100 days of school

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We completed 100 days of school yesterday. We've never really kept track before, but Claire's Spelling and Math curriculum are 1 lesson each day curriculums so it was easy to see when we got to the 100th day. Poor Claire was sick so we just put together a 100 piece puzzle.




Later, she counted out 100 pennies and we are going to exchange them for a dollar today at the bank. This was a good lesson in multiplication too. She had just been learning about multiplying by 10 so we counted out 10 sets of 10.

Nathan made a list of 100 cars. I told him to make a list of 100 things: 100 kinds of food,
100 countries, etc. He chose cars. :)



Here are some sites with even more ideas for the 100th day of school:

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/west/proj/100th/act.htm

http://www.vickiblackwell.com/100th.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/hundred.shtml

Silicone bowls and a toy mixer...just what I'd been looking for!

A while back I posted about CSN stores. The nice people there at CSN gave me a gift certificate to use in their stores. They have everything you could imagine from home office desks to kitchen gadgets. It was hard to choose!

I've been wanting some small silicone bowls. As you may know I'm now an independent consultant for Homemade Gourmet. Each month I have a meal assembly party at my house where we get together and assembe meals for the freezer. These little bowls are just perfect for that. I ordered 3 sets! (And they arrived just in time for the party!) I used them this weekend at the meal assembly for honey, chopped onions and brown sugar. They worked perfectly! I have a feeling I will be using these a lot. :)



My daughter had a toy stand mixer that I got for her several years ago. It was one of her favorite toys. Unfortunatly, I broke the bowl to it when I was moving her kitchen set one day. She was very sad and I told her I'd get her a new one. Well, that happened on New Years so the toy aisles were very picked over and I hadn't been able to find one...ANYWHERE! But I found one in the CSN stores! I didn't tell her I ordered it. I just gave it to her when it came in. She was so excited!!

The shipping on it was very quick and its a great quality toy. She is really enjoying it.

Thanks, CSN!!

Disclaimer: I was compensated for this review by CSN with an online gift certificate.

Wordful Wednesday

Claire had her first gymnastic meet of the year this weekend. She did great! Here she is doing her floor routine. I think she was doing a back bend kick over.


I can never get good pictures during the meet so I had her post on the beam afterward. (And she landed her cartwheel on the beam again too!)


Here she is with her ribbons and medal. She LOVES getting a medal!

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by seven clown circus and Parenting by Dummies.

L.E.N.S. Photo challenge: February

The L.E.N.S. photo challenge is hosted by Home is Where you start from. This week's theme is February. My photo is from our February snow. We usually have spring-like weather in December, but when February rolls around here comes the snow!

Postcard Friendship Friday #68

This is one of my favorite postcards! (And, I thought, a good choice with Valentine's Day coming up.) I would just love to know the story behind it!

The postmark date didn't show up, but the gentleman dated it 10-3-11. Which is really funny being that this is 2011. It looks like there was once a stamp on it, but it is no longer there. The card is not in the best condition, but I just couldn't resist it when I found it. I loved the mystery of it. The correspondence is written in pencil so its hard to read. The picture on the front is raised so some of those lines came through on the scan which also makes it hard to read. It's addressed to Miss Iva Rogers in Temple Texas.

This is my best translation:

Hello there girl

Are you very mad at me. Don't you think I could get you in a good humor. I couldn't tell for my life why you quit writing to me. I guess you don't like my style tho. I am going to S.D. and will write you again. Be good Iva D.

He also wrote on the front of the card. On the left side it says "A dangerous place to be"
On the right side it says "So I see Dont you remember me my name's Ernest." He also wrote "By By" above the boat.

I would love to know what they fell into with a splash and why Miss Iva stopped writing to poor Ernest. He doesn't sound like he gave up though!

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Round Robin: Valentines Boxes

My bloggy friend Amy is hosting her monthly Round Robin today. Hop on over to see other festive February posts.

I'm sharing a craft idea using emtpy tissue boxes...

Our homeschool group has a Valentine party and exchange every year. This year we have our boxes ready. We used empty tissue boxes. I spray painted Claire's and she put foamy shapes, paper hearts and stickers on it. Nathan, who is 13 and only participates in the hope of getting candy, just covered his with the funny papers. It turned out real cute though and took very little effort from him!


When I was a kid I remember making Valentine boxes out of shoe boxes. We never seem to have shoe boxes laying around though so last year I came up with the idea of using the tissue boxes. With our allergies we ALWAYS have plenty of them!

CSN stores

I love CSN stores! They have so much great stuff! They've got everything you need from
home office desks to lamps to towels and cookware. All on one convenient site.

The nice folks at CSN are giving me a chance to review one of their products. Hmmmm....which one should I choose??? What would you choose from CSN?

I'll be sharing what I chose soon so stay tuned! :)

We have a winner...

I have a winner for my Homemade Gourmet giveaway...comment #4: Amy from Keeping up with the Schultz Family. Congratulations, Amy! I'll send you an email.

