"I think my uterus might explode"

Some new things to say when meeting a mom with a large family...

Seven Lies about Homeschoolers

This video has been showing up all over my Facebook page, but in case you missed it, it's quite the giggle. When he got to #1, I looked around at all the children watching and everyone (including me!) were in their jammies! And this was at lunchtime!

Get your tissues ready...

Bryan forwarded me this article. So amazing! So sweet! So what I want for us!

Grab some tissues, and then hug your man extra tight tonight!

Couple Married 72 Years Dies Holding Hands

The best deal for four eyes

My new glasses came today! Doing a happy dance! If you haven't heard about Zenni Optical, check out their website for the best prices on glasses.

My girls each got 2 pairs earlier this year. The total for 4 pairs was around $100. One of Emelie's is titanium steel (somehow a girl falling off horses tends to break glasses?!).

I just bought a pair of glasses with photochromatic lenses (like Transitions, but cheaper) and a pair of prescription sunglasses. My total, including shipping, was about $64. The frames for my sunglasses were only $6.95!

Just take the numbers provided from your eye exam and enter them in on the website. You can even upload a photo of yourself to "try-on" different frames.

With 5 glasses wearers in the family (and likely more in the future) we were delighted to find an economical way to see better!

Note: I'm not affiliated with Zenni in any way - just a satisfied customer.

Quick & Easy Mani-Pedi

It am NOT into nail polish. Way to high maintenance for me. I can't stand it if it doesn't look good. And in my world that happens about 30 seconds after it's applied.

So how excited was I to learn about a quick way to have super fun nails? Have you seen these babies while cruising your local drug store?

Sally Hansen Salon Effects are real nail polish strips (they even smell like nail polish) that go on quick and require no dry time. My fingers stayed decent looking for about a week, my toes for over 2! The patterns are so fun, I'm stockpiling. The older girls and I can't wait to put on our next pattern for our vacation!

I watched a YouTube clip on how to apply them easily. That really helped! They retail for around $10, but I've bought all mine off ebay for about $6.50 including shipping!

Favorite Kitchen Gizmos

I just love Pampered Chef, don't you? And while it is my goal to acquire a half-dozen of their loaf pans (they make the BEST bread), dropping $40 on a stone is not always in the budget.

I've found a couple tools that run around $10. Perfect for when a friend is hosting a party that you want to support without blowing your budget. Makes the husband happier too!

The Mix 'n Mash is like a whisk except it can mash potatoes and cooked beans easily. I use it instead of my electric mixer much of the time since it's so much easier to clean.

The Twist 'n Chop is the perfect tool for breaking apart ground beef, turkey or sausage. You can also throw salsa ingredients in a bowl and have it chopped up in a couple minutes. I like to use it to make scrambled eggs.

And they can both go right in the dishwasher, because what's the point of owning something that can't?

Introducing the next Food Channel star

Meghan picked up Hello, Cupcake at the library last week. The book is filled with amazing cupcake designs that don't require fancy equipment to achieve. She was chopping at the bit to get started.


This was her very first attempt. Not too shabby!

Emelie has already put in a request for the Starry, Starry Night cupcake design for her birthday. Stay tuned to see if that happens!

Now this is too funny...

Bryan and a couple older children were laughing 'till they cried tonight looking over Engrish.com. Very funny misuses of the English language. A couple posts might not be suitable for children, so you'll want to preview. This was one of our favorites:

WFMW - Make Boutique Hair Bows

I am so excited out the Hair Bow Instructions that I downloaded from YouCanMakeThis.com. I've tried countless times to try to make bows and wasn't successful until I got this ebook.

There are tons of color photos and excellent step-by-step instructions for 17 different types of bows. For only $7.99, this is a great value! I made both of the bows below in about an hour.

Emelie is even going to do hairbows as one of her 4-H projects. There are a couple little girls pretty excited about that!

WFMW - Cute Skorts for Cute Girlies!

I just love skorts for my girls. They can tumble and play, twirl to their hearts' content, and not have to worry about modesty. I've recently made them each a skort from patterns downloaded from my favorite site, YouCanMakeThis.com.

Heidi's is a gathered one made from the Skants, Skapris, Skorts, Skirts & More pattern. Brigitta has a twirl skort from 3 Perfectly Preppy Skorts and Skirts. Both are very quick to put together - and the girls just love them!

Inspiration from a couple FREE ebooks!

In March of 2011, in the face of an abundance of homeschooling advice written by adults, Currclick put forth a challenge to homeschoolers far and wide. The challenge seemed simple on the surface – to write an advice column about how to homeschool a child written by the homeschooled children themselves. Many kids stepped up to this challenge and the result of their efforts should be required reading for all homeschool parents! Enjoy and be inspired by the heartfelt, thoughtful, and practical advice penned by these extraordinary homeschoolers.

There are many books written by adults and homeschool veteran parents about homeschooling. But don’t people need to know what kids think? We believe so! In this fantastic, inspiring and informative collection of short stories written by homeschool kids, you'll find all sorts of amazing homeschool tips and advice from the real experts ... the kids!

Click here to download both volumes for free!

A side note: Let me know if you can get through the dedication with dry eyes!

Hooked on Eagles!

A post from Emelie's Blog about our latest obsession...

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So my uncle is a huge birdwatcher guy. This morning, he emailed this link to my mom. It's a live feed from a camera watching an bald eagle nest in northwestern Iowa. She opened it around breakfast, and this thing has been on all day.


During school, everyone kept running into the kitchen to check on these birds. There's the two parents, two eaglets, and one unhatched egg. And we get all wrapped up in this reality-show, eagle style. They were like all upset when the one eaglet got more food than the other eaglet, when the parents were fighting in the nest. All that good stuff.

