Can I Help?

Today I knocked over an almost brand-new-three-quarter-full-Costco-sized jar of dried Edamame.  (If you don’t know what that is, think dried lima bean size, only you can eat these dry)  The  jar was about a quart and half size.  It was a lot of beans!

I was scrambling to get them cleaned up before little feet crunched them.  Then I heard a young voice say, “Can I help?”

My first instinct was to say “No.”  No, I don’t need this to be a bigger mess.  No, I don’t want to bend over more than I need to in order to help you clean it up, my pregnant belly just can’t take it.  No, I don’t want you to find it fun to scatter the beans with the broom.  No, no, no I don’t need or want help from a three year old right now.

But what I said was, “Let me get it ready for you to help” as I swept them into a pile and proceeded to sweep up my first dust pan full.

Hewy then said, “I have my own” and when I stood up and looked, he had gotten his own mini broom and dustpan out of the cleaning closet.  I said, “okay sure you can help.”

My Mother Heart and Mother Stomach were fighting.  This is crazy!  This is a good opportunity to let him learn and work.  He’ll make it worse.   He usually doesn’t want to work – now he does, let him.

You know what? 

He did it.  Scoop after scoop he swept up beans.  I spilled more than he did.  He was determined to get every last bean too.   I was just concerned with the over-all mess.  He found a bean or two hiding under the cabinets or in the pantry.

Now, what about those matchbox cars, the dominoes and mosaic tiles that I know he dumped out upstairs?

Perhaps if I gave him a mini broom and dust pan?

Robot Hewy

Alec had golf balls delivered.
(he only uses a certain ball and it's cheaper to order them off the internet.)

Hewy managed to get the box open himself with a plastic knife and his teeth. (yes really, I watched him do it, I wanted to see how he responded to the difficult task)

Once the box was open he made a hole in the side and made it a robot outfit all on his own. He was pretty proud of himself - and I must say, I was impressed too. Take video games and TV away and even the 3 year old gets crafty!



This is him making the hold in the side.

Success!

Hewy started spinning around and around - he had been spinning for quite awhile when I started the video. The thing with videos is you never really know "what" will happen once you hit the record button.

Really?

Is this really my Mom on a trampoline?
Grandmama and Hewy enjoy some fun time together.

Father Day Yum!

This odd looking kind-of-like-puffy-pancake thing turned into a
very yummy dessert for Father's day.



It was a recipe from my dear friend Lois - slightly adapted.

And here is a picture of it in all it's gooey goodness!


Cream Puff Cake

Crust
Melt and heat together:
1 stick butter
1c milk
Once melted whisk in:
1 c. flour
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and
bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until brown.

Filling
With a hand mixer mix together:
1 large box of Vanilla pudding
8oz softened cream cheese
1 1/2 c. milk
1t. vanilla
Fold in:
1 8oz tub of cool whip

Chocolate Sauce
Melt together and whisk
3/4 c. chocolate chips
2 T. Butter
3 T. Milk
1/2 c. powdered sugar (adapt as to how sweet/bitter you like chocolate)

Once the crust is cool spread in the creamy-yummy-filling.
Chill until ready to serve.
Cut and serve.
Drizzle with Chocolate Sauce (or drench it!)

Try not to over eat!

Lake LBJ

We had some fun at Lake LBJ with the Miller's Saturday morning.
The boys left for Utah this afternoon - but we got a full morning in at the lake before they left.




Hewy didn't so much as go near the water, other than to get on the boat. (This may have changed after we left to take the boys to San Antonio - Hewy wanted to stay with the Millers not come with us) Noble and Liam could have and would have stayed all day too if they didn't have a plane to catch.

You can see they were brimming with joy!

Rick let them all have a turn driving the boat.
This was a highlight for all of them!
(We still out of habit/respect call Rick "Bishop" - Hewy calls him Grandpa Bishop.)

Everyone that wanted to got to ride at least twice on the tube. You can see they enjoyed it! Thumbs up means go faster and Liam had his thumb up almost the entire time! Once when Liam was riding with Julie the tube went over the wake and Liam ended up upside down vertical to the water - he held on tight and still he still came up (or was it down?) smiling!

The Boys Take a Plunge

At Lake LBJ with the Miller's the boys jumped off the Marina into the floating island.

Hewy says:

“I’m feeling curious!”

Music to a Mother’s ears

The boys were so excited to tell me all about Cub Camp when they got home tonight.  This is Liam’s first year at Cub (Scout) Camp and Noble’s last year. 

Today when we went “shopping” for food-stuffs to pack their lunches this week – Liam remembered that I have always let Noble get Snickers bars and freeze them to take everyday at Camp.  It’s funny what kids can remember when they want to.

