More house pictures...

Sorry for the crazy picture layout. It's not working right for me. Anywhow, I'll give a quick commentary down here. The first picture is from the loft area upstairs. The next ones are the master bath and bedroom. Then the downstairs bedroom, living room, and dining area. And, no, none of the furniture is ours. :( I wish! It was staging stuff. Anyway, there's a quick peek. I tried uploading one last picture of the backyard, but it quit working altogether. Technology. Suffice to say, it is quite a large backyard as far as Denver goes, and we are VERY happy with it! :)

Peanut Butter Cups and Carpets and School

Well, here it is. The LAST DAY of school!!! I have enjoyed being my daughter's teacher...I really have. It has been so insightful to see how her brain works and how she learns best. What a privilege and a blessing to be able to see that and know so I can better help her in the future. Having said that, I am SO glad to be DONE! No more lesson plans for THIS teacher. At least, not for a while. :) After the summer, my sweet first-born will be a second-grader! I refuse to think about how old that makes me. ;)

The next exciting thing going on is teaching little 3-5 year olds at church on Wednesday night. I know, I know...didn't I just say I'm so glad to be done with teaching, lesson plans, etc.? But this is different. Never thought I'd be doing it because my degree is in HIGH SCHOOL education, not preschool. I really enjoy it and we can just go all out and have tons of fun for about an hour every week. And the most important thing is getting to teach them about God and what HE does and has done for us. What is more fulfilling and rewarding than teaching children about Christ? We are using the Canadian version of Focus on the Family website. They have a program...meant for use in families, really, but it still translates very well to my small class...called Kids of Integrity (www.kidsofintegrity.com). It is an AMAZING program! We focused on being a good listener last week and last night we talked about our communication. It's been so much fun. AND...the best part was...I wanted to get those little rugs that you can put on the floor. You know the ones I'm talking about? The little sample carpets that you see at the flooring store, or Lowe's, or Home Depot? Well, I called around yesterday and I found a small flooring store just down the road that was willing to give me as many as I needed. Yes! The kids LOVED them and they really help to settle them down (except for my three-year-old, of course) for story time. I LOVE them! I will put a picture in once I get a good one of them.

A friend of mine just blogged about making homemade peanut butter cups and I cannot wait to make them! Doesn't that just sound absolutely yummy?! I have been enjoying (a little too much, I'm afraid) the dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups. Not a huge dark chocolate fan, but I love those! So I'm thinking about making them for Monday. We're probably going to a Memorial Day parade close here. There is one, just a few miles away, that they say is the largest in Colorado. I love parades...marching bands and horses are my favorite, I think. And living in Denver, there seems to never be a shortage of them. So that makes me happy. :) Anyway, after the parade, we'll be hanging out at my folks, grilling out and such. And, hopefully, eating some yummy homemade peanut butter cups! I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well, that's about it for today. The next thing on my list is to change this blog background. It's driving me nuts! I messed with it once a long time ago and messed it all up. Sorry about that. Right now, I'm off to enjoy the summer off of school! :)

New House Pictures

Well, this is the kitchen and the garage door. The kitchen has granite tile countertops and ceramic tile floor. Love love love it! I think it's my favoite room in the house. :) Have to go start school right now, so I'll post more pictures later!

Wowee!

My friends, it has been forever! (Not a big surprise though, huh? :)) So here's quick run-down of the latest major happenings.

Well, we are now moved into our house and we are absolutely loving it. My favorite part is getting to send the children OUTSIDE to play in our huge backyard. They love it, too. :) And it's nice to have room in the house for just nothing for a change. Now it's time to start seriously decorating the place. First, I need money though. :) Anyway, I am going to create an entire blog post of just house pictures once I finish this because it wasn't putting the pictures in right when I just tried. Ahhh, technology. :)

School is almost finished here. Our last day is May 27th. Hannah will be attending a charter school next year for second grade! I can't believe my little 7 lbs. 12 oz. baby is almost 7! And my other "baby" will be 4 in July! I will be doing some preschool with her at home next year. It will be fun to spend the one-on-one time with her that I got to do with my oldest when I did preschool with her. Can't wait for summer break, though. No more lesson plans for this teacher! :)

We continue to love our church more and more and find ways to get involved. I am teaching the 3 and 4 year olds at church on Wednesday nights this summer...since we don't have cubbies during the summer. It's so much fun. They have so much energy and are so teachable. And I am constantly amazed at their simplistic (and rightly so) view of God. I am praying that I can help their understanding of God and how He wants us to behave and ultimately, help them understand salvation, of course. So I have been enjoying putting together different teaching aides...Gospel fuzzies (http://quirkymomma.com/2010/gospel-fuzzies/), the Wordless Book, stuff like that. It is fun for me because I love to teach. Although my degree is in high school education, the desire to teach is just that...to teach, no matter what the age group. Anyway, I'm excited! Can you tell? ;)

Oh, and this June is going to be a busy one! My sister-in-law and her husband and three boys will be coming to visit us very soon. They're only staying for the weekend, but it will be great to see them. Then, the next weekend, my brother is getting married! I'm a bridesmaid, my husband is a usher, and the girls are flower girls/candle holders. Wow. That is going to be a busy weekend. Then, the next weekend, my husband's youngest brother is getting married in Virginia! So we'll be able to see all of his family and spend time with them...especially all of the cousins. My girls are excited about that. :) Then it's Rebekah's birthday the beginning of July...and on and on and on. I'll be sure to bore you with details later. So that's just a quick catch-up of all the fun stuff happening here. Now I'm off to get pictures of the house put up!

