Singing in the Rain

Did it rain @ your house? It rained here! Yeah for a safer 4th of July in Texas!

I subscribe to a ton of homeschooling magazines. One of them is "The Link Homeschool News Network." Not every article is appealing to unschoolers. The most recent issue had an article published by Alison McKee titled Unschooling Ourselves regarding unschoolers and college. This article is not on the website but it is in the paper copy. Several of her articles are linked to on this site. Plenty of content sqeezed into some short articles if you feel like reading.

Family Traditions

I guess I have been taking pictures mostly of the kids faces and not too much of what we have been doing! We have been swimming with our friends a few times in the past week but I can't keep an eye on everyone and take pictures so there are no pictures :(

We haven't really had too many guests since everyone has been ill. Good news, Luke (aka Pookie) is feeling much better and the stomach virus seems to have subsided today. It will take another day to make sure he really is fine. Today our cousin Danielle arrives from Michigan to visit for the 4th of July! Good news, there will be no burn ban this year so we can set off fireworks @ our house! The Forestry Service determines whether or not a burn ban is needed based on a dryness scale and each county reserves the right to put a burn ban in place even if the Forestry Service does not issue a burn ban-our county just announced we will have fireworks this year! In case you can't tell I am excited. We haven't had fireworks in a few years thanks to that dryness scale!

So we are almost ready to go meet Danielle who has agreed to do some letterboxing with me. We are going to eat @ the restaurant that serves "the best hamburgers in Texas." Then letterbox and maybe head to the tattoo shop. (The kids won't be along for the tattoos.)

I will take the camera and maybe get some shots of the tattoos!

I Gave My 24-7 to You

Hello? Anybody there? One of our friends said today that she went to check our page and it was the same thing as the last time she checked it! Uh-oh. This is what happens when one takes a blog break. How to begin again that is the question.

Well, I did purchase the new camera several weeks ago actually. I still haven't uploaded the software to store the pix on the storage disk! I will attepmt to recover some from that site where I store pix.

We have not been home much though. When we are home we have someone here with us, which I love, but maybe we need to take a little break for some more family time.

So, a few family camp outs, shopping trips, several books, some illnesses, playdates, and letterboxes later here we are today. Trying to be in our perfect moment right now. What does this week hold? Well, thanks to my poor fuel planning, nothing else! I loaded up all the kids, plus some, and travled a bit to a letterbox one day, went to visit some friends far away another day, and took some more kiddos to spend the night with one another yet another day. I went to pump the last of my weekly allowance into the truck today only to realize we will not get anywhere in the beast on $20! Sorry kids, mom had to purchase more letterboxing supplies...maybe I need a larger allowance! Dom, are you reading this?!

We finally managed to get our newest member of the family home! Welcome Bunny the horse! Thanks to the Kanes for a deal we couldn't pass up! I will post pix as soon as she becomes acclaimated to her new home and is ready to ride, probably fall-ish.
Mady can't wait until it is cool enough to ride.
Niki has asked for a new pet if her own. We considered lizards but since we had no luck with the first one and one of our friends mentioned we were missing some vital parts for a lizard habitat, we decided against that. We are considering a Chinchilla. Easier to take with you on vacation than a dog and not as needy as a ferret...I think!

Luke and Ezra have been extremely ill recently. I won't list details but there were all kinds of bootie creams, pastes, and diaperless days in the bath. Almost all it well. Luke is throwing some kind of fit whenever he is unhappy now. Luke is the most easy going of all the babies so I am still concerned. I think many, many days w-o a routine may have contributed to his recent unhappiness. Since we are short on fuel (and allowance,) we should be getting back into more of a routine.

In other news, Dom and I spent our first 24 hours alone together in 3 years! Wow, the spark is still alive. Isn't it funny how during the course of daily life we just keep waiting for that perfect moment to arrive instead of realizing right now IS the perfect moment?

There you have it. 2 months summed up in a few long rambling paragraphs minus some of the fun details (there was one crazy MNO. Jen, where is that pic of a nameless mom atop a garden bush shaped into a horse?)

Pix to follow if I can figure out how to retrive them from whatever site I have them posted to!