Music to my Ears

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.

Read more...

Memories

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.

Read more...

Our 10th Anniversary

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.

Read more...

The Power of Stickers

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. :-)

Read more...

The Wheezy's

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!

Read more...

A Puzzling Obsession

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.

Read more...

The Roach

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.

Read more...