eat sleep and farm

Couldn't be happier and I think it was a smart move on his part. I've already heard the liberals making comments about how few qualifications she has and I'm dying to know... what are Obama's major qualifications for President of the United States? I can come up with two that have been the only two I can find. He's black and can be very charismatic in reading speeches that have been written for him. Just beware - don't catch him in an open forum setting... its like watching SNL. :) Anyway, the race is on! Don't forget to vote on November 4th. If you're not registered get out there and register! This is one of the best ways we can make a difference and serve our Country. If you don't vote, you're not allowed to complain or give your opinion for the next 4 years. ;-) Here's Wikipedia's run down on Governor Palin. Also, go here for my friend's take on this election. I love her point of view and the way her mind works. :)

Rachel's 1st try at the DS Showing Daddy! big brother shows her how to "jump the guy"

Every Tuesday our friend Caedmon Rippee comes over for a few hours, while his mom helps out in his brother's class at school. The kids love playing with Caedmon and I've enjoyed the time its given me to teach them more about sharing, being more caring and outward focused and just being over all good hosts when they have friends over! I came around the corner and found her just sitting here... not sure what to do. but being a good sport about it! Our big 3 1/2 year old boy Caedmon the boys mowing the lawn with Rachel's pink bubble blowing lawn mower :)

they loved this toy! our buddy Chase Green

I was looking at my friend Erin's website the other day and saw she had a link to a website I didn't recognized... so of course I had to look. Anyway, its one of the most delicious websites I've seen! I know, I describe things very weird. I'm pregnant, hang in there with me. I had SO much fun looking at it and thought I'd post it here . Its not a personal website but a store website. ** Jess Swenson, little note for you -- beware, you will LOVE it. :)

Rachel has done super well with potty training. I had a feeling she would, considering how eager she was to start. Sunday went fine. She drank lots of fluids for us, peed about every 15-20 minutes and only had 3 accidents all day. Each time she wet her pants she'd run into the room we were in yelling "I went pee-pee, I need clean underwears!" So I had to keep reminding her that the underwear needs to stay dry and the pee-pee needs to go in the potty every time. Then Monday started off not so good at all. I took the over load of fluids away and let her just drink as she wanted to and told her "tell Mommy when you need to go potty". She had many accidents in the morning. Each time she would act totally un-bothered by it. She came to the potty, took her pants off, and asked for new ones. I sat there thinking "there's no way we're going to do this." So I told her she didn't get any candy or stickers unless the pee-pee went IN the potty. I would...

Last night I decided to mix things up a bit around here and make something yummy for breakfast. I get so tired of oatmeal, cold cereal, eggs and pancakes, so I pulled out one of our all time favorites. I often make this when we have company over for breakfast and growing up, it was Christmas morning breakfast. I've posted this before on our other website, but thought I'd share again. I also have added one or two ingredients that we like. I'll put an asterisk** next to the ones I added. Make Ahead Breakfast 8-10 slices of sourdough bread - torn into small pieces 1 lb. breakfast sausage meat, browned 8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese 1 small onion, finely chopped * 1 (4 oz.) can mild green chilis 4 eggs beated ( * I add 5 eggs) 2 cups milk ( * I add 2 1/2) 1 can cream of mushroom soup Spray the bottom of your 9x13 inch pan. Put bread pieces in the bottom and then put the cooked meat on top of the bread. In a separate bowl mix together the onion, *chilis, eggs, milk and soup - p...

I have decided to be a good Mommy and start the potty training process today! I say "be a good Mommy" because Rachel has been so eager to start and I keep putting it off. Yes, yes, if you don't know yet, I'm lazy. We start our Bible studies in 3 weeks and she's going to be in the 2's and 3's class this year and they do prefer that all the kids be toilet trained, but they will take them in diapers, if they need to. I just figured it will be much simpler to do it now and not trying with a brand new baby in the house. She loves wearing her underpants. Lately we find her with no diaper on and when we ask her where she put it, she tells us "I took it off over there... I don't like diapers anymore." My only issue is getting her to understand that the pee-pee always has to go in the potty. Its never OK to wet her big girl panties. Another reason I'd like to train her now is because several of her other friends are in training and I could use the...

Jason and I decided that we'd both like to keep our jastef .net family website up and running and just do away with this one. Its probably very annoying for all of you having to go check out two different websites to keep up with us. Lately, the only thing to really see on our family site is our photo albums. So here's the plan -- Jason is going to take the webiste offline for several weeks (we're hoping to have it back up just before the baby's birth!) and I will continue posting here until he's done. I'm going to make some design changes, he will write the code for it, and then I will continue learning how to use Drupal so I can do site maintenance myself. Sound good? So don't panic if you go to our jastef.net account and a boring screen tells you its under construction. :) I'm going to miss using blogspot, but I think this will be easier for all of us. Just remember one thing... when we get our family site up and running and you create a username ...

Ethan's prayer at the breakfast table this morning... "Dear Jesus, thank you for my food and for Rachel's food. Please help us to obey You, Daddy and Mommy today. Please help me be kind when I want to be mean to Rachel. Also... please help the baby to come out without hurting Mommy too much. Will you tell her to not to scratch Mommy or make Mommy cry? Can you make sure she doesn't think the world is scary when she comes out and that she likes her bedroom when she sees it? And please tell her when she sees me that I'm Ethan... her big brother. Amen."

