Gingerbread Houses

This weekend was deer hunting weekend which means Kirby is gone all weekend and that makes for a loooong weekend. So, Tiffany came over with the boys (b/c her husband was hunting too) and we made gingerbread houses. Ok, so they're made out of graham crackers but we called them gingerbread houses anyway.

It ended up seeming like quite a long day anyway b/c the big boys took no naps and the little ones took short naps. But my kids made up for it on Sunday by taking 3 1/2 hour naps. nice.

Thanksgiving

Thursday (Thanksgiving Day)

We went to the Bentzinger home (my parents) for lunch. Yummy. All the usual, Turkey, Ham, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, Green Bean Casserole, rolls, etc. My mom bought two pies from the Schwanns man for dessert! And I made a double layer pumpkin pie that didn't look so good (everyone called it "cow pie") but it must have tasted ok b/c everyone ate it. We put the kids down for naps after lunch, my sister and I brought back the Skip-Bo tradition while everyone else took a nap. (when I was pregnant with Clae I spend a lot of time at my parents because Kirby was in Branson and Carly and I played Skip-Bo constantly. We got to a point where we were SO sick of it we quit playing but two years have gone by, so we were ready to play again. It had been so long since we had played we had to google the directions to remember how to play!)

We went to the Cass home (Kirby"s parents) for dinner. Yummy again. Jeffrey smoked a turkey, twice baked potatoes, strawberry pretzel salad, homemade amish rolls, etc. And pies, pies, pies, my MIL is a great pie maker. After dinner activites at the Cass's usually consist of crowd control with 6 kids 4 and under there isn't much else you can do. We ended up staying until 9:30 b/c our kids were being so good. This is rare, usually after a long day like that they would be melting down but they were great the whole day. What a blessing!


Friday

My sisters in law came over and we had a baking day. We made casseroles and candy. We ended up with lasagna, meatballs, scallopped potatoes, almond bark pretzels, peanut clusters and mint oreo truffles. We've never done anything like that before, just the three of us with no kids. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday

Kirby's and my 6th Anniversary. We took the kids to Carly and Brandon's in the morning and went to Iowa City to Christmas shop. We got most of our shopping done and it was somewhat relaxing since we didn't have the kids. We went out to eat at Chili's for our "romantic" anniversary dinner and were home to get the kids by 8:00. The kids did great at Brandon and Carly's. At one point during the day Car sent me a text to tell me they had made a tent in the living room and Brandon and Clae were sleeping in it. They were pretty clingy when we picked them up. I was putting Clae's pjs on when we got home and he was kind of crying. I said "why are you upset?" he said, "I'm upset pecause DON'T GO." It was a little delayed reaction to the fact that we left him all day.

Sunday

Thanksgiving dinner at the Moyer's (my mom's parents). More FOOD of course. We really don't see that side of the family much anymore. We used to see them a lot but now it's only 3 or 4 times a year, so it was nice to catch up with them. Two of my cousins who are in high school brought their girlfriends for the first time. It was fun to meet them, even though I feel like my cousins should still be WAY to young to have girlfriends, but they're not. I'm just getting old way faster than I realize!

Now it's on to Christmas...

A Little Treat

I made brownies for a church event last Sunday and let the kids lick the batter out of the bowl. This is the first time I've ever let them have this privilege, they loved it, and of course Daddy had to get in on it too!

Weekend Update

It seems like our weekends get busier and busier all the time. Sometimes it's nice but sometimes you just want a day to spend at home. This one was another busy one, here are some of the activities...

Friday:
Jr. High/High School modesty/purity lock-in at our church

I was asked to help with this event but I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Most of the girls were 11 or 12 and we had just a few high schoolers. It's been a LONG time since I've spend any amount of time with jr high girls and a much longer time since I was in jr high myself. It ended up being really fun. The ladies in charge had lots of activities planned. Hair stylist came to do hair, we painted nails, ate snacks, and had a fashion show. During the fashion show we talked about appropriate, modest dress and talked a little bit about appropriate behavior with boys. I left at midnight but everyone else stayed until 9 AM! Some of them slept for an hour some didn't sleep AT ALL. I heard many stories of the crazy things they did after I left. It got a lot more wild than my multi colored fingernails and clothes pin "up do". Our hope is that a seed was planted in these young girls and that they know some women they can come to if they are struggling with anything. Most of them do not have a lot of guidance at home so we're doing our best to fill in where positive influence may be missing in their lives.

