The Kastenbauer Family

Last year, just after midnight on the morning of Mother's day, this little tyke was born to us! He was a mere 7 pound, 10 ounce baby with fuzzy hair, puffy eyes, and just a perfectly strong boy. He has elfin charm paired with tender kisses. The strawberry blonde fuzz continues to grow up and out, a lighter shade today. We most often find him wanting (whining) to be held, or seeking mischief. He already wants to do what C, J, and A are into... and it causes him many tumbles and tears when he can't keep up or isn't allowed to participate.

We are celebrating this mini man today, on his first birthday! Happy Birthday Titus Andrew!

I found this quoted by a friend on Facebook, and had to share. It feels like A. A. Milne is once again my fatherly hero for the day! The way he writes is funny, sentimental, and so possible to imagine. I can just hear Eeyore's ho-hum voice and imagine his feet shuffling about just-so. What an optimist!


“It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”
--A.A. Milne

New Year, New Energy
The sun stays up a few moments more every day now. The cold, hard and dark of late Autumn and into winter is always a challenge for me. It's like they're calling out to me: "you're tired," "you're weary" and they howl threats to take away my joy. As I see the days growing longer again, I get a rejuvenation as I get to see the turn of the calendar, too. The howls seem farther behind now. They're not creeping around my doors anymore. Winter is in a frosty, forward thrust here in Minnesota, and as I watch the sun rise up over the trees, witness the special still and clear mornings of a hoar frost, or see a bright halo around the sun... these each show me it is still cold. But, my spirits are brighter.

Ordering my priorities. Saying No, gives me more Yes time.   When we finished our ministry serving as Missionaries with Oak Hills Center for Indian Ministries after August, our commitments were able to level out to a seasonable p…

“It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, then I first begin to have a real personality of my own…There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given yourself to Him you will not have a real self…But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality… The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His)…It will come when you are looking for Him. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes, every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the de…

It's October already!

How did that happen? It is been such a nice, beautiful, colorful season already and I am glad to say that I am trying my best to soak it up… It is hard not to dread the impending winter which brings  Cold, dark, long, hard days and weeks and months… But I still enjoy winter so much! It is funny how much as an adult I begin to dread winter already when it is only fall and fall is my favorite season! However it's just reality with four small children that winter gets hard in northern Minnesota.

Well, amidst all the crunching of leaves and tromping in the woods, we are  sopping up puddles. I have also been teaching the kids at home, potty training The two-year-old, nursing the baby, And finding a slew of other activities to keep the routine spicy! There is never a dull moment here in the kastenhouse and we tend to find ways to make it harder than necessary… The kids throw fits,I throw fits, the kids play games and make messes and we all have to work together…

Yearly Homeschool Schedule With a First Grader, Pre-K, Toddler, and Newborn... This is what our days look like with our three boys and a girl at home.

We are shooting for a July/Aug to March/April school year. Now, this is because I've watched our family the last few years, and ALLLL we want to do when the snow is melting in the early spring is get outside. Explore. So, we still can "do school" from Sept through to May or June like "normal" schedules, but I want to TRY to just be done before then. Plus, it's so hot and exhausting by the time July heat and humidity rolls around that we're done weeding, working in the yard, and ready to stay in the cool house for a few hours every day anyway, so this year, it made sense to get started.

This year, 2017-2018, we started school August 1.  Most school calendars account for 32 to 36 weeks of school. I don't have a state requirement yet that makes us do a certain number of school days per year, or even num…