A Young Girl

I have a young girl on my mind and she has been there since yesterday sometime. This young girl came in to the store and was just minding her business shopping when a regular man comes in and asks her a question. He always asks questions about Bible stuff, so I have no doubt that is what it was. She apparently didn't like his answer and asked him to prove it. He told her it was in the Bible, but maybe couldn't tell her where. (I wasn't standing there the whole time.) This girl was only about 13-14 I am guessing. Anyhow, she told him that he couldn't prove his point and he told her that he did, it was in the Bible. I am not sure what the point being argued was, as I was busy working, but I am concerned and would like people to pray for this young girl and pray that she does not turn off Jesus because of this one man being foolish. He is a large and intimidating man and he has pulled this on me. I don't argue with him though I usually just walk away. She felt the need to argue back her point. Anyhow, when she left, he said "That's whats wrong with young people these days, they don't know how to read the Bible." UGH!! I am 32 years old and I never read my Bible faithfully until recently. I knew what I was supposed to do, but to many people, myself included, the Bible is intimidating. I can read it alright, but to read a truly understand is a different story. There are a LOT of things I don't know, but I can tell you this much, intimidating me in front of people and asking me things will only turn me off more if I was that young girl. I am asking that you all pray for this girl and pray that this is not a negative experience with the Word. I am asking you to pray that this is not the point that completely turns her away. That's all. He should never have done that and it was very sad for me to walk over at various points and still hear them going. She was a very brave young girl and I feel that this kind of negative experience can turn her off. It would have turned me off at 13 or 14, in a heart beat. Pray for this girl, that's all. Thanks and God bless.

Sad Day!

I thought Black Friday was set up for deals, but with a shooting in California and a death and injuries in New York, is it really worth all that? I mean good grief. It is so sad. I did NOT venture out at 4am or 5am for anything. There was nothing worth it to me. Besides that, I was set to work early yesterday and that would have made me extra tired. This just shows how over the top people get for STUFF! Yes, STUFF!! None of that is worth it in the end. It made me extra grateful that we are clearing out stuff and keeping important things, like pictures and family videos. Those things are important and will always be there. Toys for your kids, video games, movies, the latest clothes. YEAH, all that is nice, but it all amounts to just stuff. People here locally know I have been clearing out our STUFF!! After years and years of accumulating, something hit me a few years ago and I have gotten rid of a lot of it. There is no need to keep things forever. Someone else can make use of it. I have either sold it on Craigslist or gave it away on Freecycle. Both are great for clearing out stuff. What doesn't go this way, goes to charity. I am only part way done what I set out to start, but I feel better every time I give away more. But this feeling of not accumulating things we will not use or just to be bigger and better than whoever is gone from my spirit. Yes, we still get toys, but when I notice others not being played with for months on end, I pass them on. When I find something in the closet that hasn't been worn in years, I pass it on. Why hoard all this stuff that you really won't use. We always have what we need, but I try to not have a whole bunch of extras. Keeping up with the Smith's or the Jones' is not for me. Anyways, back to my original reason for posting, it saddens me that people have to die on what was supposed to be a fun day, for stuff. Yes, it all amounts to just things and none of them, YES none of them are worth a person's life. No matter what. I pray for the families of all those who died. For the reasons they died is greed and the families have to live with that forever. It was a sad day yesterday to catch that in the news. Very sad.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had a good day today. Slept till 7:30am, yes, this IS sleeping in. We lazed around a bit, had breakfast. Jeremy cooked two pumpkin pies and then we went to his mom's for the traditional Thanksgiving feast: ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn, green beans, yams, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pies, etc, etc. There was more than that, but that's all I can remember right now. It was delicious! We stayed and visited for a while; I met Jeremy's half sister, who in the 15 years I have known him, I had never met until today; we ate and ate and then it was time to head home. At home I did three loads of laundry today, we sat and rested, for a short time and we took the pictures that we will be sending out for everyone of Anna. (I'll blog about this more another time-she was a mess.) We then sat and watched Wall-E. It is a cute Disney movie, but now that I've seen it once, I can say I have seen it and I'm done. LOL!! We will not be buying that to add to the collection this time. I save that for extra special ones. Anyhow, I finally got Anna in bed for just after 10pm. That's it, that was our Thanksgiving in a nutshell. How did you all fair? Anyone getting up for the special deals tomorrow morning? Not I! I work tomorrow and there wasn't a deal out there that I had money for that I wanted to get, so, not going until work. YEAH me! Okay, enough idle chatter from me. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. God bless!

