a blog about...

I haven't blogged much lately and I have been thinking about ..why blog. As my mom says, isn't is just a myspace for adults...NO MOM! :)

I read photography blogs, mom blogs, homeschooling blogs and weird blogs. I was wondering what purpose I wanted mine to serve and then realized...none. I blog because...

-I think it is cool to say, I have a blog.
-I like to send out pictures and sometimes don't in case people are tired of seeing them.
-I like to get my thoughts out and have never really lasted in doing a diary or journal.
-I like new technology and think this is just fun to do!


So I decided my blog was just about me. No reason. I may post about homeschooling and parenting and work and photography and lots and lots about my family.

This week Mammaw returned to the cold north. We miss her already, but know that she is probably also glad to be home.
Katie figured out you can crawl faster on tile and is working to clean the floors. We toyed with the idea of attaching swiffer sheets to her clothes, but decided against it.
We had Tay and kids over to visit. We had fun playing Wii with Taylin.
I just like this picture. He looks more grown up, but stillhas the chubby baby cheeks. love me little guy.
Getting closer. Mark and girls have been working on this k'nex project. It is a double ferris wheel. They have one wheel done, but the box is missing pieces. Hopefully they will send them soon. It is motorized and they were so excited to turn it on for the first time!

You're gonna' miss this

I've never been a fan of Donald Trump's Apprentice Show, but somehow I got hooked this year. When they started airing previews I saw that Jennie Finch was on and wanted to check it out. (She is an awesome softball pitcher for the USA.) It was fun to watch the tasks they had to do each week and how they would behave.

Tonight was the final between Piers Morgan and Trace Adkins. During the show Trace sang his current #1 hit. I had never heard it until tonight and I loved the lyrics. If you haven't heard it, I have posted the lyrics below.


You're Gonna' Miss This
Trace Adkins

She was starin out the window of their SUV
Complainin sayin I can't wait to turn 18
She said I'll make my own money
And I'll make my own rules
Momma put the car in park out there in front of the school
And she kissed her head, and said 'I was just like you'

You're gonna' miss this
You're gonna' want this back
You're gonna' wish these days Hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna' miss this

Before she knows it she's a brand new bride
In her one bedroom apartment
And her daddy stops by
He tells her it's a nice place
She says, 'It'll do for now'
Starts talkin' about babies, and buyin a house
Daddy shakes his head
And says baby just slow down

Cuz' you're gonna' miss this
You're gonna' want this back
You're gonna' wish these days Hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna' miss this

Five years later there's a plumber
Workin' on the water heater
Dog's barkin', phone's ringin'
One kid's cryin' one kid's screamin'
And she keeps apologizin'
He says they don't bother me I've got two babies of my own
One's thirty- six, one's twenty- three

Huh, it's hard to believe
But you're gonna' miss this
You're gonna' want this back
You're gonna' wish these days Hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna' miss this
You're gonna' miss this Yeaahhhh...

you're gonna' miss this...

Curriculum Choices.

It's late. I should be in bed. Tomorrow is a very full day....but yet I am posting.

I have been up researching homeschool curriculum choices for next year. I love doing this and have a hard time deciding what to get. There are so many quality choices.

Emily has requested colorful math. ?! This year she is using Saxon Math. All black and white which to her equates to boring! I like the spiral approach of mastery learning, but agree with her that it does get old after awhile.

Sarah doesn't care what we do as long as I am her teacher. I think she worries we may put her back in school, although we never mention that.

I have lots of ideas of what to use, now the narrowing down part begins.

This picture has nothing to do with the post, but I just think she looks so cute. She can't officially crawl, but army crawls. She can get up on all fours and I'm sure she will take off from that position soon.

Where do English Generals put their armies?

Easter 2003

After the crying Ty picture I had to go back and look up this scrapbook page. I took a picture of it and I know the quality isn't the best, but I love this page and wanted to share.

Title:
Easter Sunday
Mommy: Ok girls lets take a picture before we go to church.

Try #1
Emily squats down to be Sarah's size.

Try #2
Sarah adoringly gazes at her big sister.

Try #3
Sarah spices things up with a little dance.

Try #4
When I say, "smile" Sarah, think I said be silly, makes a face.
Emily's face expresses my feeling. Grrrr.


Where has time gone! I remember this like it was yesterday.

I am so scrapbooking conflicted right now. I enjoy the process, but time is so precious. Not sure if I just need a boost to get back into it, or if I should delve into a different way of preserving these precious moments.

A good Easter

We had a very nice Easter. It was a very nice to be in church and talk about the resurrection. Emily and Sarah especially enjoyed their Junior Church time. Sarah was talking about the sermon at lunch time today.


Such a nice picture below of our four kids....well maybe not. I'm not sure why he is crying....Hmmm?

