The Sanctity of Human Life

(Peanut at about 20 weeks)

Last Sunday was National Sanctity of Human Life Day and this week marked the anniversary of Roe Vs. Wade, which made abortion legal.  It is so very sad that our nation has gone so far from the morals our founding father's built this country on that is it now legal to kill our unborn babies.  54 million innocent babies have lost their lives just so their moms can have rights and freedom.  What about the baby's rights?  Please continue to pray about and fight this slaughter of our nation's babies.
I want to share something with you that I read recently in a book called Raising Kids Who Hunger For God by Benny and Sheree Phillips.  It is about how our kids hold a unique part in God's agenda.  The authors ask us to consider two crucial times in Jewish history-the story of baby Moses and baby Jesus.  In Moses' time, he was spared from the slaughter of the Israelite baby boys to become the leader of the Israelites.  2000 years later, Jesus was spared from the slaughter of the boys under two years old to become our Savior.  And 2000 years later, in January 1973 our nation's highest court ruled that it is legal to slaughter innocent children.  "Could it be that, just as with Moses and Jesus, Satan has become aware of the deliverance God intends to bring to our society, not through one man, but through a generation of children who will be "mighty in the land" (Psalm 112:2)-ones who will stand to see the nations reached for the Gospel, and thus hasten Jesus' return (2 Peter 3:11-12)?"  This gives us as parents a challenge to raise our kids so that God can use them to be a counterculture to this fallen world rather than be used by Satan for evil.  A hard challenge, but one with so many good rewards!

A Bit of Our Week

We had another great week of school this week.  Lovebug learned about the letter R.  He really likes using our Hot Dots pen to try to match up the lower case with the upper case letter.

He had fun using tongs and scoops to be creative with the pom poms.

He matched up the letters in the word "rainbow"

He practiced tracing some stars.

He used a toothpick to poke the letter R.

And he practiced some cutting/

Sweetie worked on learning her ordinal letters this week.

She also unscrambled words to make a sentence.

Buddy had fun reading a book about ships to Lovebug/

And he worked on his spelling words.

He also loves to play chess, so he jumps at any chance to play it!

We tried out some abstract painting since we are studying Georgia O'Keefe.

And Peanut got to practice her coloring while safely strapped in her chair away from the paint! :)

We also have learned about why Jesus is called the Lamb of God and so we made handprint lambs with cotton balls glued on.

And Peanut hung around watching and playing with anything she found interesting.

On Friday, we took a break from the books and headed up to the farm show with daddy.  Poor Lovebug was so overloaded with tractors he didn't know where to go first!  He loved sitting on all the tractors and usually forgot about staying with us and just headed off to the next one as fast as he could!  The older two had fun collecting candy, pens, balloons, and tons of other promotional stuff from all the booths.

Tasty Tuesday: Baked Spaghetti

(Photo courtesy Allrecipes.com)

When I made this tasty casserole a while back, my kids gobbled it up!  It is very cheesy and yummy! It makes quite a bit, so I actually divided it up between 2 8-inch square pans and popped one in the freezer to save for a quick easy meal another day.  There was still plenty because most of us had seconds and there were still some leftovers!

Ingredients


1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti
1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 (26 ounce) jar meatless spaghetti sauce
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
5 tablespoons butter, melted
2 cups small curd cottage cheese
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

1.Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, cook beef and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in the spaghetti sauce and seasoned salt; set aside.
2.In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, Parmesan cheese and butter. Drain spaghetti; add to egg mixture and toss to coat.
3.Place half of the spaghetti mixture in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish. Top with half of the cottage cheese, meat sauce and mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers. Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. Uncover; bake 20-25 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

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I Will Rise

This is one of my favorite songs.  I am so thankful to my Savior for the victory he gives us over the grave.

The Randomness of Catching Up

Once again, it has been a while since I've posted about what's happening around here!  We have such a good routine going that time is just flying by and all of a sudden I realize I've been ignoring my little blog here.  So here is another catching up post with some of the things that have been keeping us busy.

A few weeks ago, we were having such beautiful weather and most mornings we had sunrises like this. 

Hubby and I's Christmas present to each other was a night away in Seattle without the kids (thanks to our parents!) and we scored a great deal on Priceline to get a room with a view like this

We had fun riding the monorail, which was just a block from our hotel, to the Seattle Center where we watched the new Mission Impossible movie in the IMAX.  If you love thrilling, almost-give-you-a-heart attack kind of movies, you really should go see that one on a really big screen!

And of course, good weather never lasts right?  On Monday we got snow!  But since this is the first snow this year and it was really pretty, I didn't mind too much.

The heifers had fun checking it out.

And so did the kids.

But then this pretty white world...

...turned ugly with a Northeaster that blew in a few days later.

So we stayed in for a while and just watched from the window (except poor Hubby who still had to work out there).

Even a little bird wanted in and sat on the deck chair for quite a while, just teasing our cat.  (and yes that is a dryer on our deck.  That one died a couple weeks ago and we didn't get it moved to the dump before the snow hit)

And one of the great things about homeschooling is that we can still get our work done on a snow day and we don't have to make up for it in the summer!  We just finished the first half of our curriculum and we are still having loads of fun with it.

Lovebug is still working through a letter a week and loves having his own boxes (trays) with work that is just for him.  This week he worked on the letter Q. 

Sweetie is always the most eager to do school.  She begs to read more books and work on more worksheets.  I wish all my kids were as excited about it as she is!  This week she worked on sorting, so she sorted buttons by color.

She has also been asking me to teach her to sew, and I have been putting it off because I don't really know how to hand sew.  But I finally looked up a few basic stitches online and taught her how to outline with embroidery thread.  She also still LOVES her ballet dress and wears it at least once most days!

Buddy has really been working on his reading skills.  All of a sudden Sweetie can read most of the books he does, so I think that is motivating him to try and read more and get better at it.

We have been learning about living things in science and learned that everything has cells, so we made a model of a cell using jello and fruit.

We have been getting a little stir crazy being stuck inside with the snow, so I pulled out a few Michael's craft kits that I had been saving for times like these.  Sweetie made a necklace and Buddy colored and put together a wooden race car.

And of course this little Peanut is usually hanging around looking for some kind of trouble to get into. :)

Last month Peanut had a bad reaction to something, we think it is something she ate, but still don't know what. We've tested for a few things but so far haven't figured it out so we will keep trying.  We are just hoping that she doesn't get like this again before we do!

And that is about it. Not an exciting life, but it is one I love!  I do have a few yummy recipes and some DIY things I want to share so hopefully I will get those up soon!