The Lundy 5

i arranged for beth ann miller to speak to our moms group at church about organization. as a wonderful bonus, she came and helped me organize my office! what you can't see in the pictures is that everything you could see before was mostly clutter, long-term storage stuff that i didn't need out and easy to get to. plus it was hiding all the things i did need to get to. and for all my neat storage containers that looked so tidy, they weren't organized on the inside at all! just stuff shoved into drawer after drawer. when i'd run out of room, i'd get another to fill up. i seem to just fight the fires on my desk and in my inbox and all the rest just sits there and mocks me. but no, more! everything has a place now and i'm keeping it that way! now the things i use daily are at the ready and the other things are tucked away neatly in categories. if only she could organize my overflowing inbox!! :)

josh is not so little now, but he's still cute! :)

allen is a wonderful dad and does so many things with the kids (though admittedly some of them scare me!), but i don't think he could do this. he might though, it takes an awesome dad and he is one awesome dad. i love this video!!!

although we're nowhere near texas, or any ocean for that matter, hurricane ike almost blew us away! we lost huge limbs, shingles, power, cable (no internet *gulp*), then my computer crashed (blaming the power surges), and it's just been chaotic with schools and businesses closed (it's like they've never seen a hurricane in ohio!). it's almost back to normal now though. we cleaned outside for days then inside for days reinstalling programs and files on my computer and such (although i backup regularly, it's still a pain!). we'd sent the kids outside to play in the windstorm. told them if they ran really fast into the wind they might fly (they're easy like that!). but then they ran back in yelling about branches falling so we kept them in. it was dangerous out there! we didn't realize how bad it was going to get. who knew the winds would get up to 75 mph in ohio?? they had a ball cleaning up though, well playing in the big branches and fighting with a...

A friend sent a fun recipe and since all three kids were home (yet another power outage from the storm), and since Josh was begging to experience a little homeschool too, I thought we'd try it. The kids loved it! They did addition and multiplication with all the ingredients, made a huge mess, and drove me insane. So then they were sent outside for a long, long, recess. : ) I guess we could also have done a history lesson about the leaning tower of cake. : ) MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE 1 coffee mug 4 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons baking cocoa 1 egg 3 tablespoons milk 3 tablespoons oil 3 tablespoons chocolate chips 1 small splash of vanilla Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and vanilla and mix again. Put mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip ou...

the kids had been looking forward to fishing and loved that the river was down so much they could walk all the way across!