My Fruitful Life

Cancer

2021-12-13T11:32:00.002-08:00

It has been so long since I've blogged. I don't know if anyone will read this. If nothing else, I want to saved so my children can read my thoughts as they grow up. Life is extremely busy and I just haven't carved out the time from our busy schedule. However, I feel it's time I try and make this a priority. Journaling has always been a way I've been able to express myself and putting my thoughts down brings clarity.

The title of this blog is Cancer. Almost two weeks ago we found out that my husband has colon cancer. This came as a complete surprise. He had been having blood in his stool since August and it was getting worse in September. It took a few months to go to the doctor, get blood work done, visit the GI doctor, and schedule a colonoscopy. Finally the day before Thanksgiving he had his first colonoscopy. What should have been a simple in and out procedure of being there no more than 2.5 hours, turned into us being there 4 hours and discovering he has a massive tumor on his colon. They sent him for a CT-Scan and blood work under STAT, which means life-threatening and needs to be done ASAP. They also did a biopsy of the tumor. We went in the following Monday to see his GI doctor. Since it was Thanksgiving they hadn't gotten the biopsy results back but did have his blood work and CT-Scan results. Both looked good. Praise God! The following day the doctor called and told him the biopsy came back and he has adenocarcinoma, aka colon cancer. This was a Tuesday and the kids had dentists appointments in FW and I was gone with them half of the day. When I got home, my husband was still working and it wasn't until I was making dinner that he came in the kitchen and told me. Tuesdays are our hectic evenings. My oldest has basketball practice and all of the kids have Trail Life and American Heritage Girls. We didn't get a chance to fully process it together and basically ate and split to get kids to activities.

While at Trail Life and AHG, some elders from church came up and prayed over us and a few friends joined in the prayer. I'm still in shock but also am hopeful that he can beat this. We are so blessed that the cancer hasn't spread. Later that week we went to the surgeon's office and sat down in his office to talk about surgery. He said he would remove a foot of his colon and test the surrounding area for cancer and that would determine what stage of cancer he has. He said he's extremely lucky it hasn't spread and is not stage 4. He said it was stage 1, 2, or 3, but we wouldn't know until after surgery. He will spend 5 days in the hospital and then it will take 4-6 weeks to recover. We asked if there were dietary changes he could make. He said no. This is frustrating because there is so much you can do if you have cancer. We asked his GI doctor the same question and he told us eliminate pork and eliminate beef for now and if you want to eat meat only eat fish or a little chicken or turkey. But really he needs to eat lots and lots of vegetables. The surgeon also told him he's most likely had cancer for 5-7 years!!! 😧

This leads us to what are we doing now. My oldest had a basketball tournament in San Antonio. We had planned to go down earlier than we did but since my husband will be missing a lot of work coming up, we went up the day before. We still got to take the kids to Sea World like I had planned a few months ago. Anyway, going out of town made it a little difficult keeping with our new diet but not completely. My husband has cut out sugar completely. We are juicing organic vegetables daily. Mostly carrots, ginger, beets, celery, greens, and an apple. We're eating big salads, nuts, seeds, and some clean fish. After just one week of this he's lost 8 lbs and I've lost 5 lbs. Weight loss isn't the reason for this it's to kill the cancer cells and make sure this tumor doesn't grow and spread. We've been having oatmeal with blueberries and pomegranets for breakfast, black coffee, and for dinner more vegetables and legumes. We're reading all about alternative methods of fighting cancer. By nature, I question everything and after watching my step-brother die of cancer earlier this year I'm frankly disgusted with the cancer industry. I'm disgusted with the food industry. Our food is killing us and causing so many diseases and it's so hard to break the cycle. Yet in our country there only "proven" mainstream ways to treat cancer, which most fail, is to have surgery, chemo, and or radiation. Billions of dollars are spent on cancer patients, they feel like crap, and lose the will to live. When I truly believe there are other ways. They take work, but there are other ways to kill this disease.

What are we going to do? Everything is up to my husband on what he wants to do. Of course we want the cancer out. He is tenatively scheduled for surgery on the 17th. However, insurance hasn't approved it yet. Meanwhile, we are cleaning up our diets and looking at alternative methods, including beating cancer with the fenbendazole protocol (oddly enough, we have tons of this medicine unopened because we give it to our goat), ivermectin (say what?! look it up!), and dietary changes. Chris Beat Cancer is a fabulous resource on beating cancer with food. My friend's brother-in-law beat stage 3 bladder cancer with fenbendazole, which has been proven to shrink tumors. I ordered the powder which is what is recommended, we have the liquid. I'm starting to think maybe we could all use a little deworming. Many national healers tend to believe cancer is a parasite. I am not a doctor so I don't know. But I was a journalist in college and know how to reasearch things. I love looking at the research and reading stories about people who healed naturally. Also each person has the ability to take their health into their own hands. It's not the governments job to keep us safe and well. In fact, it seems like they are okay keeping people unhealthy and sick with their poisonous GMOs and processed foods.

People ask me how I'm feeling. Truthfully, I'm pissed off. I really am. I am frankly angry and it's not at my husband, it's at being lied to by the FDA. I'm angry that cancer is still the 2nd leading cause of death in America, with almost 600,000 Americans dying every.single.year from this dreadful horrible disease and the same old methods are not working well. I was pissed when my brother died from it and yet the drug companies were able to come up with a vaccine to cure covid, which isn't working well and has caused a ton of health problems for many people who have gotten it. Meanwhile, good doctors are able to treat high risk people early with proper protocols and people are recovering easily from it when given the right stuff. We all had it last December and rested and took the vitamins that were recommended. Now you can get the anibody infusion and/or take other things and recover quickly at home if you need it. I have fully vaccinated friends who have gotten the disease and did the antibody infusion and recovered. It's all about the choice and making the best decision for yourself. I don't want to pursuade anyone from doing what they feel is best but I don't think any medical thing should be mandated. I have two blood clotting disorders and am unable to get it. I get my antibodies tested every 6 months and they are still sky high. I also am so so sorry if you lost a love one to covid last year. I'm sorry if you lost a love one to a cancer, a car accident, or other disease. Losing a love one is hard. I'm just angry because of stupid covid we weren't able to see my brother as much during his last years of life and yet cancer kills more people every year than covid did/does.

Please keep us in your prayers. Life is short, we all know this. But seeing diseases eat away at people we love is so hard. My kids are worried and we're trying to be optimastic. We are blessed with some of the best of friends who are going to help us by loving on our children and caring for them so I can be at the hospital with my husband. Please send my husband some encouragement. He's been under a lot of stress at work and working so much extra for the past two years.

Also, if you are not a Christian, please talk with me. Our biggest hope is in God and through prayer and petition I believe my husband can beat cancer. Please keep him in your prayers.

Too Many Clothes!

2017-08-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

Too many clothes! What do I really wear?

Ever since living in Europe, I have separated my clothing by season. I try and keep my closet as clutter free as possible. I've been trying to do the one item in, one item out but have been failing. I just counted my short sleeve/sleeveless shirts and I have 62! 62 shirts that are hanging in my small (for American standards) closet. This is not including my winter shirts or my dresses.

62 shirts hanging

My minimalist side would love to pair down to about 15-20 great shirts. I've been trying to embrace the minimalist lifestyle for a few years now. I still have a ways to go. When I designed my closet in my new house, I decided to go with a larger shower, door to the laundry room, from the closet, rather than a larger closet. I truly want to only have what I love. I want to only see shirts that I would love to wear no matter what. Shirts that if my husband ever surprised me with a weekend getaway, he could easily pack my clothing and I would not dread wearing a single thing he packed. And if I'm really honest with myself, 15-20 shirts is still too many. I probably wear the same 5-8 shirts most days. So that's allowing me to have a few extra shirts.

