Swim Party

These photo's are from the end of the season swim party for Newington Forest Neptunes.  I'm posting them, more as an effort to "stretch" my computer savvy skills.  There's a lot that can be done with computers now a days (good and bad, unfortunately) and I'm trying to keep up a bit.  I didn't necessarily edit them much, but added backgrounds to each, grouped them, and saved as one photo.  Not to bad, I suppose, for someone who tried hard to forget computer stuff after the first was born.

Tomatos

Finally!!  This is my second, large tomato to be ripe.  The first fell prey to birds or squirrels.  The four cherry tomatoes are actually the first to make it inside.  I usually eat them on the way in, right off the vine, warm, and with whatever dirt they might attract while on the vine.  Really looking forward to a sandwich for lunch right now.  HMMMMMM!!!!

Here's a close up, should be good for 2 or 3 thick slices.  :

More Swimming Pictures

The swimming season is coming to a rapid end.  We have three more morning practices, a Spaghetti Dinner Friday, Divisionnal's on Saturday morning, and team party on Saturday night.  It will feel so good to not have to rush to the pool first thing in the morning.

Thought that those who view my blog would enjoy seeing what the boys do while waiting for their event,  LEGO's.  It's a hit with a lot of the 8 and unders.  As much as mine enjoy swimming, I think bringing the things to keep them busy is more fun.

School Year is Almost here

We've gotten our Math and Language Arts curriculum's in; will be up and running soon. The boys get so excited every time we get a box in, especially if I say it's school stuff. Thing One is working on a Map of the United States Puzzle right now. His comment "Wow this is big!!", but he's still working on it. Both were excited about the language arts and extra spelling.

Now I just need to carve out time to understand Math and Language.

Relay Races

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Originally uploaded by donbecht

This photo was from the Relay race a few days ago. Ian's found another girlfriend

Wow

Okay, so if you've read enough of this blog, it takes me a few days to get photo's up.  

My wow, is that I wasn't expecting our main subjects for homeschooling next year in so quickly.  Five in a Row's (FIAR) shipping window is 15 business days and we got ours in 5 days, including the 4th of July.  Guess I will be able to plan out a large portion of lessons, next week, while the boys are at Vacation Bible School. 

Now we're just waiting on our order from Rainbow Resources, which included Language Arts, maps, and puzzles.  Haven't placed an order for Math yet.  We're trying to figure out if it's worth going to the Conference this weekend.  If we don't save more than $20 dollars (the price to get in and shop) it won't be and we'll wrap things up on-line.

Happy July 4th

Hi everyone and Happy July 4th!!  Will publish some photos, from the parade later.  Still have a bit of shopping to do and cleaning; then a few friends over.

Stay safe and enjoy your holiday.

Only one more subject

to order, Math, and we'll have next school year's curriculum taken care of.  We're going to another Homeschooling Conference next weekend and Math U See will be there.  Hopefully we won't have to pay shipping and handling by ordering it there.  Every little penny saved is like found money.

At least this coming school year, we'll have saved about 50 % on curriculum for two kids ( approx. $450.00) compared to last year for just one ($900.00).  With one year of homeschooling under our belt, we've learned a lot about ourselves and our children; we're better prepared to make better choices and a side effect is less money going out on textbooks.

Don't remember Christmas this early

My kids and I had a busy day.  We were at the pool for 8:00 AM swim team, home and doing chores by 9:15.  Guess I really should say I was doing chores (laundry, dishes, grocery lists, you know the usual stuff mom's do).  We visited with some friends for lunch.  What a treat for me as one of my friends cooks awesome food and I am married to a self declared picky eater.

Afterward we still needed to get to Costco for gas and groceries.  On the way home, my kids (mainly my younger one) started asking when Christmas was and started into his Christmas wish list.  He just KNOWS that Santa will bring him the $75 - $100 star wars lego set.  It had felt like a long hot day and almost wanted to burst his bubble about Santa; but I held my tongue and just kept paying attention to traffic and such.  If brought up again, may have to find some diplomatic way of getting him out of wanting those legos.

If not, maybe I need to make and sell a few blankets or something to earn a little extra cash for this Christmas.