Father's Day Spice

Fred got the most amazing Father's Day gift from Timothy that their class at school made this year. It's so amazing that I think I've used it more than the father around here! Of course, Timothy makes sure I ask Daddy for permission before I use it each time. This gift is a little jar of spice mix called "Father's Day Spice" and it came with the recipe that I want to share with you. Naturally, you'll be using Watkins spices to get a superior flavor!

Father's Day Spice

1 tbsp Watkins granulated black pepper

1 tbsp kosher salt

1 tbsp Watkins parsley flakes

1 tbsp Watkins paprika

1 teaspoon Watkins garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

Try it. You'll be hooked and won't want to buy another commercial spice again!

"It's Almost Summer" Giveaway

It's almost summer here in our neck of the woods and that means that the kids will be done with school and our holidays will begin! Having three very active little boys here who like to get up early and stay up late and run non-stop between those two times can be very exhausting for any mom, let alone a 43 year old woman who would love to sleep in during summer vacation! Since I can't sleep in and I can't take afternoon naps (what are those things again?!) and I probably won't be able to just curl up with a book whenever I want (not that that has happened much in the past few years anyway), I need to find other ways to relax, even if it is only momentary. How do I do that? With lavender!!

This is where my giveaway comes in. I have a 2.1oz tin of Watkins Lavender Hand & Cuticle Salve to give away to one of my readers. This lovely salve smells soooo delicious and just one whiff of it can start the relaxing that is needed on these action-packed summer days! I love to put this salve on at night, not just on my hands and cuticles, but I also put it on those rough spots on my feet because I love to go barefoot in this warm weather.
How can you win this natural Lavender Hand & Cuticle Salve from Watkins? Simply leave me a comment with an activity that you do/did with your children in the summer that they loved, or an idea for adding some responsibilities to their daily routines that are FUN, but in reality, they are actually helping around the house! Am I fishing for ideas????? YOU BET! You may comment up to three times for three separate entries into the draw (I need LOTS of ideas!!).

Anyone in Canada, the US or Paraguay can enter to win.

Contest will close at 4:00PM Daylight Savings Time on June 29 - my kids' last official day of school and the moment they will be home for the summer.

Contestants may enter more than three activity suggestions (PLEASE), but a maximum of three entries will be valid for the draw. For those of you who lurk and don't want to comment publicly, you may e-mail your suggestions to me privately, knowing that I may refer to some of them on future blog posts.

Good luck! You may start sending your ideas NOW!! Ummm, I mean, you may enter the contest at any time. Thank you.

Angela

I'm missing Angela today. I made salmon patties and it made me think of her. She would have been proud of me, I think.

Some of you have heard my Angela stories before, but for those of you who haven't, I'll share a bit about this 90-something woman who had a great impact on me as a teenage girl and beyond. Liz, Karen and I were introduced to Angela by my mom who used to take her Meals-on-Wheels. Angela was in her 80's at the time, lived on her own and was able to see only with her periferal vision so she would ask Mom to thread some needles for her every so often when Mom would drop off her meals. She mentioned one day that she wished she knew of a girl that could come help her. Mom told her that she knew of three girls. Guess who?!

We started going to Angela's house once a week for an hour to thread needles, read her mail, and maybe make a bowl of Jell-O. We got paid .50 for that hour - but it was usually with a beautiful fifty-cent coin, so it was worth it! That was about all we could handle as 11-12-13 year olds. That one hour a week gradually turned into several hours and several days and even though we groaned about going, we didn't believe Mom anymore when she would keep telling us that Angela was going to die soon and then we wouldn't have to go anymore. Year after year passed, and Angela was as alive as ever! Our responsibilities changed, though. We would still thread needles and read mail, but we also cooked and cleaned and learned about all the saints in the Catholic church and how to make corn silk tea and (poisonous) poke berry jam and tuna patties. We made rum biscuits and honey cookies and tapioca pudding. We cleaned toilets, cut toenails and filed teeth (well, one of us did that!). We accidentally dumped holy water, unintentionally wiped Latin blessings off the front door and haphazardly fixed broken rosaries. We patched cotton stockings for the 87th time, rolled hair balls to put back on Angela's head and made our own envelopes to mail recycled Christmas cards. We painted black leather shoes outdoor-house-paint green, along with a matching black leather purse and a fabric belt from a cotton frock (one can't go to church without wearing something summery and bright, now, can they?). I drew the line at painting the bottoms of her cooking pots with that same flat, pukey-green house paint, though!