Sarah asked us if she could call Grandma Sherry and see if she could share the Resurrection Eggs with her Sunday School class. She did a great job telling the 4 and 5 year old boys the story of Christ's Resurrection. Awesome job, Sarah!
A personal favorite of mine. I love taking Katie to see Grandma, my dad and Mammaw before church starts. She always has a big smile and loves the attention she gets. I'm so glad my Dad was there!

Trying once again to get a picture of Ty. Silly guy! He was quite hyped over for Easter. I think the over abundance of candy that seemed to find the way into his mouth may have been the culprit.

One more to join the gang!

I am happy to say Taylin is now blogging.

As her older sister I will discuss the difference between Katching and Catching and the misuse of such words in title, but other than that.......great job, Tay!

The link is now listed with my every growing list of blogs.

I predict Andrea will be there next! Come on, Andrea...it really is fun!

New bloggers

I have 2 new blogging mates! Check out the links on the right! Glad Kari and Kelly can join us!

Visiting the Driskells

Tonight we went to dinner at the home of our friends, Jeremy and Kelly Driskell. We always enjoy getting together with them. It is always nice to be with good, Chrisitan friends.

Here are Katie and Nate. Sarah said that Katie was going on a date with Nate tonight.
Ty loves 'carcer' as he affectionately calls him. Carter likes Ty too, but really enjoyed following Sarah around and playing with her.

Jeremy does artistic renderings of house and buildings. Emily is extremely interested in design and architectural work. Jeremy spent a long time showing her the ins and outs of the very technical program that he uses. She was amazed at all that he does on the computer. She went to bed with a sketch book and was ready to start drawing more floor plans and house designs.

Easter Egg Hunt

Today we headed down to an Easter Egg hunt in Bonita Springs. It was hosted by a church and they had tons of eggs. It was a rainy day, so there weren't very many people there which means....lots of eggs for the kids.

Here are Emily and Sarah keeping dry from the quick rainfall.
Ty and Logan have been practicing egg hunts. They knew exactly what to do. Sometimes Ty put eggs in Logan's basket if it was closer. Logan returned the kindness by putting some of his in Sarah's basket.

Randy, Logan, Chloe, me and my 4 kids and my Mom went. Thanks for taking the picture Mom. My mom is so good about making sure I get in pictures with the kids. She knows that as the 'photographer' of your kids you seldom get in the picture. Unfortunately, she is so good about it that I don't get her in as many as I would like to. I will make sure to do that tomorrow.

Wii and hanging with friends

We had our friends the R family over tonight for dinner. Mark made delicious hot dogs and hamburgers. I had planned on the kids making Easter Basket cupcakes, but they preferred...

...playing the wii. I am happy to say that C and Mark tied in this round of boxing. I think Emily was the boxing star tonight. She seems to be the master of KO.

Sarah and B both love to jumprope, so of course they had to do that tonight.

It was nice to have new friends over for dinner. Our goal is to have 1 new family over each month. Who will be our April victims???

Resurrection Rolls

Step 1: Get your tomb ready. (Crescent Rolls)
Step2: Marshmallow symbolizes Jesus. Anoint him in oil. (melted butter)
Step 3: Cover the body in spices. (Cinnamon and sugar)
Step 4: Bake at 350 for 12 minutes and you have an empty tomb.
Step 5: Enjoy your delicious treat!

Easter Lapbook

We had a very fun week of homeschooling. Our entire week was based on the book, "The Legend of the Easter Egg" We read the book and learned many thing from it. Here are some topics we studied:
-Good Friday and Easter-Why we celebrate those days?
-Communion
-Russia and Faberge Eggs
-Parts of an Egg, How a chick hatches
-Brown Eggs vs. White Eggs
-Practiced/Reviewed Telling Time
-Similies, studied them and wrote out own
-Learned New Vocabulary
-Sequencing/Story Order
-Egg-speriments
-cooking
-symbolism

We have had a great time and love making lapbooks. Sarah is working on one from the Three Snow Bears. She has learned so much about Canada and Polar Bears. Emily is getting ready to do a Lapbook on Amelia Earhart.

Reading Festival

I was downloading the camera and found this shot and wanted to blog about it. Partly because I just love blogging. :)

Saturday, Mark, Mom, Mammaw and me took my kids, Tay's kids and Kiara and Kayli to the reading festival in downtown Fort Myers. We had a fun time and all the kids got a free book. Katie is sleeping in her carseat, but Mark is holding up her book. It was fun to let the kids pick their books.

Emily -Pippi Longstocking (I think she secretly wishes she could be Pippi.)
Sarah- Cam Jansen book-I don't remember which one, but she enjoys those books.
Kiara-a Care Bear book
Kayli-I can't remember, but she was quick.
Ty-A train book. He has noises that he makes for every train car. It is a short book, but can take a good 10 minutes to read if you do every noise on every page.

I'm not sure about the others as we picked for them.