Who Would Have Thought?

What do you think she is concentrating so hard on? I mean seriously, we are on a break! What would make her think so hard.

Ok, here's a hint. It has something to do with this bowl of mulit-colored Goldfish. YUM! Made you hungry, didn't I?

Ok, Ok, I will tell you, but first, think about it. Seven year old girl, on break from school and a bowl of multi-colored Goldfish...hmmmm!!!

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You spell your name out of course!!

See, she's proud of her work!! Got you going, didn't I?Who can resist a cute face like that!? Not me!! I love that face to pieces!!

Overheard at my House:

Mom: What are you doing Anna?
Anna: Studying Words
Mom: What kind of words?
Anna: The words in my book.

Ok, that conversation was one between Anna and I yesterday. It didn't seem to matter that we are off school for the week. She is studying words. LOL!! Smart girl!!

Week Off!!

YEAH!! We are taking the week off!! I am so happy for some much needed down time. School is fun and structured, but we needed some down time. I am glad we are taking the week off. I just wish I could be off work all week too and still get paid. LOL!! So far, I have done dishes, which I need to do again because we had breakfast and lunch; and laundry, which by tonight there will be another nice stack. I have also posted a few things to sell and I am trying to basically sit and relax, but sitting still for me is not easy. I have more fun shopping! Now, if only I could sell those few things, then maybe I could shop. LOL!! I guess that's it. Just wanted to stop in and let you know that we are off school for the week. Take care.

Reading, Writing & Math

Well, Anna is REALLY reading well. She was in the dining room yesterday and I could hear her sounding out "Reese's Peanut Btter Cups." It was really cute to listen to. She absolutely loves to read and recently discovered that she can read alot of the books on her shelf and not just her "reading" book. She is so pleased with herself when she figures it out.

Writing is getting better. She is learning how to sound out words and write down the sounds she hears and is even getting some of the vowel sounds in there. It is very cute to watch her write too. She wrote about Thanksgiving the other day and here is what she wrote:

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving..."becus i lic Grames trce." Translated to because I like Grammy's turkey. She picked Thanksgiving because it is on our school calendar and she could copy it. The rest was all her. She is very clever.

Math, well that's a different story. she is getting some of it, but slowly. She can count and she is good with shapes and number of sides, angles, etc. She can do most, but has trouble with least/fewest. she can subtract and even do some of that in her head, she can add with 0, but we struggle with 1 and MUST draw pictures with anything past 1. She is having a hard time with ordinal numbers as well. That is the issue. All the homeschool curriculum's we have come across really are going WAY to fast in math. I bought a second program a few weeks ago thinking it was slower and better suited to her needs, but we hit the brick wall again. I am having to make my own worksheets until we pass this gray area. I am very glad I know how. Is there a program for math that really captures them that I can afford to get? I am not sure. For right now, I will continue to make worksheets and practice a little bit of our trouble areas everyday without pushing it and hopefully after Christmas it will hit and we can keep going. This is really our only struggle.

I really love homeschooling and I am glad we chose to do so. She has learned so much and we can work on struggling areas a little bit at a time and then move on. We can also advance in areas she is doing well, so it won't hold her back. She loves being able to do school and then we can go experience life in the real world. She is so smart and receptive to a lot of things. I don't think I will have it any other way for a while. God has richly blesses us in this area.

Update on Mom's Disability

Just wanted to let you all know that we have heard from the judge and disability and the judge says my mom IS qualified and has been qualified since her doctor first put her on disability in Feb of 2007. I also got to read all the doctors reports that they received and there really is no way she should have been turned down the first or even the second time after seeing their doctors reports. BOTH of their doctors stated her disabilities and why. It should have been a slam dunk then, but for some reason they denied it that second time and we went all this way through appeals. Anyhow, She is approved and now we wait for money to start coming in. Hallelujah!! This was much needed this week. Thank you all for your prayers. I am so glad that things are starting to come through.

