Another Prayer Request

Please pray for my friend, Katie, who has sadly miscarried her little one.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for all former things are passed away. And He that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new. ~ Apoc 21:4-5

Fall Pictures

Mr. I'm Never Serious
Doesn't this look like an album cover?

Barefoot and Beautiful

We went to our friends house today to take advantage of the beautiful changing leaves. Since I took over two hundred pictures, I actually got some good ones!

And Now We Are Six

Our litte Gracie turned six this week. And she rang in the year with a proper and girly tea party. My mom made her a princess dress, complete with tiara, and she was definetly the princess of the evening. And her Uncle Martin brought her a dozen pink roses. What more could a girl ask for??

In the afternoon, the kids decorated cupcake "corn on the cob" (Hello, Cupcake! we love you!). It looks like a jumbled mess in this picture, but it was really pretty cute. But no one can ever accuse me of saying "my kids made this" and then presenting some item of perfection which was clearly not made by a six year old. My kids made these . . . and you can tell=)

The kids also made place cards for all of their friends and the table was set with the girliest of china.

We had lots of little friends come sip tea and nibble sugary goodness with us.

Happy Birthday, Gracie! We love you!

We spent almost every moment of our weekend enjoying the sights and sounds of the Feast of the Hunters Moon. On Friday, cold and rainy, the kids and I went out to help with the Soap Making Booth. We learned SO much and had a wonderful time, despite the seriously nasty weather.

On Saturday, we picked up a few of our favorite pals, and headed back out. The weather was way better this time around. In fact, it was perfect Feasting weather. Cool and crisp, but warm in the sunshine. The girls made beaded necklaces and the boys threw tomahawks.

(Did I tell you that, Stephanie? Your son hit the target!)

They aren't letting the Indians test their abilities. They are seeing how tall they are in order to choose their distance from the target.

Today, it was so cold that Bella spent most of her time hidden under my cape. Sometimes I slung her on my back and then put the cape over her, making for a cozy ride!

We headed out again, Sunday morning for a very chilly, but lovely, Mass. And a miracle happened at the Mass -- we were early! And we got a seat! Every year, we can be found making a mad dash, dragging children, across the Feast grounds hoping the get to Mass before the Gospel! But not this year. (Ok, full disclaimer: I thought Mass was at 8, but it was at 8:30, but give a girl some credit!).

Perfect Angel

I just had to share this picture of Angel, who left the comfort of her mother's womb to rejoice in the Beatific Vision. Is she not perfect and beautiful? Her tiny feet and perfectly formed toes are a testament to the miracle of every life. Her family and all who know them have been so blessed by her brief life! Please continue to pray for her parents as the mourn the earthly loss of their little girl.

Prayer Request

I recieved sad news today that our dear friends had miscarried their baby at 18 weeks. Please offer some prayers for this beautiful family as the mourn their loss. They are people of great faith and will appreciate any pray you can offer as you go about your days!

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for all former things are passed away. And He that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new. ~ Apoc 21:4-5

A Somewhat Whiney Post from a Stir Crazy Mama

What a week! I am SO glad that the weekend is (almost) here! We hunkered down this week, nursing runny noses, high fevers, and persistent coughs. We are slowly crawling out of the land of the sick, but I think we still need another day or so. I don't know how big families handle illnesses. It takes a long time for the "bug" to hit every person and then work its way through. With four kids, it's taken a full week to make its way through everyone and finally leave. If we had more kids, I think we'd be sick for a month!

I was bummed to be sick this week -- I had such grand plans! There were so many great Feast days this week. We did make a special dinner for Michealmas: Chicken Spaghetti Bake (angels make us brave, not chicken!), Spinach Hand Pies (spinach makes us strong in body, prayer makes us strong in spirit) and "Divinely Inspired" Apple Sauce (it was heavenly!). We met Andrew at the River for dinner, so we were able to have a fire and roast marshmallows as well.

For the Feast of St Therese, the kids all flopped on couches and chairs and didn't really move. I am hoping to get an angel craft done this afternoon, for the Feast of the Guardian Angels, but I may have to be happy with letting this kids watch "My Guardian Friend" and cheezy movie about a little girl and her Guardian Angel. I hope to also give the kids a good idea of the wonder of having a Guardian Angel and to instill in them this great, but often misunderstood fact: we don't become Angels when we die!!!

So there you have it: our sick and lazy week. Hopefully next week we will be able to get back on track.

Happy weekend!

A Funny Little Story

This is funny, if you are a "IRL" friend who knows the same people we know. To the other readers, sorry to bore you=)

While we were in Disney, I was continually impressed and excited with the care and attention we got as consumers with food "allergies". (They are actually intolerances, which are far less serious, thankfully.) Everytime we were enjoying hamburgers with gluten free buns or brownie ice cream sundaes, I would think "I HAVE to email Shawn and tell her about this!!" Three of Shawn's four daughters were recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease -- far more serious than our intolerances.

And then we went on Splash Mountain.

Heh heh. Look who else was on Splash Mountain!!!

Life is so funny.

