Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and here is a list of some of the things for which I am thankful (in no particular order):

1. A roof over our heads

2. Food on our plates

3. Running water

4. Family

5. Our health

6. Pembroke Welsh Corgies

7. Music

8. Flowers

9. Sunsets & Sunrises

10. The ocean

11. Vacations

12. Five year olds (too cute!!)

13. Furnaces

14. Champagne

15. Internet

16. Books

17. Electricity

18. Refrigerators

19. Automatic dishwashers

20. Washing machines and dryers

21. The great U.S. of A

22. Our troops

23. Freedom of religion

24. Freedom of speech

25. Belgian beer

26. Cell phones

27. Cars

28. The Interstate (but not the traffic)

29. Sushi

30. Hugs

31. Sunshine

32. Dancing

33. Laughter

34. Comedians that are funny and don't use profanity

35. Romantic comedies

36. Modern medicine

37. 24 hour pharmacies

38. 24 hour grocery stores

39. Modern supermarkets (Food is good, yeah?)

40. Life

41. Friends

Bunny Brains & Green Snake Tails

We are happy to say that Googie is finally eating "real" food, and he sure had fun eating dinner the other day. Hubby had made a dinner of lamb shanks, asparagus, and wild mushroom risotto. We expected Goggie to put up a fuss over eating dinner (like usual); however, Junior had warned him ahead of time that Dad was fixing bunny brains for dinner. Googie was so excited, he couldn't wait to eat it. Hubby put a lamb shank on Googie's plate along with a few asparagus tips and mushroom risotto while Junior kept telling him that the lamb shanks were bunny brains. Well, let me tell you he ate a total of five "bunny brains" with "blood" (ketchup). Then he proceeded to eat all his "green rattlesnake tails" (asparagus tips) washing them down with a tall, icy glass of "saliva" (water), and he ate the risotto. How's that for creative parenting?

Praying the Rosary and Laminating Holy Cards

Oh Joy!

The other day our homeschool group had a prayer group for moms. We had so much fun getting together and being silly. It wasn't until I started explaining to Hubby what we were doing that I realized how ridiculous it sounded, "Yeah, honey. We had a blast last night at the homeschooling prayer group meeting. We prayed the rosary and couldn't stop laughing because of the fun we were having. Then the teenagers went to the other room to practice singing religious songs while the moms sat in the family room laminating holy cards. Yeah, we all sat around staring at the laminator and going, 'Oooh, that is sooo cool, I need one of those.' And we weren't even drinking." Anyways, Hubby just gave me a weird look and commented on how I needed to get out more (which is what I thought I had been doing at that meeting) and Bubba just couldn't stop laughing and kept asking me about the laminating machine.

Prayer

This is a Prayer given in Kansas at the opening session of their Senate. It seems Prayer still upsets some people. When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, Everyone was expecting the usual generalities, But this is what they heard:

"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from Every sin and set us free.

Amen!"

I am the Proud Parent of an Eagle Scout

Yikes. You know when Junior finished his Eagle Scout Board of Review I was so proud of him. He was able to earn the Eagle award through his own initiative. Hubby and I didn't micromanage the whole process. Well, I guess you could say that this experience spoiled me and did not prepare me for the Eagle Scout Court of Honor. Now it's my turn to work on an "Eagle Project." It's amazing how much needs to be done for an Eagle award, even after all the "work" is done. Okay, I admit, I am kind of enjoying this, but aren't I busy enough without having some new big event thrown on my lap?

Quiet!

Don't you love Bill Cosby? A few days ago we sat down with the older kids to watch Bill Cosby Himself on HBO and the kids really loved it. Bubba's favorite part was when Bill Cosby fed his kids chocolate cake for breakfast, "Daddy's great...he feeds us chocolate cake." Junior just laughed during the whole thing. My favorite quote is, "Parents are not interested in fair. They are interested in quiet." Too funny!

No Cheap Shots Here

The day started with a trip to the pediatrician's office. Five year old Goggie was due for his Kindergarten physical. Part of the physical included a developmenal screening including a vision and hearing screening. Well, the little man tested with possible language processing deficiencies/delays and poor vision. YIKES! I had no idea. After all the challenges of having Bubba diagnosed with Asperperger Syndrome, Sensory Intergration Dysfunction, Poor Gross Motor Skills, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Gifted I.Q. (with what they called and Engineer's Profile), poor vision, and Tourette's Syndrome, I thought that I had payed my dues. Not so. The journey continues.

