Home Despot Elly

I have stubbornly stuck to my Kodak camera software over the past 5 years or so because I hate having to learn new systems when I know how to work the old one. Today I actually used a fun feature I’d never messed around much before and printed these out for [...]

Alas, the 4-year old tracked dog poop into the house. [...]

For some reason, this post didn’t post when I scheduled it to, so this is referring to the first week of January, so you don’t get confused.

Michael took all of last week off, before returning to work to start working 10+ hour days for the rest of Tax Season. We spent the week organizing, cleaning, shopping, and [...]

I was going to write a post all about my frustration with the amount of time it takes to take care of all of this STUFF we have in our lives. January is the time when this hits home because we usually have a bunch of new and spiffy stuffy that we’ve accumulated during the season [...]

Me: This is an old Star Trek movie. (referring to Star Trek IV)

Judah (6): I bet it is.

Me: what?

Judah: I bet it is, because I haven’t [...]

I sent the boys outside to play the other day.  They were greatly excited about wearing hats and gloves so I helped them to find and put on winter accessories. I looked out a little later and what did I see?:

I guess I forgot to remind them to wear [...]

My bloglines subscriptions have been unusually quiet these days! I’m thinking maybe everybody is as busy as I am with [...]

I just finished Table in the Mist  by Jeffrey Meyers, a commentary on Ecclesiastes, a couple weeks ago. I loved it. I mean really loved it. It helped that a bunch of people I know had either just read it or were reading it and also loving it, but even without that, I think it would’ve made [...]

During devotions, Michael asks Judah if he ever thinks of doing something bad, but doesn’t because he thinks he might get in trouble. Judah responds in the affirmative and is eager to give an example.
“Today, while Ezra was getting water out of the refrigerator, I thought about going over and pushing button for ice.”

Michael, “Oh?”

“Yeah. [...]

As I glance through the boilerplate on the After-Visit-Summaries from our recent doctor’s well-child checkups:

“Offer water when your child is thirtsty. Do not give your child soda or juice drinks more than one time a day.” I feel smug and give myself a mental pat on the back.

“Do not use TV and videos as a babysitter. [...]

My kids barely knew the word, “Transformers,” until Ezra got one for his birthday a month and a half ago. (he asked for one, but I’m not sure exactly how he knew about them, of it was what he was expecting) Now it’s Transformers all day every day around here. Judah scraped and saved to buy [...]

King and Knight

16th Century Sheep

Fair [...]

Recently, while reading Managers of Their Homes, a light dawned – my kids were capable of much more advanced and regular chores than I had currently been imposing! Without further ado, I wrote out a weekly chore list – one for each boy per weekday morning, and imposed nightly after-dinner chores. How the boys feel about [...]

I’m home from church today – alone with my cold and two youngest children. We’re not really miserably sick, just contagiously so. And with all of these nasty illnesses going around, it seemed best not to expose everybody else to our sniffles. I hate missing church, but that morning shower and nap during Monica’s morning nap was reaallllyyy nice.

I thought I’d try to catch up on a few things here on my blog. A history in pictures, if you will…

100% Whole Wheat

I’m back to bread baking! Cooler weather is so appreciated after a summer of bread-baking deprivation! The above bread is made from a recipe in Peter Rheinhart’s new whole wheat bread book. It’s a two day process – but better than any other 100% whole bread I’ve made, I think. I should try it with Continue reading Photo Journal

It’s simple. Leave Richland at 10:00 am. Make one unexpected potty stop in Arlington. Have a tire blow out just past John Day Dam. Wait 40-50 minutes for someome to come change the tire (20 min). Spare tire is low, so limp over to Rufus, fill up tire with partially broken air pump. Continue to The Dalles. [...]

After an injury to a rather sensitive part of one of my boys’ anatomies, I took him to see his doctor. $10. They looked at the wound, thought it looked odd, referred me to the Urologist. I was hoping they’d wait a while to call to schedule an appointment, but no, they got us in today, [...]

After Monica flipped the switch on the surge protector, turning off my computer and all of the routers, cable boxes, etc. underneath my computer desk – again – I pulled her out from there and expressed my displeasure. She looked up, waved her finger at me and said, “Mo, Mo!” (no, no) Really it was [...]

On Saturday morning Monica was playing with stuff on the bathroom counter, while I brushed out her hair, then put in an elastic head-band. Just after I got it on, she stopped what she was doing, looked up at me, smiled, and said, “preddy.” (apparently, this is what I generally say after I fix her hair – [...]

Pea-gravel is such fun

Ezra, in the playstructure where he and Judah spent LOTS of time.

Judah had fun at the beach across the road

Shoulder Ride. Monica lived in that blue sweatshirt!

We went on a train-ride in a partially covered car. Covered on top, but open on the sides.

The weather was… not [...]