Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas card will be late this year because we were waiting for Greg and Jonah, so here it is on the blog for now -- cards to follow!



Merry Christmas everyone! 

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Introducing: Jonah Anthony

Yesterday, straight on my due date, we got to meet this cool little dude:

Jonah Anthony arrived at 9:55 on the morning of Dec. 18th. 9 lbs, 6 oz (4200 grams for the metric among us), 2 hours active labor.

Thank God I don’t have to dread labor anymore! (Oh, and BTW, this was one occasion that a spicy curry actually DID work. I’d forgotten that I haven’t been cooking spicy since I’ve been only cooking for my kids in the recent past. What a surprise!)

An interesting fact that we learned the other day: My midwife was casually mentioning Lavella's birth weight to us as "really big -- close to 11 lbs".  We told her that no, definitely she was about 9-1/2.  She went to her notes, and gave us the weight in grams... as it turns out, we did the conversion wrong.  She was 10-1/2 lbs.  Holy crap.  No wonder why she looked so fat!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Who's here, and who's not

Because I realize that a long blog silence encourages speculation, here are the answers to two questions you might have: Baby has not arrived, Greg has.  This morning, Greg landed on German soil.  He took a train to a spot that's about half-an-hour from here...a train station I've been to before...and yes, I got lost trying to find it.  Greg was freezing out in the cold for about a half-hour.  I'm a terrible person.  The good news is, I did find him in the end, and it is wonderful to be together again.  Lavella knew who he was, and isn't acting distant at all, which is great.

This week has been a pretty productive one for me.  Besides the silly amount of cleaning that's been done, I've also woven these three scarves for the children:






(Andrew, Elijah, and Lavella, respectively -- to match the hats I knit last month)

On Friday I finished yet another sweater for myself:





So far during this pregnancy, I've knit 5 sweaters.  Last night, I cast on for three more, although I'm guessing I won't manage to complete all of them (any of them?) before the baby's born. 

Unrelated, but here's what Lavella looked like after she helped me make marshmallows the other day:


Thank goodness she was contained!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Frantic Clean, and a (belated) Thanksgiving recap

Today was the day I'd planned to clean for Greg's upcoming arrival.  A few days early, but I figured this would give me a chance to get a reasonable amount of things done each day without going totally crazy.  Let me just tell you: the nesting urge, once fully unleashed, is a frightening and powerful beast.  The children helped some, because of course the Best Thing Ever is to squirt excessive amounts of cleaning supplies all over everything, and we actually had a very nice day together.  Things accomplished today:

Children's toys picked up and put into their room
Floors in living room, guest room and sun room swept and vacuumed, including rolling up area rugs and getting under them.
All furniture moved and cleaned under (vacuumed inside couches, moved piano, corner bench, etc.)
Living room and my room dusted.
7 loads of laundry washed and hung to dry (= 14 trips up and down 2 flights of stairs)
Both bathrooms cleaned.
Some windows and both glass doors Windexed.
Microwave scrubbed out.
Kitchen cabinet surfaces wiped down.
Hood and stove range cleaned on top of and under.
Oven door window scrubbed.
Computer room partially organized.

I still want to wipe down the inside of the refrigerator, finish the computer room and hit a few other clutter spots, but I had to stop myself after 8 hours.  It's 10 at night right now.  The children have been in bed for 2 hours, and I'm just now finishing my dinner.  I will clean more...if I can still move tomorrow.  I'm telling you though, this level of Crazy Clean feels good.

This is very belated to post about (although when has that ever stopped me?), but we had Jonathan here for Thanksgiving weekend!

Jillian had a big Thanksgiving dinner at her house.  Lavella, teething two teeth at once, had refused a nap all day, so this is how she spent the first part of the later afternoon:


Thankfully she roused herself part-way through, and was quite the character for the rest of the evening.


Jonathan and I were responsible for most of the desserts, so we brought Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie (with dark chocolate almond bark, whipped cream and toffee sauce), and Butterscotch Pumpkin Pie (with Scotch spiked whipped cream).  Both were huge hits, and rather delicious, although Jonathan preferred the latter (guess which one he made). 


(Sorry, the picture sucks, but I kept having to jump up and help the children with stuff, so it started melting before I could get a good shot)

Also, because I'm excessive, I decided that I needed to make two types of candy as well.

