Wow. Three months... amazing how fast it all goes by. It's a whole different season that it was last time I posted on here...LOL. I could say I've been too busy to blog, but it would probably be more truthful to say I've just been too lazy. We have been busy however. I hadn't really thought too much about my blog until my uncle surprised me by stopping by on his way to visit my cousin in Minnesota, and one of the things he asked was why I had stopped updating my blog... I didn't even know he KNEW about my blog! Anyway, here I am again with a quickie update...

I've been sewing up a storm. I just finished a new quilt top for my bedroom using this spring's "Patchwork Party" and (IMHO) I think it's gonna be a stunner when it's all quilted - see the pic on my quilt page. Also, a dear friend of mine who is also a quilter has ALS (Lou Gehrig's) and has sadly been forced to give up quilting. She was sweet enough to think of me and sent me the fabric for a quilt project she planned before she got sick. That's what I'm working on right now. And there's the mystery BOM I've been doing over the past year, with another one set to start this weekend (so I'll be doing 2 at once for the next few months...). Not to mention the several dresses I need to get made for Abigail!

School - What with the move last August & several breaks for visits from family (& for Mommy's sanity), we got kind of behind, so we're still having school & have a few weeks of work left. The kids are still loving gymnastic class, and we've been able to do a few things with a group of Christian home schoolers around here, too.

Elijah's been playing baseball -- machine-pitch this year. Some days go better than others. When he's "on" he hits pretty well, but we haven't quite figured out how to teach him how to run. He sometimes still does the cartoon-character thing where he starts running in place before actually going anywhere.

Abigail's getting ready to turn 4 -- I soooo can't believe that she's that old already! She's sweet and loving -- gets that from me, of course ;-) -- as well as stubborn and opinionated (can't imagine WHERE she gets that... LOL).

We've got a garden going. Some plants are doing better than others. Weather was not our friend this spring, so we got kind of a late start-- too late for the strawberries, peas & green beans I think. But we can seriously grow some squash!!! Wow. Some of the leaves are twice the size of my hand (pics on family page) and every plant has 6-8 or more blooms or little baby squash. The onions and cucumbers are doing well too, and some of the corn, peppers and tomatoes, but I've never seen anything like these squash plants! The cantaloupes are doing OK, and I think Elijah will be able to get a decent amount of melon... much to his rapturous delight (the boy LOVES cantaloupe).

Jack's been busy making pens. Before he had been giving most of them away, but he's decided he needs to "feed the habit" and has started selling them, with a fair amount of success. He's started a new blog page to sell some of the pens - the link is in my list on the right. But he's been having a rough couple of weeks here lately. The shingles got him - on his head & face. The initial and most painful part is over, but the irritation and itching is giving him fits.

OK I think that about covers the high points for now. I'll see if I can't do more updating in the near future - if nothing else I can blog about our big McNiel family camping trip next week - and I do mean big: us, my DH's parents and his sister and her family for a week down at Lake of the Ozarks... should be fun!

PS- After the garden pics, I've added a few new pics of the kids too...

I just added a new picture on my quilt page. It's been a while since I finished anything to post over there, but I do have several works-in-progress. Maybe I'll actually finish a few more and get more pics up!

Hmm let's see... Kids are great. Elijah lost a tooth yesterday while eating pizza. Luckily we were able to find it & get it home for the tooth fairy. Of course, she nearly forgot to visit... had to distract him for a bit this morning so she could sneak in there... LOL. Abigail's all but done with potty training - YEAH!!! She still has a few accidents here and there, but not too bad. She says she's a big girl, except when we're trying to convince her to give up her pacifier (only uses it when sleeping) - then she says she's still a "little bit little."

