Early mornings....with Kids.

Submission

2011-02-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to write this post for a very long time now, but life has been so busy.

Submission is such a hard word it seems.

Ephesians 5:21-24 (New International Version)

Instructions for Christian Households

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Why do we believe that we can give our lives over to Christ and submit to Him, without following the rest of these verses and submit to our husbands? How many people get upset reading that the husband is the head of the wife, just like Christ is the head of the church? Are we, as wives, not really accepting Christ as head of the church if we are not accepting our husbands as the head of us? We can always list instances where wives were totally ruled by an unfair husband, who used this verse to be cruel to his wife. There will always be people who use verses of the bible to get what they want, but should we ever use that as our excuse not to do what the bible tells us to do? If I am following the bible and submitting to my husband like Christ has told me to do, then it will not be me that will face judgment from God if my husband uses that power to rule over me, it will be my husband, because he did not follow the next set of verses in Ephesians.

Ephesians 5:25-30

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—³⁰ for we are members of his body.

We can see here, that the husbands are to love the wives as Christ loved the church and died for the church. This is huge! It almost seems easy for me as a wife, all I have to do is submit to my husband, but my husband has to give up himself to me, like Christ did for the church. That seems like an impossible task, I am not even sure how you would know that you were doing it right. If God is holding our husbands to this kind of standard and only asking us to submit to a man who should be treating us this way, then why are we not doing it?

What husband asks his wife to pretend to be his sister? Did he not stop to think that possibly the Pharaoh might think to ask for her as his wife? What husband wants to give his wife to another man? Granted, he was doing this because he thought he was protecting himself, which just shows that men mess up. Abram had been chosen by God, because God wanted to choose him, not because of anything that Abram had done to deserve it. Yet, even Abram had moments where his faith faltered and he messed up. Sarai went along with Abram's plan and did what he told her to do. She submitted to her husband. Sure we can say that it was the culture of the time and she did not have a choice. I really believe that Abram loved Sarai and we can see later that she does have a voice with him and he does listen to her when she wants something, so I believe she could have protested this plan of his. She didn't though and this is how God took care of her for submitting to her husband.

¹⁴ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. ¹⁵ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

¹⁷ But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

God knew that Abram messed up, so he protected Sarai in the midst of the mess that Abram made. I know this story is in the Old Testament before Ephesians, but to me it really is a good model of how, as a wife, we should be submitting to our husbands, recognizing them as the head of us, because we know that God is there to protect us if our husbands mess up. And by submitting to our husbands, we are really submitting our lives to Christ!

Adam and Eve

2011-01-28T05:45:00.000-08:00

When we look in the Bible, we start to think about how we have gotten to where we are in this world, how we may need to rethink why we do what we do and how we might start to do things differently.

We know that Adam was there when Eve had the discussion with the serpent and when she took the fruit. He was there when she took her bite and then took the fruit from her and ate it as well.

Genesis 3:6

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Why did he stand by while she did this? We will never know. It reminds of a time when Tobi was younger and she cut her own hair. Brighton and Dora were both close by when she did this and so I asked them, "Why didn't you stop her from cutting her hair?" To which they replied, "We told her she shouldn't do it." I then pointed out that they should have taken the scissors away instead of just telling her, a two year old, what she should do.

No matter what Adam's reasons were for standing by while Eve took the fruit and ate it, really doesn't matter at this point. So then, why he accepted it from her and ate it, we won't know either. But we do see that when God found out, Adam was no less held accountable as Eve was. In fact, I believe he was held even more accountable. It is mentioned in Genesis that Eve took the fruit first, but after that most of the time when the fall is mentioned in the Bible, it is blamed on Adam, not Eve. So we read that God punishes the serpent first, making him the lowest creature. Next comes Eve's punishment, which I think is interesting.

Genesis 3:16

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;

with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

As a mother of four children, I agree there is pain in childbearing. I do believe that God has also shown mercy in this area as well, because no matter how hard I try, I really don't remember the pains of childbirth. There are other pains that come with childbearing, the pains of not being able to get pregnant, the pains of not carrying a child to term, and just the struggles that come with having children. I really think that we can not deny this punishment, it was given to us from God and it is real. What I think we forget is the next line, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." This is harder to pin down, harder to see in every day life, because we look at our desire to be on the same level as men as our rights as women. Is it? Are we trying to put ourselves into the same position as men, because desire what they have? We struggle with the knowledge that we are not the same as men, women don't want to admit that, but if we did, maybe it would be freeing to us. I also think this verse shows that once sin entered the world, there began a break in the union of husband and wife. What all do we desire from our husbands: attention, comfort, praise, security, etc. Security, that one I think sometimes women don't realize how much they want that. I think, and I could be wrong, that if we really admitted it, we want a husband that takes care of us, a husband who does the work that pays the bills so we don't have to, a husband who lovingly makes the final decision on decisions that are hard, and a husband who truly leads his household spiritually. Our biggest fear is that if we admit this out loud, other people will think we are weak and that it will give our husbands some kind of power over us and he will be cruel to us. I believe that is what Satan wants us to think. He wants us to think that we can not really trust our husbands to be the head of the household, because we as women can do a much better job. He is wrong and I fear that is why so many of our families are struggling today.

Genesis 3:17-19

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

Man in no way got off easy. "Through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life." All the days of your life, ALL, that means that the man will always have to work to provide for himself and for his family, this will not be easy. "It will produce thorns and thistles for you," In other words, this work will never be easy. Not only is man going to have to work ALL the days of his life, it is not going to be easy work. I think it is in man's nature, all of our nature, to want it to be easier, I believe that is why so many men have allowed women to take on their roles in the world. It is easier to let someone else do the hard work, but it is not what God had planned for man. Once again God was showing mercy to man, because through that hard work that man is doing for all his life, he is growing, he is learning and he is bettering himself and his family.

I believe that God set these punishments as punishments, but also as a way of life for us to grow and to seek Him. Just as when parents punish their children to teach them a lesson and to make them better people, so should we see these verses for us to be better people, see why we desire what we do, how we may have to learn from that and that we may need to change our attitudes.

This has been interesting for me to look at. I have no problem saying out loud that my husband is the head of our household, although inside me it is harder sometimes. Over the past 19 years of marriage, we have both grown a lot and I have learned to seek my husband's wisdom before I speak, which is a very good thing for other people, because I could be a quick tempered person. I have also watched my husband grow as the spiritual leader of our house, which I personally think is awesome. I know that he loves his family and would not do anything to hurt us, I appreciate that he discusses things with me, takes what I have to say and then is willing to make the final hard decision. There is a freedom knowing that he loves me like Christ loved the church, which makes me even more willing to submit to him.

Venting

2011-01-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

This was an interesting week. I really wanted to vent to someone, but I had to be careful who I vented to in order to protect myself from gossiping. This makes life rough, so I had to vent to God, which is amazing. The more I would talk out my frustrations in my head to God, the calmer I seemed to get, until I got to the point where my thoughts were put down on paper without any bad words or with me quitting. I feel that in the past when I come across a person I disagree with, I may try to say my concerns once to them and if they treat me like an irrational woman, then I tend not to deal with them anymore and remove myself from the situation. One thing people should understand about me, is that I rarely share my concerns with a person without first seeking council from my husband. He usually has a good idea what my concern is, he sees that it actually has merit and helps me decide what words I might want to use. So, when someone treats me like an irrational woman, it kind of makes me laugh, because I know they would not treat my husband that way and he is behind what I say. Anyways, even he was busy this week, although he did help me some with what I said, but he was working through his own concerns on the matter with God, so I took his lead and did the same.

I have also come to the understanding that in removing myself from the situations doesn't always help, because God may have placed me there to continue to get a differing point across. I think I have always taken the easier path of just quitting, but I am tired of doing that and I want to be the person God wants me to be. I believe I am seeing some future struggles coming up and I am praying for strength as they approach. One struggle I see is how we as women have tried so hard to be on the same level as men in the church. I think we need to realize we were never meant to be elders in the church, we can do ministry and we can serve on ministries in the church, but we should not be in a place of high authority in the church. I think that because women have been fighting to be placed on the same level as men in the secular world, we have allowed that into our church as well. In that process, men have stepped aside and allowed women into authority roles, and that is one of the reasons our churches are struggling in the world. Just as important as it is for my husband to be the head of our house, the men should be the heads of our church. This is not a popular idea and I am sure that I will get some arguments from women. It does remind me of the story of Jonah, the people of Nineveh did not know what they were doing was wrong until Jonah came and told them. Once they heard God's message, they changed and repented, was this easy? I doubt it. They would have had to make some huge changes that could not have been comfortable, but God blessed them after they made the changes (mostly by not destroying them). I think we in the church have gotten off track, thinking sometimes that the Bible is old fashioned and did not really mean in our more modern world that men would be the only elders, that is just crazy talk. But is it really? I have been amazed at how the Bible can speak to me in what I am dealing with right now even as old as it is. God is everywhere and I believe His order of authority in the Bible was meant to span over all generations, it may just be a test for us to see if we are willing to obey.

Ok...that may have been a little bit of venting from me.

Married

2011-01-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

I was driving home from work listening to the radio and there was yet another program about marriages ending after the kids grow up. I have heard so many of these programs, so many of them discuss how a husband should come home from work, help the wife with housework and the kids, then they discuss how the wife should make sure to make time for the husband. It is discussed how they should have date nights, make time to talk and time to spend time together. Then almost every discussion has one woman who says, "My kids are young, it is too hard to make time, I feel that I am neglecting my kids." This always bugs the heck out of me, we have no problem with neglecting our husbands, but always think that we are neglecting our kids if we are not giving them our 100% attention. Has anyone ever wondered if by giving our kids our 100% attention we are actually neglecting them? If they are always getting our attention, they are rarely learning how to think and entertain themselves, or to think about how to please others.

Our family life has always been different. I have alway told my kids, "I love you very much, but you are some day going to grow up and leave to live your own life, but your dad is always going to be here with me, so he comes first." None of my kids give off the impression that they feel any less loved, because they know that I love their dad first. I feel that I am also setting an example to them of how they should treat their own spouse someday.

It comes down to this in my eyes, I REALLY love my husband. Something inside of me still gets excited knowing he is coming home from work, and I look forward to the attention he gives me. I work hard to make sure the house is fairly clean, usually with the help of my kids and we start cleaning about 30 minutes before he comes home. (I even did this when my kids were young, they got excited too that daddy was coming home.) I try to have dinner almost done, or at least started, before he gets home. I do all this because when he gets home I want to give him my full attention. I want to relax with him eating dinner or watching a show. I want be ready to go to any meetings we need to go to. I can remember a time when I use to continue to work on the house after he got home, and I missed that time with him. It is hard for me to sit still sometimes, but I love our time in the evenings together. I think everyone is more relaxed knowing that we are going to eat dinner, watch a TV show, or even finish up a school project, all this we do together, in our living room. All of my family is in the living room most evenings together, except when the older kiddos are at practice or us adults are at a meeting, and that is a good feeling.

There is an old Good House Keeping article that was from the 1950's that I have seen passed around. It talks about the man being the king of the house and how the wife and kids should try to make the home a pleasant place for him. (Now there are some parts I don't agree with about the husband not having to come home and the wife should not question him on this.) I think too often we have forgotten our place as a wife. I am suppose to be submissive to my husband, to do things to make our home a comfortable environment and to please my husband. In return, he is to love me like Christ loved the church. I am glad my husband is the head of our household, he treats me like a queen and I treat him like my king. I am glad that after almost 19 years I can still say this, I still feel like a teenager in love. I can only hope that my kids will get to feel this way for their future spouse and that they will be able to tell their kids, "I love you very much, but your mother/father still comes first."

I'm Sorry

2011-01-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

I'm Sorry, is that 2 words or 3? No matter how many there are, they can be the hardest words to say sometimes, but the words we most long to hear sometimes. Even at a young age it is really hard to say these words. I can remember trying to get my little ones to say "sorry" to a sibling they had just hurt, or even to someone else that they did something to that they should not have. I have watched other parents try to get their little ones to just say "I'm sorry" and then they would no longer be in trouble, but those mouths seem to clamp shut and their eyes seem to lock and there is no way they are saying anything. Why in the world is it so hard to say such simple words? Even as parents, we find there are times that we have messed up, grounded or punished when maybe we should not have and it is time for us to say those words to our children. Then there comes the time to say them to our spouse, even if we did not realize we did something that hurt them or if we did know and did it anyways.

Personally, I tend to be an apologizing kind of person. I like to smooth things over and keep peace. It doesn't always go as smoothly as I want it to. Although, I have had to make myself say I was sorry to the kiddos a few times and I did find that harder. It was like really admitting I was wrong and made me feel really low, but I then realized it was something they needed to see, the needed the example and as much as I hate being wrong, it happens.

I really realized how good the words can be when they are said to you last week. I had never really thought about it and I have had people say sorry to me before, but there are sometimes the words come across more real. When you have to tell someone you think they owe you an apology and they immediately say one, it really doesn't feel real. Yet, when someone realizes on their own and says those words, it can feel so soothing. Still, we have to choose to accept the words, decide to forgive and then work past the hurt to move on to healing, which can be a whole another thing entirely...lol.

Birthdays

2011-01-08T05:37:00.000-08:00

I have the coolest new sewing table that was a gift made by my hubby for my birthday. I was going to take a picture to post here, but right now I have tons of sewing stuff stacked on top of it and nobody will be able to see the table. If I actually get it cleaned up, then I will definitely post a picture, my hubby did a great job.

I have decided I don't like Birthdays any more. I am horrible at remembering other people's birthdays, which means I rarely wish them a happy birthday or get them a gift. One of these days I am going to make a calendar just with every birthday I know. But what I really dislike is my own birthday. I start looking forward to my birthday usually a month before it happens, I am usually waiting to see what someone is going to do for me, not that I really know what I want done, but with a birthday close to Thanksgiving and Christmas, not much is ever done. The day comes and goes without much fanfare, which is to be expected. After all, I am the mom, I am the one who is suppose to do the nice things for everyone. Maybe it is just part of being a mom. Then I also wonder to myself, if I want something more special for my birthday, maybe those around me do too? Maybe I need to start looking at ways to wish those around me a better birthday? I could always start this year off by remembering other people's birthdays, hmmm...that is a thought.

