A school year Read-a-thon Kickoff

To start our school year off this year, I chose to have them do a read-a-thon.

In one week:
Pages read-- Cailin 803, Connor 357, Delaney 380 and Liam 35
# of Genres read: (types of books ie, biography, historical fiction, sci-fi, how-to etc.)
Cailin 3, Connor 4, Delaney 3, Liam 2
Most books completed total:
Cailin 7, Connor 2 (he didn't finish all of the ones he started), Delaney 8, Liam 3.

I got this idea from a homeschool blog. It was a fun way to kick off the school year, really encourage reading and, in their opinion, get free candy!!

My Sketches

 Hey this is Ryan. These are my first sketches done from photographs of anime characters, at least their heads that is. They are for my college classes. My college classes are in CAD. It stands for Computer Aided Drafting and Design.

Happy 6th Birthday Liam Boy!!

 Liam's one year old now.....and for his birthday breakfast he pick the nutritious meal of DONUTS!  with lots of sprinkles, (of course!)

 It was a 'birthday date year' for Liam, and although he would have loved planning a party, he had lots of fun planning his date too.
First he wanted to go to Dollar Tree and get a birthday balloon (check)
Then go to Macado's for lunch and get the massive brownie sundae (sort of check, we did go to lunch at a Chinese restaurant--his second choice- and he did get lots and lots of ice cream!)

 Next on the list was a movie--Smurfs 2.  (check and yes, Barry and I survived!) Even after lunch our crew put down 4 large buckets of popcorn, with soda to wash it all down.  (check!)
Afterwards, he wanted to go for a hike....this one wasn't quite completed, but he did have a great day!

 The next day, Granny and Papa came over for hamburgers, grilled corn and cake!!!  Presents were a must too!

 He got a 'search and find' type book, writing notebook with markers, some play swords and a dress-up vest.  He LOVES to play dress up.

 Arrrggh, Matey....

My sweet treasure!

A Week in Review.....

 This week has been busy....lots of mowing (when it wasn't raining), working in the garden, and getting ready for school!
On Friday, the girls and I volunteered at the Haymarket Theatre in Blacksburg for the Summer Musical Enterprises' rendition of Shrek the Musical.  The girls liked it.  Cailin just kept telling me that she wished she were on the stage.  This girl loves to act!  Her goal is one day be on Dr. Who.
After the show I dropped Cailin and Mikayla at 11 pm @ Mik's house for a sleepover.  Mikayla and Liam share the same birthday!

 On my 'to do' list I've had "weed asparagus patch" for quite a while.  Morning glories and crab grass were taking it over.  I finally got tow it and found this large preying mantis. I don't think I've seen one quite so big before.  He must've grown big and happy on all the bugs in the massive weeded mess I just cleared out.  Sad for him, but happy for my asparagus....they are starting to thrive and flourish.

After 1.5 to 2 years of NO camp outs for Connor's scout troop one was finally scheduled and completed!  Hopefully I'll have more photos later.  They went to Smith Mt. Lake to a Treetop Adventure facility and had fun climbing and walking among the treetops on ropes and rope bridges.

Family Home Evening Fun

Delaney has been eager to give the lesson for Family Home Evening for quite a while now.  She planned a wonderful lesson.  She told the story about Lehi's Dream of the Tree of Life and the Iron Rod.and gave her personal insights about it.  I had them all share thoughts they had of the story then Delaney, Liam, Cailin and I created this yummy looking fruit pizza.  Can you see the Iron Rod and the Tree of Life?

The flour game...pack flour into a cup. Invert the cup and hope the flour keeps the shape of the cup.  Place a quarter on top.  Everyone takes a turn and cut some flour from the cup formation until the quarter falls....but you don't want to be the one that let the quarter fall!

As a child we played this often for FHE....I forgot all about it until I read how Mom and Dad....oops, I meant President and Sister Stumm shared it with others at a branch activity in Africa.   My kids loved it too!  It's a keeper!

This is an excerpt from a letter to Ss. E. Stumm that Barry wrote about our FHE's once a month with others in our ward....

Last May my mom came to me with an idea, she began holding family home evenings and inviting one or two members that she felt were lonely or maybe felt a little distant from the church. Vicki and I picked up on the idea and have begun to hold one home evening per month in which we invite less actives, investigators, and anyone else we think would benefit, to our home for dinner and a lesson. The sister missionaries are always there and we have encouraged them to bring anyone they want too.

The upshot of this is that our last meeting in July brought about 32 people in. We supply the main course and everyone can bring whatever they want to the meal. Yes, we have some interesting food, but everyone is usually at ease and comfortable. We have about a 15 minute lesson and then everyone sets around and do what people do best, talk. I have been amazed at the response. So many people have come up and told us how much they enjoyed the meeting, and some folks come back each month. We feel the spirit there very strongly and have come to realize it is our best way to participate in missionary work.