I have to say that the last 10 minutes before we left for the drop off and the ride to drop off were not our best moments with each other.  Right as we were to walk out the door today, Noble was pulling his lunch out of the fridge and knocked a glass jar of pasta sauce out onto the tile floor!

Shattered glass and splattered pasta sauce – that’s what every mother/housewife wants when she is in a rush!  Not a happy moment anytime of day, let alone, when you are on your way out the door.  Not one of my best Mommy-moments. 

So as Noble got out of the car to go meet up with his friends, I grabbed his hand and said – “Noble, you’re a good kid and you are more important than my floor or pasta sauce, I love you.”   That made him cry.  But I had to say it. 

I would rather him deal with the consequence of his friends maybe seeing him teary than have him questioning my love for him.

I have this “thing” of making sure my kids and Sweetheart know that I love them, hopefully always, but especially when they are leaving my presence.  “If” we never saw each other again, something happened unexpectedly, I want them to know that I love them and that they are the most important thing(s) in my life – that my life is dedicated to them. 

So tonight when they got home and were talking non stop and trying not to fight over who would say-what and tell-what and talk next and I was being a mother and encouraging them to eat and asking them for their wet swimsuits and sweaty scout shirts to wash so they can wear them again tomorrow – my heart felt better. 

And then my heart nearly popped as they dismissed themselves upstairs and Liam said: “I got a little homesick and I almost cried.”  And then I cried when I heard Noble say, “Yeah me too.”

Music to a Mothers ears.  They not only wanted to come home, they missed home, missed me.

(Now how are they ever going to make the 10 days in Utah without me?)  :)

Literally

There is a value story about a Dad and his boys wrestling in the lawn and the Mom pokes her head out the door and says - “You’re tearing up the grass.” and the Dad responds, “We are not raising grass, we are raising boys!”

I have that quote over on the sidebar of the blog because I really do try and remember that raising my boys is more important than most “things” in life.

Yesterday was “one of those days” where we all just seemed off from each other.  I felt like I was pulling teeth to gain cooperation and they probably felt like I was the Warden of house. 

Late yesterday afternoon I had told the boys they could do the sprinkler with the trampoline but reminded them they could only let it run for a certain amount of time because the grass gets saturated.  They got distracted and forgot.  When I reminded them to shut it off, a few times, and then finally used the Mommy voice to make them shut it off – the grass was nearly on big puddle under the trampoline. 

Tempers being what they were yesterday – wrestling was going on and any mother of boys knows that once wrestling starts, it’s only going to escalate until one or more or everyone is hurt to some degree.  Physically, emotionally or mentally.  Someone will be hurt. 

Noble threw Liam down like he was a feather pillow.  Liam jumped on Noble and purposefully stomped on his leg in the process.  And the escalation began. 

Liam knowing he isn’t quite a match for Noble physically just yet got off the tramp and started splashing water from the saturated lawn onto Noble.  Only, it wasn’t just water.  It was mud.  Before long they were both covered in mud and my lawn was torn up.

I stopped them then and there.

I had them rinse off with the hose, jump some more to dry off, come in and shower and go sit on the quiet room couch.  (Why I did any of this I don’t know because the very next thing they did was go outside and do water balloons and got all wet and sweaty again)

As I have thought about it all since then I realized that I too was caught up in the day of frustration and responding in my motherly way without seeing the bigger picture, just as they were responding the way boys would without seeing the big picture.  I forgot, that

we are not raising grass

we are raising boys. 

another use for the tramp

We found another good use for the trampoline today.



We had some friends over and a mystery package delivered today.

The friends: three boys. (plus our three boys)
The mystery package: Chocolate Croissants packed in dry ice.
(we love the givers more than chocolate croissants too!)

The combination of the two - led to dry ice bombs!

And the tramp enclosed in a net - gave us a safe place to put the kids so that they could see and not be hit by any flying plastic!

Alec explains to everyone the "hows" and the "whys" and he shows them the blown up bottle.

Our first bottle blown apart!
As you can see, we kept them small (water bottle) and only did dry ice and water and made sure they were 20 feet away from anyone in our own fenced backyard.

They waited in anticipation!

Picture Starved?

I know I haven't posted many pictures recently so I am catching up today!


Hewy with Liam's scripture case on his head.
And a chocolate milk mustache.

Me and my Sweetheart.
(Papermache easter eggs we haven't taken down)



Hewy asleep in the car on our trip to Dallas.

I remember when this boy was too scared to get in the water.
Look at him now!

Swim Fun

These are from our Dallas trip last week.
The pool at our hotel.

Crutch

The Crutch

I came down the stairs the other day and as
I rounded the corner this is what I saw.


