PandaHouse Autumn

Just a few images of autumn around our home. The pic up in my blog header is from our dining room table. I just drink in this time of year.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows.
James 1:17

Birthday Tea Room 2009

Ever since PandaGirl's third birthday I have taken her to a tea room around her birthday and let her choose a special teacup for her collection. I hope to continue this fun tradition until she is at least 18....maybe longer!


Each year we have "special guests" and this year was my parents. It was raining cats and dogs, but we had a great time sipping our hot tea. Even my Daddy got in on the act since he was off work that day. What a fun treat!



The tea room we went to didn't sell cups so we had to come back home to an antique store to find just the right one. PG picked out this gorgeous metallic gold trimmed teacup. It's perfect---the owner of the store said, "It's very Frenchy!"---which goes RIGHT along with her love for Fancy Nancy this year who does everything in FRENCH!



I know it's been awhile since my last post, but with homeschool, church ministry and life in general it's been hard to find time for the computer.

More pics and (important-to-us) posts coming soon!

Happy 7th Birthday, PandaGirl!!!

Today is PG's 7th Birthday. She is so excited that I told her,

"NO SCHOOL on your birthday!!"

You'd have thought I'd given her the world! LOL! The pic above is after two days of being home from China. We were VERY jet-lagged and have little memory of this trip we took to visit family a couple of hours away from our home, but PG still looks so darn adorable!

Little Miss had been home with us for about a month when we went to interview at a new church for a PandaPop to be the children's minister there. While in the hotel PG decided it would be fun to pull out ALL the tissues and toilet paper off the roll. We loved it!
This is one of my favorite pics of all time! Yes, we started her quite early on Starbucks. Hey, we had to get her to like us, right? ; ) She loves coffee to this day and will probably get some for her special day today. She'd been home about four months here.

Home for about six months. This pucker-lip was something that she did often and this is the only time I captured it on camera. She would do it at random times for no reason and totally crack us up!
God was so gracious to give me a daughter whose birthday is in October/Fall....my most favorite time of the year!

Another favorite of mine is this cute pic of me and PG at the Ft. Worth Stockyards on a cold November day. We'd just eaten B-B-Q (a Texas staple!!) and it was the first really cold spell we had had that year. Just a special day. We ended up taking a really cute pic of the three of us there among the old wooden fences that ended up being our first Christmas card picture. Good memories.

Very happy little girl who'd been home for ten months.


Little Miss Personality showing some of her cuteness!


Totally one of my favorite pictures of PG!!! This is in January 2005. These pics are all just a small peek at PandaGirl's first year home.
Today we celebrate a little girl who is transforming before our very eyes into the lovely girl that God has created her to be. We are blessed.

Party at the Pandas'!

Friday night we celebrated

PandaGirl's 7th birthday

in our front yard with a few little girl-friends and had a BLAST! The theme was a cross between "Fancy Nancy" and "Littlest Pet Shop"---PG just couldn't decide so we incorporated both! I am a party planner after watching my own mom decorate and throw great parties for all sorts of things my whole life. I LOVE putting these things together. Very much a "sweet spot" for me (check out Mac Lucado's book Cure for the Common Life to learn more about your sweet spot).

Since PG is into being a scientist it really worked out that Fancy Nancy's latest book is about being an Explorer Extraordinaire who forms a backyard club with a friend and they go on searches for all sorts of great nature stuff. This goes right along with our Botany lessons in our new homeschool work, so that worked out to our benefit.

The reason the party decor is shabby looking with sheets and twinkles lights is because the book characters make their own tent in the backyard like this, yet Fancy Nancy has to have EVERYthing fancied up with her own flare, hence the reason for all the extra touches to the party, like curly ribbon on all the utensils. I made up pretty cute (even if I do say so myself!) hobo-bags or bundles along a real tree branch to carry it on just like the girls in the book. They were filled with a large magnifying glass, chunky notepad, bling ring, jumbo sized glow stick with a butterfly on the end and a ball point pen wrapped up to look like the stem of one of those large orange flowers, brightly colored fluffy hats and the darling bandannas tying it all up.

With the night-time sky darkening I knew that glow sticks would be a hit along with the twinkle lights....and they were! I let the girls decorate their own confetti cupcakes that had a blingy ring waiting for them in each cupcake after I made brightly colored frosting for them to spread. We also played "pin the tongue on the gecko" to add in our LPS animals for the night.

The weather on Thursday night was just awful with torrential rain. The weather for the party? A total God-send!!! The temp. was in the high 60's once the sun went down, the sky was as clear as could be and the full moon was bright and shiny up in the night sky: P-E-R-F-E-C-T!!!! It just couldn't have been any more perfect for the party. Then today it was downpour again. Good timing, God....thanks.

Thanks to PandaPop, J, C, B and K for all your help!!!!

I would write more, but I had an ALL day conference and am really pooped out. Just enjoy the pics. I'm enjoying the gobs more that I'm not taking the time to post! LOL!

