Little Peoples and Their doings

Me to Gabe as he is heading out the door:  Don't you need a coat?

Gabe:  No - I'm wearing two shirts.  (Pause.)  I don't have a rip in my pants, so that takes care of that.

Goes out the door.  

Blink.  Aaaalllllrighty then.

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Israel: (pauses in playing air guitar to music) Mom!!  Does this (mimics guitar playing) make my muscle up here look strong?

Me: (pauses to carefully examine slight muscle ridge)  Yep!  

Israel:  joyfully bounces up to the mirror to strum his imaginary guitar to his heart's content

He's such an enthusiastic kid.  I love it.

Here are the two of them making brownies today.

I had two brownie boxes and they each decided to make one.  Gabe loftily told Israel that his (Israel's) was "way more complex" (which Gabe did not seem to think was worth the effort) and Israel cheerfully informed him that he (Israel) "obviously did not care".

They are genuinely good buddies and get along very well.  They have complementing personalities.

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Poor baby Caroline.  She has been a miserable mess of fuss.  She was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, and girlfrien' ain't feelin' good.

Thank goodness for the Ergo.  Today she wanted the hood part up over the side of her face and went straight to sleep.

 You can see on the fridge that we made some Valemtimes for Valemtime's Day.  Or, rather, Israel, Zion, and Layla did.  Gabe was too busy reading.  

Mr. Reader Pants.

Today

I'm starting to understand why so many people dread the dentist.  Growing up as a hard-toothed little being who never had a cavity until age 21, I never understood why on earth people would hate going to the dentist.  There are magazines, books, new toys, stickers, and you get to pick multiple toys out of the wicker toy basket, people!!  And the people there are so nice and you can choose bubblegum flouride.  Or chocolate. What more could you ask for, really...??

Now, after birthing and nursing five children, my teeth seem to have turned on me, and have developed approximately forty seven cavities in the past few years.  Now I, too, have become one of the masses quaking before the bursts of cold air repeatedly aimed at my thenthitive tooth part-th (That's supposed to say "sensitive tooth parts" for anyone who doesn't speak lisp), or cringing while a well-meaning individual pokes my tenderhearted, vulnerable little innocent gums with a teeny tiny sharp needle-like stabber over and over and over.  I totally understand why people avoid the dentist entirely.

This time the dental hygienist sent me home with this sharp little rubberized tool that she wants me to press into my sore gums repeatedly, right where they are tender and press hard.  Oh yeah.  I'm doing that.  "It will hurt but after a few weeks it won't".  SO on it.  Like, wow.  My replacement plan is to let them stop hurting all on their own...thank you very much.

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The Littlest Girl around here is sick; croupy cough for two days and a fever that set in last evening.  Tim and I decided that I should stay in her room overnight last night so that we could close the door to maximize the humidity level, while I would still be able to monitor her cough.  She enjoyed that thoroughly, and cuddled right up to her mama in her bed, and we both actually slept pretty well!

Yesterday I was craving chicken pot pie, but also wanted to make these Triple Chocolate cookies by Pioneer Woman, so I compromised and made chicken pot pie soup, (which is slightly less time consuming when one feels compelled to make the dough if one makes chicken pot pie) and saved me some cookie making energy.  This recipe is DElicious and I must share it.  So were the cookies!!

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 cups chicken, cooked and diced
• 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 3 celery stalks, diced
• 3-4 cup fresh broccoli florets, chopped
• 2-3 carrots, diced
• 1 bag frozen peas
• 2 potatoes, diced
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 32 oz chicken broth
• 1/2 cup 1/2 and 1/2
• 2 cups milk
• pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp poultry seasoning
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 package pie crust, thawed

Cook onions, celery, and carrots in butter until soft.  (Probably you could add the potatoes to this mix too - this time I added them late and diced and cooked them until they were soft, then added them to the soup.)  Then mix in flour and add chicken, peas, broccoli, spices and heat until warm.  I like my broccoli a little crunchy so for me, this soup is done when the broccoli is like I want it.  I wait until the very end to add the milk.  To make crust strips, unroll thawed pie crust (for one crust).  Cut into strips and lay on parchment paper lined baking sheet.  Bake in a 450 degree oven for 6-8 minutes, until browned.  Remove from oven.  To assemble, pour soup into individual bowls and top with pieces of pie crust strips.  DElicious, I am telling you!!

