"The Handmade Dress" Patterns Guest Giveaway at Grosgrain!!

For over a year now, I have enjoyed following the Grosgrain blog. Her creations are so inspiring, especially the clothes she designs for children! I have even entered a few of her giveaways now and then. Anyway, right now she has a guest giveaway from "The Handmade Dress" going on--a chance to win $50 worth of adorable girls' dress patterns!!! I am so excited to enter this one. I've admired these patterns for some time now, and hopefully even if I don't win, I will be able to purchase some in the future. Be sure to check out this awesome giveaway if you have a little girl who you love to sew for!!

Homeschooling: Week 13

{image from www.sxc.hu}

Well, now that we're well over a quarter of the way into our homeschooling journey, I thought it was time for another update!! Here's where we are right now, as we head into Week 13 of our Sonlight program:

• Storybooks: We've been reading through various books over the past weeks; some have become favorites and others not-so-much . . . I think the top three in Sam's opinion would be Uncle Wiggily, the Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature (I highly recommend this one--it's really an awesome introduction to science, and is a super fun way for kids to learn it!), and Usborne's Things People Do. Besides the Sonlight selections, we've also been reading some other fun books. We recently finished Charlotte's Web, and are currently reading through a Paddington Bear treasury.
• Math: We are about halfway through Singapore Earlybird A. (We'll be doing books A & B over this year.) Right now we are doing a unit on shapes--easy peasy for Sam. The whole book has been quite easy so far, but I like how it goes slowly and thoroughly builds a good math foundation right from the start. I have to say I am loving Singapore math so far! One thing I especially like about it is that it's bright and colorful, with many fun illustrations.
• Handwriting: Sam just finished learning to write all of the lowercase letters, and this week we are reviewing all of them. Next week we'll start on capitals. I can definitely see some improvement since we started! Handwriting is not his favorite thing to do, but the lessons are short and he can get through them pretty quickly. He does enjoy getting to pick a sticker for the best letter he writes each day. The handwriting book is short, so we are only doing about 3 lessons every week, and we will still finish it early in the spring. So far I've been very impressed with the book (A Reason for Handwriting) and I'm glad we went with that one.
• Reading: We just finished lesson 73 in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. This is Sam's least favorite subject, and I'll admit I am in need of advice and wisdom with this. He is actually doing really well with his reading . . . I don't think I am pushing him too hard, but maybe I am. He can read the words . . . when he wants to. The problem is that he has convinced himself that it's "too hard" and is very reluctant when it comes time to do the lessons. Some days are fine, other days (like today) are terrible. Today we had tears and the declaration "I HATE school!" when we were working on reading. I don't want him to hate school!!! I want him to see reading as a gateway to a whole wonderful world of learning. We had a long talk about it and I decided we will take a break from his reading lessons for the rest of this week. Maybe I just need to back off on it, or go back and review some of the easier lessons. I told him he can do some reading practice on Starfall this week if he wants, or if he decides to do a reading lesson after all, that will be fine. I would love some advice from more seasoned homeschool moms or teachers . . . my ears are wide open!! To give you an idea of where he's at, we have mastered basic short-vowel words with no problem and are now working on long vowel words. He's reading (what seem to me) pretty challenging sentences, such as "Trish can fling the length of string and then catch the yo-yo." I know he does not really hate school, it's just that he dislikes putting forth the extra effort for reading. All of his other work is fairly simple and doesn't challenge him a lot yet. Anyway, please comment if you have any advice to share or have been through this with your own kids!!! :)

Overall, I am really happy with the way things are going. This Kindergarten year is turning out to be pretty much what I envisioned--a gentle introduction to homeschooling. I'm happy with Sonlight, although not totally in love with all the book choices . . . but it's good for us to read some books that we probably wouldn't otherwise buy. And I can always re-sell them when we're done, if I decide to. :) One thing I am very, very happy about is that the instructor's guide has everything planned out for me--although I think when I do this core with Julia and Josiah, I will probably use a different schedule which I've seen on a Sonlight-users' Yahoo group. The IG is great because everything is scheduled, but there doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to the way they schedule things. For example, in the Uncle Wiggily book, we jump around all over the place rather than reading straight through it. It doesn't really matter since the stories can stand alone anyway, but it's just something that's a little strange. I've seen a schedule that is arranged by weekly themes, and I think that may be what I'll try next time around. The only things I have to plan out is our weekly schedule for math, handwriting and reading. It takes me about 5 minutes of planning what we're going to do each week, and then I can always tweak it during the week if needed. Sometimes we do extra math because it's so simple . . . sometimes we cut a reading lesson in half or go back and review one if we need to. The flexibility of homeschooling is wonderful!!!

