While the cats away the mice will play...

Last week (actually it has been almost four now by the time I finished writing this) Jonathan flew off to Chicago to teach his actuarial seminar (which was very successful). In the meantime I was left with four kids for 5 days.

Tuesday - Miriam's first day of preschool. She was thrilled, especially since it was the same preschool she went to last year and her best friend, Ethan, was in her class this year. When I dropped her off the teachers invited David in the play as well. I was chatting in the hall with my friend, keeping an eye on the door to the outside out of habit (to make sure no kids escaped me), and when I picked up Emily in her carseat to leave, I thought to myself, "Wait a minute. This is much too easy. I can't have just one kid with me. What is wrong with this picture? Oh, oops, David is still in the classroom." So I went in to get him and the teachers said they thought I had forgotten him, but they didn't mind since he was sitting next to Miriam, happily doing the craft. He blended right in. Needless to say, he wasn't thrilled when I told him he had to come with me. Huge tantrum. Cried all of the way to the store. Luckily, he likes going to the store so he calmed down as soon as he saw we weren't just going home.

Since Jonathan was leaving me, I went to Sam's Club and stocked up on yummy, easy foods. I said yes to the corn dogs. Yes to the taquitos! Yes to the Chex Mix! It was a glorious moment of throwing away my usual frugal attitude. When Isabelle got home from school we skipped up the driveway hand in hand as I guessed what the pig wanted in the book she had checked out of the library (If You Give a Pig a Party). I was being a fun Mom and proud of it (note: this isn't normal for me). For dinner we ate Golden-Rod Eggs (a family meal that the kids love).

Here is Isabelle reading to her brother & sister.

After the kids went to bed, my friend Telma came over and we canned pear compote (sort of jam, but closer to a spread). Although, after a mix-up on my part between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, we canned a lot more jars than I had originally intended. Oops, hehehe. :) Luckily, that tired me out so I went right to sleep (at 12:30am).

Wednesday - pretty normal day. After school the weather was so beautiful that we went outside to play. We ended up staying outside for about 4 hours. While the kids were playing, I started doing a kakuro puzzle. Isabelle brought me her puzzle book (it started off as a word search book that she could do herself, but now it is into more difficult stuff that she wants my help with all of the time). So we spent an hour or so doing a "Places, please."

The kids had a lot of fun with the sidewalk chalk. They drew up and done the ballisters, and completely covered the two boards that Tom had replaced while he was here.

We ate hot dogs on the deck and I didn't stress about whether they stayed in their seats, or stood on them, or any of a number of things I normally would have been anal about. Instead, we just enjoyed being together.

Even Emily had fun.

After the kids are in bed it is peaceful, but I can't sleep because I don't have my hubby to snuggle up to.

Thursday - I'm developing confidence by this point in time that I can handle kids by myself and I can even have fun doing it.

The morning is chilly so I tell Miriam she needs a long sleeve shirt or sweater and socks. This is Miriam's version.

The sweater didn't last long, but at least the socks stayed on. Miriam and David are running in circles around Emily who is loving it. Dinner... taquitos, chicken nuggets, and a fruit/protein shake. The taquitos ended up being too spicy for them, so I ate them all. Hehe.

Friday - More of the same but by this time I'm getting tired. Dinner... corn dogs and canned peaches. Called my sister for help on my Relief Society lesson since I didn't have Jonathan home to discuss it.

Saturday - Pajama Day! We stayed in our pajamas all day, except David, who I changed before I came up with the idea of having a pajama day and eventually Miriam switched to the dress she loves so much. If you look at all of the pictures, Miriam is wearing the same dress every day. No matter what clothes she starts out in each day, she always ends up back in her favorite dress.

We had "lunchables" for lunch. I cut up slices of cheese, turkey lunchmeat and apples, then added different crackers and toast with homemade pear compote. The kids and I had great fun trying out all different combinations. My favorite was the white swiss/american cheese with apple.

