Growing up, I was the only kid I knew to get poison ivy practically once a month. Not funny. If you’ve ever had it, you know that there’s nothing like the feel of that scaly, oozing nastiness that you just can’t wash away. Not to mention the intense itching misery of the whole experience.

Well, I could sure use your prayers. Apparently I got into poison ivy or oak (I know what poison ivy looks like, so we’re thinking it’s poison oak). This morning one of my eyelids is very swollen up on one side, and the other eyelid is red, inflamed and itchy. I can feel it starting down the side of my nose, my neck, between all my fingers and completely covering the insides and backs of both arms from the wrist to the elbow.

Confession…I knew that I might be exposed to it, but I weeded anyway. It’s an area of my yard that has been bothering me all summer b/c of all the nasty weeds, and our weed-eater has been needing a part, so I tackled it night before last…pride had me wanting it done before several of my friends come over for lunch on Monday. Well, I’ll be amazed if I can even SEE my guests on Monday. I do hope and pray that I don’t get the crusty, seeping stuff on my eyes.

The good news is that I have had touches of poison oak/ivy off and on for the past 4 years and it hasn’t gotten to the weepy crusty stage, and it hasn’t really been intensely itchy either. My husband and I have the theory that since I pretty much had a bad case of poison ivy every month during my growing up years, my body has built up a weird immunity/ability to deal with it better.

So please pray for me to survive this, and not be scary to look at on Monday! And please God, let this be a mild case, b/c if it isn’t, from the looks of it now, it’s going to be really bad!

Thanks, friends!

Mary

If you say this sounds gross, I’m with you…but can it for a minute, will ya?

These are SO delicious! And beautiful…they really resemble red cinnamon apple rings, and taste much better! Soaking the cucumber rings in pickling lime is the secret to their apple-like crunchy texture…and a ton of sugar and red hot candies transforms them from cukes to candied temptations that will NOT last long if your family is at all like ours! I’m on day three of my batch right now…

This recipe comes from my sister-in-law, and she got it from Recipezaar…if you know someone with cucumbers galore, or who loves to can, pass this recipe along. It’s a SUREFIRE hit!

Cinnamon Cucumber Pickles

• 7 lbs cucumbers
• 1 cup pickling lime (in the canning section at Walmart, don’t confuse it with pickling salt!)
• 1 gallon water
• 1 cup vinegar
• 1 (1 ounce) bottle red food coloring
• 1 tablespoon alum
• 2 cups vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 12 cups sugar
• 8 cinnamon sticks
• 1 (12 ounce) red hot candies (I found these in 7 oz. boxes in the candy aisle at Walmart)
  

1. Select large overripe cucumbers.
2. Peel, core, slice 1/3 inch thick and core out all seeds, leaving the cucumber in a ring.
3. Soak in lime and 1 gallon water for 24 hours.
4. Wash.
5. Soak, covered with ice water for 3 hours.
6. Mix 2 cup vinegar, food coloring, 1 tablespoon alum and enough water to cover.
7. Pour over cucumbers and simmer for 2 hours.
8. Pour off liquid.
9. Bring to a boil 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 12 cups sugar, cinnamon sticks and red hots.
10. Pour over cucumbers and let stand for 24 hours.
11. Pour syrup back into a large pot and bring to a boil.
12. Put cucumbers in jars and pour hot syrup over cucumbers.
13. Place 1 of the cinnamon sticks from the mixture in each jar.
14. Process for 10 minutes in water bath for pints and 15 minutes for quarts.

Two tips for you:

1. 7 lbs of cucumbers is roughly equivalent to a plastic grocery bag full of long, over-ripe cucumbers. My bagful weighed 14 lbs, and after I’d peeled and cored them, they’d lost half their weight. (The chickens were ecstatic about all those scraps!)
2. If you have a biscuit/donut cutter with a removable center, take it out and use it to core your cukes. I peeled my cucumbers with a vegetable peeler, sliced them and then used the donut hole cutter for removing the seeds. It left my cucumber slices in pretty rings! If your cucumbers are too small in diameter, you still might need to core them with a knife.

Well, it’s a rainy and cool day here in the mid-west. I’ve been busy this week…processing bing cherries and cukes, for one thing, and organizing junk drawers and closets–one last fling at housekeeping before school starts! Speaking of school starting…we’ll be kicking off our homeschooling year next Thursday the 14th with our annual treasure hunt and craft day. I’ve been getting familiar with our new geography and science curriculums and trying to get six weeks worth of lesson plans written up for each girl.