Still, I should not complain, my husband worked in secret to make me a custom sewing table to fit in a small corner of our bedroom that gives me more space than I had before and my "5th" child, Claudia from across the street insisted that her mother buy me a portable coffee mug since she sees me take coffee to work every morning when she comes over to catch the bus. I didn't get to go out for dinner to a restaurant, but I did have dinner with my small group at a friend's house. Maybe it is just my weird expectations that get in the way of me enjoying my birthday?

If today is your birthday,

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY"

A Day at home by myself!

2011-01-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

I think this is a first in a really long time, I have they day at home all by myself. I really should be getting more stuff done, but it is feeling so good to be lazy. I am planning to try and move things around in the little girls' room. I am working on laundry today as well, I must say my new washer and dryer hold so many clothes that I am not nearly as behind in laundry as I usually am.

Last night I started dreaming about the next dress I want to make. My mom got me a gift card to JoAnn Fabrics for Christmas, then I had a 20% off coupon, plus the clearance fabric was 50% off, so I really got some good deals. I got some really filmy brown material that I have decided I am going to make me a new regency dress. I will have to layer it with something under it because it is so thin. I am not as fond of the regency dresses, but I am getting excited about this new dress idea. I want to make it fancy and do some cool things with the sleeves. It was hard to sleep last night because my mind was racing with ideas, now I just need to get started. I will make sure to post some pictures when I get started.

I do believe life is going to get back to normal for me. Work was really crazy for November and December, but it should be slowing down, I think. Of course we are getting ready to head into a busy season of Winter Percussion contests and other school like things. Does life really ever slow down? And I am really not sure what normal is for me around here...lol.

The season is closed!

2010-11-11T14:49:00.001-08:00

Our official re-enacting season is finished for this year. We ended on a cold but beautiful weekend. Friday night was just freezing! The girls slept in our big tent with our big heater, Dwayne and I slept in Sari's tent, and Brighton slept in his diamond fly. My feet froze all night, Dwayne woke up at one point and stated that we needed more wool blankets, that one blanket was not enough. I told him that he was suppose to have FOUR blankets, so then I had to find all the blankets he had kicked off. Brighton woke up Saturday morning with frost on his socks...that just happened to be on his feet! The sun came out on Saturday and warmed us all up. Saturday night we talked Brighton into sleeping in the big tent and Dwayne and I used our 2 small propane heaters to warm up our smaller tent. Sunday was another beautiful day and we were able to pack up in record time. This is a very low maintenance weekend, the event provides dinner for us on Saturday night, so I did not even have much cooking to do. Our new friends this year brought us some yummy snacks and we really just enjoyed winding down from a great season.

3 Events down...1 to go...

2010-10-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

It has been a good time. We have had some wonderful events so far and we are looking for to the last one coming up on November 5th. I did not get as much made as I wanted to. Working, keeping up with the kiddos and the house, and then just attending and preparing for each event has taken a toll on my time. The little girl's had just enough clothing to make it through the weekends, Brighton is seriously in need of new clothes, but I was able to purchase a used wool coat off of a friend that will get Brighton through this year.

I took the hem out of Dora and Tobi's blue dresses this year,
so Tobi wore that quite a bit.

Brighton looked awesome in the used coat that I bought off of Dennis,
or as we call him...Uncle Dennis.

I added some hook and eyes to Sari's Regency gowns and I think that will make them look much better on her. There has always been a gap on the back with just tying them. Plus, Dwayne looks awesome in his new purple homespun shirt.

My girls are begging for something here, but they look cute with me anyways.

First week of school...first week of work...

2010-08-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

I have finished my first full week of work and by 3:30pm tomorrow my kiddos will be home from their first full week of school. I think we have all done well with this week. First off, my kiddos have done the dishes and straightened up the living room without being asked every day this week. I think that is awesome!!! Plus, I think, notice I said think...not know, that every one has been doing their homework every day. This is such a good start! I am enjoying my 8am to 1pm work day. I know it has been about 5 years since I have done any medical coding, but it is coming back to me so quickly and I am really enjoying it. Today the weather was slightly cooler making me want to actually cook again, so I made us some cubed steak, asparagus and french fries. Dwayne took all the kiddos outside to help him set up all our canvas tents so they could air out before our first re-enactment. We will all probably sleep out in the tents this weekend. I am so excited. It also makes me realize that I really need to sew. Tobi's bodice is pretty much done. So, Saturday I will probably show Dora how to finish the eye holes for the lacing on it while I make a bodice for her.

Dwayne and I were discussing how nice it is to know that we will have 4 weekend camping trips set aside this fall for our family. We camp with another family or 2 and that makes it so much fun. It is funny how when you tell people that you can't do something because you are camping, they don't always take it serious, but when you tell people that you are re-enacting, then that is different. Which is true, re-enactments are only available at certain times. I am just thankful that we are into the re-enactments, because we can always depend on these 4 weekends for our family when all the rest of our lives are stay so busy.

My Sewing Project

2010-07-28T06:48:00.003-07:00

I am working on a new bodice for Tobi, this is just being pieced together. I have one half sewn together and the other half is ready to be sewn together. I still need to cut out a new bodice for Dora. Right now I have been taking stitches out of material that I have bought at rummage sales. I love picking up curtains and table cloths at rummage sales that I can use to make clothing from, I have to find 100% natural material, cottons, linens and silks. I am always searching for any material I can find,
and I keep it stored up for when I need it for the next project.

My Garden!

2010-07-28T06:38:00.001-07:00

Just a few things out of my garden this year!
Dwayne has built me this most awesome fenced in garden with
a cute little gate. I am learning a few things this year,
like next year I will not plant pumpkins, because they have
taken over my garden. Plus, I really need to get in and keep it weeded. I am really enjoying my tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and the occasional green bean. I should have enough today to make a small batch of salsa, with even my own home grown cilantro.
I am so grateful to Dwayne for building me the garden,
so that no rabbits could invade it.

Marching Band!

2010-07-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

Band Season!
I have 3 kiddos in band this year and they are doing great!
I love being involved with the band and helping out. I have many years ahead of me in band. I am not a musically talented person, but I love watching my family perform. We are still waiting to see what Tobi is going to do, but I am thinking she may go into guard, which would be a new world for me. This year Sari is the Drum Major, which has to be a proud moment for Dwayne, because he was a Drum Major as well. Brighton is playing Baritone and is doing well with it. Dora is doing well in her first year of marching band playing Trumpet. She is the shortest one out there, but she keeps up well with everyone.

A Great Weekend!

2010-07-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have begun on my sewing projects. After taking lunch to my band kiddos, I started working on new re-enacting clothes for Tobi, I got a new bodice and skirt cut out for her. I also did some cleaning on my sewing desk to make it easier to work on projects that are up coming. Brighton definitely needs a new wool coat and a new work shirt. After dinner with Brighton and Dora, Dwayne and I went over to our friend's house to hang out and I took along my sewing basket. It is so easy to sit and chat while I take out stitches, so I took out stitches on two items for Tobi since she as grown so much this year. It was so nice to sit out on our friend's back porch, enjoy conversation, and the wonderful view at their house. We hung out for a couple of hours, traded humorous stories, and shared our views on different subjects concerning God. I love talking about God, I love thinking outside the normal box that people try so hard to put God in, being with people who want to serve and grow in Christ, and who just need to relax on a beautiful night that God has given us to enjoy.

Sunday morning brought church and it is my Sunday to run our visual part of church. I went in early to finish up some of my slide presentations. I love working in the audio visual department of our church. This is just awesome to me! This past week, I also did the visual and the audio for Vacation Bible School, which was a stretch for me, since I don't normally do the audio side. I love learning the new stuff. At church today, we actually had a power outage half way through the first service, but it happened during the offering and the open worship time. So, although Satan could have been messing with our worship service and try to mess with us, God redeemed it during the perfect time that it did not mess too much up for the church service. We were able to quickly bring everything back up to what was needed to push the service out online. In case anyone is ever looking for a church service online, check out www.farmlandfriends.org on Sundays. I work the visual slide shows every first and third Sundays of the month. I really love working this area. I would work it more often, but I need to give other people a chance to serve as well. Today was also important to me, since Dwayne was talking about his trip to Kenya. It was a wonderul service about traveling to different countries for missions. I know my kiddos all want to travel to different countries to serve God and I am excited for that. Even though I have not felt the call to go to another country on a mission trip yet, today I really wanted to go to another country to adopt a child. Some day I see our family adopting children from other cultures and loving them, but not sure when it will come to true. I am grateful for the good weekend. Dwayne got more work done on his woodworking workshop out in the garage, I got some work done on my sewing and listening to Mars Hill church sermons, the kiddos worked on band stuff and got to relax, and to finish the weekend off we will be heading over to my grandparent Wright's house to celebrate their 75th Birthdays. I can't wait to see what we get done this next week!

Time To Sew...

2010-07-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Kids grow, we all know this, but this year I am really noticing it. I make all of our re-enacting clothes and Tobi is showing me that it looks like it is time for some new clothes.

Things are just looking short on her this year. I might be able to get away with some short skirts and chemises, but I am thinking at least one outfit that is longer is going to be wise at this point. Just wait until Dora gets home from band and tries on her clothes, that will be another new outfit probably. And what are the chances that any of Brighton's clothes fit from last year?? Not very good...lol. Yep, I really have some sewing to do and I am excited about it!

My Christmas gift

2010-01-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

I really had planned to slow down on my reading and to get busy with other things in my house, but then my wonderful hubby got me a Kindle for Christmas. I didn't even know I wanted one and now I am trying to remember how I lived without one...lol. To have a book always at my fingertips, never having to wait til I go to town to buy one, to be able to increase the text size so that I can read while I am doing other things, this thing is just amazing! My hubby really does spoil me.

Reading!

2009-12-17T05:39:00.001-08:00

I have been reading. I have been reading way too much. I have put off important things that need to be done, just to lose myself in a book. I really love to read, I can read the longest books in just a day or two. My husband has been very understanding, and I really appreciate that. I think I am finally coming to the end of my constant reading, and I actually want to do something that produces results that everyone can see. There was a time in my marriage that my husband actually had to strongly recommend that I not read, it was way back when my 2 oldest were much younger. I would not even look at books, I had to train myself to not even wonder what wonderful stories were out there that I might be missing. Then as the kids got older, I started reading some of the books they were reading, like Harry Potter and Twilight. I proved I was capable of doing both, reading and taking care of my family. Yet, lately, I have retreated into my constant reading stage, you would think I know better. So, I am going to work on other stuff today and try not to read much. One good thing from my love of reading, is that I have always highly encouraged my kiddos to read, and they are all big readers. I hear parents complain about their kiddos not reading and I don't say anything, this has never nor will it ever be a problem for me.

Life got messed up...

2009-11-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

So, we had a great time in Goshen. It was a little frustrating setting our stuff up in the rain, but we pulled together and with some help form our re-enacting buddies we got it all set up and we all slept in the main tent that first night. It was chilly and rainyish on Friday, so the school kids came a little later. There were no battles, because not enough indians showed up across the way for us to fight against. That was fine, the guys showed the students the guns and how they shot, explained pirate life and I even showed them how to keep a fire going with my cool blow tube. I got my picture in the Elkhart newspaper even...so cool! We even got to do a tiny bit of shopping and met a new guy that sold the coolest pewter buttons. We invited him to come visit our camp and he enjoyed biscuits and gravy with us Saturday morning. By the end of the weekend we had bought $30 worth of buttons, but they were so cool. Saturday was still chilly and had bits of rain, but we got some visitors which was really nice. Sunday was just a positively beautiful day!! The sun was out and it was warming up. This was great because it made packing up so much easier. I will try and post some pictures from the weekend soon.

Then Monday happened! Like so many Mondays after a re-enactment, we were all tired, so I let the kiddos sleep in until 7am instead of getting them up at 6:30am and just planned to take them to school. Sari left in her car to head off to school while I got the kiddos ready to take. Dwayne had some extra work that needed to be done, so he was staying home as well. Then came the phone call, the call you really never want to get, a police officer telling you that your child has just been in an accident and you need to come and be with her. We all loaded up into the van, not knowing what to expect, it was not pretty, the whole front of the car was totalled and my darling daughter was covered in blood, but she was walking. She had done some serious damage to her mouth, she knew it was her fault, she was upset and sorry, but from what we could tell no one was seriously hurt, no one left the scene with the ambulance. After chatting with the EMT, we decided to take Sari to the dentist to have her mouth looked at. Getting home we decided her nose needed to be looked at as well, we went off to to a walk-in clinic and discovered that yes, she did have a broken nose and a nice gash in her chin that needed stitched up and then went off to the dentist. One look at her and he sent us off to the emergency room because he said the jaw was definitely broken and there was nothing he could do. One cat scan later proved that her jaw was broken in 3 areas which sent us off to Indy to another doctor because there was no one at Ball hospital that could help us. We got lost trying to find the hospital we were suppose to be at, we finally got there and you could tell they were waiting very excitedly for Sari, they were IUPUI students and they were ready to tackle this broken jaw. The 2 students we got, quickly put Sari to ease, the female doctor was foreign, we are thinking German, was Sari's absolute favorite, but the male doctor was very nice trying to explain things to me. I laugh, because each time we go in, they still call me mom instead of by my name. They tried to close her jaw that day in the office, but it could not be done without causing too much pain, so we went back on Wednesday for her to be put under and have it closed. She has now had her jaw wired shut for just over 2 weeks and has 4 more weeks to go. We go back to the office each week to have her looked at, where she gets to see her favorite doctor. The liquid diet she is on is hard, but she is keeping up good spirits through it all and I am very proud of her. Dwayne has joined her on her diet, which is very good of him, but very hard on him. I am struggling with even wanting to cook, so I am looking into more soup like recipes. I am sure my family will be tired of soup, but oh well, we are all trying to show the best support that we can.

So, this has kind of set us back some. We have some serious bills to be paying off, but such is the way of life. We are just glad that Sari is healthy and alive. Life is finally settling back down into a regular routine for us. It has been nice to see God's hand in all this, a very good reminder to us, since sometimes you can forget that God has His hand in your life at all times.

Caffeine is Great!

2009-10-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

I just love a good peppermint latte with extra whip cream from Starbucks. I have them from other places and they are good, but still not Starbucks worthy. Just had to share that.

