My Week in the 'Burbs

I spent 6 days staying with my grandson while my daughter and son-in-law went on a vacation.  Grandson was in school so needed to stay at home and I agreed to go and stay the week with him.  So CJ and I packed up Goliath and all of our stuff and headed to their home to "baby sit" for the week.

First off, they live much closer to shopping than we do so that was a fun bonus.  But oh the traffic!  I'm just not used to that!  I think I'd rather deal with my bumpy country roads than all that traffic!!! It's a trade off I guess.

The thing about not being at home is I seemed to have more time on my hands.  We were able to walk around the neighborhood and get some sight seeing, exercise and fresh air every day.  That was different to me.  I wish I had some pictures!

It was so different to have houses so close together, yet it was very quiet.  Everyone was at work!

We enjoyed our change of pace but now I'm glad to be back home.

Please somebody remind me to start taking pictures!

Wrapping up 9th Grade

We always tend to school year round with no particular "off/on" days.  We just do school when we can and don't when we can't.  And typically we end up finishing in the winter rather than the summer.  But I thought I would record some things from this year up to now.

C.J. has grown TALL this year.  He is just a smidgen taller than me and I am 5'10"!  His voice has changed and many times when I don't see him but only hear him he sounds so manly.  It's still a shock sometimes.

C.J. walking like his dad.

C.J. has a challenging time with book learning because of some LDs but it's no sign of his intelligence and understanding which are off the charts sometimes. One thing he's done this year is a daily quiet time on his own.  Nothing fancy, just reading the Bible every day and hearing what God has to say.  C.J. learns some profound things sometimes.  In our youth group at church he is often the only one who knows the story or event in the Bible.  The other kids are "church kids" too but maybe they don't spend consistent time in the word like him, especially the Old Testament. I also see spiritual growth and understanding as he applies God's word to situations.

C.J. reading on his Bible app

C.J. LOVES the History Channel and any type of war documentaries.  He records them on his own and I don't have to make him watch them.  It's quite the other way around. He is quite obsessed with military weapons and warfare.

C.J. trying out his new Air Soft Gun

We went to our local library sale this year.  There are tons of books they are selling.  We snagged this one for $2 and it has become his favorite book this year. He wants Volume II.

Favorite book of 2013

C.J. is showing signs of becoming a gentleman.  Just when you think a teenage boy can't get any more irritating, he opens a door for others, he does chores without being asked, he notices something out of place and picks it up and returns it.  Wow!  These small moments make a mother's heart melt. :)

C.J. will not smile in pictures.  He has braces but I don't think that's the reason.  I think it's called B-O-Y.  Boys!

C.J. and his sister S.

C.J. is a very talented puppeteer.  We travel with the PIT Crew puppet team to do shows and to conferences with others to learn more about this ministry.

He smiled! Sort of. ;)

C.J. and friends at a Puppet/Creative Ministry Conference

C.J. started working in the tech booth at our church. He's learning so much from this experience. I've been told he's a fast learner.

He also loves to make stop motion videos.  Here's a sample of one he made about a year ago.  I have to say he did a good job considering we had no special equipment and in fact he had a poor camera.  He tells me that the camera is shaky because he didn't have a stand, he was just putting the camera on the floor.

Warning - subject matter is "war".  What else?

I see my son growing into a young man.  He's my baby but he's not a baby anymore.

Look out 10th grade here we come!!!

Spending Time with my grandson

We picked up "MLP" - the grandson this afternoon and he and I ended up out at the workshop until after 10 pm making a project.

He wanted another owl pillow.  This one he designed himself. He chose the shape and the fabrics.  I did the sewing. MLP is 9 years old.

He named him "Poindexter".  He has a plan to add a guitar and glasses.  

Sewing projects...Done!

I've had a few projects just sitting and waiting to be finished.  I've been very bust but let's face it, I've been procrastinating.

DOWN WITH PROCRASTINATION!

So I went out to my trailer aka workshop and got busy.

I finished up this dress yesterday for my little granddaughter "M".

