By Nicole

Whew.  30 posts in a row.  And I didn't even "officially" get on the blogrolls.  I was a crasher!  It's amazing how much I have learned about blogging and other bloggers in the last month.  I have found some GREAT blogs to follow.  Before starting all this and actually spending time exploring BlogHer and other forums for blogger moms, I didn't realize the level of support and community that was out there.  I am not planning on jumping into the digital world and seeking all my socialization and affirmation through the Internet, but it has been nice to know that it is available and to get those comments from other women that I think (unless you are a cyberstalker, psycho, or poser... and then, I guess you tricked me good) I have a lot in common with.  Well, cyberstalker or not, we all admit we love the comments and support, right? That said, I know that I did start to worry more about what people who were actually reading my writing thought about it.  Sometimes,

Well... this isn't really an "ode", but the title sounded good.  I looked up all types of poetry online , and got impatient, so I quit. Besides, I wrote this at 12:30ish the other night, in purple crayon on a random notebook, while trying to sleep.  There are times that I think If I didn't sleep a wink   I would be fine And other times, yes That I must confess   Sleep is divine If only I could choose When to wake or to snooze   I'd be dreaming!   First attempt at poetry in YEARS. 

The other day, I saw one of the prompts for NaBloPoMo... something about whether you liked being with people or being alone.  That's a hard question for me to answer. I like to think that I am a social person, and I often find myself wishing that Jason and I did more with friends... dinners together, playdates and parties for whatever reason.  I'm even jealous of those people who have lots of those kinds of things planned.  Their calendars are full of potlucks and sleepovers and camping trips with other families.  I want a social smorgasbord too... or do I? I love my friends.  I love my family.  I love my friends' families. I just don't actually get out there that often to see anyone.  Truthfully, our social invite calendar is birthdays and holidays.  It's not that we don't like people over, or going over to visit people... we just don't prioritize social events.  I have friends who plan game nights and movie nights like it is second nature... but it takes

Last night, Jason and I stayed up and went through the warranty drawer(s).  'What is that?' you ask. Oh, I will tell you. You see.  Jason and I are keepers.  I don't feel that we fall into the classification of "hoarder" just yet, although the sane might beg to differ. We only keep things we need, things we might need, and things we probably don't need.  But we are also weeders.  We weed less often than we keep, so we always have plenty to weed whenever the urge strikes.  Which usually happens two to three times a year on a long weekend.  This weekend, we have weeded part of the office, the garage and part of our bedroom (the place that will never be a sanctuary for sleep . Back to the warranty drawer(s).  It used to be one drawer, but has slowly grown to more than one.  Whenever we buy something or are given something of any value, we keep the receipt and the information.  This time our weeding happened, not because the urge struck, but because we

So I can't quit.  I am obsessed with figuring out just exactly what this cast iron skillet looks like under all that carbon buildup.  Jason is just shaking his head and humoring me by acting super interested.  When I told his grandma about it today, she just nodded her head like she had known all along.  Right now, I am on my third round of oven cleaner.  Instead of following the directions I am getting online, I am being impatient and only waiting an hour before I rinse and scrub.  So, while I have made progress... it has involved a lot of elbow grease and some disappointment.  This was from the first round.  Soaking in a plastic bag on the porch.   This picture doesn't do the amount of clean justice.  There is still a lot of black gunk on the sides though. At this point, I am positive it is a National Wagner Ware 1359 Sidney -0- Number 9.  Although the pretty WagnerWare logo in the middle is messed up.  I was debating about whether or not to scrub the sides

If you recall, in my last post, a whole three hours ago, I showed the above skillet.  It still really needs a cleaning.  Well my curiousity got the best of me (before I even started cleaning the thing), and I Googled what I could read on the bottom.  And this is what I found.  RubyLane.com has almost the exact skillet (but way cleaner) for sale.  So, I think that is what this one is.  We bought it at a garage sale for next to nothing.  It's being sold for $50.00 on the website!  Yippee. I have expensive stuff that I got for cheap.  I love that rush. We'll find out once I soak all that gunk off the bottom. I am still trying to learn more.  Especially about the hammered dutch oven.  The Find  has great links to all kinds of cast iron too.  Is anyone else out there a cast iron nut like me?

