My friend called me this morning:

Friend (all excited-like): Well hell-OH!!! Are you OKAY???

Me (surprised): Well, yes, I’m fine, thank you. Why do you ask?

Friend: Because you haven’t blogged for like FOUR DAYS and I have no idea how you’re doing when you don’t write. I was getting all worried because I thought something might be wrong because you weren’t writing and then I have to call you to find out and—

Me: Oh goodness, I’m FINE. Truly! And I think it’s only been three days since I posted, but I’ll forgive you the slip-up ‘cause it’s real sweet of you to care. Not much is happening here. I’m plugging away at using up my freezer stuff so I don’t have any new recipes to write about and I figured that everyone is probably bored stiff of hearing about the kids so that’s why I didn’t post. I do have a new recipe in the works—

Friend: Oh no, no. When you don’t write, I worry and then I have to call you to find out what’s going on.

Okay, so that’s not the conversation verbatim—

(Excuse me, but my youngest son is hacking up something in the downstairs bedroom with a scissors. I better go check.)

(Back again. No scissors involved [like yesterday]—he was just pounding on a sheet of cardboard with a green dry erase marker and a metal dustpan.)

—but it gets the point across.

And yes, I really am fine. I have a luscious cake post I’ve working on, but since my friend didn’t say she doesn’t want to hear more about my kids, I guess she kind of might not mind hearing more about them, so…

Story One: Windy Wood
Last I wrote, my kids had just rigged up a two-sided ramp using sawhorses, boards, and sheets of plywood.

They spent the afternoon shooting down the sides on wagons, trikes, and bikes.

When it came time to clean up, my son discovered a new game: stand a sheet of plywood up on end and then let it fall to the ground with a whoosh, right beside the other kids and resulting in a vigorous gust of wind and some wild hair. I observed this new game from my spot in the brand new strawberry patch (25 Sparkle and 25 All-Star).

It didn’t take me more than two seconds to toss my baby plants and sprint to the house for the camera.

I sat on the ground beside the girls and snapped madly away while the my son hoisted and dropped the board and my husband hollered at me from the strawberry patch to put the stupid camera down and come over and help him right this very minute.

Story Two: Cereal Worship
I don’t buy cereal any more. We’ve been living on granola (I make this recipe once a week, and sometimes twice), oatmeal, pancakes, and eggs. This is a big switch for me, a former cereal addict. But it’s gotten to the point where I no longer crave the boxed bits o’ dry crispies (too much), and I’ve accustomed myself to think ahead for our morning meals.

However, we’ve eaten so much granola lately that even the kids have started to beg for mercy. So a couple weeks ago I bought one box of frosted mini wheats and everybody but Papa got one bowl before the box was empty. It wasn’t nearly enough to alleviate our granola boredom.

So yesterday I included “cereal” in my grocery list. My husband was doing the shopping and stopped at a Dollar General on the way out of town to pick it up. Three whole boxes, he got. The kids were ecstatic.

My oldest son was the first to spy the splurge. He ran leaping and yelling (and totally ignoring our orders to come back here right this minute to help bring in the groceries) upstairs to shout the good news to his sisters. Then he sat down (once again, ignoring our orders to help put away the groceries) to read the cereal boxes.

This morning’s breakfast of honey nut cheerios (mixed with granola, ‘cause I can’t help myself) was an enormous hit. It put everyone in a downright jolly mood.

Story Three: The Life of My Porch Swing
It appears that my porch swing has a life of its own. It gets tired of always facing west and likes to shake things up every now and then.

Sometimes I go outside and find it facing towards the road.

Other times I go outside and find it making out with the white bench. (I know!)

And still other times I go outside and find that it’s up and tried to leave the porch all together and that a little monkey has taken its place.

Story Four: My Niece
Yesterday evening we took care of my niece. Normally when she comes over, she disappears with the older kids and I never see her. But this time my son was mowing the yard and the roaring machine, it turned out, kind of shell-shocked the poor dear.

At first I didn’t realize there was any problem. I was in the garden and the other kids were in the yard, on the porch, running in and out of the house. But then I went to the house for something and found the little girl quietly kneeling behind the picnic table, her hands over her ears.

I took her to the other side of the porch where it was quieter, but even when the machine was on the opposite side of the house, she kept her ears covered. She didn’t seem that upset, really, just … frozen.

Eventually she made it out to the rocks in the flower garden where she played with Sweetsie for a bit. But then my son brought the mower around to the barn and shut it off.

