Life in the Oak Tree

Learning with the Little Ones

2010-08-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'll get back to the "why I homeschool" thing sooner or later, but right now I want to share some stuff I've been doing recently with my 4yo girl and almost 3yo girl.

I'm not one of those that is in a great hurry to have my little people reading from the encyclopedia before they turn 3 (though they do flip through it to look at pictures), and I'm not sitting there with flash cards trying to teach them words, letters or even colors the second they can focus their little eye balls. I don't parade the 18 month old out for friends and grandparents to show them how they know this or that 4 years before anyone else and can repeat ABC's, etc. Gag. Just live and enjoy and they learn plenty, you know?

But, I wanted something to do with the girls to make them feel included in the whole school thing and something that they could fiddle with at the table while I teach. They love hands on stuff and they ARE rather sponge-like when it comes to learning, so I've been making a few hands on things for my 4yo to do to reinforce some things she already knows or add to soem things she's already been accumulating in that little brain. And the 2yo...she, of course, just wants to be a part.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle is a favorite, read 1000 times, bed-time book for the little ladies. I found a template for some counting cards made from that book. The girls LOVE them! We count the pictures on each card and they work on putting them in order. The younger one doesn't much care what order they're in as long as no one else is touching them. Sweet, isn't it? Hm. It's also good for her to learn color names. They're all red in her opinion.

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/BrowBearBrownBear.html .

Something the 4yo particularly enjoys is our file folder game. It was supposed to be an

Even/Odd game for the older boys, but due to the fact that it would have the same numbers in the same place every time (and there are far more than 24 odd/even numbers, right?), I decided to just use blank hermit crabs and use a wet-erase marker so I could switch numbers. THEN I figured I could use it for the 4yo to identify numbers. THEN I figured I could also use it to help teach lower case letters. My kids always know the upper case letters and their sounds while still getting mixed up on which lower case letter goes to which upper case letter/sound. So, on one side are her numbers. I call out a number and she covers it. And on the other side are her letters where I give her a sound and she covers the letter that goes with the sound. And I can change it up once she gets those down. Or, I can use it for the even/odd practice that it was supposed to be for!

Both of these little things only take a few minutes but it seems to be enough to satisfy their desire for school work!

Why I Homeschool (part 2)

2010-07-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

I had written this all out back in June but I was unable to fit EVERYTHING I wrote into one post and didn't have the time to cut it up just so. At any rate...here's the next part of why we homeschool! :)

Still on the note of God being opposed by the schools: The curriculum is written by people who want God to be removed from our minds. Look to two very significant places. The National Education Association has a huge impact on laws that relate to our schools. They are far from a “Christian” group and they are far from concerned about parents rights or, of course, the spiritual well being of our children. They want our children to be introduced to a variety of lifestyles, they want parents to butt out, they have a plan for our children and the future of our country and they have the numbers to act. The NEA is actively AGAINST homeschooling. They want children schooled THEIR way, period. They feel that THEY are the children’s champion and that schools/government should be trusted for their good intentions over that of parents!!! They imply that homeschooled children must be protected from their children, they need to be better monitored to be sure no neglect or abuse is taking place. It’s insane! Their power over the schools (and thus, families) in our nation is no small thing. They have an impact on the curriculum, on the things that children are taught, etc. A powerful force. And none of their values line up with God’s.

Next is that California is the largest buyer of school curriculum. As you might know, California is also one of the most liberal, least family friendly/God friendly states (looking at legislation). What that means is that publishers make their school curriculum with their largest customer (Cal) in mind. Anywhere that morals can be skewed…they are. No more acting like a nuclear family is normal. No reference to America’s very abundant God-fearing American history. These books are then used in ALL the schools in America. American public school students do not realize what America was built on…UNLESS, of course, a spin can be put on it to make people look like religious fanatics who killed and slaughtered and abused others in the name of God. THAT, you might see. Regardless of how sweet your child’s teacher is, it’s unlikely that she will properly fill in the blanks left by the publishers or that she will recognize subtle omissions and sometimes distortions of truth. No, God is NOT honored in our public schools. I could no more send them there than I could send them to a Muslim school or a Satanist school.

There they are taught that tolerance is the greatest virtue but that you should NOT tolerate anyone who thinks there is ONE way to do things or that there is ONE definite truth. Christian adults who have been raised up in these schools pride themselves on their tolerance of other religions because they believe that it’s better to be tolerant than to tell others they are going to hell and have them realize their danger!

Left and right in God’s Word we see that God wants us to BE CAREFUL that we do not forget Him. Be careful that we are not lured into worshipping the false gods they worship (which, in our culture may not be an idol, but many ideas encourage in public schools that are far from God’s ways), not to yoke ourselves with those who do not love and serve God lest our affections be redirected to the things those peers love. We are reminded to keep His words and His actions before us ALL the time, giving honor to Him in all things. The very way God directs us to rmember Him is the opposite of what the powers that be want to occur in school. And they go to great lengths to make sure that it would be very difficult to keep God constantly in the forfront of their minds.

The whole situation of Christians sending their children to school makes me think of Malachi 1:6, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master” if then I be a father, where is mine honour” and if I be a master, where is my fear? Saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Where in have we despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.”

We do not offer our children to the schools in honor of God because it is there He is decidedly NOT honored. This is nothing like Hannah sending Samuel to serve under and learn from Eli (which was not a normal thing, anyway, and should not be treated as such). We do not send them believing that it is a show of gratitude to God nor do we expect great spiritual benefit to it. It is in no way doing our best to train up a godly seed which He seeks (Mal. 2:15). We’re sending them hoping that not TOO much damage will be done or that we can, hopefully counter the damage in the little time we have during the evenings after we accomplish the homework and other stuff that the schools demand of our family time.

Some people argue that the presence of Christian children in schools will have a big impact. Well…Christians were in schools for a long time and it’s just become worse. At one time, the majority of people had Christian values. This is no longer true and this did not start happening because Christians weren’t involved. This has happened because the schools are turning Christian kids into very WEAK Christian kids, with little conviction and even less understanding. The Christians have less and less impact on the world around us because they are so weakened by their spiritually unhealthy upbringing.

When it comes to our children, the Bible emphasizes how the fathers and grandfathers are to teach things to their children/grandchildren. It does not speak of the government or teachers or friends training their children on a daily basis. The New Testament talks of making disciples. How did Jesus do that? By having the disciples live with Him, go about doing things with Him. He didn't just have them a couple hours that they should have been doing homework in the evenings and weekends. The school format just doesn't appear as a God ordained norm in scriptures.

Why do we homeschool (part 1)

2010-06-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm asked this every once in a great while. Not often, mind you, but usually from people who are wanting to do it themselves but just can't decide. I'm never prepared...and even if I was, I never have enough time to explain. So, here...for anyone who wants to know:

1. My first reason is because I believe it’s what God wants from us, as Christian parents. To start with, in Duet. 6 God says, “Hear, O Israel: The lord our God is one Lord” And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates….Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage…Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you…”

This is just a starting place but it’s a big starting place. When you read those verses, it’s clear that the WAY God wants His people to instruct their children in His ways is NOT something accomplished by a little something in the morning and a little something in the evening. Look! His commands, His Word, His ways should be lived CONSTANTLY and taught continuously as is indicated by “when we walk by the way…liest down…risest up”. We can’t have a stretch of 6 hours a day, 5 days a week where teaching about God and the Bible is expressly prohibited…and your children KNOW that their God-loving parents are sending them to a place where they are not for God! And if it is not for Him then it is AGAINST Him, right? That clearly would NOT fall into the meaning of this passage. Look, too, at how His words are to be placed in our awareness: "for a sign on thine hand, frontlets between thine eyes…write them on the posts of thy house,” etc. Did He literally mean that’s where you put it? Put it there and then go on with life as usual? For our purposes, He’s saying that He wants us to be continually in mind of His words. Now, it certainly helps to have God's Words written everywhere, but for our children, it needs to be coming out of the mouth of their parents all day so that THEY, in turn, learn how it is a part of our all day, every day. This cannot happen in a school setting. And I’ll say that even in my experience at a Christian school, that did not happen.

But, you know, also from this passage I see that God is putting this responsibility on parents. Let me try and make a little analogy here. If I go on vacation and leave my pet with you, asking that you take care of it for the week, and you decided that you didn’t want to do it and so you sent my pet to someone else’s house for the week, would I not be a little…taken aback to say the least, when I returned? Or, perhaps if I left a dear friend my house key and asked her to check on my house every day while I was gone, but instead she gave it to someone that I decidedly did NOT ask to tend my house, would I be tickled about that? Not only someone I didn’t ask, but someone who’s life’s purpose is to oppose me?

Perhaps you do not see public schools in this light (opposing God). You, perhaps, do not see that they oppose God, or that, at least, not in YOUR public school. If that is indeed the case, let me point out a few things. First, you know that they MAY NOT (as in, do not have the permission to) teach about Jesus Christ. Many Christians don’t seem overly bothered by that but it is alarming and offensive. Imagine if your children were taught that they cannot discuss their parents or any moral teachings that come from their parents. If YOU were banned from the school, would you feel comfortable sending your child there? If so, you hold your relationship with your child far more lightly than you ought!

You also know that they do not teach creation as a fact. They often teach the theory of evolution (which has still not been proven, people) as a fact OR teach it without saying it’s a theory and then blow it out of the water as impossible (as should be done). No one teaches creation science in schools, showing how things might have gotten the way they are by using Biblical accounts. And evolution is loaded in their science books…”millions of years ago”, “Jurassic period” (indicating millions of years ago)…it’s dropped here and there all the time even when it’s not directly talking about evolution. And NO one says “Okay, kids, when they say millions of years ago, we know that this person is coming from the evolution view point…what we believe probably happened in this situation is that during the flood…” Nope, they don’t get a bit of that. What’s a kid to think about the relevance of God when they get pure trash thrown at them, often in very subtle ways, that Mom and Dad aren’t there to help pick through. And you know…Mom and Dad shouldn’t HAVE to pick through trash…their kids should be with them getting the wholesome goodness of a God centered worldview.

More on this subject coming soon (hopefully).

Winter Treats

2009-12-10T14:33:00.001-08:00

It doesn't get REAL cold around these parts, but it's chilly today so this evening, for supper, we're having soup. I'm not a big soup person but THIS soup is fantastic. A tad spicey but everyone 6 and up loves it. I got the recipe from my mom who got it from...someone else. :)

Chicken Tortilla Soup

4 chicken breasts, boiled

6+ cups chicken broth (I just use what I boiled the chicken in)

14 oz. can of Rotel tomatoes (you know...the chopper tomatoes with green chilies in them)

14 oz creamed corn

1 1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp garlic

1 tsp salt

1 1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup diced onion

Simmer all of the above.

1/4 cup cornstarch disolved in 1/2 cup water.

Add to soup and simmer.

6 slices of American cheese (um...I don't think this makes a real big difference)

1 lb velveeta cheese

When you're done, throw some tortillas in a pan with some butter to brown them a bit and then tear them in pieces and put them in your bowl of soup! Delicious!!

Another yummy thing we made today is "haystacks!" They're pretty quick and easy...a nice little treat to take to a Christmas party (which we're going to tomorrow)! And your kids will think you're amazing! Well, mine do anyway. My Grandma used to make all sorts of treats for us when we would visit and this was one of them.

We got some chow mein noodles, (should have gotten peanuts to go in as well, but forgot) and a bag of butterscotch morsels. We melted the butterscotch in a glass bowl in the microwave and then stirred in the noodles until they were well coated. I dont' have measurements...you just pour them in and stir until they're covered and it looks like you don't have enough to cover too many more. I got a bag of chow mein noodles at Wal-Mart and had at least half the bag left over from the one bag of butterscotch morsels. Then you make little piles of them on a cookie sheet and let them cool. And that's it!! My picture turned out a little odd...they should be the color of the ones on the right.

Blog? What blog?

2009-12-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

I was doing pretty well blogging for a very short while and then the bottom dropped out!! Wonder if I can get this wagon train a movin' again.

Tonight I'm again pondering on how much I love my Ergo baby carrier. That's one thing I would definitely recommend to any new mom. It's worth it's weight in gold to me. You can start using it early on and use it...well, for a long time. I still carry Ella in it (2 years old). I didn't think Jacob would like it because he's not big on being snuggled chest to chest but he was happy as a lark in it this evening. Happier, I think, than in the Maya Wrap sling. He likes the sling, but it's not the instant soother that it seemed to be for my other babies. But he was quite happy in this. Fell asleep in it...slept while I vacuumed, swept, washed dishes. It's a little difficult to do all that with him on the FRONT but he's a bit small for me to manage getting him on my back in it so you do what you have to do. Though I might see if I can figure out a safe way to get him back there because if that works for him, it would be great. He has reflux something crazy and really likes being upright so that probably plays a part in why he was so content.

He's a little small yet, to have his legs sticking out both sides, so I just rolled him up in a blanket and tucked him in with his feet under him.

Other things of interest: I made an army tank birthday cake for Nate on Monday.

