Our Summer in Pictures....so far!!

Well we've had a fun and eventful summer so far and it's just begun!! I just thought I'd take time to do a sort of pictorial of the fun we've had so far.

These are Noah and Abby playing at our local park with a splash pad. So refreshing in the heat!!

Noah was baptised a few weeks ago. We're very happy with his decision to devote himself to the Lord.

These two are from the Taste of Cincinnati. We met a talking Hot Pocket!! And enjoyed some yummy pizza from Balboa's. We also pet the police horses and ate some other yummy treats. It was lots of fun.

These two pics were from our latest field trip with our homeschool group. We went on a bird watching expedition. It was really cool because Josh, the naturalist, had this special hand held thing that could imitate bird calls and the birds would actually come close to us to see who was invading their area!! It was really cool. The top picture shows the kids on top of a tree trunk that had fallen from a tree that was over 300 years old!

We're still working on our lessons this summer. And these two pictures are experiments Noah did one day when he was studying rocks. The first was to show how sedimentary rocks are formed and the second shows that only limestone bubbles when vinegar is applied to it. He's very much into geology and mining right now. He loved this study.

This was from our big family trip to Gatlinburg. We went with all of my Dad's family including his parents, his sister and her family (husband and son), his brother and his family (wife and daughter), my family and my brothers family. We all stayed together in one gigantic cabin in the mountains. I really loved it. It was so much fun to be with everyone.

This is Noah, Abby and Riley eyeing an exhibit at the big aquarium in Gatlinburg. That is the coolest aquarium I've ever been to!!

Noah and Riley goofing around in the cabin!!
This is Abby standing on one of the three balconies our cabin had and you can see our view. It was awesome!!

These are go-kart pictures from Gatlinburg. Most of my family including my grandpa raced those go-karts!!! It was so cool to see them all out there!!

These 3 photos are from the past weekend when went to the grand opening of the Lego store. The kids made bricks to help the brick master complete an 8 foot tall R2-D2. The 3rd picture shows Noah's hero, the brick master!! We then waited in line for 2 hours to get the limited edition lego set for our store. It was worth it, he was so happy!!

This is Abby in her dance costume outside at our house. I thought it looked so cute when she looked through the leaves. You can see one of my peaches growing on the tree too!!

These pictures are from Abby's dance recital. She did wondeful and her whole class looked just beautiful up doing their ballet. I loved it!!! The last one shows the bouquet of flowers she got from her family!

These 3 pics are from the Reds game where Abby announced the lead off batter for the 3rd inning. I can't show the pictures of the scoreboard because it has her full name and city she lives in. But you can see the picture of her in front of the big camera! It was so cute because the crowd was shouting things like "great job Abby" and stuff like that. She didn't want to take the Skyline hat off because that's how people recognized her when we went to the restroom or something!!

The picture of Noah is him eating peanuts. The kids LOVE to eat peanuts during the games. We bring our own to save a few bucks, but they are just as happy as can be cracking open those peanuts!!

On Fathers Day we went fishing at my aunts house. She has an awesome stocked pond and everyone caught several fish. Mainly blue gills were caught, but Noah caught a bass and then Abby caught the biggest fish of all, another bass!! She caught it with a tiny Dora fishing pole. Daddy thought the pole was going to break!!

This is from the Reds game we went to with my parents and my brothers family. It was the Civil Rights game and they had a ceremony at the beginning honoring Hank Aaron, Muhammed Ali and Bill Cosby. It was really neat to see them. This picture shows Bill Cosby going around the stadium.

And finally we have Abby practicing her letter writing skills (language arts!!) by mailing a letter to Mamaw!!!

An update date on Poppy's preparations!!

It's baby post time!

Right now I am 24 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I will be 25 weeks on Friday!! So far I've only gained 2 pounds. I'm apparently only gaining the actual baby weight and using up my "reserves" for anything else I need!! Trust me, I've been eating, but I suppose my metabolism has been boosted or something!! My doctor thinks it's fine as long as I'm not losing any weight and the baby is growing as it should and both of those are being met, so she's happy!

