Knights Becoming and a Lady in Waiting

Doctor Woes

Actually, maybe that should be insurance woes.  We changed our insurance provider at the beginning of htis year, so my doctor was no longer on the list.  This means, of course, finding a new doctor.  Now, we live in a town with a fairly prestigious medical school, so finding a doctor shouldn't be a problem, right? 

Wrong.  I have called several different providers and either they're all not taking new patients or they have really weird hours that I can't possibly get to their office for.

The upshot is that I have a sore ankle I haven't been able to get treated for months now.  I did go into urgent care and know for certain it isn't broken, but whatever is wrong with it, it's not going away.  Usually it's just a dull ache that I can ignore (although I like to think it's responsible for my more grouchy moods, lately); occasionally it flares up and is actually painful and swollen.

I haven't figured out what to do yet.  I have to get established with a new doctor in order to get this fixed, but I have to take four littles with me in order to get to the doctor at all.  Hubby can sometimes get some time off to help me out, but it's not guaranteed, which means I can't make an appointment.

Okay, whine over.  It's just been bothering me and I needed to vent.  Thanks for letting me get it off my chest. :)

Bowling with Babies

We took the kids bowling tonight and had a blast.  We'd never taken any of them before, so we figured we'd just jump in and take four (ages 6, 4, 2, and 6 months).

Happily, the location had bumpers, so we didn't have too many gutter balls (did you know you can still get a gutter ball with bumpers on??).  They also had fairly light balls, although Prince Dannyboy (3DS2) needed a bit of assistance to get the thing to the lane and all the way down to the balls (good thing we were on an end!)

We started off with DH getting a lovely strike and the boys all doing well.  Mommy... well, I take a while to warm up.  Princess Moo eventually decided that watching from her carseat was NOT fun, so I held her in one arm and bowled with the other for the rest of the evening.  I am quite sure there are muscles that will be on strike tomorrow, but it was rather fun to bowl with a baby (no, I didn't send her headfirst down the lane!).

DH won the first game, hands-down.  After all, I bowled half of it with a baby on my hip.

I won the second game (125!!).  I bowled the whole game with a baby on my hip and was "warmed up."  Heeehee!

Bedtime.  More tomorrow.  Hope you all had a blessed Palm Sunday.

C

Quick Update

I will post longer later; we're out the door very shortly.  I just wanted to check in.

Loved the conference.  Loved meeting a lot of very wonderful vendors, even if I missed the majority of the speakers (Princess Moo was not at all interested in what they had to say; she liked the friendly vendor-people!).  Got to see Maggie Hogan from a distance, but missed her talk and had to buy her book from her hubby. *laugh*  Missed my kids by late afternoon, but gutted it out. ;)

RSS Feed is now enabled.  Thanks, OreoSouza. ;)

Prince Berryboy will be sending Dippy another letter sometime this week.  We'll just make it a writing assignment.  Bwahahaha!  I love HSing some days. *grin*

Rat recovered.  She seems very proud of herself.

I miss reading everyone's adventures.  Might catch up tonight, but will likely have to wait until tomorrow sometime.

Off running...

*poof*

*unpoof*

I forgot!!  I walked 2.6 miles on Friday (although I was standing most of the day and had a baby in the front pack) and walked 1.9 miles Saturday (I borrowed a stoller!)

*repoof*

Things I Should Be Updating

I'm terrible at the regular updating, so I don't put buttons on my blog.  But I am doing both the April Walking Challenge and the Clean Heart, Clean Home Challenge.  Here's my update for the week, before I run away for the weekend!

Walking:  I walked 1.25 miles on Monday and 2.20 miles on Wednesday.  We're fighting strep (3 down, 3 to go) and I'm having some issues with my left ankle, so this wasn't bad.  3.45 miles down, 26.55 to go.

CHCHC:  My car is washed, vacuumed, and cleaned out.  I didn't get to the windows, but they're not bad (except for the one Prince Derryboy took a white crayon to).

I skipped my front yard, which isn't bad, and went to the back (because we need to clean it up to plant the garden!)  We worked in it the two dry days we had this week, but it still needs a lot of loving care.

The living room is unused at the moment, so it was clean and bare. :0

I leave at 10 a.m. tomorrow and I'm too jazzed to sleep.  hee.  If any of you are going to the APACHE conference in Peoria, look for the dazed mommy front-packing around the six-month-old princess with chubby cheeks.  That's me.  Hopefully no one else (like ME) will come down with strep before I esca... er, reluctantly leave my home.  (I will miss them in less than four hours).

