I'm pregnant with #3! It was a surprise for us but a good one. Noel and I have been on the fence about another baby and so this is the way we were meant to go. :) I'm 9 weeks pregnant right now and my symptoms so far are fatigue, moodiness, peeing a lot and craving eggs. I've already gotten a new OB due to insurance changes but have yet to meet her. That will be this week Wednesday, I believe. I've been negletful of this blog, so have lots to fill you in about.

Madelaine will be 16 months old on Christmas and is walking everywhere. Running, too! She hasn't really said anything yet although I thought I heard 'up' pretty clearly Noel claims she says 'dada' - that might be true! She knows several signs including 'blankie', 'more', 'eat', 'kitty' and we're working on 'book'. She's as smart as a whip and gets into everything McKenna does. She loves drawing on the dry erase easel that we have set up. She'll erase, too. Her hair is growing in nicely and she has her back teeth in. I'll post a pic with this log as soon as I can.

McKenna is still doing some speech therapy but I'm planning on canceling it since she's pretty well understood by most everyone. Also, her teacher is a flake. Doesn't show up half the time or forgets to let me know she won't be there the next week. I think we've only worked with her twice or three times out of 8 or 9 times going. The other trips have been for nothing or else we end up getting her teachers assistant who is nice but not as good as Sherri. McKenna is only so-so on going, too. McKenna's attitude towards her sister is so much better now. She's really not aggressive in any way other than the typical sibling push/shovery! They can get into it pretty good, but most of it works itself out and McKenna is good at sharing or giving in gracefully when the occasion calls.

It's snowed here and been so cold that it's still on the ground. We've been out in the sled and Maddy does NOT like the snow. She tolerates the sled, but won't walk in the snow. McKenna makes snow angels and loves playing with the bigger boys from next door if they're out playing. She once was allowed to play football with these pre-teens/teenagers and they were all very sweet with her. They'd let her take turns throwing the ball and when I sensed they were ready to move on to more mature-style playing I called her away. She spent a good hour out there with them that day, though. We've been playing dice games too and that's been a favorite past-time as well.

Noel is still plugging along at his job and it seems as though he's a valued asset, so I'm not too worried about him losing his job. I had a dream last night about a family of 5 moving in with us and it was pretty appalling. I hope it wasn't some sort of prophetic dream in reverse! He's pretty happy with work and now has a carpool partner, which will help with costs. We're trying to build up a good supply of food without going over our budget terribly so I've been trying to cook less expensive meals while not sacrificing quality, especially since I'm pregnant.

Well, that's it for now, I guess. Kids have found me and all is lost for now, I'm afraid! More later...

Wow, it's been forever since I posted! Maddy is walking around now. She started doing just a few steps right before our trip to AZ at the beginning of this month and now is walking and almost running everywhere. She has a mouthful of teeth now and lots more hair.

McKenna has matured and is quite understandable now. She had a great time on our trip to AZ and except for getting sick the day we left to come back to Idaho, we all had a great time!

I've been ripping out the garden. We ended up with a bunch of tomatillos and onions that we took to Noel's dad, plus some jalapenos. I expect he'll make salsa with everything.

We've had kittens around. A really cute tan one with gray tips came into our garage and played with us while I had Joey and Christi over. It had a collar on and I think it might be part of another groups of kittens that I've seen in our backyard. Unfortunately, something is killing them. We found two dead kittens today, one in front and one in back. Both look like something gnawed on them pretty good. McKenna saw the first one before I knew what it was. Thankfully, it was laying injury side down. She was very confused and kept asking if it would get better and we had to explain that it wouldn't; that it was dead. She broke down crying after awhile, so I went in and explained to her about the soul and the afterlife, both of which I believe in. That seemed to make it a bit better, but it was tough going for awhile there.
We are feeding a tomcat but I doubt it's him. He's a really friendly guy who we're planning on getting neutered and there's two other cats that show up once in awhile that we don't feed. One is a himalayan that is probably the father of the kittens and the other is a stocky, broad-headed gray tom that is not friendly at all. In fact, both times I've seen him it's because he was growling at the himalayan. He struck me as a really nasty fellow.