Christmas Time is Here!

Christmas time is here! Well, it hit our house anyways! Our trees are up, the stocking are up, but I need to find one more matching one for my mom. We are getting the icicle lights out of the storage shed and putting them up outside. (We had no where to put them last year.) The train will be up today sometime and then I was thinking about putting lit Garland on the fence ledge today. We'll see. I love all the things like this for Christmas. I absolutely love to see all the lights. No doubt we had some issues with our tree lights, but I rectified that. Anna got a pink tree several years ago and we put it up yesterday afternoon. Our tree was decorated last night when I got home from work. Here comes some pictures, of course!

Anna's Pink Tree:

Our Tree:

(Needs a different picture, like Anna's, so we can see the lights)

A Quick Family Picture:

The family picture actually wasn't half bad, now if can just coordinate it a bit better and dress up, I will have our Christmas pictures. LOL!! :-)

Lesson Learned, but Why?

Ok, my lesson is learned. My daughter for some reason can not tell me when she is full. She is too busy trying to please and when I said eat all her lunch (because I wasn't thinking clearly and served my 7 year old the same size lunch as myself) she tried to eat it all and made her self sick. Yes, sick. She shoved so much food in her mouth at one time that she physically made her self throw up. She gagged herself. Why can she not just say she is full. UGH! So, after she did that 3 times(small amounts), she was fine the rest of the day. If she would have said she was full, I would have pulled the plate, but she never said anything and is so big on pleasing people. She spent 40 minutes after that playing in the bath tub, then watched a movie and then played fine the rest of the day. We had a pillow fight, she played with her toys, she ate some supper. Everything was fine. Got me. I just wish she would use her words. I talked to her and told her that if she was full, she needed to tell me so we could take care of it. I don't want to have to clean that up again.

After that mess, I relocated a bookshelf, vacuumed up the gross mess where the bookshelf once was and all the dead flies on the window sills. That's what I get for locating shelves in front of the bottom part of my windows. Not sure they are going back there. I also relocated, for the 4th time in 2 months, Anna's toys. We are making room in the living room for our Christmas tree!! It is time ladies and gentlemen for our tree to go up and all our Christmas decorations!! YEAH!! I am so excited about this. I love our tree and I love Christmas lights!! I can't wait to put them up again. This has been a long process in the making. We have rearranged and sold and gave away a bunch of stuff to ensure that our tree could go up. I am so happy!! I will post pictures of it, if I ever get that far!! :-) The good part is now I have the space.

Well, I better go for now. Time to get ready and do school for the day. That is of course AFTER Anna decides to wake up. Have a great week all and God Bless!!

True Meaning of Christmas

Christmas Time already? Well, not quite, but almost. Christmas is like my all time favorite holiday. I love all the lights! I love the music! I love the tree! (After all the work is done) I love spending time with family! I love Christmas in general. What I don't like is how commericalized Christmas has become. Its all about the bigger and better presents. What happened to simplicity. I was reading one of my message boards recently and absolutely loved the idea from one of the ladies on there. I am going to copy and repost a modified version of it here:

We do Santa.. but now only on small scale due to the premise of " naughty list." (Items deleted here to protect her kids) According to Santa and all the songs about him he gives according to how " good " you are. Santa only does stockings at our house. We as our kids parents give our kids Christmas gifts because of Love and Grace.. not because the kids are good. In this we hope to show the gift of love to our kids even when they don't " deserve" it just like God gave us the gift of salvation when we didn't deserve it either. This is a lesson that I had to learn because my son cannot change so I have to change my thinking. I was quite frustrated with my child's (changed) issues around Christmas when I thought about being naughty.. and Santa etc.. and would get upset because he/she really didn't "deserve" to get the big gifts from Santa... but then it came on my heart that I didn't deserve it either and what right did a worldly fictional character have to take away the grace and Love that God already gave him/her.

