Sick Day

Just the other day I was thinking to myself "We made it through the end of "flu season" without the flu running through our house another time!"

And then I gasped and wished I had never thought that thought....that was like last week.

Monday night Titus started throwing up...

I know, I know that was a dangerous thought...but what can you do?

And then we were holding tight and I was hopeful maybe for the first time ever only one of us would get the flu...

And then Wednesday night at church I was just setting down the girls' plates of food and Faith threw up.

Wrong once again. There is nothing worse than your child throwing up except your child throwing up in public when you left the diaper bag at home with your other sick child.

So, I did what every self respecting mom who is the primary puke cleaner upper at their house does. I covered Faith's bed with two sheets, a towel over her pillow, a puke bowl, and a towel on the floor covering the carpet next to her bed. And then I repeated the process for Grace. Wait...I thought Grace wasn't sick yet. She's not. But, I've found if I take the time to perform these precautionary measure she is 75% less likely to puke in the middle of the night. And she didn't.

However, in the middle of the night I rolled over and knew in my heart by morning I would be adding myself to the sick list. But, even though I feel like junk- I haven't puked...yet! Being sick as a stay-at-home mama is miserable. So, my kids are getting a healthy dose of Disney Junior & PBS. Just what the doctor ordered.

One bit of comic relief for the morning was an interesting discussion between Grace and Faith trying to figure out why Faith got sick because she didn't eat too much sugar so her body should be healthy...

Bring on the SPRING! Surely, I can get an amen from all the other SAH moms out there, right?

Thankful

I am thankful for...

tiny vases

that hold tiny bouquets of flowers from my Gracie.

I am thankful for...

new gravel

so I can coax my three children to the van without getting covered in mud. Hip Hip Hooray!

I am thankful...

for Grace's gorgeous curls

and that she didn't cut them off during rest time.

(Instead she gave this poor puppy a haircut of his own)

I am thankful for...

daffodils

and the fact that they mean Spring is finally on its way!

I am thankful for..

sleep

and the fact that my lactose free baby is now sleeping through the night again!

I am thankful for...

sweet smelling clean children

after bath time. I love when bath time is done, its one of my least favorite tasks. (And shortly after this picture Titus came down with the stomach flu so I am doubly thankful for a clean non puke smelling child!)

Today, I am so thankful.

First Official (& hopefully annual) Humiston Family Holiday

St. Patrick's Day was on a Thursday so we got to enjoy doing "green" activities with our play group. Fun!

However, I failed to get the standard "my 3 kids in matching green outfits" picture. I was tempted to stage one, but decided that was ridiculous and not worth my time. If I'm being honest I was feeling a bit of mommy guilt. One of the super cute moms in our group showed up with her 18 month old daughter in an ADORABLE outfit complete with tutu (with clovers) and they had on matching gold shoes! I arrived realizing I had forgotten to even dress Titus in green (opps!) and the girls had simply picked out a shirt they owned that was green.... It made me feel very guilty as I compared my one-child mom self to my current mom self. But, then I reminded that every mom has her own thing she is good at and mine just isn't matching holiday shirts. (Please refrain from looking back to my children's Valentine's day outfits!)

Here is Grace with Titus (Go Bears!), Ruthie, & her friend Sophie. Her and Ruthie are sporting matching green barrettes so that counts, right?

Here Faith is enjoying playing in the gym at play group. I really had to talk her into wearing green at all. She is very opposed to wearing blue or green clothes as these are strictly boy colors. Luckily I remembered this outfit which is mostly purple so it passed inspection. She really wanted to wear pink, like every other day, but Grace kept telling her if you wear pink on St. Patrick's day you will get kissed. Which made her cry! Now you know how I might have been distracted from dressing Titus in green...
The craft for the day was very cute. We cut green peppers to make a clover shaped "stamp." I thought it was very creative.
So.....you may be wondering why this post is entitled "First Official Humiston Family Holiday" Well, I'm getting there hang with me.

Almost a year ago we were reading an Arthur book about Christmas. (No, I don't think it was at Christmas time) In the book one of the characters says his mom is very sad because of his parents' divorce. To make a long story short another character suggests they make up their own family holiday instead of celebrating Christmas. While I obviously don't support skipping celebrating Jesus' birth Grace caught on to the idea of having a family holiday and thought it sounded like a great idea. And so the idea of having our own official Humiston family holiday was born.

Because Jeremy's Papa was Irish and we've never had any special St. Patrick's day traditions we decided our holiday would be on March 17th in honor of our Irish heritage. We had lots of fun coming up with different activities that were connected to our family.

