Hiker Bars on a Budget

This fall I had a brain wave after I was once again disgruntled by the ickiness of a cheap granola bar, contents: oats, corn syrup, preservatives. If it is just you going hiking, you can go buy all the Clif Bars you want, but for a family of seven, this would be about the price of crowd-sized beef roast, and that isn’t how we roll around here. We love homemade granola bars, but I was wanting something not sticky, more in the line of a power bar with lots of protein. I needed it to be portable when we do outdoor sports. I needed it to be reasonably affordable. I needed it to be easy, because otherwise it wasn’t going to happen.

My idea was to combine homemade energy bites with a granola bar recipe. We loved them, but they were too crumbly to be practical except straight out of the freezer. Then the brain wave hit… why not get some quality dark chocolate and coat them, then wrap them individually, just like power bars? Now we were in business. May I introduce you to Hiker Bars on a Budget, our not so top secret recipe that we made up all by ourselves. 🙂

Combine in a saucepan and stir together over low heat until melted:

½ cup peanut butter

⅓ cup coconut oil

⅓ cup honey

Stir into this mixture:

1 cup rolled oats (we toasted them for 10 minutes, then chopped them up in a food mill)

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1 scoop protein powder, vanilla flavored

2 Tb. chia seeds or flax seeds/meal (You could use more. Some of my people think seeds annoy their teeth so I go light on them.)

½ cup of any combination of chopped nuts, sunflower seeds, dried fruits, etc. Here is where I go with chopped walnuts.

a dash of sea salt and a splash of vanilla

Line an 8×8 pan with parchment paper then press the mixture into the pan with a spatula. Pop it into the freezer for about an hour so that it sets firmly enough to lift out of the pan. Cut into desired size with a sharp knife. I make 18 bars out of one pan.

Use a double boiler to melt dark chocolate coating wafers (an 11 oz bag is ample, but you can stretch your chocolate with food grade paraffin that will also make the chocolate dry harder) then dip the pieces in it to cover the bar all around. (Keep them frozen until you are ready for this step, or you will have them disintegrating in the molten chocolate, which is not the worst thing that could happen, but just not what you are wishing for at the moment.) You don’t need more than a thin layer to hold it all together, but when you are expending a lot of energy and starving, nobody cares about 50 extra calories. Honesty compels me to say that these photos are milk chocolate and it was thicker than necessary. (Yum.) But the dark is the best.

Once the chocolate has hardened, wrap the individual pieces in parchment paper and store them in the freezer or they will definitely be all scarfed up long before the hike you are planning.

This is not a low calorie food. For that you need celery, or you could just step off the trail and find some birch twigs to chew. According to Calorie Count, there are about 164 calories in one bar without the chocolate. They are small bars, which was the point. They don’t take up much room and they are nutrient dense. This is a power food, easily made, stored and transported in a backpack. These bars will cause the frisbee to fly higher and the bikes to pedal easier, but should not be given to children in low-key-let’s-all-just-play-go-fish-while-we-wait situations.

I have tried these with a number of variations. Gabe and Alex don’t like the sun butter ones. Once I tried sucanat to sweeten them because I was out of honey, but it was too dry and I ended up adding more goopy stuff. Gregory and I agree that any granola-ish stuff held together with nut butter and wrapped in chocolate is fine, just fine.

By my calculations, I can make a batch for less than 5 dollars. Of course, there is the time factor, but I have lots of that. 😉

Try them and tell me what you think. Better yet, add some original ingredients and tell us about them.

Reasons Why I Don’t Want to Be Thin

The End. There are none.

I wrote this a long time ago, but I think I finally have the courage to post it. Parts of it are joking and parts are dead serious. You can decide.

Reasons Why I Am Not Thin… Now that is another story altogether.

