Halloween Hangover

Yes.  It's so sad but so true.  Our house has a Halloween hangover.  It ain't pretty.  Wrappers everywhere, every day, even after all the warnings, even after knowing this happens year after year.  And that huge candy haul means candy bags all over the kitchen counters and in cabinets because if you let kiddos take those in their rooms....MESSY! (messier, I should say).

Evidence (blech):

In other, perfectly pleasant, news, my husband is wearing a homemade gelatin pore-cleansing mask at my strong urging request.  A big deal that he even agreed to it.   Hehehe!

Ode to my bathroom heater?

It's a no picture post because who wants a picture of my bathroom heater?  Remember me talking about being the hibernating bear?  Well, said bear likes to crank up the bathroom heater on cold winter mornings and enjoy a hot shower, knowing when I step out the bathroom will feel like a sauna.  Leaving the bathroom, that's a whole different problem, and we won't even talk about how bad hot showers are for my skin and hair.  I am SO, SO, SO THANKFUL for hot water and bathroom heaters.  Huge blessings I take for granted.

'Tis the Season

This will be what today looks like.  Daph got our first stomach bug of the 2015-2016 season.  After all that sanitizing of grocery carts and only 3 kids in the nursery on Sundays, I'm not sure how she is first to be contaminated, but here we are.

In other thoughts, I have got to up my exercise game this winter.  I love outdoor exercise.  I do not like gyms.  I do not like exercise videos.  I like to be outside.  When it turns cold, I turn into a hibernating bear.  I want to stay warm inside and eat lots of food.  I took the below pic this morning on my extremely brief walk.  With my bum destined for an office chair 10 hours today, I thought anything to get my blood pumping beats nothing.  6 days a week lady!  You need to be doing something, anything, for 30+ minutes 6 days a week.

Sshhhhh!

I have this huge need to create.  Great talk about that by Dieter Uchtdorf.  My schedule now allows no completely alone time...except for sleep...and sleep is VERY important to this lady.  The problem with this is I like to be alone for hours when I create.  Um, not gonna happen, so I try my best to breathe deeply, realize it may not be my best work but it beats doing nothing, and I play away as the cat lays on my work, kids crawl on me and the table and pull all my stuff out, and take lots of breaks to make meals, work, help with homework, do carpools, etc.  Not ideal but doable when I desperately must create.  When I think about creating this way, I cringe sometimes, but on the days I just bite the bullet and do it, I feel very happy and fulfilled, as imperfect as the whole process is.

My current project is kind of big as I am making Daphne a quiet book...actually not to be used while she is quiet but just to teach her skills and occupy her hands, hand which demand to be doing something always, and I would prefer that something to be direct and productive.

Here it is so far.  I went with a jeans cover out of nowhere...maybe resourcefulness?  It buttons shut, plus has handles to carry it by.

 Had to do a ladybug page with magnetic spots.

Nod to my love of gardening and orchard hopes with carrots and apples to "harvest."  Then with all that produce she can bake a pie and weave a lattice pie crust.

And I loved the idea of putting together a teddy bear.  My children assure me it does not look to macabre when the teddy is missing his arms and legs.

 And the back of the cover has mittens to slip your hands into.

Remember how I said I have no time to work on this project alone?  It's true, not even late at night because I work every night late except Saturday night (by which time I am exhausted, brain dead, and really only good for cuddles and a movie) and Sunday night, which I like to dedicate to relaxing, studying and mentally preparing for the week.  So the kids, including Daphne (I can't even do it during her nap time because, alas, I work then, too.  ACK!), are watching the whole process.  I try to not let Daphne play with it so most of it will be a surprise...hopefully????...but Shawn and Ben have certainly dug in and played with the finished parts and seem to really like it.  Daddy DID let Daphne put her mitts in the mittens, and she thought that was hilarious.  I am hoping it is still a fun surprise, maybe made sweeter by the fact that she wanted to touch it so bad all of this time, and finally, on Christmas (or her birthday if all heck breaks loose), she will have sweet victory at last.

I read somewhere that it is important to make sure your kids see you doing things you enjoy and not just the work, work, work of running the household, so I hope even though it is a me thing, and occasionally I shove the cat off my sewing or desperately squeal, "Don't touch that!" that it is doing them some good, knowing that you can do what is important and matters most, that you can be really, really busy with the essentials of life, but you can still do what makes your heart sing, too, even if it isn't up to snuff, and it is squished and shoved into little bits and pieces of the days and weeks and months of life.

I am so excited.  I already have pieced together a horse page with a tail and mane to bread and 2 flower pages to lace a bee through flowers #1-10.  Desperately hoping those are sewn by Saturday but the forecast says meh.

The Melody, The Harmony, The Rhythm

As I was driving the S-Man to preschool, DG and Shawn started to click their tongues to the sound the turn signal was making.  The clicking was interspersed with their giggles.  I thought about how much I love so many sounds my kids make.  The sound of first words, the sound of mama (although hard to hear yelled loudly and repetitively at 6:30 a.m.), quietly singing or humming to themselves, the giggles and laughs, the screams of playing children without a care in the world, sweet I Love You's, teaching each other things, talking about what is important to them, what they want to know, what they are worried and scared about.  I love to hear all the knowledge contained in Matt's and Ben's brains.  I love to hear Lily (muffled and pretty much understandable) as she talks and talks while I'm working, with my headphones, knowing full well I probably can't hear her but desperately wanting to still share.  Thank goodness she normally wins out and I stop for a minute to hear what she is actually saying.  It has been this way since she was 2 years old.  Shawn asks me about 5 times a day, "What day is it?"  And he asks me a lot of questions that he clearly knows the answers to, yet he stills asks...maybe because he just loves to talk?  Daph's screams may make all within range cringe as their tympanic membranes die a little, but she has the funniest laugh when you tickle her or chase her.  She sings to herself more than any of the other kids did when they were little.  Do-do-doooo!  Yes, I love their singing and playing and talking and learning all the cool sounds and words and noises they can make with their mouths...and don't even get me started on how much I love having the actual music they create with piano played in this house.

