Conversation with a four-year-old

I have to write this one down now before I forget about it! For once, Mandy slept all night in her OWN bed! This is a rather rare occurance. Last year, for the entire two and a half months that Gary was here in Texas and I was still in Illinois with the kids, Mandy slept all night, every night, in MY bed. Since we've been here in this house, she has been switching back and forth between her bed and ours. Actually, I don't allow her in our bed very often because there isn't room. She's perfectly comfortable sleeping on a blanket on the floor. So, it was a pleasant surprise to wake up this morning to find her still sound asleep in her own bed.

"Time for little girls to wake up!" I said as I rubbed her back.

She stretched and yawned, and in a sleepy voice said, "Can I play with my play dough now?"

I said, "Well, maybe after you've had your breakfast you can."

"But I don't want breakfast; I just want to play with my play dough."

"You slept really good last night, didn't you?" I said. "You slept all night in your own bed!"

"Yeah. I used to sleep in your room when I was a little kid," she said.

"When you were a little kid? Are you a big kid, now?"

"Yes. I'm getting old, Mom."

"YOU'RE getting old? So, what does that make me?" I laughed.

With a sly grin on her face, she said, "Getting KISSED!" And she threw her arms around me and gave me a big kiss.

I think it's going to be a nice day!

My firstborn son

This is my 12-year-old son, Collin. He is a jolly lad who loves to make everyone laugh. He can talk like Donald Duck and everyone who hears it can't help laughing! I think it's pretty certain that he'll win the vote for class clown (and anything other titles we choose to tack on!). Of course, he'll win the vote because he's the only one in his class!!! Isn't homeschooling wonderful?!?

He is Mandy's best pal. He is always so good with her, even when she's being a pest, and believe me, she can really be a pest! I'll never forget the look on Collin's face the first time he held her after she was born. He was 8 years old at the time. He gazed into her tiny face, and with a deep sigh he said, "I hope I can be a daddy someday."

"What do you want first, a boy or a girl?" I asked.

He replied, "I don't care, as long as it's a baby!"

Collin will definitely make a fine husband and father one day. But for now, he's busy learning how to be a helpful young man who is always willing to lend a hand. God has given him a servant's heart and he has been a real blessing to me, especially since having my surgery. I don't have to worry about trying to lift anything relatively heavy as long as I have him around. He accompanied me to Lowe's yesterday to exchange our propane tank for the grill. Those things are heavy when they're full and I couldn't have managed it on my own. I'd promised the boys that they could go to their friends' house down the block after we got back. Unfortunately, after we paid for the propane, which took about 20 minutes, we had to sit around and wait for another 20 minutes for someone to come out of the store and get out a new tank for us. He was so patient! I know he was getting a little antsy to go, but he didn't complain once.

He also loves nature and anything having to do with it. He and Tim were very excited to find that our new home here in Texas has LIZARDS! We didn't have those in Illinois. We have a couple of them living in our garage, and at least one chameleon that lives on the fence near the gate. Collin and I stood at the window in the laundry room one day and we watched it chase a spider (and miss), and then it changed colors! How amazing!

Once while I was out somewhere, I found a large brown garden snail. We didn't have those in Illinois, either, so I brought it home to show to the boys. We did an Internet search to identify it and find out what it eats, and Collin decided to keep it for a pet. He got some sod from the back yard and made a little habitat for it in a small Rubbermaid container, and fed it scraps of veggies. It lived happily in that little container for several months, feeding on the carrots and other tidbits that Collin stuffed through the holes in the plastic that we'd attached to the top.

Now, not too long afterward we began finding ants in the house. They invaded our house from the back door, where they must have had a home deep underneath the threshold. I vacuumed up all the ants that I could get to and then sprayed a whole lot of chemicals into the holes from where they seemed to be emerging. (And yes, I immediately threw the vacuum cleaner bag into the garbage bin outside!)

That didn't completely eliminate the problem, however. After a while, I didn't see any more ants on the kitchen floor, but now I was finding them in the schoolroom! I couldn't figure out where in the world all these ants were coming from and why they were on the schoolroom table. There wasn't any food in there like there always is on the kitchen floor. I eliminated the dozen or so ants on the table in the morning before school, only to discover a dozen more in the evening! Finally, enough ants were out one day so that I managed to trace their movement. The line of ants stretched all the way across the table, onto the wall, and then up to the top of the bookshelves, and there was the rest of the colony! Those little creatures had taken up residence in the box where Collin kept his snail! I couldn't believe it - how in the world did they manage to find that snail's habitat? They had to have come in from the back door and made their way across the entire width of the house to the front room where we have our schoolroom. Considering their size, that must have been like Columbus discovering the new world and then everyone in Europe coming to live here afterward!

So, my dear son had to give up his snail. He was a little sad, but took it really well, though. He didn't want to just kill it, but since garden snails are pests I didn't want it in our yard. So he took it to the park and released it there. Meanwhile, I dumped the "habitat" out in the grass and discovered HUNDREDS of tiny ants scurrying about trying to figure out what had happened to their world. They had made a nice colony in the sod.

Since then, praise the Lord, I have found no more ants in the house!

Finally getting better...slowly!

I guess I'd better be writing something else, as I have to imagine you're probably getting tired of reading about our pork loin! This past week and a half I have felt rather lazy, but I have a good excuse. After having gall bladder surgery, I've been kind of tired. Actually, I think the phrase "really wiped out" is probably more accurate.

I am slowly getting my strength back, but I have good days and bad days. It felt good to be able to do something other than sit in my recliner - I did some housework on Saturday. I got some cleaning done that was long overdue.

