Turning Point

Yesterday I took Grace to see the doctor about her scoliosis. Praise God, it looks like Grace will not need surgery for a long, long time, if ever. The doctor who saw Grace graduated from the same small town high school from which I graduated--except he graduated two years after I did. I only remembered him as "Little Mel," the kid who lived across from the city park. Now he's "Dr. Mel" and he's not at all little anymore (I felt like a munchkin in his presence).

I called my parents later in the day to tell them who I had seen at the doctor's office. I said to my dad, "I think I've crossed some sort of thresh hold or something." He said, "Yep, you're getting old." Thanks, Dad.

My Elizabeth

A verse from Proverbs struck me as I read my Bible this morning. I quoted it to Matt as he was cuddling Jude and giving instructions for the day to the other kids. Then Elizabeth, in her usual matter-of-fact tone, said to me "If you can tell that to Daddy in two days, he'll give you ten cents."

Hard Day for a Little Boy

It's so hard to be a little boy, especially when what you want most in the world is to keep up with your older brother and sisters and do everything they do. This afternoon the four older kids talked me into letting them watch a "Veggie Tales" movie in the family room during quiet time. I gave the "o.k." with strict instructions that no one was to get out of their chairs/off the couch for one full hour, otherwise the movie would be stopped and quiet time would resume in their bedrooms, per our usual routine.

Joel heard all of this, so when I picked him up to take him to his crib for his nap, he screamed. Tears, tears and more tears. He wanted so much to partake of all the fun with the big kids, but I knew he needed a nap. Joel knows how to get out of his crib by climbing onto his dresser (which is right by his crib) and then climbing down to the floor. I told Joel not to get out of his crib before I left the room.

I poked my head into Joel's room to check on him about five minutes later. Apparently he had defied my orders and gotten out of his crib, but he hadn't gotten very far. I found Joel sitting on top of his dresser--sound asleep.

Hot Tubbing

Our hot tub has suffered from neglect over the winter, spring and half the summer months. Chalk it up to a new baby and various house projects. Matt has spent the last few days getting the hot tub up and running again. Matt is not fond of normal hot tub temperatures, so our hot tub is not very hot. Tonight the kids got their first dip ever (and Matt got his second dip ever) in our hot tub while I was gone for the evening. I guess Jude loved it. Hopefully I'll get my second dip ever soon, too.

Pool Party

Laundry First

I'm used to finding coins, paper money, rocks (it's a boy thing), hair bands and small toys in the washer/dryer. Even though I'm diligent to check pockets, inevitably "foreign materials" make it through the washing machine or dryer or both. Tonight, however, was a first for me. I found a fish stringer in my son's pocket when I pulled his shorts from the dryer. The upside--I found the fact that Paul was carrying a very well used fish stringer (a yard sale find) on his person every day to be very disgusting. Anyway, now at least I know the thing is clean.

Lazy Summer Day

Yesterday we enjoyed our first totally lazy day of the summer. The girls packed a picnic lunch and we all headed to the park for a little R & R. It was a perfect day--not too hot, no wind. The kids had a ball playing on the vintage playground equipment.
Then we all headed down to the water and threw rocks in, and Joel threw himself in, which precipitated a Mommy freak-out moment, but Grace yanked him from the water. He wasn't nearly as scared as Mommy was.

Jude insisted on being in the water. We put him on the water's edge and he splashed and splashed and laughed and laughed. We just made sure he didn't get any water in his ears as I didn't have his ear plugs with me.
Three kids ago, I would have never let the kids get their clothes and themselves all wet and soggy. God's been working on me and I'm not nearly as uptight as I used to be. When the little guys got out of the water, I just took off their 2 gallon (each) diapers and put on dry ones.

We all got a good long quiet time in the afternoon because we were so tuckered out. Then I took the three girls on a "girls night out" to go to the thrift store and look for clothes. We walked out the door at closing time (9 pm) with a couple of big bags full of goodies. The girls were tickled and I was pleased to have fulfilled my "take the girls shopping" promise I made a couple of months ago.

When I got home I got the dishwasher and washing machine started (which always makes me happy) and even got to read a bit before heading to bed--a nice ending to a nice day.

Party on a Budget

In my previous post, I wrote about the party we had for the men who worked on our house. This is the post to describe, at least in part, how we planned the party so that we would stay within our budget. Matt suggests the men skip this post--"TMI" (too much information), he says.

I did have more lead time than I had originally planned for getting things ready for the party. We first thought we'd have the party at the end of June, but when one of the contractors couldn't make it at that time, we moved the party out a couple of weeks. This extra time ended up working to my advantage.

