Schoolroom Prep.

I spent most of yesterday preparing the schoolroom to start this year's school year. We made the designed "den" of the house the school room, because I've found it too difficult with toddlers to be tucked away in some remote room of the house. This way, I can attempt to keep kids on task even while I slap PB and J's together at lunch-time. While a traditional den would be prettier, the convenience has been worth it!
What I have done for several years is have the kids keep all their day to day books and notebooks in one of these fabric bins that then get put away in this Ikea shelf. Once upon a time, I homeschooled only four kids and they each had a shelf with one left over for supplies; these days Gabriel and Alei have out-grown my system, Moriah and Alyssa still have their bins, James and Ben share a bin and Tori and Julia have little bins that leave room for the crayon, marker and colored pencil boxes.

I also cleaned out and organized the bookcases. I'm a bit OCD when it comes to having the books in logical order; I'm not sure my system would be logical to anyone else, but it's working for me. I'm also quickly running out of book room!

My last touch is that I'm going to move the horse out and set up a small train table for Elijah between the book-cases, in hopes that it will help keep him occupied during school time.

We are getting close to the 2010-2011 school year!

Catch-Up Attempt

Last week I attempted to catch up on lots of outstanding details of life that I was falling behind on. This week I am planning on organizing a few areas of my home and laying out the first six weeks of the new school year. I hope to start our school year the next Monday - we'll see if I can pull my preparations off. I would like a full month of my schedule under my belt before I add our home-school co-op and other fall obligations.

Here's some random pictures that have nothing to do with the post or each other! Here's our last detail from our nightmare renter. He left this precious gem in the back yard and we had to remove it for our new renter. The tires are rotted and the frame is so rusty that JD was afraid the camper portion would fall off the frame just hauling it out of there. It is now sitting at my house while we contemplate its future. I jokingly told Gabriel that we were sending it with him on his trip to CO so that we didn't have to finance any hotel rooms; I couldn't keep a serious face long enough to see if I could convince him of our new, frugal idea. (The picture makes it look way nicer than it is!)

Moriah blessed Julia with her own eye-shadow. She choose to wear the green above her eyes and the pink above her eye-brows. I think it's just the look she was after!

Lastly, Elijah LOVES cars, trucks and especially tractors. Here he is first thing in the morning lining them up playing with them. It's hard to not buy him a whole fleet of tractors considering how thrilled he gets with them.

Have a blessed Sunday.

Radical by David Platt

I am a few chapters into the book Radical by David Platt. It is a very convicting look at Christianity versus "the American dream." I believe he is right, that we have taken the message of the Bible and tweaked it to fit our "American dream." We have adopted the idea of what we think God and Jesus are based more on our American view-points than what is written in the Bible.

Here's a thought provoking paragraph from chapter two:
Jesus' words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:
Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?" Then I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you, Away from me, you evildoers!"

Jesus was not speaking here to irreligious people, atheists or agnostics. He was not speaking to pagans or heretics. He was speaking to devoutly religious people who were deluded into thinking that they were on the narrow road that leads to heaven when they were actually on the broad road that leads to hell.

We have been told all that is required is a one-time decision, maybe even mere intellectual assent to Jesus, but after that we need not worry about his commands, his standards or his glory. We have a ticket to heaven, and we can live however we want on earth. Our sin will be tolerated along the way. Much of modern evangelism today is built on leading people down this road and crowds flock to it, but in the end it is a road built on sinking sand, and it risks disillusioning millions of souls.

__________

I'm sure I'll have more to say in the coming days about the book, but I already highly recommend it. It is a small, easy-read in spite of it's thought provoking message!

A Trip to See Big Rat

Instead of having a birthday party, we took Julia and Elijah to Chuck E. Cheese. We actually ate dinner at CiCi's pizza buffet, then headed to Chuck E. to play games and ride thrilling rides (like Barney below.) All the kids had a blast, as usual. I think Julia finished off her tokens first as she ran wildly from ride to ride. (Can you tell from the enormous band-aid that she got a shot earlier in the day?) That's a story of it's own.

Elijah enjoyed the little playground as much as the rides.

Julia waited and waited for her turn to take a picture with Chuck E.; she and Tori have always loved dressed up characters.

Elijah, on the other hand, was quite scared of Chuck E.; he called him"the big rat." Poor little guy would alternate between telling us "I scared big rat" and yelling "bad rat" at Chuck E.

Birthday is officially over today.

More Birthday, More Tomatoes, More Watermelon AND a Salsa Recipe

Two and four are great ages for birthdays. Elijah was really into it this year; I think Julia's excitement was rubbing off on him. Since Julia had a cake, Elijah had cup-cakes. He liked the singing and blowing out the candles.

