A day of activity

Today I was able to go to a big homeschool fair in Perry, GA. I went last year and enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun to go again this year! They always have lots of great used books to look at and a good bit of homeschool curriculum to take a look at. Each time I've been I've gotten ideas for what I would like to do with Sophie when she gets a little older. It makes me more and more excited about homeschooling her! I was also able to get her several Veggie Tales videos, an Elmo video (she's already watched it once and loves it!), Cinderella, and the cartoon Robin Hood. We have a VHS player in our minivan, so these will hopefully provide some new entertainment!

After the fair, I went to Hobby Lobby for the first time. What a neat place! My friend, Machelle, was going, so I kind of followed her over to the fabric dept. She told me they have great fabric there. I headed over there and saw lots of cute stuff! I got a little bit and my wheels started turning on a potential project I have wanted to do for Sophie. Ok...but I have about zero sewing abilities! But for some reason I believe that I will be able to sew her something! But this time...I actually took some action! No one was at the house to help me get started with my great-aunt's sewing machine that was passed to me from my grandmother. Mom has used it before, but I haven't! Well, I get that baby unfolded from it's little table and start trying to figure it out. Immediately I dial Mom's number. She couldn't remember all about the way mine works, so I got the manual out. I got my bobbin threaded!! Yay! I got it in, and threaded my needle. Then I started practicing and ran into a few issues. I kept practicing and thought I got it. Then I got out my fabric that I had already cut out and pinned. Here it goes...my first seam. It went pretty well until something messed up with the machine and I have a bunched up stitch and then no stitch at all for about an inch and a half. Boo! Mom suggested I stop and try to get someone over to help me figure out what's going on. I didn't get even part of the way done, but maybe someone will be available tomorrow to come help me figure it out. But hey...I got pretty far for never having done this on my own before. And who knows...maybe I'll end up liking this sewing thing!!

Here's the old Singer and my cute fabric on the side. I hope the little dress turns out!!

Blessings!

Queen for a day

Well, this morning we loaded up the car and headed to Macon so that I could go to the doctor. Coughing hard for the sixth day has taken it's toll and I had to get it checked out. I found out that, yes, I have a prescription-worthy cough and have an ear infection! Who'd a thought?! Mom comes with me and the kiddos to the appointment and we decide to go to Ingleside Village Pizza for lunch! Yay! That place is AWESOME! Dad met us there and took Sophie and my niece with him so that mom and I could have some "girl time"...well, girl time plus a little one in tow. Mom, Isaac, and I headed off to a new mall in north Macon and Mom told me she was going to take me shopping. She told me I was Queen for the Day. We had so much fun trying on dresses and both found one for my sister's wedding that will be in September. Then we got smoothies at Smoothie King. I've never had one from there before and it was good. Mom then told me that she and Dad would watch the kids and I could go get a pedicure. Wow! Mom knew just what I needed. Then Mom cooked a great supper for all of us and she and Dad are keeping Sophie until Friday so that I can get some rest and recuperate from being sick. Being Queen for the Day was the sweetest, greatest thing I could've ever wanted today. I needed that this week. Thanks, Mom! I hope all of you moms out there get to be Queen for the Day sometime soon!

God bless..

Love this book!

I mentioned before that for Sophie's second birthday, we had a storybook party. My friend LeeAnn came (she's an Usborne books consultant) and basically hosted for me. One of the books we put on Sophie's wish list was this book. Her uncle got it for her. We just got it this past week because it was on back order. I started looking at it the other night and it is AWESOME!! I would highly recommend it if you enjoy cooking and learning about other parts of the world. The pictures are very colorful and give great step by step instructions. A few of the recipes call for some ingredients that might be hard to obtain, but for the most part it's doable. It also has special pages introducing different fruits and vegetables from around the world. I'm looking forward to doing some of these recipes with Sophie along with studying the different countries that they come from. You could develop an entire Social Studies unit based on this one book! (Can you tell I used to be a teacher?!) I always loved Social Studies when I was in school. I hope to pass some of this on to my kiddos. I also hope that I can pass on world vision that will encourage the kids to pray for God to work in the hearts of those in different parts of the world. Anyway, I couldn't pass up a chance to recommend this to all of you!

God bless!

Weekend Adventure

Well, we definitely had an adventure this weekend! Joe performed a wedding this weekend in Douglass, GA, so we had planned to go on Friday night, come back, go back on Saturday for the wedding and then come back again. We were going to leave Sophie with a family member and just take Isaac. Friday morning, our family member called and told us she was sick and one of her children was getting sick, too! We felt bad for them! We had to think fast, be spontaneous, and decided to get a hotel room in Douglass, pack up, and get the kids ready! So we loaded up the minivan and headed on our way! The adventure begins! We had a fun time, even though I had developed a cold. I took Sophie to the indoor pool, even though it was COLD, and we had fun splashing around. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep...Sophie was sleeping on a blow up mattress part of the night and with me part of the night. Isaac slept with me the first part of the night and in his pack-and-play the rest. We did get a late check-out--YAY! The wedding was nice and we headed back late Saturday night. I've still got a cold (please pray for me!) and we got to catch up on some rest Sunday. We'll add this one to the list of Daniel family adventures!

