GGRRRRRRRR.........een grass!

This is what I got to deal with last weekend...3 or 4 grass-stained white dress shirts.


Why, you ask??


Because I have a 14 year old who absolutely cannot stay on his feet when he is playing football during lunch recess at school. I believe a feather could knock this kid over.

Normally he doesn't wear a dress shirt every day, but both of my boys auditioned for and were selected to be in a special choir that performed last week with Micheal Ballam at the school. It was a pretty big deal, and they had rehearsals, hence the dress shirts every day. Thankfully, the 16 year old manages to keep his clean.

Here is a picture of my favorite laundry aid. I think I need to buy stock in Stain Stick!!

*Note to self: teach the 14 year old how to put it on the stains properly so I don't have to rewash the shirts.

Just Random Thoughts and Pics to Share

Another of our 'fun' inquiries. The girls were to research and make a "macaroni" hairdo out of shaving cream. You can't tell from the picture but they each had either a 'queue' or ponytail hanging off the back, or a bun. This was tons of fun for them until it came to the clean up part. They had shaving cream EVERYWHERE!!!!

Just a few pictures from Halloween. If you know me, you know I have an intense 'dislike' for Halloween. Therefore I do not go all out for it and I'm happy(?) to note that my attitude seems to be rubbing off on the kids. All but the youngest two decided not to dress up and go trick-or-treating. (14 year old changed his mind at the last minute and went out with friends). But we confined our celebrating to carving pumpkins, answering the door to trick-or-treaters, and eating the leftover candy--trick-or-treaters were gone by 7:30. We made jack-o-lantern pizzas and watched a movie as well. We did dress up the Soren and Sadie and let them go up one side of our street and down the other. Can't figure out why the girls laid out the plastic and then carved the pumpkins on the concrete anyway. What was the point?

Curtis has been working on building himself a larger shed in the place our old small one used to be. Part of the project included removing the concrete pad that was the floor. It was such a difficult task, he had to recruit some 'help'! Any bets on how effective this 'help' was? It was the cutest thing ever. You should have seen his eyes light up when Curtis asked him if he wanted a turn. (he does have eye protection on, it's just hard to see)

Pregnancy front: Just did the glucose screen last week. Haven't heard back yet, but don't anticipate any problems. I did get a call that my iron was low, so back on iron pills I go. Ick!! I've only had problems with this in these last two pregnancies. Wonder if it's because I'm so "old"?

Mission front: Doing well, from what we hear. Still busy working in several small towns. Has one really good investigator family they are working with. Hopefully, that will lead to some baptisms. He loves that he is within the two hour radius of the temple in Billings so that he can attend the temple once in a while. He was able to go last week. He said it's getting cold, and snow has been seen. Hope he's warm enough. I need to get some Christmas things together for him. 

So excited for Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday!! Interesting that it follows on the heels of my least favorite...Hmmmm. Looking forward to time with family and lots of yummy food.

Inquiry Fun!!

We have been trying to make working on our 'inquiries' as fun as possible. Just thought we'd share a couple that have been lots of fun for us. This is 13 Colonies Twister. We (Mom) drew a very lame map of the 13 Colonies on our driveway. Mom had made a card with the name of each colony on it as well as a card for each hand and foot. To play, Mom would read which body part and then the name of a colony, and the player had to try to reach them without falling over. Hannah gets the award for the person most able to contort her body in strange positions and still stay in the game. This was a highly requested game and in fact, it became Math Facts Twister later in the week. We drew a grid on the driveway and numbered it to 24. Then Mom would roll two dice and pick a body part card and the player had to add the numbers together and put the correct body part on the correct number. We only did addition, but will probably do a subtraction one in the future. This is a 13 Colony quilt that the girls made from paper squares. They made a square for each colony and wrote on them the name and how the name was chosen. Then they had to figure out a pattern for the quilt and how many other colored squares they needed to complete the pattern and then tied it all together. This will hang in our History Museum at the end of the year.

