House/Moving: We have moved into our temporary home. We had to move out of our other house because it sold. Everyone had a really hard time saying goodbye. We spent the last 6 1/2 years of our lives calling that little place home. For the little girls, that has been there only home. They took moving the hardest. It was unreal the day we moved all of our stuff out. It didn't seem like it was really happening. I know God has another plan for us, but saying goodbye to the home that held so many memories was difficult. It was a nice place to live, the neighbors were all wonderful. The kids were able to play outside with a bunch of other kids anytime without worry. Still, we really had a hard time living in such cramped quarters.
Our new temporary place is a small place that belongs to a family at our church. They were gracious enough to allow us to move in and "house sit" for a very little monthly. They are planning on selling it right away, but offered it to us for as long as it takes us to find and buy a new home. It is SUCH a blessing. We are still able to save money while we are staying here. If we were renting a house we wouldn't be able to save. Renting here right now is more expensive than the mortgage payment on home. We did lose a bedroom, but gained a bathroom. We only had 1 bathroom before and now there are two. This has been like a dream. It's funny though the kids still line up outside the bathroom door and wait. They have to be reminded there is another bathroom, they're not used to it yet. We have managed to make it very cozy, and comfy. We continue to go out every week and search for a home to buy. We did put an offer in on one house, but it was not accepted. That was a bummer for sure. Last night we saw a couple we liked, and hopefully will get a chance to see some more this week.
I am working on a Moving blog post, about my new moving system. It proved to be such a help and made it a lot easier. I'm so excited to share. I'm hoping to have that up later this week.
Julia and Emily: Julia was the most excited to move at first so I was surprised when she had the hardest time. On the Monday after we moved, she was very upset and had a breakdown when Adam tried to leave for work that morning. He made arrangements to take the day off and he stayed home with her. I had a lot of running around to do with the older girls that day, so he was able to spend a lot of alone time with her. It was exactly what she needed. The next day she was back to her normal self and was okay when Adam left for work. The sweet little baby girl needed her Daddy. Whoever says kids don't need full time dads are doing serious injustice to their children. Everyday I see my children needing their daddy. Each day when he gets home he has a bunch of happy jumping screaming little girls to greet him at the door. Julia is very sensitive to attention from her dad. She wants it and she needs it. He is so amazing with them, he loves giving his girls attention. He always tells them that he's going to love them so much that they wont need to run out looking for some stupid boy to love them. They will be protected and loved and able to wait for the man God has for them. It makes my heart melt to see him love them so much.
Emily has surprised us a lot with how well she is recognizing words and facts. I have not yet taught them to read. Most of it is intimidation on my part. They are very sharp little girls and I'm sure can pick it up quickly. So far I have an Abeka phonics book that I picked up at a rummage sale and we are working on short vowels. We are also doing sight words. Emily is a firecracker. She is a riot. She thinks she knows so much and likes to try to argue with me about things which she doesn't know. She LOVES learning and is very good at memorizing. When she needs to be taught about something she did wrong, I show her in the Bible what she did and what it says about it. She can retain the scriptures amazingly well. She also enjoys helping me cook and sew. I am embroidering some flour sack kitchen towels and she is right there next to me pulling the needle up and learning how to do stitches. She's very patient and eager to learn.
August and Kiley: They will be turning 12 next month, where does the time go? They are such wonderful young ladies. So sweet and loving. They have big hearts for God and are such a blessing to Adam and me. They are now in the 3rd month of 7th grade and doing very well. We are settling into homeschooling and loving every minute of it. We pulled out of public school last year to homeschool and haven't looked back since. For two weeks following my surgery and the moving, we didn't get much school work done. I was pretty stressed about it. We meet with an Education Specialist at our Charter School ever 20 days. They check the work, and ask if we need anything. They purchase supplies and text books if we need it. During our meeting with her last week I was worried she thought we did too little. The opposite was true actually. She was impressed with the quality of their work and how thorough they were. She said that she was surprised they do so much. I was so relieved. They do take a lot of different classes. In the 4H alone they are taking 11 different projects, along with the normal school subjects, and music lessons.
