Oh, How I Ache For Really Miss Chick-Fil-A!

If you live in the south...near a Chick-Fil-A, I hate you you're one lucky dog! Fast food isn't good for anyone's health, but when you live where there are more cows than people it's not available, one tends to miss it. Oh sure, we have a McDonalds...

About 25 miles away.

And a Subway...

About 25 miles away.

But that's it. To get anything else (like Burger King or KFC/Taco Bell combo....that's it!) one must drive at least 45 minutes. 30 minutes if you're really hungry.
This video about sums up my deeply disturbing, un-natural love feelings for Chick-Fil-A. Enjoy. And next time you're at a Chick-Fil-A, I hope you burn your tongue on a nugget think of me. Eat more chickin!

**DON'T FORGET TO PAUSE THE MUSIC BEFORE YOU WATCH THE VIDEO.**



~Lisa

Happy Earth Day???

Please Pray for Kayleigh!

This sweet little miracle just had surgery also, and was doing so well. Then all of the sudden things have gone down hill. Please pray for her and her family. They have been going through this for 10 months. I just can't imagine. Also, go hug your babies today and thank God for each of them. It's so easy to lose sight of what's important and take our loved ones for granted.

OK, I can only speak for myself. It can be easy to do in a chaotic house, full of kids. Once again, speaking only for myself.

Anyway, thanks for praying.

~Lisa

Pray for Stellan!

Some of you may already be following McMama's blog, but if you aren't, please be praying for this sweet miracle of a boy. He is headed into surgery as I write this. It's a very risky surgery for a baby of his age. Pray for his parent's to have peace, for the dr.'s, and naturally, for Stellan...today and in the days to come. Thanks.

Lisa

Funny YouTube Video Elyse Sent Me

This is just too hilarious not to share. My daughter, Elyse, sent it to me to watch. Why is this relevent? It's not. But she says I never mention her in my blog anymore. She's right. But I certainly have mentioned her here and there...oh, and here.

Have I mentioned she is such a sweet daughter? She has an awesome boyfriend, Sam, who apparently loves her dearly. I'm glad she has chosen him, and that he has chosen her. They are very cute together, too. The only draw-back to this relationship is that she always has her head in the clouds.....like when I sent her to the store to buy her sick dad some jello and some beef boullion, and she came home with SUGAR FREE jello and SODIUM FREE boullion. Ewwwww!

Ahem.

Maybe she's trying to tell us something??? Naaaaa....I think she just had her head in a cloud....the 9th one to be exact.

Elyse is also a great cook. When I'm not available I can always count on her to prepare a good nutritious meal for the rest of the gang.

Now, watering the plants seems to be a problem. She likes to let the plants get within an inch of dying before watering them. I'll have to work on that with her. But other than that, she's a keeper.

Enjoy the video. These two guys are very clever. DON'T FORGET TO PAUSE THE MUSIC AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE BEFORE WATCHING.



~Lisa

Happy Resurection Day!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Resurection Day! Unfortunately, most of us stayed home from church because Todd came down with a bug of some kind. I'm hoping praying no one else gets it. It was only a few weeks ago we had this happen! I'm all done with that, thank you very much!

Here is a video I came across that has a powerful message. Please watch it in it's entirety if you haven't already seen it.

PLEASE GO THE THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE AND PAUSE THE MUSIC BEFORE WATCHING THE VIDEO.



I can't tell you how many times His love for me has rescued me from the depths of sin, seasons of anger, and moments of feeling like nothing makes any sense. He washes my wounds and heals them, and has set me free from the enemy's grip.

And today, as we reflect on the day Jesus defeated death and rose from the grave after being put to death on OUR BEHALF, I'm praying you give Him the chance to change the very meaning of your life. To change the very reasons you wake up each day and breathe in and out. To give you the hope of eternal life in His presence. Be blessed.

~Lisa

Spring & Chickens

The first day of Spring here in Vermont is usually still much like winter. We usually have at least a foot of snow and it's extremely cold. April is usually still pretty cold with a lot of snow still scattered here and there, with a possible blizzard in the forecast.

This year, however, it's actually feeling a lot like spring! The sun is out, most of the snow is gone, and we can go out with jackets and sweaters on instead of coats and hats. It's muddy, but that's what mud boots are for, right?

There's just one thing missing......

Our chickens.

We have had chickens since 2004. This is the first year we've been without them. We decided to take a break from them. We kinda got tired of all the chicken poop all over everything....

On the porch, on the deck, between our toes, on our shoes, in the kid's hair (they love to roll down the hill in the grass) and on their clothes.....Yuck! Plus, they like to taste test our vegetables in the garden. Having chickens means we need to fence up the garden.

Oh, and keep the doors closed.

They're great fun to watch and listen to, though. And the eggs!!!

There's nothing better!

But my very favorite was having a rooster! We've only had one aggressive rooster. All the others were very nice and never attacked any of the kids. They're just so majestic looking and....I know this sounds weird, but I love to hear the rooster crowing. I love to hear it in the morning and all day long. Makes me feel like I should be wearing a prairie skirt and a bonnet, and that I should be scrubbing our laundry out on a scrub board or something.