It's not great but my little boys think it was awesome and loved helping me with it so...I guess it was great in all the important categories. I used black licorice for the tracks on the tank...EEEWWW! I think they're nasty and smell yucky to boot. But..no one minded that either.

What a Happy Day!

2009-06-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

I had my first doctor's appointment for this pregnancy today and they did the usual "anatomy" sonogram. We got to see baby number 7 and little boy number 5!!! Yep, a boy!

While most of the boys were rooting for another girl ("Why would we want another boy?! We have 4 boys but we only have two girls!" was the comment one made), I have to say that I was REALLY wanting another boy. You see, after you start your mothering years with boy after boy after boy...a feast of baby boys really, and then you have a few girls and your little boys are getting tall and gangly and they aren't small and chubby anymore, you start getting nostalgic. My days of baby boys are a faint, sweet memory that I wish you could relive. I miss the little chuncky guys who pick up the tiniest bugs in the back yard, the little guys who dip their foreheads in mudpuddles, the little guys who don't care about "pretty" but just do the things little boys do. While I love little girls, I MISS my baby boys!!! And I'm SOOOO excited that we've got another little guy coming to join us!! Yea!! And the boys have decided they're glad they're going to have another baby brother!

About "Inadequate" Mothers

2009-05-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

I recently heard one lady (with 3 children, expecting their 4th and last child according to her) report that another woman with a larger family (by 3 or 4 children) had said she wasn’t able to spend time with each of her children each day. The mother with fewer children said that “You are a bad mother if you can say that.” She went on to say it was weird that the lady wanted more children and she said “Why would you want more when you don’t have the time to spend with the ones you’ve created already?” Let me just briefly point out the fallacy implied in her comment “You’ve created”. The Bible says that GOD is the creator of life. We cannot create, nor can we accidentally allow a life that God didn’t PURPOSEFULLY create. But that issue is not what I want to address in this post.

It sounds, from the comment of the mother of three, as if any woman who would voice feelings of inadequacy is a bad mother (afterall, she's admitting to being inadequate!) and worse if she feels inadequate AND would desire more children! I’ve been feeling incredibly overwhelmed and inadequate (patience wise) lately. I can’t say that I feel like I’m a horrible mother, though. Not as good as I would like and not as good as I could and not as good as I ought to be. But still, a good mother who loves and takes care of and raises her children the way the Lord leads as well as I can, given my flawed human nature. Lord, save me from sharing any of my feelings of inadequacy with such an uncompassionate, judgmental woman!!

Of course, it leads you to wonder, can you avoid being a bad mother?! Doesn't ANY mother find herself in the position of seeing things she should have done differently? Things she did wrong!? Or are there really mothers who know they have always done the best thing for their child in every situation? Something to think about, anyway.

But is this woman right? Is that mother a bad mother on the basis of not spending time with each child on a daily basis?

I have 9 siblings (one born after I got married so he almost doesn’t count in my part of what I’m about to say). Did mom spend personal, one-on-one time with each one of us every single day of our life at home? No. The majority of our personal time we did get was for school work (which, I imagine, added up to far more than the average amount the kids from public school with a working mom and 1 sibling gets). I’m sure there were times when we were in the kitchen helping to do things or, doing laundry or gardening with her or…who knows what else when no one was in there for a few moments, but there was very little “time with each child every day” in the one on one, specific way the lady’s statement implies.

I ask, IS personal time with Mom every day or even most days something we needed to have?! If so, why? Is there a Biblical reason that we needed special one on one time? Let’s not go into psycho ideas that counselors have conjured up out of nowhere with no real background to them, but give me a real, honest to goodness, known for thousands of years kind of reason that time with a parent and siblings just doesn’t count as time with your parent.

My mom was with the whole lot of us all the time. We were with her ALL day, she was with us ALL day. Anytime we wanted to go talk to mom, she was there and it wasn’t as if we had to submit a request in writing, squeeze our talk in between appointments or wait until she got home from work or we got home from school. But, at the same time, she didn’t have time set aside for each person every day. If we wanted/needed to talk, we found her and did so. But our bonus was/is, we have siblings we could talk to as well. We had our CHOICE of siblings to talk to!! I know that these days I might call my mother but then again, I might call and talk to one of my sisters (children #5, 6, 8 and 9). A number of my siblings have best friends in other siblings and they’re the ones to whom they tell all those things that you might not really say much to Mom or Dad about. While Mom and Dad are certainly nice to talk to, my siblings are definitely indispensable! Thank goodness my parents didn’t cut our family off at 2 or 3 or 4 children so they could personally give us all a specific amount of time or have money to give us certain lessons of some sort! Good grief! What robbery that would have been! If there were only 4 kids in my family, NONE of my sisters would have been born and OH, what I would be missing in my life right now!! Ugh!! What a horrid thought! I love and value my first three siblings, but we would all be lacking greatly if we didn’t have the other 6!! It happens that all but maybe my oldest brother wants to have a large family of their own. I can see in my friends what you get with smaller families and I have to say that I wouldn’t trade what I got…changing diapers, babysitting for no money, doing chores that friends seldom did and all that…wouldn’t trade it for what they got. In my opinion, my friends in smaller families didn’t get a single thing better…they just got less. They may not know they’re missing anything, but if I try and imagine life in a family of four, all I can imagine is the things I would have missed. We all feel incredibly blessed and we really value growing up in a crowd, so to speak. Enough to want to bless our children in the same way. I know many children in small families who grow up kinda lonely. It’s harder to find that in larger families.

I think the blessing of many siblings for the REST OF OUR LIVES, far out weighs any benefit of special time with mom on a daily basis while we’re growing up. But again, I still don’t see the need or even the benefit of having special time alone as opposed to time with mom AND siblings. Time with parents is important…yes, but all by yourself, not so important. Did Jesus spend special time with each of His disciples every day? No?! You mean, He didn’t set aside a 20 minute block to pour himself into each individual every day? No? Well why not? Maybe because it’s not needed or necessary in order to pass on the things God wants us to pass on. It’s not necessary in order for a person to feel significant, needed, valued, loved. Indeed, I have to say I feel like the world needs me more because my many siblings are in it. I feel like I have greater opportunities to be a good (or bad) influence because I have 8 younger siblings. I feel blessed because when I have a baby, my MOM doesn’t have to come stay with my kids but my sisters (far more energy and less aches and pains) CAN! Oh, I cannot tell you the THOUSANDS of blessings that come from a large family!! Yes, one so large that Mom might often feel like she just can’t handle it. But it’s not all about Mom really, is it?

I think often a MOM (including me at this point in my life) is a lot harder on herself than her kids are. I think non-understanding neighbors and friends can also be a lot more critical “for the sake of the children”, than the children are. I know that, certainly right now, I go to bed at least 4 of 7 nights, thinking about my short comings and how I did NOT do what I feel I should have that day. I imagine the mom quoted was feeling pretty bad, feeling like she wasn’t doing all she should and while she loves her children and would delight in another wonderful blessing, she feels that she cannot do enough. I believe this is deception initiated by Satan with the very purpose of discouraging Christians from doing something effective. The fewer children born in to Christian families the better and what better way than to actually make the parents think they’re doing the best by NOT having more. It’s so easy, in this culture where 1 or 2 children families are the model “family” and expectations of parents are based on this model. But this is NOT God’s model and the expectations that spring from this lack of fruitfulness are not God’s expectations.

When moms think they don’t have enough time for their large family or feel like they just aren’t doing enough, we need to remember that GOD knows what He’s doing when He gives you the children He gives. We forget, our children and what we do are not ALL ABOUT US and being just perfect. And if we're not perfect in our parenting, it's very arrogant of us to think that it would be better if our children weren't here. We make ourselves out to be far too important when we start thinking like that. We and our children are a part of some bigger picture God is working on and God still works through the weaknesses of His children. Yes, it’s true…God uses OUR weaknesses in the lives of our children and in everything else we touch. We just need to be open to Him. Ahhh. That's a refreshing thought to an overwhelmed, inadequate mommy.

Trouble

2009-04-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

I have this little short person in my house who really likes to get into things.
This is where all interesting things collect. The top shelf there is everything that this particular little person should NOT have. It's where all those things she gets and should not have gotten get placed because I'm in the middle of teaching/cooking/doing something or other on the computer or whatever. This is also where school books and lesson plans collect sometimes, where recipes and notes about next years curriculum turn into snow drift-like piles of paper, where homeless CD's collect, where soda bottles are seldom found but were there today because some little person (hmmm, who could that be) was carrying it around the living room while I was looking at Sonlight curriculum.

So, this place is, of course, the one spot that attracts her. Afterall, most of these things were things that she found interesting elsewhere and have been deposited here. It's like a treasure desk! A marker and notebook in her hand, she's giving the rest of it a once over to see what she might want to make off with. I think she's planning on making a list so she's prepared next time she gets this opportunity.

Fabulous Food!

2009-03-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have a couple recipes to share with you guys today. Two we tried out this week and both were a big hit.

Garlic Lovers Chicken (actually, it didn’t have that much garlic- you could certainly add more)

½ c dry bread crumbs (I made these by cutting 2 slices of bread into strips and broiling them on both sides and then crumbling)
1/3 c. parm cheese
2 table spoons minced fresh parsley (I used dried…maybe a tsp or so)
½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Put all these in a bag or Tupperware dish to toss your chicken in

¼ cup milk
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
¼ cup of butter or margarine, melted
2 cloves garlic minced
2 tablespoons lemon juice
paprika (I forgot this…oops!)

Dip chicken in milk, shake in crumb mixture. Place in greased baking dish.
Combine butter, garlic and lemon juice; drizzle over chicken. Sprinkle with paprika. I also sprinkled a little extra garlic powder on the ckn.
Baked uncovered at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until juices run clear. Mmmmm, mmmm! All the adults and kids loved it.

Next it ranch dressing similar to Outback Steakhouse' ranch. Not exactly but close and YUMMY!!

Outback-like (but not precisely) ranch dressing

1 table spoon Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing (the little package of powder, and it’s the dressing NOT the dip)
1 C. mayo
½ cup milk
¼ tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp garlic powder

Let chill for one hour (you MUST do at least this for the flavor to take effect)

And everyone loved this, too.

Potty Training Adventures

2009-03-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

This little lady who is in the process of training is one interesting little person. She's stubborn and cute and hard headed and sweet, independent and helpful, resistant to commands...

Well, without going into great detail, I will say that this morning she had an accident in her undies, DIDN'T tell me about it and went on to "clean up" everything on her own. Her attempts to take care of everything on her own was a situation that was a first, after potty training 4 others. Usually they have NO desire to take care of it (and really, does ANYONE want to?!). Of course, clean up carried out by the inept is... Well, I'm sure any mother reading this knows how that sort of thing goes. It was one of those things where it takes a little while to solve the whole mystery as to what exactly happened but as the clues unfolded I didn't know if I should laugh or cry, praise her or admonish her! What can you do but a little of both followed by a sigh and a shake of the head?!

I just want to know...is EVERYTHING with girls going to be more work?

Potty training - one of the ironies of life

2009-03-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

There are so many of these with children. You're so excited that they're talking and then you get so tired of them constantly asking "Why?" when you have no clue why or "When?" when you haven't even planned on a when and just pretty much talking nonstop.

Well, I got my fill of another one of these this morning. First, let me just say that I'm a very laid back potty trainer. Usually I put training pants on a little tot one morning, tell them whats expected, put them on the toilet a few times and when they don't successfully make it several times that morning and I go back to diapers. A couple months later, I do the same thing. Sooner or later, it just works and they take it and run with it with very little effort on my part. And by golly, I like it that way. Because what I did this morning was ridiculous.

The little princess is getting pretty close to three and while I've done the training pants thing several times and I've put her on the toilet many times, she's NEVER used the toilet. Ever. This is unusual for us. I've not had one to NEVER use the toilet by this age. Course, I've not had one this stubborn either but that's another line of thought entirely. So, this morning I was thinking that, by golly, I'm at least going to get her using the toilet so she can get an idea, at least, of this potty training thing. So I made some lemonade (we only drink water around here so even watered down 50%, it's a big hit) and filled her up. Sippy cup full after sippy cup, she guzzled quite a few.

I figured we'd hang out in my bedroom this morning...I'd fold clothes, the boys could sit at the chest at the base of my bed and do school work and we'd be right there by the bathroom to do the potty training. And the first hour or so, that worked out okay except she wasn't going to the bathroom! I was starting to despair. I pulled the big bag of M & M's out of the cabinet to display the promised treat. It's probably 1/3 of a 5lb bag that a "friend" of mine had given me several months ago. I don't know how friendly that is to dump that much candy on a person with 6 kids but, I'm sure she meant the best. (Her time is coming.)