Thanks to all those who entered. If you'd like to see what Homemade Gourmet has to offer click on of the Homemade Gourmet links in this post or in my sidebar. And don't forget to check out the "easy recipes" section of their site. Lots of great recipes for delicious, quick homecooked meals!

L.E.N.S. Photo Challenge: PE

Home is where you start from hosts the L.E.N.S. Photo Challenge every week. This week's theme is Physical Education: what does PE look like at your house?

Well, my son plays baseball and he also has a membership to the gym where he likes to rock climb and play soccer. At home he rides his bike and climbs trees.

My daughter takes gymnastics and also rides her bike and climbs trees. When its warm enough we can swim in the pool.

But when the weather is cold and we are iced in, like we were this week, this is what PE looks like at our house...

GYMNASTICS EVERYWHERE!

She has a meet coming up soon so there are splits, cartwheels, tuck jumps, stradel jumps, you name it, going on at our house every minute of the day! To be quite honest, these things go on whether she has a meet coming up or not. She eats, sleeps, and breathes gymnastics!



Don't forget...my Homemade Gourmet giveaway ends on Super Bowl Sunday. Click here if you haven't entered yet!

Postcard Friendship Friday #67

The postmark is very smudgy, but I think it says 1942 or 1912. Big difference, I know, but I can't make it out. The stamp is one cent. Anyone know what the postage was in 1942 or 1912? :)

I love the keyhole look of the card. Not your typical Valentine looking postcard.

I just had to post a card today that showed snow because this is what we woke up to this morning in North Texas...

We've actually been iced in since Tuesday. Now, there is snow. Its pretty and all, but its very cold here (hasn't been above freezing in 3 days). I'm ready for spring!

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Don't forget...there's still a couple days left to enter my giveaway. The link is in my sidebar.

Cabin Fever

Well, we are on day 3 of being stuck inside due to icy, freezing weather. Personally, I'm enjoying it! All of the kids activities have been cancelled. We are getting school done and then having free time in the afternoon. I don't get a lot of free time these days so this is a treat for me! Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones that was not hit by the rolling blackouts yesterday. I have friends that are still with out electricity. From what I'm reading from everyone on Facebook, they are faced with some serious cabin fever. After all, this is Texas. We aren't used to being snowed or iced in!

I found this on the internet today. I especially liked the prayer entry!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_localdallas/20110203/ts_yblog_localdallas/dallas-fort-worth-stricken-with-cabin-fever


We aren't really experiencing cabin fever at our house, but we seem to be in the minority with that!

I thought I'd share some ideas for things to do inside with the kiddos.

First, if you haven't done it, break out the board games and play doh and paint. Its a great day for those things! Change things up by letting the kids paint with different items like a feather or a carrot. They can even make paint stamps out of a slice of potato.

Another idea is to surf the web for some winter craft ideas. Here is a good site:
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/winter/index.html

Making a tent in the living room is always fun too! Get out some blankets and make a fort or a tent. My kids would play in these for hours!

Also, cooking with the kids can be fun. Mix up a cake or some cookies. Then, give them some icing and sprinkles and let them have fun decorating them. A fun "cooking" activity for toddlers is letting them play with dry pasta. My daughter used to love doing this. A spoon, a bowl and some dry pasta provided her with lots of fun.



Or make a big pot of hot soup for this cold weather. If you need a yummy, easy soup check out my Homemade Gourmet website: www.homemadegourmet.com/aimee . Their soups are delicious and so easy to make that the kids could help out. My favorites are Chicken Enchilada and tortilla.

Yesterday, Claire made a popsicle outside! She poured some juice in a small cup, covered it with foil and stuck a popsicle stick in it. We set it on our grill right outside the back door. Six to seven hours later it was frozen solid!




Today we are reading "The Stolen Bread Smells" and making cinnamon bread. She's also painting using different kinds/sizes of brushes.

Hope some of these ideas have been helpful to any of you who are stuck inside with this winter storm!

Don't forget...there's still time to enter my giveaway. Check out my sidebar for the link.

13

Thirteen years ago today I became a mom.

After 17 1/2 hours of labor and an unexpected c-section, we finally got to meet Nathan!

Don't let this picture fool you...he rarely slept! He was the fussiest baby I'd ever seen! He cried everytime I put him down and he refused to sleep in his own bed for 2 years!

But we love him anyway!







And he eventually stopped crying and started sleeping in his own bed.

He spent the first 5 years of his life competely obsessed with construction...road construction, construction vehicles, tools...that's all he thought about every day! We rarely saw him without his hard hat on!

The construction obsession eventually faded and was replaced by a baseball obsession!

Here he is with a giant pretzel we made as part of some school activity a few years ago.

To this day he still LOVES pretzels!

This is Nathan today. A teenager. Sigh. I cannot believe how unbelievably fast the last 13 years have gone by. I also cannot believe I now have a teenager! Heaven help us all!

Happy Birthday to my Nathan!