I know she was referring to her kids, but what I really liked was her take on it all. (Her kids have issues that they can not help. They were born with them.) Santa is okay, but doing just a stocking from him means all the children receive. Kids should receive gifts from their parents. I know we too have gone WAY overboard with this gift giving concept (Santa and us), but I am not liking it now. They come to expect it. We have scaled back for the last few years and we are scaling back again this year. My daughter is going to be surprised when she realizes how scaled back we are going this year. I think the best part of the writers topic is how she relates gift giving to the way God gave us his son Jesus to die on the cross. Now, isn't Jesus really the whole meaning for the season. It shouldn't be about getting, but giving. I hope I can clearly get this through to my daughter. We are scaling back for many reasons, but seriously, I want her to understand the meaning behind Christmas and understand truly that it is about Jesus and family and getting to spend good time together. That's what its all about. It is not all about presents!

Where is she?

Well, a few nights ago, I walked in to go to bed and this is what I saw:
Just in case you can't see my daughter in there, here is a better one:

So, being the good mom I am, I removed the hundred pound horse from her face and left her like this:

You want to know the bad thing? She had that horse back over her in less than an hour. UGH!! At least we know she liked that birthday gift. (From 2007.) Now how can we convince a sleeping child that having a horse covering most of your body is not a good thing?

Anna's List

Anna has been writing a list of what "she" wants to give everyone for Christmas. Here is her list so far:

Dad: Goofy Shirts
Mom: Flowers
Nanny: Flowers
Grammy: Hershey's Kisses
PaPa Hershey's Kisses
Kendra: Horse
Amber: Horse
Avery: Horse
Andy: Dog

LOL! As you can see, her list is getting long and expensive. VERY expensive. She wants to get the girls all $25 horses. :-) Very cute idea, but not remotely possible. We will of course get people something, but I don't think Anna is understanding the concept of money. I asked her where she was getting the money and she looks at me matter of factly and says "my piggy bank." Now keep in mind we usually just give her pennies. Occasionally she will get nickels and dimes, but not very often. This child probably has less than $4 in her piggy bank. It is too cute to have her make a list for everyone though. It shows that she wants to give gifts and not just receive them. Maybe some things we are teaching her ARE getting through. Now, how do i break it to her that the list is not even remotely possible? That is going to be traumatic. I already told her it probably is not possible, but she tries anyways. Well, I just thought I would share how sweet my little Anna is. She has a kind heart. Hope you all have a good day.

Dear Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you so much for you kind gesture today. It was completely unexpected and very much needed. You wrote "Blessings" on the card and yes, it was a very big blessing. You were in and out like a spy and I don't even know who you are. You made my day and helped through a difficult time. You truly were a blessing to my family. I don't even know who you are, but do know that we very much appreciated the card and want to say thank you to you. Maybe you read my blog and maybe you don't, but thank you anyways. You are very kind and made our day. May God deeply bless you as well. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Nicole

No Excuse

OK, I said I would post pictures, but haven't. Sorry about that. Life is busy. That is the only excuse I have, but it really is no excuse. Anyhow, will you suffer with an update instead?

On Friday, Jeremy stayed home from work and we took Anna to see Madagascar 2. We will never have this movie in our home and we will never rent it or let her see it again. There were so many sexual connotations in the movie that I was quite disgusted. Honestly, we can't go to the theatre because I need to preview every movie that comes out so that I can be sure it is appropriate. That is terrible. We have become accustomed to this type of thing. That is also why we don't worry about having cable TV. There really is no point in it. We watch PBS in the morning for and hour or so and we watch Reading Rainbow every weekday afternoon at 2:30pm. Anna loves Reading Rainbow. That is fine with me. At least I know it is generally safe.

No news to report on my mom's case. We still sit and wait. I know this is a lesson in patience and to depend on God. That's all there is to it. At least my mom will get to see her other Grand baby again soon, my sisters baby. She is going there over Thanksgiving courtesy of my sister. I wish we could see her too, but it is VERY expensive to us to travel. I am really just glad that my sister gets to enjoy her time and mom gets to see a beautiful little girl.

