Saving Lives

 It's been a long time since I've posted.  We've been busy!  And it's only getting busier for a while yet, but, as always, I do hope to be better about posting.

One of the major things occupying our hearts, souls, and every last bit of brain power is a work my husband is undertaking in Haiti.

Last March, he joined forces with a group from the United Methodist Convention connected with an organization called Sonje Ayiti that was designing and building a set of composting toilets.  He jumped in with  two feet and helped in the design process as well as the physically going to Haiti and helping to build the structure.  The long term plan is to build these composting toilets/ public bathhouses throughout the country.  Pictured is the pilot phase... and it's going very well.

You see, since the earthquake in 2010, Haiti has been ravaged by cholera, a sickness so severe it can kill a healthy child in less than a day.  People wash, dump waste and drink from the same water source... the only source available.  And so the epidemic continues.

When the people have a specified location to dump waste and that location knows how to safely handle it, the spread of disease can be stopped.

So now, this previously built facility is in full operation, generating a good, safe agricultural amendment to fertilize various crops and further feed the community.  But continued contamination cannot be risked.  As volunteer for Sonje Ayiti, my husband has researched and compiled laboratory equipment so that samples of the finished product can be tested for safety before it is applied to food crops.  The lab equipment alone is expensive, despite the substantial discounts IDEXX gave Sonje Ayiti.  The equipment is currently set up at the City of Deland's Wastewater treatment facility so Randy can familiarize himself with it and calibrate it.

In November, Randy will travel to Haiti to establish this critical lab at a local university.  He will then provide training for Haitians so that they are independent in its continued use.  It will be a wonderful educational tool while it's saving countless lives and forever altering the future of Haiti and her children.

Would you consider partnering with us to see this come to fruition?  Giving is easy through GoFundMe.  Just click here to make a donation of any amount.  GoFundMe does not allow funds from other sources to be recorded so we will be decreasing the goal amount of $9,000 to reflect other giving.  We are currently about halfway to that goal.

Thank you for caring for Haiti's children!

Thankful

Good morning.  I woke up at 4:53 this morning to the squawk of a chicken and something larger than a squirrel racing across the roof.  And I'm thankful enough that I expressed as such before even realizing it's Thanksgiving Day.  You see, to be able to sleep completely through until 4:53am without a single disturbance  is blissful.  All you parents nod in agreement.

Our county fair ended a couple weeks ago and I'm still stunned that I won the Homemaker of the Year award.  To qualify for this award, one must enter homemade items in 5 different categories: plants, canning/preserving, sewing, crafts, and baking.  I happen to have a really tenacious competitive side and entered up to the limit in every category that was feasible for me... the main reason why I won.  No one else, I've learned, would even think of entering 42 items.  Now picture me blushing from embarrassment.

But anyway, the purpose of this post is not to detail my shame, my victory or even my items, but all the people... all those AMAZING people... that have passed through my life and imparted to me some skill.  I know I've lived a rare life, even in just my 34 years, but I really do think the people that have come into it are what make it unique so much more than the places I've been.

And I really must start with my Grandma Schmidt.  I honestly don't know if she'd be proud of me, rolling over in her grave because of all the things I didn't do right, or flaming with jealousy.  I'm called Little Arleen by my mom and aunt for a reason... I'm her, 50 years younger.  I can't say she taught me much.  She wasn't a great one for teaching, but she did inspire just by doing.  She did teach me how to thread a bobbin.  I think that's as much as she could stand.  I was maybe 10 years old when I got her bread recipe and started making her cinnamon and pecan rolls.  I had watched her enough to know how to do it.  I inherited her canning equipment and her knitting needles. She got me interested in sewing and quilting.  She was a whirlwind.  She could do everything, and do it all so perfectly. I'm not there.  I lack the patience to rip out stitches that aren't just right.  My quilts shift and pucker.  If I'm short on a spice for a batch of pickles, it gets done without it.  But she always had things just right.  She was an amazing woman.  We called her the bionic grandma.

My great aunt Mim was the one who actually taught me how to knit.  She also taught me how to do head and hand stands when she was in her 70s.  And yes, she demonstrated.  I don't remember the occasion, but I remember sitting in her tiny living room at her home in a retirement community and watching her knit.  Then she let me do it and she guided my hands.  It really stuck with me because that was NOT something my grandma would have done!  And for whatever reason, I never forgot how, even when it was years before I really started doing it on my own, that one lesson was so memorable to me it just stuck.  But she was a teacher.  A PE teacher.  An athlete before women's athletics were celebrated.  She's in the Hall of Fame at Boston University.  She also taught me how to play tennis and do a few goofy acrobatic tricks.  One very amazing woman.

