What would you do if you have a little brother who is crying in bed?

What would you do when you are up at night and you have nothing to do?  Well I thought I would post on our blog. I am up at night and I want to go to bed but Jeremiah does not want me to go bed. When ever I try to sneek up stairs he realizes that I am gone and goes upstairs looking for me. Daddy just went upstairs to try to put him down. It did not go well. He is screaming in his crib. We will have to leave by 8:30 am to be in Princville for Sunday. Mommy and Daddy will be leaving to go on their 16th anniversary. So we will be staying at Grandpa and Grandma Plattner's house till Tuesday afternoon.  Well Jeremiah is not crying in his crib anny more so I might as we'll go to bed. GOOD NIGHT!!!!! 

Posted by- Jolene. P. S. If you have any suggestions i will be happy to take them!!!!

Note: this was suppose to publish Saturday night, but failed. 

The Fall Is Here!!!!!

In the fall~ Trees are red, Violets are Dead, Fall is here and you are too!!!! 

Fall is here already.  Why is it that fall comes so fast?  It seems like yesterday we were picking tomatoes in the burning hot SUN!!!!!  Here are some pictures.

Handsome Jonas  ( I think he can smile a bit better.)

Yes!!!!  You are not mistaken he has short sleeves on.  I was wearing a winter coat.  ( Boys are TOUGH!)

Does it look like FUN?????  I tried it ~ it was horrible FUN!!!!!!  Well it was so so.

The Burning Bush

Whose legs are these?  (Who would enjoy wearing these pants on a cold day??)

 

Jumping on the trampoline.

I love her expression!!!!!

This is my favorite.  ( I am not a good photographer.  Is anybody willing to teach me???)

Thank You for looking at this boring post.

GOOD NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

Posted By- Jolene

Give all the credit to – Jolene

Edited by  – Mom

Five Days in Her Shoes

This is the dad of the Plattner Ranch.  Very rarely have I ever hijacked my wife’s blog and written a post, but I thought it would be fitting to make a public confession.  My confession is this: I have immensely underappreciated my wife’s sacrifice that she daily makes as a stay-at-home mom home-educating our children.  For the last 5 days she went to North Carolina to visit her sister.  During this time, I took time off work to try to attempt to fill her role.  Three of these days were school days.  I could have just said that our school is going to have a fall break, but I wanted to experience what school actually was.  Now that I have walked in her shoes for this partial week, I must say that she is awesome!  What a feat it is to home-educate 6 children.  The 7^th child (just turned 4) is begging for your time to do school with her, while the 8^th child (17 months) has to be constantly monitored and if he’s quiet something is not good.  I have been very impressed with her system of organization to track of each child in all of their subjects as well as her system of chores that keeps the house functional (meals, clean up, etc.).  It is a major multi-tasking feat.  Don’t take from this that our home and school run like a well oiled machine because they don’t.  The root of the challenge is facing your children’s sinful character issues and your own at the same time.  This role is only done by God’s Grace.

So, to home-educating moms(especially if God has blessed you with a larger family), my hat goes off to you.  You now walk 10 times higher in my eyes.  I look up to you.  To my wonderful wife, thank you very much for what you do day in and day out pouring your life into our children.  I'm sorry you have been underappreciated (and will probably be in the future).  I’m ready to take a vacation by going back to work.

Disclaimer: To public school moms, please don’t think that you are unvalued in my eyes.  I don’t doubt for a second that your lives are filled with its own unique challenges and you also are heaping sacrifice into your children.  I am just reporting what I have experience firsthand.  Disclaimer #2 - I'm no superdad-my doing school in her place was probably only doing 80% of what normally gets done.  I asked the children at the end of the week how I did, and they concluded I was a softy compared to mom.

 

Chad

Cat Museum for Jubilee’s Birthday

We went to the Caterpillar Museum for Jubilee’s Birthday and went to Chili’s after that for supper.  We really enjoyed it!!!!  I think the people who work there would like all of you to come.  It is in Peoria.  It was my second time there and moms first time there.  Dad was at work but he met us at Chili’s.  There is another museum in Peoria called the River Front Museum.  We really enjoyed that too but not the same day.

There is a movie theater in side the 797F.  It teaches about Caterpillar.

Left to Right - Johanna , Ai, Sue Baker (our neighbor), Jubilee, Me and Jeremiah

Jesse enjoying a simulator

They have simulators that you can do for FREE.  We really enjoyed it.  I think you will not want to go the same day as we.  We will be hogging the simulator’s!!!!  (Note from the editor, aka Mom – there is a little monitoring going on if others are around!!!)

Left to Right Me, Myself, and I.

Jubilee, and Javan

Jared on a simulator.

Jeremiah, and Ai.  We really miss you Ai!!!

Jeremiah and his smiles .

Ai

Jeremiah and Johanna.

Sweet little Johanna.

 

 

Jonas

These wheels are plastic.

The wheels are taller than me. I am 4 something.  I think they are taller than Dad.

We really enjoyed the Museum.    Thank you Jubilee for having your birthday when you did.  And Thank You for choosing the Caterpillar Museum.

THE END

Posted by: Jolene   Edited by: Mom

St. Louis–Part 2 (Downtown)

 

Jeremiah, our little bud.

Ai

Jesse 

How many pairs of shoes are there ? 

Jared

Jubilee

After that  we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory .

Johanna feeding Jeremiah her ice cream.

The Gate Way Arch

 The End!!

by Jolene

St Louis–Part 1

We left home around 6:20 this AM so we could get to the Arch in good time (before the crowds).  Chad planned it just right.  We purchased tickets first thing and went into the museum for a little while.  This picture is from the ride to the top!!!  I felt a little nauseous going up but I was ok once we got up there.  The way the ride rocked a little made me a little dizzy.  It wasn’t much, but just enough.  Ai was a little nervous but not too bad.

After the Arch we visited the Old Capital Building.

 

The Old Capital Building framed by the Arch.

Life with Ai, Part 3

Ai is enjoying working in the garden and helping us put up produce.  She has helped pick lots of green beans and canned them.  We also made Dilly Beans together – like pickled beans, you at as a snack or like an horderve.

 

One day she was helping the children pick zuchinni and she picked some green peppers as well.  I didn’t realize she picked them and I told the children to wait till I said they were ready because those were too small.  Ai was surprised at how big I said they would get, she said in Japan they are only half the size of the ones she had already picked!

We are picking peppers AND tomatoes now!  Next week I hope to be making spaghetti sauce – along with some fresh salsa and guacamole!!!

While we snapped green beans together we talked about favorite memories.  Ai likes the snow and sledding!