Today is my Dh's birthday!

Happy Birthday Baby!

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!
I'll be posting pics soon of our Xmas...see you all really soon!

Merry Christmas!

The Santa Debate

I have a problem with lying. I don't like doing it. It wasn't always this way. When I was younger I could lie with the best of them, until the day I got caught in a lie. It was not fun. I was 10yo at the time. Ever since that day I've had a real problem with lying.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some holier than thou person, there are plenty of things that I do that I should have a problem with and I don't!(spending too much money, being rude to kids who are mean to my kids, eating my kids' Halloween candy...)

Which brings me to the subject of Santa Claus. Now, I don't know about you but I never believed in Santa. Sure it was fun to sing about him and pretend he was real, but I always knew it was my parents or rather grandparents who got us the gifts, not Santa. It did not spoil anything for me. I still enjoyed the Christmas "magic", even though I knew the truth.

I heard a Mom, a Christian Mom, complaining that some 6yo boy told her 4yo girl that Santa was not real. She went on to criticize the parents of the boy for telling their son the truth and spoiling it for the rest of the kids who still believed the in "magic" of Santa. According to this woman, her daughter went on to tell this boy that he was wrong and that she was right, Santa is real. The mother was very proud of the way her daughter stood up to this kid.

Does anybody else see something wrong with this picture?!?!?!
This little girl is "standing up" for her beliefs, her FALSE beliefs and her mother is proud of that. She thinks the boy is wrong when in fact he is being more honest with her than her own Mother!! I wonder if when this little girl finally learns there is no Santa her mom will tell her to go apologize to the boy who told her the truth all those years ago. Because she should!!

My daughter knows Santa is not real(remember my problem with lying), we still sing Santa songs, watch Santa movies, and read Santa books. We have fun with Santa but she knows that Santa is a fairy tale just like Cinderella or the Easter bunny. It hasn't spoiled her Christmas, the magic is still there! More importantly, the day somebody tells her there is no God, she'll know she can come to me and I will tell her the TRUTH!

It's too bad that the birth of our Savior is not "magic" enough for our kids.
Maybe this is something I should really have a problem with!

Ok, I'm done ranting...go back to your shopping!!
Merry Christmas!

Holiday Break

We are done with school for the next two and a half weeks!
Tonight is our Club's Xmas party and Friday is Dh's Xmas party at his job.
Dh is really excited because we usually can't make to this party. All of the gifts have been bought, wrapped, packed and ready to go!! I don't think I'll be posting anything till after the holidays. Please pray for good weather and traveling mercies this weekend! Have a wonderful Christmas!!!

Christmas Unit Study Week 3

This week we only have two days of school. We'll be talking about the birth of Jesus, who went to see Him after he was born and why we celebrated Christmas by giving gifts to each other.
We watched The Nativity Story!, it was so good. The kids couldn't really follow the movie, but they understood the part when baby Jesus was finally born and the shepherds and Wise men came to worship the baby and bring gifts. We made some cookie dough and in a few minutes we are going to bake some Xmas cookies! I don't know what we are going to do for the rest of the week.
They just want to go to Nina's already and watch the Polar Express, even though they've seen it four times already!!
Oh! In case you were wondering Dh renewed his license and the van is getting inspected as we speak!!

It's Really Windy Outside

First we had rain, then we got snow, some more rain and then came the ice.
Now we have . . . wind?!?
Yes, we have a Wind advisory in effect from 4 PM est this afternoon to 1 pm est Monday.
What's next . . . . locust??????
(Yes, that's A5 wearing a summer dress)

Book List

I just finished reading; So you don't want to go to Church anymore by Jake Colsen
(actually that's not his real name, it is a pseudonym for the combine work of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman)
It is a fictional book, not a self help, resource book or anything like that.
I know there's a lot of people that have been hurt by the "Church". Unfortunately some Churches forget that the real Church is people going for Christ, and they start caring more about the building, the institution and how to keep "it" going.
This book is a fictional story about an Associate Pastor in a very large "successful" church, who meets a man who may or may not be John the Apostle.
This man "John" talks to the Pastor about the true Church and what Jesus really set us free from when he died on the Cross.
It is not anti church, it just reminds us to keep our focus on our relationship with God through Jesus and to not settle for being just an audience, but to be actual participants.
I really enjoyed the book, it got a little repetitive towards the end, but overall an excellent book!

