Homestead Happenings

We are a family of 8, soon to be nine so there is always laundry to be done. My goal is not to finish all of the laundry on a given day (for that is truly to dream the impossible dream) but to keep it going at a steady pace.

Before I tell you my plan let me say that there are weeks when I do not follow by brilliant plan and we get behind. Like all families we get busy or something happens in life that needs a lot of time and energy. So I am not perfect but I do have a plan.

As you can see I have bins in which to sort our dirty laundry. There are 6 bins for: whites, lights, pinks/reds (we have 5 girls!), jeans, darks, and towels. Each bin has a ribbon on it (just noticed the white bin ribbon is missing) so the little ones can tell what goes where. Yes, my children sort their own laundry. They do not have a hamper in their room so they sort their clothes each night.

See the bucket? That is for "yucky" clothes. Think potty training and getting sick. By having a bucket I can see what clothes need to be washed right away. Right now we have 2 that occasionaly have accidents plus a baby coming so I am thinking I need a bigger bucket.

Here is a wide shot. My cleaning supplies are on the top shelf and clothes that need to be ironed hang on the bar until I get to them which is often only right as Handosme Hubby needs to wear them on Sunday morning.

I am still working on that one. See the paper taped to the wall? That is my laundry schedule. By following the schedule, clothes from each bin get washed twice each week and unless I am really behind I will see the botton of each bin at least once per week. Not bad, says I.

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Another closet done!

The hall closet is done! This closet needed some demo but I did not take any "before" pics. Oh well. I was working on this closet at the same time as I worked on the girls closet. It was quite a job to completely cover the old paint. There is something about the paint that was used in this house. It takes 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of color to cover it properly. Now you know why I was working on 2 closets at once.

I have decided all the closets will be painted white. I am not about to take out shelves (or worse yet paint around them) just because I changed the room color.

This closet holds our games, books for sale, office equipment and some of Handsome Hubby's business papers. Until this closet was done all of this stuff lived on our piano and in various places in our livingroom. Not very tidy so I am very glad this project is now in the "done" side of the list!

See the door? Well that is what happens when you leave a tray of paint in the closet and forget to close the door. Then this little guy......

decides to put his hands in it and try his hand at painting. Yea, you may be laughing now but I wasn't then. He painted the door, himself and both of the sisters that found him. I soaked all of their clothes in a sink of water for 3 days and then washed as usual. ALL of the paint came out.

He IS cute though, isn't he?

Well he got in trouble for it anyway.

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Lookie what I found this morning!!

I thought Coco was far off from delivering. Shows I still have a lot to learn. This newborn kid is only abour 7 inches tall.

Sadly, her twin was stillborn.

That's the way of things here on the homestead. We are planning on taking all of our goats to auction except for my milk doe and the heard sire. I adore my milk doe! Her name is Daisy.

Daisy is a Nubian so she is HUGE compared to the Pygmies! That is her buckling next to her in the picture. He is going to auction since it is bad to breed him back to his mama.

Yes, I adore my Daisy! I am hoping to make enough money from the sale of the other goats to get 1 or 2 more milk does. Our family goes through a lot of milk and one of my goals is to be able to quit buying milk. That will save some $$$ for sure. I have a friend who has a Nubian that is possibly bred with her Boer sire and I have first chance to buy any doelings! She will give me a good price too. God is good!

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all

The girls' closet is finished!

Finally! It's done. I was able to finish the girl's closet and get everything put away, in order, with room to spare. I am so happy I could cry. Really I could. Closets are a big deal for me. It's a type A thing.

Each girl (there are 5) that share this closet has her own hanger color and plenty of hanging space. The 2 big girls get long and short hanging space. The 3 smaller girls have a lower rod that they can all reach (even the 3 y.o.) so all are happy.

All it needs is some closet doors. That's in Handsome Hubby's department.

Now it's on to finish the hall closet! Horray for organization!

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the LordHelpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Yummy Breakfast

I don't post very many recipes. My IRL friend Momma is better at that. However my favorite show is Good Eats. I record it and watch it when I can. My Handsome Hubby even got me a few DVD sets of Good Eats. Some watch soap operas I watch Food Network.

