Are We Fully Relying on God?

 

 Are We Fully Relying on God?

 

As we were reading Little House on The Prairie, I was struck by how much the pioneers had to toil and pray for what they had.

Think about our lives  today as Americans.

We can run to McDonalds for food instead of worrying if Pa will kill some rabbits and if we will be able to eat tonight.

If we want a house we can just buy a house that is already built. We do not have to live for months in a wagon as we search for land. Then when we find the land, we do not have to cut down trees to build our own homes.

Our children can have pretty much all the toys they want and not just have a hog bladder and corn cob with which to play.

That sounds good.  We are living in the best time the world has ever known. But is it really?

In the pioneer days people had to fully rely on God for everything they had. They made sure to study their Bible, pray, and go to church.

With all our stuff and conveniences we should have more time to devote to God, not less. Are we relying on ourselves and not on God? Are we using the extra time we have for God? 

Think about these things as we enter the new year.

Home

Laura Ingalls Wilder said it best when she said, “Home is the nicest word there is.”

When you hear that word, what kind of images does it evoke in your mind?

For my family, I want them to know our home is a happy, warm place—a place where they can come after a tough day and snuggle under a crochet blanket, on a well worn couch and rest their weary body.

 I want them to know that our home is a place of protection from the outside world. And we will always find comfort in prayer.

I want them to know our home is a place where our bodies are nourished with warm, comforting food and our souls are nourished with the word of God .

I want them to know our home is a place where wonderful memories are made—memories that will live forever in our minds.

 I want them to know our home is a place where there will be love, peace, laughter, togetherness, and lots of hugs.

I want our home to be a place of refreshing and comfort in this cold dark world.
At the beginning of last year, I challenged my family to come up with words that we want to describe the focus of our home and family. I took the words they gave me and framed them. They are now displayed in the kitchen for us and anyone that enters our home to read. Listed below are some of the words:
Share, Bible, Simple, God, Others, Memories, Purpose, Trust, Content, Faith, Blessed, Together, Comfort, Respect, Intentional, Give, Hospitable, Forgive, Pray, Thankful, Silly, Welcome
I challenge you to do the same. What are some of the words you would use to describe your home and family?

Cooking like Laura Ingalls

We are blessed to live in an area with lots of great resources. Although our town is pretty small, we have a lot of wonderful state parks and farms. Most of our activities and field trips this year have been free. These resources have been especially helpful this year because they cover what we are working on in Prairie Primer.

 I have been behind in sharing all of the fun activities we have done this year. For the next few weeks I am going to share with you these activities. I encourage you to look around your town and see if there are resources that you might be missing.

Cooking like Laura Ingalls

We live right down the street from an historic state park. We are able to participate in many of the great programs that they offer. One day we were able to try new teas that were made with plants found in our area. We were also able to make soup and biscuits in the same way and using the same ingredients they would have in Laura Ingalls' time.  A bonus for us on this day was getting to work with a camera crew who will be updating the Historic Washington State Park website. They are including a 360 degree tour on the website.

Excited to start the day.

Trying a variety of teas. Sassafras was by far the favorite!

 

Making sure the fire is ready.

Scraping the carrots.

Stiring the soup.

Cutting the biscuits.

Putting the biscuits in the Dutch oven.

Soup and biscuits are almost ready!

His favorite part was making biscuits.

Crushing the herbs to add to the soup.

Yummy!!!

Meeting and working with the camera crew.

Learning About Indians

                                                         

We are blessed to live in an area with lots of great resources. Although our town is pretty small, we have a lot of wonderful state parks and farms. Most of our activities and field trips this year have been free. These resources have been especially helpful this year because they cover what we are working on in Prairie Primer.

 I have been behind in sharing all of the fun activities we have done this year. For the next few weeks I am going to share with you these activities. I encourage you to look around your town and see if there are resources that you might be missing.

Learning About Indians

           We visited  Rick Evans Grandview Prairie, where we learned about Indians.

 

 The teacher is helping us make an Indian lapbook.  

We also made a plant press.

We learned that Indians used rocks to hit other rocks into the shape of an arrow.

Nothing is more fun than hitting a rock!

Because there was so much planned on the field trip, we had to finish some things at home. 

We whittled soap into various shapes. 

With the soap we had left we made reconstituted soap*. I let the children pick various essential oils to use for smell. As you can tell, they turned their soap into snowmen.

*You can make soap by putting soap gratings in a bowl and pouring a little hot water over the soap. The hot water will melt the soap and make it almost like a dough. At this point you can add essential oils or herbs if you would like to do so. You can form the soap into a shape or even use cookie cutters. It makes a really nice gift.

Fun on the Farm

We are blessed to live in an area with lots of great resources. Although our town is pretty small, we have a lot of wonderful state parks and farms. Most of our activities and field trips this year have been free. These resources have been especially helpful this year because they cover what we are working on in Prairie Primer.

 I have been behind in sharing all of the fun activities we have done this year. For the next few weeks I am going to share with you these activities. I encourage you to look around your town and see if there are resources that you might be missing.

We visited a farm in October. The farm had a great big tree house in which the boys played. They also made up a play with the other kids in our co-op and performed it for the parents as we ate lunch. 

They fed chickens.

They hugged chickens.

They fed goats. 

The boys had a great time running and playing in the field.

The boys also got to pick out a pumpkin to take home.

They had a great time on the farm!

The Blessing Of Being Without A Dryer.

