Winter Storms and Getting Ready for TN!!!

We've been pretty busy around here the past couple of weeks and I just realized how long it's been since I posted..wow! Last week I spent quite a bit of time filling hair bow orders the website and just living life! We got dumped on with snow so we didn't do much outside of the house. The kids had lots of fun playing in the snow with Daddy for the first time this Winter. Maddelyn was definitely not quiet about how she had not been in the snow yet. Caroline was absolutely hilarious trying to walk through snow that was calf high to her...but the little trooper still had lost of fun. I was also able to get a few shots of the house through the knee high snow.

I was able to slip away one day with a friend from Church. Pam and I spen tthe day at the Lodi Outlets...well more like just at Children's Place! :D Gotta love when they have most of the store on clearance for $1.99 - $2.99...and you have a coupon! With 4 kids it's a great time to stock up! Besides all the shopping it was a great time to just hang out with another mom and just have fun. Both of our husbands were oh so sweet to keep all 7 kids at our house for the day. Talk about an act of service for their wives!

The kids had a nice time away with my parents the other night at the Mohican Lodge. While they had a grandparent night we took advantage of just one child and headed to Columbus to celebrate Nathan's 29th birthday. Nathan said he wanted to go to Gameworks (like Dave and Busters) and then a movie, so that's what we did. He was so sweet to let me run into Trader Joes to re-stock on some of their gluten free items like noodles and crackers and then to let me run into Archivers. When you've been out of the scrapbook world for several months...it can be overwhelming for you! I have always been amazed at how quickley the scrapbooking market revolves. With 2 major shows a year when scrapbooking companies are doing new relases...the market is just flooded with new product all the time. Great for scrappers who always want new products..bad for someone who steps back for a bit and then wants to start back again! Where does one start??? I am realizing though that this year's trends are very homespun, as in things you'd find in a vintage sewing box. Hmmm, some I like and some are too altered/distresses for me. I am loving though all the cotton lace, straight pins, polka dots, and vintage ladies in aprons. Kinda hard to scrap anything for Elijah with that though. I am sooo not used to a boy, even after a year!

I've also been busy scrapbooking believe it or not! I am starting to realize just how much I miss this hobby of mine. I have done a bit of scrap'n for myself but most of it has been for my classes at the twelvefridays weekend celebration! I'm pretty excited that I've even tried out a few of those vintage trends myself on these layouts! Hopefully I'll soon have some sneak peeks to share. Less than 2 weeks to go until a relaxing weekend away! :) This is my second time going to Tennessee with the girls and this year I'll be teaching 3 layout classes. We had such a good time last year and even though I really got nothing done scrapbooking wise (besides the layouts the other teachers were teaching) I still had a lot of fun. The gals I'm going with are such sweethearts and always loads of fun. Not only are we scrapbooking all weekend but staying in an amazing cabin and hopefully shopping! If you're interested in going I know the girls are running some pretty good deals for last minute sign-ups!! You can email me for more information. You can also take a peak at what we did last year here.

I was just realizing that last year when I went to TN we had been dealing with a house full of sick kids for quite some time and we had .... the first B-A-T in the house!! Well we are currently dealing with sick kids who have had some sort of cold virus for the past 2 months!!! Caroline has bronchitis and Elijah has an ear infection. I'm praying that the little furry flying mice stay faaaaaaar away, but with or without a bat run in I'm again ready for some time away!

So with just a few days left until I leave for Tennessee, Nathan heads out to Texas for work, and the kids head to their grandparents in Pennsylvaina it's a busy flurry of packing and such. It will be nice when Nathan gets home form a work trip tomorrow since we've had sick kids all week as well as me trying to get everything ready for next week. As I tell Nathan all the time it feels like I need a week's vacation to get ready for a week away and then about 3-4 days afterwards to get caught back up again! I guess that's just life as a mom!

And Just becuase he's so stinkin cute!

Lesson Plans 2.8.10

So things got a bit off track last week and I did not realize how many lose ends we had to tie up so we delayed the start of our doctor unit until this week. So this morning was our first day with the great I wanna be a Doctor unit I picked up from The Old Schoolhouse. LOVE when you can get 10 units for $19.99!! The kids seemed to have a rough time getting started while I was reading the narrative part of the unit. this is a multi-age unit so I had to water down a bit of it for the girls. I just can't understand when they didn't want to know what an oncologist and podiatrist do?? Haha! They did really get into it though when they were able to act out different types of things you might see a doctor for. I think everyone tried the broken leg hop at least once. Tomorrow we will be discussing germs and preventative health so I'm sure they will really get into that as well. Caroline for weeks now (after her run in with pink eye) has been going around the house saying "Don't touch me I have germs!" or "Don't touch me I have THE PINK EYE!" That's a great one to announce at Walmart when you actually don't have it. It will make more than a few moms turn there head in your direction. I am hoping that the week also allows to look a bit into first aid seeing how life with 4 kids always involves a trauma of some sort!

