Some soccer moments

This has been an unbelievably rainy soccer season! Out of the last 5 games we have played 2!! Can you say, "Rain, rain go away?!" Well we can! We have some make-up games in our future!

The kids are doing well at this sport. Brother and Big Sis are playing for their first time and are enjoying it. Brother is pretty aggressive on the field and if we can work on keeping his attention on the ball we'll be doing good but he is very cute to watch! Big Sis likes to play but is not aggressive at all! I think she just likes wearing the uniform! ;) Biggest is playing for her 3rd season (although we missed two seasons in a row this past year) and is improving. Today for instance she played the best she ever has! She is less afraid and a little more bold. Our girls are very sweet, no aggressiveness in them at all!

I am proud of each one of them for even trying to play this sport! It's so very easy to see their unique God-given personalities while on the field! I love to watch them play and since you all cannot be here with us here are a few pictures that we wanted to share with you!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

A video from the summer

This is a video that I took one summer evening while hanging out with the kids outside. I meant to put it up a while ago but never got around to it. It's not often that Big Sister gets her turn in the "lime light" so this one is long over due! A video all of her own! Enjoy!!

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

A video from the summer

This is a video that I took one summer evening while hanging out with the kids outside. I meant to put it up a while ago but never got around to it. It's not often that Big Sister gets her turn in the "lime light" so this one is long over due! A video all of her own! Enjoy!!

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

First Birthday

Here are a few snapshots and a couple videos from Littlest's birthday! Enjoy! Wish you all could have been there!! Update!!!!**Just added a few new photos...*

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

First Birthday

Here are a few snapshots and a couple videos from Littlest's birthday! Enjoy! Wish you all could have been there!! Update!!!!**Just added a few new photos...*

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

Some wonderful artwork

We spent a good portion of these past 8 weeks or so reading a biography about Helen Keller. The girls couldn't get enough of her story! Here is some of the artwork they did for their books.


Helen reading braille.

Helen searching for food from another's plate.

Helen and her baby doll.

Young Helen Keller and "Teacher" Anne Sullivan

Sick, sick, sick

Yes, all four of our kiddos have caught the sick bug this week. It all started with Littlest and Brother but quickly spread to the Big girls! They have been miserable today! It's been very quiet as they have been doing A LOT of sleeping these past 24 hours!


They have had high fevers, headaches, sore throats, coughs and runny noses. We've gone through 1 1/2 bottles of Tylenol and Ibprofun already this week. Please pray that they get better soon, that Jerry doesn't get it and that he stays healthy while in Mexico and that I don't get sick while he's gone!

Here are some pictures of these poor babies!

Fever laden sicky!! :(

Check out her new slippers! We got them for 10 cents!!!!

Okay so he wasn't as sick, just wanted his picture taken!





Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

Sick, sick, sick

Yes, all four of our kiddos have caught the sick bug this week. It all started with Littlest and Brother but quickly spread to the Big girls! They have been miserable today! It's been very quiet as they have been doing A LOT of sleeping these past 24 hours!


They have had high fevers, headaches, sore throats, coughs and runny noses. We've gone through 1 1/2 bottles of Tylenol and Ibprofun already this week. Please pray that they get better soon, that Jerry doesn't get it and that he stays healthy while in Mexico and that I don't get sick while he's gone!

Here are some pictures of these poor babies!

Fever laden sicky!! :(

Check out her new slippers! We got them for 10 cents!!!!

Okay so he wasn't as sick, just wanted his picture taken!





Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

A birthday celebration preparation

Tomorrow Little Sis will be one (I can't believe it!) and so I"ve been scrambling to get a few things done today. Why am I always waiting until the last minute?!

Our 1st birthday celebrations are never anything spectacular, just a quiet, small celebration here at the house with Mommy, Daddy and siblings in attendance. I still try to do some special things for the birthday baby just for memoies sake but no fancy party...it's easier on all of us that way and the birthday baby won't remember it anyway. (Actually Biggest Sis did have a party but she was the first baby. We haven't done one since then. And now that I think about it she is the only one that has had a "party with friends". This year will be Big Sis's first! She wants a ballerina themed party that I am working on as well!)

One of the things that I accomplished today was completing the onesie to go with a tutu that I made for her last week. I thought this would be an easy task...and it was for the most part. I just traced a number 1 onto the fabric, cut it out, ironed some "sticky stuff" on the back of it -the name escapes me right now- and ironed that onto the onesie. After that all I had to do was sew...but this is when I ran into problems. You see, I've never-in all of my sewing ventures-I've never appliqued anything...and it showed today! That thing was such a pain! I know it's cause I'd never done it before but ugh! I was frustrated! So, when you look at the picture have mercy on me! Hopefully Littlest won't mind too much...


I was very glad when it was finally done, although very disappointed too but I tried my best! And I think that the number 1 turned out too fat! :( I'm sure that she will look adorable in this little outfit though!

The next thing I did was bake her cake. I have tried very hard to be very picky about how much sugar this baby consumes. And I'm pleased to say that except for some unknowing friends Littlest has had very little refined sugar! YAY!

