First off, why in the world is there a frog in th spot where it says my profile ? Do I have a blogging enemy somwhere that knows my fear of frogs and has hacked into my blog??

   Oh, well, onto explain myself.  Tonight at 5:00 I remember that this is the once a month pajama story time at our local library, we have missed it for the past few months and the boys love it, so I told them if they hurried and ate their dinner that we would go. So within seconds they had stripped down to their undies and were searching for their "good" jammies.

  We rush through dinner and scurry off to the library in fresh clean pajamas.Here's where it gets bad, when we arrive, all the kids are in their Halloween costumes.  For those of you that don't know, my boys are the kings of dress up, they have a costume for everything, I could start a blog dedicated strictly to the different outfits they wear eachday, so how they felt to be in a room full of kids in costumes while they are in their pajamas is probably the equivalent of how Paris Hilton would feel if she showed up to a Miami nightclub in blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Why, oh why would I not have thought they would be dressing up the night before Halloween?!?!?!?!

They had fun, and for a brief moment the thought crossed my mindthat maybe they would forget the whole thing and focus on the fun, but I was not so lucky. G cried on the drive home, insisting that next story time he's wearing his Iron Man costume. Hmm, that would be right before Thanksgiving, maybe I could covince him to dress up like a pilgrim.

With cooking that is!

   I picked up the Deceptively Delicious cookbook at the library the other day and thought what the heck, I'll give it a try.

  My children refuse to eat most foods, the only vegetables they consume are lettuce and carrots and green peas when the garden is going in the summer, other than that, forget it.  They hate potatoes, mashed, baked, sweet, you name it, they hate it, don't even mention broccoli or any type of squash. So I'll try anything once when it comes to getting them to even trying a vegetable.

 So my first attempt at trickery healthy cooking using the cookbook's methods was with cornbread, which they love, and pureed sweet potatoes. They liked it so much that the following day I found my three year old eating the left over bread for a snack. As I watched him digging into the bread I thought to myself, this could work.

  Armed with a page long list of veggies that I had to ask another shopper what the heck some of them were, I went to work. Dh was with me, aware of the plan, but cringing every so slightly as he spotted the cauliflower. "You better do the same thing with me what you're doing with the kids and not let me know what I'm eating," he told me. I smiled like the grinch and headed to the check out lane.

      Later that night I cooked up macaroni and cheese with pureed cauliflower, and they ate it! All three of them!! I was overjoyed, and hooked, this could really work.

   So two hours later I had steamed and pureed more veggies than I've had in the kitchen in months. In the middle of all of it I cooked up a batch of brownies with carrots and spinach after telling dh I wouldn't put anything sneaky in this batch as he headed off to a meeting. When he came home he and the boys tried them out. "Delicious," was the concensus. The best part was when L brought his plate back empty and pointed to my pile of veggies waiting to be steamed and said "I don't eat those vegetables." Hehehe.

 Harvard has a great idea, lets pay middle schoolers up to $200 a month for good grades, good behavior, and going to school. This experiment is taking place in  D.C, Chicago and New York. Guess who Harvard is getting to pay for a portion of this grand scheme???

You guessed it! The tax payers.

Hmm, paying a child to do something that they are SUPPOSE to do. That is just fantastic. What next, why don't we pay their parents everytime the kid reports that they got a bath, were fed, read to, hugged, taken to the doctor, I mean, that's what's going to be needed for these kids after they go through school learning that behaving in a respectable manner in society and applying yourself is not in itself its own reward, you must be paid for it.

Who comes up with this stuff? The same geniuses that decided giving people home loans that couldn't afford to pay them back would just work somehow work out over the long term?

  Yesterday was a fantastic, beautiful fall day so a very good day for a drive to a neighboring town to a used book sale at the library. My heart did a little dance when I found Drawing With Children by Mona Brooks on the shelf for 25 cents! This book has been in my Amazon.com cart for two months, the book that I got had actually been withdrawn from the library so it's the same one I've checked out twice now, ahh, the beauty in finding great book deals.

 For $8.75 we walked out with three bags of books, which included two huge Webster's Dictionaries that dh said we needed. When we got home I pointed out that we had forgotten that we had purchased a big dictionary at the last library sale we went to. He just shrugged and said you could never have too many dictionaries.

