At Home…in Alaska

Archive for November, 2007

Officially typed up 4/13/08

Chickens

Still no eggs…the stock pot is calling…

Celebrations

11/03/07 2nd Annual Covenant Bible Church Reformation Day Conference! Chris Schlect was our speaker and he spoke on “The Ancient Church and the Nations.” Very interesting. He showed many slides and I’ve saved the supplementary text packet for further perusal and homeschool ideas. I really love the solid teaching we receive at our church.

11/22/07 Thanksgiving in Nelchina (pronounced “Nel-chee-na”) with friends. Spent the night and went home the next evening. Great time of fellowship! Forgot the camera. But the children had fun dancing and sledding and eating and playing…and the adults talked and talked (and ate too )!

Weather

11/02/07 Snow 2 ¼ ”

11/10/07 Snow 2 ¼ ”

11/11/07 Snow 3 ¼ ”

11/14 - 15/07 Snow 2 ”

11/17 - 19/07 Snow 4 ”

11/21/07 44°F ! Snow melting like crazy!

11/22 - 23/07 40+°F again. Snow mostly gone!

11/24/07 Snow back again. 3 ”

Total Snow = 16 ¾ “

An eventful and uneventful month at the same time. Our business has, of course, slowed down quite a bit although we are hoping for a good bit of activity over Christmas. Except for the two celebrations mentioned, we were pretty much just busy with every day life…which is never dull with a homeschooling houseful.

‘Til next time…
Blessings,
~Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

Amongst all the sickness, all of us at some point have enjoyed the leftovers from Thanksgiving. One thing in particular everyone raved about! What’s to rave about about leftovers? Smoked Turkey Soup!

My father smoked the turkey we shared on our early Thanksgiving meal this year. If you have the chance (and the means), smoke yourself a turkey! He’s done it in the past and every time it’s been the best turkey we’ve ever eaten!! My parents took some of the meat home with them but they graciously left me the carcass. Oh, the soup from it was sooo yummy! We all were bummed when it ran out.

The only thing more I could wish for from it was that whatever “magical powers” chicken noodle soup has on the sick would have worked on whatever vicious strain of flu we’ve had recently…

~ Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

Sunday - no puking.

Monday - no puking.

Tuesday - Child #5 throws up in the AM. Child #6 throws up in the PM just after being transfered from our bed to hers. (*whew* That was a close one…it was easier to change her bed linens than it would have been for ours.)

Wednesday - no puking. Was very careful about what I fed the previously sick ones. I had been before…but some played on their father’s sympathy and a few things were allowed that I tried not to make waves over. This time, nothing other than “mother approved” has gotten past their lips.

Thursday (today) - Child #1 slept in and then came to me saying she has a very sore throat, a headache and wants to stay in bed. I sighed, gave her a big hug and told her to go ahead back to bed. Noone else has reported any sick symptoms…thus far… Not that that means anything. The majority of the time there has been no warning…particularly with the littlest ones.

November has been a blur. The month is almost over and it quite literally was spent being sick. I’m worn out. When will it end??!!

Pray for us.

~ Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

We had a busy yet fun Thanksgiving holiday!

Unfortunately, some of us have had a sickness relapse…

To recap last week/weekend:

Tuesday was spent doing the usual - homeschool, laundry, business work for the most part.

Wednesday my parents arrived mid-morning. Then, dh and I left in the afternoon with four of the children to do errands while the other three stayed to entertain Bumpa and Grammy one of which was the oldest to also help with the Thanksgiving dinner my mother was cooking. We had an early celebration with them as we would be heading north to spend Thanksgiving day with some good friends and my parents didn’t want to extend their journey that much farther. We had a great dinner upon arriving home with a lovely table set my our dear eldest daughter. My aunt and uncle and cousin stopped by a little later to visit for a bit as they would be celebrating Thanksgiving Day with friends as well. Baby L. was cranky so laid down with her to put her to bed and the rest of the evening was history for me. LOL I was sooo tired! It was getting later in the evening anyway so it was to be expected. Anyhow, the children were making so much noise late into the evening they woke the baby 3x before I finally piped up and said we wouldn’t be finished getting ready or be able to leave early if noone went to bed!! My aunt/uncle/cousin had gone home at some point in there…I felt bad missing the rest of their visit…so they were just up fooling around for my parent’s sake I guess. Dh hustled them off to bed though and when he was through I was able to lay baby down and then went to the kitchen and laundry room to finish preps for the next day. I think it was 11:30pm or so. I didn’t get to bed until sometime between 2:30-2:45am. Needless to say, we weren’t up as bright and early as we were originally planning without me being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

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We would like to wish all of our readers a happy and blessed Thanksgiving this week!

