Family Night with Friends

Last night for FHE we invited our neighbors, Nelissa and Orlie, over to talk with us about the Philapines. They moved here 3 years ago and they tell us things about their country sometimes (they're not US citizens yet) but we thought it would be fun to learn more about their culture. They talked to us about holidays that they celebrate (no Halloween, but All Saints Day on November 1st is a HUGE holiday! They actually party in the cemetary complete with food and games, and some people even spend the night in the cemetaries!!) Holy week leading up to Easter is very big (including reenacting the crucifixtion complete with young men who volunteer to be hung on a cross in the streets!) They talked to us about what schools are like and how much things cost there compared to here. We talked about family sizes and foods. I love Philapino food (she's actually bringing me over some of my favorite tonight! I don't remember what it's called but it has rice noodles and cabbage and it is sooo yummy!!!)

The kids kind of ran around crazy with their son Carlo, and didn't really sit down and listen much but Steven and I learned a lot! If you have neighbors or friends who are from another country (and if your kids are a little older!) invite them over to talk with your family about their native country. Maybe ask them to bring a favorite food or dessert to share. Have them teach you some words or phrases in their native tongue (Nelissa and Orlie's native dialect is really hard!!!) and maybe play a native game. You'll be amazed how much you will learn about our differences, but most importantly how we are all similar, no matter where we are from. It's a great reminder and a wonderful lesson for our children, especially as the face of this country continues to change! (Which is not a bad thing!!!)

What Matters Most

This seems to be the theme to the last few posts that I've made, and it's because it's something that has been weighing on my heart lately. My friend, Leila James had this posted on her Facebook so I took a stroll over to watch it. It's a video that was made using Pres. Thomas S. Monson talk in 2008. For those of you who don't know who Pres. Monson is, he is the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (otherwise known as Mormons.) This message is short, but no matter what your religious beliefs, we can all agree with this!

Camp "In"

Family Home Evening is something I believe is really important. Having said that, it is also one of the areas where Satan works on me the most. Anything that is going to strengthen our families is something that Satan will want to attack, and he works hard on this with me. We go through periods where we do pretty good, and then we slack off, and then one of us will look at each other and say "You know, we should do Family Home Evening again" and we'll start again. It's a process. But I sat down this week and made out a schedule for the rest of the year so that we would have NO excusses when it came to Family Night.

We choose do ours on Thursday nights because those are typically slow nights for us. This week though my whole plan fell apart when Thursday afternoon the movie I had reserved at the library for a really cute autumn themed night wasn't ready to be picked up. So I was scrambling trying to find a last minute thing. Then I thought, well, we can wait and do it Friday. Well, along came Friday and the movie still wasn't ready. So then I was scrambling trying to find a last minute activity, again, because I had promised Bri that we'd do family night and I didn't want to disappoint her just because my plan wasn't panning out!

So we thought we'd to the typical last minute Family Night idea...game night! The kids LOVE Disney Scene It! And then Steven came up with the brilliant idea of having a camp out...in the living room! So we all got on jammies, we blew up the air mattress, brought down the toddler bed mattresses and lots of pillows and blankets. We piled on the air mattress to play Scene It! boys vs girls.

The girls...of course...won! "I am woman hear me roar....."

Then we watched "Little Mermaid Beginnings" and ate popcorn. Then we turned the lights out and the TV off and went to sleep, all of us on the living room floor (except for Micah who slept in his pack-n-play in the corner.)

It was really fun! The kids loved camping "in"! We got up the next morning and Steven made camper's eggs and bacon (yummy!) and then life got back to normal.

But we had a great time and made some great memories, which is what Family Night is about after all. It's not always about the perfectly put together lesson (although those types of Family Home Evenings are important too!) It's about being with your family, enjoying the time with them, learning to love each other, and realizing that in the end, it doesn't get much better than this!

One more picture to share: Micah has started smiling... A LOT! His smiles are precious! You just can't help but to smile back! I LOVE this age!

