Quote of the Week

We spent most of our week taking a late Christmas vacation to Disneyland.

Here's a snapshot I took of Lauren when we finished riding Space Mountain. I think it was our second time (out of four). She had a big smile on her face when we were pulling back into the loading area and stopped for a minute.

Lauren: Brennan's right behind us.
Me: Daddy and Addison are behind him. I could hear them screaming on the ride.
Lauren: Did you hear me?
Me: I don't think so. Were you screaming?
Lauren: No, I was woo-hooing.

What a little daredevil!

On later rides, I was sitting behind her and could catch glimpses of her tiny hands lifted straight up in the air beside her big brother's.

Granola Fit for My Scouts

My son's Boy Scout troop has started preparing for a hiking trip to the Grand Canyon next fall, with my husband helping lead the way. They want to make sure all of the boys that want to make the trip are physically prepared so they are taking lots of training hikes. In addition, since my husband just loves to hike, he's also taken Addison and Brennan on several other outings.

In order to find affordable trail food that was both safe for my peanut-allergic son and acceptable to my picky-eaters, I've started making our own granola. After several experiments, we've settled on a basic recipe that seems just about perfect.

          Granola Fit for My Scouts

3 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp honey
1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/4-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup apple juice (or whatever juice is in the fridge)
2 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 6 Tbsp water


Mix the first eight ingredients (oats through juice) in a large bowl. Mix flax seed and water in a small bowl and pour over other ingredients. Mix together well and spread on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Remove from oven and use a spatula to break into appropriate sized chunks. Let cool and then store in a ziploc bag.

Note: the flax seed mixture holds the granola together in small clumps that are easier to grab while hiking. If you don't have flax seed, you can use two lightly beaten eggs instead.

This basic granola recipe makes the main part of the trail mix. We add in the extras after it is cooked. The most recent combination was granola, craisins, sunflower seeds, dried pineapple pieces, and chocolate chunks.

Happy birthday to my not-so-little girl!

Each year on Lauren's birthday, I think back to the days of the first miracles. I can't believe it was seven years ago, and I can't believe how big she's gotten.

I'm not going to post NICU pictures this year. (But if you'd like to see them, you can grab a kleenex and watch our Defining Moments video.)

This picture was taken when she was about three months old, but still teeny-tiny.

Seven years later...

God is good all the time, and all the time God is good! 

Sometimes He's especially good. Thank you God for seven years full of miracles.

All Have Sinned {Scripture and a Snapshot}

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23

What I learned about carbon monoxide today

We had a busy day scheduled at our house, and we started working early this morning. I put a few trays of granola into the oven to bake, and then I kept the oven on to dry some apples. (I had seen a cool idea on Pinterest for drying apple slices in the oven.)

About lunchtime, I was decorating Lauren's birthday cake when I heard a really loud, really annoying alarm coming from upstairs. We have at least a half-dozen hard wired smoke detectors in the house, and the one at the top of the stairs is a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. It was beeping to alert us of high carbon monoxide levels.

Hmm... we just replaced the battery in this detector a few weeks ago when it started making the same shrill noise. The CO alarm could be silenced for about a minute at a time, but it wouldn't stop completely. We turn off the gas oven and the thermostats that control the gas heat. We opened the doors and the windows. The alarm still beeped.

At this point, we had so much fresh (cold) air flowing through the house that neither of us thought there  could still be dangerous levels of carbon monoxide left indoors.

I sent Tim and the kids to Target to get a new CO detector hoping to tell if we really had a problem or if it was just a problem with the CO detector. The new CO detector didn't alert. Then I read the full package directions for the new CO detector. At low levels, CO detectors can take several hours to sound an alarm. Hmm... we still couldn't know if there's a problem or if the new detector just hasn't been in our house long enough yet.

We decided to call the Fire Department to check things out.

They nicely checked the CO levels throughout the house and didn't find them to be elevated. The alarm is still going off. We eventually figured out that the CO detector has to be unplugged in order to reset itself after it sounds an alarm. The firefighters suspect the gas stove is causing a problem and call the gas company. A representative from the gas company checks everything out in our house and didn't find any problems. 

He did tell us his best guess as to what had happened. A gas oven does put off carbon monoxide while you are using it. Normally it's not enough CO to cause any problems. I had been using the oven for several hours this morning, though, and it probably was so long that the carbon monoxide built up and triggered the alarm. Thankfully, there are a couple of easy solutions. I can just use the oven for shorter periods of time. If I am going to use the oven for a longer period of time, I can run the vent fan in the kitchen so that the excess carbon monoxide is safely vented to the outside.

I'm thankful that everything checked out fine and that none of us suffered any ill effects from the carbon monoxide. I'm also thankful that we learned how to prevent problems in the future.

