Home Despot Elly

A Thing of Beauty

Multigrain Struan, torpedo shaped, with a poppyseed glaze.

Pooh Gems

We’ve been listening to Winnie the Pooh and House at Pooh Corner in the car in the last week or so. It’s a CD recording I got from the library – not just an audiobook, but a production with a cast of voices and sound effects. Pooh is voiced by Stephen Fry (Dr. Gordon Gordon [...]

We’re Home!

We made it home from Tri-Cities today with no (as a gentleman at church put it) “unauthorized stops in Rufus [Oregon].” This is referring of course to the last time I drove home from Tri-Cities all by myself with three small children in the car – when my tire blew just past the John Day [...]

Funny Feature

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 the kids:

Domestic Disaster

I read recently on the Femina blog of a just-before-Christmas-party-disaster involving powdered sugar and 3 small children. Today we had one of our own.

I was on the phone with my mom this morning, and one of the boys burst in with, “Mom, I pooped in my pants…” (in itself not a positive thing) “and the [...]

More Pictures

My first real bed. My parents moved me into it when I was a toddler, and I’ve slept in it most of my life (except for a couple brief stints in bunkbeds). When we married, the bed came with me. Same bed, same mattress. Purchased before I was born. Old mattress.

Simmons Beautyrest Full

At last, [...]

So There!

Today, as we listened to some cello concertos during lunch I asked, “What instrument is this?” Judah responded, “The Cello.” (thank the Little Einsteins – I certainly couldn’t have told him that!)

I asked, “who wrote this music?” They weren’t sure, so I told them, “Johann Sebastian Bach.” (Judah at once informed me that this was what [...]

Handicrafts

Charlotte Mason recommends teaching children “handicrafts,” as in useful skills, in addition to their liberal arts education. Upon reflection, I decided that while I could not teach my kids plumbing or electrical wiring, I probably should be able to teach them to cook, or at least, to bake. So a few weeks ago on Friday [...]

Hive Free Morning!

For those of you who commented (on facebook) and prayed, thank you! Monica woke up this morning without an itchy bump to be seen and seems to be feeling fine. She slept in really late, which is kind of odd, but other than that, she seems to be normal. Praise God!

Mother’s Preoccupation

Monica got hives last week. Yes, I know, it’s an icky topic. I especially think that hives are icky; just looking at them makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach and itchy all over. But, indeed, she did get a terrible case of hives last Wednesday morning, which continued until Friday and only stopped, [...]

Studying

I feel like I’m in school again. Currently I am reading not one, not two, but three “big” books of the harder, good-for-you variety.

For my book group here in Oregon I am reading The Book of Margery Kempe an autobiography by a medieval mystic. Here’s an example:

Then it was our Lady’s turn to speak with [...]

Internet Recipe #4: Crockpot Yogurt

I was alerted to this recipe by Mystie last spring. I think she send me the link to this time-saving tweak, as well. When I told my mom about making yogurt a couple days ago, she asked for the recipe, so I thought as long as I was retyping out my own variation on the recipe [...]

Ugh..

Alas, the 4-year old tracked dog poop into the house. Bleah…

Last Hurrah

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, [...]

For the Environment’s Sake..

Homeschool!

As I caught a whiff of exhaust from a passing school bus today, I thought of another way to sell homeschooling! Do it for the environment’s sake! Think of it… if one parent from every two parent household stayed home every day, rather than commuting to work – think of all of the gas not [...]

Frustration…

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 [...]

In My Experience..

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 seen it.

Elly’s Top Movies of 2009

*Note: these are movies I saw for the first time in 2009, not that necessarily came out in 2009.

In no particular order:

SlumDog Millionaire – an almost-fairy-tale set in India. The Brother’s Grim kind of fairy tale where eyes are gouged out and innocents are used and abused. Not for children. But uplifting and mind-opening nonetheless. Up [...]

Better than Galaxy-Quest..

I just read this post at the Femina blog: An Uplifting Memory. The post itself and the reader’s comments had me almost hyperventilating! Good to know that all of one’s day-to-day small child related disasters are eventually a source of great entertainment – and that eventually one is OUT of that mode of life!

(The title [...]

Announcement!

Did you see that my blog is all prettied up? Well, if you did, you can thank my brother, Ben and his wife, Emeth, who took it upon themselves to spend much of yesterday afternoon updating my blog. It feels nice to have a fresh new face on the blog. And perhaps I’ll be motivated to [...]