Well, I have now made this way too long, but I just wanted to share what we have been up to. :) Oh, and this has nothing at all to do with homeschooling, but I was so very excited to read this post from MckMama tonight, after praying for Stellan through the day today. If you want to hear an awesome work of God, go read it!! God is so good. :)

Catch-up Time!

Wow, I have so much to chatter about! First things first: This is baby Elliott, our newest nephew!!!
Elliott surprised Joanna and Clay (my sister and her husband) by arriving about 2.5 weeks early, just after 12 am on Sunday. In fact, his arrival was so quick that Jo didn't make it to the birth center in time . . . but thankfully her midwife was able to meet up with them in another town, closer than the birth center, and Elliott was born in the backseat of the midwife's truck. :) Now that's quite the birth story, don't you think?! Good thing my little sis is so calm, cool and collected! Everything went just fine and both mommy and baby are doing well. It's been two years since I've seen Jo, and I haven't yet met either of her two younger children--hopefully we'll get to see them all sometime within the next year!

Everything is going well for us. Last week, Jim took a little "missions trip" to do some remodeling for a church a couple of hours away from us. He left on Monday and was gone overnight for 2 nights, then came home for Weds. night and left again early Thurs. morning. And then came home for good on Friday! So, it was a kind of strange week for all of us, but we made it through with our sanity intact. :)

I have been working at trying to better organize my life and priorities. Last week I read on Facebook that Crystal over at Money Saving Mom was starting a new routine where she was staying offline all morning. I thought, "I should try that!" So for the past two days, I've only done a quick email check in the mornings and then waited till after lunch to do other computer stuff. I think tomorrow I will start even skipping checking email, and keep away from the internet completely till after lunch. It should help me accomplish a lot more, get Sam's schooling done first thing, and generally make our home run smoother (I hope!).

I've also been hoping to implement a weekly planning retreat, such as I've read about on several blogs (most recently here). I think that would be hugely helpful for me, and very refreshing. It's so hard to find a quiet moment with 3 little ones clamoring for my attention most of the day . . . and you know, I love those little ones to pieces!! . . . but I also love to have some quiet time to think, plan, journal, and pray. I'll let you know what we come up with. Jim thinks it's a good idea, but I'm not sure where around here I would go to make something like that happen. We live in a pretty rural area, and whereas the thought of a planning time spent at a cozy little coffee shop or Panera sounds lovely, we don't have much of anything like that in our neck of the woods. :)

I recently came across a neat modest clothing website that I wanted to share. I know some of you ladies prefer to wear skirts or dresses, and nice ones can be hard to find. This site, New Creation Apparel, has some really cute skirts, and the prices aren't too shocking, either. I particularly like some of their denim skirts, and if I ever have another baby, you can bet I'd be investing in one or two of their maternity skirts!! My sister-in-law, who is expecting, recently bought a couple and told me that they're really nice, and fit really well. So, just a little heads-up for anyone who might be interested!

After our applesauce-making extravaganza, we took about a week to recover :D, then jumped into apple stuff again with our friends, who still had about 6 bushels of apples left. We took some home to freeze for pies, and worked with them last Saturday to turn the rest into apple butter, apple juice, and then more applesauce. Yum!! It was lots of fun, but I think we are all glad to see the last of the apples for this year. It will be so nice to enjoy the fruits of our labor through the winter months!!

Well, I guess that is a quick update on us . . . hope you're all doing well, too!! I'm going to try to get back to posting at least once a week, but we'll see how it goes. Life just seems to be going along at a rather breathtaking speed lately!

Feeling a little saucy :)

Apple-saucy, that is!! My friend Linda graciously invited me over to her home last week for a full day of applesauce making. They make LOTS of sauce each year for their family of 8, and this year they had picked way more apples than they needed . . . so they generously offered to share the bounty with us! Linda worked with me all day long, which was sooo sweet, since their sauce was already done, and she'd already put in almost a full week of sauce making! We chopped, boiled, and strained the apples (her handy-dandy mixer attachment makes the process SO much simpler, since you don't have to core or peel the apples beforehand). The kids played and had a blast together, and Josiah took a nap in the backpack for a while.Then once the sauce was all made and heated, and the jars were ready, we canned it. Linda's husband Dan helped with that part since he was done with work by that time . . . and it was a huge help to have 3 people working on it at once. It was a very busy day, and we were tired by the end of it, but it was so worth it to end up with 78 QUARTS (yes, you read that right!) of lovely, homemade, pink applesauce. The kids love it (well, so do we!!) and are gobbling it up daily. I'm not sure now if it will last us a whole year or not! Hopefully it'll be close, anyway. :) Mmmmm . . . yummy!!

