The Life of a Pastor's Wife

Just For Fun

2011-11-21T00:06:00.001-05:00

Isaac

This kid cracks me up. He can be such a goof. This was totally a “Look at me mom, I’m falling off the couch!” He is such a sweetheart though, and looking at that smile makes me melt. I’m going to be the one sitting on the front porch with the shotgun when the girls come calling ;-)

He is such a good big brother, and adores his little sister. He is their protector, even though he loves to push Miriam’s buttons. (which he does quite often!) He has recently started calling Hannah his “sweet pumpkin”.

Miriam

Miriam has moved up to a big girl bed now and LOVES it! She is one happy girl and growing up way too fast! She is often on the dramatic side (insert mother’s deep sigh here), but her big brown puppy dog eyes make her absolutely adorable.

This girl is constantly in motion and runs all over the house, even just to go to her room. She does not know what it means to walk :) Everything is in high speed. Here is a prime example. Jumping off one of the toys at a play place.

Hannah

My sweet baby girl!! She is all smiles and laughter! She is so incredibly happy all the time and quite the little social butterfly! She will look anyone in the eyes and smile and “talk”. She has melted this momma’s heart with her sweet temperament.

Since Big Sister moved up to a big girl bed, Hannah got to move out of the bassinet and into a crib! She had started sleeping through the night a while back, but recently had started to go backwards a little. As soon as we moved her into her crib, she started sleeping a few extra hours at night! (And has been sleeping a solid 8-9 hours at night now)Yipeee! Here is her first night in her own bed!

Our little girl on her 4 month birthday!

Creation: Part 2

2011-10-16T16:37:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 43 months

Miriam is 26 months

Circle Time

We have been starting off our times together by reading our Bible story for the week, working on our memory verse, and singing songs relating to the theme for the week. The kids and I both love this time, and it is so neat to sit down with my kids and tell them stories from the Bible and explain it to them! Isaac and Miriam love music and so does Mommy! I would love to learn to play the guitar and be able to lead them in worship during these special times in the morning. (A goal for mommy to work on, in my spare time ;-)

Creation Activities

On day 4, God made the sun, moon, and stars. So to help us learn that, the kids painted some wooden stars that I had picked up from a craft store a few years back!

I found these in my craft bin and was so excited that I had them!

This was their first time painting and they loved it!

We then used some of the stars to work on counting and number recognition. I told Isaac to put the correct number of stars “underneath” each number. Well, he did exactly that! It wasn’t quite what I meant, but hey, he followed directions! (He also wanted to put the paper stars on top of the wooden ones!)

The he had fun standing the fat wooden stars up.

We also had fun with a creation clothespin game from Hubbard’s Cupboard.

I printed the pictures off of their website, cut them out, and glued the smaller pictures to clothespins. Isaac then clipped the smaller pictures onto the bigger pictures that matched!

He was quite proud of his work and had lots of fun doing it!

We also sorted animals that flew and animals that swam in water.

I also found some foam stars and flowers in my craft bin! They were perfect to add to our creation week! Isaac sorted the stars from the flowers. Another option was to sort them by color also.

Miriam had lots of fun playing with this and poured the shapes back and forth between the cups. I showed her the difference between the flower and the star and tried to get her to sort them, but she was much more interested in just dumping them out. ;-)

Creation Sensory Bin

I am so excited about this sensory bin and the kids loved it! They had so much fun playing with it and it held their attention for a LONG time!

Included in our sensory bin was:

Day 1 ~ Light and Darkness: some electronic candles from the dollar tree
Day 2 ~ Separated the Waters: rice dyed blue to represent water
Day 3 ~ Land and Vegetation: Tree figures, some strange grassy feeling round things from the Dollar Tree ;-) and some foam flowers
Day 4 ~ Sun, Moon, and Stars: the stars that the kids painted earlier in the week
Day 5 ~ Animals of the Sky and Sea: some plastic water animals from the Dollar Tree
Day 6 ~ Animals of the Land and Man: Dinosaurs from the Dollar Tree (I didn’t have anything to represent man)
Day 7 ~ Rest (I thought about putting in a bed from a dollhouse they had)

I gave each of the kids a cookie sheet to spread their treasures out on. Isaac decided that each of his sea animals needed some rice. Haha!

Other Fun Stuff

I originally got this idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. I made circles out of pipe cleaners and painted the ends of the clothespins to match the colors of the pipes. Isaac then matched up the colors. ;-)

Miriam had fun playing with the wooden magnetic blocks. She mostly liked taking them out of their bin and onto her tray and back again.

Just Because

I absolutely LOVE this pic of my two girls! It is too cute!

Hannah is all smiles these days! I love it!

I had to throw this one in. Here are two of my cuties and Miriam in her cowgirl boots!

We had the chance last week to go and visit my family in WV for a few days. Isaac got to ride on the tractor with Grandpa!

Hannah hanging out with Grandpa.

Hannah all comfy with Aunt Hollie.

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School blog!

Linking up to Tot School and Preschool Corner.

My Cuties

2011-10-14T23:13:00.001-04:00

Creation: Part 1

2011-09-18T17:04:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 43 months

Miriam is 26 months

My first Tot School/Preschool post of the new school year!!! Hooray! I’m starting to get into the routine of things again with the precious addition of Hannah to our family. We have “unofficially” been doing Tot School on and off this summer, but now we are getting a bit more serious and organized. (Which this mommy thrives on!) This will also be my first time linking up to the Preschool Corner with Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations! I can’t believe how quickly the time is flying by! Isaac is 3 1/2 and it just blows my mind!

This week was our first week back, and unfortunately, the camera was at Aaron’s office most of the week :( So I have VERY few pictures from this week. But I am happy to say that the camera is back home now and I found the cord (again ;-) to get the pictures downloaded.

Circle Time

We are beginning are time with “Circle Time” where we pray, read our Bible story for the week, and sing a mix of “Bible songs” as Isaac likes to call them and also hymns that tie in with our story focus for the week. We also play our instruments while we sing, which the kids LOVE! Eventually, in the next few weeks, we’ll also be adding in calendar time to this. A Few of our songs that we learned this week were:

God Made Me
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
All Creatures of Our God and King

Fun Play

Our Bible story this week was on Creation. We also focused on colors and number recognition (1-3). Here Isaac and Miriam were practicing drawing the #1 in a plate of flour. Um yea. . . . it got a little messy. But thankfully it was very easy to clean ;-) Our color for that day was “white”.

On the 1st Day of Creation, God created light and made “night” and “day”. Here Isaac is sorting cards as to whether the pictures depicts night or day. He caught on really quickly with this.

Since we were also focusing on the #1, we played this easy and fun game with an egg carton and some printed numbers that helped with number recognition. We placed a number/letter in each section, put a button object in the carton, closed the lid, shook it up, and then opened it to see what letter or number our button had landed on. This would also be a great activity to use for graphing. I might have to try that this week with Isaac!

And this is what our sweet Hannah was up to during Tot School. :)

This week we also;

put blue shampoo in ziploc bags and let them practice writing the #2. (I also drew a barely recognizable Bob and Larry, and Jr. Asparagus, at Isaac’s request ;-)
worked on Animal lacing cards
played with our magnetic color cubes (a few times!)
played Candy Land (again, a few times!)
went and gathered leaves, grass, and flowers in our boxes as we learned about the 3rd day of Creation
watched a LeapFrog video (Love those!)
and read quite a bit!

Our Resources:

This year I will be pulling from a few different places to get my main ideas for our school times. I have also intentionally limited my “surfing” of other early childhood education sites just for the purpose of guarding my time. I could spent ALOT of time looking up online for fun things to do with my kids, but I don’t feel I would be a good steward of my time. Plus it keeps things simpler for me, and we always have PLENTY to do!

Hubbard’s Cupboard: I sweet lady from church sent me this link a few months back and as soon as I saw it, I thought, this is what we are doing this year! The 3 year old curriculum is based on a Bible story each week. The majority of activities for the week are based off of the Bible story that you are learning. Incorporated in this is also learning a letter a week, along with shapes, colors, numbers, etc. Everything is laid out for you, including an overview of the year, lesson plans, and all the links needed for all the activities. All the activities pictured this week are from Hubbard’s Cupboard. :-)

Letter of the Week Curriculum: We are going to be using this again this year along with Hubbard’s Cupboard. These two combined will be making of the bulk of what we do. This will be Miriam’s first time going through it, and I will be stepping things up a bit for Isaac (probably right after Miriam goes down for a nap ;-)

1+1+1=1: So here is to the website that started me on this journey :) Over a year ago Aaron and I had been talking about being more intentional about teaching Isaac. One night I was searching for early childhood resources and “ran across” this treasure. It has been such a blessing. She has tons of great ideas and free printables that I will be using from time to time.

Homeschool Creations: I will be supplementing with some of the fun free printables that Jolanthe has on her blog. We will also be linking up to her Preschool Corner too!

Coming Up . . .

Hopefully at least more pictures!! We will be doing Days 3-7 of Creation with lots of fun activities. I’m on my way to gather my supplies for the week as soon as I finish this! I’ve also got a Creation Sensory bin planned too! I’m sure I will be more excited about it than the kids!

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School and Preschool Corner this week, click on the buttons to check out the official sites!

Still Alive

2011-09-17T22:25:00.001-04:00

Yes, we are still here. Quite well and happy :-) I have been taking a little bloggy break for a while until basically I get to the point where not every spare minute I have of quiet I am trying to study the back of my eyelids ;-) Over the past two months we have slowly (and quite peacefully I might add) been adjusting to life with 3 little ones in the house. I feel like I am starting to get things caught up around the house and Hannah is (at two months) only waking up once during the night to nurse. So the last thing to fall into place for me is to start blogging again. I have had a few potential posts swirling around in my head for the last few weeks, but just hadn’t had time when the kiddos were sleeping to make it down to the computer I use for blogging. It had been such a long time since my last post that I had to look up the last thing I shared with you. haha and what I found was basically the announcement of Hannah’s birth! So, we are 2 months past that now. So until next time, here are a few pics to hold you over. ;-)

This pic was taken this morning. Miriam is such a little momma and absolutely LOVES her sister Hannah!