Coupons for Troops program

Some of you know that I have been bitten by the coupon bug! I have discovered the joy of going to the store and paying cents for something others pay dollars for! For example, Friday to Monday of this past week the Bigg's stores here ran a triple/double coupon special. Coupons up to 50 cents were tripled, and coupons 55 cents to $1 were doubled (so a $1 coupon became $2!!!) Well, I walked out of there saving $120 on my bill! I was ecstatic, and was able to get quite a few things that were put into our food storage, things for 72 hour kits, simple lunches Steven could keep in his desk at work, and just other stuff we needed. I was thrilled!

The one thing about couponing that makes me crazy is a coupon expiring before I use it! I feel like I'm throwing away money! But today I found out about a wonderful program called Coupons for Troops. Toni at The Happy Housewife conducts a program called Coupons for Troops. At military commissaries families pay more money than we do at a store here. However, they can use coupons that are up to 6 months expired. They can only use grocery coupons (so no store specific coupons like Walgreens, CVS, Rite-Aid, etc.) but they can use all manufacturers coupons, as well as internet printable coupons. She is looking for more military families who could use coupons, but she's also taking requests from couponers who would like to adopt a family to send their expired coupons to. If you coupon, and hate throwing away those expired coupons as much as I do, go here to find out how you can support our troops and their families in this super simple way!

Keep on saving! ;p

Kids say the darndest things

On Sunday, Jonah had to go to the bathroom during church, so Steven took him to the back to go potty. There is an intercom in there where you can hear the priest, or whatever might be happening during mass at that time.

So Jonah's sitting there and all the sudden he looks up at the ceiling and says

"God? God is that you?"

Steven says, "No, Jonah, that's Father."

And Jonah says, "Nope! That's God. I hear you God!"

Hehehehe! Kids are so cute!

Shorter breaks...longer school days (I'm a LITTLE ticked!!!!)

So President Obama has laid out his idea for education reform in this country. Longer school days, shorter breaks. As an educator I felt the need to sound off about this one! Let's tackle the first thing...shorter breaks.

I agree that shorter breaks in this country would be an absolutely WONDERFUL idea! Do our kids really need to be off for 3 months in the summer? Probably not! They spend the majority of the summer rotting their brains in front of the TV, computer games, etc and little, if no, time doing anything educational. As a result, teachers spend the first month or so of school trying to beat into their brains again the stuff that they learned the year before that turned to mush over the summer! I am a big proponant of the 6 weeks on, 1 week off idea. 6 weeks in class, followed by a one week break. It allows for the kids to get time off so that they don't burn out completely. Other school systems that go year round do 12 weeks, with 2 weeks off. That works too, just as long as the kids do get some break, because they do need it! (And so do the teachers!!!!)

Now, about the longer school days! I think this is a HORRIBLE idea! I have my reasons and they are as follows:

1) Children right now (at least in our area) spend about 6 1/2 hours every day in school. Some of them will also spend 1 1/2 hours EACH way on the school bus going to and from school, adding another 3 hours to their day. So if we extend the school day from 7:30 am to 7 pm as I saw in one suggestion that would mean that our children would have to be up at 5 am, to be on the bus by 6 am, to be at school by 7:30 am. They would be in school for almost 12 hours, to then get back on the bus and be home by 8:30 pm. I'm hoping that homework would be outlawed, but let's say it's not and they still have homework to do before bed. Let's say 2 hours worth. That means they wouldn't be finished until 10:30, immediately to baths and bed. Here's my problem: WHERE DOES FAMILY TIME FIT INTO THIS EQUATION!?!??!?! Are you kidding me????Most of us don't even WORK that long in one day! Why would we ask our CHILDREN to!?!?!?!?!? We want stronger families in this country...so naturally here's the solution...not allow families to be together AT ALL!!!!! Yeah...that'll work!!!! It's absurd...not to mention kind of sounds like child labor to me!!!!!