I also finished up these guys for puppetspace.com.  They'll be ready to ship this week!


I also chose a pattern, cut out and sewed up M's birthday outfit but I'm not posting a picture of it just yet.  I want mommy to be surprised.  I'll be mailing it this week to it won't be long before I can post it.

Now it's time for Sunday school!

AND and I get my other grandson also "M" tonight to stay the whole week!  Yay!  I don't get to see my grandkids often so when I do it's a real treat.

My husband's favorite cake

Prune Cake
My mother-in-law's recipe and my husband's favorite cake.  The name sounds weird but really it is one of the most moist and delicious cakes you've ever had.

I copied this from her handwritten recipe and she didn't have all the detailed instructions written down so we just make it from experience. ;)

Cake
1 cup of oil
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
1 jar of baby food apricots
1 jar of baby food prunes
1/4 t nutmeg
1/2 t cinnamon
1 t soda
2 cups of flour
1/4 t salt

Bake at 350

We use a bundt pan.

Icing
1 cup of sugar
1 T Karo syrup
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup butter

This does need to be cooked but I have no instructions, we just do it until it looks right!

Let the cake completely cool and pour glaze over.

Looking back at 2011

I've never done a post like this before, but for some reason I just got inspired to recap my year and celebrate the wonderful things that happened this year.

January Grandson's birthday and he had a fun 7th birthday party. We had a family member make his cake. Lots of fun! (I wanted to put a picture of it but I can't find one! It was a Despicable Me cake.)

February brought some ice to the north Texas area and we were kind of at a standstill for about a week! That's what happens in Texas. We're not used to it. ;)
We also had a birthday at the end of February ds turned 13!!! Yes, a teenager. My last child at home is now a teen. :D

March ahhh Soccer season! We are pretty busy each week going to practice and having games on Saturdays. His team was #1!! We also had a lot of doctor appointments in March for some reason???

I attended a WE Conference at Prestonwood in Dallas and it was a wonderful weekend! That is such a HUGE church! Finally a pic!

April Soccer continues and I've been asked to teach a VBS training seminar and I was very nervous but excited! I did it! Whew. I still like teaching kids better than adults. ;)
My mom moved this month into assisted living, her choice not mine. But it will be alright.

May One of my favorite months!  The homeschool bookfair is in May and I had one of the best times yet with friends and all the speakers.  Love it! It's also DH's birthday.  We also did a simple unit study with other homeschoolers during April/March studying "Around the World in 80 Days".  It was a lot of fun!

June I think was the least eventful month for me, except for my birthday nothing really went on.  Just hot.  More doctor appointments.  We had a PIT Crew training day for the puppet team I direct at church.  It's always fun. Well, I almost forgot.  There was one event in June that was so much fun!  Our church helped another church in the area put on a "Backyard Bible Club".  We had such a blast with this guy...

July The best month this year!  Madeleine Noelle was born! Yay!  We won't get to see her until next month though. :(

We also had VBS this week at church. One of my favorite things on the planet!

One hazard of VBS, while Grammy is getting ready for her class...someone was running and ran smack into another running kid. :( It looks really bad, but was better by the end of the night.

August Going to Indiana!!! And DS's first plane trip! (Can't find those pics either! Ack!) But here he is holding his niece for the first time.

And in August my mom turns 76 years!

September Back home, more family doctor appointments, my brother has major surgery, my mom moves again (MUCH better place) we start fall soccer, DS is an 8th grader and DH and I have been married now 25 years!!!  Whew!

October the BIG and BUSY month for me.  We do an annual blacklight show at church with the PIT Crew at the end of October.  Here's a peek at one scene...

And if I wasn't busy enough, we agreed to do a second show for my grandson's school carnival 2 days before our show!  We had a lot of fun though!

November More birthdays, youngest DD is now 21 (no, I can't believe it!), Thanksgiving and FAMILY TIME! DD is in a show "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel" at college, DS and DIL and new baby come to visit.  It was the best!!!

December Was nice and quiet actually.  A friend had extra tickets to the Dallas Museums so we went and had a good time.  It was nice to do something different.