I will not tell you how many pictures I took of the three of them trying to get just ONE good one! (With all of them at least looking at me and the two oldest smiling) I will try again another time ;-)

Here is one from a few weeks ago :-)

Our Little Bundle of Joy

2011-07-25T06:16:00.001-04:00

Hannah Joy

Born 7/18/11

7 lbs and 20 inches

Isn’t she perfect?!? I know, I know, I’m a little biased. We are so excited and blessed to welcome this new little bundle to our family!!

Hannah was brought into this world through by a planned C-Section this past Monday. (I can’t believe it’s been a week already! In some ways, it seems like one insanely long day, but I will attribute that to lack of sleep ;-) Through God’s grace, everything went smoothly through the surgery. It was a much better experience than my last C-Section, and I actually got to “hold” her for a few minutes before she left with Daddy and the nurses to get cleaned up and checked out.

While in recovery, Aaron and Hannah got to come back and see me and I was able to start nursing Hannah! I am so thankful that she started nursing right away! What a blessing! (huge sigh of relief for this momma! Miriam didn’t start nursing until almost 48 hours after birth! Couldn’t get her to stay awake long enough to latch on!) Since things were going so well with Hannah, and I was up and moving around pretty well, and the fact that this wasn’t our first rodeo, our request to go home a day early was granted.

And can I just say how extremely excited Miriam and Isaac were to have their baby sister Hannah home?! They absolutely adore her! Miriam likes to kneel beside her and “talk” to her sister. I can just imagine all the sister secrets these two are sharing. ;-)

Isaac loves his little sisters!! He loves to hold Hannah and give her kisses :-)

We have also enjoyed having our family in with us this week. (A definite benefit of having a planned C-Section, everyone can mark it on their calendars ahead of time!)

Grandma (my mom)

Grandpa (my dad)

Aunt Hollie (my sister)

Papaw (Aaron’s dad)

Mammy (Aaron’s mom)

I thought this was too sweet!

This picture was taking Sunday morning before church. The kids were ready to go and were watching their Bible songs DVD while waiting on the adults ;-) The realization hit that we now have 3 kids! What a blessing!

I thank the Lord for his mercy and care over the past week. It has been a smooth time of transition for our family and I am so grateful for that! I am healing well from the surgery, even though I still have to remind myself to sit down and take it easy. (I am so mentally ready to jump back into the swing of things but my body is definitely not ready for that yet!) We have been so appreciative of all the prayers, meals, and help our family and friends have given us.

And now I think I will follow Hannah’s example and get a few more minutes of shut-eye before the household wakes up ;-)

Stay tuned!

Tot School

2011-06-19T17:36:00.001-04:00

This Tot School post is going to be a bit random :-) There is no real theme, and it is a few weeks worth of fun all rolled into one post. We have been busy already this summer (hence not much blogging) and had about 10 days at the beginning of May/end of June when we were on vacation to see family. But here’s just a sneak peak at a few of the thing we’ve been up to in the last few weeks :)

The Little Touch Leap Pad continues to be a hit! We found a new book for it at a flea market while we were visiting family. It is The Little Blue Engine that Could, which is one of Isaac’s favorite movies!! And at $5 for a new LeapPad book, I couldn’t pass it up! Needless to say he was very excited to try it out!

We have been working on the letters I and J the past few weeks. Here is Isaac working on matching up his shapes.

He also breezed through sorting the capital and lower case “Jj”.

Isaac is learning to play games for the first time! We had finished watching Jonah: A Veggie Tales movie when I remembered that we had the Jonah Go Fish cards!

So I set both of our hands face up on the table and taught him how to play. It was so cute to hear him say, “Go fish mommy!”

I combined the themes of I for Inchworm and J for Jellybean to play this number/counting game ;-) We used our jelly beans to place on the white circles on the leaves to work on our counting, and then used our inchworm numbers to match up the correct number. I think Isaac’s favorite part was eating the jelly beans afterwards though ;-)

One of the sweet ladies from the church blessed us with some fun treasures from her teaching days! Here is a Melissa and Doug Alphabet train floor puzzle. Isaac absolutely loves trains, so this was a huge hit and he wanted to play with it as soon as he saw me bring it out!

Sister got in on the fun too. And it was all good until she decided to tear it all apart, which um . . ended with both kids on the couch until they could cool down and mommy could put the puzzle back together again :) (Yea, there was a bit of screaming going on . . . it could have gotten violent!)

Putting in the last piece!!

In one of the boxes of treasures I also found this Hi-Ho Cherry-O game!!! We have had fun playing it and learning number recognition and counting!

Isaac also likes to put his cherries on his tree with the stems upside down. It cracks me up!

That’s all for now. I have lots more pictures from the past few weeks, but I’ll take a break for now. :)

All the printables were from Erica’s Letter of the Week Curriculum!

To see what other Tots and their moms are up to this week, visit Carisa and the official Tot School Blog!

A Tribute to a Soldier

2011-06-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

As part of our vacation with family this year, we took a tour of the USS New Jersey. This was the battleship that Aaron's paternal grandfather served on during WWII. We met his parents in NJ and all got to take the tour together. Aaron requested that I make him a slideshow of our pictures from the ship, so here it is :-) (I'm "planning" on doing another slideshow from all of our vacation week with family. Hopefully I'll have that to show you soon too :-)

Tot School: I is for Inchworm (Week 1 ;-)

2011-05-22T16:02:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 39 months

Miriam is 22 months

This week was a little busier than I had expected it to be, but isn’t that normally the case? Every week I tell myself, next week it will slow down! But that slow week rarely shows up! It was a good week though spending lots of time with friends and family. We only had 1 official day of Tot School, so we will be continuing to work on the letter “Ii” for this next week also. Isaac likes to confuse it with “Hh”, so I think we need a little more time with this letter. ;-) (He also likes to call it “Y”)

The “Official” Day

My kids love playing with these things!!

Isaac requests all the time to make the letter using his magnets.

After I introduced the Letter “Ii” to them using our pom-pom magnets, we did some review. Here Isaac is making the letter A ;-)

Is she going to be a lefty??

Although I think it is kind of interesting that from the start, Miriam has done a better job of holding a crayon in her hand while Isaac still holds it with his fist. I’m wondering when is the right time to correct this and to teach him the right way to hold a pencil?

Below he is making a railroad track with his crayons :)

We worked on some lacing too. Isaac requested the cow while Miriam worked on the pig. He is doing really well getting it through the holes easily, but I think next we will work on getting the lace pulled all the way through.

I was busy helping Miriam, so I didn’t have any pictures of her working on her sheep.

Learning Through Play

We had our Leap Frog Phonics train out and the kids loved playing with it. The batteries are in need of changing, so Miriam followed my example and helped to give the train a push when it was having trouble going up the hill.

She loves to wear her brother’s boots! I think we need to get her a pair of her own! Below Isaac is busy making a fence ;-)

A Weekend with Aunt Hollie

We always love it when my sister can come in for a visit. Unfortunately we don’t get to see her too often since she lives 5+ hours away :( She was gracious enough to hang out with the kids Fri and Sat evenings so I could be with Aaron as he was involved with a wedding.

My children think these letter squares need to be worn as necklaces.

Miss Miriam and her big brown eyes!

Let me introduce you to “Joe Dog”. He is by far the favorite stuffed animal in the house! Miriam asks for him before naps/bedtimes, and he now also goes with us on long trips. She loves to snuggle with him. Below she is putting him down for a nap in the baby’s swing.

I had the privilege of getting to keep Baby M one day this past week. The kids absolutely adored her!! I had to keep reminding them that she belonged to someone else and was going home at the end of the day! (Isaac has already asked for her to come back!) It was fun to see how they might act once their baby sister arrives. Here Isaac was gently rocking the swing back in forth while he watched Thomas. I thought it was so sweet. He did a great job being gentle!

The printables form this week are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler!

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School blog!

Tot School: H is for Hippo

2011-05-16T22:33:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 39 months

Miriam is 22 months

I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures from this week, but we had lots of fun working on the letter Hh. Isaac learned it quickly and had fun at the same time.

We Love our Magnets!

I lost count of how many times Isaac wanted to “make the letter H”. He loved making the letter with the pom-pom magnets!

Miriam loves playing with them too. Thankfully I have more than one cookie sheet and plenty of magnets to go around!

One day Isaac decided to use one of his tools to help him place the magnets on the letter.

Bottle Cap Fun

My kids play with these things for hours! The only thing is by the time they are done, they are all over the living room!! But we work on colors and counting and just have fun playing.

Pattern Building

Isaac did great with this and called out the color of each hippo as he put it on the page.

He then decided to make a “bridge” with them. It has been fun to watch and observe him the past few weeks. He has been very creative and imaginative! He is always building bridges or shapes out of random things. His favorite medium to use is his food ;-)

Fun with Colors

He is doing great with his colors!!! He knows all the basic colors now and verbalizes it too. I’m going to have to come up with something a bit more challenging for him!

Here is a fun clip of him working on his color matching. Every time I watch it, he cracks me up. He is such a great little guy.

Miss Miriam

Just a few shots of my baby girl checking out her books. My mom picked up this little boxed set of Baby Einstein alphabet board books at a yard sale a while back. I keep them on the changing table to keep her occupied when necessary and we work on our letters too ;-)

To end our week we watched “Horton Hears a Who” and had Hamburger Vegetable Soup. (This movie is now a new favorite of Isaac’s ;-)

All of our printables from this week are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

The Month (or 2) In Review:

2011-05-01T21:40:00.001-04:00

There has been so much going on around here, I don’t hardly know where to begin to get you caught up! We have been very busy traveling this past month and have a little break before we go to see family at the end of this month.

Our Travels

At the beginning of spring, I was ready to travel! I was so looking forward to a road trip! And now that we have had a few in a short period of time, I am so glad to be back home and settling into our routine again! (Isn’t that how it goes though?)