Saturday:
Turned out to be less eventful than we thought. It was a very cold and windy day. There was an event planned here in town where horses were going to be pulling plows or something...I honestly don't understand totally the point of it, but Kirby had planned to take Clae to it because he loves stuff like that. Clae was looking so forward to it and talked about it all week. "is today the horsie thing?" So, finally the day came for the "horsie thing" and it was such an nasty day buy Kirby and Clae went because I knew we would never hear the end of it if he didn't get to go. So, needless to say, they only stayed about 45 minutes. When they got home I said "oh, you're home early" and Clae said, "yah, pecause I was cold, pecause I was freezin cold." It was funny.

We all had naps because mommy was still tired from the night before.

We ran and got some last minute groceries for a baby shower on Sunday.

Sunday:
Baby shower for Brooke and her baby girl who will be born December 1st.

There are 5 of us in our Sunday School class (Brooke included) so we threw a little shower for her during our Sunday School class time. This is her second baby so we didn't do an all out shower. It was fun, she apprecited it and was really surprised.

Church

Home for naps

Young married group at John and Karen's. We're going through the DVD series "Laughing Your Way to a Better Marriage" the speaker is Mark Gungor. This guy is FUNNY, but he also gets right to the heart of a lot of issues. There are seven couples is our group, we meet at our pastors house about once a month, eat a meal, watch the dvd, and have a lot of fun.

Monday:

Tried to catch up from the weekend.

I just got back from Bible Study where we packed 41 shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.

Now I'm going to clean the kitchen and go to bed.

Trick or Treat Pictures

These are the best pictures I could come up with of the kids' trick or treat costumes. They are not very good, but I was having a hard time getting either one of them to sit still and Lydia was just plain MAD about that bonnet.

They're supposed to be little pioneer kids. Clae is not supposed to be Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett or anybody like that, I just wanted to dress Lydia up in her dress and bonnet and wanted his outfit to go along with her's. I threw his outfit together from what we already had and that's what I came up with.

Kirby's aunt Karyl made the dress for Lydia. She told me a while ago she was going to make her a dress but I had no idea what it was going to look like. We came home from church one Sunday and it was waiting for us at home. It is the sweetest dress and the pictures don't do it justice. A lot of work went into making it, Karyl is an amazing seamstress. The bonnet came from The Dutchman Store, it's a store near here that specializes in bulk candies, baking goods, spices, and fabric, etc. We go there often and one time when I was there I had seen this bonnet, I tried it on Lydia and thought it was so cute but at the time had no reason to buy it. So, when I got the dress from Karyl I knew I had to get the bonnet. SO that is the story behind Lydia's costume.

For Clae's costume I just wanted him to look like a little pioneer boy to go along with Lydia. I had almost everything already, except for the suspenders which I got at the Dutchman Store also. Larry had gotten him the coonskin hat one time when they were on a trip. And the rest was just clothes I had in his closet.

It's really funny how much effort I put into dressing them up and figuring out their costumes because we went trick our treating at about three houses. I guess it's just fun to look back on the pictures in later years and see what they were dressed up as.

Sickies

We've been battling sickness for the past three weeks now. It started with Lydia not feeling well and having a slight fever for a few days. Then Clae got a fairly high fever (102 degrees). It only lasted one day but it was a very long day and he was a sick little boy. He did nothing. at all. all day. That NEVER happens. He ate nothing and drank just enough to keep him hydrated. He only moved to go to the bathroom and then I had to carry him to the bathroom and hold him up while he went to the bathroom. I made them a dr appointment, but by the next day his fever was totally gone. I ended up taking them anyway, but the doctor found nothing wrong with them and said it was just viral. Just as they were getting over the virus they started having runny noses and coughing. This is still going on and has been for the past week and a half. I'm deciding if I want to take them to the dr AGAIN. I've been doing the saline rinse on both of them and it seems to be helping, so I'm going to give it a few more days.

I took this picture on the really bad day. I ended up making beds for them on the floor in my room so I could try to get a few things done.

