eat sleep and farm

Sorry these are a day late. Not sure it will bother too many of you.  Life has been picking up in pace these days, as we get more involved at church and make lots of new friends. We were out until 9:30 last night and working out took precedence over posting :)  What I'm thinking:  about the rest of this week/end. Its packed full of fun things to do in celebrating Christ's resurrection, but in the midst of all of that, I've got lots of cooking/planning to do for Sunday!  What I'm reading:   this week it was just my Bible. I read quite a bit through the OT and then in Luke & Hebrews.    What kid quote made me laugh: when I saw that Kara had taken ALL the toilet paper off the roll, I said "who did this?" and she quickly grabbed at her belly button and said "bewy button did" :)  What we're learning:  giving a kind answer when harsh words are spoken to us: we've been talking a lot with this kids about the importance of not lashing ba...

It feels like yesterday, Rachel was saying good bye to this baby chair and yet here we are,  with our next baby, saying farewell to the same chair. And saying hello... ...... to the BIG girl chair! {a.k.a Rachel's old chair}

I'm working on our Easter Sunday food menu... and I'm coming up with boring, too traditional things to make. I'd like to try some new things. Oh, I've never made deviled eggs! Maybe this should be my year for debuting those to my family. All these things I have to think of now that we aren't going to my parents house :(  My Mom always makes the holidays amazing; lots of yummy food {we always brought something to share, but she made most of the delicacies} cozy, fun, relaxed atmosphere; good times. We miss my parents so much on the holidays. But I don't want to get all weepy here, so I'll refrain. I'm hoping my guests feel the same way at our house this year, but I've learned that providing such a relaxed, cozy and fun atmosphere does take a bit of time and planning ahead. I'm going to work on decorating a nice table for the adults and a fun table for the kids. I even thought about doing a table cloth for the kids out of white paper and givin...

the 3 of them love to color and with the weather so nice, they've taken the fun outside.  Kara always has to stand on chairs or climb on tables because she likes to see me jump.  soon our deck will be getting refinished, so we're enjoying the play time on it, before the men come and take it over for a few weeks.  Rachel colors in style  Don't you wish they made these in our sizes?? 

In the past 2 days Ethan has been eating like I've never seen him eat before. No joke. Yesterday he woke up and said he felt like he was going to throw up. He never did actually throw up, but put himself back to bed and didn't get up until 2pm. When he woke up he said he was dreaming about eggs, with cheese, with onions mixed in. So I made him some. He asked for 2 pieces of toast. I made him 1 piece, just so we didn't waste food. He ate that one piece in about 30 seconds and asked for the 2nd piece. Ate the 2nd one just as fast. Finished the eggs and began talking about tacos and burritos and how I used to make those a lot in California and haven't made ANY since we moved to Washington (not exactly correct, but I think I've only made them twice since we moved here). So I got out the lb of ground beef and cooked it and made him a BIG (and I do mean big) burrito. I stuffed it with the meat, cheese, rice, tomatoes and zucchini. He ate the burrito in about 5 ...

this post was written about the movie in the title. If you've not seen the movie, pleased don't read this post and then get mad at me. Also, if you were not allowed to watch the movie (I don't think kids read my blog, but you never know) please do not read this post. That's all.  I finally (finally) watched Julie & Julia. I know, it took me long enough. It was one of those movies that was released to theaters when we were too busy to go to watch movies at a theater. It was on our list... but we never got around to it. Thankfully, there's always DVD and for me, it was Netflix instant play on my laptop. Oh, the joys.  I love critiquing movies. When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to do for a living. I get very into movies and love to dissect them when they're over. Jason and I have spent many nights up way too late, discussing whatever movie we had watched that night. We recently went to see Shutter Island and came home and could not stop talking...

We love to take walks to the park !  can you see Ethan and Rachel in this picture?  on this particular day, Kara decided she needed to wear some sunglasses .  this is the trail we take to our park, up the hill....  she gets a weird thrill out of walking all-by-herself.  and loves going down the slides all-by-herself  (often giving mommy and daddy slight heart failure) Rachel-Kate (she is getting insanely tall, all of a sudden) the view from the park {if you enlarge this pic, you can see Seattle off in the distance}

on our way home from the park, Jason caught a cute moment where Ethan & Rachel were showing some real kind affection for one another...  and it wasn't a planned thing, so we took many pictures :)  however, adding in little sister, was planned, as you see.  because we didn't want her to feel left out.  me and my baby  big girl, Kara Joy 

What I'm thinking:  well, over the weekend my thoughts were on the Health Care bill and now I've been thinking a lot about Government; how its losing its importance and serving a very useless purpose these days.  What I'm reading:   still on Grace Unknown (I'm a slow reader) by I also read quite a bit from Bob Kauflin this week. I'm becoming a fan of his website.   What kid quote made me laugh:  Ethan, upon seeing  a red (juice?) stain in the carpet: "oh brother... looks like someone died in here."  What we're learning:  busy weekends = the oldest child needs a nap on Monday.   What I'm watching:  tonight is Lost and Biggest Loser. Wahoo!  What's cooking:   nothing. isn't that sad? we have left overs in the fridge, so I didn't cook today.  What 's something fun we did over the weekend:   Saturday (before Jason went to work) we went to a fun park on Mercer Island by the water and had a blast. Sund...

Ethan: Mommy? Is Santa pretend or real? Me: what do you think? Ethan: I think he's pretend. Me: Yep. He is. Ethan: Well, I figured it out because when it was Christmas time and we went to a lot of different stores, he was at every single store we went to! So I was like "he can't be in all these places at one time" so I knew he was just a daddy, with a fat tummy, dressed up in red clothes." Well, that was easy :)

I am so tired. Who knows why I'm blogging. I felt like it. That's a good reason, right?  Its been a good week. A very busy, full-of-non-stop-activity week, but a good week nonetheless.  The sun was out all week long, bringing with it, some higher than normal temps. So we enjoyed lots and lots of outdoor play. We visited some new parks - all of them were BIG hits with us. I love the age appropriate parks; good toys for Ethan to climb on, great ones for Rachel and smaller, baby like playgrounds for Kara. Its always nice when I can sit and relax a bit while they all 3 play away. Although, Kara prevents me from doing that too much, because even though there's playgrounds built just for her age level, she must conquer the big kid slides. So I end up chasing her around, keeping myself from having heart failure the whole time. I'm convinced she'd never really jump off the edge of a high up playground, but then I worry that the one time I trust her to not do something ...

Got this post off of  this  website and loved it! I know several of my friends are pregnant, so I thought this might be helpful to you!  Shopping for maternity clothes  is great prep for motherhood. When that baby becomes a toddler, you'll have no idea what size boots or shirts to buy on sale for next winter. Just like now. You know that cute and tiny little belly bump won't stay that way forever. Who knows how much you'll expand .. or where. Cathleen Price, who's been helping expectant mamas dress themselves for 20 years at  Destination Maternity , most recently as store manager at the Carle Place, New York, store, takes some of the guesswork away in sharing these  6 biggest mistakes  to avoid: 1. Buying clothes the next size up Lots of first-time preggos overestimate how much they'll gain. In some cases, women who normally wear a size Small will want to go for a Medium for comfort's sake. But that's rarely necessary. Maternity apparel takes moderate...