just to name a few...

Ground hog War is ON!

2011-07-20T08:50:00.003-05:00

So, I come to you with a theme I am quickly getting tired of this summer.

The ground hogs want to eat all of my garden. I, in turn, do not want them to. I want them to go away and live in the woods the way God meant all happy ground hogs to do. I also want them to not scare the snot out of me as I stand barefoot in my yard and they tear around almost running over my toes and almost making me kick one with my bare feet.

So this is the deal. The ground hogs are everywhere here. I can count 30 while driving on base, in less then 15 minutes. They are the plague of Ft Dix. No, scratch that. The sign outside of Ft. Dix says, "Home of the Ultimate Weapon." Well, being an AF wife living on an Army Post I have no clue what the Ultimate Weapon is BUT I am beginning to believe that it is the Ground Hog. The Army should enlist them ALL!

So, I have a mid-size white vinyl slated fence here and I have put in several gardens in the back yard inside this fence. I quickly learned that I would need to do more to save my garden so I bought chicken wire fencing and put that around all of the Veggie gardens. I am not found of chicken wire fencing in my backyard cause it looks like I live on a farm. IF I had the privilege of living on a farm I would not care, but I don't. I live in housing on a military base and trust me, there is little about it that is FARM like. My neighbors, though nice, are very, very close to me.

Anyhow... so I put in chicken wire. I put in metallic pin wheels to confuse them and perhaps hypnotize them or something. It didn't work.

For a while, it kept them out of the veggies and they lived on my decorative sweet potato vines. They carefully plucked each and every leaf and left skeletons in the pots on my patio. I mourned the loss and put them up higher to see if they would come back.

THEN the buggers decided to just throw their little bodies against the chicken wire fences in pure desperation. I am mean aren't I? I let them SEE the yummy green beans but they are not allowed to touch the yummy green beans. They bent the fences down enough to run in the gardens and have a party in the early morning today.

The garden was very sad this morning when I went to check on it. It cried and told me how the ground hog vikings came and pillaged and plundered and stole the children away as slaves... or something like that. MY children, in turn, decided to find weapons and sit watch in the yard. For real. My Boy got a piece of wood, an old fence post or something and decided to call it a machete. Uh huh... My daughter got a child size garden hoe. Nice. My garden crusaders are sitting watch.

I have put in ANOTHER call for housing to come and trap them. I think there are at least 5 of them that live in our back field, but I think one of them has set up home under my shed.

I am wishing I DID live on a farm so I could purchase a 22 and blast them all. I did prove at cub scout camp recently that I am a good shot! MUAHAHAHAHA. Yes. I would do it. They are no where near endangered. Do they taste good?

With all my veggies in them they must.

Catching up

2011-07-13T07:49:00.003-05:00

So, I have not posted in well over a year. In a year a lot has happened. We have moved across the country with the military. My daughter has mainly recovered from the attack last year. We continue to homeschool. I continue to be addicted to coffee. I continue to read and love children's books. Last night I read two actually, more on that later.

Does anyone read blogs anymore? I am calling out into the darkness! Everyone is always on facebook and so am I. I do sometimes have things that I don't want to post to facebook, or are just too long to post etc.

I keep thinking about posting here more, but good intentions just don't always cut it.

I often think that perhaps I should use this as mainly a children's book review blog with some of my other things thrown in for good measure. Time will tell.

Notice how I make no promises here? So sad.

Well, I have children to school and cats who obviously need more attention judging from the sudden need I have to sit cockeyed so I can see the monitor past the large cat sitting on the desk.

Have a great day blog world.

my compassion mother's day gift

2010-05-08T19:55:00.004-05:00

A few days ago I received a new letter from our sponsored child, Brayan. We sponsor Brayan through Compassion International. I also do volunteer work through Compassion but this is really about him today and not quite as much about Compassion. Getting a letter from Brayan is always very exciting and this one was no different! It came with a picture of him with a box and a huge smile on his face. It reads as follows:

Receive a cordial greeting full of a lot of kisses and hugs. May the Lord Jesus bless you and protect you. I thank you very much for that beautiful gift: it is a pair of shoes and some socks. Thanks-you for thinking of me. I feel very happy for being at the Project, because they are giving me many things like: the Word of God and how to obey my parents. I also want to tell you that I am back at school. I want to ask you: what was your favorite subject? Please, I ask you, in a very special way, to keep on praying for me. I say bye with hugs and a lot of love.

Brayan

Now, this is a great letter and it in and of itself would have been extremely well loved in my home and reread by us many times BUT... what I noticed after reading it is that his instructors name WASN'T on it. Usually it will say towards the bottom of the letter,"Written by Mary C**** because Brayan isn't old enough to write the letter on his own." Suddenly I noticed that this wasn't mentioned this time and I looked up at the top portion of the letter to find that the cursive writing at the top of the letter, where it is written in the original Spanish, was certainly that of a child. My eyes widened as I realized that I was holding Brayan's first letter written by his own hand to us! This letter will be treasured even more then the others from him. I have loved watching this little boy grow. It is now almost two years since we first sponsored Brayan. His hair has darkened as his nutrition has improved. His smile is brighter and he often talks to me now about prayer in his letters. He seems to also talk to us in a more familiar way and I love answering his questions and sending him letters back with small gifts enclosed.

My son, so far away in Colombia gave me such an honorable Mother's Day gift.

Please join me in praying for Brayan, and for his family. Please consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International. I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

kids book review---Leo The Late Bloomer

2010-03-01T10:58:00.003-06:00

So, I had almost stopped blogging in any way shape or form and now look at me! Two posts in a week. Granted one was just incredibly depressing, but this is life here folks.

Alright, so once upon a time I really thought that I would review some children's books here on my blog cause I love children's books and read tons of them and have some very strong opinions on many of them. BUT when you do read tons of children's books that usually means you are reading them and running with kids and not writing things online. Well, except for those people who seem to manage it all, but I am not one of those people.

I read a book from the Library the other day to my kids and we loved it. The three of us just sat there and read it three times in a row and with kids my kids ages we do not do that all that often anymore. Back in the day that was all I ever did, the same books over and over and over, but now they are good with reading different ones each time and their favorites over again just now and again.

This book they all loved. My daughter picked this out at the Library, although it reminded me the most of my Boy.

The title is Leo the Late Bloomer, by Robert Kraus, and it is a delightful book. It is about a Tiger cub named Leo, who shockingly is a Late Bloomer. I know... I know... strange since that is what the title says.

Leo's dad worries about him. Leo's mom is convinced that he will bloom. Leo's dad watches him constantly looking for signs of blooming and in the end Leo does what Leo's mom knew he would do. He blooms beautifully.

I read this book with it's sweet lyrical quality and nearly cried. Now, I know that I am on the emotional side right now, and I get that, but this had nothing to do with my daughter, this had everything to do with my Son.

My Boy has been a late bloomer. He didn't read when all his buddies started reading. He had ZERO interest in writing anything... including his name. He did not want to draw things, but loved using just colors and circles and things. I worried. I fretted. I pushed him with school. I put him in situations at church he just personally wasn't ready for. People told me that he just needed shoved off in that direction. They told me that sometimes it would be painful for kids but it was best for them. They questioned my parenting. I sat and watched and worried and prayed.

I started him a year late in cub scouts in a younger level. I relaxed. He found books he loved. He learned to love writing. He found his voice. He bloomed.

When we finished reading this book for the second time last night my little Leo just snuggled into me and you could almost hear my little lover of Tigers purr. This story was his and it does have a beautiful ending.

I highly recommend this book. It is good for your late bloomers to relate to and it is good for all children to see differences and to understand about that. We are different, but we all bloom at some time or another and each bloom though different is gorgeous and amazing in it's own blooming way.

i must write- it will be raw

2010-02-28T09:57:00.005-06:00

A week ago my daughter was violently assaulted by an eight year old little boy. She was pushed down and pulled down. She was refused the right to leave the room. She cried for help and no one heard. She was pushed down onto the floor with a folded metal chair. She was cornered and threatened and then hit in the head with a large board. When she finally lay crying on the floor in the corner, the young boy ran from the room, shutting off the light and leaving her alone.

My brain is having problems taking that picture from my head. The picture of my baby, alone in the dark, crying. She is cowering on the floor. Did she pass out? I do not know. Did she call my name? Did she feel deserted and so alone? She does have a concussion so I do know that her pain there is the dark was not minor, but was severe.

As parents we are to protect them, but we can't always. That is a hard thing to learn it is easier to say, harder to understand. In places you feel safe you are not always safe. With people you feel safe with you are not always safe.

She has had some bad dreams... she has dreamed of robots attacking her and trying to kill her. She has had dreams of cars running over her legs. She has talked to her precious Bear about a girl hitting him in the head and has talked of getting him a wheelchair in case he is hurt. She played pretend jousting with him yesterday and Bear got hurt and then she spent the rest of the day taking care of her sweet Bear. Doctoring him and giving him medicine and just loving him so sweet.

Last night I made a mistake. I tried to take her to church. She didn't want to go, but I thought it would be good for her to go. She loves the people there, she hugs the pastor, talks with her friends, hugs her teachers, helps me serve pizza and sodas.

Last night she laid on me during services. Snuggling close. She went to class happily but didn't remain happy. She cried off and on during class, hiding in a little corner so that others wouldn't see her. It was all too much, too soon. I didn't realize. She has so much fear that right now she doesn't understand.

It is all still so surreal to me.

Compassion in Haiti

2010-01-17T22:11:00.003-06:00

Tonight I was searching for more information on Haiti and of how Compassion international was working with their centers there in Haiti when I came across this information.

I read through and not having a child sponsored in Haiti I didn't look for a specific center.

I did however read the comments and I read the comments and I read the comments.

It wasn't long before I had tears in my eyes. There were 100 comments, most from sponsors looking for ANY information on their child. They sound desperate and I am sure they are. They were trying to figure out exactly where their child was on the map and comparing that to where the epicenter of the quake was.

Some of them left comments that they were glad that their child was on an island far away, other left comments that they child was just 7 miles from the epicenter and they simply asked for prayers.

The pain and emotion is raw in the comments and to me sounds like so much more then simply a relationship where money is just sent.

It is obvious that these children are loved, cherished, prayed over, thought of and believed in.

These sponsors sound more like parents, longing for information yet fearful of what they will hear.

If you are looking for a way to help in Haiti, you should consider Compassion International. They have a large network already at work in Haiti. They know the people, they are the people there and they are already in place to start helping.

This page has all the Haiti updates from Compassion and it has specific ways in which you can help and what exactly your donations will do for the people of Haiti.

Please check it out.

free spirit

2009-11-22T12:14:00.004-06:00

Yesterday we went to a craft class at the local Michael's. They have these demonstrations on how to do certain things and I decided to take The Girl to see them do painted glass ornaments. They did then allow the five little girls to paint an ornament to take home. My Girl did hers slightly differently. Shocking, I know. The rest of the little girls followed the exact directions to make a sweet little Christmas ornament. They decoupaged on sweet little snowflakes and glitter and such. My girl? Well, she decided that she wanted to make an Autumn ornament. So, she painted it red and she then painted green leaves on the ornament. The green leaves happen to also look like chicken feet, but she was quite happy with her creation. Though, I will admit that the other little girl's ornaments looked quite a bit more polished and "finished," I will also admit that My Girl's ornament was all HER.

She is a free spirit. She doesn't typically care if you are not supposed to read books on the bench during soccer. She reads them cause she wants to.

She creates games that get little girls running and all using their imaginations. During her brother's soccer games she would rally the troops and lead treasure hunts using maps drawn on her little sparkly purple etch a sketch. Then all the little girls were asking their moms for etch a sketches for Christmas.

She is often in another world. Sparkling and dancing and moving and doing her own thing.

Her own world is different. The only problem is when it collides with someone else's world. Or someone else's desire to actually play baseball and get people out... rather then pick clover.

Free spirits may not actually make good second base players. Frankly free spirits don't bother much with baseball. Free spirits enjoy other pursuits like finding those sneaky little fairies that hide in the clover.

I hope she does not lose her free spirit. Ever.

new letter from brayan-- my compassion international child

2009-11-15T15:38:00.004-06:00

I wanted to share this letter with you...

Dear Anna *******,

Beloved, it is a great pleasure wishing that our God fill you with blessings. The tutor Mary ****** writes you because Brayan still doesn't do it. He finds very well and he sends you thanks for everything and for being a blessing for him. He tells you that his dad is restoring the house and it is looking like very pretty. His granny was operated of a hernia, but now thanks to God he is fine. At school he is doing well and he will learn to read and to write the letter soon by himself. Brayan wants to hear: how is your home? Do you have garden? I ask you that you pray for him. He says goodbye with kisses. May God bless you.

Brayan ************

He drew me another sweet picture on the back of the letter. It is translated from Columbian Spanish to English and so there are obviously some translation issues, but really they are minor. I am always SO excited to hear from my little Brayan and since some of you had expressed interest in the sponsorship program I wanted to share this letter with you. I look forward to getting new pictures of Brayan soon. He reminds me quite a bit of my own little boy and I really have such fun sending him letter and pictures and things like that.

I am going to try to resurrect this blog and start writing again. We had an insane fall with so much going on, but I think now things may hopefully slow down slightly and I am hoping that I will have more time to post.

If you would like to sponsor a child, please go to this link and look at the needy children. If you have any questions please let me know and I will do my best to answer them.

camp

2009-08-19T21:40:00.001-05:00

I have been a naughty blogger. I am going to try to catch up with life here just a little bit. BUT there are likely to be large gaps. First of all, this blog is really more of a random picture and writing blog and here I am sharing kid pictures. Sneaky though.

We attended our first cub scout camp this year and it was all they said it would be and SO much more.

Shooting Archery!

Shooting BB guns!

Fishing!

Fun campfires!

We took our Boy and one of his fellow cub scouts with us and had such a fun time. Every day there we would rotate through six different stations, which we hiked to around the camp. So, everyday we did BB guns, Archery, Fishing, Crafts (like making a worm home), Science (like making a bug catcher, with wood burning included!), and Games (like Tug of War). On the last day the boys in our group did a fun song together with our other scouts and we had such a fun time. Our boys were filthy and completely worn out everyday. I have tons of pictures and you should probably keep an eye out for them on our family blog page.

This was how we spent just a portion of our summer...

reminder... sometimes i need these

2009-08-03T09:18:00.003-05:00

****Updated to add that I just found that this is not quite correct. This is actually
by Dr. Kent M. Keith (often falsely attributed to Mother Teresa)
The last line is not one from Dr. Keith's original Paradoxical Commandments
it seems to have been added by.... anonymous. HOWEVER... I still like it. A lot. Enough to swipe it from a favorite blog of mine Quiet Life... and when she fixed who she attributed it to, then I had to do the same.

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

such a bright light shining

2009-07-19T21:29:00.005-05:00

There are some people in this world that my spirit rushes when I see them. It is as if my spirit yearns for what they have. Their stories and their light shine so bright that I want to bask in it one moment and then another moment I am convicted to go and preach at every street corner.

I am trying to make sense here but I have a feeling that I need to start with something more concrete.

This is Cott and Shus. Those aren't their real names really but that is what everyone knows them by. This is a couple that have poured out their lives for God.

I first met Cott and Shus around 8 years ago when my son was just a baby. I can't believe it has been that long.

The first time I met them I did my best to pay them great respect because my parents taught me well and I was trained to honor and respect and love those older then me. The aged in my world are some of the most amazing people ever. Their experiences and what makes people who they are today fascinate me. I would love to sit at the feet of the older generation and soak up all the stories and tales and remembrances that they could find to tell me.

Cott did most of the talking on that first day and I remember exactly what he talked about. He talked about sharing the Gospel. He talked about how he shared the Gospel and how he talked to people. He showed me the tracts that he would sometimes use. He showed me the scriptures and he asked me about my salvation. He asked me who I had shared the Gospel with recently.

His light was so very bright.

He was a country preacher. I can identify with that in a powerful way cause I grew up tagging along after my country preacher Daddy. I grew up listening to country preachers preach the Gospel over old oak pulpits with lightening bugs flittering in and out of the open country church windows.

Cott didn't stop at the old oak pulpits. I had the sense that he never stopped. He told me about the people he would see at diners and the people he would talk to at gas stations and those that he would share with everywhere he went everyday. He was so earnest in his zeal for God.

He didn't grow up in the church. He was not a Christian until he was married and busy working his farm but once God came into his life it was never the same.

Now Cott and Shus are retired. It was a long time in coming. I do think that they were technically retired before this but that they never really stopped. They kept right on doing God's work. They consistently filled in at small country churches all over the state. They consistently shared the story of Jesus.

Finally though, it was time. Shus was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and he quickly realized that he needed to be there with her constantly and that it was time to pass on the torch of the hospital visits and all the other work to others.

They are living in an apartment in a community for retired ministers. Recently, we talked and he sat there telling me in amazement what an incredible wife Shus had been for him all these years. How she took care of all the finances and took care of all the things in the home as well as taught elementary school until her own retirement. He impressed upon me that he never understood all that she did, all that she was to him fully. That only recently had he completely realized what all she had done. Cott told me that now he would gladly care for Shus. It was his turn to do this work. To care for his beloved in so many ways.

His work for the Lord continues on in ways he never imagined.

His inspiration will go on in ways he may never imagine in this known world.

triple school points!

2009-06-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to get this posted FOREVER.... actually I have many posts like that. This post just happened to be the lucky one today.

I try to do the kids spelling words all different ways and cheap ways and fun ways and this is one of those ways.

We have this neat little portable desk thing that Discovery Toys once carried. I used to sorta sell Discovery Toys once. The key word is sorta. Mainly I bought Discovery Toys. It was an issue. Anyways, this came with neat story magnets which we still use. I was tempted to get rid of this little desk thing since we really weren't using it much, but then I found this use for it. One of the sides of the top which slides in and out is magnetic. The other side of the desk is all flat with a spot for a cup, but... goodness... I digress. Yet again. So, I found someone just giving away these scrabble tiles.

I put magnets on the back, and store them in the desk and use them with this for spelling. The kids love it. They look more like the real letters as opposed to those plastic colored letters and it just works well. They all store in the desk and we can even do spelling easy in the car.

The other fun thing... well sorta fun. Relative fun, is using the 100 pocket chart. One of the lessons in the Alpha book in Math U See is to write from one to one hundred each day for the lesson. Both of kids totally fell apart when they got to this. They feel that this is torture... SO much writing!!! Well, I know the point of the lesson and so I just did it a slightly different way. I was able to do this since I knew that both of them could actually write all the numbers that it was much more about making sure they KNOW all the numbers and how they go together to 100. So, I snag the pocket chart and pretend that a "number pirate" was caught at our house.

I do the voice when I tell them the story and the whole nine yards. The number pirate was caught but not before he had removed EVERY number from the number chart in an attempt to steal them. The kids them have to put all the numbers back in the chart. In order.

The love it. They have always been able to prove to me that they do know the order of the numbers and how they go together. It works great!!!

So those are things that work for us in school!

Can I have my triple word score now? :)

this and that

2009-06-16T19:38:00.004-05:00

So, it is VBS week at my church which equals craziness for me and mine. My problem is that I can't leave the curriculum well enough alone. I decide to take it to a whole new level. I complicate things for myself. It works well on the drive to crazyville.

The kids are finally playing some baseball games, but we still have quite a few to make up with sporadic rain constantly coming as well.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I LOVE watching my kids play ANY sport. I am learning tons of things watching them and I find such joy in watching them have so much fun.

I have been busy with life during the summer which means that I run with kids here and there and there and here.

I have lots to do and not enough time to do it all in but it will all happen at some point.

I have temporarily set up shop outside fixing the neighborhood kids bikes. It is hard being a single mom in the military. I am so glad I am not one, but at least I can fix a few bikes and help them out.

I have been reading... big shock there.

I also found the most interesting video for crazy bibliophiles.

forgiveness and baseball

2009-06-06T22:11:00.004-05:00

Today I have felt the need to beg for forgiveness like I haven't felt in a long time. I had really let someone down in my life and I felt horrible.

This little person that I really let down was my son.

The boy of mine is an amazing kid... well he is to me and really that is what matters.

He loves sports and one of his favorite sports is baseball and we are well into that season, but because of the amazing amount of rain that we have had here five of his games have been canceled. He has only been able to play one game. ONE.

Everyday that he has had a game scheduled it has rained that day, or it has rained hard the night before and the field is flooded. He sits disappointed day after day knowing that with each pitter-patter of rain drops the season for one of his all time favorite sports is quickly flying away.

Yesterday and today were glorious, gorgeous days. The sun was bright, the sky was clear. We even checked the weather radar and we were in the safe zone. The games would happen today! The weather had finally smiled down on the little boy and he would get to swing that bat and throw that ball around with his friends.

