I am back!!!

Oh how I have missed blogging!!! But I AM BACK!!!! YAY!


This last year has been interesting. I now have Internet again and blogging is like therapy for me so I decided to pick it back up. I may not post a lot but I will be posting.

My kids are all so big now! I have posted new pictures of them on the side. Jacob is now 10 and has the long hair(help me Lord!). We are begging him to cut it but he LOVES it long. He is almost finished with 5th grade and it has been a challenge!!! But he has managed to keep all A's.

Amber is now 6 and has almost finished Kindergarten and she is so smart! I am sure that having an older brother that home schools has helped! We are so excited about 1st grade!! She is now riding her bike without training wheels, I am sure we will have a summer full of walks around the block.

And last but not least is Nathan, he is now 3 almost 4. And he is a wild child! LOL He is counting to 10 very easily and tries to do Amber's school with her. He totally LOVES Bible Man movies.

George and I have been doing well. He is still working and I am still handling homeschooling pretty well. I would love to follow a schedule better. Maybe after our summer break I will be more focused. The last 2 years have been tough for us. My aunt passed away in February of 2009 and my oldest brother passed away August 1st of 2009. We are healing though, one day at a time.

I am now singing on the praise team at our church and LOVE it! Music is like a healing balm for my heart. God is so amazing to us and we are so blessed!

I will soon post again and share my heart on a few things. It is so great to be blogging again and I can't wait to catch up with all of my bloggy friends!

It has been a while, once again....

It has been a while but I am still here!!! My last post was about Amber's birthday. Well, at her surprise horse party she got lots of gifts and enough money to buy herself a new bicycle!!! She was SO excited!

Here is a little video of her riding. I will update more later. ENJOY!!!!

Special 200th post!!!!

Today is March 19th and it is my 200th post and today is also my sweet little Amber's 5th birthday!!!! I haven't been blogging much but I am still here!

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I wanted to share a little bit about my princess Amber. I mostly post her pretty pictures where she is posing like a beauty queen but today I want to show you a few other sides of Amber. She is very girly but she is also silly. Sometimes we just sit back and laugh at her while she puts a show on. She loves to dance and sing. And she loves to make others laugh. She has a very sensitive side to her also. If I get onto her she usually busts into tears and starts saying how sorry she is. She is quick to tell on herself. And she makes friends VERY easily. We can go to the park and within minutes she is playing with someone.

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I love this little girl with all of my heart and I am SO glad that God has blessed me with her!

Here are a few pictures of my little Birthday girl!

Making a silly face for the camera.

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This is from the day that the kids were all playing bad guys, I LOVE this picture!

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And here is "Princess Amber"

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Me and my little angel.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMBER!!

I LOVE YOU!!!

Our day

On Thursday morning I decided to make my famous berry pancakes for breakfast. The weather was warm that day, around 70 for a high and I had lots of energy. We got school done early and spent some time outside. Amber got up and decided that she wanted to learn how to make pancakes. So I sat her up with me and answered TONS of questions! LOL
Here are some pictures from our day.

My sweet Amber.

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Cookin' pancakes!

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The famous berry pancakes before.

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The famous berry pancakes after.

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My 3 kiddos and my 2 home schooled kids that I keep sometimes eating a snack outside.

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Oh how time flies....

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long. We have been busy around here.

I am feeling some better. I still have some pain in the mornings but it is getting better.

We have had some snow since I last posted. I have pictures to share.

My aunt has gotten worse and has been in the hospital. My aunt Sherry came from California to visit her one last time since she doesn't have much time. The doctors have given her about 6 months if she continues to not take the meds that she is supposed to take.

I have a prayer request too, my step-sister, Amanda, who lost her baby last night and today she is in the hospital having to deliver it. She was 17 weeks along. Please pray for peace and healing for her. She has 3 little ones at home.

We have been getting some school done and stayed on track with that. YAY! And the babysitting is going very well.

I went shopping the other day and got clothes for George and all 3 kids. The total was around $140 and our savings were around $350!!!! We got around 20 pieces of clothes for all 4 of them. So we got some AMAZING deals! And we got all of this at Belk in the mall. They had a great sale going on so I decided to go and get me some stuff Saturday. I got 10 shirts, a pair of jeans, a pair of pajama pants, a purse, a new wallet, and some under clothes all for around $220!!! I was in a much worse need for clothes than the others. We never get to shop like this and it truly was God's favor! He is so awesome!

Well, now I will share some pictures. Have a great week!

Amber getting ready to play in the snow.

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Jacob going out in the snow.

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Amber in the snow.

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Jacob and one of his friends playing.

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What fun!

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Me and my Aunt Sherry.

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Jacob

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Nathan

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Amber

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Amber being silly. This was such a great picture I had to share it!

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Once upon a time......

For Christmas Amber got a create a book set. One of the books is to make your own story(which we did here) and the other one can be a journal or whatever you want. We wanted to share a little bit of what we did.

Amber with her finished book.

Princess Amber....

One of the pages.

Last page.

Yesterday was one of "those" days....