For starters, I got the Miller gene, the one that is short and tends to rotundity. It will be a lifelong tussle for me, and I feel quite realistically resigned to this. But the Millers are actually exceptionally nice people and I am glad I sprang from them. My uncles and aunts are the jolliest, most kind-hearted folks around and I couldn’t love them more if they were ectomorphs. (Just a little friendly advice here: if you are an ectomorph and you want people to like you, do not mention things like being able to eat anything you want and never gaining weight.)

I am a terrible dieter. My philosophy that life is better when it is actually enjoyed tends to include things like occasional toasted bagels with cream cheese or actual sugar to sweeten my Earl Grey, or bits of real chocolate. I do not even feel guilty if I choose a piece of carrot cake not labeled THM, S, off the dessert table at fellowship meal.

Also I have a problem: whenever I cut calories drastically my body wails, “She isn’t eating enough! We are going to starve. Hang on to everything you have!” This makes weight loss very difficult and it makes me so grouchy that I just want to chew stuff. My husband does not like when I am grouchy, and neither do my children. “Mama, we don’t want you to get as skinny as _______. (Super disciplined lady we know and love.) We wouldn’t even know you anymore!” Haha. Recently I posted a picture on Facebook that my ten year old son drew. He is very suspicious of diets and suspects that thin women need nourishment. Do Trim Healthy Mamas feed their children well? he wonders. Then again, there is Pudge-o-saurus, whose salad is simply too large, or maybe has too many croutons and bacon bits on it. I am striving to hit a happy medium here.

My husband is a nurse. He talks sense to me about diet and lifestyle and how it is all about taking care of our health. If you are not living indulgently and cramming too many calories and junk all the time, thank God for the food and enjoy it he says. If you have health issues, look at your diet and make changes. I might mention also that he loves me and makes me feel beautiful, and he has always done this, even when I was nine months pregnant. This is a man worth having and a very happy place for a woman like me to be.

Lifestyle is a big deal. I stay home and in the wintertime I mean like really stay home. Sure, I run around after children and up and down steps and around beds when I change the sheets, but it is a pretty sedentary life. Every chance I get, I slip out of the house in the evening for a brisk walk by myself, thankyouverymuch, but that is more about sweeping the uglies out of the soul and restoring peace internally than about aerobics. I am grateful to be able to play tag and hike and bike with my children. What I don’t have time for is hours at the gym.

Last but not least, I have gained and lost about 120 pounds in the process of giving birth to five babies. I am not even a little apologetic about that, and I will not feel sub-par because I look like maybe I had a few babies. I refuse to bow to the popular opinion that the only woman worth anything is the woman who makes what she looks like her top priority in life. (Someday I shall tell you about the most beautiful women I know.)

So. There you have it. All my excuses. And here is a confession: Sometimes I do feel very envious and large beside ladies who manage to stay slender and I wish I had their determination. I would be happy to lose 20 pounds. I am working on it in my own private way, because I seem to be allergic to “in things”, even diets and chevron. The more rabid the following of a thing becomes, the more stubbornly determined I become to not join in. It is a bit of a problem, I know, but please just let me go. One more thing: if the comments stay quiet, I will never write such a thing again.

May I have some chocolate now?

Edit: I did try the THM stuff. I gained 4 pounds. This may be at the heart of my “allergy”. However I do applaud all women who have taken charge of their health by a diet and lifestyle change. I really do. Hats off to you!

A Moment of Silence

for my flowers. My beautiful, brave petunias. They called them tidal waves at the greenhouse. This is one plant. One amazing tidal wave of pink that made me happy all summer as it clamored over the barberry and way out of its assigned spot.

Gabe made these terraced steps a few years ago. They still amaze me, especially with trails of blooms on them. But tonight I pulled most of the flowers out. I can’t bear to see the petals blackened and ugly after frost, so I pulled them and disposed of them.

The boys chopped off the tough stems of our zinnia row in the garden, now that the butterflies are gone. I dug my calla lily bulbs and uprooted the blue salvia. All the herbs are spent and scrawny. There is only one doughty dahlia and a couple of confused lavendars still putting out fresh blooms.

