Taking Time to Smell My Childrens Flowers

• Aug. 26, 2009 - Boy Scouts

My son and my husband have officially joined the Boy scouts of America. They've been on 2 camp outs and my son is supposed to get his tenderfoot this next week. I wanted to show off some pictures of them in uniform. I took these photos right before they went on their last camp out.

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• Aug. 21, 2009 - Birdseed That Payed For Itself

This year I decided to leave the weeds left at the bottom of the bird feeder. I normally pluck them up thinking they might replant themselves somewhere else. I was way too busy this year to even care about it and I'm so glad I didn't. ( I did go out occasionally and pluck up any sticker plants that the wind blew over.) The picture below is what came up and what a beautiful sight it was from our Kitchen window. We actually had 2 areas that looked like this and lasted about a month and a half. Most of the flowers are currently going to seed so I guess I won't need to buy too much more birdseed since the birds know this area already.

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• Aug. 17, 2009 - Family Vacation

Our family vacation to the Grand Canyon was short but well worth it. We enjoyed every bit of it. The weather was hot but God blessed us with an afternoon rain that cooled the whole park down. The pictures do not tell the expanse of the Grand Canyon. It's one of those things you just gotta go see yourself. And of course these aren't all the pictures we took.

This is me and our foreign exchange student from Germany.

On the way home we stopped off at the Meteor Crater Site. That was also fun but next time we need to go to that first. The Grand Canyon made it look teeny tiny.

At the bottom they had a few things for you to look at. It was amazing to see how tiny they were from where we were standing and to know how big they actually were.

While our girl from Germany was here we took her to Santa Fe. Below are the pictures of that.

Below is a picture of the kids on the streets of the Santa Fe plaza. We did a stop over at Starbucks to get something cool to drink and discovered that our Foreign Exchange student not only knows what Starbucks is but aslo absolutely loves it!

We also did a lot of shopping, ate smores by a campfire, at our neighbors house, took the kids swimming and all of the German students had english lessons. The last day of their trip was spent cooking for us American families. We all met that night and ate a traditional German meal. Below is a picture of all of the girls at the mall. The 1 girl to the far left is American and also the 2 girls kneeling down.

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• Aug. 3, 2009 - The Simple Woman's Daybook

For Today, Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Outside My Window... Sunny Skies. Today is supposed to be a little warmer then usual. The sunflowers are blooming and the garden is green.

I'm thinking...I hope we have a wonderful day in school today. I miss our foreign exchange student from Germany.

From the learning rooms... Daughter is loving her Bob Jones DVD program. My son is somewhat happy with his My Father's World program. He is one of those kids whose hard to please, glass half empty kind of kid. Hopefully things get better this year for him.

I am thankful for... A healthy pregnancy and healthy children.

From the kitchen...

M - Posole and red chili

T - Spaghetti and meatballs

W - grilled zucchini and chicken

TH - fried chicken and potato salad

F - Left overs

I am wearing... Purple shirt, jean shorts and barefoot

I am studying... I'm in a Women Mentoring Women class. It's every Monday night.

I am hoping... to get my daughters home economics curriculum soon. I'm waiting for both that and my son's art curriculum to come in the mail.

I am creating... A more calmer atmosphere. With the Lord's help I will be much more pleasant to be around this year.

I am hearing... Computer hum, and washing machine going

Around the house and garden... More zucchini, 1 tomato, 3 chiles 2 onions, and 2 yellow squash were picked from the garden last night (my neighbors are sooo tired of zucchini!)

One of my favorite things...
Studying God's word.

A few plans for the rest of the week...

Take my dad to the doctor, go to an American Heritage Girls meeting, go to my own doctors appointment and do our first full week of school.

Here is a picture thought I am sharing with you...

I have been having a lot of trouble getting my pictures to stay visible on this blog. I'm hoping it will be okay this time.

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• Jul. 17, 2009 - Summer Coming To An End

Well, it seems I am at the end of our summer. We have our foreign exchange student with us and she will only be with us for about 1o more days. We have enjoyed having her. She is such a sweet heart. Very polite and well mannered. She has taught us some German and we are helping her with more English works.
Today we will be taking her to Santa Fe. We will be meeting other German students there. What a blessing this all has been.
When her time to leave comes, we will be starting school soon after. August 3rd is our first day. I have to start as early as I can since we have a baby on the way. (which will be born right in the middle of the school year!)
My son's swim lessons are almost done and well, summer (supposed free time) is definitely almost over. So strange how fast it has gone by. It seems like we were just stopping and now we are starting. What an amazing busy last few months we have had. I am actually looking forward to our "normal" life again.

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• Jul. 3, 2009 - 2009-2010 Here We Come!!!!!! Ready or Not!!!

For the 2009-2010 school year Dear Son and I will be doing My Father's World curriculum.

We were so unsure as to what to do this year. Dear Daughter is growing up and doesn't enjoy one on one teaching anymore. This last year she really pulled away from it. She asked me if I could make out a list of what needed to be done and if she could just do it on her own. I agreed and she did remarkably well. She really did seem ready to venture out on her own. I did continue with read alouds with her. I didn't want to give up all of our time together. I also plan on cooking with her more often. It's her least favorite thing to do.

She has asked to do more work on her own so this coming year she will be signed up with the Academy of Home Education. She has requested it even though we informed her it looks like a LOT of work!
Back to the topic of Dear Son; in his curriculum he will be doing Rome to the Reformation. He is SO EXCITED! He loves medeival times and we've never really focused on the studies of them. We did buy the deluxe package. (He has already broke into the CD on Beethovan. He loved it!!!) I really think he's ready for it. If you ever decide to buy this curriculum, be sure to make sure you have all you need. I noticed when purchasing that they expect you to have some books from the year before. Well, we didn't do this curruculum last year so we had to purchase additional books. I will continue posting on it and our other works we do. Keep us in your prayers especially now that we officially will have a homeschooler in high school.

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• Jun. 23, 2009 - God Knows Best!!!

I've noticed that one of my blog friends is saying that the weather forecasters don't always predict the weather right. I agree because earlier this year I went to the bookstore and considered buying a farmers almanac for my garden. I chose not to when I saw all the extra junk in it like horoscopes and such. I wondered if it was wrong to use the book to predict the weather patterns. Not being sure I just took a peak at it and noticed that it said that we would have an unusually dry hot summer. I was so bummed and decided to pray and ask God what I should do. I ended up feeling at peace about planting the garden. So I did! This year we have had much more rain than usual and still haven't reached our usual highs. Finally today we might hit 90. Most of the time it's been in the 70's! This last month we had 16 days of rain. That is very rare for our area! God is so good. He is the best weather forecaster out there.

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