Happy New Year!

A new year, a new blog. I've been wanting to start a new blog for awhile now. Too many reasons to even get into... none of them really note worthy.

So... click on over to my new blog. Remember to add me to your bookmarked folder, or your favorites, or your google reader... or however you read my blog. I'll leave this one up for a short time and then it's gone.

Thanks for hanging around and reading my craziness. The other blog will be much of the same, just a new domain.

ChasingTheKids.blogspot.com

Picnic

With all the complaining that I do about pictures uploading out of order you think I would remember to add them differently. But no. I forget. And get annoyed that they are out of order. ARGH!

Anyway, here is our Christmas Eve picnic.... out of order.


We have a simple picnic under our tree for dinner. After dinner we open 1 present.... Christmas Eve pj's. (Thanks Grandma Debbie!)


Roger and I had homemade "hot pockets" and the kids had hot dogs in a biscuit.
All ready to go. My flash is killer. The room was actually kinda dark with just the Christmas lights providing a pretty glow.
Hannah needed to site just like Joseph.
The kids really enjoyed our picnic this year. They are starting to remember years past which makes it fun. I love it. It's a relaxed day, simple meal, great memories. :)

How was your Christmas (and Eve!)?

My boys

Joseph: *shout of frustration* "WHY (!) does being 6 have to be so hard?! 5 wasn't so hard!" (this was said after we announced that it was bedtime and there will be no more playing the wii tonight)

Nehemiah: (sitting in bed while I sit in his room waiting for sleep to come) "Mommy! I have an idea! How bout we play a game!" (meaning, mario kart for the wii)

I think we discovered their favorite Christmas present!

Come Monday there will be some rules put in place about that favorite present... but for now it's still vacation. It's also still bedtime. :)

Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours...



Have a very Merry Christmas. May it be filled with joy and peace. Family and friends. Love and good cookies.

Joseph's Birthday Party

I'm pretty sure I'm going to explode if I can't get blogger to cooperate with uploading my pictures in the right order.

Here's a birthday party. backwards.

This is Nehemiah playing with snow. (I'll explain more later)
Table o boys enjoying cake.
Happy Birthday! The theme for this party was science. The cake was not what I wanted it to be. at all. But Joseph loved it so that counts for something, right?
See? There are beakers on (and near) the cake. They were supposed to be made out of something edible. Glass? Not edible. But it was plan C. My edible sculpture (made with rice krispie treats, and then covered in fondant) looked like something for, lets say a bachelorette party. Ahem. Nuff said.


Yes, we were eating ice cream out of a ziplock bag. If blogger would stop uploading my pictures backwards (!!) this would make more sense.

It was a science party. We made our own ice cream - in ziplock bags. It was good. We agreed that it tasted like a McDonalds shake. But in a bag.
My furniture is not normally crammed up against the same wall. I made room for a house full of 6 year old boys.
Joseph could hardly wait to open his presents from us. Roger worked on Josephs birthday so Joseph had to wait until Roger got home. It was torture. The "when does Daddy come home?" started at about 9am and continued every 3 minutes until he walked in the door at 4:47pm. Joseph was waiting for Roger, at the table, with presents ready to be torn into.

(It was science stuff.)

Now, back to that picture of Nehemiah and the snow.

This was something we bought for Joseph for his birthday. It is fake snow. It is amazing. It's made from the same (or similar?) stuff thats inside a babys diaper.Only this was never in a diaper. Which makes it more fun to play with. :) It expands up to 50times it's original size. It's reusable too.
I forgot to get pictures of all the kids doing our science experiments at the party, but this one was a sure hit. Actually I'm pretty sure all the experiments we did were a hit. All the homeschooling Moms were deciding to count the party as school time. :) Your welcome.

I forgot to tell my party goers that I found all of our science stuff online. So let me tell you. I found all of our science stuff online. It's a great website, and it has replaced our monster truck watching at bedtime. It's called SteveSpanglerScience.com You can watch videos, read about experiments and buy various sciency things. It made for a wonderful birthday party. A kinda messy one, but a fun one. :)

More birthday pictures coming soon.

Where has the time gone?

6 years ago I was pacing through my little apartment. Video camera in hand. I wanted to document what life was like before the baby came. Everything was in place. Blankets were folded. Diapers were in the ready. We were just waiting for baby. I was scheduled to be induced at 7:00am on Dec 19th. I couldn't sleep. Fast forward through my day of waiting. Shortly before 9pm my Joseph was born. I was officially a Mommy.

