Bread

I am not normally the bread maker of the family but with our usual family bread maker "out of pocket" for an extended period of time B#3 and I have stepped up to the plate. It was kind of funny that I asked a friend for the recipe of some rolls that she brought on Thanksgiving and she laughed and told me it was my recipe from days gone by. So I am using a new old recipe for our bread and so far so good. Even B#5 was excited when he heard I was making bread today.

Now I am working on reading through one of her gardening books. I have relied on her for so long to help me with the outside work that now that she is off on an adventure I am having to learn some things that I thought I was too old to learn...

Know anything about bees???

Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a great Christmas! It definitely didn't feel like Christmas here, at least to me. I have been trying to decide if it is because we had 6 less days between Thanksgiving and Christmas or if it is because we were missing three of our loved ones this year. B#1 and his wife weren't here and B#2 is down at my parents in MS spending Christmas with them. In any case it was strange. But as it is with all big families, there is never a quiet moment so we still had a good time. Its funny but DH and I are usually up before the children on Christmas so once we were up we started waking up the ones who weren't up yet.

 

 

You might think with 9 children still at home that Christmas must be mass chaos but we do try to keep things toned down. One thing that helps with that is that we do not go hog wild with gifts for the children. We typically stick to our usual plan of Something to Read, Something to Wear and Something to Share. Although for my little ones who can't read yet we do buy them one toy item instead of a book. Several of the received new rain boots this year and others got some much needed clothes or jackets. The something to share may be a game, or movies or sometimes a big item.

 

One fun item that was received by B#9 from his Secret Sibling was this minion. We are big Despicable Me fans around here and these pudgy little things remind us of our pudgy little B#9 so it was a fun gift to get. Everyone likes him.

 

We do things a bit differently around here than most people...our Christmas dinner is always pizza( a tradition started several years back when Auntie M came for Christmas). We love that it is a relaxing day for us all with a minimal amount of clean-up. We always start the morning off with canned cinnamon rolls. I love the orange ones!

We finished up the day with our birthday cake for Jesus!

 

                               B#10 got some fun toys from his Mamaw and Papaw to chew on.

Christmas Happenings around here

Well my Christmas crafts didn't go quite as planned but I still enjoyed making a few things this year as I had time and I have enjoyed doing our "Christmas Calendar" that I made. The children have enjoyed pulling a new tag out each day to see what we were going to do that day. I will admit to being very unorganized about it all, despite making a list in the beginning. Most mornings found me scrambling to write something on the tag and sometimes even trying to figure out what we were going to do that day. But all in all it has gone well.  Some of the things we have done are....

 
                                                       Make ornaments to feed the birds

 

Celebrate St. Nicholas Day by putting our shoes by the fireplace for treats

 

Make yummy sugar cookies

 

Make baking soda dough ornaments

                                                                 Make Christmas trees

 

 

 

Make Goody plates to share with our gas attendants, Dr.'s office and hospital staff

                      
                                   And make these cute animal pictures with little ones hand prints.

I was talking with the children today about how Christmas presents are a picture of God's Grace....we don't deserve them(as we usually haven't been good all year) but we give gifts out of love. Just as He gives Grace to us, free and unconditional. All we have to do is accept His free gift to us, with joy just as we accept gifts from our family.

Merry Christmas to you all and we pray that if you have never accepted the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that is offered to you through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that this will be the year that you accept the reason for the season.

Ear Tubes

Well we fought it for 2 long years and lots of "ear-rational" behavior but we finally decided that it was time to have tubes put in B#8's ears. We talked about lots of different things...waiting till he grew out of it, taking him off of dairy products, taking him to a naturopath to strengthen his immune system in hopes that he wouldn't get the colds that turn in to an ear infection every time. But in the end we hated seeing him go through his day not hearing everything as well as he could be. So yesterday he had surgery to have tubes put in his ears and you know what....it wasn't the traumatic thing I was so afraid it would be.

He was a little clingy and unsure once he realized that he would have to shed his clothes and wear hospital duds but the hospital staff was amazing. They were super kind and gentle and each person who would be taking care of him in the OR came to the room to talk to us and him. I really think that helped him once he had to leave us. Honestly that was one of the parts I was dreading the most, having to see him leave with someone I didn't know. But they let dad carry him down to the OR doors and he was even able to take "Chewcy", his special blankie in with him. He went to the OR nurse without any problems and they all said how wonderfully he did. No crying, he just looked around at them and then drifted off to sleep.

His recovery has been great, no problems there and most of all, he is hearing great. He is such a strong little guy and hasn't even needed any pain meds.

 

 

 

Christmas

I am not a crafty person, although I do wish I was. But I do have a hankering to do some crafting around this time of year. Pinterest is a great place to find ideas along with your favorite blogs. Here are a few things I am contemplating...

