I'm Ba-ack!

My goodness, it has been such a very long time since I really posted here. I am so disappointed in myself. I actually really enjoy posting and putting pictures of our crazy life up for all the world to see but life just seems to be so dang busy!!! The days just seem to fly by with me falling into bed each night, exhausted, and feeling like I accomplished only half of what I should have.
So very much has happened in the last year. My boys are growing like weeds. They change so much, even daily! I look at Little Man and see that he is, indeed, becoming a Little Man! How can that be? I swear I just birthed him only a few years ago. How is it that he can be 10? He is now a purple belt in karate and doing so well with it. He is so serious about his lessons and improves daily. He has also made vast improvements in baseball over the last year. He is a great catcher and a pretty darn good pitcher as well. He just loves the game and that plays into how busy our days have become. He is doing well in school and loves to read books about baseball and sports.
Muffin Man is growing by leaps and bounds as well. He is now 7 and quite a character. He is pretty much always joyful and loves to make others laugh. Sometimes he can be a bit too much of a clown but we just love him! He is now an orange belt in karate and has his first stripe. He is not quite as serious as Little Man but for his age, is doing very well. He makes steady progress. He loves school and picks up new concepts easily! He loves learning cursive and reading. He is currently reading the Magic Treehouse Series.
So what have we been up to for the past year? Spring was busy with baseball, karate, and school. Our schooling takes longer than it has in the past simply because we are covering more difficult concepts. We studied the embryology and growth of chickens during the spring as a science project. We built our own incubator using about $15 worth of materials and successfully hatched chicks. It was an awesome project and the boys really enjoyed it. We also spent a considerable amount of the spring painting and organizing the house before getting new carpet. Our house is now painted in browns and greens and we have lovely, clean, new carpet which I just love!!! As is the norm, we spent the summer bowling, swimming, and spending time with friends. Both boys improved their bowling skills dramatically and they no longer use bumpers. They are both great swimmers as well and it is so nice to not have to worry about them around water. Mid summer we went on a family vacation to Southern California. Along with spending time with family we also visited the La Brea Tar Pits, the Cabrillo Marine Museum, and the Griffith Park Observatory. All three provided great opportunities for fun and education. We also stopped by my childhood home and knocked on the door. The new family who lives there was so welcoming and invited us right in. It was so fun to show the boys where I grew up. When we peeked into my old bedroom, the boys were thrilled to discover it is now the home of an 11 year old boy who LOVES Bionicles. My boys would have stayed and played all day if we would have let them. We drove up to my old favorite park, "Rocket Ship Park". That is not the actual name of the park but it is what it was called by all the locals for as long as I can remember. The reason being that the play equipment from my childhood was a huge rocket ship and moon rover. Both had been removed in the past and replaced with the newfangled plastic park equipment of today. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the original equipment has been returned to the park by the Torrance Historical Society. What a blast it was to see my boys climb up the very equipment that I enjoyed as a child. Not only that, but while chatting with a gentleman at the park I was surprised to discover that is was a guy I had actually gone to school with from Kindergarten through 12th grade. What a hoot!
School started up again in August and we have been back to the old grind ever since. We just finished the winter ball, baseball season last week and now we can relax for a few months before the spring season starts up again.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. The house is decorated for Christmas and we are having a garage sale this weekend to get rid of all the junk we pulled out during our spring cleaning and organizing. Sometime this next month we will need to get our house treated for termites. We here in Arizona have the subterranean termites, so no tenting will be needed. We will need to have some areas in our garage floor and patio drilled for the poison to be injected. What a pain! But it is what it is. They say there are only 2 types of houses around here. Those that currently have termites and those that will. LOL!
My Honey is as busy as ever at work. There have been many changes, including layoffs and rearranging of staff. My Honey was promoted and he is now one of two directors of the company. He manages all the mangers for the operations side of the company. Hopefully he will not be traveling quite as much but he is still working long hours. Hopefully after the new year things will calm down a bit and his schedule will get more normal. I can hope, can't I? Sadly, he will be missing our anniversary once again this year. I think he has been home for our anniversary one time in the last 6 years. He gave me the news about his promotion and told me he would not be traveling as much and then just a week later came home and told me of two up coming trips! And of course, one is over our anniversary. So my mom decided to take the boys and I to Disneyland for my anniversary!!! So in a about a week, we will be heading down to sunny Anaheim for two days of Disney fun! Yippee!
OK, so that pretty much catches you up on the happenings of the last year. I will try to download a few pictures in the next week of some of the things mentioned here and I promise to try to be more regular in my postings in the future. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry CHRISTmas, and a Wonderful New Year!!!!!

