MN Orchestra concert part one

I saw in the newspaper that the MN Orchestra was scheduled to play at a small town less than an hour from us. Tickets were $15 for adults, $5 for students. There was no age on the student price, so we e-mailed and asked for an age. It can cost more than that to go to see a movie with your whole family, so we were prepared to splurge since the MN Orchestra was coming so near us. We told them the ages of our boys in the e-mail. I was planning on Ram and I taking turns in the lobby with Lamb 3 and in the auditorium with Lamb 1 and 2.
Soon after we sent the e-mail, we received a reply that all 3 were students. Before we bought the tickets, but a few days after we received the e-mail that all 3 were students, we received another e-mail. This e-mail said that children age 6 and above were welcome to attend with an adult. So that put us in the position that only Lamb 1 was allowed. I wrote this e-mail back.

This is very disappointing. I understand not bringing the 3 year old, but I do not understand not bringing the 5 year old. We homeschool and we have studied instruments, composers, and orchestras. We have studied this in books and listened to CDs, but nothing can compare to going to hear the orchestra live. Our 7 and 5 year old knew what we were talking about when we told them we were going to listen to Wagner and Strauss and Tchaikovsky. We were thrilled to learn the Minnesota Orchestra was coming to our rural area. We have lived in a big city before and the biggest thing I miss now that I live in a rural area is that we can not attend concerts.


I do not know what we are going to do about buying tickets, we will probably not be attending at all, because our 5 year old would be so disappointed that his brother got to go and he didn’t. Our 5 year old has sat through a church service without leaving once that was longer than this 2 hour concert.


I am the most disappointed that this information was not posted on your website and that you did not tell us this immediately when we e-mailed. In the meantime we told our boys that we would be attending and they will be very disappointed.

Then I received another e-mail back that both Lamb 1 and 2 were welcome to attend and they hoped that we chose to attend. They apologized for the misunderstanding on the website. This was the director of the small town arts program. I'm sure she never expected parents to ask to bring a 5 year old on a school night. She had to work with the MN Orchestra and go by their guidelines.

So we talked to Lamb 1 and 2. We told them what the concert would be like (as much as you can describe that to boys that have never attended a concert before). We told them they would have to miss ECFE to attend the concert because they were at the same time. Lamb 1 wanted to attend the concert. Lamb 2 wanted to go to ECFE with Lamb 3.

Since tickets were only $5 we bought 2 student tickets in case Lamb 2 would change his mind. He didn't. So Ram took Lamb 2 and 3 to ECFE and Ewe took Lamb 1 to the concert last night.

This post will be continued to talk about the concert that Ewe and Lamb 1 attended.

Lamb 2

There is a family that comes to ECFE faithfully and their dad brings them. The dad doesn't interact with his kids as much as the other moms seem to interact with their kids during ECFE. I am glad he comes to ECFE and his kids get some educational play time at ECFE.
Yesterday at ECFE, Lamb 2 noticed this dad's baby girl. Lamb 2 took the initiative to hold her hand and talk to her. Lamb 2 was not quite 2 years old when Lamb 3 was born so he didn't have too much time to be the big brother for Lamb 3-he was almost a baby himself. I had to watch Lamb 2 very closely around Lamb 3 for fear of him hurting or biting him.
At ECFE, Lamb 2 was so gentle and knew just how to treat a baby. I was so proud of him. I was glad he gave this baby girl a little extra attention. I pray that we have a girl for him to continue this next fall. No matter what gender the baby is, I could tell today that Lamb 2 is ready to be a big brother for Lamb 4. He will be so happy to be a big brother again. May the Lord bless and keep Lamb 4 until Lamb 2 can hold and eventually play with him.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I'm sorry I didn't post this until now. We had church on Wednesday night and the Lambs had an activity in the evening on Saint Patrick's Day, so we celebrated early on Tuesday.

The Lambs made these at ECFE last year. I put them up right away. When I was taking down Christmas decorations I thought about taking these down. Then I decided it was too soon until Saint Patrick's Day. Perhaps I should take them down now? They are by our back door, where visitors usually enter our house. Last March (and this March) the house was decorated well!

