Something is off in the coding of my blog that is not allowing people to comment. I’m working on the issue and will probably have to change to a completely different theme to address the problem. Thank you for your patience! Hopefully we’ll be fully functional soon!!

I LOVE to hear feedback about blogposts but unfortunately I don’t know how to control spam on the blog. And the spam got so bad (over 10,000!) that the very generous guy hosting this blog (THANK YOU BRIAN!) was losing too much space. So for now I had to close the comments. But feel free to e-mail me if you want to tell me what a great blogger I am or what great pictures I take or what cute kids I have. 😉

but I promised a very dear friend that I would post Halloween and Thanksgiving pictures. Halloween was only 5 weeks ago, right? It’s not too late. 🙂

Here we go. The Bailey Bunch on Halloween 2011:

We took a one day break from normal school and did “Halloween School.” It was so much fun! Who knew you could learn so much just studying Halloween? We studied the history and folklore of Halloween of course but we also studied spiders and bats and did a bar graph on the types of candy in our candy bowl! The kids made a lapbook to record their findings.

After school the three oldest kids went to Tae Kwon Do while the little kids and I straightened up the house. (well, I guess it was John Elijah and I that straightened up the house; no, on second thought, it was just me! John Elijah played with legos.)

A quick dinner followed (totally don’t remember what we ate!) and then it was on to costumes. We opted not to spend money on costumes this year. We’ve had lots of fun in years past doing themed costumes but this year with our Alabama house still on the market we thought frugality was in order. So here’s what they came up with out of their dress up bins:

Sophia the Super Snow Fairy

Wesley the Karate Kid

Jeb the pirate

Nov the Spanish Princess Ninja

Jess the Super Baby

And Abe the Frogger Game (which actually improved a bit before it was over) 🙂

Here’s the crew all together:

And here’s poor Abe playing the only video game he currently has available:

[in reality, the kids are still playing some games on the computers. But we’re (read: Mom) enjoying a break from TV for a while. We decided not to move our old analog TVs and one day in the distant future we’ll get an HDTV]

Most popular magazines will tell you that mom must have some “me” time. Most homeschooling magazines will point out that maybe that mentality is wrong and will wind up in a frustrated mom because homeschooling moms often don’t have time for me time.

What about in my house? Do I get me time? Do I need it? YES, I need time to myself and to be perfectly honest I’m really grumpy when I don’t get it. I like to be alone for about half an hour in the morning to drink my coffee and check my e-mail. My kids know this. For the most part they leave me alone. Most of the kids sleep later than I do and the one that doesn’t is a loner and likes his personal time, too, so it all works out.

At least it did.

And then there was New York.

Our house here has an odd arrangement. The master bedroom and bath, great room, baby’s room/nursery, and office are downstairs. The other five kids’ bedrooms are upstairs with the kitchen, dining room and living room. So in order to make my morning coffee I have to go up the creaky stairs, open the creaky gate and make coffee in a kitchen directly off of the children’s bedrooms. Did I mention that they sleep with their doors open?

So, I’ve been a little grumpy in New York. 😉

Today I took steps to remedy the situation. I bought a mini fridge off craigslist for $20 and set up a little coffee station downstairs in Kenny’s office. The plan is to get up and stay downstairs long enough to have my coffee, read my Bible, pray and check my e-mail. We’ll see how it goes. Oftentimes expectations get me into trouble.

One of the most challenging things about our new life in New York is that our church services are currently being held in our home. We have a great room downstairs that we set up for Sundays and for the most part we don’t use that room at all during the week. To get ready for Sunday we only have to vacuum, dust, set up chairs and set up the altar. Not bad, right?

Well… the master bedroom also has to be picture perfect because the only way to the bathroom is through the master bedroom. Also, the baby’s room serves as the church nursery so it must be kept in good order/ organization. And Kenny’s office is now his official church office — not the general dumping ground for anything that doesn’t have a home like it was back in Alabama.

So we’re working on it. We manage to pull it off every week but with a little stress on Saturdays and Sunday morning. My goal is to work on it a little at a time each day of the week. I found a little booklet years ago put out by Doorposts called A Day of Delight. It’s a wonderful book that shows you how to revolve your week around the Lord’s Day to truly make it a day to look forward to and celebrate. I LOVE that. But so far I can’t seem to make it work. I’ve been working on it for years and still Sunday morning is crazy. There are still lost shoes, lost belts, hair that doesn’t get brushed out until the last second, a last minute bath, etc.

But I’m plodding on. I’m not giving up. I want Sunday to be a day of delight. I want the Lord’s Day to be the children’s favorite day of the week. I want it to be MY favorite day of the week. My goal for this week is to do as much as I can early in the week to get ready for Sunday, to do all of the church preps on Friday afternoon and to plan a fun God-oriented activity for Sunday evening that will be enjoyable for the whole family and keep our hearts centered on our Lord and Creator.

Wow. I just can’t seem to get this post up on Mondays. Tuesday is kitchen day so maybe it makes more sense to post it on Tuesday anyway.

Monday – Ground turkey lasagna; salad; buttered bread
Tuesday – Honey teriyaki pork chops; corn
Wednesday – Rotel tuna; steamed broccoli and cauliflower
Thursday – Chicken quesadillas; black beans; salad
Friday – Homemade pizza on whole wheat crust
Saturday – Turkey burgers; sweet potato fries
Sunday – Paninis

I’ve actually been a flybaby for over 10 years. Whew! I fall off the wagon frequently (like now!). But I know there is no better system out there because I have tried them ALL.