JD took about 20 pictures of Julia while we sang Happy Birthday, her smile was this big in every picture. She never lacks enthusiasm.

Having them take turns opening presents was kind of like Christmas morning.

The excitement on all their faces crack me up. They know a DVD gift will benefit everybody.

Julia still wins the enthusiasm prize, however.

Other than celebrating birthdays, we have been canning tomatoes and eating watermelon. Yesterday, I canned 10 quart jars of tomatoes for vegetable soup and chili this winter. There were some tomatoes that we going bad that the chickens got to eat, but between my salsa and tomatoes, I processed over 80 pounds!

We eat 3-4 watermelons a week around here; we could actually eat more, but that's all I buy. I definitely am planting them in the garden next year!

For those that are interested, here is the salsa recipe that I use. It came from a friend of JD's at work and I've used it the last three years:

Dave's Zesty Salsa:

6 lbs. peeled and coarsely chopped tomatoes (I chop everything except the garlic and cilantro in the food processor)

2 lbs. seeded and chopped green peppers

1 lb. chopped hot peppers (or less, depending on taste)

2 lbs. white onions (other kinds are ok too)

2 T. chopped cilantro

1 T. salt

1/2 T. sugar

3 cloves minced or chopped garlic

1 1/2 c. white vinegar

1 small can tomato paste

Combing all ingredients, EXCEPT tomato paste in a large pot and simmer until desired consistency (about one hour)

Right before you are ready to put salsa in jars, add the tomato paste and stir thoroughly.

Spoon salsa into hot, sterilized jars.

Process jars of salse in a hot water bath canner for 15 minutes.

______________________

My additions:

This recipe makes 5 quart jars (10 pint jars.) I double the recipe and it works well, other than it's so large that I have to use my canner to cook it, then clean the canner to process the salsa.

Make sure the canner is at a full boil before you start the 15 minute timer.

Enjoy:)

Birthday Times 2

It's hard to believe, but my baby boy turns two today and my baby girl turns four! I snapped a few pictures of them when they headed outside this morning.

Elijah was being very serious and telling me about the butterflies in the flowers.

When he decided to present me with a big cheese, I didn't have the camera ready, so it's a bit out of focus.

Julia was more than happy to stop for a few pictures.

Four!

She has grown so much; it's hard to believe that only three years ago, she was a one year old wearing size three months clothes!

She has a flair for fashion and loves her red high-tops - even with sun dresses!

When I suggested that I take a few pictures of them together, they both thought they had better things to do. Here's Elijah chasing James and Ben as fast as his little legs can run.


Here's my babies exactly two years ago. I look pretty rough, but I had just given birth and had my just turned two year old and my 3 1/2 year old climbing on me and newborn Elijah.

We didn't think that Julia would understand that it was her birthday or that Elijah was a permanent present, but she hit the hospital room door and said, "where is my birthday boy?" She got it and was pleased with her birthday surprise.

Happy Birthday to our baby girl and boy!

2010 Salsa Event

This was our third year canning salsa. I don't remember how many jars we made in 2008, but it wasn't nearly enough. Last year we made 40 jars and we just finished the last one, so 40 was our goal again this year.

I don't grow enough tomatoes to support this project, but I bought 75 pounds from a local farmer for only $30.

JD is the only one not bothered by onions, so he chopped 15 pounds of them. My eyes were still bothered a bit across the kitchen and Julia ran at one point yelling that the entire kitchen was filled with onions.

So, we canned 20 jars yesterday and I did 20 more today (with JD's pre-chopped onions waiting in a Tupperware.)

Salsa complete - I still have tomatoes to can for vegetable soup and winter chili, but tomorrow is Julia's and Elijah's birthday and I'm taking Alei for a MRI, so they will wait until Wednesday.

The best part of canning is when they are cooling on the counter.

Today and Tomorrow

My biggest accomplishment of the day is a Julia hair re-do. She got the whole treatment - take down, wash, comb, and re-style. I was pretty impressed with the new $26 bottle of conditioner that I bought (I should be for that price -right?) I'm just so paranoid that all the swimming is damaging their hair that I keep going for better conditioner and it just doesn't come cheap. The bottle makes a comment about affordable, which is laughable considering that I've never used anything that costs more than $4 a bottle on myself! Anyway, Julia did well for hair time so she got "to go to chicken." "Going to chicken" consists of driving Julia five miles to a local gas station that is known for their chicken tenders. She proudly orders the chicken tender special and carries it home with a big smile. I realize it's kind of red-necky to "go to chicken" at a gas station, but the nearest Chick-Fil-A is about 30 miles!