I don’t like the bottom end of fall. It is so melancholy. I want to go to sleep too, or at least live with minimal effort, just kind of sipping tea and being quiet. Instead, the approaching winter requires me to dig down deep and put out fresh shoots of creativity to keep my little household happy. It requires more than usual patience and diligence in weed pulling or nasty habits and attitudes choke us altogether.

Maybe if I think of the challenges of a [mostly] housebound winter as another sort of gardening, it will be easier. Through faith and patience we inherit the promises! (But I still feel sad about my flowers.)

How to Have Breakfast in Bed

And Other Stories of Small Consequence

Today would probably be as good a day as any to have an emergency around here. They have apple dumplings in the local ER. I know because I got up early to bake them so I could send them with my husband when he left for work. Then I brewed coffee and took the extra apple I had baked for myself and went back to bed to eat it. That was wonderful.

How to Have an Impromptu Sleep-out

“Wow, it’s so warm, we could sleep in the backyard tonight,” I mused out loud. The problem with saying impulsive things like this in front of the little people is that they do not forget. I started to say how tired I was from cleaning like a maniac for days but they were sure this was just excuses from the real burning desire of my life to crawl into a sleeping bag for a change from the usual mattress and blankets routine. I slept in the playhouse that night, at least until 4:30, when I was getting a little tired of my 3 separate couch cushions and the various snufflings of sleeping children. I sneaked into the house, bringing Addy with me so that she would not waken and be frightened, this being her first time to sleep in the backyard.

How to Make a Small Boy Happy

I have mentioned Gregory’s happy place in the kitchen, how he hums and dusts flour and dispenses chocolate chips with benevolence. Recently he has discovered food coloring. It takes me right back to my childhood days when my brothers and cousins put coloring in things like potatoes or eggs. Did I unwittingly pass on this gene as a Schlabach thing, or is it inherent in every small boy? At any rate, we have red and green and blue and orange chocolate chip cookies in the house just now. “They look fantastic!” he said as he pulled them out of the oven. Behold the blue batch.

How to Clean Like a Maniac (as in, Overly Zealous Person)

When we got back from our anniversary jaunt, I looked around my house and knew with surety that the time had come. I strive to remain sensibly calm in regards to children living life fully and the ravages that puts upon my house, but there are seasons when I feel that every area is dirty and every corner is disorganized. The thought of spending winter in this is much more daunting than the thought of attacking it with zeal and getting it all ship shape. Why not just do it all right away, day after day, every afternoon when we are done with school? Why not just shampoo the rugs and wash all the bedding and wipe off the fingerprints and be done with it? So I did…All but the main area in the basement. I didn’t read for days. I was Productive Martha. I wish cleaning nourished my soul. I know some people like that, but for me, it is definitely just a means to an end.

Epiphany While Cleaning

While I was going through the girls’ room with a large trash bag (they were not present at the time) I suddenly realized what it is that is so odd about Pinterest children’s bedrooms. There are no treasures. The rooms have been carefully designed and decorated by a loving adult with gorgeous taste, who then takes photos before they allow the kids into the room. I sincerely hope that within a few weeks there will be rock collections and fronds of beautiful leaves and gigantic handmade paper dolls or fantastic Lego cars on those Ikea shelves. I hope that the tattered, most loved books can come out of hiding and the funny lumpy pillowpets that will not stay clean can return to the beds after the mama has taken the pictures. I felt better after I thought all that out.

Epiphany About Cleaning

Look around two days later. It’s a joke. It is beating back a swiftly returning chaos. But it isn’t wasted effort, surely. Surely?

How to be Late for Church

Stay in bed too long with the apple dumpling and the coffee before starting the process of dressing and polishing the crew. Bonus points for having a clock that needs the battery replaced. Bonus, bonus points for having lost shoes. Walk into church during the singing and smile as if no drama has happened at all in the last half hour.

