Candle By Night

Yes, I am still alive. Anna and her daughter Chloe came to visit for the week and sadly they will be leaving Friday morning. Haven't posted much because today we went to Amish Country, but on Monday we had an emergency. Literally! We had to call 911 and have the ambulance come and get Chloe (at 6 in the morning.) It turns out that she had a seizure . She has never had one before and we are not sure, exactly, what caused it, but we are praising the Lord that she is all right. I probably won't update again until they leave. I just wanted to let you all know what is going on. :D Blessings to all!

I just had to post this. I thought it was too funny. :D If you want to make one for yourself...just go to yearbook Yourself . Make sure you have a picture of your face straight on, not at an agle, and no bangs on your forehead for the best picture of the transformations. Just had to do one for hubby too. :D

You never know what will happen when Papa is in charge of the bedtime routine. ;o) Too funny. Here is a video of Big T looking....well.....goofy and then a video (these are dark) of Big T and Sweet E laughing. Can't resist a child's laugh.

Now that we have been back for a day we need to get back to our school lessons. Here are a couple of videos to help get back into school mode again and learn about the Moon this week. :D

It's 3 AM...Don't the children look so excited to be headed to North Myrtle Beach? ;o) I think this was about 6 am.....Sweet E was really tired. After 12 hours we finally arrive at Grandpa and Grandma's Beach house. Time for dinner and exploring their house and garage. And then time for an evening walk on the beach. Then on Saturday we took a field trip to Ripley's Aquarium . The whole family enjoys the aquarium (and I especially do since we now get a Homeschool discount when we go). This year they also had a pirate exhibit at the aquarium. (I think two years ago it was the Bermuda Triangle...or something similar) Then it was time for a quick dinosaur ride before heading back to spend the rest of the day at the beach. :D Notice that Little E is buried up to his hips. I think it took him more than 5 minutes to realize what Grandpa had done. :D Then it was time to bury the older two children. ;o) Sunday we attended church, went to the beach for a couple of hours and then...

I realize most of you probably didn't even know my family was gone from Friday until this evening. I have lots of pictures to post but I just wanted to say "Hi!" and share something. It still gives me the creeps. I went to start laundry tonight. The bucket that I keep the dirty diapers in got left by the back door, next to the washer, last week when I did the laundry. I don't recall leaving it outside for a period of time...but maybe I did. Anyway, I went to start a load of laundry, looked over into the bucket to move it, and saw a BAT! Yes, there was a bat laying face down, dead, inside the bucket. I have no idea how it got there. As I said, I may have left it outside overnight, but I can not be sure. I don't think I did....and....if I didn't....how did it get in the house and why did it land in the bucket. Yuck...hubby is disposing of it now.

I just wanted to share the experiments we did for our sun lessons yesterday. You can see in this picture all three: grapes-> raisins, sun tea, and a sundial. We have had the grapes out since Friday I think. You can see that one got darker in color and most of them are "squishy" to the touch. We haven't had a lot of "scorchers" lately so this will take a while . Then you can see our awesome sundial. ;o) The hardest part was that we had to move it to different positions in the yard (since we have a lot of shade different parts of the day.) It was fun to watch Big T....he would go out to "see if the shadow moved". He would go out...his eyes would get big and he would say, "Mama...it moved!" No sun out today because we actually got rain! I couldn't believe it. It has been so long since waking up to rain...it's a wonderful sound. :D Well, better get things together for lessons today. Blessings to all! :D

I wanted to make sure that I shared pictures of what was started yesterday. Here is a picture of all 9 crayons we made. The "suns" are, obviously, the yellow and orange ones. When I was finishing dinner last night Beloved and the children helped by taking the clothes off the line. This is what I walked out to. Now...that is a great way to get laundry off the line. :D Oh...and then there was Little E. While the older two were helping with laundry...this is what he felt like doing. Still don't know what he did with his diaper. :D Oh, and then there was MY swimdress. First of all the pattern I had was not made for a woman who has gained 45 lbs. after 3 children. So I had to alter the top, bottom, and skirt quite a bit. Well, I got the top done (I was working on this after everyone was in bed.) Top "just fit" and then I got the shorts done......Good so far. The shorts fit well and then I had to alter the width and length of the skirt. Got the front out...went to c...

"I am giving us an opportunity every Monday to not only count our blessings, but to share them with others. This is a way that we can encourage one another. Make a post on your blog telling us about your blessing. Please put a link back to this post ( on her blog ). You can add the URL of your blog post on Mr. Linky below. Many of our blessings we will have pictures of and we can share those as well. I think that many times we forget that it is a blessing to be able to breath, to get out of bed, to hold a baby... Share your blessings with us. They encourage others. We can share so many other things.... special gifts, recipes, let's take the time to share how God has blessed us!! - Marci " It just keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and.......I have so many blessings to count today that I couldn't pick just one. I thank God for blessing me with my children, the ability to sew, for friends, for family, and the chance to homeschool. So I just w...