Water drops

My mouth is giving me grief today. The pain medication is not helping as well as it should so the oral surgeon told me to use extra strength Tylenol and ibuprofen. So, while I am waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in I need some silence. Of course I choose to blog. Yesterday we had a very light rain shower and the drops of rain held onto the plants for hours. I took these shots just after I put the kids to bed. I think that "the rooster" thinks I am a little nuts. But didn't the pictures turn out nice. Right now we are getting a real down pour. I guess that I will be dealing with the mud a while longer. Every pair of my children's shoes are covered in mud.

Holy Matrimony

I heard some sad new last night about a couple that I have known for most of my life. These two people have decided to no longer be married and I find that very sad. What makes a couple decide such a thing. I understand that sometimes there are instances of abuse or unfaithfulness in marriages that cause a couple to be torn apart. But what if those extreme circumstances are not there? While I was thinking about writing this blog I thought I would be able to gain some insight by reading over the bible verses that were read during our wedding. I can tell that I was a young woman when I was married because I did not have the readings printed in the bulletin. I guess I will have to write them down the next time that "the rooster" and I watch the video.
When I was married to my dear husband I had no idea what a marriage involved. I can bet that I thought I did. I did not know that Christ himself had given us a example to look to. It was after I had been married for 5 years that I learned of God's built in guide for matrimony. His Son and His church give us the perfect example. My husband was taking a confirmation class from our good friend Pastor "K". He spoke of Christ's love for the church as an example of how a husband should love his wife. The church is ever thankful to Christ for him giving himself up for the church. He did so that the church would live. I looked at my life and how "the rooster" makes my life possible. I am able to stay home and do my job because of him. He gives me food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, children and all I have. He is doing the very job of God. Let me clean up that phrase. It is not him, it is Christ in him. I feel unworthy of all of this love. What can I possible do but to say thanks.

So now why do people give up? Do they know of this example? Do they see Christ in their everyday lives? Or, is it, that when life gets a little easier, it is just that much harder to cling to each other. I do not know. I just ponder such things while I can not sleep.

Living a lie

I love to try and live a lie. I try it often at times and it makes me just a little crazy. If I know that people will be coming over to my house I am consumed with living the lie. The lie is that I live in a clean house. My house is not really a clean house I just try to make it look like one. Remember there are four children and a dog in this house. The lie is huge! I drag the entire family into my lie and they grumble while they are on the journey. We run around and clean, put stuff away, hide things and what ever else it takes to live the lie. You all know what I am talking about. We do not want to show our real selves to people. "I would be so embarrassed if people knew that my toilets were not always clean". I know that some of you also live this lie. But the lie often goes farther than just a clean house. It will cross over to parenting, marriages, and work relationships. All of this hiding of sins is a part of our sinful nature. We are always at a war with in ourselves. Our sinful nature is getting the best of us and Christ is always there in us too. We sin and are evil and our Heavenly Father sees in us his Son, Jesus. We daily need to be reminded of our death in baptism and the forgiveness so freely given to us from our Father in Heaven. You must excuse me, I told chick #1 that her friend could come over so I have to finish cleaning. I am a sinner as always.

Photo information

If any of you would like more information on the photo that I used in my blog about vocation here is a link : http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html
Thank you Mom for doing the research.

Wisdom Teeth

Yesterday the whole family was up early so that "The Rooster" and all of the chicks could take me to town for my appointment with the oral surgeon. It was that day to have my top and lower wisdom teeth on the right side pulled. Before any medical procedure you have to sign papers saying that you have read all of the risks involved with the procedure. I was just about ready to walk out that office while reading them. But I calmly remember that God the Father is in charge and I would be in his hands. So I signed my life away, paid my $215 and walked through the door. The doctor had very kind nurses and they were trying to be so gentle with me. I then told them that I had had four c-sections and I could handle getting an I.V. just fine. They said that often times they will get young 18 year old girls in there passing out or crying while there are getting their I.V.s. They of course had to stick me three times. I do not know why God gave me such tiny veins. They were finally able to get the I.V. going and I fell asleep while I was talking to them. I woke up to sound of chick #4 laughing in the waiting room and then saying Mama. The dentist said "I think that little guy wants you." That was that and I was up. Thank goodness I do not remember a thing. They had to break one of my teeth into four pieces. The dentist also thought that it was a little strange that I wanted to take my teeth home. But any true homeschooler would make a lesson out this. He told me that they were still dirty and I should clean them, but what is a little skin when you are talking about science. Chick #3 wanted to borrow one to put it under her pillow but I told her she would have to wait till she lost one of her own. Chick #1 and 2 thought for sure I should put them under my pillow. So far the pain has not been to bad and I am hoping that holes in my mouth will heal up soon. For now I will just have to take little bites of food and chew slowly on my left side.