How to Count Grace

Many years ago a mother taught her small boy that God speaks kindly through not just good and easy times, but through painfully grueling life lessons and this morning he relayed this message to our children. It struck me with the simplicity of Utter Truth. It is all around, the grace of God, the gifts of God, the favor of God. Providence, the foreseeing care of a wise and loving Father, may be an outmoded term, but it is all around me and I am grateful. I will never get finished counting grace.

Life is Like That

I feel like the train derailed on this blogging thing, and now I don’t know how to hitch it back up. Oh well, maybe I will just start with this past week, in which we had our thirteenth anniversary. We believe that the best thing we can do for our children is to have a vibrantly happy marriage. So we went trotting off without any children. Do you want to know how it felt?

It felt really, really strange. And it was so much fun. You could even say relaxing. Five children seems a bit much to drop on one person, so we left the girls with my parents and took the boys up north to be with Gabriel’s parents, which was close to our destination at Watkin’s Glen. We have never camped without the children, so this time we decided to go all minimalist. One kettle to boil water for hot drinks, some cheese sticks and power bars. Apples. Ramen noodles, just in case we got too hungry before we hit a restaurant. I am not kidding. And high quality chocolate, of course. A duffle bag for each of us and bedding to sleep in the conversion van we borrowed from my folks. That was it.

We hiked the Glen and biked all the trails at the campground, then needing a little something, we shared a grape pie sundae. A few hours later we went out for Chinese. This is something you don’t know before your tots come along… Very quickly they will take up your hands wherever you go, or else you will be clutching at them to hang onto them in parking lots and stores. Taking your children to a buffet style restaurant is so… involved. The luxury of just having each other for a few days is just that, a luxury, only one hand to hold, and it isn’t trying to run away!

We slept as long as we wanted, which means that when Gabe asked me if I was ever going to wake up and it was 10:30, I actually wanted to get up. Did I mention that we relaxed? I missed the children like everything. It was so odd to read and read by the campfire and nobody complained about being hungry. Campfire cooking is really fun, but it is also kind of exhausting, keeping ice in a cooler and washing greasy pans in lukewarm water, so this was a nice contrast. On the second day we traveled north along the Seneca Lake to the vineyards, stopping enroute for dessert and coffee at a funny little cafe, just because.

We picked 10 boxes of grapes to bring along home in just under 2 hours, then found the home of our friends, Nelson and Amy, who graciously served us a lovely supper and gave us a gorgeous guest room for the night.

The next morning it was time to collect the children in a 6 hour process that involved picking up the boys, stopping at an orchard and picking 3 bushels of apples, then coming on home for the girls. Life felt so do-able again, crazy schedules, complex responsibilities, needy people and all. It was good to get away, but it was even better to come back.

Remember the bit about the grapes and apples? There was no option but to don the apron and get to work. Half the grapes were for friends, but even so we steamed 58 quarts of juice. That should last a while. 🙂 While the steaming process was going on, I peeled a half bushel of apples for pie filling and to dry. It was a fun project, not one that I really had to do. By the end of the day, I was a little tired.

Early the next morning I lay in bed trying to decide if I had the stamina to make applesauce that day. It was a toss-up between wrapping up the canning all in one fell swoop or leaving it for another day when I wouldn’t feel like doing it either. I decided on the fell swoop, whatever that is. Alex got a day off school and we applesauced away. When the last batch was simmering on a cooker on the deck, I asked him to check on them while I ladled the sauce into jars. He thought they looked “almost ready”. By the time I checked on them, they were scorched into a brown mass on the bottom of the kettle.

It was the last rite of canning season… a hopelessly scorched kettle to scrub and soak and scrub and soak. I started in on it and quickly realized that this was the worst, horriblest scorched kettle ever. Google brought up a solution that turned on light bulbs in my head. I share this with you because I surely am not the only person who wants to throw kettles into the trash and slink away.

