Kaden and Bethany Quotes (#24-25 and #9)

I thought I'd lighten up my writing a bit by throwing in some cute Bethany and Kaden quotes. 
Enjoy!

In the car one day,

 Kaden was talking on and on about how much he wanted to buy baby clothes for himself.

 As hard as we tried to explain that there simply were not baby-style clothes made for a nearly 6 year old boy, he would not be stopped.

"We can buy yots of clothes!" he said,

"Mommy fings, and baby fings for me.  I'll buy a crib and a swing... and diapers!"

(Kaden adores baby diapers)

"We can look on the computer when we get home!

Right Mom?"

 By this time most of us were tuning him out; still he continued:

"Right, Dad?"
"Right Defany?"
"Right Brittany?"

"Right...?" and with a big sigh: "Oh well."

 

Tonight after dinner, Bethany found a lady bug, and was enjoying showing it to everyone. 

She showed it to Brandon, Whitey (our dog), me, and my mom.

When Mom said it, she smiled and said, 

"Aw, he's a-dori-ble!"

"Yes!" Bethany agreeded, "him is a-dori-ble!"

My mom and I were working on my history for the week.
It was rough, because I hadn't reviewed the material since Christmas break started, and didn't really remember any of it.
I thrive on writing intensive work, not just reading and answering question. 
I tried to explain that the text book I was using just wasn't working for me.
"This isn't how I'm wired, Mom," I said, "I just cant learn like this."
Then, from across the room, I hear Kaden yell,
"Sure you can, Brittany!  Sure you can!"



My Thoughs on Valentines Day, and Our Party

Happy Valentine's Day to all from the Gilbarte family!

 

"Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
your justice like the great deep."

Pslams 36:5

 

Valentine's Day is about love, right?

When I think about Valentines day, I think of well, valentines. 

Candy, hearts, cute cards with sweet messages.

But do any of you know who St. Valentine was?

Yeah, I was a little rusty too, so I decided to do a little research.  

I know I'm about to sound like a history book for a minute, but bear with me, because this guys story is amazing.

St. Valentine was a Christan man who lived when the emperor believed people shouldn't get married.  In his eyes, his strong soldiers would be too distracted with wives and children that they wouldn't do well in the army.

Valentine, though, (yes, that really was his name!) believed other wise and refused to stop preforming marriage ceremonies.

Well, he was caught and thrown in jail. 

While there he met the jail keepers blind daughter who brought food for the prisoners.

Over time they grew to be friends and Valentine prayed for the girl, and asked God to heal her eyes.

God answered his prayer, and the jail keepers daughter was able to see.

Valentine, however was eventually killed.

 

His story is really amazing to me.

He lived boldly.  He knew the emperor was wrong, and was willing to die rather than pretend not to believe what he did.

Even when he was thrown in jail, probably realizing his days were numbered, he didn't give up.

He made a friend in a girl others thought was worthless. 

He prayed for and over her, and she was healed.

Because of this her father became a Christian and she probably did as well.

Valentine was killed, but not in vain.  He saved people from dieing eternally. 

 He was a wonderful example.

 

For our little party celebrating a day that honors this man, we started out with a heart themed breakfast.

 

this was followed by baking and decorating a batch of yummy sugar cookies, which involved a little nibbling and finger licking:)

 

I love decorating cookies. 

 It makes me get out my creative side, which hasn't really shown its self in a while.

But when I am doing it, I take forever. 

After a while the boys kinda lost interest.  They did about a cookie or two each and them decided to move on to finger painting.  That was fine with me! 

I enjoyed finishing decorating theirs and kept working at the rest of mine for a couple hours.

I like them.

 

Yeah, so after that the boys made a couple Valentines, and soon nap time was upon us.

I finished up my cookies and then make couple Valentines myself.

By then my creativity was drying up, so I decided to finish the rest of the valentines later and made some Valentine's Pretzel Snaps.  They turned out well.

 

This morning my Dad surprised us each with a Valentine card, even Kaden got one.

I love that about my Dad.  He's always so considerate.

So that sums up our day.

How'd yours go?

 

 



Our (very late) Christmas/New Years/Happy That Grandparents are Here Party

This year we new we wanted to have a Christmas party with Kaden.

Nothing fancy, just a simple party with simple games, etc.

We planned on it, but it didn't happy before Christmas.

So we decided to make it a New Years Party.

