3 weeks

Three weeks postpartum and I think life needs to return to more structure. While lounging and snuggling a newborn is SO nice, I just can't justify it for much longer. Not that I won't snuggle the little guy, he'll just be in the sling more often! This also happens to coincide nicely with the new year starting up in a few days.

~My goals for this month~

**Start up homeschooling again on Monday and actually teach school each and every day!

**Daily chores- the kids & mine. Plan them out and enforce them.

**Menu plan- I do this most of the time but I've taken a few weeks off as people brought meals :O)

**Eat wiser. One of the great things about people delivering meals is that they bring desserts...it's also the reason I probably haven't lost a single pound. I'm not going to 'diet' but I do need to make wiser choices.

**Work on inventory/pricing of items for my store (I'm getting excited about this one, I worked on it some today)

How about you, do you have any current goals?

Merry Christmas!!

~ The Sims Family ~

Rocky Road

I have really fond memories of cookies and candies that my mom made around the holidays and Rocky Road has always been one of my favorites.

I'm not sure why I only make these at Christmas time, other than it seems to preserve the tradition. Maybe they're more special when only eaten once a year? Maybe my hips and thighs and belly jiggle will thank me for keeping this to a seasonal tradition. :)

Ingredients:

4 cups rice krispies cereal
2 cups mini marshmallows
1 cup peanuts

12 oz peanut butter
1 1/2 lbs baking chocolate

Directions:
Melt chocolate and peanut butter in a large pot. Remove from heat and dump in all other ingredients. Stir thoroughly and drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper. Try and wait until cooled to eat. :O)

Birth Story

Warning: details included may be too much information for some so read ahead with caution.... :)


I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was scheduled to be induced Thursday morning...well, I woke up Wednesday feeling a bit off. Just not quite normal. First thing when I get out of bed is a trip to the bathroom. Then I was up preparing breakfast for Ian before he headed off to work. Only I ended up back in the bathroom about three times over the next 20 minutes. The thought crossed my mind that maybe my water had broken but I wasn't sure. I mentioned to Ian that this might be the case, but I also could just be crazy. :/

I wasn't in any pain, no contractions or anything...just LOTS of trips to the bathroom.

Finally about noon I was convinced that I was indeed leaking amniotic fluid. I made a phone call to the doctor and they said to head on over to their office so they could check things out and see for 100% certainty and whether or not I was dilating.

Fast forward a couple hours and a few phone calls later, a friend is watching the kids and Ian, Amanda and I are on our way to the doctor. He checks me and verifies that yes, my water has broken and I'm dilated 3-4cm. Still no contractions.

I had tested positive for the group B strep so the doctor needed me to receive antibiotics for at least four hours before birth. We headed to the hospital (the building is joint with the doctor's office, so it wasn't far). There they hooked me up to the iv with antibiotics and proceeded to ask me the standard millions of questions. The nurse hooked up the baby monitor and the contractions monitor belt things around me. I'm still feeling perfectly fine, no pain but she tells me that I am having contractions. Huh, okay well at least I can't feel them! :)

8:00 p.m. approaches and the doctor gives the go ahead for me to get some pitocin. Time to get this show on the road!


It doesn't take long before the contractions pick up, not to fast and still bearable. We pass the time watching Mythbusters on tv and the nurse pops in every 20 minutes or so and cranks up the pitocin.

The doctor wanted an update about once an hour so the nurse checked me a little after 9:00, 6 cm.

A little after 10:00, 7 cm.

About 10:30 contractions are starting to HURT! I'm in pain and I don't think Amanda was really sure how to watch/act. The nurse was really sweet and pulled her aside and showed her how to wet down a wash cloth with cool water and bring it to me, also how to swing it around in the air as a fun way to cool it faster.

Around 11:00 I'm really uncomfortable, on the pain scale 0-10...I'm about a 8-9. The nurse checks me once again and says I'm 8 cm and the baby is LOW, which explains all the pressure I feel. She calls the doctor in assuming that things are going to go quickly from this point. He checks me and says yes I'm 8 cm and could probably push a couple times to fully dilate but there's a lip (whatever that means) on one side of my cervix. He looks at the nurse and says, "have her breath through a few more contractions"....and then he leaves the room. I don't think I've ever, EVER been so disappointed then I was at that moment!

I'm feeling really, really weak. I think this is because I hadn't eaten now for almost 12 hours. There was a lot of crying, moaning, me crying "I can't" (I think I say that during every labor as illogical as it is) The pain isn't letting up, between contractions I have a lot of back pain and pelvic pressure.

