Some finds

Well the past few months since we've moved we have visited two parks. The one we used to go to, which is now 15-20 minutes away, or one that is about 8 minutes away. The closer one has a basketball hoop, and climbing structure, but no swings. The one farther away has swings but no basketball hoop. Well the other day we wanted to take the girls out to ride their bikes. Jerry thought we should just go to the church that was 1 mile away. So we did, and we found out they have a playground! It has swings AND a basketball hoop. The basketball hoop is important to Isabella who has taking a liking to basketball. But the other kids want to be able to swing. So a big win!

The other "find" was a game. We are reading a great Christian kids book series. In the recent book the two boys play Battleship. I told the girls how my sister and I played that when we were kids. Then a toy catalog came in and Isabella pointed out that they sold Battleship. I thought it would be a neat game for them, but we couldn't get it right now. Then it dawned on me. You can play Battleship on paper. We have graph paper. So I pulled out a few pieces and now Isabella and Moira want to play that each day!

Ummm, an explaination

Ok, OK, SOME People...(aka my sister!) brought up the fact that my children do not have any bed sheets on their beds in the below picture. I thought about that after I loaded the pics to my blog, but thought no one would notice. Well that was my hope anyways :-) So for all those interested in knowing and thinking they have to send my poor deprived children sheet sets for Christmas, my children do in deed have sheets. They had taken them off to change them, but got distracted, had company and we had to just toss their "stuff" up on the bed so it would be off the floor. Soooo that is just the temporary state of their beds. And believe it or not Jerry found all the rest of our "missing" sheets the other day. I had packed them one of the bins that had something like 9 mo. baby girl clothes in them. There was extra room at the top so I loaded it up with our sheets, no reason to take up one of the other cardboard boxes when we were moving. But alas I had forgotten I did that, and we had been lacking in sheets (they still had some, but just one per bed).

OH, a big PTL (that's Praise The Lord).....Jedidiah is up to 10 pounds now!!! Yeah!!!! So all the extra protein and fat that I am adding to my diet is working! I am so happy. He's been so small for so long that I can't imagine him being any bigger than he is.

Ok, the weekend seems to be shrinking before me and I still have a ton of stuff to tackle.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ok, so I am a little late. Better late than never! We had a great day. I made the menu a little lighter this year. Not lighter in calories, just not so much food. It made getting things together much easier, especially since Jedidiah was so needy. He has been having tummy problems for a few days now. But I finally figured out what was bothering him so he should be getting better soon. Even last night was better than the few nights before. I have a picture of our place cards. The girls colored them in. And while Jerry's parents were here they took a family picture of us, so I'm putting that up as well. I thought I had another pic to share, but I don't remember right now. Jedidiah is doing better with his weight as well. I am very happy about that . I is back up 2/10 of a pound. It;s not much, but at least we are headed in the right direction. IT is very weird to have to actually think/plan about getting more fat and protein in my diet. Usually it's the opposite. Not much else to talk about. I am planning on getting the whole house cleaned and decently organized by the end of this weekend. Jerry plans on getting the dog hut finished this weekend as well. So we'll be busy.

Oh, yeah, now I remember the other picture I wanted to share. I would title it: If Walls Could Talk. Yeah, what do you think Isabella and Moira's walls are saying? Ha, ha..

Great website

I had heard about this website on the MOMYS email list. I checked it out and have done some reading. It is a ministry for women. On the side bar on the home page is a link to free e-books. Click on it and they have like five books. One on restoring relationships, one on being a worker at home, another on homeschooling and one with restored marraiges testimonies. Check it out!
http://www.restorem.org

We had a busy day, and will continue to have a busy week. Little man was not a happy camper for half the day. I had some green onions the other day and that made his tummy upset. Poor little guy. Speaking of little.....Jedidiah has not been gaining weight. But a talk with my very smart and wonderful sister helped me to see what was going on with him. I don't want to try to write it all out. But sufice it to say I need to add more fat and protein to my diet. So I dropped out of the Biggest Loser contest. And for the record I was not doing anything unusual or extreme, just the same thing I did after my other four pregnancies. But because of his low birth weight and his need for extra fat the things I were doing were causing him to not have enough of the right fat and proteins. The good thing is that I will only need to up my fat intake for the next two months and then by then he will have his own fat stores to keep his body working like it should. He is doing great otherwise, just not gaining. Still happy as can be.

