Going on a Treasure Hunt...

Last Sunday, we made our first attempt at Geocaching. We both found and hid treasures, and we all had a lot of fun. Plus, it was great exercise!

We plan to go again today, and then we're taking the boys to see, what else-- National Treasure!

I hope to post some photos from our last hunt and today's hunt later on this evening.

Pottymouth downgrade...or upgrade? Not sure...

If you look at my blogroll, you'll see that I have an asterisk beside each blog that I know to contain any four letter words (actually, four-letter-word is an archaic term. Dooce can turn out some pretty creative fourteen-letter-words). While I believe myself to be forward-thinking, I cringe when I hear a woman swear. Must be all of those years with my pottymouth mother are embedded in my brain. Plus, I think it's only polite to warn my friends and family about the language rating of the blogs I recommend.

Chris just appealed to me from her Big Yellow House . She says that she's not actually a pottymouth. She believes she's more in the bathroom vicinity and not in the actual toilet. I agree.

Therefore, I'm downgrading (or upgrading?) her pottymouth status. I suppose the only fair and right thing for me to do is to put a number of asterisks next to a blog based on how much...um...colorful language the blog contains.

For what it's worth, I think Dooce is absolutely hilarious, but I guess I'm a bit of a prude (or still have very clear visions of my chronically depressed, manic depressive, abusive mother and her derogatory vocabulary)...I can't in good conscious recommend Dooce's site because of her prolific profanity, no matter how creative.

Sorry, Dooce.

Besides, I can only imagine that my little voice won't in the least detract from your massive place in the blogosphere anyway.

You expected oatmeal, maybe?

I thought about this. I really did.

See, I read recently that it's very important to eat breakfast, and that a lot of weight problems stem from not eating breakfast. Skipping breakfast lowers your metabolism, then what you eat later just converts to fat. I can't find the article, so if you read it, too, remind me where it is.

So, I've been making a point of eating breakfast. Some protein, some grains, a big glass of water or a little glass of juice. I feel better. Honestly. And I've even been taking my vitamins every day, just like I promised.

When I awoke this morning, I started thinking about breakfast before I even got out of bed. I knew just what I would have. Mmm. Yummy. Pecans...Milk. Protein. Calcium. And best of all, no cooking necessary.

Breyer's Butter Pecan. It's not just for midnight snack anymore.

This was written for me...

Okay, maybe it wasn't. But it certainly could have been. Thank you to Lonna at Mom and More for posting this wonderful affirmation.

"They may see the good you do as self serving.
Continue to do good.
They may see your generosity as grandstanding.
Continue to be generous.
They may see your warm and caring nature as a weakness.
Continue to be warm and caring.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It never was between you and them anyway."

Author Unknown

Should I or Shouldn't I?

It's 1 A.M and Sweetheart just asked me to read a chapter of The Boxcar Children. I told her that we got to stay up late, eat subs and watch movies, to which she replied, "But you read to us EVERY night."

"We'll see..." I said.

So, what do you think I did?

A Date with Bard

What's more wonderful than spending a day with your daughter? Spending a day with your daughter, who you think is REALLY cool!

Bard and I headed out for our date on Thursday, and I have to say that she looked stunning. I couldn't believe that she was really my little girl, this tall, beautiful young woman. I know it's banal, but I'm saying it anyway. She's becoming a lovely young lady.

Our first stop was to be lunch at the newest Chic-Fil-A in our area. On our ride there, Bard gave me a book report about her new favorite classic book--To Kill a Mockingbird. She decided to read it because a group of bibliophiles were discussing whether their favorite book characters wore boxers, briefs, thongs or went commando and one of the girls said, "Atticus, boxers or briefs," and no one knew who that was. No one, out of the 20 or so avid readers, had read To Kill a Mockingbird. Bard decided, as part of her 101 in 1001, to read one classic a month. To Kill a Mockingbird was the first one on her list.

