First Stop is the British Isles

The first stop on our Children Around the World study brought us to the British Isles. Our meal today was a typical English meal. We had Toad in the Hole, ours was a little heavy on the Yorkshire pudding. We served ours with beef gravy. I doubled the recipe for our large family and our toads had trouble peaking out, but they were delicious. This was the favorite.

We also had a regular salad and Bubble and Squeak. This dish would typically be a breakfast meal filled with leftovers but we thought the name was cute and it sounded interesting. It was not their favorite.

We topped off the meal with a game of "Queenie" and a piece of English Trifle.

Praise the Lord, We Have a Floor!

We now have an entryway floor. Hip Hip Hurray! Just last Wednesday John met a man at IHOP who happens to lay tile. John told him about our swaying floor issue and the man came over the next morning to look at it. (It turns out his son goes to church in Ft. Collins, Co. with John's brother-small world) Friday morning he started the job. This morning it was finished. I can't tell you how thrilled we are and it looks fantastic. The tile was in our garage when we moved in so we didn't have that expense and he knew how to even out the floor so there's not a mountain in the middle. Since we had the door off I painted it white and now it looks like a new door.

All Creatures of Our God and King

Today was a productive day. I was painting in the garage and thought I would tidy a few things up. I looked over at the woodpile and thought there was a bungee cord between the logs. On closer inspection it was a shed snakeskin. EWWW! I touched it. Josiah thinks it's pretty cool.

Then Rachel and a friend went exploring in the pasture behind us and brought home this treasure. He didn't enjoy the photo shoot very much.

This little guy was helping Sarah do her homework on the deck the other day.

Children from Around the World

We are into week 5 in our homeschooling. It's been very enjoyable spending time with our 4 youngest and having them work at their pace. Besides the regular A Beka curriculum we are studying Children Around the World. This is a curriculum by Winter Promise. We did a study of the middle ages published by this company 2 years ago and we loved it. It is a very well thought out and thorough study, and fun too with lots of meaningful activities. Since our emphasis here at IHOP is prayer and prayer for other nations we thought studying children around the world would be perfect. So far it is. The way our schedule works we can do this study as a family on Thursdays and have special celebrations on Sundays as we make our way around the world with different meals. We started in America with Tator Tot Hotdish on the menu. A Minnesota classic. Since IHOP is the INTERNATIONAL house of prayer we will be able to invite people we know from different cultures to our celebrations. It's going to be a fun year!

Weekly Calendar

Just for fun, this is a snapshot of our weekly calendar. What's missing is most of John's schedule. It's too unpredictable due to the nature of managing a 24/7 group of people.

A Trip to the Museum

We took a trip to the Nelson Atkins Art Museum on my birthday. It is a very nice art museum and we all enjoyed the afternoon. Sarah commandeered my camera that day and I just found the pictures. Rachel was home with a fever that day so she had to miss the family outing.

An Important Message