Loony Tunes

My kids have never watched Elmer Fudd or Wiley Coyote... until Matthew borrowed a Loony Tunes video from the library last week. They have thoroughly enjoyed it! It's been unexpected - I guess I've forgotten how much I loved them as a kid.

Tonight after supper Alyssa & Matthew were sitting at the table reminding each other about different stories on the video, "Do you remember when rabbit said...?" and then just cracking each other up remembering. Made me smile to listen to them. Way fun to see them having fun with each other.

Heavy Heart

This morning my heart was really heavy for my sister Jenn & her family. They have been having more issues with their son Caleb as well as recently finding out Joel's father was diagnosed with cancer. This morning I found myself really questioning God. I know he is a healing God, why doesn't he heal or even just regulate Caleb's seizures, etc... Why add cancer for Caleb's Grandpa, who is a huge source of help & encouragement for them into the mix? How does this glorify God? On the way to church I was looking out the window thinking how I can somewhat understand how some people who don't know God would choose not to believe (I was feeling pretty low).
We got to church (we're attending a new church, Constance Free in Andover) and went in to worship. During the first song, I just started crying (and I it's been a while since that has happened). I think it was a song about the goodness of God or something (I can't even remember what the song was). During the second song I went from crying to bawling as God touched my heart and gave me reassurances that he is in the midst of all of this & that he would sustain my sister & her husband. The song was Everlasting god by Chris Tomlin. I know I've heard the song many times, but the lines "strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord" just struck me today.

Here are the lyrics (they get repeated a lot):

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary

You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

My prayer tonight is that Jenn & Joel, Jerry & Maryann will feel God's presence and the comfort that He brings!

Matt

Matt is beginning to want to do whatever his dad does. Almost every day lately he'll ask Gregg, "Any sports on today?" He likes to watch the Vikings with Gregg (although he doesn't last very long and he's on to playing with his sister) and loves it when Gregg plays outside with him.

Tonight Matt was playing with his brother. He tackled him and his comment was "tackle on the play!" It made me smile!

Alyssa's comment today

Alyssa & I were talking about her upcoming 6 year wellness check at the clinic & how happy she was not to have to get any shots this year. Alyssa was surprised to learn that I had shots when I was little just like her.

Her comment: "Did they have doctors in the old days?"

Hmmm...

Alyssa's Birthday Party

Sunday we had 7 kids over to celebrate Alyssa's 6th birthday. Her birthday is actually on Thursday but we ended up with a beautiful day to celebrate yesterday! We had a horse theme so we played pin the tail on the horse & painted a horse stained glass picture. Here are some pictures...

Aplington-Parkersburg Falcons rise again!

As many of you know my hometown was hit by an F-5 tornado last May. ESPN did a piece on the rebuilding of the football field. Parkersburg has a wonderful head coach of its football team who has been there for many years and while the kids can't go to school in Parkersburg this year they did go ahead and fix up the football field so they could play there this year to help give the town hope that they will recover.

Here is the link if you're interested in watching (its 11 minutes long but was well done). http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=null&brand=null&videoId=3591008&n8pe6c=2

Homeschooling Alyssa

As I've mentioned before, homeschooling Alyssa has had its ups and downs. Yesterday we were finishing up our unit on the sun and after I listed off all the things we had done to learn about the sun, I asked Alyssa what her favorite part was. She looked at me and said, "My favorite part is doing it all with you mom." Yep, melted my heart. She can be such a sweetie when she wants to be!

Sailing with Matthew

Today Matthew has been sailing his "ship." He took a toy bin and turned it into his row boat. He's using a couple of rulers for rows and "rows" around the living room with the Little People carousel in his boat (not sure why but it's been there all day long & he pushes buttons and it plays its music every once in a while). It's so fun to see his creativity come out.

This afternoon he asked if I would play boat with him. Many times I feel too busy to stop and play but today I did. We went in his room and Alyssa & I used his bed for our boat & he had his boat out in the ocean. Eventually we all moved up onto his bed and we rowed, slept & saved Matthew and his Gecko, "Chip", over and over. Eventually he sat on the bed and regailed us with where we were and what was going on. We seemed to go to "Whale Ship-it" a lot, we swam with the sea turtles & the sharks, the jelly fish & the crabs.

I don't have the patience to play pretend all day long but it is so fun to take the time occasionally to just sit and play and giggle with them. Sometimes I just look at Matthew and think how these days are so fleeting and that he won't always want me to just sit and play pretend with him (or lay with him while he falls asleep, etc...). It gives me the motivation to make sure I live in the moment, stop the "important" stuff I'm doing and hang out with them now.

