Quick Takes Friday

1-
Eva has started a countdown to her birthday (or more importantly, her birthday party, which will be this Sunday) and I am in complete denial that my baby girl is turning SIX! She also had her loose tooth pulled by the dentist this week (since the adult tooth had broken through behind it). I am not ready for her to grow up so fast...there's something about loosing baby teeth that just makes me wonder how she got so big so fast.

2-
I have to admit that I've started a countdown of sorts until Charlotte's 4th birthday...not because I am anxious for her to grow up (although if her birthday reduced the amount of whining, I wouldn't complain!) but I AM anxious to move her to a booster seat and put away carseats. Moving from car to car will be so much easier when I tell the girls to grab their booster seats and get in another car. Moving a carseat sucks...

3-
Our exchange student has a date tonight (okay, I think that the boy called it "hanging out", but the hanging out will be at the movie theatre in town, so being old fashioned I call it a date. Actually, I am kinda wondering if "hanging out" involves the guy expecting the girl to pay her own way...Since I haven't ever "hung out", and haven't been on a "date" in more than 11 years (not that hubby and I don't go on dates...but it really doesn't matter who pays for the date because it all comes out of the same paycheck!) I feel a little out of touch. I thought it was hilarious...I didn't see the exchange student all day yesterday (she gets on the bus around 7 am, stayed in town for sports practice and a club meeting, and was picked up after I went to Bible Study), so when I got home at close to 11 pm, she came to talk to me to get permission for her date. Well, I told her it was fine, worked out the details (call when you are ready to be picked up...he's going to meet her after sports practice...movie at the movie theatre okay, movie at his house...no way!) So, after she went down to bed, hubby told me that he had already given her permission to go...but she wanted MY permission.

4-
I really should be doing a major cleaning of the house today, but I'm feeling kind of yucky (darn public school germs!) Tomorrow I have an 8 hour training meeting for Girl Scout leaders, and it is in a town almost 2 hours away...then Sunday is Eva's birthday party at our house...then the usual weekly stuff...and then MIL and I are taking the exchange students and my girls to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore over the holiday weekend. I'm excited about the cabin we rented, and it should be fun. I wish hubby could come, but I think they will start cutting silage about then (silage is wet corn cut, stalks and all, that is fermented and fed to the cows, for those of you who aren't rural dwellers.)

5-
I put in my first interlibrary loan request at the library in town. I asked for 8 books for Charlotte's first week of preschool...I didn't mention to the librarian that it was 1 weeks worth of stuff yet. I was amazed at how nice the librarian here has been about interlibrary loan...in our old town, I requested one book through interlibrary loan during the four years we lived there, and I got a huge lecture from the head of the library about how much interlibrary loan costs...all I asked for was a book about VBACs, which the local library didn't have...with the lecture I got, you would've thought they spend hundreds of dollars on postage for that one book.

6-
I think we may have oversocialized one of our cats. Twinkle is still a little afraid of people (other than hubby), but Tigger starts meowing, purring, and winding around your ankles as soon as you step outside as long as he is out of the shop. We are still keeping the cats in there at night until they are big enough to defend themselves. When I took Bubba to the vet for his yearly checkup and shots, I got distemper shots for the cats, and hubby got to give them the shots. They are still a little too young to get fixed, so they will get rabies shots when we take them in for their surgeries.

7-
SIL laughed at me the other day...I was planning Eva's birthday party on the way to the dentist, and asked Eva what she would like to have to eat at her party, and she replied with "steak and strawberries". I told her that we could do steak, but I wasn't sure about the strawberries, because it isn't really strawberry season anymore, so they might be expensive or more difficult to find...then we determined that strawberry flavored cake was okay. SIL laughed at the fact that I told Eva that steak was fine but strawberries were too expensive, when the rest of the world would probably say the exact opposite. I pointed out that I have a couple different cows' worth of meat in my freezer, including plenty of steak...but yeah, I'll admit that it's weird.

More quick takes at conversion diary!

The Versatile Blogger Award

Well, Christine at Christine's Contemplations nominated me for this award, so I am just now getting around to posting this (it's been a busy couple of days!)

So being nominated, I must do the following:

Thank the person who nominated me.

Thank you Christine for the nomination. Christine and I were very close friends in high school, being a big chunk of the female low brass contingent. She even lived with me and my mom one summer, and we worked together as waitresses at a restaurant, where she broke more plates than I did, but also probably made better tips, since she has always been extremely friendly and outgoing.

Christine is now a mom and a step-mom...and not the wicked kind, either ;)

She has an adorable 1 year old daughter and one on the way, and actually looks cute while pregnant (I'm just a LITTLE jealous of that!)

I must post 7 things about myself:

Not that I don't do that already, pretty much weekly, but I'll try to stick to just me rather than my hubby and kids...

1- I love to read...not in the normal I like to pick up a novel and read when I have spare time. More like, I feel compelled to read everything that I see (I used to even read the really long user agreements for computer things...now that I have very hyper kids, I just skim them like a normal person).

2- I am left-handed, which means that hubby thinks I do things the "left-handed" way, which I like to refer to as the "correct" way...since his dad and his brother are also lefties, I think that he just needs to learn to be normal, like us.

