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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Gavinism...5 Year Old Edition

The bottom line is...the kid comes up with some real gems....I'm reserving this space for the absolute best of the best. One of which occurred tonight. Let me set the stage....
We just said goodbye to a bunch of Chrissy's family: her mom, older sister, niece, twin sister, and 2 nephews who came up to visit the day after Christmas and spend a few days to celebrate Gavin's birthday (yesterday, the 27th.)...we just got done reading his bedtime books, brushed teeth, and were getting ready to say goodnight prayers when he and I had the following exchange:

Me: "Well, Gav...today was the first full day of you being 5 years old, how did it feel?"

Gavin: "Well, I know that I'm getting older because the segments of my fingers are bigger. You see this segment here? (pointing to the top part of his finger where the fingernail is), well...it used be down here....and you see this segment here? (pointing to the next knuckle down)well...it used to be way down here....also...my pinky finger is fatter than it used to be".

Me: "Wow...um...that's great man...let's say prayers."

The kid's something else. So's the girl...I may have to start an "Ivyism" tag...she's getting there. Throughout this weekend, she had multiple personalities....at any given moment she could have been Ivy, or Mary, or King David, or Joseph, or baby Jesus....It was kind of touch-and-go for a while...you'd have to figure our who she was or be forced to endure correction (by a 2 year old, I may add).

God Bless us, everyone.

I still can't believe my man turned 5 this week:


12-27-06


12-27-11

Keep going strong, big man...the Lord's got mighty things in store for you. But enjoy your ice cream first.

Christmas post and Relatives visit coming soon.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Here We Come A Wassailing....

Short Version:

2 years ago, our family walked across the street and Christmas Caroled to our neighbor. One and done.

1 year ago, our good friends, The Corbetts, joined us on vocals and mandolin as we serenaded 7 or 8 homes in the lower part of our neighborhood. We sang a tune or two to each house...many of which were very surprised and blessed by our gift of song.

This year....
14 of us went out to spread some Christmas Cheer to the Michael Lane/Wayne Ave. area of Dudley, MA.

We recently began attending a new church and have quickly become connected with some wonderful families.....families who love The Lord, and love each other...families that want to do right, honor Him, live and learn by His Bible alone, and enjoy time with one another. Tonight pretty much hit all of those points.

It was a great night for caroling....48 degrees...not too cold for folks to hold their doors open to listen to a song or two.
We went out with a pretty basic 3 song setlist:
1. Jingle Bells (we had 4 kids under 5 years old...they had a good time jingling bells and laughing all the way)
2. Hark The Herald Angels Sing: We HAD to add something about Christ in our set. Plus....I always get all rev'd up at the "Join The Triumph Of The Skies" part.
3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas...just a classic wassailing set-ender.

Our first practice was also our first caroling stop...the deck of my parents home....a dress rehearsal, if-you-will.

A little blurred with no flash but....you get the idea.

After that...we hit maybe 12 or 15 houses in our neighborhood. It's kind of funny....When you knock on some one's door unexpectedly in the night and then burst into song on their front lawn....our culture isn't used to that. So, usually, the first song is spent with the homeowners trying to pry family members away from the TV to come and listen and/or keeping their dogs from jumping through the glass storm door and tearing us to shreds. I will say that, by the middle of the second tune...every family we visited was on board and singing along. We even brought one woman to tears. Booya.
here's some random shots of us on the road:






We nominated Timmy Nault as our official caroling photographer...so...while He wasn't in most of our actual caroling shots...we had to pay him his due (complete with his kind-of-creepy, kind-of-cool fur hat):

Trust me...he's cool.

We even had a "Drive-by" caroling occur when a van that was driving down the street stopped to see what was going on...they got jumped with an unexpected "Jingle Bells" before they sped on their way.

Our night ended back at our home with delicious Hot Chocolate, tasty Winter Brews, lots more music, and lots more laughter. Easy....Simple....Perfect.

When I started facilitating drum circles years ago, I read and recited a quote from and African drum instructor, Babatunde Olatunji, who said :
"All people, from all walks of life, all colors, we have things that we can do together, and it's the simplest thing to make music and sing together..."

Add to that Psalm 147:1:
"Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him".

It was wonderful to bless our neighborhood with song this evening. It was even better to honor the Lord through good, happy, pure times of rejoicing this precious season with friends and family.
I am grateful for my friends, old and new, that I shared this night with. I am more grateful to celebrate the season...and to have honored The Lord...the Creator...who clothed Himself in His own creation...who came to us...and came to love, know, teach, guide, and inspire us.
I would love nothing more than to go back in time, to "join the triumph of the skies" and proclaim our Saviour's arrival with the angelic hosts.