Yesterday started out early...really early. Dwayne got up at 4:30am to work, I got up not too long after him to get the day started. After everyone left, I had my pile of stuff to do. I spent the better part of the morning working on bills and budget stuff....yay...so fun! Then I had to go grocery shopping. This should be fun, to go shopping without anyone with me. There use to be a time where I could not wait to do this by myself, but now that I do so much by myself, it is just not fun. Plus, no matter how fast you are, it always takes hours to get things done in Muncie...yuck! My treat to myself when I was done was a Grande Peppermint Latte with extra whip cream and cream cheese danish to go from Starbucks. This was my 3rd cup of coffee for the day. When I got home and put away the groceries, I did not feel like doing any of the stuff on my list, I just wanted to play on the computer. But then all of a sudden the caffeine kicked in and I was off. I got my chilli made, bagged and froze, got the sausage all cooked and froze. I packed up all the clothes into the trailer, even packed up the table. I drove the kids crazy and made Dwayne laugh at me, I think they all hid from me for awhile, until dinner was ready and then they had to be back around me. But I felt good with what was done.

Now, today is my baking day. I have already got bread mixing in the bread machine on the dough cycle. Bread machines are wonderful. I never cook the bread in them, just use them for their dough cycle, then I shape the dough how I want, let it rise one last time and bake it in my oven. I even used one bread machine until it died. I have to do up dishes, make cupcakes, pancakes, more bread and pack up food. We leave tonight for Goshen. I know it is suppose to be chilly and rainy, but I can't help it, I am still excited. Don't you feel sorry for my hubby, he has to put up with my giddiness when I am like this...poor guy!

I will try to get pictures posted from the weekend early next week.

Busy day ahead.

2009-10-21T05:40:00.000-07:00

My day was really busy yesterday. I got 2 more things marked off my list, plus the normal day to day chores. I watched my 2 little buddies, one who refused to take an afternoon nap, poor guy. Plus, I went to watch Dora at her Spell Bowl meet. I took some hand sewing with me to make the time go faster. As soon as her meet was done, I rushed her home, dropped her off and headed off to a band booster meeting that I was at until after 8pm, then finally got to come home to a little bit of dinner that my kiddos left me. Whew....busy day, but today is not much different.

We will be leaving tomorrow for our 3rd re-enactment of the season. This is the first time we have ever tried doing 4 re-enactments in less than 2 months. It is tiring. Today I will be cooking and freezing some of our food for the weekend, grocery shopping, taking apart our table to be packed, and packing up clothing for the weekend. Tomorrow I will spend the day baking fresh bread and cupcakes for the weekend. I am looking forward to the weekend, but since this is the first time we have done this event, I am a little nervous how it will go. Plus, the weather looks bleak for us this weekend, rain on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but it is suppose to be dry on Sunday. Well as dry as it can be after 3 days of rain. It should be interesting setting up in rain, and packing up after 3 days of rain...yuck.

3 things done...

2009-10-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

I was able to get 3 things marked off my list yesterday. My bedroom looks so much better now. Even my hubby was deeply impressed. So impressed that he thinks I should be able to get lots of cleaning done each day...silly, silly man. I have little buddies hanging out with me today, but I am sure I will be able to do something else to mark off my list...

Getting to that point...

2009-10-19T04:55:00.000-07:00

It always amazes me how long I can go before things really start to bug me, but I think I have finally hit that point. My poor hubby has to put up with a lot, because he would seriously be a clean freak if it were not for me. I can let things go way too long before I decide it is time for a good cleaning. It has been kind of hard to get use to being home while the kiddos are at school and to try to figure out exactly what I should be doing during the day. I am noticing messes piling up and today I will begin to unravel the messes and get rid of some things. It is going to take a lot of will power to stay on task, but if I make a list of projects that need to be cleaned and just take it one mess at a time, it will feel good to have it done.

On another note, we have another re-enactment coming up this weekend. We will be driving up to Goshen, IN for our first time at the Gathering at Five Medals. I am sure the weather will be colder, but I have heard it might warm up some, so we will just have to see. I have looked at my past pictures and I really plan to get some pictures of all of us in our clothes. I would really like to get another family picture. I really want a new picture of me so that I can use it on my facebook profile. Dwayne has been working on some new projects that I am very excited about. He made a new bench to use inside the tent, but being the practical man that he is, he made it so that it is a box as well, and it will hold a lot of my dry foods. We needed a bench to sit on to get dressed in the morning. It is really hard to sit on rope bed. I would like to get a linen chemise made this week, but I really should have done that last week. This goes back to the not getting done what I should be doing during the day while everyone is gone. Dwayne also made me a tiny, but sturdy little stool that I will be able to use when I am working on the fire. He has been busy.

Well, I better get started on my day and really hope to have some good clothing pictures to upload next week!

Another weekend of fun...

2009-10-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend at Mississinewa 1812. We tend to stay very busy at this weekend event. Dwayne and Sari participated in the River Pirate battles, with our friends Dave and Matt. Sari does a great job carrying the black powder for the cannon.

Our weekend had a rainy start with a thunderstorm on Thursday night. We stayed warm and dry in our tent with our wool blankets. It was muddy on Friday morning and the wood was damp, which made some difficulties get our morning fire started and breakfast very late. Thank goodness Dwayne was able to get us some straw to cover up the mud in our camp area. I don't mind dirt, but I am not fond of mud.

The days were cool, which was so nice, because we finally got to use some of our wool clothing. We had a bit rain each night. We had planned to use our new stove, I even sewed an insert into our tent for the stove pipe this summer, but really we did fine without it. I am sure it will be needed at the next event which is coming up on Oct. 23rd.

We enjoyed a great deal of shopping over the weekend. We got some new items that will make a nice addition to our camp, a new iron grill to cook on, some new shoes, new wool gloves and a pair of iron tongs that I really wanted.

We were sorry that Brighton missed the weekend, but he was off at Washington DC with his class. He had a good time, but was disappointed when he heard we had the cool weather. Now we just look forward the the next event. Here are a few pictures from our weekend.

Dora and Cody play on the river.

Sari and Sari go off to the dance with our friend Dennis, I was way too tired to go, so it was nice to have a friend take the girls.

How beautiful Sari and Sara look for the dance Saturday night.

Our Captain Bob, the big attraction to our camp.

Miss Longnecker with Dora and Tobi. She is Tobi's first grade teacher and Dora's Spell Bowl coach.

A little time in the boat, but it was a little hard to get out of it.

Dinner time! Please excuse non-period dinner, tacos can be a very easy camping dinner.

We really enjoy pulling our tables out to do our meal together.

Sari was the powder wench again this weekend for the cannon crew.

A good picture of our cooking area. Dwayne warms himself, while our water heats up.

Koh-koh-mah 2009

2009-09-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

We had our first event of our re-enacting season. I have been keeping busy sewing since the kiddos have started school. I still have lots that I want to work on, but I am trying to go at a slower pace so that I don't get burned out and not want to sew at all after the events are done. I have been diving into more research about fabric and clothing styles lately, reading blogs about other peoples projects and it only makes me want to sew more. I am lucky to have kiddos who love to do this with us, because I love making them clothes that they enjoy wearing for the whole weekend. I am quickly finding that I will have to make me some more clothes, because I did not have anything to change much this weekend and I really want some new stuff. Sari loves the regency clothing, which we could not wear at Koh-Koh-Mah, due to it being French & Indiana War, which is pre-regency time.

I have uploaded a few pictures from our September 18th thru 20th Koh-Koh-Mah event, there are tons more, maybe I will upload more later. I also have our Mississinewa 1812 pictures to upload soon, but I haven't even started on those yet.

Dora in her period correct cloak, with her non-period correct T-shirt...lol.

Dwayne headed down earlier on Thursday than I did, he took the 3 younger kiddos, while I waited on Sari to finish trying out for the school play and finish up my own last minute projects. There is something about trying to get everything ready for that first event, it takes me forever and I run around trying to remember what all we might possibly need. Sari and I got there just as everything was unloaded and the kiddos were all hungry. Dwayne headed back home to do some work that came up last minute, he came back Friday afternoon. Anyways, the group of us went out for some pizza, then I brought back the new guy, Dennis, with me and my kiddos, while everyone else went shopping. I still had to make beds up and get things set up to be ready for the Friday school day. That was not much fun trying to do in candle light. On the ride back to camp, I apologized to Dennis about the randomness of my kiddos, they jump from one subject to the next without even a pause, he made the comment that the randomness was nothing, but he was amazed that they never stopped talking. I listened for a moment and I guess I am so use to it that I didn't realize that between the 4 of them there is never a quiet moment, when one stops talking another one starts and sometimes they don't even wait for the other ones to stop talking. Just goes to prove how good I am at multi-tasking, because I can keep track of all their discussions. I really have no idea where those kiddos get their talkativeness. Anyways, back to camp, we all changed for bed, putting away our modern clothes for until we packed up on Sunday.

Tobi sits around the fire, we all smell so much of smoke by the end of the weekend, there is just no way around it, but we love the smell of camp. I cooked breakfast everyday, which was a lot of fun for me. I love cooking over a campfire. My mom got me a cast iron tea kettle which holds lots of water for doing the dishes, that is a huge help.

Our new friend, Dennis, stands in front of his tent. We made so much fun of him because he kept bringing out stuff to set out to sell and we could not figure where it all came from in that small tent. Dora, Brighton and even Tobi helped man his selling blanket. He paid them a small amount for their time, but they just enjoyed having something to do.

Dora takes a few moments to rest on the beautiful Saturday. The only bad thing about this weekend was the dusty dirt that was just everywhere. The weather was quite nice.

Sari spends some time playing with Tobi and Cody. Cody is the son of our friends, Dave and Tammy. They have been re-enacting a lot longer than us and they have been very helpful as we try to figure out the right stuff we need. Cody loves playing with my kiddos, and Sari does such a good job entertaining the younger ones.

Here is a picture of our kitchen table, obviously I have not done the dishes yet, I must have been avoiding the work ahead of me. I bring snacky foods that can be set out to snack on all day long, cupcakes, grapes, and bread.

Dwayne and Brighton are getting ready for the day. Check out my new red kitchen cabinet back there. My hubby did an awesome job making that for me this past winter. It stores so much of my stuff and has tons of room to work as well.

Dennis had a lot of fun letting Brighton try out some of his clothes. Brighton really enjoyed this since usually only the girls get to dress up in cool clothes and because he is growing so fast I don't make him anything fancy. Dennis was just about Brighton's size and had tons of clothes with him.

Brighton looks very flamboyant here...

This is an inside look at our tent. The little girls bunk beds.

This is how close they sleep to our rope bed.

These 3 stacked boxes are our dresser, they come apart to be carried separately, but hold a great deal of our clothes. Dwayne worked hard on these as well this past winter. After this weekend he had to make Sari her own trunk for her great many clothes.

Here is an inside look to our rope bed. It is more comfortable than it looks, although we are going to have to make some modifications soon. Still need to get things worked out with it to make it a little more comfortable for Dwayne.

It was really a great weekend. We really love doing this. I love making the clothes. We have our 3rd event coming up in the next few weeks and I plan to take pictures of the kiddos in their outfits to show off all the new things I have made.

So much for daily updates...

2009-07-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

Around our house things stay busy. The kiddos last day of school was June 12th, after a busy weekend, they headed off to my parent's house on Monday, June 15th. On Wednesday, June 17th, I got rid of our 2 cats....they had just pushed me too far, and then I picked my kiddos up from my parents on Thursday, June 18th and broke the news to them about the cats. They took it well.

We had another good and busy weekend, the kiddos and I packed up the van and headed out to Georgia to visit a friend of mine. Twelve and half hours later we arrived in Georgia. My kiddos travel great!!! Even with the fact that we have no air conditioning in our van....I know, I know...this is just horrible of me, but I don't do well with air conditioning and my poor kiddos suffer because of it. They did great though, no real fighting, we only had 3 stops and they did not complain, what more can a mom ask for??? We spent our first day just hanging out at my friend's house, then on Wednesday we headed to Tybee Island over by Savannah, GA. At first we had trouble finding a parking place, because the place my friend normally parks at was closed because they were filming a disney movie, so we had to find another parking area. Once we got parked we headed out to the beach. I must say, I am not fond of sand....I know...I know, I'm weird, people tell me all the time and I'm ok with that....lol. We spent 2 hours on the beach and I'm sure the kids would have spent more time, but we really wanted to head back into Savannah and check out some of the historical sights before we started the 3 hour car drive back to my friend's house. Savannah is very cool! We only got a small taste of the history, but it was fascinating. We spent Thursday chilling at my friend's house, so we would be rested up for the 12 hour drive on Friday back home. Once again...my kiddos did great on the drive home. Dora and Brighton only got a little restless as we got near home, but still the kiddos traveled great. We did those 12 hours again, with only 3 stops....amazing!

We got home late Friday night, and even though we had been in the car for over 30 hours in 5 days, we still wanted to do something on Saturday. Off to Conner Prairie on Saturday we went. With a family our size it only cost us a dollar more to get a family year membership, so I am betting the kiddos and I will take some days this summer and go back. It was a great day!

Monday, June 29 Dora went back to violin lessons, this very good for her to keep up with this summer. The week was an easier week for us. I have been sewing again and it feels so good. I made Brighton a new shirt and fitted a pair of Dwayne's pants britches that were big to fit Brighton, started a new wisket(vest) for Brighton, and finished a chemise for me. The fourth of July weekend was a good one. The kiddos spent Friday night with Dwayne's parents and we picked them up early on Saturday to do a day trip to Corydon, IN for a re-enactment...no comments on that one....lol. The day trip ended early, so after picking up some "regular" clothes for Dwayne and I, we went to an Imax theatre to watch Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen. Brighton was sooooo excited. It was a good movie, I could have done without some parts of showing off people's bodies, but oh well. Another late night home met with a late morning. Sunday was spent lazy like...just a nice grilled linner as Dora calls it (lunch + dinner = linner) and lots of movies. We had to head to bed early because Dwayne has to be up early for work.

Now, we are heading into the month of July full of marching band practices and contests. It will be a busy time for my family, but we are looking forward to it. I can't believe how quickly the summer is going already, but at least we are enjoying it!

3 months later...

2009-06-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, how horrible of me...3 months and I have not even touched my blog. Life has changed so much in the past few months. I am no longer employed, my hubby is calling me a burden on society. I may look for another job in the fall, it will depend on a few things. I am finally getting ready to sew again, starting today right after this blog. My kiddos are begging for new re-enacting clothes (although the vote is that Sari has to be last, because she already has so many clothes...) I have promised a couple of pieces of clothing to some friends as well, so I have my work cut out for me. I am discovering there is so much that needs to be done, that just has not gotten done since I was always busy working. I have also been painting and I will continue to do that soon. I think I might get my kiddos all involved to help me paint when they are all home again.

