A big happy birthday to Grandma Barbara (her birthday was yesterday) and Grandma Carol. (her birthday is today) We love you both very much and miss you - so do your grandkids. Trinity is always telling me how much she misses her grandmas and grandpas. :(

Here are some pics of life at our house. This first one is Angelina waking up after a nap in the recliner. She was laying in a lovely contortionist position, but by the time I got the camera, she moved into a more normal pose. I took the shot anyway of the sleepy girl.


What to do with kids when it is freezing cold out and you can't go out and play? Turn your house into a gymnasium. Here the girls had piled pillows and blankets into the corner and were taking turns jumping into the soft pit.

Snack break. I thought the girls looked cute sitting and eating their ice cream cones.

This was our excitement yesterday. A car ran off the road right into our yard. I circled the area where you can see the snow scraped away as the car left the road and headed down the steep slope into our yard. Our yard continues to incline down, so they went all the way to our barn.

They showed up later with a truck and tried to pull the car out. That didn't work out as nicely as they would have liked, as the road is not wide enough for them to actually get the car pulled up on it before having to turn. So they ended up dragging the car along the side of the ditch all the way into our neighbor's yard before they were able to get it up on the road again. And people think living in the country is boring! ;)

Today the girls wanted to play store. So we played endless rounds of shopping, checking out, and restocking the shelves to open the store for the next day.

Our kitchen playset was turned into our check out stand. One of the benefits of having a mom who runs a consignment sale is having an extra scanner for zapping bar codes. Trinity is very good at finding the bar codes and scanning them. She will be helping me at my sales very soon!

The other news is that we did make the final decision that we will be homeschooling the girls. Trinity has not returned to preschool after Christmas break. We are excited about it though - especially Trinity. She was more than happy to stay at home and do school with mommy. I have been looking at the Charlotte Mason method and the Classical method based on the trivium, but have more than enough time to decide since Trinity is only turning 4. We are going to start spending 5 minutes a day working on phonics since Trinity is showing 'reading readiness' signs - she is always pointing to words on things and asking me what it says.

David put in an application with a local grocery store that was looking for shift managers. We will see if anything comes of that. We would love to get him working inside again. I tried to get a part time job working the overnight shift with Walmart, but the shift runs 11pm-7am. David has to leave for work at 6:30 so that knocked me out of the running - I wouldn't be flexible for scheduling. I am going to check with another grocer. One of the moms was telling me that HyVee has overnight stockers and she thinks the shift ends at 6.

Oh, yeah...how could I forget. We finally got David's cosmetology license for Iowa. So this is another option that we are going to look into.

Here is a parting picture of our corn stove so you can see that we are keeping toasty warm in this arctic blast. :)

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: Homeschool Lane, Slow Lane on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at at 2:38 PM 0 comments    

Well, we are all snuggly and warm with our corn burner working nicely now. I had a few pictures to post so I will fill you in with the pics.

The Waldenbooks at our closest mall is going out of business so they were having killer sales to clear the inventory. I picked up a monster History of Art book for $3.75 and a Children's Atlas for $1.50. Even a broke person like me can't resist those deals! The kids have already enjoyed looking through both of them and I am sure they will provide us with lots of knowledge in the years ahead. (especially since David and I have finally made the decision to homeschool the kids)

Here are some pics I snapped of David looking at the atlas with Angelina. She was only mildly enthusiastic as you can see in the pictures. (read that with heavy sarcasm :)

I have been trying to take the kids outside for a walk whenever the weather is nice enough for it. "Nice enough" being a very relative term. Today was in the 20's, only a little wind, and no precipitation...that qualifies for outdoor time in my book. So, off we went down the road with our bags to collect treasures along the way. This was the neighbors cow watching us walk by. Most of the time they aren't in the field by the road, so this was a rare sighting of the cows in this pasture.

Angelina spotted this nest. Since we couldn't put it in our treasure bag, this one had to be captured via picture. Angelina also spotted a bald eagle and a flying crocodile. She is very alert for a two year old! ;) I can't blame her for thinking she saw an eagle. We have seen several of them in the last few weeks. I was reading about them and discovered that in January and February there are 5000 bald eagles that come to the Mississippi between Illinois and Minnesota. It is considered to be the next best place to see them outside of Alaska. We may take a road trip to the river for bald eagle spotting on Trinity's birthday.

Trinity had quite a few treasures in her bag by the time we made it home. BTW, did I mention that little Angelina decided that she was too tired to walk anymore and I had to carry her all the way home?? She managed to wake up nicely once we were indoors again despite her insisting that she needed to go home and take a nap. I sure got my exercise today!

I digress...back to Trinity's treasures... pine cones, leaves, rocks, twigs, a corn cob, and the piece de' resistance - a wooly caterpiller. She put him in a jar with some of her other treasures to keep him company. Hopefully this one will stay in the jar and not get loosed like the caterpiller she brought in the other daySigh, another shot of Trinity's fake smile. I hate trying to catch a good shot of her these days because as soon as she sees the camera, she says "say cheeeeeese" and puts on this horrid little fake grin. Her smile is lovely, just hard to catch on camera.

