We're still alive around here

I was noticing that it has been some time since my last blog, and let's be honest, will be some time before my next one.

I'm still pregnant. I am due on Dec. 18, but "she" could come at any time. I tell everyone that while she is considered full-term now, I'm never early to anything, why would she be?

Part of me is fine with her arriving later. Right now, Little Sarah (or Sara) is contained, easily maintained, and doesn't require any extra stuff when we leave the house. Of course, I feel like a cow, can't sit in one position too long, get up 3 times a night to pee, and have swollen ankles. So, I guess that it will be a good thing when she decides to come out.

We are fine around here. Our Christmas tree is decorated, our home is decked out in some Christmas stuff (I was told to NOT get everything out this year), most of our gifts have been purchased (or at least written down to purchase), and the nursery is done. I am even registered at Babys R Us, JC Penney, and Walmart. (sorry for all the Target lovers, I'm not one of you)

Jonathan helped us decorate the tree this year, frankly, did most of it. He loved getting up on the step stool and putting decorations on as high as he could get them. Which of course means that we had a decoration ring around the tree in one spot (about eye level), because he also discovered that he could move the step stool around to get to other spots on the tree. It really was sweet and I was proud of him for trying. Jeff and I redid some of them just to even out the bottom branches, but most of them stayed in the original spot.

I have included some pictures from the fall (sadly- we haven't even taken any recently). One is of a field trip that Jonathan and I got to go on to Jaemor's Farm in North Ga.
The other 2 are of my SpiderMan.


Aren't they darling??? I think so!!!

Gross!!! (don't read if you don't like bathroom talk)

I find it odd that all members of my family have bowel movement problems, sometimes at the same time. Now, if you know anything about my family, we all have weak stomachs. One of the reasons that I love being pregnant is that for once in my life I don't have to worry that what I eat will go right through. I have loved eating french fries, greasy burgers, and pizza to my heart's content. Sorry Mom- I know that it isn't "good for that baby girl". :) Well- this weekend, my entire family (except my darling husband) decided to go poop-crazy. I was awakened at 5:30 am by my husband as he was preparing for a day at the fire station. He came in to get me to help him b/c the dog had pooped in the living room (again). My dog is as weird as the rest of us b/c he has never pooped in one place. He likes to be on the move when he does his business, it actually is very entertaining (when it isn't in your living room).

I tried to go back to sleep after helping clean up and get him off to work. My son is for the most part potty-trained (thank goodness). Well- Sat. evening, he was very tired and had an accident in his underwear (on the couch, 5 steps from the bathroom). It wasn't a very big deal, I just cleaned him up and tossed him in the tub for an early bedtime.

The kicker was yesterday evening! We had our church group over for small group (we call it cell group) and were showing the kids (and some of the adults) our chicken members. I asked Jeff if he could catch one and allow the kids to pet her. He reached in and grabbed the one closest to the door (Drought- the one who is the biggest, orneriest, and darkest). After the kids pet her, Jeff tossed her back into the coop. When he turned around we all realized that the huge black spot all the way down his "nice" shirt was chicken poop!!!! What in the world? They have never done that on any of us, why would they choose to try that when we had friends over???
Who said the Lord doesn't have a sense of humor???

The picture of Mom and Dad and the grandkids have nothing to do with poop, it was just a cute picture.

Summer update

Our Summer has been fairly slow. We went on vacation this week to Panama City Beach. It was supposed to last all week, but we got kicked off the Air Force Base down there b/c we weren't in the actual military.....I mean "I'm in the Lord's Army".....doesn't that count???

Jeff's uncle really did have us a place to stay for $30 a night near the beach, but because he wasn't there to check us in, they wouldn't let us on the base- we did have a visitor's pass- just not the right kind of pass in order to check into the hotel.