I only wish that I'd have done as well with the others...although they did eat their stir fry quite well last night...anyway...

I went on a search for a "healthy" first birthday cake and realized that a lot of Moms out there feel the same as I do. It was so easy finding recipies! The hard part was choosing one! I finally settled on one called Pumpkin Apple Harvest Cake by Cait Johnson.

Here's the recipe:

• 1 c. cooked or canned pumpkin puree
• 2 lg. eggs, beaten
• 3/4 c. organic sugar (I used 1/2 c.)
• 3/4 unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. organic cinnamon
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. chopped apple
• 1/2 c. chopped walnuts or pecans

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare an 8-inch round pan by greasing and flouring it.

2. Combine first 3 ingredients in large mixing bowl. Add next 5 ingredients, stirring to combine. Add last two ingredients and stir again. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

3. Bake 20-25 minutes, until cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.

4. Cool the cake, still in the pan, on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert the cake onto the rack, remove pan and cool cake completely.

**Before putting cake in oven make sure to smooth it out as the pumpkin makes it bake in whatever shape it goes in there with.

For frosting I beat 1 c. of whipping cream until stiff peaks formed then added some cream cheese and a little sugar.

This cake smelled WONDERFUL while baking! The kids were so tempted to dig in just because of the smell!!

Unfortunately I didn't have any nuts so I'm bummed about that as I can just imagine how much those things would add to this cake.

I'm excited to taste this cake tomorrow! I'll post pictures and let you know how it all goes tomorrow!

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

A birthday celebration preparation

Tomorrow Little Sis will be one (I can't believe it!) and so I"ve been scrambling to get a few things done today. Why am I always waiting until the last minute?!

Our 1st birthday celebrations are never anything spectacular, just a quiet, small celebration here at the house with Mommy, Daddy and siblings in attendance. I still try to do some special things for the birthday baby just for memoies sake but no fancy party...it's easier on all of us that way and the birthday baby won't remember it anyway. (Actually Biggest Sis did have a party but she was the first baby. We haven't done one since then. And now that I think about it she is the only one that has had a "party with friends". This year will be Big Sis's first! She wants a ballerina themed party that I am working on as well!)

One of the things that I accomplished today was completing the onesie to go with a tutu that I made for her last week. I thought this would be an easy task...and it was for the most part. I just traced a number 1 onto the fabric, cut it out, ironed some "sticky stuff" on the back of it -the name escapes me right now- and ironed that onto the onesie. After that all I had to do was sew...but this is when I ran into problems. You see, I've never-in all of my sewing ventures-I've never appliqued anything...and it showed today! That thing was such a pain! I know it's cause I'd never done it before but ugh! I was frustrated! So, when you look at the picture have mercy on me! Hopefully Littlest won't mind too much...


I was very glad when it was finally done, although very disappointed too but I tried my best! And I think that the number 1 turned out too fat! :( I'm sure that she will look adorable in this little outfit though!

The next thing I did was bake her cake. I have tried very hard to be very picky about how much sugar this baby consumes. And I'm pleased to say that except for some unknowing friends Littlest has had very little refined sugar! YAY!

I only wish that I'd have done as well with the others...although they did eat their stir fry quite well last night...anyway...

I went on a search for a "healthy" first birthday cake and realized that a lot of Moms out there feel the same as I do. It was so easy finding recipies! The hard part was choosing one! I finally settled on one called Pumpkin Apple Harvest Cake by Cait Johnson.

Here's the recipe:

• 1 c. cooked or canned pumpkin puree
• 2 lg. eggs, beaten
• 3/4 c. organic sugar (I used 1/2 c.)
• 3/4 unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. organic cinnamon
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. chopped apple
• 1/2 c. chopped walnuts or pecans

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare an 8-inch round pan by greasing and flouring it.

2. Combine first 3 ingredients in large mixing bowl. Add next 5 ingredients, stirring to combine. Add last two ingredients and stir again. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

3. Bake 20-25 minutes, until cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.

4. Cool the cake, still in the pan, on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert the cake onto the rack, remove pan and cool cake completely.

**Before putting cake in oven make sure to smooth it out as the pumpkin makes it bake in whatever shape it goes in there with.

For frosting I beat 1 c. of whipping cream until stiff peaks formed then added some cream cheese and a little sugar.

This cake smelled WONDERFUL while baking! The kids were so tempted to dig in just because of the smell!!

Unfortunately I didn't have any nuts so I'm bummed about that as I can just imagine how much those things would add to this cake.

I'm excited to taste this cake tomorrow! I'll post pictures and let you know how it all goes tomorrow!

Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

Our week in review 10/5-9/09

I know that I haven't blogged about how school has been going lately but who has the time anymore?! I'm actually glad that I've spent less time on this computer though! All I seem to do anymore is check my email and that's it!

But anyway, our weeks have been great this year! The girls are doing so well in Beyond! They are absolutely LOVING the history portion of it! We just got through unit 4 this week (we are taking things at half speed) and are in our 8th week of schooling. In this unit we learned about the Pilgrims fleeing England for Holland to find religious freedom.

