It's a beautiful sunny day w/ blue skies today!  The house is clean & it smells like applesauce-so cozy on a very chilly day.

Yesterday a friend who makes soap gave me a bag of her soap shavings left over from carving fancy edges in her bars.  She said they can be used to do laundry, so I did some and wow, does it work well-and it smells WONDERFUL, too!

My dh surprised me this morning-he brought home a new computer monitor for me.  This screen is amazing.  It's one of those flat ones, is so clear & bright.  Actually, since I'm not used to it, I can't look at it for long-it gives me a headache. LOL

Jonah made me so proud yesterday.  He's been having some problems w/ one of the boys in our homeschool group.  They used to be friends & I am friends with the mother.  This boy has been very nasty to Jonah the last couple months.  Jonah didn't really mind because he has a ton of friends (and 2 best friends) and they don't have much in common anyway.  But, he got to wondering what the problem was, so yesterday he asked me to pray with him after gym class (while Susanna was in dance class) about what he should do and say.  So, he talked to the other boy and said they haven't gotten along well lately and wondered if they could talk about it.  The other boy said he was mad at Jonah because he felt excluded around Jonah's other friends.  His feelings had apparently been hurt because Jonah was inviting another boy, Denver, over after music lessons a lot-and not him.  This was because Denver was moving.  Really, Jonah didn't have permission to invite him also, but he didn't know that.

Anyway, Jonah handled it so maturely and now everything is fine between them.  The only problem now is that Jonah's best friends don't care for this other kid because he's also been mean to them.  I'm thinking Jonah will play peace-maker.  I'm praying that is what happens.

The girls have been quite the artists lately.  Here's a couple things Hannah has done recently.  The first one she was using shading w/ special pencils to create depth and texture.  They are both lessons from her Artistic Pursuits book:

 In this next one, she was trying to create movement w/ ink & watercolor-notice the specks that look like dust being kicked up? 

Susanna & I made this next one together for Thanksgiving.  The body is made tracing her feet on construction paper and the feathers are made from her hand prints.  Isn't it adorable:

This is a cute little craft using alphabit cereal:

The kids' cousin, Zak came from out of town-he's in his 20's and is going hunting with Pat tomorrow.  The kids were thrilled.  Well, it's taken me 2 days to write this and now the baby is awake.  Have a great day!