My Creative Boy

A few months ago, The Husband let Bubby have a piece of scrap wood that was laying in the garage. Bubby sanded the edges, painted it gray and then painted his name on it in black. He worked diligently on that sign for DAYS.

Upon completion, we hung it up in his room and he took great pride in it. It has been there, hanging above his head over his bed. I have since come to realize that he has probably spent hours looking at it and trying to think of something more interesting he could do with it.

Last weekend, he had a grand idea that his Daddy was happy to let him pursue.

The wheels were removed from an old skateboard and the sign became a great source of fun.

Crazy boys ..... and yes, I mean the grown boy AND his son!

Hymns for this school year

We will be utilizing this book this year to help us learn these great songs of faith. I tried to choose the ones that were somehow related to our country so most were written by early americans. We will read about the origin of the hymns, their writers, sing along with them and use the lyrics for copywork. We had fun with a few hymns last year but not as many as I would have liked. I was quite happy to find this book to help us focus.


Here are my choices:

Doxology

O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing

The Star Spangled Banner

My Country ‘Tis of Thee

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Jesus Paid It All

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Sweet By and By

Blessed Assurance

Standing on the Promises

Trust and Obey

America, the Beautiful

Jesus Loves the Little Children

I Surrender All

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

In The Garden

Great is Thy Faithfulness

Charlotte's Web

Fancy just finished performing in a production of Charlotte's Web this weekend. We enjoyed it SO much. She loves theatre and really does a great job. She played the part of Edith Zuckerman. It was a great play and I was so impressed with all the kids' performances. They ranged in age from 8 to 14. She can't wait until next summer to participate again. They are thinking they may do either The Wizard of Oz or The Sound of Music. She would LOVE either.

Here she is (still in costume) with all of us.

Here she is with all her flowers from her fans (AKA Bubby, Nanny and Papaw and KK). She also got a gift of some body wash and lotion from The Husband's Mom (AKA GaGa). THANKS EVERYBODY for coming and cheering AND for bringing her goodies!

And here are her flowers after she arranged them all together at home.

Summer Fun

We went to a fun get together Friday with some homeschool friends where the kids had a blast "blowing up" Diet Cokes with Mentos. If you are unaware of this kind of fun, go watch this.

Here are a couple of our pics (I have more and better pics, but I always hesitate to post pics with other people's kids in them without asking first). Bubby thought this was FANTASTIC!

Wordle

I saw this on a blog I regularly read and thought it looked fun. Wordle took random words from my blog and created this:



Click it for a better view.

Let me know if you make one .... I want to see it!

Saying Good-Bye is NEVER Easy ............

We had to find our beloved Max a new home. The Husband has just been becoming more and more allergic to him over the years. It had become ridiculous to keep him. Letting him go was made all the easier when a good friend was excited at the prospect of adopting him.

We KNOW his new family will love him as much as we have over the last (almost) SEVEN years. They just live in McKinney so in theory, we will be able to see him some. In reality though, I acknowledge how hard it is for me to even keep up with regular visits with my sister (who is even closer than McKinney) so I just know we won't see him much (if ever again). We shall see.

Max, we love you and will most certainly miss you!

A New Niece Picture

Here she is at 19 months.

What a doll!!

I'm a Winner!!!

I just realized today that I won a copy of the book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver on the author's blog.

I'm looking SO forward to reading this one.

The Countdown is On

We are planning to start school back up around here on August 4th. That's only THREE more weeks of summer for us. I guess that makes me a little bit sad, but I am also excited to dive back in. The kids feel the same. They sort of whine that we are starting before all their friends, but at the same time, they have been excited to see the new curricula coming in the mail. Fancy has already started her Language Arts and is wanting to check out her Math that came Thursday.

Anyway, I am saying all this just to warn you that for the next few days (or weeks) I will be updating my sidebar with school info. It will be a work in progress atleast for a bit.

Hope you're having a GREAT weekend.

A Not So Minor Car Wreck

Ok, so remember this post? Yeah well .... I thought I was sad for my car then.

Last night on my way to work, I was in a pretty serious car accident. A car rear ended me at approximately 50mph. I was sitting at a stop light. The impact pushed me up under the car in front of me. It was the loudest, scariest, most traumatic 2 seconds of my life. I was in a fairly bad part of town at the time and having not seen the car coming at me, I honestly wondered for a second if I had been shot before I realized I had been in a car accident. That whole life flashing before your eyes thing is so true. I remember clearly having this split second thought of whether or not I would ever see The Husband and my precious kids again. After a quick self assessment, I realized I had no serious injuries .... but my poor little Jetta (which the kids and I call "Gretchen" - she is German afterall) .... did not come out of it so well.

I wish I had pics of the car that rear-ended me. It shows damage that is more indicative of the seriousness of the accident. My car, being top rated in safety, held it together quite nicely. Still, it seems according to preliminary opinions that Gretchen is totalled. Ugh.

Oh well, Gretchen is a thing and as we all know ... things can be replaced. I am so grateful to be unharmed .... and by the way, there were NO serious injuries for any involved parties. The driver of the car that hit me from the back went to jail. She appeared to be under the influence of some sort of alcohol or drug. I can't stop thinking of her as I know she sits in jail .... she looked like she has led a rough life. Please keep her in her prayers. I know God can use this event to turn her life around. I will gladly offer up the sacrifice of Gretchen if it means this lady can get her life together.

Ok, here are a few pics. The body of the car is twisted which is hard to appreciate in the pics. That is the reason it seems it may be a total loss. The damage looks so much worse in person when you can see the rippling in the body on the left side. The doors are jammed and hard to open on the left side of the car but not the right. Is is a mess.

Oh yeah ... and the one funny part - icky but funny - I happened to be enjoying a strawberry/banana shake on my way to work. It was EVERYWHERE in my car. EWWWW. I had to take a few pics of that too. Fancy thought I had thrown up after the accident.

This is what a LOT of the inside of my car looks like:

I am moving around like an old lady today .... quite stiff, back hurts a bit, headache, blah blah blah. Mostly I am just thankful.

One last thing: Thanks so much KK for your thoughtful gift today! What a great friend!

Church Camp

I don't have much in the way of pics but here are a couple:

Fancy, comedienne extraordinaire, AFTER camp (she let all her girlfriends "sign" her on the bus ride home) ... in SHARPIE. Ummmm..... smart one Fancy! She was a walking yearbook. No real biggie I guess, it came off after 2 or 3 showers.

Bubby BEFORE camp. He was SO excited. His after camp pic would have been of one tired boy. He was exhausted when we got him home.

I am so glad they both got to go this year. It was great hearing about all the fun AND all the things they learned. I was quite pleased with their retention of the messages they heard.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

We had a fun day at the Ballpark in Arlington last weekend with some good friends.

Here are a few pics of the kids:

Fancy and Bubby

Fancy, MK and AK .... BFFs =)

Bubby and his Bud WHK

Rockin' it out at the game