So how is my weed out plan working? Every time I wear an item and wash it, I hang it on the very left of the clothes line. Slowly, items I haven't worn in a long time get pushed to the left. You can even flag the shirt on the left and move the flag over if you end up wearing that shirt. I've done this a few weeks now and I'm going to give myself another month to see where I'm at. Then it's time to purge!

Last weekend my husband asked if I needed any jeans. I looked in my closet and realized I have 5 pairs. So really, no, I'm good. I need to try on all my pants, especially before going into Fall and see what I love and don't. What fits and doesn't fit me. I do this about once a year. Below is a picture of my pants and shirts. I think I'm done to one skirt which I'm about to give away. I tend to wear more dresses than skirts and tops.

How to you organize your clothes? What do you think is a good number of clothing items to own?

3rd Grade Homeschool Schedule and Curriculum

2017-07-28T19:40:00.003-07:00

The rest of our school books arrived tonight! I was one happy lady! I love getting back into the swing of things and watching my kids continue to learn and grow. This year we're changing a few things up and adding new things in. Since we moved, we have decided to not do Classical Conversations this year due to the distance. We're on a waiting list for one really close to our house but it's doubtful space will open up this Fall. We are continuing with our Thursday co-op, but not doing the morning classes. My son loved them but it's further from our house and it would mean I'd have to find something for two hours to do with my youngest every Thursday morning and we'd be gone from the house all day Thursday. Which is HARD to do, when you have little kids. I'll be sharing what I'll be doing with my younger ones in another post.

Our schedule is somewhat flexible. Meaning, it's really up to my son on how long it will take him to complete his assignments. I allowed 30 minute blocks for most subjects. Some will take 10-15 minutes to complete, others may take 45 minutes. It also depends on his willingness to get it done and whether or not he's being challenged in a particular area. We should be done by lunchtime, except for reading, which we'll do after lunch during our quiet time. I give him the option to work ahead if he's loving a subject or we'll do extra work when we know we have a field trip that week. One thing I LOVE about homeschooling is the flexibility of it. Our core schoolwork will be done Monday-Thursday. Every other Thursday afternoons my kids have co-op classes and Friday mornings my kids have co-op classes. They will be doing school work daily, but the bulk will be done 4 days a week at home. I'll go through our day(s) and what we're doing for each subject as I talk about it.

Bible

I Can Learn the Bible by Holly Hawkins Shivers (52 scriptures every kid should know), will be our reference book for our memory verses this year.

Know Your Bible for Kids by Konna K. Maltese goes over all the books of the Bible and highlights key events from each one.

Because I Said So by NotConsumed, is a Bible study we're doing on obedience. We'll do one of these each week. I also bought a few of her other studies and will do them once we're done with the others.

We'll start our day off with Bible. This is also when we eat breakfast most days. Some days my son will already be done with breakfast. He usually feeds the animals sometime between 6:30am and 7:30am. So this allows him time to get back and get ready for school.

Math

Math U See Gamma (we have the blocks, not pictured)
Learn Math Fast System Volume 1 & 2
Life of Fred books for fun - not pictured but have

By 8:30, everyone should be done with breakfast and while I'm cleaning up, my son will start on math. I found the Lean Math Fast System and ordered it due to the great reviews. However, after reading through it, I realized it will take a good amount of my time to teach each day. We used Math U See last year and are going to continue with Gamma this year. He watches a 5-7 minute lesson on Monday , which explains the week's lesson. Then he gets to work. If he has any questions, I'm here to help. He mostly can do this on his own which is great! We'll play games using Learn Math Fast as time allows as well as continue reading through Life of Fred books.

Language Arts

Spelling: Spelling You See: Americana
3rd Grade Language Lessons for Today by My Father's World
Dude Diaries
Daily 6-Trait Writing

I scheduled language arts to take approximately 45 minutes. This is not including daily reading. We are going to continue with Language Arts for Today. We're adding Daily 6-Trait Writing, and for free writing, we're using Dude Diaries, which is perfect for boys. It has good writing prompts, and comes with a lock and keys. Once we get through LA, we'll take a break and go outside for morning recess.

MORNING RECESS BREAK

Geography and Health/Social Studies

Daily Geography Practice by Evan-Moor
Health, Safety, & Manners 3 by Abeka

After our morning recess, we'll continue with Geography and Healthy/Social Studies. My son will be taking a Geography class in one of his co-ops, so we're not going to spend excessive time at home on it. That makes Daily Geography a perfect fit. There are just two questions a day, four days a week. I really like Abeka's Health, Safety, and Manners books, so we'll continue with grade 3 this year. We should be able to fit both in, in the 30-minute time frame.

History and Science

Adventures in U.S. History by My Father's World
MysteryScience.com
Magic School Bus Science Kits

Last year we did not finish our history. So we'll continue with Adventures in U.S. History by My Father's World. We have all of the supplement books that go with this curriculum and are looking forward to continuing learning about U.S. History.

Since we only have half a year's worth of history, we'll be doing science for the other half. I'm hoping to do history twice a week and science the other half. My son will also be taking a science, technology, engineering, and math class on Fridays.

For Science, we'll be using an online science curriculum called Mystery Science. We'll also be doing some Magic School Bus Science Kits.

Handwriting and Typing

Handwriting Without Tears Cursive
Typing: Typing.com (unless I find something better)

We used A Reason for Handwriting last year but are going to go back to using Handwriting without Tears this coming year. This is the series he used in 1st grade. He got really frustrated with cursive last year and we ended up having to put it aside. This one looks like a better fit for learning. Since he's writing so much already, we'll only do handwriting twice a week and the other two days he'll be learning how to type using a free online typing program such as typing.com.

LUNCH BREAK/OUTSIDE Time

Reading

On our bookshelf:

I Survived Series: There are 10 books in this series based on true historical events and kids who survived them. We're currently reading I Survived Hurricane Katrina.

The Imagination Station Books: There are 6 books in this series by the same authors of Adventures in Odyssey.

God I Need to Talk to You About series by Dan Carr and Susan K. Leigh - he'll be reading these to me as we continue to work on character traits

Who Was Ronald Reagan? by Joyce Milton and other Who Was books.

We're going to continue to get readers that are a good fit for him as well as read several series together. I noticed this last year that he retains more when he's read to. He seems to be an auditory learner. I also noticed longer books, while he could read the words, he wasn't comprehending the story-line as well when he read it. So we'll be working on reading comprehension a lot this year. There are also novels and other books we'll be reading as part of our history curriculum. It should be a good year full of interesting stories.

In addition to the above schoolwork, my kids attend a co-op. For the co-op classes, my son will be taking: Geography, Gameschooling, PE, STEAM, Art, and Legos. He will also continue with Trail Life, as this will be his 3rd year. I'm hoping he'll get into piano lessons and he will continue to play basketball when the season comes around as well as tennis when we can make it in town. He's also showing an interest in swimming, so we might try and fit that in for a season. We have a very busy school year ahead of us!

	Daily Schedule 3rd
Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8:00	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible
8:30	Math	Math	Math	Math	Morning Co-op
9:00	Spelling	Spelling	Spelling	Spelling
9:30	LA Today;Dude Diary	LA for Today	LA for Today	Dude Diary
10:00	Daily 6-Trait Writing	Daily 6	Daily 6	Daily 6
10:15	Outside	Outside	Outside	Outside
10:30	Geography/SS	Geography/SS	Geography/SS	Geography/SS
11:00	History	Science	History	Science
11:30	Typing	Handwriting	Typing	Handwriting
12:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
12:30	Outside	Outside	Outside	Afternoon co-op	Outside
1:00	Reading	Reading	Reading		Reading
2:00	catch-up	catch-up	catch-up
3:00
4:00

Homeschool Goals and Update for 2017-2018 School Year

2017-07-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe I'm about to have a 3rd grader! Since we homeschool, we can decide when we go back to start. We decided that we're going to start next Monday, July 31st. A local co-op is going to meeting at our church this coming year and we joined it. It starts back up the first Friday of August, so we decided we'll start the same week. My daughter will be in preschool and my youngest with tot school. It's going to be a great year!

