What a week!

This past week was something else! Between rowing Cranberry Thanksgiving, starting a new exercise regime, and preparing for the actual Thanksgiving, I had my hands full! Oh and did I mention trying to corral Cadyen, who is into EVERYTHING!

Here are my two exercise buddies. We're doing in home walking with Leslie Sanson. This is how I lost 28lbs before I got pregnant with Cayden. 

They both went and put on shoes cause mommy had shoes on. 

After about five minutes this was their position. ; )

And THIS my dear friends was my house after 30min of walk walk walking! 

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of our Thanksgiving feast! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. We sure did!

Love
Amber

The Zoo

It's rainy season here so our family days have been spent in doors. But last Saturday, God held back the rain! So we headed to the Zoo. I took lots of pictures, but only posted a few. I was having so much fun with my camera that Bev bought me!! It takes amazing pictures!! 

This area is for the deer. There's no fences or anything around them. They roam free through this little forrest area. We saw about 20 of them. They're so beautiful! I love this one of the mamma and her baby fawn. So sweet.

Joseph loves to feed the elephants. He's grown up so much. This picture was taking me back two years ago when I was pregnant with Cayden. We were on family vacation in Kho Lak and we went over to Phuket to see an animal show. Joseph was petrified to feed the elephants. I think I even have a few pictures of him crying. Now he's got his own basket and he's feeding them on his own!

Need I say anything?!?

"Look at this elephant, Daddy."

He stuck his tongue out for the picture. ; )

I think this picture is so amazing it almost doesn't look real. I didn't do any photo editing at all. This is a la natural.

This guy was putting on a show for us! He swung around on his rope like crazy!

Love this shot!

Here's a picture of the water park they've added to the zoo. We were so excited to go but were sorely disappointed once we arrived. 

When we arrived there were village children running around naked, little boys standing in the pool peeing, people with food and drinks by the pool, people swimming in their jeans...need I go on. There are several reasons that the pool was heavily populated by the less cultured crowd. (i'm trying to be kind here, people. I'm really grasping for the right words)

1. For starters, they don't charge any extra money to get into the water park. You pay your $2.50 to get in the zoo and you get in the water park too. This invites the less fortunate to come by the dozens........ Truck loads of them!
2. Second, the don't require you to wear a bathing suite. There are really nice water parks in other parts of Thailand that require you to wear not only a bathing suit but also a swimming cap. If you don't have one you can rent one for $1 or 2. 

You probably think I'm being mean and exclusive, but I'm not, really! I love being with Thai people city and village alike. I mean I spent many of my first years in Thailand in the slums. I really love the poor. 

 But one thing I really have a hard time with is seeing a new place, which took a lot of money to build, be ruined by ignorance or lack of appreciation. I see the destiny for this water park if they continue on this path.

One of the times we got out of the pool, I noticed something white on Clinton's cheek. I was like, "Uh, honey, I think there's some snot on your cheek." He reached up to wipe it off and sure enough someone else's snot that was in the water had made it's way to my husbands face.........UUUUUGH! 

Need I say more, people?!?

Peekaboo Wednesday

I thought it would be fun to invite you into a day in our house. I know, I know! You've all been dying to see what happens at the Garsee home on an hour by hour basis. We live such exciting lives who wouldn't want to know. Right?!? (wink)

Although, I think I should add a disclaimer to this post in Cayden's defense: Cayden was very sick so this day wasn't the typical as far as his attitude, but none the less it was an hour by hour play up until the doctors appt at 5pm.

9am  So here's the first pic of the day...Cayden crying as his daddy's leaves for school. Please remember he's sick. Oh! and ignore my filthy door

10am Breakfast is over and I'm cleaning up the dishes while the boys are playing with water. Pouring, measuring, getting REALLY wet. But they were having fun! That's all that mattered at this point. ; ) and ignore my dirty refrigerator and dirty cabinets. ; 0

11am The next two are of Cayden as he has "blanket time" while I teach Joseph. Oh joy!

Please please let me off my blanket!

Joseph matching pictures to words! Way to go, Joe!

Cayden's fine motor skills worksheet. ; ))

11:45am Fall leaves art project. He loved doing this one. It was so much fun

Here's the finished product. We made lots of these and added them to our bulletin board. I'll put more pics of that up soon.

12:30pm Lunch... I had to put a picture of Cayden in his highchair. Since he could stand, he's been standing in his highchair. We've spanked, hollered, taken his food away....to no avail. So we just let him eat standing up. As you can see, I'm super mom and his lunch was nutritious banana muffins. Yes, I gave my child banana muffins for lunch. He was sick.... what can i say. 

Joseph and I had noodles for lunch, but I don't have the space for pics.

I thought I had taken more pics, but i guess the day got away from me. The last one of of us on the way to the doctor. 

Hope you enjoyed these pics. Next time, I'll try to get them all the way to bedtime. ; )

Trip to the Northeast

Here's a cute picture with beautiful mountains in the background to give you a little glimpse of what our surroundings were like while we were up North.

I've been so busy since we returned from the northeast that I haven't even been able to post about our trip. My days are so full, my nest is so full and I'm a blessed woman.

But on this cool Friday afternoon, I'm sitting on my sofa watching my little boys play the Wii and I decided there's no better time than the present to post!

We went went up to our good friends, the Stubenrauch's house for a prayer retreat and then spent a few days in the big city of Bangkok.

