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Human Again

7 Quick Takes

1. I just finished a no-carb, fat laden dinner. It sure was good but will it make me fat? I don't know. There are soooo many different opinions out there on how to eat healthy and lose weight. As far as health goes, tonight was inbetween. We had pot roast, mock cauliflower mashed "potatoes" (cauliflower cooked in chicken broth, then mashed with butter, cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream), and broccoli/cauliflower/carrots with cheese sauce. Definitely not a dairy free meal but I was experimenting. I am really trying to severely limit carbs but yet not starve all the time. For lunch I had a salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, black beans, bacon bits, black olives, goat cheese, and oil and vinegar. It was actually a really good salad and filled me up. I'm finally motivated again to get healthy and lose this excess weight. For the last few months aside from going to the gym I have made next to no efforts in the weight loss department and boy does it ever show. So, I'm going with limiting my carbs and see how I do. I won't normally eat such a high fat meal but tonight was good. :0)
2. Joe talks all the time and when he's not talking he's singing and when he's not singing he's making unintelligible noises. This goes on all day. It's really getting to me. Especially today.
3. Speaking of Joe, he turns 8 on Sunday! I can't believe my baby is already 8 years old. I also can't believe how much "younger" he is than Hannah and Grace were at 8. I guess that's what happens when you are the youngest boy after two girls. He chose his birthday dinner tonight--Loose Meat Sandwiches (now named Sloppy Jims--thank you Debi), tater tots, spinach, and banana-blueberry fritter with white chocolate sauce for dessert. Sounds yummola to me!
4. I'm really over Grammar right now. Today Hannah had some lesson that completely confused me and seems totally unnecessary--she had to differentiate between transitive verbs and passive verbs. I didn't get it, she didn't get it so I told her to skip it. Based on some research I've done I've decided that we will do an intensive Grammar curriculum once every few years and in between focus on writing and doing things like Daily Paragraph Editing. It is my belief that if I teach them how to learn then if they really need to understand all this grammar at some point in college they should be able to learn it. Obviously I will make sure they know the basics (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects, subject, predicate, etc.). Can anyone give me a good reason that this is not a good plan?
5. I'm even considering stopping our English curriculum right now and replace it with that Evan Moor pocket book about Nonfiction and do a unit on writing a report--taking notes, outlining, and writing a 5 paragraph essay. I really think this is a better use of our time. Just convinced myself of this. I'll be at Office Depot making some copies this weekend...
6. I'm excited about our plans for Saturday. The kids are in a parade in the morning and I'm walking with them and then we will spend the day at a festival in the town riding rides and eating fair food (are funnel cakes low carb?). Then at 3 they will perform some songs from Beauty and the Beast on the big outdoor stage.
7. I'm sort of back on FB but not nearly as obsessed as I was. One thing I did was hide a whole bunch of people who stress me out with their posts or cause me any sort of annoyance or bad feeling. Don't worry, none of you blog readers got hidden. I'm friends with almost 500 people....I can't handle that many people's thoughts and lives.

A Picture Post

This is for you sis--almost no reading! Most of these pictures are from last Saturday. We took a day trip to a local Mardi Gras festival where we listened to a jazz band and Hannah and I ate Gyros and Grace ate a chicken ball at the Brazil tent.

I took this picture specifically so that I could ask my friends to never let me start looking like that. Don't let this little nose piercing lead me down the slippery slide to pink hair and combat boots. I say that b/c I'm afraid I'm sort of drawn to such crazy antics.
After the festival we drove about an hour to Crystal River Archaeological State Park. The girls had been to a sleepover the night before and were pretty sleep deprived so took this time to get in a little nap.

In the picture above, notice Grace laid out on the steps...why does she do stuff like that? And below, Hannah didn't have a ponytail holder and got very creative with her hair. She did it in some big twist and then tucked it into a headband.

After the state park we drove to the Gulf and waded in a bit and the kids collected and played with seaweed.


Hannah got a photo editing app for her iPod and made this for me. Below you will see the cat that I want to adopt. She was so sweet!