While I was putting away all the pots and pans from Thanksgiving, I got "re-interested" in my cast iron pans.  Jason's grandma came out to the house and she was talking about the old cast iron she had when she was young raising all her kids in Oklahoma.  She said her skillets had a number on the top of the handle.  Jason and I have spent many summers garage saling to acquire the collection we now have.  And I am always on the lookout for more cast iron for my sisters and brother.  I don't think anything I own is a collector item.  I do get curious every once in a while and try to figure out if what I have is worth anything, even though it wouldn't really make a difference, since I would keep it and use it anyway.  I'm just weird, and I like to look things up on the Internet instead of do other things like cleaning and laundry.  Anyway... here is my "collection".  This is the bottom of the pan that I have with a number on the handle, like Jason&#

So, my Thanksgiving break has started off in full swing, which is why I am writing a post at 11:20 at night.  I was thinking about what to write about tonight as I made pumpkin pies, boiled eggs, concocted  an experimental dip, and baked sweet potatoes.  I was thinking it was probably time for a thankful post, since I haven't officially done one yet this month.  But I have so much to be thankful for, I don't really know where to start, and that post would be all sappy and boring.  My plan tonight was to JUST prep for Thanksgiving, but then my wonderful hunter husband reminded me that we had two deer hanging in the garage that needed cut and wrapped.  While he cut up the deer (and his finger ( really BAD... almost think he will need stitches, but he won't go)), I did the aforementioned baking.  Then I got to wash all the meat.  I like to do that part, because I get it really clean.  Now, when we started this whole "home butchering" shenanigans, I didn't li

Drinking an Airborne and heading to bed.  Sorry, that's all I've got.  Weak, I know.

Taylor loves me!  She said so in this post !  Thank you Taylor for awarding me the Liebster award.  I'm glad you can tell from my writing that I am honest.  It's hard to be that way sometimes, but it was really one of my main goals when I started blogging.  I am now going to copy and paste your explanation and work on my own awards. 'Liebster' is a German word meaning dearest, and the award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with less than 200 followers. If you receive this award, here is how you continue spreading the love... 1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them. 2. Reveal your top 5 blogs (with under 200 followers) and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog. 3. Post the Award on your blog. 4. Enjoy the love of some of the most supportive people on the Internet. :) I award the following bloggers...and in no particular order... (okay, that's only half true, you'll find out why at the end), he

Does everything take longer after you have kids?  Well, I guess I should have enough kids by now to know that the answer is yes.  Yet sometimes I still fall back into the habit of underestimating how long things really will take. Case in point.  I put off grocery shopping this weekend until I could drive into town (the "town" where we shop at Costco, WalMart, Safeway, etc. is an hour away) when it was still mostly light out and the roads wouldn't be totally icy.  Sunday afternoon was really my only time.  When I started out the morning trying to get ready ahead of time for church and still walking in late, I should have known... We finally got home from church ( I had to stay late to tape labels on my Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes that I had procrastinated on) and settled in the car to drive to town at 2:15ish.  We didn't make it to Costco until  almost 4 because I had to stop at the bank and check the oil.  The car was dry (I drive an oil-guzzling Subaru t

Yesterday morning, I opened up The Grace Effect by Larry Alex Taunton.  And I had to finish.  Since there were lots of other things I had to take care of during the day, I read the book in spurts, but I finished nonetheless.  At just over 200 pages, it is a quick read.  Larry Taunton is a Christian apologist who, inspired by his family's experience adopting a daughter from the Ukraine, explores what society would look like if atheists had their way and what grace has to do with it all.  Long story short, a society without God, without Christ, is a society devoid of grace.  A world without grace has no hope for survival and no reason to care.  Larry begins the book by stating that he not attempting to prove the existence of God nor to defend religion.  He says he is writing the book "with the layperson in mind" to explain why the world needs Christianity, yet it seemed to me that he used quite a few complex words and phrases when there were simpler ways to explain it

A few posts ago, I said I wanted to start sharing some of my cakes.  So here goes.  These are all from 2009, just before and right after I had Leilee.  This was for my sister's birthday.  She had just had Cash, and we had the baby shower on her birthday, so I made her a cake too.  She loves Superman.  This was when I was only using buttercream frosting.  This was Cash's cake.  I was trying to avoid the creepy, life-size baby type cake that they always make fun of on Cakewrecks. I really like making swirly clouds.  That's where the awesome cream cheese frosting I make is the thickest.  I usually go for those pieces.  :)  This was for Grady's birthday.  He is the boy that always requests the weirdest, combo cakes.  Never one theme in particular.  He wanted a shark playing basketball and Batman.  I talked him into a Batman basketball, and keeping the whole thing underwater.  His original vision was much more complicated.  For the shark's teeth and gums

