4 Months Old

Little Sweetheart is 4-months-old!
Dabney Hazel is growing into quite the chubbs, with a sweet round face.

.  sleeps 8-10 hours at night  .  superman  .  coos  .  

.  smiley girl  .  sucks her fist  .  gassy baby  .  bobble-head  . 

.  chews on blankets  .  sleeps swaddled at night  .  13 pounds, 13 oz  .   

.  nurses 6-8 times each day  .  loosing her hair  . 

.  plays with her hands  . likes Christmas lights  . 

Little  Miss likes to suck her fist . . . or anything else convenient :)

(She has an impressive bald patch!)

Christmas 2013

Celebrating Christmas is a joy! 

This Christmas, we exchanged gifts in celebration of the greatest gift, celebrated the Birthday of our Savior.
After unwrapping Baby Jesus in the nativity sets, the kids opened up stockings (Hotwheels, Lego Mini Figures, chapstick, baseball cards, underwear, socks, necklaces, headbands, coloring books, crayons, markers, reading books, fairy wands, chocolate), and we shared a breakfast feast.  Then came the exciting "big" gifts: Lego Sets, weaving loom, pop-up Vicotrian Doll House, handmade doll and puzzle ball, and the wished-for Lego Mini Figure book :)  And a fantastic new wooden family game.

As easy as it is to get carried away with gifts, we are conscious to keep it simple - anything x 9 can get crazy pretty fast!

The rest of the day was delightful.  We played with new toys, read "The Best Christmas Pageant", made our own pageant, decorated a gingerbread house, did our last Jesse Tree Devotional, decorated a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday to Jesus", rolled out and baked more Christmas cookies, and colored together. 

 It was a fantastic Christmas celebration.  We are incredibly blessed. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas Puppy

We told the kids we were going to drive around, looking at Christmas lights . . .
we did that, but first we had a special surprise stop, an early family gift.

We went to visit the newest member of our family: our new Christmas Puppy!!!

Surprise!!!

Our little German Shepherd pup is just 3 weeks old.  We can't wait to bring him home in January :)

We also got to meet his parents: Wolf Girl and Wolf Boy, true German Shepherds from Czechoslovakia and Germany.  Our little pup, who still needs a name, is going to be gorgeous and HUGE!

Handmade

Our little elves have been very busy making gifts this year! (magnets and ornaments)

It's such a joy to give at Christmas and to share this with our children.  They are excited to give these special gifts.   

Preparing for Christ

We try to be very intentional in how we spend our time leading up to Christmas.  We are preparing to celebrate the birth of our Savior!

We have to be careful to not let the secular Christmas hoopla overshadow the true celebration of Christmas.  We want this to be meaningful fun!

Some this seasons favorites:

.  20 dozen cookies  .  Zoo lights in Memphis with friends  .  Christmas story books  .  

.  caroling  .  church worship  .  candles  .  Jesse Tree Devotions  .  gift crafting  .

.  Jesus Birthday cake  .  coloring  .  Bible reading  .   family dinners  .

This year we baked and decorated 20 dozen cookies to share with friends and neighbors . . . and enjoy ourselves!

We have 11 stockings this year!

Creative Solutions

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Sometimes doing without can help aid creative play.  
Maegli lives with parents that may be considered to be old-fashioned in our modern, technology-crazed world, who a.) don't like to spend money and b.) don't like how nasty the children get around video games.  Therefore, we have no video game systems, no Kindle, no iPad, and the kids' technology time is limited.

They're so deprived. (quite the opposite really :)

Limited technology encourages them to get creative and can lead to much more valuable play.


Our creative little artist Maegli made her own iPad - already equipped with a makeover/color app . . . and a laptop with a Rescue Princess game set to go. (Who knows where she learned of such apps!)
She has enjoyed playing with her created media. 

Our creative little artist isn't limited to technology-inspired art, she also does fabulous portraits, including Dad and Mom :

(Daddy's cheeks are red because he's in love with mommy!)

Maegli's pretty fantastic :)

School 2013-2014 - Month 5

We've made it to 95 days!!!
And we are officially on our Christmas break :)
We are looking forward to enjoying a break from school for quality family time and celebrating Jesus' birth.

We find school is all consuming in our household.   While the kids all enjoy lots of free time, taking charge of their schooling is a massive time investment for us parents.  Schooling our children is our family priority, and so it is right that it should require the majority of our time, energy, and focus.  We are thankful for this opportunity to pour ourselves into leading and educating our children.  They're worth it!