Homeschooling ChitChat

So, we are a little ways past our halfway point for the year and now is a good time to re-evaluate some things and think about what I really want to accomplish with the rest of our school year. This is one of those posts that is really more for my own benefit but I know there are some homeschoolies out there who will enjoy reading this just because most of us like to hear what other people are doing. We've had an interesting homeschool year. We've done very little history and science compared to past years but we are doing some. This has been the year to buckle down with math and writing and language arts.
So, let's talk about Hannah first--She has completed two virtual school classes--art and keyboarding. I've been disappointed int he fact that the keyboarding really hasn't stuck with her. I have to remind her to use the right keys and most of the time I don't remind her. I was given one of those old school keyboarding books, actually I think it was the same one I used in typing class in high school. I keep thinking I'll have her practice typing using that book but haven't gotten to it. She is over halfway through her third virtual school class--Spanish. I'll be honest, I wanted to quit this class after the holidays. I had been having to help her a lot and she did TERRIBLE on her first semester final exam. It really made me wonder if she had learned anything at all. I ended up buying her a workbook to supplement the class and she does a lesson in that everyday. Back to me wanting to quit--I told Hannah that I thought she should quit the online class and just do the workbook but she didn't want to quit. So, since then, she has done it almost completely on her own and is retaining it better (at least I think she is). The jury is still out for me about whether I like FLVS or not and whether she will take any classes next year. She wants to take the career class and there are one or two others that look interesting, all elective classes. We'll see. The think I really don't like is that some of these assignments take a long time and take away from what I consider to be more important subjects. For math Hannah has completed the first book in Horizons 6. Each grade level has two books. As she was finishing the first I realized that I didn't have the next one and while talking to a friend I decided to give Teaching Textbooks a try. So, Hannah started TT 7 a few weeks ago. Well, I'm in love and now really want to do TT with all three kids next year. It's pricey though and so I'm not sure if I can afford it or not. I've really seriously considered not buying any other curriculum and just getting the TT. Truly I have enough books and stuff (curriculum, lapbooks, science kits, etc.) to easily keep them all learning the whole year long. It would be nice to actually use all this stuff that I've collected. Back to Hannah--I don't expect her to finish TT7 by the end of this school year and so we will just pick up where we left off next year and then after that she'll do Pre-Algebra. She is also doing Rod and Staff English 6. I have to say that I really like it as far as English goes but am completely questioning whether they need all this grammar. I've decided to have her complete the book but probably won't do an intensive grammar curriculum every year since it all just repeats anyway. One thing I am loving about R&S though is that every 5th lesson or so is a writing lesson including paragraph writing, taking notes, and outlining, and more. The rest of her school is Wordly Wise 6, Daily Paragraph Editing, a workbook on Outlining and Paragraph and Report Writing, Science and History (more on that later). She also reads for half an hour every day from a book that I have chosen. She reads much more than this every day but the rest of her reading time is from books she has chosen. Occasionally she will be so into her "school" book that she will keep reading even during her free time. If you look on my sidebar you will see a list of books she has read for school. This is the time that I get in the classics as well as some books that go along with our history studies.
Gracie--My main focus with Grace is math this year along with language arts. She was doing Horizons Math 3 and I was pushing her to go through pretty fast since by Horizons' standards she was a year behind. Well, that backfired on me when math became a huge source of anxiety for her. We spent a couple of weeks learning her multiplication tables and then started using them and doing bigger and bigger problems and she just wasn't ready. After a week or two of tears and major anxiety I ditched the book and got her started with the Math Mammoth Multiplication A worktext. The beginning was super easy for her and then it slowly went through all of the multiplication facts. By the end of the unit (she finished today) she was easily filling out the multiplication grid and is getting better and better with her times tables. I bought her the first unit on division today and we will start working on that tomorrow. She is still behind on math but that's life. Math is just something that you can't really rush and I know it's important to take as much time as she needs to lay a strong foundation in arithmetic. I would really love to start her in TT5 next year but we'll see. For now I am loving Math Mammoth--you buy it in individual units and the units are anywhere from 3 to 5 dollars. You download them and then print the pages out. Grace is also doing Rod and Staff English 4 and doing great with it. It's very grammar intensive and I have the same reservations that I have with Hannah. We are definitely finishing out this year but will take a break from sentence diagramming and such next year. Grace is also doing Wordly Wise 4, Daily Paragraph Editing, Cursive Writing, and the Outlining unit that Hannah is doing. She reads for a half hour a day from books that I choose (you can see a list of what she has read for school on my sidebar) and does some reading in her free time but not as much as I'd like. She had a hard time learning to read and still struggles with it a little. Of course she is also doing History and Science but more on that later.
Joe has matured by leaps and bounds this year and we are getting a lot accomplished every day. I am also using Math Mammoth with Joe after he started freaking out with Horizons too. He is doing the Addition and Subtraction unit and doing great. He just gets it the way they explain it and is much more confident. I forgot to mention this in Grace's paragraph but he and Grace are also working through this book of Math Tricks called, Two Plus Two is Not Five. We do a trick every day and they are both getting really fast at simple addition and really memorizing the facts. I make it a game with a stopwatch and there is always a prize for both of them. Usually candy. I hate that I'm giving them candy every day but for now it's working and that's that. In addition to Math, Joe is doing a 2nd grade comprehensive workbook--he does 4 pages a day. He also does Wordly Wise 2, Money Flash cards, reads a page out of his President's book that he got for Christmas and works on his unit study on Caldecott Award Winners. We call that art because it almost always involves an art project. He also does Science and History with the girls.
Now to talk about Science and History--For Science we are doing "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day." We are making our way through this very, very slowly but I love it! I seriously doubt that we will finish it this year but that's okay, we can carry over until next year as long as Amy doesn't need it back. :0) For History we are doing Story of the World Volume 2--The Middle Ages. I'm really enjoying it. We aren't doing a whole lot more than just reading each chapter and doing the map work but that's okay, they are learning. I am having the girls do the tests after each chapter and so far they haven't done so great but it's making them listen better in hopes of doing better on the test. I love learning history and it's fun to do a new time period. I have done the Creation to Greeks time period twice and done a year of American History so it's fun for me to learn something new. Story of the World is awesome and I am thinking we will continue with Volume 3 after we finish Volume 2. I doubt we will finish that this year either though. That's okay, there's no rush and we can just carry that over to next year as well. I miss doing lapbooks and special projects but I needed a break from that sort of thing. I did buy the girls an Evan Moor pocket book type thing like Joe's Caldecott study. Theirs is called, "Nonfiction" and each pocket focuses on each section of the Dewey Decimal System. The first pocket is the 100s, second pocket is the 200s and so on. For each pocket they read books from that section and then do projects or reports and stuff like that. It looks great I just need to get it prepped and get going with it. We'll probably start that after Spring Break.
So--that's where we are at and what we are doing. Sometimes I wish that we lived a less busy and less social life and so had way more time at home and I had a much shorter "to do" list so we could read more books, play more games, do more projects, and so on. But, our life is what it is and I wouldn't be happy having it any other way. My kids get to have a lot of life experiences that can't be measured on a school transcript. They are developing into independent, capable, responsible little people and I'm so proud of them!

