Photo episode

In reverse. Here we are at bedtime tonight. Glowsticks were obtained at the light parade we went to earlier this evening. Isabelle if you look carefully is wearing a Minnie Mouse costume obtained at an impromptu trip to the thrift store today.

The parade was fun and we were smart because we got a parking spot close to the road and watched it all from the van instead of braving the snowstorm.


Here is Max, and no that's not dirt on his face. He is a kitty cat. Obviously.
James and Helena, a dog and a cat respectively. Looks like the cat captured a bird's nest.
This was a dance party instigated by Helena. It was hard to capture the mania since they move so fast!

So the Advent wreath. The kids helped me decorate it and I was proud to actually have all the candles BEFORE advent started. I believe this is a first. However I couldn't find the little brass ring candle holder to actually put it all together--well--until today that is. James wanted to me to take his picture but wasn't interested in standing still.

Awwww!!!
Sisters.

Good night.

Trick-or-Treat on Mainstreet

I wrote a nice little blurb about Halloween but then deleted it. I'm having technological problems tonight. Here they are though, the pictures that is. Eric and I made all the hats in October. I may have finished the last one 30 minutes after the event started. Eric didn't believe I could but he must not understand my ability to crack down under deadline.
And look how snazzy and natural we are that we had roving ON HAND to make our beards. The down side to all that naturalness is the strong smell of sheep that is nestled occasionally up your nose. . .














Here we are L-R: Doc, Dopey, Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, and Eric in back as Sneezy.

Max up there on the left as Dopey. He played the part well... Almost too well.

I wish we had a close-up of Sally she slept the whole time and was adorable in her little baby sized hat.

There are the kids running because, well, CANDY!!!!!!!!!

Everything was kinda crazy and overwhelming when we were there. Lot's of milling.

I really like my eyebrows.

Dabbling in the flower arts

I've been wanting to post pictures for a while of the flower ladies' work. Sometime last year the position coordinating the Mass flowers opened up and I had secretly been wanting to try my hand at this job so I leaped at the opportunity. I had some ideas for increasing the scale of arrangements and after I took over I found myself in a position that came with LOTS of freedom. I scoured books on floristry from the library, including ILLs and certainly have learned a few tricks of the trade. Over the year a few other very talented women have joined in and every week we have a great time trying to create worthy arrangements for our Church. It's definitely been an awesome creative outlet, and a privilege to work with such wonderful artists who help bring all my visions to bloom (so to speak).

Small altar vase for mission church by Logan.

Offertory vase by Ceci.

Deconstruction.

Rosary table vase by Logan.

This one was being ornery for Sue.

Sue showing that freesia who's boss.

One of the main altar arrangements.

The more I learn the less I know

I love how James knows when to tell me "I love you so much mommy," he's a pretty intuitive little boy.

It's funny how being a parent makes you a better parent. It's funny how before you have kids you kinda think you have an idea of how it all works. How you'll always be the picture of firm, yet loving, equability. And of course I am! ;)

I feel that having small kids is kinda like having manic depression, extreme highs and lows. The scary thing is how the ups and downs come in freakishly close succession-- seconds apart even. Right now is pretty high, Sally's chewing on my finger. Children are playing pleasantly. Laundry has a chance at getting finished. Much is right with the world.

As a parent you can never have too many bodily fluid stories

Around 3am this morning Isabelle crawled into our bed next to me. Around 5am she peed and got up and went over to Eric's side leaving me to roll into her puddle. . .hey, no fair! Eric left around 6am and I was awoken an hour later by the smell of poop. Somehow that smell always has the ability to jar me awake no matter how good the dream. Anyway, there was Max standing next to my bed with his exceedingly loaded diaper next to him on the floor. Thanks Max for letting me know! The third and final story also stars Max, who decided a good time to get on the table and pee all over it was when I was concurrently organizing our CD collection. I just looked at him and asked "why?'

Strict Constructionist

Today Eric said to Max, "you have to have pants to go outside." Max took this quite literally and went to his drawer and obediently took out pants (and a shirt!) and carrying them walked outside.

Naked.

Stuff my kids do

I'm thinking I'm going to start keeping track of the crazy things my kiddos do, I figured why not keep it here for the amusement of all. I'm trying to look at this list as therapy... perhaps it will keep me from losing my cool. :)

The latest escapade was a productive activity James and Max wanted do, which was to throw rocks off the porch. A seemingly harmless amusement until I realized their source for the rocks was my decorative hurricane glass that got smashed on the floor in order to empty it of its contents.

When questioned why, James pleaded that he only wanted to put the rocks in the garden.