Ah yes. Angela was a character, that's for sure! She had a way of lying on her porch glider and belching so loudly that it would scare the daylights out of you! She memorized her grocery list alphabetically and then called it in to the Supermarket downtown Doylestown for delivery. The only problem with that was that she didn't always remember what she had tried to write on her list, so we'd be sitting next to her shouting the next item to her so that she could hear, and then repeat it to Dave, the Supermarket man. By the time Angela told him the item, I'm sure he had heard us shout it about 3 or 4 times already.

I continued to work for Angela through my high school years and on into college. Mom still promised me that Angela would die soon and I wouldn't have to go. I still didn't believe her. I continued past college graduation and several years more until at the age of 97, Angela's family finally convinced her (or not) to give up her independence and moved her into a nursing home. I continued to visit her until I moved to Phoenix, about 12 years after I met her. Angela did pass away at the age of 99 after I had moved away, and I would never have believed this ten years prior, but I missed her. I still do. I would love to sit down and talk with her again and listen to her stories and humor her by recycling the strings from potato bags, saving the plastic sleeves that soda crackers are packaged in and collecting dandelion leaves for her tea.

So many Angela Stories have impacted my life. There are way too many to tell here, and honestly, they are much more entertaining to hear in person. Sometime you can ask me in person about the time she wanted me to make her a brasier that she could adjust with her fingers that had no feeling from the knuckles down.

Some day I may be an old lady with stories to tell, odd ways of doing things and curious behaviors that make no sense to teenagers, but if I am an old lady some day, I want to be like Angela. I'll try not to belch when other people are around and I'll make sure that I get some dentures instead of relying on my three good teeth. I will wash my hair more than once every two months and I will refrigerate my leftovers instead of storing them on top of the fridge. I may call my "girl" Toots, just to be like Angela. And if I am still making my own tuna or salmon patties, by golly, you can be sure I'll be frying them in PURE LARD, because at that age, it really won't matter any more! Making those salmon patties the other day brought back special memories of my years with Angela, but patties fried in cooking spray just didn't taste like hers!

Weekend in a Nutshell

Last weekend was our holiday - Victoria Day - or better known around these parts as the May 2-4 Weekend. You cannot say May 24 Weekend, you must distinguish between the two digits - 2 and 4. It was the May 2-4 Weekend.

Our family had a wonderful time in Syracuse, New York at the wedding of Lucas and Melissa. It's kind of weird going to the weddings of my friends' kids when we're still dealing with three-year-old issues, but I guess this just means that I get to observe and learn from my friends as they go through the process of letting their children go.

We stayed at a hotel near the church that had a pool. THIS was the highlight of the weekend - if you ask my kids. Christopher is STILL talking about "the cold pool" and "the warm pool" and "is that the building with the swimming pool right there?" He just loved being in that pool! I must admit that it was fun, but after 90 minutes in an indoor, over-chlorinated pool, a mom really wants to just move on already! This little mini-vacation was a great memory maker for the kids.

My memory-maker of the weekend wasn't all that fun, though. At the end of the reception when we were gathering our ducks to go home, we couldn't find Stephen. We looked and looked and asked all the kids if they had seen him and went all around the perimiter of the church looking for him. We started to get a little concerned because the boys (ALL the boys and some of the girls at the reception) had been playing in the woods behind the church and there was a lot of scruffy underbrush there. No one had seen Stephen recently, but almost everyone commented that he was in the woods in the "fort" that they had built. A large group of adults started plowing into the underbrush hollering Stephen's name, as well as Austin's, who was also MIA and seemed to have been with Stephen. We hollered and yelled and tripped and ran and (I) tried not to cry because my son was nowhere to be seen! After gaining nothing but scratches and a huge blister on my foot (since I was still in heels running through this brush), I came back out to the clearing in time to see Austin's mom holding Stephen's hand saying, "I think you'd better tell your mom where you've been. She's awfully worried about you."

There he was, standing so clean and cool (while the rest of us were sweating like the outside of an ice cold glass of lemonade on a hot and muggy day) and totally oblivious to the panic that was going on around him. Where was he? Well, he was just in one of the Sunday School rooms with Austin, playing the piano! WHAT?! No wonder we couldn't find him! I NEVER would have thought to look for him inside the church and certainly NOT in a room with a piano! He was writing music notes on the whiteboard and Austin would play that note on the piano. They were quite content in there, enjoying their activity and the coolness of the building. Sigh. Always an adventure with that boy!

