Happy 2015

 From my blog to yours, happy new year! 

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May your 2015 be filled with mercy and grace.  Thank you for being my friend. 

~Jenn 

Enjoying the Season

Just seems like Thanksgiving came and went, and now it is full steam ahead for Christmas!  I am constantly amazed at how fast time is flying by.  Really.  Do we not have the same 24 hours a day that we have always had?  How can it be nearing the end of 2014?

She doesn't like the train under the tree. 

This past weekend we had Jeff's company Christmas party at a fancy hotel to attend.  I even got to purchase a new dress!  I have not been all dressed up in a very long time.  We had a great time.  Jeff has nice coworkers, plus there was a pretty decent live band.  Oh, and the food was endless.  Each employee was given a hotel room, but we had to decline since we have church and children to attend to.

We also attended our annual Christmas brunch with dear family who live in a retirement home that goes all out for this event, another delicious buffet and wonderful live piano music.  I ate too much, again!  And we love spending time with family.

This week is super busy, too with a couple jazz band events for our oldest, a mom gathering for me to attend, and the usual activities. I am also excited that we have reached week 17 in our Sonlight. Just 19 more to go. We sure are enjoying all the great books, having just finished The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.

I think I forgot to mention that I received an early Christmas gift from my mom.  She got me a Keurig!  I had wanted one for a long time, when she got one.  Then I had just about decided that I really didn't want one after all, when she brought me one at Thanksgiving!  We have been having lots of fun trying new flavors.  They are expensive, so we are trying to pace ourselves.

Another Glorious Week

Hello friends.  Another week is behind us.  This time we celebrated my youngest's 13th birthday.  I am not going to linger trying to figure out how he is already 13 years old.  Time is going crazy fast.

Monday was back to school and work for all five of us.  It is always hard to send my oldest off to school, but he really loves it, so I am adjusting.  That afternoon he needed me to pick him up because he was bringing a guitar to school that he could not take home on the bus very easily.  He also wanted me to take him to Target to get a new CD.

Nothing much went on Tuesday except for school and laundry.  By Wednesday, we decided to take the day off from school to celebrate our birthday boy.

We could not have a full birthday celebration with church that night, but we did manage to spoil him pretty rotten.  Grace and I blindfolded him and took him to lunch at his favorite restaurant, Panda Express.  Then we got him a DQ ice cream cake for after church.  In the afternoon, I let them rent a movie, Muppets Most Wanted.

Our week otherwise was pretty uneventful.  Ryan also took the PSAT on Wednesday.  He and I went to dinner on Thursday before his karate class on Thursday.  Friday we stayed home and enjoyed a nice quiet Halloween.  The weather turned out to be the most frightful part of the day.  It was a snowy, rainy, windy night.  Jeff set up my bike trainer, and we are all making good use of it.

Happy November!

Busy is the Word

Right now, it seems we are most busy away from home. We call life"aerobic" at the moment. We came home from camping two weeks ago, and haven't slowed down. This weekend, we had a jazz band concert, a 6 hour round trip to celebrate a birthday, and small group after church today. Here are some pictures from our fun weekend.

After the Jazz performance. 

Visiting Grandma.

Quick look at the beach. 

Three mile hike.  

Jazz concert. 

Earned his purple belt! 

Beautiful sunset on the way home one evening. 

Catching Up

Hello Friends!  My sadly neglected blog is, well, sadly neglected.  I have this hang up about pictures.  I want to post pictures to go with my blog, but then I have to jump through hoops to get them from my phone to a computer.  So, I don't post anything.

My problem is that my phone is an old, old Apple, and it won't automatically upload to my Google photo storage anymore.  It's like I live in between two worlds!  At one point things were working, though.  And now the uploading has stopped.

(These are taken with my tablet. It's Android, so it works with Google.  But I don't take my tablet with me, so I don't have many pictures on it.) 

I realize this is all gibberish and not worth anyone's time reading, but it is what is holding up my blogging, that and I don't use a desktop computer anymore.  I have a tablet, a netbook, and a phone that doesn't like either, certainly a first world problem!

Otherwise, all is well here, mostly.  School is going well for my oldest.  He is getting all A's at this point.  The everyday aspects of public school wears on me.  Also the rigid, inflexible attitudes.  Yet, there are things they do that are better than my own offerings, namely math and science, so we adapt and move along.

Our homeschool is moving along nicely.  We are able to keep up with our reading, which is an accomplishment with Sonlight in high school.  Grace loves reading, so I think I have finally found her happy place.  She really enjoyed "Romeo and Juliet."  Right now she is reading "Jane Eyre."  She is also requesting more C.S. Lewis books.

Trevor, doesn't share Grace's love of reading, but is flying through high school geometry at age 12, so I am happy.  He has been working on reading "Huckleberry Finn."  We read "Tom Sawyer" last year.

Last weekend we stayed in a quaint little cabin at a state recreation area located in a state forest.  We had a great time riding our bikes, walking in the woods, and just hanging out together.  We had to cancel our Labor Day camping trip due to Ryan having strep throat.  That was a first, canceling due to illness.

