And I quote...

You know how you're on another friends blog site and you look at their blog following link and then click away- and before you know it an hour has passed?! Anyway! I stumbled onto this blog and have really enjoyed visiting it. She's a mom of 6 in Canada with a sincere relationship with the Lord. I was reading one of her latest entries about homeschooling and thought I'd share a bit of what she has to say about living life:

"For us that means living:

Authentically.
Live your life. Invite your children to join you! Read together. Pray together. Sing together. Work, bake, garden, chore, clean, sew, fix, build together. Don't fabricate artificial demarcation lines between schooling and living. Live a one-piece life. Live holistically.

Joyfully.
Explore! Be awed by His World! Restore Wonder! Be a creative, thinking, exuberant person who spills with the joy of learning. Your zest for learning and life will be contagious--the children will catch it!

Curiously.
Read, read, read. Fill the house with library books. Play classical music. Post the art of the masters about the house. Go for walks in the woods. Learn a new language, a new culture, a new poem. Everyday set out to discover again, and again, and again. The whole earth is full of His glory! Go seek His face...

Consistently.
Consistently pray. Consistently read. Consistently keep the routine. Consistently live an everyday liturgy.Children thrive in routine. So do households. Have hardstops: times that you fully stop to pray, to read, to write. Regardless of what isn't done, what isn't finished. Make a full stop, do the needful thing, then return to meals, laundry, household management.
Consistently be consistent."
Her blog is
http://www.aholyexperience.com/

My manna mystery

So scroll down to my other "manna" entry-
I discovered it was, indeed, potatoes!
Didn't know potatoes could freeze but they made some pretty tasty hashbrowns so I'm going with the potato theory ;)
*whew* now you all can sleep better!
I think next time I'll label.

Death, Dying and Dead

I'm in need of some opinions and ideas here-
As you both know (j/k), my boys are REEEALLY into Star Wars. This happened in September when Jaedon started school and came home saying he and his new friends were "playing star wars" (which basically meant they assigned each other character names and played tag). Harmless enough- not to mention I thing Star Wars is pretty cool for older kids anyway. (therein may be my downfall! ;)
Well, as with most kids obsessions (Elmo, Dora, Bob the builder, Veggie Tales) I was fully intending this to fade ... meanwhile I was having fun "feeding" it b/c (again) I think it's pretty harmless and he has yet to see the movies. However, we did have waaaay too much fun getting him about every book the library had on star wars and lets just say Jaedon may know more about Star Wars than George Lucas! (he's the creator of Star Wars, mom ;)
If you know the Star Wars thing- it's totally ALL boy! Basically good versus evil to the nth degree- and a LOT of fighting (hence the GOOD fighting the EVIL). Well, my boys LOVE to play their version of Star Wars- similiar to Jaedon's recess game- they assign names of characters to one another and play (recently have added sticks aka lincoln logs to be their light sabers). My quandry is I overhear them saying "oh yes! We killed him" or "Oh! The bad guy is dead now!" and the like...
This I'm not a fan of. We've put a "you don't shoot people" ban on their gun play - but I'm not sure what to do about the "killing bad guys" play. It's just a bit disturbing to hear my 3 year old say "yah...bad guy dead now". ya know?!
So...what do you think?

Jaedon's camera session

My 89 year old Grandma occasionally will send the boys a letter that includes pictures from old magazines or cards in them. Like she'll write "Jaedon do you like to ..." and have a picture of a person reading.

So I thought it would be fun for Jaedon to take a bunch of pictures of his life and make a small booklet to send to her (this is still in the idea phase so she MIGHT get it in time for Christmas ;) . Today I mentioned the idea to Jaedon and he, of course, wanted to take the pictures himself. Okay- so I said "well, take some pictures of things that you think are really neat."

This is what he came up with:

He had multiple pictures of our garbage can, and a few pictures of trash and a broken gutter. I'm especially fond of the dead grass and rotting leaves pictures- tehee...

Yes, I stole this from you, Becky! =)

Becky, my friend, posted this poem on her blog and even though our readers overlap (all 3 of you ;) I still wanted to post it here too-

Messy House
Come in, but don't expect to find
All dishes done, all floors ashine.
Observe the crumbs and toys galore.
The smudgy prints upon the door.
The little ones we shelter here
Don't thrive on a spotless atmosphere.
They're more inclined to disarray
And carefree even messy play.
Their needs are great, their patience small.
All day I'm at their beck and call.
It's Mommy come! Mommy see!
Wiggly worms and red scraped knee.
Painted pictures, blocks piled high.
My floors unshined, the days go by.
Some future day they'll flee this nest,
And I at last will have a rest!
Now you tell me which matters more,
A happy child or a polished floor?
...Author Unknown

My Mama- from Jaedon

A friend had this Mama survey on her blog so I stole it from her. ;) Thanks, Richelle.

1. What is something Mama always says to you?
Jaedon-"I love you."
Seth "Play with your friends" (?)

2. What makes Mama happy?
Jaedon- "Us loving you."
Seth - "Jesus"

3. What makes Mama sad?
J-"Us disobeying"
S- "bad things"

4. How does your mama make you laugh?
J- "She tickles me a lot."
S- "She's funny." (again...?)

5. What was your mama like as a child?
J- "Not very tall."
S- no comment

6. How old is your mama?
J-"39. No. 30! 30! 30!"
S- "zero"

7. How tall is your mama?
J-"100 feet tall. No. maybe just 20 feet or something like that."]
S-"Giiig" (big)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
J- "cook food" (SOOO not true!)
S- lost interest at this point.