A few moments after seeing the very big bag of candy she decided she needed to go potty. And she DID!!! Oh, what excitement and celebrating there was! After the whole "now you pull your undies back on and you move the step stool (made by my father-in-law for potty training my first) over here and wash your hands and then you dry your hands...and get candy... and then you turn the bathroom light off", we called Dad to tell him so he could stop to celebrate with us (hee hee! It's kinda funny to think of interrupting someone for that). She was so pleased and so was I. Very nice. So, I went back to teaching the boys. And after I got two sentences out of my mouth, she came back and said "I need to go potty!" That really wasn't very long at all but at this point we want to keep the the excitement, don't we?! So I jumped up and said "Okay, let's go!!" So I got up and helped her through the whole sequence (minus calling daddy) and then went back to teaching. And not 2 minutes later.... And two minutes after that, and two minutes after that and then she walked out of the room and walked back in to use the bathroom AGAIN in far less than two minutes. It was INSANE!! For the next hour and 15 minutes the insanity of constantly (and I am NOT exaggerating that there was not a break of more than 3 minutes and often it was shorter) going to the bathroom and ACTUALLY using it went on while I struggled to accomplish anything else. And I greatly struggled to not just totally lose my patience and slap a diaper back on her!! Even my 9 year old, after about 15 minutes into the ordeal, laughed and said "You thought she was never going to use the potty but now I bet you're really tired of it." Ah, yes, a diaper was looking *real* good after 30 minutes of that.

I say, kudos to the people who do the concentrated "potty training in one day" thing, but based on my small, one and a half hour experience, I am absolutely not equipped with whatever personal traits needed to deal with that! Whew!

Reviving? And K'nex!

2009-03-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

Could energy be coming back? Oh, I hope so. The first trimester of the last few pregnancies have been a bit tough when it comes to having the energy or the desire to do much of anything. I think I'm doing good to keep up with laundry, keep kids fed and do school work. I've not really felt up to even doing that much (though you do what you have to) so anything past that really hasn't happened. However, this morning I laid in bed for a little bit with great thoughts for what I would accomplish today. Not that I will accomplish all that I was thinking about, or even half, but the fact that I was thinking about it could be a sign that the sluggishness is about to leave! Oh, and is my house ready for that!

Well, today I was going to share something that I think is great for kids to play with. K'nex. While they come with instructions for building a number of different things, it's the things they think of on their own that I like to see. It's really cute to see what they come up with.

It seems to me that creativity needs to be encouraged in children or they become very dependent on other things (games, sports, organized actitivies) to keep them entertained, to keep their minds engaged, to keep themselves busy. Hmmm. I wonder if a childhood lacking in practicing creativity is why so many women struggle with how they "don't use their minds" when they stay at home. They never learned how to engage their minds without direction from someone or something else. Hmm. A thought.

ANYWAY!! The really neat thing about K'nex is that there are so many creative possibilities! Many more than with Legos. Now, we enjoy Legos around here too, but with K'nex, you have all sorts of different things that link together and can move and all sorts of good stuff. Hours of good creative fun in these things!

The Importance of Being Homemakers

2009-03-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

So many times, as some of us stay at home moms go about our lives, we run into the opinion that women who stay at home, who spend much of their time on taking care of babies and children, changing hundreds of diapers, teaching their children at home, trying to make their home lovely and their food good, and just generally trying to be good, successful and efficient in their work are simply wasting their time and that they’re doing nothing for the world. What we do is nothing with any purpose or significance is what too many, even those within the Church believe. We often feel like we are alone, like we are making little impact, like the difference we’re making is no more than a footprint on the beach that will be washed away with the next tide.

This is so far from the truth!! Satan would LOVE for us to think that our duties in the home are insignificant. God, however, wants us to know that our work in the home is an important part of the Christian community. Titus 2:3-5 says “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.” We aren’t all older women but we are older than SOMEONE and here is a description of the things we are to be learning and practicing in our lives.

As people miss God’s purpose and God’s design in the small building blocks of life, more people abandon doing exactly what God wants us to be doing. It’s these little things that lay the foundation for the godly success our children’s generation and it’s these things that hold our own generation together. When we act as if the only significant life is a life focused primarily on vocal political activism or spent in a vocation of missions or spent on relief work to those in dire need or whatever someone other than God deems worthy, we are demeaning what GOD has put in place as the foundation for greater things. God has shown us what He desires for us to do. It’s what He has commanded and it’s through these little things of working at home, loving our husbands, children, etc, that we are taking part in building a structure God has planned.

A majority of us here spend most of our time caring for children, teaching them, puzzling over how to better teach them, praying that God will guide us in training them so that they will be equipped to be future leaders in our nation, praying that God will help us figure out how to deal with the strong willed attitude in one of our children, making schedules for dentist appointments, we cook 21 meals a week, we are in charge of the nutrition of our family, we are in charge of keeping our children clothed, in charge of filling these young minds with things that God desires their minds to be full of. We’re responsible for loving our husbands which includes feeding them like we love them, keeping their home like we love them, caring for their children and keeping ourselves like we love and care that our husbands should be able to enjoy and benefit from his family. The list goes on and on and some people would belittle many of these things, acting as if most of them could be done given only 10 seconds or 10 minutes a day and you should be able to do these things in your leftover time from a “significant” job.

The things we are concerned with are incredibly varied and some seem more important than others but remember, they ALL come together to build a structure designed by God and each little part is of great significance. Sometimes we think that the LITTLE things we do don’t really matter. We might think that our attitude about changing diapers and training children isn’t really a big deal but when you imagine all the ways God could possibly use that, you begin to realize that God can and does use every little thing we do to inspire others, to pass on good things to our children, to make others feel the love of Christ. We may not think our cooking or attitude towards cooking matters but our family is impacted when they see how we approach caring for them and they are impacted when they see the effort we put into it and they are impacted when they have a pleasant and enjoyable experience at the table with their family.

Don’t allow yourself to believe that what you’re doing is unimportant. God says that your efforts in these things has an impact on whether or not God’s word is dishonored!!

Our Baby Announcement

2009-03-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

Back when we first started adding to our family I didn't do anything especially interesting to "announce" the pregnancies. Largely because I'd never heard of it being done before. But, too, with your first few, people are excited and/or suprised and have a delightful reaction that you have lots of fun with when all you do is TELL them!!

Well, as time goes on and you have more, YOU are very excited but sometimes the reactions you get are not quite like the first one or two. I don't exactly get why this is because the announcement still means an amazingly precious and wonderful person, just as amazing and wonderful as your first and second born. But, whatever. So, I started spending more time planning the announcements and really soaking up all the pleasure I can from this amazing news. I may not get the MOST excited and certainly not the most surprised reactions (though some of our family members and friends did have WONDERFUL reactions!) but I get to spend the time coming up with the announcements just thinking and enjoying my news on my own.

For this little one, I decided to make a banner. I saw Valentines banners on a blog just before we found out we were expecting so I thought it would be really fun to make a banner announcing our little one.

This is made of scrap booking paper and ribbons. I wish I'd gotten a better picture to share but I JUST finished this before getting together with my in-laws and was in quite a rush.

Creative Cook

2009-03-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last month was a busy month. We found out we are expecting and so I spent much creative energy on announcing that, we visited family and had a miscarriage scare (which was apparently just that, a scare). All of that kinda kept me from spending too much time sharing here.

Well, here's one thing that was just SOOOO cute that I have to share.

One day I was making some Alice Spring's Chicken (as in, Outback Steak House). It was delicious and if I can find the recipe card (I can't right now) I'll share it. I was frying the bacon to go on the chicken and my little cook wanted to help with it. I told him that he couldn't because the bacon would pop grease in his face. He said, "Hmmmm." And left. I went on with my business only to turn around a few minutes later and see that he was back, helping with the bacon in some home made protective gear:

This is a Narnia knight's helmet with sunglasses.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the front row seat I have to these amazing little people God made!! Awesome!

Home Made Baby Wipes

2009-03-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

If you're a baby wipe user, this is a great money saver. When I first started having babies, the bathroom we used was really too tiny to change diapers in or even to store diapers in so using a washcloth when changing diapers was really not a very convenient thing to do. So we used wipes and sometime about 7 years ago I started making my own.

Here's what you need.

-Bounty paper towels. Don't go cheap or they won't work well.

-2 cups water

-Baby wash/shampoo

-tea tree oil (optional)

-Rubbermaid container

Cut the paper towels in half. You can use a large sharp knife or an electric knife if you have one. I was given a used one several years ago and it does make it a bit easier. You'll use half of the roll now and the other half will be ready for your next round of wipes.

Next you mix two cups of water with about 2 or 3 tablespoons of baby wash. I just give a couple good squirts and stir it in with a spoon. You can either put this in the rubbermaid container and drop the paper towels in after (which will take a while to soak in) or pour it over the tops of the paper towels. If you pour it over the top, the cardboard tube will get soaked quicker and you can pull it out sooner (if you're in a rush to use your wipes).

Once you've pulled the cardboard tube out, start pulling the wipes from the center. Notice my lid. You don't have to do this at all, but my lid started out with a LITTLE x in the top for pulling the wipes out (exacto knife). As it's been used for years and years, constantly, with usually 2 babies in diapers the whole time, it's gotten a LOT of use and the original little X split all the way to the edges. Which is not a big deal...the wipes still stay wet. You don't, of course, have to cut your top at all. You can just leave the top whole and take it off when you use it. The choice is, of course, yours.

And, ta-da! Here are home made wipes! For me, with 2 in diapers and using wipes only for diaper changes, we usually go through half a roll a week, more or less, so a 12 pack of bounty paper towels which were a bit under $7 last time I bought them, will last about half a year. In the course of a week, they don't get the mildew smell. If you use yours more slowly, you might want to use a few drops of tea tree oil to keep them fresh (I never have). I don't know how long it actually takes for them to start smelling a bit stale.

Last note. I've looked for the round rubbermaid containers like the one I use and I haven't been able to find any for the past few years. Some of my friends who have started making wipes more recently use a square rubbermaid container that's just a bit taller than the half roll of wipes. It'll have a #6 on the bottom. Here's the size (this is my flour container).

Are children just an "illustration"?

2009-02-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing a Beth Moore Bible study lately, the one on Psalms. This past weeks lesson contained a quote, the implications of which I found to be offensive. I don’t always agree with her conclusions but usually I find that I disagree on minor points. This, however was a bit different.

This past week we were studying Psalm 127 and 128. I was amazed at how actual, physical children were brushed over but more than that, I was taken aback that she would share the following quote as if it even made a very clear or beneficial point! It almost seemed as if the quote was added to make sure no one might leave with the impression that God could have meant for us to think this was REALLY about our physical children.

The quote is by Eugene Peterson and is referring to Psalm 128’s reference to a wife being a fruitful vine and the children being like olive shoots around the table. He says:

“The illustration is, as we would expect, conditioned by Hebrew culture, in which the standard signs of happiness were a wife who had many children and children who gathered and grew around the table: fruitful vine and olive shoots. This illustration is just that, an example that we need not reproduce exactly in order to experience blessing. (We, for instance, don’t try to have as many children as possible – or try to get them to stay home for all their lives!) But the meaning is still with us: Blessing has inherent in it the power to increase.”

Oh, the problems I have with this quote!! The first is his reference to “Hebrew culture”, as if to say it is only their culture that happened to value children. It is important to realize that the HEBREW culture is the one that was formed and influenced by God like not other culture we know. Their value of children came because children are literally gifts given by God and they accepted that as fact. God made that clear and they believed Him and their attitude reflected it. That attitude should be part of ANY culture that knows and believes God. It’s not a cultural thing, it’s one of our Creator’s things.

I also find it interesting that he thinks it’s just an illustration. Perhaps Biblical talk of a husband having but one wife is also just an illustration, and not something we’re meant to reproduce and hold to. And talk of working diligently that we find so often in Proverbs is just an illustration, not something God really expected to see His people put into practice. And, hey, while we’re at it, let’s just call everything an illustration and read the Bible according to our culturally accepted views, rather than seeing our culture through the clear view of God’s Word! (Tongue in cheek here, folks.) Where does this man get the idea that this picture is not truly God’s heart for His people and that this is just figurative? Does he get it from God’s Word? Or does he get it by trying to adjust the Bible to what is culturally acceptable?

The part of this passage that is illustration is the reference to the wife being like a fruitful vine and the children to olive plants. What we’re supposed to picture is the wife like (illustration) a lush, green vine that not only gives fruit but is beautiful and happily growing and producing in the home. This is how a woman is to be in her home. Literally. Not a thin, feeble, fruitless vine, but lush and green. People should see the wife and see that she is bountiful in her element. The children are illustrated by olive plants. Olive plants were very valuable. It was a good thing to have them and to have them growing tall and strong, to one day bear a valuable fruit. With that illustration we are shown that actual, literal children are valuable and mean good things for the future of God’s people.

It’s obvious to me that he really misses a really big point. Children ARE the primary blessing you find in Biblical references to blessing but Mr. Peterson says, basically, you need not have children to experience blessing. Well, yes, God does bless in other ways but in THIS passage children are THE blessing. If you do not accept God’s blessings (children) you WILL miss out on this particular blessing, and likely many more blessings that come as part of the child blessing. Without multiplying with children, you are greatly limiting the ways God can bless you in other areas. Had God not blessed Abraham’s line with children (even in the midst of the unfortunate circumstances of slavery), they would not have been able to take the Promised Land. What blessings might we not be able to take because we’ve refused the first blessing of fruitfulness in the area of children?