I know, I know.............

I have been promising to get on here and update for forever! And I still have simply not had the time. Baseball is finally over and summer is here, which means we should have more time but somehow, we don't. Go figure?
We are still schooling every day because I simply see no reason to stop and get off track for three months. The boys are busy getting ready for their first karate tournament at the end of this month. We are also busy with summer get togethers with all the friends that we do not get to see very often during the school year. We have been bowling almost every day for the last few weeks thanks to the generosity of our local bowling alley. The boys get one free game and shoe rental per day for the entire summer! How cool is that? In between schooling, bowling, and karate we are spending time at the aquatic center and the beach, and just hanging out with friends.
I am not going to promise to get on in the next week and get all caught up on the past four months because I have made that promise for the last 3 months and have yet to have kept it. I will try to get on soon but PLEASE do not hold me to it.
For now I will leave you with this little gem from Muffin Man. This evening we went out to dinner at a local buffet our family enjoys. At the end of the meal My Honey went and, as is our custom, filled a plate with an assortment of small, bite sized, desserts for all of us to share. One of the items that this buffet always has on hand are little, tiny cream puffs. Muffin Man picked up one of the cream puffs from the plate, gave a contented sigh, and exclaimed "These things just always cheer me up!" God love him!

May you too be cheered up by the little things in life. Blessings.

Checking In.............Yet Again!

Oh*My*Goodness! Has it really been that long since I posted? Time has just been flying by for me. The last few months have been chock full of karate and baseball practices and games. In between that and schooling each day I have also, pretty much single handedly, cleaned, primed, and painted every wall, baseboard, door frame, and door in my house. I am not quite finished but I can finally see the finish line! Our new carpet goes in next Thursday and then I can finally start putting my house back together. The furniture is all over the place. Pictures are all off the walls. A large number of totes are filled with stuff that was formerly housed in dresser drawers. All the kids furniture is getting sold at the next garage sale and their room will have all new furniture and shelves. I am determined that at least half of what WAS in their room will not be going back. I cannot wait for everything to be back in order!!! It has been a long time coming, but the end results will be more than worth it!!

I have a whole list of subjects and happenings that I would like to write about. We had visits from a few out of town friends. We built our own incubator and successfully hatched chicks. We planted what is turning out to be an impressive veggie garden. We again hatched praying mantis, butterflies, and continue to raise our pill bugs. We rescued a bunch of baby bunnies and rereleased them into the wild. Both My Honey and I celebrated bithdays. My grandmother went to spend eternity with her Lord and Saviour in March. We had cousins and Aunts and Uncles come visit. We found out that some of them will be moving here in a few months time. I know there is so much more but it is late and I am exhausted!! My mind is drawing a blank! I will do all I can to get on here in the next week and get some updates typed up.

For those of you who do check in, sorry I have been so lousy at keeping things up to date. I am going to make a point of doing better in the future. But thanks for stopping by.

Just checking in...........

........to say hello and to apologize for my extended absence! It is amazing how the days and all our activities can just get away from me. We have been unbelievably busy for the last month and every few days I think to myself, "Self, You need to blog about this!" but then I never quite find the time.

School is going well. Muffin Man is really loving reading lately and is so good with math. Little Man is working on multiplication and U.S geography. We have been following the life cycle of pill bugs, and have a new batch of mantis hatch lings to enjoy. We have five chicken eggs in an incubator and are looking forward to seeing them hatch and learning all about their life cycle. We recently finished growing bacteria and will post some info and pictures on that, soon. We are in the process of memorizing the names of the 50 states in alphabetical order and all of their abbreviations. We are studying the American revolution, and we are reading through the Little House on the Prairie series. The boys have been interested and engaged and have been doing lessons without complaint. God Bless them!

As far as my weekly goals, I have not given up on them. In the past 4 weeks I have finished cleaning out and inventorying both of my freezers, cleaned out, culled and organized all of my school supplies and book shelves, painted two more walls in the living room, filed a 2 foot stack of paperwork that was about to topple over, AND found and organized all our tax stuff and had our taxes done! WHEW! All in all it has been a very productive few weeks.