Anyway, enough cat news for now. The weather is getting colder but we're looking forward to Halloween. Noel carved up some pumpkins and did a great job but he was a little premature. They are molding and folding in on themselves already and we have 6 days to go! McKenna and Maddy will be ladybugs, I'll be a cowgirl and Noel will be a mage or something. He bought this black and silver gown with a hood that looks pretty cool, I've got to admit!

Well, I've got split pea ready to get into some hungry tummys. More later!

So what better time to blog than when you're sick in bed? I have a nasty chest cold and McKenna and Madelaine have been coughing. Luckily I have a great guy who can take care of me on the weekends! It also helps that he's immune to the kind of stuff the rest of us catch. LOL

So, there's been nothing but rain! Bad weather canceled a camping trip we had planned with the Turmes family and now we're sick. We're going to try again this coming weekend and I'm just hoping that we're all healthy enough to go. And that the weather cooperates.

The garden is doing well. Lots of strawberries right now as well as snow and shelling peas. I found a tiny little tomato plant coming up with my beans and realized that it's a survivor from last year. Must not have gotten all of the root system. I may try digging it up and potting it because I believe it's a brandywine.

Madelaine is crawling everywhere and pulling herself up on stuff. She has two more teeth coming out on top. The ones that are either side of your front teeth. So she's got a cute gap when she smiles. Her hair is a light brown right now and we're waiting to see whether it will turn darker. She also has those cute little curls that McKenna had and then lost. I've been getting busy with the video feature on the camera. I uploaded some movies to utube of the girls, so for those of you who didn't get a link, it's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojJV-xP7wuk You'll see to the right of the screen "more from Sakmeht" and there will be a vid of my garden and some more of the girls.

McKenna has finished with speech therapy for now but the school rated her speech as moderate to severe in a couple of areas so she's been referred to the speech therapist at Snake River elementary, which is where she would be going to kindergarten if we weren't homeschooling. So she'll have a fall class and I'm working with her this summer so hopefully she'll be right as rain coming out of the class.

Noel finished up the porch and also got the swamp cooler installed. He's whipping up an extra 'pantry' for me to hold all of the excess he brings home from Costco and is working on some wiring in his Geo. The fan that drives his AC is shot.

Well, that's about it. McKenna missed going to Christi's birthday party today because of illness, so we'll be getting her gift to her maybe this weekend while we're camping!

Love to all of you.

Hi all,

Time for an update. Lots of stuff happening. Noel is putting up wooden supports for our porch out back. That way we can mount our patio screen and not have to take it down in advance of a wind. We'll leave it up all summer and just take it down in the winter. We've been outside a lot watching and helping and also working in the garden.

McKenna was helping me spread dry grass clippings around some of the garden plants that I want to mulch, like the peas. My system is to mow the grass, dump and rake the grass clippings into the paths of the garden. Let dry, and then move around plants in the beds as mulch. Now my paths are bare again and as I'll mow today I'll start over. The grass looks pretty in the paths and as long as I rake it so that it all dries evenly it doesn't start stinking.
So, as of today I have strawberry plants blossoming, raspberry plants coming up nice and strong, about 6 inches high. My potato plants have just come up out of the soil as have my zucchini "pool ball" plants. I have onions that are going strong that I planted at least a month ago and spinach and radishes. Peas are about 8-9 inches high and going strong and I'm waiting on my pole beans to come up. We had tons of rain and cold weather after I planted and when I dug in I found nothing where I planted one seed and a sprouted one in another that I re-buried. I'll give them another few days and maybe re-plant. I've planted watermelon and acorn squash that I'm also waiting to come up. I have tomato plants I'm hardening off and pepper plants that will need to be potted up and hardened up in another couple of weeks.

So, lets see - McKenna can swing all by herself now. She doesn't need us to push her anymore. She's going to have a BALL next time we take her to the park and the big swings! She was in the backyard swinging for over half and hour one afternoon. She's also funny about brushing her hair. I still do it but now instead of crying about how it hurts (I really try to be gentle!) now it "tickles!". She's quite the kid, I tell ya! Her speech has improved while she's been in her class and her itch seems to be decreasing. We took her to the doc and since he didn't know what the problem was, he just gave her some pills for worms (even though he didn't see any sign of them), but at the same time we took her out of pull-ups at night and I think that has also helped.