An Amazing Woman!

We have just finished up another 'topic' in our American History study. We have spent the last couple of weeks learning about Abigail Adams. I have come to really admire and appreciate this wonderful woman. I think she was a unique woman with experiences and talents that were crucial to her mission. I also loved the wonderful love story between her and John. They were so good for each other. She kept him down-to-earth and he helped her to reach her potential. We had the wonderful opportunity to have her come to 'visit' us. She came one morning to introduce herself to us and told us many of her experiences and life history. We learned a lot about her at the 'tea' we had and became very excited to learn more.

We learned that she was 'homeschooled' too, because her health was not good. She loved to listen, read and think and write.

After 'Abigail' left we also had a visit from the Yankee Peddler. He brought around his box of items for sale and the girls each got out the 'shillings' they had earned and carefully made their purchases. It was interesting to watch them try to buy everything in the box and spend all their money, then think about it a bit more and put most things back. Cambria only bought her wooden spoon and is saving her shillings to buy a marble set. Hannah bought only the big marble and is saving to buy the rest. Sadie wanted to spend all her money, but in the end bought a wooden spoon and a pair of folding scissors. I was happy to see them be more conscientious consumers. Soren bought himself a little wooden truck toy.

Some of the favorite 'inquiries' done by the girls were:

learning a colonial dance called "Gathering Peascods" peascods is another term for peapods.

designing and illustrating a dress for her to wear to John's inauguration in 1797

draw a portrait of Abigail from a real picture of her

Research and record what kinds of chores Abigail did and what kinds of activities filled her time. Play charades, using the list made of chores and activities

Research what pewter is made of and how it's made

Research and calculate how old she was when John signed the Declaration of Independence

Research foods eaten during that time and prepare one--Indian pudding, made of cornmeal, molasses, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, milk. (Note: the girls think molasses is awful smelling!)

They Set Me Free!

What a cute little ear! I went for a follow-up ultrasound on Friday. At the first u/s the heart looked good, but it was so small it wasn't possible to see the smaller veins, so the perinatologist requested that I return in 6 weeks to get a better look. This time I took Curtis and the girls and Soren. The girls have been excited to 'see' the baby. The baby did NOT want us to see his face. This was as close as we got to seeing his profile. Although later the dr. did get a good look at the nose and lip area. No clefts.

So amazing to see all those functional body parts, bones, organs, etc. and realize that they are absolutely tiny still.

They were able to get a good look at the heart and the aorta and the pulmonary artery. Everything looked just like it should. They measured the main measuring points again and I'm measuring exactly right for dates. No changes to the due date! Rats! I was hoping they'd move it up. They told me that by the measurements the baby is about 10 inches long and weighs about 1 lb and 3 oz.

But the best part was when the dr. said, "I see no compelling reason why you should need to see us again." HOORAY!!

p.s. Much to my Sadie’s chagrin, it's still a BOY! She was really hoping it would have changed. Silly girl.

This girl!

How did my long waited-for baby girl turn into THIS girl? Wasn't it just yesterday that I was absolutely thrilled to be holding a baby girl after having 3 baby boys in a row? Wasn't it yesterday when she was going into Nursery for the first time? Or leaving me at the door on her first day of kindergarten?
I'm sure it was just yesterday that she was baptized and so excited to be heading off to Activity Days with the 'big' girls.
But now, here she is heading off to Mutual for the first time. She has been waiting for a long time to turn 12. And I've been dreading it for about the same amount of time. Know why? Cause I know that the next time I look, she be 16 and heading out the door on a date and then 18 and off to college and 20,21,25 heading off to get married and I'll still be wondering how it happened?

Something I've been wanting to do for years

For years I’ve been wanting to take some pictures of my kids with fall leaves in the background. For years it had not happened. Too many excuses ranging from non-cooperative kids to missing the leaves to just plain forgetting.

