Dear Mr. President

So I found this video and really, really, really liked it.

My Bethany, 6 years old, watched this with me. After we finished watching it, we had the following conversation:

"Mom, governments are supposed to protect people, right?"
"Yes." I said.
"Then why doesn't President Obama protect people?"
I had some idea where this was going, but said, "What do you mean?"
"He doesn't protect the babies... Why doesn't he do what he is supposed to?"
"Well, it is because he doesn't believe that really tiny babies should be protected, but that they are like the "property" of the mommies or the doctors, and they can decide what to do with the babies."
Thoughtfully, she asked, "Why don't you tell him, Mommy? Tell him that they are people, but they just need a place to grow?"
"Well, I think that plenty of people have tried, sweetie. And it would be very hard for him to change his mind now because lots of people would be very angry because they think the same way he does and voted for him for that reason."
She didn't give up, "But if more people tell him, wouldn't he change his mind?"
I suggested that she could write him a letter if she wanted, but this scared her...
"What if they come and take me away?"
"I don't think that would happen, and anyway, I wouldn't let them."
"But what if they take you away?"
"Well, I think if they take me away, they'll have a lot of trouble on their hands because we have a lot of people who would stand up for us... Honey, if you think you need to write a letter, you should pray for the courage to do it.. I'm not going to make you write it."
"Okay, Mommy."

A little later, she took me by the hand into the "den" and dictated this letter to me--I did not help her.

"Dear President Obama,

This is Bethany. I am six years old. I want to tell you to change your heart. These babies are people. They just need a place for them to grow into a wonderful person. I used to be a baby so tiny that you couldn't even see me. Then I was born out of my mommy's tummy. And now, I grew up into a six year old. Can you please stop paying people to kill these babies?

Thank you,
Bethany"

Thank YOU, Bethany.

So Close

Well, we did fill one apartment, and have an application out for another one, but alas, the trip to St. Louis was not to be. Still, we had a lovely weekend. Friday was good: got to catch up with a good friend during a playdate a BK (woohoo Big Fish!), signed a lease (in a van with 5 kids), picked out vinyl and carpet (for another apartment), ate at the fish fry with Matt, and a late tp stop at Walmart (all with 4 kids in tow).

Matt was siding a house on Saturday (you know, when it snowed), so I spent most of the day going stir crazy and listening to questions like:

"Mommy, what day is it?"
"Saturday."
"Then why isn't Daddy home? You know, the song: 'Saturday, Daddy's Home'?"

Yes, I made up a song with those words in it. We are all happy when Daddy's home! But these days we are earning our Sunday rest. :)

So the evening was spent watching 10 episodes of The Office via Netflix. I say highlight because it was not the best day, but you know how they say you can have too much of a good thing, well... sometimes it takes you some time to realize that you had too much of a bad thing... we realized that we kept watching it because it WASN'T satisfying..That we were much happier at the beginning of the show (I like the song) than at the end... you just think--"This has got to come to a plot resolution sometime, doesn't it???"--Well, long before any resolved plot, I got sick of that. I can handle stupid humor, but I think that stupid sex humor is really not funny. I also think that desecrating it through stupid sexual situations is even worse. My rule of thumb is, if you can't film the show without objectively sinning, I can't watch it without subjectively sinning. 21 minutes of "ha" isn't worth collateral damage to my soul. But hey, Duma was good.

*Whew*

So, Sunday was nice.. We went to church in Madrid so we could drop off an application to a prospective tenant and we had really well behaved kids.. We tried to get donuts for them at Git 'N Go, but turns out you can't "git" donuts there. So we came home and Mommy made apple fritters and scrambled eggs... I had purchased 30 lbs of organic apples and some were rotting in spots, so I cut out the yuck, cored them and sliced them in my new favorite appliance: my KitchenAid food processor (Thank you birthday club!) I mixed them with a little flour and cinnamon and sugar and froze them until needed.. Of course, I needed all 4 bags that I froze last Monday.. 3 of them for these amazing apple fritters which I've made 2x.

