A Glimpse into my Life.

Oddly enough, since I've come home I've had a lovely bout of insomnia as we've all adjusted to life at home. I'm averaging about one good night's sleep in five and it's killing me. It's not even the productive, energetic type of insomnia; it is the bone weary, don't want to move but can't sleep type.

On the flip side, sitting at the computer isn't a chore right now so I've been doing more research on the home based business my friend and I are getting into! Small blessings from what could be tedious. :) We are working on website ideas, color schemes, layout, etc. That is why I haven't mentioned more of it here. We need to be a little more set up before I do so. Maybe there'll be some teaser photos soon since I need to start back into the production swing of things. :)

Sewing has been a wee bit slow for me lately. One of my cousins is coming into town so she'll most likely be staying in the sewing room. I can't wait to see Brooke though, we have a blast every time she's here. I'm actually working on some tiered broomstick skirts. My cousin, K, knows how to make them and showed me her way of doing them. In return, I taught her how to make the Tznius style wrap skirt. I am now the owner of a lovely black and white tiered broomstick skirt, with a green one on the way for me and Little Miss, and K is the owner of a beautiful navy satin wrap skirt!

We finally have our garden in and plants are coming up. I think I'm most excited for my purple potatoes! When I was younger, I always wanted to grow them and my mom never wanted to so since I get to plot out the garden now....We have purple potatoes!!! I can't wait to see them! We have strawberries, corn, green beans, pumpkins, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, lettuce, carrots, spinach, peppers, chilis, and a few herbs growing. The funniest thing is we have some volunteer something viney growing right now. I guess when we put the compost stuff in the garden, some of the seeds were viable.

Lately I've been on a journey to learn more about herbs, essential oils, and how to use them. Along with that, I've been learning more about different nutritional aspects and how they effect your health. This was prompted by some health issues Little Miss has, and being told she is within the realm of 'normal' but the extreme far end of the spectrum. We are looking at diet, how what we eat affects us, how our food is processed, and what the different processing methods does to the food and us. It is an interesting journey, and we are slowly modifying things, which I'm happy to say is helping out immensely. We are working on one dietary thing at a time, and as we do that, her health is improving.

Well, time for an at home date with Hubby! Ciao for now!

This post is sans pictures again. I swear I took pictures, lots in fact. But*someone* was trying to be clever and put all her pictures on the memory card so she wouldn't have to take a few cd's home. Well, we realized when we got to the airport that the card was still at home! So much for photographic evidence of the trip. But! I am going to steal Shannon's cd so I can at least do pictures of a little bit of the trip before I get the card somehow!

Let me just say that traveling with three kids, age 5 and under is an adventure. Especially when one of them (who currently refers to herself as the Lost Princess- a chip off the old block) is her own person and doesn't march to anyone else's drum. At least the bigger parts of the crew are seasoned travelers and know that they need to get with the program once we are at the airport.

Traveling out with Shannon was fine, there were relatively few hitches. The main one being Little Miss had decided the week before we left that she wanted to start potty training. Yeah, add that into the airport mix, and there was seriously no time from when we went through Security to when we boarded the plane because I was in the toilets the entire time. Dutch needed a diaper, Rynie needed to go once, and Little Miss went in there three times! What a way to start a trip. The flight to MSP was uneventful and we booked it to our next flight and there was just enough time to change the diaps that needed to be changed and ask about preboarding the flight then get on. The gate crew were great and gave Shannon and I both our own bulkhead rows for the trip so we had lots of space with the kids! It is very nice to have that little bit of extra space when you have a few little helpers who want to stretch their legs.

Once we got to Schipol, around 6:30AM, that was an adventure. Shannon and I had to figure out where to go through customs so we could get the stroller through, then we went to baggage claim and couldn't see any luggage. Finally, we got smart and asked the men at the security desk where to go and got pointed in the right direction. Dutch was so happy to be set down and crawling around while I pulled off the luggage off the carousel. Thankfully, through the next set of doors we saw Bumpa and Floolie!

The only way to describe the country side on initial impression is surreal. Beautiful, but surreal. It is just that flat. There is no other way to explain it. They have tall buildings, lots of trees, and no mountains, hills, or anything that resembles an incline that isn't man made. They've even brought in sand and made an area of dunes covered in native grasses to add variety to the landscape. Add that to the fact you know you should be underwater, and it really is an interesting feeling. Everything was very lush and bright green though. And you'd randomly see windmills, and canals. They even use the canals to 'fence' off their cattle. That never would have worked for ours!

