Outside fun

What fun we can have after the rain!!!

Future engineers

The boys (A and Q) decided to make a road for their cars and guys. It went all the way from the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen and into the den. It was really neat to watch them figure out how to construct it so that it would not fall.

Mother's Day 2010

My best yet!! Can't beat a big breakfast, Beni Hana for lunch, a video monitor system and a portrait collage with hand picked pictures from my hubby.

Here are some pictures from a nice walk we took that evening.

Mother

Changes in the kitchen

We have been making some changes as far as eating goes. In the past few years we've made an effort to be more healthy. Not low-fat healthy, but eating raw, natural and preservative free food. We quit buying cow's milk and cheese about 4 years ago and switched to rice milk. Occasionally we'll buy cheese, but for a long time we bought none of it. Recently we have found a farm that has raw cow's milk and we are considering buying a share of a cow so we can have raw milk, cheese, cream and yogurt.
In the past few days I have started making our bread again in the bread machine. It's not a lot of work, saves money and tastes wonderful. I know exactly what's in the bread (water, salt, butter honey, flour and yeast) and know that it's healthy for my children. At some point, I would like to buy a grain mill and grind our own flour. However, the grinder things are quite expensive and I just don't know if I'm "there" yet.
Yesterday I attempted to make my own yogurt in the crock pot. It didn't turn out, but I'm determined to try it again! We're still going to use it in smoothies, but it won't work for eating with a spoon!
I've been making huge batches of fruit salad...enough for 3 days and putting them in freezer bags or glass containers with lids in the fridge. It takes awhile to cut it all up, but the kids love it and we have it for several days. It helps me to make sure to feed them fruit. I plan to do the same thing with veggies. I guess Mondays and Thursdays are going to be laundry AND cooking days!

Some things I am hoping to try soon are
making bread without the machine (so I can make several loaves at once)
making soaked buttermilk biscuits from scratch
making tortillas from scratch (1st try didn't go so well!)
making our own peanut butter
making our own salad dressings (Nourishing Traditions is in my Amazon cart to order 6/1)!

Arrrrrgh

Q played Captain Hook last night at our local community theater. He loved it and is already asking to do another play! Unfortunately, we did not take any still pictures during the play, but here we are afterwards. He didn't forget his lines, spoke loud enough to be heard and made the audience laugh over and over again. Great job, Q!!!!

Posing with his fans

Looking serious and scary!

ER trip with 5

Well, we had a scare. Wed. night Mareea's fever was up very high 104-105ish and she was breathing heavy and rapidly. I gave her Tylenol (which I never, ever do)just to see if her breath rate would go down with the fever. Once it kicked in, she went to sleep but was still breathing quickly. The next morning she was breathing heavy and quickly and I could tell she was very agitated. We took her to the local ER where the took and X-ray and found pneumonia. They transferred us to the Children's ER saying we were looking at a 2-3 night stay. 5 hours later, Children's sent us home with an oral antibiotic saying there was no reason why she needed to be admitted or needed IV antibiotics. I guess our local hospital just wasn't as comfortable treating babies. We're thankful everything turned out fine and that she's feeling well. Just for fun, I took these pictures of us at the ER before Dan got there. Thankfully his work insisted that he come home and be with us! Otherwise it would have been a reeeeaaaallly long day!


When I woke the children up early, I told them we were going to the hospital. I told them to get dressed and get a tote bag together of things to do. They did!

Art!

The children painted with watercolors for the first time in ages. Ashton, Landon and Thea didn't remember ever using them before and Mareea made her painting debut. Well, I think she painted once before but still...
I should explain that the only reason mareea got to paint was that her very kind and patient brother Quintin got her paper and helped her get colors with his brush :)
They really liked it once they understood that watercolors aren't as dark as temperas and I guided them a little bit on what to draw. Here they are being artsy.

Our morning

I am really enjoying blogging more. Dan likes to check it out and work and see that we actually do things during the day! Here's what we did this morning...

Quintin helped mareea get smarter.

In response to a great book we recently read by Gail Gibbons called KITES, the boys made these. They did not fly very well, but we're hopeful that we can make something better soon and actually get them up in the air.

Thea "played water" while I helped the boys with their school.

A pretty normal "stay home" day in our house!

Nature study

Dan and I always crack up when people tell us we're "depriving our children" by not having TV. We also think it's interesting when people look at us shocked and say, "well, what do you do then??" As if before TVs were invented people just sat around and did nothing.
When I see them find a new bug to investigate, work in their garden, build a tower of Lego's or make a card for Grandma, I am so happy about our TV decision. There are so many better things they can do with their time!

Child labor???

Someone spilled water. Without even being prompted, Mareea grabbed a rag and started to clean up. She is so smart!

Boys will be boys

I love having little boys!!! This week we've been home and they have been having a blast. How thankful I am that they are homeschooled and can be outside enjoying the weather instead of trapped at a desk. Never did I think I would love the mess and rough and tumble so much. But I do...wow...God really knew what he was doing when he gave me boys! :)

Ashton was the first, but Landon was not going to be outdone...He also stripped to undies and cape.

Day three of Halloween costume wearing. Maybe someday someone will be able to explain how their laundry basket was still full.

It was hot and he came running from the woods like this. Saying, "I'm going for a jog!"

"I'm cold and I'm wet!" Yep...that's what happens when you get in a "mud fight" with your brother and then a "water fight" when trying to clean off the mud!

Water fight! yeah...Ashton's pants got muddy earlier so he took them off. How i wish I could have gotten pictures of the mud flight!

Preschool fun

I love teaching preschool. It's so low stress due to not having to worry so much about what they're learning, and just so much fun. Painting, cutting and pasting and cute games are my forte! Unfortunately, I just haven't done as much with Thea as I did with Ashton and Landon. The schooling of the older 3 seems to take up the time I have for that. However, with us being sick the last week or so, we've stayed home from activities during the week and I've found more time to "do school" with Thea. I have really missed it and if I'm not careful a little bit of bitterness can sneak up on me about not being able to spend more time cutting out felt and using the finger paints. If I could just learn to manage my time better, I would have plenty of time for those things!


Here is Thea with the dinosaur game. I printed out the dinosaurs and put spots on them. Her job is to count how many spots the dino has, find that number and put it on the dinosaur.

Here's a closeup. I think i had planned to laminate these or attach them to felt, but it never happened!

Hungry Caterpillar sorting toy. Each of my kids have used this. They sort toys or pattern blocks onto the corresponding oval. I use this a lot when I'm schooling olders to occupy the littles.

Here's a sick Thea with her foamie set for the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do You See?
As I read the book she finds the animal. She was not so into it this time due to a nasty ear infection :(

Another favorite of mine is the 5 Little speckled frog foamie set I made. It was originally made for Landon on Christmas when he was 2. We've all enjoyed it :)

I found a blog called The Artful Parent and it has really motivated and encouraged me to get back into these fun learning games and activities again. I'm excited to try some of her ideas and let them be creative!

Getting the garden going...

This year Dan had each of the kids makes their own raised beds with wood and tools. Here they are getting ready to plant!

I asked Ashton to sit with Mareea while she ate her snack. I ran down to check my email and when I came up I found this. He's reading to her about the tower of Babel. I can't tell you how it warmed my heart.

and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 Tim. 3:15