So…normally (with the exception of children’s books and board games) I am like the opposite of a hoarder. I’m a purger. I like to giveaway tons of clothes several times a year, have yard sales, throw old junk away, etc.

But I do have one collection that’s getting slightly out of hand, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I love them. They are amazing. They are the best dishes ever.

Yes. I’m obsessed with dishes.

It’s a product sold on QVC (I’m not a huge QVC shopper, except for this brand and 2 Cottage Farms plants) called Temp-Tations. It’s affordable, hand painted stoneware that’s oven safe to 500 degrees & freezer, microwave, and dishwasher safe. Plus pretty much all of the bakeware comes with baskets, glass trivets, and plastic storage lids. I am in no way being compensated for this post (although I wouldn’t mind a few free pieces if you’d care to send them, Tara.)

I ordered a few new products the other day and Eddie was like “How much of that stuff do you already have?” Ummm…crickets. I have no idea. So I decided to take inventory.

Wanna see? So far I have all of the following. I mostly collect the black, but now I love the brand new cream color, so….. I also have some yellow & confetti pieces & one magnolia & some heritage. I’ve only ever had to return one piece because it arrived broken, but it was replaced right away.

All of these images are from qvc, some of the products are retired so you can’t get them anymore sorry.

Here we go…

I have this set in black

And this set in black
and this guy in yellow (to which Eddie may or may not have come home and said something along the lines of, “Did you really just pay money for a huge c**k and then expose it to the children?” Sometimes we revert back to 12-year-olds.) PS. Even though I’m not that into the rooster motif, this piece is a really good size and it’s less than 20 bucks right now, so it’s a great item to test run.
and I have these guys in black
and this in confetti

and two of these, one black and one yellow
and this guy in black
and these
and these in black (from the PA outlet, woot woot)

this tray in green (one of my all time favorites.)
and I just ordered this in the new cream color
and I have this in black, which I LOVE (sorry it’s retired)
and these guys in blue. They remind me of my mommom because she used to always give a bluebird of happiness as a housewarming gift.
This lovely lady in yellow holds my utensils next to my stove. She’s retired too, sorry.

and I have these in yellow, also retired.
and these in confetti. I think they might be retired too.
and these bowls in a pattern I think is called heritage.
And 2 sets of this dinnerware in black.
and last but not least, I have this set (probably the one I cook in most often) in confetti.

I love them. I chipped my pitcher the other day, completely my fault, and I almost cried. We’ve been using the dinnerware as our everyday dishes for about a year and a half and so far (knock on wood) not a single one has chipped or cracked and I’ve accidentally dropped them a couple times. I’ve also replaced all of my glass baking dishes with these and nothing has ever stuck. Not one thing. Ever. You really can just clean them with a damp paper towel.

I literally mix batter or whatever I’m making for dinner right in the 9×13, bake in it, serve in it, then put the lid on (almost all of the bakeware comes with plastic lids, unless they are already covered dishes) and put it in the fridge, then it can go straight in the dishwasher. I’m totally spoiled and now it annoys me if I have more than one dish to wash from preparing dinner.

Ok, I’ll shut up now. But there, now I know how much I have. I have the bluebirds on display as more of a sentimental piece, and I’ve only used the mini oval bakers a few times, but other than that, I use all of the other stuff on a daily basis.

I highly recommend it.

And if you’d care to buy me some more I’d be ok with that too. In the new cream color, please.

Nicholas, you are turning five today! We’ve been blessed to have you in our family for almost 4 of those years. Today we are taking mint chocolate Oreo pops to preschool and today Daddy stayed a little late to have breakfast with you and give you your present, a pair of roller skates. Right away you handed one to your little sister and now you and Abby are scooting around the kitchen, each with a roller skate on one foot. You like to share anything except your trains and airplanes.

You love airplanes. A LOT.

You also love to eat. Sometimes you have 3 different breakfasts. You need all that food to fuel you because you never stop moving. Sometimes you start doing spontaneous somersaults. Sometimes they are in the hall at church on Sunday when hundreds of people are trying to walk.

Your favorite foods are scrambled eggs, sloppy joes, and meatball subs.

You like to cheer people up, and you always do. Well, almost always. 😉

You love to talk. To everyone. All the time.

You have so much charisma that I can’t count how many strangers have said the first time they meet you, “That’s some boy you have there. I bet one day he’s going to be the mayor.” Sometimes they say President. Sometimes they say a pastor. Always a leader.

