Usborne Book Party

We're having a party at our house Friday night, the best kind of party of all...a book party!  

The happy bride of two months (on Friday!) is now an Usborne Books and More Consultant.  I had heard of people selling Usborne books in the past, but it wasn't until this past year I've used and appreciated their products.

We use this Internet-Linked Children's Encyclopedia for History, Geography, and Science.  Almost every page has a link to interactive games, videos, pictures, coloring pages, or just more information about whatever subject you're studying.  I know I could search for all of those things myself, but it saves a lot of time having them all in one place, and knowing it's an okay link to click on.  The only link I ever got nervous about was a video of a dolphin being born...but it was amazing!

This Science Activities book is the source of all the science experiments we do around here.  It's probably the reason Ella loves Science, and the activities really do help concepts stick.  We've got some colored water with sugar sitting on our kitchen table right now.  We're waiting on it to evaporate and leave behind the sugar, illustrating how water molecules leave behind anything else they're mixed with when they become a gas.  Although, don't tell Ella what the results are supposed to be.  She wanted to be surprised.

Now this Sticker Dressing book is what Ella plans to order at the party Friday.  She emptied out her piggy bank and wallet last night and counted all her money.  She plans on doing some chores around the house this week to earn $2 more to order her book.  She ADORES these books.  I may order her another one, too.  Maybe this one?

I wanted to invite you all to be at the party virtually.  This link will take you to my e-show, and any purchases you make will go toward making Hillary's party a success.  Who wouldn't want to do that?  I know Ella wouldn't mind if you wanted to stock her up on the Sticker Dressing books.  She makes rules for herself on how many pages she can do each day so she won't finish it too fast.  Though she wants to finish it so badly.  That girl...

Mommy's Tired + An Announcement

This morning I feel like I do during the first year of life with a baby:  tired.  So tired.  Lying there with the bright sunshine pouring into the bedroom and instead of feeling glad at the sight, wanting to roll over and pull the covers over my head.  

James is having sleep issues.  He has been for the past month.  I'm not a napper, but I've been forced into napping the past three days in a row, and they haven't been little catnaps.  I have been out cold in deep sleep.  Last night he was up from around 1-3 a.m.  The bright spot is that at 8:15 he's still asleep, and this is the latest he's slept in weeks.  He's been getting up with the sun.  I am thankful that this has not been the normal for us and praying this passes soon.

But is he cute or what?  It's hard to stay too irritated with him.  He's precious.  When I was putting him back to bed last night I asked him if he was okay, and he said in the sweetest voice, "Yeah, I just a little scared."  He just melts my heart.  But by 3 a.m. I was all stern voice, "Don't get out of that bed again."  Ahh, parenting...

I have a big announcement I wanted to make today (not another baby!), and I wanted to make it with bells and whistles, but I don't think my night of interrupted sleep gives me time for bells and whistles this morning.  So here goes...

Lord willing, and if everything works out, I'm going on a mission trip KJ is leading to Paris, to work with our friend Parker's church and with the International Mission Board.  Boom.  I am so excited.  I'm excited to fly away with KJ, to have sweet times of fellowship and service with people in our church I don't normally get time with, excited to see what the church looks like in France, excited about the ministry there, excited about filling up my new external harddrive with 3,000 more pictures.  I'm so thankful for such a gracious gift and opportunity (and for a husband and parents who make it possible). 

Our Valentine's Day

Yesterday was so beautiful here.  Sunshine after four days of clouds!  It was wonderful.  Valentine's Day fell on KJ's day off, so that was a win, and it meant I got to enjoy a cold morning walk by myself.  I'm such good company.  

It was time for our termite bond to be renewed, so we were furiously cleaning out every corner of our house all morning.  I thought my house was clean and organized until a stranger was going to be walking through each room, spraying in the corners.  Only then did I realize how dirty and un-organized it all is. 

All of our efforts ended up being for naught since apparently, after 7 years, it's no longer upkeep in the termite department, but it's time to re-treat everything.  Instead of spraying, the man walked around the outside of the house measuring, and we have two options to decide between, both unforeseen expenses.  That's life as homeowner, right? On the bright side, our house was really clean, and I had a shower!

It was so nice outside I felt very inspired and wanted to be creative and take pictures, but I thought Ella was probably tired of being my model, and I couldn't think of anyone that could get together very impromptu-like before Ella's gymnastics and before James woke up from nap.  So I read a little and took a nap instead.

I didn't get flowers yesterday, but I did spot the ghosts of Valentine's past rising again in the front yard.  Hooray for Spring!

      Tulips from the Past

(and some weeds that need picking)

When talking about past Valentine's Days last night, I made KJ very happy.  He never did things the "traditional" way, a dozen roses and a nice dinner.  I used to wish he would.  I used to think, "He thinks differently from everyone else.  Why is that?"  "But then," as I told him last night, "I realized your way of thinking was better than everyone else's."  He was exultant.  

His way of thinking includes flowers that can be re-planted and grow again and spending money on things that will last and things he knows I'll really enjoy and that will make me really happy.  And there's nothing so very wrong in that. 

