Too many children?

I made it out of the house today! I took 3 children and went to Walmart. Dan took the other 2 and went to Mount Vernon. We all needed a break from the house, and we all enjoyed our respective trips and had a good time. As I was standing in my line at Walmart though, I saw the People Magazine cover that read "How Many Kids are Too Many?" and it referred to the Duggar family.

For anyone who is not familiar with the Duggars, they are an Arkansas family with 19 children. They have a tv show on TLC called "18 Kids and counting".... well, now I guess it is 19 kids. I like to them watch because they are an Arkansas family and because they are one of the VERY few families on television with actual values, morales, and modesty. Plus, they look so happy and have fun together. I mean, actual FUN as a family. Its a novel concept for tv and I like them.

So, seeing that screaming title on the cover of the magazine really annoyed me. It annoyed me all the way home. It annoyed me as I tried to nap this afternoon, but coughed and coughed instead. It annoyed me through dinner, and now I must sit here and complain about it. The article includes quotes from a surgeon who believes that Michelle and Jim Bob cannot provide adequate emotional and financial resources for their children. Wow. Apparently this surgeon has never met them, never watched their show, or never learned a thing about the people he is commenting on. That really, really annoys me.

In this world, so many people have one or 2 children and cannot provide emotional or financial support for them. If a mom is working 40 hours a week, how much emotional support is she providing her child or children? Honestly. If you see your kid for 30 minutes as you rush them to daycare or school, and then see them for an hour or 2 before bedtime while you try to do all the mom things you didn't do while you were at work, there is no way you are spending as much quality time with your kid. Compare that to Michelle Duggar, who stays at home and home-schools her children. I'm going to bet that she spends more time with each of her 18 (now 19) children than the working mom does with her one or 2. (And this is not an attack on the working mom, just on the argument that Michelle Duggar doesn't have enough love to go around.) She is also thrilled with each new addition, as are all of her children. Plus, she actually likes her children, and likes to be with them! Imagine that!

And financially.... I'll bet that the surgeon in the article has more debt than the Duggars. Did you know they built their house debt free? They keep out of debt and don't spend more than they earn. How can this man possibly claim that they can't financially support their children? Who is he to pass judgement on this family? How many other families (yes, especially those families with one child or no children) can claim to be debt free? We have mortgage and car debt, and that's all. We do not have credit card debt or other debt. And we manage to do it on Dan's salary alone. But to be totally debt free with 19 children? That is amazing! Beat that, you moron surgeon.

Do we have too many children? How many IS too many children? Who gets to judge? Oh wait, I guess on this blog, I get to judge! I proclaim that if your children are happy, healthy and like to be together, then you are doing just fine. If you wanted and were delighted to bear and deliver each one, then you are better than average! If your children have clean clothes to wear and food to eat, then you are doing just fine. If you are not in the looney bin, then you are doing great. If you like your children (and I mean most of the time!) then you are doing just fine. If you are debt free, or close to it, then you are not only doing just fine, but better than that.

How many kids is too many? That's a stupid question.

Welcome to Siberia

You are in luck! The camera was taking blurry pictures because it thought it was zooming, when it was not. I managed to press enough buttons to make it stop, and I hope it continues to take proper pictures. I made up for lost time with pictures today.

Delaney started off getting ready to go outside. Somehow it entailed removing all of her clothes. Then she got distracted.

This is what Callie wants to spend all day doing. Yes, all day. She spends all day asking "Can I hod Rylee? Can I hold Rylee?". It gets very old very fast. She does do a good job holding her sister, when she's not trying to do things she shouldn't be doing with her.

This is the face I have seen waaaay to much of from Callie. This is her being mad because I said No, you cannot hold Rylee right now. (She's wearing her dress from our at-home church service today!)

This is my little kitty-kitty Marian, crawling through the snow. She cracks me up! She crawled and played all over the yard. Somehow she manages to stay on top of the snow, and when I step on it, I sink past my knees.

Perched on her mound of snow. She had a good time outside today. However, she could not figure out how come her pockets were filled with snow when she came inside!

This is my snow igloo! We piled snow nice and high in this mound, then dug out the center. Joshua is helping to remove the snow inside.

This is how snowed in the van is. It made me really glad I had pulled up so far! Look how high that is! Good thing we do not have to go anywhere for a while.

Callie and my Igloo.

Delaney did finally make it out the door, fully dressed for the snow. Well, kind of...... she is wearing Marian's spare boots, and Rylee's hat!

Callie wasn't sure if she wanted to throw this or eat it. She didn't stay out too long, but she had fun.

And we're suppose to get some more snow on Tuesday. I think I am about snowed out. This stuff was either powdery or solid ice. Not a good building meduim, and it would be too much work to build snowmen with it. So I played to my heart's content today and the kids did too. Then I came in and I made delicious Corn Chowder (Thanks Ian for the recipe!) and we had warm tummies tonight.

Snowpocalypse 2010

My camera is broken. It finally gave up trying to rebound from the severe abuse 2 little girls dish out after sneaking it from the diaper bag and making 200 "movies". I am in deep mourning. I love this camera and shockingly enough, the only thing it does well now IS movies. The girls will be thrilled. And now I will have to purchase a new camera. Sigh.

I'm doubly disappointed because we had that lovely blizzard blow through in the last 36 hours. There were so many times I wanted to take a picture: When the snow was whitewashing everything, when the kids were huddled under 20 blankets in the living room, when Joshua was outside commando crawling through the tunnels he'd dug in the snow, when Dan was shoveling the walk for the 5th time and you could see that the snow was getting really deep..... And I'm totally going to want pictures tomorrow, because I AM going to build an Igloo. Perhaps that is not really an appropriate Sunday activity. ....Perhaps Heavenly Father should have thought of that before sending a blizzard that had us without power for nearly 24 hours. Yeah, how bout that?!