This year I was determined to give it a go. We had to go two different days to get these, but I’m happy with them. And the drives to the leaves weren’t too bad, either. Of course, I still have uncooperative kids, so I only got to take pictures of the four youngest. Raspberries to my #2 and #3 boys!!

These were taken at South Fork Park and on the Alpine Loop/Cascade Springs Rd.

Our Noble EPIC Adventure

One of the things we do with each topic is to "mind-map" the Key Points of the topic at the beginning of our study. This is to share pertinent information and excite interest in the kids to do further study. The Key Points are best presented in a way that reinforces the theme. On the sails of a drawing of a ship for the Roanoke/Jamestown topic, by giving each child a kernal of corn for each Key Point in the Plymouth topic, or in whatever way you think will help them remember the information a bit easier. For this one we played a matching game of the 13 colonies and tried to place each colony in its correct place, then we did the mindmap/key points for each of those 3 geographical areas. After the Key points are presented, then it's time for Inquiries. This is the fun stuff. There are inquiries about the topic in 8 different areas, math, language, science, social studies, art, music, etc. We do several as a group and then each child is encouraged to do as many as they would like to do. This is what determines the length of time we spend on any given topic. This is Cambria doing research on the computer for one of the inquiries she has chosen. This was one inquiry we did together. We laid out the dimensions of the little ship Discover (one of the three ships to bring settlers to Jamestown) on the lawn and sat within that area to read a book about Jamestown. It was amazing to see how small that ship really was (the reddish yarn you can see). I can't imagine crossing that Atlantic in that little craft.

Here are the two younger girls doing a replica of the Plymouth Colony. They made 21 buildings and using a map placed them where the colonists properties were and labeled them. We also have a timeline that we put markers on of each of the topics and events we are learning about. Cambria drew this one. This is our Liberty Tree. Each leaf represents an inquiry done or a theme book read. This tree is a great record of the things we have done in our study, I imagine by the time we are done it may well have taken over the entire wall. For each leaf on the tree the girls earn shillings to purchase things when the Yankee Peddler comes around. He/She is a traveling salesman with various tools/toys to purchase. No one knows when he/she will come, so they are busily storing up their 'shillings' and awaiting his/her arrival. These are some of the theme books we used in our Roanoke/Jamestown study. It's sure nice to have a good library. These are the ones we recently used for our study of the Plymouth colony. We are really enjoying our study this year. All the hands-on work is keeping the girls interested and having the subjects tied to the theme makes them much more palatable. I'll try to share more as we go along.

I have to acknowledge the hard and incredible work of the women who created and shared this EPIC Adventure, Karen Kindrick, Cynthia Black, Jeanne Bradley and Deena Ortiz. So much work has gone into preparing this for our use and I thank them for that. We are learning and loving to learn as we go.

I'm Tired!

I find that I am just absolutely wiped out at the end of every day. I seriously just shut down.


I think there are a number of factors, homeschool being one of them. But the biggest one is this:

Yes, that's a positive pregnancy test. #8 will be joining our family in March. I don't get sick, I just get extremely tired!

Because I'm so 'old' I have had to go the Maternal Fetal Medicine area at the local hospital for consultation with specialists. GRRRRrrrr!!! Don't get me started on this one, it has become my latest hot button! But the ultrasound there showed nothing of concern and I refused all extra testing. Don't need to know 4 months sooner if the baby has Down's Syndrome. We'll deal with it, if it's necessary, when the baby is born.

Oh, yeah, the u/s told us that the baby is another BOY.

We're all really excited and anxious for this little guy to grow enough to come meet us.

First Day of our EPIC Adventure!

