Easter.

Since It is Friday night,

Since I am all hopped up on Nutter Butter Frozen Peanut butter pie,

with no sleep in sight,

I thought to write  quick jaunt about our Easter weekend.

But first,
Check out the pie.
It's as awesome as it sounds.
As a kid I ate this often.
Mom got the recipe from the inside of a box of Philadelphia Cream cheese.

Nothing like watching the kids enjoy a recipe from your past.
I can regrettably claim to have eaten over half of that puppy.

Since it is only one week late,

And around here that's not bad right?
Back to our Easter.

I was inspired by this picture a little over a year ago:

Isn't is lovely?

 

My problem last year was that I didn't find this in time to sprout my own grass.
So I saved it for this year

This time, 2 weeks before Easter,
Still no time for grass growing
I almost threw in the towel.

Almost.

 

Whilst contemplating an alternate plan,

It hit me:

I have nearly an acre of already sprouted foliage!

Complete with those cute little daisy weeds and everything,

 

Insert voice in my head:

I can do this!

 

All I need is a big round Tera cotta tray.

One that I would most likely use,
Then store,

Then hopefully dig out in one piece for next year.

Actually I think I need three because the Peeps won't want to share such small spaces,

And who can blame them?

 

Hello!
This is the sensible you talking here,
Stop buying so much junk and

Use something else!

 

So I did. 

I used a cookie sheet big enough for the three kids to share.

Who needs three troll sized gardens
 Floating around the house?

No One!

 I am learning.

 s-l-o-w-l-y
.
.
.

The first week,

The tomb was just empty:

 

 

Then on good Friday,

Which is the day observed for Christs death,

We wrapped our Jesus

(a daddy figurine we had from a dollhouse)

in cloth

(toilet paper)

then covered the tomb.

Then on Easter morning,

We made 'ressurection rolls.

Best described here

and uncovered the tomb,

removed Jesus from the cloth,

And put the empty cloth back into the tomb:

Wow what a hit!

At no extra charge to me!

 

Kind of made up for the rack of Lamb I bought that was too tough to chew.

 

So Since it is Weekend,

And since I am sort of on a blogging roll,

 

I am stoked to punch out

 The few unwritten ways we observe Easter.

Because the best thing ever offered to humanity

Is celebrated on this day:

 

New life.

 

On a side note,
You probably happened to notice the adorable fuzzy baby bunny in Silas' arms,
We were the proud new owners of three cuddly little yard hoppers.

That lasted for three days total.

Then had visitors.
A thieving cat and dog duo
 Came a' rambling through the neighborhood
And had their way with the poor little cotton tails.
It  was a fun three days,
And one sad traumatizing day to find them to be gone.

We are also the proud owners of many firearms.
Specifically a BB gun named
'CatandDog.'

Musings of Christmas.

A quick recap on the few items I managed to capture from a wonderfully busy December.

Our advent was a little out of sorts this year.

I planned out the first half of December,

Stayed up way too late,

Stuffed the crisp, caredully folded stationary papers made just for the little sack

(Did anyone fall for that one? More like scratch papers and coloring pages wadded up with barely legible chicken sratch)

Crawled into bed,

 and realized it was a  huge waste of time.

How in the world was I supposed to plan out fifteen days,

When I can't even plan out the meals for a week?!

So I unloaded the sacks, and held on to the papers.

Most nights, It was like this:

Figure out which one fits best and try not to let kids (who are increasingly becoming more keen on their  observations) see you stuff it in the sacks.

After the fifteen days were up,

Every night was a panic.

We managed to bust out some pretty fun stuff though like:

Buy a new star for the tree.

Hide and seek in the dark- find the star the wise men followed (using our handy new tree topper)

  put candy canes on tree

Take yummies to neighbors new and old

 Caroling

PJ Story time at library,

Christmas lights

Birthday cake for Jesus

Polar Express party With tickets and all.

Grahm cracker houses

Choosing Ornaments at pharmacy

 

 

I mean really, What cold be more fun? 

All the while,

this little snowball kept chunkin'

 

Does he not just look like the red-headed step child here?

 Its definitely the lighting.
he's not this red!

So with pictures in backwards order here.
this is what he started out the Christmas season looking like: 

A baby turtle.

How does time fly so fast?

It sure does make for random sporadic posts-
About as messy as the living room floor,

Baptising the Man-cub

Long ago,

In a brief distant time period,

There was a short summer.