I think I must have said that I felt like pushing enough to convince the nurse, so she grabbed the doctor back in FINALLY. I don't think I'd dilated any more at this point but he tells me to try and push anyway. I get about half a push in and he tells me to relax and STOP PUSHING. He says baby's head is out and I need to relax and let the rest of him just slide out so I won't tear. UMMM, have you ever tried to NOT PUSH? So, so hard. Seconds later baby was placed up on my chest and oh what a GREAT feeling that is!!!!

The contractions are gone and all eyes are looking at this little miracle. :)




Rough, rough, super painful....but SOOOO worth it!

Theophilus James

Born on Wednesday, December 8th at 11:50 pm

8 lbs 6 ounces

19 inches long

Welcome Theo, we love you!

He'll be here soon...

Well, I can't believe I'm at the end of this pregnancy already!

After my doctors appointment today, I scheduled to be induced on

Thursday, December 9th.

This isn't because of any health concern, mainly just because I'm far enough along that the doctor approves of it AND it sure makes scheduling child care for the other kids easier. :O)

So unless little man doesn't want to wait until Thursday, that'll be the big day!

Stay tuned....

Busy Bee

I was talking with my kids about the things on our calendar and realized that there is something scheduled EVERYDAY from now until next Saturday. Whoa. Not all of these things cause us to leave the house (repairman for dishwasher coming) and some things are just routine (piano lessons) but still.

Every.

Day.

And did I mention that as of today I'm 38 weeks pregnant?

I'm feeling alright most of the daytime. Late afternoon and evenings I feel pretty wiped out and uncomfortable. I feel kinda sorry for my hubby as he's the one who gets to hear me complain. :P

My oldest daughter's getting more excited for the baby, she's asked to come along to the delivery with us. The plan (as much as one can plan) is that she'll be either in the room with me or in the waiting room and be the first person other than Ian and I to see him. :O)

Thankful

Thankfulness is a feeling that we should try to have all the time but this week is a good time to reflect on all of the blessings in our lives.

~I'm thankful for~

• Healthy children
• A loving, hard working husband
• A warm home (with such luxuries as clean running water and modern appliances....things I too often take for granted)
• uncomplicated pregnancies
• loyal friends
• laughter
• coffee
• a full pantry
• cozy socks
• amazing friends I've met through the internet :O)
• the freedom to homeschool

and most of all a wonderful Savior

Jesus!!

Pregnancy week 36

I'm not sure how I got to this point so fast, but I'm 36 weeks along as of tomorrow!

~I had my OB appointment this morning and baby boy's heartbeat sounds good.

~My belly is measuring right on 36 weeks.

~My iron levels are low :( He now has me taking two iron pills daily, hopefully this will help me with all the tiredness I've been having!

~I'm dilated 2 cm...Yay for early progress!!

Fear.

I have a list (that feels like it's a mile long) of things I want to get done before the baby's born. You'd think that those things would be occupying my thoughts.

Nope.

Instead I think about labor and delivery.

And

I'm

Scared.

The end.

Kitchen Pictures...

Okay, remember a LONG time ago I said I'd post finished pictures of our kitchen?? Well, I'm finally remembering to do it! :)

These first two are the BEFORE pics to refresh your memory:




These are the AFTER pics I'm sure you've been dying to see (Ha!):


Didn't my hubby do a great job?? I love how it turned out, it seems a lot bigger!

What's on my mind?

Login in to Facebook and you'll see the little box that's always asking, what's on your mind?

It seems pretty simple to just pop in there and write a little one liner about what your thinking or doing.

Blogging hasn't seemed as easy lately. Maybe I'll just type out a few thoughts, they won't be connected or anything just kind of random.

~I went in for a check up today. Baby boy seems to be doing great, nice steady heartbeat, kicking away and making my belly BIG! :)

~I actually made it through a full day of school with the kiddos today without feeling like I was going to fall asleep (which has been the normal feeling as of late)

~I'm loving the fall weather!!

~Kathleen is 14 months old now (WOW!) I'm not convinced that she's going to walk before the next baby arrives. She's getting closer, but still.....not sure.

~ My fun, super smiley boy Abram turned 5 last week. He cracks me up with his little personality and also scares me with his fearlessness...I seriously couldn't love him any more!

~I should really be starting dinner right now but Ian's gone until late tonight and the kids are happily playing. I'm procrastinating.

~Halloween is approaching and I still haven't finished the dresses I'm making for the girls. I'm burnt out on sewing after completing the boy's. *sigh*

~ I mentioned to Ian that I was wanting some long maternity dresses but I wasn't sure if it was worth getting them just for the last 6-7 weeks. His reply, 'I'm sure you'll get a lot of use out of them during the next 5 pregnancies' HA! ....we shall see. :)

Now that I mentioned dinner, I'm hungry... I think I'll go start cooking now.