Picture on the Stairs: My Grandpa & Grandma Holst always took pictures of all the cousins on their stairs each holiday. Since my Grandma's house was damaged in the fire the staircase no longer exists. But, we used this photo op as an opportunity to talk about them and I think will be fun to compare as the kids grow over the years.

Grace took this picture of us.
Block Challenge: Our kids' block set is full of family history. Jeremy made them from wood From Grandpa Don & Grandma Kay's walnut grove. This is the same wood Grandpa Rick made their crib from. We loved talking about this.
We "branded" some of the blocks with this family logo that is on the back on their dining room chairs (made from the same wood!) It is a picture Grandma Kay drew of a cardinal.
Mom & Faith's creation
Daddy & Grace go tall.
It all falls down!
We also had a big breakfast for dinner in honor of Jeremy's Papa. Whenever he would visit Papa & Nana in Michigan Papa would make a huge breakfast for him. After that we made popcorn in honor of my Pop-o and Mom-o. Whenever I would go to their house there was always popcorn every evening. We ate our popcorn while watching a movie, one of our family's favorite things to do together. It was a great evening and fun new tradition. We are hoping this is something we can do each year and will become part of our kids normal growing up experience.

So, maybe it is okay my kids didn't have matching green shirts after all. ;)

Best Buds

Matching Outfits from American Girl=Super Pricy

Digging through your daughter's drawer until you put together a "matching" outfit she loves just as much- Priceless! (and free ;)

Titus' First Steps

Good job Mr. Man we are SO proud of you!

Give'm Somethin to Talk About?

Disclosure: I am using this blog post to do a bit of "market research."

One of my goals for 2011 was to tackle the craziness that is our meal times. Now we have three children under the age of 5 and I realize that some craziness is just to be expected, but we had fallen into a rut of Jeremy and I trying to "catch up" a bit and our children eating their food w/ lighting speed and requesting more food before we barely had taken a bite (or I had sat down for that matter.) This was not the Norman Rockwellesque picture I had of family dinner time.

So, I came up with a general rhythm for each day's meals.

Breakfast- Review Family Quest Bible Verse/Books of the Bible

Read our morning Bible story & choose a christmas card photo to pray for.

(This meal has had the most success & challenges with Faith's recent aversion to getting dressed in the morning)

Lunch-

Brain Quest Questions/Sight Word Flash Cards

My kids received these for Christmas and love doing "Amanda the Panda" questions. I'm solo on this meal so this gives us something to break up the day.

Dinner-

Family Dinner Question

Each night Jeremy or I throw out a question to answer. We take turns answering the question and then talk about what we think Titus' answer would be. Our kids are LOVING this. They always remind us and make sure we don't forget.

In order to help us I have a basket that we keep our devotional book, Christmas photos, Brain Quest/Flashcards, and our Family Quest Bingo/Bringing it Home activity sheet. That way everything we need is right there.

However, so far we have just been making the diner questions up "on the spot." Which isn't working the greatest so I figured it was time to purchase a set of creative questions.

(This is where the market research comes in... :)

When I had mentioned this in another post my friend Kristina had suggested I make my own set and make it available for purchase. I'm not sure how serious she was, but it got me to thinking. I thought I could totally do that & it would be another great way to earn money for our adoption fund!

So...what do you think?

-Would you purchase a set of creative questions to spur conversation at your dinner table?

-Would you prefer a set of cards in a deck that you could keep in order or strips in a jar that could be drawn out?

-What price point would you be willing to pay knowing the money went to a good cause? (I was thinking $10-15 for 350-500 questions)

-Is this something you would consider purchasing as a gift for another family/couple?

-Would you be interested in a "Date Night" set?

Jeremy and I also have a set of cards we use for our date nights. I purchased them on clearance after Valentine's day. We find them helpful for keeping our dates more romantic and not end up as "team meetings." But, I've always wanted to make our own set as we occasionally have to sift through the inappropriate questions from the set I purchased (don't ask.)

-Would you think, "I could totally do that myself for free" or would you think, "This will help the Humiston's adopt and its way easier than thinking up all those questions myself."

I know these types of sets are readily available on the Internet but I thought that the personalization and assurance that they would be faith friendly might influence someone's decision to purchase one from me. And one of my goals is that the "fundraising" we do for our adoption would not only benefit us, but also have other positive impacts for the kingdom (like getting family's talking & growing closer).

If you have feedback feel free to leave a comment on my blog or over at Facebook. Or you can send me an e-mail at jenniferhumiston@hotmail.com

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think!

