A Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Ezra! We had a small birthday party today with about 5 boys from our church, which I didn't get any photos of, unfortunately.

But, we did take some photos of the games we played after the fact.
Because of our house purge, we had some huge cardboard pieces lying around waiting to be recycled. So before we hauled them away, we got some good use out of them.

We made a bean bag game, with matchbox cars for prizes (there's a little flap on the bottom), and we made a reversible race track/bunko car game.

The kids had a ton of fun with the cardboard games, and then we ended with a giant balloon pop. Where we tied around 75 balloons to kids ankles and they ran around popping them and retrieving the starburst candy inside.

It was a lot of work for the kids to pop the balloons, because Jonathan and I only blew up the balloons a little (not wanting it to be too easy). They ended up resorting to stabbing their balloons with the sharp edges of their race cars and sitting on them. So they worked off the candy they won!

Then we had cake---a Spiderman DQ cake that looked like it was supposed to look!

It was a pretty fun birthday and a nice end to the week!


Ezra really liked his superhero LEGO! Thanks, Mimi and Papa!
This LEGO car was from one of this friends and he put it together all by himself after the party!
You can see below that we stapled some 1x2's (normally for canvas building) on the back of the cardboard for racing "tracks". The black things are styrofoam like pipe coverings (forget the name) that we found abandoned in the park nearby. We cut them into pieces and glued them to the cardboard, and they worked really well! They are just the right material for bouncing cars all around.

One of those weeks....

Oh boy, I'm glad it's Friday but this week has been a doozy.

We started off our Monday tired, as usual, and with one forever obstinate child who did NOT want to do her Math lesson, and proceeded to make the rest of the day pretty un-fun.

Tuesday our day started off with the dog getting sprayed by a skunk, frantically giving it a disgusting tomato juice bath, only to realize that that is an old wives tale that doesn't really work, giving it a dish-soap, peroxide bath instead, and having one of Jonathan's co-workers arrive to take him to work at 7:30 when I am groggy and in my pajamas and the house smells like skunk.

Also that day, Jonathan was gone until 11:00 at night for work (Career fair in Ames), and we ALL had to load up into the car to pick him up for his late return (at least we didn't have to drive to Ames). Oh...the cat also vomited on the carpet several times on that long, long day.

Wednesday and Thursday more random vomiting here and there, kids all needing baths and haircuts, finger nail and toe nail trimming, and basically a whole grooming service to assist them in basic hygiene.
Trying to shove school in when we can, visit from the supervising teacher which lasted two hours, and a midwife appointment late in the evening.

Then, today is Ezra's birthday and I wanted to make something healthier than our usual yellow/white cakes. So I made a carrot cake, which I tried to turn into something resembling a large Lego, which ended up just looking like a crumbling pile of crap with bird poop and marshmallows on top (Ezra very naively reassured me that it did, in fact, resemble a Lego somewhat).

And for some reason (temporary insanity, all the vomiting of the previous week, maybe sheer exhaustion) all the kids decided to conspire together to ruin Ezra's birthday and fight and pout about the fact that he got a couple presents. Jude and Violet seem to lack any concept of birthdays being a yearly event, and that a year is longer than the time it takes them to ask me if they can have this or that toy or cake.

Then, ALSO today, the city of CR replaced the shut off valve for the water at our rental because it was leaky and it was their responsibility. You would think this would be a good thing....one less thing we have to take care of. Except when they replaced it, they left the water ON (even though Jonathan told them many times we are working on the leaky plumbing and that's why it needs to have a new shut off valve) and it leaked into the house MORE than it was before. Luckily there was no real damage that wasn't there already.

Did I mention that Jonathan sprained his ankle or something and is limping around like an invalid? Oh, and I can't sleep at night unless I take Benadryl which has the fantastic side effects of motherly (pregnant) guilt, and that oh so lovely hung over feeling in the morning????

AND I have at least FOUR weeks left of being so huge I can't see my own feet let alone the zipper on my pants!!!!!!


#UR#@()(#$#@


If you read this far, I'm am so, so very sorry for you. Try to wipe your mind and think happy thoughts. Imagine a lovely beach and pretend this never happened.

Re-using and Refreshing

In our house scale down, I am often getting side tracked by other projects.

One of which is an old desk that we have been storing in our basement. It has functioned down there as little more than a surface to put things occasionally. I decided if I made it look a little spiffier, it could easily be a nice desk for me to do small watercolors and sketches.

I wanted to paint it to cover up the old scratches and dingy wood finish. So I picked a nice blue color, painted it, and now it sits nicely in our master bedroom.

