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Showing posts from November, 2009
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More pictures from Thanksgiving.
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One of our new favorite recipes. Honey Chicken 1/4 cup melted butter 1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup poupon mustard- I like to use Country Dijon by Grey Poupon. 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon curry powder Mix ingredients together. Cut chicken breasts in half so they are thinner. Place them in a sprayed baking dish. Cover with sauce. Cook at 375 degrees for 40 minutes or until done. Do not over cook. Serve over rice.
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The Fosters came for Thanksgiving. We had a great time. The invitation is already open for next year! Just like the old days, the guys played Scotland Yard . Dan is wearing the glasses to cover where his eyes are looking.
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This is a picture of my "to do" list for this holiday week and the reason I may not blog for a few days. And, this is just the stuff I had to write down so that I would remember! It doesn't even mention the more obvious things like "nurse the baby" and "answer the telephone." Notice I've crossed out most of what's on Monday and Tuesday and if I continue to stay on schedule, I'll get it all done and right on time. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
God speaks to us in coincidence. -C.S. Lewis My mother-in-law recently gave me a book called Lady of Milkweed Manor . She wanted me to read it right away because the book touched on topics she and I had just discussed at length such as nursing and motherhood. She was so impressed with the coincidence of reading a book that mentioned things we had said, almost word for word in places, just a few weeks after we'd said them. The book was a very entertaining piece of historical fiction and I'd recommend it to other ladies. But, among the other things I said the book mentioned, it also described how milkweed plants, usually considered garden pests since they so hard to get rid of and so ugly, were used to cure several common ailments back in the old days. Interesting enough, however, I didn't take the picture on yesterday's post , the picture of the milkweed plant, after reading that book, as you might expect. I just found that photo among some of my oldest picture files o
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#42 out of 100 Common Milkweed
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They are Norah's favorite part of the school day, Developing the Early Learner Books 1 , 2 , 3 , and 4 . The books came with our curriculum, Sonlight's Core P4/5 , but they are also available for individual sale. We are almost through the first book now, doing a page or two a day. They have unique activities in them, not just your typical workbook exercises. Our favorite is when I have set a timer, call out a set of directions such as "Color the bulb yellow. Color the umbrella red." That's when I start the timer and Norah has to wait until it beeps to do what I said, remembering the directions for a whole minute before she has to do them. It can be pretty tough, especially if she spends the minute chatting with me instead of concentrating on what she has to do.
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A girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot. -Allan Beck
I've been keeping a blog everyday for over a year now, so sometimes I'll wonder, "What was I up to one year ago today ?" The answer is often quite telling. Take the post from exactly one year ago yesterday , for example. Do you know how many of the sewing projects I've finished on the list I made then? I'm embarrassed to admit... only one. And that's because Dwayne's mom sewed the button back onto my house shoe for me. I flattered myself a seamstress once. Flattered being the key word.
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We bought Norah a Webkinz with some birthday money she received in the mail. (Thanks Aunt Michelle). But, now, she wants to play with it all the time ... Here's part of a conversation Dwayne and I had a few days ago. I had just gotten home from work at the Y. He'd been watching the kids while I was gone. Me- "Norah's been pestering me all day to play her Webkins!" Dwayne- "Well, she doesn't pester me about it." Me- "I don't see why not?!" Dwayne- "Because I turn it on as soon as she asks." Me- Speechless... until Dwayne and I both busted into laughter. And, such is the eternal difference between moms and dads. Moms tend to create conflict for themselves by trying to get kids to do something they don't want to do, something that's "good for them." But, dads just avoid that kind of conflict by giving kids what they ask for. " Chocolate cake for breakfast? ...Sure! "
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Avril loves to play our family's version of Peek-a-boo, one in which we rarely ever actually say the words, "Peek-a-boo." Rather, we cover her face with the blanket and ask, "Where's Avril?!" She waits for a second, actually understanding that we can't see her, then she grabs the blanket, pulling it down to reveal herself and that's when we say, "There she is!" And then we all laugh together. We taught Norah to do this at the same age, too, and with the same exact blanket. I'm not sure there is anything more satisfying than making a baby laugh so hard she kicks and squeals. It's that "Man, it's good to be alive" kind of feeling.