We arrived at Chic-Fil-A on their opening day and were greeted by our good friend and fellow homeschooling parent, Dr. Don Bartlette. Don was handing out samples of Chic-fil-A's delicious brownies! It was a wonderful surprise to see him, and we had a great time catching up with him. He reminded us what an adventure, what a miracle it is just to open your eyes every morning to a new day!

After Chic-fil-A, we headed to the movie theater, where we eagerly bought tickets to see Finding Neverland. It was very moving, very magical, and managed to make me cry. I hate it when the last scene in a movie is a tearjerker, and is immediately followed by a HUGE, WHITE SCREEN so that EVERYONE in the theater can see what a BIG BABY you are. Sheesh.

We ended the evening with a visit to a friend's scrapbooking party. I'm not a scrapbooker (GASP!) but I knit for a while and helped Bard with her scrapbook pages.

Bard spent the night at Kat's house, so we gave our hugs and parted ways. I then headed to Borders to drool over the knitting books, look, with no success, for a good family Bible Study guide, and to find journals for each of the kids for our co-journaling project.* I found a really awesome one for Monet, one with a marble-looking cover, irridescent page edges and a ribbon bookmark built right in. He loved it. For Houdin, I found one that looked a bit more bookish, and we immediately began to co-write a fictional story.

I miss Bard, as she's still not home from Kat's house, but I look forward to seeing her tomorrow. She's an awesome girl and a wonderful friend. It's a miracle to behold her face each day.

Thank you, God, for my daughter Bard.

*The journaling project is that I write them a letter in their journal each night and put it on their beds, and they write a return letter to me, and put it on my desk. Houdin and I are writing a story instead of simply writing letters.

The Boxcar Children

This was one of my very favorite books as a child. When I found it again as a parent about ten years ago, I had to have a hardcover copy, so I ordered one immediately (a very special treat for myself) and insisted on a copy with the original cover. Bard read the book as soon as I brought it home, and then I placed it on a shelf with my "special" books. It hasn't been touched since.

I know this is very wrong.

Two night ago, Sweetheart was having a hard time sleeping. Usually, Bohemian does all of the tucking in and reads from What a Fourth Grader Needs to Know. On this particular night, I decided to read to Sweetheart and Monet while they were waiting for Bohemian to arrive.

"How about The Story of Ping?" I offered.

"Sweetheart doesn't like that one," Monet answered. "She thinks it's too sad." Sweetheart nodded in agreement.

"Okay, then how about George Washington's Mother..." I began to regret my choice as soon as I said it, flipping through the pages and remembering that it's not exactly a short story and maybe a little over the head of a five-year-old.

"I don't like that one, either," Sweetheart announced, saving me from some exhausting reading and certain doom.

"Ah!" I saw it sitting there on the shelf--the wrong shelf, as it wasn't supposed to be in Sweetheart's room at all--but there it was, nonetheless. "How about THIS one?"

"Uhhhh..." Sweetheart moaned. "Not THAT one."

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Have you ever listened to this one before?"

"Nooo," she admitted, "but it LOOKS boring."

I'll show her, I thought. "Oh, but it isn't boring at all. This was one of my very favorite books when I was a child." With that, I turned to page one and began to read.

As soon as Sweetheart heard about the baker's wife who didn't like children OR doing dishes, she broke the silence. "I think I'm beginning to like this book!"

It's just magical. The milk and blueberries. The salvaged dishes. The motherly way Jesse cares for her siblings. It's just simple and inspiring.

Now the whole family is hooked. We've been reading two chapters nightly, and not one person is bored, from Bohemian down to The Baby.

This just proves it. Classic literature rocks.

Welcome to my home gym

What this house needed was some good, old-fashioned exercise. And where in the world but Wal*Mart to buy it?

I found a mini-trampoline or rebounder for $19.99 and a jump rope for $2.94 (the kind in the sports department, not the kind in the toy department). I could have splurged for the $4.96 model, with ball bearings for faster, more fluid movement, but I chose the budget route.

Add a book of jump rope rhymes from the library, and VOILA! Home gym! As in, this is my home, AND it's my gym!

