Thankful Thursday!!

*A drawing Isaac did as we studied the Last Week of Jesus for school this week. Hope to post more details on that soon! :)

22) God’s forgiveness
23) A toothbrush
24) Each of the ladies in my Sunday School class
25) Children who do a great job of helping around the house
26) Flying a kite
27) A hubby that provides for his family
28) An empty tomb (Jesus is ALIVE!)

Trying to get a picture of...

 the three little ones...

 is not as easy a task as I may think!

 These are priceless...

 funny...

 and sooo cute!!

These three are such a blessing and joy to our family!! They are in their matching PJ's, which Elijah has already outgrown. :)

Breakfast Casserole

Once a week we have breakfast for supper and everyone loves it!! I was making eggs, biscuits, gravy, and a meat. It would take me forever to get it all ready and then I struggled to have everything warm at the same time. Also I did have a couple of children (Isaac and Sarah) that wanted an omelet.

Well, after reading one of my favorite websites (Heavenly Homemakers) I came across her recipe for a breakfast casserole. It sounded so easy and very similar to an omelet. :) I just had to give it a try!! Of coarse I changed it up to our liking. So here is our version...

Breakfast Casserole

12 eggs
3/4 cup of milk
1/4 tsp of pepper (or more if you like)
1/2 tsp of salt
1 lb of sausage
1/3 cup of bell pepper diced up
1/2 cup of cheese

Brown your sausage and drain. In a bowl beat together eggs, salt, pepper, and milk. Pour egg mixture in a 9x13 greased casserole dish. sprinkle bell pepper, cheese, and sausage on top and then with a fork gently stir them in. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until egg is set and done. Serve with biscuits and gravy for a delicious breakfast or supper. :) Enjoy!!!

Thankful Thursday!

So THANKFUL for:

15) The laughter that fills our home
16) Healthy children
17) For the opportunity to homeschool our children
18) A husband that leads his family closer to Jesus
19) Parents that make the 4 hour trip to come and spend time with us
20) Warm water to take a shower or bath
21) A dishwasher :)

Chewy Granola Bars

During our read week the kids and I made these very yummy chewy granola bars! I wanted to share the recipe.

Chewy Granola Bars

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 cup oats (I used old fashioned)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup coconut flakes
(you can add any of your own personal add ins (nuts, dried fruits, etc.) your add ins together should total one cup)

Melt peanut butter, honey, and coconut oil together on medium heat. Once oil is melted remove from heat and add in oats and stir. Next stir in chocolate chips and coconut flakes. The chocolate chips will melt which cause it to be the chocolate granola bars. :) Pour into a 9x9 greased casserole dish. Refrigerate for 2 hours or until firm and serve. I put mine in the freezer for 30 minutes and they were just right. You have to keep them in the fridge or they will melt. :)

You can find the original recipe here.

**UPDATE: 3/16/2013- I made these yesterday and wanted to share my adjustments...1/4 cup of chocolate chips, 1/2 cup of coconut flakes, and 1/4 cup of chopped pecans. They didn't last long around here!

The Camp Kids Blog

I wanted to post a few pictures of Isaac at one of his turkey shoots. You can go to Isaac and Sarah's blog here to read about this turkey shoot and other things that those two are up to. :)

They have so much fun blogging for family and friends to see what they are doing. I try and get them to blog atleast once a month. I think it is good for them to learn how to blog and use the internet and also journaling for memories.

I love these two handsome men!! So thankful for this picture and for the time these two spend together. :)

Read Across America Week (Day 4 & 5)

On day 4 of our read week our Dr. Seuss book was Fox in Socks.

So the kids put on "silly socks". Now if I can just find the matches when they are washed. :)

Then we drew a picture of our favorite story or book.

I think they ended up enjoying this so much that they drew all kinds of things.

Getting creative!

Lots of fun!!

I think we will do this more often!

Bryan has been gone this week to a conference, which is why it was a great week for us to do "Read Across America Week". A sweet friend from church made lasagna for the kids and I Wednesday night. We had it for lunch yesterday and it was sooo very yummy!! :)

For day 5 our book was Oh, the places you will go.

I gave each of the kids a map to color, but Isaac and Sarah had to color the states that they had been to. They both have been to 11 different states!!

Sarah was helping Timothy. He did such a great job coloring all the states. So proud of him! :)

Elijah colored his "Man in the map" and did really well. He even colored an american flag on the back of his map. He is doing so good in his learning. I am a very proud mother! :)

Joanna had so much fun coloring with the big kids! She is growing up way too fast!!

We had such a great reading week! Our goal was 50 books and we made it!!! As a reward I let the kids get something from our reward box. Isaac and Sarah did a great job of making sure we met our goal!

Read Across America Week (Day 2 and Day 3)

You can see our first "Read Across America Day" here. Then you can read about our "Read Across America Week" (Day 1) last year here. I told about those yesterday but forgot to give a link to those in case anyone wanted to see what we did before. :)

Our Dr. Seuss book for Day 2 this week was "Hop on Pop". So many rhyming words, so we did a fun craft with a few rhyming words. We made homemade granola bars...yummy!