Just in case you ever have apples permanently stuck to your sauce pan, here is what you do: Pour peroxide into the kettle to about ½ inch depth. Sprinkle in a few teaspoons of baking soda and simmer it on low with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Touch the scorched spot with a wooden scraper and watch in delight as it lifts off the stainless steel bottom and floats gently upward.

Then you thank Jesus and pass the word along. Because nobody should spend hours scouring pans when they are dog tired from canning. Amen?

It is cold outside and the hot drinks are waiting. They are calling me to come play Settler’s. Cheerio!

Livvy’s Birthday

This is my little Livvy girl, my fragile child with the determined, sturdy spirit. She is smiling funny so that her very loose tooth doesn’t show. No matter how much we tried to persuade her that the tooth should stay back with six, she insisted that it needed to dangle along to seven.

We did a spur of the moment birthday party with my parents picking up a cake for her.

Her siblings had some little presents ready for her. As she unwrapped this present, it became evident that Rita had gifted her with one of Addy’s most prized treasures at the moment. It took only a second for Addy to snatch it back, “HEY, that is mine!” It is nice that seven is old enough to be amused instead of offended at such doings.

These two are best buddies, sharing the birthday loot and conspiring on how to quietly play with the teensy Strawberry Shortcake stuff without Addy noticing. Poor Addy.

And here we have the cake she really was hoping for: something with fondant decorations, like flowers and monkeys. We plan to share this with the school children tomorrow when we take a hot lunch to school. Marshmallow fondant is very fun to work with, but a project this large ~~was a little ambitious~~ required all hands on deck. Greg did the bushes, Alex did the monkeys and palm fronds, the little girls punched out flowers and stars with cutters and I supervised, arranged, and made the vine, etc. etc. I was, quite frankly, fried when it was finally finished. Have a happy day, everybody!

(Oh, look! The tooth came out today! Now there is the real smile! )

The Goldenrod Is Yellow

Some of you were wondering where in the world I have been. I will give you multiple choice options and we shall see how good you are at guessing.

Researching John and Abigail Adams
Going to the zoo
Feeding hundreds of people
Canning my tail feathers off
Refraining from saying things that are not kind
Hauling things up and down my attic steps
Bike shopping
Taking time to savor my coffee
Cutting holes in my daughter’s dress
All of the above

Let’s just assume you are smart about this sort of list and I will tell you that 10 is indeed the right answer. Regarding number 1, I am not certain that reading a page out of David McCullough’s 646 page biography every day at nap time can be considered research, especially as it is a library book and I doubt whether they will allow me to renew it often enough to finish it. I cannot believe the prodigious quantity of letters, sometimes 2 or 3 in a single day, that he and Abigail wrote during their frequent separations while America was learning how to be a country on her own. It is noteworthy, also, how very important it was in the early days for a politician to be scrupulously honest and virtuous. There is also an interesting biographical film of John Adams on Amazon that fascinated me. So yes, research of the Wikipedia and one page a day variety.

In all my childhood memory bank, I cannot recall anyone ever puking on the way to the zoo. Nor can I remember anyone desperately insisting that they Have to Go Potty when we were stuck in traffic so that my mom had to climb over seats to help them relieve themselves in a small goldfish crackers container. But I wasn’t the mom back then, so I may have forgotten. The zoo was fun though, especially with my sister and her family joining us from Ohio. That is my cute niece Jackie in the middle.

