Benjamin

Joshua and Paul

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL SKILLS....

By the looks of it you may be thinking that we have been homeschooling too long! We went to the park and they all hid under a bench. Maybe all those people were right about homeschoolers being social misfits or could it be that the kids were just playing hide and seek!

ONE CUTE PASSENGER!

Here is Little Paul during our vacation in Arizona. He is so cute!

MINIATURE MILKERS

Meet the girls! They are Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats. The Brown one is Beauty. She is a pretty little goat. She tolerates us milking her but is not overly friendly. She produces great tasting, really creamy milk. The black and white one is Matthews goat. He named her Rachel. She is Beauty's kid. Rachel is very friendly. We bottle fed her and gave her lots of attention as a baby! I have to make sure my hair is up when I feed the animals because her favorite thing to do is to chew on it. These little goats are the perfect size for the boys.

COOKIE DOE

Here is our whitetail fawn. Matthew came up with her name....Cookie Doe. She is the sweetest little thing. She is doing really good. She has been nursing from our dairy goat and drinking goats milk from a bottle. She follows us around and isn't shy with us a bit. She is a little shy with strangers and lots of commotion or noise. She does well with the other animals and sometimes stays in the pens with them but mostly she is a house deer.
Her sibling was killed by dogs and someone brought her to the deer rehab folks who asked us if we would like to raise her since we have access to goats milk. We are trying to do a good job but we are new at this and learning a lot along the way!

CHUCKLES A.K.A. CHUCK (ROAST)

Here is a picture of our cow Chuckles. He started out really cute. We bottle fed him and played with him like you would a dog. BIG MISTAKE! We now have a 400lb cowdog. Just imagine for a moment that you come home from the grocery and your sweet little dog runs to greet you, maybe even jumps on you a little. Now imagine that that same dog weighs 400lbs. Ya, it's quite intimidating. We do provide lot's of free entertainment for our neighbors though. You should see me trying to outrun him!
He has been an interesting experience but I am ready to send him to Dad's farm. He is just getting too big for us. Isaiah is ready to send him away also. Who could blame him? Would you like to be the pooper scooper for a 400lb dog?

YARN WEBS

Joshua loves to make spider webs with a ball of yarn. He will entangle the whole dining room and kitchen and thinks it is sooooo funny when he traps Mommy in a big tangled mess! He is hiding under the table in this picture.

CAN THIS REALLY BE SCHOOL?

Here are the kids during "math class". They are working in their math book. They figure out the problems and then jump the same amount as the answer. Hey, whatever works!

ALLERGIES

Poor Little Paul has been breaking out in hives like crazy! The doctor sent him to the allergy doctor who says he is allergic to milk. I started giving him soy milk in his sippy and now he has been throwing up and having diarrhea. I will call the Doctor tomorrow.

MY LITTLE COWBOY

P.J. loves hats. Any hats. But he especially likes this one and one of Grandpa Fritzingers old hats. He is such a good baby and is getting so big! His curls are so sweet but I know that he needs a haicut but I just can't do it.

WE HAVE A COW!

Thats right, we now have a cow. He is the cutest little thing and he is about the same size as our dog. He is a month old but very small for his age. We are trying to fatten him up. His Mommy got sick and didn't have enough milk for him. The boys feed him with a bottle. It is so cute. He licks us and comes right to us. Isaiah named him Chuckles. I call him Chuck for short. We are going to get him a collar and leash so the boys can "walk" him. I'll try to post a picture later.

AREN'T THEY SWEET!

GREASE MONKEY

This little stinker was playing outside next to Mamaw and Mommy while we were working in the flower bed. He was next to the riding lawn mower and pulled off one of the wheel caps and stuck it right in his mouth. It had grease on the inside and you can see the results.

JOSHUA GETS STUNG

Doesn't he look pitiful!!! He came running in the house and the hornet chased him all the way in! He was stung on the lip and right above the eye. They both swelled terrible. Thank the LORD he didn't swell any worse or have a bad allergic reaction. He did end up throwing up later but I read that that is a reaction from the toxin if you are stung multiple times.

GRAMPA AND NANA

The LORD surely blessed us with Grandpa and Nana. We will miss Grandpa and we can't wait to see him in Heaven!