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

What is your vocation in life? Are you a daughter, sister, wife and mother like I am? Do you constantly care for children every minute of ever day? Do you push everything aside so that you can be there for you children. Do you humbly bow your head and ask the Heavenly Father to give you the strength just to get through one more day. This photo made an imprint on me the first time I saw it. I think that it was a few years ago but I do not remember the exact moment I saw it. What I remember is the feeling it gave me. It made my stomach feel uncomfortable. The worry on this mother's face is haunting. Is she hungry, are her and her children with out a home? Is her husband gone? Then the thought wonders into ones own mind. What if that was me? How would I every handle it. The vocation of Mother is a trying one. We must forgive children when our sinful nature still feels anger for them. We must guild them daily in their learning. We have many sleepless nights staying up with sick children or giving comfort to scared ones. Do you think that I am sounding a little preachy now? Oh, these are things that you must do. You must also teach them the scriptures and the catechism. Plus you must not become angry with them or provoke them. It is a large bill to fill, isn't it. Many of you are saying, "I can not be perfect, I can not do it all". Let not your hearts be troubled. You can not do it all but one was sent who can. He was raised by an imperfect mother yet he was perfect. He could freely forgive the worst of sins while we struggle with minor ones. He gave more than any of us could ever give. His blood washed us and we were crucified with him in our baptism. Jesus Christ the Son of God has lead the perfect life in our place. His blood has washed us clean. In our baptism we died and He lives in us. He is the one fulling the vocation of Mother. We may grumble about our job but he will be vigilant and raise our children under his wings. My nine year old daughter stated it very plainly once for my five year old daughter. The 5 yr old asked me, "Where is Jesus?". Then the nine year old said, "He is sitting right here, and you know what? He made the pancakes this morning." I must say that He does a pretty good job making pancakes.

Beer Anyone?

This did not turn out to well but it is funny.

It's gone!

I am warning you now that an embarrassing thing is about to be revealed about our household. Do ever suddenly realize that you forgot to buy toilet paper. Suddenly you are walking through the house and looking under the cabinets looking for and extra roll stashed somewhere. Upstairs in the bathroom you find the same thing, none. Oh no! Where did it all go. With four children we seem to go through toilet paper a lot. Probably way to much. I am sure that all of the liberal green people would be upset with our house. So at the moment my toilet paper holders look like the above photo. All I can say is thank goodness that we had runny noses last month and there is plenty of Kleenex on hand. Otherwise, well lets just not go there.

I also thought that I would give my blog a new look for the summer months. It is a little daring for me to change it but I think it fits.

The Big Blogroll O' Vark

It seems that my blog has been noticed at the http://aardvarkalley.blogspot.com

aardvarkalley is one the first blogs that I ever read thanks to a friend who sent me a link about Charlie Brown. At that time I had no idea what blogging was or how to even get started. Thank you aardvark for placing me on the bbov.

Little Dancer

A Dancer in waiting

My little dancer is not such a little girl any more. She will be preforming in her fourth dance recital this month and yesterday was picture day. These are a few of the shots that I took.

Practicing a few steps

Our town is being invaded by Munchkins

Oh No! You caught me on film

Flapper Girls

The girl's instructor makes all of their dance costumes for the recital. She always makes sure that there is plenty of coverage and the girls do not reveal to much. Everything is very tasteful and I am so thankful for that. She very strongly believes that the little girls should be little girls and have fun. The classes are also very small so that is nice. One of the girls from the class was sick yesterday so we just had two getting their pictures taken. Next week is recital and that always makes for a busy weekend.

They did not die

This spring we had some very cold weather that I thought would kill my bleeding hearts. There was a pile of frozen foliage where the plant was making it's annual debut. As you can see it came back and is almost in its full glory. The kids just love this plant and wait for it to bloom every year. I guess that I am having a flower day.

What type of flower?

