A City Life For Me

In Spanish class (which is far less consistent than it should be) my kids learned the hymn O Say But I'm Glad  in Spanish.  So I took the opportunity to make that our hymn of the month in February.  In January and March we learned some songs I had purchased visualized. Even Henry did a good job with the catchy tune and easy phrases of this hymn, so we ended up singing it in church.  Most of our congregation is bilingual, and they enjoyed the kids' effort to sing in Spanish! With the exception of a couple visuals, this song is designed for you (or your kids) to color in before laminating and using.  Here's a peek at a couple of the visuals: Download the song in PDF form from Dropbox here.

On March 11, 2018 Elaine made a very important step in her spiritual growth.  It was an answer to a prayer I have been praying over the space of a couple of years.  Elaine asked to be baptized.  We had talked through baptism on several occasions, but always felt as if she didn’t understand completely, or as though her motives were wrong.  We didn’t push, but we prayed.  Elaine was in the Sunday morning service when Pastor Bickel announced an upcoming baptism.  She came to me and asked if she could be baptized.  We talked through things again and it was different this time.  Elaine called Pastor Bickel to talk to him.  He sent her a packet of information that she had to read and complete before she could be baptized.  It included a written testimony of salvation, and also several passages to look up and study to be sure that the picture and purpose of baptism was understood. Elaine completed her packet and submitted it to Pastor Bic...

Our year in review, 1 second at a time (as many days as I remembered to do it).  I made this video using the 1SE (1 Second Everyday) app.  It's a fun way to video journal!

:: World’s Best Dishcloths. My mom put me onto these, and since I had a house-warming gift card to spend, I went ahead and bought a six pack. I love them! I ditched everything else I had in my kitchen – even my homemade ones! I still change them frequently, but they don’t stink as often. They are soft, sized right, and do the job well!  :: Chore Charts . We are finally settled enough to establish some regular chores. I revamped the chore charts in my scrapbooking program, and the kids have done well staying on track. I am also enjoying the extra help of my now-much-bigger-little-people. Elaine washes the breakfast dishes and sweeps the back porch. (We live on three levels and have lots of drains…so if they’re not kept clean we’ll have a plumbing bill!) Nolan sorts the recycling for me and keeps the front patio in order. Liberty is fantastic at organizing the mudroom, and Nehemiah is learning to vacuum the steps! It’s worth teaching your kids to do chores! :: My house! So many of ...

We’ve been back for a bit now and life is perhaps starting to settle in a smidge of a routine.  I hesitate to say that because I’m sure it will spin out of control on me again at any minute!  This is what we’ve been doing recently… We are learning about the sun, moon, and stars in science class.  Elaine and Nolan enjoyed making some moon crafts (complete with glitter – one of my least used craft items because of the mess!) Elaine’s Nolan’s Then we conducted a project to visualize the size difference between the sun, the earth, and the moon. The large make-shift paper circle represents the sun (54.5” wide).  Ours is about three inches too small because that’s just how it worked… A mini-marshmallow (1/2” diameter) represents the earth.  The sun is 109 times larger than the earth, so we lined up {almost} 109 mini marshmallows across the center of our “sun” to visualize the vast size difference.  It was very helpful that we had just visited the planetar...

We came home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon.  The kids were ecstatic and had prepared with balloons, flowers, and cards for Baby Henry.  When they came to get me at the hospital, the twins were asleep.  So they didn’t know what had happened until we arrived home. Even the twins made a card.  Nehemiah couldn’t wait to shove it in Henry’s car seat!  There are seven balloons – one for each member of our family! Henry wore his pinstripes home.  I know they’re not blue…we have to ease into this Yankee’s fan thing a little at a time! We started at one end and worked our way down…Elaine was ecstatic! Kisses for Henry Nehemiah really struggled to keep his hands off the baby – and his lips too! Liberty, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with him.  (She didn’t touch him until today, three days later!)   Proud siblings

We celebrated the Twinsies birthday on Monday night.  It started off with a lovely walk down the Shore Parkway path to the playground.  This is one of the first family outings where we haven’t taken a stroller! We came home to a favorite meal – Chicken Nuggets and French Fries.  Then we opened presents and had cake.  They knew exactly what to do with the cake, and had been asking for it all day!  And of course, there were presents! The Presents The Birthday Boy & Girl Trying to open their gifts Enlisting help – to the delight of the bigs     Liberty with Mrs. Potato Head (Nehemiah gave her the bruise under her eye), and Nehemiah with his “ha” and “ba-bit-ball”.  Nothing else mattered after the ball was opened!   Two small cakes (we don’t want to get too fat with two whole birthday cakes!) This didn’t go so well, so we tried again!   Nehemiah would not relinquish the ball for bedtime, so we let him sleep with it hi...

  Last week in between meetings, we took two days to "splurge" on a family "vacation."  We saw Mount Rushmore and knocked that off Ben's bucket list.  We also drove through the National Park and saw all kind of wildlife.  Elaine wanted to take a cave tour since we had just learned about them in school, so we went through Wind Cave National Park (the world's 6th longest cave!).  We also visited the Mammoth Site and let the kids see fossil excavation.        We were concerned that our day at Mount Rushmore would be too windy to be enjoyable, but it ended up being perfect!  We enjoyed hiking the Presidential Trail, though half of it was closed for construction.  (That's what we get for coming in the off-season - everything was under construction!)  However, the half that was open ended up being 850 steps round trip!  We made it though, and Nehemiah did every step himself! Liberty...got A LOT of help from ...