I don't talk about the challenges of homeschooling much. But trust me, they exist! There's a reason more people don't homeschool. Spending everyday, all day, with your children, can be quite challenging. Last year was rough! I am not going to lie. There were more days than I would like to admit that I was ready to throw in the towel and enroll my oldest in the local school. If it wasn't for my husband's encouragement, I may have! My darling son, whom I dearly love, decided to have quite an attitude and made teaching him not as fun as in the past. He started complaining and wanted to be lazy. That and having two really young kids made homeschooling very challenging. To top it off, we decided to buy an old house, have it renovated, and sell our first house that we rented out for 8 years, plus sell our house we had lived in for 5 years. It was quite a year! The whole process took a little over 6 months. We've been in the farm house now almost 3 months and are finally settling in.

Here are my goals for this coming year:

Put my children's hearts first. My biggest goal above all is that my children grow in love and the likeness of Christ Jesus. That they know they are loved by God and are loved by their parents. I'm a pretty strict teacher, which is great in a classroom full of kids, but might not be as great when I have just a few students, who are also my children. This coming year, I'm going to try and look at the heart of the matter the most. If we're having a really bad day or a super hard day, I'm going to pray about it and see what else is going on in our lives and adjust accordingly. My kids' hearts come before academic success. My children NEED to know I LOVE them. I feel like I didn't express that enough to them last year.

Keep it fun! This was my goal when my oldest was younger. Then I got all serious and probably just worn out from all the things that come with having baby after baby and dealing with the doubling of housework. It's a shame really. School should be fun. I mean why not, right? My oldest son's personality includes wanting to have fun and wanting to make sure EVERYONE is having fun. He's a big includer like his mom and dad. A friend of mine brought up looking at gameschooling. Not gameschooling as in just playing educational games online but actually playing more educational games with one another. Games like Uno and Monopoly, but there are a ton more. Make games and songs out of the schoolwork and keep it light and fun. So I'm planning on making our school days more fun.

Host more playdates. We started inviting more people over toward the end of summer and have really enjoyed it. I'm hoping to get together with our friends more outside of co-ops than we did last year. Pretty much we stopped having people over, apart from life group, while we were getting our house ready to sell and through the selling part of it. We enjoy having people over and we want our friends and children's friends to always feel welcome when they come over.

That's pretty much it! What about academic success? That's definitely an important thing and we are going to be learning a ton. I honestly don't fear that my children won't gain all the knowledge they to succeed in life and more! I'll update you with what we're doing for each kid in a few days. And just to be extra clear, I do love homeschooling, even with all of the challenges that come with it. Each year we pray and talk about what we should do the following year. And for now, we're going to continue homeschooling.

Goat Attack

2017-05-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, one of the dogs we're keeping on our property, attacked our female goat. My older kids were playing with the goats and dogs in another pasture near the stables. My husband and I were getting breakfast ready, it was Memorial Day, so he was off. When we heard and saw the donkey, heehawing and rearing up and down! She was having a fit! I saw the kids were still in the pasture they were in so I knew they were okay but noticed a few dogs in with Ellie. My husband ran outside and I followed shortly behind him. Some dogs got a hold of our female goat and she was in a corner of the stables covered in blood and limping. Our neighbor and friend, was thankfully home. She ran over and got her horse trailer hooked up to her truck. She called the emergency vet to meet her at the office. She helped us load her up in her horse trailer and she took her in. Praise God, Penny is fine! The vet cleaned her up, gave her antibiotics to take for a week and we're keeping the dog out who went after her. We have six male dogs on our property. All of the dogs have done so well with the other animals but something must have startled Penny and she took off running and Pirate and a few others followed. I'm just glad Penny is okay. We realized on Monday that it's just as important that we have a vet's number handy. We also really need to get a truck and a horse trailer. We are also very thankful for our friend, who helped us with Penny. She's become a good friend of mine who has taught me and the kids so much about large animals and farm life.

She got bit on both sides of her body.

They got her pretty good under her left ear.

Farm House Kitchen - Before and After

2017-05-19T12:17:00.001-07:00

I'm going to do a series of posts featuring some of our farm house renovations. If you're new to my blog, we bought an older house on a little farm and had it completely renovated. The process took 3 months. Thankfully, we didn't move in until a few weeks before it was completely finished. First up is my new kitchen!

The kitchen in our new house is one of my favorite rooms! This is my dream kitchen and has everything I have always wanted. When I first saw our house, I saw so much potential. You can change almost any room in a house and create a space you love. When we bought our house, the kitchen had a peninsula and short cabinets hanging from the ceiling. I knew instantly that if we tore that out, moved a door over, we could create a large island. I always wanted double ovens, a pot filler, and an appliance garage. When I met with our contractor's carpenter, I walked with him along each space and I described exactly what I wanted, including pot drawers. You can never have too many drawers! I also wanted the cabinets to reach the ceiling. We also wanted white shaker cabinets, dark gray quartz counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms. I think the kitchen turned out great! You'll notice the old kitchen was narrow. The old water heater took up some of the space behind the old cabinets and wall. We bought a tankless and put it in the attic. Then we pushed back the walls and it really opened the kitchen. We had them install can lights throughout all of the living areas except for the pendant light above the sink and the chandelier I found on a really cool website. What do you think of our new kitchen?

BEFORE:

Small but functional kitchen

We moved the door in this picture over to the left.

There was a lot of wasted space.

AFTER:

Maximizing all of the space! All of the appliances we bought new.
I decided to go with a french door fridge and will say I love this one.
It's a Samsung, has a lot of space, can fit party trays, and is setup nicely for organization.

Lots of storage, double ovens, gas stove, and pot filler.

We have a 12' island. I'm planning to get bar stools, eventually.

There used to be a wall where you see the table in the background.
We added a room, I'll explain this in another post.

5 burner gas stove top

Closeup of the island.

Notice the wider walkway

Appliance garage

We Moved!!

2017-05-18T11:53:00.002-07:00

About three weeks ago we finally moved into the farm house. It wasn't quite completely ready yet, but we sold our other house and needed to move in. Our first night here, our fridge was plugged in and sitting in the middle of our kitchen. The ovens and microwave were not installed yet. Now the inside of our house is done! We are LOVING it! We still have some curtains to hang and window treatments to purchase and either install or have installed. But overall, it's great! Country life is quiet at night, peaceful during the day, and just lovely.

We had our housewarming party last Saturday and were blessed with a little over 70 friends and family members who came through our doors. Our kids are adjusting. The younger ones seemed to adjust really quickly. Our oldest is taking a little longer and isn't completely adjusted yet but is getting there. The first two days we were here, he sat in our van wanting to go back to our old house. I think having so many of his friends come over, he's feeling more at home. His favorite place is the hay low in the stables. He found a secret passage way up to his hideout.

Being busy is an understatement. Haha. Lets just say, I really don't like moving. It's HARD and with three kids, even harder. But we're here and it's almost all done. My three favorite rooms are my kitchen, bathroom, and breakfast/homeschool area that we added. Those three rooms have transformed our house! I'm also loving our new laundry room, den, and half bath. Really I like everything about our house. I'm looking forward to hosting friends and family and having hosting our kids' parties here. It's such a special place to raise our kids.

Here are a few pictures of our house and from our housewarming party. I'll do some before and afters soon.

Kitchen

Living Room. We finally decided to spend money and get built-ins.

Dining room, we added that extra window.

Breakfast/homeschool room. We added this room and it has transformed our house!