Floolie made us breakfast when we got back to her house, and we turned the kidlets loose on her house! I don't think her house will ever be the same. Thank goodness for grandparents that weren't jet lagged, so the mamas could get some sleep.

Anyway....More update later, but at least it's a start, right?!

I know I keep swearing that I'll stop getting behind so I don't have to play catch up, but life has other plans for me right now so since the kidlet crew are playing together I'm stealing a few moments. This update is going to be done in bullet point style otherwise it'll be a novel. Also, no pictures on this one, otherwise it'd be even longer before it is updated.

• We pulled Rynie out of school after only a month of Kindergarten. We found out two weeks into the school year he was being beaten up by other Kindergarteners and the teacher knew about it and was 'observing the situation to know how to proceed further.' We didn't find out about any of this at first either. Every day we'd ask Rynie how school was and he'd tell us it was fine, but the day school started he became a different child. He is normally a very sweet, thoughtful little man and he was so volatile. He'd go from calm to furious so quickly, he was fighting with his sister and teaching her to hit and pinch. It was not a pretty sight. After two weeks of this we found out from Rynie that he was being pinched, having things thrown at him, whacked with a rubber stick, his fingers were being bent backwards, and he was being used as a human punching bag. We asked his teacher if he was instigating the beating in any way and she told us that he wasn't. His class was the most aggressive group of boys she'd ever taught, and he wasn't. We talked to the school to try and resolve things but although he wasn't the one being beaten after that, he was still having behavioral issues. We pulled him out of school and started homeschooling him.
  
• I spent the better part of a month juicing apples because none of the varieties were ripe at the same time. Thankfully we had room in the freezer to hold it all so we could mix the juice for syrup and jelly. I also ended up doing some peach jam too. We are really enjoying all the fruity goodness in this cold weather.
  
• My Mom came back into town at the beginning of November because my brother's wife had a little girl. She is a sweet thing with big blue eyes and a shock of dark hair. It's been an adjustment for Jake and Shannon, but I know they are enjoying the experience.
• Right after Mom came into town, she found out from her doctor that she'd need to have surgery and was under no fly restrictions for the next 8 weeks. Everything went well with her surgery and she got out the day before Thanksgiving. She was under lifting restrictions, and couldn't lift more than 5 lbs for the first 2 weeks, then 10 lbs for the next 6 weeks, and then 14 lbs. She wasn't allowed to pick up kids, do any housework, or anything of that sort.
  
• My dad came into town the day before Thanksgiving, after having his flight delayed because of snow and other issues. His mid day flight ended up not getting in for another 6 or so hours.
  
• I made Thanksgiving dinner. Shannon came to help with washing and chopping vegetables, and helping to make the pies and a few dishes. I can now say I have cooked a Thanksgiving meal pretty much on my own! :) I was even kind to Jake and saved him some of the left overs so he could have what he was used to since it was their year to go to eat with Shannon's family.
  
• We had lots of cousins come over to visit while my parents were in town, including doing dinners with a lot of them. I am becoming very proficient at preparing meals for 20-30 people at a time.
• My Dad came back into town right before Christmas and he and my Mom were here until the middle of January.
  
• Jake, Shannon, and the Troll doll (Their daughter whose hair reminded me of a troll doll) came over on Christmas Eve and had dinner with us and spent the night. We had ten people in our house for Christmas. It was a lot of fun opening presents all together.
• My Grandma came up to surprise us on the 26th of December. We had no idea, it was a shock. She's almost 80 and doesn't like to travel in Winter, but decided since people were coming up from New Mexico that she'd hitch a ride with my Aunt Kristal and come on up. It was one of the best surprises. The ironic thing was we'd just sent her Christmas presents down to New Mexico so she had to wait to open them.
• Grandma ended up getting snowed in up here until after New Year's. It was so much fun to make Taquitos, fudge, and all sorts of yummy things with her.
• We spent New Year's Eve with some family friends. It was so much fun to see the little babies and spend an evening eating Huevos Rancheros and Taquitos, and chatting.
• We did family pictures right after the New Year. One more year's dorkiness captures digitally forever. There were some good ones, but I must say, we are a goofy bunch.
• The bunny was attacked by some varmint so we are bunny-less now. We buried the bunny, talked about the Plan of Salvation, talked about how we miss those that die, but we can remember them and how much we love them.
• We all got the nastiest colds we've had in a while. While we had the cold stuff going on, I got food poisoning. Oh Grand. :P
• I've had company 3 times since my Mom left town.
• My cousin Jeremy was hurt on the job, and ended up with Compartment's Syndrome. He had to have emergency surgery and his leg was left splayed open and packed with sponge things so the extra pressure and fluid could drain out of his leg so we tried to help where we could.
• Hubby's uncle who is Catholic needed help with music for Mass and enlisted the help of my Brother in law Tyler and myself. It was a very interesting experience. :) Tyler played the violin, I sang, and his Uncle played both the guitar and the mandolin. There was also another guitar and an electric piano. There was some beautiful music for us to do
• A friend and I are starting up a home based business! We've been working on products for it since before Christmas and slowly but surely we are getting stock built up and things ready to go. I'm not quite sure when we'll be opening up our store, but it'll definitely be online and lots of fun. Once we come up with a name for our store and finish working on product pricing, I'll post more about it here.
• In all this madness, the kidlets have grown like weeds, and it's almost time to switch out their clothes again. I'm in the process of making more clothes for them so that hopefully our budget doesn't get killed since we need to buy some school stuff.
  
