A Great Granny's Birthday Blessing

I have been gifted by God the most incredible Granny anyone could ever hope for. When I get to be a granny I hope that I can be half as awesome as her :)

Yesterday was Jude's 5th birthday and Shiloh's 3rd birthday. Granny along with giving the boys the perfect presents for each of them she wrote these letters:

"Dear Jude,
I see that you have expanded your quest for knowledge of things. Your curiosity, imagination and wit (ability to make clever remarks; powers of thinking) are amazing. Watching this is like a drink of cool water, refreshing for me!
I can also see that you are eager to follow and believe as your mom and dad continue to lead you to Jesus. it blesses my heart when you talk about him!
You are fun, sweet and caring.
You are my "Little Man" and I love you, a lot!
My Bible verse for you this year is 1 Corinthians 8:3 'The person who truly loves God is the one who is open to God's knowledge.' My prayer is that you will be on a quest (a journey in pursuit of a lofty goal) to know God better each day of your life here on earth.
You bless my life!
Love Always,
Granny"

And:

"Dear Shiloh,
I see that you have willing, helping hands. I admire that about you. The Bible speaks a lot about work. Physical (with your body) and Spiritual (with our heart and soul). 2 Thessalonians 3: 6-10 says, Jesus wants us to work and not be lazy.
The book of Proverbs speaks about work a lot, saying also that even children should work. Colossians 3:23 says, 'work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do as though you were working for the Lord, rather than people.'
You are a sweet, loving boy. You have a zest (keen enjoyment) in just about everything. You are a joy to me!
My Bible verse for you is Psalm 91:17 ' and may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful!' My prayer for you is that you continue to develop your physical work habits. That ooh will become a mighty worker in Jesus' Kingdom.
You bless my life,
I love you, A lot!
Granny"

I couldn't write better blessings for the boys! Happy Birthday Jude and Shiloh!

First Day of School

Jude turns 5 on Wednesday and we decided if we were going to send him to school we needed to wait until next year....but everyone is starting school - all of Jude's friends and his most beloved cousin are starting kindergarten. So naturally Jude has been talking non-stop about starting school also.

So we decided to try out homeschooling this year. I spent lots of time deciding which curriculum to use and asked advice from homeschool moms I know and talked with the kindergarten teacher at the Connection School, where Chad works and finally picked something that will facilitate learning but not be too much and too terribly structured for this our first year but will hopefully enable us to learn all the things a kindergartner needs to learn.

I have grown pretty excited about trying this new thing out. Jude was pretty excited to. And this is where we are learning a valuable lesson on expectations and disappointments...

Jude hated our first lesson. The curriculum I chose is Five in a Row. The concept is that you read the same story five days in row and you draw your language, social studies, math, art and science lessons from the story. Sounds great to me. The boys love stories and beg me to read all day to them. So I thought this would help us to learn how to learn reading stories and create a love of learning through reading (sounds wonderful, right?). We read our first story this morning and attempted to learn about fear from the story....Jude didn't want to talk about the story and he didn't want to listen to a story. He wanted something exciting...he threw a huge tantrum and ended up in his room...

I sure felt like a failure - how's that day 1 of school - then I made it worse by logging into chad's Facebook account where I got to see all these happy first day of school faces...and happy first day of homeschool faces (complete with the perfect school room)....yes I must say I thought about scraping the rest of the year - I mean hey I could just send him to school next year...but I don't think I should give up so easy.

Upon talking with Jude I realized I had not explained to him what school would look like for us and how we were going to approach learning and saw that he really does want to learn he just thought it would be different today.

We finished up our school day with doing our first lesson from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and making a surprise for a friend complete with coloring and cutting paper (which is what Jude thought school was). Jude did great for his first reading lesson and enjoyed his little crafting. So we ended on a happy note.

Hopefully tomorrow's Five in a Row lesson will go much better!

It's kinda like Skype...

Today we got to have an ultrasound of Baby Legare #4!!!!! I must say I'm kinda happy baby didn't want to let us hear his/her heartbeat through the doppler because we got to see our new little nugget! Which Chad explained to the boys when we showed them the video as kinda like Skype, bwhahahaha!

In case you are wondering the answers are: yes, no and no, it happens how? and I'm not sure.

The questions of course: was it planned? do you have cable or tv in your room? do you know what causes that? is this your last?

We are happy to say that in early March we should have a new addition :)

Pets

We love our dogs. We do not love the rising cost to take them to the vet. My vet charged my Granny over $200 for a visit, heart worm test, fecal test, rabies (maybe) and 6 months heart worm medicine. So with two dogs I figured my bill would be close to $400. Outrageous (we can't afford that)! So I did some research on heart worms and made a decision for our pets to only give them medicine during the season they are at risk (pesky Mosquitos) and only every other month (I'm ok if you disagree with me). And decided to only do the rabies vaccine (because it's the law - and Lilah had a terrible reaction to vaccines and 4 or 5 years ago so no extra vaccines for her). And we decided to try one of those low cost vaccination traveling things. After careful comparing of cost we chose one and went today and I'm happy to report it only cost $150 for both dogs to be vaccinated, heart worm tested and a years supply of heart worm medicine for each which will last me at least 2 years on my intended heart worming schedule so next year to do the rabies I'm looking at maybe $20 for both dogs. I'd say I'm fairly pleased with my experience. 

Lilah and Boker were less pleased to be poked and prodded. But alas well that ends well. 

Wedding Duds

Aunt Charity is getting married! The boys (at least Jude if he cooperates or Shiloh as a back up) are going to be in the wedding. As such we ordered them some wedding clothes. Shiloh was happy to model. 

Onion Powder

Onion powder is great for seasoning food. 

Onion powder is not great when your 1yr old snags it off the counter and proceeds to shake it out on the floor all through the house. 

We vacuumed and mopped today.  

To Beat the Heat

It's hot in July and August not the best time for your a/c to go out...

But we are thankful 

-for a friend who is an excellent, honest hard working a/c guy!

-for my parents house with extra rooms for us to stay...and a neighborhood pool with a splash pad. 

-for my Granny who let Lilah and Boker stay after my parents lab tried to eat Lilah (it's their house so you know...)

Mostly I am thankful that God is faithful in providing for us through everything...and a new a/c in my house :)

Beating the heat with homemade Popsicle (coconut water and frozen strawberries)!

Sunbathing in the near 100 - she's just happy to be home.