Five Little Monkeys

More From the Garden

2012-01-09T08:53:00.000-06:00

So it's been a while since I've talked about my garden. It's looking pretty raggedy these days. We had two nights that froze about a month or so ago and then two more earlier this week and my green beans and tomato plant didn't like it very much. They both kept producing, but not as well. It seemed like it was only the top layers of leaves on the tomato plant that shriveled and turned brown, so I cut those off and then the lower ones started doing it. So my nice big tomato plant only yielded four tomatoes, and the tops cracked on all of them. I'm still thrilled that I grew four tomatoes though.

Only three here, one was hiding on my plant.

We ended up with about 20 green beans total from my three grean bean bush plants. We usually just ate them right when we picked them though. Since only two or three would be ready at a time, the kids would all be disappointed that they couldn't have a whole one. What a good problem to have...kids fighting over fresh veggies. I think the biggest issue with my green bean bush plants is that I planted the broccoli closer to sun (not knowing how HUGE the broccoli plants would get) so the beans were blocked from the sun.

Speaking of the broccoli, it continues to produce! A few times, usually after a rain, it'll flower before I cut it off. The older boys just pick off the flowers and eat the rest that isstill good. We usually eat it raw, but when I steam it or use it in stir-fry, you can tell a big difference between it and the frozen florets I usually buy.

The carrots are all still growing but I picked on just to see how big the root was, and it was barely there. I'll keep them in there, but I'm not expecting big things. We read that you have to prepare the soil for months before planting the seeds, and we didn't do that. I got too impatient.

We're done with radishes for now. We had SO many and we're not that into them, but it was fun to usually have some to pick whenever we went out there. I'll grow some more later this spring.

My snap pea plants have gotten good size and they just blossomed so they should be growing the snap peas soon if the freeze didn't affect them too much. I need to make a bigger trellis for them to grow on when we plant spring veggies.

The brussel sprouts plants got very big and are just now starting to grow brussel sprout shoots. I'll have to figure out something to do with them. I'm not sure I've ever eaten a brussel sprout.

And lastly is the cabbage. I planted four plants and have picked two of them. One I gave to my dad when he visited for Christmas. The other I used for dinner the other night.

I made Runzas. We had Runza restaurants in Nebraska and it was so yummy. I made these a couple of years ago when we studied about Russia, but it was fun this time to use cabbage I had grown myself. They were yummy and most of the kids liked them.

I did it a bit different than the recipe I found. I used a tube of croissant dough instead of bread dough so they wouldn't be so bread-y and so they would cook quicker.

So there is the update on my garden. I'll go take some pictures to add so it's a little more interesting. Once the chance of freezing is over, we'll start our spring veggies! I really like living down here where our growing season is practically year round.

A Little Girl Turns Two.

2012-01-04T21:55:00.087-06:00

I can't believe this day has come so quickly. Our little baby, the one I hoped so much for when we had a little oops with our birth control method two years and nine months ago, has turned two. As in, not a baby anymore. I love watching her grow, but like a lot of mommas, I just don't want it to happen so fast.

I love that she's little and she still looks more baby-ish than little girl-ish to me. I love that she loves cuddles and likes to be held still and walks around with her thumb in her mouth and her blankey dragging behind her. I love that she has a quick little temper that makes her little tantrums disappear just as quickly as they come. I love that she follows her big sister around everywhere and tries to imitate everything she does. I love that she folds her hands to pray and mumbles out mostly indistinguishable words when I pray with the girls at night. Oh how I love my little two year old!

Chris ended up having the day off from work on her birthday, so we were able to have her party on the morning of her actual birthday.

I choose Winnie the Pooh simply because I had a lot of decorations from when Gabe had the same theme and I wanted to be able to use them again before nobody wanted a Winnie the Pooh party anymore. And Anna likes him anyways, so we both won.

I made a few of these 'hunny' pots by painting clay pots and we already had this big stuffed Pooh Bear.

Chris decorated our dining room really festively. The picture over the window was something I had saved as well and it fit there perfectly. Chris drew the Eeyore for a 'Pin the Tail on Eeyore" game. That's where the boys get there awesome art skills genes.

Yes, 'tale' is purposely spelled incorrectly, in a Pooh way of spelling.

Since we had a mid-morning party, I just made a lot of easy brunch-ish food. The kids all loved it and it was so easy which makes me love it as well.

I also made the 'honeycomb' centerpiece for the last Pooh party, just by hot gluing rope around an oatmeal canister and adding on some wooden bees.

Veggies, canned mandarin oranges, mini pancakes, mini muffins, 'Piglets' in a blanket, fresh bananas, teddy grahams, and meatballs.

We had about as many older boys as we did younger girls Anna's age, so we had the girls eat inside and the boys eat out at the patio table....so much quieter, and the boys played outside most of the time anyways.

The boys did come in for our game and the cake though which was good because the younger girls didn't quite get the hang of the game.

Anna, no blind fold on, and still pins the tail no where near the correct spot. hahaha

Cake made by my awesome hubby of course

She didn't quite get the blowing out the candles concept.

Anna didn't seem very excited with the doll house until we took it out of the box.

But her trike was already assembled and she knew just what to do. Now Anna doesn't have to try to take over Leah's trike!

Celebrating Anna turning two with her friends made for a great birthday for our sweet girl. I've never not been either pregnant, or already had a new baby on any of my kids' second birthday, which is bittersweet for me. I'm so excited to see our family of seven grow together without a baby in tow, but I do love having those babies! A new friend here has a newborn that I get to snuggle with whenever she their family comes over for play dates, and since all my children still like to cuddle as well, I think I'll be okay. :)

A New Harvest

2011-10-15T12:42:00.001-05:00

So, the day has finally come. My first harvest. A month ago I planted a row of tiny seeds and they survived.

Now, if you think it's silly that I am getting so excited over a few radishes, that's okay. I might think the same of someone else who gets excited over something that I don't think is a big deal.

But I walk outside every morning, after my God time and before getting my girls from bed, and check on my little plants, weeding and looking for new growth. It's my "me" thing. And with a house full of little ones all day, I don't get much of that.

Some of the plants in my garden I started from plants that someone else had already grown. But these babies were from little tiny seeds.

My helper this morning, Gabe, whose entire raw vegetable diet consists only of carrots, didn't seem too impressed with my little cherry radish.

It looked like just these three were ready today. Since they grow underground, it's hard to tell which ones are ready.

I'm not the biggest radish fan, and these were a bit hot, but I think they'll be perfect to add to our lentils and sausage dinner tonight.

Friday Morning Butterflies

2011-10-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

One day when we lived in Nebraska, we were out in our backyard and in a span of about a half hour, hundreds of monarch butterflies made their migration down to Mexico through our backyard. It was really, really cool. I think we had three kids then and we just laid down on the soft Nebraska grass (oh, I miss that grass after the dry, poky grass of our Texas yard and the softer-but-not-as-soft grass of our new home in Florida). Anyways, we laid down in the grass and just watched all of those beautiful butterflies flutter through our yard, not in a straight line passing through, but flying in waves and circles as they went.

So, I guess it's that time of year again because the Panhandle Butterfly House here in Navarre had a "Monarch Madness" festival this past weekend. We decided to go on Friday because Chris and the boys had plans Saturday morning. And we like to take advantage of the benefits of homeschooling by being able to do things when it's not so crowded.

We had a great time.
There were so many great volunteers there that were really interested in teaching the kids the life cycle of the butterfly. We've gone over that many many times in our homeschool curriculum and in reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar 2000 times, but to actually be able to look at the real things, was such a great learning experience.
They were able to tag their own butterflies with a tiny numbered sticker so if that butterfly happens to fly into the butterfly stations in Mexico, we'll be able to look on the internet site and see where it was found.

After we made the round of tables set up outside with the different life cycle stages displayed, we got to go inside the actually butterfly house. The kids loved looking at the display cases and delighting in the different patterns on the butterflies.

Outside in the butterfly room were butterflies flying around our heads as well as pretty flowers and plants everywhere.

The kids also got to release more butterflies into the butterfly house area. Gabe was too nervous to release the butterfly that he had tagged earlier, but there was a great volunteer inside that persuaded him to try it again. He did, as well as Leah this time!

They also had butterfly crafts set up for the kids. They divided them into different age groups and I was a little embarrassed that Gabe, who is our most vocal about his likes and dislikes, saw that he was in the younger group who was to color a picture and make a butterfly out of thumbprints, and plainly told them the he didn't want to "just color" because it's "boring". This from the child who asks to print out 20 coloring pages a day to color. After having him ask nicely if he could work at the older group's table, he made a butterfly life cycle mobile alongside Matthew.

Leah thought the butterfly thumbprints on the coloring page was fun though.

As did Anna, who only had to be told a few times to keep the crayons out of her mouth.

Christopher had the older kids' station all to himself and made a pretty tissue paper and paint stick butterfly, learning about the smaller parts of the butterfly with the volunteer.

Afterwards, we walked a short ways along the boardwalk out back and the kids were just enthralled with all the turtles, and then this tugboat pushing a huge barge in the sound, under the bridge.

Fun times!

