ready for a change....

Well, actually, I've been ready for a change since we moved into our house almost 2 years ago.  A change in the wall color, that is.  And complete removal of the schnozberry wallpaper in the dining room (see here)

Now, I'm sure it was LOVELY when the previous owner put this up.  I'm sure.  But, since the day I looked at the house, all I can think when I look at it is "The schnozberries taste like schnozberries!"  I was reading a very talented friend's blog, Juggling & Jellies, and have gotten re-inspired to do SOMETHING up in here.

I have had a color scheme in mind for a couple of years and every now and then I'll come home from Lowe's or somewhere else with a paint department and have my chips.... and they're ALWAYS the same! They may be a different brand and have a different name, but they're always the same colors.  And Eric always said the same thing: "Oh, no! Are you serious? It will look like a Mexican restaraunt!"  Until...... He and I were window shopping one day (and I don't mean shopping FOR windows.  I mean we were broke and just looking around) and, once again, I was looking at paint chips and picking out the same ones when, lo and behold, he opened one of the 'suggestion' pamphlets from Behr paint and THERE WAS MY COLOR SCHEME!  All of the chips I held in my hand were displayed beautifully in one home right there in living color! And it was beautiful!  And Eric agreed that it wasn't so bad after all. :)

So, since that day, I have been drooling over the pamphlet and 'my colors.' But I haven't done anything yet for a lot of reasons -- time, money.... you name it.  But I'm getting an itch and the only way to scratch it is with LOTS of color!!!  I was trying to find an image online of what I found in the booklet.. but I can't so just trust me; it's awesome!

In the mean time, I'm just waiting for the day when I can get rid of the schnozberry wallpaper and coming up with some more projects for ' The List.'  I wanted to make some floor cushions for  the living room so the kids will stop pulling the pillows off of the couches and throwing them on the floor and making the dog think they're fluffy beds for her.  I found this tutorial for floor cushions over at Living with Punks and I love them! I'm not thinking nautical.... but something more 'moroccan.' I love her blog, she has some great tutorials that are easy to follow.  I also want to do a slipcover for our (ratty but functional) ottoman and maybe our couches.  I don't know, that's pretty daunting.  I look at patterns for couch slipcovers and start twitching.  It's all Greek to me.  I have some other ideas that mostly require Eric's carpentry expertise (like a REAL sewing center, complete with cabinets and shelves and everything a girl needs to sew) and a coffee table.  Of course, that's pretty far down on his priority list.  Getting back to work is first.

Ok, I guess my 'blog time' is up.  Everyone is really quiet. Nothing good can be happening back there, I'm sure of it

I think I'm going to start adding a favorite kid quote of the day at the end of each post.  It's amazing what goes on when they think no one is watching or listening. I think Sam, at age 11, is only beginning to doubt the existence of my 'third eye' on the back of my head.  The other two still believe whole heartedly.  I want to keep it that way. 
Don't get me wrong, I have great kids.  They are always well behaved in public which, let's face it, is the most important time to behave. They usually do what I ask when I ask with very little whining.  Usually.  My biggest issue with all three of them right now is the bickering, teasing, and name calling.  It breaks my heart that they do things to aggravate or hurt each other on purpose.  I know people will say, "well, that's just how kids are!"  But, I don't think that's any excuse.  I think that's a cop out.  I have tried to get it through their heads that our home is our safe place.  Our family is our sanctuary.  We can get hurt and angered enough in the world; we don't need that here.  One of my pastors once put it something like this: Love protects.  When you love someone, that person can share their fears, their passions, their pet peeves, etc. with you and your job is to protect them from those things, not use them against them.  He was talking about marriage, but I think the same ideas apply to any relationship.  I don't know why they don't get that....
Ok, that's my soapbox for the day :) Now for my favorite kid quote of the day!

