Eliana's George Washington Report

George   Washington  was  the  first  presedit  of  the  USA .  Washington   maried  A  woomin  named    Martha .  The  name  of  the  house  was  Mant  Varnun.    Washington  is  on  quoaters  and  one  doller  bills.  Befoar  Washington   was  president  of  the  USA  he  was  in  the  arme .

 This is the picture Eliana picked to go with her report!

Product Loyality

When I was growing up my dad had his own business.  He has very strong opinions about supporting business that supported him.  For years I could not eat at Arby’s because the owner did all of his business with my dad’s biggest competitor.  Dairy Queen was always ok because that family had my dad do all of the antenna work at their house and business.   I bought my first car from our insurance provider's son.  Why?  Because my parents said they support us we support them.  Today I officially became my dad.  Eliana with her super human strength broke my broom this week.  I still don’t know how she did it.   Yesterday, Eliana and I went to the Mart to find a new broom.   I thought this would be a simple task.  Well, it wasn’t.  We walked down the aisle looking for the proper broom.   Eliana kept saying "Here is one."  I kept saying "No that’s not the right one."  Walmart did not carry a Libman broom!  Here is where I became my dad – Eliana asked "Why do you need to buy a Libman?"  My response, "Our good friend works for Libman, we are buying a Libman broom to support his business!"    Okay, so not exactly my dad’s words but basically the same logic.  I left Walmart without a broom.  This morning I super glued the old one together, until I can get to a store that sells the broom I want.

What crazy things have you done in order to support a business or friend?  I would love to know I am not alone in this!

Crying over cookie dough!

Isn't it funny that you can see things all the time but every once and awhile it brings an emotional response.  That is what happened to me this morning.  I took this out of the fridge.

I then started to cry.  No, not because it was almost gone but because it reminded me of someone.  Well, not really someone, but 4 someones. Raw cookie dough is a staple at any youth group slumber party.  How can you have a slumber party without it?  This is really something I've never understood.  I don't like raw cookie dough!  I prefer hot chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven. But anyway, when God brings people to my mind in strange ways I do what I always do.  PRAY!  My 4 girls were heavily prayed over this morning.

It is things like this that make me think I miss youth ministry.   Here is the thing, I don't really miss it.  I don't miss teaching lessons, I don't miss leaving my children somewhere every week, I don't miss chaperoning lock ins & I don't miss planning activities.  Ok - maybe I miss the last one a little bit.  Here is what I  really miss - the relationships.  I miss knowing what is going on with my "kids" on a weekly basis.  I prayed for my girls this morning like I have hundreds of times before.  But here is the hard part - I don't know exactly what to pray  for anymore.  Facebook, email and the occasional visit don't tell the whole story.   I don't really know what is going on in their lives.

So if you were once a part of our youth group, we haven't forgotten about you!  You are still prayed for and thought about often.   If you're in town - stop by we would love to see you!  Send us and email or Facebook message.  Let us know what is going on in your life !

Mardi Gras Party

Here are a few pictures from the Mardi Gras Party we hosted last night!

Nancy

Kings Cake - Laura made!

LanaAnne

Eliana

Josiah

Miss Racheal found the baby in her cake.  

She WILL be making the kings cake next year!

Valentines Party

For those of you that know me well  know I love a good  theme party!  We joined a homeschooling group last year shortly after Asher was born.  Because I had a newborn I didn't do a lot with the group last year.  This year I have gotten very involved.  Since I love planning parties I offered to host a Valentine's Day Party.  We had a great turn out.  We had 11 families join us for the party.  Here a a few pictures from the day!

 The boys were super excited about getting Transformer valentines!

Asher spent most of the day playing in the sensory table.  I  should  say he spent most of the day eating rice and valentine candy out of the sensory table!

Making Valentine Boxes

I Love you Craft!

Make Cupid

Seeds Glorious Seeds!

Normally this time of year I am itching for spring.  Since Illinois has had such a mild winter I haven't had my usual longing for spring. It is always right after the first of the year that I start this task.   I decided last night would be a good time to start my favorite winter time activity!

Yes - looking through the seed catalogs and planning my summer garden is something I look forward to.  Every year we pick something new to try.  Last year we planted okra.  It did wonderfully and we had tons of it.  It was like picking insulation.  The stems all have small thorns that we didn't see until after the first picking.  No one in our family loved eating it.  We decided this year we will just eat the extras my parents have.

This year we decided to let the kids each pick some thing new to plant.  We haven't decided on our vegetable yet, but we will be starting on blueberry bushes this year.

Last year we bought the bulk of our seeds from Abundant Life Seeds & Bountiful Gardens. Both are sustainably grown and carry heirloom varieties.