We had the ultrasound two weeks ago and everything looked perfect! I almost forgot to tell the tech that we didn't want to know the sex, but luckily I remembered in time!! It was so nice for all of us to see the baby. We saw all the important parts: spine, skull, arms, legs, heart, etc... and both the tech and the doctor said everything seemed great. That's such a relief. My next appointment is in two weeks and I have to do the yucky glucose test. Hopefully that'll all turn out great as well.

Poppy's looking at us!!!

I've gotten pretty big now. Not much in my normal wardrobe fits except for a few shirts and elastic waisted skirts or pants. I haven't bought a ton of maternity clothes yet, I'm just trying to get by with the few things I have. Everyone has felt the baby move now. That's always fun. After the ultrasound and feeling it move, all of this just feels so much more real. Although there isn't a day that goes by when I question if it's real! I wanted so long to experience this again, and sometimes I just can't believe I'm blessed enough to get to do it again.




We have done a lot of the "getting ready" things that need to be done, but we still have a lot to do. We moved the kids playroom downstairs to clear out the last bedroom upstairs for the baby's room. I'm still working on organizing and purging the stuff in the new playroom. We've gotten rid of a lot of stuff already, but we still have so much. I just can't deal with the piles and piles of stuff anymore. So that room is still in a disarray.

We painted two of the walls in the baby room. I like the new colors, it's much brighter than it was before. We also installed a closet system and the furniture my parents bought us is now set up in there. I love it all!! I keep walking by the room and peering in at the crib. I was sure I'd never see a crib in my house again.










I organized all my diapers and wipes in the closet and took an inventory. As of right now, I have :


120 Newborn Diapers
257 Size 1 Diapers
256 Size 1-2 Diapers
312 Size 2 Diapers
520 Size 3 Diapers
346 Size 4 Diapers
52 Pull-Ups
82 Packages of Wipes

I feel pretty good about our amount of diapers up to size 3 and then I think we need to add more to the size 3, 4 and 5's.



Oh and names. We STILL can't decide on names. Boy or Girl. It's driving me crazy. I really want to get this settled and for some reason no one can agree!! Aaargh!! Maybe we'll just end up calling them Poppy since that's what we've called them all along!!

And I'll finish with just a few pics of the cute little clothes I've gotten for Poppy already. Their so cute!!

I bought these at Meijer a long time ago. I just thought they were so cute!!

I got these all on clearance at Target. All set with Disney shirts for Poppy's first trip this December!!!

The middle one is not new. It's one both Noah and Abby wore. Riley even wore it too! It means a lot. The other two are new. I think they're so cute. Even though we buy gender neutral ahead of time, I still think they're really cute!

This is one is really for a boy, but I thought it was so cute, I thought I'd take the chance!! I just loved it!!

Well that's it for now. I'll try and update in a few weeks!! We're almost ready for you Poppy!!!

Hi

We have a big weekend planned.  It's recital weekend, as well as Abby's debut at the Red's Game!  We also have our nephew Aaron's Birthday party too!  I have a lot of little things to do to get ready for all  of that (shop for gift, charge cameras, iron necessary clothes, pack up Abby's dance stuff, etc..).  We're also VERY busy getting our house ready for baby!!  The furniture we ordered for the baby's room is in, and my parents would love to bring it here and set it up (they bought it for us), so I've been working day and night moving the playroom downstairs and the classroom out to other parts of the house.  We also got new furniture for our family room, so we had to move out all the old furniture.  I'm very tired, but now that things are starting to look finished, I"m excited!!  

I'm planning a big baby post sometime soon.  Sort of a checklist for myself, a journal entry and something to share if anyone is interested.  So look for that soon!

Well I better get back to work.