We got our jungle gym put together

Play house!

I've always wanted a pot filler and let me just say, it's awesome!

Master shower and built-ins in the bathroom/closet

This shower is huge! It's so nice!

Vanity and storage, also a sitting area.

Llamas getting sheared!

2017-03-30T13:11:00.003-07:00

Even though we have not moved into the farm house yet, there's still always something going on there. Yesterday we hired our vet to come out and help shear the llamas. He had to sedate them to shave them. Our friend, who also gave us the llamas, helped shear them. Dolly was quite scared! Llama Llama seemed to be okay, but Dolly cried and cried. It was really sad. They both look so nice with their winter coats off. I'm so thankful this only has to happen every two years. The kids loved seeing the llamas getting sheared, petting them and Princess even got to kiss them. It was sweet. I love that our kids are getting to experience life with animals.

Before

They had to put the llamas in this hold to get them their shot.

A llama beard!

Big llama beard!

Farm House Renovations Update

2017-03-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Life has been keeping our family very busy. We're looking forward to everything being done at the farm, moving, and not having anything big planned for a while.

Progress is being made on the farm house. Sadly, we had a few setbacks this past week. One being the power company had to disconnect the power to our property when we informed them of the poor wiring, which apparently is extremely dangerous. Thankfully, that has all been fixed, even though it cost us 3 days of work. The other setback was our plumber decided to work off the job. So the plumbing, which should have been completed, has been delayed by another week and will hopefully be done this coming week. We did find another plumber, the original plumber we hired, but our general contractor told us in the beginning that he wanted to use his guy.

Floors were supposed to go in next week. Most likely they will not. Below are a few pictures of the open floors. The biggest plumbing issue we have is a leak from the kitchen sink out. They have to cut a new water pipe out and under the house to the septic. Or they need to find and fix the leak.

On the positive, the back room addition has been almost completed. All but two new windows have been installed. The electrical wiring has been done. The cabinet maker is working on the cabinets. Once we resolve the plumbing problem and they fill in the floor, they can hopefully lay the floor, install the rest of the drywall, texture and paint, install cabinets, and finish up the job.

Before: We removed the wall to add a sun room/breakfast room

After: Sun room/Breakfast room addition

We also put our house on the market two weeks ago and got an offer the next day. We are past their option period and are just waiting on the appraisal to schedule an appointment. We are scheduled to close in less than a month on our current home. God has really blessed us with a quick sale. Selling a house has been one of the most stressful things I've done. I am NOT a natural homemaker/house keeper. I like things being clean and orderly but I have to work so hard to keep it that way.

This week on the farm, we're having the llamas shaved. Hopefully the plumbing will get fixed, drywall will be completed, and the last windows installed. Meanwhile, we'll continue packing up our house up for the move. The original farm house completion date was in 3 weeks! Not sure if we're going to make that. We can hope and pray, though!

We bought some Goats and got a Dog!

2017-03-26T14:49:00.001-07:00

Last week we bought a tractor and two goats. The kids named the goats, Copper and Penny. We also adopted a dog, Porridge, from the lady we bought the house from. She asked us if we would take him. He is a really sweet guy and very protective!

We let our dog swim ins the pond yesterday

Asian Massage Review

2017-03-14T12:22:00.002-07:00

Taken after my massage of the massage table

I have been having back pain off and on for about two years. Packing and moving boxes has really intensified the pain. That along with carrying an 18 month old and 3 year old around, can really wear out a back. I started seeing a chiropractor a few times a week and it's helped some but hasn't solved it. I talked with my friend who is a physical therapist and hope to see him but apparently, insurance companies require me to get a prescription from my doctor to see a PT. So, rather than take my kids and myself to a doctor's office filled with germs, I decided to try an Asian Massage first. I love natural remedies for things and have done acupuncture and have had success with homeopathy, so this seemed like the next logical step. Here is how it's different from a Swedish massage.

-the massage therapist gets on the massage table with you to really be able to work directly on top of you. I think the massage table is a little wider than traditional ones.

-she stretched my body. From my arms, to my legs.

-she used her hands to really pound on my body, including the bottom of my feet.

-she used a warm blanket to start with to warm up my body. When she was done, she used a warm, wet towel, to wash off the oil from my body. I thought that was nice.

While I listened to the instrumental version of "Moon River," my pain was removed. I'm going to try it again in the future.

Farm House Renovations Week 1!

2017-02-15T14:08:00.004-08:00

On Monday, our demo day at the farm house began! Well, inside anyway. Last week they did the foundation repairs. Today, we found out there is a leak under the foundation somewhere. To fix it, it will cost $250 for the first hour, $150 each addition hour to find the leak, then $1500 to fix each leak they find! OUCH! Lets hope it's just one leak. I'm so glad they are going to get it fixed, just wish it didn't cost so much. I'm also really thankful we don't have to live there while they are doing this work. There is so much work being done that it would be hard to live there and they would take a lot longer. We're having the ENTIRE house remodeled! The guys working on the house are doing a great job, so far.

Once the house is done, I think it's going to look really, really great! Honestly, it really wasn't that bad to begin with. It's just over 40 years old and since we want everything to be up to code, and certain things weren't working, we thought the best thing to do was gut it and start anew. We're having the plumbing redone in most of the house, electrical wiring done, adding square footage, and completely changing the layout of the master bathroom and closet area. We're gutting bathrooms, kitchen, adding a half bath, and adding a new laundry room/mudroom area. We're also enclosing the screened in patio and making it part of the house. I'm looking forward to putting a big table in that area and enjoying lots of meals with my family and friends.

I've made a few YouTube videos that I'm sharing with friends who ask. It's unlisted so you'll need the link. Let me know if you want to see the house tour.

Here are some before and after pictures of some of the renovations! We are only on Day 3!

Kitchen before. We're expanding it and going to have a big island.

This half wall in in the kitchen still needs to be removed.

Master Bathroom before

The wall is gone! Now time to remove the tub!

These shelves were located in the space above. We're relocating them.

Before

They are removing this wall to expand the living area.

2nd Bathroom

Sink and vanity are gone

Another angle of the 2nd bathroom

We bought a Farm!

2017-02-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

If we talk frequently, you're friends with me on Facebook or got a Christmas card from us, then you already know about our news. We bought a farm! We are so excited about our family's new adventure. The house sits on a little over 8 acres. There's a big shop, storage building, and really nice stables. There is lots of space to run and play and a beautiful pond that is stocked with fish!

We closed on the house last week. We originally were supposed to close at the end of December. However, 8 days before closing, our bank told us the first contractor didn't meet the bank's qualifications to do the rehab work. So we had to hurry and find someone new that would meet their requirements. Meanwhile, the first contractor threatened a lawsuit and putting an invalid lien on the property for work he never did. We hired an attorney and hopefully everything is going to work out. It's been a roller coaster. We are so glad everything has been finalized.

The farm house is an older house and we are having it completely remodeled. When we moved back from Germany, we bought a new house so we wouldn't have to deal with any older house issues. So going from a new house to an old house will be difference. We are so blessed to have it renovated, though. The house has 4 bedrooms and a great overall layout. We are making some big changes, though. The master bathroom and closet are going to be completely different. The kids bathroom will be gutted and the kitchen is going to be gutted and remodeled. We're adding some square footage and a half bath as well as new laundry room and mudroom. It's going to look so nice when it's all done. I'll be sure to add some before and after pictures.

There are questions that people keep asking us over and over. I'm going to go ahead and answer them here.

How are we able to do all of this?

To be honest, God has given us everything we have. So first, we thank God for allowing us this opportunity. Secondly, we sold our first house we bought early into our marriage. We had rented it for the past 8 years and have done without many things so we could put our extra money in the rental house when needed. When we left for Germany several years after buying it, the market was about to crash and we might have gotten what we paid for minus realtor fees. However, we easily rented it and now that the market is up, we were able to sell it for a much better price than we would have if we had not rented it. In essence, we sold our rental business to help buy a farm.