Tonight may be as close as I'll ever get.

I'll take it.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

1st Annual Homeschool Christmas Program

I remember as a (public schooled) kid...basically being forced to participate in the annual Christmas pageant. I can remember over the years dressing as a Sugar Cookie (complete with pink rosy cheeks...which I'm still not happy about), also the Captain of the Toy Soldiers and, in 4th Grade, even getting a chance to perform as the big man himself...Santa. Add to that the countless shepherds and "Heavenly Hosts" choir members from church plays...I always loved being a shepherd...it was basically the "We've-Got-Too-Many-Kids-In-Our-Sunday-School-Class-So-We-Need-Fifteen-Of-Them-To-Be-Shepherds" corollary...which meant that you got to look cool in your shepherds get-up and carry a big stick...but you didn't actually have any lines....except maybe "Hark!" and then pretend to be scared when the angel shows up with his "good tidings of great joy".
Chrissy's Christmas pageant experience, as far as I know, starts and ends with her stunning performance as "The Monotone Angel" in a Christmas pageant around 4th or 5th grade...you'll have to ask her more about it for details.

Anyway...being a homeschooling family (granted, we are "homeschooling" a kindergartner and a Pre-K'er), it seemed only right to put on some sort of Christmas Program. So here we go:



Our Audience:

Our neighbor "Miss Nancy", our good friend Carol, and grandma 'n Pa. Now, by now, The Corbett's are reading this and saying "Hey, what gives??!!"...not to worry, you are in for an exclusive performance on Christmas eve :^)


Chrissy guiding the kids in their opening Scripture Recitation. "Hide The Word in their hearts..." know what I'm sayin'?


"Mary Had a Baby Boy" sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb".


Next up was the homegrown puppet show of the book "Room For a Little One". The kids nailed this. My favorite set piece is the angels in the upper corners of the nativity...On the left is Ivy's...to the right is Gavin's....Hand outlines for wings....foot outlines for bodies. The "hay" ain't bed, either.


Little Drummer Boy (and Girl)


Presentation of Gifts...."Gifts" being a homemade Christmas ornament and a card (with nothing inside it).

And last, but not least....

Every Christian Homeschool Christmas Pageant needs a birthday cake for Jesus, right? I mean...Christ gets honored...we all get to eat cake....everybody wins, right?

The night wasn't without it's mishaps, highlighted by Ivy, in the middle of the performance, completely lifting up her dress over her head to announce that she "had an itch".

We didn't photograph that.

Thank you to my wonderful wife who invests so much of herself into our Children. it is a true blessing to be able to leave for work everyday knowing that the hearts and minds of my children are left to be moulded by the hands of my amazingly capable and talented wife...as she uses her gifts and listens to the leading of The Holy Spirit...what an amazing blessing.

At the end of the night...I took a stroll around the house. I love our home the most at Christmastime. here's a few shots that I grabbed:


Our nativity. Every year, I get Chrissy a new piece...although we may have to curb that tradition as we are running out of space on our server.


From the dining room, towards our tree...with Christmas Card wall in the foreground.


From right in front of our Christmas tree...through the dining room, and into the sun room....with the fireplace in the background We love strings of lights...we keep them up year-round...as well as tea-lights. I've always been big on "mood lighting"....so wonderful...so relaxing....

"The blessing of The Lord, it maketh rich, and he add no sorrow with it" - Proverbs 10:22

He certainly ain't talking about legal tender.

Amen.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Wreathing Havoc

So...second year in a row...probably gonna become a family tradition....

The Leo Family Homegrown Christmas Wreath.

If you remember back a blog or two ago...the one about the 12 ft. tall Christmas tree...when all was said and done...I had a solid 5 foot of pine tree bottom sitting in my side yard. This became the greens for our 2011 Christmas wreath.


We started by setting up our dirty ghetto table in our dirty ghetto driveway...hey...that's how we roll 'round here, know what I'm sayin'?!
We used the octagonal frame that Gavin and I made out of scrap wood and "L" brackets last year. In this shot, Gavin is using some pliers to take out last years staples to get ready for this year's greens.


Starting to attach some greens.


The girls arrive with the lights.


