Daley Ponderings

I'd been having these strange contractions for a few days. Not the simple Brackston-Hicks that I have throughout pregnancy that feel tight but do not hurt. Not crampy labor contractions, either. They were very tight and they hurt. They came usually when I was sitting – on the couch or... (More)

1/20 - Jonathan, as usual, singing while he plays and works.  This time it was, "Come, Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadil.  Come, Tom Bombadil..." 1/22 - When boys have a tea party:  Noah, Faith and I were playing with Faith's tea set.  Noah said he couldn't eat his soup because... (More)

If Heather hasn't been writing recently, that means I'm not writing at all... First, the basement - after all of the ongoing water problems, and finding out this year that only fixing the gutters was not going to fix the entire problem, and if one is going to get water a couple times a year,... (More)

12/16 - Headed up in the snow for another midwife appointment.  I gained more weight this time, but Thanksgiving was in between visits...  My iron was low again, despite diligently eating that horrible molasses, but she was suspicious that her hemoglobin tester is off... (More)

Actually, the only thing written in my pocket notes from all this time is that on 11/16, Jon solved the mirror cube with his eyes closed. Jonathan's 7th birthday was a very fun time.  He got a lot of cool presents and had a lot of cool people over to play.  Grandma and Dad-o were... (More)

Three-fifths of our family has been sick this week and we are all finally feeling better today.  (Thank you to all who prayed for us.)  We only did about half our chores on this day of recovery, but I decided to go ahead and have school.  I'm glad I did! Grandma had sent Noah... (More)

Inspired by an article in Family Fun magazine, I developed a fun motivator for bedtime cleanup that really works.  Before, there would be lots of complaining, dilly-dallying and nagging.  Now the house is clean every night before bed and the job is done quickly!  Here's how it... (More)

8/31 - The boys were making octopuses out of their banana peels. Jonathan called his a "cinctopus".  It had five legs.  His reason, "Because uno, dos, tres..." 9/6 - Faith's second birthday!  When you ask her how old she is, she will answer,... (More)

We arrived at the Fitzkees' house on Thursday night, and Nick said we could stay as long as we wanted.  We ended up extending our trip by a day and coming home on Tuesday, which was a good decision.  I think we spent the right amount of time for the whole family to enjoy the... (More)

We cooked bacon and pancakes (I found a nifty plastic pint jug in Walmart or somewhere that you simply pour water into the jug, shake it up, and pour it on the griddle) for breakfast, and then packed up and planned to meet for lunch at Great Falls, 15 miles away. Heather went back to... (More)

As I looked at the maps for the third day, we were going to be biking near various battlefields and other tourist-type places to visit, and so in the interest of resting a little, I decided we should drive for a ways and then maybe bike in the afternoon. We drove from Williamsport... (More)

I've wanted to bike to DC for a while, but there never seemed like a good opportunity to do so.  Once we purchased the tandem bike, and started thinking about the possibility of biking all over the country, the Washington trip seemed like a good first step. The trip did get... (More)

This is going to be woefully brief.  The bike trip was adventure after adventure, lots of fun, but lots of work.  Among the things you'd normally expect on a bike trip, it included four tire blowouts on the triple-tandem, a torrential downpour, a tent with no stakes, Jonathan riding... (More)

Noah has discovered convertibles and really wants one.  In a parking lot one day, we watched a man put up his roof and that was really cool.  When I explained the reasons we wouldn't get one (too expensive, not enough seats for our family) Jonathan decided on our next car.  A... (More)

I bought a Trail-gator for attaching Jonathan's bike to mine, and we went on a couple 10 mile rides last week to test it out, and to build up our strength, but I had been pretty tired after those rides, so I wasn't very optimistic that we would make it to Ohiopyle without calling Heather to... (More)