My question for you this week is coupled with Frugal Friday…because it has to do with money…MOOLA…the green stuff!

And kids.

Our oldest son, Asa age 11), has been able to earn money this summer working with us in two of our family businesses.  He works a little at our shaved ice trailer, and he helps Matt mow the lawn at the storage units that we own.  Asa’s been loving the responsibility…and his growing savings account!

He’s been learning more about money management, giving and saving…and it’s been great for him. 

We’d love to come up with more great ideas for our other kids (ages 8 and 6) to earn a little money too.  (We figure maybe the three year old doesn’t need an income yet.)  It’s not too big a deal…but it’s kind of fun for them to learn how to work hard and see some returns for their labor.  (The tooth fairy just can only come every so often, you know?)

So, I’m curious…

What are some of the ways you earned money as a kid?  What do your kids do to earn a little money?  What are your opinions about paying your kids to work around your own house?  What do you think about giving kids allowance?

I am just oh, so curious…

On Tuesday, the UPS man finally drove up with our wonderful box of books!!  We were all so excited and ran to the door to meet him.  (I’m sure we made his day.)

But there was just one problem.  Asa wasn’t here.  He was working at our shaved ice trailer that day…and I’d promised him that we wouldn’t open the box without him. 

So we sat the box down (it was about 12:30 pm) in the living room and just stared at it.  It was torture! 

Finally at 3:30 I couldn’t stand it any longer.  Asa was going to have to go straight from working to play practice…and I wasn’t waiting until 9 pm to open that box!!

So, we all piled into the van with the box and surprised Asa at the trailer.  He was super excited to see us….but even more excited to see the box!!  It’s cramped quarters in that trailer with four boys (actually five…I was babysitting!), plus a mama and a box of books.  We got all situated and then I started pulling books out one at a time.  Oh the joy!

Then, we packed it all back up and took it home…where we then spread it all out on the floor and began really looking through the books!!!!

Now they’re all stacked on on of our couches as I work to go through them and get them organized and make lesson plans!

I’ve also been working on the school room…which means I pull everything out of the closet and off of the shelves so that I can clean stuff out and re-organize it all!  It is SO MUCH FUN to go through everything and get ready for the school year.  But…as you can see…I’m not done yet.  Everything is still kinda all over the place as I rearrange the desks and figure out where everything is going to go.

We are very blessed to have enough rooms in our house that we can actually designate a room just for school.  However, I’ve found that we use that room as a “hub” for all of our books and projects…but we don’t spend all of our school hours in there.  I’ll share more about that later!

In the meantime…I’ll go finish cleaning and organizing and making lesson plans.  And, tomorrow, we head to Walmart with our lists and pick up our new school supplies!  We can’t wait!

Good grief, we were computerless for almost 48 hours…and you would have thought all six of us never had a life before computers.  I’m not kidding…all six of us.  Even Malachi missed it. 

It’s amazing how much you rely on the internet once you have it.  Any other day when I do have my computer…I never think of much to Google…but take my computer away for two days…and there are all kinds of things I can think of that I need to Google…right now!

Thankfully a good friend of ours (who is today of course our very, very best friend) came over and did whatever things computer friends do when they fix computers…and got us all taken care of.

You should have seen the kids when Don got here this afternoon ready to hook us back up.  You would have thought Santa Claus himself was walking through the door, carrying a big pot of gold.  The kids went nuts.

Of course, I quietly and meekly stood in the background, then kindly thanked him profusely…then as soon as he left…I reached over and shoved all the kids out of the way with my leg and shouted, “Move it boys…this computer is MINE!” 

I’m totally kidding.  I would never do that to my children.  I also said, “please”. 

Anyway, it’s good to have this machine back…and now I have a bunch of email and blogging stuff to catch up on.  It’ll all get done eventually though, right?

Oh, and how sad the Mr. Linky was being fussy on Tuesday also…so I checked on the Gratituesday post and see only two lonely links (sweet though they were).  Sigh.  Well, thanks so much for everyone who wrote a Gratituesday post this week and told us about their link in the comments instead!  I hope you know how much your posts encourage me…and how they encourage many others!  Hopefully next week Mr. Linky will cooperate with us. 