Next week the kiddos and I are heading down to Georgia to see a very good friend of mine. I have been telling her how much I want to come and see her since she moved down there, but we have never been able to work it out. I thought there would be no way this summer either, until I suddenly quit my job and what do you know, I finally had some time.

Starting in July the 2 older kiddos will start their band duties. I am very excited for them! I can't wait to see how the little Monroe Central Band will do this year, although this may be one of the last summer that they are little, there are lots of band kids coming into the band over the next few years.

Well, there is just a little update, I really hope to be doing a much better job of keeping up my blog this summer. I really want to post some of my sewing projects and share some band video of my kiddos.

Hoping for a good day...

2009-03-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

Oh what a beautiful Saturday! I don't have to work, which is nice. I really enjoy my work, but I also enjoy these days off. I really wanted to travel with my hubby and daughter to the percussion contest they were going to, but my son has hunter's education today, so I was needed here at home. I have decided to make the most of it...well...sometime soon I am going to make the most out of it. Today will just be me and my 2 youngest kiddos. I have so many projects I want to get done and I rarely have a whole day to work on anything, so I am really hoping I won't waste this time I have. Dwayne won't be home until late, Brighton will be spending the night at a birthday party and the the girls can entertain themselves...until it is time to eat at least. Maybe we will even watch some movies...who knows...the sky is the limit for us...

Funny Story...

2009-02-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

Last night before my ceramics class I decided I needed to get a little bit of shopping done. I headed over to Target, got the few little things I needed and a few things I didn't need. I still had 30 minutes to spare, so I thought I would head down to Starbucks for my FAVORITE drink...a peppermint latte with extra whipped cream. But I got distracted by Rallys on my way there and decided I was hungry and a cherry coke...my other favorite drink...would be good as well. So, I pull in, order a small cherry coke, small fry, and plain cheeseburger...I was trying to keep it cheap. I pull up to pay and wait for my food. The guy hands out a bag and in it is a sandwich and a fry...well, it looks right, so I drive off. I eat my fries on the way to class, because I hate cold fries and then park in the parking to eat my sandwich before I head into class. As soon as I open the sandwich I smell the mayo...dang, it is not a plain sandwich, Oh well...I will eat it anyways. Then as I further exam my sandwich I discover not only is it not a plain cheeseburger, it is actually a bacon double swiss burger. YES...this is great, because I really wanted a bacon sandwich, but did not want to spend the extra money. All I had to do was take the top bun off. I decided to look at the receipt to see where the mess up happened and find out that the customer in the other lane ordered a small cherry coke, a small fry and a bacon double swiss burger. What are the chances that we would order the same thing EXCEPT just the sandwiches??? I feel really sorry for that person who got my plain cheeseburger. I definitely got the better end of the deal!!

Where has February gone??

2009-02-26T08:17:00.001-08:00

I know that time goes by fast, but there are some months that seem to go by so much faster. This final weekend of the month is jammed pack for us. Tobi has her little cheerleading show on Friday night, Saturday morning begins bright and early for Dora, Brighton and myself with Angel Food, Saturday also being Tobi's official 6th birthday, Sari has a Winter Percussion Contest, and then the day ends with Sari's first ever date going to the Sweethearts dance. Since Saturday is so busy, Tobi's little party will be on Sunday where she will have a few friends from school and probably some family over for cake and ice cream, and she WILL be the princess of the day. This weekend would also be my hubby and I's 17th anniversary, but we actually have to wait until 2012 for our next anniversary. Besides...there is no time to fit in any anniversary partying this weekend...lol.

Work has been so crazy for me lately. I am working anywhere from 3 to 5 days a week, depending on what needs to be done. This has left little time to work on my sewing projects that I have lined up. I am taking full advantage of my day home today and I am finally sewing again. Isn't it hard sometimes when you have a hobby you just love to do, but you can't find the time to do it? I really appreciate my wonderful hubby for putting up with my sewing equipment in the living room all the time. This is really hard for my super clean freak husband. I must say, he handles it all well. I can't wait to spend another 17 years with him...and more!

I am so proud!

2009-02-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

I just spent the whole day in Muncie waiting and watching two of my kiddos perform at the solo and ensemble contests. Lucky for all of us, we got to drop Dora and Tobi off at grandma's house or we would have been listening to how bored they were. Sari's group 3 trio received a gold, Brighton's group 4 solo received a gold and Sari's group 1 solo received a silver. It was a good day for them. I never did anything like this when I was growing up, especially since I am not in any way musically inclined, but Dwayne did lots of these contests and he loves seeing his kiddos doing well at them.

Snow Day #2

2009-01-29T05:50:00.000-08:00

So, I got a wonderful surprise this week, instead of working 4 days, I only have to work 2 days, only Monday and Friday. I have been working Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays lately, but this week I got 3 whole days off in a row...what a luxury! But then what happened???? Snow...Lots and Lots of Snow!!!! So, now on 2 of my off days I have had the pleasure of having a house full of kiddos...where is the fairness in that??? I have still gotten things done, the kids really keep to themselves for the most part, playing here, playing out there in the snow...watching a movie for a few, reading the latest book that interests them. Sari, Dora, Tobi and I watched a slide show of prom dresses yesterday that girls made themselves and entered into a contest last year through JoAnn Fabrics. That was kind of fun. I worked on pillows for the youth room which are almost done. I am enjoying the time with kiddos, really I am...lol.

Ready to sew...

2009-01-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

I had high hopes for this week. A whole week with the kids in school and me not having to go to work...what more could a mom ask for? My thoughts were totally centered on sewing. I wanted to spend the whole week sewing. I don't think I had touched my sewing machine since I made this wonderful dress for Sari.

After making the dress my mom went into the hospital, holidays happened and my sewing machine got pushed back into a corner. I then thought I would get back to sewing last week, but I really don't know where that week went, but it went somewhere. I found out last week that I was going to get this week off as well and my first thought was...Yea, I will be able to sew while the kiddos are away at school. Monday came, and I quickly discovered what a mess my house had become. There were holiday leftovers to clean out of my frig, laundry to do, and a hall closet that needed cleaned up since some stupid mouse had invaded. Ok...Tuesday will be as good as any other...I will start sewing Tuesday. Nope...no such luck. Between laundry, hanging out with my little buddy, Kaden and way too many hours playing on Webkinz, I still got no sewing done. But today...Today I am determined and I have already dusted off the sewing machine. I have a few small projects that need finishing before I start some new big stuff. First thing first...I had to fix Tobi's favorite hat. I don't know how it got ripped, some fight between to little girls, I try not to ask questions. Here is her fixed hat...

Next I finished up Dwayne's 18th century work shirt. I started this shirt before Sari's dress, I was about 80% done when Sari's dress took priority. So, this seriously had to be done, Dwayne has really been wanting this shirt. I will be making one of these shirts for his dad as well, but not today, I need to get some measurements before I start that one. I plan to make a bunch of these shirts to sell this next year at the 1812 re-enactment.

Next will be about 12 large pillows for the youth room. It will have to wait until Friday, because I was just reminded yesterday that I signed up to be a chaperone for a 7th grade field trip...that should be fun.

Even without any motivation...

2008-12-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

I was able to get some serious work done today!!! My Christmas decorations are all put up, I am down to about 3 loads of laundry and my house looks cleaner...all without motivation...that is pretty good for me. Dwayne laughed at me a lot, because I would wonder in and out of our room today just bugging him. I am sure he will be really glad to have me go back to work next week.

Nothing...absolutely nothing...

2008-12-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

I got nothing done today. Absolutely nothing...I had great plans, I was going to clean up my living room so that I could get to my sewing machine. I was going to do laundry so that my son could wear jeans instead of the camo pants he has had on for 2 days now. I was going to put away the Christmas decorations so that I could move around my house again. But no...it did not get done. The 3 oldest kiddos and I headed into Muncie to visit my mother in the hospital, then we had to return a few things, and by the time we got home we ate leftovers and watched the BBC version of Sense and Sensibility. Very good version by the way! Now it is close to bed time and I have not much to show for the day. I guess I will have to try again tomorrow...lol.

All Done

2008-12-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

This morning my kiddos opened the last of all the Christmas gifts...Yea! I am thinking that after we go into Muncie today we might come home and un-decorate the house from Christmas. Christmas never really felt like Christmas this year and my decorations felt very lacking, so I am very ready to get my house back to the normal order. I am really looking forward to this week, because I am not doing anything major...I am going to sew, I am going to have lunch with a good friend, I am going to spend New Year's Eve just chillin't with friends...it is all good!

What day is it?

2008-12-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

For the past month my life has been at a really fast pace...really fast. In fact, my poor hubby has been playing mommy more than daddy lately...poor guy. And now I am looking at the calendar and seeing that it is Dec. 23rd...WHAT?...already? Oh my goodness...I have so much to do, and in so little time, but hey...I don't have to go to work today...or tomorrow...or the day after that...or the day after that...I really am looking forward to a few days off. I worked every day, but two last week. It was good to know that business was doing that well, but it has worn me out. Then on my days off I tried to do Christmas shopping, but I was not very good at it. I have never gotten this close to Christmas with my shopping not finished. But now it is time for me to start cooking, and wrapping...oh well...my hubby didn't need that much for Christmas, did he? I am excited about Christmas though, I am ready to enjoy my family and relax, we have such a good time together. My kids have been working really hard on keeping the house cleaned up while I have been at work, so that much is done these days.

On another note...My mom is doing much better. I have had some really good visits with her lately, she is talking and she finally got moved out of ICU. I really want to thank everyone for their prayers, I can't imagine what might have happened without every one's prayers. She is recovering well and we look forward to seeing her come home after the new year. Thank You!

A Good Evening!

2008-12-11T05:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a good day, even though I did have to work...lol. I spent the day packaging tons of fudge, caramel popcorn that was drizzled in chocolate, caught some white chocolate pretzels coming off of a conveyor belt, and finished the day packaging regular caramel popcorn in plastic tubs and peanut brittle...lots and lots of peanut brittle. In fact, I had to leave before all the peanut brittle was done being packaged, because I had a bunch of teenage girls waiting on me at home. Why were they waiting on me? Why would I hurry home to spend time with a bunch of giggly girls? We were going out for dinner and to see the movie Twilight! I stopped by to pick up my friend Patty and then we headed out with 6 girls, my goodness they were giggly. We headed out to McDonalds for a quick dinner. It was a great time bieng with these girls, they were all good and fun to be around. We got the movie theatre in plenty of time, in fact we were the only ones in our theatre for a long time. The girls had fun deciding where to sit...very far from Patty and I was the chosen location...lol. This was fine with me, because they had all seen the movie and I had not. I did not want to listen to them drool over Edward while I was enjoying the movie. I will admit that the movie started off a little slow. At first, I was kind of disappointed in some changes made to the story for the movie, but by the end I was pleased with the way the it all went. Once the movie was over, we all loaded back up in my van and I took all the girls home. It was a very good evening, so much fun taking all those girls, and I can't wait to do it again sometime.

Better!

2008-12-09T04:59:00.001-08:00

My mother is doing better! I got to see her this weekend, she is awake, and alert. The infection is looking like it is finally under control. I am just so thankful that she is doing better, she still has a long road ahead of her. We took the kids to see her on Saturday and to them she looked pretty sick, but to Dwayne and I she was looking tons better. As we were leaving the hospital, I was trying to explain to the kids that she was out of the woods, well later in the conversation I was saying she is still really sick and Tobi said, "Yeah, she is still walking around in the woods"...lol. It was just so funny.

On a totally different note, I am taking my daughter and a group of friends to see Twlight tomorrow, this will be my first time seeing the movie. I may have to sit far away from these girls so that they don't give away too much.

Absorbed...

2008-12-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

A friend made a comment to me that it had been a long time since I have blogged, and man...they were right! I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. Only a month since our fun weekend at our re-enactment event. It has been a long month. My mother went into the hospital on Nov. 22nd and has been in the Intensive Care Unit since she was admitted. Nothing much has changed with that and I have been spending most of my free time at the hospital.

Another little distraction in my daily life has been a new book series. Now, I have told many people that I try hard not to read. Because when I pick up a book, I rarely concentrate on anything else in my life. My daughter has been very excited about this new Twlight series and was greatly looking forward to the movie that came out on Nov. 22nd. So, since she was enjoying it so much, I thought I would give it a try, it was just 4 books, a mere 600 to 700 pages per book, which is not much for me. Thanks to Kim Harris, I started the first 2 books and was done with them in 3 days, just waiting to get my hands on the third book. My hubby and daughter went to see the movie the day it came out and picked up the 3rd book for me while they were out. It gave me something to do at the hospital, Sari already had the 4th book, so by the following Monday, I had finished the entire series. A very good series indeed. I find it amazing how well the author describes first love feelings. It starts off as a very teenage romantic novel, with a twist...the guy the girl falls for just happens to be a vampire. Not only is he a vampire, he just happens to be a vampire with morals, wow! The thing I really like about this book, is it shows girls that a true man, someone who is thinking about the girl he loves and not just his own wants, a true man can and will want to wait to have sex until after they are married. Talk about holding guys to a higher standard and teaching girls that a guy should want to be held to a higher standard. Of course he also plans to turn her into a vampire after they are married, but hey...it is a fantasy book, what do you expect. I really liked this story because my wonderful daughter tries very hard to read books that don't describe sex. You would not believe how many books she has started to read, then showed them to me, I have read a few lines and had to tell her that she could not finish them. Sometimes I can just get her past the bad parts, but it is so frustrating when it comes to today's books. I know there are lots of movies out there that show more than they should, and she has probably seen too many of those, but there is just something that triggers more in a girl's mind when she reads about these things. In this book, even when the couple do get married...the author stills does NOT go into detail...YEA! I know everyone is different about what they let their kids do, and I am sure that there are lots of people who would disagree with my take on the vampire romance novel, but for me...I am thankful for a better standard for guys (even if they are not vampires...lol.) And thankful for a different outlook for girls...maybe they should not always think guys are out for just one thing from them and that it is possible to find a guy who would want more than just the physical from them. Anyways, this is just briefly my take on the novels.

I promise to post more when I know more about my mother, I appreciate everyone's prayers for her.

A Beautiful Weekend!!

2008-11-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

Where has this week gone?

We had an absolute fantastic weekend last weekend. The weather was so nice and it was a very relaxing weekend. The kids had a good time. Pastor Kris was showing his deluxe accommodations from his vacation, so I thought I would show off ours.

