This is the day the Lord has made

We had Sarah dedicated on Sunday. It was such a precious time to go with our Pastor and in agreement with our entire congregation to dedicate Sarah back to the Lord. It was sweet and precious BUT I have to preface by saying, I have one of those names that could go either way, my first name can be my first or last name, Brooke Jayne. Anyways, Rob call us up to the pulpit as John & Brooke go ahead and come on up and we'll dedicate little Sarah Elyzabeth to the Lord. Sarah did wonderful, it was her nap time so I was a little worried but she did great. Rob, not so much, maybe he needed a nap, in the middle of praying,

Rob: "and we lift up John & Jayne and the entire Brooke family to You".

Me thinking: The Brooke family????? Rob, you didn't just say that in front of the entire congregation, did you????

Well he did, but thankfully he redeemed himself in the end,

Rob: "Did I just say the Brooke Family??? Oh man, John & Brooke Jayne, Rob failed again".

We do rest in God's grace but I have to give him a hard time about it. Oh well, I've gotten that for our entire marriage, why would it stop now????

I think he's redeeming himself here :)

After the dedication we headed over to the BBQ and helped get everything set up for that. John has served for the last 4-5 years cooking and he really enjoys it. I just started serving this year with the girls. Every week we usually serve around 300 people but this week we were serving EVERYONE. The BBQ was free and of course, free brings out the masses. It was a crazy crazy morning. We ran out of chips, cookies, brownies and drinks and they had to make more hamburgers. We planned on serving 700 but in the end we think there were more like 900. Wow, that's alot of grub!!

The cooking crew

I'm not sure why I did this but when we finally got a chance to sit down and eat, I let the girls eat their ice cream sandwiches first. Now remember, this is an ice cream sandwich, it's soft, it was one of those Skinny Cow sandwiches even. But my daughter, somehow loosened her tooth on it. And I don't mean just loose but hanging by a thread loose. I'm not sure how she did it but she did. And of course, she is a 7 year old little girl, she can't just pull it out and be done with it, she has to whine, cry and pout about not wanting to eat anything else now. I guess it was my mistake in letting her eat her ice cream first because the rest of the day she didn't want to eat a thing. A few minutes later it turned black, and just got blacker as we went through the day. It did finally come out at Bible study that night. She says Andrew punched her in the mouth to show her how it could come out, evidently punched her a little too hard. She was so excited though. Now she is missing her two front teeth, just in time for Christmas, I can hear the singing already.

My toothless wonder!

It was a normal Sunday but with a couple extra bumps in the road, but what day isn't when you have 3 kids????

100 random things

So I was tagged by Kim. Here goes my 100 totally random things about me.