I doubled it to have plenty of leftovers.  Also, I often use canned chicken breast for recipes like this, but only the Walmart Premium chicken breast brand or Kirkland's brand.  I heartily dislike any other brand I have tried - the chicken otherwise tends to be too soft and gel-like for me.

(this original recipe came from http://www.shugarysweets.com/2013/04/chicken-pot-pie-soup, but mine is modified.)

Life, the unfolding story

I'm in a weird, bored mood lately.  Not sure what to do fill up my spare moments.  I sort of crave a creative outlet, but am bored of everything creative I think of.  Sometimes I feel this way when I don't have any interesting books to read; life just feels a little flatter for it.  I think I'm craving a challenge involving something that interests me.

Parenting my children interests me, and lately that has held LOTS of challenges, to the point that I'm a bit maxed out on it and ready for even keel.  Zion has been a meltdown mess over the past few days, as has Layla, and the mother feels a bit meltdown fried.  I missed doing something I was looking forward to tonight, because Zion was such a mess that he needed to stay home.

Parenting sure does involve a lot of opportunities to deny yourself.  Lately the Zion adventures have felt like a kayak ride over rocky rapids where there is constant troubleshooting and evaluation and you're trying to stay upright and not go too far one way in terms of strictness/intolerance of ratty behavior and not go too far the other way in terms of permissiveness/grace for an overstimulated child and meanwhile your parenting muscles are getting sort of weary.  Then when the Layla screeches start and you had sort of forgotten that they existed, your eyes get sort of twitchy and you just feel all twitchy and done for the day with little people that act crazy in the head.  Like, time to clock out and collect the paycheck and get a good night's sleep so you can come back refreshed for the next day of insanity that awaits you.  Instead you get...approximately none of that.  The ultra marathon of parenting in certain seasons.

I'm not complaining...I don't think.  Just...bemoaning a little bit.  :D  I like my little people an awfully lot.  Even the ones that screech in my ears.  These are just my challenges of late: how to love those little people best with all their individual personalities and needs without getting too cranky and snappy.

One of the things that I've been doing for the past while is making things like I like them.  Rearranging things and organizing and hanging curtains and finding the right rug for the bathroom that makes me glow happily inside whenever I observe the color combinations that bring me great delight.

Both the recent restlessness and the house energy has to do with the fact that Caroline is getting older and I am getting more sleep.  Well, yippee for that one!!  Now, what to do with myself...what does this next phase of life look like for me?  I'm pretty sure it will be something enjoyable.  Just...waiting to see what form that takes.  That's really what makes life interesting, after all.  Our story unfolds in front of us in bits and pieces.

January

I turned 38 on January 7.  This is me, using my selfie stick called my arms.

I did a whole lot of nothing for my birthday and it was just 100% fine with me.  I was still recovering from doing the whole drive a million hours in the car bit from Christmas and I didn't even have enough motivation to go buy myself a delicious cake to stab candles into.  Ennhh.  Maybe next month.  Unenergized shrug.  It was a perfectly fine Thursday. :)

I like this one too, except I think my neck looks....strange.  That's what happens when you are holding a two year old with one of your selfie sticks and a big heavy camera with the other one.

Caroline helping to scrub the table the other night.

She scrubbed dutifully while resting her cheek on her hand.

Here's Baby Friend lovingly embracing her stuffed bowling pins.

Zion...he's been having a rough time of it this month, we think related to a strep virus.

He's taken a lot of extra TLC and ONYDM (oh no you don't, Mister) and focus this month.  He mostly quit writing at school entirely for a while; now after antibiotics and trying some different things he is doing a lot better.  I also bought him a pair of these new socks so that we could be done with the sensory meltdowns in the mornings every morning about his socks not being comfortable. These socks are like my valuable possession that I carefully keep track of and wash every night.

Wrasslin' brothers.  These two were having a time of gleeful cackling.

We had a proper snow this past week.  (I said that in an English accent in case you didn't hear it.  I've been watching Call the Midwife lately, so everything has a tinge of Bri-ish accent to it in my head these days.)  Storm Jonas.

We had a nice long weekend of stay home-edness, where I cleaned and rearranged things with great energy and vigor.  LOVED having a big block of time where I had time and energy to get things accomplished.  I got all KINDS of things accomplished and still feel quite quite pleased with myself.  :)

The only thing annoying about getting lots of things organized is that I seem to only be able to do things in blocks.  I can organize, or I can cook lots of delicious things, or I can be creative and write.  I have trouble mixing these things all together.  I like all of them, but they seem to squeeze each other out of my days.

