Allison

Allison is our little drama queen. She's excited to be in preschool again and is busy working on learning her letters. We are often answering questions of "how do you spell..." and helping her sound out words and write letters. Allison's a lefty and her favorite color is PINK. She is definitely a 4 year old girl!

Hint, hint

Allison often has a roundabout way of getting her message across. She always knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it, but sometimes makes you guess what it is. For example, as we pass Dairy Queen on the way home we might hear, "I really like icecream....pink icecream is my favorite!" When we don't catch on to her hint, she continues to offer easier ones until we finally get it. Often she will ask questions that she already knows the answer to (kind of like the sunday school teacher that only has one answer in mind and dismisses all others until you get the one they were thinking of). Offering a choice of toys or food she asks, "Which one do you want?" knowing full well which she is going to allow you to have. Another one I hear all the time is, "Mom, what should I do that's really fun?" After several of my suggestions are shot down I ask her what she thinks she should do. Of course she already had something else in mind and responds, "Well, I was thinking we should....."

And the winner is...

Allison is one competitive kid. Contrary to popular belief, winning IS everything. She loves any kind of competition that involves "who can _____ first?" or "who is the fastest ____?" This can be quite helpful in situations like bedtime (putting on pj's, brushing teeth, etc...she even insists on saying her prayers first, before Lauren). The other night when I was cutting up some veggies for dinner she got the timer out. "OK mom, you have to cut up the whole carrot before it beeps!"

Lauren

Lauren keeps things interesting around our house. Although I think she would rather be at preschool with Allison in the morning, she serves as a great little helper to me. Sometimes she gets a little frustrated with the imbalance of attention as Megan's needs are often more pressing than hers but overall she has been a great big sister. And of course, she has mastered being an annoying little sister to Allison and loves to push all her buttons. Lauren hates bugs, thunder, and feathers.

Latest obsession
Lauren has a new best friend: Dora the Explorer. This discovery was made about a week ago when Allison picked out a Dora DVD to borrow for a week from the library. I turned it on for the kids to watch and went to clean the kitchen. After a while I found that Lauren had discovered which button to push on the remote to play it again. And again. And again. No wonder she had stayed quiet for so long. Normally she gets bored of watching TV pretty quick...but no, not with D-D-D-D-DORA! When she's watching, you'll hear it from the other room--random words shouted out at the TV. Anyone who's seen the show before, I think you'll know what I'm talking about. Hey, it's better than Polka-dot Shorts. Maybe.

A little bathroom humor
As much as I hate potty training, we have reached that time with Lauren. No, she hasn't just figured it out on her own as I was hoping, but she was showing enough interest that I thought I better move on it. So here we are again. We are taking it pretty low-key at this point, and she has done well so far. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here is a picture of the chart I made for her.



What can I say...she can't read, so I made pictures instead! She has done great with it. One "enimen" (m&m) for trying (empty potty), two for "pee-pee" and three for "poop". Sorry, I didn't mean for this to get gross but hey, we're talking about potty training, what can you expect? We track her progress with stickers, and at the beginning there was a heavy imbalance on the empty toilet column, but now the middle column is catching up. So here's my funny story...at least, I thought it was funny. The first time she earned a sticker in the last column, she stood up, turned around, looked in, and announced, "It's a pine cone!!"

Megan

Megan's a growing girl! At 3.5 months she weighs in at over 14 pounds. At her last doctor appointment she was labelled a "well balanced baby," measuring in at 75% for weight, height, and head circumference. She is a strong little girl and likes to practice standing up. Megan is gearing up for her first surgery on October 9th.

Two little hands
Now that Megan has discovered her hands, she loves to grab anything and everything she can get a hold of. She likes to play with little toys and babies. Most of all, she likes to grab mom's hair. And what does she do with it? Eat it, of course! Since she can't keep a pacifier in her mouth, she loves to suck on her hands to pacify herself--sometimes both at the same time. We are pretty sure she will not be happy when she has to wear arm restraints after her upcoming surgery!

Sleeping woes

After what seemed like a good start to sleeping through the night, Megan has not slept well since we returned from our trip to Utah. We're not quite sure what the hold-up is, but lately she has been getting up not once, but twice in the night. We're hoping for some reprieve soon, but at this point we know she will get messed up after her surgery soon anyway. Hopefully she will figure it out sooner than later! We still like her, though :)

We are excited to have Megan in our family!

Family updates

I thought maybe it was time for some updates of each member of our family just to catch up on the latest at our house. So here is the beginning of a series of posts to follow over the next few days...

Adventures in wheat

Realizing that I am probably the only one interested in this, I'm still going to post about it because, well, I think it's interesting. So here it goes...

In an attempt to work on our food storage and emergency preparedness, we decided to purchase a wheat grinder. When we were married, we inherited a bunch of wheat--for which we were very grateful, but had no way to actually use it. As newlywed college students, we had little desire (or time) to be grinding wheat and making our own bread. Since then, our boxes of wheat cans have served a very important purpose: holding up our bed. It seems that recently there has been a real push for emergency preparedness (I know there always has been, but it feels like it is getting increasingly more important) so we are in a process to get our family better prepared.

