Ice Skating Adventures..

So we tried ice skating... 

We have a friend who's mom has a pond in the backyard. It is perfect because I can sit inside and watch the kids outside.

We arrived at their house around 4, no one was home. So we didn't trust getting on the pond even tho we had permission.

After some discussion and a quick phone call, we asked friends of friends if we could skate on their creek. They had not checked it since the rain, so no it wasn't safe yet. 

The kids were just so disappointed..

So we stopped at a farm a couple miles from our house, random people that usually have tons of kids on their pond. I gathered my courage and asked the farmer for permission. They gave permission and their boys joined our kids on the ice!

I had 5 kids settled on the ice..Lee refused to wear his new skates. David didn't have skates and wanted Elizabeth's skates. Elizabeth happily skated in her borrowed skates. Meanwhile Fayth crawled around on the ice in her new skates and refused to get on her feet.

We had prepared warm clothes for everyone, but Miss Nesiah was not happy that she had to sit out in the cold (wrapped in warm blanket). Less then ten minutes after getting the big kids on the ice, Nesiah started wailing. She does not cry often. But when she does, we listen.

So I drug the wheelchair and the screaming toddler across the field back to the van. Where much to the delight of 2 boys in the parking lot, I tackled getting two wailing kiddoes into the van!!


The 4 big kids were able to enjoy another 15 minutes on the ice while I calmed the littles in the van and warmed them up!


Tomorrow we shall try again.. without Abi. 

Tis The Season To Give

Christmastime...
We started off strong, with big ideas of what we wanted to do for the Holidays. We did a couple projects and had lots of fun. But somewhere in the last 2 weeks, I got to busy and had to many unbloggables to deal with and we lost our Holiday spirit. Christmas did not look like  I wanted it too. 

But we did a couple fun projects. 

We found this pinterest project that I thought would be simple, quick and fun. 

Pinterest and I do NOT MIX!!
We used modge podge and epsom salt to coat pint jars. The goal was to make them look like snow. Yea, we were highly unsuccessful. 

We did print these cute tags off pinterest that turned out nice. We laminated them, cut them out, punched holes then attached them to the pint jars.

The kids did 90% of this project and truly enjoyed it!

I made a homemade hot cocoa mix that we poured into the jars along with small marshmallows. 

The kids had a lot of fun making these and handing them out to bus drivers, teachers, therapists, and neighbors. 

We also fixed a surpise package to send to our far away cousins. The kids had so much fun, buying and wrapping up these gifts. We shipped it off with orders to be opened on Christmas Day! 

The kids had been begging to go Christmas Caroling. They really wanted to do that this year. I missed the homeschool group event.
One day in the middle of all our medical appointments, our sweet bus drivers did us a huge favor. So we decided to bake Christmas cookies especially for them. 

We had extra cookies, so the kiddoes asked if they could deliver some to our friends. A light bulb moment.. I had them take the cookies and sing for our neighbors! They had so much fun!!

Food Prep

We canned some of the  50 lbs of carrots/celery/potato mix to be used in chicken noodle soup.




In years past (prior to a having so many kiddoes) I would cook chicken and add it to my mix. I simply did not think I could manage all of that at this time. 

However, I had a large turkey in my freezer! I cooked that turkey, served some for dinner and bagged the rest for the freezer! 

Now when I want chicken noodle soup, I just dump a can of my veggie mix, a bag of my frozen turkey and some broth into my crockpot! Simple, delicious meal in minutes! We add rice or rice past in the last hour before serving it!