New Growth

2011-10-12T13:13:00.002-05:00

So, I had tried to grow a small vegetable garden back in our Nebraska base housing days. I was so excited when the stems of green beans and zucchini seeds sprouted out of the ground, and day by day, their little leaves grew bigger. I watered them perfectly and checked on them and marveled at their creation from just a tiny seed, multiple times a day. It was when I had just one baby of my own and I was so excited to be the "mommy" of these new plants.

In less than a week, they had all been eaten by rabbits, reduced to short green stems. I was pretty distraught over it and decided that gardening was not for me.

Since then, I got over my hopelessness in my gardening abilities. I've bought small pots here and there with some variety of vegetable or herb growing in them. They didn't grow well in the house and so, each time, I'd set them somewhere in the backyard, and each time, no matter how high of a platform I found to put them on...a table, the grill, the A/C unit, our dog attacked them and their lives ended. Darn dog and his agression towards potted plants.

That hope never went away completley though. For some reason, a desire to grow my own vegetables is just somewhere inside of me. I've always preferred to buy produce at farmers' markets to get it fresh and natural, but having to make that extra stop to shop, and now not even being able to find a good one near our new home, has made it seem easier to just choose from whatever the commissary has in their produce department.

All this to say...I've started a new garden. And it's good this time.

After researching gardening websites and blogs, as well as my Vegetable Gardening for Dummies book, I decided that a raised garden bed was what I wanted. We have a huge yard but most of the backyard is very sandy soil. Not having to dig that out of the way would be easier, so we just put our raised bed garden right on top of it.

We found a simple way to build them on some website (sorry I can't direct you there), and Chris set out to build it.

All he used was: 3 8-foot long 2x6s (one cut in half and used on the two ends), 3 8-foot long 2x4s (as a railing around the top edges), and a 4-foot length of 2x4 cut into 12 inch lengths. We dug up the grass and weeds in it, put down a weed barrier on the bottom and then filled it with a truckload of soil and mixed bags of compost into it.

I had started some seeds in some peat pellets I found on clearance but none of them grew, not even the beans, which usually grow pretty easy. So I planted all of the peat pellets in the garden and they still did not grow. It was getting pretty late into the late summer growing season here, so I dug them all up and planted new seeds as well as some plants that were already starting to grow.

I forgot to take pictures of the garden right after I planted everything, but this is what is looked like three days ago, about two weeks later...

Starting in the back is a tomato plant (transplanted) and beans plants (grown from seeds).

In front of those I've planted onion seeds which are just starting to come up so you can't see them well.

The big ones are broccoli, which I bought as tiny little plants and I love how big they've gotten under my care!

I planted romaine lettuce in front of those but I can't tell if it's sprouted yet.

There is a row of carrots in there that you also can't see in the picture.

And the little plants in that front row are radishes. I'm not a big radish fan, but I read that they are the easiest thing to grow and I wanted something that I could pick and eat!

I've been weeding the garden but I'm not sure sometimes what is a weed or not, so sometimes they get to stay for a while.

Some close up pictures...

my tomato plant with some flower buds means that fruit is to come in a couple weeks! you can alse see the bean plants in the back.

close-up of bean plants

my huge broccoli plants! the little one in the front wasn't too happy about being transplanted but is making a comeback. fyi, that's the size the others ones were when they started out in my garden!

radishes.

This was today after some nice rain yesterday. Something has been chomping on my radish plants and a critter fence is in the works. But now I can see my carrots and onions sprouting! (Not really visable in the photo)

And my super hubby made another raised bed this past weekend!

When we were reading about the carrots, it said to plant them after you've let the compost enrich the soil for a few months (or something like that). So we're going to let that one sit until the spring and start some yummy spring vegetables then.

And as you can see, we have a lot more space if we want to add more raised garden beds.

I'm really excited to be able to pick our first harvest and I'll be sure to add pictures of the moment!

A Camping Adventure

2011-09-23T23:14:00.002-05:00

I love camping. Or I probably should say I love camping in my mind.
Exploring state parks by foot, leisurly swims in fresh water rivers, making friends with our camping neighbors and chatting while the kids play together. Watching my sweet hubby bait hooks and show kids how to cast their fishing poles. Roasting marshmallows over the fire and enjoying the memories being made of sticky kids with chocolate smore faces. Relaxing conversation with my soul mate by the fire when the kids fall asleep in the tent.

Ummm, yah, our camping experience was a little different than my expectations.

A spur of the moment decision to go camping with five kids and a dog might not be the best idea. And while I like to plan things to every detail sometimes, I also like to just do things without thinking about it too hard. And so we started out on our first camping trip in our new home.

After cleaning dog vomit out of my trunk from our carsick dog, we realized that we were the only tent in the camping area. We were surrounded by RVs, which we'd rather not be, but actually wasn't too bad since all the camp spots were surrounded with a little privacy row of trees and brush.
We went on a weeknight, so there were no other kids around and I'm sure that all of the guests where we were were thrilled with our loud kids (okay, and adults) yelling at our dog who was freaking out about constantly wrapping his 30 foot leash around everything in the area. I'm sure they were relieved that we only stayed one night.
After we set our tent up, we walked along the hiking trail, looking for alligators in the alligator lake, and we decided to put off swimming until the next day since the camp ranger said while they had never had a problem with alligators in the swimming area of the river, dusk is the most likely time for them to show up.
We cut our hike short because we were all getting bit by mosquitoes and we had left the spray back at the campsite but it was still a nice, quiet walk.

We roasted hotdogs for dinner and marshmallows for smores. It's a bit tricky, roasting marshmallows with five kids. They were much more interested in roasting the marshmallows than eating them, except for Anna, who kept swiping the marshmallows out of the bag, her timing perfect for when Chris and I were both loading someone's stick with marshmallows, blowing out marshmallows that were on fire, or squishing crispy marshmallows between graham crackers and chocolate bars.

We brought the playpen for Anna to sleep in. She's still in a crib at home and while it took a lot of space in the tent, we didn't think she'd sleep without it. Well, she screamed when we put her in it, so we took her out and put her on the air mattress to see if she'd fall asleep with Leah. After who-knows-how-many marshmallows, she was not anywhere near falling asleep. We pretty much gave that idea up and the boys said they wanted to go in and get ready for bed, so all five kids ended up in the tent, and I'll just say it wasvery loud and very funny, watching their shadows jumping around, trying to find the perfect spot to sleep, but really, all they planned to do was to be crazy with the girls. Chris and I let them have a few minutes of going crazy before we tried to get them to calm down.

Yah, that didn't work.

Add to that that the temperature was still in the 80s, and I decided that I'd had enough fun, packed the girls and the dog into my car (we had brought two cars for just this reason), and we headed home.

So call me a camping snob.

We did have fun while we were there, and I'm glad we went. Chris and the boys had a good time sleeping in the tent and I think they went for a little hike in the morning and then came home.

I hate that it sounds like I'm complaining about the whole trip. It was a nice memory to make, and we plan on trying again sometime later this fall at a different camp area. But I'm sure we'll take two cars again, just in case. :o)

Enjoying the Beach

2011-09-20T13:58:00.002-05:00

I think my favorite restaurant in this area may be The Crab Trap on Okaloosa Island, just west of the Destin Bridge. We first went there with some friends when we drove through this area over a year ago on our way home from vacationing in Orlando with family.

We had no idea that we'd be living is this beautiful place just fifteen months later.

Chris' mom, stepdad and brother visited in the middle of the month for a weekend and we ended up at The Crab Trap for the second time. It's great because you sit on the deck right on the beach, and there is not many better views than that. And the kids' meals come in these little buckets with a shovel and after you enjoy some delicious shrimp and hush puppies and grouper, you just walk down the stairs and you're in the sand.

And if you go for dinner, by the time you finish, you're just in time for this.

My God, thank you. For this.

Seven swim suits, five kids meals buckets, and this beautiful emerald coast. We are a blessed little family.

A perfect picture of this little girl's goal in life at the moment...to follow her sister's footsteps.

This one will be framed in the girls' room.

Yes, we enjoyed the beach very much.

School Weeks 1, 2 & 3

2011-09-16T13:18:00.004-05:00

I guess on a blog that is supposed to be about our life, with homeschooling being a big part of that, I should give it some space here.

I'll start with our school room, which after three years of using the dining room table, I am absolutley loving.

This room is supposed to be the formal living room and it is through double glass paned doors immediatley when you walk through the front door of our house. I'm thankful that we can just close the doors up if we don't want it (the mess) to be noticable. Even though the doors are mostly glass, it still closes the room up quite well.

On the left is Christopher and Matthew's desks. (And the printer sitting on a makeshift box 'table'. One day we'll give it a proper spot.) Four Walmart type do-it-yourself shelves fit perfectly along the back wall. We are using our old kitchen table as the school table for Gabe and I, although he would like his own desk as well. You can't see it in this picture, but to the right, just in front of that swivel office chair is a tiny little utility stand about 1 1/2 feet high that Gabe has been using as a makeshift desk. Why? Because I joked one day with him, when he asked when he would get a desk, that he could use that as a desk, and he thought I was serious. It's quite awkward for him to work at, but it's funny that a desk is so important to him that he doesn't mind the awkwardness.

