"Airplane Yin-yang Mailbox!"

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

A Bit o' Bubbly

I recently made old-fashioned Ginger Ale for the first time. In the past, I have made attempts at other lacto-fermented drinks, such as orangina (the precursor to orange pop) and lemon punch, which none of us could stomach at all. I had better luck with beet kvass, which I used extensively while I was pregnant with Jabin. It tasted like a slightly sour and salty beet juice, and eventually, I could down the 4 oz. a day I required even without diluting it with water. However, it was still not something I ever looked forward to--I took it as a tonic, for it's nutritional and medicinal properties only. (It is extremely beneficial for pregnant women and those suffering from kidney stones or who get blood clots. I'll post that recipe another time.)

So, other than kefir, which my family consumes daily, lacto-fermented drinks have not really caught on in our household. Even kefir I still cannot stomach straight--I am too unused to the texture and taste, so need to have it "hidden" in a smoothee, or I use it to soak my grains in for baked goods, etc.

So, I was pleasantly surprised with the results of this latest experiment. I tried it, hoping that the results would be more agreeable to my taste buds than fermented citrus drinks. The first time I tried it was just after a workout when I knew I would need some electrolytes replenished, and I just couldn't seem to drink enough water. I was pleasantly surprised--the ginger ale was agreeable and refreshing--after only a few sips, my thirst started to be quenched. By the time I finished my glass, I was no longer thirsty and I felt really refreshed.

I have diluted it 1:1 with water every time I've drunk it, and while plain filtered water works, using carbonated water adds a nice twist--and makes it seem more like pop.

Ginger Ale
This recipe was taken from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary G Enig, PhD.
Makes 2 quarts

3/4 cup ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated (I grated mine with my food mill--it made this super-easy!)
1/2 cup fresh lime juice (about 3 room-temperature limes)
1/4-1/2 cup unprocessed sugar (such as Rapadura or Panela)
2 tsp. unprocessed sea salt - coarse grey is best
1/4 cup whey
2 quarts filtered water

This is a most refreshing drink, taken in small amounts with meals and as a pick-me-up after outside work in the sun.

Place all ingredients in a 2-quart jug. [I didn't have one, so I mixed everything, then put equal parts into two 1-quart jars.) Stir well and cover tightly. Leave at room temperature for 2-3 days before transferring to the refrigerator. This will keep several months well chilled.

To serve, strain into a glass*. Ginger ale may be mixed with carbonated water and is best sipped warm rather than gulped down cold.

*I had some circles of window screen cut out for the top of my jars to use them for sprouting, so I just insert that when I want to pour some of my ginger ale out--works like a charm!


By the way, my kids don't really care for this. I think it is the heat of the ginger, as well as the fact that this is not nearly as sweet as commercial ginger ale. (Jude says he doesn't like the "fizzy water," but he didn't like it diluted with plain water, either.) I'm sure it is also the unfamiliar new flavour, as my kids balk at anything new (don't most?) However, I don't mind--all the more for me!

Let me know if you try it, and how it worked out for you! :-)

I Should Have Known Better

I should have known that any friend of Colleen's would be wonderful. I should have been prepared. I should have known that two friends of hers would be twice as wonderful.

Yet, somehow, I was still caught by surprise.

Mindy and Cheryl showed up at my door at 10:30 last night, road-worn, but not too much--because somehow we managed to stay up talking until 1:30 a.m! I had never met them before, my only previous experience having been seeing their names on comments on Colleen's blog. But Colleen is one of those types of girls that when you know her, you would do anything for her, so when she asked me to host her friends as they were passing through, of course I said yes.

They are single, I married with children. But other than that, we have so many things in common--all musicians, Mindy is going into missions, all with a love for Jesus, and all friends of Colleen! Our conversation last night brought me some badly needed encouragement. We laughed, we shared, we imbibed hot beverages. And then we exchanged text messages at 1:30 a.m. while we were waiting for the caffeine to wear off! :-)

When they came last night, they were Colleen's friends. When they left this morning, they were my friends, too.

Thank you, Lord, for the love you give that binds us together in unity.

*****

As if I needed more justification, this article on Dr. Mercola today gave even more of an excuse for me to hang on to my tea habit! From the article:

A four-year study has found that tea slows down brain-cell degeneration, and thereby keeps your mind sharp into old age.