The other find that made my day was pumpkin eggnog is back!   Now I can make my scrumptious pumpkin eggnog cheesecake. We made some pumpkin cookies for the first time last night, the boys actually liked them, so I think I'll add that to our Halloween party's menu, along with my cheesecake for the adults. Ahh, 'tis the season to get fat.

my boys are on the couch watching t.v. It's the Magic School Bus, though, that makes it okay, right? Well, it does in my mind so that's all that matters.

  The weather has been downright horrible all day, rain rain rain. After our school session we actually braved the great outdoors in our raincoats and rubber boots and headed to our nearby pond to collect stems for our paper bag pumpkin project, then came home and had hot chocolate to warm up. I made my Nana's chili and set it to cook in the crockpot and we went to work on our pumpkins.

 It was only after I had the boys ready to start their projects that I realized I had no orange, nor did I have a good red and yellow to make a good orange from, so we winged it with Apple Harvest Red and Sunflower Yellow, with a little Olive Green thrown in the mix, they are still drying so I will have to wait to post pictures to my "picture blog." Oh, yeah, I'm also missing green pipe cleaners, so maybe I'm just due to make another frightening visit to the craft store.

 DH will be working on another paper that is due tomorrow, so that means another several hours of him walking out of the computer room saying "I hate writing," several dozen times. As much as he hates writing, and puts off doing his papers until the night before they are due, he still manages to score low A's, so he must not hate writing THAT much, but try telling him that. I think that the boys and I will hit the gym in the morning, followed by a swim and a trip for those green pipe cleaners, and we leave him to wallow in his writing misery alone.

  Yesterday we hit Barne's and Noble for a new Kumon book for numbers. This was right after our stop at the library (the second visit this week) so G Man piped up with a clever obsevation "so there are three libraries?" He asks. I explained that this was the kind where we paid for the books and got to keep them forever, the library just let us borrow them. Still didn't keep him from asking for every good book he came across. As I was perusing the Easy Readers I saw a new Mr Putter and Tabby!! I was so excited, this use to be one of G man's favorites, he still brings things up like "juicy tomotaoes and juicy pears" and as a matter of fact, wouldn't eat a pear until he read Mr Putter and Tabby Pick the Pears, and he tries using his underwear as a sling shot and yells "ZING!"  So of course he should be thrilled about a new book, right? Wrong! When I asked him if he wanted to get it, he said no, that's just a kid's book.  So what did we get? Star Wars.

 Tomorrow I'm going to go back and buy that book. I'm going to read it to him and he's gonna like it!

  I have come up with a plan to improve the chances of sucess for eveyone in our school systems, both at the university level and K-12.

 Any student scoring a B or better must share a percentage of the grade with the students receiving low C's and below. 

 It's called fairness, they have enough to spread around and I just want to ensure that those behind have a chance to excel as well the obviously more privileged A and B student.

 As you can probobaly guess by my title, this week we are rowing Little Nino's Pizza. I'm going to post some pictures of our activities on my "picture" blog, if anyone's interested.

We already made pizza last night, which neither boy ate since we made it  with white sauce instead of red. In the process of crying over not eating the pizza, L Train scratched his eye and spent the rest of the night  rubbing it, then crying, then falling asleep on the couch. When he  woke up this morning it was fine, so no permanent damage. I do recall his big brother doing something very similiar right before he turned two, he scratched his own eye while he was having a tantrum. This one did result in an obvious scratch on his eyeball so we were at the doctor's office at eight o'clock at night and optometrist the following morning, kids!

 I do have enough ingredients left over for another red sauce, my mommy guilt is setting in so maybe I'll make one for the boys for lunch, so much for my declaration of no longer cooking special meals for the boys if they weren't going to eat it, sigh.

 I admit it, I watch SuperNanny. I record it each week and watch it after the kids have gone to bed because it makes me feel better about my own kids. When I think I'm failing as a mom I just watch fifteen minutes of any episode ever aired and go into their room and smile lovingly at my little angels.

  But here's my question. What's with every family ever shown always having giant homes with granite countertops and fantastic furnishings? This could mean one of several things:

                   A) Only people with fantastically large homes have problem children.

                   B) Only people with naughty kids that live in fantastic homes will contact the show for help.

                          or

                   C) The show will only help families  that live in fantastic homes.

