Magnificiant Moments Monday

Our Magnificiant Moments from this past week:

1. Making Ekmek, a Greek dessert, we made in celebrating learning about the Ancient Greece. We ended the chapter on the Greeks having the first Olympics and so they would feast and party. So we made a Greek dessert in honor of thier parties!

Girls mixing the pudding!

Below: Making our own syrup.

Final product and it was yummy!

2. We found John actually reading a book all by himself without us asking him to! He is such a great reader, but not confident enough to motivate himself to see if he can read a book. Great picture for us to have.

3. All the kids helped our church stuff Easter Eggs with candy for our FIRST Annual Easter Egg Hunt. They were so eggcited!

A New Favorite and the Wisdom Wall

My new favorite book that has helped me out with train my kids is Parenting with Scripture by Kara Durbin. It is a great book that is divided by different topics and gives verses that go along, as well as, discussions for you and your children to have regarding the topics. Then it gives you an action to do to reinforce those values. Click this link to see an inside view of this wonderful book. We have been using this as a great bible time at the beginning of our school day. When I am instructing the kids it is a great reference to what God has to say about different issues that they are dealing with. And since I don't have the book with me at all teaching moments, I made my own wisdom wall that I can glance at whenever I need it. I can also have the kids come over and read a definition of what they have done and the the corresponding verse. Depending on what they have done they can copy it out for me. It has taken me seven years to figure out how to handle my scatterbrain self and with disciplining my kids (they even have to remind about their punishments sometimes, sad I know!)! Post notes everywhere!!! The verse I am working on James 1:19, "Everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." Is laminated and posted on my bathroom mirror. All the cards on the Wisdom Wall are laminated so that I won't have to do it again! 8-) They are taped so I can easily take them off to have a child right it out and then stick it back on the wall. Now, I didn't do all of the topics, just ones that they are working on right now...that seem to be a problem. As you can see, there are enough. I have had to use the wall from time to time for my attitude too! So, it has been a great reminder for me as to what God really wants me to do! Check out this book, it has been such a great resource for me. I just "stumbled" upon it, although I think Someone much bigger than me actually tripped my feet to find it! I hope this book encourages you, as it has me. Happy Parenting!

Sparks-a-rama pics and video...2nd place!

We had fun cheering our oldest on at the Awana Sparks-a-rama this past Saturday. I didn't do Awana growing up, Pioneers was my thing. Jason was the MASTER at the beanbag races, so it didn't surprise us when our son was amazing as well (see video below). Bethel, our team, was tied for most of the day. The other team pulled it out at the last minute and we got second. It was fun! He can't wait to do it next year. The girls on the other hand don't mind to just come and cheer. 8-)

Jason and twin #2 cheering our son on
Our oldest waiting for his turn

The best cheerleaders a boy could ever have!

I am so proud of him!

He is the one that looks like he is going to take off!

Broken dryer...no blogging

Our dryer broke last week so I have been trying to catch up...therefore...no bloggging. More post soon to come. Our oldest was in the Awana Olympics and came in second. He rocked at the bean bag race. More to come and fun videos soon!

Fun times with family!

This past week we headed to Michigan to celebrate the annual March birthdays. Jason's mom, brother and sister-in-law all have birthdays in March. It was great to spend time with them and to have the kids around grandpa. We packed our school work and brought it with us, so the kids had a good time curling up with grandpa to do their reading work to him. He enjoyed it too! Our littlest one just LOVED snuggling up with him, she couldn't get

enough. Wes was doing so much better than the last time we saw him! He truly is a walking miracle and we are blessed to see him getting stronger. This is a picture of us at a nature center Jason use to go to when he was little. We love going there during Maple Syrup time. The trees are tapped and we get to enjoy the first few days of spring weather! We also got to go to the new water park that opened up in a hotel right down the road from Jason's parents. We had planned on going there this past Christmas, but it didn't work out. So we were able to tackle it this weekend. Here are some pictures of the fun times we had! Our oldest said that it was the best time he EVER had! That must have been some great fun!!! Next Christmas I think we will have to return!!!

This is our oldest flying down the water slide. It was cool, it even went outside (enclosed of course)! Jason is going to hate that I put this on here, but do you notice his stomach???? This is actually better than a few days before. That is where he kept having to put th e Lovonox shots in his stomach. Ugh! I admired him for doing it himself. So far, right now he is off of them!

What an exciting week!

Due to time I will keep this quick...
Tuesday my husband had to be rushed to the ER due to heart palpitations, dizziness, sweats, chills, and he was about to faint. When he arrived his blood pressure was 154/111 and pulse was bouncing all around, so they rushed him back for an EKG and CAT scan to rule out heart attack and blood clots in the lungs (due to how his heart was beating out of control it could have produced blood clots). The admitted him and monitored his heart for two days. During the first day they gave him and Echocardiogram and determined his heart was normal, then proceeded to give him medicine to try and make his heart get back on a normal pace. After a few hours the medicine finally worked and they kept him till the next day just to make sure it stayed controlled. They will be monitoring his heart for the next month to determine what caused this huge attack. He has had small episodes, which we didn't realize were a problem for a few years. They put him on blood thinners to make sure there weren't any blood clots. The thing I didn't like was that one of the doctors just said he wanted to go on the blood thinnners as a precation, but didn't inform us it was because his levels were so elevated that it could have caused a stroke. His regular doctor informed us today of that when we dug a little deeper. Please pray that as they watch his heart over the next month that they will figure out what is triggering these irregular fibllirations and especially pray that he won't have another "BIG" episode. He never wants to go through that again. I have never seen him so terrified. Thankfully, his only restriction is contact sports, so no tackle football for him. Good thing he is into baseball!