The Sims Dancers

This is a daily occurrence at our house... the girls dancing! Even Maria knows how to work the CD player. She will put on her favorite songs and just dance and sing. They often get together and make up dances to put on shows for the rest of us! What I love about it most is that they do it to Christian music, it is their favorite genre of music! Okay, sometime they dance to Rascal Flat or Taylor Swift or Barbie, but mostly to praise music! We listen to 104.9 in the car (Christian station) so they hear a lot of the same songs and you will often hear them singing! The best is that we sing those same songs at Church and I will often hear Olivia, Maria or Anna singing their hearts out! That is when I feel especially close to Christ!

Maria

Maria loves horses... these are two of her favorite foals at the barn... Ariel and Penny.

She was the first one ever to sit on this 5 month old foal! How exciting!

ANGEL! I love her curls, they are ringlets! Her hair hangs down to the middle of her back, but you would never know because it shrinks up with all the ringlets!



Big Girl - Maria grew up fast in order to keep up with her siblings! She was very dependent at an early age and quickly had to do everything by herself! She is even starting kindergarten this year, although she is only 4. She is very shy until you get her to warm up to you. Then she can talk your ear off! I love how when I take her on our tag a long bike that she sits behind me and talks the whole ride! She stayed at my dad's once and when he returned her, he mentioned how she jabbers a lot! She will fill you in on every detail of her life! Too cute! Here are some snap shots of her at dinner and cleaning up. Teach them young to take care of themselves, it is much easier on the mom and teaches them responsibility!

Favorite place to be... the barn (well maybe Dairy Queen would be her answer!).
Favorite food... corn on the cob
Favorite color... hot pink
Favorite TV show... Phineas and Ferb
Favorite Barbie movie... Thumbelina
Favorite music... Rascal Flatts

Update!

Sorry it has been so long since I posted... busy getting school back in session!

I will at least post some pictures to tie you over until I get a few minutes to start writing again! I do have a lot of great things happening with Uppercase Living... so stay tune!

Of course we have been busy riding Bubba.... soon I will post pictures of our new horse we will be leasing!!

These photos were taken at my cousin's little girl's birthday party. Check out their flowers in their hair! TOO CUTE!

Maria, Shazia, Olivia and birthday girl... McKenna! The party was at the cutest candy store in Dublin! They had shelves filled with glass canisters containing every type of candy you can imagine. They had a lot of older candy too, which brought back a lot of memories!

Loved the curtains at the candy shop! I am thinking of duplicating them in my girls room! Someday!!!!

This is Anna. Her and her sisters played "runway model" one day. Alex spent a lot of time designing all their outfits (out of our dress up box) then they showed them off to Curt and I. We had to rate them and vote for our favorite! I believe Anna's lace dress was made from a table cloth! Alex took the pictures so that is why they are blurry. Anna still looks gorgeous even when she is a "blur"!

Like most moms I am rarely in the photos that are taken. I do not like to be photographed mainly because of my weight (a picture reminds me how much weight I should lose... guilt) and because I am usually taking the photo. But here is one a friend sent me. It was taken at the Canal Winchester Relay for Life 2008. This is one of the years I was the chairman of it, so I am surprised that she got me to stay still long enough to pose.

Another reason I post this photo is because my hubby is in it. I love him so much and I am so blessed to have him. He just left this morning for a week long vacation with Curtis to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. A 15 hour trip to no man's land! Every year he goes camping with a few members of his family and this year they decided to take an adventure. Bill is always looking for an outdoor adventure! Last year he and Curt camped in the Everglades. This year they are on the North side of the states in a cabin in the woods. From crocs to bears! (Actually when they were in the everglades, they never saw one crocodile! We saw more nature from my dad's patio than they did in the everglades!). Just one more thing off his "bucket list". We are planning a trip to Colorado for next summer so that will take care of the West side of the states. He also took Curt and Alex to DC last March so technically he did the East coast as well. Hmmm... what have I done??? Nothing, but take care of the kids left behind! Oh well. My time will come... I believe I have a 40th coming up and maybe I will just take off by myself!

Buy Two Get One Free!