I have to watch what I eat VERY carefully for now, and if I eat something my system can't handle, I pay for it for the next three or four days. I've lost another 3-4 pounds because I haven't had much appetite, though it's slowly starting to come back, too. On Sunday afternoon, I actually ate a full meal for the first time in a long time. I tried to be really careful, but I must have eaten something that my system didn't like, because Monday wasn't all that great. Not horrible, but not great, either.

I'll be really happy when I get past this recovery stage - I admit I'm getting rather impatient. I'd like to go back to the way things were before it all started. Maybe I'll get there eventually, but in the meantime I just have to sit back and praise my Father for all that He's done in our lives. It's so easy to praise him when I'm feeling good, but when I'm feeling rotten all I seem to do is gripe and pray that He'll make me feel better. How spoiled I am. I am certainly not suffering like others I know.

God reminded me of that Sunday morning before church - and the hymns seemed to say the same thing - that I need to praise Him in ALL circumstances, whether or not I am feeling well. He gently reminded me that He is working on healing my body, and maybe working on a few other things in my heart, too!

The Case of the Missing Pork Loin

Yesterday, I went shopping for groceries. I hate shopping - it's hard work and I can never get absolutely all of it done in one day unless I can get out of the house right after breakfast. And, lately, it's not easy for me to get out of the house at all. I took all four of the kids with me this time, because I still tire easily. They were so helpful! I let the older ones push the cart, and I just walked around and pointed out what to put in it. Mostly! I still got REALLY tired out!

Anyhow, we got home with a vanload of groceries, including a pork loin from Sam's Club. I try to get most of our meat from there because I can get the larger quantities at a slightly lower price and package it up in individual meal sizes for the freezer. I had let the kids put the groceries away because I needed to rest when we got home. By the time that was done, it was time to start supper. Thankfully, we were just having leftovers so it wasn't long before supper was ready.

About an hour later, we were finishing up our dinner when it occurred to me that I didn't know where the meat was. I was concerned that it had been put into the freezer before I'd had a chance to cut it up and package it in smaller quantities. When I questioned the kids about it, the ground beef was in the fridge, but the pork loin wasn't. I was struck to discover that no one seemed to know where the pork loin was!

We all jumped up from the table and started searching. It wasn't in the freezer. It wasn't in the van. Amy remembered putting it in the cooler when we unloaded the cart into the van, and Tim hauled that cooler into the house. So, it had to be in the house somewhere! Tim was the last one to have it, but he'd pretended it was a baseball bat and swung it around a bit; after that, he couldn't remember what he'd done with it. Collin remembered yelling at Tim about playing with his food or some such thing, but couldn't recall anything after that.

So, logically, the only one left to question was Mandy. Now, this child is notorious for swiping things and hiding them in unusual places. She's more like her big sister than Amy wants to admit! Once, when Amy was about Mandy's age, I found a shriveled up slice of mozzarella cheese in the bathroom drawer where I kept my hairbrushes. That was before we had any other children, so there was only one culprit for that. Amy liked to stash snacks in strange places for later consumption, and, like a squirrel hiding acorns, she sometimes forgot about them. But, sometimes she didn't! She came into my room one day with chocolate all around her little mouth and a sweet, satisfied look in her eyes. Upon further investigation, I found a little pile of Oreo cookies behind the couch under the curtains where she would hide to eat them.

When I questioned Mandy about the pork loin, I had to ask her in simple terms that a four-year-old understands. Things like, "Mandy, did you see the long meat?" (hands out wide for visual effect)

"You mean the BIG meat?" (Little hands stretched out wide)

"Yes, the big one."

Blank stares...more questioning..."Mandy, where is the big meat? Did you take it?"

Suddenly, the light came on and a mischievous look swept over her sweet little face. She grabbed my hand and tip-toed me through the house, all the way from the kitchen to the stairs, and pointed up. "Come on!" she whispered.

We crept up the stairs, as if the pork loin was alive and we didn't want to wake it up. She led me to her bed, giggled, and pointed to the drawer underneath. By this time I was getting a bit exasperated, but hopeful.

"Open the drawer, please, Mandy."

She struggled to open the drawer (there was obviously something heavy inside) and there, resting peacefully, was our pork loin! THANKFULLY the packaging was still intact so there wasn't any need to sanitize the drawer. It was also still very cold so I have no doubt that it wasn't spoiled by this time.

Now, I'd really like to know just how that little girl managed to carry nine and a half pounds of meat up the stairs to her room, especially without any damage to the packaging. I almost wish I'd seen her do it. Maybe she saw her big brother with it slung over his shoulder and decided it couldn't be too hard. I'd also like to know what exactly she planned to do with all that meat. That was certainly the strangest snack stash our family has come up with so far.

Whatever the motive, I'm really thankful that God alerted us to the fact that she'd swiped it, and He did so BEFORE we had to leave for Bible study. In addition to the loss of almost $18 worth of meat, I shudder to think what that would have smelled like in a day or two! A dead mouse smells bad enough...but nine and a half pounds of dead pig??? Yuck!

A Woman of God

Today marks the second week since my gall bladder was officially evicted. Since then, my 17-year-old daughter, Amy, has pretty much taken over the kitchen.

I'm so very pleased with her hard work. It's been a huge relief to me that she has taken care of the cooking so I can recover. She has planned out the meals, done the shopping, and prepared dinner for the family nearly every night since my surgery. Yes, there are still things to be learned, but she's way ahead of where many young ladies are at 17!

She and I are long overdue for a girls' day out, and as soon as I'm up to it we're going to do it.

Amy is well on her way to becoming a faithful woman of God. Thank you, Lord, for giving me this sweet young lady!