I don’t know if you were here when Neal A. Maxwell visited our state. It was several years ago. One thing that he said was that there was a stake within our stake struggling to be born. I have thought much about that as our little family home evening program has taken off. I did not realize that so many people feel a distance between themselves and the gospel. I did not realize that offering some simple ways of fellowship could meet with such huge successes. I know that there is a ward in this town, waiting to be born. I feel it so strongly that it makes me a little scared to be a part of it. I am afraid of screwing it up. But I know that this is the time for this town. The work is here and it is coming. Our town needs it. We have a huge drug problem here and it goes from generation to generation. Also there is much poverty here as well as poverty in education. Yet I know that there are good folks here too, just waiting for the opportunity to hear the gospel. This ward will be built from the ground up by the humble people of this area. 

This week....

This week has been a humdinger of one, that's for sure!  Due to a ear breaking loud thunderstorm, which frightened the dogs immensely, they broke the gate to their fenced in area of the yard.  They have had quite a bit of fun terrorizing the neighbors (we later found out), but they now have a new home...expensive, but sound.  They won't be able to break free, chew it down to the nub or any other sort of destructive thing they have done with the wooden fence.  So far, Bailey hasn't even tried to dig out.  I don't think she will as long as her water dish is full.  We were quite blessed to find a used igloo house for $25.00 on Craigslist, as we needed a second one. There is a silver lining to this...now that we have more yard space and a more secure area from the dogs, we now have a place for chickens!  yeah!!  I can now become a homesteading, garden chic!

If this were the only glitch in the budget, then all would be well (all is still well, we just have no more savings) but, the transmission went out in the truck and Barry's large walk behind mower in two consecutive days!!

Tender Mercies came....we found a good truck, within our price range and we are able to get the mower fixed too. (This is still in the works)

It took the money we had saved to fix our heat source this winter, but, I'm bound and determined to get it fixed too, so it's a beans and rice, rice and beans diet for us and we'll save the money for the gas furnace and build food storage again later next year.

Another tender mercy was that just two weeks ago, I was able to fill our depleted deep freezer with rock bottom prices on ground turkey 40#'s at $1.33 and ~ 10 London Broil roasts for $.1.99 a #.  I also picked up chicken and various pork, also for rock bottom prices.

With all that food we'll be fine and I'll still have warm lovely heat this winter!

 This little lovely girl is growing out of her diapers.  I will be making cloth ones soon and that will mean more dresses.  She grew out of these cute bib overalls so I cut off the bottoms and added a skirt.  Right now I'm working on another one.  ......Ta-dah, I've finished it.  My need to 'create' has been fulfilled for today....take a look...pretty darn cute, if you ask me.

For the past month, the girls and I have been working hard to get ready for school this year.  We're making these planner booklets, Nature Studies books and a copy/dictation book for Delaney.  

I'm also working on lesson plans and schedules.

We've begun getting up at 7:30 am to read scriptures with or without Barry.  After hearing a talk about the importance of family scripture reading,--mostly the importance of consistency (From a quote by Elder Bednar) I've decided that I need to get over my insecurities and desire to only have family scriptures when we are a complete family.  Because of this, family scripture reading was always a hit and miss scenario in our family....now it is not.  

The other morning, as Delaney was reading about the 'corruptness" of the people Delaney kept saying Kaput instead of Corrupt ....we all laughed and enjoyed the moment.  Really, both words could fit quite well.  A corrupt nation is a kaput nation! (or people).

I canned 10 quarts of homemade tomato soup concentrate yesterday.  Mmmmm, it should taste delicious this winter!  

Well, that about covers the past two weeks.  The mowing business is going strong....too strong. The rain keeps coming and is making it hard to keep up with all the customers.  There have been plenty of days that the mowing crew has been rained out.  But, we won't complain.  All this is helping to build $$'s for missions...(if the mowers would stop breaking.)  Every single mower (total of 4) have some sort of issue.  But we really do see the Lords hand in helping us. 

 All is well that ends well...if it isn't well, then it isn't done!

Scouting Celebration

 Three of these young men have earned their Eagle Scout Award...and the last one will soon have his too.

Cory Hale, Ryan Hale, and Josh Witherspoon....who could have known that eighteen years ago these cute little baby boys would grow up to support and help each other in earning this high award.
Connor is currently starting his project too.
What a great group of young men.

 David and Nancy held a cookout to honor and celebrate these fine scouts.  It was a great time.

 A friend of Nancy's, from her college days, has a 24 year old son with Down Syndrome too--Tyler.  He was a delightful young man too.  I loved his hugs and wonderful heart felt prayer he gave to bless our food.

It's not fair!!! My pie quest continues.....

 Connor joined me on the quest of perfecting pie crusts.  He loves to cook and he's good at it too....so good that his crust--first time at it--was amazingly flaky and tasted good too.  Not Fair!!
Maybe it was beginners luck right?  Not so, second time around it was still fabulous!

 So, now he's responsible for making the pies for Thanksgiving!

I'll keep trying.  Here's my blueberry pie, satisfactory, but not great.  I'll just ditch the lessons and ideas from the internet sites I'm going to and watch Connor as he makes his!