The Girl had her game first at 10am and we went to that and had such fun, then the boy's game was at 1pm.

John wasn't sure that his game was at 1pm. During the girl's game he had overheard someone from the Boy's team commenting that they had to be back in just a half hour... at 11:30. So I double checked the schedule and checked it against the large white board that I use for all of our activities on the fridge. It said One O'clock in that nifty little square that I studied once more.

I made some lunch... fixed water bottles... did some gardening.

Finally I made sure the Boy was ready and we headed out. He ran across the field ahead of me with his batting helmet and bat and glove. He was SO excited that he was finally going to be able to play a game again. He had honestly waited weeks to be able to play a game.

On my way over, as I lugged the water and the camera and the snacks, I noticed that his team members were on their way to the parking lot.

All of them.

I stopped one family and confirmed that yes, his game WAS OVER. I am sure my eyes about fell out of my head... and my heart dropped.

What really did me in though was seeing my little boy, just moments ago so excited, now running towards me with his face crumpled with tears.

He ran towards me and I hugged him tight. I was a bit indignant. How could this have happened?! I was SO careful. Was my schedule paper a misprint?! I started looking for his coach, a good friend of mine, to figure out what had happened.

I found her and she smiled and waved to me. I met up with her and told her that I had double checked the schedule and all of that... she was puzzled and sorry and she pulled out the schedule and I pointed to the neat square where it said 1pm on Saturday the 13th. The problem that she quickly pointed out was that today was the 6th.

THE SIXTH!!!

That was when I just looked at my son and he looked at me and I apologized about 100 times. I am not exaggerating. He had been waiting for weeks. I was looking at the wrong square everywhere. All day.

I brought him home and I apologized again and again and again. He seemed fine with it and really bounced back, but I felt horrible.

I offered to camp out and read as many books as he wanted. I offered to bake him cookies to take to his Sunday School class. I offered to paint him a picture of a Tiger for his room. I needed to do something for him to "earn" his forgiveness... which is silly, but I just felt so BLASTED GUILTY!

Finally I tossed them in swim suits and they played in water at the house, then I took them to the pool over on base where the water was freezing and they complained. It was not the best day here people... but we muddled through.

The good thing is that even when I mess things up that he has been yearning for, and I do mean yearning for, for this long... he was so quick and willing to forgive me.

There are many things that I would like to "fix" in my child's behavior, but frankly, I was proud of him today. I really missed the mark big time, but he got over it quickly and moved on quickly. Frankly, he moved on faster then I was able to move on.

He has four games this coming week. I told him that I would make sure that nothing else interfered with his games. I will hold back the clouds blast it!

i want to learn... please?

2009-05-18T22:38:00.003-05:00

My Mother's Day gifts this year spoke volumes to me. I was floored and delighted and almost in tears.

John took the kids out to shop and after he convinced the Girl that her present did not have to be the very best and most amazing gift in the entire world they were able to move on. They purchased their gifts and wrapped them for me and presented them to me during the afternoon.

I opened my Mother's Day gifts with absolutely no idea of what I would get. They each bought me one item and then they bought me one thing together.

My boy bought me a sweet hummingbird feeder. He has shared my love of attracting birds to our yard and this is something that he has wanted for sometime. He also knew that I would LOVE it. I do love it! It is currently hanging in our tree in the back yard and we are awaiting our little humming friends.My daughter gave me a very nice gardening book and this is ALWAYS a welcome sight in my home especially since I am a bit of a gardening addict. I have already read through much of the book and have learned quite a bit. I am excited about what else I will learn from my book.

The gift from both of them was large and rectangular and heavy. It felt obviously like a book and since I lurve books I opened it eagerly!

When I pulled back the paper I saw this massive history book.

This book is very large and is filled with maps and articles of what has happened in our world in the past.

I opened it up and my husband said, "Now you need to hear why they wanted to get this particular book for you." He had this funny grin on his face.

BOTH of my children were sitting on the floor at my feet and at this moment they both chimed in together, "We bought it for you so that you can use it to teach us more history!" They looked up at me with beaming faces, full of anticipation. My eyes grew wide and I realized that I was just given one of the biggest compliments of my entire life.

I have a great love of learning and I love learning more about history. I homeschool our children and I love bringing history alive for them. We use Sonlight history and they think that the history portion of our day is one of the best parts of each day. They often talk me into doing more then one day of history at a time.

I have succeeded in one of my goals in homeschooling. I have instilled in my children a love of learning. I know that I do not do everything right. There are many times when I question myself and what we are doing here in our little corner of the great homeschooling world, but on Mother's Day I got one of the best gifts. I got a great progress report as a homeschool teacher. Now... let's see if we can work on my progress report for organizing a house...

downtown

2009-05-15T09:43:00.003-05:00

Recently the whole family went on a field trip with the homeschool group to downtown. We visited the Old Courthouse where some very famous cases were heard and where new things in architecture were discovered. We went to the arch to hang out for a bit and I took MANY pictures.

These are two of them. Normally my camera is trained on kids and on nature, but on this day it was the architecture that really caught my eye.

I did mess with the shadow and steeliness on the Arch and I think it turned out quite nice. I was tempted to drag the contrast further, but decided that this was a happy medium. I did like the darker look as it was very dramatic but I like the dark swirls that I was able to still see in the clouds in this picture.

This picture was taken from across the rotunda into a well lit stairwell. I was impressed with how well this turned out for a couple of reasons. I only have the one basic lens on my Rebel and it often just doesn't do the job I want it to do when taking pictures from a distance like this. When I got the picture into edit I had found out that it surprised me on this one. I cropped it in a little but did almost nothing else to it. I really like the curving stairs here... grace.

I have more pictures to share with you, but many of them have my children or other children in them. I can't share them. Bummer.

Click the pictures to make them larger.

I linked this post to a wonderful blog that I admire greatly for her spirit and for her photography. She was having people link their pictures of beauty in unexpected places and I thought these fit. Check out her blog your eyes will thank you!

mark of a mom

2009-05-10T12:04:00.003-05:00

This morning I wore gray pin-stripe dress pants and a black t-shirt to church. I looked so springy. Ahem. I did see other mom's completely dressed up in their cute dresses looking the beautiful sweet part of Mother's Day. Honestly, I have very few dresses and since I am away from home right now, I do not have any of the dresses with me that I own.

One of the moms that I saw was just so sweet and gorgeous looking. She had her blonde highlighted hair pulled up in the back and her make-up looked flawless. She had on a layered gauzy pink butterfly dress on with a matching light pink spring mid-thigh coat. She wore lovely jewelry and had on matching open-toe sling back heels that looked like they were of some faux alligator skin. In pink.

She looked like she walked out of a very nice magazine.

BUT...

There was one slight... flaw.

(time for me to get critical on you all)

She had on a rather tacky bracelet.

It was plastic beads.

On YARN.

The beads didn't even cover all the yarn... they covered maybe half of the yarn. Maybe.

What was she thinking?

She didn't have kids with her... yet she wore the mark of a homemade mother's day gift rather proudly. She carefully took notes on what the preacher was teaching with the same hand on which this gift was on.

No shame.

The mark of a mother is no shame.

No shame in looking a peditrician in the eye and telling him that you will not be giving your child the said treatment because it hasn't been tested enough and your daughter is not a guinea pig.

No shame in running half-naked out of the house looking for a toddler who just pushed the door open and was heading for a busy street.

No shame in eating some strange food item that the little one is trying to feed you which was probably licked by the dog before being put in your mouth.

No shame in showing up in the ER with a baby with a high fever, while wearing smeared make-up and sweats.

No shame in walking out of a store with a young one in high-tantrum mode after you told him NO to another toy.

No shame in telling others that you chose to homeschoool.

No shame in telling people that you chose traditional school.

No shame in cancelling out on a party because your eight year old burnt his hand and now nothing is more important then just loving on him and his pain.

No shame in walking through a crowded place with a teenage child who is very into expressing themselves through their pink hair.

No shame in cheering on the only child on the team who cannot hit a baseball no matter how hard they try.

No shame in running through a crowded hospital, after a doctor, in a foreign country, while wearing nothing more then a napkin that covers your top third while otherwise wearing only panic on your face... over the life of your unborn child.

There is no shame allowed in mother's love.

No shame in wearing plastic beads on yarn.

No shame in the mark of a mom.

Happy Mother's Day to all with No Shame.

so the movie and some rambling

2009-05-04T11:14:00.004-05:00

I enjoyed the Hunt for Gollum movie last night.

They did a release at 4 GMT, but are releasing it across the board on May 10th. I didn't get on to watch it until my kids were in bed and it didn't want to let me watch the movie. I clicked on "have problems watching it in HD, watch it in HQ" and I was able to watch it last night. I don't know if that option is working today or if you missed it if you have to wait until the 10th.

It was a good movie... very Jacksonish... and quite well done. There was, of course, ways I could tell that they had cut corners to work things into budget. BUT overall, I was very impressed with what people can do with a passion. Or obsession. It just depends on how you spin that word.

I have lots to show you from what I have been doing here. I just haven't taken all the pictures yet.

I have put up a greenhouse and started lots of little plants in it. Some are flowers which will go around my house. Some are veggies which will go in the organic garden at the farm. Regardless, my starters have worked this year. Every year I have tried to do starters and every year they don't make it. These made it!!! It was so exciting! They even made it for about 5 days when we were away and I was so pleased!

I have put in a rain barrel at the farm for watering the organic garden. This is great because we don't have to run the hose from the well house as often to water the garden and it is great because we can make Chicken Manure Tea for mid-summer fertilizing. What we can do is take a nice pile of chicken manure and put it in a nice cheese cloth bag and plop it right in a full rain barrel and then water with this great tea! My plants will love it and being a (regular Lipton) tea drinker myself I think this is great. I will post pictures of my rain barrel at the farm later.

I have been spending more time with the kids at the farm and it has refreshed my spirit. This farm has got to be one of the best things ever thought up and I have been so blessed by it. We can go out and do all sorts of farm type stuff. Organnic gardening, fishing, hunting all sorts of little critters, rain barrels, collecting eggs, playing in the hay loft, feeding horses and playing with baby goats and hiking all over looking for tracks and talking about all we see. Really, the farm is a working farm, it is quite redneck and very rustic and farm dogs and farm filth abounds but I am becoming so attached to this farm that I don't know what I am going to do when we leave here for another base.

When we leave here we will have been here for four years and we will have once again dug in our roots very deep.

I have problems imagining that I will ever find anything as great as this farm anywhere else.

I have to believe that wherever we go God will have even more awesome opportunities for growth for our family.

In the meantime I am here. I am here loving where I am and loving the absolutely incredible friends that I have here.

I do believe that the next place we live will have more amazing oppotunities for us that we will be ready for when we move there. I will not get lost in my ponderings of the present. I will keep my focus up. (that last part is me admonishing myself... you were just along for the read)

Do you want to know what the real problem is? I am borrowing trouble. I do not move for a year and a half.

confessions of an obsessive leach

2009-05-01T07:57:00.006-05:00

So, I have mentioned here I believe how I can get obsessed about things.

Basically once I get interested in something I cling to it like a leach until I am well fed on information and I let go.

So, a couple of years ago I got hooked on Tolkien.

I know many people have undergone this obsession and many have felt the draw of Middle Earth (now I am sounding like an idiot).

I read everything I could get my hands on to read of his and I borrowed books with maps of Middle Earth and I rewatched the movies and scoffed at what they had changed and I dreamt a few dreams in Middle Earth (that last one was slightly hard to type) and I generally became an obsessed mad woman about it.

Now, I do slowly get over an obsession and I do move on after sucking the information stream dry and that is what slowly happened with this obsession as well. Once I have had something in my obsession sights though, I will still have a good interest in it even after the period of true obsession slows down.

You will soon see what I mean.

This morning, I did my morning routine of checking my email, checking facebook, checking a blog or two and checking a news source to scan for anything of major importance.

I saw this story and I instantly thought to myself, "OH! I need to post that to my increbibly large audience at my blog!" (sarcasm intended) And so I instantly came here to show you. Really. I kid not.

I could not figure out how to imbed this trailer for this piece of Fan Fiction work, that looks pretty amazing, but I think that most of you can figure out how to click on the link and then click on the trailer that is on the left column.

They have this website as well and really, it looks pretty good! I do think that some of the casting maybe a slight issue because we have gotten so used to seeing certain people in certain roles on the movies, but that should be but a small distraction for the movie I think.

This is by far the best piece of "fan work" I have ever seen. Now, I am judging this by the trailer, but considering they actually filmed and costumed and casted and directed and edited etc... I am highly impressed... so far.

The movie will be released this weekend over the internet and save a lawsuit to stop it from going through I will be watching it.

Me and my slightly OCD self.

compassion in kolkata

2009-04-27T20:58:00.004-05:00

I have discussed Compassion International here in the past. They are an amazing international organization that does work with impoverished children. They spread the Gospel of Jesus and they assist the child and the family in ways that are desperately needed, like school fees and clothing and food and medical help. The assistance that they offer varies from project to project and from need to need. What is amazing is what they do for these people. What YOU can do for them as well. Compassion works largely on sponsorships and what that means is that people like you and me will sponsor a child and the money that you pay each month helps that child with their needs. Knowing that someone out there cares enough to do this is huge!

What was surprising to me though was how much just having a real life person sponser them means to them. They know that someone cares. Someone believes in them. Someone LOVES them. When the children are reading the letters that are sent to them and seeing the pictures it is enough to boost their self esteem to the point where they can see the outside of the poverty stricken area they are living in. It lets them dream and dream big!

It really is amazing what $32 a month can do.

I spend that same amount every month for just one of my children to take gymnastics lessons once a week for an hour.

Just an hour a week.

When Compassion takes that same amount do you see what they can do?! It amazes me everyday.

The amazement doesn't cease... I have read accounts and read accounts of the poverty and the desperation in these places. I have seen the pictures and have f0llowed bloggers as they went on the last two Compassion trips. They are doing a trip right now in which they take bloggers and they take them to Compassion sites in a country that Compassion works in and they show them what they do and the Compassion Bloggers will show the pictures and they will tell the story. This is a very effective way to spread the news of what Compassion does. It reaches so many people to let them know of this opportunity to reach out and be blessed... blessing your socks off kind of blessed!

If you would like to follow the Compassion Bloggers on this trip as they visit India, please check out the following links.

Angie @ Bring the Rain

Melissa @ The LPM Blog

Robin @ Pensieve

Anne @ Flowerdust

Pete @ Withoutwax.tv

Please consider sponsoring a child. It is a decision that I do not believe you will ever regret.

my lovely template here on my blog...

2009-04-26T14:21:00.002-05:00

I know that my template is rather "wintry." It is a problem for me. I haven't had issues switching out templates really, the problem is that right now my computer isn't letting me download new templates. It just isn't. I have no clue why, so please just join me in putting up with winter here on my blog.

I also know that I could just switch things around without a template, but frankly people I do not have time. At all. I am lucky when I can get on here and post a little post about birds and other nonsense.

Hopefully I will fix this before we are blown away by summer... and I am still freezing my heiney off here at just to name a few... icicles.

oddness and an eastern meadowlark

2009-04-24T21:28:00.004-05:00

If I had told my friends in high school that one day I would be into bird watching I think they would have simply stared at me with shocked expressions... mouths agape. That would have been an appropriate response really.

Today however I am a very inexperienced bird watcher and the whole thing just snuck up on me.

Growing up I knew what a few of the basic birds were. I knew a robin and a sparrow and a blue jay and a cardinal and a Bald Eagle and umm... that may have been it. I knew OF many other birds but I am not sure if I could positively ID them if they landed in my yard and stared at me.

In the last few years the kids and I have started IDing more and more things. We had started IDing spiders often when we lived in OK cause we had some bad spider issues. I didn't want all spiders to die just the bad ones so I researched and researched until I knew many basic spiders and what many of their webs looked like and where they generally lived. I was driven to this out of desparation. I was scared to death of them and they were everywhere there. They really freaked me out and since the Air Force wasn't going to move us anytime soon I had to learn to live with the evil buggers.

After time we started IDing different insects and finding out more about them as well. I think much of this was initiated by gardening and my need for things to be Organic. I would figure out what type of insect was bothering my garden and then I would try to figure out the appropriate way to deal with it. This didn't always work and still doesn't but I figure that I can try.

In the more recent years we have started feeding birds in our backyard. I was able to tell the kids what many of the birds were like the ones that I mentioned above but when other birds started showing up that I didn't know and the kids asked me what they were I had a hard time telling them what they were. In the true homeschooling spirit I would simply stop what we were doing and look up the bird online and then we would know one more bird. We continued this until we knew a good list of birds that would visit our back yard. We would also see birds from afar and we would start looking them up when we got home. It made it easier when both of the kids and I would see the bird and then when we got home we would look it up online until we found it.

Today I will admit that I was quite excited when I was out at the farm and I spotted an Eastern Meadowlark. I have looked at this bird online and I knew it was fairly common, but we didn't have any in this field behind my house. I find this strange about myself and I find the whole thing rather odd. I mean... um... bird watching? I actually was excited to see an Eastern Meadowlark?! Really? My how times change.

Of course I also now get Star Wars jokes. I find that odd about myself as well. That however is a husband thing. You see, I took him for what he was a Sci-Fi geek and God Bless him, he has introduced me to all sorts of strange Sci-Fi. Someday I may recover.

pack?! who is next? quack?

2009-04-06T21:50:00.004-05:00

Oh, I am sure many of you have gathered that I love books and I especially love children's books. I would have made a very happy children's librarian if God had not seen fit to give me the lovely job I currently have.

A favorite book of nearly every child I have known is Make Way for Ducklings and I just found that very story in the news. Unfortunately, one of the ducklings is missing.

Poor Pack got duckling-napped!

It is a sad day in Boston folks!!!

What can we do to help?! Well, I really have no idea what you can do to bring Pack back to the park, but I think that a good way to show support would be to run (yes run... you can do it) out to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy of Make Way for Ducklings. It has an amazing innate charm that kids love. Eveyone must know of some child who would love to own a copy of this fantastic book. We have one on our shelf and I think it is time to bring it out for reading tomorrow.

The only other way to help would be if say, you saw someone sneaking a large bronze statue of a duck into their house. That may clue you in to call the police. So everyone look out for wandering bronze ducks. Pack is missing. We need him home!

things that make me pause and take note

2009-04-02T19:43:00.004-05:00

I have honestly been coming up at a loss for what to put on this blog. Sad. The problem is that my life is wrapped up in my kids really and I won't post pictures of them online. So many of the time I just start writing a post and it ends up getting too long and then I don't have time to finish it and when I go back to read it and write more I have lost the main thought and I don't finish it.

This post will be fairly short.

I hope.

I read online probably too much, but I read and I can't help myself. I used to get my news fix in magazines and the TV but most of my news fix now comes from online sources. One of my favorite online sources is NPR. I used to listen to NPR all the time and I loved the mix that the NPR channel in Springfield MO gave me. They would have the classical music on interspersed with the awesome news shows and jazz piano and Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion... etc. Unfortunately here where we are now (sorry about my annoying vagueness) closer to a larger city we have multiple "NPR" stations but they are all specific. One is only talk, all news, all talk type stuff. Another is all classical music, but it has ads? And this station is still on the NPR website, but never advertises itself as NPR. Weird. Another station is all Jazz. I miss my all in one station. SO... I mainly just listen to the classical station because much of the news found, well... anywhere isn't appropriate for children to hear and the local news personalities annoyed me.

So, as I continue on writing my, ahem... short post... what I was trying to say in the above paragraph is that I no longer listen to NPR for news, I read it online at their site. Sometimes I also listen to it online it just depends on the story and what is going on in my world. Tonight what caught my attention was a story on pinhole cameras.

I vaguely remember studying the overall concept of pinhole cameras in school, but I don't think we actually made one. I am really interested in making one of these in the future with my kids.

The image has such a great look to it and honestly the picture is much better to my poor eyeballs then the cheap type kid safe digital cameras that they make. Those pictures make my eyes want to bleed. The fuzziness... the painfulness the annoyingness. I lose patience for those cameras very fast.

Perhaps we will try this during the summer months here. I have a feeling that we need some nice crisp light to get this to work well and summer sounds like the best time for us to experiment and play with light.

back from paradise

2009-03-21T22:36:00.005-05:00

I know that I have been absent from blog world again for a while.

I have been doing some of this.

My son took this picture of me. I was holding one of these guys...

He gave me the flower after getting help getting it out of the Jacaranda Tree. I thought it looked especially pretty against the blue sky.

These flowers are on what is known as a Bombax tree.

The trees were gorgeous and it almost looked like they were raining pollen. They were simply beautiful.

After viewing these you surely can understand where I have been spending my time.

We are home and we are missing the family and the warm weather, but we are getting ready for summer coming up here.