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On my way in to work at the YMCA one very cold night last week, I saw a grown man in a suit coat pull the lid off a trash can like this and dig through it until he found a soda can he could turn in for spare change. There was only one time in my adult life that I wanted to steal something. I was washing my hands at the grocery store bathroom and looked down to see a brand new roll of paper towels under the sink. They were still wrapped in plastic and obviously placed there by a dutiful custodian who noticed that the current roll was running thin. I had seen this kind of thing all the time, but I had never once felt the urge to take anything that didn't below to me. However, this particular day, just minutes before in the same store, I'd spent almost all the money I had left after paying bills, filling my Jeep with gas, etc. to buy groceries and other things for my family (including paper towels) that we needed to get through until the next pay day. But, I was left with only
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On my way home, I drove past an eighty year old woman whose house is at the bottom of our hill. She was raking up leaves in her yard, bending over and putting them into large brown paper bags. Next, a few houses past hers and a little farther up the hill, I passed a young man. He was working in his yard, too, blowing the leaves out into the street with a power blower. When I finally pulled into my driveway at the top of the mountain, I turned off the engine and sat there for a minute. Something, no, several things about the whole scene just seemed wrong.
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"It's fun to stay at the..." The YMCA is once again our second home. I started teaching group fitness classes and water aerobics again in August of this year. Avril was just at six months then, the minimum age for kids to attend the free childcare classes. I've recently added even more exercise classes to my work load with the start of the latest schedule . And with personal training and cardio workouts as well, we end up there at least four to five days a week, sometimes twice a day. I can't say enough good about our Y. It's the kind of place I'd pay to go to, but as an employee, I am I'm lucky enough to get a free membership. And, teaching group exercise is so rewarding, I think I'd do work as a volunteer! But, it's just all the more unbelievable that I get paid (and paid well, I think) for what I do. Norah enjoys being in her classroom. She has made friends with some of the kids who come at the same times we do. And even Avril, who has a har
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I thought it might be fun to photograph some of the milestones Norah and Avril are passing, those rites of passage throughout their childhoods, so that readers, particularly family members, can share in them, too. This picture shows Norah waiting in line to purchase "those twisty cinnamon thingies" from Taco Bell. She's been ordering and paying for items more and more often since she's proven that she can handle it. Don't worry, Dad. When she's standing in line like this, so far away from where I am, I watch her like a hawk until she is back sitting with us again.
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If you want to encourage your kids to learn apart from school, I support that. If you want to empower them to follow their interests, I support that. If you want to promote freedom and comfort and let your children wear pajamas all day, I support that. If you want to inspire creativity and let them wear cowboy or Indian costumes while they work, I support that one, too. But, if you want to ignore established knowledge or manufacture artificial success apart from diligence just so your kids can feel good, that's where you lose me. You can't create another world, one where hard work doesn't matter or one where a successful person doesn't have to do something he doesn't want to do at least some of the time. And, I know that a number of the founding fathers and leaders throughout history taught themselves to read... Blah, blah, blah. I've heard that argument in favor of unschooling so many times that I could puke. But, let us reason together. These men had to teach
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I know my posts about homeschooling are usually all blue skies and roses, but I've been noticing something. The more I mingle with homeschooling moms, the more I see that we generally come in two types and those two types are very different. There are the uptight ones. I'm one of those who read and plan and read and plan and make lists and teach and teach and teach even before my kid is out of the high chair. We often overdo it, yes, but we mean well. And, then, there are those carefree types who frankly, don't ever seem to be home enough to actually home school and who "Don't really care about how their kids do things, just as long as they do them." At playgroups, you hear a lot from this kind of mom, first, because she's always at playgroup and second, because she seems to have a lot of explaining to do. She says high-minded things like, "I never taught my *Johnny how to hold his pencil. I just allowed him to figure that out naturally , in a wa
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This post is dedicated to Grandparents: those useless (though dearly beloved) people God just keeps around to populate the earth. Read on. You'll see what I am talking about in one second. This is an excerpt from a recent conversation with Norah over lunch. It's a good one, so hold onto your seat and swallow your coffee, otherwise you may end up spitting it all over your computer monitor. Norah- "Old people don't like the cold weather." Me- "That's not true. Some older people don't mind it." Norah- "No, none of them really like it." Me- "Why do you say that?" Norah- "Well, Grandmom and Grandad Evans moved away because it was 'too cold' and Grandma Karen and Grandpa Herb don't visit when it's winter. And they all live in places where it's warm all the time... Florida and South Carolina. Old people don't like the cold. They're allergic to it." I try not to laugh out loud. A long pause... S
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Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush is afire with God. -Elizabeth Barret Browning
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We used Norah's Halloween candy (or what was left of it) to make a bar graph. We skipped our regular math lesson for that day and did this instead. Gasp! And, when were done, we even ate some candy, making our graph incorrect with only a few quick chews and swallows. Yum!