I did a bunch of cleaning today, but there is still a ton more! We are having a good friend of ours stay over tomorrow night. So I want to get most of it done before he gets here. Then we have a church fellowship on sunday and then Thanksgiving is on thursday.

Well not much else to write about. Need to go do some more cleaning, then I am hoping to read some more of those e-books. In the "Worker at Home" I skimmed the chapter on Toys and I plan on implementing her idea. I have heard about rotating bins of toys per month. Well hers is a bit more drastic. You sort each toy set into a bin of some sort. Then you put the bins in a closet and LOCK the door! Then each day you bring out ONE set for the WHOLE day for them to play with. This fosters creativity, and there is only one set for them to clean up! I LOVE IT!!! Now if I can only get organized enough to get their things into bins!

Have a great night.

Butterfly kisses

I'm not sure how many of you know the song "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle, I believe. I haven't heard that song in a long while. I was driving tonight by myself (now that's hard to imagine!) when it came on. I was about to turn it off because it always makes me cry. But I thought, hey it's been a while, I am sure I can handle it. NO! WRONG!! I wasn't crying......I was BAWLING!!! This is no joke. I think I cry more each time I hear it. I would write about what the song is about, but I know I will start crying, and I don't feel like crying right now. Maybe google it, buy it or listen to K-LOVE (request it to be played) so that you can hear it.

I had done a huge grocery shopping today. I made multiple runs and am shopped out. I picked up this set of fraction cirlces from Walmart. I am always having to cut out circles and fractions of the circles for Moira's math and decided to get something that would better represent what they are trying to teach in her lesson. After all the cirlce fractions are supposed to be *equal* sized pieces, and for some reason I fail miserably at that . So tonight Isabella decided to teach Flannery about fractions. Then she decided to teach Saoirse the numbers 1-10. I snapped a few pictures of them. So here are our resident teachers/students. Moira had joined in on being a teacher as well.

I also added the last picture because you can see Isabella and Moira's hair wraps. Isabella only has a half of one because she didn't like how long it was taking. The wraps are on their right side of the head, behind their ears. Flannery had one as well, but we have taken it out.

My blog's colors..

Well it seems that "some" people were wondering why I changed my blog colors. The answer: Because I can. Yup there you have it. It has to do with a sense of control. This is my little world over here and I can make it any color I want to! So there :-) For those of you who don't know my sense of humor, what I just wrote was all in fun. And that "some" people, was actually my sister. Yes, I decided it was time to for a change. You see I am really itching to paint my walls. ALL of the walls in our house are only primed. That means every thing and any thing sticks to it. So I went to Sherwin-Williams to check out paint colors (on line that is) and they have the COOLEST tool!!!! You gotta go check it out! You drag the color from their vast collection over to the wall of a desired room and it "paints" it on there so you can get a feel for the color! How entirely cool. I was totally in my element. Isabella and I were having a blast "painting" yesterday. So I talked to Jerry about paint and it seems that we can probably get one can of paint a month. So it will take me a couple of months before I can start painting anything and I was feeling restless about it.....so I "painted" my blog instead. Ahh, relief. Well sort of, until I start noticing all the lovely finger prints all over the place!

Ok, gotta go take a shower and go to Walmart. The white noise maker isn't working!!! It worked fine last night, and then this morning I went to turn it off and it wouldn't shut off. So I unplugged it. When I plugged it back in to use for one of Jedidiah's naps it didn't work at all! UGH! I am hoping it is just a defective unit and not a fault with all of them. And in case my Mom is reading this, I took the one from the back!! Hee, hee.

Toodles!

My blogging anniversary

Well tomorrow will be one year that I started this blog. You can go back to that first post and see how things have changed!