Spring Youth Retreat

We had a great group of girls from our church that went to the retreat this spring. It was the first time for some of them to be out of state, so that’s always fun. I pray that the truths taught to them during this week have a lasting, transforming impact on their lives.

(Here we are pictured with the group from my Dad’s church. We were all in the same cabin :)

Conference and Visit with Family

Each year in the spring we head to the mountains of NC for our annual conference for our denomination. It is always a wonderful time of refreshing for us and a time to visit with other pastors and their wives.

On the way to the conference center, we stopped for lunch and my daughter couldn’t wait for her food to come out. So she started eating a lemon ;-) By the time she was done, there was a little bit of the peel left, about the size of a quarter. Yuck.

Here is Isaac and his “cousin Emma” who he absolutely adores.

When the conference was over, we took a few more days and traveled to KY with Aaron’s parents to visit with his sister and her family.

His sister and her husband own a restaurant with a family fun center attached. Our kids loved to run around and play. Here is Isaac (with daddy’s help ;-) playing his first round of ski ball.

Here is Isaac with one of his cousins. I’m thinking they look like they might be related ;-) Isaac loves his cousins and still talks about them!

Discipleship Summit 2011

Myself and two other ladies from our church went to a Ladies’s Retreat hosted by the Francis Asbury Society. After about 10 minutes on the road together, we were laughing so hard I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to drive! It was a wonderful time of relaxation and refreshing for all of us.

We stayed at the Amish Door Inn in Wilmot, OH in the heart of Ohio Amish Country. There are lots of fun little things I could tell you about this weekend, like for starters, the food was DELICIOUS!!

The Inn was beautiful . . .

The countryside was gorgeous . . .

And the company was exceptional . . .

(Our “table buddies” from Ohio :)

But the most memorable and special part of the weekend was the presence of the sweet Spirit of God and a life (lives!) that were transformed because of it. As we walked into the comfortable conference room for our first service, I felt the sweetness of the Lord like I had not felt in such a long time. I couldn’t keep the tears back! Silent tears streamed down my cheeks during the prayer, the singing, and the message. I knew that God was here and he wanted to do amazing things in the lives of all of those who came seeking Him.

The theme of the weekend was “The Making of a Disciple”, what does it truly mean to be a disciple of Christ. One of the things that stuck out in my mind during that first message was that Jesus called his disciples to Himself, just as He calls each one of us to follow Him. During the time of discussion at our table after the message, one of the ladies mentioned just how amazing it was that God had called each of us there, and that each of us were one in the 107 ladies that were present that weekend.

It was an absolutely beautiful weekend, reflecting on the “Enoughness” of Jesus (are you allowing Jesus to be enough for you, or are you trying to have Jesus + something to bring you fulfillment) and having a surrendered heart to Christ.

Our Easter

Easter came upon us so quick this year! I could hardly believe that it has already come and gone! We had an Easter Egg Hunt at the church again this year, and it was so fun to see my kiddos really hunting for eggs this year! Last year I had to point the eggs out to them, but this year, they did it all on their own!

All the kids were attentive as they heard the true meaning of Easter.

And Miss Miriam especially like her cupcake :)

So then Easter Sunday I tried (and failed) to get a good picture of them in their Easter clothes. Maybe next year?

Our Family

I realized it’s been quite a while since you’ve heard how we are actually doing! In a nutshell, we are all doing good :)

Aaron

As usual, Aaron is staying on the go most of the time. ;) Of course, I’ve never met a pastor yet who wasn’t. Pastoring a church takes so much time, that is often not realized to the lay people in the church. They never know the late night/early morning phone calls that he gets, the difficult situations he has to handle, or the long hours spent in preparation for sermons, let alone the time just spent in administrative details of the church. Even in all of that, he does a wonderful job taking care of our family and as you can see, his children adore him. He is their hero. (And mine too :~)

In his “spare time” he is working on relearning his Greek and also has a few extra projects going on here around the house. We are working on gradually finishing the upstairs to give us a couple more bedrooms (I’m so excited about this!).

This was the start of the project. . . the dormer on the front of the house originally had no support, and so the back side of it had sort of “sunk” and put alot of weight on the main roof. So Aaron had to go in and gradually raise it back up to get it squared up before he could build the walls under the dormer to stabilize it.

Here is where we are now, with most of the framing done. (The only framing left is to frame in some closets, when we figure out where we want to put them ;)

We have new windows ready to go in, and new siding to put on the outside on the front of the dormer, to freshen it up and give it a nice little face lift. (The old metal siding has “bled” white onto the brick, ugh!) Then next on the list is the electrical and insulation!!

Isaac

My children never cease to amaze me. Isaac is talking much more now and some of the things he says absolutely cracks me up. For example . .

sister is screaming . . . again!
What are YOU doing?

He is so light-hearted and relaxed. He has done well with potty training and is officially in “big boy underwear” all the time now except sleeping. (Hallelujah!) He knows his colors and is all the time pointing out what color something is, without our prompting. He is doing well counting, although he still likes to skip #4. And he knows most of his alphabet and what sound the letter makes. He loves to help out with anything!! One of his favorite things to do is to help mommy “wash dishes” after lunchtime before his naptime. He is such a precious gift.

Miriam

My little precious girl, where do I begin? Well, for starters, she is a talker! I am absolutely blown away by how quickly she is developing, especially in the language department. She has been saying phrases for a while now, and is getting really close to saying short sentences (just within the last week or two!)

She is a very spunky and fiery 21 mth old who has a mind of her own and adores her big brother. She is quite vocal when there is something going on she does like (aka temper tantrum, which we are working on….continually!) She is both a daddy’s girl and a mommy’s girl, and is a little bit more cautious around strangers than her older brother. But she is absolutely precious and loves to snuggle!! She is our Baby Girl :)

Hannah

Miss Hannah will be 28 weeks tomorrow! I can’t hardly believe it! Time has flown by so quickly this time! She seems to be a bit calmer than her sister was and doesn’t kick me quite as much :) She seems to be growing on schedule and not giving mommy too rough of a time :) We are all so excited to see her! I think Isaac is really catching on this time, and will say that Baby Hannah is in mommy’s belly. Just a little less than 3 months to go!

I have been doing well and feeling well overall. This pregnancy has been a bit rougher on me than the previous ones, but from what I’ve heard from other women, not too bad, so I’m not complaining! I’m staying busy with things at home, trying to keep up with everybody. Currently I’m still teaching the youth SS class, the children’s Wednesday night class, and leading one of the ladies’ Bible Studies. Come the first of July though, I will be gradually handing these over to someone else as I get ready to pick up a newborn!

Well, I think that’s about it! I’m sure there’s lots of stuff that I left out, and I will think about it later. ;-) That’s the way it always goes isn’t it?

Our Family Garden

2011-05-01T14:39:00.001-04:00

There is one particular gardening season that stands out in my mind when I was a child. That year in our little plot my mom planted corn, green beans, tomatoes, etc. The main thing that I remember her planting was zucchini. I remember my dad telling us that we needed to pray over the garden and ask God to bless it. In our childlike faith we prayed expecting God to bless it and he most certainly did! That was the greenest, healthiest looking garden I think I have ever seen even to this day. Everything grew and that little garden plot produced and produced and produced, even though many of our neighbors did not have any success with their gardens at all that year. I remember my mom canning and canning and then when she couldn’t take any more, she gave and gave and gave the produce away! I remember the zucchini because it was absolutely huge! It was the first time I was introduced to this shiny green vegetable and we ate so much zucchini bread that year I was sick of it! I still do not care much for zucchini bread! As I grew older and remembered that year, I never really had a desire for tending a garden of any sort. (Of course, now I realize that my mom did 99.9% of all the work) But now as an adult, it has somehow become a lifelong goal of mine to learn how to garden and preserve its produce. I’m not quite sure where the switch came, but non the less, I am excited about gardening. The biggest obstacle for me at this point is taking the time, especially when it comes to harvest time. (Miriam was a July baby and Hannah is due in July also this year!!) So for the last few years Aaron has tilled a garden plot, we have planted it, he has harvested, and I have worked in getting the produce used up. Each year we learn a little more and it is so fun to watch the things grow that you have planted from seed.

In our regular garden, that gets bigger every year, we have corn, onions, green beans, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, etc. New to us for this year , Aaron is working on making some fun raised garden boxes, and have planted lettuce for the first time this spring!

When finished, our garden boxes will have our tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and I would love to find someplace to plant cantaloupe! That was my favorite new thing from last year! They were so yummy! We also added a new flower bed around our mailbox that we finished up last night! So pretty!We are so excited to be expanding our garden and trying new things this year.

This year I thought it would be fun to include the kids in on it. Isaac always wants to “help” us do anything we will let him around the house. When I saw that Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations was offering a free Garden Preschool Pack, I thought, this is perfect for our Tot School for the next month or so. Plus we are working on the letter “Gg” so what better word to go with it then “garden”! Along with this fun preschool pack, the Homeschool Village is offering a fun Garden Challenge with a link-up, which encourages teaching your children about gardening. So, in the works for the coming month in Tot School, we will be working through our Garden Preschool Pack, making a garden themed sensory bin (my mind is already swirling with possibilities!), having a family fun night, and having the kids by our side as we water and tend to the garden. (I so wish I had my camera with me while we were working on the new flower bed and planting the garden. The kids were very much involved and loved every minute of it!) I am so excited about this, even though I know the kids will mostly be excited about playing in the dirt, but hey, we have to start somewhere, right?

My Silly Girl

2011-03-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

Tot School: We’re Back :)

2011-03-13T16:13:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 37 months

Miriam is 20 months

Well, it’s finally happening . . . I am posting my first Tot School post in um . . .months?! We have still been doing a very informal Tot School, because after all, every day we are learning and talking about colors, shapes, our alphabet etc. You just haven’t seen it b/c I’ve been napping instead of blogging. (Us pregnant ladies can do that ;-) But this afternoon, I am wide awake so I am going to let you have a sneak peak at a few of the things we have been up to while the blog has been silent.

