The day I realized ...

...that homeschooling was a good fit for our family, was the day I woke up and noticed that 20 minutes had passed since the private school bus went by and an hour had passed since the public school bus went by.


And that my friends, is the beauty of what we do! ;-D

Wordless Wednesday

Post could also be titled "Phun with Photo.shop" ;-D

(click pictures to enlarge)

original:

Weekend Fun

Our plan was to go to T's parent's cabin this past weekend, but neither of us wanted to go up with me being sick. We've tried a couple other weekends up there while sick ... and it. is. not. fun! 

We had some extras planned for the weekend to do while driving up and home.  Even though we stayed home this weekend, we still did our extra trips and we are so glad we did!

I just have to say thank you to my two best friends, acetaminophen and ibuprofen, for helping me get through the weekend!

Here's a little smilebox slideshow of our weekend!  It was so much fun!

Make a Smilebox photobook

(Yes, T calls me "Mum" in case you were wondering when you heard it on the video clip) 

Mumma Roar :)

Life goes on ...

Friday morning...

and then came this...

My kiddos took good care of me!!

Attitude

There once was a girl who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head. "Well," she said, "I think I'll braid my hair today." So she did and she had a wonderful day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and saw that she had only two hairs on her head. "H-M-M," she said, "I think I'll part my hair down the middle today." So she did and she had a grand day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that she had only one hair on her head. "Well," she said, "today I'm going to wear my hair in a pony tail." So she did and she had a fun, fun day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that there wasn't a single hair on her head. "YEA!" she exclaimed, "I don't have to fix my hair today!"

Attitude is everything. Choose to have a great day!

I may have posted this before, I'm not actually sure, but I have always loved this story of this little girl with such spunk!

I'm battling a cold right now and it would be so easy to complain that while the weather is beautiful, I feel miserable. But, since attitude is everything, I'm choosing to have a great day and enjoy propping my feet up and sleeping - even if nothing gets done ... sigh.

Have a wonderful weekend - and CHOOSE to make it great!

What are you eating?

Need some dinner ideas? Yeah, me too. Here's two I've made recently ...

... Stromboli ...

... Angel Hair with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese ...

The stromboli is great because you can make several at a time and freeze them to have an easy meal - just thaw and bake! The angel hair pasta is great (mostly because of the goat cheese) and is also a fast dish to fix.

We love them both and you can find the recipes HERE!

Have any to share with our family? I'd love to have some new recipes.

Be sure to come back and leave me a comment if you post any on your blog! I can also add your links to this post so we can share with everyone!

******UPDATE********

Double Nickel's Applesauce Bread

Wordless Wednesday

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Its been a little bit since I've recorded some of the Tiny Talk happening in these parts. Its not because they haven't said anything worth recording though. :-D

We were driving and came up behind an Amish buggy. There were 3 blonde-as-blonde-could-be little boys with their heads popped out of the back of the buggy. As they turned off the road onto their farm lane, T and I waved to them and they got big smiles and waved back.

Elle, not knowing we had waved, watched them and exclaimed, "They are waving at me!"

It was just so precious how she got excited thinking they were waving just to her. It melted our mommy & daddy hearts!

To read more Tiny Talk, head on over to Mary's!

Credit - Original painting done by WilmaLee Eckman

Play Tent

I got this tent a few years ago planning to use it on the beach during vacations.  The black rods were too much of a bother for a quick setup on the beach so it became an indoor/outdoor playyard around the house.  The kids have always enjoyed it.  Its been a teepee, a pirate ship, a cowboy hideout, among many other things...

...just make no mistake, though,

strollers are not welcome! ;-D

I love it when He does that!

A lesson about Jonah ::

One of the things I love about homeschooling (besides that we can start early and stay in the a/c while it's too hot to be outside and then take a break when the wonderful fall weather comes) is seeing God's hand in our educational pursuits.

Not just that we study the Bible and pray - but that God is a wonderful conductor orchestrating our days to bring honor and glory to Him.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Seemingly insignificant events ... all came together for a great purpose ... and a Bible story came to life. It was a story about Jonah.

We started in the morning talking about Jonah and how he traveled by foot, by boat and by whale.

We made our whales with Jonah inside praying. I tweaked the lesson a bit so we didn't have to use paint. :-)

I didn't have anything else planned for the story and with the kids having taken a shorter rest time (and a storm on its way); we headed outside to play 'til supper.

I grabbed some chalk and thought about making our story of Jonah come to life. Elle was not enjoying the thunder in the distance, so Quintin went solo on the re-enactment.

"Jonah" taking a ship to put distance between himself and Nineveh.

"Uh-oh! Look at these raindrops and our ship is being tossed about."

OVERBOARD!

"I seem to have found myself inside the belly of a whale. What will I do now?"

"I know!"

Being tossed out to dry ground.

Our next move was inside as the thunder was coming closer and supper was soon ready. Here is where I marveled at God's work. I had already put the kids' supper in the oven before we went outside and I took a break during our re-enactment to prepare supper for T and me ... not even thinking about what I was making. As we headed inside, the kids asked what was for supper. Then it hit me - and I had to chuckle at how God put the events together - T and I were having tilapia and the kids were having fish sticks - or as I told them, "Whale sticks!"

