It's Begining to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Turn up your sound and click here for a Christmas greeting from our family to yours.

Don't Eat That - You Might Learn Something

Our science class is studying Biology and we took a look at plant cells this week. We identified, colored and labeled all the cell parts and made cell models. (We also watched a Sponge Bob movie in between called, "The Fungus Among-Us" which was entirely amusing.)
The cell models were made from lemon Jello as the cytoplasm with various candies used to replicate the cells parts. They were both instructional and yummy. Bite of Endoplasmic Reticulum anyone?

3 Days Later....

The party's not over till the balloons deflate.

Still Counting the Blessings

The holiday is over and it's post quiet here. The turkey is now sitting in a zip lock bag waiting to be a sandwich.
We had much to be thankful for including the news that Kirsten is beginning to feel a little better each day as the malaria symptoms are subsiding. Thank you for your prayers - We have seen God do mighty things as He hears the cries of His people.
We also celebrated our granddaughter Scarlett's 1st birthday and the news that she will have another brother or sister this summer!
And our last good news is that our 3 year old is sleeping in past 6am. Whooo Hooo!

For more pictures from the birthday party..click here.

All Things

It's still quiet here- Thanksgiving morning. Only the turkey and I are up and he's in the oven smelling good. The tables are set for later today - we have 29 people celebrating with us. I'm thankful for this tiny slice of peace before the day begins and most grateful for all the people and noise God has brought into our life.
Please pray for our daughter Kirsten in Chad who is spending her Thanksgiving battling malaria and yet their family gives praise for the opportunity to be there.
Everything He gives is good.

Warning!

Swim fish...swim for your life!

The Buzz on the Bee Movie

My husband is a beekeeper so it seemed that we had to go see the new Bee Movie. Wow! It was really bad. I know I'm prejudiced against cartoons, but this one was so stupid. It was mildly amusing in parts but not amusing enough to make you smile or anything close to it. What was interesting was that it was Gabby and Trent's first time to the movies. Gabby was completely impressed with the size of the screen and asked a few times, "Are we going to all fall out of our seats because we're so high up here". She loved the movie and thanked us for taking her. The most amazing thing about the entire event was that Trent was great. He slept through most of the movie (good choice I thought) and was quiet when awake. That's not bad for any 3 year old and for him that was incredible.
So skip the bees or you'll get stung!

Bad Choices

On Friday one of our sons is having a parole hearing. He's hoping to leave his present residence (IE jail) and return to the real world. My husband and I are driving 5 hours to be there for the hearing. I'm not excited about it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have to watch one of my kids being brought into a room wearing handcuffs. (I did actually get a small amusement out of the orange flip flops that compliment the orange jump-suit.) Every kid that comes to our house has the chance to start all over again. We don't know all their past...their mistakes or habits and on day one in our family you start out with all privileges. Each kid can watch and see what they can have. They can choose the Lord and they can choose blessings. Most of them do....God's very appealing when you've been rejected by everyone else.
But some don't. I've seen them walk back to their old life and go down in flames. This kid's one of them. As much as I love him and it breaks my heart, in the end he's chosen this path.
So, I've lined up friends to drive kids to their stuff and a daughter (thanks again Lane) to come and hook Grace up for dialysis and my mom's going to homeschool the kids while were gone.
Just so the whole trip isn't terribly depressing, I plan to watch 20 episodes of HGTV in our motel room.

What I meant was

Okay, so my last post wasn't all together true.

The part about Alfred was true......he was great.

It's the part about, "when I'm losing the battle, I run to the Word."
It really goes something like this.
When I'm losing the battle I...
first try to figure out whose fault other than mine it is..
and then I get mad
and then I usually complain some
and then I try to work it out on my own..
and by this point when every thing's wrong..
I sheepishly go to the Lord who was patiently waiting for me all along and He runs to me.

Confession over.

Ode to Alfred

Here stands Alfred the Great....defender of England against Viking invasion.... on a milk carton covered in faux rock (crumpled paper bag). The project was fun- minus the hot glue that stuck to the tip of my finger and hopefully his place in history will remain in my kids brain just a little longer.

*History lesson learned from Alfred the Great - If you want to beat the invaders, build up your army first, physically and spiritually. Which is good advice no matter what or whom the enemy is. Whenever I feel like I'm losing the battle, I know I need to run to the Word and get strong.

On Alfred the Great's real statue in England there is a plaque that says, "Alfred's name will live on as long as mankind shall respect the past." And here he is standing on my kitchen table all these years later.
Alfred's so cool.