Ram's mom gave us this dish with this Irish Soda Bread recipe on it. I had to try it for Saint Patrick's Day!

The bread was delicious, but after some searching on the internet, I found out this isn't Irish or Soda Bread! It is more like Native American bread with raisins in it. Irish never would have used raisins and especially not during Lent.



DakotaPam's Irish Stew recipe, with all beef because Lamb is impossible to get locally unless you have a friend that raises Lamb or if you would plan WAY ahead of time.

On Saint Patrick's Day we read some books about Saint Patrick and I learned a few facts too.

We had a great celebration on Tuesday!



Being a rural pastor's wife post #24

I have a few more comments/topics to address about being a rural pastor's wife, but I thought I would take a break today and answer some comments that have been made about my rural pastor's wife series. I chose to not comment back on most of the posts that comments were made on-I just waited to address them here.
1. Thank you to those of you who left comments on this series. It's helpful to me to know that I'm not alone in some of this. Actually the most helpful comments were from those of you that don't live in rural areas but still do some of the same things-like stocking your pantry. It's not too late to add more comments on any of the posts in this series if you want to!
2. Helpful Teacher asked about my salad dressing recipes. I just picked some out of the cookbook-nothing fancy. The Lambs particularly like homemade poppy seed dressing with oranges and walnuts on spinach or lettuce. I only use walnuts because that is what I usually have, I think it would be good with almonds too.
3. Agnusdei1996 talked about the difference between our situations and how she doesn't miss/think about many things that I talk about in my posts. I don't know if I've stressed this in my posts, but the difficulty I have with being here is that I came from the second largest town in IN to a town of 113. There is no grocery store, place to buy gas, or bank in our town. I lived in Fort Wayne from 1989-2003 with the exception of 4 years at college but coming home on breaks. I learned how to drive in a big city and quickly got used to borrowing the family car to make a quick run to Target or the bank. I didn't have a car my first two years of college so I did shopping when I came home on breaks. When I was teaching I would run all over town to multiple stores to get supplies for my classroom. My other difficulty is that living in a small town would be easier for me if it was within 1 hour of a big city. I have a friend that was in that situation and she constantly complained about being one whole hour away from the city. She has now moved and would probably like to be back in that situation of only one hour away. But living 3 hours away from a big city, 4 hours from a really big city, and driving 1 1/2 hours to just get to a big town is difficult for me. I am thankful for the Internet and being able to buy things online or it would be even more difficult for me to live here. I'm don't mean this to sound like I'm complaining, because I am happy that Ram currently has a Call and the people are so nice to us here and I could go on and on about our blessings of living here (see some of the previous posts in this series). I also know that there is more to life than shopping. But that doesn't change that it was really difficult for me to adapt to living here when we first moved here as it was so different from where I came from. It really has become better since we moved here almost 8 years ago and I got used to it.
4. Esther commented that she wouldn't be able to survive without play dates and that she needed time to get together with her friends. I have a college friend that told me that once too. I think it is a blessing that we moved here before we had children, so I have no idea what I am missing with play dates because I've never had them. My comment to my college friend was that if she was in a similar situation as myself, she really could survive without play dates, even if she didn't like it. I learned things to do without having play dates.
Esther's other comment was that kids have to come in contact with germs some times. I agree and I'm sorry if the post sounded like I was truly afraid of germs and trying to keep my kids in a bubble so they didn't get sick. That was not the way it was intended. What I meant was this-when we used to have a babysitter come once a week, every week during the winter on the morning of babysitting day-we would have to call each other and make sure that we were all healthy enough for her to come over. Neither one of our families just wanted to pass germs back and forth and be sick all winter. Every week the day before babysitting day, I would think about if the runny noses were too bad to have her come etc. Her mom did the same thing with her before she came to our house. About once a month during the winter one of us would be too sick to get together and then I missed out on a babysitter. I'm thinking that the same thing would happen with play group. We did not go to ECFE last fall and it has not begun yet this spring. We were not sick with any major sickness so far this season. Our friends with kids in the area have been sick a lot this season. We still go to Sunday School and out to community events, so they had chances to get sick. But it wasn't the one hour every week in a room full of kids chance to get sick that they had at ECFE. The part of play group that I wouldn't want is the DECISION about healthy kids. I hope this explained this better.
Come back tomorrow as I continue this series on being a rural pastor's wife.