The kids have been jumping and hopping and bouncing for three days. They were actually sore when they awoke this morning! Houdin is the sports-oriented guy, and the one most prone to competition, so he challenged everyone to a competition to see who could jump rope the longest. Currently, he has me beat...55 jumps to my 39.

With all this jumping, I hope my bladder holds up.

Here's a bad idea...

Eleven boys.

A sleepover.

Lots of sugar.

Just wait. I haven't come to the bad idea yet.

No, I'm not kidding.

Here's the bad idea. Maybe the very best bad idea I've ever had. Give each of the boys a disposable camera. Tell them to take pictures of anything they want. Here's what they take pictures of:

Me waking up in the morning.
Me in my pajamas.
Me without make up.
Me giving my husband a stern look.
The backs of my arms. I didn't know they were that fat.
Me, from behind, from the waist down. Just my butt and the backs of my legs. I didn't know they were that fat.
A very closeup picture of the back of my waist. I think you know how I felt about that.
Fourteen pictures of the baby chicks. From 15 feet away. I got doubles.
A picture of my very messy pantry. Seven times.
Me with my mouth hanging open. Wide. Just like the closeup of my waist.
Thirty-two extreme and very blurry closeups of each boy's ice cream sundae creation. Again, doubles.

I did get several pictures of both of the birthday boys blowing out the candles of their cakes. Several, because I got doubles.

Amazingly enough, I did not end up with a single picture of any boy's private parts. Not enough sugar, I guess.

A Natural Interest

Monet is 9. He's the first child I've had who I didn't insist on "teaching" him to spell. But somehow, he has this natural interest in spelling that amazes me. Right now, he's writing a miniature book about Christmas, and as I sat across from him, eating my lunch, he asked me to spell some of the harder words for him.

"How do you spell "straight?"

"S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T."

"I know how to spell 'said.'" He says.

"You do?"

"And I know how to spell 'by,' like 'by Monet,' and 'bye' like 'goodbye,' and 'buy,' like 'buy something.'"

"You're very smart!"

"So are you. You're the one who taught me."

Awwww. :-)

Hit the Ground Running

There are days when you wake up and you hit the ground running. Today is one of those days for me.

It's amazing how fast things can pile up. It seems that everywhere I look, there's a reminder of what I didn't do, can't do, should do, must do. For some reason, no matter how much I DO do (did I just say do do?) it's not enough. I go to bed exhausted every night, and I wake up exhausted every morning. Sometimes, I wonder if sleep is real, or if it's just an illusion and cruel joke that gives mothers hope for rest.

Yesterday, I spent the day working towards fulfilling one of my 101 in 1001 goals, to clean my room to my satisfaction once a week. I like the fact that it's to MY satisfaction, because that means I can stop whenever I'm satisfied. That means I can clean it until all of the underwear is ironed and folded, or I can stop when I've cleared a walking path to the computer. Since I worked at the local cheesehouse just about every weekday from early November on through the first of this year, and since we went for a week without electricity over the Christmas holiday, I haven't had a chance to clean my room to my satisfaction in about two months, even if that means clearing a path to the computer. So I put it on my list of things to do consistently for the next 1001 days.

I can't believe it's taking me so long. I worked on it on Monday. I worked on it most of the day on Tuesday. It's still not done. What are the main culprits? Laundry. Clothes that need to be stored. Even in this big, new house, I don't have enough storage, and the storage I do have isn't organized well enough to be perfectly useful. Don't let anyone fool you, even those slick "101 Tips for Organizing Your Life" magazines at the Wal*Mart checkout. There is no perfect storage solution. Well, there IS one. Don't own anything.

After lots of Windex, vacuuming, folding laundry and dusting, I finally got the majority of my bedroom clean. It's not to my satisfaction, yet, but I still have a few more days before the week is over. Besides, if I wait until tomorrow, my standards may have changed, and it may be just right.

In the mean time, the rest of the house is coming tumbling down.

Do you ever feel like you're just struggling to keep your head above water? Do you ever feel like you're constantly just trying to catch up?

