I was just writing a post about our long vacation and then my computer did something and everything was lost! I have no idea how long it had gotten, but I'm going to have to write it all again!
Things are going great. We've been to Canada, we've seen 7 states. We've started school. Jonathan is now signed up for Cub-Scouts. We are considering gymnastics for Adie. Alex is keeping us all on our toes. Still no word on our move, but it will come sometime! Don't worry, we'll put the word out when it comes. Things are going great though. Keeping busy, but good.

Hope you all are doing fine. I'll try to write that blog again soon. I've been writing for twenty minutes and so it'll take some time to get it all back, but I'm tired and need to train myself to get to bed earlier now. I'm still on vacation mode! I've got to get disciplined again!

Love to you all.
Blessings!

A Garden Mistaken for Weeds

Wildflowers...
Those wretched weeds! Those nasty things are growing in my yard again! That field has been let go for too long, look at that over growth!

Wildflowers...
Look how beautiful they are! So many colors, so many beautiful designs. God gave us many wonderful natural gardens for us to enjoy!

I love driving or walking around and viewing all the beautiful wildflowers God has graced the earth with. Just two blocks from here, there is a small field that had so many wonderful flowers growing in it (well, the variety wasn't that large, but the amount of flowers was abundant)! Jonathan and I actually had gone in there and looked at several of them. It was refreshing to the soul to enjoy those with him. Then just a couple days ago, we drove by there and it is all gone. Every bit of it has been mowed down. Sure I get it, we need to control overgrowth and it will most likely grow back. But will it? It was so beautiful! Not only did we see several flowers, but the deer enjoyed walking through there and munching on the vegetation. Now it's gone, absolutely gone. I miss it.

I wrote this last month and just realized that I haven't posted it yet!

A New Interest

Hey there folks!
For my birthday, the family gave me a jewelry making set. I've had so much fun making things. So far, I've made 3 necklaces. I'm giving one away as a gift, (I'll post a picture of that one when I give it ~ don't want to spoil the surprise!) one was for Adie and I'm going to re-do it, and the most recent one I made is for me. Here is the picture.

I took the picture with my phone. It's not the greatest, but it works. Our camera is on a trip for the week. More on that one later.
Here's to a fun July!

The Synopsis of June

Good evening my beautiful friends!

June has been a fantastic month! We've been home enjoying summer. We started bowling. We went swimming. Our garden is growing, by leaps and bounds! We've had ice-cream, cook-outs, and snow-cones. We've gone to the zoo and parks. We've gone on walks, around the neighborhood, down the street, and to the library. It hasn't been a huge month by any means, we've just soaked in the joys of this wonderful season. We've been watching lots of bugs take up residence in our back yard, and even in our home. We've gotten to know a daddy-long-legs, several mud wasps, cicadas, snakes, and even a little mouse. Inside our home we have had your usual little critter spiders, but also a couple of those mud wasps (NOT FUN) and last night I saw a mouse in the kitchen!

I have to tell you, I feel like I'm re-living my chldhood. Where I grew up, we had many mice in our home, skunks living underneath, squirls in the walls, and cats that liked to leave "presents" in my sister's bed! We've had nearly all of that and more here. The only thing I'm hoping we don't experience is the "presents" from our cats.

Well, I'll leave you with a few pictures from the month. But not before I put a plug-in about a new blog of mine. I want to keep this blog, it's personal and fun to come and share these thoughts with friends and whoever else may be reading. It's a journal that I hope to keep for years to come. But this new blog is strictly home school. I had wanted to chronicle it all here, but that didn't work. I've been educating myself this summer and have been praying about my scheduling practices. I hope to really write about all we do in our homeschool. After all I've been learning about homeschooling and an extremely wonderful method of home education, I'm so excited about it all. Educating the children at home will not only be a safari of learning for them, but it's a quest of knowledge for us all. We will be nourishing our minds with the best of ideas and quenching our thirst with God's amazing creation. If you find the time or your curiosity is pricked, please visit our blog: Kingdom Heights Homeschool. The link is on the right side as well.

Good morning!

Well, it has been a while since I was here. We went on our trip (#1 for the summer), saw my cousin get married, enjoyed visiting my parents and sent Jonathan off on a week trip to San Antonio with Jeff's family. Our grass is doing very good and we did finally get the garden planted in the ground. I'm afraid we've lost the peas. However, the carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, squash, and pumpkin are looking great. We have a lot of rodents around here; squirls, rabbits, ground hogs, racoons, skunks, etc. A friend of ours suggested that we plant peppers around the perimeter to ward off the critters. One taste of those spicy leaves and they'll be gone! So, we we out and found some nice pepper plants that were already established and growing well and picked up a strawberry as well! We got it all in the ground Friday and it all seems to be going well so far!

