Let Me Introduce You

Introducing the William Boeing you never knew!

Doesn’t he look cute in his felt mustache and Dollar Tree reading glasses (sans lenses)?!?!

The 5th graders at our school held their yearly biography fair the other night.  Each student is assigned a person of historical significance and then they learn as much about their person as they can.  They come to the fair dressed like that person and display a poster with facts they have learned, as well as a picture of who they are.  The parents and others who come to the fair get to try to guess each person, and can only ask three yes/no questions.  I missed this event when Emily participated, so it was fun to see how it all worked.  I sure need to brush up on my important-people history!!

Here’s what William Boeing really looked like:

(Image courtesy of Investors.com)

As you can probably surmise from his name, he was an important man in the airline industry.  If you want to know more, just ask this guy…he’s the expert!

World Down Syndrome Day 2013

Happy World Down Syndrome Day!!  I’m letting Daniel author today’s post, because he is the one we’re celebrating.  Without further ado…

 

I am Daniel.

I am a brother who is adored by his siblings.

I am a daddy’s boy.

I am a cousin.  (I have 16 cousins, with 4 on the way, and 8 soon-to-be step-cousins.)

I am an adored grandson.

I am silly and smiley.

I have feelings and emotions.

I am adventurous.

I am curious.

I am a survivor.

I am social.

I am Daniel.  I have Down syndrome.  I am loved.  I am wanted.  I will do great things.

LUCKY

We are so lucky cursed!!  We can’t seem to get rid of those pesky Leprechauns – even in a new house!!!  They made their annual visit of mischief while we slept, and as usual, left a mess everywhere!

They peed in the toilet again.  Of course they forgot to flush!

 

 

They spilled the books out of the basket and left them scattered all over the place!  (It looks like they chose some of the best ones for reading, though.)

 

This was reeeeally weird.  They lined up all the shoes around the front door!  Were they trying to trap us?  Or just having fun playing with all the big shoes?

 

They were obviously trying to find good stuff in the kitchen, as they left cupboard doors open and drawers pulled out.

 

And they tipped over chairs at the table.

 

This year they were extra nice and left us a “pot” of gold!!

 

I love this silly little tradition.  It gives me a giant smile to see the kids having fun with this, and to hear what they have to say about the mayhem.  My favorite this year was from Rachel (who has been counting down the days until “Leprechaun Day” all month): “How could such little people do such big people things???”

I got brave this year and tried corned beef and cabbage, along with red potatoes and carrots, in the crock pot for dinner.  (We also had lime jello with cottage cheese and mandarin oranges…an old favorite of everyone here.)  I was crossing my fingers that the corned beef wasn’t going to be a gigantic mistake.  It was absolutely delicious (aside from being more greasy/fatty than regular beef) and definitely a keeper.

And for dessert, we had Irish Mud Cups, of the non-minty variety.  Delicious, and very rich.  But also a keeper.

 

I don’t know about luck, but we sure are blessed!!  We hope you had a blessed day as well!

What We’ve Been Doing This Week

All this (and more!) happened this week.  Sooooo glad it’s Friday!

This is courtesy of Daniel.  His love of watching things fall is getting ridiculous!  (The lamp and shade are broken.  I don’t think they are repairable either.)

 

His love of eating is getting ridiculous too!  It has certainly gone too far when you’re ingesting dirt clods that have fallen off of shoes.  And on more than one occasion, too!

 

Courtesy of Caleb. They’re still there, by the way.

 

We also signed Josh up for baseball and Emily for softball, took Daniel to the ophthalmologist for his yearly exam, cleaned lots of dirt off the front porch, and Emily attended the Young Writers’ and Artists’ Fest.

I’d say it’s SPRING!!!!

Storage Rooms

When tax season rolls around, our lives tend to slow down quite a bit.  Which means any projects – whether planned or already started – slow to nearly a stand-still.  I was hoping with everything I had that we’d have the garage cleared out enough to park our vehicles inside by the end of February.  Didn’t happen.  Sigh.  BUT…we did manage to get the shelving in the storage rooms all finished up, and we loaded them up with most of what will occupy their space.

We definitely need to re-stock our food storage!  But we still have enough that it took Jared and me (and some help from Em & Josh) several hours of hefting and moving boxes and totes.  In all honesty, I’m GLAD we didn’t have any more than what’s there right now!

Here are a few shots of the main storage room.  The door on the right side is where you come into the room.  That little arm of shelves sticking out in the middle (where the Home Depot box is) was quite the beast to work with.

Now the door is on the left of the picture.  On the right side of this picture (you can’t really see it) is the door that goes into the cold storage room, which is below the front porch of the house.  These shelves sit behind the two doors when they’re open.

And these are shots of the cold storage room (AKA: the freezer)…

(Looking at these pictures, it looks like some of the boards are quite crooked.  I promise they are all quite straight!!)

All the boxes are filled with #10 cans of varying items.  Our most used is probably oatmeal, followed closely by pinto beans, black beans and wheat.  When we bought the water barrels, it was enough water to take care of everyone for 2 weeks.  I think we’ve added 2 kids since then, so we definitely need to increase our supply.

I hope we get a chance to plant a good garden this year so we can stock back up on bottled tomatoes.  And my beans and corn from the year Daniel was born are almost gone!  The freezer is looking very bare!  We can’t wait for more peaches (and possibly pears) to bottle as well.  I’m getting a little trunky for warmer weather!!