Candy Corn Day!

Today is National Candy Corn Day, so be sure and grab a handful before the day’s over!

While working on our Harvest lapbooks yesterday, we learned that candy corn was invented by the Wunderlee Candy Company in 1880. It was made in the shape of a corn kernel, and thus the name was born. The colors also were chosen to resemble corn. I was surprised to learn that one of the ingredients in candy corn is marshmallow.

My brother held a poll at last week’s family birthday party on which was the most favored candy corn – the yellow or the brown. I, of course, voted for the brown due to it’s close resemblance to chocolate. However, in the end, the yellows won by a narrow margin, with the result really being summed up by my nephew, Dylan, who said he voted for yellow because – “it’s classic”.

Which is your favorite color of candy corn?

Blessings,
Nancy

Bloggy Anniversary!!

Today is my 2 year blog anniversary! Two years ago today I wrote this post. I didn’t know how long it would last, but I’ve found that I really enjoy writing about our adventures, sharing recipes and thoughts on life. It is sometimes a challenge to find the time to write about what’s going on, since the going on doesn’t ever stop around here! And the truth is, sometimes I’m just too tired to write about it all! But, I’m always glad when I get a new post done, and it is archived for our family to look back on and remember our days by.

I appreciate all of you who stop by to visit with our family and share your thoughts and encouragement with me! So many of you have inspired me with your own blogs and I am thankful for you!

Blessings,
Nancy

Remember this? . . .

بدلة العريس

Remember last week when I posted this?

Well, I should have known to go straight to the technological expert in the house for my answer. When I showed it to him (Matthew) this morning, he immediately copied it, and headed off to Google for an answer. When he pasted in this – بدلة العريس – he was rewarded with a screen full of pictures of tuxedoes. That was our first clue. Then he went to Google translate and pasted it in. Here was the result -

Translation: Arabic (automatically detected) » English
بدلة العريس The groom’s suit

So, I guess that answers my question.

Google obviously sent someone to my blog as a result of this post. Go ahead and check it out, because I’m a mother and I just can’t help myself!

Another mystery solved.

Blessings,
Nancy

Okay . . .

. . . so, this is what someone Googled that led them here -

بدلة العريس

Any ideas what this means? Or even what language it is in? And why in the world did Google send them to my site when I’ve never written anything remotely similar to this?

Ah, the mysterious world of the computer . . .

Blessings,
Nancy

And finally the sun!!!

After days and days of cloudy skies and rain, rain, rain the sun is finally shining brightly today. I’m not complaining about the rain – it has been a welcome change from the hot temperatures that preceded it, but after a week of gray, the sun surely is a lovely sight.

We have been learning about the Sun this week, and making weather charts, which were getting a mite repetitious with the clouds, but I think I’ll run outside today and do all of those shadow activities that we were deprived of doing all week.

I think that I am not the only one who will be enjoying the sun today ~ the kitties have been taking turns in the open windows all morning !

Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,
Nancy

Hungry Kitty?

The other day I sat down on my bed (my favorite quiet spot) to eat lunch. A few seconds later Macey jumped up on the bed ~ her nose had picked up the scent of my chicken sandwich ~ and proceeded to stare at me, licking her chops in anticipation of a feast. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few pictures of her in action, all the while protecting my lunch from the beast.

Please, may I have some of your chicken sandwich?

Yes, I mean that one . . .

I reeeealllly want some . . .

What’s this? Do I hear my girl coming? She’ll give me some.

Yay! My girl is the best!

Yum, yum, yum . . .

But I still want your chicken sandwich . . .

(She never did get any of mine, though ~ I have to share my food with little people, I gave up a long time ago sharing it with the animals!)

Blessings,
Nancy

A Frequent Sight at Our House

For about the last month or so, David has been spending most of his days with a crayon or pencil in his hand. He asks us to print out a coloring sheet for him the moment his feet hit the floor in the morning, works on them all throughout the day, and at bedtime, I have to pry him away from the table where he is working on yet another page. When he can’t persuade someone to print one out for him, he will pull out a coloring book, or sometimes he takes to drawing his own creations – usually adorable potato people that he says are Teletubbies. This particular day he was copying numbers that I wrote on his paper -

All of this handwork that he has been doing has had the result of an amazing ability to control his fine motor muscles. We are continually amazed at the detailed coloring he is doing, mostly staying within the lines. Here are a couple of samples of his work this week -

He has also had an increased interest in working puzzles lately, neither of which I can complain about – nice, quiet, brain stimulating and I don’t have to be constantly checking to see what he’s into. I hope this phase lasts a little while – it’s been a welcome break for Mom!

Oh, and by the way, these pictures were taken with my new camera – the kids helped me and we managed to figure out how to get them off of the camera and onto the computer – yay!

Blessings,
Nancy

What’s Living Behind Your Furniture?

Beware! This post contains harsh realities and fuzzy findings! Continue reading at your own risk. Really, it’s not that bad – it could have been much worse than this – in which case, I may not have been so willing to share it with you. If you have an aversion to dust, feel free to skip this post entirely.

