Soccer

Soccer has started.  Well, we started practices a few weeks ago but the games started last weekend.  We missed the first game because we were at my nephew Rob's wedding so this last Saturday was our first game.  I love soccer season, it is busy but I love watching the girls play and they have so much fun.  I also like the time we spend out at the soccer park with our friends.

Here are some pictures from our first game.

I love this beautiful girl.  She is really enjoying soccer this year so far.  She is getting out there and going after the ball this year.  Last year she did a lot of watching the ball but was a little too timid to go after it.  She made two goals this Saturday!

Ellie's favorite position is goalie.  Oh my, I find it very stressful, if I were out there I would cover my head and sink to the ground, too much pressure for my taste! Ellie loves it.  She played left forward the first part of the game and scored one goal.  So exciting.  I am the loud mommy on the side lines yelling for her kiddos.  I only yell good stuff though!  

Special Breakfast

I read a blog called the Homespun Heart and the author is just the most fun mommy.  She is constantly working hard to make special memories with her children and she does a great job of it.  I am not always the most fun mommy.  I can get very caught up in all the stuff that needs to get done in our day and I forget to have fun with my kids.  This morning after reading her blog, I decided to have a special breakfast on the front porch with my kids.  We had apple pancakes and enjoyed the cool morning.  It was fun and I am determined to work harder at creating special memories with my girlies.

Ellie helped me set everything up.

And...She's One!!!!

Sniff sniff, Sophie is one!  No fair!!!  This year has flown by.  We had so much fun celebrating Sophie's first birthday, we had a small party with family and a few close friends.  I do not know if it is the fact that I am pregnant or what but I have been very emotional about this birthday.  I feel like I want to soak up all her baby time while she is still actually the baby and it is going by in a flash.  She is such a sweet girl and so easy to take care of.  She is a great sleeper (now, she did not start out that way), she can entertain herself for a long time  and her smile is seriously like nothing on this earth.  Our whole family is so smitten with her and I think she knows it.
Sophie is not walking yet, I have never had a one year old not walk.  I secretly like it because when babies start walking they seem so less baby like.  She just started standing on her own a little though so I do not think it will be long before she tries to take a step!

Here are a few pictures from her birthday party.

Sophie did not like one of her gifts.  A few days later we tried again and she loved it!

Little sister and Daddy

Not too interested in the cake.

Now, she is interested, yummy!

She loved this gift!!!

We went with a rainbow theme for the little miss.

I so love birthdays and first birthdays are so exciting!!

Not Back to School

I have been having so much fun over on the Not Back to School Blog hop at iHomeschool network.  I decided to participate but as usual I am a little late so I am including my curriculum and school room all in the same post.

Well, it is that time of year again, school time.  I was sooooo done with school last year, I think I was ready for summer around Christmastime.  I am equally as ready for the new school year to start now.  I am ready for routines and excited for what we are going to be learning this year.  Last year I bought a boxed curriculum for the girls thinking it would be easier with the new baby and while I am sure it was easier, it was boring and the girls and I were pretty uninspired all year.  Each day seemed to be just about getting school done and not enjoying it at all.
This year we are starting history at the very beginning-creation.  I am using My Fathers World Creation to the Greeks for history, science and Bible for my second and fifth grader.  We have done it for two days so far and are really enjoying it.
For reading/literature the girls are just going to be reading real books and we will be practicing narration and book reports.  Ellie is starting with Treasure Island and Emma is reading the first Ivy and Bean book.  We will be reading books that pertain more to our history time period along with other good reads as well.  Emma will continue working on her phonics as well, I am actually ordering something for that today, not sure what yet.
For grammar Ellie is using the fifth grade grammar book from Abeka, Emma will be finishing her 2nd grade book (Bob Jones) from last year as we did not do much in it.
Ellie is going to be using Institute for Excellence in Writing this year, I am really excited about this as I have heard it is great for moms too.
For math we are using Teaching Textbooks this year.  It is our first year with this and the girls are a little apprehensive about doing their math on the computer but I am thinking it will be a great help to me as we will have another new baby and I have a three year old and one year old to chase as well!
Ok, so that is our curriculum this year, now for our school room.  I did not change much from last year, I added drawers for our daily work and I think that is going to be a big help organization wise.
We do school in our family room, luckily it is a big enough area to have a large bookcase (the ikea expedite) and table along with our family area.  We do not do school just at the table, we start our day on the floor on the carpet all together and we do a fair amount of reading cozied on the couch.