In the afternoon we went on a pilgrimage to Gilbert, IA to Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church to fulfill the requirements for obtaining a plenary indulgence in the year of St. Paul. We did not partake in the real part of the pilgrimage, the 12 mile walk from St. Thomas in Ames carrying a 200 lb wooden cross, but it was cool watching the college students come in right at 3pm, knowing what they had been through to get there. I had a beautiful chance to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation with a wonderful and holy priest. It was so cool because before the priests went into the confessionals, they knelt at the altar and confessed to each other! I've never seen a priest give absolution to another priest before. It was a true show of humility.

So, finishing off with leftover night and kissing and blessing our girls good night, it was a good weekend. I mean, it was a great weekend. I am truly blessed to have the family I do and even more blessed to be the child of God that I am.

1/2 way there!!

So we made a little deal with God.. Well, sort of..

I am told by those great spiritual writers of history that the secret to peace is not to want anything too much that its loss will cause great sorrow. So with that in mind, here is our deal.

Matt and I have been bowled over by the common sense and truth of a certain constitutionalist named Ron Paul. We wouldn't give him the time of day until some friends we really trusted suggested we take a close look. We read The Revolution and started reading Mises.org to find out what is REALLY going on with our economy.

Well, next week, Campaign for Liberty, a grassroots group devoted to Ron's ideals of freedom, peace, and economic liberty, is having a regional conference in St. Louis and boy do we want to go. Not only is the incomparable Ron Paul speaking, there will also be a man named Thomas E. Woods who is a regular contributor at Mises.org and who also wrote a book called How the Church Built Western Civilzation.

So we this is right up our alley! But there is that pesky income problem.. So the deal is: we have to fill 2 apartments at Madrid before we can go. This would be a significant sign since we've had 3 empty for a year and we have a week until the conference. But today we filled ONE!!!! YAY! Our hearts are heavy for other reasons, though, because Matt's grandma isn't doing very well, and unless she improves we can't make any reservations in STL at this time. So our deal isn't so much a deal as a request for a sign and a way.. If we don't get to go, we don't get to go.. this could be a great event in our lives, but if it is truly meant to be, God will make it happen so we can truly say, Que Sera Sera.

Enscuela de Capitalism

So, we had a pretty capitalistic day in our little homeschool today. The math lesson (in the math book--I take back some of what I have said about textbooks) was to organize empty food boxes and cans into what aisles they would be placed in a grocery store. Luckily, their aunt Kelly got them a BUNCH of play food stuffs.. So they spent much of the morning sorting....

And shelving....

And pricing...

My favorite was the freezer section (Bethany came up with the idea of using the french doors):

That's pizza and ice cream in there..

Bethany lasted longer than Ms. Emma, so Bethany determined that the store should be called "Bethany's." Emma decided she'd rather be a customer, anyway, so she went back to her "time test" that took her most of the morning..

Probably because her answers looked like this:

Madeleine was busy with the "tiny beads" a work that the kids do everyday.. You're suppose to iron it and they stick together, but this is a gift from 2 years ago from aunt Kelly (not favorite aunt Kelly (LOL), the other one). This pic is from a work Emma is doing right now, but this morning Madeleine showed us her design which she said was a garden.. :)

Little Leah is still sick and is taking a long nap.. Poor baby. She hasn't puked since last night, thank goodness. Hopefully she'll eat something when she wakes up.

So that is our day.. Daddy just left for work. He is going to put up siding at Bob's new construction house all week from 1-8 each day. Not quite full time, but hopefully we get some good leads soon!

Incredible Family

So my sweet girls have a real love for the movie, The Incredibles. If you haven't seen it, you have to get it.. It's just awesome.

This would be them acting out a scene from the movie in their "Incredibles costumes." There are only 3 kids in the Incredible family, so they made up a part for Madeleine, a "super" named Ada. Ada can fly, run really fast, go invisible, and her head won't fall off if you try to cut it off. I guess they had to throw in some pretty awesome powers if Madeleine was going to go for it. Leah is "Jack Jack" and just for kicks the girls threw in a baby doll named Gino (short for Eugenio). I am Elasti-girl, and with 5 super kids (including Violet, Dash, Ada, Jack-Jack, and Gino) I need those powers. Daddy is Mr. Incredible, and he digs that name, too. He is a pretty incredible guy, anyhow.

What's Up.