Learning Our Colors

Coloring continues to be a favorite around here. Although I think Miriam enjoys it more than Isaac does ;-) I am amazed when I look back how quickly Isaac is learning. Right around Christmas, he started verbally naming all of his colors! He is doing great at this!

One fun way we have been working on our colors is through games! We have a neat game board that has many different games, including Chinese Checkers. I got Isaac started and he finished matching all the colored marbles.

We also had fun learning with paper plates and foam letters :)

We had fun sorting the alphabet by color while also working on letter recognition.

Since this was a new bag of letters, he also had fun poking out the little pieces from the letters. ;-) He looks like he is concentrating hard doesn’t he!

We have been enjoying an early spring here, which also means we are getting lots of good use out of our sunroom! It has officially become the kids playroom since that is where I keep all of their big bulky toys. This particular day we got another a different Chinese Checkers board that had pegs instead of marbles. Again, more color matching, but also the extra hand-eye coordination as they had to put the pegs in the holds. Miriam loved it!

Here’s a cute video of my kiddos in action :)

My Little Bookworms

This bookwormish mommy is so happy that my little ones like books! They sat here happily, on their on and “read” for quite a while!

Magnet Fun

Mamie and Papaw brought this magnet board and tin of fun magnets down with them on one of their recent trips. Isaac loves playing with it.

The tin is filled with letters, numbers, and fun pieces for a farm scene!

Playing with Puzzles

Isaac got some fun new puzzles for his birthday this year. This train puzzle is still pretty challenging for him, but he brings it to me all the time to help him with it!

We picked these Melissa and Doug puzzles up at a Consignment store also for Isaac’s birthday. (Gotta love those places!!) Below Isaac has a buddy helping him out.

At the same time we also picked up this fun Melissa and Doug barn set. Isaac’s favorite part is to have me build the barn and then he likes to knock it over when I am ALMOST done!

Miriam is stacking the round block to make the silo :)

Isaac working on building a fence for his animals.

An almost completed barn! While we are putting it together, we also work on our shapes. I ask Isaac to get me another “triange” for the roof, another “square” for the walls, “circle” for the silo, etc.

P.E. ;-)

We are blessed to live in a nice quiet neighborhood that hosts one of the city parks!

This was Miriam’s first time on the “big” playground. She marched right up all the steps and went right for the big slide.

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official 1+1+1=1 blog!

The verdict is in . . .

2011-03-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

We are having another baby girl!! We are so excited! This is little Hannah Joy at 18 weeks. She was weighing in at around 9 oz. at the time and her heart rate was a solid 148. We are so thankful for this 3rd blessing and are getting more anxious for her arrival every day. The kids are starting to catch on too that there is another sister on the way. I am feeling great at this point and everything is normal. Monday I will be at 20 weeks!!! :)

Hopefully more to come in the future. I am not going to guarantee a time frame. Normally when I have extra time, you will find me sleeping instead of blogging these days :) So my normal Sunday afternoon blog time has turned into nap time. I have tons of cute pictures of the kids from the last um . . .3 months?!? , a few months worth of Tot School activities, and exciting things to tell you about what all the Lord is doing in our lives and in the church. I think it is safe to say I will once again resume my regular blogging, just not sure how soon :) Until next time . . .

Larry Boy!

2011-02-09T16:07:00.001-05:00

Can you guess who he is? He came up to me the other day and said “Mommy, I’m Larry Boy!” He makes me laugh . . all the time!

11 Step Program for Those Thinking of Having Kids

2011-01-08T12:13:00.001-05:00

I ran across this on Facebook and had to share it. It made me honestly laugh out loud! I’m also posting this at Tot School this week, even though it not the “normal” post. I just thought you other moms of tots would enjoy it. I have everything ready to go for this week of Tot School though and now that the holidays are over and I am almost through the first trimester exhaustion, I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. So, without any further delay….. 11 Step Program for Those Thinking of Having Kids ;-) Enjoy!

Lesson 1

Go to the grocery store.
Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
Go home.
Pick up the paper.
Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

Methods of discipline.
Lack of patience.
Appallingly low tolerance levels.
Allowing their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
Set the alarm for 3AM.
As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
Go to bed at 2:45AM.
Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...

Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
Then rub them on the clean walls.
Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

Hollow out a melon.
Make a small hole in the side.
Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Author Unknown

To see what other moms are doing this week with their Tots, head on over to the official Carisa at 1+1+1=1.

The Exciting News You’ve Been Waiting For . . .

2011-01-04T15:14:00.001-05:00

Yup . . Baby # 3 is on the way!! We are extremely excited and I’m still insanely exhausted ;-) This ultrasound was taken at 7 1/2 weeks and I am now 11 weeks! (I seriously think the time does go faster with each one. Must have something to do with running around after 2 little ones!) I am finally past the point of being in shock and disbelief, even though we were ready for number three. The exhaustion, lack of appetite, horrible gag reflex and clothes that don’t fit anymore help with bringing you to reality ;-)

So the official due date is July 25th which is 2 days after Miriam’s 2nd birthday! I mentioned to Aaron that Miriam is now 17 months, which is the age Isaac was when she was born. He about dropped on the floor saying, Could you imagine if this one was being born now!?! So we are glad we spaced these two a little farther apart ;-) Yea, it would have been insane.

But mom and baby are doing great. . and so are daddy and brother and sister :)

Back From the Holidays

2011-01-02T15:56:00.001-05:00

Well, I took what you might call an unintentional break from blogging during the Holidays. ;-) But I’m back. So here’s what I’m working on today that should show up in the next week or so…..

December in Review – so the last post I made was about our Thanksgiving and now we are after New Year’s! I am currently downloading the MANY pictures off my camera as I type this. We have been so busy I had already forgotten half of what we’ve been up to!
Exciting News – but I’ll tell you all about that soon ;-)
Christmas with Family! – Originally we were going to stay home for the Christmas season, but due to my dear Uncle Charlie passing away, we were with my family for the funeral up close to Christmas time. It was a hard time but yet a great time getting to see some of my family again.

So I will leave you with my favorite pic of the season (there are MANY more to come, I promise!)

Here are my ever cute kiddos with my Grandma :)

A Week of Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T22:58:00.001-05:00

I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to be able to travel to WV this year during Thanksgiving. We were able to spend almost a whole week and got to see lots of family!

The kids did great overall during the 5+ hour drive and thankfully I remembered to bring some books to keep them occupied!

Fun at Grandma’s

Thankfully one thing we do not need to pack when we head to Grandma’s house is toys!! My mom had bought this little pool during the summer and it has never seen water! The kids love to lay in it while watching TV, reading, or playing with their toys.

Aaron bought a bag of 100 plastic balls from Wal-Mart and this made a nice addition to the pool. :)

Yes, Isaac is somewhere underneath the balls. Needless to say the kids LOVED playing in the pool. It got brought out EVERY DAY!

My dad had a little doll house ready for Miriam when she arrived. She loved sitting up on Grandpa’s lap and playing with her FIRST dollhouse!

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving morning started off restful as we watched part of the Macy’s parade. As you can tell, Isaac was very much into it!

My mom made this cute turkey to take to my Grandma’s house as an appetizer. The body was an especially yummy cheese ball and the feathers were vegetables.

My Uncle Ed is the official turkey carver at Grandma’s

Shortly after we arrived, Miriam went over to the doll cradle and draped her little body over it. We sat there watching her and she did not budge for several minutes. The longer she stayed frozen like that, the harder we laughed. Here is my cousin Nate kneeling beside her. She eventually kicked him. We put her down for a nap very shortly after this ;-)

My cousin Nate’s wife, Leah, on the left and my sister, Hollie, on the right.

Aaron reading to Isaac and Nate’s oldest daughter, Emma.

Isaac decided Nate’s hair needed a little brushing. ;-)

Isaac spending some time with my cousin Ben’s little puppy dog.

Isaac and Emma watching a Thomas the Train movie. Isaac LOVES his cousin Emma! And talked about her the whole trip.

Here he is giving Emma a hug and kiss goodbye.

Isaac with his backpack (that he wore all. week.) and my Grandma.

Time with Family

We were so blessed that Aaron’s mom and Grandma were able to make the trip down to see us overnight. (Although we missed Papaw!)

Miriam getting some night time snuggles in with Mamie.

I am so glad we were able to visit with my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Bev while we were in. We went out to breakfast with Uncle Charlie earlier in the week and then they came over for a visit one evening.

A family pic before we headed back home. In case you can’t tell, Miriam is NOT very happy at this moment, in fact her face is beet red from ~~screaming~~ crying.

Other Fun Pics of My Cuties

Miriam’s first time eating her Great Gram’s Texas sheet cake. I think she liked it ;-)

Miriam is such a snuggler! Especially when she’s tired!

Wearing Daddy’s hat with the lights.

I have a couple of cute video clips of the kids from this week too. Hopefully I can get them uploaded this week. (They take forever!)

Our Town’s Christmas Parade!

2010-11-22T06:04:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday we attended our town’s Christmas Parade! This year was (thankfully!) a little warmer than last year, but still pleasantly crisp :) The kids absolutely LOVED IT! They were busy clapping and moving their feet to the bands. Isaac would point and shout “tractor” . . ." truck”. This kid is all boy!

This picture is right side up, my little girl is just hanging upside down. She was strapped it, although she was hanging so far over I was beginning to wonder if it would hold. Every time Aaron would set her right side up again, she would happily turn herself up side again and munch away at her chicken nuggets. (We strategically placed ourselves across from McDonald’s ;-)

Me and my little girl :-)

Tot School

2010-11-22T05:32:00.001-05:00

Isaac is 32 months

Miriam is 17 months

This week was full of complete randomness ;-) I just pulled stuff out and we had fun playing ~ no planning whatsoever. We will pick back up with our Letter of the Week after Thanksgiving. I am so excited to work on “G” is for Gumball. The other fun thing is the J for Jesus will land right around Christmas.

Sensory Tub Fun

I brought out the sensory tub and they played for over an hour! They loved it! They were much more into it this time than the last time they played with it! Of course, I had a mess to clean up when it was all over with, but it was worth it!

