This has been an extremely exciting week here at the Eaglewood’s household.  So… Why haven’t I been blogging about it?  Well, as it turns out, I have a REALLY good excuse this time!  I managed to hurt my right hand in three separate and dramatically different ways this week.  I would like to point out that NONE of those injuries involved my skills (or lack of them) with a hammer.  One of the injuries did involve my misuse of a multi-tool while wrestling staples out of the old chest-of-drawers, however, so I’m not completely off the hook in the tool department.  The other two involved moving furniture and sheer stubbornness.  Ever suffer from that problem?  Well, I sometimes think that I should have been the poster child for stubborn pride (much to my shame).  In this case, I was too stubborn to get help with the rain-swollen gate even though I am pregnant and was lugging a case of bottled water at the time.  Because of my stubbornness, I ended up bruising up a couple of fingers wrestling with it myself.  Pride goeth not only before a fall but also before swollen purple fingers, apparently!. 

I’m pleased to announce that my brother-in-law and his wife (the much talked about Kaylaugh) have seen both of their daughters graduate from high school in the past week!  Niece 1 graduated from a public high school with many honors and Niece 2 graduated from their family’s home school where she was in a class by herself!   Both young ladies were homeschooled for at least part of their educational lives.  Kaylaugh and Cardoc have sacrificed much for the education and welfare of their lovely daughters and those daughters will surely rise up and call them blesssed!

I had a particularly successful week in the thrift shopping and garage saling departments in spite of the Spring storms around here!  We found some fabulous clothing bargains (boys clothes and maternity stuff) and finally found a shelf for that awkward spot in the office where a shelf was desperately needed, but I was too cheap to spend the ton of money needed to get one that would fit in the space.  You know the spot.  Every house seems to have one.  I found a shelf unit in near-perfect if not absolutely perfect condition at a resale shop for just under eight dollars!  Great was the rejoicing here in the nest!  Some days being a tightwad actually pays off.

Spring cleaning has been going surprisingly well here.  We have gotten a great deal accomplished and haven’t actually misplaced anyone yet.   Eaglewood was somewhat shocked to find the house quite rearranged when he returned home from his trip to New Mexico, but has managed to recover nicely and now thinks that he actually LIKES the changes!  Yay!  Nutter Butter, the cat, also approves and has found himself a new happy place next to the new shelves where he can lounge about like the worthless yellow rug that he is.  He toils not neither does he spin, but we are still quite attached to him.  Go figure.

Our city has decided to bless everyone with new trash and recycling bins and increased trash pick-up service!  Our family is something beyond thrilled.  I cannot help but wonder what it says about us that we spent an entire day this past week keeping up with the progress of city deliveries and pick-ups on those aforementioned trash and recycling bins and giving each other breathless updates of the “the new recycling bin is MUCH bigger than the old one” variety!    I guess entertainment IS a little hard to come by around here…  

The Spring storms have caused some more havoc here in our little part of Texas.  The last storm that blew through took out a very large tree limb and left it in the middle of our side yard.  Power was knocked out at Eaglewood’s place of employment resulting in an unexpected day off for him! Yay!  I had something of an adventure driving down to pick him up while dodging dangling traffic lights, downed trees, fallen branches and braving flooded streets, but it was completely worth it to have a little extra time to spend with Eaglewood.  I’m crazy about that guy.

 

You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 85% Supergirl 70% The Flash 70% Superman 70% Green Lantern 60% Robin 55% Spider-Man 55% Hulk 45% Batman 45% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 35%

You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

It must be.  I have relied heavily on my ignorance of my inability to accomplish things for years.  Surprisingly, this has caused me to actually accomplish a few things that others didn’t think I could do.  What sorts of things, you might ask.  Well, armed with my total ignorance I have become my family’s barber of choice (and of no choice for that matter).  I’ve rescued the family toilet armed with only plastic-coated paper clips.  I’ve learned to crochet and made a couple of quilts.  I started homeschooling my children solely on the belief that if I could potty-train them, teach them their abc’s and numbers, I MUST be qualified to teach them something.  Silly me.  So, why do I bring all of this up now?  Well, armed only with my complete ignorance of anything even remotely related to carpentry, a hammer, some nails, wood glue and a pair of pliers, I’ve been attempting to (and at least partially succeeding in) repairing an old chest-of-drawers.  Will one of you PLEASE tell me I can’t do this stuff before I try anything else involving a hammer and nails? 

Really!  Feel free to have a look around the place.  I am definitely NOT here as I am off having an insanely busy week elsewhere.  Spring cleaning insanity has pretty much taken over our lives.  It seems to be contagious.  You have been warned!