My warriors!

Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare for war!
Rouse the warriors!
Let all the fighting men draw near and attack.

Joel 3:9

We got all the boys (and husband) all dressed up for the Treat Fest at our church yesterday....SOOO much fun. :)

Scripture & A Snapshot - Week 3

New ventures

I think it's about time to post something that doesn't involve a picture of my preggo belly! In one of my last posts I mentioned that I'm creating a business. 'Tis true.

For several years now I've had a thought in the back of my mind that I wanted to start a resale shop. Mostly those thoughts revolved around kids clothes, toys, books and such. Well, then one morning I woke up at like 3 am and could NOT get back to sleep. My mind was just going like crazy about a curriculum shop.

Here I am a home school mama. A mama who's noticed that if you want to buy or sell curriculum almost all of the transactions are done online.

I'm also the kind that wants to look through books, to be able to touch and feel them...browse a bit before knowing if it's something I'd want to buy. I believe that I'm not alone on this one. :)

So, I've decided that I'm going to open a used curriculum store (and possibly a kids clothing section). To start off with it's going to exist in the basement of our house, with the goal of having a building to move to in late spring of next year.

I've put a lot of prayer into this and I believe that this is the way I'm being led, or at least something I'm being given permission to pursue. It's something that my kids and I can do together and eventually they will be old enough to take it over completely (if they are interested). Also, it's something that my husband is very on board with.

It's been pretty amazing how much progress has happened in just the last couple of months towards this! I'm hosting a party for the ladies from our church next Friday to talk with them about this new venture, get the word out and hopefully some of them will have some helpful feedback for me.

How about you? What do you think?

Scripture & A Snapshot - Week 2

This one may seem like a no brainer but I thought it worked well for my first time linking up to:



Click the image above to go check out other snapshots!

Pregnancy 29th week

Throughout most of my previous pregnancies I've had this picture in my head of climbing a hill, so to speak. The first 29 weeks are the upward climb, week 30 is the peak and then the last 10 weeks speed by. Not that the last weeks are the easiest by any means, just that the time seems to go rapidly. It's hard for me to believe that I'm approaching the 30 week mark already!

I'm feeling pretty good overall, I passed the blood sugar glucose test at my appointment yesterday. I was relieved not to have to take the 3 hour one (those are miserable!). The doctor did say that my iron level is low and he wants me to take a supplement....not surprising, I've done this at the end of almost all of the other pregnancies. It's also a good excuse to eat more steak! :)

Sleeping is becoming a bit more uncomfortable with heartburn and restless legs but it's not much to complain about.

Weight gain- I'm not really that happy about where I'm at now. I am 3 pounds less now than I was at my heaviest (full term with my first), and I have 10.5 weeks to go still.....

I think that sums things up fairly well.

Open House

I am wearing...sweatpants, a purple tank top & navy blue hoodie

I am listening to....my husband watching a movie across the room

I am reading...the book of Isaiah for BSF

I am looking forward to...a night of real sleep, I think it's going to be awhile still....

Outside my window...darkness

I am creating...A BUSINESS!!! ...and a baby :)


I am praying for...friends/family, my BSF group, and guidance


I am thankful...that the Lord gives us grace, I seem to need a lot of it!


From the kitchen...a sink full of dishes awaits me :(


What's going on with you?? I would love to visit your open house!

History & Science

Now that we are a few weeks into our school year, the foundation things (language arts/math) are going along fairly well. I decided that this would be a good time to start adding in history & science lessons. I wasn't very dedicated to history last year (bad home school mama, I know!) even though I really like the book we're using:


When I would read to them last year I'd give them a blank piece of paper and ask them to sketch whatever came to mind. This worked out alright but I wanted something more specific. So this year I bought:
I don't think we'll be using the writing aspect of this book but when we pulled this out yesterday ALL four of the kids had such a great time drawing along with what we were learning. Hopefully the enthusiasm will last awhile. :)

For science we're studying astronomy:



We'll be using the notebook that goes along with this too.

I really like the narrative style of these books and that four of the kids can do this together, though varied depending on their age. I must say though, after reading both of these lessons aloud back to back....my throat was sore! Hopefully that will get easier the more we get into the year too. :)

I'm a failure too

I was going to write up a post about how lousy I've been at keeping it 'all together' lately, the housework, schooling, attitudes....etc. But then I came across this post and she just said it all for me. Now I'm just feeling thankful. Thank you Lord that each day is new and your mercy is great!

Life has gotten in the way of blogging.

