Posted in Children
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Alayna is my little Mama. She loves to help with Maria - sometimes TOO much but never any harm done. I can always count on her to help! For this picture, Alayna picked Maria up and brought her to the rocking chair. Those of you who know Alayna - you know how tiny she is at nearly 5 year old! So to see her lug Maria around is pretty cute. I worried at first but now that Maria's head is not so wobbly so it's okay! Sister Love!
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Posted in Children
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Guess what we did yesterday! We (as in my family and Cathy's family, minus our husbands) went to the library's Summer Reading Kickoff. It was themed, "Catch the Reading Bug" and it featured Bruce the Bug Guy! Also featured were large moths, hissing cockroaches, gigantic millipedes, fuzzy tarantulas, nasty scorpions, little caterpillars ... yeah - a bunch of LOVELY little animals!
Serena with a big moth. She showed NO fear with these huge bugs! A few weeks ago there was a tiny gnat on her and she freaked out, so that was amazing to see!
It had some huge grabby legs!
Here is Paige with a hissing cockroach! She was VERY brave to hold that nasty thing! I did not even consider holding this one.
Here they passed some tarantulas and scorpions around ... I suppose it's safe to hold them in a cage!
Yeah, this is me. LOL! The look on my face says it all. But I did it! I held Rosie the Rose Haired Tarantula. And apparently Maria held her as well!
Once again, no fear from Serena! I tell ya, those tarantulas are SO COOL! Their legs are so soft and gentle as they walk on you. I suppose their fangs wouldn't be so gentle but this particular tarantula was a nice one. I would hope so, since Bruce the Bug Guy was letting everyone hold it for a minute! Yes, it was a fun and buggy day overall. |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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This is so hilarious. A few days ago I read on Cathy's blog, about her husband Duane planting their fields. It looked like a lot of work, and I laughed because my square foot garden is so small and not a lot of work! Well ... My husband plants fields too - but not directly FOR us, but for the deer he loves to hunt. BTW, we have two beautiful shoulder-mounted deer heads on our wall that prove this fact. Anyway, he wanted to plant a field of soybeans for the deer. I'm not sure how big it is - but we had 3 100lb bags of soybeans. I'm thinking at least 2 acres, maybe 3? I'll have to ask him. He asked a farmer if he'd be willing to plant them. Nope. He asked some friends if he could use their four-wheeler. Nope! So he brought the bags of soybeans, all of us, and a few yard seed speader thingies out to the field. Well ... we found that we couldn't use the wheeled-seed speader thingie. The dirt was too rough. Sooo .... he used the hand-held spreader and I used ...
Can you tell what that is? It's the bowl to Serena's POTTY SEAT! We brought the potty along in case she had to use it while we were out and it became a necessary part of planting the field. Do you think ANYONE has used a potty seat to plant a field before? I doubt it. We also used a Mt. Dew bottle.
Here are more pictures of our fun-filled planting day:
As you can see, Maria spent quite a bit of time on my back in her carrier - compliments of Dawn (Serene-Terrene). She fell asleep at one point, and then at other times she was talking with me as I tossed soybeans here and there. I realized I have NO pictures of Serena but she WAS there, somewhere! Aaron was taking these pictures, but then later on I found them pretending to be animals, crouching in the tall grass.
I stand corrected about the field. It was 4 acres. Whew! Now it'll be fun to see the soybeans come up ... and the deer will love them and then Allen can shoot them in the fall. |
Posted in Children
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I'm getting so big (12 lbs, 14 oz) and I still love my fingers! :-) How did 4 months go by already?! |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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First of all, Maria is growing! I can't believe that she'll soon be 4 months old. She still is madly in love with her fingers!
Second, our flowers/garden is growing as well!
I have had flowers in the past - normally they'd die by mid-summer because I'd forget to water them. I had an excuse - that was the summer I was pregnant with Alayna (my soon to be 5 year old). After she was born in July, I totally forgot about the flowers! LOL! As for the vegetable garden, this is my FIRST attempt at it.
I have been reading Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and I think it's a great way to have a garden. It makes sense for us, anyway! I had my husband build one 4x4 box, and then after that I realized I wanted one more, so he put that in, too. However, he did NOT put them in the way I wanted them. They are crooked and not supposed to be placed together; however ... I still love him and things are still growing in them!
Onions are shooting up!