But it didn't happen before - or after- New Years.

So we decided just do the week after New Years, and it didn't happen then either.

Finally, when we heard that our grandparents would be coming to visit we deiced to do it with them...

and we did!

We made the "healthier" version of gingerbread houses with peanut butter and cream cheese instead of using the tradition kits.

It was a lot of fun!

We gave Kaden two graham crackers and let him put whatever he wanted on it,

and the rest of us made little houses.

He did a lot of smiling...

...and eating!

There were a few construction problems here and there,

but nothing that eating a couple of bites wouldn't fix:)

This is probably one of the best things about being homeschooled.

We are so fixable.  If something doesn't happen before Christmas- or New Years - we are able to turn it into a late celebration or make up a new one.

 

What about you?  Do you have any different celebrations or ways to celebrate?



My Math Buddy

I have the best math buddy!

 Because I do my math on the computer, I am able to hold Bethany for most of the lesson, but it normally puts her to sleep after about 30 minutes:)

 

Every day for the past week and a half, I've taken a picture of us doing it together. 

Notice how different she looks in all of them.

This is definitely one of my favorite things about homeschooling!



Reminded

Every day around our house is full of surprises.

And excitement,

and love,

and joy.

Although we do have a couple arguments, frustrated moments, bad attitudes or what ever,

we get over most of them quickly, and move on.

 

One of the most wonderful things about being homeschooled,

is that I am right there with everybody.

Watch new firsts,

making memories,

and enjoying my family.

 

I'm gone for about 7 hours at homeschool co-op classes on Mondays,

and even though that is a normal school day for many,

I feel like I've missed way too much time away from

my siblings and parents.

But that time is good.  It reminds me how much I love my family. 

And makes me even more ready to enjoy day to the fullest,

and reminds me how blessed I am to be called these kids big sister.

 

 

 

look at that smile... love it!

 

Tomorrow's a new day,

a day that the Lord has made... let us rejoice and be glad in it!

{ Psalm 118:24}

The God We Serve

God does amazing things.  He is showing me so much of His power that it blows my mind.

Today I had a couple co-op classes that I go to on Mondays, my last class is photography. 

Today we didn't have a lesson, but went outside to practice what we had learned

 the past couple of weeks. 

I use my dad's camera for this class, because it is a little nicer that the camera I usually use, and someone from his work had worked with the camera a few days before, and I hadn't messed with it since.

When I turned the camera on, something popped up saying the memory card

needed to be formatted, and it couldn't record, etc.  The rest of the class was already out taking pictures, and I ran to my teacher and embarrassedly told her the memory card wasn't working, and asked if  I could go in to get my spare. I ran inside and put in the other card.  To make a long

story short, that memory card was also refusing to work.

I tryed to put the contents on my computer and erase it off the disk, but still it didnt work.

By this time I had been gone about half and hour, I ran back out the rest of the class.  My teacher couldnt figure out what was wrong with the card either, and so I decided to give it up and

watch everyone else take pictures, but I was kind of bummed. 

"You can make it work," I prayed, "I know you can.  Please will you make the memory card work?"

I turned the camera on and the same message popped onto the screen - for 0.5 seconds.  I didnt press any bottons, I did nothing, but the memory card started to work, and I was able to take pictures normally.  The camera was working as if nothing had ever happened.

Sure, you could say it just happened to work, but no. I spent half and hour "trying to make it work"  and it didn't.  God showing me that He is bigger.

He has amazing power.

He can move mountains with faith the size of a mustard seed.

That's the God we serve.



Loving it

The weather is finally cooling down, wahoo!

It has been beautiful here, the temperatures are in the 70s, and we have done a

lot of our school out side. 

Inside, the windows are open, and the breeze is blowing through the house. 

We are lovin' it!

 

Yep, School is Back...

Week 3 is almost over, that means we've been in school for about a month! 

Time is really flying!  Here are a couple of pictures of some of the fun stuff we stuff are doing.

Reading...

Reading...

Nature walk

more reading

We also make a cake with the continents on it, that was a lot of fun! 

The cake with only the outlines...

icing it

and the finished product!

Yes, we do do more school than cake baking, nature walks and reading, a lot more.   I just took pictures of some of the more "fun" stuff.

Photography

Taking pictures is a hobby of mine, one that  I really enjoy.  Today for school we went on a nature walk, and I was able to get some really good photos.  Here are couple: