31 Ways to Pray for Your Children

I thought this was excellent and I hope to start using this to help me as I pray for my children:

http://www.d6curriculum.com/teacher/previous-quarter/fusion-31-ways-to-pray

To God be all glory...

Zoe Update

Since this was originally a blog about our journey with bringing Zoe into our family, I think it is time to give an update on Zoe. Zoe means life and she fits her name well. She is full of life. She definitely colors our life way more than it would be without her. Her favorite things are eating, playing with her sisters, reading books and laying on our dog Piper. Thankfully, Piper is a very patient dog. She seems advanced for where I think she should be, but maybe I am biased. She seems to understand a lot, she "talks" a lot, and every once in a while a sentence will come out of her mouth. When she was 12 months old, she was standing by the step down into our living room. She held out her hand to me and said, "I need help." I really couldn't believe my ears. That seemed so young. But then later that day I was holding her and I had on a necklace that has a picture of Hope and Gracie on it. Zoe was looking at the necklace and said "I see Gracie." Again I couldn't believe it. I didn't think a 12 months old baby could say anything more than maybe one or two words like mama or dada. I have come to the conclusion that she is really saying stuff with her babbling and we just can't understand it. But once in a while it comes out clearly. Today she said (she is almost 16 mo. old now) "I need to get that" about something she was pointing to on the floor.

She continues to be a big girl and weighs 27 pounds, but the chunkiness fits her personality. Below are some recent pictures of Zoe who brings so much joy to our lives...

Falling asleep at lunch as she transitions from 2 naps to 1

Zoe wanting to try on her sister's glasses

Zoe at the Smithsonian National Art Gallery

This is such a Zoe look

Zoe with her two sister and wanting to be part of the action

Fun School Day with the Girls

I usually hit the wall with homeschooling around February. At least that has happened every year for the past 4 years. I haven't quite hit that point yet, but I am heading that direction. And as the leader goes, so goes the students. So we switched it up yesterday and threw out all the traditional school and did some fun stuff. We have been studying the digestive and renal systems in anatomy, so we decided to make a digestive system amusement park. This turned out to be one of the highlights of the year and also turned out way cooler than I thought it would. We started with listing some parts of the digestion system and some rides we wanted in our park. Then we brainstormed to come up with names and a map of our park. Then we started creating. The girls had a ball and so did I. Here are some pics of our results...









My personal favorites were the kidney flowers and the saliva pool. At lunch time, we mixed it up again as I said, "Let's go to Pizza Hut!" At that point the girls wanted to know where their mother went and if I was their real mother. Ha ha. When we finished, they gave daddy a grand tour of the park and were able to tell him what each part of the digestive system did. They said we didn't have school today, but I was thinking "oh yes you did and you probably learned way more than if we had done what we normally do." I am glad I was that "other mom" today and hopefully it won't be too long before she throws another day out the window.