An Afternoon at the Mall

I am not a shopper at all. I really, really do not enjoy the mall at all. I think if I had more money to spend I might like it more but it's just frustrating to go and see so much stuff that I like but yet, can't buy any of it. Y'know? Anyway, on Friday I had to have some work done on the car and the service center was right by a mall so the kids and I hitched a ride on the shuttle to while away the hours walking the mall. We just went from one end to the other and I let the kids go into any store they wanted to. We spent a good long time in the pet store where Joe decided that he wants a chihuahua. The puppies were very cute and the staff very unfriendly. They didn't even offer to get any puppies out for the kids to play with. It seems like it would be good for the little pups to get some play time.
We spent some time in the comic book store where the girls sat themselves down and read Archie comics. They love Archie comics. Joe loves Sonic comics but they didn't have any in.
The kids brought their money and were allowed to buy a snack if they wanted. I was so proud of the choices they made. They are really learning to make wise decisions about how to spend their money--at least most of the time. This day they did. Grace bought 2 of the "cheap" chocolates at Godiva and then later bought a Chick-fil-a Kids Meal. She was going to get a sandwich but saw that the kids meal was almost the same price so she got that. She even got the fruit cup instead of fries. Hannah and Joe decided to share a drink from the Smoothie stand and some Bourbon chicken. As the guy at the Smoothie place was making the drink he was also talking to Hannah. He was so impressed that she was spending her money on something to share with her siblings that he gave her three drinks instead of just one. He also told her that she had a great personality and that she should come work for him someday. So much for the unsocialized homeschooler. :0)




After snacktime we walked the mall a little more and spent a good long time in the Disney store. The dolls in the above picture are fun b/c they all sing their song from their movie. Soon after this it was finally time to go back and pick up the car. All in all, I have to say that I had fun at the mall this time and the kids did too.

