Musical Family?

Neither my husband or I are 'musical people'. I played the clarinet throughout junior high and that's the extend of the musical abilities in this house. However, the kids expressed interest in taking lessons. So now we have four of them learning instruments. Amanda & Jessica are learning the piano. Kenny is drumming and Stephen is learning to play the guitar. We even have a music room.

When the kids talked to us about lessons, we told them that it's not cheap and it would require a big time commitment. Our first step was to pray about it. Pray that we'd find a way to acquire the instruments and find teachers...basically pray about all the details.

You know what? Shortly thereafter, I received an email about a new teacher in our area willing to teach pretty much ANY instrument and he's willing to come to the students home for lessons.

It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord cares about things we may think are small requests.

Not only did we get lessons, but ALL the kids have the same teacher...and he comes to our house. No driving all around.

Amazing! We serve a very awesome, loving God! :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Our week in pictures

Yesterday Stephen turned 8!
On the kids' birthday's I let them pick out what they want to eat for dinner and the type of cake they want. Most of the kids pick out pizza and white/chocolate cake...not this guy. He picked out biscuits and gravy for dinner and cheesecake for dessert. His daddy complimented him on his wise choices as both of those are ones he'd personally choose too!




A few of the kids caught the colds (coughs, runny/stuffy noses) that have been going around, but as this photo shows it didn't bother them too much. :)



Bath time pictures are just so fun!




We got hit with 'Blizzard 2011' along with half the country, these are just a couple pictures to show how much snow we got. The drifts in the middle of this picture go up to Stephen's waist!




This is the view from our garage door, about 17 inches. Thank goodness for neighbors willing to let us borrow their snowblower, that would have taken ALL day to shovel!

Tuesday ramblings

Along with everyone else in the mid-west we are expecting a blizzard today/tonight. They predict anywhere from 12-20 inches of snow and ice.

Kathleen is now 17.5 months old and finally walking! I think she could have done this a lot sooner but lacked motivation. Once she took a few steps and all the other kids cheered her on, she decided she'd go for it.

I'm working on an inventory list for my store, pricing each item & tagging it as I go. It's a long and tedious process. I'll be happy when I'm done and all I'll have to do is a handful of items at a time when people bring them to me (vs. the hundreds I'm doing now).

Baby Theo is growing well and seems to be a pretty content little guy. He's the first baby of ours that has refused to either find his thumb or take a pacifier, so that's new. He smiled at me for the first time a couple days ago, LOVE that!

We're plodding along with school and I'm seeing progress. I still struggle with hearing what other homeschoolers are doing and wondering how they pull of such fun and creative things. Am I just a boring mom? :P Some where along the line I stopped recording all the lessons we accomplished in each day, I need to get back to doing that. It really helps me to stay consistent when I can visually see what we've done.

We've had vehicle problems on and off this past year. Fix one thing and something else would go wrong....so we bought a new van. With all the time, money, and worries we were dumping into the other vehicles it feels like a load off our shoulders to have a reliable vehicle!

The munchkins are awaiting breakfast so I'll end there~