week in review

Monday night was Keepers and Contenders, which is a fun club we do once a month for Daddies and sons and Moms and daughters. One of my sweet friends from church, Christy, volunteered her time to come and show the older girls group how to make chenille. They had a great time learning this fun skill. Anna finished her pillow Tuesday. Thanks Christy and girls for all your help! When I can find the camera, I will show Anna's cute pillow. Claire's group did candles and they smell wonderful.



Tuesday, Anna and I went to Walgreens and Kroger armed with coupons for a quick power shop. I got 4 bottles of shampoo free as well as some Tylenol. At Kroger, I was able to get 10 bags of meatballs and for 89 cents each and with each bag I got a free box or bag of pasta!! Great deal!
Thanks Penny! I always get free soap at Kroger also.

Wednesday, Mom came and I had an 'in person' session with my online class to try and help them a little :~ I enjoyed being in front of a class again after 10 years of being home with the kiddos. Teaching a college class certainly is a lot easier than raising children, too!

Thursday, we had CHOICE, where Anna is taking Physics, Money Management and Fitness and Ben and Claire are taking art, science lab and crafts. Then off to choir. Anita, Kim and I had a good time of fellowship while the kids did their Thurs. afternoon thing.

Friday was coop and it was fun as usual. We finished filming our Lewis and Clark DVD, and made possible bags and reviewed the states with Anna's group while Ben's, Claire's and John's group made volcanoes and other fun projects such as smoothies and snow cones :)
After lunch we had Angela, who lived in Hawaii, teach us a hula dance. It was fun as well!
Friday night I pulled an "all nighter" with my KONOS friends. We stayed out planning at HBC until 4am!!! Scandalous! It was really a fun night of laughing(55 calories) , crying and encouraging each other in the Lord.

Saturday, after sleeping rather late, I picked up Anna from Mom and we all went to Anita's for a farewell party for the Brocks. They are such a great family and we will all miss them terribly!

Sunday afternoon we headed to the Duley's and had a wonderful time of food and fellowship.
I am always amazed by this young couple's wisdom and walk with our Great God. They always encourage me greatly.
We are planning to school Mon., have company Tues. and Wed. and on Thurs. I have to do a breakfast and shopping trip with some ladies from Scott's work, and hopefully we can do school again on Fri.

I am thankful each day for all that the Lord is teaching me as I study His word and try to stay in a constant state of prayer to Him. Our church is doing a book study together called Salvation in Full Color, and it is proving to be sooo helpful and convicting. I am so thankful for the teaching and guiding of the Holy Spirit and the more I learn the more I realize how foolish and blind I have been and still am in so many ways!!! We are so needy!

Lessons and creek fun

Today after church , sweet Sarah D. came home with Claire and what started out as a short walk, turned into a 2 hour hike and swim in the creek near our house. Claire, Sarah, Ben , John , and Anna played in the rapids and had a great time. Scott and I sat on the bank and watched. Everyone, thankfully, had on old clothes except John who had to remove his pants and swim in his Bob the Builders :) I am lovin' this spring like weather!

Our other goat is about to pop any minute, and I am fully convinced that she is having at least twins and probably triplets. She is humongous and her poor teats are bigger than my feet!

On a serious note, we attended a beautiful wedding Friday night at our church. Anthony and Hannah are such a precious couple and I wish them many, many years of love and happiness together. Our book study this time is SO SO good and I am very thankful to God for his goodness in teaching this sometimes(most times) deaf and blind and foolish heart so many precious truths from His Word. My heart would still be as dead as stone if not for His wonderful redemption and love, which when I think on Him and this unfailing love, my heart just melts. I will share some of the things I am learning in future posts.

Coop Friday was fun. We filmed some of our Lewis and Clark DVD and went on a LONG hike near the Natchez Trace Visitors Center.

Weekend ramblings

I like this new background because it reminds me of Easter eggs:)
We enjoyed playing in the snow yesterday!

I had a great time Saturday getting several items FREE at Walgreens and Kroger.

Penny just happened to be in both stores the same time as I was and was a tremendous help in Kroger with the management:0 who freaked out when my bill rang up Negative 33 cents!!

The poor checker did not know what to do. The assistant manager was bumfuzzled and said we are paying you to take these biscuits out of here! I said Yes!!! -that is the idea!!

Considering both stores I was able to get 35 items for free!!! Toliet paper, crescent rolls, soap, shampoo, contact solution, toothpaste,feminine napkins :0, hair color :0 :0 , all things I consider very useful! I even helped Rachelle get 6 bars of soap for free!