This was over heard while the kids were having lunch:
Ruby (age 5) ~ "You know, Uncle Matt and I are a lot alike.  He likes the smell of gunpowder and I like the smell of hotdogs."
WHAT?!?
Here's one of my favorite pictures of the girl so you can put a face with the quote:

My Chicken Pie



Horrible picture of a beautiful pie, I know.... The batteries in my 'real' camera were dead, so I used my cell phone. I swear, every time I upgrade my phone I have poorer picture quality with the camera and more dropped calls..... 'smart phone,' my butt.

Anywho, there was a request for the recipe for the chicken pie so here it is:

Mama's Chicken Pot Pie

1 (2-3lb) broiler/fryer

      (I usually just use a large pack of chicken thighs)

1 onion, quartered

1 stalk celery, cut into large pieces

1tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried rosemary

1 tsp salt

1 bay leaf

Combine all the above ingredients in a large dutch oven (or stock pot), cover with water & bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat & simmer for about an hour.

Remove chicken from broth, strain broth & reserve 1 1/2 c. of it. (I usually take out the 1 1/2 c. for the recipe and then freeze the rest for use in recipes that call for chicken broth; it's so much better than canned!)

Cool chicken, remove from bones and chop meat.

Now, on to the vegetables:

1 c. chopped celery

1 c. chopped onion

1 c. chopped carrot

1 c. chopped potato

about 6 sliced mushrooms

1/3 c. butter

1/2 c. flour

1 1/2 c. half & half

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

pastry for pie

    (I'll admit that I mostly use the roll-out refrigerated kind)

1 egg

1 Tb milk

Saute all the vegetables in butter until crisp-tender.  Add flour, stirring until smooth (about 1 min).  Add reserved broth and half & half & stir constantly until thick and bubbly.  Stir in salt, pepper & chicken.  Remove from heat.

Spoon mixture into pastry & cover with another pie crust.  Trim, seal & flute edges.  Cut slits in top

Combine egg & milk & brush over pastry

bake at 400* about 30 min or until golden brown.

*** I like to make a 'gravy' to spoon over the slices of pie.  I just make mine by melting some butter, adding some flour & some rosemary or thyme & stirring constantly about a minute or two.  Add some broth and some milk & some salt & pepper.  But you can go without or use your favorite chicken gravy.

If you make this, I'd love to hear your opinions!

Happy Birthday, Sammy boy :)

Well, today my oldest turns 11.  Happy and sad all at the same time. He is getting so big.  I love watching him turn into his own person, but i miss that sweet, fat baby :) check this out:



I mean, don't you just want to eat him up??? He was about 6 months old here.  He would just die if he knew I put that last one up!  Oh, I may miss the days of nursing him to sleep, teaching him signs, his baby giggle.... but I am so thankful to have him now! That boy is such a joy and so helpful.  Don't know what I'd do without him :)
He is still recovering from having been in the hospital for a couple of days with some respiratory problems, but we are still having birthday dinner..... the same thing every year for him:

chicken pie

fruit salad

chocolate cake

with

 peanut butter frosting

cookies & cream ice cream

Well, I suppose I should go start the chicken for the pie.  Maybe I'll get pictures up later... maybe a recipe?

here's the boy all grown up :)



