Five Things for Friday, Book Update and Neverending Winter Edition

I am convinced winter is never going to end.

It has been a long and oh, so very, very cold winter.  And I don’t know if I can take much more of it. I thought I was tough, but this winter has been so cold. We’ve had almost two months where the temperature has hardly risen above zero!  Last week I looked at the forecast and just about bawled. The high was 10 degrees! This week has been a bit better. Today it hit 30 degrees and it felt like a tropical paradise, which is kind of sad.

I am so ready for spring.

Still, I do have hope that it might not be too far away because I have noticed that the birds are back in our trees. We now have the most delightful group of robins living in our front
yard, and a family of sparrows are now inhabiting our barn and the bird
house in our yard. Also, the kids and I opened up the car doors yesterday and the waft that reached our noses told us that spring really must be right around the corner because… the skunk is awake.

A fragrant reminder that winter won’t last
forever.

I had a few people ask me how my book on New Testament women is coming along and I am happy to report that I am about  2/3rds the way done! It has turned out to be a bigger job than I first expected. Mainly because my editor and I decided that, since I have written about so many of the women in the New Testament,  it would be a shame not to just write about ALL of them.

So I am.

My book is going to be called, “All the Women in the New Testament” … or something close to that. I am really excited about it! I have gotten so much inspiration and guidance as I have been writing
about these women, and I know it is going to be such a blessing to
people to have all these women’s stories in one place. It is going to be
a great resource for anyone studying the New Testament. Also, the pictures are turning out SO beautiful. Mandy is working on the cover images right now, so hopefully in a few weeks we will have a sneak peak to show you. I am getting really excited to see the finished product.

Now, to just to get it all done!  The Lord has blessed me with a big
burst of energy the last few weeks, but I just hope that it keeps up
because I still have about 15 more women to write!  If you want to say a little prayer for me I wouldn’t mind getting all the help I can.

A few weeks ago I started taking pictures for a  post about our homeschooling routine. For the last four or five months we have had a really great schedule going, and I was feeling so good about how our system was working, that I couldn’t wait to share it. Then all of sudden everything fell apart. About mid-February the kids didn’t want to do anything even semi-school related. Our schedule went out the door, their were tears, arguments and “I’m bored” became the most common phrase in our house. I wasn’t too worried though, I’d been warned by veteran homeschoolers that this burnout happens to EVERYONE in February, so I was prepared for it. I decided to reign back our schedule, toss out academic stuff, and just do activities. 

A topographical map of Mexico out of paper and glue

Scaling back seemed to work pretty well. We spent a few days going through dinosaur books and classifying and naming all he dinosaurs in the boy’s
collection. We made passports and used the Friend Magazine’s Friends Around the World activities to study new countries. Asher and Rose started taking piano lessons. We put on a few puppet shows. We painted, drew, sculpted,
and scribbled. We cooked and baked. We read “By the Banks of Plum Creek”. We played in the snow. We watched movies.  We made up stories. And we played with LEGOs.

Lots of LEGOs.

But I am running out of ideas, and I still have several more weeks till this endless winter ends. We are getting bored. I’d love to hear what other people have been doing to beat the “cabin fever” and “homeschool funk”!

Like I mentioned we have been playing lots of LEGOs. In fact, can I just say that who ever invented LEGOs should be knighted, maybe even sainted. I honestly don’t know how pioneer moms made it through the winter in one room log cabins without LEGOs. They are just about the best toy in the world.

One of our favorite things has been to make stop-motion LEGO movies with the Lego Movie Maker App. It is a really awesome app… and it is free! Asher and I have made some pretty epic videos together. These two our our best I think.

Oh, and look who can sit up now!

Isn’t she a doll?  I’m totally addicted to kissing those little cheeks.

I hope you have the most wonderful weekend!