As we sat down to supper, the rain began. I looked at each of the faces around the table and asked, "OK, which one of you was the cause of this storm? Who do we need to throw overboard?" The kids chuckled and I continued to marvel at God's hand in our lesson. It is my hope that the kids will remember our fun Jonah lessons and that it will bring a smile to their faces. Well, once Elle forgets about the booming thunder she heard outside! :D

So, yeah, I love it when He does that!

The craziness that is our days! (and I love every minute)

A week with no internet leaves...

time for this.....

Quintin: "Oh yeah, bring on the water!!"

Elle: "Yay! Wait a minute, I'm not so sure....Yay!"

Colin: "Um, I think I prefer to stay back here, thank you very much!"

and some of this...

and this...

time to play with some of our 12 cousins...

...more cousins

more of this...

And all of that...makes us very, very, very tired!

...while we had a great time, I still missed my internet! ;-D

Blogs not opening?

If you, or someone you know, uses sitemeter on their blogs, their blog will not open with Internet Explorer. You can remedy this problem by going to your dashboard and deleting the sitemeter page element.  Just open the box where you have the sitemeter code and click 'remove.'

I don't know if sitemeter is working to fix this problem, but if you desire a new application to track your blog traffic and stats, I'd recommend statcounter.com.

Have a great weekend!

FOUR!!!

Well, we did it!! Here we are *after* playing 18 holes while sweating in the hot sun, getting dripped on by a light rain that fell and after a delicious meal (which we were excited we didn't have to cook!)

When we got there, all the golf carts were lined up in order of where we were to start. We were 12A starting at the 12th hole. There was a 12B, a group of men who were obviously big on women trying their hand at golf. They managed to reach the 12th hole before us and tee off before we got there - which was fine with us. We had a few mishaps on the way to the 12th hole. As you can see below, the other cart had some problems strapping their golf bags onto the back of the carts. My cart buddy and I had some good laughs over this one - but not before checking to make sure ours were securely strapped in...oh man, did we laugh! Good times! Good times!!

These 3 gals are part of the group I go to the beach with in June. We tried thinking of a group name and came up with Sandy Sisters...thinking of the beach as well as any sand bunkers we may be stuck in throughout the day!

Here comes the rain!! Not only did I take this to show the rain drops on the water, but I wanted to show you that if you'd be in need of some golf balls, you can find several at the bottom of this pond courtesy of our group!!

But for every ball we lost, we'd find more!! I guess that is the penny pincher in each of us - we had to at least try and look for our lost balls - and we'd find many more from those before us that didn't bother to look! Worked for us!!

We played near our state capital and were very close to it airport - I enjoyed watching the huge plans go by. I tried not to let it disturb my game though. "Ok, ladies, who's ... Oh look, another plane!"

Beautiful form and talent was displayed by all!!!!!!! This first picture is the organization behind our team - she is the one who asked us to play and she serves on the Farm Show Committee organizing the Wednesday night parade during Farm Show week every October.

We had such a blast - playing all 18 holes was tough work, but we managed to keep our game moving that we didn't have anyone waiting on us. When we got to the pavilion after our round, we enjoyed a wonderful meal. As we lined up for the meal, they were giving door prizes. Their goal was to have a prize for each golfer. They had separate prizes for the ladies. One in our group left with a small silk flower arrangement, two left with coupons for flower arrangements (right, Zimmey?) and I got a $20 gift card to a local restaurant - woohoo, date night here we come!!!

Then came the prizes for longest drive and so on. As well as prizes for the lowest score. This was a "better ball tournament," meaning that we each hit from the tee, but 3 of us picked up our balls and dropped them were the furthest ball was. And we did this the whole game. We ended up with a nice score of 92 - which is a desirable score for a beginning to intermediate golfer...we were pleased! As they announced the top team with the lowest score, we heard 56 - Oh my!! That was 16 UNDER par...we were 20 OVER! They went on through announcing the top teams and then he paused...he said they had 10 lady golfers this year...we looked at one another. He continued saying that there was one foursome of ladies this year...and we were in ... last ... ahem ... place! We left with a nice tote bag, a small flashlight, 2 sleeves of balls, tees and a pen. Hey, I'll take last place any day! We parted ways yesterday saying that our story is "We were 8 under" and we're sticking to it. Our hope is that no one will ask "8 under what? Par? Or 100?"

God was certainly with us and I thought it was pretty awesome that they started out the event with a word of prayer. Praying that if it rain, we be thankful for it and recognize it as water for the corn (remember, I live in a HUGE farming area...and this was for the benefit of the FARM show). The rain we did have was very minimal and didn't keep us from finishing. 45 minutes away, at home, there was heavy rain - Praise God for keeping us dry to complete our fun day!

While we were at the end of a few fingers pointing and laughing - we held our own. There were several people who were very nice to us and we were just proud of ourselves for getting out and doing it and FINISHING! So there - MEN! I'm thankful we each married into families with encouraging men who don't think it is a sport just for the guys! So, I think next July we may be doing this again! It was a blast!!

Anyone want to set up a tee time with me before next July? I'll need the practice!!