Hello all my bloggy friends.

I am so glad that today is a new day! Because yesterday was a TERRIBLE day!

What started this was I went to my Facebook and opened a message that I thought a friend had sent me and it was a virus. So from that point on I began to have trouble with my computer. Well, by 3:00 we couldn't get it do log onto anything hardly. So I called emachines. They give me the news that I have to restore my computer to it's original state. Which means that I lost everything I had on my computer. Pictures, documents, folders, recipes, EVERYTHING!!!! She made me erase all of my personal things on my computer. Well, I guess it was for my own good. I have never saved anything to a backup disk. Well, let's just say that I will be learning how to do that real soon!

So while I am talking to the nice lady that is helping me erase all my personal things from my computer, She tells me to turn it off and unplug my printer and internet. While I am doing this my little Nathan decides to turn it back on. It is at that point that she asks me how old my children are and how well behaved they are....wonder if she was hinting to something?

After I get off the phone with her, I am finishing up the wiping away of all my personal things on my computer(I am dealing with this, really I am!) Amber comes in the living room screaming at the top of her lungs that Nathan had thrown a toy and hit her in the head.

Now let me just tell you that we have had so much trouble with this little 2 year old throwing things, we don't know what to do! If he doesn't become a famous pitcher for some baseball team I will be surprised!

But back to my story... I lean down and hug my little Amber and rub her head and I feel something wet. I begin to panic. I pull my hand up and there is blood. I take her to my bathroom about 12-15 steps away and blood is dripping into the floor and she is screaming louder. I guess God stepped in because I don't handle those situations well. I cleaned her up and found the wound. It is pretty deep but I decided not to take her to the ER. It stopped bleeding pretty quick. But when I got home from choir practice last night(George stayed home with the kids) it was still bleeding a little. So I am not sure if I should have taken her or not. Any tips on busted heads would be appreciated so I will know what to do next time.

So today I am reinstalling my printer, trying to find all of my home school sites that I used, finding all of the kids favorites and I may close my Facebook account, haven't decided on that yet.

If I am not on here for a while it is because I am getting tired of spending time with the computer. I am beginning to feel like it is a 4th child that doesn't know how to behave and the other 3 children are being punished for it.

So there is another day in the real life of a home school mom.........

My little girl is growing up....

This past Friday night Amber and I went to my friend JoAnna's house for her daughter, Alyssa's, birthday party. Alyssa had a sleepover. Amber didn't sleep over but we were invited to come for some "girl time". I have to say that Amber was one upset little girl when almost 10:00 came and I told her it was time to go. She just cried! She wanted to sleepover with the big girls! So we had to promise her that really soon she and Alyssa can have a sleepover, just the 2 of them. And that made her happy!

I wanted to share a picture of Amber's very first "big girl" party she went to. Alyssa's cousin, Lauren, is at the right and she didn't stay either. Then of course Amber is right in the middle. And the birthday girl is right by Lauren with the purple sweat suit on. Here it is!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALYSSA!!!!!!

We went to the doctor...

FINALLY! LOL

Amber and Nate both have bronchitis. They now have antibiotics and a very strong cough medicine. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes. Maybe tomorrow will be an easier day.

On Friday we are taking Jacob to be retested for his peanut/nut allergy. Please be praying. When he was 1 he had 2 severe reactions to peanuts and we had him tested. They said he had a lifelong life threatening allergy to all nuts. Mainly peanut though. Well, a few weeks ago we bought the new Cocoa Puffs Splits(I think that is the name). They were chocolate and vanilla. The regular Cocoa Puffs are safe so I didn't check the new ones. Well, after he ate them I saw that they are made with peanut flour. And he had NO REACTION!!!!! So we are very hopeful that God has healed him and that will change his life! I will keep you updated.

Hello!

It has been a while since I posted. I have been SO busy!!! I have tried to keep a check on all of your blogs, sorry I haven't been commenting though. My mom is doing great and appreciates all of your prayers.

I wanted to share real quick some pictures that my friend Aprille took of my Amber the other day. She is so precious in these. When we are outside she will play with these sea shells that we have collected over the years. On this day, she had a rock that was her baby egg and the sea shells were her babies. She has buried them somewhere in the yard to keep them safe. I have so enjoyed watching her play and seeing her childhood innocence blossom.

Hope you all have a great Sunday!!!!!

Totally unaware she is being watched!

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OH hello there!!

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Showing off one of her "babies".

How PRECIOUS!!!

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I have AMAZING news!!!!!!

I wanted to share with you all that my little Amber prayed tonight and asked Jesus into her heart!!!
Today she got upset because she couldn't hear God talking to her. She was talking to Him but couldn't hear Him talking back. And she said that she guessed that she didn't have Jesus living in her heart anymore. I didn't really know how to talk about this. She had never asked Jesus to live in her heart. So when I put her to bed we talked all about it and I prayed the sinners prayer with her and she was so excited! She even had to tell God she was sorry for breaking one of Nathan's toys when she was 3! How precious!!!!! She is only 4 now. But I think she is such a big girl now.
I had to tell you all, I am so proud of her!
Hope you all have a great night!!!!

