Well, we have five pups left out of the “Magnificent Seven” litter. Two sold by word of mouth (no advertisement!) before we even had them fully weaned, which helped bunches to keep the dog food flowing and also to cover all the ads we needed to place around. These are my ten year old’s puppies. Kind of a nice little hobby-income she’s had the past two years now.

Tuesday morning, in addition to rushing through math worksheets, history homework, and meal prep for a friend who recently had her fifth girl (!)…we somehow managed to bathe two of the eight-week-old pups in the kitchen sink without total chaos! They were lil dumplin’s…so good sitting there like little drowned rats in the process and like spiky half-wet owlets in the drying off aftermath! Each girl sat in front of the fireplace for a half hour afterwards making sure they were good and dry. I would have taken pics but my digital camera batteries had run down! All this because we were taking them for show and tell at our homeschool co-op. Need I say…Very Big Hit?

The picture above is of “Frog”, an older pup, up next to one of the newer ones shortly after they were born. This one is our youngest daughter with “Frog”–her favorite. Frog’s first sound was a croak, thus the moniker, and we’ve encouraged their relationship, as Frog will be sticking around.

But as for the rest of them…wish us luck…may they sell before they eat us out of house and home!

P.S. We called this litter the “Magnificent Seven” because dh told oldest about the movie (it’s one of his favorite westerns–if you’ve seen it…yeah, I know…) and she named the two males after the two main characters in the movie: Chris and Vince.

I love our children’s library!

We bustled into it last night, deposited our customary 30-odd books from last week, and checked out the Christmas book displays. Momentary guilt hounds me if I take more than two or three of the featured holiday stories, but several titles snagged my attention…so I figured, it’s only for the next week!

Three year old daughter trotted over to the bird cage to say hello to “Alpha” (”Bet” died last year, and poor Alpha stands alone) and I thumbed through a sweet story…First Grade Elves by Joanne Ryder. Had a fleeting thought that this book might spark a new family tradition and tucked it into my canvas tote. I soon forgot all about it.

Today my two oldest daughters devoured most of the books we’d checked out, and I came from the laundry room to find them snipping out delicate snowflakes. You see, the first grade elves in Mrs. Lee’s classroom had the great idea to plant nice surprises for each other during the month of December…in celebration of Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. With the secret surprise, they also left a small paper snowflake…to show that the Christmas Elves were behind the treat.

So, I guess my girls and I think alike…and we now have a new secret “angel” (they preferred that over elves) December tradition. A fat stack of 4″ diameter snowflakes rests on the corner of one of my end tables…

I thought I’d share it here, because it would be a lovely tradition for anyone, especially those of you with many children. You could assign names or just bless randomly as we’re going to do.

I’d love to know what Christmas traditions you’ve got in the works…

Don’t we adore, more than anything, to cause the light of appreciation and happiness on the faces of those we love the most?

Holidays really bring that out in a woman, I think. Every little girl remembers the magic of Christmas Eve, the flurry of gift wrapping and candle lighting…the festivity of mothers staying up late into the night, stuffing stockings, setting the table for Christmas breakfast, doing whatever it is that mothers do best.

My mom’s baking specialty, hands down, will always be her French croissants. All my childhood friends are sure to remember them fondly, as well as the various church families to which we belonged. They graced every holiday feast and many school faculty break room tables. The eighteen hour process behind their creation isn’t at all hard to comprehend when you’re sneaking one warm from the cooling rack, or peeling back one of the many flaky layers that mom’s floury hands folded in with love.

In today’s world…it is still women’s business to make life better, to make tomorrow better than today.” Helen Thames Raley

The croissant making tradition is one that my mom passed on to me. I just finished rolling and folding my butter-layered yeast dough for the third time, and have put three batches worth “to bed” for the night. Tomorrow morning will see me using every baking sheet in the house to find enough square inches of rising space for the hopefully 6-7 dozen crescent shaped rolls.

My husband will come home after a morning’s work in freezing weather and he’ll scarf a dozen down without trying. Our girls will have one or two small ones before remembering that they’ll get more later at my in-law’s Thanksgiving get-together…

As for me–I’ll sneak one of the crooked ones, and remember a yellow-tiled counter top in Texas, a mother who loved me, who wanted all my todays and tomorrows to be as special as they could possibly be.

“The spirit of tradition is one way that knowledge is passed from generation to generation. It has filled our lives with many ‘rare and beautiful treasures’ over the years and we have tried to pass those treasure on to our children. We share and celebrate our special ways of doing things, many of which come from the traditions that shaped us.” Emilie Barnes

Thanks Mom!

I now have two 15 pound birds in the house, thanks to our local grocery store having a buy-one-get-one-free deal on turkeys!

So it’s beginning to feel a lot like Thanksgiving!

I’ve been wanting to do some fun things this year, maybe start some new traditions. Here are a few appealing ideas–some I came across on the net, and some from me:

• Making a Thanksgiving apron for the Grandmas in your life…this is cute…they took a variety of autumn fabrics and traced the grandkid’s hands, cut them out and put them on the apron, and then decorated them into “turkeys” with puff paints!
• Having a Kernel of Thanks sharing time at the Thanksgiving table. This would be a good time to share the amazing story of Squanto and God’s plan and preparing him for the pilgrims…
• Thanksgiving games
• Watch the Macy’s Parade (did this every year growing up!)
• Make tissue paper leaves. Cut brown, orange, red and yellow tissue paper into small squares. Spread a section of contact paper sticky-side-up on your table and cover it with the tissue squares. Top it with another side of contact paper and trace leaves (that you’ve picked and traced onto cardboard). Cut them out. My kids loved this craft…and if you end up with enough leaves you can make a flat wreath…
• Buy a special Thanksgiving book to be read every year at Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.”
- Edward Sandford Martin

How do you celebrate Thanksgiving? Tell me about it…your favorite foods, the places you visit, the traditions you return to time and again…

And I’ve got to recommend two books and some great craft party ideas!

First, now is the time to be thinking about hosting a Christmas cookie exchange. Whether for the adult cooks in your life, or your own children and their friends (why not both?), this is a great way to kick off the giving we’re so fond of during the month of December.

In the book Great Parties for Kids by Nancy Fyke, Lynn Nejam, and Vicki Overstreet, you’ll find a two page spread on how to host a “Favorite Cookie Swap” for the kids in your life. Basically, each guest brings three dozen cookies, and the hostess makes about six batches of different kinds of cookies for sampling and giving away. Everyone leaves with several platefuls of variety to share with others. I like to emphasize that this is the time to make those fancy holiday cookies you only make once a year. It kind of dampens the enthusiasm if everyone brings chocolate chip cookies, know what I mean?

Also in this book, is a cute gingerbread man template to use for party invitations.

The second book I’ve got to recommend is Martha Stewart Living’s Crafts and Keepsakes for the Holidays. I was so excited to find instructions in this for classic looking homemade snow globes–something my 7 year old has been wanting to make since last Christmas! I marked several great projects in this book, from jingle bell wreaths to real ribbon chains (remember the construction paper chains we all made as kids for the tree?), to awesome silver origami ornaments to hang in your windows…

Do you have any great Christmas projects in mind for this year’s celebrations?

Dreaming of Christmas reds and evergreens,

Mary

As I type, my dh is enriching our daughters’ lives with the music of Marty Robbins. Never heard of him? Think authentic cowboy music. Sons of the Pioneers. Red River Valley ring any bells? Cool Water? Well, anyway, these songs make you think of Roy Rogers and fringed shirtsleeves. Corny as it sounds, it’s actually happifying, in a lilting, crooning kind of way…

So we’re making a lot of music here at our house lately. Well, at least a lot of noise anyway. Our seven year old’s 4 year dream of owning an “honest to goodness” trumpet has finally come true. Yes, when she was two we bought her a yellow and blue plastic Fisher-Price trumpet that played a few tunes, and when she was three, we bought her a red plastic trumpet at the State Fair. She’s kind of always had an attraction there, and her uncle happens to play–so once she heard it in real life…at about age three, yes, she decided she wanted a trumpet.

At this same time, her big sister was almost seven years old and had been saving her pennies for her very own Border Collie so the idea of “saving up for something” became doable.

Overnight she turned into a little Dave-Ramsey-money-guru.

