The One with the Kitchen Sink Approach-Memories & "Sun Bread"!

Well, I will be honest. It has been a TOUGH week!!

I won't go into all of the details (as there is a LONG list of things weighing heavy on my heart), but please allow me to weave a few personal elements into this blog post.

First, I would like to honor and remember a wonderful woman who has been a great influence on my life. I lost my Great-Aunt Edith this week. She was a very young 104 years old!! 

 Here she is meeting Elle when she was a baby.

Some of my other family members with Aunt Edith.

 This is Aunt Edith would dress EVERY day----like she was going to church, lol:)
She kept the most immaculate home, but warmly welcomed us in and didn't mind a bit!

 Here she is with my Great Uncle Frank. They were married for over 50 years!
 They never had children, so we WERE their Grandchildren.

This is how I remember her as a child. She was the most elegant, classy, educated, and sophisticated socialite you would ever want to meet!! She was married for 50 plus years to one of the first African-American Dentists in Indiana. They never had children, so whenever we would visit them, Uncle Frank and Aunt Edith would welcome us in like we were their own and love on us like no one else! 

I will always remember Aunt Edith fondly and can honestly attribute my love of reading and seek-and-find puzzles to her. No matter what else happened, I could always count on  receiving a subscription to Highlights Magazine and a Loop-a-Word from them 

for Christmas as a child!

I will certainly miss her spirit. How she was the Matriarch of our family and how devoted to all of us that she was. I certainly hope I will be blessed with her good health and longevity and my descendants will have fond memories of me 60 plus years from now!!

Secondly, our youngest (of 3) dog Rocky had to have surgery to remove a huge mass. We are still waiting to hear the results of the biopsy that was done, but he is on the mend and absolutely hates to wear his "conehead". LOL.

 Anyone who has a pet that is part of your family will understand the feelings we are having right now. Rocky has always been my little "furbaby" as I rescued him from some old neighbors of mine that were abusing and neglecting him. Rocky is almost 12 yrs old and I have had him for over 11 years.

Many other factors are making my heart heavy, so I decided to try to brighten up my day(s) by really focusing on the "fun" aspects we had on our weekly curriculum. It is like the Lord *knew* this week would be full of emotional challenges and provided just the perfect elements to brighten my mood. 

Our color of the week is yellow, so we decided to make a Yellow Sensory Bin. 

To make it extra-fun and exciting, I gave the girls white shopping bags (what girl doesn't love to shop?) and sent them around our house shopping for things that are yellow.

They came back with all kinds of neat yellow items for the bin!

My camera cord got in the way, but this is just the cutest 

shot of Em, so I had to add it!

We put all kinds of goodies in the sensory bin and the girls have 

had a really fun time dumping it out playing with it;-)

Also, one of the books on our lesson plan for the week was "Sun Bread" by Elisa Kleven. It is really a nice story and the girls love all of the pictures of the animals in it! Plus, since it is really cold here right now, the theme of trying to get the sun to come out was really fitting! So, we decided to make our homemade "Best Ever Brown Bread" to go with our theme and also tie into our letter of the week being B! It turned out really yummy!

 We also love to make homemade Roasted Butternut Squash Soup! 

We even saved some of the squash to puree for CeCe who

recently started solids on Thanksgiving.

I have to say, now seeing all of this yellow together, I can feel the "sonshine" coming into my heart and into our home even in the midst of a troubling time!! 

I praise God for His faithfulness, even in times of trouble!

As always, I am glad you are here!
Please jump around at some of the other blog posts to see what a "normal" week
is like around here!
If you like what you see, why don't you "share the love" and invite a friend to join us!
Blessings,