Jack's folks have been spending Spring Break with us. The weather has been just about perfect, until today, so the guys have been doing lots of fishing and we girls have been busy hitting the quilt shops and getting Abby set up with her spring wardrobe. (Don't worry, Grandma, there's still plenty of shopping to do when y'all come up next month... **smile**)

OK, I am slowly creeping further and further into the "information age," where you can carry your entire CD collection on the head of a pin and little pieces of one's identity float randomly around the WWW... First I gave up my trusty, idiot-proof 35mm camera, which had never steered me wrong. Next, at the urging of my sis-in-law, I started this blog, which has been fun, I'll admit. Then I discovered the joy of the mp3 player - I do so love being able to jump randomly from Macca to Edith Piaf to Holst to the Phantom soundtrack with the push of a button... Now I've been "sucked in" even more!

First, Jack & I finally upgraded our cell phones and plans. I'm now finally reachable by text message on my shiny new green phone. (First pink, now green... I love fun color phones - no more boring black for me!) That worked out well, because Sprint had a BOGO on LG Rumor phones going on so we both got fancy new phones for a grand total of $30, and our monthly bill won't be going up too much either. I need to remember to re-download "Texas Fight" for my ringtone.

Then - the very next day, actually - I finally caved to peer pressure and got on Facebook. Who knew that would be so addicting?? It's been great tracking down old friends and classmates. I've already been able to track down some friends I haven't seen in 15 years (since college). Let's see, I've joined a group on there for our congregation's youth (which they still let me on, even though I'm hardly "youth"), a group for my 20th high school reunion - yes that's THIS year, ugh - and a group for my sorority pledge class, among others. I've also gotten on the FB fan clubs for my Longhorns, Chuy's (yum, somebody e-mail me a Ground Beef Stuffed Sopapilla with Tex-mex sauce!), Macca, Colin Firth and the Animaniacs. I think the most addicting part is collecting "Flair," which is kind of like virtual buttons on a virtual bulletin board. I remember in high school I had a real live button collection on a denim jacket. In fact I still have most of the buttons, but have since jettisoned the denim jacket. Anyway, I've found Flair buttons for just about everything imaginable from bagpipes to fave TV shows to quilting to random sarcastic comments. Here's one: "Sar-chasm: The giant gulf between the sarcastic comment and the person who doesn't get it." LOVE IT! Well, as anyone from my high school days who wanders over here from FB can certainly attest, I've always been a huge nerd-- guess I just proved it there... haha

Anywho, I'd like to welcome any new readers who have made it here from FB (or any other way for that matter). Thanks for stopping in my little corner of the web!

How do I know that? In a word, SNOW.

Maybe I'm just more attuned to it since Tuesday is supposed to be the day we drive over to Lee's Summit for the kids' gymnastics class, but it seems very odd to me that we seem to only have really nasty weather on Tuesdays. It was supposed to hit yesterday, so my dear parents started back first thing yesterday and took the more easterly route through Arkansas in hopes of skirting around the weather as it moved in from the northwest. Somehow, however, the weather bypassed our house and headed straight to Arkansas, so they spent the evening driving in an ice storm before finally deciding they'd had enough for one day and opted to stop early for the night. Somehow, I don't think my dad planned on spending his birthday (which is today) at a Best Western in Conway, AR. Here's hoping it gets cleared out enough for them to continue on home today.

Anyway, by last night, the weather "experts" were all but taking the snow and ice out of our forecast here. I should have known, though, since after all today is Tuesday, that we wouldn't be able to escape. So now, instead of heading out for gymnastics (which is usually a highlight of everyone's week) we're sitting at home watching the snow accumulate on top of the glazing of ice we got earlier today. I generally don't mind the ice and snow, but when it first comes down it's not terribly safe to get around in, and I just wish it didn't always seem to come on Tuesday! Seriously, this is like the third or fourth time since November we've had to skip class because of the weather. Gymnastics is the only day my kids get to hang out with other homeschoolers, and it's also one of my rare chances for adult conversation. I've found a pretty good friend in one of the other moms, whose 2 younger kids are the same ages as my two, and I miss our chats when we can't get together... almost as much as I miss the kids having the chance to get out some of that excess energy! At least if this keeps up, I'll be able to send them out to go sledding and they can burn some energy that way.

