Weekly Wrap Up : Great Aunts & The Important book

I'm seriously considering feeding my family ONLY GV pasta until I save our grocery $ for a Mac!!! I kill PCs... not sure what I am doing but they keep dying on me. Brian resurrected, via recovery disks, my 3 yr old Toshiba (that i love using when it WORKS... arghhh!) anyway, it's not starting again :(

So you're getting the only word version on our week :( Sorry!

At the beginning of the week we attended my younger brother's wedding;) During both Monday and Tuesday we stayed at my parents and swam in their pool;) WE all love pool time at Grammie & Pey's:)

This week was a little different because we had Grammie's sisters, my aunts, visit and swim with us at the pool:) It's soo much fun that although we don't get to see them very often, they keep up with us via FB and our blog! So hey guys, thanks for reading... it really means a lot;) And are you sure you are called "great aunts".... that sounds soo old for how young you all are;)

To see my kids playing and getting to spend time with my aunts was really special. Makes me wish for a big family get together so my kids can meet my million of cousins (lol... not that many, although it can seem like it with all of us there!) and I can meet my cousins' families;)

I don't have ANY pics of my kids with my 3 aunts! I DO have a video of my one aunt and my mom playing a game with the kids on the diving board.... oh, my goodness... it brings tears to my eyes! My kids have a WONDERFUL Grammie and a SUPER Grand-Dee!! But the video will be saved and shared with family... it was funny the day of... can't imagine how much we'll laugh in a few years:)

WE got home Tuesday early evening and so Wednesday we tried to get back into routine;)

I've been trying all summer to "keep up" with doing a chapter a week of history and keeping Chris doing a couple math lessons a week... this week I saw it as silly.... why RUSH through history when we're really enjoying it at a slower pace?? And why not have Chris REALLy know the math facts we've already covered then RUSH ahead???

SO that's what we did last week... we enjoyed the slower pace. We read, we read history, we colored, we read, we practiced math facts, we took walks...

The slower pace was also a change in my focus. I think it happened sometime between the rush to get home, the quiet 2 hours driving home, the drive to get to Tuesday night Bible study and the challenge at Bible study that as parents we have a great influence on our children and calling to teach them about God.

Wednesday morning I started asking the kids what they thought the "most important" book was. They answered the Bible. So I asked "if it's the most important book, what should we do with it?" And the kids quickly answered,"Read it!" and "Memorize Scripture!"

On Wednesday morning we read the Bible (a small Psalm) after breakfast. And I pray that we will make it habit to read the Bible together earlier in the day and NOT just tied with "school time" or practicing Awana verses... which are GOOD things. But treating it like the important book we believe and say it is!!

One fun thing happened this week.... Anna is forever trying to find books that she enjoys reading at her reading level (which we're not exactly sure what it is!). She usually just settles on something she finds at the library and does her "time" and finishes the books eventually. But last week at the library I picked up Pippi Longstocking thinking it might be on Anna's level (or a little above) and that she would like it.

Oh, goodness!! She loves it. The time timer goes off and she keeps reading:) And she's soo excited about it that she shares some of the silly stories with us. So Lydia and Chris want me to read it to aloud to them:)

So when I say we read this week..... it wasn't any classical literature:/
If it wasn't the Bible, it was Pippi:)
Yay for the summer;)

And this week we are totally off, minus reading library books, because we have VBS each morning;)



247. diving board laughter
248. noodle squirts
249. great aunts
250. refreshing ices
251. challenging lyrics
252. quiet car rides
253. balance of faith & wisdom/planning
254. peach season
255. breakfast fruit
256. roots that soak up Truth
257. Truth in pages that can be held in my hands
258. missionaries to small towns
259. masking tape
260. like-hearted friends
261. children excited about VBS
262. familiar faces
263. a child enjoying a book
264. sharing a banana with a toddler
265. banana cheeks
266. breakfast for supper
267. a welcoming home
268. a return-ed visit from neighbors

Even My Mom Noticed....

With my computer out of commission and lots of company in the house, the blog has been neglected!! But it has been next to impossible to work on the computer with all the busy-ness happening around the house.

Finally on Tuesday night, Brian (my genius husband) got my computer sorta working.... so maybe you'll start to hear from us again!! But this "break" was soo long that even my mom, who works for weeks at a time with no blog access noticed.... LOL!!

Unfortunately when the computer went down so did my interest in taking pictures, but with my sweet friend Erica who visited whipped our her new awesome DSLR, it inspired me to pull out the camera again too:) So I hope to share some pics of our AWESOME almost-full week with our sweet seminary friends soon:)

Here was our parting kid-group shot:)


Man, we're going to miss them!!!

