As usual, life has interrupted my blogging plans.  I imagine these clever entries.  I intend to keep all my loved ones "in the loop", and then life dares to challenge me for time!  Aarrrgh!  Well I have the answer.  I am going to travel through time.  Let's see what time has to give in response!  I've already downloaded the photos.  I've transferred them to Photobucket, and I'm ready to go.  Let's begin!

Our launch pad for the beginning of our time travel is at a book signing by the author, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, lovingly known as The Yarn Harlot.  I highly recommend a visit to this lady's site, whether or not you are a knitter.  She is a very talented and funny writer, who knows how to strike a chord with women.  And especially with knitters.  She makes me laugh, and I love her for that.  She was a diminutive lady with a lovely Canadian voice, and she was very kind to give us all so much of her time and her wit.  I enjoyed the experience with several other knitting friends, and managed to capture a few photos in the process.

Here I am, with friends on either side.  Yes, we all brought our knitting!

So, okay, Trish was blinking, but here's another photo of some lovely ladies!  Alas, two of my newly formed Florida friends were unable to be there.  Chris was sick (feel better soon, lady!), and Ruthie was working (bummer!)

Before that visit with The Yarn Harlot, my dear hubby and I got to take a lovely trip out to Scottsdale, Arizona all by ourselves!  This was our first official "vacation" without kids.  Keep in mind, our oldest is 11 1/2.  11 1/2!!!!  Yikes!  Now that's way too long!  While there, I was able to visit some lovely yarn stores, knit, and even hike Camelback!  I managed to capture a few photos along the way...

This is a photo of Camelback taken from our hotel balcony.

Here's Brett and his associate Scott, as we were at the trailhead preparing to hike up Camelback.  It was probably close to 100 degrees out, but I couldn't tell, as there was no humidity!  Oh joy!  It was a huge change for me from Florida.

Here's a view of some of the cacti that we got to hike by.  It was absolutely stunning!

Here's a cliff face we hiked right by.  At one point, the hike was steep enough, that hand rails were supplied.  We greatly appreciated these, as we did not come prepared with the proper climbing equipment, but rather were doing this just in our regular athletic shoes.

Here's one of the many breathtaking views we got to enjoy on the climb.  Most of the way up we did a fair amount of bouldering.  I was glad to stop and rest occasionally!  At one point, we met Claude the Water Guy coming down off the mountain.  He gave us some good climbing advice and offered us some of his water.  He told us he'd done this climb over 5,000 times, but that he knew some people who'd actually climbed it over 30,000 times!

One mile!  We're almost at the top!

At the top!  It took us about 2 1/2 hours to climb and a little over an hour to descend.  I slowed the guys down a fair amount, but they took it in good stride!

Oh, here's one more image of that cliff face.  It was near the bottom of the climb.

And moving on....

Here's a photo of my completed Shalom Cardigan.  This was a fun knit, and went very quickly.  This is the project I worked on while in AZ.

And here's a close-up...

Now, switching states... back in September, I had the pleasure of returning to Ohio to visit some friends and attend the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs.  I had a great time.  I had come just after Hurricane Ike paid a visit, and my friend Sue and her family was still without power! 

Only in Dayton is it possible to look up in the sky and see a Wright Bros. airplane (the Wright Flyer) and not be surprised.  I saw this guy when I was on my way to pick up my girlfriend Melissa from her 10K race.  Go Melissa!

And here's my incredible racer, with enough energy to go with me to the Wool Gathering!  It was so much more enjoyable with her there to share it with!

Five day old lambs.  Cute!  I wanted to take one home with me!

Now here I am at Tim and Sue's.  This may be what you see,

...but this is what we saw!  Yep.  She was still without power!  It made for a very relaxing evening, visiting on the porch and dinner out at a restaurant!

Okay, moving even further back in time!!!  Here is my darling daughter...

Those of you who know her, know that this photo captures her personality pretty well.  It was right about the time this photo was taken that we learned that she is indeed dyslexic.  This was a bitter pill for both of us to swallow, but it also supplied so many answers we had been praying for.  While her road will not be an easy one, I am convinced that God has wonderful plans in store for her, and she will prevail.  And yes, I believe she will even learn to read.  We are working dilligently on a specialized program for her, and we are seeing slow (but steady) progress.

OK, I'm really not schizophrenic, but I wanted to show you guys a photo of these fellows...

This is the sort of traffic we experience out here in the wilds of Florida!  We have a pond in our back yard, and across the street is another pond, so it is very common for us to see these fellows traveling through our yard and heading over to the other waters.