In the spirit of our family motto, “Don’t look at what you are missing. Look at what you are seeing.” I want to reflect on the few weeks we were without a dryer and what a blessing that was to me. 

It was the week we were gearing up to learn how the pioneers washed and dried their clothes.

I had already bought the clothes line that we would hang our clothes on as they dried. 

I had already picked out two tall trees that were the perfect distance apart so that we could get a big load of clothes on it.

I had also just bought two new packages of clothes pins. 

And then it happened…

I was right in the middle of drying a load of clothes when the dryer died.

Nothing could be done to fix it. At least it had good timing.

That was the day that started a really neat blessing. 

Our days actually slowed down. Instead of being able to do 4 to 5 loads of laundry a day, I could only do one. We could not rush around gathering the clothes and folding them as fast as we could between school lessons. We were taking our time, putting the wet clothes in the basket , walking to the line, and hanging the clothes. We laughed and talked as we carefully placed the clothes on the line. 

The boys commented on the fresh smell of the clothes. I told them that it was because I put peppermint essential oil in my clothes detergent to give me a peppy attitude as I clean. They just laughed.  And we continued being silly and hanging our clothes.  Hanging the clothes on the line became a relaxing and fun job.

After the clothes were hung, we stayed outside and played. We did not sit and listen for the dryer to buzz as usual, but instead we enjoyed our peaceful reading of “Little House in the Big Woods”.

At night when the clothes finished drying, the boys and I would go out and gather the clothes off the line. We enjoyed smelling how fresh they smelled after being in a nice breeze all day. We enjoyed listening to the owls and watching the sun go down while we put the clothes in the basket.

I loved the peacefulness of it all. I enjoyed reflecting on our day as I smelled the clothes. I was really able to take everything in. 

Another great thing that happened was that I got back into ironing, since we did not have the convenience of throwing the clothes in the dryer to get the wrinkles out. I realized I love the slowness of ironing. It was nice to be able to do something slowly and really think about what I was doing. I could focus on the fact that I was able to do this and it was helping to take care of my family. I also had the opportunity to teach the boys how to iron their clothes. 

Was I glad when the dryer arrived? Sort of. But I loved that it felt like I had more time and that I could be more intentional with my day.

Building a log cabin.

Building a Log Cabin

 
The boys have decided that they want to build a Little House scene that can stay up all year. They started with Legos and made most of the characters into mini figures. They even made a wagon with their Legos. It looks great, but they do not want me to take pictures until it is finished.
They also really wanted to build a log cabin. 

They made up a plan for the cabin.

 They gathered the amount of wood that they would need to build the cabin. 

They started sawing the "logs" the exact size that they needed. 

After several hours they decided that it was a lot of hard work; but,we were able discuss how difficult it would have been for Pa to build a house. It was a great discussion! I am always amazed at what we can learn together when the boys decide to get creative.

 And they are always teaching me that just because our original plans do not come together like we had hoped, something great can come from what we had not originally planned.

They are now working on building a house out of Popsicle sticks.  Pictures will soon follow. They are also working on doing some Little House stop motion episodes. I will post those as soon as they are available.

Making Butter

Making Butter


This week we are still without a washer and dryer. I am learning some very interesting things. I will be writing a separate post just about our laundry adventures very soon.

The boys are loving everything about hanging the clothes on the line and taking them off the line. Do I really want that new washer and dryer?

We bought some cream at the store to see if we could make butter. I halved the cream between two glass canning jars and let the boys shake the jars like crazy. 

One of the boys decided to stop shaking once his hit a nice whipped cream stage. He said he wanted to use it later for hot chocolate. The other boy decided to shake until he started to hear a thumping noise in his jar.

He was really excited to find a lump of butter. 

We put the butter lump on a flour sack and squeezed out the excess liquid. 

That night we used our butter on roasted corn and piping hot biscuits. It was very good. It is always so exciting to be able to make things yourself!!!

On Our Prairie

On Our Prairie

Have you been curious about what is going on with our prairie schooling lately? I am going to try to catch up in the next several posts.  We have been having a lot of fun, but an interesting thing happened. In our second week of The Prairie Primer, when I was about to let the boys have fun learning about hanging our clothes out to dry, our dryer actually went out. So we are now hanging our clothes on the line for necessity instead of  for whimsy.

 

The boys have really enjoyed everything about hanging the clothes on the line.

  

We have a neat place in our area that makes homemade cracklings.  We went by the store one day and bought some to try. The only one of us who liked them was my husband. I let him finish the bag .

                                                 

 

Everyone acted like I was crazy for wanting to get an actual hog's bladder to blow up for the boys to play.  (Yes, they actually did that on slaughter day, according to Little House in the Big Woods.) I decided to just use a normal balloon and pretend it was a hog's bladder. :)  The boys played with it for a long time until it burst.  

That was our excitement this week. Follow along and see how we adapt without a dryer.

First Day of Prairie School

First Day of  Prairie School

 

For our first day of school we decided to go check out an old settlement from the 1800’s. Since we are using the Prairie Primer  (http://cadroncreek.com/shop/prairie-primer/) ,  we thought this would be a great opportunity to be immersed in that time period. 

 We visited a church/school,

  

a log cabin,

a creek where we threw rocks, 

and an old mill.

At the mill we looked at different grains that they would grind. We were also able to feel the texture. It is a very different texture from how our grains are ground today.

We also saw a wagon.

And we even had a black bear run out in front of us!!!!

We made some great memories. Memories that I hope the boys will recall as we read all the Little House on the Prairie books this year.