So that's where most of our homeschool business gets done. We usually do read-alouds in the living room or outside on the patio table, and science in the kitchen quite often, but other than that, the kids and I like working in there.
Our daily routine has been pretty much the same from last year. Our mornings are free for playing, cleaning, running around town, etc, and when the girls take a nap after lunch at about 1:00, I take about a half hour to just sit and rest (me time) and then we start our school day and finish up around 3:30 or so. We don't take breaks and apart from the short complaint about english or math being "the worst thing ever", the boys keep focused and get their work done pretty quickly. Sometimes I juggle helping the boys with their work and doing Gabe's first grade work with him, and other times I wait until the older boys are done and then Gabe does his school work.
I'd like to have the boys do some school in the mornings so we don't work so late into the afternoon. Christopher has a friend from public school that likes to come over at about 2:30 or 3:00 and I like for Christopher to have time to play with him before dinner.

Chris also wants the boys to start a typing program as well as a computer Spanish program and I have the kids do math facts practice on a computer program as well (www.factsfirst.com). So I have to figure out how to fit that into our day as well with minimal freaking out by the kids. So we'll see what changes happen with our schedule in the near future.
So...first day of school!

We didn't do quite as much special stuf for the first day as last year, but the boys didn't mind since they were so excited about their Phineas and Ferb activity pads (Target Dollar Spot!)

In fact, their first day of school pictures weren't even taken on the first day! (Shhhh!)

I did, however, wrap a bright pink sheet around myself and pretended to be Roman slave, in charge of tutoring the children of the home. It was a fun act and everyone wanted a turn with the sheet/robe.

We did take a break for a snack that day...a typical (sort of) Roman snack.

We are all really enjoying the books we have been reading for Bible (How the Bible Came to Us), History (Anicent World, Streams of Civilization, The Roman Empire, Augustus Caesar's World), and Science (The Human Body for Every Kid, First Encyclopedia of the Human Body). I'm so thankful that MFW did all the legwork of finding great books to use.

When I looked ahead to these years of the My Father's World curriculum we're using, I wasn't very excited. I always thought ancient history was a bit boring. MFW uses really good books and makes learning about everything interesting though. I love the part of school that I get to read these books aloud to the boys.

We've read about Romulus and Remus and Julias Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and are now up to the point in Rome when it becomes an Empire run by Augustus Caesar.

We learned to play an old Roman game called Odd or Even and that was enjoyed by all the boys. Gabe had a hard time when he was behind in his number of pieces of corn, but that's the norm these days with him.

To play, you have 20 pieces of corn (well the book said they used beans, but we didn't have any), ten for each player. One player puts some of his corn kernels in one hand and the other player guesses whether he is holding an even amount or odd. If the other player is correct, the first player has to give one piece to him; if he is incorrect, the first player gets a piece of his corn. Simple, but fun.

The boys started out learning about cells in science, then moved to learning about brain functions, and now we are learning about the senses. It was fun to test our involuntary reflexes and the kids enjoyed making a cell out of jello that was edible.

Another science experiment.

Matthew was excited to start learning cursive this year (I'm not joking!) and he's doing really well with it. His printing is not the best, and he still gets letters like d, b, k, p, and a backwards, but it's easier to keep letters going the correct way when using cursive writing.

Gabe is really into his phonics lessons and is eager to do school everyday to learn more. He does really well at reading short vowel words and is doing great working at the first grade level.

Each week Gabe learns about a new subject in science. This week was plants and we found some flowers outside to look at and we chose one to pick and dry in a book so Gabe can make a bookmark out of it to give as a gift to someone later.

We soaked some seeds so we can examine their insides and we also are going to watch one grow in a clear jar, held up by a wet papertowel. Fun stuff!

So, we've enjoyed our first few weeks of school and are getting more and more used to our new home. We've found a church that we really like, the kids are starting Awana soon, we've gone on a couple more outings with homeschool groups, and the moving boxes are nearly gone.

We've entered our new "normal".

Exploring Our New Home

2011-09-06T20:48:00.001-05:00

In the midst of unpacking a thousand boxes, figuring out where to hang our many many portraits of the kids, painting bedrooms and bathrooms, updating and organizing our new home, and in between trips to our little beach as well as Navarre Beach (or the "big beach" as we call it), dips in our pool, and homeschooling, we've made a few trips out to explore our area.
Our new base, Hurlburt Field, has an "airplane park" right at the entrance that I think we'll be frequenting often.

The boys have never lost that infatuation with having another baby in the house. They love Anna and always want to hold her hand, or hold her, or talk to her, or have her look at them. In fact, they argue sometimes over who gets to have her attention. And of course, she has gotten to that age where she wants to do things on her own and gets upset sometimes with them for crowding her so much.

Leah asked Gabe to carry her baby and this is how boys carry babies...

Anna, who is now 20 months, walked all the way around this airplane park. I was pretty impressed, but she is pretty determined that she should do whatever her siblings are doing.

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While it is true that many many houses in Florida come with pools, we still are so thankful that we have one in our backyard. The kids are in it nearly everyday still.

Gabe has gotten really good at swimming, but he tries so hard to keep up with his big brothers and I have to remind him to rest because he looks so out of breath sometimes.

This is Leah "jumping" in the pool, trying to be like her brothers. She jumps off the step that is already in the water. You seriously could barely even tell she's doing anything, but we clap anyways because she thinks she is so cool.

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My dad (Grandpa White) visited over Labor Day weekend for a week and while we were slowed down by Tropical Storm Lee, (yes, welcome to Florida; enjoy your first named storm!) we still mangaged to get out and do some fun stuff. Lee hit west of us a ways, so while we had strong winds and lots of rain, there were no evacuations or anything here.

Labor Day weekend is terrible timing for lots of rain, so most of the events around here were canceled, but the Greek Festival in Fort Walton Beach was indoors, so we drove over there in between rain bands. Greek dancing, Greek lunch, Greek dessert, and lots of vendors' booths to window shop at. We had a fun time.

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And then one day, we went and got a close up look at the storm, crazy-people-on-the-Weather-Channel style. We drove over to Navarre Beach to see how big the waves were and how hard the wind was blowing.

(Again, the storm was pretty far west of us so we weren't in danger.)

There was plenty of space in between the bands of rain and Navarre Beach is only about ten minutes from our house. The boys were excited to see the waves.

The boys thought it was neat that they could lean back a little bit without falling because the wind was holding them.

The girls did not like the wind in their faces.

Especially Anna.

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And then Lee went north to rain on already flooded New England states (lots of prayers going up for them!) and we went back to our routine. Eat, swim, sleep. Repeat.

The storm cooled off the weather and our pool water, but Grandpa got in one last swim with the kids before he headed back south.

Have a great week!

Missing Friends

2011-09-05T13:18:00.000-05:00

I'm missing this right now...

And this...

And these little friends...

And getting together every Thursday over the summer with more good friends for this...

And I know that before I know it, I'll be making memories to share with new friends in this new place.

But forget the kids having a hard time with moves. They were fine from day one. And I thought I was too, but I think I'm at the point where the newness is wearing off and I'm seeing what is left, what is real. It's been almost four weeks since we left our Texas friends and it's finally kicking in that this is where I am now; I've started a new season of my life, one I'm very happy with the location of, but it's still not easy to be completley content when so much is different.

I'm excited for God's plans for us right now, where he has brought us to. I'll trust that he has good things and good friends in store for us here.

So I'll miss my friends from Texas, just like I missed my friends from Nebraska three years ago, but I know we'll find some here that we'll miss just as much when it's time to move on again. I guess I just want finding them to happen quicker.

And It's Here...School Week 0 (Zero)

2011-08-26T15:20:00.004-05:00

Gabriel started school this week. He's officially a school-aged kid. He's in kindergarten this year, but since he did the kinder curriculum last year for preschool, he's doing first grade this year. As I've said before, I completely believe in "better late than early" but having two advanced big brothers, this kid was ready and willing to start, and he did great. We kept the option open last year to take it slow and spread the kinder curriculum over more than a year, but he loved school and was eager to do it on time.

I have the same willingness this year to let hime take longer than a year if need be. I've done this first grade curriculum with Matthew and this is where they really start reading the hard stuff, learning all of our crazy phonics rules that may or may not apply but you pretty much have to figure it out by trial and error. So we'll see what happens. He is five with a November birthday and is already reading soft vowel words well.

I call this week zero because the older boys won't be starting until next week. Yes, just two weeks after we've moved across the country from Texas to Florida. I like to do something special for the first day of school but didn't get to it this week with Gabe (one week after moving), so I want to reserve the title of "First Day of School" for when I'm prepared for a little something special.

So week zero for Gabe turned out to be a good week, taking about a half hour each day. I went shopping for house stuff on Thursday, so we ended up doing both day four and day five school on Friday, but day five school for Gabe is strictly an exploration (science) day, so it's easy to make up whatever we need to from the week.

For Bible, Gabe will be memorizing several verses from the book of Proverbs this year, and his reader is a simplified book of the Bible as well. For some reason his head starts hurting whenever we work on memorizing though, but I at least get him to repeat the verse for me everyday.

After Bible, Gabe works on his reading workbook, which for the first couple of weeks is just handwriting and letter sounds review.

He's also practicing even more handwriting to eventually make into a scroll when he's finished with all of the letters.

