By the grace of God

I had a 100ft tree in my front yard that made me want to stay in a hotel every time the wind blew. So this last week I finally had it taken down. It was quite a process that involved a big truck parked in my front yard, a chipper machine and a man in a bucket, all of this was great entertainment for the kids.

But the real scary part is that my neighbor had a tree in her yard that was a Hemlock and was leaning dangerously over my sons bedroom. She decided to have hers cut down too. We got quite a suprise when they got to the bottom of that tree. The bottom ten feet of the tree looked like this:

But the trees are down and I can sleep easy at night. And now I have a ten foot stump in my front yard that is begging for a tree house to be built on it this summer.

Smarty Pants

After catching her for the fifth time playing in the dog food:

"Keep your hands out of the food!"

I turned back around ten seconds later:

Hands held behind her back, with her WHOLE face in the dog food.

Got me there kiddo.

Letters

Just in the last few days, Bear has been recognizing more and more letters. And it is just randomly. Not even letters we have been working on recently. So we busted out the Bob books and started working away at those. He is starting to sound out really simple words with very little help. Like Mat and sat. He won't be reading War and Peace any time soon, but I think it is a good start and I am so proud of him.
And then tonight him and I were sounding out words and she ran in from her bedroom and shouted, "A B C!" ran back into her room and started laughing. Has to keep up with her brother...
;)

This is not Lawanda's fault...

I keep telling myself that. My friend and fellow blogger Lawanda posted the other day and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I would post a hyper-doodly-giggawatts-thingama-jig here but I don't know how, so you can just follow the clicky to the right hand side to her blog.

I want more kids. Plain and simple. I had my heart set on eight of the little boogers a few years ago. I have learned is hard to just let something like that go once you have planned on it. And I don't understand. I wish that God would take away this burning desire and just let me be happy with the two babies I do have. But I want more. I want to have a house full of happy laughing kids (even though I know the reality is more like arguing, pinching, toy snatching, whiny kids.) But see? I have a sense of humor about it. Doesn't that make me a prime candidate for being mother of many? Sigh.

I come from a big family, and I love getting together with my family now that we are all grown up. It is loud and happy and fun.

I had the hardest time getting rid of baby clothes this last summer. I felt that if I did, I would be admitting that I am done. That there will be no more babies. And that hurts my heart. All of the baby paraphanelia is on the front porch waiting for me to make a decision about it.

I see brand new babies in town and my heart longs to be growing my own. I love being pregnant. Well with the exception of the last month when your ankles have become "cankles" and you have to pee every hour during the night and you toss and turn when you aren't peeing trying to get comfortable, and nothing fits you anymore and everything you eat causes you to have heart burn so badly that you buy stock in Tums and chug milk like it is going out of style. But other than that I love being pregnant. I have such easy pregnancies, this is what my body was built for. Baby growing and carrying. And I love breast feeding. Bear breast fed until he was 18 months, she is almost 18 months and shows no sign of stopping.

I just wish that I could get over the fact that this is it and I just need to be happy and thankful for what I have. And I am, I love these kiddos more than myself. And I thank God every day that he gave them to me to raise for Him. But I just can't seem to shake the "sad".