This is my baby monkey who likes to wrap her arms around my neck and just chill.

She is so dear and precious and dear and sweet and universally adored by all of these peoples that live in this house.

Raspberry fingers.

Off to do laundry.  Cheerio!

The Christmas Epistle

I'm feeling the slightest niggle of blogginess lately, and all the children are sleeping all snug in their beds and the desktop computer yawns yearningly at me to sit down and type.  It sometimes feels that the desktop, my former blogging/photo-editing haven, is constantly busy anymore.  I often look wistfully at all of it's busyness and remember the days when I could sit down and type fervently.  For a long while, my seat-ed-ness has reminded everyone of my lap, and my lap in front of the computer reminds everyone of things they think they must do RIGHT. NOW. on that computer, and by everyone I mean Caroline Baby, who is very dear and precious and lap needy and awfully hard to type around.

Today I journeyed to Walmart; a solo journey armed with a little Christmas money that The Pioneer Woman spoke very convincingly to me from the shelves about.  She is very persuasive, that Pioneer Woman, what with her colorful bowls and mason jars with straws.  Let's just say I came home with more ceramic bowls than when I left.  And four mason jars with colorful lids and interchangeable lids and straws, all delightfully hued.  Merry Christmas to me.

The End Of Christmas Vacation was today.  Tomorrow Life As Normal resumes, in all it's January greyness.  Christmas was nice.  Like my friend Becky said today, Christmas is a season, not a day. It's the most fun to view it that way, I think.

We had Christmas concerts by the boys.

Israel played his guitar along with the rest of his guitar class for a middle school chapel that week.

I got sick during the week before Christmas and missed Gabe's concert and Israel's guitar playing, but I did hear Israel play and sing Go Tell it On the Mountain at home and liked it. :)

The four older kids were all participants in a play that our church did this year called The Christmas Clinic.  Gabe played the doctor,

and Israel, Zion, and Layla were all part of the choir.

Layla, the rapt shepherd.

It was super cute and I was really glad we expended the energy on it!! :)

Layla arranged most of her dolls in the hallway this day because she wanted to put on a ballerina show and needed an audience. ;)

I may or may not have photoshopped the marker off of the wall and some of the crumbs off of the floor.  Whoooo knows???

We had our Christmas Day the Saturday before the week the kids got out of school, (since we were going to be out of state on the 25th) and we like to take a whole day and stretch it out lazily and eat good food and have plenty of toy playing and screen time.

It was a particularly sweet and good Christmas this year.  I was really excited about the presents I had found for the kids.  I found a ton of stuff used and for great prices, and I couldn't WAIT to give it to them!!!  The big present for Layla was a dollhouse I found on Craiglist for $100 cheaper than what it was worth,

and I actually drove to Fredricksburg, VA to get it one day in October, (and had a really good time doing it, btw...in my minivan, by myself, all hyped up on Christmas excitement...).  Ironically, her favorite gift was a $10 yellow "vacuum" I found (also used) that is kind of like a big dustbuster but exactly her size, and plugs in and works, much to her joy.

The gift I couldn't wait to give Zion was a $25 used toy Gator I had found!!!  He was really happy about it, but his favorite gift was a Wii game, Just Dance 2015.  He had told me several days before our Christmas that all he really wanted for Christmas was a Just Dance game.  Now how could a mother resist that??  He was SO. HAPPY. for it.

We bought a used XBox 360 for the older boys, and they were THRILLED.  It was their favorite gift of the day for the both of them.

Gabe was also super thrilled about this pocket knife he's been waiting for.

It was greatly treasured.

Baby did not need hardly any help opening her gifts this year.  She had this present thing DOWN, peeps.  Tear the wrapping paper open, eagerly scan for the next present.  ;)

Layla is wearing the Christmas dress she earned recently for staying in her bed all night.

She was earning a sticker a night for 10 nights that she could return to her bed and finish out the night on her own if she woke up.  It took a while to start clicking, but eventually took, and she spends most nights in her bed now, and sometimes doesn't even wake up all night, and is currently earning her third prize, which is a set of Barbie makeup.  Her second prize was a red velvet purse to go along with her dress.  She chose this dress herself from Target, and has worn it a lot over this holiday.  She happily dressed herself in this to open presents.

The aftermath.

After opening gifts we made a yummy breakfast lunch and scarfed it down.