Who does not like something FREE? In addition to the special I have going on right now, remember that Uppercase Living is offering buy two get one free until Sept. 10! Get your orders to me to take advantage of all these promotions and start expressing yourself throughout your home!

Uppercase Living Give Away!

For the LOVE of Uppercase Living!

I LOVE Uppercase Living and I know you will too! So to help you get started in decorating your home with words that express who you are, I am giving away $25 gift certificate!

Here’s what you have to do -

1. Visit http://kls.uppercaseliving.net

2. Create an account or Log in

3. Look through the new Fall/Winter Online Catalog (seriously, you will fall in love!)

4. Post in the Comments what your most favorite item is!

5. This will close on September 10, 2009. I will draw a name from everyone who leaves a comment.

You want some EXTRAS? I always LOVE incentives!

If you want to host a catalog party, I will be more than happy to help you do this! I will mail you catalogs that you can pass around to your friends, co-workers, neighbors. This is a great and easy way to earn free products! Collect $200 in sales and I will give you a $5 gift certificate towards your order.

An easier way to receive free Uppercase Living products is to hold an OPEN HOUSE and invite all your friends and family to see how to express themselves throughout their homes! Like above if you collect $200 in sales, you will receive the $5 gift certificate or if you collect more than $400 in sales I will up it to a $10 gift certificate. That is in addition to all the free expressions and half off items you will earn!

There is NO better time to check out Uppercase Living! I guarantee you will love it as much as I do! If you would like an exciting way to earn extra money and take advantage of wonderful incentives, just ask me how you can become a demonstrator for only $99!

Questions? You can email me at bksims@wowway.com or leave a comment!

Uppercase Living products can warm your heart and make you smile!

glass blocks = cute gifts

Uppercase Living now sells these great clear blocks! They are easy to decorate with your favorite expression and they snap apart for easy filling. You can even fill it with a small string of Christmas lights to create a night light or holiday display! Just think of all the possibilities for gift giving! Here are some ideas that other customers have come up with!

NEW Uppercase Living Catalog

Get EXCITED.... I just received the new Uppercase Living catalog and it is AWESOME! New fonts, new colors, new expressions and new accessories!

From now until Sept. 9 you can buy two expressions and get ONE FREE! Check out my website http://kls.uppercaseliving.net and review the catalog on line! Want a catalog... I will be happy to get you one for $3 (my cost) or book a party and you can have one FREE plus a $5 coupon to use on your order!

Here is a preview....

Expressions can go right on the glass of picture frames. Uppercase Living offers a rectangle frame and new this year a square frame. They also sell extra glass inserts so you can change it throughout the year!

My niece is getting married and we are hoping to do this to her dance floor... too cool!

New... Uppercase Living sells these great glass blocks with holes in them! You can fill them with anything, lights, candy and even crayons! For Halloween you can fill it with candy corn and have a cute embellishment on the front! Or for Christmas you can fill it with peppermints and add an embellishment on the front plus the word Believe! How cute would that be?!

This took my breath away! It is HUGE but what an impact it makes on a hard to decorate space!


What do your walls say?

the Hike!

First let me say that it is another gloomy day in OHIO! A thunderstorm just went through and we should get more rain later. I love thunderstorms, but I really want that 90* day that I talked about in the last post. SO I am pouting over the weather!

Yesterday was it was 83* which would be okay normally to go to the POOL, but with the temps getting down to 63* at night - the water is FREEZING! Really no big deal for my older kids, but I have to get into the water with my younger ones and I do not like freezing water. However, I am usually the one in it trying to persuade Maria and Livy to get in! Because the weather was not warm enough to go to the pool I got creative and we went hiking at Slate Run Metro Park. It was nice and sunny and I really needed some God appreciation time. You know the times where you are just in awe at His beauty! Well, nothing goes as planned. Instead of a peaceful walk through the woods, I ended up with girls clinging to my body! It turns out that Alex, my 14 y.o. has a phobia to spiders. A few years ago we were up at Marblehead trying to find a letterbox (don't know what that is? I will explain in a future post) and she was leading the way. Of course she was leading the way, she always has to be the one to beat out her brother in things. Well, she walked right into a giant spider web in between some trees and the giant spider that made the web ended up in her hair. After she was done freaking out and we managed to get it off her, she was scard for life! She use to be quite the camper and loved being out doors, but in the last few years I have noticed that desire has vanished. I thought it was just her age. After yesterday's walk, I now know that it has nothing to do with her age and being a girl, but that she is petrified of the possibility of walking into another spider web! She clung to me the whole 1 1/2 miles. In the beginning we were joking about it, but after a while I told her to deal with her fears and let go of me. She then had tears forming in her eyes and asked if we were all most our of the woods. I finally told her she could not hold onto me for about 1/4 of the last mile, and she walked directly behind me with a whimper in her breathing! Pathetic! Bill of course thinks it is all nonsense and that she is just being silly, but we will see whenever he gets her out to go for the next hike!