Miriam really had fun digging around in the bin this time. :)

And Isaac decided it was fun to stuff his pocket with rice and pom-poms. He had fun stuffing it and I had fun cleaning it all out ;-)

He then decided all the flowers from our sensory bin needed to go in the schoolhouse.

I love this little boy. He is sunshine on a cloudy day.

He now talks to “Larry Boy” on the school telephone. The first time (and every time since!) that I saw him do this, it absolutely cracked me up. He says “Hi Larry Boy!”

Miriam’s Independent Play

Most mornings after breakfast I let the kids play in separate areas of the house with a few toys. They really seem to enjoy this and it lets me get my morning routine done (clean-up after breakfast, switch over laundry, make my bed, etc)

Foam Alphabet Tiles: Big and Small

The kids always love playing with their foam tiles. We picked up 2 sets of these mini ones at Wal-Mart for a dollar a piece. (My local Wal-Mart still had them in the toy section last week!)

We worked on matching them up to these fun printables from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.

We then made a puzzle out of it and he put the letters back in their squares.

We then got out the big squares and he was mostly interested in taking them apart. So we called out what letter it was while he was separating letter from tile ;-)

Then he thought it was great fun to insert the letter in his toybox.

Other Fun Activities

We worked on color matching. These fish printables are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

We then played with a box, some pasta, and a hammer :) The kids love this and it is so easy. Take any kind of box, poke some holes in the top, insert pasta, and let them pound away. Great for hand-eye coordination!

Miriam loves to just play with the pasta. She will put her hand in the box, shake the pasta up and pull some out. After she has studied it, she drops it back in the box and does it all over again!

We brought out the pom-pom Magnets and ended up sorting by color. (Isaac and I both were working on this one together ;-)

My kiddos LOVE watching Baby Einstin and Baby Genius videos! These are the only ones that Miriam will actually sit down and watch.

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

A Family Night for a Good Cause

2010-11-20T09:38:00.001-05:00

For last few years, Aaron has been on the Salvation Army advisory board. For opening day of the kettle campaign (I’m sure there’s a more technical phrase for it ;-) they asked all the board members to take an hour to ring the bell. So this year we got to do it as a family! We had an early supper at Burger King and then headed on over to our local Wal-Mart. The kids had a great time taking turns ringing the bell, and I think it put a smile on a few people’s faces to watch our cute kiddos. :)

Here is a clip of Miriam in action :

Learning Colors with Bottlecaps

2010-11-14T20:53:00.001-05:00

I have not had a Tot School post in over 2 weeks and I have to say I have missed it! We have not had official Tot School during that time due to sickness and extra things going on. Things are beginning to get back to normal and slowing down a bit. I am excited to get back in the swing of our daily routine (which is in the process of changing again since Miriam is down to just one nap a day now!) So I am again going to be working on figuring out when is the best time for Tot School since I like to work with them together but also give them each one on one time.

My kids love playing with the bottle caps that we (and my in-laws ;) have been collecting. We have a gallon size ziploc bag jam-packed with these things. The other week while we were playing my mind started rolling about all the things we could do with them! Here is just one of the ideas I had, and hopefully you’ll see some more soon!

I took a little bit of paint and some of the white bottle caps and went to work painting!

There are a few activities that we did with the colored bottle caps. I had Isaac tell me the name of the color as he was putting them in the can. Once he named one, on his own he went for a hunt for the rest of that particular color.

Another way you can play is call out the name of the color and let them find it and put it in the can.

Then Isaac matched up bottle caps to the animals on his pajamas. :)

And then of course he had to match up the colors to sister’s pajamas. Miriam just liked putting the bottle caps in the can :)

Our can that we used is a Oatmeal container wrapped with fun scrapbook paper. I cut a hole in the lid and it works great! The original idea for the container came from another Tot School mom at Psalm 127:3.

Note: I noticed after I painted them, if I painted some of them really heavy with paint, they tend to chip a little where the paint is the thickest. I’m sure this could be resolved with another type of paint (?) or not painting too heavily. I am also only letting the kids use them under my supervision as Miriam still likes to put things in her mouth ;-)

To see what other fun things moms are doing this week with their tots, visit the official Tot School blog!

Isaac is 32 months and Miriam is 15 months.

Why won’t The Door Lock?

2010-11-13T13:59:00.001-05:00

I think there is a certain little 2 year-old boy who is the culprit. I won’t tell you how many days I pondered this question before I happened to glance in the deadbolt hole ;-)

Isn’t She the Cutest?!?!

2010-11-10T23:00:00.001-05:00

I went in to check on her tonight and this was how I found her. It just makes me want to pick her up and cuddle her! She is absolutely precious and a gift from God. I am so so blessed! My little Snugglebug :-)

Living Healthy: O Sweet Desserts!

2010-11-08T16:02:00.001-05:00

I have to say, I am awfully fond of chocolate and sweets ;-) But to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure the feeling is mutual. In fact I know it’s not. I have even seriously considered putting this lifetime habit change off until later because I really want to eat chocolate whenever the mood strikes (haha is that not horrible!) But I figured, I might as well go ahead and just do it :) (Does this picture not look insanely yummy?!?! My mouth is watering right now!

So here’s what this is going to look like:

Weekly:

Have only 1 dessert per week (and try and keep that to special occasions!)

Daily:

To have 1 small piece of chocolate to nibble on with my hot tea in the evenings. It is such a yummy treat!

So no more will I be munching on the cake in the kitchen whenever I am going by and no more snatching the snack sized candy bars a few at a time. I will just keep telling myself that I don’t really want it. (Do you think that will work?)

What I Drink Week 3 Check-In

So, week 3 of my challenge. I think overall I did fair. I had adjusted this habit to allow for one (occasionally two) sodas or sweet teas a week with a meal. This past week we had lunch with a sweet young lady from our church and I had an absolutely delicious (real) cherry coke with my Mexican. I have to say I enjoyed it immensely and I did not feel guilty at all. We went out another time this week with a family from the church to this really great steakhouse and I did get a sweet tea. This week was definitely an exception on the eating out – I rarely go out to eat! Maybe 2-3 times a month, let alone twice in one week! The hardest thing for me at this point is still drinking enough water. But I know me and my water bottle are going to become good friends :-)

Wild West Fall Fest

2010-11-07T00:09:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago we had our annual Fall Fest at church. It was so much fun to go as a parent this time! The kids had a great time and the children’s ministry team did a great job putting everything together!

Isaac was sitting down on the grass and Miriam came right over and sat down right in front of him like this! They were absolutely adorable. . .and you know I had to get a picture of it! They sat this way for the longest time!

Living Healthy: Weeks 1 & 2 Check-in

2010-11-05T20:42:00.001-04:00

I know, I am way behind on this. It is almost time for me to check-in for Week 3! I have made some adjustments as I have gone along. My purpose for doing this is to establish lifelong habits that will lead to a healthier me and ultimately a healthier family as they follow my example. My children are imitators – they learn by watching and following others. In more areas than just food, they will follow where I lead them. So here’s how the last two weeks went:

Week 1: I did great! It was very very hard at times, because I really wanted a soda in the afternoon! And I am extremely fond of sweet tea. The other hard part was drinking enough water! I have gotten so accustomed to drinking flavored drinks that it will take me a while to appreciate the taste of water again. But I did it!

Week 2: Well . . . I didn’t do so great. Not horrible, but not as great as week one. I did give in a little . . .

So where am I at now? I will be posting (hopefully on Monday) how my third week went. Through these few weeks I have been reviewing what I really want this habit to look like. I am working on establishing lifetime habits and so at this point, I have revised it so that it is something do-able for me.

Daily

one glass of juice in the morning mixed in with my liquid vitamin
one - two cups of hot tea a day (breakfast and/or evening)
one cup of coffee (during my Bible Study)
6-8 glasses of water
glass of low-fat milk

Weekly

an occasional soda or tea with a meal (working on keeping this at once a week) You know some foods are just better with a Coke, like Mexican or pizza ;-)

So I think this is very workable for me and still eliminates a huge area for me . . .drinking sodas or tea at random times during the day and therefore not drinking nearly enough water. On Monday I will post my new healthy habit that I will be working on and also let you know how my third week went :)

Creamy White Chili Recipe

2010-11-03T12:11:00.001-04:00

Creamy White Chili Recipe Taste of Home Recipes

I am a Taste of Home girl all the way. Whenever I am looking for a recipe or a How-To tip, you'll find me on their site. We are having a soup and salad dinner tonight at church and I was looking for something a little different. I ran across this award winning recipe and immediately started making my grocery list. I already have it in the crock-pot and even though I haven't tried it yet, I think this one is going to have a regular spot on the Withrow menu list ;-)

Thoughts That Have Inspired Me

2010-11-02T16:17:00.002-04:00

I have run across a few blog posts in the past week that really spoke to my heart and I just wanted to share them with you!

I have been linking up with Tot School for the last few months. This is hosted by Carisa at 1+1+1=1. She recently attended a conference called Relevant for Christian women who just happen to blog in their spare time ;-) Carisa shared some great nuggets of wisdom that she gained from the conference. One that really spoke to me was “If you don’t have time for God, you don’t have time to blog”. I think that can be applied in really any area of our lives! If we do not have time for God, we do not have time for Facebook, the TV, and the list can go on and on! Thanks Carisa for sharing!

Over the past month or two I have been thinking of what it really means to be a “homemaker”. You may or may not see a post on my thoughts about this in the future ;-) but I ran across a post shared on Raising Homemakers that really touched me. It is about being “the keeper” of our homes.

Another blog mom at The Iowa Farmer’s Wife wrote a great post about Mom Guilt. I think most of us have been there and I think sometimes we’re drowning ourselves in our own expectations of motherhood. This post helped me refocus :)

Tot School

2010-10-22T23:42:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 32 months

Miriam is 15 months

Water Play

I have been wanting to do some pouring activities with Isaac for some time now. This summer I had it in the back of my mind to do a water sensory tub outside, but never got around to it. Now that the weather is cooling off, that idea will have to wait until next summer ;-) But it has been warm here a few days this week, so Isaac and I headed outside to play in the water. I realized as we were doing this, that he has never poured any liquid before!! So, we will continue to work on this. He absolutely loved it and had a great time. I had to strip him before we went back in the house. . . he was absolutely soaked, but had a huge smile on his face!

