buy this cd. trust me.

you know a kids' worship cd is a good one when just about every song is a convicting one.... walking with the wise by sovereign grace music is worth listening to even when the kids are in another room. this album is right up there with seeds family worship in my book. these songs stick in your head, and you don't mind at all! i do have to warn you, though. if you don't want your children hearing songs about their sin or what Jesus has done for them, you will not like this CD. at all.

in a nutshell...
right-on theology + musically well-done = a hit at our house!!!

and i just noticed that the album is available to download for $5. are you kidding me!? skip your starbucks or chick-fil-a today and download this album! following the link above will enable you to listen to samples, but here are some of the lyrics that get me choked up every time....

from the song "i don't have to hide":
when i have done something i know i shouldn’t do
and I’m tempted to hide it
when i have spoken words
i know i shouldn’t speak
and i want to deny it
if i confess my sins,
i’ll find mercy
blessed is the one who fears the Lord
and admits his sin
blessed is the one who trusts the Lord
who alone forgives
Jesus died so i don’t have to hide anymore

from the song "make me wise":
make me wise, make me wise
so i’m pleasing in Your sight
Lord, i want to bring You glory
so i’m asking You to make me wise

from the song "to tell the truth":
to tell the truth is what i want to do
because You love the lips that speak the truth
to tell a lie leads me away from You
so help me, God, to tell the truth

ok! last one!

from the song "all ears":
i wanna be all ears when Mom is speaking
all ears when Dad is teaching
there’s a lot i don’t know
and they’ve been around a whole lot of years
and have covered some ground
their words will make me wise, so i’m all ears

have i convinced you to buy this yet? once you listen to it, i'd love for you to leave a comment telling me about your favorite song on the album. (sovereign grace did not ask me to promote their album. and if they did, i guess i'd have to use capital letters, huh!?)

five in a row

one book. five days. several projects. countless memories. this is five in a row.


but what is five in a row, you ask? it's easy. we read one book five days in a row and do some sort of activity relating to the book. my children love the repetitition. by the end of the week, they can basically read the book to me. and the activities we do are so simple, yet so engaging. they really make the book come alive to the kids. caroline often wakes up asking, "what project are we doing today?"


there are five subject areas that are meant to be taught each week: social studies, language, art, applied math, and science.... one per day. (there is also a supplemental bible study/character guide that i LOVE as well.) the teacher's guide offers plenty of activities to choose from for each subject area, and i have found that the online five in a row (FIAR) forums provide even more ideas. the age range for FIAR is listed as 4-8 years old, so my kiddos are obviously on the low end of that spectrum. because of that, sometimes the activities are not on their level... but never fear! i have had fun coming up with some of my own activities or i will simplify the suggested project. these books are meant to be revisited as the children grow older, so when i skip over an activity, i get excited thinking about coming back around to it in the years to come. now... my default is to complicate. (brian just shouted "amen" over here!) keeping things simple is something that does not come naturally to me (think birthday parties...). BUT i am working on it. and FIAR is a great, great arena in which i can practice this skill. there are 1001 activities i could come up with relating to a single book.... but the founder of FIAR stresses over and over again to keep it simple. so i'm doing my best. :)


(waiting for the next round in our taste test!)
i chose to start FIAR in the summer because our schedule was less hectic, and i thought this would be a wonderful way to keep a little bit of structure to our summer before delving in to kindergarten (and phonics and math!) with ethan in the fall. there is so much flexibility with FIAR, yet it provides just enough structure to keep us keepin' on. if that makes any sense. but because it is the summer, we have beach days and pool days and trips out of town and various and asundry things that could stress me out about getting in our five days in a row! but we just roll with it. some weeks we do four days, or our fifth day may be on saturday. or we may carry one book over to the next week and begin our new book on a tuesday. it's tempting to stretch out a book to two weeks when the kids are having so much fun with it, but i try to stick to my plan-- and i remind myself that we'll come back to that book again!

the kids get so excited when they know we're about to start a new book. of course, i build it up and make it a big surprise. i usually will hint to what the book is about, and they just can't wait to find out what it is. the first thing we do after reading our book for the first time is talk about where the book takes place. our kitchen is now the home of two gigantic maps-- a world and united states map-- and each book has a laminated story disc. we place the story disc on the location of the book, and then each day after that, the kids take turns putting the story disc in the right place on the map. in the case of the picture below, the kids put ping on china (on the yangtze river) every day that week. by friday, they absolutely knew where ping lived!