Can anyone guess what type of flower this is? I will give you a clue that it is somewhat mutated. I do not remember the blossoms ever looking like this or the anthers being so numerous. Maybe the testosterone in the flower just got the best of this blossom.

Race Day

This is the medal that all of the finisher received. I must say that I am still wearing it. I earned it baby!
You can barely see me in this photo. My shirt is that little white things just off of the lady in pink shoulder. I had been by her during most of the race and of course I had to past her and cross the timing mats before her.
My daughter took this photo in front of the wall that we are taking the wall paper off of. It looks pretty good. I am not wearing a stitch a make up and I am a little tried today so my photo is not glamorous. But then running is not a glamorous sport. At least I crossed the finish line strong and I did not puke. My husband had taken a picture of me before I left the house at 5:45 AM, but they did not turn out. Sorry.

Some of you may know that over the past three or so months I have been training to run in my first half marathon. For those of you that do not know how far a half marathon is, it is 13.1 miles. Today I can proudly say that I ran 13.1 miles in 2 hours 30 minutes and 51 seconds. We had a little timing chip that we had to tie to our shoes. That way your time waiting to cross the starting line does not count. There were about 5200 participating in the half and full marathon together. My husband took the above photo of me. I am the one in the white jersey with my knee up in front of the army truck. He does not claim to be a photographer so it is a little blurry. I was able to make a good sprint to end, if you can call it a sprint. I must have pasted about 20 or more people in the last 1/2 a mile. At that point you do not have a far to go at all and the fast you run the less you feel your legs. I will not tell you how I feel now but it was worth it. It was worth every ache and pain to be able to say that I had the guts to try. As we began the race my heart was pounding from the excitement from the crowd. I had never experienced anything like ever.

What????

I guess we do not have enough to do around here. My husband got that

itchy feeling that we should start a new house project. He wanted to rearrange our bedroom, but I said no. I have such a hard time sleeping when we have changed things around. So I guess we will redo the living room. It is only fitting since we have new furniture. We will be doing this room one wall at a time and I will keep you all posted on how this is progressing. I just hope he realizes that this means I will have to buy new curtains too.

Daddy breakfast

My husband has a wonderful tradition of cooking breakfast on Saturday mornings. It gives me a little break and the children so look forward to daddy's breakfast. As you can see it is a real man's breakfast. The meal is always the same bacon, toast, and fried potatoes and onions with eggs. The potatoes and eggs are fried in the same pan that the bacon was fried in so they are extra good. He also cut up all of the potatoes and onions to go with them. He learned to make this dish from my Mother while we were camping. It was always known as our camping breakfast while I was growing up, but Birk loved it so much he wanted it more often. That is why he decided to start making Saturday morning breakfast. This has been a tradition for about 9 years.

Where did the puppy go?

Remember that we got a little puppy last October? You can always look at my past blogs if you would like to see a puppy picture. Well this is what he looks like now. A fifty pound teenage dog.

He loves to tease our children and this morning he let me brush him. Hopefully, some day, he will let me trim his hair so that his dark brown grown-up hair will show through. He still has the softest fur. For some reason he prefers toilet water to water in his bowl. It must be a dog thing. He still wiggles everywhere when he wags his tail, I guess we should have named him wiggles. This morning he crept upstairs after the kids had let him outside. He laid his head down on the bed right by me and began licking my arm. He then crawled up into bed and actually behaved. He usually is not supposed in our bed, but he seemed rather sweet this morning, so I let him. Maybe he will grow out of the teenage years and become a trustworthy dog.

Shoes

My little two year old son was given a job to do the other day. We try think of very simple things that he can easily do so he can feel that he is helping the family. All of the other children were helping pick up in the living room after the school day was over. My husband told my son to pick up the shoes and put them by the door. There were probably four shoes scatter about in the living room. What my husband meant was that the shoes were to be placed on the brown rug by the door. Our little son picked up every shoe that was already on the rug and moved them to the door, just as my husband has said. Birk, had to laugh at the way a two year old mind works. He told Wyatt "good job, son" then Birk fixed the shoes.

