http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:18:00 -0600 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:18:00 -0600 Yesterday I decided that I was going to spend the next two weeks doing some major flinging and cleaning to get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating and all of the other fun things that we will have going on the next few months.  So I made a plan and then I saw on Monica's blog (for some reason I am having trouble linking, so it's homespunheart.blogspot.com), that she is having a "Making My Home A Haven" week, so I thought I would join in.  My days may be a little different than hers since I already made my plan and I'm working through my zones, but it will be fun to share my progress with others. - Today's List- All morning school and normal routine. Afternoon: (My zone is the kitchen this week, so a lot of my focus cleaning will be there) Wash down kitchen cupboards and walls. Clean chandelier Clean microwave inside and out Mop the floor. Weekly Home Blessing; dust, vacuum, empty all trash cans, wash mirrors, through away old papers. Put 3 baskets of clean laundry away. Wash towels. Tidy my room and change bed sheets.  Vacuum bedrooms. - Weekly Menu (I tried to make a menu from what I have on hand this week since I have so much going on and I didn't want to make a full trip to the store, we will see if I can avoid it :-) ) Monday- Homemade Mac and Cheese, Green Beans, AppleSauce - Tuesday- Bratwurst, Seasoned Red Potatoes, Coleslaw - Wednesday- Chicken Vegetable Soup, Homemade Rolls - Thursday- Chicken and Black Bean Tacos and fixings - Friday- Homemade Pizza ---- I will try to share my progress later and keep up through out the week!  Come join in if you need some inspiration!! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/617241/ Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:18:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/617241/ Ask and you shall receive...  so Lauren prayed for about a year and finally they have a little pet.  I am ok with it.  Lauren is doing a pretty good job of taking care of her and as long as that keeps up, Sissy Lola and I will get along just fine. - This is our little Guinea Pig, Sissy Lola.  We did not name her Sissy Lola, that is the name that she came with and seems to respond to so we just kept it. - All of the girls really like to play with her and they get her out of the cage a few times a day.  We have had her about two weeks and she seems to be getting used to the girls now. - This is how the girls always sit when they play with her.  If all three of them are playing then they all have their feet together.  It's so cute! - I said I would never have pets, but, oh well!  Having little children changes a lot of things! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/604327/ Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:18:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/604327/ I love Fridays!  Friday mornings we just have a few things to do for school and finish anything left from the week, do our daily chores and then we do FUN things!  It always seems to be a very relaxing day to just enjoy being together.  This past Friday I thought it would be fun to bake some Pumpkin Cutout Cookies.  The girls are always up for baking cookies, so bake we did.   With baking comes a mess, and mess we did make. - Tatum the messy. - Lauren the messy. - Chloe the Queen of Clean. - When we were making the cookies I thought "this will be so much fun, not like when I usually make cutout cookies and then regret it immensely because of the mess and having to ice all of those cookies.  This time will be different!" - After we had cutout and baked and cleaned up and then I saw all of these cookies to ice, I must admit the familiar dread of icing set in.  But I reminded my procrastinating self, the best thing to do when I don't feel like doing something is to DO IT!  So I set everything up for the girls to "paint" their cookies. -   And paint they did. - Later Teetee called and said that she was going to come over to visit us, so I asked the girls if they would like to plan a surprise Tea Party for Teetee since Daddy had to work late.  They had fund setting up the tea and planning a surprise for her.  They asked me probably 20 times "When is Teetee coming?"  But she came and we had our ladies tea with our freshly baked pumpkin cookies. - Praying for the food.  Angelic aren't they? :-)  I'm not sure why they folded their hands like that.. I guess they thought it was 'proper'.- All the ladies at the tea..  Mom, Chloe, Tatum, Me, Lauren. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/603837/ Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:31:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/603837/ Lauren was out sweeping the front porch when she found this huge Praying Mantis!  She freaked out and I thought it would be a great idea to catch it and keep it in the school room.  Living science. ya' know?  So after many loud screams (mostly from the girls, but a few from me too), I caught the little booger and put him in a container. - As scared as the girls were at first, within just a short time they had named him "Herby".  (I know he was a he because males have 8 sections in their abdomens, females only have 6.  