Thankful For...

...the Messiah, who is alive and I'm forgiven.

...my husband, who goes out to get me steaks at 11 at night and doesn't even ask for a bite. he loves me!

...the blessing of five daughters

...a mom and dad that love my daughters as much as I do

...my grandma, who dotes on my kids and fusses over me

...fabulous, faithful, though far away friends

...this house with a big back yard

Hope your Thanksgiving is spent with family rejoicing over all the blessings we have in this great land.

Must go makes cranberry scones for breakfast.

Just Call Me Martha

Just to show you how smooth I am in the kitchen, I managed to prepare the filling for four pies today. When I went to get out my pie pans I realized that I have ONE pie pan to my name and you know what, it's not even my pie pan. It's my grandma's.

Sigh...I want to go back to bed.

Tid Bits of Mainly Useless Information

I didn't get even one free Dr. Pepper because their server was so overloaded that they couldn't handle the traffic. I bet they did that on purpose so they wouldn't have to give out a bunch of free Dr. Pepper. That stinks. Blah.

But, I've been pretty sure for about a week and a half now that my little breech baby turned. I didn't want to get my hopes up until I went to the doc and today I did and the doc said she's pretty darn sure baby turned, also. This is GREAT news.

Other good news: Mom comes home from Maui next week; the house is getting fixed up pretty darn well; I only have 7 weeks left before I have my tummy all to myself again.

I haven't started cooking for Thanksgiving yet. I meant to do that already.

I Can't Wait For Sunday!!!

Lord, forgive me for looking forward to Sunday for a reason OTHER than I get to go to church and learn more about You. Amen.

You know I used to really like Guns 'N Roses. Not so much anymore though. They're a little too...mmmm, shall we say, angry? Violent? They hate God? But today I say "you go boys" and smile at them because on Sunday, guess what I get?

FREE DR. PEPPER!!!

All because Guns 'N Roses finally decided to release their 14-years-in-the-making "next" album. Can you imagine! These guys are ancient. I think skinny rockers on drugs should retire long before they don't age gracefully. Ewww.

Anyway, if you don't like Dr. Pepper, keep me in mind and send me your coupon, okay?

Some Pictures of Andrew...Finally!

His eyes are dark grey! I wonder if they will stay this way or turn blue like the rest of us?

I cannot believe it has taken me so long to finally get pictures up here! You'd think I am suddenly very busy or something! :)

Well, Joanna put up the basic facts for me while I was still in the hospital, so you already know all of that. We were scheduled to come home Thursday morning, but Andrew became jaundiced. His numbers weren't really too high, but the doctor was concerned because they went up too quickly, so Andrew had to spend the day Thursday on lights in the nursery at the hospital. After a day of lights, his numbers had gone back down enough to let us go home. That was good, because if they hadn't, I would have still had to be discharged, but Andrew would have had to stay. I know lots of women have to go home without their babies when they are born early or other various reasons, but the thought of doing that was not a nice one. Plus, the boys were sooo looking forward to Andrew coming home. They were really sad that he had to stay the full day, so we had them come up and bring games and toys and a movie and we went out and got them burgers to eat with me in my hospital room. We just made a party of it!


The boys were fascinated with their baby brother from the start! Isn't the way Ethan is hugging him so cute?

The transition home has been okay. Andrew has a really weak suck, so we have run into some troubles with nursing. I had a lactation consultant come out to the house today and got some help, so I am really hopeful that he will get the hang of it soon. Much of it is just his age and lack of strength. It is amazing how much stronger a baby is who has a higher birth weight! I keep trying to remember that he is actually average sized!

Andrew's first Buckeye game as one of the "men" of our family!

My Bible Study group is having a baby shower for me tomorrow. It will be kind of fun to have one more shower! I mean who doesn't enjoy opening baby stuff?? After that, I plan to lay low all week and just bask in the glow of my new baby.

This is probably the only time anyone will see a picture of me without make-up...don't get used to it!

Dude, Was That a Brick Wall or Did You Just Punch Yourself in the Nose

I scrubbed the floor in my bathroom on Tuesday, tried to hang up curtains (I only succeeded with one), did some laundry and...something else that I can't remember. The next day it was like hitting a brick wall. Every day by 8pm I'm ready to sleep. I can barely think past the pregnant haze in my head. I always get this way in the last trimester. It's a good thing I got some stuff done before my energy was sapped. I'm so tired I actually took out those dumb fish sticks and gave them to the girls for lunch. That's really bad.