There was also face painting, crafts and other booths set up. There were authors there too. I didn't know many of them, but they had Stuart Wood for the adults. I used to read some of his books, but now they scare me.

I love free community events. Lots of fun!

The little things in life

I have a 'list' of things I want to do with the kids when they are young. There are of course the big things...accept Jesus as their Savior, get an education, ....the major things in life, but there are also the little things.

We did 2 of those little things in the past week.

-Get ice cream from the ice cream truck. Every kid should remember doing this. I remember running 2-3 streets over with a handful of change trying to catch the truck. The girls have done this many times when we lived in Cape Coral, but this is only the 2nd time since we have moved to our current home. As soon as Mark saw the truck drive by he hollered for us to come outside. Ty was thrilled to get a Spongebob Ice Cream. We talked to the lady and she said she would be by every Saturday night. It looks like we will be doing this again.

-Sleep in a tent...ok, so we didn't actually sleep in it this time. Mark set up our tent in the front yard, complete with electricy to watch a video on the little tv.

We plan to have part of our school day in there tomorrow. Should be fun.

Maybe I will sit down one day this week and right down all the little things. I think all the little things are what add up to make a great childhood. I hope our children look back one day and realize how much effort we put into making life fun and exciting for them. We sure enjoy doing it!

Due for an update

Robin sent me an email letting me know I needed to update my blog.....here you go Robin. :)

Tonight, Emily, Ty, Katie and I met Mom and Mammaw at the linear park to go for a walk. We are having gorgeous weather right now, so it was very nice.

Mammaw has been doing a lot of walking while she has been here. The kids and I met her at Lakes Park last night and she walked around the lake while we played on the playground.

Where's Katie?

Just click the area above to see Katie playing her
version of Peek a Boo.

How do you compute?

Sarah has a unique way to use the computer! The girls are 'in' to Webkinz again. Ok.... me too! I even have my own pet, Simon Seal. There are so many fun and addictive games on there. It is fun that Sarah can use the desktop and Emily can use the laptop and they can 'meet' in one of the Webkinz game rooms to play.

If you, or your kids, have a Webkinz let us know. We would love to add you to our Buddy List.

Last post today

Sarah-I'm happy to drive my family around!
Ty-Look Ma, a new handrest!
Katie-Are you sure you want me to ride in here?
Emily-Wait! Let me get in the picture too!

:)

Uniquely Sarah

Sarah is such a unique kid. I like the way she interacts with people.

Mark and I were talking about our recent training for work. The facilitator was a really neat person. She spends her day getting other people excited and 'buying in' to their program. By the end of the training she had us snapping and clapping for the good work of other people. Emily thinks it sounds crazy (she wondered if the lady thought we taught Kindergarten), but we had an awesome time. We both think Sarah could do this job when she grows up. #1 She likes to have fun and wants others around her to do the same. #2 She doesn't mind being a little goofy.

On Monday in their Journals I had them write down 2 goals for this week. I told them to think seriously about what they would like to accomplish. I was thinking they would put something like--say 2 sections in King's Kids, finish the book I am reading, keep my room clean. Um...no.
Sarah wrote:
1. Play webkinz with Grandma on the computer.
2. Finish a song on Guitar Hero 3.

PS--What an awesome shirt ! :)

Katie's real meal!

To celebrate her 6 month birthday, Katie enjoyed her first real meal. Yummy, delicious baby oatmeal!

Sarah is thrilled to feed her. NOtice we have to hold her hands down. She wants to grab the spoon and shove it in. She really enjoyed the meal and ate every bit of it.

Ty loves oatmeal and was quite bugged that he didn't get any. We let him try it thinking he would not like it because it was baby oatmeal, but he loved it. Silly guy.
Emily also helped out.

Licking the spoon! Yum!

Happy Birthday Emily! Part 4

Thank you everyone for coming. Travis was also there, but at the time this was taken he was trying to catch a fish. Unfortunately, an alligator got his bait. It was quite an exciting moment!

Katie-6mo, Sarah- 7 , Kayli- 5 , Emily- 9, Ty- 2 , Kiara- 5 and Logan 1

Happy Birthday Emily! Part 3

Dual Kite flying
Sarah and Kayli
Cake time! Emily was so happy.

My girl! Daddy's girl.

Happy Birthday Emily! Part 2

This was a perfect kite flying day. All we had to do is gradually let out the string and they swooped right up in the air. We were flying the $1 kites from Walmart and they worked wonderful!

Ty and Mammaw. Notice Ty has his Kite handle in his hand. He liked flying his Cars kite, but sometimes forgot and let go. I chased it down twice. Emily went after it the third time, but it got swooped away. If you look closely at this picture you can see Katie smiling in the background.
Grandma and Katie-both are smilers!
We had a total of 6 kites, but at this point we were down to 2 or 3.