Catechins, a natural compound in tea, protect brain cells from damaging protein build-up over the years, maintaining your brain's cognitive capability.

In addition, the caffeine in tea, unlike that in coffee, contains the natural protein theanine, which counters the normal side effects of caffeine such as raised blood pressure, headaches and tiredness.

Researchers studied the tea-drinking habits of over 2,500 Chinese aged 55 and older and gave them memory tests.

While two-thirds of the tea-drinkers maintained their memory test scores two years later, 35 percent of non-tea-drinkers had a decline in their memory test scores, which indicates cognitive decline.

Official Announcement

It has been lurking on the edges of my blog posts and conversations for the last seven months. It has been central in my mind for most of that time. This has made it difficult to post sometimes, when all I can do is think about something I'm not supposed to talk about. And now I am finally allowed to speak freely about it.

We are moving. Not just across town, or out to our property by the gun range. No. We are moving to Arkansas. As soon as our house sells.

Many of you know this already, but have been sworn to secrecy. Okay, the secret's out! You can stop changing the topic whenever anyone asks you about it!

Jason didn't want too many people to know about it, so word wouldn't seep back to his boss and co-workers before we were certain it would happen. However, his little trip a couple of weeks ago had the end result of a stamped and approved work visa for him, so that means we are going.

What are we doing? We will be going down to work for, and eventually take over (assuming our green cards go through) my mother's business, Wells 5 Star Equine Products. These are the products I have been selling on eBay for the last three and a half years at www.wintersdistributing.ca.

People keep asking me if I am excited. In all honesty, no. This is a big move, and although we know that this is what God would have us do, it is not what we would do if we could just obey the cry of our hearts. Some of our dearest friends are here. We are beginning to become better friends with some people we have wanted to get to know for the last two years. We don't know anyone in Arkansas other than my mom and Mike, and the few of their friends we can call our acquaintances. (Well, there are the people at 5 Star's shop, too, I guess.) While we only get to see our family a few times a year right now, that number will be going down to an average of once, maybe less for the first couple of years.

Moving is a lot of work, and this is by far the biggest move I will have experienced. While I know a few wonderful Americans, I am not excited about living in the United States. I am fiercely proud to be a Canadian, and I worry about my kids growing up without a strong Canadian identity--not to mention a Southern drawl! I'm sure every parent wants their children to speak like them, so although I know it is somewhat inevitable, it still saddens me.

If I felt like we had no roots tying us here to the Peace Country when we moved here, how much less will we have to hold on to when we are in a foreign land where none of our previous generations have walked? My great-grandparents lived in the States for a short time, but not so far south. At least here, we are still in Alberta, a place where our ancestors had a hand in forging it--some of my relatives even lived here in the North for short periods of time.

I have had "mourning moments" in increasing intensity, the closer we get to the actual move. Sometimes it is hard to remember why we are moving in the first place. I've started crying over the stupidest stuff--I've thought of sending thank you cards to the owners of the drug store that carries the soap I like, as well as the cod liver oil I like, and the apiary owners where we get our honey. Silly stuff like that, because I just know that it will be work when we move to source that stuff out again. At least my mother has already found a good source of raw milk and grass-fed meat, among a few other things. The health food store there is small, in a little old farm-house, but she actually carries a pretty impressive selection of stuff.

Today is one of those days where I am having a hard time finding the positive in this, but I will try, so those of you reading this don't think that there is absolutely no good reason for us to go there!

Reasons to move:

• The opportunity to own our own, well-established and successful business, which will help us achieve the financial freedom we need to accomplish our other goals, like regular short- or long-term missions trips
• Thanks to low housing prices (comparatively to here), our "get-out-of-debt" plan will continue, except we will be living in an actual house, not a garage, while we work our way through the "Baby Steps."
  
• An eleven-month growing season. With our debt-driven North American lifestyle, it seems only inevitable that the economy is careening toward a major crash. When that happens, it will be those without a debt load, and who can sustain themselves from their own resources, that will weather it with the most ease.

I have reasoned myself through all my objections a million times: Yes, we are leaving friends, but we will make more. We didn't want to move here either, and look how wonderful it turned out to be. I will be home schooling my children, so I can have a say in how much Canadian history they learn. We will still be able to see our family and friends in the summer when we come north, and hopefully more often if they choose to come visit us during the milder winter months.