We finally found a noise maker. I know, it's not like we don't have enough noise around here to begin with. We needed a white noise maker to drown out some of the ups and downs of the laughs, screams and other banging going on over here for Jedidiah's sake. We had our fan going, but that is causing Jerry's allergies to act up. We looked on line and for a noise maker that sounds like a fan was about 50$'s! Someone at church has one and I asked her where she got theirs. At Target for under 20$. Hmmm, sounds like a deal to me. But Target didn't have it. I had looked tonight and was frustrated that no one could help me there. So I had a few more things to get but decided that Walmart was cheaper and I knew the layout of their store (I felt lost in Target). I took a look-see to see if Walmart had the noisemaker and they did! It was under 15$'s ! Yeah!! It has settings for babbling brooks, rain and other fancy shmancy noises, but we just needed the whitenoise setting. It works great!

So we have almost been in our house for 3 months already! Today the girls and I went down to the creek. It's the first time since we moved. The girls had a BLAST!!! They want to go back tomorrow. I think the next day or two will be warm enough. The reason we haven't been down there earlier was due to the ticks. But with the cooler weather they go into hiding and we were free to have fun down there. They were jumping off the little bridge into the water. Then Isabella climbed on a tree limb that overhangs the creek and jumped in from there. I really love it here!!!

Thought I would share a picture of our efforts to memorize scripture. The first one is of Moira coloring in this weeks verse. I add on a verse each week. We memorized Psalm 23, which is "The Lord is My Shepherd". Now we are memorizing the 10 commandments from Exodus 20. We are memorizing the whole passage. I found that by putting the words to pictures my girls have no problem memorizing scripture. The second picture is my memorization. I am memorizing Proverbs 31:10-end. I didn't want to spend my time on the treadmill being fruitless. And I would love to listen to some semon tapes or other types of seminars while walking but I need to listen out for the girls. So I decided to hang up large pieces of paper and memorize scripture myself. I have 1/3 of it memorized in two days!

Must go get the girlies off to bed. I can hear them "playing" out there. Have a great night.

backyard fun

Jerry has been building a dog hut. Don't worry I didn't know what one was either. A dog hut will be a covered structure for the dogs to get out of the rain and wind when outside. I really need for them to be out of the house. The girls where outside with him and they had a blast playing out back. I really want to get them a swing or two to put up between two trees. If anyone knows the how to on doing that please let me know. They need something to do out there. It looks so different around here now. This is our first fall here in the house and as the leaves fall we can see more of our neighbors. Not a lot, but just more of the land. It is so pretty out here. Not much else going on. Oh, wait, yes there is. We may have a reason why all my kiddos have had tummy problems. Jerry went to the doctors the other day and the doctor believes he has something (which Jerry can't remember the name of) that can be passed on the the kids. It's a bacteria that gets in the intestines that causes pain and other unpleasent things. He will be getting a blood test to determine for sure. But that would be great if we had something to go on. Maybe the kids can get treated. Jerry is just very happy that someone was able to give him hope that he can be cured.
Ok, here is a pic of the kiddos and Jerry climbing on the downed trees in the back. They didn't want to come in for dinner!

Jedidiah is doing better!

Phew! Soooo glad he is doing better. He was starting to scare me! You see, he smiles ALL the time. Ok, not every single second, but pretty darn close. Big smiles too, like the one a few posts back. Well he was obviously just miserable with the hives because I can count how many times he smiled all day yesterday!! He is back to his little happy self today. I put all my clothes in the laundry to be re-washed. Hey, I needed more laundry!! I never seem to have enough to do (insert big rolling eyes here). I just plan on washing all our clothing in Dreft. When that runs out I will try the All Free and Clear and see what happens.

I have been spending some of my "free" moments making new Jesse Tree ornaments. I will post pics of the two I have finished and the one in the making. There are 28 ornaments in all for the tree, so I have a bit of work to do. The good thing is if I make two a day then I'll be done right before the Advent season starts. Here is a link or two on the Jesse tree. I have used several places to get the info I needed.
http://www.domestic-church.com/CONTENT.DCC/19971201/FRIDGE/FRIDGE1.HTM
http://www.teachingmom.com/features/advent.html
I can't seem to find the link that had the daily readings! I have it saved in a Word document, but didn't write the link down with it. I don't think I saved it to my favorites because I just decided to save it in Word.