Finally, I found absolutely misguided, this part of his quote: “We, for instance, don’t try to have as many children as possible – or try to get them to stay home for all their lives!”

God is the God of conception and apart from His divine intention and plan, no child is conceived. What we, in our culture don’t do is accept God’s gifts! We resist and in many ways make it clear to God that we have no desire to take as many blessings as He would like to give us! If God did not want us to have these gifts from Him, He would not give them as much as we “try”. In the same way, God doesn’t give when He doesn’t have a special purpose and plan for all involved. This quote assumes that God is not intimately involved in each conception, an idea that is refuted by a number of Old Testament scriptures. But, Mr. Peterson might argue that those are just “illustrations” as well. Yes, I suppose if you don’t want to believe something, just tell yourself it’s an illustration and you no longer feel like you have to take it as if God actually meant what was written.

Born to Mother

2009-02-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

I recently had a friend tell me she used to wonder how people with large families did it and then she met me. Now, she said, she understands. (Needless to say, at this point I was REALLY wondering what she thought she'd learned!) She said that I am a born mother, that she can tell that mothering is my special calling and she felt that she (with three children) did not have the same thing.

I have a different perspective. I was not a "born mother." I know people who have always wanted to have children and I know people who just love babies. I was neither. I was never drawn to be around children and didn't grow up desiring children in any numbers. People who are like that are, in my mind, "born mothers." They just naturally like the mothering stuff. I'll tell you right now, I had a night last night that wasn't really all that bad relatively speaking. One of my little ones was up a few times in the course of about 2 hours crying about her leg hurting. It was nothing compared to what some people have with newborns and really, I can't say that if I told people they'd have that much sympathy but I was ready to go nuts! My husband saw that I had ZERO patience and sent me to bed! My lack of giftedness at nighttime parenting (my gift has been God allowing me to find ways to NOT be awake for any amount of time at night) is one huge sign to me that I'm not a "born mother".

I do believe my friend is right in one sense. Mothering is my calling. But it's also the calling of any woman to whom God gives a child. The key is that I have "embraced" that calling, to steal a phrase from Nancy Campbell of the Above Rubies ministry.

That's the reason some might perceive a difference. It's all about perspective and actively deciding to alter your attitude to enjoy what God has most obviously planned for your life. Too often we just do what we have to do, enjoy the nice moments and complain about the difficult ones. We often fail to see the bigger picture of what we're doing and wonder why WE have to be stuck with these small and annoying things. We look at others doing what we think are more significant tasks or perhaps more enjoyable things and we wish that our lives could be like that.

When I look at my children, I see potential. Potential that God wants us (my husband and I) to help equip and direct! This is the future of our family, of our society, of His Kingdom. What I do with these children, every little thing could be of greatest significance!! It could be of little significance but I don't know! I don't know what enormous plans God could have for these children but I know that I'm a part of those plans and some of those plans rest heavily on what I do or don't do with my children. As you catch that vision and just imagine the ways God COULD use your children in the future, you start finding more purpose and significance in what you're doing. As you start to see that you have an impact on your children that you couldn't have on anyone else in the world, you start to see the value of this relationship! The longer you think along those lines, the more you get caught up in the bigger picture where, before, you focused on piles of laundry, dishes, messes, arguements and runny noses but now, you can get lost in thought about the view of that big picture while you're doing the little things that go into that big picture.

Isn't it exciting to be a part of something God is doing?! No, I wasn't born thinking how awesome it would be to mother. I didn't even start thinking it was awesome until I was two children into it but now I can say that there's NO job as awesome, significant and blessed than this!

Mudpies and Mary Janes

2009-02-14T11:18:00.001-08:00

I'm not big on just browsing through people's blogs but from time to time my searches for something takes me to a blog that is a jewel. Mudpies and Mary Janes seems to be just that sort of thing. Check them out at http://mudpiesandmaryjanes.blogspot.com

This blog apparently has give aways ALL the time! And for people who love to win free things, that's definitely a plus. But for me, what really draws me in is the ideas that are sparked from the things they give away. About a week ago I was inspired by their Emmie Cakes Giveaway! I'll have a picture of the resulte of my inspiration before too long!

Bingo - Reading Games

2009-02-05T05:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning we went to Chick-fil-a for breakfast. Chick-fil-a resturants in our area are giving away one free breakfast item every Wednesday morning of this month and it was a chicken biscuit yesterday. One of my children looked at me like I was nuts and said "Chicken isn't for BREAKFAST!!" Well, it was yesterday.

Apparently they have Bingo every Wednesday morning and we got to join in. It reminded me of a game that I had made a while back for reading and I decided to make a new one.

While phonics is very important for reading words we don't know, MOST of our reading as adults is from having memorized words that we've seen many times. Our beginning readers, however, have to struggle through sounding out each word as they go along. While I would definitely not stop teaching them phonics, it's helpful and makes reading more fun for them (and us) if they have more words memorized so that they can recognize them instantly. Word Bingo is a fun way to help your kids get familiar with words.

Today I made two different games, one for my beginning readers and one for readers a bit further along. I picked 24 words. I chose words they struggled with from a recent story they read or words from a list of most frequently used words. I put the same 24 words on each card (construction paper) in a different order, with the usual free space. Then I wrote out the words on index cards (not shown). To play we stack them up and have the child draw a card and read it out while we both cover the word on our card. We continue until one of us calls out bingo after having covered 5 words in a row. If you have more than one student on the same level, they could do this together. This is a FUN way for them to get a little reading practice!

Solving Front Seat Wars

2009-02-05T05:22:00.000-08:00

My friend, Kendall, was unable to leave her comment but here's her idea on solving the "who gets to sit in the front seat" delima for anyone who has kids sitting in the front seat.

“here's a thought on the justness of who sits in the front for which leg of the shopping trip. Have each young person who is old enough to be allowed to be in the front seat have a week in the front. on Sunday a new week begins and a new child has their week in the front. It ended all arguments when Mum implemented that regime as I was growing up.”

We not only have front seat wars but also wars over who's turn it is to sit by the baby. This is a great idea! Thanks!

Okay, yes, I do have my hands full!

2009-02-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

In exactly the sense that they mean it! My day isn't long enought to do all the things that ought to be done. Thankfully, I'm not one of those people who stresses terribly over that kind of thing. All the same, things need to be done around here, ya know?!

I have to admit that I really do more than I personally ought to be doing with all the other little hands in my home. The older kids do some simple chores around the house. Make beds, of course, empty trash, unload the dishwasher, vacuum to an extent, clean out pet cages. It's time to pass some of those on and have the older ones doing some more difficult things. Yesterday I had my 2 and 4 year old kiddos unloading/loading the washer and dryer (with a little kitchen step ladder) and they also emptied the dishwasher while I had the 6 yo load the dishes in. The older kids helped fold laundry but they're horrible at it. That's going to need some work. Sweeping the floor is something else that I need to train some kids to do. While I ask them to sweep from time to time I always have to go back and do it over. I guess the key would be for me to make THEM go back and do it until it's done properly. Ugh!! So not my idea of a fun time. But it's not about fun, is it?

Do any of you have other suggestions for what kids ages 9 (almost), 7, 6 and 4 could be doing around the house? And while you're at it, how do you go about training them WELL? Somebody, give me some thoughts!!

Friday - Grocery Day

2009-01-30T13:12:00.000-08:00

I don't like grocery shopping. Nope, no I don't. I have to plan, I have to go, I have to spend, I have to put away in a half organized fashion. However there are a great many things in life that are much worse and it's not doctor appointment sort of misery or anything like that. Our grocery day is currently on Friday which also happens to be produce day.

Here's a glimpse of grocery day. Hopefully I've checked the sales at Winn Dixie and Publix on the internet on Thursday and finished my list mostly if not totally. Often, however, I haven't and I have to do that Friday morning. Then we load up in the car and set off for the three stores we visit. We go to the one furthest away first JUST in case I feel the desire to quit after the first and closest store. Last week I wanted to quit before we GOT there. Yeah.

Publix is usually the first store. I usually spend the least there because we ONLY hit the sales there. Even buy one, get one sales are often more expensive than the generic brand at Wal-Mart and unless it's something that we just can't have substitutes for, we don't get it. But you know, I enjoy Publix. The people are nice and even the customers are nice! You really feel like you've been to your neighborhood grocery store. Of course, NO trip to the store would ever be complete without a comment or two about our crowd. This is normal...the comments started when there were only two but obviously there's a few more exclaimation points on the end of people's comments now. Today we had three people say something about the number of kids in our family from the start to finish of Publix. When we got in the car (the last guy poked his head in my car as I was loading everything/one up) my kids commented on the number of people who said something today. It's so precious their point of view. As they are wondering why so many people say things to us, one suggested it's just because they like our family. When I pointed out that most people only have 2 kids (give or take) and they just don't see families with more very often, one of my kids said "It must be hard to have two kids." That one definitely made me smile.

Next is usually Winn Dixie. They generally have great meat sales but today there weren't too many things we were needing from there so it was a quick run. I will take this time to say, one of the reasons I don't really like doing grocery shopping is the getting in and out of the car. Not a huge deal, of course, but slightly bigger when you have to buckle people into carseats and deal with people discussing the pros and cons of sitting in the front seat and how just it is that one should sit all the way here from home, while another only sits from one store to the next and so on. And yes, if I only went to one store, it would indeed cost me more to shop.

Now, the Winn Dixie part reminds me that I really have to share that another reason I don't like grocery shopping is that it's not as calm and orderly as people perceive. On a number of occasions I've had someone from church say that they saw us at the store and the kids were so well behaved and I looked so calm and when someone else came down the isle the kids just moved to the side without a word from me and so on. I try not to look TOO shocked when people say this to me. That they would have that impression is miraculous to me. I won't go into great detail but suffice it to say, sometimes I feel like I have a small tornado whirling about me as I walk up and down those isles. A lovely, joyful tornado, but still a tornado.

Today, standing in line and following a little tug-of-war with Abby over the blasted, strategically placed candy during which she shrieked her piercing, glass breaking sort of shriek followed by a whine (only quieted by the threat of calling Dad, *sigh* at the lack of influence on my part), two of my kids crowded into the little area where the cashier would stand for the line next to us and they turned on the conveyor belt. Folks, I've never worked at a grocery store and I have no idea where they turn those off and on. For a brief moment I thought "Maybe I can ignore that and we can check out and leave and be long gone before anyone realized this conveyor belt is running." But no, I wouldn't want to do that AND of course, my kids would spend the next five minutes trying to turn it off and in the process they would turn on the light, turn on the speaker (price check on isle 4 please), and who knows what else. Luckily, I am not altogether lacking in intelligence and mostly good at undoing things that shouldn't have been done in the first place and I was able to turn it off without too much delay but it's just one of those things. After you've walked through two stores with little boys bouncing off of each other and a little girl having a fit when her shoe falls off and trying to stay out of people's way, that's just not something you've got a lot of patience to spend on.

Finally there is Wal-Mart. There are always too many people in the isles and I always wonder how I spent as much as I did and by that point I'm really ready to be done. When I go to Wal-Mart, I walk FAST. It's a huge store and I always need something at both ends so, to make up for the fact that I have to cover the whole thing and that I'm ready to be done, I walk fast. Apparently I'm the only person in this store to do this because I'm always getting behind those who stroll. Argh, matey!! Me thinks they should stroll the plank!! Today one of my little guys asked why we were running. I pointed out that I was walking (see my legs...they're longer than yours and THIS is a walk) and that HE was hopping (which is what he does anyway) and so his question wasn't a valid one. So, got our goods, loaded in the car, realized we forgot cereal, went back to get it. Took it home, loaded the fridge, got back in the car to go get the produce (got 3 avacados which we've never gotten before and guess what I bought at the store today? yep), dropped by a friend's and visited for a bit, went home, threw people in bed and went to work on the horrid mess that this day creates in my home.

And that, my friends, is a more-than-you-wanted-to-know post on grocery days.
I am not spell checking because I've got company coming and still have a mess to finish working on.

My Favorite Baby Carriers

2009-01-29T07:30:00.001-08:00

My last post was talking about cooking which I am not an expert in. I figured that this time I would share about an area where my experience exceeds the experience of the average mother in my country.

In my nearly 9 years of continuously mothering little babies, there is one thing that I think is absolutely indispensable. A good baby carrier. I'm a baby carrier junkie, so I'll share my top three.

My first carrier was a sling called The Over The Shoulder Baby Holder. My sister in law gave it to me when my first was about 3 or 4 months old. The first few days I didn’t think I’d ever figure it out and during the time I couldn’t figure it out, my little Wee Boy was not enjoying it. However, I didn’t give up and then it became a part of my life. I also found that USUALLY it depends more on the mom than the baby. I've demonstrated sling wearing a number of times to mothers who have been unsuccessful with theirs (I think everyone has a hard time right at first) and the baby does just fine so I really think that once mom figures it out, baby is good. Usually. Anyway, I used that sling for 4 children and can’t imagine what I would have done without it!