Josiah at 18 months

It's been a while since I dedicated a post to my little third-born sweetie pie. He hit the 18 month mark on Saturday, so I decided it was time! :)

Josiah is so much fun. He mostly has a very sunshiney personality and his grin and giggle are so infectious! I truly cannot imagine life without him in our family. At 18 months, he is starting to "talk" more, but he still mostly babbles . . . he doesn't say a whole lot of real words. I guess he figures as long as he can make us understand what he's asking for with gestures, why bother using words?! :) He does have the word "no" down pretty well, plus "mommy," "daddy," and a few other random ones that pop out now and then.

I am not sure how much he weighs--I haven't tried weighing him on our scale and it wouldn't be accurate to the ounces, anyway. Somewhere over 20 lbs. He was supposed to have his 18 mo. checkup yesterday, but I cancelled it due to all the sickness that's going around. I'm not the type to really freak out over the swine flu hype, but I figure that the place he's most likely to pick up a bug of any kind is at the drs. office, so I might as well keep him out of there since he's healthy right now. :)

Of our three kids, Josiah is the one who looks most like his daddy. He has that charming grin and those twinkling eyes! He is generally very laid back and easygoing, although he does occasionally display a bit of temper! A few interesting things about Josiah that I don't think I've mentioned here before: Both of his hands have a "single transverse palmar crease" on the palms. This is where there is basically only one crease going straight across the palm rather than two creases which don't intersect. When he was born, my midwife was a little concerned because of this, because it's a common characteristic of Down syndrome. However, he is one of those rare people who just happen to have this interesting physical trait, but not Down syndrome. :) Another interesting thing is that one of his ears is different than the other--a little bit "not quite finished" at the bottom. I don't think I have a good picture of it, but basically one of his ears just looks a little bigger than the other. It's not really noticeable unless you happen to be looking at both ears at the same time. Josiah is also the only one of our kids to have never had any kind of hernia (thankfully!). To me, it is fun to notice these little things that are just part of who our kids are.

As far as other habits--he is doing well again with sleeping good long stretches (10-12 hours) at night. He had been doing this since August, then went back to waking again in the night a few weeks ago, and seems to be settling back into his normal routine again now. He has 7 teeth. He puts himself to sleep, usually without fussing at all--he was the easiest one to train out of all our kids; he basically trained himself. He eats pretty much anything. He's still nursing a little bit, but I think he'll wean himself before too long . . . if not, I'll give him a gentle nudge in that direction over the next few months. :) (Yes, I do like to nurse my babies a long time--please don't faint. :) Sam nursed for 21 mos. and Julia for 18.) He does not mind getting his haircut at all, unlike his older brother, who didn't like it at all for quite a while, unless we bribed him with M&Ms!Well, I guess this has been a rather rambling post about our littlest guy, but I wanted to write it for my own benefit, so I can look back and remember what he was like at 18 mos! I am so blessed that God picked me to be his mommy. :)

A field trip to Cherry Pond

Back on Columbus Day, we took our first family "field trip." I love how field trips can count as school days! :) A lady at church had told me about a place called Cherry Pond, which is part of the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge in Jefferson, NH. It was a really nice place to take the kids--a nice, easy (although long!) walk along an old railroad bed . . .

to a beautiful, remote area with woods all around, opening to a gorgeous view of the Presidential range.

The fall colors were still lovely up there, and we had a perfect day for our adventure.

The kids enjoyed looking off the observation deck.

View of Mt. Washington (snow-capped mountain on the right) and surrounding peaks

Cherry Pond

On our way home, we drove some "back roads" through Kinsman Notch, and stopped here at Beaver Pond. As we drove into the parking lot, we suddenly remembered that we'd been here before, exactly 5 years ago. Sam was about 7 mos. old at the time! As you can see, the weather had clouded up by the time we got here, and the foliage was not nearly as nice, but we still enjoyed our little visit.
The brook that runs out of Beaver Pond:
I am so thankful for this beautiful area where we live. I know that there is beauty all around, pretty much no matter where one lives . . . but we are blessed to have so much natural beauty surrounding us. And we don't have to go far to find it. We had such a nice, refreshing day away!

