Search me, O God

a week off

2011-08-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

We've been dealing with a lot of sickness in our household for the past several weeks. Fortunately I've been well, but the rest of the family... my hubby, both girls, and our cat, have not been so well. Last week we just decided to take the week off and have a chance to rest and recover. But this week we are finally back in to school! Hopefully I'll have some pictures to post by the end of the week.

I've got to share something funny my daughter said to me over the weekend... we were at the store, and I was holding my youngest daughter's hand. She's 7, and is at the point where she doesn't want to hold my hand in public. She'd rather walk a step or two ahead of me, as I guess that way she feels more grown up. When I asked her why she didn't want to hold my hand she replied she wanted to be like her big sister, and not have to hold my hand anymore. Well, my older daughter still likes to hold my hand when we go out. So when she heard her younger sister say this, she came back and held my other hand. I thought that was so sweet... and then she said, "Mommy, do you know why I want to hold your hand now?" I thought she was going to say something sweet, but instead she said, "Because I know it won't be much longer that I'll be able to hold your hand... before we know it, instead you'll be holding a walker." That stinker! :-) At least being sick hasn't hurt her sense of humor!

World Cake

2011-08-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've got the pictures on my computer, so I decided I might as well go ahead and upload them. At first I had around 20, and decided that was probably too many. :-) It's tough to decide which pictures to put up here, but I've finally whittled it down a bit. :-)

Here's D, outlining Australia.

Europe, Africa, Asia...

A is filling in the oceans.

I thought about just leaving the continents bare with no frosting, but my kids weren't having any of that! :-)

Filling in the continents...

Voila! Our finished Cake!

Two proud girls :-)

But of course no cake is complete without sprinkles! :-)

Yum!

Sugar! :-)

Week 2

2011-08-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

We've only got one more day for week two, and we're doing great! We did have a light week of school this week, though. The girls are going to VBS every morning from 9-12, and it's just too much to have 3-4 hours of school in the afternoon. So we've been doing the fun stuff, and the things that would be too hard to catch up with next week.

I didn't take many pictures this week, until today. We made a cake and decorated it like a map of the world. That was so much fun! I took lots of pictures of this activity, and will try to post them this weekend.

This morning the girls got up early so they could help me make the cake and get it in the oven before breakfast. Once it cooled I found a map in one of our school books that was about the size of our cake. I unfolded a paper napkin and placed it over the map, then carefully traced the shapes of the continents in pencil. For the continents that were very close or touching (Africa, Europe, Aisia; North and South America) I made it all one shape, to make it easier for my girls to decorate. Then I cut out the continent shapes and carefully placed the napkin shapes on our cake in the correct places. This afternoon the girls mixed up some blue and green frosting, and took turns tracing the shapes of the continents with the blue icing in a ziplock bag with the tip cut off. Next they filled in the blue oceans, then took the napkins off the cake and filled in the rest with green. Oh, my oldest daughter suggested we use the plain white frosting for Antarctica, since it's not green that far south. :-) The finished product was great! We lost quite a bit of detail when spreading the frosting, but you can still tell which continents are which. The perfectionist in me really wanted to take over and do it all myself, but I had to keep reminding myself that this is for my girls, not me. :-) And they really did a great job! I did help a little, and did just a bit of touch up work. But for the most part, my girls decorated the cake!

I'll try to post pictures either later today, or sometime this weekend. Enjoy your weekend! :-)

Week 1 pictures

2011-07-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a collection of pictures from our school work this week. The girls have sure had a lot of fun this week, and so have I! :-)

D & A drew the continents on oranges...

We sliced and peeled the oranges, then tried to put them back together in a flat map. Here is D's orange...

...and A's orange.

Here is A's John 3:16 poster...

...and D's John 3:16 poster.

Wednesday the girls studied our backyard habitat.

Later we went on a nature walk at the park. A sat down on the bench and drew a water fall.

On Thursday we started an experiment with worms. We'll keep an eye on them during the next week and see how they mix the layers of the soil.

watching the worms wiggle around in the dirt

A is drawing her findings for her science notebook.

D is drawing her observations for her science notebook

This has been such a fun week learning about the world God has created! We're looking forward to see what else we'll discover next week! :-)

Week 1 - Day 4

2011-07-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful week this has been! We've still got one more day of school this week, but it looks like tomorrow will be a light day. Which works out great, as by Friday we're usually ready for a break. :-)

I'm hoping I'll be able to post some pictures this weekend of our first week of school. We didn't take any pictures the first couple days as my oldest was sick and feeling pretty miserable, but starting Wednesday we started taking pictures.

Here's a bit of a recap of our week. Monday we started the week with prayer, saying the pledges, and taking communion. I think I already wrote about the rest of Monday. The highlight for the girls was filling out their passport applications.

Tuesday we learned about Ecosystems, and read about what the first ecosystem in the Garden of Eden might have been like. We did all the basic things... spelling, handwriting, math, LA, geography and science. For art the girls each made a John 3:16 poster. They cut out pictures of people from around the world and pasted them onto their colored paper, then wrote the Bible verse to go along with it and pasted that on their papers, as well. They put those posters in their geography notebooks.

Wednesday during Bible we read a book called God Speaks Numanggang, about a family who moved to Papua New Guinea 30-40 years ago to start working on a Bible translation. That was an interesting book. The girls' favorite activity was a nature walk we took in the park. Each of the girls took a clipboard, blank paper, colored pencils and a magnifying glass. We walked one of the trails at the park and they each chose something to draw. My oldest drew a waterfall, my youngest drew a rock. Yeah, that pretty much sums them up. :-) We'll try to plan a nature walk every week.

Today in science we learned about niches. The girls really enjoyed today's activity! We filled a large pickle jar (empty and cleaned, of course) with layers of moist soil, sand, soil, sand, and a thin layer of oats on top. We were going to try to dig up some worms in the back, but the ground is too dry so we weren't able to find any today. Instead we drove to the local sporting goods store and bought a dozen night crawlers. We brought them home and had fun dropping them into our jar. My youngest wouldn't touch the worms, of course. My oldest thoroughly enjoyed playing with the worms. :-) They each drew the jar and wrote their observations, then we covered it in dark paper and put it in my closet (a cool dark place). Each day we'll take out the jar and see how they've mixed the layers as they tunnel down into the soil. We'll do this for 10 days to two weeks, and when we're finished we'll set the worms free in the garden, if any survive that long. :-)

Tomorrow looks to be a light day with just the basics. Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted sometime this week, and next week I'll have more fun school activities to report. :-) We're really enjoying this new curriculum!

First Day of School with My Father's World!

2011-07-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

What a day! It's been a long day, but overall, a good day! Unfortunately my oldest daughter has been sick... she felt pretty miserable over the weekend, so this morning we made an appointment for her to see the doctor. I told her yesterday if she wasn't feeling up to it we didn't have to start school today, but she said she really wanted to.

This morning when I went into my younger daughter's room to wake her up, I noticed she was snuggled under her covers, fully dressed for today wearing khaki's and a long sleeve shirt. When I woke her I asked if she had gotten up early and gotten dressed, then went back to bed. She shook her head "no." I asked when she got dressed and she sleepily replied, "I wanted to be ready for school." I distinctly remembered her wearing her night gown when I put her in bed last night, so I asked her if she changed into her day clothes after I put her to bed. "Yes. I wanted to be ready for school!" Silly girl! But I'm really glad she was so excited to start school today! :-)

Even though my older daughter said she was miserable, she really wanted to start school today. So after breakfast we opened our day in prayer, then said the pledges to the flags (we have an American flag and Christian flag hanging in our school room). After that we had communion, then began our learning with reading from Window on the World. We also reviewed our memory verse for the week, John 3:16.

Some other subjects we worked on this morning were language arts and math. Then the girls filled out their passport applications. Since we'll be studying geography this year both girls will receive passports, and get to enter in a sticker for each country we study. They were pretty excited about filling out their applications, and turning them in to the Passport Office, aka Daddy!

After lunch we made the trip into town to see the doctor. It turns out my daughter has a left ear infection, a right eye infection, a sinus infection, and possibly bronchitis. Poor girl! No wonder she's been so miserable! On the way home I told her we don't have to do any more school today, she could just relax. To which she replied, "No, Mommy! I want to finish school today!" So once we got home we finished our day with some geography, followed by science. This year in science we'll be studying ecology.

I think that about sums up our day. It was a great first day of school! I wanted to take some pictures, but since my daughter was feeling so miserable I decided to wait on that, until she's feeling better. I'm thinking we did more than what I've written here, but it's late and I can't really remember. And this post seems a bit scatterbrained, but I wanted to at least get a quick post up and say how wonderful our day was, despite my daughter being sick. Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in soon and she'll be feeling better. And now I'd better get to bed so I can get up early to give her the next dose... If you've got a moment, she could sure use your prayers that she'll recover quickly from all these infections. Thanks!

Trials and Blessings

2011-07-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

What a month this has been. We've had plenty of trials, but we've also seen God's hand in our lives. It's been a month of car repairs, washing machine repairs, and vet bills. Last week I was praying, asking God how much more could we take? There were so many unplanned expenses this month... we didn't know where the money was coming from. We just kept trying to trust God to take care of it. My husband kept reminding me to be joyful in our trials... but that's really hard to do!

One of our biggest trials this month has been with our cat, Autumn. Autumn has become such a wonderful part of our family over the past 4 years. We adopted her 2 days before Christmas, and were so excited to give her a forever home. It seemed she might have had a rough life. She was afraid of everything, at first. The agency we adopted her from said they picked her up as a stray 6 months before. She was sick and malnourished, and wouldn't trust anyone. By the time we adopted her she was healthy, but still didn't quite trust people. But over the past 4 years we've really become attached to her, and she has her place in our home. She seems happy, she's finally gotten used to having kids around, and is content to just sit in your lap and purr.

Well, a couple weeks ago she started getting sick. Autumn had an accident outside her litterbox, which she had never done. We took her to the vet and he ran some tests. Our first thought was some sort of parasite, but that came back negative. She was underweight, and not eating. We took her back again a couple days later, because she seemed to be getting worse. The vet ran more tests, and called us the next day, asking us to come in. He said he's not 100% certain, but it looks like Autumn has lymphoma. Another possibility is Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but the word cancer really stuck in my mind. Our oldest daughter was at camp, our youngest was home with Grandma. How could we tell our girls their beloved cat might be dying of cancer? We told them both when our daughter came home from camp, and that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. My oldest daughter, especially, was just crushed.

So yes, it's been a difficult month. We're seeing some progress with our cat. I'm not convinced she has cancer; I don't know if I'm just in denial, but I'm not ready to accept it. The vet did give her a couple of shots that he explained would help her feel better, at least temporarily. We've changed her diet to something that is good for cats with IBS, in case that's what the problem is. She's eating again, and is putting on a little weight. I just keep praying that God will heal her, because I know He cares about the animals He's created. But if He doesn't heal her, well, I know He knows what is best, and will continue to take care of us.

As far as the finances go, it's amazing how quickly vet bills can grow! My husband and I decided that we've done all we can. We won't take her in for any more tests, and we can't afford treatment. So we'll just make her as comfortable at home as we can. It's just been tough, with the vet, the car, and the other unplanned expenses. But you know... God has been trying to show us all this month to trust Him. My husband and I both subscribe to K-Love's Encouraging Word of the Day. I've just got to share a recap of the emails we've received...

The day we received the news from the vet, the verse was

Psalm 120:1 - I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out to Him, and He answered my prayer.

Saturday, the day we had to tell both of our girls the news...

Psalm 3:4 - I cried out to the Lord, and He answered me from His holy mountain.

During this time we were wondering about finances... how were we going to pay for it all? Sunday's verse was

Psalm 38:15 - For I am waiting for you, O Lord. You must answer for me, O Lord my God.

And the verses continue to be so encouraging! But now I need to share with you God's blessing in our lives this month. We experienced something I've heard about, but never experienced myself. Someone, we have no idea who, gave us a gift on Sunday... a gift that covers every single dollar we've had to pay this month on these unexpected expenses! It covers the car, the washing machine repair, and all the vet bills! I've heard of this sort of thing happening, but I've never experienced it myself. I am humbled and awed that God would provide for us in this way! It is so apparent to us that this was God answering our cries to Him, providing to us in this amazing way. It's not a coincidence. It's God showing us He loves us, and is taking care of us. The money didn't come before we had the expenses, it came at just the right time. Like I said, I am so awed and humbled.

The funny thing is, yesterday we took the car in for an oil change. They did whatever inspection they do when they change the oil... and at the end of the inspection the gentleman informed us that there is an oil leak. The part to replace isn't that much money, but because of the place it's located, it will take around 15 hours of labor. Normally this would really stress us out... but after seeing God's hand at work in our lives this week, my husband and I know He's going to take care of us. I'm not even going to worry about the car. Oh, and the funny thing is, here are yesterday's and today's verses...

Philippians 4:6 - Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.

1 Peter 5:7 - Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

I just have to smile, and trust God. Because I know He's got it all under control.

A Fly Went Bye Bye

2011-07-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

When my youngest daughter was five, one of her favorite books was A Fly Went By. We would read this book over and over. And that really has nothing to do with today's post. Well, other than the title.

Last night after we put the girls to bed, my oldest told me my youngest was in desperate need for me to come upstairs - there was a fly in her room. I went up to see what all the fuss was about. I can't catch a fly, they're way too fast. And I didn't want to squish it... anyway, she was freaking out because there was a fly on the edge of her bed. She had a crumpled up tissue that she pressed into my hand, and told me to "get it." Yeah, right. Well, I figured I'd try, and then it would fly somewhere else. It was a big old fly, one of those fat lazy ones. Probably at the end of its life. I grabbed at the fly with the tissue... and guess what? I caught it! But then what do I do with it? I didn't want to throw it in the trash, it would crawl out and fly around the house. I didn't want to throw it outside, I figured it would come right back in. So I did the only logical thing I could think of... took it downstairs to flush it.

