Home Education in Our House

Our local volcano

The little stickers are the girl's villages


Today, my husband and children gathered around their volcano to watch it erupt. They built the volcano last week, painted it yesterday and today was the day to watch the explosion. The eruption was quite small, but I was happy since this great event was happening on my kitchen table.

My husband has been teaching our girls about volcanoes in science and this was the culmination of lessons. I believe our girls will always remember these lessons.
When I was teaching our girls science, I would just read the lessons to them. My husband is quite the opposite, he does every experiment with them.
That is what makes learning fun for all of us.

What's for Dinner

On Sunday, I wrote a post about Ways to say I Love You to your husband. I used one of the ideas, I made one of my husband's favorite meals last night. We had a modified Greek dinner. We had chicken, salad and pitas (Tammy's Recipe). He asked, "What is the special occasion?" I told him it is just because I love him. He smiled and I realized all my work was worth it.



There is no better investment of my time than to show my family how special they are to me.

I am ME

Isn't the bloggy world great. You can learn how to do anything you want from the comfort of your couch. Here is my biggest pitfall. I want to do everything and I want it to be perfect, just like all the beautiful pictures. On any given day I will visit the following sites:

Money Saving Mom- She can save us all a lot of money. She runs a successful home business that helps her family financially.

Like Merchant Ships- She has an amazing sense of style and an eye for treasures at yard sales and thrift stores. She makes me want to redecorate (actually, just decorate) my home.

Tammy's Recipes- Her food looks amazing. I use many of her recipes each week.

Girl Talk- They inspire me to live and love my girls, not to just get through my day. Also, to read more books. As a bonus, Janelle is so creative with the camera.

Happy to be Called Mommy- She is a truly gifted artist. She even makes her children's drawings into stuffed animals.

As I look at any blog, I need to keep myself in check and remember I am not that person. I am ME. God made me for His purpose, to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. So I need to flourish with the gifts and talents God gave me, not the gifts He gave to someone else.
I am thankful that God has made us all different, this world would be bland if we all had the same gifts. Thank you Crystal, Meredith, Tammy, Carolyn, Nicole, Kristin, Janelle and Bethany for sharing your gifts with us on your blogs. You truly inspire us.
Thank you God for loving us so much to make us each different and unique.

I Praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
-Psalm 139:14

Ways to say I Love You

Here are some simple ways to let your husband know you love him:

• Say "I love you"

• Make his favorite meal for no other reason than your love for him.

• Clean up (shower, hair, face, teeth, etc.)

• Mail a love letter to his work, put it in his Bible or in the car.

• Make sure the house is clean and calm before he comes home.

• Watch a "boy" movie with him.

• Scratch his back or massage his feet.

• Don't spend more than he makes.

• Always listen when he wants to talk.

• Don't neglect his physical needs.

There are thousands of other ways to express your love to your husband. Find ways each day to let your husband know how much you care.

Why I wanted a camera

Last year I was blessed to be able to read Eyes of Wonder which was a blog by a beautiful woman named Jewels. She had an amazing way of writing that just put peace in your heart. Unfortunately, Jewels shut her blog down a couple of months after I found it. I used to look forward to going to her blog each day, reading her gracious words and looking at her amazing pictures. She had a way of taking pictures that told a whole story. Her pictures were so good, I wrote to her and asked her what kind of camera she used. She responded to my email not only with the kind of camera she used, but with encouraging words for me.
Jewels' blog was a pictorial journal of her days. Pictures of everyday events, lovely scenes from around her home and her children.
I wanted a camera so I could capture our life like Jewels did. I told my husband about the camera I wanted and figured it would be a long time before we could get it. But, this past Christmas my husband surprised me and bought me the camera. Now, I am trying to learn how to take good pictures.
But this week I used my camera to take pictures of life happening here.

Abby enjoying a quiet afternoon on the couch.

Hannah after school.

Thank you for letting me share part of our day with you.

Deals for the week

Tuesday was our day to set out in search of the deals. I used Money Saving Mom and Couponmom to direct me to the treasures.
After we finished school in the afternoon, we headed to the recycler first for a little cash to work with.

Our first stop was Home Depot armed with two coupons. One from Sears and one from Lowes.
We bought a plant and huge bag of soil for $6.43. Pretty good. I needed some green in my living room. That saved our family $15.00.

Next was CVS, this was not my best trip and I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. But I am still happy with the results. Here is what we got:

1 12 pack of Sierra Mist (to complete the Pepsi deal)
5 Deodorants
1 Fusion power razor
2 boxes of Honey bunches
1 Johnson and Johnson soap

Now on my list I had the CVS trash bags and two more cereals, they were out of stock of both. I had figured my total would be $56.88, so I printed the CVS 10/50 coupon. But without those items I did not have enough. I should have either purchased more or left and returned with another CVS coupon. But I did the best I could.

I paid $10.91 oop and received $35.95 in EB. Still ok. The receipt says I saved $36.51

Next stop Vons for three transactions.

The first transaction:

1 bottle of ketchup
8 cans of tomato sauce
Quaker Oats
Simple Harvest Cereal
2 Cinnamon Life
1 regular Life
Oat squares cereal
Cap-n-crunch
2 Quaker muffin bars
2 Special K cereal

oop $4.79, saved $56.58

2 transaction:

Quaker oats
2 Quaker instant oatmeal
Simple Harvest cereal
2 Quaker granola bars
2 Cinnamon Life
1 regular Life
Quaker Oat Squares cereal
Cap-n-Crunch
2 gallons milk (milk right now is 2 for $6.29)

oop $5.23, saved $53.86

3 transaction:

Simple Harvest cereal
2 boxes Quaker granola bars
Quaker Cinnamon Life
Regular Life
Quaker Oat Squares Cereal
Cap-N-Crunch
2 Quaker Muffin Bars
2 Special K cereal

oop $2.00, saved $51.45

So the grand total for the day was $29.36 oop and $213.40 saved with $35.95 still in EBs. What does all this stuff look like?




Head over to Crystal's Money Saving Mom blog to see all the great deals.

Be a cheerleader not a critic

What a wonderful opportunity we have to serve our husbands with our words and actions, to be his cheerleader and friend. Look at this quote from Barbara and Laura Bush.

When an interviewer once asked Barbara Bush what advice she gave to her daughter-in-law Laura Bush, her answer was simple: “Don’t criticize your husband.” The elder Mrs. Bush recalled a remark she made about one of George Bush Sr.’s speeches: “I think you’re tired, and you mumbled your words.” The effect of this seemingly innocent comment? “When I criticized George, he remembered it for months afterwards.”

“So I really took her advice to heart,” Laura Bush said. “I knew there were plenty of other critics [of my husband] without me being one of them. Until one night we were driving into our driveway and he said, ‘Tell me the truth, how was my speech?’ And I said, ‘Well, it wasn’t that good.’ And with that, he drove into the garage wall!”

Laura Bush points out something we must really think about, “I knew there were plenty of other critics [of my husband] without me being one of them." How often do we want to be the one to bring all the problems to our husband? He said this, he didn't say that, he wore that shirt out of the house and so on. Our husband has plenty of people around him correcting him. We should instead be his biggest cheerleader and encourager. I am not saying that we should be dishonest with him, I am saying we look for the good and compliment that.
Also, if we know our husband is under a lot of stress we should work hard to relieve that stress and not add more.

Lars Gren (Elisabeth Elliot's husband), presented this helpful challenge:

“A wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to perhaps eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it by very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy.”

We are not perfect and our husbands aren't either. Just enjoy the husband of your youth.