Interactive TV

One of our family's favorite channels to watch is the food network. Grace & Faith will happily watch an entire cooking show! One of our favorite shows to watch is Food Network Challenge. And we love when they are doing cake challenges! Over the summer we watched it most Sunday evenings. But, due to small group it has been awhile since we have been able to watch. This past Sunday our small group didn't meet so we enjoyed watching our show. While the girls were watching they were constructing their own cakes for us to judge.

Grace won the prize for biggest boldest cake! She used pillows for layers and smoothed her purple blanket out on top for fondant.
Faith won the prize for best detail work! She usually stacks her cakes as well, but tonight opted for a one tier cake with lots of "extras."

A Winter Picnic

Last week I was feeling a bit stir crazy and the weather was just warm enough for an impromptu picnic at the park. It wasn't too cold as long as you were wearing a coat. The fact that we ate a hot pizza worked great too.

Those crazy curls- always in her face!

Titus' stroller worked great as his "highchair."
Thanks Daddy for taking the pictures. It was a great break from our normal evening routine! I can't wait for Spring and many more evenings at the park.

Tent Fun

One day at the end of rest time I entered the girls' room to find this:

Grace had constructed her own tent out of a sheet & diaper boxes. She even used her books stacked on Titus' changing table to keep up the sheet. She was asleep inside!

So, later in the week they asked for help making a tent. With an extra sheet and some chip clips we were able to make a tent big enough for two.

Before nap I crawled in with them to read them a chapter from our American Girl book. This is a new tradition before nap/bedtime of reading a chapter at a time. Grace is LOVING this so we have already completed 2 of the 3 books we purchased.
Jeremy went in at the end of rest to find them both asleep snuggled up in their tent- so precious! Along with their doll collection and various other treasures.

Oh, the joys of childhood to be tiny enough to sleep in a homemade tent and imagine it is so much more!

Grace's Cake

Here is the cake we found that gave us the starting point for our ideas. Grace's cake of course had to be purple instead of pink. But, we used some of the general ideas. My mom took the pictures of her blowing out her candles so I will have to add those later. I used the laminator I got for Christmas to laminate a picture of Ruthie I printed. (much easier than icing or an edible transfer). This was my first try using Kristina's chocolate fondant and I LOVED it. I will definitely be using it for future birthdays.

An actual glimpse...

The official name of my blog is "Glimpses of God from the Humiston Home." (I know its a mouthful) However, lately it has been more of a "Baby book/Scrapbook of the Humiston Family Year O' Fun," than a chance for me to share what is in my heart.

Why, you ask?

Well, things have been a bit crazy for say oh, about the last year or so at my house. Since I have transitioned to 3 kids I rarely sit down at nap time anymore unless it is to fold laundry. And I also gave birth to a chid who has no interest in playing with toys. He'd much rather fish in the toilet, unload my kitchen cabinets, empty the dishwasher, & get into his sister's art supplies. Thus, its hard to get much done that requires thinking while he is awake. (Don't worry too much I can declutter, do dishes, and oversee laundry without thinking these days.)

Actually that precious little boy I speak of is sleeping in my lap as I peck out this post because due to two consecutive awful viruses his mama (opps, I mean sleep schedule) is currently on life support.

When we first transitioned to three children our family had zeroed out our calendar. Due to the vocational changes in our life we had VERY FEW church or social commitments. And I naively remember thinking, "This isn't too bad. I think the transition to 2 was much harder." And then we found this amazing church and made some awesome friends and I've felt overwhelmed ever since. I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that I joined the children's ministry team, we joined a small group, Grace started Kids Choir, we started attending Family Quest, I started selling jewelry for Inspiranza, we began mentoring a few students, and we've been trying to figure out how to get started with an adoption. Oh, and I declared it the "year of fun" before we send Grace to kindergarten. There's actually more but it makes me tired to list it all.

Well, I digress... all this to say my blog has become less about me trying to put together an intelligent thought and more about just keeping up with everything we've been up to. And for the most part I'm okay with that because I fully intend to enjoy the 5 months of fun we have left! However I do want to record what God is teaching me because it has been some good and sometimes challenging stuff. Mama stuff, forgiveness stuff, adoption stuff, submission stuff, with a whole lot of searching mixed in. So, I am setting a goal to sit down every other Wednesday or so (my goals are a bit more flexible these days) to try and just write something that doesn't have anything to do with something we've done. It will still probably be something to do with my kids, just more thought life and a little less play by play of our real life.