A little bit of everything.......

Today I will be posting about a few different things.

First I want to talk about the FREE Chicken biscuit from McDonald's that I just had. Today only you can order a medium or large drink and get a free chicken biscuit until 10:30 and then from 10:30-7 tonight you can order a medium or large drink and get a free chicken sandwich. Well, I ordered a medium iced vanilla coffee and I must say that it was good but it was no Java Chiller from Sonic. Now the chicken biscuit-they are trying to make it like the one from Chick-Fil-A and it is NOT anything like it!! It was good, but Chick-Fil-A has them beat hands down!!!!!

Next we will talk about the fact that we are officially done with school for this year!!!! YAY! It has been a pretty good year, Jacob has done very well in 3rd grade. He got all A's. He has mastered multiplying and cursive writing. (I was really scared of these two things so I am glad he did so well with them.) He read 2 chapter books in Literature this year and wrote little reports on them as he went along. He doesn't feel very creative usually so this was a big deal. He has touched on division and understands it very well. He has learned about punctuation and nouns and verbs. He is so smart and picks up on all of this so quickly! We ordered next years books when we got our stimulus payment and we have already gotten them in. He was so excited! I know that he will do really well in 4th grade also.
Now to Amber and her school stuff. We began the year learning letters and numbers but in September when their paw-paw Kenny died things in this house went a little down hill. We couldn't get back into a good schedule. This has been one of those school years that we couldn't wait for it to end. In the mix of all of this Amber has still done really well. She learned to recognize a few letters, she can count better, her coloring pages look really good instead of looking like scribble, and we have worked a lot on her speech. She is talking a lot clearer now. And her imagination is out of this world!!! We have even dealt with the imaginary friend thing! Jacob never had one of those. She has learned to play on the computer this year too. She LOVES that! She is my book worm. She really loves to look at books. Amber will still only be 4 at the start of our school in the fall so we will be doing a whole year of pre-school.
Now my little Nathan. He will be 2 in July and he is really wanting to color a lot and do craft stuff. He is very hands on. He likes to pretend a lot. He has graduated from eating paper thankfully. So now we can work more on letting him look at books and not worry about him eating a snack while he reads!! LOL
I am glad the summer is here for us. I have hopes for next school year to be full of fun and lots of hands on stuff. I will spend part of the summer planning for next year and I am DETERMINED to stay on a better schedule next year!

Now to sleep. And by that I mean that the last few weeks Nathan has been trying to take my pillow at night. We put him to bed in Amber's bed and usually in the middle of the night he comes to my bed and stays until morning. Well, last night I decided to give him a pillow when I put him in Amber's bed and he slept in her bed ALL NIGHT!!!! I was trilled and a little confused this morning when I woke up! I kept thinking that George was Nathan all night! LOL
So I hope that this is the beginning of something beautiful for me. All of my children sleeping all night in their own spaces that do not include my bed!!!!!

So now that I have taken up so much of your time I will bring this to an end. As your school year comes to an end(or maybe not to those who school year round) and summer approaches, evaluate your year and make a plan of what you may want to do different next year. Make this summer a great one for your children. Plan lots of fun stuff for the summer.

So my words of wisdom for today are:
Have a plan for next year and have lots of fun this summer!!!

"You made my feelings cry!"

Hello all! I wanted to share a cute little thing about my sweet little girl, Amber. She is such a great kid for the most part.(she is a female and I believe some days she already has PMS!)


This is something that our family has gotten used to hearing but this morning I was talking to a friend and she heard Amber say it and she said that I HAD to blog about it. So here it goes Meladie!

Any time that the boys do anything to make Amber cry we will ask her what is wrong and she tells us,"He made my feelings cry!"

I think this is too cute. A few months ago she was trying to explain why she was crying after Jacob had done something to upset her and the only way she could make me understand was,"He made my feelings cry!"

So now we have all adopted this saying instead of "hurt my feelings" it is now "made my feelings cry".


She really is precious. But I was telling my husband this morning that she is so much like me when I was her age. Jacob and Nathan can be up early in the morning and be ok with it. And by early I mean before 7 am. Now Amber could sleep until 9 am if I let her. And the boys are pretty talkative when they first get up, it isn't a huge deal to get out of the bed. But Amber is a TOTALLY different story! Take this morning for instance, it was about 8 am and everyone had eaten breakfast except Amber. Why you ask? Because she was still asleep. So I go in to lovingly wake her up. I rub her back and talk really sweet to her and tell her she can have a Pop-Tart. So she begins to move a little and Jacob comes in being cheerful and jumping on the bed and Amber begins to growl and scream. So I had to get her back in line. Then I had to correct Jacob. So the way she is just like I was when I was her age is that I didn't like getting up out of the bed either. It would take me a good 30 minutes to even want to look at anyone much less wake up. And my sweet Amber is just like that.


So I wanted to share a little about my sweet angel. Here is her precious face. Isn't it amazing how a face this sweet could be so angry first thing in the morning! LOL