Saturday at camp.

Inside the tent, Dwayne rests on our wonderful rope bed.

Camp on Sunday morning.

Camp at Night.

Amazingly the kiddos can have fun, even without electronics, just doing some chasing, hiking and rolling down the hills.

Brighton leads Tobi, his prisoner, around.

The kids rest at the end of the hill after rolling down it many times.

We had a beautiful hike.

A quick photo spot during the hike.

A little rest after our hike.

A quiet Sunday morning, all the kiddos had something to do.

How about a little "guess what I am drawling"?

Brighton spends quality time cleaning wax off the table, at least he gets to use his knife...

Tobi plays her new flute, which mysteriously disappeared on the way home... :)

It was our last re-enactment for the year, but we are looking forward to many more next year.

P.S. Work is really picking up, so I may be a little slow in blog updates.

Moving Back In...

2008-10-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

We might be a little ahead of the game, but we took some time to move back into our house this Saturday. Just a few pieces to keep our clutter to a minimum were brought back in. Brighton got his loft bed back, so that meant the futon bed had to leave. (Does anyone want a futon bed?) All the kids got book shelves brought in and the little girls got their doll house back. Now technically the doll house creates clutter, but because they actually play with it, it got brought back in. We are getting so close to be done with the For Sale sign in our front yard, we are very excited about that. Just 12 more days to go, then all of you who have told us how much you would miss us if we left...well, you got your wish and now you are stuck with us.

New Test...

2008-10-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

So...have I learned anything at my new job? Well, today was a new test for me. The lady who has been training me, the lady who is the only one who knows it all at work...well, she got sick today and had to leave early. I had just finished popping 41 patches of popcorn and I was getting ready to start helping her with Carmel popcorn. She had to leave about 3 hours before we were suppose to get off from work, so my boss asked if I thought I would be able to do it. I told her I would be willing to try, so we decided to try one batch and see how it turned out. I passed the test! I can make Carmel popcorn on my own in at least one of our cookers. I just have to learn how to use the other one. Still, I felt pretty good about it, but very tired!!!

Knock on wood...

2008-10-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

I THINK my family has pulled through this round of sickness without Dwayne, Sari or I getting sick, that is pretty good, only half of the family getting sick. Today I have my little neighbor girl, because her mom had to work and she has strep throat, so she will be resting here today.

Our family is preparing for our next weekend re-enactment. We will be going to Muster on the Wabash. My kiddos will be missing on the usual Halloween/fall festival activities, but they are good with that, they are looking forward to doing another re-enactment event. We know nothing about this event, we have turned in out application and we will just be heading down and hoping it will go well. Our friends the Clouses are not going to be able to go, but the other family we camped with at Mississinewa 1812 will be going with us, so we will not be all alone. It will be good for us to get to know them a little better since we have just met them. It is going to be a colder weekend and Dwayne has been working on finding us a stove for our tent, but if we don't get one in time, we will just bring some of our propane tent heaters and have all of us in the one tent.

All this re-enacting is causing me to dig into more history books. I went to the library last week and picked up a few books on Indiana history. I will be looking for more books on the French and Indian war, and the war of 1812 soon. It is really cool to read more on this and be able to take little pieces of this past and work it into our stories when we talk to people who come through our camp. Dwayne and Sari were doing a great job of this at 1812. Now I just have to catch up with them.

Just one of those weeks....

2008-10-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

At first I thought this last week was going to go fast, but then *BAM* it slowed way down when all my kiddos started getting sick...one by one. Sari is the only one that has stayed healthy. Tobi started with a headache and a slight fever. She stayed home on Wed., just when I thought she might be feeling better, she puked all over me...YUCK. Next came Dora, she came home from school early on Thursday, and missed on Friday. She complained of the same thing, headache and then slight fever...lucky for me I was working at the church when she puked. Brighton had the headache and fever all weekend. Whew...I just hope this next week goes better.

Recovering...

2008-10-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, my whole family was so tired on Monday. I had to go to work, the kids had to go to school, and Dwayne, well, he had to work, but it was in the comfort of our house. Monday evening Dora and I had to head off to town for her violin lessons and her soccer. Her teacher was very excited to hear how much Dora had practiced over the weekend (She played for about 5 hours, which is easy to do when people are paying you to do it, she better not get use to it though, I am not paying her to practice...lol.) Her teacher is getting ready to push her a little harder on some of her songs, so more practice. Off to soccer next, I always wondered if it was possible to wear my little super energy child out, and I have found out yes, it is possible. She was out there on the field doing her best, but I could tell the girl was very tired. Tonight is her last night of soccer which is good, I think she is tiring of it. Then I came home Monday night to find that my wonderful husband and 2 oldest kiddos had done tons of cleaning up of our re-enacting stuff. They sorted through all our totes, did up all the dishes, sorted out the laundry and made dinner!! What a wonderful surprise, this meant I would be able to pick up where they left off on Tuesday with my cleaning.

Tuesday came around and you could tell everyone is still a little tired, but starting to get back to the reality of life. I was very lazy Tuesday morning, but finally got started on laundry. I am not doing any sewing this week. I am trying to get all my projects sorted through and put away some extra material that is not needed right now. I did finally finish sewing the binding on my stays Monday night at the soccer game. Let me tell you right now, that really starts some interesting conversations, when you are sewing stays at a soccer game.

Today, still more laundry for me. I had to keep Tobi home today because she is running a slight fever. I am sure it is nothing serious, just a little cold. This week is going by so fast. Our weekend is not overly planned out, but still enough stuff to keep us busy. I will be in the A/V booth this weekend, so I will be at the church this Thursday night. I really enjoy working in the A/V booth. Brian Cline does an awesome job of keeping his volunteers informed, which is really nice.

Well...off to do the laundry now. Have a great day everyone!

Mississinewa 1812 (2008)

2008-10-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

It was a great weekend. Very cold on Thursday night, but the other nights were not too bad. The days were very warm, but the mornings were nice and cool. We all stayed busy and the time went by way too fast. We are looking forward to our next outing. I wish I would have taken more pictures, but it is easy to just get busy and forget about my camera.

Here are a few pictures I did take....

(Brighton and Jeremiah's camp)

(Brighton and Jeremiah doing card tricks.)

(Sari, Sara and Dora relaxing on the pier.)

(Our Camp)

(Our Kitchen)

(A view into camp)

(Sari and Sara's camp)

(Dwayne during the pirate and indian battle)

(A group breakfast)

(Preparing ammunition for the battle)

(Dora playing the violin, she made lots of money)

(Brighton and Jeremiah chillin' at their camp)

(Dora opening her birthday presents with her new friend watching)

(Tobi checking out her handwriting with a candle lighting her way)

(Dora in her new birthday dress, while it was still clean)

(Dwayne during the indian and pirate battle)

(Matt telling Tobi to get to work)

(Sari and Sara enjoying a little boat ride)

(Sari and Sara coming up the hill)

(Dora and her friend playing under Capt'n Bob)

(Brighton taking wood to his campsite)

These are just a few pictures. It was a great time. Thanks to all those who came to came by to see us.

Starting to slow down...

2008-10-07T17:52:00.000-07:00

Today has been so busy. I did lay down for about 2 hours this morning after my all night sew fest. I got quite a bit done and even straightened up my sewing stuff afterwards. Then I headed into Muncie to do some much needed shopping for this coming weekend and a little for the following week. Together with my little shopping partner, Kaden Vickery, I went to about 3 different stores looking for the best deals. I even got a wonderful Starbucks peppermint latte with extra whip cream....yummy. When I got home I had to start getting my 3 oldest kiddos ready to go to concert with their dad. They were going to a Marine band concert and their band teacher told them to dress nice, no jeans. First of all, their dad would have made them dress nice, but second thing....Brighton doesn't have dress clothes. The boy just keeps growing. I keep buying things for him, or my mother finds some things, but I just buy what he needs to get through until the next growth spurt. So, sorry Mr. Band Teacher, Brighton was wearing jeans, (hint...hint...mom...Brighton needs size 32 black dress pants), a button down shirt that was really too small (hint... hint... mom... Brighton will need a men's med or large white dress shirt, just in case you see any ;)), but he did have nice looking sports coat on, thanks to my mom who bought him one at a resale shop. It was even hard to find dressy clothes for Sari and Dora, just because still so much of our stuff is packed up. (By the way....on 1 month to go today until our contract is up and Dwayne will tell the company we will not be able to move after all.) But they did all get dressed looking nice, although Dwayne wanted him and Brighton to wear ties, but someone still has all our ties....I will have to get those back. We only were able to get 4 free tickets to the concert, so Tobi and I stayed home while everyone in their fancy clothes headed out. I have been cleaning up the kitchen, putting away groceries, but I am not sure I can last much longer. I have a feeling I will sleep well tonight. Tomorrow I will work my only day of work this week, come home, take Dora to soccer, and then head to the important church business meeting. I will then have a very busy Thursday trying to get everything packed and read for us to leave Thursday night...we can't wait.

Quick answer to a question in the previous comments, Milah, I don't have an actual address for Mississinewa 1812. The only directions I have are 7 miles Norht of Marion, IN on State Road 15. Sorry I am not more help. Dwayne always does the driving and I have not paid much attention.

Well, I think I am really looking forward to sleep tonight. I love staying up, I get so much done, but I also love the feeling of being so tired that I really fall asleep when I finally do go to bed. I am one of those people who let their thoughts keep them awake way too long, but not tonight, I am way too tired to think...lol.

3 am...

2008-10-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

So, what am I doing up at 3 am? Sewing...I bet anyone could have guessed that. I must say I love these all night sewing times, because it is the only time I get to work on my projects without anyone asking me questions. I am surprised that I am not just knocked out all the next day, but I seem to do just fine. A little tired, which might have shown on Sunday, because I was up in the A/V booth running the slides for both services...over 4 hours in a little sound proof room. Anyways, I stayed up all night Saturday night making a surprise birthday dress for Dora that she wanted, I went to bed around 6am only to get up at 7:15am to head off to church. So, if you thought the slides were a little behind on Sunday, now you know why...lol. Anyways, I am up tonight, getting more done than I thought I would. I just put the the finishing touches on Dora's birthday dress, I completely made my cape, made an apron, and now I am getting ready to start a new petticoat for Tobi and make a few quick neckerchiefs. I am doing this, because I really need to put my sewing stuff away sometime tomorrow and concentrate on packing and making food for this weekend. All the other little things that a mom has to do, so I will not be staying up any more nights, just sleeping.

By the way, for anyone who might be thinking about coming up to Mississinewa 1812 here is a little information for you:

Hours: Sat. 9am-5pm, Sun. 9am-4pm
Prices: At the door, Adults-$7, kids (6-11) $4, but some Marsh stores are offering advanced tickets, Adults-$5, kids $3. You might want to check that out.
If you are looking for us, we are the first campsite on your left side, by the river. We are with the River Rogues (Pirates).
There are TONS of merchants selling all kinds of cool things and foods, so be prepared, plus there is a really cool battle re-enactment that I think is done maybe twice a day...
Last thing, I know that I will be in a sewing information class on Saturday from 10am to about noon, but all my kiddos should be around.

Allrighty then...it is now 3:15am, I better get back to my sewing. I will hopefully get my picture software loaded to the new computer soon so that I will be able to post tons of pictures.

Internet Problems!

2008-10-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

We have seriously been experiencing internet problems around here. On Tuesday morning we tried to log on to the internet with no luck. This is really bad for Dwayne, due to the fact that this is how he does his work. He called Verizon and found that there were some outages in the area and we needed to keep checking through out the day. By Tuesday night we still had nothing, so Dwayne called again. After spending about 2-3 hours on the phone being told it was not their problem, but our computer problem. Ok, if that was true, then how in the world do they explain that it is not working on any of our 3 computers that connect to the internet? Ummm....they all went down in the same day, same moment....I don't think so! Well, we obviously HAVE to have internet, so it was time to change providers. Dwayne called comcast, but they could not get us installed until Friday. Well, now we have new internet, seems to be working...funny, not our computers after all. Amazingly enough, Verizon was very willing to send a technician out to check our internet connection once we decided to cancel our DSL. That would have been a nice option when my hubby asked for it on Tuesday, but since they were convinced that it was our problem and not theirs, they lost our business. And now as soon as comcast finishes running their networks, we are going to switch to their phone lines as well. Too bad Verizon. So, anyways, we finally have internet again, but we also got a new main computer, so it will still be a few days before I get some new photos uploaded to my blog.

Buried...

2008-09-29T07:53:00.001-07:00

I am feeling so buried these days, buried under tons of fabric that is. With just less than 2 weeks until we leave for 1812, I am trying very hard to get a few more things made for my family and for some friends of ours. Last Monday I was able to find some much needed wool to make Sari and I's capes. I spent last week working on short gowns for Sari and I, regency dresses, short stays, haversacks for the kiddos, and last night, finally, I made my first cape. I have a few little loose ends to finish on each of those projects from last week. On top of all the sewing, we had the usual activities of life, violin lessons, soccer, a pampered chef party, more soccer, clarinet and baritone lessons, and then early Saturday morning, Angel food and then Sari had driving lessons later in the day, while we were all working on more sewing. We have had the tents up in the backyard all last week, so Dwayne was planning to take them down after we went to lunch with some great friends, but no...Dwayne was very sick on Sunday. He spent the entire day in bed, while the kiddos and I just hung around the house and did what....oh yeah, more sewing. I will be sighing a deep sigh of relief when this is all done, but really it will never be done, I will always want to make some thing new, but I will be glad when it is back to a slower pace and just not trying to finish before we leave. I hope to be posting some pictures of the new pieces of clothing and the tents, including the rope bed Dwayne made for us. We slept out in it last week and it is really pretty comfortable.

PS. If I have acted distant or ignored anyone lately, please let me know. When I get this buried in my projects, I tend to forget there are other people in the world. I hate that I do that, I really need to work on that. But at least I should be back to the land of the living starting around Oct. 13th. Even though we are going to another re-enacting event the first weekend of Nov. I will not be sewing so much for that one, I hope...lol.

Koh-Koh-Mah 2008

2008-09-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

We had a great time on Saturday. We day tripped to the Koh-Koh-Mah event, which is a re-enactment of the French and Indian War. We will definitely be camping there for the whole weekend next year. We have friends who camp there every year, so we did some scouting for a bigger space for all of us for next year. The kiddos have so much fun just walking around on their own, check out the cool things to do and then also just sitting around camp and chatting. Here are few pictures that were taken, I should have had my camera out tons more than I did.

