It's been a while since I penned lyrics

Milk in glass bottles from a local dairy.

Serving my kids milk that's not hormone-scary.

Returning the bottles each week makes me sing:

These are a few of my favorite things...

(So I'm a little rusty...)

Belated Lent

So many things in my life are belated at the moment. And I've belatedly decided to give up saying anything that indicates how busy and frantic I feel. For one thing, everyone is busy and frantic. (As my sister-in-law Becky once stated matter-of-factly, "Everyone's busy and no one thinks they have enough money.") For another thing, unless I can do something about it, I should just draw on the grace for each day and practice contentment in all the things that are right and good and full of joy. There are lots of those.

And even though Easter is right around the corner, maybe I can keep this up until Earth Day. :)

Happy Belated B-Day to Alan

Amelia's birthday note to Daddy last week. :)

Hallway Architecture

Check out this Zhu Zhu Pet bungalow. I love what happens when kids unplug. Keep in mind our children do their fair share of playing Wii and watching movies, but I do love those times when hours of play happen without any electronic help.

And speaking of being unplugged, after nine months in Narnia, we finally finished The Last Battle. Sigh.

The only thing that's keeping me from crying about leaving Narnia is that we jumped immediately into...the Little House books. :)

Yes, I KNOW...

...that the stomach flu post immediately followed the we-ate-bugs-at-the-Science-Center post. But the flu was much more likely the result of sharing a handrail with a sick person than eating a mealworm prepared in salsa. :)

Gladly, we bid farewell to the flu. Do not make haste to return.

Dinner tonight? Cheese paninis and a mesclun, strawberry, and apple salad. Very tasty, with my favorite salad dressing in the world:

Whirl the following in the blender until smooth:

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup oil

1/3 cup red wine vinegar (I often add a little extra...love the vinegar bite!)

1 tsp dry mustard

salt/pepper to taste

Hello, Stomach Flu.

It's been a long time since you were here. Can't say that I missed you. At all.

How long do you plan to stay? Don't feel the need to visit with all of us.

Weak stomachs might want to skip this post :)

Once we learned that 80% of the world's cultures have insects as a dietary staple, we had to jump on the bandwagon! The Science Center's current Insect Exhibit features a Louisiana chef on Saturdays serving up gourmet hors d'ouevres a la bugs. (Don't worry, they weren't alive.)

I was proud of my future Survivor contestants, who reveled in their unique snack. Check out those little worms in the salsa!

We brought one of Evelyn's schoolmates along, but I have no pictures. She kept shrinking miserably away with a look of "I can't believe you people are DOING this!" on her face.

She warmed up once we got to the dinosaur exhibit (not for consumption), and fortunately the bug horrors faded away in the light of hours of well, normal fun.

So...who wants to go to the Science Center with us THIS Saturday??

Evelyn's Breakfast Prayer

"Dear God, thank you for this breakfast. Thank you that we have healthy milk from healthy, local cows. Amen."

Hee hee. I admit pride in the cow statement...however, my pride should probably be in the fact that she's praying. :)

"REALLY, Mom?!?"

This picture, taken at the Science Center, captures a bit of the attitude Evelyn had when she responded to me in the car yesterday.

On our way to church we pulled up next to our friends' teenagers on their way, too. Our girls were thrilled to give me the blow-by-blow about what the teens were wearing and doing as we shared the road.

At one point I said, "I wish we had puppets. You guys could give them a puppet show," thinking I'd follow up with the story of how my brother and I used to while away road trip hours entertaining the folks behind us. We'd constantly ask Mom and Dad, "Are they smiling? Do they see us? Did they laugh??"

But before I got to my childhood story, Evelyn replied, "REALLY, Mom? You would WANT us to distract our friends while they're DRIVING?!? Our FRIENDS?!? Why would you WANT us to do THAT?"

My apologies to the hundreds of distracted drivers across the miles of US highway during the 1970's.

You whine? You lose an eyeball.

I'm a sucker for a system.

Diana gave us this great responsibility chart. But its big, chunky magnets for each block made it a challenge to record TWO kids' weekly accomplishments.

After failing to find any small magnets, I resorted to making my own using little craft eyeballs and sticky-back magnetic strip. Amelia's are pink, and Evelyn's are yellow (coordinating w/the colors of their "blankies.")

We fill in the whole week at one go, and the goal is to keep all your eyeballs. (Notice the "no whining" blocks have DOUBLE the eyeballs of the other blocks...we all go through phases...)

I'll let you know how it goes. So far it seems very motivating, and I must say, it can really re-direct all our attitudes when I say out loud, "Think about what you're doing--do you want to lose an eyeball?"

New Year's Eve

Nothing like March 1st for remembering the start of the 2-month-old year! For the third year in a row, we headed down to Baltimore's 34th street in Hampden to see the lights at dusk. Shelley went with us, and we met our friends Betsy and Logan there.

As you can see, there are times when it's pretty in the city!

Then we headed home to watch "Tangled," play Wii, order Thai food (another recent tradition) and play three-handed Rook. Shelley, Alan and I barely made it to midnight. :) The girls were in bed long before that. (We learned our lesson about keeping the kids up late!)