Blogs to read this week

I have so many blog posts floating around in my head and I'm too busy to post them. Some of my friends have posted similar topics so I thought I would share them here.
1. Ram posted about going to Houston next summer. I think I'm going to ask my parents to come visit while he is gone. Are any of your husbands going to convention next summer? Ram is prepared to receive tons of mail. See my sidebar for who I think Ram should vote for!
2. I'm an old fart at age 35 too. I posted a long comment on Elephant's Child blog. I would like to add that I refuse to do Facebook, I don't have a cell phone, nor do I have anything like a Blackberry or IPod. I'm happy to remain and old fart at age 35 (well-at least for a few more weeks until I'm an old fart at age 36!)
3. I have been meaning to post about my canning and freezing this year. Maybe I will still get to posting it, but I Shouldn't Be Doing This did a wonderful job posting what she accomplished this year. It is impressive how much she did (with her mom's help with some of it!) I left a long comment here too telling what I did.
4. I have been thinking a lot about Lamb 3 after my recent miscarriage. By this point both Lamb 1 and 2 were weaned because the next Lamb was on their way. I'm thankful Lamb 3 "gets" to be my baby a little longer. Melrose had a beautiful post on October 18 talking about being pregnant with number 3. I can't figure out how to link to that specific post-sorry. I also left a long comment here talking about Lamb 3.
5. Where we live, there aren't homeschooling co-ops or young families for the Lambs to do activities with. We drive 20 miles one way to the country church in our tri-parish because they have one family with children our age to go to Sunday School with. Sometimes I feel guilty that we aren't able to give them more opportunities, especially at church. Elephant's Child wrote a nice post on this topic. After reading this, I don't feel so bad. The Lambs have spent the last few days playing lots of Lincoln Logs. Lamb 1 has become quite good at them even though he rarely played with them before this week. The Lambs put pillows around my dining room table and pretended to be groundhogs (why in October? I don't know.) I like that all of their play Lamb 1 and 2 do together and often Lamb 3 joins in (like when they were groundhogs). Lamb 1 and 2 have also been playing more board games together. I can't imagine if Lamb 1 was in school that they would have time to use their imaginations like this.
6. Indiana Jane wrote the post that inspired Elephant's Child to write her post that I talked about in #5 of this list. Indiana Jane said, "I can't have those lovely bygone days back when all I had to do was cook, clean, and hang out with my kids". This really struck me, that those of us with young kids complain that all we do is cook and clean and take care of toddlers. Here, Indiana Jane is wishing to be back in that situation again. Thanks, Jane for giving us that perspective.
7. I tried MckMama's recipe for Texas caviar and it is delicious! We have had it a couple of times now and I plan on making it again soon to use up some more tomatoes we have waiting to get ripe in our house after the first freeze.
8. The last blog is not one that I was thinking about, but Susan has a recipe for carmel dip that sounds wonderful. Lamb 1 has caps on his teeth so he can't have sticky foods. We haven't had carmel dip for several years because of this. We bought some wonderful apples this year and I was wishing we could have carmel dip. I haven't tried Susan's recipe yet, but it sounds delicious!

Thank you to all of the friends who posted on their blogs this week that I mentioned in this post. I may be an old fart, but I do enjoy reading my friends blogs! Some of them I have never met in real life (Elephant's Child, Melrose, MckMama), but I consider them friends because I have read their blog so often!