Just a little update on Margarite's bloodwork. It is fine! All clear. Perfectly healthy. It feels like such a lavish gift to us from a very kind Father! Thank you for praying with us!

EMS Picnic

Some things that might happen at an EMS picnic.

• There might be conversations at the lunch table about gory calls, or bad accidents.
• They might be selling a fundraiser cookbook with a few pages of lifesaving tips in the front before you get to the recipes.
• There might be a call where every EMT on the premises rushes off and leaves their bewildered spouse and very numerous progeny behind for a few hours.
• The scheduled hay ride might be two hours late, due to aforementioned call.
  

Two Little Boys

"Once there were two little boys who liked to share. They shared everything they had. If one of them had a cookie, he would cut it in half and give half to the other boy. Always they shared everything. Then one day the one boy found a toad. Now they could not figure out how to share it, so they fote and fote over it. Finally they were so mad that they just turned their backs to each other. And that is when the toad hopped away. Probably he was tired of that conversation."

Gregory related this story that Alex read to him when we were camping at a cabin this summer. I do not know the title of the book, but I would love to get ahold of this book, if it rings a bell with anyone. It sounds very familiar. We have little boys at this house that are best friends. Some days they are so kind and sharing, it seems almost syrupy. I have noticed that these days of great effort to be nice to one another are often followed by days where they "fote" all day. (That is Greg's past tense of "fight", by the way.) One day, in desperation, I deprived them of each other's company for a good long while, which seemed to help bring them to their senses. Life is very boring when you aren't allowed to play with your brother.

I have noticed that when men say they want to "do a bit of digging" they usually mean "make massive holes and pile the dirt somewhere else for a while". This applies as well when they want to "scrape a bit of snow" off the lane. I used to watch in amazement as my Dad painstakingly, methodically removed the snow on our farm lane with his skid loader. Never mind that we needed to leave for church in 15 minutes. This was a job that needed to be done properly, no quick pass and leave the rest.

It's like the world turns into their sandbox and every scoop of the bucket makes them feel more possibilities: "Hmm, I could pile this over there and then move that over here... maybe bring in some creek rocks and landscape that spot right there by the lane..." This seems to be completely involuntary. Something we uninitiated females struggle to understand. But that's O.K.

So this summer when Gabriel said he wants to fix some of our landscaping bugaboos, I walked around outside with him and tried to keep up with his envisioning. First he borrowed my Dad's Dingo, which is basically a tiny digging machine on tracks. I tell you, it was astonishing what that little workhorse could do. He cleaned out underneath our deck to make it usable for parking lawn mowers and bikes. The excess dirt went on a pile under the shade trees in the back yard. Then a kind friend loaned us his skid loader, and so our new parking spot became reality, with a long slope of topsoil slanting down to the back yard, waiting to be seeded with new grass. The neighbor lady got 2 loads of shale hauled in so that we can fix her lane when we finish ours. Another pile of dirt. We hope to extend our picket fence about 50 feet along the road front to give the children more safe area to play, so we graded and redirected the lane to the back of the house. At this point I am kind of hoping we can refrain from borrowing a bulldozer.

Since we are literally surrounded with dirt this summer, every time the children step outside they head for the summit of the nearest pile and set up camp with whatever toys happen to be the favorite at the moment. It ought to say something that in three days we went through 18 pairs of pants at this house.

So I was completely flummoxed when Gregory made a wistful proposal: "Mama, if we ever move away from here, could we get a property with more dirt?"

Margarite Elise, 2 months

People ask me how we are adjusting to a new baby in the family. Now that Margarite is two months old, I thought I would post a photo of a typical expression on her sweet little face. She is not only good, she is angelically so. For me, the novelty of having such a happy baby is still new every day. I feel an urge to pinch myself to be sure it is true every time she falls asleep on her own. She coos and grins and gains weight like a good little baby. At 2 months, she weighs what Olivia did at 6 months. It is truly a miracle for us!

So the adjustments to the new baby have been easy. She just sort of slid into her spot in the family with very few ripples. We still do not have conclusive results from the testing we did 6 weeks ago, but we are at rest and happy to report, all is well. Glory be to Jesus!

We Learn More

In the course of this morning, I discovered that I had a total of 2 diapers left for Olivia. Now I could break out the stash of cloth diapers that I used in the frugal days of only having one child, but I don't really want to, being from a spoiled generation and all. Or I could give my little girl a crash course on what training panties are for. There was also the option of using up the Little Swimmers. But when Gabe came home for lunch, we decided that the best idea would be to go to Walmart and shell out more of our hard earned money for cheap imports that cheat Americans out of their jobs. Well actually, the conversation didn't go quite that deep.

So here is what I learned today on my little excursion.

Walmart parking lot+ white dress on mother+ baby blowout= no shopping.

We (Alex and I) turned around and came home, deeply grateful that I had stopped at the pharmacy first, noticed that their diapers were on sale and stocked up there. At least the shopping trip wasn't a complete washout. We did have a few items left on the list. How long do you think we can make it without milk and toilet paper?

At Least I Tried

When someone I love has a birthday, I think favorite foods, gifts, friends to party with, whatever validates that person and expresses their uniqueness. Birthdays are very important to me. When we were little, that was one day when we did not have to do any of our usual chores.

When Gabe's birthday came on a Monday after we had been gone all weekend, I wasn't sure how to make it special. He was studying all day, and since our internet wasn't working, he couldn't stay home because his assignments had to be e mailed that day. I knew that trying to make a knock out meal with a six week old baby in the house would be an exercise in frustration and futility.

My Mom came to the rescue by inviting us over for grilled chicken. Now there was a lovely birthday meal, but I still wanted to bake the annual Italian Cream Cake. I only make it once a year for Gabe's birthday for a reason. It has about 20 ingredients, some of which need separated and whipped and some that need chopped, etc. etc. Also it is baked in three layers and I only have two round pans, so that in itself is a long process of about an hour.

I kept some sanity in the cake baking by limiting the amount of children that could help in each step. Alex poured ingredients into the mixing bowl while Greg, mollified by the promise of helping with the icing, played in the back yard. Olivia and Margarite conveniently took naps.

Somewhere along the line, I got the brilliant idea to make black raspberry ice cream to complement the cake. It seemed like a nice thing to do, considering I had not managed to even buy a special card for Gabe. This would really show him my love. The only problem was that I had run out of time to cook the base so I looked for a recipe you didn't have to cook. Ahh, I found the one that came with the ice cream freezer. That should work for sure.

• Cook down the raspberries.
• Drain.
  
• Scald milk.
  
• Sugar.
  
• Cream.
  
• Raspberry sauce.

So nice and easy. I made a run to Osterburg for ice. The thought occured to me that it would be cheaper just to buy ice cream, but no, this needs to be special.

Alex and I felt very pleased with ourselves as we opened the freezer to check on our ice cream. It was a beautiful purple. We did a taste test. Wait a minute. What is this? It can't be. Surely it isn't. Yup, it is butter. I didn't know it was possible, but we did it. We made butter in an ice cream freezer, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how.

The children got a bit suspicious when I told them they can have an ice cream party right then, in the middle of the afternoon. Greg and Olivia innocently ate it down, but Alex didn't think it was good. Oh well, the cake was fabulous.