Anyway, back to the shots. We had a total of seven shots today. Goggy had three "Kindergarten Shots" plus a flu shot. Bubba had a flu shot and I had two allergy shots. And the day had just started...

Later we had music lessons, tap class (for Mama) to which I had to take Googie and then a Boy Scout meeting. It was a long, long day. But at dinner time Goggie made this for us.

It puts things into perspective, doesn't it? What a day.

My Life is Totally Boring

Yes, my life is so boring I really don't think I have much to write here. It's like that old McDonald's commercial, "I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed..." In a way, one could say that's a good thing. No excitement means that things are going along smoothly and I suppose that's pretty much right. So why the rant? I really don't know. I look around and see so many people with such strong opinions about this or that; living totally exciting lives with accolades to prove it. And I'm just glad that the day went along without anything of note.

Okay, so I had to chase the 5 year old in the soccer field WOO HOO! How's that for excitement? That's right, Goggie thought it would be great fun to wrestle Bubba in the field while I was trying to watch Junior play soccer. That on its own merit doesn't sound too bad, right? Nice wholesome, little boy activity not involving video, TV, computers or who knows what. But then we are in this huge field, with plenty of room all around, miles and miles of space as far as the eye can see (I like to exaggerate but you get the picture right?). Okay, well do you think they go wrestle out in the open spaces available to them? No, of course not. They find the only other person around and decide to wrestle right next to her, almost on her lap. Then Goggie thinks it would be great fun to run. Not out in the open spaces, no, but around and around that same poor woman. Yuppers.

Then, the possessed child runs off, crosses the streets and runs across the soccer complex so I have to chase the little rascal (yes, my life is PG rated so the language has to censored). And then when I manage to catch him 1 mile later, I spank his little hind end. Talk about a screaming banshee. I've never heard one before so I really don't know what a banshee sounds like, but I'm sure it can't be as loud as a 5 year old that was caught by his exasperated Mama. Obviously, I missed Junior's soccer game. Yup, that's excitement!

How about coming home and realizing that it's 8:00, no one has eaten dinner, I need to defrost the meat, put a meal together from scratch and on the table no later than 9:00, so that my OCD 12 year old son can be in bed before 9:30 per his therapist's instructions, all while talking to my sister on the phone (I thought it would be fun to call her since I hadn't talked to her in a while)? That was a rat race but I got it done. TA DA!

Now tomorrow promises to be another boring day. Non-stop boringness from morning till night. Wonder what we'll have for dinner????

Like I was saying, my life is totally boring...

Looks like cocoons are dormant

So much for the swallowtail caterpillars. It looks like they went dormant and will not be emerging anytime soon. I guess it's something to which we can look forward next Spring. Yeah!

Great Painting

Little Googie just loves to do his paintings. Here is one of his latest paintings. When I asked him what the painting was he said that it was a little boy looking for Jesus. This is from the same little boy that thanked me the other day when I walked by him and stopped to kiss him on the head.

Praying Mantis

This spring, a friend of ours hatched some praying mantises from eggs and needed to find homes for some of them; therefore, we offered to "adopt" a bunch of them to place in our garden. We were hoping that they would eat the big ants that were taking up residence around the bean and tomato plants. Well, was I surprised to see this huge "grown up" praying mantis on our door the other day. I couldn't believe how big it was. Pretty cool, huh?

Swallowtail Caterpillar Update

Yes, it's true I'm the proud mother of boys! And as everyone knows, boys love bugs. Hence, my recent focus on bug photos. Here is a picture of the swallowtail butterfly coccon in Bubba's bug habitat.

Pictures of Swallowtail Caterpillars

Bubba, Hubby and I have found at least 8 swallowtail caterpillars in our garden! Just as I promised yesterday, I am uploading some photos. This is a photo of two of the swallowtail caterpillars that we found in our garden today. How exciting! We could even see them munching on the parsley. Bubba also has two in his habitat as you can see below.

Today was also our first day of school. Everything went really well. Bubba started the day with one hour of piano practice and then we all got together at 10:00 for a family Rosary and the official start of our school year. Googi was so excited to start Kindergarten and he spent some time after lessons were over looking over his school books. He particularly enjoyed his new math book and was so thrilled that he already knew most of the things in his book.