This week we were supposed to focus on our living rooms Monday thru Thursday and our dining room on Friday. Right now (with a new baby in the house) I only managed to work on the living room for 15 minutes on two different days this week. And what I accomplished in that room has now been negated. sigh

That’s OK. Today is Saturday and I don’t have to be anywhere. (I was actually supposed to clean the church today but my sweet husband is doing it for me so I can focus on the house; I am one lucky woman!)

Flylady’s rule is that the room has to be generally straight before you start zone cleaning. Also the weekly vacuuming is supposed to be done. Those 2 items in themselves are overwhelming to me right now.

Babysteps.

I’m going to start with room generally straight. Here’s how it looks right now:

I’m going to go right now and set my timer for 15 minutes. I’ll photograph again when the timer goes off.

**time lapse**

The session was pretty typical. I couldn’t find the timer. I didn’t want to waste time so I set the timer on the microwave. I cleaned as fast as I could. I folded and put away laundry, picked up toys, straighted the school mess by the brown chair. Sophia whined about a pencil but I told her to go ask Novella. 🙂

All in all I got a lot done. When I checked the timer it had already gone off without me hearing it so I may have worked slightly longer than 15 minutes. But not much as the original post time lists 10:41 a.m. and I finished at 11:00 a.m. I still need to clean off the piano, work some more on the school mess and dust and vacuum. I would say all in all I probably need about 30 more minutes to completely clean the living room. But I’ve got a lot of mess in other parts of the house so I believe the living room is “good enough” for now. If I can get the rest of the house to “good enough” maybe I’ll come back to the living room and do some detailed cleaning. But I also need to go grocery shopping, get the boys some shoes, make granola and banana bread, get the clothes ready for Lord’s Day, bathe the children, feed the baby several more times, make lunch and dinner… AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Breathe.

Baby steps.

🙂

I keep trying to make a giant birthday post and of course I never have time to finish it. So I think I need to do them one at a time. Sophia has the first kid birthday and she kicks off birthday season at our house (5 kid birthdays in 2 months).

My sweet little baby girl turned 2 this year. She is definitely 2! From buttering chairs to scribbling with blue markers on the marble floor she keeps us all hopping!

Here is her cake. I attempted roses but it was so hot and the frosting was so buttery that they were kind of weepy roses. LOL

One of the most fun thing of the kid birthdays is that the kids do the decorating. They always have a blast. I hand them streamers and tape and tell them to have at it.

Sophia eyeing her cake:

Dad helping her eat her cake and ice cream:

Sister helping with the presents: (I LOVE the look on Sophia’s face in this picture. It totally captures her 2 year old personality right now!)

I’m afraid my camera did not re-surface until yesterday when I finally had a moment to clear kitchen counters. I knew I had taken it away from J.E. and thrown it gingerly on the counter while elbow deep in some kind of dough or something, but I looked dozens of times the night I made French Baked Hash and it just wasn’t there. I proceeded to look in all the other usual camera haunts — K.’s desk drawer (it’s official home which it unfortunately rarely sees), the piano, my dresser, the dining room table… Nothing. I was beginning to think I may have somehow thrown it away with some trash on the kitchen counter. I mentioned this to K. but he was unable to entertain that idea given that it is technically his camera. All I’m saying is that if he buys me the $800 digital SLR I need (notice I’m saying need and not want — digital SLR cameras are a necessity; a vehicle large enough to hold all your children probably is, too, but that’s another story. You have to take good pictures…) I will leave his puny little camera alone.

Somehow I’ve gotten off track. This post is supposed to be about berries. I watched the Julie and Julia movie last week and then read the book this week (reviews to follow). I’m sufficiently inspired to try some new things in the kitchen again. Somehow, amidst my three picky eaters, I’ve gotten into the chicken nugget, macaroni and cheese rut. I used to love to cook. I think I still do. I just have to enjoy the food, enjoy the fact that K. enjoys it, and not worry about the three children who decided to eat just carrot sticks for dinner.

So I went to Costco for milk and bananas and peanut butter. That was all that was on my list. Well, that and half and half, because (confession time!) I never did give up coffee. I came out with those things plus strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. I have never bought all the berries at one time before. In fact, I’ve never bought blackberries or raspberries ever before in my whole 37 years of life. But they are in season, were a really great price yesterday, and I found this recipe I wanted to try…

The very first thing I did was to ask my extremely sweet hubby to put a few of each berry in a cup for each kid so everyone could try them. And then read Jamberry by Bruce Degen while they indulged. I’ve wanted to do this since A. was 2 1/2 years old!

First I can’t resist showing you a picture of all the beautiful berries:

Then a picture of Dad reading Jamberry while the kids ate the berries plain and raw in all their glory:

And a couple more eating berry shots just because I have cute kids 🙂 :

And finally, to the recipe. It is from Cook’s Illustrated. I’m not going to type up the whole thing because I’m not sure about copyright laws and you have to be a member of their site to access this recipe. Basically, though, you just throw a cup of each of the berries together with a little sugar and pinch of salt, top them with a bread crumb, butter and brown sugar topping, and throw them in the oven for 15 minutes.

Before the oven:

After the oven:

Plated and ready to eat warm with a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream:

I thought it was divine. The funny part was that most of my picky eaters loved it. But my main taste tester, W., plus K. were not that impressed. Still, I think it was good enough for a dinner party — simple enough to let the true berry flavors shine through!