Re-Re Cycle

This week's homeschool craft was from our history curriculum. (We're using "The Story of the World" with activity pages.) We have to make a statue of Alfred the Great and we needed four half gallon milk cartons for the base. At our house we buy milk in kegs, not half gallons so I had to look elsewhere to get them. Today was garbage day and I decided to set out early and pick through people's recycling bins before they were collected. I scored all four half gallons on our block and made some interesting observations in doing so.

#1 Bottled beer is preferred over canned beer
#2 Beer is preferred over milk, orange juice or soup
#3 Many people drink beer while reading the paper and don't appear to eat
#4 Our family drinks more Sunny D than anyone else in our neighborhood
#5 Either no one eats canned vegetables or no one likes to wash out the cans

I'll show you the finished project tomorrow.

Layla Grace

Our granddaughter Layla Grace is 2 this week.
She is everything a 2 year old should be...without the "terribles".
Her parents threw a fitting party complete with friends, family and a new tricycle.
She is adored by all -
as it should be!!
(Layla, tell mommy you want to come to Grandma Kate's house.)

Appliances Are a Girl's Best Friend

Unfortunately one of the tiles in front of our kitchen sink has a large crack in it. (and "nobody" did it....we asked.) For the last few days, water has been seeping up when you step down on it. Then yesterday we found a puddle further down the floor by the refrigerator. Most broken objects or weird occurrences are somehow a direct result of some nefarious action from one of our kids but this one we couldn't pin on anyone.
James spent some time crawling around on the floor and discovered the water source was near the dishwasher. And that made sense because it had been making a terrible noise lately when we ran it. It normally makes a sound as it grinds up large food particles but this noise was as if someone's arm was shoved down in there and was being chewed up to the elbow. James pulled the dishwasher out and found under it a place where water was shooting all over and one of Grace's many lost retainers. (At a replacement cost of $75 which she had labored many hours to pay back.)
It was time to replace the dishwasher, so after a beautiful wedding yesterday on the way to pick up our kids who didn't attend, we stopped at Home Depot. My daughter Kelly and I looked lovely in our dresses and cute shoes. James was dashing in his suit and tie. That's a problem. Next time your in Home Depot look around. Before people head to Home Depot they rummage around in their dresser drawers to find their nastiest outfits. Guys are drawn to the sweatpants with the oil stains- topped by a too small t-shirt so you can just see a little stomach hair poking out. For the women either the sweat pants or maybe the too small jeans with a "big shirt" to cover the butt. As we checked out the dishwasher selection people were staring...like WE were wrong.
Selecting the dishwasher. This was difficult. We checked out - how many wash cycles, energy saving features, advance filters, noise reduction enhancements, capacity, multiple wash levels, and on and on. I was getting confused and sick of looking at them after a couple of hours. I opened one model from the group of ten we had narrowed our selection to and it had a lovely gray interior with gray racks. The gray was soothing and I could picture our dishes looking lovely against the gray. Sold!
Sadly it won't come for a few days, so don't come here for dinner. I'm thinking I could parlay this whole mess into eating out a lot. If not, invite us over to your house to eat. (There's nine of us and two of them only eat macaroni and cheese.)

Bottoms Up

We have a fairly large house which is needed to stuff all of our kids into. There are lots of bedrooms which is fine and I only clean mine and those of kids under age 6 (which presently is only 2). Everyone else is on their own.
The issue continues to be with the bathrooms. Keeping them clean is not too bad. I clean bathrooms that the boys use every other day and girls bathrooms less often. I never wash a shower curtain. When the mold is noticible I buy a new one.
The issue is running out of toilet paper.
I buy the largest Charmin pack they make at Costco. The 24 pack that "is like 48" rolls because each roll is double the normal size. The stuff is thick! My friend Joanne's husband swears it'll clog up the septic system.... it's that thick. The package is so huge it doesn't fit under the shopping cart and I knock things off shelves as I weild it through the store. It should last for about 20 years or so. Or at least a week at our house. The rolls start to dwindle and the manuvering starts. Someone steals the roll from the guest bathroom. Then the downstairs bathroom rolls dissapear. I sneak in and steal the roll from the girls bathroom for our bedroom. Only the boys don't play this game. They basically don't care if they have a roll at all. That scares me. I could buy 4 of the mega rolls and I still wait till we're down to tissues before I go back to Costco for more. Do they make a hundred pack that "is like 200?"