When I was pregnant with my 5th I got a new sling. A Maya Wrap. Because I’m the one who wears it and I’m the one who takes pictures, the only picture I have of it is not me wearing it but it IS my baby in it.

Crying babies were always easily calmed by carrying them in the sling while I went about doing whatever needed to be done around the house. One baby napped in it because he had reflux and couldn’t sleep any other way (until I defied doctors mandates and laid him on his tummy). They were always perfectly content on hour long grocery shopping trips, often falling asleep. Because they were used to being held in a sling they would always sit contentedly in them while holding them in my arms would be like holding a crazed monkey. I used a sling every where…the park, sightseeing, church, the mall. Even now that I have a different “most used” carrier, I use the maya wrap frequently. I always use it for church, I usually take it along if we’re going out to eat… I use it for anything where I’m going to need to have it on and off quickly or frequently. One big plus to the maya wrap sling is that it’s also a nice cover should the baby need to eat while we’re out and about. I think I bought it for about $45 on ebay. It has definitely been worth the money.

Now, my current most used carrier is the Ergo. Again, pictures are limited for the same reason as before AND the fact that when we take pictures I usually get her off my back so she can be IN the picture! In this picture

you don't really get a good look (you could of course go to the official web site http://www.ergobabycarrier.com/) but here I am wearing our teeny tiny at Disney. She's leaning back to look at the carosel we're about to get on.

This carrier was more expensive. I'd heard about it for a while but the price turned me off. However, with Christmas money in hand and testimonies of friends, I decided to look and see if I could find one a little cheaper than a new one. My dear SIL that got my first sling found one for me on Craig's list in her area for $70 I think. Again, way worth the money in my opinion. This carrier is the most comfortable one ever. I can wear a 20+ pound baby in it ALL DAY and not feel it in my back because the weight is carried around the waist. With a sling I have a limit of maybe 1.2-2 hours at a time The awesome thing about this carrier (other than the comfort) is that with the baby happily on my back I can easily do laundry, lean over students while we're doing school work, do house work, wash dishes, start dinner, pick up another baby and a great number of other things that are difficult with a carrier that has the baby in the front! And my two smallest people who often get crabby in the evening when I'm busy are VERY happy to be carried on mommy's back. One at a time of course.

yellow squash patties

2009-01-29T06:47:00.000-08:00

Since I have a lot of posts about cooking, I figured I should share that I'm not what one would think of as a good cook, really. I'm not doing this to show people how to cook or anything like that. Good heavens, no. don't come to me asking for cooking help! It's really just lately that I've been trying lots of new things. Some of this is due to the fact that I'll have a few things that I cook regularly and at one point my husband will say he likes them or at least he'll eat them with no apparent objections and then he'll say he doesn't really like it, that he's tired of it (once every two weeks is frequent for him and left overs are definitely not his thing) or that he likes it a different way (that I don't like). It seems that recently there were lots of things that my dearly beloved wasn't so tickled with. So, rather than try to tweak the recipes and too often, not being successful at pleasing his tastebuds, I tend to dump the recipe nearly altogether and look for something new.

Also, of course, there is our weekly supply of produce pushing me to try new things in order to use up what we get. So, if any of you guys every have a recipe for anything that I mention, please share it with me!

In our produce we've been getting lots of yellow squash. One thing we really love is a squash casserole recipe that I got from my aunt. However, we've gotten enough squash to have at least one a week if not more often. I needed a new recipe! Plain ol' steamed squash isn't a real big hit so the other day we tried some squash patties.

We used about 6 medium squash, shredded

1 small onion shredded (which was a pain, using the shredder, maybe should have used the processor)

1 tsp salt

1 c all-purpose flour

1 egg beaten

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 table spoon olive oil

We were supposed to let the shredded squash sit in a strainer for 30 minutes, letting the liquid drip off but I didn't and it went alright anyway. Here's my little chef, shredding the squash for me. He did every bit of it except for half of the first one! What a diligent little man!

We mixed the squash, onion, salt, flour, egg and cheese in a bowl and then dropped it by the serving spoon into oil in the skillet which was on medium heat. We cooked it for about 3 minutes on each side or until browned. I think I might add a little garlic next time but it was yummy and even reheated the next day the left overs were good!

Bell Peppers and Rice

2009-01-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

Once again, our produce co-op has prompted a new dish. This past week we got several red and yellow bell peppers. In past weeks we've gotten lots of green bell peppers and while I've used some, I ended up slicing many of them and putting them in the freezer. I decided to use some of those peppers today!

Here are some of the main ingredients we had for lunch. Frozen green bell peppers, fresh red and yellow, red onion and cilantro. I used one of each (no, it's not all pictured here). For the cilantro, I used about twice what you see here.

After starting a pot of brown ride and after chopping the vegetables all up, I dumped them in the pan with some olive oil and cooked till the veggies were soft. Doesn't it look great?! I think I'm going to try putting the same ingredients in a food processor, fresh with a fresh tomato and see how that is for dipping corn chips!

Once it was done, I took two tomatoes, one red and one yellow, chopped then up and threw them in and cooked for a few mintues longer until the tomatoes were warmed up. Here is the end result along with the brown rice. It was delicious! My little bitty girly even ate a little bowl full!

The Cutest Cook

2009-01-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

This is my little cook. He always helps me and apparently he's burnt himself (nothing of any significance, mind you) enough times that he's decided that he can only help using oven mits. Of course, he has been known to touch things to see if they're hot. All part of the learning curve I suppose. Needless to say, the mits are quite limiting.
He decided (after wearing my apron around for about an hour) that he would like his own apron. So, tomorrow when we go grocery shopping I guess we'll get some apron fabric for the little man.

Lots of Onions

2009-01-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago in our basket of produce, we got a bag of small onions and we usually get a couple of large onions every week to boot. I like onions but I've just not been able to use them all. Yesterday I decided to use some up in a recipe that would be most fitting for my Dad (tomatoes and onions, baby!). First I chopped some onions up and threw them in a small pan with a bit of butter. Mmmm! My house smelled great!

Now I tried to tomatoes two different ways. The first was to put them in a pan with a touch of olive oil and cook till they're a bit soft. Or rather, softer than usual for a tomato! I also used them freshly sliced...either way was good.

I toasted some bread. you could use a nice looking bun of some sort but all I had was sliced bread. I spread a bit of mayo, loaded one side with the onions.

I put a slice or two or tomato on each sandwich, covered it with mozzerella cheese and sprinkled it with some basil. On the basil note, I've read that dried basil keeps it's flavor better if stored in larger pieces. I will say that my basil that I've just recently dried and stored as whole leaves (more or less) in a spice jar seems to have more flavor than the basil I've bought already broken into tiny pieces. I will also say that the extra flavor of the basil really made this for me. I popped it in the oven to melt the cheese a bit. I also tried the microwave and didn't observe a huge difference.

And here's the end result. I recommend just a touch of salt.

It was quite filling, 3 of my 4 boys liked it (one didn't like it because of the veggies included, of course) and my husband liked it in spite of the large quantities of onion.

A Favorite for Cloth Diapers

2009-01-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I use cloth diapers on my smallest baby. In the early years I'd do it because money was too tight to get a pack of diapers for the week or it was close to being to tight for that. Sometimes I'd just do it because it felt good to my numbers self to be able to count up how much I wasn't spending on something my kids were just doing to do a number on. Chuckle, giggle, snort... I amuse myself. Anyway. I also read dismal stats on how the planet was going to be covered with disposable diapers (think Wall-E with skyscrapers made of 300 year old diapers) by the time my grandchildren are around and so it feels nice to keep just a few of those ol' sposies out of my grandchildren's future. The list goes on. There are enough things that appeal to my personal interests and not the least of these is that truth be told, I like wrapping my baby in cute things and the latest finds are cute!

For the past year, I've used the cover and snap in liner of gDiapers. http://www.gdiapers.com/ So cute!! These aren't REALLY cloth diapers. They're partly a cloth diaper and partly a biodegradable/flushable diaper if you use them as intended. I bought the sample which includes 10 flushable/degradable liners along with the two covers and 4 snap in liners (because sometimes the liner gets dirty but not the cover so you can snap in a new one). After using a few with the disposable, I decided that I really preferred to use a cloth diaper insert. I love the way the diaper fits. I like that they aren't as bulky as other cloth diapers I've tried. They're also better about leaks than several I've tried.

For those who are interested, here's the line up. Diaper cover, snap in vinyl liner, flat fold diaper cloth folded to fit with an extra soaker pad on top made of flannel and fleece (fleece is supposed to keep the baby's skin drier).

And here's the fit. It took 5 minutes to get this shot (not the best, but sufficient after chasing her around with my camera - boy didn't I look silly). Just TRY taking a picture of a 15 month old's moving back side! If you're wondering what the white squares are, that's part of the hook and loop closure (aka Velcro). They close in back...that supposedly keeps the baby from removing the diaper on it's own.

They have a variety of other colors and even some striped ones that are super cute. One day when I'm rich, I'll buy some more.

The Blessing of Family and a Father's Prayers

2009-01-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago we went on a mini vacation with some of our family. My brother-in-law was running a marathon at Disney World over the weekend and we all were able to go down there for a few days. My kids have never been, so we were really looking forward to it. I was a little nervous before we went, not sure about all day at a theme park with one baby who still takes 2 naps a day and one who needs one 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. The trip turned out GREAT even with missed naps! And really, the best part wasn’t so much the theme parks, although those were really fun. The best part was spending time and making memories with extended family. The only drawback was that Matt’s sister and her family weren’t there with us.

Here is my family at Epcot:

And here are 5 of our kids (one is on my back as I'm taking the picture) and 2 belonging to Matt's brother.

On this trip I was reminded again of how blessed I am with the family I married into. I will say that it's not 100% wonderful all the time and there have been a few rough patches here and there to work through...one patch in particular was really hard, actually. BUT, all in all, I can say that from my personal view point, God has blessed me incredibly.

I grew up in a conservative Christian home (family devotions, certain standards for dress, music and more), had a big family and I was homeschooled some and went to a Christian school some. Growing up in my family, I don't recall a time of not knowing about Jesus' love and sacrifice for us. Those are all things that I wanted to carry with me into my own family. My husband grew up in a bit of a different background. Pretty much different in every area. Growing up, he wouldn't call his family a Christian family and he didn't know about Christ and what He did until his 20's. His family was smaller with him and two siblings, his parents divorced when he was in his early teens and he went to public schools.

Who would think that his family would be such a awesome blessing to me?! One that shows God holds all the strings in His hands and arranges even the smallest details. His mother and step-father have been absolutely supportive and encouraging about homeschooling, of our growing family and especially of teaching our children about God and His ways. My husband's sister ALSO had 6 kids (and counting?) and she's done a bit of homeschooling with them as well. My husband's brother and his wife will be homeschooling (their kids are preschool age right now), they would certianly like to have a larger family and they plan to be missionaries so there's definitely a Christ focus there. I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who understand where I'm coming from and have similar goals and values. It has made living our convictions so mcuh easier than it might be if his family thought we were just wierd, you know?

You know what I think? I think that the prayers that my Dad prayed for my future husband every night when I was growing up were answered in ways Dad couldn't imagine. ;o)

Brussels Sprouts and a new Chicken Dish

2009-01-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that we're part of a co-op that gets vegetables from the farmers market on a weekly basis. Recently we got some Brussels sprouts which I personally don't recall having before. Perhaps I have, but they have not been regulars in my house so I had to find a recipe for them and YUM!! I ate all but one myself! Pig, I know.

Garlic Brussels Sprouts

1 1/2 pounds fresh Brussels sprouts
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3 teaspoons butter divided
2 teaspoons olive or canola oil
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Cut an X in the core end of each brussels sprout; set aside. In a large saucepan, saute garlic in 1 teaspoon butter and oil for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown. Add sprouts; toss to coat. Add the broth, salt and pepper; cover and cook for 12-14 minutes or until sprouts are tender. Drain; add the remaining butter and toss until melted.

I didn't add the salt and pepper until after they were cooked and I just used my own chicken broth that I freeze when I boil chicken. It was delicious! And Nathan liked it, too! So I'm looking forward to the next time Brussels sprouts come my way!

The chicken is called Herb and Chicken Pasta but I have other similar dishes so I think this one needs a more original name. I've gotten a lot of basil in our produce lately and really hadn't used much of it so I ended up drying it. I've filled two little herb containers with it so I figured I'd find a recipe that called for some basil and some onion (because we got lots of onions a couple weeks ago as well).

1 (16 ounce) package angel hair pasta
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon Cajun seasoning (optional)
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 cup chicken broth

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain and reserve.
Meanwhile, season chicken with salt and pepper, basil, rosemary, Cajun seasoning, and red pepper flakes. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat; add chicken and cook until browned. Remove chicken from skillet and stir in garlic and onions; cook and stir until clear.
Return chicken to skillet over onion mixture and add broth. Simmer until chicken is cooked through and no longer pink inside; spread mixture over pasta and serve.