Pizza fun

My friend Elizabeth had a fun idea a few months ago for her son's little birthday get-together...making homemade pizzas! Sophie loved it (as seen above)! And the pizzas were very good. She had some pizza sauce in a jar to go on it and we added cheese and other toppings...turkey pepperoni, onions (which surprisingly Sophie loved), and ham. I thought this was a neat idea and wanted to pass it on. Here is her pizza dough recipe (from moneysavingmom.com):

Homemade Pizza in Less Than 30 Minutes

Pizza Crust:1 Tbsp. active dry yeast

1 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F.)

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

2 1/2 cups flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the rest of the ingredients in and mix.

Dump onto a floured surface.

Knead into a smooth dough (five minutes or so).

Roll out and press down onto a greased pizza pan.

Add toppings. (Have fun and be creative with this! Our favorite variety is salsa or barbecue sauce, diced cooked chicken, and cheese.)

Bake at 450 degrees F. for around 12-15 minutes until the crust looks crispy and lightly browned.
By the way, you can make up a double or triple batch of the pizza crust dough and freeze the extras if you don't need it. This speeds up the preparation even more as all you have to do is pull out a bag of dough and a bag of chopped cooked chicken in the morning and then put the pizza together right before you're ready to eat. You can also freeze the pizzas already cooked but I doubt it would ever stay uneaten long enough to make it to the freezer around here!

Hope you enjoy!

Blessings!

Loving cream cheese! (*slightly edited...*)

Ok...I don't know about ya'll, but cream cheese is awesome to me!! I could eat that stuff with just about anything! Something I did today that I got from my friend Keisha is to pour salsa over cream cheese. It was great with the sandwich I had for lunch. I actually have been eating my salsa with reduced fat wheat thins and I like it just as much, if not more, than eating with tortilla chips. My grandmother gets pepper jelly...which I normally would have nothing to do with...and pours it over cream cheese...and it's awesome for parties or as a snack. One of my favorite party foods or even a great dessert for the family is fruit pizza. It has cream cheese, of course, and it is very good! Here is the recipe, complements of http://www.cooks.com/ (one of my favorite websites for recipes):

Fruit Pizza

• 2 packages of cream cheese
• 1 roll refridgerated sugar cookie dough
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)
• Pizza pan
• Assorted fruit...suggestions: kiwi, strawberries, mandarin oranges, blue or black berries, bananas, marachino cherries

Spread cookie dough over pizza pan. Cook the crust as directed on wrapper. In a bowl, microwave cream cheese until soft. Add vanilla and sugar. Spread cream cheese mixture on top of cooled cookie. Cut and lay fruit in circles. Serve immediately.

Hope you enjoy! *Another great way to serve it is to just bake the easy sugar cookies that are already sliced and let them cool really good and then spread the mixture over it and put the fruit on there. That way you can have little individual fruit pizzas...easy to serve and you don't have to cut! Great for kids, too!* I will hopefully post some great party food recipes soon. My family LOVES to do party foods for family get-togethers, game nights, etc. If you have any great recipes, I'd love to have them...especially if they're fast and easy!

God bless!

Playing with Water

Our little girl, Sophie, loves to play in the water. Saturday I thought it would be good to take her outside and let her play in the baby pool and with the water hose. It just seems like lately we've been staying inside a lot. I'm always feeling like I'm tired or need to catch up on something in the house after being busy over the weekend. I felt like we were due for some outside activity. Boy, did she love it! She was having a blast with the hose and the baby pool. The water was cold, too, even though it was warm outside. Here she is having fun...

Not only does Sophie love to play in the water hose outside, she loves to play with water on the inside, too! Mommy has a fun time keeping Sophie out of the toilet! So that leads us to the next story about Sophie playing with water. Poor Cindy doll. Cindy came to us from Thailand. She was given to me several years ago by my friend Sherry as a gag gift on my birthday. Little did she know that one day my little girl would claim Cindy as her own! Cindy is almost as tall as Sophie. Sophie was toting her around the other day and before I could turn around, Sophie had dipped Cindy's feet in the toilet! Cindy got her first foot washing and, poor thing, had to be hung to dry.

Isaac thought it was pretty funny, too! Hopefully the next time we play in the water it'll be outside and not inside! ;-)

Blessing to you and yours!