Grilling Goodness #14 (late I know..)

1. Do you like scary movies?  Not even a little bit, though I used to when I was younger.

2. What kind of cell phone do you have?  My hubby and I have the same phone, it’s a Nokia… not sure of the model?

3. Do you have a passport?  Nope, never needed one.

4. Has anything sad happened in your life this week?  My husbands uncle is in the hospital under a medically induced coma.  He had complications resulting from chemo to treat lung cancer.

5. Have you ever broken any bones?  Nope, I guess I’m made of pretty tough stuff!

6. Did you do anything this week that you don't normally do?  We have completed all of our lessons every school day this week.  Pretty sad that doesn’t happen often huh?

7. What's the worst thing you ever had in your wardrobe?  There are too many to narrow it down to one or even two.
 
8. Did you have braces on your teeth?  No, though I was supposed to for an overbite.

Blessings,

Cassie

Homeschool Memoirs #22 – ABC’s Describing Me

THEME

This week use the ABC’s to describe your character, your life, your homeschool, and your family. Next to each letter of the alphabet put a word that describes you or has something to do with you. It was very amusing and a bit tricky. Once you actually get to a letter your mind goes blank!

OK, this sounds like a fun challenge…here we go!

A – Attentiveness – This is something I am trying to teach my kids daily.
B – Bible – The Bible is the center of our school.
C – Cooperation – We are learning to work together to reach our goals as a family.
D – Delegation – Something I am finally learning to use in order to manage our home.
E – Efficiency – It’s all about getting the best results we can in the time we have to do something.
F – Family First – What more is there to say?
G – Games – We try to use games to reinforce what we learn often.
H – Humility – Another quality I am trying to instill in my children.
I – Intelligent Design – Our belief in the origins of the earth and life.
J – Jokes – Our day is filled with laughter!
K – Kindness – Yet another trait we encourage daily.
L – Laughter – We are a family that loves to laugh.
M – Messes – I am constantly picking up messes, but what mom isn’t.
N – Nerds – We love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and we are not ashamed to admit it.
O – Organization – This is something I constantly struggle with.
P – Personal – We love being able to personalize the way we teach each individual child.
Q – Quiet – Something we are NOT!
R – Responsibility – We encourage our children to take responsibility for their own actions.
S – Schedule – This is something we are slowly moving towards.
T – Truth – We are teaching our children that the Bible is the highest Truth.
U – Unique – We encourage our children to be individuals and accept them for who they are.
V – Values – We are instilling Biblical values.
W – Will – We want to follow God’s will for our family.
X – X – Drew will be learning times tables soon.
Y – Yes! – What I thought today when we actually completed all of our lessons today.
Z – Zany – A word that describes all of my children, the are always making me laugh.

Blessings,

Cassie

Oh the Joys of Apartment Life….

So the night before last we started having problems with our furnace.  The pilot went out at 1am and hubby could not get it lit.  The furnace here is ancient and the button that you push down and turn wouldn’t budge.  We called the emergency maintenance 3 times to no avail.  The maintenance here is atrocious.  But usually when you have a real emergency, they are out within half an hour to take care of it.  It was beginning to get chilly in the house and I was starting to worry about what we would do if we couldn’t get it lit.  Finally around 4 am hubby got it going again. 
It ran fine all night until the next afternoon when it went out again.  We called maintenance again and they came out and replaced the thermal coupling and got it going again. But alas, it went out again within a few  hours.  We called and the same guy came out again and said that there must be something more wrong, probably the air exchange.  Since the furnace in ancient, as I mentioned before, it would be next to impossible to find parts for it so we would need a new furnace.  He left again to see about getting us some space heaters until the next day, when they could see about getting a new furnace installed. 
He came back with one tiny electric heater.  He apologized for the inconvenience and told us that was all he could find.  We managed to keep the house reasonably warm through the night.  I did some laundry and kept the dryer running and we turned the oven on to keep it warm downstairs and we used the space heater in the hall upstairs.  However we had nothing running downstairs while we slept and boy was it frigid when I got up.  So I turned the oven on and ran some more laundry and brought the heater down to warm it up.  Maintenance came and measured this morning for the new furnace and said they would be back to install it later.  We are managing to stay warm in the meantime, and I’m making some major progress climbing Mt. laundry!
The thing I am most excited about is with a new furnace we are hopefully going to have a lower gas bill and be able to keep it warmer in here.  All of our front windows that face the wind are leaky, 2 of them having huge gaps where the cold air gets in.  When the wind blows, you can really feel it blowing in.  We have plastic AND blankets hanging over those windows and it helps but it is still very hard to keep the house uniformly warm.  In order to keep it warm downstairs, it is usually roasting upstairs.  Hopefully the new furnace will remedy this problem some.
I guess you could say the whole ordeal is a mixed blessing.  I will keep you updated on how things go once the new furnace is installed.

