a sweet week

Some notes from this week:

On Monday West poured out a bottle of expensive liquid cod liver oil on our dinning table. Not thinking clearly and trying to stop it from running onto the floor I grabbed a kitchen towel to mop it up. I then threw the towel in the washing machine and forgot about it. The next day I did a load of laundry which included both of Shane's good work pants. When that load finished in the dryer our house smelled reeked of cod liver oil. Poor Shane had to wear those pants to work and I think the towels and other things in that load of laundry are ruined forever.

Last week our local one screen movie theater had a fire in the concession area. There is a fancy chocolate shop next door to the theater and because of the fire and the smoke that could have damaged the taste of the chocolates, the Chocolate Box made a quiet announcement that on Friday beginning at noon they would be giving away the chocolates. My two girls were there at 10 minutes till noon (with their aunt Sasa) and brought home a bag of dark chocolate covered Twinkies, salted caramels, milk chocolate truffles, chocolate covered marshmallows and chocolate coconut bars. Needless to say I did not stick to my no sugar diet that day. It was pure heaven and worth every calorie!

Shane has been working very hard in the yard putting in deer fencing all the way around and building new beds. Our lettuce is going crazy and we have leeks, beats and lots of flowers coming up. We had sun on Sunday and since then it has been nothing but rain all week.

The girls and I are really enjoying reading The Burgess Bird Book for Children each afternoon, a fictional story told from the perspective of Peter Rabbit that introduces kids to birds and their patterns, as part of our nature study. They also love The Nature Connection, a nature workbook.

We've been visiting a new church and are really enjoying the people there. We're praying about where the Lord wants us and for wisdom and direction about church.

Last week we ran out of paper towels and oatmeal - not such a big deal, but because I've pretty much used up our grocery budget we were going to have to wait until next month to buy more. I was a little bummed because the kids eat oatmeal 3 or 4 times a week and with a busy toddler and a baby that constantly spits up, paper towels are a must. Then on Friday, some friends rang the doorbell and when I opened the door they were standing on our porch with three or four big boxes of groceries including a huge Costco size bag of oatmeal and a box of paper towels! These friends had no idea that we needed these items, yet here they were with them. Apparently some older people had gone to Costco and brought a load of groceries to church and asked them to share them with people from the church. My friend said she'd prayed the night before about what to give to what people and the fact that she brought us two items that we really needed was such a God thing. He cares about even the smallest things in our lives. What a powerful message that gave to our girls that day.

We've been potty training West and so far I must say it's been much, much easier than the girls were. They were both almost 3 1/2  before they were potty trained and West just turned two. I never would have even begun potty training him so early based on my previous experience with the girls, but I recently read something about how you have a small window of time right when they understand and recognize that they are going to the bathroom. If you can potty train them during this window you'll have better chances of success. If you wait you'll be more likely to cause potty fear and other issues. Since in the last month West has stopped and told me several times when he was wetting his diaper I figured this was the window and I should at least get out the potty and try. The first day he wet his underwear most of the time, second day he was peeing in the potty, third day he was going in the potty every time and by the end of the first week he was even peeing in public toilets when we went out. He's also been dry every night and during naps. I'm not totally getting my hopes up yet because you never know, but the fact that we haven't used a diaper with him in a week makes me so happy!

Those are my journal notes from this week. More coming soon about a new bike, goals met and raw foods.

april days

 

Recently I was inspired by Rachael and her darling little terrariums and as soon as I saw them I knew it was the perfect project for our 4H group. The girls had a great time thinking about their minute gardens and creating little houses, fences and paths. I confess that this project was as much for me as for them. In fact, I've now created three terrariums myself!

The rest of the week has been busy with gardening plans. Grass is coming out, new raised beds are going in and lots of seeds are being sown both indoors and out. Three new chicks are living in the garage (soon to join our other 5 hens). I've also been spending lots of time in the kitchen working on such delicious things as these quinoa and basil rainbow stuffed peppers and kale salad.

And I had to share this last photo of West with our blog books from the last few years. One morning last week I found him on the couch looking through the blog books of the years before he was born as if thinking to himself, "so this is what my family did before I came along." I have our blog printed into books using Blog2Print at the end of every year and it's a wonderful scrapbook of our days for our family. The girls especially love reading them and that's what keeps me blogging. It's a journal, scrapbook and ongoing love letter to my family.

spring in silverton

happy easter

pounding flowers onto fabric

Yesterday the girls, a friend and I took a rainy walk around the garden to collect flowers and leaves for another science (and art) project. I had some inexpensive white cotton fabric that we cut into small squares and placed over our flower petals and leaves which the girls had artfully arranged on a piece of white scrap paper. Then the girls (and West - this was the part he wanted to participate in) pounded away on the fabric until the "juice" from the flowers and leaves bled through onto the fabric. Beautiful! They used tweezers to gently remove the leftover flower bits from the fabric. Next they stitched their fabric into little pillows while watching a DK Eyewitness DVD on plants from the library.

schooling in the sunshine

Oh, how much I love that we homeschool on days like this - beautiful, warm, sunny days when Shane is off work and we're home all together. Learning, playing, working and being together as a family outdoors. Even my mom (who lives next door) ducked through the garden fence between our yards and joined us on our blankets for the afternoon.

Side note: For science the girls and I wrapped up our study of the human body before spring break and today started our plant study. We'll spend the spring studying plants using Green Thumbs and other books in addition to lots of nature study. Today we planted leeks, flowers and other seeds in indoor trays, made and recorded what we did in our awesome new gardening notebooks (found free here) and sketched in our nature journals which we've had since we first started homeschooling four years ago. Also, if you're wondering why we're crazy enough to homeschool or want more information about how it works for us, this article says it all and we school very similar to how she describes.

slowing down

 

  

Over the weekend we enjoyed a slower pace and other than church on Sunday, stayed home most of the time. The children played outside, we planted lettuce, did some baking and watched the Sound of Music. I worked on some special Easter basket knits (think fuzzy little spring creatures in tiny hoodie sweaters), did some menu planning for April and mostly tried to kick this cold I have.