Don't get me started as to why in he world these people want their families on t.v for all the world to see, that's a whole other posting,

 I went on  a cleaning rampage last night, cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floor, washed all the entry ways and doors down, I don't know who is dirtier, the dogs or the boys, and all the while the boys were playing so nicely together building elaborate lego and tinkertoy contraptions. So I thought, well, not like we need to be up at any particular time, we'll just all stay up late and sleep in, right? WRONG!

I won't even admit what time G passed out on the couch and L finally made it to bed for fear of being seen as a horrible mom! But it apparently wasn't late enough, because at 7:30 I hear "mommy, I want up!" So much for sleeping in.

Right now life is probably going too smoothly, we're getting school completed, the house still gets cleaned, we get in the car way too much for activities, and each kid only has one, what'll I do when there's more. 

 Speaking of activities, I have a funny story from G's martial arts. When he says he can't do something in class he has to do push ups, you don't say you can't, you try your best to whatever you do. Well, this is great since we have the same rule at home, I just never came up with push ups as punishment. So yesterday in the middle of school L decides he needs  a nap. G Man informs me he can read the last sentence by himself anyway, so off I carry L Train to bed.

As I'm coming back into the front room G is on the floor. Back to the table, I snap. "I said I can't read a word so I'm doing a push up," he tells me. Oh, whoops.

 This was the question posed by my chiropractor the other day (what is it with males and super powers?). First he asked dh, his choice was super strength so I had to come up with something good. My choice was the power of never needing sleep.

My dr.'s response was what in the world could you do with that. I said think of all the stuff I could get accomplished! So you want the ability to never sleep so you can do some laundry, he asks. Hmm, this was rather irritating, is that all he thinks I do?

 But after giving this serious thought this would be a fantastic super power, think of the things that you could complete, learn, build, clean if you never needed sleep. No more cranky days from lack of sleep with a new  baby or throwing up kid. Not to mention the amount of books I could read if I could stay up all night and read, which,unfortunately I have a tendency to do sometimes which results in the aforementioned cranky day.

Of course this super power would have to be exactly that, a super power that only a few could have, I certainly wouldn't want my boys to have this ability, because they are bordering on the ability as it is, to accomplish any of these extra things you need sleeping kids, so there'd need to be an age minimum, probably 25. Anyone younger would probably put the ability to poor use, like staying up all night to party and then walk into class the following day and take a test.

 Another way to put this to good use would be having multiple jobs.I can remember younger days when our bank acount would have appreciated this greatly. 

 Yes, this super power is way better than super strength,which my doctor said was better because you could help someone move a piano if they needed it. Hmm, sounds really handy, because in my lifetime I've been asked to move a piano, oh, I don't know,  never.

 So, to anyone that's working on this super power serum, I'll be your guinea pig.

  Since starting this blog that has been the word to describe me on this blogging journey, normally I'm like that Dave Matthews song (if your a DMB fan you'll get it, if you're not then you probably won't get me anyway) but currently, nothing.  I am attributing this, along with my lack of desire to clean the house, to the election.

Strange connection, you're probably thinking. But I am obsessed. I don't read homeschooling forums anymore, or peruse inspirational blogs, I leave the news on 24/7 and search for political artices. My three year old can say the names of both candidates and my five year old knows both candidates and the vp picks.

I didn't realize how obsessed I was until I ws giddily clapping my hands and stomping my feet on the floor over some campaign move by my candidate (I'll never tell) and my dh looked at me in disbelief. "You're being like me with football," now that's bad.

And don't even get me started on our govenor's race, I found out there was a debate just down the street from my house and I was trying to figure out how to get inside. Or maybe I could just stand alongside the road with a big sign that said "candidate X, this homeschooling family loves you, candidate Y "you're going down on Nov. 4!"  But seeing as we live in a small town and I'd be the only one out there, I'd probably end up in the paper, and the editor of the paper has already sent me one nasty email, so for my family's sake, I just stayed home.

I must say, though, that as nasty as this campaign is getting, I haven't been nearly run down in my car for my bumper stickers this election season, yet. Last time I was driving along with my oldest, who was very little and in his car seat in the back, when I noticed a car riding my rear end, they swerved back and forth as if to get my attention and then drove up alongside revealing a car full of college age young psychos  men (I wasn't too far from their age at that point)  who proceeded to roll down their window, shout some expletives at me with my choice for president's name thrown in the middle, oh and waved a lovely hand gesture at me. So as I'm driving, I'm wondering what in the world that's all about, then it dawned on me, my bumper sticker. Oh, well, living in a republic with freedom of speech just stinks when you're against one of the candidates running doesn't it? I thought to myself as they sped off.

