Visitors

Who doesn't love to see, hold, and cuddle a newborn? While we were in the hospital we watched scrubs on netflix. There's an episode where they joke about the phrase, "Look at the baby!" But it's true. Unless you're one of the few people who have a genuine hatred for living things you can't help but love babies whether they are human, dog, cat, anything. There's just too cute to resist!

This brings me to the subject of visitors. We've had friends and family express interest in meeting Miss Capuchin. We love that she is loved and people want to meet her. Here's the hitch. It's practically December. It's winter. I've never been as worried about any of my newborns getting sick as I am right now. We are going into the height of illness season. Those of you that know me are aware that I'm not a germaphobe. I let my girls roll around in creeks, they run around barefoot, and while I do encourage hand washing I don't force them to wash constantly. I think it's important for overall health to get a little germy.

Here is what does concern me: Viruses. A lot of our family and friends have young children that attend school co-ops or frequent churches. We have family members that work in public schools. We have family members that are always sick this time of year, I mean literally every year, the same few people. I truly love you all, but I am thinking of the well being of Capuchin. The first six months can be frightening, but the first six weeks are increasingly life threatening if she were to get sick. Six weeks puts us into January. We will not be attending holiday gatherings this year. The earliest I am going to even consider getting together with anyone will be new year to possibly celebrate Lemur's birthday. We may go beyond that depending on how much illness goes around this year.

You can think I'm crazy. I'm okay with that. I probably will be crazy by the end of the six weeks from cabin fever. Please don't take it personally. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is what is best for Capuchin. Chalk it up to being brought up believing Murphy's Law was created just to describe my life :p

Officially 6 Monkeys in the Country

Fresh baby with daddy, only three hours old.

This was our first day at home as a complete family. Pretty uneventful honestly. Not that I'm complaining! Tamarin sat on the couch and watched Capuchin for most of the day. Lemur wanted to rock her and touch her. Howler keeps saying "Ewww!" every time she sees her umbilical cord. The kittens want to smell her. Shaggy (Tamarin's dog) did the Lady and the Tramp standing on his hind legs and tried to peek over the rocking bassinet/chair thingy. It was cute, wish I'd gotten a picture.

My sister recommended this rocker/chair thing to me. Glad I listened, she sleeps very well in it.

I can't wait to get a pic of the four of them together, but I'm still recovering. Wrangling kids for a photo is not in the cards today. The anesthesiologist tapped a vein the first go into my spine (Wow, talk about a weird feeling when they pump that stuff right into your blood). Then he seriously hurt me the second time. I was screaming at him.... it hurt, a lot.... if he had to pull it all out again I was not about to give him a third try, but once he pulled the needle out the pain stopped. My back is bruised and there's a funky pain occasionally through one of my legs. Today is the first day it's begun to feel better, but now I'm beginning to feel my stitches. Then there's the matter of engorged boobs. So, if it's not one thing it's another.

Chris is taking a week vacation to help me recover and help the girls adjust. So glad he's able and willing to do this or today would have been difficult. I'd imagine my blog posts are going to get sporadic for a while. It's going to take some time to find our new groove. So far I'm not as overwhelmed as I thought I would be, but I'm sure when Chris goes back to work it'll start to sink in.

On the country front:

What a beautiful moon tonight!!

While we were in the hospital one of our guinea pigs died :( He was acting unwell a few days before, but we thought he was recovering. The girls are taking it well. They are kind of preoccupied right now with Capuchin.

I moved our young guinea keets outside into tut's winter box with two heat lamps before heading to the hospital. It's nice to have my laundry room back! They have all survived the cold nights, woot!

Only one egg laid while we were gone..... hmph, need to put a lamp in the barn. Birds won't lay due to short days. They need a certain amount of light or their instincts kick in and tell them not to lay since baby birds can't survive cold winters. So, if you want them to lay more in the winter you have to give them fake light. Isn't nature interesting?

It feels so good to be home!!! Two days away was too long!!

Missing School, T-day Part 3, and Elf on the Shelf

Missing School

Last night, I'm laying on the couch feeling like a beached whale. Tamarin comes running in and and tells me she wrote her sentence for the day. "Smoll Btatos." Yes, obviously I was being lazy and letting them watch Disney channel before bed. I told her they needed to do something for it to be a sentence, she decided on sing which turned into 'seen'. When I asked her if she was missing something she realized she needed a g, but she did have an exclamation point at the end of the sentence already :) At least she remembered her punctuation.

