Spring has arrived!

The beginnings of my first humble garden...

Flowers on our peach tree...

Gymnastics in the back yard

Justin built Jordan a balance beam today. It amazes me how quickly Justin gets a project done. He gets the idea one minute and the next minute it's done. I've NEVER had a honey-do list for him because it's done before I even know we needed it!

Flashback Friday

I added a couple of photos of my friends from back in the day:)

Last week I showed you some pictures of one of my bottle calves. I had many other animals as well. My parents spoiled me with the things that I loved...good thing they loved animals too!

We always had cats and dogs. Here's a cute little kitten. You can even see one of my rabbit cages in the back ground. I think I even showed that cat (and the rabbits) through 4-H at the county fair. Ah, 4-H and the fair...the makings of another post:)

One of our first baby goats. She was our favorite, acted more like a dog than a goat:) Showed her every year, too. Mom, do you remember her name?

You know how every little girl wants a pony? Well, I actually got one for my 10th birthday. His name was Sammy. A little ornery shetland pony.

A couple years later I got this horse, named Midnight. My mom claimed animals (like this one) but I pretty much took them over. He was the BEST horse. My friend Melissa, who is the one riding the horse, and her mom used to come pick me and Midnight up in their trailer and we'd go to a trail somewhere and ride together. It was fun. I spent less and less time with Midnight as I got into high school and got super busy, but I spent most of my jr. high summer days riding him.

An Easter Project

I saw a cute Easter craft for the kids to do on pinterest. We've been working on it for a few days. The girls made bunnies out of toilet paper tubes. Then, Jordan and I painted a back drop for the bunnies during Rylie's nap today. It was Jordan's idea to paint the backdrop to have a puppet show. Can't wait to see her show:)

Notice how the girls have to include Bo. They are such great older sisters, pulling him around to where they are. Jordan will even pull him over to sit by her when we eat lunch.

Painting butterflies. Jordan says the black things are grass-like leaves falling from the trees.

I especially like the "leopard bunny."

A little of this and that

I'm learning a lot about early childhood education these days. Below is a picture of Jordan working on spelling some CVC words. We've been doing this for several months and I never knew what CVC meant until just a few days ago...consonant-vowel-consonant. Good to know.

I love to see Jordan grasp new concepts and skills. It seems that all of a sudden it clicked with her that words are made up of letters that actually mean something. She knew words started with letters--like ball starts with B--but the rest of the letters were just letters. Until one day not too long ago, she started actually sounding out the letters in the words. It was so cool to see! She went from recognition to understanding. Below, she is sounding out each word and figuring out which letter to write next.

I tried uploading a video of Jordan building sentences using some sight word cards, but it wouldn't work, and I don't have a picture of it. We had a lot of fun taking turns making sentences like, "I see the big bus."

Below is some handwriting practice. I'm trying to teach her to write only the first letter of the name with a capital letter. (All of that is Jordan's writing, none of it is mine. Guess how long it takes her to try and write every letter perfectly? I keep telling her that her teachers may not be as patient as her mommy.)
Here's a sorting/pattern activity. The girls helped punch out some shapes and then make a pattern with them. Jordan made up her own patterns. Rylie just started gluing:)


The girls took turns with our little letter magnets thing. Jordan practiced spelling different CVC words, and Rylie practiced learning her letters.
Remember when I said I would NEVER make sugar cookies again? Well, it's been long enough that the "fun" of it is not fresh in my brain so I tried it again. But this time, I left a certain little person out of the fun (she was taking a nap) and it went SO much better. The cookies are amazing--one of my pinterest finds:) Here's the recipe. I may even make them again soon!


Sometime in the next week or two, I'm going to do an anatomy unit with the girls. I think it will be fun! So stay tuned for updates on that...

