Be The Cheeto

She looks like a Cheeto. {Sniff} She smells like a cheeto.
She must be a Cheeto...


Health conscious mothers, this is not the house of artificial horrors. The Princess of Wails has only honored a Cheeto bag with her presence once, and you're looking at it. Faith is a total granola girl, preferring organic rocks (teeth sharpening), Georgia clay, wood chips, weeds, bar soap, and my personal favorite - dog hair pulled out of the dog's grooming brush.

Simply Happy

Happiness is having the most comfortable seat in an empty house and a cushy lap to share it with.

Happiness is doing our school reading outside underneath the cool shade of massive trees.

Happiness is a fuzzy barn cat insisting to sit on top of the book Mom is trying to read from aloud.

Happiness is having a new excuse for a poor narration.

Canine happiness is chasing down barn cats and bumblebees.


Happiness is pure dizziness after your sister swings you in circles ten times...until you walk straight into a solid wall.

Happiness is when you suddenly have access to every puzzle mom has had locked away in the school closet. But now you have endless square footage to piece them together upon.


Happiness is our first home cooked dinner filling up the rooms with the delicious smell of chicken fricassee and couscous.

Happiness is for just one hour, being able to smell something other than the thick aged stench of "cat" in the farm house with my super-bionic pregnancy nose.

Happiness is finding that your jean legs poof with puffs of farm dust when tapped.

Happiness is a warm shower and a wet soapy baby squeegie-ing the shower door to her little heart's content.

Happiness is three kids tucked in bed for the next 11 hours.

Greener Pastures

My dogs are hoarse from barking after three days of vacuuming, steam cleaning, scrubbing floors, peeling tens of stickers off bedroom doors, and moving school supplies into the school kitchen. We have already spent hours spit shining the house, and there are hundreds of hours ahead of us, but it is easy to keep a smile on my face through the exhaustion. It is sinking in...this farm is our farm. We are moving to greener pastures.


It is funny what you decide to move into a new residence first. For me, the school room/playroom begged to be rescued in our current house. We have been schooling at the kitchen table for months, which has worked wonderfully as we've moved beyond Montessori into Ambleside curriculum. We will be using the second kitchen, cabinets and the adjoining sunroom as both our morning and lunch eatery and our schooling area. Last night, I moved a little kid table and a patio bistro set into the sunroom and it worked perfectly for our first day of school today in the new house. All of us found that, at least for the first day, having giant windows begging us to come out and play rather than school were a distraction, but we worked through it.

The property is greening up and the pastures catch you longing to get lost in their tiny purple and white violets. In the afternoon, the children headed out to explore the back 10 acres with Dad who had stopped by to check in. Our newest member of the family, Domino the barn cat, decided to accompany the troop on their journey...


After watching from a far as they walked out there together, I could take the suspense no longer. Until today, I had yet had the opportunity to go out and visit the back 10 acres. All I knew, is what Ken had taken in pictures. And that was when it was freezing and brown out. When the family returned, I asked for a crack at exploring the property myself. The children headed out with me, eager to show me around, and Hatch, the happiest dog you've ever seen in the last two days, was just as game for a leash free jaunt.

The scene was breath taking. The closer to the creek we got, the greener and more lush the invitation. This is the tree line along the creek...


On an 80 plus degree day, the sound of rushing water made it feel like I was walking into an oasis. Hatch had similar thoughts, and couldn't resist jumping in for a cool swim. The trees were amazing. Those fascinating kinds of trees that have been around for many years and show their age in their odd shaped branches that invite a climb or a sit.


Happy wet dog looking back over the last five acres and an old grove of six barely there trees that surely have stories of their own to tell...


The horses perfect the tranquil setting on the property. Their large glistening bodies are like moving canvases on the property. Always rearranging themselves, adding definition to the land. Making us laugh at times, or stand in awe. Ken and I are agonizing over the horses. If we allow the horses to continue to be boarded, we sacrifice a privacy that we longed for on this type of property. Almost always there is a boarder or two or a trainer and trainee on the property with cars driving in and out. Saturdays and Sundays too. Many of them have been very kind. If we nix the boarders, the horses obviously go too, at least for a couple of years. Not to mention the issue of insurance and liability. It is a hard decision, but luckily not one we have to make right away. So for now, I drink it in...


The children have tickled me with their enthusiasm and gradual realization of what moving really means. Jack is still trying to figure things out. Today he asked, "How many houses do we have to live in before we get to heaven?" Not sure where I went wrong there, but he's clearly mulling over things in his mind. Grace, on the other hand, is in nature walk heaven, bringing in toads, kitty tales, and minute by minute exclamations of how she loves this paint color choice or how great the knobs from our old house look on the new house cabinets. Faith is having a blast running from room to empty room as her little padding feet echo throughout the house. We all turn into little kids when we explore empty houses, don't we?

Holy Haystacks, We Bought The Farm!

We closed today! It really happened. Thirty minutes before the closing appointment, I checked in with Tom Builder to verify that we were not going to close today. I was going to lay Faith down for a nap. He looked at me and said, "I'd keep her up. We're closing." Oh good heavens!

Tom Builder and I went in the office prepared to walk away. Certain stipulations had not been taken care of as previously signed and agreed upon. At one point, I thought we were going to leave the table over twenty stinkin' dollars. My heart was pounding, listening to my husband and the other man get heated over how much money should go in escrow over a broken hot tub and jetted lap pool. The man even had an open consultation with his ex-wife suggesting that maybe they should go with the higher offers. Higher offers??? (Note the plurality.) And over twenty dollars in interest. If there were higher offers, everybody knew we wouldn't have been there in the first place. I stared hard at my hands willing the twitching muscles around my mouth not to betray my amusement and my pride in Tom Builder at my side.

Tom Builder had discovered another problem this morning upon inspection of the house. The washer, dryer and fridge had been removed from the old house. Three brand new appliances that the ex-wife had verbally agreed would stay. I was very proud of The Incredible Tom Builder. He stood firm and resolute on his escrow offer and the appliances (which he is now retrieving from storage with the owner). Mr. Incredible was logical, concise, and unwavering. The only thing the man could do was say, "Ok. But then you're not getting the tractor." As mentioned before, the tractor was very old and crippled without a steering wheel, needing repairs every year before it would start. Not much of a loss considering that one of our stipulations stated the tractor would either be fixed or removed. And it was no longer on the property.

The emotions I have at this very moment are remotely familiar to the day after our wedding. I know with my mind that it has happened. I know that on paper, the farm is now ours. Our future dreams are waiting for us there. But it will take three days for my heart to relax from the build up. To accept that this place is our new home, and the dream is not going to be pulled out of our hearts at the last minute.

This is the part in the story where there is a blank page. A marker of silence. The beginning of a new set of chapters. A new season. The page turns, and the chapter of the second act begins...

"In the warm spring of 2007, when new green glistened at the tips of every winter worn branch, our family moved from the only home we'd ever known to twelve wide open acres of pasture land..."

A Day From Closing

Tomorrow we are supposed to close on the farm. Both of us are chomping at the bit to get inside of the house and start painting, patching, and steam cleaning the carpet we will rip out. Every move in-er has it...the need to wipe every surface clean. And it is not just a woman thing. Even Tom Builder gets the heebee-jeebees over old bits and crumbs being left behind in kitchen cabinets and carpet stains that are not our own.

We are scheduled to close tomorrow, but we won't. We've learned some valuable lessons over the years. When they have their money, they leave. Job is over. Even if it is not. And while the small list of things on our punch list is getting done (an old truck has been removed from the property, all house plans and warranties are now sitting in a pile), there are other things that still need to be done. The tractor is still missing a steering wheel, two pools aren't filled to demonstrate that they are functional, and perhaps most importantly, there is still stuff piled on the porch and in the garage.

So as much as I wanted to christen the home with soap and a sponge this weekend, I'll have to wait. And I'll have at least one more week to obsess over the giant Behr paint fan I purchased to help with our paint color selections. We are so close! We've waited a long time to find a place like this. What's one more little week? However, if I'm still sitting on my swelling duff in two weeks, I might be singing a different tune.

The Grey Goose

How many days did you think would pass before we noticed that the grey goose was missing?