You love sports. Especially golf. (Who knows why) It rarely discourages you that you can be clumsy or if you aren’t the best on a team. You just love to play.

Sometimes (often) you test us. Especially mommy. We’re working on it. We’re also working on the potty, colors, letters, and thinking before you act.

You remember an amazing amount of the lines you see in movies. You can still quote a movie six months after you see it.

Everyone who knows you loves you, and you seem to know everyone. People I don’t know come up to me all the time and say, “Oh, you’re Nicholas’ mom. We just LOVE Nicholas!” No matter where we are, church, the mall, Panera Bread, it’s always…

“He is so funny.”

“He has such a genuine love of life.”

“He is a joy to be around.”

Or your teachers

“He was struggling today, but he tries SO hard.”

“He didn’t want to do the work, but he is just so funny it’s hard to get upset with him.”

When I make appointments for your sisters at the doctor’s office, the staff always ask if I can please bring you too.

Friends always ask if Nick has said anything funny lately, and there is always a new story.

Maybe one day you will be a pastor or the mayor or the President. Or a pilot. Or a stand-up comic. As long as you are a stand-up citizen, I really don’t care.

Until then, it will be fun to watch you grow into the man you will become.

Ever have one of those days that starts out awful and just gets weird?

So this morning all of our kids were up by 6am. Joy.

I got the older two to preschool and took Penny with me to get an oil change.

Turns out our car needed a lot of other stuff too. So that wound up costing $400.

I went to pick up Abby since she gets out of school a while before Nick does, but when I got there the teachers said Nick was really upset. They thought he had a hangnail because he wouldn’t let them get a good look at his finger. It was actually a 2 inch long splinter that was jammed all the way underneath his fingernail, all the way down to the cuticle. Ouch!

Luckily one of the other preschool moms is a nurse and she got it out, but it took me and the preschool director holding him down to get it out. (Thanks again Renee and Michele!)

It was actually kind of cute afterwards because he was really excited to get to wear a bandaid on his finger just like daddy. (Eddie smashed his finger trying to fix our garage door opener last week.)

When it was time to take Nick home I told him he could have anything he wanted for lunch since he had a rough day. He picked Burger King so we went through the drive-thu and brought it home.

Then the dog ate his chicken nuggets and he cried some more. (He still had a few so it wasn’t a complete tragedy.)

In the mean time the baby had a huge diaper blowout.

Then Nick informed me he’d had an accident. The poop kind.

Thankfully, then everyone took a nap for a little while.

After getting changed after nap time because they still wear pull-ups to sleep, neither Nick or Abby wanted to wear pants. I’m way too tired to fight about it. So Nick is running around in toy Story underwear and Abby is wearing a pull-up and a turtleneck. And one sock. It’s a fashion statement.

Then my pantsless children started having a very loud conversation through the window with someone who was apparently standing at our front door.

The loud conversation woke up the baby, so I took a crying baby to the door where a young man, maybe 19 or so, politely said to me, “Hello, ma’am, I was wondering if you’d be interested in my meat today?”

“Um, I’m sorry, what?” (Mostly naked children still hopping up and down and yelling from the top of the steps)

He pointed down the block to a truck he was driving. Apparently he was a meat delivery man and was finished his deliveries and offering to sell me his left-over meat at half price.

I’m sorry, I don’t buy meat from strangers selling it out of the backs of trucks. Especially when the big pitch is that it’s the meat no one else wanted. Did we really wake the baby up for this?

“uh no thanks. I just went to the grocery store yesterday.”

Then I went to the top of the steps and found the dog eating the Lincoln Logs, which were now in a million tiny pieces. Because, really, what I wanted to deal with today was more splinters.

I’m not complaining because I have way too much to be grateful for this week. Like our time with Eddie’s parents who took us all out to lunch yesterday. Our settlement on Friday. The church’s clothing exchange on Saturday where I always find a few nice things for my kids. Being in a position to not have to buy meat out of the back of a truck. Those kinds of things.

But this one?
She goes to the highest bidder.

This is not a post about craft projects and there are no pictures of my kids. There is an important issue going on here that I don’t feel comfortable ignoring any more. I haven’t seen my perspective represented anywhere & this is the only public forum I have, so I’m going to talk about it for a minute.

