Archives for October 2006

Lazy Saturdays, Firecamps and Pumpkins

We’ve decided to cut a few things out of our schedule so we had today as nothing but a REAL Saturday. Nothing to do but nothing! It was so wonderful.

Tonight my husband fried chicken which was wonderful. I made a cake which I promptly ate too much of and we built a campfire. Loving Auburn football like he does my hubbie even strung the cable all the way out to the fire and the boys are sitting there watching football as I type. I’m inside watching and trying to root our Auburn Tigers on to a victory over the Florida Gators.

When the boys went to Stuffmart today they bought a pumpkin and dad carved it tonight so we’d have a pumpkin by the campfire (which is commonly known as a firecamp around our house, something the kids started)

So I thought I’d share a few pictures of tonight with you before I head back down to the firecamp.

Baby girl in her new “hand-me-down” kitty sweater. It's too cute!

Dad begins to carve the pumpkin

The grimace as #2 son holds the pumpkin for a picture.

Helping daddy!

The artist!!

The Finished Product! BOO!

In Him,

Julie

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/juliestew

3 Comments

Posted: October 14, 2006 by Julie |Category: Happenings | Tags:

The Best Hour of the Day

Today my husband and I spent about an hour lying on our driveway enjoying the breeze and the fall temperatures. It felt like one of those beautiful Colorado days with no humidity, crystal blue skies and a gentle breeze.
He chose the shade and I chose the sun. As I gazed at the sky I thought how often I need to take the time to stop and admire all God has made for us to enjoy.
And I also got to enjoy my husband. We laughed, we talked, we rested as the kids pulled one another in the wagon and baby girl slept inside. What a joy!
Thank you God for rest and for the good sense to take the time to stop and smell the roses.

In Him,

Julie

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/juliestew

4 Comments

Posted: October 12, 2006 by Julie |Category: Happenings | Tags:

What a day…

What started off as a routine day with Bible Study and a doctor visit ended up being a little more involved than I had planned. My son had a severe reaction to a bee/yellow jacket sting several weeks ago and we finally made it to the allergist today. He had an anaphalactyc (too tired to look that spelling up!) reaction so the allergist wanted to do some testing. First, a little scratch test. Then on to the needles. YIKES. The numbing cream didn't work so we suffered through two rounds of 6 needles each round before calling it a day. My little guy was so brave!

So the dr. sent us home with a prescription for numbing cream to be applied 1.5 hours before our next appointment. Hopefully, this time it will work since it will be on for much longer.

The great part of the day was getting a visit from our friend Amy from KY. We lived there for three years until moving to our present home. She now lives in Reno, NV. And has promised us a place to stay in the event we can get a babysitter for our four “angels” for about a week so we can go skiing. Any takers??????????????????????

While you are thinking about that here's a picture from our trip to get pizza tonight…

3 Comments

Posted: October 11, 2006 by Julie |Category: Happenings | Tags:

Field Trip Monday

Today we went on a field trip to Chimney Rock Park in North Carolina. You can read about the park by clicking here. They had a special homeschool day today and a lesson about bats. I admit, I was a tad bit disappointed. I was expecting to see bats. Instead we built a bat house and then the instructor talked about bats. No skeletons, no real bats, no caves, no bat scat. Bummer. It was an absolutely perfect day otherwise.

And since I went with a friend and her kids I have two, count them, one, two, pictures to share with you that have ME in them. Can you believe it? My kids do have a mom.

So without further ado……

Here's my youngest son running around before the bat house making began….

Here I am TRYING to hammer nails to make the bat house. The wood (white oak, I think) was really hard and difficult to hammer a nail through. We got it done though!

Here are my boys with their friends…..

Here's me and my oldest son. He's gazing at the huge American flag flapping in the breeze….

Here's the waterfall we hiked to see. If you look at the lower part of the photograph you get an idea of the scale. There's a man pointing out something to the group he's with. At one part of the hike we climbed about 200 steps. Talk about a work out! All four boys were sitting waiting for us at the top. My friend Lisa was front-packing her 2 month old and we were carrying her 2 year old between the two of us. Whew!

Crazy boys and a beautiful day…..

At one point on the hike water had eroded the soil underneath a huge tree and the boys had fun in the hole made by the erosion. It was so cool to see all the tree's roots and the way they had adapted to their circumstances.

