W A N T E D:

Qualified person to potty-train stubborn, uninterested 3-year old boy. Job may take days, weeks or months (hopefully not more than a year). Your house or mine. Serious inquiries only, please.

:)

Pizza Sticks

Here it is. The recipe for Pizza Sticks that I promised earlier. I stumbled upon this recipe in Oskaloosa's Fellowship Bible Church Cookbook 2008. We really like it and it is simple and fast to make.
1 tube refrigerator breadstickes
24 pepperoni slices
2 T. Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 C. pizza sauce
Separate breadsticks. Place 2 or 3 pepperoni slices on the bottom half of each breadstick. Fold remaining portion over pepperoni. Seal ends. Twist 1 or 2 times. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Combine Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning and garlic powder. Sprinkle over each breadstick. Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutess. Serve with heated pizza sauce.
**I like to sprinkle them with mozzarella and cheddar cheese half way though the baking time.
Give it a try. We hope you like them as much as we do.

Sunday afternoon

Sundays. It is our day of rest and worship. It usually starts out with pancakes and bacon (all prepared by Seth). Then it's time to get everyone dressed for church. After church, we try to enjoy a nice lunch at home. And then what? That's the great debate at our house. Nap or no nap? Seth says "Yes, a nap for everyone." Jenny says "Quiet time is fine. If the boys take a nap then they don't go to bed until 10pm." I don't think we'll ever get this one settled. On this particular Sunday, Seth was the only one who got a nap.


After "nap" time, we had a great visit with Seth's paternal grandparents. They still live in their own home south of Eddyville and they are in their 90's! The boys always enjoy Elizabeth's cookies and lemonade. They also like playing with the tinker toys and farm animals--all toys from Grandpa Arlin's days.





Eliza was able to show off her new walking skills for Great-Grandma Elizabeth.




And I snapped this cute picture of Eden and Elmer playing with the wooden blocks.

Our Sunday evenings usually conclude with some form of pizza (I think I'll include my recipe for pizza sticks in a future post) and a Veggie Tales movie before bed.

Sickness

Where do I start to explain our weekend? Remember from my previous blog that Eden puked on the way home from Sears. Well, it must have been more than too much candy. We were fine Friday night and all day Saturday. Saturday night about 8:30 Eliza started thowing up. Emmet joined in by 10:00pm and Ephraim joined in by 11:00. Eden woke up with all the commotion. So, we had all four children awake from 10pm until 3am Sunday. Keep in mind that neither Seth nor I had been to bed yet-we were almost 24 hours without sleep. By 3am Sunday we were able to get a little bit of sleep before the next round started at 7am Sunday. I didn't feel sick until 6:30pm and Seth felt it coming on by 8pm. With this came mounds and mounds of laundry (blankets, pillows, pillowcases, pajamas, towels, washcloths, etc). On the bright side, it was a fast-moving virus because we are all fine now. We'd all had our flu shots but this must have been something else or a strain that isn't covered in the shot.

There are no pictures of this episode.

On a different note:

Examples of what happened in our house this week when I wasn't looking:

Emmet unrolls the paper towels

Eliza bites off the end of a marker and has blue drool for the afternoon

Examples of what happened in our house when I was looking:

Emmet adds too much parsley to the cheesy potatoes and we end up having potatoes with our parsley instead of parsley with our potatoes

Emmet uses a red marker on the carpet

Emmet takes the kitchen sink hose, turns around and hoses the floor (twice)

Eliza deliberately puts her toothbrush in the toilet (it's in the garbage now).

Eliza took her first step last week. Of course we didn't get it on film. But she did take TEN steps last night, giving us plenty of opportunity to get it on tape and take photos. She walked from the chair to the footstool and back!

Picture time!

Brrr! Time for the winter coats today. I had the day off and had scheduled the children for pictures at Sears in Ottumwa. We managed one group shot, individual poses and one pose of the twins. The boys did excellent. The girls did okay. I thought they would do better since our appointment was at 10am. Oh well. If we got too many good pictures then I would have a harder time ordering photos or I would just spend more.

Our photos are available online but you will have to create an account with Sears. The website is www.searsportrait.com
Click on View My Pictures
Get a pencil now because the Session ID is 46041A107899312
The Session Password is DPWMFYXKD
If that's too complicated, many of you will just have to wait until our Christmas card comes in the mail.

While taking the pictures we had to keep the girls entertained with fruit snacks and Smarties. That was evidently too much for Eden. On the way home I smelled rotten milk and made a mental note to check under the seats for a forgotten sippy cup. When I got home, I realized that Eden had thrown up and had it all over her coat, pants and the car seat!

Oh, prior to coming home we made a stop at the grocery store for some much needed milk. Yes, I conquered the grocery store with all four kids but I would not recommend doing this on a regular basis. The boys were excited to drive the police car cart. Eden sat in the cart and Eliza sat in the front part of the cart. There really wasn't a lot of room for groceries! I think we could be heard throughout the store. Ephraim and Emmet were hollering "Beep, Beep, Get out of the way, dude" and "Whoooooooooooaaaaaaaa". And, of course we would have to run into an acquaintance of mine who is a judge.

Time Change :(

Okay. I do not care for the time change. The kids are not handling it well. For the past FOUR days, all FOUR kids have been awake at 5:50am. It is eerie how they are waking up at exactly that time. Emmet wants his breakfast right away. Ephraim wants to watch cartoons (which aren't on yet). Eliza wants to start playing and Eden wants to rock in the chair. I'm hoping we can transition out of this phase soon.

Here is cute picture of Emmet and Eden. Eden was standing on the back of Emmet's bike and Emmet said "I take Eden for ride." That looked a little dangerous so I got Eden to sit down. Then they both had fun riding around in the basement. Emmet took Eden to the zoo and to Casey's for doughnuts.