The Price of Children

While I don't normally pay much attention to forwards that just end up being junk filling my mailbox, I thought this one was worth reading. It's also a good reminder of why I decided to have three of the little things in my life.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from
birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family.. Talk
about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition ..

$160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month, or
* $171.08 a week.

* That's a mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children
if you want to be "rich." Actually, it is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?

Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites
Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or
how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:
*fingerpaint
* carve pumpkins,
* play hide-and-seek,
* catch lightning bugs, and
* never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to:
* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
* watching Saturday morning cartoons,
* going to Disney movies, and
* wishing on stars.

* You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator
magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand
prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for
Father's Day.

So for $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be
a hero just for:
* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
* taking the training wheels off a bike,
* removing a splinter,
* filling a wading pool,
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that
never wins but always gets treated to ice cream or pizza regardless.

You get a front row seat to history, to witness the:
* first step,
* first word,
* first bra,
* first date, and
* first time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family
tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called
grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in
psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human
sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all
the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed,
patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and
love them without limits. So, one day they will, like you, love without
counting the cost.

That is quite a deal for the price!

----------------------------------------------------------------

With a 13, 14, (and 23 year old still living at home), I seem to be perpetually stuck in the 'grounded for life' line of this letter. It's nice to be reminded of all the benefits. Enjoy your kids everyone. They grow up way too fast.

niet

looming just around the corner

Last week we received an unexpected envelope. In it was a check for our corrected tax return. Yaho boy!

I:
1- Paid down credit cards.
2- Restocked the pantry/fridge/both freezers. Oh Sams club how I love you!
3- Bought myself this little baby for only $200.00 (glee)
4- Got taken to dinner and a movie (Mongolian BBQ is excellent. Ninja Assassins could have been better if they had relied on the story line and special affects instead of blood and gore.)
5- And bought a few more Christmas presents.

Today is my birthday. I am *cough hack weeze* years old. My aunt just sent me an email letting me know that, if I can find a way to pick it up, I have been gifted with a treasured family air loom. My grandmother's LeClerc floor loom.

My grandmother was an artist. She painted, carved wood, and wove. I was 9 years old when my favorite person in the world died, but if I close my eyes I can still remember the sounds of her weaving as I daydreamed out the window of that big old farm house. I am honored and humbled to be given such a gift.

Split pea soup

Last night I made the best pea soup.

1 ham hock with lots of ham left on the bone.
4 cloves garlic - minced
1-2 carrots - diced
2 boxes good chicken broth
2 cups dry split peas
3 bay leaves
dry, ground rosemary to taste

You'll need a pot the sized of a Dutch oven for this one.

Add the chicken broth, garlic, diced carrot(s), bay leaves, ground rosemary, and ham hock to boiling. When you've got a rolling boil going, add the split peas and simmer for about an hour.

Remove the ham hock from pot and cut what ham is left on the bone into chunks. Add the ham back into the pot and simmer until the split peas have dissolved, about 1/2 an hour more. Remove the bay leaves and enjoy.

I think this soup would taste great with an onion added, but my husband is allergic to onions, so I usually just add a lot of garlic to make up the lost flavor. This soup wasn't garlicky at all, so you could still use that much garlic with an onion and it would be fine. I never measure my spices, but I used probably 2 TBS of rosemary at least. It added a wonderful flavor. I wouldn't use dried rosemary unless you grind it up first, otherwise you'd be choking on some pretty sharp sticks. Fresh rosemary would be wonderful. The ham added enough salt that I didn't need to add any. Crisp bacon pieces might be tasty in this if you don't have ham.

I made homemade bread to go with it, and since the soup was done a little before the bread, I filled my bowl with soup to let it cool while the bread finished. It smelled so good that I had it half eaten before I got the bread out of the oven.



This made enough for 6 large servings with one small serving for lunch the next day.

Baa Baa spotted sheep have you any wool?

C and I finally got to visit some Jacob sheep in person.

I found a listing for raw Jacob wool on craigslist in a nearby county, and started a conversation with a very nice and friendly lady, Meg, who invited C and me to come visit her farm. What I thought would be maybe an hour talking about sheep ended up being about 5 hours of wooly fun, and spending time with some wonderful people.

Mapquest sucks.


I plugged what part of the address I had into mapquest. I wasn’t even sure which town I was going to because it wasn’t showing up on the map, and I also had a gps. The gps got us lost getting out of our own town and mapquest had us going to a different place than what the gps was saying we should arrive at. This is detrimental to someone who gets lost in parking lots.

Meg had asked me to call her about 20 minutes away from her place so she coule tell me how to get to the farm. To make a long story shortish, I had no cell phone that day, so I figured I’d just find a pay phone once we got out there. When I lived out in the boonies (millennia ago), every corner store and gas station had a pay phone. Now no one has them.

I followed whereever the gps told me to go. It had me pulling into a driveway with the wrong number, but once I asked the people who lived there where I should be I finally found Meg and her troupe.



When we got there Meg and co-llama farmer Connie, were working with this little guy. He needed his fighting teeth cut and nails trimmed. He did not want to co-operate so I offered to help. I still have bruises. Those guys are STRONG.



Everywhere we went there were more animals. Meg was very modest about it all but by the end of the day we had to have seen over 100 llama, alpaca, sheep, and one little goat.



This is C and Roo. I had no idea that llama were so cuddly and would follow you around everywhere.

Kissy loves to give kisses

In the beginning of this video, Connie had called a whole bunch of mamas and their babies over from the pasture and as one huge mass they came running, then she called Kissy over to say hi.






As long as we were in this field, Kissy would not leave us alone.

Throughout the day we visited Megs’ two farms and stopped into another one where one of her male llamas, who was on loan, was mating with another farmers female.

Everywhere we went on her farms there were more animals around the corner.



That’s Gunner on the right, the middle black one has a sinus problem which gives him the cutest snuffling sound when he sniffs you, and the tall one on the left looks like a giraffe with all his spots. I should have written their names down because now I can’t remember them all.



There were ducks


And more llama. This one is Robbie.


And more sheep. That’s two Jacob rams, and one Navajo ram. The big Jacob was a bad boy and tore up Meg’s barn, so he doesn’t get to be put back in with the ewes for a while.


And more llamas and alpacas everywhere. This is Rhythm (black) and I think the brown one is Rock.


In between farms we ate lunch at a little diner that had the best greasy spoon food I’ve had in a long time, and Meg introduced us to her friend Ginger. Ginger is a spinner and was kind enough to give C, Connie, and me a free lesson. She showed me what I’ve been doing wrong and how to correct it, and gave C some inspiration to start too. Ginger was in the middle of a very busy day but she was willing to take time out to help us. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of Ginger, but it would be hard to forget those smiling eyes of hers.

All in all we both had a wonderful day and we got to meet two terrific ladies who obviously love their animals.



We came home with 9 pounds of Jacob fleece to wash/comb/card and spin. I’ve almost got Tracy’s daughter’s fleece washed. The first batch was prewash weight of 4oz, post wash became 2.25oz. That’s a little more loss in the wash than I wanted considering there’s a great deal of VM left to deal with, but I’ve spun a little bit of it up already and I’m very happy with it. We hope to go back in the spring for another visit and wool spending spree.

Link to Meg’s farm – Shadowbrook Farms

happy shopping