Life is made up of many pieces, like a puzzle. Here I attempt to put them all together.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Birthday Presents

I thought I would share a few pictures of the birthday presents I opened last night.

Doug bought me a stand mixer that I know I'm going to enjoy using. I've wanted one for awhile now.




Austin knows I'm always losing my pens and wasting way too much time looking for one so he bought me two packs of them.



Amanda bought me this very comfy pair of slipper boots. . . . .



. . . . . and this very cute teddy bear.




I am very blessed to have received such nice gifts and even more blessed to have such a wonderful family.


Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving Day

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope everyone else did too.

Thaksgiving morning we picked up Doug's daughter and she joined us for a trip to Doug's parents home.





The girls were goofy, Austin slept, and Michael just enjoyed the ride. Michael does really well even though it's a fairly long ride - about and hour and a half. A couple times he did ask Doug if he could find Pawpaw's house. I always enjoy the chance to get out for awhile and this time I took a couple pictures of the scenery.




We had a delicious Thanksgiving Dinner prepared by Doug's mother. My favorite parts were the dressing, and the pumpkin pie. Oh, and the pink jello salad. I didn't get any pictures of the meal, I was too busy enjoying it.

The weather was nice and the kids had a lot of fun playing outside.









Amanda had the camara (actually my phone) part of the time and I found these pictures when she gave it back to me.

Can you tell she loves these boots?


And this is my favorite.



It was a great day.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

As of today all my school age children that I provide childcare for are in school. So begins the days of waiting for the bus, arranging drop-offs and pickups and homework. No homework yet but I know it's coming.

The silence here was almost deafening today. Well, I guess that's an exaggeration because there are still my own three even if no one else shows up but it was much quieter without a houseful of school age kids - mostly boys. Although, honestly, some of the girls are louder than the boys.

This happened to be one of those days when the preschoolers were either home with their parents, parents were working a late shift or, as in the case of one child, were coming late because of a doctors appointment. So we took advantage of the extra time this morning and did a lot of work upstairs. Amanda still has things to rearrange from her room change. Austin needed to just do some general cleaning in his room. And I had lots of clothes to sort through and put away and laundry to do. There were four big boxes of clothes that were given too us to pass on as needed, use for the kids or do whatever with. I knew a lot of them were Michael's size or the next size or two up and needed to be put in his closet. I'm so glad that's done now.

Michael took advantage of the fact that I was busy and decided to give himself a haircut with Doug's electric razor.


I had to laugh every time I looked at him until Doug finally gave him a haircut this evening. He had to cut it down really really short, but it looks better than this anyway.


The salon that was in business right behind us has moved to a new location. Today the salon owners were back to finish cleaning out and offered to let us have four bookcases, and a small table that they no longer had use for. I was more than happy to give them a new home and now I'm full of ideas of how I want to rearrange the playroom. But the actual rearranging may have to wait until next week when we're on vacation and I won't have so many little ones to work around.

I can feel myself getting excited about vacation and feeling less focused on the day to day work. I can hardly wait to sleep in, read, write, and work on some projects that I've been looking for a chance to tackle. We are also planning a couple day trips - to visit Doug's parents and to go to the zoo. We've never taken Michael to the zoo and I'm excited about seeing his reaction to the animals.

As I'm writing this Austin and Amanda are outside with a flashlight looking at all the spiders that have shown up to take advantage of all the bugs that fly around our porch light every night. Because it stays on all night due to parents in and out picking up and dropping off their children their is a steady supply of insects to fly  into the webs. Amanda said there are about 12 spiders out there right now. And now Austin just came running in to tell me he found "a humungous gathering of slugs" outside.  

And on that lovely note I will say goodnight. I wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring?

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Celebrating the 4th With a Birthday Party

We celebrated the 4th today by attending Doug's daughter's birthday party. Her birthday is actually the July 4th.

We had four daycare children this morning when it was time to go so we loaded everyone up in the van and headed out.










It was an outdoor party at Kristen's house and the kids loved the playground and the creak.














































We had a great time and Kristen seemed very happy with her gifts.

Happy Birthday Kristen!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Plannning Day

Today has been gray and rainy outside, cozy and busy inside.

Thursday is my planning day. I plan my menu for next week, make the grocery list, plan next week's school assignments and make sure we have the supplies or put them on the list to buy when we do our weekly shopping.

Austin and Amanda do not have school here at home on Thursdays. On Thursday evening they go to the home of another homeschooling family and they often do some assignments there. So I give them the day off.

Today they spent quite a bit of time cleaning out the cages of all their pets. Since Amanda now has two rats and two gerbils, and Austin has three mice and two hermit crabs, they have a good bit of cage cleaning to do. When they bought the pets they did so with the understanding they were in charge of feeding, watering, playing with and cleaning up after them. And they have done an excellent job of it. A great way to learn responsibility. They also learn a lot first hand about animals. Great science.


A large part of their day was also spent in their rooms cleaning. Last week I talked to both of them and told them that they had the rest of the week to get their rooms clean. If they did not, then starting on Monday of this week their would be no free time until they were done. Very little was done last week, so this week has been a hard one for them. It's been hard for me to watch. But . . . They're getting it done. Austin finished his today. Amanda should finish her room tomorrow. I've been very proud of the way they've stuck to it without complaining . . . much. I've also told them that now that we've gotten this far, there will be no free time each day until it looks they same way again - Clean.

As for my challenge. If you don't know what I'm talking about see my post here. I've done pretty good but I don't think I'm going to do quite good enough. It's looking like I am going to have two very happy kids on Sunday.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter Sunday

It's been a great Easter.

We decided that since we had no extra kids today we would visit Doug's parents. They live about 75 miles south of us so we don't go down there as often as we'd like. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the kids were so good. I was very proud of them.

Since Doug's mother recently had back surgery we did not stay very long. Just long enough to have a nice little visit without tiring her out to much.

Doug's father has a 4-wheeler and Doug took Austin and Amanda for a ride on that. A big thrill for them!

We were home by 5:30 this evening. It's nice to have a good day away and then be able to get home in time to unwind and get ready for the beginning of another busy week.

While we were on the way back home two of Amanda's friends (sisters) called and asked if they could spend the night tonight. There's no school for them tomorrow and they wanted to show off their Easter goodies.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and is ready for a good week.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.