the newest addtions to our family

We have been blessed with two new members of our family. Their names are Caleb and Christopher Neal. They are in the NIC unit of Mission Hospital right now but they are growing and progressing wonderfully. Please keep them in your prayers. Children are a gift from God and we as a family are so delighted to be given such a beautiful gift! I will be posting a picture soon!

great site

I just found a great FREE site. It has some great resources for everything from meal planning, to planning your weekly curriculum to a great science journal. Whether you are a homeschooler or not , this site can help you get it together!

DonnaYoung.org

or click on this and it will take you right to her site-

http://donnayoung. org/index. htm

Zoo

Why do I love this word? Because it is the first one that Jayden officially spelled on his own just because he could. This morning I was cleaning the kitchen and he was playing with the letters on the refrigerator. He smiled and said - "Look mom I spelled a word! Zoo!" I looked and sure enough he had spelled it. It is a little word to some but a big word for Jayden who is 3. He then went on to spell Cat, hat,rat, tap, and pat out perfectly for me with his magnet letters. We have been working on learning to read and he is reading a few small Hooked on Phonics books ,but this was totally on his own. So it is a big moment for my little guy and I of course am the proudest mommy around today! Yeah!! We are on the track to becoming a successful ( and a joyful ) reader!

Great snack!

So I am always on the look out for great healthy ( and cheap) snacks and meals for my family. Well I found one that i wanted to share with everyone. It is super cheap to make and even my picky eater likes it. You can add whatever your family likes to it. I add 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed , a 1/4 cup wheat germ, and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter to mine for added nutrition. You can add raisins, coconut, Peanut butter, whatever you can think of with in reason.

Easy Granola


1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of honey
4 cups rolled oats

Melt butter and honey ( I melted my PB too at this stage). Pour over oats and stir well. This is when I mixed in my flaxseed ( which is a great heart healthy addition- you can usually find it in your baking aisle and it is cheap!) and my wheat germ ( this adds fiber- I found in the cereal aisle on one of the top shelves). Put on a cookie sheat ( I added 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips over the top and squashed it all down at this point, but you don't have to) and bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. You can stir it and bake for another 5 minutes. If you boil the butter and honey for 1 minute and do not stir after baking, when cooled these will stick together more like the granola bars.

We put ours in a Tupperware when it was cooled and we have eaten it like cold cereal, you can eat it alone, or you can sprinkle some over low fat vanilla yogurt and it is really good. All of my kids eat this. We call it crumbly candy bars. ( we don't do the candy bar thing in my house so to them this is candy!) I love this recipe because it made so much and it smelled great cooking to! Plus it is high in fiber so it feels the kids up ( my kids seem like bottomless pits sometimes) ! You can send this in Ziploc bags for snacks for school or picnics. Just thought I would share! Have a great day everyone!

Great news!

God has blessed my family very much. I now have two sisters that are pregnant. Brandy (Scott's soon to be wife) is having twins and Drew's wife Kristen just found out she is pregnant. Brandy is due around March 14th and Kristen is due around June 2nd. I am super excited that we will have a houseful of children at holidays. Please keep both of them in your prayers!Thanks everyone!

Jayden and the slide

Jayden and me got a day to ourselves today. My daughter is is on her visitation with herdad in NC. I decided we would do something special for mommy and Jayden day so we went to the park to play.Jayden is pretty fearless about things so he loves the big slides at one local park. Plus it is all shaded so no sunburn or third degree burns from equipment. Well he has discovered climbing walls which he loves (and which make me scared to death to watch him shimmy up). So he happily climbed up the wall with me trying my best to stay right behind him just in case he falls I can catch him or we will both fall and he will land on my nice soft squishy body (see there is a reason why I don't have six pack abs). Well anyway he gets to the top and decided to go down the biggest scariest slides they have. This slide even scares me because it twists and turns and you go fast on it. Well the first two times down went fine.But the third time he got turned the wrong way and it scared him. It scared me so I am sure it was pretty scary to him. He cried a little and decided he wanted to go on a little walk.so we walked out into this huge field and he ran around and then we collected rocks to paint later today. We where walking back to the car to go home and he put down his armload of rocks and very matter of factually said- I would like to go back to the playground. I said OK we have some time and it isn't really hot.Lets go. Well he headed straight for the climbing wall and he told me the slide was scary and it hurt him. I said that's OK just go down the other slide ( a lot less scary). He said OK and climbed up the climbing wall to the top of the platform. I thought he was going to go across the little bridge thing and go down the other safer slide but to my amazement he did not. He looked at the scary slide and told it- I am going to go down you now! And preceded to slide down it with a very confident look on his face. When he got to the bottom I of course swooped him up and told him I love him and I was proud of him. He was so funny. When I put him down he turned around and looked at the slide and said- Goodbye slide , I will see you again. And then told me we could go home now.and we got in the car and left. I was so impressed by my little guy. It is funny how God gives you these cool little kids in life and you think it is your job to teach them everything and sometimes it is the opposite.I think I have something to learn from this cute little crazy guy. Sometimes the best way to fight fear and hurt is to face it and tell it you aren't going to be held back anymore, you aren't going to take the easy less scary way , you are just going to conquer it!

Gravy- why are you sooo hard?

Have you ever had those mornings where nothing seems to be going right? That was the way mine was starting out. I slept through my alarm to get up and walk the dogs,my coffee pot turned off to early, the biscuits didn't cook all the way through and the gravy was not even fit to eat. I think that is why God gives us a sense of humor. Because even though the morning didn't go as planned at least I got a couple of really good laughs this morning to start my day with. And I got to see what a wonderful husband I have who smiled the whole way through breakfast and claimed the biscuits where wonderful. If anyone would like to pass on a recipe for biscuits and gravy I would take it. Gravy is my arch nemesis of cooking.No matter how hard I try to make it - it always comes out uneatable. Oh well- there is always next time!! Or I could just make waffles!