Unfortunate truth.

The cleaner my house is, the more the kids have been fighting.  If they can't solve their problems civilly, that is, without saying things like "I hate you" and "I wish you were never born", without squeezing in a good sucker punch, or without requiring mother's intervention, those involved acquire an extra chore for the day.  My house isn't immaculate.  I guess that's a good sign.   But it ain't a wreck, either.

Father's day.

Apparently, Tim and I don't take an abundance of pictures of each other.  We'll have to improve at that.  Or not.  So here's a token one from an April bowling outing we had:




In any case, once I got a picture of Tim's Father's Day breakfast in bed, the day slipped through our fingers and I've no record of the delicious steak dinner, or the chocolate banana cream pie, or the family games we played, or the little moments in which we celebrated dad.  He's really our hero.  I mean, who can be father to four crazy girls (and married to another one) and not be superhuman in some fashion?

Happy Father's Day, my dear!  We love you!

Strawberry season.

Rachel's been dubbed the official strawberry-picker of the season.  She invites each person who enters our yard (and sometimes innocent passersby, too) to delight in the harvest of our healthy strawberry patch.  The berries are tiny, but delicious.  And regrettably, I haven't eaten too many this year.  But to those of you who have, I hope they're good - and no, I'm not bitter.

Even if Rachel weren't so generous in her offerings, we still would not produce enough to preserve, so every so often, we hit up the nearest strawberry farm (or farthest, as was the case this year), put the little ones to work, add a whole lot of sugar and voila! Jars of jam for the taking.  This year we put up 14 half-pints and 4 pints.  Not too shabby.

(What's a photo gallery without a little crack to show for it?)

A whole new world.

Ever since Rachel's debut on a two-wheeler a couple of weeks ago, we've explored places previously unaccessible to us due to the fact that I had to single-handedly lug a tag-along bike with an attached bike trailer behind me.  It was too bulky, and frankly, not worth it most of the time.  We now ride many places.  One of our favorites is the Oregon Trail Reserve close to our home.  This area is not new to us, but it might as well be, because we are experiencing it for the first time as off-road bicyclists. 

With the wind in our faces, the thrill of navigating a narrow dirt path replete with continuous ups and downs and a stunning river view to boot, each of us let out a squeal of delight with a promise to return often.  We've been back three times since then.   Here we are at the trailhead.

What's for dinner?

(The following is a lengthy and possibly boring explanation of menu-planning at our house, designed for posterity - since I'm sure I, like my own mother, will have forgotten almost everything about daily life as a homemaker in about 20 years.)

My dad once told me about his mother's system for meal-planning.  If I know my Grandma J, I believe she had countless systems in place to keep order  It was her middle name, after all.  By my dad's description, grandma established a 30 day meal plan, one in which she rotated through the same thirty meals month after month.  I've no doubt it gave her a lot of peace of mind to have everything worked out in advance so that all she need do was ensure that her grocery list matched up and she could call it good.  Talk about efficiency.

It wouldn't work in our home (love you grandma:).  Yes, I too, aspire for order, I get giddy over systems and charts, but, if there's anything I've learned as a mother, it is that plans and flexibility go hand in hand.  My menu planning techniques are based more on reducing waste, cutting costs, and eating a variety of foods than having everything perfectly mapped out for the rest of my life (though it does sound dreamy, doesn't it?).

So here's how we do it at my house:

1.  At the beginning of each week, I take a peek in my fridge to make note of the perishable items begging to be used.  I plan several or all of my meals around using up these ingredients.  Cookbooks with good indexes are key to finding recipes that fit the bill.  So is the internet.  What did we ever do without it?
2.  Sometimes the recipes I find require that I purchase additional ingredients - I add those to my shopping list and make a plan to go to the store within the week, if necessary.  If it's not necessary - hurray for me!  And my budget.
3.   I try to plan 4-5 meals per week, one leftover night, and one breakfast for dinner meal.  Much of the time, our meals serve enough people to freeze what's left for a later date. At least two of our meals every week are vegetarian.
4.   My meat comes straight from the farm, with only a few exceptions.  I just bought a third of a cow - which lasts our family over two years.  The meat is delicious and forces me to get creative in my cooking.  Anyone know what to do with soup bones?  I also buy my chicken wholesale, and the rest of my meat I dig up from the reduced-price section at the grocery store.  I invested in a chest freezer a few years ago, which keeps everyone happy.
5.  I buy the non-perishable stuff only on screaming deals.  I splurge a bit on fresh produce - except during the summer, when our garden provides enough to offset the cost of our indulgence in things organic.  If I were really cheap, I would eat only canned and frozen goods throughout the winter, but I suppose I'm a sucker for things out of season.
6.    When I'm feeling really frugal, I make as much as I possibly can from scratch.  Bread, granola bars, pasta noodles, egg rolls, you name it.  I freeze them for future meals.  The way I figure, I'm spending a fraction of what it would cost to buy the same item of reduced quality at the store.  Now, if only I could squeeze a couple more hours out of my day to do it all the time.