Seems like things around these parts have just been non-stop for the past few weeks! We've finally finished our work on our kitchen (though I haven't remembered to take a photo....that'll be added soon)

A couple of monumental things....

My sweet Amanda turned 10 last weekend!!



I think I mentioned before that we had decided to throw a big birthday bash once a year instead of giving each of the kids an individual party with friends. We hosted the first on on Amanda's birthday and it was SOOO much fun! There were over 70 people that came throughout the afternoon/evening.

One of the things we did for the party was roast a hog, something my husband has wanted to do for a LONG time. :)

Yummy!! (we're still eating the leftovers)

Here's Jessica taking a swing at the pinata~

And the birthday girl with her friend Bailey.

Another monumental thing is that baby girlie turned one! I need to sit her down and do a photo shoot now that things have slowed down a bit.

We've also transitioned back into school. The first week or so was hard, but things are starting to smooth out and do I dare say that today was actually enjoyable. Attitudes were gone and my willing happy students were back! :)

Things are going well pregnancy wise, I'm feeling good most of the time. When I don't feel well it's usually because I try to take on to many things and just plain wear myself out! :P I had my 24 week check-up yesterday and I'm measuring right on track and his heartbeat was a strong 150!

I think that's about all for now~

Randomness

~It's Saturday morning and I feel like I'm moving a bit slower after working on our kitchen floor yesterday. We decided to remove the vinyl floor and replace it with laminate wood. My little helper (Stephen, age 7) and I tackled removing all the trim and old flooring, not really an easy task! After all that was taken up the floor had these little staples sticking up everywhere, so we were pounding them all down. Stephen was so cute, he said, "Mom, this is just like playing whack a mole". It makes me happy when one of the kids chooses to enjoy a task that is pretty mundane! :)

~Today's project is installing the new floors! I'm excited to see how they look when we're done.
I'll be sure to post some before and after pictures too.

~We are throwing a big birthday bash in a couple weeks....makes all these other projects have a deadline to be done...eeek!

~Baby girl Kathleen will be ONE in a couple weeks also, cliche I know but I can not believe how fast her first year has gone.

~We started back to school this week. Mainly just continuing right on with where we left off at the beginning of summer. The kids weren't very happy to get back to the books so we had some character/obedience training too, which is exhausting.

~A friend from church hosted a group of homeschool mom's at her house for prayer and encouragement for the start of the school year...seriously, this could not have come at a better time, it was wonderful!

I went in for my 20 week ultrasound today.....

It's

A

Boy!!!


I wanted to put up some pictures but sadly the cd they gave me is blank. :( I'm waiting for the nurse to call me to see if I can get another copy, if I get one I'll come back and post them for sure!

Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me....

Well, I've been having a hard time trying to figure out what to post here....plus we've been busy remodeling our kitchen and taking the kids to swim lessons.

Anyway, just to be brief, things are going well. I'm 19.5 weeks along now and have an ultrasound scheduled next Wednesday. We like to find out the gender of the baby and normally don't keep any secrets. So when I know, you'll know! :)

Now I'm off to start celebrating the first day of the last year of my twenties.....it started off with my girls bringing me coffee and a tiara to wear! :O)

Happy 6th Birthday Jessica!

You are very loved!

How do you tie your shoes?

Someone just posted on Facebook about teaching their child to tie shoes and it just made me wonder what method you use?

Bunny ears?

One loop around and tuck?

or this super fun way that happens to be how I tie mine?

Life

Once Ian finished the tree fort he decided to move right on into remodeling our kitchen. When we bought this house we knew that the kitchen was small and something would need to be changed with it and we've been tossing around ideas. Once we settled on what we wanted to do, the demolition began. He's put in a doorway between the kitchen and dining room, removed some of the overhead cabinets and moved the counter to open things up. It looks and feels so much bigger now! I'll post some before/after pictures when it's a bit more complete, right now it's still a bit rough. :O)

On top of all that the kids are going to a soccer camp each evening this week and have swimming lessons every evening for the next two weeks. I know each of those things only takes a couple hours or so out of each night but having something EVERY night just wears me out. I'll be ready to be a homebody when it's all over.

The finished project....

The pictures in the previous post were the building in progress. Here is the finished tree fort. The first two levels were put up by a friend of ours, but Ian did a marvelous job on the third level!

He also put up a ZIP LINE! The kids love it a lot.

This little cutie pie is now ten months old! (Her first year is flying by)

Happy Father's Day!

Ian,

You are an amazing daddy, the last few days you've spent working hard (up a tree) are just a glimpse of what you do for them.....

We LOVE you!!

Need encouragement?

click here....you won't regret it.

