Watch That Shooting Finger and My Other Job

                          You know, people ask me if having only 4 fingers handicaps her in anyway..

                             I'd say, it doesn't seem to stop her at all! She has quite the aim.

                              That brings me to my other job...patching pants!
                        In the past I always patched pants with fabric glue and fabric on the inside of the pants

                   That works OK unless the patch gets caught on a big toe or something...

                   the other day I saw an article on line about patching jeans and doing it neatly with a sewing machine and no additional fabric

                        So I decided to work on these pants that had a loose patch on the inside.

                        you stitch in line with the remaining threads, forward and backward a bunch of times

                     Then you can stitch perpendicular...or diagonal like I did here to finish it off

                             I was pleased with the results. I didn't put new fabric inside on the smaller holes, just on the larger one..... I was very happy with the results until....he came home last night with this big tear...
             a drill got away from him, thankfully it got his pants and not his leg.

Saturday Baking

We were planning on having the church youth group over after revival meetings tonite, BUT the weather forecast changed my plans.
Had planned to have a hot dog roast and accompanying "stuff" campfire related.

Instead, I made these caramel apple cinnamon rolls  they turned out pretty good...I made them small for more of a bite size idea, but I think a big thick cinnamon roll still looks better. The fun part was the caramel...did you ever boil a sealed can of sweetened condensed milk? After 2-1/2 - 3 hrs you have lovely caramel!.  You put the can in a kettle, fill the kettle with water...keep the can almost submerged for the entire cooking time, because if the kettle cooks dry the can will explode, nothing like cooking with a bit of excitement brewing on the back burner.  Here are the directions
Then I made bread sticks and heated sauce in the crock pot.
Hope helped me make monster cookies.  She even made sure the m&m's matched on the top. sometime I need to take a picture of her organizing!

I warned my family, next weekend I don't plan to do much baking AT ALL I had my fill today.... tomorrow morning I need to get a crockpot of veggies going for fellowship meal after church. Faith peeled almost 5# of carrots for that.  All good stuff, but I don't like my days stuffed quite so full.

Oh then in the afternoon we do get to do some fun stuff...go to the grandparents section of child-birthing classes...wonder how much they changed the methods from 15 years ago?

Too Many Yesses?

The experts tell adoptive mothers, mothers who are trying to build a relationship, to say "yes" as often as possible. This to a child who might have a built-in instinct to answer EVERYTHING with "no". Anyhoo, I got caught, she was on the porch while I was hanging up laundry and she asked for an apple.  "yes, you may" 

"Can you cut it mama?"

I was on a roll with yesses,

"yes you may"

"NO, MAMA, not me! Next I cut my finger!"

Then mere hours later...

                                     "mama, can I take these to church tonight?"
                           
                                   Ha ha little one, didn't catch me that time!

                                   NO!
           

Background Noise

 Yesterday little missy was playing a harmonica for most of the morning, I didn't really notice what she did with it when she finally stopped. Well, last night was the first night of revival services at our church and I allowed her to bring her "church bag" she had forgotten it on Sunday. It went through my mind that I should check through it since she had it in the house all day, but we were in a hurry. Well, you guessed it! She was a wiggle worm during the service and finally she was sitting nicely in my lap. Then Faith poked me and I saw with horror that she was raising the harmonica to her lips. Thankfully we were on the back bench.

 Today she managed to find a 2-note recorder..Two notes because it makes one sound when you exhale an another when you inhale. Well I guess you could count the shrIEK that it makes when you blow really hard as a third note.  She even took it along when we walked out the drive to get the mail....I'm sure all the wildlife ran for cover.  I had to smile anyway...it was much better than the little girl that needed to sit on my lap yesterday when I was trying to sew  AND as she informed me...in two birthdays she can go to school! Then I will miss the noise.

I finally finished this quilt for an order...those angles on the border were a challenge.

Being the "Bad Cop" and Other Stuff

I was just wondering today,do other moms feel like all they do is make people (children) mad at them?

Some days I feel like I always have someone ticked off at me.

On Thurs. I asked Hope to do a chore that wasn't on her mental schedule and she was miffed.

This morning Faith was irritated because she asked for a piece of toast. Daddy told her that there are three pieces made already and she shall ask Zeke if she may have one of them. The little chin went down and the lip came out and her mouth stayed closed. She kept looking at me to help her out...I waited, finally, Hope walked in and asked if she can have one of the pieces, finally Faith pipes up and asked if she can have the toast.

