And Now We Are 6

Happy Birthday

January 19, 2004

Fall 2004

May 2005

Christmas 2006

Christmas Program 2007

May 2009 with his best buddy

First summer on the dirt bike!!! He has waited FOREVER for this moment!

June 2010

Yesterday, he made his birthday cake. It was from a mix, but he cracked the eggs and put in the water and oil. After it cooled, he iced it as well. Today, he will place a Transformer on top of it with the candles. He is such a big boy.

Another Way We Are Saving Money

This is a neat little gadget that my mother gave my husband for Christmas. Since he is the only coffee drinker in our house, it was the perfect gift. Until the K Cups ran out. We went to purchase more and cannot find them for less than 50 cents per cup. That seems expensive to us since you can brew a whole pot of coffee for less than that. So for a while we used the coffee "tea bags" with it. That worked, but was still a little pricey.

When we are out and about, we will often stop to get a cold drink at some point. It became cost prohibitive when our financial crisis hit at the end of last summer. So we stopped doing that as much. We still did it though (every time we were looking over our shoulders for Dave Ramsey - eek!).

Earlier this spring I found a little cooler at a church rummage sale. Perfect! I started taking drinks with us when we went out. Usually bottled water, but sometimes tea or other drinks that I purchased at the store. It was cheaper than going to a convenience store, but still not cheap.

Then one day, I was looking at my husband's Christmas gift and I thought I'd try to brew iced tea with it. At that moment, I started a new trend in our house.

Now I am brewing the tea we take with us when we go out and about. There are many benefits here. #1 being cost. A tea bag costs pennies compared to the $1.50 to $2 we were spending on drinks at convenience stores.
The side benefit is that I know what is in that bottle now. I don't use corn syrup or artificial sweetners or chemical preservatives. I use tea and honey or raw sugar and sometimes I squeeze lemon juice in. Labeling the bottles is very important. When I brew fruit teas for the kids, it can sometimes be a hard sell if the children don't know what's in the bottle.

I haven't calculated costs, yet. However, I know this is just better.

I brew the tea right in the bottle with the water from our Kreurig machine. When it's finished brewing, I add water to fill the bottle and stick it in the refrigerator. Hubby likes having the individual servings in bottles to grab and go.

Laundry Soap update

The laundry soap that Lucy and I made is working out great. Our clothes are clean and we are paying a fraction of the cost of commercial laundry detergent. I'm thrilled with it.

Our Property

Through the unfolding of events over the last year, we have found ourselves on a piece of property that is about 12 acres and wooded. Some think we are doing well because we got this big house on this big piece of property when in reality we are renting. The rent is less than half of what our mortgage was in our previous house. Despite several efforts over the last 4 or 5 years, our house didn't sell. It has come to a point where the house is in foreclosure. I won't go into great detail here, but let's just say we are feeling the economic crunch with many others right now. I publish these things so the truth will be out there.

Nonetheless, we are making the best of our current situation. Through the woods we have cut a walking trail. The trail is rough right now, but walkable. It has been a wonderful bonding experience for our family to have a project such as this in front of us. The nice part is that it really didn't cost us much money. My husband had to purchase a new chainsaw blade. Other than that, we have a lot of "sweat equity" in it.

We are estimating that the trail is about 1/3 to 1/2 mile long. It starts near the house and ends near the house. Every day we find footprints left by the wildlife that wanders the woods at night. Talk about an excellent opportunity for nature study!

We are looking forward to many, many adventures on a trail that we can call our own.

Laundry Soap

While at the Tractor Supply Store purchasing pullets this spring, I noticed this issue of Mary Janes Farm magazine on the rack near the check out. It caught my attention and I thought "What the heck". (Truth be known, I'm a sucker for magazines. Don't know why. I just love them.)

I found a recipe for laundry soap and was intrigued. After doing more research, I found that making your own laundry detergent is economical. Hmmmmmm....

So tonight, we made laundry detergent. I haven't done the calculations yet and I'm waiting to see if this actually works. In the meantime, I'll share pictures.

These are the ingredients. I found these items at the grocery store in the laundry aisle. (Confession: As much as I hate that place, I checked "Wally World" first. They did not have all of these items. So much for one-stop shopping.)

My husband even got in on the action. He likes the saving money part.

Homeschool Convention and Where Did My Babies Go?

Had an amazing day at the CHAP Convention yesterday and am gearing up to go again today.


When I go, I have my list of books I must purchase to get ready for next year. My first stop is usually at the Queen Homeschool booth to purchase our Math U See books for next year.


So yesterday, I went up to them and said, "I need a complete set of Alpha, a student book for Epsilon and a complete set of whatever comes after Zeta." The very courteous young man helping me said, "Oh, that would be Pre-Algebra".

(Imagine here the scene from Christmas Story where Ralphie's mom called Schwart's mom and told her that Ralphie heard a bad word from Schwartz. ~ What?! What!? WHAAAAT?!?!?!? That's a little glimpse inside my mind at that moment.)


I was shocked! Pre-Algebra!!! I mean, I should have known because I am familiar with Math U See as we have been using it for a few years now. I started thinking in my mind, "Okay, DD12 will be 13 this summer and she will be 8th grade in the fall, so I guess that's right." All of this happened in about a milli-second. I tried to keep it together and not let this guy know what was going through my head - I wanted to know where in the heck my baby went and that I wanted to leap over the table at him for telling me my firstborn is growing up so fast. But, hey, can't shoot the messenger.


After a quick moment, all I could do was look at this poor young man and say, "I'm not emotionally prepared to make that purchase right now. Give me the Alpha and Epsilon books, but I need time to digest 'Pre-Algebra'."



Whew! They grow up right before your eyes, don't they?

Our First Spring Nature Study of the Year

“Let [children] once get touch (sic) with nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through his life.” --Charlotte Mason; Home Education, pg. 61

Over the winter, we had a tremendous amount of snow in this area. In two snowfalls, within a week, we recieved nearly 5 feet of snow. That is out of the ordinary for our area.
Another two weeks while there was still snow on the ground, we had a tremendous rainfall. Of course, we noticed all the little creeks and streams in our area were over their banks. We decided to take a morning and go to Caledonia State Park to observe the many streams that wind through the park.

Here, DD11 is making a nature entry in her Commonplace Book.



She came prepared with mud boots so she could wade in the small currents and stay dry. She also brought along a bag of pretzels for a snack.


DD12 found the most interesting rocks. They looked like obsideon with streaks of marble through them. We are not sure if the rocks are native to the area or if they were brought in.



DS5 did what any reasonable boy his age would do ~ threw multitudes of rocks into the water. I'm especially excited to see the I caught the "splash" in this photo.


We walked by some favorite picnic spots to see how close the water came to them. We could see that the water was higher before we got there because of how the grass bent near the banks and the debris was piled up at the bottom of the trees and around picnic tables. It will be fun to take the many pictures we took today along with some new pictures we take over the upcoming summer to observe the differences in water levels.