I got an e-mail this morning with a link to an artist’s website. I’m only sad that I’ve not known this artist before this morning. His work is exquisite to me. I was so moved by his new painting “One Nation Under God” that I wanted to share it here. I have only captured a small section of this picture in hopes others will click on it and visit the artist’s site to see the full work and read of his thoughts on it.

I am so amazed by the talents of others and their willingness to share them. I really think Jon captured the heart and essence of all the wonderful elements of this great nation in his painting. I could feel a shared love for American History and the sacrifices of so many wonderful people since it’s birth.

The Halloween craze continues to run rampant in our neck of the woods. On our nightly walks we see nearly as many outdoor lights and displays as we do at Christmas. It’s truly a ’spooktacular’ phenomenon. My son tells me all the time that we don’t have enough stuff on our house. But we have more than I ever thought we would. Kids have a way of helping make sure that happens. I thought we were doing pretty well, I mean we have our ghost in the tree:

Some tombstones, a couple pumpkins, a skeleton, a witch’s broom and one of those annoying noise maker coffin boxes:

All are accompanied by a red/orange glow from the colored bulbs in the light fixtures, and I was especially proud that my plug in jack-o-lantern worked with my plug extension twisted into the light socket directly above it. Last year he sat hidden by the door, this year he’s front and center without an extension chord. However, Taylor wasn’t so easily impressed with my engineering feat. Lucky for me, he tends to lighten up when it gets close enough to Halloween to carve and light our pumpkins. *wink*

Halloween got an early start for us this year, the first weekend of the month to be specific. Cidnie decided she wanted to find and color some Halloween coloring pages. So she went to the computer and started printing out pages to color.

Taylor joined in the fun and then we cut them out and hung them on the mirror.

Last week we had fun making some Halloween decorations that Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids for their birthdays. We watched some of the movie The Labyrinth while making the skeleton. I still love that movie.

The month was already filling with Halloween things and then the cookie phantom and boo ghost landed on our door. So last night we made treats with the kids; two kinds of cookies and some chocolate dipped pretzel sticks. I was so happy with the way the cookie cutter cookies turned out that I wanted to share the recipe.

Basic Cookie Cutter Cookies

3/4 C Sugar
1/2 (1 stick) butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 C Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons pear butter (I put in the pear butter because the mix was too crumbly. You could easily substitute apple sauce for the pear butter. )

My only complaint with this fun activity in past years is the need to make copies of stuff to give with the treats. In the past, I’ve ended up making my own version to print out (I promise to get all those in their many varieties up on my file section soon) and then I give extra copies to the families we share with so they don’t have the headache. But this year, the boo ghost smartened up and came with a website address to go get the information and picture from.

I have two weeks left to figure out costumes. Cidnie wants to be the confessor from the TV show “Legend of the Seeker” and Taylor wants to be Darth Maul.

So far I have Cidnie’s knives:

Looks like the sewing machine will be used for more than humanitarian quilt tops! Hopefully, I’ll find enough success to want to blog it when it’s done.

So that wraps up our Halloween 2009 Part I. In a few weeks I’ll have one full of the pumpkin carving, trunk-or-treats and Halloween night parties. *wipes brow* Is it Thanksgiving yet?

There are things that aren’t worth the effort, like my Christmas Bonus from years ago that was 29 cents in change - not kidding, but this takes the cake:

That’s right, a government check in the amount of ONE cent. Almost leaves you speechless doesn’t it?

Sweetheart, today you turn twelve. It doesn’t seem possible, and yet I know I’ll feel the same way when you hit sixteen and that will be here before I know it. As a parent you long for your child to reach new milestones all the while wishing against hope that you could keep your precious ones small. You’re growing up before my eyes, but you’ll never outgrow my heart. You see, you are the champion of my heart.

That heart skipped beats before and until your arrival. Oh it tried desperately to achieve regularity and stability, but all was in vain without you. Something inside simply knew it wasn’t complete. I prayed and prayed for that completeness to come. I cried, worried, mourned and despaired over the emptiness only you could fill. For many years I wondered at the future of my heart. For the first time in my life I began to doubt.

They say the brightest rainbows come after the darkest storms. Well dear, your rainbow surpasses description. You are the champion of my heart. You won it over the moment I laid eyes on you, when you were still in your mother’s belly. I felt a tingle in that empty place. The ache in my arms was replaced with such warmth and love the first time I held you, my baby sweet. You were everything I’d hoped; everything I’d dreamed; everything I’d wanted. You still are.

So you see, you can never outgrow my heart for you grew in it. You played a critical role in completing it. You are the champion of my heart.

I can’t resist sharing this photo of Tay a few days ago before his haircut. It seems to fit perfectly with the title of today’s post too!

We had the pleasure of enjoying Grandma and Grandpa’s company last night so we threw in a little early birthday celebration fun. I wish I could put into words how excited my sweet boy gets about things. He was so delighted to see his cake (which was so rushed by mom!!) was in the form of one of his newest video game favorites…PacMan! But when he turned it around and saw the candles that spelled his name and how old he was turning he moved from excited thank yous and jumping to squeals of delight and “You’re the best mom ever!” chants. I love this kid!

