Ryan, watching mommy make dinner.


















Will walking around, sans pants as is all the rage with toddlers these days. He looks half scared/half like a mini-frankenstien. What's up with that?




















Ella-Kathryn, still sporting her 80's pink eyeshadow from a bday party, listening to some tunes on her ipod whilst awaiting dinner. is it just me or does she look stoned?










Jack in full riding gear, going nowhere soon though because we've had rain 11 out of the past 14 days. UGH.















Well, I am deep into my housewifery today. Just unloaded my 5th load of laundry - I suspect that the little people in this house are changing clothes several times during the course of the day because they don't think that I have anything to keep me busy:) Sweet them to think of me...
Unfortunately, I am one of those people who cannot think when there is clutter covering every flat surface of my home. The giant hairballs rolling across the living room like something out of a western, simply push me to the edge of distraction. Our poor Border Collie, who thinks he is a house dog and only now has the desire to heard small children around our small home, is molting. At least that's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for the amount of hair that he is shedding. I really must figure out a way to stuff pillows, sew wigs (black and white hair, perfect for the Halloween season, no?), perhaps weave a tapestry depicting our families triumphs for the year? Suggestions? It seems so dang wasteful to just vacuum it up and throw it away.
For those of you with children, those who know children, or those who have ever seen a child, you know that the hours of 3:00-bedtime is actually the "witching hour." This is the time when their blood sugar plummets, they become despondent and lose their ability to think rationally when told that dinner will be served in mere moments and thus they will not truly starve.to.death. It is also the time when homework must be completed, because in our house, you do what you've got to do, in order to do what you want to do. Period. We've tried it the other way around, allowing for some play time prior to homework, but trust me when called away from playing to begin homework, the Oscar will always go to Jack Simpson. Jack is super-creative, imaginative, funny, and so many other awesome things. But when it comes to schoolwork, oy. It seems that 9 times out of 10 we have to get to this horrible place where Jack is crying and I am praying non-stop for self-control. I actually told him to get out of my face the other day after 15 minutes of our back and forth. This is why we don't homeschool people! It's a vicious cycle and yet, when we get past this point of him not really trying, he usually gets it and is finished in a jiffy. Yes, we try all sorts of different ways to present the material, but most of it is so black and white and has to be done according to the teachers methods that he was already taught in school, so there's little to be done other than just gut through it. I hate it for him. I hate seeing him struggle so much. The good news is that he does care about it, even if he sometimes says he doesn't, and that he is a smart kid. So smart in fact that sometimes he simply blows us away. At the dinner table the other night, we were discussing forgiveness and I posed the question: When is it hard to forgive someone? Jack said, when I'm mad, sometimes I am so distracted by my anger that I don't think that they need my forgiveness or that I want to give it to them. WOW! So, enrollment in Jack Simpson's Seminary will begin next Monday...
To end, when talking about God and his "superpowers" we then turned to what we wish our superpowers could be. Jack - laser vision. My dear, sweet, precious, darling, daughter - a coat made out of guns. Nuff said.