Homeschooling

Yes some of our children our homeschooled. And I am excited about some of the things I have done to decorate our schoolroom/ youngest girl's bedroom. We've added the alphabet across the top in nice bold blue. We've also added a section to the wall that is a weather center to put labels based on the season and the current weather. I hope to add temperature charts and percipatation charts as the girls get older. Then we have our character trait papers. At the top of the wall we have the USA flag. Oh and we also have a section for hanging well done papers. It's really quite beautiful. Maybe one of these days I'll get the camera working to show you what I've done. I hope to add to this wall whenever the mood strikes me so we'll see how often that is.

PS I did go to CVS this past Saturday and when I find my receipts I will post my deals.

Trying to get it all done

It is so hard to keep up with a busy household such as ours, but there are definitely some things that can be done to make it work out better. Getting the kids to help out is one of them, but also making it a game. Making it fun. So today I am focused on trying to get the housecleaning done and clipping coupons all while having fun with my kiddos.

Meanwhile I cannot post a lot of photos on my blog of my one stepdaughter at the request of her mother. So if you notice a lack of photos of all my children, or you come up with less than six kids it is because I am honoring the wishes of her mother.

Also, I am going to try to get back into couponing and blogging about it. So we'll see if this helps with keeping me blogging more.

Swimsuits

I don't know why I put myself through such torture every year, but I do it. Every year my daughters need new bathing suits and every year I arrive home frustrated at the lack of selection. This year when I went into my rant, my husband said, "You can't be the only one fed up with this, we don't you blog about it." And so here I am. First I went into Walmart. After finding success with two adorable t-shirt/shorts combos for my two youngest I was on to find something for my older two girls.

This is where I started getting mad. I think I saw one, yes ONE one-piece. That's it. And the cutout for the legs looked like it was meant to show off far more than I want to think about my girls showing. Then I thought well maybe a cute two-piece that covered everything. Nope. Aparently two-pieces are created to show off everything but what legally has to be covered. And this is in the 4-16 section! Why do we as a society think it is cute to have our little girls look like...well you know. I found a single pair of shorts bottoms at walmart and scooped them up like gold. Then I went to target where I scored cute outfits last year. They had two styles and had only one matching set in a size I needed. But because I had grabbed the shorts from walmart I was able to pair it up to a t-shirt style top and voila. We have swimsuits for the year. (Or at least until someone grows out of them.)

Now if only I could find a good bathing suit for myself. Sigh. Maybe I'll have to look into ordering them online next year.

Learning to blog better

I'm thinking about how I can blog on a more regular basis and about how I can help people with the things I know. Sometimes it's hard for me to put anything out here because I assume that anything I have to say is boring, or just already known by others. Yet there are so many good blogs out there that seem to just put out there regular thoughts and feelings. They say what they feel like regardless of how boring or whatever else it might be. So I need to just start getting my thoughts out there. Any advice would be helpful.

More pics of the kids coming soon

It's been incredibly hectic around here lately as we are getting ready to move in a few weeks (we bought a repo that was basically guted and we've been working hard to get it fixed up so we can move in, more to come later). Also our van broke down and we may have to scrap it and buy a new-to-us one. Once we move and are settled in I am hoping to get into a new routine of blogging much more regularly.

Russell

This is Russell. Of the kids I gave birth to he is my first born. As with any first born he was the one I knew nothing about birthing but has been my guina pig (at least until I married Steve because now I have my step-children who are allowing me to learn parenting skills with them! :) He is such a happy kid. He is into Hockey (as the goalie!), Cub Scouts, and is in T&T in AWANA. Russell is always trying to build something whether it be a contraption on our wagon to hold a fold up chair or just playing with his legos, he loves to build. Right now he is wanting to get into wood-working/carpentry. Maybe someday I can have my little guy build me a nice set of bookcases.

Pics of the kids: Katerina

First of all let me say happy birthday to Katerina!! She just turned 4 a few days ago! It always amazes me how quickly the time seems to go as the kids grow. Of the babies I gave birth to Katerina is the one who made me wait the longest to meet her. I tend to have my babies on the early side and she waited until 38 and 1/2 weeks before she made her appearance. She is deffinately one who likes to do things in her own time. She thinks she is so much older than she actually is which is just funny. I like to joke that she is 4 going on 13. She is also excited because she is starting gymnastics in about a week. Katerina just can't wait! So here are her pics.

