandth time this hour, offer a prayer for the children whose questions only get answered by television and their peers.

When you're tired of eating leftovers, offer a prayer for the person whose dinner is whatever you threw away yesterday.

When your children say or do something that breaks your heart, offer a prayer to Mommy Mary....think of her heart breaking at the foot of the Cross.

When you feel like you just can't go on and your problems are more than you can bear.....look at the crucifix.

When all else fails (and really before you've tried "all else"), go to Mass, turn to God, have Hope.

Perhaps I'm Gestating an Elephant

Happy International Midwives Day! I would love to celebrate by going into labor, but unfortunately that's not looking likely. One of these days I will have a baby...I promise :)

So I went to Dr. Bowen's yesterday. He was out on a delivery and Dr. Wall couldn't stay and see me because he had to do rounds....so I didn't get to see a Dr. I *did* have them do a urine dip and take my BP (which was pretty normal...not bad considering I had rushed in and was stressed about driving all the way out there without getting to talk to Dr. B). So really, there's no update. I didn't get results from my urine, but I figure if there was anything super exciting, they'd have told me. I set up my NST for next week on Tuesday.

So on paper, today I'm 41 weeks....but I'm not entirely convinced and here's why: We had a miscarriage on July 20th of last year....so I'm clearly not more than 41 weeks because the math doesn't add up. We're pretty faithful NFP charters, but hadn't started charting right after the miscarriage because I didn't know it was possible to get pregnant again just a few weeks later :) I got to the point a few weeks after the miscarriage where I just was feeling terrible and it would hit me about the same time every day. After a few days of it, I said to Ben "Man, it almost feels like I'm pregnant!" But we didn't think that was even possible.....joke was on us :) When we found out, we were of course thrilled, but had no idea when we had conceived.....but knew that it was most certainly a "new" baby...and not a continuation of pregnancy #3.

So, all we had to go on was an ultra sound at Dr. B's. While in the room way back then, the tech said the baby looked "about 10 weeks" and asked if that sounded right to us. I said that seemed a little further along than I felt since I'd only been feeling crummy for about a week (the three times before, we'd found out we were preggers at 4-5 weeks and I had a few weeks after than before I started to feel sick). I told her if I had to guess, I would have said I was 8-9 weeks. (also, both of my girls were "big fast" according to ultra sounds...in fact, with my first, they wanted to change the due date by several weeks....we didn't let them because, like I said, we're faithful charters and knew exactly when we conceived)....but since we didn't have anything else to go on, she said, "well, it looks like 10 weeks and today is Thursday, so we'll call you 10 weeks today and set a "made up" due date for 30 weeks from now...let's see...that's April 28th.".

Growth at 20 week ultra sound was consistent with me having been 10 wks at the first ultra sound, so no one said anything.

Two weeks ago, my midwife measured me at 36cm and last week I was measured at 38cm. While that's not an exact indicator, your measurement and wks gestation are about the same. I didn't get measured yesterday because I didn't actually have an exam.....so we'll see.

I think saying all of this is more for my sanity than anyone else's concern. Dr. Wall gets a little excited, but he's new to this game :) Anyway, it's possible that our math was off and I'm actually 40 wks THIS week, not last week....either way, I still feel fine, bp is good, baby movement is good...all that jazz.....

I had three days (Sun, Mon, Tues) of real crampiness for a few hours each day...some low back pain, but no real pattern of contractions....and nothing I couldn't walk/talk through...just kinda made me go "Oh Man!" and feel like I needed to get up and walk around. Other than that, I've had no early labor signs. At some point I'll have a baby...I just don't want to end up in a situation where I'm being treated and possibly pressured as though I'm 42 weeks when I'm really not. I just keep praying and taking deep breaths...trying to stay relaxed and enjoy a day of sunshine...and work on making this baby is faced the right way....felt some little feet up top again yesterday...gotta get him turned around!!

One of these days, even if we're were wrong about the initial due date, I will hit 40 weeks....if it's not today, then it'll be soon :) Come on Baby! M keeps telling me to call the midwives to tell them we want to have the baby today :) Oh how excited I am to be able to fulfill her wish.....

What a difference a baby makes.