On that note, here's what I had for dinner last night:

That was all KJ's idea, and it cracks me up, but his thoughtfulness meant a lot to me.  He picked up dinner on the way home from gymnastics with Ella, and after the kids went to bed we made it through at least half of a James Bond movie before I started falling asleep.  McDonalds and James Bond:  I think that's a pretty good way to spend Valentine's...except I woke up early this morning with a start because I was dreaming there was an intruder in our house, and I was so tired I couldn't make myself get up and take care of that problem. 

Do you remember the first Valentine's Day we were dating?

Mmm...why don't you remind me?

I think your mom probably had to call you and let you know it was Valentine's Day, because you weren't aware of things like that back then.  You picked me up at my dorm with a single rose and a box of conversation hearts...

I think conversation hearts are disgusting.

I LOVE conversation hearts!

I didn't eat them, but I saved them.

Those are 10 years old by now...

 

Yeah...

 

-A Valentine's Night Conversation -        

For all our loved ones, far and near

 

Truly, we love you people so much.  "Coincidentally," James' memory verse for Cubbies this week is, "God is love."  It's really cute to hear him say it.  I'm reminded of what follows several verses later, "We love because he first loved us."  And we really do.  I'm so thankful for how God changes our hearts to love others and to little by little love them more than ourselves.  I have so many opportunities to learn this while mothering my little ones day after day.

Speaking of which, James' most frequent phrase to me lately is, "Mama, I like you."  And I'm so thankful (even more perhaps) for all the friendships with people I don't just love but people I genuinely like.  Friendship is such a gift, and in this season of my life, it is valued more than ever before since I don't have the free time to spend with friends that I once did.

Friendship is born at that moment when one

person says to another,

"What!  You too?  I thought I was the only one.

- C.S. Lewis -

My Girl

Ella at almost 6 1/2 ---

She's just as energetic as always, dancing, prancing, and flipping about all day.

She's a really amazing reader and starting to read to herself of her own volition more often.  This makes my heart happy.

She loves gymnastics and will walk on the beam without holding on to her teacher's hand now.  She'll venture up on the high bars, too.  She's growing in confidence.  

She's better about speaking to adults at church when they speak to her.  Again, growing in confidence.

She says Science is her favorite subject.  

She spends her "quiet time" in her room each day playing with paper dolls, coloring, and watching The Andy Griffith Show. You can hear a lot of cackling intermittently coming through the walls.

She's a really good big sister, lavishing James with hugs and kindness on most occasions.  

KJ says she answers questions about his sermons at the Mission Community really well, even in a room filled with bigger kids.

She's growing in her ability to recognize her wrong behavior and apologize.

I watched James "hit" her in the face when she wouldn't give him a colored pencil she was using, and she didn't flinch or hit him back.  Her restraint was impressive to me.  I think I would have (and did) hit my brothers back.

She still has her struggles (food), but she is growing in this area, too, eating more variety than she has yet in her young life. 

I love her, and I'm glad she's my girl.      

January: Instagram Style

My iPod takes not-so-very-high quality pictures, but it does capture the little moments that would otherwise go undocumented, the little moments that make up our daily lives.  A good portion of January was spent recovering from the flu.  The birthday party pictures at the top capture the day James was exposed, and my cup of chamomile tea documents the onset for me.  And how awful is that first picture of James and I right in the middle of the worst of it??

Thanks to my iPod, I can always remember the days of lying in bed, watching NetFlix and playing Mario.  Who would want to forget that?

Monday's Memories: The End

It's been a year and four months since our plane landed in London, and with little to no sleep between the two of us, we spent a day walking around the city, praying we wouldn't pass out from exhaustion.  

On our last day, tired and ready to take the train back to our hotel, we decided we might as well walk by Buckingham Palace.

Another trip I might want to go inside and take a tour, but it wasn't high on my priorities that time around.  It was impressive to look at, though, and we walked around it on our way to the station.

I think I must have reached a burn-out point on taking pictures, because this is the last one I took on our trip.  There are no pictures of our last train ride, of our hotel, of us at the airport, etc.  

I remember that when we got back to the hotel that night 1) I had walked 24,000 steps according to my pedometer, and 2) I'd walked a hole in the toe of one of my socks.  We did a lot of walking that day. 

The plane ride back was a lot more enjoyable than coming over, despite the fact that it was a couple of hours longer.  I dozed a little, read a lot, and it was nice not to feel the frustration of feeling like I needed to go to sleep and couldn't.

I think this trip ruined me on a lot of levels.  I don't know if any other "big" vacation will do for me again.  Some people like cruises, and I will always want to go back to England.  I was reflecting this morning on the million little whys of why it was so wonderful.

• KJ and I hadn't taken a week-long trip anywhere since our honeymoon, so it had been over 7 years since we did anything big like that.   
• My life for the previous 5 years was spent mothering at home, and it was good for my heart and mind to have such a horizon-expanding experience.
• It was really nice to talk uninterrupted to my husband for two whole weeks.
• Probably 90% of my favorite books are written by British authors and take place in England, and being there and finding it all just as I'd been reading about it for 19 years was...sublime?  It's hard to think of a good word.
• I love history and learning and understanding the past and how it relates to the present, and there was a lot of that happening.
• And of course, there were things like this:

 

What's not to love?