Granted, I spent a lot of time yesterday just playing and laughing with the kids. Bard, Houdin and I spent a good hour just laying on my bed and laughing, laughing, laughing. I spent a lot of time working on my blog and updating my 101 in 1001 list. But not so much that I should have a sink full of dishes, a stack of laundry ten feet high, and a bed that STILL isn't made at 3:00 in the afternoon!

Sigh.

Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who made a list of things he wanted to do to better himself? Wasn't he the one who found that, no matter how hard you work to perfect one area of your life, another area suffers?

My bedroom is (mostly) clean.

The rest of my life is totally and completely suffering.

Maybe I'll spend the rest of the day in my room. Or at Wal*Mart. I could always use some more stuff I can't store. Or right here in front of the computer. Maybe I should have put that on my list. "Sit in front of the computer for six hours straight every day." I bet I could have met that goal easily. But then...

How long do you think it would take before my family actually got sick of the messes and cleaned them up...[gasp]...INDEPENDENTLY?!? Without being told?

::Looks around the computer room:: I don't have enough food and water in this room to survive that long. I'm not sure I have enough food and water IN THE HOUSE to survive that long. As a matter of fact, I don't know if there's enough food and water AT WAL*MART to survive that long.

Maybe I should just go back to laughing with my kids.

Houdin's First Gig

Today, I talked to a woman at our local senior center who was very thrilled at the prospect of having my 13 year old son, Houdin, perform magic tricks for the residents. We have an appointment for him to do a 1/2 hour or more performance next Thursday afternoon.

Houdin is way excited.

Broken Branches--A Plea to All Fathers

Broken Branches 

The Wednesday before Christmas, the weatherman promised sixteen to eighteen inches of snow. I was working at the local cheesehouse in the mail order department when the first few inches started to fall. Shortly after one o'clock, I put on my coat, gave a few instructions to Ashley and Ursula, and made my way down the spiral staircase that separated my little office in the tower from the rest of the building.

I was off to a hauling job.

About two months ago, I started taking appointments to haul Amish. To the doctor, to the grocery store, to their sister's house to make cookies. Wherever. I charge per mile with a small fee if I have to wait while they shop. Usually, I just shop, too. On that particular Wednesday, the young Amish mother that I would be hauling was taking her baby girl to the doctor.

It wasn't long after I had dropped Rachel off in front of the doctor's office that the snow really started to fall heavily. I hadn't seen a snow like this in many years, and it was as exciting as it was scary. A white Christmas! I thought. As long as we could get home in one piece, I might even look forward to being snowed in with my family for a few days. When the young Amish girl finished her doctor's appointment, we both headed to the local grocery store to stock up.

Before we had even driven the few miles from the grocery store to my passenger's house, the snow had completely covered the roads so that they were barely visible. People were creeping along in their vehicles and there were already several cars on the roadsides, stuck. Even my attempt to get home was thwarted. I had to park in a nearby driveway because I just couldn't get my van up the hill of a local back road. Thank God for a co-worker, who just happened to be going my way and stopped to give me a ride in his 4-wheel drive truck. I told him not to try to make it up my steep drive. He dropped me at the end of the long lane to my house, and I walked the rest of the way, the snow turning to sleet and pelting me hard in the face.

When I awoke the next morning, there was truly a winter wonderland glistening outside my bedroom window. It was a dangerously beautiful scene, and, before long, it became apparent that not only would we be staying home for the day--maybe even the weekend--but that we would be fighting to stay warm. Sometime in the night, the power had gone out. After listening to the local radio station, we found that the continuing ice storm had left most of our county without power, and that the problems were only increasing.

I made my way to the couch, snuggled under my grandmother-in-law's thick comforter, and I looked through our windows over the gorgeous glimmering countryside. Every branch was covered with a thick layer of ice, and the heavy sleet continued falling. When all was quiet, you could hear the limbs and branches cracking, breaking, falling all around the house, all through the woods. As I sat, I watched my oldest daughter Bard's favorite tree sag under the weight of it's burden. One by one, I wagered with myself over which branch would crack and fall next. Before it was all over, dozens of once-strong limbs lay on the ground around the roots of what had been a full and sturdy tree just two months ago.