And for the sake of honesty, our family/ school room is rarely this clean!!!!

You can see read about other great school rooms and curriculum at iHomeschool Network.

today...

- I heard the baby's heartbeat, 153, nurse practitioner says it sounds like a girl. Yeah, we know, that's all we make and that is ok.  Ultrasound is scheduled for four weeks from now and we will find out for sure.

- I lost it with my kids today, big time.  Oh Lord, I am so glad I have you for this parenting journey, it is hard and I need your grace. 

- John gave me a few hours away this morning when he got home after my appt and it was good.  I needed it.

- I have been online looking at Aviano Air Base in Italy, they are hiring civilian firefighters and John thinks we should go.  It sure is beautiful there, I wonder if I could convince my mom to go.

- I have nursed Sophie about every 45 minutes, she thinks she needs to nurse every time I sit down.  She thinks I need to hold her every minute of the day.  She will play happily if she cant see me but if I am in her view then she screams until I pick her up.

- The littles did not nap. 

- I have Bunco. Yay. 

The New Chicken Coop

We had a fun day yesterday, we (by we I mean John) built our new chicken coop!  Sooooo fun, I have wanted chickens for ever and John finally agreed this year.  He built a chicken coop with a friend of ours at their house and then bought us chickens a week later.  I guess he was inspired.
The problem was that the area we wanted to put the coop in (our garden area) did not have a fence around it.  It is in the area behind our garage and we had never gotten around to the fence.   The fence had to be built first, I can not believe how much the fence changed our garden area, it is now a nice private place that I love to sit in with John in the mornings or evenings when we go out to work in the garden.  Once the fence was in John got to work on the coop and I just love it.  He did such a good job.  The chickens love it too, they like it much better than the little house they lived in in our garage for the last month or so.  I can not wait to start getting eggs, from what we have read, we can begin to expect them around August.

Last years garden with no fence.

This years garden with the new fence.

The new coop.

A few of our chickens.  We have seven.

Another angle of the coop.

I love our little garden area.  Someday I hope we have a bit of land to call our own but until then we will make the best of what we have.

I have no title!

Ok, so I came to blogger with full intentions of deleting my blog as I NEVER actually blog.  But, I could not bring myself to do it.  I am not a scrapbooker, my last two kids do not even have baby books and my two older kids hardly have anything written in theirs.  I need to be better about recording our lives and this really it the simplest way, I just need to make it happen.  I think I may be able to manage it at least once a week, we shall see.  During summer I think it will be easier and maybe I can develop a habit that lasts through the school year.

Ok, what have we been up to lately, well, the big girls are playing indoor soccer this year.  Sooooo fun, our last game is tomorrow.  I love watching them play, unfortunately John's schedule has not allowed him to attend one game which has been a bummer for both him and the girls.  He hates missing things, the girls are getting used to it as it is just the nature of having a fire fighter for a daddy.  Ellie has really blossomed this season and is doing well.  Emma is pretty shy out on the court but she actually got in there a little at the last two games and that is fun to see.  Her coach thought she hated her because she never talks and often times does not smile.  I wish people could see my shy girl at home sometimes.  She talks a lot and has a smile so beautiful it is often the first thing I notice when I walk into a room.  Olivia is fairly miserable at the games, she runs around like a caged animal set free and I leave frustrated with her most games.  That's ok, tis' only a season, right!  Sophie is pretty chill most games and likes to nurse most of the time making it difficult to tackle my wild Livvie, I think I am the one that misses having John at the games most of all as it would be nice to have a second pair of hands!

School is about to come to a close for the  year although much to the girls dismay, we are doing a bit of summer school.  I think Ellie needs a little extra help in math and Emma, while having come so far this year in her reading could use a little extra practice before becoming a third grader.  I will have a fifth grader and third grader next year, holy cow, I can hardly believe it.