9.10.08
After several attempts to start our EPIC Adventure, we finally had our first visitor of the year and were able to introduce our theme for the year. Captain Moroni was just so busy fighting Lamanites that he kept having to delay his visit. We were excited to finally hear from him about why he was fighting and what he was fighting for. He told us about and showed us the Title of Liberty (Alma 46:12). He then shared with us some food like the kind he would eat when he was soldiering. We had dried beef (jerky), dried fruit (apples), and fresh berries and water from the nearby spring (water cooler).
He got a chance to return home and left all his armor in camp. So we tried it on! It was a bit big on us. But it was fun to wear the armor and hold the sword.


This is going to be a great year when we learn about the founding of this country and the courageous people who defended and championed liberty. Hopefully, we will begin to understand our responsibilities and duties to defend our liberty as well.

State Fair

I have so many things I want to blog about, but keep putting them off. Things like my Education Week experience, how school is going, yada, yada. I will share this while it's fresh in my mind. These days, things spoil in there pretty fast. Yesterday we got the boys out of school a bit early and headed up to SLC for the State Fair. It was Family Day and they had a deal on admission and 1/2 price on all-you-can-ride wristbands. So we made a day of it. The kids had a great time riding the rides and they were all so good to go on the little kid rides with Soren. He had a ball, riding in the helicopters and the race cars. When we got there, there weren't many lines for the rides so they were able to ride anything they wanted pretty quickly, and that's what they spent most of the afternoon doing. In fact, I'm ashamed to say we did not look at any of the 4H stuff or Open exhibits. We did walk through the goat and dairy cow barns and through the stinky pig area. That was it. The rest of the time we rode rides and spent waayyyyyyyyyy too much money on food and games. But we had a blast. All the kids won stuffed animals and other silly(useless) toys. I'm sure if you asked my family they would say the highlight of the night was when their mother got to be part of the Kenny Ahern comedy show. That was really scary for me. But it was fun for the kids and they got it all on video. Cambria was laughing so hard the video is pretty shaky and I disappear from the screen often, but it's pretty hilarious. When he started heading into the audience for a helper and locked on me, I was really hoping he was coming for Hannah who was sitting next to me. But no such luck! My 3 minutes of stage time! I can wait an eternity before ever having to do that again. (wish I knew how to put video on here)

Why?

Why does it always happen? Ok, well, not always, but it does often.

There have been so many times when my dear hubby has been out of town and I have been so sick I can't keep up with anything, including the kids. This last time we all were feeling cruddy, so thankfully they were pretty easy to keep up with. The house got trashed, but we took care of that when we all got feeling a bit better. And thank goodness it was just colds/sinus stuff not the intestinal kind of sick.

I remember a time a few years back when DH was gone to Scout Camp and we all came down with stomach flu. It was not pretty! There were not enough toilets to go around! The weirdest part was that my BIL was in town for some work stuff and stopped by to visit. I sat in the living room talking to him, but had to excuse myself every so often to go heave. If I had been him, I would have run screaming from the house.

Every time this happens, it makes me wish all the more that my mom lived close by. I would love to call her and say, "Can you watch the kids for me for a couple of hours, so I can get an uninterrupted nap?" In all my married life, I've never had that luxury. Guess I just had to learn to buck up and deal with it, like it or not.

He's a Big Boy Now!

Just more proof that my baby isn't a baby anymore! sniff, sniff

WE PASSED!!!

Hallelujah!

We got enough done on this house for the mortgage company to be satisfied and release our construction funds from escrow. Now we have some savings again.

So, what did DH do the day after all this was over?






Knocked out the big kitchen window and the wall below it to form the new entrance into the dining room. That's the new 'doorway' into the dining room above. A preliminary step to removing the entire wall.



Next he will fill in the old doorway and frame my new pantry! The pantry will fill the entire wall you see to the right. The red tape on the floor indicates where it will be. Hoohoo, all my appliances can have a home someplace other than the top of my refrigerator.


Never ending fun around here I tell ya, but at least we don't have to have it done on anyone else's timetable now!

Never Thought It Would Happen....