So this was me the night I went into labor with #2. Compared to my first pregnancy, I thought I was soo much bigger....and MAN, was I uncomfortable at the end! She was born on her due date (so this was the evening before her due date....I had about a 30 hour labor), so I was right at 40 weeks.




This was me yesterday....two days past 37 weeks. Not in labor...

Rounding Third and Heading for Home!

Sorry for the baseball reference, but COME ON! The Redlegs are FIVE AND OH!!! Everybody was super stoked to see the Reds win their first two...you can imagine how excited we are now! In this family, we're fans. Win or lose, we go to games, wear our Reds gear and cheer our home team, but MAN is it nice when they win :) Can we just stop the season now? No? Well, that's ok because if we did, my little man would never get to wear HIS super cute Reds gear :)

Now, back to regularly scheduled programming.....

I'M 37 WEEKS TODAY! Or, the baby is 37 weeks today? Either way, we're in the home stretch (hence the baseball reference). I just can't wait to meet this little man! It's getting more and more real every day.

It's so strange...I feel like I know so much about him already...from his movements and times of stillness....but at the same time, it's this whole wide world of wonder.

It's equally amazing to talk to the girls about their brother and what it's going to be like. M is excited to give a gift to her brother....I think she's going to be a little bummed when he isn't interested in playing with it from day one. S is all about "decorating" him (check out my belly pic on facebook from the other day)...and yes, it's cute now and will be less cute when she puts stickers on him for real :)

Either way, they both seem to be pretty excited. We'll see how long that lasts when I'm sitting with the baby and S wants to nurse.

I had an interesting conversation with someone earlier this week. She's from quite a different background than I am (religious, political, geographic, probably financial, etc) and has been raised with a different view of pregnancy than what I have. She said to me that she loves hearing me talk about the baby as if it's already here and part of our family....when the way that she was raised (admittedly superstitiously), you didn't even decorate a nursery or have a baby shower before the baby came so as not to jinx its life.

I dunno...I just can't imagine having a baby in my belly that is doing back flips, hearing sounds, "breathing", playing, listening and all those other things and not view it as a part of our family. Obviously things really change once he's out and we get to learn his personality and interact with him more (though M sings him songs and gives him hugs all the time already)....but he's part of our family. Now, you know me...he was part of our family from the second he was conceived....but at this point, if he was born today, he'd be considered fully developed and ready to live his life. Just still being on the inside is merely a technicality.

Don't get me wrong...I totally get the other perspective...especially from long ago in a time when there weren't ultrasounds and fetal monitors...etc. And I even get how it lasts...especially if you're superstitious...or were raised in a culture where talking about such things was taboo. But at the same time, I really appreciate my friend's willingness to openly appreciate another way of looking at it.

Either way, I'm excited. My dreams these days are of his birth....feeling him on the outside for the first time....kissing his head...will he have hair? Kissing his fingers...how long will his nails be? Watching his big sisters kiss him for the first time and touch his back. What time of day/night will it be? Will M actually participate in the birth the way she says now that she wants to? So many wonderful wonderings....I'm excited to see how it all turns out.

But not before Easter...right? :)

Hail Mary

Hail Mary! Full of Grace. The Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death, Amen.

My Intention is Set

Happy Monday!

It's going to be a looong week. Lots of single-parenting, lots of catching up to do, no room for sickness or whining......we'll see about those last two.

To catch you up: Last Thursday was my monthly La Leche League meeting. I missed it because I had a sick kid and no car (Ben's car was in the shop and so he had mine...but I had a sick kid anyway, so it doesn't really matter). It got me to thinking....I had missed the previous month's meeting due to illness as well...and at that point, we'd already been sick for more than a week....so that means, we've been sick for the better part of two months....yikes! Not continuously...and not the same person or the same illness...and we've had spots of brightness...but really....two months of sick....you can imagine what that's done to my house...and our diet. Last week, when I felt like I was at risk of bed sores on my back end from sitting in the recliner for most of four days, I had a sickie who would cry when I put her down to use the bathroom.....she was sooo not going to go for me putting her down for a few hours to make bread and amazing meals....so needless to say, we ate a lot of pbandj, pizza, salami sammies and the like....as well as a lot worse. I kept thinking of Deann and Marlene and hanging my head in shame.