Flashback Friday

I grew up loving animals, taking care of them in a small town in Southern Iowa. My parents still live on the farm that has been in our family for 150 years or so. These are pictures of one of my bottle calves, named Lucky. She was born c-section, and since her mother died, I got to be her momma. Morning and night (and often in between) I was there taking care of her. This is something that I am sad my girls will most likely not get a chance to do. Farm life will be foreign to them, except when they visit my parents a few times a year. It was a great opportunity for me to learn responsibility and caring for things other than myself. Yes, my kids could get a dog...but there's just something special about the work on a farm.

Lucky, when I was around 11 or 12 years old. I used to let her "kiss" me by letting her suck on my cheek.

Though there's no bottle in the picture here, the puppies would always lick up the milk that didn't make it into the calves' mouths.

This is Lucky as a momma herself. It looks like I was 19 in this picture.

2 months!

Bo, you are 2 months old today! You have been such a blessing and a source of joy, more than I ever expected. Here are some things you've been up to this past month:

--You started smiling on the day you turned 6 weeks! You love to smile for us girls especially:)

--At four weeks your baby acne was REALLY bad, but then it started clearing up at five weeks. You still have a little bit on your face and a lot on your chest.

--You have become unpredictable with your nightly schedule. Over the past month, you've gone from waking up once a night, to waking up every 3 hours, to sleeping a long 7 hours, then back to waking up every 3-4 hours. I never want to get up with you, but once I do, your sweetness melts my heart and I just love picking you up and cuddling you in my arms. You are worth it:)

--You still poop all the time, even at night, so it takes longer to get you to go back to sleep after being completely woken up during a diaper change.

--You have been wearing size 1 diapers since about 5 weeks. Pampers newborns didn't last that long, but walmart-brand newborns did. Which, by the way, I actually liked better than Pampers and they were much cheaper:)

--You still love the changing table and you like to have your diaper changed--just like Jordan did.

--You are very easy-going most of the time. You are a lot like Jordan was as a baby in this regard.

--You are more like Rylie, though, when you sleep because any somewhat loud noise wakes you up.

--You are developing a more predictable daytime routine. You like to take a longer late morning nap and a longer late afternoon nap and then go to bed around 8:00-8:30. You still take a few cat naps in between, but you're slowly getting away from those.

--I was a little sad when you outgrew your newborn clothes. As you can see in the pictures, you are filling out your 0-3 month clothes very well.

--I'm not sure how much you weigh. I'll update your stats on Thursday after your checkup. UPDATE: you weigh 11 lbs 7 oz. The small weight gain is likely due to you being sick with a cold and/or fever for 10 days. You are 23 1/4 inches long. Your head circumference is 15.8 inches.

Flashback Friday

Okay, enough with the sports theme--for now:) It's just that when I think back to high school, sports were such a big part of my life, there's not much else that had a big impact. Well, that's not totally true, I am already thinking of other posts to write that don't include sports. But, that will be another day...

Anyway, back to the theme of this post. I found pictures of my baptism in an album of random photos. Actually, Jordan really likes looking at all of our photo albums, so she's the one who found them. It was at the end of my sophomore year of college and Justin had just proposed to me in front of lots of people at Christian Challenge (that will be another post, as it was for sure a significant time in my life!) so I chose him to be the one to baptize me.

The baptism is significant because it represents the most important decision of my life...more important than saying "yes" to a marriage proposal, more important than having kids, and certainly more important than anything having to do with playing sports in high school:) I chose to be baptized to proclaim to everyone watching that I decided to live my life for Jesus Christ. Little did I know just how much my heart would change from making that decision for my life.

I grew up going to church. I considered myself to be a good person. I was successful in school and pushed myself to try and be the best at everything I did. However, with all my "success," I still wasn't satisfied. Nothing quite gave me the "happiness" that I wanted, not even the boys I dated (a man CANNOT fulfill the emptiness of your heart...that is God's job!) I remember listening to some country songs (yes, I was a country girl) that expressed what I was feeling, though now I couldn't tell you what they were. There's got to be more to life than this was a consistent thought of mine. I was always looking for something more.

