Anniversaries

I just noticed today that my last post was posted on our anniversary and I didn't say anything. We have been married for nine years. It sure does not seem like long ago that we were married, but with Miss M being almost seven it must be true. We have both come a long way and I am very happy. Tomorrow is the day we look forward to and celebrate more. Miss Mae will have her golden birthday and we were sealed in the Salt Lake temple four years ago. That was a great day. What a tough road that was to get to, but as I found out it was not the end that I thought it would be, but only the beginning and the years since have been some of the best and most annoying years of my life, after all, I am one half of the married partners. I have made many mistakes and will certainly make many more, but thankfully my wonderful man is so forgiving and has a really bad memory for the wrong things I do. I am thankful to be a part of a family and to be a part of the lives of these wonderful people. There may be memories I would give up, but I would not change where we are for anything. Here is a picture of our wedding day. Tomorrow I will post a picture of our family at the temple.

Erin taking steps

Matthew took some liberties with the camera sorry!!

More Fun School Stuff

We have been having so much fun with school lately. We read about the enslavement of the Isrealites and how they made bricks, so we made our own mud bricks. We used a little bit of flour, some dirt and grass, and enough water to make a paste. They baked at 200 degrees for a long time. We shaped them into bricks and decided that we would like to have a mold if we were going to be doing this every day. Here is a picture of Sister Sue making a wall with the bricks we made


Next we read about the Phoenecians. One of the things that these brave explorers were known for was the purple dye they made. We made our own purple dye from blueberries. We put them in a pot with water and boiled them for a half an hour then soaked our fabric for at least 5 minutes and now we have purple fabric. Here are the girls holding up their fabric, now we have to decide what we are going to make with it.


Today as we studied about explorers who discovered America we talked about what it was like to be a sailor. One of the things they did for fun and function is tie knots. We learned to tie a bowline knot. This is a rescue knot so it should come in handy. Here is a picture of them rescuing their dolls from after they had fallen off the ship at sea.


Miss M tied hers all by herself, Miss Mae tied hers with my help, and I tied Sister Sue's knot.

I love homeschool. We have so much fun.

Here is another random picture. This is one of the reasons that I taught Miss M to read....


So I would only have to read Green Eggs and Ham once a day instead of multiple times.

This is a well used book at our house!

Fun music finds

For music this year we are studying "The Story of the Orchestra" where we isolate individual orchestral instruments and learn to hear their sounds. I am amazed at how we are able to hear the different instruments when listening to a whole orchestra after isolating it for a whole week. In our quest to vary the songs we use to learn the instruments I have found some really fun videos on youtube that I thought I would share
This one is just weird:


This one is so pretty:



Did you know that if the french horn was stretched out it would be 12 feet long?

I fell in love with the oboe:


I also now love the bassoon:


If the contra-bassoon were stretched out it would be 16 feet long!!!

This song is beautiful and the dancing/skating is amazing:


There are many more, but I am short on time and you don't watch to sit and watch videos all days. We are having so much fun with this. I love to hear my children in the car trying to pick out the different instruments as we drive down the road listening to music. I would rather hear an argument about oboe vs. bassoon than about the toys they would like to bring.

Finished a McGuffey's book!!!

Miss M finished another McGuffey's Reader. There are six books total; a pictoral primer, a primer, then first through fourth. She started learning to read with these about six months ago. We learn phonograms and then read short stories or sentences that utilize them. Sometimes there are lists of words that I assume are supposed to be spelling words, but I didn't use them as spelling words. She is slowly learning the rules of spelling and didn't want to put any pressure on her. Nevertheless, she learned to read all of the words and to read with out using monotone. She was so excited to have a reading lesson today because she got to use the first reader which she thinks is the first "real" reading book.

Family Proclamation Photo

We declare that God's commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.

Four children may not seem like a large family to some, but to many of the people we know, we are crazy. When we announced that we were having our first everyone was happy, our second people thought it was o.k., but when it came to the third and fourth we endured many comments along the lines of why? and how are you going to afford another baby? These made us very sad because we know that each and every child is a miracle and a sacred trust from God. I feel privileged that he has entrusted us with four daughters to guide through this life safely back home to him. We will gladly accept any blessings He chooses to send our way (yes I have come to terms with having another baby) and will be excited to meet any other members of our family.