And so far my yard sign is paint ball free, of course my large Rottweiler learing out the window probably has something to do with that, but you never know.

Speaking of my 110 lb beast, he turns 2 today, and not a title nor a point either behind or in front of his name, as I pointed out to dh. Well, you have to actually enter him in something to get either of those things, dh rudely pointed out, whatever!

Like I said, maybe after the election, I blame them!

"Bulls don't make milk, girl cows do, bulls make chocolate milk,"

And that is today's lesson, taught by a 3 year old.

That's what I really want to name my blog, in dedication to my favorite show as a teenager, "My So Called Life." But I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that I didn't love my life, so I'll just name an entry after it.

 What a week it has been, poor little L came down with something on tuesday, vomitting and fever and achy all over, along with complaints of a headache. So we go to the doctor on friday, "it's a virus that's going around."

By four that afternoon he complains that his neck hurts and he won't turn his head, call the nurse, "can he touch his chin to his chest?" after much fighting he finally does, "give him motrin." Fast forward to the next day, his neck is worse, he cries when you pick him up, look up Dr. Sears website, any neck stiffness go to the doctor. Headaches, fever, vomitting, along with neck stiffness and screaming when you attempt to put their knees to their belly, run to the doctor!

So we head to the ER, since it's saturday night, where no one seems to be too concerned about his symptoms .  But I'm not surprised, last time we went in to the ER when L had pneumonia and couldn't breath, a disabled child sat in the waiting room and screamed at the top of his lungs in pain and no one seemed concerned about that either.

So the doctor sees him, it's not meningitis, he tells us, it's torticollis, a virus that causes his lymph nodes to swell and his neck to stiffen. The nurse that signs us out hasn't even heard of that.

So we google it, torticollis is some neck condition, nothing we read describes it as a virus!

Oh well, he's better today,whatever he has,  other than crying at the drop of a hat, although falling on his head from the back of the couch after being told we don't climb on the couch didn't help, if I believed in kharma (which I don't) I'd say it was getting him back for jabbing his big brother in the eye with a tinkertoy stick

but....

he jabbed his brother in the eye after 15 minutes of his brother trying to dismantle the robot that he was building,

so....

that could have been kharma as well,

if....

I believed in kharma.

I just  filed away this week's work and I must say everything is going along just great. G is doing really well in reading, as long as he focus' on what we're reading he has no trouble with sounding out the word and knowing what the word is, it definately helps that a child is familiar with lots of diferent words, I find that if it's a word he hasn't heard before he has a harder time reading the word. For example he read the word hog but was unsure of himself until I said it was right, then h asked me what a hog was, okay, so we only use the word pig in our house.

 It's taken him three weeks but he finally has the Pledge of Allegiance memorized without any prompting, hand on his heart and all. He also earned his first belt in martial arts this week for memorizing and reciting their little creed.

For the past two days little brother has insisted on sitting at the table with us and doing school. I had his folder ready with some letters and match the animal to the home worksheets that kept him content. Today I started him on the Hand Writing Without Tears preschool book as he was adamant about doing one of his brother's handwriting sheets. He just followed the lines of the ants and bees and then drew a "T" by himself, not bad for three.

Tomorow we will hopefully be able to go apple picking and finish up our apple unit for the week, along with making lots of blackberry jam out of all the blackberries the boys and I picked a few days ago. This will be my first attempt at jam, I'm borrowing all my friend's canning paraphanilia as I had no idea what to buy at the store. Luckily I have one of those friends that is totally domestic, love ya Lolly,and she is teaching me well.

 Next week we start A New Coat For Anna, I had the crazy idea of picking sme of the overripe blackberries, putting them in the pastic pool and letting the kids stain a white t shirt for their art project, I shall include pictures on my "picture" blog if all goes well.

This week we are doing an apple themed week, we don't follow all the activities of Five In A Row since we're trying to follow the Charlott Mason style of learning as best we can until to switch over to Ambleside Year 1 next year, but with the boys being so young, it's fun to have a theme

 We're reading How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World, Apples to Oregon (G's favorite book) A Fishing Surprise, The President and Mom's Apple Pie and A Starting Life book about an apple tree. I thought this would also be a good time to start our year long tree study. here's apple trees that provide the hores at the barn we board at with a nearly colic inducing amount of apples s that'll be a good place for a monthly picture to study the changes of the tree, anything close to us coniferous so no exciting changes with the seasons. Ever heard a three year say "deciduous?" it's pretty cute!

