Summer Goals for the Kids

So, last summer my goals were pretty much focused on staying cool while pregnant in Texas. We spent a lot of time at the pool. This year we plan on going to the pool a lot but I wanted to set some goals of things the kids and I would like accomplish.

Here they are.


1. Enjoy our Summer

2. Each child will finish their respective Vacation Station Book from www.bjupress.com

3. Each child will learn how to wash, dry and fold/put away their own laundry.

4. Each child will plan, go with me to buy ingredients for, and prepare one supper.

5. Each child will finish one small sewing project with me.

6. Each child will write and illustrate a story. We will then copy the pictures and incorporate them into a book to be printed off at Kinkos.

I honestly think between traveling and trying to just enjoy our summer, that this list is sufficient. We have already started on some of these goals and have really been having a great time.

So what summer goals are you working on?

Wii gave in

That's right.

We have up to this point heeded Dr. James Dobson's wisdom of video games and boys. He believes that video games take away a boy's vision for the future. And we have done much research that has also pointed towards this same view.

We have had none in our home to this point. No DS. No Computer games (okay so maybe a couple but not more than once a month).

But we got Daddy a Wii for Father's Day.

And I discovered it might not be the boys I need to worry about.

On her second time to play in the sword fighting game, my sweet 5 year old got the controller and turned around to her brothers and dad and said,

"Watch and learn boys. Watch. And. Learn."

And then she proceeded to bash in the other virtual player with her sword until he fell off the platform. She racked up the most points of anyone who had played so far. And MY was she proud of herself.

I'm thinkin' the Wii is not going to be beneficial for character building.

On another note, what are some fun games for the Wii or your kids' favorites?

Tuesday Morning Fun

Nothing says Good Morning quite like having your brick mailbox taken out.


Because I've really got nothing better to do with my time than figure out who can come and rebuild our cracked mailbox and fix our turf. And go back and forth to the post office 15 minutes away to get our mail.

I know there are so many things to be thankful for... like the fact that none of the kids were outside playing safely in our front yard.

But it's just one more thing.

And we would SO have set this thing right back up if it hadn't cracked on the sidewalk.

Bummer.

And that's pretty much all I've got to say about that. Unless anyone knows of a good mason in the Dallas area they can recommend! :)

The little sister she prayed for

When she was three years old, our girl started praying for a baby sister.

When we told the children we were expecting, she knew it was going to be a girl because she had been praying for one.

When we saw on the ultrasound that it was going to be a girl, she just shook her head in agreement because she was just sure she was getting a baby sister.

And now she has her very own mini-me. Right down to the fair skin, button nose, blue eyes and attached ear lobes.

Thankful Thursday

1. Thankful school is out! We were actually finished last week but did

some wrap up stuff this week. We are enjoying our summer so far!

2. Thankful for our neighborhood pool. It's about a 5 minute walk from our house. Come on over and go swimming with us!

3. Thankful for our Sunday School class! We co-teach with some friends and we started the class a year ago. It has now grown to 40 members and they are a great group of friends. We feel so blessed!

4. Thankful that the yard is full of baby bunnies and not baby snakes. :)

(although I'm going to go buy some mothballs to scatter around because I've been told it will keep away both)

5. Thankful that my husband was off Monday. We really enjoyed having him home and going fishing with him.

6. Thankful that we can get our deposit back if the oil spill hits Gulf Shores and the location of the beach house we have reserved for August.

7. Thankful for air conditioning. I'm thinking it's going to get hot in Texas this summer.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday!

I'll take one Mickey Mouse..... to go

or.... what one does when one needs to ensure that one has Mickey Mouse

in one's possession once one reaches one's destination

Dedication

We had our sweet baby girl dedicated on Mother's Day.

We had actually planned on doing it in the fall since it was my husband's birthday. The Nursery director contacted us the week before and asked if we were planning on participating. I told her we would just do it in the fall and she informed me they only do baby dedications on Mother's day.

So there you go.

I was in a little bit of a panic because I had only 4 days to find a dress for her. For my 5 year old, I spent months finding and ordering the perfect smocked little bishop dress from Rosalina. It was beautiful.

I made a hasty trip to the mall and could only find a couple dresses that might even work and they were $50 plus!

My last chance was going to be Friday on my way home from the homeschool convention. I was going to be passing a big Dallas mall and was just sure I would find something but convinced I would be paying WAY more than I had budgeted.

At the homeschool convention I stopped by a booth that was selling all sorts of homesteading items along with tea sets, dolls and all sorts of other things. I happened to notice that there were a couple smocked dresses hanging up. Three of them were in larger sizes and had a Christmas motif. Two of them were blue newborn smocked dresses.

And one was a sweet pink smocked dress in size 9m by Rosalina!

I couldn't believe it!

There were some stains on the back and so it was marked down to $19.99.

I bought it. I washed the stains out. And it was absolutely perfectly what I wanted!

So there you have it. Our sweet girl in her dedication dress!

Happy Birthday to my Babe

April Showers..

...bring my favorite spring flowers.

My irises have been my faithful friends. I love them because they are so hardy! I didn't start out loving irises but they have grown on me.


This group has been with me for over 10 years. They have lived at 4 different houses with me and made it through 3 moves. I've lost a couple colors along the way but it is always hard to make sure you've got them all when you move.

When we moved to this house, these iris were lucky we even got them in the ground. My priority is always to get the daylilies in the ground first and we just didn't have much energy left when we made it to the irises. We basically just dug an area out, threw some bone meal in and planted them with the rhizomes sticking out.