The first of the week we got to stay in a one-room condo that a friend of ours located for us. It was pretty nice- right on the beach, 11th floor (Every time we ever went into or out of our front door, Jonathan had to look all the way down.). It was at a resort called Splash and was kind of fancy. It had 4 pools downstairs- one of them was a kiddie-water park thing. Jonathan wouldn't go near it b/c the top had a huge bucket of water that loudly dumped water everywhere when it filled up. 2 were normal pools, and the last one was a "lazy river" thing. That was my favorite. You got a little floaty thing and the water shot you around in a circle. Other than running into (or over) kids the whole time, it was fun.

Of course, the beach was beautiful- I love the gulf. We didn't get to go in the actual ocean until day 3 b/c they had posted double red flags (DANGER- RIP TIDES). They were pretty serious about this red flag thing. They had police helicopters and cops on jet skis that would come and yell at you if you were past the point they had determined for you to go (anywhere past your knees). We had our own little policeman lodging with us though in the form of a 3 year old who was terrified of the loud waves. He loved the sand though- even made sand angels.

After getting kicked out of the air force base, we decided to start heading for home. We spoke with our travel agent - Daddy and Mom- and got a room in Columbus for the night. Then we spent the day in Pine Mountain, GA at the Wild Safari Animal Park. It sounds cheesy but was actually pretty cool. They have a ton of animals running around this park thing (zebras, wildebeast, deer, pigs, elk, etc) and you take a zebra-bus (bus painted to look like a zebra) and ride around. They come right up to the bus and put their noses in your windows. If you have food (which you buy of course), they will eat it out of your hand. It really was interesting. Jonathan's favorite animal was the pigs. At least he didn't say the squirrels.

After poking around the Little White House (FDR's Warm Springs place), we headed home.

It was a good vacation and I'm glad that we got a chance to go. Course- it is always nice to be back home, but I really miss eating lunch by the ocean.......

Potty training Woes

We started potty-training when Jonathan turned 3, back in January. He really wasn't ready until then, neither were we. It has progressed fairly slowly, but he had the hang of it before we went to Florida for the Memorial Day weekend to visit family. Because of the long drive and crazy hours, he wore a bathing suit or a pull-up for most of the weekend. He must have enjoyed the freedom because when we got back, he began wetting/messing on himself all over again. It was enough to make me crazy (and has on several occasions around here).
I sought advice from our preschool director at church. She advised me to back off a little, let him clean up the mess that he makes (taking underwear to laundry, etc), and to remember that this is one area in his life where he is in control (I can't MAKE him pee in the potty).
So, Monday I decided to let him do just that- no stress on me. Within a few hours of awakening, he had already had his first accident. It wasn't huge, but his "big boys" were messy. I calmly told him that he was in charge of cleaning them up after he finished up in the toilet. He was fine with that. I told him to wash them out in the sink. When I came back to check on him a few minutes later, he was obeying.....with his toothbrush!!!!
After my shock and quick removal of the now filthy toothbrush, I showed him the correct way to clean out dirty underwear.

Thankfully- that was the only accident of the day, plus he got a new toothbrush out of the deal!

All the chickens are laying!!!!

Contrary to popular opinion, life at Hog Mountain can be very exciting. The 3 of us spent Easter Saturday watching the neighbors have a huge moonwalk blown up in their yard. Then, we got to play in it for the rest of the afternoon. (I had to leave for a little while to have a whirlwind shopping spree with Rebecca and Mom). There are always dogs visiting (we usually have a total of 2-3 at any given moment). We only have one- Jack. We know and actually like most of our neighbors. We spent Thur and Friday helping our next door neighbor prepare her guest room for her mother's visit this weekend. It was a bright pink, she wants it a more normal color with a chair rail. The good thing about helping your neighbors is that you usually get invited to dinner soon afterwards.
And of course, we have chickens:
We now have 3 chickens who are fully grown!!! Drought and Clara have been laying for a few weeks now and we were waiting on the baby. Sunshine has begun to lay her daily egg. It is so neat to go out daily and find 2-3 eggs in the little nest that Jeff has fixed up for them. We also have a orange plastic easter egg in there. We had heard that if you put an Easter egg in their nesting box, they would know where to lay their egg. It has worked so far. One day last week, the Easter egg migrated to the front of the roosting pen, then the next day, tried to commit suicide. I saw it on the ground next to the feeding bucket. I really didn't see any reason to pick it up, after all, surely the chickens knew by now that it was a fake and didn't need it. I was wrong. Our oldest, Drought, had a really rough day- squawking and carrying on all afternoon until the egg was returned to the correct location. Poor egg.