As for feeding hundreds of people, I should explain that I am counting my children 3 times a day, along with occasional friends and relations. When you figure it out, it’s 21 people a day just for our family (I pack Gabe’s lunch). No wonder the groceries fly off the shelves as fast as I haul them home. Or can them. I know the amount of food I preserve is laughably small compared to some. Gabe’s mom does hundreds of quarts of tomato juice every year. On the day I was hauling home 2 bushels of tomatoes to make into pasta sauce, I passed a middle aged guy in a red convertible, top down, hair ruffled in the wind, blissful expression on his face and all. I thought, “I don’t envy your life at all, buddy. But could we just trade for the next 24 hours?” Cause I think it would do him good to see a child’s delight at learning to mix primary colors in icing… after the tomato canning was done, of course. School marches on. I think we have 24 days done, even with all the days we took off. I love having the freedom to dismiss lessons for busy days because we started early. It took the pressure off majorly. And I have little runners to fetch and carry and husk and peel. They are such good helpers that some days I had time to write posts, but I found myself rereading them and hearing my mom in my head, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” So I didn’t. And no, you may not see my drafts folder.

The bike shopping turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. Olivia has been riding a small boy’s bike all year, and all year we have looked for a pink bike at yard sales. We don’t really see the point of buying brand new ones when they are still in the learning stages and crash all the time, but by her birthday she still didn’t have a bike her size. So I took her and Rita with me on an excursion to Altoona, first to a consignment sale where the only bikes were boys’ bikes, then to Walmart where I opened my eyes to the prices as well as the ugliness of the decals. I could just imagine how the Disney princesses would look after scraping against backyard trees and riding through the mud in the garden. Meanwhile Rita saw a teensy bike with a dolly carseat attached to it and began to sob quietly in her hopeless desire to own it. We decided to check Target, where they did not have a single 16 or 18 inch bike on stock. As we were walking out, the girls saw the Lego friends sets and Olivia said she would rather have one of those anyway, so I got her one for her birthday. That is not all, though. Our neighbors had a yard sale this weekend, and there was a lavender girl bike for 5 dollars, so the boys bought it for the birthday girl. Whew. *dusts off hands*

The birthday girl brings us to another subject: that of letting her pick out fabric at Walmart for a dress. If you know their fabric selection, you know that it is varied and unreliable as to quality, but right now they have a lot of cheap stuff, likely for costumes. We found some we liked and I planned the charcoal dress with a filmy purple overskirt. I was feeling a bit smug as I entered the home stretch of doing the overlock seam on the skirt in just under 3 hours. Suddenly I realized that the slippery fabric had doubled under and I was overlocking too many layers. Oh, please, please. But yes, the blade on the serger had cut a large gash right into the middle of the front bodice. The longer I studied it, the more I wanted to chuck the whole thing into the trash can. But I picked it apart and kept on working at it until it was all done. I love my little girl dearly but I have to admit that I kept thinking, “Ain’t nobody got time for this.” Here is the damage. Tomorrow I will try to post a picture of the girly in the dress. I have convinced her that she is now old enough to put her beloved blanket into the attic in her keepsakes box and the dress is a sort of swap or reward for bravery. The first time I broached the subject of the blanket, she burst into tears. You have to understand that with a dysfunctional adrenal gland, this blanket has gone with her for every lab draw and every scary doctor’s visit and swaddled her in every stressful situation since she was just wee. It has supplied comfort and calmed her for her entire childhood. She has staunchly defended it from her brothers’ merciless teasing. (Are you going to share your blanket with your husband?) And she has agreed to give it up. After all, it is flannel and it says Baby on the front. I am so proud of her! To the attic it went.

The Goldenrod Is Yellow…It really is, but the reason I used it for my title is because it is the first line of a poem I learned in second grade and this time of year I can hear our class chanting it vigorously as Teacher Sarah beamed at us with approval. Any of you others remember it? I can’t recall the whole thing but I would love to teach it to my children just for fun.

Anyway, that’s where I have been, plus a lot more besides. Where have you been?

How to Clean up Spilled Milk in Twenty-two Steps

A Public Service Bulletin

When we accidentally spilled nearly an entire gallon of milk in the Suburban earlier this summer, I needed just one website or one person who could say with authority, “Do this. This works.” My frantic google searches produced only suggestions of a tentative nature, “Try this. If that doesn’t work, try this. Or you could sprinkle this on it…” It was as if people only hypothetically spill milk and never have more than theories for cleaning it.