Memorial Day

The cemetary was beautiful today. So many colors of flowers and so many American flags. If it wasn't a cemetary, I'd love to spend the day there! Maybe even have a picnic! We arrived just as the Memorial Day parade had ended with a walk through this particular cemetary and they had lined the streets with big flags that we got to drive through. It was so moving. My grandmother's headstone is in. It was so hard to see her name on it. The kids were so sweet. They hugged me and just stood there quietly with me for a few minutes. That was nice. We brought two little arrangements of yellow roses for her. Each kid chose where to put one. She loved yellow roses the best. There were already some there. There were lots of other really pretty arrangements too. It was very beautiful.

We visited family also today. It was a nice day. I'm very blessed.

The picture is of Abby and my Grandma this past Christmas. I really miss her.

Update

Hi!

I have a little time tonight, so I thought I'd do a little catch up!!

Well as most of you know, my grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. It still doesn't really seem real to me. I guess as time goes on and she's not at all the family get togethers, it'll sink in, but it's still hard to even imagine. I haven't lost anyone close like this before and it's all so new to me. My grandmother had been sick for awhile and I'm so relieved to know she's in a place where she's no longer sick and her body has been made perfect and whole. I do take comfort in that, but I still miss her. I do feel so blessed though to have gone 30 years of my life with both sets of grandparents. I don't think that happens often and for some reason, I've been blessed with that gift and for that I'm so grateful.

Well I should probably move on, because it's still a little raw talking about that and still a bit hard for me to put into words.

So for something on a different note: I will be 20 weeks pregnant this Friday! I can't believe I'm about to hit the halfway point. That's just crazy! I've gotten a pretty good pregnant belly going now. I've moved into my maternity clothes pretty exclusively. I am able to feel the baby move now, which is so nice. I love those little reassurances!! We have our ultrasound schedule for 6/1. We will not be finding out the sex as we have done with our other 2 babies. There really is nothing in this world like hearing the Dr. say "it's a...." right as the baby is delievered. I feel like it's so worth waiting for and something to help you get through the labor. We still have not decided officially on names. We've added a few choices to out other list, and I still can't for the life of me make a decision. Hopefully it'll come to me soon!

Our furniture for the babys' room will be here in a few weeks. I have a lot to do in the meantime. We are changing the upstairs playroom into the baby's room and that means I have to move the playroom downstairs to the room we currently call the classroom. We haven't used it as a classroom for awhile now as we find it much nicer to just sit around the kitchen table doing our lessons (or outside, or together on the couch, wherever!!), so that's not a big sacrifice. I just have to do a lot of condensing because the classroom is much smaller than the current playroom. Then after the baby's room is empty, I need to do a little painting. I am only changing two colors. The room is made up of 4 colors already: green, yellow, purple and red and I want to change the purple to blue and the red to a more raspberry red color to match the bedding we bought. You can see the paint treatment on the walls in this post, I'm keeping the hard work I did on the block wall, again just changing the purple to blue and the red to raspberry. Then I'll finally be ready for the furniture!!

We're going to Gatlinburg this week. We leave Thursday. We're going with my parents, my brothers family, my grandparents, two aunts, two uncles and two cousins. We're all staying in a 3 story cabin together! I'm excited about it. I love spending time with my family. I can't wait to get down there!

Our next Disney trip will most likely be in December. We're still waiting to decide for sure. We're waiting for any news of deals for that time. We've already gotten emailed codes for the end of November, so we're hoping the December ones will come soon. I can't wait to take a new little one there and sort of start over with them and the whole Disney experience. After that trip we may wait a little bit before going again because we're in the early planning stages for a 10th anniversary trip to our honeymoon destination of Maui. We want to take our kids with us this time and stop in California for a few days in Disneyland and a stop in La Jolla. Noah and Abby both had their very first beach experience at La Jolla beach (near San Diego) and we want to do the same for the new baby. Noah's was in 2001 and Abby's was in 2006 and the new baby's will be in 2011!! I just realized that's like every 5 years! We hoping to go during the humpback whale season on Maui. The kids are very excited about that. So sometime in February 2011 is our goal (our anniversay is actually November 2010, but we'll wait for the peak whale season!!).