it's been a 'dose 'em with benadryl' kind of day

This is from Nov. 2007

okay, my day started out fun enough;  if you think that fixing 3 different breakfasts ('because, mama, i just want grits now.  i don't want that other stuff that i wanted before now that you just fixed it.  i like grits now.) is fun.   he got grits.  my coffee wasn't even done brewing yet so  how do you expect me to argue with that?  i was still asleep.
ok, breakfast was done and cleaned up (thank you, lucy, for your help licking the yogurt off of the floor.... it makes my job so much easier. now if you would quit sneaking cat turds out of the litter box and leaving them on the carpet that would be great.)  then it was time to get dressed.....
it used to be so much fun to dress ruby.  i loved having a little girly girl to girly-up!  it pretty much quit being fun the day she stripped down to her diaper (yes, DIAPER-- at this rate of progress she'll be in one when she gets her license) and stood in front of her open closet and down right sobbed..... not because she didn't have anything to wear (which i sometimes still do at 31) but because she didn't have anything that she WANTED to wear.  poor eric kept taking out dresses, tops, pants, tutus, etc. and saying 'how about this sweetie?' or 'here, baby girl, you look so pretty in this!'  to which ruby replied with a snotty and hysterical "NOOOOOOO!"  it was ugly.  she is going to be fifteen in 12 years, 7 months, and 15 days.  i can't wait.
ok, so everyone is dressed and ready to go.  i hurried to take mama to her appointment, ran through the bank, got daddy to go with me to pick my van up from the mechanic, hurried back to mama's to change car seats etc. from her car to my van and by this time every little person i own is chanting their hungry cry.  ruby's sounds like this:  "dumpin'  EAT! dumpin' EAT!" it starts out in a normal (but whiny) voice and then the 'EAT' part is loud and then she always ends it with a grunt and, if we happen to be in the car, a kick to my seat.  sam's isn't loud so much as it is exhausting: "hey mom, i'm hungry....... hey mom, i'm hungry....... hey mom, i'm hungry."  really, i got it the first 12 times.  did you hear the first 12 times i said "I'M WORKING ON IT!" when it's time to eat, you'll be the third to know.
so, we came home and wolfed down some grilled cheese sandwiches, walked the lucy, got dressed AGAIN (because SOMEONE doesn't like it when crumbs get on her shirt.  and it wasn't pink anyway.) and hurried out of here to get to our home school co-op.  it takes about 15 minutes to get there and we made it about two minutes before classes start when sam said 'oh no, mom!  you left my guitar sitting on the bench outside at the house!'  and i did.  in the 'mobile home village.'  so we hauled ass back home to get the thankfully-not-stolen guitar and then went right back to co-op.  whew!  made it!  i thought things were going well until, about an hour into co-op, another mom came to tell me that eli was in the bathroom crying and wouldn't come out.  oh no.  i went in there to find him sobbing in a locked stall, pants soaked.  but his underwear were bone-dry.  how could that be, you ask?  BECAUSE SOME OTHER KID PEED ON MY KID!!!  yes! i mean the boy PEED ON MY KID!  eli was devastated.  i took the peed-on pants and went to find the mama of the pee-er and an extra pair of pants, size 5.  ok, so i found the mama.  and i have to say that i wasn't mad....... until i talked to her.  i mean, kids are kids and do really strange and inexplicable things sometimes.   if you have kids, you know exactly what i mean.  but when i told the mama (who, by the way, has 9 children so i figured she's pretty 'together'.  i mean, you'd have to be, right?  she grinds her own wheat to make bread, for pete's sake!)  do you know what her response was?  'you know, i think he might be diabetic or something.  he drinks a lot and when he has to go, he has to go.'  WHAT?!?!?!!?  your kid just peed on my kid and you're not getting up out of your freaking chair?  you know, if that had been the other way around (but it wouldn't be because my children are fairly aware of the consequences of such actions) i would have busted somebody's butt and they would have apologized profusely while hand-washing the kid's pants in the bathroom sink.  i mean, come on!  no, she didn't apologize for the kid or go talk to him or anything...... oh well, i've got enough 'fun' raising my 3, i can't raise someone else's 9. 
ok, so i tracked down some silly shorts for eli and got him settled back into music class and went to teach the preschool class.  20 minutes later, it's time for snack.  i'm heading to the fellowship hall with ruby to get her snack when i see sam coming out of the bathroom soaking wet from the waist to his shoes.  can i just say 'WHAT?!?!?!?!?!'  my boy peed his pants.  he was in the other building for guitar lessons and he had to go, so he ran over to the main building, where he had to stand in line and when he finally got up there he couldn't undo his button.  it happens.  bless his heart, he was mortified.  i didn't have a change of clothes for him either, so we left early.  i guess he didn't need that guitar after all.  but can i just point something out here?  at least my kid peed on HIMSELF.
right now it's about 10:30.  all the little people's eyes are closed and my bottle of wine is open.  eric is in myrtle beach living it up playing in the national pool tournament.  he left on saturday and won't be back until friday.  it's a long week already and i miss him.  i was really hoping to get the house clean clean clean before he got back, but i might not be done drinking soon enough to do that.....