My dad taught me gardening.  He let me carve a little spot out of his landscaping to plant flowering annuals or veggies.  He doted on his fruit trees and gave me a love for walking barefoot in the grass.  He taught me composting.  He taught me how fun it is to have your hands in the warm fluffy dirt... and how to add that warm fluffy dirt to the flat heavy sand to make it sustain life.  I have no problems getting dirty.  I'm comfortable dirty.  I have no desire to wear gloves or work carefully sparing my clothes and body the evidence of outside.  That's from him.  Wear grubby clothes and roll in it.  Savor it.  Lay in the grass. Stick toes in the mud.  I would never be able to plant as much as I do without that love.  Gardening is my haven.  Dirt is my therapy.  My dad is the giver of that beautiful gift.

I was a young teenager when a family friend taught me how to sew.  She worked with my mom at a local drug store and also worked for my dad at the laundromat.  I'm not sure which association came first.  She was just Sandy.  A spitfire of a lady with a tongue as fast as her hands.  She told me to buy a pattern and some fabric and come to her house.  I did and she taught me how to follow a pattern, how to backstitch, how to hem, even how to cheat.  She got me off and running and the rest just took practice.

We had a little stretch of time where a family friend came to live with us.  She was a forlorn woman who found great joy in crafting.  So crafting she did and I did it with her every chance I got.  She made chocolate candies in molds and taught me the tricks of that trade.  We once made an entire candy train for Christmas and filled each car with various goodies.  She also taught me the various uses of wonder under (fusible interfacing) which is a major component in a good number of my creations.  She let me work with her, tag along with her, ask a million questions and maybe actually help her some too.  Sometimes I wonder where she is now, if she's still as sad and forlorn as she was those days, or did she find the Joy that comes even when crafting is not possible?

Then there are 2 wonderful ladies I met in China, one who taught me how to quilt and another who taught me  that canning really isn't as scary as it seemed.  And a recent friend who introduced me to the bread cookbook.  And my father-in-law who gave us a Mother Earth News subscription where I've learned yet more.  Our landlord that shared his Countryside magazines with us.

So many awesome people.  Who love me.  Who invest in me.  Not for crafts, but for relationship.  I am so amazingly blessed.  Thank you, Jesus.

To Make a Cake

 1. Have a fabulous boy who is turning 3.

2. Go to the grocery in a dead run to buy ice and get it back home and in the freezer while not being late for teaching a K-3 music class.

3. Come home exhausted but put away library books, issue vocabulary test, prep for next week's school, remember that you have no coherent plan for dinner... and oh yeah, you need to start that cake too.

4. Use every last egg in the basket and set the ice cream a-churning.


 5.  Realize you need eggs for the brownies.  Your favorite recipes all use 4 eggs.  Pray the chickens are having a good day and check the pen to find 3 eggs.

6. Squeeze a few chickens.  If that fails (as is usually does), find a recipe that uses only 3 eggs and mix it up.

7. Let cute kids lick the spoons

8. Remember you also need to make caramel.  Set the sweetened condensed milk to boiling while the ice cream is churning, the brownies are baking and the pot pie you froze a month ago is popped into the oven with ice crystals still on it.

9. Bite nails wondering if the ice cream is going to finish before you're late picking up a child from preschool and charged $5/min.

10.  Pull brownies from oven, set caramel to a low simmer, check the pot pie and attempt to stash finished ice cream in an extremely full freezer.

11.  Rearrange entire freezer to make ice cream fit and drive like mad to get aforementioned preschooler.

12.  Come home, feed goats, feed chicks, pull 3 preschool boys from splashing in mud puddles. Repeat.  Twice.  Issue clean up and hand washing instructions while dishing up potpie.

13.  Eat dinner while repeatedly answering the question of where Daddy is with, "He's working late.  He'll be home soon." until its a frenzied response of, "What did I just say?!?!"