A Vacay Report

Phew. We are all exhausted. My parents took us to Disney World this past week. And we used every.single.minute. It was great fun and now I want to sleep for a month!

We flew with Dumbo.

Plummeted down Splash Mountain (pictures to come later).

Christopher got to train to be a Jedi Knight and learned to defeat Darth Vader!
But Darth Vader must have sensed the Dark Side in PeterXavier, because he kept coming over to look at him!
And at the end of each day, we all felt like this!

Pre-Vacay Vacay

Here we are in this hotel in Indianapolis for our "pre-vacation" (next week, we are going on a mega-vacay with my parents!) for the week while Andrew is in training at the Indy Ivy Tech campus. The kids and I are just enjoying free cable, free breakfast, and a swimming pool. We met Andrew for a picnic lunch today, went for a swim, and now the kiddies are relaxing with some quality (ha!) TV time.

One of the joys of unschooling is the premise that "learning takes place everywhere" and, therefore, trips like this are prime learning experiences. Right?? Yesterday, the kids and I were at the pool and the sign said:

"Hours--9:00AM-10:00PM"

Christopher read it allowed and said:

"Whores at nine AM? What does that mean?"

Yes, we are learning all the time!

Drapery: The New Black

Here are some (really awful) pictures of my curtain skirt. (per Jill's request -- Hi Jill!) It's definetly not perfect -- the hem turned out a little funny, but it is still fun to wear. I hope someone comes up to me sometime and says "I have a curtain at home just like that!!"

Cute kids and Picasa 3

We spent our weekend pretending it was warm.
Maybe we'll just try to do that all winter.

Busy Days

Hello??


Anyone still reading this? Anyone? Bueller?


I apologize for the lack of posting. It's been busy around here. We have officially started our school year. Unschoolers that we are, that is a fairly loose term, but our pace and structure have shifted, marking the start of a (slightly) more structured learning. The kids have started memorizing some poetry (so fun!), doing a bit of math, and balancing this all with gobs of independent reading.


I have also re-instituted our afternoon quiet time. Ahh . . . I love quiet time! It makes such a difference for everyone. On the weekends, I have been doing some serious decluttering, which has allowed me a bit of freedom during quiet time. During on of my major decluttering frenzies, I uncovered my long lost sewing machine. Hooray! It was suffocating under a massive pile of ironing, which I actually ironed, instead of just moving it! And I was so happy to have my machine back. It has been getting lots of happy use lately.


We are going out of town in the middle of September, and I always find traveling easier when each walking child has a backpack. PeterXavier's was filled with holes, so I planned to buy him a new one. I mentioned this to a friend and she suggested making one. Great idea! So I harvested the back panel along with the straps from the old one and made a new front. Ta-da! Free new backpack, complete with "PX" faux appliqued to the front.

I also made a pretty cute, but less than perfect, skirt from a beautiful curtain a found at Goodwill. It was fun to make and it exercised my newly learned skill of putting in a zipper. And this zipper was extra exciting, because I harvested it from an old skirt that no longer fit.

Fun River Weekends

We had a fantastic weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and water at my parents river cottage. Our good friends joined us, as well as my parents and my sister and her family. We did everything you should do on a lazy Sunday afternoon -- nothing. Except eat. And the food was great. (That first picture is my promised cloth diaper picture)

The kids enjoyed the water, which was a perfect level for little people. And they even built sand towns in the new "beach" (Thank you, Flood!)

And this is my daughter getting drunk, unbeknownst to her Daddy. She repeatedly stuck her celery stick in his Bloody Mary and licked it off until my Dad finally pointed it out and Andrew made her stop!

Can you say "Cutie"??

Isn't she adorable?? This is Marianna Eva, our newest neice, and the first on Andrew's side! Unfortunatly, she is living WAAAY over in Washington state, so we probably won't get to meet her too soon.

There is a certain little guy around here who has two distinct things working to his advantage. First off, he is insanely cute with an infectious grin and contagious laugh. This keeps him out of trouble more often than not. The other is that he is the third child, not the first. Had he been born first, he probably wouldn't have any sibling! And his mother would be even more lacking in patience and a sense of humor than she already is!

The good thing is that he has taught me many things I may otherwise never have learned. Today, he felt quite compelled to teach me. Maybe he can feel the "Back to School" vibes.

Whatever his motives, I learned a lot. (Not that I really wanted to know!)

For instance, did you know that lotion is VERY DIFFICULT to remove from carpet? On the other hand, it wipes up quite easily from laminate flooring. Hair spray and curl spray are easily removed from tile with just a swipe of the towel. I am so glad I know this.

And honey. It is very sticky. I know from past experience that it is not so easy to remove from furniture. But today I was so lucky to learn that is comes out of of five year olds curls quite easily in the shower. The cabinets, counter, and floor take a bit of scrubbing, but after the carpet, it seems like a breeze.

Big brothers get very angry when younger brothers take lego projects apart bit. by. bit. and scatter them around the room. In case you were wondering.

And our little monkey learned that the skillet is REALLY hot when it is in the four hundred degree oven. And the oven doesn't care if you want to cut the bread into star shapes. It will still burn you.