Later Shekinah was helping Faith to wash windows with the microfiber cloths and a water sprayer. As you can imagine a lot more water was being used than necessary. After awhile Faith was complaining that Shekinah was smearing up the windows faster than she could clean them. So I did the good mom thing and took the cleaning cloth. She lost her cool. I fed her. Found the plate that Ben didn't have time to eat on Thurs. night, nuked it a bit. She ate it and was in a much better mood.  note: she did eat breakfast, but it was now about 10 AM.

Then this afternoon, Joe was doing homework and he asked what "insential" and "non-insential" means. I checked exactly what he meant...he needed to know what essential and non-essential appositive phrases were. I told him that there is a big thick book that has that definition and the whole subject was discussed on the previous page. There we go...he was muttering under his breath. Don't get me wrong,  I do help, but I will not hand answers to a perfectly capable young man. 

Being a mom takes a thick skin sometimes, I'm trying to get used to being the "bad cop". I don't try to irritate my children,but I also refuse to ignore thing just because they might get upset or cry or mutter.

Then I have Hope come up and give me a hug and tell me she loves me.

We have conversations that show my children are glad for the challenges and knowing they can learn, can depend on me to pull them in and down when they are getting out of hand.

It might sound a bit harsh, but children need a mom and not a friend

they need a cheerleader, not a free lunch

somedays I'm tired and not sure I'm getting it right.

I pray that God will show me when I'm missing something. Meanwhile I look at the big kids and say, "they didn't turn out too bad and I didn't know what I was doing back then either!"

Here you go...water in a container on a subwoofer makes some neat designs.

As Ben and Zeke showed me this morning.

             Made the facebook recipe that takes a cake mix and pumpkin....it's OK, not wonderful.

Last night Ben was showing the younger ones how to bump a volley ball...check out Shekinah's  form!

This morning the temps were in the upper 60's and the girls decided it was time to gather hickory nuts.

They cracked some nuts and needed to sweep the drive afterward.

Last night when hubby and I went out for our anniversary meal, we were driving down the highway, I was admiring the cornfields. Suddenly it dawned on me what that odd contraption was that was sticking above the tassels. It was a tractor with cab, a corn picker, and forage wagon...all that was visible was the very tops of the equipment. The cab roof, the top of the "goose neck" and the roof of the wagon. Tallest corn I ever remember  12+ foot tall stalks ought to fill the silos pretty fast.

Cabin with Family

This year, we rented a cabin instead of camping in our front yard. Cabin was barely the word to describe the nice house we had. It was a great weekend.

We even had two different bears come and visit the deer feeder, one came at 10 PM the other one surprised us at 9AM. The guys declared they felt watched while they played cards under the pavilion Saturday night and sure enough, the bear was eating between them and the cabin...a few rocks in the right direction sent him off in search of a less threatening food source.

Some of us felt the need to work off the delicious food...actually I think she was just toughening up in case someone asks her to be the pack horse on another trip to a foreign country...not me Cari, sorry.

    Then these two cousin spent hours with their feet stuffed behind the sofa cushions and fell straight back and slowly bent down to touch their heads to the floor....pulled themselves back up and did it all over again. Gonna have some 12 pack abs, they are!

Shekinah was able to hear her cousins play and she was so engrossed! Since we are home, she wants to watch the videos over and over. Of course, I am having trouble loading one onto my blog.

Then since it was Sunday, these three had church on the front porch. They took turns being the minister and song leader. I need to talk to someone about the charismatic dancing that was taking place!

How Do You Keep Them Entertained?

This little girl has dolls, educational toys, books, etc, etc. but she needs me to help her play. Unfortunately that doesn't pay the bills, so I am trying to get her to play by herself. Today she did pretty good, this afternoon she even told me to take Hope and Faith back to school.

Last night Zeke mentioned a statement by Mark Twain about how women thread needles vs the way men thread needles...something about holding the needle still and moving the thread toward it or holding the thread still and moving the needle toward the thread. Apparently, according to Ben and Zeke...Mark Twain differs in his "facts" in" Huck Finn" and" Prince and the Pauper". So of course, I needed to bring a needle and thread to the table and we all checked how we threaded needles. Two of our number need to figure out alternative methods of needle threading, so today Shekinah decided that would be a good activity....hey, whatever floats your boat...er, or keeps you occupied for a bit.

In case you think she spent her day threading needles....her activity lasted about 10 minutes, with me needing to "come help me" every few minutes.  But she did it one time all on her own!