1. I was born in 1974
2. In Corvallis, OR
3. Only stayed there for 6 mos
4. Lived in Portland for 10 years
5. I have 3 beautiful girls
6. All of our kids have a Y in their middle names
7. I married the greatest man
8. I've been married for almost 13 years
9. I've tried water skiing
10. I couldn't do it
11. I've tried wake boarding
12. I couldn't do it
13. When I was a Freshman I lived with a different family
14. My dad died while I was there
15. My dad had brain cancer
16. I moved back to Corvallis when I was 10
17. I was on dance team in High School
18. I LOVED it
19. Wish I could still do the splits
20. I love Jesus
21. I love Worship Music
22. I homeschool
23. I love homeschooling
24. I am going to Women of Faith
25. 1 am 1/4 of the way done with this
26. We have a dog
27. I can't stand having a dog
28. I enjoy scrapbooking
29. I love photography
30. I wish I was better at it
31. I love Beaver Football
32. I am from a family of Beavers
33. I graduated from a trade school in Salem
34. I was a Financial Aid Officer
35. I have a wonderful mom
36. We went to Disney World for our honeymoon
37. I want to go back
38. I got married in Corvallis
39. I enjoy techie gadgets
40. I can't afford techie gadgets
41. I have great friends
42. I have taken flying lessons
43. I used to have a plane
44. My first car was a 79 Honda Accord
45. I hate my lack of boldness for Christ
46. I wish John could go to the Men's Retreat
47. I am looking forward to watching OSU play on Thursday
48. My favorite season is fall
49. I love the cooler air
50. I love football season
51. We were married in the fall
52. I've never broken any bones
53. My favorite movie is Facing the Giants
54. I cooked for 13 hours yesterday
55. I wish I didn't always second guess myself
56. My favorite jelly belly is "buttered popcorn"
57. I'm being challenged at being frugal
58. I only buy Dansko or Birkenstock shoes
59. I love my Danskos
60. I've had a home birth
61. I mostly enjoyed it
62. I'm scared of spiders
63. Although my fear of tiny ones is waning
64. I love reading Christian Non-Fiction
65. I like to watch Jon & Kate + 8
66. I've been to Iowa
67. I stayed on a pig farm
68. It stunk
69. It took me 4 1/2 years to get pregnant
70. I enjoy the indoors
71. I want to know more about gardening
72. I don't have time to learn
73. I had fun canning this summer
74. I lapswim at 5:30 most mornings
75. I need to be better at it
76. I have thought about doing a triathalon
77. I can't stand running
78. I love chinese food
79. And mexican food
80. I've been out of the country once
81. But I dont have a passport
82. I think I live in the greatest neighborhood
83. I'm not scared of the economy
84. I trust Jesus
85. I try not to worry
86. It's hard sometimes
87. Wow, I'm getting done
88. I don't like my name
89. I wanted to change it when I was younger
90. I trust my husband
91. I love listening to my children laugh
92. My favorite color is brown
93. I can't wait to cancel our cable
94. I think it's full of garbage
95. I enjoy cooking for my family
96. I love God's grace and mercy
97. I've been to a bowl game
98. I've seen golf ball size hail
99. I drove a car when I was 12
100. I want to go to Israel

Wow, that was fun. It wasn't that hard either. Try it yourself. Just 100 random things!

USC Got Stomped!

I can't believe I ever doubted my Beavs. I should have known better that the Beavers can do ANYTHING in Reser Stadium. Wow, that was an incredible game last night. They dominated over USC like the Trojans were a high school team. My opinion is that Mike Riley needs to get some better practice games in the summer and spring time because they always have VERY weak beginnings and once they can get their game together, that's when they start playing with heart & tenacity and become bowl eligible. USC will come down to the top 25 instead of #1 and who knows OSU may be in that top 25 now. Quizz is a household name and we have him for 3 more years, YAHOO (that boy is fast and short, he can duck like the best of them)!!! Go Beavs! Next week we are in Utah, we are not at home but I'm sure we'll do just fine. No more talkin smack about my Beavs!

Taken at the Emerald Bowl last year. I hope we would be able to attend another bowl game, that was an absolute blast.

GO BEAVS!!!

OK, so I can't deny it, I'm am an Oregon State Beaver fan!!! I bleed Orange & Black during Football season, I love to sing "O....S....U..... Oregon State Fight Fight Fight"!!!! I have the OSU fight song on my cell phone. This is my favorite season by far. Now I have to admit, tonight probably won't be pretty since we haven't done that great this season and we are playing the #1 team in the nation USC but I still get reved up and pumped about watching my beloved BEAVS play.

GO BEAVS!!!!

The First Lapbook

The Solar System Lapbook!


Not extremely colorful but they learned alot and that's the point. Maybe next time??

How are you going to deal with suffering?

In my devotions I've been reading this devotional "Women of the Bible". Every week there is another woman of whom she had a role in the Bible. There is even a whole week on Lot's Wife who only had one little sentence in the whole Bible about her. This is an amazing book and I have grown closer to the Lord through this Devotional.