We’re sad to see summer go, but I think we’re all getting a little excited about school and fall activities starting up again!

How about you? Are you gardening or canning this year? Are you ready for school to start? How about your kids? Don’t forget to build up their immunities before sending them out in the big bad world…

We may not have oceans in the mid-west, but we have lakes!

For four years now we’ve been blessed with access to a private lake owned by friends…calling it “access” is actually a pretty laughable understatement…our friends insist on us using their beautiful property for birthday parties, etc, and treat us as if our kids were family. This private lake is flanked by a cabin with a fully-screened front porch, perfect for large gatherings, a lush green lawn watered by an underground sprinkler system, a huge pile of sand for playing at the lake’s edge…and when the hostess is around, the jet ski is purring and the tubes are flying! It all makes for a magically, grand time…

This past Saturday we had our fourth annual birthday bash out there. We always invite both sides of the family, and allow the “birthday girl” to invite one special guest of her own choosing, and their family, of course! We had thirty guests invited, and around 24 were able to come celebrate with us. This is the first year we’ve veered from a “Luau” theme, going with a cowboy/cowgirl theme instead.

This picture captures several poignant things about our lake times…first, notice that the guys are enjoying some umbrella shade while watching kiddos bobbing waves in the tube. Next, notice the yellow lab, ever-present tennis ball in her mouth, perched with the canine satisfaction of knowing that she’s surrounded by willing arms, ready to racket that ball out to “sea” for her to retrieve–all she has to do is drop the ball at their feet… Then you have to take in the background…the huge pile of freshly delivered sand at the water’s edge…can you see the blue wading pool between the colorful umbrellas? It’s for doggie and toddler enjoyment alike. What you can’t see are all the sprinklers going full bore in the yard, but the people in the cabin are surely enjoying the cold mist that the breeze carries in as it passes through them…

We had guests arrive at one o’clock…breaked at 3 P.M. for Snickerdoodle Cake, birthday cake flavored ice cream and home-made Cinnabuns with vanilla ice cream. The brand new eight year old opened her birthday gifts and handed out goody bags and then it was outside for more swimming! At five o’clock we started grilling burgers and hot dogs, and setting out shredded potato casseroles, candybar apple salad, cukes ‘n onions, burger fixings, chips galore, watermelon, grapes…and Caramel Apple Crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert! We ended the fun with a horse pinata around 7:30-8 o’clock and finally, the evening air cooled down–just in time to clean everything up!

Here’s the cabin at dusk…and the sunset on the lake as we were cleaning everything up…and the last picture is of me and mine on a 105 degree mid-west day! (See the cowboy/cowgirl decorations in the background? Good old Oriental Trading Company!)

I think contentment is cultivated. I believe that joy and peace are a by-product of resting in faith, waiting on God…in the little things even more so than the big things. It’s the little things that happen constantly, so what better training ground for the “big” things, right?

Certain unpleasant happenings will always come our way…but we can choose not to react, or get bent out of shape, or waste time worrying and fretting over how to handle the latest glitch to mar our lot in life. How much better, rather, to wait and see how the Lord wants to work? He’ll never let you down!

Here are a few “for instances”…

God gave it back to me…

When my b&sil’s house burned down, we helped all we could but it never seemed like enough, you know? Our savings accounts have never been fat, so what we did give may have looked like little, but it came from our hearts. At the time, I’d really been ministered to by my Point of Grace CD, How You Live, the album I raved about here on the blog, that dh slipped in my Christmas stocking? Well, I was deeply moved to get it out of my CD deck one day when I stopped by their “new” rental. I loved that CD, but felt like my sil needed its message of hope and peace more than I did at that point. Knowing that she isn’t a Christian music fan had me second-guessing–I almost felt like I was throwing my CD away…I still haven’t heard from her whether she even listened to it, or thought about it twice after I gave it to her…but that’s okay. I could have chosen to get upset, to wonder why I’d given it, or whatever, but honestly, I acted on something stronger than your average impulse, so it was okay.

A couple months went by and I almost ordered a new CD twice, but held back. We needed the money for other things. Guess what God did for me? He gave me a new one. My hubby came home from work and handed me the day’s mail, which included a packet from our local Christian radio station. He’d been the winning caller on the exact Point of Grace CD that I’d given away! Can anyone say AWESOME?!? I missed that CD so much, and God knew. He knew! He cares about the little things. And he let dh be the gift-bearer–twice!

