Life At The Circus

The kids were treated to a few inches of snow at Grandma and Grandpa's last week.  It was just enough for some sledding!             It's easy to see that a good time was had by all.  Doesn't my baby look like an oompa loompa ? I gotta confess I had quite a few laughs at her expense watching her try to walk around in her big sisters boots and snow suit. 

At our house, the rule is No Christmas anything until after Thanksgiving.  My hubby is pretty strict about this...He even scolded my grandma on Thanksgiving for wearing a Christmas sweater.  But, come the day after Thanksgiving you better believe we are cranking those yuletide carols as loud as we can as we head out for some good ol' fashioned Black Friday Shopping! I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!  It is by far my most favorite holiday of all.  To kick off the holiday season, I thought I'd post my answers to  a "Getting To Know You Christmas Edition" e-mail I received from two different friends last week.    So, for those of you interested in learning a little more about Christmas Circus style, grab some hot cocoa and read below.  1. Wrapping paper or gift bags or boxes? I am a horrible gift wrapper.  In general I try to opt for a recycled gift bag, but when wrapping paper is all I have left, and the job falls to me, it quite honestly looks like...

My son came home from school the other day with a craft he had made listing the things he was thankful for.  They were Mommy and Daddy (yea, we made the list) his sisters (doesn't this just warm your heart) toast ice cream This list was quite insightful to me.  Who know that toast got such high billing?  I'll be sure to have toast around more often now that I know how much he values it.  Of all the things he's thankful for, toast is in his top 4 list.  How about me?  What am I thankful for?  It is so easy to overlook the reason for Thanksgiving.  In the hustle and bustle of preparing to travel or preparing to host the feast, it's easy to find yourself going to bed with a belly full of pie and visions of Black Friday savings dancing in your head, having never stopped to reflect on all we have to be thankful for.  And more than just to reflect, but to take a few minutes to actually give thanks to the Lord for the blessings He has given...

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  This weekend our family tackled the leaves in our yard.  And really when I say our family, I mean, my husband.  The rest of us came out to hold rakes, snap pictures, and jump in huge piles.  Daddy was the one still raking in the cold all by himself when everyone else when inside to warm up and take naps.  Yea, I know my husband rocks . Here's a picture of what it looked like before he got to work. Then the work crew came out. Check out this pile of leaves.  You know it is just begging to be jumped in! The kids truly enjoyed this part the best.  (check back tomorrow for some great aerial shots of them being tossed into the piles)   By the time it came to the backyard, it was just poor old Dad all by his lonesome.  He tried out using the lawn mower on the back yard.  Doesn't the yard look so much better?  Now we are ready for snow to fall and to put up Christmas lights next week. Scott bagged up 38 bags of leaves th...

I came into the kitchen the other day to find my son lining up cups of water.  I asked what he was doing and he informed me he was setting up a "Water Stand" in our house.   I asked how much he was charging for a cup of luke warm tap water. $14.00, he replied. Any takers?

My son was playing in the backyard swinging his stick like an ax into the mound of dirt when he announced in an overly dramatic voice, "I am working like a slave!"   I am sure it's not hard for you to guess what we've been studying this year in Bible Study Fellowship .    That's right...the life of Moses.  I was recently reading in Exodus 16 about the Israelites wandering in the desert.  After the Lord had freed them from captivity and led them through the Red Sea, and provided them with drinkable water, they found themselves again without food and water.  And even though God had provided for them every step of the journey, they again found themselves grumbling and complaining.  For 400 years they had been held captives as slaves in Egypt.  Yet here they are "on the 15th day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt," (Exodus 16:1) and they are already saying that they wish they had died in Egypt as slaves because there they...

My daughter loves to play school.  She asks me to play All.The.Time. But, my daughter has never been to school. And everything she knows about school, she learned from watching her big brother. So when we "play school" it goes something like this... My daughter takes her booster seat down from the table and sets it up in the hall to be her "car seat".  She then has me strap her in and drive her to school.  I then unstrap her and she sits beside me while we wait for her teacher to come to the car and get her.  She grabs her folder and bag, kisses me goodbye and smiles widely as she waves goodbye.  A few minutes later she announces it is time for me to come and pick her up.  I pretend to drive, I wait for her pretend teacher to bring her to the car, she gives me a huge hug, sits back in her seat and tells me about her day.  She shows me her "school papers" in her folder.  She tells me about running around on the playground and what she ate for s...