Family Weekend

We had a great family weekend. My husband went on a trip to the temple with the youth in our ward, they met at the church at 6:30 am. I love this time and the only way it could be better is if it were earlier. My girls love it when they wake up and their daddy is home, they miss him so much when he is at work. Even though he wasn't there when they woke up, they knew he would be there for lunch.

We did nothing the rest of the time. We sat around and played with each other Saturday afternoon, ate dinner with Grandma, then had church today. I even got my husband to read a scene from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew with me. He was Petruchio and I was Kate. I think he really liked pretending to throw food around and be mean. We do not have very many weekends like this. Usually my husband has some youth commitment or work or we have so many errands to run on Saturday that we can't wait for Monday so that life can slow down again.

I used to want to be going somewhere all the time, but now I just want to stay home. I love being here at my house especially if I can just relax with my family. After spending so much time having to be somewhere, I am incredibly grateful for my time at home and really look forward to weekends like this.

Beauty and the Beast

We are really into fairy tales at our house. This may be an understatement. We read fairy tales, we draw fairy tales, we act out fairy tales, we even live a fairy tale sometimes (many days I really feel like Cinderella with all my work and somedays like the Step-Mother with all my barking). Most every day we are watching the clock and the driveway for our handsome prince to come and take us away to our happily every after, usually just the backyard, but it seems much more fun when we are entertaining him rather than just each other....but I digress, back to the post.



We read multiple versions of each fairy tale and usually pick a favorite to keep as "our" telling of the story. I have only read two Beauty and the Beast stories and that is because I did not read this one first. I can't bring myself to read another one. This one is not easy to read and it is very long, we usually spend three or four days reading it, but we are never disappointed. I know the story and how it ends, yet I still cry every time I read it. Beans (aka Miss Mae, more on this later) is especially touched when I read this book. She tells me that she is not scard of the Beast anymore just sad for him. My girls always beg me to start it over again as soon as we finish, so we will take a long time to look at all of the gorgeous paintings that illustrate the book. We just finished reading this book again this week.



The Beast in this story is very mean and very scary, but the more time we spend with him, the more we see that he is really just very sad and very lonely. He has learned to be kind and loving despite his curse, but has been rejected so much because of how he looks and how he used to act that he is feels that no one will ever know the real him because no one wants to anymore. He is very hard on himself.



Luckily for the Beast he meets Beauty Fortune. He falls in love with her and eventually she grows to care for him as well, just not romantically because she is waiting for a prince to come along for her. By the time that she realizes that she does love him it may be too late.



I have been this Beast at times in my life and sometimes I still find him creeping into my thoughts from time to time. Luckily for me I have five Beauty Fortunes who love me no matter what I sound like, look like, or if I act crazy sometimes.



Families are like that though, at least they should be. A good friend of mine always tells me that "home should be the safest place for people to make mistakes." This is because it is a wonderful place to learn from mistakes without having to feel humiliated because we make them. This is my goal everyday, that my home can be a place where those who are here feel safe making mistakes and then learning from them, including myself.

One sentence that's it!

I started off my month long celebration of the family by using the Proclamation in our devotional. I was so excited to share this with my children because they have heard us talk about this document, but I don't think that we had ever taken the time to explain what it is, where it came from, and why it is important. We spent much more time this morning doing the "spiritual message" portion of our school morning and we only got through one line. I am not really surprised by this because it is about my girls' second favorite topic, marriage (first is princesses).

They are still young enough that they think that they can marry their daddy. I had to explain to them this morning that he was already married to me and that they would have to find another man to marry. We talked a little bit about the kind of man that they should look for to marry; they don't know any boys right now that they could marry, none of them have jobs. I was able to testify of the importance of not just marriage, but marrying right, in the temple and to the right person. It was a great experience and I am so excited to study this with my girls.

Celebrating the family this month

I am going to be participating in a month long celebration of The Family Proclamation. This will celebrate the 15 year aniversary of the prolamation.

We really love being a family and love to celebrate this fact. I also don't think that I use this document enough and know that my children don't appreciate it enough. I am going to use the proclamation everyday for our devotional lessons and spending as much time together as a family as we can.

Here is a link where you can get all of the detail about what this is.