God’s into Pool Pumps

A few years ago our in-laws gave us one of those 12 foot by 3 foot inflatable pools, the kind that come with a pump to circulate the water. We set it up a couple of weeks ago, and our girls enjoyed seven days of water play–spending HOURS each afternoon and coming in sun-browned and *exhilarausted*! Well, almost a week ago, the pump on the pool quit working! Within two days the pool turned green! Horrors! We only got a week in it and after checking the price of replacing this particular pump ($60!!) we were trying to remain hopeful that daddy could work a miracle and FIX. THE. PUMP.

So we drained the pool, hubby and I scrubbed it out and we refilled it. That was this past Sunday night. Meanwhile, I had a pool pump on my ebay watch page…and I was thinking, if dh can’t fix that pump, we’re wasting a 1,000 gallons of water and I’m not exactly thrilled about having to scrub this pool out yet again!

He took the pump apart, fixed a broken washer, and hooked it back up to the pool again. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Okay. I hadn’t really let myself be anxious about it. These things happen, but man. To have a nice pool one week…that’s like torture, to-have and then not-to-have. The next day my mother-in-law called and found out about our dilemma. Guess what? She still had the pump to her old pool, which had been tossed last summer after the sun and weather damaged it. She brought it right over, along with more chlorine pellets and we’re back in business. Just like that. Only went four days without our water fun–three days actually, b/c we spent Monday afternoon at the lake!

Milk for the “babies”…

This last example is humbling to admit…but who cares, right? I haven’t gotten used to hubby being on half-pay yet–fyi, during the summer, he puts in half the hours at his “real” job, so that he can catch up on saddle and leather projects here at home. Problem is, he’s been spending more time catching up on “fix-it” projects than paying “leather projects”…so anyway, I overspent (not to the point of overdraft–thank God!). Our daughter had a birthday and birthday meals with family over get expensive, our Saturn hasn’t been running reliably so gas expenses have been hugely noticeable…anyway, we’re basically making one week’s worth of groceries stretch to two. Which really isn’t a hardship, b/c I have a full pantry, and beef/chicken in the freezer etc. My hubby joked with me when we stopped at the grocery store for ten gallons of drinking water only (when you live out of town you make the most of your grocery stops!) that you know you’re pathetic when you feel rich because the water jugs are full!

So we ran out of milk. I do keep nonfat instant dry milk around to cook with, so we HAVE milk, you understand. It’s just not that palatable for a couple of my milk drinkers. So guess what!? My parents are headed out of town for a while, and they brought over their perishables! Part of which was over a half gallon of milk! We can make that last till the next paycheck, easily! Also among the goodies were fresh veggies, several of which were on my internal wish list!

**Please don’t feel shocked or badly for us, if I could have hubby home half days forever I’d gladly get by on half the pay. Summer is my favorite time of year b/c of his time at home with us. It’s totally my fault that we have found ourselves strapped this month…I just wanted to share how you can take a dismal situation and not let it ruffle you. And then watch God provide. Yes, even when *you* got yourself into this mess in the first place!

If we didn’t have the hard times, we wouldn’t know or realize or appreciate what God can do.

His mercy and grace ever astound me. What has He done for you lately? I’d love to hear your testimonies of His goodness…

O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together…Psalm 34:3

My 4 year old (she just had a birthday, btw!) found something very special nestled under some leaves and cottonwood tree fluff. Right out in the open where they could accidentally get stomped was a nest of 12 baby bunnies! One escaped the hatch as we clicked away.

Sad update…my 10 year old went to check on them and a HUGE black snake caught her by surprise…feet away. She ran for her daddy, which is what all able-bodied females should do when confronted by such a threat to wee small furry friends…and Daddy shot snake dead. But there were only eight bunnies left in the hole. No, we didn’t perform an autopsy to see if he’d done the dastardly, but that would have been a neat science lesson.

This second picture shows the little escapee on the far left, straight across to the right is their hidey-hole. Can you believe it’s there? Good camo, mom rabbit, but what happened to burrows way down deep? Is that just stuff for storybooks?

Moral of the story? You never know what surprises God has for you in the underfoot muck of life. Look for miracles in the ordinary and you might actually find some. And watch out for snakes. They seem to appear after every miracle. To make you doubt His goodness?

Never!