Have a wonderful next two days, all!  I'll blog when I return and have restabilized my home enough to find the computer. :D

Hold That Thought

Probably no big posts today.  We had tornado warnings last night, minor damage (lots of sticks in the yard and all my downspouts are down).  I also have a sick DH and my poor Prince Derryboy (2DS4) has an infected thumb from biting his nails!!!!  I'll post a pic later so you can all use it to break your kids of the habit, if you want.  Prayers greatly appreciated.

Off to get school, devotions, menus, and the CHCH Challenge going. Weeeeee!

Ooh, Look, a New Toy

Well, it's more an ability than a toy, but I'm still just as elated as the proverbial kid in a candy store (or as my husband when he gets a new piece of technology to call his very own).

I was printing out the journal for Dandelion Seed's "Clean Heart, Clean Home" challenge and read through her instructions.  She told us the secret of long life... for my paper pile, at least.  She told me how to print two-sided pages!!

Now before all of you who are environmentally-inclined, proud tightwads, or even just technologically superior sit and point fingers at me, I really do print two-sided most of the time.  (I print way too much to NOT do so).  But I've always done it this way:

1. Print page 1
2. Remove page 1 and reinsert into the printer tray
3. Print pages 2 and 3
4. Remove page 2 and 3.  Set aside page 1/2 and put page 3 back into the printer tray.
5. Print pages 4 and 5

And so on.  While it works, it requires you to sit the computer rather like a daddy Emperor penguin watching over your egg (yup, we watched March of the Penguins for movie night tonight).  You have to warn, threaten, and cajole certain little princes to not touch the pages as they print (or stick King Bravemore's sword into the printer while in action).  Hmm.  Okay, that one is still an issue.  But I don't have to sit and babysit the pages anymore!  The odd pages all print out first, then the even on the second round.

Excuse me while I go do a little victory dance.  Since I'm a bit challenged in the dance area, it's not a pretty sight.  You might want to cover your eyes.

Ahem.  As I was saying... you, too, can learn how to print two-sided with ease.  But since this is Amy's baby, you'll just have to go over to her blog to find out how.  While you're there, you might as well read up on and sign up for the "Clean Heart, Clean Home" challenge.  After all, misery-- er, I mean industry-- loves company.

What We're Reading With Our Ears

Yup, we read with our ears.  We read in the car, in the playroom, and just on our own.

We love books on tape (or CD-rom).

Our latest adventures have been The Railway Children, The Magic Treehouse (books 1-8), and Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

We're still in the middle of the first two (one in the house, one in the car), but we've finished MPW and intend to check out more on our next library trip.

What fun these books are!  They're old-fashioned, so there's no language and very little attitude.  The children say things like "Zowie!" and have rather charming manners (and my oldest son is now saying "Zowie!" too *laugh*).  They also teach a character trait AND give parents a way to deal with certain little... personality slips.  All of this is done in such a well-told manner that the children enjoy the books as much as I do.

If you get a chance to read or listen to any of these books by Betty MacDonald, I would fully recommend them. :)

So Much to Blog, So Little Time!

It always seems that the more I have to blog about, the less time I have to blog it.  It has been an absurdly busy week (for a woman who goes into stress mode when she is at all busy).

I think I'll start with the thing that made the most impression on my week.  My husband and I finally had the sit-down discussion I've been begging, pleading, (whining, nagging *wry smile*) for for several weeks now.  Boy, was there a lot of laundry aired out!  I can't share most of it (now, c'mon, I don't ask you these things *grin*), but the very best part was us talking about God.  My DH isn't saved and generally leans heavily toward an atheistic view, so this was a huge thing for me.  He usually walks away from any "religious" discussions.  We actually had one!

You know.... there are sixty trillion other things I wanted to post about, but I got the big one and the kidlets are done with their self-entertaining activities, so I'd better run.  More later, I hope!

C

What's Cookin'?

Normally I don't share what we eat.  (Normally you're eating roughly the same thing I am, so why bother? *laugh*)  But tonight we had something a little different, so I thought I'd share.

Lentil Soup and Lavosh

Lentil Soup

1 pound (1 bag) dried lentils

3 quarts water

1 ham bone (or 1 c chopped, cooked ham)

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 bay leaf

1/4 tsp dry mustard

salt and pepper to taste

1 can (1 cup) of corn

1 can (1 cup) diced tomatoes

Wash and sort lentils.  Put all ingredients in a large pot, cover, and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until lentils are very tender, stirring occasionally.  (If using ham bone, cut meat off bone near the end).    Add corn and tomatoes; cook an additional 10 minutes, and serve.