We also began a week's study on Valentine's Day. We read a book on the history of St. Valentines and how America adopted the holiday. I was going to show them a video on it as well, but I felt like I would have to censor it too much. I was amazed at how vulgar the Roman roots of this holiday were? We did though talk about chocolate being a Valentine's Day treat and we watched 2 videos on how chocolate is made. Emma was amazed at how they shake the almond trees to harvest the nuts for candy bars. On Friday we will be having a little Valentine's Day party of our own. We had done a Valentine's Card exchange with some other homeschool kids whose moms I met on The Homeschool Lounge. The past 2 weeks we've been getting little packages in the mail filled with Valentines cards and candies that our kids have been storing in their little heart shaped baskets waiting for the 14th. I know that we will be doing some crafts that days as well and I am hoping to make some gluten free heart shaped cut out cookies as well. We'll see how it goes and if the cookies end up being jello jigglers instead?

Homeschool Lessons Plans Week of 2-1-10

This week should be a fun one in school since we have finished up our Civil War/Abraham Lincoln unit with Maddelyn and now are starting with our Health and Safety unit for Miss Em and Miss Maddie. Over the next three weeks we will be working on learning about:

Doctors (their professions/first aid/germs/hospitals/emergencies/different types of doctors)

Fire Safety (firefighters/protective clothing/stop-drop-roll/stay-low-and-go/911/fire prevention/tools firemen use)

Police Men (strangers/only good things for your body/police dogs/helping others/different types of police officers/neighborhood-street safety)

We will be pulling resources for lots of different places including Homeschool Helpers Fire Safety Lapbook, Making Learning Fun's Printables, Prekinders Activities and Links, and the great ebooks we picked up from the Old School House Magazine while they were running an amazing sale last week, 10 studies for $19.95! Totally worth me stepping out of the "never bought a homeschool e-book before" phase! We also found a great video on fire safety on where else you tube. This one really seemed to keep the kids attention and had them asking lots of questions!We will be ending our study with field trips to the Fire and Police Departments. Kinda helps when Grandma is a police dispatcher and Grandpa and Grandma as well as several other family members are firefighters!

This week Caroline is working on the color green and we will be of course taking Tuesday to learn about Groundhog's Day and Weather Prediction. Emma is working on the letter "D" since we started over with the alphabet after New Years. Long story but the previous curriculum just was not keeping her attention so we started over with a great new "Letter a Week" program and she seems to be enjoying it as well as retaining the info! Maddelyn is also going to be working with the Starfall website that I have heard is wonderful extra practice while learning to read.

Relaxed and Ready to Start the Week!

We had a wonderful time at our marriage retreat in Amish Country with our church. It was a great time of not only relaxing and spending time with my husband, but also spending some quality some with other couples from our church as well. We got home on Saturday just in time to get ready to host our first Bible study in our new house. We have started a young couples Bible Study on Saturday nights and the first book we are working on is Love and Respect by . Nathan and I did this book about 3 years ago with another group from our church. We really enjoyed it and have both said how much it changed our marriage so we wanted other couples to benefit form it like we did. Nathan and I are very excited to be hosting our first small group in our house. We knew from the time we first looked at our house that if we got it for the bid we wanted...this house was definitely God given and to be used for ministry. Part of that is using the over 4000 sq feet for small groups and young couple fellowship. So last Saturday was the first small group Bible study of what I am sure will be many over the next years to come! I think at this point we have 9 couples signed up so obviously we did hire our babysitter Ashley to sit for all the kids upstairs each week while the parents have our discussions downstairs. When doing any type of study or class for young couples, babysitting is a must...unless you want 1 or both parent missing most of each session while dealing with their kids. Thank you Ashley for being willing to help us out!!!

This week started out very smooth or at least smoother than expected for a busy Monday! The day started out with ADT setting up our security system and trying to teach us (me) how to use it. I'm afraid the local police department is going to get tired of the false alarms coming from the butter cream house on the corner??? So between me forgetting that I set the alarm and the girls tripping the motion detector or opening a door....we'll see how the week goes!

