Hello Again

So, shortly after getting back from Time Out For Women, I got sick. Really sick. All of my kids were sick. We had the pukeys. And well, everyone got better, but me. LOL~ My sickness would last for the next 3 months. I have to say I was so very excited to find out we were expecting baby number 5. I had been feeling the desire to have another baby for a while. I couldn't help smiling for days. But of course I couldn't share my secret so soon. LOL! Well, my secret didn't stay secret for long. I was sick. Very sick. I have NEVER been so sick when pregnant. Poor Winslow and my children. Mommy was down for the count. The tv on made me ill, the oven, the fridge, pb and j sandwiches, soda, trash cans, you name it, it made me sick. A few weeks in I decided we needed to take drastic action. So I started taking Zofran for the sickies. It helped, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. So we grinned and bore it. Not really, I lived on the couch or my bed and my hubby did an amazing job of taking care of the rest. Abby told her friends I had cancer. Silly girl.
Thankfully, in the last few weeks I have begun to feel better. Food is no longer a chore, and although the queasiness has not completely passed it is so much better. I have amazing friends who made me dinner, cleaned my house, and helped me stay mentally sane. I am so grateful.
This summer we have taken on the project of building onto our home. So far we have done a lot of digging! We dug out our footers by hand (over and over again until we got it right.) And the concrete was poured late last week. Now onto the block for our stem wall. So my back yard is completely unusable for kiddos. We are now using the front yard to house all our yard toys. Progress is coming, I can feel it.
This has been an emotional ride for me. Yesterday, I asked Winslow to give me a blessing. I was concerned with not having felt the baby move for almost a week. Normally this would not make me so worried, but in light of my loved ones who have recently suffered from the loss of their babies, I am especially freaked out this pregnancy. I am so grateful for the power of priesthood blessings. I cried this morning as I was laying on my bed with the laptop and felt kick after kick.
Of course, I am showing already and people have begun to reach out and touch my tummy. Some of them I don't mind. Others I do!
It's 4th of July week and we have the Saline's coming again this year. Hurray! But instead of getting my house ready and all the laundry done, I have been planning this coming year's preschool curriculum. What can I say, when the ideas start coming you have to run with it. 
There. I have missed way too many things in my absence of writing. I will try to do better. 

Time out for Women

Wow! Every Woman needs a TIME OUT
(for women that is!)

Absolutely LOVED LOVED LOVED our girls weekend. We had AMAZING speakers.
Jenny Oaks Baker was INCREDIBLE!
Hilary Weeks was FABULOUS!

Can I tell you how much I love my Sisters in LAW!!!
(we missed you Mandy and Jenny!)

Word Games

To spice up literacy for Rachel we've been playing word games. This week we played Puppy Love Word Family Game from teachers pay teachers.
Low cost and lots of fun. It has a spinner for Each of the Short vowel sounds and cards to go with them. Lots of good uses for this game. I hope you check it out

Math Games

Roll and Add Dice Game

Here is my latest preschool game. We love the Dice Games. Really good for number recognition and adding skills. Even my 3 1/2 year old and my 6 year old love to play together.

Go here to download it for FREE

Some of our other favorite games are Sequence States and Capitols, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, and Guess Who. What do you like to play?

PITA BREAD photos

 

 

 

Success

So a few months ago my sister Tami called and asked if I had a good Pot Roast recipe. I laughed! No, I told her, I am not good at making roasts. I have tried and tried and every recipe I use seems to come out dry. I have fond memories of Rochelle and Chris Castle inviting us over for Sunday Pot Roast when we were first married. She made an excellent roast. Winslow LOVES to have Roast so I kept trying. Today we had SUCCESS!
I decided I would try using the technique we use with the pulled pork for Cafe Rio. So I put a roast with 1 cup of water, 2Tbs beef bullion, 1 envelope dry onion soup mix, and 1 can cream of mushroom in the Crock pot LAST NIGHT. I cooked it on low ALL NIGHT. Then this morning I got up and shredded the meat (which is something I think defines a good roast, if you can't shred it, it's not what you're looking for.) left the meat in the juice added 1lb of baby carrots and left it on low until 1:30pm when we got home from church (and the other food was ready.) It was SO GOOD! My family was in Heaven. Abby and I made homemade mashed potatoes, threw together a salad, and busted out with the rolls I made last night (yes, from scratch.....although I was SORELY tempted to buy some Rhodes Rolls at the store this week.)

The second success we had today with food was home made Cream of Wheat. I admit, I was skeptical. But my kids eat pretty much anything. I was afraid it would be like flour paste. I was pleasantly surprised. Thank you Kara for giving me the courage to try it!

Here is the recipe.

2 cups red wheat coarsely ground (I used the coarsest setting on my wheat grinder mill...still looked like flour)
4 cups milk (you can use water, milk just makes it SOOO CREAMY!)
1 Tbs -2 Tbs Butter
1/4 cup sugar

Bring the milk almost to a boil
Add ground wheat, butter, and sugar.
Whisk and turn down heat to low.
I cooked mine about 5 minutes before serving it.

(keep in mind this in not the exact texture of the Cream of Wheat you buy in the store. It is smoother. I have some real issues with texture and breakfast, so I only gave myself a little. I was happy to find I really liked it!) I got the recipe here

The other thing I made recently from Scratch is PITA BREAD. SOOOO Yummy. I got the recipe from the Frugal Girl.
I used a baking stone from pampered chef to cook them on. Also don't roll them out to thin or they don't puff up. We filled them with chicken salad. YUM!!! See photos below!

Dr. Seuss

So this past friday was Dr. Seuss's birthday. And of course the movie the LORAX came out. So at the beginning of the week I gave my children a challenge. It they each could memorize an Entire Dr. Seuss book before the end of March, we will take them to the THEATER to see the LORAX movie. They are doing pretty well! 

 This week I think I will make a Poster and some Trees, so they can put a tree on every time they memorize a certain # of pages. 

Other things we have done this week are Dr. Seuss number spinners. (Rachel did tens and ones, Jacob and Abby used them for Multiplication facts.) Find it Here from TeachersPayTeachers for free. And Rachel and David used this awesome roll and cover free from HERE

 

We read If I Ran the Zoo and they each drew their own NEW animal to go in their Zoo. They had to tell what it's name was, where it lived, and what it ate!

 I made new word blend cards for Rachel and put them on Mega Blocks. (with Dr. Seuss font of course!)

We are still working on the Revolutionary War for History. 

And Science right now is WEATHER. So awesome. I am learning so many cool facts. Like how Hail is made. Do you know that Hail is ice that falls from the clouds but then gets pushed back into the clouds over and over. That's how there are different sizes of hail. The more times the ice falls and is pushed back up, the more layers of ice are formed. You can cut open hail and see the layers!

We made Rain. So fun. Science always grabs their attention!