The girls have their last day of soccer (until the spring that is) tomorrow. Isabella has been planning all sorts of parties. She wanted one for her soccer team, but we told her she should wait till the end of the year, not the season. And speaking of Isabella...she has decided she wants to fly. And no, I am not talking about in an airplane. She is making plans for some wings. I'm very serious! She plans on running down our road (downhill) to take off. If that goes well, she'll take off from our roof. She must of talked to me about it for at least an hour today. I "helped" tweak her plan. Well, for example, she decided that she needed to make each wing 9 feet long. But our little gravel road in not 18 feet wide. Small problem. Now Jerry told her that it's just not possible. But I'm thinking this would be a GREAT physics class!!!! Talk about hands on!! So if anyone has any ideas for her, I'm sure she would love to hear them. I don't know the first thing about flying matters. I told her God gave the birds wings, not me, so therefore I figured I shouldn't be flying. Makes sence to me. She just gave me an "Oh, Mom!!!" in that exasperated tone, a little roll of the eyes. Not in the bad sence, just in the 'your'e so old' sence. Ahh, to be young and know it all. I'm sure *I* was never that way.......HA! good night all

new blogs to look at

OK, I made a blog for Moira as well. But these blogs are all on my account so in the info area it will have my name. Her blog is at:
http://moirasfriendsandfamily.blogspot.com

I will have to go change her comments setting as well. I changed Isabella's last night.

Poor little man is having on heck of an allergic reaction this morning. His skin is broken out with red bumps everywhere!! The only thing different is that I changed MY laundry detergent. I was using the cheap generic brand and decided to give Tide a try along with Downey softner. I still wash his clothes in Dreft. Big NO-NO. He wasn't sleeping well for naps yesterday at all and was only breaking out a little bit. This morning he woke up at 6 a.m. and it's almost 8:30 a.m. and it's way past his time for a nap. But I think he's just feeling miserable. I worked out a dosage for some generic benadryl for him and gave him some. Hey, my sister and I were talking about all the things we had to learn in school that were totally irrelavent. But here we have a good reason to learn math! So glad we had to spend 12+ years to learn that one :-)

And Flannery has an almost shiner! I put our folded clothes on a big table to sort and she had climbed up on it to get her clothes for the day and fell and hit one of our school chairs right by her eye. The school chairs are very hard. Not wood and not metal (although it is made of metal in parts). This morning it is all black and blue and looks like someone socked her! Poor girl.

But overall things are going well. I have a bunch of cooking to do today for our fellowship dinner tonight. I plan on making twice baked potatos, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. I would really love to have some of the pumkin pie, but it's not a normal pumkin pie. It's really creamy as it is made with pudding and cream cheese and whipped topping (and pumkin of course). But it also has milk. And the pie is not baked so I can't have it :-( Bummer. But I can have some of the apple pie :-) which all in all isn't good for me anyways! Oh well, I'll start that raw deal later ;-)

Ok, gotta go start my day. Oh, I have to show you all how much the girls have "GROWN"! Ha, ha, I don't know who thought this one up, it was either Moira or Flannery. Too funny.















Here's one of the girls and their soccer jerseys and soccer pictures. Saoirse is in it just because she wants to do what her big sisters do. The purple jersey all the way to the right is an old one of Isabella's. And Isabella got caught blinking at the wrong time, but I only took one photo of the set up so here it is:

I'll call it a day

No, nothing bad happened. Just the usuall. Except that poor baby man wouldn't sleep for naps! I do believe he is down for the night though. I forgot to share that Saoirse had been stung by a bunch of red ants a couple of weeks ago at church. They said it was fire ants, but I know a lot of people say that when in truth they are only red ants. But they hurt, and blistered up. Poor thing. Thankfully they had benadryl cream at the nursery. We were able to get that on the bites until we got home. She had around 50 stings! Mostly on her feet and ankles. She is all better now, and unbelievably, not afraid of ants.

