Our first dinner of the week was Spicy Slaw W/sauteed Streak Strips served with corn tortillas, lime, and sour cream.  Flavorful and summery and totally scrumptious.  Seth and I were blissed out.  The children?  Not so much.  Eden and Ephraim enjoyed them, but the youngest three boys would live happily ever after if I never stuck another bite of red cabbage underneath their noses again.  I make the slaw when I’m cleaning up from lunch so the flavors can meld by dinnertime.  I  sprinkle some sucanet in the dressing to add a bit of sweetness and bring out even more bright flavor.  I also skip the fresh garlic as the first few times I made it,  I quickly decided it should have been titled Dragon Breath Slaw.  It was too strong, even for a garlic lover like me.

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 Ephraim has this way of completely wearing items of clothing out in mere weeks after they have been purchased.  These are his Wal-Mart shoes.  They were chosen in the name of frugality and convenience.  They were highly prized by Ephraim, but not so much by his papa.   Seth is a talented engineer with a business manifesto of high expectations and standards for any man-made thing,  his or others.  He appreciates a thing well-made.  I, too, appreciate good quality and have sympathies to Seth’s  mantra of Spend More, Use Longer.  However, when I am in town with five children…four of them boys  who don’t necessarily enjoy shopping…and I am faced with the decision to either by Wal-mart brand shoes or:

buckle everyone in,

drive to another store,

unbuckle everyone,

herd all children to the shoe isle of a name-brand store

and then face the daunting task of finding the right pair of shoes

at the right price,

for the right child…

and LEAVE with the shoe department still in one piece…

Well, the answer is simple.

Buy Wal-Mart shoes.

Anyway,  Upwards Basketball began this month, and Ephraim and Zion both needed new athletic shoes.  However, the day Seth was going to take them to get new ones,  Ephraim made some unfortunate decisions and thus,  had to stay home from the purchasing trip. This was actually fine  because his Wal-Mart shoes still fit and were in working condition…or so we thought.  Unbeknownst to us, the soles were coming loose.   Therefore,  as he began his first game…things began falling apart,  literally.   Ephraim tripped and skidded his way through the first part of the game.   At half time, some dear caring adult took Ephraim behind the scenes and taped up the shoes for him so he could actually be a productive part of the remainder part of the game.   This was a bit awkward for my dear engineer, who is always more comfortable on the giving end than the receiving.  Not too mention, if he had done the “shoe choosing”,  Ephraim would not have been there with his feet wound tight with duct tape.  Then, a Very Nice Person, daddy of another player, came up to Seth and offered hep in  ”finding new shoes for your son by next practice if he’s in the need of some”.   Seth, not one to explain that his son had been given the opportunity to upgrade his footwear, curtly answered the Very Nice Person:  ”We can buy our own shoes, thank you.”    I,  for some reason,  found this all very comical at home in the retelling.

  Seth promptly ran to town and came home with yet another pair of Nike’s to add to the household stash.  Yet, even with Ephraim sporting new shoes at the next practice,  Mr. Very Nice Person STILL came up to Seth and said “Hey, does your boy need everyday shoes?  I think I could find him some.  My nephews are about his size and always have shoes lying around that they’ve grown out of.”   This was all very humbling to Seth who is very conscientious of taking care of his family’s necessities.   He came home and asked me, a bit glumly:   “What do I look like anyway?  Do I have” Mr. Can’t Provide For My Own Family” written all over me?!”   I found this no less humorous than the week before and even had to snap of a few pics of the offending shoes before Ephraim pitched them.  We had stewarded out of the shoes all that we could, and it was time to lay them to rest in the dumpster.  And as for the Very Nice Person who offered us assistance in shoe provision,  I  thank the Lord that there are people  recognizing need in their surrounding environment and willingly giving help as they are able to,  regardless if it goes down well the recipient or not.  We may not have needed his persistent generosity today, but we may in the future.

The line-up: Zion's basketball shoes, my running shoes, Ephraim's basketball shoes, Seth's running shoes

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Wednesday

Wednesday was Saliva Sample Day.  HURRAY!  (sarcasm inserted)  In the hope of getting my cortisol replenished and my adrenal glands healed…I, firstly, have to provide four vials full of spit to be analyzed.    The large one has to be filled first thing in the morning, after rising…and before coffee.  Serious business.  I attempted to do this in the dark, without the glare of lights in my blearly eyes,  for reasons now unbeknownst even to myself.  It was a bit of a disaster.  After missing the tube twice, and having to wipe saliva off of my hand and the paperwork/directions beneath…I turned on the kitchen light.  One cannot waste precious spit when there is so little to come by in the early a.m.  This brought to mind a story that I remember my Grandma Brovont telling me…about a little girl who was sent to the closet to think over her less-than-lovely behavior.  When her mother went to check on her, sure she would find a docile and repentant child, she was actually confronted with these remarks from her daughter: “I thpit on you coat, and I thpit on your shoes, and when I get some more thpit…I’m gonna thpit on your dress.”    The story is only funny, if it isn’t your child.   Anway, back to the test…I thpit on my hand, and I thpit on my directions, and when I get some more thpit,  I’m going to thpit in the bottle.

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Thursday

Thursday I sat and watched the most glorious sunrise while rocking one sick child in the chair and praying for another curled up on the futon.  That’s my little Eden lying beneath all that glorious God-breathed color.  She and Izzy both came down with the flu the first of the week, which turned into a chest cold, which then turned into pneumonia.   I don’t have a physician’s say-s0 on the matter, but I know the symptoms and the signs.  Seth, Eden, and Izzy all have the inclination towards chest infection and pneumonia.  I immediately put the two sickies on raw garlic, and now the whole house smells like Italian eatery.

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Friday

He’s my seven year old, boy wonder, cracking his way through division and finding the area of trapezoids, but has never lost a tooth until today.  He is quite pleased.  It’s the right of passage so important to a child…all that space to stick your tongue through which used to be covered up with tooth.   We all congratulated him and stood around admiring his new bloody trophy.  Boys need that kind of admiration and respect.

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Saturday

These pictures are actually over a year old.  But this is what we did Saturday.  We doctored up Eden and Izzy…fighting their fever with them and keeping them quietly occupied when they were feeling alert.  Izzy seemed to pull out of the worst of it by Saturday evening.  But Eden is my  fragile flower.  She has very little fight in her when it comes to sickness.   She turns her head, refuses her meds, and fades away.  I have to kind of get up in her face and *make* her swallow her doses, which seems rather loud and cruel in comparison to her fraility.  She would be the first to go if we were still in the days of the Bubonic Plague and Influenza epedemics.  (sigh)  She is just the sort of female faction that would do well to carry smelling salts in her velvet portmanteau in the case of being taken by a spell of lightheadness.   Oh, but I love that about her… and am so thankful it is I, that am called her mama, nurse-made, and caretaker.   What a precious privilege.

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Sunday

We are home with the snifflers and sneezers… a  much needed day of rest.  The three boys who are well are out making snow forts and bombarding each other with snowballs, some much needed wearing off of testosterone.  My love and I are side by side on the couch, enjoying the easy companionship.   He has uncharacteristically laid aside his ipod, droid, and kindle to peruse the pages of real books; the titles being “Thinking: Fast and Slow” and “Grass Fed Cattle”…proof that, yes indeed, woman and men generally choose different literary genres.   When one book gets too dry, he switches to the other.  He amuses me by reading blips out of his books, that, perhaps, only him and I would think absolutely hilarious.  There is leftover taco soup on the stove and coffee in the pot.  Thank You, Father for a Sabbath and a sanctuary from the rushing world.  Thank You.