Church Matters

When we were at church yesterday, Will asked, ‎"Mama? Why aren't the angels at our church anymore?" I had to explain to him that the choir doesn't always wear robes, but they were the same people who sang the other times, too. That one goes right up there with the time he asked, "When can I be bath-tized?"

We stepped out of our normal comfort zone and chose a large church. It has a lot to offer for the kids and me. One of the advantages of a large church for us is that not too many people notice we have triplets. We don't have to call ahead to make sure there is enough room in the preschool class for them, and we don't have to call and say we aren't going to be there. With smaller churches, the crowd seemed to rotate about our three babies, leaving Will off to the side.

We have been attending the same church off and on for the almost-three years we've lived here. The little kids enjoy their classes, and we've gotten to know several of the preschool teachers through Sunday school, mother's day out, and Tuesday morning Bible studies. Will enjoys going to "big church" with Allen and me, and will sit calmly, quietly, and still for most of the service. When he gets tired of watching the preacher, he reads his Bible, but I know he's listening because later he asks us questions about the sermon. I'm okay with that, and I am thrilled that he is thinking. Will really seems to enjoy Sunday school, too, especially when they gave him his own Bible. He takes such good care of it and he is proud that he can read it, even if he doesn't understand it all yet.

We go to church for a while, then flu-RSV-H1N1 hits and we stop for the winter. Our church shows services on television, and I still stay involved in activities during the week, but once we are out of the habit of going on Sundays, its hard to get back to going. That's been the cycle since we moved here. When we aren't going in winter, I don't feel guilty. We still pray as a family, I read the kids Bible stories, I participate in Bible study and MOPS. God isn't out of our lives, but just as we limit the germs in the winter, I feel like I have a ceiling on my spiritual life when I'm not at church.

As my friends and I have been planning MOPS for the fall, the fact that I was not a member of the church came up just briefly. Not everyone in our MOPS group belongs to the church, and not everyone in steering belongs to that church. One of my friends said, "Sarah, you come to Bible studies, you pay for mother's day out, and you are already involved in the ministry of this church through MOPS. So why aren't you guys members?" Sometimes it takes a simple question to get me moving and this one did just that. Allen and I discussed our reasons why and came up with "why aren't we?"

So, here we are.
In a large church.
Three years later.
Now members.
As of yesterday.

Musically Inclined

Allen and I have been talking about letting Will take music lessons this year. We don't know for sure that we will do it, but we are talking about it. He could learn to read music, learn rhythm, have something to be proud of. We were considering instruments --piano, guitar, violin -- but really wishing there was a teacher that let kids borrow a different instrument a month just to see what was out there. Part of the talk included asking Will if he would be interested in learning to play an instrument. He said yes, he'd like that, and we told him to think about what instrument would be fun. Several days later, Will came to tell me he decided what instrument he would like to learn to play. The conversation went something like this:

Will - "Mama, you remember you told me to think about what instrument I want to play?"
Me - "Yes. Have you thought about it?"
Will - "Yes, but there may be a problem. . . ."
Me - "What's the problem?"
Will - "I don't know what store you are going to find me some bagpipes."

....remember up there when I said "We don't know for sure that we will do it?" ....

Chores

I am a mama who is teaching her children how to do things. I'm going beyond learning to walk, read, and write and I'm already teaching them how to do things around the house. This week, I've realized Will knows how to handle knives safely and he puts away the clean dishes from the dishwasher. All of them.... sort of. He still can't reach the top cabinets even with a stool, so I ask him to stack the plates neatly on the counter just below the cabinet they go into. When I get a minute, I can just open the doors, put the stack away, and be done with it. Here is where our challenge comes in.... he still isn't putting forth the effort to figure out that when he is unloading clean dishes, then the dishes stacked next to the sink are dirty, not clean. Or maybe it is MY problem since I don't recheck everything before loading the cabinets. Let's just say its a good thing we didn't have company this morning. There were some spoons in the drawer that still had milk and cereal crumbs, then I got the big laugh. I got my coffee cup from the cabinet. . . .it already had coffee in it!

Yes, I'm laughing this time. And as I'm enjoying my java from a clean cup, I'm watching Maddie and Jon fold a basketful of laundry. It takes a bit longer than when I do it, and the creases aren't usually perfect, but they enjoy doing it, they are proud of themselves, and they are getting really good at it. Jon sorts the clothes as he folds them, and he gets frustrated with Maddie for "not doing it right." Will's shirts get stacked neatly next to Will's shorts, then the little boy shirts and shorts, then Maddie's piles. It makes it pretty easy to hand Will's to him to put away, and Maddie puts some of her clothes away. The bath towels will make it to my bathroom counter without me asking, and Ben will put the kitchen towels haphazardly into the cabinet where they belong. Maddie will end up racing Ben to put the socks in the sock box, and my clothes usually make it to my bed. I LOVE that they enjoy doing laundry ....especially since I don't.