Speaking of scrolls, Gabe made a clay jar to replicate those used to store scrolls in the past. It started out tall but ended up short and fat by the time it finished drying. And the lid somehow got broken to pieces.

After the phonics part of schooling, we move on to math, which has been a review this week as well. We've only been doing 'number of the day', Gabe's 100 chart, calendar, and reviewing money so far. He'll start his workbook next week. Or I guess I should say he'll continue his workbook. He was so excited about starting it when I ordered it (actually, he kept begging me to order it so he could do it), that I let him start it this summer.

As we count up to 100 on his 100 chart, he collects a piece of corn in his cup. Once he gets to ten pieces, he'll glue them to a craft stick and use it as a ten-counter.

For art this year, we are just going to be looking through some classical art books we have. There is a drawing book also, but my kids draw so much for fun that they don't care for instructional art books. The older boys still do one with their curriculum, because they can always improve their tecniques, but having Gabe do one as a requirement would cause a lot of battles I believe, as Gabe is the most stubborn of the boys. But observing and talking about the painting in this book has been going well.

And science is always popular in this house. Gabe's using a book called Things Outdoors for the first months of school and the first lesson was about dirt and animals who like dirt. Good for a boy who always seems to get dirty!

The hands-on activity that went along with this week was a big hit with Gabriel and easy to do, which makes me happy. We simply poured some honey on a piece of bread, set it next to an ant hill, and watched the ants go crazy eating it. It was neat to see the first couple of ants see it, go back to the ant hole and tell his friends, and then tens of ants came streaming out.

Of course Gabe wanted to taste the sweetness too.

I have to admit I was wondering if this would make our yard popular with the ant community in our little city. Ughh, I've already been attacked once when walking barefoot to the mailbox.

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And that, my family and friends, was week zero of school at our house.

Have a great week!

Yay for Family Visits!

2011-07-10T22:09:00.003-05:00

We were delighted to find out that we would have family visiting this month. Not only were Chris' dad and stepmom coming from Arizona, but his sister was also able to come for a week from Florida with our three year old niece. We love having family visit and having grown up the first eight years of my life with many many cousins in Michigan, it hurts my heart that my children are able to see their cousin just once a year usually. But we had such a good time with them here. And I'm hopeful that we'll get to see them more often once we move, even though we will be living on opposite ends of a very long state.

We started off our time together down at the Riverwalk of course. Rita's on the River is my favorite restaurant down there and we always sit outside when we go. There were many birds that evening scrounging for food and our girls were ever the sweet animal lovers and fed them many tortilla chips together. We would have made them stop since it was obvious there was passive disapproval from the waitress for the next table, but the girls contagious giggles made it just too hard to make them stop. Bad mama.

And the pigeons and ducks weren't the only one enjoying the chips. Anna practically ate the salsa as a soup with her chips. She was a mess, but she was happy, and sometimes that trumps keeping a baby clean!

We spent one day window shopping in Fredericksburg (while Chris, Grandpa, the boys, and Anna went to a war musuem) followed by an evening at the Tejas Rodeo. This girl fit right in.

Leah had an unfortunate incident with her diaper and dress while in her car seat on the way from Fredericksburg to the Rodeo and ended up having to wear this to the rodeo.

From cowgirl princess to this sloppy look in a diaper and football t-shirt. This is why you should not judge when you don't know the whole story!

But she didn't care and we had a lot of fun (although I do have a hard time watching those poor little calves getting roped. I guess I'm not a true Texan.)

We started with a BBQ dinner there at the rodeo. Anna came up with a new way to eat a hot dog.

After that we were ready to watch the rodeo events.

Halfway through the rodeo, they let the kids come out to try to grab a ribbon tied onto some calves. The boys took Caroline and Leah and they had fun even though I don't think they had any idea what was going on.

The kids ended up playing in the dirt (big surprise), but Anna didn't take into account that playing in the dirt and sucking your thumb don't mix.

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One of my favorite things about having an imperfect life is having memories that I can picture in my head and still laugh about. One such memory...

Father's Day fell right in the middle of having our family visit, which was perfect since Chris' dad was here. I bought this nice frame for him and wanted to take a picture of the cousins to put in the frame to give Chris' dad.

We tried once and it just wasn't working. Attitudes were not happy and there was no way we could get a decent picture.

We gave up and decided to try later. 'Later' became last minute and we had to get it done, on Father's Day, before church. The kids were great. Smiles and happiness and all that.

The neighbor's dog was outside, as was ours, and the thought to put our dog inside just didn't pop into any of our minds as the two dogs ran up and down the fence line together. The fence that we were using as our background.

I am totally laughing out loud right now, remembering this happening. The kids were looking at where ever the dog was and I was trying to click my camera while Chris was trying to keep Anna from walking away and Olivia was trying to get the kids to look at the camera and not the dog.

But we got one that was 'good enough' when it comes to taking a photo of six kids ages 1-10.

Why my girls lift their dresses up like this, I have no clue. It is certainly not something learned from their mom!

When I picked the photos up from Walgreens later that day, the lab developer said, "Oh yah, the picture with the girls lifting their dresses?" Yes. But it was seriously the best one.

And I didn't forget to get some of Chris with the kids as well.

Happy Father's Day to the best daddy my children could have!

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We took the kids swimming one afternoon to cool off.

And hung out a lot at home, just enjoying catching up and watching the girls be best friends for a week.

On our last day with Chris' sister and neice, we went up to Landa Park in New Braunfels. There is much to explore there and the kids especially liked following the train tracks and feeding the ducks.

Followed by playing on the playground.

We had a great time with our family and are excited for when we'll get to see them again!

June in Pictures

2011-06-15T14:38:00.003-05:00

Again, making the most of our last months here.

Pump It Up, San Antonio

Army guy wars on our kitchen floor

Camping at Canyon Lake with Chris' Squadron

How can you resist this kissy face?

Matthew caught the one and only fish of the trip!

May in Photographs

2011-05-31T21:14:00.005-05:00

In the last few months before our move to Florida, we're trying to squeeze in as much fun as we can...

Landa Park, New Braunfels

Pool date with friends

Aquarena Springs Glass Bottom Boats, San Marcos

McKenna Children's Museum, New Braunfels

Tejas Rodeo, Bulverde

Memorial Day OCF Barbeque

A Little Girl Turns 3

2011-05-20T09:34:00.005-05:00

How does this happen so quickly?

Three years have gone by and this chubby little newborn has turned into a fun, silly, sensitive, mini-mama preschooler.

So of course we made her day special.

And special days start with donuts of course.

To be followed with a much anticipated Mickey and Minnie Mouse party later that morning.

We started out at the park on a very overcast day. It was supposed to rain, so we set everything up at my gracious friend Sara's home, who lives right by the park we were at. But we had fun playing at the park for about an hour before we headed indoors. And it never rained.

Yes, I made the hair bows, the shirt (iron-on) and the shoes! Go me!

We went to the house for Hot Diggity Dogs and Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse cake and other yummies.

Cake made by Leah's daddy.

Corker bows that I made as party favors for the girls.

Mickey mouse ears party favors...foam circles, a foam strip and a piece of elastic, all attached with hot glue.

Minnie and Micky necklaces for all the kids.

Chocolate dipped rice krispy treat Mickey ears.

We had the party on Leah's actual birthday, May 20th. Chris was able to take the day off of work and Leah and the other kids had a great time. Leah's so excited to be three now and likes to tell everyone she talks to.

She decided not to wear her birthday tutu at the indoor portion of her party like I had planned, but she put it on once we got home and let me take lots of cute pictures of her with it on.

That evening we took her out for her birthday dinner. She chose Cracker Barrell. Her choice may have had something to do with me reminding her how yummy their mac and cheese is.

Anna got a wooden pink rocking chair for her birthday and Leah loved it so much that we got her one for this birthday.

I'm pretty sure Leah enjoyed her special day and I thank God that she's my little girl. I love her so much and I know that her being my little girl has made me a better mama. As much as I think that she's growing up way too fast, I am loving watching her grow and am excited for the woman she will become. I love you sweet Leah!

Week 28

2011-04-27T16:09:00.002-05:00

The letter of the week for Gabriel was R-r-Rock.

Stone Soup is sure to draw all the kids in for a good read aloud. Afterwards, we made our own picture of stone soup. Yummy.

In this science experiment, we tried to grow a stalagmite rock on the green plate. The baking soda that is mixed in the water was supposed to seep up into the yarn and then drip onto the plate. It never worked.

But the baking soda and vinegar volcano never fails to entertain.

And Gabe practiced his sorting skills using our rock collection.

Have a happy day!

School - Week 27

2011-04-17T23:28:00.004-05:00

Gabe's week in school focused on the letter 'Z' and the unit study of the zebra.

Leah did some coloring for Gabe in the top right picture.

We went to the zoo this week and the kids took a picture with the zebra there.

We read the book If I Ran the Zoo which is about a kid who makes up his own silly animals to put in the zoo. So the boys all made up silly animals too. These are Gabe's...

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We continued reading in 2 Kings about Elisha and the story about how Naaman was healed from leprosy. Naaman was an important general and thought that he should have to do something impressive to be healed since he was so strong and impressive, but God, through Elisha, healed him by having him do something so simple that anyone would be capable of doing it. Exactly like how we can be saved from eternal death by something simple, that anyone is capable of doing...putting our faith in Jesus Christ alone and his gift of salvation. It's not something that only impressive and important people can do.

