17 Beautiful Years!

This past Friday was Bryan and mines 17th Wedding Anniversary!

Bryan and I met at our church in Bakersfield, California. We knew each other when we were in highschool though we went to highschools that were across town from one another. We saw each other on Sundays and Wendesdays and at other youth group events throughout the year. One of my closest friends from church and one of Bryans closest friends from church were brother and sister so we often found ourselves together at there house or out and about. We had a pretty close knit group of friends in many ways. It was an awesome youth group to be apart of and looking back I will forever be thankful for those years in my life and those lifetime friendships that were developed during that time. When we reached our college years Bryan was off at Biola University in Los Angeles for a time while I stayed in town. Once Bryan returned to Bakersfield we found ourselves both working with the junior high youth students at our church. I was the girls leader and Bryan was the boys leader. This meant we were spending even more time together at youth events, bible studies, Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, and Winter and Summer camps at Hume Lake. We did a lot of fun events and projects with the youth during that time and all the while Bryan and I were developing an even closer friendship with one another. In fact, we became best friends. You really already know the rest of the story. :-)

In September of 1992, 18 years ago, Bryan proposed to me on a beach in Santa Barbara, California. That was a day to be cherished greatly, and I have.





We were married a little over one year later, on September 24th, 1993, which was a Friday evening. Our Wedding was held at our church there in Bakersfield- where we had first met one another and were still actively involved. Our friend Dave Champness, who also happened to be the youth pastor when Bryan and I were IN the youth group, and at the time was the associate pastor of our church and is now the lead teaching pastor, married us. That was and will always be very special to us. A little over 200 dear friends and family attended our wedding. A couple of close friends sang at our wedding. Three of my junior high girls participated in it by being candle lighters and guest book attendants. We each had 6 attendants by our side including our maid of honor and best man and we had a scripture reader and flower girl in our wedding as well. Our ceremony wasn't long, only about 35 minutes. We had several songs, the lighting of the candles, some scripture readings, my dad prayed over us, and we took communion with both sets of our parents. We wrote our own vows to one another. We did not use the traditional wedding music that is typically used in a ceremony. We used a lot of Christian music as well as music from some of my favorite musicals. My dad walked me down the isle to Handels Messiah. We passed out programs for our guests that included bits of fun information about Bryan and I, how we met, and short paragraphs about each of our Wedding attendants and what our relationship was to each of them.





Our reception after our ceremony was in the backyard of our friends home. The friends I mentioned above that are brother and sister. It was around their pool and gazebo and it was beautiful! Bryans best friend put together a slide show of pictures of Bryan and I through the years from birth to our engagement photos. He set the pictures to music and we rented a really large screen that was set up in the backyard to show the video on. Dinner was catered in, clear lights hung in the trees around the yard. Balloons floated in the pool. Our Wedding Cake was set up in the gazebo. We used the driveway as the dance floor. Our dear and mutual friend, Chris Green, served as our DJ for the night and he did an awesome job! We even had a bubble machine set up near the driveway that shot out bubbles over the dance floor. Their was dancing and limbo. Towards the back of the yard we had ping pong and other games set up for the younger kids.





It was an incredibly wonderful celebration! But the best of it all wasn't all of the above, it was that I was starting a new life with my best friend. It was knowing that everywhere we went we would now get to go together. Every experience in life we would now experience together. We would face things in the years to come that we could have never foreseen on that evening 17 years ago but the obstacles we have had to overcome have only made us stronger in time. I think that's the beauty of marriage. You really do become one in Christ. The experiences you share with one another help bond you together even more at a time when you thought you couldn't grow any closer to one another than you already are. Their is something beyond beautiful about knowing that you have someone to count on, lean on, and enjoy life with. Someone you can trust and someone who desires to see you grow closer to the Lord with each passing moment, month, and year. Someone who not only knows your a sinner just like them, but isn't surprised when you do sin and fall short of the Glory of God and that same someone still loves you just the same despite your daily short comings. That person would actually lay down their life for you if they had too. What an incredible picture of Gods love for us, marriage is!