But still...

I ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers over the next few months (or longer!) It is only by the grace of God that we will get through this.

Thank you, friends.

Saturday Tidbits

It's been a good week. I can hardly believe it is over already.

It was Vacation Bible School week, for which I was a volunteer on the worship team. The theme was VeggieTales' The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. So! I got to dress like a pirate all week long! YIPPEE!

That was really fun. I'll try to get a photo up later.

I also read not only the book I started last weekend, but the one after it, since I didn't know going in that it was actually one story in two parts. That meant a lot of short nights, since I was reading all evening and getting up early to get the kids and I down to the church by 8:15 every morning. I finished the second book at 3 a.m. Friday morning (!), and have decided to take a little break before starting another one, so I can do other things with my life... like sleep.

From an article on Dr. Mercola's website that I read today:

"With that said, coffee is clearly not the healthiest liquid to drink – your best choice is pure water -- but coffee is still far less dangerous than fruit juice or soda."

Yesterday's "Quote of the Day:"

"When I go to bed with ink on my hands, I know it's been a good day." - Talena Winters

Pre-emptive Strike

"Would you like some tea?" I ask my husband. It is after lunch, and I decide that a cuppa something warm and creamy is just what I'm needing to kick the drag I am feeling.

Jason looks over from where he is emptying the dishwasher, thinks about it for a second, then says, "No." A pause. "But once I see you drinking it, then I probably will."

"So, should I just get it ready now, then?" I am already reaching for his favourite mug.

"Yes."

Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man marries his trouble begins

I tried to blog this week. Honest I did. Except somehow, it ended up being Friday before I knew it, and I still hadn't typed a word on here since Monday. (Okay, that might not be true. I think I responded to a few comments.)

It's been a mopey week for me. I've been wandering around, not really sure what to do with myself most days. I've been working away at the final vestige of my taxes, which are about 30 minutes from completion. (Notice how I am spending this 30 minutes typing a blog post, instead of taxes? No comments about that, please.) I've been scrapbooking a little, but not really feeling like I'm accomplishing much. I've been trying to tell myself that it's okay to go outside and enjoy the summer weather with my kids, now--the house is clean and listed, and if the remaining renovations wait another day, that's okay. I've been drained by the constant bickering between my older two children. Yet, ironically, I have also been experiencing baby blues after typing out Jabin's birth story for a layout last Sunday night. Not to mention, the communication errors that are somewhat inevitable in any relationship that seemed to be rather predominant this week.

I have a hard time blogging when I've got that much "downer" stuff going on in my life. However, there were some good things that came out of this week, too:

Jude had two firsts on Tuesday:

• His first solo shower (I know it seems insignificant, but it just seems like a very "grown-up" thing to do)
• His first scrapbook page.

He's been bugging me that he wants to learn to scrapbook, and I have no problem with that! :-) It actually all began one winter day when I was experimenting with painting my own watercolour background paper. Jude thought that was a good idea, and created his own "scrapbook pages." I bought him a cheap album and an acid-free glue stick, and on Tuesday we printed off some photos of his 5th birthday and I set him loose with some stickers and patterned paper. The choice of photos was actually inspired by the safari animal stickers he spotted in my stash, which he immediately decided he wanted to use. Bonus for him: he got to make a page with one of his favourite themes while using his creative muscles. Bonus for me: I got to use up some really old paper and stickers from my stash, and enjoy the product of my son's creativity.

He made the second layout the next day. The only trick was trying to convince him that he didn't need to use every tool and stamp and sticker on the very first page! :-)

I finally gave myself permission to read a fiction book this week. I have finished the first chapter of A Voice In The Wind, by Francine Rivers. It's not the type of book I would normally pick off the shelf, but Amanda recommended it so strongly, then leant it to me, that I said I would read it. However, I haven't had time for fiction since I finished off Harry Potter 7 at Christmas. It's been a little weird to think that I could be diving into a wonderful fictional world this weekend. Yippee! As soon as those thirty minutes of taxes are done, I'll really be letting loose! :-)

Yesterday, while I was out getting groceries, I bought a couple of Sonic comic books for the kids on a whim. They loved them so much, that a miracle happened: they managed to sit on the same chair for half an hour without fighting with each other!


