Charlotte Mason Here We Come...

Well, at the moment, I'm the only one going, but ultimately, it's a "we" thing. I'm headed to a Charlotte Mason all-day workshop. This is the method for homeschooling that I have decided upon using. At the moment I am doing My Father's World for Libby's curriculum, which is a "canned" version using Charlotte's methods, but I want to dive right into the real thing once I feel ready to let go of the "training wheels" of this year. So, we start our homeschooling journey!

How's That Go?

"When I smelled it, it smelled like...it." ~Libby talking about her taco pizza last night

A Tag?

Ok...so I wasn't ACTUALLY tagged for this one, but I thought it was cute so I decided to do it anyway (eventhough it didn't turn out quite as I expected).

The rules are that you take the fourth picture from your fourth file folder and write about it. Then, you tag four people and they do the same.

So, because Chris does a lot of file folders with the date on them, the fourth file folder was full of pictures from a work party. This is a guy that I don't know playing fooz ball with...himself? I'm not sure. I know it was at Chris's bosses house. It looks like it might be Robert who is partially shown in the picture. I've only met him a few times, but that looks like his face and he does have a beer in his hand after all. Anyway...it would have been more fun with a picture of the girls, but then again...maybe not. :)

I'm going to tag Val (because she has so many billion picture folders), Brittney, Jamie and Alexis.

What a day!

This is Libby's art project from "Mommy's Day Care" today. I was SO proud of her. I didn't touch this a bit. I told her how to spell tractor and that was it. I have been emotional lately so I got myself worked up and cried that my baby is writing now. She isn't a baby at all anymore.

Then at supper she was quite the comedian. I said that I felt like I was falling out of my bra and she said, "Well, just take it off and use your shirt. I just use my shirt." After this, her daddy sat back down at the table with his creation of melted cheese on bagels and she said, "Daddy, that's 'scustin!" (disgusting) I was about to roll on the floor. She said something else too, but I can't remember what that one was due to the "scustin" remark.

In other news, I started Libby's homeschool curriculum today. So, she now knows that on the first day of creation God created light from darkness. I KNOW that creation is the foundation, but I am seriously ready to get on to the part where I get to teach her to read. It scares the ever-livin' spit out of me, but at the same time I am so excited to see those lights come on. I have dreamed of these days (some being tougher than others I'm sure) for so long. I'm even more anxious as she can spell "cat" now. We worked on it together and it is stuck in her head for good now. Her last day of preschool is Wednesday and then it's all up to me. Yikes! :)

As for Grace, she started waving bye-bye today. She can clap and has even been standing for ten to fifteen seconds at a time in the past few days. I am absolutely in love with the little darling and I love watching her grow and learn new things.

Can you tell? I'm in love with my girls!

Another Episode of Dancing with the Stars

Snow and Cupcakes

We got our first set of flurries yesterday. Nothing stuck, but Libby was SUPER excited and wanted to wear her snow boots, hat and mittens.

One of our neighbors down the road invited Libby to come decorate cupcakes. She made 75 cupcakes and Libby decorated one, ate it and was done. I asked her if she was going to make Grace a cupcake, so she did that. I asked where mine was and she refused. Why do I keep getting the short end of the stick?

Here are most of the girls (I think two are missing) from yesterday's fun afternoon.

Grace was an absolute hit with the girls. They even took her to Ella's bedroom and played with her. Grace was calm as could be and just accepted her fate as a human baby doll. When they finally brought her back out to the living room they said that they were "taking her to the doctor's". Hilarious!

M&M Tea Party

A grand little tradition started at Grandma Tucker's. Libby absolutely LOVES it...once a week!

Notice that the tea AND the food all consists of...M&M's.

And here's the princess enjoying her M&M's. Notice what momma gets to enjoy...a fake hot dog or a piece of fake lettuce. What happened to MY M&M's? Seriously!

The Poor Guy Seriously Tried

Nine Month Pictures

We didn't get six month pictures. We tried twice and Grace cried twice. Now, I wish we would have gotten them anyway. Too late. So, even though she just turned ten months old, we decided to try again. I told the guy who took the pictures to just keep snapping whether she was crying or not...end of story. She didn't cry at all. She didn't smile either.

Why were there no tears this time? Well, duh, she can crawl now. He took two pictures and she said, "Thanks for your time, but that's enough now," and started to crawl on over to me. Luckily, the guy had enough forethought and just kept taking pictures. This is the best one of the bunch.

Here is the head shot in which she looks like her Great Grandpa Besson...bald and sober.

We took precisely ONE in the rocking chair. She couldn't crawl to me so instead she TRIED (I caught her in time) to take a nose dive out of the chair so she could get to me.

And...this is the closest thing we got to a smile out of her all day. After this she was "seriously" done!

I Like to Eat, Eat, Eat Apples and Bananas

Ok...actually she likes to eat anything you put in her mouth...except cheerios, bananas and applesauce. Yes, we have two children and they are so opposite that it makes me giggle sometimes. We used to listen to Libby cry when we fed her. Why? Because we were still trying to feed her and she. didn't. want. it. What a frustrating battle to have with your child. Now, we have Grace and we have to listen to her cry when we feed her too. Why? Because even though I still have food in my mouth, I want more...NOW! Yes, folks, she absolutely DID eat daddy's ENTIRE Stouffer's pot pie last night (minus the chicken chunks). Where does she put it all? I never did ask Chris if he actually ate anything for supper. Grace certainly did though.

What is Sin?

