Well, I didn't disappear from the face of the earth ~ just took a little trip.
Friday, last week, Amy, Greg and I headed to New York State with a Mission Team to serve for the week in Albion, NY...somewhat near Buffalo. We spent Friday & Sat. riding on the bus & yesterday and today riding on the bus. It was a nice comfy bus....but 2 days in a row in a bit much. 2 days in a row for 2 weekends in a row was pushing the limit.
Amy served on a team that did Kids Clubs (backyard bible clubs) and every evening at a Bash (block party). She got to go out and help & she helped us in the kitchen. Her very favorite part was washing dishes ~ yep, you read that right! The church kitchen we used for lunches and dinners was a commercial grade kitchen. Her favorite by far, was the 90 second per load dishwasher. Can't say that I blame her....it was fun to use.
Greg and I, along with 2 other gals, were the cooks for our 34 member Mission Team. As always, my husband was super chef and did an awesome job with his cooking and putting up with me and the others calling him Gregory all week!
We just got home today. I have lots of pictures and menus to share. But the pics are still on the camera and we are bushed.
More next week!
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Simple Things
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| Praying all my children remember the times shared, the lessons learned, and the love between us. You are never too old to not need your parents. I am very grateful to my mom and to God for his blessings of my family! |
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
New Family Member
Monday night our new family member arrived.
She is a wild bundle of energy and ALL puppy. Rosey is a 13 week old black Lab/Boxer mix.
Rosey is a gorgeous dog, loves to romp (and scratch & nip), and has taken an instant liking to swimming in our pool. She LOVES the pool. She can swim all around and go back to the shallow end and climb up the stairs. Its a little more difficult for her to climb up the ladder at the deep end, but she has managed it 3 or 4 times.
She wants to romp and play with the Chihuahua's but they aren't having anything to do with that yet. I think little Licorice is terrified cause Rosey is so big.
We got Rosey from our church friends. They were having to move and couldn't keep her in their new rental home.
Amy is working with her to cut down on some of the jumping and carrying on. Rosey is doing real good until she gets excited ~ like seeing Will walk down the stairs, or stealing Greg's flip flop, or playing tug of war with my skirt (I was wearing it), or any shiny object that catches her attention. Amys water glass was a favorite of hers yesterday!
Rosey came with all the puppy essentials ~ and a coupon book they had gotten from Pets Mart. There were 2 coupons for free puppy day camp training & she and Amy will be attending!
This is an adventure ~ for Rosey and for us.
And yes....I guess we are the crazy dog family!
(I would put up pictures but I can't get them to download right now)
She is a wild bundle of energy and ALL puppy. Rosey is a 13 week old black Lab/Boxer mix.
Rosey is a gorgeous dog, loves to romp (and scratch & nip), and has taken an instant liking to swimming in our pool. She LOVES the pool. She can swim all around and go back to the shallow end and climb up the stairs. Its a little more difficult for her to climb up the ladder at the deep end, but she has managed it 3 or 4 times.
She wants to romp and play with the Chihuahua's but they aren't having anything to do with that yet. I think little Licorice is terrified cause Rosey is so big.
We got Rosey from our church friends. They were having to move and couldn't keep her in their new rental home.
Amy is working with her to cut down on some of the jumping and carrying on. Rosey is doing real good until she gets excited ~ like seeing Will walk down the stairs, or stealing Greg's flip flop, or playing tug of war with my skirt (I was wearing it), or any shiny object that catches her attention. Amys water glass was a favorite of hers yesterday!
Rosey came with all the puppy essentials ~ and a coupon book they had gotten from Pets Mart. There were 2 coupons for free puppy day camp training & she and Amy will be attending!
This is an adventure ~ for Rosey and for us.
And yes....I guess we are the crazy dog family!
(I would put up pictures but I can't get them to download right now)
Monday, June 17, 2013
Making Progress
A couple of weeks ago, Greg read a blogpost by Tim Challies about eliminating time wasters in your life. Its one of those posts where it makes you start thinking about your own life and what you can do to improve certain areas. One area we are looking at is email ~ there are emails I get everyday that contain ads, homeschool advertisements, etc. ~ I am unsubscribing from those lists. Which will mean less emails to go through everyday. On FB we've "hidden" some pages from our fb wall, we will still have the option to read them by finding the page, but it won't show up in front of us everyday. On Pinterest, I have "unfollowed" some boards that don't interest me personally. I like all the crafts, travel, missions, homemaking, etc. boards but not so much the my fashion or my style. If at some point I am looking for something specific, I can still search for it.