Maybe I should actually call it "things my kids break."

To every season...

A couple of weeks ago we drove up into the Jemez to see the damage. It was damp from recent rain and still smelled like char. I was surprised to see what burned and how and oh so sad to see all the recovered aspens were gone. Yesterday I was talking to Wayne (he works for the county and was there fighting the fire) about the fire and he said he hadn't really thought that there was going to be a chance this time for the town. Weird to know that in retrospect. Alls well that ends well?

I had an EKG the other day. That was a new and exciting thing. I was surprised how quick it was; it took longer to hook me up then to perform the test. Turns out I am in supremely good health. I mean, I thought so, right? Always nice to have confirmation. The reason for this was my midwife thought I had a funny sounding heartbeat. Apparently the explanation for that is that sometimes young people just have extra beats in there. Who knew?

boring bullet list of my day

• Coffee
  
• Arranged flowers with the cool Church ladies.
• Packed vegetables with the cool foodnerds.
• Ate some of said vegetables at lunch with cool kiddos.
• Drank some more coffee.
• Cleaned repulsive looking kitchen.
• Processed beautiful cabbages, kale, and carrots to put up enormous keg'o'kraut.
• Made large vat of granola.
• Made wise decision to pick-up pizza.
  
• Tried to justify pizza eating by topping purchased pizza with a salad.
• Made white russians with Eric.
• Tried to justify white russian by making it with kefir.
• Just kidding!
  
• Cuddled with lots of children while watching "Honey I shrunk the Kids."
• Mused over feelings of nostalgia while watching "HISTK."
• Put a wittle baby to bed while Eric wrangled other children (the benefits of having boobs).
  
• Cuddled with Eric while watching embarrassingly bad movie... oh wait... that hasn't happened yet. . .
  

******************Goodnight!

A west wind, an atom of ocean

Some days are just designed for breakfast burritos and today was just such a day. Bacon, ham, sausage, redways, greenways, hash no hash? Take your pick. I went out to grab one for Eric and me to split. The morning was cool, misty, damp, thanks to recent rains. I felt light and unattached going out by myself; almost like a college student, certainly not like a parent of five.

I like being out while others are still sleeping, there was a quiet camaraderie amongst the few coffeehouse patrons as we clasped warm paper cups full of liquid energy. Chorizo, green, mmm.

oh monday

Yes, it's been a while. I feel like getting back into it though so maybe friends will trickle back in.

Today was my first day home alone with all five little hornelings. I sensed some of my coming challenges with this episode. Everyone is out on the porch "painting" as we like to do with water and brushes. Isabelle spies some chicken "hoop" (aka poop) on the porch and thoughtfully mops it up with her brush. I see this from my nursing position on the love seat and tell her she needs to wash the poop off her brush before she can paint again. She comes over and sits down at my feet just out of reach and proceeds to paint chicken shit onto her feet. This, I can tell you, is as disgusting as it sounds, the poop was definitely fresh and had attractive bits of slimy white that is now sliding down Izzy's ankles. I yell out some wordless exclamation of horror, but Isabelle is calmly ignoring me and continuing to do what she does. As I said I was just out of reach and otherwise occupied which made manuevering difficult, so I decide to swipe for the brush and grab it but Izzy is holding tight and then suddenly lets go which just flings the wet brush across the porch showering Helena, Sally and me with the delightful mixture. At this point Helena and Sally start to cry and Isabelle pees on the porch.

Afternoon Showers

Things I like: eggs
Things I don't like: messing up my eggs so that the yolk breaks. I take a lot of pride in my ability to prepare eggs. Sometimes it can be crushing to my ego to mess up my flip.

Something else I like: the most awesome cake ever that I made yesterday. It's called Easiest Best Chocolate Mousse Cake. Mmmn...

Note the ingredients:

1 lb. bittersweet chocolate
2 sticks butter
8 eggs


Yeah, you read that correctly.

And I for one have died and gone to heaven. It even partly makes up for my badly fried egg.

September Silences

Babies are sleeping for now, that is except, for Max. Maximilian for the last few days has just slept in snatches prefering instead to practice supermans, arm flapping, and rolypolies. I think he is pretty nice company though, whenever I look at him he grins at me with this huge open mouth, and a look of pure adoration. Who could resist that?

I haven't written anything in so long that every word I write looks funny as if it's misspelled. Eric has been begging me to start up the ole blog again, he thinks I don't hold up my end of the posting. Which is true. Sometimes though its hard to find things that I'd like to write about.

