November is Flying By!

The land of homeschooling, caking, and IT work has been busy here!  Big G has been working hard on her 3 R's, and we're seeing some real progress so far in her Kindergarten year!  She's getting much better at cutting more complicated patterns too.

Our first month of the Book It! program through Pizza Hut had us reading our BOB books in a fury!  She earned her first free pizza certificate last month!  Little G is still trying to figure out how to get one of those as well.

 

We also have enjoyed using a new site a friend recommended for our handwriting practice.  WorksheetWorks.com.  They have TONS of worksheets for almost every subject!  We've used several including my favorite, the handwriting worksheets where you can enter the text you want your child to either trace or copy, and then it creates a pdf file for you to save or print.  This has been AWESOME!  We've used it to reinforce our AWANA memory verses for church, theme sentences to go along with our Five-in-a-Row books, and unit studies.  We just finished "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue."  A very handy tool!

We also spent some time in Kansas City at Children's Mercy taking care of some minor things, and decided to have some fun while we were up there!  Cabela's is great - like a mini Bass Pro.  

And T Rex Cafe is... AWESOME! 

 

 

I've been working on my own set of skills as well.  I had the opportunity to do my friend's son's first birthday cake.  And what fun it was!   For the larger half sheet cake with "one", we did a double layer classic almond white wedding cake with buttercream icing.  The smaller 1 was baby J's smash cake and was also a classic almond white wedding cake in one layer.  We added some touches of owls to tie into the rest of the theme.  I think they turned out nice.  Oh, and a thank you to Kara Guffey Photography for the great pictures of the cake!

 

And last but not least, with Thanksgiving so close, I'm also gearing up for the onset of Advent. Last year, we kind of muddled through our first year as a family to observe it. I had found some online resources to print out, but my friend recommended this book as a very nice, comprehensive Advent book - perfect for a family like ours!  I look forward to getting this for our family to use this year!

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November Local Events

picklewart.blogspot.com

November is here and so are more fall, Thanksgiving, and pre-Christmas season events!

Nov 11th: Monett - Festival of Flavors
6 - 8 pm, First United Methodist Church
Tickets $12
Call Monett Chamber @ 235-7919

Nov 12th: Monett - Broadway Nights
To 9 pm, Downtown Monett

Nov 13th: Cassville - Christmas Open House
Throughout the day, Chamber and merchants

Nov 24th: Monett - Festival of Lights
5:30 pm - 9:30 pm daily
Light display in the South park through Dec 26

Nov 25th: Springfield - Turkey Trot
8:00 am, 5K run in Jordan Park and MSU area
...not to mention it's also THANKSGIVING!
I'm running this one! WHOOPEE - my first 5K on my 35th birthday!

*If you know of more around here, let me know and we'll get those posted too!

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The Little Engine that Could | Running Program

picklewart.blogspot.com

It's the beginning of Fall, and I am four weeks into my new running program: The Couch to 5K Running Program

When I started, I had hopes that if I was really really lucky, I might be able to do a 5K (3.1 miles) by the time the Turkey Trot came around this Thanksgiving... which also just so happens to be my 35th birthday! (I see a special T-shirt design in my future...)

Now honestly, I'm not a runner and never have been. I'm quite a chunky gal, so running, obviously, hasn't been a "thing" for me for a long time! But when I saw the Couch to 5K program through a friend on Facebook (yes, FB can be a GOOD thing!), it motivated me to, at the very least, give it a try. So, in prayer and with much apprehension I started the program. I acknowledged that I may very well fail, but at least I would try it out and see how it went... so, I DID.

You mothers out there will understand my initial concerns of WHEN I would have the opportunity to even do this exercise program. So, after much consideration of the very young ages of the children, the new school schedules, church activities, work schedules, farm schedules, etc. I decided to go with the EARLY AM runs. So, 5:30 AM is my new wake-up call. Boy was it painful at first... trust me... even this morning person was hurting when that alarm went off!

Off I went running - Week 1 made me realize just how out of shape I really was. Sad.Sad.Sad. So, huffing and puffing I went - for a whole 3 minutes of running and then walking and then a little more running and then some walking - for a whole mile. I thought I was going to die. (Verses about your body being a temple and gluttony and laziness plagued me.) And so the theme continued for the next several weeks.

Week 4 - Something happened this morning... this incredible Friday Sep 17 morning. Something truly glorious! I was out doing my running/walking duo, except I skipped the walking part.
Yes, I ran... and ran... and RAN!
It was a beautiful morning... just before the sun was going to rise.
The owls were still hooting.
The ground was cool and the air crisp.
The cows were just beginning to stir.
The breeze was starting to slip between the trees.
The stars were like crystals in the sky.
My obnoxious rooster, Lenny, wasn't even crowing yet!

I decided today was the day to run 1 mile straight. So, I did. I hit a rough spot about 12 min in when fatigue hit and the heaving chest breathing pains almost took over, but I kept telling myself my mile wasn't done yet, and if I could just push a little further, I'd be there! But the "pocket" of pain passed and it was like I hit this bizarre "high" and suddenly the breathing became perfectly natural and the fatigue became less of a feeling of exhaustion and more of a feeling of automation.