Our tv is more off than on. We've got certain shows we want to watch ~ Master Chef, The Next Food Network Star, NCIS, Elementary, to name a few. We've gotten very good at watching 1 show and then turning off the tv...as opposed to surfing the channels looking for nothing in particular.
Our library cards are getting a workout. We come home with a bag of books and take back the bag within a week or so. Greg and I also cleaned out a bunch of books and took them to "2nd & Charles" in Birmingham this weekend. They buy your old books. We took in 3 crates of books and they bought most of them. The rejects, I put into the free box outside except for 3 nicer books. I am going to start our online book swap account back up soon and will put the nicer ones on there. If you want cash for your books, they will give you that price but if you want store credit ~ the price they "pay" doubles. We went for store credit. Amy found several baking books, we found Greg a turkey fryer cookbook, and we got some just for fun reading books. Lets just say ~ our store credit is $0! We spent it. And they had a buy 5 novels, get 5 free deal going on ~ so we stretched that money even further. I think Greg ended up paying $10 for all our books.
Now that homeschool is over, I've got lots more books I can share/sell/trade etc. I have given away lots of our textbooks. Some I am saving for Amy to use with her own children one day ~ like the ABeka readers, all the Dover coloring books, Little House curriculum, Am. Girl books. But there are lots more to go. It just takes time to go through stuff ~ and stamina since some of this is stored in our super hot attic in file cabinets. But we are slowly weeding through the accumulation and sharing with others.
So now its time to read, or sew, or do laundry, or cook, or cross stitch, or cut out fabric, or crochet, or pick vegies from the garden, or pet the doggies, or swim, or menu plan, or clean something, or go through more stuff!
Happy Monday!
Our tv is more off than on. We've got certain shows we want to watch ~ Master Chef, The Next Food Network Star, NCIS, Elementary, to name a few. We've gotten very good at watching 1 show and then turning off the tv...as opposed to surfing the channels looking for nothing in particular.
Our library cards are getting a workout. We come home with a bag of books and take back the bag within a week or so. Greg and I also cleaned out a bunch of books and took them to "2nd & Charles" in Birmingham this weekend. They buy your old books. We took in 3 crates of books and they bought most of them. The rejects, I put into the free box outside except for 3 nicer books. I am going to start our online book swap account back up soon and will put the nicer ones on there. If you want cash for your books, they will give you that price but if you want store credit ~ the price they "pay" doubles. We went for store credit. Amy found several baking books, we found Greg a turkey fryer cookbook, and we got some just for fun reading books. Lets just say ~ our store credit is $0! We spent it. And they had a buy 5 novels, get 5 free deal going on ~ so we stretched that money even further. I think Greg ended up paying $10 for all our books.
Now that homeschool is over, I've got lots more books I can share/sell/trade etc. I have given away lots of our textbooks. Some I am saving for Amy to use with her own children one day ~ like the ABeka readers, all the Dover coloring books, Little House curriculum, Am. Girl books. But there are lots more to go. It just takes time to go through stuff ~ and stamina since some of this is stored in our super hot attic in file cabinets. But we are slowly weeding through the accumulation and sharing with others.
So now its time to read, or sew, or do laundry, or cook, or cross stitch, or cut out fabric, or crochet, or pick vegies from the garden, or pet the doggies, or swim, or menu plan, or clean something, or go through more stuff!
Happy Monday!
Friday, June 14, 2013
More Grad Pictures
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| Graduate, Principal, Teacher, Graduate! |
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| Our Pastor admonishing them to live their lives appropriately, chose their friends wisely, and make their lives count. |
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| Greg presenting Amy's diploma |
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| Greg presenting Wills diploma |
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| Our homeschool group of 2013! |
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| Our family picture ~ and I don't know why AK isn't up there...see the IPad? That's Rob on there ~ they skyped so that he could see the ceremony~ |
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| OK, flip your laptop on its side for this one and the next...don't know why they won't flip! |
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| Miss Angel took Amy's business card, digitized it and made her a "company" t-Shirt! And Greg and Andy had to photo bomb!!! Goofy boys! |
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Happenings....
I haven't been able to post the rest of my pictures ~ the computer has been wonky and "hid" all our files. Greg has got it figured out and I am very thankful the files were only hidden and not gone. We back up our pictures to a separate device but haven't backed up the recital or grad. pictures yet. I would have been really upset to lose either of those!
After VBS, dance recital & graduation within 8 days, I was exhausted. And when you throw in my awesome out of town company ~ Mom & my niece, and our newlyweds, Andy & Amy Kate.....then you've got a houseful of company AND all of the activites. Maybe exhausted is too benign a word!