Chinese Food and a Chinese Boy

Tuesday night we were so blessed to spend time with old friends from when we lived close to Houston several years ago. PandaPop served on staff at a church there, but I worked at a private Christian school where I worked with my friend pictured above. She and I quickly became friends and have been close ever since even though we haven't lived there since 2003. We all four hung out quite a bit (didn't have kids yet!!) because we all got along so well and because they did not attend our church making it easier to really be ourselves. Not that we aren't ourselves among church members, but other vocational ministers know what I mean by this. We just needed a break from church-life and these great friends were our respite. Miss them dearly, but had a great time catching up and laughing this week while they were in town on business. My homeschool blog has more details.


Yesterday afternoon we welcomed home our friends' new little son from China. He is just a doll!

First Day of Stone Table Academy

I won't post homeschool information on this blog very often, but being the first day of our journey then click here to see what we did. These other pics were just hanging out after dinner with PandaPop.

Thank Goodness We Homeschool

Can you say "tongue & cheek" title?...as Monday, September 21st was to be our first official day to start homeschooling, yet PandaGirl came downstairs at 4:15 this morning with a fever of 103.2 and gunk in her throat.

Lovely.

Wasn't sure if it was strep or pig flu and wouldn't be able to find out until after noon when the acute care clinic opened.

BTW: this picture was taken a few days ago. She did not look this cute this morning. Nor did all the other icky-sicky kiddos that came into the weekend clinic. Can I just say a H-U-G-E THANK YOU to all weekend medical workers?!!! We walked in the door as soon as it was unlocked along with some VERY sick children. I wanted PG and I to wear one of those astronaut looking suits that the contaminated/poison/bomb helper people don before entering a deadly zone. I am not a germ-a-phobe, but at the clinic....I was. Especially, when the mom and dad bring in their three kids with barf bags in hand and all three children ranging in age from about 5 to 10 look green and are bent over with scrunched up eyebrows. Poor things. They were on vacation. Ouch.

Where's the Lysol
and masks and hand-sanitizer????

Thankfully, there are no pigs involved...except for the yummy ham, potato and cheese crock pot dish I had cooking all morning...and so far the culture didn't prove strep, but the doc will send it to another lab with more equipment to test for it. PG is on an antibiotic just in case, but we caught it soon enough if it is.

Needless to say, our original educational plans are not going to work out, but I am thankful for the flexibility of our homeschool. Smile.

I Heart the Library

One of my favorite places to go is our local library. It is so soothing. Though I am a girl who likes to always have music playing in the car and at home, there is something wonderful about the hushed muffled almost padded sound of the library that just says my name. I wish I had the time to stay the entire day long searching for whatever I wanted to and then sit and sit and sit in those big puffy chairs looking out at the blue sky with green trees or the falling rain or the wintry sky through the GINORMOUS three story floor to ceiling curved glass window while not reading whatever wonderful book was in my possession.

Ahhhh.

I adore the children's section. It has to be one of the best around!! Recently remodeled in the past few years, it boasts a funky, cool convex ceiling right in the middle of the HUGE section that is one of those echo thingies. I'd say it is about 25 feet in diameter. When you walk under it you can whisper, but your voice is magnified a gazillion times while within that convexed area yet no one outside of that area can really hear you...it stays muffled. Very scientific and cool. On the top of that the ceiling it is lighted with rich changing colors that swirl all around. I always make my way through whispering something, anything to PandaGirl just so we can giggle. Flip flops sound really silly through the middle of it. When we finally get that out of our system, we head separate ways and I can get lost amid the gobs of picture books, what's new, non-fiction---all of it. We always walk away with more than our two bags can carry.

Now that we will be homeschooling, I'm quite sure we'll be able to spend even more time there. Fine by me.

Two Sweet Scenes From Camp

Am I the Only One?

Is The Pioneer Woman really a REAL person?

Honestly, I feel like a complete and utter loser when looking at this woman's life.

(Ms. Drummond, if you should happen to read this, I REALLY don't mean any disrespect towards you).

Please, by no means, am I bashing her. Just the opposite. I think she is amazing. I have no idea about her spiritual life, but as for the rest of her.....I think I find myself a bit....no a lot jealous.

Downright covetous.

Have you visited her blog?
*It is so visually appealing.
*She has gobs of recipes in her cooking SECTION.
* She has a wonderfully organized and deliciously painted homeschooling room, in the Homeschooling SECTION, that makes me drool with lust for it.
*She has a lovely and creative Home and Garden SECTION.
*She lives in the country on a ranch.....my dream.
*She has darling kids, a rugged hubby and she is just gorgeous herself.
*Her photography SECTION is second to none. The woman knows her stuff backwards and forwards with a camera and photos and has time to do amazing things with them.
*Clearly she knows how to maneuver "HTML" and all kinds of computer stuff since her website is so darn amazing.
*Did I mention she homeschools her FOUR children, too?

All this and HORSES, too?

Why??

HOW???

Don't get me wrong. I know I am so blessed and I am not complaining about all that the Lord has so graciously given me in my life.
I am truly curious as to HOW all this is accomplished...daily.

Does this woman have more hours in her day than I do? Does she sleep....ever? Is there a walk-by pump of caffeine that she swigs throughout the day in order to stay pumped and motivated to accomplish all that she does and then has the TIME to post it all on her site?

Someone help me with this 'cause SURELY I'm not the only girl "out there" who feels this way.

Please.

Someone help me out here...the jealousy is killing me.