Our Homeschool Blog

I just started a new blog about our homeschool. If you would like to see what we are doing in school go check it out at: http://busy-bees-academy.blogspot.com/

Cake Wrecks

While watching Greg cut Chase's really cute cake yesterday, I was telling him about a blog full of not-so-cute cakes: Cake Wrecks. Decided instead of emailing him I'd post it here and share it with everybody.

Here are some good entries to get a feel for the site:

• Cakes where they got confused about what to write.
• The Wedding cake they wanted and the wedding cake they got
• Congratulations!
• Congratulations to you and your bride!
  
• Olympics Cake
  
• Spider-Man cakes
• Merry Christmas!
  
• Happy Hanukkah
  

There are some good cakes on there, too, like this Lego Batman cake or this Super Mario Bros. wedding cake.

Valentine's Party

Every year one of our home school groups, IEAH, has a Valentine's Party at Chuck E Cheese. Besides having the Valentine's Party we meet together weekly at a local park. We also have a yahoo support group, and whenever one of us needs advice, reassurance, or hears of a great educational idea we contact the rest of the group and let everyone know.

A lot of friendships have been made and solidified at our home school park day! The girls have a ton of friends that they love to see each week. Yeah, we don't have any worry about our kids having enough socialization. Between, park days, dance classes, activities, having friends over, and church we get enough socialization!

Anyway, back to Chuck E Cheese (where a kid can be a kid). To prepare for the day we have to get together our Valentines, this year 61 kids signed up to attend! WOW!!! So, in theme with the Boy Scout motto of always being prepared, we made up about 72 Valentines. I also made up a dessert. (I had had Activity Girls the day before and only had two girls show up. I had made a 9 X 13 pan of Brownies, so I just cut up the rest and took those.

You can get coupons for Chuck E Cheese at their website or in the coupons that come with your Sunday paper. Make sure to also print out a reward chart for each child-that's 10 FREE tokens each! You all know how much I LOVE a good deal!

So, the kids get to spend the day at Chuck E Cheese with their friends and mom gets to hang out with her friends and play some games as well. What can I say, I love Chuck E Cheese! I know, you all are thinking that I am crazy! If the shoe fits wear it, and I wear my crazy shoes proudly!

Here are some pictures from the festivities!

Mia playing a shoot 'em up game. She is definitely her parents' daughter!

Emma playing the catch the bee game!

Mia driving, just a few more years and it will be in a real car! Yikes! Where did the time go?

Emma playing stomp the spider. You can bet I would be stomping a lot harder if they were real spiders, while Emma would be gathering them up as pets. Emma and her animal friends!

Everyone passing out their Valentines--organized chaos!

Mia passing out Valentines!

Emma passing out her Valentines!

Punch Recipe From The Bridal Shower

For everyone who asked here is the recipe for the punch that I made for the Nikki's Bridal Shower. I really liked it because it wasn't the sickly sweet punch, it had a nice tart yet sweet flavor. I found the recipe by doing a google search for "punch recipes." I got it from the allrecipes.com website.

Here is the original recipe:
2 (6 ounce) cans frozen pink lemonade concentrate
1 (6 ounce) can frozen pineapple juice concentrate
1 gallon cranberry juice
2 liters cranberry ginger ale
4 cups crushed ice

Directions:
In a large punch bowl, mix lemonade concentrate, pineapple juice concentrate and cranberry juice. Add ice and slowly pour in the ginger ale.

Here is what I did differently. I couldn't find any cranberry ginger ale so I just bought regular ginger ale. I was a little mystified by the fact that I couldn't find any ginger ale in a 2 liter bottle at the store I was at, so I ended up getting a 12 pack. (For one recipe use 6 cans, I bought enough to double it but we only ended up needing 1 batch made, so I came home and made the other batch for us)

Instead of just straight cranberry juice I used Cran-Raspberry, because I don't like straight cranberry juice, I like it mixed with another flavor. I also bought lemons and raspberries to float in the top of the punch bowl. Except we didn't end up using a punch bowl, instead we used a really fancy drink dispenser that Nikki's mom had, I did put the lemons and raspberries in the batch I made at home and it was a nice touch.

I'm excited to try new combinations later, like Cran-Grape, Orange-Pineapple instead of straight pineapple, you get the idea.

Michelle, you were asking about a dark red punch, well, we discovered that if you put some food coloring in the punch it turns a deep dark red. As Emma said, "I'm drinking blood now!" So, if you liked the punch we can use this recipe for our Twilight party, or I can look fro a different one, you decide!

PS I read Twilight last night, so I'm ready for New Moon! I finished it in a little over 4 hours, Erik said I was mean to him but he should know better than to try and talk to me while I'm reading! ;) There's a double standard at our house, I can interrupt him whenever I want but he can't interrupt me. It's sad but true, something that I need to work on. Not interrupting him that is, I can still be mean when I get interrupted, right?

Read The Peacegiver Free Online

Jim Ferrell has written an excellent book for the LDS audience called The Peacegiver. I can't recommend it enough. It deals with relationships that may be stained by hard feelings, blame, or resentment.

You can buy it, of course, but it's also available online, free, at Meridian Magazine.

There's not a real easy way to navigate it on the Meridian website, though, so I thought I'd put a clear, chapter by chapter breakdown here. Then you can bookmark this page and come back to it as you read through the book.

It's by one of the guys responsible for the books Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace, but it takes those ideas all the way, and puts them in their true context: our relationship with the Savior.

The chapters are short--you could read one every couple of days pretty quickly.

Preface and Chapter One: A Storm in the Soul
Chapter Two: Memories
Chapter Three: Marching to Carmel
Chapter Four: Souls at War
Chapter Five: A Peace Offering
Chapter Six: Atonement
Chapter Seven: Forgiveness
Chapter Eight: The Storm Continues
Chapter Nine: The Cause of the Storm
Chapter Ten: Who We Are
Chapter Eleven: What We Deserve
Chapter Twelve: A Merciful Question
Chapter Thirteen: Mercy in the Balance
Chapter Fourteen: Waiting for an Answer
Chapter Fifteen: The Chains of Sin
Chapter Sixteen: The Storm Renewed
Chapter Seventeen: A Beam of Light
Chapter Eighteen: Chains
Chapter Nineteen: Agency in the Balance
Chapter Twenty: Of Sin
Chapter Twenty-One: Of Repentance
Chapter Twenty-Two: Light in the Darkness
Chapter Twenty-Three: An Agony
Chapter Twenty-Four: Recovery
Chapter Twenty-Five: Covenants
And finally, the Epilogue is here.

GO STEELERS!!

Okay, I just had to get that out! Steelers won! Yay!!! Six time champs!!!

For all of you who don't already know, I love football--more so if I'm there. There's just something about being there in the stands, the excitement, the energy, you get the picture. I love the Steelers, you can't grow up in the Pittsburgh PA area and not have black and gold running through your veins. ;)

So, we watched the Superbowl yesterday, Erik more for the commercials me for the game. There were some moments when I was a little stressed, quite the nail biter. I yelled, cheered, groaned, and finally celebrated. My girls must have thought that I was truly crazy. But what's new? They always think I'm crazy for some reason or another, and maybe I am.

Anyway, just had to celebrate a little with all my peeps!