Just a quick note

I know I haven't updated in a few weeks. We have been crazy busy. We have gone to Green Meadows petting zoo, Florida Forever for a photo shoot, and other places on between. I have new pictures I want to post.

I will hopefully get that all up tomorrow. We are enjoying the cooler weather so we haven't been in the house too much these past few days. So check back soon and I promise I will have updated about the fun stuff we have been doing.

Have a wonderful week. We are getting ready for the Fall Festival at church tonight. Unmasking God's Heroes. What a great way to celebrate fall.

Already Finished

Can you believe that it is only October and Zach is already finished with his MUS Gamma book? Shay is finishing her Algebra 1 book Monday. She will continue in the honors book but by November she will be done also.

We started slowing down to Math 3 days a week over a month ago. But they still flew through the books. They are flying through the science books too. We decided to take November and December off and they will still be done with all of their stuff at the end of February!!

I did buy the next set of MUS books for them. Zach will start Delta in January and Shay will start Geometry than also. Until than they will do practice drill and Shay is in a math league. Its called Math Counts and they meet every Tuesday. So she will still have work to do during that time.

We are starting to work on making some warm clothes for our trip to North Carolina. We are going to spend Thanksgiving there. My in-laws own a home up there and they are leaving for vacation the first week of November. And we will be joining them the weekend before the holidays. I am so excited!! I haven't been up in the fall weather in sooo long. I am going to have sooo much fun!!! So are the kids. Steve wants to see if we can find a place to go snow tubing. I hope we can.

Okay, I know this started off as one thing and lead someplace else altogether.... That is how my brain is working lately.......

Back to the school thing. We are making warm pj's for the kids. That was part of their birthday gifts. They each got a tool box full of sewing tools and fabric to make some clothes. They just didn't know for what. So in our free time we will have more sewing time. And even though our mentor is leaving, I just noticed they are offering sewing classes at our church starting next week. That will work out perfectly.

See, if I don't schedule the time for classes, the sewing wont get done and neither will all the gifts I am working on.

I will also have baking classes during the off time but it will centered around Christmas baking. Zach & Shay are excited about this part too. More Zach than Shay. She helps me often with dinners now. But she really enjoys baking. As long as its not bread. Which she has mastered and is tired of making. Speaking of...I just told her to make the bread dough so it can rise. I got a dejected "K" for a response. But she will have fun when I tell her tomorrow we can make sweet roles out of some of the dough.

Well, I better run just in case she needs an extra set of hands. And I hear my book calling me. Have a wonderful weekend.

Rain, Rain Go Away.....

Well, it has been raining here for two days now. Normally that is no big deal. But the sunshine is gone also. So the house is dark and gloomy. I have a high strung kiddo that has the sniffles and is bouncing off the walls.

I am feeling depressed. I had a hard time getting out of bed. I heard the rain again this morning and it flipped the "why bother?" switch. And I fell back asleep. It was like I was drugged and couldn't wake up. Now that I am awake, I have a headache. Not sure if its from the weather or staying in bed too long.

Just call me Eeyore today. Grey and gloomy and I can't find my tail........

Freezer

Well, it looks like we need a new deep freezer. Shay went to get chicken out for dinner tonight and it was thawing. We had to throw out some food but have saved most of it. We will have to cook it all tonight and I wont have to cook this weekend. Lots of leftovers........

Gardening

In August we started growing plants from seeds. We have had fun watching them grow. A couple weeks ago Steve built us this stand so we could hang our plants topsy turvy style. As you can see in the above picture it is going pretty well. We have 2 types of tomatoes hanging and 2 types of cucumbers. We still have more tomatoes to hang. I have to scrub out the buckets first.

I know, you are all probably thinking we are crazy for starting our garden now. But in Florida you plant you garden in the fall and winter months or else it will get destroyed during hurricane season. Not to mention its too hot here to grow tomatoes during the summer. The shrivel and die.

This is our yellow squash plant. It is growing in a regular container. It seems to be fairing well, so I didn't want to move it and chance killing it. Its flowering already so I will take that is a good sign.

This is a container with more cucumbers in it. We didn't have enough buckets at first so we just left these ones in here. They are flowering now too so we will leave them alone now.

These are all the other tomato plants we have growing. I need to get them into containers tomorrow or in the ground with streaks to grow up so we don't lose them. The white container in the side view is a butterfly garden. Once they bloom they are suppose to attract butterflies. We planted them from seeds too.

This is our last set of plants. In the eggs are pepper plants that we planted straight out of the peppers. In the big container is a passion fruit vine that we started from seeds. We are hoping they take off. I love passion fruit juice. If it works, next year this time we should have tons of passion fruit. We also have a star fruit tree but I didn't take a picture of that one.

Baby No More

Zach being silly

Darth & Matthew

Cool guitar lamp.

Tug of war.
Girls beat the boys....

The rip stick

Well, Saturday Zach turned 8. He is my baby no more. Not that he has been for a while. But where did the time go?

My kids love the way we do birthdays around here. They have a party with all their friends during the day and than for dinner we have the adults over. Grandma Jean couldn't make it this year. She was sick. But we had a nice turn out for the kids party and the adult party.

We had chicken, beef, and chocolate fondue for dinner with all the adults. Zach invited our chiropractor, Mike and he came with his girlfriend, Adreana. Paul, Helen & Randy where here, Roger & Tali and Poppy Andre. It was a nice turn out.

Steve, Shay and Zach got tickets to Sea World with Paul and Randy for Sunday. So I guess you could say that Zach had an awesome birthday. He even got to show off his stitches. Which came out on Monday.

Believe it or not his favorite gift was the sewing kit I gave him. It is a blue and white tool box with lefty scissors, seam ripper, magnetic pin catcher, blue pins, measuring tape, rolling cutter, needle threader, fabric for several projects and matching thread. Shaylin got the same thing except all her stuff was pink and her box was yellow and white. I couldn't fine a pink one.

I fell trying out his new rip stick an dgot a stren look from Dr. Mike when he found out. I laughed and told him it was job security for him!!!!

How was your weekend???