Tonight we will be over at the Magnusson's. Jason is going over to watch UFC. I will be scrapbooking, and our children will be playing. Sounds like good times!

I guess I can say about this week: All's well that ends well. Right?

Poppin' Up All Over the Place

Please excuse this secondary post today. I just wanted to make a note: A while back I removed my Bravenet counter because it seemed to be causing pop-ups on other people's computers. As an experiment, I have just put it back. Please let me know if you are receiving pop-ups from my site, and I will remove it again. I don't want to spam my friends when they visit.

Thanks.

Edit: Okay, folks, I took it off again. It was giving pop-ups already. Oh, well. Guess I'll have to get along with SiteMeter--at least they don't spam on my site!

Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

This is a quote I just took off of one of my favourite blogs:

"I completely and violently disagree with this concept of ‘weekend parenting’. Parenting, in my humble opinion, is not just about hanging out with the kids and having a great time – that is what they have friends for. And I am of the firm view that I am not interested in being Ayaan’s friend (at least not until he has become an adult in every sense of the word) – my job is to be his mother." -Rohini, Mama Says So

Rohini, a full-time working mom, was writing in response to an article about "weekend parenting," a new trend emerging in the middle class in India. Sadly, it's a trend that has been in existence here for years, whether it has been called by that name or not.

I pity the parents who do not feel that it is important to participate in their children's daily lives. "Quality time" is what happens at the most unexpected moments of "quantity time."

Today, on the way home from our walk, Jude came out with one of his "Did you know...?" questions.

"Mom, did you know that bats eat mosquitoes? And flies?"

"Yep, you're right."

"What else do they eat?"

"You know what, I'm not exactly sure. Why don't we look it up?"

We were approaching our front yard, so we went right into the house and looked up bats in a Childcraft book on animals. It gave us a brief overview, but it wasn't enough to satisfy Jude--he wanted to look them up on the internet, too. So Wikipedia was our next resource, where we learned all kinds of things about bats, including the fact that they are viviparous, like humans. This reminded me that Jude has asked several times lately about how babies come out of people, so while we were on Wikipedia, I looked up the "pregnancy" entry and was able to show him diagrams of a baby growing in utero, and explain how when the baby got big enough, the mommy pushed it out through the vagina. He was amazed at how small babies start out, and how weird they looked at first. Then he asked me a few questions about when he was a baby. Finally, he felt like he was satisfied for the moment, and we went to make some sandwiches for lunch.

This is only one "quality" moment of many that hide in the quantity of moments in my day where only a parent will do. For instance, I teach my children the Alphabet Song or other "educational" songs by singing it to them while I brush their teeth. An alternative caregiver, or even a well-trained teacher, cannot replace having a parent involved in their children's lives day in and day out, who cares way more than anyone else about what their child learns, what attitudes they have and who wants to keep their love of learning and curiosity alive.
E.g. Jason and I believe that talking about having a baby is NOT taboo for a five-year-old, but some people may have been uncomfortable answering that question for someone else's child the way I did for my own.

Also, how can one hope to correct anything they see that they don't like about their children in two days on a weekend?

If all a parent wanted was a hobby and a tax deduction, start a home-based network marketing business. There are plenty of "daily" parents who would love to share their kids with you for a few hours on the weekend so you can get your "kid fix." But those are the parents who are NOT willing to give up their rights to train their own children 98% of the time.

Thank you, Rohini, for your thoughtful post on this subject. I hope that it will help some of your readership re-evaluate their own priorities.

Simplify, Simplify

I just read an article about Voluntary Simplicity on NaturalNews.com. This really struck a chord with me, because it has been a goal of mine for years. We are finally making strides in this area as a family, because the more I think about it, the more I realize we can do without.

For instance, I have made my own clothes since I was nine. I was mad that my brother got to go into hockey, and I didn't get to do anything new and cool, so my mom taught me to sew. I'm so glad she did, because with my lanky measurements, I often had to sew my own clothes to make things fit the way they should. As I got older, and "tall" jeans became more widely available, and I got busier, sewing kind of went by the wayside. However, out of frustration with the lack of available nursing dresses when my children were born, I modified one of my favourite dress patterns to make two nursing dresses that don't look like you just had an elephant for breakfast. They still fit, and so I wore one to Peace Fest on Saturday. (See right. Photo by Jude.)

