I'm taking Sandy's lead here and sharing the first line of my first blog of each month for 2006. It was fun going back over the blog. I know blogging has been lean lately, mainly because I've mostly been puttering around here and have nothing very interesting to share. We had a fantabulous Christmas. Santa came, kids squealed, we ate ourselves uncomfortable. The kids rooms are purged and organized. I still have morning sickness, mainly from 5-8 p.m. I cleaned out the school cabinet so we are nicely organized for our new semester. Riveting, no?

I will continue to be on an extended blog break because we are heading out for a ski trip. Starting the New Year off right! We're going with four families that we love and adore, so it should be a blast. I'll catch up when we get back!

JANUARY Happy 2006 everyone! A little late, but homeschoolers are never behind, right?

FEBRUARY Last weekend I avoided it by exercising my gift of hospitality. It was spiritual, see, so it took priority.

MARCH My neighbor Leanne just sent this handy little tool to me.

APRIL I sat down to write a very serious post about the growth I've experience in the last few years, how God used the struggles to refine me, blah blah blah.

MAY I am from mayonnaise and white bread, from homegrown tomatoes and black cast iron fried chicken.

JUNE Well, I finished To Kill a Mockingbird.

JULY I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day! Ours was great. We had a little parade here in our little neighborhood.

AUGUST This is the week of getting it together for my trip to China.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER Hi out there! A quick update on things here: Jacob is doing great - back to normal life as a high school senior. Praise be to God for that!

NOVEMBER

Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring, Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing, Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove, Say, is not absence death to those who love?

DECEMBER So, I'm back fro the AIDS Conference.


HAPPY 2007 to my blog friends. You are all wonderful!

Well, today we begin "Christmas School" at our house. It's a simple concept, really. One hour of school which includes math, spelling and reading for Luke and math, phonics and reading for Peyton. Of course, if they want to read more, that's allowed, wink, wink. We may throw Latin in there for good measure, because everyone just likes that a lot.

Then we move to one hour of cleaning. Basically the house is a disaster area - the kids' rooms particularly. I'm really not excited about adding to the disaster zone with Christmas gifts, so this week we'll spend an hour a day cleaning up and out, to make room for the Christmas loot. When your children have an unmarried uncle with no children, no other relatives under the age of 23, and more money than sense, they tend to get a lot of loot on Christmas. I love that they have an uncle who enjoys them and giving to them so much, but loot takes up real estate!

After an hour of cleaning and an hour of school, we move to the "Some Fun Christmas Activity" portion of our day. Could be a gingerbread house, cookie or fudge-making, making our reindeer food, or something like that. Today we will actually shop, so they kids can buy for eachother and for their dad, then come home and wrap gifts. Then we can stay home the rest of this week, which will make me very happy!

What are your plans for school this week? Have you started vacation, or are you full-steam ahead or something in between? I'd love to hear about it!

Boomama has done an amazing thing organizing this Tour! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Click on her site to see some of the wonderful entries.

I was looking at the Parade of Homes entries and lamenting the fact that I really don't have all my Christmas decorations out yet. So I just thought I'd post a link to last year's pictures, because, well, the stuff is all the same, except I have a new tall, skinny Santa.

So if you're here for the Christmas Tour of Homes, click here!

So I went to last December's archives, to get the link. Oh dear. I was a good mom a year ago. This year, not so much. I guess I have a week to recover and make something good happen for this Christmas. The maternal guilt is overwhelming. I must manufacture some memories here!

Here's what happened last year:

Made a Gingerbread House

Kept an Advent Calendar

Hosted a Cookie Decorating Party for the Neighborhood Kids

Made Reindeer Food for the Neighbors

I've got a lot of work to do in one week to keep up with last year. I've gotta get to it!

I spent the weekend battling escalating "morning" sickness. Actually the first few minutes of the morning are the only part of the day that I feel normal. It's all downhill from there. Yesterday it turned into vomiting. My usually beloved Pad Thai is apparently not a favorite of Buster (as the baby is now affectionately called).

On Saturday my brother Gary called. "Aunt Jean is sick and in the hospital, I'm going to see her today." "Okay, call me when you see her, I'll go see her tomorrow, if I'm feeling well enough." Later Gary called back and said it was indeed very bad. So I decided to go see her Sunday afternoon, regardless of how I was feeling.

But before I left to go to the hospital on Sunday, the phone rang again. Aunt Jean had died on Saturday night. It was like a punch in the gut. I knew that Aunt Jean had had several health problems in recent years, and chronic pain from a car wreck 20 years ago only exacerbated everything for her. But this was my favorite aunt. She was my dad's baby sister, and I just adored her. Maybe because she was the baby in her family, she always treated me like an adult, when to everyone else I was still just a child - even at 39. I loved our conversations.

And my heart breaks for her daughter. Her father and brother have both died, and her mom was the only person she had from her childhood family. They were so incredibly close. Terri is married and has a sweet son, but I know this is going to be so difficult for her.

I'm just very sad today. I will miss my Aunt Jean so much.

On the fifth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me -
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Bird
THREE HENCH MEN
Two Turtle Doves
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Lyrics by Luke

What makes me gag: Bounce Dryer Sheets

What I'm craving:



Barbecue always made me gag just thinking about it with both of my pregnancies. It's starting to be a turn off now, but not nearly to the degree that Bounce is.

I'm afraid that by the end of this pregnancy I'll need serious dental work because of all the Hot Tamales I've consumed. They sure are good!

What made you gag? What did you crave?

The five senses of Christmas. I got it from Donna, where else?

Sight: Messy hair and pajamas on Christmas morning.
Sound: Singing Christmas Carols with my family. We have quite a repertoire at this point. Bud accompanies on guitar.
Smells: Turkey dinner
Things to Touch: Every ornament, over and over again. So many memories packed away each year, just waiting to be relived each December.
Taste: Cornbread dressing. Homemade Fudge. German Chocolate Cake.

Please add this to your blog and let me know it's there!

So, I'm back from the AIDS Conference. It was good to get home. Things to do here you know. We need to buy speakers for the media room Bud is building. I was really pushing for the Bose, but Bud preferred the Onkyo. I was going to argue with him about why the Bose was obviously the better choice.

Then I remember that 2.8 million people died from AIDS last year. Suddenly which speakers Bud chooses is not so important to me.

Peyton has a birthday party to go to today. I don't really want to take her, much less go shopping for a gift before we go. I'm tired from travelling and I really just want to hang around the house.

But I remind myself that 6000 children will be orphaned by AIDS today. I am thankful that my children are not among them, mostly because I was blessed to be born in the United States of America, as opposed to sub-Saharan Africa, for no real reason that I can discern. And I am thankful to be able to take my daughter to a child's party.

My house is a mess and I do not care to clean it up right now. It will simply be messy again tomorrow.

And I remember the hundreds of thousands thrown out of their own mud and thatch homes in sub-Saharan Africa, because they have AIDS. Suddenly I can't imagine not being a good steward of the blessings God has so graciously given.

I live in a white, upper-middle class suburb. I have a husband, two children and another on the way. I homeschool. How can I help those all the way in Africa? It doesn't seem possible.

Then I realize that I will someday soon stand before my Savior and I know I really have no choice.