This week the study is on Hannah. I felt like Hannah at one point in my life and she has an amazing story of faith but I don't want to go down her barren road this morning. I want to go down the road of comparison between Hannah and Sarah & Rachel. All three of these women were barren at one point in their lives. God granted them all their desires by giving them a child. Sarah laughed when she overheard the angel speaking to Abraham, Rachel yelled at her husband to give her a son and despised her sister Leah for having many children (and other reasons). But than there is Hannah, she didn't laugh in unbelief when Eli told her she would have children, she didn't yell at Elkanah to allow her to have a child. She sobbed before the Lord, she only told Eli because he thought she was drunk. She never once got mad at humans, she pleaded with the Lord.

The point I want to make this morning is not barreness but the comparison of how she dealt with her trials versus Sarah & Rachel. I have a very good friend who is going through the unimaginable right now in her home, things you and I would never want to deal with. But she has constantly looked to the Lord in all this. There are so many things that she could "do", she could laugh in the enemy's face and mock the Lord for putting her in this position, she could yell at the target and get upset at the Lord for allowing her to be tested. Instead she has waited patiently through things that humanly we can't wait through and only a "weak person" would wait through. But she is not weak, she is the strongest person I know right now because of the dependance she has on the Lord. The Word says "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me". This includes everything that she is going through right now. God is her strength, she is not her own.

There have been so many times I have thought that she needs to do "ABC" to "fix" this situation but she knows exactly what she is doing though. She is waiting on the Lord who knows exactly what He is doing. She is patient to wait, she is waiting for His timing to do anything and fix anything.

"Do ALL things without complaining and arguing" Phillipians 2:14

"Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful" Romans 12:12

"God blesses the people who patiently endure testing. Afterward, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.", James 1:12

Be patient in the trials that God has for you and you will learn more about His character, you will be given the crown of glory that He has promised you. God loves each of us and doesn't want to see us suffer but He does want us to draw closer to Him. Allowing us to suffer sometimes does come hard but is needed to glorify HIM and get us to call Him KING!!!!

Next time, how are you going to deal with your suffering?

Alternative Education

Earlier this year Angie told me a little bit about lapbooking. Lapbooking is kind of a little "scrapbook" of what the children have learned. At the time I tucked it into the back of my brain and wasn't sure what I would do with that information. When I was making plans for this school year I did not put in any plans for science and history for the simple reason that I wanted a simple year. I would put in some sort of studies of science & history but wasn't sure what it would look like.

I asked the kids the first day of school "what are some things that you would like to learn this year". They gave me a list of things and I am supposed to now run with that. So for the past week I have been making a list of fun field trip ideas that would somehow involve the list of ideas that they would like to learn about. This is the time when lapbooks come back into the picture. I finally decided to look them up and really decide to figure out if it would work for us. I'm glad I did. I think this is going to be our answer to science & history. As we prepare for field trips we will be learning about what we are going to go see (or went to see depending on how prepared I am).

Yesterday we had a plan to go to the Gilbert House for their homeschool day. This time it was held in the evening because they wanted to have a "star party" afterwards, which works great for us because than Daddy can come too. So lapbook momma printed out some mini books on astronomy and that was school yesterday. They learned about planets, the phases of the moon and comets & meteors. They started their lapbooks and than we went on to the Gilbert House. Guess what? Everything we learned about during the day we talked about and discovered last night at the star party. Yahoo, Success!!!!!! Emma was so excited when she could see Jupiter and 5 of its moons. We talked about comets & meteors on our way home because they thought they saw a "shooting star". We couldn't see the moon last night, I'm not sure if that was because it was a new moon or it was out of sight???? (pictures will come later of the lapbooks when they are completely finished.)

In any case it was such a fun day of alternative education and it was a fun evening as a family. My kids are amazed that school actually lasts all day long and doesn't end when the books are closed. Alternative Education doesn't have to mean weird people, it just means that what we are doing doesn't line up with what everyone else is doing. That's OK because if everyone did the same thing, we would look like a society of robots.

By the way, I give God ALL the glory in the way this year is going to look for us because there is no way I could have figured all this out on my own. God is the one who has orchestrated our school year and I'm just trying to figure out His plan.

I'm not fat,
I'm pregnant with Ice Cream's baby!


I saw this on facebook the other day, thought it was too good not to share.