Sickies...Layouts...and a Wonderful Week to Come!

So we are now entering our 3rd week with sick ones in the house! In the past 3 weeks we've had 5 cases of pink eye, 2 sinus infections, snotty noses, upset tummies, deep coughs, and now Miss Em probably has an ear infection! I think we are about to request a speedy check out lane at our doctor's office, or at least the option to earn frequent flyer points! Even little Elijah got hit with the nasty virus. Last week he woke up with pink eye. I don't think I've ever had one this young with pink eye before? He looked just pitiful! Poor little guy! I was thinking today that last February we had done the exact same thing with the never ending virus except that time it was a flu bug. I guess I can count my blessings then that at least this long virus is just the cold and not stomach flu virus.

This weekend I was so blessed by an amazing husband who said I could take some much needed time for myself and lock myself in my scraproom Saturday night. Oh how wonderful! It's been way too long since I've scrapped anything. It was different scrapbooking without someone to sit and chat with, but sometimes it's nice to just have that quiet time to yourself. So not only was I able to get 3 layouts done, but I also was able to break out the new Cricut Expression. I know, it's the one that I got for Christmas and that has sat neglected in my scrapbook room since then. But in my defense it could have sat there *much* longer like all the scrapbooking products I've been stashing away for the past few months since I haven't had time to scrap. We had a really busy Fall so scrapbooking was just not a priority. So it was like Christmas pulling out all these shopping bags full of new products. I had pretty much forgotten what all I had purchased, so it was almost as if I had just gotten back from a trip to Archivers and then sat down in my chair to scrap. Nice huh? So now that I am realizing how much I miss that creative part of my life I'm sure I will be scrap'n on much more of a regular basis. Here's a look at what I did last night....I know bad pics of the layouts, but I can't find my disk to load my scanner to my new lap top so here's to better than nothing!


This week should be a good but short one. We will be finishing up Maddelyn's Civil War/Abraham Lincoln unit and hopefully finishing up yet another Addy book from the American Girl Series. All the sore throats the past couple of weeks has slowed down the read-a-louds more than I'd like. Since we wil be having a short week this week we won't be starting any new lapbooks with Miss Em until next week. We will however be getting our Valentine's finished up to be mailed out. We are so excited to have been able to do a Valentine Exchange with other homeschool kids form across the country! I heard about the exchange on the Homeschool Lounge, which is an amazing support system for homeschool families. Our three girls will be mailing out about 18 Valentines each this week and over the next couple of weeks they will be each receiving the same number. We got our first ones in the mail a few days ago and the girls each placed them in the little heart shaped baskets I found at the store for them to use as their little Valentine's Day mail boxes. On Feb 14th I will let them open and read all the little cards they received as well as enjoy all the treats that came with them. Since we school at home we won't be having the normal Valentine's Day party like traditional schools will be, but we will be celebrating just the same. The girls also spent some of their craft time this week making and decorating hearts to hang up all over the school room. I think their pretty excited about Valentine's Day this year.

The reason for the short week is that Nathan and I have our annual marriage retreat with our church this weekend. Our pastor and his wife take 3 different groups of 8 couples down to Amish Country to a bed and breakfast for a time of marriage building, discussion, learning, and fellowship. It's nice to have such great marriage building time, but also to have it at a wonderful b&b in the scenic Amish Country. When you look out your big glass doors on your suite at the B&B all you can see are the rolling hills dotted with Amish Farms. It's hard to be stressed out with such a view! So we'll be off to the B&B and our beloved Ashley will be here to sit with the kids. Our children just adore her and definitely won't be missing us while we're gone.

So even with kids still fighting this bug and we will more than likely be back to the doctors office....it's going to be a good week!

It's a Circus Around Here!!

