Beach baby

I did this layout for a couple of GDS challenges, I used another of Christy's fun kits. This one is My Man... Nathan was just being too cute at the beach today..

Kite Festival

Today is Mike's birthday so we spent the day at the beach watching kites and playing in the heat. Above is the first page of the day. It is all the first page I've created as a member of Christy Skaggs' Creative Team at GDS. It uses pieces from her fun Shabby Boy kit. Stop by GDS and check it out...

Travels Lapbook Day 1

Summer school is going well. Now that I have my camera charged again I can hopefully post some pictures of our "classrooms".  We found a wipe off calendar grid in bright colors at Staples the other day so we can officially have calendar time now. Thank goodness as Cameron was not happy about not having calendar time.

Today we finally got started on our "CARS" themed travel/transportation unit. We are making a lapbook/ activity book. A race track game using dice and little stampers from the Dollar Tree as markers starts off the book. We talked about writing home while traveling and postage stamps.. Cameron drew his own stamps (I think the 2 mini books about stamps are from the Flat Stanley Lapbook at HomeschoolShare's website. We also built a LARGE library pocket for a car parts matching game Cameron and Mike are going to make.  Since there will be a lot of activities in the book we put the lapbook inside an old folder I had from college.. I think it was an Avery brand folder in a portfolio style with 2 wrap elastics... Any way the folder is perfect for carrying everything and gives us some extra surfaces to decorate... Again the Dollar Tree finds were perfect, Cameron added some wallies decorations to the outside of the folder and then added a colored picture of DocHudson to the back cover.

Tomorrow we are going to the kite festival for the day and won't be doing traditional school, but might do some carschool and talk about traveling since we have an hour drive to the beach...

Mowing the Lawn

My husband loves his lawn mower and my boys love the trailer, so they combined their loves and got the job done... Mike mows the lawn at high speed so the boys get a crazy fun ride. Some days you've got to love them

Dancing with the Stars

WOW!!! What a night... 2 numbers stood out for me.. The Viennese Waltz and the Contemporary numbers tonight were incredible. Twitch was amazing with Kherrington, where did that come from... I was literally crying it was beautiful. And then Courtni and Gev another beautiful number. I almost called in... I don't vote on these shows but tonight I really thought about it. Can't wait for the results tomorrow.
On a note from last week... Honestly if Raven had danced on Pointe she'd still be here I'm sure... If you are a Pointe dancer then by all means use it... If you get put in the bottom 3 and have to dance to keep your spot , it is time to pull out all the stops and put your all in it. I was sad to see her go, let that be a lesson to the other dancers... Use your talents, show them why you are there.

Remember Tim

In my high school years I was very political and had very different opinions on lots of things. Now, I'm more conservative and more take care of it ourselves and leave the government out of my business. That aside, I still am not a big fan of political talk radio or television commentary, for the most part it drives me up a wall. But, over the last year or so I have come to enjoy Sunday mornings and Meet The Press on NBC. Since church service doesn't start until 1130 and we don't have to be there until 11 or so, I found Meet the Press and Tim Russert to be a good way to catch up on politics and the goings on. I was saddened to hear of Mr Russert's early death last week and touched as I watch NBC this week including Sunday as a tribute to a man who was solid in his convictions but approachable and sincere. Watching MTP had become my way of seeing the candidates for who they were not what they wanted us to see.
I only hope NBC can find someone half has committed and knowledgable.

First Blog on the "New " computer

I plugged the new computer in tonight and only ran into a few glitches... I am currently typing this blog on the new computer so all is good for now... I am running updates to Ubuntu and installing all my firefox friends, but all is good in my world... well in my computer world.

I'll post tomorrow regarding the Mommy life (I'm trying to recover emotionally from today on the Mommy front..) Raising boys in more than a full time job, it is hazardous to one's health.

Weekend in Review

Well the mommy minute didn't happen but I have some plans and the boys are going to help get some stuff moved out of the office.
Mike and I worked the Laurel Valley School of Dance Art Recital Saturday. It is mostly a labor of love as the school is small and a non-profit. Mike worked hard to get all the music cut and sounding great as usual and I did the lights. My light set up is simple but does the job. I caught up with some of my old dance friends again and reaffirmed my concerns regarding the direction the public school system is going. It sure isn't the same system I graduated from. I am glad I have options and support from family and friends in regards to my decision to homeschool.

I did get a couple more scrapbook pages done and posted Friday night.. Stop by Go Digital Scrapbooking to check them out.

Our friend brought me my "new" computer today. It is a little scary to me, but I think it will be fun.

Mommy Minutes

I started this idea a while back and thought I would revisit it...
Today, Cameron is off to the neighbor's house for a playdate and Nathan is suppose to be taking a nap so my "Mommy Time" today is going to be very calculated. I want to work in my office organizing (goes along with several of my entries). We are getting a "new" computer this weekend (it is a hand me down from a friend) so I need to make room for it...
My plan is 15 minutes in each Zone of the office (Kids desk area, reading area, my desk area, my scrapbooking area) the last 2 zones blend together as it is really 1 desk in a long L shape but they need the most help.

I will try and post some pictures of the progress... I hope to have the boys' desk area ready to move a computer over there this next week. Also need to figure out where to put up a chalk/magnet board..

Dayton FFA Nursery Flowers

In May the preschool took a field trip to the Ag Building at Dayton High School. I loved the colors of the flowers just sitting their and snapped a couple of flower only pictures. This is the first page since Helen's CT was announced. I used Helen's wonderful birthday lilac kit from GDS.





Both the following pages are from the same day and used a wonderful kit called Spring Bling again from GDS.

Creative Team at GDS

I love digital scrapbooking and have been playing around with it for a while. I hang out on several forums relating to digital scrapbooking. Well today I got one of the best emails ever. I am now a memeber of Helen's Creative Team at GDS. Your can check out my Gallery of pages and projects. I am so happy!!! Today is Helen's birthday and she is offering an awesome deal on her store at GDS... Check it out along with all the other fun things GDS has.

If you haven't tried Digital Scrapbooking yet, you have to try it... Think of it has all the fun we have with traditional without the mess or the worry of using that one last piece of great paper... You can always use that piece of Digi Paper again and again..

First Day Sucesses and Weakness

Tuesday was the first day of the summer school.
I learned a few things from the first day of school.
1. Circle Time doesn't have to be in a circle. I didn't have a circle rug but substituted our Paddington Bear rug.
2. 2 age levels at the same table is more challenging than I thought. C is 5 1/2 and just finished his first year of Preschool . N is 2 1/2 and wants to learn but is still so young. Balancing C's needs for attention anSo Todad structure and N's need for exploring and attention is Mommy's personal learning challenge.
3. Tying the story to the activity is more important to C than I thought. I misplaced our first storybook and had to really work to tie the activities of the day into the story without having it in hand. "Sir Small and the Dragonfly" is our story this week, we have read it several times over the past several weeks so we know the story, but without it in our hands it was a little harder than I thought it would be.
4. C may not like to sing or perform but music is a BIG part of our educational process. I don't need a clock as long as I have a mulit track fun CD. We found a great Christian Kid's Sing along. We had our clean up/ get ready song, followed by our sing and praise time song, then our play time music, we picked a song to bring us back to our activity time. Music is going to be a centerpiece to our program whatever it is.

Today we attended a Used Curriculum sale in town and found a "family" environment that impressed me, even though I only knew a couple people everyone was friendly and welcoming. We are new to the homeschool idea and everyone was so willing to share and offer advise.

Tomorrow we are back on schedule for our morning school day. Then off to Grandma's house for family pictures.