This year the whites seem to be particularly hardy and are taking over. I've had this happen before when there is one color that is stronger, it will grow over the others and then the next thing you know, you only have white. So, I am labeling all the leaves. This fall I will dig them up and put all the whites in their own group.

I know. There are days when I verge on brilliance.

I've always had a weakness for clematis.

When we moved here, someone at the local nursery advised me not to try to grow clematis down here. She said they just don't do well.

But I love them and thought I'd give it a try anyways.

And look what I've got!

This is their second spring in my yard and they seem to be growing just fine thankyouverymuch!

So what's growing in your spring garden?

It's the little things that make me happy

While we were at the farm, the kids spent most of their time on the 4-wheelers. In fact, in almost every picture I took they are either on a 4-wheeler with their dad, Grandma, Grandpa, or Great-Grandpa.

There are many fields to ride through, ponds to go visit, and a gravel road to drive on down to the river. It's great fun!

During one of the rides we drove through a field where an old farm house used to be years ago. No roads to it. No foundation left. Nothing was left to show that it had ever existed.

Nothing except daffodils.

Lots and lots of daffodils!

There were at least 2 different varieties if not 3, but only one was still blooming. I asked my Grandpa if I could dig up some starts of them (seeing as how they were way back in a cow field and nobody ever saw them anyway) and he said that would be just fine if I thought they would live.

He's not a real big gardener.

And I know it's not the best time of year to dig up daffodils, but I'm just working with what I've got here.
Aren't they beautiful?

So my dad and I hopped on the 4-wheelers and rode back to the pasture and he dug up a couple clumps for me. The clumps have lots of bulbs in them because it has been many many years since they have been divided.

I am so excited!

How fun is that!?! Fancy daffodils from my Grandpa's farm. I can't wait to see what the other ones look like!

And I thought I had trouble

So we took a road trip to my Grandpa's farm last weekend.

10 hours up. 10 hours back.

Loooooong trip.

But it was so beautiful and we had such a great time.


We usually see lots of baby animals around this time of year so when the kids ran in saying they found a nest of babies, I wasn't that surprised.

I was thinking along the lines of, "Big deal, it's probably a nest of baby bunnies and we've already got 3 and counting of those in our own backyard!"

But I was wrong.

They weren't baby bunnies.

They were baby armadillos!


There were 4 in the nest and the mama was a big ole gal who wasn't very happy to see us. After she took off, the kids got adventurous and Grandpa caught them a couple to hold.

We checked all the backpacks twice to make sure we didn't bring any back to Texas with us.

***disclaimer*** no baby armadillos were injured in the making of this blog post

Modesty, it's that thought that counts

So my girl was trying on clothes.

A skirt to be exact.

She came in the room to model it with nothing else on.

I told her it fit just fine but that ladies wear shirts around the house to keep themselves modest.

She smiled at me and said, "Don't worry Mom, I'll keep myself modest on the way back to my room."

And then she took both of her hands and very carefully covered her belly button with them and ran all the way back to her room.


Great. It seems we've got a lot to discuss.

It's all worth it

All the nights of interrupted sleep.

All the shirts that will forever have the faint stain left behind by spit up.

All the exhaustion.

All the outfits ruined by a blowout.

All the endless loads of laundry.

All the diapers and binkis and onesies and socks and burp cloths.

It's all worth it.

Besides my husband heard somewhere that your oldest son

is the one who will pick out your nursing home and your

youngest daughter is the one who

will come see you.

All our hope is in her.

It's so worth it.

Thankful Thursday

So much to be thankful for...

1. Thankful that the second round of antibiotics took care of my strep.

2. Thankful that none of the rest of my family got strep.

3. Thankful for my Thursday night Bible Study. We are doing Beth Moore's 'Living Beyond Yourself". It's a great study!

4. Thankful for my Thursday night Bible Study ladies! It's been so fun getting to know them all!

5. Thankful for the sunshine.

6. Thankful for a sweet violin teacher who is giving me a 10 minute lesson each week after my kids are done with theirs.

7. Thankful for my parents who came down to watch my kids so I could go to a physical therapy continuing education class. I had a great time away and the kids had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.

8. Thankful for my husband! We've been married for 13 years this week!

9. Thankful for the willow blue KitchenAid Mixer that my husband gave me for an anniversary gift. Love it. Is loving an appliance wrong? Because if it is, I don't wanna be right.

10. Thankful that God is Good. All the time.


Happy Thankful Thursday!

Sad Story, Happy Ending

Well, a couple weeks ago I dropped my camera.

My beloved camera that I adore. My beloved camera that I use just about every day. My beloved camera that my husband bought for me 2 years ago for my birthday.

I tripped, and I dropped it on the concrete and it busted the casing on my lens and messed up my camera body.

I almost cried.

My husband remembered that we had bought a 2 year warranty on it. The only problem was that my birthday was a week ago.

When we checked the warranty we discovered that we bought my camera a week and a day after my birthday.

At that point the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine shone down on me and I'm just sure I heard someone singing "Hallelujah!... Hallelujah!..."

It might have been my husband.

So we took the camera in with one day to spare and they sent it off with me hoping they would indeed repair it.

We picked it up this weekend and it's perfect. Everything is fixed. I'm so happy. And I kept singing a song in my head that I heard when we saw the Blue Man group.

Yes, I paid good money to take my husband to go see 3 guys with blue heads entertain us for his birthday one year. And I have to say, it was quite entertaining. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. No eternal value whatsoever. No intellectual curiously stimulated. Just pure entertainment.

So this is the song I've been singing. About my camera. I know, it's sad. But it's that little things in life that make me happy.

I so want her dress!

And I'm always going to carry my camera in it's case from now on!