On the other hand, we have a back yard! And it was 90 degrees yesterday. I caught Ella picking up mud and slathering it all over her chest and legs! How fun! It's truly a blessing to have a yard.

I am managing to get some school done. We're almost totally caught up in history. History is fun and easy to catch up on since we are only supposed to do one chapter a week. We've done four chapters already this week and will likely do two more today. Did you ever read the story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? Did you know that that story is where we got the phrase, "open, sesame"? I used to say that all the time as a kid. It's a strange story though. So far we've

read two stories from the Book of 1001 Nights. They are both strange. As a project to help us remember about "open, sesame" we made sesame cookies. Basically they were just freezer cookies with sesame seeds on top. They were good though.

I want to sew or something. I'm tired of scrubbing floors and unpacking boxes. Would you like to hear me whine some more? No? Okay, I'll sign off then because I'm pretty darn good at whining.

Weight, Height, Time and a Name

Johanna had her baby today. Andrew was born this morning at 8:46. He measured 20 inches and weighed 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Everyone is shocked at how small he is. No one was even remotely close with the weight but Lawanda was only one day off of the date. Good guess! She said she'd get some pictures up when she got home and settled. Andrew is nursing nicely and Johanna sounds good but tired. Sigh, it's always so nice to not be pregnant anymore. Oh, she didn't have an epidural either. She was praying to not have one. She's brave like that.

In other not-o-exciting news, Del and I have finally settled on a name for our 5th daughter. Please pray for our next theoretical baby to be a boy, because I'm not sure we could muster ANOTHER girl name. We love having all these girls, but at this point we've just about used all the girl names we really care for. So, she's Anna Lyn. Anna is a good name and means gracious or merciful. Lyn is after my godmother Lyn, who happens to be Johanna's mom.

All the girls' middle names are easy because we just pick someone we really respect or love or is family and toss that name in there. So far we have Renee, after me; Elaine, after my mom; Anne, after my mom's best friend Marcia Ann (you know you have to spell Ann with an "e"); and Lily Irene, after my grandma.

Names are so interesting. I really like to hear how people named their kids. Surely you have heard the ones about Lemonjello and Oranjello. People are kooky. How did you name your kids? After anyone?

You may be wondering...

Some of you may be wondering what is going on with this baby of mine. Well, my doctor and I are wondering, too! Today, my official diagnosis is that I have a "temperamental uterus"! How funny! I tried to tell my doctor that I go long and have large babies. But he insisted that a woman who is on her third baby who is already dilating at 36 weeks will absolutely go into labor on her own, and most likely by 38 weeks. Well, despite all of our best efforts at getting labor going (I have been to the doctor 4 days this week), my uterus is on vacation. After days of contractions that did produce a bit more progress for me (although not as much as it seemed like it should), I have completely. quit. having. contractions. So there it is. All of you who were so wonderful to predict a birth this past week, I love you all. Even the day I predicted has come and gone. My official instructions are to lay low and try to keep everything calm this weekend because my doctor is not on call again until Sunday night at 10:00. Then Monday I go back in first thing in the morning and the doctor will try to repeatedly agitate my uterus all over again. Surprisingly, I am not frustrated. I am not very miserable. I am looking forward to having an excuse to be lazy all weekend long! :)

Visitor

This morning, I opened up the dishwasher full of clean dishes to get out a bowl for my breakfast. It stayed open throughout the day, and then I decided to empty it this evening while dinner was cooking. I pulled out a skillet to put it away, and discovered that a visitor had made my dishwasher his home at some point today!

What do yo think? Should I leave that in the dishwasher to wash again?

Hannah

It is still so long of a wait until we get to bring our daughter home, and although I have already named her, grown to love her deep within my heart, and dreamt about her, because it is still so far away (and she won't even be conceived for another year or so) I have done nothing other than paperwork and dream. However, I now have something tangible to look at and associate with my sweet Hannah. My parents went to China last month and they brought back this adorable little outfit that is sized to fit a child between ages 1 and 2.

