Some pictures of the guys.

Coming in from a campfire outside and too tuckered out to actually make it to bed.

Making our medieval pouches and dog biscuit Rudolph ornaments.

Silly smiles cannot be excluded!

A meal that only my kids would eat!

As most of you know, my children are known to eat foods that most of their peers probably would not touch! As we are finishing up tonight's meal, I thought I would share the wonderful meal that I prepared and was eaten with great anticipation. Tonight they wolfed down the following:

Emu Steaks (crockpotted with cream of mushroom soup)
Harvard Beets
Lima Beans
Mashed Potatoes
Frozen peas straight out of the bag

We are having a clean out the freezer week in preparation for Thanksgiving. The emu was gifted to us with our free freezer upon our move and it was time for it to be eaten (by the rest of the family - not me). The rest of the things are actual normal foods that get eaten at our house. But, I realized that it was a combination that may result in a battle of wills over the dinner table at other people's houses. JL is having the hardest time with the mashed potatoes actually - only my kids would have an issue with mashed potatoes and not the three vegetables that were served!

I hope that you had a very enjoyable meal tonight (last night) whatever it happened to be.

Reflections from today...

Today we hosted church at our house for the first time! We had a normal crowd today of around 40 people which was a full-house but still some elbow room. The first people arrived around 9:30 (right when I was jumping in the shower after a run) and the last person left around 4pm. In between time we had church, a meal, and lots of playing! It has been an outstanding day weather wise so Sunday School happened outside as well as most of the people outside as well. I enjoyed having church here and being able to host people in our house and having them feel comfortable enough to spend hours and hours here. I was even motivated enough to clean the kitchen even though my husband offered. We may have left the wrong impression with some of our visitors though - it seems that the most violent toys (Styrofoam swords, Nerf guns) are the ones that came out at the beginning of the morning and even stuck around through part of church! The college guys were having a bunch of fun with them - they are just amazing how much they play with the boys! We host through this month - we'll see if we get asked again or not!

Tomorrow we start our next week of homeschool. I have just been blown away by how much I have enjoyed homeschool. Here are just a few reasons why...
1. We don't have to get up and out of the house by a certain time. (I don't have to nag which makes me very happy.)
2. We or the boys can go different places during the week or for weeks at at time. (Currently there have been at least four weeks that they have been out of town during the week - and there are more planned.)School is portable and they can learn all kinds of things everywhere!
3. I get to spend quality, structured, meaningful time with my boys and I know what they are learning! For the day that they do school somewhere else during the week, I hear so little about the day. I can't imagine that being the case 5 days a week! When I know that I have done school with them, I don't have guilt having them entertain themselves.
4. I get to filter what my children are exposed to...I am OK with them being sheltered. That doesn't mean that they don't have socialization, they have a lot of that!
5. We don't have to do homework...we can stop when we are tired and we can press on when we are in a groove!
6. I am enjoying what we are learning and am learning fun things too! Grandma read the a book the week that they spent with her and now I want to go and read it too!

Last thoughts - running. I really wanted to do another 1/2 marathon this fall. It just hasn't worked out to get that done. My running partners got a 13 mile run in one Sunday morning that I wasn't able to join them. This morning was supposed to be my morning to get it in but for some reason all during the week I didn't prepare my body or mind for the race. For some reason I had it in my mind that I would wake up this morning and crank out 13 miles just like it was nothing. I have trained so it's not like I was thinking I would go out cold, but it's still 13 miles and I haven't done that many miles since the August race. I didn't really drink enough water for days and I didn't do any carb loading and I didn't mentally prepare myself to keep running for over two hours straight. So this morning when I woke up (I didn't even set an alarm and we were having church at our house at 10) and it was raining, it was God telling me that it wasn't my day. The rain stopped but it wasn't enough time to try and get 13 miles in, so I got about 5 in and came home to do final touches for church. Not sure if it will actually happen yet this month or not! Right now I have to be OK with not getting it in...I run to keep in shape and that's really the overall goal.

That's the reflection on Sunday - I'm off to bed leaving Todd and his friend studying for a test tomorrow!