But we're snapping out of it! My sickie from last week still isn't 100% better (in fact, she's sitting on my lap coloring while I'm writing...but hey, at least we're not in the recliner!), but we're going to plow ahead. I have goals for the week, tasks for today and the forecast is for sunshine at least a few days this week :) Oh, and I set my intention!

I set my intention!

Did you hear that?! I set my intention!

Now all I have to do is remember that.

Will you help me? If you think about it...or any point that you're having trouble staying focused and getting done what you need to get done, will you say a prayer for me? Just that God (gently) nudge me back on track and remind me of my intention and my purpose. No acedia here this week!!!

With your help, and particularly God's help, I'll get this train back on track!!

The Love Between a Mother and a Son

So I'm (roughly) six weeks away from uncharted territory. According to (what seemed pretty clear to everyone in the room) my ultra sound at 20 weeks, we're going to give birth to a son sometime (God-willing) shortly after Easter.

First, and a bit of an aside, I must say that each year, Lent seems like this huge, formidable force separating me from spring, new life, and even in some ways, Christ himself. Of course I know that Christ never separates himself from me, and frankly, by the time Lent is finished, if I've given myself over to it, I'm closer to Christ than any other time of the year. Either way, when the week of Ash Wednesday arrives, I feel like I have a massive chasm in front of me.

This year...at the same time...I feel as though meeting my baby is right around the corner! It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that there's an entire Lent between me and my son (God-willing). What an amazing gift of waiting and preparation I've been given in such a tangible way this time.

Ok, back to my original post idea.

I just read a post about Mary, the Mother of God, on a blog called Caritas et Veritas. It was so beautiful and the line "All of Christianity can be summed up as a love story between a mother and a son" was so touching to me.

What kind of mother will I be to this little man? You'd think, after two kids, that I'd already have some kind of idea about that one...and to an extent I do. I don't think, especially right at first, that things are going to be radically different. But, despite what some say, boys and girls are different...and to treat them as if they're not is a disservice to them....but to exaggerate things unnecessarily is a disservice as well.

What I think about a lot is the ways in which I will fail as a mother (hey, I'm a melancholic). Times when I will yell (do yell) rather than asking questions. Times when I will get frustrated in the middle of the night rather than just giving a hug and saying a prayer. Times when I will forget that this little man won't be little forever and that some day I'll be wishing to have my plans halted so I can play with him or rock him or listen to his story. I already feel those things now with my girls.....I wonder in what ways it will be different this time around.

In those times of failure, I pray that Mother Mary will tap me on the shoulder (or more likely on the heart) and show me how to love my son the way that she loved hers. God-willing, I'll never have to endure even a fraction of the heartache that she did upon the death of her Son, but who better than her to show me, no matter what suffering I do endure, how to wipe his tears, pray for him, comfort him, teach him, kiss away his pain for as long as that works, and most of all to love him.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for Us.

The Load of Laundry That Changed My Life

Well, maybe not...but "The Load of Laundry That Was A Tangible Example of How My Life is Going To Change Once I Have a Baby Boy and Everything's No Longer Pink and Purple" seemed like a bit of a long title.



Let me just say that I'm THRILLED to be having a boy. And not just because we'll "have our boy" and can stop. God-willing, this is just the beginning to a wonderful "quiver full" of arrows. And I'd have been THRILLED to be having a girl...I hope (as was my feeling when I was packing away infant girl things) that I'll again have a little girl to wear the pink monkey sleeper :) among other things.

All that said, as I was doing laundry tonight, I tossed a load from the washer to the drier. It was mostly girls' clothes....and it was a light colored load. I noticed that each toss (my washer and drier are diagonal from each other) was a motley of pinks, purples, and whites...and was really girlie. And I had a moment.

In the next few months, my laundry will change from pinks and purples to blues and greens. It was just a moment when I got a glimpse into the future. Made me think of all the other things that are going to change.

That's What They Tell Me....

Word on the street is that I'm nesting. Well....praise be to God! I'm super glad that I'm pregnant then, because this house is a disaster! Wait....I'm glad I'm preggers because babies are always and only a blessing....yeah, that's right. But this nesting thing is a close second.