Here the kids are walking in the children's parade.

Here I am just chillin'.

Here the kiddos are just hanging out at camp.

Sari in her new stays...much more comfortable for her than last years.

The whole family.

Happy Birthday...

2008-09-18T06:05:00.000-07:00

to Dwayne! Today is my hubby's 37th birthday. The kiddos and I could not wait, so we gave him his presents early this morning. Some new green (the new color of choice these days) t-shirts, a few old school hip hop cds and a wood lathe. A pretty good birthday, of course I am leaving him tonight with a bunch of kiddos while I go work at the church, but hey, every birthday can't be perfect...right?

I love my kids...

2008-09-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

and I love their excitement! Dora was so thrilled to start back to violin lessons last night. She told me that she was more excited about violin than she was soccer and she is really loving soccer. Her teacher is just so good with her and gives her the right amount of praise and encouragement to keep her love for the violin alive. She was telling us yesterday that there will be a recital in December and a music contest in March. She was so encouraging to Dora that she almost can't wait until December for a reason besides Christmas. I can't wait to see how well she does. Tobi went with me to all of Dora's stuff last night and on the way home I reminded her that tomorrow, which is today, is her ballet class, to which she is very excited about that. I like that fact that we do not allow the kids too many activities, so that they can truly enjoy the activities they are in. Sari usually ends up with the most activities, but most of them are school related. The kids all keep me on my toes with all they have going on, but I love it, I love watching them enjoy what they are doing.

A day off...

2008-09-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

I have the day off today, which I must say is awesome, I love it. My supervisors had to work on Saturday, so they got today off, which means I get today off because there would be no one to tell me what to do. Of course in a house filled with kids, there really are no days off. The house needs to be straightened up, dishes need to be done, laundry needs washed and tonight Dora has tons of activities. But...I will be home all day and I will be able to do it. I love my work, but I will enjoy these unexpected days very much when they come along.

The kids are getting very excited about Saturday. We will be heading to one of our re-enactments and they can't wait. I have just finished up some clothes for Sari last night, and I still need to finish up some other clothes, but we will pretty much be ready for our day trip....yea...we can't wait!

We made it.

2008-09-13T02:58:00.000-07:00

The whole family survived my first full week of work. Yea!!! I really have lots of sewing that I need to be working on during any free time I might have. Next Saturday is our first re-enacting event of the season. We will just go for the day to Koh-Koh-Mah, this is an re-enactment of the French and Indian War. We are hoping to stay the whole weekend next year. Then in too short of time for someone who has lots of sewing to do, we will head off to Mississinewa 1812 for the whole weekend. Dwayne might go early on Wednesday, Oct. 8th, while the kiddos and I will head down Thursday evening, Oct. 9th. Too short of time. I still have so many clothes I wanted to get made, but there is just never enough time. Sari still has a dress to finish sewing and the other kiddos need to sew up some haversacks, which is just a period correct bag. Dwayne has found us another re-enactment that we might try to go to, it is down in Vincennes, IN on the first weekend of November. I am hoping to fill our calendar next year with a few more events, just for fun. It ends up being a free weekend of camping, plus each event teaches the kiddos a little more history. I really hope the more we get into this, the more the kiddos will want to research history to understand the the times we are portraying. Well, it is 6am on Saturday and it is a good time to start some of that piled up sewing.

Popcorn...lots of popcorn!

2008-09-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

I spent my morning at work yesterday learning to make popcorn. After about 40 batches of popcorn, I am pretty sure that I know how to make it now. It was fun to do, kept me really busy, not that bad to clean up after, but the smell...ohhhh...the smell. I felt like I could smell the popcorn oil all day and evening. I took Dora to soccer after work last night and by the time I got home, I had to take shower to see if I could get rid of the smell. I am sure I am the only one who could smell it, but it was strong. We also put together lots of boxes of chocolate. That is very fun. The kids are settling very well with mommy working. Dwayne is a huge help. He had to go pick Sari up from school yesterday, because she was still not feeling well. She had a fever all day on Tuesday. Next week will begin a serious rush for us on Mondays. Dora starts her violin lessons back up, so it will be violin from 5pm to 5:30pm, then off to soccer from 5:45 to 7pm. Busy Mondays...lol. I am so glad Dora is getting into some extra actvities. Sari just has clairnet lessons for now, but academic season will be starting soon and Tobi is enjoying some dance classes on Tuesdays. Brighton only has trumpet lessons for now, but maybe something else will catch his eye soon.

Where does time go?

2008-09-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy few days. There have been school open houses, church activities, work and just life. Today is my first breather day. Dora started soccer last night, and starting next week she will have violin and soccer on Mondays. I am just trying to get some organization done, so that we can keep all our activities straight and our life some what on track. This is a new phase of life for me. I am enjoying it, but it is going to take some getting use to.

First Day of Work

2008-09-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

I survived my first day of work. I rode my bike to work. I got there by 8:30am and started in wiping down some candy molds, then I worked with another lady to package candy. That takes a lot of time. Next, came making turtle candies, yeah, my hands were covered in chocolate. No, I did not lick my fingers. I do believe I will really enjoy my job. There is a lot of work to be done, not much down time. I will definitely keep busy all day. My kiddos were hard at work on the dishes when I got home, which was great! I need to get a little more organized and have something in mind, or started for dinner on the days I work. I am sure we will get into a nice little groove with this whole work thing.

By the way...I have no temptation at all to eat any of the candy, it did not even appeal to me yesterday. As much as I like candy, I like it when I am in the mood for it, working on it all day yesterday did not tempt me at all...guess I am just a little weird like that...lol.

Feeling Good!

2008-08-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

I spent all day yesterday getting the garage cleaned up and reorganized. Dwayne is a neat freak, I am a pack rat...the two rarely mix well. My hubby puts up with my pack ratishness, and I have been trying really hard to give up more and more stuff as I find that I don't need it. Yesterday, I threw away stuff, I packed up a whole van load of stuff and took it to Goodwill. In the process I gave my hubby some much needed working space in his garage. We had moved a whole bunch of things out to the garage when we thought we would be moving, but seeing how that is not looking like it is going to happen, we need to decide how we want our house to look, what we want brought back and what we don't want brought back in. It felt good to show him all my hard work last night. It paid off well for me, he gave me many compliments of how nice it looked and he is out there right now working on our tent poles for the canvas tent we will be using at 1812. Now today it is hard to get myself motivated to anything...lol.

Joining the work force...

2008-08-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

It looks like I will be once again joining the work force. It has been years since I have had to go into an actual building and work all day, but starting next week I will be quickly reminded what that is like. I have been hired on to make candy at the Main Street Coffee shop. I had my interview today and I will start working 3 days a week (Monday, Wednesday, & Friday) 8:30am to 4:30pm. Those are really good hours for a mom who does not want to be away from her kids too much. I am so excited. I have wanted this job ever since I heard about it. Talk about awesome timing, just one week after my kiddos start school, I start to work. Plus, the lady who interviewed me said that the hours will probably be way less in the summer time...how perfect is that!

Our first meltdown.

2008-08-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

I knew it would come, but I did think she would be able to make it at least the 3 days this week. Tobi cried this morning. There are boys at school that like to scare the girls, and she misses being at home, but between Daddy and I, we were able to calm the tears. We reminded her that we loved her, we missed her too, and that we are here when she gets home. Also, we pointed out what fun she has while she is there, that she likes her teacher, she has new friends to be with and that the weekend is coming. She has made some new friends at school, one we hear lots about is Tiffany Oren. They sit close by each other, plus Tobi remembers her from mega sports camp, so that helps.

Dora brought home a paper on soccer yesterday and since the deadline was Aug.30th, I quickly signed her up and mailed it out. The mega sports camp really got her excited about soccer and Dwayne and I are always on the look out for things for Dora to do, she needs to get out there and make friends. This little 3rd child of mine is a goofy one. She will occasionally talk of friends from school, but that is about it. Nothing about wanting to have them over, nothing about planning a huge birthday party with friends from school and no, absolutely no sleepovers for this girl. All my other kiddos like to do things with friends outside of school, even Tobi is already bugging me about wanting to invite a friend over for dinner, but not Dora. Besides grandparents, the only other place she will stay the night is at our friend's house, the Clouses. I think that is just because we do so much with them, that they feel like family to her.

Well, I am glad today is Friday, the kids will have a 3 day weekend to rest up before they return to school. Tobi may need all 3 days to recover. I do like the fact that the kiddos are kind of eased slowly back into school, 3 days this week, 4 days next week and then on the full school week. Tobi may need that slow transition, but I think in the end she will do fine. All of them will.

Everyone Survived

2008-08-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

Lucky for us, everyone survived the first day of school. Tobi ran into a problem at lunch time, a little boy bit her bag cheese crackers. He even ripped the bag! That was the very first thing she told me when she got home. Then she said, "I did not eat them after that." Well, I would think not...lol. Dora loved her day. She really enjoys school. Sari talked non-stop about her day. Brighton just made it through the day. He does not like school. They all seemed to like taking their lunches, so far. Dora said she did not have enough to eat, so we sent more food in her lunch today. We went out to Chuck E Cheese last night to celebrate the first day of school. I even survived the day with no kids at home. I must say, I did sort of miss hearing some little voices during the day. I went and turned in an application for a job. That will be weird, I have not really worked outside the home for a really long time. I did medical coding at home for a long time, but I haven't even done that for at least 3 years now. Now, today I have lots to keep me busy. (And if I don't keep busy, Dwayne WILL find something for me to do...so, I better get to work...lol.)

First Day of School Pictures!

2008-08-27T06:17:00.001-07:00

First day of school for my kiddos....Finally!

Dora is very ready!

Brighton will go if he has to go, not because he wants to go.

Tobi and Claudia are so ready they are outside wait for the bus!

Here comes the bus! Everyone on!

Now...what in the world am I going to do today. Oh yeah, get caught up on my blog...lol.

Stays Pictures!

2008-08-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

I have been working hard on a new set of stays for our 1812 weekend. Here is the inside layer.

There is metal boning in most of these sewn in channels. This took tons of stitching. Thank goodness I have a sewing machine.

This is the outer layer being pinned on.

This is the pieces sewn together, with the binding hand sewn on. I just need to get these all laced up and then try them on Sari, I think I made them a little too big for me.

Camping Pictures!

2008-08-27T05:42:00.001-07:00

OK...I have tons of pictures to share, here are just a few. We had so much fun at Spring Mill State Park.

Here my little beauties are not quite out of their beds yet. We have a huge tent and the kiddos all sleep side by side on their cots on one side of the tent, Dwayne and I get the other side.

Here my kiddos are checking out some of the pioneer games. I am sure they are all taking notes, so they will know what to play with when they go to Mississinewa 1812.

So, off to the next house. I love walking through each house, looking at the tables, the dishes, the cast iron pots, and just the over all look of the way people lived back then.

Can you walk on stilts? Dora did a really good job, Dwayne can do it, Sari tried, but was not the greatest, I am not sure if Brighton ever accomplished it, and Tobi...well, I am pretty sure she never made it either. ME...I did not even try.

What an absolutely beautiful family I have!

A week has flown by...

2008-08-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

On Friday morning I set aside all my sewing projects to begin packing for a family weekend camping trip. We have not been camping in so long and I had to really redo my thought process from sewing to camping. I can be a very one track mind person when I am working on projects or reading. We headed down south to Mitchell, IN to stay at Spring Mill State Park. They have an awesome 1800s pioneer village to explore and really wanted to walk through it again. I have a huge tent that is so easy to set up. I love tents, I have way more than I need. I actually love camping equipment. I am one of those weird people who enjoy washing the dishes in "heated over the campfire" water, I love cooking over an open fire and I absolutely love playing in the fire. We had a very nicely secluded campsite right next to a creek. The kiddos had plenty of space to play. It was just a wonderful weekend. We even got to have lunch with Dwayne's sister in Indy on Sunday afternoon and then do a little window shopping while we were in the big city.

Monday morning it was off to St. Louis for Dwayne. He is there all this week and when the cat is away the mice will play. I have stated this before, but when my dear hubby heads off on business trips, I really slack off and I really become quite reclusive. I stayed up past 2am on Monday night, watching movies and working on redoing some of my re-enacting clothing. I had to go to band meeting Tuesday evening and when I got home I had a hard time getting into the groove of sewing again, so I went to bed around 11pm, quite early for me when Dwayne is not here. I am looking forward to working on a new project today, my first set of real stays, I plan to stay up as long as it takes to get them done. Then tomorrow I will be doing tons of cleaning since my hubby will be coming home that night and I have to get the house back into the order he is use to seeing. I hope to post some pictures of the progress I will be going through to make the stays, it is all very interesting for me.

Light Reading

2008-08-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

My wonderful husband bought this book I have been wanting. I really wanted to read through this before I started redoing all the girl's clothes. I had a pretty good idea that I was not too far off on the guy's clothes, but I had a feeling I was not doing some things right with the girl's clothes. Well, it came in the mail yesterday, it is a short book and I had it all read last night. I was right, I have some serious redoing to do on the girl's clothes. That beautiful, fun crocheted lace on Dora's chemise...yeah, that is not period correct. Any floral material that I have bought is probably not period correct, and really linen should be used more often than cotton. I need to make my chemises over, which I already knew from some research that I have already done. Now, I really need to do some research on the Regency era, we can use clothes from that era at 1812, but not at Kohkohmah. Kohkohmah is more of the 1750s and obviously War of 1812 is in the 1800s...lol. Amazing how 50 years can make a huge difference in clothing. I am not too worried about this, because we will only be spending 1 day at Kohkohmah and the whole weekend at 1812, but when I get involved in something, I want to do it right. I have just started cutting out Brighton's coat, I had enough wool left over from Dwayne's coat to make Brighton a coat and possibly a cape for either Sari or myself. I will still need to buy a little more wool and it is hard to find right now. I will post some pictures of Brighton's coat as soon as I get it finished, I need to find some material to use as his lining and then I can start sewing.

A little fun...

