Still here!

Just wanted to let you all know we are doing fine!
We have just been busy that's all!
We bought my Mothers house in May. We are enjoying it! It is so much bigger!
Also, we were busy with the garden and other things this summer. I will try to get on here soon and do a real post!

New photo's and Sunny Days

29 going on 30

BTW, I'm going to be 30 in 2 days. Ben and I are going away for the weekend and are staying at a bed and breakfast, going to a tea shop, antiquing, and going to a big book store. I'm excited because we've never done anything like it! I had a slight moment of panic last night when I realized that I would be 40 in 10 years. It doesn't bother me being older, just the fact that the past 10 years have gone by too quickly, and I want to make sure and cherish the next 10 years with my husband and children. It's funny, when I was 20 I thought of 30 as being old. Now it don't seem so bad and I feel just as young and probably just as immature as I did then. :)

Heart Ache

My heart aches. I just got a call from an old friend/room mate. We haven't seen each other in almost 10 years, but we speak from time to time, and my love for her still goes on. She is one of the best friends I've ever had. Today she called me to tell me that her and her husband are separating. Because of his unfaithfulness and his wish to be with someone else. I didn't know what to say to her. My heart aches for her and what she's going through. What do you say to someone who is going through this when you happen to have a great marriage, and have never experienced what she is experiencing? Ultimately I'm praying for his salvation and the restoration of there marriage. But in the mean time Lord Jesus speak peace to her heart!

Australia day.

My friend Emily are getting together tomorrow to do a bit of home schooling. We are going to be learning about Australia. I just found this web site with a bunch of cool stuff that you can make and do to help your kids learn about it.
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/australia_links.htm

Solar System Coloring pages

For all you homeschooling families out there.... I found a cool site that lets you print of a solar system coloring book for beginners. Aaron is very excited about it as we are currently reading two books. One about Space and another about Neil Armstrong's life.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/coloring_book/index_beg_edu.html

Boys and Pocket Knives

We bought the boys their first pocket knife at Christmas time. Every boy needs a pocket knife right? They were just cheap little $5 pocket knives. And the boys loved them. Well we are two months down the road and Aaron decides his pocket knife doesn't have enough "stuff" on it. He saw one of his cousins awesome swiss army knife and realized what a sad little thing his knife was. So the last Friday He had to have a tooth pulled out that was refusing to make way for the tooth that had come in behind it. And because he did so good we got him a $20 swiss army victorinox. He was so excited and he uses it for everything (even cutting up his food at the table). The only problem is that it's considerably sharper than his last one and he's cut himself several times. :) Boys, are apparently sent to earth to give their Mothers gray hair and a heart attack. Actually, they've only been small cuts thankfully. This is one of those times I just have to close my eyes and tell him to go talk to his Daddy. Leave me out of it please. I don't want to make my boys into girls that's for sure.

Project Gutenburg and Homeschool

I've known about Project Gutenburg for years. It is a place where you can download books for free. They are all out of print books. I thought that it was probably a bunch of boring books that I wouldn't be interested in. But I had a brain wave this morning and decided that I would check to see if they had kids books. Sure enough they do. A ton of them! They are old and interesting. Here are links to a few pages of them:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Children's_Picture_Books_(Bookshelf) You need to scroll down for the books
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Children's_Bookshelf
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Children%27s_Myths%2C_Fairy_Tales%2C_etc._%28Bookshelf%29

My kids really enjoyed the ones that I read them and they sat still!

Happy searching!

Where you go I'll go

This is a song I'm sitting here listening too. It's my prayer.

Once a month cooking

Being a home teaching family, we get pretty busy around here. So i've decided to try once a month cooking. You make up several meals in the period of a day and then freeze them in the size portions you want. I tried it several months ago and liked it, but didn't really have very many recipes. I searched on the web the other day and found this web site with recipes specifically for freezing. http://www.momsbudget.com/freezerrecipes

I'm trying a few of the recipes today. Hopefully they will be good. So far I've done Teriyaki Chicken, Honey Ginger Chicken, and A potato casserole. I'm excited about this because this could really make my day run a lot smoother!

Outdoors and ADHD

Here is part of and article that I found very interesting. It originated from here:
http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0605/a-wndr.html
-Sarah

Can anyone remember those lazy childhood summer days spent roaming the woods and fields? When Mom said, "Go outside and play," and everybody stayed outdoors until supper time?

