Friday, October 24, 2008

October News

October has been a busy eventful month in our house. I am terribly behind on posting, so I thought I would catch up on things in one post.
October has been a good month of schooling for us. Everyone is doing very well and our schedule seems to be working well. In a nutshell, we are up by 8, chores and breakfast are done by 9, most are done with lessons by lunch time. Jacob has to work for a while after lunch usually. But he has some big books to work through. Tommy has taken on the responsibility of teaching grammar to the kids in the evenings. He is doing a great job too! Jacob has started Algebra this year and is doing very well. Samuel is learning to be more disciplined with his time and is completing his work most days by lunch time! Abigail does more than all of us pretty much everyday. She and Anna have started preschool curriculum with Wendy and Lily and Wendy is loving every minute of it. Wendy is a sponge right now! Abby is also practicing for a December recital for piano. She will be playing "We Three Kings". Anna has become quite the reader. We are very proud of her progress and is learning cursive and has nice hand writing.

In sports news, we had a month filled with soccer games and a baseball tournament. Samuel's travel baseball team had an excellent showing in the AAU state tournament. They took second in the tournament which made them 9th in the state! We really enjoyed watching Jacob and Samuel play soccer for the first time since they were age 4 and 6! They played their hearts out, and enjoyed it even though they only won one game. In other news.....Anna's soccer team, coached by her Daddy, has not lost a game and is playing for the Championship on Saturday, weather permitting. Go Fighters!!

October has been great, but not without some stress too. Little Wendy had a terrible fall on the playground....scared this Mama really bad! She fell from the top of a rock climbing wall, and pushed her two top teeth into her gums. We thought they were knocked out completely, but x-rays showed them pushed up in between her permanent teeth. So sad and painful for Wendy, but she is unbelievably tough. We are just waiting for her to heal and are not sure what will happen with her four top baby teeth. Wendy is trusting God to bring down her teeth. We are so thankful that God protected her from other serious injuries because she fell eight feet. Praise God for protection. The very same weekend of Wendy's accident, Jacob had his new bike stolen out of our garage. Obviously this was very concerning to think someone would come into our garage and steal something. The great news is that Jacob's bike was replaced by friends of ours that are in a community group called the Jaycee's...another blessing!
In baby news, Rose is nine months old! She loves food and is currently cutting teeth number six and seven! Her tooth filled grin is almost as cute as her gummy grin was! She is really getting around, by army crawl, our second to crawl this way! She definitely makes her presence known with lots of baby talk, squeals, and giggles. She is such a joy!
I cant' finish this "newsletter" without introducing the newest member of our family. Her name is Josie and she is a sweet heart with a face that is so ugly it's cute! She's a boxer and is full of playful energy and seems to need all of our attention, which we are happy to give!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Cute Therapy

click on me if you wanna see my new teeth, I am working very, very hard on my teeth!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Making Caramel Apples

This was fun and easy and not nearly as messy as you might think! And they were delicious! We prepared these before dinner and popped them in the refrigerator. After dinner we went to the library and came home to enjoy our apples. Lily and Wendy could hardly wait!
Here's how we did them...
Anna washed and dried eight golden delicious apples

Anna and Lily unwrapped the caramels and put them in a glass dish.

I had planned to melt the candy in the crock pot, but she was busy baking potatoes for dinner! So I microwaved the caramel a minute at a time stirring after each minute. It took about three and a half minutes.

While the girls unwrapped candy, I put the sticks into the apples. The bag of Kraft caramels came with five sticks, and we saved some sticks from popsicles to use on the rest.

I chopped peanuts and made a pile of sprinkles.

We rolled the apples in the caramel, and scraped the excess caramel off the bottom of the apple with the edge of a knife. Then roll in the nuts and sprinkles. Some wanted only one topping, some did half nuts and half sprinkles.

It was best to tilt the bowl and roll the apple against the side to evenly cover the apple with caramel. We had to melt the caramel a couple of times for 10 seconds between apples.

I sprayed the glass dish lightly with cooking spray so they wouldn't stick.