Later, we cleaned up the house in preparation for Jonathan's return home, although it hadn't really been that bad. In the past, I have always thought I kept the house fairly clean in part because I knew Jonathan liked it that way, but I discovered while he was gone, that I just can't stand a mess either. The more messy the house, the more I feel like chaos reigns, and the more I feel like I can't handle life. So poor Jonathan always got blamed for my chores although it was really about me all along. Oops. ;) I made a second discovery while he was gone. In my attempt to keep kids happy, I had planned out ahead of time all of the meals for the week so it wasn't a big deal making dinner each night. Of course, the easy meals I chose helped with that. But suddenly, the next week, dinners became a big deal and a chore for me again. So after a few days of that, I started planning my week in advance and suddenly making dinner was more enjoyable. I wasn't wasting the half hour I had available to cook (because I procrastinated deciding what to make) going through recipes and trying to decide what sounded good when nothing really did anyway. I know, probably nothing new to you, but it was a reminder to me of something that I know in my brain, but have trouble translating into changed behavior.

Saturday night after the kids were in bed and I was relaxing thinking that Jonathan was going to be home in a couple of hours when I got a phone call from him. "Honey, I missed my plane." What????? He had called me from the airport hours before his plane was to leave, how could he have missed it??? Yes, well, now I know that the Chicago airport is notorious for changing the gate without informing anyone. So Jonathan, having arrived hours early was sitting off in a corner , keeping his ears open for announcements, but none came. So about the time he thought the plane was getting ready to board he wandered over to the gate and his flight wasn't posted there anymore. Upon checking, he saw that they had changed the flight to a different gate across the terminal and the boarding gate was already shut. And it was the last flight of the night. Aaarrggggg... So they rescheduled him for Sunday morning and he prepared to sleep at the airport all night. He later told me of his miserable attempt to sleep before deciding to give it up. So he set out in search of the perfect wall with outlets nearby. Since he was coming back from teaching his seminar, he had all of his electronic gear with him... his laptop, LCD Projector, etc. So he set it all up and watched Man vs. Wild for hours (he didn't have any movies loaded onto his laptop since he never thought he would have time to watch them). He got quite a few admiring looks. I mean, hey, if you're going to be stuck at an airport all night, you can at least do it in style, right? The next morning he went to his gate early and again almost missed his plane since they changed the gate again. Luckily this time it was just down the way a little, but he still had to run to get there in time. And then it sat on the tarmac for an extra hour.

Meanwhile, I'm at home, thinking my husband will be home soon and help me get kids ready for church so I can get a few extra minutes in last minute prep for my lesson. I check the computer for flight status. Oh no, the plane's late. Well, there goes choir practice, as well as any visual aids I might have made. Um, is he even going to be home by the time we have to leave? Hooray! He makes it home (barely). And out the door we go with him wearing the same clothes he wore the day before and with him falling asleep in the pew. He took Emily home after sacrament (she was a touch on the sick side anyway) and he crashed. I taught my lesson. It went okay, but not as well as I know I could have done. It was one of those times when I prayed heavily that the Lord would make up for my inadequacies.

So that was my week without Jonathan. The kids and I had a blast together and I was more than happy to have my hubby back home in the end.

More fresh fruit...

I love summer in Connecticut with all of the fresh fruit and veggies. While Tom and Sandy were still here (August 19th), two of my friends, Kim & Kristi, and all of their kids came over so we could can peaches. I've never done it before so it was a great learning experience for me. We canned two bushels of peaches in 3-4 hours. Not bad considering we had 10 kids between the three of us. The kids had fun playing outside, watching Diego, and trying to catch spiders to feed the frog they found. We let the poor frog go at the end of the day.

My share of the loot.

The next day, (August 20th) Sandy decided she wanted to take home some blueberries so off we went to the orchards to pick some. She later froze them all and managed to take them on the airplane with her. Surprisingly, they were still pretty much frozen by the time she got home.

The kids had great fun.

We grabbed some apples and peaches while we were there.

On Labor day, Jonathan and I decided we had better do something with the profusion of tomatoes in our garden... salsa!

What a beautiful sight.

Jonathan had the dubious pleasure of chopping peppers.