My current focus is a new home school support group that my girlfriend Michelle and I are putting together. We both belong to the local Christian support group but there are many non Christian home schooler's out there in our county and we want to reach out to them, meet and support them as well. We are in the planning, implementing and publicity stage. Just getting the word out is a huge and time consuming process. We are looking forward to how things will work out. Wish us luck!

The boys are busy with Karate and will be starting baseball this next Monday. Both boys earned their yellow belts in Karate in the last few weeks and that was really exciting. I REALLY LOVE karate and I am impressed with the difference I have seen in them since they started. It is a sport that I hope to keep them in for years to come.

So that is about it. I PROMISE to get some pictures and info posted on some of our recent activities and I also VOW to get back on my goal posting by this next Wednesday. Until then, take care.

A Few Pictures

Here are just a few photos from Christmas. Two of the photos I took for our Christmas card and one of each of the boys with their BIG Christmas gifts. More photos to come later.

 

 

 

 

Goal Check In and Other Thoughts

So, this last weeks goal was to get my old camera software off the computer and the new camera software installed. I mentioned this in passing to My Honey last week. I know this does not sound like much of a goal to some of you but I am pretty much computer illiterate. It is all I can do to find a program let alone do anything with it. This past Saturday I decided to get crackin' and get it done. I sat down at my computer and began looking in the obvious place, under "All Programs." It wasn't there. I took the opportunity to get rid of a few other old programs and software that we no longer use but the one I was really looking for was clearly missing. Of course, My Honey had left on a business trip by this time so I was unable to ask him for help. I continued to search for the missing program for about 3 days and then gave up. On Tuesday, my good friend Michelle asked me how my goal was coming along and I shared with her that I was unable to find the program in my computer. Our conversation spurred me on to try once again. I returned to my computer last night and spent a bit more time searching, but to no avail. I then decided that I would access the program via my desk top and see if there was some way to remove the program that way. I returned to my desk top only to find............

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE..............................................................

.........My Honey must have already removed said program some time last week!!!

It was no longer on my desk top! I had been searching and searching and practically pulling my hair out in frustration over being unable to find that program only to find it wasn't there to find! My Honey was just being helpful, and knowing that I am not exactly a computer whiz, he took care of it for me. I just wish he had told me. It would have saved me quite a bit of frustration. Note to self: Look in the most obvious place first!

I have now downloaded my new software. That was easy, as it is just a matter of following the prompts. I now need to learn how to use it and get my first photos downloaded. I will try to do that within the next few days.

This Week's Goal- This week my goal is to inventory both my inside and outside freezer so that I can better prepare for making meals each night. I will also throw out any old items and pull older, usable items to the front and put newer items in the back. One of my long term goals is to follow weekly meal plans! I have started this in the past but it is so easy to get sidetracked with all the sports schedules and family happenings. Because of this, our family goes out to dinner far too often and it needs to stop. Not only is it not good for us, it costs way too much. Since the beginning of the year, I have been doing really well getting my meals planned and on the table at a decent hour. I know that getting my freezers inventoried will help me immensely.

On the home school front things have been going pretty well. I am having a few struggles with Muffin Man who seems to be resisting regarding the learning of certain things. He grasps concepts quite quickly when he wants to but if he isn't in the mood, God help me! I was laying in bed thinking about this the other night and I realized that he is only six. I did not start Little Man in Kindergarten until he was six. I started Muffin Man at barely 5 and I think his maturity is coming in to play. I am backing off a few concepts that he seems particularly confused with and back tracking a bit to the basics. I think he is ready in some ways and not ready in others. I want him to learn but I also want him to enjoy learning. If it is becoming a struggle, he will just give up. The last few days since I made this decision have been much better. We are focusing on word families and just getting addition and subtraction facts down cold.

As an aside, we are doing a little germ/bacteria growth experiment this week. Both the boys have colds and I am constantly telling them to wash their hands. Today I pulled out a few disposable petri dishes and some agar and we set up to get a real true picture of the germs that we otherwise cannot see. I swabbed the boys hands and teeth and then let them swab a few places around the house. (The remote control, a door knob, the computer key board, etc) We will have to wait a few days to see the results. I did this once before with Little Man but Muffin Man was really little at the time and even Little Man has limited memory of it. I will be sure to post pictures for you. Blech.