I’m a conservative Christian housewife living in Amish country. I’m a registered Republican. I voted for McCain. I’m strongly opposed to abortion, illegal immigration, and I do think homosexuality is a sin. And this is for my college friend Rene. Not my gay friend, just my friend who happens to be gay. And her wife.

I support gay marriage.

Why? Because to me whether or not our country should legalize the union of two people of the same sex is not an issue of morality, it is an issue of civil rights.

Is it sinful? Yeah, actually it is. It’s also sinful if I don’t go to church on a Sunday or if I cuss under my breath when the wrong contestant gets booted from American Idol. But I do that stuff and so do you.

Do I associate with gay people? Umm…do I associate with any people? Of course I do. If we refuse to hang out with people on the basis that we think they are sinners it’s going to be a pretty lonely existence. Newsflash: all people are sinners. Most of us aren’t being denied basic civil liberties because of it.”Last time I checked my watch, it still said America.” -Tim Allen

In our society right now people are outcast for being gay. You know who loved a good outcast? Jesus. You know who liked to persecute people who didn’t share his beliefs? Hitler. I’m not sure about you, but I’d much prefer to embrace the example of the former.

Did God make gay people gay? Yes. He made every human being and every one of us is a sinner. God loves every one of us despite our sinful nature. Hence, God loves gay people. Get over it Westboro Baptist “Church.” And P.S. Nobody is going to make me stop shopping at JC Penny.

Here’s the thing: it’s not the government’s job to regulate personal morality when it comes to issues that aren’t affecting the safety and well-being of others. That’s pretty much a fundamental Republican philosophy so I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to apply to the gay marriage argument in real life.

In my mind it works like this:

Murder? Sinful + Harmful= Illegal.

Drugs? Sinful + Harmfull = Illegal

Teenagers back talking their parents? Sinful + Not Harmful = Not Illegal

Gay marriage? Sinful + not harmful = _____________

It seems to me the logical answer to the question should be “not illegal.” Actually, it seems to be far more harmful to deny the gay community the advantages of a legal marriage.

My friend Rene and her wife are mothers to one very sweet little girl. They are mothers just like I am. As they have been anxiously awaiting Maryland’s ruling over the legality of their marriage, I’ve been reflecting on the benefits I take for granted as a woman in a traditional marriage.

The life insurance policies I would automatically have access to if something happened to my husband.

The tax deductions we just filed.

The fact that Eddie never had to go through the process of adopting our biological children, despite the fact that we never offered proof that he was their biological father. (Which, I can assure you, there is no question about.) The point is that even if he wasn’t, the hospital just gave him the rights to the children that came out of my body because we are legally married and I said he was the co-parent. When Rene had a baby Lauren had to wait months and pay thousands of dollars to adopt their own child and then go through hell trying to claim the adoption on the taxes.

We also have one adopted child and no one gave us a hard time about filing our adoption claim.

The right to adopt our son from Florida, the state where we were living at the time. I’m not sure about the current policy, but when we adopted Nicholas out of foster care in 2008 it was legal for gay couples in our state to foster children, but not adopt them. Consequently, there are foster children who have been living in loving foster homes for years with gay couples who lose yet another family when they become eligible for adoption and the couple who has been caring for them no longer has the option to do so if the child is to ever find an adoptive family. If the child stayed with the foster family he/she would lose the benefits that came along with being adopted, which at the time in Florida included a free college education.

My grandmother didn’t work, but she lived for years on my grandfather’s pension after she was widowed. What do gay couples do?

I am on my husband’s health insurance plan during these years I am home with my young children. What do gay couples do?

More importantly, what does a person’s sexual orientation have to do with things like health insurance, taxes and pensions?

When did we, collectively, become a society of adults acting like third grade bullies? Effectively, what we are saying is, “You can’t be in our club because you like girls.”

Well, I call bullshit, America.

I am tired of seeing teen suicides all over the news because we are constantly sending our children the message that to be gay is to be less than.

This is our generation’s version of Jim Crow and it is just as ridiculous.

I’m ashamed to say that I almost didn’t post this because I was afraid I’d turn off readers or offend people from my church. Or, alternatively, offend my more liberal friends from college. If I offended you I’m not sorry.

“My generation’s apathy. I’m disgusted with it. I’m disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.”
– Kurt Cobain

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
– Albert Einstein