family

this has been a busy time for our family. 2 days after our anniversary we celebrated another birthday in the van clan house!! emily mae turned 9 years old. she is our third child, second girl. emilys entrance into the world was a quick one! she was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital. and only gave the doctor 10 minutes after we arrived! today she is a sweet, gentle spirited young lady. she is always willing to help around the house and is often a second mommy to the babies. she has also taken on the role as family bread baker. she enjoys sewing, ballet and playing the piano. and today is her piano recital! she is playing "silent night". zaccy will be playing "we three kings". later tonight we will be celebrating with emily by taking her out to her birthday movie. we are going to see "hugo". well we get a break from family birthdays until february. that has its good point and bad points. it will be nice to fill that birthday envelope back up but we do so love celebrating birthdays around here! we are looking foward to this next coming week. we have our last recital for this time of year. a ballet/guitar recital. then it will be christmas break! we will enjoy a very much needed down time here :)

family news

this week has been an eventful week for our family. we celebrated a birthday this week. daddy had a birthday on wednesday, the day before thanksgiving. we were able to sneak a small date in. we also celebrated thanksgiving. the best part about holidays is having hubby home. this week we have him home for 4 wonderful relaxing days. thanksgiving day was spent with the extended family. a nice big dinner and visiting. the day after thanksgiving we spent at home having our own thanksgiving. we had my best friends family over and we feasted!!! hubby spent the day cooking a yummy turkey. i am not a big turkey fan but his is always the best. moist and flavorful. we revamped some leftovers from the day before, pasta salad, potatoe salad. we added some homemade bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and stuffing to the menu. it was a great evening. now the fun part is coming up with lots of ideas for turkey leftovers. maybe that will make a good blog!! we only have 2 days left of having daddy home. we are always a little sad when he has to go back to work...ok alot sad. but we are thankful for the time. im very proud of my children over the weekend. my 2 oldest had a neighbor pay them to help her put up decorations around her house. and this of course sparked a little entrepreneur in them. jr. (10) would like to start a lawn mowing business in our neighborhood. savanah (12) and jonah (7) would like to partner and offer a leaf raking service. they made flyers and passed them out today. its never too early to teach them the value of hard work. the best part is their heart attitudes. they all have said they want to be able to donate some of their earnings to help with the adoption. oh, and lets not forget josie (3). she has filled her piggy bank and is ready for a small lesson in money. we counted her money yesterday and i showed her the 3 envelopes we use to split it up. she was very interested. and now shes very excited to get to spend her spending envelope! and i must admit im excited to take her :)

family news

there is always so much going on in our house. i thought it would be fun to set a day aside each week to catch up with all the eventful things that go on. some big news over here, roger jr. and emily took a cpr training class and are now certified in infant, child, and adult cpr and aed. proud mom...yes i am! and we had a birthday in the van clan house. zacchaeus turned 6 on november 15th. he is the oldest of the "irish triplets". for a month the twins and zaccy are all 5. which is always a fun conversation starter. it must be so fun to be a child. i think he has been celebrating his birthday for a week now. first he had his birthday dinner at grandma and grandpas house. he picked buscuits and gravy for his dinner. thank you to my mom for having salad fixings as well. im not a fan of buscuits and gravy. one of his birthday presents was a toys r us gift card so a couple of days later grandma and uncle matthew came and took him to lunch and shopping. i like to let the children pic the menu on the day of their birthday. so for breakfast he picked homemade donuts. for dinner he wanted tater tot casserole and brownies for dessert. the day after his birthday we had joy club and i made the "acorns". those were a hit! now on to today...his movie!!! today we are taking him to see "puss and boots". at first it doesnt sound very interesting. at least not to me. but the reviews on plugged in were pretty decent. like i said before...must be great to be a child! i think my children even enjoy going to the doctor for their birthday physical...lol!

holiday teachings

there are so many holidays coming up this time of year. i always think about doing fun teachings with the children but the holiday will come and go and i miss it. something we started yesterday was a holiday journal. our first entry was reformation day. i read to the children out of the church history book about martin luther and we watched a video from the movie luther. then i had the chidren make a journal entry. the bigs wrote a summary of what luther did. the littles drew a picture. yesterday i started reading to them out of a book called pilgrims of plimoth. it is told from the point of view of a pilgrim. our journal project for this book is to pretend you are a pilgrim keeping a journal. after each reading the children journal about their adventure. i love teaching like this. my plans for 2012 are to celebrate the jewish holidays for the whole year. i have wanted to do this before but never got started. hopefully i will stick to it this coming year. what a fun homeschool adventure. first we will study the holiday and then celebrate it the best we can. and then of course i will blog about each one :)

ethnic night

we love cooking and baking in our house. anytime the children study something that has to do with food we love to turn it into a homeschool lesson. its such a fun hands on way of learning and experiencing. since savanah has been studying ancient civilizations we have made this into a tradition. anytime she finishes up a unit we celebrate by researching the food they ate and having it for dinner. and it has to be ancient not what they eat for today. for example the jewish eat bagels today but they didnt in ancient judiasm. we try to do this the best we can.sometimes it is hard so we try to find something to represent something they ate. so far we have had ancient egyptian night, ancient china night, and ancient jewish night. most of the foods are very similar. alot of fish, flatbreads, nuts and fruits. i had apples and honey for the first time together last night and it was so yummy! it reminded me of apple cider or a caramel apple. today roger jr. is going to be making indian pudding to go along with his study of colonial america. next up for savanah is ancient greece. i cant wait for that night! maybe for thanksgiving we should plan a traditional pilgrim dinner....hmmmm i feel a lesson brewing :)

birthday fun!

we just had a birthday in the van clan house! or should i say 2 birthdays. monday the twins, levi and benjamin turned 5. for anyone who knew us when they were born, you know what a blessing their lives are!

for those that did not know me, they had a rough start. they were born 5 weeks premature. levi weighed in at 4 pounds 13 ounces and benjamin was 4 pounds 3 ounces. they were born via c section. my first one after 5 natural deliveries. and let me tell you i would rather do it all natural any day compared to that!!! my little guys were not born healthy. they had several breathing issues right off the bat. i was so happy when they were weaned off of all the oxygen and moved into a crib together.

roger and i spent all day everyday at the hospital with them for 3 weeks. we missed our other children so much. we were always home in time to have dinner with them and go to bed. we had breakfast with them and then were off to the hospital. one great blessing from this was all the bonding i got to do with my husband over this. we held our babies, fed our babies, ate all our meals together and took many walks together inbetween feedings.

after 3 weeks they were feeding and gaining weight. they were finally sent home. as soon as they came home we noticed they didnt breath or coordinate their eating right. they would often stop breathing during feeds. the time benjamin turned completely blue and limp, i had to administer cpr and roger called 911. this landed us back into the hospital for a week of observation. they had what was called reflux apnea. this is where the reflux muscles are not developed and the babies airways close during reflux. as if they were drowning.

it was a looooong 6 months before they grew completely out of it. it was a 6 months i will never forget. roger getting laid off was a blessing in disguise. God used so many people in our lives to provide for us and i had someone home to help me take care of our preemies on top of 5 other children. 1 of them only being 11 months older than the twins!

looking back i see God written all over the circumstances. and i now have 2 very healthy rambunctious little boys! i watch them sleep and thank God for them.

so, they have had their birthday dinners at grandpa and grandmas. 1 chose pizza and 1 chose macaroni and cheese. yum! we had our own family dinner at home of pancakes. hopefully this weekend we will be taking them to their birthday movie!!