2) Is congress going to pass some sort of resolution mandating that teacher's get paid more?!?!? Because we all know that teacher's get paid CRAP! And we will be expecting them to work more hours each day, and every other Saturday (as one article I read suggested), and take away the breaks that they also enjoy, but still pay them the same amount of money. Not going to happen! You'll have pissed off teachers, who are overworked, underpaid (oh, wait! They're already overworked and underpaid!!!!) So they'll be MORE overworked, and MORE underpaid and then what happens!??! They will HATE their jobs, their attitude will translate into substandard teaching and our kids will learn NOTHING!

3) It doesn't matter how long the school year, or the school day, is...if you have inadequate teachers, you are going to have substandard resullts. Period.

So here's the deal, Mr. President...you try to enforce this in our country, and see how many parents will pull their kids out of the school systems and homeschool them instead! Somewhere along the way we decided that childhood was defined by school. Where is the time for our children to just be children? To run, and play, and use their imaginations, and dream about the day that they will go grow up to the President, or an astronaut, or a doctor, or a teacher! We're so worried about competing with the rest of the world, that we are willing to SACRIFICE childhood in order to be the best! Well, guess what? I won't play the game! I will homeschool my children, and focus on the things that are really important, like family, and our beliefs, and not wether or not my kids would win a math contest against some kid from Korea! So thanks for playing the "Let's Reform Education in This Country" game, President Obama! Try again!

Our Big Weekend

We had a very busy, but absolutely wonderful weekend. It started Saturday evening with family night at the zoo for Steven's company. They closed the zoo at 5 pm and the only ones allowed in were employees of Steven's company, their families and friends that they brought. It was so cool to be in the zoo after hours, even though it was still really crowded. The kids had a blast, and we took Steven's mom and dad with us, so that was really fun. It had been a long time since we had been to the zoo, and with as animal crazy as our Jonah is he was on cloud nine the whole time. We were there from 5 until 9 pm, and they were so excited we couldn't even stop to eat. We didn't eat dinner until about 9:30 that night...making for some very hungry, very tired, but very happy kiddos!!!

I'm getting me one of these signs made up for our front door! I think it would be hilarious!

Then on Sunday, we had the oppurtunity to have Micah baptized. It took place at St. Joe's after mass. We had lots of family there with us and it was all wonderful! Micah did really good, until it came time for the actual baptism part and then he started crying. I thought it was pretty funny because he likes to get his hair washed, I thought the baptism wouldn't bother him but it did! But he did well overall.

This is Deacon Tim Schabell. He also baptized Jonah (who he almost baptized as Noah...LOL!)

Jonah's shirt was pulled up in all the family pictures! Go figure!!

These are Micah's godparents- his aunt Michelle and our friend George.

Everyone that joined us at the church! Lots of family (mainly Steven's!) and our friend George's wife and children.

After the ceremony we had everyone back to our house for a party. My mom made mostacolli with homemade sauce that was sooo good, but we ended up making WAY too much! No kidding, we have probably two or three nights worth of dinners in the freezer right now! But I'm not complaining...makes for an easy dinner on a busy night! :) We also got to watch the Bengals beat Green Bay for the first time in years so that was really exciting! Who-dey!!!

I spent most of the day on Saturday decorating the cake. My original plan (using the Wilton cross pan) had to be scratched at the store because I couldn't find the pan. So I used a half sheet cake pan that I covered with buttercream icing (homemade! YUMMO!) and then I decorated it with little baby feet and a scallop edge and icing roses. It turned out so cute, and everyone said it tasted really good, even though I wasn't thrilled with the taste. If anyone has a recipe for a yellow cake that they like...please let me know :)

It was such a wonderful day and I am so thankful for my family and for our wonderful new addition! May God continue to watch over you, Micah, and may He guide you in all the things that you do with your life. Know how much we love you and how happy we are that you are here with our family!