We are debt free except for our house. Granted, it took us 10 years to pay off our student loans. But other than that, we have mostly tried to be debt free since early on in our marriage. And if nothing else, not accrue a lot of debt. The first 3 years, almost all of my income went to pay off debt from college. We shared one car, took our lunches to work, ate at home, and lived very frugally. Our dates consisted of going to half off movies at the dollar theater and sharing a meal at restaurants. If you make sacrifices early on in your marriage, they will pay off later on. Many of our friends were buying new cars and eating at nice restaurants. We worked to pay off our student loan debt that was at a higher interest rate that we couldn't consolidate.

We also looked for a big property for over 2 years! We have really been working on our patience and our realtor has been amazing. Honestly, this was the right time to do this. Even though we've never spent this much on a place, we have made sure it fits within our budget.

So why a farm? Isn't that too much work?

Why is work bad? We're constantly working and doing things. Some of the best memories are made from hard work. Some of the best relationships, take hard work. Working is good for all of us.

Growing up, I had a great aunt and uncle who owned hundreds of acres. When I would visit their farm, it was so peaceful. You could see the stars at night and it was truly lovely. It was fun watching the cows graze and explore their property. From that time on, I have always wanted to have more land and to raise some animals.

We also like to garden and spend time outdoors. People used to know their local farmers. People used to grow more of their own food. Now we're so tempted to buying cheap stuff from grocery stores that contain many chemicals and very little nutrition. We want our children to know how to grow food, including raising livestock for food, and be aware of the work that goes into it. I think people would waste less if they knew how precious good food is.

So what's our timeline for moving? Have we moved in?

We met with our builder last night. They started foundation work today. The rehab will be done in 8-10 weeks. We plan on staying at our house until it's done so we don't have to live in the dust and are out of the way of the workers. We have a friend who is going to be staying on the property so everything will stay secured. Meanwhile, we need to get our house ready to sell. I think that's going to be the most stressful part of the whole process.

What animals do you have or want?

We have two llamas and are looking forward to adding a few more animals to our farm. We'd like to get chickens and some pigs to start with. We're also looking into goats, sheep, and cows. For a few months two horses, a donkey, and seven dogs will be staying on our property as well. There are also two cats.

If you have any other questions, please let us know!

Dolly and Llama Llama

Exciting News and Update

2017-01-17T12:43:00.001-08:00

At the Stock Show

Several of you know our big news. If not, here it is: We are buying a little farm with an older house on the property that we're going to have completely remodeled!! We are super excited! We were supposed to close the end of December. Unfortunately, 8 days before closing, our bank told us our contractor did not meet their qualifications and we needed to find someone else. This all came at us around the same time we found out about my mother-in-law. We had been working with the first contractor for almost 2 months. Sadly, they failed to submit all of the paperwork they needed to a month prior, so we didn't find out about them not qualifying until very late. Thankfully, we have found someone new, along with a good attorney, since the first guy has threatened to put a (invalid) lien on the property, we have yet to own. We should be closing on the farm house at the end of this month. Renovations will take 10-12 weeks. Once the renovations begin, we'll decide when to put our current house on the market. Ideally we'll close on this house right after the renovations are done on the farm house. We are looking forward to getting some animals and learning how to raise animals and expand our garden.

It's been a whirlwind of the start of the year. Right before Christmas, we found out my mother-in-love was not doing well health-wise. We decided we needed to make an emergency trip to see her. Rather than travel on Christmas day, we left a couple of days after and headed home on New Years Day. Thankfully, she's still here but in hospice. Please keep her in your prayers.

Christmas was lovely, except for worrying about my mother-in-law. The kids had a nice day and we really scaled back on the toys they received. They each got something they wanted (a toy), needed (boots), to wear (pjs), and to read (a book about something they are interested in). They also got a toy from each other and something from several extended family members.

New Years Eve was sad. My husband spent most of the day next to his mother whom we thought was probably not going to make it through the night. New Years Day, we drove 14 hours home from visiting there.

Earlier in the month we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. We don't get to spend as much time alone together but we have a strong relationship and marriage. Being best friends helps tremendously! Not to mention, we have three of the most precious and beautiful kiddos out there! But I think the main thing that keeps us strong is having a close relationship with God. We try and live as Jesus would, are by far perfect, but we try.

We just celebrated our Princess' turning 3. She had a fun birthday party and is the cutest 3 year old girl ever. We took a family vacation to Disney World at the beginning of December and had a wonderful time!

Homeschooling is going good. It's been a tough year, I"m not going to lie. I've had to really work with my 7 year old and his attitude. I've considered putting him in public school, which I really would prefer not to do. We took December off and are now back at it. Thankfully, he's having a better attitude and I think we'll continue through the end of the year with flying colors.

Our homeschool groups and co-ops started up back week. I don't know if I ever wrote about us joining a Classical Conversations group last Fall or not. Anyway, we're enjoying the CC community and learning so many facts about history, science, latin, and math! We have a wonderful co-op as well. My husband and I have been teaching 2nd grade this past quarter at church. Blue Rock just had his first basketball game of the year last Saturday. He scored three baskets! Blue Knight is on the go and loves cars and balls! I think that's the brief version of what's going on at our house. We hope you and your family are doing well.

Princess is 3!

2017-01-17T12:13:00.001-08:00

Dear Princess,

Happy 3rd birthday, my sweet, smart, and beautiful daughter! You have grown so much this past year and it's been so fun watching you learn and grow. You bring lots of sunshine to our lives.

This year, you wanted a Minnie Mouse Birthday party. You LOVE Mickey and Minnie Mouse! We had it at our house and it was probably the last birthday party we'll have at this house before we move to the farm house. You had a blast! You had 4 friends come and a few of their siblings. Your cousin, A, ended up in the hospital due to RSV so she wasn't able to make it. We played games, ate some fun Disney themed food, and had a yummy cake and cupcakes. I surprised you with a giant Minnie Mouse walking balloon, we decorated your bedroom, and took you to Chuck E Cheese on your birthday for lunch.

Fun Facts:

Favorite color: pink
Best friend: Abigail
Favorite food: pizza
Favorite veggie: sandwich (salad with ranch)
What you want to be when you grow up: a doctor
Favorite song: Jesus is Lord and Create in Me is a close 2nd
Favorite book: lots of books
Favorite place to go: Disney World and Chuck E Cheese
Favorite toy: Mouse dolls and toys, especially Mickey and Minnie Mouse

Princess, you are one of the most kind and thoughtful people I know. I love how you are willing to share, comfort, and love others. You are very bright for you age and speak clearly. You love to help those in need and are very precious to us. We hope your love for God, Jesus, and others always continues to grow. We love you very much!

Love,
Mom

Playing the Mickey and Minnie Chase game

Pin the Bow on You!

She loved the custom game I made her

Minnie Mouse cake and pink cupcakes

Disney themed food: Pluto's Popcorn; Princess Pretzels; Goofy's Grapes;
Daisy's Vegetable Garden; Minnie's Bows; and Donald's Cheese and Quackers

Pin the Bow on her game

party favors, kids grabbed a Minnie or Mickey ears when they arrived

Kind of like musical chairs but Musical Bows, dance around from
bow to bow. When music stops, stop on a bow and pick a prize in order
of your number. We had monkey dolls in pink, red, and white to choose from.

Enjoying cake with her friends

Some siblings

Party friends!

Present time!