Someone must think this is artistic.
Who hangs a crutch on the wall?
I can totally see this in a college dorm room.
Wo is me...

One day Hewy decided he had a broken leg.
He pulled on a wine-bottle-cozi that Alec had brought home from a golf tournament that week - Hewy used it as a pretend cast and now I think it has found a permanent home in the dress up box.

He even walked around the house with the crutch almost all day -
because his leg was broken.

78 days

I just did one of those pregnancy calculator things and realized that I have 78 days (approx) until Baby #4 is here in living breathing flesh! 

Aak!  I have more to do than that time allows!

But oh, how exciting!

This pregnancy has been easier than any other I have had.  It has also gone by so quickly.  Now, I also understand that I have the Texas summer to get through for the last three months; June, July and August!

Swimming pools and Air Conditioning will save me!

Feeding Moses

I stole the title from the article that first brought this story to my attention.  I was deeply touched by this story that although I’m glad to see it covered by a national magazine, I was disappointed that it wasn’t the cover story once I found it stashed in the back, you know where all the last minute advertising is.  it isn’t even mentioned on the cover.  Where is the national media coverage of this inspiring good news!?

But first the bad news:

Robbie Goodrich is the father to a little girl (I am guessing around age two) and a young infant boy, Moses,  6 months old.  Robbie’s wife died 11 hours after childbirth due to a rare amniotic-fluid embolism. 

Let your heart sink and crash and push away the fear and devastation and thank your lucky stars and God for your life – I know you are all feeling some degree of that right now as I did when I first read it. 

The good news:

Robbie knew that his wife felt strongly about breast feeding for the first year and had enjoyed breast feeding their daughter.  He made the immediate decision to purchase banked breast milk to feed their son for the first year.  Praise to him!  Way to go Dad!

The amazing news:

Upon finding out about his choice a family friend that had a nursing a baby volunteered to breast feed baby Moses and within a day had a mob of nursing mothers, mostly strangers to the family, that volunteer their time and mothers milk to feed baby Moses!  Every three hours a Mother shows up to nurse this baby boy and they each donate milk for the father to bottle feed him breast milk at night.

Robbie Goodrich says, “It’s not just about nutrition – it’s about nurturing”

Way to go Moms!  This is womanhood at it’s finest.  Cheers for you!

(note: the only concern with cross-nursing are health risks that the nursing mother may carry an infectious disease such as HIV or hepatitis.  If all mothers are tested and determined to be in good heath there is no risk to the baby.  The American Academy of Pediatrics quoted in the article: “If the mothers and baby are healthy, it’s reasonable, breast milk is always best.”)

quick trip

We took a quick trip to Dallas this past weekend.  We had hoped to leave on Thursday and see clients, law school friends and family – but life as it is, we didn’t leave until Friday. 

We were still able to see Christy (Alec’s sister) and her family and attend Josh Petersen’s baptism.  (Josh is Todd (Alec’s cousins/honorary brother) son)

We stayed in a hotel.  The boys went swimming.  It was a nice little “up and back” escape. 

We had to come home Saturday night as I had meetings and was teaching RS.

"Gosh that was a good time, Mom!"

Yesterday was the last day of Public school. We are going to do "school" through summer and then take off a couple months when the baby comes. Traditionally however, on the last day of school we invite all our friends over for a Rootbeer Float party.

I didn't take a single picture. (GASP! The Horror!)

Several of our friends came, the kids jumped on the trampoline, played on the rainbow, kicked back in the sand box, while the parents hung out in the shade of the oaks trees and chatted.

Everyone had at least one rootbeer float. Gads of goodies like cookies, cupcakes, peanut butter pretzels, and fruit.

This morning when I got up, or rather, surfaced to the rest of the family (I had been up for a while and just been in my room), but when I came to the kitchen, both Noble and Liam gave me hugs and Noble said, "Gosh that was a good time, Mom!" and went on to tell me everything he liked about the rootbeer float party.

That's why I have these silly traditions. The boys look forward to them, but I really believe that when they look back on their childhood, these are the days they will remember. And how hard is it to send out an email inviting people over, buy a bucket of ice cream and several two liters of rootbeer? For about half the cost of what it would cost to take my children to movie we had 40 of their closest friends over for an afternoon and they are still talking about it the next day.

I wish mothering was always that easy.

Funny things Hewy has said recently

Recently when Hewy asks if he can sit on my lap I say, "I don't have a lap anymore!"  (and what lap I do have, it isn't comfortable for me to have someone bumping my belly from the outside)  However, Hewy has found a creative way around this, he now says "But Mom I'm pretending you have a lap!"