These drawers are the color the whole desk was. I didn't get a photo of the whole desk before I primed it.

I've never really primed anything before, since I usually don't mind if it get's a "worn" look. But I really wanted the blue to be the actual color, so went the extra mile to prime this desk.

This is the desk after painting! I've always like colorful furniture, but it seemed too risky. But I really like how it turned out!

Another project was this old barn window. I am always trying to figure out new things to do with them since we have so many. I saw some fabric I really liked and thought, "that would look nice behind the glass panes". But it was $20 per yard.......on sale. So instead I drew out the pattern on a piece of paper and copied it onto the window with paint. It still seems kind of plain to me, any suggestions my crafty sisters and mother in law?


Now that those two things are out of the way, I can get back to cleaning.

Sometimes nesting means "Scaling Down"

I know I'm in full on nesting mode, so I won't be offended if someone thinks I'm crazy for seriously wanting to chuck half the stuff I own (don't worry, I'm not being *that* drastic).

At the beginning of the year I made it one of my big goals to purge the house before the new baby comes. So I know it's nesting, but I also know it's this:

"I'm tired of being a household drudge, feeling resentful when I do take time to clean and guilty when I don't." (From "Scaling Down" by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker).

So far, I've finished the upstairs purge, and it was some hard work.

I kept a lot more than I probably should have (it's okay to have two can openers, and 6 sets of sheets for a family our size).
But I also got rid of more than I ever dared in the past.
For example, post purge, we now own a total of 9 pieces of tupperware and about the same number of small pyrex containers. We said goodbye to two huge black garbage bags of tupperware, and tons of other misc. kitchen items that rarely if ever get used.

I can honestly say now that I know what every item in my kitchen is, and it is something I use! Imagine!

I found this book at the library this week and it's been echoing the feeling I'm hoping to achieve:

"Once in a while a wake up call comes sooner. Judi's came when she was in her early thirties and spent a week at the beach in a vacation house. The kitchen contained only the essentials that were needed to make easy meals; the living room and bedroom could be straightened up in a matter of minutes, leaving the family free to relax or explore for the rest of the day. For the first time in her life, she knew exactly where everything was. The experience was an epiphany."

As someone who likes to paint, sew, and enjoys working on many projects and updating and re-purposing old things, it's going to be hard to pare down ALL our clutter. But I'm going to make a herculean effort to pare down our "stuff" to the things I won't resent keeping and caring for!

Birthdays

Violet turned 3 on Monday! Here she is showing us how old she is.

And here, blowing out her candles. Which we did about seven times. She also got to wear her Halloween costume all day.

Princess costume + pink cake + balloons + living room picnic for dinner +cards from family = over the moon 3 year old.

It's hard to believe we will have four birthdays in a row right at the beginning of the year! Violet, Ezra, Cranbaby 5, and mine! Four cakes before May!

Christmas Spirit

We tried a little harder this year with the outside lights. I planned ahead on a warm day in October, and Jonathan braved the roof, much to the kids delight!

I think the kids did a pretty good job with the tree this year! They did all the ornament hanging except for the top two feet of the tree! We have so many kid ornaments now, there wasn't any room for mine or Jonathan's! Maybe we need a bigger tree.....

Halloween

Thought I better get these up before Thanksgiving.
We had two fairies, a Super Mario, and a Captain America.

First Video of Baby!

We're getting to experience a lot of new-to-us technology with the OB's here. This is a video of baby moving. They gave us a disk full of ultrasound photos (some 3D) and four video clips of baby moving!
In this one, baby is turning it's head towards us and kicking!

And here is one of the better photos:

Busy month!

It's been a busy month!
Last weekend was the annual Apple Festival in Dubuque. The kids had a blast looking at the pumpkins, tasting apple cider, getting their faces painted, and most of all, jumping in the bouncy castle. They were the only kids in for their first turn, so I actually got a couple good shots of them jumping!

Ezra got a flag for his design. He was very excited to come home and put on his army hat for a photo op. He was not so excited when his flag started to crumble in the bathtub.

After the festival, we headed to my favorite fall destination--The Pumpkin Barn! I managed to only get five pumpkins/squash/gourds this year, to Jonathan's delight.
After the pumpkin barn, we all went to a UD football game. The kids had no idea what was going on, (Ezra was pretty impressed by all the "wrestling" though), but they enjoyed clapping, shouting, whistling, and stomping on the bleachers immensely.
After the football game we walked by the Old Chapel and got a family photo (thanks Alan for the great photos!). Here we all are at the same spot Jonathan and I walked down the aisle nearly 8 years ago!