I have more pictures of our trip to post but I will make no guarantees about getting them posted.

I hope you all have also been doing well!

emerging from winter

2009-02-25T23:04:00.002-06:00

(I am going to go ahead and publish this as is and will edit it a bit later. I figure that you can forgive me because at least I am getting this on the blog.)

I know that technically it will still be winter for a long time, but today I got another small taste of spring. I even wore sandals to church tonight. I don't know if you remember this post about my daughter and socks, but I know that she got this allergy from me. My feet were thrilled to be out of socks.

Anyhow, I have tons of things that I need to tell you all, but I am going to go back two weeks for this one when I drug my family out of bed at an ungodly hour to head up the river. We were going on an expedition and we had such fun.

Our area here has a huge number of American Bald Eagles that winter along the river. They come down to avoid starving while their own lakes have frozen over and fish are very hard to find on a frozen lake. The river doesn't freeze over very easy and even when some areas freeze over the traffic on the river especially around the locks keeps water flowing. I have heard that when much of the riven is frozen you can see dozens around the dam and locks catching fish. In order to do that though you need to go out in the absolute freezing cold and sit and wait. Sounds like fun no?

So, I woke up my family and put a bag full of snacks in the car and packed up the winter gear and the camera and the Boy's telescope and the Boy's binoculars and we set out with coffee in hand.

I had picked a day when our entire family could go and when they had some fun things going on near the locks and dam. They were going to have a Master's of the Sky show with birds from the local bird sanctuary and they were supposed to have a hot air balloon ride and they had tours of the locks and dam and trolley tours to see many of the Eagles in the area.

We showed up at the crack of dawn on the river because that is when Eagles and most birds are the most active. I really wanted to see them fishing on the river and I knew that would require us to be up early enough to drive the 45 minutes to see them fish at dawn. We made it just after dawn and drove over to a small island on the river. We parked our car and hopped out to see this.

I know that it doesn't look that exciting to the naked eye and my pictures do not do this justice because our lighting was poor and I only have the one basic lens for my camera, but if you look over at those trees you can see four Bald Eagles in those trees. They would fly around and swoop down and grab fish and take it back to the trees to eat. They would soar and chatter to each other. I will be honest and let you know that I was excited about this trip and when we saw them right there sitting in the trees I was very excited, but when I heard the Eagles calling to each other and doing the chatter type noises that they make, I was just beaming. You see I am a bit of an Eagle nut... but really that is another post. When I heard them calling to each other as they flew around, I got all bug eyed and looked at John and about squealed, "OH! I never thought I would hear that in real life!!!" There was another young couple that was stopped there watching the Eagles and I knew that at that point they thought I was a total nut case. I really didn't care.

So, we watched them there for quite a while and I took tons of pictures but most of them are worthless because the lighting had much to be desired and my lens just didn't remotely cut it.

I did get to watch this trio in the tree as the lowest one was eating a large fish. All three of these guys are adults. They actually don't get their white head until they are about five years old and we saw many, many juveniles. I was fun for me to guess how old they were by their markings. Do you see how easy it is to entertain me?!

I will spare you the other pictures as they were equally impressive, but we drove down the road a ways and found another young eagle dining on the side of the river. I hopped out of my car, but he took off as soon as he heard us. When I walked down to the side of the river I found a HUGE dead fish. It was about the size of my six year old. I am sure he was munching some nice washed up fish for lunch. I missed seeing him up close, but as we are really their only predator, it is best that he is scared.

We went to the locks and dam for our show after we did breakfast at McDonald's in town and we were not disappointed in that show at all! It was amazing! They flew these birds right over our heads and our show was the only one not sold out that day. I suspect that most people didn't want to get up as early as we did, but I think that they probably missed out on much Eagle action by getting up later.

This was the first bird that they brought out. He is a Harris Hawk and he was gorgeous! You could actually feel his wings as he flew over us. We had to remain seated as they are trained to fly to people who were standing. They would walk the birds around so we could see them really up close.

This was a vulture from Africa. I am sure he had a better name then that but I couldn't remember. Do you know why they don't have feathers on their heads? It is so they don't end up covered in the dead animal they are eating every time they stick their heads in a carcass. Nice eh?

A Great Horned Owl. Doesn't he look noble? And smart? I thought he was so exquisite. Regardless he is not very bright. Two thirds of his head is eyes... so guess what the remaining one third is. Yup. His small brain. We still love him though!

This is a sweet Barn Owl. I think they are so cuddly looking and soft. I am sure that their beaks and talons are not friendly but they are my favorite of the owls easily.

This is an American Kestrel. He is a Falcon actually, but I think he is the cutest falcon. We are supposed to have these around here, but I haven't seen any in the wild yet. Hopefully we will before we move. They can hover in place which is amazing to me. This little boy was only a year old and so he didn't completely listen to his workers and he did perch for a little bit on the one wire in the tent. It was sweet, but thankfully he didn't perch on me! In this picture she was talking about how to tell the boy Kestrels from the girls.

They brought in the Bald Eagle at the end of the show and this is how she entered the tent. She was trying to get her balance and she came in with wings flapping. I heard a very audible gasp from right behind me. My husband had never seen a Bald Eagle in person like this and she was huge! The girls are bigger then the boys and Patriot was a sight to behold.

She scared me only slightly when she looked at me like this. Yikes.

Patriot was brought to the bird sanctuary when she was a young Eaglet twelve years ago. She hadn't fledged yet and the nest that she was in was knocked down by a wind storm. It fell in the water and her two siblings drowned. When she was found she was very sick and had pneumonia. Her lungs were permanently damaged and though she is healthy in every other way she would not be able to survive in the wild.

Their size is amazing. Look at her talons. She is sitting on the hand of a grown woman with large heavy leather gloves on. Amazing.

After this show we went on a tour of the locks and dam.

This would be the youngest Eagle watcher in the family standing on the locks. She really needs her own binoculars. Maybe in her Easter basket? Maybe I will get a pair in my Easter basket too!

This was the view down the river from the Lock and Dam. It was so very overcast.

After that tour we went on our trolley tour and we were able to see an older abandoned Eagle nest and we were able to see this fellow fairly close up.

He took off shortly after this picture and flew back towards the river. If you looked around there you never knew where you were going to see an Eagle.

We watched an Eagle soaring just below the locks with the gulls. Here he is right in dead center. It looks like he may have been fishing but maybe he was just having fun.

We went home after the trolley ride and we took naps before we headed to church that night.

If you are interested in checking out the source of my fascination with Bald Eagles go ahead and look at these Eagle Web Cams. We watch several of the nests but our favorite nest is at Pelican Harbor. We know these Eagles by tag numbers as well as by name. We know the eaglets they have had in the past few years and we do get a huge kick out of watching them on the computer. If you have any questions let me know!

Now... time for bed!

dear sun, I miss you. can you come out to play?

2009-02-11T21:44:00.002-06:00

My life has consisted of either snow or rain the past couple of weeks.

My back yard looked like this last week and this week it is one huge mud hole. It is amazing and I am wondering how many baths my dog can handle in one week.

The problem is that my gardener's heart is stirring. I have been thinking about this and that and I have been trying to figure out if I will go ahead and put in raised beds here to put in my veggies here at home this year, or will I forge ahead again with the gardening co-op out at the farm? Big decisions you know.

I will be honest with you all. I could easily skip this time of year. Every year. I do not enjoy winter. I desperately need to feel the sun hit my face and I think my garden preparations are really just signifying that I am yearning for summer in a major way.

Although the top picture of mine is attractive and I think it is pretty cool. I would much rather see this one below.

This one was taken at the Botanical Gardens this last summer.

This was one of My Son's sunflowers from this last summer. He planted them along side the house and they grew in a nice tall waving line. He loved them and I am sure they will make a return appearance this summer. I miss them. I miss them waving at me as I walk past.

This is a badly composed picture, but I don't care. I like that my lavender went ahead and took center stage. She stepped right up and told people how it was going to be and what things were going to be like. She bloomed hard all summer and made my day many, many days. I would go out and sit beside the lavender and run my hands through it and just smile.

I didn't save any of the blooms. I didn't cut them and do anything with them. I let them go and enjoyed them while I could. Now I am wishing that I had some remnant of that smell. I say this as I look out on the cold mud in my yard. I wish I had a remnant of that summer day. A feeling of warmth. A scent of sweet purple summer. A look of lushness.

blind

2009-02-09T21:13:00.003-06:00

I have no words to introduce this link I am giving you.

I give you simply:

ali's african adventures.

Grab a tissue or two.

picasa play

2009-02-08T22:16:00.002-06:00

So, lately I have been playing more and more with doing basic editing in Picasa. I have to say that at times I am surprised what you can do with such a simple and um... free program.

This top picture is a picture of my lovely dog Liberty. Now, I have lamented over what a pain it is to take pictures of her in the past, so I was VERY pleased when I got this shot. The top one is straight out of the camera. I took this picture in the morning light as it reflected off of the deep snow. Because she is so dark usually her features are hard to make out, but the reflection of the gorgeous morning light on the snow and the light as it shone on her made for a great picture of my dog. You can even see her eyes here which are usually lost in her very dark chocolate brown fur.

I liked the picture so much that I had to play with it. The shot just below here is after I played with it a bit. So, I took it and I used the tint option (under effects) and I went down a bit on how much color I wanted to show through. Then I went ahead and added a very small bit of sunny yellow color to the picture. Then I added a bit of glow and finally I cranked up my fill light a small amount to get the washed out and ethereal look here.

Now, I like both pictures, I really don't think I have a preference in either and it was fun to do.

This shot is of me.

I was playing around taking some self portraits cause I was getting my hair cut and was thinking of going really short. I didn't, so this shot isn't really all that pertinent anymore, but I had fun editing it. I ended up doing basically the same thing to this, but I also cropped it down in a fun way.

Whenever I edit pictures of myself and I see them so large on my screen I am always shocked at the number of freckles I have. It always startles me. I suppose I just don't pay attention when I see myself in the mirror? I don't know. Anyways, if you can't afford the photoshop, don't quite give up on free. There is TONS you can do with the free program Picasa.

This by the way, doesn't mean that I am not going to be getting photoshop, it just means that I have fun trying to see what I can do for free. The one thing that is really lacking in Picasa that I want is the ability to raise and lower individual colors better and the layering abilities. I am sure that there are more, but some of that you can even get around using the other functions on Picasa.

shaving spelling words write off the list

2009-02-04T21:10:00.005-06:00

On a recent post, one of my great blog friends, Sneaky Momma, commented that when she taught school they would write their spelling words in shaving cream. Now, I will admit that I have had the kids write their words in many, many ways and I have heard of the shaving cream deal more then once, but I had yet to try it. That was all the inspiration I needed. The shaving cream was coming up soon!

The idea is to make writing a fun thing and honestly that isn't always easy. One of the problems is that when you make something fun it takes longer. That is just Murphy's law. I think nearly every time I make spelling fun it takes longer, BUT does it really? My kids learn the words better. There is no whining. It is an adventure. They LOVE it. So is it worth it? Yes. BUT... anytime you do something that really makes school downright squealing-out-loud-fun, you had better think ahead and change your normal schedule and do that squealing last. Trust me.

The shaving cream brought squeals from my kids just like I knew it would. It was super distracting for anyone else in the room trying to learn and they just loved it!

I put down the fabric cutting mat on the table. By the way, if you happen to do most of your homeschooling on the kitchen table like I do, these little puppies will save your table and your sanity. They take the beating and my wood table top doesn't have to. Lovely little guys. You can pick them up at your local sewing shop. We then propped up the spelling list and got the cookie sheet that we use for magnets out and covered it with the good stuff.

This was our poison of choice. It is what John uses every morning to shave his face and because of this the kids were worried that he would not be happy that we were using it. I told them that I would just get Daddy more.

This is what it looked like early on. My kids are not at all afriad to get dirty or messy or anything, but this did confuse my son momentarily and he actually wrote one word in the shaving cream and then washed it off his hands to start the second one. I told him to get over it. He did.

What a beautiful clean slate for writing on! Wahoo! Like fresh snow!

What this looks like with a word written in it. Much fun!

Of course, stuff like this was inevitable and you gotta roll with the punches. At least he wasn't flinging it on the walls!

On a side note, would you look at those teeth coming in?! Yikes! He is growing up.

Then things like this started happening. At least it washes out right? And really it is just like soap. He covered his arms in it and got it on his shirt and pants.

Most of my pictures of The Girl using this have her face in the picture, so I decided to just show The Boy, but here she is having a blast with it too. Like her mountains? She was trying to figure out if these were mountains which side she would want to slide down. The Boy helped her figure it out. Majorly important stuff here.

They had such fun and so did I. This was simple clean fun.

Try it out yourself!

(Oh, and if you are one of my many OCD friends then you can wait until summer comes and do this outside. They will love it and then you can hose them down before they come inside, just take some deep breathes and you can do it! )

visitor

2009-02-02T16:51:00.004-06:00

We had a visitor to our yard today. The Boy looked out and saw this good size friend on the playset right over the swing. That would be about 15ft from our back door. This is not a picture I took, unfortunately, (I couldn't get to my camera in time) but is just like our new friend. The only problem is we are now pretty sure that our new friend has visited before. He seems to really like to visit our other very small sparrow friends who we feed daily.

He didn't get to feed in our backyard today, but he has in the past. We were in awe of our visitor and will call him Cooper now whenever we see him because he is a magnificent Coopers Hawk.

I will try to snap some pictures of him when I can to show you all our new buddy. Hopefully he doesn't eat all the sparrow friends though!

favorite words spoken this week

2009-01-31T09:47:00.004-06:00

This first was said by the girl after she was done playing pretend with me. "Momma, can't you just be normal Momma who knows everything?"

The second was said by the Boy while I was shoveling the driveway out. The snow plow had plowed in the opening of the driveway and it was VERY heavy snow. I was complaining at how hard it was and he said, "Well, it is hard for you just cause you don't do gymnastics."

I smirked as I handed him the shovel and then hugged him when he found that gymnastics hasn't quite done it for him yet.

I LOVE my kids and the things they say... Have those around you said amusing things this last week? Share them in my comments so we can all have a little giggle!

spelling in egypt

2009-01-28T10:05:00.004-06:00

Sometimes when you work with creative kids (btw, I believe all kids are innately creative) you need to think like a creative kid.

Everyday I have my kids spell out the spelling words for the week. They can do this in many, many ways and I will be highlighting those here as we work through our wide variety of ways.

Today, I will show you how we incorporate ancient history into spelling.

My kids LOVE ancient Egypt. We have studied it quite a bit and they know more then most adults when it comes to this culture in particular.

They were not wanting to do their spelling words today at all until I gave them the job of apprentice scribe. They had to use manila paper and only their black water colors with small brushes to do their words. I constantly called them, "Young Scribe." and they played along quite well.

not me monday~ cardboard cookies

2009-01-26T11:19:00.001-06:00

Monday is a special day here. I participate in MCK Mamma's Blog Carnival and I get to tell you things that I would not normally tell you, but I get to lie. So, these are things that I did "not" do this last week. It is a sad tale, so pull out the kleenex!

Last Monday I did NOT bribe my children to do their best at swim lessons by promising them something "special if they did a good job listening to their teachers. When they did a great job I did NOT fly around trying to come up with something for them. Not me. I had it all planned obviously. I did NOT finally find a box cookie mix for gingerbread bears that was a year old. Nope. Not me.

I did NOT mix up these cookies that were a year old and expect them to taste normal. I would never do this. Ever.

The kids did love the cookies. They loved decorating them and since my kids are angelic they would never decorate the poor bear like he had an alien coming out of his stomach. Not me. Not my kids. Nope.

I did NOT eat one of these cookies and wonder what was wrong?! They did NOT taste like cardboard on a bad day.

I did NOT let my kids eat these cookies. That would be something that a bad mother would do... Not Me.

So, I did NOT toss these cookies in the trash as fast as I could and make fresh new cookies for my kids and my dear husband.
Nope.
Not Me.

Oh, and to comment on what I am actually doing on this Monday? I am NOT frantically copying lots of fun things for my kids to present at the geography fair tomorrow, cause I would NOT let us all wait until the last minute to pull together our unit study on Antartica and Alaska. Nope. NOT ME!!!! (can you hear the copier whirring in the background!? YIKES) I DO NOT PROCRASTINATE!!!!

Click on the "not me" graphic on the top of this post to check out other Not Me Mondays and be prepared to giggle!

simple works for me wednesday

2009-01-21T13:10:00.002-06:00

I am participating in Rocks in My Dryer's Blog Carnival. Every Wednesday she does a Works for Me Wednesday and many, many times I want to participate and don't because, well, I really feel like I have some issues and there isn't much that works for me that I am happy with. I am continually trying to find things that work better. But, eh, I am taking the plunge.

I have found lately that simple is working for me. For example, we have had these great cordless phones and recently the batteries on BOTH of them stopped holding a charge for very long and with me that is a problem because I always forget to put them on the charger. I have driven over five miles with a phone on the hood of my car. It made it to the farm in one piece. No kidding. Unfortunately I got terrible reception out there.

So the phones finally just quit. Both of them. I have to get batteries for them, but since they are over two years old they don't seem to have replacement batteries just anywhere. I mean most people apparently don't care if their phone lasts that long but oddly enough I think my things should last forever. So, in the seach for new batteries for my phone I had to buy something to serve me in the meantime. My husband is in the military and they have to be able to reach him whenever they feel like it. So I bought this puppy. It is simple. It has a cord. It makes me stay in the kitchen when I talk on it. That sounds bad, BUT I have one big benefit from it. My kitchen has been much cleaner! I am trapped into cleaning! I highly recommend it.

I have one more amazing item of simplicity for you today folks! So don't run away yet.

We homeschool and my children are addicted to very sharp point pencils. They will not write with a dull pencil point. I can understand this even though it does get annoying when I am trying to work with them and they HAVE to sharpen their pencil. The problem was exasperated even more when I had an electric pencil sharpener. That thing would just not sharpen correctly. It drove me nuts. They would keep messing up their pencil and it would take forever. FOREVER! I do not have tons of patience for things that should be simple and are not. So, after many versions of very, supposedly, high quality electric sharpeners, I picked up this little baby.

Guess what? It works and it works great!!! You need one of these guys! You can tell people that it is an antique if you need to! It sits right on my kitchen counter cause that is where we do school and it works awesome! Pencil points come out perfect every time and it doesn't look like it will break anytime soon.

So, what works for me is simple! Embrace the simple life!!!

exhaustion

2009-01-20T18:11:00.004-06:00

Today we woke up to the sun shining on the snow.

There are few things as appealing to small children first thing in the morning. They see snow and instantly think snow angels and snow men and snowballs and sledding and snow boards.

I just saw the sun sparkling across that snow and it made my heart glad. Overcast days and I don't get along.

The dog apparently enjoyed the morning snow as well. She kept rolling all over it. I found this picture to be quite sweet.

Besides the snow this morning, the rest of the day was fairly standard.

We did school, played outside had lunch and then we set off for gymnastics. It was just before gymnastics that I felt this immense exhaustion hit me. I felt like I could just curl up on the sofa at home and take a nice nap, but considering the fact that I pay $16 an hour for my kids to go to gymnastics I really didn't want to miss it. So I hauled my rear off the sofa and headed out the door.

At gymnastics I usually sit and chat with my friends and we have a great time. Today, I kinda wanted to curl up and fall asleep on the hard cold metal bleachers. I didn't. I felt I should mention that because there have been times in my life when I have been so tired that I HAVE just curled up and fallen asleep.

One of those notable times was when I was in college. It was in the summer and I was working full time as well as taking full time classes. Along with that, I was living with my sister with a brand new baby and I was dating this amazing guy who was occupying my every thought and my every evening. I really couldn't get him out of my mind and I still feel that way about him which is a good thing, since I am still with him and he does make an amazing husband, BUT this story isn't about him. It is about my exhaustion.

So, I was working during the day doing work on the grounds of the college campus that I went to school at and I was working hard out there. It was a hot, hot summer and I was weeding everyday and hedge trimming and raking and watering baby trees and I was doing something else called rock picking (which is a whole 'nother post). After leaving work I would head over to the local community college where I was taking a Biology class and I would do school there for a couple of hours each evening. We would have an hour of lecture and then we would have a 15 minute break before he would head in for another hour of lab.

The building was so cold and I worked in the heat all day outside, so for me it was even more cold and I just about froze in there everyday. This is probably a blessing because I would probably have fallen asleep if it wasn't so cold.

In the evenings my dear sweet John and I would see each other and we were poor and hadn't known each other all that long so much of our time was spent walking through parks talking and sipping coffee at Dennys as we stared at each other through the smoke. There may have also been a considerable amount of time spent kissing and holding hands and looking all sparkle-eyed at each other. The problem was that we were staying up too late for the rest of my schedule to work well. Actually this continues to be a problem for us. We are night owls.