I am so thankful that God created marriage and that He gave me Bryan to share it with!

This song was sung by a dear friend of ours in our Wedding Ceremony and it was also the song we danced to at our reception.

Bath & Body Works Fun!

When we were in Missouri at the end of July and start of August and Bryan and I took our trip to Branson we stopped into the Bath and Body works shop there to grab some bubble bath for our jacuzzi tub in our hotel room.

This is what we grabbed.


Since coming down with my Fibro, I have a very high sensitivity to smells and have been unable to use most scented lotions, body washes, and sprays. Perfumes are out of the question for me. In fact, most of the time I have to avoid just walking past the Bath and Body Works store in the mall because the smell from the outside will make me sick. Thankfully, I was feeling well enough during our Branson trip that a trip inside the store did not mess me up, though I was very careful about what I put up to my nose while in the store. I noticed when I was standing in front of this group of Jasmine Vanilla products though that the smell wasn't real strong. Bryan and I both agreed that the smell was very clean and beautiful without being overly powerful. Thankfully we felt the same after using it in the tub. Don't you hate it when something smells good in the bottle but looses it's smell once it hits the bath water! Jasmine Vanilla did the opposite. The gentle smell hung around longer than any other product I have used. I fell in LOVE with it. It makes my skin feel so soft and the smell is mild enough yet it stays with me all day long. I LOVE the smell!

My old Dove got put under the sink when we got home and Jasmine Vanilla took it's place in the bathtub. Jasmine Vanilla has become a new best friend around here.

For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, Bryan bought me the lotion, body spray, and more of the body wash as a present.


I do have to be careful with the lotion and body spray. On my bad days with my Fibro I cannot use those though I can still use the body wash and it doesn't mess me up. The lotion and spray are not nearly as strong as most other scented lotions and sprays and when I am feeling well and my sensitivity to scents are not real high, I am able to use the lotion and spray with no problem.

I am so thankful to have finally found a product that smells soooo good, makes my skin so soft, and that I am able to actually use. I know many people, even outside of those who have Fibro, have issues with being sensitive to smells with lotions and body sprays and washes. If you are one of those people you might be able to handle Jasmine Vanilla. I say might because I know each person is different and has different sensitivities. If you are one of those people that are blessed to not be sensitive to smells, then you definitely need to check out Aromatherapy's Jasmine Vanilla. Did I mention that it smells sooooo good and that I LOVE it!

2 Corinthians 2:15: "For our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God".

Skeletel System Study

As part of our Apologia Anatomy study this year we had a chapter on the skeletal system. The older kids have done several anatomy studies in the past but not one that I felt was as thorough as this one so we spent some extra time on the bones chapter than I had originally planned. We ended up spending about 3 weeks learning a lot about our skeletal systems. The younger kids joined in on a few days with lessons that were more appropriate for their ages as well.

One of the first things we talked about was how our skeletons support us so that we can stand, move, and do many other things. To demonstrate this we used some clay. The kids shaped human beings out of clay and when they were finished they tried to stand their clay humans up.







No matter how hard they tried, the kids were not able to get their clay humans to stand up without falling over.

The kids then took toothpicks to represent our bones and inserted them into their clay humans. They had to reshape their humans around the bones. They experimented with this and with each clay figure it took quite a few toothpicks before their clay figures would stand without falling over.







This was a really good visual for my younger children in helping them to understand the purpose of our skeleton system.

We learned about the special layer of fluid between our skull and brain that God gave us for added protection. In order to demonstrate the need for this fluid we took an egg and placed it in a sealed tight container. The kids took turns jogging around the room with the egg. The egg represented our brain.


Upon opening the container we found that our brain had gone splat! We then washed out our container and this time we filled it with water to the very top to represent the fluid in between our brain and skull. We placed another egg in the container and sealed the lid on tight. The kids repeated running around the room, bouncing, and shaking the container. When we opened it our egg had not gone splat. In fact, their wasn't even a crack in it.