Last night I put the last coat of polyurethane on my dresser project. First time I’ve ever tackled a refinishing project like this, and I’m so impressed! Now to find the perfect handles!

I’m so excited to have this dresser done. Wish I had a before pic for you, just imagine it painted a black paint/stain with gaudy gold-plated handles. As I worked on this baby, I fell in love. Each scrape of the putty knife sliding old paint away revealing wavy grains–each rubbing with steel wool and fine sandpaper heightened my anticipation to get the job done! I mused about where I’d place this antique that my husband’s grandfather built in his young adulthood.

I love antique dressers more than anything else furniture-wise. Especially the ones up on pedestal legs. I can’t bear to waste them on clothing storage! This dresser’s former glory was as winter gear storage on our back porch, right next to the kitchen entryway. One drawer for gloves, another for hats, yet another for coveralls, etc. That was fine then, but…

It’s got too much of *me* in it now to subject it to my family’s daily abuses! (Sorry, fam!) When the light bulb moment came I about spilled my can of stain/varnish. MY KITCHEN! Perfect place to put the microwave–at head height, no more bending over punching in times and start buttons.

Other pluses–Plenty of huge drawers to hold my generic brand George Foreman grill, and my Pampered Chef mini-4-in-one-loaf pan–both items have been hogging space on an end counter b/c they’re too large for my other kitchen drawers (or maybe it’s because my other kitchen drawers are already fully occupied!). So now they’ll be out of sight! I plan on using one of the smaller top drawers for my great-aunt’s silver, tablecloths, placemats and cloth napkins. Which will in turn give me more space in the hallway linen closet for the girls’ puzzles! I have a zillion cookbooks, they’ll go spine-side up in one of the drawers so I can grab the ones I want easily and not forfeit any more counterspace to all my favorites!

So tell me, do you like my “kitchen dresser” or do you think I’m crazy for putting a microwave atop something so stately!?

What pieces of furniture are your favorite and why? Got any stray dressers you could put to practical use while showpiecing them, or maybe you do already?

While toting rocks across our property in the bucket of my hubby’s CAT (landscaping project of the moment), I got to thinking more about our housekeeping thread in the comments of my First Impressions post. Several of us were throwing out descriptions of homes, such as “filthy” or “lived-in” and now I’m wondering, just where does the line blur between the two? (Not that it matters, right?)

To me, filthy is stepping on some sticky, dried-on mess and not knowing what it is, only that flies are living off of it and probably have been for a few hours or more. Filthy is not realizing that your kitchen floor tiles were originally white. Filthy could be a moldy-smelling laundry room with no visible floor space under all the mounds of clothing. Or a back porch full of shoes and dirt and dust on everything you touch (raising hand sheepishly on this last one, this has been my back porch on more than one occasion!).

Lived-in, however can include many things. Toys on the floor. Clutter on the end tables. Clean laundry on the couch or bed waiting to be folded. Fuzzy lint on the carpet. A little toothpaste scum in the bathroom sink. All forgiveable, right? (Unless this is your version of filthy. Do tell in comments!)

What are your definitions of “filthy” and “lived-in” as regards housekeeping, just for the fun of it?

After two days of being busy outside, and because of three girls keeping busy inside…my house was a wreck! My oldest has discovered the joys of sewing Barbie clothes…so she’s all set up with my sewing machine on the card table (thread and fabric snippets everywhere) having a BLAST…and her little sisters turned the living room and kitchen into “Barbie resort land”–actually, they had two things going on at once, Barbies b/c of all the new clothes big sister was turning out, and babies b/c that’s their ultimate when it comes to playing together…so anyway, can you imagine? The funny deal is, we usually have them pick it all up before supper, but last night with a storm rolling in, I was up to my elbows in garden dirt with my rock project, hoping to get done before the dark skies and lightening unleashed their fury overhead. Dh, similarly, was working with our oldest on getting our big inflatable pool set up. (We had no idea it was going to storm, it really caught us off guard, going from ninety-some degrees to 67*F in less than an hour!) So by the time we got our respective projects wrapped up, and ran for the house…the electricity was flickering and then poof, lights out. So tripping over baby dolls and chair forts, we made our way to the matches and candles.