Everyone helped with everything ~ A&A ran errands and helped with our craft projects for graduation. Plus Amy Kate did Amy Lynn's makeup for the recital for us! No one else had a professional make up artist! Greg ran lots of errands and took us out for a wonderful stir fry meal on Sat. night and bought us pizza for our lunch at church while setting up for graduation.
We were so proud of our kids when they stood up in front of everyone to sing during their grad. And they did an awesome job. In fact, the worship leader asked them to sing again on Sunday morning during the worship service on Fathers Day! And we were thrilled with the attendance at graduation ~ lots of our church friends came and supported our graduates!
Amy Lynn went home with Gran and Bethany for some girl time. And some spoiling....they ate ice cream for lunch yesterday!
Greg had a presentation to make and some seminars to attend...so I ran away from home and went with him. Its just us~ and I love it. Don't get me wrong...I love my kids, but being with just Greg for a couple of days is wonderful! Plus, no cooking or cleaning, and we've had some naps ~ great to rest after last week! Last night we had a yummy barbeque dinner and cruised around awhile in Gregs new-to-him car. I brought my cross stich & crochet, and a book (I've already finished the book).
Monday night we got the news that we were going to be grandparents again! Our little munchkin Robert is being promoted to big brother in January! (He will be a year old the end of this month). So we are excited!
Time to sip some more coke zero and relax!
Happy Wednesday!
After VBS, dance recital & graduation within 8 days, I was exhausted. And when you throw in my awesome out of town company ~ Mom & my niece, and our newlyweds, Andy & Amy Kate.....then you've got a houseful of company AND all of the activites. Maybe exhausted is too benign a word!
Everyone helped with everything ~ A&A ran errands and helped with our craft projects for graduation. Plus Amy Kate did Amy Lynn's makeup for the recital for us! No one else had a professional make up artist! Greg ran lots of errands and took us out for a wonderful stir fry meal on Sat. night and bought us pizza for our lunch at church while setting up for graduation.
We were so proud of our kids when they stood up in front of everyone to sing during their grad. And they did an awesome job. In fact, the worship leader asked them to sing again on Sunday morning during the worship service on Fathers Day! And we were thrilled with the attendance at graduation ~ lots of our church friends came and supported our graduates!
Amy Lynn went home with Gran and Bethany for some girl time. And some spoiling....they ate ice cream for lunch yesterday!
Greg had a presentation to make and some seminars to attend...so I ran away from home and went with him. Its just us~ and I love it. Don't get me wrong...I love my kids, but being with just Greg for a couple of days is wonderful! Plus, no cooking or cleaning, and we've had some naps ~ great to rest after last week! Last night we had a yummy barbeque dinner and cruised around awhile in Gregs new-to-him car. I brought my cross stich & crochet, and a book (I've already finished the book).
Monday night we got the news that we were going to be grandparents again! Our little munchkin Robert is being promoted to big brother in January! (He will be a year old the end of this month). So we are excited!
Time to sip some more coke zero and relax!
Happy Wednesday!
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Graduation Day~part 1
Today was a very LONG, and very AWESOME day for our family~
After all the planning, crafting, sharing ideas, posing for pictures, reserving graduation gowns, sending invitations, and lots of cupcake baking ~ it was time for graduation!
We shared the day with our friends the Foys, as their oldest daughter Emmalyn graduated. Their first graduate and our last 2 highschool graduates.
We got some great ideas from pinterest, and they worked well! This is the first of 2 installments of graduation~ more tomorrow!!
After all the planning, crafting, sharing ideas, posing for pictures, reserving graduation gowns, sending invitations, and lots of cupcake baking ~ it was time for graduation!
We shared the day with our friends the Foys, as their oldest daughter Emmalyn graduated. Their first graduate and our last 2 highschool graduates.
We got some great ideas from pinterest, and they worked well! This is the first of 2 installments of graduation~ more tomorrow!!
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| Amy"s senior table ~ pictures, fair ribbons, projects, and her new business cards! |
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| Will's senior table ~ same as Amy's with the addition of his K'nex battery powered ferris wheel~ |
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| My handsome husband & youngest son |
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| New daughter Amy Kate, helping Emmalyn & Amy Lynn get ready |
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| pictures on the playground! |
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| So excited for the day! |
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| One of our pinterest projects...they are supposed to be candle stands but Amy turned ours into cupcake stands~ |
Friday, June 7, 2013
Pictures
Our friends, the Foys, gave Amy & Will and their own daughter Emmalyn special graduation shirts this week. Our homeschool group name is CLIF (Christian Learning in the Family) ~ our friend Angel made the shirts.