I was very sad the other day as Libby and I were doing her daily devotions. I have been quite out of sorts for the past month (thus the reason I haven't been blogging) and haven't been good about sticking with my devotions, let alone Libby's. This past week I have been feeling better and starting to fall back into my normal routine. Well, Libby's devotions were on sin and how it hurts God when we sin and it separates us from Him so we need to say we are sorry. It goes into how Jesus is the only bridge between us and God and that we need Him in our lives to forgive us of our sins. As we started talking about disobeying God, Libby told me that she had disobeyed God. I asked her how and she told me that she had wet her pants. I just about cried as the whole "wetting her pants" thing has already led her to try to hide her undies from us and lie to us about it. Chalk it up to parental inexperience, but this is a PRIME example of making too big a deal out of something STUPID! Wetting your pants is a sin? I explained to her that wetting your pants is NOT a sin, but trying to hide the wet pants from mommy and daddy IS a sin and so is lying about it. I don't think it is sinking in right now, but hopefully mommy ad daddy will learn from their mistake.

On the same subject, we had the radio on last night and a line in this song was talking about not crying, but going to Jesus with our problems and Libby asked why it said not to cry. I told her that the song said that we should go to Jesus and she asked if she could go to Jesus with me. Now, I am not naive. I KNOW she is not ready to make that commitment yet, she doesn't have all of the foundation and understanding to make that commitment. BUT...it was an awesome, God given, lead-in to some foundational knowledge. We talked how great it would be to go to Jesus and how we have to let Him have control of our lives and how much He loves us and wants us to offer ourselves to Him. It was an awesome conversation with my three year old. I was very excited about it!

Fun with Grandma

Well, we took mom back to the airport on Saturday. We had a good visit, even according to Chris. :) I think this is the only picture I got while she was here, but that's because she had her camera so I let her take the pictures. I'll show the rest of them when she gets me hers. :) I've been awful this month at taking pictures. Oh well! Anyway, we'll miss you grandma and we can't wait to see you at Christmas!

My Chillun (Kind Of)

Finally, pictures of Soya and Landon (and Libby...Grace was still asleep). Here is Soya trying to hold Landon. He didn't seem to mind.

Here is Landon in all of his cuteness.

Here is Miss Soya. Her face isn't as clean as it should be, but life goes on.

And here, of course, is my most precious Libby.

What Happens When You Don't Check on a Quiet Child!

I never had to check on Libby when she was quiet...EVER! Grace on the other hand? Well, that's another story. This is what I found when I DID get to her. OOPS!!!

Mish Mash

Oh my goodness! Here I am, apologizing again. Too many long stretches the past few months between posts. Sorry! So, seriously, life is cRaZy as of late. Here we go...hold on for the roller coaster ride.

1. I am 100% doing the "in-home daycare" thing. Libby's last day of preschool is October 29th. :( We have stretched the time an hour each day, so they are going to pay me a bit more. Last week was our trial week (thus the reason I wasn't blogging) and I was ready to tell them they could continue to take their kids in town as of Thursday morning, but then my MOPS girls (thank you SO much Jen!!!) prayed about it at our MOPS meeting and now, I'm not even feeling wishy-washy about it. I am completely a-ok that this is the path that I am taking for the moment. Anyway, I will have the kiddos tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to show off my new children sometime this week. :)

2. We have two MOPS meetings down and our third is this Thursday. The first one I was ready to pull my hair out of my head, but I think that all leaders feel that way about the first day of anything. I did have fun making the "welcome bags" for the girls though. It had a sucker, a chocolate kiss, a "drink" umbrella, a votive, a tissue and a piece of Extra gum in it with a little poem. I love doing things like that, but I had a lot left over so I don't know if everyone got it. The last meeting was awesome and went well. We have SO many more women this year that we actually wiped the food bowls clean...completely! So cool!

3. Libby is completely excited to have a new "sister" and is sad on the day's that Soya isn't here. I am getting quite excited about starting a preschool curriculum with her. I was planning on starting next year, but seeing as she isn't going to be doing the preschool thing anymore...we're going to town. I have already been going through her curriculum (My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum) and we will start first of November. She got to go to a tea party on Saturday that one of the neighbor girls hosted. She had an absolute blast although, being Libby, she refused to wear a dress to it. :) I wouldn't have expected anything less from her. She has shot up another inch and is now in her booster seat. Quite exciting for her! She's growing up on me.

4. Grace is completely on the move. She is crawling every which direction, as well as cruising. She can stand on her own for about 2-3 seconds at a time. She still likes to be near mommy, but has discovered that it is ok if I'm not holding her ALL the time when she is crawling around with Landon. She has decided she kind of likes music and likes to dance to it when it comes on. If I can get a good video clip of her dancing (head bobbing) I will so totally put it on here.

5. Our neighbor's had their Fall Festival last week and Libby had a blast over there. I think the "jail" was her favorite, but she had quite a bit of fun with the water pump too. Since the traffic was already going to be out here, we decided to have a garage sale. We got rid of about 1/3 of what we set out to sell and made a good $800. I'm not going to whine about that.

I think that is about everything. I will (hopefully) post more later.

Old News

When I was younger we always took cookies, or at least acknowledged, our new neighbors. It's just how I grew up. SO, when our next door neighbors finally got to move into their house I asked Libby if she wanted to make cookies for them. She looked through one of her kids cookbooks and found the perfect cookies and we made them. We took them to Tom and Molly the night before we left for Tennessee, though, so it never got blogged. So, here is Libby with Molly showing off her cookies. In the second picture you can see how proud Libby is of her cookies. We absolutely adore Tom and Molly and couldn't ask for better neighbors. For that matter, our whole neighborhood is awesome. Chris swore he'd never live in a subdivision, but with the large lots and the wonderful neighbors, I think even he is happy with where we have landed.