I know you didn't see Ben's name too much on the list of helpers. He prefers to unhelp. I made up that word, but it fits. Those nice, straight piles of neatly folded t-shirts? Ben thinks its fun to run across the room and slide onto the couch where they are stacked. I don't know which he enjoys more -- the flying laundry or the fight that comes when Jon loses his temper about the mess. As for dishes, I've had him put away silverware only to find out he tastes each spoon before he stacks them in the drawer. Evidently they stay neater when they are a bit damp. I don't ask him to help with that unless I can give my full attention. For now, he gets to help sort the dirty laundry, load the washer and dryer, clear the table after dinner, and pick up his own clothes and toys. And now I need to finish this post. The kids are still working on the laundry basket. Maddie and Will yelled (from five feet away). "Mama! Come quick! Ben is wearing all your panties!"

Buzz, Bugs, Teeth, and Training

Sometimes, life can best be summed up by the random little sentences that I post. Some of these are just little bits that don't fit into a long story, but that I want to get written so I can laugh about them later.

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR - A split lip and a knot on his head are not enough to convince Ben that he can't fly. He is now crying, not because he hurts, but because I told him he couldn't be the FLYING superhero. But he's running around saying "To infininini and beyond!" so I guess he didn't notice. The story continues. . . .after telling him AGAIN that he couldn't fly, he ran up to get the Buzz Lightyear costume. When he asked me to help him get it on, I explained AGAIN that he can't fly. "I know, Mama. But, Buzz can fly and now that I have the costume, I am Buzz." He ran off yelling about infinity and all that. He's still black and blue and determined. That night when I tucked him in I explained that Buzz Lightyear wears a helmet all the time. He sighed a bit and asked where he could get one.

EDIBLE BUGS - Over the weekend, I let the kids watch a recording of the kids' episode of Bizarre Foods. They were upset when they found a bunch of crickets in the yard but I wouldn't cook them. Monday, I ordered several flavors and varieties of packaged edible bugs for them, so they are excited again. Ever since I told the kids I ordered the bugs, they ask me EVERY night if we are having bugs for dinner. They are pretty excited about it, and I'm am trying to be. I'll have to try the edible insects, but it seems easier as a kid...They are scheduled to be here Monday, and Will gets really excited everytime he sees the UPS truck in our neighborhood.

LOOTH TOOTH - At ‎1:13AM - "Mama, my tooth is really loose. I think you can pull it out now. I've been wiggling it since I went to bed." Yes, it was Will. It seems he was up a few times last night -- he can't sleep if he can't suck his thumb, but both his top middle teeth are very loose. I told him to practice saying "loose," now while he can do it without the toothleth lithp. Both of the front top ones are loose right now, and I am secretly hoping they'll come out at the same time so he will quit sucking his thumb at night.

POTTY TRAINING - We are still working on getting the little kids potty trained, and like I've always heard, there is a big difference in potty training girls and boys. Training two boys and a girl at the same time makes these differences quite clear. For example, Maddie sobs uncontrollably when she "toots in her pink panties." Ben, on the other hand, when asked to please go potty marches to the bathroom and washes his hands. When we remind him he went there to potty, he proudly boasts, "I DID potty. I peed in my pullup and washed my hands at the SAME TIME!!" Wow -- my son, the multitasker! Maddie is now out of diapers and pullups and is staying dry all day. We still have her in diapers at night, but she wakes up dry about 6 days out of 7. I am still too nervous about going out and having an accident to clean up while keeping four kids from getting germy in a public restroom, so I have a pullup on her over her panties when we go places. Ben and Jon both use the potty regularly, but they seem to be having a competition to see who can make a bigger mess in his undies. I'm getting pretty tired of that part, so they are usually in pullups.

Quiet Hill

Whew! We are back and almost back to normal after our summer vacation. The day before we left, I told the little kids that we were going to a ranch and would get to see chickens, pigs, horses, and birds. I told them some of the things we might get to do, then I asked them to go talk about what they might have fun doing. The six little feet scurried to the couch and they bent their heads in conspiring whispers and giggles. It suddenly got quiet so I looked up. They had come to me to announce what they wanted to do on vacation. Jon enthusiastically exclaimed, "We want to go on vacation and do LAUNDRY!!" ... are they really my kids? Luckily, I was able to arrange for them to get their wishes fulfilled. This is what I looked like for a lot of our trip.  I still take pictures as if I'm going to scrapbook everything, but I almost forget how to scrapbook (it's been a long time....) In the end, I came back with almost 900 photos for the six-day vacation.