 These homemade granola bars are supper yummy! I found the recipe here. I will post this recipe soon.

 We took plastic Easter eggs and made these cute rhyming words eggs. I found this idea on Pinterest.

 I have been letting the big kids take turns reading through out the day and it has been a great time for all of them!

On Day 3 we had a birthday party for Dr. Seuss!!! Every birthday has a gift, right? So the kids got to open a gift.

 It was this Dr. Seuss book! This was our Dr. Seuss book for the day!

 At birthday party's you play games, right? So the kids played a fishing game! So much fun!

 Every birthday party has a birthday cake, right? So we made Dr. Seuss a chocolate cake with white icing! The cake is a whole wheat chocolate cake that I found the recipe here. The icing I tried was a ganache and I wasn't happy with how it turned out. I am sure I did something wrong. LOL!!

 We sung "Happy Birthday" and blew out candles. :)

We had so much fun and are so enjoying our "Read Across America Week" here at our home!!

Read Across America Week (Day 1)

Two years ago I came across this "Read Across America Day" and thought we would celebrate too. It is in celebration of Dr. Seuss' birthday (March 2). That year we just celebrated the one day. We had lots of fun and the kids read a total of 9 books in that one day (our goal for this week is 50 books), also we had a neighbor come over and read to the kids.

Last year I saw where some schools were celebrating all week and calling it "Read Across America Week"! That sounded like lots of fun...a whole weeks worth of fun! So last year we did a whole week of reading.

This year the "Read Across America Day" slipped up on me. God is sooo good...it has been great that we are celebrating this week and not last week (more details on that later). :) I wanted to share with you what we are doing each day and hopefully next year you will have lots of ideas for "Read Across America Day Week"!

Day 1 was Cat in the Hat. This is one of the Dr. Seuss books we didn't have so I was in a hunt for this book over the weekend. I found two and yes I got both of them...one was at Goodwill for $.50 and the other one was at a consignment sale for $.75!!

Cat in the Hat was the theme book for this year and so I made it our day one book. Along with reading a different Dr. Seuss book each day I wanted to do a food and a craft.

For Monday's food we made these really cute "Cat in the Hat's" hat with strawberries and bananas. Isaac actually came up with this idea and it was perfect!!!

Isaac just stacked his up but the other kids used straws to put theirs on.

Joanna was loving this!

Sarah with her "hat".

Once the hat was created we ate them all up!!

Then for the craft I let each of the kids color "Cat in the Hat" a hat of their choice.

Some were different and very creative.

Some were a very good replica of the original hat for "Cat in the Hat".

Here is Isaac's finished hat!

Sarah's was a "Cat in the Hat Holiday Hat"!

Elijah's was like the original one and he even drew the "Cat in the Hat" balancing the three books (a part from the book) on the right of the hat. This let me know that he was paying attention. :)

Of coarse Timothy's hat is green. This boy loves green! I guess the "Cat in the Hat" could wear this hat when he was eating his "Green Eggs and Ham"!!!

My parents were here on Monday so that was an added bonus to our fun!!! :)

Presidents Day

For Presidents Day we did some fun things and I hope the kids learned some things too! :) We have a placemat with the President's on it, so we got it out and looked at all the Presidents, talked about the ones we knew, who was president when they were born, who was president when Mommy and Daddy were born, who was the tallest and shortest presidents, and who was on what money.

The kids made flags after we talked about what the flags looked like when George Washington and Abraham Lincoln was president. They liked looking at the difference in the flag over the years. In the picture below you can see that Elijah's flag is different than Sarah's flag (above). Then we put their flags on dowel rods and they marched through the house.

We read a small book about George Washington and looked him and Abraham Lincoln up in the encyclopedia. The last thing we did was see how many presidents we could name without looking at our placemat. Isaac and Sarah named 19 out of 44! I think next year they will be able to name even more than that. It was a fun and educational day. :)

Homemade Ranch Dressing

I found this recipe for homemade Ranch Dressing and it is so good! :) I have used it as a dressing, dip, and the dry mix for some recipes. It is a winner at this house and I will keep using it instead of buying dressing at the store (that has all those ingredients that I don't know what they are). :)

Ranch Dressing
Mix 5 Tablespoons dried minced onions (if it is a little too oniony you can cut back to 3 TBS)
 7 teaspoon parsley flakes
 4 teaspoon salt
 1 teaspoon garlic powder

 Mix together and store in an air tight container.

For dressing: Mix 2 Tablespoons dry mix with 1 cup mayonnaise and 1 cup buttermilk or sour cream. (I use buttermilk.) When I first made this I only made 1/2 the recipe so I would know if we liked it before making the whole recipe. :)

 For dip: Mix 2 Tablespoons dry mix with 2 cups sour cream.

 Mix up a few hours before serving, so the flavors all blend nicely.

*This recipe is pretty much word for word from the Heavenly Homemakers website.*