Peas! I'll post an update later, when more veggies start appearing! Of course the tomatoes and peppers are already up, but that was thanks to the garden center, not me! Ugh, and I need to pick all those little "things" in the dirt ... they are coming from a nearby tree. I actually don't mind "weeding" ... the garden is such a manageabe size that it's not a big deal! Happy Gardening and Growing to all of you! |
Posted in Children
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It was a beautiful spring day, and I declared, "Aaron, it's TAKE YOUR TRAINING WHEELS OFF DAY!" He said, "No it isn't!" and proceeded to bike away. But Mama chased after him and we took the wheels off. No, it didn't happen just like that but I thought it might! He really didn't want them to come off. But I KNEW he was ready, and he was! He rode like he'd been doing it all year. He's my cautious child, though ... always very hesitant to try new and possibly dangerous things. Here he is!
And where do the little girls ride? In the bike trailer! Amazingly we can smoosh 3 little girls in there.
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Posted in Children
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I can't get over it - the only one of my 4 children that LOVE to suck on their fingers! It's so precious. I can just lay her down and if she's tired, she finds her favorite fingers and goes to sleep! |
Posted in Knitting
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Why I am semi-retiring from the knitting business. I suppose I could have wandered off quietly, but I wanted to share the reasons why. Well, I've been knitting shorties and longies for Adventure Knits since August of 2005. It's almost been 3 years since I have been knitting for children all over the US, Canada and even cool places like Australia, Croatia and England (Cathy has knit for someone in Norway, too!). It has really been fun and a pleasure! I always love to get customer emails, especially if they send a picture of their child in my creation! When I started knitting, I had two children and was pregnant with my third. My busiest time probably would have been from the beginning until the fall of 2007, when I was pregnant with my fouth. I started homeschooling my two oldest children (the oldest is K-aged now) and that was a higher priority. I also began knitting for the little one and WOW did she ever get the dream stash! I didn't knit enough for my third child so I was over-compensating for the fourth! Anyway, I had full intentions to get right back at it after Maria was born in late Jan 2008; however, she has the same odd skin condition that her next oldest sister had as a baby. Some of you may remember that. It's not as bad but it does make her very uncomfortable and I spend a lot of time holding her. Of course I LOVE holding her, but it makes it hard to be a speedy knitter like I used to be. That's one reason. Another reason is that I recently enrolled with a medical transcription training school online, and I want to devote my energies to this as well. Because my hands-free time is limited anyway ... I need to devote that time to this new endeavor. Another reason - I began REALLY homeschooling the children this spring. I had been doing more preschool activities with them but I knew I needed to buckle down and get a "curriculum" for them. We decided to go with Sonlight, which is GREAT. It's a lot of reading and that alone takes up (good) time. And so ... for these reasons I have decided to put the needles away - commercially, anyway. Of course Maria needs new knits! And perhaps I will stock a special custom every now and then. Maybe I'll create an instock if I have time, who knows? But for now, it's time to concentrate on these new parts of my life. A Mama can only do so much! I would never want to add so much to my plate that my children suffer for it. That's WHY I stay home with them - to be the best possible mother to them. Of course I'll still be around, on this blog, on messageboards where I have made good friends ... I'm not going anywhere! |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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Here she is! Aaron has named her "Lightning Speed"! Here's the story. Every summer, my husband says, "I wish we had a boat. If we had a boat, we would have something to DO this summer". So, at the end of last summer, we looked at a boat or two. They were pretty small and/or non-impressive. Then came winter, and all he wanted to look into were ice fishing houses. Then came spring and he began looking into boats again. We found an ad in the paper and he says to me, "Honey, can we get this boat?" I looked at it and said, "Sure, honey, let's get that boat!". He was expecting me to say, "NO way!" He even told me that he wished I would have said that, so he could stop thinking about a boat. But no, I told him that every summer he wishes for a boat and that I was tired of hearing it. So he called the number, we went down to see it and I really fell in love with it! I thought it would be perfect for our family - if we wanted a boat, this one was the one to get. My husband, however, was thinking it was too big and the motor too huge! Long story short, he decided to get the boat and we picked it up yesterday and took it out on it's maiden voyage. LOL ... I say maiden because it was OUR first trip with it but this boat is a 1987! You'd never guess it because it was a one-owner boat and in excellent condition. It was windy, the skies were cloudy and threatening to rain - but we had to take it out yesterday. The children loved it! Maria only loved it when we were moving - fast - otherwise she hated her life jacket. I wish I would have gotten a picture of her in that life jacket - hilarious! But I did get pics of the other ones. Aaron and Alayna even drove the boat (with Daddy's help, of course!).
