Remember These Things?

Before Facebook took over the universe, these were all over MySpace.  I used to see them on Facebook, but either people don't do them any more, or it's just hard to see it when they do.
So I don't know what they're called - surveys, quizzes, or whatever - I call them, "Paul's at work, and I'm bored."
And here's another one.  So by all means, please fill this out for yourself!  I love reading people's answers on these things!

1. What is your favorite weather?
Mid-70s with bright sunshine and a slight breeze.  (Which we had for a solid week this month - in August!  How awesome is that??)
2. Do you put Ranch dressing on pizza?
YES.
3. Do you know where the high-beam indicator is on your dashboard?
Not really.  I think it's between the speedometer and the gas gauge.
4. Which of your friends lives furthest away and how did you meet?
Friend is Esther - we were roommates in college.  She was older than my parents and from Germany, and I was totally nervous about living with her, but she was one of the most awesome people I have ever met.  

But my sister lives even further away, in Zambia, Africa. :(  But only for 2 more months!!!

5. Is your second toe longer than your big toe?

Yes.  It's a sign of perfection. :)

6. What is your favorite meal to eat?

Tuscan-marinated ribeye, with potatoes and green beans.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.

7. What is your favorite meal to cook?

Whatever is fast!  

Actually, I love making "farm hand" meals with all the trimmings, when I know people are going to love it - whether my husband and kids, or friends and family.  Any meal made for someone else that you know they'll enjoy is a pleasure to prepare.

8. What is your favorite outfit to wear?

Ha!  I seriously wore my pajama dress all day today.  And this isn't a fair question since I'm preggo.

9. What is the cutest thing you’ve seen lately?

My daughter asleep, using her pillow as a body pillow.  I don't care what kind of day I have, if I go look at my children after they're asleep, I will come down with a smile on my face.

10. How do you wear your fingernails?

Short.  And usually un-painted, although they were so stained from cutting up plums that I did paint them last week.

11. As an adult, what is your favorite children’s movie or show?

Tangled!!!

12. What was your favorite movie or show as a child?

I had so many.  But I have to say Homeward Bound was pretty close to the top.  (Still a favorite as an adult.)

13. Do you care which way the toilet paper comes off the roll?

No.  The holder is usually empty anyways at our house.  Besides, ours hangs vertically, so that takes care of that little dilemma.

14. Do you have an irrational fear of an everyday thing?

Actually, I do.  I am terrified of falling down the stairs.  Mainly because at least twice a day, I am carrying a child down the stairs.  (We have a flight of 15 very steep wooden stairs.)

15. What is one thing that will always make you gag?

Vomit from anyone besides my kids.  (Being a mom has apparently made me slightly tougher, and I can clean up after the kids without gagging.  Still working on serving my husband that way.....)

And hair when it's not attached to something.  Cleaning out my hair brush or - even worse, gagging just thinking about it - the roller bar on the vacuum.  And seriously gagging now - cleaning out a drain plug.

16. What’s the best vacation you’ve ever been on?

Our honeymoon.  We went to the deep south in the springtime.  We spent 3 nights at a plantation mansion bed and breakfast, and then 3 nights at a bed and breakfast on Mobile Bay.  (Now I want to go back......)

17. What’s your favorite dessert?

Warm apple pie and ice cream.  (Now I'm craving that....)

18. What’s an unusual food that you don’t like?

Raw carrots.

19. Do you have a popular musician or band that you don’t care for?

David Crowder.  Just don't care for his voice or the lyrics.  Most of the time the choruses are great, but the verses are really obscure.

20. Do you eat the pie crust?  What about pizza crust?

Definitely, to both!  Pizza crust is made for dipping in Ranch!

21. What’s your favorite convenience food?

For myself or my kids?  Hot dogs are the most oft consumed convenience food in this house.

22. Do you have an odd overused word or phrase?

"Inappropriate."  

Although I've noticed that I use "so" as a filler when I'm talking to someone and the conversation isn't flowing smoothly (like with an older person).  I didn't notice that I did this, until I noticed my brother did it and I thought it was weird.  Then I listened to myself do the exact same thing.

