Christmas Day

This was our first Christmas morning without Juliana here, but she did come later in the day to open presents, and course, eat cinnamon rol...

Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful, slightly more low-key than usual Christmas Eve this year. Because of my fatigue, I was not on the worship team and the ...

Christmas Baking

These are the lovely Christmas treats that got created this year, with almost no help from adults. I was not feeling well with fibromyalgia...

Bonkers and Breakfast

I thought this was too funny to forget. This morning, Natalie and Jamie wanted to play bonkers during breakfast. This game is SO OLD - my b...

Cabin Fever

After getting a little Christmas shopping done, we went to the indoor play area at Eden Prairie Community Center. It is half-price af...

Library Tours

One of homeschool "hobbies" is visiting different libraries. We were out and about and needed to absorb some time today, so we ...

Sunset Sun Dog

Whenever I am driving Katie somewhere, she will always notice the sky if it is interesting. Today, not far from home, we saw a cool s...

Food Bank Volunteers

As part of greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies night of service, Lauren and some of her sisters and I got to volunteer at Second Harvest H...

Poetry Tea Time

One of our favorite school activities this year has been Poetry Tea Time. We found this idea from Julie Bogart at BraverWriter.com On...

Tumbletrack into Foam Pit

We got a chance to go down to IGM for another (free) open house/open gym this afternoon for 2 hours. It was less crowded than last time ...

The Box is the Gift

My printer died this week so I ordered a new one from Amazon. It came in a gigantic box that I knew would be the perfect plaything for the ...

MN Children's Museum

For a Friday Field Trip, I took Lauren, Gloria, Natalie and Jamie to the MN Children's Museum in St. Paul. They all had fond me...

Skating at Centennial Lakes

Ice skating has been a major occupation around here lately. Today we went over to skate at Centennial lakes. Everyone remembered being he...

Christmas Decorating

Today we got out the favorite Christmas decorations: the victorian village that Grandma Kate got for us quite a few years ago, and the ma...

GTCYS Christmas Concert

Lauren's orchestra played for a Christmas concert at a retirement community in Stillwater this morning. They presented their two festiv...

Early Season Skating

We had some unusually cold weather this month so the outdoor ice skating was available earlier than usual. Yesterday, we were at Thorpe for...

Outdoor Lights

This is the outdoor light decorating crew. Jim got out the sparkly stuff and the extension cords and then Lauren/Gloria/Natalie/Jamie set...

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we traveled over to Wisconsin to my brother's house. He and Judy made an amazing meal and the girls had fun...

Grandma Kate's Memorial

These are some of the flowers from Kate's memorial service at our old church, Vision of Glory. It was truly wonderful to see her family...

Homeschool Candle Class

The last of three classes we signed up for this semester, through Three Rivers Park District, was homeschool candle making at Elm Creek Par...

Nick U

We were very excited that we got some free tickets again for Nickelodeon Universe. We ended up with 11 rides for the kids and 3 rides for m...

Kip the Bunny

Katie really, really wanted something warm and loveable but I would not agree to a puppy. I did say a nice used bunny would be OK. So we en...

Science Museum

With some of our Christmas money, we got an annual membership to the Science Museum of Minnesota today. Some of the highlights included ...

Ikea Lunch

Yep, just about any excuse will do for heading over to IKEA on a Tuesday for free lunch. We are still in the process of decorating/setting ...

Women's Retreat

I spent the weekend at Clearwater Forest Retreat Center with some of the other women from The Mills Church. I was part of the planning comm...

Lego House

Natalie has been especially interested in building an elaborate house with Legos this week. She said it was a great break from Minecraft. I...

Starting Gymnastics

I was so excited to bring Natalie and Gloria to their first gymnastics lessons today. They were the only two students in their class and go...

Poor Roxy

Roxy is not much for dressing up. Whenever we put something on her (like this scarf and t-shirt scrap from a sewing project), she gets even...

Homeschool Friends

We have been getting together to play a couple times per month with 3 other homeschooling families from The Mills Church. The kids have...

The Underground

This year, I am small group leader in The Underground - the middle school youth group at The Mills Church. We play LOTS of games (well, the...

And Snow it Begins

The snow started pretty early this year, but everyone seemed very excited to welcome it. There had already been lots of talk about how the ...

Kids Computer Room Finally Done

The transformation of this room from my home office into the computer room has taken quite a long time as we have not worked at it very cons...

More Time for Service

We got two opportunities to use our time to serve others this week. First, we made a small batch of pop-up greeting cards for Cards for Hosp...