chattanooga day 2

I got a few of these pictures out of order. Here is Amy, the penguin trainer during our up close and personal penguin encounter!

This shark cage (you can see the bent bar in the bottom picture) was attacked by a shark during the filming of a documentary. The occurrence and documentary inspired the movie Jaws! The shark in the background is just a picture, but we were right beside a large tank with several sharks.
There was also a butterfly garden exhibit. The kids could stand still and let butterflies land on them. There were also laminated pages with pictures of the different specimens. Will particularly enjoyed identifying the butterflies. Here are Jon and Ben taking a break on a bench in the butterfly garden.
After a full day at the aquarium, we went to have dinner at a nearby restaurant. The kids saw this brick boat and immediately jumped in for a voyage!

Chattanooga Day 1

Last week, we got to take a vacation to Chattanooga! We were out of school for Easter break, and my friend Ginny invited us to go visit her old stompin' grounds. Ginny has two boys, Ben and Jon, who are great friends with my boys. Her brother and sister-in-law live in Chattanooga, and they have two children close in age to our children.

Hannah went to stay with my mom for the week (I will post about that later), and we crowded into the van and headed for Tennessee. When we got there, it was snowing!

We got to stay in a house that was built in the 1800's. I had a great time seeing where a bathroom and kitchen had been added, hearing about how the confederate and union soldiers had watered their horses in the spring behind the house, and even knitting in the front room (while imagining that someone hundreds of years before had knitted in that very room... perhaps while keeping watch for indians!)


Sarah and Olivia (Ginny's neice) outside in the snow

Will catching snowflakes on his tongue!The boys had a great time playing with the castle and action figures. Above are Jon, Josh, and Rob making their silly faces.

Sarah and Olivia outside playing on the mountain that rose sharply from the backyard.

Rotel Muffins

This is a great recipe that freezes well.

1 can flaky layers biscuits
1 can rotel, drained
2c. shredded cheddar cheese
2c. shredded mozzarella
1/2c. mayonaise
1 small onion, chopped and cooked in Pam or butter
1lb turkey bacon, cooked crisp
1lb turkey sausage, cooked and drained

Peel apart layers of the biscuits, and place one layer in each section of a mini muffin tin. Mix all other ingredients together, and put about 1-2 Tbsp. mixture on top of each biscuit layer. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. (350 for dark pans)

***** When we made these, I used the real bacon crumbles from the big bag from Sams... On the back it tells you how many cups equals a pound. I also substituted a pack of chopped up canadian bacon for the sausage.

****** Also, we ran out of biscuits before we ran out of mixture.... we just added some eggs and cooked the mixture in the muffin tins without biscuits. It made a little quiche and was really good!

Cooking day

Today has been a beautiful, busy, fulfilling, "Whew I'm pooped" kinda day.

I chuckled to myself as I came in a few minutes ago...What would my facebook "friends" from high school say if I changed my status to "Heather is finished cleaning out the hen house and now picking chicken mess out of her cast!"

My, my, who ever thought I would be posting pictures of chickens... not to mention really liking them and referring to them as "my little friends!" In reality, I am quite taken with our new little pets. (Egg-specially since they are beginning to be quite the little producers!) One of my favorite things to do is sit on our back porch and watch them mill around and peck at bugs. However, this is not quite as relaxing for my husband... the chickens enjoy scratching in the straw holding his grass seed in place!








Hannah displaying our eggs!







Today was cooking day! The kids and I are leaving town next week, and we wanted to make sure Scott has plenty to eat while we are gone. The girls (esp. Hannah) did a significant portion of the cooking... and the clean up!












Hannah made two pans of lasagna and a double batch of blueberry muffins. Sarah made a double batch of "rotel muffins," a quiche-like recipe. Both muffin recipes freeze well and make a super quick, relatively healthy breakfast.

Cooking day was briefly interrupted by a spur of the moment water balloon fight... Hannah and I did not participate, but we were lured away from chopping onions to take pictures and serve as witnesses!


















We also kept taking brief breaks from our tasks to run (for myself, I use the term quite loosely) upstairs and check on our new KITTENS!!! Last night Sophie (lately known as Fatso-phie) gave birth to three kittens! We have been speculating as to whether or not she was pregnant, getting extremely fat, or just really fluffy. Lately, the fluffy option had been ruled out, and we were fairly certain that the obesity option could be ruled out as well...she definitely had the pregnant mama waddle goin' on!

Anybody want a free kitten?!