Everyone liked it and Matt even specifically complimented it so it went over well. Although, I have to say that I'm beginning to get suspicious of Matt's sincerity. He's complimented far too many new meals lately and he doesn't usually. Is this a new years resolution or something?! It's fine by me, as long as he really means it cause there's nothing as annoying as making a meal someone said they liked only to find they don't really like it that much, you know?!

Do Unto Others

2009-01-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

As a parent with several children, I spend a lot of time working on how people are to interact with others. As a parent who is in the process of raising little Christians or servants of God, I have to focus some on the practical side of teaching them how to serve God and others. Next to having a personal relationship with God, the way Christians actively love or serve others ought to be one of our main identifying characteristics.

God has been using a number of circumstances lately to remind me that putting others first is very important. While many Christians will agree with that, I think that we easily slip into putting ourselves first and from there it's easy to teach our children to put themselves first, by example, if nothing else. I can think of cases where we have done that.

Sometimes we teach our kids using the 'put yourself in their shoes' line of thought. But sometimes it's a little off. Some use this one: "I wouldn't want to have to do that, so I won't require my children to do that." Sharing a new toy, for instance. We might think, I wouldn't want to have to share something I JUST got when I'm really wanting to play with it so I won't require that they do it. Giving up something, anything, we feel entitled to for the sake of someone else is something that we sometimes struggle with. How we feel about it varies according to how much we want it ourselves. You see, WE are selfish by nature and if we gauge what we and our children should do by what we WANT to do, we'll be way off base. If you're going to use the 'put yourself in someone else's shoes' line, it should be approached from the receiving end. Often we might not want to give or put ourselves out for the sake of someone else, but wouldn't we so appreciate it if someone got something brand new that we really wanted to check out/ look at/ try and they gave it up for a bit just so we could try it and did it with an attitude that indicates they are really glad to share with you?!

Hospitality is built on this idea of putting the comfort and needs of someone else at the top of your list. Not making them feel like their visit or whatever you're doing for them is a burden to you but instead making them feel you're just delighted to have them or to be able to do something for them and you're not thinking about how to avoid mess, work or trying to figure out ways to profit off of their presence. If people get the feeling that you're anxious to avoid the mess their visit will produce or that you're terribly busy and their "intrusion" is taking up your valuable time or whatever, they'll simply come away feeling bad, NOT feeling blessed by you.

And so it begins!

2009-01-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

I don’t even have teenagers and yet, I’m already being introduced to the wild world of secretive, unapproved meetings that would certainly be undesirable from the parental view point. Right under my nose in my very own back yard!! The culprits?

This is our Smokey.

This is his friend who found a way into our yard last night. Cute, but we're not sure about the character. I mean, what am I to think, sneaking in during the night?!

And has spent enough time here to dig this under Smokey's cage (which I JUST moved before bed last night so I KNOW this was done since last night). Apparently QUITE interested in hanging out with Smokey. A little forward, don't you think?

We will be speaking to the parents of Smokey's friend about this!!

I've Been Tagged!!

2009-01-09T04:12:00.000-08:00

Here are the rules to receiving this award:
You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous bloggers in a post.
You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.
You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.
On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them.

I was tagged by my friend Stephanie at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/mamazee

In turn, here are some blogs that I enjoy and think are tag worthy!

Bethany (whose blog inspired me to keep up with my own) at http://bethany.preciousinfants.com/
She's wonderfully creative, likes homemaking and is artsy... all things I love! I could browse her archives all day!

Carisa at http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/
This one I enjoy specifically for fun teaching ideas and inspiration. I specifically like her lapbook ideas! At the very least, I'm reminded to keep learning fun.

Sarah at http://fiddledeedeeblog.blogspot.com/
She's the wife of a friend I grew up with and her blog is specifically interesting if you're looking to save a few bucks. I started reading her blog to figure out how to do the CVS thing, where you use sales, coupons and extra care bucks to save yourself lots of money. However, apparently everyone around here caught onto that and when I went to CVS they'd never have any of the good deals left so NOW I go to her blog for the Publix deals/coupon information. She has coupon links and all sort of good information there.

Those are my 3 fabulous additions. I'm afraid I don't have five at this point in time.
Sorry not to be able to follow through with 5. I'm not a huge blog reader and while I could choose some random blogs, those are the only ones that I know of and feel are definitely worthy of a look-see.

My New Apron

2009-01-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, first let me say, I've never been an apron kind of person. Actually, I've never in my years until recently (when I got a kitchen bigger than a bathtub) been a 'spend time in the kitchen' kind of person. My little sister, 10 years younger than I was known for her bread making skills while I was still in college without bread making skills. A little embarrassing that she would be able to do that and I would not, but I didn't let it get to me. I still don't have bread making skills but I have a bread machine so that's how I take care of that problem. Another sister is known for her baking. Or at least, before she was doing the college thing she baked more frequently that I personally would ever do. A sister younger still is known for her green beans! Ha!! Well, not really but once she put a JAR of green beans in a pot because that's what mom told her to do. It's one of those stories that you wish would die but your family will remind you of forever and even blog about it! Suffice it to say, she now knows how to cook green beans without the jar.

Back to my point. I've not been known for just loving to cook and no one ever got me cooking things as gifts prior to my wedding (when everything is about cooking) because WHY would I want that?!

But being a wife and mother 6 times over has had an effect on me. You might as well embrace what you have to spend a lot of time doing, huh?! Maybe having a preschooler who is addicted to cooking shows has had an effect. And maybe having a good friend obsessed with healthy eating has had an impact... I guess a lot of things have come together to give me a greater interest in cooking/food preparation. But still, does one HAVE to have an apron to do this? Well, no, but I personally am not the neatest cook! I have grease stains on most of my shirts (ALL of my maternity shirts) and it's quite frustrating. So, I need protection for my shirts AND I need big pockets. My mother says that my pockets aren't for collecting all the toys in the house but I must explain. My boys have many toys with small pieces that always end up "wost and awone" far away from their place of residence. What happens is that I pick them up and put them in a nearby mug, basket or some other small container because at the time I'm doing something and can't go to the other room to take some tiny toy everytime I find one. So, my apron pockets are for collecting these things as I go and depositing them with their family when I get around to their place of residence, whenever that may happen.

After talking about wanting an apron for a year or more I finally made one over the holidays. I found the perfect fabric. Mary Englebreit (http://www.maryengelbreit.com/) fabric that has tea pots and tea cups and watering cans and cherries (of course) and little houses and cute little sayings like "Bloom where you're planted" and "Home sweet home" and "Nurture all you love" and "Home is where the heart is" and other things that are perfect for an apron when you consider that you're wearing it as you go about your home trying to make it a lovely place for your family. I've loved Mary Englebreit's artwork for a long time. I love that it's bright and cheery and that she uses LOTS of colors (because all colors are my favorites!). Ah! I love my apron!

Holding Grudges

2009-01-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a book called Created for Work by Bob Schultz. Today I came across a little section about grudges that stood out to me, not because I have a grudge against anyone but because I'm a witness to a monstrous and nasty grudge and the truth of these words seem like something every grudge holder should consider.

"A grudge is the inward reluctance to give. It's the unwillingness to benefit the people you resent. When you have a grudge against someone you cut them out of your life, even when they are in the same room with you. You don't smile and only talk if absolutely required. A good grudge holder doesn't look at the person. He refuses to acknowledge their presence. He can be pleasant to everyone else, yet carefully avoid the target of his grudge...

Grudges require work. Emotionally, you must keep the sour feelings. Mentally, you must remain alert not to smile of look kind. A day of grudge holding is physically exhausting. However, with training, some people are able to maintain an intense grudge for years.

God desires to benefit the world through you. He designed you to be a vessel in which His Spirit grows and bears fruit. He wants to display His mercy, forgiveness, and goodwill everywhere you go. You are like a pipe He wants to use to pour goodness into the world. The only hindrance is that we have the ability to clog our own pipes."

Sometimes people seem to think the grudge impacts only the person they're holding the grudge against. Not so. The grudge I'm thinking of seems to have a greater impact on the "favored" people on the fringes of the grudge than one might imagine. They feel awkward to be favored when the other person is being carefully left out, they feel the injustice displayed towards the object of the grudge, they have to choose words carefully and hide information because they know that giving further evidence of the grudge would seriously hurt the feelings of some while raising the ire of others. The grudge holder seems to think nothing, now, of this habitual practice and apparently plans to continue this to and beyond death. Yes, the object of the grudge DOES feel it acutely. But others, also feel the sting of it, struggle to grasp how the person they love can act that way and struggle too, to be loyal to both parties. A grudge is a nasty thing.

I'd like to ask, WHAT is the value of a grudge well held?

Equipping Missionaries

2009-01-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

Acts 20:33-35 says;
"I have coveted no one's silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In everything I showed you that be working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"

Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3) and, according to this passage, he didn't depend on others to provide for himself but rather, he provided both for his own needs through his own hard work and he helped others with his hard earned wages.

From this and from reading a number of biographies of missionaries, I see that it's very important for missionaries to be equipped to do more than just preach. Many missionaries equipped themselves, prior to going to the mission field, by learning about medicine, by learning construction skills, by learning about gardening/farming and anything else they thought would be useful in serving. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The people see the missionary applying God's Word to working, which they all have to do to live, they see the missionary serving them and meeting some of their needs through some practical skill and from that learn about serving each other, not to mention that they see love in action. What a blessing we can be to others when we have a practical skill that we can use to meet a practical need while we're sharing God's love. It's where words and action meet. It just makes sense that someone should have skills beyond that of teaching God's Word (which any child of God should be able to do) as they go into ministry. Those in "the ministry" should not be the least skilled people around!!

With that in mind, it's my desire to give my children, in addition to a working knowledge of God's Word, some practical skills to equip them for serving others in practical ways.

Growing Missionaries

2009-01-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

I love reading and my favorite thing to read these day is biographies of missionaries. When I was younger I found their stories interesting and entertaining but now I find them amazing and inspiring!

The first missionary story to make a really significant impact on my life was the story of Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China. At the time that I read it (actually re-read because I had read it before), I had two little babies and I was feeling like I wasn't accomplishing much in life. Staying home, not coming into contact with other adults much at all, really not fitting into the churches we tried even though I'd make the effort to get involved. The only adults that I talked to about life, other than my husband, was my mom (by phone) and his mom! I was feeling a bit depressed about things when I read that book.

A small part at the beginning of this book permanently changed my perspective on my job. I read about Hudson Taylor's parents praying to God before he was even born, that their child would take the gospel to China. He never knew about this until he was a missionary in China as an adult. Suddenly I realized that God used those parents to change the eternal destiny of multitudes of souls in China! Not through going out and doing amazing things that everyone could see and call amazing, but by doing the quiet little thing of raising their child for the Lord! It's not a job with lots of glory, but when you look down the road and see what God could do with your service... Wow!!

To me it would be a great thing if God chose to use one of my children as an overseas missionary. Not that I would like my children to be far away, but I would definitely love to have my children play a part in spreading the gospel to all the world. At the same time, I pray that God will use all of my children in a significant way, drawing others to Christ and supporting other missionaries, no matter where they end up.

With that in mind, I've not had another day of feeling like my job was pointless. I'm preparing little missionaries to love and serve the Lord. No other job could have greater, longer lasting significance!

Hair Clip Holders

2008-12-29T12:25:00.000-08:00

3 years ago, for obvious reasons, there were no cute little hair bows residing around here. In the past three years, the population of hair clips/bows has grown by leaps and bounds. They threaten to put matchbox cars in the minority which is no simple feat!

Governing authorities have decided to restrict hair thingies to residing on reservations provided specifically for them so that they can be protected in their natural state and so that they can be used for their created purpose (which seldom happens if they're in the bottom of the toy box fraternizing with matchbox cars).

Here are some very simple hairbow reservations I created today. The addition of the little wood critters makes this super cute in my opinion.

If you don't have anything nice to say...

2008-12-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

FIND something nice to say. Seems like, every where you go, you find people ready to be critical, ready with a complaint, ready to tear down, ready to show how other people just blew it.

Encouragement is an amazing thing. It works wonders and has results like no amount of criticism ever had.

For me, it's taken practice to encourage. It's not always my first thought by any means. You look at the bad and say "In what way could this be good?" Was there anything good in this? Or maybe, how could this be made good? Or how might it be good in the long run? What could God be doing here? And sometimes, it's all about timing. As apples of gold in settings of silver, is a word spoken in the right circumstances (Proverbs something).

Something happened at our church today that our pastor is bound to catch some flack for this week. It wasn't his fault and he couldn't have known it was going to happen but he will very likely have some hard times this week because of it. My first thought was to express to him my thoughts on what happened. Then I thought how silly that was because he'd be thinking the same things I was but more so because he'll feel responsible and people will hold him responsible! And the more I thought, the more I realized that what he'll need this week is encouragement and prayer.