I know there are many ways of going about food storage and every family's needs are a little different. One principle I do want to follow is the "Store what you eat--Eat what you store" rule. I figured if we ever HAD to use our wheat, we would be in real trouble, since we didn't have any way to grind it. And besides that, we haven't ever made anything with it before. After searching for the best grinding solution I decided to get two grinders--One hand crank mill (can be used without electricity) and a grain mill attachment for my beloved mixer. The cost of these two ended up being less than an electric mill and served a dual purpose.

Now comes the experiment!

First we used the hand crank mill to grind enough flour to make one loaf of bread. This takes a considerable amount of time, but I figure that if we are in a situation where we need to actually use this, we will have nothing better to do anyway, right? I was actually a little surprised at how fine we were able to get the flour with a little hand mill. We sifted the larger pieces out and put them through the mill again which helped a little, but to make any difference you have to do this process quite a few times. I made one loaf of bread with this flour, kneading by hand. The result was pleasantly surprising and rated "pretty good" by Allison. I was expecting a brick to come out of the oven, but it was actually quite edible.

Our hand mill is called the "Back to Basics Grain Mill" and we bought it for about $45 on eBay.

Next, I used the KitchenAid grain mill attachment to grind enough flour for two loaves. This process was not only faster but much less tiring :) The flour was noticeably finer, but not quite as fine as commercially ground whole wheat flour. I mixed the dough in the mixer. The result was very similar to the first loaf. In fact, there was not much difference at all between the two, which surprised me a little.

Last, I made two more loaves of whole wheat bread using commercially ground flour. I mixed the dough in the mixer. The bread here did seem a bit softer, rose slightly more, and was oh-so-good. I am not sure if I was just hungry, but I ate close to half a loaf of it when it came out of the oven (slathered with butter, of course)!

I had never made whole wheat bread before--just half and half mixtures with white flour. I was a little surprised how different it was to work with the dough. Now I just need to experiment with different recipes and get used to working with it. Anybody have a great (simple) recipe for whole wheat bread?

Of course, if we start using our wheat supply we will need to rotate some more in--otherwise, how will we keep our bed up??

Gustav update

Here's the latest from Louisiana...

Dad was able to get to the house today and reports it is in good condition. There was very little damage to the house and even the little tree in front was still standing. He hooked up the generator to the deep freeze to hopefully save everything in there. He is still staying with the bishop's family, and technically is still not allowed into Houma yet. Since power is completely out in the area, other services are also not available which makes it unsafe for the general public to re-enter. They are saying that it could be weeks before power is restored to everyone. Starting Friday they will be enforcing a strict curfew of 6am-8pm in Houma so residents can return to their homes and assess the damage, etc. Residents are encouraged not to stay past 8pm. Dad reports that he spent 2.5 hours waiting in line at the gas station today, with 90 cars ahead of him.

Given the current circumstances, Mom has decided to hang out with us here in Indiana a little longer (since we at least have power, clean water and A/C). After calling the airlines today they told us to just call back when we knew when she wanted to return and they would reschedule her ticket at no charge.

For more information, we have found the local newspaper to be most informative with updates.

First day of pre-school

Hurray! Today was the first day back to pre-school for Allison. She's moved up to the 4-year-old class, which means 3 days a week for her now. I think we are all excited about this...except maybe Lauren who was hopeful that she could go to preschool this year as well. Sorry Lauren, one more year of waiting for you! Allison seemed to enjoy her first day back and is ready to go back tomorrow.

Hurricane Gustav

There have been some inquiries about Gustav and Julie's parents...here is an update, for those interested:

As some of you know, Julie's parents live in Houma, Louisiana. As it turns out, Houma took a direct hit from the hurricane and seems to have caught some of the worst of it. Mom Tew just happened to be visiting here for the weekend (for the blueberry festival--see post below). She got here before the storm came in and was supposed to fly back tonight (Tuesday). Dad got the house prepared for the worst and weathered the storm at the bishop's house in Thibodaux, about 30 minutes north.

We have heard from Dad and he seems to be fine. The police are not allowing anyone into Houma right now because of all the power lines down, etc. so he has not seen the condition of the house yet. However, he has talked to a neighbor who stayed behind and has walked through the neighborhood. The neighbor reported that anyone with a fence no longer has one. He said that builder quality is evident as some houses are missing shingles and what not while others seem fine. He said that their house looked ok but he did not see the back of the house (which is where the wind was). It seems that downtown Houma took a pretty hard hit and it not looking too good right now.

This is about all we know at this point. Mom's flight back was cancelled and rescheduled for Thursday night.

For pictures of Houma afer the hurricane, click here (thanks for the link, Lori!).

Blueberry time

It's blueberry time again! Labor day weekend is always a busy time at our house. Our city is host to the annual Blueberry Festival each labor day weekend. Among other things, there is a parade which Matt's band marches in. And we can't forget the carnival rides! This year we were lucky to have Grandma Tew visit with us and join the festivities. Three cheers for Matt's band and a job well done!