Hannah's Photos

I raided Hannah's camera again...here are just a few of the over 600 pictures that I put on the computer tonight.

Isn't she a good daughter? Taking an animal butt picture for her mom? :0)






These last few are from today. We went on a day trip and she got some great pictures. I'll share my own tomorrow, not nearly as artsy but more of the "tell a story" kind of pics.

This pic above is of seaweed. They were collecting it out of the gulf and then Hannah did a little photo shoot.

In order to get the above picture of this pelican Hannah was very patient. She approached it extremely slowly over the course of about 20 minutes taking tiny steps and then stopping and so on until she got close enough to take some pictures. Below are a couple of pictures of some roses that a family had thrown into the ocean. I didn't see them but one of the ladies there told me that an old woman dressed in black and some other people pulled up and took these roses out of a vase and tossed them in the ocean. Hannah got some pictures of the roses that were floating in the water but I didn't like those shots as much as these two.

Feeling Better and Other Stuff

Thank you to those of you that encouraged me through the comments. I'm feeling much less stressed and making strides to keep myself from getting so high strung. I am truly blessed to be able to stay home and to live my days in relative freedom. After all, I decide when to get up and how much I am going to try to accomplish. I decide whether to make a complicated dinner or serve canned soup. I have some control here, my life doesn't have to run me. It's good to be reminded of that sometimes. I definitely tend to overcomplicate things and do too much and set standards that are unrealistic. It's only when I realize how unhappy I am and that I'm wasting my days in a fog of tension that I remember to stop, breathe, and lower those standards. This is an ongoing life lesson for me.
I took Joe to get his hair cut today at a "real" Barber Shop. Ollie usually cuts his hair or I take him to one of those cheap places like The Hair Cuttery. We were doing theatre business in a local downtown and Joe needed a hair cut and so we went to the barber. We had to wait about half an hour b/c this place was popular. During that time Joe did school--I wrote out 20 math problems for him, had him read from a magazine, take a spelling test, and count the change in my wallet. Then, it was his turn. I think from now on we will go to a real barber shop--they definitely know how to cut a boy's hair. I love his hair cut and it's so much better than the last few times he's gotten a hair cut. I'll see if I can get a pic of him later. He hates having his picture taken so I may have to be sneaky.
Have you ever had a Krystal burger or a White Castle burger? Well, I made "Crock Pot Loose Meat Sandwiches" last night and they tasted JUST LIKE a little Krystal burger. Except that they weren't in patty form. The whole family loved it and voted to have these once a week. They were really good and very easy. I don't know that we'll have them once a week but we will definitely add them to our regular menu. We are still trying to mostly eat vegetarian. My goal is to have no more than one beef meal and one chicken meal a week if that. I just wish I liked the vegetarian options more. Mostly the problem is that I have to limit my dairy as well so that cuts out a lot of choices that involve cheese. Anyway, I'll post the recipe soon.
Well, Hannah needs the computer to do her Spanish so I'm outta here....

Figuring Life Out - One Thousand Gifts

Got This in My E-mail This Morning

Hannah got a new photo caption app for her iPod and apparently she was busy before bed last night.  This old picture of her is one of my favorites.

A Great Post on Stress...Very Timely

Read all about it...go here.

Unschooling Anyone?

Sometimes I wish I believed more in unschooling. Sometimes I wish my kids went to school. I'd love to wake up each day with the freedom I used to feel to do whatever I wanted for the day. Now I wake up with a major agenda every day. When life gets busy and I have to take a day off of school to catch up on other stuff I feel guilty. Most of the time I just stay terribly behind on just about everything--including homeschooling. There is so much that I want to teach my kids and so much to do in a day that I never feel like we are where we should be or caught up. I don't like that feeling but it seems the harder I try to catch up the further behind I get, not just with school--with everything. If we were unschoolers or less tied to a curriculum then we could play all these educational games and science kits I've invested in. We could finally do that nature study and nature notebook that I have planned to do every year for the last 7 years. We could watch some of those educational movies and read more good books. When it comes down to it though I'm afraid that without a specific curriculum I would end up doing a whole lot of nothing. I'm not disciplined enough. We've had two days off of school this week already--I had a ridiculously busy weekend so I needed one more weekend day to get some things done and then today we went to a play (Anne Frank and Me--very educational). So, tomorrow morning I will wake up knowing that we need to work and work and work and get it ALL done. Pressure's on, no fun 'til we're done.
Sorry for the rant...just feeling overwhelmed and underpaid. This homeschooling business is hard! But oh so worth it. I love my kids and love teaching them. I'm living my dream. I'm living my dream. I'm living my dream. :0)

