The approach of summer

Coming up to summer is both a relief and like running the end of a marathon. With school ending we are so busy getting projects wrapped up and such. Six more days of school! Yippee!

My oldest son had to memorize a poem for school and present it before all the parents. He HATES getting up in front of people. He actually won't get baptized in church even though he's made a decision for Christ because he doesn't want to be in front of everyone. I keep telling him, that's kind of the point! Anyway, he did awesome at his poetry night. I believe he had the longest poem to memorize. Even other parents told us how good he did because of the length of his poem. He must have felt encouraged, because then he decided he wanted to to be in a play. We'll see how that goes. He has a part in a Bullying play being put on by the community theater in the next couple of weeks. Maybe baptism will be next on the list??

My second son has been working on a country report for a number of weeks. His group was assigned to study Canada. He also had to do a project at home about his country to be presented at the multi-cultural fair. He did a poster about hockey in Canada. He did a great job and was very proud of the final product. This past Wednesday was the main event. I think 10 - 12 countries were represented by both classes. They had food from each culture too. My son was concerned about not having food at their table, so I was thinking, well Canadians eat the same stuff we do? Then I remembered Canadian Bacon, so that's what he brought. Then I thought it would be cute to get Canada Dry too, so I did :-)

Of course, none of these projects can be truly completed without parent intervention, so we all stayed busy until it was all done.

My husband has been out of town all week going to see his twin brother graduate from Basic Training or Boot camp... whatever the correct thing to say is. He is on his way home as I type and it will be so nice to have him back with us. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a single parent to 5 kids. That's all I have to say about that!

So as we go into Memorial Day weekend, I am looking forward to some much needed rest!! Hope you all enjoy your holiday weekend as well!!!

Decorating on a dime - Part II: Pictures

As promised, here are pictures of our redecorating on a budget.


This one shows all of the changes. We painted the kitchen a dark coral color, the back wall, a dark blue color, and stripes on the outside wall. Also seen here is our couch we found online. You can also see in the bottom right of this picture how NASTY our old couch was looking.... just wanted to point that out :-)

While the stripes in the first picture are very noticeable, they aren't actually that noticable when looking "straight-on" the wall. This second pic shows how subtle they are towards the right side of the pic. You can barely see the lines between stripes in parts. As the light reflects off the semi-gloss paint, the stripes pop out.

The Angels are Singing

My little girl just told me a little while ago that she wanted to be a Christian and follow Jesus her whole life. I asked her if she had prayed and asked Jesus to be the boss of her life. She said, "no". I said, "do you want mommy to pray with you now?" She said, "yes". We went into my office and I thought I would pray with her, but she said to me, "I want to go first". Then she proceeded to pray something to the effect of:
"Dear Jesus, thank you for this day. I want to follow you my whole life and be a Christian. Please come into my heart. In Jesus name, Amen".

I was touched. And just like that, in a few moments, she became a child of God. How awesome! And she initiated it all! Thank you Lord for touching her heart and calling her to follow You.

Happy Birthday

to my wonderful 3 year olds. Truly a gift from God to us and ever present reminder of God's sense of humor.

I have a hypothesis

Tonight I was giving my 5 year old daughter a bath. I was doing a little science experiment with her. I had two 8 oz cups, one that was tall and skinny and one that was short and wide. I asked her which cup would hold more water. Then we filled up one up and poured the water in the other. Obviously we found out they were the same. She then says to me, "That's interesting. I have a hypothesis."

I just started laughing. Quite rude of me that I didn't actually hear what the hypothesis was, but I was flabbergasted by the fact that she used the word. I said, "where did you learn that word?". "Dinosaur Train", she replied. Guess that goes to show me that not all TV is bad!

Still never heard the hypothesis, but impressed at the little scientist I have on my hands.