Grandson spent a week with us while school was out.  The kids put the Christmas decorations up for me since I had to work extra this month.  It was nice.  We had some family over on the 23rd had dinner, visited and played "Just Dance 3" So fun!  Then Christmas Eve candlelight service and Sunday morning service.  Nice and quiet.


I left out so much but I just can't fit all in. No wonder I'm tired! LOL
Thank you Lord for a blessed year!

The Homeschool Mother's Journal

The Homeschool Mother’s Journal ~
Week 6.5 C.J.'s 8th grade

In our homeschool this week…
I'm calling this week "6.5" because we used it as a catch up week.  It is our 7th week of school, but we didn't do week 7's work.  Make sense?  Not that we got so much caught up, but it helped!

In my life this week…
I have a hard time with this one because my weeks seem to run together, so I thought I'd break it down day by day and find out what it actually is that we do each week.

Sunday 
Go to church early for dd to practice for praise band and I join the prayer group in Pastor's office.
Sunday school - I love my class!
Church - this week I had to teach in Children's church even though it wasn't my month.  The teachers were out of town so I taught for them.  I am the Children's Church director, so it was no burden for me to teach.  I love it!  We are on a "Winners" unit and this week we learned about "paying attention" to God.  We learned about the boy Samuel and how he heard God calling him and giving him instruction.  It was a good lesson.
After church - PIT Crew practice for the Black Light Show!!! This lasted until 7pm!!! I'm exhausted by now.


Monday
I think we slept in on Monday I can't remember anything specific about Monday.  It was Monday.  I had some paper work/planning/organizing to do and I did that all day.  DH took DS to soccer practice that evening. Storms rolled in later that evening.  We need the rain so badly here in Texas, it was wonderful!

Tuesday
Again, I can't remember anything special about Tuesday.  We did some school work and some housework.  Got caught up on laundry. Whoo Hoo!

Wednesday
My day to work at church.  Get up, rush around trying to get lunch and all necessities gathered up and out the door.  Spill Diet Dr Pepper all over myself in the car, turn around to change clothes. Arrive at 8:05am. Just 5 minutes late.  A long list of tasks and projects to get done.  Lots of e-mails, copies, questions to answer, orders to make.  Somewhere in there DS got some schoolwork done.
Ordered the pizzas for dinner at church.  Made the tea, served pizza, cleaned up.  Got ready for our children's department program.  I do a skit every week with the children's pastor.  Finished the skit.  SAT DOWN FOR 15 minutes!!! Church is over at 7:30pm.  Ran an errand for hubby.  Go home.  Get a snack.  Fall asleep on the couch.

Thursday
My second work day at the church. This morning's fiasco was the carnation instant breakfast my son made for me leaking out all over the car and into the lunch bag.  What a mess!!  Got that cleaned up.  We have a little girl coming in to record a skit for us for our Black Light Show.  That takes a couple of hours.  Now I'm behind on my tasks, but somehow I get it all done.  Ate lunch with my friend who cleans the church and her daughter and granddaughter.  Back to work.  Now DS isn't feeling well.  He ends up sleeping on the couch in Pastor's office the rest of the afternoon. Text the coach. He's not making it for soccer practice.  I had to wake him up at 5:00pm to leave.  Had to run an errand for my mom.  Had to get gas in my van.  Drive home. Walk in the door and throw a very quick dinner in the oven.  I didn't have anything thawed! Why??  Sat down at the computer and have a little down time where I decide to write this post.

Friday (at the time of this writing, this is the tentative plan)
Get up.  Meet a friend who is the treasurer of our church to get her to sign a check so I can pick up banners our pastor ordered for a parade in our town Saturday.  Go to the city to pick up my contacts and while I'm there pick up the banners too.  Come back to town.  Get the parade float ready.  Also work on some last minute props for the Black Light show (sense a theme here?).  At home maybe do some light housework and laundry.  Fix dinner, clean up and go to bed.