Of course, the kids wanted to help them on their way...

And now onto something more current...

Here are a few photos of projects I'm working on (or have just completed)...

This is my current favorite... a cross-stitch scarf.  I love the colorways!

Here's an Airy Scarf that has been packaged up and sent off to someone I love very much!

And yup, here's another dishcloth.  These are fun little knits that take next to no time.  It's been a couple of years since I'd done one, so I cast on for another.  This one will likely become a gift as well.

And now you guys are pretty much caught up.  I'll try to keep up better with this, but life is so much fun living forward than looking backward, that I have a tough time keeping up with everything!  God bless you all!

All right, I was tagged bylalaith

The Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know he or she has been tagged.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Now, I'm pretty certain I don't know six people to tag, but I'll do my best to fulfill the requirements...

1.  I tend to be an insomniac.  I have a healthy fear of medication, though, so I muddle through life as best I can with no more than an occasional Advil PM.  It creates lots of time for other things though, like tagging people!

2.  My wedding anniversary is coming up in April.  It will be 16 wonderful years with my man.  We honeymooned on a cruise to the Bahamas, and my dear husband was sick with a sinus infection the entire time!  Still, we made the best of it, and had a great time.  The marriage, I'm very happy to say, has been a blessing, and absolutely wonderful!  I'm very thankful for my husband.

3.  I have a B.A. from the University of Kansas in English Lit.  That being said, I have always enjoyed math and science, but was afraid I wouldn't be able to perform well enough in any of those majors.  Thus, the English degree.  I have no regrets, but some day, I could see myself going back to school to "collect" degrees.

4.  I really enjoy reading fantasy novels.  I just finished Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, and had such a great time enjoying it!  One of my all time favorite fantasy books is by Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.  Of course, my absolute favorite fiction novel is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

5.  I dislike flying in airplanes.  Even though I am a rational person, who knows that flying is a very safe mode of transportation, I tend to get very nervous way up high in the sky.  I much prefer terra firma!

6.  I am now teaching some basic classes on spinning.  Yesterday was my first class, on basic spindling, and I had a great time sharing a love of my craft with some new students.  Next month, I'll be teaching a basic wheel class.

I guess that's it.  I'll see who I can tag now... How about Rohanknitter?  I can't think of any others right now that haven't already answered this tag!

\

I have been working on a knitted lace shawl since the end of June, and I can finally say it's done!  I am pleased with my first official lace shawl, and it's given me the confidence to do even more in the future.

This is a photo of it, blocking on our pull out sofa bed.  It's based on the principle of Pi, the ratio between the circumference of a circle to its radius.  If I remember my geometry right, it's expressed as a fraction as 22/7, or in a decimial as 3.14 ...(ad infinitum).  At any rate, it certainly makes a lovely shawl!

After all that math and lace, I switched to something much smaller in scale, and ever so much faster... the Shalom Cardigan.  Here it is in progress (note, it's barely in progress!)

Lastly, I've been having fun dyeing yarn, so I decided to go ahead and dye some fiber and spin it up to see what I'd get.  I dyed using my left over Easter Egg dye, and I'm thrilled with the results...

Well, for being in our new home state of Florida for such a short amount of time, we have discovered the excitement of tropical storms.  Or tropical storm Fay, to be exact.  For all my family and friends, I thought I'd share a few photos of what Fay looks like from our home.  Thankfully, it didn't enter our area as a hurricane, but my, it was still plenty to deal with!

This photo was taken yesterday (Thursday, Aug. 21) in the afternoon.  Fay is just starting to get going...

Ok, this is pretty much the same photo, but what can I say... I was getting rained on!

This photo is taken from the rear of our home.  The rain was making the pond raise at approximately 1 inch per hour.  I took this photo this morning.

And here we are with a slightly different angle.

Fay seems to be slowing down somewhat right now.  It is still pounding down rain, but there are intermittent bursts where it isn't bad, and sometimes it isn't even raining at all.  During one of those breaks, I drove to the local Winn-Dixie and got some food and a movie for tonight.  I noticed several large trees down and water everywhere, but all in all, it wasn't too bad.  We are very happy to have a solid roof over our heads for sure...

I've been wanting to do this for ever so long, so at long last, when we had a week off from school, I decided to take the plunge.  I purchased some left over Easter egg dye after Easter for .10 a box, so I dragged those out, along with the rest of my supplies as listed below...