Well we now have 2 Reds games planned for this summer. The first is the one we just found out about today. Abby won the Step Up to the Mike contest with Skyline and she will be announcing the first batter up for the Reds in the 3rd inning. They will have her on the big screen in the stadium and her name will be up there. It's very exciting!! We entered both kids and I think Noah was a little disappointed he didn't win, but he's been a great sport and very gracious to his sister. He's really a good boy! So we get 4 free tickets to see the game and to see her and that should be alot of fun!! We're also going to a game with my parents and brothers family in June. Both of these are night games and I'm so relieved because it gets so hot sitting in the stands during a regular game!! The sun just bares down on you sometimes and it's really hot!

Abby's dance recital is the same weekend of her big game debut, so she's got a crazy weekend to look forward to!! It should be a lot of fun though.

We don't have a lot else planned for the summer because we're going to be schooling through most of the summer to be able to be off in the fall when the baby arrives. We are taking 3 weeks off at the end of June and beginning of July to prepare for the new curriculum to start and take just a little break. I think it'll be exactly what we need to get through the summer. I'm excited to start the new curriculum.

One last thing, my Mother's Day was very nice. It was actually a Mother's weekend as Friday Abby and I attended a mother/daughter tea at Steve's Mom's church. Then Saturday morning we took his Mom to the Zoo (something she's wanted to do for awhile now) and then out to lunch and Saturday night Abby and I went to a mother/daughter banquet at my Grandmother's ( Dad's mom, not the one who passed away) church. All of those were very nice events. My mama came to the last one and she had a hard time because she's missing her mom so much. I felt really bad for her. Then Sunday my babies gave me my gifts, they each chose something: Noah chose a small outdoor table because I lost both of my dining tables to the crazy winds last year and this one is made of wood so it won't shatter!! Abby chose a very beautiful and soft blue pillow for me to rest on! I always love so much what they choose for me. Then we went to church, then out to lunch and then we spent a few hours at my Mom and Dad's house. Then we went home, I clipped coupons (there were a ton of good deals at Meijer this week!!), we went out to dinner at Olive Garden (my favorite, other than Outback!!) and then we went to Meijer to get some of the great deals. It was a wondderful day! I felt so blessed the whole weekend to be surrounded by such wonderful mothers, grandmothers, aunts, daughters. It was just so nice!!

Well that's all!! How's that for an update! And now a few photos!!

This is Abby in her dance costume for this year. We got her dressed for picture day. She's standing on the edge of our bed!

This is from one of our days homeschooling. Noah was learning about Michigan and how it's home to two major cereal companies: Kelloggs and Post. So we made a little recipe with Corn Flakes called Peanut Butter Crunchies. It was yummy!!



And here he's doing his Math lesson. These are actually new books that we got at convention. We love them!! They're Horizon Math. Our other books moved so slowly and with so much repetition. These have just enough repetition and review, but also move along at a much quicker pace. The kids both do well in Math, so this is a great fit for us!





And here's Abby doing her lesson. Aren't they cute when they concentrate!! I feel such a love inside when I realize how blessed I am to be able to be there and see them learning and be a part of it. I love homeschooling them!

This is from our first field trip with our new homeschool group. We visited a park in Dayton and learned about native Ohio mammals. Here Abby is holding the pelt of a red fox!!

This is also from the field trip. Noah is investigating a skull and trying to figure out what animal it is by the chart.



This is the kids working on our little container gardens we started this Spring. Here they're planting a few carrots and cucumbers!




And these two pics are from our trip to the zoo with Grammy. Here's Noah, Grammy and a giraffe and below is Abby is waving to the big silverback gorilla. It was a great day!

Well that's it for now! Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!!

I want to post. I really do. But I just can't do it right now. I have a lot to talk about. My grandmother, the baby, our first field trip with our new homeschool group, the ginormous list of things I need to do before baby's arrival, our plans for the rest of spring and summer, our new homeschool choices, etc... Hopefully I will post about all of this soon, even just for my own journal if no one else reads it.