Well, when I lifted the lid, I noticed someone forgot to flush. Gross. Oh well, I was planning on flushing, anyway. I threw the tissue and fly into the toilet and flushed. But then the tissue came back up. I figured the fly probably drowned, and was about to flush again, when I saw the fly float out of the tissue toward the surface of the water. I couldn't imagine it would be alive, but before I got a chance to flush... it flew out of the water! Unbelievable! So now I had a pee soaked half drowned fly, buzzing around the bathroom. Fortunately I had shut the door. First the fly landed on the toilet. I grabbed some toilet paper and made a swipe at him... but apparently his near death experience gave him a boost of adrenaline, because he was quicker than me. Great. Then he tried to get out of the bathroom, and landed on the door. I was afraid it would fly out under the door, as there is a pretty big gap there. But I was able to catch him that time, and lost no time in flushing him. I watched carefully, and this time both the fly and toilet paper went down to their watery grave, and didn't come back up. Although after that I was a bit nervous to use the toilet, because you never know...

When I told my children the rest of the story of what happened to the fly after I took it downstairs, my oldest said I should make this story into a children's book. And my youngest said, "Yeah. It could be a Little Golden Book." Oh my.

19 days and counting

2011-07-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

This past Friday was our latest Box Day. We received our school supplies, and had fun looking through all our new books. Our math books came today, so now we're all set for the upcoming year!

This is going to be such a busy month! On Sunday our oldest goes to camp, and she's so excited! The day after she gets home from camp both girls will be staying with their grandparents for a week. Their church is having VBS, so the girls are looking forward to going to that. Then on July 25th we start our first day of school! :-)

I've spent the past few days looking through our curriculum, and at first I was a bit intimidated. The instructor's guide seems a lot more detailed than what I'm used to. But after spending more time with it, I think it will work out just fine. I figure the first couple of weeks we'll all be getting used to the new program, but after that it should come a lot more easily. Hopefully in about three and a half weeks I'll be able to write a new blog entry about our first week of school! It's amazing that it's coming up so quickly!

Last night my oldest was sitting with me as I was putting all the worksheets into sheet protectors. She was looking through the art book we'll be using this year, and she found a lot of interesting projects. As she was just about ready to go to bed she turned to me and said, "I'm so excited for school to start!" That's such an encouragement to me, and confirms to me we're doing the right thing with homeschooling our girls. :-)

Convention - more fun than I realized!

2011-06-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend my hubby and I traveled up north to go to our state homeschooling convention. His parents were wonderful and kept the girls to make it easier for us. We only went to the curriculum exhibit, but we still had a lot of fun! I was amazed at how many companies were represented!

Our first stop was the My Father's World exhibit. It was wonderful being able to see all the curriculum laid out, and the people there were so friendly and helpful! Even though we knew we wanted to buy from them, we decided to wander around the exhibit hall before coming back and making our purchases.

At first I was a bit nervous, as there were so many people there! It was a bit overwhelming. But God is good, and within two minutes of walking in to the convention center we saw another homeschooling mom from our church. We visited with her for just a couple of minutes, but that really helped to make it seem not quite so overwhelming. She said this year they had the biggest turnout they have ever experienced. That's pretty cool!

As my husband and I walked around to see the different vendors, I commented to him that it was kind of like walking around at the fair, only most everyone there were Christians. I loved it! And my husband said next year he'll have to try to get both days off work, so we can go to the entire convention. That will be so much fun!

There were some really fun exhibitors we visited. There are a couple of creation science based organizations in the Pacific North West, and it was fun to see the different tours they offer. There is even a creation museum up near Mount St. Helens! We would love to take a trip up there someday with our girls. It's several hours away, but that would be a wonderful field trip someday.

We finally made our purchases, although most everything we bought will have to be shipped to us, as by the time we went they were out of some of their packages. We were going to take the Light Rail back to our car, but it was such a beautiful day my husband and I decided to walk. Saturday was really a wonderful day!

Yesterday after the girls came home we showed them the few things we brought home from the convention, and they were so excited! Each of the girls will have a pretend passport this year, and each time we visit (learn about) a country they will get a flag sticker to put into their passport. They both thought that was so cool, so last night when they were talking over the computer with my parents, my oldest had fun showing Grandpa her new passport. It was a lot of fun, because then he was able to show her his real passport. She was amazed at how similar they looked, and how real her passport looked! :-) The girls were also really excited to see some of their new language arts books, and thought they looked like a lot of fun. I've had some reservations about the LA recommendations, but I decided to go ahead and give it a try this year, and if we don't like it we can try something else next year. But my oldest was so interested in the book she curled up in the recliner with hers and started reading! I think she's fascinated because it is a reprint of a book that is almost 100 years old.

All in all, Saturday was such a fun day, and now we're even more excited to start school in a few weeks. In about a week or so we should be having our "box day," so we'll have a lot of fun going through our new books. I wish we could start school sooner (and so do the girls!) but my oldest will be away from home for 2 weeks next month, so we'll need to wait until she's home. She'll be going to camp for a week, then the girls will be be with their grandparents for a week so they can attend VBS and Grandma and Grandpa's church. Once they get home we'll start school, so that will be July 25th. We're all anxious for that day! And I look forward to having some fun topics for my blog, once we start school. :-)

thoughts on next year

2011-04-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

I've been giving more thought to my blog lately, and I'd really like to get back to updating on a regular basis. I don't know if that will actually happen, but it's a goal. :)

We're wrapping up our current school year, and I've been giving a lot of thought to next year. A couple weeks ago we visited my parents in Arizona, and somehow during that week the topic of next year's schooling came up. I'm not sure what all we talked about, but I got to thinking about the possibility of trying something new next year. We've been using Sonlight for the past 5 years, and we've really enjoyed it! But I think we're ready to try something new. Sonlight has a lot of reading (which we love), but not much of anything else. I think we'd all really enjoy some hands on activities.

The past two weeks have been crazy with researching different curriculum options! When I began I didn't really know what I was looking for, although there were a few things that were important...

I want a Christian curriculum. Something that gives a lot of focus on the Bible would be terrific.
I'd prefer a lesson plan that has everything planned out for me. I'm not comfortable in my ability to put everything together. It's too stressful (I tried that in preschool and it didn't go so well) and I'm not confident I'd include everything my girls need to learn.
Combining lessons would be terrific. My girls have had separate lessons in everything up to this point. It would be great if some subjects could be combined.
Hands on activities are fun, but I'm not at all creative... if we're going to do these kinds of things, it needs to be planned out for me, and scheduled in. Otherwise it's not going to get done.

As I searched online for various curricula, I found a few that interested me. At first I was drawn to Tapestry of Grace, but the cost of that one held me back from putting too much research into it. So right now the top contender for me is My Father's World. It has everything I'm looking for, and the cost is about half of what I'd pay for another year of Sonlight. And the way they save money is by using the library for most of the readers. One thing we loved about Sonlight is the wonderful library we have built up over the past 5 years! But the cost of continuing to build our own library is just not possible right now. We do have a wonderful library system in our state, so I'll be able to make use of that. We can look online to find the books we'll need, and have them sent to our local library for pickup. And through the course of the year if there are any books we find we just love, we can keep our eye out for a used copy somewhere.

During my research I've read about some fun activities that are planned during the year's study of Exploring Countries and Cultures (the program we'd start with My Father's World), and it looks like a really fun program! I've shared my findings with my girls, and they are both really excited about the prospect. In fact recently as I was looking online for other curriculum choices my oldest asked what I was doing. When I told her she said, "No, Mommy! Don't look at any more! You might find something that's not as fun!"

Although I haven't decided 100% on our choice for next year, at this point it looks like we'll be going with My Father's World. I'm excited to go to our Homeschool convention in June so I can see the books in person. This will be our first time at a homeschooling convention, and my husband and I are really looking forward to it. We won't be going to all the different workshops, as this year our focus is just to see the exhibit hall. While we're there I'll also be looking into a new math program, but that's a post for another time. :)

I'm excited to see what the coming year has in store for us!

lost in space

2011-03-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been way too long since I've updated this blog! School is going alright. We're not as far along into the year as I'd like to be, but such is life. I guess that's one of the beauties of homeschooling. I wanted to finish in May, but it looks like we'll go into June. I'm just thankful I have the freedom to arrange our homeschooling schedule to fit our lives, rather than the other way around!

It's hard to believe my girls are 7 and 11! And I'll have a 5th grader in the fall! Where has the time gone?

Although I've neglected this blog for the past several months, I've been working on another one, lately. I'm not sure if I've got the courage to share the address for that one, though. :-) My husband and I started a new weight loss journey last month, and I've been chronicling my journey, stumblings and all. He's trying to get his diabetes under control, so I'm joining him in our new exercise routine, trying to give him whatever support I can. It's been a wonderful change for our family, although it sure has been a challenge! Whenever I start a new exercise program I almost always end up injuring myself, and this time has been no exception. But I'm finally back on track. Anyway, most of my blogging efforts lately have been with the other blog. If I ever get brave enough (or if someone requests it), I might post the link from this blog.

In any case, I figured I'd better check in to let you know we're still kicking. :-) And still pressing on with our homeschooling!

Through my child's eyes

2010-09-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

Over the past five weeks, Peanut and I have been reading through the book of Mark for our time in the Bible. She is a very sensitive child, and we have to be careful what we allow her to watch as far as television and movies. For example, when we watch Little House on the Prairie, she always sits next to me because if there is a disturbing scene (someone is injured or sick) she will bury her face into my neck. She can't bear to see anyone in pain.

Because of this, I have wondered how she would handle the chapter about Christ's crucifixion. I know she's heard the story before, as we've read about this in some of her Bible story books. But to my knowledge, this is the first time she's heard this story straight out of the Bible.

Today we were scheduled to read Mark 14:43-72. Peanut was sitting in my lap and while I was reading about the soldiers beating and mocking Jesus, she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face into me. I stopped reading for a bit so we could discuss what was happening, and how she felt. She said she didn't want to read anymore, so I asked her if she knew how the story ended. Peanut nodded her head yes, and said Jesus would come back to life. I asked if she wanted me to keep reading, so we could read the happy part of the story. Peanut thought for a bit, then agreed to have me continue reading. Mark 15 was very difficult for Peanut. I paused off and on to be sure she was ok. We talked about why Jesus died on the cross. Then I read chapter 16. It was such a relief to her to read about Jesus coming back to life, and that He was ok!

It was very touching this morning to read from the Bible with my girl. To be able to experience the anguish and joy through her eyes... I think this morning she is the one who taught me about reading God's Word... seeing it through my daughter's eyes was an eye opening experience for me. And it reminded me of what a great sacrifice Jesus made, so that I might have eternal life with Him.

a troubling day in school

2010-08-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

This morning Peanut and I were reading about the Bedouins in the Arabian desert. I was reading to her out of her history book, and this is the sentence I came to:

The Bedouin are Arabs who wander across the Arabian desert, herding camels, goats and sheep.

Peanut exclaimed, "That's terrible!" I didn't see anything wrong with what we just read, so I asked her what she meant. "They kill their animals! That's so mean!" Then I realized the source of her confusion. I read "herding camels, goats and sheep," but Peanut heard "hurting camels, goats and sheep." I guess pronunciation is extremely important! :)

Later we finished reading Charlotte's Web. Peanut has enjoyed the book during the past couple of weeks, but she was terribly disappointed in the ending. "What? Charlotte dies and that's the end? How can they do that? Who would make a book with such a sad ending?" I guess she is learning books don't always have a "happily ever after." But at least I know she's paying attention in school today. :)

Chocolate Fix

2010-08-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been needing chocolate. Unfortunately, I'm down to 1/2 square of Ghirardelli chocolate... and I hesitate to eat the rest of it, because once it's gone, it's gone. So tonight I got online and did a search for "single serving brownie recipe." A few weeks ago I tried making a chocolate cake in a mug, and that was a disaster. It turned out rubbery and tasteless. But I knew there had to be a way of making one serving of some sort of cake or muffin... I've had those little single serving chocolate cakes you can buy in the grocery store... you just add water to the mix, stir, and microwave. I really like those, but don't want to pay for them. So tonight I was on the prowl for something I could easily make at home, using the ingredients I already have on hand.

I ran across this recipe. After my last attempt (and failure) I was a bit hesitant to try this one... but one thing I liked about the ingredients was that eggs were not on the list. Since there are no eggs, I figured this would be easy to scale down to a half serving. But since this was my first shot at it, I decided to make it as it's listed. Well, I mostly followed the instructions. The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons sugar, and I cut it back to 2 1/2. That was plenty, it could even do with a little less. Although I prefer my chocolate dark, so if you like the sweetness of milk chocolate, you may want to add in all 3 tablespoons.

I mixed everything up in a 2 cup measuring cup, since I was a bit leery of using my good coffee cup. :) But to my surprise, it turned out pretty well! I heated it for 60 seconds, and according to the recipe 60 seconds is supposed to give you a molten chocolate texture. Mine was cooked all the way through, but that could be because I used the 2 cup measuring cup. Next time I think I'll half the recipe, and use a small 6-ounce cup, and see if that works. The consistency was very soft, almost like a bread pudding, but not quite. This could have been because I devoured it as soon as it came out of the microwave. If I had let it cool for a few minutes it might have firmed up a bit. Oh, and as I didn't have any vanilla ice cream, I enjoyed this with a nice cold glass of whole milk.

Now that my chocolate fix has been satisfied, I think I can get on with the rest of my evening. The girls aren't home tonight, so it's just me and the cat. I'm ready for a quiet evening. :)

Week 1

2010-08-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

We have almost completed week one of our new year of school! Our school days have taken longer than I anticipated, but we are reading some great books. Soon I'm hoping to make a list over in the right column of our favorite books we are reading.

So far Peanut's favorite subject is poetry and her favorite book is Favorite Poems of Childhood. Butternut's favorite is math, although her favorite book so far is By the Great Horn Spoon.

It looks like this is going to be an exciting year! :-)

All Creatures Great and Small

2010-08-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

I am not a spider person. If there was some sort of plague that destroyed all the world's spiders, I'd count that as a good thing. In fact, if something wiped out all the creepy crawlies, bugs and insects from this planet, that would be just fine and dandy. However, I know there are animals that count on the bugs to survive, and plants also need certain bugs to pollinate and grow. So it's a good thing God hasn't put me in charge of the earth's insect population, or we'd all be in a heap of trouble.