For most youngsters today, those opportunities for exploring the outdoors are fewer or virtually nonexistent. And that, author Richard Louv believes, is depriving children of much more than fun and fresh air.

In his new book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books), Louv takes an in-depth look at the importance of children developing a connection with nature. He finds an alarming increase in what he calls "nature-deficit disorder," a trend that's keeping kids indoors much of the time, contributing to obesity, depression, hyperactivity, and attention problems.

"There's something in us as human beings that needs to see natural horizons," Louv argues. "When we don't get that, we don't do so well."

Children today, he says, rarely get to experience the simple pleasures of nature, such as fishing in a stream, building a tree house, hiking in the woods, climbing a tree, watching a campfire, idling in a special hiding spot in the woods, or just gazing at a nighttime sky or a bug in a vacant lot.

Even the passive enjoyment of watching natural landscapes from the window of a car has been pre-empted by built-in video screens.

What children today are missing, Louv says, is more than just another form of fun. Nature engages all of the senses in a way that few other experiences can. "We need natural experiences," he writes. "We require fully activated senses in order to feel fully alive."

Louv supports his argument with recent studies suggesting that direct exposure to the outdoors can reduce the incidence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), decrease stress, and boost children's creativity and concentration. Research has shown that "Kids who play outdoors were calmer, more open to conflict resolution, and did remarkably better in science and math," he says.

Louv thinks parents need to be aware of the importance of this natural bonding with nature and make a greater effort to get their children outside. And he believes Scouting—from Tiger Cubs through Cub Scouting, Boy Scouting, and Venturing—offers a special opportunity to help address this "deficit."

STUCK INSIDE

Today's younger generation is the first in history that isn't spending big chunks of time outdoors, Louv observes, and we are only beginning to understand the negative ways this affects children.

"For tens of thousands of years, human beings' first developmental stages were spent in nature, playing outdoors," he says. "That has reversed in just a matter of decades...and it has enormous implications."

Most parents are all too aware of why children aren't enjoying the outdoors in ways previous generations did: Too many tightly scheduled, highly structured activities; lots more homework; too much pressure to succeed in academic pursuits and organized sports; and increased parental fears of "stranger danger."

And there's the siren lure of the PlayStation 2's and Xbox 360's and other electronic gizmos.

A Kaiser Family Foundation study, for example, found youngsters 8 to 18 average 44 hours a week plugged into some sort of electronic medium, whether it's an IPod, computer, or video game.

"I interviewed a boy who said he preferred playing indoors because that's where the electrical outlets were," says Louv. "But that 'plugged in' environment promotes an atrophied perception. The world is reduced to a flat-panel screen."

There are other reasons kids aren't getting out: Neighborhoods that once ended at a woods or a field are now surrounded by expanding urban development.

And our litigious society makes any mildly risky outdoor activity off limits.

For example, concerns about potential lawsuits prompted a school in Broward County, Fla., to banish swings from playgrounds. And to keep children safe, a community in California now prohibits tree houses.

Louv believes parents can counter these trends if they better understand the downside of limiting outdoor play. He cites research, such as a University of Illinois study, which suggested that children as young as 5 with ADHD show a reduction in symptoms when exposed to any kind of nature.

Another study showed that people who could see a natural vista—forest, landscape, or mountain—from their hospital bed recovered faster than patients whose view was limited to urban vistas.

Why does nature have such a profound effect on the human psyche? Louv thinks that exposure to a nature setting demands "immersion attention"—the use of all of one's senses. That kind of exposure in turn boosts the brain's ability to sustain "directed attention"—the concentration and focus that allows a child to stay attentive long enough to, for example, finish a homework assignment.

Louv would like to see more studies on the subject, but he says that's unlikely, because there's little commercial incentive. It's ironic, he notes, that one of the few studies on the subject was conducted by a laundry detergent manufacturer—to find out why kids weren't getting grass stains on their jeans anymore.

He also worries that children with no deep connections to nature are unlikely to become adults who want to serve as good stewards of the natural world.

"The health of the earth is at stake as well," he says. "How the young respond to nature...will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes—our daily lives."

Winter days....

We discovered this at wal-mart the other day for only $6 ( 2.5 pounds), and the kids have been enjoying it. We've really been feeling the need to find things for the kids to do with there hands on these cold winter days. Otherwise they get antsy rather quickly. They also play with lots and lots of legos :)