Fast forward to today. Too muddy and humid outside to want to paint, etc, besides, my poor house! If any of you had dropped by I would have been mortified. Eek! The real problem was the toy mess, which somehow morphed into a disaster that took us ALL day to clean. My oldest was only concerned that it meant putting away the sewing machine (grin, she’s my #1 helper when it comes to clean-up time) but my younger two were so sad to have their glorious play-area eliminated. 3 yo was in tears. So what does a mommy do?

She throws a tea party. (Hands up in the air) We had an early lunch, called it a brunch and served it with English Breakfast tea in the teapot and mommy’s fancy teacups and real silver. What a mood booster. Then the younger two had a half hour to play one last time in their chaos of make-believe, while oldest and I split up the kitchen, bathroom, and chicken duties. Then it was *get serious* time on the girls’ bedroom. Everyone pitched in, we unloaded bookshelves, rearranged beds and dressers and gasp(!) I even condensed the overflow bulge of drawers full of clothing to the point that now my middle and youngest can share a five-drawer dresser! We even turned up a missing ice pack and youngest’s favorite mini-dog (stuffed, I assure you).

This was a room definitely past the blur of lived-in to filthy, and we try to clean it every Friday…but yeah, we’ve been busy, what can I say?

So, it’s time to share your thoughts. What is “filthy” to you? What is “lived in”? Are you harder on yourselves in this area than you are on other people? I sure am!

Looking forward to your thoughts on this!

Warning! At the end of this post is a pic of me with no make-up. It’s only fair to give you advance notice…just so you don’t spew coffee all over the keyboard or something. J

Jessica over at Farm Fresh came up with this voyeuristic idea…that we moms need to give a grand tour of what life is like at our house. The tour includes pics of the following, so without any further ado, come right on in!

First Stop: My bathroom and the toilet…

This is our one and only bathroom–Thank God. I’m thrilled to pieces to only have one bathroom to keep up with! I love dark brown, and dh thought I was crazy for choosing it in a small room like our bathroom, but we love how it turned out. The wainscoating is tongue-n-groove siding that we pulled off of a falling-down building on our property, I sanded it, coated it with primer and paint and dh threw it on the walls.

As you can see, the toilet is back in its own little alcove, as is our bathtub. Check out our old-fashioned heat resinor in the wall. We have one or two of those in each room, it’s what our hot water heat (from the outdoor corn stove) travels through to toasty-warm up our house in winter.

On to the Laundry Room:

Very little to see here I’m afraid. Yes, I painted this in the late nineties. (Dh swears it looks like doctor’s office colors) I’m thinking of a redo of coral and tan maybe. Haven’t decided yet, and that would definitely be a project for NEXT summer! Meet the twenty year old washer we brought with us from our first home…the dryer bombed last year, thus the two colors. I’m a white appliance lover. The washer keeps holding out. I actually was all caught up on laundry (pretty much) the day we took all the pics…except for the covered basket you see in the pic which contains hand-wash items and a few tie-dye shirts that I still wash separately.

To the kitchen–meet my refrigerator and sink…

We had guests yesterday morning so my sink was still clean! Whoopee, but does that mean I fail this “real-life” test? Just look over at my magnet/craft covered refrigerator, what a hodge-podge! And we’d just finished a supper of leftovers, can’t get much more “real life” than that, right? My desk, in the background, is covered with tardy birthday presents for various of my nieces, and magazines and books on their way out to the car and back to the library! Still playing catch-up after being sick and then going on vacation!

Check out two of our closets…

This first one is in my hallway right next to the bathroom. The drawers on the bottom contain play-dough, paper dolls, wrapping paper supplies, etc. I used to have all the games on the top two shelves, but early this week I moved all the kid games to the bottom shelf. It’s summer, they need to be within reach!

The one on the right is supposedly a coat closet for company, but it’s by the front door, and ALL our company comes to the back door, of COURSE! So this closet is a mess of card table/chairs, the girls Indo-boards, boxes of videos we never watch, and all our stamping/scrapbooking supplies. Strange collection there, isn’t it? Oh for a craft room.

And the Living Room…

It wouldn’t be real life if I moved the exercise equipment out of the way, though I normally exercise and then scoot the Gazelle off the center rug and out of traffic. Don’t ask me why there’s a plastic bag hanging on the coffee table…it’s probably a hammock for one of my three yo’s dollies. There’s a handkerchief tied to the TV table in the same manner with something sleeping in it. The laundry basket is full of library books, renewed in the nick of time.

Those horseshoe tables were made my by fil, we love them, and have several horse pictures on the walls. My attempt to underline hubby’s passion in life: horses. Though the way things are going, maybe I should be framing pictures of dogs.

We’re also supposed to be posting pictures of what our children were doing while we put this post together.

Mine were catching crawdads. What else is there to do in the country after a big rain?

And finally the picture you’ve all been waiting for of me bare-faced and dull at the end of a day…

Oops. The digital camera’s batteries died before I could upload it. Truly sorry! I do promise a raincheck though! As soon as possible, of course! (I really would have, honest, I just don’t feel like robbing batteries from my youngest’s playtoys)

Thanks, Jessica, for a fun party! It’s Real Life, any of you want to participate? I’d love to come peep in your windows! Be sure to check out Jessica’s, she did an awesome tour of her life, as did many others!

As promised, my gleanings from three days spent with a super-mom of six!

Some may consider a family with six children smallish, especially when contrasted with broods of ten-sixteen…but in my book, six is big. Consider the conversation I had the other night with friends at the pancake feed benefit for my s&bil. I was surprised to hear the husband admit that they were done (and glad to be!) after two children. I kind of gave him a hard time before sharing that I’d really like to have more. This is a Christian couple. I knew this guy in high school and he was ALL gushy over kids and babies. I thought he’d have a passel.

Anyway. *I* have always been somewhat intimidated by the idea of expanding my apron strings times six, so this visit to Jana’s was my chance to see how the pros do it!

First of all, I have to totally commend Jana and her husband for a job well done. Consistent in their expectations? Check! Scheduled? Check! Loving and fair? Check, check! Prayerful and always seeking God’s leading for their family? Definitely, and she’d honestly tell you she’s had to hang on tight to God, it’s been far from easy.

A little background, this lovely Christian couple have four biological children and are adopting two that they’ve fostered for two years. Both of the foster boys are high-maintenance, to say the least. We’re talking fetal alcohol syndrome, attachment disorders, etc. It’s been a long, tough road, and knowing their background, I half expected them to melt-down by the minute, but wow! I have such high admiration and respect for how far they’ve come with my friends’ dedication and persistence in training, and by the Lord’s grace on this special family.

How this family blessed me…

Something blossomed in my heart at each mealtime. There is something about fixing three hearty meals a day for nine children (hers and mine) that makes mothering take on an old-world worthiness again. I cherish my mental inventory of all these beautiful children seated around my friend’s island/bar and her table, waiting, smiling expectantly as Jana and I “dished” their plates up with steaming, rib-sticking fare. Like little birds. Oh the thought and time that went into preparing these three squares. After each meal, the troops would make their way into the kitchen, and file by the dishwasher inserting their plates and silverware into the appropriate racks. We always had one little guy who would gladly finish up anyone else’s scraps, interestingly, this boy was too picky to eat anything when Jana first welcomed him into her home. He’s since learned to be grateful and to branch out. You should hear the stories…can it be the same child? It didn’t happen by magic, people!

If challenging children suffering from neglect and FAS can be retrained this successfully, the rest of us have no excuse to put up with bad behavior from our sons and daughters.

A few of tricks that I learned:

On keeping track of details…

1. Big families need a “cup system”. With that many thirsty kiddos, a dishwasher could get dizzy. My friend solved this problem neatly by giving each child a place on the counter for their cup, with their name neatly labeled on masking tape at the counter’s edge. (See picture, and nope, t hose aren’t her kids’ names) This way they can keep drinks straight and use the same cup all day. Handy, huh? I decided to implement this one, even with my paltry three…mostly because I like the idea of 3 yo learning to recognize her sisters’ names…
2. Each child has different colored socks, for sorting ease at laundry time. I’ve also read about mom’s of many children marking a “dot” on the outsides of their sons’ tube socks with a different colored permanent marker for each boy.
3. Jana keeps a breakfast menu on her refrigerator…they’ve given up breakfast cereals (except for oatmeal) and now everyone knows what to expect Monday-Sunday. And breakfast is at 8:30 am every morning. This keeps her from serving breakfast for two hours as each child wakes up and straggles into the kitchen. She confided in me that she’s recently nixed the morning snack, realizing that a healthy breakfast really will carry a child till lunch. This is true, and I’m going to nip morning snacks in the bud as well. Afternoon snacks are different, the stretch between lunch and supper is quite long and needs broken up, but I’ve found that morning snacks usually work against you when lunch time arrives!
4. At each meal, Jana would have one or two helpers. Patiently she would show them how to chop potatoes or strawberries, or let them mix up ingredients. Likewise, her husband is so good about varying the children he takes with him to check pasture or ride along to a job site. Each of these six are getting quality mom and dad time.