• Easter Egg dye
• Undyed yarn (or fiber)
• Condiment bottles
• Crock Pot dedicated to fiber only
• plenty of newspaper
• vinegar and vinegar spray bottle
• candy thermometer
• pH paper and color check
• plastic mixing spoon

The first step on the path to dyed yarn was to soak the yarn thoroughly...

I let this yarn soak for a little over an hour in a tepid water bath.

While the yarn was soaking, I got the dyes ready...

I usually dye eggs with Paas, but this is what was offered for .10 at Wal-Mart, so this is what I got...

I mixed the dyes according to the directions on the box (2 tablets per bottle) in the condiment bottles.  This box had five different colors.

After I mixed the dyes, I mixed up the vinegar water.  I used about 1 gallon of water to I'm guessing approximately 4 teaspoons of vinegar to get to a pH of 4 (slightly acidic).

After I got the yarn put in the crock pot, I gently poured the vinegar water over it, and then turned the pot onto high.  I needed to wait quite a while for it to get up to 190 degrees, but at last we got there...

The temp was still climbing here!

Once everything got heated up, I took the squeeze bottles, and carefully applied the dye, started with the lighter colors, and progressing to the darker colors.  Once the dye was taken up into the fiber, I turned the pot off to cool overnight.  The water turned clear when the dye was all absorbed.

The next day...

I rinsed the dyed yarn by banking it so that the water kind of damed up on one side and slowly ran over the dyed yarn.  I kept pressing to remove any residual dye, and then added a couple of drops of Dawn, and continued to press it until the water ran clear.  Then I squeezed the yarn, and hung it up to dry...

like this!!!

I'll update the blog once it's all dry, and I've started knitting with it.  This yarn will eventually turn into socks.  All in all, I had a great time working with it, and I look forward to doing a better job the next time around.

I can't believe my first baby is now 11.  Time is flying faster and faster, and I'm so thankful I am blessed to be able to be home with my children.  It's now only a short 7 short more years before Jacob heads off to college, and I'm beginning to feel that's just not enough time.  Jacob had a wonderful birthday (his first in Florida).  His favorite gift was his pet leopard gecko, Saphira.  He studied so much about leopard geckos, and even wrote papers about their required care.  He estimated the cost of keeping one, and Brett and I finally decided he was ready.  Saphira has already gone through one shedding, and seems to be growing well, so I think he's doing a good job of caring for her!

Here's a nice photo of the birthday boy!

Hurray!  Jacob loves his brother Oliver's gift of a book on Anoles.

Here's a gift from Uncle Shawn and Auntie Arleen that I know Jacob will love!

It looks like we're going to have a lot of studying to do!  Mindstorms!  Wow!  Such fun!

Admittedly, this is a poor photo, but Emma worked so hard on her art "gift" for Jacob, I wanted to be certain to share it with everyone.

Is it time to eat yet???

11 candles... count 'em!

We continue to adjust to our life down here in the south.  My, it gets hot and humid down here!  I don't believe it's really been any hotter than what it gets in Dayton, but it's the humidity and the number of days it's hot.  I'm looking forward to the fall, which, I understand, doesn't really get felt until November, but still, at least there is a weather change to look forward to.

A couple of weeks ago, Brett sent me on a trip back to Dayton and my friends.  While there, I attended the CHEO homeschool conference.  The conference was much smaller this year, due mostly, I think, to the competition created by the Cincinnati Homeschool Conference, but as I went with some very dear friends, I still enjoyed myself very much.  I concentrated on writing seminars, and l.d. seminars (focusing on the dyslexia aspect, which I'm almost positive Emma deals with to some extent).

I really enjoyed seeing all my dear friends.  I stayed the first night with my friend Melissa, and unfortunately, I wasn't thinking clearly enough to capture the moment with a photo, but I'll remember it in my heart instead.  The next night saw me at the conference with Jeni and Mary Beth, and the following nights I spent back in Dayton, with my friends Sue and Tim.

While there, I really enjoyed going to worship at SouthBrook.  The new theatre is completed now, and I was able to see the fruit of so much prayer and labor over the prior years.  I had a lump in my throat for much of the time, frankly, feeling a little sorry for myself that I was no longer directly a part of it, but I know God has a plan for me, and I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be at the moment.  Charlie talked on experiencing God in everyday moments, and I am now revisiting a much loved book, The Practice of the Presence of God by brother Lawrence.  It is an excellent reminder about how God is always with us.

Here I am with some of my "core" friends at church.  They are all such beautiful souls!

And here I am with my first friend that I made in Dayton, Sue.  We're drinking (for those of you who aren't tea conniseurs) blooming tea, although I can't remember the exact one.  We had a blast watching all the "petals" unfurl, and the tea was quite good!

