I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter Day with your families.  Ours was a very low key day.  My sister-in-law was up for the day with the cousins(brother-in-law could not make it).  The cousins were here on Friday and spent the weekend.  The kids all had fun.  I ended up having ALL 11 cousins at my house on Friday (11 includes my four) for some egg decorating and play time.  They all did well.  Unless you count my youngest male nephew.  He is somewhat of a terrorist and enjoys chasing the ducks/chickens.  Apparently he had visions of Jedi Knighthood and slaying my birds.  He was chasing them with a large stick of sorts and got ahold of one of the ducks.  Josh set him quite straight!  You see, Josh may get chased by the rooster but he is quite fond of the birds and can't stand to see someone chasing/hurting them.  I was pulling for Rambo Rooster to get Caleb.  But he didn't.  By the way, we now call our rooster Rambo.  We were swaying between Rambo and Terminator.  Rambo has won.  Anyway, we decorated eggs and had cookies and wreaked havoc on my home.  The pics. will come but I have not gotten them on the computer yet. 

We went to the dollar theater on Saturday night and saw National Treasure part two.  Way good show.  And it was P.G.  If you liked part one you will like part two.  Of course Rodger, being the eternal realist, did not like it that Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) could figure stuff out so quickly.  It just is not real.  But who goes to the movies for a reality check?  Not me.  The world needs realists like him though. 

Tonight we had our kids Talent Show with our homeschool group.  Zach played piano and Sophie did a little skit with her friend Mackenzie.  Rodger looked at me after the first song and said in a VERY quiet whisper, "This is going to be a loooong night."  Yep.  I have to say that overall it was a good night and so many of the kids got up and did something in front of a lot of people!  I could not have sang a song in front of all those people!  I would have sweat bullets and turned like, 20 shades of red.  I can talk in front of people, but don't ask me to sing! It was cute to see them showing off their talents. 

Hey, an update on Jenny.  Today her incision on her head began leaking fluid and her husband took her to the dr.  She has to go in tomorrow for another surgery to place a shunt in her brain to re-route the spinal fluid that is going into her brain area.  If the Lord reminds you, please continue to pray for her and her family.  She will also be seeing an Oncologist who is known to be very upfront and not the most positive.  He tends to give you all the negatives and then hope for the best.  I do not think this is all a bad thing for them.  Her husband is still in a kind of denial (I do not begrudge him what he is going through, just stating where he is emotionally).  Thanks for praying for them. 

Well, have a great week.  I will be off to the Midwest Homeschool Conference in TWO DAYS.  Of course I will miss my children.  I will probably loose sleep and need to come home early.  I know it is time for a little get-a-way when my "rose colored glasses" came off and Rodger actually bothered me.  Hmph.

See ya on the other side of the conference. 

God Bless, Tammy 

Me:  Josh, would you please go and feed/water and collect eggs from the chickens.

Josh:  Sure.

*fast forward a little bit*

Josh, bursting in the house.  Obviously disgruntled and/or other fuming emotions spilling forth

Me:  What on earth is the matter? 

Josh:  I want that rooster dead! 

Me:  Well what happened (I confess to my desire to know when the rooster attacks.  I have to blog about something.  And when I'm irritated it gives me a vision of something to laugh at)?

Josh:  He ruffled his feathers at me!!!

Me: Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

end conversation

Seriously.  The rooster ruffled his feathers at Josh!  My nearing 100 pound child is upset because the rooster ruffled his feathers at him. 

Rooster - ll        Josh - 0. 

I think I'll post this on our dry erase board.

*Please be in prayer for a family in our homeschool group.  They have 3 children in 3rd, 5th, and 8th grades and also the mom's teenage sister lives with them because the mother/younger sisters mom died a few years back.  The mom in this family was just diagnosed with brain cancer and had surgery to remove it last week.  Her family is reeling with shock and they are very scared.  The mom, Jenny, is paralyzed on her right side (don't know if it is permanent or just a temporary thing).  The 8th grader is trying to care for the mom right now.  They also are disconnected from a church right now.

God bless, Tammy

Well, we went from this:

To this:

To this:

And now we are all back to this:

And Duchess want to wish you all a wonderful week!

Here are some of our past week happenings:

1.  We almost ran over a deer in our driveway.

2.  We had a three legged deer in our yard.  I have no clue what happened to the fourth leg. 

3.  Brutus had a possum in his mouth.  The possum was playing dead and when Rodger got the dog to drop the possum it laid there for about 5 minutes and then got up and trotted off.  Rodger had gotten a shovel to dispose of the "dead" possum and when he nudged it with aforementioned shovel, off it went.  It was all like, "wow.  thanks dude for getting that mangey pooch off of me.  I thought I was toast."