After three weeks

Well, we've been homeschooling for 3 weeks now. I really feel like it's been a huge learning curve for us and I guess I wasn't anticipating that it would be. This week found us at the beginning of the week very frustrated with Alyssa's negative attitude towards school, me giving her a piece of my mind & the two of us praying together. Seriously, I was thinking that if her attitude continued we would not be homeschooling for much longer. Something had to give but she was not really giving things a chance. While we prayed together it was like God was whispering words to me as I prayed, helping ME realize how much Alyssa needed to hear some of the things I was praying about - how much I had been looking forward to spending time with her doing school stuff, how sad I was because of her attitude & that I was willing to do something different if homeschooling really wasn't going to be a good fit for her.

For many reasons, the rest of this week has been really good. Alyssa's attitude improved a ton (I still get resistence every once in a while but NOTHING like on Monday & last week). Part of the change is that I began giving Alyssa a list of what we need to do every day that she could cross off as we did them. I also made sure that the first 4 things we do, we pretty much do every day. And we began studying topics. This week it was the Sun and therefore we read books about the sun, did science experiments having to do with the sun, painted pictures of the sun, we made sun bread and so forth and I think she's really liked it.

The other thing that happened this week is that we just happened to be at Messiah Lutheran Church cleaning some toys for MOPS (it's where we go to MOPS). One of the women I know there invited us to stay for the meal they have on Wednesdays and then invited Alyssa to try out the bells class they have for K-2 grades. She LOVED it and ran out the door afterwards saying how she wanted to go back again next week. It's early enough in the evening that I think we're going to do it - eat there every week & have Alyssa do bells while the boys run around with some other friends they know. Music was one area I wasn't sure about and I think this will really help her learn about beat & rhythm. And she loves music...

We are ending the week on a much better note than at any time in the last 3 weeks and am hopeful that we've turned a corner. Monday we go to co-op and I'm hopeful that she will enjoy it. She gets to play soccer in her P.E. class and she really likes soccer.

I've been tagged!

Thanks to Carolyn for tagging me!

Ten Years Ago
I was single living outside of Miller, SD at a Christian boarding school called Sunshine Bible Academy. I was a secretary & asst. volleyball coach there. It's an absolutely amazing place that was going through a very hard time the year I worked there but I really enjoyed getting to know the kids and many of the people who worked there (and still do). I had Chelsey, my faithful friend (& dog).

To Do List Tomorrow
-Take care of the kids, make breakfast, & keep the kids quiet until Gregg gets up
-Go to the library
-Return movies to Blockbuster
-Get cake stuff for Alyssa's birthday party
-Check out games for Alyssa's birthday party
-Hang out with my hubby for our weekly "date night"

Snack that I enjoy
Anything chocolate is always good...

Things that I would do if I was a millionaire
(in no particular order)
-Pay off our debt
-Let Gregg pursue his dream to golf
-Buy a bigger house with a backyard, swingset & enough bedrooms for all of us to sleep on the same level of our house
-Give some away to many different great organizations & ministries
-Help my sister & Gregg's family with expenses/needs
-Go on a date more often with my hubby
-Go to Hawaii
-Go to Israel
-Travel the country in an RV for extended periods of time marvelling in all that God has made
-Go on mission trips as often as God will let me

Places I have lived
(in mostly order & including places I lived for the summer)
Heidelberg, Germany
Cedar Falls, IA
Williamsburg, IA
Parkersburg, IA
Highland Park, IL
Galesburg, IL
Wilmore, KY
Richland, WA
Karaganda, Kazakhstan
Sibley, IA
Stillman Valley, IL
Miller, SD
St Louis Park, MN
Current Location, MN

I won't tag anyone but if you want to email me your answers, I'd love to hear them!!

Sun Bread

Today we read a book about Sun Bread and then tried our hand at making Sun Bread. Now, I have never made a loaf of bread from scratch in my life so I knew this process might have some glitches but we really had fun. The pictures speak for themselves...

Yep, I burned it! :-)

We had cinnamon bread(from the store) instead...

The Quiet Game

Remember the Quiet Game? We have started to play it with the kids and I have been amazed how much they LIKE it! In the game everyone tries not to speak or laugh and see who can go the longest. We have been playing it at mealtimes & for a few minutes it is so peaceful! Josh doesn't know what to think. He smiles, makes a few noises since no one else is saying anything but stays pretty quiet too usually. Aaah! We have found a game we ALL like to play! :-)

Brainerd weekend

Here are some highlights of our weekend in Brainerd.

Gregg helped his mom out with several projects including mowing her lawn & chopping down part of her crab apple tree. The kids spent much of the weekend trying to "club" crab apples off the tree with Matt's golf clubs. On Monday when Gregg cut off many branches, they were thrilled to have more crab apples than they knew what to do with. We also went to the beach & swam one afternoon (no pictures) as well as went miniature golfing at Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf. We also spent time with many of Gregg's family as well and we ended our weekend trying out a 50s diner & introduced Joshua to grasshopper malts.

It was a bit warmer than I would've liked and I ended up sleeping with Matt both nights (which means I didn't get good nights of sleep because he moves around A LOT) but we had a good time.