Allen and the kids and I took the long way down there. We stopped at my parents' in Waco to spend the night, to celebrate my dad's birthday, and to pick up Will who had been staying with them for a few days. The next morning, we loaded the car and headed south. I had planned a few letterbox stops to break up the trip, and our stop was at Blue Hole park in Georgetown. We found a letterbox, walked around the park, let the kids walk in the river, and had our first of MANY potty stops. I emphasize "many" now so I don't have to keep mentioning it. It often seemed like half my day was spent in a restroom, but since Allen's parents came, Allen and I had plenty of much-appreciated help with the potty training. We made one more stop for lunch in Georgetown, but as we headed west, the clouds opened up and it started raining hard. The kids quickly fell asleep, so we just kept driving and skipped the other three letterbox-stops.

We stayed at a different type of bed and breakfast -- they provided the beds and the breakfast, but we had to cook it ourselves. Quiet Hill Ranch is located about 25 miles from Fredericksburg, Texas, and it was a great place to call home for the six days we vacationed in the Hill Country. With three rowdy boys and a little girl needing to be heard, we wondered if they needed to change the name while we were there. Allen's parents met us at the Ranch, and we all had a great time together in the rustic log-cabins and the ranch overlooking what seemed like all of Texas.

When we arrived at the ranch, Jim (our host) gave us a tour, the kids met the farm animals and gathered some eggs from the hen house, we unloaded the bags, and the six of us went out for dinner while we waited for Nana and Papa. Ben and Maddie spent the first two nights in Nana and Papa's cabin, while Jon and Will were in with Allen and me. There was enough room for six in each cabin, but three boys + lots of rain on a metal roof + thunder + two parents + a little girl makes for a loud room.

The second day it was still raining, so we all slept later than normal. Jim brought us a list his wife made of things to do on a rainy day. There had been about five inches of rain the first 24-hours we were there. When we were assured that we would be able to cross the creeks with the vehicles, we headed toward Fredericksburg and visited Wildseed Farms. This would have more fun without the rain, but we busied ourselves for awhile. We went to town for lunch and, since the rain stopped, we headed to LBJ State park and visited the Sauer-Beckmann living history farmstead. We avoided the mud, and since it had been raining, there weren't many tourists. The kids enjoyed watching and helping the docents with the day-to-day chores: making cheese, molding lye soap, washing up with a pitcher and basin, gathering wood for the kitchen stove, crushing egg shells, feeding the chickens, and picking tomatoes from the garden. There were lots of animals to keep the kids busy -- pigs, a calf and cows, a sheep and her lamb, chickens, roosters, and turkeys. At the end, Nana found a web with a huge beautiful spider. We headed back to the ranch for dinner that night and Maddie spotted a deer outside the window. We had seen nearly four dozen while we drove the farm roads, but this was the first the kids' saw at the ranch and up-close.

The third day was Saturday and that was the BIG day for the boys. They got to ride horses. We offered Maddie a ride, but she didn't want to. In fact, her proud moment was that she was finally brave enough to touch a horse. The horses were great and the boys were so proud to be riding. When Jim came to get them, they each grabbed one of the decorative hats so they could be "real" cowboys. Jim walked Will's horse, Ranger; Allen held onto Jon's, Chihuahua; and Papa kept hold of Ben's horse, Amigo. I followed or ran ahead to get a variety of photos as they took about a thirty-minute stroll around a bit of the ranch that overlooked the valley. It looked just like what I think Texas should look like even though normally I think the cowboy-horses-hats Texas decor go a bit over the top. The Western-stuff added a bit, but the beauty was that we could see almost to the edge of the world. We took a "scenic" drive to town so that we could pick up a few more letterboxes. One of those detours took us by Morris Ranch, now a ghost town; the other took us through Lady Bird Johnson Park's nature trails where the kids were fascinated by all the butterflies, a big snail, and a dead scorpion. We spent the afternoon in town again, and this time we went to one of the rainy-day spots even though it wasn't rainy. Jim told us we shouldn't miss the five-and-dime, so we stopped in there and let the kids pick out their souvenir (with a little guidance.) Will already had a new cowboy hat, so he chose some plastic soldiers similar to the ones the kids played with at the lodge when it was pouring rain. Ben, Maddie, and Jon each left with a new straw hat. We had lunch at a German restaurant, and I think we had dinner back at the lodge that night. The exciting dinner company? A skunk wandering around. Needless to say, we weren't anxious to run out for the picture.