However, I have recently come to the conclusion that if the spider is outside and not in my direct path - for example, sunning itself on a flower, making a web in the bushes, or climbing a tree - I don't mind it. I've actually begun to enjoy watching them - from a distance. However - and this is an important issue that all spiders must understand - if any spider crosses the threshold and enters my home, he is as good as dead. The critter will either find itself in a watery grave, or on the bottom of my shoe. Or better yet, on the bottom of my husband's shoe. That way I don't have to worry about my shoe getting all icky on the bottom. That, and his shoes are bigger, so it just makes sense that I'd use his in exterminating said spider.

But back to a more friendly note (after all, these are God's creatures, so I should respect them as such), I have begun to make friends with a little spider in our back yard. My husband first noticed the little guy at the end of March. He was hiding in the grill cover. My husband looked this little guy up online and found it's called a crab spider. They eat other insects, so this little fact helped me decide to tolerate the little guy. He was a bit creepy looking, so as long as he kept his distance from me, he could stay. :)

Now let's fast forward to a couple days ago. Butternut had been playing outside for a while when she excitedly came in and said she'd found a big spider on the flowers. I decided to go investigate, and sure enough, it was our little friend. Only now he's not so little!

Isn't he pretty? I see how they get their name of crab spider. He was a little upset with my husband right then. I don't think he wanted his picture taken. Come on now, little guy, don't be shy! :)

My husband went back out later to take some more pictures, and when we loaded them up on the computer we had a bit of a surprise. Our little friend was enjoying an afternoon snack. I guess they really do eat other insects! In this picture he is feasting on a small bee. So now it's official. As long as he stays in the flowers, the little guy can stay. Who'd have ever thought I'd be interested in something creepy crawly like a spider? I went outside to check on him this morning, and he's still in the flowers. I guess that's his new home. He sits on the flower and waits for an unsuspecting bee to come along, then whamo! He's got lunch! I'd like to see him actually stun the bee, but I don't know if he'll do it in front of an audience. I guess I'll just have to keep my eye out. And please, pretty little spider, stay outside so I don't have to put an end to our beautiful friendship.

expect changes :-)

2010-08-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

For our anniversary my husband took me out for a drive into the country. I love looking at farms and barns! My dream is to someday have a small acreage out in the country with a barn. I don't necessarily want any animals, I just love barns! I've got fond memories of playing in the hay loft of my grandparents' barn, and I'd love for my girls to be able to experience the same thing someday. So anyway, we drove around out in the country and looked at barns. What a relaxing way to spend an afternoon! We took some pictures, so I think I'll use one at some point as my header, instead of the mountains. That's what I've been planning since I revamped the blog. I took a few pictures, but most of mine are grainy and out of focus. I'm not that great at picture taking. :-) However, my hubby took several pictures, and his are beautiful! So I'm sure I'll be able to find a good picture for the blog.

Well it's time to get the girls up and get ready for church. I love going to church! It's like walking into a family reunion every Sunday morning. :-) Have a wonderful day!

A Nutty Week

2010-07-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

This week started out great! It was VBS week at our church. Our girls have been so excited, looking forward to this all summer. We got there Monday, and my husband helped with the games, and I helped to corral the preschoolers. I think we had 23 preschoolers on Monday, and when we got home I was exhausted! I came home and took an hour and a half nap. :-) Tuesday was another fun day with 26 preschoolers. But at the closing ceremony I could tell my oldest (Butternut) wasn’t feeling so well. She came home after VBS and took a nap. Which is pretty unusual for either of my girls. Wednesday morning both girls were sick, so I stayed home while my hubby went to VBS. By Wednesday evening my throat was getting a bit sore, but nothing major.

Also on Wednesday, my computer died. That was a bit sad, but strangely enough, it really didn’t seem to bother me. I figured a few days without a computer wouldn’t hurt me. Then Thursday morning the coffee pot died. That was tragic. A computer, I can do without. Coffee… not gonna happen. So I boiled a pot of water on the stove, poured the grinds into the coffee filter inside the filter basket, and slowly poured the water from the tea kettle into the filter basket, while holding it over my mug. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do! I declared to my husband that I wasn’t touching anything electronic for the rest of the week.

My husband is so wonderful. After lunch we got online and looked at stores in a nearby town to see what they had for coffee pots. We found one that would work into our budget, and he set out to buy it. And just a few days ago he’d received a coupon for the store, for 20% off. The coffee pot was already on sale, plus it had a mail in rebate. And because he’s so wonderful, he upgraded a bit and got the one with the stainless steel carafe, as my anniversary gift. As it turned out, once he got home and opened it up he saw it had been used. Ick. So back in to town he went… but they made up for it. They gave him some money back, so it ended up costing the same as the original one he was going to get. :-)

Well, Thursday evening I started to get sick. I felt worse than I’ve felt in a very long time. Turns out I have a nasty sinus infection. So I’ve done a lot of sleeping the past couple of days. I guess I really didn’t end up missing my computer. And after a bit of trial and error (and reformatting the hard drive back to factory settings), it’s back to working again.

So that’s been my week in a nutshell. Oh, and speaking of nuts, I’ve got our family profile over there on my side bar. I think I’ll use those nicknames when I’m talking about our kids, just because I’m paranoid about putting their real names here on the internet. That’s probably a bit crazy for someone who met her husband online, but what can I say? I guess I’m a nut that way. :-)

Edit: Ok, now somehow my formatting is not coming through correctly, and all my paragraph breaks disappear when I try to publish my post. Don't tell me I've now broken Blogger... That's gonna drive me crazy if I can't get that figured out. Hopefully it will work for me the next time I try to post... Grrr....

Granola Bars! :-)

2010-07-14T08:36:00.001-07:00

Well, I believe the verdict is in. Although the previous recipe was a bit sweet for my tastes, it does seem to be the one I will go with. When I tried cutting back on the honey the bars were very crumbly. So I guess I'm ready to post the recipe. :-)

A couple of weeks ago I ran across a wonderful find that I included in the bars... mini marshmallows. And not just any mini marshmallows... these were truly miniature! They remind me of the kind you get in packets of hot cocoa mix. I included them in the last batch of granola bars, and although I really liked them, the kids said they couldn't really taste the marshmallows. I suppose that's true... but I really like marshmallows. I'd be happy eating a bowl of these for breakfast. :-) In any case, I probably won't use these too often because the store that sells them is pretty far away. I will include them in this recipe, but if you want to either omit them or use something else (nuts or dried fruit) that would be delicious, as well.

And now, for the recipe! Here is the cast of ingredients. It's all pretty basic, and mostly what I use for our regular granola. And as you can see we go through a lot of oats! :-)

3 cups oats
1/4 cup plus 1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup plus 3 Tablespoons honey
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
12 teaspoons mini marshmallows
6 teaspoons mini chocolate chips

This starts out the same as the other granola. Mix oats and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Add 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup honey, and vanilla, and mix well. Pour into a non-stick baking pan and bake at 300 for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. If you stop at this point you can store in an air tight container and have very simple granola.

To make the bars, let the mixture cool for a few minutes, then pour back into the mixing bowl. While it's cooling, lightly grease a muffin pan.

Measure out 1/4 cup of the granola into a small bowl, and add 1 teaspoon of mini marshmallows, and 1/2 teaspoon mini chocolate chips. Mix well and pour it into a muffin cup.

Repeat this with the remaining granola. You'll probably have a bit of granola left over when all the muffin cups are full, so just put a little extra in each of the muffin cups.

When all the muffin cups are full, firmly pack the granola down into the cups. I've found using a plastic 1/2 cup measuring cup works well for this. I just place the measuring cup on the top of the granola, and press down with as much preasure as I can. When all the granola is packed down, bake at 300 for a final 10 minutes, then allow to completely cool. I usually let mine cool around 3 hours.

When the bars are completely cool, carefully remove them from the muffin cups. I've found an easy way of doing this is to carefully slide a plastic knife down along the side of the bars. This applies just the right amount of pressure to free the bar from the pan. When I first took mine out of the pan they were very sticky. Almost too sticky. So I put them all on a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet and left them in the (cool) oven overnight. This allowed the air to circulate around the bars and really helped with the stickiness.

My family loves these granola bars! And even though they are a bit on the sweet side for my tastes, I do admit they go great with coffee! :-) We all thought they taste very close to the S'mores granola bars you can buy in the grocery store. And although they do have more honey than I'd like, at least they don't have the high fructose corn syrup or preservatives of the store bought ones. I also like the fact that they are round, rather than rectangular. It makes them a bit unique. I also think it helps them hold their shape a bit better, as there are no corners to easily break off.

I store these in an air tight container, but they could also be individually wrapped in plastic wrap. I've also decided I need to get a second cupcake pan so I can make more than 12 at a time. Otherwise I'm making a new batch every 3 days. :-)

Experimenting in the Kitchen

2010-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

For the past couple years I've been looking for a simple granola bar recipe. There are oodles of recipes online, but they all have so many ingredients, most of which my children won't eat. :-) I was hoping I could find a recipe to make our granola into bars, but so far, nothing has worked.

Recently I made a mistake when making granola. Usually I half the recipe, but this particular day I decided to make a full batch. Unfortunately, I was still thinking in halves, so even though I used 6 cups of oats, I used half of everything else. The granola turned out pretty tasteless. I hated to waste all those oats, so I figured I might as well experiment with it. I'd try coming up with my own recipe for bars, and if it didn't work, oh well. The oats would have been tossed, anyway.

After a bit of experimenting I came up with something that for the most part, seemed to work! It still needed a bit of tweaking, and that's what I've been working on the past couple weeks. I think I have the recipe just right... I just pulled a batch out of the oven. We'll know tomorrow, when we eat them for breakfast. If this is "the recipe," I'll post it here. If it still needs some tweaking, I'll try to get it just right before posting. When I made them earlier this week my girls and husband loved them, but they were a bit too sweet for my tastes. So I've tried to cut back a bit on the honey, and we'll see if they still hold together. I should know in the morning!

The Visitor

2010-07-13T05:20:00.000-07:00

It was late at night and the house was dark and quiet. The girls were asleep, and I was in bed reading a ghost story, when I heard it. It was a horrible sound... the low guttural, muffled meow of my cat. That in itself was very strange... she rarely meows. But when she does, it's not the nice soft meow of most cats. Her meow sounds more like a cow in pain. Only tonight, the meow was even more horrible, compounded by the fact that I was reading a ghost story.

Autumn jumped up on my bed, and I noticed by the dim light of my reading light she had something in her mouth. This was the second strange thing. Our cat has numerous toy mice around the house, but she's never shown an interest in them. This time she was holding one in her mouth. "Whatcha got, kitty?" I asked, calling her forward. She dropped her toy mouse... and in a flash it scurried across the foot of my bed! And to be honest, I'm surprised my scream didn't wake my girls. I don't know who was more scared... me or the mouse!

For a while I just sat in bed shaking, afraid to get out for fear of stepping on the thing. Finally I got up the nerve and quickly made the bed (to be sure there were no little lumps under the covers), then proceeded to turn on all the lights in the house. I'd heard mice usually come out at night, so I figured I'd discourage this critter from running across my path. Then I went through the house and cleaned up all the jackets and blankets left scattered around. I didn't want to give this little guy any convenient hiding places.

Finally in the wee hours of the morning I was able to calm down enough to go back to bed. But before going to bed I told my kitty that the next time she decides to catch a mouse, please dispose of it. And please, please don't bring it onto my bed!

Throughout the night I heard scratching noises in my closet, and the next morning we found a little hole in the wall where the mouse had escaped. We saw it once more that day, then didn't see or hear anything after that. We figured our kitty must have scared the poor little critter away. There was no evidence of a mouse anywhere in the house (fortunately no droppings or food chewed up), so we thought that was the end of it.

Nine Days Later.

Around 2:30 in the morning my husband and I were awakened by our cat making a very loud, horrible sounding meow. She was in our room, and my husband began calling her to us. In my sleep muddled mind I thought, "don't call her, she might have a mouse!" I mentioned this to my husband, and he turned on his flashlight, but didn't see anything. Then he got out of bed and looked on the floor in front of her... and sure enough, there was a mouse on the floor. A very dead mouse. I asked if he was sure it was real, and not one of her toys. He assured me this was real. He left to get a garbage bag to dispose of the pitiful creature, and my cat started batting at it, trying to get it to move! "Autumn, stop!" I didn't want to take any chances that the thing was just in shock, and would regain consciousness and scurry across my floor again. My wonderful husband disposed of the mouse that night, and we haven't seen or heard any more little visitors in our house.

The end.
(At least, I sincerely hope this is the end.)

Rice Crispy "Donuts"

2010-07-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

This year for Father's Day my girls wanted to make Daddy breakfast in bed. The only trouble was, he was running the sound board at church, and had to be there at 7:00. Which meant they'd have to get up at 5:30 to serve him breakfast. We did a bit of brainstorming, trying to come up with something they could make the day ahead and serve him in bed. Daddy likes donuts, and he also likes rice crispy treats. So we made rice crispy donuts. :-) I mixed up a batch of rice crispy treats, then we formed them around little cups to make the donut shape. Some of them ended up looking a bit more like ant hills than donuts, but it's the thought that counts. :-)

Saturday night I set my oldest daughter's alarm for 5:30. When it went off she woke her little sister, they crept downstairs and got Daddy's donuts (hiding in the entertainment center where he wouldn't find them) and brought them to Daddy. He was quite surprised, but mostly surprised that his girls were able to crawl out of bed so early in the morning!

Our Homeschooling Journey

2010-07-09T10:14:00.001-07:00

Update - 08-02-11 When I wrote this we were using Sonlight for our homeschooling. I still love Sonlight and am grateful for the wonderful library we've built up, but this year we decided it was time for a change. We are now using My Father's World, and so far we love it! I'll leave the rest of this post up, until I have a chance to do a full edit and give more of my reasons for switching. But for now, I'll just leave this edit here.

When I was pregnant with our first daughter, my husband and I knew we wanted to home school. We had both gone through the public school system and turned out alright (smile), but we knew we wanted our children to have the opportunity to learn what we believed (and still do!) was most important, our faith in Jesus.