You took the grey goose under the cover of darkness. You know who you are...Grey Goose Gidnapper. Say you did win a bet that some of us can not remember making a year ago. A fair man might have mentioned that he was putting said grey goose in said car for a migratory trip up north. But you were afraid. Afraid that the grey goose might not want to go. Might prefer to only remain north of the pantry shelving. Crisp. Clean. Untouched. Waiting patiently for just the right celebratory occasion in which to be fully appreciated.

But you've had to stuff the grey goose in a dark place, haven't you. Because he stares at you with those beady eyes when the house is empty. He watches you. Questions you. Face it. You can't handle the goose.

Summer is coming. And in three months, his previous owners will rescue you from your grey goose guilt. Until then, you have 90 days with the giant goose. A harsh sentence for certain. His owners may or may not have a smaller replacement goose of more appropriate proportions when they return for the goose.

My advice to you is to make sure you lay low and don't ruffle any feathers. Oh...and watch your back. Geese bite.

Four Parks in Three Days

This past weekend was a very special weekend the children had been looking forward to for weeks. Uncle Jeff and cousin Alyssa were coming down to Georgia to kick off spring break! Thankfully, the weather was fabulous and there was no need for elaborate "What are we going to do today?" plans. The children took turns tag teaming all of the adults for bike rides, walks, and park visits with movie night in the evenings. In all, we hit four parks, probably had 10 walks, and ate boat loads of greasy take out and ice cream.

Our neighborhood park was the second park we hit. I really enjoyed an hour of peaceful sunning (Faith-free), while the kids built roads, giant smiley faces, and buried their toes in the sand.


Jack discovered on this day that he could "barely lift the entire park" from underneath this climbing structure.

On Sunday, we were to meet with Uncle Christian and Aunt Kristy for lunch. We waited and we waited for them to arrive from what was supposed to be a quick errand to the local PetSmart. And we waited some more. When they arrived, they were beaming with the announcement that they were the proud parents of a new baby girl...

After some gooey eats the children and I took the clan with us to see our soon to be new home and farm. Alyssa is a horse fanatic (small understatement), and we knew she would have a good time cavorting with the horses in the pens. It surely must also be mentioned that "horses" was the topic of all games and pretend play. I'm not sure what my kids would do if Alyssa came to town and announced she was over horses and was moving on to elephants.

Yesterday, was our finale with burgers, more ice cream and a last visit in the evening to our Towne Park for more bike rides. Faith and Uncle Jeff hit it off very well on this visit. Everyone knows, it is not easy to win Faith's stringent approval, but Jeff apparently spoke her language. I told myself that I was going to try very hard not to mention that Jeff is totally available. (I could have tried harder, but what's the fun in that?)


The poor guy below, deserved some extra TLC this weekend. He was unable to join us until Sunday afternoon, after being stranded in Philly for three days due to the inclement weather. Six hundred dollars, 10 hours of delays, two days of flight cancellations, and three days of wearing the same clothes later, he finally was able to fenegel his way back home. Without March Madness in full gear, he might have turned himself inside out with boredom.

The Incredible Tom Builder doing his best to burn a generous hour of caloric intake as he supervises the mass transit of bikes and scooters.

Grandpa, This Blog Is For You

I should be in bed, but I don't think I'd be able to sleep without posting this message to my darling grandfather. Grandpa, I spoke to Dad today, and he told me about your wonderful visit together. What a fun adventure you two had! Dad also happened to mention that you showed him print outs of some of my individual blog posts.

You print my posts.

In the prime of your life, at a youthful 86 years old, you are such an inspiration to me. I want the entire world to know just how precious you are, but they also need to know what a catch of a grandfather I have.


Last April you wrote a message I will never forget. I hope you don't mind if I share it with the entire universe:

Subject: Your Knucker Hatches

Hi, from Grandpa Adams,

To let you know that I have appreciated receiving your family pictures and the neat descriptions that you have added. Please keep it going for me, at least.

Lots of love to you, and yours,
Grandpa, in Arizona


Keep it going... for you at least? Grandpa, you are the ONLY one who keeps me going when all of this blogging feels like time ticking by that will one day be lost in space anyway. On the other side of the states, I have a grandfather that checks my blog almost daily.