Saturday
7:00am, arrive at church to finish last minute touches on the parade float.  Meet at the parade starting point at 8:00am.  Ride in the parade.  Hope to get back to my van in time to get DS to a 12:30 soccer game in a neighboring town.  Go HOME!!!

Then start it all over again!
I'm going to bed now. ;)

New Grand-baby!

I didn't realize I hadn't posted about my new grand-baby.  She was born July 24th.  Beautiful. Perfect.

Here she is at 4-weeks old.

Love you M!!!

Looking back, looking ahead

Have you ever had a homeschool year that just seemed like a blur?  This was that year for me.  I know that my son did some work, and I also know that we didn't finish everything we set out to do.  We had so many distractions this year and I hate to make excuses but stress got the better of me.  As I'm looking ahead for next year, I have to take a look back to see where we've come from.  It's a bit discouraging if I'm being honest, but then again, so many good things were learned this year that I just can't put down on a report card or grade book. Know what I mean?  In fact when I really think about it we really did so much this year!

My dh has been ill with an undiagnosed illness.  So far they have said "Fibromyalgia" but aren't sure.  All we know is that he is in pain almost constantly and for seemingly no reason.  He has been off work a lot with no pay and had test after test.  Thus I got a part time job, it was a Jesus deal and now I work 2-half days and 1-whole day at church as my pastor's administrative assistant.  My son can go with me and work in the office with me on school work. It works fine as long as there are no interruptions but believe me there are always interruptions!

One day he said to me, "I never realized there was so much that goes on at church. I always thought we just showed up." Ha ha!  He's learned a lot about this and I hope it's been a good experience.

I also make puppets for our church and to sell (sometimes) this is also time consuming.

There are so many, many other things going on that don't need to be aired out here, but just writing this post has helped me to feel better.  It's my report card of sorts, a record to help me remember what we went through this year.

Thanks for listening. ;)

Ack!

July is practically over, I'll be gone most of August.  Where has the summer gone?  I haven't posted in over a month!

I am working on some school plans but there are so many family things going on too.  My SIL has been living with us for a year and a half and she is moving this weekend.  For me that means moving furniture (mostly mine) vacuuming, rearranging, organizing, dusting, sneezing and doing it all over again until we get things situated.

I hope to get to Wal-Mart before the weekend's over and pick up some things that we need.

I also had a new granddaughter come into the world last weekend and am preparing for the trip to see her in August. Can't wait!

So much to do so little time!

Maybe I'll post some pics and plans soon.

Have I mentioned...

that I'm getting a new granddaughter at the end of July?  Well I am!  And we are soooooo excited about it!

Her name is still under wraps, but her loyalties are already set.

(sorry this one's blurry - camera phone)

These are the first things I bought.  I was on the phone with my son as he was telling me she was a girl... I went directly to the baby section and got these!  So fun and exciting!

Carving a pumpkin...

Well, as it turns out ds age 12 has never carved a pumpkin.  We quit "doing Halloween" a long time ago.  I guess it's been about 12 years!  Anyway, this year I decided to get him a pumpkin to carve.  He decided to do some sort of video game helmet and here is his result. Can you guess what it is?

The carving...

This is it illuminated.  Cool!

I think he did a good job!  He drew the pattern and then applied it to the pumpkin.  I helped him do some of the scraping and a little of the carving - just the larger areas, but mostly he did it himself.

24 Years

Today my dh and I have been married for 24 years.

Swimming with a broken wrist??

We had a family get together back on June 26 at a nearby State Park.  It was hot, but not too bad.  It could have been worse.

But dgs has broken his wrist this summer and has a cast up past his elbow but his mom found out about a waterproof cover that you can get to go over it for swimming and bathing.  Genius!

Here are Uncle and Nephew enjoying the cool lake on a hot summer day.  If you look closely you can see the blue arm dgs has.  At first he was concerned and didn't want to wear it, but as soon as he hit that water he forgot all about it.

We had a fun day enjoying family.