I’d give both girls fifty cents to spend at the thrift store and oldest would drop hers just for the sake of spending, while lil trumpet lover just clenched hers tight in her hand till she could get home and insert it into her piggy bank, big band music notes in her eyes…

This year she asked for money for her birthday. That brought her up to almost half of what a new trumpet costs ($700). I got some quotes online, and ended up getting our local music store to knock off $300 from their typical “new” trumpet price to match the online price of the same brand. Wow! So now our girl finally has her trumpet. She blew it so hard and so much the first day, she ended up bursting blood vessels in her cheeks… I’m just personally glad she didn’t end up with permanently crossed eyes. Um-hm.

I have to admit to several doubts along this musical path. Trumpet, Lord? Why this fixation on trumpets? Till one day it came to me. Seven year old has always been my loud child. The one needing to tone it down…several thousand decibels. High-pitched giggles, ear-splitting whistles, room-echoing enthusiasm for this life and nothing less. What better instrument to boost this natural gusto than the trumpet? (Feel free to check with me in a couple months and see if I still sub to this theory)

Borrowing from Leticia here:

Moving On…

While on this music spree I had the music store restring my guitar. The guitar I bought years ago when pg with my oldest and moving to a new home. The guitar I never really did anything with.

So I was excited to find this site with the lyrics and guitar chords to many praise songs, including my toddler’s newest fave “Making Melodies in My Heart”… try singing that with your tongue hanging out (to understand you need to observe a gang of children engaged in the actions for this one…).

Now to brush up on my basic guitar chords…and find my daughter a trumpet teacher.

Tell me about the instruments in your life.

Great quote, isn’t it? I sure don’t want to spend my life ’sitting in the truck’, missing out because I’m not willing to get my hands dirty. And getting your hands dirty is part of friendship, marriage, parenting, Christianity. It takes work.

It’s hard. It’s rewarding. It’s even fun with the right attitude.

Come over to Weekend Kindness this morning and read about how my girls and I had to ‘cowboy up’ for hubby a week ago. Literally.

Then come back here and share an unforgettable time when you had to ‘cowboy up’…

Have a great day!

Monday mornings are always a bit slow around here.

Sunday evenings blur as we rush to leave for Awanas by 4:45 P.M. (too early to eat supper–see my latest sidebar survey), and we return home by 8:30-ish just famished! Thankfully, my dear husband always has his special dish prepared for us: peanut butter and scrambled egg sandwiches on toast, plus whatever he can scrounge up for a side. Still, we all get to bed after ten o’clock, nothing unusual for me and hubby, but it’s enough of a late night that my two older girls sleep in a bit on Monday morning. (Another plus to homeschooling!)

I normally am the chief dishwasher on weekend nights, while the girls do them on weeknights, but lately toddler has been champing at the bit to finish her supper, dump her plate in the sink and begin the washing all by herself. She just LOVES to wash dishes, usually with 7 yo by her side. Since it was wa-ay too late for such a long drawn out process last night, I promised her I’d save them for her to do this morning while we started school.

Up early (of course, when are toddlers not, I ask you?) she dragged me out of bed, slurped down a carton of strawberry yogurt and protested at me filling the sink with hot, soapy water.

“Don’t wash without me!” (wish you could have seen her yogurt besmeared mug!)

“I’m not, I’m just filling it up for you.” (and discreetly pre- scrubbing all the silverware and cups–just in case…)

We pushed two chairs up to the sink and tied her Winnie the Pooh halter-apron on, and got to work. Two chairs? One for the soapy sink, and one for the rinsing sink–this way she could walk her way to the dish drainer. By the way, this is a great way to ensure your kitchen floor a clean start for the day…

Anyway, children even as young as 3 love to help, don’t they? And when it comes to washing dishes, I don’t know if any toy compares, at least not currently, to my three year old.

Well, excepting maybe “Frog”, our four-week-old fluffy Border Collie…

Mary here: MIntheGap kindly agreed to guest post here today! I’ve missed you all here in blogland, but between church, family, homeschooling and now jury duty my life is running away with me…but enough about me, read on!

Children: Our Mirrors

One of the most humbling things about being a parent that I have found was how much my children are me. My oldest child is like me in so many ways:

• He has the physical build I had when I was young (my wife feeds me too well now!)
• He has the same set of interests that I had (I was always the indoors child)
• He has the same type of memory– that can tell you where something is even though you don’t believe he could possibly remember.
• He tends to want to be the third parent– what first child doesn’t?