I am sure that for the next several months, I will be too busy to even think about my far away little girl, but when the craziness of a newborn in the house settles into routine, and the wait for Hannah looms ahead of me, I will now take this out and hold it and pray for this child of my heart.

Sometimes I Amaze Myself

Apparently all I needed to stop being such a lazy bum was a huge house with a gazillion projects. I am exhausted but unlike in the apartment, my fatigue doesn't stop me from doing the projects. In the apartment I'd just say, "Well, I'm pregnant" and lay down on the couch and rest or sleep if I could. I don't do that here. I am a little afraid that I'm going to throw myself into early labor by all this crazy work I'm doing. And we're very far behind in school. I know, I know, it's our school and we can do it whenever and wherever we like but seriously, I didn't make lesson plans so that I could ignore them. It's hard for me to not feel pressure to get this joint cleaned up.

All that to tell you that yesterday I went outside and just sort of tugged a bit on one of the mystery plants that I want to get rid of and it literally just eased right out of the ground. They all came out that easily and then, I lost my mind. I destroyed, I opened a can of...um...the friendly version of kicking butt. We were outside for more than four hours trimming and ripping and raking and shoveling and killing bugs and scaring lizards and going crazy on the chaos.

That Mexican Petunia is a bugger. NEVER get it for your garden; it takes over and then you have to go postal on it to get it out. And even then there's no guarantee that it's not going to grow back.

Reminder "before" pictures.

And after we went to town it all.

It looks a lot better already even though it's hard to tell from these pictures. The only bad part is that my back is killing me. Oh well...today, there's more tile to clean.

Chivalry Is Not Dead

Weird day. I couldn't sleep past 5:40 so I got up and made monkey bread for breakfast, hung some more laundry to dry in the kitchen and checked for when the polls open. The monkey bread was good but not done in the middle (I couldn't find my Bundt pan), the supervisor of election's website did not have a time up for when the polls opened. I left the house at 7:30 to go vote while Del stayed with the kids. No food, no coffee. I didn't think I'd actually be gone that long.

When I got to the polling place the line was about 1/2 a mile long. There was no way I was going to stand in that line with no breakfast...so I went back home. Del left for work and stopped by the polling place on his way and then when he was getting near the front he called and told me to come by. He stood in line for nearly one hour and then gave his place in line for me so I wouldn't have to stand in the line as a big, chubby, tired, cranky pregnant lady. Isn't he fabulous? So I voted, and then he had to stand in line again while I took the kids home. Fortunately this time he only had to stand in line about half an hour.

Am I ever glad this election cycle is over. I'm sick of politics. The funniest thing I heard today was from Ann Coulter, of all people. I think she's a bit odd and sometimes off her rocker, but she said something along the lines of, "Well, at least if Obama get in we can start saying "I told you so right away." It doesn't sound so funny now, but it did at the time. I just keep praying that God will have mercy on our country, despite our headlong plunge into hedonism en masse.

Other than that I've killed two wasp nests, sprayed our hibiscus for aphids and researched how to prune hibiscus and stop Mexican Petunias from taking over your yard. I think I'm going to have to cut them all down, pull the roots on much of the plant and divest the garden of the grassy weeds and then see what grows up in the Spring. There's not much else to do in the winter. Most people's Mexican Petunias are 2-3 feet tall. Ours are taller than me. Here's Ella in front of them to show how tall they are.

Here's a picture of Ella in the palms we have that I think are totally fantastic and of the chaos I must tame in the front yard before we start getting notices from the HOA.Oh and this ugly mystery plant that I plan to pull up and destroy unless someone tells me that it does something spectacular. I like the red and yellow and green one with big leaves but the other one is really ugly.

The best thing is that yesterday I figured out how to clean the tile. I hate tile and if we ever get the chance we're going to rid ourselves of all the tile downstairs and put in something more forgiving to the girls' faces. But anyway, they waxed this tile for some really dumb reason. You're not supposed to wax ceramic tile, so I've read. Anyway, there are tiny bits of wax everywhere; you can feel it when you walk and see it. Oh it's so gross. It's all black and gross. I was about to just go out and hire someone to clean the tile (since The Maids don't really clean, they just maintain but we won't get into that frustrating story) when I read that Simple Green works as a good wax stripper and tile cleaner.