Alayna was a little ... what's the word ... careless on the boat. She would lean WAY over, or move when the boat was going pretty fast ... we'll have to talk about that! But she LOVED it. Especially her pink life jacket (that matches mine)!
Here's Serena again - she was very good - staying in ONE place and enjoying the ride!
My husband asked Aaron if he wanted to drive and he said no ... so he asked Alayna and she said YES! But then after she was done ...
Then Aaron wanted to give it a try! Okay - and here's a funny story and a rave for Maria at Made by Maria! When we got there, my husband said he didn't have any rope to tie the boat to the dock. Well, look what saved the day! The diaper bag strap from my awesome diaper bag - thank you, Maria! He laughed when he saw what I had rigged up. Maybe Maria needs to go into boat tie hookup things? ROFL! Even funnier is that I had to take a picture of it, huh?
Well, I think we're going out again today - it's new so we're all excited about it! I am looking forward to creating many family memories on this boat. I'm sure it served it's first owners well for nearly 21 years - now it's our turn! |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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Okay, so I guess that gives it away. I'll post more pictures tomorrow! |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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No one else wants to take a crack at what we bought? Come on, I know I have a larger readership than this! (OR maybe I'm deluding myself?) No one is right so far ... let me give you a hint: It's Big. As in - 17' big. |
Posted in Miscellaneous
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Guess what we just recently purchased? It's not here yet. We're picking it up sometime this week and I'll share pictures with you all. But until then, I thought it would be fun to have a contest! Add a comment, giving me your best guess. If you win, I'll send you these:
Hand-knit by me, organic cotton TINY baby booties! Perfect for your own newborn or to give as a gift. First to guess the correct "thing" wins! :-) And you'll all find out what it is when I post pictures later this week. edited to say: Cathy, you are NOT eligible! Or anyone else who I have already told IRL. LOL! |
Posted in Children
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Forgive the fact that the you have to turn your head sideways to view this adorable clip of Serena! I'm not sure why it did that. Or how I can fix it!? |
Posted in Children
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I had been wanting to get some educational toys for the children, mostly for Serena to play with while I was using workbook-type materials with the older children. There was a home/life expo nearby and I went, seeing that Discovery Toys was on the list of vendors. Instead of buying the one toy I wanted to get for Serena, I signed up to be a Discovery Toys consultant! Why? Well, for $99 you got an awesome kit of toys - including the one I wanted to get for her. They were for ALL the age ranges of my children, and some products even a little higher for use later. They were all educational. I'm big on tossing out toys that serve no purpose - so we don't really have a lot of toys! Mostly Legos, playsilks, plastic dinosaurs (okay, those were mostly mine from childhood!). So for $99 (payable in two installments, even!) I got a big box of cool toys. No catch, no "you have to sell $X amount of toys in X amount of time. Cool! But ... after playing with the children and seeing the educational value, I thought to myself, "I could have a few parties, get a few more of these cool toys for free" ... and now I'm actively thinking of parties and who I can tell about Discovery Toys. So ... now I told you. If you want to get some neat toys, send me an email and I'll hook ya up. You want to get in on the $99 kit of toys? I'll definitely hook ya up! My email is spyderk@gmail.com or adventureknits@gmail.com. Now for some pictures I took this morning!
Alayna playing with "Playful Patterns". Preschool in a box! Did you know she knows what an isosceles triangle is?! I learned that today, too!
Here is the toy I wanted to get for Serena during that expo. It's a CELL PHONE! Those close to Serena know how much she loves cell phones. It records a message, too - all of the children love that. Best part - lifetime guarantee! She's already dropped it a few times - that guarantee may come in handy.
You should have seen her excitement when she saw it in the box. The package had a picture of the phone on the front and back and she said, "TWO cell phones!". Okay, the below picture is of her hammering away on ... "Hammer Away". Of course when I brought this out, ALL of the children wanted an immediate turn with the hammer!
Here is Aaron, testing his mechanical skills on "Motor Works". Once again, they ALL love this toy too. Thank goodness we got this huge kit with these toys (plus many more!).
Even Miss M isn't left out of the action! Here is the first time she's ever grasped a toy! "Boomerings" are perfect for her - I can see wanting to get more of these.
And one more, because she's SO CUTE! And she just turned 3 months yesterday. 11 lbs, 12 oz!
