This is so Awesome...

I just came across a new toolbar today. Yep a toolbar. But this isn't just any old toolbar. This one is so perfect....perfect for homeschoolers! :)

I love it! Seriously. It's the Homeschool Toolbar and it has some great features.

• Homeschool blogs
• homeschool websites/resources
• email
• Gadgets - todo list, notes, calculator. (I love the notes)
• weather
• You can personalize....I added buttons to open Word, Excel, notepad and paint with one click.
• The search box is really neat to. You can search the web, the site your on and ebay! AND if you see something on the page you're on that you want to learn more about just highlight the words and they automatically show up in the search box...just press enter to do your search!

How cool is that? Really? Ok, so go check it out. On their site you'll see their complete list of items on the toolbar (I didn't name them all) and at the bottom of the page they have a picture of the toolbar. I hope you like it too!

Funny...

(from an email my mom received)

My five-year old students, are learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,

'Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!'

I took a deep breath, then asked...

'What did you call it?'

'It's a frickin' elephant!

It says so on the picture!' And so it does...

' A f r i c a n Elephant '

Rosie-Posie

My little Rosie-Posie recently celebrated a birthday. Ah, my sweet, bratty baby girl is now two years old.

Here she is wearing her birthday hat.

Just Kidding!

What can I say about this little girl? Well, she's starting to come out of her shell a little more. She enjoys playing with the neighbor kids. She'll now give some of them hugs and let them hold her. She has started to talk a little more. Yesterday she put three words together (instead of the usual two) to say "Momma helpa me". :) She absolutely loves her big sisters! In fact, they haven't been her the past couple of days and I can tell that Rosie misses them. First thing in the morning these last two days she got out of bed, went into the hallway and started calling "Me-me". (Me-me is what she calls Jasmine). Awwww. That really made me smile.

Well, enough of that. Here are some more pictures.

Her yummy birthday cupcakes...

A pic of the three girls...

I love this one...the birthday girl playing with one of her new toys.

Or perhaps just the box it came in! :)

New shoes...and a new BUG?

Here's my Lily...

Do you like her fancy new shoes? Hey, they even match her shirt!

She made those herself. Well, with a little help from her Grandmother! It was her history project for the week from Days of Knights and Damsels.

Here's a pic of Granddaughter and Grandmother...





and finally...

A very strange looking bug that I'm told "Just fell from the sky".

Anyone know what type of bug this is? Jasmine keeps telling us it's a caterpillar. :)

Oh Happy Day!

Oh what a beautiful day today was!

We had the windows open!! I think I have spring fever. =o)

We took a long walk again today. Well, not Lily, she was running around with a friend. It was very enjoyable. When we were done with our walk neither girl wanted to come back in, so we went to the little 'baby' park here.

India went down the slide all be herself. It was so cute. The first couple of times she had a 'I'm not sure how I feel about this' look on her face. But she kept going done it again, and again.

They were outside almost all day though. Inside for a 'Littlest Pet Shop' break and then right back out the door.

Lily had a lot of fun climbing the trees with the neighbors. I didn't get to see her. But she was pretty excited when she was telling me about it. Apparently she is getting better. =)

______________________________________________

I made some very yummy oatmeal/chocolate (with a touch of cinnamon) cookies tonight! They taste good. Ok, well we think so. =P I usually don't make home-made cookies though. I'm usually a 'roll of cookie dough' kinda gal.

Here's the recipe if any one wants to try it out: (makes 2 dozen cookies)

1/2 cup rolled oats (regular or quick), 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter, 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla extract, 1 tsp lemon juice, 2 eggs, 3 cups semisweet chocolate chips, and 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts.

1. Preheat oven to 350`F. Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place rolled oats in blender or food processor and process until finely ground. Combine ground oats, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a mixing bowl.

2. In another bowl, cream butter, sugars, vanilla and lemon juice together using an electric mixer. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.

3. Stir the flour mixture into egg mixture, blending well. Add the chocolate chips and nuts to the dough and mix well. Using 1/4 cup of dough for each cookie, place 2 1/2 in apart on prepared baking sheets.

4. Bake until cookies are lightly browned, 16-18 minutes.

Store in a sealed container to keep them soft and chewy.

Enjoy!

The recipe says that the prep time is 10 minutes. Well, it took me longer then that. But then again, I'm not a natural cook by no means and I was putting everything back were it goes once I used it. It made for a quicker clean up. =)

I hope everyone has a great week! =O)

Yes! It's starting to warm up...

I am so happy that it is finally spring. I don't like being cold. I hibernate in the winter. =(

Today we were able to get out for a walk. We still had to wear jackets but at least it's dry and not so cold, although it was pretty windy.

Before we headed out today I pulled out our copy of The Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature'. We read the section on Spring. Then while we were on our walk we looked at the different trees and the grass and talked about the changes that will be happening soon.

