I think the biggest thing happening lately is that our oldest son is learning to drive.  He’s actually doing a pretty good job of it.  Last Saturday I took him driving in my little old truck, which has a 4-speed manual transmission.  The only other time he’s ever driven a stick was in his grandparent’s truck out in a hay field.  I gotta say I’m proud of him.  Not only was this the first time he drove a stick on the road, but I actually took him out on the highway for the first time too.  He does very well on the road – parking lots are a little scary.  He particularly needs to practice driving in reverse more.  I think I only yelled a couple of times :) and I sure laughed more than I yelled.  Anyone who drives a stick knows that starting off in first when pointing up-hill is tricky.  At one point he stalled 4 or 5 times trying to get out of a parking lot.  It got to be pretty silly.

William is getting to be more and more consistent with using the potty.  Only peeing so far, but going through two or three pull-ups a day is lots cheaper than a bunch of diapers.

Vincent is getting bigger and bigger – we think he’s got a tooth coming in, and he’s trying to roll.

Elizabeth will be taking first communion on the first Sunday of next month (if all goes as planned!).  Both Elizabeth and Teresa have cute new *short* hair cuts as well – nice for summer, but also nicer to brush as there are fewer tangles.

Julianna is really starting to talk more and more.  She asks for things and is starting to use multiple words together.  She also likes to sing “Old McDonald” and will sing out “E-I-E-I-O….COW!” :)

Allena has been running with me (and on her own) too, and is beginning to see the results with some slimming down.  We’ve both been trying to eat a little healthier too, and I think that’s helped.

On the farm, we have one doe left to kid, and one ewe (maybe) left to lamb – we’re not sure about the ewe.  I also managed to pretty much destroy the chicken coop trying to move it.  It’ll have to be re-built.  Meanwhile the chickens are all pretty pissed off.

So, that’s the update – anything going on in your lives, oh loyal readers? :)

My running is improving – this week I went for 35 minutes at a time, and ran for 5 minutes / walked for 1.  I only ran twice last week (I’m going to try to run today, hopefully that will work out).  I’m at the point where I *think* I could run a full mile without stopping (gasp!  how amazing!  lol).  Of course, Week 7 calls for running 2 miles.  As I said, I had to step back from the training schedule so that I’m only running 3 times per week instead of 4, to keep my shins from aching.  Week 7 may have to have a week 7a, 7b, and 7c just to build up to that full two miles :)

In other news, William has started using the potty with some consistency – he still goes through several pull-ups per day, but he’s using the potty as often as not.  Woot woot!

In other news, we went to the zoo today.  Springfield has a small but nice zoo and we bought a family pass so we’ll undoubtedly be going back before long.  I took several pictures with my cell phone – we’ll see how they look when I upload them.  I was able to get some remarkably close shots – the animals just felt like being near the observation points I guess.  If any turned out good, I’ll put ‘em up.

Well, our latest child failed to show up in time to save us a bunch of money – we’ll just have to pay the deductibles again. Easy come, easy go. He also failed to show up early enough to be “first baby of the year” which would have been a conversation piece at least. No, he’s decided to take his own sweet time and just come when he feels like it. I guess all babies are that way really, but it sure is making Allena uncomfortable.

We didn’t do anything exciting for New Year’s Eve – we figured out several years ago that the kids get up early even when we stay up late, so we were in bed by 10:00. True to form, Julianna was up at 6:00am, so our strategy paid off.

Anyway, I hope 2010 is a wonderful year for everyone, filled with many blessings!

It was a white Christmas for us here in Southwestern Missouri, but coooooold!  Brrrrrrr!  It was about 15 degrees today, and the wind was howling.  Needless to say we did not go outside to play in the snow.

It was also kind of a humble Christmas for us.  We did things a little differently this year.  We didn’t put up our Christmas tree until the 24th.  Heck, we didn’t even do any Christmas shopping until the 22nd.  We opened the vast majority of presents on Christmas eve – St. Nicholas only brought candy and one toy – a “Little People” nativity scene for the two youngest kids (although the older girls still play with it too).  Our Christmas day dinner is just a roasted chicken, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and some cranberry sauce.  We didn’t have lots of family over, or go to their house either.

