Dane is turning into our little con-artist. Things keep disappearing and then several days later he secretly returns them… but we have no idea where he hides them! The T.V. remote control was gone for about a month and a half and then out of the blue he brings it to me and says “here mommy”. Ryan was missing $10 and while I was doing laundry I found it in one of Dane’s pockets. Yesterday I was missing my keys all morning and at lunch I dished Dane up, left the room, and came back to find them sitting by his Macaroni Bowl… Now we’re missing Matt’s glasses and one of our cordless phones. If only I could find his hiding spot….

We all have little colds, but nothing major. I’ve been pumping everyone up with AirBorne.

It is harvest time! Here is what we had in our yard yesterday.

They haven’t done our beans, yet but the boys were excited to watch the combine in the field right next door. I’m sure they will get to ours this afternoon or Monday.

Matt is off to the funeral this morning. Then he has a couple visits to do this afternoon. Then we have the young adult group meeting here this evening. It has been a crazy last couple of weeks. Next week the boys have Thur – Mon off so I think we are going to take a day off and go for a day trip of some sorts.

I bought a food dehydrator the other day. I have been wanting one for quite awhile. Someone from church brought us 60 apples, so I decided it was time. I LOVE dried apples! So we did about 10 apples and they were gone in a day between Ryan, Dane and myself. Christian and Matt decided they weren’t so fond of them. Then we made homemade beef jerky and that turned out really yummy as well. As soon as the trays get out of the dishwasher this morning I will work on some more apples. I need to buy a couple more of the solid trays so we can make fruit leather. YUM!

Well, I”m off to the shower and housecleaning stuff. Have a great weekend!
C-

My new Blog is finally done! It is called The Menu Mom. You can click on the button on the right as well. I just love the design my designer came up with!

Tonight was a bit crazy. Ryan accidentally plugged the bathroom sink drain when he was cleaning the sink. Then Dane went in and washed his hands and left the water running. Well…. No one noticed until the bathroom and basement were flooded… OOPS! Then tomorrow we knew that the area pastor’s are meeting at our church. (They rotate churches) What we didn’t know until this evening is that the pastor’s wives are coming as well and it is my job to entertain…YIKES! So we did a quick clean up, I pulled a muffin recipe and hopefully things will go okay.

We finally after 2 months got our license plates for our cars today. Matt got Pstr Mat and I got MCRCD. Here it is only about $10 more to get personalized plates, so we went for it.

Well, so much for our hope of no more funerals for awhile. We had another death on Saturday. The service is this coming Sat. Matt is having a crazy busy week this week.

I have been talking to accountants the last couple days. I think we are going to turn our taxes over this year. With Matt being a pastor, my business and also state tax here it is starting to get too confusing. I also am trying to figure out if we should form an LLC (limited liability corp.) for my business. One of our church member’s mom is a CPA so I talked to her first,,, but then Matt decided he would rather deal with someone who specializes in clergy taxes, so I found a lady in Chicago who might work out.

Ryan wrote his first poem this week. It wasn’t an assignment or anything, he just did it for fun. Here it is – so cute! I am pretty sure the first line was supposed to be God not good. How cute is that?

Well, I guess I better go to bed so I can be awake for my “entertaining” in the morning…
C-

All three boys seem to be growing like crazy. Dane slept in until 9:45 this morning – I couldn’t believe it! All three boys seem to be wearing high water pants. It took Ryan three pairs to find something that fit for school the other day.

The funeral today was large – there were cars all the way down the block. It occupied Matt the entire day, so now he is in his offices putting the finishing touches on his sermon for tomorrow.

It has been raining like crazy. We got over an inch last night and it is raining again pretty hard now. The rain is making a not so good situation for the farmers as a lot of the fields are ready to harvest, but they are too wet to do so. We are praying things will dry up a bit so they can harvest before the crops are ruined. During the day today it was a typical fall day – mid 60’s, windy – it felt refreshing and crisp.

We had an interesting dessert tonight – leftover from the memorial service. It was ice cream sandwiches layered in a 9×13 pan. Topped with Cool Whip and drizzled with magic shell chocolate and thrown in the freezer. How easy is that? And it was YUMMY! Dinner on the other hand was a new crock-pot trial recipe that I can’t say I was all that impressed with. Oh well.

I’m off to clean a bit. I tried to get a lot done during the day, but as the saying goes….. “Cleaning the house while the children are still growing is like shoveling the walk while it is still snowing.” We have youth group here tomorrow night, so it needs to get done!