It was great to be able to discuss with the children how blessed we are to be able to go to whatever church we choose and worship God in whatever manner we desired and not have the government interfere...not yet anyway!

When reading about the Pilgrims finally landing in Holland we were given great details from the book about what it looked like when they landed! We then went on the internet to find more pictures of Amsterdam and windmills. Big Sis was so intrigued that she is determined to move there!! I told her that maybe the Lord will have her marry a man who is led to go to Holland to be a missionary.

We also read about some of the food that the Dutch eat (they put mayo on their french fries!) and it was awesome to see all those boats docked along the street edge. Amazing!

One of our activities this week was building a dike out of playdough in a pan to see if it would hold the water on one side of the dike or not. Apparently it is good that we did not help build dikes for the Dutch because ours leaked big time!

We finished up our Helen Keller bio. a week or two ago and plan on doing a very simple play to act out some of the main points of the story. Once we get that finished I'll post it up. We truly loved learning about Helen Keller this year! That is one story that will stay with us all forever!

Montessori Moments

We went to the library the other day and I check out a book called Teach Me to Do it Myself by Maja Pitamic. It is a book full of Montessori based activites and although I admit that I know nothing about Maria Montessori the activities in it looked great! I decided to try one out on Brother tonight since we stayed home from church because he was sick and I jammed my toe. We enjoyed our time tonight very much! I loved being able to spend some one on one time with him (of course Littlest Sis was here too) because I don't get much of that kind of time with him most days.

The object of the activity was to work on his fine motor skills and his grouping skills. Because we haven't done many "official" activities of this sort with him I wasn't sure how he'd do. Much to my surprise however he did GREAT!!

He was suppose to group 4 different colored links into four different jars using tweezers. According to the book the tweasers made this more advanced because they are small and require sharper find motor skills. I guess all that time he spends playing with Legos, cars and playdough have paid off in the find motor skill category!

Even Littlest had her turn at it (minus the tweezers) and she did great!

A field trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Well autum and returned and with it comes, "Mommy, can we go to the pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins?" Every year for about the past 4 or 5 we have taken our kiddos to the Pumpkin Patch to start out the autum season. It's a nice little place where you can take a hayride, go on a maze hunt looking for lost animals, play on the playground and purchase country vegetables, fruits and snacks. The kids LOVE it!

Here are some pictures from our trip out there yesterday!

New hair cut!!

King and Queens of the Hay Mountain!!

Sweet girl!!!

Our four nuts!!!

Our tiniest pumpkin with her tiny pumpkin!

Me and my ridiculous face when we found that tiny pumpkin!

She took FOREVER to find the right pumpkin!

This one wasn't it!

Our four pumpkins.

Review for Voices of the Faithful Book 2 compiled by Kim P. Davis

I have always been a huge fan of devotionals. Ever since I was a teenager for some reason I would always find myself drawn to them. Maybe it's because they are easy reads or maybe it's because I find myself easily relating to many of the days devotions. Well, whatever the case this new book has gotten my attention.

The book is called Voices of the Faithful Book 2 (Thomas Nelson, 2009) and it was compiled by Kim P. Davis.

This devtional book is unique in the fact that each devotion is written by different missionaries that are still out doing the work on their God called fields. Each month has it's own theme (May, for example, has the "Follow Me" theme) and all of the devotions deal with following Christ in some way.

Typical to standard devotion fashion they all start out with a verse or two, followed by the devotion and ending with a short prayer.

This is a great devotional however I honestly wished that some of the devotions went a little deeper than they did. With that said though I felt the Lord convict my heart when reading this numerous times!

I think the biggest blessing of the whole book is what I stated earlier. These are written by men and women still out there doing the work, fully involved in the battle for winning souls and changing lives for Christ. It was hard not to find myself convicted for not doing more for Him after reading each day.

If you are a fan of devotional books then I would recommend this one to you!!


Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy

Review for Voices of the Faithful Book 2 compiled by Kim P. Davis

I have always been a huge fan of devotionals. Ever since I was a teenager for some reason I would always find myself drawn to them. Maybe it's because they are easy reads or maybe it's because I find myself easily relating to many of the days devotions. Well, whatever the case this new book has gotten my attention.

The book is called Voices of the Faithful Book 2 (Thomas Nelson, 2009) and it was compiled by Kim P. Davis.

This devtional book is unique in the fact that each devotion is written by different missionaries that are still out doing the work on their God called fields. Each month has it's own theme (May, for example, has the "Follow Me" theme) and all of the devotions deal with following Christ in some way.

Typical to standard devotion fashion they all start out with a verse or two, followed by the devotion and ending with a short prayer.

This is a great devotional however I honestly wished that some of the devotions went a little deeper than they did. With that said though I felt the Lord convict my heart when reading this numerous times!

I think the biggest blessing of the whole book is what I stated earlier. These are written by men and women still out there doing the work, fully involved in the battle for winning souls and changing lives for Christ. It was hard not to find myself convicted for not doing more for Him after reading each day.

If you are a fan of devotional books then I would recommend this one to you!!


Thanks for stopping by!!
Krissy