4.  Rooster attacked Brutus.  Brutus deserved it since he was going after Rambo's harem. 

5.  Rooster attacked Josh.  Josh attacked Rooster.  Rooster won! 

6.  Chloe pushed the emergency call button in the mall bathroom.  We had to wait and tell the guy on the intercom that oops!  My little daughter "accidentally" pushed the button.  No sir, there is not an emergency in the womens bathroom.  Yes, that is my face completely red from embarrasment.  Yes, I know you can't see my face, but it is still red.  And by the way, it is way to hot in this bathroom.

7.  Two minutes later Chloe managed to make the alarm go off in the next store we were in.  She was clutching a webkinz to her chest! 

8.  Rodger filled out Zach's summer baseball form.  checked off female?  What?  "I guess I read it wrong." 

9.  They say the third time is a charm, so we got Josh's passport after driving downtown for the third time with all our proper paperwork etc. . .

All in all, it was a good week.  God is indeed good because I still have my sanity!

We are going through Benjamin's Box and the Resurection Eggs this week.

Our church cantata was yesterday. 

We are going to make the traditional easter egg coloring day this week.  Hopefully we will be able to do an egg hunt for them this week.  I think we are supposed to get a lot of rain.  

Blessings for your week, Tammy 

Well, we have lived through a mild snow storm to an ice storm to a blizzard and I am going to bet (but only if I were a "bettin'" kind of woman) that by Thursday/Friday we will be well into a flood! 

We just experienced a good, hearty blizzard.  Small in comparison to the Blizzard of '78, but a blizzard none-the-less.  We had about 14" of snow from Friday morning till Saturday night.  It was so much fun.  Rodger was having a blast on his baby, the Kubota.  He picked up a drag blade from a neighbor who can't use it and he is in plowing heaven.  The city was pretty much shut down.  Even the plow trucks weren't out because they could not keep up with all of the falling snow.  Every church was closed on Sunday.  The kids did some kind of happy dance because they did not have to get up early for church.  Is that good? or bad?  We ventured out on Friday night to go down the road to go skiing.  Not to bad getting there.  A little slow, but fun.  Saturday when we went out I knew that we probably would not get back up.  Except with our two legs.  We ended up sliding down the driveway sideways for a good 10 - 15 feet.  Wow, was that fun.  But Rodger is the man.  He righted that ole' Durango and off we went.  

So today was almost 40 deg. outside with sun and clouds.

We had a death in the family this past week.  Thursday night our sweet doggie of 10 years died. This is what he did best.  Sit.  Oh, he had a big bark too! 

Here is the obituary that Rodger wrote.   

Duke died last night after a short unknown illness. Just coughed a few times in the kennel and that was it. He just turned 10 on Valentine's day. Duke loved to eat and bark for more food. He is survived by his loving family Tammy, Josh, Sophie, Zach, Chloe, Rodger, grandpas, grandmas, and fellow kennel mates Brutus and Duchess. He had no children (no thanks to his loving family). He is proceeded in death by his mother Hershey who was hit by a car on SR309. Funeral services to be announced.

I think it should be said to all that my DH is NOT the life of the party.  In fact, he is not a real laugher.  Don't get me wrong, he is not grumpy or unlovable/unlikable.  It just takes a lot to get him to laugh.  He is more of a serious minded person.  I, on the other hand, could talk to the wall and I laugh a lot.  Seriously.  A. LOT.  This whole obituary is so out of character for Rodger to have written.  It really made me laugh.  Even putting it on here  made me laugh again looking at it.  It is a funny, creative work of art from Rodg.  We really did love our dog though.  I miss him because he was the only one who wouldn't jump on you.  Althoug he did that aplenty in his more youthful days.    Rose colored glasses. 

Other than the crazy weekend, there is not much new going on here.  We had a really great day of productivity today.  We are going to be going to the Cincy Homeschool Conference on the 28th.  Grandma and Grandpa will be here with the kids.  And the Smith & Wesson

Anissa and I are going on an overnight to Cinci in May to go to the Creation Museum/Planetarium, Underground Railroad Museum and the Cincy Aquarium.  We are going to take the older kids only.  They will enjoy it so much more and we will get more out of it.  So that is what is going on and what is coming up.  I am looking forward to spring getting here. 

Enjoy your week!

Tammy

We had a very nice weekend.  We cleaned up the house pretty well on Saturday and went to a movie by 12:45p.m.  I did end up taking the kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks.  I think it was cute overall.  I am realllllly glad we did not spend money for the big theatre.  There aren't to many movies that I can say I am glad I spent the full amount for. 