Anyway, I tried a recipe from one of his new shows and it was very good for breakfast. It is called Dutch Baby. You make your batter in a blender and put it in a cast iron skillet that has been heating in the oven. It tastes like a waffle! Some of us had it with syrup and some just ate it plain. I doubled the recipe and cooked it in 2 skillets. Once it cools down a bit just cut it into wedges. How easy. You can find the recipe here. Next time I am going to add some fruit to it. Give it a try. Enjoy!

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all

How much crazier can the gov't schools get? Read on...

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say they want to give struggling children a chance, but the district is raising eyebrows with a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work.

The district and teachers union last week issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka said the policy is several years old.

While some districts use "F" as a failing grade, the city uses an "E."

"The 'E' is to be recorded no lower than a 50 percent, regardless of the actual percent earned. For example, if the student earns a 20 percent on a class assignment, the grade is recorded as a 50 percent," said the memo from Jerri Lippert, the district's executive director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, and Mary VanHorn, a PFT vice president.

You can read the rest here. Don't forget to print out a copy for your "Why I homeschool" binder.

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all.

Easter Eggs!

Well these are not our first homegrown eggs but they are our first from this batch of hens. Can you pick out which ones are ours?

Yes the eggs are really green! One of the breeds of hens we have lays eggs that can be green, blue, or even pink. Each hen lays her own color of eggs. Every day there is an easter egg hunt on the Colestead! They are all the same on the inside. Except homegrown eggs taste better, in my opinion. ;-)

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the LordHelpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Camping

Here are a few pics of the camping trip. We had fun but I must admit that camping is still a lot of work for a mother. My ideal trips are like the one we took to New Orleans. The trips with hotels and restaurants are #1 in my book. I digress...

We don't have pics of everyone. Kit was too busy to take a lot of pics and I didn't even try.

Here is Mini Man. He decided he likes dirt and rocks. Mostly rocks. Who needs to buy toys? Just give this little guy a few rocks and he is a happy camper. Really happy. He is real good at getting dirty too.

This is Munchkin. I think she actually put her hands in the dirt then right on her face. She likes getting (really) dirty. She also likes making faces. It is pretty hard to get a picture of her not making a silly face.

Next is Supergirl. She is not that dirty but I just couldn't resist this pic of her missing two front teeth. Too cute!

We all had fun and remained injury free until the last day. As we were packing to leave Miniman fell and caught his cheek on a rock. He had quite a scrape but with daily application of my homemade herbal salve and a band-aid he was complete better in 2 days. I did nothing for my scraped elbow and had to deal with a nasty scab that slowly peeled off for a week. Next time I will heal myself as well as my son. :-)

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the LordHelpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Going camping!

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the LordHelpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Pistol Packing' Teachers

I support the right to bear arms. Do you? Do you in all cases or just a few? Read this and tell me what you think.

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all.

The remodel continues...

We moved into our place last September. I have not written much about it but we have been working on the house since we moved in. Our original plan was to buy bare land and have a house built. We even picked out a builder that specialized in plain but large houses. It would not have cost any extra to use thier architect to customize a plan just for our needs. Dreams of a huge school room and an extra large bathroom for the children were high on my list of wants.

However it was not to be. The cost of improving the land was just too much. We had been talking about moving for a couple of years already and our oldest was already 11. If we waited too much longer she would be grown. We had 2 choices. We could stay in the city we were in and get a bigger house but on a small lot or we could move to the country and get a house on an acre or more but with a house that needed some work to make it what we wanted. We chose option #2. I am so glad we did! Well....

OK, confession time. I am glad we did now. I was not at first. You see Handsome Hubby (that's his new blog name) found this place. When we went to see it he told me. "Unless you find something you really don't like this is the place I want to buy." As we were driving there I told myself, "I'm sure I will like it. As long as it is not some old mobile home." Well guess what? That is exactly what is was. OK it was not falling down or anything like that but it does show it's age (for now). Plus it is green. As a color in nature green is OK but I truly HATE green as a paint color!

As I sat there looking at it I prayed that God would have his way with my heart and to help me speak only good things about whatever I saw. As we walked around my hubby kept telling me how much he liked this place. The more I looked the more I saw good and the more I saw what we could do. I am so glad I was not negative that day. It would have been awful to hold onto my idea for a "just right" house and then to miss out on the blessings we have of living here! Horray for Handsome Hubby and for him finding this place!