EVERYBODY FEELING BETTER

The last few weeks have been rough! Everybody has been sick! We had strep throat, the 3 big boys had impetigo, Little Paul and Joshua had earaches, I had mastitis and the to top it all off Matthew had an allergic reaction to the Penicillin the doctor gave him. Within about 30 minutes after taking it he said "Mommy I think I have poison Ivy". I went and looked at his arm and it looked bad within a few more minutes he had rashes all over him. I called the doctor and he said if he starts having any difficulty breathing to go to the E.R. by ambulance. Thank the LORD his breathing was fine. We now know that he is allergic to Penicillin and the doctor says that the first time that you have a reaction to it, it's not that bad but the second time you are exposed to it it can really be bad. So his medical charts have been changed and we will be really careful to make sure he doesn't get it again.

DOME BUILDING

The boys are trying to build a dome out of triangles made with toothpicks and marshmallows. We finally built a pretty neat (although lopsided) dome.

DADDYS BLOG BUDDY

Little Paul helping Daddy on the computer.

SUCH A HAPPY BABY

PAULS FIRST PICKLE!

THE LOUISVILLE SCIENCE CENTER

we went to the Science Center this weekend. Here is a picture of Isaiah and Megans arch that they built and a picture of my brother William holding Paul.

EXPLORING THE U.S.A.

Today we started our trip around the world beginning with the U.S.A. We will be here for two weeks before moving on to Mexico and then Canada and then we go on to South America and the rest of the world! This is a fun curriculum and I know we will learn a lot with it. Today we labeled maps (which the boys really like, believe it or not), learned about Indiana's facts and symbols, watched The Scrambled States of America DVD from the library (it was really cute, and had lots of stories on it plus our National Anthem and other songs), learned about deserts, plus read about missionaries kids in other countries and practiced their Bible verses. Isaiah is memorizing Psalm 100 and Matthew is memorizing Psalm 23. Joshua wants to be a part of it all so today he worked in a pre-school workbook and practiced his circles and writing the number 2. The baby is happy as long as his schooling includes crackers!

PLAY-DOH (hopefully it's non-toxic)

Little Paul was being so good in his excersaucer yesterday. I happened to walk by and look down and he was happily chewing on a big ball of yellow Dough (like Play-Doh). He had yellow slime all over his face and hands and he was VERY upset that I took it away. It must have tasted pretty good considering he gags evertime you try to feed him baby food or infant cereal (If you can even get him to open his mouth because he has learned to purse his little lips together as soon as he sees the spoon). Now, don't get the idea that he is a picky eater, he justs wants what we are eating and nothing that says "Baby" on it. Oh ya, after questioning the boys Joshua was the one who was "sharing" his Play-Doh.

FIRST TOOTH!

Little Pauls first tooth broke through yesterday. He has been chewing like crazy but he has not been fussy. (Isaiah wants proper recognition for being the first to discover the tooth!).

LITTLE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Kids make great photographers! William Clever (8) took this picture of Little Paul. Isn't it adorable! You can't see it very good in this picture but Paul is wearing an outfit with a one of a kind design by Big Brother Isaiah. We took a pair of plain white P.J.s and Isaiah drew artwork on them and "I Love Milk" with permanent markers. They turned out really cute. Anyways back to the kids and Photography topic, Bro. Harold gave our kids a digital camera on Sunday. They love it! They take such cute pictures too. I think it is because they are on the right level with each other and they are more natural with each other instead of freezing up when you say "Say Cheese". They are snapping away while they are playing and they get such nice pictures because nobody is trying to smile! They also take pictures of things that I would never think of. While visiting their grandparents house they just went around taking pictures of stuff in the house that was interesting to them. Some of the pictures were pretty cool! Digital cameras are great because they can take so many pictures and we can just choose the best ones to print!

GRANNA & LITTLE PAUL

Here is Granna and Little Paul at the T-Rex Museum. Little Paul even wore his Dinosaur sleeper so he would fit right in.

SLEDDING!

Here goes Matthew sledding down a sand dune. You wouldn't beleive how fast you go!

WHITE SANDS NEW MEXICO

This is where we went on my birthday. Isn't it beautiful!

MATTHEW AT WHITE SANDS NEW MEXICO

T-REX MUSEUM

We went to the T-Rex Museum in downtown Tucson. The boys had fun. They dug up dino fossils and saw lots of neat stuff.

MEXICO

Isn't he adorable! The day after Christmas we went to Mexico. We had fun!

HOME SWEET HOME

We are back and although we had lots of fun it's so nice to be home again! I was looking foward to everything getting back to normal again but we have all been sick this week. Everybody is finally over it (I hope) so mabey this week will be better! I still have to finish unpacking ( last week It was almost all I could do to keep clean laundry in the house since everyone was sick). I hope to post some pics of our trip in a little while.