• Little Dutch has cut two teeth with eight more right behind it. He is rocking, scooting, crawling and busy everywhere. He is also trying to stand on his own, has successfully figured out the stairs and is generally into everything! I love it!
• We are in The Netherlands right now visiting my parents. Since we've been here everyone has been sick. My Dad picked up something in his travels, and ended up sharing with us. We spent the first two and a half weeks of our trip slogging through the sickness since Shannon and Baby B came with us. Once they went home, we took a few sick days and are now feeling human again.

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I was last in Scotland! It's amazing to see how big the kidlet crew have grown!

Elgin Cathedral was first established in 1224 AD and I can only imagine how spectacular it would have looked in all it's glory. It has enjoyed a long history, and survived the Wars of Independence, only to be burned in 1390 by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan. He was also known as the Wolf of Badenoch.







The brightness of the day belies how cold it was. We all had frozen fingers and noses by the time we were done. Even though it was cold, we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. The brisk, biting air was invigorating.

Little Miss had a wonderful time strolling through the grounds, and she didn't want to leave when the day was done.



Rynie is always ready for exploration and adventure. We explored every nook and cranny we possibly could while Little Miss hung out with Floolie.


I love the silhouette of the cathedral against the Winter Blue sky.


Sunset at Elgin! One of the prettiest sites I have seen. It was incredible to see the stone light up as the last rays of sunshine shot through the clouds and the window ruins.

I know I got a wee bit sidetracked with life, but I still wanted to put up some pictures of Scotland from my last two trips. I love visiting Scotland, and even though my parents are now in The Netherlands, I can't wait for the time when I can go back to Scotland and visit the friends I made there! There isn't going to be much of an order to the postings of my trips, but I'll try to include a little information with them.

A beautiful Winter sunrise in Scotland!

This is Braemar Castle. It is the ancestral seat of Clan Farquharson.
http://www.braemarscotland.co.uk/history/index.htm


The village of Braemar: The upper course of the river Dee flows through Braemar. The kidlets had a wonderful time at the bridge watching the river beneath them. (Who can blame them when there is this fun little turret.) They hold some of the Highland Games in a field near Braemar.

Rynie and my friend Melanie, who came to visit Scotland with us. I think Rynie now has a new best friend! They went for a walk to see a different part of the River Dee.

We woke Little Miss to walk around Braemar, this is her "I'm not sure I"m happy to be here." face. Of course, since she is a budding fashionista, take note of the turquoise bead necklaces she had to wear with everything. Her Floolie brought those back from Egypt for her. We later found out it was painted mud because she wore her beads in the bath tub and they disintegrated. That was a nasty mess to clean!

The River Dee.


I love Scotland in the Winter! Let's be honest, I love Scotland any time I've been there and it's been a wonderful opportunity to visit.

We took the kidlets up to Temple Square to look around since they've never been there before.

We did a Birthday Party for Little Miss on Monday. We kept it low key and just did a dinner with her cousins and grandparents.
While she wouldn't say thank you because she gets shy about talking in front of a lot of people, she was more than happy to applaud her presents!



I think the baby cradle was a big hit! Now hopefully Little Miss will stop tossing her baby into Little Dutch's bed while he's trying to sleep.



Aunt Kelli showing Little Miss her cake while we sang Happy Birthday to her!


She loved having us sing to her.

Since she wouldn't blow out her own candles, we had to recruit Rynie, Cousin B, and Cousin A to help!