Hen Devotions

Every morning while the children are trying to finish up their breakfast, I do a devotion with them. We use the morning one from the LSB, we go over their catechism memory work and the proper for the upcoming Sunday. Let me describe to you this somewhat chaotic event. On the table before us is five plates, cups, and forks. There is also milk, juice, two frying that contained our breakfast, and syrup. This morning my oldest daughter spilt some syrup on the table so there was also a wet rag. My son Tristen, who is 8, has a terrible time memorizing his catechism so my 5 year old daughter is prompting him on his next line. He of course does not like this. Then while I was reading the bible readings my little son, who is two, began throwing his sippy cup. I finally got that under control and began reading again. Then I notice that my oldest daughter, 9 year old Adri, is practically washing her entire body with the rag that she used for the syrup. I mean she was scrubbing her arms, legs, and feet. (uh!) Out of my mouth comes the correction "that she should not be washing her legs during devotion and at the table". We finally made it through the readings and had fun singing the hymn of the day for the fifth Sunday after Easter. Thank goodness God's word does what he says and Christ is in me. I alone could never make it through these crazy morning devotions.

Mamapalooza revealed

Some of you may not be familiar with the ever famous Looper Mamapaloozas. Loopers are a group of LCMS Homeschoolers that are connected on a e-mail loop. If you want more information jump onto the CAT.41 web site. There have been various Mamapaloozas in the past few years. It seems that most of them are in or around Ohio. That would not be a close drive for me in Nebraska. Lucky for me two of my now close friends planed a Mamapalooza in Iowa. Yeah! I could finally see what one of these events was like.

Imagine sitting a in a room with ten women. Three of whom you have met before and 7 that are face to face strangers. Chocolate is passed around the room and visiting begins. After about an hour of talk you realize that you really do know these women. They are just like you. Their lives move in a circle of Christ in them, love for their family, and educating their children. We all have the same joys and hardships and we all could be free with each other. There were no masks or competition among us.

We ate to much food which must be a symptom of being free in the gospel. We ate Chocolate with nuts, chocolate covered espresso beans (a new favorite) drank coke and had cheesecake and brownies. See, I told you, we are to free in the Gospel. We talked until the wee hours of the morning and still woke up at 7 AM. I guess that mothers are creatures of habit.

I was sad to leave these wonderful women who had become close friends in only two days. But I do have e-mail so we can keep in touch daily. The memories of my first Mamapalooza are grand and heart warming. I am sorry that I do not have a any pictures to post on my blog. If you would like to see a picture of the group of ladies you can click on Angie's blog. She have a group photo of us.

Victory and Defeat

I am very happy that the highest court in our land has banned partial birth abortions. Finally there are a few brave souls to stand up for the silent babies inside their mother's womb. We must protect life.

Then NBC has to sink to a new low. They are truly among the bottom feeders in today's society. Last night, when I saw the anchor holding up the envelope from Cho like it was some prize, I was stunned. Thank goodness a few men, Rush Limbaugh http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html has said that they would not air Cho's voice. How disheartening it must be for every family involved in the Virgina Tech shooting to see this horrid man's face (Cho) on TV. I believe that we will find out that there is more involved in this whole shooting then anyone suspected.

Plus, I wonder how on earth Barbara Boxer, the senator from California, can be such a stupid woman! Did any of you hear what she said yesterday? She lumped all of the following things together, as tragedies, that have caused her stress this past week. Virgina Tech shooting bringing back post traumatic stress from 9-11, women lives being put in danger by the new abortion ban, and global warming. Now I know that this is not a direct quote and I tried to find it. If I come across her words I will post them because they are unbelievable. Maybe she is attributing her heat flashes to global warming and that is why it caused her stress. Ha Ha! I just had to through that joke out there. Do not hold it against me and my young age.

Misc. ideas

Here are my children bright and early Easter morning. We had a very nice Easter and had fun dying eggs the day before. Little Wyatt was very entertaining flinging eggs from one cup of dye to the other.

So why have I not been blogging? I have been running. I had the crazy idea that I could train for a half marathon and now I am scared. The past two weeks I have not got in as many miles as I would like. First, my feet were getting blisters on them after I would run 6 miles. I had to buy larger shoes because when I had bought mine last fall I never put into account my feet changing during my pregnancy with Wyatt. I should have known better, after all it was my fourth child and my feet had changed every other time I was pregnant. I missed two days of running so my feet could heal. Then I had a "poor me day" and could not run more then a mile and a half one day. Feeling sorry for ones self does not help when you are trying to run distances.