C-

Wow, this week seemed to zoom by. I guess we just keep ourselves busy! I actually had a Mommy Night Out on Wednesday! I got to go to a Mary Kay Party. It was very fun.

Yesterday Dane was “Mr. Get Into Trouble Man”. It seemed every time I turned around he was into something. The most exciting was when he tried out my new Mary Kay make-up I had just bought the night before at the party… And when he decided to cut up my brand new curtains that are in the guest room with scissors. Oh the joys of an almost two year old! At the same time he is being so cute. I of course was upset with him throughout the day and every time in the sweetest way he would say “Sorry, Mommy”. How can that not melt my heart?

This afternoon and evening through 11:00 p.m. we are under a tornado watch. (I wonder how you are supposed to tell if a tornado is coming when it’s dark?) We had a nice big thunderstorm, but I think everything is calming down now. I was just thinking the other day how we had about a week and a half during the summer where the grass started to look a bit brown, but all in all it rains enough here to keep things green. Right now especially everything looks so lush and beautiful. The leaves are just starting to change as well. It was only 41 a couple days ago when I went out for my walk BRRR!

Ryan got his first Report Card today. Well, I guess it is a mid-term report – not an official report card… Here’s how he did.
Religion – check plus
Memory Work – A- (That’s my fault, I keep forgetting to teach him his verse! It is only twice a week and the day changes so it is confusing. I have the chart up on the cupboard now so hopefully I will be a better mommy!)
Reading – B (I was kind of surprised on this one. I don’t know what they all grade on, but he seems to be reading really well…)
Spelling – B
Math – 97% – A
Art – plus
Science – plus
Social Studies – A-
Handwriting – plus (That is a big accomplishment and he is very proud of it!)
P.E. – plus

Then there is a big area with 12 study habits and anything that has a checkmark by it means it needs improvement. He didn’t get any checkmarks.
Comments: Ryan is doing very well.

So we are pleased!

Today was Grandparents Day at pre-school. Christian invited “Mail Lady Joy” to attend. She is our Mail Lady and attends our church. He likes to sit with her sometime during church. Things seemed to go well. Of course days like this make us miss our real grandparents, but we’re surviving. (Hopefully the grandparents are too….) It was a bit sad to see all that cute artwork intended for Grandma & Grandpa go home with a surrogate, but that’s how it goes.

We had another death in the congregation on Tuesday. Matt visited her around 2:00 p.m. and she passed away at 7:00 p.m. She was still alert and communicating at 2:00 so she went quick. The visitation is at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, the service at 11:00 and the private familiy burial at 4:00 p.m. so it will be a busy day for Matt. So this is the third funeral in what, a month? They say they come in three’s around here so hopefully that will be it for awhile.

Well here are the red walls! (excuse the mess…)

We don’t have any major plans this weekend – just the normal clean house do laundry etc. Like I said Matt is busy tomorrow and then Sunday I was invited to go to a craft show with a friend, but Matt has a meeting after church and then we have youth group at our house in the evening… So that probably isn’t happening.

I have been working on a new Blog Design for my Business Blog. It is so cute! I can’t wait to show it to you. It is almost done.

Have a great weekend!
C-

Well, after 150 coats (okay maybe 3 1/2) I got my painting done Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. I always said I wouldn’t paint walls dark because it is such a pain to get good coverage, but it looks really good for the most part. The entry wall didn’t want to except the paint real well and it was the last one I did, so I was getting tired of painting… but it turned out okay. The other two look really good. I have one more framed print on order and the black and white photo’s for my star wall gallery and then I’ll take pictures and post them. Probably next week sometime. You’ll just have to stay in suspense until then. Then I’ll have one room completely decorated! What should I tackle next? I haven’t decided yet…. Dane’s room could use some work – it has a girly birdhouse wallpaper border… but I might wait on that one until he is out of his crib. I haven’t totally chosen a theme for Ryan and Christian’s room yet…. So maybe one of the bathrooms, or the kitchen… I’ll let you know in about a year when I decide….

Ryan brought home all “+” and 100% papers today! YEA! He said he lost 5 minutes of recess today though because he forgot to bring his eraser to reading group.