Here's a close-up of the blooming tea.

 All good things come to an end, and at last I needed to head back south.  I had much to look forward to, though, in that my children were missing their mom and my husband was missing his wife!  I bought the kids some t-shirts at the convention, and they were very excited to put them on.

The very next weekend was Independence Day, and our family had special plans to attend our first ever Nascar race at Daytona Motor Speedway.  We had tickets for both the Friday and Saturday night races, but decided to do the smaller Busch race, to get a taste of the race life, since they didn't start until 8:00 p.m.  We all had a great time, and were ever so glad we took along hearing protection!

Here's Emma, very excited!  Our seats were almost directly across from Jr.'s pit.

And here's a photo of the pit area.

Oh, and lastly, here's a photo of me.  I just like this photo, and I like so few, that I figured I'd post it!

Lastly, I wanted to share a photo of my little sock blocker keychain that I knit for Melissa.  It was such a fun little project, and took next to no time at all!

I know it's been forever and a day since I've contributed to this blog.  It has never been far from my mind, and I have been hoping to find time to update, but that time never came.  I just decided this morning to forgo my chores to get this done.  It will clear such a load from my mind.

Our family is now settled in our new home.  It is absolutely beautiful, even though it is a tad bit smaller than our last one.  The kids have really enjoyed the beautiful weather down here in Florida.  One of the nicer amenities is the fact that we have a pool in our community, and we can swim pretty much every day of the year if we like.

This is a photo of the house, taken from the street.  Our lot is much smaller than we had in Ohio, but we do have a lovely view of a pond in the rear.

One of the benefits of living in such a warm climate, is we have a wealth of critters to catch around here.  That pleases the kids to no end.  So far, we caught many lizards, hatched out our tapole, and have even had a snake come visiting.

Sorry 'bout the fuzzy photo.  I really don't care for snakes in the least.  I decided this guy is a black racer snake.  He was very unhappy to be removed from our lanai.  He was coiled up and hissing at my husband, while he tried to extricate the snake from the premises.  Racers may be aggressive, but at least this little fellow wasn't poisonous like the cottonmouth that was killed in between our neighbor's house and our own!

This is one of the many little lizards that have been caught by the kids.  This fellow, unfortunately, lost his tail tip.  I think he's the only fellow so far to have that happen to him.  The kids typically let the lizards stay over for a couple of days, and then they release them back out into the wild.

And here's a photo of our little toad?  Or is it a frog?  The jury is still out.  This little guy hatched from a tadpole, and we quickly converted our aquarium into a terrarium.  So far, he's only been eating blood worms, because he is just so tiny!

With all these critters around, the kids have been doing a ton of reading on reptiles and amphibians.  We've pretty much exhausted the library's juvenile literature, and have invaded the adult books now.  They are becoming quite the little herpetologists!

This is a photo of Castillo de San Marcos, which is about a 20 minute drive from the house.  Believe it or not, we still haven't been able to manage to visit it!  I actually took this photo as the kids and I drove by it on the way to try out a Tae Kwon Do school.  It is gigantic, and I'm hoping that we'll visit it at some point in the near future.

 Life has been challenging for me.  I realize it is not easy to move at any time in one's life.  This time, has been particularly difficult for me for a number of different reasons.  This is the first time I've ever moved with children, which has had its own challenges.  Also, I am a shy person, who takes a long time to "warm up" to other people.  I also greatly miss my friends back in Ohio.  We have yet to find a church that I love, although we have found one that I think will work.  Also, our homeschooling has been further challenged by this unforseen move.

I can say, though, that with much work and sacrifice on all our parts, that we will be able to finish by the end of this month, and that is what I originally scheduled way back a year ago.  We are down to our last couple of weeks of history, and Oliver has already started on next year's math, while Jacob is on the last lesson for this year.  The things that I had to abandon were Latin, and I slowed way down on science.  I plan to just pick up the threads and continue with both this next year.

Challenges for the future include Emma's reading instruction.  She is not a natural reader, and struggles every step of the way.  I am contemplating purchasing either the Wilson method or Barton's reading program in the hopes that a focused, intense, O.G. method will succeed where other more traditional methods have failed.  She is a very bright girl who is frustrated that she just can't "get" it, but she is valliantly still trying, and I am doing everything I can to support her.  We may end up needing to test her for potential dyslexia, but before we even go that route, I am planning on just treating it that way.

Successes for this past year's curriculum included...