Thank You LORD

I want to thank the Lord for always watching out over our little ones. Joshua scared me really bad the other day and it sure makes me realize how much the LORD watches over us. Joshua (3) was standing on the landing of our stairs the other day and he wrapped the mini blind cords around his neck and jumped off. It broke the end off the blinds but then the next screw held. Thank the LORD that I was in the same room reading a book to the bigger boys and was able to immediatly jump up and unwrap the cord. It left a burn mark around his throat and shook him up a little but you know Joshua, he was over it fast and into something else.


God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalms 46:1

Thanks!!!

I almost forgot.... I wanted to say thanks to Mom and Dave and Mamaw Connie and Aunt Cindy for helping make this a very Merry Christmas for the boys (me and Paul too!). We will be enjoying the zoo and museum pass all year (thanks Mamaw!). The boys have already had lots of fun with their new toys and will enjoy the craft stuff and the new Leapster game while traveling. Paul and the boys will have fun hiding in their camo and Mommy loves the new clothes. Little Paul looks too cute in his new cloth diapers. Thanks and we love you.

P.S. Paul Loves the griddle!!! HaHa!

Christmas Vacation

We are almost ready to leave! I have been packing and packing and packing and now we are almost done. Tommorow is The V.O.G. Christmas party and after that we will pick up the boys from Aunt Lainy's house and be on our way! Yay! We are planning on making it to Tucson in time for part of the Believers singing they are having there. We plan on visiting Sunset Mountain and Mt. Lemmen. The boys want to go to the T-Rex museum and it is a family tradition to take the kids to a mini golf place whenever we go on vacation (Cheap and the kids love it!). Mabey we will get to eat at Pinnacle Peaks (Mamaw, You should have came with us!). I know we will have a nice time being with family and Paul is of course excited about the hunting. Thankfully for Mommy's sake the boys are still to young to go lion hunting. Everybody have a Merry Christmas and we should be back by January 2nd.

Memphis In The Sea?

We are planning on driving to Arizona to spend Christmas vacation with Granna & Papa Rob (Pauls Parents). The boys and I were talking about it and I told them we would probably stop in Memphis Tennesee to see Mamaw on our way. Matthew had a puzzled expression and then said "Memphis in the sea?". I said "no, Memphis Tennesee." Then he said "Oh, I thought Mamaw was out on the water somewhere."

Yuck!!!!

I made Matthew and Joshua perfectly yummy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch today. Matthew asked for mustard. ??? Yes, They both dipped PB&J sandwiches in mustard. Yuck!!! Oh well at least they eat.

Exploring Countries and Cultures Curriculum

We will be starting our new curriculum in January. It is Exploring Countries and Cultures by My Fathers World Homeschool Curriculum. I am so excited! I think the boys will really like it (me too!). Exploring Countries and Cultures is a one year Geography Unit study. After that it is followed by 3 or 4 years of History and then you can repeat the cycle. In January the boys will be learning how to read maps and globes and then we will start our tour of countries. The curriculum is very missions based and I hope to use a lot of the information from The Voice of God such as the Catch the Visions and their website to go along with the places we will be learning about. I'm sure I will be blogging about it as we go!

Christmas Play

Our Homeschool group had it's Christmas play on Saturday. All of the kids did really good! Isaiah sang LOUD and clear. He did really good reciting the Scripture verse he memorized and in this picture They were reciting a poem together as a group. Matthew and Joshua did good too. They recited the poem "Smiles" with the preschool and kindergarten group. It was a fun time for all of us.

Nana & Grandpa

Nana and Grandpa came early with Paul. Nini, Papaw Dave, Mamaw Connie, Aunt Cindy, Micah, Cody, Aunt Elaine, Megan, Jacob, Kimberly, Kelly and Grandma and Granpa Wenger also came to see the play.

Little Paul

Little Paul in the manger.

The stable Paul Built

All of the boys in the stable and manger that Paul built.

Paying Close Attention!

Matthew paying close attention to the play.

Isaiah Reciting Malachi 4:5-6

Zion, Christian and Isaiah. Isaiah is reciting Malachi 4:5-6.

The Boys

Joshua (3) Paul (4 months) Isaiah (7) and Matthew (5)

Welcome To My Blog!

Hi, welcome to my new blog! This will be a journal for me and a place to keep family and friends updated on the boys. Thanks for visiting!