Interesting Article

My friend Kiley sent me the link to this article about raising boys that read. I was shocked by what some schools are doing to get boys to read. Give me a break! I thought he had some really good points and he addresses homeschooling in the last paragraph.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405511702112290.html?KEYWORDS=THOMAS+SPENCE

How to Raise Boys That Read (As Much as Girls Do): Not with Gross-out Books and Video Game Bribes
By THOMAS SPENCE
When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Everyone agrees that if boys don't read well, it's because they don't read enough. But why don't they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the "stuffy" literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must "meet them where they are"—that is, pander to boys' untutored tastes.

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means "books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor." AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to "grossology" parties. "Just get 'em reading," she counsels cheerily. "Worry about what they're reading later."

Not with 'gross-out' books and video-game bribes.
There certainly is no shortage of publishers ready to meet boys where they are. Scholastic has profitably catered to the gross-out market for years with its "Goosebumps" and "Captain Underpants" series. Its latest bestsellers are the "Butt Books," a series that began with "The Day My Butt Went Psycho."

The more venerable houses are just as willing to aim low. Penguin, which once used the slogan, "the library of every educated person," has its own "Gross Out" line for boys, including such new classics as "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger."

Workman Publishing made its name telling women "What to Expect When You're Expecting." How many of them expected they'd be buying "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" a few years later from the same publisher? Even a self-published author like Raymond Bean—nom de plume of the fourth-grade teacher who wrote "SweetFarts"—can make it big in this genre. His flatulence-themed opus hit no. 3 in children's humor on Amazon. The sequel debuts this fall.

Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised "so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."

"Plato before him," writes C. S. Lewis, "had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful."

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are.

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far.

The other problem is that pandering doesn't address the real reason boys won't read. My own experience with six sons is that even the squirmiest boy does not require lurid or vulgar material to sustain his interest in a book.

So why won't boys read? The AP story drops a clue when it describes the efforts of one frustrated couple with their 13-year-old unlettered son: "They've tried bribing him with new video games." Good grief.

The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time "plugged in" than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys' attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

Dr. Robert Weis, a psychology professor at Denison University, confirmed this suspicion in a randomized controlled trial of the effect of video games on academic ability. Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn't it, but Science has spoken.

The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

People who think that a book—even R.L. Stine's grossest masterpiece—can compete with the powerful stimulation of an electronic screen are kidding themselves. But on the level playing field of a quiet den or bedroom, a good book like "Treasure Island" will hold a boy's attention quite as well as "Zombie Butts from Uranus." Who knows—a boy deprived of electronic stimulation might even become desperate enough to read Jane Austen.

Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter's husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?

I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

Fall Festival

Every October we have our "Forest Craft/Scenic Drive" fall festival. This is one of my favorite events of the year. I love the crafts, the food, the weather all of it. Last year temperatures were in the 30s, Clae and I went to the parade and FROZE. I bundled up the kids in their winter gear and we walked around and looked at the crafts but we were pretty much miserable the whole time. But THIS year was a different story. Temperatures were in the 80s and we took full advantage of the nice weather. These are some pictures of us at the parade. Kohen and Abraham came with us, they all loved the parade and got lots of candy. The semis were Clae's favorite, the candy was Lydia's favorite!

Pumpkin Patch Trip #2

Our second pumpkin patch trip was to Kathy's Pumpkin Patch near Donnellson. We had SO much fun at this one. There were tons of activities for the kids to do. Their favorite thing was the "corn box" it was like a huge sand box but with corn instead of sand. It was nice for the moms, too, because the kids were kind of trapped in there so we didn't have to worry about losing them. It was super busy in the morning but by the afternoon it cleared out and we were able to enjoy everything a little bit more. We took a picnic lunch and ate there, it was a beautiful day, and we just had a great time.

Weekend at the Butler's

Kirby's sister and her family live in Illinois where her husband is a farmer. Kirby had the opportunity last year to help our brother-in-law with the harvest and really enjoyed it. We spent last weekend at their house so Kirby could spend the day combining with Jeffrey again. And of course Clae got to ride in the combine for a while, too, and LOVED it.


