Why I Have a Complex....

When I first moved to this country God gave me a wonderful friend named Trish. Our families are pretty similar. We both have the same style of child training, we both homeschool, we share the same theology, similar likes and dislikes, but there it ends because what you are about to see is NOT what I do....

Trish makes funky pillows.
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And blinds.
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She recovers her couch.
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She picks berries and stocks her fridge with homemade jam.
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She plans, plants, and picks from her garden to can for the long winter.
But wait, there's more....
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She scrapbooks. Not just forward, but backward--to 1974.

And...
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You just saw the family scrapbooks, these are the individual scrapbooks for each kid. Ethan is nine. As you can see, Trish has his scrapbooks ready to roll through age seventeen because she plans ahead. And now they will all match.
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Feeling inadequate yet?
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Here's Kaleb's. And Josh has his own too. Trish has three boys, all about one year apart.
It took my body two years between kids just to get back to normal. Wait, did I ever get back to normal?
You're not going to believe what's next....
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Guess what Trish is doing here?
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She's making homemade Poptarts.
I know, I know.
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It's only a matter of rolling out and cutting 36 rectangles of dough..
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Assembling a variety of toppings....
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Spooning it carefully on....
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And baking them just so.
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Voila!
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You can do all this because your house is clean and organized, your homeschool books for next year are bought and stored, your school schedule for next year is planned and color coded, your favorite recipes from all your cookbooks are catalogued on your computer and your menu's are planned, and an top of all this you can also volunteer at church, lead a ladies bible study, visit shut-ins, have missionaries over on furlough, redo the church nursery, and not get mad that your kitchen floor is plywood and has been for some months because you are saving up for a new one.
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I would be depressed. But God tells us not to compare. So I'll just be glad I know her. I've got her on video so you can know she really exists.
That's my best friend.

Are My Shoes Too Big?

Sawyer's been asking for "basketball" shoes for a long time.
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Yesterday a friend from church gave us two pairs.
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He doesn't care that they are several sizes too big.
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Because for his purposes, they work just fine.
At first I objected. But do you really need shoes that fit to do this?
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Far be it from me to squelch his elation.
He finally got the shoes he wanted, and they'll fit for four years.
Can't beat that.

Egg Sandwiches and Tickle Fights

Tristan is teaching Sawyer how to make an egg sandwich. Tristan just learned, himself, 3 days ago. The problem with taking these impromptu shots is that it reveals things you'd rather not share with the world. On cleaning day I moved all the fridge magnets from the front of our fridge to the side, so our kitchen would look neater. Then I start taking shots from the perfect angle to show them all? Yes, that is a jar of bacon grease on the counter, and yes, those are all of our coke bottles yet to be redeemed, returned? deposited? I buy coke in those little bottles when I buy it at all, because they still require a bottle opener and I think it's whimsical. If anyone knows that they actually twist off, don't tell me. And boys, turn that pan handle flush with the stove! Safety 101.
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The finished product.
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This is what the kids are doing when they are not engaged in cooking lessons.
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I think we need to get out of the house.
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The rain has stopped, so maybe we'll hit the park today. After the butcher, the baker, and the video store. I SO wish we needed a candlestick maker.

Tolerance

This is our good dog, Daisy.
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And this is what three boys do to her.
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No. This is a trick of the camera. They did not land on her, but it sure looks like they did.
Daisy remains amazingly unharmed and mostly unbothered by the shenanigans in our home.
Now, this next picture might do her in. It's what I toyed with feeding her:

What IS it?
Is it chocolate brownie bits in fudge sauce? Not so lucky.
It's what happens when you optimistically use a flank steak marinade recipe in your crockpot. All the alcohol burns off and leaves the meat to burn to a crisp. Black. Inedible. Except for maybe by a dog.
But we decided to spare her in the end.
Tolerant Daisy may not be that tolerant.

It Was a Biscuit Morning....

Nothing much happening here. Except we made biscuits for breakfast, and Sawyer wants a tattoo.
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"What is THAT?"
"A tattoo."
"But you're not allowed to write on yourself, you know that."
(This must account for the guilty look and the hastily washed off look of the pen marks).
"Can YOU draw a tattoo on me? An eagle?" he asks longingly.
When did this penchant for tattoos begin? Was it a movie he saw? A biker he's befriended? Do we even KNOW anybody with tattoos?
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"Right here, Mom, on my back. An eagle, going like this," he says, imitating wings.
An eagle? What happened to Bob the Builder? This is a mystery to me. I'm going to ask him where he saw it and why he wants it. Hold on a second.....I'll type you exactly what he says:
"Come here Sawyer I need to talk to you. Why do you want an eagle for a tattoo, where did you SEE an eagle?"
"Nowhere. I was finking of it."
"Why do you think it will look cool?"
"Because I saw it on, remember that movie, that fat guy had an eagle on his back? That's why I want it, that's what I did, that's what I fot (thought). Can I have a yogurt stick?"
"What movie?"
"There's this fat guy, the police, and he had two wheels and he was driving and it was called Cop Maid."
"Mall Cop?"
"Yeah. Mall Cop."
Mystery solved.
I need to rethink my system for evaluating which movies are Sawyer appropriate.

She Wore the Wrong Shoes....

Our home school group met at the park again, for soccer. But she wore the wrong shoes.
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Luckily, brother had his pair of running shoes in the van.
Wait. What is he wearing then?
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Crocs, of course. Crocs for soccer. Sister talked him into trading the Crocs for his own running shoes so she could wear his Crocs. For soccer. Is anyone else bothered by this Crocs for soccer phenomena?
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He said yes, of course. Because he's Greyson.
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It wasn't too long before the shoes didn't matter because a dispute disrupted the game. The face of that boy in the foreground about sums it up.
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Sawyer gave up altogether and doffed his jersey.
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This is the universal whiney face. Why do they do this when they know it gets them nowhere? Keep this face in mind, it will come in handy later.
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Greyson, what happened to the game? Where is everybody going?
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Oh, over to the playground. This is better.
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Enough see-saws for everybody. I've never seen them all used at once.
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Then it was over to the monkey bars for a timed race. Who was going to be the fastest?
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The big kids had a blast racing over and over again. But it left the littlest kids out because they weren't quite big enough to complete the full length of the monkey bars. It was hard for them. Oh, wait. There was ONE little kid who did it.....
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See this face?
This-- I just did the monkey bars-- face?



It wasn't too long ago that it looked like this.
He has a whole kaleidoscope of faces available.








His attempt was captured on film. Not without the unexpected.

ONE of Us Was Having Fun....

You'd never guess by this picture.....
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But his big brother is across the street in a dentist chair. Getting shots.
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Sawyer came for the fun. He knew there was a really cool park across from the dentist's office. So while Tristan's getting numb....


Sawyer's scaling the balance beam and flashing the I-did-it! face.
Life is just not fair.