So, that is about it for now. I will try to get a few pictures posted in the next few days. Until then, Carpe Diem.

A Merry Christmas After All and Other Ramblings

So, despite all the Anti Christmas I was feeling a week before Christmas, our family ended up having a wonderful Christmas!! We finally did get the shelves and pictures back in place and although I did not put out all the usual decorations, we had many Christmas cards from friends and family that filled those shelves beautifully. We managed to get quite a few of our favorite traditions completed, including making Christmas goodies and having a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve. Even though I felt like everything wasn't as it should be, the boys were happy as ever and enjoyed every moment of the season. God love them!

Christmas morning went off without a hitch, even though My Honey and I were both sick as dogs. My parents came up to our house for the morning. I baked a breakfast casserole for everyone and we just enjoyed being together and opening gifts. This year I had hidden the boys big gifts and created a treasure hunt that the boys had to use to find them. After all the smaller gifts were opened and they thought that was it, I mentioned that there might just be one more gift for each of them. I told them to look in the tree. They found the first clue and the hunt began. The hunt took them throughout our home and backyard and then eventually down to my mom's house. They had a great time following the clues and it was really fun watching them as they worked together to figure them out. We finally made it into my dad's machine shop where they found their gifts. Muffin Man got the new bicycle he wanted. He just recently learned to ride his old bike without training wheels and really needed a larger bike. He looked like a clown on his old bike, it was so small. Little Man received his first gun. His dad is a gun enthusiast and loves to go out to the shooting range to shoot targets. He has been wanting to give Little Man a gun for a while and take him out with him but we just did not feel he was ready yet. This past year he has really matured and we felt it was time. Little Man was beside himself with glee!!! He could not have been happier. He and My Honey went out to the range the very next day and he did really well.

For those of you who are aghast that we would buy our son a gun, allow me to put your mind at rest. We have a gun safe where our guns are safely stored and the boys have NO IDEA how to open that safe nor will they until they are adults. The only time my son will be able to use, touch, or even look at his gun will be when My Honey is present and involved.

Back to Christmas morning. after all the hullabaloo was over, we spent the rest of the day just resting and watching the boys play with all their toys. As I mentioned earlier, both My Honey and I were sick. I was beginning to develop a killer sinus infection and My Honey ended up with Bronchitis. We both ended up at urgent care that weekend and were put on antibiotics. So, based on how we were feeling, we really did nothing for the rest of the day which seemed to be fine with everyone. All in all it was a very low key, enjoyable day.

New Years eve at our house has traditionally been not much different than any other night. Maybe we rent a movie and make some popcorn, but we rarely even manage to stay up till midnight. This New Year's, my good friend Michelle invited us over to spend the evening with them. They too, usually have a very low key, early night for New Year's but we both decided this was the year for a change. We made some snacks and finger foods, bought hats and noise poppers, ordered pizza, and spent the evening playing Wii and visiting. All the kids had a BLAST and would have happily stayed up all night but the four of us adults were struggling to stay awake. We did manage it though and we went out front at the stroke of midnight and, I'm sure, woke up quite a few people who had gone to bed early. LOL. The kids were a riot with their horns and poppers. They just had a ball. It is really nice, now that the boys are a bit older and we can do stuff like that. We really had a GREAT time. Thanks Michelle, for inviting us over. Next year is at my house!

So, all in all, the holidays were really great. I guess the lesson I learned is that I needn't run myself ragged for our family to have a good Christmas. I always try to get so much accomplished and I do so much for the boys. And while I love doing all those things, it usually means there are many other things that I don't get done. This year was different. There were many things I usually do that I didn't do this year but there were other things that usually don't get done that this year I did get accomplished! But regardless of what I was doing or not doing or how crazy I felt, my boys were happy and enjoying themselves. And in the end, isn't that what matters?

This past Monday our household returned to normal. School is back in session and we have spent the last two days getting back into the swing of things. It is so hard to get back on track after a break. But back on track we are. Thankfully the first two days back were full of many hands on activities that helped make getting back into the routine, fun. The boys were both really good and there were no complaints. We just picked right back up where we had left off and things are going smoothly.