In the beginning, I knew next to nothing about homeschooling. I had a few friends who had been home schooled, and from what I could tell it seemed like a pretty simple concept. When our daughter started reading at a very early age, we decided we'd go ahead and start preschool early. When she was three I did some research, and decided it should be fairly easy to come up with my own curriculum. I know for some families this works wonderfully. However, ours wasn't one of them. :-)

I also tried a couple of curricula that utilize the library for your main resources. After a few weeks of this, I decided that wasn't going to work for us, either. I needed something simpler, something all laid out for me.

I had heard of Sonlight, but by this point I'd forgotten about it. My Mom-in-law somehow knew of Sonlight, and suggested we take a look at it, again. (Thanks Mom! :-) When our daughter was 5 we ordered the Kindergarten Core, and have not looked back. It's worked wonderfully for us!

The main thing I like about Sonlight is the fact that everything is planned out for me. And you also order all the books, so there's no running to the library only to find out the book you need is unavailable. It is a literature based program, which means lots of reading for my girls. Being as how they both love to read, this works well for us. I don't think it would work quite as well for a child who doesn't enjoy reading.

This year we're starting 4th Grade for my oldest (American History part 2), and First Grade for my youngest (World History part 1). My first grader is very excited to start school! My 4th grader wouldn't mind waiting a few more months. :-) In any case, we plan to start next month. It's not quite soon enough for my youngest daughter, and a bit too soon for my oldest. But it's just about right for me. We always seem to get behind during the school year (last year our water heater broke and flooded our bedroom, so all of our bedroom furniture was in the dining room [aka the school room] and living room for a couple of weeks; later we moved, so there were another couple of weeks without school...), so this year I'm hoping that by starting early we can prevent falling behind too badly. But we'll see how it goes. I guess that's part of the beauty of home schooling... it's so easy to make school revolve around your life, rather than life revolving around school.

One of my goals for this blog is to keep a running list of our favorite books we read in school this year. I don't know if I'll succeed at being faithful to that, but I'll try. Hopefully that can also help me to keep motivated to keep Grandparents updated in what we're studying throughout the year. It's one of my goals, anyway. Usually my goals last a few weeks (or a few days! :-), so we'll see how this one goes.

And that, in a nutshell, is our homeschooling journey! If anyone who reads this has any questions about homeschooling in general, or Sonlight in particular, feel free to ask me any questions!

I've got it!

2010-07-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking quite a bit over the past few days about this blog, and what I want to convey in the title. I don't know why it's been such a big deal to me, sometimes I can tend to obsess over the little things. :-) But I wanted the title to reflect what's important in my life. And I wanted it to be able to go with any picture, in case I later decide to change the picture in my header. Finally I decided the title should come from Psalm 139, my favorite chapter of the Bible. You can't go wrong with that chapter. :-) So my new title is taken from Psalm 139:22. Now that I've got the redesign and title completed, I can get back to blogging. Well, unless life interferes with computer time. :-)

Under construction

2010-07-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

Right now my blog is under construction... I'm on the search for a new background design, as well as a new title. I can't really say I'm Dreaming... I realized recently, I'm Living the life God has given me! God has so richly blessed my life, and I want this blog to reflect that. Hopefully it won't take me too long to figure out what I want to do here. :-)

long time no see

2010-07-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, so much has happened since I posted, back in February. I'd like to start posting on my blog again, but it's hard to get started after a long break. :-)

I guess the biggest thing that's happened to us is we moved in February! We've moved into a beautiful house! (No more apartment life for us, at least for a while!) We have a back yard with room for the girls to run around, a playhouse, swings and a slide, and room for a future garden. I'm hoping to be able to start the garden next spring. The girls each have their own room, we have a play room, and even a school room! God has blessed us so much with this house!

Along with moving, we are now enjoying small town life. I've missed living in a small town, and now this town is just perfect for raising our girls! We're closer to our church, and we love it! We really feel at home here. Also, there is a nearby church where the girls will attend AWANA in the Fall, and that's a blessing, as well! We no longer need to drive into down town in the early evening amidst all the traffic getting off work... now we can walk! God has really blessed us with this move, in so many ways.

We are excited to start our next school year. In fact, the girls are so excited they wanted to start early! So last night we dove into our handwriting curriculum. This year we will be studying our second year of American History for Fourth Grade, and our first year of World History for First Grade. The girls are so anxious to start (especially our First Grader!) that we will probably go ahead and officially start the year next month. And hopefully with starting in August we'll do better at not falling behind this year. Every year we seem to fall a bit behind during the year, then rush to catch up in May and June. :-) Hopefully this year we can avoid that, but we'll see.

I've got one or two recipes I'd like to post, and a few fun stories about family life. But I'll leave those for another day. Hopefully that will motivate me to update this blog more than every 5 months. :-)

A couple of great finds

2010-02-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

I've recently found a couple of stores that have special offers for home schoolers. I love a good bargain, so I was excited to learn about these! Jo-Ann Fabrics has a rewards program for home educators. It's for any teacher, but the cool thing is they include home school teachers. You just need proof that you are a home school teacher (a PEAH or HSLDA member number) and you'll receive a card for 15% off your purchases! Teacher Reward Page

Then today I was in Car Toys, and the manager gave me a discount for being a homeschool teacher. He told me if I let other home school teachers know and to ask for him, he will give them a discount, as well. I don't know if this is at all Car Toys locations, or if it is specific to our local store. In any case, it can't hurt to ask! :-)

It makes me wonder what other stores offer discounts for home school teachers. I think I'll just have to start asking! :-)

Granola Revisited

2009-12-15T21:44:00.001-08:00

My family loves our granola recipe. We usually eat it for breakfast every morning. Recently I decided to try to come up with a way to make it in the oven, so it wouldn't take so long. I really like the ease of making granola in the crock pot, but there are days I don't have several hours available to watch it. My husband and children all agree they prefer baked granola to crock pot granola, as it is crunchier and also has sweet clusters of granola that stick together. I like the fact that it bakes so quickly. Here's what I've come up with.

6 cups old fashioned oats
1 1/2 - 2 teaspoons cinnamon (we like extra cinnamon)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Pour the oats and cinnamon into a non-stick baking pan. Mix the cinnamon into the oats. Next, pour oil and honey into a 1-cup measuring cup, followed by the vanilla. (By pouring the olive oil in first, the honey slides right out of the cup, rather than clinging to the glass sides.) Pour this mixture into the pan and mix well. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Be sure to stir the granola at the sides of the pan, so it doesn't burn.

Once the 30 minutes are up, I usually give it one last stir, turn off the oven, and put the granola back in the oven to cool overnight. It doesn't need to cool that long, but I find leaving it in the oven gives it a little extra baking time and helps it dry out so it's ready to eat by morning. If you have a well insulated oven, I'd probably let the granola cool on the counter, but our oven is pretty old and cools off quickly.

One batch of granola usually lasts us about a week. We each eat 1/4 cup in milk for breakfast. Sometimes my kids like to eat it as a snack, as well. One fun way we've found is making "healthy donuts." I slice an apple into 3 rings, spread peanut butter over the tops like frosting, and let the kids top it off with granola "sprinkles." Granny Smiths are what we had on hand tonight, but it's even better with sweeter apples. The girls like to do this with bananas, as well.

Doll Clothes

2009-12-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

Last week I bought a sewing machine! I've been saving up for a while, so I was so excited when I was finally able to order it. My first project was to sew night gowns for the girls' dolls. They're a bit tight to get on or off, but once they're on, they fit well. These are very simple night gowns that I made from old t-shirts that no longer fit my youngest. I've discovered 3T or 4T short sleeved shirts work perfect for 18- inch dolls. The length of the shirt goes down to the doll's ankles, and the short sleeves go almost to the doll's wrists, so no hemming is required! I followed the basic instructions from this blog. She has several other helpful tutorials listed on her blog, as well. I'm so glad to have these night gowns finished for the girls' Christmas presents! And I look forward to learning how to do more projects, as well. I'm very much a beginner, but I'm having fun! :-)

Thinking about Christmas

2009-11-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe Christmas is only 46 days away. Last year we started a new tradition; rather than buying gifts for each other, we made them. Our girls had the enjoyable experience of making gifts for each other, and Mommy and Daddy. And my husband and I had fun planning and making gifts for the girls.

Yesterday I ran across a blog with wonderful directions on how to make doll pajamas out of old baby clothes. My older daughter bought an 18 inch doll from Vision Forum earlier this year, so I've been looking for ideas of how to make pajamas for dolls. I made nightgowns for each of the girls' dolls last Christmas, but my stitching didn't hold up very well. This year, thanks to this tutorial, I will be making nightgowns for the girls' dolls again, but this time I anticipate them turning out much better! Unfortunately I don't have a working sewing machine, so I'm doing all my stitching by hand. Yesterday I made a quick nightgown using these basic instructions, and it turned out very well! I've found my younger daughter's old 4T t-shirts are the perfect size to make nightgowns for an 18-inch doll. The length of the shirt is the perfect length, and the short sleeves are perfect for the doll's long sleeves, no hemming required! Yesterday's project was just a quick trial to see if I could do it, but when I have a final product ready for Christmas, I will post pictures. Now if only I could think of what to make for my wonderful husband...

Picky Eater

2009-11-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

My youngest daughter is a very picky eater. For a while she would eat nothing but bean burritos, bananas, and raspberry yogurt. At least those three are healthy choices. Her doctor said not to worry about it, eventually she'll get tired of the burritos and will try something else. I don't think that will happen. Ever. :-) The other day I was searching the internet, trying to find recipes for picky eaters. One blog I ran across suggested Mac & Cheese, as the author of that blog had never known a kid who didn't like Mac & Cheese. She has never met my 5-year old. She will not eat Mac & Cheese. Or PB&J. All the normal kid foods, she won't touch. Unless it's loaded with sugar. But I try to avoid too much sugar with the girls.

Tonight I tried something new, thinking I had finally found something healthy she would love. It was healthy, disguised as junk food. I made "healthy donuts." But she wasn't fooled. She knew right away these were not "real" donuts. On the other hand, my 8-year old, who is not very picky, loved them! First I cored and sliced two apples into rings. I sliced the rings thick, as I discovered when I made them too thin they broke. So each apple made 3-4 "donut" rings. Then I spread peanut butter on each of the rings, and generously sprinkled home made granola over the peanut butter "frosting" for the sprinkles. I thought they were wonderful! My 8-year old really enjoyed them. My 5-year old thought they tasted too much like apples. :-) So the search for healthy food she will eat continues.

There is one benefit to her pickiness. She's even picky when it comes to candy. Both girls got quite a bit of candy this past week; they each have a sandwich sized ziplock bag filled. That might not be a lot of candy to most people, but since I'm trying to keep it out of the house as much as possible, that's a lot for us. Anyway, thankfully her pickiness also falls into the candy category. So when she takes a bite of something and decides she doesn't like it, Mommy gets to eat it! Which only seems fair, seeing as how I didn't get any candy last week.

I admire Moms who can get their kids to eat anything. Last week when we were eating supper at the church before AWANA, one of the girls at our table didn't really like what was served, but she followed her Mom's instructions and ate it, anyway. She didn't eat all of it, but each time her Mom told her to take a bite, she did. And it wasn't a little lick either, which is what my daughter would do. I think I'm going to try to teach her to just eat what she is served, whether or not she likes it. I'm getting tired of fixing burritos. :-) If anyone who reads this blog has a suggestion, either on healthy foods to try, or creative ways to get her to eat what we serve, I'd love to hear them!

Music to my Ears

2009-10-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Right now my oldest daughter is in her room reading a book for school, and my husband is doing science with my youngest daughter at the dining room table. She is learning to read, so she's sounding out the different words in her science book. It is music to my ears to listen to her sweet little voice reading the words from the pages. She's also started sounding out the words in her AWANA handbook. I love to hear her reading and reciting Bible verses! There is nothing as sweet as listening to children speaking the words of our Heavenly Father! What a blessing it is to have this opportunity to teach our children about the world God has created for us.

Memories

2009-09-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday was a day full of memories. There were new memories to be made, and precious memories to be relived.

My oldest daughter has been taking Ukulele lessons for almost a year. Thursday, she and my husband's Dad played at a local nursing home. They did a very good job, and people enjoyed listening to them, as well as visiting for a bit.

Being at the nursing home took me back to the last time I saw my Gramma. It's hard to believe she's been in heaven for over a year! But I hadn't been to a nursing home since I saw her last Spring. Being there on Thursday and seeing all the precious people in their wheel chairs reminded me of Gramma, and even though I know she's in heaven with Jesus, my heart ached for her. She was such a wonderful woman. Gramma loved Jesus with all her heart. Before her stroke she travelled the world, telling people about Jesus. She had a heart of gold, and had such a love for everyone! But Gramma especially loved her Hubby, her children, her Grands, and her Great Grands. They meant the world to her.

I miss Gramma. I think I'll give Grampa a call today.

Our 10th Anniversary

2009-08-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Recently my husband and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. I've been meaning to write about that, but I am so behind in just about everything right now. :-)

On our anniversary my wonderful husband brought a box into the room. He said he has not done a good job of giving me the traditional gifts on our anniversary, and so this day he wanted to make up for it.

On the first anniversary, the traditional gift is paper. He opened the box and handed me that day's newspaper.

The second anniversary's gift is cotton. My husband reached into the box and pulled out a cotton ball.

Leather is the traditional gift for the 3rd anniversary. He gave me a leather shoelace.

The fourth anniversary has a choice between fruit and flowers. My husband handed me a bag of dried apricots. I love dried apricots! :-)

Anniversary number 5 is wood, so my husband gave me a wooden knob, or drawer pull.

The sixth anniversary also has a choice, between candy and iron... my husband knows me well and knows I wouldn't even know what to do with an iron, so he gave me a snicker's bar. *lol* :-)

Number 7 is a choice between wool and copper, so my husband gave me a penny.

Since bronze and pottery are the choice for the 8th anniversary, my husband gave me a bronze drawer pull.