I took them to my mother's Friday night so I could go walk to try and encourage Capuchin out. I asked them to grab a toy or something they wanted to bring with them just in case tonight was the night. Tamarin grabbed a stuffed critter and as we were about to go out the door she gasped. She told me we forgot her school stuff. I told her that it was the weekend, we didn't need school stuff the next couple of days. Chloe tried to grab a handful of storybooks to take with her. I had to remind her that Mimi had books, we didn't need to take ours.

I think the long weekend has got my kids confused. We only did school two days this week and they miss it. Yes, I could do school stuff on the weekend, but I just don't want to. I want to lay on my couch and sulk in the fact this is the longest I've ever been pregnant. I've decided this kid is holding out till December and I have another week of this misery. I need to get my head out of my rear and get stuff done. The house will not clean itself. The girls are trying to school themselves which is adorable and sad at the same time. They both keep going to the school room and declaring themselves the teacher, only no one wants to be the student......

T-day Part 3

We cooked up the gobbler yesterday. Since he was so much older than a store bought bird I was worried he might be tough and gamey. He was neither. His texture was a bit different from a young store bought bird, but still good. I wish I had remembered to puncture holes in the breast before brining. It makes a world of difference in the taste, but he still came out incredibly moist. Chris sliced him up and he is ready for sandwich making for the rest of the week :) Tamarin made a point to call him by his name all day yesterday, "Is Thanksgiving done yet??" I asked her what she thought of Thanksgiving her reply was "Yum!!!!"

Elf on the Shelf

I'll have a few EotS posts over the next month. I enjoy doing it..... most of the time. Ergh.... I remembered at 4 this morning that I forgot to move them. Lemur already woke up 30 minutes ago and saw that they hadn't moved. That is the one problem. I've heard some people tell their kids they must have a "lazy elf". I usually say, "I guess there was nothing good or bad enough yesterday to report. Let's try to do something really good today so he has reason to return to the north pole tonight!"

Lemur decided to 'help' the other elf get into the bath this morning when she woke up. Going to have to remind her that she can't touch them. Nothing horribly creative in me this morning. I left a trail of marshmallows into Howler's room and stuck them on her wall decorations. The marshmallow bath is the first creative thing I've done this year, but I'm not one of those crazies that sets the bar too high doing something silly every morning. I like about half creative and the other half a hide and seek game. These are the highlights from last year:

I forgot about the fishing mishap :)

Donut breakfast with the princesses.

Chris asked me the next morning if Chippy was on shore leave :p

I guess I didn't take as many pictures last year as I thought.

He turned the milk green.

He did the mission impossible dangling from the ceiling thing. He used hair bands for his rope.

He was holding the Rudolph movie and had painted a red nose on himself (and the girls, but it rubbed off by morning).

He made snow angels in sugar.

He wrote them a note asking them to leave some toys he could take back to the north pole to recycle into new toys.

He brought them peppermint kisses on quite a few mornings.

He brought a star back from the north pole. We could not find our star for our tree last year. This bothered Ellie tremendously so he brought one back for her.

The girls are worried their elves won't find them if they go stay at the grandparents when Capuchin is born. I told them they may decide to stay at the north pole and help build toys for a few days. That seemed to go over okay.

Is it necessary? No! Is it silly? Yes! Does it brighten my day when my girls are running all over the house trying to find the elves? Absolutely. That is why I think it's worth it. If it were a burden or I found it annoying I wouldn't do it. I love seeing the joy in my kids' faces. Everyone deserves to believe in magic at some point in their lives :)

Shower for the Monkey

I'm so glad I didn't end up in labor yesterday. I would have missed the other half of Thanksgiving. My sisters surprised me with a baby shower. They even incorporated my blog into the theme :) Capuchin got some really cute outfits!  A shout out and big thank you to my sisters for being so sweet!

They asked me if I wanted a shower a few weeks ago. I didn't feel like we needed anything and told them a get together would be fun, but we didn't have any needs. I saved everything from my other girls so we're set. Looking at the new stuff side by side with my well loved stuff I'm happy they did it anyway. Now I just need to get ahead enough on my laundry to get the new stuff washed :p

One thing she got that I had never seen before was this:

This is the kind of pacifier we used with my other girls, but I've never seen it with a critter attached to it. How smart!! I cannot tell you how many times in the middle of the night Chris and I would both be on our hands and knees trying to find the blasted pacifier for Tamarin!! (Lemur and Howler to a lesser extent. Tamarin was my binkie kid.) I'd imagine it helps them as they get bigger to grab it and stick it in their own mouth. This is one of those cases where I'm saying, "Why didn't I think of that??"