For this 5th month in our school year, our history learning started off with a bang: World War II.
I am so thankful we can be the ones to introduce this difficult history to our children. We first looked even further back in history at the story of Esther, to parallel this Bible story with Hitler  This opened up deep conversations with our children about our fallen world's desperate need for a Savior.  Human nature is generally constant through history.  We will always have despots, war, and attempted genocide.  We need to train our children to think for themselves, discern motives of those in power, and hold fast to Biblical principles despite the culture of the day.

We learned about the heroine of Amelia Earhard, followed the events leading up to this second World War, studied our world map, learned about the Axis Powers and the leaders of Japan, Germany, and Italy; and we learned of the attack that launched the initially reluctant America into the War: Pearl Harbor.

We poured through pictures of Grandma Vee and Great Grandpa at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and learned her stories from the home front.  We made our own ration cakes, watched wartime propaganda films, followed the fighting on our world maps, and watched Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters perform for the troops in USO shows.  We made ration packs and ate beef jerkey, M&Ms, tuna, and dried fruit for a day, having to ration our own food like a soldier.  We read about Anne Frank, FDR, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman.  We finished our learning with VE Day and VJ Day.


The kids are all chugging along with their math, reading, language arts, and spelling lessons.  We also spent a lot of time coloring pattern sheets, making fantastic Rainbow Loom bracelets, practicing piano, making Christmas ornaments, impromptu stargazing, and baking Christmas cookies.  For a special treat this month, we had a great demonstration at a local ceramic studio, and attended a fabulous Lady of Guadalupe festival with fabulous dancing, costumes, and food (tamales and tacos!).  We've been using the Jesse Tree to focus our daily devotionals on the coming of Christ

It's been a great first semester to our school year.
Now it's time to celebrate our Lord and enjoy great family time this holiday season. 

Smile!

This little one will make you smile :)

 (And she looks super cute in a hat!)

Nativity

It's beautiful to find our daughter carefully playing with a Nativity set.

"Dear God, thank you for this food, our great friends and family, daddy's job, our house . . . and we can't wait for your birthday.  Amen."  - Davis

Jesus' Birthday is a big deal!  Each Christmas we get to teach our children the enormity of the incredible gift of a Saviors birth, and celebrate His birthday. What a joy it is to share this celebration with our children. 

Superheros

At nearly-7 and 4, Burke and Kolpin are our resident superheros.   We're thankful to have these two keeping guard, rescuing and protecting our family against the forces of evil. 

Whiplash, Mr. Fix, Dr. Doom, and Loki don't stand a chance against these two tough guys 

Be brave . . . CHARGE!!!

Hard Earned

After over 35 hours of hard work raking leaves, Hendrick was proud to purchase a HUGE Lego set. 
He earned it.
We are so proud.  


Each week, the kids each have an opportunity to earn up to their age in chore money.  Each child has assigned chores on top of the normal, expected, you-are-a-part-of-this-family jobs (making your bed, putting away clothes, cleaning up after yourself).  The weekly chore money must be earned, the kids have to complete their assigned jobs daily and the pay will be based on how well the work is done.  The jobs they do are invaluable to the functioning of our household.  Some of our jobs: dishes (loading, running, and unloading the dishwasher as needed), laundry (hanging wet laundry and sorting dry laundry), toy shelves (keeping the toy bins organized), floors (sweeping and vacuuming as needed), carport (sweeping and keeping bikes and toys organized), and the table (setting and clearing).  Now, the kids don't always earn their maximum amount (read: younger kids don't always do their jobs).  But for those kids who are extremely motivated, disciplined, and hardworking, we gave a few extra, above-and-beyond jobs they can do to earn extra money on top of their regular chore money.

Raking leaves is an extra, above-and-beyond job.  Raking leaves is hard work.  We paid $5 an hour :)
  
The kids are learning to save money to be able to buy special toys.  Hoping to instil good, healthy, responsible spending habits, my husband has developed a great system to coach them as they spend their money.  For each dollar spent on something fun, $0.50 must go into into savings, plus they must have enough to cover sales tax and 10% to give.
For this enormous $100.00 Lego set, Hendrick put $50 into savings, and was able to give $10.00!  Awesome! 

Nutcracker

For the third year running, I have loved taking my two ballerinas to see the Nutcracker - such a magical show. This year we saw our local Ballet Arts performance.  Maegli was on the edge of her seat the entire time, beaming ear-to-ear when the familiar music began. 

Good Morning

Each morning, Dabney and I snuggle in bed, nursing and enjoying the quiet before the craziness begins. 
Soon, waking kids come to greet us, eager to visit with their sister.

Dabney is happy to coo and smile in response to all the loving attention.

All too soon, it's time to make beds, clean rooms, get dressed, and jump into our day.

I'm so thankful for this special, restful waking-time with sweet Dabney.  What a delightful start to the day.

*She's losing quite a bit of hair on top!