On Saturday night we had the Anissa clan over to have a little impromtu party for Tylers 12th birthday.  Mass chaos ensued when it was the opening of the gifts time.  The "BIG ONE" was a Nintendo Ds and you should have seen the excitement.  New Yorks Power grid had nothin' on the excitement in our house.  Then of course we took a picture with all the children lined up with their ds's.  Wow.  They know how to get that "glazed" look in their eyes on command.  Anissa tells the kids to look kind of zoned out and BAM, they were there.  That was kind of scary!

Sunday we went to Malabar Farm where there was a Maple Syrup Festival going on.  Upon arrival we got into a very long line to wait the get on a horse drawn wagon.  The wagon was to take us on a nostalgic producing ride up the lane to a sugar shack.  There were demonstrations and such at the destination.  Meanwhile I have some hyperactive child screaming in my ear on my "nostalgic" ride up the lane.  Oh, and the driver behind us with his horse and buggy caught up to us and let his horses come right up to our back end seats.  Lets just say that horses do sneeze and it ain't pretty!  When we got to the top of the hill and exited the nostalgic wagon ride we went directly to the first demo. spot.  It was a demo. by some true native americans on how their ancestors would make syrup.  Quite a neat process.  Apparently Native Americans died more from periodontal diseases than any other form of death.  They were pretty unhygenic (according to Mr. Indian).  This particular gentelman (not the one pictured though) was an actor in the Johnny Appleseed production we had in our local area.  He also has been on several documentaries portraying the indian in the 1700's.  He is a very nice fellow to chat with.  The guy we got a photo of gave Sophie a buckeye nut/seed.  He did think to tell her that she should not eat it since she was not a squirrel.  Hmmmm.

By the time we got to the modern day sugar shack Rodger realized that his dream of having a maple syrup farm was fading quickly.  You need to have 43 gallons of sap to equal one gallon of syrup.  You can only have three taps per tree and your trees need to be at least a 14" diameter.  On ten acres of land we will be hard pressed to find the right amount of trees.  Since about half of our trees are pine that leaves approximately, oh say 12 maples left!  So, scratch the syrup farm idea.  Next. 

While we were there we purchased two bags of maple flavored cotton candy and one stick of maple beef jerky(Josh).  We were able to watch four older men (read: as old as the hills) play in their bluegrass band.  That is so much fun for me to watch.  The kids like it too.  They played all kinds of music with their guitars and banjo's and violins.  They are just so darn cute!  Plus they are clearly having a good time. 

The Anissa clan came trooping in after us and then it all went down from there.  Not that it was Anissas fault.  Somehow, our boys have this fine art of loosing things.  Namely inhalers for their asthma.  Like one minute it is packed in their overnight bag and the next - it just "disappeared".  That would be Zach's gift.  The child loves to loose his inhalers.  So all is good and fun until we realize that Zach can't breath.  Nice.  We are 10 minutes by walking from the car where the inhaler is supposedly packed in their bag from having spent the night with the boys.  So the men trot off to get the inhaler and we hitch a ride with yet another nostalgic horse drawn wagon.  Meanwhile Zach is stressing out just because he can't breath.  I mean, really!  We're all trying to encourage  him to just hang on b/c we are only going 2.2 mph and surely we will be there before the trees bud in May.  So we get to our drop off point and go off to the car where the men are getting the inhaler.  Funny thing is - it is not there.  No where to be found.  Josh had it packed up and ready for departure from the spendover.  Zach decided he needed to use it and he laid it on the counter and then it just "disappeared".  It was the ghost of "Not Me".  Somehow it showed up in the schoolroom at Anissas house.  Things that make ya go hmmm.  So now we are only about 7 minutes from home and we decided to just go ahead and go.  Poor Anissa woke up in the middle of the night dreaming that Zach was dying from not being able to breath.  We were all a little stressed/concerned for the poor little critter.  Then you have the older brother whispering sweet words of comfort to Zach.  "You are fine Zach.  You don't need the inhaler."  This is coming from the boy who also has asthma and knows full well how awful it feels to not have the relief of an inhaler.  All ended well as we flew home and zipped in and got the inhaler.  Did I actually sign up for this stuff when we decided to have kids?

So here are the pictures of our drama filled weekend.  Sophie took the pictures.    

So there is our weekend in review.  We had a nice weekend and all the snow has melted in our area.  We are now on to ice storms coming in.  Yea!  When you want different weather in Ohio just wait a few minutes.  It will change. 

I hope you all had nice weekends and have a great week.

P.S.  While I was writing this post Josh was the first to go on the maiden voyage of eating one of our duck eggs.  He said it was fine, but he did almost throw up because he got a raw spot where he had not cooked it enough.  HAHAHAHAHA!  O.K. it kind of made me giggle a little. 

Tammy