I will admit that not having a computer freed my time up a bit to work hard on cleaning out our school room…OH…and OUR BOOKS CAME!  Thank you UPS man!  So anyway, I have gotten a lot done during these days of being without my friend the computer.

I’ll be baking for the farmer’s market in the morning…then after that I’ll try to post some pictures of our school book excitement and finished school room.  Um, but I need to finish the school room before I post finished pictures. 

Oh, it’s good to be back. 

(And good to know that life does go on without a computer…)

P.S.  Guess what?!  Char’s been working on a new header for my site!  I can’t wait for you to see it!  Be watching for it!

The older I get, the more I appreciate people who are older than I am.  I love their wisdom, their encouragement, their smiles.

I have several “older lady” friends at church that I grow to love more all the time.  They care for me and my family.  They encourage me as I mother my sons.  They offer advice when I need it.  I love them.

One of these friends, Lorna Mae, was spending time in Texas with her daughter earlier this summer when she began having some health struggles.  She went to the doctor there and found out that she had cancer on her bladder.  They did surgery right away and removed her entire bladder.  Thankfully, they were able to remove all of the cancer, so she will not need further treatment.  But, she spent several weeks of slow recovery from her surgery in Texas with her daughter taking care of her before she was able to return home last week.

Much to my surprise, she was able to be at the church service this Sunday morning!  I was so happy to see her, that I went over right away to give her a hug as gently as I could so that I wouldn’t hurt her.  I’ve been so concerned for her this summer and missed her so much.

She hugged me back…with much more strength than I thought she would have!   I was overcome with joy that she was just as happy to see me as I was her….and that she was strong enough to give me a hard hug!!  It was a wonderful reunion!

Before we knew it, right there in the church foyer, we both began weeping together as we talked about the loss of my cousins, her illness…and the fact that we’d missed each other so much.  How truly wonderful to have such a lady in my life that cares so much for me.  This certainly wasn’t the first time she’s cried with me.  She’s been one of the first to comfort me and care for me during other losses and changes in our lives during the past few years.

I am incredibly thankful for the friendship of this woman who loves me so much and I am so thankful that she is home and recovering.

I need women like her in my life…and I am so thankful that God has provided these godly women for me to lean on and learn from.
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What are you grateful for this Gratituesday?!  Please share with us!
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*Sorry, Mr. Linky seems to be having some trouble tonight….I’ll keep working on it!*

*Okay…so apparently Mr. Linky is not going to cooperate today.  Please leave your link in the comments and we’ll come visit each other that way!!*

*Also…MY computer seems to be not cooperating too!  I am at a friend’s house writing this, so I thought I’d better let you know that I’m a little out of touch right now!  WOW…do I miss having a computer at my fingertips!  I’m spoiled, I realized!!  I’ll check back in as soon as I can!*

We mostly drink water and milk at our house.  Sometimes when we have company though, I feel kind of boring with the drink choices I have to offer.

At one point I realized…why, I have LOTS of drink choices! 

Would you like your water cold…or room temp?  Filtered, or not filtered?  In a mug or in a glass?  Ice or no ice?  Crushed ice or cubed?  Would you like a straw?  What color of straw would you like? 

By the time I get through all of my questions, my guests feel like they are at a five star restaurant that caters to their every need.  (Or something like that.)

Occasionally though…it’s fun to treat the kids (or company) to something special and exciting.  And when I really think about it, our blender works overtime making yummy smoothies, slushies and milkshakes. 

Here’s the lemonade I make every once in a while for a refreshing change of pace.  Or…I use limes instead of lemons to make limeade.  Or…I use lemons and limes and make lemon-limeade.  (Ice or no ice?  Crushed or…)

Refreshing Lemonade or Limeade

8 cups cold water
4 lemons or 4 limes or 2 of each
1/4-1/2 cup agave nectar

1.  Put the 8 cups of water into a pitcher
2.  Slice the lemons and/or limes in half.  Squeeze the juice into the pitcher of water.
3.  Add agave nectar.
4.  Refrigerate.

This will make you pucker…but it’s so yummy on a hot summer day!