I got a little workout there too...pushing the double stroller against the wind. Go me!

Jasmine and Signing Time

Signing Time just had auditions for a new baby signs video. All you had to do was record your child signing certain signs and send it in. Jasmine had a lot of fun doing this so I thought I would post it here as well. It's nothing fancy at all. Just my cutie pie.

I'm a FLYbaby!!!

Hi to any fellow FLYbabies out there! *waves*

I just started flying. It's been about 2 weeks now and things are going pretty good. My sink is still shining! =o) I love waking up to that!

School is going smoother now too. I love it.

I'm still working on decluttering. The downstairs is pretty much done but now I need to start decluttering upstairs.

If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about then go check out the Flylady. She pretty much helps people (us unorganized people) get control of their lives, the CHAOS in our homes.

Reading....No India, don't eat the book!

Bowling

Hubby and I took the girls bowling yesterday! We all had a lot of fun.

Lily did pretty good. In fact, I only beat her by 3 points. Of course, I'm not any good at bowling. But still...

It was Jasmine's first time going. The very first ball she rolled down the lane didn't make it all the way to the end. he he. And all the rest after that went down in slow motion but they made it! =)

India even got to help daddy push the ball a couple times. (and he still had the highest score, what's up with that!)

Too many toys...

Ugh! I'm trying to figure out how to organize the girls toys! They have too many and I've been trying to get rid of some but... there are still too many.

Right now we have a lot in a toy box. Well, the ones on the bottom never get played with.

I'm wondering if we should get some shelves to set them out on. Will that help? Then they can actually see their toys.

I still need to get rid of more, I know. It's just kinda hard to do. The youngest may want to play with it someday. So there I am keeping it for years, for the 'maybe' she'll play with it.

I wish I was a natural organizer. =( Instead, I stand here staring at the problem trying to figure out how to fix it...forever. And it hardly ever gets fixed. But I did waste a lot of my time staring at it. argh!

Hey, I'm not alone right?

How do you manage toys?

We have toy racks too. With the little baskets lined up on it. I guess that helps. But each basket is a total mess. Hey, it's a contained mess though. That's good right? =)

Date Night

My mom watched the girls the other day so hubby and I could go to the movies. India was actually without me for 5 hours!!! That's a record for her.

Anyhow, we went to see Sweeney Todd. I really enjoyed the movie!! It was wonderful. When I asked my husband what he thought about it he said, "I didn't care for all the singing, but besides that it was pretty good." I loved the singing. I thought it was awesome how most of the story was told through song. Loved it!

I had to close one eye for some of it. =o) That's what I do on scary parts....cover one eye so that I'm just peeking at the movie. Oh I'm sure I look pretty silly when I do it too.

I love Johnny Depp, he is an amazing actor. Someday I'd love to own all of his movies. Yeah, I'm dorky like that. =o)

Pampering Mom!

Oh My!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh!

My sweet little Lily....

She asked me to come upstairs - when I got to the top of the steps she told me to close my eyes. She takes my hand and walks me to my bedroom door. Then I hear music start (Tim McGraw!). And I'm told that I can open my eyes. =o)

There is a candle glowing, my bed is made and on top of the bed I see....lotion, a massage bar, make-up and nail polish.

How sweet is that?????

Lily told me to lay down on the bed and she massaged my back. After the massage she put make-up on me. We never got to polishing my nails because by then Jasmine was in the bedroom wanting make-up on as well.

It was such a wonderful massage! Such a wonderful daughter!

One happy momma in the house tonight!

(until hours later and they turned into brats. he he)

Scrubbing...

I decided that it was past time to scrub the kitchen clean. So the other day that is what I did. I actually had all 3 girls in there helping me. =) No, I didn't ask them. They were having fun...washing the front of the cabinets, the fridge, the window, the stove and so on.

Well.... Rosie wanted some windex on her paper towel too, just like her big sisters. I of course told her no, that she was to young for chemicals and I went back to scrubbing the sink. A couple of minutes later I peek over at her to see how she's doing and I caught her......

Shaking her sippy cup upside down on the cabinet door and then wiping it with her paper towel!

Oh I tell ya! Kids. Yep, she's my little monkey butt. I couldn't help it, I had to laugh.

I, of course, started wetting her paper towel with water after that. There, now she's happy. (and so is momma) =o)

Blogging....

I have been reading a lot of homeschool blogs lately. Wow! I've been learning so much from them. They have been such a blessing. I wonder if the bloggers even realize how helpful their blogs are. We are only in our second year of homeschooling and it has been so great to see what other homeschoolers are doing. What's working for them....what's not...what changes they make and on and on. In fact they are the reason that I'm sitting here right now creating my own blog. I'm hoping that eventually if I can get this up and running then maybe someone new to homeschooling will come across my blog and find it helpful in their journey. My other reason for starting this blog is in hopes of sharing our journey with our family (and friends).

Here we go.......