14.  Begin reading a story about a squire and promise diligent eaters a movie about knights and squires.

15.  Attempt to cut pentagonal shapes from brownies while kids get pj's on.  Realize far too late that a ruler or template would have been extremely useful.  Enjoy a cute boy dancing around you singing about his birthday cake.  Nearly blow your top when loud, unrelenting arguments arise about who's birthday it is.

16.  Set kids in front of the brain numb-er and line a bowl with plastic wrap.  Set quasi-pentagonal brownies face down and spaced out in the bowl.   Spread a layer of ice cream holding brownies in place.  Rearrange the chest freezer to find a place for this bowl.

17.  Welcome home the superhero.  Milk goats. Put kids to bed. Do dishes.  Crash in bed.

18.  Take ice cream out of freezer while enjoying a cup-o-joe with your favorite mother.  Take cake out of freezer and realize that the ice cream oozed around the already iffy pentagonal brownies to make just blobs.

19. Drizzle a layer of caramel on cake layer.  Crumble brownie crumbs on top of that.  Spread another layer of ice cream.  Probably should refreeze here. (I got impatient)


20.  Drizzle last half of caramel and use the rest of the brownie crumbs on another layer.  Spread rest of ice cream, cover bowl and refreeze.

21.  Wait several hours while mowing the lawn, building a garden fence, moving chicks out of the garage and tilling chicks' poopy paper shreddings into a garden bed.

22. Decide to give it another attempt at looking like a soccer ball and buy a tub of whipped cream.  And then feel really guilty while reading the ingredients and mentally berate yourself for not making your own.

23. Pry cake out of the bowl onto a pizza pan and frost with million-ingredients-you-can't-pronounce-and-a-few-you-don't-want-to-whipped cream. Forget to take a picture until its almost frosted.

24.  Let birthday boy lick the spatula.

25.  Mix cocoa in with leftover whipped cream and realize it tastes horrible.  Add stevia powder to sweeten it.

26. Slice 3 left over quasi-pentagonal brownies in 2 pieces each,  hamburger-wise for 6 soccer spots.  Seriously question your ability to draw so many hexagons on a pile of whipped cream and begin to wonder if it would look like a soccer ball if they're in squares instead.

27.  After freezing again, put sliced brownies on cake and refreeze to hold them in place.

28.  Put cocoa-afied whipped cream in the cake decorator and connect brownies with thin brown lines of whipped cream.  Refreeze very quickly.

29. Use the rest of the whipped cream to edge the bottom... until the tip pops out of the bag and a mess glops on the counter.  Then just finish up by glopping it by spoon the rest of the way around the ball.

30.  Stow in freezer and wait for party time!

31.  Celebrate loving family, beautiful weather, fun times and a sweet little muffin man.

32. Know that you'll go to the ends of the earth for an excited smile from a precious son and a treasured memory.

33. Eat super yummy ice cream cake!!!

Happy Birthday, Nathan!  I love you!!!

Happy New Year!

 The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) happened upon us over the weekend.  So instead of our usual game night Friday evening, we made shofars!  Now a shofar is traditionally made from a ram's horn... but we're fresh out of real ones.  And the rams horns we've had have not been very grand and glorious anyways.  So here are the kids coloring their shofar pieces.  Then they "sewed" the pieces together with yarn... that was a bit tricky for them.  No pictures because I was busy undoing crazy knots.

 Once the 2 pieces were sewn together, we stuffed part of a toilet paper roll in one end, the blower of a party horn in the other, a few drinking straws through the whole deal to keep it stiff and let them wail!

Just before my sweet neighbor was about to run screaming back home, we silenced the shofars and settled in for a couple Rosh Hashanah stories.  My favorite was "The Day the Chickens Went on Strike".  Its a humorous tale about some chickens going on strike from being used for Kapores.  In then end, the village people decide to just try to be better people and not swing a chicken over their heads to take away their sins.

 Then Sunday evening at dinner, we each decided what we did this past year that was good.  Gloria learned to read really well.  Aaron became a puzzle master.  Nathan learned to go potty.  And Cap'n K also learned to go potty.  Then we talked about what we're going to do better this year.  For Gloria, she's going to try to not get so sassy.  Aaron is going to try to be diligent and work hard even when its things he doesn't want to do.  Nathan is going to try to not be so disruptive during school time (but since he still doesn't talk that great, that was my dictate on him... it didn't come from the heart).  Cap'n K is going to try to not bite or hit anymore.