Now, just a quick note about my Wednesday goal setting. Last week I said my goal was to get all our photos off the computer. Well, I did get that accomplished and then when I was finished with that, I was so motivated that I pulled out ALL my loose photos from the last how many years, and I organized them all by year. What a job!! It took me pretty much the entire week, but I feel so accomplished!!! It was a killer job because it meant sitting on the floor for long periods of time sorting through boxes, and my back was killing me. BUT, I had so much fun! The boys spent much of the time with me, looking at all the pictures and laughing about how they looked when they were younger. I now feel really motivated to get caught up on my scrap booking. I also feel relieved knowing that all my photos are in one place and safe.

Now that I have all the old photos off my computer, I need to get my old camera program removed from the computer and download the new camera software so that I can get some new pictures posted here. That is my goal for this week.

Baby Rolly-Pollie's, Oh My!

It all started back in October when our family went on vacation in California. While visiting My Honey's parent's home, the boys spent time doing one of their favorite things to do at Grama and Grampa's house. They search for rolly pollie's, also known as pill bugs, sow bugs, etc. We always called them pill bugs when I was growing up but somehow they have come to be known as rolly pollie's in our household. But I digress. Rolly pollie's are not to be found in the Mohave Desert of Arizona, so the boys are quite thrilled with them when we visit California. Normally they are able to find quite a few but, during this trip, they seemed to be sparse. Little Man gave up after a short search but Muffin Man continued on his quest. He ended up with six of the little critters and promptly informed me that he planned to bring them home with him. Being that our visit with Grama and Grampa was the start of our vacation, and the idea of lugging around bugs that would most likely die did not appeal to me, I tried to persuade him to let them go. He was quite persistent, and knowing how passionate he is about bugs, I finally relented. I made a trip to the local Target to pick up a few things I needed and while there I searched for some sort of a small bug box. Apparently bug boxes are a seasonal item and there were none to be had. I ended up buying a plastic travel soap box which was small and had air holes already drilled into it. Perfect!

That night at the hotel I spent a bit of time on My Honey's laptop researching rolly polly bugs, what they eat and how to keep them as pets. It turns out that rolly pollie's need high humidity. That would explain their absence in Arizona. The website informed me that if I put a bit of soil and dead leaf matter, a damp paper towel, and some potato or apple chunks in with the rolly pollie's, they would be as happy as pigs in manure. I followed the instructions exactly and pretty much forgot about them for the rest of our trip. I was aware that Muffin Man had the container and would occasionally open it and check on his bugs. I also noted that it spent time on the floor of the car, upside down, for at least a portion of the trip. But somehow, despite substandard care, all 6 little critters made it home to Arizona safe and sound.

Once home, I transferred them to a larger plastic container made of transparent plastic. I gave them a few small, flat rocks to hide under and some fresh soil. They have been sitting by the kitchen window ever since. I occasionally throw in a new piece of potato or spritz the dirt to keep it moist and Muffin Man occasionally spends time looking at them but other than that, they are pretty much ignored. Their home has transformed itself into a mini terrarium, as at least two of the potato pieces have sprouted. The roots have taken over the soil, creating perfect places for the rolly pollie's to hide and tunnel.

A few weeks back I spent a bit of time searching through the soil and roots to see how many of the little critters were still alive. I was amazed to find that all six were still active and seemed to be thriving. This evening, while spritzing the soil, I moved one of the rocks and discovered a teeny, tiny, baby, rolly polly!! It was small enough to fit on the head of a pin and almost transparent. I was so amazed. I spent a few more moments looking through the container and sure enough, there are at least a couple babies in there. I cannot wait to show Muffin Man tomorrow morning. I know he will be thrilled. I am excited to see how long we can keep these little guys alive and to discover how quickly they grow and reproduce. As shown by past posts here on my blog, we love to study the life cycle's of insects and here we find ourselves with yet another study and it wasn't even planned. How awesome is that?

So, anyway, I just had to share. I thought it was really cool that our little rolly pollie's have reproduced. How very cool it is to see all of God's creatures, great and small, as they live out their lives. How awesome it is to be able to study the things that we find most interesting. In Muffin Man's case, it is insects. My budding entomologist. How happy I am that I relented and allowed him to bring them home with us from California. Even the smallest and oddest of situations become huge opportunities for learning.