We're now almost finished with the birthday train here... Mom was last Thursday. We spent the day shopping-- works for me! Saturday was Elijah's day. Despite the fact that he spent Thursday night reacting rather violently to either a tummy bug or the pizza from Jason's Deli, we managed to have a good time at his party. We went rather low-key this year and just invited a few of his friends for cake & ice cream. Nothing elaborate, but the kids had fun. This coming Saturday is the last of the birthday week -- mine. Then it's back to normal around here for a while.

I've been busy at the sewing machine finally. I'm doing another block of the month quilt from the same quilt shop as last year. This year it's earth-tone batiks, as opposed to the bright batiks we did last year. These blocks are GORGEOUS! The colors are seriously faboo--greens, golds, burgundy, oranges... yum. I'm getting caught up on those, then I'm gonna start one of the piles of kits I have sitting around. And I also have a few things to make for Abby. Guess I've officially caught the bug once more! Bye... gotta go sew!

Howdy, y'all! Things are going along swimmingly here in the McNiel house. We're recovering from Christmas-- almost done de-grandparent-ing the kids again, just in time for the other grandparents to come for birthday time starting next week (both of my parents, my son, one of my best friends and I all have our b-days in a 9-day period at the end of January). Of course, you know for certain that I'm just using "swimmingly" completely as a figure of speech, since it is a bit chilly for things like swimming here!

Yes, folks, I'm getting my first taste of a real winter this year... It's been cold a time or two so far. I've found that I really don't mind the cold for the most part. Hardest thing has been adjusting to wearing shoes around the house all the time-- I'm a barefoot kind of girl, but can't do that this time of year--too cold, especially downstairs. Lowest temp we saw before this week was -1 (F), and we've had snow a few times too. Wednesday morning it was 36 degrees (F) when Jack went across to the office. By the time he came home for lunch it was 22, and it just went down steadily from there. Thursday morning, the thermometer on the kids' playscape read -6 (F). Yep, you read that right, my friends & family in sunny Texas... 6 degrees below 0. Only one word for that: BRRRRRRRRRRR. I think it "warmed" up all the way to 7 or 8 on Thursday. Friday morning we woke up to a fairly steady snowfall. I actually really do like the snow. Not that I want to go stay out in it for hours on end like the rest of my family (great sledding hill right behind the house), but it is just so pretty!

Driving with ice/snow on the ground is another new experience for me. It's actually not that bad. They do a good job of keeping the roads clear, and I don't venture out too much when it's really bad. One funny thing I did discover last night, though; as difficult as it is to drive a car on snow, it's a whole other game trying to steer a shopping cart over packed down snow in the Wal-mart parking lot! For the life of me, I couldn't get that crazy thing to go where I wanted it to!! Those carts are hard enough to navigate under the best of conditions, but when the ground is both bumpy and slick, you can just about forget it.

So..... New Year's.... time for that silly tradition of making necessary but often unpleasant changes that you've put off for the previous several months, saying to yourself "I'll just wait until after the holidays... it'll be my New Year's resolution." Well, I've got the usual ones-- lose weight (of course THAT has to wait until after birthday month, so that's more of a February resolution...LOL), do better at keeping the house straightened up (ugh), work on my stress-to-patience ratio (stress frequently seems to win that battle), keep up with my blog (*smile*). I've added one more to my list for the year that 1) I think I'm actually going to keep and 2) kind of snuck up on me. I'm putting it in writing on here, as additional incentive to keep up with it.

As most of you know, I have my degree in French, and was at one time well nigh fluent. Since I haven't had the opportunity for using it much, I've lost most of my fluency. Well, we were in Barnes & Noble right around New Year's and I came to a sudden realization... I want my French back. So I hunted around and found a good-looking review book and have started going through it. If I keep up at the pace I'm moving, I'll be finished with it by about the middle of summer. Then I'm going to dig out my college textbooks and stuff and really do it right. I have plenty of literature in French to read. Hopefully I can find someone else to talk with, but if nothing else, I can listen to recordings. I'm also going to make a more concerted effort to teach the kids French. Even Jack says he's willing to try it! He's going to sit in when Elijah and I start our "official" French studies for school in the fall. Won't that be fun-- all of us speaking French! (I know I'm weird... get excited over the oddest things... LOL)

Well, I guess that's about it for the day. I've finally started sewing again-- had to get some X-mas stuff done. Can't wait to finish some of the things I have in the works and get some new pics up. I'll let you know!