Right at sunset (when the new year occurred... which for the record is much more conducive to my sleep schedule than the whole Jan 1 midnight thing), the kids all blew their shofars again.  The shofar tells us to WAKE UP!  We have to honor God with our actions and not get lazy in our wrong-doings.  There was enough noise to wake the whole neighborhood up... but since it was only 7:30, all was well.

Ask us next year how we did at improving ourselves!

Slumber Party!

 Still playing summer catch up.  But back in July, a little girl had her promised slumber party.  It wasn't for her birthday or anything.  She just wanted to have friends over for all night fun.  And it was fun!

First thing was did was make bracelets.

Then we made ice cream!  It happened to be one of the girls' birthday so we let her choose the flavor.  She opted for chocolate chip, but I thought she'd enjoy m&m.  So instead of buying chocolate chips, I bought m&ms.  There's a reason we don't have m&m ice cream available in the stores... the candy coating comes off and you just have chocolate chip ice cream with dyes mixed in for no benefit other than to mess with your head.  Oh well it was still yummy!

Then we made individual pizzas.  The girls got to roll out their own crust and add their own toppings. I had sausage, green peppers, mushrooms onions and black olives for toppings.  They had so much fun loading up their pizzas that they went over their own taste limit (which I think was probably zero to begin with) on the veggies.  So the pizzas didn't get eaten very well, but...

There was ice cream, so who cares, right?

The girls got pretty messy so by then we had each of them jump into the shower and get into jammies.  Then I painted their fingernails.  When nails were dry we rolled out the sleeping bags and set up the little movie player.  I was sure they'd fall asleep during the movie.  Nope.  At 10pm I had to say it was time to be quiet with the lights out.  And they did.  All night.

Then come morning we made pancakes.  I cut butterfly and flower shapes from them for a little extra fun.  It was a great time for everyone.

Even the boys.  It was the start of the olympics so Randy took Cap'n K and Aaron over to my mom's house to watch the opening ceremonies.  Nathan fit right in with the fun until it came to nail painting.  By then in was a feasible bedtime for him though so he got tucked in, along with the other boys who had come home.  All in all, a very fun event with some very precious girls!

Baby Buddy Buck-O Boy

 I ran across a little piece of paper while cleaning off my desk over the weekend.  It was notes for a post I intended to do eons ago.  A post to remember all the little things about my sweet "middlest" child.  Its not his birthday.  Its not even his half birthday, but now is always a good time to remember the preciousness of a child.

I got pregnant with him in May... intentionally.  I didn't want another summer baby.  His sister made me roast until she was born in the middle of June.  So I thought a good January/February birthday would be great.  Which meant I (because I'm cool like that) started to get absolutely ginormous in October.  And I was HOT. Seriously.  I was so hot I don't think I got comfortable with the temp until mid December.  And this kid, to this day, hates the heat.  And with his red hair, he could almost pass as a Nordic viking so maybe that's why.

Another thing that's interesting about the A-man en utero is that in one of the sonogram pictures he's laying on his back giving a thumbs up.  Compare that with his sister who was enthusiastically waving or his brother who was pumping his legs like he was running.  Yes, personalities are there before birth, and Aaron has always been laid back and easy going.
Once at a family reunion when Aaron was 6 months old and extremely calm as usual, another family with a young boy said that if their son was that calm they'd be running to the ER.  But that's just our little man.  He's our only child who would put himself to bed when he got tired.  Clearly, he decided he was sleepy before ever actually getting to his bed in this picture.

As a baby, I tended to sing a random, mommy-original that had 1 word.  "Buddy-O".  And thus he got named "Buddy".  We called him Buddy for about 2 and a half years.  Then when he finally started to talk and you'd ask his name, he always answered "Aaron".  And so his nick name fell away.  Despite always being called and answering to Buddy, he knew his true name.

The same as Mommy has her originals, Daddy does too.  He called him "Baby Buck" or sometimes "Baby Buddy Buck-O Boy".  Nick names don't have to be short.  Consider that Gloria's was "Peanut Princess Chicken Child Girl".

Can I have more cherries please?

Aaron learned to talk a little later than most.  That's why I'm not at all concerned about Nathan.  But when he did start talking, he had the cutest words.  Up until about a year ago, he always called his Daddy "Di-da".  Imagine just getting home from work and a cute boy with big brown puppy dog eyes runs up to you calling, "Di-da! Di-da!"  My mom insists her name is "Grandma Dedee, Grandma Dedee" because he never just says her name once, always twice.