9. What does your mama do when you're not around?
J- "Go out on a date."

10. If your mama becomes famous, what will it be for?
J-"Doing homework."

11. What is your mama really good at?
J "making food." (I'm sensing a pattern here...)

12. What is your mama not very good at?
J-"I don't know."

13. What does your mama do for her job?
J- "Cooks food and wrestles with us a little bit."

14. What is your mama’s favorite food?
J-"Pizza."

15. What makes you proud of your mama?
J-"She's nice to Seth."

16. If your mama were a cartoon character, who would she be?
J-"Robin- from the superheros." (uh...ok?!)

17. What do you and your mama do together?
J-"Read books."

18. How are you and your mama the same?
J- "We both kindof have blue eyes."

19. How are you and your mama different?
J- "She has more freckles than I do."

20. How do you know your mama loves you?
J-"because I'm her favorite child." (This made me howl!!!)

21. What does your mama like most about your daddy?
J-"He's nice and he goes to church."

22. Where is your mama's favorite place to go?
J- "Stores to get us food to eat." (Shure! ;)

What a hoot eh?

A Super Party, Man!

Due to illness we had to cancel Seth's original birthday party- but we had a good time in the make up version. Grandma Jan and Granddaddy along with cousin Katelyn were able to join us for a special birthday supper. Mama made tacos- the kids ate saltines. =)

If you asked Seth what he wanted for his birthday he'd tell you "I whant a sooperman caake and babberry Iteem." (strawberry ice cream) which is exactly what he got! =) Brad did the superman logo in M&Ms. Turned out cute eh?

Happy Happy day

Happy 3rd Birthday, Seth Broderick!

Boys in my House

Author: Erin Jo Kilmer
There are boys in my house – and Spiderman shoes

And 200 papers in various blues.

There's Bob (he's a builder) and Thomas the Train,

There's a fireman coat to wear in the rain.

They have cars on their shirts and frogs on their hats

There's a glove and a ball and a red plastic bat.

There's dirt on a face and a smudge on a nose;

Grass stains on knees and sand between toes.

There's bathtime at night with bodies to scrub,

And when we're all done there is dirt in the tub!

There's bandaids and bruises and curious bumps,

There's smiles and laughter and sometimes there's grumps.

There's odors most icky; there's boogers so green

There's more yucky things than I'll ever get clean.

There's piles of laundry; there's stories at night;

There's bedtime and bathtime and dinnertime fights.

There's cars and there's trains and there's books about trucks

There's Scoop, Lofty, Dizzy, and Travis, and Muck.

Sometimes there are bugs, and sometimes there are frogs;

Sometimes they are lions, or dinos, or dogs.

There are cute little vests and darling neckties

Dragged right through the mud – oh what a surprise!

There's running and climbing and jumping and falling

And laughing and crying and hugging and brawling

And rolling and losing and finding and creeping

And whining and stealing and sometimes there's sleeping.

There's tantrums and time outs and extra loud noise –

There's love in my house shaped just like little boys.

It's not manna but "what is it?!"

Ok so I was digging in my freezer today and came across 3 bags of this...uh...stuff.

It's shredded so I obviously thought enough about it to take the time to shred it and freeze it but I did NOT take the time to LABEL it. I have no clue what it is. It kindof looks like potatoes but I have no rememberance of shredding and freezing potatoes.

What do YOU think it looks like and what in the world should I do with it!? =)

Signs of things to come

We were just remembering that last St. Patricks Day there was snow on the ground. Today Jaedon had some buddies over after school to play OUTSIDE and have the first picnic of the season! I've been itching to go bike riding since last spring I missed out b/c I was great with child

and I think I got out once last summer - Owen obviously being too small to go for a ride. Tonight we pulled out and dusted off the bikes, strollers and runabout, pumped up those tires and went for our first family-o-five bike ride. I get to pull the two younger boys in the stroller and my legs protesteth much. ;-) Owen was content, Seth sat and sang and Jaedon mused with Brad about bikes with no training wheels. It was a great day.

Circus Fun

You'll have to push the "pause" button on side playlist before you push play for this.

Hearing from you...

I'd like to hear how you are preparing for Easter this year.

Do you do anything personally or as a family that helps you remember Christs life, death and resurrection? What years have been most memorial to you in the past when celebrating this time of year? Do you have a favorite "Easter song" (is there such a thing?=)

I'd love to hear from you!

Busy boy

Fun with Fun Dip

It seems that there is a yearly cycle of candy intake- has anyone else noticed?

We get candy for Valentines Day and when that runs out

it's time for Easter and when that runs out

it's summer and time for parades and just when the last tootsie pop is tossed

it's Halloween

then Christmas

then it starts all over again.

I'm not a candy lover (chocolate isn't considered CANDY is it? ;)

And apparently I'm rather a nazi when it comes to doleing out the candy goods to the boys. The other day Jaedon was going thru his Valentine stash and found Fun Dip. I guess he's never had it before but it's a packet of flavored sugar with a little candy"dipstick" that you DIP in the powdery substance. Well, Jaedon thought you had to empty the packet - and so he did.

The stick was quickly disregarded and discarded and they thought licking the TABLE was WAY more fun!

I'd have to agree.