This is dad on the nest from earlier today

And of course, there's the beaver. There's a nice, stiff, very dead beaver in the foreground of the camera. At first, we couldn't figure it out. It was brown and fuzzy and had big teeth, but mainly, it was dead. And who knew that eagles ate beavers? But, according to Wikipedia, eagles will eat pretty much anything. So...ok. This was proven when there was another bird in the nest.


And eagles get ugly when they eat. Mom and Dad fighting over the food, spitting food into the baby's mouths, that one little guy getting more than the other little guy, yeah. There's a whole untapped drama source at the eagle dinner table.

We even watched watched Eagle Cam during lunch. Which really proves that we'uns are all purty much country kids, if we can watch that while we're eating. There was some confusion, though. One of my brothers kept asking if we could rewind it.


The gold star moment goes to my sister, who asked, "When will they say words?" Followed by Hunter who would cry "See Turkey!" everytime the screensaver came on.

Are you ready to be addicted? Follow the link...

Get Ready to Laugh

In honor of the Tim Hawkins performance Emelie and I watched last night, have a giggle on me. This man is so funny, he had me doing that ugly laugh/cry thing!

First Year of College for $500?!

A couple years ago I listened to a couple convention sessions by Woody Robertson of CollegePlus!. I came home excited with a new vision for Emelie’s high school years. Today she had the pleasure of listening to one of his sessions, and to say she’s excited about finishing her Bachelor’s Degree by age 18 would be an understatement!  

Some thoughts from the session:

• In 2010, fewer than 20% of college graduates get a job right out of school and most of those that do earn under 40K
• Only 54% of freshmen entering college will graduate
• 80% of college graduates do something different than their major
• Students spend more time in drinking and sports than academics (less than 3 hours per day average are spent in academics)
• 93% of faculty describe themselves as liberals
• Our Founding Fathers graduated college at 16 and 17 years old

In contrast, those students pursuing the method promoted by CollegePlus! have an 80% employment rate. The time saved can be spent on internships and advanced degrees and the learning is individualized to the student.

Emelie’s personality and study skills make her the poster child for this method. It will be interesting to see where this takes her!

Try this magazine free!

This offer just showed up in my inbox - a free 7-day digital subscription to Home Educating Family Magazine. Both current and back issues!  This great magazine is published by the same folks that produce that fantastic planner that I use.

Click here to sign-up. Then get a cup a tea and start reading!

WFMW - Find the cheapest gas

The vehicle we drive isn’t exactly petite. It’s a 6.8 liter diesel with a 35 gallon tank. (Insert the Tim, the Tool Man, Taylor grunt here). Unfortunately, diesel fuel is quickly approaching $4 per gallon.



We are really enjoying using Gas Buddy. It’s a website and iPhone app that searches for the lowest-priced gas station in your area. Sometimes we can find a price that is up to $.30 per gallon cheaper! That can be worth driving an extra mile down the road!

Stumpf Thumbs Up - Secretariat

We Red Boxed Secretariat this past weekend. What a great movie! I'm a real sucker for horse movies, I always end up blubbering at the end (much to the amusement of everyone else in the room!).

This is one of the best horse movies I've ever seen. Even though everyone in the room new how was going to end (we live with Emelie so horse trivia is a frequent topic), we were all cheering through every race. And the best part... "Oh happy day" was playing as he thundered down the track at the end. I was crying the whole time!

Disney really got family entertainment right with this one!

A great way to help New Zealand

A powerful earthquake struck New Zealand's already-bruised city of Christchurch on Tuesday, collapsing buildings, burying vehicles under debris and sending rescuers scrambling to help trapped people amid reports of multiple deaths.

CurrClick and several publishers have teamed up to raise funds to aid those affected by this earthquake. They have a new bundle of great products available now.

The bundle includes over $230.00 worth of items from our publishers and can be purchased for a $20.00 donation. 100% of all proceeds for the bundle go to the New Zealand Red Cross.

The bundle included download curriculum like Apologia lapbooks, Shakespeare, Math, Copywork, Online Music Lessons, and Monthly Meal Planners. What a great way to help out and have some new resources!

WFMW - A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family

I needed something to put me over the top for Amazon free shipping (do you do that, too?), so I purchased A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family by Mary Ostin. I ended up being very please with my purchase.

The book is full of practical organizational tips that can be applied in a family of any size (Ohhhh, how I love tips!). What I enjoyed most were some of her "experienced mom" insights:

I'd love it if my insides matched my outsides all the time. I'd love it if I could actually feel serene all the time instead of just faking serenity. But despite what others assume about me, endless serenity is not my personal reality as a mother.

Maybe that;s the heart of patience: refusing to get sucked down into negativity and instead choosing kindness; not avoiding the negative emotions - wouldn't that take a lobotomy? - but resisting them, rising above them, and prevailing over them.

I'm planning to loan this one out to my friends and have them jot down their favorite pages inside the cover. Thought it would be fun to see what speaks to different people.

Go with God, Shultz Family!

Tonight I was able to spend a little time (too little!) with friends about embark on the adventure of their lives. In three days the Shultz's will leave a comfortable life to spend a year in Haiti. We're talking Mom, Dad, three children willing to heed God's call. How's that for picking up a cross and following?

Visit their blog, say a prayer, and let them know you've been there. Encouragement would mean tons right now and prayer more than that.

Amy, should you read this, this is how the Stumpfs have got you covered:
Bryan - praying for blessings on Jay's work
Lainie - praying for smooth homeschooling and peace for Amy
Emelie - praying for Anna's adjustment
Ted - praying for Jer's nerves
Meghan - praying that the children will adjust to the food
Caleb - praying for Jacob's happiness
Jacob - praying you can tell a lot of people about Jesus
Brigitta - praying that she gets to play with Fedlaine soon!