As many of you know we worked with Brian and Marybeth for ten years. We moved to Thailand together, had babies together, celebrated birthdays together, baptized new Thai believers, graduated three classes of Bible school students, started a village church and many many more amazing things... but God called them to another part of Thailand back in May. So we were able to go and spend a few days in the cool mountains of Leuy, laughing, singing, praying and EATING! ; )

Our family, well ME if you get right down to it, decided the view was so amazing that it would be a PERFECT place to take a new pictures. The rice fields were so green and lush, who could pass up a pic.

Here's Chase doing what he does best....loving on his little brother

All the brothers!

Married couple

Beautiful Joseph

There's more pics to come.......

School room pics

I know it's been a long time coming but here it is in all it's glory. ahm

First, I wanted to show you one of the sections of our bulletin board where i have the sight words listed. I saw this caterpillar on someone else's blog but I didn't want to draw millions of circles. Okay maybe not millions, but i didn't want to draw ANY circles. SO! I went to BHG website and found these amazing labels I looooove them. There's 27 pages of labels that you can pick from. Or if you're like me you'll be compulsive and print them all off. ; )

       Here's sweet Baby Cayen showing off the new school room table.                                                         

Add caption

 Here' the view standing at the front door. To the left I have all of our supplies, art, play-doh, crayons, map pencils, and some learning boxes for Cayden.  LOVE this side of the room!!! On the right side are all the school books and some of Cayden's toys. Then there's "the" desk where all the magic happens. hehehe On the second shlef of this said desk is my beloved new best friend. THE LAMINATOR. Under her is the printer but you can't see it. You can also see at the bottom of the desk my file folders. LOVE those too!!

I'm a file folder kind of girl!!

Here's the left side again just because. ; )

A full view of our beloved bulletin board! 

Another view of our sight word section of the board. It will be fun to see this caterpillar grow! I have about 100 site words to add, four each week. We might have to open the window to the left to give him room.

This wall is where we're learning our days of the week and keeping track of the whether. I'l be adding lots of cool stuff to this wall. It's on it's way!! I went nuts on Amazon one night while lying in bed. It was 1am and waaay too late for me to be up. I spent our food money for the month. The next morning Clinton asked for some money and I said, "We don't have anymore." He replied, "Excuse me?" I said with trepidation, "Well, last night, ahm. you see I stayed up way too late and...well... you see I used all of our money on school supplies." I won't tell you how the rest of the conversation went. ; ) 

And I had to add this pic because as I was heading up the stairs with the camera around my neck, I walked into the boys room to sing and pray and this is how I found baby Cayden. He's been really sick for two days. You can keep him in your prayers. 

Printing, Cutting, and Laminating

Today baby Cayden woke up with a fever, so we weren't able to go to church. Hummm What to do??? I decided to finish my task at getting the school room ready. Oh what a time I had. In between wrestling scissors, pencils, puzzles pieces out of Cayden's hands, I finished organizing the school room. Complete with labels, a white board on the wall, and a bulletin board decorated for fall. 


I can't tell you how much fun I'm having! Throughout the day I reminisced about schooling the older two boys, and can I  tell you it wasn't this much fun. In fact, I remember being scared out of my head and feeling like I had NO idea what I was doing. Wait a min! I didn't know what I was doing!! I frightened poor Chase through his learning how to read experience and probably scared him for life in the arena of learning. Oh His grace! I thank the Lord for every rememberence of the scripture, "My children are taught of the Lord and great will be the peace of my children" That's one I cling to, friends. ; ) 


Anyway, I could sing this next paragraph....the rest of the day was spent getting curriculum together! I printed, laminated, cut, and pasted ALL day long. I actually JUST finished a few mins ago. If i had any idea a laminator would be so much fun I would have bought one long ago. This could be my new hobby. I've laminated everything I could get my hands on. Flash cards, labels, school work, Cayden, my lunch. Oh wait! Just kidding. ; ) But it's possible. If I could laminate my house I just might try. 


If you don't have a laminator, go out and get one! Quick! You're life will never be the same!! 


i CAN'T WAIT TO START school tomorrow!! We'll be doing our Sing Spell Read and Write, BFIR "Angus Lost", studying some site words, and doing a Fall craft. ; )  


For baby Cayden, we'll be doing some sewing, blocks, and counting fun with cereal. WE'll see how this goes. 


Pics coming soon. I promise!   

Kindergarden/Tot School

Yes, I know I'm  a little late but I guess late's better than never, right?? We've been doing school for the last four weeks, but just recently I've been introduced to many amazing homeschool blogs. To be honest, i was considering putting Joseph in school. After homeschooling for 13 years, I just didn't have any steam in me to keep going. BUT! God is so good to give us just what we need when we need it.

This weekend, I'll be spending time getting our school room ready. With Chase leaving, with him goes all of his music equipment. And he has a lot. So our small room was a school room/music room/office, but will now be my office and school room!!! I'm so excited!

I'll post some pics when I'm done. I have lots of fun things coming from Amazon, and CBD books, and Rainbow Resource. I can't wait to get it all and start hanging things on the wall. So much fun.

I was up until 1:30am last night reading blogs and getting ideas.

If you're a homeschooler to little ones I'd love to hear your ideas or see pics of what your Tot school looks like.


Here's a link to one of the sites I'm currently gleaning from for Cayden:
Tot School
Totally Tots

And here's a few I'm gleaning from for Joseph:
Homeschool Creations
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Delightful Learning


love Amber

Our baby's a man

Chase the lover

                   
                                                           Chase the thinker/protector

                                                     the photographer/ and man does he have an eye

                                                 The stud. He's too good lookin for his own good.

                                         

The waiter. He's got more patience than all of us!

                                                                          Full of Joy
     

                                                                          The  Serious