because ethan is really into maps, i have them color the focus country on an identical world map each week. this is probably not something i would force upon a five year old who was not interested in it, but ethan looks forward to the map every week. we talk about where the character lives in relation to where we live and how we could get to their country. for the books based in the united states, we figure out how we would drive to get to their state. since we have started this, caroline is very interested in where we are going in the car. almost every time the car turns, i hear, "which way are we going now?!"


so we are having a ball. i plan to write a little post about each book we are doing, for memory's sake, but also to share the love. i've enjoyed reading other FIAR moms' blogs, and i've come away with some cute ideas for the various books that we will be reading. perhaps i can return the favor at some point with my FIAR posts. we just finished our third book last week, so i am hoping to blog about those first few books before i get too far behind.

FIAR is precious to me because my children are learning to treasure books in a new way. for five days, we snuggle up on the couch together and we soak in the story. for five days, we notice more details in the artwork, we learn words we did not know before, and we gain a greater understanding of God's truths through these characters. and at the end of those five days, ethan and caroline have a new favorite book. sounds like we'll be hanging onto this idea for awhile.

be back soon from china with the story about ping!

a busy birthday!

what a wonderful birthday i had today! it all started with not cleaning up throw-up. that was an absolutely marvelous beginning to my day. by 9:15 we were headed out to the beach! it was a beautiful morning in the clean, clear water. i did not take a single picture at the beach today because we spent almost every moment of the (very hot) morning in the water to stay cool... i know...i couldn't believe it, and apparently, the toys are a little shocked as well. :) anyway, we'd planned to leave after lunch because of our plans later in the day, but a looming thunderstorm sent us packing a few minutes earlier. so no pictures. oh well. just believe me. we were there. and we got nipped by lots of little fish, we found snails, scallops, and clams... and a crab got me while i was digging for shells!

after showers and a nap (for the girls), we left sleeping amelia with gram and met brian at the movie theater for the opening day of toy story 3! we made sure to get to the theater extra early to get a good seat. (which is SO not me!!) we got there at 4:15 for the 4:50 show. i know, way too early. they did not let us in the theater until 4:48. i am not exaggerating. so we pretty much got there early to get a good seat in the lobby. there were not even any toy story displays to stand in front of for pictures... oh well. we got a super deal on our popcorn and drinks (couples' combo + toy story discount + kellogg's movie cash= two families' popcorn & drinks for $9!! how sad that $9 is a good deal!!!). we got great seats for the show and we were ready to go! i'm sure the people behind us were not thrilled about us snapping pictures in the super dark theater before it started... but i was able to get a few real quick.

the kids could not wait for the show to start! they loved the kid-sized 3-d glasses!!


caroline was in my lap for the 3-d preview that was disturbingly inappropriate for the selected audience (um, who thought m. night shyamalan belonged in the same theater with woody and buzz??) , but i successfully convinced her that toy story would not be scary!

i love this picture of my niece karina! she has a history of not caring for 3-d shows, but i think she liked this one!


and i also love this beautiful picture of my bro'-n-sis'-in-law! thanks, jeff and kristie, for coming with us!


the movie started before we could get our family picture, so we put it off till after the movie. and let me tell you about the movie. it was really, really good. the 3-d is both subtle and effective. the story line is (not surprisingly) adorable and engaging. i heard my children laughing out loud right along with me. but i think i was the only one on our row who shed some tears... yep, it's a tear-jerker. if you have a little one, a grown one, or even remotely like children, i'd put a tissue in your purse next to your contraband candy!!

after i dried my eyes, we gathered 'round for our family picture in our cool 3-d glasses...


i had to laugh at this picture because caroline and i are obviously very guilty of messing with our glasses with our theater-butter-popcorn-fingers! caroline was just fidgity... i had to take mine on and off when i ran to the potty three times! (note to self: don't get a refill on a large mr. pibb at the movie theater. you'll miss lots of good moments in the movie. and your husband will get really tired of you crawling over him.) anyway, i was initially very bummed that this picture did not turn out as well as i'd hoped it would. we should've taken it before the movie. :( but then i just had to laugh. so we'll stick with laughing at it. and brian was not at all surprised that his girls smudged up their glasses. :)

after the movie, we booked it over to tgifriday's, where my mom, amelia, and brian's dad were waiting on us. (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting!) i read somewhere that the movie was 1:20 long... when really, it was 1:40. and it started late. so we were a little off on our plan, but the good news is that our table was ready for us when we got there, and amelia had food to eat while she was waiting! eating at tgifriday's was ethan's idea since my birthday was on friday and he knows how much i love their brownie obsession. mmmm. good call, ethan. we were so so full from popcorn that we couldn't eat that much, but i will enjoy the rest of my dessert tomorrow!! i couldn't leave amelia out of my birthday pictures altogether, so we took a quick family picture outside friday's. none of them really turned out that great, but this one made me smile...


