A City Life For Me

Bronx Zoo  (He’s such a good dad!) Love this! He was causing trouble.  Getting into school.  So Elaine made him a play station.  Lasted five minutes.  First and last play station ever. First one awake gets to watch Blues Clues!  Wait…it was Henry?!?! Elaine’s Cursive   Rib Fingers!  (They want to know when I’m going to make Grandpa’s ribs.  Um…never).    Little Leaguers!

I’ve seen a lot of frugal hacks for liquid hand soap going around Pinterest.  Most of them involve grating a bar of soap, adding water, and voila!  You have a ton of liquid hand soap to use as a refill.  However, since there are no preservatives, you are inviting a bunch of bacteria to live in your gallon of liquid hand soap for several months until you get around to using it all up.  I actually prefer foaming hand soap to straight liquid soap, but either way it’s pretty expensive…especially with five kiddos.  I sometimes wonder how we have so much water and soap sitting on the bathroom counter every time I go in there.  It’s like…could they have even gotten any of it on their hands?!?!  So – we definitely needed a frugal hand soap refill option. I make small batches of homemade foaming hand soap refill.  This is how I do it… I use Dial foaming hand soap dispensers.  I’ve tried several brands, including Bath & Body Works, but none of t...

   On the streets of Brooklyn after church…   

Last Friday, since we did not get to close on the house, we decided to take an outing.  We just needed to get out of the house and direct our attention on something else.  Nolan even cried when we told him about not closing on the new house, so we definitely needed a distraction.  We decided to go to the Statue of Liberty.  We hadn’t been since the first summer we moved to NYC (2010), and none of our Brooklyn Babies had ever been!  The kids were elated.  We may have caused a little bit of confusion, because after the trip I overheard the twins saying there are two Statue of Liberty’s – one in the water, and one in the grass!  I guess since they have only seen her from the highway, standing out in the entrance to New York Harbor, they thought she was just floating in the water!  When we got to see Lady Liberty in person, they thought it was a different statue – in the grass! I never get tired of this sight! First arrived on Liberty Island Hami...

I wrote this post on Friday, but I wasn’t ready to publish it yet.  While most years find us remembering this “Good Friday” as the day Jesus bore our sins at Calvary, prior to celebrating a glorious Resurrection Sunday, I was all set to enjoy this day, April 14, 2017, as a good Friday for another reason.  Today, at long last, we were to close on the house in the Bronx. Three years ago we began a life changing journey of deputation.  I admit, it wasn’t anything I had planned on doing (even as a missions major…I thought there must be a way out of it).  But it was good, and hard, and growing, and we crossed the finish line of that season of life on November 28, 2016, when we pulled into our temporary driveway after our last deputation trip.  Near the end of that process, we gave up a much-loved apartment in Brooklyn.  We moved into missions apartment in upstate New York, 2 long hours from my beloved Brooklyn, to save money on the rent.  It has been 19 ...

Elaine has been very interested in art for a while, but I am not the one to teach her this subject!  After she drew a…well…quite an awful version of a horse, we decided to find some help and encourage her budding artistry.  I found a YouTube channel called Art for Kids Hub , and in each video a kid draws the picture along with the teacher.  Since I have some perfectionistic kids, this helped them see that their picture doesn’t have to be exactly like the teacher! Here are some recent samples of Elaine and Nolan’s drawings!  (a 1,000% improvement!)    Butterfly on a tulip, and a cartoon T-rex (Elaine)    Nolan’s Cartoon T-Rex, and Elaine’s Poppies    Elaine’s first great looking horse – pencil, and colored A “sampler” she made for Meredith’s birthday

  I started (and completed!!!) a study in Psalm 91 from the Doorposts blog.  This is the first time I have completed a Busy Mama 30 day study in…30 days!  Henry loves his new glasses! Labeling some stray tracts with our new church logo! The kids enjoyed some quiet reading time while I had morning devotions We found strawberries for $1 a quart and made 16+ pints of strawberry jam! Spring snow storm…to the kiddies delights I have always favored the McDonalds Shamrock shake, with its rich mint flavor only available in the month of March.  My budget couldn’t follow my cravings, especially when the kids got a taste of the deliciousness.  So…we made our own!  They had chocolate chips in them, the only thing lacking from the Mickey D’s version!     I started cloth diapering again with Henry.  Grandma & Grandpa Fezzie came to help us with a St. Patrick’s Day blitz, and Henry enjoyed wearing Grandpa’s boots. Bubbles!  I brought h...