While Rachel's at school

Rachel's been in school for about a month now and for some reason I have a hard time leaving the house without her. It's like I feel the need to sit around and wait for her to come home, which is ridiculous since she's gone for eight hours. That's plenty of time for Miriam and Benjamin and I to get out of the house and go on some adventures so today we did just that.

One, two! Wake up the crew!

First we had to get everybody up and ready for the day. Daddy got up first and he woke up Rachel and got her moving. He only woke me up before he left so that I could take Rachel to the bus stop (it was a long night and our longstanding agreement is that since I get up with the kids at night he can get up with them in the morning).

Three, four! Get 'em out the door!

It's kind of cold now that it's fall, but only cold enough for dew—not frost—and it warms up in the afternoon. Still, it's cold while we're waiting for the bus so we all put on sweaters, except for Benjamin. I just slapped a cap on his head and picked him up from bed, blanket and all.

Our weekend

This is how our weekend began:

Rachel came home from school exhausted. All three of us girls are sick but Rachel's still been going to school because I don't think you can stay home with a cough...for a week...so off to school she goes. Friday afternoon was filled with cartoons while Daddy painted the trimming on the shed and I made dinner. Our traditional Friday pizza night was cancelled in favour of soup and crackers. I made crackers for dinner—like, from scratch.

Little House

We're currently reading aloud the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Both girls love—and demand—to be whisked away nightly on a literary journey through Laura's life. They both eat up every detail and are always hungry for more. I enjoy using the parables Laura has sprinkled throughout her stories to try to get my girls to behave.

"What?! Are you complaining? Laura doesn't complain. Carrie doesn't complain. It isn't ladylike."

Now that we're reading By the Shores of Silver Lake and the girls have learned that *spoiler alert* poor Mary goes blind and gets her hair cut short Miriam no longer wants to play the part of Mary (mostly because of the hair, I think (and that's mostly because Rachel said that if she wanted to be Mary she would have to cut her hair as short as Daddy's)) and has instead claimed the role of Carrie. Rachel clings to the role of Laura, which is rather apt for her personality, I think.

I sent them outside with a broom a couple of days ago because they were bickering so terribly inside.

"Here," I said, handing Rachel the broom. "Be Laura and Carrie. Go fix up your homestead."

The principle of work

We've been studying The Family: A Proclamation to the World for our FHE, which we're now holding on Thursdays because Andrew's not usually home on Monday evenings (this really bothers Rachel because Monday is Family Night; she can be quite letter-of-the-law at times). I meant to go through it paragraph by paragraph but skipped a couple so that we could talk about the principles our family is founded upon. And kind of so that I could foist chore charts upon our children because I'm going straight crazy trying to keep our house in order by myself.

So today we focused on this one sentence:

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained of principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

After saying that a few times we focused specifically on this one word—work—and how that one word   can help us become closer as a family unit.

Fortunately we'd just done a family project this weekend—we primed the shed—and Rachel was super pumped about that and provided textbook answers for the questions I asked her (but only after I set up the context because before I did she had no answers for me at all).

We decided that painting the shed was hard work but it was fun to be working alongside each other and we feel a sense of ownership of our work. When we look out the window and see it we remember how much fun we had spending time together and how much effort we put in to make it look nice. We think, "Wow, we painted that! And it was hard! But it sure looks amazing!"

(Not that we're vain or anything.)

I said that the same thing applies to housework. And my kids definitely looked at me like I was crazy.

(And perhaps I am.)

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

This year Andrew and I held a competition to see whose birthday celebration could be the lamest. There are no winners in a contest like this but I think we both tied for second place (which as we all know is just a fancy way of saying first loser).

Let's recap my birthday first, shall we? We spent the day at the hospital. Andrew packed some stuff and let me nap. And then we ate cupcakes that someone dropped off with dinner the day before. Except for me, that is, I got a fancy cupcake from the Sweet Tooth Fairy, courtesy of Karen. I think we might have had a more jovial celebration at my parents' house later...

Andrew's birthday went like this: Andrew got up and went to class. I found out that our good friend had died the day before and spent the morning crying because I still cry at the drop of a hat. Miriam and I made fig newtons while Benjamin screamed. I forgot to put the last 3/4 cup of flour into the dough. Miriam stirred the fig jam into the bottom layer of dough. It was a bit of a fiasco but we did end up with newtons of sorts to have as an after school snack...complete with birthday candles and song. We had tacos for dinner; Andrew did most of the work. Andrew went to cub scouts. He came home and revolutionized our world with Bojangles. We watched an episode of The West Wing. This morning I let him sleep in for a while since he wasn't able to on his birthday.

That about sums it up.

Benjamin at 2 months (-ish)

Sweet relief! Benjamin finally let me put him down! He's been such a terribly fussy boy lately—and I just realized that we took his prevacid away to see how he'd do without it. It's been a couple of dreadful, dreadful days so maybe we should put him back on it.... Heartburn's no fun for anyone.

In honour of his two-month due-date-aversary (or his 3.5 month mark, in actual age) I thought I'd take some pictures of him. Unfortunately our snazzy camera's battery was dead so I had to use the point-and-shoot camera instead. I'll have to do a better photo shoot later. I've been so stressed out that I don't feel I've given Benjamin the same attention my girls got as babies so I figured I should just take some pictures today so that we have some because "later" is a dangerous word. So I took lots pictures. And Benjamin kind of cooperated. And sometimes Miriam pushed the button for me because she's "a big girl now and big girls can feed their brothers from their tummies and take pictures with the camera." She was a little heartbroken when I told her that she couldn't nurse Benjamin (even though she's almost three (which is really big)). I couldn't say no to being allowed to use the camera.

Here's his serious face:

Rainy days

A few interesting thing things I've noticed about North Carolina so far:

1) You can buy 12 oz. cans of tuna at the regular grocery store—that's a big can of tuna!
2) Manners are important. Rachel has to say "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am" at school. I know this because once she said "Yes, ma'am" to me. She acted all embarrassed like she'd just called her teacher Mom or something.
3) When the weather forecast says 20% chance of rain, you'd better bring your umbrella because they actually have weather here.

Weather like so:

Yard Work

Last night around 1 o'clock, Andrew sneaked outside and sprayed the living daylights out of our garbage can. An unfortunate band of angry wasps had built their nest in a little crevice of our can and it made taking the garbage out quite tricky.

House Tour, Part 1

We weren't the only ones to move this summer. In fact, my sister-in-law Emily also moved in August. Emily promised pictures of her house (as we did) and promptly posted pictures of her bathroom, stating "it's the only room put together enough to take pictures of." I looked around at my house and thought, "I will never have any room put together enough to take pictures of."

But then while Andrew was at school one day I tackled the master bath. It didn't have anything to do with Emily posting pictures of her bathroom. Rather, I think it's because bathrooms are usually the smallest rooms in the house and organizing the smallest room in the house felt doable. So I did it.

Without further ado, here's our bathroom:

Two sinks: be jealous

I've got nothing to say but it's OK. Good morning...

On Wednesday Andrew and I stayed up far too late. He was studying. I was writing. We lost track of time. It happens. And when it happens it's usually very difficult to get up in the morning so I was bugging Andrew about setting the alarm.

"Are you sure you set it?" I asked him.

"Yes," he assured me.

"For AM not PM, right?"

"Of course. My clock is in 24-hour time, remember?"

"And you're sure your volume is turned up?"

"Yes."

"Let me see."