Anniversary number nine has a choice between pottery, willow and china, so he gave me a little clay flower pot.

And for the 10th anniversary, the traditional gift is tin or aluminum. My husband handed me a sheet of aluminum foil. :-)

I loved my husband's creativity as he put this gift together! Here's a picture of all my anniversary gifts.

The Power of Stickers

2009-08-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

It looks like in October we will be moving to a nearby city. We are all very excited, as this is a move to a much larger apartment, and the girls will each get their own room! However, the chore of moving is not much fun. Sorting, packing, moving to the new apartment, unpacking, putting everything away... I am not a very energetic person, and the thought of all this work just exhausts me. I'd much rather have someone else come to our home, sort through all of our stuff, pack, move, unpack, and put everything away again. But I suppose that's not very practical. :-)

I have followed FlyLady off and on for the past 8 years, or so. Well, I should say I've entertained the thought of following FlyLady. I've never actually been very good at following her instructions. I agree with her principles, I'm just not so good at putting them in to practice. Her basic principle is that you cannot organize clutter, so slowly rid your home of things you do not use or love. If you have a nic-nac sittinig on your shelf that's been there for 15 years, you don't remember where you got it, and it doesn't bring you any joy, get rid of it. Either throw it away or take it to Good Will, if it's something in good shape that someone else can be blessed with.

I've been thinking this really makes sense to me, especially in light of our up coming move. So today I created a contest for the girls. I mentioned it to my husband, and he said he'd like to join in, as well. I printed off a calendar of the month of August for each of us, and I pulled out a package of star stickers that I bought a couple years ago, thinking I'd use them for school. Then I set up the rules. For the girls, for every 10 items they either throw away or put in the Good Will box, they will receive one sticker to put on their calendar for that day. For my husband and I, I figured we have a lot more stuff to get rid of, so we need to get rid of 15 items for each sticker. The items to get rid of could be a book we no longer enjoy reading, an old toy that is no longer being played with, or a scrap of paper crammed in the back of a drawer. As of right now my husband and I have a combination of 7 stickers, my girls each have more than my husband and I have combined. So they are really getting in to this! Who knew stickers could be so motivating? If I had just told them today we are going to get rid of over 200 items, they wouldn't have wanted to have anything to do with it. Neither would I. But stickers make throwing stuff out fun! :-) The amazing thing is most of what we're getting rid of is trash... old papers, junk mail, torn papers... But then we're also slowing filling up the Good Will box. Hopefully we can keep up with this all month, and when it comes time to pack things will go much more smoothly. That's my goal, anyway. :-)

The Wheezy's

2009-07-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

My oldest daughter came to me today with a book of poems she has written. I'd like to share my favorite with you. :-) Oh, and for a little background, the poor thing suffers from allergies, so I'm assuming that's her inspiration for this poem. :-)

The Wheezy's

I think I have the wheezy's
My nose likes to be sneezey.
My toes are rather teasey
Yes, I think I have the wheezy's.
I think I need to sneezy!
Ahhhhhhhh choo!
Oh! Bless you!

A Puzzling Obsession

2009-07-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter loves puzzles. For her 5th birthday (this past December) a friend gave her a beautiful, but very difficult puzzle. It has 750 pieces, and no straight edges. The puzzle has a fancy, almost lacey edge. She's tried several times over the last several months to put the puzzle together, but has never been successful. Part of the problem is we just have one table, so everything must be put away for meals. I've often wished we had a puzzle table so we could leave it up for a few days and work on it here and there.

Last week my daughter asked me to help her with the puzzle. We worked on it for a while, but before long it was time to put it away. I got the idea to separate the pieces into their own baggies. All the pieces of Snow White went into a baggie, the bunnies went into a baggie, the gray squirrel and brown and blue raccoon went into a baggie, the blue birds had a baggie, and the purple birds had a baggie. Part of the problem was the bunnies fur is the same color as Snow White's skin, and the raccoon's blue mask and rings were the same color as Snow White's dark blue hair. So some pieces got put into the wrong baggies, but for the most part we got it separated. All of the background was just left loose in the bottom of the box. At that point we put the puzzle away for the rest of the day.

Last Thursday my daughter again asked me to help her with her puzzle. It was almost lunch time, so I told her we'd work on it after lunch. My husband was meeting a friend for lunch that day, so as soon as we were finished eating my girls got to work on the puzzle while I cleaned up the kitchen. When I was finished I sat down at the table and worked with them. Having the different sections separated really helped, but it was still a long process. When my husband came home we recruited his help on the puzzle. After a while the girls grew tired of working on the puzzle; but I was hooked. We were making progress, and I couldn't stop! A little after 5:00 our oldest asked, "So... what's for supper?" Supper? Time had flown so fast while working on that puzzle that supper completely slipped our minds! At that time it was too late to fix what we had planned, plus we didn't want to put the puzzle away. We were making so much progress! I suggested we eat out someplace cheap, then go to the store and look for something to put the puzzle onto, so we could continue working on it without taking up the table. We had a coupon for McDonalds, so we all got into the car and went out to eat. Then we drove across the street to Walgreens and looked for some poster board. What we found was even better... a large sheet of foam board, like what you would use for mounting posters. We bought that and headed home. My husband and I got right back to work on the puzzle. We very carefully transftered it to the foam board, and continued working. After a while my husband decided he needed a break, so it was down to just me. I couldn't stop! My back ached from being hunched over the table for so long, but I just couldn't stop! I did take a short break around 7:00 to get my girls' baths ready, and another quick break around 8:00 to put them to bed. But then I was right back at the puzzle. Around 9:30 my husband said he was going to bed. I told him goodnight, and continued working on the puzzle. I guess I was obsessed with finishing it! At 10:00 I decided I'd just work another 15 minutes... then before I knew it I heard the clock chime 11:00. Where had the time gone? I knew at that point I needed to call it a night, if I was ever going to get up the next morning.

The next morning I moved the puzzle to our bed, then brought it back out after breakfast. It's a good thing we are finished with school for the summer so I had the time to work on the puzzle. I was going to finish this puzzle, no matter what it took! :-) I knew there would be some missing pieces. The puzzle has been all over our apartment... the dining room, the living room, the girls' room... so I knew after 7 months the puzzle would be missing some pieces. I was just hoping it wouldn't be missing too many pieces, and that they would turn up.

I moved the puzzle at lunch time, and at that point it was almost finished! My husband helped me after lunch. It was so cool to see the pieces taking shape! We decided we'd let our youngest daughter put in the last piece, since this was her puzzle. And our oldest daughter could put in the second to last piece. Finally it came time to finish the puzzle! We were missing three pieces, but other than those three, the last two pieces were ready to be put in. Our girls put those two pieces into the puzzle, and we all sat back and admired the beautiful puzzle. I decided at that time that I will never ever take this puzzle apart! It is not going back into the box! *lol*

We did a lot of searching for those missing puzzle pieces. My husband did find one of them, so now we are down to just two missing pieces. We went through all the other puzzle boxes, and although we did find some puzzle pieces in the wrong box, these two particular pieces have not yet turned up. We are hoping to move this Fall, so I'm guessing they will turn up at that time, if not before. Although I'm really hoping we find the missing pieces sooner than that! When it's complete I want to get some puzzle glue so we can glue the puzzle together. Then we can hang it on the girls' wall. There are several pieces that are supposed to come out to create an even more decorative border, but I won't remove them until we have the puzzle completed. Hopefully one of these days I will have a completed picture to show you. But until then, here is our puzzle.

The Roach

2009-06-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

This morning my youngest daughter was looking at a book with a picture of a colorful beetle. It reminded me of something from several years ago. I'm not sure where I got them, but when I was still living at home, somehow I acquired 2 very realistic looking rubber cockroaches. When I was a kid I startled my Mom with them a couple of times. She had a certain kind of ice cream she especially liked. One day I put one of the rubber cockroaches in the small tub of ice cream. I think it was one of those small Ben & Jerry packs, or something like that. When she opened the lid, out popped the cockroach. It was great fun, as I have rarely heard my Mom scream. She got me back though... one day she stuck the rubber cockroach up into the faucet of the bathtub, so when I turned on the water, the roach came out with the gush of water, giving it the appearance of swimming for its life. The favor was returned; Mom got to hear me scream.

Recently when I was going through a box of memorabilia from my childhood, I came across the rubber cockroaches. I stuck them away for just the right moment. Today that moment came.

When my daughter was examining the colorful beetle in her book, I rather nonchalantly mentioned I had a cockroach. Both girls were instantly interested; Really? Can we see it? What's its name? How come we've never seen it before? I told them when I was finished with my coffee, I'd show them my cockroach. But be forewarned, he doesn't like being out in the light, and he gets nervous around people. My kids couldn't believe I'd have a pet cockroach, and my oldest was very skeptical. They could hardly wait for me to finish my coffee. Then I went into my room and shut the door. I cupped the rubber cockroach in one hand and covered him with the other. Then I went out into the living room. Both girls were very interested to see the cockroach. I gingerly opened my hands just enough for them to get a glimpse, then quickly covered him again. My youngest was a little nervous, but my oldest said, "That can't be real!" I told them he was tickling my hands because he was moving around. Then I pushed his head out between my fingers with my thumb, and both girls screamed. "It's real!" I was having great fun with this. I don't normally play pranks on my children, but this time it was just too fun. After this I let the cockroach "jump" out of my hands, towards the girls. My husband had the camera and was recording, so I thought I'd share the resulting video. Hopefully I don't appear mean for doing this, as it was all in fun. And after it was over, my girls were able to laugh about it. They loved watching the video, too. And I eventually let them know this was not a real live cockroach. :-) Enjoy the video!

Edit - I've decided to remove this video due to a couple of "visitors" that have left me a bit uncomfortable. I think I will have to rethink posting videos in the future, especially when they deal with my kids. I am a Momma Bear, and protecting my children is my highest priority. :-) The visits in question are probably completely innocent, but I've decided it's best to err on the side of caution.

Under Construction

2009-06-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've decided it's time to choose a new layout for my blog. When I picked this template it was Autumn, and I was ready for Christmas. This seemed to fit. Now that summer is here (I'm behind the times!) I decided something new is in order. Of course the template I've decided upon will not work with everything in my side bar, so now I have the fun task of trying to get everything to fit. So if this blog starts looking a bit odd, hopefully I can get it back in gear! And I really hope I don't make the whole thing go *poof*! :-) If you see a new background to my blog and everything seems to be in place, then I will have succeeded! :-)

Edit... I seem to have everything figured out, except my mp3 player of my girls singing. For some reason I just cannot get that to work in this new layout! So now I need to decide, to I change to a new layout, continue to work on the problem, or leave out the mp3's? I think they'd be disappointed if their songs were no longer here, I've put too much effort into this silly thing to quit, so I guess that means I keep at it. Which means it's after 10:00 and the laundry still isn't folded. Ah, such is the life we lead in this technological age! :-)

Final Edit... I think I've found a work around! I've found a customizable mp3 player, that I can adjust the size of the player. I can only put one song in it, so I just made one player for each song. Now maybe I can go to bed! :-)

The "S" Word

2009-06-23T17:35:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, my oldest daughter and I are going to have a very special afternoon and evening. We've arranged with her grandparents to keep her younger sister for the night, and my husband will be at work. I have told her we'll have that time together, just the two of us, and given her just a few hints as to what we're going to do. She's growing up too quickly, so I want to have a time for the two of us to talk, do girl things (like paint our fingernails and eat chocolate), and just have fun together.

Tonight at the table she turned to me and said, "Mommy after supper I need to talk to you. It's private, just for the two of us. It's about the "S" word."

The "S" word? I could only think of one "s" word that would require privacy to talk about. What question should she possibly have that was so urgent? She's EIGHT! We have been open and answered any questions she's had, but so far her questions have been very simple and basic, nothing requiring secrecy.

After supper we went to her room and sat down on her bed. I was trying to prepare myself for any question she might have. Taking a deep breath, I asked what was on her mind.

"Mommy, on Sunday if it's nice, can we sit outside when we go to Starbucks?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Starbucks" was the "s" word. She was being cryptic because she didn't want her little sister to be jealous of the fun day we had planned. I guess my little girl is going to stay a little girl for a little while longer. :-)

I did it!

2009-06-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, I believe I have added an mp3 player with 2 songs to my sidebar. It seems to work on my computer, hopefully it will work on others, as well! :-) I just picked one song my 8 year old is singing and playing on her ukulele. My 5 year old wanted to do something too, so she sang one of her favorite songs, from one of her favorite movies. I'm not sure how to put titles into the MP3 player, so it's just the link name. When I listen to the song, a little popup comes to the top of my browser saying I need some plugin for it to work, but I didn't download it, and it works fine for me to listen. If anyone has trouble with the player, let me know and I'll see what else I can find. Thanks! Also, I don't know if I'll change the songs in the future, but I put today's date in the title of the mp3 player. If I ever update it, I'll put the current date in there, so it will be easy to see if I've added any new songs.

(Update... I just checked to see what plugin it tried to install, and it's apple quicktime. I don't particularily like quitime, and I don't want to install it on my computer. It doesn't seem like you actually need it to work, but if it doesn't work for you without the plugin, let me know, and I'll look for another player. Thanks!)

My Ukulele Gal

2009-06-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

My oldest daughter has been taking ukulele lessons for a few months. I love to listen to her play and sing! One of these days if I can figure out how to do it, I'll try to put up one of those music players in my side bar, and put her mp3's into it. That could take a while, though. I'm not that tech savy. :-) It's one of my goals, though. Maybe I can work on it this summer, during our break from school.

I seem to have been in a blogging rut the past couple of weeks. And even though now I have my computer in front of me, I can't think of much to write. So I guess I'll put the blog away for a few more days, and hope inspiration strikes! :-) Or maybe I can use this time to try and figure out how to put my daughter's mp3s into my blog. In any case, I'll try to have something more of interest in the next few days.