Journey Through Xmas Bloopers!

Journey Through the Christmas Story

Our Church does this play every Christmas; Journey through the Xmas story and it is wonderful. You literally have to walk through the whole building, where you get to see different scenes of the story of the birth of Jesus!
This year my Dh got to play the angel Gabriel. This scene is Joseph having a dream about leaving Mary when an angel appears to him in the dream. Dh did such an amazing job!!
It was so funny because as soon as X3 saw him he whispered "Daddy"!

Ice Ice Baby!

For the last 4-5 days we've been getting nothing but rain, which is nice since the rest of the country is getting ice! I've been going to different blogs from women all over the country and the pictures are incredible, houses, backyards, grass all covered in ice. I haven't complained about the rain because I knew it could be A LOT worse. Well, now it is a lot worse, we finally got the ice.
Thankfully it does not look as bad as those other places and they are calling for the sun to finally be out tomorrow, so anything that happens tonight as far as ice will be gone by then.

The weird thing is my deck in the backyard is covered with ice but the front of the house is not.
I was able to get the mail just fine, but when I tried to help the dogs come in from the deck I almost killed myself because of the ice. Wheatherbug is calling for a winter storm warning right here in our area and I'm really worried for Dh, but he keeps telling me the roads are fine in Maryland. It's not Maryland I'm worried about!!! Once he gets to the Pa line things are going to look a lot different.

We read A Charlie Brown Christmas today and since we have the movie we were able to watch it as well. Other than that we have been playing with X3's train tracks! Look at the awesome job my son did this morning (I helped).

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Ever since I had kids my brain has not been what it used to be.
I forget things, lots of things.
Once we began homeschooling, I started forgetting a lot more things. Two months ago I forgot to pay my electric bill (yeah, that bad!). This month Dh has to renew his drivers license and the van needs to be inspected, two weeks before Christmas and I forgot all about it. I don't even think I told Dh about the license renewal yet. Should be a fun conversation when he gets home tonight!
So I decided to create a Master Check list.
It will be divided into several categories; house, cars, Clubs, etc. Then subcategories like:
Cars

1. Neon

• Oil change
  
• Inspection
• Registration

2. Voyager

• Oil change
• Inspection
• Registration

You get the idea.
Hopefully this will help me remember the things that need to get done around here.

Next year we are becoming even more involved in Clubs since Dh is considering taking the Clubs' Boys Coordinator position. Yep, you guess it, I'm going to be his 'helper". Which brings a whole lot of new things for me to forget!!

Christmas Unit Study Week 2

This week we are continuing to read lots of Xmas books, movies and so on, but we are going to be doing more crafty things. We read The Night Before Christmas and A5 made a snowman pasted it on paper and them drew around it.
There are so many Xmas projects to do that I'm having a hard time deciding which ones we should do for school. This week we are going to do the cut and paste type of projects. Last week we did a lot of drawing and coloring type of stuff. I would like to do a paint project, of course I'll have to include X3 in that one since he loves to play with the paint. Maybe towards the end of the week.
I want to save the best for last, A5 really want to bake Xmas cookies, so we'll leave that for next week.

Happy Christmas to Me!

We went to the Yankee Candle store today, enough said!!! :)
The mall was crazy, I forgot just how crowded and crazy the stores get during the holidays.
It took us 20 minutes to find a parking spot, we only went to one store because it was so crowded.
We then went to Toys R Us and found a few things for A5's birthday! Since her birthday is at the end of January, it's really hard to find any good toy sales. That's why I usually buy her birthday stuff together with the Xmas stuff. As far as the mall, I won't be going there till after Xmas, they have great sales then and not as crowded!