Seriously, if you want some toys - lots of toys (that $99 special is pretty cool!) - email me! I'd love to get you some. |
Sarah's at it again - putting in as many irons in the fire as she can! Maybe you don't know me and that doesn't make any sense ... well, I'll fill you in.
Posted in Miscellaneous
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What a fun day we had today! As usual, Cathy and I planned a spur of the moment get-together for this evening. I picked up the food in town and our family headed out to their place. The guys roasted hot dogs and Cathy's daughter Paige (13) made homemade mac & cheese while Cathy and I nursed our little ones. All of the other children (Bri - 9, Aaron - 6, Alayna - 4, Leia - 2 and Serena - 2) played outside and had a blast! We had our dinner, played some more, saw some baby chickens (I'll post that one later), and then before heading home, I wanted to take a two-family picture. We've never done one before so it was about time! Of course, this picture is REAL - kids with dirty clothes, Leia with her thumb in her mouth, Serena with her tongue sticking out ... that's US! No fancy posing or outfits here!
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Posted in Knitting
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Here ya go, Katie! They (along with Cathy's longies for you) will be arriving to you this week!
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Posted in Knitting
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This is for you, "S"! Little Doggies BFL shorties. The yarn was dyed by Kimberly from Western Sky Knits. It was a great pleasure to knit with! One thing though - I used EVERY single yard of yarn. There was nothing left over at all! The drawstring didn't get as long as I would have liked but it is still functional and able to tie. I was sweating it a bit as I was working on that last leg!
I won't be knitting nearly as much anymore, after I finish my current customs and trades. I need to devote more time to my M-Tec training and to homeschooling the children to the fullest! I certainly won't stop knitting - Maria needs shorties and occasionally I'll be stocking an instock or possibly a fun custom slot like the one above. |
Posted in Homeschooling
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I must confess; I haven't always been a dedicated reader to my children. Sure, we've always had books (our own and library books) and I have read them, but it wasn't something I really loved or something I put a lot of thought into. Perhaps it was because I didn't know how or what book to choose. It's funny because I love to read and I knew I wanted my children to love to read too. So I did some investigating into Sonlight (and many other curriculums). The very IDEA appealed to me and made me want to learn more. I realized I could get book lists and create a curriculum with great books, without much expense. However, I know myself and I knew that if I was going to succeed with homeschooling, I needed a plan - and NOT a plan that I had to spend hours putting together! I'm not a natural born teacher, by any means. Growing up I always said there is ONE profession I could not do. I could NOT teach kids! LOL! The Lord has His way of giving you tasks that you cannot do, so you have to rely fully on Him, huh? It was the same way with children - I didn't even give the idea of children much thought, because I didn't like them! And look at me now - married for 7 years with 4 young children. And loving it - most of the time! So anyway, now that we have finished our first week with Sonlight, I am so pleased to report that it is going well with the children. For a few weeks beforehand, I had been purchasing the Core P3/4 (Core A) books and reading them to the children, and they loved it. When the big box arrived, they didn't think it was unusual at all to have tons of books in the living room shelves! Now the only problem is that they want to read ALL of them, every day! Thankfully that means the TV is sloooowly getting pushed aside ... slowly. Aaron is still clinging to his "kid shows". We're weaning him from that! All that said, here are some pictures I took today. Serena had been reading to Maria as she was lying on the floor (P4/5's Family Time Bible). I asked Serena if she wanted to sit on the couch with Maria and she could keep "reading". I placed Maria next to Serena and then Aaron and Alayna hopped up with some books too! Before long, they all were listening to Aaron read, "Katy and the Big Snow" (Mike Mulligan and More) from P3/4.
Precious, huh?! |
Posted in Homeschooling
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We received our Sonlight box on Friday, the 18th. On Tuesday, the 22nd, we received a smaller box - a box of Math-U-See! At first all the children wanted to just build with the blocks ... uh, the manipulatives. That was fine - that kept them busy while I watched the DVD. After Aaron had made quite the impressive ship (sorry, no picture of that one!) I had him dismantle it so that we could actually DO our math. This is our first math curriculum and I am pretty impressed so far. It was meant for Aaron but Alayna loves it too so I let her work alongside him.
Woo hoo for FUN curriculum! |
Posted in Children
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Maria found two new friends!
I tried to coax a smile out of her ...
But that's all she'd give me! She has been doing this the past few days. None of my others ever sucked their fingers or thumb! Just shows you how unique and special each one of our children are. I took about 25 pictures of this exact pose, just because it was so adorable. I'll spare you the other 23. |