The kids and I took a nature walk last week.  As we walked along the path, I realized we had necessary elements for some great pictures. 1.  Happy Kids 2.  Setting sun 3.  Fall leaves However, we forgot the photographer. After frolicking along the path gathering leaves and sticks, I noticed that the suns rays were really quite beautiful.  I remembered Scott saying that one of the best times of days to get pictures is before sunset.  "Perfect, I thought." I sat the kids down on a bench at one of the "exercise stops" on the walking path.  You were supposed to do sit ups here.  My son saw the curved bar and thought he knew what to do.  Before I could even think about stopping him, he had flipped over the bar and landed hard on his poor little noggin.  But, I had just set the girls down for the phot opp at the same instant and I knew time was of the essence. Poor guy didn't even have time to recover before Mom started snapping pictures.  And the girls weren't ex...

I have to tell myself this quite often at the circus.  "It's just milk, no use crying over it or making anyone else cry over it."  This time, the spill was my fault as I dropped the full gallon of milk over myself and my floor... No use crying over it, so I snapped a picture.  Check out 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordess Wednesdays!

Crafty, I am not.  But, I was an elementary education major, so I do know how to use scissors and glue.   And, I have found that I really enjoy doing simple arts and crafts projects with my children.  But, the circus life can get rather busy.  And as with most things, if I am not intentional, the opportunities and the moments pass me by.  So, this year I have designated Tuesday as "Crafty Tuesday." I have found that having one day a week set aside for crafts allows me a week to plan ahead and get everything together.  I picked Tuesday because it is the one day a week we don't have a morning commitment.  We typically have a leisurely start to the day, take care of errands mid day and after nap time we work on our "special projects."    I try to make dinner something easy on this night, either a crock pot meal, something I prepped earlier in the day, or something which requires minimal effort.  This way we can work on our pro...

Sunday my husband and I had plans during the Steelers games.  Thankfully we have a DVR, so we just recorded the game to watch when we got home.  This has happened before, and we have devised a sort of routine for situations like this, because it would be AWFUL to accidentally find out the results of the game before we watched it.  So, we typically race into the house (because what if we see a neighbor and they casually mention the game)  we then unplug the phone (because what if a friend or family member calls to talk about it) and we don't turn on the computer (because what if someone e-mailed about it or we saw something on our "igoogle headline"  (since we have Steelers websites in our favorites on our home page.   Yes, we live in a sort of state of paranoia. We've settled into this crazy routine only after learning from the past.  Yes, we have actually sat in our living room with our hands over our ears much like Jimmy Fallon in Fever Pitch w...

  Last week the kids were having a jam session in the living room with their play guitar and drums.  As we looked at my son's pose, with his tongue out, and his fingers holding the "chords" on the guitar, I couldn't help but think he had a startling resemblance to KISS (minus the face paint)!

The Safeway near us closed down for the past year so they could tear it down and build a bigger, more modern grocery store.  I must say I am pretty excited about this because now I don't have to drive as far to get my groceries.  Perhaps, I got a little too excited. When I got the flier in the mail about their "grand opening preview party" on Thursday night, I started making plans.  And, I kinds got the kids excited brainwashed about it too.  They actually started looking forward to it...."Thursday we go to the grand opening of Safeway, right Mom?" (Now part of the reason we were all so excited is that last week we accidentally went to Giant for their grand reopening after they had rearranged the store.  It was incredible.  There were 5 clowns with balloon art, every where you went there were people giving samples, stickers, candy, there were line greeters, cashiers, and baggers....it was insane... and we had the balloon art to prove it). When my hu...

After posting last week's goofy national park pics , many of you commented that you looked forward to the day we included the kids in these shots. Well, wait no longer... It only took 18 mths for us to bring our son on his first national park trip. Much like the beginning of our first trip, this pose was quite normal.   Here we are in Acadia National Park. The next summer we had a two and half year old and a 7 month old.  Our son fell asleep in the car after a day of hiking in the park.  Unfortunately, we were only in this park that one day.  So, if we didn't get the sign picture on our way out, we wouldn't have it.  We had no choice but to take our sleeping child out of the car to pose for our pic.  (He stayed asleep the whole time until we put him back in the car seat).  And the next year, we went camping with our 3 and half year old, 1 and a half year old, and 2 and a half month old.    No need for funny poses now....