So I have been thinking that I really want to buckle down and change to eating more raw foods, for me and the kids. Then today I have read of a few people that I have either read their books, or blogs that have cancer. I mean everyone seems to have it!!! It is really getting scary. I am sure part of it is the ability to broadcast that you have it on the internet, so more people can know. But the other is due to the fact that it has indeed grown more and more common. So I will try to impliment some changes a bit at the time. It seems like it may be easier to just go cold turkey, at least easier on the budget. I have done a lot of reading on this subject and know that we need to make the change. One of the things that got me reading, besides my love of reading up on health issues, is the scripture in Genesis that says that man's days shall be 120 years. How many people do you know personally that have lived to 120 years. So I figured one of two things was going on. One, God lied, which I know is not a possibility. Or two, we have fallen away from what He had planned for us in regaurds to how we live and eat. I'm leaning towards the second. There have been societies, and maybe a few left, that have indeed lived routinely to 120. And the common thread was that they ate raw foods, worked hard outdoors and drank plenty of water. And to think that as far as I know these were unbelieving groups of people. So the matter of health seems to be like a law of physics. We all know that if you put a penny in your hand, lift your hand above your head then turned your hand over that the penny will fall to the ground. Unless of course you put it directly over your head and it fell on your head. But in both cases the penny will fall. It's a law that God made. He made physical laws and spiritual laws. Now obviously it is more important that we adhear to God's spiritual laws. But I don't see why we can't do both. I know that sometimes when I talk to people about health issues they will bring up the fact that we are all going to die anyways....Yes, this is true. And indeed it is true that heaven will be immensely more glorious than this earth. But I do believe we can find blessings in living out our earthly time in health and energy. I find it a bit saddening that many Christians are being layed up due to numerous health issues. We spend our time in prayer for things that I believe can be avoided. Now PLEASE do not take me the wrong way!!!! I will always pray for those whose needs come my way regaurdless of the nature of their situation. I just think we have been blinded by the money makers of this world who want our dollars and who could care less if we are dying because of it. I would love to one day give talks on health to churches so that people can see that what ails them is caused by what they are eating. But for now I have to live it!! Isn't that the hardest part? We can know what to do and how to do it, but its another thing entirely to actuall DO it. I confess, I'm weak. Chocolate knows me by name.

Ok, well that was some post hey?

We are having a quiet week. I like it! We have church Bible study tomorrow. We eat dinner together and then have the Bible study. Then the girls have their last soccer game this saturday. I would like to start making some new ornaments for our Jesse Tree. We started that as a new tradition last year and I love it. But I found out about it late and made some of the ornaments REALLY quick!! I will still have them made of felt, but I would like to sew them instead of glue them as the glue kept coming undone last year. If you do an internet search with the words "Jesse Tree" you will see what it is. It's a great way to keep the focus of Christmastime on Christ. I also would like to get a "real" advent wreath with candles. We had a make shift one last year and lets just say it's a bit of a fire hazard. But the girls loved lighting the candles each evening at dinnertime.

Ok, must be going now. Didn't mean to write a novel. I was waiting for the girls to get done with their showers and so had a few minutes to write. Hope you all have a blessed day!!

Oh, here are some misc. pics of the girls creations. The first two are of Flannery and Moira's playdough creations. Flannery's are donuts or cupcakes. And Moira made a tea set with fork and spoon included. She even made a teddy bear to enjoy the tea set. Then the last is of Isabella's lego creation. It is a horse stable suitable for two lego horses. She is still a horse lover through and through!!

A P.S. I will be setting up blogs for Isa and Moira. We have Isabella's blog address, but there are no posts yet. You will be able to see her at:
http://Isabellasfriendsandfamily.blogspot.com
Please stop by for a visit and leave her a comment. I will have to disable the section that makes you log in to comment, so check back if later if it isn't done yet.

another post

I thought I would just put another post up here, just because I can!!!!So there!!! Yes, I was in withdrawl for the past two months, so now I have to make up for it.

It is Saturday and the girls have soccer. The older three play in the local league. They are having a great time with it. And at first it was a bit overwhelming for me, but now that Jerry has been taking them it's been easier. For one thing Jedidiah can't handle being out for so long. The games are one after the other, so Flannery needs to be there for 8:45 am to warm up and then by the time they get home it is 1:15 in the afternoon. It's a long morning. They love it, but for little man, he needs his naps. And I'm sure if he could talk he would tell you he needs his nap in his BED. He is not one to nap on the go.