Handsome Hubby has been true to his word and work is slowly progessing. The first thing we (meaning mostly Handsome Hubby and our BIL) did was knock down 2 walls. One was to open it to the schoolroom. This was demo to just a frame that would become the front of the closet. Then the back of the closet was build out into the schoolroom. This way the closet space did not move into the gilr's room, which is pretty narrow. The next wall was taken completely out to combine 2 rooms in to one large room for the girls. We wanted one room for the girls and one for the boys. As of this writting we do not know the sex of blessing #7. Kit has told us that she is hoping for a boy so MiniMan does NOT get his own room.

Here is what it looked like when we demoed (is that even a word?) the wall between half of the girls room and the schoolroom. Actually it is yet to be a schoolroom as it is the place we put all the stuff from the room we are working on.

After this we added drywall and texture. Hubby hired someone to do this part since he was really busy with work at the time.

This is the girl's room closet. Itis painted pale purple now. But I am not ready to post that pic yet. Hubby has started putting in the floor and baseboards and I still need to get some pics of that.

OK, that's is enough for now. You get the idea. More pics to come when I can put them up. Have a blessed day!

Mother of 6 blessings (and #7 due in Jan. 09!) from the LordHelpmeet to my Handsome Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Our annual youth meeting

Once a year our congregation hosts a youth meeting. We just finished it so I thought I would share what we did. The schedule for the meeting is very full and by the end we are all tired, but it is a good tired that comes from lots of good fellowship. We start each day at 10am. We have singing, speakers, more singing and then lunch. After lunch we have more speaking then games. We have 2 hours to clean up before dinner, evening services, and a night activity that ends at 11pm. See, I told you it was a long day. Good but long!

Our theme this year was "Don't Blend" as in Romans 12:2. So we designed a shirt that definately does not blend! We gave shirt to all under 18. Adults have to buy theirs. Snazzy aren't they?

I have more pics but they were taken in such a high resolution they are giving me trouble. So they may make it to another post.

Why we no longer vaccinate our children

People are often shocked when I tell them that my hubby and I no longer vaccinate (vax) our children. "Why in the world would you do that to your children?!" They ask. Well I will tell you why.

My first 2 children were vaxed right on schedule. I was very diligent about making and keeping their doctors appointments. When child #3 was born she started on her vax schedule. My children had their "regular" bout of ear infections and I dutifully gave them the antibiotics the doctor prescribed to clear them up. Then something happened.

When blessing #3 was 8 months old she was given her MMR vax. Within a few days she was covered from head to toe in small, clear blisters. They were everywhere! It was a bit scary. So I did what good moms do. I called the doctor and got her right in. The doctor spent 30 minutes questioning me. Had I started using a new laundry soap? New body soap? Had I introduced a new solid food? Had I let her have chips or soda? Every question she asked me pointed in only one direction.... what had this mother (me) done? I asked the doctor if it was possible that the vax could have caused it. She looked at me like I was stupid and told how "completely safe" each vax was. An uneasy feeling filled me as I left the office. Something was not right.

Here is where I must say that I can not blame the doctor. As a mother I am responsible for the choice I made to vax my children. I do not believe that using the services of a professional such as a doctor relieves me of the God-given responsibly to train and protect my children. I also must say that when blessing #1 was a baby she received her first 2 polio vax as an oral vax. I read later that this oral vax was a LIVE polio virus and the only cause of every polio case since the 50's. When I brought it to the attention of this doctor she very casually said that I was welcome to choose the injection that contains the dead virus. I should have found a new doctor right then. Alas I didn't.

So here was my infant daughter covered in blisters and all the doctor did was ask me what I had done to cause it and gave us a cream. That rash lasted for over 2 weeks. When it finally cleared up I was relieved. Shortly after that one of my older blessings caught a cold. Then (no surprise) the other 2 caught it too. Well the other 2 children got over it but blessing #3 developed this deep chest cough that just would not go away. She coughed so hard she could not lay down to sleep. She could barely sleep when I held her upright because she just would not stop coughing. The doctor had no answers for me. However, regardless of what the doctor said, I knew that vax caused the problem. None of our children received another vax after that.

Every time one of the children caught a cold she would get it and get that deep nasty cough. Each time it lasted for at least 2 weeks. About a year later I went back in when she was yet again sick. This time I was seen by a different doctor since our regular doctor was out. This doctor prescribed an inhaler! It did help a bit but never completely. So the cycle of cold and cough went on for 2 more years. I can't believe it took me so long to educate myself so I could help my child. As I slowly educated myself I learned about the many children injured by vax. I never knew before that our government actually keeps a database of vax caused injuries and even a fund to compensate them!

