eat sleep and farm

Jason finished the remodeling of jastef.net and it is now up and running!! For those of you who don't know, that was our original website we created just after getting married. We took it offline, so Jason could "tweak" it and its finally done! Bear with us as we tie off a few things, including the picture links to our Flickr stream. I wrote all this over at jastef.net, but I'll say it here as well... You can keep your old username/password (if you remember it) and if you'd rather use your Facebook login info, that's fine too. You may not see pictures unless you login. I know this annoys some of you and I'm sorry... but we're trying to keep some privacy. :) We did the FB login to try not to add anymore online stress to your lives, so we're hoping that helps in keeping things simple for you. I will ocassionally post a picture or two on the actual post, but for the most part, our pictures will be in albums. As we post, we will let you know what album...

I used to post about babies being born; whether they were in our family or our friend's. I'm not quite sure why I stopped. Maybe I was having a hard time keeping up? :) Because I think babies and the gift of new life is amazing, I am going to start back up again. Its always exciting to hear when God brings another precious life into this world. 2009 has already been a busy baby year! I'm going list names of them here, to start this tradition back up again. And yes, in this large crowd of babies, there is only one boy :) I'm not going to post about baby births until the parents of the baby have already announced it. I don't want to steal anyone's thunder in that dept. 1. Levi Mitchell 2. Mia Amore 3. Ainsley Marie 4. Makena Ruth 5. Caia Jael 6. Serena Rene 7. Aliya Grace 8. Moira Quinn Amazingly enough... there are more than 15 more babies due by November of this year! So stay tuned. :)

Our kids love to play outside and get so upset when they have to come in. Ethan used to act like it was ME who made the sun go down and had it be dark outside... so he'd cry and beg me to please "bring the sun back out!" The other night they had to come in for dinner and they didn't want to because they knew, as soon as dinner was over, it would be too dark to come back out to play. So I had the grand idea of having dinner on the porch! They loved it. Rachel prayed for dinner and here was the end of her prayer: "could You please leave the curtains open in Heaven so it won't get dark at my house tonight?"

I cannot believe another Mother's Day has come and now gone. I enjoyed a very nice Mother's Day and especially enjoyed the cute things my kids said to me and asked me. I think the holidays are getting way more fun, the older they get. I plan on reliving my childhood through each one of my kids. :) We didn't do anything spectacular today; we don't exchange gifts between Jason and me or the kids and me. Its just something personal we've decided not to do for our own reasons. I enjoyed the time I had yesterday and today to spend time reflecting on God's goodness to me in my roles as wife and Mommy. Each year that passes, the importance and weight of those roles becomes more evident and more rewarding to me. The challenges are still there (harder than they used to be) and the rewards are there - but more rewarding than before. Each year I can see new things God has taught me about my husband, new things He's taught me about each of my children and new things He...

Ethan's new set-up he loves his new loft bed Our sweetie-poo (she had such a high fever here and was still being such a sweet heart.) Kara loves watching Rachel play Rachel is talking for her pretend people here and every time she talks for the little girl (in a high pitched voice) Kara would crack up laughing. I think they sat playing for about 30+ minutes!

Ethan and his buddy Caedmon.

Grandma Elsie came over and we took both Grandmas out to Chinese food and then we went out to ice cream. We decided that in a perfect world... we'd all live on the same street :) Kara gets acquainted w/her Great Grandma fast friends :)

Last week we went to Livermore and spent 4 days with Jason's Grandma Anita. The kids had such a nice time with her and we got some great pictures. Grandma and Kara had a rough start... because Kara doesn't typically want anyone but me to hold her, but they ended up becoming quite good friends. :) playing peek-a-boo with Daddy I'm not sure what, but something scared her here... I couldn't get over the cute face. Ethan and Rachel slept in the guest room and, to my surprise, did a pretty good job sleeping in the same bed!

milestones and exciting things going on in Kara's life: prefers mommy over anyone else sits up completely by herself thinks mommy is the bomb waves bye-bye adores mommy likes to bounce whenever her feet touch the ground is attached to mommy eats anything and every thing in sight (and gets quite angry if you don't give her the food she has her eye on) wishes Mommy could be attached to her 24/7 has NO intention of crawling (the right way) anytime soon gets told she looks mostly like mommy has her brother completely wrapped around every single one of her fingers. will not let anyone else hold her (happily) while she can see or hear mommy loves to... be talked to, sang to, cuddled, loved on, danced with, played peek-a-boo with, carried, watch Baby Einstein, play with her monkey toy, ride in her stroller, and smiled at... though she makes no promises to smile back. She puts on a front as being a very serious minded girl. But I think its just a front. Inside she wants to smile ...

the lawn mower broke, so the lawn has grown as high as Ethan's waist the carpet is so stained, I've stopped trying to clean it. the grout on the kitchen floor drives me insane. I can't remember its original color, but I pretend it was always a nice, chocolate brown. I shaved Ethan's head for him (his new favorite cut) and made some mess-ups, but haven't had time to fix them... a week ago. finally trimmed Kara's fingernails, after getting an awful scratch from her on my neck. Hey! when there's no dirt under them, I forget. needed to wash the van SO badly, God sent rain. did I forget to brush my teeth today? the garage still looks like we're moving in... not sure that will ever change. I have episodes of FRIENDS and the Office memorized, yet struggle to retain a few Bible verses. still learning how to speak as sweetly to my kids as I do to my friends when they call. If I was as faithful with working out as I was with checking Facebook and blogs... I'd ...

Rachel has been going through, what I hope is just a phase that needs extra attention and care. She has become very bossy, very sassy and extremely dramatic. We've been dealing with those issues and its starting to be obvious in what she says... this morning she was singing to her dolls: "its the end of the world as we know it!" Then I asked her "Rachel, why are you singing that?" and she said, "that's what my Daddy sings to me when I'm frowing a fit." "you have to speak before you listen, Efan." "I can't figure out life, Mom." -- she woke me up this morning with that one! We saw a little boy at the store, throwing a fit over not getting a toy and Rachel says (to his mom) "he needs to go to his room until he can have a happy attitude!" Thankfully the mom died laughing and took it well. I reassured her that Rachel only knows about that from personal experience. :) I was nursing Kara the other day and Rachel real...

A few days ago I was explaining to Ethan what a car package is. I can't remember why he asked me, but he did and so I explained it. Today he took a box I had opened in the mail and he put about 5 of his cars in them, brought the box to me (with that big dimply grin on his face) and showed me the box saying... "look, Mommy - its a CAR package!" ;-)