Maddy is more like me as a kid than McKenna is. She has her favorite blankie at night and sucks her thumb. I took her to Patty's for babysitting and luckily I grabbed her fuzzy pink blanket from her crib and it saved Patty's sanity. Instead of crying the whole time, she grabbed at her blanket and evidently ate her dinner with it and held onto it as much as possible! She's crawling now and is pulling herself up onto her feet. Loves the cat and will grab hanks of fur and squeeze with all of her might. She's not very popular with Diablo, as you might guess! LOL

I've discovered some extraordinary tea. My friend Patty told me about Adagio Tea and I ordered some green and chai tea. One of the chai was called rooiboos and it's pronounced "Roy-Boss" tea. It's a south African red bush tea and when I looked it up online it's supposed to be really good for you. All I know is that when I had some it instantly became my favorite tea of all time. Since it's a chai, this one was flavored with vanilla, so I'm going to order some straight rooiboos and see what it's like. If anyone's interested, I can send you a $5.00 off coupon, just email me for the link.

Well, I think that's all for now. I've got to decide whether to pot up peppers or mow lawn - and the littlest one needs her nap. New pics coming soon!

Maddy is almost crawling! She gets on her hands and knees and rocks and also picks up her legs like she wants to go forward with them. Noel says she did crawl a foot when I wasn't looking last night (putting McKenna to bed). So I guess this first is his! She also cut her first tooth about a week and a half ago and right now she's got two tiny lower teeth in front. She's still pulling herself along with her forearms mostly. She can hold onto a sippy and drink some juice. She's very active at this point. No other breaking news right now.

Getting the garden together. Got some extra strawberries and spinach plants from my neighbor so now I have onions coming up, as well as peas and lettuce and radishes planted. But the radishes are old seed and I'm doubting they'll come up. I've got my tomato plants going inside and I hope to have them in the ground my early to mid-May.

Had a dream last night that Noel and I found a property of about 5 acres for $120K. It had a barn and a chicken coop and it was a big old farmhouse with a beautiful front porch. Noel tried burning some garbage and the trees across the street caught fire. Besides that, it was a lovely dream!

Madelaine isn't crawling yet but she gets around. She can grab at the ground and pull herself along a bit, but mostly she's rolling everywhere. At least it's a slow progression. Guess I need to start re-babyproofing the house!

McKenna had fun today making life-sized cut-outs of the family with some large rolls of paper that we had on hand. She had a ball. I think she's got some sort of infection, either yeast or bacterial, that I need to get checked out. She's been grabbing herself a lot and complaining of itch. At first, I thought she just needed to go to the bathroom, but she kept saying that she didn't. I'm thinking the culprit might be all of the peanut butter we've been eating. I've been making lots of peanut butter balls for quick energy for Noel since he's working out at a gym now. She loves them and eats quite a few in a day, plus sometimes has pb&j for lunch and also pb crackers. So right now I'm cutting out peanut butter, sweets, and she's on water only. I've also been applying some external monistat cream to help relieve her itch. She's been better today, but I think I'll still get her checked out.

Noel and I were going to get compost for our garden today, but it was a bit rainy so we'll wait until next week. I think I'll get my lettuce and peas started then. I'm excited to get things growing again!

My dad is in the hospital. Did a major job on his back when he was doing an exercise and couldn't get out of bed yesterday morning. Mom had to have an ambulance come. There's more details regarding that, but I'll post more later. Tomorrow is Monday and I'm determined to concentrate and clearing out the shelf in McKenna's closet. There's clothes she's outgrown that need to be put away for Madelaine. Well, other than making money with my gpt site (click here if you're interested in making a little extra money doing cash offers) nothing much else going on. I put up portions of my alaskan sourdough starter on craigslist for sale so we'll see if anyone expresses interest. Probably not, LOL! ;)

I've got seeds started indoors! Basil, cilantro (probably will be inside herbs) and my alpine strawberries. This year I will NOT neglect them and will get them into the ground! There's been great weather here and there lately. I divided my iris and re-planted on the south side of the house. It's back where I never go, but the plants will be happy there and I can always go back and get what I need later when I've got a permanent bed set up for them.

We've had lots of rain and McKenna and I were out rescuing worms to put in my garden, poking slugs, and rolling pill bugs along (which we found under a brick). It's been so wet in fact that I may be able to get some edging put in along my garden. The soil is incredibly hard when dry. I also want to get some compost and manure soon so that I can work it into my garden when I need to. I've got separate beds planned here and there in the backyard.