OK for all you moms out there... I got this via e-mail from a dear friend and thought it was too great not to post. It made me laugh, but actually isn't all that funny, if you catch my drift...

Dear Santa,

I've been a good mom all year. I've fed, cleaned and cuddled my children on demand, visited the doctor's office more than my doctor and sold sixty-two cases of candy bars to raise money to plant a shade tree on the school playground. I was hoping you could spread my list out over several Christmases, since I had to write this letter with my son's red crayon, on the back of a receipt in the laundry room between cycles, and who knows when I'll find anymore free time in the next 18 years.

Here are my Christmas wishes:
I'd like a pair of legs that don't ache (in any color, except purple, which I already have) and arms that don't hurt or flap in the breeze, but are strong enough to pull my screaming child out of the candy aisle in the grocery store.
I'd also like a waist, since I lost mine somewhere in the seventh month of my last pregnancy.
If you're hauling big ticket items this year I'd like fingerprint-resistant windows and a radio that only plays adult music, a television that doesn't broadcast any programs containing talking animals, and a refrigerator with a secret compartment behind the crisper where I can hide to talk on the phone.
On the practical side, I could use a talking doll that says, 'Yes, Mommy' to boost my parental confidence, along with two kids who don't fight and three pairs of jeans that will zip all the way up without the use of power tools.
I could also use a recording of Tibetan monks chanting 'Don't eat in the living room' and 'Take your hands off your brother,' because my voice seems to be just out of my children's hearing range and can only be heard by the dog.
If it's too late to find any of these products, I'd settle for enough time to brush my teeth and comb my hair in the same morning, or the luxury of eating food warmer than room temperature without it being served in a Styrofoam container. If you don't mind, I could also use a few Christmas miracles to brighten the holiday season. Would it be too much trouble to declare ketchup a vegetable? It will clear my conscience immensely. It would be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized crime family.

Well, Santa, the buzzer on the dryer is calling and my son saw my feet under the laundry room door. I think he wants his crayon back. Have a safe trip and remember to leave your wet boots by the door and come in and dry off so you don't catch cold.

Help yourself to cookies on the table but don't eat too many or leave crumbs on the carpet.

Yours Always,
MOM...

P.S. One more thing...you can cancel all my requests if you can keep my children young enough to believe in Santa.

My friend Laura over at The Peanut Patch recently posted this list of "lifetime accomplishments" on her blog and I thought it might be a neat thing to do to see how many I've done too. Granted, this is someone else's list of "things to do before you die" so the priorities might be a little bit off, but it's still fun!

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you could afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyworld/land
8. Climbed a mountain (a little one anyway)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang/played a solo (I've actually done both)
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch-hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you were not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping (ewww)
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse (I've seen a lunar eclipse, not a solar, though)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (both)
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (I'll get to Scotland one day)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (I've learned a few, but never self-taught one)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (remember what I said about priorities)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing (once, and I didn't do very well)
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance (not something I want to remember...)
47. Had your portrait painted (as long as a chalk portrait counts)
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (only made it halfway up... too $$$ to go all the way!)
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check (another thing I'd like to forget... so-o-o-o many years ago)
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the changing of the guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Darrel Royal)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved-one
94. Made a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake (been there, no interest in swimming in it)
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

I borrowed Laura's plan of putting things I've done in boldface, and things I would like to do in italics. If you can't tell, I LOVE to travel, and have done a bit of it... I hope to do more as the years go by.

Anyway, I'd love to see your list,too. Let me know if you do this "meme" on your blog.

