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Showing posts from November, 2011
I just remembered that some of my family members who follow my blog don't also follow my posts on Facebook, so some of you might not know about Norah's blog. Click here to see it.
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We've been making a big batch of little pancakes from scratch, then letting them cool, freezing them and then toasting them every morning for the girls' breakfasts. These pancakes thaw as they toast and by the time they pop up, they are hot enough to be smeared with butter and covered in syrup, almost as if they just came off the griddle. (I've tasted them and they aren't that different than fresh pancakes.) This has been pretty easy for me to do every day, mostly because I already know what I am going to make the girls and I don't have to give them choices and then wait for them to choose between two or three things. And the girls love them. They eat them all right up. (Before, the girls would only finish half of some of the other breakfasts I was making them and just leave the rest untouched.) Pancakes this way are also a much cheaper (not to mention hot ) breakfast option than several of the other options out there. And, with the same meal every morning (or al
How can this be? You make me holy, a vessel for honor, prepared even for glory? And then you pour and pour and pour your grace in me but I can't contain it. So it spills over and over and over, But you keep pouring. Why lavish so much on me? You do this so I, as an object of your mercy, can look around and see clearly, how kind you are and how much you love me. -Veronica Boulden
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My Thanksgiving plate this year.
As crazy as this sounds, as I read on Facebook about some of my friends headed to Grandma's right now, it makes me look forward to being the grandma making Thanksgiving dinner for like the fortieth time with my kids' spouses and grand kids all around me, God willing. There's so much to cherish today and so much to look forward to! I'm glad that in the Lord, I don't have to fear the passing of time. "Strength and dignity are her clothing, And she smiles at the future."
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I thought I'd start using my blog to keep track of the songs I like when I like them so I can look back after a while and see what I was listening to when. So, this is one of my favorite songs right now.
Dwayne's reading the book EntreLeadeship by Dave Ramsey. In it, Ramsey suggests making goals for all the main areas of your life (so that your goals aren't too one sided and you become a more well-rounded person.) Dwayne suggested we make goals in all these areas for the coming year. I was already thinking about my New Year Resolutions, so now, I am just placing my goals in the correct categories and concentrating on balancing all of the areas well. Dwayne and I are also discussing some of the goals, particularly the "familial" goals, since they might require us to help one another in order to accomplish them. Here is the list of life areas Ramsey suggests making goals for and the goals I have under them as of right now. As I think about this throughout the next month or two, these may change and I may add some more to them. - Goals for 2012-2013 Career- Master Sue Patrick's Workbox System , adapt it and implement it in my homeschooling. Finish ten
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Avril's the right size for the rocking horse that my dad made back when Norah was her age. She rides it all the time now. Avril calls it "my baby yee-haw." She is very affectionate to it petting it, kissing it, hugging it before and during and after every ride.
We're still using Family Bible Time in Pictures by Kenneth N. Taylor but now, Norah is the one reading it to me. Each story is just about the right length that I want her to practice reading out loud everyday. Here's Norah reading about Jesus walking on water.
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I took the girls to the Jump Zone last Friday, but it was a school holiday. It was sheer madness. I thought a home school mom would have no need for consulting the public school calendar... Lesson learned. They had a deal right where you only paid $5 per child if you bring in goods for their holiday food drive. I cleaned out my cabinets, taking all my extra cans of yams and corn that I bought for some reason, some time back, but can't remember why. It was a win-win for me. But, I will have to take the girls back when it isn't so crowded.