Some pics I like of the kids: Natalia

I want to start adding more pictures of the kids so I will slowly work at putting more pictures on my blog. First here are some that I like of Natalia. The pic on the left is from about a month ago. The other two are from when she was only a few days old. It's amazing how big she is getting! She is so full of smiles and is just such a calm, happy baby.

Life lessons

There are some moments in life where we need to step back and evualuate what we need to be doing in our lives. We recently had to start getting up earlier due to a change in Savanna's bus schedule and it's started me thinking about all the things I need to start doing at home on a more regular basis. So I'm trying to get into a good routine with housecleaning, homeschooling, and just basic life schedules. Yet I still need to remember to step back and laugh as well. Yesterday was a long day of taking care of sick kids. Katerina just wanted to be held all day and when she would let me I got a few things done as fast as I could, well last night I found that there was a perfect pen made handprint that Katerina had managed to put on the couch. All I could do was laugh. What else can you do in this situation? So today I encourage you all to look at the things you need to do and come up with a good plan, but then to also remember to smile!

God's blessing on us!

Yes our God is an awesome God who answers prayers! And he has answered our prayers of a house. We currently live in a single-wide mobile home, with 6 children. It was getting just a bit cramped but in His perfect time He has supplied us with a house! It is a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house which sits on almost a full acre of land! I can finally have a garden! Now, it is a repo which basically means that we have a lot of work to do, but that's all right by us. Thank you Lord! Thank you!

Cat food and Macaroni

So you know you're a parent when...you look in the cat's bowl and realize there are uncooked macaroni noodles in it. So as a good animal caretaker you pick all the noodles out. Then you ask yourself how the noodles got in there in the first place. It really is a valid question, especially when you realize that you were the one to just refill the cat's bowl. After closer inspection of the box that we keep the cat food in I realized that my 3 year old had decided to add a decent amount of macaroni noodles to the cat's food. It's funny now that I think about it, but this morning as I was slowly... slowly working my way at picking all the noodles out it wasn't that funny.

What we've been up to at our house.

It's been pretty busy around our house lately. Between the round-the-clock nursing and hockey and AWANA we always seem to be doing something. And to top it off there is Christmas to think about. My sister and I made quilt with mine and my siblings names and birthdates and all of my kids names and birthdates. It turned out so pretty. I was really quite impressed with the two of us. We've never done something like that before and it was really refreshing to see something like that turn out so well. Meanwhile I thought I'd put a pic of all the kids on here. This is my dad's staircase. We were trying to play with different poses. Enjoy!

Announcing....Natalia Joy!

She's here! I know it's been 3 weeks since she was born, but hey it's hard when you have a new little one. So here is her birth story: (written from me to her)

