Perspective

Teresa brought this beautiful butterfly home from kindergarten last spring.  It was the centerpiece of our fridge art until today, when I decided to make room for new creations.  That's when I noticed it.

It has been backwards all of these months!  I can't believe Teresa never said anything!  It does make a lot more sense this way.  So now I'll enjoy the FRONT of the butterfly in my office for awhile. :) 

In other news pertaining to PERSPECTIVE, Nathan found his glasses tonight!  

(Photo from last fall.)

The glasses had been lost for MONTHS and all rescue missions had ceased LONG ago.  They weren't at school or in his book bag and I had been over (I thought, anyway), every inch of the house cleaning after our big remodel.  It turns out they were on a shelf in his room all along and none of us saw them.  (They do have several shelves with A LOT of books and stuff on them, but nothing has ever hidden that well on them before!)  It's a pre-Labor Day miracle!!!  

Every once in awhile, Nathan would start begging me to buy him a new pair, even though he disliked the way they felt when he had them and nearly always complained about them.  I refused because 1) They are the weakest prescription one can have and 2) You just don't go around losing your glasses!  You just don't.  

And guess what?  He can see SO much better now.  Just like when I give Landen Tylenol for a "headache" and he says he can feel it working as he walks out of the bathroom.  

Yes, it is a small miracle, I tell you.  I haven't seen that boy that happy in a very long time.

So, let today be a lesson for all of us.  Let's take a moment to turn things around if what we're looking at seems backward (and even if it doesn't at first).  You never know.  The other side might be even more beautiful.  Or, at the very least, it may have googly eyes to bring it all together.

And, always keep track of your glasses.  Life is so much clearer with them on.

Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

I love having a son who both loves to farm AND bake cookies for our family.  

Tonight Landen wanted to make a new cookie recipe, so I sent him to the cookbook shelf to search for a winner.  He chose this one from the 2005 Eureka What's Kuchen? cookbook.  Irene Kusler, Class of '45, gets credit for this one.  

We all approved and it would make a good breakfast cookie, too.  (Although I also think chocolate cake is a perfectly acceptable breakfast, so keep that in mind.)

Banana Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup butter (or margarine)

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup mashed bananas (Landen used 2 bananas.)

3 T milk

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup oatmeal

1 1/2 cup flour

1-2 cups chocolate chips (Landen used 1 cup white chocolate and 1 cup chocolate.)

Mix first 5 ingredients until combined.  Add egg and vanilla.  Stir in dry ingredients and chocolate chips.  Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.  Don't over bake.  These can also be baked in a 9x13 pan and cut into bars.

Weekend in Eureka

The boys had been wanting to go fishing in Lake Eureka with Papa Butter all summer and this was finally the weekend!  

Unfortunately, it rained on the first day, but we tried our luck anyway.  Some other guys not far from us caught a few big ones, but not us.  

Even so, I was still happy to sit on my rock in the rain with Teresa's fishing rod.  I think I might be a fisher woman when I grow up.

(Papa Butter)

This morning brought sun and another chance to fish, but in the end . . . still no fish!  The boys stuck it out for a few hours while the girls went to play at the park and playground.  Everyone was happy.

After lunch, we had a few scooter races.

And motorcycle rides. 

 And we visited Great Grandma Joachim at the nursing home, too.

It wasn't the successful fishing weekend we were expecting, but it was still a great one!

Perhaps future Uncle Vince can give us some pointers on how to catch the BIG one next time!

Happy 1st Day of School!

It's the first day of school and everyone's excited to start the new year!

Wheat Harvest 2014

Wheat Harvest 2014 is officially safely in the bins.  

It was a fun harvest this year with Uncle Dann coming up to help us with trucking.  Landen was the full-time grain cart operator, which he loved, of course.

The rest of us did our best to keep the harvest crew all fed.  Everything was done so quickly, I never had all four kids in the same field at the same time to take my annual wheat picture!  

So, a 2014 collage will have to do!

Monday

Hello!  It's Monday again!
We've been busy with wheat harvest, making bologna sandwiches and Pepsi floats, book club, learning how to ride horses, and begging mom for horses!
I'll be back again soon!

Happy News!

Our family received the happy news this past weekend that my sister Amanda and her (now fiance) Vince are getting married!

We are so happy for them.

Our kids have been asking when they were going to get married from pretty much the first day they met Vince.  

When they heard the news, Teresa said, "Now we will get the uncle we always wanted!"  

Garden Walk

How about a mini flower garden walk?

The stars of 2014 are the echinacea, which have taken over a good portion of the perennial bed.  I am letting them take over, however, since I love them so much.

I didn't think any black-eyed Susans survived the winter until just the other day when I saw one plant peeking out from the back of the garden.  

One thing I remember about visiting Duluth several years ago (on the best/worst vacation ever) is that most everyone had echinacea and black-eyed Susans in their flower gardens.  I figured if they grew in northern Minnesota, I could get them to grow here, too.  And they did!

Next, I ventured out to the north end of our farm and found my favorite weeds--wild sunflowers.  

 Teresa was more than happy to pose for a photo.

Rachel was too busy, but I caught her anyway.

The boys no longer take flower photos, but they WILL be taking the mandatory wheat harvest photo very soon. :)

Some Cranio for your car

The Cranio Care Bears have just released these adorable window clings.  I can't want to get mine!

Although we didn't discover the Cranio Care Bears until after Rachel's surgery, our family is so excited about what they do for children and their families facing cranio surgeries.  Last month the organization set a record for care packages in one month--nearly 100!  

For more Craniosynostosis Awareness items, and information on craniosynostosis, visit www.craniocarebears.org.

I get twitchy.

It's 8:39 and I'm twitchy.

Why?  Because it's 8:39, and even though I put my children to bed at the appropriate time, one of them has come back upstairs and it milling around, reading over my shoulder, playing in the Scentsy warmer in the bathroom . . . .   I repeat the old Mercer Mayer book title, Just Go to Bed! so often in these cases.
What's that?  Ahhh . . .  the child has wandered back to bed.
Twitching has subsided.

It's funny, but over the past--almost 11--years, my body has developed the ability to internally know when it is 8:00.  If I feel myself starting to get unusually impatient, I can pretty much guarantee that the clock has slipped past our children's set bed time.  It's probably because there have been plenty of days over the years that I have told it, "We just need to make it to 8:00, body, we can do it!  Just twelve more hours!"  Now it knows it is a finish line of sorts.

Even though life around here isn't as intense as it once was (most days), I still start to get twitchy when it is after 8:00 and there are still children wandering about.  We spend a lot of good, quality time together during the day.  GOOD and A LOT.  So, 8:00 is bedtime and that is that.

It actually makes it very easy to start a new school year in the fall.  We don't ever have to get back into the bedtime routine, because for the most part, it has stayed the same.

Sometimes, of course, summer calls for staying up past 8:00, and there have been several evenings away from home that I've had call on a few more mom super-powers and get over it.  When we're on vacation, for example, and parenting needs to be done after 8:00, I often default to Dad.  Really, anything more than, "Mom, can I have a glass of water?" is too much for me to process at that point.  Mom needs a recharge.

Now we've reached the magic hour again, when I am only equipped to make one decision regarding my immediate future--ice cream or a Raz-berita on ice?