Sometime soon I’ll share some of the recipes for the milkshakes I like to make!  Our blender has been working overtime this summer on these healthy treats!

If you haven’t signed up to win HeavenlyHomemakers new ebook go sign up now!!

I have finished another e-book!!  This is actually the very first ebook I started writing (many, many months ago!)…then I put it on hold….and I’m excited to tell you that it is now FINISHED!!

I am so excited to be launching this ebook, called “Fill ‘Em Up!”

“Fill ‘Em Up!” is written for parents or teachers of children ages 4-18 (give or take!).

It contains seven recipes….and each recipe is accompanied by two Bible lessons (one suggested for use with children ages 4-10, the other suggested for use with children 11-18).

While you spend special time cooking and baking with your kids and filling their tummies…you also experience the joy of discussing God’s word together, which will fill their hearts with His wisdom.

Thus the name…”Fill ‘Em Up!” 

These tried and true recipe/lessons have worked well for families, as well as groups of children and teens.  What a fun way to study God’s word together!

To help you more fully understand what ”Fill ’Em Up!” is all about I am offering everyone a free download of the one of the lessons in this book!  Please feel free to download it here, read through it and try it out!  Let your friends, family and youth workers know about it! 

AND…sign up here to win the entire ebook!  Leave a comment letting me know how you would use this ebook…and on Friday at 5pm CST, I’ll let Random.org choose a winner. 

At that time…this ebook will be available in the HeavenlyHomemakers Shop for HALF OFF!  I’ll be sure to let you all know about the special sale! 

But for now…until Friday evening…sign up to win “Fill ‘Em Up!” and be sure to download the free ebook sample here!!!!!!!!!!!

To start off this week, I have nothing exciting to share. 

I have not been attacked by any roosters this week…and by all means, I am not at all thinking about putting scissors even close to my hair.  We are still excitedly watching for the UPS man and eagerly preparing for our first day of school…but other than that…not one thing special or exciting is going on around here.

OH WAIT!

I’m hosting a GIVEAWAY for the new ebook I’m about to launch!  That’s kind of exciting!  Go check it out and sign up for the giveaway!

And now for this week’s menu plan…

Sunday, July 27
Oatmeal, oranges
Take to potluck:  devilled eggs, fudgie brownies, burritoes
Quesadillas, fruit

Monday, July 28
Whole wheat pancakes
Lamb-burgers and onion rings, watermelon
Tuna casserole, peas

Tuesday, July 29
Scrambled eggs with cheese, kefir smoothies
Homemade pizza, strawberry-peach slushies
Shepherds pie, tossed salad

Wednesday, July 30
Apricot breakfast bars, bananas
Homemade chicken nuggets and fries, carrot sticks
Beef stroganoff (what with all that penne pasta I now have), zucchini

Thursday, July 31
Applesauce bread, pears
Pizza casserole , pineapple orange slushies
Pack snacks for Farmer’s Market

Friday, August 1
Fried eggs, oranges
Potato wedges, peaches and cottage cheese
Cheesy turkey stromboli, fruit salad

Saturday, August 2
Whole wheat donuts
Tostadas
Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans

On the blogging menu for this week:  I’ll be snapping pictures of our Homeschool Hubbub as we get our school room and supplies ready…I’ll share a recipe for yummy and healthy lemonade and limeade…and don’t forget the GIVEAWAY!

Visit Organizing Junkie to check out other great menu plans!

It was so much fun to read your answers last week about what you loved reading as a child.  Wow, are there some great books out there or what?!

Thinking about books I loved to read made me think about the toys I loved to play with.  I was TOTALLY into everything girly….and well….I LOVED dolls.  I got a new doll for Christmas every year (until I got married)..and I played with them all…forever.  Oh, and my mom almost always made a big box of homemade dolls clothes for my new Christmas doll to wear…and usually she made them out of the scraps of material leftover from my clothes…so my dolls and I matched.

I remember in the seventh grade being embarrassed that I still played with dolls.  I had some friends coming over one weekend, so I went down and messed up the little doll house section of my basement so that it wouldn’t look like it had been recently played with.  (You’ve gotta love Jr. High.)