We learned about lipids, minerals, calcium, calcium salts, Vitamin D, malnutrition, phosphorus, and osteoporosis. We then moved on to learn a bit about joints and bone anatomy. The older kids learned about the layers of the bone from periosteum, compact bone, to spongy bone. We also learned about bone marrow and osteoblasts which are the cells that make new bone. We discussed cartilage and joint cartilage. Joint cartilage keeps our bones from getting hurt when they rub against one another. In order to demonstrate how this works I had each of the kids slap the kitchen counter with their hands. Of course, it stung. Then we placed a pillow on the counter to represent our joint cartilage and they did it again.

The kids learned that in addition to growing longer our bones also grow wider. We learned in detail what happens within the layers of our bones that helps this happen. They learned that if you are a boy you will keep growing in height until about 18 years of age. That means that a nine year old boy is 75 % of the height he will be as an adult. On the other hand, a girl is 75 % of her adult height at seven years old. So girls grow a bit faster and stop growing a bit earlier than boys. We also learned that as a baby you are born with about 300 bones but an adult has only 206 bones. The kids thought this very interesting and of course wanted to know what happens to all of those other bones? That lead into a lesson on bones becoming fused together. One other thing that the kids thought fascinating was that even once your body has finished growing your bones are constantly being remodeled according to the activities that you do daily.

We talked about broken bones and how bones heal themselves. We then went into bone basics and learned which bones in our body are considered long bones, which are short bones, flat bones, sesamoid bones, or irregular bones and how you define each of the above. We used a chart in our book to work on memorizing the proper names of each bone in our body.



We also used a video we found on Utube that we really liked to help the kids memorize the major bones in our body.


They had fun memorizing the song.

We talked about ligaments and sutures. We learned that of the 14 bones in our face, all except one are attached to the other bones with a suture joint. In all of those bones, only one bone moves. The kids all guessed right as to which bone that was; the Mandible. We learned that the three smallest bones in our body are located in our ears! Their names are malleus, incus, and stapes. Something the kids thought to be very fascinating is that these three bones are so small that if you were take all three out of our ears and place them on a dime they would fit with room to spare.



We learned about the parts of our vertebrates/spinal column. The kids thought it interesting that most people have as many ribs as they do vertebraes, but some people are born with more. Through a diagram of the ribs we learned that seven of our ribs are true ribs and five are false ribs and the bottom two false ribs are called floating ribs. We studied our pectoral girdle, scapulae, and clavicles.

One of the things we learned about long bones is that in order to classify a bone as a long bone, it has to be longer than it is wider. The bones in our arms and fingers are long bones.


We made this model of our arm (long) bones, the ulna, radius, and humerous, and we will be adding muscles to it in our next chapter.

The kids learned that they are about as tall as they are wide. They loved this concept. We took some yarn and measured each person from head to foot and then with their arms spread out at their sides we measured from the tip of the middle finger over to the next and the kids saw that the measurements were nearly same for each person.





The kids also learned that the longest bone in our body is in the upper part of our leg and it is called the femur.

We used a drawing from our book to count how many bones are in the hand and foot.


We then did a little math. We multiplied each number by two. We found 27 bones in the hand and 26 in the feet. All together, that added up to 106 bones. We then recalled that we had only 206 bones as an adult which means that more than half of our adult bones are in our feet and hands.

We talked about how our bones would be unable to move without our joints and how some joints allow a lot of movement and others allow just a little and still others don't allow any movement at all. We talked about how without our joints we would be able to stand but we would be stiff as mannequins. We discussed synovial fluid which allows the joints to move more easily. To demonstrate this we rubbed our hands together really hard for one full minute. Of course they became warm due to the friction which generates heat. We then applied some lotion to our hands to represent our synovial fluid and did it again. The kids saw that it was much easier to rub our hands against one another with lotion on them.