I'll address the power issue first. I was pleased that it stayed on long enough for us to watch The Soup last night. Then it went out. I collected all the candles, lit enough so the kids wouldn't freak out if they woke up to no night lights, and went to bed. I can't sleep in such silence, when its not really silent, so that was crummy.

This morning there was still no power. I didn't want the kids to go outside only to come back in to a cold house. It was around 60 degrees in here this morning. I called the power company and they said it was slated for a 1pm return to power. Yay! I let the kids go out and they had fun. Joshua was out most of the day having a marvelous time and saturating everything he had on. The stove is gas, so we had a cook-top and were able to make gallons of hot cocoa.

1pm came and went. I called at 3 and was told, it was still listed as 1 which meant the crews were out at work and we should have power before night. Yay. But no power. We had spaghetti by candlelight for dinner and set up tents in the kids rooms. It was warmer in them and they loved burrowing under piles of blankets. It was 53 degrees in the house by then. I called and was told 8pm was when the power should come on, and I felt happier. And to my great delight, it came on at 7:45. Joyous day! My heater is now trying to make up for lost time and I am thrilled to have light. I hate the dark and candlelight is so dim.

And that was my day. Well, it was most of my day. Delaney won't go to sleep and is currently having a meltdown about a diaper, but she doesn't want help, and she's tired. The house is slowly warming, and I'm glad I do not have to worry about Rylee freezing or anything now.

So, the city is shut down. While there has been no official word yet about church, I expect that is only because the bishop has no power and can't tell us. I doubt anyone will attempt to go tomorrow. There's got to be close to 3 feet of snow in our yard, not counting the drifts. This is why I am excited to get out there tomorrow! We'll have a family devotional in the morning and then go out to play. I think I have wash I need to finish so their snow stuff will be dry.

And tomorrow I shall cry bitter tears that I do not have a functioning camera.

Help me!

I have been on a quilting kick quite recently. It has taken a bit to get anything done, what with the 500 other things that need to be taken care of around here! I do need some advice though. I have e tendency to go overboard. I love bright colors. I love colors! And when I finish a quilt and look at it, its not always as great as I had hoped. Sometimes 2 fabulous fabrics are not so fabulous when put together.

I am currently almost done with one project, and I want to begin another. Here is the one I want to get crackin' on!

I love the blues. I love the starfish and fish. I had originally thought to put it with the lighter blue fabric on the right. Then I wondered if that fabric was too busy. Click on it to see it bigger and tell me what you think. Should I go with the solid darker blue, or the lighter, patterned blue? The other one will probably end up as the backing.

And here is my most current delimma. I am done with the top on this quilt and need a backing. My pictures are out of order here.... I picked a lovely red print for the back, and am second guessing it now. Should I switch to the blue?

Should I keep the red?

See, it is a lovely, bright print, and already pretty busy. Will the red be too much? Perhaps I should go find a nice green? What do you think I should do with this one? And do you think it needs a border? I was going to do one, but then thought it might make it too big. Its 10x9 rows of 6" squares, and I didn't mean to make it quite so large, but I loved the fabric!

So, that's what I'm mulling over right now. I would love your opinion on this! I have no vision, no sense of colors, and zero idea of how things will look at the end till I get there!

The Fun, and the Inexplicable!

Rylee has done 2 new things this week! The other night, she rolled over. I went in in the middle of the night to feed her and she had rolled onto her back. Yes, I do put her to sleep on her tummy. And she had rolled onto her back. I think she scared herself.

Normally I don't really think babies need to start solid food till they are 6 months. I mean, if they can't even sit up alone, do they really need food that requires an upright position to consume it? However, today I was bored. It snowed, the kids were all home from school and Rylee sat in her Bumpo on the table, watching me eat breakfast and I thought, why not? So I mixed her up some rice cereal and she actually ate it well, and liked it!

Yep, she opened her mouth, swallowed it and managed to eat more than she drooled out. It was kind of fun.

And then we went out to play in the snow! Yay!

This is my fabulous snow sculpture. Delaney kept saying it was Daddy. It was pretty big and took a while to build. Fortunately, the snow was amazing at sticking together!

Here is another view. Joshua helped me sculpt individual fingers. We did a pretty good face on it too, but you can't tell from the pictures.

Joshua and the neighbor kid made this good-sized snowman on the curb. Marian just wanted in on the picture. She is a funny kid!

Speaking of funny kid, see what she's wearing? Her very favorite fuzzy shirt, shorts and boots. That's my girl!

Callie got hit by snowballs and was sad. She lay down in the snow and then ran to the backyard to cry. I really don't understand this child sometimes, but she was darn cute in the snow!

This one I have no words for. She is wearing snow clothes, but guess what she is wearing underneath all that?!

Yep, she's wearing her snow gear over her swim suit! She found the beach bag yesterday and has been obsessing about the swim suits ever since!

Before the swim suits, she was wearing this- Marian's shorts. And nothing was going to convince her that these were not her own pants. What a pickle! (What's actually even funnier is that at this very moment, Delaney is wearing Rylee's pants! They look like Capris on Delaney and again, she is convinced that they are HER pants!)

And here are the "capri" pants. Also worn with 4 shirts: A long sleeved red shirt, with a onesie over it, Delaney's favorite Frog Jammies shirt on top of that, and the lovely Halloween shirt on top. I can't even guess as to why!

PS- Mom, I've been working on only taking her picture while her hair is out of her face!