Family Friendly Indian Recipes

Ollie brought home an Indian cookbook from his school's library--it's written for children and had some great recipes. Here are a few that we tried last night and we all liked them and they were all easy to make--

Lima Beans with Raisins

1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro leaves
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 140z. can of lima beans
2 Tbsp. raisins
1 tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Finely chop the cilantro and drain the liquid from the canned beans. Heat the oil and add the lima beans and cook for 1 min. Turn the heat down to low and add the rest of the ingredients except cilantro. Cook for another 5 minutes. Add 2 Tbsp. water and simmer for 5 minutes. Sprinkle the chopped cilantro over it and serve.

Shrimp Patia

1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic
1 small piece of fresh ginger
1 Tbsp. oil
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. paprika
2 Tbsp. plain yogurt
1 Tbsp. honey
2 tsp. vinegar
1 1/2 lbs. of shrimp
1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro

Chop the onion, press the garlic, and chop the ginger and add to the oil in a saucepan over medi. heat. Add the cumin, turmeric, coriander, and paprika and saute for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat and add the yogurt, honey, and vinegar. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the shrimp and simmer another 5 minutes or until shrimp are cooked through. Chop the cilantro and sprinkle it over the top. Serve with rice.

Spicy (not hot-spicy) Chickpeas

1 clove garlic
1 onion
1 can chickpeas
1 Tbsp. oil
1/4 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Press the garlic and chop the onion, chop the tomatoes, and drain the chickpeas. Heat the oil and add the garlic, onion, coriander, garam masala, and turmeric and fry for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, chickpeas, and lemon juice and cook for 10 minutes.

I Could've Cried...and other random tidbits....

We went to the library yesterday for some Valentine craft fun and then we went back to the children's section to check out books. We do this often and IF Joe chooses to check out books it's always picture books but not today. He came home with two CHAPTER books--An A to Z Mystery, The Absent Author and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Grace (also a reluctant reader) also checked out a few A to Z Mysteries. When we got home I went into the kitchen to start dinner and noticed how quiet it was and so I went looking for the kids. They were all in the living room (see pic above) under blankets READING. I could've cried I was so happy! I want sooooo badly for my kids to be readers. They all have to read every day as part of school. The girls read for half an hour and Joe usually reads a short picture book. Aside from that time, Hannah is the only one who chooses to read. Grace has read a few books here and there but it's not a consistent thing. And Joe...he has never even tried to read a chapter book. By bedtime he had read three chapters and today he's read 4 more. I'm so proud of him and I only hope that this is the beginning of his adventure in books. Grace has already completely finished the book she started yesterday afternoon. I'm so proud of her too. There was a time that I worried that she would never learn to read, it was a struggle but now she reads completely on grade level. Woohoo!

Joe has been doing art just about every day and the other day he did some painting. Here is one of his pictures--he says that this is what he thinks the gate of "heven" looks like.
I love to make cut out sugar cookies and I love to decorate them with icing and sprinkles but what I don't love is the chaos of the cutting out and baking. Also, for some reason my dough came out super crumbly for this batch and I knew it was going to be a stressfest if I tried doing the cutting out with all three kids. So, I stayed up very late on Thursday and rolled out and cut out and baked lots of little heart sugar cookies. The kids were only mildly disappointed that they didn't get to do the cutting out parts. I have to say that pre-baking the cookies was definitely one of my more brilliant ideas. And, the cookies turned out beautifully. The kids got so creative with them. They are almost too pretty to eat!
In other news...I had my hair colored today. I went to the "fancy" salon in town. I got a gift card for Christmas which is the only way I can ever afford to go to this place. I have to say that although I love the treat of going somewhere professional and fancy (they even gave me a glass of wine) I am always a little uncomfortable. Like I'm pretending to be all hoity-toity but knowing that everyone can see right through my charade. I always feel so frumpy and pathetic in places like that. I think I belong in the Hair Cuttery instead. But--you can't get the awesome color-do that I got today at a regular old Hair Cuttery. My hair is coppery red again--I did that thing that is like a henna stain. I love it because as it very slowly fades I get all sorts of different colors and it covers my gray for a good 6 months!
I resisted the temptation to buy a box of Girl Scout Peanut Butter Patties and eat the whole thing twice today! Those little Girl Scouts are all over town hawking those cookies.
Well, that's all I've got for now. I have a big homeschooling post brewing but it may be Monday before it makes its way onto the blog. Peace out peeps!