Thanks again to my wonderful sisters :) Love you both!

Black Friday

I don't get it...... I mean, I tried it, once. I knew a chain had a couple of things I had considered getting on sale, but I went store to store too late to get it. It was a disappointment.

That year I did come across a slew of cheap movies for Chris, but it was an impulse buy. I should have held onto the $20-30 I spent on 10 movies and gotten him a movie he REALLY wanted instead of movies he was okay with having. I don't think we've watched any of them since the first couple of months after that Christmas.

Perhaps I'm jaded. I worked at a retail chain for a while and noticed the half truths they tell. "Lowest price ever" ummm.... that's the same price it's been all year! I worked a black Friday. The items in the ad were so limited if you hadn't been among those camping out there was no hope of getting it. Look: A TV for $200!! Ummm.... it's the discontinued model! It's quality is no where near the one that's on sale for a hundred more starting the next day.

I hear people all the time, "What am I going to get for _____. Oh, that's on sale/cheap, that'll work." I don't understand starting with a list of people and trying to find 'whatever' for them. "But they're going to give me something. I need something for them."

What happened to giving someone a gift because the item made you smile and think of them or it was something they genuinely wanted? It wasn't an obligation. It wasn't an inconvenience. Gifts are supposed to be bought out of the kindness of your heart with the needs or desires of the intended receiver in mind.

In my honest opinion if finding a gift for a particular person turns into a burden maybe you shouldn't be getting them anything. I'm not saying spending time thinking about what to get a particular person is bad, but when it turns into something stressful why do it? If the gift isn't bought with thought and happiness what kind of gift is it really? Why not suggest to others this year, take the burden out of the holidays, no gifts, just quality time spent with people you care about.

One last thing I want to add to this post. Before running out to the stores this year and spending hundreds of dollars on stuff please take a few minutes to donate $5 or $10 to those less fortunate. If you don't want to part with your money then donate your time. Two years I got to help build bikes for the salvation army. It was a great experience. I was only out gas money to get to the warehouse and they provided a really good lunch :)

Regional Food Bank - Any donations through mid January will be matched by Chesapeake.

Global Giving - My favorite donation site. You can pick a cause that speaks to you. You know exactly where your money is going.

Salvation Army - There are a lot more chances to volunteer than what is listed on their website. Call the coordinator and see if there is something that you can do that will fit into your holiday schedule.

If you are saying in your head, " I can't do that." I call bullshit. If you can afford to buy more than food you can spare $5. Watch what karma does. It's worth it when you stop being selfish and start thinking of others. Offended? Then you are exactly who I am speaking to.

Thanksgiving Day aka Fooooooooooood

Well, nothing like being in limbo. Will I be at the family Thanksgiving? Will I be in the hospital with a newborn? Will I be in early labor and opt to stay home? What if I am in the hospital all day tomorrow? Ah! I can't miss out on all the good food!

Oh, I don't intend to miss out on any good food. I am prepared. I have all the fixings for a T-day dinner on standby. I spoke to my grandmother on Monday and she already has a turkey for the family meal so our gobbler will be cooked on Friday after he's done enjoying his brine bath. I'm going to set out most of a loaf of bread for my dressing today. Potatoes on standby. Green beans on standby. I would love to share my recipes, but I don't want to risk copyright infringement. All my recipes including my brine for the turkey (and this brine makes the absolutely best turkey) comes from this book:



In my opinion, the best cookbook in the world. My copy is missing the front cover, some of the pages have disappeared. She has been well loved. Everything I intend to cook this week is in this book except for the desserts. I stick with family favorites for that.

My other cookbook is a binder I made myself. It has all the family recipes, the copied from other people recipes, copied from the backs of boxes and from the internet. It's pretty messy. In fact I just discovered I'm missing my pecan pie recipe from it. I'll have to call grandma later today!

Today I plan on making pecan pie. That is my only contribution to the family thanksgiving meal tomorrow if we end up going. I was going to share that recipe, but since grandma is not awake yet I guess I will share another family favorite.

Sausage Ball Appetizer:
1 lb sausage
3 c bisquick (or the like)
about 10 oz of shredded cheddar cheese

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes

My grandmother makes these for every holiday. They are simple and fast. They can be made days in advance, stuck in the fridge and reheated when you need them. Doesn't get much easier than that.