At least this year we remembered the latex gloves. They were much easier to work with than last year's plastic sandwich baggies over the hands.

Isabelle ended up being a great helper. First she peeled the tomatoes that I boiled and iced. Then she helped me deseed them.

The fruits of our labors.

Next up... pear and apple season. Yummy!

August's Final Project - The Basement

The main project of the three Jonathan's Dad worked on while visiting in August was our basement. We had a large unfinished laundry room with full view of the water heater, boiler, circuit box, etc. I grew to dread doing laundry. Who wants to kneal on a dirty, cold concrete floor in a in an ugly room with poor lighting and laundry scattered everywhere? There was also a little pantry in one corner of the room which was fairly ineffective, so we had put metal shelves up in the laundry room as well as a fridge. Finding ingredients for dinner became a treasure hunt, I had to search through 3-4 possible locations for each item.

First step - remove all items from both the laundry room and old pantry.

Second step - demolish the old pantry. Tom managed to do both of these steps the first day he was at our house.

Third step - paint the walls with dryloc and frame out the new rooms. We weren't too happy with the town's rules that the boiler had to be 3 feet from any walls. Lots of lost space. Oh well, we'll probably put all of our water storage in that area.

Fourth step - call in the plumber to rework the locations for the washer/dryer and add in plumbing for a sink.

Fifth step - Tom put in all of the electrical. He also changed the location for the pantry light and added a light in the new "mechanical room."

Here is a picture of the new pantry taken from the doorway.

This is the pantry from the new laundry room.

Here is the edge of the laundry room and a view of the mechanicals room.

And finally, the view from the mechanicals room to the other side of the laundry room.

Sixth step - insulate and attach drywall.

Isabelle helped hand the screws to Grandpa.

Almost done with the pantry!

Seventh step - tape the seams and paint the rooms. Add molding around the doorways.

Eighth step - install drop ceiling.

The pantry ceiling is done. (No, the walls aren't different colors, it's just the lighting.)

Tom and Sandy are hard at work on the laundry room ceiling.

I loved the color that I picked for the laundry room. So refreshing!

Eighth step - install laminate flooring. (And bifold doors)

Isn't this fun?

Almost there.

Look how slippery and fun the new floor is!

Look'in good. But wait, what's this? Tom and Sandy are leaving me? Nnnnooooo!!!!!

Ninth step - paint and install baseboard molding.

Tenth step - assemble laundry room sink. (still need to have the plumber come back and install it for me).

The pantry is done! Hooray!

Now this is a room I can work in. :)

Storyland Travelog - August 21-23

We decided a family vacation was in order since the last trip we took as an entire family was a year ago. We heard from some friends about a place up in New Hampshire called Storyland. Basically, it's Disneyland for younger kids; aimed at ages 0-12 yrs old with the strongest target being the 6-yr old.
Thursday, 4:30pm - we gather the troops and head out. A 4 1/2 hour drive, made easier by allowing the kids to watch "Cars", and delayed slightly by the treasure hunt we found ourselves in (searching for the hotel in the dark). We arrive at the Merrill Farm Resort and check in. First impression: cozy and quaint. Grandma and Grandpa get the queen bed downstairs, the rest of us get the loft with two full beds. A phone call later, we get the promised porta-crib. Then, Jonathan and Tom become my heroes by carrying the rocking chair up the stairs so I have a place to nurse the baby at night. David goes into the porta-crib and the girls into one of the beds. Jonathan and I go downstairs to enjoy a little TV with his parents while waiting for the kids to fall asleep. 6 trips later to put the kids back in bed and only 1 of the 3 is asleep. Isabelle and Miriam are having fights over where the exact middle line of the bed is. Jonathan crashes on the other bed. I feed baby and whisper furiously at the girls some more. Miriam seems to have issues with gravitating toward the nearest warm body. I give up and tell Isabelle to go sleep with Daddy. Emily ends up in the carseat and I take the bed with Miriam. I keep waking up during the night thinking that Emily will be hungry... but she remains asleep. A miracle has occurred. She slept the entire night and didn't wake to eat until 7 the next morning. Meanwhile Miriam has taken her place for waking me up by continuing to gravitate toward the nearest warm body... mine. I hope that whomever she marries later in life likes to be hot and likes having legs and arms strewn over him throughout the night.