A Sweet Smelling Home (hint, hint)

I've been going to a lot of different blogs in the last few days because of the Homeschool Blog Awards and there was one blog that I really enjoyed reading.
It is a homeschooling blog but she also has tips on how to take care of your home. This blog has so much info that it's going to take me several weeks to get to it all.
One of her post is about keeping you home smelling nice, especially when you have company.
She talks about wax potpourri warmers as a great way to do this. Now, I've heard about potpourri warmers but I just didn't like them because you need to have a tealight in the bottom section to do the actual warming of the wax. Well, they now have electric ones. I think they've had them for a while, I just never took notice. I have a candle warmer and I love it! But the thought of having a wax warmer and being able to just purchase the little wax tarts in all different kinds of scents it's just too cool!!!!
Yankee Candle has this beautiful Gingerbread Electric Wax Potpourri Warmer that would be perfect, of course I would need a different one for the rest of the year!!
The website also has all of the different wax tart scents.



These are the ones I want to start with!

• Frosted Cedar Wreath
• Country Linen
  
• Good Morning
• Sun & Sand
  
• Lemon Lavender

Are you reading this my blondie bluey!!!!!

It's Snowing!

This Morning!

Bundt Pan Cheesecake

My DH (Dear Husband) made this Bunt Pan Cheesecake from a recipe I found on another blog.
It was so rich and delicious even X3 loved it and he never likes anything! :) We've had it twice already. The 1st time he made it I ate the whole top (which is really the bottom) while it was still warm. This is the one he made for our Xmas party. He made me stay away from it so that he could take a pic after it had been in the fridge.
Here is the recipe as I found it on the other blog!

Bundt Pan Cheesecake

Crust
1 c. graham cracker crumbs
1/4 c. butter, melted
2 T. granulated sugar

Combine crust ingredients and press into bottom of a 12 cup molded bundt pan.

Filling: 5 (8 oz) packaged cream cheese
1 3/4 c. granulated sugar
3 T. flour
1 t. lemon zest
1 t. vanilla extract
6 large eggs
1/4 c. whipping cream

For filling: Mix all ingredients except eggs and cream. Beat until light and fluffy.
Scrape bowl often. Add the eggs and mix for 2 minutes on medium speed.
Add cream, and mix well, scraping sides occasionally. Spoon into crust.

Bake at 300 deg. for 65-75 minutes or until set.
Cool upright in pan for 30 minutes, then refrigerate 2 hours or long.
Invert on serving plate.

* The cake rises up and above the bundt pan by a good 3-4 inches. But when the cake is cooled it sinks back down to the size of the pan.
* You do not need to grease the pan.

Enjoy!

Our 1st Christmas Pics

Here we are doing our gifts exchange!

A5 finally got her mermaid and Hungry Hippo!
Yes, she is wearing her Snow White dress.

X3 and his new Lightning McQueen car!
He also got a Park & Play Garage for all his new cars.

A5 and her two kittens Clara and Sheegwa!

We had a wonderful time with my family, A5 and X3 had a blast with all their cousins.
They all loved their gifts! Now we wait for round two at Nina and Grandpas'!!!!

Christmas Unit Study

For the next three weeks we are going to do a Xmas "unit study". Which means we are going to be reading lots of Xmas books, watching lots of Xmas movies and listening to lots of Xmas songs!
I think CBS is going to be showing Xmas movies for the whole month of December.
Here's a list of some of the books we are going to be rowing in the next three weeks.

• Harold at the North Pole
• Christmas in the Big Woods
• The Night Before Christmas
• Polar Express
• Cranberry Christmas
• A Charlie Brown Christmas

I've been meaning to go to the library to pick up a few more, but this weather is not helping.
They are calling for snow tomorrow and it's been so cold and windy lately that I'd hate to go get books and then worry about having to return them in really bad weather.