Almost done with the greens. A quick side-note. To those who have a super keen eye for keen observation...you'd notice that during many blog posts and facebook update
photos throughout the past 2 1/2 years or so, I'm wearing the same ratty, washed-out, stretched-out long sleeve black T-shirt that you see in this photo. The truth is...I'm wearing this shirt inside out because on the front-side it says "50 Cent G-Unit" and has an icon of a bullet with wings. Not my style at all but...Truth is....
I bought this shirt at a thrift store for 3 bucks like 3 years ago....and being a big, fat dude....this shirt has been key in some hardcore snow removal, gun-range shooting, and overall cold-weather protection over the last 2+ years or so...I can't begin to describe how comfortable this shirt is...It's getting a bit gnarly these days...but I'm not-at-all ready to get rid of it. It continues to be a key component to my Winter Well-Being...Anyhow...let's get back to the topic on hand....


The girl with the bow.


Stapling up some serious Winter-Berries...We're almost there.

A silly little basket-head...]

So....with greens, lights, pine cones, and berries attached....

Here's what she looked like all set up:


...and here's what she looked like come nightfall:




Blessed and thankful for the Lord's guidance, peace, and provision.....and praying the same for you and yours this Christmas season and into the New Year.

Merry, Merry Christmas,

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Stamping a Moment in Time

There are eras/days/events/hours that you wish you would never have to live again.
There are eras/days/events/hours that you never think about after they happen...just a flash in the pan, then dissolve into some distant memory that you may or may never recall throughout your life.
There are eras/days/events/hours that are so important/epic/life-changing that you will forever use them to mark life-long changes in your path through life.
There are eras/days/events/hours that you just want to look back on fondly because they were just pretty awesome.

Tonight falls into the last category.

To make along story short:

Chrissy went out to do some Christmas shopping tonight. It was me and the two little ones for the bulk of the evening. Some things to note:

It's Christmastime.

It's the first night in 2 weeks that it's even felt "Christmasy" and chilly.

I had this night planned and in the bag from the get go....complete with a night-before stop to WalMart for supplies.

We made These:


Watched This:


I hung out with Them:


I drank one of These:


While curling up next to This:


Simple. Fun. Family. That's just about all I need.

Merriest of Merrys to you!

God Bless.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Extreme Tree Trimming

Well...like many others...this weekend was the weekend to procure the family Christmas tree. I posted a similar post last year:

http://findtheblueheron.blogspot.com/2010/12/tree-trimmingliterally.html

about our exploits in securing our tree. This year was much of the same....same place: (a guy right in our town who's got a couple acres with trees planted on it)
same date: (first weekend in December)
Not-quite-the-same price: he went up from $25 to $30...but, in the end, I'm still supporting a local brother
same harvesting means: hand saws are for chumps....I say let the Stihl do the work.
same over sized tree: refer to the pictures below for explanation.


WE FOUND IT!! Now..a couple of factoids to bring up.

1. I'm 6'2"
2. The top of the tree is nowhere in sight in this photo
3. We have 8' ceilings in our Living Room

The reality is...the guy who we get our trees from has trees that are 3 feet tall and trees that are 23 feet tall...and all of them cost the same price. This adds an interesting element to choosing a tree because you are in the unique position of not necessarily selecting a tree, but selecting a part of a tree...last year we cut ourselves an 11' tall tree, lopped the top off of it, then shaped the bottom of it into a nice Christmas tree shape. This year, it was just the opposite. Chrissy spotted this one and decided that the top half was a keeper. Around here, we don't just TRIM the three....we chop that mother in half.

So, I fired up the ole chainsaw ant let 'er rip:

which elicited this response from my daughter:

shock, terror, and sadness at the fact that I just chopped it down. She's, by nature, a nurturer, and fell in love with our tree as it stood in the field...she had a real hard time understanding that it had to get cut down in order for it to be brought home and put up in our house. She came around, eventually.


Loading her up onto the tractor. One of the nice things about buying a tree here is that the owner comes out in his tractor and trailer and hauls the tree out of the field right to your care for you...now heavy lifting.

Gavin made sure that the tree was secure during it's trip from the field to our van.

just a cool shot that Chrissy took.

Once we got it to the van...we loaded it onto the roof rack. I had to snap a pic because this thing was a giant root ball away from being the Griswold Family Christmas Tree:


Which stirred up the quote:
"Dad...that tree wouldn't fit in our yard".
"It's not going in our yard, Russ, it's going in our living room".

During the trimming and shaping portion of our afternoon, there was also a very aptly quoted:
"...little full....lotta sap".

At any rate...when the sawdust cleared, we were, as usual, left with a nice little Leo Family Christmas tree:


May all your Christmases be white...we'll bring you some figgy pudding...for auld lange syne...deck your halls...laugh all the way...come and behold him...and all that stuff.

