Looking to the Past

Today in History, we learned about Ferdinand and Isabella. This is Little Bit's first year to fully participate in our history lessons and she is LOVING making her timeline pieces each day.

Some of our timeline pieces from the first year...

While she was coloring Ferdinand and Isabella I reminded her to make a dress on Isabella.

LB: Why?

Me: Because she would have worn a dress.

Sweetheart: How do you know?

Me: Because women always wore dresses until about the 1960s when Aunt T was born (just to give them reference).

Sweetheart: Why did they start wearing pants....to be like men?

Me: Well, yes.

Sweetheart: That's silly.

I quite agree!

I tell you, S and I have been talking about the girls' fall/winter wardrobe. Sweetheart is going to practically need a new wardrobe and I was so impressed with all the goodness Giovanna found at the thrift store for her daughter. I really have to start visiting the thrift stores more often. My friends who do tell me you have to go often and you will score big. S really wants to limit the jeans and denim that we purchase for all of us (me and the girls). He much prefers khakis or nice pants and of course, more skirts. In the winter, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt every day can get really old. And not lovely either.

In addition to that, I am really inspired by the New Dress a Day blog. Did you see this on Yahoo? I am so totally impressed! Sometimes I look at her "before" picture and think there is NO WAY she will be able to make anything fashionable out of it and she always succeeds. Our modesty standards are not quite the same, but then neither are our sewing skills!

Still, she got me to thinking about how perhaps I could cut off fabric from women's dresses that were hopeless otherwise and make easy skirts for the girls. Hmmm....

I plan to start in September working on their new wardrobes--and hopefully mine! Anyone else got some inspiration for me?

The Purpose of the Birthday

Some friends of ours had their daughter's one year old birthday party (this was about 13 years ago) and we went. They had catered bar-b-que, a big tent out back, a moonwalk, music, drinks, etc. It was a huge celebration. Where was their daughter? Upstairs taking a nap.

That always confused me.

I have never been a big fan of the huge birthday bash. HOWEVER, neither do I want to be the mom who doesn't do anything special for their child's birthday. Middle ground, folks. Middle ground. We had "kid" birthday parties for Sweetheart at home when she was 3 and 4, met everyone at the beach for her 5th and had smaller friend parties after that and sometimes just family. Little Bit has never had a friend party since she has built-in cousins and a sister and once family gets over....it's enough. Plus all the friends we used to invite over when Sweetheart was little all just had one child too. By the time Little Bit came along, they all had a sibling or 2 and it was just too much! And Little Bit got the flu for her birthday last year so I think this year she deserves a bigger party.

Sweetheart had a "big" party last year. It's not big by most folk's standards but it was big for us! There were games, we fed everyone hot dogs and hamburgers, and she had 5-10 kids over. It was big for our family in our 1500 square foot house.

This year I had great plans. Wonderful plans. They involved an out of town trip and a visit to a place Sweetheart would have LOVED to have gone to. However, August, especially THIS August, is the worst month in the world for affording things. So I thought of Plan B. But that was going to be too much too.

And I was getting really disappointed. A party at home with just family? That's not what I really wanted to do for her. Plan C wasn't what I wanted. So I got to thinking.....what is the point of the birthday party anyway?

It's to make sure she knows how loved she is. And how special she is to us. And how happy we are that she was born.

Right? So I will make a chocolate cake. We will put up decorations. Her aunts and grandparents and cousins will come over. She will get presents that she wrote down on a list 2 months ago and afixed to our fridge. She will get hugged, and spanked, and loved on.

And it will be wonderful.

Becuase she is wonderful.

School Pictures

This week on the Not Back to School Bloghop over at Heart of the Matter, we are sharing our student's pictures.

Last year I ran across Sprittibee's simple idea of having her children hold up their fingers for what grade they were in. Only problem was, Little Bit was in Kindergarten last year. So, I did this:

Goin' to school barefoot just like Abe Lincoln!

Continuing the tradition, here are this year's first day of school photos:

Sweetheart, 5th grade.

Little Bit, 1st grade.

And one together. I love these girls so much.

Nunya

Do you know nunya? My college roommate used to say that one.

"Who are you talking about?"

"Nunya."
"Who is Nunya?"

"Nunya business."

Remind me one day to share all the little sayings I learned from her family. They were great.

So I haven't been blogging much this week because all that's been going on is 1.the start of school and really, how much can you read about that before deciding you need to go scrub your baseboards? and 2. financial stuff. Which, even though I love you all, is decidedly NOT the blogging world's business. It's nunya, you know? Just can't blog about money.

But I can blog about being frugal. And husband and I have decided as we climb and dig our way out of our hole that we are in right now, that frugal is how we always want to be. It would have been really great if we had decided that 17 years ago, but at least we are here now. Just one of our many revisions the Lord has made on us. August is a really hard month with the start of school, summer electric bills, and Sweetheart's birthday. My plans for her birthday are not going to happen and that hurts my heart a little. But here's what I know: God loves that child more than even I do and He delights in her. I trust Him that her birthday will be special no matter what.

As for school--this week has been great. Little Bit is a bonafied 1st grader. She's hanging with us through all the subjects and working hard. Reading is SO much easier for her than it was even in May. Next week we add more subjects. I've really enjoyed it so far. Five more weeks to go until our break! I think I'm going to like this "sabbath schedule."

We're studying Zoology 1 this year which covers flying creatures on the 5th day of creation. We are blessed to have some friends from our homeschool group doing the same book this year. Her girls are each a year or so younger than mine and they all get along well. She also has a little turkey boy who tags along. I think he's 2. One of the first activities calls for us to go on a scavenger nature hunt. So, I'm making these for us to use. I think I'll put the kids' initials on them so they can each have their own bag.

Other than that, we are so lacking in the grocery area that I actually will be going to the store in the morning and taking S his lunch afterwards. Diabetes + finances = making lunch every day and I'm simply not prepared tonight. I've managed to feed him every day and his doctor said his numbers look great but it's still hard and I'm so out of ideas and tired of trying new things. I just wanna make spaghetti, OK? It's a meal that requires no thought. And a lot of recipe blogs I had on my google reader just need to be deleted because they are no good to me now.

They have become nunya.

One easy decision this week? I will be continuing to shop at HEB (a Texas grocery store chain) instead of my closest Wal-Mart. Giovanna secured that one in my mind FOR SURE.

Propaganda At It's Finest

I was so stuck this year. I just did not have any great ideas for our first day of school. None. Last year all our first day activities centered around listening. I just had no ideas this year.

Finally, FINALLY on Sunday afternoon I had an idea. I ran across a Clean Home Unit study and an idea was born.  We read "The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room" on the first day of school. My girls know this book by heart so they colored pictures of Brother Bear and Sister Bear while I read. Then we watched a hilarious home-made video of the book Pigsty. They got a kick out of it.

We started making a lapbook on clean houses and I'll share that with you when we are done. It's one of my professional lapbooks. Don't you just love my propaganda....lesson idea?

Today we covered three of the reasons why we keep a clean house (or why we should, ahem). One reason was "so we can find things when we need them." It was nicely illustrated as I had to call an impromptu recess to tear the house up and find the new credit cards for S as our old one had expired.

Homeschooling keeps you humble.