And, yes, I did let Trinity go for a walk in her princess dress. I made her put pants on with it, but thought, why not? You can only get away with that kind of stuff when you are young, so she may as well enjoy it now!

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: Homeschool Lane, Slow Lane on Friday, January 9, 2009 at at 3:43 PM 0 comments    

I was watching Wall E with the girls and there was a scene showing a galaxy. Trinity says excitedly, "I know what that is!"
I tell her, "that's a galaxy."
Trinity says, "I know, it's a galaxy and it's called the Milkshake."

LOL!!

Posted in: Slow Lane on Saturday, January 3, 2009 at at 10:24 AM 0 comments    

Good morning! At 5:20am, the normal waking hour in our household, I hear Trinity excitedly calling, "Mommy! Mommy! Come look! Mommy!" So our Christmas morning began. Angelina was still sleeping, but not for long. Here are pictures of our morning:

This is actually a shot I took before going to bed after getting everything set up. We got the big Barbie playset for free off of the Des Moines ReUseit group on yahoo. (formerly freecycle) What a blessing! We found the Muse Barbies on sale at Walmart for $5 each, so they are now in Barbie heaven. :)

Loving those Barbies!

David helped the girls open their stockings. They each got a little bear, a purse, some M&M's, and a pack of gum.

Here Angelina was very excited about something going on in the movie "Barbie and the Diamond Castle" which is one of their favorite movies and a gift from Grandma Barbara which IMMEDIATELY had to be put in to play.

Angelina is giving the horse bouncy ball a ride. This was a gift from Great Grandma and Grandpa last year, which we stored away until this year. Angelina was just a little too small last year - this year is working out perfectly. :)

Angelina is checking out the train set from Grandma Mary while not letting go of the stuffed bear that was waiting in her stocking.

I was able to buy a lot of 10 games off of craigslist for $6. Four of them they got now and the others will come as they get older. This year they got Franklin Goes to School, Alphabet Bingo, Bible Dominos, and The Memory Game.

A happy morning :)

Posted in: Slow Lane on Thursday, December 25, 2008 at at 10:26 AM 0 comments    

I took the girls to the mall today so they could burn off some energy in the play area. Then we went over to see if Santa was there....and he was. I was on the wrong side to get pictures, so I missed Trinity on Santa's lap. I just managed to catch this one of Angelina. She sat up on his lap and just started rambling away. Then he asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she said, "um...candy!" I wish the picture wasn't blurry, but at least I got a picture!

This is the same santa we went to see last year (and caught him going on break) that made me cry. He has Dad's eyes. I didn't cry this year, but still see Dad in his eyes.

The other day we made jewelry. We got an advert in the mail from a jewelers. Loads of great bling to create with. Here is Angelina in her earrings.

Here is bling girl herself, miss Trinity. She made earrings, a neclace, two bracelets, and two rings. I think I may be in trouble when she gets older! lol!

Posted in: Santa, Slow Lane on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at at 3:03 PM 0 comments    

Winter is here in earnest!

"A Wind Chill Advisory Remains In Effect Until 12 PM CST Monday. Dangerous Wind Chills Will Develop This Evening As Winds 20 To 35 Mph Combine With Temperatures Falling Through The Single Digits On Their Way To Lows Of Near Zero To 5 Below Zero... Resulting In Wind Chill Values Of 20 To 25 Below Across Much Of The Region Through Noon Monday. A Wind Chill Advisory Means That Very Cold Air And Strong Winds Will Combine To Generate Low Wind Chills. This Will Result In Frost Bite And Lead To Hypothermia If Precautions Are Not Taken. If You Must Venture Outdoors...Make Sure You Wear A Hat And Gloves."

Right now we are at 3 degrees with wind chill temp of -21. They are calling for -3 for the overnight low. Wow! Really makes me wish we had our corn stove already hooked up. We are still waiting on the installation kit to arrive. So we will just use up a lot of our expensive propane to get through this cold snap. But, BOY AM I GLAD I AM NOT DELIVERING PAPERS!!! I had tried doing a paper route, but you couldn't just throw the papers from the car. You had to hand deliver the papers to the front step. (or back porch or anywhere else the customer designated) I knew that I was not going to be a happy camper when it was nasty weather to be trotting papers up to front steps at 4 in the morning. I can't even imagine doing it in -20 windchills....BRRRR! I will be praying for all those people who are out there in the wee hours of the morning trying to get the papers out... poor souls.

Here are pictures of the girls enjoying the first snow we had this year - I think this was the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Posted in: Slow Lane on Sunday, December 14, 2008 at at 9:16 PM 0 comments    

Note: Gas is at $1.84 today!

The girls were very excited to get their "I voted" stickers today.

At our voting place, Palmyra Township Hall, out in the country, no long lines for voting!
The church in the background is circa 1890.

Here are the girls enjoying the last rays of the day and sharing a yogurt after a long afternoon of playing in the leaves.

A series of my country girls in their favorite pickup.

Posted in: election day, Slow Lane on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at at 8:53 AM 0 comments