Wordless Wednesday!

Eva Rose

Eva Rose was born today at 4:54pm. She weighs 6lbs. and 10 ozs. 19in long! Jaimie was in labor from 12:17 pm until her birth at 4:54! Record time for a first baby!! I'm very tired tonight, so I'll wait to post more pictures of her. For now here are a couple of her.

She is quite a cutie!!

Thanksgiving party!

Yesterday we attended our homeschool groups annual Thanksgiving party. The crafts were broken up in stations, and the children were divided up by grade. My children being younger had a snack/treat first. There were some very delicious selections. They then went to play some fun games such as duck,duck,turkey! And then they had a relay race. They had to transport teddy grahams by the spoonfuls to a bowl across the room. Then they had the class picture taken. To top off the afternoon fun they had a craft. They made thankful trees from foam.

This week in our homeschool we are studying the Pilgrims. We are using a book called Sarah Mortons Day. We are learning what the pilgrims ate, wore and what types of houses they lived in. Today (Thursday) we had our annual Mayflower dinner, in which we make indian cornbread (3 C. boiling water to 2 C. cornmeal make into patties and bake for about 15 min. at 425) and then take some stale ginger ale aka. "ale" we also take beef jerky, a homemade beezwax candle, a cd player with ocean sounds on it and we head into the dark basement. The basement is the Mayflower and we stay in here eating our "food" singing hymns in the candle light. We stay in here until our cd gets to the part where we begin to hear seagulls. Then I shout "land ho" and we all pile out of the "Mayflower" into our warm kitchen where we eat our chicken corn chowder, cheese, rolls w/butter and drink hot spiced cider. Today one of the older girls noticed how much more comfortable our dining room chairs are compared to the cold basement floor LOL! We did have one of our "pilgrims" with a bit of a sour disposition (Im sure you can guess who mom LOL)so we threatened to put her back on the Mayflower!

I talked to Jaimie today, and she is still not really having much action. She said that baby is probably going to be one of those strong willed children (which I wouldn't doubt!). So hopefully I will have more news for you all this weekend

Continue to pray!

I talked with Jaimie tonight, and from what she has described to be it sounds as if her water is breaking!! woohoo!! We hope she goes into labor soon! Keep praying!!

Pray for Jaimie!

Jaimie visited lastnight after her doctor's appointment. Up to now everything has gone well, but this appointment she has gained 10 pounds in one week, and is very puffy. Her blood pressure is up and she is seeing spots before eyes. Doctor Loftus is concerned that she may be in the early stages of toxemia. So if she hasn't gone into labor by Saturday she will be induced Saturday morning. She is suppose to be at the hospital by 7:30 am. Please pray for a safe labor as she ushers in her firstborn daughter. I will update when I have more news.

catching up!

Hello all!

I haven't kept up here this week. a few of the children had the croup and one (Abby) had bronchitis(sp.?) We did have school anyway. It was a nice diversion. We did a five in a row unit on the Ox Cart Man. It kept us quite busy with all the learning opportunities in this book. We finished rather hurriedly on Thursday, as we had a wedding to go to on Friday morning. So I knew that Friday would be a busy day and we would not have time for school work. After school on Wednesday we had a nice lunch of homemade pizza and apple slices, and juice, while listening to Maria Von Trapp's great grandchildren sing Edelwiess.

Martha Cook and Simon Kropf were married yesterday (Friday). It was the churches third wedding since it was started in 1997. There is just something about seeing a Christian couple beginning their lives together. I don't normally like weddings but I do love any opportunity to fellowship with my brothers and sisters in the Lord. We left the house around 9:15 am, I had to stop at the gas station to fill up our van and the wedding was in a town about 35 mintues away. Our girls all had matching blue dresses on (Jess, and Em had to serve at the reception so they had to wear blue) and so our little ones followed suit by wearing blue dresses. They had little white hearts all over them. My dress was the same print but it was pink as I don't look good in blue it makes me look like a black and white picture. We got to the wedding on time but had to sit in the back because we weren't early enough. Afterwards we had to wait to be dismissed, but the little ones were very patient. Savannah fell asleep. The reception was held at a different church then where the wedding was, but still just down the road. We had a delicious meal of Scalloped potatoes with ham, cauliflower and broccoli salad, a fruit/cream cup, rolls and instead of cake we had cherry pie and ice cream (Mennonites don't hold the same "traditions"as most). I left there at around 3:30 and arrived home about 4 pm. It felt very good to get into something more comfortable and sit and snuggle on the couch. We were however way too full to even think of eating anything. It was our pizza night but I assure you I made room for my favorite pizza! ;-)

How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World!

This week we had lots of fun doing the above named book in school.
It is about a girl who wants to make an apple pie and has a list of ingredients, but the market is closed. She then hops on a boat and heads off to Italy where she picks some semolina wheat. She then heads off to France for a chicken (French chickens lay elegant eggs). She then heads to Sri Lanka for bark from a Kurundu tree(aka. cinnamon). Then she goes to England for a cow/milk (you will know her by her good manners and her charming accent). She then heads to Jamaica but on her way across the ocean she collects sea water(salt). While in Jamaica she picks sugar cane. Finally she heads back to the USA and parachutes (with her cow and chicken) to an apple orchard in Vermont where she picks 8 apples, 1 for the cow, 1 for the chicken and 1 for herself, and 5 for the pie. Finally she begins the process of grinding the wheat, pounding the bark, evaporating the water from the salt(we actually did this during the week) boiling the cane and so on. This book is read 5 days in a row with an activity everyday. First we learned about all of the countries in the book, their location, flags etc. We also evaporated water from salt and documented it by making a book to put in our lapbooks(if interested in this do a search on youtube.com). We did a geography lesson by locating all of the countries on mini maps and placed them into our lapbooks as well. We did apple math when studying the beautiful Vermont. To finish the week, Jessica became teacher and helped the children make an apple pie, which they made a book with measures, time and such. It also had directions in it to follow, so they got a little reading in too. The apple pie was delicious! Next week we will be doing the Ox Cart Man. A beloved book we look forward to reading again.

Wordless Wednesday!