Merry Christmas from The Leo's

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Homegrown for the Holidays Pt. 1

O.k. so, before I get to my main point, let me quickly mention this....The Leo Family Coat Drive....with Gavin in "Kindergarten", thus officially labeling us a "Homeschooling" family...we thought that an annual holiday service project would be right for our family. We decided to hold a Coat Drive...which basically amounted to us sticking fliers in our neighbor's mailboxes asking for them to donate used coats that we would, in turn, donate, to those in need in our area. Well...last Saturday, we went around and collected the coats...then Chrissy and the kids spent the last couple days using this outreach as a teaching tool.....ethics, Bible, math, graphing....Go HomeSchool!!

Graphing the number and type of coat we received.


Our Big Score!! We're starting our own movement...it's called OccupyYellowCoat. So far we have to people onboard but willing to recruit more :^). It was a nice experience for the kids...We are going to try to do some sort of service project every holiday season.

Now...on to the meat of this post.

Christmas....such a wonderful time for many...such a stressful time for many more. Our family has definitely had our fair share of both. In years past, we have definitely over-spent on presents for our kids....just heaping junk on top of junk that ends up being meaningless. A few years ago...Chrissy and I came to a decision...
Let's slow it down....let's buy just a few things for the kids, and let's commit to making one thing for each of them ourselves. Past home-made gifts have included painting/cooking aprons, musical instruments, a toy wooden musket. This year, our home-made toy wasn't a "from scratch" product as much as it was a refurbished piece that my folks had grabbed from a yard sale:

An old-school puppet theatre.

My mom and dad had found this thing at a yard sale a few years ago for like 5 bucks. It's definitely home-made. And whoever fabricated this thing spent some time on it. It's very well made, with lots of little structural considerations that tell me that whoever designed/built this thing knew what they were doing and decided to take some extra steps to make it right. Notched shelving, rounded corners, proper bracing....this thing was built to last.
When we got it...our kids were much too young to be able to fully enjoy it so we stashed it in the back of our garage and kept it out of sight. Gavin and Ivy are getting older and play so well together...it just seemed right that this was the year to put some work into this thing and bring it back to life....here's where I am so far:
Before:


After: cleaned, sanded, primed, and ready for new paint:



Not quite sure what kind of paint job I'm going to put on this thing....perhaps some country-cool scene a la Lancaster County, PA with rolling hills and farmland...or perhaps some sort of sun/moon day/night mural...I'll have to wait until inspiration strikes. Chrissy plans to sew up some new curtains based on whatever theme I end up going with...I guess I'd better lock it down soon and get painting....

More to come.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

No Soap Radio

So...this blog is about sharing a Leo Family practice...making our own laundry soap. We've been making our own soap for about 4 years now, and I can't imagine ever going back to the store bought stuff. We're able to make the stuff for a FRACTION of what it costs to buy it. (I mean....what would cost you 7 or 8 bucks for a thing of Tide can be made for pennies...AND...it works just as well.) There's lots of parts of the process of making this soap that the kids can help out with, which is nice...It's all natural...not to say that you could sit and drink it but...it contains no artificial dyes or fragrances...now, that being said, it's important to note that this soap does not have ANY scent...so, if you LOVE your clothes coming out of the laundry smelling like "Spring Rain" or "Honeysuckle Blossoms" well then...I don't know what to tell you (actually...more on this in a minute).
Before I lay down the recipe/process, let me just say that I am definitely not taking credit for this....there are hundreds of variations of this same basic recipe all over the Internet. I have tweaked my own recipe to a degree, which has never let me down (even in taking care of the "funkiest" cloth diaper). It works great as a pre-treater, as well. Some folks have asked me if it works in front loading washers....which I do not have....but I DO know that I've seen an episode of The Duggar's where they make laundry soap using a very similar recipe...and they use front loading washers so I'll assume that it's o.k. but if you have a front loader, you may want to do a bit more research. Alright...here's how it's done (at least in our home):

You will need these dry ingredients:


Fels Naptha bar soap
Borax
Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
(the handsome 4 year old is optional :^)
*remember when I said that the soap has no scent? Well, I've seen some recipes where people add some essential oils....maybe lavender or tea tree oil. We don't do this, so I wouldn't know how much to tell you to add but I'm sure that you could dig around online and find out more.
**Also I should note that not all of these ingredients are carried in every grocery store....you may need to check around....I know that Market Basket has all 3 ingredients...but you can talk to your grocery store manager and they can start to carry these items in your local grocery store if you request them. I did this at the Price Chopper in Webster.

This recipe yields 3 gallons of soap at a time and is a slightly more concentrated soap than most of what I've seen elsewhere online. We need a strong laundry soap around here...we work hard...we play hard...we poop hard.

Wow...that was gross. let's just move on.