Chocolate rum balls (recipe to come soon):


And vanilla marshmallows:


On the last day he was here, we struck on a fun idea.  He ran out to get take-out from the local Asian Bistro (their name for it, not ours -- just "Asian".  Really darn good food though; some sort of Chinese/Thai fusion.).  We set up the computer room with my little collapsible tables, and then watched on the computer an episode of Bizzare Foods on Thailand.  Everyone ate happily, and the kids thought it was the coolest thing ever to be "eating what the other Andrew is eating!!"

(I love all of their expressions in this shot)



We also visited the Midevil Christmas Market at a nearby castle ("OUR" castle), which wound up being kind of fun, but very, very cold in the end.




Overall, we had a wonderful visit, and look forward to seeing him Christmas weekend!  (He and Greg will probably be cooking dinner -- should be fun times!)


Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all of you, and much love from our family to yours.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Bellyshot: 38 weeks

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Refreshing

This week has been a little bit difficult for me -- trying to buy a larger vehicle (and running into stupid problems that shouldn't be an issue), running extra errands, having trouble sleeping, combating with crazy nesting instinct, not being able to accomplish much homeschool with the children (for the above reasons)...

I had scheduled my monthly spinning Friday for today a few weeks ago, but as this week unfolded, I started to feel that panic that often threatens to grip me as a new baby gets ready to arrive. "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it" was oft repeated in my head, even as I accomplished each task. Looking around my disheveled house, I felt certain that I should cancel Spinning Friday...but then I realized something. I need Normal Life to continue. I need things to look forward to each day. I need something to clean my house for. I want to have people to bake and cook for (besides my children).

I'm sitting here now in my tidy house; everyone from the spinning group has gone, the children are in their quiet times or naptimes, and I am so glad that I decided to keep the date. I feel refreshed by the visit with the other ladies, successful to have managed to clean the house and bake, and all together satisfied and pleased with the day.

For every spinning event that I hold at my house, I bake something special for everyone to eat when they walk in the door -- the last two times was cinnamon rolls (from a fantastic recipe at Bon Appetit that actually produces light, soft rolls!), so this time I made Baked Donuts.



For my kids, the best part was the donut holes:



Recipe found at 101cookbooks with a few modifications: I threw everything into my bread machine -- all the liquid first, then all the dry, just as I do with my bread. The recipe calls for 5 cups flour, but I used 5-1/2 because the dough was too sticky. 1-1/2 cups of the total flour was whole wheat, which didn't weigh the finished product down at all. I actually might try substituting a cup more next time. I also doubled the cinnamon in the cinnamon-sugar topping, and actually would up it to a whole tablespoon next time, because I loved the extra flavor.

I made up the dough last night, shaped it, and then put it on parchment paper-lined panes, wrapped it in saran wrap and then put a layer of aluminum foil over all to ensure that they didn't dry out overnight. This morning, I proofed them in a slightly warm oven with a bowl of hot, freshly boiled water sitting below them.

Instead of sliding the parchment paper onto pre-heated baking stones like I do when I bake cookies and muffins, I chose to leave them on the pans this time, and the texture was lighter and more pleasing than when I'd used stones another time. Overall, I was very happy with them, and will make them again. Plus, anything that can be prepped the night before and needs only to be slid into the oven in the morning is great to me. Feels like I didn't even have to do anything, yet I can still eat freshly baked deliciousness!

Yesterday I cut this off the loom:


I decided to experiment with a bit of tone-on-tone embroidery at the one end, and free-handed a little flower. (I know, it's hard to see, but whatever. I like it.)


It's far from perfect, but I love the blue that I spun for it. Now Andrew and Elijah both want scarves too. Since Andrew put his order in yesterday, he's asked me every few hours if I've warped the loom yet, so I should probably get on that. The little guy never forgets a promise.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sleepless in Germany...

I can't sleep; uncomfortably firm Braxton Hicks contractions and terrible heartburn had me rolling around in bed for a few hours, so I'm back up.  I'm sipping on a big mug of heartburn tea mixed with the relaxation tea my midwife gave me.  I'm too tired to do anything terribly productive, seeing as it's almost 2am, so instead, here I am blogging.  Well, that's kind of productive, right?  Here's a little look at what's been going on in the past week or two. 