So by the time I hit biology everyday I was exhausted. Completely and totally and I really wanted to sleep but that building was so stinkn' cold! So I would sit and shiver and make it through. Then I would go out of the building during our break and try to just sit on the hot sidewalk, up wind of the smokers, just to get warm. I would lean up against the brick building and just enjoy the heat.

One day I finally was just over the limit tired and after sitting out there for just a minute or two and trying to close my eyes and just rest them I wondered in my little head, "Why don't I just lay down right here and take a little nap." Now, to the rest of the world this may sound odd, but to someone as tired as I was it made perfect sense. So, I laid down, right there on the sidewalk right outside of the building and I proceeded to take my nap. It would have been great, BUT people kept waking me up. They would stop and ask, "Um... mam? Are you alright?" And I would sleepily look up at them and say, "Yes, just tired... thanks." And try to go back to sleep. It wouldn't be long until someone else would come up and ask me if I was alright. I really just wanted a nap and I ended up being quite annoyed with these people all interupting my nap.

Many years later when I thought about my attempt at a nap I saw how crazy I must have looked to people, but I was so exhausted that I just didn't care.

Today, at gymnastics, I was almost that exhausted. Almost. Apparently I have decided that laying down on the sidewalk for a nap isn't that great of an idea. Probably a wise choice on my part.

not me, I certainly do not live in a children's museum

2009-01-19T11:40:00.004-06:00

Ah... the life of a stay at home, homeschooling momma is just so tough. This week I did many things and I did not do many things. MCKmamma over at My Charming Kids hosts the blog carnival, Not Me Mondays, and I participate because, well... I can.

Basically, you lie on your blog. A lot. With lots and lots of brutal honesty! So here we go!

This last week I did NOT skip church Wednesday night. I did not skip church to clean for friends who were coming. I would never put the cleanliness of my home before my worship of God. Not me.

I also did NOT stuff an inordinate amount of junk on my desk into a file drawer beside the desk. I would never, ever do that. I always, always sort through things and file them as soon as they hit my desk... I mean... come on! Who would ever just stuff things in drawers? I never ever do that.

I did NOT feed my daughter popcorn for dinner last night. Nope. The boys went to go watch the football game at church and she and I did not just sit and watch movie and munch all night. I would never, ever do that. I suppose she did not also have soy hot dogs for dinner. And I am not a paranoid mom who still cuts all hot dogs lengthwise for my nearly 6 and nearly 8 year old kids. I would never be that paranoid and weird. Nope.

I did NOT visit the local children's museum this last week and wonder what it would take for me to basically redo my entire home in Children's museum style. I mean, really? Why would I want my kids to love their home? Why would I want swings hanging in my hall way? I would never even consider doing that. Crazy.

I do NOT have a copy of Photoshop Elements still sitting on my desk uninstalled. Nope. I would never procrastinate on something I have wanted on my computer for awhile. I would install that puppy ASAP!

Oh, and I did NOT actually pray for my children to just sleep any night this week. I mean, come on? I love singing sweet songs to my little ones regardless of how extremely exhausted and cranky I am. My house looks like pictures like this every night at bedtime. JUST like it. I never lose my cool at night and wish that I could just toss them in bed... clothes still on, not bathed, no teeth brushed, no prayers. I am a very responsible mom who would never ever consider doing that to her children. (gosh, I feel guilty just writing that!)

To check out what other people did NOT do this week, head on over to visit mycharmingkids and keep giggling on a loverly Monday.

granted reprieve

2009-01-12T21:26:00.006-06:00

Yesterday evening I was tucking my little boy into bed and praying with him. For years he has said the beginning of his bedtime prayers as, "Jesus, Jesus day. Bless Momma, bless Daddy... etc... etc. Amen."

It may sound weird but that is how he prays and always has. He has prayed this way since he could talk. Since the day that he could lisp out the name Jesus, this is how my son started his prayers. I do know generally how this happened. You see when he was young I started off many a bed time prayer with, "Dear Jesus, Thank you for today."

He merely smooshed it so it was easy for his little mouth to say. He is now seven. Yes, seven years old and still saying, "Jesus, Jesus, day." Most of the time I do not even notice it. It has simply become part of praying with the Boy.

My problem is that yesterday evening that whole thought went up in smoke when he started by saying, "Jesus, Jesus, day..." and then he stopped. He paused and then said, "Dear God..." and he finished his prayer. When that happened I squeezed my eyes shut tight in shock and surprise. I know that my seven, almost eight year old, should not still be saying, "Jesus, Jesus Day..." BUT it is such a part of him. Such a part of his littleness. Such a part of the baby I used to snuggle and scoop up with such ease. It is such a part of so very many memories of us praying together, night, after night after night.

Nights when it took patience for me to even pray with him. Nights when I would pour out my heart to God in prayers that left me in tears. Nights when I would pray for help in leading this boy in the correct way and many nights spent praying with him for Daddy to be safe in Iraq. I have spent nights praying for sweet bunnies who have died and nights spent praying for aunts and uncles in China and then years later the same aunt in a hospital just hours away. I have spent nights hearing his sweet prayers open with, "Jesus, Jesus day... " and have heard him continue on to pray for young friends suffering with leukemia, and to hear him thank God for the trees and the flowers and the bushes and the bugs. All the innocent childhood prayers for years and years were encompassed with that opening phrase.

My momma heart felt slightly torn as I knew that he was realizing that his opening for prayer wasn't "right." That there was a better way. A more acceptable way... in his young mind.

It was hard for me that night to give him a soft kiss on his still soft cheek and to just walk away from his bed. There was actually a part of me that wanted to curl right up there with him and beg him to stop growing up. That would be a weird parenting tactic, but I can't deny that the urge was there.

I felt wistful looking back in on him later that night. I made sure he was covered up well and all was well in his room and kissed his cheek again knowing that, "Jesus, Jesus day..." would probably not be heard again.

Tonight, I prayed with him and I talked with him and in the process he actually licked me right across the nose, which was disgusting and wet and just plain gross and was so very little boy like. Then we prayed and he opened the prayer with, "Jesus, Jesus day..." and never paused and never seemed to think about it twice.

I however did pause and I did think twice and I did hug him close and know that I was granted a reprieve. It will not be long I am sure but I will treasure every time I hear, "Jesus, Jesus day..."

not me, I mean really... look around!

2009-01-12T08:08:00.004-06:00

I have Not left up my Christmas Blog template simply because I am too tired to take the time to move it all around again. I do not look at my own blog in disgust because of this. Never.

Last week I did Not wait until the last minute to work on my son's Pinewood derby car. I did not want to wait for my husband to help him and I did not go ahead and cut the shape out myself. I was not worried that I would cut my fingers off and did not finally decide to use the ever helpful vice-grip in cutting out the shape of the car. I did not leave a bad cut groove on the top of the car that took way too long to sand out. I would never do that.

I also did not guide my little Tiger Cub's design theory on the car to make it more appealing. Anyone can put flames down the side of a car, but not just anyone can paint tiger stripes coming down the sides of a car and pull it off. When he won best use of color for his car design I did not smirk slightly at the fact that a 32 year old mom had just won best use of color. Nope.

I did not completely blame my husband when the car came in dead last in 4 of the 6 times it raced. I was so sweet and didn't say a word when I noticed that the axles were slightly crooked.

I have Not waited until now to send out the last of my Christmas packages. I did NOT try to make this alright by quickly printing off some pictures of the kids with the gifts from each person to make it alright. I also did not for the first time use real photo paper in my printer and become amazed at how well it printed and what a big difference it made. I am not behind on the times when it comes to this stuff. Honest.

My garage certainly does Not look like it exploded all over the floor and my dear friend who is coming to visit will certainly Not be sucked into it like a black hole never to return again. I am sorry dear friend. I will try to control the black hole before you get here, but this black hole just hates me with a passion. No kidding.

I have not just sat here writing this post when I should be making the kids breakfast. Nope. Not me. I would never put my writing, or erm... lying before the kids breakfast.

Nope.

Not.

Me.

Dia de los Reyes

2009-01-06T14:17:00.002-06:00

Happy Three Kings Day!!!

This is also known as Epiphany and is a very important holiday for many people. Our family has some fairly strong Puerto Rican roots to it for which I am so grateful and because of that we have begun incorporating some of this holiday into our family traditions.

I did find an awesome children's book on Three Kings Day at our base library and as you know that I love kid's books and I love sharing them with you all that book is The Storyteller's Candle.

There are many great books on this celebration but I do think this was my favorite! It doesn't just tell the story of Three Kings Day though, it tells some of the culture of the Puerto Ricans in New York city in the early part of the last century and how a wonderful librarian reaches out to the community. I think it resonated with me and my kids because of our love for Libraries and books and all of that good stuff.

If this isn't a celebration that you are familiar with check it out. Find a book or two or at least google it and see if this isn't something you and your family would enjoy celebrating as well.

This celebration and Epiphany have been around long before Christmas was celebrated, so if for nothing else, you should check out the wonderful and rich history behind it.

moving and grooving and reflecting

2008-12-29T21:28:00.007-06:00

Today I went on a total cleaning spree and moved furniture and vacuumed like my life depended on it. I have a love relationship with my vacuum cleaner so he and I hung out all day. We did the walls, the floors and touched up the drapes!

Then I folded all the laundry and washed all the bedding in the house.

I have still resisted the urge to take down the Christmas decorations but it is hard for me this year.

It took me a long time to get into the Christmas spirit thing and now I want all the decor gone so that it will be easier to clean and organize again.

I am resisting as long as I can for the kids. They love the Christmas stuff and I want them to enjoy it.

Oh, I had a question about my Jesse tree. One of my amazing readers had never heard of such a thing, so I will tell you a little bit about ours.

Last year I found this book at the church book store. It had directions for making a banner and then making felt and embroidered ornaments to hang on it. The idea is that you do a Bible reading for each day tracing the story of Christ through the entire Bible and you hang an ornament that helps to symbolize that story each day.

Well, not to disapoint you all, but I don't think I could embroider all of those ornaments in a year's time. That just isn't a skill I have learned yet. So, I pulled out something that I did know how to do and that is clay. I made all the ornaments, with my kids, out of polymer clay. We baked them in the oven and we started doing our readings.

Last year when I started this my kids were young. They were 4 and 6 and well, they couldn't sit through all the scripture readings that they had laid out for us in this book, so I would use the stories from the Children's Bibles that we have around and sometimes I would read portions of the actual Bible story and sometimes I would read portions and paraphrase it all so the kids would get it better. It worked out great!

These are a few pictures of our ornaments on our Jesse Tree. You can spot a burning coal in tongs as in Isaiah, a scroll as in the scroll of Caesar calling for the census, the fish as in Jonah and the Great Fish, the ram from Abraham and Issac, the Rainbow from Noah's ark, the tree in The Garden.

You may spot others as you look at the pictures. The entire collage can be clicked on to enlarge it.

This has been a wonderful way for us to reflect daily on the wonder of the season. It has made our Christmas season much more meaningful.

I have more to post concerning Christmas but that will be saved for another post.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T00:58:00.002-06:00

I have so many posts started and I just need the time to finish them up and wind up my thoughts into some conclusive point. It hasn't happened yet, but it is bound to happen. Right? I certainly hope so. The problem occurs when I get a thought in the middle of the day and I sit down to write, then I have to hop up to take cookies out of the oven. Then I have to put tea on, then I have to pour some lemon zinger tea for some small people to have with a fresh baked cookie. Then I have to get up to clean up the lemon zinger from the floor because the said little people were giggling too hard at silly jokes and knocked the tea all over the floor. Ah the giggles... I could do without the tea on the floor, but I certainly can't deal without the giggles.

That in a nut shell is why I start MANY blog posts and often do not finish them. Of course, the scenario often changes but it is still so much the same.

I finally have all the presents under the tree and I have the stockings stuffed and I have the last Jesse tree ornament ready and waiting with the Bible open and I have to lay out my clothes and wake early to celebrate the day our Savior came here. The day he lowered himself to walk with us.

What a moment.

What an incredible point in time when we celebrate this absolutely amazing point in the life history of our world.

To you, to yours, to all of us here to celebrate on this small blue planet.

Merry Christmas, may it be your best yet.

one sunday in november

2008-12-19T19:02:00.004-06:00

One Sunday in November I took a day's worth of pictures. I didn't plan anything special this day, it just sorta happened. It was a busy day looking back on it, but I have a feeling that everyday would seem busy if I actually took pictures and documented everything we do. I didn't start taking pictures until mid-morning, so I will describe that morning until that point.

I awoke to The Girl playing multiple instruments on my bedroom floor. We are talking drums and tambourines and singing... it was great. Really. We did breakfast, which I think was pancakes and then we settled in to cleaning up the house and living the standard Sunday morning. We attend church on Saturday night so we do not have the typical Sunday morning church routine.

As I was cleaning the kitchen, the kids started pulling out projects and things to do.

The Boy pulled out a kit to make window clings and decided on a turtle. First he needed to outline it all in black and wait a few hours and then color it all in.

On the other end of the table, The Girl started this project. These little guys are like packing peanuts and are actually just like the biodegradable ones that some companies use. They sell these at expensive kid stores for crafts. I got mine for free from someone who was getting rid of their stash. You simply wet them slightly and they stick together. She was making a wall here.

This is the caterpillar that The Boy made.

After a bit the Aquadoodle was pulled out. I love this thing! Art with painless water filled markers! Who ever thought this up deserves a gold medal. We practice spelling words on this too, but that is another post.

Back to the kitchen and a bit later, this is the outline done on the turtle. It is now drying.

In the meantime, I am checking out this magazine. Look at those cookies! Yum! I love the detail of that one with the snowman and the boy and I actually got on ebay and checked out the molds that are used to make cookies like that. I was just so impressed with the look of it.

Yet another item was pulled out of the laundry room. This is another favorite. I found this toy at a yard sale on base at our last station. It is from Germany and that becomes obvious as you look at what this toy does. You get to use a little hammer and real tacks. You see in Germany they can sell fun toys like these because people are not as sue happy there. They know that if a kid swallows a tack that they as a parent are to fault, not the company for making a toy. My kids love this and I think I paid a dollar for it. Great fun!!!

This is the overall look of the table as all of this was going on at virtually the same time. My table nearly always looks like this though.

I tell people we just have the privilege of eating in a classroom.

The finished hammering project. Nice standard little picture there... now we can all collectively sigh at the happy little domestic scene.

Time for music!!! Singing and making up songs about virtually nothing! Can it get any better?

The instruments were put away and they collaborated forces to build a fort to fight the bad Tigers. No kidding.

The cushions are off my sofa again.

They made arrows and spears out of K'nex. They had to fight off the bad guys from their fort. Guess who had the privilege of playing the bad tiger? Yup... that would be me! See what getting half your college education in Drama gets you?!

After some grand battles we stopped for lunch. That consisted of amazing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yum. We had a few other things with that but I can't really remember what right now. Probably some clementine oranges. We love those guys!

After lunch the turtle was finished and it currently resides on the window of The Boy's bedroom.
The colored portions become more clear as they dry and look like a sun catcher type thing. It will stick right on the glass until the sun will slowly over the time of about a year disintegrate the material and you get to scrape it off the glass with a razor.

I checked on the bedrooms and what was going on up there. It looks like the dollhouse people are having a picnic. Notice the composed dad and the family dog. Now, look at the mom's wild and disheveled hair. Should I be fixing my hair more often?! What is she trying to tell me?!

The kids are playing here having great fun in the tree house and enjoying the picnic.

Ah, now next door in The Boy's room we have the K'nex mess. This mess shows up way too often around here. He loves these things though. They can be so many different things and he does use them to build things with the kit instructions but he also builds tons of different things. Like arrows. Spears. Guns. Such things that are so worthy of a little boy's time.

It was right about then that we went outside and The Boys started doing this.

The girls started doing this. It was time for the garden to get winterized. Mushy pumpkins were getting buried so they could make yummy dirt to plant things in when spring hits us.

The boys continued doing a bit of this...

The girls did a bit of this...

Then it was time to get ready for kid's choir practice. I washed up the kids and got them into appropriate clothing and ran to the commissary because I forgot that it was The Girl's turn to bring in snacks for her class. We picked up some of these guys for the kids. They are safe. No milk, no peanuts, just issues for those with wheat allergies and she has none of that going on in her class. She has developed a dairy allergy, but that is a whole 'nother post. I have found it is just easier to bring in snacks for her myself more often then not. If I don't bring snacks then they end up trying to serve them goldfish, or ritz crackers and she can't have either of those things so then I have to run next door to the store and grab her a different snack.

I stayed to help out some in her class cause there are tons of kids and we got all the juice boxes ready. I pulled up the "wings" so that the kids could grab those and not grab the box and squirt juice everywhere. They still did squirt some juice around. God bless janitors everywhere. They need it.

I took a fuzzy picture of her class on purpose. I do not post pictures of kids on my public blog at all, but I wanted you to get the overall impression of her class. Lots of kids, lots of fun. She is the one in the red dress on the right side of the picture.

The Boy's class was practicing for the musical they did for Christmas. Another fuzzy picture for you to enjoy. He was up there on the left side somewhere. I made this one too fuzzy for me to even tell where he was exactly.

For dinner we had tortilla soup. I made up those little yummy tortilla strips in the skillet too. Yum. I did take a picture of the soup, but the lighting was not working for me, so I will subject you to my fuzzy kid pictures but not to bad lighting pictures. I have my standards.

Yummy ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery. It is a tradition. We do not always go out for ice cream, more often then not we have sorbet here at home, but we always do Sundaes on Sundays. It is something that we picked up on from some of my dearest friends at our last duty station.

The Boy broke the norm and had mint ice cream. He ALWAYS has sorbet so this was something new for him. He ate half of it then he dumped out the ice cream and ate the cone. He just isn't an ice cream lover.

That was our day. I am sure that somethings were left out, like how I fell over once the kids were in bed, but you get the gist of it. I will have to do this again sometime in the future as well. It was fun to see our day from later looking back. It made me realize how much we actually do in a given day and most of our time was spent at home just messing around.

I hope you have an amazing weekend and time with your family as we prepare to celebrate this amazing season!

advocate for compassion

2008-12-18T11:25:00.004-06:00

I had my Compassion International interview recently. I think I mentioned some of this back in my post about Compassion Bloggers. I am in the process of becoming a Compassion Advocate. This is a purely volunteer position and I will be a voice here in our area to try to get the word out about helping these children.

I had sent in all of my information to Compassion including the paperwork for my background check and was awaiting my training DVDs or something. I didn't think it would take that much for me to just tell people that they need to sponsor a child in need. I mean... really. Then I found that Compassion isn't like most places with volunteers. I received an email from a wonderful lady and then a phone call from her and she scheduled an interview for me to speak with her uninterrupted for at least 45 minutes. I gulped. That is a long time for an uninterrupted phone call in my house. I homeschool! I have kids that think they should and can have access to me at absolutely ANY time of day or night.

Thankfully it worked out fine because my sweet John had the day off work.

We talked on the phone for over an hour, she explained how the Compassion advocates work and how the training works and how we have meetings and get togethers and conferences and many other things. That made it sound really complicated and demanding but it really isn't. There is a great support network and there is awesome training and there are wonderful opportunities for ministry as well, but you set up how much you can do and you make those decisions for yourself and your family. I am hoping that our whole family can have opportunities to become involved in this ministry.

What I am impressed with is that they have all of this set up for volunteers! They will have people in place to help me with my training. Some of which is done online and some on a conference call. They do not want volunteers telling people wrong information because we are the ones on the ground here and in many ways we are the face of Compassion here where we are. That makes so much sense.

I am looking forward to my training. To learning more about this company and to being able to help more children find someone to help them.

My family has been blessed beyond measure already through Compassion. It is amazing how blessed you can be while blessing others isn't it?!

The kids and I wondered in the past what the world would be like if everyone in our country stepped out and sponsored just one child with Compassion. Just ONE! What would the world look like? How many lives would be literally saved from hunger?

I will keep you updated on this training of mine and what it entails. I decided to go ahead and post this information on my blog because maybe some of you would consider becoming an advocate as well. Maybe once you see what it is like through my eyes you will be encouraged.

In the meantime, there are waiting children. Even though my training isn't done, I can help you find a child to sponsor. Please let me know if you are ready to reach out to a child in need.

until they found a little house covered in candy...

2008-12-17T22:49:00.008-06:00

There is nothing like Neccos for the roofing of gingerbread houses. I wonder if even the witch in Hansel and Gretel used Necco wafers?

The Boy made this little wreath for the back of the house. I thought it turned out quite well done.

I don't know that I would have been able to resist the sight of the sun shining through gumdrops either. The witch would have had me too!

