Our children’s zoo opens it’s doors for two weekends in the winter. I never want to go because, let’s face it, who likes to walk around in the winter winds of Nebraska when you don’t have to? But Thanksgiving weekend here was amazing weather-wise, so off we went. I like this shot of Livia and my niece Madeleine because they were entirely engrossed in a completely empty turtle exhibit. Muddy leaves were all that covered the concrete basin, but they found it quite interesting. We had a fun afternoon together, complete with vanilla ice cream cones and a walk with Shiloh through the park. The girls were really sweet to one another—not one squabble over a toy. Praise God for cousins!

It’s the last day of November, peeps. Stretch those fingers, squint those eyes, do a few laps around the yard to wake up your brain in preparation for the December Photo Project! Twenty-five days straight of photography fun in one of the most beautiful seasons of the year. Our list of participants is growing and I get more excited each time someone signs up. Grab a badge and join the challenge of the 2009 DPP!

We enjoyed a really relaxing and delicious day yesterday as we celebrated Thanksgiving with both sets of parents. There is something quite decadent about two turkey dinners in one day, I must say. What I really felt was the wealth of riches God has given us: our parents (now grandparents to Livia) that have raised us faithfully and loved us unconditionally over the years. We are incredibly blessed by our families.

As much as we enjoyed our folks, we did miss our siblings. So Bean, Adam, Kris and Andrew? Can’t wait to see you at Christmas!

Pictured above are a few of the side dishes we ate at the Lawton dinner. There was the sweet potato souffle and bourbon cranberries from Needs More Butter sitting next to The Pioneer Woman’s corn/wild rice dish. We ate our fair share of green bean casserole and stuffing, and of course, the star of every Thanksgiving meal, turkey. Liv and I ate turkey sandwiches tonight and I can’t imagine a better way to eat leftovers than slapping them between mayo-coated slices of bread. Mmm, mmm good.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, what is left of 2009? A lot! The December Photo Project starts shortly (make sure you sign up—it’s fun!), then we have the national holiday known as My Birthday, and finally Christmas. Jesus’ Birthday. Somewhat of a larger event than mine, I suppose. ; )

Click on the image below for all you need to know about this year’s December Photo Project!

Our small group at Redeemer meets every other week for dinner and bible study. I’ve come to love these folks and enjoy both the dinners and the studying with equal interest.

Our kids are loud and creative and active—and our babysitter is worth every penny we pay her. In this photo Rev has a light saber, naturally. He and Liv encourage each other to new heights of commotion, I believe!

My favorite shot is this last one of Conrad and Amy. I have a perfectly lovely shot of them tucked away in my files, but I like this one better. Conrad actually held that skeptical expression so I could get my camera settings right. I have more photos of people scowling at me than you can imagine! But this one is fun-loving, so it gets posted.

I’ve been juggling—juggling bits and pieces of life in the air and hoping to successfully catch them all, one at a time.

I’m used to juggling motherhood, friendships and church work. And every so often I’ll pretend to do some domestic chores in order to keep everyone in clean clothes. I won’t even pretend I cooked last week, but that’s a different story and I’m trying to do better this week.

Recently I’ve begun to juggle two very cool, very exciting life bits: freelance writing and photography. This past summer I began to feel it was high time to fully pursue my gifts and talents in these areas. When I’m writing or taking photos, I feel like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and I delight in worshipping God through these activities. I’ve always known that “whatever you do, do it all the glory of God,” but I’m experiencing that in a very new and quite satisfying way right now. I could probably say a lot more about this line of work and how much I’m enjoying it but I won’t… at least not in this blog post.

So the juggling.

Turns out, I’m not a world class juggler. Imagine that! Or perhaps it’s just that I’m juggling too many bits and pieces at one time. That’s fine, really, because I’m in a transition stage right now and have plans for the future that will involve putting down some of the bits and settling into a less juggly-type routine. And oh, I do love routine. Consistency and comfort zones are two of my favorite things. Apparently, juggling is not.

But you must excuse me, I see that laundry in the air and I’m contemplating tossing up some freelance writing work as well. That amount of juggling I can handle.

What are you doing for fun??

1/2 C washing soda
1/2 C Borax
1/3 bar of Ivory soap, grated

In a large pot, heat 6 cups of water; add grated soap and stir until dissolved. Add washing soda and Borax and stir until dissolved. Remove pot from heat.

In a clean 2 gallon pail, pour 4 cups of hot water and add heated soap mixture. Top pail with one gallon + 6 cups of cold water; stir well.

Use 1/2 cup per load, stirring detergent before use.

After my friend Sarah M. posted a detergent recipe, I became very curious about the idea of making such a product at home. While I’m not exactly a frugal woman, I knew making my own detergent would save a lot of money. But the biggest draw in my eyes was the number of ingredients. I’m concerned about all the weird chemicals in our home environments these days and I’ve slowly become more interested in using simple products to accomplish household tasks. I still like spraying 409 on the kitchen counters, so don’t suspect me of turning super granola or anything. ; )

I used this page as a reference and ended up visiting the Duggar family site (afterall, their kids look clean, don’t they?!). If you dig around the world wide web using Google you’ll find a lot more information on the financial savings of homemade detergent. I’m also going to post the (inedible) recipe to Needs More Butter for easy referencing in the future.

Final note: Arm & Hammer Washing Soda isn’t the easiest product to find. I check about six different stores before finally locating it, ahem, at my grocery store three miles down the road. Wish I had looked there first!

Kids can’t resist piles of leaves.

And fun-loving adults can’t resist doing things like this.

With minimal arm-twisting, poses are made and captured with my camera.

And then the dog gets involved. I wish I could insert video here because Shiloh’s tunneling and leaf-leaping was absolutely hilarious.

Even the neighbor boy gets involved, because, as we all know, kids can’t resist piles of leaves.

The sweet babe in the following shot had just woken up from a nap. Her eyes were a bit puffy from sleep and her hair was sticking up adorably. I love this tender moment of cuddling between the little punkin and her mama. It’s a privilege to snap shots like this.

The almost-two-year old in the following photo completely cracks me up (on a regular basis). She was looking kind of funny in the pic prior to this one because her tongue, though in her mouth, was thrust under her upper lip. Next thing I know, her tongue is outside her mouth and I’ve got a perfect shot. So funny and so cute.

Oh, this one is sad! Before you feel like I’m a horrible human being for snapping this guy in his moment of distress, you’ve got to know why he was so distraught. He wanted a blue cookie, BLUE, and there was nary a blue cookie to be found. No one in his class had blue cookies, but such rational thought did nothing for the sweet lad. Life is hard sometimes. Sometimes one just needs a blue cookie, what can you say?

The last photo is self-explanatory as I have great love for this kiddo. Could someone please tell me who replaced my baby with a big kid?