I'm sure it had more to do with the hat than anything, but I drew quite a few looks because I was "dressed up". One lady even stopped me to ask me if I was British. Okay, sorry, this was not supposed to be a diatribe on the casualness of our culture. Ahem. My main point was that I really enjoyed wearing the dress because I knew it was well-made, it fit me, and that I had done it myself. There is something about ready-made clothes that robs the wearer of satisfaction in all three areas (and, more often than not, modesty as well.)

This spring, I have actually "gotten back into" sewing--not just because of the reasons mentioned in the last paragraph, but also because it is, in many ways, much more economical and environmentally friendly than buying something from a box store. I know that someone didn't get paid $1 a day to make my shirt, so they could take it home to feed their family of twelve. Also, I get to experience the thrill of thrift when I can make all three boys a pair of shorts out of a piece of fabric that I got in a garage sale for $1. Or when I can re-purpose a pair of jeans with the knee blown out into a trendy bag.

Here are some other ways we have been moving towards "voluntary simplicity" (in no particular order:

1. We stopped exchanging Christmas gifts, or participating in the whole "Christmas industry" in any way in 2002.

2. Last week, I made my boys a handful of hankies each out of scraps of flannel and cotton I had in my stash. These will replace the boxes and cases of facial tissues we used to go through, especially in the winter months, most of which had barely touched a little man's nose before being discarded. After diapers were eliminated from our trash cans, Kleenex was the biggest contributor to our non-recyclable paper waste.

3. We have nearly eliminated the use of paper towels, opting rather to use rags whenever possible. About the only thing I really use paper towels for is stuff that can't go into the washing machine, such as combustible fluids, or poop. Fortunately, there hasn't been much need to clean up the latter lately.

4. Along the same lines, we use cloth napkins instead of paper. I have even started trying to remember to bring cloth rags along for road trips, so that we can create less waste while traveling. Also, we usually bring our own travel mugs, and with all the traveling we have been doing this spring, I have managed to bring most of our meals with us, so we usually only have to eat out once or maybe twice on the entire weekend.

5. When we sell our house, we will be moving into a much smaller, more easily-maintained and debt-free place to live.

6. We have a plan to pay off all of our debts by the end of the summer, or shortly thereafter.

7. We buy less, and make do with our own stuff (or stuff we can make out of our stuff) more.

8. We wear our clothes until they are worn out, then repurpose them into something else. OR, we give the ones we don't wear at all to charity, so that someone else can benefit.

9. We use the local Freecycle group (free swap of stuff), and the Put'n'Take at the local Recycling Centre (same thing).

10. We are not ashamed of our used, hand-me-down, mismatched furniture that we have had since our college days. Well, most of the time, anyway!

11. I will not be taking students this fall, nor will I be volunteering with the kid's club, so I have more time to spend with my family and approach home schooling with energy.

12. After we move, I am looking forward to growing my own vegetables and milking our own cow, since our biggest sources of plastic waste are milk jugs and the packaging that comes on organic produce! What's with that, anyway? You buy organic, and every little tomato has a plastic wrapper! Kind of cancels one good out with the other evil, doesn't it?

Anyway, this is what's coming to mind for me. What have you been doing to simplify, friends?

On The Road Again

We've been doing a lot of traveling so far this summer.

Jason is on another road trip this weekend, but I opted on staying home with the kids this time. However, last weekend we were down in Sylvan Lake, staying at my dad's house. I got to visit my aunt and uncle and cousin, and grab some of my grandparents' photo albums for the masochistic scrapbooking-of-the-family-history project I volunteered for this summer.

I had a slight moment of panic the first day when I realized that my camera case had popped open. Remember the last time you used this? And you dropped it? Twice? Yeah. That. Shoot. Fortunately, I rustled around in my brother's room (he wasn't there, being on a wild and woolly vacation through Seattle at the time) and found a teensy-tiny screwdriver and fixed it. However, it meant I did not get any photos of my uncle and aunt, or any of the time at my Dad's. BUT! We hit the beach for a couple of hours before heading home, where I got some really great pics. Here are just a few:

"Boys! Give each other a hug!"
Is it just me, or does this hug not look particularly enjoyable? :-)

"Yook, Mom, yook!"