And then I realized I had more in me... so I ran further, and further, until I had ran a full 2 miles - without stopping! For many of you, 2 miles probably isn't all that impressive, but for this heavy gal that's not a runner, this was a huge accomplishment. I still can't believe it. Honestly, I can't.

Well, here I am now ready for my next day of running - and really looking forward to it. (I cannot believe I just said that.) I know I can do 2 miles, so I've got 1 mile to go until I can reach my first goal of running that 5K Turkey Trot in November... but you know what the coolest part is? I know now that I'll be ready before then! Incredible. And to think, I started this whole thing praying to God to help me "give this thing a try" and to not let me embarrass myself with failure.
God is good.

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Have Kids That Don't Like Veggies? TRICK THEM!

I received a book awhile back... back when my toddler ate anything I put in front of her. At the time I thought, "My kid's a good eater. I may not need this." So I set the book aside and forgot about it... until my little angel-eater developed an opinion of food to rival the likes of the most angry food critic!
So, here I sit with that book... The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine. This is a great book... no, really, I mean it's a GREAT book. A skim reading through it was my approach. The book provides recipes for the core purees that you use to hide veggies and fruits in your kids' foods. I keep page 96 marked at all times... that's the beginning of the purees section... She also provides specific food recipes that you can use the purees in, but I found that after my skim over her recipes, I could do my own "hiding" in my own recipes using her key tips.
This has taken so much pressure off of our meals. I no longer have to fret whether or not Grace eats her broccoli or peas... I still put veggies on her plate (I've heard the statistics that it takes an exposure of up to 20 times for a kid to eat a new food!). But if she doesn't eat the "real" veggie, I don't freak out... I know there's a couple of servings of veggies hidden in her: spaghetti, meatloaf, mac n cheese, cupcake!, you name it!! That's right, my little picky eater has heartily consumed such "nasty, disgusting" veggies as broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, collard greens, all kinds of legumes (beans), etc. He he he...
Seriously though, I'm glad to get our garden going again so that I can start sneaking my own veggies into her foods. Let the food battles begin! ...because I know I'll win... ;-)

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We ate, we ate, we ate...

Oh yeah, and we blew stuff up!
We had the crew out to our house this year for Thanksgiving and had a really nice time with everyone. My sister and her family, my brother and his family, my dad, my sister's in-laws, and, of course, our little family. I dressed the dining tables with stuff from around the house and clippings from the field. It made for a nice fall look that was cheap and easy.

And, yes, there was food galore. You may have seen my previous post about the menu. Well, it grew. We also went up to the garden and picked some greens for a nice salad, and Courtney did a deer roast in the crockpot. We had a lot of food! In fact, I was begging people to take food with them as they left! There were Macy's Day parades, football games, kids learning to feed the "feathered hogs", ...kids running crazy everywhere..., eating, eating, and more eating, and SHOOTING!

Yes, the crew also brought the weaponry. Had there been an attack yesterday, we would have been fully prepared. We have a small shooting range set up off our upper back deck. That's where most of the family could be found yesterday. After thoroughly stuffing themselves, they then went on to try and stuff pumpkins full of lead... pumpkins, crab apples, cans, you name it. There were little shots from .22's and there were loud shouts enough to make you jump inside the house! They all had a good time though. Dad even brought out a new 20-gauge he'd just picked up. And Elijah shot a gun for the first time yesterday! Anna even got in on the action.

It was a really fun day, and I know that we were all thankful to have our time together!

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Some Catching Up to Do...

I'm a little behind on posting some pictures, so this will be quite a montage.

Fall has arrived in our neck of the woods... finally. It's been a late year around here for the turning of the leaves, but we have some nice color. I really love our place, especially in the fall! So does our dog Zelda. She was kinda funny the way she was almost posing for pictures yesterday... silly dog. But Grace ADORES her. They're like playmates. I mean, out here there isn't much for playgrounds and parks or even neighbor kids. She really pals up with Zelda though.

We had a good Halloween. We decided to drive into Springfield to my Dad's neighborhood and do some trick or treating there. Grace went out with her cousin Elijah (who was a cowboy, of course!). My little chicken went door to door "Treat or treating". She wouldn't say Trick. She'd also let out a "Ba-gawk" every now and then too. That would frequently get her extra candy... like that's what she really needs!

The next day we spent some time at my dad's house doing yard cleanup. Boy was that place a mess! It was nice to get the patio cleaned up and livable again though. Courtney spent quite a bit of time wacking down tree limbs & trying to figure out how to stuff them into our little trailer so that we could haul them away.

And then, there's always the Jeep pictures. Of course, I had to take one of the boy with his Jeep. It happens every fall. It's the fall Jeep portrait session. So, then the kids piled in an old (and I mean OLD) little powered Jeep at Dad's. Of course, they needed their Jeep portrait too!

I guess I'll end this post with some more fall pictures from around our little place out here.
Did I mention that I LOVE fall???

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