What's for supper? :)

{image from www.sxc.hu}

Tonight at our house, we will be having alfredo veggie lasagna and Italian garlic bread. Mmmmm, just the thing for a chilly fall evening. Oh yes, and apple pie for dessert!

I am a little bit bummed because it looks like we won't be able to make it to church tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the final services with the Pettit team, and we weren't able to go to either of the ones during this week, due to Julia having a tummy bug on Weds., and Josiah having a runny nose yesterday. Now Julia and Josiah both have runny noses, and Jim got the tummy bug last night . . . so I think we better all stay home. :( Why oh why do we always seem to get sick when there are special services at church?!

Today I did a few errands in the morning, including visiting one of the local thrift stores. I found a really cute summer shirt for only $2--couldn't pass that up, even though I won't get to wear it till next spring sometime! I also dropped off some clothes at the children's consignment store; hoping to get a good amount of store credit from those to stock up on a few things for this winter!

Tonight it's supposed to possibly get down in the 20s, so I'm going to pick all the roses that are still blooming, as well as the hydrangeas (which are well past their prime, but still have a bit of color). We'll get to enjoy them on the table for a little longer! Yesterday I picked the last of the garden produce, which wasn't much--a handful of green beans, two green tomatoes (which I am going to fry--a first for me), and our one cute little cucumber. We had such high hopes for that garden, but it was rather disappointing . . . however, I have a few ideas of things we can try next year to hopefully improve our harvest. :)

Well, that's just a little quick rambling update on us. Thanks for all your comments on the ceiling and everything last week--sorry I haven't had time to respond to them individually, but I do really appreciate you guys taking the time to comment. :) I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend! What's for supper at your house? I'd love to hear! I can always use more inspiration! :)

Works of God Monday

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Works of God post, but I’m glad to finally take the time to do so today! It is so awesome to see God at work in our lives and in the lives of others. Yesterday was the beginning of evangelistic/revival meetings with the Pettit team at our church. What a blessing! Steve Pettit’s messages were very challenging and encouraging, as always. Hearing him makes me feel like I’m back in college. :) And the team’s music was amazing, too. I really don’t know who all reads my blog (other than friends and family), but if any of you readers happen to live in the Concord NH area and have a free night on Weds. or Fri., you would be very welcome to come over to the services at Trinity Baptist Church! Weds. is Family Night and Friday is an Irish sacred concert. Both services start at 7 pm, and you can get info and directions to the church here. I don’t know if we will make it to both Weds. and Fri. nights or not, but we’re hoping to make it to at least one of them!

Another thing that is awesome is to see God at work in our children’s lives. A few months ago, I had blogged about Sam’s profession of faith. Ever since then, when we would talk to him about salvation, he didn’t really seem like he remembered or was sure he was going to Heaven, so we weren’t sure if he had really understood or not. We kept praying for him and bringing it up now and then, trusting God to work. One Sunday a few weeks back, I heard him “witnessing” to Julia. I asked him again if he was going to Heaven and he replied that he didn’t know. He seemed to be kind of hung up on “not knowing the right words to say,” so we sat down and went over the plan of salvation again, and I explained that he didn’t have to say some exact words, just pray what was on his heart and trust Jesus. This time he wanted me to come in his room with him as he prayed. I sat and listened as he prayed such a sweet little prayer, and I think he really “got it” this time. Of course time will tell . . . but we pray for fruit that remains!

Finally, I’d just like to praise God for all the work He’s allowed us to get done on the house over the past few months. Even though Jim has been working fairly steadily, he’s still had some free time to accomplish some big projects, and it’s been a real encouragement to see things moving along!

So those are just a few things I’m praising God for this week. How about you? Head over to Jenny’s blog to join in with Works of God Monday!!

Bookworms

I have been overjoyed lately to see my kids really turning into bookworms. :) I think it has to do in part with our school curriculum being centered around books, plus we have just been finding some great ones at the library recently. Also, Sam's and Julia's attention spans are getting longer and longer, which helps tremendously! I love the fact that Sam would rather snuggle up and read books with me than watch a movie. Here are a few that we've been enjoying over the past few weeks (some school, some library):

• The Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature
• Things People Do
• Fancy Nancy
• Strega Nona/Big Anthony (several different ones in the series)
  
• Wee Gillis
• Make Way for Ducklings
• Horton Hears a Who

As you can see, we have quite a bit of variety in our book choices. :) I am so thankful for our library, as I am able to get so many more great books that we couldn't afford, let alone have room for!