Even though we are miles apart, through the magic of the Internet, I can still share the nitty gritty parts of my life with my grandfather. And to beat all, he even prints a post here and there because it means something to him.

Just for you Grandpa, I post on. You amaze me.

All my love...Amo

Craving Crisis

My cravings are all over the board with number four. Last night, grocery shopping at 10:00pm after Bible study, I thought I was going to hit the floor from low blood sugar. The check out man must of thought I was being a bit melodramatic as I slapped a Three Musketeers bar on the conveyor belt before a full cart and practically shouted at him to "Leave it out!". As he checked out the groceries, I wolfed down the bar, while the people in the line behind me seemed to watch with odd amusement. What I really wanted was a fresh salad with all of the fixins', but convenience was necessity.

So home again, home again, to make a fresh salad with ranch dressing at 11:00pm. Followed by powdered doughnuts. OIY. That should be enough to make any body's stomach turn! Sugar. Salt. Sugar.

MY OB looked at my weight after 12 months of nursing to nothingness (a whopping 103 lbs.), and said I will probably need to be eating more meals than most women at this stage of pregnancy since I'm a little depleted. But it has been a bear to keep up with. The nausea makes it very unpredictable as I try and figure out what I really want. However, you know what tastes awesome right now? Chef Boyardee beefaroni. I could eat giant cans of that stuff! Pretty much anything with sauce slapped on a heap of noodles is heavenly. The frozen Stouffers meals are a lifesaver for lunch. I have a feeling my body is doing anything it can to locate protein, and thankfully, pasta is a decent source.

This child is going to come out looking like a little wet noodle.

I Hate You

I got my first "I hate you" this morning. I told the children after schooling that they couldn't play outside in the front yard until I had taken a quick shower. (Even though we live in a very safe neighborhood, I'll never take my chances on the children playing alone out of eye and/or earshot till they are at least 30). Whelp, apparently that didn't go over very well with my very-moody-this-past-week daughter.

Jack, promptly informed me after I headed into the bathroom, that Grace had said "I hate you." Daggers. Daggers. And yet the first thing you want to do is probably worse than her own words. So I showered and considered my options...let it go, have her sit down for the next hour and do some lovely copywork, take away her TV hour, call Daddy for back up ideas...

I settled on letting her think I had given her a pass, by not mentioning Jack's tattle. But when she asked for her TV hour, she and I had a little talkin' to do. We did. And it went over well. But no TV hour, no ma'am.

Ken's response later was, "She's lucky I wasn't there." I think she was.

I'm usually pretty tough on punishment, but seven years is a lot of parenting to go through without hearing an "I hate you." Not bad. So I went easy. But if there is a next time...not so much lil' missy.

Minutes Away from Mosaic Meals

Remember when I received all of those beautiful broken spanish tiles? The goal was to mosaic our old family dinner table, and create something really unique and ours...a Knucker Hatch original. Well, finally, FINALLY, the table is almost ready to be grouted and sealed. What a job that was! When I count the hours around the table where actual work was being done, it probably will have taken Ken and I about 10-15 hours. But getting myself to work on the table after a full day of managing the motherlode, was more difficult than I anticipated. So here is what the table looks like sans grout:


The real question Ken and I keep on going back and forth on is what color to do the grout? We love the bright colors, and we don't want to overpower the piece, but because there are so many colors in the tiles, the choice is harder. I originally thought light brown, but we smeared a bit between some tiles and it just looked like concrete. So then we thought terracotta (the actual underside color of all of the tile), but now we are not so sure. Another option that might work is a pewter color...but will that look like concrete again? I hate to screw this whole project up with a poor grout choice. The pressure! Any ideas??

Copywork Humor

Yesterday, Grace finished reading William Blake's 40 poems for her poem a day assigned reading. We use the poems also for her copywork, and she'll usually pull 2 lines from her poem that day and write them out in her notebook. Looking for a "tweener" before we start our next poet, I noticed that she'll be having to recite all of Psalm 23 for AWANA in a couple of weeks. So we settled on using the Psalm for her next copywork assignments to help with the memorization.

