Not a Favorite

Time for another book review.  It has been a while.  Mostly, because my latest book to blog was "Not by Might" by Al Lacy and it wasn't one that kept my interest long enough to get it finished quickly.

An old western setting with wagons and horses and posses, the names used in the first few pages almost had me laughing.  It was so 'typical' that I had a hard time conitinuing.  It tells a story of two nurses with their own drama with their 'men folk'.  One wondering if she can recapture the love of an old flame who finds himself paralized and the other trying to save her husband from a trap.

The ending is very predictable as is most of the book.

Very Christ centered with many Biblical references, which is always nice to see.  I do enjoy reading through plots where the character use Biblical methods to think through and process their issues.

Sorry folks, that is about all there is to this one.  If you want a mindless, comfortalbe read, this a book for you.  If you like something a little more intense and original I'd look elsewhere.

I am sure this author is spectacular, but just didn't hit my fancy with this one.  Sorry Al.

I received this book for free for this reveiw from Waterbrook/Multnomah Publishers.

State of The Family #49

So, #49 for the SOF's, my 101st post.  Aren't you tired of reading yet?  I have to admit, my children can be quite entertaining.  Yesterday, would have qualified as one of those times.  I'll fill you in a little later.

The weather here has been beautiful the past few weeks (turning into lots of rain the last few days), but we were able to get a lot of sunshine time in while it was nice.

The kids had a small break from school for parent teacher conferences.  So after good reports from both teachers, we headed up to one of my kids' favorite places, the Lincoln Children's Museum.  It has been a while since we have gone and they were so glad to return.

Of course the big news around here was Miss Firecracker turning 4.  This girl has been waiting to turn 4 since the day after she turned 3.  (Thankfully, she hasn't said anything about her 5th birthday yet, except that she hopes some of her favorite aunts/uncles/cousins get to make it to her next birthday party since they couldn't make it to this one.)  She had a lollipop themed birthday and took lollipop cupcakes to school.  Daddy even went to eat breakfast with her while mommy volunteered in Noisy Man's classroom, then came to play with her a little bit later.  The highlight of her day, though was probably her best friend from preschool getting to come over to play at our house all afternoon.  They were giggle boxes and there was a little mishap with some sunscreen, but it was so fun to see them together rather than just hearing all about Little Miss S all the time.

Her party was a big success.  Most of our family was able to make it and all the kids left sufficiently sugared up with a 'thank you lollipop' in hand.  I'll let the pictures do the talking for the party. (They ended up down below because they wouldn't move up and I got tried of trying!)

The day before the party was St. Patrick's Day and those sneaky little leprechaun's made a mess out of our house.  I love St. Paddy's Day, mostly, I think, because green is my favorite color and any excuse to turn everything green for a day is fun!  Here is some of the mayhem the leprechaun's caused.  (The kids are still blaming missing, broken or out of place things on the leprechauns.)

Our scavenger hunt for our snacks that the leprechaun stole!

Noisy Man and the leprechaun trap he and daddy built for school.  Not sure what this face is.

Yes, out of place....I cannot get it to move and like I said...I give up.
But this is the Birthday cake!



leprechaun snow angel in powdered sugar from Miss Firecracker's cake



They made a fort!

undies on the TV!!!

I was so excited to get to attend a conference in Nebraska City with my favorite Christian author, Jen Hatmaker.  It was so relaxing and such a beautiful weekend.  Not to mention, I got to attend with a great group of women that made it even better.  Jen, of course, was an amazing speaker and left us all in tears at some point, convicted our hearts and gave us a missional view on God's church.  I continue to pray on what God wants me to do with this message.  If you want to know more about my somewhat obsession over Jen Hatmaker and the weekend you can check it out at my other blog.  Amazing weekend!

Enjoying her taco!

Opening presents....this was some new panties.  She was a bit embarrassed :)

The cake and the birthday girl.  The cake is minus one lollipop....it died.

And a short version of my exciting children yesterday.... I was up to my elbows in 'the runs'.  Believe me, a 2-year-old that is trying very hard to go on the potty with diarrhea is not much fun.  The poor thing was trying so hard, though.  I'll spare you the details, but it was reminiscent of a few years ago.  My poor Noisy Man had an incident at school, they cleaned him up quickly and was put on the bus home.   The poor guy was in tears as he came through the door.  Long story short, a 30 min bus ride is not the place for a little boy with diarrhea.  I don't think the teachers thought that one through or really realized what was going on.  They did call me, but not until after the buses had already left.  Miss Firecracker escaped with the least drama and it was all very short lived.  No more mishaps past 5 pm last night, thankfully.

