What Have We Been Doing, Part 3

Visiting
We have been blessed to visit with lots of friends and family the past few months. Our friends, the Boyds, started our visiting season off in May. They travelled from Alabama to spent a couple of days with us. We had a great time catching up with them, and the children loved running around with their three boys. Our time with them was much too short!

We travelled to Baton Rouge for the Memorial Day holiday. Despite the fact that we moved away from there almost three years ago, we still cherish the time we get to spend with our Loiusiana friends! My friend Laura has a great talent for serving huge, delicious meals, and we were blessed to be able to eat her yummy cooking upon our arrival. Our dear friends, the Callahans, opened their house to us (which is not small thing when you have seven in your family!), and we loved spending time with them. I was able to sneak off to the outlet mall with Connie and Maryellen, and scratch my bargain shopping itch. We spent the last two nights at the "Morris Family Resort" swimming, fishing and bonding with the Stuarts and Butners. Our time in Baton Rouge seemed much too short! Unfortunately, I did not spend much time taking pictures!

Mamaw came for a visit for the Fourth of July, and she brought two special friends with her. The children were thrilled with their visit, and Bailey was especially happy that Mamaw was here to celebrate on her birthday! We loved our visit, and the time flew by!

My parents came for an extra long visit last week. We are used to only having them here for a couple of days, but this time they were able to stay for almost a week! It was wonderful! My mom helped me do a bit of "summer cleaning" and my dad helped in my flower beds and the garden. Mark and I were able to slip away on a date, and my mom and I snuck away to do some shopping. We all loved spending time with Nanna and Grand-Bob!

My friend Laura and her two boys are here right now, and we are having a great time visiting with them. There has not been a lot of sleeping going on, but there has been lots of bonding! I have really enjoyed my chats with Laura, and the older kids have loved playing hide and seek in the dark!

I am truly thankful for visits with friends!

What have I been doing? Part 2

Playing in our Pools!

We decided to "splurge" and get two new pools this year. I shelled out a total of $25, and we have most definitely gotten our money's worth! The thought of taking all five of the children to the public pool, is quite overwhelming to me, so they have had back yard fun instead. We really know how to have a good time!!!

What Have I Been Doing? Part 1

I have a hard time jumping back into the blog world after a lapse. I keep thinking that I should blog, but then I think, "No, its been too long. I have too much to catch up on!" So, today I decided I should just jump back in. I decided to simply answer the question, "What have I been doing?"

Gardening--This is my first year to have a "real" garden. By that, I mean that someone actually came on a tractor and plowed a portion of my back yard, and I actually planted seeds and plants down in the ground. The past couple of years, I have done square foot gardening, but this year I decided to kick it up a notch and put some of these 3+ acres to use. It was lots of fun to work in the garden back in March and April when the temperatures were mild. I was a bit ambitious, and planted 36 tomatoes (it turns out that is a lot!), peppers, onions, green beans, potatoes, corn, zucchini, squash and cucumbers. I started thinking sustainable thoughts and feeling all farmerish.

Then, June came, and it turns out that Arkansas moved a bit closer to the Equator. "Farming" is not all that much fun when the heat index is hovering around 100! I pretended that the garden was not there for a week or two, and a lovely crop of grass moved in. Mark suddenly developed an interest in the garden when he realized there is heavy machines available. He started talking about buying a tiller, and I started thinking that I never wanted to say the word garden again. I made myself get back out there, and I ended up pretty pleased with our first year. We had lots of cucumbers, zucchini, squash, tomatoes and peppers. We had one "mess" of beans (I have no idea how three rows of beans only makes one "mess". There is some weird garden math at work!) Just when I was getting tired of figuring out what to do with squash and zucchini, they died, and I did not mourn their loss too much. I made tomato sauce and froze 12 quarts, which made me feel a bit like Ma Ingalls stocking up for the winter.

Even with the heat, I really enjoyed my first "real" gardening experience. Mark found a great deal on a tiller, so we are officially committed to trying again next year!

Our Houston Trip, Part 2

We hit the beach in Galveston the day after we visited the space center. It was Eli's first time at the beach, and he loved it! He was not afraid at all. In fact, I really wished that he was a bit more afraid of the ocean! The seagulls really enjoyed meeting Eli. The hovered around quite a bit after they figured out he was a messy eater!

The other children had a great time splashing in the waves with their friends. Isaac and Bailey ventured out quite deep, and I had to keep bringing them back. Anna Grace and Olivia were content to splash around closer to shore.