On the way home from work today, I changed the CD in the stereo.  The kids and I have had the same one in for a few weeks now, and they have the numbers of the songs that they love memorized.  Every once in a while, I throw them off and change it up.  Jason goes bonkers driving in the car with us because we change CDs so rarely.  If you saw the inside of my car you would understand why I don't want to add a bulky CD case to the chaos.  So, something got me thinking about how songs are linked to so many of our memories.  Music has a way of sticking itself to the most memorable of moments in our lives.  Sometimes sad, sometimes happy, sometimes a just plain, weird memory that you can't figure out why your brain hasn't emptied that part of the recycle bin yet.  It takes up space for no apparent reason, and there is usually a song stuck to it.  I have certain artists or genres of music that bring back memories, like Nelly and Simon and Garfunkel hanging with me and my besti

Sometimes, I can't believe that I am a grown-up. It is ridiculous to think that I am responsible for three little lives, that I have "assets" and a life insurance policy and retirement. I can't believe that teenagers look at me and think, 'Wow, she is old.' And yet, I don't think that any one of those moments (or even the combination of them all) makes me an "adult". Legally, I was an adult at the age of 18, even though I still couldn't buy alcohol or rent a car. When they let Jason and me leave the hospital with Connor, I was only 22 and terrified. I held back tears the whole way home; I was so scared (and hormonal). We couldn't believe that they just let us walk out with him. No training manual or comprehensive test required. We were automatically parents. But that, in itself, did not make me an adult either. I remember a drive home from a shopping trip with my mom and my kids. The kids were sleeping in the back, and as we were talk

So today I took an unplanned, mental health day.  After three nights of awful sleep and a pile up of stress about work and schedules, I am just wiped out.  This morning, after a long round of snooze pushing, I realized I had set my alarm clock for later when I went to bed last night.  I crawled back into bed trying to figure out how much longer I had before I needed to get up  to get the kids to school on time and go in late to work. Then Grady said, "Mom, my tummy hurts."  Usually I tell my kids you have to have a fever or be puking to stay home from school, but today I said, "Okay, we'll stay home."  I sent my texts and made a few calls, and we all went back to bed until just after 10 a.m. this morning.  Which is unheard of for my early bird kids.  I figure we must all have needed a resting day.  Even if we just came off of a three day weekend and it's only Tuesday...

I am so tired. Not tired of writing.  I actually have 10 post ideas in draft form, and thanks to all the smart, creative ladies on BlogHer NaBloPoMo right now, I have a few more ideas that I want to steal, um... ahem, pay tribute to.  For one, I have seen some birthday cake posts... like this awesome Rainbow Cake .  I started making cakes for my kids about Connor's second birthday... so I have quite a few that I could share and write about the successes and utter failures.  I haven't ever posted pictures of any of my cakes because my fear this whole time has been that someone would send them to the CakeWrecks people and they would ridicule me. I don't think I could handle the rejection.  Now I think I am so tired that I don't care... Anyways, I had the worst sleep I have had in a long time last night.  After about 1:30 a.m. I finally dozed off and  every sound woke me up from that point on, until the alarm went off at 5:45.  To try and catch up, I slept on the flo

Whew! This makes me caught up on NaBloPoMo. And it is helping me catch up on organizing jewelry for the upcoming Christmas Bazaars. I have missed the Farmer's Markets for quite a while, so I have a bunch of stuff to sell.  At best count, I have just under 100 pairs of earrings and 10 necklaces or sets.  Here are the earrings.  They aren't the best pictures, but this is a quick introduction to what I mean when I say I am a beader.  I'll save the sets and the seed bead work for another post.  Excuse the beat up rug. 

We watched Despicable Me today.  At the end, when they do the shadow puppets I had an idea.  I remember when I was little that my mom went through this silhouette phase in her artwork and made us kids pose for silhouettes.  I didn't like my own silhouette, even as a child. I also remember loving to do shadow puppets, and the very few times my mom would get out the old projector to show us slides, we would ask to have time with just the light on the sheet so we could play shadow puppets.  So my brilliant idea today, since we use a projector to watch movies instead of having a big, expensive TV taking up space, was to pause on a good spot and let the kids pose.  Here is what we came up with.  Not without a little begging and pleading on my end!  Two bunnies hopping towards a duck   Two ducks quacking at a bunny   Butterfly   Guy with mohawk   First shadow puppet ever...not sure what she is going for   Baby Girl  