Grandma's Pumpkin Bread:
3 c sugar
3 1/3 c flour
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1 t soda
1 c oil
4 eggs
2 c pumpkin puree
2/3 c water
1 t vanilla

Combine dry good, combine wet goods, then mix the two together. Sometimes we add a cup of chopped pecans.... ahh... making myself drool. Makes three loaves.

Here is where things get interesting with family recipes. I have bake at 350 for 1 hour then lower to 300 for 15 minutes. Beside that I have written "Reality - 30 minutes at 350, 15 at 300" lots of wiggle room...... This is where I'm thankful for toothpicks :)

Hope everyone has a great holiday! Safe travels, good food, and happy memories to all!

Suuuuee-eeee!

Apparently, a lot of you enjoyed yesterdays post. I got twice the hits I normally do. I thought I'd follow up with some pork. As if yesterday wasn't exciting enough. We reclaimed a kitchen table and chairs that someone had left on the curb. We butchered the turkey. It gets better, we went to have lunch at my grandmothers and as we were pulling down the drive I see two black creatures walking in the field. They were too small to be our labrador. I hit the breaks and stared for a moment.

"Awww, crap." It was the pigs. Chris and I both jump out of the car and tentatively approach the hogs. I wasn't sure if they would run or charge us.

There are a lot of breeds of pig. And I mean LOTS. We don't have the accommodations for a LARGE breed pig that can reach 500 to 1000 lbs. I happened to know a guy who had a pair of mixed breed pigs. Part pot belly and part larger breed, but he was unsure what the larger breed was. His pair were about a year and a half old and about 150 lbs. That sounded doable especially at the price he was willing to sell us the offspring (read dirt cheap compared to others).

 

Bacon.

 

Now the only pig experience I have was watching my neighbors pot belly pig when they would go on vacation. He was a sweet pig, very social. We knew as soon as we got these two home that they were not going to be that way. They were spastic. The female more than the male, but neither were too fond of us. The guy we bought them from had warned us that his hogs were not terribly social, especially the mother.

Sausage.

 

Not terribly social was an understatement. These pigs don't like to be touched. Never have. We got them at two weeks old and could not get them to bottle feed. We tried for a week and were worried they were going to die. I finally found a pig rescue site that recommended just repeatedly shoving their nose into a pan of milk replacement and stating if that failed then they were just not going to make it. It took a few more days, but they finally clued in.

At this point I'm annoyed because the milk replacement isn't cheap. So we basically lost our headway on how cheap they were by the time they were able to eat feed. I was in for an even ruder awakening. Imagine my surprise when I discovered how much these little buggers EAT! They eat far more than I expected. Their feed to weight conversion is awful. I knew it wouldn't be great like the true meat breeds, but I had no idea it was going to cost so much.

 

Until Chris gets a chance to fix their pen they will have to resort to living in the small chicken coop again. See! This is what happens when you don't behave!

Fortunately, they were not as spastic as I expected. I was able to drop some feed into the chicken coop and they walked right in. We've lined it with storage boxes so they don't destroy the chicken wire. That blue tub you see in the background is a least two foot long if that gives you an idea of scale.

As of today we have had them for 6 months. I'd say they are probably about 50-60 pounds. They are all muscle. Not like most pot bellies you see with tons of fat wrinkles. Our plan from the beginning was to get them to a year old and butcher. I am second guessing that plan now. I think we will give them a few more months and due to the loss of money on them so far we will have no choice but to butcher them ourselves. I really wanted to outsource this since we have no experience, but I guess that's how you get the experience, right?

So look for Suuuuee-eeee! Part 2 in January or February. It should prove interesting.

D-Day Part 2

In a perfect world it would have gone like THIS tutorial. This was the guide we used when doing our chickens 3 years ago. Warning it is VERY graphic, but it has a picture for every single step. What you will find below is how things happen when amateurs are allowed to butcher.

A couple of things that are important before you ever begin:

Wear clothes you do not mind getting disgusting. Every animal does the same thing when they die. They convulse and their bowels evacuate. When you are dealing with poultry this gets very messy because they flail.

Have VERY sharp tools. Multiple. You don't want to have to stop and keep sharping the same knife. This is a very important thing that we forgot. This is when things go wrong, as they did tonight.

The meat needs to rest for a day or so in the fridge. Make sure you have space for this before you begin.