This week I have the new shoes working well and did 9 miles on Sunday all thou I did run them all. Now I have a terrible tooth ache and need to have my wisdom teeth pulled. My dentist says that I should be able to wait until after the marathon but he put me on a antibiotic because there was and infection around my tooth. For those of you who do not know, I am allergic to three types of antibiotics so that leaves erythromycim. Nasty, nasty stuff! I was sick to my stomach all of yesterday, that meant no running. So far I am feeling fine today. It always take me about 48 hours to get used to taking that medicine. Maybe this afternoon I will be able to get 6 miles in. Then I will feel a little better about my training.

I also want to direct everyone to this site http://righttheship.wordpress.com:80/ . The Conservative side of the LCMS must form a untied front so that we will have a man of God as our next president. Lets correct the wrongs of the past and join together as a united front. The Word of God must be taught in it truth and purity. We can not put our own ideals into it or emotions. As a good friend of mine once said "The Bible says what it says! That is all you need to know." Tell your pastors about Wohlrabe running for president. If we all stand behind the same guy maybe we will have a chance.

Where oh where did my enchiladas go?

During lent our church serves dinner before the church service. The whole church works together to bring different item for these dinners. This Wednesday it was enchilada night. I usually bring something every Wednesday and this time it was a big pan of enchiladas. Yum! Now I do not want to brag but I can cook pretty well. After the ladies served everyone we opened the ovens and there were my wonderful enchiladas. I was thrilled because I would not have to cook Thursday night. We enjoyed them Thursday evening for dinner. But low and behold a half of a pan of enchiladas were left. They would go so nicely with a big salad for Friday at lunch. Plus my husband would also be able to take some for his lunch.
I was not home last night. My daughter had dance and I took her there then I drove to town for choir. This morning my husband called me to tell me about the happenings in our house last night. He said, "The enchiladas are gone." "Oh?", I said. Then I heard about how our third child, Constence, got some grapes out the fridge last night before bed. It seems that she did not get the door shut all of the way. So, while Birk and the children were in the living room the dog, Toby, pulled out the pan and enjoyed. Can you believe it? He ate my enchiladas. Birkley told me that if he (Toby) asks to go out I better let him out quickly. My husband is still holding a grudge against the dog. Lets just hope Toby does not figure out how to open the fridge.

DNA

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Barb had this on her blog and I thought it was so cool. But of couse she is one of the coolest gals.

Birthday parties

My oldest son has his birthday party last Saturday on the 10th. The boys had fun playing together and the Dads had fun visiting with each other. As you can see from the cake he had a race car theme going. I love to decorate cakes for my children's birthdays.
This is Tristen just before he blew out his candles. He is very proud to be eight years old.
Little Constence who will turn 5 tomorrow had her party on Saturday. So that meant two parties in my house with in 8 days. My house was clean for a whole week. This cake took a little bit of time to make. I was not able to start baking the cake until 7PM and then I was up until 11 finishing it. I had made the pony hair a few days earlier. It is made out of sugar, water, corn syrup and pink food coloring. I then cooked it until it was at the soft crack stage. Then I had to form each strand of pony hair. It sure did turn out nice.
Here I am with Constence before all of the little guests arrived. This was her first birthday party with friends.
Finally, our new couch, chair and ottoman were delivered last Friday. We had never bought a couch before because people in the family had always given us hand me downs. This past month our recliner broke and we decided it was time to buy real furniture. I think that the leather will last a lot longer than cloth. Our dog is trained well enough that he will not be getting on it. My husband and I are still helping the kids to remember not to put there shoes on it or to cut paper on the couch. We did buy the five year protect plan so if anything does happen it can be fixed. I really like the wood feet on the bottom and the rolled arms. It is traditional with looking to stuffy.

Chocolate anyone?

I know that just a few chocolate lovers may read my blog. So please be careful not to drool onto your keyboards. Our 4-H group went on a wonderful field trip today. We were able to go into the production building of Baker's Chocolate. They produce a very high quality chocolate in this building and I can say that it is very creamy and has a wonderful taste. This is the machine that the melted chocolate is pumped onto and then it is quickly cooled down.
Here is where the chocolate is sliced and diced then covered with a very creamy melt in your mouth chocolate. The inner chocolate is harder and that is what they add the flavor to.
Pre-coated chocolates. Yum!
Constence is looking into a large box of chocolate. Does anyone need a chocolate fix?
These are the final products before they are wrapped. Of course we did not leave without buying any of their delicious goodies. I pick up some champagne dark chocolate raspberry meltaways and some milk chocolate raspberry meltways. Wouldn't you know it, my two daughter like the dark chocolate. You can click on the title to go to their web page.