i think ethan's still laughing about the movie, and caroline looks like she's serenading me with my all-time favorite birthday song. what can i say?? i am blessed. it was a great day. thank you, Lord, for the gift of Your Creation, the gift of laughter, and the gift of family and friends. You continue to bestow upon your children gifts that we do not deserve. May you have all the glory.

clickety, click, click

we interrupt this disney vacation for a short commercial break....

ok, who shops at amazon?! if you are like me, i check prices at amazon before i shop anywhere else online. i can't remember the last time i bought a book from a local bookstore (besides those christmas kids' books i get 50% off after christmas!). local retail business owners probably despise amazon, but this mom loves it. :) i also love spreading the word about my favorite books. if you are a mom and you have been in a conversation with me about children lately, it is very very likely that i have told you about my latest favorite book: don't make me count to three. (don't worry... she encourages you do to do quite the opposite!) but there's a lot of you out there (at least 3 of you!?) that i don't get to chat with on a regular basis, so i want to share these books that are making a difference in my family's life! i've added a couple of lists to the right side of my blog... first, i've listed the stack of books that i'm trying to read all at once. :) some i have finished (like the disney one), others i am working my way through (teaching the trivium is a thick one!), and others i go back through again and again (the gospel primer-- i should really read it every day!). we are currently using training hearts, teaching minds in our family worship during the week, and our sunday school class just began a study of shepherding a child's heart today! parenting with scripture is a topical book that is wonderful to use alongside the principles in don't make me count to three and shepherding a child's heart.

my second list shares some of the books my kids are asking to read these days. we just got hooked on the little house on the prairie series, and we finished the first book last week! ethan and caroline could not wait to start the second book, and they wake up most mornings asking to read another chapter (which is music to this mom's ears vs. "can we watch a movie!?"). ethan is also completely into history non-fiction, which is music to his daddy's ears! we've been reading about the flight at kitty hawk, abraham lincoln, and most recently, the alamo. caroline is even picking up a little of the history. the other night at dinner, caroline lamented to brian, "daddy, daddy, guess what?! this is so sad. davy crockett died at the alamo!" we had to chuckle at her breaking news!

i hope to keep these lists updated as our reading choices change. i have a few children's books coming my way that i can't wait to share... once they get the approval from those twenty little toes! as you can see from my nightstand pile, i am focusing my reading on homeschooling and christian parenting books right now (and i left the disney one in there for fun!). fiction may eventually find its way back onto my bookshelf, but for now, there's no room! i'd love to hear about what books you are reading, even if they are a totally different focus from those on my bookshelf. somebody's got to be enjoying a good fiction book out there somewhere... right!?

oh, i almost forgot... my whole reason for this post! if you are an avid amazon shopper like i am, or even if you just visit amazon to peruse reviews.... i could use your help. if you click over to amazon using my links to the right (or any links in my post that take you to amazon), i have the potential to make a little $$ from it. not much, but every little bit counts, right!? i'm still figuring out how it all works, but i think i will get some referral $$ if you click on the link and buy anything from amazon or if you just click on the link to check it out but do not end up purchasing anything. i do know that you do not have to purchase the book i've linked to... any purchase from amazon will be considered a referral from me if you click to amazon through my link. so if you want to buy a new tv or dslr camera from amazon, please, please please click on my link first!

is all that as clear as mud!? if you will just take a second to click on a book, your clicks will help me see how this all works, and maybe i can figure it out. really, it's a win-win for everyone... i tell you about my favorite books, and you can help me make a few pennies. which will hopefully add up to a jar of pennies. thanks, clickin' friends!

i'll be back soon with more disney adventures!