The fourth day was the Fourth of July. I love the fourth of July because it celebrates our country's freedom, but I also love that we almost always are with family having fun. This year, we celebrated differently, but all the things I love were still there. We took the third photo in an annual series we've been taking, and since we were all coordinating in our red, white, and blue, I made the kids sit and smile for a few more photos, too. We took the 30-minute drive to Fredericksburg, and the little ones fell asleep. Luckily, they learned to be flexible about napping, and they always caught the Z's while we commuted. They were still snoozing when we found great parking spots a couple hours before the parade. Will, Shelley, and I got out and found a letterbox about a block from where we parked. Then when the kids awoke, all four played at the playground until it was time for the parade. It was a great parade and the kids enjoyed it, though we did all get a bit more sun than we needed on this first day it was actually hot. The kids loved our stop to a strange little place that had homemade ice cream; actually, we ALL enjoyed that stop! We had a picnic lunch and headed "home" for some rest, some pool-time, tree-climbing, campfire and marshmallow-roasting. We sat atop the ranch's hill and watched the fireworks. Although the view of the valley is beautiful, the fireworks were so far away they looked sort of like exploding lightning bugs. Papa and Nana got out some glow sticks, and the kids were back to having fun in the dark. They were amazed at how many stars they could see, but I forget how high they counted before giving up and just saying, "God sure hung a lot of stars in the sky!"

The next day we went to the LBJ ranch and Texas Whitehouse at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park. It was an interesting place with a driving tour of the ranch, a ranger-led tour of the Whitehorse, and some self-led tours through the childhood home and cemetery. I didn't know much about LBJ before this tour, but now I know quite a bit. Will also learned a bunch -- he did an activity-book and completed what he need to be sworn in as a Junior Park Ranger. He had gotten a badge at another park, but this time, the ranger actually swore him in rather than just handing him the pin. In the end, he told us this was the best part of the whole vacation (even better than riding a horse...?) We ended the day back at the ranch; the kids enjoyed playing on the swing set, and all eight of us got a little bit dirty playing horseshoes.

At dinner the last night, we went around the table and each said what our favorite part of the trip was. I loved hearing the different answers and was thrilled that we found something for everyone! The favorites?

• Will - being sworn in as a Junior Park Ranger
• Ben - the playground
• Maddie - my family
• Jon - finding the treasures and stamping (letterboxing)
• Nana (Shelley) - seeing the kids learning new things
• Papa (Randy) - the Sauer-Beckmann living farm
• Allen - spending time with family
• Sarah - watching the boys faces light up when they rode the horses

Fourth of July

I am still working on the vacation post, but until then, look how we've changed (or not.) In the family photo, Jon is sitting on Sarah's lap, Will is in the middle with Ben standing behind him. Maddie is on Allen's lap.

2008 Photo - Ben, Maddie, & Jon are 21 months, Will is 4 1/2 years old:

2009 Photo - Ben, Maddie, & Jon are 2 1/2 years old, Will is 5 1/2 years old:

2010 Photo - Ben, Maddie, & Jon are 3 1/2 years old, Will is 6 1/2 years old:

Time is passing quickly. Not much long till Ben will be too tall to be the only one standing. Not much longer till Jon won't fit on my lap. Not much longer till Maddie won't let me put pigtails in just because I want to.

From left to right are Jon, Ben, Will, and Maddie. 2008, 2009, 2010.

... and, yes, I got a better photo, but this is the one that makes me laugh.

Camp Gramma & Granddad's

I have quite a collection of pictures now that the kids spent so much time at my parents'. First, for a week when I was sick. Then last week, the kids and I went to Waco while Allen was on a business trip. The triplets and I came home last Friday, but Will stayed with Gramma and Granddad. My parents wanted a place where they could play outside with grandkids, and I think that's all they seem to do. Here's what's been happening there over the last month:

A rope swing

Setting up camp

Playing with cousins

Sleeping in a tent with Uncle Jason (Will)

Learning to start a fire with flint

Roasting marshmallows and hotdogs

Fishing at dawn

Staying up to catch fireflies

Staying up to have a flashlight and shadow theater

Staying up to hunt frogs

Staying up to count stars

Catching bugs, fish, crawdads, frogs, and snakes

Calling the barn swallows

Seeing the swallows tend their nests

Taking apart wasp nests

Getting stung

Learning to swim in the lake

Learning to bait a fishhook

Watching waterfalls and sunsets

Catching, cleaning, dissecting, and eating a female bass who had recently eaten crawfish

Watching the news every night

Learning about oil spills with a bucket of lake water, cooking oil, feathers, and dried grass

Running through the sprinklers

Watching a beaver cross the yard

Counting turtles on the log

Feeding apples and carrots to the neighbors' horse