You will also need:
A big cooking Pot
1 wooden spoon
1 cup measuring cup
cheese grater
big plastic bucket (preferably with a lid w/ a pour spout)
Something to mix up the soap with (more on this later)

Here's a pic of the first 2 steps:


STEP 1: Fill the big cooking pot about 2/3 of the way with water and cover...bring to a boil. It doesn't matter exactly how much water is in the pot because you are basically going to cook up a concentrate that you will later add to more water to bring it up to the correct final volume of 3 gallons.
STEP 2: Grate the entire bar of Fels Naptha using the largest side of the cheese grater (watch those knuckles). When you are done grating, you should have a pile of something that more or less looks like this:



Step 3: Once the water boils, roll back the heat to medium and add the grated Fels Naptha. At this point you are going to have to stay pretty close to the pot....as there is a tendency for this stuff to boil over if left unattended. Use the wooden spoon and stir, stir, stir until the Fels Naptha is melted. Keep an eye on the heat...if the boil gets too aggressive, tone the heat down.
STEP 4: Once the Fels Naptha is melted, add 1 cup of the borax (slowly...adding it too fast can cause it to bubble over) and stir, stir, stir until the mixture feels fluid and not grainy at all.

Ivy getting ready to measure out some stuff.

Step 5: add 1 cup of the A&H Super Washing Soda in the same manner as the Borax.

Once the mixture is fluid with no graininess at all, kill the heat. Let it sit in the pot a minute.

Step 6: Add a gallon or so of COLD water to the bucket that you will be storing the soap in. Our bucket looks like this:

The fact that it has a pour spout on top is key. It makes the process so much easier. i think that this bucket used to carry Drive Train Oil...I think we got it from some local machine shop. At any rate, you should be able to pick up something similar at Home Depot or whatever.
STEP 7: Add the completed soap concentrate to the cold water in the bucket. Stir. I marked the 3 gallon volume on my bucket with a Sharpie so, at this point, I just use more cold water to fill the bucket to the right height.
STEP 8: Stick the lid back on the bucket...let sit for 12/24 hours.

After you let the soap sit...it basically sets up into a big gelatinous mass (kind of like when you refrigerate real turkey gravy...you know, all wiggly and gross?)
Now...here comes one of the last steps...breaking up this mass into a liquid. Now, keep in mind that this is not going to become a syrupy blue liquid like store-bought stuff, but rather a pale-yellow, kind of watery, kind of chunky slop. But, no worries, because it is all good once it's in the washing machine doing it's job.

STEP 9: Mixing up the soap.
I used to just use a large wooden stick to swish around and break up the chunks as best as I could. It worked o.k. but I was constantly clogging up the pour spout of the bucket with globby chunks that were too big to fit through. About 2 years ago, I switched to this contraption and life got much easier:

What you've got here is a big cordless drill with an attachment that is designed to mix up 5 gallon buckets of paint (can be found at any Home Improvement or Paint store) being wielded by a feisty 2 year old. Now..if you go this route, keep this in mind:
Make sure that the chuck (or, in layman's terms: the part where the drill bit goes into) of the drill will open up large enough to accept whatever stirring attachment that you decide to go with. I have 3 drills, and my stirrer only will fit onto 1 of them. Mix until it is as fluid as you can get it.
STEP 10: Keeping the Soap.
It is quite heavy and cumbersome to pour the soap from the big bucket right into the washer every time so I have kept a couple of old Tide bottles that I fill with my soap (this is where the pour spout on the bucket is KEY). Some folks might use empty milk jugs.
Some folks might make smaller batches of soap and not have to worry about this step at all.

Use it in the same amount that you would use store bought stuff.

And there you have it. Now...all that being said...if you ask 100 people who make laundry soap how they do it...you will probably get 100 different answers. It all comes down to how much you need, how strong you want it to be, and what you will be using it for. This recipe that we use has taken several years to fine tune.

I've never sat down and figured out on exact cost analysis of what I save by making this but, I can tell you that a bar of Fels Naptha costs about a buck-fifty. The Washing Soda and Borax cost about $3 a box, and each box probably has 12-15 cups in each...so...I figure that, give or take, I can make 3 gallons of my stuff for under 2 bucks....whereas it would cost me upwards of 30-40 bucks to buy the same amount at a store. That's savings I can't pass up.

I certainly believe that, for my family, making our own soap is something that helps us stay in obedience of the many scriptures about being skilled, resourceful, and good stewards of our money and time. It is something that my family does together...it is (most times) a blessing rather than a chore. I hope that you give it a shot and reap the same benefits (and $avings as our family has).

Happy Soaping.