It was neat how just a week or so before we read about this story for school, we read and discussed this story in our Bible study group. The Bible is so relevant for both children and adults.

We're almost caught up in art. This first lesson was to copy the picture of the statue on the page, using lines to shade to show depth. Christopher's is on the left; Matthew's on the right. And I don't know why Matthew's looks like the man's brains are exposed.

This lesson was about drawing people. The boys usually draw stick figures, and this lesson added ovals and rectangles to the stick people to make them look a little more real. Under these pages, the boys drew the scene of Jesus walking on water during the storm.

Christopher's on the left; Matthew's on the right.

We also started some painting using acrylic paint. The boys practiced mixing colors and then painted in the picture of a stag beetle, trying to copy the color of the real painting.

We've also been trying to catch up in science. We are working quickly through the chapter about plants in our science book. One of the experiments we did was to grow plants from seeds we have around the kitchen...beans, spices, and herbs.

And we also had our last homeschool co-op meeting of the semester, and the last one that we'll be able to attend with our awesome group. In the class I taught, we made Easter baskets out of milk jugs and I brought in some eggs to give out as well.

If you'd like to see what other MFW families' school week looked like, click here. 2 ladybugs and a lizard is guest hosting this week.

And I'll leave you with some other zoo pictures from this week...

I love that they are all able to walk around together, hanging out. They walked through the reptile house, following each other around like little ducklings...so cute!

The elephant was really neat to watch this zoo trip. He kept sticking his trunk into a stream of water and then putting his trunk in his mouth to drink the water.

I got bombed by a bird while we walked through the bird aviary...yuck!

Part of the group of friends we went to the zoo with.

And should you think that I dress my kids in the same clothes everyday, we actually went the zoo, took bluebonnet pictures, and went to our Bible study Easter egg hunt on the same day!

Have a great day!

On the Hunt

2011-04-15T22:02:00.002-05:00

We meet with other military families for a Bible study every week on Thursday evenings. It's neat that the guy who usually teaches now was the leader of a Bible study group we went to in Nebraska as well. They ended up moving here last summer, started coming to our OCF Bible study, and he is such an awesome teacher that he now leads us every week.

Anyways, we got together for a potluck and Easter egg hunt this week.

During our Bible study, we have all the kids go upstairs to play with two teenage babysitters supervising them and trying to keep them quiet. That's a lot of kids!

Bluebonnets

2011-04-14T20:22:00.002-05:00

I suppose I had to do it eventually. I just loved our bluebonnets picture from last year so much that I didn't want to take it down from my blog header!

We haven't had very much rain this spring, so our Texas landscape sadly isn't as colorful as it was last year. I'd say only about 5% of the bluebonnets from last year made an appearance again this year. We still had some yellows and pinks and whites growing wild along the roadways, but not the take-your-breath-away canvas of color that we were blessed with last year. And I was hoping for it since this is our last spring here.

But we found a patch of bluebonnets not far from our house, and stopped pulled over to capture some more memories. We had just come from the zoo and Leah had crazy car seat hair where her ponytail had been rubbed against her carseat so many times on the way home that she looked like she had a very messy 'bump-it' under her hair. I tried to smooth it down, but it didn't help, and then taking the ponytail completely out left her hair in a crazy sort of permanant mess.

And the bluebonnets were not quite as bright as they should have been, but the pictures I took were still sweet.

My new header picture

The boys ran back to the car as fast as they could once I got a few shots of all five kids. I'm still hoping for a spring shower so maybe some more bluebonnets will come out and we can go back to get more pictures.

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And posts are coming less often (although I do start plenty of them!) because we are in the midst of scouring the internet for a potential home in Florida. I think we've found one and things are moving quickly!

School - Week 26

2011-04-09T21:32:00.002-05:00

So eight more weeks left of this school year for us! If felt like it was going pretty slow for a while, but suddenly it seems like the end of the year is very near.

Gabriel's letter unit this week was K-k-Kangaroo.

In the activity below, I choose the letter of the week plus another letter and mix the picture cards up. Gabriel has to sort them based on the beginning sound.

Here, he has to cut and paste words to the pictures they belong to.

We read about kangaroos, tried to hop as far as one (only about 37 feet short), and made this cute little pencil box. Gabriel was really into it when we did it, but when it came time for picture, he got all annoyed about it.

Christopher and Matthew spent the week reading about Elijah and we read quite a bit about the religions of India, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as some about their caste system. We initially read these things about India last year, and one of Christopher's favorite missionary biographies we read was about Amy Carmichael, which talked a lot about the caste system as well.

The boys finished up their copywork and memorization of Psalm 1.

Matthew's

Christopher's

They only wrote one verse a week, and it's really the only cursive I make Christopher do his schoolwork in (other than a handwriting copywork sheet) but he really just doesn't like to write with it. I can't imagine taking the time to print all of what I write, so I hope that as I have him do more cursive copywork, he'll get more comfortable, and quick, with using it.
He did ask me that once he finishes his cursive handwriting worksheets (he's doing one letter at a time), if I could write the words in print and he could copy them into cursive. It was an odd request, but sure, I can do that!

Matthew was excited to finish up his Singapore Math 2A workbook, mostly becasue he has the next week off from math, except for some fun math games. And I still need to order 2B, so he may get even longer. Whoops.

Christopher's Writing Strands assignment this week was to write a story with a problem and a solution.

One of the art assignments this week was to draw household items around the house. Usually Gabriel wants to do art with the boys, but he didn't for this assignment, so I used the copy I made for him. Obviously they kids do not get their drawing talent from me, although I think I did quite well compared to usual.

Christopher's is on top, Matthew's to the left and mine to the right.

And on (most) Fridays, I follow the suggestion of MFW and have the boys write a letter to a family member. A letter with a pencil and on paper. Not very common these days, right?

Now, if I could just remember to look up the addresses and get them in the mailbox!

If you'd like to read about more homeschool highlights from other MFW families, click here.

Have a blessed week!

Awana Games

2011-04-04T20:42:00.039-05:00

We don't do a lot of organized extracurricular activities with the kids. Right now, the three boys are only participating in Awana, a Bible memorizing and games club at church, which is for the whole school year. We do sports every once in a while, but I'm really not into the whole movement where I must be driving my kids to some activity every evening of the week. They are more than happy to be able to play at home and I am more than happy to not have to work dinner, which we eat together at the dining table every evening, around who needs to be where and at what time. And I like having my Saturday mornings free from chasing my girls around sports field sidelines.
I'm sure that as my kids get older, we'll be doing more of it, and I hope that I'll enjoy it, like I did flag football for Christopher and Matthew in the fall and basketball for Gabe in the spring, but right now we have one evening activity, besides Bible study groups, and that happens to be Awana.
And we did have to get up early on a Saturday morning to go to the annual Awana Games competition at a local church.

Matthew is in the Sparks group, which is kinder through second grades and Christopher is in the T&T (Truth and Training) group, which is third through sixth grades. They both had fun doing the fun gym games and both groups did very well.

Looking back through my pictures, I am cracking up at some of these little guys and their facial expressions. Matthew has an interesting look in the photo below and the second kid in the line looks like he's up to trouble with that balloon.

And I love this little boy in this photo. You just can't make this young crowd wait around this long or they have to come up with ways to entertain themselves!

The Sparks came in second out of the four in their group and the T&T kids came in third out of 11 teams.

Christopher has never really been into the team sport thing, but all three of his best friends were doing this, so I'm sure that played a part in him being so gung ho about it. He had to stay after church every other Sunday for the past few months to practice, and it was nice that he never complained about it.

The girls got a bit antzy sitting around watching the sports go on after a couple of hours so I took them shopping at an annual consignment sale for an hour or so and then we came back a little later.

Anna didn't really do much better shopping either, but Leah enjoyed it, especially becauses I bought her a cute pair of pink Crocs that had a Snow White bling thingy on them.

School - Week 25

2011-04-02T21:37:00.000-05:00

In Creation to the Greeks this week, we finished reading about King Soloman. While he had a great start, asking for wisdom to be a great king to his people when he could have asked God of anything, apparantly all of his wisdom didn't keep him from making a lot of mistakes that the Bible warned about in Deuteronomy 17:16...becoming too rich, having many wives, worshipping false gods. His heart left God while he worshipped the false gods of his wives, and because of that, the kingdom of Israel would be divided.

We then started reading about the prophet, Elijah. God had him wait around for a while before he used him to do great stuff. The boys drew handguy versions of Elijah challenging the Baal worshippers on Mount Carmel to see how powerful each of their gods was.

Christopher finished Singapore Math 5A last week, so this week he reviewed some of the concepts he learned with math games and facts practice.

We're still working on catching up with art and the boys used their practice of drawing dragons last week to draw their own version of this scene from Revelation by Albrecht Durer.

More art...

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Gabriel's Kindergarten lesson this week was P-p-Penguin.

His words to remember were "I show love to everyone, especially my family." We talked about how the daddy Emporer penguin would sit with his baby egg on his feet for almost two months and not even eat so that he could keep the egg warm. That's a lot of love, just like the love that God has for us.