patience

We had a great sermon this morning on patience. Scott and I expected to hear how WE could improve and become more patient, etc... but the focus was appropriately on HIM and how He is so patient with rebellious sinners like us. How His patience flows out of His goodness. Why is God patient with us? Because He desires that all come to repentance. His goodness towards us leads us to repentance. His patience is to give opportunity for Adam's fallen race to repent. God does not delight in punishment. He delights in mercy. He brings judgement by degrees. Even when He judges, if we repent, He brings us back and embraces us. How gracious He is, slow to anger and GREAT in mercy!
He is not patient with us in the same way that we are patient with others. We are patient with people because we need them. He certainly does not need us, so His patience does not flow out of that. We are patient because we are powerless to do anything, i.e., when we are ill or with a person in authority over us. He is certainly not powerless! The display of power in His ongoing restraint of wrath in present day world is amazing! His patience, instead of coming from weakness, shows great power. That He restrains His wrath, that He has restrained His wrath on this earth for years, shows greatness. We can restrain ourselves for a day or two when faced with difficult or annoying people, but He shows His great power by restraining and showing long suffering for generations. We are patient because we think we share some of the blame for other's behavior. Especially as parents, we are patient with our children's behavior because we feel we are to blame ,at least in part, for their behavior. God has certainly not done anything that would bring Him blame. He is not to blame for our behavior, for our constant provoking of Him by our sin.
He ended the sermon with this: There was only one person who ever lived that did not need patience from God - His precious Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. He never did anything that He needed patience from God YET all the wrath that our provocation of God deserved was poured out on Him, that spotless Lamb. God delights in patience towards us because of Christ, because He took the wrath that we deserved..His great patience with us,because of Christ, is NOT motivation for ongoing rebellion, of us being our own god, of us living on in self-centered lives. This great, merciful, kind, gracious, patience should cause our hearts to melt, and should motivate us to turn wholly to Him- away from ourselves into His loving embrace.

Friday update

Here are the kids after our moonlit walk out in the pasture. The moon was so full this night that you could see well enough to take a hike. Scott and the kids painted their faces like Indians and had a great time!


Here is a nightly ritual at our house - Scott and the little ones playing bull.
Scott is the bull and they all try to ride the bucking bull. He trys to gore them.
Great fun with Daddy! I don't think they will remember most of what we do but I think they will remember stuff like this!



I think Ben has got the bull in this one!

We have also had another funny bug story. Our house must be a magnet for strange and weird bugs!! Ben came running in the den screaming that there was a strange insect next to the garbage can in the kitchen. He said he thought it was a queen ant. The head looked like an ant head and there were no visible wings. Anyway he scooped it up and put it on the counter for me to look at it more closely. I called brother Jerry , the entomologist, and he said to take a pic and email it to him. So I did. He said it is a blister beetle and I sure do hope you all did not touch it. Well as I was taking a pic I touched it to turn it over. He said well send me pics; you will be in my next book!! I started screaming HORRORS!! He said the blister beetle oozes out a substance that causes terrible blisters and that I would have them on wherever this ooze touched. I had touched the bug and rubbed my eyes and who knows what else!!!!! I was horrified. We scrubbed the children's hands and waited for the blisters. Thankfully, I must not have touched the bug ooze because the next morning I had NO blisters!!

I had no idea such bugs even lived in Mississippi. SO, beware of any bug that looks like this one.

Our coop for today was cancelled due to illness. Several of our 13 families doing this unit had sickness this week, so we decided to spend some more time on the Midwest states.

I am glad because there was SO much to cover in this section. With my group we are doing a 4 week project on Lewis and Clark. We are writing a script together. I gave them an outline of a script with 10 scenes pertaining to the expedition and we are going to fill in the blanks with information they learn at home and then film the scenes at coop. I think they are excited about this project. We are also planning to cook pioneer recipes and make butter in a real old fashioned churn. We plan to top off the day by making a possible bag like the pioneers used. I will post pictures of these next week.

I am hoping to do some organizing this weekend and have a huge list of things to get at Kroger and Walgreens. I am hoping to use some of the tips Penny and Anita gave us last week at a great homeschool meeting where these wise ladies shared how they are saving money.

I will post some of my bargains. Be sure to check out Penny's blog( tupelodeals.blogspot.com)

She always has some great deals. I have also been going to some blogs from her blog list and finding some good info.

new life on the farm!!

This morning Scott told us to bundle up and go out to the barn for a surprise. When we went in- there it was- the cutest little baby goat you have ever seen!! Solid white with blue eyes!

How fun. Claire, even though she has a cough, is still in the stall and wants to stay out there all day!

Our chickens have also become proficient layers! We are getting 9 eggs a day. Let me know if you want some farm fresh eggs!

coop fun

Here is group 1 at the Johnson's sand box recreating the Erie canal!!



They had to figure out how to make a lock system for their tiny boat and pull team to go through.



Here is group two's effort.




There was some difficulty once the water was added.





Can you see the little yellow boat?






Group 2's lock worked fairly well.







Oh well, the Erie canal wasn't built in a day, but I think they had fun trying!
Anna, Laura, Ryan and Julie

The other project we did today was to simulate a factory assembly line. Our factory was K and A's Pillow Factory. I interviewed them to see which jobs they were best suited to, told them their quota and set them up in the assembly line.

MacKenzie was the head of the line and she traced he pattern onto the fabric. As the foreman of the line, I must say they all did fine jobs!

Next, Margaret cut out the fabric. She was very efficient but almost had the carpal tunnel after 8 pillows!

Laura came next and had to have "on the job training" of how to pin the material together!!:)

She was a quick learner and did a great job.

Anna sewed the pillow together and Julie took out the pins and ironed it well.

Next, Noah turned the pillow right side out and Ryan stuffed it!

The final step was Olivia, who sewed up by hand the hole!

Here is our first pillow ever from K and A's Pillow Factory!

That was easy!!!

They make their quota (8 pillows in 30 minutes) and were paid nicely in ice cream!!

We are also doing a 4 week project on Lewis and Clark and I think this group is excited about it - we are going to do a DVD of various scenes from their expedition and have a narrator (MacKenzie) tell her daughter (Julie) about it from the daughter of William Clark's perspective.