Christian had Circle Day at school today. He and Ryan had a big arguement over a toilet paper roll this morning. Ryan wanted it to make a craft and Christian wanted it for show and tell. Christian won. LOL

Dane has a new habbit of taking off his poopy diaper after he is done with his job. So we have had a couple “lovely” messes to deal with lately.

I went to a new Bible Study group this morning. It is a group of area ladies held by one of the moms from Ryan’s class. It was really nice to get to know some other moms outside of the church. It is really good for Dane too as there are three other little ones around his age and he really doesn’t play with many other kids his age since there isn’t nursery at church. I’m really excited for this group, it’s going to be good!

This afternoon we made our 45 mile trip to Danville for Matt to pick up a fog light switch he had ordered for his car. Then we went out to dinner at “Ryan’s” Ryan’s new favorite restaurant. It is a buffet type place. The we did our big shopping trip at the Super Wal-Mart. The one I raved about a couple weeks ago. It was a nice afternoon – I even had a nap on the way down there – can’t beat that!

Well, I’m in the middle of a brainstorming online chat with one of my business partners, so I’m going to run! Hope everyone is well.

C-

Sorry it has been a bit since I posted. I’ll make this a long one to get you all up to date.

Let’s see… So Tuesday the boys went and tried out Karate. They had a pretty good time, but in the long run we decided to not go ahead with lessons – mostly because of the cost…. It was $75 a month total for both boys to go if we made a year committment (who knows if they would still be into it in a y ear!) and $95 a month for a six month committment. So i wasn’t real excited about the price and then I started worrying that they would end up hitting each other and others to “practice”. So we decided to not sign-up. The boys were a bit disappointed (especially Ryan) but they’ll survive… Matt did have to go back today because they left their jackets there I finally figured out. They had been missing for awhile and I had to rethink where we had been.

Dane is constantly handing me the camera these days and then saying “Cheese”. (meaning he wants me to take a picture) When I take a picture he says “I see, I see mom, please.” Then when he looks at himself he says “WOW!” In the cutest exlamation. It is funny to think that our kids will probably hardly even know what it is like to have to take a roll of film in to get developed before they see the pictures. Here is a picture I caught while he was concentrating on drawing on his erasable coloring board thing.

Here are some more of the kitties. They are really growing. The black two seem to be the friendliest at this point. They don’t have names yet. The orange one with the white on its neck is “Hisser” and the other orange one is “Garfield”. Ryan wants to call one of the black ones dark sky or something like that. We might have to go with Blackie or Midnight or something… The Tabby one without the white we called “Crier” in the beginning, but he hasn’t been crying as much lately, so who knows if that will stick. I’m still hoping to find homes for a couple more too. We’ll see. They are awfully fun to watch play together!

So my big pumpkin that I showed in a previous post, got attacked by bugs, and has a hole on both sides of it! I was so sad. We sprayed it once we found it, but I don’t think it is going to make it…. I don’t have a green thumb at all!

Ryan and Christian’s school had an open house on Thursday. I guess they do something every month. This one was rather boring – we picked up the parent handbook thing, and took a quick look in each classroom – Christian’s class actually had a little scavenger hunt thing – Where do we do the weather, where do we do story time, what is your favorite toy etc. That was cute. Ryan made it into our little town newspaper this week too (That’s not too hard to do…). His class was pictured in front of the Flag Pole during their 9-11 Rememberence Ceremony.

I was crazy and went on another of my 5 mile walks on Thursday. I didn’t go on Wednesday since I had my annual OB/GYN appointment, so I made up for it on Thursday. I feel like I have accomplished something big, when I walk that far! I know many people go much further, but for me it’s pretty good! Friday I only made it my usual 3 miles and I felt like I had walked 5. When I got home I looked at the weather station and it was 91% humidity out so I’m pretty sure that had something to do with it.

In my completely ignorant farming expertise, I would say that our beans are ready to harvest any time. I am curious when the combine is going to show up to take care of that. From our best calculations (which is pretty much a guestimate, from some statistics in the newspaper) we think we’ll end up with about $300-$400. We’ll see I guess! Pretty good for not having to do anything but watch them grow!

One of my new favorite food resources is www.justtomatoes.com. No, if you know me, I’m not ordering the tomatoes… However they have many types of dried fruit that are very yummy! We tried the organic apples, strawberries, raspberries and the vegetable mix. The favorite was the strawberries. Dane liked the veggies pretty well. I am going to have to order some more. I love seeing my kids beg for more dried fruit as a snack! Can’t go wrong there!