My Home Library

I recently catalogued our home library. This took me weeks of taking books off of shelves, piling them on the couch and typing them into the computer. Only one person could sit on the couch for three weeks and if you did you had to worry about one or two mountains of books falling on you (which would have messed up the (dis)organization I had set up). This is something I have wanted to do for a really long time. A few years ago I read an article called "Our Refined Heavenly Home" by Elder Douglas L. Callister of the Seventy, it was reprinted in the June 2009 Ensign. There were many things in this article that caused me to pause, but because we are such a book loving family, one part especially stuck out



"There was a fine library in the home of President Gordon B. Hinckley's youth (1910-2008). It was not an ostentatious home, but the library contained almost 1000 volumes of the rich literature of the world, and President Hinckley spent his early years immersed in these books"



We have lots of books, at least I thought we had lots of books. When all of the books were listed we have over 500 books, some of which are picture books. I am not sure if there were many picture books in the Hinckley home, but even if there were, my children have only half as many books available to them. I seriously need to work on that.



This year we also got rid of books (this at first seemed a sin to me), but we set a standard in our family of what is an acceptable book and what is not. We defined those that are acceptable as Classics or Living Books. These are books that are worth reading more than once. The ones we got rid of were what we (and Charlotte Mason) call Twaddle. These are books that don't have moral value, didn't inspire us, or were just plain dumb (or dumbed down). I am so glad that we did this, now I know that whenever one of my children picks a book from a shelf she has an opportunity to be inspired and to learn. More importantly they can never be accused of wasting their time just reading.



Along with increasing the number of books we have also made it our goal to replace as many of our favorite paperbacks with hardcover books. I am also having a hard time with this because even though my copy of Jane Eyre is held together with a rubber band and I am so worried about losing pages every time I pull it out, it has all of my notes in it. I guess getting a new copy will just give me the opportunity to re-learn from the book. I will be able to start fresh with, hopefully, a new set of epiphanies. Just writing that makes me want to leave this post and order a new copy from Amazon. As Matthew would say, just put down the keyboard, walk away, and no one will get hurt.

10 things I am thankful for today

I just wanted to write about some things that I am thankful for. We were counting our blessings today and this is my top ten list (not in any particular order):

1. My awesome husband. He just keeps going and going no matter what and he tries really hard to make my life easier and me happy.
2. Six braids for three girls. My three girls let me brush and braid their hair today, they look so cute when they don't have orphan hair.
3. Eight teeth for my almost eight month old. She is finally back to her smiling happy self, no more constant, nerve grating crying.
4. My homeschooling/parenting mentors. I have learned almost all of what I know about raising my girls from some very smart people. Now I just need to more consistently apply it.
5. The Good News of the Gospel. This really should be number one. My testimony and my membership in the Lord's true church are my most prized possessions. This is what I most want my children to learn from me.
6. Air conditioning. It is really hot outside and I don't like to be sweaty. Yesterday Matthew came home from work with heat stroke, (headache, weakness, vomiting, etc) this proves to me that I am supposed to stay inside where it is cool.
7. Books, Books, Books. I love to read, and am so thankful to my parents, my Aunt Peggy, and Mrs Loop for teaching me this and cultivating a love of learning in me.
8. My daughter loves to read. One of my biggest fears is that my children will not love books like I do, but Miss M does. I have to force her to stop our reading lessons so the others won't feel neglected.
9. Grocery stores. Because I don't have to work so hard to get my food I have more time to read.
10. My bed. I have an awesome bed and it feels so good to climb into it every night. I have been so tired lately and love the soft warm place to recover. 10a is that I am not tired because I am pregnant, I am tired because I have been eating too much junk food (cookies are too good to pass by, luckily they are all gone), too much sugar really is bad for your brain.

Does Anyone Else Think This is a Bad Idea?