The Boy working fervently on gluing on as much candy as possible. Can there ever be enough glued on?

Somehow I doubt the witches table was as messy as mine, but she was getting ready to eat kids, not letting kids consume copious amounts of sugar.

The Girl's finished house.

The Boy's finished house.

We did use a basic Wilton house kit. I don't really like to admit that, it is sorta like using a mix to make cookies. The deal is, I have decided that I will use the box because then I will have time to get it done. If I had to make the dough and bake it and cut it just right I am not sure we would have made the houses at all and I am so glad that we did make the houses. I will also add that I knew that Wilton put a pathetic amount of candy in the box and I bought plenty of my own to finish them off. The box didn't contain Neccos for example and I was set on having Neccos.

I did help with the roofs but they did them... and I did give suggestions on a few things, but they created. I did teach them how to make the icicles hang on the side of the roof, but those weren't really all that exciting for the kids to make. That took too much patience for them.

Maybe someday I will take the time to make my very own gingerbread house and will make it beautiful and exactly how I want it. Sometimes it is hard for me to not say a word as they make their own house the way they want their own house to be. Sometimes it is hard, but I am always so grateful when I keep my mouth shut. They come up with amazing things on their own that way. For example, I love the way The Girl put the little candy balls all over the roof. She loved playing with them and dropping them all over the floor and I loved the way they ended up looking.

The Boy created that sweet wreath and lined the edges of his area with those gum drops and I love the way that turned out.

The Girl said that so far this was her favorite part of the Christmas Season. That made it worth my keeping my mouth shut and made it worth the huge mess that was my kitchen and made it worth the tons of sugar I let them inhale.

gingerbread jealousy

2008-12-15T18:33:00.002-06:00

So, I am about to sit down with my kids and make gingerbread houses and I have a problem. I want to make my own. I only bought enough for the two of them. I really am having issues here! I want to do my very own sweet perfect gingerbread house!

I will post pictures later of the finished houses, and maybe someday I will take the time to make my own masterpiece. In the meantime, you can watch this video of what my masterpeice would look like. No... really... it would. I have Neccos!

be merry

2008-12-14T11:56:00.000-06:00

I hope that this season allows for much walking in winter with those you love.

These are some of mine that I love so very much and I love walking with them in winter and frankly during any other time.

i wanna be a widow

2008-12-09T09:38:00.005-06:00

My daughter wants to be a widow.

She came into my room one morning not long ago and announced her decision. I smiled slightly and asked, "Do you know what a widow is?"

"No."

"Well, let me know you. A widow is a woman who was married and her husband has died."

"Oh.... Yup, that is what I want to be. A widow."

I had to giggle. My daughter wants to get married and have her husband die?!

Fast forward to today when she was playing with her Mr. Potato Head toy and she made a pretty potato and announced, "This is a widow."

Now, I am not sure what she is thinking exactly with these widow things. I think part of it is from the Bible stories we read about the widows in the Bible. She knows the stories of Elijah and the Widow and she knows the story of the widow and her offering in the temple. I can only suppose that these are influencing her remarks. Perhaps they are drawn as pretty ladies in the book? I have no idea. Perhaps she remembers how God commands us to care for the widows and the orphans and she wants cared for?

In the meantime, while other little girls dream of having weddings with their pretty things, my daughter dreams of her husband dying and her being alone! YIKES!

freebie friday: christmas music

2008-12-05T21:42:00.005-06:00

So, this is my second weekly Freebie Friday. I am impressed that I managed to do this two weeks in a row, so I do not make promises that I will find a freebie every Friday, BUT I will try.

This is coming from someone who routinely shows up late to everything, so please do not get incredibly miffed with me if I miss a Friday or two... or three.

BUT this weeks Freebie Friday is a pretty neat one for this season.

It is free, down-loadable, LEGAL Christmas music, so grab your MP3 players head on over to Feels Like Christmas and get DLing people!

Now start rocking around the Christmas tree rejoicing over your free fun this Friday!

brought to you by the united states air force

2008-12-04T23:12:00.004-06:00

John and I do not have TV channels to speak of. We sorta get in PBS and once in a while some great snow, but that is about it. We do watch movies and what not but we fulfill our TV show desires on hulu. Now, if you haven't heard of hulu then you should go check it out and see what you can watch for free. No cable bill here!

Tonight we watched the new episode of Chuck. We really enjoy Chuck... and we often will catch The Office and 30 Rock, or whatever else we decide to waste time on.

Hulu has minimal commercials during the show and they are always just one sponsor per show. Tonight, that sponsor was the United States Air Force and they had about four spots or so interspersed through the show.

It was just very amusing to us because as the show started it said, "This show is brought to you by the United States Air Force." Since I still get a kick out of the fact that John is in the military (don't ask it is a complicated and weird part of me) I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He laughed and replied, "We should have that announcement on everything here."

Can't you just see it? I open my microwave, bought with money from my husband's paycheck, and the microwave says, "Brought to you from the United States Air Force."

The thought of this made me laugh every time an AF commercial came on. I can see everything in my house covered with tags labeling how we got everything we own.

The military is a different world and they do tend to own you. Once I was very much awake and it was quite late and John was trying to go to sleep, but I really needed to get all my words out for the day and I kept talking to him (I am sure those of you that know me are shocked with this information). And finally he whined at me, "This is abuse of government property." I laughed so hard that I about fell off the bed.

The problem is that this is so true. We are a home where all the income comes from the military. He is their property and all we have should say as you use it, "Brought to you by the United States Air Force."

Every now and then I have to remind the kids that Daddy has to work. Frankly, they would rather he be home everyday to play with them. I have to tell them that Daddy works so we can have a nice warm home and food for them to eat and all those things. Every now and then I need to remind myself and my family that the Air Force doesn't own all we have. Sure, they own this house and they sorta own my husband in some ways, but they do not really own any of it.

All of this belongs to God. Every stick. Every penny. Every blanket. Every bear. Every hand woven mohair blanket. It is all His. We are just borrowing it all.

So, what would be even more interesting is if everything in this house had labels on it saying, "Brought to you by God."

If my little one walked in for breakfast with a night gown, embroidered on the front, "Brought to you by God." Would I reconsider ever getting snippy with her? Would I hug her tighter if I were reminded of this constantly? Would children anywhere be abused? Neglected? Forgotten?

What a different place we would live in if things had that label everywhere we went.

get the lead outta yer...

2008-12-03T22:26:00.006-06:00

Toys. Yup, Lead in toys, we have all heard about it. Many of us have sent toys in to be replaced... I know I did. I remember being SO mad that toys that my son had played with everyday for three years, toys that were quite pricey had lead on them.

Actually his favorite engine had lead on it. The paint was flaking off of this engine because it was so well loved but what do you do? Whinging about it fixes nothing so you move on and pray a little harder for your kids.

Tonight this article caught my eye on CNN.

After reading this article and cringing, I went to the site they referenced in the article and found out some very interesting things.

So, on this site, you can look up specific toys, you can look up the worst toys and you can look up the best toys and you can spend your time with your chin hitting the key board in shock.

Now... is this accurate? Who knows. I certainly don't and there isn't tons I can do about it. I suppose I can run out and buy a lead testing kit to test my toys myself for lead, but what about Mercury? Chlorine? Arsenic?

This toy has high levels of Mercury in it according to Healthy Toys.org and though I do not have this toy I have considered purchasing this toy before.

On the site it does contain this:

IMPORTANT NOTE

The information on HealthyToys.org is meant to provide general information to the public on whether or not certain chemicals were detected in tested children's products. HealthyToys.org did NOT conduct studies to determine if the chemicals of concern will migrate or come out of the product, causing a direct exposure. Therefore, HealthyToys.org can not determine whether the presence of these chemicals in a product results in human exposure, nor can HealthyToys.org estimate the health risk posed by any product. Studies intended to examine whether or not chemicals of concern do come out of products under various conditions can be done. Some manufacturers report having done studies of this kind. Please contact manufacturers directly if you are interested in that information.

The test results shown on the site apply only to the specific toys tested. Earlier or later versions of the same toys may contain different chemical formulations.

So, that makes me feel barely, slightly better.

This holiday, I plan on giving my kids twigs grown in my organic garden and some sweet mohair blankets spun and woven myself from the goats I personally sheared out on the farm. No really... they will love these gifts I am sure.

This summer past we built a sandbox for the kids in the backyard and I built it out of the most basic pine boards I could find. The guy at the lumber yard tried telling me that I needed to use pressure treated lumber and I told him he was crazy because of the levels of arsenic in it. He told me that my sandbox would only last a couple of years. I then informed him that we didn't really plan to be in this area that long anyways because of this whole military thing and that if I really needed to, I would willingly rebuild my sandbox in a few years.

In a later conversation with my dad he asked me what I used to build the sandbox and seemed quite pleased when I told him. He then apologized for using Pressure Treated lumber on our outside gym and on the sandbox we had growing up. I was more then willing to forgive him; he made the best choices he could for his kids at the time he made them.

As parents we can only make decisions on the best information we have at the time. We should not be paranoid and panicky, but we should be cautious and wary.

I think that is the best advice I can give on this.

advent conspiracy

2008-11-30T10:47:00.002-06:00

It is that time.

Conspire with me.

bear returns

2008-11-24T22:21:00.005-06:00

Continued from: Simply Bear

The Momma checked her email and checked her email again and again to track the precious box that was being shipped across the country. Finally, the tracking site said that the package was delivered.

The Momma eagerly walked down to the mailbox and unlocked the small door. The box sat there in all it's freezing splendor. It was shoebox size and the Momma instantly imagined the two brother bears tumbling about inside together. The package was light and she quickly carried the box back down the street.

At home she sequestered herself in her bedroom and locked the door. She quickly opened the box and peered in. Bear was sitting right there on top. His rear end pointed up. She pulled him out and held him at arm's length to be sure it was really the sweet bear come home. She determined that it was, save that ribbon that he must have lost in his travels.

The new friend bear in the bottom of the box was sweet and soft and had a blue satin ribbon around his neck. The Momma reflected with a smile that he must have adopted another brother for the family.

When she thought of keeping this bear from The Girl all the way until Christmas, she felt like a idiot and so she decided to let The Girl have Bear. But how? The Momma straightened the bed and carefully placed both bears back in the box the way they had traveled.

She skipped down the stairs and found The Girl painting at the kitchen table, "Come on upstairs, I have something that you need to see!" Momma also motioned for the brother to follow.

The kidlets, with excited faces, raced up the stairs and into the bedroom with the box.

The Momma directed the Little One to the box, "There is something in this box that I think you should see." The Girl looked up at her Momma puzzled and the Momma's heart swelled just a wee bit. The Little One started opening the box as she said, "What is it? OH! BEAR!" She pulled the floppy bear out and instantly hugged him to her chest. After a moment she pulled him off of herself and held him at arms length and looked at him hard. She studied his fur and his face and her brow wrinkled up when she noticed the missing bow.

Momma interceded, "He must have lost his bow in his travels. He was gone so long, who knows what happened to his bow." The Girl tucked Bear under her arm in such a sweet familiar way and she looked in the box again. She gasped slightly and reached in to pull out the second bear. "But Momma, where did this bear come from?!"

"Oh, I think Bear decided that he needed a brother, so I think he adopted him." The kids were later known to argue over where the brother was adopted from, they couldn't decide whether he was from China, or from Asia.

Momma continued on, "Perhaps since Bear needed a brother, perhaps your brother could be the new owner of this bear." The Girl instantaneously agreed and handed her brother the new bear.

The first thing she did was take Bear down to the Book Nook and read him a story while he was snuggled on her lap. The Momma watched this take place and tears welled up in her eyes. The sweetness, the specialness of the Book Nook had just grown by another ten fold. Many times what children are really trying to say comes out so much more profoundly in what they do.

After the Book Nook, the Girl decided that Bear needed a new ribbon and that he needed some clothes. Some pajamas perhaps? The Momma promised to sew some up soon.

The rest of the day and the next couple of days Bear could be found snuggled up very close to The Girl at all times. He was once again the constant playmate for the Little One.

The brother bear became known as Carmel because of his Carmel color and he soon had a fast wrestling friend in The Boy.

The first night that the bears were both home, the Momma went and checked on her children as she does every night and she found both of them hugging the bears so close, so snuggly and tight, the way bears are meant to be held and snuggled.

For the next several days Bear was constantly attached to the girl, whether playing or eating or doing school Bear was there with her. He was christened with soy milk on his head from breakfast and later smelled like Labrador drool from the cleaning he got from the dog.

One night though, after the Momma had taught Cub Scouts and drove home with the Boy, she found the house in a mild panic. Bear was missing again. "Was he taken anywhere today? Did he go into any stores? Where was he last?" The sweet Girl was concerned, but not upset. She was optimistic, but slightly worried. She couldn't remember if she had taken him into the store. She thought the last place that she had him was inside the tent she had made in the living room. The house was searched from one end to the other. Blankets were shook out, beds were peered behind. Sofas were searched under, laundry baskets were ransacked.

No Bear could be found.

Finally, after much thought and concern, The Momma decided to check the back yard. Even though the weather was cold The Momma often would send her children out to run and play and imagine and she thought she vaguely remembered Bear going out to play as well. She decided to do a quick scan of the yard. She walked towards the play house and peered in. An empty doll stroller stared back at her. She looked up in the fort and nothing but a freezing spider caught her glance. She walked past the empty swing blowing in the breeze and she peeked in to the wagon and saw a small fuzzy brown shape tumbled in the bottom.

The Momma pulled the cold bear up to her and hugged him close and breathed in the sweet smell of much playing. She carried him up to a restless Little One who quickly pulled bear to close to her under the covers to warm him up. Her smile could have lit up the dark room. Bear grinned as he was slowly lulled to sleep by the steady breathing of a warm cozy companion.

Ah, the adventures that bears have.

not me

2008-11-24T08:40:00.007-06:00

Just participating in Not Me Monday here folks. I will tell you it has been an interesting day already.

I did NOT forget to brush my teeth last night upon going to bed, and previous to that I did NOT have chips and salsa. This morning I did NOT wake up to the sound of the trash truck outside my window and I did NOT jump out of bed toss on my husbands huge-on-me green fleece and some slip on shoes and run out waving to the trash man who was working now on the other side of the street. He did not look at me disgustedly as I grabbed my trashcan and run across the street. He did think I was a nut case and he did ignore the fact that I was not an apparition, an imagining of his poor crazy dreams.

I did Not run back inside hoping that my neighbors did not see me but knowing that at least one did as he drove to work.

After that, I did not get quite snippy with my children as they both seemed intent on eating but not on helping me get food on the table for them. Instead of helping me get things ready, they did not just slink into the livingroom into my praised book nook and I did NOT want to scream and take all the books away. I do not get really weird before my morning coffee. I Don't. Really. Stop looking at me that way.

I did not then just sit down and decide to do a Not Me post so that I could vent and drink my coffee and have a nice normal day. Nope. NOT ME! Cause I am always pleasant and sweet, I never greet a trash man in my pajamas, with horrid ate-salsa-the-night before breath and I NEVER get snippy with my kids.

I do NOT want to crawl back into my warm bed and pretend I didn't wake up to a dark overcast trash day morning.

To read more insane Not Me Monday posts, click on the Not Me box at the top of the post!

(Post on Bear coming up soon!)