A month or so ago we had a little issue with a child checking a book out of our library that I wish had never come into my home. Let's just say that I was shocked and appalled when I found out. I learned a few things, first, the library will allow anyone to check out anything at anytime.
Second, I better make sure I know what my kids are checking out and looking for at the library.
I had to go in and make some changes so that they are now not able to check anything out without my presence and permission. I also sat down and wrote a letter to the library expressing my disappointment that such a book was in the young adult section and that minor children were allowed to check out such books. I asked them to consider removing it from the library or at the very least marking it in some way that would make it impossible to check out without a parent's permission. I sent it off, never dreaming that they would do anything about it or even respond. Imagine my surprise when I received a letter in the mail this week from them. It stated that they understood my concerns and that they had discussed this book more than once since receiving my letter. The most that they felt they could do was remove its Young Adult designation and put an adult designation on it. Granted I know that in reality that means nothing, since all the YA and A non-fiction books are shelved together, so if a person looks up said book, it's probably still in the same place. I am just amazed that they took the time to discuss the book and the issue of its place in the library, and also to write me a return letter.

And, yeah, we have had a good, long chat with this child about what happened. I hope that now we are clear on what is and what is not allowable in the way of media in our home. I guess up til now I've still been in that blissful place called Naivete'. No longer, I've just had a rough landing in the land of Reality!

On the Primary front: As of tomorrow we will finally have a new Music Leader. HOORAY! I'll be glad to hand off that responsibility! Still working on the secretary and some new Nursery Leaders. Ugh!

Mission front: all's going well. Sent home some wonderful pictures and funny video clips from the MTC. With one of them I didn't realize it was a video until I saw my son walk across the room. That really gave my heart a leap, to actually 'see' him after so long. It was awesome. They were playing tricks on the elders just coming in that day and hiding in the closets! Silly boys!

House front: had our last building inspection yesterday with the city. They passed us on everything except we need to get our cabinets in the office area, to conceal the wires sticking out of the wall. Hooray!

School front: Boys are gearing up for school, we got all their school supplies this week, just need to get a few more uniforms for them. I have lots to do to get things ready for school here at home. Need to get a costume made for our first historical 'visitor' of the year. That's the most pressing issue right now.....getting excited to get going!

Have a great weekend!

Who?? Me??

"Are you kidding?"



"You can't be serious."



He was. The Bishop. Calling me to be the Primary President.



Yikes!





I haven't been the president of anything since I was in the Laurels YW class eons ago. This is all a bit overwhelming, but I can say I'm really glad I had a few months to be in Primary as the music leader so I'd know how in the world it works.

We live in a very transient ward, with a very small base of stable families and a large population of BYU married students. So the turnover is huge, about 3x a year. This happens to be one of those times, so I'm stepping into this with basically needing to redo the entire Primary. Makes my head hurt. Wish me luck!

Look What I did!

I've been getting some of my harvesting done which is a big deal for me. I usually lose all interest in the garden starting about now, when it starts to get HOT! But I'm really trying not to get apathetic about it this year and to not leave a bunch of stuff to go to waste.
So far, I've gotten about 8 cups of raspberries. I'm just freezing them until I have a larger amount to make jam. But they are YUMMY! Big and juicy.

I also harvested all of my spinach and cleaned it, tore it and froze it. I think we will be able to use it in green smoothies, at least that's my hope. Not too much salad eating going on around here this summer, not sure why. But I didn't want it to bolt and be useless, so I decided this was an option to still get the use of it.


Tuesday I went out and pulled up my garlic. I was happy with how much we got. We *heart* garlic at our house. I braided the smaller heads into this fun hanging braid. I'm still soaking the larger heads to see if I can soften up the stems enough to braid them as well, if not we'll figure out another way to store them.

I may make a gardener after all!



Nah!

*Update-This is the wrong kind of garlic for braiding. This is hardneck garlic and if it grows its scape (flower) then it's too stiff and hard to braid. The little bulbs hadn't done that yet, so they were pliable and braidable.