 

Prepare the space. A bucket for entrails, a bucket for edible organs (heart, liver, gizzard, and neck) and we had a third for the drumsticks and back bone. We planned on separating the bird. There is no way I could cook this monster whole.

 

 

First we all went outside and thanked the turkey. The girls pet him one last time.

 

 

We tied him and hung him from the tree. We figured out last time that the easiest clean up was to use a bucket or trash can with a bag in it. Chris slit his throat and lowered him into the can till he lost enough blood to expire.

 

 

And here I thought Tamarin would be traumatized. "Is he dead yet?"

 

 

The girls helped pluck. Well Tamarin did, Lemur collected feathers, and Howler played in the dirt pile.

 

 

The wing feathers proved incredibly difficult. He resorted to using dikes to cut the largest part of the feathers off. We decided since neither of us are fans of wings we would feed them to the dogs.

 

 

The girls watch daddy work.

 

 

That's no way to get a head in life...... sorry... couldn't help it.....

 

 

If only we had known we were about to admit de-feet....... okay, I could have helped that one, but chose not to.....

 

 

Watching daddy remove the neck. My grandfather loves the neck so we saved it for him.

 

Everything had gone fine to this point. Still a lot of pinfeathers to remove. The wings hadn't cooperated, but we were okay with that. This is the moment just before things went wrong.

 

Remember what I said about sharp knives being a necessity? They really are. Chris had just removed the head, both feet and the neck. At this point the knife had used any sharpness it had. Unfortunately we were headed into the most important part of butchering ill prepared.



 

DO NOT cut the entrails, it spoils the meat it touches. This is the trickiest part of cutting up a bird. We messed up a couple of the chickens last time and the turkey was a little more complicated than we had planned.

 

I think he over reached because of the dull knife. We should have had another knife on hand. I was disappointed. My grandmother loves backbones. I was going to give her the spine, instead it went to the dogs.

 

Once the spill happened he was able to throw caution to the wind and he sliced the cavity whatever way he needed to so he could reach in and pull the entrails out. You then pull the heart and scrape the lungs out.

 

 

As I stated above, there is no way I could cook this guy whole, so we removed the legs.

 

 

 

This is the heart and the neck. Chris forgot about the bile organ attached to the liver so it was a loss, but we did get the gizzard.

 

 

You see all that yellow? That is fat! Let there be no doubt this guy had a great life. He was able to roam wherever he pleased. He had access to females. He ate and ate and ate. Enough that his organs were covered in fat.

 

 

This is the inside of the gizzard. This is where the rocks birds eat crush up their food. This guy had been caged on the porch for about 36 hours. For chickens there's a 24 hour fasting rule before you butcher..... apparently for turkeys it should be much longer. This likely contributed to the intestinal spillage too.

 

 

 

The cleaned gizzard which went into the same bag as the heart and neck for the grandparents.

 

I didn't get a picture of Chris chopping the lower half of the spine off. I was a little busy helping him. He chopped off the contaminated section of spine. The dogs ate well tonight: two wings, two feet, and lower spine.

 

Four hours after we started we had this:

 

 

Not too bad for our first butchering in three and a half years. It's resting now in the fridge and we will separate the two breasts in a couple of days when it's time to start brining the breast for thanksgiving day. I didn't post every step since most people I know would probably not appreciate the blood and gore, but there are the basics of butchering a bird.

 

All three girls took it very well. Howler did shed some tears when she saw me with the knife. I was bringing it back outside so he could try to cut the wing feathers and she got upset, but as you can see once it was inside she was fine with it. She just went into the kitchen then came to me and said, "Uh oh. Where'd the turkey go?" I told her he was in the fridge, she looked and seemed content with my answer.

 

I'm not sure what our finishing weight was I do not have a working scale. We are guessing about 40 lbs of meat in the breasts and thighs you see pictured. They are HEAVY.

 

I bet Chris will pull out our wii fit later tonight and weigh them........

 

Update: 32.2 lbs

SAHM

What's a SAHM? For those of you who may not know it's the acronym for stay at home mom. Which I officially am. Yesterday was my final day of work. I only worked one or two days a week. I expect Capuchin will be here before the end of this week therefore I will not be working next weekend. I am done. It feels strange to be unemployed. Funny story, it's an interesting combination of quit/fired. My plan was to quit when Capuchin is born, but the company I worked for lost a big contract and I would no longer have a job at the end of November anyway. So, it was meant to be. Funny how things work out!