Alphabet Matching

I brought out our Alphabet Matching cards this week along with our pocket chart. I made these cards out of 2 identical posters I got from the Dollar Tree. I cut them out, laminated them, and now we use them for matching games.

Our pocket chart came with these sight words and also a set of Alphabet cards (without pictures). To add a little extra this time, I had Isaac match up the correct card (without pictures) to the correct letter. We then also talked about “words” and how they are made up of our letters. I used the sight word cards and had him tell me what the first letter was in the word, and we matched those up too.

Little Touch Leap Pad

We pull this out at least once a week. We now have 5 books that go with it and he LOVES it! I had a whole stack of stuff to play with on this particular day and this was what he chose. Miriam just likes to flip through the pages and doesn’t want me to show her how to play yet. ;-)

Lovin’ Our Lacing Blocks

We’re including Miriam more and more in our Tot School play times. It has been great and it’s fun introducing Miriam to all these new things!

I love how she is holding out a block to her brother!!

I noticed that Isaac stacked up the blocks by shape all on his own! He seems to have quite the organizational mind! (I’m sure there’s a much more technical word for it, but he likes things neat and organized)

Miriam and I had fun with the blocks while Isaac was napping. I showed her the hole in the blocks and how to lace them together. Here in this pic she is sticking her finger in the hole ;-) We had such a good time and made some precious memories. She was content to sit on my lap and snuggle as we played. And of course I absolutely LOVED IT!! She is such a little doll!

Bottle Cap Fun

We played with the bottle caps one day and both kids enjoyed it. I first brought them out while Miriam was still taking her morning nap. As Isaac was putting them in the container, we would call out what color it was, or what letter I had written on the cap. As we were doing it, it gave me some more ideas of how to play with the bottle caps. Hopefully more on that in a couple of weeks!

Miriam got in on the fun once she woke up.

I had some tumblers that we have used with color sorting. Isaac picked up the blue one and declared it his. He then put all the blue bottle caps in it. I have come to the conclusion that his favorite color is blue. He picked out a blue fish the other day from our letter F printables and declared it his too. ;-)

Miriam loved playing with the tumblers as much as the bottlecaps. She would stack and restack them. In this pic I pulled out the green, orange, and blue caps and the same color cups. I showed her how the colors matched, but she just wanted to play with the cups ;-) I don’t have a picture of it, but Aaron played with her some with them. She would hand him the stack, then he would only let her have one back at a time. Once she had them all stacked again, she would hand them back to her daddy.

My cute kids also like the sound they make when they talk into the cups :)

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

Living Healthy: What I Drink

2010-10-18T07:53:00.001-04:00

I desire to LIVE HEALTHY, not only for myself, but for my family. I want to model a healthy lifestyle for my children, so they can grow up and know what it is to live healthy and already have those habits formed in them. So, I have decided I am going to let you all in on the journey :) Sometimes I look at myself and see so many things that I want to change, but I have come to realize that I do much better working on one thing at a time. (And I am able to stick with it!) I’ve heard it said a few times that it takes around 3 weeks to change a habit. So I am going to be working in three week increments. I will be working on a habit for three weeks, checking in on Mondays to let you know how I did (accountability is a good thing!). After the three weeks I will move on to the next habit that I would like to change, keeping up with the previous ones. First off I am going to change what I drink. I like sugar. I love sweet tea and soda. :( And I definitely don’t drink enough water. So my goal for the next three weeks, (and forever) is to seriously change what I drink. Here’s what it will look like:

one glass of juice in the morning mixed in with my liquid vitamin
one - two cups of hot tea a day (breakfast and/or evening)
one cup of coffee (during my Bible Study)
8 glasses of water

And that’s it! That’s what I will be working on these next few weeks. How about you? Are there any unhealthy habits you want to work on in the next three weeks?

Tot School

2010-10-17T14:48:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 32 months

Miriam is 14.5 months

This week we mostly did a little of this and a little of that. :) We reviewed our letters we have learned so far: A-F and will probably continue that through this coming week. Any printables you see are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler!.

Enjoying the Sunshine

Our First Sensory Bin!!

I have had a sensory bin on my “to do” list for quite some time. We have been having beautiful weather and one afternoon I just started going around the house collecting stuff to put together our FIRST!!!! sensory bin and take it outside.

Both kids enjoyed it so much! The hardest part was keeping the spoon out of Miriam’s mouth!

In our bin we had rice, pinto beans, alphabet letters, artificial flowers, pom-poms, cars, and measuring cups and spoons.

Miriam’s First . . .

time playing with Play-doh!!

and her first time playing with Pom-Pom Magnets!!

Favorite Moments of the week :)

I was finishing up something in the kitchen and asked Isaac if he wanted to “read” his book while he waited on me. This is how he ended up. Absolutely precious! For this bookwormish mommy, I LOVE to see my little guy enjoying books!

Veggie Tales Live!!

Wednesday we got to see Veggie Tales Live as a family! We all had a great time and the kids absolutely LOVED it! (even though we were cutting into naptime!) Both kids bounced, swayed, and sang along with the music. It is such a joy to see your kids having so much fun!

Reading with Daddy

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School blog!

MIriam dancing

2010-10-15T18:31:00.001-04:00

Chicken Corn Chowder

2010-10-11T12:04:00.000-04:00

This particular recipe is my first very own creation :-) I had wanted something with chicken and corn and creamy so I started looking up recipes and used ideas from about 3 or 4! The result is one of my favorite comfort soups. It is so quick to make and easy to keep ingredients in stock. The other week I even made it on Saturday evening to have for Sunday lunch! We like it with grilled cheese sandwiches :)

Here’s what you need:

1/2 – 1 small onion, chopped
1 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb. cooked chicken, cubed or pulled
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup chicken broth
1 can whole corn or bag frozen corn
1 can diced potatoes or 2 medium potatoes peeled, cubed, and cooked
(optional) 1 c peas, bacon, and/or shredded cheese

Above picture is without optional ingredients.

How to fix it:

In your soup pot, sauté onion in butter and olive oil.
Combine soup, milk, and broth and add to pot.
Then add cooked chicken, corn, and potatoes to soup. (opt. peas) and simmer until heated/cooked through.
Top with bacon and cheddar if desired.

Tot School: F is for Fish

2010-10-10T23:28:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 32 months

Miriam is 14.5 months

We had another fun week of Tot School. Right now we’re averaging about 2-3 days out of the week of having official Tot School time. My dad came in for a short one day visit this week too, which was extra fun!

Online Fun

Isaac and I played one day on the computer. We love the Fisher-Price online learning games! They have a fun alphabet zoo game where he learns letter recognition and we also played a few new games this time! One focused on colors and shapes and another we played taught him opposites.

This was his first time using the mouse! He would learn in/out, up/down, etc and then had to click on the picture that corresponded with the one they called out.

Alphabet Foam Tiles

We started off “trying” to play a game where he would jump on the letter I called out . . . but that didn’t work. Maybe next time :)

So then we put them in order and took the letters out of the squares and made a puzzle so he could match up the letters.

He did great with this!

Miriam had a lot of fun playing with these too!

And when you’re done learning your alphabet, you can wear them like a necklace. Silly kids :-P

Ff is for Fish

All of our printables this week are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler!

Miss Miriam

She is becoming such a little ham!

I really have no idea what she is doing, but she does it often, I caught her twice. It’s kind of like she is giving me a cheesy smile and she tilts her head back while she is doing it. ;-)

On a more serious note . . . . :-) Books are keeping her attention more and more. Although she rarely looks at the pictures, she just likes to turn the pages, over and over again!

Our little princess :)

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

A Boy and His Boots

2010-10-05T16:06:00.001-04:00

For those of you who know my son personally, you know that he has never liked to wear shoes! There has been more than one Sunday morning that his father and I have been picked on because Isaac would be running around church with no shoes on! It has really become somewhat of a joke. Well, we have now found a pair of shoes that Isaac DOES NOT WANT TO TAKE OFF . . .his cowboy boots!! In fact, he will cry whenever we take them off. So today when I was putting him down for a nap, I asked him if he wanted me to take them off or leave them on, and of course, he wanted them on! :-)

Create In Me A Clean Heart

2010-10-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me”. Psalm 51:10

This past Sunday in the youth Sunday school class, we looked at Psalm 51. This has always been one of my favorite passages of Scripture. We talked about the background of the passage, who David was, his achievements and failures and his repentant heart. We walked through the life of David that led up to Psalm 51 and continued the story by reading the Psalm in class. When we got to this particular verse, I had a bowl of water on the table. We then talked about sin. As the class named off different sins, I dropped food coloring in the water. The once pure water was quickly turning an ugly shade of brown. We talked about how sin does that to our heart. It “dirties” us up. I then brought out the Scripture that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. When we have sin in our hearts, the things we say, our actions and attitudes are affected by that. It then hit me that God was speaking to me, for you see, my actions and attitudes the week before were anything but pleasant. I was frustrated, annoyed, impatient with my children and the list goes on! And let me tell you I cried over it! I said Why God?! What is going on that I am so cranky and irritable?! The dirtiness on the inside was coming out in impatience and unkind words. I realized in that moment in that Sunday School class that God was telling me I needed a clean heart. That was my problem last week. Just like King David, we must all cry out to God for a cleansing of our hearts. That we might be clean and pure before him. For it is out of a pure heart that we can love and give ourselves to others. As the illustration continued in class, we poured bleach into the murky water and watched a transformation take place. The once dingy (and disgusting) water was becoming pure and clean right before our eyes (I ran out of bleach. . . oops. . . so we ended up with some beautiful blue clear water, like you’d find at the beach ;-) As I told the class, when we are truly repentant of our sins, God (and God alone!) can come in and cleanse our hearts of the sin and make us pure. That is my prayer today and my prayer for you as well. And you’d better believe the next time I get a little short with my children, I will pause in my place and take a deeper look. ;-)

Southwest Chicken Salad

2010-10-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

I fixed these salads the other night for supper and thought I would share with you! This salad is soooo yummy and easy to throw together. I got the original recipe out of a magazine and then tweaked it for our taste.