I already knew this

Your Personality is Somewhat Common (ISFJ)

Your personality type is stubborn, conservative, trustworthy, and caring. About 13% of all people have your personality, including 18% of all women and 7% of all men You are Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

I saw this quiz on one of my friend's bogs. It seems to be true in picking my personality. What about you?

He's home

My dear husband made it home safe and sound. He rode home with one of his friends who lives out of town also. Then his buddy let him drive his truck to our place and my husband will pick him up in the morning.
I think that his buddy's truck looks pretty nice in our driveway. Note how high the snow is on the bumper. He had to bust through drifts up to the headlights. And of course my oldest son is still out there playing. There will be no dance class or choir practice for us tonight.

Super Mommy

Look what I did! I cleared our driveway all the way down to the street. All of the roads are still closed in SE Nebraska. But if they open up later on I know that my husband will drive home to me. His little car would have never been able to drive up the driveway with all of that snow. My arms are going to be hurting tomorrow.

Can you say SNOW?

Here is the lovely view from our front windows in our living room. There is about two feet of snow in our driveway and my dear husband took our little ford escort to work this morning. When he left is was not very bad yet but it sure did pick up. I am now wondering if he will even be able to make to back home tonight. He has about a 30 mile drive to make it home. Maybe he will have to stay over with one of his friends from work. With the winds blowing so hard there are going to be huge drifts and our the road leading to our town is not know for clearing away drifts. I have tried to shovel the area of the driveway where his car will be parked. Hopefully after lunch I might be able to make it a little closer to the street. My arms already feel like Jello.

Here is the view from the back door. It is not very often that we have snow stuck onto our trees. The kids really want to play out in this weather but I am making them wait till the winds die down. I think that I will be making a big pot of warm chili for supper tonight. I just hope my husband will be here to help us eat it.

I can't give it up

This is my favorite food. I could eat popcorn everyday and I would never dull of it. It is perfect you can eat it with your fingers, it's salty, and fun to eat. Popcorn is something that I can not give up for lent. Just looking at the picture makes your mouth water, doesn't it?
This is my famous popcorn pot. It is a heavy cast iron dutch oven and it works wonderfully. All you need is some olive oil and butter in bottom and your good to go. Of course you must salt the crunchy treat after you dump it in a bowl.
And look who has raised their ugly head in my house again. The dreaded sock monster has returned with more power. There was a full scale battle last spring and I was victorious. There remained only a slight remnant and it seems that the remnant grew. I do not know where this monster gains his strength but I must beat the beast.

Oh No!

Whoever would like to see a picture of me big and pregnant needs to check out nanaporcupine (My Mom's blog). She posted a picture of me the day before Wyatt (my fourth) was born.

This little girl

This is my third daughter ,Constence, and is she something else. I do not know if it is because she is the third child or what but she is different then all of the other children. Usually she is a very soft spoken girl and almost whispers. I am constantly telling her that she must speak louder while she is telling of her dreams or about a story she made up. She will talk quietly to herself most of the day and imagine the wonder and exciting things. All she needs is two pony tail holders and their will soon be a adventure happening. But watch out if she if fired up about something because she can be a ball fire. The loudest thing in the house running to and fro. She will laugh so loud and squeal that it makes our ears hurt. Her whole goal in life is to be 14, have braces and talk on the phone. So I guess I better watch out. A few days ago she had a bad dream during the night and talked about for most of the morning. She told her dream to everyone and we were all getting a little sick of it. Suddenly she starts telling me that today she will be praying to God so that she will have good dreams. When a child speaks of such things it helps to let you know that something is sinking in. This morning I was reading her one of her favorite stories and she wanted to know both of the girl's name. Wouldn't you know it, but this story did not give us the name of the main character. It was a beginner reader book. She then decided that she would name the little girl. After a little while she comes into the kitchen and tells me the girl's name. "I named her Sarah, Mommy" she said. "Oh", I said. "Yeah, it's in the bible you know." said Contence. I just smile and finish making the oatmeal.

James won

I must brag about the beautiful springer spaniel that won at Westminster last night. James was just wonderful. I really did not think that he would win. As the judge was looking at all of the dogs a second time he walked right by the springer and did not even look at him. I was very surprised when he won the competition. He is just beautiful without any spots and his markings were beautiful. Does anyone else enjoy dog shows as much as I do?