But I learned that toothpaste takes the burning pain away. I don't know why, but it really works!

I also learned that when your little terror is really hurt, he screams for Daddy. And even though he it burned him, when the bread comes out of the oven, he is still determined to cut it into star shapes.

It was a day of lessons, and hair pulling, a growing in patience. But with that grin, who could be upset?

A Baby of the Cloth Part II

If you missed Part I, you can read it here.

Once I decided to faze out my disposable, I started using a few cloth diapers while at home, but stuck to the disposable when out. It just seemed easier. But then I found myself addicted to the cloth! I enjoyed doing it and some of the covers were just so darn cute that I wanted Isabella to sport them outside the house as well as in. And once I went out with them, I realized that it was easier than I had expected! I just toss the wet/dirty in a grocery sack and put it straight into the laundry when I get home -- no problems!

Another thing that scared me was the way so many people talked about how hard it is to care for the cloth diapers. One day a friend stopped by -- she is a Mama to one and has cloth diapered from the get go. Admittedly, her little gal is still exclusively breastfed, so things might be a bit easier, but she told me she just tosses everything in together and doesn't do anything special. Hearing this was like a wall falling down. No special detergent? No special cycles? I can do that! So now I just wash everything on hot, with the same detergent I wash everything else (I make my own, so I know it is free of dyes, fragrance, etc.). *Total Disclaimer* My diapering is made infinitely easier because I have two washers and dryers! One is now my designated "diaper washer" BUT that doesn't mean it can't be done. It only means that you probably can't get away with slacking on the other laundry like I do. And that is probably a good thing!

One thing in the washing that has made a world of difference is sunning the diapers. Sometimes, in the dryer, they weren't getting completely dry. And I think that it was allowing bacteria to grow and therefore causing rash. Once I started sunning them, the rash disappeared. Since sun is antibacterial, this would support my little theory!

I have to say, while my promary reason for switching was to save money, if I hit the lottery tomorrow, I would still use cloth. But I would buy every cute cover I could get my hands on!!

One final tip . . . while the gender specific covers are unbelievably cute, if you plan to diaper more than one child, get some gender neutral covers. PeterXavier (now finally potty trained, thank heavens!) was in the cloth for a short time. One day, I only had a pink cover clean, so I tossed it on him and headed out to meet some friends. Somehow the poor guy was depants, and there he stood in his crowd of friends wearing a PINK diaper. It was hilarious and he cracked up along with everyone else. But it might be easier just to avoid the issue!

Questions? Comments? I am definetly a novice here, but maybe that makes me more sympathetic to any questions!

I will try to add some pictures later, but I don't have any on this computer. Cloth wins hands down with its cuteness factor!

The Mountains Fell on my Excitement

Some how I am on the emailing list for Puccini's, a pizza place in West Lafayette. And today I recieved an email in which the subject line excitedly announced

"Come Meet Carl Landry!"

But I thought it said "Come Meet CARY Landry!"

And I almost jumped in my car to go meet him. Can you imagine?? Would they have a Folk

Group belting his much loved tunes?? What excitment.

But alas, I was wrong. I don't even know who Carl Landry is.

Maybe he's Cary's grandson??

A Baby of the Cloth

I have had this post brewing in my head for weeks now. And since it came up at Annie's place, I thought that now would be a good time to actually put to paper (screen) what has been floating in my brain.

About three months ago, my beloved Target diapers changed completely resulting in a higher price tag and way lower quality. This change spurred me to make a switch I never thought I would make -- I became a cloth convert. And now that I am here, I would never go back. But before my switch -- on my seven year stint with disposables -- I had a million and one questions that were easy to answer, but the answers weren't always easy to find. So I thought I would try to answer a few of my own questions here and maybe make the conversion experience a little easier for someone else.

*I also want to make it clear, that I am in no way a diaper snob. If you think I am crazy and you are in love with your disposables, more power to you! I just want to show that the option is out there and not nearly as daunting as it might seem at first!

Before I made the switch, one thing that held me back was the high price tag of starting out. While I could clearly see the long term savings, I couldn't stomach shelling out a couple hundred dollars to start something I wasn't even sure I would be able to handle! Once I decided that I really wanted to switch, I realized a few things. First, I didn't have to stop disposables cold turkey. I could easily faze them out as I gradually up my supply of cloth. The other thing I realized was that prefolds are EASY to make. I actually haven't purchased a single diaper -- I have only purchased the covers. So while I spent time sewing diapers, I gradually acquired covers and slowly fazed the disposables out over the course of a few weeks. In total, I have spent about $50 on diapers. When I started, I was diapering two and had been spending about $60-$80 a month on diapers. Not a bad savings!

The other thing that saved me a boat load was http://www.diaperswapper.com/ where I found a nice woman selling her homemade covers for next to nothing. I think I paid $20 for eight, shipping included! I didn't discover this site until after I had purchased a few other covers here (my favorite!) and here. What I got there was deeply discounted, but none the less, had I discovers Diaper Swappers earlier, I would have saved even more!

This is long . . . I will continue later!