Digging and Winking

 Jeremy has put Josiah's love of digging to work. They tackled a smaller stump first and now they have conquered this big one! It's amazing what a passionate little boy can motivate his Daddy to do!

Let's just clarify...Aliza is have a "pj" day and Josiah dressed himself completely.

 They dug out the roots.

 Jeremy cut the stump in sections.

 There it goes!

 It's gone! Josiah's personal objective was to find grubs. He was successful...and he enjoyed squashing them!

Josiah figured out that he can wink both eyes. I believe it is genetic. Jeremy can wink both eyes. I can't and Aliza can't. He concentrates so hard.

Rainbows

 Aliza learned about clouds and rainbows today and they did this experiment. I was exclaiming right along with the children!

Put some milk in a small dish. Add 3 drops of red, blue and yellow food coloring. Put a couple drops of liquid dish soap in the middle.

The dish soap pushes the color to the edge and causes the colors to start spreading out.

It takes a few minutes, but the colors mix and you can see every color in the rainbow.

Our bowl got sloshed around a bit so I didn't get a good end picture before it was mostly black. It was super neat, though, and easy to do!

Yay for learning!

Higher is Always Better

 Anna is climbing up on everything. Every time I turn around she is up on something that she doesn't belong on. I remove her from her precarious situation. And she lays on the floor and cries about it for a moment. She hops up and goes to find the next available chair to crawl up on that will lead her to higher ground. Right now all of our dining room chairs are pulled away from the table and the desk chairs are away from the desk. I try to give myself some sanity!

On the desk. Anna has already started Netflix by pushing buttons on the Wii remote.

Eating oranges on the table.

Eating someones unfinished lunch. I guess I didn't get the table cleared off fast enough! haha.

Washing dishes at Grandma's house.

On my desk while I'm working on Linda's wedding invitations.

I decided she may as well "help."

And at this moment Anna snuck up behind me and is getting in to finished invitation pieces!

On the other hand, Aliza and Josiah have been the BEST of friends this week. They have played and played and played together. You know how they say, "Never wake a sleeping baby." I also say, "Never interrupt siblings playing happily together." I hate to interrupt them to even start school. In fact, Josiah has watched several lessons with Aliza this week. I hardly know what to do with myself when I'm not a referee! I LOVE IT!!!

Bird Feeders

We had a week of summer weather last week and Aliza's unit in school was "Winter"! It was fun to do a "winter" craft on the deck in summer weather.

The day's science lesson was about how birds migrate to warmer areas for the winter and the craft was to make 3 different bird feeders.

For the first, Aliza made a string of Cheerios and hung in on a branch.

For the second, Aliza cut shapes out of (a whole loaf) of bread. We let the bread sit on the counter overnight to dry out and then spread peanut butter on each piece and covered it in birdseed. The shapes fit quite nicely in suet feeders. We hung one up at Grandma's house.

 Finally, pine cones were rolled in shortening and then rolled in birdseed.

My Soul Rejoices

Aliza's Bible lesson today was about Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a short man who climbed a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were despised because they often collected more money than the government required and kept the surplus for themselves. As Jesus passed by Zacchaeus, he called him out of the tree and told Zacchaeus that He was coming to his house. As a result of meeting Jesus, Zacchaeus was a changed man and the town people could see the difference in his life.

Aliza's teacher said, "If you have not asked Jesus to forgive your sins, you should. Then people around you will see a change in your life too."

I was listening to the lesson as I cleared the supper table.

Before it dawned on me what was happening, I noticed that Aliza had gone under the table. She often tries to sneak away from her lesson, so I called her back to her chair. As soon as I said it I realized that I had interrupted something important.

Aliza didn't give up. She told me that she needed to be in the living room for a few minutes by herself. I peeked around the corner quickly to see her face down on the couch.

A minute later she came back to me and said, "Mommy, I have to whisper something in your ear." It is usually something important if she wants to whisper in my ear. I leaned down and Aliza said, "I just prayed and asked Jesus to forgive my sins." I gave her a hug and told her that was wonderful and together we told her Daddy.

Aliza felt a little shy about it, but I wanted to tell everyone!!! I settled for telling her grandparents.

I know this is Aliza's story, however; I wanted to record her story because it is a Mommy story too. I have prayed since the day I found out that Aliza was growing inside me that she would choose follow Jesus. I continue to frequently pray for the salvation for each of my children. To see my prayer for Aliza be answered is awesome! My prayers for Aliza's faith will continue, but they will change a bit. Now I pray that Aliza will grow in faith in God. I also pray that she will never waver from her decision to follow Christ.

Rain

Josiah picked out an off road truck after his doctor appointment. He cooperated for the whole visit including 5 shots so I was pretty much game for whatever he picked out! Josiah really wanted some mud to drive his truck in. So after the rain today he was quick to take his truck outside. Anna was right behind him!

This is a video of Josiah and Anna playing outside.



A friend told me today of an article she read about women suffering from depression and anxiety because they read Mom blogs and compare themselves to other Moms. I know there is a risk of only publishing the perfect aspect of life and, of course, some of the imperfect would be inappropriate to publish. Here's my disclaimer, if my life looks perfect to you and you feel depressed or anxious when you read my posts, please stop reading! My life is far from perfect; however I am quite happy. =) I want my readers to be happy too!! The end.

It is too soon to mention this, but we started the couch25k training program tonight. We meaning the whole family. We ran/walked up and down our little side road. Josiah and Aliza ran with us and we pushed Anna in the stroller. I do not really enjoy running, but I feel the need for cardiovascular health. We'll see how this goes. I hope we keep at it, but no promises at this point!

Noteworthy

 First and foremost, Josiah pooped on the potty for the first time tonight. (Insert a happy Mama dance here) I believe that my second child is now completely potty trained.

We are in our 4th quarter of school. Being a counter, I am counting down to the end. By weeks, not days. We have sortof slowed down a bit. A few more 4 days weeks. Since the weather is so nice we are outside a lot more and doing away with some of the crafts.

We took a field trip to visit Daddy at work.

Recently Aliza has been teaching her Lalaloopsy Girls. It is fun to listen to her because she asks questions for them and answers the question.

 Anna's new spot. She turns on the water and brushes her teeth--with everyone's toothbrush.

Anna managed to dump Jeremy's ipad into the tub while Josiah's water was draining. I believe that I was cleaning the downstairs bathroom, since we were having company in the evening, when that happened. The consequences I face for getting something done are steep around here! There is hope that the ipad will recover.

It's golf season--enough said.