the place for shades

if your children are anything like mine, they love their sunglasses. just like daddy, they grab their shades on the way out the door... that is, if we can find them. the way it usually goes is that ethan puts his sunglasses on and heads to the car, and caroline has one foot out the door when she realizes (gasp!) brother has on his glasses! i must go get mine! we are most likely already running late, and the search for the cute little pair of pink flowery shades makes us even later. after digging through the kids' two junk boxes, i usually still cannot find them. so now are we not only late, but caroline's world has ended (at least for the moment). as of last week, we had three pairs of glasses to our name and none were accounted for. after listening to caroline lament, "bright! bright!" all the way to wherever we were going, i resolved to stock up on kids' sunglasses. i thought target would have some cheap ones, but um, no. i was not about to pay $5.99 for hannah montana sunglasses. one, $6 is way too much for something that may or may not last two weeks. two, hannah montana? for a two year old? c'mon. those of you who know me well know that i steer clear of cartoon characters on stuff in general, so i was not about to pay even more for glasses that i didn't even like. so i went to walmart. same problem. $6 for dora, diego, spongebob (don't even get me started), ariel, snow white, and the rest of the princess brigade.

i remembered that children's place had a good selection of kids' glasses on sale the last time i was in there, so i called to see if they were still on sale. the sweet lady informed me that their regular price for sunglasses was 2 for $5! that's right, i could get two pairs of adorable, stylish sunglasses for less than the tacky ones at our beloved superstores. so that very evening, ethan and i had a date to the mall. i'm sure the children's place employee was ready to turn in her two weeks' notice when we were still there 30 minutes later looking at sunglasses... but with ethan as my "helper", it was taking me twice as long to decide. we walked out of there with three pairs for ethan and caroline and one pair for amelia to match caroline's "farkly" (sparkly) sunglasses. (and some matching ones for cousin karina, too!) i plan on keeping a sunglasses basket on my desk so that they will be easily found on the way out the door. now i just have to clean off my desk to make room for a basket! :)

if you are in need of shades for your kiddos, i encourage you to check out children's place. they have sizes for 0-2, 2-4, 4-7, and 8-14. if you don't have one locally, you can shop online. there is a flat shipping rate of $5, which is still cheaper than a pair of spongebob glasses!

our new toy

so i got an early birthday present. and i think it will count as this year's christmas present too... we've been salivating over dslr cameras for awhile now, and after borrowing our friend lori's nikon d60, we knew this would be a great camera for us. photography is really the one interest that brian and i share (after God, our children, and 24!). so i convinced brian that we could get a mint condition refurbished d60 for a great deal and that it would be worth the savings to go the refurbed route... the camera came a week ago, and we went to clickin'. within 24 hours, we'd taken 188 pictures...and we'd found 4 hot pixels. argh! this thing was supposed to be in mint condition! the scratch on the LCD screen and the generic lens cap cover could be overlooked, but we did not want to sacrifice image quality. well, after checking out the prices of new models, i realized that we could get a new d60 for just $80 more at amazon... so that's what we did. the refurb is already back at the store, and our new d60 has seen 365 clicks to date. and we're having loving it. (by the way, the place where we ordered the refurbed camera agreed that it should not have had any hot pixels after being refurbished... so i think buying refurbed is still a great way to save some money. we just got a bad one...)

here are my favorite shots so far: (some with lori's, some with the faulty refurb, some with the new one...)












i told you we were having fun! :) i am really looking forward to learning the ins and outs of good photography with my husband!

lovin' lowe's!

we are always looking for fun and frugal things to do with the kids. our new activity is lowe's build and grow clinics! lowe's hosts these free saturday morning workshops for kids twice a month, and we have had perfect attendance for the last 4 clinics. :) the kids have built a racecar, tabletop basketball goal, a rain gauge/lawn ornament, and a birdhouse! on our first visit, the kids received a work apron and goggles. each kit comes with blueprint directions and all the materials needed to build it. after completing the building project, the kids receive a patch specific to that project to go on their aprons (mommy's favorite part! ha!). we enjoy this special time with our "big kids", and my mom unloads my dishwasher while amelia naps watches amelia. they love marching through lowe's with their aprons on. one week, an older gentleman stopped caroline and asked, "do you work here?" her curls bounced and bounced as she confidently nodded yes! as we near the back of the store, you can already hear a dozen hammers pounding away on plastic tables in a tiny room. music to ethan's ears! :) ethan has shown great improvement in his hammering skills. this last time, he was able to nail in one whole wall of the birdhouse all by himself... he'd pick up the tiny nails, put them in the pre-drilled holes, and hammer them all in totally independently. i was pretty impressed, considering the fact that my nails make it in straight about half the time! ha! some projects are easier than others, and really, this kind of thing is more geared for ethan's age or older... but caroline enjoys "helping". we usually start her nails and then let her bang them in a few times. we have yet to walk away with black and blue thumbs, so that's worth a patch, don't you think?! speaking of patches, when we came home from our first visit to lowe's, the kids were so excited to have their race car patches in hand. they came back and showed the cars and the patches to gram. we told them that she'd take their patches home and sew them on their aprons. (yes, i could do this, i know. but gram is wonderful and loves to help out this busy mom...) well, when she brought their aprons back with the unremoveable patches, ethan and caroline went ballistic. they wanted to play with their patches! (who knew!) so if there's lots of extra patches at lowe's, we take a couple more for the kids to play with. and everybody's happy... well, here's a peek at our little woodworkers.