Pockets

Now I'm about to state the obvious: I have 3 girls, I know it's shocking and you may not have known that, but it's true, I have 3 beautiful little girls that one day, Lord willing, will grow into moms and wives. My heart in the last 6 months or so has been to be training them in homemaking; cooking, cleaning, laundry and sewing (I'm sure there are others but my 5AM brain will not come up with the rest right now). Yesterday Emma was so excited that I took the time to teach her how to make "pockets", they are actually just simple little purses. She wanted something that she could put in her purse to put jewelry in. I made the first one (not pictured) and she made the next one with my help. My struggle in all of this is the mess. I have such a hard time keeping the mess laying around in our tiny little home. So we had to pack it all away over night and I'm sure first thing after school she'll want to start right away on more "pockets".


Trying to tie a knot

So proud!

Haircut & A Game

Emma has been wanting her hair cut short for some time now. I have never thought it would be all that cute so I hesitated but thought well we do need to get her hair cut but just not as short as she is thinking. I tried finding one of those $1/year places but the only place I could find was in Corvallis 30 miles away and it just didn't seem worth it once I paid for the gas to get over there. Friday morning was just not our morning for school. Don't get me wrong, we tried a good effort but wow, it was difficult! So for a break in our routine I decided ok, it's time, we are going to go get their hair cut. Riah really needed hers dealt with too. The girls were so excited to go to a "salon" to get their hair cut, wahooo! This was kinda like that first haircut for them. I have taken Emma once before but it was just for a little trim and nothing really significant. I think this one counts. Hence all the pics!

Notice Emma's hair is half way down that blue elephant.

She had enough hair to cut to send to Locks of Love

Riah's wasn't quite as long but she definitely cut off some length.

ohhhhh, I wish I had done it sooner. So cute!

The next day was the Beaver home opener so guess who was there? The kids got in free with our cheap parent tickets, $21 each, doesn't really sound cheap to me but when a normal ticket is upwards of $50/each, $21 doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we'll be able to enjoy some other games this year but they'll have to be free to us.

Apples & School

Wednesday evening we went and picked apples. Apples & Blackberries are the only two fruits that I have left that I would like to preserve in one fashion or another. This generous family opened up their trees to us to pick as many apples as we cared to have. This is what we got!

Two boxes of beautiful apples.

And one happy baby!

We started school a week ago yesterday. This year is going to be so great. We have streamlined our education and the girls really seem to enjoy it. We started using Spell to Write & Read for Language Arts, Abeka for Math and we are still working out the science and social studies. We will most likely read biography's for history, maybe Voice of the Martyr books and nature walks for Science with some field trips scattered throughout the year. School used to be all day long, with a mundane amount of work to do but now it's 1 1/2 hours tops and the girls have a happier momma.

Studiously making 5's

Cursive this year!

BooHoo

I was on the phone talking to a friend and Emma comes in yelling "Mom hurry you have to see this quick" and I walked outside and there is Riah riding her bike with no training wheels. I think Sarah not being a tiny baby anymore has made me more nostalgic or treating Riah more like baby lately because I have looked at her in a new light lately. She is really only 4 years old. I have always had this view of her as an older girl, in the same age bracket as Emma but really she's not and last night it really hit me that "ooohhhhh, my baby is growing up". Now she really is getting to be that same age bracket as Emma and I missed all that toddler time. I have started Kindergarten with her this year mainly by her pushing me into it but I also wonder if maybe I should force her to wait. I don't want to lose that window of opportunity that she is in with her love of learning. Well enough of my pitty party, back to the excitment. Yes, Riah learned how to ride her bike last night. Enjoy the pictures. Oh and by the way, we called Noni last night to tell her and she says "Wow, that's great, when is Sarah gonna learn to ride her bike?". I immediately came back and asked "When is Sarah gonna learn how to walk???" First things first mom!



There she goes!

What are big sister's for?