I recalled these moments today, two and a half weeks after the power had gone out, a week and a half after it had returned. What brought the scene to mind was a single comment that my father made, something he undoubtedly thought was very funny.

Being the butt of the joke, I didn't find it funny at all.

My father's kind of amusement--this brand of comment--isn't knew to me. When I was a child, I heard my father shower his icy comments onto my mother's branches for many years, many times, and I watched as her strength gave way and her limbs broke under the weight of his words. It was all a game to him.

"Are you eating again? Neice! You'd better hide the fridge!" The branch bends.
"Where'd you get that outfit--Akron Tent and Awning?" The branch cracks.
"Don't make your mother mad. She might sit on ya." The branch falls to the ground.

The comments weren't always directed at my mom, either. My father would make remarks about other women, and he just couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut or supress a smart-alek comment if an overweight woman was in view.

"Woohoo! Did you see that big lady? Wouldn't wanna make her mad!"
"Wow! Look at that one! Hea-ea-ea-vy!"
"Get a load of Big Mama!"

I grew up listening to, embarrassed by, these demeaning comments almost daily. I never saw my father give my mother affection. I never heard my father speak about women with respect. Instead, every woman was either "kinda pretty" or "really heavy." Every woman, no matter her occupation, personality or lifestyle, was very verbally judged based on her appearance. She could be the first female president, the inventor of a life-saving vaccine, or the first female astronaut in space, and his only comment would be either, "Kinda pretty," or "Big Mama!" And while his comments were never directed at me--only because I was always grossly underweight, bordering on anorexic--it was very clear to me that being overweight was a condition for which to be demeaned and ridiculed by men.

Now I'm grown, my parents have long been divorced, and my mother is no longer living.

And I am no longer grossly underweight.

I've struggled with being overweight since the birth of my first child. Looking back on my postpartum body of 15 years ago, I realize that I was perfectly healthy. But being anything over 100 pounds, to me, was unacceptable. Instead of getting involved in a healthy lifestyle, I began to fast and binge. Now, after five children and fifteen years, my body is showing the consequences of my choices. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't worry about my health, my energy, but, most of all, my appearance. I can't help but think that my unhealthy body image comes greatly from my father's careless comments. Now that he lives with me, I hear them on a daily basis. He has never directed them towards me.

Until today.

This morning, an Amish neighbor called on the phone for me to discuss the details of the ride she needed for this evening. My dad answered the phone. There was a brief exchange that went something like this:

"Hello? Oh, hi Laura! Yeah! You want Denice? Boy, is she ever! Ha ha! Don't tell her I said that! Boy, would she give me heck!" My dad handed me the phone, laughing. I knew he had ridiculed me. He often makes fun of me for my child-rearing, my decision-making, my housekeeping...whatever he can find to jab at me. I took the phone and spoke to my neighbor, but I was instead distracted by my dad's voice as he bragged to my husband, Bohemian, about his juvenile comment:

"Ha! Laura asked if Denice was 'round! Ha! I told her, 'Boy, is she ever!' Laura said, 'Don't you tell her you said that!' Ha! Ha ha!"

I was crushed. I could feel my limbs sag under the weight of his icy words.

The amazing thing about ice storms is that it really doesn't matter how strong are the roots of the tree. It doesn't matter how much nourishment and rain it received through the spring, or how much sun and warmth it received through the summer, or how much mulch and protection it received through the fall. When the weight of an ice storm comes, the tree simply can't stand the stress. One by one, the branches bend, crack and fall. I even saw several that were completely uprooted, literally torn from the ground as if by a tornado.

My husband compliments me on a daily basis. He tells me that I'm beautiful. No, I'm not, I retort. He tells me that he loves me. Why? I challenge. He tells me that he finds me desirable, sexy, attractive. Yeah, right, I scoff. He showers his nourishment, his sunshine, his protection on me. And yet, it's the ice storm that my father brings that keeps coming to my mind every time I look at myself in the mirror. It's the chill and the sleet and the burden of that ice that weighs down my branches. I can't accept compliments. I can't believe that a man would love me. I reject my husband's compliments and his unconditional love, because I'm so certain that I'm not worthy of it. Intimacy, for me, is a constant struggle.