I have been looking forward to it for some time, but it's still a very strange feeling. I worked for this company for 10 years. I will miss the income, but I will not miss the fact it took me into germ infested stores in the dead of winter! I will not miss the added stress. I will not miss the grouchy customers. I will not miss the deadlines. I will not miss all the ruined holidays!

People always seemed surprised when I would say that I stayed home with my girls, homeschool, and work a part time job. I suppose now when people ask, I will be lumped into that category of freeloading wife. Oh well, I'm still happy that I don't have to stress about getting everything done anymore! I can spend my free time with my family as a whole. Instead of one or both of us working every weekend.

Only problem is what excuse will I give the girls when I go gift shopping now? "Mama will be back later, I'm going...... ummmm...... yeah..... bye!"

D-Day

Today is D-day for the gobbler. It is strange to watch them go from this

To this

I said before on here, this guy sealed his own fate. We were fully prepared to keep him as a pet, but he started chasing the girls. He is too aggressive to keep. He is also a broad breasted bronze. We bought him under the belief he was a standard bronze. What does this mean? He's been specifically bred to have VERY large breasts. Animals that have been specifically bred for large size tend to not have long lives. Their organs and bones cannot withstand the excess muscle. He has lasted 9 months because we have allowed him to free range. The meat chickens we raised three years ago began to die because of this defect (yes, it's a defect when you stop to think about it). They suffer heart attacks, organ failure, broken legs, a whole host of things that result in sudden death. When you are dealing with breeds like this there is a deadline. Some can live beyond it, but most will not.

It has been three and a half years since we butchered a bird. I think a refresher course is in order. I may get Chris to butcher one of the extra roosters or a duck before the turkey. It is important to not cut the intestines open while gutting the bird. It sours the meat it touches. I would hate to lose any of this turkey. Unfortunately, I think this whole task will fall to Chris. Last time he slaughtered and plucked, I eviscerated and cleaned. One thing we both remember incredibly well is the stench of butchering chickens. It is incredibly unpleasant. I don't know that my pregnant nose will allow me to participate this time.

Tamarin wants to watch. Lemur is on the fence. I would like to watch the girls reaction, but I will probably be keeping Howler in the house. It's important for me to go through the spiritual side of it with the girls first. I want them to appreciate the fact this animal is losing it's life for us to eat. We have provided him with a great life where he was free to do as he pleased. He was not stuck in a large room with a couple hundred of his kind, debeaked, never to see the sun like the turkeys everyone else is picking up at the grocery store. It's important for me to teach them where our food comes from and that our food has a face and should be appreciated. I'll update here later what their reactions were.

Facebook Friends

This week I deleted quite a few people I never would have thought I'd delete, including a few extended family members. I have to admit, my friends list is still 184 people. 184?? Really? And that is considered too few by facebook standards. It keeps asking me if I need help finding friends. Seriously?? 184 isn't enough for you? I see people with 400, 600, or more "friends". Does it make people feel good to see a large number associated with the word friend? It is not possible to be friends with 400 people! You have 300 acquaintances and maybe 100 friends, even that seems too high of a number. I am not interested in being friends with that person I met once at med fair and I made the mistake of sharing my real name or the cashier at the local store that always keeps me in her line talking for way too long when people are waiting.

So what makes up 184 friends??

Know It Alls
There are a few "friends" of mine that post good information that I am happy to read. Those are mostly friends I have never met that we came to know each other over the internet because we share some ideal or hobby in common. These people have been a wealth of information for me. I am glad I made that decision a while back that it was okay to friend people I had never met. I am a better person for simply knowing of these people.

Family
I still remember the day my first relative "friended" me. "AHH!! This is for college kids WTH are you doing on here?? OMG. Can they see everything I ever posted??" Followed by an entire day of constant scrolling to look at everything I ever posted and deleting things..... lots of things.......

One Liners
Most of my friends fall under this category. Almost all the people I went to school with as a kid fall under this category. After all I was a theater person so it's understandable that most of them have a great sense of humor. You don't know when they will post, but when they do you know that you'll be rolling. How could you deprive yourself of such personalized hilarity?

Oddities
The people you've known at any point in your life that you feel like you are looking at them through the glass. People who you find puzzling or curious and you just like the idea of keeping tabs on them. What ARE they doing now? I have only a handful that fall under this category. I mostly have their posts hidden because they post some STRANGE things, but I like to be able to look in on them from time to time.

I Wish We Were Friends
Not the facebook definition of friends, but REAL friends. People I have known at different points in life that I would no longer consider myself to be friends with. I knew them at one point, many of them I would have considered a friend at some point. People I wish life would allow me time for.

