My poor blog...

This blog has been forgotten. Lost in the corners of cyberspace, it has sat here for a long time without being noticed. My poor, poor blog. But I shall not dwell in the past! Up I arise, and here I am, writing a new post as if nothing has happened. Well, anyway, life in the Sims clan has been good. You know, as good as it can be with all the crazy SNOW that has been happening here! First we got three inches of dry snow and then it rained, so we basically had rock hard snow. And then, we got a good eight inches of nice, packing snow. Yay! I dunno, though. I mean it's FEBRUARY for Pete's sake! We should've gotten all the snow in December! Stephen's birthday was yesterday, and he got some Duck Dynasty stuff (one of our favorite TV shows), and Mabel and Nicholas's birthdays are coming up soon! February is the only month where we have 3 kid's birthdays in only one month. We recently got a membership to Four Seasons (a health club/gym in our area) and it ROCKS! We generally go swimming in the pool there at least once a week. Also, there is a great event coming up in Downtown Bloomington, where my mom's store is located. Once every month, on the first Friday of the month, all the businesses in Downtown stay open until 8 o'clock, and people come browse. Well, this time, on the first friday of February, they are hosting something called the 'Tour de Chocolat' where every business stays open until 8, and all of them offer something chocolate to eat. People walk around, stopping at each business and sampling things, there will be a baking contest, and it should be lots of fun! We are making mini chocolate cupcakes, and mom didn't know how many people to expect until she emailed the lady in charge and she told her to expect up to 300 people! That's a lot of cupcakes! So that's what we will be doing tonight and tomorrow in preparation. Also, we have the sniffles going around in our family. :( But oh well, better to be holed up with a good book and some tea! 

~Amanda

Hey Folks!

Hey everybody? What's up? I haven't posted in quite a while, sorry! Life is so busy it's starting to get to me. So, in some news: We are moving our store! My mom has owned a small resale shop that sells home school curriculum and used clothes. It's called 'Duckygirl's Resale'. We've been at our current location for about a year now, but we've been growing, and the building that we're in is now too small (for our liking anyway). So, we found a location that will almost double the space that we put the curriculum in. It has two floors, and the upstairs will be where the register is, where the kids will hang out in the back, and it will be where the clothes go. The downstairs will have the books and a table with a coffeemaker so people can come plan out their home school year. And the best part is: Our new location is across the street from a cupcake bakery. Yum! It's on Main Street in our town, so it seems like there's constantly something going on, which is great! We think it will be a much better location for our business, and it will be a better place for the kids, too. Speaking of kids, Mabel has learned to walk! She's just toddling around now, getting into all kinds of stuff. Her current favorite thing to do is to get into the lowest cabinet that has all the baby bottles and lids, and she'll take them all out and scatter them across the floor. It's cute, but it does require quite a bit of cleaning up! :) Nicholas is starting to move around a bit. He likes to move his arms and legs like crazy when he is in his swing or carseat. We think he's going to be like Theo, (the active one) who practically skipped the walking stage and went straight to running! Everything is going good at our house, despite how busy the store is. We have a k-group (bible study) every week, and a few families from our church attend. It's a lot of fun. There's one family that has seven kids, and one family that has two, so it turns out to be a lot of kids when we're all put together. So, that's what's been going on in our family, hope you enjoy!



~Amanda

Randomness...

Hey everyone! Today this post is just random rambling... so, anyways, how's everyone been doing? I've been pretty good! So, just something funny for today. Earlier, the conversation between my mom and Kenny:

Kenny: "Mom, I have a headache and I feel sick."
Mom: "Sick how?"
Kenny: "Cow."
Mom: "What?"
Kenny: "Didn't you say, 'Say Cow?"
Mom: *laughing* "No, I said, 'Sick, how?"


We all thought that was funny. ;) Anyways, I'll hopefully blog more tomorrow! 

Peace out,


~Amanda

Looonng time! Nice to be back!