Do you enjoy reading to your children? What are some of your current favorites?

A Homemade Life

As I mentioned in my previous post, we've been able to do a lot of work on the house over the past few weeks. We got a wonderful deal on some v-groove pine for our living room and kitchen ceilings, and after getting it all urethaned, we spent about 3-4 days installing it. It makes such an amazing difference in our house! No more energy shield ceilings!!! Here you can see what it looked like when we first got started in the living room (and you can see those lovely ceilings that we've been living with for the past 4 years :)).
Here is the kitchen ceiling, all finished:
This shows how Jim enclosed the main supporting beams that run the length of the house:
And he even built a door for our storage area above the kids' room. YAY!!! No more black hole!
And this is how we enclosed the part above the windows in the living room:
There is still a lot of trim to do, but it is SO nice to have the ceiling almost totally done now!!

Another homemade thing I did recently was to make a pillowcase for Jim's body pillow. We both have them and they are so comfy to snuggle up with at night, but his pillowcase was falling apart (due to the kids using it for a "sleeping bag"--and they've been strictly instructed not to use the new case for that purpose!!). I had this great cowboy fabric that I bought on sale years ago, not knowing what to do with it . . . well, it was perfect for this project! I recycled the zipper out of the old case and it turned out great. It was a pretty fast and easy project, and Jim is so happy with his "new" pillow!


The last thing I want to share is some more exciting house progress. Jim got the front of the house all sided!!! We've been living with Tyvek for a long time, and it's thrilling to see such a big chunk of the siding done now. He still needs to finish the sides of the dormer, then we need to tackle the garage door end (which is on the right in this picture), then the far end. We already have most of the back side of the house done.

So that gives you an idea of what we've been up to over the past month! Have you tackled any home projects or anything else homemade? I'd love to hear!!

Time to catch up (again!)

I feel bad that I've been doing such a lousy job keeping up with the blog lately! I really enjoy blogging; it's been a wonderful outlet for me and a really fun way to record our life over the past 4+ years . . . I wish I could make more time for it! I'm going to try to do better and at least get one or two posts up each week. I know there are some of you out there that keep up with us mostly through the blog, and I'm sorry I haven't done so well updating on our lives!

Let's see . . . Fall is officially here and going by way too fast. It doesn't help that we've had a lot of rain this week, so not so much time to enjoy the foliage, which is getting close to peak! We haven't done a whole lot of interesting or unusual things lately, but we HAVE gotten a lot of house projects done--praise the Lord!! I will share about those (with pics!) in a separate post. It is exciting to see things moving along. We have set a goal of trying to get the house finished by Thanksgiving 2010. Obviously this will depend on two major things: money and time. :) But it feels good to have something to shoot for. We have made really good progress over the summer, and it's given us a boost to get so much done on some of the bigger stuff.

Homeschooling continues to go well. We just completed our 7th week. We took a week off while we were working on some major house projects, but the next week I doubled up on some of the schoolwork, so we've actually finished 7 weeks of the curriculum, although only 6 weeks by the calendar. Sam is still really enjoying school, for the most part. His reading is coming along well, even though he is convinced it's "hard" at this point. :) I'm pleased with the progress he's making, and trying not to push too hard. It's really fun to listen to him starting to read sentences more smoothly and quickly!

Jim and I have started going through Financial Peace University (again!--we've still never gotten all the way through it, although we've had the program for two years), and I also borrowed The Total Money Makeover from the library, so we're reading through that as well. We have been really challenged and convicted of how we need to become better managers of the finances God has blessed us with. We've been rather loosely budgeting for the past year, but this month we set up a more concrete one and actually took out cash for our grocery envelope. For most of this year, my goal has been to spend $300/month or less on groceries, but I decided to cut back even more, and this month's budget is $250. Which will be quite a challenge for me, but we did well for the first week, spending only $51.44. So I have hope that we'll be able to make this amount work for our family!

If you all think to pray for us, will you please pray for work for my hubby? We are heading into the "slow season" after a nice and busy summer where he had three good sized jobs. Knowing how tight things were last winter has made me rather anxious about this one . . . but I need to remind myself to "be anxious for nothing!!" (Phil. 4:6)

Well, I will wrap this up now because I have a couple other separate posts that I hope to get up today as well. Hope you're all having a lovely weekend!!