This weekend is Mission Festival at church, so there are THREE church services tomorrow. I’ll probably only take the boys to the morning one and the potluck in the evening. There is a guest speaker coming so Matt doesn’t have to preach – a nice break for him. Along with Mission Festival, is clean up the church day each year. So this morning at 8:00 a.m. there were about 20 guys and in less than two hours our house, the church and the cemetary grounds were nicely cleaned up. They removed all the old flowers, trimmed all the hedges, cut down a tree in our front yard, trimmed the other trees, and I’m sure much more. I was amazed how much they got done in such a short amount of time, but as the saying goes “many hands makes the work light”.

Well Matt bought a clearance yard cart thing at Wal-Mart last night. It is a big cart thing you can push, but he is trying to rig it up to pull behind his lawmower, so that is what he is doing right now. He’ll use it when he haul’s trash to the neighbor’s dumpster down the road. They let us use it for anything that we can not burn, and to throw our burn barrel ashes into.

Matt asked at the last council meeting if I can paint a couple accent walls in the living room red and they said go ahead – go to the hardware store downtown and charge the paint to the church! That was very generous of them! So Matt picked up the paint yesterday afternoon and then we went to WalMart Last night to get the rollers etc. So hopefully I’ll get to do some painting sometime this week. I’m crossing my fingers it turns out good!

C-

So I have been walking abou 2.5 – 3 miles a day since Ryan started school. I drop him off and then I head out with my IPod for a walk. I generally go down our road for a bit – I know where the 1.5 mile mark is and then I turn around. Well a few days ago Matt challened me to walk around the block. The roads out here are a square so it would be 4 miles. I thought HMMM a mile more – I could probably do that. So this morning it was nice – 62 degrees, slight breeze and Matt didn’t have to be anywhere since it was his day off – so I thought – this is it I’ll go around the “block” Well, I FINALLY got to the halfway point and I thought HMMM this is starting to feel really long. I did make it home (In an hour and a half…with a storm quickly approaching – so much for that nice weather) I walked in and told Matt that I took him up on his challenge and walked around the block, but that extra mile really feels long… And what does he say? “Oh, I forgot to tell you I was talking to someone the other day and I guess those aren’t exactly 1 mile each way – the two side ones are a mile and a half. So moral of the story…. I walked 5.2 miles today! YOWZA! Think I’ll be able to move tomorrow? I actually didn’t feel too bad when I was done – once I hit the halfway mark I got a second wind… but I don’t think I will be repeating that again for a few days at least.

Matt’s friend Ryan, from MN, gave him a fancy (okay, that is probably not a very manly way to describe it…) Blackhawk Backpack when he was there last month. It was something he had from his trip to Iraq and it had a rip in it. However, they have a lifetime guarantee (and should for that price!). So Matt sent it in and got a brand new one today. He was all excited (a girl can never understand such things as excitement over a backpack I don’t think…) But anyway… It made him happy. Here he is trying it out.

Tonight we ate dinner at the DQ and then went to the freshman football game. I paid for my food (with a check since they don’t take debit cards) and then afterwards we told the kids if they ate their dinner we would get ice-cream. They did really good so I went up and ordered our dessert and wrote another check. So what does the lady say? “Next time, if you are going to order dinner and dessert I would prefer you would order it all at the beginning so we only have to take one check…” ?????? Isn’t that part of business? I am so not used to these small town things. LOL I didn’t want to order ice-cream until I knew the kids were going to eat their dinner. They wouldn’t have if the ice-cream was sitting in front of them at the same time. I don’t know, that place is just kind of weird. We like the one in the next town over a lot better. Their prices are a lot better there too. To add to the small towness (yes, that is probably a made up word…) they serve your food on real plates – like the Corelle type. Strange to me for a fast food place. Dinner was great though – yummy food! Dane ate half of my chicken sandwich and then a full medium sized blizzard (we were supposed to share, but I got about 5 bites and he gobbled down the rest) and half of Matt’s Banana Split! I couldn’t believe he ate that much ice-cream! He just kept shoveling it in.

When we got home one of my favorite Bible Study groups was meeting, so we quickly worked through homework and then Matt took over and I ran over to enjoy the time with the ladies. Matt popped over after the kids were in bed too.

Well, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow the boys are taking a trial karate class in the evening. Ryan has been begging to take karate for a year, so we decided to try a class out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

C-