We needed to trim some branches off of our power lines today. They were too tall for our ladder and Matthew had the brilliant idea to stand on top of our Suburban, in the wind, and use a saw on the end of a ten foot pole to cut them down. It is a good thing that we are not unionized in this house or OSHA would be shutting us down right now (on second thought maybe that wouldn't be so bad).

my extraordinary girls

40 Bag Challenge Update

I am up to 20 bags. I can't believe how much stuff we have!! I said that I didn't really notice a difference, but I was wrong. Our house is so much less messy all the time. Even at its messiest lately it is still pretty straightened up. It has been a lot easier to keep on top of it. I can't wait to finish. I did our bedroom, except under the bed. Hopefully I will have time to do that this weekend. Then on to the shelf in my dining room. All of that goes, then I can move our dog crate to that side of the room and it will look so much better. I need to do the bathroom bad! I have had to stay more on top of our laundry lately (which is easy because it is never more than three loads) and I have found out that we have too many towels, they all do not fit in the closet.

My children do not miss the toys we got rid of, nor do they play with the ones we kept anymore than before. It is still books, dolls, blocks, and anything that belongs to me that they want to play with.

40 Bag Challenge

A few months ago just before Lent I participated in a discussion about what to give up. Of course I suggested that I would like to give up sweets knowing full well that I would fail after a few days, I know the weaknesses that I have that I am ready to work on and chocolate is not one of them. One of the women gave us a challenge she called The 40 Bag Challenge. In this we would commit to taking one bag of "stuff" out of our house each day of Lent until we had taken out 40 bags. I really wanted to do this, but my baby was just too small to start a project like that then, but I am ready now.

I started this weekend by going through our clothes and then I slimmed down our toys today. So far I am up to 9 1/2 bags of "stuff" and 1 1/2 bags of garbage, I don't mean the small grocery store bags, but the large outdoor garbage bags. I only kept a few toys that my children really play with; dolls, art supplies, dress up clothes, and a hopscotch. I am still on the fence about the Mr. Potato head toys. I really love that family of spuds, but my children only like them. Next will be the shoes and then onto my bedroom. I am saving my books for last in hopes that my 40 bags will be full or almost full before I get to them. How do I choose which ones to keep and which to not. It is too much for me to think about right now.

I have some pictures of what all of this stuff looks like, it is amazing because there is not a lot of difference in our house yet, except that I can now remember the color of the carpet in the girls' room (ugly orange) and why I wanted to forget it in the first place. I have 11 bags of stuff in my dining room that we don't need, I am amazed and embarrassed at the same time.

Tiddely Pom

Late last night, 8:45 pm, Daddy-O put the last of the swnigs on the set and this morning we were ready to go. We were momentarily disappointed when we saw the snow. We sang Tiddely Pom, got our snow clothes on, and headed outside. Even Our Angel had her snow suit on. It was a blast The girls were out for almost two and a half hours before they were cold enough to come in for hot chocolate. I will not complain about the snow because I thank God everytime he blesses us with life sustaining water, so thank you God for the snow this morning and for warm clothes so we could still have fun on the swing set.

Tiddely Pom

The more it snows

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom,

On snowing.

And nobody knows

(Tiddley pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddley pom),

Are growing.

A.A. Milne

A week off and my Suburban tried to kill me

We are taking this week off of school and although it is only Tuesday, I know that this is not the lifestyle for me. I need more direction in my day. I feel like we are just floating around waiting for something, but I don't know what. Next week we are going to get back on it. We are half way through our first official term of Kindergarten (We call it Year 0.5). It is very casual and simple. We (Mallorie and I) are learning how to do school so in September when we start Year 1 we will be ready.

Yesterday we picked up our new swing set from Pitcher Sports. I almost died doing this. I pulled our trailer with our Suburban into Sandy to get it. When I got off the freeway at 106Th South I could not stop. I pushed as hard as I could on the brakes and still could not stop. I ended up pulling up onto the rocks in the middle of the off ramp and came to a stop about three cars in front of where I should have stopped. It was so scary and I am sure all of the those drivers thought I was a maniac. I figured I must have just been going too fast (it is a very heavy trailer), but it turns out that my gas pedal was stuck under the floor mat. I was still shaking almost 1 hour later when I met up with Matthew to trade vehicles. My Suburban tried to kill me and some complete strangers!!!! That may be a little dramatic, but you didn't see the faces of the drivers in front of me.

The set is all put together and if the wind ever stops we will cement it in place so we can play. It has a huge slide, monkey bars, and six swings. I think before the summer is over we will change out two of the swings for rings or a bar and add a fireman's pole.