As far as the school year goes, we are nearly done, 4 days left! This morning, Jonathan got up very early and got right to work! He planned and opened up a Kool-aid stand yesterday and was very determined to do it again today. So, he wanted all his school work done first thing this morning, to allow himself most of the day to sell "nice fresh koolaid on a hot summer day!" It's 9 A.M. and he is done (course, these last few days are extremely light in the work)! VERY ambitious young man. We are proud of him. He only made one sale yesterday, but he started in the alley and decided that wasn't the best place, no one came! So he moved to the front. Some teen agers drove by and he and Adie were yelling at the top of their lungs to get those girls to come to their stand. Didn't work. Then, Jonathan got the idea to go door-to-door selling his drink (for $.50!). That was at 7:30 last night. I allowed them to go to the only neighbor we know, on the condition they would sell it for a quarter. Well, that was their sell for the day and today, they are determined to sell more today. They've added to what they want to sell today, smarties! These kids are so cute! Oh! While we were sitting on the porch ending the day, I was telling Jeff that I've got a new interest. Beads and making jewelry, not to mention the bows and socks that I'm getting back in to! Immediately, Jonathan piked up and nearly jumped out of his chair and said, "OOh! More stuff for us to sell!"
They are working very hard, he says, so they can earn money for them to go to Canada and see their cousins. That trip is coming very soon, and all of us are so excited! Lots to do, lots to do.
Have a good week!

Growing, Growing, Growing!

Spring is such a lovely season. The list of birds we are seeing around here is growing. Today we were so lucky to see a very shy Baltimore Oriole! The orange on this bird is amazing! I saw it a few days ago sipping from our hummingbird feeder and it flew off before I could see exactly what bird it was. Today, he stuck around long enough for us all to see! It was wonderful!

Today, we began cultivating our backyard. This is going to take forever! We have NO grass in the back yard so we are going to try planting seed. We'll see how that goes. I'm kind of skeptical. Yesterday we spread weed'n'feed. I hope it works, it would be nice to have a good looking yard. We are also preparing a section in the back yard for a garden. I'm so excited and I hope they grow! We are going to plant the seeds tomorrow for science. Last week, we talked about seeds and opened up some beans to see the baby plant inside and that was pretty cool. I hadn't ever done that. It really was a cute little baby plant right inside that bean! I even peaked inside of a maple tree seed. I've got some pods to start our garden and hopefully we can cultivate the garden site enough before we leave for our trip.

Well, it's growing season! Let us not forget to continually grow in spirit as well!

It's Spring!

Good morning.
It's been a great two weeks. We thought spring would never come, but it has finally arrived! Last week we had temps in the 80s and it was wonderful. The leaves are beginning to grace us with promises of the serenity of shade. We've witnessed the birth of flowers growing out of their buds. We've enjoyed the excitement of guessing what birds we hear, what tree is over there and what that wild flower might be called. God has blessed us with many birds to enjoy, a red maple tree, sweet gum tree, a pecan tree, and a couple of other tress still to be identified. We had a meadow of beautiful yellow wild-flowers that at first were mistaken for dandilions, but at closer investigation, they were found to be mountain sunflowers! Such cute, dainty little things! I'm glad we enjoyed them because they have whithered away. I wonder what else God has in store for us! One of those lovely days, we enjoyed over 7 hours outside and it was the best day we've had. Jonathan did most of his school work out there and we all had fun with a nature study. I had great plans to start a new formal science unit on seeds and growing and plants. While I was getting all of that together, Adie came running in to me yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! You have to come see what we found!" I ran out with her and they were amazed by a little snail making it's way up a rock in our back yard. It was a cute little thing and I decided at that moment to drop the unit for the day and grab their attention and excitement for this creation. We spent about 30 minutes watching him and learning about him from our field guide. Among other things, we learned that we had a ram's horn snail with a coiled shell. He's an invertebrate and a mollusk. They were excited and even now, a week later, they are talking about that day.
We've been planning a garden that we are going to plant. I'll have to admit that even I have a world to learn about this area. We are going to try carrots, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, broccoli, parsley. We also have some flowers to plant. We'll see how it goes! Or "grows!"
As far as brids go, we have seen most of the regulars and occassionaly we are graced with a few new ones to enjoy. Jonathan identified a vulture flying over the river one day and that totally impressed me. The Yellow shafted Northern Flicker is a beautiful cousin to the woodpecker. I think I've also seen either a Red-Headed Woodpecker or a Red Bellied Woodpecker, both of which have the most red I've seen on one so far. A couple days ago, I heard a Phoebe. I'm not sure which kind it was I only heard it's very recognizable song "fi-bee!" We continue to see Cardinals, Blue Jays, Sparrows, Chickadees, Robins, and I'm pretty sure we have some Starlings. I've been watching a nest up high in one of our trees and I think a European starling has taken up residence there. I enjoy their clicks and whistles. A couple of our neighbors have some bird houses up really high and the Purple Martins have arrived and are neat to watch as well.
This week we started listening to the composer Gustav Mahler. I'm looking forward to learning more about him. His first symphony "Titan" is one that I really like so far, it's got a gentle intro. I can definitely hear a difference from Mozart. Tuesday when we were reading about him, I discovered that his inspiration for some of his symphonies came from German folk poetry, "The Youth's Magic Horn." I have yet to find anywhere I can read this or what it may be about, but I'd love to find out!
We are also studying Van Gough. Jonathan will tell you that he's his favorite, mainly for "The Starry Night." Jonathan has a link to a jigsaw puzzle of this work of art. I did it, it was very challenging, but so fun! Through some links from someone in email, I found some Van Gough pictures for the kids to color! I think they will really like that. Today is actually our art day, so I'm sure Jonathan will be very excited.
Two weekends ago, we went to a home school conference and it was fabulous! We found the math curriculum we are going to use. Right Start. We got the manipulatives and used them yesterday. For the first time EVER, Jonathan said he loves math and it is fun! Today, he asked if he could do his math first and it sounded like he was asking to go to his best friend's house! He was almost giddy about it. Yesterday, he could actually see the equations working and balancing out. He was so excited about it! I'm looking forward to using the full curriculum.
This last weekend, I went with about 15 ladies to a Christian conference called Women Walking with God. It was fantastic, I had an amazing time! My favorite session was about Child Spirituality. I've much to learn! The next one I really liked was about the sandwich generation. I had to hold back several tears in this one. They had a humorist and she was hillarious! I can't even explain. It's just great! Also, a friend of mine came with her siblings and they sang for us, they were The Herndons. They have great music. I saw so many friends from OC that I haven't seen in years and lost touch with, now I have the chance to catch up! The entire weekend was wonderful! Even the trip home was eventful. A 3 1/2 hour trip took us six! We were caught in the middle of two tornadic storms and the second one caught up with us about 15 minutes before it produced a tornado. I've never been more thankful to make it home safely! Then, as I got home, I learned that our cellar was flooded! Sunday morning we were awaken by an awful sound coming from the fan! Thankfully our land-lord did come that morning and now we have a new sump-pump.
A rainy weekend has turned into a cloudy, rainy week and the rivers are beginning to swell. This promises to be an active spring!