Today's editorial cartoon for Psalm 23:1 just tickled me:


Grace is a talented illustrator, who has a knack for putting thoughts down through her drawings. I have really taken a delight in using the notebooks that have room to color above the lined paper for her copywork. More often than not, she'll create a fitting drawing for her poem excerpt, and her drawing becomes a narration back to me of the poem with her interpretation. It is a unique way of sneaking in a required narration, without her knowing she ever did any hard work.

The Doll Collector

I have one room in the house called "The Yellow Room". It is the only room in the house that I request be left "toy free" and pass-able just in case someone stops by and we need a clutter free room to sit in. The children have been very good over the years about keeping Mommy's request. Hatch, however (our new dog rescued from death row last year) has other plans for the yellow room.


He doesn't sleep in the yellow room, and he doesn't eat in the yellow room. But for what ever reason, our kleptomaniac feels compelled to deposit all his daily room looting in my supposed to be clutter free room. A pile like this takes no more than two days. Today, he caught me taking pictures of his piles, and decided he needed to keep a closer watch over his pillaged goods. Thankfully, Mr. Hatch sticks to random stuffed animals, dolls, and small toys. I'd be a little less forgiving if he hauled out our dirty laundry every 3 hours.

How can you say "no looting" to this handsome fuzz ball?

A Leg To Stand On

After spending two weeks in a half leg cast, Faith had her check up today. In the last week, she had committed to hobbling around the house, determined not to let a broken bone keep her crawling for too long. We hoped this was a good sign that things were healing. Since it sounds like we have a resident pirate walking around our house keeping watch over the hard wood floors, Faith has quickly earned the nick name "peg-leg".


The doctor was very happy with her follow up X-ray. On the left was the original X-Ray of the break (where the pen is pointing) on the right is her X-Ray from today. The thin sliver line you see on the right side of the bone, going quite a way up the fibula, is actually NEW growth of bone. All that in two weeks! She has received clearance to begin going cast-less for periods of time under strict supervision over the next 10 days. The break is healed but it is still weak, and we will need to be careful that she keeps her back flips and quadruple toe, triple toe combinations to a minimum (which is like trying to use floss to keep a wild horse tethered).

Ordering A Large Family

What if you could order a family? Sitting in your car, you pull to the speaker and glance at the Family Menu options - The three and 1 combo, the Whacky Pack, the 8 piece bucket. Say you are really hungry, and you ordered the large family sized bucket. How many people would that be? What if you super sized your order? I'm curious. I am.

I did a search on large families last night, and the sites that popped up were intriguing. Different large family forums, one of which might quantify large as 4 children, another which might quantify large as 5. And for large families themselves, many might consider their family large if they have been blessed with 6+, but by American's standards, large might be as low as 3 children. When do you officially become supersized or deemed a megafamily?

To press the issue: When is it that society stops looking at your family as "nice" and starts to view your family as "overgrown"? (Not that society drives my personal vision of family size.)

When Ken and I were at the ultrasound, the tech asked if we had any children. We rattled off their three ages, and she quickly made the comment that "You don't see many couples these days who have larger families. I think it is wonderful." So by having four children we are unquestionably "larger", but I don't think we've achieved "bucket" status. On the flip side, no one would argue with the fact that we are at the very least, a Whacky Pack!

Number Four

Being that our pint sized pressure cooking peanut doesn't have a nick name as of yet, the little one continues to simply be "Number Four". So this morning, while mulling over the great mysteries of the earth over yogurt and coffee (and number three hanging on my knee), I wondered if there was any biblical significance to the number four. After doing some research, I felt much better about the handle "Number Four". Here is what I found:

"The Number 4 is thought to represent Gods absolute control over the world.

4 Directions on the earth (north, south, east, and west).
4 Seasons (summer, autumn, winter, and spring).
4 Things that make up the universe (time, energy, space, and matter).
4 Major provisions for man (earth, air, fire, and water).
4 Divisions of the day (morning, noon, evening, and midnight).
4 Winds (Matt 24:31)

Four seems to represent cosmic order, as in the four phases of the moon, the four cardinal points of the earth, the four rivers of Paradise (Genesis 2:10), the four winds of heaven Jeremiah 49:36), the four guardians of the throne of God, and so forth.