Party favors

Feeding her new baby doll

Some of the balloons

Disney World in December

2016-12-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Last June, I booked plane tickets and our hotel at Disney's Pop Century in Orlando. We wanted to take our kids to Disney World and I got a great price on Southwest to fly there. The kids had a blast! We decided to go in December since it tends to be less crowded than the summer, the weather is great, and it's beautifully decorated for Christmas. All was true, except it rained one day while we were there. We planned ahead and brought ponchos and braved the rain at Magic Kingdom with our three kids in tow. We were so glad we went in December and hope to go again in the future.

We bought 3-day park tickets and spent two days at Magic Kingdom and one day at Epcot. Magic Kingdom is really the best park if you have toddlers and preschoolers. There is so much to do there. Epcot has a nice diaper changing area with some couches and plugs to plug in your cell phone. So pack your charger in your bag if you go and need to rest.

My husband and I went to Disney World on our honeymoon almost 13 years ago. It was a different experience with kids but a lot of fun. We ate at some fancy restaurants and had a great time. We did not purchase the dining plan but were still able to make some reservations for nice restaurants while there. One great thing about going when we did was that our younger two are under 3. So they were FREE to go to Disney. Also, at the all you can eat restaurants, they ate free as well. We saved a lot of money going before Princess turns 3, which is next month.

The weather in December in Orlando is great. Blue Rock and I even swam the first night we were there. We took the Disney Express from the airport which made things so easy! We got off our plane and went straight to the bus that took us to our hotel. Disney picked up our luggage and brought it to our hotel later that day. Next time we go, we're going to pack our swimsuits in our carry-on bags. The weather was perfect when we arrived to swim. Our room was already ready but we had to wait until later for our luggage to arrive at our room to get our swimsuits.

We did one big character meet and greet with Mickey Mouse. Princess LOVED meeting him! He was friendly, asked our names and told us a joke. We were super impressed. Princess wants to go back to Disney World and live there. Blue Rock's favorite ride was Fast Track and Space Mountain. Princess's favorite ride was Aladdin and Peter Pan, even though she was a little scared flying on Peter Pan, but it was really cool. Blue Knight's favorite ride was probably Winnie the Pooh. He fell asleep riding It's A Small world.

Like I mentioned, we stayed at a Disney Hotel, Pop Century. It was a value resort, which was fine. We had a crib and ended up also getting a Pack n Play since the kids played musical beds. It allowed us to put Blue Knight in the crib but if he woke up he could sleep next to me without another kid in the bed. I think it was worth saving the money and staying there. Especially since we were mostly there just to sleep. Although we might stay at a moderate hotel next time if we plan to do more at the hotel. We stayed 4 nights. We also purchased the Magic Moments picture package. Some photographers were better than others. We did get a few nice pictures and used some on our Christmas card.

Here are some pictures from our time there.

This was Blue Knight's 1st plane ride

Nothing is better than playing in the rain

It started pouring on us when we were on this car ride. Princess was a great driver!

The boys were behind us.

Blue Rock's first time on Space Mountain

Winnie the Pooh ride

Jungle Cruise ride

Aladdin Ride

There were games to play in line for Space Mountain

Meeting Mickey!

Yummy German Restaurant in Epcot

German Biergarten Restaurant

Our room

Honey and Maple Syrup Pork Chops with Sweet Potatoes in the Instant Pot

2016-09-07T13:46:00.004-07:00

This was seriously one of the easiest and tastiest pork chops I have ever made and eaten! I did some research when trying to figure out the right cooking time. For 1 lb of boneless pork chops, I cooked them on high pressure for only 3 minutes and did natural release for 15 minutes. You might wonder if there's enough liquid in this recipe for it to work. I can assure you, there is plenty. In fact, once it was done and I removed the lid, there was excess liquid. These pork chops were moist and delicious! My family loved these sweet pork chops!

Honey and Maple Syrup Pork Chops with Sweet Potatoes in the Instant Pot

1-2 lbs boneless pork chops. Salt and pepper both sides of pork chops. Sauté pork chops in some olive oil.

Then add the following on top of the chops.

1/4 to 1/2 cup honey
2-3 Tbs maple syrup
1/4 cup raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar
2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

I topped the chops with two peeled sweet potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil (or spray them with olive oil spray) and salt on top.

Cook on high pressure for 3 minutes and slow release for 15 minutes. It's very important you let it slow release and don't over cook them. These came out perfectly! I added sliced apples as another side and the whole meal turned out fantastic!

Happy 1st Birthday Little Man!

2016-08-19T13:43:00.001-07:00

Dear Blue Knight,

Happy 1st birthday!! You are now 1 year old! This past year seems to have flown by. We love watching you learn, grow, and explore. You are such a happy and sweet baby and very active! You love to crawl, climb, sing, babble, and want to try to fit in the smallest places. We had a wonderful birthday party at our house for you last weekend. We kept it pretty small and invited family and a few friends from church who have kids in your cradle roll class. In all we had 13 adults and 12 kids. 8 kids were 2 and under. We decided to have a brunch. We served fruit, yogurt, lots of breads, muffins, veggies, sandwiches, coffees, juices, dips, and chips. We bought an indoor Jumping Gym as his big present from us that the kids 2 and under enjoyed. We set-up Caden's big water slide for him and the older kids who came. It was a fun party. We really like home parties the best and loved having some of our friends and family over to celebrate our cute and sweet boy!

One of your best friends being held by his dad

On your actual birthday, we met Daddy and Opa at Chick-fil-a. You even climbed to the top of the playground! You also took a little fall, which sometimes happens when you're learning about gravity. Thankfully you were okay!

Your 12 month well baby appointment was yesterday. You're an active and healthy baby/toddler. Here are your stats:

31.5 inches long (90% height)
23 lbs, 7 oz (80% weight)
47 cm head (75%)

They now do a new eye screening test and it showed up that you could have a potential eye problem. They recommended we see a pediatric ophthalmologist. Your vision seems fine and I'm not sure what they could detect at this point but we'll check it out. We're praying your vision is okay.

You typically take one nap per day, in the afternoon from around 1-3. You wear size 18-24 month clothing. You're in size 4 diapers, still. You sleep from around 7:30pm-7am. You like a wide variety of foods but love fruit the best. You still prefer crawling over walking. One cute thing you've done for months is that you like crawling with a ball or car in your hand. You still nurse 5-6 times per day and we'll eventual introduce you to whole cow's milk, although the World Health Organization recommends breastmilk until 2 years. So we'll mostly stick with that unless you decide to wean on your own before then.

We love you so much, son! It's been a great 1st year! Happy birthday!

Love,
Mom

Some of the older kids

Attempt at getting all of the little kids in the bounce house for a picture

Eating pancakes and blueberries for breakfast

My helper!

Such a cutie!

Eating lunch. You ate grilled chicken and fruit.

Opa loves you!

Daddy loves you!

Mommy loves you!

You climbed into your sisters chair and started eating your brother's watermelon and carrots

Playground fun

You and your sister had so much fun!

Salisbury Steak in the Instant Pot

2016-08-19T13:09:00.001-07:00

This recipe is so easy and very delicious! Enjoy!

Salisbury Steak in the Instant Pot

Ingredients

4-6 hamburger patties (I used organic grass-fed patties)
1 onion, sliced
12 ounces of sliced mushrooms
1.5 cups beef broth
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 Tbs butter
olive oil
steak seasoning
2 Tbs flour
1 Tbs minced garlic, optional

Directions

- Brown the onions and mushrooms in olive oil in the Instant Pot for a few minutes, add garlic, salt, and pepper to taste, and continue browning until the mushrooms have shrunk in size and the onions are caramelized. Remove from IP.

- Season both sizes of the hamburger patties with steak seasoning. Brown the hamburger patties in batches.

- Add the hamburger patties back to the Instant Pot, cover with the onions and mushrooms, add the beef broth.

- Cook at high pressure for 10 minutes.