Being an Army family, we like Simple Green. If the Army uses it, it must be good. And on top of that, it doesn't have anything really deadly in it like, say...oh...hydrochloric acid. I mean really! Is that necessary? Anyway, Ella and I set to the tile yesterday with some hot water, Simple Green and scrub brushes and look at the difference.

Isn't it amazing. Now I just have to scrub about 1500 more square feet of this tile, on my hands and knees. Doesn't it sound fun? Don't you want to come over and help me?

House Update Again

Hi. It's me again. I'm a little paranoid that I have misspelled its/it's so forgive me if I have.


Our first official morning in the house and the girls had donuts for breakfast. Yummy. This was not yesterday but last Saturday, before everything was moved in.
That same day Sarah lost her first tooth. Okay, I pulled it out. But in my defense both of her bottom adult teeth are already growing in and the tooth had to go. I'm currently trying daily to pull the other baby tooth to make room for the adult tooth that's already growing in.
And now on to progress. Del is working like a dog. Or something. Our bedroom is nearly finished. It just needs to be organized basically. But all the furniture is in, drapes are up. I think it looks nice. We're thinking about putting a rug in. I really like the floors. Oh darn, I forgot about the missing bed skirt...I wonder where it is.

Toys. Sigh. They take over your life. I feel about children's toys the way I feel about TV. I mean, how many boxes and plastic dishes and stuff like that do your kids play with and not the gobs of toys. These guys play with some dolls, Legos and maybe the Little People but other than that they make the rest of it up. I want to down size our toy collection. This is supposed to be half a school room and it's totally taken over by toys.

Ahhhhhh, what a lovely sight. Except for the ugly wall color, which I will have to live with until we actually have time to paint. But isn't it a fabulous sewing room already? I want to put a long table in it for scrapbooking. And eventually I might have to share the room with a guest. Sheesh, friends...always taking up your space. LOL. I'm just kidding, you can come take up my sewing room any time you want to.

And here's Del's office. Obviously not very made up yet. We don't have a desk. There's never been room for a desk in any place we've lived in so we don't own a desk. It will be sssssoooooooooo nice to get all the Star Wars paraphernalia out of my bedroom and into his office. Not that I don't have an ever-loving fondness for all...okay, a lot of things Star Wars but it's just not so relaxing and romantic in my bedroom. Know what I mean?

So there you go. It's been quite a productive day. I should go put away all my plastics.

Finally, an Update

Hi. I'm alive. Isn't that great! Who knew that moving into a house would be so much work. It's different moving into a house instead of an apartment where all you do is move in and live. In a house you have to fix it up...or whatever; it's different. I have to sit on the floor to type this up so I'm just going to post some pictures and then get my poor tailbone on a couch for a little while.

Here are three of our new appliances. Man what a horrible picture! Sorry, I'll try to get a better one. I'm desperately trying to get the kitchen in order because I feel that once I can have order there, the chaos in the rest of the house won't bother me as much.

Here is what I dig about having a house. Look at them. Doesn't it look like they're having a lot of fun. Okay, maybe that looks boring but man you should hear them giggling and having a blast out in the sunshine. The "grass" is mostly weeds and there is one particular weed called a dollar weed that they really like making "salad" out of. They've been using an old, dead palm frond for an oar and sailing about to who knows where in that turtle sandbox. You know, the one that's been in storage for 4 years. I am just so grateful to have this back yard so the kids can play out there.

Here are three of the girls at the empty apartment. We took pictures of them in all the rooms and Ella almost cried because we lived here longer than any other place we've lived as a family. Del got sort of sentimental over it because the only place he ever lived longer was Boy's Hope and that was by less than one month. Not me. I said good riddance. LOL. We did pray over the apartment though and thanked God for providing that humble little home for us.

I've spent the better part of two days lining cabinets with that cool green contact paper. What a pain!!! I'm finally done with the kitchen. I might do the bathrooms next.

The good news is that my washer that has been in storage since...June of 2002 works. The bad news is that the dryer doesn't. So we have a clothes line in the kitchen. It's very funny. We just got finished putting it up before I posted this so the kids haven't seen in because they're in bed. I can't wait to see how they'll react to their clothes hanging up in the kitchen. It's going to be funny.

Anyway, we're having fun and surviving. I'll try to get better pictures.