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We decided last year to begin a new tradition of eating pumpkin pancakes for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. So we've been building it up for weeks now, how yummy they were going to be, how unique they are, etc. Thanksgiving morning, I'm slaving away in the kitchen making these yummy pancakes when Daddy walks in and tastes one. He looks at me and says, "Have you tasted these?" A horrified look crosses my face, what have I done?! Luke comes in and sneaks a taste of one and his face screws up into an ewww-yucky-kind of-face. Now I'm almost in tears. I taste one, hoping they're exaggerating, only to realize that somehow I've ruined our Thanksgiving morning special breakfast. :o( Daddy suggests that we try to eat them anyway, maybe the boys won't really notice. Of course, Luke had already noticed. We sit down at our lovely decorated table with cute little Thanksgiving plates. Joshua starts tearing into the pancakes. Finally, he says, "Usually I like pumpkin pancakes, but when I swallow, I don't like these very much." In the end, I had to confess to the boys that I had messed up breakfast and maybe we could try again the right way the next morning. We threw the rest of the pancakes away.
It was the vinegar. It calls for 2T of vinegar. When I was pouring it into the measuring spoon, I spilled a little. So I just figured that maybe I had spilled more than I realized. The thing is, the vinegar taste was SO strong in the pancakes that I couldn't figure out how I possibly could have spilled that much. The more we pondered (and tasted) the problem, the more we tried to figure it out. Later Daddy had to run outside to get some eggs for me at the little store in our apartment complex. He noticed the vinegar that he had bought for me the day before (which I had used that morning) and saw that it said 70% proof. When he got home, he checked out what we were using before he had bought this new stuff. It was 6% proof! No wonder my pancakes were awful! The vinegar I used was more than 10 times as strong as normal vinegar! Just another adventure of living overseas and not really being able to read food labels. Later that day we bought a new bottle of "normal" vinegar and I made the pancakes again the next morning. They were very yummy! And I was able to redeem myself in my children's eyes. :o)
It's hard to limit this to one post, but I've been collecting some of Joshua's cute sayings/conversations for a while now. For those of you who we will spend time with in the U.S. next year, this is just to whet your appetite for conversing with a 5 year old who talks like a 25 year old. :o)
* One day I showed him this page of 6-8 squares that I wanted him to cut out (still practicing his cutting skills). And he said to me, "Aaaaw, Mom, I only wanted to cut out 8 less than 10 pictures today." (That's two in normal language.)
* A different time Joshua came up and hugged me as he commented on my pretty blue sweater. "It feels just like llama wool, Mom!" He learned about llamas on one of his computer games and has ever since talked about llama wool quite a bit.
* "Mom, I think I'm just going to drink milk and eat vegetables forever so I can not ever get sick again. That will keep me healthy because those are healthy foods." ("Healthy foods" learned from Sesame Street)
* When trying to remember where his Exodus memory verse was found, he asked if "Excolonians" was the name of the book. :o) I had a hard time not laughing when he said that.
* After getting out our fall decorations, Joshua spied the orange plastic pumpkin candy dish. Remembering that we had candy corn in it last year, he asked if we could put some of the "triangle candies with 3 colors" in it again. We told him we didn't have any candy corn.
"Well, where can you get it?"
"You can get it in America."
"But that's on the other side of the world!"
Sorry, Joshua, no candy corn this year. :o)
* One day Joshua and Luke were picking up the 50 puzzles they had all over the kitchen floor so that we could get lunch ready. Well, Luke was picking them up, but Joshua was just kind of just sitting there. In trying to encourage Luke for doing the right thing (as well as try to get Joshua going at it too), I was praising Luke. So I said, "Luke, you're just going to town!" Since they didn't really know what that meant, I had to explain it to them. Then Joshua says, "Yeah, Luke, you are going to town. But I'm not going to town because I'm too tired." The two of them proceeded to have quite a lengthy conversation about who was going to town and who was not.
* Earlier this week I kept hearing something banging in the washing machine. I was afraid it might be broken until I realized that there were 2 toys in there being washed with the clothes. One was a toy phone that was turned on, so the lights and music were going off the whole time (though we couldn't really hear the music because my washer sounds like a rocket is taking off). Anyway, the washer is a front loader and you cannot stop it until the entire wash cycle is finished and it stops on it's own. Even if you turn it off, you can't get the door open. So we just had to let the toys get washed. When I took them out of the washer to inspect and see if they still worked, Joshua says to me, "Well, I guess we'll just have to sell them for junk now." I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff.
* When eating a new kind of lemon cookie the other day, I asked Joshua if it tasted like lemon or not. His thoughtful reply, "Hmmm, I think it tastes like banana, lemon, and lime all mixed together. It's quite delicious!" Thank you, Joshua, for your cookie commentary.
I'm sure there's more and I KNOW there will be more in the future. But these are just a few that have come up recently. That Joshua - he is something else!
Well, Daddy has been gone on his trip for 8 days now. Counting today we have 3 days left before we can see him again! He will arrive in the middle of the night Sunday night/Monday morning, and we can't wait! I must say that my boys have done remarkably well for only having one parent around, particularly the not-fun parent. :o) We had one day-from-the-pit where they got in trouble for everything and I had little to no patience for anything - not a good combination. But most days have been pretty good. I've really been impressed with how Joshua has stepped up on several occasions to help me. Daddy had a talk with him about how he was the biggest boy in the house when Daddy was gone and how he really needed to help Mommy. Joshua has mentioned it several times, so I know he's thought about it. He has had his moments off and on, but this week Joshua has really shown more maturity than I thought was there. It's been a delight. And I can even tell at times when Luke is following his lead. Luke has been more challenging this week, but he is 3 (which naturally explains it all). I've been so grateful that we've all been healthy (except for Micah's runny nose) and safe so far. There were several projects that I'd hope to get done while Daddy was away, but I've pretty much stuck to surviving and haven't really worked on much extra. Oh well, it'll all get done someday. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us this week. We are so thankful for you!
