Nonstop

Ricka still nurses about every 3 hours. And every afternoon between 2 and 3 we're gone for school pickup. So, this is what happened the rest of the time last week which might explain why I'm looking forward to sleeping trying to sleep in tomorrow.

On Saturday I finished icing Emma's birthday cake and we had a birthday party for her that evening.
On Sunday we went to meeting. Then we went shopping for fishing bait on our way home.
On Monday there was no school, so Sir took the day off from work and we went fishing at a lake 45 minutes from home. We invited Grandpa and Grandma C to join us and agreed to meet them at the lake at 8am - except we got stuck in traffic the whole way there so we were late. And it rained ALL day long. We fished in the rain from 9-3 anyway and didn't catch anything. So, we ordered fish and chips and had Grandpa and Grandma C. and Dee over for supper.
On Tuesday I took the dog to the vet for an infected foot. Then I swapped stuff around in the storage unit so I'd have more jars at home to can with. The rest of the day was spent doing load after load of laundry because everything got wet and muddy on the fishing trip. Then Sir and I went out on a dinner date and left Ricka for the first time! It was really nice.
On Wednesday the kids and I went shopping for more canning stuff. I spent the afternoon chopping vegetables to add to our garden tomatoes for salsa. Then we went to meeting. Well, the kids went to meeting. I got there and spent most of the time in the nursery with Ricka. When I wasn't in the nursery I was picking Sir up from the skytrain so he'd get to meeting before it was over.
On Thursday we drove Sir to work and then Emma and I canned the salsa when we got home. I picked the kids up from school 15min early and took Dolly to the dr. for an infected eye. After we got home I finally got the laundry folded so the living room looks a bit less like a laundromat now. And (gasp!) I played a game of Age of Empires between interruptions like homework, chores, dinner, baby etc. (Hey, at least the little people in the game keep doing what I told them to do until its either done or I tell them to do something else - it's therapy :))
And today... well, I am going to take a shower if it's the last only thing I do! I also need to blanch and freeze the corn before it spoils, and the plan is for me to go across the border after school for gas and a package pickup. We ordered a shop vacuum so we can clean the wood stove before we start having regular fires.
But for now... I'll start with my shower.

If You're not Tired

On our way home after a late night out:

Dolly: Do I have to brush my teeth when we get home? 'Cause I'm really tired and I don't feel like brushing my teeth.
Me: You're going to brush your teeth... it won't take that long.
Dolly: When we get home can I just get my pajamas on, go potty, brush my teeth and tell Daddy 'good night'?
Sir: Yes... Isn't that what you do every night, Dolly?
Dolly: But do I have to drink water!?
Me: No, you don't have to, but you can if you're thirsty.
Emma: Can we brush our teeth without aksking?
Me: Emma, you're just going to get ready for bed like normal. Just do it quickly. It's very late.
Dolly: Yeah, like almost the middle of the night right? I'm not gonna have any trouble going to sleep 'cause it's soo late and I'm really tired.
Emma - in a matter-of-fact tone: But if we're not tired and we can't go to sleep, we can just talk. Right?

Right. That explains a whole lot!

Ricka's 1 Month Portrait

"And they blessed Rebecca, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions."
Genesis 24:60

This was Ricka the day after her 1 month birthday. Because I was behind on some of the other kids' pictures, I tried a different photography place, and the lady that did these pictures was probably the best photographer I've ever had. She was creative, patient, and fast! Well, fast when it came to capturing poses - it took longer to prepare them. She also gave me a great deal on the package that I was buying, which is why I ended up with so many poses this time.

This is actually the picture I chose for the package. The top photo was the 10x13 for my wall, and I could choose a different pose for that picture since it was an extra cost. But this picture was the best one of Ricka with her clothes on. She decided to pull a 'PC' and be unwakeable for her first professional pictures. Which means she wouldn't even open her eyes until she was down to nothing but a diaper.

Of course, babies are adorable in any state of modesty (or lack thereof) and this picture is one of my favorites. You wouldn't know that I was only able to hold this pose for all of 2 seconds because of how much Ricka was kicking and squirming, but the photographer managed to take at least 4 shots in that time to get the one she was looking for. This was also about when I decided I had a new favorite photographer. :)

Anyway, we did a few of the classic poses. You know, 'baby in the basket' 'wedding rings and baby toes' 'naked baby positioned just so to be barely modest' to name a few. They were all excellent shots and definitely begging to be added to the package, but I really did have a bottom to my pockets.

Then while I was hemming and hawing over which pictures to choose and how much extra I could afford to spend and admiring all the enhancements they put together to entice you to spend even more, the photographer asked me if I was to choose a collage photo which one would it be?. There were about a dozen enhancements and a handful of beautiful collages, but none of those are an option when you're just purchasing the basic promotional package and a few extra wallets. Anything else starts to really add up, so I told her, that as lovely as the collages were, I wasn't going to be ordering them because I had a budget I needed to stay within. "Yes, I know, but IF you were to choose one, which would it be?" she pressed. After a split second to scan over the collages enough to give her an answer, I pointed one out, but told her I still wasn't going to be able to add it to my purchase. "That's ok." she said, "I'll just throw it in for free!" And that's what she did!

