A Praise to share with you all!

Joseph was nursing 5 or 6 times per 24 hour period when Luke had his accident. I am one of those 'prone' to mastitis if I go 12 hours without nursing. This was, of course, a huge concern when I was at the hospital with Luke. The last thing I needed was mastitis.

The accident was Monday late afternoon. Joseph had nursed around noon. That night, around midnight, the nurses brought me an electric double pump to use. I pumped for 20 minutes and got Not A Drop of milk. My milk was gone. Poof. Just like *that*. Tried everything, hot shower, hand expressing, everything. There was just nothing there. Not a drop.

Really an answer to prayer.

We got out of the hospital on Thursday. Joseph nursed just about as soon as we got back to the S's house. Man did it hurt. Nursing while completely empty is very painful to me. There was no milk there. None. I continued to allow him to nurse when he asked but made the sessions very short as I was very teary with pain at each session.

By Sunday my milk was starting to come back. By Tuesday it was back in full-force.Isn't God so good! I know Joseph doesn't *need* to nurse and I was resolved with him weaning and very much at peace with the whole thing. Then God restored my milk ... what an extra special blessing this is to me. Nursing is so dear to me and I am so thankful!

Our newest family picture

Our precious "niece" Lauren took this picture last week.

Welcome to our Home ~ The Playroom

Welcome to our Home! I've been meaning to show you around for a while so let's start with the Playroom. Here's the right side of the room (if you are standing in the dining room). Those double windows face east. The canvas bins hold Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Playmobile, etc...

Here's the left side of the room. First is the children's computer area and the large cupboards. The first cupboard holds art supplies and extra school books and supplies. The second cupboard holds bins with sorted toys, dinosaurs, horses, doll house furniture, etc... The door to your right opens into our living room.
The end wall, the one you are facing has a long narrow closet. This is what MaryVance uses for her 'nursery' and 'kitchen'.

This is the backside of the shelves holding the canvas bins. I finally took the time to organize the books!
The tall shelf has chapter books on the top shelf. The other shelves are fiction books sorted by author's last name. The spines are all labeled.

These shorter shelves are organized as follows:

"Bible" books and Bible-related books are labeled with a red sticker.

"Animal", "Science", "History", "Geography" have a green sticker.

The baby board books are not labeled (bottom shelf left and part of right) and the remaining bottom right shelf are "Other" and labeled with an orange sticker.

I did the alphabetizing for fiction because I wanted an easy way for the little ones to reshelf books and I thought it would be a good way to reinforce alphabetizing. I decided to do general categories for the others for ease in reshelfing.

At the top of the photo you can see our dining room. This is where we do the majority of our schoolwork. See our giant dry erase board!

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our home. I'll try to post one room a week. (For those of you who have been to our home before -- this is the room on the front of the house that was originally our library and most recently our sewing room:-) )