Saving More

This has been one of my fun projects this summer, preserving and canning. I have canned such things as pears, peaches, applesauce, green beans, and relish. One of the things people are most surprised about is the pearsauce. It's just like applesauce but you make it out of pears. It is so yummy and the best part is that you don't have to use any sugar, a plus in my book any day. I made relish this year and have never done it before. I can't say the cost was that much less than just buying it but I know exactly whats in it and it didn't cost nearly as much as any organic brand out there. I also did some freezer jam and just saved up some blueberries and raspberries in the freezer. Right now I have zucchini zucchini zucchini and making lots of bread. I am going to try zucchini quiche tonight. I still want to do more apples for apple bread, more applesauce, apple pie filling , salsa, and blackberries for jam and just to have some the freezer. This is my first year really doing alot of this and next year I hope to get started sooner and do better planning. What kind of things do you preserve from your garden or summer crops?

Life/Time Savers

Saving money is number one and foremost on my mind right now. We have always been the "if we need it we'll buy it" people. Now we need to be the "lets really think about how much the NEED is before we buy it". It's been challenging this last few weeks but really good. Yes there has been things that I have purchased that maybe weren't a need in some people's eyes but they really have been useful tools. Two things come to mind,

1. My new watch, Wow, I didn't realize how much I needed a watch. I have used this thing sssooooo much in my daily life. A watch??? you ask, how can a watch make such a life difference. Well OK, it hasn't made such a life difference that mountains are moving BUT I have a timer now, that goes with me everywhere, I don't have any more excuses of why the laundry is still in the washing machine 6 hours later, of why my kids are still playing outside at 8:00 and they should be inside getting ready for bed (or in bed already), why I didn't get out of bed at 5:00 to go swimming since I didn't hear my other 3 alarms going off. How did I ever live life before (or at least get anything done on time) is beyond me. This new watch has been a lifesaver. So when I got a new watch, it didn't seem like a life or death need but I knew it would help with at least school with test taking and such and now I know it helps with so much more. I still have yet to use it for my original purpose, school, I'm sure it'll come in handy for that some day.

2. My new knife. I have complained for years that I need new kitchen knives but never wanted to fork out the money for a good knife that would actually cut (hmmm, what a concept). I have a friend who sells Pampered Chef and guess what, I got a new Pampered Chef knife. I can actually cut the food in the kitchen. I have recently taken up canning to save on money in the long run and that knife has made that job easiar, I cut paper thin elk steak the other day, tomatoes are actually in cubes now instead of a watered down mess of mush.

So now I have two new items that have really helped me out quite a bit and have made my life easier and more efficient. John always wants to the right tools to do his job and now I have the right tools to do my job. What has been your time/life savers????

10 minute session

Finally I get a chance to sit down and update my ever neglected blog. I really enjoy blogging and reading other people's blogs but I can't see how these mom's of umpteen children blog everyday when I only have 3 children and I can't seem to blog once a month. Tips would be nice on this one. Anyways, I'm trying my hand at the 10 minute blog session. If I don't keep it up you'll know it didn't work.

So in the last few days, God has shown me a few things I thought I would share,

1. Feminity, I am a woman that God created to be feminine. I have never been very feminine and never really thought I was missing much until God has pressed it upon my heart in the last few days about my beautiful precious little girls. God created them to be feminine and they will not be that way unless I foster that in them. I wonder if that is why He gave me three girls, to teach it to me. I konw that's how God works alot of times is He throws you in the situation until you learn it. "OK, Brooke, I'm going to continue to give you girls until you get this one", hmmm humerous. We do serve a humerous God.

2. Grace, I need to show my children more grace. They are gifts from our Heavenly Father and He has shown me grace, I need to show them more grace and kindness. Don't get me wrong, I am not this mom that is constantly screaming at my children BUT I know there is more room for grace. I need to speak kindly to them and show them more grace in my actions and speech with them. I know that I am a sinner and they are sinners, Grace is a gift that God has given me, I can give it to them.

I hope that maybe I am making a little sense and if I'm not, than just remember, this is my attempt at the 10 minute blog session. Check back tomorrow and see if I can keep it up.