And in those few days,

We went camping for a weekend.

And in that weekend,

We celebrated our socks off!

It was most definitely the hottest weekend of the year.

Almost too hot.

But we live in paradise here,

so the river was a puddle-jump away......

 Silas had his birthday,

and baptism.

The most special birthday in his entire existense.

 We had friends join us in celebration,

and family from states away....

Dad announced Silas' choice to follow Jesus,

and desire to folow in obedience to him.

baptism was a natural next step choice. 

 

A very special friend of Dad's was honored to perform the ceremony.

I never pictured my boy old enough to do this: 

Mercy,

Was I proud.

Another special friend Barbara came and brought mud pie dessert.

 

Cousins and friends brought gifts and company.

Does he look excited or what?

Almost as excited at the monkey right?

 Even though this was 4 months ago,
I am committed to revisiting his story,
long enough to share it,
and remembering it like it was yesterday,
The day my man-cub
Became less of a cub,
And more like a man. 



The result.

Although we found out this news quite a while ago.

Like more than a month..

(who's counting?)

I still need to staple this to the blogging timeline.

Even if it is out of date.

Finally,

The real results from our ultrasound.

Basically ,

What we came home with was a confusing stack of images.

Before I begin the most hilarious ultrasound story I've ever heard

(I know at least 4 of them)

Lets begin with our pre-doctors appointment discussion on manners:

Mom: "Silas, what are you going to do if the doc says 'It's a girl'?"

Silas: "Oh man, I'm going to be SO angry and scream."

Mom: " Oh no son, you can't do that! You have to control yourself... etc etc."

I bravely decided to bring all the Peeps with me,
a little timid about not having Daddy there- especially after the above conversation.

We all piled into the room, turned out the lights and told the ultrasound tech

"Were dying to know! That's why my kids are all here!"

To which he replied:

"We'll find out at the end. That's how we do things!"
Seriously!?
What kind of nut job says something like that????

So we waited, and waited.
Claire was so worried that it was hurting me.
The most recent doc appointment she had, she got a "poke"
Reassuringly, I told her it was just 'jelly on my belly'.
She later got up the courage to speak up and asked "can we eat it?"

a few minutes into the ultrasound,
I noticed the tech squinting hard. So I started paying real close attention with one eye.
Simultaneously, I tried to keep Peeps wrangled around the bench.
Then the thought came to me: Why can't I have eyes like a bird?
One eye on each side of my head would be SO great right now!

After more observation, squinting,
Then finally bringing his face close enough to touch his nose to the screen,
(Well almost)
I concluded the guy just couldn't see very well,
And this was going to be the longest ultrasound yet to come.

Then someone asked him a question,
To which he adjusted his hearing aid, announced that he was very hard of hearing,
And requested a repeat of the question.
Oh Boy.

Fast forward 20 minutes:
Doc says:
 "99% sure It's a........"

What??

This is the point that I realized and thanked God for our spur of the moment

"What if?" conversation that I had with Silo.

I did feel bad for him.

He just put his head down a little.

My boy has never been one to lash out in screaming anger.

He probably wouldn't have done it-even if we hadn't talked about it.

The doc had a few more measurements to do.

There was some extra work required on his part because I had waited so long to have my ultrasound.

So we continued on, and Silas quickly recovered for some

rock-paper-scissors with his sisters.

Feeling a little sorry for myself, and for my boy,

I casually watched the screen.

Then:

"Wait a minute! What's that?" I yelled while simultaneously sitting up.

Oops.

 Didn't give myself the "What if?" talk.

After returning to the appropriate position, this is what we

found:

Tech says: "99% sure its a......"

BOY!

To which Silas overheard and yelled

"yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!" in the biggest man voice he had.

Forgot to ask him the "What if its a boy?" Question?

Not sure that one would have helped.

After praying for more than a year for a brother,

Finally convincing his parents to actually have another baby,

He finally got his prayer answered in the best kind of way.

Words cannot express how perfect and wonderful this news is to our little clan.

Honestly, this was my plan for my entire life.

Seriously.

I never planned beyond this point.

As a girl,

It was always the plan to have 2 boys, 2 girls, and become a teacher.

Somehow, this plan was PUT in my heart for a reason.

Even down to being a teacher to my most favorite kids in the whole wide world.

My dreams have all come true.