Tomorrow we're hoping to start our container gardening. Praying that goes well and in a few weeks we'll have some sprouts!

For Sonya....Thank You!!!

I'll put the author last name first, then the name of the book. The red ones, are ones I've gotten.

Avi - Prairie School
Bulla - Riding the Pony Express
Bulla - Viking Adventure
Clements - Jake Drake: Bully Buster
De Jong - The Last Little Cat
De Jong - Shadrach
De Jong - Along Came a Dog
Fleischman - McBroom's Wonderful Acre Farm
Goodman - Cora Frear
Graves - Marco Polo
Henry - Misty of Chincoteague
Herman - The House on Walenska Street
Hurwitz - A Llama in the Family
Haywood - B is for Betsy
Kinsey-Warnock - Lumber Camp Library
Levinson - Clara and the Bookwagon
Lovelace - Besty and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
McKissack - Tippy Lemmey
Merrill - The Toothpaste Millionaire
Peterson - The Littles
Richardson - More Stories From the Attic
Repp - A Question of Yams
Roop - Keep the Lights Burning Abbie
Sandin - The Long Way to a New Land
Sandin - The Long Way Westward
Sobol - Encyclopedia Brown
Allan - Tales of Robin Hood
DuBois - The Twenty One Balloons
Henry - White Stallion of Lipizza
Lenski - Strawberry Girl
Llorente - The Apprentice
Montgomery - Kildee House
Platt - Castle Diary
Shemin - The Little Riders
Shetler - And the Word Came with Power
Skurzinksky - The Minstrel in the Tower
Hillyer - A Child's History of the World
Benge - Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime
Barton - Maps and Globes
Hockett - Catching Their Talk in a Box
Johnstone - Explorer's News
Schiller - Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky
Spraggett & Johnstone - Window on the World
Stanley - Michaelangelo
Stanley - Peter the Great
Stanley & Vennema - Good Queen Bess

Told ya it was long!!! Just let me know what level your using and what books you've gotten and can use my catalog to see what others you need and when I'm out looking, I'll look for you too (if you want me to). Thanks a lot!!!

Hi!!

Just a quick update!!

1st: Pregnancy: Well today I'm 14 weeks pregnant. I'm starting to find my regular clothes quite uncomfortable and will probably be transitioning to maternity clothes in a week or two. I still need to shop for a few things. I only kept 1 shirt from my other 2 pregnancies. My mom took me and the kids shopping yesterday, mainly for furniture. She and my Dad wanted to buy us the furniture for the nursery. We picked out the crib and a matching dresser/changing table. I love them both and felt so blessed that they wanted to do that for us. Everything will be ready in about 3 months (they had to order the dresser), so in plenty of time! We haven't decided on names yet. We have 2 or 3 contenders for each sex. We always do Biblical first names, and we're still going with that. I feel like I fall in love with the names the more and more I think about them. Right now the choices are, in no particular order: boy - Joshua, Jesse, Caleb girl - Sarah, Elizabeth (go by Libby), Eden. We won't find out the sex ahead of time, so only about 26 more weeks until we know which name it is!!

2nd: Homeschooling: Our homeschooling adventures are continuing. We had a planned field trip for today, but it was outdoors and I chose to not go considering the rain, wind, cooler temps and I'm sure tons of mud!! I probably would've gone anyway, but Abby has a pretty good cold going and I just thought being out in that weather, wasn't a good choice. We were a bit bummed about that, but hopefully when the weather gets nice again, we can do something similar. We are still planning to go the Reds game next Thursday. At this point they are predicting rain for that as well, but I'm praying that changes! I'm so excited for the weather day portion of the game (before the game, the meteorologists from Fox 19 will be doing special weather presentations and experiments for kids) and I can't wait to see Steve Horstmeyer in person!! (Steve Horstmeyer has been a Cincinnati Meteorologist for just about as long as I can remember and I have always loved watching him do the weather. I love weather in general and I would get up 30 minutes early when I was in middle school to watch him do the weather in the morning!)