Jabin: "Augh! Augh! Code, Daddy!"
Daddy: "Jabin, look at Mom!"
Like he wanted to do that!
(See Noah recovering under a blanket in the background? The sand and water were really cold.)

Mmm... Ice cream.

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

Like most first graders, I was both excited and nervous about school. Maybe more nervous than some, since I had not attended kindergarten, so did not really know what to expect, and had no friends in my class.

I'm sure my parents weren't the least bit worried about either situation. They knew I was more than ready academically for grade one, and although I had very little confidence in my ability to make friends, my parents must have seen the gregariousness of my nature and knew I wouldn't be friendless for long.

On the first day of class, the desks were arranged in groups of six, with three desks tight beside each other facing three other desks in the same arrangement, all touching like we were around an oddly-slanted dividable table. I don't remember if I sat in the middle of a side, or on the end--something is telling me I was sandwiched in between two other kids.

That was the first time I met Amanda. She sat directly across from me, her brown hair cut short in a boy-type crop, and her blue eyes sparkling with all the friendliness evident in her smile. Unlike me, she had attended kindergarten the previous year, knew most of the kids in the class, and realized right away that I was new. That, and her natural boldness, is why I am sure she must have introduced herself to me first, not the other way around.

It wasn't long before we were buddies who did everything together. She was fascinated by my long blond hair which I often kept in side braids. For this reason, when we were "pretending" horsies, I always got to be the horse, because those braids made the best darn reins ever. (Amanda enjoyed this arrangement much more than I did.)

After grade one, we were not in the same class again until high school, but we maintained our friendship at recess--we loved to "pretend" Ella Mae, and describe all the animals we had as our friends, especially the pet monkeys that were always clinging to our necks. She grew about a foot taller than most of our peers between second and third grade, and I remember being startled when she came back to school that year with--*gasp*--BOOBS! Now that I have the perspective of being on "the other side" of puberty, I know that it wasn't quite the blessing I had dreamed it would be at the time, but of course it made her wildly popular--with the boys, at least. Shortly after that, she went to Tanzania with her parents for a missions trip that lasted most of the school year. Between that and the separation of being in different classes, our friendship kind of ebbed for a few years.

I spent grades six, seven and nine in a private school, and although Amanda and I hung out a bit when I was back in public for grade eight, it wasn't until the tenth grade, when I returned to public school for good, that we finally renewed and built upon the friendship we had started. This was helped along by my switch to attending the church she and her family were attending at the time, and both of us being heavily involved in the youth group there.

As we have aged and seasoned, so has our friendship. It survived the boyfriends that came and went. It survived the moves far from each other, then close to each other again. Our husbands became friends after we were married. (Heck, Amanda almost dated my husband when they were teenagers!) Our children are close in age and are all friends. (For more information on that little love triangle, see here! Oo, did I mention that Emily has now decided that she wants to marry Jabin?) The memories we have built are entwined in the tapestries of both our lives like beautiful accents of gold.

Amanda is the friend who is not afraid to ask you the hard questions. Her boldness can border on rudeness, coming across as lacking in tact, but anyone who knows her knows that she is not trying to tear anyone down by her candidness--she loves people, and because she cares, she just feels she has to say something. It may not always be the right thing to do, but the heart behind it is pure. It's awfully hard to get away with anything with a friend like that. She just won't let you deceive yourself, darnit!

She is competitive, which used to annoy the heck out of me. Either she has mellowed with age in this regard, or we are just in fewer situations where the competitiveness is apparent. However, it is her desire to do everything to the best of her ability that is one of the things I admire.

In high school, we would practice our French and study for Biology together; now we compare first words and nurse each other's plants and pets when the other is away. We have gone from comparing crushes to encouraging each other in our relationships with our husbands. We learn from each other as we discipline our children, clean our houses, and plant our gardens. The similarity of our personalities has driven us both crazy at times, but helped us to understand each other and ourselves better, too.

Amanda has helped me appreciate the value of having a friend that you can just be with. When we were new here, though she lived an hour away at the time, our brief visits were wonderful respite from the loneliness of being surrounded by people whom I neither knew nor was known by. When your friendship has this kind of longevity, it's kind of like being an old married couple--you are comfortable enough around each other that the silence you share has as much value as the words. You know you are loved, and don't feel the need to keep checking on the fact.

