THANKFUL!

I realize it's been awhile since I've updated.  Two months to be exact.  :)  Between dishes, laundry, school work, home study updates, birthday party plans, sewing Halloween costumes, and well, just LIFE, my blog has kind-of taken a back burner.  And really, I'm OK with that.....one less thing on my "list" is fine with me right now.  Buuuutttttt...... many of you have asked about Charles' new job and the status of our adoption, so I thought it was time for an update.

Here's how life has been treating us.....

ON THE JOB FRONT - Charles working again has definitely been an adjustment for the entire family, but we are so THANKFUL he has a job!!!  His new job comes with very early mornings, however, it (most days) leads to earlier afternoons as well.  THAT makes mama happy. :)  Overall, we have seen some wonderful things come from this new position.  Things that we may not ever have thought to have prayed for.  Things that we know could only have come from a detail-oriented God.  So, so THANKFUL!!!  THANKS friends for your prayers!

IT'S A PARTY!!! - Since my last post, we celebrated a birthday around here!!!  My second oldest, Joseph, turned SEVEN!!!  We are so proud of the little man he is becoming.  This year he celebrated with a Star Wars themed birthday party in our backyard.

A Death Star Birthday Cake for one very special Jedi

I had a gazillion more pics, but unfortunately they were lost to an untimely incident between a mug of hot chocolate and my MAC book.   Ahhhh......life with kids.  :)

Joe's most favorite present (besides the gobs of Lego Ninjagos he got)???  Losing a tooth right before bed.  And then, he literally LOST it.  So......he wrote the tooth fairy this little note......

Apparently in our house, if you lose a tooth ON your birthday, it gets you $5.  Lucky dude.  :)

HURRICANE NEWS - Unless you live in a hole, you've undoubtedly heard about a little Hurricane named Sandy wreaking havoc up and down the East Coast last month.  Fortunately, we live far from the coast and didn't experience any damage in terms of water.  The biggest concern where we live was the wind.  More specifically:  trees falling down due to the wind.  And OH!!  were there a TON of trees that fell!!!  During the height of the storm, we took our flashlights, pillows, and blankets down into the basement and camped out for the night.  Despite losing power early in the evening, we made the most of it by eating ice cream (Hey!! You can't let that stuff go bad!), playing Pictionary (by candlelight!!), and reading Detectives in Togas.   Memories were most certainly made!!

When we awoke the next morning, it seemed that everywhere we went, trees were down.  Blocking roads, on top of houses and cars, and resting precariously upon telephone wires.  In my brother's wooded backyard, approximately 20-30 trees fell, all piled up in a neat, not-so-little stack.  This is actually where we spent the week.  Our power went out on a Monday night and wasn't back on until the following Sunday afternoon.  With temperatures drastically dropping, it made for one really cold house.  :)  Honestly though, seeing the stories of the victims in New Jersey and New York, we felt quite fortunate that we merely experienced a slight inconvenience.  We spent the week at my brother and sister-in-law's house. My nieces had off from school for the WHOLE WEEK due to the storm, so we got to spend time with cousins.  It was an instant party!  So THANKFUL for family and friends in the area who helped during this time!!!

IT'S HALLOWEEN!!! - Really, I'm not sure where the year went!  Just a minute ago it felt like the beginning of 2012!!  Before I knew it, Halloween was here, and with it came the costume demands.  So......out came the sewing machine, and with a little bit of creativity, here is what we came up with.....

An Egyptian Princess...

A red ninja...

A green ninja...

And a princess....

SCHOOL - As if hurricanes, birthdays, and job changes didn't keep us busy enough these past couple months, there is always school!!  Our year has gotten off to a great start.  We have managed to keep quite busy.   Here are a few of the highlights so far....

Making mummies using paper mache.....poor Barbie. :)

Haha.  An attempt at marshmallow pyramids....

Class trip to Crystal Caves

Inside the caves with my little love bug.

Apparently soaking a raw egg in vinegar for 72 hours creates a "naked egg" (the shell has dissolved) that you can hold in your hand!  Who knew??!  My kids had so much fun with this experiment!

Field trip to the local dairy farm....

followed by a hayride out to the pumpkin patch.

Gearing up for the Presidential Election....took a tour of the Capital Building in Harrisburg, PA.

The outside was beautiful, but OH MY, the inside!!!!  So fun!  We even got to tour the Senate, House of Representatives, and Supreme Court!