We would love to know what you are going to plant this year.  We would love to know your favorite places to purchase your plants and seeds.  Once we have our seeds ordered we will let you know what will hopefully be growing in our garden this summer!

Yesterday - UGH

My day began early in the morning with Jeremiah waking me up to tell me he was sick.  All I had to do was smell him to know what that meant.  I put him in the bath tub then began cleaning up the bed.  As soon as Jeremiah got out of the tub I heard crying again.  Back into the bath tub he went & I cleaned up the floor.  By this time everyone is up.  No one else appears to be sick.  We have breakfast then begin school.  In the middle of a math lesson I smell fingernail polish.   I run to the boys bedroom to find them in Eliana's makeup.  I now have purple heat registers and Asher looks like this! 

I didn't want to put fingernail polish remover on Asher's face so he spent the rest of the day with a purple mustache.  We have lunch and I let the kids watch a movie.  While I am cleaning the kitchen (the only thing I wanted to get done yesterday),  I smell fire!   Since we live in an old house that my grandfather wired,  I am paranoid about electrical fires.  I began smelling walls and touching every outlet in the living room.  It doesn't smell like an electrical fire.  As I get to the boys room it smells like matches!  I ask the usual suspects who are all on the couch still watching a movie.  Of course all deny it but Jeremiah looks guilty.  He then tells me where the matches are, in his room on the window ledge.  Nothing appears to be burned and he has no burn marks on him.  I then give him a long, loud lecture about how we don't play with matches explaining how he could have gotten hurt or worse.  Pretty sure all he heard was moms mad and tuned me out.  By this time Trev is getting close to getting off work and I need to start thinking about dinner.  The boys ask to play with their Leapsters.  Yes- anything to keep them busy at this point.  I have learned that when things are quiet at our house it is not a good sign.  I heard no on in the living room but I heard running water.  I proceed to check out what is up.  Josiah is in the bath room with his leapster running it under the water.  I have no idea how long he had been doing it but water is still seeping out of the leapster this morning.  Pretty sure it is ruined.  Now I start dinner.  Since Eliana had Girl Scouts and Trevor had b-ball  on Valentine's day we were having a nice diner last night.  Eliana was helping by making the tea.  While she was getting the sugar out of the canister this happened.

No, she didn't drop it on the floor.  She was hitting  the side with a spoon trying to get the sugar out.  I now think she has super human strength.  I have no idea how she broke it!  I cleaned up the broken glass and calmed her down!  Dinner was late but tasty!  We then enjoyed the last hour before bedtime listening to Rich Mullins and watching the kids play with balloons.  I had no idea they could spend an hour playing with balloons.   It is 8:00 and bed time.

At 10:30 while I'm unloading the dishwasher I hear Jeremiah crying.  I yell at Trev because he is closer!  Jeremiah then emerges from his room sobbing and sick.  Straight to the tub I take him while Trev handles the bed!   A bath, new jammies and cleaning the mattress and floor are not what I planned on doing at 11pm!  Jeremiah slept with his brother and I planned on being up all night.

Luckily I can tell you - I got to sleep all night.  Jeremiah seems to be better this morning.  I wish I could tell you this is an abnormal day.  But it is not!  Every day may not look exactly the same but I never know what the kids are going to think of next!

Tech Tickets Part 2

So week one is finished and here is what we have learned.  Eliana completely gets time management.  She is really good at figuring out how many tickets she has and how long she has to watch TV or play a game.  The boys don't understand at all, which is to be expected at their age.  Josiah very closely watches his sister and only used tickets when she used tickets.  Jeremiah would have played for 5 hours straight on Monday if we had let him.

The two big problems we encountered were:
#1 - What to do with the boys if they didn't want to watch what Eliana was watching.  Since we only have the TV in the living room if it is on everyone is watching it.  Eliana can easily play in her room if the boys wanted to use tickets and she didn't.  We can not leave the boys in a room with a closed door for that length of time.  Still trying to figure out how to fix that.

#2 - Saturday morning cartoons!  Eliana had 2 hours left of tickets and wanted to use them on Saturday morning.  The twins only had an hour left.  Rather than listening to fights about turning the TV off after an hour and Eliana being able to do something else we just let them all watch for 2 hours.   Next week we will continually remind them if they want to watch TV Saturday morning they need to save the tickets for that.

One thing we will be introducing this week is the chance to earn extra tickets.  We already have an extra chore jar so we will be adding extra things to do around the house.  Each chore will earn a certain number of Tech tickets.

In general this has helped with the constant "Can I play with my leapster?" we have heard since Christmas. It also lets us know exactly how much TV the kids are watching.  It has made it easier not to just cave and put in a movie when we are having a rough day.  I think this is a plan we will continue to use for awhile.