The milk had run from behind and under the driver’s seat along the the edge of the door all the way to the gas pedal. It was… epic… Somehow, by the grace of God and a whole lot of work, I blundered on a process that really did work. Not a trace of sour milk smell wafted around our vehicle even on the hot days, and you can believe that we did a lot of suspicious sniffing.

Whimper pathetically, “Oh. No. No, no, no, nooooo.”
Panic and pour about a half gallon of vinegar on the spill site.
Blot, blot, blot, blot, blot with towels.
Scratch towels. Get ShopVac and start sucking up the milk.
Look at amount of liquid in ShopVac and cry a little when you see that you may have 2 cups out of a gallon.
Pull off all plastic molding pieces around spill site so you can vacuum the padding under the carpet and the floor under the padding.
Notice that the vinegar has turned the milk into cottage cheesy blobs, effectively stopping it in it’s runny tracks.
Get a bucket of water and a rag and start cleaning up the cottage cheese, one blob at a time.
Pour a bottle of Peroxide on the spill.
Take a break to clean up the kids for a supper invitation.
Garner lots of sympathy from other people, as well as cautionary tales of carpets replaced, even vehicles replaced due to sour milk stench.
Go home at bedtime, tuck the kids in bed and get out the ShopVac again.
Vacuum that padding until it is frayed.
Sprinkle a box of baking soda on top of the carpet and on both sides of the padding.
Stuff plastic bottles under the carpet to lift it up and allow airflow.
Pray about the areas under the seat and up the console that couldn’t be reached effectively.
Go to bed and forget your troubles.
Have your dad pick up an oxy-based carpet cleaner at the auto store the next day. Spray it on liberally and scrub it in.
Call it good enough: please, please, please, Lord, don’t let this car stink.
Wait to remove the plastic bottle air spacers until the carpet is dry.
Replace the plastic molding pieces around the door frames.
Buy air fresheners and be astonished that you don’t even need them.

After doing a bit of research, I found that by using enzyme cleaners I neutralized the lactobacilli that would have caused the sour smell. It cost us about 10 dollars, vinegar, peroxide and baking soda included, versus a hundred dollars for detailing. I actually think the oxy carpet cleaner wasn’t necessary, but better safe than sorry.

May this never happen to you, but if it does, here is hope in 22 steps!

(Remember, these are your friends. Keep them on hand and you are home free! Almost.)

August Potpourri

I was dragging my tail at 2 o’clock this afternoon, so naturally I made myself a cup of coffee. Now, at 11 o’clock, I am still feeling it. I can’t handle caffeine, I know.

The last 2 weeks were stuffed full of fun and relatives on both sides of the family. We spent a few days up north with Gabe’s family in the middle of August. His folks hosted a reunion for the Peight family, no small matter when you consider that there were 14 boys and 2 girls in the original clan and most of them had substantial families as well. Gabe has more cousins than you could shake a stick at! The Peights are notorious for not getting together very much, but when they do, they have a great time, especially telling tales of the old days. I have often wished I could have met the mother of all those boys. (Or wait, was it 12 boys and 2 girls? Pretty sure it was 14, give or take a few.)

We were back home for a few days before two of my siblings and their families came for a visit. My parents have guest quarters in their basement, so we spent most of our visiting time at their house. With our limited space, it is easier for us to host a crowd if the weather is nice so that we can spill out onto the deck. However, it poured on the evening that we had the crew at our place for supper. Gabe grilled sausages with a big umbrella over himself. Eight adults and twelve children in our living room felt nice and snug. 🙂 To top it off, I had roasted cauliflower in my oven. It tasted amazing but put off an awful stench that lingered the entire evening. Note to self: next time roast on the grill and let the zephyrs drift away.

