Baltimore Trip

Here are the highlights of our trip to Baltimore to have a little Christmas time with Steve's brothers and families!

Uncle Jeff sports his new Michigan Hockey jersey!

Abby gives Aunt Chris some love for the special jewelery box and necklace!

Micah mixes up a volcanic reaction with his new science kit!

Abby gets "the royal treatment" from Herschel....

Eli LOVES his science kit from Uncle Dave, Aunt Kim, and cousin Otis

We take a trip to the National Museum of Dentistry. Fasinating, really. Did you know it existed?

Teeth brushing practice :)

Hmmm...she looks a bit natural in a white coat, don't you think?!

Duck-Pin Bowling

Micah "forces" his ball down the lane!

Waiting....

...waiting...

...it hits!

Eli's turn.

Zeke's form

Uncle Dave and cousin Otis--the kids LOVED seeing their cousin and couldn't leave him alone!

Christmas Highlights

Here are a few of our favorite Christmas memories from this year!

12.25 Thanks, Mom! Love my sweater and socks!

12.25 Zeke with Grandpa

12.25 Abby was very excited to open up her own pool stick!!!

12.25 Mush, Daddy, Mush!

12.25 Daddy after "mushing"!

12.25 Eli's Sphinx...thanks, grandma!

12.25 Zeke got his gloves for martial arts!

12.25 Abby's new coat...thanks, grandma!

12.25 Abby's slippers from Aunt Lolo....so cool!

12.25 Great grandma and Uncle Ted come over for a Christmas brunch.

12.25 Cinnamin rolls before the Christmas morning oven fire :)

....and during. Oops!

12.24 Abby's new Webkinz Jr.

12.25 Christmas morning...don't hold us back another minute, DAD!!!!

12.23 Skating at an outdoor A2 rink when we arrived at Greenfield Village's Holiday Nights...and they were sold out :(

What we've been doing around home

Since I am monumentally behind on my weekly reviews and blogging in general, here's a few shots that show us playing with some of the great Christmas gifts we received this holiday. Thanks grandmas, grandpas, aunts and uncles!!!!

I feel that this week, life may get back to some-what normal! We started up co-op again, which gives me a free Tuesday afternoon to catch up on laundry, blogging, and house-hold stuff. We have been having a good time getting back into school and everyone is working hard!

We have two in the Upward basketball program this winter, Abby started a swim class at EMU with a friend, and I start up a new Beth Moore study (Daniel) next week-yeah!

Here is Zeke making his homemade rootbeer with his buddy; thanks, uncles Jeff and Dave and Aunts Chris and Kim!!



We got some of the Playmobil Egypt sets and the kids have had a great time setting them up and playing elaborate games with them these last few weeks! I have made a couple shelves of one of the bookshelves in our living room a "special toy" shelf. The kids play really well with the toys featured on those shelves and I plan on rotating them avery 4-6 weeks.

Micah LOVES to build. He has plans to build his own full-size house with Uncle Sam sometime. Here he is with a car and a boat built from a set he got for Christmas.

The Story

The picture from my last post is...our new house! We have been "looking" for land (5+acres) for quite some time now. Once in a while, we would get on a kick of looking at houses on line, taking long Sunday drives to the outskirts of town, even calling realtors to show us a house or two. However, we've never really been in a position to move on a house. Until this year! We were tentatively planning on starting our house search this spring. Steve decided to get on our realtor's email listing this fall, so we could start seeing what types of houses/land were available and the price ranges. While casually looking over the email listing one evening, we saw this one and we both paused and thought...we should look at that one! And the rest is history!



Around December 23rd we saw the house for the first time. Steve and I just kept looking at each other, hardly believing what we were seeing! We've had our wish list going for sometime and, of course, were ready to sacrifice things on the wish list if needed. Well...this one had...it all! Even the unfinished basement, the open floor plan, first floor master, the acreage, the pole barn... more than we were even dreaming of actually having!!!


This is a bank-owned house, which, learning from seeing a few others on-line that these kind of deals usually are snatched up in ONE day or so, we knew we had to move fast! So we went ahead and made an offer on Christmas Eve. Due to the holiday and the big snow storm that hit the east coast after Christmas, we finally heard on about Dec 28th that the bank had countered our offer, so we quickly accepted their counter offer, and that day they cancelled two other showings of the house, I think!


Right now, we have had our inspection and well and sewer inspection, we have received the purchase agreement from the bank, and the abandoned well on the property has been properly filled. We can now sign the purchase agreement, and then I think we need to close within 30 days. I have been rather guarded because of the bank-owned aspect of this house...we've been told that they have 4 other offers waiting in case anything fell through with our offer....yikes!


We do have a lot of work to do with the house before it is in move-in condition. It was not trashed by any means, but all the appliances, light fixtures and mirrors are gone, no window treatments remain, fresh paint and carpet need to happen...so, we are going to take our time transitioning, and thankfully, do not NEED to sell our current house before closing on this new house.


We have been so amazed and humbled by God's goodness. "Wow" is all I can think of to say sometimes!


Here is a shot of the dining room; the windows face the front of the house. Built-in china cabinet :)

Great room shot:
Sliding door in great room, leading to....nothing but a very dangerous drop off! No deck yet!