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"In thee my soul shall own combined the sister and the friend." -Catherine Killigrew
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My friend wants to learn to sew and I've been talking to her about the process today. Learning to sew is a process, I think, because you don't just learn everything you need to know at once. It takes a lot of trial and error. So, with sewing on the brain and for the fun of it, I thought I'd go back and see if I could collect some pictures of what I've made over the years. I wondered if my pictures would show any apparent improvement in my sewing abilities. And I think they do! It's clear to me that my projects have gotten more difficult over the years. This has been very encouraging to me today and it just makes me want to go sew some more! Using a poncho pattern, I made Norah a ladybug poncho for Halloween in '08. I bought Norah's pajamas way too big and hemmed the legs (then let the hem out as Norah grew) so we could get more than one year's wear out of the same pair of pajamas. I followed (and then altered and customized) a pattern for an Native A
If you look around at the people you associate with and find that you are the most respectable person in the bunch then you might want to rethink your friendships. This little proverb occurred to me tonight while I was thinking about the day, praying for one of my friends, overwhelmed with how good she is, how much I love her, how thoroughly she inspires me, how much I want God to bless her and her husband and kids. Dwayne and I barged in on them today. As they welcomed us with kisses and hugs and laughter, the savory smells and warm air coming through her door pulled us right into their home. We found her busy simmering a pot of homemade soup, cutting out made-from-scratch biscuits and cooling some carrot cakes (made with fresh carrots) for her friends and family. She was doing as much work as I do in the kitchen on a holiday on a regular Saturday and all this for other people. And, perhaps most notably, she is doing all this in the midst of fighting breast cancer, the cheerful han
God is in the process of showing me that humility looks different than what I thought it looked like, entirely. Until recently, honestly, I thought that I could learn humility without ever having to suffer actual humiliation. I guess I always thought the road to humility should leave my pride intact. Or that humility would lead (fairly straightly) to my being exalted before men. I laugh at myself now that I realize these things and say them all out loud. But God is leading me into one circumstance after another that is shattering these misconceptions. I am beginning to see that humility is more like: bearing up under the knowledge that others have judged and even condemned me, not contending with to the proud, holding my tongue when someone is using theirs to tear me to pieces, even praying blessings upon those who curse me, and leaving room for the all-important possibility that I could be wrong even when I feel that it's the most unlikely. Humility is downright humiliating ! With
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We put an egg in a tupperware without water and ran around and threw it down. Splat! The egg broke inside the tupperware. (This is to show what would happen to our brain without the fluid that surrounds it.) Next, we put in another egg and filled the tupperware with water. We had to try really, really hard this time to even crack the egg inside the tupperware, demonstrating how well the fluid that surrounds our brains protects our brains and how well God designed this part of our bodies.
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Halloween '11
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We had heard people talking, but we weren't totally sure until we found the mayor's official announcement in the newspaper online: Waterbury has moved Halloween to tonight. (It was canceled on Oct. 31 due to the big snow storm that took out most of the city's power, including ours.) So I have been finishing the girl's costumes this morning. I was going to cut this old, brown shirt and sew it to make it into a genuine cape, but Dwayne talked me out of it. With a brown shirt and pants and boots, he's right when he says this will pass for Yoda's cape as it is. I also finished attaching the yarn braids to Norah's ear muffs. And instead of making a separate belt, we saved serious time and effort by attaching the silver-gray patches directly to the skirts elastic. And we did this in a matter of seconds with crazy glue. So the girls are ready for tonight, basically. I'll take more pictures when they are all dressed up and ready to go and if I can, I'll
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On a previous post, I took pictures of the girls playing in the first few inches of a snow storm a few days before Halloween. Actually, the weight of that same snow combined with the leaves still on the trees ended up being so devastating that it took down many power lines around the state and we went without any power from Saturday night through Tuesday afternoon. (I didn't have working internet during that time but my blog was still posting things because I had written and saved them several days ahead of time.) Many friends and neighbors and businesses are still without power so we are very fortunate to have ours up and running again. We spent most of our powerless days in front of the fireplace in the front room for warmth. Everywhere else in the house was freezing. We enjoyed a lot of family time since we were totally dependent on one another for entertainment. My camera's battery was charged so I managed to take photos even though almost every other piece of tech
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We started our chapter on the skeletal system in science. The first project was to build a clay man with and without toothpicks to demonstrate how our bones support us. This was a really interesting demonstration and I suggest doing it with your kids when you study bones. Without the toothpicks, the clay man just fell over. But, this picture shows how well he stood with the toothpicks inside his frame. You can see a toothpick in the man's neck if you look closely. Note: I decided to stick with Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology this year. It's very, very advanced, but I have decided to really shorten the lessons and this seems to make in manageable enough. It's going to take us a really long time to get through each chapter, so it will, naturally, take us even longer to work through the entire book. (I am guessing it might even take two school years!) But all in all, I don't think I will find a program that I like better, so we're sticking with