In summary, plan meals around perishable items, eat your leftovers, buy meat in bulk, be a vegetarian some days, plant a garden, cook from scratch, and buy non-perishable stuff on sale with coupons.  It may not be as neat and tidy as my grandmother's plan, but it's definitely cheaper.  And likely healthier, too.

That time that confessing my religion got me out of sitting on a jury.

This week I fulfilled my civic duty.  I pawned all four of my children off to four different families so I could spend 3 hours answering questions that would, ultimately result in my being released from jury duty.  About 15 years from now, it's highly possible that would truly enjoy sitting on a jury.  Just not today.  I spent a few minutes last night googling ways to get out of jury service only to find that my integrity, sense of duty and candor would not permit me to adhere to any of the suggestions I found.  Darned principles.

As it turns out, my religion just might have been the ticket.  Apparently, Latter-day Saints are incapable of being impartial.  Actually, I'm sure it had more to do with luck than anything else, but I kind of like the fact that my religion was brought up during the questioning so I'm going with it.  Tim says I should sue for discrimination.  I'll settle for a bowl of ice cream.

Getting into a groove.

I love summer.  Love, with reservations, that is.  I fully anticipate having all four of my kids home all day - the adventures we'll encounter, the endless hours outdoors, the lack of schedules that allow me more control over each day... I could go on and on.  And yet... each summer I force myself to be patient as we all adjust to being together all day.  Every day.  For three months.  Life is not always rosy those first few weeks.  In fact, sometimes it can take the wind out of my sails completely.  None of us get enough sleep, the fighting is intense, my children think that since they no longer allocate seven hours of their day to school that each and every moment they are entitled to play, watch movies, and avoid chores altogether.  We've had plenty of fun moments, to be sure.  But the contention somehow seems to eclipse all that for me.  In the meantime, I'll just have to grin and bear it.

Art gallery.

In my efforts to create a Christ-centered home, I've had a goal to fill at least one wall per month this year with something meaningful.  Not an overly ambitious goal, I suppose, but when you consider that I intend to spend very little money, reuse items I already own, and rely on my own creativity (limited, at best) and not a Pottery Barn catalog to accomplish said goal, it seems a bit more lofty.  Hence, I have completed only three walls so far in 2012.  Oh well.

The latest was, by far, the easiest.  I used three small planks of hardwood, leftover from the floors we put in at our rental property, leftover paint, and nine clothespins.  Here's the mentality behind it:  the kids' artwork used to end up in a box in a corner of the kitchen, where it lingered until full.  Then, we'd go through it, pick out the most treasured pieces, and insert them in the kids' art binders for safekeeping.  Now, we have a way of actually displaying some of them until the meet their banishment to "the art box".  Presenting the Egbert Family Art Gallery:

The End.

Whirlwind weekend.

Rachel had her last day of Joy School on Thursday.  The big kids got out on Friday.  Rachel spent their last morning of school learning this:

Phew!  Riding to kindergarten is going to be a cinch now that I only have one child in a bike trailer in tow.  She even rode half way to school to pick the girls up that afternoon.  They were floored.

Saturday morning the two oldest girls ran the Capitol Classic.  A mile run down Capitol Boulevard.  Lily's motivation was, of course, the treats.  Both girls gave it their best and I loved cheering them on (and all the other runners, too).  When we met up afterwards, both girls immediately said, "Can we do this next year?"  Who knew I could give birth to a couple of runners?

Eve, Rachel and I staked out a shady spot on the sidewalk that looked promising.

Anna in the distance.

Lily, who sped up so that she could wave.  This was the resulting picture:

Both girls after the race.  Lucky them, they inherited their mother's inability to sweat/turns red in the face during exertion.

And finally, Rachel graduated from Joy School that afternoon.  I am so blessed that I manage to sucker

recruit such awesome moms to teach with me every year.  I love teaching, but I also love knowing that I am sending my daughters off to teachers with whom I share values and whom I can trust to give my children an enriching preschool experience.  Rachel, having been indoctrinated since birth in the ways of Joy School was, not surprisingly, ecstatic to participate each week and grew immensely this year.  Congratulations Rachel!

And that's a wrap.  On to summer!