I have several home schooling moms that read my website and many of you have been starting up that adventure this year, with your kids! I applaud you all, as it doesn't look to be the easiest job in the world. I've only slightly begun to see the huge sacrifice my Mom made in teaching the 5 of us, and I'm learning more and more to be grateful for the gift she gave to me. Its funny how I thought I was super thankful and grateful back during my single days... haha! So much I've learned in marriage, keeping a home and now raising our kids. Today my friend Emily posted a fun read on her blog about the top 5 benefits to home schooling. I enjoyed reading them, it brought back wonderful memories of my early school days and really gets me excited to start this adventure with Ethan in only 2 years! We already do little preschool text books during the day now, crafts, lots play dates with friends, field trips and lots of other stuff... but its so super casual and nothing I plan t...

Playing ball with Dad Friday night treat :) I loved the face I captured on him :) "she shoots, she scores!" picking flowers for Mommy Saturday's treat: frozen yogurt w/sprinkles!

I am kicking myself right now because today we had our friends, the Adams over and I didn't take any pictures!! I put my camera in my room on the charger before they came and then totally forgot about taking it out when they were here. Erin Adams has been a very dear friend to me almost my whole life (pretty much as far back as I can remember) and today she came to visit with her two (adorable) kids, Gillian and Peyton. I had the most fun holding sweet little Peyton. He is all baby soft and cuddly, full of smiles and cooing. Oh my. After she left I was seriously aching to hold my baby. I hadn't realized how much I miss those precious baby days and also, how long its actually been since we've lived through them. I also got another glimpse of how much my daughter needs to learn how to share her toys and books. My goodness! Rachel has decided that she's marked all her toys and if you come within 2 inches of them, she literally freaks out. I think she's used to sharing...

I saw this google survey on my friend's website and her rules were "if you read this, consider yourself tagged!" so here I am. Enjoy, Jess! Oh, by the way... I have the same rules. :) Rules: You must answer each question by typing your response into Google and picking your favorite image from the FIRST page of links. Have Fun with It! My first name: (I picked the picture of Stefanie Powers because she's where my parents got the idea for my spelling... off the show Heart to Heart) Place I'd like to travel: (Maine) Town where I was born: (Santa Clara, CA) My Age: A past love: (I miss diving... every time I get into a pool and smell the chlorine, I can remember my diving days so vividly.) My Favorite Color: (Blues of course) My favorite food: (I'm Italian, what can I say?) My Favorite Animal: (I'm not into pets, but a parakeet is something I would totally buy!) A past pet: (our family's Cocker Spaniel, Taffy) Favorite place to be: (with the man I'm ...

Today we ventured over to San Fransisco to visit some friends! We were welcomed by nice cold, foggy and drizzly weather. Quite the change from the usual hot weather out here. The kids kept saying "Its too freezing cold here!" although I rather enjoyed the feeling of being cold. My pregnant body is always over heating, so the feeling of needing a jacket was... amazing. :) We had lunch at our favorite stop, Underdog and then walked over to the park and then Stow Lake. This was Ethan's first visit to these two places and he absolutely had a blast! We saw lots of pigeons, ducks and turtles and walked our hearts out. The kids slept very well on the way home and are already talking about our next trip to Jenna's. on our way to meet up with Laura and Jenna - we haven't used a stroller in SO long, I had to get a picture of it. :) blowing bubbles for the girls Rachel and Jenna On the playground where I used to play when I was his age! She's goofy... not much else to sa...

Here are some random pictures from this past week. Baby's right foot :) Ethan's buddy, Nikolas In the pool at our play date Trying on everyone's flip-flops

I am SO not a fan of diaper bags. I can't stand the big, huge ones that you have to lug around and really don't need to. I hate that they can be so pricey and its annoying how they don't last from child to child. I do like having a bigger one for vacations or all day trips we take, but I've been searching for something smaller to use on a day-2-day basis. I like to double it as a purse for me, which can be kind of hard. I do love the first one. I think its got a super cute pattern, but I can't quite figure out how big it is and how you carry it. I'm eventually going to trek over to the store and try them out, but for now... here's my faves.

Getting out of the car at the Tracy outlets: "Mommy, I never ever want to live here because every time we come here it smells like cow poo-poo." Talking about his cousins' parents: E - "Who is Madison's Mommy?" S- "Aunt Amber... you know who she is, right?" E- "Oh yeah. I renember Amber. But what's her Daddy's name?" S- "Uncle Jeremy. Do you remember him? He has light brown hair and we went to the park with him when he was at Papa and Nana's house?" E- "Oh. Yes. I renember him. He likes bread." (only those of you who really know Jeremy will get that one!) Today at Target I saw a new born Cabbage Patch doll on the clearance rack for $3.75 - I was super excited to find such a cheap doll! It was a little black baby and I kind of thought that was perfect because Ethan has been wanting his own doll for a while and I figured this way, we could tell very easily which doll belongs to who. I held the doll up to him...

Here's the ever growing belly! We're down to the last 8 weeks and time couldn't go any faster. I'm happy and sad about that fact. :) Rachel and I (along with my sister Emily) drove to Dublin on Thursday to get my hair cut and then took a trip to the mall for dinner and some shopping. It was such a fun night, but the highlight was getting to see my good friend Gretchen. I haven't seen her in a year -- which means my hair really hasn't looked good in a year. So the hair cut was also a "friends catching up" date. :) I bought this dress at the mall and when we got home Rachel could not wait for me to try it on. So... you get to see the belly, the new do and the dress! She is completely thrilled about the idea of meeting her new baby! Gretchen didn't have time to really style my hair, so this is sort of the rough draft. :)