Never a dull moment

Life is never dull or boring and most of the time I like it that way.  (What I don't like is when "exciting" includes the hospital or other medically related problems.)  Daily life with the people I love - that is my kind of excitement.

Eliana brings her own brand of energy to our days.  Rebecca does her best to infuse a level of "girliness" into her sister, but it is hard to outweigh 4 brothers.  LOL  Rebecca does a fabulous job of giving her sister amazing hair styles.  Its always easy to tell who fixes her hair each day.  If it looks outstanding ... then it was Rebecca!  Here is one of her latest styles.  Isn't it cute?!

Want a peek at some Eliana happenings?  One day she was calling me from the kitchen.  I walked in and found her like this.  She then indicated that she wanted to open the microwave.  What I didn't realize then was that she had already opened it.

And put in a box of taco shells to heat and eat.  LOL

Later that same day, when Roger arrived home from work,  he called me upstairs.  Our bathroom was very foggy because someone had been taking a shower.  And Eliana was standing there in a "ta da" pose showing us what George had been doing.

She was excited to go on an egg hunt in the neighborhood this year.  She liked finding the eggs and really didn't care about what was in them.  Thankfully there were a lot missed at the beginning of the hunt as she was not going to go quickly or fight the crowd to get to the eggs.

She was just as happy to be swinging with her friend George.  Yes, he is a pretty constant companion.

Some days our medical appointments include everyone.  Not my favorite, but it is doable.  This is at our eye doctors.  ALL of them are patients there.

Check out our little chicky with her new glasses.  She is not terribly found of wearing them so we are practicing.

Heading to therapy.  We have the same routines coming and going.  As we walk in, she points to each door and asks me  "this one".  She waits for me to say no, or she will say no if I don't answer correctly.

Just a peek.  We are thankful for this little bundle of cuteness.  We are thankful for EACH one of our children.  EACH was prayed for and desired very much.  We are so THANKFUL to be parents to 6 amazing children.  God is very good.

Blessings
Leslie

Before FIAR co-op: Prayer for a Child

This meeting of our Before Co-op focused on the book Prayer for a Child.  We started out with a devotion and a song on Jesus Loves the Little Children.  There is a beautiful picture in the book of children from all over the world.  We watched a video of this song that also had lovely pictures of a wide variety of children.

We read the story.

Eliana is interacting so animatedly with Curious George (who is a dear friend and goes with her everywhere!).  

 We talked about shapes and looked at a variety of objects and identified the shapes.

 THen they were given a puzzle to work.  Each child got these papers and also a baggie with cut-up shapes inside.  Eat shape was cut into 2 pieces and some of them were trickier than you might think.

Eliana was happy to glue these two pieces together and then she was done.  We took it home to work on it another time.

 The other kids did make the puzzles though.

 Meanwhile the older boys were treated to another lesson day with one of the Dads!  They learned about the human body.

 We also played a shapes game.  Isn't this a great use of a tablecloth?  There were 8 different shapes drawn onto it.

 One of the moms called out a shape and the child then tried to toss a beanbag onto the correct shape.  Eliana liked this one and it was fun to see her participate.  (She doesn't always join in.)

 Each child had 3 beanbags to try on 3 different shapes.

 Boys listening to their heartbeat.

Snack time for this book was obvious as the girl was thankful for milk and bread!  I offered to make and bring gluten free bread for Eliana.  I tried a new mix.  I thought it looked really pretty but the results were only OK according to everyone that tried it.  (I didn't have any as this was during my juice fast.)

 Eliana having her snack.  This was a good spot for her away from the other bread.

 Everyone enjoying the yummy foods.

The last activity of the day was a craft project.  They made little hands and could write on each finger someone that they were praying for.

 Eliana enjoys cutting.

She also likes trying to trace her own hands.

 The children work so diligently.

 Just a cutie!

Rebecca helped Daniel again with his project for show and tell.  It was an awesome one too!  This was again from a story in the Mad Scientist Club.  In this particular story, the boys rig up some pranks to make a house seem haunted.  One of them was using magnets to hold up the pictures on the walls - and also to make them fall off.  

 Daniel's pictures were also held up by magnets and thus would fall down when removed.  Love all the details that they added to the room too.  He and Rebecca have both had fun with these projects.

 As always, this is a fun morning with friends.  I sometimes wish that Eliana was more cooperative in participating with the activities, but we'll keep working on it and take any improvements where they happen.

Looking forward to fun with Jesse Bear next month.

Blessings
Leslie

Misc happenings in March

So many things that don't really fit into a day or a theme, but are just parts of life.  Most of life is that way.  Not a celebration or an event, but just the daily happenings that make up our life.

Here is a peek at a few things that happened last month.  I was able to spend a week-end with friends scrapbooking!  I haven't done this since before Eliana was born and it was so much fun!

Roger and the children went to a friend's house to hang out so that we could have the house for the girls week-end!  Did I mention that it was fun?!