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Recent snapshots of the girls.
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When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet. Proverbs 31:21 On the first bitterly cold day of the season, Norah had a coat, gloves and a hat that fits. They had been purchased a few weeks earlier and were hanging on the hooks where she could reach them, just waiting for the time when she would need them. When I zipped her up and we headed out into the cold air, I said to God silently, "It is no small thing that she has a coat. Thank you, Father." You can imagine my surprise when I heard His Spirit say back to me gently, "It is no small thing that you made sure she had one. Mother." So unexpected was this praise, His praise to me , that my breath caught in my throat. And just then, the wind brushed my face and His Spirit sent the verse above blowing softly through my mind. I was humbled and had to blink back the tears stinging the sides of my eyes. As precious as this message was to me, as much as I am sure it was mean
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Now. And Then. Norah this Halloween and Norah on Halloween two years ago. Now and then I like to compare my pictures, to see how quickly my kids have grown. This serves to remind me how quickly time flies, how what seem like insignificant minutes add up to hours, days, years. For what is your life? It is a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. James 4:14
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This post was written by my husband Dwayne, my favorite (my only) contributing writer. I was given this poem by an ex-navy co-worker who left after six years in “the hole.” While I cannot say I know what my brother is feeling, I do know his is a thankless job for a crappy employer. Brandt, our hearts and prayers are with you. Fight through this. You will get through. With much love from your little brother. SNIPE'S LAMENT Now each of us from time to time has gazed upon the sea and watched the mighty warships pulling out to keep this country free. And most of us have read a book or heard a lusty tale, about these men who sail these ships through lightning, wind and hail. But there's a place within each ship that legend's fail to teach. It's down below the water-line and it takes a living toll - - a hot metal living hell, that sailors call the "Hole." It houses engines run with steam that makes the shafts go round. A place of fire, noise, and he
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Norah made this cool caterpillar out of a paper towel roll. Though... hers ended up looking more like a snake than a caterpillar since it is sooooo long and we didn't put antenna on it. But, it's a keeper, none the less. Click here and scroll down for the directions.
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Our loving "Grand-neighbor's" brought Norah and Avril each a bag of treats and presents for Halloween. Norah's bag included these Disney princess dry erase books... Awesome! Our neighbor's are becoming terribly good at almost channeling my mind when it comes to gift preferences. But, as Norah was enjoying her new toys today, I was thinking about the princess stories when something struck me so hard I started laughing out loud. We all know and love these stories, but they don't exactly reinforce the best ideals for little girls. Take Ariel, for example, her story may persuade adolescents to ignore their loving father's advice and continue down dangerous paths, swimming with sharks, metaphorically speaking. Girls may go so far as to pursue interests and boys their fathers don't trust or approve of, thinking their dad and everyone who thinks they are acting foolishly will just be proved wrong in the end. Or take Cinderella. Girls will equate love
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It was very windy and a little wet, but we seized the late Saturday afternoon to build a campfire in our backyard. We toasted bologna cheese sandwiches for a fun dinner before we went trick-or-treating. Avril was all bundled up, of course. You can see her two teeth coming in on the bottom. My big girl Norah helped toast her own sandwich, that is... until she almost swung her red-hot toaster around and hit me and the baby with it. Sigh ... But, the pictures turned out nice. Norah's costume turned out fantastic, if I may say so myself. She ended up loving it. How do I know? Besides the fact that she skipped everywhere, looking down at herself, almost running into walls all night, when I put this on her, she was overcome by joy, grabbed my neck, hugged me and said, "I love you so much, Mom!" Sniffle. Sniffle. And, that's not a real knife, by the way. We covered her plastic toy kitchen knife's handle with masking tape, which Norah then painted brown... This is on
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Norah finished her goal of reading twenty pages and/or Bob's books on Friday afternoon, so we were able to take her to get her first free pizza with the Book It program . This is the page she read to us right before we left to have dinner. Notice the page has the word "woodshed" on it. After reading it, Norah asked, "What's a 'woodshed?'" and at that, Dwayne and I had to ask ourselves through chuckles whether or not we were raising her right. We haven't had Pizza Hut in years, literally, so we gave Norah a hearty and genuine "Thanks" for working so hard on her reading because we were able to enjoy a dinner out with her. Obviously, even though her pizza was free, we had to pay for ours, but Norah felt good about herself, about doing something we could all share in, and we felt good about saving our extra money up in order to do this, not eating out too much at other places so we could go out and celebrate with her.