We discussed the different types of joints such as hinge joints, ball and socket joints, saddle joints, sliding joints, pivot joints, and ellipsoidal joints.

The older kids had a chart in their anatomy notebooks where they had to write the names of each bone next to a skeleton picture as part of a test at the end of our unit. Here is Houstons page from his anatomy book.


Are you laughing yet? I cracked up when I saw his drawing that he added to the skeleton. I told Bryan, at least I now know what was really on his mind during his lessons.


Emmys page. They had to use proper names, not just "ankle bone or collar bone" for their answers.

We discussed the 6 main systems in our body that we will be learning about during this anatomy study and as an extra I gave each of the kids 2 pages to glue into their notebooks.


With each page they had to glue on the name of the system next to it.




We also have a page in our notebooks where at the end of lesson we will be adding the system and various organs that we will be learning about. We added our skeletons to our bodies at the end of this unit.


As an added review activity for this chapter we used these sticker sheets that I had on hand from one of our units a few years ago. I purchased them at Oriental Trading that year. It was fun but the only thing I didn't like about them is that they do not use the proper names for every bone on the sheet. Nonetheless- it was a good review activity.


For fun, I surprised the kids with these puzzle skeleton candies. After they put their puzzles together they had to name the bones of their skeleton before they could eat them.



We wrapped up this chapter of our anatomy with one last experiment. We analyzed a chicken bone.

We took a couple of cooked chicken wings and pulled the meat off of them. We found the ligaments and cartliage on the bones. We filled one bowl with water and placed a couple of the bones in it. We then filled a second bone with vinegar and put a couple of chicken bones in it. We let our bones sit and soak for 3 days. Vinegar is an acid that removes calcium salts from the bone. The kids made their hypothesis as to what would happen to the bones and the differences they might find in the two at the end of the three days.


After a few days in the vinegar, the bones had lost a lot of their calcium salts and they therefore felt soft and rubbery. It confirmed for us the importance of collagen and calcium to our bones.

This was a good chapter. We really learned a lot from it. Next up in our Anatomy Study is the Muscular System.

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Fall Festival of Children's Books!

5 Minutes for Books is hosting a Fall Festival of Children's books right now. I couldn't resist joining in! Children's Picture books are one of my favorite topics to discuss.



Until September 28th, 5 Minutes for Books will be reviewing Children’s Books. LOTS and lots of children’s books! They are going to be reviewing funny books, sweet books, religious books, beautifully-illustrated books. They will feature fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. And, one of the best parts is that they will have giveaways! Lots of giveaways! In addition to individual give-a-ways on blog posts they will also be having a grand prize give-a-way. You can check out more info HERE.

So as part of my participation in the Fall Festival, I get to share with you a favorite Children's Picture Book of mine. Let me just say that deciding which picture book to write about here was not easy!


I decided to share about this one. It has been a favorite with all 6 of our children!

In All Those Secrets of the World, author Yolen shares a bittersweet memory from her own childhood. She tells about the two years during her childhood that her father was away from home during World War 11.

The book begins with a trip to the dock to see the big ship and wave her daddy goodbye. At the dock they ate ice cream cones, waved American flags, and watched mama cry all the way home. Janie was very young (only 4) when her dad went off to war. After he left, Janie and her mom and baby brother move in with grandma who lives on the Chesapeake Bay. During this time Janie has many fun memories with her cousin Michael, playing on the beach, and even getting into a little mischief together one day. On the beach Michael points to the specks on the horizon and tells Janie that they are ships. She cannot believe that they could be ships because they are too small and she had just seen her daddy's ship and saw how very big it was. That's when Michael tells Janie the "Secret of the World", a lesson on perception that when things are farther away, they look smaller. He begins to move farther away from her down the beach and she sees that the farther away he goes, the smaller he gets. Eventually Father returns home and he cannot believe how big Janie has gotten. That's when she tells him that she was smaller when he was far away but now that he is here now, she is bigger.