But the number four can also represent God bringing disorder for example, the Four Horsemen who bring calamity on the earth (Revelation 6:1-8) and the four acts of Judgment (sword, famine, evil beasts, and pestilence) with which God condemns the idolators of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 14:21)."

Excerpt from Bible-History.com

No one can argue that the Lord has proven himself in full control of this family with the introduction of Number Four. And I'm sure adding Number Four will add more disorder! But it is comforting to know that by having Number Four we will have achieved the heights of cosmic order.

For some reason, after Faith, I had this feeling that the Lord had plans to use me in other directions. I had worked it in my mind that He would press the pause button on our growing family for awhile. I don't know why I thought that. It was not a deep seated desire of mine. But Faith has required so much of my time and attention, keeping me from using other spiritual gifts, that I thought He would want to stretch a few muscles that hadn't been stretched in awhile.


At almost 9 weeks, the pregnancy has been going wonderfully. We had our first ultrasound last Tuesday, and what a relief it was to see the white pulsating heart of Number Four on the screen! The insomnia is mostly behind me, and the crazy dreams that accompany my pregnancies are in full gear. The nausea that I had with Faith in the first trimester, is present again, and of course the fatigue, and the incessant hunger. What a juggling act those three issues can be!

Any mother with three children knows that "naps" don't happen on a three child schedule -- especially in a homeschooling household. So I army crawl through my day. What keeps me going is the knowledge that all of this passes, and I should be feeling much better in a few more weeks when everything evens out. I just pray that the Lord spares my pelvis the pressure that I began experiencing with Faith at five months. Mercies on that one please!!

And so, Number Four is the picture of health. I'd be avoiding the truth if I didn't say that I really hope this child is a floor potato. Is that a horrible thing to say? By floor potato, I mean the child that loves to study the details, flipping a toy over and over again in his hands, making hundreds of mental notes. Faith set the bar for difficulty. Floor potato she is not...being Mama's back potato, lap potato or face potato she's really good at. If this one isn't a floor potato, happy to entertain himself in even half hour increments, I will be stretching muscles that are already so stretched they won't snap back into place.

O'Lord, please send me a brilliant floor potato! And if it is not your will, remember that new body you've promised to keep on hold for me. May I be so bold as to ask if it is available for an early release date on earth? I'd be more than willing to be your humble servant and try out a beta version. Not that there would be any glitches...

...maybe a floor potato might be easier.

Letters To Africa

The homeschooling blog is still awaiting the grand merge. I hate that. But I thought I'd share something the children and I worked on this week through the inspiration of our church.

A number of months ago, after our pastor and a group of others from the church had visited Africa, our church was inspired to sponsor an entire village of children who have been affected by the AIDS/HIV epidemic in Kenya. Through WorldVision's HopeChild program, hundreds of children's folders lay on the tables in the foyer of the church awaiting a sponsor. What an overwhelming experience. You just wanted to scoop up an arm full of children and take them home with you.

Ken and I decided to sponsor one child for each of our three children. When we got home, we taped their pictures and information sheets to our fridge as a reminder to pray for our three little ones on the other side of the world, and to keep their needs in our thoughts. We chose two boys, Daniel and Pelengus, and one girl, Chepkemoi. All three were similar in age to Jack and Grace.

In the months that followed, I was very impressed with the information packets we received from WorldVision regarding each of the children, and the follow up phone calls. Last month, we received our first greeting cards that we were to fill out for each of the children. Jack and Grace used their copywork time during schooling, to fill out the cards with their names, add their location of residence, create a little bio about themselves, and then paste a picture of our family on the back of the card. Permitted to send flat gifts, the kids hand selected an array of stickers to include for each child.

The children are excited to have "pen pals" in Africa. What a learning opportunity it will be as they grow up together on either side of the world, exchanging bits and pieces of their culture! If you are interested in sponsoring a HopeChild you can visit WorldVision's web site online, and select a child from the hundreds available.

"Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me."
Matthew 18:5