This weekend we have a bike tour and family reunion.  I am bringing a big pumpkin cake, pasta salad, and fruit.  We will also get some fried chicken.  I am looking forward to seeing my family.  I hope I can ride my bike the required 10 miles.

We are busy with AWANA as Trek (Jr. High) leaders.  My oldest still does karate.  Life is full.  I need to find a way to upload some pictures from my phone, but decided not to keep me from writing.
~Jenn

Week in Pictures

Hello friends!

We are off to a good start to our school year.  We just finished our second week.  We are really enjoying all the books, but it is a challenge to get everything done, so I think we are still adjusting.  We also added karate back into our weekly schedule.

This week we even managed to get the house tidy,in addition to lessons.  I am working on finding the best time to get groceries.  It's a big job, going to more than one store, so it needs a time slot during a day that isn't already busy.  Things one must juggle when home educating your children.

Here are a few pictures from our week.

 I took Ryan to look at a used guitar that would be used to play in jazz band at school.  He thinks he might like one for Christmas.  :) 

 Ryan helped Grace with her math homework.  She says he explains it better than me.  

 

Trevor had to go to the doctor because he had an infected ingrown toenail.  Learned that he is now 6 feet tall!  No wonder I am feeling so short these days.  

 Blue Bell ice cream was on sale.  I refuse to buy it full price, so this made my family very happy.  

Finally, we found a used bike for Trevor.  He was using a spare bike and it was way too small.  We had found a new bike for lots of money in his size, but didn't feel comfortable spending several hundred dollars on one, so we were very thankful to find this older, used bike for a decent price.  

Thanks for stopping by! 

Jenn 

Summer Wrap Up

 We are back from a great last camping trip before starting school.  We will still plan to go a couple more times.

 Grace bought herself a new guitar with her birthday money.  The house is alive with the sound of music!

  

My kitty is happy! 

Here we are in August!  We have started our homeschool year, on day 3 to be exact.  I always feel as if it is a big job to turn the tide from summer to school.  This year we have a 9th and 7th grader at home, and a 11th grader at public school.  

So far, the public schooler is doing very well.  Home scholars are also.  I am thankful for the good books we are digging into together.  This year we are studying the 20th century and classical literature.  

I miss my oldest quite a lot during the day.  Sometimes I watch his YouTube channel to hear his guitar playing.  However, I know I he is learning quite a lot and seems to be enjoying the opportunity.  I have been reaffirmed of our choice to homeschool, though.  The public schools are not very individualized.  

So, life is rolling along, and soon we will be back to our evening ministries.  I am not looking forward to the busy months ahead, but I know they are really short, because one day my kids will be gone and I will miss these busy days!  

Summer Break is Almost Over

We are two weeks from restarting our homeschool! Seems like we really flew through summer.  We still have some camping trips scheduled.  I'm not quite ready to jump back in,but I never am.

Summer Snapshots

Hello friends!

Summer school for oldest son started on June 9th.  Since then, our day has consisted of driving son to school at 7, coming home to some quiet morning study, morning chores, riding our bikes, playing games, reading, going back to get son at 12:30, coming home to eat lunch, exercising with son, doing a chore, reading some more, watch Adam 12 with daughter, then making dinner!  We have not varied from that routine much for the last few weeks.

I have to admit that I was dreading summer school, but it has turned out to be a great experience for him.  He has proven to himself that he is a good student.  He learned to ask for help.  He learned how to navigate a tricky computer interface.  He learned how to persevere when things were boring, but you have to be diligent and wade through what "they" want you to know.  He is looking forward to starting the fall semester on July 29th.

Starting school so early doesn't leave us a whole lot of time for summer, unfortunately.  We have family to visit, a birthday to celebrate, a camping trip up north, all to cram into a few weeks.  I will make sure to make the most of these precious days!!!

I Love Summer Break!

Here we are in the throws of summer break.

We are staying close to home, which is proving to be very restful.  We decided to cancel our Father's Day camping trip to save some money after a BIG vet bill, and some other expenses.  That's really OK, because there is plenty to do around here to keep busy and happy without spending tons of money.  In July we are going on our big camping trip to the lake.  That will be our big to do as a family.  Then summer will be over, just like that.

How is your summer going?
~Jenn

Excuses, excuses!

My phone stopped talking to my Google Account!  I suppose that is what I get for being part Apple and part Google.  The result is that I don't always get photos uploaded automatically, and since I am a rather pathetic blogger at the moment, I use that as an excuse not to blog.  :)

But recently, these photos somehow made the great divide and so I was inspired to blog.

These are from last Sunday, taken in between church and small group.  It was such a lovely day.  Yes, the food was amazing, too!  We really need to stop eating out, but it is hard to pack a lunch when you have to leave at 7.  I know, another excuse!  We did have a gift card to cover half.

In other news, we will finish lessons next week, maybe by Wednesday.  This has been a fun year.  We loved our Sonlight Core 100.  I ordered Classic Literature and 20th Century History for this coming year, which will be here before we know it!