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. 

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

Summer Break

Summer break is here.  That means freedom!  Well, not really freedom, but a change in routine, which is always appreciated.  As usual, we are not totally abandoning our books or chores. In fact, we are revisiting our old chore system of having a morning and afternoon chore.

Each morning, after our chores and exercise, we are reading aloud from the Bible, a poetry book, and The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter.  We are putting away our math studies, which is not a usual summer habit.  I hope we do not regret this break in our math studies.  I just felt we needed one.

This week we will sign up for the summer reading program at our local library.  The kids usually enjoy participating.

Our oldest is enrolled at the local high school to take summer school, which will keep him busy the month of June. ( Yes, he is choosing to go to the public school this coming year. )

We also hope to swim at least once a week this summer.  I want to build into our summer days a lot of time for downtime, and less running around.  The school years are so busy.

We are also scheduled to camp a few times this summer, which we are looking forward to very much.  We will see if the weather cooperates.

Summer is going to be a little shorter for us, as we are going to adopt our public school's balanced calendar, so we can all be off at the same time.  I am looking forward to the 2 week break in October, prime camping time!

How are your summer plans shaping up?
~Jenn

Wherein April Ends Happily

I picked a great title for this blog, because we sure are Busy at Home!  Since tax season ended, we have been really enjoying our family time again.  We got to take a recent Monday off, and took a day trip to a favorite park.  Here are some familiar scenes.

Then we had a nice visit with precious family later in the week.

Oh yes, Easter was fun, too.

 Grace made us a fun cake.  She saw it online and wanted to give it a try.

More Easter photos...

Jeff practicing his disc golf putting.  (You can't see the basket in this picture.) He and Ryan played in a disc golf tournament last week, 36 holes!  

A coffee drink for him, smoothie for her.

And, we have kept our lessons on track, too.  I am pleased to report we only need 14 more school days. The kids are currently in Florida with their grandparents, so we will finish lessons the end of May.

All in all, this has been a really good school year.  We have enjoyed United States History via Sonlight.  I am still thinking of what to study next year.  The next Sonlight core, church history, may not be right for us, but the literature is excellent, so I may just order that part.  I really need to make up my mind soon.

This week without kids just feels odd, but I know they are having the best ever time, something I could not give them right now, so hooray for them!!!  Until next time...
~Jenn

Weekending Fun

We're back from our quick trip up to the lake to celebrate Jeff's mom's 66th birthday.  We can sure jam pack a weekend!  Here are some photos I wanted to share... 

Ryan's abode. 

The mornings were in the 40's! 

Enjoying breakfast

Disc golf with the birthday girl! 

Neat tire creature! 

Hot cocoa! 

Finished her first big bike tour. 

Lake Michigan

Good day to fly kites

And now, the juggle to wash all the blankets begins!  I say juggle because with this old house on a well, there is precious little water pressure.  We have to either do laundry, dishes, or take showers,but not all at once.  So, last night we all had much needed showers, and today I will alternate the dishes and laundry.  There is a quick turn around time on the blankets as Jeff and I are going again this weekend to celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary! 

First Camping Trip of 2012

Just back from a whirlwind trip to our favorite lake, Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes State Park.  For 24 hours, it was "make the most of every moment."  We'd been obsessing about the weather for a week.  I really didn't think we'd get to go, as we only had a day and I was not interested in going if it was going to rain. 

Thankfully, the weather was absolutely beautiful!     We did a craft at the nature center. We hiked. We played at the beach.  We had Grandma and her friend over for dinner. We watched a sunset.   We enjoyed our camper.  (I wish I could say that we enjoyed sleeping in our camper, but a noisy bird kept us awake off and on!) And then we packed up in a big hurry the next day after lunch to avoid the storm that was threatening our happiness!