I’ll be too busy to post any closer to the day and probably through the weekend too…

If you are traveling, may God grant you a safe journey to and fro as well. Please pray for us also as there is a possibility that we may be doing so ourselves.

To further celebrate our thankfulness for all the blessings God has bestowed on us, we are offering 15% off all orders over at our shop through the end of the month! The special is inadvertently sweetened by the fact that I have not been able to figure out how to have the discount occur *before* shipping…so shipping is included in the price and the discount is indeed 15% your total order! (ie - With shipping calculated before the discount, it bumps the price of your order up and therefore your discount is greater. )

Ok, that’s it for me this week. Again, the Lord’s blessings on you as you celebrate our country’s heritage and God’s provision! †

~ Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

We have had a recurring bout of some kind of vicious bug since the last time I wrote. It actually started a few days before for the first couple of children…grouchiness, listlessness, general blahness…you get the idea. But the vomiting…oh the vomiting…didn’t start until the afternoon of my last entry or the day after. I don’t recall exactly. It’s all a blur. I commented in a reply to Robin that most had it sometime after that and that I was hoping me and baby didn’t get it. It wasn’t the Lord’s will unfortunately. Baby especially was very very ill! I’ve never had a baby this young get sooo sick! I was more than a little concerned… The good Lord pulled us all through though and I am one relieved and thankful mother! It isn’t completely gone yet…we are all still feeling a bit worn out and there seems to be some residual intestinal discomfort amongst some of us…but, for the most part, we are up and functioning and feeling ourselves again.

So, that’s been our week+ in a nutshell. Hope everyone else has been better.

~ Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

Here’s proof:

After a few cycles of cold-warm-cold-warm-again weather, I was going to post last Thursday about the unusually mild weather and our lack of snow. We had just had another cycle of mid-40’s temps which melted all but a thin layer of ice from the couple of inches of snow we had received the previous week…but I had gotten swamped in all the site upgrades seen here and at our business site. Friday and Saturday I took a break from it all and it’s a good thing because it would have been a moot post…between Sat. and Sun. we received about 6″. I didn’t turn the computer on at all on Fri. and most of Sat. and not until later in the afternoon/evening on Sun. which was fine because I actually didn’t get these pics until this morning. There it is…in all it’s freshness…before little feet have made complex mazes through it and little hands brushed it off the railing. I have a feeling it’s here to stay this time…

Upgraded and (main) blog changes complete. Need to work on school and garden blogs although I may scrap them altogether and combine all the posts over here. Still deciding. Also, I will be upgrading our business site. All this will be over the course of some days/week (or 2) though…whew. My eyes hurt and my shoulders/back are stiff from being on the computer so much the last couple of days. Not accustom to it and really glad I don’t have a job working at a desk/computer regularly!

How’s it look Valerie? Let me know if you see anything that looks “wonky”… Maybe now I can get to your emails!

~ Tamara
♥ oxoxox ♥

Every year since we began home educating, we have taken a break from our regular history studies during the month of November to read and study about the Pilgrims. We never tire of our picture books because they are always new to someone in our family…as the littles either see them for the first time or have grown to an age where they finally remember the stories from the previous year - “Oh, I remember that book!! I really liked it!” The olders like to reminisce about when we acquired the book or when they first remember hearing it and really enjoy introducing them to a younger sibling that hasn’t had the pleasure in hearing it yet or doesn’t remember. It’s also been fun for me because we’ve gradually acquired books at higher reading levels. While I know that I could always read those books on my own, generally my reading pile is a leaning tower already and I just prefer to “save” these types of historical books for the season in which we will all enjoy them together. I like that I am always learning with my children. I’ve always known that eventually I would read the higher level books as my children are obviously going to age and catch up to my level (and probably surpass me).

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