God chose to use my freshman year of college to draw me to himself, to be that "something more" in my life. I had gotten myself into a situation in which I had no control over the outcome. It consumed my thoughts every minute of everyday for several weeks, and I had no choice but to cry out to God to save me.

What's amazing as I look back, is that God had it all planned out. During one of those long weeks, I visited my brother in Wichita. It was spring break. No one would have guessed the battle going on in my heart just by looking at me. My brother's friends from Christian Challenge probably had no idea the impact they had on me that week as they simply lived their lives in front of me. I got to see people like my brothers Rick and Brock, Justin, Alisha, Will, and Rich (just to name a few) that had something I wanted. I remember thinking, "I want that. I want what they have." What they had was Jesus.

Remember, I said I grew up going to church. I prayed the sinner's prayer asking Jesus into my heart every time the preacher asked, "If you were to die today, do you know for certain that you would go to Heaven." Well, as a little kid, do you know anything for certain?! I know that I had given my life to Jesus when I was very young, but it took God using a very difficult situation for me to start living like I did.

During the next decade (it's been 11 years already!) God has done amazing things in my heart. Though I'm still focussed on myself most of the time, God has given me a heart for people. My unhealthy competitive drive is gone and I know life is not about me. The things of this world matter to me less and less and the things of eternity matter to me more and more. The old is gone (washed away!), and the new has come. True fulfillment of life is through Jesus...there's no other way!

So what about you? Are you like I was, looking for something more, thinking there's got to be more to life than this? If so, why don't you check out what the Bible has to say:

Romans 3:23--"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Romans 6:23--"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." The gift comes through a personal relationship with Jesus, not in a religion.

John 3:3--"In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

John 14:6--"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Romans 10:9-11--"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

Maybe you're wondering what the "sinner's prayer" is. It's simply talking to God...confessing your sins to Him and asking Him to forgive you in the name of Jesus Christ. It's inviting Jesus into your heart and the beginning of a new life, a life fulfilled through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Fun for the kids

I have not been good about letting the kids be creative and crafty lately. When the mess is added on to the everyday things to do and clean, it is just too overwhelming. I don't like being that way, so this week I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I had to make lunch and clean up afterwards anyway, so I had the kids help me make it. I'm sure most of you actually do this on a regular basis (which I plan to start doing at least once a week), but I am not good about letting the girls help me cook either.

I decided to tweak a recipe my friend Alisha gave me called BBQ biscuits (from her "Four Ingredient Cookbook--which, by the way, I need to return to her. Thanks for letting me use it!). Instead of the BBQ filling, I used pizza topping for the filling. A package of Pillsbury Grands refrigerated biscuits was used as the "pizza dough". Because they're so thick, I divided each one in half to make two thinner biscuits. I pressed each one into a greased muffin tin, then added a spoonful of pizza sauce on top. Then, I let the girls put on whatever toppings they wanted. I used what I had available: shredded cheese, diced pepperoni, real bacon bits, and pineapple. The pineapple was for my mini pizzas:) Let me tell you, they turned out delicious! At least mine did...if you like pineapple and bacon pizza!

I've seen the "I Spy" bottles around the internet for a while and decided to make one for the girls. I didn't have a bottle, so I used a baggy instead. Works just fine. I put in a bunch of rice and then little trinkets I found around the house. I took a picture of the little trinkets before adding them to the bag, so the girls would know what to look for. I laminated the picture so they can cross off each item as they find it with a dry erase marker. It kept Jordan busy for a while. I may use it on a car ride sometime.

I found these adorable Build Your Own Cupcake printables on pinterest and made the girls a set. Jordan had fun building her cupcakes after nap today.

Jordan's Grocery List

Jordan made a grocery list. Can you tell what's on it? Her first attempt at writing words on her own...so cute! The last word is spelled exactly how she hears it and how she says it. I'll be shocked if you can figure out the third one. It does begin with a P, so that's a good start:)