Almost done...

With the house-buying process. Yup. We are buying a house! Still can't believe it myself! We have already done the inspection and the bank process is already done. By tomorrow, we should have a concrete date set for closing. Right now it's March 31st, but we would like to move in a week earlier, if at all possible, so we'll see. The seller has been so gracious, too. They are willing to do all of the work we submitted on the list...praise the Lord! He sure does lead us every step of the way, doesn't He? And gives us peace and grace to go with it!
So...about the house...it is older (we like to think of it as having character ;)). It was built in 1955, had a second-floor addition put on, went in to foreclosure, etc. But, the great thing is, we didn't buy it as a foreclosure! I don't know if any of you have been looking at foreclosed/short-sale/bank-owned homes, but they are usually trashed and need a lot of work. At least, the ones we looked at did. Anyway, it WAS a foreclosure home until a company bought it and completely flipped it...and they did a beautiful job! I will post pictures as soon as I figure out how to do it on here. :) It's four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a fenced in backyard that I can send my kiddos out to play in! Woohoo! I can't do that where we live now. It will be such a blessing, especially with home-schooling.
About home-schooling...we have really enjoyed this school year. I have really enjoyed seeing how my first-grader's mind works and learns. We've had our days, especially when it comes to math, but it has definitely been worth it, in my opinion. Having said that, my soon-to-be-second-grader will be attending school next year...outside the home. She will really enjoy it, and in our opinion, it is the best choice for her at this time. It is one of the charter schools that we applied to. This one has a small class size...maybe 20 students...and two grades in the same classroom. It will be so great for her! And then I can focus on my almost four-year-old and learn some colors, shapes, numbers, and letters. So exciting!
Let's see...is that it? Guess so. Still doing Pampered Chef and it is going well. I would still like to get more contacts, but that will come. In the meantime, if you like Pampered Chef (they just came out with their new products two days ago!), come visit my website www.pamperedchef.biz/njoycookin
Come on, you know I had to put a plug in. ;)
Well, that's about it for now. Thanks to my college roommate who reminds me to blog about life changes every now and then. :) She knows who she is. Anyway, well it's off to do some more homeschooling...art, history, and science. Then I have to decide what and how I'm going to pack in the next few weeks! Thanks for reading

Bon Appetit!

So I am now officially a Pampered Chef consultant! I have done two parties already and have another one scheduled for 13 days for now. It is really fun and I love seeing how much fun everyone else is having. Now if I can just keep balanced with homeschooling, housework, and the business side of things, we'll be ok...oh, plus house-hunting.

House-hunting? Yes. The crazy process is ours for now. It's a great time to buy. Unfortunately, everyone is buying the houses we find perfect! :( As soon as these amazing deals pop up, someone puts in an offer and they are gone. And by amazing, I mean AMAZING! Three to four bedrooms/two and a half bathrooms, big kitchen, two car garages, big yard (all built 1999 or after)...all for under $150,000!!! But we are not discouraged. We have time to look and there are plenty of houses for sale. :) So we'll see. It may take a while, but we don't mind the wait. We definitely want to make sure we make a wise decision. And our realtor is great. She loves Pampered Chef, too. ;)

We haven't heard from the two charter schools that we applied for, so we'll have to see about that. I need to call them. Some of the houses that we've been looking at are in a different school district, too, so that could make life more interesting.

So...in short, we are very busy here...school in the morning, new business stuff and housework in the afternoon, and house-hunting in the evening. Whew! Hopefully things will slow down a bit here soon, but in the meantime, God is giving us grace and wisdom and strength to make it through each day. I'm so thankful that, even though things around us are changing from day to day, HE is the same yesterday, today, and forever. HE will never change and neither will HIS promises. What a comfort and a joy to know!

More Ramblings...

So I really need to re-do this blog. I tried changing the template quite some time ago, but it didn't work very well. Oh well. Maybe that'll be on my to-do list in the very near future.

In other news...I have just become a Pampered Chef consultant. It has been fun so far! And it's great to know that I can help contribute to paying off some debt that we acquired after having no job for six months. Hard to believe that two years ago, we had ZERO debt. But I digress... :)

We have found a couple of charter schools that we like for our soon-to-be second grader. She is signed up and now we wait for them to choose...it's a lottery system. So we shall see.

We are also looking for a house. We have never bought a house before and so far the Lord has given us peace about this decision. Ever feel like renting is just "throwing away" money every month? I do. And we're pretty sure that we could lower our monthly costs with a mortgage. We're grateful for the townhome/apartment complex we live in, but if we could contribute our monthly payments toward something, that would be great. Anyway, I'll let you know if we even find anything. :)

Well, I need to get moving. The girls are performing in a "show" and apparently I am not participating in the audience as I ought to. Oops. ;)