Next Year's School

2009-06-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

Even though we're at the end of our school year and I'm sooooo ready for summer vacation, I'm anxious to get next year's curriculum. We'll begin our 2-year study of American History, and it looks really exciting! Some things we'll be learning (taken from Sonlight Core 3):

We'll start with archeological information from hundreds of years before Christ
We'll accompany Columbus on his journey across the Atlantic
We will
discover which state was founded on the loot of smugglers and pirates, and which state (then a colony) was founded by men who believed the Bible taught them never to offer military or police protection when their citizens were attacked.
We will meet Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Lewis and Clark, and many others
In Science we will study physics, human anatomy, biology, and taxonomy...

This is definitely going to be a fun year! I can hardly wait to start!

A Day To Remember

2009-05-31T17:00:00.001-07:00

Today is a very special day. On this day, May 31st, 2009, my oldest Daughter was baptized by my husband! Today has been a day of celebration! We praise God for our daughter, and the decision she has made to follow Him. Today is a day to remember!

Ice Cream

2009-05-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Last night the girls and I made ice cream and this time I took a video. We did it a little differently as we doubled the recipe, and put the baggie with the milk mixture in a mixing bowl with a lid, rather than a larger zip lock. It didn't turn out quite as well, but I think part of that was due to the fact that it was 80 degrees inside, so as soon as we served the ice cream into the bowls it started to melt, very quickly!

My oldest daughter narrated the video, and my younger daughter made crazy faces. :-)

I feel a bit odd for posting a video, as I've never even posted pictures of my girls on this blog. But my husband recently started up his blog again and he's posting pictures and videos, so I figure I might as well. Enjoy!

Quote of the Day

2009-05-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

"Maybe growing up is harder than I thought it would be!" ~ Words of wisdom, by my 8-year old.

Say What?

2009-05-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

This morning my girls decided to wear their Easter dresses to church. My husband has been taking a picture of them every day lately to send out to the Grandparents, and when my 8-year old saw her picture she said, "I look like Mommy!" At first I was flattered... then she continued, "I look really old!" Kids. :-)

Recipe for Fun

2009-05-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

I've seen several recipes online for home made ice cream in a ziplock baggie, and I've always wanted to try it. Well, tonight I decided this would be as good of day as any! It's a great easy recipe to do with kids! You will need...

Ingredients:

1/2 cup milk (we used 2%, but it might be even better with whole)
1 Tbs. sugar
1/4 tsp. vanilla
2 Tbs. Sea Salt
4 trays of ice cubes

Materials:

1 quart sized ziplock bag
2 gallon sized ziplock bags
broom and dustpan
50's music

People:

Mommy
2 giggly girls

Directions

Pour milk into the small ziplock baggie. I found it helpful to push the baggie down into a tall glass, with the edges of the baggie hanging over. It made it real easy to make the baggie stand up. I measured out the milk, and my 5-year old helped me add all the ingredients.
Let your 5-year old scoop one Tablespoon of sugar out of the sugar canister
Sweep one tablespoon of sugar off of the Mommy, the counter, and the floor
Help your 5-year old measure out one Tablespoon of sugar, and add it to the milk
Poor in 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, plus whatever extra splashes come with it
Seal up the baggie
Insert one gallon baggie into the other (This is extra protection in case all the shaking punctures a hole in your gallon baggie)
Fill the inside gallon baggie with all four trays of ice cubes
Insert the baggie with the milk mixture into the large baggie, burying it into the ice
Pour 2 Tbs. salt into the large baggie, and seal
Turn on the 50's music, and let the giggly girls take turns shaking up the bag!

We had such a blast with this! I didn't time to see how long we shook our bag, but we got a bit impatient for a sample so I'm sure it wasn't more than 10 minutes. It could have used a bit more shaking, but it turned out pretty good! We poured the ice cream into a small bowl, and each got a spoon and dug in. We'll make it again later this week when Daddy is home, and this time I think we'll make more than just one serving. 1/2 cup is just not enough to share between 3 or 4 people! :-) This would also be great with chocolate syrup!

Dinner Is Served

2009-05-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

For a while now my daughters have wanted to serve me breakfast in bed. Because they are rarely both up before me, this has been difficult for them to plan. So this morning my oldest daughter told me she wanted to serve me supper in bed for my Mother’s Day gift. I was very hesitant to agree to this as my husband leaves for work at 4:00, so they would be completely on their own in the kitchen. I almost said no, but I knew how important this was to her. So I reluctantly agreed, but tried not to show my hesitation to her. She was so excited, I didn’t want to spoil her fun.

My daughter planned out an entire menu, and had me get settled in bed. Then her younger sister brought in their little TV tray, and my older daughter handed me the menu. Each thing on the menu came with a price… kisses! My choices were:

Burritoe………………......1 kiss

PB&H……………………3 kiss’s

Cheese ‘n’ crackers………2 kiss’s

Cinnomon Toaster’s …….4 kiss’s

Oatmeal………………….1 kiss

Raisin’s ………………….1 kiss

Since my girls were completely unsupervised in this endeavor, I chose the peanut butter and honey sandwich. I didn’t want them using the microwave without an adult, or a sharp knife to slice cheese. They also had a list of sides to choose from, as well as desserts and drinks. I put in my order (including "Doritoe's (tm)", water, and some leftover Easter candy for dessert) and waited expectantly for this fantastic meal.

Listening to the girls in the kitchen was so much fun! Our bedroom isn’t too far from the kitchen, so I could hear what was going on. How precious hearing the girls work together so well in preparing supper for their Mommy… truly a gift of love! And fortunately I only heard the words “Uh oh!” once. :-)

I did have to try really hard not to laugh when I heard my older daughter yelling to her younger sister, “No don’t lick that! I still need to make my sandwich with it! Oh well, I’ll just rinse it off, but don’t lick it again!"

Finally everything was ready, and they brought my plate into the bedroom. They had made me a half peanut butter and honey sandwich. They tore the sandwich in half and arranged it on the plate along with the Doritos to resemble a smiley face. The two pieces of sandwich were the eyes, the chips were the smile and nose.

This was such a precious gift! It is definitely something I will cherish for many years to come. And there wasn't too big of a mess in the kitchen for me to clean up when supper was over. :-)

God has truly blessed me with my children!

Lasagna Roll Ups

2009-05-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Today for lunch my husband tried a new recipe. We had company (his parents and uncle) which was great fun, and something we don't do near enough. If only I could cook as well as my husband! Oh well, he is an excellent cook, and I enjoy eating his creations! Rather than repeat the entire recipe here, instead I'll give you the picture, and link where you can see the recipe yourself. Oh, and my hubby also made his homemade sauce, from his own recipe. I love it when he makes things from scratch, so we can controll the sodium, and other things we don't want adding up in our food. I look forward to the day when we can have a garden, and grow our own veggies!

Ok, so here's the picture, and the recipe...http://blogchef.net/lasagna-roll-ups-recipe/

Road to Recovery

2009-04-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

This past week has been a difficult one. Somehow I strained my trapezius muscle, and my neck / shoulders / back have been in a lot of pain. My husband has been great though! He's completely taken over the housework, and taking care of the kids this week. And his parents have been a tremendous help as well. I'm really blessed!

My kids have enjoyed having most of last week off from school. We did just a little school last week, so I'm hoping this week we can get back in to things. I think we'll take it slow though, and just see what we can accomplish.

My girls have been really sweet this week, too. Monday was a difficult day, so I went to the bedroom to lay down while they were finishing up their supper. When I came out a little while later, my children had cleaned up the kitchen as best as they could.

Even though this has been a difficult week, it has helped to reaffirm in my mind just how blessed I am!

Alice Swissenheart

2009-04-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

To encourage my daughter with her creative writing, we've decided to start a school blog. It will be a place she can publish her book reports, write about field trips, and any other creative writing assignements she wants to include. She's always wanted a pen name, so for her new blog, her chosen pen name is Alice Swissenheart. One of her favorite books is Alice In Wonderland, but I'm not sure where she came up with the Swissenheart.

If you're interested to see her blog, here's the link. http://swissenheart.blogspot.com/ We don't have anything up yet, but I'm hoping to have her first post by the end of the week.

The Old Testament

2009-04-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

The other day my husband overheard our children having a theological discussion. Our 8-year old said to our 5-year old, "The Old Testament is full of old people. That must be why they call it the Old Testament."

Seems logical to me! :-)

I love my husband!

2009-02-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

This has been a rough week, health wise. I guess there's something going around... just about everyone you talk to has at least one sick person in their family. It's not much fun. The bug finally caught up with me on Tuesday, and I've been pretty much wiped out ever since. Wedensdays and Thursdays are my husband's days off, and this week he spent his days off taking care of me and the girls. He has done everything - cooking, washing dishes, cleaning up the apartment, playing with our youngest (who seems to have somehow avoided this bug), making sure me and our oldest daughter were comfortable... My husband has been absolutely wonderful! Unfortunatly, late Friday night / early Saturday morning, it hit him. He's missed the past two days of work, and the three of us have remained sick. He's feeling better today, and is hoping to get back to work tonight. I just wanted to tell everyone how wonderful he's been! I love you, Darling! :-)

good kitty

2009-02-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

My girls have this bug that seems to be hitting everyone right now. My youngest is doing pretty well today, but my oldest is pretty miserable. She's been sleeping on the couch most of the day. She's got a fever, but is also cold, so I've covered her with a light blanket. I just walked by a few minutes ago, and she's sleeping on the couch, and curled up next to her is our kitty, Autumn. What a precious site... a sleeping child, and an empathetic kitty sleeping next to her, keeping her warm. It's amazing to me how animals always seem to know when we are sick or in need of comfort. That's definately got to be a God thing. I wonder what it would have been like before the fall? I assume there would not have been sickness, but at the same time, if a person was in need of comfort, can you imagine a lion curling up next to you, purring in your ear, giving you warmth and comfort? What a beautiful world God created for us!

Sugar Cookies

2009-02-10T16:47:00.000-08:00

I realize we're two months past Christmas, and I never posted my recipe for sugar cookies. So here I am, a couple months late! Which pretty much describes almost every aspect of my life. :-) (Actually, I would have posted these much sooner, but for some reason I wasn't able to access the folder on the computer with these pictures. My hubby finally figured it out for me today, so I could post the pictures.)

This recipe comes from a Sesame Street book my parents bought when I was in Preschool, and the recipe is called Cookie Monster's Sugar Cookies. I remember my Mom making these cookies as I was growing up, and I loved them! This year I made them for my family, and they were a hit! But as it turns out, I realized I don't follow the original recipe. I didn't mean to improvise, but apparently I did. So I'll post my modified recipe, since that's what I've been making.

1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 & 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt

Blend butter and sugar with fork. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Sift flour, baking powder and salt, then add to the bowl. Knead (this is the kids' favorite part!), then chill at least one hour, or overnight. Roll out and cut into shapes on a floured board. Bake at 400, 6-8 minutes.

And here's the finished product. These are the nativity cookie cutters my parents gave us for Christmas. See if you can make out all the shapes...
I apologize the picture is a big blurry. I took this picture Christmas Eve, and I guess I didn't bother checking until now to see if the picture was in focus. :-) In any case, I'm sure you can recognize the heart, star, angel, camel, king, Joseph, Baby Jesus and manger, Mary, shepherd and sheep. But can you guess what that odd looking shape is under Mary? Actually, it's in the picture upside down. It's supposed to be a donkey, but when I first pulled the cookie cutter out of the container I couldn't figure out what that animal was supposed to be. I turned it upside down and thought it looked like a slug. My husband says this is the NorthWest version of the nativity, as we get a lot of slugs in our neck of the woods. :-) So for our family, the final critter, rather than being a donkey, is a slug.

potty mouth

2009-02-07T22:07:00.001-08:00

Thursday I went to the dentist for my anual cleaning. My girls were interested to see what was going on with Mommy, so the hygenist invited them into the room. She is a very kind and grandmotherly lady, and on her days off work she visits schools to teach the children about dental hygene. While she was cleaning my teeth, the hygenist was telling the girls about plaque. She told my girls the story she tells the children in schools; "Everyone has teeny tiny bugs in their mouth called bacteria. These bugs eat the same things you eat, but they especially love when you eat sugar. And after they eat, the bugs do the same thing you do after you eat; they have to go potty. And that's where plaque comes from. So you see why it's so important to brush your teeth very well every day?" She had a hard time finding any plaque in my mouth, but was able to come up with just a little to show the girls. My youngest daughter's eyes got real wide as she thought about what these teeny tiny bugs were doing in people's mouths and she said, "Is that why you were gloves?"

Out of the mouths of babes!

To Facebook or Not To Facebook

2009-01-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

My husband has had a facebook account for a while now, and he thinks I should get one, too. But I've been resistant. I have enough ways of wasting my time as it is now. And if I were to get a facebook page, I'm afraid that's what it would become for me... just another time waster. But today I got to thinking, it would be a fun way to be able to share pictures with family.... although they would also have to have accounts. And there are other people in my family who are just as resistant to facebook as me. I suppose I could put up pictures here on my blog, but I'm hesitant to do that, as well. At least with facebook (at least as far as I understand), only people you want can access your page. So I'll have to keep thinking... I'd love to put up pictures of the kids, but there's a part of me that's leery of doing that. Even though I met my wonderful husband online, I don't trust the web. I suppose I'm a bit paranoid. So for now I suppose I'll just have to stick with sending pictures in emails. For whoever reads this blog, if you have an opinion on posting pictures here, on facebook, or an alternative way of sharing pictures online, I'd love to read your comments!

One year ago tomorrow...

2009-01-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

One year ago tomorrow my little sweetie asked Jesus to come into her heart. She was 4 years old, the same age as her older sister when she asked Jesus into her heart. What an exciting year this has been, watching her grow spiritually. I remember that first night so clearly. She had been in bed, but came out to me and said in an almost disappointed tone, "Mommy, I asked Jesus to come in to my heart, but I didn't see Him come in!" So I crawled into bed with her, and we discussed what it means to ask Jesus in to your heart. She said she knew she had done naughty things, and she was sorry and wanted Jesus to come live in her heart, but she couldn't understand why she didn't see Him enter her. Ah, the faith of a child!

Since then she has played with Jesus, colored with Jesus, and tried to give Jesus gifts. She has come to me, not understanding why He won't take her toys up to heaven with Him.