widgets

2008-11-23T21:22:00.007-06:00

~~~Update~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, I figured out how to do it, cause I am really smart and I know how to use Google. See how special I am!

So, these are the instructions for changing your template without losing your widgets.

Does anyone else think that "widgets" almost sounds like a naughty word? Please tell me I am not the only one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, blogland, I have a dilemma. I really enjoy messing around with my template and changing it and I was all set to do so, and hit save and guess what? It informed me that I would lose all my widgets, even ones I thought I wouldn't. Those of you who are my Follow Me space? It said I would lose that.

Now, I really thought I would only lose those widgets from outside of Blogger, my widget from Compassion and my widget from the little tracker thingie that I can't remember the name of right now. BUT that isn't true. I will lose even the followers that I have now and so, I didn't change my template. There has to be a way to do it.

Can anyone tell me how? Do any of you know?

Please help me... I really wanted to put up a fun Christmas template.

freebie friday: jelly telly

2008-11-21T16:29:00.016-06:00

So, some of you know who Phil Vischer is and if you don't, then you know what he is most famous for. Veggie Tales. If you don't know what Veggie Tales are then you need to stop right now, and get out of your mom's basement and come into the light and have a little chat with me.

About two years ago Phil Vischer started a new company, since he no longer owns Big Idea (and therefore does not own Veggie Tales) and this new company is called Jelly Fish. There is an interesting reason for that, which once again, I am not discussing today. Hehe... just to keep you guessing.

Now, if you want to hear Phil's take on Jelly Telly this is it. He speaks better for himself and his new ministry then I ever could here, so I will let him take the mic for the moment, while I go chase down crazy children of mine.

Alright, so now you have an idea of what Jelly Telly is. If you want more information go check out their site. You can sign up the first month for free and check it all out. My kids really enjoy it. I do find that portions of it feel contrived and as of yet they are not up to the standards that Veggie Tales were BUT... if you look back at the beginning Veggie Tales you will see how far a dedicated creative Christian ministry can come. The important part? My kids like it.

I am not getting anything from them for talking about it here. I just wanted to pass on this neat info! So, go on and check it out!

bloggy bluggy give aways

2008-11-20T17:38:00.004-06:00

I have this problem. I keep entering blog giveaways and I never, ever win anything. I also think it is pathetic that I keep trying, cause well, some of them have thousands and thousands of entries, and yet, I put my comment on there and hope for the best. THEN the saddest part?! I am actually slightly disappointed when I do not win anything.

I think that above paragraph could make me certifiably weird. I mean really.

So, once again, here I am. Entering a Blog give away. This one requires me to post about it here on my blog and there are very few things that I would do this for. I am not even sure that I would do it for a Kitchenaid Mixer... and I did recently hope and hope I would win one of those and of course I did not. Nope. This blog give away is for something that I hold even more dear... Don't giggle... I am sure that you wouldn't realize this in a million years... The give away is for...

BOOKS!!! She is giving away books.

So, if you like books, and if you have been reading here for long you will know that I have an obsessive personality problem with books, then head on over to Owlhaven and check out what she is giving away.

She is my hero and she doesn't even know it.

my first tag! should I cry or cheer?

2008-11-18T21:08:00.005-06:00

So, I have been tagged and I decided to go ahead and take the plunge! My wonderful friend M at Faith, Hope and Love tagged me. The process was rather amusing to me, as I had watched this tag float around a few blogs I read and finally it came to rest here on me. I really thought I had dodged the bullet, but the bullet has come home to rest.

The Rules: In order to accept this Bloggy Award/Tag, you must do the following.....

Write a post showing it, together with the name and link of who has given it to you.
Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in their content or design.
Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Honest Weblog’.
List [if you can and/or dare] at least ten honest things about yourself. And then, pass it on.

10 Honest Things About Me! (does it get more egocentric than this?)

1.I love the smell of babies. I think that the smell is second only to the smell of coffee. No, really, I don't know anything better then the smell of babies. Actually, I don't think there is anything better then that baby smell. I will be down visiting my friend again soon and I will be frantically sniffing that baby every chance I get. My friend will have to beat me off with a wet burp rag.

2. I am pretty good at many things, but I don't feel that I am VERY good at too many things. I feel that while I can do art and I can do a bit of writing and I can do a bit of speech stuff and I can do a bit of decorating and a bit of gardening, I don't feel that I have any one area that I am stellar in. I am not complaining... I just feel like I am good at many things, but not amazing at any of them. I am content with this.

Isn't he a cutie!!!

3. I love my husband more then I probably should. He is my rock and I stand amazed by him everyday. He is strong and patient and loving and kind. He has a very common sense outlook on life and he sees things for what they are. He is able to be to the kids what I cannot be. He relates to them in ways that I cannot. One of my favorite things is watching him play with the kids and watching him read to them or watching them and their love for their daddy. He balances me and I do need that. I can be very artistic and spontaneous and flighty and forgetful and he is able to bring balance to my force... sorta like Anakin Skywalker.

HA! He would be so proud of my Star Wars reference!

4. I do not eat breakfast unless I actually cook something and I certainly do not cook breakfast everyday. I do however drink coffee. Everyday. Without fail.

5. I love my life as an Air Force wife. I am very proud of my husband and I enjoy being a military spouse.

John in Iraq.

I like talking to people about the military and what is is like being part of that culture.

The garage door decorated for a homecoming from Iraq.

I remember what is it like being civilian looking in and I understand the questions that people have. I have no problem answering them, actually I welcome them because if anything, the military needs more people to understand what is going on now in our little culture bubble. We need people to understand how to help military families as our spouses are deployed again and again.

You see my kitty keeps trying to grab me in this picture. She likes me too!

6. I like animals a lot. If I had my way I would have a small zoo here. Fortunately, like my earlier post stated, John keeps me in check. He allows me to have the one beautiful puppy and the one sweet kitty and the one boring sucker fish. If it were up to me, I would have another 4 or 5 pets. Then I would start going crazy cause I can't bring balance to the force of the litter boxes and the tanks and whatnot. It would get scary people and that is why we have Anakin... er... I mean, John here.

7. I have this really weird tendency. I talk for things. Things like animals but also things like tea kettles. My tea kettle doesn't just whistle it yells. No kidding. The tea kettle will be whistling away on top of the stove and my kids will yell at me to let me know, cause obviously I cannot hear the screaming tea kettle in the room with me and I will start talking for the tea pot, "HEY! I'M HOT!!! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF! I AM HOT!!!" I will also speak for animals that are in videos or pictures or just out. I am afraid it is a sickness. I will talk for our pets. For example, the dog will be looking at me and her eyebrows are dancing and I will be saying something like, "Are they talking about going for a walk? I can't tell cause they have learned to use that code word. Maybe they are! I would love to take a walk, but then again, I would love to snuggle them. I love everything cause I am a goofy Lab and I just love life! I love my pillow and I love my dog dish and well... I love my toy! Yippie! Mommy is getting out Peanut Butter! My favorite!" Do you see how this is a disease?! The problem is when I do not feel like doing this and the kids really think I should. They ask me constantly, "Mom, what is that bird saying?" If I am tired of it I will reply, "Nothing. The bird is saying nothing." They beg. They just know that the bird is saying something SO funny in their momma's head.

"Nope, I don't hear the train coming, but I may or may not hear a herd of buffalo."

7. My husband is helping me out here, so for this one, he says that I need to put down that I talk in a very "theatrical way." He says that I sound like I am narrating a play when I talk all the time. Maybe I should ask him what that means? Does he like this? He has never mentioned it before? Does it grate on his nerves and he feels like he finally got the chance to tell me? Who knows... I am not going to risk asking him. He will just have to deal with the narrator's voice for the rest of his life, cause I do not think I can change that.

8. I love my coffee. I have teased you all here in the past about me quitting my addiction, but I do not think it is going to happen anytime soon. I have even bought that Teechino stuff and I have not brewed ANY of it. It is supposed to help me break my coffee addiction and it was expensive. It is still sitting on the shelf in my kitchen. I have contemplated brewing some in the evening for a nice warm drink, but I haven't even thought seriously about brewing it in the morning. That is crazy! I stumble into the kitchen and start my coffee making and I have never contemplated brewing Teechino for my morning brew because at that point my body needs only one thing. Caffeine. My body needs it bad. I know my whole house will be happier if I just have my caffeine, SO I just have my caffeine. Ah well. Anyone want a full bag of Teechino?

9. I am Obsessive about things. I am not OCD... I am just obsessive about things. When I get interested in something, I get REALLY interested in something. When I want start learning about something new, I mull it over in my head constantly. I dream about it, I watch information on it. I read about it. I check out books from the Library on it. My friends have to listen to me talk about it constantly. I am sure it is a chore for them, but they must be good friends cause they are still around. My poor friend Kristen has seen me through many of these obsessive times with me. I am sure she was ready to pull her hair out during the WoW faze. I am sorry Kristen. What can I say? My husband was deployed?! I don't know. I am hanging my head in shame. Honest.

K10 and K26 checking out a brand new egg!

When I was going through a Bald Eagle Obsessive time, we were watching the Bald Eagle web cams and reading up on Eagles and we went on a field trip to a Birds of Prey sanctuary and one morning My Girl came in to ask me a question when I was stil mostly asleep. She asked, "Momma, who are Doodle's parents?" I replied in my sleepy stupor, "K10 and K26 of course." Then I stopped and paused and woke up slightly and said, "No, they aren't. K10 and K26 are EAGLES and Doodles is a cat. We don't know Doodles parents." My daughter went away confused. Poor girl.

10. Sometimes I take really, really random pictures.

It is sorta scary,

but you never know when you are going to get a really great shot.

Right? You just never know.

Now, I am supposed to tag 7 people. Are you worried? Oh, come on, this is fun!

Anyone and everyone who reads this blog is tagged. That should be about seven! hehe... Now, all of you, go out and type up ten true things and hit publish on your blog. If you don't have a blog, make one. If nothing else, it is therapeutic and a great way to waste time on the computer!

not me!!!! my house is always sparkling!

2008-11-17T11:54:00.005-06:00

I never, ever leave toys out on the livingroom floor from one day to the next. I ALWAYS pick them up every night. I did NOT leave these out last night.

My post last week made one of my dear friends question my book nook practices and she was floored that my book nook always looks perfect. The books are always lined up nicely on the shelf. They are NEVER EVER out of place.

I would never, ever polish a book shelf and carefully line up the books and carefully adjust the lighting in the room to get great pictures for a blog post. Nope never.

This is obviously NOT MY Book Nook.

We never leave books on the floor, or on top of the shelves, or anywhere but where they belong.

AND speaking of that Works for Me Wednesday Post of mine. I did NOT post the wrong link initially to Shannon's blog. I did NOT post my last NOT ME monday link to it. I did not also post a second link on Mr. Linky to the correct post to my blog, then email Shannon asking her to delete the wrong one. Shannon did NOT delete the correct post, nope... then I did NOT ask her AGAIN to delete the wrong post, she did NOT delete it. Then when I posted the correct one AGAIN... she did not read my comment about the problem and without realizing it... She DID NOT delete my link... again. ALL BECAUSE I AM NOT A TOTAL AIR HEAD SOMETIMES. NOPE.

I did NOT stay up WAY too late last night searching Ebay for a bear my daughter had lost. I did NOT enlist the help of numerous people on a forum to help me. One of those blessed people did not have to listen to my screams as I did not thank her for her help in locating said bear.

I did not let my children continue to make a mess of my livingroom this morning when they should have started school work. They did not take all the cushions off my sofa again and make islands to have air fields on.

Nope, we don't live on an Air Force base.

simply bear

2008-11-17T00:41:00.008-06:00

This story starts actually four years ago with a Momma who was desperately trying to potty train a two year old boy, who was frankly not ready to potty train. You may guess that she had never had a little boy before this one and she was a bit caught up in that whole momma mess where we are judged by what our children do developmentally. This young momma promised this little boy many things if he would just go potty ON the potty. He was doing pretty good with peeing on the potty, it was that other large annoyance he was having problems with. Finally his sweet little momma promised him that she would buy him a Thomas The Tank Engine train if he would do his big job on the potty.

One unforgettable day the little boy did this! The world cheered and the sun shone and the birds twittered, (not so unlike how bloggers twitter now). The young momma instantly decided that they needed to run out immediately and purchase this train, so she quickly strapped in the little two year old boy and the little seven month old girl and she headed for the village limit. THEN she had a thought... what if the small gift store that is actually located in this minuscule town carries Thomas stuff? She pulled her car right into a front parking spot at this small store and saw the Thomas sign in the front window. She strapped the baby girl in her stroller to contain her and she led the little super excited boy into the store full of collectibles and breakable things.

They headed right around the corner to where the Thomas stuff was and the little boy set right to playing with all the trains on the table. The baby girl was getting bored so the silly, young momma picked up a nice little bear that was handy and tossed it into the stroller for the baby girl to play with while the Momma searched for the coveted train.

The train was found! The boy was thrilled but he still continued to play with the trains on the store's train table. The momma turned to check on the quiet baby girl to find her with the tag of the bear in her mouth. The Momma's eyes got big and she carefully took the bear from the little girl's grip. The tag was completely mauled and unfortunately was one of those tags that people actually care about. The small red heart shaped tags that we are all so familiar with.

The young Momma's budget was tight and she wasn't planning on buying a bear and a train, but buy it she must and buy it she did. She planned on putting the bear in the baby's Christmas stocking because the baby would never know the difference and on Christmas morning the baby didn't.

As the years passed the bear was slowly toted around more and more. He was taken out to the yard where he had the pleasure of eating sand.

He was left on the floor to be tumbled about.

He was dressed up as a knight with his friends in the Girl's room.

He was snuggled in bed until he was quite smooshed. (look right down by her feet)

He was loved and loved and he was always called Bear. Simply Bear. Nothing fancy, nothing too haughty... just Bear.

Then the dreaded day came when Bear couldn't be found. He was missing. The Momma's head spun as she tried to think of where Bear could be. She tried thinking back to where Bear could have been taken and left and she couldn't remember where Bear had been last.

The, now five year old, girl and her now seven year old, brother and the, not as young, Momma asked everywhere they frequented if Bear was lurking in the lost and found bin. The Librarians were quite excited when they thought they had found the owner of a bear they had hiding in their bin, but it turned out to be someone else's bear waiting for their own owner. The other bins? They turned up Bearless.

The girl made Missing posters for Bear. She drew his picture on them and drew on his sweet green plaid bow and his sweet fluffy fur and she cried. Tears slid down her face and the Momma looked on worried. Anytime Bear was mentioned the Girl's eyes got large and started to well up with tears.

Finally, after Bear was not turning up by asking around lost and found boxes, the Momma took to the computer and started looking for Bear. Perhaps he was hanging out on that ebay place. Perhaps someone had located a long lost twin brother of bear somewhere else.

This Momma looked and looked and asked questions and searched. Finally one night, with several of the Momma's friends also looking, a sweet helper sent a link with a picture and the Momma's eyes lit up with such joy that she nearly fell out of her desk chair! She studied the face, she studied the body and she studied the price for flying Bear home and she pushed the little Buy It Now button.

Momma is now awaiting the arrival of bear and if it is indeed the one and the only Bear, then this sweet Bear will once again grace a stocking hanging carefully waiting for a little girl to find him and give him those hugs that only a little bear-struck girl can give.

book work nook work it works

2008-11-12T13:34:00.006-06:00

My kids are addicted to books and they have been since they were incredibly young. There are lots of things that I need to improve on in my life, but my kids love of books is not one of them. Their skill in reading is another story, and if you want to read a little bit of it you can do so here.

I started reading to my kids when they were beyond little. Just days after we were out of the hospital and I was finally getting over the fog of my C-section meds, I started reading to my son. I started off with books like this and this and this.

We slowly moved on to other books and more books and more books and more books and more books.

My wonderful husband thinks I have too many books. I tell him that we just don't have enough bookcases. I have seven bookcases. Can you ever have enough?

When the kids were little though, I didn't have anywhere near this many and what I did have wasn't of the same quality. I really picked up any book I could afford and most of my books were used and most of my books are still used. I would get them at thrift shops and used book stores and places like Airman's Attic which is a free thrift shop for Junior Enlisted in the Air Force.

As I have slowly been able to afford more books, I have slowly become more and more discriminating. I have slowly passed more of the just OK books on to others at Airman's Attic and I have slowly picked up more books that are more then just OK books.

The one thing that has never changed though in my house is that we read... many, many books a day. I have read to my children for unlimited amounts of time and have yet to find their limit on my reading books to them.

The second thing that has never changed in my house is that books are always available for the kids to get to. I have had book baskets beside comfy kid sized chairs since my kids were just a year old. In the beginning the baskets were stuffed full of fun board books that they could sit and look at when they needed some quiet time. Or when momma was making dinner and couldn't read and cook at the same time, or just whenever. Often times they would be sent to the book nook to settle down. It was not even a time out and it works wonderfully as a quiet area for them.

In our old house, we called the book space with their little chairs and baskets the Library. It was really just a little corner of our living room. Here in our new home, the name has slowly morphed into "The Book Nook." The kids voluntarily head over there MANY times a day. They pull book after book off the shelf and they look at pictures and they study the details and they check it all out.

I have tried to organize it by subject matter somewhat, but that only sorta works. They love just about any kind of book out there and you will find every genre of book on these shelves. I do have the Magic School Bus books pretty much in one spot and the Early Readers pretty much in one place. I have the very early phonics readers in a separate place and the fiction and non-fiction is mixed all over the place. The picture books are down lower and the kids chapter books are up higher. We mainly read the chapter books in the evening, but we have been known to sit down and devour a nine chapter book in an afternoon. None of use wanted to stop reading... we all wanted to find out what was going to happen to Little Bo.

What works for me is having a kid's book area. This is a place that my kids can go that is theirs. When they were young they would mainly just pull books from their baskets and not the shelves as much, so I would rotate different books into their baskets. Now I do not have to use the baskets as much.

What works for me, in this spot, is having small kid size comfy chairs. My kids are about ready to grow out of these guys and I have been considering a couple of high quality comfy bean bag chairs. I do think the chairs and the comfiness is important. They will stay there longer and look through more books if they are comfortable.

I also have this crate. It is full of library books and this is where they all must go back to. Library books are not to go upstairs (this rule was instituted after I found some overdue books under a bed). This entire crate goes to the library with us once a week and then it stays right here in the Book Nook and they pull books out all through out the week.

When I find books that my kids LOVE we actually follow those authors. We check out their websites, we find out when their new books will be released and we show up at the bookstores on those days to have a snack and to read our new book.

I have had friends over and my kids have sat glued to books in the book nook the entire time. People are amazed and I am frankly thrilled! This has slowly evolved for us into such an awesome thing! I am SO grateful that it has become such an important part of our home and of our lives.

What works for me is fostoring a love of all things books!

Check out more things that work for others at Rocks in my Dryer's Works for me Wednesday!

Liberty and Justice For All!

2008-11-09T21:04:00.009-06:00

My dog is named Liberty. This is her, the sweet goofy spastic Labrador that she is. It is VERY hard for me to take pictures of her because as soon as I pull out the camera and point it in her direction she comes over to see what is going on AND she gets all excited. I was sitting on the floor when I took this one and when I laid down on the floor to get a different angle she had to come over and give me kisses, regardless of my asking her to stay. She kissed my filter on the camera lens. Wasn't that sweet?

This is the best picture that I have ever gotten of my dog. Let me see if I can find some others... you will see what I mean.

Ah yes, you see this is a perfect example. This is what I normally get. Now, I do need to tell you that this picture below was taken with my old camera. My old camera was dropped and it didn't work great, so you get to look at this fuzzy picture BUT this is what she normally does. She runs over as soon as the camera is pointed at her and she looks up at me in her sweet adoring way. This just does not make for the best pet portrait.

This is another example of the same trick she plays. This is when she was younger, she learned this trick pretty early.

This is another little thing she likes to do. She likes to simply roll over on her back and beg me to rub her tummy. She really doesn't care about my picture taking at all. It is all just about her and her tummy needs. She is just so selfish. Man.

Now, this is yet another problem I have taking pictures of Liberty. She is a very dark chocolate brown. She is nearly black and in this picture you basically just get an outline of her on the white snow. Liberty? Are you there or is that just your shadow. Liberty? Well, the shadow sure is moving around fast like her. Who knows, but look at those ears! She looks like she is trying to fly like Dumbo!

Now, the following is a wonderful portrait session done when Liberty was just a puppy. John was deployed and Libby was about seven months old. I had a two year old, a four year old, a spazador chocolate puppy, a teen cat having kittens in my garage and yes, my sweet husband was deployed. My wonderful love was playing over in the Sandbox and he requested that I send pictures of the puppy so he could see how much she had grown.

I had a very good friend of mine assist in taking pictures of the crazy puppy. I need to let you know that my friend spent most of the time cackling with laughter and snapping away. Many, many funny pictures came out of this photo session and I felt that they were very telling of my dog's personality.

Notice the grip I have on her collar. That should tell you something right there.

This is where things started to get a little crazy.

Do you see my eyeballs popping out of my head? My friend was still laughing by the way. Some friend! HA!

This next picture is when the kids came out of the door. Liberty took one look and then all Hades broke loose!

WATCH OUT! YIKES! I think she ripped my arm off in this picture. She probably only weighed about 40 lbs here, but I am telling you what, it was 40 lbs of muscle. Every last ounce.

My Liberty can still be a crazy dog. She can still go ballistic at a plastic bag blowing across the field behind our house. It could be an enemy you know. She still gets outrageously excited when people come to the house. She still LOVES, LOVES to play with kids and she still does find occasion to nearly rip my arm out of socket. She has come a long, long way though and she mainly lays around on her pillow like she is at the top of this post.

That is actually a new pillow that I picked up for her. I brought it home the other night and moved her old worn out pillow and put this one down and she was excited to see me, but she hadn't realized what I was doing. I patted her pillow and told her it was hers and she started wiggling all over and smelling it all over and then she kissed me. She wasn't going to get on that pillow until I told her it was hers and her expression and her excitement were so telling of what was going on in her head.

She is such an amazing dog and though I will never forget what a challenge it was to have a puppy with everything else going on while John was deployed, I could never ever regret having this super sweet, super dedicated, super personalitied dog.

Just look at her. She is mournfully looking at me because I am making her stay on her pillow. She desperately wants to get up and wiggle herself over here and kiss my lens. Sweet puppy, I can't imagine life without this spazzy sweet puppy.

Penguin Polls

2008-11-06T22:50:00.006-06:00

Just to name a few... things we did on November the fourth.