Biblioplan III:  This was an awesome, easy-to-implement program that all the kids enjoyed (Mom included)

Rod and Staff IV Grammar:  This is such a thorough grammar/writing program.  Jacob really knows his grammar with it!

The Fallacy Detective:  Wow!  I am so impressed at how Jacob has implemented the information in this small book to analyze his arguements, as well as the arguements of others to determine if there is a fallacy in them.  I can't wait to get the next book!

All About Spelling:  Oliver and I have hit upon a spelling program that is actually working for him!

Our failures, although not necessarily due to a "poor" curriculum would be

Latina Christiana:  We just couldn't keep up with it.  Still, it's a good curriculum, and I will pick it up again probably this next year.

Spelling Power:  It didn't work at all for Oliver, although Jacob continues to use it with success.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons:  It just didn't work for Emma.

Now that I'm back on the page for blogging, I pray that I'll be able to keep it up more or less regularly, now.

Business seems to be the order of business around our household these days.  Preparing for the move and homeschooliing and settling into life in another state take up a ton of our time.  Of course, none of us were apparently too busy to get sick!  Emma came down with something suspiciously resembling the flu right after Easter.  Soon, Oliver got it, followed by Daddy and finally Jacob.  I so far seem to be the only one who is able to resist it.  I sure hope my strength holds out!  We down to less than 2 weeks before we close, and I frankly don't have the time to deal with one right now.

On Saturday (while my 3 men were languishing at home with this flu, but I didn't realize it at the time) I went to a spin-in at my lys, Knitwitz.  It was so much fun, and I really enjoyed seeing all the wonderful yarns everyone was creating.

Here's our happy little group.  I've never been around so many Majacraft in my life!  It was so much fun!

Here's one of my new fibery friends, Kris.  She has a nice business going where she dyes roving, blends it, and also spins it up for sale.  You can find her stuff on etsy here.  Anyway, she brought a ton of rovings and offered to mix the colors to create a custom blend.  What you see her holding is my new custom blend of bright pink, blue, and cornflower, along with tencile to create my new custom purple-pink roving.  Sweet!  I can hardly wait to spin it up!

While I've been enjoying my fiber addiction, the kids have been getting ready for their own competition, held at our new library.   There was a Lego construction contest held today.  All three kiddos competed, and believe me, they've been thinking about their design for weeks!  The competition was stiff, and none of them won a prize, but they all did so well, and were so creative that I couldn't help be pleased with them.  One of the best lessons a kid can learn is how to be a gracious loser.  All three were gracious, and even though Emma had a few tears, she did very well.  Oliver and Jacob also congratulated the other participants in the contest.  They can hardly wait to do another!

Here is Emma, working very hard on her house design.  See the concentration on her face as she struggles to get a piece "just so".

Oliver and Emma's stations were side-by-side.  They both worked very intently.  Oliver even wanted to help his sister when her pieces wouldn't obey her wishes, and I had to gently remind him that it was a competition.

Here's Jacob working on his version of something Star Wars-ish...  He was in good company, however.  I believe most of the other boys in his age range also chose general Star Wars themed items to design.

Happy girl...

and happy boy!

Here's Oliver being interviewed by a panel of three judges about his design entry.

The kids "rescued" 3 tadpoles from the lake in our back yard.

"Mommy, can we keep them for our very own?" pleaded the children.

"What are they?" I asked.

"We think they're tadpoles, and they're soooo cute!!!  Can we keep 'em?  Huh?"

"Ummmm.  What do they eat?"

"Do you think they'll eat the crickets the lizzies ate?" (said "lizzies are now liberated")

"Honey, I think the crickets might eat them.  I tell you what... let's research it, and we'll see..."

Enter...

Harry, Han, and Beans...

This one is Beans.  Don't ask me how they can tell.  They just can.

Luckily, I found an article on the care and feeding of tadpoles here.

I learned the dear critters love boiled lettuce.  I'm getting rather good at boiling leafy green vegetables, given I just boiled cabbage last week so my kids could enjoy sulfur smells at their finest!

Bon appetit!

We shall see if we can actually grow ourselves some frogs.  I have my doubts.  We've done fairly well with all our lizards, however, so I'm game to give it a go.  I'm open to suggestions for all you frog-philes out there!

** Later note... the tadpoles are still squirrming.  One of my friends recommended Pets in a Jar.  Great book.  I own it.  I also own Pet Bugs and several other great handbooks on nature.  Unfortunately, they are all packed up in Ohio!!! sigh.  And, unfortunately, the library system here is, shall we say, less than what I had back in Ohio???