An Adoption Poem

--An Adoption Poem--

Once there were two different women.

The first you may not remember, 

and the other is whom you now call mother.

Through the first God gave you life, 

yes praise God she allowed you to live.

She gave you all the natural things like appearance, 

emotions, personality, and the need for love.

Yet only through the second one will you find your needs fulfilled.

You now have one to guide you, teach you, and wipe away all your tears.

A mother to help and provide for you and one to calm all your fears.

For you, the first one was not able to provide,

While the other prayed for the Lord to provide.

Even though you may not know it, there is a bond for these two in one short moment.

That is the mark of the second "beginning" for you my child.  

And now, for you, these things will stay the same;

The wonderful creation God made you to be and the home to which you came.

 Welcome Home.

--by: Stephanie Wright--

 

See The NEED!

Me- Ok, boys.  We are going to play a game.
Boys- Ok what is it?
Me- It's called "See the need"
Monkey- How do we play?
Me- (walking over to something on the floor)...."Oh!  This doesn't go here! (and then I put it away)
Get it?  Ok, ready, set, GO!

And they ran off to see how many things they could "see the need" for that are laying around and shouldn't be there, then they put them where they actually belong.  I had them keep track, and the one who saw the most needs got a prize. (a piece of gum, or something small was enough for them)

You can also say, the first person to "See the need" 10 times wins....Go!

Spice up chore time!  And make putting things away fun!

Go ahead and use this tag line.

How many times will you ask your children....

(or spouse...haha) to see the need this week?!

 

Number Placements

Bear is doing really well in his kindergarten math book.  I've made and bought some other fun things we can do along with his paperwork to make it fun or like a game while learning at the same time.

I made number placements....1-9 green units, 10,20,-90 blue tens and 100, 200 -900 red hundreds to match our Math-U-See curriculum.

I set them up like this....

Then I would give him a number and he would put them together to make the number and practice saying it.   

four hundred sixty seven....go!

 

Carrot Stamp Art

Turn a carrot into a stamp! :)

Take a full size carrot and cut it half to make two stamps.  

Then I cut the fatter end flat.  Last I cut/shaved it to make it a shape.  

A line, rectangle, circle, star, triangle, and hexagon.

Then get out some cardstock, and some paints....and make a shape creation!

This was my example for them on how to use it as a stamp and not slide it like a brush.  

We wanted to see each shape on the page.

And their final creations. :)

Happy Crafting! :)



 

Craft time, Marble(ous) Maze!

Craft of the day!   

Marble Straw Maze

 First I found a box...you can use whatever size you have laying around.  I could only find a big box lid.  I taped paper together to line the inside of the box.  Then we drew our maze design on the paper.  

 Next we cut straws and glued them onto our lines for the maze walls.

 Let it dry and then use a marble to find your way through your own maze....or your brother's. :)

 

American Flag Craft

We are learning about American History.  So in talking about our independence we decided to make a flag.  Here's what we did.

Take red, white and blue construction paper.  Use the blue piece for the background.  Cut the red and white into 3/4 inch strips.  Line them every other starting with red.

Start on the bottom like a real flag and after the 6 full lines make the next ones shorter so you have room for the stars.  Glue on the strips covering the blue, except for the blue square in the corner.

Then either draw on stars or use star stickers!

Hang your artwork, and say the pledge and sing the Star Spangled Banner!  We actually listened to the Star Spangled Banner repeatedly until we were done making our craft! :)

Happy Crafting!

 

Homemade Brownies #2

I found another homemade brownie recipe....so you don't have to buy those boxed mixes. :)

The book called them Final Exam Brownies (But what does that mean?  You can't tell that they are a homemade recipe from that!)

1 cup cocoa*
1 cup REAL butter (melted)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar*
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
2 cups mini marshmallows
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Melt the butter completely, and mix in the cocoa.  Add sugars, vanilla, and eggs and mix well.  Add the flour last and mix well.  Then use a spatula to fold in the marshmallows and half the chocolate chips.
Spread in a 9x13 pan and sprinkle the top with the remaining chocolate chips.  Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.