Hobbyists
For me this is my cycling and triathlon buddies. I miss them badly and I live vicariously through them when they post their races and workouts :p

Friends
The handful of people I still speak to with any regularity, honestly there's not more than 10 people in this category.

Who didn't make the cut?

Remember Whens
These are people my first inclination is to delete, but I have a sentimental attachment to them. Some may only post once a year, but I still don't want to "unfriend" them because pulling up their profile once a year reminds me of good times we used to have. They are on the chopping block. I have not deleted all of them yet. I am a sucker for nostalgia.

School Mates
I used to enjoy reading about activities the people I grew up with knew were going on. Most of them have kids about my children's ages so I would find out about different events geared for kids. Now most of them have sent their kids off to school. Now they post about their kids' classes or other school things, lunch dates, crazy hair days, or dress up days. Eh, not that interesting to me. The events they post are school events. Now that the child is in school there's no reason to do anything outside of that realm. No more museum events, no more businesses getting together for a kid's day, all the extras suddenly became unnecessary I guess.

Haters
I didn't notice this trend until the election propaganda started popping up a few months ago. My "friends" were posting tons of hateful things in either direction. I have to admit I lean one way, I am not truly in the middle, but I feel no need to post metaphors for killing those I disagree with or information that is blatantly false just to get people angry. It made me realize that other than kids I had nothing in common with quite a few of the people I claimed to be friends with. We may have gone to the same school and grown up together, but I would probably not be friends with them if we were to meet for the first time today.

Fakes
There were a few people I was friends with at one point or another and I knew good and well that the relationship had gone south. Distancing happened and yet there they sat on facebook reminding me that neither of us had the balls to admit we didn't really care for one another.


What category would you add? I have a jumble of other people, but I couldn't come up with a good title to throw many of them under.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I was cleaning dishes yesterday morning when I heard a familiar sound, but it struck me as very strange. Most days I leave home I hear this sound, yet it surprised me to hear it at home. I hadn't heard it since the first month we moved here. I heard this sound at least once a month in the middle of the night and plenty of times during the day at our old neighborhood. Figure it out? A fire truck went down my street. I hadn't heard sirens here since February.

I began thinking about how miserable the sound traffic was living on a corner lot in a neighborhood. Especially with crazy neighbors that liked to call the cops on each other. The intersection was a four way stop and people ran it all the time. Horns from other waiting cars would blare at all times of day. There was a jack ass that lived two streets down. Every weekday he would start up his motorcycle and rev it for a good 10 minutes, gun it down our street, be gone for all of an hour and then drive back. He wouldn't go straight home though, he would go up and down the street for 10 or 15 minutes. This practice is annoying to begin with, but when you have toddlers trying to sleep it's maddening. It never failed around 1:30 he'd leave, around 2:30 he'd return, I was screwed trying to make nap time around this jerk's riding schedule. Noon was too early for nap, 3 was too late. Then of course at 3 o'clock all the neighborhood kids were dropped off beside my house and would commence yelling obscenities at each other or just screaming at the top of their lungs while running across my lawn right in front of my children's window. So if by chance they slept through the motorcycle they would definitely wake up after that.

Around here the only sounds are nature. Inside the house we hear dogs barking, turkey's calling, roosters crowing. If you go outside you may hear neighbors sawing or hammering things (a guy on the other side of the woods behind us is in the process of building a house himself). There is a firing range a few miles north so on the weekends you can hear gun shots in the distance while you are outside, but it's far enough away you cannot hear it in the house. Some weekends it is busier than others. Occasionally I will hear neighbors yelling at each other, but honestly I heard it far more in the neighborhood than I do now.

In the summer I tried to convince the girls to sit outside and listen. I want to focus more on teaching them how to be quiet and truly listen. Tamarin is my main culprit, the child has no idea how to not talk for even one minute. I constantly have to remind her during our school work that we are not discussing anything other than schoolwork right now. She used to tell anyone and everyone every little thing that popped in her head. Her soccer coaches last year thought it was hilarious. Not so much when your 5 year old has no filter! So glad you find our unedited family stories funny, not! She has gotten better about talking to random people about the details of our lives, but she still talks non stop. Now Lemur is beginning to pick up this habit. Something is going to have to change. I cannot handle everyone talking to me at the same time and then getting upset with each other because "I was talking first!" This is mostly a car problem, but it is beginning to come inside. Not cool!