As I mentioned in my Daybook yesterday, Michael (7) was in a real cleaning mood yesterday. I don’t know if it was the Dr. Pepper he had for lunch (not a normal occurence) or the driving force of earning a dollar, but he kept coming to me asking for more work. To his credit, the paid jobs came after his initial independent decision to clean the entire living room, as well as do his other afternoon chores without being told and before our normal chore time.

Anyway, one of the jobs that he asked to do was to clean out behind our entertainment center, which is a mostly neglected area, not high up on the list of places to clean up regularly, and so generally forgotten . . . until you are hunting for a missing DVD or video game, and then you muster up your courage and dive into the mix of cords, dust and whatever else has found it’s way back there. It doesn’t help that our entertainment center is rather large and therefore, has lots of space behind it for gathering . . . things.

So, what did Michael find while on his expedition to rid our home of this particular black hole? Well, I asked him to tell me, while I jotted down his findings so that I could share it with you (whatever was I thinking?).

Here’s the list he gave me -

-Dvds

-Books

-Videos

-Dust (we won’t even talk about how much)

-Video games

-Uno card

-Toy figures

-Cheeseburger – no, it wasn’t real – a toy from Anna’s play kitchen.

-”Soft, gray thing” – which turned out to be an old tissue covered in dust – he was wary of diagnosing this himself and called me in to investigate. My first thought at his description of it was, “Oh, no, I hope it’s not a dead mouse!” Needless to say, I was quite relieved to find that it was not.

-Pencil

-Duplo block

-Ball

-Cords (LOTS of them)

-MarioKart steering wheel

-Paper

-Dirty socks

So, there you have it. No, I’m not proud of it, but not too disturbed either. In a house with this many people, including small children – you just learn that there are priorities in life, and the floor behind my entertainment center is just not one of them right now – unless, of course, you are seven years old and looking for income anywhere you can find it – even in dusty, uncharted territory.

Hmm. . . maybe he’ll decide to dive under the couches next. But I really might not have the courage to tell that story.

Blessings,
Nancy

Back Up and Running

Well, we had quite a week last week! A storm blew threw Wednesday evening which knocked out our power. We spent the evening camped out in the living room with candles and flashlights aglow. One by one the children fell asleep and we finally joined them, expecting to be awakened by the lights coming back on in the night.

We were surprised to find that the power was still out in the morning. It was refreshingly quiet in the house with no electonics, washers, dryers, etc. running. Finally around lunchtime the lights came back on – but only for about 10 minutes, and then they went out again. We kept expecting them to be back any moment – surely they were working on it, right? We went out to lunch and drove around town to see if the rest of the town was affected, which they didn’t seem to be, although we saw a number of downed trees and limbs around.

We spent the afternoon playing outside and swimming – enjoying the light of the sun, which was newly appreciated. I spent most of the afternoon working on my quilt. By dinnertime there was no sign of power, so we started to prepare for another night of darkness. I gathered more candles and set them around the rooms downstairs. I set two candlesticks with tapers on the table so that we would have a nice spot for playing cards and games when the sun went down. Still no power meant still no cooking in the kitchen, so Jeff ran out and picked up some pizzas for dinner.

As the sun set, we lit the candles and settled in for another night. It was a different atmosphere from the previous night, when we were sitting out a storm in the outage – expecting it to be a temporary inconvenience. Thursday night there was no storm – everything was calm, and we now had the feeling that we could be living like this for awhile. We’ve been learning alot about pioneer days recently, and we couldn’t help but talk about the similarities in what we were experiencing to what we’ve been learning – no electricity for lights, cooking, cleaning, entertainment. It was inconvenient and we all were looking forward to the return of our normal lifestyle, but at the same time – it was an adventure, fun and exciting.

We played Dutch Blitz for a little while, and then pulled out our In A Pickle game. It is a card game where you build words on each other and end up with some really funny sequences. The two littlest were asleep by this time, but we were having a great time dying of laughter over the game.

We fully expected to spend the night this way, when, to our surprise, the lights suddenly came on about 10:30 pm – we all cheered, but then we turned them back off and finished our game – the lights ruined the cozy atmosphere that we were enjoying, so while glad to have the lights back, we savored the last few moments without them. The kids camped out in the living room again that night, reluctant to give up the fun!

It was nice to have our power back Friday, but the Internet was still down. There was some damage to the tower which took them longer to get fixed. It finally came back Saturday, and we were back up and running in every way.

Our power was out a total of 27 hours – a new family record – although I’m sure some of you have experienced longer outages. It turned out to be a time of blessing; however, and one we will remember for a long time.

I’ll be back later with my Daybook for this week!

Blessings,
Nancy

Something to do on a Rainy Day . . .

Wondering what to do on a rainy day, when you can’t go outside to play? Here’s one idea -

The kids got tired of playing war with these Star Wars cards, and decided to put them to use in a different way – construction.

Please ignore the pile of laundry in the background – just one more thing to do on a rainy day!

Here is the one-story flat roofed model -

From this angle, these card houses are a bit creepy!

Have fun!

Blessings,
Nancy