When blessing #3 was three my hubby was deployed to Iraq so we had to get our care from the base hospital. So when all of our children (we had 4 blessings now) caught a nasty stomach virus I took them in. So while there I told him about the cough that plagued blessing #3. He listened as I told the whole story and then asked, "Where did you read about R.A.D.?" The he explained all about Reactive Airway Disease. It made sense but when I asked if it could be cause by the MMR vax he too brushed it off. By this time I knew better. I had stared looking into herbal medicine. This last doctor visit convinced me to put my studies into high gear.

R.A.D. is what it is called when ones lungs are extremely sensitive to irritation. It can act a lot like asthma but it is different. Being around a certain dog seems to set it off. I don't know why it is this one dog. It makes her sad because this dog belongs to her grandparent and she adores him but has to keep back. Our dog (lives outside) seems to be no problem. It helped a lot when we pulled up the carpet in out last house so we are doing the same thing in this new one. There is no cure for R.A.D. and my research tells me that she may grow out of it but then again she may not. To say the least it make me extremely MAD that I unknowingly let this happen.

Think I am way off base here? Each couple must decide for themselves if their children should be vaxed. Despite what you may have been told having your children vaxed is NOT required to attend school. Any parent can sign a vax waiver. We did. By the way my blessings that have never been vaxed have never had an ear infection, never needed antibiotics, and get over colds and flu quickly. We use doctors when truly needed. The only time that has happened in the last several year was when we were in a major car accident.

The government, after years of telling us how safe vaxing is have finally admitted that some children have been injured. Read about it here:

Also look at the CDC website. You would think you would find mass outbreaks among the non-vaxed. You won't! It just does not happen. By the way, a vax only lasts about 10 years so most adults are complete vax-free! Make the vax decision with much prayer and research! ~ MotherOfBlessings

Our Trip to New Orleans

As you can see I have been really bad at keeping this thing up-to-date (sorry Dad) but the summer tends to be busy and living out here adds a lot of stuff to my "to do" list. I digress...

Hubby won a professional award so we were treated to a trip to New Orleans with the plane fare and hotel paid for. I was really dreading being away from the children for 5 days but I REALLY had fun having my hubby all to myself. It was alomost like we didn't have any children expcet for the fact that I thought about them a LOT.......... we talked about them a lot............ called them every night........ you get the idea.

We were able to spend most of the time sight seeing. This included (for me) a list of things that I really want to do and food that I wanted to try. Thanks to my dear hubby I did and tasted everything on my list. How sweet is that?

We ate at Cafe Du Mond (twice). Those beignets are wonderful! If I lived there I would weight 1000 pounds! Yum! The crawfish was good but being a New England girl #1 for me will always be Maine Lobster. We had Alligator sausage, gumbo, read beans and rice, bread pudding (most places we went), and et tu fet (spelling?). They were all good.

I will post a few pics here. Family members and close frinds can email me and I will send you my kodak link so you can see all of them if you are that brave. There are over 400 of them!

I know..I know...

It has been a long time since I have last blogged. There has been a lot happening.

First, blessing #7 is due in January. So right now I am in the middle of "morning" sickness. Why do they call it that? I would be glad if it was just in the morning. We are very excited that the Lord has blessed us with another child. Now I am in a slight panic wanting to get the girls room done so we can finish what we hope to be the "boy's room". Yes, we are praying for a boy. After all, MiniMan would like a brother to help stem the flood of girls around here.

In May Hubby and I went on a trio to New Orleans for 5 days without the children. The best part was that due to Hubby receieving an award for his work, the airfair and hotel were paid for!

What a blessing! We took over 400 pics and I will post a few in a seperate entry about our trip.

Soom after that we took NancyDrew to Disneyland for her 10th birthday. Again I will put that in a seperate post.

That's all for now. I am on the phone with the IRS. Seems that since they only have room for 4 children on the 1040 form they decided the amount of our refund (and stimulus check) needed to be "fixed". Grrrrrrrrr

Mother of 6 blessings from the LordHelpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Tag...I'm it

I like this meme...so I'm going to do it and tag a few other folks to do it, too!

What I was doing 10 yrs ago: May of 1998...Kit was almost 2 and I was 3 month preggo with Nancy Drew and sick, sick, sick. Money was very tight and God took good care of us.