3- I am very bad at math, unless you can turn a problem into something with dollar signs. I guess I just need the problems to be applicable to my life, and money works as a good motivator. I also don't seem to understand math problems in the same way as my right handed daughter, so I am hoping to learn a lot using Math-U-See with Eva this year.

4- I really wish I had some impressive talent...maybe being a great writer, or a great seamstress, or a great knitter, or a great scrapbooker...but basically, I am a jack of all trades, master of none.

5- I have been blogging for a little more than 4 years, and I think that I have about 4 readers who are not related to me...and maybe another 4 readers that are related. I have to admit, my blog is mostly a dumping ground for my random thoughts, so it's not really surprising.

6- I am a planner...I married into a farm family...this is not a good combination. However, I have managed to come to terms with never being able to plan an event in advance in the last 11 years. My mother, however, has not really come to terms with that yet. She asked me again today (for at least the 3rd or 4th time) if I had come up with a plan for Eva's birthday, and I had to tell her no...I mean, her birthday is still 8 days away! Am I really supposed to have a plan already? On the other hand, for things that don't involve my hubby or in-laws, I plan WAY too much (probably just to get the planning out of my system.) In my google documents right now, I have the following planning lists: Little Saints preschool list, preschool syllabus, physical education, science syllabus, 1st grade homeschooling stuff for Eva, History Syllabus, 1st grade Syllabus...not to mention shopping lists, lists I am currently done with, and completely miscellaneous lists.

7- I'm an extrovert who would usually rather stay home. I do get energized being around people, but I am also a little bit shy, so don't really like going out into groups of people. I think maybe that just makes me weird...but I guess it is one of very many reasons.

I must nominate 5 other bloggers:

If I only knew 5 other bloggers...

But I definitely would like to nominate the other Christine over at Good Company.

Quick Takes Friday

1-
Our exchange student started school yesterday, and seemed a little unimpressed. I guess several of the kids in her math class were mean to her, one of her classes doesn't start until next Wednesday, and another class she only has one other student and the teacher in the classroom with her (the other students are participating by TV from other area high schools.

2-
In the "I forgot to mention it last week in Quick Takes" department (probably because it was something I put all over Facebook), we have a second bottle calf. FIL took the exchange students to a livestock auction, and bought a bottle calf ("It looked like a good deal for a good calf" is his explanation, but I am suspicious that it really was so that both girls could have a calf...) for us. Hubby thought his dad said it was a "he", so originally the calf got named Duke-Duke (from Veggie Tales Duke and the Pie War), but then BIL checked when he dropped it off at our house, and it is a girl (which is apparently what FIL said to hubby, but it got all confused) so, her name is now Daisy Duke...so we've got Flower and Daisy now, and are going through a 50 lb bag of milk replacer (I like to call it calf formula) in about 2 weeks now. Good thing I can just charge it to FIL at the feed store!

3-
Since our Austrian exchange student has never seen (and never heard of before coming here) The Sound of Music we have the DVD from netflix and we plan to watch it tonight with the kids...she also took the soundtrack tape that hubby found (yes, I apparently still have a cassette tape soundtrack to The Sound of Music) and listened to it last night while she worked on homework. I think she was relieved that it wasn't terrible. She said she liked "My Favorite Things" and "16 going on 17".


4-
Update on Eva's tooth...one week later, and it still hasn't fallen out...but we can see the tooth starting to come in behind it...so, how long does it normally take for a tooth to fall out, and at what point does she need a tooth pulled? I know that I had to have 4 baby teeth pulled by my dentist, and BIL had a couple that had to be pulled too...so any advice on what to do?

5-
Charlotte, after getting her hair cut professionally, decided that she wanted it shorter, so she found some scissors at grandma's house, and took matters into her own hands. So, I had to take her to hubby's Aunt, who was able to help out by repairing MOST of the damage (though the self cut bangs are going to need some time to grow out...so here are some before and after pictures.



6-
The girls have been driving me crazy at bedtime again recently. Two nights ago, when hubby went in to tell the girls to knock it off and go to sleep, he opened the door to find them STANDING ON THEIR DRESSER...I still don't know why. Last night, however, I had a great success. The girls were thrashing around, kicking the walls, running around their room, talking and fighting, so when I went in (after hubby gave a warning) Eva was out of bed, so I took her out of the room, gave her a spanking and put her in the corner with the instruction that she was not to move or talk. I set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes. About 2 minutes into this punishment, Charlotte freaked out, started sobbing saying "I need Eva!!!", I gave her a spanking as well (for coming out of her room twice in the first two minutes, tucked her into bed, told her to stop and go to sleep, and that she could go to sleep without Eva. I pointed out that they weren't sleeping and they were both in trouble, and told her if she kept up with the crying and fussing, I would ban trips to Grandma's house for the weekend. She settled down, Eva (who was crying quietly in the corner) got done with her 10 minutes. I gave her a kiss and a hug, told her she needed to go to sleep, and both girls did! We didn't have to do any more reminders, yelling or punishments. There were a couple of minutes of whispering when Eva went back to bed, but they went to sleep! Yeah!

