Long Time No Blog

Just a warning - this will probably be a long one! Not really sure why I have been off the blog lately. I think I just got sad and got out of the habit. We had some really bad news early in February. Our babysitter's mother Nana had a stroke and then died a week later. We were all very close to Nana. She was our back up babysitter and the kids spent alot of afternoons sitting around her kitchen table having tea. Nana was from England and was a very unique lady. Her first husband had been in the British Military and they had lived in Africa. She had amazing tales to tell about Africa, living in England during WWII and just life in general. She was a true force of nature and never afraid to speak her mind. We miss her every day.
Other news for February: Emma lost another tooth, Ben had 4 more teeth pulled and we survived filling out valentines!


We have Ben's bone graft surgery scheduled. We have a pre-op appointment March 20th and the surgery is scheduled for April 3. He will be on very limited activity and diet after the surgery for 6 weeks. We really wanted to get this over before summer. I just couldn't imagine telling him that he couldn't swim for 6 weeks! We got him a used gameboy so hopefully he won't feel too bad about not being able to ride his bike or participate in PE at school.
Yesterday, we went down to Pasco to visit and do some shopping. We hit Walmart right before we came home. There was a big display of slippers on sale for $1 ea. They were the fuzzy scuff kind of slippers. The boys were complaining because they were just girl slippers and I told them if they wanted, the girls could have the pink ones and the boys could have the purple ones. They all agreed - then when we were at the check out, Ethan piped up and told the cashier that the purple ones were for Ben and him. Ben just about had a conniption telling him to be quiet - that we don't tell people that the boys were going to wear girl slippers - that was just for home!!! Once we got out to the car - they all wanted me to cut the strings off the slippers so they could wear them. Ben took a good look at his and got all excited because he could read that they were "MADE IN CHINA" - he called out - "Hey, that's so cool - these were made in China." Then he said, "Hey, maybe Emma made these! Emma, did you make these slippers when you were in China last year!" Emma replied, "Yes, I think I did!" I just about fell out of the van laughing!!!

We cleaned up the garden a little - Rod and the kids hauled the cut up firewood out and stacked it up. Bailey was the number one helper on the project. She even went out after dinner and hauled another load. Quite the little Daddy's helper!!!


Another warning: I just got a new toy!! It's been here about 5 days and so far I've made a triple batch of chocolate chip cookies and a single batch of bread. It was so easy to mix up both of those that it was almost laughable. Can't wait to make more!!! I promise to post some recipes soon. Wish we could have smell a vision here - the house smells like fresh baked bread - yum!!! Oh, and there were 3 loaves of bread in the batch - 1 disappeared in about a 1/2 hour after it came out of the oven. Four little snarf mouths made short work of it.