Voting Booth!!!  Tonight's decision??  Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or Orphan Annie and brownies or ice cream for dessert.

 (for the record, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and ice cream won)  :)

The three oldest stayed up late watching the results come in and coloring in their Electoral College Maps.   

Philadelphia Art Museum field trip!!!

By far, the kids favorite was the Arms and Armor room.

Taking a break to play some chess.....

ADOPTION - And finally, our adoption.....all is trucking along there as well.   Due to Charles' new job (and the fact that 18 months are up), we are having to update parts of our portfolio.  Financial statements, insurance information, medical records, FBI fingerprints, clearances, and such.  I'm not at all excited to be back doing paperwork again (it's A LOT!!!!), however, THANKFUL to still be in the process! Once we finish up with our updates, we can be added back onto the wait list at the number we were "frozen" at.  Looking forward to moving DOWN that list again real soon!!!

THANKS again friends for all your thoughts and prayers!  We are certain that without them, we would have struggled much more than we did during this time.  We have so much to be THANKFUL for going into this season of THANKFULNESS.  We even managed to steal away last month for a little date night:

Dead Sea Scroll Exhibit - Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA

Have a wonderful THANKSGIVING!!!

Kirsten

Hello again!!

It's been awhile....and quite frankly, I've been enjoying the break.  :)

Since my last post, life has just been, well,  really busy.  Here are a couple of the highlights though....

Last year, in the beginning of September, Kaya had decided that she wanted to go for something called, "Memory Masters".  It is a really big honor within Classical Conversations (the homeschool group that we are apart of).  MM is completely optional.  It is an oral exam in which the student must recall from memory EVERYTHING they have learned this year.  This includes: skip counting through the 15's (plus the squares and cubes), geometric formulas and equations, listing all 44 presidents of the United States in order of their terms, recalling a 160 point timeline beginning at Creation and going all the way to the Obama presidency, the periodic table of the elements, human anatomy, 24 history sentences, with dates, of major historical significance, conjugating irregular verb tenses, locating all 50 states and their capitals on a map, locating major geographical U.S. landmarks (rivers, mountain ranges, prominent features such as the Grand Canyon, etc....), memorizing John 1 in Latin and then translating to English, and many other terms to be defined.  All together, the facts that the student needs to recall total over 500.  In order to get MM, students need to be able to answer EVERY question correctly.  No room for error, people!

Well, on Monday morning she went for it.....And......SHE GOT IT.

It was a fun, but stressful morning for all the moms and kids involved.  8 students total from our campus went for it.  There were tears of happiness, anxiety, lots of hugs, shouts of joy and nerves on end.  Each student tests individually with their tutor, with testing taking a little over an hour per child.  But in the end, ALL 8 students achieved Memory Master.  What a celebration we had after!!!  So, SO proud of each and every one of these kiddos.  Sitting in and testing with these kids really gave me an appreciation of our Creator and this amazing brain He has gifted us with for learning.  Truly a miraculous organ!!

Here are Kaya and I last night celebrating her accomplishment on a Mommy-Daddy-Kaya date at the Melting Pot. :)


                           

She's beautiful, isn't she?? :)

In other news, today is my hubby's birthday.  We are celebrating by heading down to Georgia to spend the week with family.  WE.  CAN'T.  WAIT.  Tonight is birthday dinner and packing the car up.  Then, tomorrow, bright and early, we head out.  12 hours. 7 states.  4 kids.  It will be quite the adventure, I'm sure. :)    Either I'm very naive, or incredibly confident in my children's car-riding abilities.  Haha!  Not sure which (probably naive!), but I do love long car rides and am really excited.  We'll be staying with Charles' brother, Dan (who coincidentally, happens to have the same b-day as Charles, just 5 years apart), his wife, Rebecca, and their 7 children.  It's going to be a BLAST!

Lastly, we have adoption numbers for you from last month.  We moved down another three to.....

#73

Seriously, are we cruising or what??!?  ;)

Thanks for all your continued prayers!!  We have been really blessed by each of you along this journey.





Kirsten 

When Learning Comes Alive

Every year around this time, I find myself getting the homeschool blahs.  Stuck in a rut, bored, and oh, so tired.  Whether or not you too are on a homeschooling endeavor, I'm certain you can relate.  Wintertime (even one as mild as this one has been!!), can do that to you. 