We tried very much to keep Christmas (the day of Christ’s birth) separate from all the other things that we tend to get caught up with in the holidays.  Sadly, we weren’t able to go to Mass today – the roads were not in good shape, and Elizabeth was running a fever of 102, so we wouldn’t have gone regardless.

In any event, I thought it was a nice day…we’ll probably do it again this way next year too.

Once again, Merry Christmas to everyone!

After the appointment, it was near lunch time so we stopped in at Panera Bread, which is a nice bakery/sandwich/soup/salad type cafe.  They’re all over the place – most likely you’ve seen them.  We had soup and some delicious bread, and Dominic had a gigantic cinnamon roll, and the girls had some pastries, and everybody shared with everyone else.  Somehow the subject of how French people eat in courses and such came up, and the kids all agreed they’d like to try that.  So we bought a couple of extra baguettes at Panera to bring home, and tonight we ate like the French.

We started with fruit – slices of apple and pear, and bunches of grapes (hey, not a whole lot of variety this late in the season!).  Wine was served – a Chardonnay in the “table wine” class, but nice all the same.  We even let the kids try some.  Theirs was predominantly water with a little splash of wine in it.  They were *still* not impressed.  lol

Course number two was baked brie with almond slivers on top, served with the aforementioned baguettes.  We haven’t had that in a long time, but let me tell you it’s fantastic!  I’m sure it did terrible things to my cholesterol levels, and it was worth it all.

The third course was soup.  We actually found the recipe on line for Panera’s Broccoli Cheese Soup, and I must say it’s a very close match.  Highly tasty.

For desert, we got all the ingredients for crepes, but everybody was full by that time so perhaps we’ll make crepes for breakfast tomorrow?

It’s nice to eat in a different manner once in a while.  Dinner was at a very leisurely pace – we spent over an hour at the table just talking about food and things.  I can see why the French enjoy dining this way.

We still haven’t gotten around to making hasenpfeffer yet, but perhaps tomorrow night we’ll extend our international dining experience to cover Germany.  Anybody know how the typical German family sits down to dinner together?

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It is NOT rabbit stew.  The recipe looks WONDERFUL, and we will be trying it soon.  It’s apparently one of those dishes that everyone cooks just a little differently, but every recipe we looked at sounded outstanding.  Check out the Bavarian Grill for just one variety.

So why all this interest in hasenpfeffer?  Well, because we butchered some rabbits on the ol’ ranch last night (five of them) and we were searching around for good ways to prepare them.  Allena has fried rabbit before, and rabbit stew would be easy enough to figure out but we like to try new stuff.  Hasenpfeffer is definitely on the list – we only lack some dry wine to cook the sauce with and that will be acquired today.

We probably won’t make it until the weekend, but I’ll definitely let you know how it was.  Bon Appetit!

Elizabeth is definitely on the mend.  She does *not* want to lay around and rest, she wants to get outside and play.  She forgets that she’s still hurt, but gets the occasional reminder when somebody bumps her arm.  We keep telling her to go easy, but she must be using a different definition of “easy” than we are.  She has another appointment with the orthopedic surgeon today – I imagine she’ll have quite a few of these follow-ups to do x-rays on her elbow to ensure everything is mending correctly.  Very encouraging all-in-all.

My seizures are definitely coming under control.  Most days I have a handful (read: 10-20) of “shivers”, especially at the end of the day or during stressful times, but even if you were looking for them you’d never notice them.  I can feel them of course, but from the outside they’d be almost invisible.  I still have a bigger one once in a while but not daily any more.  Last Thursday (Friday? not sure), with the help of a couple of Benadryl, I slept through the entire night for the first time in about four months.  If you’ve never gone an extended period of time without a good nights sleep you don’t know how wonderful that really is!   I also got my blood tested last week to check the med-levels in it, so I hope to hear back on that today or tomorrow.  The doc may or may not increase my dosage depending on the results of that test.

I may still be on the emotional roller coaster – I may just be on an “up” part right now, but I’ll take it! ;)