Over this past weekend we also did some last minute socializing with Gabe’s SD brother and his family, sharing our popcorn and ice cream with them on Sunday night before they packed up to leave Monday morning. I would venture to say that we value time spent with them more now that they live 20 hours away than we did when their house was just a mile down the road!

We keep putting in about 3 days a week on school, in between all the mingling. For those who wonder about the social aspect of homeschooling…. It’s not a problem, truly. I was so worn out yesterday that I just feebly lay on the recliner with a book and let the children scatter Legos all over the living room. Eventually I bethought myself of the hampers flowing over onto the floors and we did laundry. That was all. Just that and a bucket full of green beans. Well, we cleaned some floors too, and mowed the lawn, but I had the troops busy and let me tell you, that is a huge asset!

Every year I like to adopt a motto when school starts up again. When I was a teacher I used to have a weekly pep saying or verse for myself in my plan book, but homeschool is a little different. I just need one to hang onto all year since I really don’t have time to rethink every week. :p I have been reading Hebrews and seeing a continual pattern of faith, of course. I had never noticed before how many times it is coupled with endurance, patience, and just general “do the next thing-ness”. As soon as I have time I want to paint myself a little sign for this year’s motto: FAITH and PATIENCE

It comes from Hebrews 6:11,12 in the ESV.

“And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

And again in Hebrews 10:36 this idea is repeated.

“ For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.”

I don’t know about you, but I really, really need endurance and so do my children. None of us are thrilled with hard stuff day after day. I explained to my boys how doing difficult assignments opens more neural pathways in their brains so that they can think better and do even harder stuff. “It’s like a mole tunneling new ways and making more connections for thinking to happen in your brain. If you never do anything that is hard work, your brain stays mushy.” They want the expanded tunnels but aren’t so sure about long division and summary writing to get them.

All the while I was explaining this to the boys, I was telling myself, “So quit trying to constantly make your life easier. Embrace the season and the mess and the hardness! Don’t complain about how everybody always needs you. Just wash the floor already instead of sighing at the remnants of fruit jello smeared under the table. Take the time to address that bad attitude instead of hoping it will go away while you sip your tea. Let it all expand your capacities…”

Oh, but Lord, it is hard sometimes…

And it is funny sometimes. We had a sign up sheet for a 24 hour prayer chain at church. Just a fifteen minute slot- that was all I signed for. Yesterday I made sure everyone was fed and happily employed before my 15 minutes. Predictably, there were calls for help in the bathroom, which I serenely ignored until my big boy came racing up the steps calling that there was water dripping from the basement ceiling. Out of the entire day, that was the time for my tot to clog the toilet with paper and flush repeatedly. And that is why there were 15 towels on my clothesline today.

Faith and patience.

Stage Whispers

Parents with small children cringe at the blurting statements of those who have not figured out the skill of whispering without making any noise, but if they step back and look at the situation outside of the embarrassment, the hilarity needs to be shared with those who are fortunate enough to sit somewhere less ~~entertaining~~ distracting. I give you some quotes verbatim from my small fry in church.

What do you stink like? (This is accompanied by loud sniffing.)

Why is he talking so loudly?

Can you look into my nose and see if there are any big boogies?

Is church about done?

The Smartie Man is here!

I am starving!

Are we going to have dessert? May I have dessert today? (Dessert is the reward for good behavior in public assemblies.)

Is church about done?

There is Doddy! May I go sit with him?

Am I being good?

I have to go potty! ( Shh… Just wait a few minutes then church will be over.)

But I have to go now! I will pee myself!

“Amen,” says the preacher.

Amen. That means we are done!

Was I good? Do I get dessert?

I remind myself that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, particularly weak when it takes more than 2 hours of sitting still to earn a piece of cake. I myself am afflicted with a terrific urge to giggle at solemn times such as at my aunt’s funeral or during ponderous prayers where God is being informed of events He already knows quite well. It isn’t exactly irreverence, but more the incongruity of a matter that sets me off. I suppose there are times when I shouldn’t have dessert after church either.