This is such a sweet story. One of my favorite things about this book are the beautiful watercolor art on each page. The pages almost remind me of Norman Rockwell paintings. The colors are vibrant and Jane Yolen and Leslie Baker really captured the time period so well. You can't help but smile and feel all warm inside as you read the story and view the beautiful art. All Those Secrets of the World is also a very gentle presentation for young children into the topic of war.

We have been collecting Children's Picture Books for quite a few years now. I have been slowly making a list here on our blog of our favorite Picture Books. While I do not have it complete yet, I do have 79 titles listed so far. If your interested in checking out some of our other favorite picture books then click HERE.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
Maya Angelou

Kids Picks Tuesday

It's the third Tuesday of the month which means it's Kids Picks time over at 5 Minutes for Books.

So this month I thought I would feature some of my 12 old year daughters recent favorite reads.


Alice Ann Moxley's father works for the FBI and has been transferred from Chicago to Jackson, MS, in 1964 to protect civil rights workers and individuals registering to vote. Taken aback by everything from Southern accents to the way black people are treated, Alice finds it very hard to adjust and nearly impossible to make friends. She's quickly branded "Yankee Girl," and the one friend she finds, the boy next door, abandons her when school starts-late this year, due to fear of integration. Alice's school is indeed being integrated, by two daughters of an important ally of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Valerie Taylor is in Alice's sixth-grade class, and although they are both outsiders, Alice is torn between trying to befriend her and trying to fit in with the popular girls. As the civil rights movement heats up, the Ku Klux Klan begins to focus on Alice's family. It takes until spring for her to sort out her inner conflicts, and by then tragedy has occurred and her reality has been shattered. Chapters begin with dated headlines that build a framework for the story. Some of the language is troubling, but it's also appropriate and adds to the increasing tension. Constant references to the Beatles embellish the '60s flavor, and the dialogue and narrative flow naturally. In an author's note, Rodman reveals that she lived this story 40 years ago. At 204 pages this book is geared towards the grades 4-8 range but older girls would probably enjoy it too considering it's topics.

Yankee Girl was Emmys favorite recent read. She tends to be drawn and has a passion for this time period in history and usually enjoys books that are set during this era. She has a huge passion when it comes to injustice and likes to read books about people that stand up to it. Yankee Girl fit that bill for her.


Frightened orphan Mary discovers the joyful wonders of life on the Yorkshire Moors with the help of two local boys and a mysterious, abandoned garden...where all things seem possible.


The last thing Sarah Ida wants to do is spend the summer with her Aunt Claudia. But when her parents send her away because of problems at home, that is exactly what she has to do! With no allowance and no fun to be had, Sarah Ida decides to look for a job. The only person who will hire her is Al, the man who runs the shoeshine stand, and soon she is knee-deep in shoe polish. Then something happens and it looks like the shoeshine stand will have to close forever. If Sarah Ida wants to keep it open, she'll have to learn a few lessons about growing up along the way. This is a shorter chapter book.
Shoeshine Girl was another favorite of Emmys. In Emmys words "This is a cute, little fun book set in a small town and the characters are fun".


This is a Bobsey Twins book called The Bobsey Twins at Snow Lodge. Next to Yankee Girl this was Emmys 2nd favorite recent read. These books relate the adventures of the children of the middle-class Bobbsey family, which included two sets of fraternal twins: Bert and Nan, who were 12 years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who were six.


Emmy said this is her 3rd favorite recent read. She really enjoyed Prairie School. We love Lois Lenski around here. This book was published back in the 1940's. It should be noted that Amazon makes this book sound like it is a preschool picture book. That is a mistake on their part. It is a chapter book geared towards upper elementary and junior high age children. It carries you back to a time period that seems foreign to us today. Emmys favorite part was when a very severe blizzard hits the prairies of South Dakota, and the children in a one-room schoolhouse must muster their wits together and stay at the school until help arrives. They run out of coal for the fire and one of the children becomes sick. It's up to the teacher to get to the doctor for help.


"A Little Princess" is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's most loved stories. It is the story of young Sara Crewe who while growing up in a well to do household suddenly finds herself impoverished when her father, Captain Crewe, dies penniless in India. Sara is forced to abandon her life of privilege for a life of bare existence at Miss Minchin's boarding school. To survive those hard times she imagines herself to be a little princess as she awaits her rescue from a mysterious benefactor.


And last but certainly not least, The First Apple. This lively family narrative is set in China's rural south during the 1940s, although the war and revolution of the period are not a part of the story. The first-person account is presented by eight-year-old Yeung Ying, an impulsive, appealing protagonist. When she was five, her mother and father moved to Hong Kong (for reasons that aren't explained), and she has lived with her grandmother in a small village southeast of Canton ever since. As Ah Pau's 71st birthday approaches, Ying discovers that the woman has always wanted to taste an apple, a rare and expensive commodity, and decides to buy one to share with her. Her constantly frustrated efforts to beg, earn, or even steal money will lure readers into her culture. While they will be intrigued to find such a common fruit described as exotic, they will find Ying's relations with her family, friends, and the class bully to be quite familiar. Emmy really loved this one too!

If you want to see what others are sharing this month for their Kids Picks then hop on over to 5 Minutes for Books.

Recent Read Alouds

A few weeks ago our Read Aloud was Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.


If your familiar with the Little House on the Prairie book then you know who Almanzo is. Farmer Boy is his story of his childhood. To say we enjoyed this book seems like an understatement! We learned so many interesting things through this reading not just about what Almanzos life was like as he was growing up but what life was like during that time period on a farm in New York. We learned that growing pumpkins with milk causes them to grow much larger. The list is really endless on the topics this book covered. And it was really an enjoyable read! The kids were astonished as to how much food they ate at every meal. One of the things that the kids thought was cool is that they often ate Apple pie for breakfast. For fun, we made our own Apple Breakfast Pie.




The kids did a great job! It was delicious!

Our read aloud from last week was.....


Josh Landis who has always lived in Washington D.C. moves with his mom and new step-dad to Northern, California to the Sierra Nevada Mountains where his new dad works as a park ranger. I enjoyed this book mostly because of it's setting. That probably doesn't surprise those of you that know of my growing up in California. The Sierra Nevada Mountains is something we had not talked about much before this book. The kids did some research on the mountain range and had to share 5 things about the Sierra Nevadas that they learned in their reports. They also had research on the Great Grizzly bear from this book as well as on what it means to clear cut a forest. That was something that came up in the book that the kids were unfamiliar with and they therefore had questions about what it meant, so we researched it and spent some time learning about the clear cutting of forests. All of the above made for some interesting questions and learning.

We are currently reading through:


We are reading the unabridged version so we are taking this one a bit slower than most of our read alouds.

And we just started:


This book grabbed me the minute I saw it. It was published in 1955. It has 304 pages broken down into 50 chapters and it covers the time period from Leif Ericson discovering Vineland in 1000 A.D all the way up to the birth of the Atomic Age in 1945. I am really excited about reading this aloud to the kids. I have a feeling we are really going to enjoy it and learn much from it. We had a sweet surprise when we opened up to the first page. An old copy of the Declaration of Independence fell out of the book. I am sure I will be eager to share more about this one once we get it finished.

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~Edward P. Morgan

B-day Pics

Here are a few pictures that were taken on the 19th Anniversary of my 20th Birthday which was last Friday. :-)





















I did nothing on my actual birthday. It was sooo relaxing. The older kids did everything from all three meals to taking care of the younger kids. It's something they have insisted upon these past few years. I always give the kids the day off of school when it is their birthday so they all declared it a "no school" day since it was my birthday which cracked me up. Emmy made blonde brownies because I prefer brownies to cake. Saturday night Bryan and I went out to dinner and a movie. We enjoyed a feast at the Cheesecake Factory. It was a fun night out celebrating!

"This is the day the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it."
~Psalm 118:24