Summer Monday at Home

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” - Jane Austen

Monday is usually a home day for us. Not really sure why, but it has just always seemed to work out that way. After a busy weekend, Monday just has always been a day to get the laundry done and stay close to home.
Matthew started his orchard job today, so we won't be seeing him at home most of the day for the next few weeks. He drives a tractor during the apricot harvest. They start early in the morning (about 5:30am!) and are usually done around 2pm. He is usually pretty hot and tired by the time he gets home.
So today, Kelsey and I stayed home and were able to do a few fun things together...

Making and spending more money than we will ever see

Homemade Snickerdoodles...yum!

It is Monday, so there was laundry to be done

No sense of baking all the cookie dough, so we flash froze some to be baked later


Letter from Lina arrived!


We started taking all the pictures off of the project boards from Matthew's graduation...


...and started adding them to the album for him to keep
This letter was an extra surprise today! There was a letter addressed to Kevin from Compassion. There was nothing on the front of the letter indicating that it might be a letter from his correspondent child, Murimi, from Kenya. Back in November, we put some items together for Murimi and sent them to Kenya with our friends who are over there this year working with Agape Children's Ministry. They dropped the package off at the Compassion country office to be delivered to Murimi.
Along with a nice long letter, we received these 3 photographs of Murimi! The first picture shows Murimi holding the gallon size ziploc bag of items we sent over. The next picture shows Murimi wearing the t-shirt and shorts we bought for him and he is holding the 2 Hot Wheels cars that were in the package. The last picture at the bottom shows Murimi holding the snowman picture the my husband made for Murimi as well as the paper snowflakes on his head! What a special treat this was!
Did anything special happen on your Monday?


Be a Blessing

One of the best things about being an advocate with Compassion International is the opportunity I have to help find sponsors for children living in extreme poverty.

Right now, I have 4 children who would love to be blessed by someone who will sponsor them, pray for them, and write to them regularly. Would you like to be that person for one of these children?

 Kornelius is 9 years old and lives in Indonesia. He lives with his mother and helps her by washing clothes. He enjoys playing with cars and telling stories.

 Dede is from Ghana, and she lives at home with her parents, as well as one sibling. Her household chores are running errands and cleaning. Dede likes to play house, run, and play group games.

 Yancy lives with her mother and one sibling in El Salvador. For fun, Yancy enjoys art, playing with dolls, and running. She helps at home with gardening, making beds, and running errands

Nithin lives in India with his parents and one sibling. He helps at home by carrying water, washing clothes, and making beds. His favorite activities are ping pong, volleyball, and singing. Nithin has also been waiting 7 months for a sponsor.

If you would like to sponsor one of these children, please reply to this post or send me an e-mail at kymk99 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

So happy to find!

Last week was our local homeschool curriculum swap. If I had planned it a little better, I could have boxed up some items and been out there selling some things that I don't need anymore. But the kids and I headed over and as I was looking around, I found a couple of things I was really excited about!

My first find was 'Before Five in a Row' by Jane Claire Lambert. Now you might be thinking, why did she need to purchase this book when she just graduated her first student and her other student is 12? Good question! I went through this book with Kelsey when she was little and I really loved the format. However, I loaned the book to someone years ago and have never seen it come back.

One of the reasons I want to keep this book on hand is in the hopes of one day having grandchildren and being able to spend time with them like my friend, Copperswife. I love that she is able to spend an afternoon each week with her grandchildren, teaching them some fun lessons and spending time together.  What a blessing that must be for her, her daughter, and her grandchildren.

This book was a great bargain! The person was selling it for $2! Now I already have this book, but I have the older edition. This new edition has over 100 new pages included of new material! I may give my older edition to one of the young moms at church who are considering homeschooling.

I like to read homeschooling books like this one over the summer. Like Clay and Sally say in the preface, "This book is designed to give you, a Christian parent and home educator, greater confidence in the stewardship of your children." My homeschool journey is not over. Kelsey and I will be spending the next 5 to 6 years together. Even though I have one homeschool graduate under my belt, there is still room for me to learn and improve so that I can continue to 'train up my children in the way they should go'.

What homeschool books are your favorites?

Compassion Letter Writing Fingerpaint Project

Last night we held our monthly Compassion Sponsor Letter Writing Night. We were hoping to work on this project for each one of our kids:

However, we soon found out that painter's tape doesn't come off of fingerpaint paper very well:

The original project was done on canvas, and we know we can't send canvas to our Compassion kids so we used fingerpaint paper instead. The paper started to rip in some places, so we decided to still use the fingerpainting, but in a couple of different ways.

I went ahead and fingerpainted a page for each one of our sponsored kids and my correspondent kids

Then, I drew out the letters of their names that could be cut out and glued to the fingerpaint page

Here is the one for Xiomara
One for Abner
My husband decided to cut the letters out of the fingerpainted paper.
I love how these turned out and can't wait for all the kids to receive them!

Blueberries!

Today, the kids and I were able to head out for a day trip with some friends of ours. Our first stop was the $1 movie at our local Regal theater.

Today, we saw the Kit Kittredge movie. Everyone really enjoyed it!
Then we drove over to the blueberry place! After a picnic lunch, we found our buckets and worked our way over to the blueberry bushes.
They look ready to work!
After 90 to 100 degree weather over the weekend, then cooler and rain yesterday, today was a perfect day for picking blueberries!
We ended up with 10.5 pounds of blueberries, one pound more than last year... :o)
After we get home, I start sorting through them all. We usually end up with some green ones and squishy ones that need to be tossed.
I line a cookie sheet with wax paper and fill the tray with a layer of good berries.
Once the tray is full, the tray goes in the freezer for a couple of hours.
After the berries are frozen, I put one cup of berries in a snack size bag. These bags go into a larger freezer bag and are stored in the freezer. This is a great way to have 'fresh' berries all year long for muffins, smoothies, etc.
Have you done any fun summer things yet?