The Road to Fat...

...is paved with good intentions. Today I was going to get up early and hit the gym for an hour or so. Then I was going to juice some carrots, celery, and apples and drink that for either breakfast or lunch. I was going to eat super healthy today and this was going to be the day to start getting back to healthy eating. Instead, I woke up to rain and went back to bed until 8 am. For breakfast I ate a cold egg sandwich that Hannah made me (probably with too much butter) after I finished reading to the kids. The day has just gone downhill from there. I have been busy with school and laundry and life and so didn't take the time to juice anything. For lunch I ate a (small) bowl of the alfredo pasta that Hannah made. Tonight I am going to book club and we are having an appetizer potluck. I'm sure I'll eat too much of stuff that's not good for me. I had good intentions for the day, I really did. Eating healthy really does require more time and preparation and sometimes (a lot of the time) I just don't have the time.

Time4Learning

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as an online homeschooling curriculum, afterschool tutorial or an online summer program. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

Just Stuff

Our theatre group has now joined with an established "real" theatre in a neighboring town and so now we get to participate in all the events this little town puts on. For a little town they do a LOT! I foresee making lots of lemon bars and chocolate chip cookie bars for lots of bake sales...On Friday night we did our first "streetfest" and we had a table set up but some of the kids also walked around in costume (partially completed costumes) carrying a tray of baked goods to sell and passing out flyers. Hannah was "Belle" for the night (she's actually Cogsworth in the show) and Joe walked around with them but wasn't in costume. After the girls "worked" for an hour or so they got dinner and then went to the play that opened that night. Joe hung out with me until we closed up shop. It was a fun night!


Saturday we celebrated this little guy's first birthday! He's such a cutie and has so much personality.


And, in other news--

• My fridge totally stinks and I can't seem to find the source of the stank. I think it may be coming from something under the drawer that I can't get out. My fridge is up against a wall and the door won't open wide enough to get the drawer out. I think to get it out I am going to have to take one of the racks off the door. What a pain, but it must be done. Nothing says, "let's eat!" like a stinky fridge--eeewwwww....
• I have now been a member of Gold's Gym for about three months and I have nothing to show for it as far as my weight is concerned. I barely make it there three times a week and I think I've only gotten there 4x in one week once. My endurance has improved on the elliptical so I guess that's something but I was hoping some of these pounds would melt off of me. I guess I should eat more salad...
• I went to the gym early this morning and got to watch some of my favorite morning show--Good Morning America. I love watching morning shows but never watch them at home because I can't trust what my kids will hear and I don't have time to be watching tv. Anyway, I heard some news from Egypt and I hurt for those people. It's not getting any better and their economy is suffering and so there are people suffering. And, our gas prices are through the roof and only going higher. Oh, and there is a teenage girl in Tampa raising a tiger cub that sleeps in her bed with her and although Robin Roberts thinks she's totally crazy and just knows it's terribly dangerous, the expert they talked to who raises tigers himself isn't concerned at all. The Midwest is going to be getting more snow and more frigid temperatures but Steph and Lisa--don't be discouraged--the jet stream should move north next week and will bring your temps up to a balmy 36 degrees.
  

Well, I'm off to wake up my kids--we stayed up late last night watching the last 4 episodes of Doc Martin so I'm letting them sleep in. But--I think 9 am is late enough--we've got things to do around here!!

Baptized!

Hannah and Grace got baptized yesterday. Some of our church family met at a fellow member's house that has a pool and we did a baptism! This was a really special day for our family. Enjoy the pictures--some (the good ones) are courtesy of my friend, Ofelia--thank you!