Having multiple children proves to be rather chaotic at times (okay, pretty much ALL the time with my kids, but sometimes more than others). See, each child has a mind of his own and each child has something to say that MUST be heard. Let's take this morning at breakfast, for example. We were just finishing asking the blessing on our food, everything is ready to eat, Daddy has just said "Amen". Then the noise and chaos ensue. Micah has gotten into the habit of yelling, "Aaaaaaaaaaa-men" after we pray. He holds the first syllable out so long that you think he's just yelling to make noise, but he always adds the "men" to the end of it. It's really funny, even if a bit loud. So, Micah is doing that, while Luke immediately starts asking for help with pouring the milk. This also is not unusual, but Luke asks in his own special 3-year-old way by stuttering a little and repeating words until he gets what he needs. And at the same time as all this, Joshua is telling Daddy all about how the South Americans grow potatoes in the mountains, and they also grow corn, which is good because he likes both corn and potatoes. I'm so not kidding, either. So, Daddy looks at me and I look at him and all we can do is laugh through the chaos. The nice thing is that it was only for about a minute until we could start getting food into all of them, then the table quieted down a little. :o)
Trying to get out the door with the entire family is also a rather chaotic time, but that deserves its own post. Hopefully some other time... Until then I'll leave you with a few pictures...
There are two moments in the day when I sigh that deep sigh of relief mixed with exhaustion... The first moment comes around 3:30 in the afternoon when I'm just about to lay down to rest/nap. I've been going hard all morning, preparing 2 meals (simple though they are), cleaning up after those meals, teaching Kindergarten, protecting Micah from imminent danger (i.e. his older brothers), breaking up spats, training my boys in the way they should go, doing special Luke-school time, sometimes preparing things for supper, etc., etc. You get the picture. Then around 3:00, it's time for Micah's afternoon nap. After he goes down, it's time for Luke's "rest time". Sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he just looks at books in his bed. I get Joshua settled playing his computer learning games so that I can finally get to that wonderful moment. I go to my room, close the door, set my alarm for about 20 minutes, snuggle under the covers, put on my headphones playing lovely piano music, and the sigh inevitably escapes my lips. It's only 20-30 minutes of peace and quiet (well, most of the time), but it is a beautiful part of my day. And it helps me get geared up for everything else that comes after it. Now, to be honest, even when I do get a good nap in, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm #1 mommy all evening. In fact, there are often days when I can't wait for Daddy to get home from work so he can take over things with the boys, particularly training responsibilities. You know, there are some days when patience seems to abound, and there are days when it's not so much. But I digress... The 2nd sighing moment happens around 8:45 or 9:00 when we've finished family devotions and the boys are all down in their beds. Daddy comes back into the room and we just look at each other like, "Wow, I'm exhausted, how about you?" Raising 3 little ones will always generate such a response, trust me. By this time of the day it's really hard to be motivated to get anything else done that day. Unfortunately it's about the only time we can get any tasks done, so we press on. That is, on the days when we can push ourselves to do anything. :o) There are the evenings when we just watch Cosby Show episodes (we own all 8 seasons), then go to bed. All in a day's work of being a mommy, I guess... I wouldn't trade it for anything else in all the world!
When we chose the name for our 2nd born, it did not occur to us how hard it would be for him to say his own name correctly. Of course, this shouldn't be a problem after 3 years old, so it's really not that big of a deal. But since Luke is only just now 3, he's still learning how to say it right. :o) For a long time he introduced himself as "Woot". Then eventually he was able to pronounce the "k" sound so it turned into "Wook". Just in the last few days we've been really working with him to pronounce his "l" sound, which until now, has proven very difficult for him. Now, today, however, he's all about the "l" sound (when he's trying and thinking about it). So he can actually say "Luke" - Yay! Since this is such an accomplishment for him, and he's quite proud of himself, he goes around saying every word he can think of that starts with "l". "Luke loves lions and leopards." Last night when saying his verses after supper, he kept saying "The Lord is my leopard..." (as opposed to shepherd, that is). Anything to show off his new skill! I'm proud of my Luke!
Recently we studied rocks, so this is the boys painting a rainbow rock garden. 
We did 4 weeks of wild animals. Penguins was one week. So I drew (at least attempted to draw) 3 different penguins as their actual height. The Emperor penguin is actually 4 feet tall! I learn so much when I'm teaching them. 
Micah wanted to measure himself against the life-size penguins also (since that's what big brothers did). He is about the same height as a chin-strap penguin.
One week was about elephants, so we made these ears and trunks. The boys really liked these! We also watched some great footage on Planet Earth of elephants. Yay for Planet Earth!
The boys put on the pilgrim hats (thanks Grandmother!) and we made a feather headdress for Daddy so he could pretend he was Squanto. They had a fun time acting out the story of the pilgrims. 
This picture is not actually school related, but I included it so you could see Micah's cheese face. He's totally into getting his picture made these days. So cute. I'm hoping to post a cuteness update soon!