Mmm... I smell coffee brewing in the next room. Paul and Chip, a couple Youth Apostle friends of ours, stopped in to visit a couple weekends ago. They had this one cup coffee maker with them and left it in our care as they won't be needing it in the future. Both of them are becoming consecrated in the fall which is very exciting. And also good for us because the coffee maker brews some damn good coffee and it's fast. A whole lot faster than my trusty french press.

Tuesday was an interesting day. I was having a rough time with the babies, it seemed as if all four had been crying all day. Morale was low. I called Eric in desperation and he came home early from work, we all got in the Cobra and drove to Taos. It was my first time there and I loved it. So charming. We ate at this place called "The Love Apple" which was set in an old adobe church. They had mismatched glassware and flowers and Zucchini picked from their garden decorating the tables. I really enjoyed the setting and the food was fabulous too. All the food is locally grown and raised. They use traditional methods of preparing food (very Weston-Price) and everything was delicious. On our way back we stopped at Taos's natural food store and bought some grass fed beef and a few other tasties. The sun was setting over the Rio Grande gorge as we drove home and no one was crying anymore.

Thanks, Oscar!

Today we woke up to find that our neighbor's cat, Oscar, had given us a gift... a dead bird for our porch! IU knew something was missing out there, I just thought we needed some flowers...

we haven't identified the bird yet, but hope to soon...

Oh, Hail no!

At work today Logan called me on my cell phone. "Is it hailing where you are?" "No" "Well, it's hailing golf balls here." We live about a mile from the Church where I work. "Oh wait Logan, I see one just hit the ground. And another..." in about 2 minutes, it was coming down. Hard. I'd hate to have been stuck out there...

My office is in a building about the size of a double wide. There's the office part, and then the main room with couches, etc. I moved to the main part, and open the front door to watch the hail come down. it started pea size, then got gradually bigger... and bigger... it started ricocheting off the railing of our front step and shooting inside. I decided it would be wise to close the door at this point, no sense in getting unnecessarily bruised! I turned around just in time to see one of our skylights break. glass and hail started falling from the ceiling. There was now a basketball-sized hole in the ceiling, the hail was getting bigger, and the hole in the skylight was getting bigger. If you walked near the skylight, you'd get hit with hail. I played it safe. When it was over, I found some large hail that had fallen in the building. There was one that was literally the size of a golf ball that landed inside, but it split into two and melted before I took pictures.

I ventured outside once the danger had passed. It had been a nice day, but the temps had plummeted with the hail. Now they were back up, mid-80's, and the hail was melting fast. our car was... well, it will start. but the windshield is cracked, with at least 5 or 6 obvious impacts. Time to call our insurance... oh, what fun.




The skylight... note the clouds. The skylight is about 2 feet x 4 feet.
There are two layers to each skylight in the building. The five other skylights were broken on the outer layer, and this was the only one where the hail got all the way through.




found these little guys inside. they had already started to melt. There were bigger ones that fell outside, but these were the biggest I found after I started taking pictures.

Bourbon Milkshake

Milk
Ice Cream
Bourbon

Blend until frothy and delicious.

Tonight, ours was on the thinner side, I'll use less milk next time. When I discover an acceptable ratio, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm enjoying this nice summer evening, this nice summer evening bourbon delight, sleeping babies, and a wife who'll soon fall asleep with me as we cuddle and watch a movie. Praise God!

but where were the amber seas of grain?

Logan and I took a nice drive with the newest babies down the hill to Española today. On the way down we caught the last gasps of breath of the setting sun, and it was spectacular. It is amazing how the same landscape can have so many different manifestations, depending on light, season, clouds, and whatever else makes this the land of enchantment.

Slot Canyon!!

I went to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument today with some kids from my church. In addition to seeing some pretty sweet rock formations (from the volcanic rock in the area and way-cool erosion), we got to hike through a slot canyon.

They're way cool, but you gotta be wary of the weather... a sudden heavy rain could be deadly.

see that little crack in the rock? It's about 1/3 up from the bottom and 1/3 from the left edge of the photo. That's the slot canyon we hiked through, then hiked up to the top of the mesa, then were greeted with 360 views of NM. You can see some of the formations for which the Nat'l monument is named (they look like tents... or at least upside down ice-cream cones...) The tent rocks were interesting, but it was the slot canyon that stole my heart.

Scrunchy

James has started to make the same face every time he realizes you're taking his picture. He thinks the flash is going to go off, so he scrunchees his face pre-emptively, whether or not you have the flash on.

New Carpet!

Out with the old, in with the new. Logan's pick, but I like it too.