Ds1 started martial arts last week, amazingly he is doing quite well. This was the third martial arts school we sat through before deciding on one and although I'm not a big fan of martial arts, I'm really impressed with this particular program. His last class, for instance,didn't do any jab,cross punch, front kicks (see, I already know the lingo) instead they put the kids through footwork drills that would have had me even stumbling over myself and the different steps took a lot of though and concentration for the kids. They also talk a lot of "focusing so thy learn all the details," which is what he has to do for narration, so it's nice that he'll be getting that along with his punching and kicking fun, I know, I know "that's not what it's all about," but he's five, so to him that's it right now And so far he hasn't attempted to use any of it on his brother.

Sometime this week we'll be visiting an apple farm for apple picking and cider and I will attempt to make an apple pie and apple butter with the ton we intend on bringing home. I'm going to try to go to a store and buy one of every different kind of apple that they have so we can do some taste testing. I'm sure that'll irritate the cashier, I'll have to use the self checkout to save myself the embarassement, 'cause I'm sure they'll ask what we're doing,then I'll have to tell them it's a "school" project and eventually G will blurt out that he's homeschooled just as he's fighting his brother over who gets to ride on the end of the cart, then they'll flip the basket over, some lady two aisles down will gasp so loud the whole store thinks she's had a heart attack but then their attention will go to the cause of her gasp, my kids. Then because my face shows more irritation than concern a cashier will come over to ask my kids if they're okay and silently wondering if they should call cps because this crazy woman that homeschools her kids shows no concern over them flipping the cart nearly on top of them.

Not that this has ever happened to me, I'm just saying....

  The comment by tiarali79 reminded me of where I was going with my talk of parents relying on the teachers, it was late and I couldn't sleep, I went rambling for a second there.

But Tiarali79 made an excellant point. A couple that I purchased my dog from just rcently retired from a nearby school district, I haven't told them yet that we homeschool, as I can already tell that they wouldn't be too pro homeschooling, so on the rare occcassions I see them and they ask about the kids I try to avoid the school topic. But somehow it came up about early learning, and she shared with me how her friend that would be teaching her daughter in K told her to not teach her anything, no alphabet, no numbers, definately no reading, because she would just get bored. So they did this with both children, I assume they were attempting to pass the advice along to me, but little did they know it' too late.

  So yes, I believe that this has been happening for so long that some parents have conditioned themselves to believe when it comes to education they aren't the experts, so leave it to the school. But now teachers are wringing their hands wishing for some involvement.

That's why I'm glad we homeschool.

 The church we attend has quite a few homeschoolers for such a small congregation, and a fair share of school teachers that so far from what I've seen, love homeschoolers. One of these teachers is a wonderful young woman that teaches the fourth grade at a local public school. She shared with me the same line you often hear from teachers dedicated to their work, she just wants to teach and not be involved in the political stuff, which in our state is the ridiculous assessment test that is worshipped by all educrats in the ps system.

 So after the first week of school had passed we were talking about how her new class of fourth graders was, she said she had around 20 students  (I can't recall the exact number) and I asked if she had a teacher's helper or if it was just her. She said she had a couple of helpers during reading time as there were several students that were barely at first grade reading level.What?! I asked her. If you can't read you can't do anything. She nodded her head (as if I had to tell this to a teacher). I know, she tells me, but we no longer hold kids back, I guess it helps a little that they are kept with their classmates for the social aspect but not for their academics.  Are we not sending our children to school for the academics?!!!

My response to her was that they got to shove kids through so it looked good on paper that all these kids were passing, while the kids struggle for the rest of their academic career because they can't read, if they don't drop out at some point, of course. She was fervently nodding her head, she sadly knows how the system works. My next question for her was why weren't parents realizing their children couldn't read and ordering a book like us homeschoolers do and teaching their kids to read themselves. Again her response was a sad one, most parents didn't seem to care and expect the school to do everything.

Now, I can't believe that most parents don't care, or rather I don't want to believe they don't, but  do believe that the school system, and private schools may be to blame as well, have set up this system of relaying to the parents that they will cover everything and have created this wall of seperation between parents and their kids' education.