Being a rural pastor's wife post #20

1. The state of MN has Early Childhood Family Education classes offered at the schools for children up to age 5. The usual format is to read a story, parents and children do art project and possibly science experiment together, then children play while parents discuss a parenting topic. I was impressed with ECFE when we did attend regularly. We did not start to attend regularly until after Lamb 3 was born. While I was pregnant I was hesitant to go to a room full of kids with possible germs each week. Before Lamb 3 was born, I was just too overwhelmed to add in a commitment to take the Lambs up to the school each week. Perhaps we missed the ideal time to take Lamb 1 to ECFE. Lamb 1 is too old now. The teachers are willing to let him attend, but I see him so much older than the other children that I don't really want him to attend. Most parents stop bringing their children to ECFE after they go to preschool. So Lamb 1 and 2 seem much older than the other kids that attend. The first year of ECFE the topics for the parenting part were good. After that, the topics seemed to be the same. I know we can always improve our parenting skills, but often the topics did not apply to me (with all boys, more than 1 child, regularly attend church, homeschool, no TV, etc.). For all these reasons we are not attending regularly any more. The teacher spoke to me about possibly teaching ECFE (the student part while the teacher taught the parent part). I'm considering this as it might be the answer for us for ECFE-especially Lamb 3 is missing out on what the other Lambs had by us not going to ECFE. We'll see. Anyway, see if your state offers anything similar to ECFE at the school. (I believe that MN has a unique program, but it's worth checking into.)
2. I want to post this in full disclosure of what there is to do in our local community. One of the neighboring communities received a grant to do early childhood education events/education. This often partners with ECFE, but does it's own events. They have now spent most of their grant money and now they are working on raising money to continue to do events for the children in the community. Ram is not an official board member, but he often attends their meetings. They love to have a dad at the meetings to get his perspective and ideas. This group was perfect for our Lambs-when it started all 3 of our Lambs were in the 0-5 age group. Some events they have done are field trip to farm; big toys day-bring in construction equipment, fire truck, etc. and let them pretend to drive them; dad/child reading nights, etc. We are thankful that our local community decided to do this and know that if we were even one community over from where we live, we probably wouldn't be close enough to participate in many of their events. We will miss this when all the Lambs are too old. Many of the events don't cost that much-just need some one to plan them and the community to participate.
3. I'm actually glad that there aren't children in this area with SAHM moms to set up play dates with. My Lambs have learned to play with their brothers well. I don't have to deal with discipline of another child/ren at my house. I don't have to clean up my house for them to come over. I don't have decide if my child is sick if we should cancel the play date. I don't worry about getting their germs if they don't know they are sick. Would it be nice to have another mom to come over and chat while the Lambs play with her child? Yes. Do I think it would be worth the hassle? No. Do I want to drive my kids some where else (either another child's house or some place in the community) to go to a play date? No.
Check back tomorrow for more about being a rural pastor's wife.
Do you have any final thoughts about being a rural pastor's wife with children?