 And I got so much done.  That was encouraging.  I still have much to do though.  Its a project that always seems to be behind.  LOL  More than just getting things done though, it was fun to have this time with my friends.  I'm so thankful for my friends (those here and those not).

Our weeks always include therapy.  Eliana has speech and occupational therapy.  This is a fuzzy picture, but its my big girl riding a trike and doing a great job!

 And doctor's appointments too.  We have had so many the last few months it seems.  Some are routine and others are diagnostic.  Joshua had a great (but LONG) diabetes clinic visit last month.  His A1C had improved greatly and it encouraged me a lot!

 After co-op one day, some of my friends and I were talking about health and how to achieve better health.  We talked about doing a juice fast.  We decided to try to do this together.  To encourage each other.  I never would have done it on my own!

After the first couple of days, I wasn't sure that I was glad that I started it either.  My first couple of drinks were not good!  This was the first one.  It needed way more apples to balance out all of that kale.

 The first couple of days I was VERY cold, grumpy and hungry!  I was dropping weight pretty quickly (for me) and finally figured out how to get in more calories to slow that down.  By the 4th day, I felt GREAT!  My head was clear, I was not tired.  No headaches.  And LOTS of energy!  It was as though I had never realized that I wasn't feeling good.  It was very encouraging.

I stayed on the fast for 7 days.  I weaned off of it slowly, but still found that I felt badly eating a lot of more traditional foods.  I'm still trying to figure out how best to eat healthy.  I have cut out wheat (which I had mostly done before) and white sugar.  I'm trying to eat mostly whole foods and foods made from scratch.  Its a journey and one that I know I will continue to learn about.  I'm thankful for friends to have done this with me!

So, there's a peek into an interesting couple of weeks at our house.  More soon.  I'm hoping to post each day this week.

Blessings
Leslie

Sweet celebration

I'm so very thankful that we are close enough to Christopher to run over and celebrate with him on his birthday.  :)  I know that this may not always be the case and I want to take advantage of any opportunities that we have.  I'm also very thankful that he is interested in hanging out with us.

I am so very thankful for this oldest son.  The one that made me a mom.  I've learned so much being your mom.  So many lessons that I had not anticipated and the joy surpassing anything I could have imagined.  The ups and downs of life have thankfully been travelled with people we love and most of all a God who loves us more than we can understand.

We had a short window of time in between Christopher's classes and so we met for lunch.  We chose Mellow Mushroom since they have gluten free pizza.  (And I was VERY impressed with our waitress who took extra precautions after asking if the GF was due to celiac.)

The kids all bought him gifts with their own money.  Very sweet!  We also made him a cake - but didn't have time to share it with him.  (He took it to share with friends.)

The time went too quickly and it was soon time to drop him off and give hugs.

 I'm thankful for you and love celebrating a wonderful (mostly) 20 years!

Blessings

Leslie

Field Trip to Art Museum

We had a last minute cancellation of a field trip and so an impromptu one was planned.  It was a gorgeous - but COLD day to head outside!  (This was a couple of weeks ago for those who are local.)  The weather in NC in the spring was wide swings!

We wandered inside the museum for a little bit and looked at a few of the exhibits and then headed outside.  Our family has not done much exploring behind the museum and we had a great time doing this.  We wandered along the paths with some of our friends.

The nature of this trip left us separated in some ways from friends.  We didn't all arrive at the same time and as we were wandering it was harder to catch up.  It was still a lot of fun.

 The trails behind the museum are nice, paved ones.  Eliana helped with her stroller, but was glad for the ride when we reached a steep hill.

It was a fun place to run and a great place for scooters too.

 We walked until we reached this bridge.

 It goes from behind the museum across the highway to Meredith's campus.  Not many people were on the path this morning.

 Some of the kids tried to get trucks to honk at them as they drove by.  And some did.

Its funny, as a driver, I've never noticed people on this bridge.  I'll have to look the next time we drive under it.

Most of the kids liked the bridge though a couple found it unnerving to be on a bridge while cars and trucks were passing underneath it.

As we were leaving the bridge, one of the very observant nature loving kids spotted this perched on the top of the bridge.  Pretty neat, huh?

On our way back, we enjoyed the company of friends.

 We went to the "cloud observation" area.  There is a small opening in the roof to allow in some sunlight.  The small amount of light causes reflections and shadows of trees and clouds to show up on the walls of the structure.

 Initially, it is very dark when the door is closed, but as your eyes adjust, you are able to see neat things on the walls.

 This was a fun spot to explore.  It would be fun to go again at a different time of day to see what we could see.

 Due to the temperature, we did not picnic outside, but instead opted to just run and play.

 This would be a fun spot to do some nature journaling and observing.  We look forward to returning.

 It was a great day to be outside - enjoying both nature and the things created by man.  A fun day to spend with friends.

I'm thankful for all of the great things to explore in our area and love doing this with my family and friends.

Looking forward to our next adventure!

Blessings
Leslie