We had a photo session at church on Wednesday night before Bible School started ~~~~~
Our 3 graduates have decided to sing "Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing" during their graduation ceremony at church on Sunday. They sounded great the other night! Emmy is going to accompany them on her ukulele. We are so proud of them and their accomplishments.
Today is our morning & afternoon dance rehearsals. Then recital is tomorrow. And graduation is Sunday.
We had a photo session at church on Wednesday night before Bible School started ~~~~~
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| the graduates and Miss Angel! |
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| Someone brought out swords! |
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| The girls were getting into the sword battle ~ can you tell they have brothers? |
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| Practicing their song for Graduation |
Today is our morning & afternoon dance rehearsals. Then recital is tomorrow. And graduation is Sunday.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Goodies in the Mail
I was a participant in a craft swap on Michelle's blog (http://michelleslittlepieceofheaven.blogspot.com/.) Gina (from Austin) and I received each others names...
My goodies came in the mail the other day ~
Bookmarks, a coaster, and coffee! There were 2 quilted bookmarks ~ but the other one is fulfilling its life mission....holding my place in my book!
Thanks Gina!
Yours is going in the mail tomorrow ~ I'm sorry it took so long to mail, its been a busy week with graduation preparations, dance recital rehersals, and Bible School at church!
This was fun! I hope Michelle does it again!
I can't tell anyone what I sent Gina...its a surprise!
My goodies came in the mail the other day ~
Thanks Gina!
Yours is going in the mail tomorrow ~ I'm sorry it took so long to mail, its been a busy week with graduation preparations, dance recital rehersals, and Bible School at church!
This was fun! I hope Michelle does it again!
I can't tell anyone what I sent Gina...its a surprise!
Late Nights
When you watch tv at night ~ you can finish your show and turn off the set. There are definite beginnings and endings to shows (most of the time).
But when you don't have on the tv and you read at night.....its harder to stop and turn out the lights.
Greg has certainly jumped on the reading bandwagon in the last 7 years. And in the last month has devoured many books. Amy & Will are readers. And I have been one for the last.....however many years since I learned how to read ~ 1st grade?
Right now I am reading a set of Amish books by Wanda Brunstetter. The set is "Sisters of Holmes County". The books are great, I am on book 3 of 3. The 3 books all flow together and all are mysteries. Its gotten to where now I am seriously wondering who the bad guy/guys are because they are just mean fellows. These books keep your attention and you never know what the next page is going to bring.
All this to say ~ I guess when you are laying in bed, falling asleep, and you drop the book on your face....its time to turn out the lights! I am thankful the books are paperbacks!
But with our Bible School week and all the other activities ~ many nights of 11:30 bedtimes are wearing me out!
But when you don't have on the tv and you read at night.....its harder to stop and turn out the lights.
Greg has certainly jumped on the reading bandwagon in the last 7 years. And in the last month has devoured many books. Amy & Will are readers. And I have been one for the last.....however many years since I learned how to read ~ 1st grade?
Right now I am reading a set of Amish books by Wanda Brunstetter. The set is "Sisters of Holmes County". The books are great, I am on book 3 of 3. The 3 books all flow together and all are mysteries. Its gotten to where now I am seriously wondering who the bad guy/guys are because they are just mean fellows. These books keep your attention and you never know what the next page is going to bring.
All this to say ~ I guess when you are laying in bed, falling asleep, and you drop the book on your face....its time to turn out the lights! I am thankful the books are paperbacks!
But with our Bible School week and all the other activities ~ many nights of 11:30 bedtimes are wearing me out!
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Exciting times!
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| Amy's cupcake sign got hung in the kitchen |
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| Will got his first paycheck! |
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| gave our sweet friend Emmy her graduation gift |
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| Had my first potato harvest! |
We had a crafting time with Emmy and her mom on Friday morning for graduation while the boys went swimming. I am looking forward to graduation being over and done ~ and am anticipating many tears! More crafting tomorrow!
I don't normally work in the garden on Sunday, but I did tie up a tomato plant and watered a few things that needed it. I noticed the tops of my potato plants were droopy and wilty, so I dug around and started finding potatoes. I got so excited that I didn't stop till the bucket was full! I've still got 1/2 of our largest planter box to harvest. Can't wait to eat these little beauties with some green beans.
Lots to do with week with vbs, dance, Gran & Bethany coming, recital and graduation!
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