So, I sent our pastor a quick note, not complaining but telling him that, knowing people go to him with complaints, I would pray that he receive an extra bit of wisdom and grace this week should he need it. Also, the little thing at our church today made me think of something I value in our pastor but hadn't thought to actually "value" before. So I also took that opportunity to let him know about that. What started out with me being fairly appalled and wanting to complain, turned into a perfect time to encourage.

A+ Stuffed Mushrooms

2008-12-28T17:04:00.000-08:00

The long background to these stuffed mushrooms:

My honey bunny isn't overly intrested in eating healthy food. He could probably go weeks without eating any veggies beyond fried potatoes and a slice of tomato and a bit of lettuce on a burger. Not to say that he doesn't LIKE vegetables but that he doesn't make a concerted effort to eat them. The effort, then, is placed on my shoulders.

A few weeks ago we joined in with a few friends to get veggies wholesale from a local farmers market. Every week we get about a laundry basket full of a variety of produce for $15. It changes every week and you never know just what you're going to get. I LOVE it because it means we have lots of produce every week, you never know what so it's almost as exciting as a Christmas gift and since we often get something that I haven't used much of in the past, I have to branch out a bit.

This week we got a package of mushrooms. Mushrooms. I don't like mushrooms but my honey bunny does so I asked him what I might make with them. His response was stuffed mushrooms so tonight I tried some. He LOVES them!! Yea!! I tried some and the stuffing part was good but I still don't like mushrooms.

Here's the recipe.
8-10 fresh mushrooms
1 tbl spoon butter
2 tbl spoons minced onion (I got two recipes mixed and didn't use that much)
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/4 tbl spoon worcestershire sauce
1/4 c. soft bread crumbs (I used 1 slice of bread)
1/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2 tbl spoons water
salt/pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Wash mushrooms quickly under running water. Pull stems from mushrooms and chop stems finely. melt butter in skillet over med-low heat; add chopped mushroom stems, onion and garlic. Saute until tender. Stir in worcestershire sauce, bread crumbs, cheese, salt and pepper. Sprinkle salt over mushroom caps and fill with sauteed mixture, mounding over top. Put 2 tbl spoons water in shallow dish and arrange mushrooms in dish. bake about 20 minutes. Serve hot.

This was one of those that was REALLY a big hit with him. He ate nearly all of them.

Hand Print Stepping Stones

2008-12-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

For a certain gardening grandparent, I decided to make a stepping stone with each child's hand print on it. That means six of these suckers. Here's one in the process of drying.

I used a sack of quick drying concrete. Not the best choice because, though it's not real expensive (it was a little more than $5 for a 50 lb bag), it has lots of little rocks in it making it difficult to stamp the letters and numbers. But it works.

I mixed it in an empty plastic ice cream bucket. Just enough to do one at a time since it sets within 30 minutes. We poured it into the clear plastic flower pot dishes (surely there's a name for that) that we got at Home Depot for less than $1. They have similar things at Michaels near the stepping stone kits that sell for nearly $4. Not a good deal if you want to do 6 of them.

I DID buy the letter stamps at Michaels.

Something I might try sometime is buying patio paint and painting the handprints onto already made stepping stones.

Home Made Gift Tags

2008-12-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, remember the wiki stix that we made? Well, now is the time to make them into little cute gifts. I got some little bags at the dollar store to put them in and I made some tags that I think turned out kinda cute. I got out the pack of scrapbooking Christmas paper that I got a year or two ago and never used, my cutting mat that's quilting size (as opposed to scrapbooking size), and these little round cutting thingers that you've probably seen at Creative Memory get togethers. I haven't gone to any of those things for several years and I can't recall if they have a name (did you not catch my previous entry about my memory?!) but they're great for cutting nice smooth circles. The other option would be tracing various cups but the cutting part is tedious that way.

So, a little paper and a little glue and here are a few of our wiki stix gifts.

The Reason for Christmas

2008-12-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

The reason my family celebrates Christmas is to celebrate Christ's birth. It seems that everyone agrees that it's not about presents but I've heard people say that the season is about family, friends, our blessings and such. No, it's not about family, not friends, not our many blessings but the ONE Supreme Gift; our God coming to earth to pay for our sins.

Everyone seems to have plenty of Christmas traditions but often a majority of those traditions really don't have a whole lot to do with Jesus Christ. It's easy to celebrate the Christmas without thinking much about Christ. Just think! The one question that children get asked this time of year is "Are you ready for Santa?" People assume you'll be celebrating with gifts and Santa but don't even think about asking if you're excited to celebrate Jesus!

With so many traditions that aren't specifically about Christ, it takes a little extra effort to make sure you pass on the true meaning of Christmas to your children. There's one Christ-focused thing we've been doing the last two years that my children really enjoy. It's an "interactive" nativity set. It has several boxes, each with a character from the story of Christ's birth. The kids take turns opening each one and setting their person in place and we read about that character (Gabriel, Mary, Jospeh, Jesus...) and talk about them and what the story means to us, etc. You can see this nativity set and read more about it here: http://www2.familylife.com/wgwfc/

A brief tidbit on how poor my memory is. Since we got the Christmas stuff down from the attic several weeks ago, I'd been thinking how I'd really like a hands on thing that I could do with the kids and I was thinking maybe there was a nativity set or something I could get from the Christian book store. Finally, last week I went to the bookstore and asked for something that fit this description and the little gal showed me our exact set which we had used a number of times last year. She looked at me like I was a bit nuts when I exclaimed "I have that!!" Sigh. Yeah.
We did it several times last year. Part of my problem is that I didn't put it away with the Christmas stuff. I'll try to remember to do that this year so it'll be there when we start getting stuff down for Christmas.

Sharing

2008-12-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

In a world of one and two children families, people think that children in large families miss out, that they're being cheated of what all these other kids get in these smaller families. From the point of view of a child in a large family, I'd say they've got it all backwards. In my particular family a majority of us (I haven't discussed it with all 9 of my siblings) feel greatly blessed by the experience and richness that being in a large family has provided. Perhaps other people are thinking how much stuff/time they give to their one or two children and then try to imagine providing that much for 5, 8 or 10 kids. Maybe they think it would be a sad childhood to have to share everything. If that's the concern, I offer this picture for their consideration.

We don't have a little CD player like this at our house so it was quite a novelty while we were at my parents house this past week. Here's the scene I walked in on. If you can't tell, each boy has one ear-bud and they are listening to the CD together with the little guy leaning on his big brother.

Fresh Honey

2008-12-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

This past week we visited my parents (and siblings) and while there, one of my sisters brought home some fresh honey comb. It looks like the caps that cover the honey combs had been removed for the most part.

Here's a close up. Look at all the honey in there! Isn't it crazy to think that they put honey in there a little tiny bit at a time and think how much we eat on one serving of toast!!

Here's mom cutting some off to show my sister how she should do it so we can put it in the jars.

And HERE are the jars of honey/honey comb. She sent two jars home with me. A good bit of honey had dripped out but I need to get the rest of it out. Some bits of honey comb have crumbled into the honey and I'm not all fired up about eating bees wax so I think I'm going to get some cheese cloth and strain it out. I actually have no idea if/how that will work. We'll see.

Shhhh! Here's the Christmas doll!

2008-12-18T14:39:00.001-08:00

Here she is! Hand made by grandma! It's not real easy to tell from this picture, but her hair is in two thick braids. Yea!! So cute!

Dancing Rain Dolls

2008-12-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, our pastor's wife made me a soft sculpture, cabbage patch like baby doll. I loved her! She was supposed to resemble me with long blonde hair and green eyes (though my eyes might be more accurately described as "pond water green" according to my aunt!). I would love to pass her on to my little girls but she was one of the many casualties from when our house burned down just before my wedding.

I asked my mom if she would be interested in making a similar baby for La Princess this year for Christmas. Long story short, she's making her a doll but it's a different kind. But OH! SO cute! I'm at my parents right now and have been able to see the doll in the making and she's cute!! The pattern and supplies were ordered from http://dancingraindolls.com/

Here's one from their web site. They have many more! Check them out! They are SO cute!!

Sweet Things Kids Say

2008-12-14T13:11:00.001-08:00

In our family, time in the car ends up being question and answer time or time for deeper discussions than we usually have. Especially between me (the driver) and whoever is sitting in the front seat. Yes, I know, the back seat is the safest place for children under the age of twelve but we have 6 children in that age range and 5 back seats. So they rotate who gets to sit in the least safe seat. If God doesn't want us in an accident then all seats will be equally safe, right?!

As I was saying, deeper discussions. Far too often it's on spiritually related matters and to be honest, I'm just not qualified to answer half the questions they come up with. Well, this week we were heading somewhere and Little Chef was riding up front with me and started asking me about the new bodies that we'll get when we're in heaven. He asked if they'd look the same, he asked if our skin would be the same color (rubbing my arm as he asked), he asked if people would have, um, certain body parts (try responding to that in ANY form or fashion with a straight face), the list goes on. To these questions I'm saying "Hmm, I don't really know. We'll see!" Finally he asked if we'll have the same faces. Without much of a pause he said "I hope so. I hope YOU do. I like your face." Awww. My little sweet boy! You just gotta love 'em!

Cookie Cutter Ornaments

2008-12-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

We had bakers clay left over from the bears (which dried but now need super glue to stick them back together because they've been handled and dropped a few times in the drying process) so we made cookie cutter ornaments out of it. Little Chef got a few cookie cutters for his birthday and we used those. A hole for hanging the ornaments was made with a drinking straw. we put them in the oven on 300 degrees for about an hour We've not done this before so we tried a variety of thicknesses. The star in the upper left was VERY thin. The ones in the shape of the blown glass ornaments were a little thick and got a bit fat in the oven. Here they are just baked.

Here are a few in the beginning stages of being painted. Obviously we have plenty more to paint.

And here are just a few finished ornaments. We used acrylic paints we had on hand as well as some shiny fabric paint.

Christmas Triathalon...er...Party

2008-12-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

Generally speaking, I don't overly load our schedule. I don't have a problem saying no (I practice it continually at home, for goodness sake) and I know well that children can survive without doing something outside of the home 3 plus times a week. This week however, has been a busy one.

Today was a bit crazy. It started off yesterday. Yesterday we did a gingerbread contest (our house won 3rd place!) where I was reminded that, for the party today, we had to bring a dessert of some sort and found out that we were also supposed to bring along some sort of finger food or something. After lunch (at Chick-fil-a where the gingerbread contest was held) we went to pick up stuff to make the necessary food went home and put kids down for a nap and tried to catch up on a little stuff at home and before I knew it, we had to leave for "Bethlehem". A church about an hour away has a wonderful live town of Bethlehem including the nativity which SOMETIMES has a live baby for Jesus. This year they did not. For goodness sake, Jesus is the main character and in this LIVE nativity, they couldn't get a LIVE baby?! I digress. We did that last night, got home pretty late, flopped into bed. I made some spinach dip with the bag of fresh spinach before we left so that was taken care of and I figured that I would bake brownies as soon as I got up in the morning so they'd be ready for the party at 9.

Wouldn't you know, I got up this morning and La Princess was in her bed yelling/crying "Mom!! I'm poooop!" I went to get her and YIKES! I couldn't tell where the leak was right off so I carried her superman style to my bathroom only to discover that the leak was in front and now my carpet and i both required cleaning. Argh!! So after bathing her, washing the carpet, taking a shower myself and doing a load of laundry I could finally do the brownies. Thoughts of calling it off were dancing through my head (forget the sugarplums, okay?!) but of course I had already told them we were going and I hated to disappoint.

We arrived at the church for the party about 25 minutes late, Little Bit had taken her shoes and one sock off (and it was pretty chilly out so I hated to haul her in like that...) and La Princess was SO not cooperating with anyone. It's okay though, we were there and things were bound to smooth out a bit.

I spent much of the 3.5 hours we were there with one little lady on my back and one in my arms. Both were tired, one would have been best left at home or just about anywhere else in my opinion. All in all, it was one of those things where my arms were given a workout, my patience was given a work out and I was rather looking forward to going home. I felt somewhat frazzled, especially by the time they got around to eating, which was the last activity for the party. At that point Little Bit had been stretched beyond her limit and was way tired. La Princess wanted mom, wanted her carseat, wanted to go home and whatever happened, did NOT want me to do anything but sit and hold her.

Interestingly, I had one lady come up and tell me she saw us in the grocery store and complemented the kids on how well behaved they were and how they all just stepped to the side and got out of the way when other people were coming down the isle without me having to say anything. She also said we all looked so calm, etc. You know what that reminds me of? You know those stories you hear about people smuggling Bibles into other countries and the border guards don't even look in the box with the Bibles or perhaps they do but they don't seem to see the Bibles? That's what this seems like. Like they're missing something that's so obvious I can't believe it's not some sort of trick. Because I don't think there's a time in the grocery store where I don't have to instruct my kids to step aside and watch out for people. And calm!! It's true, I don't yell at my kids in the grocery store. I actually drop my voice and hiss at them! Ha! Not really, but I do drop my voice to correct them in public. I don't much like hearing people chew out their kids, myself. Really though, I'm amazed that it seemed calm to her. I always figure people see us coming and it's like a small tornado coming down the isle, you know?! With little heads flashing out from time to time, a hand shooting out there to grab something off the shelf, and on down the twister goes. Perhaps I had just issued a death threat and they were all contemplating how serious I might be. Or, maybe, like in those missionary stories, she really just didn't see it! I always worry that I'll be a bad testimony to the world as related to having a larger than average family. Maybe that's how God takes care of that!