For the last several months my little sweetie has questioned me, wanting to understand how Jesus enters our hearts. When I couldn't give her an answer she was satisfied with, she said, "Maybe He crawls in." Then one night during our bedtime devotions we read a Bible story that said Jesus rules in our hearts. I could almost see a light bulb turn on over hear head and she exclaimed, "Ohhhhh! So that's how Jesus gets in our hearts! He rolls in!"

Yes, the faith of a child. Happy birthday, Sweetie!

Coffee with Jesus

2009-01-11T20:07:00.000-08:00

This afternoon has been so quiet! My hubby's parents took the girls for a sleepover today, so this afternoon has been just me and the cat. I straightened the apartment, made my oldest daughter's birthday present (She's going to be 8 next week! I keep thinking I'm not old enough for an 8 year old! Then I have to remind myself I'm in my 30's...), and now I'm just enjoying a quiet relaxing evening. I might have to make myself a cup of tea in a little while, as it seems cold in here, and tea just sounds good this evening. It's too bad I can't have coffee in the evening, but the caffeine would keep me awake all night. Actually, it's probably a good thing I have to stop drinking coffee at noon, or our grocery bill would probably double. :-)

Anyway, I promised I'd share about my quiet time and computer fasting from this past week, so here I am. To be honest, I only stayed away from the computer for a few days, and they weren't all consecutive. I think the easiest thing would be to copy some things from my journal.

Friday, 1/2/09 - I put away my computer this morning, for a few days. I spend more time with my computer than I do with Jesus. I even spend more time with my computer than I do with my kids. It's definitely time to get my priorities straight.
Saturday, 1/3/09 - My quiet time this morning was fantastic! I woke up before my alarm went off & had around an hour & 45 minutes in prayer & Bible reading, and it was amazing!
Sunday, 1/4/09 - This evening I opened up my computer to rip some praise songs into mp3s to use in my quiet time. That would have been fine, but I got sidetracked & spent a couple hours on the internet surfing, just doing worthless stuff. I think I need to set up some ground rules for myself with my computer.
Monday, 1/5/09 - I had another really great quiet time this morning! Having praise music to listen to with my headphones while everyone else was asleep was really cool.The songs really spoke to my heart, especially Draw Me Close To You. This morning my 5-year old got up while I was reading my Bible. Usually when she gets up she wants to cuddle, and I almost always say, "No, Mommy's having her quiet time with Jesus." I have a hard time praying when she's there, because she asks questions, and talks, and makes it hard for me to focus. But this morning I decided since I was done praying & was reading my Bible, I'd go ahead and hold her. So I picked her up and we cuddled while I read. Then I decided I might as well read out loud. I was reading the first 3 chapters of Exodus, so I read out loud to her while she snuggled in my arms. I don't know if she absorbed any of what I was reading, but it was nice to snuggle with her while I read.
Tuesday, 1/6/09 - This morning when my alarm went off I knew I should get up, but I didn't. I turned it off & went back to sleep. By the time I got up it was time to fix breakfast for the girls, then do school. I haven't been feeling so well all morning - I don't feel sick, but I am feeling emotionally drained. I think it's because I didn't have my quiet time this morning. It's almost like when I don't have any coffee & go through withdrawl & feel all sluggish... I've given my daughter some work she can do independently, and retreated to my room for my quiet time. So now I'm going to have my coffee with Jesus & see if I feel any better..... Later... Yes - I feel very much refreshed! Now I am prepared for my day.

Those are the only days I wrote in my journal, but I've definitely learned something... putting aside distractions (whatever they may be... computer, sleeping in, anything else I'm tempted with) and having a set time each day to meet with Jesus makes a huge difference in my day! I've also found coffee is very important when it comes to my quiet time. If I grind the coffee beans and program the coffee pot the night before to start in the morning, I am much more likely to get up and have my quiet time. (I can't grind the coffee beans early in the morning without taking the risk of waking my youngest daughter. She'll hear it and get up, and then quiet time is no longer quiet. *s*) When my alarm goes off I know I only have so long to get up and have my coffee before the coffee pot turns off and the coffee gets cold, and then I've wasted my coffee. But if I don't set up the coffee pot the night before, I have less motivation to get up in the morning. And once the rest of the family wakes up, it's very difficult to find quiet time without distractions. I know it sounds silly, but for me, coffee is essential to my quiet times. :-)

One day recently when I did sleep in and had my quiet time later in the day, my youngest daughter saw me taking my cup of coffee into my room, and we had the following conversation. "Mommy, are you going to have your coffee with Jesus?" "Yes, sweetie, I am." "But Mommy, Jesus can't drink coffee!" "Oh Darling, if Jesus wanted to, He could drink coffee! After all, He created it!"

I think that pretty much concludes my week! Oh, and not every morning that I had my quiet time was fantastic. I was talking to a friend about that on the phone the other day, and she reminded me that's the way it is with any relationship. Some days are terrific. And some are just OK, nothing spectacular. But I guess just the fact that Jesus wants me to keep coming to Him is spectacular!

Oh, and there's one last thing I'll share. This morning my daughter got up after I had finished having my Devotions. She was so disappointed I was done. "Mommy, I wanted you to hold me and read to me!" So I scooped her up and read out loud the next chapter from my reading in Exodus. That was so special to me; she's just turned 5, and wants me to read to her from my Bible. The amazing thing is, usually she is not interested in books without pictures. But I guess God can even use "grownup Bibles" to speak to His little children.

real quick

2009-01-10T10:43:00.001-08:00

I've just got a few minutes, but I wanted to make a quick post saying I haven't fallen off the planet. :-) I've had a really good week, and I'll write more about it tomorrow when I have more time. Have a great weekend!

Friend of God

2009-01-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

Lately in my Quiet Time I have seen certain people stand out as being called a "friend of God." The first, of course, are Adam and Eve. Imagine walking with God in the garden every evening! I've heard this story I don't know how many times in my life, but this time the thing that most stood out was that God came to the garden to walk with Adam and Eve. Wouldn't that be amazing? (Adam and Eve aren't called friends of God in this passage, but I can see a friendship between them, at least before the fall.)

Then we read about Cain killing his brother, Abel. I always thought Cain must have been a bad person, right to the core of his being. I mean, how can anyone even think of killing their own brother? But when God banished him from the land, Cain's response makes me think twice... "My punishment is too great for me to bear! You have banished me from my land and from Your presence...!" (Genesis 4:13-14) Now granted, Cain's first thought was being banished from his land, but the fact that he brings up being banished from God's presence tells me he must have had some sort of relationship with his heavenly Father.

Now comes one of my favorite people in the Bible; Enoch! I really wish we were told more about him. But what a legacy! "...Enoch lived another 300 years in close fellowship with God, and he had other sons and daughters.... He enjoyed a close relationship with God throughout his life. Then suddenly, he disappeared because God took him." (Genesis 5:22, 24) I've often wondered, what about Enoch set him apart so much that he above all others of his time enjoyed a close fellowship with God? What can I do to have what Enoch had? I long for that close relationship with my heavenly Father!

Well as you can probably guess, I'm reading through Genesis. :-) And I've come to see there are several people throughout this book who enjoyed a close relationship with God. I love how it says they enjoyed a close relationship with God. Because that truly is something to enjoy!

Even though I really long for this close relationship with God, lately it just seems out of my grasp. I don't feel close to Him. And I know we can't always rely on feelings because they don't truly gauge the heart. But I've been wondering, what can I do to grow closer to my Father?

Another passage I've recently read is where Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. That has always bothered me, that God would even ask Abraham to do such a thing! I know God had planned all along to spare Isaac, but it is still a really hard story for me to think about. But I guess the point was, Abraham was willing to give up everything he had for God.

Then later when God called Jacob to move his family, first he got rid of his household idols, and purified his family and moved to where God called him. I thought it was really strange that Jacob had idols, when he was obviously a God-fearing man. So I read a little bit about this, and apparently the idols were something of a "good luck charm." Jacob probably didn't worship the idols, but they were something he had with pagan roots that would have gotten in the way of his relationship with God.

So this morning I got to thinking, what do I have in my life that is getting in the way of my relationship with my heavenly Father? And if there is anything, am I willing to surrender it to Him? Well unfortunately, one thing does come to my mind; my computer. I use this thing more than I care to admit. :-) And nothing I do on it is wrong... but if there is any chance that my time on my computer is coming between me and God, then I need to change something. So for the time, I'm going to put my laptop back in its case, and put it away. I don't know how long it will be; it could be a couple days, it could be a week. But I am not going to use my computer until whatever stronghold it has over me is broken, and I can think of my self as a friend of God. I want to use this time to grow closer to Him.

In any case, I won't be blogging for a few days! But I'll be back. And hopefully then my faith will be refreshed, and I will feel what I know is true in my heart.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

~Emily

Pictures

2008-12-29T17:58:00.000-08:00

OK, here are the pictures I promised.

The girls' gifts to each other
The perfect coffee mug from my husband, filled with Friendship Tea, a gift from my cousin. It's my Grandma's recipe, and this is her first Christmas in heaven with Jesus. We miss you, Grandma!Sleeping bags for Violet and Esther
Daddy's train, from his girls
Cinnamon Bear and his cat
Elliot, George, and Sedgewick, from The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

Creative Christmas

2008-12-29T14:10:00.000-08:00

Several months ago when my job ended, my husband and I knew this Christmas would be tight. So we decided that this year instead of buying gifts for our children and each other, we would make gifts. And I must say, I think this was one of the best Christmases we've had! We decided on a limit of $10 per person including all materials, and we ended up making gifts for less than $5 per gift. And it was such a fun Christmas! I had so much fun making gifts this year! It was so much more enjoyable than running around the stores, fighting crowds and stressed shoppers!

I'd like to share pictures with you of the gifts we made for each other, but unfortunately I'm having technical difficulties and can't access the folder on the computer with our pictures. Ah, the joys of technology! I love my little computer, but I will admit there are days when I could find great satisfaction with throwing it out the window. :-) So instead I will try to describe our gifts, and when the photo's folder is responding to me again, I'll post pictures.

At the beginning of the school year we gave each of our girls a Faith and Friends doll. The girls love their dolls, and have named them Esther and Violet. My husband and I wanted to make doll beds, but we decided this would be bigger project than we were prepared to tackle. So instead I found instructions to make sleeping bags. These sleeping bags are for an 18" doll and our girls' dolls are only 14 inches, but this way the dolls can have sleepovers. Also, my oldest daughter eventually wants a Life of Faith doll, which is about the size of the American Girl dolls. If she ever gets one, she can use the sleeping bag for her, as well. (A Life of Faith dolls are similar to American Girl, but they are made by a Christian company, Mission City Press.) The girls were so excited to try out their sleeping bags for their dolls, and their dolls had a sleepover that night! Both girls share a room, so the sleepover took place in their closet. :-)

My husband really enjoys trains, and someday would like to have a train set. The girls know this, and decided they wanted to make Daddy a toy train. I found the pattern online, and we spent a few evenings putting together a small train and track. Here is the front car they put together. Our youngest daughter needed something easy to make for her sister, so she painted some pretty pictures with her water colors, and we glued them onto a tissue box. Then we made a lid for the box, and voila! It became a treasure box for her sister to store her doll clothes in! Our older daughter was a bit more adventurous, so she found a cute little paper mechanical Frog Chorus toy to put together. The girls had so much fun making gifts for each other, and for Daddy and I! And they were so excited Christmas Eve to see everyone open the gifts they had made!

My girls each made me some cards on which they drew pictures of some of their favorite Veggie Tales characters from the latest movie, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. My oldest daughter also made me a little paper bear, named Cinnamon Bear. (Each night before bed we listened to the radio program Cinnamon Bear on the radio. It was so fun to listen to, and I'm sad it's over!) My youngest daughter made me a little paper cat, and said it's Cinnamon Bear's cat. They colored and cut out their own creations. :-)

I won't be posting a picture of the gift I made for my husband, as the person I got it from asked me to not post it on my web site. I will honor his request, but I'll describe it for you. It's a little paper train that goes through a tunnel and around some trees, when you turn a crank on the side. If you Google for paper moving train you will find a picture of it, but unfortunately the pattern is no longer being offered online.

My husband made me a booklet of romantic poems and songs, as well as some romantic pictures. And the very last picture was of an old barn on a snowy winter day. I told him that must be the view out the back door of my dream house! :-) He also bought me a coffee cup, but that was OK because it is the perfect coffee cup, and I've been wanting it for a while, plus he was still able to stay under budget. :-) When the photo file is working again I'll post pictures. I'm not the most computer savvy person, so I don't know how to fix the problem. All I know is some days I can't access the folder, then as if by magic, some days it works just fine. :-)

My husband and I decided we would open gifts on Christmas Eve, so Christmas we would be able to devote the day to Jesus, since it is His birthday. :-) Christmas morning my husband baked a angel food birthday cake (we thought that would be rather appropriate), then after lunch I frosted it with Cool Whip and we covered it with crushed Butterfinger bars and crushed candy cane crumbs. It sure was tasty! Before we ate we all sang Happy Birthday Jesus. We have a nativity set up and each week the Wise Men move somewhere else in our home, on their journey to find the newborn King. They haven't made it yet, but will probably do so sometime soon. What an exciting day that will be, as well!

I hope your Christmas was a peaceful time for you! Even though Christmas was last week, we can still celebrate, so Merry Christmas!