I've been obsessively working on another sweater:


Cleaning the house in a never-ending cycle because of little people like this:

(Together, they unwrapped every single band-aid in the cabinet, squeezed out some ointment, opened a brand-new toothbrush and ate some toothpaste.  In about 5 minutes.  According to Elijah, Lavella got into the sink herself; this is exactly as I found them.)

Teaching little people to clean because of their evil ways (no, really because it's a good skill, and they're VERY excited about using brooms and spray bottles):






Frustratingly, Elijah has developed and obsession for squeezing things out.  I find piles of hair conditioner, shampoo or body wash in the bottom of the shower or in the toilet.  Today he was carefully (and quickly) tearing off squares of toilet paper and putting them into the toilet.  He and Lavella paint things with body lotion (walls, bed-posts, etc.)

~sigh~  Baby is due in 2-1/2 weeks, and Greg is due home just a bit before that (dates obviously can't be discussed on the blog for security purposes).  He'll be around for 18 days once he lands here, so I hope and pray that everything works out with baby being born in a timely fashion, and that my recovery from the birth is as quick as possible so that I can continue to manage the home on my own.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Let it snow

Is there a less original title for a blog post?  I think not.  Now that we've cleared that up...

In the two German winters we've experienced so far, we have had but one or two light dustings of snow, which have melted so quickly that I'm not even sure we made it outside in time to make footprints.  This past week, much to the delight of my children, we've gotten some Actual Snow.  In these photos it doesn't look like much, but it actually stuck around for a whole day!  Another morning we woke up to a few inches of wet snow. 

Each snowfall hasn't lasted more than about 24 hours, but we've managed to have some fun in it anyway.  Since I have no choice but to run certain errands like, you know, buying food and such, I've had to practice driving in possibly slippery conditions.  I guess that's good for me, but I am not AT ALL excited about it.  (I used to be perfectly fine driving in the snow, but since I've totaled two vehicles on slippery roads -- the second time with baby Andrew in the car -- I've had this terrible fear of it and won't even go out in it.  Not that we've lived anywhere recently that's even had snow to speak of, but still, snow-driving is probably not a very good skill to lose.)

Anyway, here are the little people, jumping (and biking) in the snow (notice the tongues fully extended and the feet hovering over the ground).















In continuing with my Sweater For Me obsession, here's the latest in my line of brand new knits:

Andrew took these pictures this afternoon.  He's been showing a great interest in photography lately, so recently I taught him to hold down the shutter trigger half-way down to focus before completing a shot. 

For this set, I had the camera set up on a tri-pod while he stood on a chair behind it.  This was so much easier than using the timer like I usually do.  He loves to "be a very good helper", as he says, and he actually is!





Here's the little photographer.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

"Maybe I will"

A silly video that the children thought was hilarious this morning:

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Beauty all around

As the time for this baby's arrival draws ever closer, I have found myself in moments of panic. The thing of it is, the panic doesn't seem to be based on actual fact, just vague Dark Cloud feelings of "I'm going to drown in housework." and "I'll never make it alone with 4 children." Then I stop and look around at the beauty that surrounds me, and the things that I DO manage to get done, even at this late stage of pregnancy.

A funny little face:








Having fun baking together (this is Emms' beer bread recipe -- my only mod is that I put a few tablespoons of melted butter in the pan to "grease" it before adding the batter):

"Cheers!"







Weaving:


Sweater progress:


This morning's baking -- bread and granola:
(I put the ingredients for bread on the "dough only" setting, and then after that first rise take it out, form it into a loaf and let it rise a second time in a loaf pan before baking it in my conventional oven.)

Handknit socks hanging up to dry (the children love swirling them in the sink and then squeezing the water out):


Because of the constant business, excess hormones, and general pregnant discomfort, sometimes it's easy to forget all of the little moments and things that mean so much. I have learned to photograph the texture, the unexpected beauty, as I live through my day. When I have a moment to rest, in those quiet pauses when I can breathe, I go back through the still images, and I'm reminded of how much I accomplish, and how much I have. I am truly blessed.

Blogged with the Flock Browser