Dr. Seuss Post #100!!

I was needing to do a SOF, but lacking anything to update on.  Things have, thankfully, been pretty normal around here.  So there isn't too much to report on. 

But just in case you are in withdraws...LOL.


Here are some pics from our fun day of celebrating Dr. Seuss and his books that we love to read.

We swirled some colored dough together to make some crazy cookies.
They didn't quite turn out like the ones I found online, but they still tasted great!

We had 4 Thing 2s and only 1 Thing 1, and getting 5 kids to sit for a
picture is impossible when wearing silly hats.

This is also my 100th post!  How exciting is that!??!  Thanks for humoring me and reading.  Looking forward to many more!

State of the Family #48

Whoops.  Its been a whole month plus a few days.  Thankfully, things have been pretty calm around here so there isn't too much to catch up on.

Most of the excitement around here has been with family happenings.  Cousin's birthday parties, baptisms and births.  Getting to meet new baby Broden aka "Gus"  on Feb. 3rd has definitely been a highlight.  It was hard on mommy seeing a baby boy with many resemblances to Noisy Man when he was a newborn.  Where does 5 1/2 years go?

The other highlight has been the final arrival of winter!  I can always do without the cold, but my motto is that if it is going to be cold at least give me some fun white stuff we can play in.  We all love to play in the snow.  Sledding, snowmen, forts, snow ice cream and my personal favorite, snow angels.  Then to come inside to some nice hot cocoa with cute rosy cheese and noses is the best!

I had been feeling pretty blessed to have such a healthy winter, but just heard on the radio yesterday that the flu is just starting to make its rounds.  Miss Firecracker and Miss Thumb Sucker got a nasty little cough and fever over the weekend but seem to be on the mend.  Miss Firecracker got the brunt of it and is still doing some breathing treatments on the nebulizer to keep it under control.  She gets into some doozies of coughing spells that just make your chest hurt watching her.  So far, everyone else has avoided it.

Noisy Man's 100 days of school project - his favorite thing - LEGOS

Mommy had her bi-annual scrap and only was able to accomplish finishing her digital calendar.  Oh well, fun time with the girls no matter how much you finish is always worth it, right?  I could adapt the old fishing saying to, "A bad day's scrapbooking is better than a good day's work"!  Totally true.  I also got to get pampered at out MOPS spa day, so much fun.

Noisy Man has been on a total Monopoly kick lately and is actually very good.  He is learning so much with numbers and adding and money stuff that it has a double whammy effect.  It keeps him entertained for hours and its educational!  Little stinker actually ends up winning 75% of the time too, without mommy and daddy even having to try to lose. 

Miss Thumb Sucker has finally crossed the threshold for potty training!  She hasn't had an accident in weeks and only has to wear pull-ups for bedtime, she even makes it through nap.  So. Fabulous.  She continues her ornery ways though, and I had just implemented a Pinterest find, the Time Out Jar.  If you put her in time out she just keeps getting up every 20 seconds to ask if she is done.  So, the time out jar was brought into play.  Shake it up when the time out starts and once all the glitter is at the bottom, you can get up.  Now she just has to learn not to continually move it around while she sits there so that it actually all gets to the bottom!

Miss Firecracker has learned to do a cartwheel and land on her feet!  She is so proud of herself.  And if I can learn how to upload a video on here you'll get to see it - if not a cute pic of her dance leg warmers will have to suffice (sorry).

Doing a fun Valentine's Day craft with red noodles!

That about sums it up.  Amazing how I can think nothing has gone one in the last month and then type on for 7 paragraphs.

No More Time-Outs

So, I had to get this down before I forgot it, and by the next time I have time to sit down and do an SOF, I'd probably forget.

Anyway, we were doing our little devotional which, tonight, was about God loving us so much that He sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins.  So, to bring it down to their level a little bit more, I said it was like one of them got into trouble for doing something naughty and mommy or daddy went and sat in time-out for them.  Or if one of Miss Thumb Sucker disobeyed and had to get a spanking but Noisy Man took the spanking for her.  It was really cool to see the connection being made on their faces.  We have told them this time and over again.  They can tell you very easily who Jesus is and what He did for us, but it was a really great analogy for them to be able to really understand it.