2008-08-12T05:16:00.000-07:00

I am suppose to be starting on a coat for Brighton. I went through and organized all my material and I found that I had just enough wool left from Dwayne's coat to make a coat for Brighton, as long as I am careful doing it. But before I can do that, I have to piece together some kind of pattern to fit Brighton. Dwayne's pattern is way too big for Brighton. I have pattern I bought last year that has a very "costumey" look to it, but if I try I can work with it to make it period correct and it is in Brighton's size. On the coat in this pattern, the buttons are on for looks, not to actually button up, which means I have to add paper to the pattern to make it meet in the center so it can button up, making it more functional and period correct. So, I am spending time looking at Dwayne's coat pattern, this other pattern and trying to make them match up. This is takes time and I don't always have the time. Just getting all the pieces laid out, then to try and remember what I need to do next...well, this past weekend, I just did not have enough time to really work on it. So, I decided to try something else that I could pick up and do between activities. I read on someone else's blog about them using hand crocheted lace on a chemise. I know how to crochet, so I thought I would try this out and crochet the lace right onto a chemise that I had already made. It turned out really cool. This is for Dora. I hope you can see the edging there that I have added. I can't wait to do it to more, but today I have the time to work on Brighton's pattern, so that will have to take my time.

New Pictures...

2008-08-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

Here is the front of the coat...
Here is the back...

Here is about half way through finishing the pants...

And here they are all done, except the buttons,
which I do have done now.

Now I have a few more items to make for the guys, and then it is on to the girls new clothing...yea, much more fun stuff to make.

2008-08-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

Dwayne has been doing an awesome job on our new rope bed. I have now finished his new pants. Pictures will come soon. My sewing is going really well so far. I spent all afternoon yesterday just cutting out some new patterns. I am not sure what I am what I am going to start next, I am excited about each project I have ahead of me. We had some of our re-enacting friends over Friday night and last night, just going over plans and sharing ideas. It has really helped Dwayne and I get excited and motivated for this October. This year's 1812 event falls on Dora's birthday, October 10th. I am going to try and figure out how to have an 1800s like birthday for her.

My little girls really enjoyed their first day of the Mega Sports Camp. Great job to Tonya and everyone who is helping out. The kids all looked like they were having a good time. Brighton had to leave early last night, but I know he is looking forward to helping out the rest of this week.

This week is State Fair Band day on Wednesday. I am going to ride the bus with Sari and spend the whole day there. I took my kiddos a couple of years ago and it was so expensive for a family, that I am just going this year. I know Sari has greatly enjoyed band, but she is ready for a little down time. I am ready for her to have a little down time...lol.

Ready to sew!

2008-07-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Dwayne's coat for our re-enacting. I hope to get a picture of it on him, but because it is made of wool and it is so hot outside, he really doesn't want to have it on. Today I begin his pants. I am not a great sewer and I am even worse I trying to follow pattern instructions and unfortunately, these instructions are not real good, because they are a rough draft that I picked up for free last year at Mississinewa 1812. Lucky for me I took pictures of the pants they had on display last year, so with those pictures and the pattern pieces I have, I am hoping to be able to basically put the pants together. I will post a picture of them when I am done, if I am brave enough. Dwayne is building us an awesome rope bed, so that we will not be using cots this year, which means we should be more period correct inside our tent. This will mean if we want to, we can leave our tent flaps open for people to look into our tent.

Well...off to sew...tons to do, Brighton will need a coat, Sari and I need capes, Dwayne wants a new waistcoat (vest), Sari wants a new dress, and I would like to make Dora a dress as a Birthday surprise.

Awesome Griller!!!

2008-07-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Dwayne out did himself on Saturday night. He grilled us some wonderful corn, squash, chicken and hamburgers. The corn was sooooo good. All he did was put it right on the grill for about 30 minutes, the husk and silks came right off so easily and it was very good. Tobi and Brighton were going to town on it, I only wish we would have made more. After the wonderful dinner, I headed off to watch a band contest at Winchester. I got to sit with Jill and Joe Cunningham. I am so glad I had someone to sit with. Besides, Jill has more knowledge about bands than I do, so she could point out the difficulties of the music and other things that I know nothing about. I like that, because to me they all sound fairly similar. Our band placed 2nd overall, Great Job Hagerstown!!!! Now it looks like another week of band practices, last week of violin lessons until September and for the most part, a much quieter week here at home. I am sure I will be working out some time with friends for Dora and Brighton, since my house is sooooo boring...lol.

Busy Week...

2008-07-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

I feel like it has been forever since I blogged last, but it has only been 3 days. For those who are wondering...no we have not heard anything new about our house. Who knows what will happen next, but for now...nothing new.

The band has been doing well, and that is all that has been going on at our house. Sari had tutoring early Thursday, I had to run a friend's kiddo into Muncie, come home and take Sari and Sara to band, and then head over to Jay County myself to watch the band contest. Fifth place Thursday, fourth place last night and who knows about today, I will be leaving for that band contest here soon. Dwayne went with me last night, but he will be staying here with our kiddos tonight. It has been really neat watching her perform. I have video that I could share, but I think she wants to do that to her own blog.

We did end up with a bit of a scare yesterday. Dwayne was having Brighton and Dora destroy an old mattress box springs, Dora got a little frustrated at it and decided to stomp on it. Well, she ended up with a nail going into her foot, so that was a quick trip to the Dr.'s office, nothing bad, he cleaned it up and gave her some medicine in case of infection. She took it like a trooper, in fact she was a little disappointed that she did not have to have a shot...lol.

Cousin Week

2008-07-23T05:02:00.000-07:00

This week is cousin week at my Mother-in-law's house. Every summer she tries very hard to gather up all her grandchildren and have them at her house for an entire week. This should mean that I get an entire week without my lovely kiddos. LOL...yeah, right. Not my kiddos, something always comes up and since I am only 15 minutes away from her house...I go over there. This week has been even more messed up. Since my children are getting older, that usually mean there is more going on in their lives than just being able to relax in the summer. Sari has band every single day this week, Dora had violin lessons, and well, Tobi just doesn't want to stay every night. On Monday, I had to drive Sari and Brighton over in the morning, since they had youth group the night before and did not stay the night Sunday night. Back over at 2:30pm to pick up Sari, Dora, and Tobi, Dora for her violin lessons, Sari to drop off at the school to catch her ride to band, and Tobi because she didn't want to stay. Then, back over at 6:30pm to drop off Dora, since the house was being shown and it gave us somewhere to be, Tobi decided to stay, back over again at 10:30pm to drop Sari off to spend the night, pick up Tobi, who thought I was gone way too long, to stay the night back at home. Tuesday, Tobi stayed with me all day until I went over at 5:15pm to pick Sari up for band, then Tobi stayed with Grandma. Back over again at 10:30pm to drop off Sari and to find out that Tobi has decided she would like to stay the night...WOOHOO! So, now this Wednesday morning...no kids...my first and only morning of cousin week with no kiddos...yea! This is all short lived, because of course at 5pm I will be picking Sari up yet again to drop her off for band, then she will stay here tonight, since tomorrow, Friday and Saturday are band contests. So far, I have driven over 140 miles in 2 days of my week off...lol.

I hate Ants!!!

2008-07-22T05:49:00.001-07:00

I have been finding these tiny little red ants around my house. They will randomly scope out some little piece of food and then there will be tons of them. I will spray bug spray on them, get them all cleaned up and then days will go by without seeing any sign of them. Then *BAM* out of no where there will be tons of them again. They are driving me crazy. Today I found them in a bag of cat food. They really seem to like the cat food. I spent an hour cleaning them out of the cat food this morning. I would have just thrown the food away, but it was a full bag and that is just a waste of money. Anyone else have problems with these little pests?

On another note, no...we have not heard anything more about the house. The house was shown again last night. Not sure who to, but it was shown. I spent all day yesterday either driving kids to music things or cleaning. I am ready for a little break today.

Thank you!

2008-07-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

We still have not heard anything more about the house, but I really want to thank everyone for the wonderful support I get when I talk about all that is going on with us right now. It is nice knowing we will be missed if we move, but it is also really nice knowing that we have support from everyone if we do move. We still feel a peace about moving, although the closer we get to school starting, a little more anxious I feel just because I worry about my kiddos, and we are still good with staying as well. I truely believe this is in God's hands. This is all just a learning experience. Part of me keeps wanting to think about how much easier it would be just to stay, just ignore the possibility of moving and figure out a way to just stay, but then deep down I start to think, if I push this and stay, what blessing...what ministry...what opportunity could I be missing if we move? What kind of things could my kiddos be missing if I keep them here instead of following God's plan? How in the world can I justify staying if God is leading us else where? I can't. After all the praying Dwayne and I have been doing, I think there would be some kind of hint that it was not God's plan for us to go, if the house sells. We both feel very strongly that if the house sells, in this bad housing market, at the price we have to ask for, then it is God's will for us to go, and go we will...

On a side note, last night was Sari's first every marching band contest. She is marching with another school with some other Monroe Central students. It has been hard, not only is she learning how to march, she is learning a new instrument as well....a huge bass drum. I will not tell how well the band did, I will leave that to her to post on her own blog.

waiting...

2008-07-17T05:01:00.001-07:00

The offer was made, it was low, we expected that, we have come back with our counter offer...now we just get to wait...and wait...I am just loving all this waiting these days. :)

Still Nothing...

2008-07-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

Now 2 days have gone by this week and we have not heard anything about any offer on our house. Either it is taking them a long time to decide what to offer or they have changed their minds, but what ever the reason, I am going just a wee bit crazy here...

A tiring, but good day!

2008-07-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how cool it can be to belong to a good church family. I spent a wonderful morning in the A/V booth running slides for both services. I love doing this, I try to make sure everything runs as smooth as possible, although I usually mess something up. Pastor Debbie sung a wonderful song during offering in first service. It was speaking to me so loudly that I was almost trying not to listen, but I still heard her. Pastor Jeff did a great job preaching, he seemed a little more into his sermon in second service. Then we got invited over to a friend's house so the kiddos could swim. I had a most needed chatting time with two wonderful women. I can not say how needed that was for me. Then this evening I spent with the youth group. I love just chatting, it felt good to talk to some teens I have not talked with much lately. It is great to hear the kids having a good time. It was neat to hear them pray at the end of group time tonight. Awesome! I am exhausted now, and my poor hubby is still working. He has been working ALL day. While the kiddos and I got to play, he has sat at his desk on conference calls all day and programed. I am sure he will be ready for a break sometime....ummmm...probably next week, not tonight.

Second Showing...

2008-07-11T11:57:00.001-07:00

So, we have now had the house shown for a second time on Thursday to the same people that saw it on Tuesday. It is now a waiting game, you would think I would be getting really good at this whole waiting thing. I am been thinking like Jonah these days, God you want me to go? Do I have to? The only difference between Jonah and I, is that I am willing to go, I learned from him and I don't need to spend anytime in the belly of a great fish, I will just go. But it is still hard. We have not had an offer yet, we have just heard they are preparing to make an offer. Not sure what the offer will be, we really have no bargaining room with our price...that is our price, take it or leave it, so we will see...

Ironing...

2008-07-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

Lots of ironing being done this week. Yep, every time I wash 100% cotton material have to spend hours ironing out the material. It is this hours of prep work that makes laying out the material for patterns, cutting the material and sewing the material so much easier. Kind of reminds of raising kids, all the prep work of discipline in the early years makes raising older kids so much easier. Most of my disciplining these days is more like a reminder of what they already know. But doing all that prep work in the beginning is hard to do. Ironing is just takes so long, feels like there is no end to it. Disciplining kids in the beginning is hard too, feels like you are just being the meanest person in the whole world. But it makes a huge difference in the end. Just looking at all the nicely ironed material that is just waiting to be laid out flat and easily ready for patterns to be set upon, so that it can be made into something nice, is so cool. Also, watching my older children grow, ready to do what they have been taught is right, knowing that I can hand them off to others and they will be respectful to them, and just watching them make decisions on their own, VERY COOL.

So weird...

2008-07-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

So, how weird is it that just after I blog today about how I only have to wait 4 more months and we will be able to say we are staying, that we should get a call asking to show our house tonight? Yeah, we had to leave our house for a short time while someone came and looked at it. It is really weird to come home to your house, knowing that a stranger was just in it...lol. It is still in God's hands. It just seems like He likes to keep us guessing right now...

4 months to go...

2008-07-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, I can't help it, it must be the humanness in me, but in just 4 months our contract for selling the house will be up, things will be decided and we will be able to get back to normal. The kids are really wanting to bring some things back inside that had been all packed up. It will be nice to make long range plans without saying, if we are still here. I have been trying really hard to be patient and just wait things out, but the longer it drags on the harder it is. It would be harder to move at this point than it would have been, say back the first of June, but I would still move if I thought that was what God wanted us to do. Dwayne and I have been wondering if this was just a good time for us to purge a lot of unneeded items from our house, to learn to live a little more simply, and to just be prepared for what might happen next. One cool thing about all this is that I almost always have a fairly clean house, not as much to pick up, so we have been able to have more people over for Sunday afternoon lunches and stuff. We are still waiting to see what the final plan is, but if things keep going this rate....looks like we will be staying in Indiana.

Sunshine...

2008-07-03T03:51:00.001-07:00

What a beautiful week we have had!!!! The weather has been wonderful. My oldest kiddo left for band camp on Sunday, my son join the ranks of Jr. High Youth group, he was so excited and then we started out our week. Monday, Dora and Brighton went to play at the Clouse's house, so I offered t cook up dinner for us all, which meant a quick trip to Winchester to pick up just a few items. I decided to drive my litte ghia, so much fun, fun that is until the battery in the middle of Winchester, thank goodness for my wonderful hubby, who drove over to save me. We had a wonderfully relaxing evening with our friends. The kids have spending their days else where this week, which has give me ample time to work on Dwayne's new 1812 great coat, pictures will soon follow, I should finish it today.

The funniest thing about this week was Sari coming home from band camp last night very RED! Her comment was, "I thought there were places the sun just could not touch, but no, the sun knows no boundries." She was very tired, and she looked so much more grown up last night. It is kind of sad watching your kids grow up sometimes, knowing that they are increasingly learning how to make it out in the world without you. But it is a good thing too, when you get to see them making good decisions. Obviously a little more sun screen would have been a wise decision for my daughter this time...lol.

This summer is going by so quickly, I can't believe tomorrow is the 4th of July. We still have no takers on our house, so at this rate it is looking more and more like we may just stay here. As I have been meeting new people and enjoying hanging out with old friends, I am good with that. We are good with where ever God places us.

The water is cold!!!

2008-06-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night at the lakes, Dora decides to be brave enough to try out the water. Now, she decided to do this at night...not in the heat of the day. I love how funny she sounds as she tries out the cold water, and how much braver she gets when she knows she is being video taped.