And, every year around this time, I start reevaluating my goals and methods, trying to determine what must stay and what must GO.  After all, change can be good, right?  It's one of God's most wonderful blessings to us.  The freedom to problem solve and to infuse change into our routines every so often. 

As an educator, I absolutely thrill to the idea that learning can come alive to my children.  History stories that leap off the pages of stale textbooks, science experiments that make us stand in wonder of our Creator God, and even Latin lessons that cause us to better understand and appreciate our mother tongue.  The backbone of the education that we have strived to give our children is inherently classical, yet with a flare of an eclectic mixture of fun thrown in.

Here is a look at some of the ways we've attempted to make learning come alive to our kids the past few weeks, despite the wintertime blahs.....



A sick day doesn't necessarily equal no school!  Here the kids are creating their own inventions after reading about famous inventors of the 1800 and 1900's.





Jackson, busy working on his "invention" also. :)

 

The finished product - a robotic dog for kids who are allergic to dogs.  Can you tell what they are hoping for??



Jackson, fishing for ABC's.





Breaking out the shaving cream to work on our memory work.  So fun!





Practicing skip counting....



And letters...for little ones. :)

And this is what happens when you turn your back for a minute to unload the dishawasher while the kids are happily oocupied finger painting with shaving cream. :)

Took a little break to play in the snow.  Not much of it this year.....have to take advantage while we can!

Edible fractions....

Sophia wants to be just like the big kids!



History comes to life....here are my kids wrangling up some cattle and building a fort out of sticks in our backyard.  Can't believe this February weather!!



Laura Ingalls Wilder

And a random cowboy. :)

Taking a little break for some reading.  Currently, a couple titles we're reading are, The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and a biography of Gladys Aylward.

Here we are at the Valley Forge Visitors Center on President's Day.



Yeah, it sounded great in theory, but in reality it was super-crowded and the kids were more interested in stick-fighting. Oh well. :)

 


In CC this year, the kids are learning about the periodic table. Here are the first twelve elements.  Red jimmies = protons, blue jimmies = electrons, and the chocolate chips = neutrons.  Super fun...and yummy. :)







Some of us helped more than others. :)

 



 

So, there you have it!  A handful of things to balance out the monotony of a normal school day.  This week?  We're heading to the city to see the Philadelphia orchestra!!  Love learning right alongside of my kids!

Kirsten

Got Coffee??

A day in the life of....well, me. :)


6:00am - Alarm goes off.  Another day.  Morning came way too quickly....again.  Hit the snooze button.

6:07am - Hit snooze again.

6:14am - Hit snooze again.

6:21am - You get the idea.

7:00am - Finally up.  NEED.  COFFEE.

7:05am - Slippers.  Check.  Bible.  Check.  COFFEE.  Check.   Cozy couch with warm, fuzzy blanket.  Check.  Check.

8:00am - Kids start to trickle downstairs.

8:05am - Wait!  What's that I hear?  Laughter?  No, yelling.  Trudge back up the stairs.

8:10am - "He's in my room!!!!"  More yelling.  Some tears.  A couple of foot stomps.  One wet bed.  Start the laundry.

8:15am - Get the kids dressed, teeth brushed and hair brushed.  We're doing good.

8:30am - Oldest daughter starts breakfast for everyone.  Stick coffee in the microwave to heat up.  Still 2/3rd's full.  Walk away.

8:45am -French Toast is served!  Bible time around the breakfast table.  A stray elbow knocks over a cup of milk.  Milk spills all over work.  *Sigh*

9:15am - Spill is cleaned up.  Breakfast is finished and bible stuff is all put away.  Out comes the school work.  While my back is turned loading up the dishwasher, the Lego bin is dumped out all over the kitchen floor, the boys start a sword-fighting duel, and a small tornado whips through my house at lightning speed.  Someone is yelling for me from the bathroom.  Give some quick instructions and then head down the hall.  Just a little poop on the floor.  No biggie.

9:30am - Mess is cleaned up.  Crisis averted.  WHERE IS MY COFFEE??  Check microwave.  Cold.  Set for another minute.  Ahhh...perfect.  Nice and hot.  Move onto memory work.  Math.  Reading.

10:30am - Quick!  Run upstairs and switch over the laundry.  Handwriting (a few tears).  Science experiment (a couple CHEERS!). 

--Temporary interruption due to two small children who shall remain nameless; creating a little science experiment of their own. ;) --

11:15am - Spelling test.  Check.  Vocabulary review.  Check.  History lesson.  Check.