I knew the majority of my budget would be spent on food. I wanted to serve the bratwurst that are made in the small town where I spent many summers of my youth working harvest with my family. They actually sell the sausages at one of the grocery stores down here, so with each shopping trip, I would throw a couple of packages into my cart. I did this over the course of a few months, to "spread out the pain," so to speak.

I bought all the buns for the brats and the hot dogs (which we served to the kids) at the bread outlet. The Fourth of July sales on pop and Capri Suns helped me out in the beverage department.

Matt and I made a big run to Costco a couple of days before the party to load up on fruits, vegetables, potato chips, paper plates, plastic silverware and cups.

Since most of my budget went towards food, the girls and I tried to brainstorm ways to keep the decoration and activity expenses way down. I bought some polyester twine at the hardware store and set the girls to cutting out flags from our fabric stash in the basement. Our ping pong table worked great for this activity, which kept the girls occupied for the greater part of last week (thereby keeping their minds off of their absent Daddy). They used fabric glue to attach the flags to the string. They cut out some plain white flags so that we could stamp "To God Be the Glory" on them. We used fabric paint and some letter stamps that I had gotten at a yard sale for a dollar. We attached these strings of flags to the house, pergola and fence posts. The girls also attached flags to wooden skewers to put in all my outdoor potted plants.
(The picture above was the only one we took of the flags. Unfortunately, the wind tangled the string of colored flags with the "To God Be the Glory" flags.)

I had wanted to cover our rented tables with fabric table cloths, but I didn't have enough big cloths in my own stash and my thrift store runs turned up nothing. So I opted to use a roll of purple plastic table covering that I had gotten at a yard sale for 50 cents a couple of years ago.

The girls and I wanted flowers on the tables, so we asked a local florist the girls know about filling our mason jars with daisies. She wanted twenty dollars per jar to fill them herself, ten dollars per jar if we arranged the flowers ourselves. We were planning on five to six tables, so we quickly dismissed this idea. My hydrangea bush was in bloom, so we decided to cut nearly all of the blooms off to put in the jars. We did this the night before the party. They looked great on the purple tables.

I bought six gunny sacks at the feed store for ninety nine cents each to use for the gunny sack races. We can reuse the sacks, but even if we couldn't I thought that price was a bargain. We always keep a full stash of water balloons on hand which I buy on clearance at the end of each summer. We already own a three-man sling shot with which to shoot them.

Our other ideas for kids included egg-in-spoon races, badminton, wiffle ball, a tent to play house in and a nylon train in which to play (all of which we already own, none of which we actually used because of the wind).

Matt loaded music onto his MP3 player and attached it to our outdoor speaker. We rented tables, chairs, two beverage coolers for water and two misters for a nominal fee. We had expected 90 degree plus weather. It turned out we could have easily made due with one beverage cooler and skipped the misters all together, but who could have known, except God Himself?

We had a ton of food left over, but I packaged a bunch of it up for our families to take home. We have nearly finished our leftovers, with the exception of the bratwurst, which I froze for future use.

The one thing we would do differently if we had it to do over again is sending written invitations. We contacted our guests via phone a couple of weeks before the party and even though everyone said they would be here, we had some no shows. I think had we sent out written invitations, the party would have been less likely to have slipped off some peoples' radar.

All in all, we felt the party went as well as it could have considering the weather. We had a plan in place for keeping the party moving, which it did (and not just because of the wind, either :) Hopefully our next big shindig will be an improvement over this one, especially if there is no hurricane predicted.

Party of Gratitude

Sunday we had a party to honor the wonderful Christian men who have worked so diligently on our house over the past months. The kids and I worked tirelessly to prepare for the party all last week while Matt was in Oklahoma on business. We shopped and scrubbed and painted and decorated.

Originally, we had only planned on having the men and their families, but later decided we should invite our families and close friends as well. We've had plenty of people praying for us throughout the remodeling process and we wanted them to come and partake of the fun, too.

We were expecting about thirty adults and thirty kids, but a few people weren't able to make it. The weather was nasty. Thunderstorms were predicted, and although we weren't hit by the storms during the party, we did get plenty of wind. Oh well, we made the best of it.

We had numerous games/activities planned for kids, but because of the weather, we ended up only having gunny sack races and shooting water balloons with the three-man sling shot. Then the kids played on the play set and with the chickens. They were none the wiser that they missed so much and they had a good time anyway.