Last night after he asked to sit on my lap I plopped him next to me on the arm of the couch and put my arm around him.  He immediately protested, “I don’t want to sit on the couch, I want to sit on your lap!”  He ended up sitting between my reclined legs with his head resting on my bump of a tummy.  He thought it was funny when Bear would kick him in the head! (As if he were saying, Get off me Bro!)

A couple days ago I had an embroidered maternity shirt on.  When Hewy first saw me he said, “Mom, why you wearing the beautiful shirt?”

Still not sure what that meant. 

St. Louis - Gateway Arch

We flew out of St. Louis so on our way "home" we made a stop at the Gateway Arch. It turned out to be a highlight of the trip and one of our favorite things from a really great trip!

This was our "escape pod" for my Star Wars fanatic children. It was a small enclosed windowless ferris wheel type car that took us to the top of the Arch.

630 feet in the air!
Considering Alec and Noble are scared of heights, this is something to brag about!
Taller than most (maybe even all) other U.S. landmarks.

Views from the top.

Lincoln's Tomb

We were not going to go see this and I am so glad that we did!
It is stunning and beautiful and so well done.



The monument/tomb itself is beautiful from the outside and really captures and honors his life. Once you walk in the door you walk around the tomb in a circle that has quotes from his many speeches on the walls and statues representing his life. In the back of the tomb is where he is buried along with his wife and three of his four children. (the fourth was buried at Arlington) Did you know there are no living descendants of Lincoln?

love of history

I can't say enough how delighted that I am that my boys like history. Especially U.S. History. It does good things for a stay at home Mom that homeschools heart to hear her kids get excited about history and want to hear and know more. When we get in the car one of my kids, including Hewy, will say "Can we listen to Story of the World?" which are audio books of world history. I can hardly believe my ears when I hear myself say, NO! No more, I can't take it! Literally, every time, we get in the car, this is their request. I just found and bought an Audio book set that is just U.S. History that I look forward to listening to with them.

Noble has been a Lincoln fan for several years now. He owns several books about him and will outright tell you that Abe Lincoln is his favorite president. That isn't because he knows the most about Abe, although that is probably true, Noble has several books on the presidents and can tell you all kinds of tidbits about all of them. When he suggested we see Lincoln sites while we were in Illinois I wasn't sure just how much Lincoln we could all take. Turns out, we did quite well.

I know that we all came away with new understanding of the man we already looked up to. Noble says he did learn new things, but that he still thinks that he knew and understood the most about Lincoln before we went. Alec and I suggested he visit again when he has kids and is in his 30's. I think his politic views might be different and he may gain new insights to his favorite president that he just doesn't quite grasp at 10.

Lincoln was a great example of many things and I couldn't really ask that my boys look up to anyone better. This statue honors him as a deputy surveyor - which he didn't know how to do, but he taught himself. Just like he learned to read on his own. He wasn't afraid to try new things. He wasn't afraid to fail. He wasn't afraid to try again.

Lincoln's New Salem

New Salem, Illinois, is where it is said "Lincoln became a man." He came here and tried many professions, wasn't afraid to try new things and do things he didn't know how to do. He was a postmaster and a surveyor among other things. He made many friend here, but once he decided to become a lawyer he left for Springfield and it is said, "When Lincoln left, the town left with him." The town died away. It has since been rebuilt to the way it would have look when Lincoln was there and is a historic site. It runs as a Living History Museum. Each home that we visited had very informative dressed for the time people that would talk to us and demonstrate life as it was then.



The Mississippi Gnats and Mosquito's were so bad when we first arrived we had to leave and go buy bug spray! Once we were covered, we had a good time!

At one of the shops the boys learned about a Pull Saw or a Plain. The man made them New Salem Icicles. Before this trip I don't think my kids could have told you what a cooper (barrel maker) was but they now talk about it just about everyday. As well as blacksmiths, wheel makers, grain mills, etc. They may feel like they were on vacation, but I see a lot of history and other subjects that were learned!

From the start of the trail to the end was about 1 mile with houses (complete with furnishings), barns (complete with animals), gardens (that were really growing), wells and wood piles along the way.

Hewy had a good time even though he couldn't really understand why we were really there. He became fascinated with root cellars. each one that he saw he would climb on it and say "take my picture Mom!"

Mrs. Lincoln's Attic

This was at the Lincoln Museum.
They had all kinds of hands on play things for kids to do.


dress up duds

A model of Lincoln's Home complete with dolls to play doll house.
Hewy spent most of his time here.

The toys of the time.
This was one of those get the ball to balance on the cup side (the side that is down here) or somehow with the Luck of nature get the hole in the ball on the spindle of the stick - that is what Alec somehow managed to do here - ON HIS FIRST TRY! We were both shocked!