Besides baby dolls, I loved paper dolls, barbie dolls, teaching school to all my dolls, dressing up all of my dolls, cooking meals with my little dishes…for all my dolls.

I probably had some other toys too…  But I mostly remember playing with dolls.

 What did YOU love playing with as a child?!

Please sing along with me:

(Sung to the tune of Oh Where oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?)

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man?
Oh where, oh where can he be?!
With the big box of books for our new school year…
Oh where, oh where can he be?

Thank you, you have so much musical talent.  That was lovely.

That’s our theme song right now.  We can’t help it.  Every year right after I place our big curriculum order, we start listening for the UPS truck.  Like obssessed people.   Because we LOVE it when our books come in!!  It’s almost better than Christmas!

So, let me tell you just a bit about our order (because while I’m waiting for the UPS man, I have to at least talk about my books)…

We order most of our school books through Rainbow Resource…because they have excellent prices for just about everything you could possibly ever need for school, ever.  Plus they offer free shipping for any order over $150.  I also order books through Amazon if I can find them cheaper there.  (That’s my Frugal Friday tip, by the way…using Rainbow Resource and Amazon for great book prices!) 

We choose our books based on what Sonlight Curriculum recommends.  They are very literature based…so we get to read many, many wonderful books together to learn more about the Bible, History and Science.

Here’s what we’ll be reading for History (we’re focussing more on World History this year) and Geography:

A Child’s History of the World
The Story of the World:  Ancient Times
The Story of the World:  Middle Ages
Time Traveller
People of the World
Ships, Sailors and the Sea
100 Gateway Cities

For Science we’ll be learning about electricity and magnetism…and about how things are made.  The boys are especially excited about this.

Usborne Elecricity and Magnetism
Usborne How Things Work
Usborne Book of the Microscope
Light and Color
Diary of an Early American Boy

For Bible lessons, along with simply reading from the Bible, we’ll read through Egermier’s Bible Story Book…work on memorizing verses and work on godly character training.

For Math, the younger boys use Miquon…and we LOVE it.  It’s kind of a backward way of learning math, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but our boys have done well with it.

This year for Asa, we bit the bullet (what a weird figure of speech…I would never put a bullet in my mouth and bite it).  Anyway, Teaching Textbooks was recommended to me and after checking into it, I thought it looked great.  So, that is what Asa will be doing for math.  Thankfully, all of the other boys will eventually use it too…so that makes me feel better about biting…that bullet.

For Reading, each of the boys have a list of books to read either on their own, or to a parent. 

Elias:

Bob Books (great set of bunches of little readers)
The Fire Cat
The Bravest Dog Ever
Greg’s Microscope
A Big Ball of String
Little Bear
The Cat in the Hat

Justus:

The Sword in the Tree
The House on Walenska Street
Jake Drake:  Bully Buster
Keep the Lights Burning Abbie
The Littles
Long Way to a New Land
Lon Way Westward
Viking Adventure
Third Grade Detectives (series)
Along came a Dog
Frindle
Mustang:  Spirit of the West
Shadrach
The Whipping Boy

Asa:

Adam of the Road
Archimedes and the Door of Science
The Bedwins Gazelle
The Bronze Bow
Catherine Called Birdy
Luther:  Biography of a Reformer
Detectives in Togas
Mystery of the Roman Ransom
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Samarai’s Tale

Matt and I will also read the following books to the boys altogether:

Island of the Blue Dolphins
Little Britches
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Diary of a Worm
Johnny Tremain
Calico Bush
Justin morgan Had a Horse
Sign of the Beaver
Toliver’s Secret
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Mountain Born
Homer Price
Cheaper by the Dozen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Wow…looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.  Except it doesn’t feel like work…it feels like READING!  And if we don’t get them all read this school year, we’ll carry them over to the next.  (And by the way…I didn’t have to order ALL of these books this year.  We have quite a few of them already.  Otherwise I would TOTALLY be over-budget!)

Coming up in Homeschool Hubbub:  I’ll share more about what we do for Language Arts, what our schedule looks like…and after the UPS man brings our books…I’ll show you pictures of the excitement!!

