Weekly Wrap Up : 11/11/11

Happy Veteran’s Day to all who are serving and have served!!  May God bless our friends who continue to stand in harms way!!

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In our homeschool this week…

We started working on our Gratitude Lapbook – the kids are enjoying it and I am hoping to cultivate a more grateful heart in each of them! 

I am inspired by…

Podcasts – this week I have listened to several from Matt Chandler at the Village church in DFW, and Michael from Manna in NC.  I have really enjoyed both and been incredibly inspired!!

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

This week we stayed close to home, but next week we head up to Dallas for AG’s heart appt.  She will have an EKG & ECHO on Monday to make sure her heart looks exactly like it should.

Last Sunday I did get to take AG to a Clover Kid field trip to see many animals.  It was lots of fun!!  She got to see a Sheep, goat, many chickens and even work with a heifer!

Planning Time

It’s Wednesday in our week of “vacation” of sorts.  The other little girl who schools with us is on vacation, so we are taking a bit of a break too.   It is nice to get a break every now and then, especially to make you appreciate what you have!!

The extra time I have had has been spent researching a plan for November and December.  While we will keep on track with regular school in November, I wanted to incorporate something dealing with Gratitude and also with the history behind Thanksgiving.  I found a couple different things for these topics, but my favorite, and the one I think we will use is Attitude of Gratitude Lapbook.  It is a 12 lesson plan with some great ideas!! 

Fall Fun & Yummy Recipes

I love fall!  I love the cool temps, the yummy food and the occasional bonfire!

These days occasional is none – with the burn ban, a fire was not an option for our Fall “Party” but that was okay, we still had lots of fun!

We had tractor rides, compliments of our 10 year old driver.  The girls (and boys) colored lots of pumpkin coloring pages.  We all enjoyed watching Clarabell check out her new field!  She even made friends with Max our neighbor horse (that E.D. named, since we do not know his real name, and he will not tell us)

Fall Fun VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We had yummy snacks!!  To include :

Boilermaker Chili

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles {love, love, love this website – I have made many of her recipes and have loved them all!!!}

Smoked Turkey (our last of 3 – Christmas was served this afternoon)

and corn bread

Finished off with some yummy Pumpkin Cake  - thanks to Lisa!

We had a great afternoon with the other Cole family and our friends the Kincaids.  Hope to see more friends in the weeks to come!! Come on our and visit us, anytime!!  We love to have friends over to play!

Book Review : Baker’s Wife (& Giveaway)

I love reading all kinds of books.  One of my all time favorite authors is Ted Dekker, I will toss aside most others books to read his.

This time I was able to read a book by Erin Healy, who has written several books with Ted Dekker.  So, with my love for Dekker you can understand how thrilled I was to get a copy of The Baker’s Wife to review; I even saved it to savor on my recent trip to DC & NY. 

The story of the Baker’s Wife is about Audrey Bofinger, the wife of a “former” pastor and her husband, Geoff.  These two are accused of a crime, however there is a significant lack of evidence.   The accuser, Jack is a deacon from the church where Geoff has been asked to step down, so there is a theory of revenge in the story, which kicks off the twists and turns.