So as to the comments from some persistant friends and family members I am finally getting pictures posted from Caroline's 3rd birthday party. Miss Caroline is a HUGE Dumbo fan and even though we tried our best, there really is just not any Dumbo party supplies (let alone anything else Dumbo) available out there. We instead convinced her to have a circus themed party since Dumbo was a circus elephant. I found a great printable circus party package from a lady on etsy. She was wonderful to work with and not only were her designs adorable but she even personalized them with Caroline's name and age. She would have added photos too if I had chosen. The birthday party went great and I believe all the 19 kids and 20 some adults had a good time as well. As the kids arrived at the party they were each given a party hat and a felt bag with their names on tags tied to each bag. These bags were for them to store their tickets and prizes in through out the party. Around the 1st floor of our hosue we had set out 7 different canival type games: bowling, boat guess, bean bag toss, tumbing cans, ping pong toss, and ring of fire (a hula hoop covered in red and orange streamers and then kids would try and toss stuffed circus animals through it.) At each game they would win tickets. I'm pretty sure some of the adults who were helping withthe gmaes were stuffing kids bags with tickets! Ha! After they won their tickets the kids could then turn them in for prizes from the prize table or treats at our concession stand. We had hot dogs, cupcakes, ice cream cones, circus peanuts, animal crackers, fresh popped popcorn (in a popcorn carnical popper borrowed form a friend), HUGS juice bottles, water bottles, and punch. The kids loaded up on prizes and food since they could spend whatever tickets they earned. During the games I also painted the kids faces. After the games were pretty much over we had Caroline blow out the candles on her gluten free cake and then open her presesnts. As you can see in just these few pictures, there was a definite elephant theme to the gifts. Caroline had a blast at the party and is still telling everyone we see that she had a Dumbo party and is now 3!

Resolutions

With the look back at last year I see things that went well, as well as things that I would of course like to improve so...no better time than to make my New Year Resolutions. It's not too late for that is it? I also figure that if I type them up to post online and then print them out, I not only have them made up where I can hang them up to remind myself but all my friends and family can see them to keep me acountable for them! Okay so some of my resolutions are concrete things I would like to accomplish this year and others are more ideals.

1. Set aside time to scrapbook so I will spend time for myself. as well as try to get caught up a bit!

2. Read a book a month for myself (realizing this might be hard to achieve it can be a teaching/parenting/marriage/faith based book!)

3. Get my old photos at least organized into photo albums since I am realizing I will never get them all scrapbooked!

4. Get back into the swing of blogging! I know how I have neglected my blog this past year! I started blogging to keep an online record of our lives to print out for my children to have so I need to get back at that.

5. Get my past blog posts printed out, organized, and in albums.

6. Complete the rest of our basement (ie, paint and carpet) so we can have a tv room/playroom/rec room.

7. Do the landscaping around our yard that we wanted done last Spring!

8. Take the girls to see a play...would love to take them to see Lion King!

9. Learn to just smile and remember they are only young once....when they are all grown and moved out I will actually miss all the smudges, crumbs, and noise.

10. Get into a better morning routine with the girls before school starts. Oh how mornings are my true test of patience. I will get up early and have my quiet time...I will get up early and have my quiet time....

11. Have a mommy-daughter day with each one of my girls where we do whatever they want for the day and just spend one-on-one time with them.

12. Work on setting aside time for both myself as well as time with my husband just to relax and repair.

13. Start a Love and Respect Bible Study for young couples in our house.

14. Take the family to Williamsburg and Jamestown to see where our country got it's start.

15. Go away for another couple's time with hubby like we did in San Antonio last year.

16. Print out last years pictures and get them oganized and ready for either albums or scrapbook layouts.

17. Continue and expand my list of blessings to pray over our children each day.

18. Make use of both our Y membership as well as the fact that we live on the edge of our city park.

19.. Make our homeschool experience one where they learn through life experiences and not through textbooks.

20. Learn to pick my battles with my children while they are young so we are prepared for when they are older and it really matters!

Welcome 2010!

I can't believe that 2009 is already over! Wow! I guess one thing about getting older is that the years tend to fly by much quicker? Maybe it's just that while chasing all the little ones I don't realize how fast each week flys by and before you know it the year is already coming to an end? This year has definitely been a busy and very productive one for us Martins! I think the theme of this year has to be summed up in one phrase "construction!" It's amazing how even though you get in the routine of construction dust and workers in your home for over a year, you never really get "used" to it? But I am VERY blessed to say that now that it is over we have a beautiful century old home that God has blessed us with! We LOVE our home and so much so that we've told the kids we hope they like it here because we when we die one of them is getting it! As in God Himself is going to have to be VERY vocal if He ever sees fit for us to move from here, I'm talking pigeons out on the front law spelling out M-O-V-E before we'd even consider! HA!

Looking back at 2009 I'm still sitting here surprised at all that got done around the construction mess! Here is a brief sum of 2009.....