Speaking of rain, I'm seeing that our back yard is becoming VERY wet, please pray that we don't have too much water to contend with!

In His Hands

My sweet little Jonathan has created his own blog. He hasn't posted much on it, but everything that has been done so far has been all him! I'm so proud of my little boy, no my BIG boy! He came up with a great idea and I can tell more wonders are on the way from his hands.

Hope you enjoy! Jonathan's Hands can be seen here.

Alex says hello!

Winter Storm of the Year

It crippled Denver and was said to dump around 2 feet of snow in southwest Kansas. It hit New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas yesterday. This was the largest area of a snow storm I have seen in a very long time (maybe ever). At the beginning of the week, I had heard around town that there was something coming on Friday and we were going to get some snow. I laughed inside, saying to myself that we had such a beautiful spring week the week before, surly this wouldn't be that bad. Wednesday night, I heard someone at church saying we were supposed to get 4 inches!

Real quick, to preface this, we've dropped cable and we don't have antennas yet, so we just see a lot of static and we just aren't watching that much television any longer.

So, I told Jeff and we checked out the weather websites and discovered Wednesday night, that we were predicted to get 8-10 inches of snow here! Other stations were saying 4-6. It has gone up and down all week. Yesterday I watched the internet radar and saw this storm knock on our door and then fissle up. There was still a large area behind it and the action for us was going to begin at 2 o'clock this morning. We were actually looking forward to the snow, one last play and another chance at a good snowman this year. People all over town covered flowers and parties were cancelled for today. Even Jonathan's last game of the year (which happens to be a make-up from the last snow we had) was cancelled for today. We've been watching outside and on the radar, this storm is loosing it's punch, space, and turning into rain. Our city is right on the line of where this storm is fighting itself. So far all day today, we've had rain and the occasional sleet.

UNTIL NOW. We were just about to sit down to lunch and Jeff said to look outside. The largest flakes I've ever seen were coming down! I couldn't get the camera in time, it happened pretty fast. But now, the ground is covered in a layer of white and the snow is falling. From the look of this radar, we could be in this for several hours now. I wonder what will happen!? How many inches will we actually get???

Well see!....

...2 hours later
The snow's still coming down and we have about an inch so far! Doesn't look like it's going to stop soon. Hmmm...

...6 hours after the snow began...
Well, it's just about over. Alex, Adie and I went outside for a while and ended up building a snowman! Woohoo! Actually, it's a snowgirl! While we were putting her together, Adie said that she should be a girl because the last one we made was a boy. That was Jack frost from January 2007. Jo has been sick the last couple of days and so today he stayed inside, since he gets pnemonia easily. But tomorrow, we will all stand with our snow girl and have our first family snowgirl picture with Alex!
The total for snow here was only about two inches or so. Not that much, but enough for a snowman!