We saw Math Blocks and we saw how the Penguins like Math U See blocks. Penguins make math more fun too.

We voted and saw what a ballot looked like and we discovered that there was little of the fun in it no matter what their momma said. The Girl dressed up for this event and was even found to be chanting, "USA, USA, USA!" All around the house.

I was voter 204 at my polling place. It was an exciting thing for me, even though my kids just looked at me when I was done and asked, "Was that it?"

That night we did count up some of the states electoral votes and were tallying up the points for the different candidates. At every state one of my kids cheered and one was booing cause they were rooting for different parties. It made the night much fun! We did put them to bed though before the night was through. They may have loved to stay up, but we had a big day the next day.

This day does have another segment for those of you on the family blog list. I really wish I could share the other pictures here but somethings just don't work out that way.

Blogger was acting strange with these pictures tonight, so I hope they turned out.

Compassion... meets blogging!

2008-11-05T16:02:00.007-06:00

I have mentioned Compassion International on my blog here before and I have had the little compassion button on my sidebar for a while, but I haven't updated you all recently on Brayan and honestly that is not what I am doing now. Right now, I am cluing you in to something else.

Some bloggers go on trips with Compassion. They blog the journey and give people back here a blogger's eye view of the trip.

I have been reading these blogger trips lately and honestly I was reading the last Compassion blogger trip to Africa as well. I have been very impressed with what I have seen coming across these blogs. I have been impressed with Compassion enough that I am now going through an application process to become a Compassion Advocate. Which is essentially a volunteer for Compassion. I will be helping around my area to get the word out about Compassion and what they do. My application process isn't done yet, but I have already received information from them and I have filled out my background check info to send back to them.

Much of this has happened from me reading these blogs, although I was considering becoming an advocate before and I have spent much time praying about it. I felt that this was the right time and I made the plunge. I am very excited about volunteering my time in this way.

I wanted to share the link to these blogs with you. Check them out. Check out Compassion and reach out to a child in need. You will make a difference, not just for now, but forever.

There will be an update on Brayan soon, as I really do want to include all of you in the life of my sponsored child. There is this incredible connection to him that I feel that I never could have imagined. That all needs it's own post, so I will wait until I have more time to write, in the meantime, check out these blogs and think about what you can do.

vote

2008-11-04T07:53:00.006-06:00

The kids and I will be going out to vote today. They are both pulling for different candidates which makes my life interesting here. Their choices are fueled completely by looks which makes me giggle but sigh at the same time, because I fear for how many vote on appearances, on either side of that narrow purple line.

They are also slightly confused by a children's book we read. We read the book Grace for President and we all really enjoyed it. The problem is that they have been asking me questions like, "Will we go up on a stage with you to vote in front of everyone?" "Will there be games to play, like bowling when we go vote." I have since told them that really, voting for them, from their point of view will be very boring. They will get to stand in line with me and I will show them the ballot and all the choices on it. And I will vote and they will wonder why I am not on a stage in Congress letting the world know how I vote. We will be taking snacks and things to do in case this takes awhile. I do not know what things are normally like here as far as voting, but I do not think there will be games and I do not think they will ask me to represent my state on stage for the Electoral Votes of this great state.

This is my first time in a very long time to be voting in person. My previous state gave me major grief about getting my lisense renewed so I had to renew my license here and therefore I am able to vote here. I am very excited about getting out to pull that lever and vote today. I have voted absentee for years and so this voting experience for me is unique and exciting.

I will probably take my camara with me cause it is my third child. Maybe I can get some neat pictures while we are out. I can call my next post, "voting in the middle of america." Yup, that is catchy... I personally think my titles here on this blog are amazing. Notice the one for today. I know it blew you away.

So, I may post pictures later, but for now, get out and vote. Vote early and vote often, as one of my favorite people in this world says.

things you find in your house

2008-11-02T15:50:00.002-06:00

I found this guy hiding in the bookcase and asked a few kids what in the world was going on with the chick with a gi joe hat on. I will admit that the whole thing made me giggle when I found him and I wanted to know the kid story behind this one.

The Girl fessed up. Chick has his helmet on cause he is going on a bike ride. Makes sense to me too. Yup.

eagles and tigers and biologists OH MY!

2008-11-02T10:05:00.002-06:00

I do not normally post pictures of my kids on my public blog, but since they have so much on them as far as paint, I decided to go ahead.

Last blog I did post about getting these costumes done just in time. They were done, just in time and I did keep them fairly simple. The Girl has gone as a Bald Eagle, with tags on for K10 and K26, our favorite nest to watch on the web cams. K10 is the dad and K26 is the mom, and she couldn't decide which bird she wanted to be, so she had different tags on her different wings.

She only said that she wanted to be a princess once that night, when she saw a princess that she found particularly attractive. Poor girl her mom talked her into a Bald Eagle.

I made her a white hood that snaps under the chin and brown wings with a white tail attached. I made her talons to just tie on and lay over her feet. I painted her face up with white and yellow. I had wanted to get her a little beak that stays on with elastic, which would have looked neat, BUT I know it would have been uncomfortable and she wouldn't have kept it on, so really it would have just been for pictures.

The Boy was a white tiger and I basically just used a pajama pattern to make the top and bottom. I made the tail to just stick in the back of his pants and I whipped up the hat without a pattern... it was pretty simple, but The Boy didn't really like it. I think he didn't really like the way the stripes were running, but I just didn't have tons of fabric left to make choices of for the hat. Ah well... It was so easy I am tempted to make hats like these for kid Christmas presents. Overall he really liked it and has been wearing them for PJs constantly and doesn't want to change. The only thing I wish I had done was feet covers for his feet with the claw on them, but there is just so much time in a day.

I also painted up his face and he loved that. They were the only ones there with their faces painted and although the paint didn't stay on because of small eagles and tiger drinking from water fountians and then wiping their faces on their costumes, they loved the paint and the fun that it was.

My little eagle did get tired of her wings and she did take them off part way through, but she really liked it and I can see much pretend play coming from these costume.

One guy did mistake this tiger costume for a zebra costume and I was slightly miffed, BUT no one else mistook it at all. It was the way he said it though that really annoyed me and he said it that way in front of The Boy and that bugged me too. If he didn't "get" the costume fine, but don't use grown up sarcasm about my son's costume in front of my son. He loved it... except for the hat and I have a feeling he will be wearing this costume out before he out grows it.

Oh! I did go as a wildlife biologist... my costume was simple. I wore jeans and my green corduroy shirt with a name tag stuck in the pocket. On the name tag I simply wrote wildlife biologist. I figured this was pretty right on for the night as I kept up with my tiger and my bald eagle. Periodically I had to catch them and check to see what they were eating and check for contaminants in their food (candy)... heheh...

Next year I would like to keep the costumes even more simple... as I was slightly stressed over getting them done on time. I think we will go as scary unsocialized homeschoolers. ;)

RAWRRRRRR

2008-10-30T08:29:00.003-05:00

(((Please beware! This post runs rampant with randomness!!! Consider yourself forewarned, I cannot believe I am going to hit the publish button on this one.)))

So, last night I was up late.

I was up until 2am.

Why you ask? Why?

Well, you see, I made a commitment to a couple of little people. They wanted some costumes for Friday and I had to oblige.

I looked and looked for these costumes to buy but apparently they are hard to find.

My son wanted to go as an Amur Tiger. Now, a tiger costume itself isn't hard to find, but it seems that it is hard to find in his size. It SEEMS that most seven year old boys want to be other things. Things like Jedi knights and things like spiderman with blow up padding in the chest.

My boy is a bit... just a bit (slight sarcasm intended)... into tigers.

Finally I found a fabric that I liked and finally I got most of it sewn last night.

The things we do for kids. MAN.

Now... do you want to know my plans for tonight? Are you curious at all?

Tonight I get to make a BALD EAGLE COSTUME. Yes, you heard that screaming right. My lovely daughter... well, you see, she wanted to be a princess, but if anyone is getting tired of the princess thing it is me. SO, when she started talking princess, I started naming alternatives that were more interesting. Interesting being the key word. Let us just say that you cannot buy a bald eagle costume unless you are a mascot for a fairly prominent team. They are expensive and not sold in little girls size six.

Right now, though I need to run these kids and their grandma off to another field trip. I just wanted to stop in and let you know what was going on, cause I know that all five of my readers were hanging on the edge of their seats breathlessly waiting my next update on my exciting life.

Now, do not lecture me on getting these things done earlier... I KNOW... but this wouldn't make an interesting story at all if I just showed sweet pictures of costumes already made and done and pressed would it?! I didn't think so.

Please take this post with a bit of snark intended... when I am sleepy I tend to get snarky, and also I OBVIOUSLY like cleaning up spilled raw eggs that SOMEHOW got all over my kitchen floor.

All I can say this morning is in honor of tigers everywhere.

RAWR

not me... nope... no bribery in my house

2008-10-27T09:21:00.001-05:00

Last Tuesday the kids were about done in and I had to do Language Arts with them yet. One of the assignments was to make up words with U and I in them. Pretty simple, but my practical children usually see this as pure busy work, which they detest, like I do. I can see the purpose in it, but they cannot, so we forge ahead. Often, I try to make it a game so it is more fun for them. This time, that game did NOT involve these Caramel Bits. Yup. I DID NOT BRIBE them. Nope. They did NOT think it was the most amazing thing ever.

We were towards the end of the day and they had gymnastics, and the brains were starting to lack in functioning abilities. They each made up dozens of words. No kidding... it was amazing. For each word them wrote on the dry erase board they were given one caramel bit. These are tiny things, the size of a pea. They thought they were marvelous! I will not NOT tell them that I like to sneak handfuls of them! HA!

Then I did NOT start feeling bad about bribing me kids. I did NOT feel like a bad mom! AND worse, I did NOT feel like a bad homeschool mom. Why aren't my kids reading Charles Dickens?! Why aren't my kids playing the violin like a virtuoso?! Why don't my kids match their clothes and constantly smile? Why does my daughter want to wear soccer shorts everywhere instead of sweet little denim jumpers with her hair in braids?

BRIBERY! When did it NOT enter my school lessons! YIKES!

I also did NOT miss the trash man this morning and I did NOT run my garage can across the street to be able to catch him. I did NOT pray that none of my neighbors would see me do this in my pajamas.

I did NOT forget about apple butter I was making last night in the crockpot, at least my house smells great.

I did NOT take out THREE empty cat litter cartons (to the recycling)because I keep forgetting about them in my laundry room.

I did NOT just tell my daughter that we do not whine about being cold, that we do something about it and think back on a zillion times I have whined about being cold.

I did NOT take my kids and my friends kids out to the mall by myself while visiting her and I did NOT think, quite a bit about what it would be like to have four, and find myself longing to do so.

I did NOT smell a wee babies head so much that she probably doesn't have hair left on her head from me smelling it. I do NOT love that smell so much that I could become addicted.

I did NOT finish eating all of the caramels from the above bag all by myself.

I did NOT eat a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast yesterday and I will NOT have one for breakfast today.

I did NOT just ask my daughter AGAIN to go put a hoodie or something on cause she is still cold.

Head on over to My Charming Kids for more Not Me!!!

i drove home last night

2008-10-25T10:46:00.002-05:00

On the way I did stop for a potty break with the kids and also got myself a mocha from McDs... I know, kinda weird huh? Mochas at McDonalds, well I will take my coffee wherever I can get it. Anyways, as I was ordering the sweet teenager who was taking my simple order asked me if I wanted non-fat or regular milk in my mocha. My reply, "Skim please." just didn't work for her. She looked at me slightly concerned and said, "That isn't an option here, we just have non-fat and regular." She said this as she studied the keyboard on her cash register. I grinned, and holding in my laughter, told her that I would take non-fat.

In the car, as I drove down the highway, I just shook my head. Yikes!

step right up and smell the baby, that is right, genuine baby here!

2008-10-22T07:45:00.003-05:00

This morning I am embarking on a little trip to go and visit one of my very bestest of best friends. She has just this last weekend given birth to a baby. A baby! There are very few things in this world as precious as and as special as a baby. Ok. I really can't think of anything else as special and as precious. I just can't!

I have been a little stressed lately and so I am going down there to just breathe in new baby smell. You know... if you have ever been around babies what that smell is like. It seems to encompass all that is good and innocent and pure and right with this world. My kids don't smell like that anymore. My kids smell like adventure and sand and sweat and grass and dreams.

That is a very different smell.

Every now and then it is so important to remember that new baby smell. That pureness and that innocence of a new one fresh from heaven to the shores of this world.

I cannot wait to just smell that smell again! Yippie! So, you don't need to tell my friend that I am really just going down to smell her baby. I am sure she thinks that I am going down to oh... SEE the cute baby and to see her and spend time chatting with her, but we all know the truth don't we! My motives are selfish, but the baby is pure, so that makes it alright doesn't it?!

glorious autumn AND....

2008-10-17T09:19:00.006-05:00

Today we are setting out to pick pumpkins with our homeschool group. The weather is very crisp and cool and the kids are ornery. Sounds like AUTUMN!!!

Although anyone that knows me knows that summer is my time of year, who can help but revel in this amazing weather and time. Even if you prefer to swim in the heat, who can help but be in awe at the amazing color that unfolds every year at this time?

I am looking forward to sharing pictures with you soon of our foray into the pumpkin patch!

Have an awesome autumn day!

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I had to add onto this post to say that my next post will be my 100th post. Now, that is something. If you actually LOOK hard at my profile you will see that I actually started this blog in January 2007. Now... look at when my first post was. January 2008. That is right, an entire year later. That should tell you something, but I really don't want you to tell me what that might be. Lets just pretend that told you nothing, cause I don't know what that will tell you, but I am sure it isn't something I would like.

So, should I do something special for my 100th post? Should I do a dance? Get down tonight?

I have no idea, but I just noticed that my very next post was going to be post number 100 and I just thought you should know.

So what should I do?! SO much pressure!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, I lied. Sorta. The next post is not my 100th post according to the dealie on the side there. My next post will be post 81 or somthing like that. SO, I have time to plan for the 100th. My dashboard told me that I was on post 99, but that may be my total posts, including the ones that I do not publish and frankly I have quite a few of those.

You can feel free to leave me ideas for my 100 post. I am thinking a sorta list of 100 things. Like 100 ways to feed your kids dinner while daddy is TDY, or 100 things to play with in the sand, or 100 things to send to a deployed spouse, or 100 ways to skin a turkey, 100 ways my kids sneak cookies out of the kitchen... you know, things like that.

tea, yup, it works for me

2008-10-15T11:58:00.006-05:00

Yes, I am participating in my second blog carnival of the week. Don't make fun of me... I am trying this whole process out. :) Instead of the compulsive lying I did earlier this week, today I get to tell you something that works for me. So, this is what works for me!

Part of our rewards/encouragement system in our home involves magnetic plastic letters on our fridge. They can earn these letters and lose these letters for behavior on their part. The dog and cat have letters also and occasionally they lose quite a few! If a child has all of their letters on the fridge at 7pm they are rewarded with a "special treat." They get to chose the special treat, but we as parents do plenty of guiding.

The Girl had all of her letters on the fridge at 7pm and she decided that she and I would have a tea party. We had one with Graham crackers and Lemon Zinger tea. She invited Pooh and Piglet to join us and we had a delightful time. The Boy periodically would slide a card under the door that he had drawn for one of us, delighting us with pictures of flowers and the like.

We do dress up for these and I have been seen in my wedding dress more than once. The Girl puts on one of her princess costumes and tonight she added to that with a purple fleece robe. I have no idea why, but she thought that was just the thing on top of her purple princess dress. She added enough sugar to her tea for oh... 4 tea cups, but she was happy and that is really all that matters. She had a delightful time and she went to bed tired.

Ah, to put on my wedding dress every night and have tea!

This works for us. The incentive program, the incentives at the end of the day, all of it. They do pick all sorts of things, from tea parties, to baking cookies, to a special video, to a 30 time slot of playing lego starwars on the computer.

My favorite? The tea party. We use her good tea set and we act "fancy." Like Fancy Nancy! What a great connection for mother and for daughter, and really, what woman doesn't enjoy dressing up periodically and pretending?! It is a win-win situation!

That is what works for me!

not me... nope... definitely not me.

2008-10-13T12:08:00.007-05:00

So, this is my first attempt at a Not Me Monday and I have no clue what I am doing. SO, I will just do it. I think.

~ I did not just contemplate doing a Not Me Monday for the last 15 minutes.

~ I did not just struggle with the fact that I maybe celebrating my failures and somehow convincing myself that they are funny and not really bad.

~ I did not over analyze them and decide that my failures may actually help someone realize that they are not alone.

~ My kids are Not still in Pajamas playing with Pixel Blocks in the kitchen while I read blogs... at lunchtime.

~ I do Not have dishes sitting in my sink while I write a blog post. Nope.

~ I did not feed my kids popcorn and apples for dinner TWICE last week when my husband was gone.

~ I did not get snippy with my husband when he kept whining incessantly about being sick when I didn't really think he was sick and I did not feel bad when he was actually running a temperature.

~ I did not let my daughter wear a shirt with Oatmeal smeared down the front most of the day. Oh, no, she was dressed so nicely and so clean all day. Really.

~ I did not just contemplate how many lies I have told on this post.

~ I did not just think about going to confession even though I am not catholic. Didn't do it. Nope.

Funny Kid Post

2008-10-13T10:01:00.004-05:00

The Girl was dancing around the livingroom working on her ballet and John commented that it looked like she was doing Karate. The Girl told him she wasn't and I asked her if she knew what Karate was. Her response, "It is when someone tries tearing their shirt off."

Apparently this happened during the Olympics and that is what she got out of Karate.

In the case of the cubs though, they are just going to tear each others fur off.

miracles still happen

2008-10-09T22:52:00.005-05:00

We have gotten so used to people shrugging things off as coincidence and "being lucky" that we have forgotten that sometimes there really are miracles. There is no such thing as coincidence.

Two weeks ago the kids and I were driving to the zoo and we were about half way there on a busy highway in the city when there was a loud noise and I looked back to see that The Boys window had completely shattered. It had blown in all over The Boy and portions of it were still hanging in the window and continued to blow in. I slowed down and put my four ways on and I prepared to get off the highway as soon as I could. I kept asking if everyone was alright and the kids seemed shaken and disturbed by this whole thing, but there were no tears and there was no screaming or extreme fright.

I pulled off and I started cleaning the mess up so we could drive back home. There was glass everywhere. It was still partially hanging in the window and we could hear it continue to crack and make a faint music.

I cleaned off The Boys booster seat and I cleaned out the glass hanging in the window. I left the glass laying on the floor for John to clean up at home.

The booster seat had pretty major scratches on the arm rest. The Boy had been sitting covered in shards of glass. He had been wearing nothing heavier then a T-shirt. Glass had flown over as far as The Girl when the window broke.

More then likely it was a rock kicked up by a passing vehicle and these things happen.

We drove home and talked about how amazing it was and is that none of us were hurt at all. Not one scratch, The Girl started praying immediately. She thanked God for keeping us safe. She prayed such a fervent heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving that I was choking back the tears.

I am still in awe that there was not one tiny scratch on my son. I find it so hard to understand and my very human brain wants to understand. I have tried to figure out what he was doing when the window broke. Was he reading a book? Was he playing his leapster? Did one of these things shield him somehow? My brain tries to make sense of it all while my sweet little girl just offers thanks to God.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

i reward myself for doing what i should do anyways

2008-10-09T13:57:00.004-05:00

For those of you who just can't wait to hear, No, I haven't yet even started weaning myself off coffee. Just thinking about it makes me quiver. I do want to quit, but blast it, it is so hard.

Alright, now on another vein. The other day when I posted the below post/rant/vent/reflection/whatever, I had to run to the commissary twice and on one of those runs I did something that I do occasionally at the commissary. I reward myself. I reward myself for shopping with two kids and still paying attention to what I am buying and watching prices and watching ingredients and still leaving with two kids who hopefully have not pulled out all of each others hair. My reward is usually chocolate. OK... my reward is always chocolate. You forced it out of me. You are ruthless.

The other day I rewarded myself with these.

I felt that they were worthy of a picture on my blog. I cannot buy these ever again. They are rich and creamy and yummy and not so cheap. BUT... I did go to the commissary TWICE in one day, with both kids. Does that make it OK?

Just look at that yummy Chai goodness... hmm....

been thinking...

2008-10-07T20:35:00.006-05:00

About a few things. John is TDY this week and this is the first time in a long time that he has been gone for a bit.

I think he is supposed to leave for these periods of time for a few reasons.

1. The military wants him to. They own him... they get to send him to Vegas if they want him to gamble. Granted that is not what he is doing, he is just taking a boring training class in Jersey, but still.

2. It reminds me of how amazing he really is AND how much he does around this house. Just like sometimes a man needs to be left to do everything without the wife to appreciate what she does everyday, I need to be left without John to realize how very much he does here to help me.

3. It reminds me in the slightest way what I had to put up with during those last two deployments and makes me grateful he is not deployed... again.

4. It helps me have some perspective on the Single Mom. Though I still don't fully get it since I do not have to provide income for my little brood... I am all alone. I cannot run to Lowe's to pick up PVC for an art class I teach without VVVEEEEERRRRRYYYY SSSSSLLLLOOOOOWWWWWLLLLLYYYYYYY corralling my kids through there and back out and without losing one of them or accidentally shoplifting something, or accidentally tying one of them on the roof instead of the PVC. It could happen you know. They are just as unweildly. No lies there at all.

On that note, someday I will count how many times I call my daughter's name in a given day to get her back on track. My rough guesstimate is around 400. I am not kidding AT ALL. Just ask anyone that is around us... or sits through a gymnastic class watching her... or teaches her at church or Co-op... or ballet.

Alright, so you get it? I suppose I should say that yes, once again, I have woken up to the fact that John does a lot. Life alone is hard. I hate shopping ANYWHERE with kids and yes... I have grown to love the shift key again.

SO, on that note. I now have to run and cut 30 odd pieces of PVC pipe so that the kids and I can make didgeridoos tomorrow in our Art class during Co-op I should also find my kitchen table. I think it is somewhere out there under the mess we made on it today. OH! And I forgot... I need to compile the Australian Meat Pie that I am making for the Co-op potluck tomorrow. We are studying Australia. I am sure you couldn't tell.

for those of us thinking of kicking coffee to the curb...

2008-10-05T09:43:00.008-05:00

In my post below this one, I didn't mention that I am actually really contemplating kicking the coffee addiction. I do not like being addicted to anything, and I tend to have issues with addiction. Not like BAD stuff... but I seem to become addicted to things easily. Like Cadbury Mini-eggs. We have discussed these things before here.

I hate having a pounding headache because I didn't get a chance to grab coffee on my way running out of the house in the morning. That drives me nuts and makes me feel that I am not in control. Not that I am a control freak. Nope.

Ok... then there are the health aspects. Coffee really isn't healthy. It just isn't. It just tastes great.

I ran across this blog and I really liked the sounds of it and would like to try this stuff, BUT I will need to get my grubby hands on it first. We will see if I can the next time I get to Whole Foods.