Finally got my cousins handbag done! Went to her house on Saturday for a big party to wish a dear friend goodbye as he is leaving for Iraq this week for 8 months. So I hurried and made a proto type to make sure I would not make a mistake on hers (the one on the bottom). I put a zipper in the proto type and it came out okay! Will be making more bags with zippers in the future! Both bags are made with Amy Butler fabric and it was so nice to work with. I do not make to many things with her fabric, only because so many other people do. But she does produce a high quality fabrics for a decent price! I love the way Michelle's bag turned out! She loved it too!

If you would like a bag like Michelle's let me know! Or customize your own! I will only be sewing them for the next two months then I will be taking off November and Dec. for the holidays!

What to do on a Gloomy Day

Another gloomy day here in Ohio! The weather this summer has been terrible. I am still waiting for that 90* day where you have to be in water in order to be outside. We have been to the pool only a handful of times and the water is freezing. My little ones do not even want to go in it.

So what to do on a gloomy day? Yesterday we cleaned the house... well we picked up the house. Pretty bad when it takes you all day to just pick up! So today I better actually clean. A little dusting, vacuuming, and scrubbing should do the trick. I hope to get through it this morning so I can do some sewing this afternoon! My cousin is still waiting on her purse. I am going to see her Saturday so my goal is to get it done by then! Still not sure how I am going to get it not to sag in the middle... I will try a stiffer interfacing and hope that it is not to rough feeling in the end. I hate to ruin good Amy Butler fabric with bad interfacing!This is the bag that we are modeling my cousin's bag after. It is from PacoLupe one of my favorite purse designers on Etsy.com. This is a cute hipster I hope to whip up for my cousin as well. We'll see!

Before the sewing though, I am determined to play a game with the kiddos. I use to have a neighbor that you would find often in her PJs sitting on the floor playing all sorts of games with her kids (and it would be noon)! She would let everything go whenever they asked to do something. Her house was not spotless and I am sure there were many things left undone, but her kids were happy and loved being with her! I took many lessons from her and learned to take time out for the kids. Lately with all that has happened this summer I feel like I have not done a good job just being with my kids. SO today is the day to do that! What about you.... is there someone you need to go and play cards with?

Have a good one!

more fair pictures

Anna winning 5th place in "Egg in Spoon" contest.

Alex competing in flags - Bubba is not a contesting horse, but she had fun trying. It is always fun to try to go as fast as you can, scary but fun. I think she may of won a ribbon in this event because all the really fast horses dropped the flag (slow and steady wins the race!).

She looks so beautiful in her English riding attire and Bubba is just as beautiful! They make a good team! Should we buy him?

A long week at fair!!!!!!! Maria was actually only with us 2 days but it was very tiring sitting around all day waiting for them to show. I looked over and she was asleep! Maybe it was more boring than tiring for her. She actually loves horses and I think she will follow in the girls footsteps and become a rider.