Family Update

I have a bunch of topics to blog about, but we've been busy and I can't blog about all of them now. Here's a little of what we have been doing recently.
*We're back to homeschooling all subjects. Last week we had school every day except Sunday. I'll have a big weekly homeschool report soon. I'm proud of the progress that Lamb 1 and 2 are making.
*I ordered some audio CDs of stories for the Lambs. They listen to these at bedtime. It doesn't seem so bad to go to bed when you get to listen to a story. We aren't far enough into technology to go beyond CDs in their room. We live too far away from the library to take advantage of that. I think this was a wise investment to get a few more CDs for our collection as they were tired of the ones we owned before. I like that they are getting a few more minutes of homeschool when they listen to these classic stories. The Lambs stay in their room for the whole CD because they don't want to miss a minute of the story while they go to the bathroom. They usually fall asleep by the end of the CD.
*Ram has a checkup at Mayo soon. Please pray for good results and a safe trip. We are praying that this is his last trip to Mayo and if he needs more tests or checkups they can be done locally. He will have a bunch of tests done and see his doctor that did the surgery.
*I got all my papers filed instead of in a big pile so I'm ready to get everything together to send to our tax lady.
*We made good headway on writing/making thank you notes last week. We still have more to do and I'm embarrassed that January is almost over and we haven't finished thank you notes for Christmas yet. The church members were very generous this year which is a good thing, but we have a ton of thank you notes to write. I'm having the Lambs write/make notes for each person that gave them a gift. Hopefully people will understand that it takes the Lambs a long time to make their notes so that is why it took so long.
*Ram took the Lambs to a library program last night about feet. They measured their feet, did an art project by tracing their foot and decorating it, ate foot long subs, and a whole bunch of other fun activities. It was wonderful for Ewe to have an evening alone to try to get things done at home.
*Ewe took the Lambs to a drop in play time at ECFE this morning. It was good to get the Lambs out to play with other kids, do art, and see the teachers. We took last semester off of ECFE. We're going to try to continue this play time in February. I had to laugh though, during play time the Lambs played together with the doll house almost the whole time-not with other toys, not with other kids.
*I've been trying a bunch of new recipes, most of them from vegetariantimes.com . Last night I made chickpea tagine with carrots, cinnamon, and cumin and at first I didn't think that Ram liked it. Tonight he said he liked it and he was full after just one bowl. Everyone ate it except for Lamb 3 so it was more of a success than I thought it was at first.
*I'm going to try to get our paperwork together for taxes and finish thank you notes and put the Christmas decorations away (they're down, but on the guest room bed) so I'm going to concentrate on that and not blog much. Hopefully I'll be back soon when my projects are done.

19th Week of school report

Considering the circumstances of last week, we did pretty well on school. Our babysitter came on Tuesday and we also had ECFE so we didn't have school. We didn't have school on Wednesday because I went to the midwife. Thursday and Friday we had school but it was such a struggle to get Lamb 1 to cooperate, especially for math, that we took Saturday off. We'll try school this week while Papa is gone, but again I'm not expecting to accomplish a lot while Ram is gone. The Lambs are definitely into routine and Saturday was a struggle for behavior all day. I'm thinking that we should do school this week even if it is a struggle because not doing school is worse! I'm so thankful that we homeschool and I don't have to take Lamb 1 down to the cold bus stop this week while Ram is gone! Here's what we worked on this week:
Math: Continued working on lesson 12.
Reading: Finished volume 1 and 2 of My Book House. Began volume 3 this week. Volume 3 has longer stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears that Lamb 1 is looking forward to. Read Who Owns the Sun? Had a nice discussion about slavery after reading this book. It is on the FIAR list and I should have read the book before reading it to the Lambs! Very well written book. We didn't do any FIAR activities with it, just read it. Still memorizing Bed in Summer by R. L. Stevenson.
Phonics: Lamb 1 continues to do well in Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.
Religion: Didn't start anything new this week.
Latin: Continue to review in Prima Latina.
Music: Continue to learn the names of musical instruments. Listened to some John Philip Sousa march music.
We didn't get to much science or history to talk about here.
Art: Made Valentine cut out cookies and decorated them, and made homemade Valentines and mailed to relatives. ECFE theme was Valentine's Day and did some art projects for that. Even Lamb 3 tried to do the art at ECFE this week.
Handwriting: Lamb 2 continues on his worksheets from http://www.donnayoung.org/ and he does a little better every day. Lamb 1 continued to review making his numbers correctly. Lamb 1 also worked on writing his name neatly on his Valentines. Ewe cared about this a lot more than Lamb 1 did!
This morning we got up and went to early church which was a good thing because the other two churches canceled because of weather. This is the most snow we have had since we moved here 7 years ago. Lamb 1 is quite good at shoveling now. We are ready for spring!
Happy Valentine's Day! We didn't have any plans for today, but we wouldn't be able to go anywhere even if we wanted to.