So often I am overwhelmed...which is clearly demonstrated on this blog.  I kind of have a spunky, adventurous, wanderlust part of me that stays hidden to the outside world.  Thus, I can let the rhythm of the mundane day to day drag me down, but noticing all the little not-mundane details of what seems like a boring Groundhog Day repeat but really actually factually totally is anything but ordinary makes the music of my life sound pretty lively after all.

Good news today is November 3rd, no more pretending, AKA the post about the pumpkin patch

Leetle wee Shawn.  Sometimes being a middle child feels like getting lost in the crowd (at least that's how it seems to me), but he is such a fun kid, and I was super excited to get time off work, so I could go with him to the pumpkin patch.  I love that Shawn gets to go to preschool.  It's like his own special place, a home away from home with no big bros or sister to boss him around.  

Now every Nicholes kid has gone to the Linder Farm pumpkin patch.  L and M went as they went to the same preschool Shawn is at, and even Ben went with his preschool (but they didn't allow parents on that trip).

DG was cuckoo the whole time because it was her nap time.  She loved the animals, though.  All the things the signs warned against, she tried really hard to do.  Don't stick my head in the pen?  I'll show them!

 Bright sun selfie.  We were on the hayride.  Shawn and I were having a good time.  Daphne was trying to be a big girl and wouldn't let me touch her (I secretly held on to the back of her pants so she wouldn't fall) as she bumped all over on the trailer that tracto was pulling.  You know, I have the hardest time loving my face with glasses on it.  I apparently have some deep-seated biases against me with glasses.  Doesn't bother me on anyone else but on me...sigh...maybe I will crack and get contacts...but enough about me.

A new feature was this giant black culvert they had turned into a slide, angling it against a straw bale pyramid.  Shawn made the happiest Wheee sounds you ever heard as he shot down it.  I don't know what Daph would have done...we didn't dare try.

"I own this place!" thought the 1 year old always.

Oh, and a corn pit to play in.  Not as sharp as I used to be because when I was sweeping/mopping/vacuuming last week I was wondering where all this huge kernels of corn came from that I found around the toilet and under the couch cushions.  Aha moment.

And we even encountered a train on the way to pick up Lily when we were done.  That happens like once every couple of years in our meanderings around town, so pretty cool.

All right.  I'm caught up.  Now I have 27 more days to blog.  We will see what I end up writing about.  There is a lot going on in my head, so letting some of it pour out onto the screen shouldn't be that hard.

Camelback Park - An Unintentional Tradition

Still pretending.  This is my pretend November 2nd post.

Maybe I have a little bit of hawk or eagle or, gulp, vulture in my blood, or maybe it is that thin thread of old royalty that runs through my blood, but I like to get up above it all and be able to survey my surroundings.  THE place to do that in Boise is Camelback Park.  It is set into the foothills and has lots of ups and downs like a camel's humps.  I can't even remember when the first time was I went there, but I know I have dragged Lucas there several times.  I remember being very unfit and hauling babies up it, and me being pregnant and hiking around.  We even tried to watch fireworks from up there one year.  It wasn't THAT cool, but I do love it there, and my kids (who used to just complain when I told them we had to hike up the hill and back down before they could play on the playground) now pretty much love hiking around too.  Somehow hiking there in the fall to check out Le Bois is a definite tradition, even though, if the weather cooperates, we have done it in March, January, all summer long, etc.  Fall has been super late this year, so not very many trees had changed, but it was still a perfectly beautiful day... and the first time DG did a lot of walking rather than being carried.  Oh how she loves to run FREEEEE!  She also likes stink bugs...a lot...as we learned on this hike.  The kids always look forward to near the end when we reach a nice steep sandy hill leading up to some sandstone where they can crawl and carve and have a generally awesome time.  It reminds me a bit of my young childhood as we had some sand hills around the ranch.

Simple play is the best!  Playing in nature is even better.  Tech stinks.  (My mantra...which is not appreciated by many people) :)

Lily, looking back at DG and I, noticed the artsy looking framing of the trees, so we had to have some fun with that.

 Shawn carried his little card with a pic of Jesus that he had found in the car the entire hike with him, even climbing up and down the slightly dangerous sand hill.

Ah, yes, many excellent views from all over the park.  It felt so wonderful to sit at the top of the sand hill watching the kids play.  I enjoyed it extra because minutes before some punk kid (who needed punched) was blasting really, really obscene music as he walked hand in hand with his girlfriend, desperately seeking attention, I guess.  As a mom I felt bad, but with my quick, although absurd thinking, I just started talking really loudly to the kids, having them cheer Daphne up the hill, etc, and they didn't even notice the gross music.  Seriously, how much does a girl have to hate herself to walk proudly around with a guy that listens to music that demeans all women, including her?  People love yourselves!  Love each other!  Don't be morons.

Thus, when the crappy music was silenced and it was just the sounds of contented children playing, happy dogs, and the occasional bike whizzing by, with the beautiful surroundings below, I had a heavenly few moments.  Yippee!