posting again...

Wow! I can't believe the lapse in posting that I have had lately. Things have just been busy. My free time is consumed with Christmas plans, not blogging. I just finished by card tonight and I am quite pleased with it. I can't wait to get it back from the printer.

I thought I would share a few picks from the month of November.


Grandma Sherry bought Ty this tool set at a garage sale. Great deal and he loves it.

Emily and Sarah had friends over to play. They had a great time! They are all holding wax balls from dipping their hands in hot wax.Emily and Sarah are great helps around the house. They are learn lots of new things and really pitching in with the work around the house. Mark was out of town for work for a couple of days in November. I appreciated all the help I got from the girls. They are great workers!

Katie is enjoying the American Girl Magazine. She is turning into quite the independent girl lately. She loves to do things herself and is working on mastering the fork. She does pretty good as long as there is no ketchup on the plate. She prefers licking ketchup as opposed to using it for dipping. hmmm

Mammaw came to visit for a week and Kami is also in town too. This picture was taken on Mammaw's first day. We had a picnic at Lakes Park. Other than the bees we had a great time.

Emily and Sarah are studying the Egyptians. We learned about how they made papyrus and practiced by making homemade paper. It was a fun process.

The girls had their first cheerleading competition this month and earned first place! Way to go girls!

Sarah is on the far right holding up a girls leg. Emily is next to her, holding up the girl.Emily is one of the bases for this stunt.There group has two teams. Both teams won first place.
I could do without the lipstick, but the girls sure loved getting to wear for the competition! :)
We surprised them by going to SeaWorld while we up in Orlando. Sadly, this is the last time SeaWorld is doing the free passes for teachers. We plan to use ours as much as we can between now and 12/09.

Emily and Sarah enjoyed feeding the dolphins. (Thank you for the passes Andrea! We appreciated it.)

Ty wasn't into the masked people, but the girls were happy to pose.

They have way more rides than last time we were there. The crowds were slim, so the girls rode a lot!

They loved the Shamu roller coaster. I think they rode it 5 or 6 times.



We spent Thanksgiving week enjoying Grandma and Grandpa Motorhome (Dillehay) and ate dinner with everyone at my Mom's house.

We are looking forward to December. My goal is to not be consumed with all the activity, but to sit back and reflect on the reason for the celebration.

We head to Michigan tomorrow (well now it is today). I talked to Mammaw today and she said it was 20 degrees, but it would get cold tomorrow. What! I think 20 is pretty cold enough!

Wordless Wednesday

Out of my comfort zone.....by miles

Today I had the honor of participating in NDLW(National Distance Learning Week). I was asked by my supervisor to present, alongside a good friends, the Algebra 1 course for our school.
I was quite nervous at the idea, but honored to be asked. Naturally I said yes, she is my boss.

The session went very well. Thanks to those who prayed for me. I wasn' t nearly as nervous as I thought I would be.

It was fun to work alongside a teaching friend of mine. Her husband teaches at our school and her son takes classes with us full time. Kinda neat that we are similar, Mark works for the school and Emily will begin taking courses with us next year. I guess you can say our families are true believers!

Below is just a clip of what the online session looks like. It was a great experience, but I am so glad it is over!

Pictures, aargh!

Before church tonight, when the light is just right, I tried to get some pictures of Ty. This is quite a daunting task. He doesn't look at the camera much. Drives me batty.

Here is his pose. Can you see that he is laughing?

I am somewhat happy with this one. It was another of his poses, which makes it more special to me. It does showoff the fact that he is overdue for a haircut. I call him Shaggy Boy.

Open Gym

Today we joined the Driskells for a day at the gym. It was an open gym time for ages 5 and under. Ty and Katie had a great time.

Our favorite spot was the foam pit. Ty loved to swing on the rope and land in the pit and he like when I threw him in the pit. I was a little uneasy of Katie in the pit at first. I didn't want her to sink in, but she loved it! (and she never sunk in too deep)

Thank you for inviting us Kelly, Carter and Nate!

Random Stuff

This has been a really good week of school. The weather has been nice, so we did a lot of our school time out on the patio. The fresh air was good for all of us. Katie and Ty have enjoyed playing with the kitchen set and the slide while we work.

The girls are doing very well with their studies. We have made a few changes this week in our science curriculum and restructured our math time a bit. For history we are in the process of making recycled paper. Sarah plans to post our work on her blog next week.

Mark and the girls started our Thanksgiving tree this week. We have had a good time adding leaves on the tree. Each leaf stands for something that we are thankful for.

Wordless Wednesday

20 minutes well spent

Today, Mark and I, with kids in tow, exercised the right to vote. Gotta love the 19th amendment!
I love it that we have a chance to make our choice known. Our precinct seemed to have a really good turnout. They said it had been steady all day. We had heard that Chick-fil-a was giving away free sandwiches to anyone with an I Voted Sticker. We went there for lunch, but found out it was cancelled. Apparently that is illegal.
Emily and Sarah wore their McCain/Palin shirts today. As Emily puts it, she is voting in her heart. :)

Spending time with Grandma and Grandpa Motorhome

We had a fun week with Grandma and Grandpa here to visit. They came Monday-Saturday. They were a big help as usual. Grandpa did some painting and helped Mark with most of a playhouse. Grandma did laundry and helped whenever needed including homeschooling.

We also enjoy our visits with them.

Here are G and the girls making Caramel Apples.

Oops. How did that get here?

The weather turned a bit chilly while they were here, but we enjoyed being outside anyway.

Grandpa and Dad hard at work.

We also went to Chuck E Cheese. We went at lunch time on Thursday, so the place was really empty. Ty raced cars against Grandpa and ...Grandma was the skee ball champ! Who knew she had this hidden talent? Go Grandma!

They had been working on this online Name That Tune and kept getting stuck on the section of 80's music. They thought we might be helpful...me, not so much. Mark was very good at it. Between the 3 of them, they finished the whole game. Yay!

They were also here for Halloween. Here the kids are at a halfway time for trick or treating. Katie, with bottle in hand, is heading to bed none the wiser that the rest were going out for more candy.

Grandma and Grandpa manned the door and passed out candy for us.

Thanks for coming to visit. We had a really good time. :)

Happy Halloween

We had a wonderful time picking out Halloween costumes. I love entire process of deciding what everyone will be each year. The girls are now on board with that and like to come up with creative ideas. For awhile they were all going to be characters from Peter Pan, but we switched that (several times) and here is what they decided on.
Emily is our Woodland Fairy. You can't tell it here, but she has a good deal of hair and body glitter on. That was very fun and I feel like we will be seeing remnants of glitter for weeks to come. :)
Sarah is a 1920's Dancing girl or Flapper Red as she likes to call it. :) She had planned to go as Sarah Palin, but gollygee those glasses are hard to find. :)

Ty ended up as Peter Pan, minus the hat. Many people thought he was Robin Hood.

Katie was a very cute, black cat. Our first stop for the night was Grandma June's and she was so cute. We met up with Grandma in the dining room with her friends. Of course, with 8 cute, dressup kids we got a lot of looks and oohs and ahhs. Katie just sauntered right in with a big smile like she owned the place.

Hanging out with Daddy.

Kaylie, Kiara, Logan and Chloe joined us for part of the trick or treating fun.