The funny thing is when I sat down to write this post I simply wanted to tell you about how God taught me something through our morning Bible time and a little pink princess devotional book. But...my family just woke up so I guess that will have to be a later post. :)

Grace's Big Birthday Trip

For Grace's fifth birthday we decided to do a trip to Chicago for her to get an American Doll. This was her one and only birthday gift. All of her grandparents, great grandparents, aunts & uncles, etc. gave her money to spend on her trip. We talked a lot about this idea before deciding to go ahead with it. Even though she had received a catalog in the mail and really liked it I wanted to make sure she wouldn't be disappointed when her birthday rolled around. It was so funny to here her tell people about our plan, "I don't get any presents to open (thats the sad part), but its okay because we are going on the train and I get to pick out my own doll and buy her stuff with money!" Here is the picture play by play of our special day.

Watching for the Train- Cold & Excited

Faith bundled up & ready to go.
Our tickets- I wanted to let Grace sign her own ticket, but the grouchy ticket taker insisted it be signed by an adult.

Grandma fulfilled a Humiston birthday tradition by taking Grace to purchase doughnuts from the cafe. She was very generous and shared with everyone.

Finally there- good thing is was SO hot on the train we nearly melted!
We took a cab from the train station to Water Tower. Grace could hardly wait to see Ruthie (the doll she had chosen from looking online). She kept saying, "Let's find Ruthie!" Here is her first glimpse.
Grace chose Ruthie, Kit's best friend, because of her curly hair and purple dress.

Grace getting Ruthie out of the box.

Love at first sight!
Our family had also generously given Faith some money to spend on the trip. Since Ruthie is from the Kit line you could buy both dolls, their accessories, and their books for a discounted price. By the time you figured the savings Faith basically had enough money to purchase Kit (and Gramy thought this was totally necessary). SO.....Faith got Kit. Here she is waiting for her doll.

They were having a special event and you could make a lei necklace for your doll.

Here Grace is showing Ruthie the different pets to see if she would like to purchase a pet...
We had some complications with making reservations at the restaurant. So, we ended up being on the waiting list for the 12:30 time slot. I was VERY close to giving up as the kids were basically starting to melt at this point. (They had been up since 5:30) But, I remembered Kara's pictures of her girls right before lunch and figured if we could make it to eat we'd get a second wind. I finally said we were only waiting 10 more minutes and then they finally called our name. I'm so glad as this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I would definitely recommend making it part of your experience.

Its funny looking around a restaurant and seeing all little girls. It was really geared towards kids. As soon as we sat down they brought us a "warm welcome" mini cinnamon rolls. Then they brought an appetizer tray with veggies & pretzel bites. Grace ordered a tic tac toe personal pizza and Faith ordered a mini hamburger/hot dog with a tiny dish of macaroni and cheese. All of the ladies had salad. The food was very good and speedy.
The best part was all the little touches. The dolls had special seats and their own tea set. Our napkins were wrapped with hair ties for us to keep.

I think we heard them sing Happy Birthday 10 times while we ate! There were a lot of little girl birthday parties. Even though we didn't get the special cake our server did bring Grace a candle to blow out with her dessert. Our dessert included a tiny cake, cookie, and flower pot with chocolate mousse.
During lunch Grace and I talked about how she would spend the rest of her money when she went shopping for Ruthie after lunch. While she shopped Faith (who was feeling awful & coming down with a horrible virus) slept.
Grace ended up choosing a pair of purple pjs, a purple dress/hat, and a pink skirt/shirt & pink shoes from the "shoe store." She did a great job of narrowing down her choices and making sure to get things that matched. I was so proud of her that she didn't ask for more, but was content with her choices. Even though we were finished at the American Girl Store we still had some extra time before catching the train home.
Josie & Joy (her roommate) Joy collected American Girl dolls when she was little and even gave Grace & Faith some extra clothes to enjoy.
We spotted the Ghirardelli Chocolate shop and stopped in to get a treat.
I ordered a peanut butter sundae to share with the girls. Neither of them would eat a bite! Grace fell asleep in my lap & Faith was crying because she didn't feel good and didn't want to share me with her sister. This was one of the more challenging moments of our trip. But, how many mamas get to snuggle with their five year old on their birthday, right?
I was glad when we finally got on the train to head home. Grace had fun drawing pictures of her day. She did some really great ones that I'm going to include in the book I'm making her.
Welcome home Ruthie! Grace requested to take her along to church. When we got there she said, "Welcome to our church Ruthie, this is where we worship God." (love it!)
Her first outfit change- to her comfy purple pjs.
She wore each of her outfits the first day. Here is Grace with their "matching" purple hats.
Grace,

I am so glad we made this special memory together. Seeing the joy you have gotten from choosing Ruthie made my mama heart SO happy. You really are enjoying changing her clothes and bringing her along everywhere we go! You are such a sweet girl and I love you so much. I can't believe I'm a mama to a (gasp) 5 year old. You are getting so grown up. Happy birthday my favorite five year old, I love you the purplest!

Mama