And speaking of adventures with him, that wasn't the last. On our way home from Syracuse Sunday night, we stopped at Fred's brother, Dan's, for a campfire and fireworks. The kids were given sparklers and they were having fun waving them around and enjoying the experience. We were, too, until I heard a piercing scream coming from Stephen ... somewhere close to the creek. Sure enough, he was so intent on watching his sparkler and dancing all around with it that he didn't realize he was so close to the muddy bank of the creek and OOPS! Down he went! The poor, overtired guy freaked out because he had mud everywhere and wanted us to strip him down and throw his clothes in the fire. Being overtired can make you quite irrational. Since Mom and Dad Weinhardt live right next door, we just went over there, put him in the shower and pulled some clothes out of the suitcases that were in the van. What a day!

Now we're back in our routines and looking forward to another weekend full of adventures with our cousins, Daniel and Ryan!

My Husband, the Servant Who Honors

Servanthood that honors, honors others with more servanthood.

This afternoon I have a moment here to write because my husband, the servant, has blessed me with a beautiful act of service this afternoon! His servant responsibilities started last night. He went to his parents to help get his dad ready for bed and then spent the night so that he could help him get up this morning, too. Dad W. has really slowed down in the past few years and it's getting more and more difficult for Mom to care for him physically. Fred was serving/honoring his parents last night with his care for his dad. All the siblings are pitching in, but last night was Fred's opportunity to be there.

He got home late morning and then surprised the boys (and me) by telling them that he was going to take them to the Playland at McDonald's for lunch so that I could have a few hours to myself today. I'm all teary-eyed as I'm writing this because I am touched by the servant-heart that I saw in Fred again today. He knows it's been a rough week on me, and even though he hasn't been home himself for almost a whole day now, he chose to honor me by giving me some quiet time without the activity of the boys here.

I've been able to do a million things this afternoon, it seems. I've mended a puppy who's been losing stuffing for months. Poor Timothy has been asking me almost daily for several weeks if I would fix him. I finally honored him and fixed his puppy ... I even sewed his ear back on that was held in place with a safety pin. I am baking Fred's favorite bread, because it will honor him. I cleaned up the boys' blocks that used to be a garage on the living room floor, because I want to honor them.

Sigh. I must cut this short because I just heard the garage door open and the house will no longer be quiet, but I just want to reiterate the statement at the top of this blog. I can see today that servanthood that honors will honor others with more servanthood. It's a beautiful cycle to be a part of.

The Crazy Story

Once there was a blank piece of paper with nothing on it. Timothy didn't draw anything. He went to the bathroom to get toothpaste. Then he had to wash his hands. He left his eyeballs alone.

He gave himself a kiss because he was very strong. He watched TV while he was riding his bike. He hit a tree and then ate a popsicle. He scurried off in a wink to his neighbor's to find a dog.

The End

This is the story that Timothy and Christopher wrote today on a whiteboard that Grandma gave us. The two of them were messing around so badly today and fighting about every little thing. I was out of ideas of what to do about them anymore, so I grabbed the little whiteboard and just started writing a story about Timothy (the loudest whiner at the time). After that story, I asked Timothy to give me a sentence and with his smart alecky voice he recited "Once there was a blank piece of paper with nothing on it!" HA! He thought it would discourage me from writing a story, but nooooooo! I was desperate, remember? So I asked Christopher for the next sentence. Then they both started laughing and getting goofy and this is the story they came up with. They had so much fun that they wanted to write the next one and share this with you, too. Now they are quietly illustrating their stories and I'm going to finish this and get off of here and get some stuff done while they're quiet for a change!


Once upon a time, Meat was crazy. He jumped on his bed and cried La La La La La. Then he got hurt on his bed and decided to paint a picture. He went to the kitchen and ate a clown. It tasted funny. He wrote a message to his mom.

He went to the garage and saw a funny bear. It was jumping everywhere! He saw his mommy coming into the garage. He gave his mom $20.00. She was happy and went and bought a new harmonica. As soon as she played it, the bear ran away.

The End

Toy Lending Library

Our local library branch has a wonderful toy lending library. We can check out a toy for a week at a time and have a lot of fun with it. At the end of the week, we count all the pieces, put them in the bag and take it back. The boys love it because they can get Rush Hour (our favorite!), Hi Ho Cherry-O, Pegs in the Park, Little People Pirate Ships, etc.

Here's the latest favorite that kept the boys busy for days! The barbeque!

Aren't they cute together?!

(And yes, Christopher is grilling a donut.)