Happenings

I've been busy lately.  It's been good though.  Mostly just getting ready for things like Puppet Shows, Mission Trips, and VBS.  We've had a lot of doctor appointments lately and I'm pretty much responsible for taking whomever it is that needs to go.  I have two more weeks before VBS and I'm in charge of the crafts.  I chose simple ones so maybe it won't take too much time to get them all together.

DS has been tutoring twice a week with a lady from our church who's a teacher so we've been doing that too.  We had DGS this week.  Just took him home today as a matter of fact.  He'll be back in two weeks to go to VBS with us.

We've also had a lot of babies due around us lately.  I went to shower #2 yesterday and there is another one at the end of this month.  Babies everywhere!  Not in our home though thank goodness!

I wanted to do some school with DS this summer and we did at the beginning and we'll pick it back up soon.  This is why we basically school year round because there are times when other things come up so we put the books aside, then pick them back up when things settle down.

I have some more things I'd like to blog about.  Hopefully this week will afford me some time to sit down and get my thoughts together!

So things have been really busy lately. I can't really recall what we have been doing that is keeping us busy, but it is something I tell you.

We are going to continue some school work during the summer. But will be taking a break here and there.

For the first time in YEARS I will have no kids for ONE WEEK! What will I do? Everything without interruption!!!! ;D

I have my dgs for this week so I have extra kids now, but then come the 14th (my birthday) they all leave. YAY!

I need the break. I've been really stressed.

Can you tell?

How sleeping dogs lie...

DD was taking a nap on the couch. Goliath was taking one too (yes he's really asleep, not climbing!). I guess he's so long, he doesn't give much attention to his hind end! LOL

Praying for your kids

I have a book that I've had for a long time. Called Power of a Praying Parent. If there's one person to whom God gave the gift of intercessory prayer, it's Stormie O'Martian. God has really used her in my life over the years, even though I've never met her in person. I believe that "where two or three are gathered together, God is in the midst of them". I sense that presence when I'm praying one of Stormie's prayers.

I've recently gotten this book back out and started using it again. It's amazing to remember some of the times I prayed for my kids in the past and now that two of them are married I have added a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law to the list. Also I pray for my grandson. God is so faithful!

I have a family picture and I look at each face and name each name as I'm praying. Oh, I pray that it touches their life, but wow does it ever touch mine!

First off, God sticks a mirror right in my face to humble me and cause me to examine whether I am being a good model of these things as I am praying for my children. Many times (okay, all the time) I have to stop and confess and repent before I can continue. He is so amazing.

I love it. I love Him. I love my children!!!!

If you aren't praying for your children in a consistent manner, I highly suggest you begin today. The rewards and blessings are indescribable. You don't have to have a book to pray. I started out praying for the four "P"'s for my children -

Partner (future or present)

Path

Protection

Purity

These seemed to cover just about everything in general that they may experience in their lives. I also choose a "life" scripture or two for each child according to their personality or needs. I would personalize the pronouns to fit the child.

For one daughter it's Psalm 30:11-12 "Turn her wailing into dancing; remove her sackcloth and clothe her with joy, that her heart may sing to YOU and not be silent. O, Lord my God, her God, may she give you thanks forever."

Another one for a son was Psalm 5:11-12 "Let him take refuge in YOU and be glad, let him sing for joy. Spread Your protection over him that he would love your name and rejoice in You. For surely, O Lord You bless the righteous; you surround him with your favor as with a shield."

About 12 years ago I typed up some of these things on a page for each child and as I prayed I wrote new requests and praises along the way. It's amazing p look back and see how God has worked in their lives as they've grown. My youngest son has had one of these pages since before he was born!

God has really grown my family over the years. I can't thank Him enough for that. I'm making a fresh commitment today to pray for my kids and their families everyday not just "God bless them" prayers, but truly seeking God for what He wants to do in their lives and joining Him in it.

Birthday Tee Pee

I made my grandson this Tee Pee for his birthday. I hope he enjoys it.

Birthday Cake!

My 19 yo dd made this cake for my grandson's birthday party tomorrow.

I can't wait to see how he likes it!