Then we let both kids open their birthday presents from Grandma and Grandpa. They scored big time with both, but Tay’s Bakugan was definitely the first prize winner! I should point out to check out his sister’s reaction in the background of the photo, she of course is explaining how much he LOVES these silly toys. *giggle*

This morning he woke up before 7:00 a.m. asking if he could open the rest of his presents. I’m not sure who was more excited, him or his sister. *wink*

Taylor had a fun early birthday present. He got to spend a few days with his half brother. This morning they opened their birthday presents from Marci - matching Heeley shoes! I promised to get her lots of pictures so here’s a few. I also had Blake use one of the kid’s cameras to get video. The picture quality is lacking but the essence of excitement is still captured!

The passing of time really does sneak up on you. I was looking through pictures this morning and couldn’t help but see the serious growth in my kids just since these were taken when we moved into our new home only 3.5 years ago.

This is our fourth fall in this home. It doesn’t seem possible when it still feels like only a year ago at most. Yet here the calendar and pictures are telling me that what it feels like and what it is are not the same thing. Time really does sneak up on you when you.

Over the years, I’ve learned the value of blogging a few things - things that I think I’ll remember but find the details got hazy. Some of my best recipe creations have been lost to the haze, but as soon as I started blogging some of my successes I’ve been able to go back and find them. Technology can be a helpful and beautiful thing. Another benefit for me personally is the way it helps me track progress on goals. I love seeing posts and pictures from big projects from beginnings to end. They say a target to be hit must first be seen, well for me the motivation to keep working on those targets comes from visually being able to view and comprehend my progress. It is literally my fuel for success. So this post starts the first of many on recording my progress toward my goal of true self reliance through the principles of Family Home Storage.

First a little history to understand my perspective. I grew up hearing the importance of self-reliance and preparedness. The wise counsel of preparation has been ever present in my life, although I readily admit that I’ve been only partially vigilant in following the counsel. Instead of a full year’s supply of emergency food storage, I had a couple month’s worth. Instead of financial freedom I convinced myself I was doing great because we were always paying more than minimum on our debts as well as putting money away in several different savings and investment plans. If anyone had asked me how I felt about things at that time my story would have been laced with illusions of grandeur through rose colored glasses. My wake up call came when disaster struck in 2001 and I learned the valuable lesson of direct correlation between our level of vigilance and our survival/recovery. The good news is that we survived a serious blow of six months with no income without declaring bankruptcy. The bad news is that we only barely survived and our recovery was monumental. I seriously underestimated how quickly all those reserves would go when used. We incurred increased consumer debt used to float us through the gap of my husband securing employment. There are not words to express the feelings of helplessness, frustration and entrapment which followed the many months later as we struggled under a mountain of debt and limited resources. Looking back, I see how our partial attention to self reliance played a critical role in our surviving our own emergency, but I can also see how full attention would have provided full benefit. Things would have been different. Things would have been better.

In September I helped organize and present an evening of instruction on the very topic of Family Home Storage. Through the process, I was able to identify several things I still haven’t and should be doing for my own success in this area. The first was moving my knowledge of what I had from my cluttered head to an easier and more tangible system. So this week I took my own advice and went through all my food storage to make an inventory. I pulled things off the shelves, wrote down what I had, reorganized my supplies and then moved all that wonderful information into a spreadsheet.

While I haven’t perfected my system, I now have a start. I organized my list into a column for checking when the item has met my 100% goal, a column for the item description followed by two columns one for “have” and the other for “need.” My goal was to quickly identify in the first column how complete my goal is, the purpose of the last column was to help me quickly determine items needing to be added to a shopping list. I broke the list out into sections that included my pantry, freezer, long term food storage and non perishable items. The goal for food is to get three months worth of usable storage and one year of long term/emergency basic food storage.

Yesterday I put my list on the door of my pantry. I added a checklist for myself and family members to write down when items are pulled and used so I know what needs replaced. I just used a large white mailing envelope to hold my list and attached a checklist on the front and a pencil.

I’ve got a good start to my three month supply and a decent beginning to my long term storage, but I am totally lacking in drinking water and a few other non-perishables. It is recommended to have two weeks worth of drinking water for each family member. The suggestion is 3 cases of individual drinking water bottles per person for that time. That means I should have 12 cases of water bottles, I have one. So my immediate goal is to add one case of water and one package of toilet paper to each shopping trip. In our last home, I’d get caught with my pants down several times when the complex had to turn our water off for repairs. Sometimes it would last a good half to full day. I was so grateful for the inspiration to fill my empty canning bottles with water. The number of times I had to run down to my storage room to get a pint of water was many! I know the value of having usable water available.

My next immediate goal is to start tracking how quickly I use the items in my pantry. That way I’ll know what a three month supply means for me and my family. Right now it would be pure guesswork. I will also start adding that step by step application of one extra can of something here, a few pennies in the jar there, etc. I look forward to sharing photo updates of my progress on my goal. I wonder if it will look anything like the picture in my head?