I realized that some of you might wonder what's going on with us since we are kind of in limboland. Well, we're doing very well! Matt is working hard this week at our apartment "complex." We've known for a while that it needed some work. I went two weeks ago to surprise him by painting the apartment where we needed to redo the flooring--took all four girls for two days! That was kind of fun, because as he left to go down to my uncle's house to work for him, I smiled in my pjs and then ran to get everyone ready to leave in 20 minutes!

Note the lovely carpet and the princess castle... Leah spent a lot of time in the stroller!

The gold is the new color, though the blue was difficult to eradicate completely!

Matt's work has been to lay the new flooring: brazillian cherry lock n' seal laminate from Sam's Club. He did most of it in 2 days!

Home news: We listed our house on the MLS today through a flat fee broker... So we can sell our house for just a buyer's commission, but we still get to be on realtor.com. It may take a couple of days to get on realtor.com, but we're excited to see!

Matt has a job lead right now, and we're waiting on an interview.. We've talked about the trade offs that we have to work through in life: especially security and freedom. He is free right now to go and work on our rental property and on Bernie's and Curly's and our friends' place in State Center. He can trade work for beef and be his own boss while he is learning and perfecting a trade, but we don't have the security of a fat paycheck, or even a regular one. But after 2 months of freedom (while still getting paid for the jobs he does), it will be difficult to put the yoke back on to provide more security for our family. I am supportive of his desires, mostly because I know he is an eminently reasonable and rational guy and he'll find the balance he's comfortable with... I probably have more of a risk tolerance than most people. ;)

I guess time will tell. Right now it seems that the "plan" isn't quite ready, or God would have revealed it. We are more than taken care of, and haven't even drawn unemployment yet. The message right now, though, seems to be "wait patiently." Although somedays we get antsy, we're both pretty at peace with the limbo for now.. Really it's more like purgatory because we are confident that things are going to work out as soon as the waiting is over. :)

Beet Burgers

So... I am the opposite of a culinary artist. I'm more like culinary recycling artist. Matt says I should make a Youtube channel with videos of me cooking.


Here's how I made this beauty of a supper:



Thawed some organic hamburger we got from some friends for Matt's working on their basement. When I started, I was thinking: meatloaf maybe.

Well, then I looked in my fridge and saw the leftover chopped up beets and carrots that I had mixed with apples and made into a not-very-appetizing smoothie, I decided to add these to the thawed hamburger. I also saw some leftover spaghetti sauce that I had made in a blender using cheap spaghetti sauce and blending in the green tops of the beets and some onion (also not the best--so I also added some salsa), so I threw that in with the beets and carrots. Just for kicks I threw in an egg and a bunch of uncooked oatmeal. (Keep in mind that Matt is watching with his mouth hanging open). Then I threw in a little olive oil and sea salt.


At this point I decided to make hamburger patties instead of meatloaf because we were hungry and wanted to eat sooner than later. I got out my double burner griddle: and they pretty much burned right away.. I guess the carrots and beets didn't like the high temps.. So then I switched to a pan with a lid and turned down the heat.. I decided I had too many burgers so I mushed them together and got a nice little loaf which I cooked at 350 for a while then froze.

I served them on some awesome whole wheat bread my sister bought for me from Sam's Club (no high fructose corn syrup!) Matt and I used some leftover beet greens as our "lettuce" on the sandwiches. Everyone ate one (kids included) and the verdict was: Edible and sort of Good. I can't say repeatable because it would be way too much work to make this sort of thing.. But I learned some things about how to be a better culinary recycler.

I ended up using the leftover beetburgers to augment my beans and rice and onions and taco seasoning staple: pretty good. And I added crumbled them up in the remaining leftover spaghetti sauce and served with leftover spaghetti.

One post note: I do not do the "culinary recycling" because I am trying to save money.. although it is a fun sport that has a side effect of monetary savings. I simply like to cook this way, and now I have almost gotten to the point where I couldn't go back. Recipes are suggestions, and I seldom if ever follow them without making additions or changes. Sometimes it works out and sometimes not.. most of the time it does--cheese and ketchup work wonders..

Anyway, there you go, Ms. Kaela. You asked for a post and you got one!!!!! :) Love you all!