Miss M and Miss Mae went to the doctor this morning for a checkup. The doc told me what I already knew, that they are perfect. She did say that it was perfect weight and height, but I know that was code for all around perfect. Miss Mae did get immunizations, I have mixed feelings on this (Sis. Sue had a really bad reaction to immunizations and became like a newborn at six months old). She is doing alright so far, but is taking a nap, which is very abnormal. I have been praying for and will ask Daddy-O to give her a blessing when he gets home.

By the way, we ended up with two extra really nice American flags. If anyone wants one just let me know.

WARNING: Proud mother gushing

I am going to gush about my daughter. Miss M spent all day (8:00 am until 5:30 pm) on a Saturday auditioning for Annie. She is usually not a very patient person or easily entertained, but she really wanted this. Her hard work paid off and she was selected to be one of the orphans. Everyday she asks me if it is the day to start rehearsals. We are so proud of her and can't wait to see her perform in June.

Also, kudos to Matthew for spending his Saturday with her because Erin and I would not have been so patient.

Princess Projects

As part of school we do handicrafts that we call Princess Projects. This is a time when I teach them anything that I think they will need when they (the princesses) become Queens of their own kingdoms (their houses). Some of the things on this list are sewing, cooking, cleaning, organizing, budgeting, and the list could go on forever.

This week I got serious about teaching the girls how to sew. I sew all the time (at least I would like to) and Miss Mae and Miss M always beg me to teach them. I ordered some books by Winky Cherry to use in school next fall, but pulled them out now. I am so glad that I did. These books are very simple they use rhymes to teach things and have some great ideas that I just never thought of. Now they are sewing all the time. They are working hard to make all of the animals so they can move on to learning how to embroider so then they can make the dolls.

So far they have made birds, unicorns, a bear, a moon, and are currently working on an alligator and cat.

Updates

It has been so long since we have had anything really interesting to post, but I will update. Miss M turned six and had a fun party with family. She had a 3 tier cake decorated with white frosting and candy fish. Her favorite presents were a new doll and accessories and a veterinarian kit for her many animals. We have officially started lessons with school. These are practise lessons to help her be ready and in a routine when we start Year 1 of school late this summer.

We are reading from a bible story book, memorizing poems, nursery rhymes, and poems.
She is honing her reading skills with the McGuffey's Primer.
Math is with Rod and Staff workbooks (not ideal, but they were free so we are using them). Geography is a cute book called "The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on a Ball That Floats in the Air"
History: "Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans"
Nature Study: "Handbook of Nature Study" and "Among the Farm-Yard People"
She also does Copy work and literature almost everyday

We are having fun and learning that all important narration skill.

Miss Mae has been so responsible since she turned four. She has always told us that when she is four she will do things like put on her own seat belt all the time, make her bed by herself, and give herself a bath, but we had to stop calling her Beans. I really miss calling her Beans, but she does not like the nickname. She has been faithfully doing all of these and many more since her birthday.

Sister Sue has recently decided that she is ready for panties. We have only had about 3 or 4 accidents in the last week. She even made it through church and an all day shopping trip in Salt Lake without an accident. I love having only one in diapers and she loves to wear panties.

Angel (the baby, we are trying this name out for her) is getting so big. She is already 11 weeks. That means that it has been almost three months since she was born. I think she weighs almost 15 lbs. (for perspective Mallorie was 18 lbs. at 2). She sleeps all night, but still will not tolerate anyone but Mama holding her for more than a few minutes, but as long as Mama has her she is happy and smiling at everyone. We call her our cartoon baby because her facial expressions are so animated and exaggerated. When she is getting upset she tucks her upper lip behind her lower lip which sticks out farther than I thought possible until she can't hold the cry in any longer and it bursts out of her whole body.

I am excited about the warm weather because the girls are wanting to play outside a lot. I have been spending most of my free time getting things together for school next year. I love to plan and to have a plan so starting early for me is a must, plus I have to buy books and it is better for me to buy them over time rather than get them all at once.

The most exciting thing for Daddy-O is that he finally got the trailer he has wanted for a few years. Three years ago we bought a small super trailer to haul all of our camping stuff for us, but we have outgrown it so we now have a mega trailer that the super trailer will be attached to and leave us lots of room for bikes and whatever else we want to bring with us.

This was long, but it has been a long time. Thanks for reading.