Evan and Clae eating breakfast


Lydia snuggled up reading a book with Uncle Jeffrey

Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

These are a few of the pictures from the trip we took to the pumpkin patch LAST week. (We also went to a different pumpkin patch THIS week, so I will be posting those pictures soon.) My sister-in-law and I have been wanting to take our kids to visit the pumpkin patch forever, but the past two years we haven't been able to make it work. Either we had bad weather, something came up, our babies were too little, it was always something. So, I am very excited that we have already gotten TWO pumpkin patch trips in this fall, we are making up for lost time AND taking full advantage of the beautiful weather before we have to settle in for the winter.



Kohen, Lydia, Clae, and Abraham

Homeschooling (Part 1)

The idea of homeschooling is something that has been in the back of my mind ever since I started having kids. Kirby has several extended family members who have homeschooled and are currently homeschooling, I had friends in college who were homeschooled, and more and more Christian families seem to be choosing to homeschool their kids rather than send them to public or even Christian school.

Until the 09-10 school year the elementary school that my kids would be attending was right here in Stockport. At that point I was content to make the passive decision to send them to school and if for some reason things weren't going well I would think about pulling them out and homeschooling them.

Then, last year the school board made a decision to create a seperate middle school here in Stockport and move the elementary school to Douds (about 20 miles from here). This was a big dissapointment to us at the time and really changed our thinking about our children's education. For one thing they would have to ride the bus for 1 HOUR, EACH WAY. That is two hours a day on a bus with kids as old as 5th grade. Ummm...no thank you. So, this was something that was constantly on my mind. How is this going to work? I'm not putting my kids on that bus. I'll have to drive them. That will take up at lot of my time. Especially if we happen to have another baby by then. And on and on. All this time in my mind I'm justifying sending them to public school and trying to figure out how it is even going to be feasable, at the same time knowing homeschooling is what God really wants me to do.

Then I watched a DVD message that shed some light on a lot of issues for me. Kirby's cousin Jeff and his wife Naomi homeschool their children. Naomi has known that I've been on the fence about homeschooling so she gave us a dvd to watch called "The Children of Caesar" by Voddie Bauchman. He talks about the spiritual benefits of homeschooling, the spiritual dangers of public school and the refutes several of the common oppositions to homeschooling. I'll get into more detail in later posts. But basically he put everything that I knew in my spirit into words. After watching it all of my logical justifications were no longer vaild and it became clear to me that homeschooling was going to be the best choice for my family.

After watching the dvd together, Kirby finally admitted to me that he has always wanted me to homeschool but he wasn't going to push it on me because I'm the one who has to be the one to actually do it. Not that he won't play a big role in the educating of our kids, but the everyday teaching would have to be done by me.

We have three years to make our decision and we're still praying about it, but as of right now we are leaning very strongly toward homeschooling. I know some people kind of cringe when they hear the word homeschool. I'm still learning about it myself but I am very open to any questions anyone has for me about why we think this is going to be the best choice for our family. There will be many more posts to follow about the why's and eventually the how's of homeschooling.

Pigtails

We can now put Lydia's hair in pigtails! She looks like such a big girl with them in, not a baby anymore.

Walk in the Word

I have recently discovered the radio program "Walk in the Word" with Pastor James McDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel near Chicago. Dr. McDonald gives AMAZING messages. No frills, no fluff, straight from the Word of God, very interesting and captivating to listen to. I listen to him at 2:00 every weekday on KAYP 89.9 for those of you who live in this area. Otherwise you can go to the website and find out when he is on in your area, or download the messages, or buy the cds. I have a link to the website under our links. I highly recommend checking it out.

"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'" Isaiah 30:21

Helpers

We burn wood as our main source of heat during the winter. We're trying to get our stock built up before it starts getting cold. We were working on it last weekend with LOTS of help from our two little hard workers.

Breaking Free

Our women's small group has just started doing the Bible study "Breaking Free" by Beth Moore. I am SO excited about this. I did this study NINE years ago as a 22 year old senior in college. I can't believe nine years have passed since that time in my life, it seems like yesterday. It has been so interesting to reflect on how much things have changed since then, not only in my life circumstances, but in my heart. I have learned so much since that time and am so excited to see what God does in my life through doing this study again. It's a 10 week study and has just been updated for it's 10 year anniversary. All of the study material is the same, it's just the dvd series that has been changed. If you're looking for a study to do with a group of women this is a great one.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Free-Journey-Beth-Moore/dp/1415868026/ref=sr_1_2?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1284927267&sr=8-2

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners," Isaiah 61:1

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1

Garage Sale

My friend Katie and I had a garage sale at her house today. After my last garage sale I was never going to have another one again, but I thought maybe having one in Keosauqua might be more successful than having one in Stockport, so I gave it another shot.