The homeschool convention is in 2 weeks and I'm super excited. I LOVE going to convention. There are about 16 slots to see speakers and I've chosen 26 I want to see, so I'm going to have to pare down and make sure I leave time for visiting the exhibition hall where all the curriculum people are. I think I've made most of my decisions about what curriculums we'll be using next year (all except Language Arts/Writing). Notice I said curriculums with an 's' because I'm going to be mixing and matching next year for a change. I'm very excited about that because I'll be able to personalize the education to the child.

Our calendar schedule is going to be a bit crazy for the rest of the year (and next!). We were planning to do all year schooling, with 3 week breaks 3 times a year and a bigger break at Christmas time. But now with the baby coming, we've decided to sort of go all out until the end of September and then break for October, November and December. We'll be actually starting "next years" curriculum in July and then continuing to the end of September and then resuming it in January. We're taking a total of 5 weeks off between now and September. One is for Easter week, one for the week we go to Gatlinburg with my family (mid May) and 3 for the transition from this year to next years curriculum (which will be end of June, early July). I think that will work...hopefully!!

Oh, I almost forgot, I finally found a group to be a part of and I can't even begin to tell you how much of an answer to prayer this is. For so long I prayed to find a group of "like minded" homeschoolers that I could feel comfortable fellowshipping with and having as support. Well I had only been searching for Cincinnati area groups and one day, I did a sort of generic search and found a South Dayton Group. Not only do they hold to the same beliefs we do (Christian, believe in parents right to educate their children, etc..) but I had also prayed to find someone with kids my kids ages and the lady who first responded to me told me she had a son who is 9 (my son is 9!!) and a daughter who is 7 (my daughter will be 7 in 5 months!!), I couldn't believe it. Whe He delivers, He delivers!! They have monthly mom meetings and I'm going to my first one this Sunday. I can't wait!!

3rd: Other News: Not much else is really going on, other than normal day to day living. I'm hosting an Easter brunch for my parents, my mother in law and my brother and his family. I love hosting meals. I'm trying to "do it on a dime" and will probably post how much it all cost.

The kids are doing great (other than the annoying cold we keep passing around and let me tell you, it is no fun having a pretty good cold and being pregnant when you can take nothing for it!!). We're hoping to get a garden going in the next few weeks. The kids are very excited about that. We'll be growing carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, strawberries and later in the summer, pumpkins. We also already have peach and pear trees and are hoping to plant apple and cherry trees this Spring.

Abby has lost lots of teeth (including the front two) and Noah has gotten new glasses. Noah is very excited that a Lego store is opening at Kenwood Towne Center this summer.

Oh and 1 more thing, even if you don't believe homeschooling is right for your family, can you please go to parentalrights.org and sign the petition for an amendment that would protect parents rights to choose wheter to send their children to public school, private school or homeschool. As parents we should have that choice and the government is trying to take it away (The UN Conention on the Rights of the Child). So please take just a second and sign the petition so we can maintain the freedoms God has bestowed on us in regards to our children. Thanks!!

About to go!!

Well we've got about 15 and 1/2 hours until we leave for our trip. It's been a crazy couple of days trying to get everything ready. We took our van in on Tuesday for a tune-up and possible exhaust work, and they told us to bring it in Thursday morning and they'd have all the parts ready to go and it would take about 4 or 5 hours. Well it's now been 30 hours and I still don't have my van!!!! Steve is there now and will hopefully be leaving in the next few minutes. It became a big complicated mess with having to take it over the Nissan dealer to have something fixed and it just took forever.

And when it finally gets here, I have to take Jasmine to the vet, go to the bank and stop at the store. I need to get dog food, food for my mother in law and food for us to snack on during our drive. My mother in law is taking care of our pup and she'll stay here off an on during the week, so we like to have food for her to eat while she's here.