We've got a long way to go (especially if we ever plan on letting outsiders in the front door ever again), but every little bit helps....and I'm trying to do a thorough job as I go. I got into this mess because I would clean clean clean...and then "sweep whatever was left under the rug" (ie, in one continuous motion, toss it into my craft room/office and shut the door quickly before anything escaped). Thus, the craft room would be my audition material for "Clean House".

But we're getting there.

Over the last few days, I've set my timer (small children, indecisive thyroid, pregnancy, dogs, husband-who's-a-bigger-pack-rat-than-even-me....I run out of steam quickly) and gone into the office armed with industrial size (ok, maybe not, but the big, black ones) garbage bags and I've been ruthless! My inner crafter and tree hugger had to be bound and gagged a few times, but my love of repurposing is part of what got me into this mess....literally.

It's a little frustrating to spend time, effort and allergies (cleaning kicks up a looooooot of dust around here) and not feel like it even made a dent in the problem.....but then I just go out and look at the big, full garbage bags and I feel better.

And then there's the storage containers....

I FINALLY got through some of the toys in the toy room. I have an awesome storage thingy from IKEA with little pull out tubs of different sizes. I had visions of the girls taking out one tub at a time and making the toy room a little more toddler friendly....they could choose what they wanted and be able to handle it all on their own. Great idea....

but what we ended up with was kiddie junk drawers. Not cool.

So far so good on the clear boxes. Maybe I made a bigger deal of it. Maybe (for now) it's more organized. I've always been a person who will put something away EVERY TIME if there's a clear place for it....it's all the extra "stuff" that I struggle with....and so now....all the extra "stuff" in the toy room is still strewn about waiting to be pitched, donated or settled...somewhere.

In the mean time, the girls have been so excited about the boxes and I've seen them play so well with the "new" toys in the boxes. We've had dinosaur trains, doll birthday parties, tool bench creations and much more. The big one never realized we actually had that many blocks....and the little one feels like such a "big girl" when she can "do self". She's sooo good at putting away!

Now on to the craft room. I don't have a *real* before picture of the closet....to ugly for capturing. But as you can see in the first picture above, there's a floor now (we (Ben) tore out the shoe ramp in the bottom so there'd be a flat space), but there are still a few hanging items left over from when it was the nursery....as well as some random luggage (see, I don't have a set place for the luggage to go, so I think there's a suitcase, back pack or brief case in just about every room of the house!). But...God-willing...at the end of the day, there'll be a beautiful craft room/kid craft/homeschool materials storage system for me to declutter the world! Well, at least the craft room.

More to come.....

Rainbow Eggs

Ok, so everybody knows I've been on this "know where your food comes from", "eat happy animals", "buy local" etc food kick over the last...year really. And it's been pretty great. The kids get excited to go to the farm, I get warm fuzzies about helping to support a local family (that goes to my church even!) and we eat animals that were well cared for, ate what they are supposed to eat and had plenty of recess and friends to play with. (and for the record, I have zero ethical issue with eating animals. I do not (no matter what my hubby says) think that "animals are people too" (thank you Mr. Morra)....but I DO think that by being put "in charge" of the animals of the earth, we must take care of them and not abuse them)

Back to happy animals.....

So the girls have gotten a kick out of being closer to our food....being involved in picking it out and knowing where it comes from. But there's been a recent additional thought running through my head lately.

After getting eggs from a farm for the last year, I've noticed that eggs come in alllll shapes, sizes, colors and even textures. It's pretty fun to open a carton of eggs and have pink, green, blue ish, and brown. Some have freckles, some are pointy and some look like runofthemill brown eggs you have to take a second mortgage on your house to pay for in the store.

But here's the difference: Even the organic, free-range, brown eggs in the store are allllll exactly the same shape and size. We pay extra for "happy" eggs from the store....but what happens to the funky pointed ones or the ones with freckles or the ones that are just a little bigger or a little smaller? Are they pitched? Are they sold as "odd bulk" at some store I've never been to?

Anyone who knows me knows that waste, particularly food waste drives me a little batty. I'm known to collect food scraps at other people's houses and bring them back for our green cone...just so they won't go into the garbage....yet producers of "happy" brown eggs don't think we can handle a carton of eggs that doesn't look all the same...and just like the last carton we bought.

It just bothers me to think about the amount of waste still happening even when you're paying extra for "better" food.