Neils has grown and matured so much over this past year, even in the last couple of months. He is the same compassionate, intense, fun-loving guy he’s always been, but he’s grown into himself even more. He’s "leveled-up" you might say. With new powers and … ok, well maybe not exactly like that, but pretty close. He is reading more and more each day, can tie his own shoes, is more and more independent,  and more able to perceive what someone might be feeling or needing and what he can do about it, which makes him more willing and able to help his brothers out when they need it. I had a really fun time planning the party, and making a special celebration for my son.

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Conan will create an additional 15 square feet of kitchen space out of thin air. Conan is awesome. He recently made our nice smooth-top range look like it actually belongs in the kitchen by making it flush with the countertops and moving the kickboard into a supporting role. He then built some nice new shelves for pots & pans! What a stud I married. How lucky can a girl be?

Three years old! However did he manage it? Well the twos were fraught with peril for all, but we’ve all survived, and have a beautiful, kind, exciting little man to show for it. I love how every morning he dashes to our room with a cheery "Skudmorning!" I love how he always wants to be sure everyone gets what they need; if he gets a special treat he always asks for one for Keane, too. I love his tenacity and sense of doing things "right," in his own way. Such a wonderful little person. He wanted a Tractor Party, which I expanded to a farm party; and though all my grand ideas to get a petting zoo of sorts compiled were fruitless, as well as my grand design to get the farmer to park one of those giant harvesters in the field behind the fence, we invented a lot of other fun ways to celebrate Burke and honor his birthday wishes.

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A new fun evening tradition for our family:

So long soy beans!

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OK, so the fact that we found our dream home in 2 weeks– at a price we could miraculously afford (ok, so it needs a little elbow grease, but still!) was not enough. The fact that we were able to sell our home in Indiana in a so-so market in three weeks and at the price we wanted, still not enough. I have been focusing on being my ideal body weight and size… I’ve got a picture of what I want to look like posted on my bulletin board, and that’s pretty much it. No change to, nor re-invigorated interest in exercise or healthy eating habits. I had kind of stopped really even focusing on it, truth to tell. But I noticed my clothes have started fitting me differently. Not better necessarily, but differently. Take these pants, for instance…

They used to fit me perfectly, maybe a bit snug, when I bought them right after Keane was born. I can no longer wear them without a belt. I do not own a scale, nor do I ever desire to, but when I stepped on one out of curiosity at a friend’s house, I was astounded to find that I’ve finally lost that elusive 10 pounds of baby fat! Not from when Keane was born. Nope. I’ve been trying to lose that since NEILS was a baby. He’s now nearly six. I guess all my body needed was a little extra encouragement from my brain! Allrighty then! I’m a believer.

Wow. Well, we’re back in the saddle, though I feel like we’re just barely getting into the swing of things. I was a little, to say it mildly, put off when three days into the school year Neils’ teacher approached me to say that she felt he needed to be in Kindergarten for lack of maturity, and poor fine motor skills (in reality, handwriting), and she felt he had an attention problem. Here’s the long story…

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I was recently invited to participate in a blog run by a young mother in our new ward called, "The Bare Necessities of Motherhood." It’s a really great blog all about well, the obvious, and I really have never felt more like I fit in with the ideas and interests of a group of people better, so that in and of itself is such a blessing. I introduced myself to the group and immediately was asked to be a regular contributor. I will be posting once a week about some kind of cooking topic, which I am looking forward to immensely! I’m going to try to post every Wednesday for both my benefit and for anyone interested in following my threads. I just love that there is this little nest of women who are interested in child development, spirituality, becoming green, being good parents, and supporting one another in those goals. Not that those are totally unusual things for women to be interested in, but just that they’re each so good at those things and have so much to share. It’s awesome.

We were lucky enough to see Matthan and Brenda TWICE this year! Over the fourth of July, they drove all the way up from Ohio, where we were also lucky enough to see April, Eric & co. (I’ll post pics of that later) We couldn’t stay as long as we’d liked in Ohio, nor could they stay with us long, but we feel so blessed that they were willing to come up and see us at our green acres. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Conan discovered a mouse in, eek! Our bathroom. We introduced Niketta to the little rodent to see what she would do. We were pleased to see her instincts were still roughly intact, though very dulled by repeated admonishing to NOT use her claws on people. We eventually removed all hiding places for the thing, and locked her in with it, with a towel under the door to keep him there. She did eventually slay it, though only after poor vegetarian Conan accidentally threw it against a wall (trying to keep it from escaping)and paralyzed it. He thought he’d killed it at first, but after awhile it did start running again. It still took over an hour, all told. My hopes of having a highly effective resident mouser were diminished, though not totally dashed to pieces… she’s still young, maybe she’ll get better?

Well, today those hopes were reclaimed! ALL ON HER OWN, she found a little mouse under our refrigerator! She attacked, repeatedly, chased it all over the house and lost it, temporarily. I later found her with what seemed to be the same quarry (similar size, color, moving slowly as though it had already suffered some wounds) in the garage. She had it cornered in one of the kids play sand buckets. I finally took the kids inside to let her do her work. When I went out to check on her progress a few minutes later, she was in the process of enjoying the fruits of her labors, so to speak. Sorry, no live action shots. Though I did accidentally get a pretty good shot of the poor disemboweled creature… though I’m assuming no one really wants to see that.