We had several people show up in the morning, then it started raining, then our signs got destroyed by the rain, so people stopped coming. Then is stopped raining, my dad fixed our signs and people started coming again.

We both got rid of a lot, but had quite a bit left too. The worst part of having a garage sale is trying to figure out what to do with the items that DIDN'T sell. Throw away? donate? consignment shop? or continue hoarding?

All in all the day was a success. I cleared some stuff out of my basement, made a little money and had a fun day hanging out with a friend.

New Name

The last time we changed the name of our blog we were expecting another baby...this time we are not. But Kirby and I were talking about the title and didn't think it was really fitting anymore, so this is what we came up with. Psalm 37:4 has been one of my favorite verses ever since we were trying to get pregnant with Clae, and has been a verse I come back to often to keep things in my life in perspecive. I'm always striving to keep MY desires in line with GOD'S desires. To do this I need to be DELIGHTED by Him daily.

Updates

It has been brought to my attention that people are tired of seeing the pictures of the log home everytime they check our blog. I apologize that I have not kept up with posting very well the past few months. It is my goal to do a better job of keeping my posts current.

So an update of our summer (in reverse order)...

Labor Day weekend we had our annual BBQ Days here is Stockport. Clae and Kirby drove the fire department's Gator in the parade. This was the highlight of Clae's weekend since he is in love with ALL machinary.

We had our Brown family reunion, with around 115 people in attendance, all direct descendants of Kirby's Grandma and Grandpa Brown. Grandma Ruth, the matriarch of the family, is 89 years old.

It was a busy, fun weekend spending time with family.

In August:

We spent a weekend at Kirby's parents cabins. It was an enjoyable weekend and the only "vacation" we took all summer. I'm finally realizing that we are just going to have to be a winter vacation family. Summer vacations are just not possible with my husband in the line of work he is in.

In July:

We had Vacation Bible School at our church. There was a class for Clae's age so he and I went every night and had a great time. The memory verse for the week was 1 Timothy 4:12 "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity." Clae memorized the WHOLE thing. I was so proud of him. I actually didn't think he was getting it at all. Then one night at dinner he said "in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in FURITY" just out of the blue. So we started working on it with him some and realized that he knew the whole thing and the reference.

I babysat for two kids from our church for a week. After having four, two sure seems a lot easier

In June...
Lydia started walking, and walking, and walking....I think walking is her favorite activity. It's pretty much what she does for entertainment all day long. She is so much fun, she has an independent side that her brother does not have and she is FEARLESS. She will climb on, in, around anything she can find. We are fortunate we haven't had any major injuries with all the things she has tried.

And I think that pretty much takes us back to my last post. Kirby has had a very busy summer with work and the kids and I have just enjoyed the summer, spending as much time outside as Possible.

I don't have a lot of pictures to post. I've been taking a lot more video than still pictures mainly because the kids NEVER sit still anymore so it's much easier just to take video and get all the action. So, this is about the only way I can get a picture of them sitting still...







And this is the most recent picture I have of them together...

Log Home

This is the project Kirby is working on right now. It's a log home that was actually built in Montana, taken apart, loaded onto semis and shipped here to Iowa to be put back together. It's been quite interesting to watch the whole process. They're doing a great job.

Family Pictures

Some of the family pics we had taken recently.

Lydia's Birthday

These are just a few pics from Lydia's birthday party. We had great time and the weather was perfect. All of the kids had fun playing outside.

Easter

We had an Easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa Cass's. Then we got dressed up for church on Sunday.

Enjoying the Weather

We were so fortunate to have some beautiful days in April so we spent a lot of days outside.

Reading his Bible

The other day I came into Clae's room before nap to find him sitting in his rocking chair reading his Bible all by himself. How precious.

Clae's Big Boy Bed

We officially moved Clae into a toddler bed. Grandma Cass made him a new quilt to go on it for his birthday and we made the transition a few days after his birthday. It was quite challenging to get him to stay in it at first, but with a little work he now loves it and is doing very well staying in it all night and for naptime.