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man…..

Encouraged by your comments after my last post of random topics, I’ve decided to bless you with allow myself a totally random blog post every once in a while.  So, I randomly chose today to write again about some of our random activities…

1.  I finally finished looking through curriculum catalogs, made my list, checked it twice, then a third time, and then placed my orders.  I finally just had to close the catalogs and put them away so that I would quit finding more and more awesome books that I wanted to order.  Tomorrow I’ll share our list of books with you!!!

2.  Tuesday we picked up our Azure Standard order for the month…but not without a little drama.  The truck driver called me Monday (because I’m the top of our group’s calling tree) to tell me that he would be at the Walmart parking lot on Tuesday at 9:15 am.  I called everyone, then we all met at the appointed time.  Then he never showed up.  Turns out, his truck had broken down and he had called to tell me that he would be late…but I missed the call somehow.  Bummer.  So, we finally figured it all out and went home…and then came back to pick up our order that evening after his truck was working again.  Poor guy.

Anyway…just in case you’d like to stare at my groceries for a while…here you go:

Here we have five pounds of Landmark raw white cheddar cheese, three jars of Hain safflower mayonnaise, six pounds of butter, two jars of Natural Value peanut butter, one can of olives, one container of Nancy’s whole milk yogurt, five pounds of carrots, five pounds of oranges, a jar of olive oil, five pounds of peas, and three packages of mixed veggies.  The boxes you see are 10 pounds of whole wheat spaghetti noodles and 10 pounds of whole wheat penne pasta.  Partially pictured in the background are two really cute little boys.  They did not come with the order, but they are very sweet and delicious.

3.  I’ve taken the time to read a few Karen Kingsbury books during the past couple of weeks.  I usually don’t really have much time to read, but with school starting soon, I decided to allow myself a little chill time.  So, I went to the library and checked out some good reads, then neglected a bunch of housework for a few days so that I could enjoy some books.

4.  You do not want to enter my bathrooms right now.  (See #3.)

5.  Malachi is totally into microphones, and creates one out of anything he has in his hands.  I have been interviewed by and asked to sing into many a Lincoln Log lately.  Last week at a garage sale, we found a real toy microphone for 50 cents.  You would have thought we gave him the moon. 

6.  Let’s just take another look at that box of penne pasta.  Now that’s a lot of pasta.

7.  Elias wants piano lessons.

8. When I was a little girl I got one of those “Doll Head” thingies that sat on a little stand so that you could fix her hair and make-up.  You know what I’m talking about?  Well, I enjoyed it thoroughly for about two weeks…and then my brother used the lip stick pencil and drew a thick, bright pink line from the top of her forehead to the bottom of her neck.  He truly thought that it would scrub right off, but it never, ever did.  Ever.  But I’m over it now.

9.  Asa and Justus are in a musical that the city is putting on this summer, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  They are in the children’s choir and are having such a wonderful experience.  Anybody ever seen this musical before?

10.  I think it’s weird that we call small towns like the one I live in a “city”. 

11.  Last Friday I let each of my boys pick one friend to take to the bowling alley.  (Remember the free bowling passes we have?)  Matt wasn’t able to go with me, so it was just me and the boys.  Now, let’s do the math (and try to figure out WHAT in the world I was thinking when I made this plan).  I have four boys of my own, and each of them chose one boy to take along.  That equals a total of eight boys…ages as follows:  three, three, five, six, eight, nine, eleven and twelve.  How many arms did I think I had?  Simply figuring out who needed what shoe size at the beginning was just about enough to make me turn around and go home.  At least the no smoking ban has officially been put into place this time, so we did not come out smelling like the deep fat fried cigarettes we smelled like last time we were there.

12.  I should not continue to come up with random thoughts at 11:32 pm.  Especially when I need to get up and bake for the farmer’s market tomorrow.

13.  We keep getting rain and other severe weather right when it’s farmer’s market time.  I like the rain, but not when I’m trying to sell pretzels. 

14.  There’s a 30% chance of rain tomorrow. 

15.  Seriously, I’ve got to stop.  What random things are going on with you?!