Pure Joy

One of the joys of homeschooling is having the freedom to spend the entire day outside on a beautiful day. This day made the challenging days so very worth it!

A Quick Peek Into Our New Schoolroom

We have had fun having school in our new school room!  It is still chaotic and disorganized, but it's usable.  Here are some pics from the last few weeks of school in the school room.

E(3) LOVES these animal word puzzles.


We all love the bells!

The sandpaper letters are popular with E(3).  Both girls were excited that their American Girl dolls joined us for school!  They have fun making Kit and Kaya ask questions about the lessons.

E(3) is making a house on the geoboard.

O(6) loves math!

Elliott is building shelves for our schoolroom at this very moment, so hopefully it will be organized soon!

A Delicious and Healthy Dinner

Thanks to everyone for your wonderfully kind comments!  You've inspired me to keep this blog going for a while longer.  I've been searching through my pics for inspiration for a post, and since I don't like to show my girls' faces here, I'm having trouble finding any pics that I can use.  So, a food post will work for now :)

My mom recently brought us a bag of Israeli couscous (from Whole Foods), and it was a HUGE hit with the girls.  I cooked it with pesto sauce and added in fresh tomatoes and rotisserie chicken.  E(3) said "I LOVE "raylee" couscous!!!"

Along with the Israeli couscous and pesto, we had avocados, steamed baby carrots and green beans, and oranges.  Both girls ate all of their dinner!

To Quit or Not...

I just can't decide if I want to continue this blog or not.  A huge part of me wants to stop blogging here, but I think that I'll regret it eventually.  Hmmm.  Thinking and wondering if continuing is worth the effort.  The huge amount of spam comments are pushing me towards saying forget it, but Mr. Ed really wants me to keep it going :)  So, we'll see...

Blog Break

Since it's been a busy bloggy month, I've decided to take a few days off from posting.   Also, I left my camera at my mom's house, so I don't have access to any pics from the last week :)   Have a Happy New Year!!!

A Santa Playdate

We had a super fun playdate on Sunday with cousins that we rarely see.  E(3) and I worked hard to make goodies for the playdate, and most of them were edible.

We made a rice crispy treat gingerbread man and Christmas tree.  The kids loved the twizzlers, but didn't eat much of the rice crispy treat.




We made cinnamon and sugar pretzels.

We made a brownie gingerbread man that actually turned out to be more brick than brownie.  The kids thought it was funny that they could pick him up out of the pan by his foot.  Eventually, someone sawed off pieces for the kids to eat, and I was glad that none of their teeth came out while they ate it.


My mom made reindeer food (recipe coming in a later post), and it was deeeeelicious!


She also made her famous forgotten cookies.


The 6 and older kiddos had a wonderful time playing in the treehouse while the 5 and under crowd played on the trampoline.

I'm not a big fan of trampolines, especially ones without nets, so I was glad that I had candy cane playdough to lure the little kiddos inside to play.



After playing with playdough, they had fun making foam gingerbread boy/girl ornaments (craft kits from Dollar General).


The highlight of the afternoon was a visit from Santa Claus!  (the girls are lucky that their Grandpa is one of Santa's helpers!)
Here are Santa and my mom!


Santa and the girls


The kids ran off to play after taking pictures with Santa, so I called them back to thank him.  O(6) sang him a song, and E(3) did a little dance for him.

What a wonderful, fun afternoon!  Thanks to everyone who made it a success!!!

Cinnamon and Sugar Pretzels

E(3) and I had fun baking together last weekend (O was busy listening to an audio book and organizing her room and wasn't interested in joining us). 

First, we made cinnamon and sugar pretzels.  E(3) LOVED unwrapping the butter, placing it in the bowl, and chopping it up (one of the 2 things on her Christmas wish list was butter...the girl LOVES butter!). 


After melting the butter in the microwave, she mixed in a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half cup of brown sugar.  She stirred in about 16 ounces of pretzels to coat them.
We baked the pretzels at 350 for 30 minutes.  I stirred them every 10 minutes. 


This simple and yummy recipe came from a fellow homeschooling mama!
After we made the cinnamon and sugar pretzels, we made Christmas rice crispy treats!  The girls always love making rice crispy treats, especially since I let them lick (gnaw on) the spoon when we're done!

A "Humongo" Sugar Cookie & A Gingerbread Cottage Playdate

The girls had fun mixing up sugar cookie dough and pressing it into this Christmas tree pan to make a "humongo" cookie for a gingerbread house decorating playdate last week!

They decorated it with sprinkles before we baked it.


The plan was for the kids to decorate the tree with icing (using the squeeze bottles from E's bday party) before eating it, but the icing would NOT come out of the bottles!  Eventually, we gave up on the squeeze bottles, and E(3) spread the icing using a butter knife.


The kiddos had fun building and decorating their gingerbread houses (even though the houses collapsed at least 3 times each before finally staying together!).