Zoo..

We have many medical and foster care appointments, the require us to drive an hour or more.  When your childcare providers are expensive, sometimes it is cheaper to take the kids along and do a field trip before/after the appointments. The idea is, you don't need to pay a sitter and you get to do fun fieldtrip you might not otherwise.



Last week we had quite a few appointments and a crazy week, so I decided to make Friday a fun day.

                                     
                                        We packed a picnic that morning, loaded the van for a full day of fun and headed out around 8:30.

                                     

We were happy to have our friend Miss. A along for this fun day! The kids were so excited. 

We arrived at the zoo at 10 am. We had to wait a couple minutes for them to open, the kids were antsy to get going! 

The bears were a huge hit, the kids loved them!

We made it through the zoo in almost exactly an hour. 

We left the zoo and headed to the park. The kids love packing lunches and each carry their own lunch box. We try to pack special lunches instead of getting fast food. 

We enjoyed our lunch then had an hour of playtime at the park. It was a beautiful day to sit and chat while the kids ran and played. 

Finally it was time to clean up sweaty, dirty kids and head the the hospital for tests. Thankfully the park had a nice bathroom and everyone washed up nicely.

We were early to our appointment but they took us right back.
Now this is when you know you are homeschoolers... everyone crowded around, watching in awe, and asking questions as they did the test. It was really quite interesting, despite the level of stress involved for the momma.

The kids did a great job all day so Miss A offered to treat everyone to ice cream on the way home. Oh, the joy! Getting out of the car, going into the restaurant and buying ice cream cones, then sitting outside to eat them! Momma is NEVER patient enough for that! This was def a special day!


We arrived home just in time to get Nesiah off the bus! It was a day not soon to be forgotten by my kiddoes. It has been a long time since we did a fun day like this and it was much needed. 

God's Provision

Every year I get venison from relatives who are hunters.They shoot the deer, I pay the butcher for the butchering.  We get mostly burger and for the past 2 years have not had to buy any beef. It is a huge blessing.

Last year we got 4 deer butchered.  I used up the very last 2 packages on Sunday. I had looked into purchasing beef to hold me over until deer season.   But had not gotten it done.

On Monday morning, my father in law called to tell me that they had a doe for me. The meat would be ready the end of the week!

Today I picked up a huge laundry basket full of 2 lb packages of venison burger for $100!!! So incredibly blessed!

Second provision of this week. We have been  incredibly busy and I had need for sitters 3 days this week. A crazy week of appointments, some where I could easily take the kids and others where I truly needed sitters.
I was able to get friends to watch the kids, they even offered to watch the kids on days when they could go with me. The kids love this friend's house. They do their schoolwork and help her with her littles, so it can be helpful to both of us.

This morning once again this friend offered to watch my kids, so they didn't have to ride in the car with me for the two hours. #blessed

Friday Encouragement..

We would appreciate your prayers today as we go through today..

We trust God to show Himself to us today.

We trust His Peace goes with us, no matter where we go..

We trust His provisions.

School and Schedule

Each day brings a new challenge, on some days it's each hour bringing a new challenge.

We seem to have the home maintenance well under control. My kids like a posted schedule. I have several goal oriented kids. They like knowing what is expected each day. They are pretty good at going with the flow when schedules change as long as the basic schedule stays the same.

This year I have 4 jobs each day and it seems to be working well. The goal oriented ones work well through each one and there is minimal nagging needed. The other's usually need no more then one reminder.

The school work load. Now that is a different story. We are rather relaxed homeschoolers. We have focused on healing emotions/trauma while working on the basics of education. We have come so far. But this year, this year I had big ideas. Workbooks. School that requires dedication and shows results. Lot's of reading and learning new things.

It's going fairly well for my readers, my kids who explore the whole world by reading. My one who doesn't read, yea it's an uphill battle. We are doing upwards of 5 hours of school every day. I. can. not. deal. with. that.  
We spend 15 minutes trying to work through the instruction "draw a line through the sentence" today. Yes, this is my 4th grader. I would appreciate some heavy prayer. ;)


We dropped co op. Sadly our babysitting job interfered with the schedule,  it kept changing and keeps changing. I struggled fiercely with this one. It was to be our out.. But once I made the decision and said no, I felt like a 100 lb weight was lifted off my shoulders. I was immediately filled with peace. It was the right decision.

Babysitting.. I am driving to the local public school each day, waiting in the kindergarten line to pick up kiddoe and bring her back here until her momma gets off work. Her momma has some health challenges and that has effected our schedule tremendously. Kiddoe is sweet and Fayth is in HEAVEN, with another little princessy here! They play nicely for hours.

Fostercare and health challenges continue to throw us curve balls. We continue to persevere in prayer.

We have a full day of Wednesday appointments, a day at home on Tuesday and Thursday, and trip to the city on Friday. Kids are going to a local amusement on Saturday with mentors. It looks to be another crazy busy week.

We canned 120 Quarts of Applesauce!

It's one of our favorite traditions. Canning applesauce with our friends from church.  Every year Mrs T and Mrs. D help us. Mrs. T provides us with the apples and plans the date. Mrs. D gathers willing helpers.
Last year all the kids mentors helped us. This year it was Mrs. T and D and two more friends from church in addition to our neighbor.

We had 8 kids 10 and under here, we gated off the kitchen and all little people were forbidden in the hot food area. 

So thankful for people who sacrifice their time and efforts! 

 

We canned 120 quarts of applesauce!! So unbelievably blessed by this! It is something we eat at almost every meal! 

God is good..

God is Good.

Life has been crazy busy..
School is a challenge...
Babysitting a balancing act...
Health challenges a constant drain...
Foster care an emotional journey...
toilets overflow..
kids are defiant..
kids constantly need fed...
kids constantly make messes...



