We’re a Christian family, as I am sure many of you are aware.  It is often mentioned that my husband is a pastor.  Therefore, reading the Bible and doing daily devotions is something that is important to us.  If you aren’t interested in such things, you may want to go ahead and go read a different blog or something at this point. 

Okay… for those of you who are interested… There is a great devotional book for kids (families) that is completely FREE!  It is called Keys for Kids by CBH Ministries, and it is a great tool!  We keep this in our little basket on our dining room table that holds napkins, and salt & pepper and try to read it each day.  It is just a short one page devotional meant for kids.  (but us adults get something out of it periodically too!)   Each devotion includes a Short Story, Bible reading, a Key Verse, and an easy-to-remember Key Thought. The publication comes every other month and has two months worth of materials in it. 

You can also get the daily devotion via e-mail or podcast. 

At any rate, this is a valuable tool that I highly recommend checking out. 

C-

*I was not compensated in any way to share this information – I just like what they have to offer. 

It was a great day. It was so fun to watch the kids rejoice and play the day away. Our meetings went well with the school. We have made the decision to homeschool next year – Christian only. Ryan will be going back to the private school, as he his excelling there, and Dane will be attending pre-school as well. It was not a decision we made lightly, but we believe it is the right decision. There just isn’t much offered in terms of helping Christian with what he needs in the public or private school at this time. There are tutors that specialize in the type of training he needs, but they are all over a hour away. We will resort to them as needed, but plan to start out using the Barton Curriculum that is designed for dyslexic students. We then will use Sonlight for the rest of our curriculum – we used that for Ryan in Kindergarten and loved it! Our hope is to have him back to grade level by next year. The school psychologist said he is on the upper end in the IQ arena – he just struggles with reading – which is what we knew all along.

We went out to dinner tonight to celebrate the last day of school. I let Ryan and Christian pick where we were going since it was their celebration. I was quite surprised at their choice – The little Family Restaurant in town. I thought they would pick Dairy Queen, or our favorite pizza place, or even our favorite drive-in (for the ice-cream) but they wanted pancakes of all things and decided the tow diner was the place to go! It was fun, and yummy too! Matt had some kind of big burrito and I had a Turkey Club Sandwich.

On a side note, there is currently a contest running to win a really cute hand-crafted coupon organizer. Go check it out! There are some really cute designs, and I personally just LOVE Etsy shops anyway!

Have a GREAT Weekend!
C-

You have to act fast on this one! For a very limited time Shelley from One Roast Vegetable has opened up her Very Veggie Video Cooking Class! This is a very reasonable priced class (only $16.50 !) that you are sure to gain quite a bit of insight from as you learn from Shelley’s fun videos! (there is a sample on the site). I hope you are able to get in, I think you will really enjoy it!

Have you been able to keep up with all the peanut butter recalls? Here is a good site that lists the many products that have been recalled. http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html#recalls

I am nominated here http://www.profitablemommyblogging.com/best-mom-blog-header-contest-phase-two-voting/ for my blog header design at www.themenumom.com and I’d love to win! Would you be so kind as to vote for me? All you need to do is visit the link and leave a comment that says I vote for number 34. THANKS!

Hey look at these! http://familyfoodies.com/2009/thank-you-pillsbury/ Have you seen them yet? I haven’t found them yet in my little country store that carries hardly anythng… but I’m watching!

If you are still trying to decide what to ask for for Christmas… I highly recommend taking a look at the VitaMix Blender. It is my absolute favorite kitchen appliance – you can see why here: http://smoothieblends.com/why-we-love-the-vita-mix If you do decide to purchase, you can receive free shipping with coupon code: 06-001694. If you do get one, please let me know what you think! We LOVE ours!

FYI Amazon (my favorite place to shop) is having an 48 hour online kitchen sale. This is a great way to get some Christmas shopping or wedding shopping done. Or perhaps your kitchen needs something! Happy Shopping!

We survived last week and are onto a much better week now. My cold sores are just about gone, hubby’s poison ivy is still around unfortunately – he has another dr. apointment tomorrow, the kids ended up fighting off their colds and never got really sick. The baby? I have no idea what position she is in now – she is getting so big it is kind of hard to tell. I am getting most kicks up high, but that could still mean her butt is down and feet are up… or she could have flipped – I really can’t tell. I have an appointment tomorrow so maybe she will be able to tell. If not, we are most likely having this baby in a week and a half – EEK! I had moms at preschool yesterday telling me how awful c-section recovery is. UGH. Why do people tell you these things? I’m trying to relax about it here, not hear horror stories!

Anyway, all in all things are going better his week.

A couple days ago I answered 15 Menu Planning ?’s on my Menu Mom Blog, that I thought you would enjoy. You can check them out here: www.themenumom.com

Have a great week!
C-

I just found a really fun site! It is called Paper Back Swap (but they do hardbacks and audio books too). If you look on the left and scroll down you will see a blue banner there that you can click to learn all about it yourself. Esentially you list 10 books that you are willing to part with, and you get two free credits to get you started and then every time someone “purchases” one of your books you receive another credit to “buy” a book. You have to ship your books out that are “for sale” obviously, and then when you “buy” books the person “selling” them ships them to you for free. It is a great place to pick up new cookbooks or essentially any book you are looking for.

Have fun!