Then we were all lazy and whatnot for the rest of the day.  I made a "snacky supper" of fingerfoods and we watched Elf in the evening.

The next evening we had a candlelight service at church in the evening.  I love those.

I got some red sparkly nail polish to put on the girls for Christmasyness.  Here Caroline is getting her nails dried. :)

She was being a Kling-On while I was trying to get trip prep done due to being sick and not feeling so well, but it was making me grouchy.  Tim cheerfully took her and had her help him wash dishes. The boy knows how to speak my love language, that's fo sho.  I love this picture.

We left for Indiana the next Wednesday, at around 8 AM and arrived in IN around 9 PM.  I actually drove most of the way, because I had a bee in my proverbial bonnet to arrive at our destination ASAP.  :)  We had rain a lot of the way, and it was totally stressful to drive in rain after dark, with wet shiny roads and trailer trucks thundering past and pouring water all over your windshield.  Ick.  The good part was that the kids traveled really well, and there was minimal fussing from Caroline.

Watching The Grinch together.

Carol wanted us to all sing the 12 Days of Christmas before we opened our gifts.  :)

The "Henry" that Carol refers to at the end was my nephew who was Face Timing in from WA, where he was visiting other family.  We missed you, Henry!!

Eating Vietnamese Spring Rolls prepared by my sister-in-law, Lynette.  Deeeelicious!!

Tim with his sisters and his Grandma Polly.

Grandpa Norm with the sleeping baby who fell asleep while he was holding her.  :)  He held her the whole time she napped and then gently woke her up after a while.

Irresistable baby cuteness.

Norm took the girls out to go shopping the day before we left.  The weather had been mild (flowers were blooming in IN!!!) and I thought I wouldn't need my coat, but the weather had changed and I was COLD!! I found a great coat in JcPenney's for $14.99!!!  This is when Lynette flipped my fuzzy hood up while we were in Costco.  Everything sounded muffled in there, for some reason. ;)

Yaaay for cousins!!  The kids all had a great time playing together.  This is Aubrey.

Fondue supper on the porch.

Norm took Gabe and Israel out to shoot BB guns one day while Tyler was visiting someone else.  They were SORELY longing to shoot themselves a "fat squirrel" that was allegedly pestering the bird feeder, but alas, none was to be found.

The boys spent several nights out in the log cabin.  Here they are listening to Grandpa Norm tell stories before bedtime.

We had a great time in IN seeing Tim's family, and drove to VA about 5 days later to see my family.  Again the rain, this time freezing and heavy.  The freezing rain eventually stopped, but it rained a large part of the way to VA.  We left IN around 11 AM and arrived in VA at 12:30 AM.   This time all relevant parties were not so cheery along our traveling way.  It sure was good to arrive!!

Baby Girl eagerly awaiting lunch. :)

There were lots of games of chess between these two.  I think my brother taught them a few years ago.  I have no clue how to play chess!! Layla and Zion didn't play chess, but spent long periods of time carefully arranging (Layla) or flinging (Zion) the pieces.

Helping Granddaddy cut firewood.

Christmas!!

Caroline was very very happy with her Frozen bodywash.  So happy that she wanted to use it all up in one fell swoop that night and cried and cried when I wouldn't let her.  Zion came back from his shower with an empty tube that night though.  VERY CLEAN he was, apparently.

Quentin helping Israel with a thing to make string bracelets.

 Going,

going,

aaaand gone.

All of the boys.  All of 'em.

Layla carefully applying her beloved lipgloss with her beloved compact mirror. :)

We saw both sides of our family.  This was the Heatwole (my mom's) side.

Grandma Lou handing out presents to the great grandchildren.

Despite the poor weather during the trips, they were still totally worth the effort.  I'm really glad we went.  Last night was our first night back and I totally konked out and slept hard, and woke up momentarily disoriented when Caroline woke up once in the middle of the night - where am I this time??! :)

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One separate part of our holiday that deserves it's own section was this.

Life is such a bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow and sometimes, heartbreaking grief.  The Tuesday morning before we left for Christmas, I got a phone call at around 6:30 AM.  It was my mom, who was calling to tell me that my Uncle Dave had died unexpectedly that morning at work after calling to tell my aunt he felt like he was going to pass out.  He was 54, and has 8 surviving children, five of which are still living at home.  He was very kind and good natured, and is so greatly missed.  Love you, Aunt Betty and kids!!!! http://www.dnronline.com/obituaries/view/8355