~Maddelyn turned 6 and started 1st grade at home.
~Emma turned 5 and started kindergarten at home.
~Miss Caroline turned 2 and became the little diva of our lives
~We learned what the color blue was all about with little Elijah and actually got "boy toys" when he turned 1 the week before Christmas
~We finished the remodel of a 7 bedrooom, 3 1/2 bath, 4000 + square foot Victorian
~Nathan started his own political consulting firm and landed his first major contact
~My website Sugar Sweet Bowtique just took off and we opened up an etsy store as well
~The kids and I saw the West for the first time on our 4 week trip driving from Ohio to Washington State and back. Yes we did earn the badges saying "I survived 17 states and 7000 miles, with 4 kids under 7 in and SUV!"
~We hosted our very first holiday celebration in our new home by having 32 people for Thanksgiving
~Our older 2 girls got to be flower girls for the first time in their Aunt Emily and Uncle Jeremiah's wedding
~I got to go to Tn to spend some lovely scrapbooking time with friends for the twelvefriday's weeekend celebration
~My bestest Alicia and her baby Emma-Lee visited for a week and helped celebrate Maddelyn's 6th birthday
~Was honored to attend a Freedom Concert this Summer, and of course the girls were jealous that Mommy and Daddy got to see Miley's dad Billy Ray
~Froze our behinds our but had a great time with family at our annual Hamons Family Camp-Out in October
~Ended our first year in our new home by having an Open House for all our family and friends as well as the Boulevard neighbors who welcomed us into their neighborhood. I actually had one Boulevard lady say jokingly about me raising children in my high school rival town "That our children are not Shelby children, they are Boulevard children." HA!

So as you can see we had a very busy but wonderful first year on our new home. We had lots of surprises come up along the way but God has so richly blesses our lives and we can see how His hand has guided our paths throughout 2009. We are very excited to see what wonderful things He has in store for us in 2010 and we know whatever comes along, God has said... For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. -Jer.29:11

Happy Birthday Elijah!

I just can not believe that our little guy is already turning 1! Wow where did the past year go? It seems like just a few months ago were were bringing home that 10lb bundle of joy. It has been a wonderful past 12 months watching him grow and develope his own little personality. Anyone who knows him will say he has to be one of the happiest babies they have ever me! He is truely a JOY to us and we are very blessed to have been given him! So as I tearfully glanced through our last year of pictures I thought I would share!

November and December in Our House

So I know it's been almost a month of no posts, but I had come to realize that the Fall had swept me over with all the major events we had/hosted and something had to give. I had to take a bit of a step back and re-prioritize things...which included my limited free time and how I spent it. Well sorry for all of those who follow me on here..but you guys were one of the things that got put on the back burner for a while. But now that things will be starting to slow down after Christmas I am hoping to get back into a regular posting habit again. After all the whole reason I started blogging was to keep a sort of online journal for my family and friends, but also to have a place to keep all of those memories together for me to print out and save for the kiddos. So back to blogger land it is!

The past month has been pretty busy with another the girls being flower girls in their uncle's wedding, another craft show, Elijah's 1st birthday party, Christmas and Birthday pictures, and now preparing for our 1st Christmas Open House! Jeremiah and Emily's wedding was of course gorgeous and she made a stunning bride! :D The girls were too cute in their flower girls dresses and having their hair done in up do's and I personally thing the best man was HOT! (Okay yes I do happen to be married to him so I was kinda partial!) I don't think the girls could have stood anymore glam! It was also great to spend time with family from out of state and of course we had to get a 4 generation picture with the Martin men. This was the first time that Grandma and Grandpa Martin had met the one that will be the first to pass on the Martin name. An awful big responsibility for such a tiny little man huh??

Elijah's party went really well and I was for sure the poor kid was going to bust at the seems with all that chocolate cake he ate (Gluten Free of course!) It was so cute seeing all of those "boy toys" he received. We definitely are NOT used to those! Of course the pictures form the party have not been downloaded on to my computer yet? We have said since last year that when the house was finished we wanted to have an open house to invite all of our friends and family as well as neighbors on the boulevard to see the house. We did not know then that it used to be the big thing up and down the boulevard too see all of these grand Victorian houses done up for Christmas. So the timing of our house completion was perfect fr us to have our open house just in time for Christmas. If anyone is local reading this you are more than welcome to stop by our Christmas Open House Saturday from 4-7 or Sunday from 2-4.

I thought I'd also share a few of our newest Family pictures we had taken. I will have to post Emma and Elijah's birthday pictures tomorrow since it is getting so late.