Some Bugs

We have been dealing with a couple of bugs ...

All of us have the sniffles, coughs, etc!! Yuck! But the good thing is that all of us have it together, so maybe we'll all be over it more quickly... LOL!! Even little Nate has it :( He's been doing ok... no fevers, etc! Just a little more fussy and wanting to be held and nursed more frequently.

The other BUG that's hit has attacked my computer.... grrr! Anyway, I'm not sure what it is! Everything works fine except the Internet... the one thing I use the most:)

So I've been using the pockets of hands-free time trying to get it working and now trying to backup my photos so I don't loosing anything if my computer totally crashes. Gotta save all those precious treasures and memories!!

I finally got some "decent" all 4 kid pictures that I wanted to share. And some pics of Nate trying to sit alone... he's soo close! But he looks WAY too GROWN!! Where did my newborn baby boy go???

But it's actually happened at "kind of" a good time!! We have two sets of company coming back-to-back at the end of this week and into next week!! We are super excited to have our friends and family visiting!! So there is plenty to do in preparation for all our guests:)

And get this... one set is a family of 7 staying with us.... we'll have a great time... looking forward to visiting with these precious friends from seminary! And taking part on our church's fall revival meals and services!

I'm BACK!!!!

Yay!!!!!

The most AMAZING thing happened last night (well in my little world)!! After weeks of messing with my computer, pricing computers online, Brian deleting all sorts of files in DOS and Safe Modes and attempting to connect to the Internet..... my computer gave in. I think when we were fixing Windows, Brian downloaded a new version of Internet Explorer that wasn't connecting to the Internet and this version was just NOT finding the Internet connection.

Anyway, we're using a different browser that was already installed in the computer!! And it downloads soo much faster than it used to!!!! We've learned a TON about the computer and we're soo thankful we can hold out on investing in a new computer.

So I won't have to share with Brian (as much). But I will be sharing with Anna again who has been dying to get back on PBSkids :) And I am thankful for the period of "rest" I had.....you might not have known the difference but my time online had been really cut. It's one of those things that you don't appreciate until it's gone!!

We're having a quiet morning and early afternoon, in the hopes of flying our new kites at the park this evening!!! Maybe we'll actually get them in the air and have some pictures.

Computer Sharing, Warding off Sickness, and Other Randomness

Yes, we are still HERE!! Everyone is well right now.....although Daddy is starting to wonder if he's coming down with something.....ohhhh, I hope NOT!!! He's been extra busy these last two weeks ministering to families who are in the hospital or family members who have lost their loved ones, so maybe he's just TIRED (who wouldn't be)!!!

Sooo, I've been having to use my husband's computer the last two weeks. But it's been a hassel....sort of. First let me THANK him for letting me use his computer......it's his workstation for all of his MANY, many tasks!! So, thank you, Sweetie!! Anyway, it's not quite as easy as sharing the car ;) Part of it is that it IS his work space, our schedules for computing don't match up and I'm totally learning a new computer:) I know whinning.... So maybe by the weekend I'll have a decision made and we'll see what happens:)

The kids are fine:) We took them to a visitation this evening....the kids did pretty well considering they are young children and this is a "quiet place" and we had a long line to stand in. But the family also had a couple of children and so while Daddy was getting some details for the service arranged....the kids and I hung out in an extra room and were joined by other younger children.

Well, they couldn't just run around and climb on the pretty nice furniture and stuff, ao I was corrected them quietly and quickly.....anyway, after a few "corrections" I heard another parent say to his spouse, "Honey, we were dong something wrong. Did you see how the responded and obeyed? If we would have asked our kids to do that they would have looked at us and laughed..."

I feel their pain. I wonder daily how I can better discipline so that my kids obey better, treat eachother sweeter and not have ugly attitudes. So the comment tonight was a little encouraging, maybe I'm doing a little bit right. And it was great to praise the kids when we got to the car about how well they obeyed when I had to correct them:)

BTW.....I'm starting to believe that little Lydia is my least "strong-willed child." She will already come when I call her....and start to come on my first call. When she has something she knows we want she'll immediately put it behind her back. But this afternoon she hid Brian's pen behind her back when he reached for it. But she quickly gave it to him when he asked for it and put out his hand!!!! I'm going to have to praise her for quickly obeying and maybe training for "first-time obedience" won't be as difficult with her as it has been for the other two :)