Valentine’s Day

We never need much of a reason to want to celebrate…or to make a delicious spread of food!

Making delicious food is one of my greatest joys!

Last week we celebrated Valentine’s day with not one, but two “parties!”

Just look at these Valentine’s of mine!!

When I came out to the great room very early Wednesday morning, I found this beautiful table.

I knew what Addie Mae was up to, and I was asked to help a bit with the food!

I also knew that her siblings were going to feel SO loved and blessed!!

They were super surprised and did feel LOVED!!

Addie had very simple but very thoughtful gifts for each of us!

A joke book, a card game for road trips in the van, a dice game, a guitar pick holder and chocolate of course!

She gave me two pair of beautiful leather earrings! I love them!

After our breakfast fun was over, we started to get ready to go to Briar’s place!

To have some more Valentine fun!

Kayla’s friend Becca and her two sweeties were there to help us celebrate too!

I am thinking I could have just put this photo on this post and been finished?

BRIAR PROMISE IS SO ADORABLE!!!!

The kiddos played, we ate a huge lunch, did a finger print painting craft, and ate chocolate cupcakes!

We had our Valentine card exchange at the very end of the party.

We have celebrated Valentine’s day with Kayla and her crew for many years now!

It has been a joy to do and I think this tradition will be sticking around!

It was a super fun day, our love cups were filled up, and our hearts were super full too!

Hope you all had a nice Valentine’s Day too!

Full Winter Days

These winter days have been FULL of Blake and my plans for school for these kiddos!

Here’s a peek into a day in the life of Moschel Academy-

The mama of this crew gets up at 4 a.m. – crazy, I know – but I like to be showered and dressed, have time with the Lord, and then time to myself before our busy day starts!

You might be thinking “I would be SO tired!” – but it is just the opposite – it is FUEL to me!!

I wake the kiddos at 6:50 and we have breakfast at 7 a.m.

We all do our daily chores from 7:30 – 8:00, and then the kiddos have their personal Bible time from 8:00 to 8:30.

We all meet at 8:30 to start our school day with worship and Bible time!

At 9:00 Chad starts his work, I help Lane get started on his, and then I teach Tate and Eliza their Math and Phonics and Reading.

At 10:00 we grab a snack and I teach Lane, Tate, and Eliza our FIAR study, Apologia science, and we do our projects and crafts!

SUPER fun time of the day for us all!

Sometimes Chad wanders in to see what we are up to – and I love that so much!

At 11:30 those three youngest cuties are free while I have my daily meeting with Chad!

We all then work together to make, eat, and clean-up lunch.

We have a half hour after lunch to do our mid-day chores or finish our morning chores, if needed.

At 1:00 p.m. it is time for read aloud!

We are reading Sarah Maxwell’s new book right now and loving it!

The kids make illustrations and narrations about the story after I read to them.

During our read aloud hour, Chad is doing French in the school room.

At 2 p.m. Chad runs Sadie outside, and usually has some helpers.

Lately we have not been able to do this part of our schedule because it has been so dangerously cold!

Our afternoons are filled so easily with games, good books, guitar practice, projects, and sometimes a good show to watch on the lap top.

Soon it is 4 p.m. and time for a snack and dinner chores.

We have used a schedule for our school days since our second year of homeschooling way back in 2001!

If you would like to check out how to make a schedule go here.

These winter days are FULL and very special!

Hope you all are enjoying winter too!!!

Thriving Even In The Cold

Last week was a crazy week weather wise.

One week ago this morning it was 37 degrees below zero here at Twin Oaks, with a wind chill 55 below zero.

CRAZY!

We survived that scary cold, and are even thriving through these winter days here at Twin Oaks.

I doubt any of you are surprised when I say that we all LOVE to be home!

At the end of January we did get out and took a nail biting drive to the airport in a snow storm to drop off Addie Mae who was headed a bit farther south to visit the sweetest friend!

She had the BEST time – even through all of the travel troubles she dealt with because of the weather – mostly on the way back home!

We missed her SO much!!

There has been a ton of snow, which almost all melted believe it or not!

But it is snowing again today!

The snow plow guy took our mail box clean off its post as he plowed our road one day.

We rigged it up for now, and will have to replace it in the spring!

Since it has been so snowy and terrible cold, I figure it is still ok to have garland and lights up?

Are there rules about this in February?

The lights are SO pretty though!

Our food choices around here have been matching the weather.

I am trying desperately to think of the last time I ate a salad!

Yikes!

It has been soup, soup, and more soup!

And warm comfort foods too!

