my blessed life

The other day I told you all about the first part of our family vacation . Today I wanted to share the rest of it with you: Chicago! It was our first time to Chicago~because flying through doesn't count. Vince and I have done big cities before, but this was our first time to do one with kiddos. A bit of a different story, I must say. But a fun story, too. We arrived in town after a full day's drive from Ohio, just in time for the evening rush hour traffic~makes me happy to live in a small town. We finally made it to our hotel though and freshened up, then turned around and headed downtown for the Navy Pier . There we took advantage of the children's museum' s free admission on family night. The kids had a great time playing, even if it was just for a short while. I wish we had more time (thank you, never-ending-traffic) , because it looks like a really fun children's museum. We only had time to explore a portion of it. The kids loved the *

Can I just tell you how happy I am to be making a weekly menu again?! It has been one long month (meal-wise) and I am ready to get back into my cooking groove! I've never been so tired of eating out in my whole life. Not that I haven't had some good food, but I could probably wait a week (or six) to eat another burger. My kitchen has been the hardest room to figure out since our move and it's still very much a work in progress. I've got LOTS of painting to do and some more organizing, but at least I think I've finally found all of the kitchen boxes (I couldn't even find my knives until this past week!) and can now function fairly well. And thank goodness, my cookbooks are accessible again because I need some inspiration. Last week I made our first homemade meal since moving in ( Stouffer's enchiladas and pasta from the freezer section doesn't count): the Pioneer Woman's spaghetti & meatballs . Really yummy! Although I got a

I recently had the opportunity to review How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids by Rachel Carmen with Apologia and I'm so glad that I did. It was a wonderful read for me as a homeschool mom just before we start back to school again. I am familiar with Apologia 's curriculum (our family loves their Exploring Creation series !), and I was curious to read this inspirational book geared toward moms. ***** "As intentional parents we do not react, but we respond. We do not panic; we pray. We do not give sermons; we give scripture. And we are prepared to do so through our own pursuit of God, for His glory and by His grace." ***** Rachel shares a lot of her family's homeschooling story in this book, but she also shares many nuggets of wisdom from God's Word in the five chapters. She talks about: H ave a heart for the things of God E nrich your marriage A ccept your kids R elease them to God T each them the truth. Each chapter is chock-ful

In the midst of all this moving process we planned a little family vacation for ourselves. It was good timing~even if it did leave lots of boxes waiting on us~we needed a getaway to relax! The kids and I really wanted to go to the beach, but Vince wasn't up for it...it was too hot. Then I had this idea to head up to the Great Lakes area for a few days. They have beaches, right?! I grew up in Southern Ohio and had been up to the Lake Erie area a few times as a kid, but Vince and the kiddos had not. So we thought that would be a good place to head. I'm glad we did, the weather was really perfect! We were only there for about 2 1/2 days, because we took our time along the way, stopping at antique stores or wherever we wanted. We enjoyed one day at the Cedar Point beach and it was lovely! I had never actually visited any of the beaches along Lake Erie and was really impressed with the sand~it was just as soft and fine as any beach along the Gulf Coast. At least it

This month has flown by! It must have gone by somewhere in the whirl of cardboard boxes and freshly painted walls. I really thought I would be further along in the settling-in process that I am. This has been on of my rougher unpacking episodes. I think it had something to do with doing some remodeling right at the beginning, plus starting to paint right away, plus the unbelievable disorganized mess of our boxes in the garage..ha Slowly, but surely I'm getting there though. Thank goodness! I still have a very long punch list of things we want to do to this house though. I thought I'd share them with you...in no particular order: paint the master bedroom walls paint the kids' bedrooms paint The Princess' bedroom furniture paint some of Mr. B's bedroom furniture paint the hall bathroom walls paint the hall bathroom vanity paint the kitchen walls paint the kitchen cabinets paint the hall light fixtures paint the *new* hutch for the kitchen sand/stain/pa

(in Put-in-Bay, OH) I feel as though I dropped of the face of the virtual world this past week. Well, really this whole month so far. This past week though I have not had time to blog at all, even though the thoughts are swirling around in my head. If you follow my tweets (and you should, right? just kidding;) then you may have been keeping up with our comings and goings. We have been on family vacation! Whoo hoo! And it's really been a lot of fun. We really haven't been on a true vacation in about three years and this was the first one we've been on that's just been the four of us (no extended family). And while we do love our extended family and enjoy traveling with them, it has been fun with *just us* this time around. We started off last weekend by driving to Tennessee where Vince spoke in the Sunday morning service at a church there. Then after lunch with our pastor friends there, we changed into traveling clothes and took off! Sinc

Do you have any idea just how many peaches are in a half-bushel?! Well, I didn't. I know... silly, you say. But just so you know....I do know just how many there are now . After I bought them:) I am really enjoying exploring around the new area of the country that we've moved to and the Amish and Mennonite farms are so beautiful. One day I just followed the signs for *peaches* to one of those farms. I just couldn't help myself. It was late in the day and I really didn't expect them to still be selling... ...but then two boys appeared and waved me (and my mom and sister) on up the driveway. So of course I had to buy something. Turns out they just thought we were lost, but were happy to show us their produce anyway. Boy, did my mom and sister have a laugh when I came out of the produce shed carrying a box with a half-bushel of peaches:) They knew that I had no idea by my sheepish grin. But the peaches were so pretty~and smelled so good~ I

Here I am, back at Starbucks, sipping on a blended strawberry lemonade (which is absolutely divine, I must say!). We won't have internet at our house for a few more days and I needed a mental health break anyway. Yesterday evening we took a little drive through some of the farmland that surrounds our new hometown. It is such a beautiful area! The pace of life just feels slower here...and I really like that. The town that we're from is only about 80,000 and while that is large by no means, Hopkinsville is only roughly 30,000. The town is completely surrounded by gorgeous farms and I just love driving by and looking at them. Here is a little peek at some of the farmland mere minutes from our house. I love the orderly rows of crops, in this case, soybeans. Tobacco is also a large crop here. Isn't that moon beautiful rising over the cornfield? There are so many beautiful barns here! I'm already scoping one out for a Fall family photo shoot:)

Hey, Y'all! I'm out of the house for a couple of hours today to run errands and get some wifi at our local Starbucks:) It's been a crazy week of moving here! And I've been missing blogland. You can only do so much on a phone and a tablet...ha We've been in our *new* house for a week now~well, sleeping there for the past 3 nights, the rest were in a hotel~and we're busy digging out of boxes. Right now it seems like an endless task, but I know there will be an end. We've also started doing some painting and today Vince is starting that project for the learning room that he's been dying to do. Yea!! I'm sorry I can't post any pictures today, but as it turns out the usb cord wasn't in Vince's laptop bag after all. Oh well, we should have internet at the house within a day or so and then there will be LOTS of pictures! I've already taken lots of *before* pics:) And that's my little update: moving, closing on our n