Went to the Lakes...

2008-06-28T09:32:00.001-07:00

We went up to my parent's lake cabin on Thursday. The original plan was to go up for the last time, because they thought it was sold, but it turned out the people backed out at the last minute, so we just went up to hang out for the night. We got up there around 4pm on Thursday to find this in the backyard.

What an awesome jungle gym for my kiddos to play on. They had fun climbing the tree on the ground. Brighton did fall once. Still it would all have to be cleaned up. So, we drove into town, ate dinner, went shopping for a chainsaw and shoes that my kiddos could work in.

And the next day we accomplished this...everything cleaned up and put into piles. We burned quite a bit, but Dad wanted to take the kiddos to the beach, so we left some big piles to be burned later.

Look, even a little princess has to work sometimes.
She was not happy that she was having to do peasant work...lol.

Taking the Ghia out for a spin...

2008-06-24T04:54:00.000-07:00

This Ghia is much nicer than mine, but this is what mine would look like if I got it all fixed up. I got the Ghia out this weekend and it started right up. I was so excited. I filled it with gas last August and I had only driven 20 miles in 10 months, so it is running just a little rough with that old gas in it, but I doubled the miles yesterday taking Sari over to her tutoring job. It was wonderful to get this car out and drive it around. Our plans are to let Sari drive this once she gets her license and learns how to drive a stick. It is an awesome little car, plus it is all paid for. The body needs some work, but the engine does really well.

A beautiful new day!

2008-06-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

The open house went ok yesterday from what we hear. There were two people that came by, but only one was interested and he would have to sell his house first....so...not sure what will come from that. Looks like we will have another open house at the end of July. It is really hard to say how we feel about it any more.

The sermon was awesome yesterday...great job Ryan! I really love the way he talked about complaining. It made a lot of sense and made me stop and think about how I talk to others. Do I complain alot...how am I complaining...should I be taking these complaints to God more often? It has given me lots to think on.

Dwayne is finally back home. He got home on Friday night while I was out with the youth group bowling. We had to have a friend go and pick him up since I was gone. I have been doing bowling on the wii lately and to go bowling for real was kind of hard to get use to again. I did manage a few strikes, so did Sari.

I must say, now that the open house is done for this month, I think I will get back to some sewing. I have several projects I would like work on. I am very excited about this week. Lots of stuff to be done, and lots of fun to be had!

Done with short hair...

2008-06-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

The novelty has worn off. I am now back to my usual feeling of missing and wanting my long hair back. I have been enjoying the newness of the short hair and it is cooler for the summer, but this past week I have just gotten tired of it. I don't feel like I am even looking at myself when I look in the mirror. I can't do any of my usual hairstyles, not that I am really that creative with hairstyles. I am even missing it on my little girls. I really hope they grow their hair back out, even thought that will be their decision. It is funny how there are so many different hairstyles to choose from and how so many of us know exactly what makes us feel good. Well...it is definitely long hair for me and I have to wait about 6 years to get it back...6 very long years. :(

Tagged!

2008-06-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

I was "tagged" by Mindy...

things about me...

4 places I go over and over
1. Cornerstone for the Arts, Dora's violin lessons.
2. Monroe Central Schools
3. Farmland Friends Church
4. Meijer

4 people that email me
1. Rog, a friend out in Arizona
2. My mom, she doesn't like calling and I am always home when I read my email.
3. My hubby, even though he works at home
4. Monica, she sends me some cool forwards and stuff.

4 of my favorite foods
1. Hershey chocolate bars w/almonds
2. Spinach and artichoke dip
3. pizza
4. chocolate chip cookies

4 places I would rather be right now
1. camping
2. pretty much happy where I am, where ever that will ever be.

4 movies I could watch over and over
1. French Kiss
2. All of the Jane Austin books that have been made into movies.
3. Indiana Jones movies
4. Santa Clause movies

4 people I want to know more about...
1. Keym
2. Not sure who else right now...

Life is so quiet...

2008-06-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

It was another very quiet day. Kind of weird, you take away all the guys from this house and we are just a group of quiet girls. Books were read, dishes were done, dinner was made and even a movie watched. There was so much of our dinner that we sent some over to our neighbors. They are remodeling their kitchen so they have not had a stove for awhile now. Sari kept saying we should send some over, but yet again, my favorite phrase..."It was a new recipe" and so I was waiting until someone tasted it first before I offered it to others...lol. I am sure many people have heard me say..."I am not sure how this will taste, it is a new recipe" I love trying out new recipes.

This has been a really hard week on Dora. She loves being with her brother and you can tell she has no clue what to do when he is gone. Kids are funny. Two more days...just two more days and I will hear her giggle again.

2008-06-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

It has been a long day. I spent the entire day getting all the weeds out of our flower bed and I am feeling very sunburned. Now, really...gardening is NOT my thing. My oldest daughter plants all the seeds and for the most part takes care of all our plants, but when it comes to the first time getting the weeds out, I usually do the most work on it. This would be because as much as I hated working with plants, every summer I would "help" my mom with her garden, mostly because I was forced to do it. Really it is kind of nice to go and do this weeding, you feel like you have actually accomplished something. Now, once the plants are bigger and it is easier to tell which ones are flowers and which ones are weeds, Sari will do the majority of the weeding. This is my one token helping with the flower garden. Although, I have told Dwayne with prices going they way they are, we will have to seriously look into growing an actual vegetable garden next year, which means I will have to work more on it with Sari.

Night number 2 without my hubby. You would think that I would be making the best use of my time by myself...you know, like reading a great novel (already finished it last night), watching some chick flick that he would make fun of, or working on some great project, but no...I have spent the last 2 hours playing on my kiddos webkin's accounts. Now all my girls are in bed for the night and I should go to bed myself, but it is amazing how lonely a bed can seem. I am sure I will be up way later than I should, doing absolutely nothing...lol. At least my hubby will be back on Thursday night, I feel really sorry for those poor wives who have to wait until Saturday...you have my sympathy.

Where did the weekend go?

2008-06-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Do you ever have those weekends that go by so fast that you are still wondering on Monday if you even had a weekend? I just had one of those. My Sunday was a complete blurr. Even today I was still very out of it. Brighton is off to camp and Dwayne left today for his business trip in St. Louis, so the girls and I were very out of it. They had spent yesterday with their dad swimming at his parent's house all day and they kept complaining of sunburns. I spent the majority of yesterday driving and then I had to drive again today...that was enough for me for awhile.

It looks like this week will be spent cleaning house. Not sure how it worked out that all the guys are gone and only us girls are here to do all the cleaning...not fair. The realtor came by tonight to put out the open house sign for this Sunday. I must admit, I am feeling nervous again. This will be the first real thing we have done towards selling the house since we signed the papers to put the house on the market. It seems that we are told by someone new every week how much we would be missed if we moved. It seems to be harder to think about moving the longer this all goes on. I would have rather had it done quickly, this dragging out thing is hard. I keep meeting, getting to know new people all the time, and so it can cause me to think we should just stay here. But then I have to remind myself, it is not about what I want, it about what God's plan is for my family...where ever that may be.

Tons of Cooking...

2008-06-12T04:45:00.000-07:00

I spent all day yesterday cooking. I started off putting food in the slow cooker for dinner, then I made chocolate chip banana muffins, chocolate chip cookies (lots of them) and then Dora and I made homemade biscuits. Dwayne kept asking why I was cooking so much and I said, it is not as hot today and I thought I better cook as much as I could while I felt like it. The bad thing with summer is when it is hot outside I have a hard time mustering up any desire to cook or bake. My kids hear "fend for yourself" a lot! So, I try to stalk up as much as I can ahead of time when I am in the mood.

On a different note, I am sure all our neighbors were wondering about us last night as we drove around the block twice waving at people who were sitting outside. Actually...it was Sari who was driving. She wanted to drive on an actual road, not just a parking lot. Today she is out driving with her driving instructor. So, stay off the roads until after 9am!

An Awesome visit.

2008-06-11T04:03:00.000-07:00

So...yesterday, I was just going along in my normal day. Cleaning, chatting with my kiddos, we even took a break, headed downtown Farmland to visit our favorite place, the library, go to the post office and down to Tanglevine to pick out new webkins for Dora and Tobi. Anyways, it was going along just like so many other days. Not anything super exciting but then we got visitors. I have had a lot of different teens over the past few years who have hung out at my house in the early morning hours waiting for the school bus to show up. I love having them here and you will be amazed at how chatty teens can be at 7am in the morning. Well, my visitor yesterday was a guy who hung out here for about half of a school year while his family lived in the trailer park next to me. He showed up with his girlfriend just to say hi. Now, you would think that after about 10 minutes he would have been long enough for him to be bored just chatting with me, but no. I would say he was probably here for almost 2 hours. I loved listening to him and his girlfriend talk about different things. Hearing what their plans are after school...or even this coming year at school. It was really funny after his girlfriend got a call from her mother saying she had to come home. This very quiet girl, who had not said a whole lot because she really did not know me, suddenly became very chatty as she talked about how inconsistent her mother was and things like that. I listened and encouraged her, that yes, mothers can be that way...making a teens life hard. It is always kind of weird for me to hear a teens talk about their moms, because I kind of wonder how my kiddos will or do talk about me. But, I still love to hear and I can point out that while yes, sometimes parents react a little weird, sometimes they are doing it for the right reasons. It was just a wonderful visit. After they left, I had to hurry up to make my new favorite snack for small group which meant I was a little late, but it was worth it!

Shopping

2008-06-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

I spent the day yesterday shopping with my kiddos. With the gas prices being as high as they are, our trips into Muncie are very limited. Even when we go, we just do what we have to do and that is it. I told the kids that they could pick a couple of stores each that we would visit for them. Brighton has discovered that having 3 sisters means more girly stores than manly stores, but he survived. We left around 1ish and got home around 8pm. It was a long fun day. Now we will be home for the rest of the week.

A revitalizing weekend!

2008-06-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

I think this was one of the most relaxing weekends we have had in awhile. Friday night was just the family. We went into Winchester, we seem to go there more with the gas prices being so high, and picked up some needed groceries, came back home and Dwayne grilled a fabulous dinner for us. It was so cool to sit out on our back porch and just watch the dark storm clouds creep their way over us...well, until we start to feel the rain drops. Then we decided we better at least get all the food and dishes taken into the house quickly. We stayed up way too late watching 5 episodes from season one of Hell's Kitchen. My kids loved it, everyone except Tobi, who eventually went to her room to watch Madeline.

Saturday was a lazy morning...what do you expect after a late night. We had to go by the coffee shop to pick up our next fix of coffee for the house. We were asked about when we were moving...yeah...still don't know on that one. Headed into Muncie next to pick up the dreaded Drivers Education learners permit for my oldest child...am I really old enough to have a child driving? Not possible. Since it was storming pretty good, Dwayne decided just to keep the other three kiddos in the van while I ran in with Sari to do the paper work. My daughter had me and the BMV lady laughing so hard when it came to answering their questions.

BMV lady: "Have you committed any moving violations, or had your license suspended here or in any other state?"

Sari: "I don't know....I haven't driven yet."

BMV lady: "Would you like to be an organ donor?"

Sari: "I am not dying yet."

On and on it went...just so funny. The lady finally told Sari not to over analyze the questions. They allowed her to have the permit and she goes to her second drivers ed class today.

We then traveled over to New Castle to see friends of ours that moved to Georgia last year. I was so excited to see them, because she is such a good friend of mine and I have missed her. They are the opposite of us, they have 3 boys and one girl. One boy is the same age as Dora and they have always been such great friends. The kiddos were as excited as I was to see their long lost friends again as well.

Sunday...a great sermon. It is kind of funny, but a lot of what PK is talking about is right along with some things Dwayne and I have been thinking about anyways, so it is so good to hear him talking about it. We did follow his advice on taking more time with people and invited two couples over for lunch. It was a great time!!! It is just so nice to hang out and chat with people. You get to know them so much better and you can't wait to hang out with them again. The time went by way too fast. We are really excited about who to invite next.

Wonderful weekend...I only hope that more people had as good of a weekend as we did!!!!

Check out my Dolls!

2008-06-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

Tobi's doll

Dora's doll

I am very excited about the dolls I have been making. They have turned out nicely. I have finished clothing for Dora and Tobi's dolls, but poor Sari's doll is still naked. I am working on her outfit today. I love feeling like I have accomplished something. I really think Tobi played more with her doll when it was naked...lol.

First day of summer vacation...

2008-06-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

It was our first full day of summer vacation yesterday and it was a lazy one. We have started in on the new summer rules, limited tv time, limited computer/video game time and more outside time. Tobi managed to fall off her bike into a mud puddle. Now where as this might be fun for most kids, not for my little princess. She was screaming bloody murder and I thought for sure something was broken, but no...just covered in mud. That was an easy one...I just put her in the shower and all that mud washed right off. Tobi takes after me in this area. I am huge into camping, I work outdoors, I can get dirty and survive it just fine, but I don't like to be dirty. I don't like to be sweaty, I don't like sand at all, I don' t like being in mud, and so far Tobi is the only one who follows me in this area. Now Dora on the other hand was riding her bike through all the mud puddles, came in all soaked and it did not even phase her.

I have been sewing for the past few days. It feels good to have my sewing machine back out again, it has probably been about 8 months since I have done any sewing. I have been making some cloth dolls for the girls to play with if we get to do re-enacting this year, and I have been making clothing for the dolls. It is a lot of trial and error, but it feels so good to be doing something fun and not just working on the house.

It looks like we will be preparing the house for an open house. Our realtor called and set up an open house for June 22nd. No reason to start cleaning today, but I can assure you that after working Angel Food on June 21st I will be coming home and cleaning for the rest of the day.

Kids are great!

2008-06-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

I spent a wonderful weekend with my kiddos. We all spent as much time outside as possible. Now, for the kiddos this was because of a little pushing from their parents. Pushing as in...no more tv, you have to do something outside! My kiddos get really stuck on watching the same DVDs, since we don't have cable or antenna, and they will watch them all day if we don't stop them. So, yesterday they got informed of the summer rules. Only one movie per day, limited computer/video game time, more reading, they have to journal, they have to help out with chores, all that fun stuff. I think they will survive fine, we were outside this weekend and they had a good time. Dwayne bought them some new sports equipment, new football, new soccer ball and yard jarts. And then at night we sat out on the back porch and played scrabble. Scrabble can get a little goofy when you get down to your final letters. I think we will have a great summer!