Well I’ve been a very bad blogger. Things have been really crazy this summer. Usually we get ahead on our school during this summer but not this year. So for a quick recap of the busiest summer here goes.
May – My oldest retuned from Africa and made it to his college graduation with 15 minutes to spare. It was such a wonderful moment for all of us. We had a party for him the following day. It was wonderful to welcome him home and to celebrate his graduation.
Then we left for a family vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia. My dh had to leave half way through our vacation. In addition to Williamsburg we also stopped in at Yorktown and Jamestown. We also took an interesting side trip across the Chesapeake Tunnel-Bridge. That turned out to be so cool. We even saw a nuclear sub coming into port. We took the long cut home and stopped and visited with friends in Hickory, NC.
While we were finishing up our vacation my husband was back here in Florida competing in the Ford Master Mechanic Challenge for the Florida market. He placed first in the state. I am so absolutely proud of him.
Then it was off to the Florida Homeschool convention. I had a wonderful time working at the Sonlight booth all weekend long. I love the chance to talk to others.
June – The 3 youngest started their Camp Fire Twilight Camp program. They will go every Tuesday evening. The will attend for 7 weeks and study the 7 continents. Also because they get dinner while they are there it ends up being a great date night for my husband and me.
At the end of the month my husband and I traveled to Detroit for the National Master Mechanics Challenge. Ford paid for the whole thing. It was such a wonderful vacation. It was the first time we have been away together alone in 11 years. What fun. And it was wonderful to watch him compete since I missed the market level. He placed fourth in the Nation.
July – Found me of to Jacksonville to work the Sonlight booth at the HERI convention and then off to Largo to work the booth there. I traveled to Jacksonville all by myself which was a really nice time of quiet and recharging. I headed to Largo with my two oldest boys. We also stopped in and visited my great aunt who has recently been moved to an assisted living facility in the area.
August – I started out the month working on our Homeschool group’s handbook changes for the year. The children had dentist appointments and two of them had to go back for follow up visits.
My oldest left for seminary. He plans a two week vacation on the way up to St. Paul where he will attend Luther Seminary. After he slept we spent a few days pulling out everything from Hannah’s room and getting it set back up for her. The good news is she loves her room and has been sleeping there every night.
We also went over to my in-laws. We found out there may be an opportunity for us to travel to Norway next year with the family. We will know more about it in the next few months.
Well that about gets me caught up.
And now some goals for September. We need to be more serious about getting our school done. We’ve reviewed what we need to accomplish and so we just need to get it done. Also I need to move out of my comfort spot and make some business calls. I really want to help off set some of our trip expenses or at least make enough to cover my own scrapbook supplies. I’ve been content to just be a friends and family hobbiest but I want to see if a little effort will get me a bit beyond that point. Also I have I have a ton of pictures that need to get scrapped, including a bunch that my oldest left in my care. He says if I get them into albums he’ll finish them up with the journaling. In addition I need to get back to my exercise program. And finally I need to be better about blogging.
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A couple of weeks ago we were blessed with a gift of nature from our pastor's wife. She called and said she had quite a few caterpillars on her passion vines. She remembered her children loved to watch the whole process of caterpillar to butterfly so she thought my guys would enjoy it as well. She had a butterfly box that she has used in the past so we were all set to go. So we started out with 3 caterpillars. By the end of the first week 2 had spun into chrysalises. We still have one of the larger caterpillars left. You can see him in the background on the vine. We also have a small little guy that came in on some the vine we brought in to keep our big guys fed. This first caterpillar had hung himself from a leaf underside. Unfortunately one of the other caterpillars almost ate up his leaf so we rescued what was left and used a push pin to hold the leaf bit to the top of the box. The 2nd caterpillar was nice enough to attached himself to the box top so we don't have to worry about his leaf getting eaten. Hannah discovered our butterfly this morning minutes after it emerged because I had checked it less than an hour before and nothing appeared to be happening. By the time I got my camera his wings were already starting to straighten out although he is still sitting completely still. Hopefully the rain today won't interfer with him being released to the wild. We are in and out today so we will keep checking for the right time to release. This has been so much fun to watch and a big thank you goes out to our pastor's wife. Thank you so much for thinking of us. 
These are shots of the lobby. I just loved the teak bells. There were just beautiful. Our room was up on the 7th floor and we could look out on the two pools below. The outdoor deck pool and the indoor pool. We ended up just using the indoor pool. 
Here is a shot of the kids getting ready to take the sky bridge and then looking back at over to the Center and Hotel from the Cumberland Mall parking lot. 
Hayden really had a good time and really seem to shine on this trip. He made friends and played with others every evening in the pool. And on Friday he saw some boys playing their DS's (Nintendo Dual Screen - small hand held video game) so he went back to our room got his and joined in the group. They played for over 2 hours together. It was really neat to see. I had him do all the talking to the Teaching Textbook vendor. He has decided on Sonlight Core 300 (using Audio Reader program), Teaching Textbook (either Pre-A or Alegebra depending on placement testing), and Aplogia Physical Science (using MP3 audio CD and possibly Live and Learn lapbook). He is also looking forward to applying for job locally in the next couple of weeks. He wants to save up for a new computer so he can take advantage of two of the products he found at the convention. One is a course on web design and the other is a computer animation program. He was impressed with both but would need a better computer. So he now has a goal to get save up for a new game system, then computer, then buy the programs he found at the convention. Not sure how long it will take him but its exciting to watch him make goals and formulate his own plans. I'm not sure if he is just getting more confortable with himself or by being somewhere without the other two boys to be the outgoing ones left him room to move out himself. Or maybe a combination of the two? In any case it was really great to see. Also I realized on this trip just how much that boy can eat. I guess I never noticed at home because either there's only so much food or since everyone is eating from the same pot you don't notice how much he eats at one time. Although he did fill up enough on his huge double burger at the Cheesecake Factory that he was willing to bring his piece of cheesecake back to the room to eat later. 
I also got to meet another friend my homeschool egroup in real life. And like the times I've met up with other mom's from the loop we had a really great visit together. I think her son was impressed with Hayden's video game. Hayden also "impressed" him by going down the up escalator. Never thought to say don't do that before. 