In the fall when I bring home a literal ton of pumpkins from the post-Halloween pumpkin patches, Aaron has always had a special affinity for the little pumpkins.  For weeks he would talk about "Gumpin Beebees".

When we were potty training him, if he went peepee on the potty he got a chocolate chip, which he called a "chop chop".  So he'd go potty and then look up at me with those amazing eyes and sweetly say, "chop chop?"  If we were venturing out on an errand, I'd always ask him if he needed to go potty.  The answer was always "no."  So then I'd ask if he wanted to go peepee on the pineapples.  He'd run out the door, over to a little patch where some pineapple plants were growing and proceed to pee on the pineapples.  I could always get him to go potty if he got to peepee on the pineapples.  He was almost entirely potty trained outside so he thinks nothing of nature calling naturally.  Once we were at a large public park where we were camping nearby.  There was an enormous field.  He was trailing behind, enjoying the sights and sounds.  I turned around to see that he had stopped in the great wide open to relieve himself.  His grandfather remarked what a sad day it will be for him when he realizes that there are conventions to this world.

Aaron did have a little attitude too.  If something happened he didn't approve of, he'd let you know by saying "Humph!", and laying his pouty little head on his shoulder.  I'm not sure when it ended, but we'd see it several times a day.  If he was shy, mad about not getting a 4th banana, or told to stop trying to ride his brother, we got "the pout".

Recently Aaron spent the night with his Grandma just for fun.  He's the absolute best kid to share a bed with because he doesn't kick or hog the bed or climb on top of you.  He just nuzzles sweetly all night long.  And because of his puzzle skills, we call him the Puzzle Master (apologies to Will Shorts who really has that title). Grandma Dedee renamed him the Nuzzle Master.  For good reason.  He has always loved to just sit and nuzzle.  And he loved to have his tummy rubbed.  Sometimes he'd lay across a lap and ask you to rub his tummy.  Sometimes he'd rub it himself.  But he'd lay there, sucking his thumb, calmly looking up into your face for hours letting you stroke that soft round tummy.

He also enjoys Eskimo kisses.  In said nuzzles, he'd often give that precious smile and then rub his nose gently against your's.  And now that he's sleeping in the top bunk and doing a proper tuck-in is a little difficult, that Eskimo kissing is a nightly thing.  I hope he never grows too old for it.

Now he's 4 and a half and he lets everyone know that.  The other day we were all walking into a public building and passed a security guard.  Aaron promptly said hello and announced his age, which then made Nathan bounce up and down holding up 2 fingers.  And Gloria was too old to be quite so little kiddish, but still really wanted to be, so restrained her excitement and put on a "I'm the only mature one of this bunch" attitude and said, "I'm six."  Then Cap'n K said "I'm 28."  Of course we all laughed.

And this 4 and a half year old is a big kindergartner now and growing so much.  He's reading now as he begged to learn.  He also asked to learn to play piano, so we tried... he's still a bit young so we'll try again in a year or 2.

I love this boy.  Any readers of "The Shack" will no what I'm saying when I say, "I'm especially fond of him."

I love you, Baby Buck, and always will.

Reunion Addendum

A few more reunion pictures.

These are on the drive up.  We took mostly country roads there so when Randy spied a playground we stopped and had a great time... but we were missing Cap'n K already.

He even had a duckie that looked so lonely...

But we still had fun.  We knew Cap'n K was having fun (and likely being spoiled rotten by the wonderful couple he was staying with!)

 

 Lots of fun on the drive up and even more at the reunion.

 Took some coaxing, but Aaron finally went down the slide... and loved it!

 Here's Gloria riding that carousel horse.  She loves it and would spent upwards of 10 minutes at a time just sitting on it.  And that was multiple times a day!




On the way home we stopped at Jacksonville's Science and history museum.  Meet Sue, the biggest and most complete T-rex fossil ever found!  Sorry, but no kids wanted to get close enough to it for a picture!

Aaron learns to be an archaeologist.

The kids enjoy looking at turtles at a native plant and turtle exhibit.

Sorry text refuses to line up with pictures all of a sudden.  You'd think blogger could get some consistency.  But I've wasted enough time on it.  Gotta move on.

A