7-
I have been working a lot on getting Charlotte's preschool stuff ready to go. Yesterday, I went over to MILs house, and made a bunch of copies (probably around 200 from the pattern packet for Little Saints Preschool Program), MIL didn't realize that she had already used her spare black toner cartridge, and I used it up without realizing it (I mean, don't copiers usually say "toner low" at all times?) Well, her printer/fax/copier is too smart to trick. We tried putting in a cyan cartridge to get a fax to print (because FIL was very upset about not being able to get his fax) but the dumb...err....to smart for us printer KNEW it wasn't a black cartridge and wouldn't print. So, MIL had to drive up to the nearest big town (an hour drive) to get a new one...never mind that I am taking the exchange students up there tomorrow to do some school shopping...there is NO WAY to get a fax to print on a color cartridge if you run out of black toner. Of course, it will let a color item print in black and white if a color cartridge is out. When I confessed to hubby about just how many copies I had made (I figured while I was making copies, I might as well make all that I could!) he told me that I should have gone to get the cartridge instead...I would've volunteered, but both girls really needed some rest time.

More quick takes over at Conversion Diary!

Quick Takes Friday

1-

Our exchange student has arrived, and she is starting to settle in, I think. We have her registered for classes, have figured out how to plug in her computer stuff, and she has spent many an hour playing with the girls. She has expressed interest in seeing me teach (homeschooling does not appear to be common in Austria) and I am sure she will before the end of the year. The one thing that everyone seems to think of when she says she is from Austria is "The Sound of Music", which she has never seen. I think it will be moving to the front of our netflix cue so that she can see it before school starts. I'm having a hard time explaining why EVERYONE knows and likes The Sound of Music.

2-

We had a great time at the Midwest Catholic Family Conference. My favorite part was that Charlotte was old enough to go to the kid's classes. Last year she was VERY squirmy during the adult sessions, and this year I heard them in peace. We stopped in Hayes, KS the first night and stayed at the Ramada there...I don't know that I'd recommend the rooms, but they do have a really nice pool with a waterslide. Once I bribed Eva to go down the slide, she had a lot of fun. It was also nice that we dragged hubby's sister along. I even coerced her to go to the young adult singles social event.

3-

In the "I haven't been home much" category...last week, we moved the above mentioned sister out of her apartment in the city. She and I went up to pack on Monday. Tuesday hubby and his brother brought up a trailer, helped load it up, drove it home, and unloaded it in a storage unit. Wednesday, SIL had an interview, and I was running around with the girls getting errands done, taking Eva to Girl Scouts and packing. Thursday we left for the conference. Got back late Sunday night. Monday, met our exchange student (who had to be picked up by MIL, since we were in Wichita when she got here) and got her registered for school. Tuesday took MIL to her doctor's appointment in the city, then picked up her exchange student at the airport. Thursday, a trip into town in the morning, and my bible study in the evening. I am hoping to stay home a little more often soon.

4-

I still have plenty of planning to do for the upcoming school year, but I have laid out a school calendar for my girls. We will be starting the week of Labor Day and we will finish the last week of June. That's 40 weeks with at least two week long breaks, and I am sure we will have some long weekends in there, too. As for the local school calendar, it appears that they have no school very often. In the month of December, they have the first friday off school (actually, they have a teacher inservice EVERY first Friday...I told hubby that I need a teacher inservice once a month, a day with no students all day long...) and then they have the last two weeks (minus one day, but then the break goes 4 days into January as well). So, I think that they are in school less than out of school.

5-
Hubby has written his first article over at the Rural Republic. It's on subsidiarity, and it only took him a good month to research and write (he's such a perfectionist...) I think he makes some really great points, so go check it out: Subsidiarity in Rural America

6-

My bible study group had a Charismatic prayer night last night. I was teasing hubby that I would be as late getting home as I was when MIL and I picked up her exchange student at the airport (got home at 1 am), but in reality, I got home early...just after midnight. I have to admit, I am not particularly charismatic in my prayer life, but I participated...and I think that is pretty good. One thing that came to me during our prayer was the story of Mary and Martha, and I was thinking about how this was a Mary moment (and not one I am particularly comfortable with, to be honest) and I had this sudden urge to go find the story in the Bible. When I borrowed someone's Bible to look it up, I of course ended up having to flip around looking for it (I still don't know which Gospel it is in) but my eyes fell on this passage, and it really hit home with me...and when I continued on looking for Mary and Martha, I found the same story in another gospel, and decided maybe it was what I was supposed to see:

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon." But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." And he answered, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs taht fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly. Matthew 15:21-28

7-

Eva woke me up this morning with the news that she has a loose tooth. I told her she wasn't allowed to have a loose tooth yet, and that she'd better stop growing. After patiently explaining to me that she did have a loose tooth, and that it is normal at her age (a friend of hers that is 3 or 4 years older than her told her so...) she explained that it was only one, and it would take awhile before she lost all her baby teeth and got all her adult teeth. I have to admit that I am not ready for my baby to loose her baby teeth.

More quick takes this week over at Betty Beguiles!