I watched my niece watch my son as he sat on the silent mower. After a minute she called to me loudly, never once taking her eyes off the monster machine, “Jennifer! I’m scared!”

I alerted my son to the traumatized child fleeing the rock garden behind him and he came up on the porch to entertain her.

I think my niece might adore my son. Just look at that face!

He danced around and made silly so she might be happy.

He cracked her up, he did.

And then he cuddled with her on the porch bench while my husband did the finish-up mowing.

This same time, years previous: flour tortillas, chocolate-covered peanut butter eggs, the value (or not) of the workbook, asparagus-walnut salad, asparagus with lemony crème fraîche and boiled egg

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that every winter my husband and I do a bet with each other to see who can spend the least amount of money for the longest amount of time. I won all the bets (here’s one of them) up until last year when I lost (sniff).

This year, however, we’re not doing the bet. This year we’re doing a seismic overhaul of how we manage our household finances. It has been revolutionary and I am on fire.

It all started a couple years ago when my friend and her husband took a Dave Ramsey class. She’d fill me in on Dave’s theories and methodology and I’d grill her on the details. I began to think that we might benefit by learning more about The Dave Plan, but my husband didn’t view the new ideas as rosily as I did. His comments ran something like this: “You pay for everything with cash? That’s stupid.”

“But hon, I do better when I pay with cash,” I’d say. “I need to see what I’m spending.”

“Nah, it’s too inconvenient, not to mention too risky. I don’t like it.”

So we continued to bounce along from pay check to pay check (it’s amazing how attached you can get to a non-working plan), spending money when we needed to and wanted to and hoping we didn’t face-plant. Sometimes we’d get sick of all the bouncing and would attempt to get control of the situation, but it never stuck and soon we’d be back in the good old Sliding By Position.

A note of clarification: our financial situation wasn’t dire, as far as financial situations go. We didn’t have credit card debt, and John possessed a fairly good understanding of how our money moved. (We’ve since learned that understanding how our money moves is very different from controlling how our money moves.)

Then last fall my friend loaned me her Dave Ramsey book. I slurped it up, and when she informed me that a new Dave class was opening up, I planted myself in front of John and informed him that we needed to take it. He, wisely, agreed. So every Tuesday evening for the past eleven weeks (two more to go!) we’ve been meeting at a local school for our two-hour sessions; the first hour we watch a DVD of Dave and the second hour is class discussion.

Far and away, the best thing this class has done for us is—and this can not be overestimated—it has put us on the same page, hallelujah! We now share a framework with which we can talk about money. John agrees that paying for things with cash is perhaps a wise idea, and we plan to get rid of our household credit card in the near future (we’ve switched to debit) and—

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me back up. For those of you who aren’t familiar with either Dave Ramsey or his Financial Peace University (the fancy name for our class), here is a sample of a couple of the main ideas:

*people spend 12-18% more when they use a credit card than when they use cash (even when paying off the credit card every month), so use cash
*rainy days will happen; plan for them
*never get a loan for a car or anything for that matter (except a house and college, if you must)
*financial peace means having a plan and sticking to it

Dave’s financial plan is comprised of a series of baby steps, the first three of which are:
1. put aside a thousand dollars in an emergency fund
2. snowball your debt
3. save 3-6 months of living expenses (which is step one expanded)

There are more steps, but since they’re the ones that John and I are working on right now, they are all I’ll mention. I don’t want to overwhelm myself (or you).

This class has challenged me to not only change how I handle money, it’s also challenged me to rethink how I view money. I somehow got the idea growing up (in a series of Mennonite churches and with halfway-granola Mennonite parents) that money is bad. We were to avert our eyes from it, and not depend on it, talk about it, or roll in it. People who had a lot of money were entangled in its snares. Not being controlled by money meant not having any. ‘Cause didn’t Jesus tell us to sell everything and follow him?

These teachings still persist. Just the other week we had a Sunday church service that revolved around money. The classic Do Not Worry About What You Will Eat Or Drink scripture was duly intoned, and there was much talk about trusting God and good stewardship and yadda yadda yadda. Inside I was screeching, Don’t tell us not to worry! Tell us what we can DO so we can STOP worrying! Which is completely anti-Everything I’ve Been Taught because not worrying about money is all about faith, right?

Wrong! If faith means turning a blind eye to finances and just hoping things work out, than I want none of it. (Which is probably not what any church leaders intended us to do—the turning a blind eye part—but when we’re given mystical, floaty, o-happy-day teachings in place of concrete advice, general clueless-ness is the unintentional side effect.)