In other news, my little one will be crawling soon I think. She's working hard to get her legs under her when she's on her tummy. McKenna loves 'helping' her to roll over, sit up, etc... they are really cute together! :)

My dad's having some problems. Digestive stuff (doc thought Chrohns at one point and he's on an IV steroid every 2 weeks) and now a compressed fracture of his lower vertebrae from doing an exercise where he was pulling himself up off the ground with his fingers on a door sill. He's pretty emotional about the whole thing. Probably won't get out of the valley this summer with everything going on. We just might have to make a trip down to AZ visit for the celebration of mom's 65th birthday. NY was a possibility and I'd love to get back there because we could also visit Noel's mom and family... but we ended up putting ALL of our tax return onto medical bills from the birth of Maddy and Noel and McKenna's bout with E.coli. I think we may do a family camping trip up into the mountains with our pop-up trailer and maybe the trip to AZ this summer and that will be it, I'm guessing.

Other than that, everything is going well. I've decided to tackle growing onions, potatoes and garlic this year since we use lots of all three in my cooking. It's another year and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Economy wise, I'm thinking it will be worse this year but as long as Noel keeps his job, we'll do all right. Catch ya'll later!

Maddy rolled from her back to her tummy yesterday. First time! She's skooching forward on her tummy more now, too. I have to keep re-adjusting her on her blankie. She grabs for food now if we are holding her on our laps and eating and will grab for the spoon as we're feeding her. I've had a couple of messes because I wasn't careful and she grabbed the food jar and spilled. I feel a lot more comfortable leaving McKenna alone with her although we've had two incidents in the past month. Once was McKenna dropping her when she was carrying her to me. (I think I mentioned that one) All was well as she landed on her back and not her head - also landed on the carpet and not the hard floor. The other incident happened yesterday. Maddy was in the exer-saucer and McKenna was playing with her and pulled the exer-saucer upside down. I looked over, forgetting for the moment that Maddy was in it and said, "Noel would you right that please" and so he flipped it over and as he did I saw a little foot wiggling and then Maddy was looking at us for a second with a "What the f-" look on her face and then decided to start crying. Noel hadn't realized she was in it either. She was fine and calmed down very fast so I think she was mostly just scared at finding herself upside down. We talked to McKenna and I think she didn't intend for it to flip over. She pulls on it sometime with Maddy in it in order to pull her into another room. I think this time when she was sitting next to it she just got carried away - but we talked about her being careful. Anywhoo,

I can't wait for spring! I've gotten interested in geocaching: www.geocaching.com and can't wait to start looking for some treasure! I think McKenna would enjoy it, too. When we go camping this next summer I think it would be a fun addition to the fishing and swimming. There's hides all over the place - in urban, rural and woods areas. Some are really difficult and others are easier to get to. Ones you could take your kids to.

In other news, we got our new cow for the next year. All divied up with Patty and Joe and tucked neatly into our freezer. We had some t-bones a couple nights ago and they were yummy! Also had dinner with Patty and Joe and kids last night and I did some cod (I never make fish) and everyone really liked it. Since Noel has joined Gold's Gym and is trying to lose weight and get healthy I think I may start doing fish more often. A trick I picked up is to soak the fillets in milk and it gets rid of that fishy smell and taste that some people don't like. I was glad to see that McKenna ate all of hers as well. Well, I think that's it for now. Don't have time to proof read - hope there's not too many mistakes! Later......

Let's see. Maddy sat up by herself without support yesterday. Sat for a good while, too. I took several pics. I guess I feel a little guilty for not getting more pics of Madelaine up. We took tons of McKenna. First baby and all. I guess it's that I've got the pictures but don't have as much time with two kiddos.

Let's see. Other things of interest. She chomping on her soft toys a lot lately. Another couple of months should see some teeth coming in. She's eating baby food and likes to stick her thumb in her mouth between bites. It gets rather messy, lol. Noel and I share the baby-feeding chore now that he actually can participate. She's blowing lots of raspberries right now. Just loves it. Lots of drool, yum! Likes to grab for my book when I'm reading. Is VERY distracted when nursing if she's not really hungry. Likes to latch on, then pull away to look at me and smile. Sometimes I have to ignore her in order for her to even eat! But she's getting fed at any rate. Putting on the pounds. I think I mentioned that she's rolling from her front to her back now.