How sharp is your axe?

There's a story that I'm sure many of you have heard about two loggers going out to the woods to cut down a tree. One takes the time to sharpen his axe, while the other just starts chopping away. The man who sharpened his axe can chop down the tree faster and with less effort than the man with the dull axe.

I was just standing doing the dishes a few minutes ago thinking about how this story can apply to so many different things in life. Here I was scrubbing away and I noticed that I have two sponges, one that I've had awhile and a newer one. The older one has softened over time and doesn't scrub nearly as well as the newer one. I believe that my time/effort is worth the money to buy a new sponge when needed just as the man's time was well spent to sharpen his axe.

It just made me wonder what other parts of my life this can be applied to. Are there other areas where my axe is dull?

Science & Industry Museum

***Warning***Lots of pictures!

We took the kids on a field trip up to the museum in Chicago yesterday and had SO much fun!



Jessica is sitting on the outside of a plane here....



and this is the kids on the inside. I don't see them getting to go on a plane ride anytime soon so this is about as close to the real deal as they'll get. :O)



This was an old time cinema where they played a 20 minute Charlie Chaplin movie. It was neat to see the kids cracking up while watching.


Airplanes! The big white one above their heads here is the one they were sitting in just moments ago.



I wish I had had the video going when we rounded the corner to see this submarine, very exciting! This is the actual German sub captured during the war.


The enigma machine used to crack the codes, can you just see how happy Ian is to be here? Oh, he had a great time in this part of the museum!




Torpedo!

Depth charge.


And lastly, this is how Kathleen spent the day. She was a really good girl.

There were many, many more things that I could post pictures of but I'll spare you from hundreds of photos. I know the submarine was up top for some, but they also really enjoyed the space section getting to see the things that had actually gone up to the moon, very cool! One of my favorites was the storm center that had a Tessler coil to create lightning, a tsunami wave model, and a small tornado.

All in all the day was awesome, we'll definitely be going back in the future.

Playing in the mud

It rained quite a bit today and when that happens our front ditch area accumulates quite a bit of water. When the rain stopped and the sun peeked out the kids were itching to go out to play. Shortly after I found them doing this....



and it looked like so much fun I couldn't stop them.




They had a blast and got VERY, VERY, VERY dirty!

Guess What??

Yep. I'm pregnant. :O)



(sorry for the old news if you already know this *cough*Emily*cough*)

Another Day for random thoughts in a list

~I am so thankful for a reliable babysitter! We've gotten a date night four Friday's in a row now! :O) It doesn't even matter what we go do, I'm just thankful for the time.


~The walls in our girls' bedroom are brown wood and I've wanted to paint them since we moved in. Today I started on what may turn into a long term project. I'm painting the walls in vertical stripes of three different colors. (I'll post pictures when I'm done, but I'm not even going to guess on how long that'll be)


~I finally got my plant starts in my garden yesterday. Watching things grow will be really neat, and hopefully produce yummy veggies.


~Max Lucado writes amazing children's books. I have a hard time not crying every time I read one aloud. (In a good way)


~Praying that we can order parts and fix our furnace ourselves and not have to pay the amount the service guy quoted us. EEK! (one of my very sweet children who shall remain anonymous managed to flood our basement with 1/2 inch of water and saturate the inside of the furnace)


~Noah turned 2 last week! We had fun celebrating, though I think he was completely unaware of what was going on and why we were singing to him. :P


~I'm trying to wean myself off of caffeine. I'm down to one cup of coffee per day from two and I switched to caffeine free diet coke since I can't seem to stay away from it altogether. Thinking decaf coffee is next.

Whatcha Doing?

Almost daily my husband texts me asking, "Whatcha doing?"

Most of the time I have very exciting answers like: dishes, school work with the kids, folding laundry....etc.

My days are busy in a very pleasant yet uneventful way. Well except for the times when water gets spilled all over, the baby cries and everyone seems to be talking at once (those aren't the most pleasant!).

There are some neat things that are happening though. I started some seeds for my garden that Ian tilled up for me.

All the trees in the yard are blooming, very pretty to look at out my kitchen window while I do dishes!

Jessica learned how to ride without training wheels!! It's always so exciting when they 'get' it for the first time!

(and yes, I know she's barefoot. Trying to keep shoes on my kids is almost impossible, everytime I turn around they take them off again!)

Abram is not too far behind her in learning. Watching her has made him REALLY motivated! :O)

We set up a basketball hoop and have been having so much fun. We have it set low so that the kids can make it it the hoop and each evening we've been playing a game called Bump, it's fast, fun and hilarious to play.

Now I shall go fold more laundry!