The view….truly magnificant!

So, how was your Monday?

My hubbie was busy while we were going and hot our fire pit/camp fire area all ready for the fall/winter season. Pictures of that tomorrow. I'm typing on the bed and don't think I have enough energy to find my camera!

Exhausted but alive in HIM,
Julie

8 Comments

Posted: October 9, 2006 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags:

Spiders and the love of Jesus through a dear friend

This is a resurrected post I decided to share again in light of Kampsplete's sweet and kind words in her post today.

SPIDERS

Here's a funny spider story from when me and my hubbie were first married……..

my husband is definitely scared of spiders. he had a room mate when he lived in california that collected black widows. i remember him telling me stories about John throwing wads of black string over the shower onto him saying, “say hello to blackie!” at which my husband would promptly FREAK OUT.

when we were first married and living in TN he came running into the bathroom one evening while i was showering. he was yelling something like, “come here, come here! it's an emergency” (i had visions of this being my life after children, not with my newly aquired and very handsome husband)

quickly drying off i enter the kitchen with towel wrapped around my body to find my husband standing across the kitchen from a giant wolf spider shooting rubber bands at the thing. okay, it may be a female thing but what if you hit it and it goes running instead of dying. YIKES.

what do i do? i promptly jump over the spider, grab the can of RAID and position myself for the death spray. Ready. Aim. Fire. What??? What's that? As momma spider is promptly curling to her death a million zillion quadrillion baby spiders who where inconspicuously perched on her back run for dear life. needless to say my spraying radius got bigger and bigger.

i think the entire breakfast area got a dose of RAID.

now that they are ALL dead….
who gets to clean them all up?

I'll let you guess!!!

now don't get me wrong…my hubbie will slay the fiercest of dragons for me, but spiders? no way!

6 Comments

Posted: October 5, 2006 by Julie |Category: Chuckles | Tags:

Homeschool lesson of the day….

Homeschool lesson of the day…

Where do foreign languages come from?

or
What mom learned in Bible Study today

Genesis 11:1
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

Then Noah's decendents decided to disobey God and settle after they'd moved eastward from the ark's landing.

Genesis 11:3 and 4
They said to each other, “Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (oh, how highly we think of ourselves!!)

Genesis 11:5-7
But the Lord came down to see the city…
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

And this place was called Babel because the Lord confused the language of the whole world there.

And I wondered where the word babbling came from! This is just another indication that EVERYTHING comes from the Lord. He IS the beginning, the middle and the end. He IS I AM.

Resting in HIM,
julie

(notes: bold in scripture is mine)

1 Comment

Posted: October 4, 2006 by Julie |Category: Happenings | Tags:

What's in your yard?

After a morning of Bible, then a cute halloween craft, we meandered outside for God's homeschool lesson of the day.

Now, don't think I'm some supermom. I didn't do much Bible all last week, in fact I've let it slide too much this school year. So this morning I began with Bible. We prayed together and then read about Jesus' crucification and resurrection. Afterwards we worked on a cute Halloween craft I got at Michaels. I meant to photograph it too but alas, all you're getting is bugs. So today I laid aside math, language and spelling for “putting first things first”.

On our ventures outside today we ran across a small praying mantis, lots of spiders, a huge praying mantis, and a small snake. Yes, we played with the snake some too but let it go before I could get to the camera. I was scared the boys would squish it before I got it back to safety.

Here's what's in our yard….how 'bout yours?

His defense posture….so cool to watch!!

JULIE

6 Comments

Posted: October 2, 2006 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags:

There's no coach like dad…

My boys have had the privilege of having their dad as one of their coaches this year.

I can't tell you how awesome it has been to know that he is out there on the field with them.

I've been so blessed because of the comfort I feel knowing he is out there for the right reasons….to serve his God and to serve those kids.

His love for football is something he wants to relay to those kids but that goal comes behind his love for Jesus. He wants those kids to feel good about who they are and why God has put them here. He wants to encourage kids in their walk with God.

Some of these kids may go on to be professional football players. Some may discover their heart for serving. Some may go on to seek fulfillment in other sports. But no matter what they choose God has chosen to touch each of their lives through my husband.

For that, I am extremely grateful and ever so humbled.

1 Comment

Posted: October 1, 2006 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags: