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Week #11 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on January 11, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Once more we have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #11 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. Our oldest daughter asked our Amelia Bedilia to quiz her on some of her school work. Well, Amelia Bedilia could not read her sister’s handwriting so she improvised, substituting it with mumbo jumbo. The problem? Her older sister could not understand what she was saying and was of no help in the quizzing process. Oh dear Amelia Bedilia, we love you because you make us laugh!

4. This photo doesn’t do the newspaper justice Amelia Bedilia style of bagging but it gives you an idea of what it should look like and shouldn’t look like. I can’t remember what happened or how but Amelia Bedilia, B and I just cracked up on Wednesday over Amelia’s bagging style. Thankfully she saw the humor in it too.

3. We found “Luigi” a gift from Italy in our big bag of oats and our three year old throwing pennies at him/it.

2. This morning Miss Moo broke out of her stall and plowed down my husband’s wall of hay he built to reduce the cold and wind. Naughty little cow!

1. We had a little girl in our home who claimed she couldn’t find her school work all week. Guess where her brother found it this morning? In the laundry basket. Still not sure how it got there and no one is fessing up to anything!

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Motivation Monday is Back!

Posted by html404 on January 6, 2014
in Cleaning, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Homeschooling, Monday Motivation, Organization, Uncategorized

It has been a long time since I did a Motivation Monday post. Let’s see when was the last time? Wow, back in August! The purpose of Motivation Mondays was originally explained here, which was to help me get motivated and get more done. Since that time I have become more busy but still need motivation to stay on track towards my goals.

I have a lot to do now that the new year is here. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if I think too much about it. I have to take one thing at a time and do things one day at a time.

Here’s what I *think* I am looking at for this week and possibly the rest of the month with slight variations:

– Teaching my five year old to read. Hubby is home so he’s helping.
– Getting the children back on track for their school work. It’s always tough after a break. Gotta shake off the lazies.
– Cleaning
– Organizing and reorganizing my office, again! Getting ready for tax time….again.
– We need to make some farm decisions – how many chicks to buy, will we buy pullets from the hatchery in March, what seeds do we need, how many plug trays will we plant or buy to get our veggies started, will we take on an intern and worker shares this year? Are we raising turkeys, if so, how many? Will we add any other farm ventures? Will we do any farmers markets? How will we meet our goals?
– Apply to more VA jobs. My goal is to take on one client for 10 hours per week or two clients for 5 hours each per week. This will help us in replacing my husband’s income, just in case he cannot find a job.

What about you? Do you have a list of to-dos or goals for the week?

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Week #10 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on January 4, 2014
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Home, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

I took some time off over Christmas so I broke my straight run of posts for the Saturday Top Laughs but I enjoyed the time off! And now it’s time to laugh with the Goulds again! Once more we have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #10 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

6. My husband was messing with the garbage cans at the end of the driveway on garbage day, when our three year old saw him from our front window he started calling, “Daddy!” Then it changed to, “Robert!” which came out more like “obert”. I proceeded to ask him what my name was and he goes, “eesa”. It was cute and now he hasn’t called us by our names since. Recently I taught him our real names but it was like one time so I was surprised that he remembered our real names, then again he does hear us calling each other by our real names.

5. Robert celebrated his birthday recently and the girls made him two birthday desserts but only one was ready to eat in time. He said the next morning he had a bad dream (I call it a birthday nightmare) that mice came and ate his chocolate chip cheesecake during the night. He woke up with relief to find out the cheesecakes were just fine. 😉

4. Kittens climbing across Miss Moo’s back.

3. Kittens sitting under Miss Moo’s udder to catch the drips of milk in the morning.

2. Padfoot, our goofy Newfie, jumping to catch snowflakes!

1. Our children started calling my husband “Vader” after watching Star Wars over the Christmas break. Our 14 year old daughter, B, discovered “Vader” is the alternate spelling of the Dutch word “Vater” meaning father. Darth Vader means “dark father”. B and O even decorated their dad’s birthday dessert accordingly. B’s been calling me “Mater”, latin for mother.

That’s as good as it gets this week. How about you, what laughs have you started 2014 with? Or what nicknames do your children come up with for you and your husband?

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GS Preschool Games for Android

Posted by html404 on January 3, 2014
in Apps, Downloads, Education, Entertainment, Family Stuff, Free Stuff, Fun Stuff, Homeschooling, Kids Stuff, Reviews, School, Technology/Electronics, Uncategorized

Most of you who are regular readers know nearly all the apps on my cell phone are educational. Our children love to go on my phone to play with the apps. They also love it when I change the apps by downloading new ones. GS Preschool Games for Android has a cool little app our children have been enjoying the past couple of days.

GS Preschool Games has ten different activities children can enjoy and learn from:

– Jigsaw puzzles
– Match the Objects
– Solve the Maze
– Memory
– Burst the Balloons, which teaches letters, numbers and colors
– Count the Objects
– Compare the Objects
– Find Odd Items
– Find the Correct Count
– Scratch the Pad to Paint – while doing this activity our three year old son passed me the phone and said, “Scratch Mommy”….it took me a minute to figure out what he meant!

The characters are whimsical and fun. Not to mention attractive to a little one’s eye, as the colors are bright.

GS Preschool Games app is easy to use. Simply choose your activity with a click and then swipe and click to play. The skip button allows children to skip and choose a game based on his or her interest at that moment.

One thing I noticed while doing the balloon activity is when you earn your sticker for clicking the correct balloon, the pop up has this pause and there is barely enough time to catch the rest of the balloons as they float up and off the screen.

Even our five year old and seven year old had fun with this app. The app is recommended for ages 3-6. My daughter who is seven said it was fun and it has rewards. They love earning something for their effort. It’s very motivating for them as they learn and play. However, we could not figure out if the stickers led to more activities or bonus features or if they were just a reward pop up with an encouraging word. We are inclined to think it’s the latter. After a few activities within a game they do get to choose their own animal sticker reward.

Each game contains approximately 16+ individual exercises within that category, providing ample fun and entertainment for children at home or on the go. One thing to be aware of is a parent does have to be involved and read the instructions to a child who does not yet know how to read.

This app is available for yours and your child’s educational pleasure for Android here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.greysprings.games

and is also available for iOS as well:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gs-preschool-games/id726944785?mt=8

Enjoy!

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2014 is Here! Happy New Year!

Posted by html404 on January 1, 2014
in Family Stuff, Holidays, Home, Seasonal Stuff, Uncategorized

Another year has come and gone….and I am not sure how I feel about it. I cannot say I am excited about the new year. Excited for spring and summer. Guess I am quietly contemplating what is going to happen when my husband’s unemployment runs out in 2-3 months. It kind of puts a damper on the new year cheer to say the least.

Looking back on 2013, I can honestly say it wasn’t all bad. The good list certainly outweighs the bad.

The Good:
Finally sold our townhouse.
Increased my income….somewhat.
New work at home job as hostess on Moms.com
Saw growth and potential in our wee organic farm venture.
Added a cow to our farm family.
Healthy family.
Not one but TWO visits from my mom.
Birth of my first niece on my side of the family.
Signed a two year lease with our landlords. Hard to believe one year is gone already. Only a year left.

The Bad:
Sixth miscarriage in June 2013.
Husband’s second job loss in five years.
Loss of poultry.
Bad break with a client.

Looking forward to 2014, I really only have one goal in mind and several others stirring. I don’t like to make new year’s resolutions because past experience tells me I won’t succeed. I prefer setting short-term and long-term goals.

What about you did you make any new year’s resolutions?

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10 Things that Make Me Smile

Posted by html404 on December 31, 2013
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Holidays, Humor, Uncategorized

As 2013 comes to an end, I am thinking about things that make me smile.

1. I am usually not thinking of things to smile about while doing the paper route at 3-4 AM, especially during the winter months. However, there’s this one house that has a tunnel built right through a huge pile of snow and every morning it makes me smile as I think of how much fun they had digging through the snow. It also makes me smile because of how much our children love digging snow tunnels.

2. Seeing all the snowmen children build around our town. I must say they are few and far between this year.

3. Obviously, my children.

4. My husband. He has the ability to make us all laugh.

5. The look on my children’s faces when they learned to read. This doesn’t happen during reading lessons, but usually after we are all done and they read something over my shoulder or their older sister’s and really realize they can read.

6. Our goofy dog.

7. Christmas lights. I’ll miss them once everyone takes them down.

8. Christmas music.

9. My favorite foods: Pizza, chocolate, ice cream. All the healthy stuff, right?

10. Doing a job well.

What makes you smile these days?

Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve! We will be hunkering down at home, watching movies, munching on some goodies and probably letting some of our children stay up late to ring in the new year. Not sure why that is so appealing to them but it is. 🙂

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Merry Christmas!

Posted by html404 on December 25, 2013
in Family Stuff, Holidays, Seasonal Stuff, Uncategorized

Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas! We are staying at home and celebrating as a family. We opened gifts last night and made lefse (Norwegian potato bread). Today we surprised the younger children with a teepee which we set up last night. We served a breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls with yummy cream cheese frosting. Then we will have our Christmas dinner mid-day or early afternoon, play games and/or watch a movie.

Have a wonderful day!

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Week #9 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on December 21, 2013
in Animals, Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs

That time of week again – to laugh with the Goulds again! We have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #9 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. The children brought me a dozen eggs telling me they were bad. We just got them from a friend’s farm last week so I knew they weren’t bad. Come to find out when we picked up more eggs they are a cross between Easter egg layers and brown layers so the color of the eggs is really unusual as you can see from the photo below. They kind of do look “sick”.

4. Not all of our children have stockings and I have been eyeballing the stockings at Pottery Barn (eeks, I know) but I want them to have something nice that will last. Plus it’s something they will use or pass on to their own children once they leave home. Thanks to my paper route tips, I can actually afford to treat the children. Well, I was telling my husband that because the stockings were half off I went ahead with the “mammogramming”……my husband goes, “Mammogram, isn’t that like for a breast exam?” I paused and thought about it and then burst out laughing at my own mistake….it’s monogramming….wonder where our Amelia Bedilia gets it from! lol! :0 I’m serious, if you could see me I would be blushing right now. I also said, “Guess, I made the Saturday Top Five Laughs, this week.”

3. One morning B went out to milk Miss Moo and discovered her stall open and Miss Moo gone. Eeek!? Guess where B found her? She was just outside eating from the hay wall my husband built to keep the barn warmer. The barn is older and the lower level is pretty much all open as the old doors must have rusted off and since we are renting it isn’t like we want to put a bunch of money into improving something we could leave. Thankfully Miss Moo was a good girl and stayed at home. Good thing we have food to keep her here! I hate to think what would have happened had she ventured off……argh. I wish we had a picture of that too because B said she was just standing there chewing her cud and looked a Rebecca as if to say, “What are you doing silly?” Like B was the one doing something out of the norm!

2. Our three year old has this funny little habit of saying, “Me go pee on my potty” when he’s asked for something and we say no. It’s like his going pee on the potty gives him license to ANYTHING he wants. I think the praise of going on the potty got crossed in his brain somehow.

1. Our three year old grabbed my husband’s phone while in my husband’s lap and said, “Me want to text you.” It just cracks me up. Of course it was mostly jibberish, the word “school” was my husband’s doing obviously.

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The Way My Three Year Old Decorates a Christmas Tree – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on December 18, 2013
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Holidays, Home, Humor, Kids Stuff, Seasonal Stuff, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

In Saturday’s post, I mentioned the way my three year old decorates a Christmas tree, well here are the photos to show just how he does it!

Don’t be too shocked at the almost wordless Wednesday post! I am cheating to watch a TV show with hubby and because I am going out to lunch with fellow farmer friends today. 😉

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Airborne from Smiley360

Posted by Brande on December 17, 2013
in Coupons, Family Stuff, Health, Products for Dad, Products for Mom, Reviews, Uncategorized

I received this product for free from Smiley360 in exchange for my honest review. You can join Smiley360 here!

Airborne can support your immune system. It’s packed with vitamins, minerals, and herbs. Airborne contains no preservative and is gluten free.

Airborne Kids offers a blast of Vitamin C with flavored citrus and berry gummies. It has an herbal blend including Echinacea & Ginger, with antioxidants.

Airborne Chewable Tablets also have Vitamin C. No water is needed for these berry flavored chewables. These taste great for vitamins.

Airborne Effervescent Tables need to be dissolved in water. One Effervescent Tablet has 1,000 mg of Vitamin C! It’s zesty orange flavor also tastes good.

Besides these few kinds I received, Airborne is also available in lozenges, Airborne plus Energy, and Hot Soothing Mix. Don’t let me forget Airborne On-The-Go.

Here’s what’s in Airborne products:

Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Zinc, Selenium, Manganese, Magnesium, a variety of herbs, & Echinacea.

Click here for a $1.00 coupon! Don’t forget to visit Airborne’s Facebook and Twitter pages!

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