ECFE Parent Discussion

After most of December and all January off of ECFE, we resumed class today. The theme today was groundhogs. The story, song, art project, and even their play time was all about groundhogs. Then the parents meet while the children play. The children, especially Lamb 3, but other children too, seemed to have forgotten the routine and didn't want to leave their parents for the meeting. I'm hoping to get back to the routine soon where all the Lambs play while I go to the meeting.
At this first session, we brainstormed topics for the next 7 weeks for parents to talk about. It has been the same parents for the last few years so we've already done most of the normal topics of potty training, bedtime routine, discipline, etc. We decided to repeat discipline because we can always learn more about that.
The leader had a few interesting ideas for topics.
1. What do we want to teach our children to be prepared for the future? Some ideas given were-be respectful, keep their priorities straight, not give in to peer pressure, etc. When I discussed this with Ram, he said we want to train up a child in the way he should go... (Proverbs 22:6) and nothing else is as important as that. He also said we want to teach our Lambs to do problem solving and do simple math etc. in their heads and not rely on technology. I agree with the parent that said teaching them to keep their priorities straight is so important. Anyway, I'm going to be thinking more about this question as I think it is important.
2. The next topic she suggested was teaching your child to use technology wisely. She gave the example of college students giving up their cell phones for one week and they thought they were going to die. Another example was 4 out of 5 students don't watch the basketball game-they text during it. How ridiculous to go to a basketball game and not watch it! Last, sadly many couples sit in the same room and text each other instead of talking to each other. I can't even relate since I don't own a cell phone, or a laptop, or a mp3 player! I have never sent a text message on a cell phone. But I did really miss our computer when it was down for 18 days! I think this is a good topic and I look forward to our discussion.
3. One mom suggested how to talk about the birds and the bees with your child on an age appropriate level. I kept my mouth shut but I was so tempted to say that she should get pregnant as it is much easier to talk about this with your children when you are pregnant and when you have a new baby-Mama's breasts are for nursing, etc. After the meeting she stood up and she is obviously pregnant-and she told us then that she is expecting twins! Problem solved!

I'll be thinking more about topics for us to discuss. I try to take the Lambs every week so I may as well have an interesting topic that I would learn something from.

Sickness Update

All the Lambs are feeling better and Ram never got sick this round. Ram took Lamb 1 and 2 to ECFE this afternoon. It was his first time taking the boys to ECFE.
Ram made me go to the doctor because I still wasn't better after one week. The doctor agreed that I should be better from regular flu by now. She put me on antibiotics to hopefully help my cough and also help my possible ear infection. I had so much wax that she couldn't actually see my ear drum. In the old days (aka when I was a child) they would clean all that wax out. Now they don't want to disturb the possible ear infection nor risk putting a hole in the ear drum. I have memories of the pain of cleaning out the wax so I was happy we didn't have to do that today.
I took Lamb 3 with me to the doctor because he had not been without a fever for 24 hours so I didn't want to send him to ECFE. It made Ram's job to go to ECFE much easier without Lamb 3. Lamb 3 was scared of my nurse and doctor and afraid they were going to check on him.
This has all been more complicated because our previous doctor got burned out and moved away. It is difficult to be a doctor in this rural area. So we chose to go to a closer town with several doctors but one brand new female doctor. Our previous doctors since we moved here were all Asian. This new doctor graduated from high school when I graduated from college so she is just a few years younger than me. She grew up in this area and wanted to come home. I am hoping that we can stick with her as our doctor for awhile. It was a little strange going to the doctor today and not having to pay such close attention to her accent. I liked hearing English!