6 years later. "Mommy" has become such a common word that some days it needs to be said a thousand times before I even here it. (At least thats what the kids think as they shout "mommy mommy mommy mommy!!!!") My baby boy is growing into a little man. It's happening all too fast. He's in Kindergarten. He lost his first tooth. He enjoys doing things without me. (Ok, well, that last one is a little iffy. He LOVES going to his Sunday School class and he is begging for Jerub and Jewell to babysit again. Other than that he wants me to play with him all day every day)
Joseph, he is what I call a spirited child. Everything he does, he does MORE. He laughs more. He cries more. He loves more. He hurts more. He has a flair for the dramatic. He has a heart for compassion. He has a desire to make others happy and understands things that are at times beyond his years. There are times when his MORE-ness is a little hard to bear (all that drama!) but I know that God has created him with such purpose that he just can't help to lay it all out there. I am excited to see what God has in store for Joseph this next year. I just hope God can slow it all down for me. I don't want to miss anything.








Happy Birthday Joseph! I love you!!

Only my Hannah

I was standing in the kitchen cooking dinner and this is what I hear

Roger :"Hannah did you just lick your book?"
Hannah: (giggle) "Yes!"




Than later she is doing this. In case you don't understand her she is saying "You make me crazy"

(Mental note: Don't bang head and shout You make me crazy while children are in view) ;)

Please keep your eyes on Hannah. If you allow your eyes to wander you will catch Nehemiah picking his nose. Consider yourself warned.

This N' That

My boys have issues. They took great joy in watching this. It's the sponge bob neighbors. They apparently have a thing for inflatables. That's ok. I like these inflatables. The issue here is that it was a windy day. An insanely windy day. The inflatable in front was, well, inflated. The wind got a hold of it and pulled it around. The boys cheered and hollered it was grand entertainment.

This is their viewing perch. Please don't call social services. (and just so you know, the heater was not on. We are not using it this year.)





Remember our daily Christmas chain thingie? One day we were to make a card for someone that was lonely. (The plan was to deliver to a retirement home) This is Joseph's creation.
That's it. "I wish you a Merry Christmas" On a piece of paper with a cut out of it. He was done. He is normally very crafty. I guess he wasn't "feeling it" this particular day. He wanted to write on the card "too bad you don't have any family and you are lonely" I talked him out of it.
This is what the table offered for card crafts. The white box holds various scrapbook paper and scrapbook "stuff" Enough to make a cool card. Oh well. Maybe next year.






This I'm pretty sure breaks many health code violations.




And this is a game we made for part of school. I found a neat book at the reuzit shop for 50cents and it had some great crafts. I loved their Christmas ideas and this is a twist on a game they had... I didn't have what they required so we improvised.
We read from the Bible about the birth of Jesus. Taking note of 1 John 4:15 as a special verse.
Then we made this game. We used a ring from those baby ring stacker toys and a dowel from my cake stuff. In order to gain a turn you had to say the verse "Jesus is the Son of God. 1 John 4:15" Then you could toss the ring.
It was a huge hit. The kids played all morning.
Even though Hannah cheated putting the ring on, she always said the verse before she cheated. :)

Oh! Important part. The ring was like a wreath, which are both circles. The circle represents Jesus' love for us... never ending. I also stuck in a little lesson about wedding rings there too. :)

Love it. Simple lesson that taught so much.

Homemade laundry detergent

Did I post on this before? I don't remember. I know I took pictures. Did I ever post them? I SO need to organize my blog.

Well, by popular demand (and by that I mean one person) I will now present to you my laundry detergent recipe. (Your welcome Jenny.)

1/3 bar Fels Naptha soap
1/2 C Washing Soda (not baking soda!)
1/2 C Borax powder
Bucket (at least 2 gallon size. mine is 5 gallon)

I can find all of those ingredients at my grocery store. I don't think WalMart has all of the ing, but they have some. Look for Fels Naptha with the regular body soap or with the cleaning supplies, which is where you will most likely find the other ing. as well.

You will want to grate your soap. Doing the whole bar at once saves time later, but grate as you wish. You will need approx 1/3 of the bar for now.
Put your grated soap in a big pot with 6 cups of water. Heat until soap melts. Add your Washing soda and borax and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups of HOT water in your bucket, add soap mixture. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water. Stir.
Let sit for 24 hours. I put the lid on but leave a tiny side cracked open. I have no idea what the actual rule is on this one. Mine seems to turn our fine doing it this way.

After 24 hours you should have a rather funky looking soap. It will be thick and gel like. Give it a stir. Done. Use about 1/2 cup per load of laundry. This soap does not sud so don't expect to see suds. It's ok though. Your clothes will still be clean. The last time I made this I also added some Oxi Clean. It bubbled like mad. It does help with cleaning the clothes though, I think I might add less next time. I can't give you an amount there though because I have no idea how much I put in. I'll be making more sometime next week. I can let you know how it turned out then. :)
You need to give this a little stir each time you use it. I have a little measuring cup that I just leave in the bucket. I stick my hand in and give it a quick stir with the cup before I measure and pour.

