What a Day!

Today started early with loading Riley, Lady and myself up in the car.  We went to the John Deer dealer to have the lawn mower blade sharpened, then we headed to church to drop Riley off at Camp Crazy.  After that, Lady and I headed to the vet to get a shot.  On our way, my sister called and wanted to meet me to give me something.  Thankfully she came to me... :-) Lady got her shot and we headed home so I could drop her off and pick up some snack food for me, almonds and cranberries and a water!  Mmmmm!  I called my Mom and as I talked to her I repotted some cuttings from a plant my sister gave me.  I did walk out to the shed to check on the baby birds, but could not find them anywhere so they must have flown into the woods behind our property.

About 30 minutes later I hit the road again to go to Creative Learning Connection in search of curriculum.  I was able to get just about all of our readers for reading and our Bible lesson plans.  Crossing things off that list is good!

I left there to go get dinner and to the grocery store.  Picked up a few items and a pizza (knowing I would not have much time to cook today...).  I ran them home, let Lady out, grabbed some lunch and hit the road again to run to my sisters house to look through her curriculum with her.  Of course while I was there I had to get my baby fix with my sweet little chunk of a nephew who is 4 months old and weighs 18.5  lbs and is 27" long!  What a sweet boy!

I left there about an hour later to go get Riley at Camp Crazy.  He had fun again today!  Woohoo!  We left there and picked up the lawn mower blade and headed home.  We met Chris coming in the door and picked up ball and glove and ran back out the the door leaving Chris and Lady to their own at home.  We headed to our friends house where Riley went swimming, got stung by a hornet, played baseball while I talked with some new friends, was in awe over a garden, had fun meeting some chickens and learned about the busy life on a growing farm! Thankfully Chris put the pizza in the oven and had dinner ready when we came home.

I don't know how you would feel but I feel like I have done just about everything a person could possibly do in one day!!  So on that note, I'm pooped and will call it a day (and a half!).  Till next time, blessings!

Up to My Ears in Blackberries and Baby Birds!

Today was a good Monday!  Riley went to Day camp through the church we are currently visiting.  (Camp Crazy - I have to admit, the name did worry me a little bit... :-))  I dropped him off this morning fighting off tears (me not him) and praying a whole lot!  He went in with a look of determination on his face to make new friends and came out this afternoon with a grin on his face!  He had a good day,he made several new friends and even saw a friend of his from COOP!  He's ready to go back tomorrow!  Woohoo!

While he was at camp I spent the day reclaiming my home from a week of business and a weekend of travel.  Doing laundry, unpacking suitcases, cleaning the kitchen etc. Then I ventured out back to see what type of work awaited me there.  Tomatoes to pick, a few banana peppers, one grape tomato :-) and tons of blackberries!

 As I picked the blackberries my mind started thinking on what I could do with them.  Last year I froze a bunch and made some cobblers.  So this year I thought how about some blackberry jam!  MMMmmmm.....
Today I tried a recipe from Southern Living that seemed simple enough, it is a microwavable recipe, that didn't call for pectin.  Hmmm...  I tried it without the pectin at first but soon realized that you have to have the pectin.  Once I added it, the jam soon thickened up, I put it in jars and will refrigerate them.  I found another microwave recipe from Cooks.com that I'll try with the next batch.  Do any of you have a good recipe for blackberry jam that you would like to share?

The recipe made two jars and about two servings.  

Just before dinner I went out to water some plants, everything was so thirsty after our absence this weekend.  I love our backyard, it is so big, lots of flowers, our gardens and some trees and then our shed.  Our lovely, useful, ugly tin shed that is such an eyesore... See, our shed door fell off...a while back.  It was so heavy and so high off the ground that it just rotted off and we took our sweet time to get it fixed!  Doesn't that sound so hillbilly-ish?  We had finally got around to ordering a new door and found out that a mother Carolina Wren had made a nest inside a box on a shelf and laid 5 eggs.  Well, we very well couldn't put the new door on now could we??  So we wait.  Today I noticed a baby bird sitting on the ladder hanging in the shed, I went in to check it out and this is what I found.  When I came inside the shed she flew to some pots.

 Then upon further investigation I found this...

 

Aren't they cute????  And no, that isn't a real bug, it is on the bag.

So now we just have to make sure Lady doesn't find them....fun stuff though to find such cute little babies in our shed.  The door will just have to wait a little longer.  

Tomorrow while Riley is in Camp Crazy, I will take Lady to get a kennel cough shot so she can board soon.  Then I will head to our local homeschool resource center in search of some used curriculum.  Creative Learning Connection is a great place to get used curriculum, teaching aids, books, videos and games at decent prices.  If you live in the Huntsville area, go check them out!

   

Martin Luther King, Jr Lapbook

We are learning about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr this week. I went to CurrClick and found a lapbook to help us study him this week. In the Hands of a Child created a project pack that has all the tools you need to put a lapbook together. In the project pack there is a Research Guide for the child to read with you. Then your child can complete the hands on activities which correspond to the research guide. After the hands on activities are completed they can be added to the lapbook.

As we finish I will post pictures of the finished project.

Happy New Year!!

Well let me just say, Happy New Year to each of you!  My prayer for you is that your New Year is rich with God's blessings.

We thoroughly enjoyed our New Years Eve, the three of us stayed home and had a nice candle lit dinner of crab legs, shrimp, salad and sour dough bread! It was delicious!  Riley was so excited when he found out we were having a candle lit dinner and even more excited when he found out we were having crab legs!  He jumped in there and cleared the table, and helped get it set and got the candles ready.

As we ate we discussed what the new year brings, an opportunity to make resolutions, to make a new start and to anticipate what the Lord has in store for us.  We had to redirect Riley a little when he said his 'revolution' was to play more WII...it's hard for an almost 8 year old to think about anything else except for playing.

Chris surprised me and asked Riley if he wanted to be homeschooled this next year.  I must admit, I was a little anxious to hear his answer.  Thankfully he said he wanted to keep homeschooling!  Whew!!!!  Then we talked about doing the Abeka DVD's or continuing on our same curriculum choices we've been using.  Riley said he liked what we were doing!  That is a good thing!  I just need to get some more energy somewhere!!  This break we've had over Christmas has been a BIG blessing to me for I was really tired!!

I look forward to starting school next week.  I have some things to do to get ready.  Math, Phonics and Bible are easy because we'll just pick up where we left off.  Science we are still studying birds and I need to see what is in store for us there.  We need to finish up our American History/Geography so we can resume our Mystery of History.  Of course we need to do some more reading and make a trip to Pizza Hut for his Book It awards.  We are doing a Coop this winter/spring.  I had decided to take the Fall off from doing any Coop classes and here's why.  Last year we had Friday classes and it seemed that by Thursday school would be going well and we'd be on a roll then we would have to stop and go to classes on Friday and I felt like we were falling behind.  After taking the fall off, I've decided my plan worked, we really enjoyed staying home and getting school done and being able to do our own thing once we were done.  However, I really felt Riley was missing the interaction with other kids.  So we are giving this a try.  I'm looking forward to it, I've never done a Coop before.   Riley seems a little excited too, it's always hard to meet new people.  It meets on Friday mornings from 9-noon.  So we'll have the afternoon to finish up projects or get other stuff done.  We'll see how it goes!

I have spent this past week cleaning out particular areas of our house.  They were in terrible need of purging and dusting and cleaning.  I feel like I have made some progress!

So I guess I say all that to say that I feel like we are going into 2010 somewhat ready mentally for somethings.  At least my home will be purged and clean for the most part and we will be ready for school next week!!

So blessing to you this weekend as you start your new year!