Okay, Here are the pictures.

Here are some pictures of my new dining room. It's 15 x 16.5 ft. That's a huge space compared to what we've been cramped into for the last 10 years. The old dining space is part of the kitchen and you have to go through it to get to the stairs. Such a pain. We figured with 7 children, we will eventually have huge family gatherings to host so we needed more space to accomplish that.


This skinny space is my new office/scrap/craft area. It started out designed to be a mud room with cubbies for the kids, but since I am now home schooling them, we don't have a need for all the backpacks and stuff and more need for a space for all of our school supplies. The wall on the left and wrapping to the back wall will have cabinets and counter space for my printers, computer, Cricut and sewing machine. I told C he can have one little corner for his 'stuff'. Hoping to get good drawers for art supplies and gift wrapping, and use the upper cabinets for my scrap-crap. Still toying with the idea of going totally digital and getting rid of all the other stuff. We'll see. I don't imagine I'll really sit in that little space to create anything, just a way to have it accessible yet mostly out of the way.






These next two pictures are just to show the wood floor I chose. Yes, I CHOSE! Anyone who knows me knows what an accomplishment that is. I'm a very indecisive person as a general rule. But I LOVE this floor. I love all the color variation and the knots and the smell. I thought it was hickory that I wanted but this is Australian Cypress. The color on the walls is Rejuvenation, Behr from Home Depot. Still not sure I'm crazy about it, it's a bit springier-green than I wanted, but I'll live with it for a while and see if it grows on me. It will probably look nice with the black or dark brown cabinetry we will eventually have.




The last picture is my RED wall. I've always wanted to have a red wall so since this wall will eventually be removed when we do the final steps of our addition I thought it would be a great place to test out having a 'red' wall. This used to be the back wall of our kitchen, hence the windows. When we remove it the only part of it that will be left is the small portion with the breaker box on it, everything else will be gone. And I'll have an L-shaped kitchen with a HUGE island and a large pantry closet (where our table currently lives) instead of the dinky little U-shaped kitchen, with no storage, that I have now. None of the plumbing has to be moved and the fridge is the only appliance to be moved. So except for the cabinets, it's really a cheap kitchen redo.

I'm hoping soon to move my dining table out here and to get rid of all the construction junk and tools. Not sure what we're going to do with those honey supers. That's the stack of white boxes. That's our harvest of honey from last year that we never got 'spun'. They weigh about 45 lbs a piece. Yum! Guess it'll serve as some sort of decor until we get it 'spun' out.

Well, what do you think? Worth the last four+ years of turmoil? There were many times I wished we had never dug that blasted hole, but I'm so happy with how it's turning out and the extra time has allowed us to rethink and revise and make more practical decisions. For me, it was definitely worth it!

Nutso-rama!