23. Do you have any recurring dreams?

I used to have one when I was younger that I can't describe.....  (I can't describe it because I seriously don't know what it is - it's just "something.")  Then my niece described a dream that she has sometimes, and it's the same one - and my sister (her mom) had the same one, and I think our other sister said she did too.  How weird is that???

But I have dreams about all my teeth or hair falling out.  (Obviously two things I'm vain about.)  Also that I am trying to lead worship either in the dark (so I can't see my music), or that my music is lost, or that I have music, but I am expected to lead a song that I've never heard before.

24. What’s an odd kitchen utensil that you use a lot?

Pastry knife?  Is that odd?

25. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

Depends on the day.  Although I had a Fried Ice Cream flavor once that was amazing!  (I think it was a Breyer's limited edition thing.) Why don't they pair ice cream and cinnamon more often?

26. What’s a favorite food you could eat every day?

Bruschetta on Italian toast.  Mmm......

27. What’s your most embarrassing moment?

Ha.  Okay.  So when my sister-in-law graduated from high school, her family took a trip to Silver Dollar City and they invited me.  (She and I were friends of our own accord.  I liked Paul, and he knew that before we went.)  So he spent the whole weekend pestering me (totally mixed signals).  We went to the night show at their Amphitheater, and he left for the Intermission and purposely pushed me as he left, and so I figured I'd get him back (we were so juvenile).  When he came back down, I stuck my foot out to trip him.  He was carrying nachos and a pop.  He dropped the nachos on the older lady's head in front of us.  She had cheese all over her hair and sweatshirt.  I was so embarrassed I spent the rest of the show trying not to cry.  (Incidentally, the lady was awesome about it.  She was like, "Oh a bird pooped on me earlier, so this is no big deal!")

28. What is a food you avoid buying, because you can’t avoid eating it if it’s in the house?

Um.  Anything snacky.  Salt is my weakness.

29. Do you prefer to stay home or go out?

Home, definitely.  And I really do enjoy staying and being at home.  But I think that's why I enjoy it when we do go out, because it's definitely a treat.

30. Any other random things you want to share?

It took me 40 minutes to fill this thing out.  Short, to-the-point answers obviously aren't my thing.  :)

Then I spent another 20 minutes editing it for uniformity, because I'm OCD like that.

Overheard: "Half."

 "Nathan, give half of that piece of bacon to Jake."

"This is half!"

On a related note, I think my daughter may be a Communist.  She doesn't like bacon.

Quote to Consider:

"Parenting is a constant struggle between making your kid's life better and ruining your own."
-Willie Robertson, Duck Dynasty


Ha ha ha! So true!
Some ways I've been ruining my life lately (....daily):
Listening to screaming for two solid hours because my daughter can't be distracted by something as menial as breakfast.  (She needs to learn how to eat at mealtimes.)
Lose two hours of my life overseeing my sons to clean one room of the house.  And that's just the mess that they themselves have made!  (They will learn to pick up after themselves, and how to do it properly.)

And yes, I am in love with the show Duck Dynasty.