Can I Be With You?

 Can I Be With You?
  Rich Mullins, Justin Peters

Everybody each and all
We're gonna die eventually
It's no more or less our faults
Than it is our destiny
So now Lord I come to you
Asking only for Your grace
You know what I've put myself through
All those empty dreams I chased

And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the lies that nearly ruined me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free?

And when You start this world over
Again from scratch
Will You make me anew
Out of the stuff that lasts?
Stuff that's purer than gold is
And clearer than glass could ever be
Can I be with You?
Can I be with You?

And everybody all and each
From the day that we are born
We have to learn to walk beneath
Those mercies by which we're drawn
And now we wrestle in the dark
With these angels that we can't see
We will move on although with scars
Oh Lord, move inside of me

And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the lies that nearly ruined me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free?

And when You blast this cosmos
To kingdom come
When those jagged-edged mountains
I love are gone
When the sky is crossed with the tears
Of a thousand falling suns
As they crash into the sea
Can I be with you?
Can I be with you?

Rich Mullins and Keith Green are undoubtedly my favorite musicians. Both of them had a unique power in their lyrical ability as well as their delivery musically. I was listening to this song a few days ago as I was shuttling my children somewhere. Something about the chorus of this song hits me every time I hear it. The heartfelt and very simple cry made to the Father, "Can I be with you?" cuts right to the heart of who we are as believers. I want to believe that in the end when all is made new that I will have the opportunity to just be with Him. I don't even care what that means, don't care what will be on the agenda, don't care if I will be able to have any one-on-one time. I just want to be with Him. Just to be nearby, to know as I am known, and to rest in the peace that all the trial is over, the sin is destroyed, and my Father has become "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).

Oftentimes my children express this very same thing. They just want to be near me. They want to see what I am doing, go where I am going, or just sit near me as I read a book. I don't get it. I am with myself all the time and I often get weary of who I am. But they think it is fun to be near me. As they grow and change in their desire to simply be near me, I pray their heart will resonate with mine in their desire to just be with their father in heaven.

January Goals

I completed both books for January early in the month.  Here is what I (Bethany) read:

 Love Times Three
 By: Joe, Alina, Vicki, and Valerie Darger

If you are at all curious about how a polygamist marriage works this is a good read.  The book reveals how their marriage is similar to everyone else.  It is a little difficult to follow at times, as each chapter is written by a different spouse.  The last chapter is written by a few of their oldest children.  I was interested to hear how the kids felt about the lifestyle their parents had chosen.  Their faith is a big part of their lives, as it has motivated their marriage choice.  It made me think about how other people few my faith, but left me wondering how crazy some people must  think I am for the          things I believe.

 

 Taming Your Family Zoo  
Six weeks to Raising a well- mannered Child
by Donna Jones

The quote from the top of our blog is from this book.  If you are looking for a list of ways to help your kids learn manners this is for you. The first part of the book is about us as parents and how we have trained our children to respond certain ways.  Let me say that was an OUCH moment!  The second part of the book is broken down into 6 things to work on with your children.  Each task/skill is to be completed in a week.  I cheated - since I got this from inter-library loan I could not keep it for 6 weeks.  If I find it second hand I will be adding it to our home library.  One thing I really liked about the book is she gives you realistic things your children should be doing at certain ages. 

The rest of the goals I set for the month:

Kids book to read aloud:  This one we didn't get done.  School started back up after our Christmas break and it is always a little hard to find our groove.  We finished On the Banks of Plum Creek.  Since that is what our unit study is about it doesn't count as our read aloud book.

Crafty thing:  Tech Tickets

Cleaning/Organization:  I cleaned out the fridge.  I waited until the 31st to do it.  Had I not had it on a list that I wanted to cross off - it would not have been done.  I only cleaned the inside of the fridge, not the freezer section or the exterior.  So by my mothers standards it is still not clean but it is good enough for now!

Marriage:  Trev & I have almost finished The Scarlet Letter.  Our date night this month consisted of dinner out and grocery shopping.  I know we live an exciting life!

New recipe: French Onion Soup
My family doesn't eat french onion soup but I use it in a lot of recipes.  This recipe made about 6 cups.  I put it in freezer bags and froze it.  I have used it in our regular recipes and it tasted great.  One more thing I can now say I don't need to buy any more of!

DIY: Homemade Peanut Butter
This was a complete fail.  My dad gave all the kids a large bag of peanuts in the shells for Christmas.  From our last experience of having this many peanuts in the house I knew we would not eat them all before they went bad.  Making my own peanut butter sounded like a good idea.  I do not own a food processor.  My mother convinced me a blender would do the same thing.  Well-  I now have finely chopped peanuts that will be making there way into granola bars.  I still have no home made peanut butter.