Okay so on Monday I thought my water had broken in a trickle so I called the Midwife, Pat, and she said to come in and get checked. My water had not broken and I was still only about 2cm and not very effaced, but very soft. I asked her if she would strip my membranes and she did. It hurt but I figured that was a good thing. The rest of the day I had contractions off and on. Aunt Vickie and I walked around Walmart in the evening and I had good contractions but by the time we got home and I got settled for the night they were gone. I woke up at about 4am with little tiny twinges but they weren't too bad. By 5am I realized that these might be decent contractions because they were coming regularly. By 6am I realized that they were about 4 minutes apart. I woke your Daddy up and told him that I thought this was it because it felt like my other labors once they were nice and established. So then he showered and by 7am he was off to vote. A few hours later we could tell that this was going to be it so we called Aunt Vickie to come watch the other kids so I could go vote and so that she could be here when the baby was born. By this point labor was starting to get strong so we asked Daddy's cousin across the street, Chrissy, to watch the older kids so that I could vote before we got too far into labor. When we arrived at the polling station the lines were kinda long but everyone was so nice when they saw me and realized I was in labor. I went straight to the front of the line and they let me vote really quickly, then I had a whole gym of people congratulating us! It was great. I started to tear up pretty good and Daddy thought that was cute. So we got home and labored some more. By this point Aunt Vickie was here and her and Daddy did basic things around the house while coaching me during the contractions. (They had spaced out to about 5 minutes but were getting stronger and longer). By about 11am I thought it might be time to go, but Daddy read through the bradley book about emotional signposts again and said he wanted to hold out until 12, maybe 1 o'clock. By this point I was pretty much tuning everyone out during contractions and in between. By noon we thought we should go in so we called the Midwife, Pat, and she said yup come in. (Daddy made the receptionist laugh because when he called she said "can I help you" and he said, "Yes, I'm in labor." She laughed pretty good.) On the way to the hospital with Aunt Vickie, Savanna, Russell, Katerina, Daddy and I, we got a low tire. Daddy pulled over and then announced it wasn't low enough to stop him. ( I think he was worried he'd have to deliver you), then he was talking to family members on the cell and missed our exit to the hospital. Looking back it's pretty funny. During though I was kinda spaced out and didn't care too much. After we arrived Pat said I was 5cm, 80% and nicely established and so we walked, and rocked in a rocking chair and stood. By this time we had Grandpa Clare, Grandma Allison and Aunt Shirley join us at the hospital so it was like a party in the room. While standing I suddenly felt weird so I thought my water was breaking, when the nurse got me on the bed I started trembling really bad. All of the sudden I knew I was in transition and I kicked everyone out of the room (except for Daddy). The nurse checked me and said I was at 8cm and fully effaced. Daddy says that she seemed to panic a little and ran off to call Pat back. It seemed like only a minute and Pat was there. When she checked me she broke my water. Up to this point I was doing great without any pain meds, but once she broke my water it got much harder to tolerate it. She kept asking if I felt like I should push yet and I kept saying I wanted to push, but wasn't sure if I should yet. Finally after throwing up 3 times I felt a tad better and she suggested trying to push. That hurt! (at this point I let Grandma Allison, Aunt Vickie, and Grandma Lila in the room to see you be born) I backed off from it for a second until Daddy and Pat said they could see your head. Then I opened my eyes and 3 more pushes later you were here! You were born at 4:14pm. You weighed in at 7lbs 9ozs. And 19 inches long. You had such a big thick umbilical cord that it was hard for Pat to get the clip on it. Your birth was beautiful! I've never used a Midwife before and I've never gone totally natural before but this time I did both and it was absoutely awesome!

It's a Girl!!!

I keep forgetting to post that we know now that the baby is a girl!!!

where have I been?

Well to answer that question: I've been camping a lot with the kids and I've been working on Katerina's curriculum for this school year. It's so hard to decide what to do with her because she is my first homeschooler. This year will be her first year in preschool and I don't want to overload her, but at the same time I want to give her a good couple of hours each day of something structured to do. I have found a lot of sites I like. www.first-school.ws is perfect for preschool things. It has so much information that you could easily become overwelmed, so I'm only using a few things from it. www.homeschoolshare.com is another awesome website! I took some ideas from there that will make up some of the basics of her curriculum. Like the alphabet lapbook! I love this idea and have had a blast coming up with fun things to do for each letter. When I get stuck on a letter I head over too www.letteroftheweek.com Also we are going to do a county a week, that begins with the letter of the week we are doing. We are building a lapbook for that too that I am calling her Geography Alphabet Lapbook. In it we are going to do simple little things like record the books we read about the countries, maybe draw some pictures or even find some neat printables or crafts to fill our book. It should be a lot of fun! The last site I'm using is www.enchantedlearning.com This is a pay for use site, but it's really cheap. I think it was about $20 for a year of use. Don't mind if I'm not here much for the next few weeks, I'm still finishing up and I'm going camping again. See you soon.

Prenatal Appt.

So I had another appt. today with my midwife. It went really well. I'm measuring right on target for my 17 weeks and baby's heartbeat was good at 140. And I've only gained a total of 6 lbs for this pregnancy thus far. I'm feeling pretty good right now! It's so nice to get back into the swing of things at home. I feel like I'm coming out of a long fog now that I'm feeling better and starting to have more energy! It's also nice to be feeling better because it's summer and the kids and I like to get out and do things. We will be going camping several times this summer along with going to the zoo and various other summertime outings. Oh and I have my ultrasound next weds. and I can't wait!! I really want to know what this baby is so I can start getting some of the clothes out of the shed to inventory. I want to get them out now but I know that's just silly. Since everyone wants to know what I "think" the baby is I'll go ahead and say boy, but really I'm not sure. Wednesday can't get here fast enough!!!