Now, Julia is worn out.

My next big today project, other than clearing the living room floor and shuffling laundry, is to finish Gabriel's transcripts. I'm not enjoying that job right now, which is why I'm blogging to procrastinate.

Tomorrow, after church, and after the water park, I pick up 50 pounds of tomatoes to start this years salsa making. We made 40 jars last year and just finished the last jar last night! It's a lot of work, but tastes way better than bought!

Guinea Crises #1 - (I'm Sure There Will Be a #2 at Some Point)

I drug myself out of bed this morning after a whopping four hours sleep. I got the kids up, fed a few and sat down to drink my hot tea and cut coupons for my planned trip to the grocery store when....Ben came running in yelling that all the baby guineas were out of their cage. I called everyone to come help. Turns out that they are so small that they fit out of the bars of the baby cage. On top of that, the chicken coop door was open (to help keep them cool) so the babies all had access to outside. Considering we have foxes that pluck off full-grown chickens, I feared that we had lost several. We started collecting them from the hen house and the chicken yard. We ended up locking all the big chickens inside at one point and the babies started coming out from under the hen house - nine more to be exact. We found three more sitting under a bush on the edge of the woods. Once we couldn't find anymore, I started moving them to a different cage and counting - 30. I am really amazed, but we found every one. Now my problem is that this cage doesn't have a leaf-proof roof, so JD has a job for tomorrow (after he fixes the blue car!) Poor guy, but I'm just not a qualified roofer (nor a qualified car repairman)!

Look at this baby; they go to sleep when you pet them.

Good night. I'm hoping for a better nights sleep and a calmer morning tomorrow.

Vehicles and Guineas

I'm really thankful that we had renters move in Tuesday; it made yesterday's vehicle crises more bearable. It all started with a normal day - JD dropped the Toyota off to be inspected and took the truck to work. The garage called to tell us that the Toyota failed due to a faulty air-bag and it can only be fixed by the dealer. Great - there's no better place to be ripped off than the dealer!

Later in the day, JD needed to get to work on the base and the base won't allow the truck on (due to farm plates) and won't let the Toyota on until it passes inspection. Virginia law allows you to drive a vehicle with a rejection sticker for 15 days, but not the base. So, I ended up trading the van to JD and driving the truck home. Now, mind you, this is a big truck - you know the kind with the four tires across the back instead of two. It also has no air-conditioner and scares me when it shifts, but back to my story......

I came home in the truck, but needed the van in time to take the children to VBS. JD had to juggle his schedule but made it home just in time for me to load them up and head for the church. I noticed a few miles down the road that the radio quit working. Then a few more miles down the road, I looked down and the speedometer wasn't working. Then I heard the engine die and I had to coast that bad boy off the side of the major road we were driving on. It wasn't going to start either, so I called JD and told him of our predicament. It was nice and hot sitting in the heat of the van, but I wasn't about to unload my crew beside the busy road or cross the big ditch next to the road. (I only removed Tori and Julia briefly to let them go potty next to the road!)

JD towed it to a church parking lot and made a few attempts to get it started, but that wasn't happening. We then brought the children home and we headed back out. First we waited for the lock-smith to break into the Toyota, since JD let the repair shop lock the key in thinking that we had a spare to open the door (it's been missing for some time.) Then, he waited for the tow-truck to drag the van home.

Today, JD is attempting to fix the van; the Toyota is going to have to go in the shop after he drives it 13 hours on Saturday to take his Mom home. In the mean time, I drove the Toyota to take Alei to the Dr. this morning and wouldn't you know it, I got pulled over. Thankfully, she was only checking on the date of the rejection sticker and it's reason for being rejected. When I told her that it had to go to the dealer for the air-bag, she said, "I bet that will be expensive." Yep, that's what we are thinking.......I'm glad the house rented.

The best part of it all was watching how thrilled Elijah was to have a tow-truck deliver the van. He has talked about it all day.

Overall, it's been a good van; this is the first time it's broken down on me.

Our baby guineas, that I ordered over two months ago, were finally delivered today. We got 30 and everyone was ready to hold one.

I was happy that none died in transit and the kids were elated to add some guineas to our chicken assortment.

Elijah felt the need to kiss this one on the head.

They are happy out in the brooder in the chicken shed. Hopefully, they will grow up to be champion tick-eaters, which is the reason we got them.

Julia asked if we got to go to VBS tonight, instead of sitting by the side of the road like last night. I told her that I was going to take her in the truck. She asked if Dad was going to drive; I told her that I was. She looked alarmed and asked, "Does Dad know this?"