Thursday, January 22, 2009

How To Make A Turkey

Ashlyn brought home a book from her class library yesterday called How To Make A Turkey. It's a book that her teacher put together after having all of the kids in her class write out instructions for making a turkey. I'm sure it's one of those activities they did around Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I only saw it for a couple of minutes this morning, but I had to look through to find Ashlyn's. Here are her instructions:

1. Buy a 6 pound turkey.

2. Put it in the oven at 90 degrees.

3. Cook it in a pan for 45 minutes.

4. Take it out and put some hot sauce on it.

5. Then you eat it!

I'm thinking she may need to spend some more time with me in the kitchen! And I'm wondering where she went and had turkey with hot sauce on it???

Monday, January 19, 2009

For Deanna

This post is dedicated to my friend Deanna who gave me a ridiculously hard time about using corn boiler in a sentence...

After four months of research, long travels, more research and daily phone calls to the plumber, my wonderful, brilliant husband has gotten our new corn boiler installed. It's amazing the amount of heat that puppy puts out and how much warmer the house is. Some days, it's almost too warm - as in if you start any kind of activity like cleaning (gasp!), you almost can't stand it. It's a wonderful feeling!!

He's still working on getting it perfect, but I'm so proud of the time and effort he's put into making it work. Knowing Britney and how he is when he has a new toy or project, it'll be many more weeks of "tweaking" to make it just right! He's so smart, he figured out how to move the corn from a big bin he and his uncle built through PVC pipe, using a vacuum cleaner. He also built a contraption that will clean the corn and get rid of most of the dust, so it all goes in the vacuum while the clean corn goes into the big blue barrel before being dumped into the hopper. From the hopper, it goes into the boiler where it gets burned and heats the water that will flow through our radiators and heat our house on bitterly cold days (like -20!).

Thank you Lord for a husband who cares enough about his family to take the time to keep us all warm and toasty!

Pictures are here.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Happy Birthday, Carter!

I can't believe my baby is four. Well, he hasn't really been a baby for a long time, but he's still MY baby. He has to be one of the most active, smartest, stubbornest, sweetest little boys ever.

Happy birthday, Carter! I love you more than words can say and love how you make me laugh almost every day. Even though there are days you make me want to pull my hair out, you're my special little boy. I'm so thankful for the blessing of you and know that the Lord would not have given you to us if we were not equipped to handle you :) We pray that one day you will grow into a great man of God and I just know that all of your stubbornness and argumentativenss (is that even a word?) will allow you to do great things for Him!

Enjoy your Subway :)

I have to include on funny story from this morning. I asked Carter where he wanted to go eat tonight for his birthday. His choice out of any restaurant within driving distance - the Subway attached to the gas station here in Adrian. Of course! Ashlyn on the other hand, quickly reminded me that on HER birthday, she wants to go to Carnival of Brazil in Sioux Falls. It's a Brazilian steak house where they bring around all different kinds of meat on skewers. Oh, the difference between my kids is obvious right there in that small fact.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Back to the Grindstone

Yesterday was our first day back to "real life." It was a wonderful 2 weeks in Georgia, and no one was ready to start back to our normal routine. But, we made the best of it and surprisingly, everyone had a good day.

I'm not one to normally make resolutions for the new year. There's always something I could do more or less of, weight to lose, friends to stay in contact with, etc., etc., etc. But this year, I thought I would make some, just for myself. But I need somewhere to write them down so in a year I can look back and see how I did. I figured this was as good a place as any - and maybe knowing YOU know will help me keep them.

First off is to do better at keeping up with this blog. Now that our move isn't so "new" anymore, I'm not really sure what to write here. But, I know that it's how a lot of people keep up with us, so I'm going to do better about writing something more often. It may not always be profound, but if that's the case, you're almost guaranteed a laugh from something funny that has happened around here.

My second resolution is to give more gifts. Gifts are my love language. I love giving them and getting them. Gifts is not so much Britney's love language, so he doesn't always understand why I feel the need to give so many :) But, he's never told me I couldn't give a gift. So, this year, whenever I feel that little nudge to do something special for someone, I'm going to - before satan can take away the joy I get from doing it by reminding me we may not have the money for it or I don't have the time for it. I think it may help me truly live out part of what God has for me this year.

That's it so far. I'm also going to try keeping a journal for my kids to have one day about the things I'm praying for them. But, I'm not good at or used to writing down my prayers. So, that one's a maybe. I did go buy myself a cute little journal at Target yesterday, hoping that will motivate me some. Now, if I can just keep the piles on my desk low enough to actually find it...

Now, for something not so profound :) This was an actual conversation between Carter and one of his friends when we got to preschool this morning:
Quentin - "Hey, Carter! What did you get for Christmas?"
Carter (frantically searching through his backpack for something amazing to show Quentin - "Hey! I got a new scarf!"
Quentin - "Cool! I got a poop spreader!"

I laughed out loud and thought - where else in the world would you buy a poop spreader for your 3 year old for Christmas and it be perfectly normal and all of the other 3 year olds (and 30 year olds) would know exactly what it was? :)

***For those of you city-folk who may not know what a poop spreader is, it's a manure spreader used in farming to fertilize the fields.***