Here’s what you need for the salad:

green lettuce (I used green leaf lettuce here, but butter lettuce is also VERY yummy for this salad)
diced red onion
can of black beans, rinsed
cooked corn (I got a bag of the frozen sweet corn that you steam in the microwave, makes it extra fast!)
diced tomatoes
1 lb. cooked chicken
shredded cheddar or Mexican blend cheese

Just layer in one big bowl or individual serving bowls. Sorry I do not have exact measurements. For our family, I normally just cut up what I need at the moment and put in individual bowls.

The Dressing:

2/3 cup Ranch mixed with
1/4 cup BBQ sauce

Enjoy!

Unjumbling some Thoughts

2010-10-03T15:28:00.001-04:00

I have had a lot of things on my mind lately, some things to blog about and some things not ;-) I keep telling myself that I really should journal just to get all this stuff out and hopefully make some sense of it. But these days I normally only have a few minutes at a time to sit down, so the thoughts never go anywhere, they just keep whirling around inside my head. I have finally decided to write down some possible blog posts that I’ve been contemplating for a while. Again I rarely have more than 5 minutes at a time to sit down at the computer! So here are some things I’ve been thinking about posting. (I’m sure this list is 99% more for my benefit than yours, just to get it down on paper and off my mind!)

Our Evening Routine
Our Daily Routine
~~My First Recipe Post!! Southwest Chicken Salad~~
~~My Second Recipe Post! Chicken Corn Chowder~~
Homemaking: A Lost Art?
Thoughts on the Proverbs 31 Woman
The Importance of Marriage in Raising Children
~~Create In Me A Clean Heart O God (Psalm 51)~~

Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel better now ;-) Now maybe I can get some of these written!

Update: The post ideas marked through are not off my list, they have already been completed and scheduled to post in the coming week or two :)

Tot School

2010-10-03T15:07:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 31 months

Miriam is 14 months

Here are a few pics from our week of Tot School. We had a full week of ministry and not a lot of time spent at home. It was a fast paced week, and I am looking forward to it slowing down just a smidget :-) I didn’t have the camera handy at times this week, so there aren’t a lot of pictures to visually capture our time together. But Isaac recognizes the letter “E” now which was our letter of the week!

Music Time

Calendar Time

Fun with Play-doh

Reading with Mommy

Other Activities this week:

Making the letter E with our magnetic color cubes
Letter E Coloring Page
Caterpillar #’s
Do A Dot page with stickers
Clothespin Color Match Game
Little Touch Leap Pad
Reading, Reading, and more Reading!!!

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School blog!

Trike-a-Thon

2010-10-01T17:58:00.001-04:00

Every year the church daycare sponsors a Trike-a-Thon to raise money for St. Judes. This year we attended with our kids! Isaac got to ride his bike that Grandma and Grandpa got him for his 2nd birthday. When he first got it in February, his feet just barely touched the pedals. Now his feet can reach! He needs to grow just a little more to be able to pedal better, but it is so fun to have the visual that Yes! He is growing!!

Miriam got to hang out with the toddler class while they were outside for a buggy ride. They had a seat with her name on it ;-)

Up and Coming

2010-09-28T00:35:00.001-04:00

Now that we have settled into Fall (to which I am EXTREMELY thankful – its favorite season!) we have settled into more of a weekly routine. There are a some really exciting things going on in the church and I am so blessed to be a part of them! I just wanted to give you a little glimpse of what all is going on this fall.

Women’s Bible Study

I am so blessed once again to help lead a Ladies Bible Study group. We are doing another Beth Moore study: Esther, It’s Tough Being a Woman. We have TWO groups again this semester for a total of 15 ladies participating! This has been a desire of my heart for some time and I am just full of joy over it and so thankful to the Lord. I felt like my heart might burst this past Thursday night at the beautiful picture I got to see – eight amazing women gathered in my living room studying the Word of God together. It is in those moments in ministry that keep you going! I thank the Lord for using me and pray that I will always be continually obedient to his leading and willing to be used by Him.

Growing Kids God’s Way

Aaron and I have the privilege of learning along with three other couples about how to raise our children according to the Word of God. We are using a series called Growing Kids God’s Way. It is an eighteen week course (pretty intense) and we are about 4 weeks into it at this point. I have to say, for us personally as a family, I am SO GLAD that we are going through this. We all want our children to be well-behaved and respectful of others, but this course takes things a step further and asks the question, Why do we want our children to behave in such a manner? Is it so WE look good? So we won’t be embarrassed out in public? Instead our answer to the question WHY should be based on Biblical principles, that we want our children to have it in their heart to obey us and ultimately to obey God. Our children’s obedience should come out of a heart that desires to obey because they know the moral reason why and not just out of fear of punishment. This course really helps to lay the foundation of reaching the heart of your child for Christ. These first few weeks we are really laying a foundation for this and learning the extreme importance that the marriage relationship plays in the family. As we go along, hopefully I will take time to share little nuggets that I have learned from this.

True U: Does God Exist?

I have been teaching the Youth Sunday School class again for a few months now. I have not been real happy with the curriculum we have been using and have felt like they need something with more depth and more foundational in the faith. I recently came across a series that Focus on the Family and the Truth Project have helped to put out. I am so excited about this and pray that the Lord will use it to help our youth become deeply rooted in their faith.

D is for Dinosaur

2010-09-26T21:40:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 31 months

Miriam is 14 months

We had so much fun playing together this week in Tot School!

Pounding Pasta

I got the idea for this from Mama to 3 Blessings. I took an empty box, poked holes in it, and put ziti pasta in the holes for Isaac to hammer. He LOVED it and we played it over and over and over . . . and over!

I set it up the first time, and then once he pounded the pasta down, he put them back in the holes himself. Here he is using his fingers to push them down through instead of the hammer and I am telling him to use his hammer. He thought it was great fun ;)

Miriam played with this for over half an hour in one sitting!

She was pushing them in as fast as I could set it back up! She also liked to hear the noise it made when she shook the box with all the pasta in it. She would reach in, pull out a couple pieces, inspect them, drop them back in and do it all over again! She was too cute!

All About Dinosaurs

We used chocolate chips to help us learn to count . . . Yum!

Our new calendar board is working out great! Isaac enjoys putting the dates on the calendar. I have to help out a little to make sure he puts it in the right square ;-)

A little pom-pom magnet fun. We were using red magnets to make the letter D since our color of the day was red.

I pulled this game out from our C collection. He had fun counting the caterpillars and it kept his attention a lot longer than normal!

We are making a D for Dinosaur!! I got this idea from Totally Tots. They have a fun craft for each letter of the alphabet!

Dinosaur puzzle

Size Sorting: We have just started working on the small/little and big/large concept.

The Activity Mom featured this fun dinosaur shape sort printable from Yellow Mums. What perfect timing!

Bottlecap matching!

This was our first time doing this activity and Isaac did great!

All other printables this week are from our Letter of the Week Curriculum by Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Fun with Cards

Someone had given us these matching word cards a while back. I thought they were so cute! I laminated them for durability and right now we use them to match the pictures.

I pulled out six sets at a time. I put the first half of each picture in our pocket chart and let him find the matching half.

He’s thinking awful hard!

Isaac started off being very neat when he would make a match and making sure it was right side up and so on. By the time we got done he was . . . well . . . not so neat.

Miss Miriam

Here she is playing with a fun puzzle I got for a few bucks at Wal-Mart. She is just beginning to start matching them up, it is so fun to see her learn. And when she gets tired of matching the shapes/colors, the blocks make for a nice snack ;-)

More Bottlecap Fun!!

We have been collecting these for a while and I even got my in-laws in on the collecting. I had made this can from an oatmeal container, wrapped it in scrapbook paper and cut a whole in the top. (Original inspiration for this came from Morgan at Psalm 127:3) Miriam loved playing with this and it held her complete attention for over half an over. She filled up the container, so I had to empty it so she could keep on going!

And of course, snacking on the caps is always an option.

Taking it Outside

This was Miriam’s first time playing with the sidewalk chalk. I think we can safely say it was a big hit!

Watching brother writing on the sidewalk.

Isaac is thinking: “FINALLY! Something mom will let me hit with the bat!”

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

Dueling Pianists

2010-09-20T13:47:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to share this very fun and incredible video clip!

My Blog Was Featured

2010-09-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

on two blogs recently!! I was so excited. I am a little behind up keeping things up to date on here (except Tot School) so it was a few weeks ago now. But I thought I would still share the fun news!

About three weeks ago Jolanthe from Totally Tots featured my blog in her Terrific Tot Sites article!

JDaniel4’s Mom has a list she posts weekly of noteworthy posts she has come across. She featured the color matching game with clothespins and pipe cleaners I had posted a while back!

Tot School This Week

2010-09-19T16:25:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 31 months

Miriam is 13.5 months

I’m beginning to think that there is no such thing as a normal week for us and that every week there is something extra going on. So maybe the “un-normal” week for us is when we are at home all week with nothing extra planned? This week was very enjoyable and a special blessing to us. We had a missionary couple stay with us Wednesday – Friday afternoon. They had served in Mexico for over 24 years and it was such a wonderful blessing to have them in our home. We had late night conversations over a cup of coffee learning about their ministry and life in Mexico. We learned alot about Mexican culture and found out that Mexicans stay up LATE (we’re talking early morning hours) and are out the door by 6 am. Kay also fixed us an authentic Mexican meal on Thursday evening! It was absolutely delicious! We greatly enjoyed our time with them and valued their insight and mentorship.

We did get two days of Tot School in this week amidst preparing for and having company.

Fun with our new Calendar Board!