So this year we went to our church's Reformation Day Celebration. It was a blast. The girls loved it!! Refomation day is to remember Martin Luther and the 95 thesis that he pinned up to the Cathedral of Wittenburg's door. That would be the extreme condensed version of what happened anyways!! Martin Luther was tried in Germany in the city of Worms (hey, my favorite!), and the council that tried him was called a Diet. So they made this game up at the church called "The Diet of Worms". They put some gummy worms into the bottom of a bowl, then put a bunch of dry noodles on top of them. Then with the kids' hands behind their back they had to try to eat the gummy worms (without tipping over the bowl). It was a bunch of fun.

I'll try to find a few pics to put up. And then I have grocery shopping to do. and then maybe I'll call my sister a couple of times today, just because I can!!! Ha, ha!! I'm not sure if she'll be ok with that, but hey, I have a PHONE!!! Yippeeee!!! So I have to use it!

Ok, so I uploaded a few pics. One of Isabella on her birthday. She turned 9 this summer. We had jsut moved in here like three days before her birthday. She made her own cake for her birthday as well!! It turned out well. Then there's a couple of ones of Saoirse. One of her helping me with dishes, the other one is just her being cute. Then there's Moira and Flannery with Jedidiah. Flannery asks me often to take pictures of her and Jedidiah. This is a much better transistion than she had made when Saoirse was a newborn. Then again she is two years older as well. I think if we had given Saoirse away, Flannery would have celebrated! Now she can't get enough of her little brother. She is CONSTANTLY touching him, singing to him, talking to him, asking to hold him and get pictures of them together. It's great!!! Then the last one is a picture of a coloring page that Saoirse was doing. Yes Saoirse colored that. I think it's amazing since she is only two!!! She colors with in each boundry before going on to the next. So even if she colors something all on color, she didn't just scrawl up and down the page, she actuall colored the legs first, then the feet, then the body..... Now the funny thing is I was talking to my sister one day and she told me that her kids draw like once or twice a WEEK. Now that is a foreign concept to me as my kids draw about 4 hours each DAY. No joke! They just draw and draw and draw. I have to find hiding places for our printer paper or they would use it up in a few days. I am seriously not joking. We have rolls of paper, that we got for fREE. But they don't like that kind because they like the nice neat borders of an 8x11 piece of paper gives them. We need to get one of those paper cutters we used to have in our classrooms in school. Then I could cut the paper down to size.

Ok, I must be off. I need to get Flannery up for her to get ready for soccer.

Mr. Smiley

Here's our Smiley boy!!

We have internet!!!!!

Well it seems to have been like forever! We just got it in this evening. I am sooooo excited. I missed my email and the few blogs and sites I visit often. I have a ton to tell you all. But hey, there are only a few more hours left to the night and I need to get some (ok, a lot) of cleaning done. But wanted to share that I will be back and share a few pictures. If I can manage that. I got a really great one of Jedidiah. I'll put that up first, and then one of all of them that came out so-so. Flannery has been hamming it up lately in front of the camera. She's too funny. We are all doing great. I have been on top of homeschooling. I'm ususally on top of the house work. And my Biggest Loser contest just ended and during the 12 week contest I lost 15 pounds!!! I am soooo excited about that. I love the fact that my clothes fit me now. I still have a bit to lose and because of the upcoming holidays they are going to run a shorter (8 week) maintenance contest that I am joining as well. So since the birht of Jedidiah (4 months ago) I have lost 34 pounds of the 48 pounds that I gained during the pregnancy. Not bad if I say so myself. I'll post my before and after shots if I can find those as well. Ok, I found the pics. I put Jedidiah's up top. Then the one of all of them at the end of the post. I next put up my before pis then added the after pics. After I hit the submit button I have no idea how they will be arranged on the screen. Ok, the pics of me with the bit of staircase/railing in it on the left is the after pics.
I'll write more soon.