my beaver smells like chocolate (and other funny things my kids say)

I used to have a blog on one of those social networking sites that starts with 'my' and ends with 'space.' I hadn't been there in a LONG time and thought I'd go rescue the ramblings and put them here so I'd have everything in one happy place :)
This is from Sept. 2006
Enjoy!

okay, i just about spit coffee through my nose when eli came running into the kitchen shrieking that his beaver smells like chocolate.  i choked on it when sam asked to smell his beaver.  before i go any further, let me clarify that the beaver we speak of is a stuffed animal,  and it smells like chocolate because it was laying right next to eli's chocolate scented easter bunny his mimi got him.  (eli is very into the way things smell) these are my innocent children, who have no idea how incredibly hilarious they are.  i am going to try to compose a list of the funniest thing my kids have said/done in their short time here.  i'm sure this will be an ongoing list because, as my own mother can attest to, we don't stop doing/saying goofy things just because we're 30 (or 27, ms. "game of death!")  feel free to add your own funny kid stories as comments, then any time any of us are feeling a little blue, or just wanting to hang a "free to a good home" sign around our children's necks and sit them in the front yard, we can re-visit this blog and cheer ourselves up.  we may possibly even save our children from being handed over to some weirdo desperate for child labor.
1) sam, at about age 3:  while eric was drying him off after a bath, sam looked down at his not quite flaccid penis and said "hey, dad, what is this?  did i swallow a chicken bone or something?"
2) sam, at about age 2:  after watching an episode of reading rainbow, sam came bursting in the bathroom while i was in the shower and announced "i'm doing teamwork!"  to which i replied, "oh, yeah, who else is on your team?"  his answer-"no one, i do teamwork all by myself!"
3) also after an episode of reading rainbow- this one happened to be on slavery.  sam and i had a long discussion about slavery and what it was all about.  at this point (and still to this day) sam made no differentiation between black and white people.  we have just never used color to describe people if it wasn't relative to whatever story we were relating.  but it was relative to the story of slavery, so we talked about it.  later that day, we went to the store.  when we walked in we were the only white people in there.  sam wondered aloud (very aloud) why they weren't all in chains.  you can imagine the looks we got.
4) also sam, also racially related:  as i said before, sam never calls people "black" or white."  instead, he tends (or did) to call people by the color of their shirt.  one day we were at city park and sam was playing with a couple of boys, one white, one black.  when it was time for the white kid (with a black shirt on) to leave, sam hollers "hey, where's that black boy?" the other little boy (known as the "red boy" to sam) said "here i am!"  
5) eli- for about 6 months his threat to anyone who ticked him off was "i'll leave you at burger king!" *note- this was never a threat to him and never actually happened!
6) this one isn't as much funny as it is humbling and heart-warming-  when sam was 4, we were reading in one of his kids' encyclopedias about people of the world.  one excerpt was about peruvians.  there was a picture of a llama and the caption read "llamas are used as pack animals, as well as food sometimes"  sam was appalled.  i guess up until this point, we hadn't had the whole "meat talk."  we did then.  pork is pig, beef is cow, chicken is chicken, etc.  he said "well that's not really fair to the animals!  i don't think i want to eat meat anymore."  sam is a very passionate kid and also makes pretty healthy choices when it comes to food, so i let it go.  i wasn't going to force him to eat wilbur or elsie, you know?  he prayed about it for about a week.  during this time he didn't eat meat at all.  after about 4 or 5 days, he came to me and said " you know mom, god gives us animals for different reasons.  some are to play with, some do work for us and some are to eat!"  i couldn't have said it better myself.
7) now i'm getting in to thinking about all of the sweet innocence and compassion that makes up sam.  most of you have probably already heard about this, but i'll list it for posterity's sake.  this past january, sam turned 6.  sometime in december, we started talking about what kind of party he wanted to have.  sam had been overwhelmed by the generosity of people who had sent us so much stuff after katrina.  some of them were complete strangers.  he wanted to do something, too.  he knew how blessed we were to have made it out with our entire family and our animals.  he was heartbroken about all of the animals that were left behind and separated from their families.  sam, on his own accord, decided to ask people to bring either a bag of cat food or dog food to be donated to the local animal shelter in lieu of a gift for him.   this kid sure puts me in my place sometimes.
8) sam was about 2 1/2 while i was pregnant with eli.  when asked whether he wanted a little brother or sister, he replied without missing a beat " hmmm, i want pie!"  
9) sam, who is always (mostly) conscious of his manners and of being "proper" (no elbows on the table, please!)  once exclaimed as we were sitting down to dinner "bone up to eat!" (that's bon appetite, to you folks without an internal kid-translator)
10) the other night, i was laying in bed with eli.  he was just laying there grinning, so i asked him "are you happy?"  he said "yes."  i said "what makes you happy?"  he answered withough missing a beat,  "easter bunnies and roly-poly bugs."  aaaaahhhhh, to be so innocent!
11) eric shared this with me yesterday:  he and sam were in the truck taking a movie back to the library, "darby o'gill and the little people."  sam asked if leprechauns were real, to which eric replied that they were not, but it was fun to tell stories about them.  after thinking for a minute, sam said "hey, dad, you know what we need at our house? a midget.  they don't cause any trouble, they just like to sing a lot."
12) sam went to school for a total of 4 days earlier this year (we're homeschooling again).  on the second day, he came home with the story of a crush!  a little girl was chasing him around trying to kiss him.  he was pretty concerned about it and was trying to think of different ways he could avoid her (staying home, wearing a disguise, etc.) i finally convinced him to talk to her and tell her he didn't want a girlfriend (if that was the case).  so, they were in line when he told here "i have  a plan for my life."  (you can imagine the look on the 6yo girl's face!)  when i'm 16, i will have a girlfriend because i will have two cars; a limousine and an amphibian car so i can take her to the movies and swimming.  but i'm not 16 yet.