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Trekking out and about about with a toddler can be tricky enough, but running errands with a potty training toddler, her into everything ever curious, little sister and her energetic older brother is down right difficult.  Those bathroom stalls were not meant for four people!  But what do you do when your potty training toddler has to go and hasn't learned how to hold it? This genius idea is courtesy of my dear friend Rebecca.  When I saw a porta potty in her minivan I instantly said, "I need one of those!"  And let me tell me it's worth every penny. I have a little potty seat in my minivan.  In the bag behind it I have the tube of mini M&Ms (her potty reward) hand sanitizer, Lysol (for disinfecting the seat) and extra clothes (for times when we don't make it to the seat fast enough.  I recently added plastic shopping bags (for when she goes number 2).    Now, instead of dragging my 3 crew circus into the bathroom stall at every sto...

There's a show on Disney which my kids really liked for awhile, but it just didn't sit right with my husband and I.  There's nothing morally objectionable in it.  It's just a silly little cartoon.  My concern lies with the fact that it seems to trivialize the word hero.   Ever seen Higglytown Heroes ?  In each story the main characters find themselves in a situation which needs help from a higglytown hero (a local community person doing their job)  It might be the locksmith, the veterinarian, or the barbershop owner.  While I agree that anyone can be a hero, I do not believe that just doing your job makes you a hero.  I think you need to do something brave or honorable to be considered a hero.  Getting my door unlocked when I lock my keys inside, is really helpful.  It's a job I am truly thankful for.  But I don't feel like you can use the word heroic to describe that action.  I feel doing so takes away from the truly her...

Who would ever thought soccer cleats could be so cute?  When I took my son to get his cleats at the beginning of the season, I thought those cleats were far cuter than any baby bootie I've ever seen.  I've never been into bronzing the baby shoes, but I will be tucking these cleats away in a box to look at years from now when I complain of the big stinky cleats I find sitting in my doorway.  Last week we watched my son's last game of the season.  In some ways he's come a long way since that first game .  He knows to stop when the whistle is blown.  And while he never scored a goal, he did dribble the ball down the field a few times.  My husband and I couldn't have been more proud at the rainy game a few weeks ago when he ran after the ball and kicked it down the field.  More than once!  I remember Scott and I looking over at each other with such enthusiasm and shouting, "He touched the ball!"  His antics at his last game were truly mem...

A recent dinner conversation resulted in one of those, "wow" moments for my husband and I as we listened to our four year old speak truths that truly made us rejoice.  We had been talking about voting and my husband asked if my four year old son new what voting was... Son:  Yea I do I learned it at school...it's the government who makes all the rules Dad:  Right... and we get to vote on who will make those rules Pause  Dad:  Who makes the rules in our house? Here's where I was expecting him to answer with "Mom and Dad" Son:  God And I instantly stopped eating and looked up my husband.  My son answered that question better than I would have. How comforting to know that our son gets it.  He understands that when Mommy and Daddy make rules, it isn't just for the sake of making rules, it's because we are obeying God and we want our children to do the same.  How exciting that he knows that Mommy and Daddy submit to the same God he does!...

Ladies, I have truly enjoyed reading your comments about how your husbands rock.  It was probably my most exciting blog week to date.  I can't tell you how much it brightened my day to read such uplifting words about your hubbies.  I want to encourage all of you to tell your husbands why they rock.  Today.  Don't assume they know.  Don't figure they don't need to hear it.  Don't wait for them to tell you why you rock first.  Tell them today what you told me this week.    You'll be so glad you did! And now for the lucky winner of this fun contest!  Thanks to Random.Org for generating this number for me because there is no way I could have picked it myself!   Random Integer Generator Here are your random numbers: 8 Timestamp: 2008-11-07 19:27:49 UTC   8 JPg It’s so great to hear women singing their husband’s praises! My husband, Jake, (my crush since middle school! :)) is absolutely incredible. He is a model of p...