Back to the party. First they had a craft. Three of the boys made some baseball game, my little engineer chose a more complicated car to do and La Princess and I did a mailbox sort of thing. Here are a few carpenters, busy at work.

They also had a cupcake walk. Sheer numbers worked in our favor there (or worked against us as bringing home cupcakes isn't the best thing in the world) and we won twice, netting us twelve large chcolate/candy coated cupcakes. Here are a couple of pictures of the boys during the cake walk.

Decorating a Gingerbread House

2008-12-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

Our homeschooling group is having a gingerbread house contest tomorrow. It's fairly low key as far as I know, but still, we're not expecting to be real contenders by any means. It'll be fun though, getting together with other kids in our group and seeing what everyone else did. AND the kids really did enjoy it.

We just got a gingerbread house kit from Wal-Mart. Actually, it was one of the little chef's birthday gifts. Here it is at the start. They didn't even put it together straight. A certain brother of mine would have been in there with a crow bar to reset the thing correctly. I have no such tendancies. Actually, I had to give the gingerbread house over to God before I started so I wouldn't get upset that no one was doing it the right way. If you listened to the Pineapple Story, you'll know what I'm talking about.

It took a while. One of my sisters called right after we started to destress after a final. I was glad to chat but it set us back by a bit (and also making me forget that I put a kid in the shower-- where IS that kid?!) But here's our finished product. We hope it will last till tomorrow morning.

Blanket Training

2008-12-10T06:49:00.001-08:00

Today I started working on blanket training my smallest. I had a lot to do this morning and keeping her out of trouble wasn't something I wanted to spend a lot of time on. More produce is coming in tomorrow instead of Friday and I realized that there are several things from last week that we've not used up so I needed to freeze those things (green peppers, broccoli and squash) and I also needed to start some chicken in the crock pot for tonight (called cream cheese chicken, I've never had it, I hope it's good). Getting my cooking out of the way earlier has become a goal of mine lately, but that's another topic.

What is blanket training? Well, it's just teaching them to sit and play on a blanket you've put on the floor until you've allowed them to get off. I did this with the previous baby a little earlier than this. I didn't use it extensively but it was useful at times. And now is the time I need it for this one. Right now she's always into cabinets and all sorts of things she ought not be in. A play pen would be an option, yes, but either she'd have to be back in my room where the pack-n-play is set up, thus attracting the other little lady in there (and she'll just get into all my stuff and she's much more creative about getting into things) or I'd have to haul the pack-n-play in and out of the room which is a pain. And it's easier to take the blanket outside, to someone else's house, etc. While blanket training takes time, it's easier in the long run. AND a good practice in obeying mommy.

It's not overly difficult. Especially now, as she understands the gist of what I'm saying when I tell her to stay on the blanket. As soon as she gets off, I put her back on making sure not to let her have her way in wandering off. If you let them wander off they'll never stay on when you want them to. I started off with about 10-15 mintues this morning. I gave her some kitchen things to play with. Her big sister decided to join her. (Really mom, her hair is like that for security reasons! No one will be able to identify her! Same for the spoon.)

Pineapples!

2008-12-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

We have recently joined up with a few friends to form a produce co-op of sorts. Every Friday for $20 we all get a very large box of a variety of produce. It changes every time and you never know what you're going to get. It's always a bit exciting to see what we will be eating for the next week. We often get a number of grapefruit which isn't so great because we're really not into that but we can pretty much find a way to eat everything else. We get grapes, fresh spinach, asparagus, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, basil, green beans, celery, apples, oranges, bananas and more!

This week we had a pineapple in our box of produce! I'm not a big fan of pineapples but I have several kids who like them. I also just came across a recipe for Hawaiian chicken which calls for pineapple so we'll try that out. Since I never buy pineapple whole, we've had a good time with ours today as I was cutting it up for the chicken.

First we discussed why it might be called a pineapple (which I've never really contemplated before) and came up with a pretty good explaination. They observed that it looks a bit like a pine cone on the outside and tastes a little bit like an apple. Works for me!

We also had a chew on the middle of the pineapple to see why they always cut that out. Some little person snagged a bit of the scraps and seemed to enjoy that:

We also found The Pine Apple Story on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8M3SWFbeQk&feature=related) and listened to that. It's an excellent true story (close to an hour) about a missionary who wasn't really able to reach the people he was trying to share the gospel with until he turned his possessions over to God. I highly recommend the story. Turn it on while you're doing a little cleaning or something. Now I need to go chop up the chicken for tonight!

Air Pressure Experiment

2008-12-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I was thinking about the fact that I don't do enough science stuff with the kids. My #2 son really loves learning the details behind why things work, what things are, the what, why and how of the world around him. It's a natural interest that's just there in this little guy. God has a purpose for these little people and He gave them special interests, talents, strengths for a reason. God has entrusted me with these little people and my role is to help prepare them for God's purposes. Therefore, when I see a natural interest like this, I figure it's my job to do what I can to nourish what God put there.

SO! I pulled out a book of science experiments last night thinking which ones I might want to do with the kids this week. I should have known better! I left it on the table and this morning #2 flipped open the book and in a few minutes he was quietly gathering up what he needed and starting an experiment on his own. Course, he was following the pictures and not reading the details so I had to help him out but this was today's experiment. It was on air pressure. Very simple. We put hot water in a 2 liter soda bottle, capped it tightly, set it in a bowl.

Then we poured ice water over the bottle and watched it collapse.

Explaination: The warm air in the bottle cools and exerts less pressure than the air outside the bottle. The air outside has stronger air pressure and crushes the bottle.

Birthday Traditions

2008-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Today is a birthday in our home. Kinda stinks because I'm not feeling so great and the little one is still having some issues from the stomach bug that hit last week but birthdays must go on!

Instead of the traditional birthday cake, we're doing brownies. In my family of origin, birthdays weren't always celebrated with all the traditional things (cakes, parties, store bought cards, properly wrapped presents) although it's not that there were NEVER any of those. But not as frequent as in many homes. And I love the way we did things. To me, that made birthday's extra special. One thing was that we often had something other than cake. Which makes sense to me seeing as how everytime we do a cake, half a cake sits around until I throw it out. When I make somehing people LIKE, it's gone within 2 days.

This leads me to ponder on birthday traditions and situations I've had to deal with because of the way we celebrate. It's always within family because people outside don't seem to mind how you do it and that makes it even more frustrating. As I was mixing the brownies a bit ago I came to the conclusion that it's best to assume that each family's traditions make their special time (be it birthdays, holidays or whatever) a really special time TO THEM. It's hurtful and offensive to say things that imply that certain things were more 'special' in your family than in that of the person you're talking to. Obviously YOU think your traditions are great but maybe they just have different ones that are equally special to them. Too often we're in a hurry to tell about what we do/did and why it's so special. Next time, I plan to just take the time to ask them about their traditions and ask what they enjoyed rather than feeling like I have to prove that our untraditional celebrations are some of the best memories in the world to me.

Teaching Kids to Give

2008-12-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

One thing that inspires me as a mother is knowing that I could be taking part in laying the ground work for a person (one of my children) who will serve God in a great way some day. It's my hope and prayer that God will use my children; one, some or all of them, to reach many. With this in mind, it's important to me to make sure my children learn to think of the needs of others. When they get something, I want them to be thinking about passing the blessing on, not just hoarding it to themselves. I want this to be my attitude, too. And that goes for anything. Toys, money, food, a godly heritage...

So, just how do you do this? Well, lately we've had the opportunity to take part in a new organization (http://elpisinternational.org/) that my brother-in-law and his wife have helped to bring together. An Ethiopian congregation meets at their church and the pastor is originally from Ethiopia. He and his brother (who lives in Ethiopia) started a feeding center for children there. I gather that a couple times a year, this pastor flies back to Ethiopia with funds for his brother to feed children who have no parents or with only one parent. This past year, my brother-in-law flew over to Ethiopia and visited and since coming back they've been working on getting this organization together so that people can sponsor kids. Hopefully this will grow and they will be able to feed and teach more. We've had the opportunity to sponsor one of the children who is just the age of one of mine. We have his picture above our kitchen sink and pray for him, too. Since this is small scale right now, we have been able to send a Christmas package with a group from the church who are going over there. While we've done the Christmas shoeboxes for several years, this is so much more real to the boys because they have a face and a real story of the person who is getting this. Talking about it and having them take part in getting things for him has been really great. Today we grabbed lunch at a fast food place and several of the kids chose to save their kids meal toy for sending in the future (some of these will have to go in the Samaritans Purse shoe boxes)! How awesome is that?! It's a little thing but that's where this stuff starts!!

New Clay Bears

2008-12-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday while doing language lessons and then while reading history to the boys, I made these two little bears. Multitasking at it's finest! Okay, I don't know that I would say that. We've been playing with play-dough since we were little, it's not like it takes a lot of concentration! One of these is for the smallest member of our family and one for another one of the kiddos. Our ornamental bear family is now complete! For this year anyway. No, that's not a hidden announcement.

I used bakers clay. You can find the recipe for this all over the internet but here it is:

2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of salt
3/4 to 1 cup of water

Mix the salt and flour and then add in the water. Knead with hands until smooth. Last time I baked the little bear but since these guys are a little chubby, his back cracked in the baking. FYI, I understand that less chunky pieces won't crack. I read that you can also just allow them to air dry over a few days. I'm going to try that this time and see how that goes. I'll paint them in a few days.

The kids really love playing with this stuff, too. I think we may make some ornaments by rolling it out flat and cutting it with cookie cutters, let the kids paint them and give them to adoring grandparents.

Making Clay Christmas Ornaments

2008-12-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

Several years and several children ago, a family member gave us this Christmas ornament. It had names across the stockings or hats and our family name and year on the heart there on the left (removed for privacy). Oh, look! Little bear on the left has lost an eye!

Well, two years ago I decided it would be nice to have some matching bears for the rest of our family (since little people always ask where they are). I looked up a recipe for dough that you bake on the internet and took a shot at it. I only made one at the time. I painted it with some paints I had on hand. The white paint I used on the hat was old and ended up peeling so i think I'll redo that, but here's how the bear turned out. Since I have a sick kid today and we won't be doing much, I think we'll look up a recipe again and try to do two more. I'll let you know how it turned out!

2008-12-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

We made copy-cat wikki stix yesterday. My 7 year old loves them and used them to make all sorts of things as well as using them to tie up his little action figures, spiderman style. They're a little expensive to buy for something so simple and something that gets gross enough for me to want to throw away. So, I found a way to make them. Since we also have a heap of children, in addition to our 6, to get Christmas gifts for, I thought this might be a fun thing to make and give as gifts. We made 230 some of these things which are 100% cotton yard, about 8 inches long, covered with wax.

Here's how we did it:

Supplies: yarn (100% cotton is best), paraffin wax, wax ring of toilet sealant, wax paper

In a double broiler or a pot with a bowl inside it, melt 1/4 cup of paraffin wax (gulf wax from wal-mart, about $2.50 for 1lb) and one wax toilet ring. Ew! Those can be found in the plumbing section of wal-mart for around $1.50. For stirring, I wanted to use something that I didn't have to clean later for stirring so used a broken dowel rod I had on hand.

We didn't want to get our hands or any other thing that we might ever want to use again in the wax (lest it be too difficult to clean it up... I'm a little on the lazy side and I'd rather avoid the work, thanks.) so we decided to put the string on a wire. When I went to the garage to find a wire, there, on the floor was a croquet wire. So, we looped the yard onto the wire and dipped it in for a few seconds and then pulled it out. It's good to let the excess drip off for a bit. Here we have 5 long pieces looped onto the wire. We did up to 20 some at a time.

Going in:

Coming out:

We then laid the yarn on the wax paper (working on not dripping since I didn't want to have to clean it up!) to cool off. After I slid the yarn off the wire, I cut off the loops which had been on the wire and did not get dipped in the wax. This resulted in strips taht were about 8 inches long.

Here they are before the loops were cut off:

The red ones are 100% cotton and those turned out most like the real thing. The yellow is 100% acrylic and was a little fuzzy.

And now, a zillion wikki stikki stix:

REALLY starting to blog today...

2008-12-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

Or, I'm planning on it anyway. Yes, I know, I've done this before. But maybe this time I'll stick with it. Why am I doing this? Well, I figure if I do this I will have a record of things said and done that I might not otherwise keep. Life is busy, you know? And I seldom sit down with a journal these days. Here's to good intentions.