Seventh Week of School Report

Here's what we accomplished this week:
Math: Worked on MUS lesson 4. The concept here is adding 0 to a number. Math is gradually getting more difficult for Lamb 1-not impossible, but he was surprised that he had to (gasp!) think this week!
Handwriting: Lamb 1 practiced writing his first and last name some more. He is improving.
Phonics: We reviewed vowels and the consonants we did before. We learned the consonants h, j, k, and l.
Religion: Memorized John 14:3 (for Sunday School), worked on memorizing the third and fourth commandments and the hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God. We were excited to sing A Mighty Fortress in church on Sunday. The Lambs did a very nice job singing this hymn in church. I was afraid they would act silly or act like they didn't know it, but they sang nice and loud! We did a little Bible stories about Abraham, but not very much this week.
Science: We read more science books on fall topics like leaves and pumpkins. We also read some science books about our bodies (heart, lungs, etc.)
Reading: We finished How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. Read a few stories from My Book House and a few poems, recited Time to Rise by R.L. Stevenson daily.
Latin: Worked on Lesson 3 and 4 from Prima Latina.
Art: Play doh with babysitter on Tuesday.
On Tuesday our babysitter came and we had ECFE so we didn't do school. The ECFE theme was colors. I think the Lambs favorite part of ECFE was the snack had fruit loops and they rarely get sugar cereal like that. We got out the Halloween costumes this week. I was glad their costumes from last year fit them and I had a costume for Lamb 3 that fits him too. Lamb 1 and 2 are the same as last year (Eeyore and Pooh) and I'm excited that Lamb 3 is going to be Roo. I got these costumes at Once Upon a Child and have collected them over the years. I was so glad the costumes still fit the Lambs! We made fall cut out cookies this week too (apples, pumpkins, turkeys, and leaves). They continue to work on the sewer system in our town so the Lambs have not had nearly enough time outside to satisfy them. The Lambs played with Lincoln Logs a lot this week. They were never really interested in them before this. Lamb 1 has become quite good at building with them. Lamb 2 and 3 try to build with them and it is successful if no one knocks down another Lamb's buildings! On Friday we took a day off of school and went shopping in Sioux Falls. I think I'll save what we did on Friday for another blog post. We didn't quite fit in as much school as I would have liked, but they also learned by watching the construction in our town and making cookies with me. We're going to try to fit a lot of school in early in the week because on Friday and Saturday we will be busy going to an open house at the veterinarian's new office building and trick or treating activities in the neighboring town. I can't believe October is almost over. The days just fly by!

Wordless Wednesday

Stellan made it through surgery!

UPDATE: Tonight at ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) several children and one mom were wearing orange. Then we used orange sand in the sand table. I thought this was all planned for Stellan-well at least the mom dressed in orange. None of the moms attending ECFE had ever heard of Stellan or the blog before. One mom was thankful I told her about it because she had seen "Are you praying for Stellan?" on Facebook today and had no idea what that meant. The mom wearing orange was proud to wear orange today when she heard about it. Lamb 1 kept talking about Stellan with his ECFE teacher and she had no idea what he was talking about. The Lambs all wore orange to ECFE today, I don't own any orange!
Check out the blog, Stellan is doing remarkably well. The doctor did a fantastic job in difficult circumstances.

The Lambs wore orange today in support of Stellan. These two photos were posted on the website. http://www.mycharmingkids.net/ Stellan and his family still need our prayers.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host:

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Here we go again...

It is currently 10 degrees and feels like -9 at 10am here. We are predicted to get 7 inches and 40 mph winds.
The schools around here have all canceled. It takes a lot for them to cancel. They have canceled several times this year and I'm sure they will be going to school for several days after school is supposed to be out this summer.
Lamb 1 has been looking forward to ECFE. The leader had a baby in January and there has been no ECFE during her maternity leave. They did have Spanish classes for Lamb 1 for a month, but that's not the same as ECFE and Lamb 2 was too young to attend Spanish. When the schools cancel ECFE is canceled. So he has to wait another week until ECFE.
The ironic thing is the theme of ECFE was this book. I thought that was an odd choice for March, but I was wrong.