OK, so the real memorable part came a little later when we were doing bed-time prayers.  Miss Firecracker chimes in "We thank you for Jesus and that we won't ever have to sit in time-out again or get any spankings because he died on the cross for us."

Hillarious!  Of course I had to set the record straight and clean that up quickly, but we'll see what she says next time she gets into trouble.

Finally Finished It

I would be surprised if Waterbrook/Multnomah hasn't forgotten about me by now.  I finally finished my last blogging for books, book.

The Christmas Singing, by Cindy Woodsmall (I am hooked, OK) again, did not disappoint.  I love this author and everything she writes.

This was a wonderful, short story (I finished it in a couple of hours) that leaves you with a few tears in your eyes and a smile on your face.

In true Woodsmall fashion it is an Amish love story.  Mattie and Gideon, friends since childhood and a true love match, parted ways on very bad terms.  Mattie moved away and started a very successful business.  A turn of events leads Mattie back home to face Gideon.  There are things that were never cleared up between the two of them and, of course, Woodsmall has you turning every page to see if things will finally come to a happy ending.  She doesn't leave you hanging, except for maybe wanting more to read.

I received a digital copy of this book for free from Waterbrook/Multnomah Publishers for this review.

State of the Family #47

Whew!  Survived the Holidays.  With our last Christmas just occurring yesterday, we are finally done.  Now, that doesn't mean super-organized, on top of it all me has the Christmas tree and lights down yet, but we'll get there eventually.  I do actually have the tree undecorated it just needs to be lugged down the stairs, which I think I will leave to Daddy.

Christmas was good to us and I was so glad to have all my kids home all the time for almost 2 whole weeks!  Seriously.  I am not even being sarcastic.  I was so not ready to send them back to school.  There were way more things that we wanted to do before it was over.

At any rate, we had a great time.  It was a blast to get some real play time with my Noisy Man again.  We had some great Nerf fights (although quietly), pirate battles, coloring sessions and book reading times while his sisters were sleeping.  Have I ever mentioned that I am still not a big fan of this all-day, every-day kindergarten thing?

All the cousins at the Piper Christmas

We made the rounds to all the Christmases with all the grandparents and cousins.  We opened gifts and crammed them all into the van without ever having to strap a child on top to make it home.  Miss Thumb Sucker and Firecracker got a new Barbie house, Noisy Man got a Lego pirate ship.  They all got new clothes and tons of other fun things.  I have a counter full of advent crafts from a fabulous activity calendar we did this year called The Truth In the Tinsel.  It was a fabulous way to keep Christ at the center of all our activities.  Every night the kids would ask if we got to do another craft.  And we were busy enough that there were a few evenings we didn't get to the activities so we will have new ones to do next year. 

Miss Firecracker with some good buddies watching the afternoon
preschoolers sing at their Christmas party

Our weather has been unseasonably warm (almost concerningly so) so we
have been enjoying it to the fullest.  This is at the new part at our YMCA

We even did our first ever Christmas with just our family.  Usually we are so rushed between this event and that, that we aren't at home enough to do a little celebration of our own.  Thankfully, this year things slowed down a bit and we got to do it.  It was so nice just to have our three munchkins open a few gifts that they knew were just from Mommy and Daddy.  Next year I think I am going to try and have the kids get 'gifts' for each other somehow. 

The reindeer pancakes we had for breakfast Christmas morning!

We also all made a trip to the Omaha Children's Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit there that Noisy Man has been begging to go see for 6 months now.  We had a great time and they had some fun things, but we will probably stick to our favorite one in Lincoln (which we can since a membership there was one of our Christmas gifts this year!).  I would love to show some pictures of the great things they had in Omaha, but I forgot my camera at home that day.  It made me sad, but at the same time it was nice to just enjoy our time together with out having to interrupt things for a picture.

Back to the swing of things now.  Time to clean up and move on.  I am signed up for my 3rd Lincoln Half Marathon and am back in a better/more regular running routine.  Bible Studies, AWANAs, Basketball for Noisy Man, and all the other fun activities will be back in full swing this week as well.  Can't wait!