Here's my differences...
I have the cocoa marked because you can sub dry cocoa powder for melted unsweetened chocolate.  And this is what I did.  It calls for 4 one-ounce squares of chocolate.  It is 1/4 cup cocoa for every ounce of chocolate if you are going to sub.
Then I did not have enough sugar, and since my other homemade brownie recipe uses 1 cup brown and 1 cup white that is what I did for this recipe too.  But the original recipe says to just use 2 cups of white sugar only.  No brown sugar.  They still taste great!  Just goes to show you can mix things up a little sometimes, within reason and get the same result! :)


 

Chicken Roll-ups

2 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
1 can corn
1 jar salsa
cheddar
10-12 8" flour tortillas

Cook and shred, or chop chicken.  Mix chicken, corn and salsa together.  Place mixture in tortilla and roll, placing the end on the bottom of the pan.  Cover with foil.  Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.  Sprinkle more cheese on top and uncover.  Bake for 5 more minutes.  Top with additional salsa, sour cream and cheese if desired.

Quick kitchen tip on preparing the tortillas...click here to check it out.



 

Kitchen Tip v20

Do you ever make regular enchiladas,  chicken enchiladas, or roll-ups, or burritos?

I like to make sure that I have the same amount of filling in each one.  I hate to start out with a little then get to the last tortilla shell and find out I  have a bunch of meat filling left and then stuff it....so here's what I do.

I lay out all 10 or 12 shells on the counter.  Then I spread the mixture in the middle of all of them filling them evenly.  Top with whatever other things you are going to put in the middle and wha-la!  Evenly stuffed tortilla shells. :)

Its ok, I know I'm a dork.

 

Craft Time, Soaking Colors

We made color blend flowers.

First take a coffee filter.  And color on it.  As little or as much as you want.  The more color the more blending and design you get.

 Here's before...

 Then we dipped the edges in water, and let the paper soak up the water, blending the colors together while it did that.  Here's how I dipped the paper.

It doesn't need to go in the water that far.  So just a shallow amount on a small plate is fine.

 Or at first I laid a small edge in there at a time so we could watch the color blends a little better.  But the above way was much faster and you could still see the difference in from beginning to end.

Then lay it flat and let it dry.  Here are all three that we did.

Next I twisted together the middle and taped it to a straw.

And then put them in a vase!  Flowers that will last a long time. :)

This is the one I did, before and after.  See all the blue in there, I did not use a blue marker at all.  Neat way to show the color blends.

Happy Crafting!

 

Water Experiment

Soaking colors.

First we did a preliminary experiment where we put a dot of color on a small piece of coffee filter.

Then dipped the edge in a little bit of water.  And watched it absorb the water.

While it did that it pulled the color up with it.  Some colors stayed the same, while other colors that are blends, like black and brown, green etc....showed the hidden colors inside.

Here's all the soaked colors.

Can you tell which color is which?

I'll start with the top and go around clockwise.

Purple, Green, Brown, Blue, Red, Orange, Black.


Then we decided to turn it into a crafty project....click here to see what we did next!




 

The Boy's First Gaither Concert

I should probably say their first and second concert.  We went to the first one Friday night, October 14...in Indepence, MO.  Then we went to our second one on Saturday afternoon, October 15....same place.  There was yet another one on Saturday evening, but we needed to drive six hours to get home for church the next day.  So we only did two of the three-concert event.

This weekend we took the boys to their first ever Gaither concert!  This was however....concert number 15-16 for me and 18-19 for TJ.  You think that's crazy....is that right?  Well I'm sure there are things you like to do a lot of times.  I guess Gaither concerts are what we like to do, lots of times!  Now if they would just venture farther north so we don't have to go so far south to see them!  That would be great.

Here's some proof that we were really there.....

 The boys with Kevin Williams the Gaither's guitar player.

And then Monkey took a picture of TJ and I. :)

Now to see more pics of all the artists who sang, click here to go to my Photography Blog.


The concert on Friday night was from 7-11pm....do you think Bear was tired????

and this picture was taken at intermission....so there was still about one and a half hours left.