Christmas Cookies!

We try to take our neighbors cookies @ Christmas every year. Some years are better than others, but we are done for this year. It feels very good to do something for others. I enjoy it and I think it's a great thing for the kids to do too. I also enjoy the surprised looks. I hope we can be a good witness to our neighbors as well as trying to get to know them better.

Here is the finished product! We put chocolate chip, orange cookies, molasses, soft sugar cookies, and cut out cookies in the bags. I hope they enjoy!

Orange Cookies!

I just tried this recipe, and I love it!

1 cup butter

1tsp. baking soda

2 cups sugar

pinch of salt

2 large eggs

1 tsp. (heaping) baking powder

1 cup sour milk

4 cups flour

1 medium orange, juice and rind

Frosting

2 Tbls melted butter

1 Tbl orange rind

4 cups powdered sugar

juice of an orange

Cream together the butter and sugar till fluffy. Then add eggs beat well. Add sour milk and orange juice, and rind. Seperatly mix soda, powder, flour,salt, add to the above mixture beating well. Drop by heaping tablespoon on to greased cookie sheet. Bake @ 350 for 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Yield-3 dozen

Once cool frost and enjoy! If frosting is to thick(mine was) add milk

Being truly Thankful

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. It used to be an excuse to get out of school! Now it's about being truly thankful for what God has given me. Here is a list of things I'm thankful for:

An Omnipotent God

Jesus making the ultimate sacrifice for me

My husband

My 3 beautiful children

My family and friends

Having a home and having food to eat

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Look what I got!

I am so excited! Yes I know it's a drying rack. Most of the time it will be used for diapers. My old rack is on the left, my new one on the right! You can see the size difference! It has plenty of room on it! I love it!

Big Boy

TJ got his first tooth, and he is starting to sit up! He's 6.5 months old.

The Glorious Flight!

This is a story about Louis Bleriot. We made 11 planes just like in the story, and we flew them. I learned that this should have been a project daddy helped with, I can't make airplanes well at all! We still had a lot of fun!

A pair of Red clogs!

This is a great story about a little girl who learns about honesty. We learned a little about Japanese culture and ate with chopsticks at the end of the week! A fun experience!

Yes Zeke is in his Jammies!

Zeke

Zeke read his first words! He was playing with blocks and I asked him what he was doing, he said reading. I sat down and said mom will make you a word to read. I put the blocks together to make it say cat and he sounded it out and read it! I did several more and he read them, all 3 letter words! He has known his letters and his main letter sounds for over a year so it's not a big surprise. Now he can do spell to write and read along with Brie and I (maybe!) He's pretty proud and so is mommy!

Brie can ride her bike!

She did it! She decided she'd had enough of being the only one of her cousins who couldn't ride! We are so proud!!!

Titus Jack is 5 months old!

My little boy is getting bigger! I can't believe he's 5 months old.

Applesauce

For three or four years my mil and I have made applesauce together. I'm glad we have something like this we can share! I'm very blessed to have such a great mother-in-law! We did 2 bushel of apples, 1 of Gala, 1 of MacIntosh. We got a total of 36 quarts.

For the year of 2007 we have 43 quarts of tomato juice, 19 quarts of peaches, 9 quarts of green beans (plus more out of our garden), 13 pints of diced tomatoes, 14 quarts of sweet corn, 7 quarts & 30 pints of pizza sauce, 17 pints & 25 jelly jars of salsa. A lot of this is being divided up between my mom, sister and brother, but still a good stockpile. The total price for everything was $125, and a lot of work!

Titus is the first one of my kids that I've cloth diapered. I love it, I wish I would have cd'd all of them! He is wearing a wool soaker in this picture, which I love! It has been 1 month since our first usage with wool, I'm hooked! It's kept his bottom clear of rash, it's amazing how it absorbs moisture, and I think it's cute! We've had lots of comments about our boy having a sweater on his bum, but like with most comments I don't care. It's a great thing and I love it! I'm sure someday down the road Titus may not appreciate it, but oh well! Do most teenagers appreciate anything?

Game Day

Ah, it's that time of year again! The air is getting cooler, leaves are starting to change color, and best of all: Football season! I love it, football has become my favorite sport over the years. I grew up on sports - baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, and football. I was born and raised in northern Indiana, where the normal college team to like is Notre Dame. Well, I slipped through the cracks. I am a die hard Michigan Fan! I remember always liking Michigan, but around Jr. High I started to follow them every year. Since then that's who I've liked! It gets a little ugly around our house this time of year. I can tell you from experience that it's not a good idea to laugh at your dh favorite team (N.D.) while they are losing! I can't help it, I guess it's my competitive side coming out! I try to cheer on the inside, and keep it to myself, anything to keep the peace! If you believe than you don't know me very well!!! Hopefully Michigan can pull out a W!

COLORS!

We tie-dyed today! I love to do this, it is so much fun! I did 6 shirts for Titus, 1 shirt for Brie, and 1 shirt for Zeke! Then I did a whole bunch of diapers which are for Titus!
This is the second time I've done this and each time I start the kids have to have a "paint shirt" too. Today they got to help me!

I had a good time, hope you enjoy the pictures! Don't mind the mess in the back ground, I promise it doesn't always look this bad!

Lentil

The book we are reading this week for school is Lentil! It's a great book about a small town boy who can't sing or whistle. He saves up his money and buys a harmonica. He practices and practices til he can play. I decided that learning to play a song on the harmonica could be one of our fun projects to do, well let's just say that so far it has not been that fun! After working for about an hour she has decided it's too hard, but I've been trying to encourage her to keep working on it. This was how we started our school this morning, so after reading the story I pointed out that Lentil practiced whenever and wherever he could. I'm not sure if it will help or not, but I hope when we are done with our book she will be able to play a song. I should mention that the song she's trying to learn is Popeye the Sailor Man! Her choice, not mine!

School

I homeschool, and for the most part I love it! I have days when I wonder why I'm doing it, what I'm thinking, and of course am I ruining my kids? I do think it's the right choice for our family at this point in time though. We officially have 1 week under our belts. I thought it felt great until Brie informed me today she didn't like school! She had been begging me for weeks to start school back up. I said to her you're the one who wanted to start back up so bad, she said I want to do last year's school. I guess I have to get on the ball and work harder. Last year we did My Fathers World, it's a unit study curriculum. It had crafts, things she got to read, some writing, and we learned about a new subject every week. This year for our main core we are using Five in a Row. We read a story every day for a week, after we read we talk about different elements of the story. It does have some crafts, but not many. I'm going to have to come up with something! The girl reads very well, and enjoys doing so. So maybe having her read some read alouds would help. For math we are using Right Start. So far it has been review, I think as it gets going she will enjoy it. For phonics we are using Spell to Write and Read. I haven't gotten that started yet! I hope to start it very soon! Zeke listens to some of what we do, but other than the math he isn't very interested.

Cartwheel!

I love to do cartwheels! It's such a rush to be upside down, there is that split second where your whole body is suspended in the air. Nothing keeping you from crashing down except gravity! Zeke always says that he can do "real cartwheels", last night I said I can do cartwheels too. Brie and Zeke both thought I was making it up so I took them outside and showed them that I in fact could still do a cartwheel.( a pretty darn good one if I don't mind saying so) When we were working on the salsa Brie came running upstairs and told me she could do a cartwheel, and asked me to come watch her do one, I of course went down and watched in anticipation. I'll be honest I didn't expect her to be able to do one, since she had been working on them for a while and she had a ways to go. I was shocked at what I saw, now it's not perfect but I think it is great, I'm so proud of her! And Zeke... well he is 3, after all!

More cousin pictures!

Jeff was nice enough to share some pictures with me! I think they turned out great! It looks like a lot of fun to me!

Cousin Fun!

Mark's cousin Jeff, his wife Carolyn and their sons Evan and Seth were in town this weekend. It was so nice to see them, I really enjoyed our visit, I wish it could have been longer though! It felt good to catch up with them a little bit and hear what's going on with them! It was amazing to see how well the kids got along! Brie had met Even and Seth 2 years back and they picked up where they had left off. I'm not sure if they remembered each other or not, but they got along great!

Construction is coming along!

This is my In-laws house! It's just around the corner, I'm really excited that they will be so close. Right now they are 3.5 hours away, so being 5 minutes away will be great! It will also be nice for all the grandkids to be able to spend more time with them! I can't wait!

Tomatoes

We have canned a few weeks in a row now! It feels so good to have produce put up, but it is so much work. My mom, grandma, and sister have been helping, that makes it go so much faster. We ended up getting 43 Quart of juice out of 2 bushel of tomatoes. We also got 19 Quart out of 1 bushel of peaches. The next week we made salsa, and we got 17 pints and 24 jelly jars, and 13 pints of diced tomatoes! Mark and I put up 5 pint of pickles, 14 quarts of green beans(so far) and with a little help from brie and my mom 13 quart of corn. My mother-in-law and I will still be doing applesauce. I think we are ready for a bad winter, which means we won't have one! Stiil it feels good to be stocked up!

How many Quarts?

Sunday after church I was trying to figure out how many quarts of tomatoes I could get out of a bushel. I yelled for Mark and told him I needed his brain. Zeke was standing there watching me and I said to him maybe you can tell me, he said yeah. So I said ok, if a bushel weighs 50 pounds and it takes 3.25 pounds to make 1 quart of juice, and how many quarts can I get out of a bushel? He thought for a few seconds and then said 16. Well I scrolled down the page and it said 15-18 quart so he guessed right! We thought this was so funny! Zeke is 3 and VERY smart but I don't think he is that smart!

Deer Forest

I grew up hearing Deer Forest commercials on T.V. always wanting to go there. When I heard we were going there on vacation I was so excited! Who wouldn't want to (as their theme song goes) "Feed a deer, ride a pony, feed a deer, ride the train, feed the deer, grab a hot dog, feed the deer, ride again, feed a llama, ride a camel, talk to folks from nursery rhymes, feed the deer ride and picnic, feed the deer, a day of fun"! I was born in '80, and the park probably looked the same then as now! You could tell that everything was fairly outdated, but it was still so much fun. They have a ferris wheel, small roller coaster, and then helicopter, bugs, horses, boats which go in circles. I made Zeke go on the helicopter ride with me and Shad. After Zeke went on the helicopter he went on several more. Brie did great! I think it helped her to have all her cousins there with her! I'm not sure who enjoyed it more me or the kids!

Here are all the cousins except Titus.

Swimming Lessons

Our summer seemed so busy that it felt like we didn't even have a summer. Brie was able to take swimming lessons. A lady in our subdivsion let us use her pool, and someone found an instructor. Zeke could've but decided that it looked to scary! Brie did a great job, you could tell she was nervous, but she still did a great job! We went on vacation right after lessons and we were able to practice more. I think that helped a lot, I'm sure with a little more practice she will be swimming!