McKenna is still a good little helper. Winter is NOT our time of year. I feel like we watch too much TV. We don't go out for our long walks because it's too cold and too much work with an infant. We are doing some speech therapy classes at Parkview even though she wasn't eligible for the main program. Which is a good thing, I guess. I know she's really too young to worry about it yet, but I wish she was interested in reading more. I know worlds will open up for her when she learns how and she won't be moping around the house so much. I've been doing some schoolish things with her to keep us occupied. We play matching games with shapes and also with Capital and lower case letters. She knows all of her letter sounds and we got her the "Talking Word Factory" by leap frog which starts to put letters together to form short 3-letter words. I think I just need to sit down with her more often and read during the day. Often the only reading we do is just before bed.

Other things going on - I'm making blueberry soda from scratch. I've got the soda culture bubbling away (made of ginger, sugar and filtered water) and it had to sit and be 'fed' for another 3 or 4 days and then it will be ready to use. When I stir it I can hear it fizzing and it has a pleasant ginger ale kind of smell to it. I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out. I remember my mom making some root beer with us soon after we moved to AZ. I remember it turning out okay. Noel's interested in root beer so I may have to try that, as well.

I'm ready to start ordering seeds for my garden this year. I've plotted out where I'm going to plant everything and nothing is going to be planted where it was last year. Rotation, and all that jazz. I've been very interested in Herbalism of late and will try making some salves and teas and tinctures to try. I like the idea of knowing what plants can help which ailments in case I ever need that knowledge. For instance, I read that sodas used to be used medicinally? It was just another way to take a medicine. I also read that the little bacteria used to produce the carbonation are technically 'dead' in the sodas we drink since otherwise they would be exploding on store shelves if they weren't bought and used right away. Directions for my blueberry soda caution the user to not forget about the sodas in the fridge because even though the fermentation process slows, it does not stop. Anyway, can't wait to try it out.

I'm also planning to make dandelion wine this year. We don't spray our backyard with pesticides and we have a nice batch of clover and dandelions so instead of cursing them this year I'm going to try using them to my advantage! I'll let you know how THAT experiment turns out. It would be a year before I could drink it, anyway. They call it 'slow food' for a reason, I guess!

More later!

So there's a wild and crazy LAN party at my house right now. It started at 10am and as of 9:14pm is still going strong. Noel told me people might be here until 2am, which is better than 6am I guess. I just put McKenna and Madelaine down and we'll see how they sleep. I spent the whole day today at Patty's, who was kind enough to let me crash at her place so I wouldn't have to live upstairs in my own house. The kids had a fantastic time. They got along really well except for a couple of times and the claws (on my daughter) never came out. I think she's starting to grasp the concept of sharing and asking permission before playing with other kids toys. She's also speaking more clearly and I think that helps a lot.

Our house was pretty clean before the party-goers started coming over and Noel was mostly to thank for that. The place was decent with only some vacuuming and mopping to do, which I figured would be better doing AFTER the party. Otherwise, he cleaned out the bathrooms and picked up clutter and got the cats settled upstairs with food water and litter. I was thinking to myself at one point, 'maybe we should have a LAN more often if he's going to clean like this' but that remains to be seen. Now that the twins don't have their house to host the parties in, the guys will be rotating parties through each others places which means we'll have parties here more often. However, depending on how this one goes, I may have to impose a time limit. Like everyone gone by 1am. And that, in my opinion is generous!

Other than that, a good day! I brought a book with me to Patty's "World Made By Hand" by James Howard Kunstler which is basically about a future world where oil has depleted and there's been a few bombings of major cities and the government is either non-exsistent or mostly defunct. Basically, people have to grow their own food and walk or ride horses everywhere. Life it much more local. A good read on what might become of us if the 'Peak Oil Theory' is proved as true someday. Also worked on a belt for McKenna. I crocheted it out of some chenille yarn and now just need to attach it to a D-ring which I thought I had some of, but guess not?

Anyhoo, time to surf the net for awhile and relax. I'm not even going to try to fall asleep before midnight. I'm not looking forward to all the tossing and turning I'm no doubt going to have to get through with all of the comotion below!