Lily ate the WHOLE THING! I had more fun watching these two eat than eating my own!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Menu Plan

A little later than usual, but not too late! The fall weather calls for more cooking don't you agree. We continue to enjoy buying and cooking food from local farmer's at the farmer's market. Here's our fall inspired menu, though partially eaten:)

Monday
B-Cereal, toast
L-ham and cheese, leftovers
D-chili dogs, tater tots

Tuesday
B-biscuits with gravy
L-scrambled egg burritos, apples
D-broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole, grilled trout

Wednesday
B-blueberry muffins, hot tea
L-boiled eggs, leftovers, apples
D-baked potato bar...butter, sour cream, steamed broccoli, cheese
desert...crock pot caramel apples

Thursday
B-scrambled eggs, oatmeal
L-pbj, bananas
D-baked chicken, rolls, sweet potato casserole

Friday
B-apple scones
L-pbj, boiled eggs, leftovers
D- spagetti, veggies

New foods for Baby Rose...butternut squash, sweet potatoes.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

CVS

We shopped CVS for the first time in several weeks because all of our ECB's were to expire on Tuesday. I decided to try a store in town that I had only been in once before. I checked with the manager first to make sure he accepted internet printable coupons and he did! I had several coupons I had printed for the post it note deal. Also an FYI for fellow shoppers, I called customer service last week to ask about store policy concerning expired ECB's. It is CVS policy to accept expired ECB's up to two weeks past expiration; however the final decision is up to the individual store managers. I had a customer reward ECB that had expired and I had thrown away. Customer service renewed it for me and it printed at this last trip! Thanks CVS!
In summary, I went in with a non-detailed list and a fist full of manufacurers coupons and did four transactions to roll my ECB's. I spent around $5 out of pocket!

I got these groceris at Wal-mart this week for $1.96! You can use links for Kashi and vlassic pickles and tons of great coupon matches for Wal-mart at The Centsible Sawyer.

The Centsible Sawyer and Money Saving Mom have all the details you'll need to shop CVS and Wal-mart every week!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Vacation

Wow! September is almost over and I have only posted twice. My girls want me to post about our vacation that we took on the sixth of this month. It was a good vacation. With gas prices, we decided to stay close and we only had to drive an hour and 45 minutes to get to Massenutten Mountain. We have been several times before. It is a great family friendly place. Here are some pictures from our trip.....
We enjoyed our first road trip in our "new to us" 12 passenger van. The kids are really enjoying the extra leg room!
We really enjoyed having my sister and her family with us the end of the week. Our time went fast, but we managed to squeeze in as much as possible! We had a little celebration for Elizabeth's 9th birthday.....
And Jackson was just happy to be there!
Wendy and Lily were very in to treasure hunting, and nearly filled a ziploc bag with pine cones, pine needles, rocks, moss, leaves, sticks, lots of acorns of various sizes and colors, some of which looked suspiciously like deer doo...(we are city folk you know).
Jacob tries to avoid and ruin every picture I attempt to get of him these days, but I manage to get a good on here and there:)
The deer were great entertainment and they were everywhere! Of course the babies were adorable. We learned that they like bread, but not cheetos....
Grandpappy groundhog was very grateful for the cheetos. I think if we would have allowed he would have came on in and sat at the table with us....a friendly chap indeed!
Lily was so wiped out by swimming, but tried her best not to nap in fear of missing something:) We had a great time, and I was glad to get home and back into school!

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Lily Bug is "3"

Lily has talked about and anticipated her birthday since early this year (yes, that's about seven months now)! She celebrated and enjoyed six other parties while waiting for hers:) In our "full house" with lots of hustle and bustle, birthdays are pretty special. Not because we spend a lot of money or even have a big party, but because we try to make the birthday boy or girl feel special. We are celebrating the blessing of that son or daughter, brother or sister in our family. They get to choose their birthday dinner and cake and ice cream or desert. We sing, take pictures, and video and enjoy a few simple gifts, usually yard sale finds and hand me downs and homemade cards and letters. It's just plain fun!
Lily was patient for a couple of "cheese" shots, they had to have a star sprinkle!
One of her favorite gifts....pink heart shoes with lights from Nana:)
This is Lily with her favorite binky and blankey putting her baby in the "applesaucer".
Lily helping in the kitchen, washing grapes.

Happy Birthday Lils...We love you very much!!!