I guess that's about it. We are going to get started for the day soon. Take care all. God bless.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNA!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNA!!

I can't believe my baby girl is 7 years old today. She is getting so big and so smart. She is so lively and full of energy. She loves to use big words. LOL!! She must take after my sister in that respect. My sister always liked to use big words. :-) She is still cute and lovable, but getting so tall. She will probably pass me up soon.

Anyhow, like I said, my baby girl is 7 now. We had her birthday party on Sunday, but she has one small, but big gift left for today. I will update later with pictures, after we give it to her. Have a good day all. Happy birthday Baby!!

Pray

Although the election did not turn out as I would have hoped, it is done. Now, all we have left to do is pray.

Pray for our country.
Pray for our economy.
Pray for our future President.
Pray for our people.
Pray for our State.
Pray for our cities.
Pray for our families.

Most importantly, just pray. That may be the only thing to get us through this next 4 years. Things will change, but it will not all be good. Just pray. Nothing more and nothing less. PRAY!

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who came out to Anna's birthday party yesterday. It was great. The weather was great, the kids were great and Anna had a great time. She received many wonderful things and had a blast. She came home and we promptly took off all tags and took everything out of boxes, so she could make use of them. LOL!! Here are a few pictures from the day:

As you can see, we had a good time. There ended up being 14 kids there, which is more than we have ever had and there were 15 adults. This is by far Anna's largest birthday party yet. LOL! We usually try to keep it simple, and this is the result. It was fun though and she had a great time. The last two pictures show her playing with a few thing she got. She loved everything and had so much fun. Yes, she finally got her first video game system. We let her play it a lot last night to figure it out, but will set a timer on her, so she is not playing it all day long. All her cousins have a video game system of some sort (handheld and other) and we felt that she was old enough to handle one, so she got it. It came at her birthday, so she could get games for birthday and Christmas, because past that, she won't be getting any more games, so that will give her 4 or so after Christmas. Anyhow, she also got a really cool crystal art thingy that she is dying to color. She loves the babies and that she can color them and put them in the window. She also got that Barbie horse and carriage, clothes, a couple of games, some dress up items, a diary with a four color pen (she loves this concept) and a addition/subtraction wipe off book. It was a very successful birthday. She got way more than expected. Anna was one excited little girl. Her actual birthday is not for a few days, but we wanted as many people as possible to make it. Anyhow, thank you everyone for coming and for Anna's great gifts. She had a blast! :-) Better go for now. We are trying to clean out some room for the Christmas tree now and we still have school to do. Have a great day all.

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P.S. Happy Birthday Emily!!! We will see you in a little while. (She knows who she is!!)

OK

Ok, last night was different. Unfortunately, I think the kids got too mixed up in trying to beat out one another with handing out bags, so the little ones didn't get to give out as many. The bigger kids would hop right off the trailer before we could get the younger kids down. I think it was kind of sad and would prefer that there was more order to the whole thing. I was busy getting in and out of the trailer all night and lifting kids out of it and putting kids back in to it. You know I was helping the little kids. They were scared to go by themselves, some of them. I was a little disappointed with it, because I specifically asked some of the parents to make the bigger kids sit for a round or two and they didn't. They went around the other side and got more bags and the kids were always the first ones off. I think the kids were missing the whole point of the thing and it really broke my heart. Unless there are changes for next year, we will do something else yet again. It was not what I was expecting and I really wished it were better. Don't get me wrong, the concept is great and all and the kids had fun, but when it turns into more of a competition, the basic idea is lost. UGH! Anyhow!

As for today, I am going to work and then make sure everything is in my car for Anna's birthday party tomorrow. No, her birthday is not tomorrow, but her party is. Her birthday is actually on the 7th, Friday. I can't believe my baby girl is turning 7 already. That was another thing we completely lost what we did one year for Halloween. I listed what we did for 3 of the years, but I have lost the second year, 2005. How we lost that year, is beyond me. The only thing I can think of is that we stayed home. We had a bunch of kids at that point and we may not have gone out. Who knows. Well, time for getting ready and moving. Have a good day all. God Bless.