sick again

i have strep throat. i have no doctor. friday night i felt yucky. saturday morning i prayed for God to provide a way for me to see my friend and fellow soccer mom, marijo. i haven't seen her much this season (if at all) because our sons are not on the same team right now. BUT today, who shows up to watch my boys play? marijo. really it was her son luke who wanted to come to the game and they finished up an appointment early, so they came. but really God sent marijo to me. so i asked her to check my throat and she confirmed i had strep and needed to get an antibiotic. i went straight to the clinic in our local pharmacy where the NP promptly told me she did not think i had strep and it would cost me extra to send my culture to the lab if the rapid-strep test came up negative. but the test came up positive and i got my antibiotic and 3 hours later, i'm feeling better!

(i'll refrain from posting pictures of my throat).

more books & incentives

okay. i have to add minute boys of lexington (historical fiction, revolutionary war) to our favorites list. if we had time to read the sequel minute boys of bunker hill, i am sure that would be on there as well.

and in-n-out is offering a reading incentive: read 5 books for a free burger! the kids signed up tuesday and yesterday (friday) they said, "can we go get our burgers?" i reminded them they needed to read 5 books and they had only read 3. they all hunkered down and read 2 more books so they could get their certificates that night before the library closed at 5pm. we went straight from the library to in-n-out. thankfully, they can earn 2 more burgers each and i think i can get a lot more reading out of them now! :)

books we're reading

we've been having so much fun with books this fall. we're still working through the chronicles of narnia series. (and watching the BBC movie after each book). our favorite book last month was Stories of the Pilgrims. and this month we're already picking our favorites: carry on, mr bowditch and alone, yet not alone.

the 2nd (alone) is fantastic. i read it first because when we first got it through interlibrary loan, i looked at it and decided not to read it to the children. the story is about a german girl who is taken during the french & indian war. the indians kill her father in their home and take the girl to their indian village to be raised as an indian. (i thought this storyline might be to scary for my kids). but throughout the book we see the girl rely on her faith in Christ and trust Him no matter what. when i finished it, i really wanted at least the older boys to read it because it was such a fine display of living out faith and trusting God through extreme circumstances. they agreed to listen to the first 2 chapters and then decide if they wanted to hear the rest. after that, they were hooked. even one of the librarians who heard me reading to them said it sounded so good she wanted to read it. i said i highly recommended it! i really love the CC resource list - we get so many great reads out of it. like this one, where we gain understanding of the french & indian war and are encouraged in our faith!

crockpot

made apple dumplings in the crockpot.

had to not make the teriyaki meatballs planned for dinner because my crockpot was already in use. (i never thought i'd need 2 crockpots until now - and now i consider that if i ever have to live in a hotel, 2 crockpots may come in handy, so maybe it wouldn't be a waste to buy another and for sure, i'll get one with a timer)...

anyway. just wanted to share, i've got a ton of crockpot recipes from

crockpot365.blogspot.com

including the super-yummy apple dumplings we just finished!

astronomy

this fall, we are studying astronomy using exploring God's creation by apologia. we are really enjoying it so far. pics of some of the experiments we've done:

LA County Fair

Scott was able to take time to go to the fair with us. I had planned to go a couple weeks ago with the DiPeppino's who we went with last year, but i totally forgot and they went alone. i was planning to go friday, but scott said if we went today he could go along, so we packed up the kids and went! here's the photos...

our day at the fair

bees

pig races

picking pretend fruit, pretend vegetables, and milking a pretend cow - it's LA

community activist

i was annoyed to find out that the city planned to make it illegal for me to cross the street near my house. i cross at this intersection, maybe, once a month to go to the local park. it turned out that they decided that since there are a few irresponsible high school kids crossing there during high traffic times, they should ban all people from crossing at all times. i say no. so i wrote to the city and said "no thank you". then took the older boys to visit our city engineer. he was fabulous and invited us all back to his office and showed us how he can see all over the city on his big flat screen right there in the office by looking at different traffic cameras! it was really neat and he was great with the boys.

still, i thought they should only ban pedestrian crossings during high traffic hours, so this afternoon, i went to the city traffic commission meeting to say so. turns out a bunch of elderly neighbors also cross there to get to the shopping center on my side of the street. consequently, they decided to take a better look at it and recommended only restricting pedestrians during high traffic hours. yay!