Whoever you may be, reading this, I wish this for you: that you, too, may have at least one friend like this, and hopefully several. If you know you already do, take the time to let them know over the next few days--by word or action, just remind them how much you appreciate their presence in your life. (I just did.)

Because even though friends like this may not need to hear it--it's still nice to know.

If the Mockingbird Won't Sing...

Well, it's done.

It began on Sunday morning: three solid days of renovating and cleaning madness. Carpet shampooers and saws and paint cans were flying left and right. Beds were moved next to couches, couches were moved into the dining room, kitchen cupboards were even moved around at random, but eventually everything was put back to the way it should be.

Which is, in itself, a spooky thing. I don't think, in our history in this house, there have ever been so many things where they should be at one time. It is kind of surreal to walk around and see not a trace of a toy strewn haphazardly about, all the carpets shiny and fluffy, all the shoes in their cubbies or on mats, and not a sign of a paint brush or hammer laying around anywhere.

The renovation projects are not completely finished... but they are at about 90%. And the "do-or-die" push has eased off a little bit, since we listed our house last night, and that is when the photographs were taken. Then there was an "agent showing" for all the realtors in the area this morning--so now, although we will try to maintain this as much as possible, I can let the kids play with their toys again!

Besides the loss of sleep, there was one other price paid for all this organization--last night I noticed that the small diamond in my wedding band was missing. The empty claws were snagging at my clothes, which tipped me off. Since it happened in the melee of the cleaning frenzy, it could be absolutely anywhere. It is very small, so my hopes of finding it are pretty much non-existent. It's probably in the vacuum cleaner somewhere.

As I looked at the ring closely, I noticed the claws on the 5-year band on the other side were also getting pretty worn, so I decided to just take it off until we can afford to repair it. (The three bands are welded together.)

Jason cracked a joke about having to hire a bodyguard to keep the guys off me now, since I'll be walking around without my ring.

"I'm sure they'll just be beating a path to the door of my home now that the ring is off," I replied, laughing. "I think I can handle myself, anyway."

As an afterthought, I added, "And wouldn't it just be cheaper to fix the ring?"

"Good point."

(Click on photo to see missing-rock space. Not to be confused with a missing space rock.)

Jude, a.k.a. The Source From Which All Knowledge Emanates

"Mom, did you know that mammals? They don't lay eggs. Except platypuses. Those are the only ones who do. Them and one other animal, those are the only ones who do."

"Mom, did you know that octupuses are purple?"

"Dad, did you know that all flowers have pollen and nectar?"

"Did you know that skunks smell bad?"

... and the list goes on and on.

So fun to see that he is digesting and ingesting and any other applicable forms of gesting the information he is exposed to.

'Tis the source of many giggles behind hands on Mommy's part.

Song of the Cheetah

By Jude Winters

One day a cheetah was walking by the river
He was looking for some food
He was walking through the jungle
Then he saw a monkey in the tree
Then he was climbing up his tree and got it with his paw
Then he got it with his teeth
Then he gobbled it up

Then he was still hungry
Then he was still walking through the forest
Then he saw a giraffe
The giraffe was running away
The cheetah got it with his tail on his [the giraffe's] tail
Then he ate it.

Then he was still hungry (Jude: "That's a lot of 'T's'!" Mom: "That's because you are starting every line with 'then'!")
He saw a zebra
The zebra was running away faster and faster
Thenthecheetahwasrunningfasterandfaster
Then he got it on it's leg.
Then he ate it.

Then he was still hungry (Mom: "He was still hungry? Are you SERIOUS?!" Jude: "Yep.")
Then he was still walking through the forest
Then he saw a spider
Then the spider was spraying some web and swinging and swinging and swinging
And made a spider web
So the cheetah can't get through.
Then he got through anyway (Mom: "How did he do that?" Jude: "He was just runnin' across it!")
So he got it on it's head.
Then he ate it.

Then he was still hungry
Then he was walking through the jungle
Then he found an elephant
The elephant was running and running,
Then he got it.
Then he ate it. (Mom: "Is he full yet?" Jude: "Nope.")