I did make the kiddos a chunky monkey the other day, even though we might have had to wrap in blankets after eating it!

Chunky monkey knows no weather though!!

The weather kept us from our favorite people for MUCH TOO LONG.

We enjoy our days together more than I can put into words.

How do you explain the deep love you have for your grand babies, and their Mama and Daddy?!

In case you were guessing that Briar looks JUST like Kayla – here is a photo of Kayla at this same age.

GAH!

Our pups even survived the cold, but were probably the least happy about it.

Poor girls!

They are SO spoiled!

These are Sadie’s “please stop reading that book and give this pool ole girl some attention” eyes.

I caught this photo to text to Addie while she was away!

It’s rare to find them like this!

I love them both SO much!

Don’t tell Blake about this one, ha!

Ruby is settling down more and more everyday.

She is cuddly more than not these days!

This photo is from the Saturday morning that Addie Mae was gone.

I had some guys go after grocery late Friday night in the absolute freezing, freezing cold – and found the dry goods waiting to be put away the next morning.

Small house problems – it would have been too noisy to put them away the night before!

I have a lot of school photos I will save for another post – which is what fills our days to the brim right now.

We just enjoy being together so very much!

Especially these two!

Tate hit is head SO hard one afternoon – scared me to pieces – and left a good bump there too.

That rice sock he is holding was a gift from our sweetest neighbor, who happens to be a nurse and maybe knows us too well?!

She made two of them for us and I put them in the freezer the same day we received them!

I am happy to give our nap time report!

NAPS ARE DONE!

It was a slllooowww transition for Eliza, but she has conquered it!

This photo was several weeks ago, and I haven’t had the opportunity for one since!

Our cherubs are doing AMAZING, as usual.

The Lord has been so gracious!!

Do you see Eliza’s burrowed brow here?

Her feet rubbing together?

Her fingers flicking each other?

These are signs that she is struggling.

I love how the Lord clearly shows us!

We run for our oils, some deep holding time, some therapy of some sort, or a hot bath with four drops of lavender oil – and then she is ALL better!!

Just look at that smile!

It is important that I start our day by filling up their love cups!

They still love to be held – even though I need a bigger lap these days!

Some mornings look like this.

Eliza has never been our early bird!

When she first came home, I would wake her up at 9 a.m. to start her day!

Look at Lane’s yawn too!

This guy.

I guess a pasta bowl of cereal is what you have for snack when you are almost 6 foot tall and growing an inch every night while you sleep.

Help.

Speaking of growing – look at Tate!!

He still sits on his feet to reach the counter though.

I love it so much!

We are still enjoying every sunrise and sunset, and our afternoons filled with games, playing, and just being together.

I started a new journal over a week ago, which is worthy of noting here, because that simple thing brings me SO much joy!

Those crisp brand new pages….

To close this post, here is a photo of my guys who show up right at lunch time most Saturdays – but then they do the dishes for me after I fill their hungry bellies.

Isn’t that just the BEST!?

They are keepers for sure.

Time to wake up Grant who is taking a quick snooze before he heads out to plow snow all night.

NO, his Mama does not love the fact that he is driving around in a snow storm!

But it’s great money and he loves it, so I just pray protection and safety over him – A LOT.

The snow is beautiful, once again!!

Hope you all survived the cold if you had it, and are enjoying your winter days too!!

The Year of the Pig

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year!

2019 is the year of the pig.

We celebrated Chinese New Year this past Saturday night!

We have two precious reasons to do so!

Ah, they are SO cute and fun!!

Addie Mae and Chad headed up the decorating committee!

I headed up the food committee!

But I had some handsome helpers in the kitchen!

We made Chap Chae and an asian lettuce salad.

One handsome guy grilled all the chicken for our meal, which made it even more delicious!

Addie Mae made cupcakes that looked like pandas.

It’s tradition, folks!

Addie’s friend joined us, and Auntie Gail was supposed to join us, but the fog was so, so bad she had to turn around and head back home.

We were looking forward to seeing Auntie Gail SO much!

Soon, Auntie Gail, soon!!

We really enjoy celebrating Chinese New Year each year!

We have settled into our own traditions for this celebration now.

We make it simple, but fun.

It gives us such a great opportunity to talk about Tate and Eliza’s heritage, about how Chinese New Year is celebrated in China, and about the things that we believe.

We watched home videos of our times in China to round out our evening!

Which DID OUR HEARTS SO GOOD.

We are grateful, grateful that we have these two precious cherubs to celebrate!

Tate and Eliza, how did we ever live without you two??

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!!