On child training:

1. Jana taught her children the “stop, look, and listen” rule. She says they even had a sign up concerning this for a while–most of this type of training she had to do b/c she was starting from scratch on manners with the two foster boys. Basically, the stop/look/listen goal is to teach awareness of conversations going on, to keep the kids from interrupting when adults are conversing. Occasionally when we were chatting, one of the little ones would interrupt, and she’d remind them “Stop, look and listen!” and they’d place a hand on her arm and wait till she was done to speak. (Btw, having your child place their hand on your arm when you are busy talking to someone is a great way for your child to let you know that they need to tell you something w/o them barging in rudely. In turn, you cover their hand with yours so they are reassured that yes, Mom knows you are there, and she will give you her attention as soon as she is done with that thread of conversation. We learned this trick from Gary Ezzo’s Growing Kid’s God’s Way series)
2. You know how children sometimes chatter non-stop, or keep asking the same question as if they didn’t hear you answer them the first time? Jana has a really unique way of dealing with this, and again, she’s had to figure out ways to crash-train two little boys who had absolutely no training in how to be civilized before they came to live with this family. She has them cover their mouth. For however long it takes for it to sink in that they were running off again. What a concrete way to reinforce self-control that may be lacking in this area.

All in all, I was so impressed at Jana’s training and love for her family. In spite of all her protesting, she and her husband are amazing parents, with incredibly big hearts for God and family. If every child out there had parents half so dedicated and serious about their mission…I only wish we’d had more time there. What I glimpsed was just a drop in the bucket of what this couple’s commitment to the Lord, and to each other is being reflected in each of their children’s lives.

Proof of this? I left there wanting more kiddos. Suddenly everywhere I go I see pregnant women rubbing their bellies or young moms with baby carriers in tow. How can three days spent with a family of eight affect me so strongly? Dimpled, angelic smiles and wholesome happy faces could charm Snow White’s wicked step-mother into changing her M.O. It’s the families with one or two rude, bickering, spoiled children that make so many people want to stop at two. Families like Jana’s are the exception, folks. And I’m convinced with big families, so much more is required of every individual to make things successful, that responsibility, thoughtfulness, and gratitude almost come about naturally.

I want in. How about you?

After six weeks of overseeing an indoor “chick nursery” we finally got the little biddies moved into their hen house last Tuesday. As you can see, having them make our back porch, a.k.a. “mud room”, their stomping grounds, really started messing with our heads and shoulders.

My dear husband has put so much sweat equity into this new chicken abode…and I’ve learned that the phrase, “It’s like pulling teeth…” really should have been, “It’s like pulling nails…”

You see, I had this brilliant idea. Why not move a lean-to attachment we had–part of a barn that is caving in on our property–across the way to a better location and fix it up into a chicken house? It would be quite roomy, I reasoned, and purty cute after I got after it with a paint brush. What do you think, honey?

My man spent an entire weekend rolling this building up onto old utility poles (we just happened to have a pile, how handy!) and then inching it across our property to its destination. Inching, being the key word. Many times he grunted that he should have taken the building apart, moved the pieces, and then rebuilt it rather than fighting it so hard with chains…pulling it with his truck, having to place new poles constantly to keep the building rolling on rather than rolling off.

Then, once that was done, the real challenges began. Long story short, we ended up taking out the entire floor and rebuilding the joists. While hubby shored up the old floor beams, I pulled nails out in the hot sun so we could reuse the original floor boards. When we finally got the floor reinstalled, we had to build two doors and make chicken wire grids to fit into the two windows to keep predators out. After hanging their light and feed pan from the ceiling beams, we transported our flock and turned them loose! They love their 11′x19′ home…you should see them spread their wings and take off at a dead run! Way better than their previous orange box homes from Aldis!

I’m really thrilled that all 25 chicks have made it a week out there w/out killing each other. Literally. I have five younger Aracaunas and the twenty bigger Buff Orpingtons (gold colored) and Bard Rocks (black) are really concerned about establishing pecking order. Those poor lil’ chicks are having to duck and run to survive.

But they’re happy to be out of their cardboard boxes! And I’m flipping cartwheels to have them out of the house! Bet you’d like to see a picture of that!