Five things on my to do list for today: laundry, laundry, laundry, dinner, and laundry!

Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Start a "Helping Hotel" to give people a place to stay while teaching them about God and helping them raise godly families and become self-sufficent. I would also hire a house keeper so I could spend more time playing with my blessings.

Three of my bad habits: being a perfectionist (and letting it keep me from getting things done), my brain going faster then my body and mouth, starting projects and not finishing them,

Five places I have lived: A little town on the East Coast that is rather large now; many little towns far too near to big cites than I care to mention, and now on an acre of God's creation. OK, that's not five but we moved A LOT when I was little so I don't know them all.

Five jobs I have had: (from most current back...) homeschooling mother, Retail Banking (went from teller to the youngest Assistant Manager in the Company at the age of 21, McDonalds cashiers, birthday party hostess, and character (I was the Hamburgler and Grimmace), before that I was just a kid. :-)

Now, who shall I tag? Just consider yourself tagged if you are reading this!

Happy Birthday Mini-Man!!!

My Mini-Man is one year old today! His Daddy got him a nifty John Deer push car. He was glad to shop amongst the boy toys but lamented the fact that Mini-Man is still too little for the fun stuff that Daddy could play with. Too funny.

Happy Birthday Son! Children are truly a blessing from the Lord. I am thankful for each of my blessings.

~Mother of 6 blessings from the Lord & Helpmeet to my Hubby who is my best blessing of all

Goats 1, Milkmaid 0

The time has come to start milking my goats, Sammy and Cocoa. Their kids are over a month old and have started eating hay and grass plus they are drinking bits of water from the pail. I figure I can leave them on their dams until I get good at milking so the does will not dry up.

So I set up my milking place. Buying a milk stand is not an option. I know I can build one but if I start one more project around here my hubby will not be happy. Guess I need to finish the girl's room that I am working on first.

So I get a table that was in the goat pen (for them to climb on) and I put a little feed pan there by attaching it to the fence. I add and chair and poof! my milking place.

Having read about milking step-by-step I feel that I am armed with enough knowledge to get the job done. My goats had other ideas.......

She was unhappy from the second I washed her udder. She kicked and wiggled and called to her kids. So I put them in the pen next to where we were so she could see them and that calmed her down....until I tried to milk her. See my yellow rope. Well that did not work.

This is me trying to get Cocoa to be still. The grain I gave her was gone in a flash so here I am trying to bribe her with hay. No luck. I moved my bowl (that held a tiny bit of milk) because she had already seen fit to step in it. I will be getting a goat hobble......very soon.

I knew I was losing to a goat but I was determined to get some milk from both sides. If nothing else this was a training time for both of us. There are no more pictures after this because I sent my eldest daughter, Kit, to the house. The giggling was getting on my nerves.

I released Cocoa and got Sammy who was no better than Cocoa. So I got a bit from both sides of her. Then I put everyone back in the pasture and when back to the house taking with me the sign of my defeat.

Yep, this is what I ended up with. Want some? Me either. I will not give up. So far I have figured out that I need to cover my table (aka stand) with rubber so they will not slip. I also need a different restraining device since the rope was not working. Some places say to seperate the kids during the night so that the does are full in the morning and them will want to be milked. We are considering this.

What about those giggles? As the Mother I could not let that stand. So I let Kit try it for herself. The giggles have been silenced. When I do come in with that first good milking my blessings will know that it was not easy. Then they can learn to do it. Who will be giggling then? Me!

Special Day with Mother!

About 2 weeks ago we had our annual "Special Day with Mother". We used to call it "Special Girl's Day" but since the birth of Mini-Man that has changed.

This day is planned for the day that Hubby goes skiing with some people from church. He got a care free day to ski those black diamond runs that he likes and we take the day to set all chores aside and have some fun.

This year the day started EARLY! We were up at 6:00 am. This year our day fell during our homeschool group T-ball session. So we dressed in our T-ball shirts and grubby jeans and went to Ihop for breakfast. We all had Who-cakes since seeing Horton Hears A Who was on our schedule. We actually made it to Ihop, ate our breakfast (without having to rush), and made it to the park for T-ball with time to spare!

