Raising Blessings

A Eucalyptus plant

Joshua woke up with a stuffy nose last week and he was having a difficult time nursing because of it. After hunting around my house for my little jar of baby vicks I realized that the ingredients listed on the back included eucalyptus oil, lavender oil and chamomile oil.   These three oils were included in my stash of essential oils so I decided to make my own “baby vicks”. Here is what I did:

• In a 10 ml glass jar I put in 2 drops of eucalyptus oil, 1 drop lavendar and 1 drop chamomile.
• I filled the jar up with grape seed oil. You can use any carrier oil you want such as olive oil, jojoba oil, coconut oil etc…
• Place the cap on the jar and shake.
• Add a few drops to baby’s chest, back and or feet.

This works just like vicks and it smells a lot nicer. In no time Joshua had a clear nose and was able to go back to nursing normally. You can increase the strength of the essential oils to use for older children or adults.

If you have ever wanted to go to LEGOLAND®, there is a great deal going on now this week until they are sold out.

Plum Steal: $359-$495 for Two LEGOLAND® California Two-Day Hopper Passes + Two Nights at The Grand Pacific Palisades Resort – $599-$815 Value

The LEGOLAND® park hopper tickets gives you:

• 60 interactive rides, shows and attractions for families with children ages 2-12.
• LEGOLAND® water park.
• Sea Life Aquarium.

Regular price is $220 each so this is a great deal especially when you add in 2 nights at the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort.



 

On Monday last week Sariah turned 6 years old. She is such a wonderful older sister to 3 siblings. She loves to help take care of them and be a good example.

Usually we do 5 school subjects each day, however on her birthday I told her that we would do just 3 and she could choose which ones. She chose Art, Science and German. I also let her choose what we would have for dinner and she decided on waffles, bacon, eggs and orange juice.

That evening we had family home evening where we looked at pictures of Sariah from the day she was born to currently and then we talked about how Sariah’s name means “Princess of the Lord” and what it means to be a princess of the Lord (Keep the commandments, be kind, use good manners, dress modestly etc…)

On Saturday we had a birthday part for Sariah. The little girls came dressed as princesses and they made princess crowns. Here is the cake I made:



It looks a little off because I was using the Betty Crocker recipe and set the oven to 325 but I was using a Duncan Hines cake mix that called for the oven to be at 375 (which I realized after the cakes baked). So the cakes did not rise properly and the doll just fit up to her knees. I used a dixie cup to cover her up from the knees to waist.

We participated in the Rex Lee Run again. With 4 little kids, of course we walked but we didn’t just walk … we were slow! We came in 4th and 5th LAST!!!  That is mainly due to JJ’s “I want to be last” attitude.  I think it’s a southern thing….

Anyways it was fun and I thought it was so great that Sariah and Rebekah walked all 5 km themselves. Miriam just sat back in her little stroller the entire time, relaxed as could be and Joshua was a sleep the entire time in the pouch sling I wore.

JJ’s P.I. was one of the people in charge of organizing the Rex Lee Run. He is very well known in the Cancer Research Field. He was the one making announcements on the Megaphone and as we were nearing the finish line the P.I announced “we have 7 very special members of the Lee family with us” and JJ started getting all excited. I admit my first thought was “there are only 6 of us” then I quickly realized he was talking about Rex Lee‘s 7 children.

Rebekah was really cute as she crossed the finish line and people were cheering, she excitedly said “yay! I win, I win!”

Maybe next year I can convince JJ to try to beat this year’s time.

One benefit to homeschooling through K12 is that the students can move up in each subject once they have mastered all the concepts for the subject even if it is before the end of the school year.

Sariah had her last kindergarten lesson and assessment last week so we threw her a little family graduation party with ice cream cones. She also really wanted to open her birthday gift from my sister Sara-Jayne, early. So we got permission to allow that It was a pink sweater that she loves.



Teaching Sariah has been such a joy. She learned about patterns, adding, subtracting, graphs, solid shapes, how to spell sight words, syllables, improving her reading skills, Sentence structure, continents, different countries around the world and early American history and a lot more!



She made this train with her 2-d shapes after finishing up a lesson once. I thought it looked great.

I put a lot of thought into what would be the right thing for Sariah starting kindergarten. I really felt like I should homeschool but I was so unsure if I would be qualified to. We put her into a lottery for a charter school but she never got in so I decided to the K12 program and thought maybe I would try again the next year to get both Sariah and Rebekah into charter school. I liked how the school was set up and the kids were just so cute in their uniforms. However after 6 months of homeschooling I have come to love it. Rebekah is so excited to begin kindergarten in August. She loves doing her reading lessons each day and joining in with Sariah where she can.

Homeschooling two children will, I’m sure, come with challenges in the beginning and in the end will be twice the joy.

Have you heard about the youngest pacemaker patient? I love reading “good news” and this is one of the best I’ve read in a while.

Even though I have never had any pregnancy complications, I still became so nervous when it came time to check the baby’s heartbeat at each midwife appointment. I can’t imagine how worried little Jaya’s parents were at each appointment knowing that their baby had a congenital heart block.

The successful operation of implanting a pacemaker into a 3.5 pound, 15 minute old baby could give hope to other parents of babies with severe heart problems. The pacemaker will last Jaya about 10 years and I can’t imagine how much medical technology will advance between now and then.

It is a blessing to live in a time where we have laser spinal surgery and prenatal surgery for babies diagnosed with spina bifida.

My Little 4 year old, Rebekah is such a fun child. She loves to dance and sing. It is so much fun watching her dance. She was up all night dancing at my cousins wedding when she was only 2 and a half and more recently on New Years Eve. Here is a picture that my sister took:



Miriam is her little apprentice, copying Rebekah’s moves and telling her when to play another song.

Rebekah’s dj gear consists of the Windows media player default music, classical music on youtube and her Pandora station which mostly plays music from the Disney princess movies.

This years Valentines was very nice. JJ surprised me with this very cute and yummy cookie when he came home.



He then took the Sariah, Rebekah and Miriam to the church where they were having free babysitting!

While JJ was gone I nursed Joshua down to sleep and then we enjoyed a nice candlelight dinner at home. I made curried vegetables with rice and naan bread including a few heart shaped ones especially for JJ:)

On Sunday the kids were dressed in red, white and pink for church.



All of the girls wore “valentines clothes” on tuesday and I tried to get a good picture but after 10 tries this is the best I could get:



I hope everyone’s Valentines was full of love!