12:15pm - BREATHE.....The kids scatter.  It's free time.  Time to think about lunch.  Pick up a couple random things off the floor.  One sock.  A handful of rogue Legos.  Some play food.  Not sure what the point is.  There's a lot more where these came from.  Collapse into a chair.  Finally I remember.  "Hey! My coffee!  Where DID it get to??"

I should have known. :)

All in all, I count that as a GREAT morning!!!  I think I may just about have the best job ever. :)

Kirsten

Got Thanks?

It’s that time of year again!!  I don’t know about you, but our week has been filled with finishing up all our school work so that we can move onto all things Thanksgiving.  Pilgrim and Indian costumes are being pulled out, Thanksgiving books are being dusted off and read, names like Squanto and William Bradford are being thrown around at the dinner table.  One new activity we did this year was to make our thankful tree (or our variation of one).  Take a look:



I particularly love it because I used our new laminator to laminate the leaves, so they can be wiped off and re-used next year.  Score!!



But as I reflect on the holiday coming up and all that it stands for, I am humbled by the lack of gratitude in my own heart this week.  Oh, it’s there alright on the outside.  As I’ve said, I’ve done my fair share of TALKING about being thankful this week with my kids, but does my heart reveal something different?  Was that a spirit of thankfulness welling up in my heart when my (almost) 2 year-old took marker to my couch?  Or when the kids were fighting…..AGAIN?  Or when I felt entitled to some “alone time”?? 

Then this…..Enter Matthew 5.  The Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Nope, not me.

“Blessed are the meek.”  Not me again.

“Blessed are the pure in heart.”  Ouch.  That hurts.

“The peacemakers…..the merciful.......those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  You get the idea. 

And there I am  left.  Again.  Realizing that that little ole Pharisee in me is having a field day.  Like so many things in life, it is a choice.  Do I CHOOSE to be thankful?  Even when things don’t go according to plan?  Even when my so-called “rights” are infringed upon? 

And so again I remind myself…..

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his mercies never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

~Lamentations 3:22-23

~

Or, in some cases, every waking moment of every single day.  And THAT is something to be thankful for. 

So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful that HE sent His Son, His only Son, to die in my place.  Thankful that He came to this earth to wash away all sin, even the sins of the heart.  The ones nobody else sees but me. Why?  Because it was the only way a sinful man, like myself, could one day be in the presence of an Almighty God.  Thankful that it is nothing that we can DO on our own.  We cannot earn our way to Him. It is a free gift called grace.  And it is available each and every moment of the day.  Even when we don’t deserve it.  Even when we are ungrateful for that gift and turn away.  It’s still there.  Beckoning us to come.  To sit.  To bask in the wonder of a King who would step down from His throne in heaven to take my place. Our place.  Totally unwarranted grace.  All we must do is receive it.  And I’m thankful for that.

So today I've resolved to start my week of thankfulness (again), after already having started it again a couple times. J  Based on my leaves on the tree, can you guess how my week began?? J 

Thankful for new beginnings.  Thankful for His grace.  Thankful that He loves us so incredibly much.  Just plain old thankful today.  And that’s a good place to be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kirsten

A Perfect Fall Day

Today we had off from CC.  We took advantage of the beautiful weather and headed to Harris' Dairy Farm for a little field trip.  Join us as we take a look back on our adventure!!



Harris' Dairy Farm



We LOVE having Daddy home during the days!  He got to join us today.



Feeding the cows.



Milking barn.  We even got to see how the cows were milked!!





Looks like Sophie is having a meaningful conversation with this cow!!





The kids had a blast learning all about the cows.  Of course the highlight was the cows pooping.  We're still talking about it over here. :)



Our motley crew. :)

At the pumpkin patch.

We were chauferred out to the pumpkin patch via tractor.  Through the creek and everything.  Super fun!



My four littles.  When is number 5 going to join our ranks??!??





A ladybug for our little lady. :)





After lunch and a fall craft, the kids LOVED playing and splashing in the creek.  They were covered from head to toe in mud, but they sure did have fun!





We ended with a candy scramble.  Yikes!  A bagful of candy just a couple weeks before Halloween.  What were we thinking??





We ended our field trip back at our house painting pumpkins. 

 

 



So that was our day!  A nice little break from the norm on this perfect fall day.  How did you spend it??

"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

~Psalm 118:24



Kirsten