Then, Monday morning, a friend from church brought over two of his chickens that he wanted to get rid of. I think this will be our last slaughtering experience until we move out of the suburbs. Jonathan wasn't as enthusiastic about this one. The chickens were a lot bigger, and the kids weren't nearly as squeamish this time around. Although the twitching after death really freaks them out. Me too!

We couldn't get around to them Monday night and ended up being wakened bright and early Tuesday morning (very early morning) to roosters crowing proudly. We groggily and hastily moved them into our garage so we wouldn't get chewed out by our neighbors, then we took care of them Tuesday afternoon.
At one point, when Jonathan and I were both inside working on a part of the process on the first chicken, Roxie literally ripped the seams on her collar and chased the other one around the yard. She had it pinned and was relentlessly biting it when we caught her. We chased her off and the chicken promptly fell over stiff as a board. We thought she had scared it to death, but it recovered a few minutes later, only to be slaughtered a few minutes after that. Poor chicken.
A week ago, I had my first prenatal appointment (yes, I didn't bother calling anyone until then). The Dr. thought I was measuring big and wanted to rule out twins. So we had an ultrasound, our first one ever this early, and our first 3D one, too.
Just one baby. Too early to tell the sex, which is unfortunate because I wanted to know and we probably won't get another one. So we might have a surprise by accident this time.
The above photos is at 15 weeks, so baby is no bigger than an apple all scrunched up, but can you see the little face?! This is a pretty bad scan, but I think it's visible.
Recently we've been feeling a clothing storage squeeze. The kids clothes get bigger, they get more of them, and suddenly we don't have enough dresser space, and then a new baby that will ALSO wear clothes is coming.
So I was delighted when I found this dresser at the Salvation Army for $50. It has very sturdy construction with dovetailed drawers, so it's probably sturdier than half the furniture we own.

I didn't really like the weird tan color, so I painted it antique white, and you probably can't tell from the photo below, but I painted the knobs regular white, for a tiny bit of contrast. So, Sadie and Violet will get a new dresser to share, and the new baby will get the one that all Violet's clothes are crammed in now! Thanks Jonathan for letting me get this and moving it all around for me!


That's about it, but I've got a list a mile long of things I still have to do in the coming weeks, including a commission, several paintings for family, Sadie's birthday party coming up, and some art for a game expansion Jonathan invented for one of his favorite games: Glory to Rome.

Not to mention school, which is an all day job at this point! It's like a race to see how much I can get done before Christmas, and then another race to see how much I can get done before March! We'll see!!!

Projects

When I want to paint, but feel like I just can't carve two to three hours out of the day, I resort to, what I think will be, small projects.

I got this shelf at Salvation Army for $1. It had a pretty ugly yellow plastic panel on the back, which we took off before this photo was taken. I also sort of tried to protect the fabric that was on there, even though I was going to cover it, hence the masking tape.

I used spray adhesive to fix the fabric on top of what was there. So this project really did only take around 30 min. total.

This was an unfinished sofa table that had been in our basement for months. Finally I decided I wanted to try boiled linseed oil and oil paint to finish it. I really liked the results. It's probably not as durable as polyurethane, but it wasn't toxic to breathe, and I didn't have to panic about brush marks or it setting in a weird way. That's a nice advantage to wipe on, wipe off finishing methods.

Embryo Adoption??

I was intrigued by this article -- (http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2011/09/embryo-adoption-a-unique-option-to-give-a-child-life.html#more-12355) -- and the discussion that resulted from it.

Frankly, I was surprised that so many people were unequivocally positive about it.
While I understand that a baby out of the freezer and into the world, rather than being destroyed, is a good thing, I still can't help but think that embryo adoption is a small band aid cover that could easily allow otherwise well meaning Christians to condone and continue to practice IVF and freezing embryos. Making the problem that much bigger.

Personally I feel, that if we had ever had a hard time conceiving children, adoption of already born children, domestic or international would have been our first option, and I don't think... no, I KNOW we never would have considered IVF.
Even though we didn't have a hard time conceiving children, we feel that caring for orphans is something ALL Christians are called to do, and adoption has always been on the back burner of our mind, waiting for it's time.

Do we really need our own biological children SO badly that we will spend thousands of dollars implementing morally questionable technology to make it happen? Especially when there are so many children in the world already waiting and longing for loving homes?

And how much of IVF/embryo adoption is actually just a flat out refusal to show the love of Christ to children who may come with scars and emotional baggage?

But then again, it can only be good when one of these little embryos is given a chance at life.

I'm very interested to know other peoples opinions. Please share.

So....much....canning....

Watercolor Speed Painting

Free will, Charity, and the State- "George Ought to Help"

Five Children and It