Then he was still hungry
Then he was walking through the forest
Then he found a tiger
Then they were fighting, fighting,
Then the cheetah got the tiger.
Then he was full. (Mom: "Did he eat the tiger?" Jude: "Yes." Mom: "Cheetahs don't eat tigers." Jude: "It's just a silly song." Mom: "No doubt.")

So Much Too Blog About, So Little Desire

Blogging has been a bit low on my priority list lately, as you may have noticed. It might have something to do with the sunshine that has been pouring down. Or maybe it's the renovations we are trying to complete in a hurry so we can list our house for sale.

Yes, we're listing our house. But before I tell you why, I need to backtrack a little bit:

On our camping trip, two things happened:

1. We had a lot of fun.
2. We decided to "go to the mattresses" on our finances.

We spent a day at Jason's parents house, so got to catch up a bit with the family, which was nice. Then we headed down to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. It was a perfect weekend for it--lots of sun. We got to test the water-fastness of our new tent when we woke up Sunday morning to a steady downpour. (Of course, inside the tent, it sounded like a hurricane was passing over--so much fun!) We paid an exorbitant rate for an armload of wood so that our kids could have the "full camping experience" - roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire. Thank goodness we bought a little propane cookstove for the rest of our cooking--it definitely paid for itself, with wood at that price!

There is a great big sandy beach at the campsite, with a slow, winding, shallow river that we all enjoyed ourselves at for the better part of the afternoon--the water was refreshing in the stifling heat. Jason and I, still toting around our winter-white skin that had barely seen the sun, got pretty impressive burns out of the deal, but after some mild peeling, they have already faded to tans. (Thank goodness I brought an aloe vera leaf!)

My two favourite features were the hoodoos (which you saw Noah walking through in the previous post) and the museum, which told us about how this was a sacred spot to the Blackfoot tribe, thus the "writing-on-stone" part of the park's name. Unfortunately, other than some illegal graffiti, we didn't see any native artwork, as our children were not old enough to go on the 3-kilometre interpretive hike. I would probably have wandered along the trails a little more myself if we would have had more than just a day to spend there. As it was, we just spent some time climbing around in the hoodoos situated in the 500 metres between the campsite and museum.

The week or so before we had left on this trip, Jason had read a book called The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, and asked me to read it, too, which I did while we were driving. (More specifically, during the sections of road while Jason was driving. I know some of you were worried for a second, there. Although he read to me while I was driving, too.)

This book is amazing! What's so amazing about it is not that there are any earth-shattering new principles in it. Dave Ramsey will tell you himself that the stuff in there is all stuff your grandma knows. It's just amazing because he gives you the step-by-step process for an average person, regardless of income, to get out of debt, save for retirement, make smart financial decisions, and have financial security.

We have made significant financial headway over our eight years of marriage, but in a lot of ways, we now realize that we have pussy-footed around. After reading this book, we have figured out that we already have it in our power to be debt-free with a paid-for residence by the end of the summer--thus catapulting us through Dave's first three "Baby Steps."

So, we have been painting and tiling and cleaning like mad to get our house on the market, hopefully by next week. This isn't the most ideal time to list our house (two months ago would have been better, as far as the market is concerned), but it is a lot better than it will be two months down the road. Our plan is that with the money we will make from our house that we will pay off all of our existing debt, have a fully-funded emergency fund, and build a small cottage on our property in the country (read: a garage with a bathroom) that we can live in for a few years until we have saved up the money to build our actual house. It's going to be interesting, but frankly, I am SO. EXCITED. to finally be getting a handle on our finances, and to not be "house-poor" because we are living in a money-sucking black hole, and to saving up money to be able to travel, and to knowing that we are looking after our kids' college educations, and that we will not be part of the 98% that retire in poverty--if they get to retire at all!

Did I mention that this book is amazing? Get it. Seriously.

Here are some photos from our trip:

This hoodoo was seriously high. Noah wanted to stand on it like Jude had done, but we wouldn't let him!

Of course, Jabin had to prove that he could climb up there just like his brothers! Shocked the heck out of me!

Jabin is sitting on a ledge. I'm actually a lot higher than it looks, honest!

HOODOO!... HOODOO!...Hoodoo!...hoodoo...hoodoo

Everyone gets to help clean up!

Happy Birthday, Canada!