A coworker of mine reminded me the other day of Days of Our Lives. We talked about how much we loved Hope and Bo and how evil Samantha was. You see, back in the day, when I didn't do much but nanny for part of the day in the summer, I used to get done just in time to race home and watch Days of Our Lives.  It was this mindless, mind-numbing escape.  Everyone was glamorous and rich and had horrible family and relationship problems.  There was also plenty of bad acting, which helped my teenage brain think that I could so easily be a movie star.  (Maybe I'll tell the story of my one and only  college drama class another time).  I remember thinking how messed up things were in their lives and how their relationships were so screwed up. Fast forward through life a little, and I have learned about and seen some pretty screwed up things happen in real people's lives and homes.  I think I would rather be kidnapped by Stefano than deal with some of the stuff that friends of mine o

There, I said it.  I started NaBloPoMo to force myself to write more and put myself out there so that people would hopefully read my blog and give me some feedback.  Now, I have just spent some time on Blogher reading blogs about bloggers who suddenly quit and leave their readers hanging.  I want to give props to those bloggers who have been writing every day.  I started late and am still "behind".  Only four days in a row, and I am starting to get nervous and worried about what I should write each day. I just read a blog entry by Emily at http://www.simplysahm.blogspot.com/ on how she wants to train for a marathon again but is working through her own nerves about the commitment.  And I was right there with her when I read it, thinking ME TOO. It has been over 90 days since I ran the Tacoma Narrows Half.  I didn't win of course (not even close, in fact some ninety-year-olds and a couple moms pushing heavy jogging strollers totally passed me up), but I didn't d

The title of this blog might seem a bit shocking, but I don't know how else to say it.  My almost 2 1/2 year old daughter loves boobs.  Mostly mine, although she has pointed to other women's breasts, and asked, "Those yous boobs?"  (I love how she says "your" as "yous".)  I nursed all three of my kids.  Both of the boys nursed until about 18 months, and I vaguely remember having to cover up the other nipple so that they wouldn't play around with it while nursing.  But that was that.  They quit when they were ready, and we happily moved on to sippy cups and cuddling at night, and my boobs did not re-enter the picture. This little girl of mine is a different story.  She was completely happy to keep nursing.  Eighteen months, nineteen months, twenty months... nothing.  She was happy as a clam.  Totally loved the boob.  But she was also becoming an annoying and bossy nurser.  She didn't need it anymore.  She just wanted to play around and

My husband and I had a funny, banter-filled conversation the other night over sleeping and waking habits.  You see, he recently switched shifts.  For the majority of our relationship - a year of long-distance dating and eight years of marriage, he has worked night shift - 10pm to 6am.  By the time he gets home in the morning, the kids and I are up and ready to leave for work and school.  There were periods of time when I hated it (see http://womaninawheelbarrow.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-growth-and-growing.html ), but for the most part... I had grown to like it (don't tell him).  You see, we had two nights a week to snuggle and then I had five nights a week to stay up as late as I liked and watch what I wanted and write up blogs or eat ice cream, or all three at the same time.  Those were the days (ahem, nights).  Well, now he is home most nights, which took some getting used to (for both of us), and he switched again to this crazy shift that changes almost weekly.  Now we have to a

It's not technically 11/11/11 yet , but by the time I have finished this post it will be.  I remember playing the three wishes game with my brother and sisters when we were younger (usually after watching Aladdin), and we were always really tricky and would start out our wishlist by wishing for more wishes.  That would be followed by wishes for lots of money, a new house, all the candy we wanted, and world peace, among other things.  Now that I am a jaded, cynical grown-up, wishing isn't that easy anymore.  I feel like it would be silly to wish for world peace or all the candy I could eat.  I want my wishes to be realistic... you know?  In light of Veteran's Day, and remembering a post I wrote a few weeks ago about my brother leaving for Afghanistan , I know that I want to wish and pray for my brother's safe return home.  And for his brand, new marriage to stay nice and strong through this great challenge.  Shoot, that counts as two, huh?  Well, I am saying if it

So I started BlogHer's NaBloPoMo Soup Challenge  today.  I am 10 days late and 5 posts behind.  But we won't dwell on that.  Today's prompt is "What is your passion?"  I got a little nervous, because there are lots of things I really like to do, but I wasn't sure they would qualify as passion... so I looked it up.  Merriam-Webster  gives quite a few definitions for passion.  I am choosing definition number 5b to write from, which is, "a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept." Great.  I have lots of passions.  Some of which include running, beading, reading, writing, raising my kids, loving my husband, serving God, and spending time with my family.  I also doodle a lot.  Even at times when it could be considered mildly inappropriate.  So, since some might find the other passions I listed a bit boring or cliche, I am choosing to write about my doodling. I have doodled for as long as I can remember.  During clas