Our little Freckles*

"Mommy! There's a green spider in the bathtub! Do you want to come and see it? Come on, Mommy! It's a green spider and it's MOVING!"

Since this was such an urgent and exciting matter, and Ricka had eaten enough to fall asleep on the job, I put her in her bassinet and followed Emma to the kids bathroom. She did a little dance in excitement as I peered into the bathtub at her latest find. "Can you give it to me, Mommy?! Please, can I have it?" she begged. I scooped the badly maimed grasshopper up and carefully put in in Emma's outstretched palm and then went to find my camera.

Emma slowly followed me, never taking her eyes off her treasure. "Isn't he nice, Mommy? He's soo cute! Don't you think he's cute Mommy?" I assured her he was and took a few pictures of her. Then the rest of the kids came in and Emma proudly showed them her bug.

"Can I hold him?" Dolly asked as she was already trying to get the insect from Emma's shirt sleeve to her own. When Emma realized she was being relieved of her pet, a short scuffle ensued and order was restored once the bug was returned. Dolly tried a different approach, "Can we keep him, Mommy? We can put him in a little cage, and give him grass to eat..." Emma's eyes lit up and suddenly they were best friends on a mission.

("Oh! That is a real one.")

Then PC came by... "Oh! That is a real one. The other ones don't have wings. Let's feed him to the chickens - they would like to eat him!" "No!" both girls screamed in protest and then Dolly remembered that we don't have any chickens. "It's ok, Emma, We don't have any chickens, so he can't do that." After that they all traipsed outside to 'make a house'.

Home sweet home - complete with flowers.


They named him Charles.

*As in Gene Stratton-Porter's book character.

Memory Verse Musings

"I am the LORD, I change not".
Malachi 3:6

This is the new memory verse, and we asked the kids on the way home from meeting what they thought it meant. Of course they all answered, "I donno." so we took smaller steps...
"What does it mean to change not?"
PC: That it's the same?
Dolly: It means that God is God and he's not gonna change.
"Ok, who can tell us what God is? Can you think of a verse that might tell you?"
Dolly: "God is love"!
PC: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life." So, He's gonna love us forever!
"So, what is 'forever'?"
Emma: Forever and forever and forever.
Dolly: Never gonna stop.
PC: Always!

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever."
Hebrews 13:8

"The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
Jeremiah 31:3

Have you ever just stopped to really think about what these verses mean?

Some things Make you Thankful

I started making my teriyaki sauce marinade at about noon today. First I measured out the soy sauce, and then got sidetracked warming up leftover pizza for lunch. Once I got the kids up to the table and served, I got back to the sauce project. I started measuring out the sugar, got halfway through that when I ran out of sugar in the main container. As I headed to the pantry, thankful there was a refill sugar to grab, one of the kids had some urgent question that they insisted needed my attention. I answered the question as I walked back to the kitchen with the sugar. Please note that my pantry is a whole eleven feet from my kitchen stove (and yes, I measured that distance especially for this post).

When I got back to the stove, I couldn't remember how much sugar I'd already put into my pot. Eventually I figured out how much more sugar I needed to add (that involved dissolving and tasting) and I turned the burner on to start heating the sauce to a boil. But by then the kids were done eating and I was sidetracked with washing them up, stirring the sauce when I remembered and being thankful that I was supposed to heat it on a low burner setting each time I stirred it and found it was still unburnt.

Then the phone rang - it was Tina. While I was talking to her I discovered Butler had a dirty diaper so I changed him while I talked to her on the phone. By this time it was almost nap time, so I put him to bed and walked back to the kitchen just in time to find my teriyaki sauce had finally come to a boil and was about to boil over. It did start to boil over as I moved the pot off the heat and then it continued to boil over for a couple seconds as it cooled down. So, I had a huge mess to clean up on the stove top, but I was thankful it was a glass top and that I'd wiped it clean before I started the teriyaki project and that made it a little easier to clean. Besides, it gave me more time to talk to my sister (I've found that you can talk and clean at the same time very effectively).

It wasn't very long before it was time to feed Ricka again so I put the rest of the kids down for naps and sat down at my desk to reply to an e-mail while she nursed. When Ricka was happy again, I took the meat out of the refrigerator, measured out the teriyaki sauce, mixed it into the meat and then started putting the ice cream buckets of meat (there were four of them) back into the fridge to marinate. The second bucket I grabbed, slipped out of my hand and fell onto the floor perfectly upright. The impact had split the bucket down the side and around the bottom, so when I went to pick the bucket up it started to dump. Then I was thankful that I had half a dozen more ice cream buckets in the cupboard just inches away. That made salvaging the meat that didn't dump out easier.

I put the undumped meat into a new bucket, picked up and rinsed off the two cups or so of meat that did dump out, added them to the bucket and measured out more teriyaki sauce which made me thankful that I'd made an extra large batch of sauce today instead of making exactly what I thought we'd need for my marinade. Of course, I don't have a lot of extra teriyaki sauce now, but I didn't have to start over either.

And when I got to cleaning up the huge puddle of teriyaki sauce that leaked out of the cracked bucket, I was thankful that the bucket dumped AFTER I'd put the kids down for naps so I wouldn't have to worry about them walking in it.

It's only 3:30 and ALL five of my kids are asleep! And that is definitely something to be thankful for.