We even hatched our own one year! Not in an incubator, mind you. A broody hen sat on them in her own private quarters and they hatch under the mama!!

Every once in awhile one or two needed some help when the mama wasn't interested in keep them warm while they were hatching, so we used a brooding pen and a heat lamp till they were warm and fluffy, and could be in with their mama again.

That was a lot of fun, and a great homeschool treat. We researched how to choose the eggs, how to candle them and how often to candle them. And when they should hatch. It was an amazing process. We must have hatched 3-4 clutches of eggs.

This was a much better process than buying the day old chicks and raising them in a brooding pen. The mama takes card of them and you never have to do a thing. BUT, the only problem is you end up with a lot of roosters that way. If you're looking to get more layers, this may not be the way to go. If you're looking to just put them in the freezer, it's great.

Now, if summer would just hurry and get here! I'll miss the chickens, but I think I'll survive the summer without them this time. Next year may be a different story.

~Lisa

Sunny Patch!!

I have an eBay store. It's called Kid Kadoodle.

It's not much of one, but there are plenty of cute things in there for any mother to choose from. And the prices aren't bad. Unfortunately, competition is brutal on eBay. I think my prices are competitive, but I just don't seem to be getting the exposure I would like.

Anyway, I'm excited to be adding to my inventory! Melissa and Doug has come out with a line called Sunny Patch. I think it's a line that use to be sold in Target. Not too clear on that. But I have never seen such adorable things!!! And the qualtiy....well, Melissa and Doug do not put out junk. Their toys are quality! Here's sneak peak.....

OK, that's all I'm willing to show you. So, so cute, huh? There are so many other items in the line, but I just couldn't purchase much more than I did. Business needs to pick up some.

Anyway, I haven't listed any of those items as of yet, but I'm hoping to have some time today or tomorrow to get those items up.

I'm also going to open up my own online store outside of eBay soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to add more items as business picks up. I have several things in mind to sell, including my Vermont Baby bibs. Just need money, that's all. Isn't that what we all need?

No?

Just me?

~Lisa

Vomit, birthdays, and other fun stuff...

I'm the worst mother in the world I need a really good long nap. I have had 2 little ones have birthdays since my last blog post, but haven't added birthday posts. Partly because when Mark turned 3 on the 13th, just about everyone was getting over a trip to Vomit City, USA....a mother of many's worst nightmare. OK, I suppose there could be worse things than 4 kids vomiting at literally the same time, all night long. But at the time, it just didn't seem possible.

It all started on Thursday March 12th. First ,Anna started vomiting around 8 pm. She made it to the toilet, thank God. She felt better, so we put her to bed. Since I was planning on a solo trip to Texas for a week long getaway all my self the following Monday, I said a little prayer that anyone here who is going to get it, gets it before I leave, so that my husband, who gets psychosematic nausea doesn't do well with vomit, wouldn't have to deal with it. Well, all I can say is be careful what you ask for.

By 10 pm, Mark was vomiting....all over his crib. Blech. While I was cleaning him up, Jonathan came out to inform me that he threw up....all over his bed. Joy. More throw up to clean up. But before I could clean up Jonathan's bed, I had to catch more Anna throw up in a bucket. So, after getting everyone cleaned up, I set up the infirmery in the living room with Jonathan, and Mark, caught a few more bucket fulls, than had to run up and clean up the next patient, Erika, who....yes, you guessed it....threw up all over her bed.

While I was up there cleaning HER up, Mark vomited on the sofa (which was thankfully covered with a blanket). So, I moved Erika down to the infirmery thinking that the three would have to be together so I wouldn't have to run up and down the stairs nursing everyone back to health.
Nope. I was wrong.

Anna continued to throw up through the night, plus I had to dump and rinse buckets, so I was up and down the stairs no less than 20-30 times before I gave up and left everything in the buckets.

Have you ever seen vomit ballet? No? Let me paint a picture...I'm sitting on the floor holding a bucket for one vomiter while holding one leg up to keep another, (who is flailing his body around in his sleep because he's about to vomit, too) in order to keep him from falling off of the sofa. This position felt quite unnatural, but what I did next seemed so graceful, I think it could be considered ballet. I set the barf bucket down, and gracefully leaned over to grab the bucket for the flailing, falling off the sofa child and caugh his barf just in time. It was quite a lovely, perhaps poetic movement, I'm sure.

NOT.

Anyway, when the sun finally did rise, I found out that my poor husband was sick upstairs, too. He's lucky, though. He has a great prescription for anti-nausea meds that keeps his vaso-vagal syncope under control.
So, on Friday the 13th, which happend to be Mark's birthday, everyone was just laying around looking zombie like, and drinking gatorade and eating jello. Not a fun birthday for Mark, but he really didn't know the difference. Here' are a couple of pictures taken the day after his birthday when he got to open some presents.






He wouldn't look into the camera, but no matter....he has the most scrumptious eyelashes!

After my trip to Texas we celebrated Erika's 5th birthday! Here she is!

*crickets chirping*

Well, apparently Blogger won't let me add any more pictures for some reason. The add photo button all of the sudden won't work, so I'll have to add the photo in another post. Sorry.

Love,
Lisa