Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Jesus is Alive!

I pray you do not feel alone this Easter Sunday and that you will gather with others in love to celebrate this wonderful holiday together.

For those of you who are unable to gather together, you are never alone.  Christ our Lord is your Father and Friend, with you always.  I pray you know him well!

Lent, Day 34 and So On

I still have a lot of other things I want to blog about when I have some spare minutes ... or hours.  But I don't want to fall down completely on the whole Lenten Thankfulness thing!  It's what's kept me going over this very busy season of life.

Something to Think About

I found this on another blog and thought it was quite profound.  I want to share it with you...

I love this!!

Please Help This Homeschooling Family

I don't know if you have followed the news about the German family seeking political asylum here in the United States so they may continue to homeschool their children.  But here is an article posted by Fox News about their plight if you would like to find out more.

In the meantime, HSLDA is helping them fight their battle and they are asking for our help.  Here is text from an email I received today from Mike Farris of HSLDA (of which we are members), asking us to sign a petition they've put together to help change the minds of our federal government, who right now wants to send this family back to Germany to be persecuted.

Lent, My Days 28-33

Maybe I'm getting lazier, but I can't believe it's been almost a week since I updated my Lent Thankfulness List here.  So bear with me as I tear through six joy-filled days (okay, so not completely joy-filled, but I'm trying to think about the good stuff right now).

Day 28, Tuesday
I am thankful for a flexible schedule to be able to rest up after our whirlwind trip to Arizona.  We didn't do much of anything this day except some unpacking and straightening up.  I watched E and drove my older nieces to and/or from school.  C was at work, of course, so that made me even more thankful for my job at home since he didn't get much of a break at all after all that driving.

Still Here

Everyday life has consumed most of my time lately. I have some posts started and hopefully I can finish and post them soon.  All is well... a little illness, some household organization and cleaning and schooling have put me at my daily limit for awake time lately. Must be these longer days and coming out of winter hibernation that has life getting so busy.

I appreciate your patience. If you are new to our blog, perhaps now is a good time to read some earlier posts during this lull. The links are in order by date down on the right side.

Anyway, I'll blog you later. Hopefully sooner!

The Bag Lady

I have a confession to make.  I am a bag lady.

Yes, I do love bags of all kinds -- cute tote bags and the like.  It takes a lot of self-control not to buy every cute bag I see at every store I visit.  I just love them, but don't have enough uses for them (or storage to keep them).

But the real problem is that when I come home from a store (Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, Marshall's, etc.) there are often a couple items left in the plastic grocery bag that I want to save for later after I put away all the stuff for now.  I stick the bag someplace for safe keeping and then when "later" comes, I forget where I put it.

Healthy Elvis (Another Simple Smoothie Recipe)

I've heard the stories about Elvis Presley's love of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches, as well as Monte Cristo sandwiches.  So I decided to use some of the basic flavor profiles of these two sandwiches to make one delicious, Paleo-friendly smoothie.  I figured if those flavors are good enough for a king, then they're good enough for me.

I was right!  I loved it.  Even though I mixed spinach in with fruit flavors, which has always weirded me out.

Gym Report, Week 2

Click HERE for a recap of my first week with my new gym membership.  Read below about my second week...

So this week was a little more mixed up with regards to the gym, but I still feel like I'm doing pretty well considering this is a new habit I'm trying to form.

Lent, My Days 25-27

We traveled to Arizona this past weekend, so my overall thankfulness is about the opportunity to do that!  But I will divvy up the days of Lent and recall some specifics for you here.

Day 25, Saturday

On Saturday, we drove the 6-1/2 hours to Tempe, where we stayed for the next two nights.  There was snow falling for a large portion of our journey and even some snow packed roads once we were up in the mountains.  But I'm thankful the Lord saw fit to keep our van on the road and to keep all of us safe on our trip!

Get to Know Me (2013)

We're home safe from our trip to Arizona and I will have some photos to show you (if you're not already bored of looking at my Instagram posts -- I went overboard, but I had fun doing it!) and a vacation recap, but first, I wanted to respond to an email from my good friend at Hope Rising Farm, here in a blog post to share with you all here...

Lent, My Days 23-24

I know my day 24 is not over yet, but here's the thing, I'm going away for the weekend(!) and so I'm posting my thankfulness now so I can be thankful I don't have more posts to make up when I get back.  We all know I'm already backlogged with so many things I want to write about here anyway.

Six-List: Lent, My Day 22 and Six Things I'm Thankful for Today

I have a lot to be thankful for today!

1.  This is my 500th Mama Flock post.  Hooray!

Lent, My Day 21

I was so thankful yesterday because we actually got every one's school work done by 2:00.  That used to be the norm, but since watching E, everything takes a bit longer and we're usually still trying to finish things up in the four o'clock hour.

But the kids were really cooperative!  I'm thinking it has something to do with our new weekly schedule and my giving them more one-on-one time.  Come to think of it, I'm noticing the kids trying to be more helpful with the housework as well.  Exciting!

In other news, S has recently made some headway in her understanding of her relationship with her birth mother.  She talked with me about it yesterday and I was glad to hear her insights.  She will be reevaluating that relationship for decades to come, I imagine, but I'm really proud of her for being more discerning lately. 

Lent, My Day 20

If "My Days" of counting Lent were actually real Lent days, we'd be only twenty days from Easter.  But actually, there's almost a week more on top of my count.  So you don't have to panic.  You can still enjoy most of March and St. Patrick's Day and then figure out what everyone is going to wear for Easter Sunday.  It'll be fine.

So yesterday, my day 20, was really super special.  It was the first Monday of our new schedule and I heard that D got tons of stuff done at home (her girls shared with me today that she did all their chores for them before they got home from school -- what a treat!).

Special Nights

It hasn't been very long since we started this new habit of having special nights and times with certain members of the family, but I thought I'd give you an update on how it's going so far.

Lent, My Days 17-19

Now that I'm spending more time with our kids one-on-one and as a group, I'm finding less time for blogging!  Maybe that's not a bad thing, except that I have so many things in my mind I want to blog about and not enough time for my outlet.  So once again, I'm stuffing three days of thanksgiving into one post since I found a moment between things to write.

Gym Report, Week 1

So I figured, at least in these early stages of forming my gym-attending habits, that I will use this blog to document my success (and failings?) at the gym as a way to hold me more accountable and consistent.  I hope you won't mind.

C got our gym membership at Planet Fitness on Saturday, February 23.  My first visit to said gym was Monday morning, February 25.

To Love Another

So I promised a followup post once we had some resolution to what caused my Tuesday to be extremely stressful.  Today we got some good news, so I wanted to write this up soon.

I've mentioned before how my sister, D, who lives nearby with her four daughters, is a single mom.  She has some incredible strength to be doing the job of two parents, basically on her own.  The father is not involved any longer.  The girls still have so much promise and joy in them even though their mom is tired so much of the time.

I know how tired I am a lot of the time and I have a partner in this crazy life.  So as well as things continue to go over there at their house, I have admiration for my sister's ability to keep doing and giving to those girls.  Money is always tight, quality time is limited and it's a house full of five females with nobody to kill the bugs or repair things.

We do our best to help D and the girls as much as we can.