They are both in their 5th year of playing soccer. I was a soccer player as a kid and so I just automatically signed them up. They enjoy playing the sport. This year Kiley has been the goalie, while this is heart wrenching for me to watch those girls kick balls hard and fast at my child, she is really good at it. She is a phenomenal goalie. August has been the teams center halfback. This is a tiring position, but since she is very skilled and VERY fast she does well at this position. I don't know if I've seen too many children run as fast as she can, she almost like a bolt of lightning. When she was in public school she was the 2nd fastest in the whole school. Only 1 boy was faster than her. The soccer keeps them busier. It is only for a few months a year and then we don't play any more sports.
I am nearly 4 weeks (tomorrow) post surgery. At first the recovery seemed horrible but it has gotten a lot better. I still am not feeling 100% but each day it gets better. They give 4-6 weeks for recovery so I'm still within that time frame. We did our move during the 2nd week of recovery. This was good and bad. The good was that I didn't have to lift any boxes or move one thing. I was able to sit on my little bar stool and direct traffic. The bad was I wasn't able to lift any boxes or move anything. This sort of made it difficult to unpack. The older girls were a big help though and we are pretty much all unpacked. We are not unpacking everything since we will be moving again in the next few months.
I have discovered a love for embroidery. I have been doing 30's style bonnet girls (like the one in the link) on the edge of flour sack cloths to use for dishtowels. Each of the girls picked out a girl for me to embroider so I also embroiders that girls name onto the towel. I'm trying to find a website who has a good bulk deal. I originally got them for the airplane to Tennessee and am really enjoying them. I'll take some pictures soon.
Me: My most recent change has been deactivating my Facebook account. I really have in the past enjoyed Facebook. I like being able to see photos and updates about loved ones who live far away, as well as old friends from school. I'm taking an indefinite break. I found myself constantly checking it from my phone and sitting down on the computer during the day. I would sit down to do something else on the computer and end up on Facebook for an hour. It has gotten out of hand. Sometimes it's best not to know as much about your family members. Facebook can get very personal. This was my only connection to some people and I hope they aren't offended by my hasty deletion of my account. Hopefully they will remember my blog and come here. This morning when I woke up I reached for my phone to check my FB, and I realized I had a problem. It's not okay when it's the first thing on your mind in the morning. So for now, I'm giving it up. I am not setting a time frame but as time passes I'm sure I will no longer have a desire to go on there. It has been such a time waster lately.
I'm getting ready to start gathering all of my handmade projects for Christmas. We are on a very tight budget this year, since we are buying a house so I am going to make a lot of the gifts for others. I wanted to make the book slings in the Family Fun magazine. I have also been wanting to make the little girls duvet covers out of vintage sheets or fabric, but I'm having such a hard time finding something I like. This will most likely wait until their 5th birthday. I was thinking of making all of the girls pillowcases with embroidery. So much to do so little time. I absolutely love vintage or Victorian style fabrics and linens. I wish I could decorate my whole house in a vintage style, but that would get pretty expensive.
I also just joined Swagbucks.com, and I'm still trying to figure it out. If anyone has any tips, I would love some help.
Adam: We finally have him back in the evenings now. For a couple of months he was building 2 bathrooms at our Pators house and he would be there all night after he finished at his regular job. It was hard not having him around most nights for dinner and the like. He was really missing the time with the family. A lot of the time he has side jobs after work and I know he is exhausted. He works so hard to take care of us. His birthday is this month and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to get him. I'm going to bake his favorite dessert and cook a yummy dinner for him. He doesn't really care too much about gifts so I think just the family being around will be nice. We celebrated with his family over the weekend, and that was nice.
His mom is from Germany and I have been meaning to ask her about German type traditions. I would like to incorporate that into the kids lives. I should try out some German dishes maybe? She had a very nice family gathering for Adam and his brothers birthdays. The dates are close together so we did them at once. His parents are such wonderful people. I lucked out in the in-law department. They were there all day the day we moved helping and moving and working. They come out every weekend to watch the kids sports. I love having family all around. I feel sad for those who don't have that.
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I'm hoping to be able to blog more now that I am not spending so much time doing time wasting things online. I'm hoping to be able to spend my morning alone time to blog a couple of days a week.
1 comment:
We recently studied Germany for our homeschooling curriculum and made some delicious food from a cookbook called "Cooking the German Way" by Helga Parnell (from the library). It included a lot of information on traditional German food culture and recipes. That might be a fun book to take out and cook from with your kids...and maybe even surprise your husband and his parents with a traditional German meal!
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