I'll be 9 weeks pregnant on Monday. That seems pretty far already!! Atleast to me!! Last week I had bouts of nausea and exhaustion and this week has been pretty good. I've had two days where I was very tired and not really any nausea, just some food seem really gross to me right now, like milk. I usually love milk and drink it twice a day, but right now, the thought of it just makes my stomach turn. I have been able to get some down so I can make sure I'm getting enough calcium, but it's been hard!! I'm a little worried about being tired at WDW, but since Steve and the kids are going to ride so many rides without me (all the big rides), I'll have all that time to rest, so I think I'll be ok. I'll hang out on the TTA for awhile, that's always relaxing!!

Well I still need to finish packing, charge the camera (if I can ever find the charger, or buy a new one), make a bed for my mother in law, clean the fish tank and set out the fish food, set out the dog food, do the dishes, vacuum and all the errands I mentioned earlier.....so why am I sitting here blogging????? Have a great week!!!

Lots of Stuff

I just felt like posting a random post today. I love these two pics of the kids sledding. They looks so intense!! I love waiting until the other kids go back to school to go sledding, so we have the hill all to ourselves!! Ahhh, one of the many joys of homeschooling!!

>I still can't believe we're having another baby!! It's just now starting to seem real. I've wanted it for so long, that it just keeps feeling like a dream. But I know it's real and I couldn't be happier. Abby is so impatient about it!! She wants the baby here NOW!!! I've explained a little of "where babies come from" to them (more so to Noah) but to Abby, I told her she has eggs in her tummy that someday have the chance to become babies and the other day her and Noah were playing and Noah sliced her with a play sword across the belly (it didn't hurt or anything) and she yelled "Noah be careful, I have an egg in there!!" I thought that was so cute!!

Introducing....Poppy!!!

This is the first picture of our newest baby!! We call the baby Poppy because when we first told the kids we were expecting, the internet said it was about the size of a poppy seed (it's grown now, all the way to the size of a lentil bean!!).

I had my first ultrasound yesterday. I'm about 6 1/2 weeks along now. We were able to see the heart beating, so that was very exciting!! I know the picture is blurry, I had trouble scanning it, so I had to take a picture of the picture and they all turned out pretty blurry. This was the best one. The baby is what the white arrow is pointing to.

Our baby is due October 5th. That's the exact week we had our Disney trip planned for, so we had to cancel that one! We are actually going in a couple weeks and then we're planning to go again in December so we can take the new baby as well. Our first ever Disney trip was when Abby was 2 months old and Noah was almost 3. This time Noah will be almost 10, Abby will be 7 and the baby will be 2 months old!!

I'm a little nervous about "starting over". I mean Abby will be 7 before the baby is born, so it's been awhile since I've done this, but I'm also very excited for this third blessing that's been given to me. God is so good.

Well I'd better go start lessons now!! Have a great week!!!

Homeschool Experiment - We Made Butter!!!!

I'm so excited because today the kids and I made our own butter!!! Now why you may ask, are we making our own butter....well, over the past few months we've read in two different sources about how people at different times of history have made butter. It just happened to come up twice in our studies. The first time was during our reading of Little House in the Big Woods and the second was during our Bible studies, we learned about Joseph's life as a boy. Both times butter making was mentioned and we wondered if we could do it ourselves. So I did a little online research and found out that we could and we didn't need to buy anything special to do it. So today we gave it a try. We bought heavy whipping cream to use. We used a plastic container with a tight fitting lid and a marble. We poured about 2/3 of the container full of cream and dropped the marble in. The marble adds more agitation which helps the butter to form. Then we sealed it up and taped the lid just to be sure and started shaking!! Here's pics of the kids shaking (please excuse the pj's and messy hair, this is how "school" normally looks in our home!!)