Sure we've added a dog or two,

And basically ended up STUFFING my dreams into one tiny (oh so itsy bitsy) little house,

Its still the plan.

God knew what was going to conspire out of all of this and put this plan in my heart.

I am incredibly honored that this life didn't just happen to me.

It wasn't out of the blue.

The timing maybe, but not the big picture.

Now this is where it gets a little sticky.

I'm not even sure if sticky is the right word.

Interesting maybe?

Or how about unpredictable?

I'm just wondering: "Whats next?''

I'm 28 and my plans are accomplished?

Well, I intend on finding out with no inhibitions.

Do I really have a choice?

I am done dreaming of the future success and failures, accomplished and unfinished.

Everything else is just icing on the cake.

This is just my perspective for this day.
It is currently 6:01 AM

Happy as a lark.

Both of my sons, rockin' the 'love' sign 

Because that's how they roll....

Bombed.

This picture is perfect.

I feel like the entire holiday season has swooped in and is nearly out.

We have squeezed every breath of life out of this years season.
Probably best year yet.

Yesterday, we chose to start and finish the bomb site trail.

We tried once before, but the rain made puddles,

and the puddles made boys.........

Wet.

So we gave in to the elements and went home.

It was still overcast, but a perfect day-after-Christmas jaunt.

So here's the scoop:

On August 15Th 1945 Japanese bomber Nobou Fujita bombed our forest.

It was an act of retaliation, 4 months after we raided Tokyo.

The intent was to ignite a large wild fire.

I should say there are two scoops:

On August 15Th 2005, My little man rocked this neck of the wardrobe

Just by being born.
Did I mention that his name means

"wooded man" or "man of the Woods"

Indeed his name predestined him for glory in the forest.

Funny thing about our timberlands:

They're really really wet.

Little damage was done,
And nobody was hurt.

Later, Fujita returned to Brookings and made peace.

The kids were massive storm troopers this go around.
They blazed through the woods like it was their own backyard.

Like the back-of-your-hand sort of familiarity.

A new and still unidentified mushroom.

Assuming that 'bright yellow' wasn't a good sign,

I smacked down a "no touching'' rule and shot a photograph instead.



Grandpa joined us for the adventure.

It was a bit exhausting, but he made that trail his victory.

A slog through the forest doesn't brake this old Piep.

Wouldn't do it without a proper walking stick though.

Looks a little like a screaming Nerf football right?

Massive Rhododendron.

Salamander of the woods,

Meet man of the woods:

Pointing out the mushrooms

Some of the trees are indescribably large.

And made us look like like little toadstools.

chainsaw tree branch.

Oh yeah baby.

Myrtle wood trees:

Absolutely breathtaking in person.


Of all the things we enjoyed over Christmas break,

We'll mostly miss having Daddy home.

Unfortunately, December has crammed a million things together for us.
We have condensed about 6 weeks of activities into like 4.

I say unfortunately because January comes,
And so do the rains..... and thats about it.
If only it could be spaced out and savored right?
New for us this Christmas:
Advent Calendar with devotions and a treats,
Lighting candles for advent every night at dinner.
Strews of new Christmas crafts.
Night time story time at library (in our jammies!)
Silas sang "We Three kings" loud and clear for story time!
Caroling to our neighbors. This was so much fun!

Our old hats:
Gobs and gobs of Christmas books and movie watching
Ginger bread house (three to be exact)
Hiding of the glowing star (finding the star to Bethlehem)
Buying new Christmas books
Craft fairs with homeschoolers
Christmas light show



Handprint Christmas tree with vintage button onraments from Great Gram
If you know me very well, you know that my love can be bought.
Not only with money,
A GREAT gift will suffice too:
This homemade wreath was hand crafted by a good friend.
Seriously, all this stuff was in her yard.

Our advent calendar included fun things like:

snow cones (an ice shaver- genius gift from a friend)

Eating dinner in the living room (with Christmas movie)

Cookie parties

Ornament making

skits to go along with illustrations of bible stories (a huge hit!)

candy cane play dough (link below)

(http://artfulparent.typepad.com/artfulparent/2010/12/candy-cane-playdough.html)

delivering cookies to neighbors

buying and playing a new family game

Holiday Christmas lights at the park are mostly the same every year,

But never ceases to amaze the little eyes.

They are such a fun crew!

Still a challenge to capture in picture.... The older they grow, the more life and fun they throw into the Christmas mix.