I think you can also use a soap called Zote. I don't know where to find that though. I have heard of people using Ivory soap too, but I would think that you would have to add more ing. because that wasn't designed with washing clothes in mind.
You can also just add your dry ingredients together if you prefer a powder detergent. If you go that route only use 1 TBSP of powder per laundry load. I have never tried that one before. I prefer liquid.

There is enough to make multiple batches with all of the items purchased.

Happy detergent making. :)

Making Christmas Ornaments

I like to make things for the tree every year. We don't always make dough ornaments but we usually make something new. This year, it was dough. Just a simple flour and salt recipe.

Painting

The Finished Ornaments

Hannah's

Joseph's

Nehemiah's

The kids all had fun. Honestly it wasn't very messy either. And our tree has some lovely new ornaments.

Christmas Countdown

To add to the excitement of Christmas we have 2 things that we do daily around here. One is our Advent calender. Each day we open a new door and the kids get a little piece of candy. (Did you know a mini York Peppermint Pattie is only 1pt?) Our 2nd thing is new to us this year, but I think it will become a tradition as well. We made a simple paper chain, with one link for each day from now until Christmas. On each link we wrote something special that we want to do. Here is a small example of what our December holds for us.

• Learn a new Christmas song
• Color a picture
• Bake cookies
• Make Christmas cards for someone that is lonely (we chose to deliver them to a near by nursing home)
• Watch a Christmas movie while drinking hot chocolate and eating popcorn

Sorry, that blinding flash. This one says "take a drive to look at lights".

And this one says "watch home movies of Christmas' past".

Our list goes on, and it has some repeats but it has been a lot of fun so far. I can't take credit for this idea. I found it on another blog. Sorry fellow blogger, I don't remember who you are. But I thank you. Want to join in? The kids are excited to see what each day holds. Josephs nightly question of "what is tomorrow?" no longer means "What day is it?" or "Is it a church day?" He wants to know what special Christmas activity are we going to do! :)

And I thought I should just add this one. Hannah ran to get into this picture with Joseph. Heaven forbid the camera be out and Hannah not get her picture taken! Apparently her presence was enough and there was no need to smile. I took 3, and not only is she not smiling in any of them but she isn't looking at me either.


What special things do you do for the Christmas countdown?

Wiggle and a Yank

For some reason blogger keeps loading my pictures opposite of how I add them. Was it always that way?
Anyway, this first picture is the "After" If you squint and cock your head to the side you can see the adult tooth peeking out back there. It's actually pretty far in. We couldn't believe that his baby tooth didn't fall out weeks ago.
That's just nasty. Teeth should not be able to do that.
Somebody get the yankers!

For those of you that enjoy videos of this sort of thing... here's some wigglin' in action. I had to pretend that I was fascinated by the bloody little wiggling tooth because Joseph was not looking forward to losing his first tooth. Other than this particular morning he NEVER wiggled. I wanted to hide under the table, but I sucked it up and video taped the whole thing. Memories. Beautiful memories.


Did you watch? Ok, I know you didn't even get to see the grand finale of the tooth coming out. My camera will only record for 1 minute. (technically 1:01) I got him all excited about pulling some more. Refolded the tissue. Gave him some yanking instructions and he went at that tooth with gusto. It popped out and he threw the tissue on the table. 5 minutes later I finally found the tooth. Joseph cried that his tooth was gone. 20 minutes later he finally ate his (now soggy) cereal.

I think all joy was restored when he got money. He earned enough from his 1st tooth to get 2 matchbox cars.
He has 3 (three!) more loose teeth. He's not wiggling.

SNOW?!?!

I think I tried to skip this post but there were some cute pictures so I decided to acknowledge the snow.
The kids woke up with shouts of joy "MOMMY! IT'S SNOWING!" ugh. go back to bed.
I endured hours of "can we go out to play NOW?" before I decided to be a fun Mommy and actually take them outside.
They were thankful.
They worked together to build a snowman. (that in the first picture they *ahem - Joseph* destroyed.)
Hannah wore mittens from when she was 3 months old. It was all I could find.
My flowers were still going strong. Snow in November? All wrong. ALL WRONG!
I don't think he is posing in front of anything, he's just posing in the snow. I think.
Shovel. Roll. Build.
Ahhh, the power of the shovel. To my surprise they shared our one little shovel like they have known how to share their entire lives.
They even listened when I said "stand by the fence and smile for mommy" I actually have about 6 pictures that are cute.
Thats not our tree. We don't have any. It's our spongebob neighbors tree. I just thought it was pretty. Snow can be pretty. From a far. In the warmth of a home. With hot chocolate in hand.

I'm crossing my fingers that the next snow fall doesn't come until February. Of 2011.

A girl can dream.