See I learned something already.)  Anyway, the girls took a liking to Herby and were worried about leaving him by himself in the dark schoolroom at night.  I convinced them that he is used to being by himself and he would really be ok.  Tatum thanked Jesus for Herby that night at bedtime. - The next morning the girls woke and went right to Herby.  Lauren even was brave enough to try to hold him.  Shortly before lunch I walked in the schoolroom and noticed that Herby was not in his container.  Ack!!  I'm just fine with a contained Mantid in my house, I am not so ok with one that is walking freely and could, like, crawl on me when I'm not expecting it.  So we searched for him and could not find him anywhere.  And then about an hour later I saw him... He was hiding in the blinds.. Yuck!  So the girls and I talked about the fact that he wants to go outside and we ended up letting him go.  Now for the saddest part of the story...  Lauren bawled her eyes out.  I mean sobbed.  But it wasn't just because of Herby, she just wants a pet.  We don't have any pets because honestly, Jeremy and I are just not animal people.  I don't like the thought of animals running around my house.  Some of our friends have animals and they are sweet and everything, we are just not into that.  BUT.. when my almost 8 year old daughter LOVES animals and has been begging for a pet it pulls at my heartstrings.  So we are now talking about getting them a pet.  My sister in law knows someone who is trying to give away a Guinea Pig that is supposed to be really sweet with children,  so that is a possibility.  We need to start small. :-) We of course haven't told the girls yet.  They would be so excited.  I will let you know.  Hopefully I can handle this... http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/595834/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:42:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/595834/ I thought I would jump back into my blog this week with Menu Plan Monday hosted by orgjunkie.com... - Here's what the plan is this week... Monday Tacos, Salad - Tuesday Barbecue Pork Sandwiches, Oven Fries, Salad - Wednesday Grilled Chicken, Red Skinned Potatoes, Garden Green Beans - Thursday Our 9th Anniversary!!  Out for dinner.... - Friday Pizza (of course) - Saturday Rigatoni, Garlic Toast, Cucumber Salad - On another note, I have recently begun CVSing and am learning how to get my grocery bill under $50 a week...  I have been successful for the past 4 weeks!  I will post more on that later..  but I know, so exciting! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/576941/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:20:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/576941/ Tatum "watching" the fireworks. She never moved from my lap the whole time. :-)  She was playing in the dirt just before this, can you tell? http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559583/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:48:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559583/ Does anyone else love projects?  I really do.  I have a neverending list of projects to complete, and I always feel so good when I get to cross things off my list.  Well it seems that I haven't been doing so much crossing lately, more maintaining.  But, last week I did get this one nagging thing crossed off my list... This little room is a screened in porch right off my kitchen.  I have had wonderful plans for this little room ever since we bought this house (almost 6 years ago)  but somehow it always becomes the catch all for, well... all.  My top plan would be to have a little table out here, something simple and quiet, where I could come in the mornings and read my Bible and have my coffee.  I have to settle for second best right now because I need to use this room for some storage, BUT NOT LIKE THIS PICTURE!!!  My SIL walked through this room a few weeks ago and I about fainted.  The horror!  So I just had to get it taken care of.  It now looks like this... My mom gave me a cupboard to put out here and I'm going to keep all of my garden canned goods out here.  There are a few things left in there that I am going to sell in our yard sale, but other than that everything that I haven't used in forever got tossed.  On the other side of the room is a little art area for the girls' messy projects.  The room is not perfect but it makes me smile when I look at it and remember what it used to look like.  Does anyone else ever do this.. I think is there anywhere in my house that I would be embarrassed if someone looked in? And then if I can think of something, it goes on the top of my project list.  One embarrassing thing is now crossed off.  Next on the list:      1. Repaint and reorganize the schoolroom (again)      2.  organize the craft closet That's the top 2 of about 20...     http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559581/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:23:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559581/ Today is Princess Chloe Mariah's birthday!  The celebration for her birthday was stretched out this time because of the holiday weekend..  but she had a blast!  - Last week my mom, aka Teetee, came over and helped Chloe make this purse cake from Betty Crocker.   