The next time I dry apples in the oven, I'll run the vent fan and hope that I don't have to call the Fire Department to check out another Carbon Monoxide alert.

How to make every day a slushy day

Over a year ago, I was listing some of the things I was thankful for and I mentioned that I was thankful for a Slushy Day. When we lived in Arkansas, I drove past Sonic at least a couple of times each day, often during Happy Hour. Slushy Days were days when everything seemed to go as planned -- days when everyone did their schoolwork and nobody complained about a sibling breathing too loudly. Basically, Slushy Days are a reward for the days when my kids worked extra hard and were extra cooperative.

This week I realized something. For a long time I have underestimated my role in creating good days.

This week I realized that I can make almost every day a Slushy Day. I found several things that made a difference in our days this week.

I woke up early. Early is very early at my house, and it's really tempting to squeeze in just fifteen more minutes of sleep. Lauren is out of bed and ready to go at six-zero-zero every morning. She's more than capable of entertaining herself if I'm still in bed or still trying to get a shower. Unfortunately, capable of entertaining herself means that she'll start watching a video on the computer or iPad. Watching TV is never a good way for her to start the day. If her day is going to be off to a good start, I need to be up and dressed by the time she wanders downstairs at 6:01 am.

I had a plan for the day. I'm not a big planner, and I didn't have color-coded schedules for the days. My plan was just the basics -- really just a rough sketch in my head of when I was going to do things during the day and what I was going to serve for dinner. Most of our work is just the next thing in the book. Even though I didn't have it all written down, the important thing is that I thought through my rhythm for the day ahead of time.

I cleaned up as I went along. I emptied the dishwasher as I waited for my grits to finish cooking in the microwave. When we finished breakfast, I put the dishes in the dishwasher, quickly rinsed out the coffee pot, cleared the place mats off of the table, and left the kitchen looking nearly spotless. As my children completed various school assignments I checked it right away. No more piles of papers for me to look over later in the day, and more importantly, no more math pages that were done completely wrong because I hadn't noticed the errors the day before. All of the cleaning up tasks that I normally dread aren't so burdensome if I just take care of them along the way. Besides, my house looked nice nearly all day long.

Finally, and most importantly, I didn't spend time on the computer. Early in the morning, I set a timer for five minutes so that I could glance over my inbox for emails that I wanted to see. After my time was up, I closed the laptop and didn't look at my email again until after all of our schoolwork was finished. I was amazed at how much more I got accomplished on the days when I didn't keep checking in on my email (or facebook) for just a second here and there. When I'm not looking at a computer screen (desktop, laptop, iPod, etc), I'm attentive to my children and their needs. I check their school papers as soon as they're done. I intervene before one child's talking or ball bouncing gets on another child's last nerve. I'm being the homeschooling mom that I'm supposed to be.

I have no illusions that every day will be easy from here on out. Honestly, paying attention to what I'm supposed to be doing is hard work. Hard work leads to sweet rewards, though, especially on days when I just happen to be driving past Sonic during Happy Hour.


Several members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew are writing "How to ______" blog posts this week. If you'd like to learn something new or perhaps just a new way to do something old, visit the Crew blog  any time after Tuesday morning January 12th to see the list of what everyone is sharing.

Parenting from the Overflow {review}

I should start this review with a confession. I'm a huge devotional cheater and rarely write down my answers when a book has thinking or application questions. I know that I'm really just cheating myself. Not writing down the answers means that I don't think about the question long enough to come up with a concise well-thought out answer. I'm wasting an opportunity to learn by not using the tool that's right in front of me.

A few months ago, I read a book that challenge me even though I didn't write down my answers. It's perhaps the book that challenged me most as a parent last year.

Parenting from the Overflow by Teri Lynne Underwood isn't a typical parenting book. It's not a to-do list of easy solutions. It's a book that challenged me to change my heart and to rely more on God. When I am filled with God's spirit, His love and grace can overflow so that my children will see God though me. "We must be filled with the Lord so it overflows, pour out of us and covers those around us. There is only one path to this end: giving our first attention, our priority attention, to our relationship with God." (page 14)

According to the website, "Parenting from the Overflow is more than a method or theory, it's a biblically-based framework for living in the abundance God has for each of us ... and modeling that life for our children."

I highly recommend this book as we start into a new year. I'm going to be rereading it and actually completing the work pages this time. I'm praying that it will give me a renewed commitment to being the mom God created me to be.

Parenting from the Overflow is available on Teri Lynn Underwood's website as a pdf ($5) or as a print book ($8). Right now, the Kindle version is on sale for only $2.99.

Disclaimer: I received a pdf copy of Parenting from the Overflow so that I could share this review, and I received no other compensation. In return, I agreed to give an honest review of what I thought.