- You can do slow or quick release, doesn't matter too much. Remove the steaks, onions, and mushrooms. Turn the IP to sautee. Add 2 Tbs of flour, a little at a time while you whisk it. Add 1 Tbs butter and continue whisking until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste in your gravy.

- Pour sauce over steaks and enjoy!

Homeschool Schedule and First Week of 2nd Grade!

2016-07-11T13:31:00.001-07:00

My smart and funny 2nd grader!!

I'm not going to write weekly posts of what we're doing this year. I honestly, just don't have time to do so anymore. However, I plan on posting highlights here and there.

I'm going to try and post a more detailed version of what we're using this year later this week. The short version is, Adventures in My Father's World for history, Bible, science, art, and music, and Timberdoodle's 2nd Grade for Language Arts, Math, STEM, and Thinking Skills. We're using Abeka for reading and a few of their books to accompany our history, science, and Health, Safety, and Manners.

The first week of 2nd grade went great! Honestly, it went even better than I expected. Last year, I taught Blue Rock M-W-F and he attended a part-time school two days a week full time. It got to be a battle some days for him to do his work with me. Sometimes school work seemed to drag on ALL DAY! Frankly, the curriculum just wasn't working for us. It was a great curriculum but didn't fit our personalities as well. Which got me to thinking, when we have the opportunity to really customize our child's education, why not truly customize it to fit them the best we can? Everyone is created uniquely by God. Blue Rock is gifted in a lot of things and his favorite subject is math. He tested as a 5th grader in math at the end of the year on his tests scores. The cool thing is, he's never been taught 5th grade math. He figured out multiplication and division on his own. Does this mean that this year I'm going to go ahead and move him up to 5th grade math? No. I decided to stick with his age and if he wants to continue on and test out of most of the year, we'll move forward. However, I don't want to over push him. I want him to be confident in his ability to do and understand math. I want his favorite subject to remain a favorite and him not to get bogged down in frustration. Will we do some advanced math as we go along? Absolutely! Some subjects are going to be more challenging for him. For example, he hates handwriting and we did grammar pages last year that were a beating! As someone who has a BA in English, I found it to be pointless for him to do these grammar pages. Does that mean that I believe grammar is pointless? Not at all! But for my first grader, they were. I really LOVE our language arts book this year. So far, Blue Rock loves it too. Also, Blue Rock is someone who picks up on things very quickly. If we spend more than 15-20 minute son a subject, he gets bored and I lose him. He can do short bits quickly and effectively and retains the information well. Also he needs time to move and get some exercise throughout the day. I do too for that matter! The thought of him sitting at a desk all day without being able to play outside makes me sad. So glad it doesn't have to be that way!

Here's an overview of how I set up this year.

Planning. The way I planned this year was I organized the year by weeks. I took apart the workbooks and put assignments into folders by weeks. I put the books we'll be using on one shelf in my office. I have a history binder, completed work binder, and a weekly binder. At the beginning of the week, I pull out the week's assignments and put them in the daily folders. I go over the assignments of what we're going to be doing and make sure I have everything we need. Then the night before, or morning of, I quickly review the day's agenda and we get started. So far this is working well but I'm only 1 week and 1 day in.

This year's assignments, organized neatly in this binder folder

I organized by week in these folders

I have 5 folders in this binder for each day of the week

Rough outline of his weekly assignments

How I Homeschool 3 Children. Several people have asked how can I homeschool with 3 kids? Especially, two of them being the age of 2 and under. This is what we do. First of all, I include all of my kids when possible. We start right after breakfast, sometimes during. When my oldest is done eating, it's time to start an assignment. My younger two take longer to eat so while they are eating, or I'm feeding the baby, I give instructions to my oldest and he gets started. Some things he needs very little instruction, others a little more. We usually start with Bible and that includes reading our daily scripture. When we sit down for lunch or a snack, I read through our Health and Safety book. My 7 and 2 year old are both gaining knowledge when we do this. In fact, my 2 year old loves answering the questions as well. History and science, same thing. Most of the reading takes place before bed. It allows my husband or I to give our son one-on-one time to practice his reading and he's more relaxed to sit still at this time. Mostly because he doesn't want to go to sleep. I also save any other subjects or projects that need my undivided attention for when the baby is taking a nap. One other thing, my house does not remain spotless during the school week. I try and pick up at the end of the day but if you dropped by, you'd see my kids have a lot of fun. They can play with their toys and create fun things during their free time. We're inside more during the summer because of the heat and it's easy for my house to become a mess. It's hard letting go of this and I get really frustrated at times, but my children's hearts mean more to me than a small mess in the living room. We do try and all pick up at the end of the day. I also have a fun curriculum I do with my 2-year old so she has her own work to do so she doesn't feel left out. She even has hers in her own binder.

Praying that this year goes really well and that my children and I all learn a lot! May God be richly blessed through this. I am so thankful that I can raise and teach my children.

He took care of our neighbor's dogs for a few days and did great!

What does the inside of a space heater look like? With Dad.

Egg science experiment

Caden reminded me that we did this in kindergarten

He knew the answer but had fun doing it again anyway. :)

We made a timeline for history this year!

We have a 2nd grader!!

2016-07-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

Most of the curriculum, minus a few books

I decided last Monday night that we'd go ahead and start the school year on Tuesday morning. I had originally wanted to start 2nd grade after the 4th of July but wasn't sure how it would work out.

After Blue Rock telling us that he did not to go to soccer camp last week and just wanted to stick with tennis, we decided to go ahead with my original plans and start school. Since there was no tennis camp this week, we thought it would be a great time to start. I love the idea of taking June off for a summer break and December off for a winter break. Or basically Memorial Day through the 4th of July and Thanksgiving through New Years. Then taking time off here and there throughout the year. Blue Rock has been asking to start school and had a great first day and second day today! He did great jumping in and working hard. It was a difficult decision not to send him back to his part-time private school this coming Fall, but after praying about it and talking with him, we decided we'd rather homeschool full-time. It gives us more flexibility to travel, more money to do things, and I enjoy picking the curriculum that fits him best. Also he really wanted to join his friends in a co-op that meets on Thursdays this coming Fall. I'm also probably going to enroll him in an all day Fine Arts class for homeschoolers that meets one day a week as well. There are plenty of activities to do with friends and this gives us the most flexibility and more valuable family time as well as time with friends. We're praying for a fun year of learning! I'll do another blog post with what we're doing for each subject when I get some time.

New Art program

Finishing up his spelling

Close up of what we're doing

2016 Spring Garden

2016-05-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Square foot garden

We are hobby gardeners. By hobby, I mean, we really enjoy gardening but don't produce enough to feed our family throughout the year and spend more on gardening than it would cost to purchase organic food from the store. However, it's a great learning experience and we're learning as a family how to grow things organically. As part of our homeschooling, I decided that this year, we will weigh what we harvest. This way we can keep track of how much food we're producing and get an idea of how our garden is growing and feeding our family. I'm not including the cost of seeds since most of them we either saved or bought in the past. Not to mention, seeds are pretty cheap. I also didn't include the cost of soil or any gardening supplies. My goal is to grow 25 lbs this year. At the end of the year, we'll compare the cost of organic food from the store with the cost of organic food we've grown in our garden. In the future I hope to add more details about our garden such as how long each crop took to grow, the total cost involved, and how much time daily we spent watering the garden and taking care of it. But to start, weighing the crops is enough. I was excited to finally justify the cost of a kitchen scale.

We harvested our first crops a few weeks ago and some more earlier this week. So far, we have harvested carrots and onions and are just over 4.5 lbs. If our pumpkins, cantaloupes, and watermelon grow, we might make our goal before the Fall harvest. We have harvested some kale but I didn't weigh it. We should be getting some tomatoes as well. Our tomato plant is a great example of how my husband planted an organic tomato that we got from the store, in a pot of soil. The seeds have grown and produced lovely tomato plants that have been very fruitful the past few years.