Friday morning - Everyone conviently wakes up at about the same time. We head to the continental breakfast. Not a great spread, but the 5 varieties of homemade muffins are quite tasty, and they had hot chocolate so I'm a happy camper.

We decide to check out the downtown area in the historic town of Glen, New Hampshire. Oops, wrong turn. It's a good thing we didn't discover we were going the wrong direction for about fifteen minutes or we never would have discovered the cool little train place.

Ah, aren't they cute?

Next stop, Zeb's General Store. Who would think a store could be so cool?

Inundated with maple syrup products, salsa samples, a 70 ft long candy counter and fun paraphanelia we were happy to spend some of our hard-earned money appeasing the kids with a new toy for each of them, appeasing Jonathan with Pineapple Salsa, and me with, um, a happy family. :)

Lunch was at the Homestead Restaurant... an old house passed down from generation to generation since 1852. Yummy food and great character. I pat myself on the back for choosing such a fine establishment.

Then back to the hotel for naptime. Jonathan, Tom, Sandy, and Isabelle go canoeing in the Saco river with no camera (sorry). Isabelle, though enthusiastic, wasn't as skilled in her paddling. Poor Jonathan.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Storyland I go. They have a terrific deal there... buy tickets after 3pm and you get in the next day too.



We check out the Mother Goose storybook area first. Yep, bad Mom here. My kids didn't know most of the stories. Luckily, they were excited to see all of the animals, whether or not they knew the live sheep was there for "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" or the spider was hanging off the tree to represent "Little Miss Muffet." I mean, hey, its a spider. That's cool, right?


Somehow Sandy and David got the fast boat. They were doing circles around us. This ride ended up being Isabelle's favorite.

Saturday morning - we head back to Storyland for a fun-filled day.

It's a good thing she is just so adorable because I wasn't feeling too kindly toward her that day. First, she wants to be held. Then she wants to eat. Then she has a blowout. Then eats some more... and spits up all over the place. Only 2 hours later and of course she is absolutely starving right when we are nowhere near a mother's room. Yep, get this. At Storyland they have a mother's room attached to each restroom with rocking chairs for nursing mothers. Too bad there's no A/C. Blissful rocking in a beautiful breeze through the open windows you might think, and you would partially be correct. Unfortuantely, not all of the mother's rooms had such wonderful orientations. Sweltering, that's what I would call it. Nursing is hot business anyway, especially with an oven for a baby up against you. Then add stagnant heat and humidity. I was a geiser of water which tickled as it trickled down my back and front and forehead and nose, and you get the picture. And when I return from feeding this entity that seems to always be attached to me, what do I find? Jonathan with an ice cream cone. Again. Every time I turned around, he had another one. And the one time I attempted to buy one, did I actually get to eat it? Of course not; the kids confiscated it after only two bites on my part. They were pretty cute with their mouths open and pleading like baby birds.

The hats made it easy to find them each time I returned from the mother's room.

It's amazing how exciting driving a car is until you have to do it everyday.

Ah. Waiting in line is made easier through more appeasements bought at Zeb's the day before. Rock candy, yummy!

Who can roll a rock weighing several tons? Our kids can! With the nifty help of water. Float a rock on a thin bed of water and watch it spin.

I am conveniently feeding the baby as they go around and around and around. I used to have a solid stomach. Not anymore. Oh the changes that occur to your body after you have your first baby. I've become a boring adult now. For shame. ;)

Got milk?

Jonathan's version of watching the baby... lay down with an ice cream in hand.

Resting up at the end of a long day.

A circus, a train, roller coasters and sidewalks spewing water. What's not to love about Storyland? Saturday night we head back to Connecticut, stopping for pizza, and watching "High School Musical" in the backseat before the kids zonk out in blissful exhaustion. A successful and fun trip for all.