Well, I've been spurred on by a friend's comment essentially asking which side of the earth I had tumbled off of... I'm here... just haven't felt like blogging lately. First a week goes by, then I think "OK now I need to post," and then I start to feel guilty since I haven't posted any pictures for the grandparents and they start to pile up and then it just kind of snowballs until I have to start from scratch instead of trying to get everyone all caught up on every little thing going on. ANYWAY. Enough whiny "stream of consciousness."

We're good. It has turned COLD. This morning it was 15 degrees. Fahrenheit. Not even Thanksgiving yet and it's already 15 degrees. Yeah. I'm from Texas. This will definitely take some getting used to. And long johns. In all truth, it was a very nice morning. I needed to run out to Wally-world and grab a few breakfast items, and it really wasn't that bad. There was no wind to speak of and the sun was shining brightly--beautiful morning, even at 15 degrees. With my coat, hat and gloves, I was perfectly comfy for my quick walk from the car to the store and back. It was actually quite pleasant!

My dear son has now lost both of his front teeth. He looks too cute with that big gap in the front! (Pics on the family page) He lost the first one on Election night and the second one just this past Wednesday. Poor Abigail keeps checking to see if she has a loose tooth yet... Jack got to go hunting on the land of a friend of ours and got a very nice 8-point whitetail. He wanted me to post pics of the "dead thing" as I call it, but hey, this is MY blog... I have a "no dead things" policy in place... LOL But I will admit to being very happy with the supply of meat that will soon be in my freezer! As for me, I still haven't quite gotten back into the swing of things since we moved. I haven't even been on my sewing machine one time, though I know I have some things I want to accomplish before Christmas. I'll get there. S'pose part of it is feeling guilty that I still have several boxes that need unpacking -- including all my art and photos for the walls -- maybe as I decorate for Christmas after we get back from Thanksgiving in Texas I'll get around to hanging some stuff on the walls.

Hi Everyone! It's been a little while, so I thought I'd just update a little on what's been happening around here. We did get school started September 15, and that's going well (at least after we got through the first couple of days). We're trying a new schedule this year. Rather than mirror the public school calendar, we're going to go year-round, but build in time off throughout the year by going 3 weeks on - 1 week off. For simplicity's sake I have planned it so we just take the last week of each month as our off week... guess what this week is!! OK so it's not actually the last week of the month, but I couldn't very well only have one week of school before we took a break...

I've been spending the most of the week on the house. I got the majority of my sewing stuff unpacked, so maybe, just maybe, I'll get some time in at the machine before the week is out. At least it's finally out of the box! The boys went fishing on Monday at a lake near Blue Springs. We all went down there yesterday for a picnic lunch and to check it all out. There's this really neat park there that has a kind of "Pioneer Town" museum set up, plus they have a small herd of bison and another of elk. The elk were extra cool 'cause they're in rut right now so the bulls were bugling. I'd never heard an elk call before-- didn't have any idea what they would sound like, but I sure didn't expect a high-pitched cry like that. Sounded very much like a loon's call. Kinda eerie. Then Jack went with us to gymnastics class. He had the camera (which I can never remember to take) and got some good pics of Abigail. Elijah's class is too far away from the "viewing area" to get good pics with our little digital camera, though he may have gotten one or two; I haven't looked yet. But I'll try to get some pics of our happy gymnasts up soon. Jack's going to start working on Elijah's upper body strength and ab muscles (push-ups and sit-ups) so he will be more able to do more stuff.

Elijah and I did have some fun putting our science class into practice at the park (well, I at least thought it was fun). We're doing the Apologia elementary botany book this year and it starts out with basic stuff, but jumps pretty quickly into different plant phyla (this part's for you, Grandma). He's able tell me what makes a plant vascular or non-vascular, he'll tell you that the job of a flower is primarily to make seeds, and he knows that a pine tree isn't an angiosperm because its seeds don't have a "container." Our picnic table was right next to a pine tree so we took the chance to talk about what we've been learning about conifers... pretty cool.

Well, I start teaching the pre-schoolers' Bible class tonight, so I'd better get going and finish getting all that ready.