Fathers, don't kid yourselves. Don't underestimate the role you play in your daughter's growth. Every word you speak, whether to your daughters, your wives, or even about the people around you, soak directly into your growing child's roots. You have so much power in your words! You have the power to grow a strong, sturdy oak with a firm foundation and a beautiful crown, flourishing under a canopy of love and encouragement. Or you can produce or a deeply burdened, sagging, broken form whose roots simply can't bear the weight of winter, no matter how much others nourish and protect it.

I beg you, fathers. I beg you to reject the temptation to tear down your family with mockery and hurtful jesting and to instead choose wisdom and encouragement. Your children will flourish with your love. Your actions will matter for eternity.

And your family tree will thank you.

Books Bard has Read Recently

This is actually Bard posting at Mom's request. So hi everyone.

Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce,
Candle in the Darkness, Lynn Austin,
Fire by Night, Lynn Austin,
Secret of the Indian, Lynne Reid Banks (re-read),
Bud, Not Buddy, Christopher Paul Curtis,
Messenger, Lois Lowry,
Steven Spielberg, biography,
Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchet,
The Middle Moffat, Eleanor Estes (re-read),
Dragons in the Water, Madeline L'Engle (re-read).

I think that's pretty much it, though I may have forgotten a few re-reads. I'm about to read The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, and listening to The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun while I cross stitch.

As American as a Food Allergy...

This article , referred by MamaGeph at Still Odd, discusses how one school is handling a child's severe peanut allergy by segregating to one table all children who bring peanut butter sandwiches to school. Apparently, the child with the allergy is so deathly allergic that he doesn't have to actually ingest the peanut butter to be in severe danger. As a result, all of the other children in the school must be screened for peanut butter and made to sit in the "Peanut Gallery" if they are bringing PBJ in their lunch.

The parents of the child with the allergy issued the statement that ""he does not have to ingest it for his air to constrict and he loses the ability to breathe. We have the medical evidence that shows that our son has one of the worst allergies on record for this food."

First, this makes me wonder...if just sending your child to the lunchroom each day is a hazard to his health, why not keep that child out of the lunchroom? Why ostracize all of the other children because of one child's allergy?

Better yet, why not control the child's learning environment completely? I think you know what I'm getting at here. I know that many homeschooling parentsmake their decision to homeschool in part because of the potential dangers of some of the public school systems. So, if your child is highly allergic to a substance commonly found in his learning environment, a substance that could very well end his life, why not...ahem...change his learning environment? It seems like a perfectly reasonable option to me.

But the part of the article that caught my attention even more was this part:

"Food allergists say peanut allergies (search) among school-aged children have doubled to 400,000 over the last five years. They can't explain the spike but said it has caused more schools to creatively accommodate allergic students."

Doubled?? In the last five years, there are TWICE as many school-aged children allergic to peanuts? Food allergists can't explain the spike. It makes me wonder...what kind of research has been done? Has there been any extensive research on the kind of chemicals--herbicides and pesticides--that have been used to grow peanuts in the past, say, twenty years? After all, a peanut is a root and I would imagine that any chemicals they receive are systemic.

The sidebar of the article states that "C-Section babies are at risk for food allergies." Higher risk? Or just risk?

Now...get this: there is a possible cure for peanut, milk and wheat allergies. It's based on a foodborne bacteria called (pregnant women, hold onto your seats) Listeria. Listeria is one of the baddy bacteria we kill when we pasteurize milk. Huh. Imagine that. A cure for allergies in real, honest-to-goodness, raw whole milk.

The Weston A. Price foundation must be beside themselves with triumph. Not familiar with that organization? Check it out. And then find a raw-milk producer in your area and star t drinkin'!

Can YOU?

The HH's 101 in 1001: My 101 Things to Accomplish

The Happy Housewife did it! Can YOU?

Times Trials...