As we worked, we had all of the windows open and enjoyed my favorite background noise... the sound of Scott on the tractor and the boys... and sometimes Sarah... playing outside. I can't explain it, exactly, but the sound of the tractor is a comforting, secure... "this is home kind" of sound. Scott got most of the backyard disced up, harrowed, and seeded. How I look forward to the day when I look out the back windows and don't see a vast expanse of red dirt!! It won't be long; our front yard is getting green!

When we finished our cooking, we joined the boys outside for some chores, and the kids had a great game of hide-n-seek in our tall rye grass. At "dark-thirty," we all came in for baths and supper, and spent some time reading aloud before bed. What a great day!

God is Still Patient

John has been preaching on the patience of God, and this week's message was very helpful. His theme over the last few weeks has been this: as we get to know God, we will see our sin for what it is, and how largely it goes against the character and glory of God. As we get to know God and see our sin, we will begin to see just how patient God is with us, and this ought to lead us to repentance and love towards Him.

He used two illustrations from the bible to discuss the two main ways we tend to sin against God. First, John talked about how we, like the Israelites, are tempted to turn back or return to "Egypt" when things get difficult. Second, he talked about how we sin in the same way of the Israelites when they fashioned the golden calf; we are often guilty of adjusting God, making Him more reasonable, manageable, and like us. The Israellites did not say they were making a new god... they just said, "here is Jehovah." We tend to do the same thing by disregarding the Scriptures and placing our feelings or cultural traditions above what God says about Himself.

Are we going to give everything to Christ and allow Him to rule over every part of our lives? Or are we guilty (just as the Israelites decided to try to enter the promised land after saying it couldn't be done) of strapping on our swords and Christian books and church friends and charging ahead on our own... This is a recipe for destruction, just as the Israelites were destroyed. We never gain holiness without a price. First, we must come to Christ and then go to the battlefield.

We must look at the sin of Israel and realize we do the same thing... we adjust God and are tempted to stop short. The giants seem too big, temptations seem too great, and we are tempted to turn back. By doing this, we provoke Him.

BUT GOD is patient and doesn't let us go back to Egypt!

He endures the provocation of our fickle, blasphemous ways with (literally) infinite patience. When we see this, it gives us the desire to repent and lay all aside and follow Christ. What a wonderful Savior!

This Week

This week the girls got to go to the Father-Daughter Banquet with their dad. They had a great time getting dressed up, seeing friends, and enjoying a special evening. Friday we had school, and then Catherine came over to spend the night. Saturday morning, we all got up early and headed for Pontotoc. The girls ran the Pontotoc 5k (their first since November), and the boys went to the track meet with Scott.

The girls did very well, considering they hadn't run more than 20 minutes at a time. I don't think that either of them walked! Sarah ran a 30:52 and Hannah ran a 32:57.

I sat out of this one... On Wednesday I finally went to the doctor. Stress Fracture in the tibia was the ruling. I have a lovely giant black air cast/boot to wear for three weeks, and then I go back for a re-check.

It was great to see so many of my Spartans at the 5K. We all joked about them being homeschoolers and not getting out much; it was obvious how glad everyone was to see each other! It made me excited to start cross country in a few months!

Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful week. No crazy shennanigans (sp?) involving the chickens or other animals...

Josh-ism for the week: My mom had given him some Peeps (those nasty little marsmallow and food coloring shaped chickens), and he was asking for one. "Hey mom, can I have one of those little Pip Squeaks?"

(The doctor told me that the boot did not mean I could walk around all the time; he told me to sit and prop it up as much as I could... the children heard him say this.) So now, the most common saying heard at our house is, "Aww, Mom, SIT DOWN... Put up your feet! Let me do that for you!" Makes my heart melt like buddah...

Works for me... Lit. and Spelling

There are many reading lists available for picking out grade-level appropriate literature. I have found that the easiest thing for me to do is use the Veritas Press catalog as a guide. (If you do not get their catalog, I love it!)

Each grade level has a literature section with good, classic literature. Some books have study guides, but I usually just ask comprehension questions or assign a book report. (How to Report on Books is a good series published by Evan Moore.)

I will mention, however, that Veritas prices are not the lowest out there; I usually take the list and go to Rainbowresource.com.

As far as Spelling goes, I have not found anything that I just love. Programs seem to either go by commonly misspelled words or loosely follow phonics rules. Frankly, they all seem pretty random to me.

The Rigg's Institute has a list of "47 Rules of Spelling and Syllabication" that is used along with their materials. I think I am going to take the list and create a two year spelling program that involves learning the rules and list words that go along with each rule. Who knows, I may end up with a perfectly random spelling curriculum of my own...