I was really thinking that our summer was going to be so laid back. We didn't have any grandiose plans to go anywhere and with the cost of gasoline, we were just going to kick around at home. Oh, well, yes, there are a couple of scout camps in there. . . . and a youth conference. . . . . and a trip to see some plays at the Shakespeare Festival, but that's not much. HA! I'm starting to feel like this June was a repeat of last June. We didn't go big, fancy places, but one or another of us has been gone to something, somewhere for the last 4 weeks. Montana and Ford have been gone to Youth Conference since Tues and should be home sometime today. It's been rather strange and VERY quiet around here. Next week Ford heads off to one last Scout Camp at Entrada, near Moab. I think he's about worn himself out. On the missionary front: Jordan is now in his first area; Helena, the state capital. He likes his companion and had dinner with some people who knew his Grandpa Welch, but that's about all we've heard. He's never been one to use too many words. (roll eyes) We miss him a lot, but are getting used to only having six kids at home and all fitting around the table for meals. On the Addition front: We are this close to getting our addition done. Siding is on, not painted yet. All the lights and outlets are connected, just need to do one more thing in the breaker box, or something, not sure I understood what he was saying to me. The wood floor is gorgeous, I love it and I'm so glad I got what I loved rather than settling for something cheaper. We will have to wait a bit on cabinets now, but I'm okay with that. I'm looking at cabinets for my scrap/office area. Just the cheapest white ones at IKEA. I am going to get the upper ones now, and just use the long banquet tables til we can get the base cabinets and countertops. So excited to get all this stuff out of my bedroom! On the Homeschool front: After learning about EPIC Adventures and how they can work within a TJEd framework and heeding the feeling that I really needed to concentrate on the Founding of America this year, I am excited to have found at a bookstore in Cedar City a pre-written Epic Adventure called A Noble Birthright, Defending the Title of Liberty. I had looked at purchasing a downloadable version but really wanted to see what the inside looked like first, as I already had a type of US History format I was going to use. I was thrilled to find it at Classic Books in Cedar City and to find it for $10 less than the download price. I have read through it twice now and yesterday I took the time to plot it all out on the calendar so I could see how it could all fit in the Sept-May time slot. This will be mostly for me, I have felt so strongly the need to study this subject more, but this will be such a fun way for me to do You, Not Them and Inspire, Not Require and just invite them to come along for the fun with me. I have also already come up with some ideas for another Adventure, maybe for the following year? Not sure I feel up to writing my own, but maybe I'll feel braver about that after doing this one. The kids are doing well, the youngest girls are gearing up for their birthdays in the next 2 weeks. Hannah will be 9 and Sadie will be 7. Then Montana will turn 16 in August. He just got his wisdom teeth out plus another tooth for some orthodontic work, so that will put back his Driver's Ed for a while. Even with ins., the dental work was spendy! Ouch! He was such a cute little chipmunk! Thought we got a picture of him, but can't find it on our digital cards. Oh, well. Soren is getting to be quite the 2 year old. He is getting very ornery about helping out or picking up messes he's made and is so bold as to tell his parents "NO!" when asked to. He's learning to sit on his bed until he's ready to do what he's asked to do. So fun! He's still such a joy, though, and he makes us laugh all the time. He's just testing out his limits a bit and we know he's really a sweet kid, somewhere under that two-year old cover. Whew! If you made it that far, give yourself a smack on the forehead! You've got better things to do than read this.

Oh, Summer, Where Art Thou?

We seem to have missed most of spring this year and I'm wondering if we will miss summer too. This has been the coldest, dreariest spring I can remember. My poor little garden plants are in stasis, I think, because they have grown to a certain point and there they sit. I'm not sure they dare grow anymore. Summer break has not begun as I would have liked. I've had some medical issues that have kept me from being as active and getting the kids up and going as I would have liked to have done. However, I'm on the mend and soon we'll be charting course for the summer break. I'm trying to set up a reading group/discussion with my boys. We have talked about a book we could all read and discuss, but we haven't pinned one down yet. I really want to start a study of the Constitution of the U.S. and the Founding Fathers, so I'm leaning to The Real George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, or the Autobiography of Ben Franklin or something of that sort. We'll see how it goes. I've also discussed with Cambria about setting up a reading group with her friends where they all read the same book and then we have a fun discussion/activity to go along with it. I think it would be good for her. Hannah and Sadie just got invited to become part of a 4H club that meets weekly. They are excited about that. We are a family club but we haven't done much yet. We'd like to make some things to put into the county fair. I'm getting excited for my excursion south with Ford to the Shakespeare Festival. We are seeing three shows this year that I absolutely love: Taming of the Shrew, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Sound of Music. It's an intense three days, but so much fun. I'm sure if I didn't go with the 8th graders I wouldn't get there at all. Jordan is still doing well. Only a few more days in the MTC, then it's off to Big Sky Country. It's probably cold up there, since it's still a bit nippy here. Hope he bought good warm clothing!