Enjoying Life Again

Tax season is over!  (This was our 9th tax season, by the way.)   This is truly the best time of the year.

Grain free, sugar free, but still awesome!

Thrift find

To celebrate, Jeff received a four day weekend from his generous employer.  We made the most of every moment.  First we took 2 bikes to get tune ups.  Then, we worked very hard on our front and side garden beds.  We hand edged, moved plants around, mowed,and mulched.

Hard workers.

Edged, transplanted hostas, and mulched. 

Then we had friends over for dinner with lots of yummy healthy food.  We also rode our bikes.  We even found a patio table at a thrift store.  This week it will get painted.  And, we bought garden boxes to build as well.  Since it looks like we are going to stay here for awhile, we have decided to start making our backyard the way we would like to have it, a little bit at a time.

Hooray for spring!  In the past years, we have taken day trips to a favorite park, but this year we wanted to direct all our resources to our home and friends.  Either way, it was just a blessing to spend four days together!

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!

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 

My Birthday Present

My dearest surprised me today.  It's a 1981 Schwinn World Tourist.  And it's mine!  Thank you to my wonderful husband!