Dancin' Diva

Snuggle Bug

We've got a snuggler, no doubt. She has a very particular way she likes to sleep, here's what it looks like.

 Compared to this, I'd say we're making progress.

Baby steps!

Camping With Nana

My mom came into town this past weekend and per her request we went camping! If you know my mother at all, you know she's not the camping type. But, she wore a smile the entire time and even talked about our next trip. What a good sport. Oh, what a grandma will do for her grandkids!

 Ready to set up... acrylic nails and all :)

 Time for smores!

Letterwriting Lizards

I am asked multiple times a day if we can do some more school.

I'd say that's a good gauge of how well things are going!

White After Labor Day

If you're this cute, you can wear white anytime you want!

Last Harvest

We picked most of the crops left in the garden. We ended up with these two butternut squash and have a small one that we're gonna waiting a little while longer before picking.

We planted 3 pepper plants, one green, one red and one yellow and this is the only one we got! Not sure what happened, but something got to the leaves and ate them all up.

Our tomato plants did the best. This picture was after a good rain and they were all drooping. They grew to be taller than the stakes. We've still got a couple dozen green tomatoes, that we'll pick this weekend and then let ripen in the house.

We never got any cantaloupe or watermelon. We had 4 watermelon start growing, but never amounted to anything. Bummer.


After we clean out the garden we're going to be planting lots of spinach. I'm very excited about this considering we eat spinach daily and it's not cheap. It should be a fairly easy thing to grow.

Even though our garden is small, I think we've had a good return on our plants. I'm still amazed at the whole cycle of plants and how they can grow from such tiny seeds to edible produce so quickly. God is an amazing creator! I love being able to witness his power in this way.

The Underwear Game

Yes, you read that correctly. We have a game in our home called 'The Underwear Game'. Secrets out. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it up front... we are strange! I'd love to say it's just Andy, but as his family reminds me, I must have been just as crazy to chose him :) For a couple years now I've been waiting for the game to die down and them to move onto something else, but that doesn't seem like it's happening anytime soon. They only seem to be getting more into it. So, I've embraced it, and now it's going viral, and will be in our memory books for generations to come.

 How this game came to be, we aren't quite sure. I'm assuming I was folding clothes one night and they were all wrestling and someone took some underwear and started running around the house hitting everyone with it. (We are quite civilized around here, I know!) And we all know wrestling is more fun when you can hit each other with underwear. So, that was that... The Underwear Game.

Since Annabelle was in the womb and we knew she was a girl we joked about what she would do for The Underwear Game, and Andy just said, she'll join us. Well, here's your proof, this girl loooves The Underwear Game. She honestly gets upset when she's got to go to bed and she hears them getting in position!

They all have starting positions and Andy calls them to attention and then officially calls the game to begin and then they go at it. The only rule is no face shots. Annabelle still is learning that rule. Oh, and the underwear have to be clean... my rule :)

Every night at dinner they talk about what their evening activity will be. It's either wrestling (downstairs, or on our master bed), The Underwear Game, or country running, which is running around the circle downstairs with objects you have to jump over. That one always leads to wrestling, too. Notice a trend?

It is pure music to my ears to hear my husband and my children thoroughly enjoying being with one another as I clean up the tornado that went through our kitchen each night.

I am blessed beyond measure to be married to this amazing man!

Off to School

Cornerstone Christian School opened it doors yesterday! We had a fantastic first day of school.

It's gonna be a great year!

A Year for Risks!

I've been blessed with 29 years on this earth. I am beyond excited at what this year is going to bring!

Photo (by Sam) of me and my girl on my birthday!

All I wanted for my birthday was to paint our bedroom. I'm a fairly artsy person, but I don't take many design risks. We've lived in our home for over 2  years and for the most part it is still visually dull and boring. I have a very eclectic taste in decor, so I've had a hard time making all the ideas in my head actually fit under the same roof. I decided if I was going to take a major risk, our bedroom would be the place. It's out of the way, and if it was a total flop, only we would have to live with it.



The color isn't right on the screen, but you get the idea.

Either I made a huge mistake, or I'm going to be able to pull off this color and it will look awesome. A fashion tightrope, perhaps? We only have 2 walls done, but so far Andy and I both love it. The final results are yet to be determined.

Special Deliveries

Our weekend is off to a great start!

We came home this afternoon to these on our doorstep! Thank you Dane and Berta for blessing me on my birthday with these gorgeous flowers!

And earlier this morning we got our handwriting curriculum in the mail. As you can see the boys are thrilled!

Gearing Up for Kindergarten!

Despite us all being under the weather the last few days, we are pushing through and finishing up our tasks before the school year begins on the 7th! I found an enormous dresser at a second hand store that I couldn't pass up. It's going to solve my constant issue of how to hide all of our clutter, and now schooling materials. It needed a lot of work, but for the price, I was willing to put in some elbow grease and get it looking decent. But, here it is, finally finished!

So, we're in the process of completely revamping the play room into a school room and have now put all of the play toys (as opposed to learning toys) in the boys room. So, when Joseph is done with his school stuff and Samuel is still working, Joseph can only play with learning toys downstairs or go upstairs to play with the other toys. It's a way to (I hope) keep Samuel focused and not want to stop working. And also because they are getting some smaller toys now that are so hard to keep away from Annabelle. This way if they are in their bedroom and they aren't ready to put them all away we can just shut the door and keep her out.

We took this out of the playroom and now the boys have their trains, lincoln logs, tinker toys, big legos, small legos, cars and trucks in here in their (gasp) bedroom. I have fought tooth and nail for over 5 years to never have toys in the bedrooms, but here we have it. Never say never, I suppose. They are quick to get into and put away and, most importantly, satisfy this very anti-clutter mama!

And now to go find a new home for all of this stuff before I completely have a heart attack!

Things already done:

• Spent countless hours of prayer, research, interviewing veteran homeschool moms, reading countless books and blogs all to figure out the best way to structure this year. Tips always welcome!
• Registered Samuel through the city.
• Bought materials needed.
• Finished the dresser.
• Repainted the bookshelf.
• Painted the school table white.
• Purged our toys, books and supplies.

Things still to do:

• Organize the school room.
• Wait for 3 books in the mail.
• Figure out if we are going to supplement our curriculum with more math.
• Finalize our name!

I guess that's not so overwhelming now that I look at it and see what we've already done and have left to do. I do know we're all going to get a good laugh out of this entry for years to come. It's all gotta start somewhere, right? I cannot wait to see where our homeschooling years are going to take us. What an exciting escapade we are about to undertake!

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All of those thoughts are juxtaposed against what I read during my quiet time this morning.

Continually restate to yourself what the purpose of your life is. The destined end of a man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. The only thing that matters is whether a man will accept the God Who will make him holy. At all cost a man must be rightly related to God. ~Oswald Chambers

It sure puts all of this hustle and bustle into getting all of our school things 'just right' in the next few days into perspective. None of that matters unless my heart is in a right relationship with the one who made me.

So, here's to a school year that is full of learning about letters and numbers, plants and animals and vowels and consonants, but most importantly here's to a year that is full of learning as a family what it means to be rightly related to God.