So where do we go from here? Our lease on Bubba is about up. I might be able to renew it and continue on with the girls training on him. He is such a good horse. Everyone at fair loved him and wanted to ride him. I really trust my girls on him. He rarely gets spooked and has bonded a lot with Alex. His big advantage is his jumping... boy can he jump! Since this is Alex's thing, I think sticking with Bubba might be the best thing. The owner has offered for us to buy him for a VERY good price. But with that comes the vet bills, farrier bills, etc.. I do not think we are in a position to do any more than we are doing. We have also been offered a different horse. A friend has one that she is keeping at her barn and would like Alex to have it. She would help us out with the bills as long as we feed it. Sounds like a good deal, but that means leaving our trainer, and no indoor arena to train at. Plus the horse is a little "green" meaning he needs some work to be show quality. Alex is very intrigued to take on this horse and work with it, but I do not know if I trust her to jump him. So we will see where the world of horses take us. All I do know is that God has always provided opportunities within our budget for my girls to ride. I know he will continue to do so in the future... God is good!

Back to Business

We are back from the county fair!

Let's make one thing clear.... I AM NOT A COUNTY GIRL! Never in a million years did I ever expect to be spending a week at the fair from sun up to sun down! I am a "city" girl or at least a suburban girl! Well, I did survive with only a few laughs from my fellow barn moms.

On July 17th we unloaded our "leased" horse into it's new home for the week. One thing was clear we did not have all the supplies needed to show for the week. Luckily we have great people in our 4H group who loaned us everything (wheel barrow, pitch fork, saddle rack, tack box, hooks, black hoof polish, spray paint (yes you paint the horses legs and polish it's hoofs black), riding gloves, etc.). But considering the horse is not really ours we did pretty good. It is amazing the STUFF you need to show a horse. Talk about some money tied up in a "recreational sport"! You can imagine the cost just to own the horse, but add all that other STUFF to it and it is quite the investment. Some of the mom's work one or two jobs just to pay for the horse! SAD. I am lucky to have a daughter who knows our limitations and respects what we can do. She is very appreciative to be given the chance to lease a horse and show it.

So Alex and Anna spent the rest of the week showing in all different classes, from your typical equitation classes to your fun "ride a buck" classes. Alex pretty much did all English classes she could, where Anna stuck to just the simple fun classes. They both came home with lots of ribbons to be proud of. Alex also participated in Musical Freestyle, which is where the rider puts together a routine to music. If you ever want to come watch a horse show this is the one! It is amazing the costumes these kids come up with and it is very entertaining. Alex put her routine to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock'n Roll". It really got the crowd involved and singing! Got to love the oldie but goodie songs! She had a lot of skills packed into her routine including 3 jumps, which Bubba did great at! She competed against 3 others and one girls did the song "Mickey" (remember... "oh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind"). Who does not love that song. And her costume was Mickey mouse and her horse was dressed as Minnie! It was so adorable. I did not see her routine, but she did take first place and Alex took second. We were still very proud of her and a lot of people came up to her and told her she did great!

So we had a lot of fun and the girls made some new friends. But I am glad to be home and getting back to a normal routine. Now it is time to start planning for our school year!

Words of Encouragement

Just loved my devotion for today so I thought I would share!

Take a Break!

Suggested Bible Reading

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."

-Matthew 6:25-34 (NRSV)

Today's Scripture The psalmist said to God, "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" -Psalm 119:103 (NRSV)

THE honeybee is known for ceaseless labor. Its hive is a hotbed of activity. No wonder. A single worker bee makes 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime, and a good hive will produce 50 to 60 pounds of honey to survive the winter. The work never ends!

Still, it's a little known fact that even the hard-working honeybee will find a spot on the comb, cease all activity -- and do absolutely nothing for a while! Nothing productive as far as the world is concerned. But this time of refreshment and renewal is absolutely essential. Bees seem to require a little time away from the busyness of life, and it doesn't seem to hurt the hive at all.

Many of us discover that our levels of stress and anxiety rise because of the never-ending tasks that fill our days. We worry about whether we can keep up. During these moments I find it best to follow the example of the honeybee and just stop. After all, Jesus did the same thing. When he was very busy, he went up the mountain to pray -- to create a time and space for God to refresh his spirit. If Jesus needed such time, surely we do too.

Frank Ramirez (Pennsylvania, USA)

Prayer

Lord, we open our hearts to you. We stop to listen and learn from you. Amen.

Thought for the Day I cannot make a moment of time, but I can give time back to God.

Shaving Cream - Keep out of reach of Children!