What does work is getting A Financial Education and A Plan and Sticking With It. Scrutinizing our spending habits, naming where the money goes, and working with what I have and ONLY with what I have, has provided me more peace than anything I’ve ever done.

(I can share more of the nitty-gritty details regarding our allocated spending plan and envelope system, if you’re interested—just give a shout-out in the comments. But if not, no prob. I don’t want to drag you all through our money dirt [which is not to be confused with pay dirt].)

Three Post Blog Post Disclaimers
1. Dave Ramsey does not know who I am.
2. I do not agree with everything Dave Ramsey says.
3. Dave Ramsey sometimes gets borderline Prosperity Gospel-ish which turns my stomach—when he gets going like that I just plug my ears and chant, I’m not listening I’m not listening.

I am so used to my children’s weird antics and creative games that my nerves have numbed.

For example, I look out the window and see one of my daughters using the deck railing as a balance beam and think, Now THAT would hurt if she fell, and then I go on about my business.

Or, I watch as my girls (again), who for some odd reason are standing in the middle of the poopy chicken yard, run at top speeds for the fence and then try, unsuccessfully, to hurdle it and the only thought that crosses my mind (beside, Oooo, Papa isn’t going to like that) is, I ought a turn that fence on. That would teach ‘em good.

So yesterday when my boys and Company Boy were mountain climbing the clubhouse and then repelling back down, I just stretched myself out in the grass and took pictures.

At one point Company Boy was at one end of the rope that was strung through the clubhouse and my little boy was at the other—the general idea being that Company Boy would jump out the clubhouse door and hoist my baby up into the air in the process. I had my camera sights fixed on them when Company Boy clued in to the fact that I was lying right there and he was about to do something potentially dangerous with my youngest child. He turned to me and asked politely, Um, do you mind if I do this?

Nah, it’s fine, I assured him.

So he jumped (and nothing happened).

Then this morning while I was planting rhubarb, radishes, lettuce, and more spinach, my son rigged up a swing. ‘Cause if you think an industrial sized swing set is enough for my children, then you’d be wrong.

This time I did intervene from my spot in the lettuce patch. “Hey!” I hollered. “You need to brace that board!”

“I did,” he hollered back. I decided I’d take his word for it.

When I walked over later to take pictures, I saw he had braced it, sure enough.

What a good boy.

Then I looked down at the massive amounts of rope circling the clubhouse. “What’s all the rope for?” I asked.

“So the swing doesn’t slide off.”

“Oh, right. Okay then.”

I headed back to the garden to weed the strawberries and soon the kids came over to the barn where they rigged up a ramp and took turns shooting out of the barn on the wagon.

In between and around these activities, the girls decided to scrub (yes, scrub) the chicken coop (but I stopped them because I didn’t want them to mess with the chickens’ prime laying time), my son asked me if I had flour (huh? you’re asking me if I have flour? what ails you, child!), I stopped my daughter from watering the strawberries, I stopped my daughter from watering the mulch, and I made two kids get out of the pile of horse manure.

(I’m quite excited about that horse manure. Out on a walk with my sister-in-law yesterday, I passed our neighbors driving around in their pick-up. Or rather, they passed us, several times, in fact. Finally I yelled at them, “What’s wrong? You lost?” in kind, neighborly fashion. And then their little puppy started chasing us down the road so I had to scoop him up and shove him in the cab window at them. The one guy asked, “Hey, whadda I have to do to get some more of those cinnamon buns?” [He was referring to the buns I made for the hog butchering.]

“You have any manure?” I shot back.

“Sure do!”

Within an hour I had me some horse manure, and today when he gets home from work, he’ll have him some cinnamon buns. Ain’t country living great?)

One final thing before I wrap this up, when my parents stopped by this past weekend, my father introduced my children to the live cam of the bald eagles’ nest. There are three little babies (they hatched last week), and the parents take turns sitting on the nest. This morning over our bowls of oatmeal and canned peaches, we watched as the eagles fed their babies. The kids were thrilled.

I’d leave it on all the time if it wasn’t so distracting—every time the babies chirp more loudly or the parents call, the kids drop everything and run to the computer.

(Check out the fluctuating number of viewers listed at the bottom of the window—a hundred thousand are on at any given time.)

P.S. After writing this, I started loading photos and got up to look out the window to check on the kids. This was what I saw.

I rest my case.

This same time, years previous: asparagus with lemon and butter, new territory: grief, the kind of day, in all seriousness, peanut butter frosting, cream of tomato soup