But we are fighting to thrive in this:
We have friends who inspire and encourage
We have Godgiven breaks on the tough days
The knowledge this is only for a season
The strength that comes from God.
The peace that surpasses understanding.

The blogging will be on the back burner for awhile as I work to find our place in this chaos.

Maquerade

  We were invited to our friend's 16 birthday! Miss C is our "Mother's Helper". She often goes with us on day trips and appointments to help me keep everyone corralled etc..she is an excellent helper, quiet, sees the need and steps in when needed, helps with big kids and little kids. Oh, I can only hope to teach my girls to be helpers like this!  

  

Fayth was delighted with her $2 Goodwill dress and received many compliments!

Lee wanted to go with a wolf look... this was about as dressed up as he will get. $5 Goodwill outfit

David wanted a white suit with a white tie. This was his compromise. Ignore the fact that he is wearing flipflops. We forgot to get him dress shoes. his was another $5 goodwill outfit. 

Elizabeth had originally bought a purple dress and a beautiful shear lace sweater.  $4 outfit...
But then I found this blue dress for $2. She chose to wear that with leggings we already had. 

The birthday party was at a local golf course. We left the littles with a friend so that the big kids and I could have a fun night out! I can not rememeber the last time I got dressed up to go out for anything other then church or court hearings ! 

We loved the message in a bottle idea...

The beautiful fancy table. We had to have a long talk about appropriate manners etc.. I loved that my kids had this amazing opportunity to practice good manners and eating out. 

Lee was proud of his table manners and mom was happy that all those times of teaching did really reach his brain! 

Just so you know we didn't make perfection.. even tho it was close. :) 

The birthday girl and her friends! 

They played a game called musical balls. My boys won the prize! 

The Birthday girl herself!! 

Dancing... 

My kids were thoroughly disappointed that we had to leave early to pick up the littles, They didn't know all the dances but learned quickly! I had told them before we left, when in doubt, watch what  others do. :) 

It was a fun night out for us. We so rarely dress up and go out, this was a very special treat.

Homeschooling...

First official week of homeschooling full schedule. We have been playing around with the schedule and starting school for several weeks.

 I have 4 laminated sheets of schedules on my fridge.

List #1 has daily jobs that get done at each meal time, counters and tables cleared, dishes washed and dried and  floor swept! It helps us keep our living space under control.

 List #2 has daily school schedule. It lists what needs to be done each day in order to complete our school year in a timely fashion. This way the kids know what to expect and I am not forced to do much planning each day.

 List #3 has our daily home maintenance listed. This is a new one for us. I am working on maintaining our house without hiring help or getting stressed out. I list things that bug me if they are messy and each day each of the kids does a cleaning task, except for Wednesday and Friday which are our running days. I do major things like cleaning kitchen and bathrooms, one room each day. I also switched up our laundry so that I am doing the majority of the laundry and only doing it twice a week. 

List #4 has the public school schedules listed for Nesiah and Anna, our babysitting kiddoe. We need to do bus stop morning and evening for one, kindy pick up for the other! It takes careful scheduling to make sure we don't miss anything!

It is taking a good amount of juggling to balance everything but so far so good. We have even added in weekly trips to the library. However, we have had to switch libraries because Lee read all the acceptable books at our old library. Oh, the thrill of a new library full of books we have not read!!

Several exciting things we are doing with school right now..

Postcard exchange! We signed up with this facebook group to exchange postcards with other families in the US. We should be receiving 5 postcards from 5 different states each month for 10 months! We also send out 5 postcards to 5 different states each month. There are so many things to be learned through this!! We got our first postcard today, from Hawaii!! The kids were delighted!

We are also doing co - op which is new for us. We decided to skip choir and running club this fall and try co op. Co-op will give the kids socialization with kids that live in our area. It will also be an opportunity for them to learn things in areas that I struggle to teach. 

We are also incorporating some of the easy peasy online homeschool curriculum for music and art. The kids are liking this. Somehow they end up spending lots of time digging around on the websites linked to EPOHS. I love when they love learning.

I am hoping this year will be a year of learning new things on a new level. As my kids get older their interest expand and it takes more effort to meet their levels of curiosity.

Big Brothers and Polly Pockets

We are predominantly boy/tomboy family. Fayth is our only "princessy" pink lover. The majority of our toys are boys/sports toys.

So Fayth was absolutely delighted that we will be babysitting a little girl who has no brothers! We dug out all the dolls, the dollhouse toys, the pink legos, the dress up clothes... But they are all rather scattered and bits missing, because Fayth doesn't treasure her toys. 

I had seen this Polly Pocket Wall Set for sale on Amazon last year. I had hoped to buy it for a Fayth, but she was going through a challenging time and had lost the privilege of this specific new toy.

But, alas the child has learned to enjoy school work and the value of a job well done. So I felt it was a good time to reward her, in addition to providing a new GIRL toy!

The much anticipated packagae arrived and putting it together was a family affair. Now big brothers asked that I make it CLEAR, they were ONLY assisting in putting it together. They did not want anything to think they totally enjoyed playing with this very awesome set.
(I was thankful for big brothers who can assemble toys)

The set includes a whole wall party. It has a camping area, a pet party area, an amusement park area, a hot air balloon and several other areas each is connected to the other by a zipline. 

There are 6 Polly dolls. 

They all have suction cups. 

This would be the Polly Pocket Gymastics Show that was done on my kitchen table.
 Photos compliments of Fayth, who took atleast 50 photos... 

The final bow, after the show! 

These kiddoes played for hours and hours and hours and hours with this set. The first day was almost 4 hours straight of playtime with these 4 kiddoes. Worth every penny of that $11 I spend on this set! Yes, I had sales an coupons stacked up and bought the set off amazon for $11!!!!