What’s humbling is the times where you can see yourself in your children. I’m not simply talking about the word choices (I mean, what child knows truly what a chrysalis is– to them, it’s a Christmas) or their tastes, I’m talking about they react to the world– what they deem important.

I’m blessed that my children like to hear Bible stories, they like to memorize Scripture. My wife told me that the other day they were out in the yard enacting a scene from David and Goliath. The trouble was that they were using real stones!

And then there are the times that they reflect the poor character traits that we have. How we respond to frustration they do as well. If we raise our voices, so do they. They reflect and parrot us because they look up to us. We’re their world to them– especially when they are young.

How’s your reflection in the “mirror?” Do you like what you see?

MInTheGap
MInTheGap has been commenting on the culture at large and current events from his blog since 2004. He enjoys spending time with his family, writing, and being active in his local church.

Today is my husband’s 36th birthday! He’s the strong silent type, preferring no fanfare, so we’ll be having a quiet family supper tonight, with foods he requested on the menu.

Here’s what’s for dinner:

Southwest Rollups

~I’ve been fixing these since I first found the recipe in a 1997 issue of Taste of Home magazine–ten years of yummy! This is one of dh’s favorite “chicken” recipes…remember he’s a rancher (GO BEEF!) at heart!

• 2 TB salsa
• 1-2 jalepeno peppers, seeded
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 TB chopped onion
• 1 (16 oz) can refried beans
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 TB chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 cup cubed chicken, or a bit more
• 1 (4 oz) cup shredded cheddar cheese, divided
• 10-12 flour tortillas (6 inches)
• sour cream and additional salsa, optional

Cooking instructions: Place the first eight ingredients and 1/2 cup cheese in a food processor; blend until smooth. (I don’t own a food processor, so I just chop everything fine) Spread evenly over tortillas. Roll up and place seam side down in a greased 13×9x2 inch baking dish.

Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes or until heated through. Sprinkle with remaining cheese; let stand until cheese melts. Serve with sour cream and salsa if desired.

Pan de Elote (corn loaf)

~This is such a family favorite, we have it annually at our big family get-togethers; however, it’s souffle-like, so it’s not a great choice for potlucks unless you can prepare and bake it on location. And no opening the oven door to peek while cooking…

• 1 (16 oz) can cream style corn
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 (4oz) can green chilies with seeds rinsed out, drained (optional)
• 1 cup biscuit mix
• 2 TB melted butter
• 1/2 lb Monterrey jack cheese, grated

Combine corn, biscuit mix, egg, butter and milk. Mix well. Turn half of batter into 8×8x2 inch greased glass baking dish.

Cover with chilies and cheese. Spread with remaining batter.

Bake at 400 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until browned.

Frog-eye Salad

~This is my big sister’s recipe, an extremely luscious fruit salad…hubby adores it, and 7 year old made it just for him! (Read entire recipe before fixing)

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 TB flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup pineapple juice
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp lemon juice

In small saucepan mix sugar, flour and salt. Stir in pineapple juice and egg. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly until thickened.* Add lemon juice. Set aside and cool.

• 1 cup Acini Di Pepe (available in small bags in pasta section of grocery store)
• 2 cans (11 oz each) mandarin oranges, drained
• 1 can (20 oz) chunk pineapple, drained (reserve 2/3 cup juice for first part of recipe)**
• 1 can (20 oz) crushed pineapple, drained
• 1 carton (12 oz) dairy whipped topping
• 1/2 cup maraschino cherries

Cook Acini Di Pepe according to package directions. Combine cooked mixture with Acini Di Pepe. Cover, place in refrigerator until chilled. Combine remaining ingredients, stir lightly. Chill at least one hour before serving 8-10.

*Note, cook juice mixture just until thick as over that egg white coagulates. (and be forewarned, it doesn’t thicken much)

**If you don’t like pineapple chunks, you can opt for pineapple tidbits, or eliminate this and just use two cans crushed pineapple.

And we’re having Peaches and Cream Pie and oldest daughter’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (secret recipe) for dessert.

Now, back to class…but before I go…humor me, what’s for supper at your house tonight and/OR what dishes would be on your birthday menu?