Room Re-do

I decided to deep-clean the boys' room last week.  It took 3 days, spread over 2 weeks, and it all started with my feeling the need to vacuum.....
Anyhow.  I'll spare you the process.  Because reading the process might allow you a glimpse of how my brain works.  And quite frankly, that could be a bit scary.
The boys have shared a room since Jacob was about 18 months old.  It was a bit young for Jake to make the transition from his own room and crib to a different room and a big bed, but we had made plans to move him over that summer when we found out we were expecting in 2011.  Even though we lost that baby, we still went ahead and moved him as planned for the summer, to save on electric costs.  (Each room upstairs requires a window unit.)
Zadie and the new baby will be sharing a room for a year or two.  Even if it's a boy (which, for the record, I think it is), I think it's fine when children are very young for brothers and sisters to sleep in the same room.
Personally, I think it's best for kids to share rooms.  Maybe that comes from the fact that I never had a room to myself until I was 18, and I'm quite sure I turned out wonderful.  (ha ha)  But I think sharing a room teaches kids good life lessons about boundaries, sharing, accountability, and responsibility.  So even if we had the money to add on, or for some reason moved into a bigger house, I'm not sure I'd want all my kids to have their own separate rooms.  It just seems.... lonely.
We were given a set of used bunk beds.  We'd been planning on bunks for the boys, but in pricing them new, had decided we could build some ourselves for much cheaper.  We thought we'd have to build them anyways, as the sloped ceilings could prove to be a height restriction.  But these fit just perfectly!
So we put them up in the boys' room.  That way, it's already kind of set up to move another bed in, if Baby is a brother, or they'll permanently have a play space where the other bed was, if Baby is a sister.  (Incidentally, if Baby is a sister, the girls will probably eventually move into what is now the boys' room, as it is slightly larger, and we all know how much stuff girls require!)
Anyhow:  So here are the photos!  Not a complete makeover, as it still has the nursery paint job, but definitely a deep-cleaning, re-arranging, different feel to the whole room.
(I should have taken a "before" picture, but when I started cleaning, I didn't know this is where it would end up.  I know I've probably got one somewhere, but I am not sorting through my 10,000 unsorted photos just to find it.)

The bunk beds cleaned up quite nicely!  (They'd been stored in an abandoned house.)

There is a set of drawers that can be slid in under the bunks.  We decided the amount of space they take up vs. how little the drawers actually would hold made them not worth the effort.  We'll slide totes under if we need extra storage.

And the beds are made, solely for the photo op, since we don't make the beds..... Ever.

Play Central:  All Legos, wooden train tracks, and matchbox cars/farm equipment are gone from my living room!

Looking back toward the door (standing by the window).  Do you get the feel for how little the room is?  Jacob's dresser is the wood one.  The matching desk and dresser are Nathan's.

The tree trunk is a doorway to the only closet in the house that's not in the master bedroom.....

......So we use the enclosed dormer as the boys' closet.

The tiny dresser was Jacob's dresser, which I repurposed as a linen dresser to hold all the twin-size sheets (rather than having to go downstairs to get them).  We moved the bigger wood-grain dresser over from Zadie's room (even though he only uses 3 drawers), and she now is using an antique dresser.

The bunks have a ladder, but Zadie can zip right up it, so we keep it down under the bed during the day and set it up at bedtime, so it's easier and safer to get down in the middle of the night.  Besides, that thing takes up a lot of real estate!

Nathan is currently in the top bunk, but Jacob really wants to sleep up there.  So we may switch residents each time we wash sheets.

Sweet Corn!

Just a couple pictures.  I have an entry coming that hopefully will be nothing but pics, so you all can see how our kids are growing (so fast!).
The kids LOVE sweet corn.  They liked it last year, but this year they were super excited about it.  As in, they'd pick, shuck, and brush it on their own in order to get it for supper.  Probably a good thing we had to keep a fence around it.... It keeps the dog and the kids out.  I'm not a huge fan of sweet corn - not that I don't like it, just that it has to be a certain age:  not too young, not too old and gummy, for me to like it.  If I can find a batch that meet my criteria, I can put it away with the best of them.
Next year, I should let the kids enjoy the sweet corn more often.  There's part of me that doesn't want to eat too much fresh, or we won't have enough to freeze.  But I guess we'll plant a couple more rows and make it one of those sweet things that summer is all about.

I couldn't distract Jacob enough from chowing down to get him to look at the camera.

Even missing his two front teeth, Nathan cleans off an ear really well!

Zadie would eat straight through the cob if we didn't keep giving her our finished ears to distract her!

