Letters From the Homefront

Yesterday I finally saw a little bit of normal routine possibly coming back to us! This past month of June - I don't know what happened to it. I know it was here, but I couldn't tell you were it has gone! In all seriousness, the plans I thought were so well laid and that were going to be easy to accomplish were completely blown out of the water by the end of the first week of June. In my post about our summer plans, I thought I had everything pretty neatly laid out, with a little room for last minute changes. Boy, did I have another thing coming! Our month of June started out with two weeks of Vacation Bible School, one at a family member's church, with my husband out of town the same week, and then another week of VBS at our own church, which was even busier because I was an assistant teacher in the 3-5 year old class (imagine 9-12, 3-5's in a room that couldn't have been much bigger than 11'11 - and then add to that the fact that 1/3 of them were visitors

My NO, NO, NO Day! Written by Rebecca Patterson This is the story of a little girl who has a BIG, BAD day! Let's take a moment and be real and honest with each other - we ALL have these kinds of days! We just don't express them the way kids do. Starting with a bad start to the morning, her day goes from bad to worse.... (I can definitely relate to this picture! When all five kiddos go to the store with me, it's a busy time! And occasionally we are there longer than Buddy Boy can handle!) If you notice in the picture, all the other people in the aisle seem to be inadvertently staring at :that: mom with the screaming little girl - doesn't it seem like, even when the truth is no one is watching us at all, when our children are being loud it feels as if the whole store is staring at you as you do your shopping? Or is that just me.... :)     The day continues to get worse, as social skills fly right out the window in the face of

One of the best things we get monthly, came in the mail today. A NEW BOOK :) In case you can't tell yet, we are a book-loving family. My husband is not much of a reader, and neither are most of his sisters. I, however, LOVE to read, and one day hope to have the time to get back to being able to have my own reading time. As it is , whenever I have time to read, it's usually reading something that will assist in teaching my children!  We heard a few years ago about Dolly Parton's Imagination LIbrary , but when I first checked into it, we had lost the support for it in our local area. Sadly, I chalked that one up as an opportunity we didn't have and forgot about it. Until the beginning of this year, that is - when I found out that we had indeed gotten the support back for it, if we had ever truly lost it in the first place. So the first thing I did was get online and get my youngest two signed up - fast! Unfortunately, by this time, my oldest three were already

I thought I would share another DIY that I have had on my shelves for quite some time, just haven't had the chance to take pictures and share it with you. I have been so busy lately, and almost felt a little guilty for not paying more attention to my blog, but first comes family, then comes blog. :)   Introducing: DIY Sound Bottles    I made these quite a while ago, and had done some research before making my own. I read a post long before making these from Mari-Ann at  Counting Coconuts  where she spoke of buying Montessori sound bottles, only to realize later that she really could have made them far less expensive, and it would have been easy. That was my first introduction to them, reading that article, so I decided then and there that I would NOT purchase them, but find the best way to make them for little money. I looked through many great ideas for  making them from the sensorial link at What Did We Do All Day's ultimate DIY materials list  and from De