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Thursday, June 30, 2011

Summer Update

What's been going on lately?????


  The garden is coming along quite nicely!!!  I did however, have to replant onions (they rotted..too much rain!!!), cucumbers, watermelons, mushmelons, and pumpkins.  And we won't even talk about my tomato trouble!!!  But it's all growing beautifully now!!!  I've had lots of help from my Papaw Busick, he's been amazing!  My lettuce is ready to harvest any day.  I froze some jalapenos yesterday for the salsa we'll be canning this fall. I also dried a bunch of cilantro and basil yesterday too.  I plan on canning tomato sauce for all our pasta and pizzas that we make. 

  We are now proud owners of 19 meat chickens, 2 layers, a Rhode Island Red rooster, and two baby chicks.  So it looks like we'll be butchering chickens before long to fill up the freezer!! 
 
  I've been working my way through Maxwell's book "Managers of their Chores" and trying to come up with a master list and chore packs for the kids that will work for us.  It's very stressful, seeing as I'm not quite the "scheduled" person.  I'm more a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl.  But I do enjoy lists and orderliness, so I'm hoping this will bring more peace to our lives.  I'll have to update you more on this as we go along.

  I'm very excited to announce we will be using Heart of Dakota this year for school!!!   A dear friend of mine, Angela, is letting me borrow her curriculum, and I will definately be purchasing more of it for myself!!!  I am so excited to get started.  However, I truly am enjoying summer with my children and husband this year.  I don't really know how to explain it, but summer has been very hard for me, since Hannah.  She was born in May and passed away in Sept, so that year my entire summer seemed to have passed me by in a hospital room.  Then the next year, I just couldn't quite figure out life without her and the yearning I had to have another baby.  Then 2010 seemed to be blur, having Leah, moving, and Derek's first official year of school.  So this summer has been the first "real" summer I've had and got to enjoy in a long time!   We've been enjoying swim lessons, gardening, church camp, 4-H, we had lots of kittens, playing baseball with our homeschool group, catching fireflies, and spending lots of time with Daddy now that he's home every evening!!!  

  I sat in the garden tonight weeding, and just looked around at the kids playing and the baby sitting next to me playing in the dirt and just soaked it all in.  Because just as quick as Hannah was born, she was taken away, and I know that just as quick as these three are young and wild, they will soon be grown and gone.  I thank the Lord for every precious moment I have with them and my husband.  And I praise him for such wonderful summer memories.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Quiet Time

  Today the 4 Moms, 35 Kids are talking Naps and Quiet Time!!!  So I'm linking up to Kimberly at Raising Olives and Connie at Smockity Frocks, some of my favorite blogs!!!

 moms of many manage

  Quiet Time is definately a must around our house in order to keep things sane!!!  I have tried a couple of different routines, but the one we are using right now, seems to fit us best.  I have used the timer before, but here recently the rule has been when the baby wakes up, the rest of the house may "be loud" again.  We eat lunch around noon everyday, so as soon as we're finished eatting, we try to clean off the table and wash up.  (The baby can make a huge mess out of bread!!!  Anyone else's kid like that?) 

   We try to lay the baby (that's 17 months old now) down by 12:30 and she normally sleeps until 3:00-3:30
Leah at 2 months during naptime

  For the first hour, the older two are aloud to play outside or quietly in Derek's room or finish up any school work they still may have.  Then at around 1:30 - 2:00, Lindsay lays down for her nap.  While both girls are napping, Derek has to read to me for 15  minutes.  And then he's allowed to play quietly in his room for the remainder of quiet time.  Derek is very good about playing quietly, so it has never been an issue for us to just let him play.  He plays really well all day with his sisters, so he definately enjoys some time to himself to play with his tractors and cars.  Lately he has been into building things, so he goes out to the barn to build with his Daddy's scrap lumber during nap time, and the the girls are always excited to see what he's made when they wake up!
    Lindsay has been my "problem" child lately on taking naps.  She was having trouble going to sleep the same time Leah was and would lay in her bed and toss and turn and whine and cry.  And it was just really miserable for all of us.  However, if I let her stay up the whole day like Derek, by 5:00 we were all ready to kill each other!!!  So, I finally decided one day to let her stay up and see at what point she started to get crabby.  2:00 is about her breaking point, so wa-la!!!  Derek was about 5 when he gave up his nap, but I still made him lay on his bed quietly until just recently. 
  Now this is what works for us, and I'm not saying that some day if we ever have more children that I won't make Derek lay quietly on his bed longer, but for right now, this seems to fit us just fine!!!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Skirt Wearing

 So I've been following Amy at Raising Arrows and Caroline at The Modest Mom in their series called She Wears Skirts. 

 

And this week they have a link up of skirts in pictures!  And I want to thank my 6 year-old, Derek, for taking the pictures...hehehe ;)  So here goes...



These are some of my very first skirts I actually have sewn myself!!!  I used the Homestead Blessings Sewing DVD's as a guide for meausrements and my dear friend Melisa came over and gave me lessons on how to use the sewing machine and cut and so on......Needless to say, I'm very proud of these, because I'm what you would call a sewing dummy!!!  ;)  Lindsay has been wearing skirts and dresses alot longer than me.  She loves to be in a dress and almost never wears pants or shorts anymore.  It's extremely difficult to find skirts that are decent enough for little girls anymore, so I thought, hey!  why not just start sewing them for her!  And she absolutely loves them!!!  I've sewn 2 now and have more to go!  She especially enjoys matching mama.

This is one of my favorite outfits!!!  I bought two denim skrits at a yard sale the other day, this being one of them.  They came from Catos and I found out afterwards, that Catos is about the only place left that sales denim skirts all the time.  Anyway, I love just wearing this outfit out grocery shopping or Friday nights when we all go out as a family.  You can always dress down or dress up a denim skirt.

And this is one of my favorite Sunday skirts!!!  I wear this year round.  I have a black turtle neck that I put with it in the winter.  I found it at a thrift store here in town for about $6!!!!  It's 97% cotton and 3% spandex so it's very stretchy!!!  I love this skirt!!  I wish I could find more just like it or at least material like it so I could sew my own.

So, I hope you've enjoyed, and I hope you also link up!!!!