The children ended up sunburned (my nomination for Mother of the Year award was yanked away!!). It was the first time we had been to the beach that we were not actually staying at the beach. We have always gotten up early and done our beach time in the morning before the sun was most intense. This day we were there from about 10:30-2:30. I put sunscreen on them in the morning, but I did not reapply enough. The water really pounded the sunscreen away! Isaac's face was especially fried! Oh well, a lesson learned! Overall, it was a wonderful day!

Our Houston Road Trip

We took a trip to Houston with three other homeschooling families. Isaac and Bailey's co-op class studied space this semester, so we decided to take a "field trip" to the Johnson Space Center.

We headed out on a Thursday morning to travel the 550ish miles. It took us approximately 50 hours (or 12, I can't remember!) with all of the bathroom stops. We had a picnic lunch at a park in Atlanta (Atlanta, Texas that is!). The children had a great time travling with their friends. We seemed to trade children at about every stop. We hit Houston at rush hour, which is quite a shock to our small town selves. Olivia said, "There sure are a lot of cars in this town!"

We hit the Space Center on Friday with about 2,300 public school children (I am not exaggerating this time!). The children immediately jumped on the giant playground. Isaac was disappointed that he was too tall to play on the play structure. He really is growing up! We spent the day touring the center, and doing quite a bit of waiting in line. We saw some really neat things. Eli was not too interested in the movies or exhibits, so Mark and I took turns entertaining him.

One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the origianal Mission Control. I have seen it in movies and on television several times, so it was neat to see it. I now have a better appreciation for the huge amount of time and effort that have been put into the space program. I was also struck by the lives that have been lost. I enjoyed seeing the Saturn V close up. Our two youngest girls really enjoyed looking at the fake green grass that was under the Saturn V. They completely ignored the rocket, and marvelled over the plastic green carpet!

Mark and I enjoyed the center, but we agreed that our family would get more out if it in about five years. There is not a lot of "hands-on" activities, and our children (especially the younger three) lost interest in the movies and displays. It is worth a return visit if we are going to be in the Houston area again. We will probably check and see how many school groups will be there before we decide to go for sure. Their system does not seem to be equipped to handle large crowds.

Olivia's "Pretend" Birthday Party

We had a birthday party for Olivia last night. Her official birthday is not until Saturday, but a week night worked out better with every one's schedule, so we had it a few days early. Anna Grace called it her pretend birthday.

We had twenty six people over to help us celebrate. Olivia wanted to eat pizza, red chips (Doritos), orange drink and Sprite for supper, so that is what we ate. I was happy because it required very little preparation on my part! After we ate supper, we had princess cake and ice cream. Olivia loved her presents, and the children had a great time playing. I enjoyed chatting with the adults!

We will have a small celebration on her actual birthday and Olivia will get her presents from us and from her grandparents. I am very thankful for friends to celebrate with. I am also thankful for my Birthday Girl!

Family Night on the Farm

The girls have been in a Little House on the Prairie book club this year. Each month we have read one of the books in the series and then met with the club to discuss the book, do activities and eat snacks from that time period. We have really enjoyed it. Isaac has enjoyed it to, because he gets to play with all of the boys while the club meets.

The last book we read was Farmer Boy, which is the story of Almanzo Wilder's (Laura's husband) childhood. One of the other mothers in our book club lives on a farm, and she was willing to host a family night on the farm. So, Saturday night we loaded up the family and headed to the farm!

We started our night with a cook-out (much of the book was about all of the good food they had to eat). We then went out to call the cows in for dinner. The cows were pretty shocked to see all of us standing around waiting to watch them eat. One of the bulls got a little riled up, so the children got a first hand view of why you should stay away from an angry bull!

Bailey got a long splinter in her hand, and was pretty upset about it. Thankfully, one of the dads is a vet, so he was able to take care of her. What a blessing!

The children then rode on a trailer pulled by the tractor and headed to the barn. They got to see chickens, goats, a peacock and a turkey. I suspect all of the animals will need some therapy after being invaded by our crew!

We finished off our night with a ride around the farm. We stopped at the top of a hill overlooking the farm, and the children looked for lightening bugs in the dark. The temperature had dropped, and the lightening bugs had burrowed down in the grass, so the children dug for the bugs instead of chasing them. We sang songs on the way back down the hill. It was a wonderful night. We were exhausted, but happy on our way home. It was the perfect way to end our book club!