Close Call

So back in June (yes, two months ago - I'm behind), Paul had a close call.  A near disaster, actually.
We have been battling some huge weeds behind our shop.  They get up to 8 feet tall, and so instead of spraying them this year, Paul thought he'd hack them down and burn them so they didn't seed out.
He used a mixture of old motor oil and some gas he'd drained from our mower after it sat in the tank all winter.  He's used this mixture before, but the several things were different:  More gas than oil, he poured it on green weeds, rather than dry wood that soaks the liquid up, and it was a very humid day.
I was up on the deck sorting my garden seeds to put away, and I hear a loud, "WHOOMPH."  I looked over, and I see a fireball 50 feet in the air, and at least as wide (the brush pile was behind our dog shed and two trees).  I hollered out there, and didn't hear an answer, but didn't hear any screams, so I figured it must be okay.  But still I got up to head out there.
Long story short, Paul had been totally engulfed in the fireball.  All the exposed hair on his arms, face, and head had been singed.  Even his eyelashes were singed, and he had sunglasses on.
Initially his burn didn't look too bad.  Like a sunburn.

Singed goatee.  He immediately trimmed the curled ends off.  (Jafar, anyone?)

You can kind of see the outline of where his hat was, singed in his hair.

Doesn't look too bad.

When I was pregnant with Nathan, my grandpa was severely burned in a shop accident where gas fumes ignited.  In trying to get away, he then kicked the bucket holding the gas, which spilled on him.  He had third degree burns on both legs, and we were told he may die from the complications.  He spent two months in the hospital burn unit, and received multiple skin grafts, but did make a full recovery.
So my family is no stranger to burns.  And when I saw that Paul was not injured (at least not visibly at first), all I could do was laugh.  A bit manically, I'm sure.  But sometimes the line between hilarious and horrible is a fine one.
But over the next two days it got worse and worse.  His left cheek, the side of his nose and ear all bubbled up and started blistering.  We self-diagnosed it as second-degree burns.  He didn't go to the doctor - maybe he should have, but he probably would have been sent to a specialist (another co-pay) and sent home to treat it exactly the way we did.  The second day was the worst, as it was constantly oozing and blistering.

 Two days later.  Forgot to take a picture without the bandages, but you can get the idea from what his nose looks like.

But then it dried up and started to get better.  (Although not looking better at first.)  It peeled and he had bright pink baby smooth skin underneath.  Even his freckles were gone in that spot.

Four days after burn.  We kept ointment on it pretty much constantly.

But now two months later, you can't tell any difference.  Well, maybe he and I can, the slightest pink tint and texture difference.  But no scarring.  And his freckles have returned. :)
We're just very thankful to God, because it could have been much, much, MUCH worse.
And besides the injury to Paul, all three kids were nearby watching.  He had put them in the truck a ways away from the pile while he lighted it.  So they were kept safe from the flames, and also from seeing any injury to their Daddy.
We are so grateful to God for His protection that day.

Allow Me to Excuse Myself.....

I typed this last week.  It took 5 days to remember to get it posted.  Such is my life right now.

So, someone I know in the Eastern Hemisphere kindly reminded me I haven't updated my blog in.... a long time.
Allow me to offer my excuses:
First off, I've been sick.  I got sick a month ago, thought I was well, and then after a weekend at Women's Encounter (and only about 10 hours of sleep total all weekend), the cold came back with a vengeance.  Over the last week, I have been coughing so hard I pee myself and have to wear a pad all the time.  (Not a pantyliner, an overnight pad.  So attractive.)  I'm pretty sure I've popped myself a hemorrhoid, and my hernia has doubled in size.  I'm coughing that hard.
In the midst of this, I am trying to find the house for the mess.  We've had rain every day for the last week and a half - not complaining about that! - but that means the boys and their mess have moved inside.  There is a constant supply of mud to play in, which means multiple wardrobe changes and baths a day.  I don't discourage the mud-playing for the most part, because they're boys.  But after the third set of clothes, I may say something.
Then there's the things that I really need to get to.  Like weeding the garden or flowerbeds.  Or cleaning our bedroom - which I'm questioning whether I've cleaned since Zadie has been born.  Or practicing wedding music for a wedding we'll be playing at in a month.  Or sorting and putting away Zadie's out-grown, and soon-to-grow-into clothes.  Or - this is a big one - going through my curriculum and deciding what we're going to use for Nathan's school this fall.  (Yeah.  School starts in less than a month, on Labor Day.)
So can you tell where blogging ranks on my list?