 

This one is from my favorite blogger, Joy at artfulhomemaking. You can go HERE if you would like to see how she made this beautiful plate for next to nothing. She also has some other great printables as well. I used THIS printable on some brown paper colored cardstock and put it in a black frame. Such an easy and beautiful way to add Scripture to your home.

 

For our Advent calendar this year I am making THIS. I will modify it though and just use posterboard for the backing instead of fabric. I don't mind if it isn't reusable since I enjoy finding something different each year.

 

I also picked up three fake silver platters from the Dollar Tree to make THIS. I just love anything that is chalkboard. I got a can of chalkboard paint for my birthday that I have been trying to find projects for.

 

Anyway, those are a few projects I am hoping to work on and that is about all that baby is going to let me write.

 

Happy Christmas Crafting!

 

 

 

 

 

Before Five in a Row

Yes, the school year has been in full swing for quite some time and yes I did buy a whole new curriculum for my Kindergartener at the beginning of the year and yes I started something else in the middle of the school year. I think I drive my husband crazy but hopefully for the rest of this year I am set on one thing. As I was "schooling" with him I just felt that we were just doing things for the sake of doing things and he didn't seem to be retaining much of it. I really just wanted to be sitting on the floor reading to all of my little ones.

Then I read a post at one of my favorite blogs, Artful Homemaking. She had a post on the fun they were having using "Before Five in a Row". It had all of the elements that I wanted to do with the children...reading, art, and fun. Then I remembered, "I have the teacher book for that".  So we are now using a fun curriculum, if you want to call it that.

Basically we read the same children's book for five days in a row and do some fun, learning activities to reinforce our reading. Our first book was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

 

Our first activity was dressing Jesse Bear.

 

B#8 wasn't really he wanted anything to do with it all but once he saw the book he was excited to read it. Then when I told him we were going to the table to do an activity he politely declined. Once he saw the activity he jumped on board and wanted to keep dressing more bears.

 

 

We are having fun with it and I love how flexible it is. I just find activities on the internet that I want to do and print them out or prepare them.

Two Book Reviews

Let me just start out by saying that I am not a gifted writer who can write enthralling book reviews but I do love books and reading and I also would love to help myself and my children to better memorize God's Word. So when Jenn at The Purposeful Mom offered to let readers have a free ebook in exchange for a book review on their blog, I jumped at the chance. Her ebook is called "Hiding God's Word in My Heart". Her book is an easy read, only 20 pages, not too overwhelming, with no incrimination if you aren't memorizing God's word with your children but with encouragement and help to jump in and get memorizing. Included in her book are instructions for using the book, ideas for teaching Scripture to baby on up, list of songs and other go-alongs for learning Scripture, specific songs for verses in "God's Word in My Heart" and printable memory verses. I like the ABC verses as that is where I am at with my Preschooler and soon-to-be Kindergartener. We also enjoyed starting the memory verse caterpillar that she mentions making, although we didn't get very far with it because a certain small person in our house tore some body parts off of it. Maybe we will try again once we start back to school. I also have older children at home and while this book didn't provide what I need to really help my older children, I do think it had some fun ideas for little guys and it is helpful that she has done the leg work for you in providing the verses and printables to make getting started very easy. Jenn has graciously offered to let me do a giveaway of a free copy of her book in which ever Bible version you prefer. Now I am not a big-time blogger so I don't really know much about doing a give-away but if you are interested, just leave me a comment and in a week or so I will do the old fashioned "pull the name out of a hat" version of a drawing. If you don't have little ones at home, feel free to enter so you can give your copy to a friend with littles or maybe grandchildren.

The second book I want to "review" isn't necessarily a review and I am not even finished reading it yet, but I am loving what I am reading so I wanted to let you all know about it. It is called " Three Decades of Fertility". It is written by 10 ( I believe) different ladies on how they chose to allow the Lord to be in control of their fertility and the struggles and blessings that have come with that. I have found it to be a very encouraging book in many ways. I have only read from three of the ladies so far but my favorite for now is Natalie Klejwa's testimony.  I love this bit from her:

                "The key to a healthy family and healthy relationships, I'm convinced, is humility . It is the willingness to admit sin, repent of it and ask for forgiveness. The families I know that practice this are just like every other family in that they sin against one another.  But they maintain emotional and relational health because the individual members grieve over their sin, saying they are sorry and asking for forgiveness.
                "The families that struggle are the ones that have difficulty admitting sin.  IF the parents are prideful and refuse to admit wrongdoing, blaming other family members or making excuses for the ways they hurt others, the family as a whole will suffer untold ways.  So let me be clear. Healthy families are not sinless.  All families sin and they do it everyday in numerous ways. We can make a difference for eternity by simply humbling ourselves before our family members and learning the art of saying sorry and asking forgiveness."

Anyway, I am far from being finished with the book but wanted to put in a plug for it if you are interested. You can find it HERE at the Visionary Womanhood website.