Blessings,

Cassie

Joey is on the move!!

Yes, you heard it here first!  My baby boy is getting so big, and now he is learning to crawl.  We were playing with him last night when we decided to get the camera out .  take a look at what we captured…

  
I am continually amazed by my youngest son.  He is babbling, saying mamama and dadada, feeding himself finger foods, drinking from a sippy, and now he is CRAWLING!!!  I am so very proud yet at the same time it makes me sad that time is whizzing by.
I am thankful we were fortunate enough to get a permanent memory of this huge milestone!

Blessings,

Cassie

This week’s links…

So I was surfing around the other day, reading my favorite blogs for new posts and looking up random things when I thought, “Hey! I should share things of interest I find by posting them on my blog!”  So here is the first weekly post of many to come.  Enjoy and feel free to comment to share what you thought!

• Read about Tonya’s process of reformation from messy to organized click here.  (From “The Kissack Chronicles” )
• Learn how to make your own yogurt using a crockpot and everyday ingredients here (from “A Year of Crockpotting”)
• Stephanie from “A High and Noble Calling” shares a wonderful recipe for Chocolate Éclair Squares that I can’t wait to try out!

Yeah, I know that’s not a whole lot, but hey, I’m a busy woman!  I hope you enjoy them just the same.

Blessings,

Cassie

Grilling Goodness meme #19

1. What's your 'dream machine' - as in vehicle? Do you think you'll ever own it?
Oooh, that’s a hard one!  I think I would really love to have a Chevy Suburban.  Three rows of seats, plenty of room for the kids to stretch out and relax!  plus I just like them.

2. Can you water ski?
Dunno, I have never attempted to.  But I have been tubing! Fun times!

3. What kind of milk to you prefer?
Definitely 2%

4. Have any of your pet peeves 'gotten your goat' this week?
YES!! I had the kiddos help me around the house by dividing up some jobs that needed to be done.  Two of them did certain jobs very half-hazard and I then made them sit and watch ME do it the correct way.  I also told them that next time it happens, they will continue doing the chore over until it is done correctly!

5. How do you prepare your taxes? HR Block, Turbo Tax, by hand - or does someone else do it for you?
I fill our taxes out online with HR Block’s turbo tax software.

6. Did you start a workout program this New Year?
Nope.

7. Do you have a certain meal that you cook each and every week?
lately we are having hamburger helper once a week.  Hey it’s cheap and easy!

8. When do you normally write your blog posts?
Whenever I can and I have something interesting to share!

Are you frustrated by messy bedrooms?

Boy I know I am…constantly. I was browsing around, reading a few new threads on my FAVORITE message board (Raising Godly Tomatoes) when I happened across a thread that linked to this…..

“Cleaning their bedrooms the mean mom way…”

I am TOTALLY for this method and I am going to try it at least once. I am usually the one who ends up going in the kid’s rooms and really getting things done, which is exhausting! So if I am going to be doing the work periodically anyway, why not find a way to make it work FOR me and work towards helping my achieve my longtime goal of having my kids keep a clean room!

I am currently recovering from a weird injury from stretching 2 days ago (yes I know a sure sign of getting older). I feel much more functional today but am not totally pain free yet. I am going to add the kid’s rooms to my list of things to do once I get back to my normal routine.

I will be sure to let you all know how it goes! Leave me a comment if you like and tell me what you do/don’t like about this method and if you decide to try it let me know how it goes!

Blessings,

Cassie