We're working on quick memorization of multiplication facts. Tonight, we did a time trial for our nines facts. Here's how it worked out:

Bohemian: 17 seconds
Me: 21 seconds
Bard: 52 seconds
Houdin: 1 minute, 7 seconds
Monet: 6 minutes, 32 seconds

Pop Quiz: How fast can you write your 9 times facts? Have someone write them in random order and time you!

Happy, Happy Anniversary

Today is my Crystal Anniversary. Yep, that's right. Fifteen complete and total years of marriage to my beloved Bohemian.
Since we didn't buy each other anything for Christmas, we're planning a romantic shopping trip for two. With no money.
Ah, well. At least we have each other.

Pop Quiz: If it were your Crystal Anniversary, what would you do? What would you buy for your beloved? What would you buy for yourself?

Pa is *SO* Hot!

I'm pretty amazed by the popularity of one of the Christmas gifts I gave my oldest daughter, Bard, this year. And it's not just popular with her...the whole family's nutty about it!

Earlier this year, we began reading the Little House on the Prairie books. Finishing them is on my 101 in 1,001 list. I told my kids how much I used to love the television show, starring Michael Landon. I looked up the series on NetFlix, and, sure enough, there it was. Before I could even get it on my queue, the kids had brought one of the DVDs home from the library. We watched the first show in Series One and they were hooked. I have to admit, I was hooked again, too. I had forgotten what an awesome show it was.

The problem came when my dad, who's not very particular about the movies he chooses, brought home a disc from Season 6. I laid down the law. No watching the series out of order! After all, what impact will it have when Mary goes blind? Or how can we fully appreciate what a scoundrel Nellie is when Laura pushes her down the hill in a wheelchair unless we watch all of the awful things Nellie has done to Laura over the years? No more Little House DVDs from the library, I said. You simply must wait until they come from NetFlix. My motivation was to get through the books first, so that they children could see that the television series really wasn't much like the book series at all.

What I didn't expect was how eager the kids were to get their hands on the rest of the DVDs. Bard, for one, was totally into Pa. "You didn't tell me Pa was so hot!" she said. To be honest, it never occured to me. I mean, when I was a kid, Pa was just...Pa. :-/ I wouldn't have minded having him for a dad, to be sure. But that's just because he was warm and loving and wise, which was, ahem, in stark contrast to my own father.

I did the bulk of my Christmas shopping in three places this year. I shopped at Toys R Us for a doll, stroller and play food for the little girls, a local educational toy store for Playmobil stuff, and Sam's Club, because they're so awesome. I bought the kids a cool treehouse playset there, as well as all of my wrapping paper and most of my holiday foods. When I walked into Sam's Club to do my shopping, I decided to check out the DVD aisle. Bard wanted Pirates of the Carribean, so I thought I'd see if they had it.

Nope. No Captain Jack Sparrow here. But, Aha! They do have some good ones.

• Elf, which is a new surprise favorite of mine ("I like smiling. Smiling's my favorite!")
• Miracle on 34th Street, the newer one with Richard Attenborough and that adorable Mara Wilson
• Christmas Classics, with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Frosty Returns, The Little Drummer Boy and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
• And...oh, what's this? The Little House on the Prairie series! Awesome! I buy Series 2 (about 18 hours of shows) immediately because they don't have Series 1 in stock. I find Series 1 later and buy it, too.

I'll tell ya what...these kids, from 15 year-old-Bard all the way down to almost-two-year-old The Baby have just LOVED these shows! I can totally not remember a time when my children literally CHEERED at the TV like they did during Founder's Day or yelled at the screen like they do at the love-to-hate-her Nellie Oelson.

That was awesome programming, don't you think? I'm not a big TV fan. In fact, we don't have cable, satellite or even television reception. Maybe I'm just being overly nostalgic. Are there ANY shows being produced currently that are as awesome and inspiring as Little House?

I highly doubt it.

What Is 101 in 1001?

What Is 101 in 1001?

I finished my list of 101 goals for the next 1,001 days, as I read about here and here. I'm keeping a blog of my progress here.

Wanna join me?