This is a card that Gabriel made for his daddy. The big blue oval is the egg on the daddy penguin's feet.

This book was a good one and opened a conversation about how we move around a lot as a military family but that the city or the house that we live in don't matter, as long as we are together as a family. That's where home will be.

If you notice that Leah doing a lot of our school activities with us, there is a reason for it. Well, of course she loves to do this kind of stuff, but also, we moved the two girls into the same bedroom and now nap time is a little off. Leah hasn't taken a nap since we moved Anna into her room but she's proving that she still needs one, so we'll have to get that figured out, whether she takes a nap in my bed or in Christopher's maybe (who now has his own room). But for now, she's totally enjoying the glueing and the painting and the coloring.

I think someone else in my town is learning about penguins also because this is all they had available at our library this week. We have some more at home, so it turned out to still be enough penguin saturation for us.

We added the penguins to our Africa map (yes they live in south Africa!) and while you see a polar bear visiting where Antarctica would be, Chris reminded us that they do not in fact, live in Antarctica, so we took him back off after this picture was taken.

This is what we keep in Gabriel's school box for his tactile letter drawing...salt in a tupperware. Sometimes we get the playdoh out to shape into letters, but we use the salt every week.

This whole school year Gabriel has been counting craft sticks for each day of school. This was the big week that Gabriel has been looking forward to for a long time...his 100th day of school! Technically this is his 100th day of preschool, so I think we'll do something even better next year for his kindergarten year.

To celebrate this year's 100th day though, Gabriel got to count 100 of one of his favorite sweet treats...chocolate chips!

And of course, all of the kids want in on this school assignment!

Leah can count up to about twelve before she starts repeating numbers, so she thought that she should be able to do this too.

If you'd like to read about more homeschool highlights from families using My Father's World, click here.

A New Adventure

2011-04-01T22:49:00.003-05:00

Come August 2011...

Our family is going home.

See those yellow dots labeled Destin and Pensacola? Right in between those is where we'll be moving to this summer. Hurlburt Field.

Okay, maybe right there is not exactly home for me. I lived in south Florida for ten years growing up, not in the panhandle. But Chris lived there for several years when he was growing up.

And everytime we go back to visit our family, I miss it when we leave again.

I'm looking forward to a lot of this...

In less than five months we will call the Emerald Coast our home. If only we could pack up our church and friends and take them with us!

Leah's Hospital Weekend

2011-03-30T23:09:00.002-05:00

Leah didn't have a great weekend.

We took a little trip to the emergency room on Friday evening and it was decided that she'd need to stay for a little while. Three nights to be exact. They had to flush out her digestive system with two gallons of GoLytely liquid to get rid of a partial bowel obstruction.

Disclaimer: This post may be too much information about Leah's bowel issues, so feel free to skip it!

To give some background on this little problem we've been struggling with for almost two years...

When I was pregnant with Anna, I was given Zofran for nausea. Apparantly it can also cause constipation. And I was still nursing Leah so it also caused constipation in her. Going potty while constipated hurt her once, at about 14 months old, and she has never forgot about it. She's been trying to hold it in ever since then. We've been to the pediatrician over this many times and she's been on Lactulose and Miralax, but neither have worked well enough to overcome her trying her best to hold it in.

Last weekend her tummy started hurting on Saturday evening. It wasn't too bad and I didn't think to do anything about it since she only complained sporadically and it wasn't an urgent type complaining.

By Sunday night she was in a lot of pain. I ended up sleeping in bed with her because she was waking up all through the night. She'd cry hard for about a minute and then fall back asleep. I made a same day appointment for her to see a pediatrician on base in the midmorning on Monday, but leading up to that, she was in intermittant intense pain. It looked like the poor girl was experiencing labor contraction type pain sometimes. Sometimes the pains would be just a few minutes apart, sometimes a half hour or more.

We went to her appointment, I described exactly what was going on, but Leah didn't have any of those pains in the 20 minutes we were there. The doctor didn't feel anything amiss when she pressed on Leah's abdomen and said it was probably gas or another side effect of upping her Miralax dose the week before and sent us on our way, with instructions to come back in a few days if it didn't get better.

That day it got worse and by that evening, we decided that it wasn't just gas and she needed to be fixed now. I asked Chris to take her to the emergency room instead of going myself. I seriously think that the doctor thought I was exaggerating or being too emotional earlier that day. Either that or she didn't know what the heck she was doing.

So Chris took her in, the doctor saw some of her pain episodes, took some x-rays, felt and saw the #2 that was stuck in her, did and enema, and thought she was okay to go home with instructions for suppositories and a high dose of Lactulose. She started having BMs everyday and we thought it was taken care of.

Come Friday late afternoon, and she's got a hurting tummy again. The pains came pretty close together and we knew that waiting around wasn't going to make it any better. I took her back to the emergency room at about 5:30 PM.

They saw us right away, did a catheter urine test (OW!) to see if the pain was caused by a urinatry tract or kidney infection, and took an x-ray which showed that the blockage hadn't gone away from Monday night, and decided she needed to be admitted so they could give her the GoLytely (what they use to clean people out for colonoscopies) through a nose tube because there is no way she'd be willing or able to drink a gallon of that nasty stuff.

There ended up being two different partial blockages of impacted #2 in her and it took two gallons of the GoLytely to clean her out. Getting the IV and the nose tube in her was so hard to watch, but knowing that it was much worse for her, I sucked it up and didn't cry (well, maybe just a few tears). She cried for a few hours straight after the nose tube was put in because she wanted it out, but she finally fell asleep at about 3AM and when she awoke at about 7AM the next morning, she wasn't miserable anymore. She asked every once in a while to get the tube out, but we just hung out and watched the Enchanted movie about ten times that was playing on the hospital movie channel. Chris came up on Saturday to hang out for a few hours while a friend watched the kids and then I went home, cleaned myself up, and took a nap for a while and then went back up to the hospital. I brought some books and games for Leah and I to play and that's pretty much what we did for the next two days.

It was kind of nice to get to cuddle and hang out with my sweet girl for so long. She shared her hospital bed with me and she was pretty content to just hang out in bed for the whole time.

I changed a bajillion diapers and had to push the little nurse call button dozens of times because she was going so much, so liquidy, that her diaper leaked every BM she had and we had to change the sheets or bed pad every diaper change. (TMI?)

It felt like we were there forever and it got pretty boring sometimes, but it could have been worse and I was thankful that we were there for a reason that was not life threatening or risky or anything like what most people there were probably there for.

On Monday, they decided Leah could go home. Taking off the tape from the IV and nose tube was almost as bad as putting those two things in was. I took this picture to show her that her nose tube was out so she would feel better after having the tape painfully removed, and she wanted to look at it several times but wouldn't let me take another, happier one. (And all of these pictures were taken on my phone since I didn't think to bring my camera!)

But Leah is home now and we've been talking about having good #2 habits from now on and so far, she's been doing great. Having the whole nose tube threat will probably work to keep her from holding it in again.

And she's pain-free now and back to being a happy little girl. And now you know more about her BM than you want too probably.

School - Week 24

2011-03-25T22:34:00.002-05:00

Gabriel took the week off from his kindergarten work. I had a parent teacher conference and decided that it was okay to give myself and him a break. Because he's a pre-kindergartener doing kindergarten work and well, that means I can give him a week off if I want. That's just the kind of week we had if anyone can relate.

But the older boys didn't get the week off, much to their displeasure.

We finished up reading in 2 Samuel and started in 1 Kings, continuing reading about King David, and we read some of the Psalms he wrote as well.

We started reading about King Soloman as well. Again, I'm amazed at how little I actually knew about these well-known kings of the Bible and it makes me appreciate this homeschool curriculum we're using even more. And it's so odd how much less boring it is than I thought it would be. :oP

Christopher finished up another lesson in his writing curriculum. This one was about looking out a window and describing what he saw.

And we are still getting caught up in art.

I love how some of the lessons specifically tell us to go outside and draw God's creation.

The first one of these was the boys drawing a portrait of me, their momma. Lovely, aren't I? The one below those is copying a scene of an angel talking to a woman that was in their book.

Matthew's on left, Christopher's on right.

And this lesson is a few sketches of dragons.

Matthew's on left, Christopher's on right.

These ones are some of the what they've been drawing in their free time lately. They make up scenes from Mario Brothers video games on the Wii. There are many many many of these types of drawings around the house. They explain the whole level to me, usually when I'm trying to make dinner or something, and you probably need to have played the game before to be able to figure out what everything is. And then they also make up their own stuff too.

Christopher's

Matthew's

Christopher finished his math workbook, Singapore Math 5A, this week! I told him we can just do some math facts practice and games next week before starting the next workbook. He was pretty happy with that. Can't you tell?

And I thought I'd add these pictures...

I teach a Construction Art craft class for third through sixth grades at our homeschool co-op that meets weekly on Fridays. We use materials that you can normally find in your home to make various artwork. This week we made sock pets. They were a hit and when we got home, my other children wanted to make some too.

Christopher with two classmates.

Christopher's, Matthew's and Gabriel's creations.

I hope your week was great!

If you'd like to read about more Homeschool Highlights from other families using My Father's World, click here.

School - Week 23

2011-03-20T13:57:00.006-05:00

This week, Gabe has been learning about elephants and the letter "E".