Isaac is picking out his "color of the day”. He did this a few times . . a day ;-)

We are beginning to learn the days of the week by singing a song. Isaac then gets to put the days on the calendar.

;-)

(My inspiration for the Calendar Board came from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. Here is the link to her Calendar time post.)

D is for Dinosaur!

This picture was taking after Isaac had colored it. If you look closely, you can see a few faint scribbles at the far left of the paper. (Actually, don’t look too closely, I need to repaint the table hehe) After a very short while, he was ready to clean up the crayons.

We also worked on sorting upper and lower case D. He did really great with this, I was so pleased!

Play-doh is always a big hit. (I was the one to make the play-doh letter Dd, Isaac watched. He had a short attention span that day! ;-)

I found this set of blue dice at the Dollar Tree. We rolled it on the table and counted how many circles were on the top of the block.

Stickers are a great exercise for those fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination! We used the Do-A-Dot page in our curriculum and put stickers on the circles.

Our letter “D” printables come from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler!

Dominoes!

This was a new one for us! I showed Isaac how to set them up and we knocked them down, over and over. By the end I could hardly get any set up before he was knocking them over again!

Miriam wanted to join us, although I’m not sure Isaac was very thrilled with the idea ;-)

Our Tiny Tot

It’s amazing how long a few cups and a couple of laundry baskets will keep her occupied. She put the cups in and out of the baskets and worked on her stacking skills.

She also really likes playing with cars! Here she is taking the cars in and out of the barn.

We were also playing with our nesting blocks.

Our Early Learning Box

A few months ago Aaron picked up this learning box for $10 at a local department store. Isaac and I bring it out about once a week and play.

It has magnetic round stickers, books, flash cards, stickers, and dry erase markers to be used with a few of the books. It focuses on colors, the alphabet, numbers, animals, etc.

The kids love playing with the flash cards. They are also made where you can help learn categories, such as fruit, birds, farm animals, toys, etc. The whole is color coded and all the contents of the box are built on the same theme.

Is he going to be a lefty???

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

Yard Sale Blessings

2010-09-18T21:49:00.000-04:00

I absolutely love finding a good deal on gently used children’s items and yard sales are a great place to look! A few weekends ago (yes, I have a list of things to blog about hehe) we headed out on a Sat morning to go yard sale shopping. We came home with some GREAT finds!

I had just finished telling Aaron before we arrived at one yard sale that the kids were fine with clothes, but the next thing we would need for Miriam was fall/winter in the next size – 24 months. Well . . . . the Lord provided a BOX of fall/winter clothes in the exact size we needed for only $15!!!

The same lady had a bag of 12-18 month boy clothes that she threw in for $5. We figured we could pass it along to someone who needed it!

Since we were buying quite a bit from her, she kept throwing things in at ridiculous prices. The Dora Bean Bag Chair . . free.

We also came away with some really fun toys for the kids. Miriam loves her little aquarium that plays music whenever she drops the fish in.

We got this Fisher-Price table for $1. I don’t think the lady knew what she had!

It was a little like Christmas morning at our house when we got back home! We also got alot of fun VHS videos for $1 a piece and a big stack of board books for $2!

My Favorite Find of the Day for Isaac!!

Isaac loves watching Go Diego Go with Aaron in the evenings before bedtime. At one yard sale we found this motorized Diego Jeep for $10! How perfect is that! (And at another sale we found some little Diego house-slippers! )

My Favorite Find of the Day for Miriam!!

The total cost for these 3 articles of clothing . . .(drum roll please . . ;-) $4!! I’m thinking Christmas for the red dress and the brand new white coat! And I LOVE the Old Navy pink coat!! Too cute! I am so grateful to the Lord for his blessings. He always provides for our needs and sometimes a little extra :)

Funny Gal

2010-09-17T21:16:00.001-04:00

She was blowing bubbles with her spit . . . lovely right? ;-)

She loves making faces . . .

More blowing bubbles and spitting . . . .

Week of Potty Training and Planning

2010-09-13T21:18:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 30 months Miriam is 13 months

We did not have “official Tot School” this week . . . instead we had some intense “Life School” ;-) We have been working with Isaac now for a while with potty training and I decided it was time to step it up a notch . . . “deep sigh” . . . so Monday evening we got “Puppy Dog”, put “big boy underwear” on him and checked to see if he was dry. Then Tuesday morning we checked again, and Yup, puppy dog was still dry, Isaac was not. So Isaac got to wear big boy underwear this week, so he could really feel the difference between wet and dry. We are putting the emphasis on staying “dry and clean” instead of asking him if he is wet or dirty. Isaac and I had a lot of time just hanging out, watching a little extra TV, eating lots of crackers and drinking lots of water, and trying to stay clean and dry :-)

The circle and square stickers are for Isaac being dry when I checked him. The Diego stickers (his favorite!) are for when he actually used the potty. Aaron had gone to Boston for a preaching conference at the end of the week, so my mom came down and hung out with me and the kids. I had a few appointments on the two days she was here, so she took over most of the potty training while I was out and about. We both came to the conclusion that he’s close, but it’s not quite clicking yet . . .you know what I mean? So we will keep our routine times during the day of going to the potty, and I will be keeping him in diapers instead of the big boy underwear . . .fewer messes for me to clean up that way.

;-)

This week I tried to finish up my Board for Circle Time!! I am almost done! It has our calendar, days of the week, number/shape of the week and letter of the week. Also we have the color of the day and our week’s memory verse!! The last thing to go up on it is our memory verse cards!!! Hopefully I will get that done this week. I am having a little problem printing them because the only computer hooked up to a printer is the Mac, and the file does not show up correctly. So I’m hoping to get that figured out soon!

I also printed off printables and did some planning and organizing for the next 3 weeks! We will be working on the letters D, E, and F (I love the fish!) I print everything on card stock and laminate it. I then have each letter in its own hanging file folder along with the planning sheet I used. This way when we go through it again (with Miriam next time!) I already have the foundational materials and I can add to it if I feel the need (or just find some fun stuff to go along with it!)

We have been using the Letter of the Week Curriculum by Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler! All of these printables are from this curriculum.

To see what other fun things moms are doing this week in Tot School, check out the official post with Carisa at 1+1+1=1.

Everyday Life

2010-09-06T03:05:00.001-04:00

Tot School: Taking It Easy

2010-09-05T14:35:00.001-04:00

Isaac is 30 months

Miriam is 13 months

This week I felt like we did not accomplish much at all in the way of Tot School. It was another unexpectedly crazy week with a follow-up doctor appointment for the kids on Monday, (Isaac’s pneumonia is cleared up and so is Miriam’s ear infection!! Praise the Lord!) an all day event preparing a meal for our Wednesday night fellowship and prayer, and then my parents came in for a visit at the end of the week! As I look back through the pictures for this week though, I see that we actually did quite a bit!!

Play-doh Fun

I brought out the play-doh a few times this week. My initial thought here was to review the letters A B and C. So I got out three colors and the three appropriate letter mats . . .but Isaac of course had other ideas ;-)

Here he is taking his play-doh and trying to get it to fit in the hole.

On a separate day I brought out the letter A and here he is trying to make it himself!!

Sorting Pom-Poms

This was one of Isaac’s favorite games this week! He asked to play it a few times and couldn’t wait to get his hands on it! I used a package of colored pom-poms from the Dollar Tree and I had these fun tumblers that we had gotten from Wal-Mart. Isaac then sorted them by color.

And when he was tired of matching up the colored pom-pom to the correct color tumbler, he stacked the cups and stuffed as many pom-poms in a cup as he could ;-)

Miss Miriam

Miriam did a little reading this week ;-)

And played with some flashcards. (Her facial expressions absolutely crack me up!!)

We looked at her fun book blocks. This one is all about shapes.

And she enjoyed her Leap Frog Musical table!

Using our New Easel!!

A few posts ago I shared how we got a great deal on this extremely nice, well-built easel!! We have had such a great time with it this week!

Isaac has loved playing with it. I have made shapes and letters out of magnets and he has loved just putting magnets up on the board!

Everyday Items

I got the idea for this from another Tot School mom, Morgan at Psalm 127:3. She used an oatmeal container, wrapped it in scrapbook paper, and cut shapes in the lid to use as a shape sorter. This got my mind rolling . . . I had everything but the foam shapes, so in my lid I cut holes and then we used pipe cleaners! (Then Isaac decided to put his pom-poms on the lid too) So I am going to be saving my lids from now on and using this container for different activities! (My next one will be a big hold for Miriam to drop pom-poms or cotton balls down through!)

Choo-choo!!

I have had my eye on the Melissa and Doug block train for a little while now. A few months ago, we went to a consignment store and they had it for $5!! I was so excited! Isaac loves choo-choos and this is our first toy with blocks like this!

Lacing or Not ;-)

Isaac wasn’t too interested in the lacing animals. He just wanted to look at the box. :)

Eating Our Numbers

I found this fun poster at the Dollar Tree a while back. I hadn’t used it in a while and brought it out this week.

We placed apples jacks on each picture to help us count. (Isaac could not eat them until we were all finished. Such a mean mommy I am. At least it kept him on task. Although he was not real happy about it as you will see later ;-)

Then sister got in on the action and helped Isaac eat the cereal.

Just a Little Reading

I am so glad he likes books!!

Shape Sort

I had pulled these shape sort cards out and laid them on the table. I turned my back and Isaac got them out of the bag and started matching them up on his own!

(These printables are from Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler)

Mom’s Favorite :-)

To see what other moms are doing in Tot School this week, check out the official Tot School site!

How deep the Father's Love for Us

2010-08-29T10:08:00.002-04:00

On Sunday mornings I like to listen to one particular Christian radio station because they play beautiful worship music on Sunday mornings. I love that in the hustle and bustle of getting everyone ready, listening to this music redirects my heart to worship my Creator God. As the kids and I were playing, this song came on. It is one of my absolute favorites. In light of my reading through Deuteronomy and my post last night (or early this morning ;-) I thought this song was so fitting to share.

NOTE: There are some graphic scenes depicting the crucifixion and you may want to view without little ones present.