Why would I try this stuff? Well, to be honest, I love the taste of coffee and I like the "special" drink factor in the morning. I like that I have a nice warm something to kick my rear into action. Of course, when I give up my Joe I will have to deal with massive headaches and a lack of kick-my-rear-into-gearness, BUT... oh... see... there is the problem. I think about missing out on that Kick my Rear Into Gear goodness and I have problems letting go of the Joe.

I will let you all know if I can give up my Joe. I like to think that I can, but you know what? It is going to be a very hard addiction for me to break.

grab a cup of joe with me

2008-10-04T15:05:00.007-05:00

So, about two weeks ago tragedy hit my house. John was putting away some groceries and he dropped a jar of peanut butter onto my coffee pot. The glass carafe broke and left me with no way to make coffee in the morning. I have had this coffee maker for about 13 years or so. It had been my grandfathers before that. I inherited it. Yes, some people may inherit things like money or jewels... hehe... I got a coffee maker. ANYWAYS, I didn't really want to just buy a whole new coffee maker. I decided that I would just go buy a new carafe, which I had done one other time. So, I headed to Target and picked up a new carafe. I brought it home.

It was too tall for my coffee maker. I would have to return it.

So, still being stubborn about my coffee maker I proceeded on. I mean, who wants to buy a new one if you can keep one out of the landfills by just buying a new carafe? I get peeved with our disposable society so I take things to extremes. You can feel free to roll your eyes at me if you feel the need.

I got on ebay and looked for a carafe to fit my coffee maker. I found one! I made an offfer on it and they countered and I got my coffee pot in the mail a few days later.

It was too short. No kidding. I now have TWO carafes that do not fit my coffee maker and I am drinking instant coffee. I mean someone can only take so much of instant coffee.

Finally, I decided that it was time to go buy a new coffee maker. My Mr. Coffee was still going strong, I had just broken one too many carafes, so I decided to just go with another Mr. Coffee. I found one with a stainless steel carafe. (I can't break it!) It was only eight cups, but that is fine because I am the only one here who drinks coffee and I can always brew more when others are over.

I took the whole thing out of the box and found these weird holes on the back of the fill tank. They are just barely above where the water fill line is. Barely. I was miffed. If I move the coffee pot with a full tank, water will easily be spilling onto the counter. UGH. I called Mr. Coffee and talked to a lady. What is up with that? I called MISTER Coffee. I suppose he is busy and has his wife answer the phone for him. She told me that they are overflow holes so you don't accidently overfill the tank which would result in overfilling your pot, which would result in coffee all over the counter.

I debated taking it back, BUT I just don't want to. I am tired of this and it is a good coffee maker and I don't usually make eight cups at a time so it will rarely be an issue to worry about.

At least I finally have nice hot coffee again.

I SOOOOO wish my coffee looked like this every morning.

I also have two extra Mr. Coffee carafes and a working coffee maker without a carafe just in case anyone needs one.

This tells me something about myself I am sure, but frankly I am not sure I want to know what it is. I am stubborn? I am weird? I am incompetent? I am just not going to think about it.

wondering

2008-09-29T14:11:00.002-05:00

Those of you who are homeschoolers out there... have you ever had one of those days, or multiple days where the kids brain seemed to just stop working and well, you wonder why in the world you are doing school at all? BUT you feel like you must persevere and DO school that day? Why do I torture myself? Oh, yes, because I don't want them to feel that they can act this way and just get out of school... Thankfully these days are few and far between.

raku

2008-09-27T21:17:00.003-05:00

Last month we attended a Japanese Festival and among many wondrous things that we were able to see and partake in this is but one of them. We were able to watch a potter fire some Raku pottery. Raku started in Japan and is a method of firing pottery. It produces a great finish to a piece, and usually one that is poisonous with lead. Do not use your raku pottery to eat from please!

I have heard quite a bit about Raku, but I have never seen it done before and I was quite interested in watching this. The kids also loved seeing this take place. They have watched their daddy fire pottery at VBS/marketplace and so they knew the process, and they have had it described as I have shown them and talked about the pottery that I have done. But this was unlike anything they had watched before.

This is a picture right after he took the kiln off the pots. They are orange hot still and just a few seconds after this shot was taken they went ahead and picked these up with long tongs. It was incredible.

Here he is with the long tongs putting the pot into a small garbage can filled with straw on the ground.

You can see the fire start in the straw because of the extreme heat in this picture.

While the pot was in the metal bin, he talked to us a little bit, but not more then about five minutes. He then pulled the pot out and put it into water. I got wide eyed cause well, when I have put really hot things into really cool things, they have really broken, but this guy knew what he was doing.

They passed the pieces around afterwards so we could all see them. The interesting thing was that I could touch them. Weird to me, considering how long we usually wait for a kiln to cool before you could touch your pots. They were beautiful and the other interesting thing is that they smell like smoke!

I really followed only the one pot with these pictures, but if you look at the first picture you will also see this pot below and this is it finished. They both turned out so well. Very interesting process. The kids loved it!

faith, hope and love

2008-09-24T23:24:00.004-05:00

Sometimes in life we are led to things and sometimes they find us. One or the other happened the other night and the following small plaques and I met up at Target. As soon as I saw them I thought of someone very specific in my life.

I suppose you could say that this friend is a great believer in these three little words. Faith, Hope and Love. That in itself would have caught my attention, because she and I have spoken about this portion of scripture and how she would even like to have a sign hanging on her wall with this Scripture on it. When I saw them though what really caught my attention was that they had the Chinese characters on them as well.

You see, this same wonderful family is awaiting their daughter from China and I have been praying for this family and hoping for them and I have faith that this family will be together and the love will abound. See! The Scripture is perfect for them. The problem is the delays right now with Chinese Adoption and so we continue to hope and pray and have faith and we continue to love on one another until this little princess of God comes here and we can love on her

So you see... I had to buy these for my friend. I even eluded that I had something for her and would give the "small gift" to her the next day. Then I checked her blog and found that she had found the exact same items on the same day I did. So I decided to write this instead and I decided that I would keep these and use them as my own reminder. A reminder to pray for this family and a reminder to hold these three things even closer to my heart.

So, my dear friend, I hope you don't mind that I am keeping your gift (yikes!) and I hope you know how much I appreciate your friendship. Thank-you for your friendship!

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

A Picture Collage on How to Get the Best Seat in the House, Courtesy of the Neighborhood Lions

2008-09-20T21:26:00.005-05:00

Hmm... this spot is kinda lumpy. I need to find a new spot.
He certainly looks comfortable. He only needs a little snuggle buddy. Hehehe...

This post continues into the next two posts. I was lazy and posted the pictures on separate posts...

2008-09-20T21:24:00.002-05:00

Yup, I will just sneak down in here and see if there is room for me. Or not. I am sure he won't mind.

Ah, yes, now, this is one comfortable Lion covered mattress. Perfect.

It may have one slight lump in it, but I think it will be fine!

I figure he will last about 3 seconds longer.

2008-09-20T21:21:00.003-05:00

What? You aren't comfortable? Hmm? Dear?

Oh, you are leaving? Tired of this spot you say?

Ahhh... there we go, the best spot.

I will admit that we all laughed quite a bit when we watched this beautiful Lion kick her dear husband out of his spot.

Amur Tigers

2008-09-20T21:08:00.000-05:00

On Thursday we went to the zoo to check out the 5 baby tigers that were born in April. This was the mom's first litter and it really isn't that common for there to be five cubs for a first litter. We are SO excited to have these five cubs nearby for us to visit. The Boy is obsessed with Tigers and he was over the moon ecstatic about the little cubs. They did not disappoint us at all. They played and rolled and pounced all over each other and their momma. Tigers are one of the few cats that really enjoy the water and we did see all five in the pool at the same time.

These Tigers are endangered and The Boy really would like to work with them and help them when he gets older. I keep trying to talk him into something closer to the United States, something more like the Bald Eagle. So far, there is no way! I am sure though that he will change his mind a dozen times or more before he is considered grown, or he could always be like his Daddy and never decide. ;)

Morning Joy

2008-09-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

There is nothing like waking up next to a nice warm snuggly cat who has curled up by your side. Nothing like it. Also nothing like walking half asleep into the laundry room to start the first load of laundry and stepping on a nice wet hair ball from said cat. Nope. Nothing like it.

Top of the morning to you all there also, hopefully without the hairballs.

One Saturday a Month

2008-09-14T10:09:00.006-05:00

Just one Saturday a month as I wake up and lay in bed trying to eek the last bit of sleep out of the night before I am forced to deal with feeding two kids and a dog and a cat and a husband, just this one Saturday a month I realize something. It is the Saturday for Gab and Nibble!!! This actually gets me out of bed quite quickly and as I hop up and do all my morning preparations, getting dressed and doing my hair and all of these things that usually get done on Saturdays MUCH MORE SLOWLY I think about what kind of coffee I will have. Ahhh... now that is something to think about when brushing your teeth!

I skip downstairs, check out what Ike did in the night and check my email and let my family know that this is the Saturday morning that they are on their own. John just grins slightly and completely understands. I drive over to the chosen location, this week it is St. Louis Bread Company, sometimes it is at more personal places that serve full omelets and other such yummy things. I walk in and feel like I was just welcomed at Cheers where everyone knows my name! Ten ladies sit around a table with their mugs of coffee and their bagels and their ready smiles and the ready chatter. We talk of homeschooling our kids and we talk about Bible Studies and we talk about our gardens and our homes and our issues with weird neighbors and our issues with strange family members.

The time passes so quickly as we sit and eat pumpkin muffins and sip coffee and tea. Laptops are pulled out and blogs are figured out and pictures are shared and tales are told. Finally someone's cell phone rings. The dad's have broken the mom solitude of the now afternoon. We all scoop up cell phones and say our good byes. We will see each other in the coming week, but it will be with kids and our conversations will be vastly different. They will be interspersed with calls to children, "Don't pick that up! Please don't touch that. What did your sister do? Can you stop crying long enough to tell me what happened? Please don't run in here."

You get the picture. This morning is almost as sacred as church and I do treasure it and can I just tell you how GOOD that pumpkin muffin tasted! MAN!

This reminds me of how important these times are for us moms. The times taken to be without children and it doesn't need to be that long. These mornings often drag onto the afternoons slightly, but they are certainly not weekend retreats!

Once again, I Thank-God for the amazing Homeschool group we have and what a stupendous blessing it has been to our family.

If Spiders Bother you Scroll on by...

2008-09-06T01:10:00.001-05:00

A month or two ago, I was stepping into the house from being in the backyard and I saw a weird looking wolf spider. I stopped and turned back and saw this amazingness. I do not know if any other spiders do this, but wolf spiders will carry their egg sack around and they will also carry their babies on them once they are born. I have no clue how she carries so many babies but she does.

In the first picture you can see that she looks, well a little lumpy and odd.

In the second picture, if you look closely, which I have so nicely cropped in tight for you, you can see her and all her babies. Look at all those little spiders! Amazing!

This is her from another angle so you can see what she looks like as a hard working momma. Someone has to take care of this crowd and she has quite the job cut out for her. You can do it little friendly spider! Go with God and catch all those nasty flies and mosquitoes!

Feel free to click on these to be further shocked by how close I got to this spider!

The Post That Was Meant to be Short

2008-09-05T23:37:00.004-05:00

I know I haven't updated in forever. What can I say. As a good friend told me once when I was struggling with a canoe in Canada, "Excuses are like feet, Anna, we all have them and they all stink." My femininity was not happy with that statement but eh, it is true.

We started school this last week and it has gone quite well. The kids seem to be getting so much more out of school and the whole process seems to be much easier. Maybe we are all just getting better at this.

I did have a moderately sad story to tell on my sweet boy. I have hesitated to discuss things like this on my blog because of my children's privacy but I do think that sometimes in NOT talking about things like this, others think that our lives are all perfect and they end up feeling alone in their struggles. So, I have decided to share a few things that I have not shared here before.

My Boy has had a slower time with reading. I honestly do not think he has true reading problems, I really do think that this area of his brain is just developing a little bit slower then other areas and for him, that is perfectly normal. The language area of his brain always developed slower. As we have been homeschooling I have felt all the standard pressures that moms feel, but in the homeschooling world, sometimes those pressures are on steroids (not that the pressures are intended, I want to make that clear). We feel that since we are doing everything one on one and we are able to customize our children's school work that they should be the most brilliant intelligent children on this earth. The fact of the matter is that not all kids are created the same. I did everything I was supposed to do with my son. I read to him from the time he came home from the hospital. I now have more children's books then anything else in this house and they are VERY well read. The problem arose when I decided that we should start Kindergarten. He was by age ready, but he was not really ready.

I bought curriculum. I watched homeschooling friends buy advanced curriculum and I quivered. I saw amazing papers by children who were homeschooling and were so advanced. I grew determined. I organized and plopped books in front of him and planned and then grew frustrated at his lack of interest. He didn't want to write his name. He didn't want to learn to write numbers. He didn't want to sound things out. He didn't want to do any of it but have me read to him. That is all he was truly comfortable with. Half way through Kindergarten I tossed half the curriculum out the window. I ditched the Math entirely. I continued to struggle through the Language Arts. I was determined that MY SON would not have problems with this. I had read to him since he was one week old. I had read TONS to him in these years of his life. He knew his letter sounds. I was sure that he would get reading. I was sure that it would all click.

The next year I bought the next level of curriculum. I now know that what I should have done was redo the previous year and not think a thing of it, but I persevered. I continued. I bought the next level of Language Arts, I bought a totally different Math. I continued reading and reading and reading. I decided that the particular Language Arts wasn't working for us and so I decided to buy Hooked on Phonics for grade one. I ordered it and opened it all up and stared in dismay. It had them already reading blends. He was no where near ready to read blends, he was not really able to read simple three letter words like hat and cat and mat. I put it back in the box and ordered the K level and wanted to cry. The K level came and the lists of letter sounds he had to do were redundant and boring for him. He was losing interest faster then I could finish a simple K level lesson. I packed that box up and put it on the shelf also. I stopped doing Language Arts. I stopped doing Phonics with him. He was burnt out. I was burnt out. His little sister was sitting down and doing all the K level language arts. It was time for a season of rest in this field.

We all took the rest. We continued with the History and Science that he loved. We continued with the Math that he worked through. We continued reading aloud to him.

A good friend of mine has a son that she still struggles with in reading and in many areas of school and she would encourage me and tell me that if you do nothing else continue to read to him. Just read, read, read. Well, thankfully the curriculum that we use is very read aloud heavy and that was working great. She tells me that even though her son still struggles with reading his vocabulary is absolutely wonderful and it is because of all the reading they did with him.

After a few weeks with no Language Arts and no Phonics at all, I started prepping the kids for this new thing I decided to call Box Work. I ordered the Language Arts from Sonlight, the company that we were doing everything else with (except Math). We had never tried their Language Arts and it was time for something new. I bought them plastic file boxes with the hinged lids. I bought them special clip boards and put their names on them. I had them decorate the file boxes and I had them decorate some little folders and told them that this is where their new work would be going. I set one up for each of them and when I ordered the curriculum I ordered two sets of the K level Language Arts consumables. I also ordered their K level readers. This worked much better. This level was easy for him and he found great success. It wasn't called phonics or language art or anything else. It was called box work and it was set up differently then anything he had done before. He did the activity sheets with little problem, but he didn't want to try to read the little books much at all. I would have him work through some of them but I didn't push it hard at all. He wasn't ready. Just like he wasn't ready to talk much at age two, he wasn't ready to read at age six. I did find some books that he loved and I have bought them all to slowly reward him with them. They are here. I will try to remember to talk about these at another time.

We finished the year weakly I felt. It was done. He wasn't reading. I was getting concerned about the fact that in classes at church and with other kids it was quickly going to become apparent that he wasn't reading. After VBS one day this last summer he let me know that he wasn't a good reader. My heart broke just a bit. I debated again whether I should have put him in the K level VBS for this reason. I hadn't done that, I had kept him in a class that I felt he would fit in well with and he did do alright, but apparently he also learned that he wasn't a good reader.

This summer, I spent my time slowly finding all of the books and Instructors Guides that I would need to do the work for the next level of school. In July I started wondering about my sanity. I started thinking seriously about redoing the whole last year of school. I do not call this holding him back and there are several reasons that I decided to do this. With the curriculum that we use and love, at the Core 3 level the readers that the kids read and the history starts to mesh. I wanted him to be able to take advantage of that and if we continued on the way we were there is no way he would be able to do that. Another reason that I started contemplating doing Core 1 again is that he loved it and he certainly would not mind one bit. I added in tons on my own as well. We would get extra videos from the library and we would get extra books from the library as well and so, I could easily continue this and we would be fine. Another reason that I started contemplating this is that The Girl was really ready to go straight to Core 1 and skip Core K. She was already reading more fluently then The Boy and if I put them both on Core 1 my life would be much simplier and they would have much more time to do other things and we would be able to share in so much more in our homeschooling.

So, after I had already bought nearly everything I would need for Core 2, I carefully packed it away and ordered the few things I would need to teach Core 1 to two children. I warned The Boy that The Girl would be doing much of school right along with us and I let him know that we were going to be redoing much of what we did before. He was perfectly fine with this. The history and Bible with this curriculum is really quite advanced and so I do not feel that I am holding back his education, actually I feel that this whole process is probably one of the most beneficial things I have done thus far in his education.

Now, the first day of school I sat with them at breakfast and I read them our Bible work and the verses and then I read them the History. Then we started with our word list for the week. These were all simple words. All the "at" words were present and both of the kids knew them all. The Girl did read them a bit easier then The Boy, but he didn't struggle with them. I left her to color in her new coloring book and I took The Boy into the living room to read a short story in his book. He refused. He sat on the sofa and refused to hold the book. He refused to point to the words with his finger. He refused to sound out one single letter on the page. He had reached the point where he honestly believed that he could not read. He felt that he was going to blow it again... once again and he refused to do that. His sweet little boy face crumpled up in a wrinkled mess as he struggled not to outright cry and I held him. I knew he could do it. The story had no new words on it then the word list. I talked him through it and tried to explain how he could do this. It was a process. Finally, I got him to agree to us taking turns reading lines. I read one line then he read one line and on we went through the short story. He did it. He faltered slightly, but he made it the entire way through and then we snuggled and cried together.

Then The Girl came into the room and The Boy left to color and she sat down and read the entire story without a glitch. I was so happy and proud of her, but it is honestly such a bittersweet moment because she is two years younger then her brother and though I am thrilled that she read that without a hitch, it does make life more interesting with my little faltering reading boy.

I never intended for this post to be so long and I have not posted on this at all ever because I really wanted to protect my little boy. I grew up with two sisters who struggled with reading. One who will always struggle with reading and I wanted to protect my little boy from everything I watched them endure. I do not think that I am opening him up to ridicule here and I do not think that I am protecting him less by sharing this, but I do think now that maybe someone can benefit from my story of growing.

I maybe six

2008-08-06T08:06:00.004-05:00

The Girl greeted me with hugs and kisses and exclamations about how special she is to God because he sent her a rainbow in her room... this morning. Then she noticed that she has gotten a little hole in her pajamas at the knee and says in awe, "I must be growing! I MAY BE NOW SIX!"

This is followed by her wanting me to plan her party... regardless of the fact that her birthday isn't for months. I had to burst another bubble... ah.. the daily disappointer job of being mom begins.

Today I taught Sunday School

2008-08-04T22:46:00.004-05:00

Today I cleaned house this morning, then I took the kids to the pool for the afternoon. While we were there some of our friends from our last duty station showed up and we were very pleasantly surprised! I am beginning to feel how small the military really is. We have only been stationed at three different bases and I am already running into and meeting up with people that I have lived with on other bases. There are about 8 families here now that I knew from our last duty station. Last week I ran into one of my friends at Garden Ridge. She had just moved here that week and I hadn't seen her since we moved here a year and a half ago. It was so weird seeing her walking around Garden Ridge. I was so used to seeing her in her little shop in Oklahoma. The Air Force is a small world. Anyways, back to my little story...

The boy had friends at the pool to play with, but the girl really didn't, so she invented something new. She had brought one of her dolls with us that can go in the pool. Her name is Katie. She decided that she and Katie and I would play, "baby Moses." We would take turns playing the different roles in the story and we would switch out as necessary. I started off as Moses's mother, and The Girl played the part of Miriam. I set the floating naked baby doll into the pool and said something touching and sweet about God watching over my baby and I asked my little Miriam to watch over her brother. THEN I had to run over and pretend to be the princess. I asked Miriam/lady in waiting to, "bring me that basket." She does and promptly turns around to change character back to Miriam. I then say my next line which is, "I will name you Moses for I have pulled you out of the waters." (Note my King Jamesy ness there?) Miriam then comes up and asks me if I need her to find a nurse for the baby and I agree of course. She fetches herself... I mean... the mother of Moses and promises to return him once he is "weaned" (I had to explain that word.) She then returns him and I make some touching speech about him growing up as a Prince of Egypt.

We played this many times, changing things slightly etc. After a bit, a little girl comes over and in all little girlness asks The Girl to be her friend. The Girl agrees (wouldn't it be nice if it was that easy for us?!) and then proceeds to tell this new girl what we are doing and how to play. The new little girl is confused... she doesn't remember the Moses story. I go over it with her and she remembers that she owns that movie. We have plenty of parts in our little story, so she decides to play the princess and I have to explain "weaned" again. The new girl also thinks that this is much fun and soon another little girl shows up to play with us. We explain the game again (I have to explain 'weaned' again... hehehe...) and go through the lines and they all three play this new game together. Over and over.

I feel like I just taught Sunday School at the pool!

Again we revisit this... again

2008-08-01T22:58:00.004-05:00

I have seen again the horrors of people homeschooling. Another news article made it very evident that homeschooling is dangerous because of the lack of supervision from certified teachers. There is no one checking to make sure that these kids are not being abused. This revelation also brought about my attention to THIS article.

I mean really... summer should be illegal.

((I need to note since sarcasm doesn't translate well to written word that this is pure snark. The news article isn't, but the other blog article is as well as my little blurb above. ))