This is the first week that he has a little story to read. We're supposed to cut it out and make it into a little book, we just hadn't gotten to that part yet. He felt so proud after he read the whole thing by himself.

Gabe with his words to remember.

We learned quite a bit about elephants this week. For our map, we focused on the African elephant and some of his African friends. We colored the continent of Africa based on whether it is desert, forest or grasslands and stuck the animals basically where they belonged. We have a couple more animals to learn about in coming lessons before we'll take down our map of Africa.

Some cute little elephants we made from a toilet paper tube and this website.

One of the books we read about elephants this week.

Our new simple supply caddy...$2.99 at the Container Store baby!

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Christopher and Matthew are continuing to memorize Psalm 1 and they pretty much have it down now. Matthew needs a hint or two towards the end, but they've only copied four of the six verses, so he still has two more weeks to get it one hundred percent.

We finished up reading about King Saul this week and moved on to when David was king.
I read Unspoken: Bathsheba from the Lineage of Grace series by Francine Rivers a year or so ago, and while it ws an awesome book, it was the most I've ever read about David other than when he killed Goliath with his sling. The book did not make me think that highly of David since it was from Bathsheba's perspective and I didn't quite understand why he is considered such a Godly man.

Oh, is that why I should actually read straight from the source? (That was sarcasm.)

We've spent the week reading about David, and how he did mess up and did sin, and some of his sins were very serious, but God knew his heart, and he knew that his heart was completely for HIM. How great is it for me, that the same man in the Bible that God loved so much and blessed so much, was a sinner, just like me. I always will be, but I can still love God with all my heart and he'll know that, and love me too.

I never thought that reading through this part of the Old Testament would be something I looked forward to doing, and I am pleasantly surprised. (Goodness, I sound like a heathen mom, don't I!) I get so excited telling the kids about the lessons we are learning and how it applies to our lives and I just truly hope that some of it will stick with them.

I wonder sometimes, because Matthew seems to have a bored, distant look on his face quite often, and like I've said before, he often seems more worried about his next snack or meal than about anything else. Lucky him, he'll be going through this same curriculum again in five years. :o)

So at the same time as we're reading through this period in the Old Testament (and some of David's Psalms), we've read about a civilizaion from Phoenicia. The boys got to see what their writing looked like, and wrote their names using their alphabet at the bottom of the worksheet below.

Matthew's name written using the Phoenician alphbet and his summary of King Saul.

Christopher's summary of King Saul and his name using the Phoenician alphabet.

Christopher adding King David to our timeline

That's about been our week.

To read about more families' Homeschool Highlights in My Father's World click here.

Game Night - DC-opoly Style

2011-03-18T21:45:00.001-05:00

Last year our boys were obsessed with playing Monopoly. They played everyday, and they are the type of kids who don't lose interest after thirty minutes.

At the same time, they started making up their own pretend versions of Monopoly. They'd type up the names of the properties they'd have for their own Monopoly game. They'd change the selling prices, the rent prices, the mortgage prices, the prices for houses and hotels. We'd have about thirty sheets of paper around the house, printed out with all these pretend Monopoly lists. They were obsessed.

The plans for Christopher's Florida Monopoly

Then one day I got the brilliant idea to look on Amazon to see if they had a Monopoly making kit. They did. It was $30. Thirty dollars a kit times three boys was looking at almost a hundred dollars. Seeing how we were already on our second Monopoly game because things like that just don't last long when they get played with everyday in our house, I was not excited about spending a hundred dollars on these Monopoly kits that probably wouldn't last all that long anyways.

In steps my super hubby with his usual good idea.

Just buy a regular Monopoly game for $10 at Walmart, get some sticky computer paper (I'm sure that's the technical name), design Monopoly squares on the computer, print them out, stick them to the Monopoly board, and viola! The kids made their own Monopoly games (well Chris and I did help quite a bit, but they were each designed by the kids. And it took awhile.)

Christopher designed a Florida Monopoly game with properties like Lake Okeechobee, The University of Florida, and Disney World.

Gabriel designed an Oceanopoly game with property names like Baluga Whale, Submarine, and Octopus.

And Matthew designed a DC Monopoly game (I think we made these shortly after our vacation to Washington, DC in April 2009).

And that is what we played during game night this week.

We used the original money and game pieces, but in addition to making new property cards, we came up with new 'Community Chest' and 'Chance' cards, renamed "House" and "Senate" in Matthew's Washington, DC version.

It was really fun to do with the kids because they were the brains behind the idea and they were so excited about it. And somehow they turned out really nice looking.

St Patrick's in the Park

2011-03-17T00:10:00.000-05:00

My Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group met at our favorite park on Wednesday to have fun with each other using St. Patrick's Day as our excuse. We had four leaf clover crafts but we mainly hung out together and let the kids play in this beautiful south Texas weather.

Christopher with some of his favorite friends...they spent most of the morning back in the bamboo forest exploring and doing fun boy stuff.

Anna has no problem finding willing friends to hold her. I think Jess is one of her favorites. But then again, Jess is a mom of three boys and I think she likes holding my little girl too.

This picture just seems to Anna to me. She's standing up in her stroller (being defiant) and stuffing her face with food. This girl must be about to hit a growth spurt with how much she's been eating lately!

I love Leah's choice of shoes here. I've learned that the shoes that she wears to a park is what whoever said the quote "don't sweat the small stuff" was talking about.

If you have any kids under kindergarten and would like some good friends to hang out with, look up the closest MOPS group on http://www.mops.org/. Being a military family, we have to plug in quickly when we move or by the time we find friends, it'll be time to move again! I joined the MOPS group at our church within weeks of moving here and they were a life saver when we were going through Leah's hip surgery less than a month after we moved here. (My blog post on Leah's hip surgery...you have to read down a bit before I got to it).

Anna's starting to walk more and more, but I will be happy when she is walking well. I see a lot of park days in our near future and having a crawling baby at the park is quite dirty.

My Girls - A Photo Shoot

2011-03-14T23:41:00.001-05:00

I took Anna to a local portrait studio a few weeks ago and it didn't go well.

She didn't want to sit where she was supposed to. She didn't want to be anywhere away from me. She didn't want to sit by the huge teddy bear. She didn't want to smile at a feather tickling her tummy or a bunny fake sneezing off of someone's head.

All of my other children have never had a problem with that kind of thing, but this little girl does.

While I took the four others to tons of protrait studios, I've always taken Anna's pictures myself (other than newborn) with my handy dandy Canon, but when I dress her all pretty and put a little bow in her hair, she knows what is going on and wants nothing to do with it. She furrows her eyebrows and wants me to hold her.

A smile? How'd that happen?

So, I'll try yet again for her one year pictures sometime soon. Or I may give up and take her back to a studio.

But my older girl? She's about at happy to take pictures as you can get.

And I know that unposed pictures are nice to have, but really, I'd like a good smile from my little one too. She does it so often when she's not in front of the camera.

But she was happy to get to play while Leah was posing for me.

In her defense, I'm sure that I annoy her with always having my camera in front of my face and calling her name while she's trying to explore and get into everything. You'd think she'd just get used to it, right?

School: Week 22

2011-03-12T10:18:00.010-06:00

Gabe's week of school focused on the letter H, the number 14, and a study about horses.

On one of the back roads to a friend's house, there are many horses in the yards and since we didn't go to a farm or anything to see horses, I joked that our field trip was driving down that road. I don't think the kids were too impressed though.

Gabe working on his pattern calendar

Gabe singing his vowel song.

Gabe and I played a game that showed how his memory words, "I obey right away" apply to horses and to him. Horses obey right away when they are given commands by their master, and they stay on the right path. We also need to obey, both parents and escpecially God, to stay on the good path that God has for us. For our game, I told him to go to various places in our house and the last place I told him to go was to the laundry room and look on the washing machine. He liked what he found there.

And even better, when he saw that I had left four suckers there, he immediately wanted to share with his brothers and sister. Sweet boy.

So, needless to say with a lot of children in our home, we have been using "I obey right away" to remind the kids regularly ever since we heard it the first time we used this kindergarten curriculum with Matthew. We used counting to three before that because that's what everyone else seemed to be doing (and sadly, that seems to be how I used to parent) but after taking a parenting class by Chip Ingram with Chris, we realized that giving them three chances to obey is giving them two chances to disobey.

We read the story of Jonah to see how Jonah disobeyed God and then God gave him a second chance and Jonah did obey. Grace and mercy are such wonderful gifts to be given from God for all of our human imperfections.

We did a few more activities, including watching Black Beauty. We also read a book about a horse and a circus. (Not that we go to circuses...we are trying to stay away from food and entertainment that involve animal cruelty. And no, we are not vegan, but we do believe in treating animals with respect while they are alive. There's some sad stuff going on out there when it comes to this subject.) But back to Gabe's school...

picture taken by Matthew

And Gabe's finished school work from this week...

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The older boys are on week 22 of 34. Right now, they are both memorizing Psalm 1 over several weeks. That is in addition to their Awana Bible memorization. Christopher had memorized Psalm 1 earlier this year for Awana, so he's already got it down for school.

The last section of memory work was Psalm 23.

