Y’all, we’ve had a busy fall. We have had a ball, but these two little girls have kept me on the road! With our buy schedule, this little blog has taken a backseat. I’d like to be able to tell you that I’ll do better about updating and posting more often, but the truth of the matter is that that probably won’t happen. These two sweet girls God has given me need my full attention. Homeschooling them is a BIG job. It’s a job that I love, no doubt, but it is demanding and time-consuming. If I am going to do all of the teaching, chauffeuring, socializing, Bible-studying, parenting, wife-ing, cleaning, cooking, laundering, bill-paying, organizing, decorating, sewing, reading, and whatnot that I also need to get done, the blog just won’t get as much attention. I will, for sure, check in when I can. But writing a new, insightful, powerful, creative, laughter-inspiring post five days each week? Ain’t gonna happen. Thank you for not stoning me for that decision! Love to you all!

My name is Ashley and I write this blog. I haven’t been around to write in a while for one reason or another. Life and life abundant has kept me away from my computer lately, mostly hauling kiddos to their various activities and such. I’ll be back soon to update you on all our outragelously exciting happenings. 🙂

Although the weather is not really what you would call “fall-ish” in our town, we are in the mood for some cooler weather. We keep thinking that if we wear our fall clothes and cook fall foods that the weather will cooperate. So far, we’re just melting and eating a lot of heavy food!

But this weekend, I am determined to do a little autumn cooking, cool weather or no.

Here’s what I’m gonna make:

Chipotle Pumpkin Barley Soup with Chicken from Edie at www.LifeInGraceBlog.com. Doesn’t that look DIVINE?!? Can’t wait to try it!

This San Francisco Sourdough Bread recipe that I got from www.Allrecipes.com. We’re going to top it with this Pumpkin Apple Butter that came from the same site. I’m hoping the apple butter will be good enough to can a few jars.

I’m not sure we will need a dessert after eating the pumpkin apple butter, but why not go all out? Look at this Apple Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce from http://www.marthastewart.com/. Oh, my! Can you go into some kind of sugar coma from eating a meal like this? Because I think  might.

I can’t wait to try these fabulous looking recipes. If the weather doesn’t cooperate any better than it has been, we might be sitting around in our swimsuits eating it all.

Please, call before you drop by.

Y’all have a good Tuesday!

Now there’s a question you don’t hear very often! Maybe “Is it Monday already?” or “Isn’t it Friday yet?” is more common, but I have to say that this week has flown by for us. We have school-ed and ballet-ed and gymnastic-ed and soccer-ed and church-ed so much this week that Friday sort of took us by surprise. Not that we are complaining, mind you.

A couple of things…

I took the girls to the McWane Center (our children’s science museum) this morning. We ran into some of Mary Anneliese’s friends that were in her ballet class last year. They don’t take ballet this year, and we have missed having them in class so much. It was a great treat to get to spend the morning with Zoe and Lexi.

We ran by the nursing home to see my little grandmother this morning. She is 88 years old and because of a major stroke a few months ago, she is not able to live at home or with her children any longer. It was a heartbreaking decision for my parents and my dad’s family to put her in a nursing home, but they were just unable to care for her at home. That being said, I was so pleased when I saw her today! She looked and felt great. Her physical therapists are on the ball with her. They felt like she was not responding to therapy very well because she was over-medicated. They worked with her doctor to pull back on some of her meds, and she is so much better. She was able to feed herself her entire breakfast this morning, which she hasn’t done in many months. She is not able to talk, but she was still able to comminucate today. It’s amazing how she doesn’t have to use words to get her message across. Such an improvement for her! We hate that she is not able to live at home, but are so incredible grateful hat she does have a nursing and therapy staff who love her and look out for her best interest. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have a facility available where we trust the people taking care of her!

My big girl and her Daddy have a date tonight to a Samford University girls soccer game. They love to go see the big girls play and then strategize how they can work some of those moves into her game. So funny!

Friday night is eating-out night at our house.  We’d rather try a new place than eat somewhere we’ve been a thousand times. Any suggestions on where to go tonight?

Happy weekend to you and yours!

According to the random number generator at http://www.random.org/, the winner of the Jesus Calling devotional book for children is #2 Cynthia Moss! Congrats! I’ll get your book to you at church.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

We do lots of preschool art projects around our house. While Big Sister does her school work, little Pitter Patter gets to do school work of her own. Today, since the fall weather has been oh so fabulous, we had a little discussion about fall. We talked about cool weather, leaves changing colors, pumpkins, Halloween and Thanksgiving. We thanked God for the cooler weather and how creative He is to think about seasons. And then we did a little art project. It was easy peasy, required absolutely no preparation, and it is something you could easily modify to use whatever supplies you have on hand.  We used construction paper, scissors, glue, and tissue paper.

We started by tracing Pitter Patter’s hand and arm onto brown construction paper to use as the trunk of our tree.

I realize that this art project required absolutely no creativity. Any monkey could come up with something so simple. That’s not the point… or maybe it is. The thing is, kids just love for their parents to be involved with them. They want your full attention. They crave time with you when you are not distracted by cleaning or cooking or talking to someone else. They want YOU. If our children do not get the attention they need from us, they will look for it elsewhere. And “elsewhere” can provide a dangerous brand of attention. This simple are project is really less about the finished product and more about the fun we had creating it together. Come on, get involved with your children. You will both love it!