Fun in the Snow

2008-12-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the girls and I got out to build a snowman! I can't remember the last time I built a snowman, but it's been over 10 years, and I had a blast! So did the kids! It's only about 2 feet tall, as although it looked like we have a lot of snow, most of it is actually ice. We found some ice covered branches and that looked like antlers and decided to make a reigndeer snowman. We also happened to have some hazlenuts inside, so we used those for eyes, and leaves for arms. Pine needles worked for the mouth, to complete our snow deer. When we came inside, Daddy had mixed up a pot of fresh hot cocoa. What a wonderful afternoon!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2008-12-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

It's amazing to realize Christmas is next week! Yesterday our town received an early Christmas present; it snowed! We have not seen this much snow since a few days after my youngest daughter was born. Yesterday afternoon my husband's parents called to see if they could pick up the girls for a sleepover, and this morning the girls got to go play out in the snow. They built a snowman, but my oldest daughter said it looked more like a snow lump, because the snow wouldn't pack together very well. :-) But they had so much fun! I wish I could have seen them play! Instead, I was home putting the finishing touches on their Christmas gifts. My husband and I have decided that this year we will just make gifts for each other, rather than buy any Christmas presents. The girls each get one gift from the two of us, and although we will have a very simple Christmas, we are very much looking forward to it! Maybe after Christmas I'll post pictures of the gifts I made for my girls, and my husband. I can't do it now, because I don't want them to see what they're getting! :-)

In any case, we are all very excited about the snow. I think it's so pretty, although I will admit I don't like being out in it. When I was a kid I used to build snow forts in the back yard; now I'm content to look out the window and drink my coffee, wearing my nice warm flannel pj's. :-)

If you have snow where you are, enjoy it! Even if it's just to look at its beauty, and think of our Creator who makes each snowflake unique. What an awesome God we have!

Daddys and Daughters

2008-12-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

Last week our youngest daughter celebrated her 5th birthday. My baby is growing up! Right now I can hear her sweet little voice as she sounds out some words in one of her books.

Our daughter received some nice gifts from friends and family, but one of her favorites is the gift my husband gave her. He gave her a timer set at 30 minutes, and a letter that stated that every day for the next year he will spend at least 30 minutes with her, doing whatever she wants (it has to be approved by Daddy - for instance, he won't take her to the park in the rain *l*). He listed several ideas, such as a trip to the carousel, playing at the park, cuddling on the couch watching a movie, playing with her toys, or a computer game. It has only been nine days since Daddy gave his girl this special gift, but the transformation I've seen in their relationship has been amazing! Our daughter has always loved her Daddy, but she's always been a Mommy's girl. She wants to sit by Mommy, play with Mommy, she wants Mommy to take her to her class at AWANA... but lately she has grown to adore her Daddy! Something as simple as spending at least 30 minutes a day with her on her level has brought an amazing dynamic to their relationship. And I can't even begin to say how much it warms my heart to see their relationship blossom.

This afternoon during my quiet time I read Genesis 4-7. There were two people that really stood out to me; Enoch and Noah. I have always been intrigued by the story of Enoch. The Bible doesn't tell us much about him, but listen to what it does say:

After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived another 300 years in close fellowship with God, and he had other sons and daughters. Enoch lived 365 years in all. He enjoyed a close relationship with God throughout his life. Then suddenly, he disappeared because God took him. ~Genesis 5:22-24

Imagine what it would be to have such a close relationship with God! I have often thought I would love to have that kind of relationship with God! In fact, some time ago I wrote in the margin of my Bible, "If Enoch could live 300 years in close fellowship with God, surely I could strive for 60!"

In the next chapter I read about Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless man living on the earth at the time. He consistently followed God's will and enjoyed a close relationship with Him. ~Genesis 6:9

So I got to thinking; what made these two men so special? What was it about them that helped them to have that close relationship with God? Then I thought about my husband and daughter. Lately they are enjoying such a wonderful relationship! My daughter adores her Daddy, and he takes delight in the fact that she wants to spend time with him. Maybe all I need to do to improve my own spiritual walk is to make the effort. If I choose to spend time with my heavenly Daddy every day, growing closer to Him will come naturally. He's given me insight into His heart; all I need to do is read His Word. And He's also given me a way to communicate with Him, through prayer. My heart longs to share a special relationship with my heavenly Father. I'm looking forward to this renewed spiritual journey I'm about to embark upon!

"It's smellin' really good in here!"

2008-12-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

It just warmed my heart to hear those words from my almost 5 year old daughter this afternoon! I had some canned pumpkin left over from Thanksgiving, so today I decided to make a batch of chocolate chip pumpkin cookies. It's a good thing I only get into a baking mood around Christmas time or we'd all need to buy bigger pants! But there's just something about the lights of the Christmas tree and Christmas music playing over the radio that makes me want to bake. So here's one of our favorite cookie recipes.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

Cream together:
1 & 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
1 egg

Sift:
2 & 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon

Add alternately to sifted ingredients:
creamed mixture and 1 cup of canned pumpkin

Stir in:
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts, if desired (although I like the nuts, my kids don't so I leave these out)

Drop by teaspoons onto cookie sheet and bake at 325 13-17 minutes until firm, but not hard. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk!

"Let's split the Baby Jesus!"

2008-11-24T15:07:00.001-08:00

My parents sent my husband and I an early Christmas present. The girls have to wait until Christmas for their presents, but we were told we could open ours now. They sent us the coolest set of cookie cutters that make up the manger scene! The set includes Mary and Joseph, Baby Jesus and a manger, a king, camel, shepherd, sheep, donkey, star, heart, and angel. Mom and Dad wanted us to have our present early so we could make use of the cookie cutters during the next few weeks. So today I washed all the cutters, and prepared a batch of our favorite sugar cookie dough. I'll have to share the recipe here sometime, and also post pictures of our nativity cookies. :-)

Well, once the cookies came out of the oven the girls were marveling over the different shapes, and my oldest daughter piped up, "I want the Baby Jesus!" To which my younger daughter said, "But I want the Baby Jesus!" They continued to argue over which one should have the Baby Jesus, and my husband had his own idea. "I don't think we should eat the Baby Jesus. Something just doesn't seem right about that." Finally my youngest piped up, "I know! We can split the Baby Jesus!" That got me to thinking, so I grabbed a knife and cutting board, and brought it to the table. I asked the girls, "Why did Jesus come?" My oldest replied that He came to die for us. Then we talked about Jesus coming to give His life for all of us, and that His whole reason for coming is so we could all share Him. So I cut the Baby Jesus into four pieces, and gave one to each of us. I will admit, there was something strange about cutting the Jesus cookie into four, and then eating it... but it drove a point home to each one of us. My husband said we could almost do this for communion, as it would help to cement in our girls' minds as to why we take communion, and the sacrifice Jesus made.

Eating the rest of the cookies was much easier, but I think from now one when we make the nativity cookies, we will all share the Baby Jesus. Because that's what He came to do; He shared His life for us. I look forward to many more memories we will make as we celebrate this Christmas season, and the birthday of our King!

I'm thankful for...

2008-11-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how Thanksgiving is this week, I'd like to talk about some things for which I am thankful.

My husband who loves me and provides for our family
Two beautiful children who have both asked Jesus into their hearts
My parents who raised me in a loving home and taught me about Jesus
My husband's parents who also raised him to know Jesus
My husband's job, which is fairly secure in these difficult times
A roof over our heads, food in the fridge, clean clothes in our dressers
My Jesus, who wants to have an intimate relationship with me, and everyone He loves

I'll write more about which I'm thankful for as I have time throughout this week. Now it's time to start thinking about what I'm going to fix the girls for supper. Have a very thankful week!

Crock Pot Granola

2008-11-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

Cooking is not one of my gifts. However, there are a few simple recipes I have come across that I enjoy making, and my family enjoys eating. With two picky children, sometimes finding things they will eat can be difficult. So when I found this recipe for home made granola, I was thrilled when both of my children loved it! And lately granola has become a staple in our home, especially considering we can easily go through a box of cereal per week. With all the preservatives and sugar, not to mention the price, we've decided store bought cereal will be an occasional treat, rather than a daily indulgence. In fact, I've got some cooking right now! So here's the recipe...

6 cups Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

In your crock pot, mix oats and cinnamon. Stir in olive oil, honey, and vanilla. With lid cracked, cook oats on low 3-5 hours, or until granola just begins to turn golden brown. Once the granola is finished I usually pour it out on a baking sheet to cool, then store in an air tight container. I'm not sure how long the granola stays fresh; it doesn't usually last too long in our home. The girls like it with milk for breakfast, or dry as a snack. I think the longest it has ever lasted is 5 or 6 days, but as oats can be bought pretty inexpensively in the bulk department of our grocery store, it's a pretty economical food.

Tips and Hints:

Be sure to keep the lid cracked during the entire time you are cooking your granola. I usually stick a silicon spatula in the crock pot, to prop the lid open.
Stir the granola every hour or so, to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the crock pot. If your crock pot has hot spots, stir more frequently. Usually some granola will stick to the bottom of the crock pot, but I let it soak for a couple hours with hot soapy water after I empty it, and then it's a snap to clean.
If you like dried fruit or nuts in your granola, mix them in for the last 30 minutes. Raisins and dried cranberry's go well.

Well it looks like it's family movie time, so I'd better shut down the computer. I'm looking forward to granola for breakfast tomorrow! :-)

My Greatest Wish...

2008-11-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

My daughter's birthdays are coming up. We pretty much know what we're doing for our soon to be 8 year old, but I haven't got a clue yet what we will do for our soon to be 4 year old. And her birthday is only about 3 weeks away, so we'd better get on the ball!

The other night I asked the girls if they could have anything they wanted, what would it be? I didn't say anything about birthdays or Christmas, I just asked what they'd want if they could have anything. My oldest daughter thought for a moment, but when she answered I was blown away.

"Well, I could ask for more toys... but when I really think about it, what I really want is to grow closer to God. I mean, toys are nice and everything, but sometimes I feel like I'm just not growing close enough to Him, and that's what I'd really like. I want to learn to pray more, and read my Bible. Yeah, that's what I'd really like."

Sometimes my children astound me. So much wisdom coming from someone so young! Is this why Jesus said we should become like little children? There are times I learn so much from them.

Although I was surprised by my daughter's answer to my question, when I really thought about it, I realized that's the same thing I want. It's what I've been longing for. And I suppose if we all stop to think about it, growing closer to Jesus is something we all long for. I think He put that pull in our hearts. But too often I ignore it.

My quiet time is something that has suffered for a long time. When it comes right down to it, it is never quiet in my home. Sometimes I try going to my room and shutting the door to read my Bible and pray, but I am always so easily distracted, and I'm not able to focus. So most of the time I just let it go. But then, what kind of an example am I setting for my kids? Maybe what I should be doing is reading my Bible and praying when they are around me. I will still be distracted, but apparently no more so than when I am by myself. And I want my girls to see their Mommy spending time in prayer, and time in the Bible. If they don't see it from me, where are they going to see it?

So yeah... I want to grow closer to Jesus, too. And when I grow up, I want to be like my little girl. :-)

must... have... chocolate...

2008-11-16T21:16:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been craving Dark Chocolate. Anyone who knows me would think this strange... "Lately?" It used to be I was always craving the mysterious, slightly sweet, mouth watering indulgence. But for a while I was doing really well, and didn't have the need for much chocolate. Well, now that we are down to just a few chocolate chips in the fridge, I am really starting to crave it. Actually, this works out perfectly... I received a late birthday card in the mail yesterday, and enclosed was enough money for some chocolate! I need to write to my Uncle and let him know how much I appreciate his timing! As soon as we have the opportunity to go to the store, I will seek out the chocolate isle. And I don't want just any chocolate. I want Ghirardelli 72% cocoa. Nothing but the best! I've recently discovered not only do they have the 72% cocoa in bars, but they also have it in squares. And better yet, they've started carrying it in chips! That will be just perfect, as I can just have 2 or 3 to satisfy my craving, and I'll be done with them for the day.

My Mom has also told me about a tea I'd like to try, Celestial Seasonings Candy Cane tea. I should have enough left over to also get a box of that, as that has been sounding wonderful lately, as well. It's almost like Christmas!

Hm... I wonder if I could find a Dark Chocolate theme for my blog? I've looked, but haven't found any that reach out and grab me. But I did think this snow one was kind of cool.

Well, I'm off to indulge in a few chocolate chips...

Tokens

2008-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

We've recently started a token system with our girls. They can earn tokens for things like cleaning their room, doing all their chores for the day, staying in bed at night, and being respectful throughout the day. Usually they can earn a maximum of 15 tokens per day, but most days they get around 10. They can also lose tokens for things like fighting, being disrespectful to Mommy and Daddy, refusing to stay in bed at night, and things like that. So far their favorite thing to cash in on is computer time. My four year old often asks me, "Mommy, do I have enough money to play on the computer?" But today my 7 year old surprised me. One of the things they can use their tokens for is Mommy will do one of their chores for a week. This is a pretty expensive thing, at 50 tokens. Well this morning my daughter counted out 50 tokens and said, "Mommy, I'd like you to fold and put away all my clean laundry for the next week!" I must admit, with all the chores she could have picked, that's a pretty good one. My kids really dislike folding and putting away their clothes. But I've gotta say, they come by it naturally. Laundry is one of my least favorite chores, too. So I told my daughter that will be easy; I just won't wash any of her clothes this week! She looked at me like only a 7-year old can to let me know she didn't think I was being funny. :-) So right now I'm washing a load of laundry, and when it comes out of the dryer I have one hour to make sure it's folded and put away. She's a smart girl. I figured she'd pick something like me making her bed for a week.

Well, I'm off to clean the kitchen. I've been slacking this morning, spending too much time trying to figure out what to write about. I'd better get busy so the kitchen is ready for my Dear Husband when he's ready to fix lunch. He's such a wonderful man!

A New Adventure

2008-11-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

Starting a new blog is always difficult... what do I want this blog to be about? I've tried various blogs over the past few months, but nothing has seemed to stick. I mean, if I'm not even interested in my topics, why would anyone else bother to read it? :-) I have lots of ideas, but where should I start? My Mom has often told me I should write about my children. At ages 7 and 4 they definitely provide me with plenty of material!

I'm sure I won't have a chance to blog every day, but I will try to post at least once a week. And I guess I'll just see how this blog develops. It might just end up with a mind of its own. :-)

About Me

2008-11-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm glad you're able to stop by. If you've clicked on this link, I guess you'd like to know a little about me, so here goes. :-) I am a Christian wife and Mommy. I've been married to my wonderful husband twelve years, now. We have two children, both girls, ages 10 and 7. We home school our children, and that has been a joy for each of us. I am so thankful for the opportunity to stay home and teach our girls. We've had seasons where I have had to work, but we are so thankful right now that I am able to stay home. Even though at times it is a struggle, we have decided it is worth the sacrifices. Life is truly a blessing!

Thanks for stopping by!

Emily