well, hello again!

I just realized, after having read a friend's blog, that I haven't been on here since last year! HAHAHA, are you tired of that joke yet?
But seriously, folks.....
It has been a crazy couple of months around here.  Eric broke his ankle the day before Thanksgiving and was just released to go back to work on Jan. 3rd.  Thanksgiving day itself was fantastic :) I was so happy to see my sister and my cousins and, of course, we ate like royalty all weekend. 
After Thanksgiving was over, I kicked it into high gear to try to bring in some income.  I already keep a little boy 4 days a week, so there was that.  I have started doing some medical transcription for my cousin, which helps some. AND.... drumroll please..... I DID A HOLIDAY BAKE SALE! I was actually pretty satisfied with it.  I did my cinnamon rolls, 2 kinds of pie, 4 kinds of cookies, and truffles.  I took orders and had them ready as needed, so it wasn't as crazy in the kitchen as I thought it'd be.  There was one day during which I don't think I left the kitchen, but that was the only crazy day.
I definitely think I'll do it again next year.  Maybe before that.  I'd love to do some baking from home and sell it throughout the year, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't get licensed, what with the zoo that lives under my roof and all.  I'm looking into it, though.
Christmas was wonderful, despite the fact that we were so stinking broke that we didn't buy one gift for anyone.  I was at peace with that, though... The kids were spoiled by everyone else (as usual) and all of our bills, including the house payment, were paid!  That was a good feeling.  I have to say, though, that our house payment was made almost entirely out of LOVE.  I'm not kidding; there were a few people who felt led to bless us with cash last month and it all went to the house payment fund :)  God is so good!  We hadn't said anything to anyone about how broke we were, but most knew Eric couldn't work and that I stay home and homeschool the kids.  But GOD KNEW :)
So, here we are trying to make it through another month.... Eric is doing some side work, but there's no movie in town right now. 
I'm hoping I actually keep up with this blog... I do enjoy going back and reading them.... You never know, it's a new year.  I might actually do it.