I have been eyeing this book for a year or more. I think I am finally going to break down and buy it.


The reviews for it are pretty good. I know nothing else about it. I forget where I came across it to begin with. I'm sure I was complaining about how Tamarin would not quit talking and my brain was about to explode when someone suggested it to me. I think it was still over $10 last time I looked, it's a bit cheaper now so I probably will get it. I'll let you know how the girls like it.

How do you encourage quiet?

It's Cold Outside!

Everything outside is frozen. There's a beautiful frost over the trees and grass. I need to take pictures... if only I could find my camera...... Yet again, the breaker for our heater tripped a few times last night. It's cold, so the first thing I do is turn on my oven. I had no idea what was going to go in it, but it NEEDED to be on. Started with some canned crescent rolls that had been rolling around the fridge for a while (fat free, hence why they never got used, always be VERY specific when sending spouse to grocery store).

Start perusing pinterest, decide to start with something I've done before:


These are awesome! The girls even like to eat them without chocolate chips or icing. However, I ran into every baker's worst nightmare. I only had two cups of sugar. Fortunately I did have brown sugar, so I made due. I am now faced with two choices, wait until Chris is on his way home and send him to the store (I remind you about the crescent roll issue above) or load up everyone in this below freezing weather and go to the grocery store.

With 40 minutes to kill until the bars were done I found my way back to pinterest.

Ummmm.... okay..... no more time to blog.... I need to get everyone bundled and head to the store......

Week 11 Complete

Well, one more day, but we're in process right now. It's practically complete.

The girls are getting frustrated. I've been using boxed Thanksgiving crafts this week. We've not done anything new in the realm of science. Other than some election stuff we've not handled anything new, wonderful or exciting.

Tamarin has moved on to another math book and is getting the hang of subtraction.

We're still working on recognizing th, ch, and sh. She's getting it a little more each day. While I am disappointed these last few weeks have been almost exclusively 3R's at least I still feel like we are accomplishing things. I miss the hands on science stuff. I just don't have the energy to do it right now.

Her writing is getting messier so I'm making her use this practice paper my mom found at target. It has plain lined paper, but also has paper with the path of the letters indented, very useful for a kid who is beginning to write things sideways.....

Mead Paper


Lemur is now asking me every day to write a word for her to copy (mom, dad, Tamarin, Santa). Her and Tamarin took turns playing teacher yesterday afternoon. Tamarin, being my mother hen, enjoys teaching her sister. This may work out good for me! Now if I can just get Tamarin to start reading to Lemur. I would be ecstatic.

While we have dropped some science time, we have been doing piano and knitting the last couple of weeks. I think I'm beginning to get an idea of how our daily schedule needs to work for us to get everything in once Capuchin is born and my energy level gets better. Of course, once Capuchin is here I'm sure she'll make a point to not allow us to accomplish anything :p

In other news the Christmas tree is up! It used to look huge in our old house.... it looks kind of puny now. We used to have to bend the tip under to fit a star on top and it would still be pushing against the ceiling, not anymore! There's like 4 feet of space between the tree and the ceiling! Crazy! The girls are insisting it's not the same tree. A lesson in perception is due today I think.

Two of our mallards returned.... that was a short migration.......

Lemur is already asking for help writing her list to Santa. Maybe I need to break out the Elf on the Shelf before Thanksgiving just to watch her. She's been getting up around 5 and then waking up her sisters. Maybe she'd stay in bed if the creepy little elf was sitting on her bedpost every morning......

Holiday Gifts

Election day over, Thanksgiving on it's way, time to turn attention to Christmas gifts. I've always tried to have a nice mix of frivolous and educational.

We always get 2-3 books for each kid.
We always get a puzzle, board game or video game for each.


This year I'm hitting a bit of a wall on what else to get. In years past I've done science or musical toys like these things:

This year I have been suggested Legos. I'm leaning that way, but that still leaves the more educational toy up in the air. Maybe I will get two birds with one stone and get educational video games for the older two, something like this for Tamarin since she is a math kid.



We got the girls some educational DS games last year that they enjoy playing.





I would love to have all the holiday shopping done before Capuchin comes, but I doubt that will happen.

Scholastic's warehouse sale won't be open till December, that's where I get most of our books and also where I picked up the two video games above for cheap! If you've never checked out one of their warehouse sales, you should. They are open to the public you just have to fill out a form on their website. Great stuff at great prices!

Help me out here, what are you getting? What has been a big hit in your home in years past?