I think that it has been so widespread that teachers of today are frustrated and floundering at the lack of  involvement on the part of the parents' and as I've heard from another teacher friend of mine, they blame it on single parenting, high prices forcing both parents to work until six at night, well it's just not their fault, my friend told me. Hmm, I guess that excuse may make someone feel better, but it's not going to help the child succeed in life.

A big fancy elementary school has been built in my county, state of the art stuff, the newspaper proudly proclaimed. I drove past it the other day on my way home. It was quite visually impressive, and it sat right outside a brand new fancy neighborhood that had been built over farmland. The insides of these homes boasted granite countertops and ceramic tile floors, I think it was written into the cc&r's that laminate couldn't even be driven into the neighborhood. But all the money in the world isn't going to get a kid to learn.

I have no way to prove it, but I'm pretty sure the young people that worked for generations on that farmland that was plowed over to make way for that fancy neighborhood and it's matching elementary school grew to have a better understanding of life and how to function in the world then the children that walk through those doors will ever have.

I've flipped through a few workbooks at the store whose cover screamed in big bold letters  that it "prepares your child for standardized tests!" and "Supports National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards," well, duh, that's because it "Prepares your child for standardized tests." 

So I'm intrigued and I thumb through it. It is full of demeaning, twaddly garbage that gauges nothing and teaches no substance. Now mind you I've read all of Charlotte Mason's books so perhaps I'm coming from a slanted point of view.

But I walked away thinking about these books that would prepare my kid to score really high on a test that is suppose to make me, the parent, feel good because my kid is learning something, and make the school shine because it is teaching my child something, but in reality, you could lock a child in a room, bring him food, allow him out to go to the bathroom, and everyday sit one of these workbooks in front of him that gives him a picture of a tree and tells him to draw a picture of a shorter tree, and he would then ace a test that tells the world he is ready to go on to conquer it. Hmm, something just isn't sitting right here.

I think what it comes down to is the window dressing makes us, the parents, somehow feel good, all the money that gets thrown around makes us think, it's gotta be good! There's a fountain in front of the school, who needs that ratty montessori school down the road when you've got a fountain for free!!!  But no matter the building, condemned or automatic water faucets in the bathrooms, they are all teaching to the same test, and remember my scenario of the locked room??

 To the parents of slow talkers, disruptive, and forgetful children, take heart, Albert Einstein was all of these!

I have been reading the biography of Einstein by Ronald W. Clark and so far what I have learned is that his parents feared him to be "subnormal" due to his lateness to talk, and wasn't even considered "fluent" in his own language at the age of nine. They believed that he suffered  a form of dyslexia, although I must digress here and say that true dyslexia has nothing to do with what is so commonly diagnosed as dyslexia today so I am unsure of which one he was feared to have had.

His teachers labeled him as disruptive to the other students, lazy and a family legend claims that when his father asked a teacher what field he should be preparing for the teacher responded that it didn't matter because he would never succeed at anything. He was even expelled from a school at one point before he could get a doctor to diagnose him with having had a nervous breakdown so that he could leave the school and his math teacher offering a statement to go along with this based on his horrible performance in math!

I have read in some places that Einstein has been listed as "homeschooled," but other than his biggest inspiration coming from a much loved uncle and never officially finishing their version of high school, I don't see any proof to this as his parents attempted to keep him in school. But this doesn't mean he wouldn't have been a wonderful candidate for homeschooling, and how blessed he was to have been born in that time, because if he was alive in this day in age, he'd be medicated and heavily labeled. Thank goodness he never took what any of his teachers said about him to heart!

Alas, I learned my pictures are too large to post and I apparently have no program to "compress" them so I started a blog for mainly pictures. I found that I can set it up so that random people searching for key words or pictures won't be directed to my blog, call me paranoid, but that's just me. I'll stick to this one for commentary on our life.

  So this morning I went out to check on the progress of  our volunteer squash patch and found a tomato plant growing right in the middle of it! I was thoroughly excited as this, too, is a volunteer plant. I almost think having a surprise garden is more fun that having a perfectly planted one.

Summer is still hanging on in our neck of the woods, which is wonderful,  it is even suppose to get into the eighties next week!

I dragged myself through my longest run so far since taking up running again after a two year hiatus,  an exhausting, sweaty 3 miles. Dh is already up to five and he's lost 10lbs. As for me, nada, zilch, zip. Men and their metabolism seriously stink!