My brother-in-law, Trevor, wood burned scriptures into the handles of ten awls as a wonderful favor to me. The awls were our thank you gifts to the men who worked on the house. Matt's parents, my parents, my sister and niece came early to help set up the party. We couldn't have done it without them.
When it was all over and Matt and I reflected on the evening, we were glad that the three men who did the most work did make it to the party so that we could honor them in person. Their wives also got to see the work their husbands had done. The goal for our party was to honor God and the great men He provided to work on our house. Even though things didn't go as planned, we were able to achieve our goal. Thanks be to God! We're glad it's all over and we can get back to "normal" living again--whatever that is.

Stimulating Conversation

Tonight’s dinner conversation started when Grace asked Daddy about a passage in Deuteronomy that she didn’t understand. Lydia interrupted this conversation when she asked, “Daddy, how does someone rob a bank?”

“They come into the bank and say, ‘Give me all your money!’” he said.
“Then they have to go to jail?” she asked.
“Yes, they have to go to jail,” Daddy said.
“Do they feed them there?” Lydia asked.
“Yes, they feed them there,” Daddy said.

Then Joel piped in and squealed “Me! Me! Me!” (meaning, “I want to go to jail!”)
Lydia said, “You can’t go to jail, Joel. You didn’t rob a bank.”

Getting Older

You know you’re getting older when you walk into the feed store and ask if they have any gunny sacks and the girl behind the counter looks at you quizzically and asks, "What?"
And you say, "Gunny sacks. You know, for gunny sack races. Do you know what I’m talking about?"
"No," she replies.
And then you say, "Is there anyone here a little older than you who might know what I’m talking about?"
She points and says,"Yeah, that old guy over there."
And then you go ask that "old guy" about gunny sacks and he says, "Yeah, we have those. They’re in the back by the long-handled tools."

The Confession

Last night we watched fireworks from what has become our traditional viewing spot. Our friends, Tom and Eleanor, have a panoramic view of both of the big fireworks shows in town from their lawn. They graciously invited us to partake of the fun again last night.

Half way through the show, I heard Lydia say, "I'm tired, can we go home?" I glanced over and saw her laying on the blanket on her belly, one eye barely open enough to try to keep up with the action in the sky. I knew she was really tired because "confessing" you're tired when you're a kid is almost unthinkable.

When the show was over, we packed into the van. Before we left the driveway we noticed that Lydia had already fallen asleep. She had taken the car travel pillow, which normally attaches to the head rest and strapped it around her head instead. We all got a good laugh--pretty darn cute.

This morning when we woke up, I asked Lydia how she liked the fireworks last night. "They we good, but I was pretty tired," she said.

Happy Forth of July

The following is a letter from Benjamin Rush to John Adams written on July 20, 1811 (as quoted from the book, "The Spirit of America," edited by William J. Bennett).

Dear Old Friend,
The 4th of July has been celebrated in Philadelphia in the manner I expected. The military men, and particularly one of them, ran away with all the glory of the day. Scarcely a word was said of the solicitude and labors and fears and sorrows and sleepless nights of the men who projected, proposed, defended, and subscribed the Declaration of Independence. Do you recollect your memorable speech upon the day on which the vote was taken? Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at the time to be our own death warrants? The silence and the gloom of the morning were interrupted, I well recollect, only for a moment by Colonel Harrison of Virginia, who said to Mr. Gerry at the table: "I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead." This speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.

Cool Dude

What does one cool dude listen to on his dad's old MP3 player while traveling to visit Grandma and Grandpa? Why Veggie Tales' "Sunday Morning Songs," of course.

Survival Swim

Grace and Raphaella had their survival swim today. It was their last swimming lesson of the year. They had to jump in the pool fully clothed, take off their clothes (they had swimming suits on underneath) and then blow up their jeans and shirts to use as flotation devices. Both girls were pretty tuckered out, but they did a great job. I think they both had some fun, too. As I recall, my own survival swim at the age of fourteen wasn't nearly as pleasant (probably because I took it too seriously.)

The girls had a bench full of cheerleaders giving lots of "helpful" advice from the poolside.

When swimming lessons were over, we came back to the house and had lunch with our old neighbor, Marg. It was nice to have some time to chat and get caught up with her. Tomorrow the little kids have their last swimming lesson of the season. I'll be glad to be done with lessons for this year--it's so tiring to be constantly keeping the two little guys from jumping into the pool.

More Lydia Logic

A couple of nights ago, Lydia asked to sleep in our bedroom. When I said, "No," she responded, "But you only have two people in here. You need more people."