…Spring Fever!  I just don’t seem to be doing much blogging these days.  Did you happen to notice?   If I had any actual writing talent, I could wax poetic on the subject of the beautiful weather (I LIKE rain!), the Spring flowers, the delights of nature (other than bugs and geckos) and Spring cleaning!  Fortunately for you, I don’t have that much writing talent.  You will just have to live with the fact that I am taking a moment away from the joys of nesting, crocheting, digging through homeschooling catalogs and flirting with my husband to actually write something.

You surely know the type of morning that I’m talking about.  This is the type of Monday where you wake up to weird dreams  that bear startling similarities to your husband’s weird dreams.  This is the sort of morning where, the moment your husband walks out the door without an umbrella, it starts raining.  This is the sort of morning where you are lying in bed wondering if the rain will lull the children into a few extra moments of sleep and let you get away with being extra lazy (it didn’t) and you look over at your husband’s side of the bed where the clock is located and notice a gecko sitting smartly in his desk chair looking for all the world as though it needs a cup of coffee, a newspaper and the phone number for GEICO!  This is the kind of morning where you catch the wayward lizard and take it out onto the front porch while still wearing your pajamas (they are quite modest) only to find that the gecko likes you and your house much better than the cool cement of the front porch and begins to try to ride your feet back into the house while you are forced to dance about in all of your pregnant glory in front of the neighbors taking their children to school in order to keep the little varmint at bay.  Yep, it’s a Monday all right.  Maybe I should have just given the little guy a cup of coffee and the number for GEICO after all.  In the meantime, you can call me “Dances With Geckos”. :/

Morning sickness has all but ended for me.  Great is the rejoicing here in Eaglewood’s Nest!  However, it has been replaced by a new and equally alarming ailment (at least in the mind’s of my progeny).  I’m on the Spring cleaning binge to end all cleaning binges.  I’ve never had the nesting bug hit me so hard or so early in a pregnancy before.  Ever.  Eaglewood says it’s a sign that the latest little Eagle chick must actually BE a chick.  I’ve also been crocheting more than usual and have started planning (gasp!) sewing projects.  I should go ahead and confess that I am NOT a seamstress.  I would like to be, but I am NOT.

In other news, the unusual amount of rain we have been having has been slowly transforming the patch of weeds we refer to as our yard into something that more closely resembles a jungle.  Poor Ditto has been attempting to beat the whole mess into submission with the weed whacker and then mow it into something more manageable.  It hasn’t been working.  If you don’t hear from me again sometime soon, I’m probably just lost somewhere in the weeds between the driveway and the door.  Send help armed with machetes.  Just be warned that any help you send will probably get dusted, vacumed and/or disinfected before being freed.
 

…. With hat tip to Pablo, Arielle, CrazyJo and Heidi who seem to have perfected this style of post!

Sneefert has recently discovered two new loose teeth.  Great has been his rejoicing!  He has also finished up another Explode the Code book (which thoroughly thrilled him) and has precipitated a need to go out and get the next one (which is a good deal less than thrilling in his opinion).

One of my normally brilliant offspring accidentally got a foot stuck in the kitchen trashcan this morning while trying to throw away a piece of paper.  I’m not saying who did it, or how it happened, but it has made for some VERY interesting conversation!  The scariest part is that I could see myself doing exactly the same thing under similar circumstance. :/

Eaglewood just got back home from a trip the day before yesterday and has left for a day trip today.  Please be praying for travel mercies.  The man is tired. 

Today is our bulk shopping day.  There are few things that thrill my younger boys less than the thought of spending half the day food shopping.

We also have a small garage saling and used book shopping budget for the day!  Yay!

 

We had a BUSY weekend here at the Eaglewood’s Nest!  On Saturday we took the children to see Spiderman 3 in one of our neighboring towns (because they have the cheapest theater!) and then went to the Marvel Free Comic Book day at a store in another neighboring town (because that one has the comic book shop!).  Sunday the children had a baking contest in which they were the only children who participated against 8 adults.  Their frosted chocolate cheesecake with strawberries came in fourth.  Add all of that to our usual family activities and the need to help Eaglewood get ready for a business trip today and you are looking at a pretty full schedule.  I did manage to find a little time to work on another baby afghan, though.  A mommy has to keep her priorities straight!    Hopefully, normalcy will return soon.  

Just last night our little part of the great state of Texas had a big ol’ nasty storm blow through.  Wind gusts have been estimated to have reached 102 miles per hour.  Everywhere you looked fences were blown down and trees were damaged or downed.  For the most part, our little area came through just fine.  So what kind of damage did our family get?  Well, I feel almost guilty for admitting this, but the only things that really happened at our house were a few downed limbs and some blown over trash cans.  On a side note… some baskets that I had stained earlier in the day and forgot to bring in became accidentally “antiqued”!   They actually look pretty good sitting on top of my antique chiffarobe so I can’t even complain about it!