Around, Around the Mulberry Bush.......

You may ask, why is my 5 year old Ellie running away from little James????





Why she hiding??













I've entitled these photos "Walk Softly and Carry A Big Stick"

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A Mouse Tale

Saturday night was terrible, in the night I heard a scratch scratch, scratching in my closet.

Definitely a mouse, definitely unacceptable. I desperately tried to ignore the noise, but soon the sound changed to a scratch scratch scratching under my bed!!!!!!!!!!!

Ack!!! I hoped I had a imagined it, I hoped it would go away, it seemed like for hours the scratching continued.

Finally I could stand it no longer, I flipped on my light, of course this caused the scratching to stop, and set out on a determined search to find out how that nasty little critter got into my room.

Pulling mostly everything out from my closet, I discovered a small space between the carpet, and the Sheetrock in the back of my closet, and just as I was examining it, a little mouse stuck his head out. ICK ICK ICk.

I stomped downstairs, flipped on the light and loomed over barry, who had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fire. Barry, a deep sleeper with hearing loss surprisingly opened his eyes and looked up at me with a confused expression. I explained very nicely that I had been up all night listening to the scratch scratching of a nasty mouse, and that I had found his hole and that he(barry) would get up early before church and block it.

Barry surprised me again, and quickly agreed and closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

Now 4am, I tromped back up the stairs, happy to have a plan, I sat on my bed and announced to mister mouse. "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die!
Laying down on my bed, I then peacefully went to sleep.
I was woken up in the early morning by Barry asking me what in the world I was talking about in the middle of the night.

I explained againnicely, and Barry seeing the dark shadows under my blood-shot eyes wisely did not argue and went to work. He blocked off the hole to my satisfaction and then quickly got ready for church, I got Ellie ready and sent them off. Yes, I sent them off to church without me, claiming a sore throat. The sore throat was in fact true, but it was from the cloves I put in the cookies that I had eaten the night before, and was in no way contagious.

The Ox is in the Myer, I told myself, a mouse is in my house, and that is a very serious thing.

I went to work, cleaning out my entire closet, which was full of all of our emergency supplies, 72 hour backpacks, guns and suitcases. I cleaned out under my bed throwing away anything the mouse might have licked, scratched, peed on, etc.
I washed all of my bedding in case the mouse had perchance scampered across a blanket hanging on the floor in the night, and swept and vacuumed the entire house in case the mouse was looking for a last meal.

After thoroughly cleaning the closet I did leave the the mouse behind just one small present, a gift bag, with a mouse trap snugly tucked behind it. I quietly closed the doors, put another log on the fire, dished myself up a big bowl of ice cream and waited.

It wasn't long...... SNAP!

R.I.P little mouse.

Ahh I could suddenly breath again, the air seemed cleaner, the world was a better happier place.

I grabbed a newly washed and dried blanket and curled up in front of the fire and peacefully feel asleep.

I did reset the trap, just in case mister mouse, was a mrs mouse, ....and I'll tell you what happened then, but that story is for another day.




Authors' note: Now don't be reading this and thinking I'm mouse-a-phobic or something. I am not. I would do the same thing if someone let their cat, dog or gerbil scamper through my house. Of course then I would have to use a bigger trap. ;)

Sunny Day

Yesterday, I woke up, I didn't have a headache, I wasn't dizzy, and I had some energy, a rare occurrence these days. I decided to take advantage of it.

I spent the morning, washing and chopping up onions from our garden to freeze. I got through about half of them, and could stand the smell no more...

So I decided to clean out the fridge, in which I found a lemon, which smelled so good I decided all I wanted in the world was a lemon meringue pie. So I made one, and then I decided I better make a butterscotch one too for Barry, since he doesn't like lemon.

Unfortunately, I was too tired to make supper, so we had leftovers, but Barry was consoled with pie ....and so was I.

October

On Saturday, we went to the Robin's Pumpkin Patch, and let the kids pick out their pumpkins, James had no trouble, but Ellie wanted to look them ALL over first.






Coming home with their pumpkins, James wanted to be big like Ellie and hold his pumpkin on his lap, but he eventually pushed it off, I think it was making his legs go numb.






Ellie making cinnamon rolls with mom. She's a big help, she likes to put on the nuts and raisins on and help cut the rolls with the floss.




Ellie's Cinnamon Roll snake.




Recently James and I have been at war. He desperately wants to play in our bathroom drawer that has my make-up in it and my curling irons. I have tried just about every possible method to keep him out of it. Child locks were not successful, removing the handle was not successful, jamming the drawer shut with something was the only thing that really seemed to work most of the time. James was extremely frustrated by this solution, and worked on it until he discovered a solutions of his very own.





Thanks James.






Now I don't ever have to worry about him opening my drawer again........














He doesn't need too, ...........he can just reach right in.












Happy October!

Squash Day

Today is a Squash day. The smell of Squash cooking in the oven reminds of home. It takes me back to my childhood, of Saturdays of working hard, Saturday night baths, of crisp cool fall evenings, warm food, and my family.

Today, I want it back. I want to be a child again, I want to give my cares, fears and worries away .......and just live. Today, I want someone to cook MY dinner, wash my clothes and clean up my messes, I want someone to hold me, to love me, and to tell me everything will be alright.

I'm feeling tense, I'm feeling stressed, can you tell?
3 kids, how can I have three kids? My neighbor says when you have three kids, that's when you lose all control. I can't help thinking about THAT, but most of all I can't help worrying about my Jamesers.

My Sweet James, so full of love and life with his dark gentle eyes, and mischievous grin. He has softened a part of my hard-heart that not Barry, nor even Ellie was able to reach.
I don't want James to feel displaced by a new baby, even for a moment, I don't want him to feel less loved or less special, even for a moment.
Ellie is excited, but I feel like James is going to be broadsided by this.... and I don't know what to do.

All I can do is pray, pray he'll understand.

But James, when you CAN understand, I want you to know, that I'm having another baby so soon for YOU! BECAUSE YOU are so special, so important, so loved. So you can have a playmate, a comrade, a friend, someone close to your age. So you won't have to be lonely like Ellie was for so long before you came along.

We love you James, you have brought so much love to our little family.

Ellie we love you, and we are so excited for you to have a little sister to mother and love and play with.

and Baby Pate, we are so excited to meet you and hold you in our arms and welcome you into our little family.

Tonight we'll be having squash for dinner, homemade wheat bread, and hot oatmeal cookies. (Talk about comfort food)

Need a little comfort??

Come join us.

Hanzel and Gretel

One beautiful fall day, Hanzel and Gretel went for a walk....







They didn't get very far before they decided they were hungry







Hmmm where to look???????????









Luckily there was a nice-looking Amish man sitting in the middle of the forest cooking hot dogs.

His witch of a wife also tried to fatten them up on potato salad, bananas, and applesauce muffins....







but they were not fooled....





They took only a hot dog, bite of muffin, and some pistachio pudding dessert....





......and skipped merrily back home.



THE END