The pictures below were taken from inside our "chicken annex". Jeff has built them a little temporary pen where we would like to plant some flowers this year. They eat, poop, and scratch. We get fertilizer and a tiller all in one! It works out real well, most of the time. Jeff had to weed with them a few weeks ago, because they don't like a certain ground cover that we have in there. Wish I had taken a video of them pecking Jeff because he wasn't pulling worms out fast enough for them! It was priceless.


Jeff ran in his second half-marathon Sunday morning. He did great- 2 hours, 15 minutes. We (Amber, Kelly, Rebecca, and Derek) tried to get to several spots to cheer him and Trey on, but really only made it to mile 4, 6, 11, and the finish line. We got stuck with the marathon runners because the policeman wouldn't let us go down the road for fear that we would hit one of the poor runners. I guess he figured that they were in pain enough, some may actually jump in front of us to end the race early. (In his defense, we WERE in Amber's monster SUV) Instead of fretting, we just spent 20 minutes hanging out of the car windows, playing music and cheering on the runners we would never meet again.


After the race, Jeff and I went back to Trey and Kelly's to get ready for my first concert as a member of the Toe-Tapping band. I had tried not to scream too much during the race, but I practiced all the way to the church where we were performing, and by the time I got there, my voice had started to go downhill. In fact, I am still sounding very froggy. The Lord was good though, my voice held out during the concert. It was the oddest concert I had ever been a part of. The majority of the people who were there to listen to us, didn't! They had just finished church and a pot-luck lunch. I guess they were tired. We had 2 tables of people who stared at us the entire time, I'm not really sure they understood that it was okay to smile- we were there to entertain them. The other 7 tables quickly emptied of people or contained small groups of women who talked the ENTIRE time that we sang. It was actually very funny to me. Thankfully- I had my own fan club there (my in-laws, Jeff, and Jonathan). We had a good time, but Daddy (the leader of Toe-tapping) started dropping songs toward the end, to get us out of there sooner I guess (or to end his misery). We sing again in 2 weeks down near Macon, GA. That is a Sunday night "Gig" so we should have a little more active audience- I hope.

I guess that is all from Hog Mountain for now. Hope everyone had a great Easter. Happy April!!!!

My List

I was sitting at dinner tonight thinking of "The List" that I have in my head of things that I never thought that I would have to say to anyone.

1. "DO NOT LICK the window!"

2. "I know that you are fixing dinner, but can you help me get my chicken?"
("Sunshine" escaped this afternoon. I chased her all over the yard. I finally went next door to get my neighbor to help me catch her. Sunshine is our newest chicken- Rosie ended up being a rooster. )

3. "No! You can't take your suitcase to the grocery store!" (I told Jonathan to pick ONE toy to bring with him. He literally came out dragging his suitcase)

4. "Sure Honey, you can have chickens in our backyard." (What was I thinking???) (by the way- they have started laying small blue-green eggs)

5. "I don't care if you figured out the password. We really don't need to be stealing "security-locked" wireless service from our neighbors. " (we are already snagging the unlocked service from someone down the street)

6. "DON'T gag yourself! You ARE going to eat that green pepper stuck on your pizza!!!" (We have discovered that our child can cough and get out of eating things b/c he will throw up. We are not sure if he does it on purpose all the time. He really does have a quick gag reflex. We have almost cleared restaurants with the sound). By the way- when he finally finished crying, he actually enjoyed the green pepper.

I guess that is all for now. Feel free to add your own.