I ended up doing most of the shaking as it took about 20 minutes start to finish. After about 15 of the minutes, it felt like I couldn't get it to shake loose anymore and we peeked inside. It looked like white whipped butter. I knew from my reading that we were close to being done, but not quite. So I shook it about 5 more minutes and then it became amazingly easy to shake again and I knew it was ready. What happened was the butter finally separated from the buttermilk (as you can kind of see in the picture below). I thought it was so cool how a minute ago it was all mixed together and then it just separated into two different things!! Wow!!! (If you try this, don't forget to take the marble out!!)

So then we strained the buttermilk into a bowl to save and use for a recipe later (pancakes or something???) and had yellow butter left in the strainer. It was also so cool how the butter turned yellow. It was like a miracle!! (I know, I'm easily amazed, but it was so cool!!)

We then all took turns giving the butter a little love pat to get any remaining buttermilk out and then we sprinkled a little salt on it (it keeps it from going bad quickly).

And then I formed it into a shape resembling a butter stick!!!

And then to try it out, I made biscuits with our lunch and slathered some of the fresh yummy butter on them. Oh my where they delicious!!! Here's the kids eating their lunches.

Overall, I think this was my favorite experiment ever (well this and the time we got dry ice in our Omaha steak package and played with it for awhile!!). I don't know how to explain it, but I was just awed at God during the whole process. I mean he created the cows that give the milk to use and I bet he thought of how the butter would be made back in the beginning. It really is such a cool process!!!

Chicago - January 2009

Here's some pictures from our trip to Chicago. We just got home today. The following pictures are actually in reverse order of the days we went. The first pic was taken today!! We had a great time, even with the cold, and I think Noah really enjoyed spending his Birthday there. The past two years, we've spent Abby's Birthday in Walt Disney World, so we wanted to give him a special treat this year. I can't believe my baby boy is now 9!! He's halfway to adulthood!!!!!! Well anyway, here's our trip:


This is from the farming exhibit at the Science and Industry Museum. Wow, this museum was so cool!! We saw a real German sub, a super cool coal mining exhibit, played with robots, saw planes and trains and many other things. The kids also got to help milk faux cows, even putting on their teatcups!! I loved it, it was a very neat museum!!



This was Sunday night (Noah's Birthday). We had dinner at Applebee's (we used our giftcard from my grandma and grandpa, thank you!!). Noah got a Birthday sundae and everyone sang to him, it was very nice and very yummy!!!

For Noah's special Birthday treat, we took him to the Legoland Discovery Center in Schaumburg (a suburb of Chicago). He had a wonderful time!! We did everything they had to offer (many several times!!), had lunch and he shopped with the gift cards he got from his Birthday party. He ended up coming with quite a large stack of Lego boxes thanks to his generous friends and family!!! We all had a great time and I particularly enjoyed the 4D show!! I usually don't care for those, but I loved this show!!

This was an exhibit at the Adler Planetarium, that we just did a quick visit of. We were worn and tired from the Field Museum, and didn't stay here very long, but it was a very cool place as well!!

This is Sue from the Field Museum. It was a neat museum, but I kind of got tired of all the "non-creation talk". I expect it at museums like this, but it was just a bit ridiculous. The exhibits are truly awesome though and sooo thorough. I just couldn't believe how long each exhibit went on. We did an Ancient Americans exhibit, the Animals Exhibit (this was so incredible, they had nearly every animal you can think of on display (not living), the Dinosaur exhibit, the gems exhibit and many others. It's really a one of a kind museum. Both museum's are must see's on a trip to Chicago.

This is Abby on our first day there. It was by far the coldest day and the wind just stung the face. We were outside maybe 6 minutes here at a park on Lake Michigan, but her eyes are watering in the pic from the cold wind!! I thought she looked so cute!!

And this is my Noah at the park. He's quite the cutie too!!! I loved the "snow beach" on Lake Michigan. It made for some really cool pictures!!

And this was our first stop on the trip, the Sears tower. Here's the kids looking out from the 99th floor Skydeck. You can see Lake Michigan in the background. They were both amazed at the view. It was so cool!! We also had yummy deep dish Chicago style pizza that day!!

It was a great trip and we have wonderful memories to share!!