Lavosh

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 cups wheat flour

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

1 1/3 c water

2 egg whites (or one whole egg)

4 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a large bowl mix all dry ingredients together well, then add wet ingredients.  Mix well to make a stiff dough.  Knead about five minutes.

Divide dough into approximately 14 balls (this is a great math activity!).  Roll each ball on a lightly floured surface until thin (note: original recipe says paper-thin; we do it by hand and end up roughly 3/4" thick).  This is also a good kid activity, if a bit messy.  Place on an ungreased cooking sheet and brush with olive oil (the original recipe calls for egg white and sesame seeds; we use 1 tsp olive oil).

Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, until browned.

Enjoy! :)

CM

Are you talkin' to me?

I just had to put this up really quickly before I go to bed:

"If you want to be listened to,

you should put in some time listening."

Ouch.  I guess that explains a lot, lately!

C

Confessions of an Obsessive-Compulsive Planner

I've been spending so much time enjoying and passing on others' blogs that I haven't done much with my own.  Shame on me.  Heh.

Actually, things have been going so much better that I've not had the need to vent.  Now why should that be more important than sharing the good days?  I don't know.  But ever since I've tried to relax more (math, what's that?) and take each day as just that day, things are going much more smoothly.  I've been doing my quiet time (and being held accountable by my dear sis in Missouri), getting off the computer for more of the day than I'm on it, cutting out TV shows (why do I watch some of these anyway??), and just generally getting back to living instead of planning.  Wow.  I should have done that sooner.

Here's a challenge for all of you over-planners like me.  Take one day (don't over-think it, don't PLAN it) and go virtually planless the whole day.  Now I don't mean cut out all structure-- I think kids need at least some structure to their days.  I just mean toss out the lists.  Don't worry about getting in two pages of math, the spelling test, two loads of laundry, cleaning the rat cage, etc.  If you get to it, lovely.  If you don't... lovely.  It will still be there tomorrow.  If you're going to worry about anything at all, worry about the things you'd MISS if they weren't there tomorrow. 

I don't know yet what day I'm taking.  I'm not going to think about it.  I'm just going to get up one day this week and say "I'm not planning today."

I'll let you know how it goes.

March Waking Challenge

I just signed up for this.  What a great motivator to get outdoors and get some exercise.  Hey, the kids can burn off energy with me!

Click on the pic to read more:

On we go!

Before I Was a Mom

I got this in my TEACH magazine newsletter and didn't want to lose it (no copyright restrictions, I think, on anonymous material?).  Enjoy.

BEFORE I WAS A MOM

Author Unknown

Before I was a Mom
I made and ate hot meals.
I had unstained clothing.
I had quiet conversations on the phone.

Before I was a Mom
I slept as late as I wanted
And never worried about how late I got into bed.
I brushed my hair and my teeth everyday.

Before I was Mom
I cleaned my house each day.
I never tripped over toys or forgot words to lullabies.

Before I was a Mom
I didn't worry whether or not my plants were poisonous.
I never thought about immunizations.

Before I was a Mom
I had never been puked on
Pooped on
Spit on
Chewed on
Peed on
Or pinched by tiny fingers

Before I was a Mom
I had complete control of my mind
My thoughts
My body
And my time.
I slept all night.

Before I was a Mom
I never held down a screaming child
So that doctors could do tests
Or give shots.
I never looked into teary eyes and cried.
I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin.
I never sat up late hours at night watching a baby sleep.

Before I was a Mom
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn't want to put it down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces
When I couldn't stop the hurt.
I never knew that something so small
Could affect my life so much.
I never knew that I could love someone so much.
I never knew I would love being a Mom.

Before I was a Mom
I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body.
I didn't know how special it could feel to feed a hungry baby.
I didn't know that bond between a Mother and her child.
I didn't know that something so small
Could make me feel so important.

Before I was a Mom
I had never gotten up in the middle of the night
Every 10 minutes to make sure all was okay
I had never known the warmth
The joy
The love
The heartache
The wonderfulment
Or the satisfaction of being a Mom.
I didn't know I was capable of feeling so much before I was a Mom.

Safe Code-- do you worry?

I read this at Dandelion Seeds and had to share.

She has a great idea about how to "code" your children while posting on the Internet.  See more here.