T-ball went well. Turns out Supergirl is quite a good fielder. Everyone's skill seems to improve with each practice. Our group is for parents and children to play together. I am the permanent catcher, since I can do that and keep an eye on Mini-Man while he is in his stroller. Munchkin is our bat-girl. She does a good job retrieving bats and balls. It keeps her busy and out of trouble. Sometimes she plays in the practice, but since Daddy was not there I kept her with me. She had a special bat-girl place behind the backstop. She thought that was neat!

After T-ball we changed into our clothes. Each of the girls picked out a special outfit for the day. Silly me forgot the camera!

All the their outfits had some sort of sparkly jean and a glittery top. It's a girl thing!!! I forgot to wear my sparkly jeans. Maybe next year.

After that we just HAD to go the Hello Kitty Store in the mall. We used to spend the whole Special Day in the mall but that got boring. Going to the Hello Kitty store is something we MUST do EACH year or it just wouldn't be our special day! So we spent about and hour there. Yes an hour! I gave each of the girls $10 for the day. This is a really big deal because hubby and I don't give out money any other time. They get an allowance that they earn by working at home. Actually that is not accurate. They share in the work at home because they are members of the family. They also share in the income from Daddy's paycheck because they are members of the family. Anyway, I digress, back to our day. They all picked out what they wanted (mostly stationary, stickers, and notepads) and some got those grab bags that I liked when I was a girl. It tickles my blessings to think of me as a girl shopping at a Hello Kitty store just like they do. So after they agonized over what to buy, paid for it, and had their bonus cards stamped, we were off.

Then we were off to the movie. We had planned to stop at the store to get some candy before going to the movie but we did not have enough time. So we got 1 box of candy plus a drink and popcorn before sitting down. Horton Hears A Who was OK, but it is not a movie we will be buying. The villain in this movie is a self-righteous kangaroo. In the beginning of the movie she is lamenting how Horton, a fun-loving Elephant, is corrupting the children with play and fun. Then she sticks here nose up in the air and proclaims, "That's why we do pouch-schooling". Can you believe that! I took that as a direct slap in the face to homeschooling. That little kangaroo never left the pouch until the end of the movie when he turns against his mother. Obviously the people who made this movie don't really know any homeschoolers since they choose to portray us this way. Sad.

After the movie we went shopping at a different store then we went to Chuck E. Cheese. We had pizza and watched the show. We waved to Chuck the mouse and played games. My poor ears. That place is so LOUD, but it is fun and we all (even me) earned tickets playing games and got prizes with them. I gave my prizes to the younger girls since they did not earn much. They have this machine there that does pictures so we has those done since I forgot my camera. We stayed until everyone was ready to leave. Guess we were there about 2-3 hours. It was fun and I did not get a headache so it was good.

After that we hit one more store. Kit was looking for something specific but they were out of what she wanted. Poor Kit. Munchkin got a new baby instead of the money.

This was not the end of our special day. The girls had planned a spa party. They got this idea from an American Girl book titled "Snooza-Palooza". They set it all up. I was pretty beat at this point, but didn't want to squash the fun they had planned. We painted our nails.

This is a big thing for us since we don't wear nail polish. We even did our toe nails.

Then they had a plate of mashed banana that they put on their faces, but I passed on that.

They took it off after a few minutes because they did not like how it felt. I did put sliced cucumbers on my eyes and laid back for a bit.

So we laughed and ate and did our nails. It was a blast. I felt like I was 12 years old and at a slumber party. Having 5 daughters means that we can have lot of slumber parties. Mini Man was a good little guy and slept through all of our silliness.

Rag-curling our hair was on the schedule but we ran out of time. We did not start the movie until 10 and it turns out that "The Happiest Millionaire" is a 3 hour movie!

Daddy came home about 30 minutes after we started the movie and admired our nails and listened to the girls tell him how about our day. He sampled the treat and fell asleep 10 minutes after he laid down to watch the movie.

So there you have it. It was fun and I am already looking forward to doing it again next year.

Homestead Happenings

Wordless Wednesday

Laundry for 8 ~ my plan

Another closet done!

Lookie what I found this morning!!

The girls' closet is finished!

Yummy Breakfast

How much crazier can the gov't schools get? Read on...

Easter Eggs!

Camping

Going camping!

Pistol Packing' Teachers

The remodel continues...

Our annual youth meeting

Why we no longer vaccinate our children

Our Trip to New Orleans

I know..I know...

Tag...I'm it

Happy Birthday Mini-Man!!!

Goats 1, Milkmaid 0

Special Day with Mother!

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