I guess one of the biggest happenings around here is that I am pregnant again.  Seriously I am not sure what God is thinking in that he keeps blessing me with these sweet babies.  Lord knows I do not deserve them and there are so many other woman who are such better mommies than me.  I will do my best though and I am so grateful to Him for them because I know that it is only by His grace that we have these kiddos.  It was about 14 years ago that they told us that we would never have children!  Each time I get pregnant I feel guilt, I do not know why God chose to heal our infertility issues, but I am grateful, and I continue to pray for the women who want to be mommies so badly.

Well, I am off to try to get a little rest.  I do not know if it is my age, because I am nursing a little one or what but I am wiped out this time around.  I sleep a lot!  John is good to me when he is home and he lets me sleep in and take naps.  I go to bed early too.  I am 11 weeks so I am thinking not too much longer and I will feel a little better and not be so tired.

Day One

Sooooo... my family is doing a ten day real food challenge.  We are eating no processed foods for ten days.  I got the idea from here.  I really thought it would be easy as I like to think we are pretty healthy eaters over here.  When I grocery shopped last night I realized that we eat a fair amount of processed food. Things like yogurt, condiments and bread bread are common processed foods around here.  Hmmm, as I shopped I thought maybe I had bit off more that I could chew.  But as I looked at the back of food packages I became more determined to give this a go.  There is so much junk in our food!  I know that we won't give up all processed foods forever but if we can cut out even a few after this little experiment then we will have done good for ourselves.
Breakfast for day one included banana bread that I had made a few weeks ago and froze and applesauce (from a jar, we can eat packaged foods with five or fewer ingredients).
Our morning snack was air popped popcorn, one of our faves anyway.
I was going to make a homemade mac-n-cheese for lunch but then I remembered we had homeschool park day.  What could I make that was portable?  My kids love sandwiches so I decided to make bread this morning.  I used to make bread all the time with my bread machine but to be honest I like Orowheat a lot better! I found a new recipe to try this morning though and did not use the bread machine and it turned out quite nicely. We took carrots and grapes along with the sandwiches.
Dinner must be portable as well since we eat it between the big girls basketball practices on Thursday nights.  I intended to do chicken salads with homemade ranch but I think John wants to try sandwiches on the bread so I am going to do tuna.
I made chocolate chips cookies today also as a treat so that no one feels too deprived.
I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today which made schooling  a little challenging at times.  I am going to work this weekend at getting some muffins, granola and granola bars made to make things a little more convenient.
All in all I think this will be good for us. Planning ahead will be the key.

My Valentine Mantle

I do not normally decorate too much for Valentine's Day and I almost never change my mantle for anything other than Christmas but I am hosting Bunco here next month so I decided to see what I could do.  My goal was cheap cheap cheap! Oh, and cute.  It is pretty simple but I like it and I achieved the cheap goal!

Here is the close up.  I got the heart ornaments after Christmas at Target, $1 for four, the vintage postcards were a free printable from here, the mason jars were inspired by pinterest and I had all the stuff for those, and I modge podged fabric to card board and cut out the letters for "LOVE". Pretty easy and cheap.  Oh yeah, I already had the wreath, wrapped in some fabric and stuck on a angel holding a heart Christmas ornament. I think it is kind of fun and I might be inspired to change up the mantle a little more often.

linking up here



oh and p.s. I am obviously not a very good "stager" because you can see the little yellow lego I hid behind the owl ornament to keep it upright.  Oops!

p.p.s trying to talk my hubby into letting me paint the fire place white.  I so do not like the red brick.          

I don't want to forget...

*sweet Sophie Jean's toothless grin, oh how I love it.  She is drooling a lot and chomping on her fingers constantly so I think teeth are coming soon.
*how Olivia says that something is "licious" instead of "delicious" and how she lights up when she sees her Daddy.  He is her favorite!  She says so all the time.  As a woman who did not have a Daddy, that is music to my ears.
*Ellie's ten year old self.  She is so innocent, still much more so than her peers.  I love it.  She loves to pretend and play and she is not afraid to just be herself.
*the way Emma says "bether" instead of "better" and her hugs, oh my goodness how that girl can hug. Makes my day.

I truly love my kids and time is passing by so quickly.  I never want to forget the way they are today or any day really, but I do, the changes just come so fast!