building the racecar...




building the basketball goal... you can see that ethan got tired of hammering and asked daddy to finish.




caroline loved making the flower lawn ornament/rain gauge. the irony was that we built this in the middle of the worst two weeks of storms i can ever remember us having. and of course their rain gauges are still in their room... we need to paint them and get them outside!



caroline was proud of her work.



really proud.



and finally, the birdhouses.



we painted the bird houses the next week with kristie and karina, and we plan on putting them in the back yard soon. i know that lowe's does these clinics for kids as a marketing technique. they get our family into their store twice a month, and there is more than likely something we will need to buy on our way out. WELL, they may have us fooled, but not our son! the night before we were going to build the bird houses, we were telling him what we'd be doing the next morning. he got so excited and said, "and we can go to home depot to buy bird food!" sorry, lowe's. that kid loves home depot, and his love cannot be bought.

i'll end with a little video of ethan hammering all by himself. he's getting so so big.


the next lowe's clinic is tomorrow morning, so if you're reading this before 10:00, grab your kids and go make a hang glider!

orlando science center: daddy's theme park

we spent a wonderful few days in orlando this past week. of course i took way too many pictures to fit our whole vacation into one post... so i'll start with the orlando science center. this was my bribe to brian to take this trip. :) i knew he'd love to experience this with ethan, and i was right!


our first discovery was "kidstown", the area designed just for younger kiddos. ethan and caroline could have stayed there all day. ethan actually could've stayed at the mechanics exhibit for most of the day... it was adorable. (if fixing a car can be adorable!) you can change tires, check under the hood for various parts w/ sound affects, replace the license plates, and even slide under the car to fix the muffler.





next, we explored the orange grove factory, where the kids picked "oranges" and imitated harvesting them. the kids loved the factory noises and whistles that blew as you worked. the picked oranges go into a tube that moves the oranges along above you as you cycle. (this is the only bicycling i'm doing these days!) the oranges then plop into a bin (i know, real technical, huh?) and the kids transfer them to the conveyor belt. something may happen after that, but this area suddenly got bombarded with very-excited boys, so we moved on!





ethan and caroline stayed busy with the little red kitchen. i have actually been shopping around for kitchens for a possible christmas present for the kids, and i fell in love with this one. i found out that it is $700 from pottery barn, so i told the kids to enjoy it that day because they'd never see that one again!!



brian's favorite part about the entire museum was this water table where you can alter the flow of water with plastic dams. the kids also had fun splashing in the water and following their boats in the current. a funny story... i was with ethan in the kitchen area while brian and caroline were playing boats. she decided to join us, and brian stayed behind to finish his big levee project. :) a few minutes later, an employee walks in and sees brian playing away and notices the empty stroller with shoes in it. but no child is anywhere to be seen. he asks brian, "do you have a toddler?" brian, not wanting to be interrupted from his project, quickly says, "yes". the employee stands there and gives brian this look like, "well, where's your kid?!" as if brian was so engrossed in the water table that he lost his child. :) my husband may be no multi-tasker, but he IS mr. safety!!!!



ok... this post is already long enough, and i haven't even finished the first level of the science center! we did spend the most time in kidstown, though, and i just loved how they had so much geared toward the little ones! i will stop here for now, though there is more to come about the science center... a very very amazing norman rockwell exhibit, which i think was worth the price of admission within itself, as well as the typical science museum stuff that my husband loves. :) hope you are having a good weekend! stay tuned for more...