This year, we added a two barrel compost. That along with the compost tube from our Garden Tower should really help our soil naturally. Here are some pictures of our garden. I'll start with some pictures of my family, since I know that's what my family enjoys seeing the most. Scroll down and you'll see pictures of our garden and gardening supplies. We're growing a lot of things. The Garden Tower mostly has herbs, strawberries, and greens. The square foot has pumpkins, onions, cantaloupes, peas, and potatoes. Our tomato plant is in the pot in front of our square foot. Depending on how this year goes, we may expand our garden next year. We'd love eventually become more self sufficient. On a side note, we have not had to run our sprinklers this Spring yet. Thankfully we've gotten some good rain and we've been able to use the rain from our rain barrels to water our garden, which is the best kind of water to use. Plants love rain water.

My four loves!

This cute baby loves helping in the garden!

Three carrots we harvested.

Her first carrot to harvest.

Yum!

Harvested onions

Our cute wild bunny that lives in our yard.

Pitcher plant, to hopefully help catch all the fruit flies in our kitchen.

One of several really long onions

Such great helpers!

Compost barrels

Rain barrels

Garden Tower, filled with herbs, strawberries, and greens.

Mosquito repelling plants

Several herbs


Where we just pulled some carrots and onions. Don't worry, new seeds have been planted.

We had to pull the kale from our Garden Tower but don't worry, there's more growing here.

MFW Preschool Unit 2: Obedience

2016-05-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

Princess just finished Unit 2: Obedience in My Father's World, All Aboard the Animal Train. It was such a fun unit. The animal was the black bear and the character trait was obedience. We played, "Mommy says," hunted for bears, read lots of books about bears, and spent lots of time playing and singing. She memorized the "Black Bear" poem quickly and still remembers the bunny one from unit 1. Princess loves doing her school work and picks up on things very quickly.

We acted out the story of "The Three Bears."

We made a black table and black beds for them.

The sandbox is always fun

Trampoline Park

Backyard trampoline

A fun match the ball in the right hole game I made

We played zoo where the kids could purchase animals from me

She loved playing "hide the bear"

Coloring

Playing with her younger brother

First time to visit the dentist

Her teeth looked great!

Egg sensory bin around Easter

The closest thing we saw to a black bear, she was unsure of it.

Nothing beats fun in a box!

Freshly Review

2016-04-13T17:29:00.002-07:00

Facebook advertisements occasionally actually entice me. Not all ads do. Thankfully, I own some Facebook stock so I'm okay clicking on the occasional ad if it interests me. That's how I found out about Freshly and actually Blue Apron and Green Chef as well, although that was through friends on FB.

What is Freshly? It's a meal delivery service that delivers cooked meals ready to be heated. They are not frozen and you keep them in your fridge until it's time to eat.

Here's how Freshly comes packaged.

So convenient, right? It also says it only takes 2 minutes to heat up. I found that the meat and sometimes the veggies were not cooked enough at only 2 minutes. 3-4 minutes turned out better and we have an amazing microwave that is only 4 years old, so it is on the normal range of cooking. I compare Freshly somewhat to getting freshly prepared foods at places like Central Market or Whole Foods. The first week I ordered 12 meals, 6 different ones, so we'd have six dinners ready for the week. Each comes with 1.5 serving. I only got pictures of 5 and I'll explain why below. Here's what I got.

Homestyle Meatloaf

Grilled Flat Iron Steak

Coconut Lime Salmon

Beef Provencal

Moroccan Chicken

I also ordered Chicken Rustica with Roasted Cauliflower. We just ended up not eating it and throwing it out. The reason being was, it would expire before we had time to eat it. Hopefully it was just because they try to use as few preservatives as possible. I just would have liked to have known that the food would not last a week before going bad.

I was hoping to get the meals delivered early enough last Friday to serve our first meal on Friday. However, they did not arrive until after 7pm, which is no fault of Freshly. Since we have little kids, we eat around 5-5:30. The meals were overall, okay tasting. Some better than others. We liked the steak probably the best. We didn't fully enjoy the others because my husband and I got sick, we think food poisoning. We're trying to decide where it came from and hope it wasn't from Freshly. We think it might have been the tea from a Mexican food restaurant since our kids eat everything we eat, except for a few meals from Freshly they just refused. Which honestly, that saves me no time if my kids won't eat it and they are actually really good eaters. Some have some interesting spices and some were a little unusual in taste.

Before we got sick and were unable to keep anything down for over a day, I had already ordered food for next week. Although my husband said he'd rather me just cook from now on. He does like food we make from Blue Apron and Green Chef. A few of the meals had a hospital-like taste to them. If you've ever eaten hospital food, you know what I'm talking about and I haven't eaten hospital food often. I'll come back and write another review after next week. I'm trying a few breakfast items as well. I LOVE this idea but the food has to taste good. I also am not saying Freshly made us sick, we really don't know, but when you try something new and end up sick, you always wonder if it was because of that. If you do want to try Freshly, let me know and I'll give you a coupon code to get some free meals.

Camping at Fort Griffin

2016-03-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, I am really not a camper. I might be a glamper but even that may be pushing it. Frankly, I'm more of a B&B girl. I like clean bathrooms, nice beds, and climate control. However, I LOVE the outdoors! I just don't like bugs or trying to use the restroom outside! However, I married a man who loves to camp and so on occasion, we will camp or glamp as a family.

Last Fall we went camping for the first time as a family. My husband and I went camping around 11 years ago when we were first married and got rained on. Blue Rock is in Trail Life which is kind of like boy scouts but a Christian scouting group. They had a family camp out last Fall at Fort Griffin. It was fun. We more or less glamped and stayed in the climate controlled shelter rather than in a tent in the 40 degree weather. A good friend of mine glamps there every year and she gave me the heads up and I felt it was fine to try with the two little kids. Blue Rock would love to stay in a tent next time and probably will have lots of fun tent camping experiences with his dad in the future.

The stars were pretty at night. The night sky brings a lot of people to this area. There is also a nice museum and lots of rich history. We had a great time.

I stayed in the shelter most of the time with Blue Knight and some with Princess while Blue Knight napped. That's the one hard thing about traveling with little kids and babies is how much they need to nap and rest. The car ride was not the most enjoyable experience as Blue Knight does not like the car but we made it and he didn't cry too, too bad. We just stopped more than if he loved the car.

Blue Rock's favorite part of the camping trip was the campfire and smores. He also enjoyed hiking with the guys. My husband and Princess went hiking with them while I stayed with the baby. Friday night we had smores and let Blue Rock hang out with his troop while we tried to put the little kids to bed. We only stayed one night, instead of two. When we were almost done packing up it started raining. I was really glad we decided to go ahead and head home. We had a packed day on Sunday.

Blue Rock had an encounter with a barbed wire fence. He's okay, thankfully! His troop also did some community service while they were there. They picked up the trash all around the camp ground.

I recommend Fort Griffin. It's a smaller campground, you could probably walk around the tent/rv/covered shelter area in about 30 minutes. There are two bathroom facilities with showers and they are clean. There is only one covered shelter. There's a big playground in the middle of the campground. There is also lots of nice hiking around the campground and outside the camping area. That's where most of the hiking took place. We saw some Indian ruins and they have golf carts you can borrow for free to drive around if you have a little kid or are unable to walk it.

It was really nice to get away from the city and unplug from cell service and the internet. I see more camping or family glamping trips in our future. I recommend Fort Griffin and thought it was a nice place to camp in Texas.

His poor nose!

He loved exploring

Our climber!

The shelter

We set up two queen air mattresses

There was even a picnic table inside

At night

Car ride home. The first and probably only time all three kids will nap at the same time!

Sweet baby!