Vanentine's Day

Wyatt's Birthday party on Sunday was very nice. We had my husband Mother, our friends the Bolin's and our friends the Kuhlman's over for goodies. We had cake, ice cream, brownies, nuts and popcorn. I thought I should have a little more than just cake and ice cream because there were 27 people in all. I was a nice time to visit and watch the little guy open a few gifts.

Today is Valentine's Day and the children are all very excited. They awoke to find a little pack on homemade valentine cookies taped to their door. They were surprised that I let them eat both cookies before breakfast. I knew that I would be making waffle this morning and they always take such a long time. The cookies would then buy me a little time.

Oh Yeah, when I went online my Google home page said that it was -3 degrees. My feet are chilly today.

Super Duper 2 year old

Here is the newly potty trained Wyatt. He really think that he is a super duper. He came up with this word when we bought him his superman underwear. Today he wants to wear his favorite pair outside of his pj's so he looks really super. He also like to wear his cape very day.

Here is a picture of Wyatt when he was only 1 day old. Now little guy is turning two years old. This afternoon we will munch on a large cookie for his small birthday celebration. My friend Leslie sent a gift for him and he has been looking at and wanting to open it all week. He will open that gift today and maybe one small one from us. On Sunday we will have a few family and friends come over for a larger birthday celebration.

Potty training 101

I now have a potty trained 23 month old. We began training 3 weeks ago this Tuesday. The little guy is doing just wonderful and has only had 6 accidents. I thought I would make a list of training hints.

1. There must be a lot of hype leading up to training day. I am talking "super bowl" hype. I started talking about potty training about 2 weeks before we started. We looked at his favorite underwear at the store. We talked about how these underwear could not be dirty and he must keep them clean. All of these discussions were done in a very upbeat and positive way.
2. More hype : we talked about how fun the potty chair would be and he watched older brother and sisters use the potty.
3. The day before we bought a new potty chair for him. (Our old one would be used in the upstairs bathroom but there would be a new one down stairs.) Hey, if $6.99 helps train a boy why not pay the money.
4. We bought the Superman underwear that he had been looking at for a few months at the store. He carried them through the store and we made a huge deal about them being kept clean and dry.
5. He got to the unwrap the potty chair and underwear when we got home.
6. He sat on the potty without a diaper and reminded what would happen when he woke up.
7. Before bed we (he was involved) set out his pile on clean underwear (I always have at least 12 pair on the back on the toilet) and we also got both potty chairs in position and ready.
8. Right before he went to bed, we went to the bathroom and looked at the potty. We put his favorite superman underwear by the potty and I told him that tomorrow he would not ware any more diapers. He would go pee on the potty as soon as he woke up in the morning. After that he would get to wear his underwear.
9. I made him repeat the words I just said, "Tomorrow I will not wear diapers, I will pee and poop on the potty."
10. Then bright and early as soon as I heard him we hurried to the potty and he peed on the potty. Huge HUGE excitement is them showed by everyone in the house and the little guy was given a small (one smarty) piece of candy. This reward is then given every time he pees for about a week.
11. That whole morning until noon you talk to the child about keeping their wonderful underwear clean and dry. You remind the child every five minute about staying clean and dry and have them sit on the potty chair every ten minute at least.
12. Chips, popcorn, drinks and snacks are given as bribes for sitting on the potty chair. He can see the snack but will not have it until he has sat on the potty chair.
13. When the child has an accident then you must be disappointed and he should feel bad about messing up his underwear.
14. Practice time. From ten location in the house he will practice saying "I have to pee" running to the potty chair, being placed on the potty chair and standing up. I say the same exact thing every time we practice and talk him through the whole thing. Your job is to teach and you must tell and show them everything.

This is how your life will be for about three days. Mom and Dad must be wonderful actors and make this very fun and exciting. On the first day of our training with Wyatt my wonderful husband came home and ran a bath for me then said" Go enjoy your bath, I will take over." Of course he also knew the whole training routine. Believe me, I needed a break by that time. At the end of that day we had over twenty picture book and other various toys in the bathroom from spending so much time in there. My older two spend the day reading to and playing with my four year old and letting the dog out so I focus on training Wyatt. Meals were also very simple that week and we did not go anywhere until church on Sunday.

Here is another resourse that will aid you in training your child. I found this book very helpful.