Appliance-less kitchen:

Our Unexpected Christmas Gift

God is amazing! More on this later...I've been a little...distracted...to say the least! Trying to get back to normal after a three week christmas break, including a trip to Baltimore, and the above blessing falling into our laps! Wow, what a ride it has been, and it's only been a month!

True Confessions

I know that it is needless to say that I just can't keep up with blogging during this holiday season. But...I HAVE to post this! I enjoy sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly, and this one is pretty darn ugly. Unfortunately, it's about my heart during this glorious season! Here it goes!

Yesterday, we celebrated our last day of school by not doing any school and going to a friends house to have a Christmas party...we read Christmas stories, watched a Christmas movie, did a craft, ate pizza, decorated cookies...a fantastic time! I had a few errands to run after our party and before the kids' spanish lesson at three, and here is where it hits the fan.

Our first lovely errand was dropping off all the gifts we had purchased and wrapped for our Adopt-a-Family through Salvation Army. I truly love doing this and we are so blessed that I feel a responsibility to help those that may be struggling. However...I will not be shopping at Wal-Mart again...but that story is for another post all about my ugly heart as well...

Anyways...after dropping off our gifts, we head...to the Post Office. Oh yes, the post office at this time of year with 4 young children, 3 of which just have a hard time with self-control...why have I not learned????? The line is only about 20 people long, they actually have a pile of toys that the kids can play with--nice! I have my bag of gifts to fit into a box and a few envelopes...we pass the flat rate display panel and pick out a box that my packages will fit into and start putting my packages in the box...the kids are sprawled out on the floor around me playing with the toys, we are slowly inching our way through the line as I move along filling out the addresses on the 3 packages I have to mail.

**sigh** "Do you mind if I go in front of you?" says the elderly woman behind me, which I know by reading her body language the last few minutes has NOT been happy to be behind me.

I pause for quite awhile, since I am not quick on my feet at all and am just absolutely bewildered that someone would ask me this... "No, I'd really like to keep my place in line..." I weakly respond.

There you go. I cannot believe I told this little old lady no! Now, there were a few more comments from this little old lady that I won't share, since I am tempted to justify my behavior! I tried to redeem my failure to hand out grace and be a light for Jesus by asking her if she'd like to go ahead of me once I got to the front of the line, but she not-so-graciously declined.

Oh dear. A major fail on my part. It led to a good discussion with the kids that night, especially Zeke who could understand my struggle to show this lady grace. I told him that this is the way parents and trained and disciplined by God. He got to see me repent that night when I was praying for him at bedtime and ask God for another chance to extend someone grace who doesn't deserve it, just as our Lord gives us favor when we don't deserve it.

I am so far from Jesus! I feel as if my heart has shrunk this season and is just a few sizes...too small...

Month-old school review :)

Yes, I think these pictures are about a month overdue on my blog, but hey, life happens...and we've had A LOT of life happening here! One thing I LOVE about these pictures is that Abby was self-motivated to draw them and they show that she was inspired by what we are learning. I chose to deviate from the read-alouds scheduled in our Creation to the Greeks curriculum, and I have been really pleased with our choices so far (these choices were mentioned in the book list in the back of the curriculum, but I would have had no time for them without cutting out the scheduled read-alouds). Our first read aloud was All of a Kind Family, and then we dived into The Golden Goblet, and now we have started one of the scheduled, Star of Light. Abby drew these pictures toward the end of the The Golden Goblet. The kids absolutely LOVED this book, and even though it was heavier reading for Eli and often took me more than a half an hour to read one chapter, they would beg for more each day! This book gave such a vivid picture of the Ancient Egypt culture...and seemed to fall right in line with the cultural things we were learning on any given week. For example, we learned all about Egyptian villas one week, made a model of one, and then got a great description of one while reading The Golden Goblet! Same with the quarries, marketplaces, artisans, tombs...I just loved it and we were all sad when we finished the book. Abby and Eli have empty booklets on their desks with the title "Ranofer's New Life" because we were mourning the end of this book and I asked them each what they thought Ranofer's life would look like now...and that we wished there was a book about Ranofer's new life. I should probably encourage this creative spark and desire in them...but a homeschooling mom has only so much time in one day/week/month :) Anyway, this was just cool, so I had to share it!
Here are some other pics from the past month:
Abby and Eli after making an apple pie during our reading of "How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World" ( I am trying to read some Five in a Row books with Abby and Eli this year)

The boys playing with their throwing sticks, just like the boys in Ancient Egypt:




Congrats to Zeke for completing his test for white belt senior...

And here is Micah mining in a box...actually, he was coloring inside the box and found it to be dark, so requested his head lamp. This child keeps me way too busy!


Since all this, we have just been plugging away. I have stripped some of the projects out of our weeks because I am yet again feeling very overwhelmed with life, so am trying to get the basics done, plus return/regroup from travel, decorate for Christmas, do my Christmas shopping, make dinners, recover from a nasty cough/cold that is entering its third week...etc...sigh...

More later on our awesome Thanksgiving trip to Niagara Falls and New Hampshire! And, wasn't cutting down a Christmas tree supposed to be a fun family adventure, full of happiness and memory making? Well, that is NOT how it turned out for us this year, which left me really discouraged about the kids' hearts...but it did lead to a good heart to heart discussion with Zeke and is keeping me very humble...

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.