Chloe has been looking forward to making this cake for months and she loved doing it!  I think that we will be making all of the birthday cakes from now on.. Lauren and Tatum worked on this cake together. We celebrated Saturday night with a cookout and then we went to watch the fireworks. This is the princess viewing the fireworks..  My Dad picked out this crown for her, and she has hardly taken it off.  She even wore it to church on Sunday.  Hey, I figure I am always telling her she's a daughter of the Most High King (it's even the title of my blog), she IS a princess! - Then today, we had a few of her little girl friends from church over to play... Here they are!  Aren't they cute?  They painted little clay figurines, watched Strawberry Shortcake, had lunch with icecream and cookies, chased butterflies, and played "house".  They had so much fun today!  Also, my friend Tara brought the girls over and stayed to play with us too!  Thank you Tara!  They all helped Chloe have a very fun and special day. - At four years old Chloe is sweet and fun, strong willed and demanding (we're working on that).  She comes up with the funniest things.  Today she came to me and said "Mommy I always wanted you as my mommy.  You're just the cutest mommy."  I said, "Oh you think so?"  And she said, "Yeah mommy, you are so cute.  Go look at you, look how cute you are."  Oh how precious she is!  :-)  I am so blessed to have her as my little girl!  Happy 4th Birthday Chloe bo Boey!  I love you! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559072/ Wed, 9 Jul 2008 22:24:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/559072/ Ahhh... I feel so refreshed.  Jeremy had a meeting in Pennsylvania yesterday and today, so I asked to go along for the alone time.  Generally I am not one that feels like I just need to "get away", I really am a home-body and I love being with my girls.  But we have been so busy and I have been soooo tired!  I just felt like I needed to take a little time to just breath.  - So I did. - So what does one do with hours upon hours of free time in a city that one knows nothing about?  Well first of all she uses VZ Navigator to find everything that she is looking for and also find the way to get there (shameless plug), and then she browses.  How many moms can say they ever have time to browse?  I know that I really don't, usually it's hustle and bustle, get in and get out.  But not yesterday or today, these days, I browsed.  I browsed JoAnn Fabrics for 1 hour and 45 minutes and didn't buy one thing. I sat at Panera Bread and ate a delicious lunch and worked on lesson plans with the laptop.  I walked around walmart and picked up a few REALLY cheap school supplies, and a present for Chloe's birthday.  I sat in our hotel room in the quiet and prayed.  I spent time with hubby just laughing and talking.  I woke up leisurely this morning, and moved slowly.  It was wonderful.  And then I came home today missing the girls, ready to start again, ready to handle all of my duties with love and patience and peace and joy.  - God is so good.  He knows exactly what we need and when we need it, and He provides for us.  (We didn't even pay for this trip because it was for work) This may seem frivolous with all of the other serious things that take our attention, but I know that God loves me and He takes care of me, inside and out. - On a funny note:  we have a rule in our house.  When you wake up in the morning, you must get dressed and make your bed BEFORE coming downstairs and no one is allowed to turn on the TV.  Apparently, the girls have not yet understood that this is a rule, because if they wake up while I am in the shower, this is what I find when I come out, every time... - Everyone snuggled, jammies still on, beds not made and their favorite show "Jon and Kate Plus 8" being played off the DVR.  And I always have to say... "Upstairs girls, let's get dressed."  But for real, how cute are they all snuggled like that? :-) http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/558513/ Tue, 8 Jul 2008 21:34:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/558513/ Here I am again after a very long time of not blogging..  We have been enjoying summer.  My favorite thing every morning is to wake up and look out the window to see how much my garden has grown.  Jeremy laughs every time he sees me, but there is just something so exciting about watching it grow!  I love it!  I have made a list of things I'm going to blog about and will hopefully be able to start that soon, but today I wanted to link you to a blog I read...  Read it here.  God loves a grateful heart, He loves when our lips are full of praise for everything that He has given us and everything that He is to us.  But I must say there are times when I complain about little things, ants, not enough bathrooms, clutter, and I have to repent for my ungrateful heart.  Read the blog I linked to and then thank God.... for everything. - "Thank God in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:18 Aplified http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/549897/ Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:09:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/our3daughters/549897/