Making Your Home a Haven

Crystal at www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com/blog.htm is hosting a refresher course for the making your home a haven series and I figured this would be a great thing to comment on. We are trying to make our home work out better for us. We were originally trying to move this summer and get a bigger van but we've decided to put these things on hold for six months to a year. So because of that we are trying to revamp our house to make it less cluttered and work better for the whole family. Plus we are trying to figure out where to put the new baby's things in the house. Not that a baby needs a whole lot, but I am hoping to find a place to store clothing, a bassinet, a swing, and maybe a changing station (which may end up housing the clothing and diapers too.). Today however I am simply trying to finish up the living room. I need to declutter it and finish reorganizing it since we took several bigger items out (like our huge entertainment stand). Between that and getting the general house back in order since we've been very busy the past four days with preparing for and operating a yard sale and then father's day with moving the big furniture around in the living room. Happy Cleaning to all who participate.

Frustrated

I'm looking for some encouragement because I'm tired of being put down for being a stay-at-home mom who doesn't "work" (regardless of the fact that I take care of our home and children and working on a home business...but no of course I don't "work") and for the size of our family. We are talking about going to get a 15 passenger van. We've found a couple we are going to go look at tonight that might be what we are looking for but apparently we don't know what we are doing because a lot of family members say well you can still fit in a mini-van, one of those 8 seaters. What they don't think about is when we have to put something other than people in said mini-van. Plus, here's where they get even more mad, we might still have more kids! What would we do then, go out and buy yet another vehicle? That's just silly. We need to get into the right size vehicle now so we can start paying it off now. Then years down the road we can just own it outright. What a novel concept wanting to own something without debt attached to it. Grrr... I'm just so frustrated. I know our life is much different than the average Americans but it's MY life not theirs. What they don't see is what is beneath the surface. Like when I'm asked when my youngest will be put into preschool in the fall. I simply told that family member, again, that I will be homeschooling her. She is already so smart and she loves to learn, I don't want that to go away. We have four older children who we have to allow the state to educate (due to our family dynamics it's not something we can do anything about). I won't allow the next one to be state educated too. Our children our blessed to have a father who loves them so much that he is willing to do all he can to give them their mother/stepmother at home with them all the time. These children don't know what it is to have to be separated from their family all the time. Plus the cost alone would make it not feasible for me to work, my income would go negative due to the daycare costs. Alright I'll stop with my rant. If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle family members who just don't understand please offer some suggestions.

It seems like I never blog anymore

I know I know. Where am I? Well I've been feeling pretty sick lately and I'm just starting to feel better now. I'm 15 weeks today and I still get queasy sometimes but I'm definitely feeling much better than I was. Plus soccer and hockey and everything season is finally over! Yeah! Now that school is almost over it's so nice to just be able to relax and enjoy the kids. Meanwhile we are looking for a new house and a new van. With this new blessing on the way we don't have any seats left in our present minivan so we need to move up to something bigger. We are hoping to get a 12 or 15 passenger van. Meanwhile we are also looking for a bigger house. Our price range is very low so it's my hope that we find something soon despite the price range.

So my big thing right now is working on getting the house super clean again (it was hard to do deep cleaning with so much going on and morning sickness). I'm trying to find a good schedule to keep on. Any ideas?

Pregnancy Brain

Okay so I've know about this new little blessing for about two weeks, and yet I still find myself dwelling on it. I'm just so excited! As of yet I'm not really too sick. I've been a little nauseous this weekend, but nothing too terrible yet. On other fronts it was a really bad weekend with S and her situation. I don't want to elaborate, but please pray for us all. Now let's see what else is going on. I currently cannot use my oven for cooking because R was acting like a monkey and a chair he was using hit the knob and broke it off the stove. Luckily I can still use the stovetop until we can order the piece we need to fix it. Well, I need to finish dinner and help the kids finish homework.