Christopher's on left, Matthew's on right

We've been reading through the Old Testament this year and we are in 1 Samuel right now, reading about King Saul and David. I recently bought a Bible commentary that someone else recommended on their blog. It is so helpful to me, since I just don't fully understand all that the Bible is trying to teach us. We read it everyday with our Bible reading, which is usually one chapter per day. It makes Bible time take much longer, but we get so much more out of it. I have asked the boys what they think about reading it along with our Bible, and Christopher really likes it and Matthew doesn't really care. He's the one that I'm working with to stop interrupting me while I'm reading aloud (patting my arm 50 times) to ask what he can eat. Oy!

It is written in another translation than the NIV that we use, so we still read from my Bible back and forth with the commentary.

And we still read the Victor Journey Trough the Bible after them both as well! It is a lot of reading, but I know that we are getting so much more from God's Word than without them.

We have been reading The Children's Homer for a few weeks now. It is written a bit in old style writing (with thee's and thy's and thou's) in some places, but the boys (mostly Christopher) are really enjoying it. Christopher really wants to get to the part about the Trojan horse, so hopefully he'll still enjoy the book once that part has passed.

We took the week off from our history text books to read a few of David's Psalms. I tried to put them to melody but I think I was doing a bad job because Christopher asked if I could just read them normal.

Christopher started ratios in math and is enjoying how simple it is so far and Matthew is doing some two digit plus two digit addition in math. He's not quite so thrilled with his math.

We got off track with art for a while and are now doing a lesson from God and the History of Art everyday to catch up. The boys like doing art so they don't mind doing it everyday at all. The book is actually for ages 10 and up, so while I require Matthew and Christopher to do it (even though Matthew is seven), Gabriel has a choice. If he doesn't do his page, then I got ahead and do it myself. I could use any help I can get with drawing.

Christopher's work

Matthew's work

Gabe's work

Christopher does a few extra things that Matthew doesn't. He starting a writing curriculum this year even though he has been writing short stories for a while (years). I debated having him doing the extra work, even though it was reccomended by My Father's World for his grade, but I decided on it in the end because we could all use improvement in our writing. I realize now with the lessons he is doing that he didn't have that much depth to individual parts of his stories. Here is his latest. He had to write a list of things that happened in his day and then elaborate on two of those things.

And while he knows cursive, he's pretty choppy when he writes with it, as opposed to being flowing. So I'm having him work on it a bit with some Donna Young worksheets for practice.

And this little girl worked on her writing skills a little. She's getting pretty good at these 'easy mazes'. Thanks to her Daddy...

When I showed her with my finger how to do it, she couldn't figure it out and I thought we should just wait a while until she was older. Chris was watching however and showed Leah how to do it by doing it himself and telling her to trace his crayon line. Maybe Daddy should be doing some of this homeschooling teaching stuff! (Actually, science used to be his department, maybe we should start that up again!)

And that's our week of school. To see more of My Father's World users' weeks of school, go to MFW Homeschool Highlights.

Chocolate Ice Cream Faces

2011-03-11T22:12:00.001-06:00

This blog entry could easily be told in pictures.

One nice breezy Tuesday evening, a mother who has been home with her five children all day remembers that just down the road, there is a nice little ice cream joint with $1 kids ice cream cones on Tuesdays.

She was all over that.

Because chocolate ice cream faces are some of my favorite things.

one of Anna's favorite faces to make these days

And the $1 cones were just the right size to give three little boys the burst of energy they needed to race up and down the breezeway of the shopping center.

And She Stands

2011-03-07T00:03:00.000-06:00

Okay, so she's actually been doing this for over a month, but we have yet to actually take a picture of our sweet fifth child doing this...standing all by her little self.

She's been pulling up on the couch or whatever for months now, but she just started standing up from pushing up on the ground in the last month, and just standing around like it's a normal thing for her to do. She just seems too little to be doing this stuff...even though at 14 months old, she's getting kind of on the 'late' side of it. But she's my baby, and she's just so little.

And for the record, she's been taking steps for weeks now also. She's doing it more and more often, but not enough to call her a "walker". With spring having sprung, I'm ready for her to walk. She just gets way too dirty crawling around outside.

Taking a few steps!

And Leah is so cute; she still gets so excited when she sees Anna standing up and tells me, "Mommy, look, Anna's standing up!" She's such a sweet big sister.

And I am so loving that Anna will play so well with her big brothers and sister so often!

God's Word Helps Me Grow

2011-03-05T23:18:00.002-06:00

So I guess it's about time I talked about some homeschooling stuff, right?

Gabriel has finished exactly half of the alphabet lessons for his kindergarten curriculum in My Father's World. We just finished lesson 13, C-c-Cow which is part of a unit study about farm animals, and the Bible words to remember are the title of this post...God's Word helps me grow. As in cow milk helps us grow physically and the Bible helps us grow spiritually. I dug out a bunch of our books about farm animals and it's so funny how I can start reading a book to one or two kids and the others come out from the different rooms in our house and gather around. I love it.

Gabriel is doing so well with reading short vowel words and his school work is taking almost no time at all. He enjoys it so much though and even though he breezes through it, it is just the right amount of work for him. He doesn't get bored with it, but he is also excited to do it everyday.

On his counting worksheet (bottom left), the numbers are 13 and 2. He's been doing this for a while now, where he has to draw that amount of objects and he decides to draw the number 11 that many times. It's not very creative or exciting, but really, our boys are drawing constantly, these elaborate pictures, of which Super Mario Brothers made up worlds are the artwork of choice right now. So I don't worry about the math worksheet. I'll have to take a picture and show how crazy-detailed they get with their Wii World drawings sometime.
And on the letter worksheet (bottom right), I write the letters that you see first and then Gabe's are second, just so you know.

He loves all this cutting and pasting. A lot. And Leah does too, which gets messy, but with all the practice she's been getting at age two, she'll be a pro by the time she's in kindergarten.

Okay, so here are a few more activities we did...we talked about cows and what yummy food products come from them, and we also read the Story of Ferdinand and drew our little picture about it. (I drew Ferdinand (so you know the boys don't get their artistic skill from me!), Gabe drew the tree and made the flowers.)

And that's just about what his week of school looked like. We did a few more activities, like acting out "Hey Diddle Diddle" with some stuffed animals, talking about the different dairy products we eat, but one thing we did before with this unit study, making butter, we haven't gotten to yet (I didn't get cream from the store...whoops). We'll get to that though since the kids like it a lot. And I'd love to take them to a dairy farm. We buy fresh milk from a local dairy, but it is on the other side of San Antonio and milking time is during dinner so it's not very convenient to go to, but maybe on a weekend soon we will.

More school updates to come soon!

Another Birthday

2011-02-24T21:23:00.001-06:00

So Chris kind of gets jipped for his birthday. It's two days after Christopher's. Even if it's not the biggest celebration, we still go out to dinner for him and most years we have another cake.

Because you can never have too much cake. And baking it is a good homeschooling lesson for the kids.

Happy Birthday to my sweet, wonderful, cute, smart, hardworking hubby. I love you Chris!

And yes, the cake does have pink icing and little bunnies on it. Hey, I just used what I had on hand. And it's the thought that counts, right?

And this is the third and last time I can make fun of him for being an old man in his 30s. No offense to anyone else in their 30s. I'll be joining you this fall. Not that the 30s are even as old as I joke it is. I'll just shut my mouth now. :oP

A Mommy for a Decade

2011-02-22T22:21:00.001-06:00

Ten years ago, this sweet baby boy turned me into a mommy.

6 weeks old

I can't believe it's been so long since that morning that he was born. I was 19 and had no idea what I was in for, but somehow I knew it was all good.

My relationship with God then wasn't even very close, but he still gave me comfort throughout my pregnancy and I didn't feel apprehensive or fearful or anything like I would expect a newly married teenager with a newborn to feel. I felt like a mother and knew that this was meant to be. It just felt natural.

God planned it an eternity ago. It may have come about in a way that wasn't how he planned for babies to come, but he knew it would happen.

I can't imagine my children becoming parents so soon in their life, but now I can't imagine me not becoming a mom when I was so young. There's nothing in my life I would enjoy more, at this moment, than being a mom to my children, raising them, training them up, spending so much of our lives together, having such a close relationship.

And it all started with this little blessing.

Me, 20 years old & Christopher, 12 months

It probably helped that God brought me together with the greatest guy to be a dad to our child. I don't know exactly what Chris was thinking when we found out we were expecting, but for me, he was a rock. He was never not calm about it. He was 21 and it was the summer before his senior year in college. I was really scared when we first found out, I was still 18, but that really didn't last that long and Chris was awesome then, and he has been such a great dad and husband ever since.

I look at my first born, my sweet son, and while I know that he must go through trials to grow into a godly man, I pray that he will be strong and faithful like his dad. He's already on his way there.

Christopher, 3 years old

Christopher, 4 years old

Christopher, 5 years old

So we celebrated my sweet boy on his special day.

Starting with birthday balloons outside his bedroom door when he woke up.

And then birthday donuts!

And that evening we went out for dinner and dessert at the places of his choice...Denny's for dinner and Rainforest Cafe for dessert.

And then we headed home to open a couple of presents.

And this sweet boy let his sister help him open his gifts!

Happy Birthday to the boy who made me a mommy. I love you Christopher James!