Gardening Is So Much Fun!

Yes, it's Labor Day, the un-official end to summer . My garden is still doing well; however, the tomatoes did not do as well as they did last year. Our yield was lower and now the plants that are left look like they might have late blight. I'll probably spray them with an organic fungicide from Gardens Alive. That fungicide helped me save a tomato plant earlier in the season that had early blight. Also, the peppers have been doing so well that I have been harvesting banana peppers, Hungarian peppers, jalapeno, Serrano and green-to-red peppers out the wazoo. We are still trying to figure out what to do with all those peppers. However, I did not have any luck with the cucumbers this year and the pumpkin plant only yielded one pumpkin.

This year I have the most amazing garlic ever. I planted them in the fall from bulbs I ordered from the Garlic Store and I am so impressed with the quality of the garlic I got from them that I just had to order some more for next year. This week we will eat the last of the potatoes from the garden :( No more yummy fresh potatoes until next summer.

It's too bad that the lettuce didn't do too well this year. No problem, next year will be better. Bubba was so excited to find four parsley worms in the curly parsley. He collected two of them and placed them in this "bug habitat." He already raised one swallowtail butterfly this year and last year he was able to raise two swallow tails and one monarch butterfly. The caterpillars really like the curly parley. We can't figure out why they prefer the curly parley over the Italian, flat-leaf parley. We have both of them planted next to each other and have never found a parsley worm caterpillar on the flat-leaf parsley. Of course this is fine with us since we eat the flat-leaf parsley. I'll post pictures of the caterpillars and the butterfly if I get a chance to do it.

Tomorrow will be our official first day of school. Let's pray that it will be a good one.

Neal Boortz on the UN

I just have to say that I completely agree with what Neal Boortz had to say today about the UN. The UN is anti-American and the U.S. really needs to re-evaluate its involvement in the organization. The more I read about what the UN is doing, the more annoyed I get. So, yes, let's start a new international organization of nations and pull out of the the UN.

Christmas Songs in August?

Yes, I'm already singing Christmas songs; however there is a catch. We always like to make fun of the "Little Drummer Boy" song because it really is hard to sing in Choir. It's "the" Christmas Carol to make fun of. Because of this, a couple of Christmases ago I started to sing it something like this: I like tequila but please give me some rum. I had sangria but always prefer to have rum. This pina colada's great 'cause it's made with some rum. I like my coke 'case it goes well with my rum. Rum rum rum rum, rum rum rum rum... Me and my rum rum...

It gets everyone laughing here.

So Sad About Owen Wilson

I was soo bummed to see a news article claiming that Owen Wilson had attempted to commit suicide. He is such a fun actor and one of my favorites. I really hope that it either isn't true or that if it is, he gets the help he needs to get better.

On another note, I think that I ruined one of our nice cooking pots. I was outside in the backyard talking to my neighbor and forgot that I had put the green beans on the stove. After a while, I remembered that I had to check on them and when I went inside to check, the water in the bottom of the pot was completely gone and the beans on the steamer basket portion had begun to burn. Yuck! Now the bottom of the pot seems to be lumpy.

Favorite Day

Sunday is my favorite day. Not only do I get to sleep in until 8:00 a.m., we also go to church. Some quotes from today's Scripture readings: "My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whon the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges."

Also: "Lord, will only a few people be saved?" He answered them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough."

Saw the Movie

Well, we watched that movie "The number 23" and had some fun with it and the whole idea of The Number 23. For example, we found that we rented the movie on 8/24/07 and that 24-8+7=23. Too weird huh?

Hello

Hello,

This is my first blog entry. Not sure if anyone is out there but I thought I'd try this out. Right now I have a dog barking, a young child running around in his underwear wanting help getting ready for bed, another child asking me if I have time to help them out and another one outside in the garage making the dog bark. Where is the hubby? Watching that Snakes on the Plane movie in the master bedroom. As soon as I get the youngest children in bed, I think that we'll be watching the movie "The Number 23." I'm not sure what to expect but it has Jim Carrey in it so I thought I'd give it a try. If anyone has any techniques to help me get my barking dog to stop barking...Maybe I need to get the Dog Whisperer out here.