Hello everyone! It's nice to be back to my regular blogging schedule after the holidays. I have to say, South Dakota was eventful and fun! The snow was the driest snow I had ever seen, and you could see the snowflakes in perfect detail. Shows how amazing our God is, and how creative he can be. Love it! Well, now we are back to our regular schoolwork. I'm really excited, because I'm in a writing class with about 7 other people hosted at one of my mother's friends house on Tuesdays. The past two weeks we have started writing the chapters of our soon to be novels! I love writing, once I get a good idea to spark my creativity. ;)
Well, today's post is short one, I guess. I hope you all had great holidays and are feeling good!


Peace out

~Amanda

Christmas is coming!!

Post #4!! So, my life has been going pretty well today... It's been a little bit easier to take care of the little ones lately because we received our christmas presents on Saturday! (we're going to SD for a vacation, so we're going to be gone the actual day of christmas.) So everyone's been trying out all of their presents and such. :) We all (and by all I mean everyone over the age of Noah) got D.S.'s! We each got one game to go with ours (I got cooking mama- it's so much fun!) and some of the multiplayer games we all share. I also got leather Chucks, which I adore. ;) So, how's everyone's christmas season going so far? Christmas music is my favorite! I hope we get snow here in Illinois before we leave! I love snow. It makes the inside seem so much more cozy, as if you're bragging to winter that you can stay warm no matter how cold it is outside. (And I know that probably sounds crazy to you, right? Right? Yeah, being in the back of a store all day makes your mind wander. Maybe mine's been wandering a little too much? Could be possible..) So, yeah, christmas is my favorite time of year. What's your favorite tradition/thing about the christmas season? Tell me in the comments!



~Amanda

Crazyness

Hello! (my third post! YAY!) Well, how's everybody's days been going? Good? Good. My days been going pretty well. A few ups and downs, (bickering for instance, it's like every child's nature) but my day got better. I found out that we might possibly go see The Hobbit today with some of our friends, and I got a plate of cookies from the christmas party that our local M.O.M.S. group gave me (I work in the nursery there on Fridays) and got paid for dogsitting. :) But, something horrible happened in CN today. There was a shooting at an elementary school in Newton. 27 people were killed, and 18 of them were children. One of the people that got killed was the shooter himself. There isn't much details yet, and you should pray for the families that have lost children ages Kindergarten through 4th Grade. We are praying for them, too. Can you  imagine the grief these people are feeling for their lost children? So sad. Well, on a happier note, each of those children are safe in Jesus's arms as we speak. Well, I think that's all I can write today. More tomorrow!



~Amanda

It's hard to think of titles for these posts.....

Oh my goodness, I actually made it to the second post! I have multiple blogs that I created just for fun and only made one post before deciding that I couldn't keep it up. :) And WOW! 2 comments! Thanks you guys! Comments are my favorite... So anyway, how's everybody's day going? My day's been going pretty well. One of my favorite moments today was when I gave Theo some of my leftover eggs for breakfast. His eyes just LIT UP! Right now Theo's in what we call the 'parrot stage' where he starts to really pick up lots of words. He repeats just about anything, we think it's so cute! Mabel isn't talking yet (in fact, she's not even trying to walk yet, I think she's a bit of a late bloomer- but that's okay with us! One less baby to have running around underfoot I guess.) But we'll see. We really hope the new baby (Nicholas Cecil) will be Irish twins with Mabel, but we probably shouldn't get our hopes up, we're not sure yet! The boys are so excited because a new TV series they like is on Netflix. Lately, we've been watching more TV and playing games on the iPad and Kindle Fire, probably because we're at the store all day, and our schoolwork doesn't take so long. I really like a game called Minecraft, (and you probably know what that is) and that's a lot of fun, but it's probably not the best to play it to much. ;) I'm trying to think of a couple more games to get on my Kindle Fire, but they have to be free, because I'm not exactly the richest person on earth. Anybody have any suggestions? Tell me in the comments!



~Amanda