Want to take a look?

. . . finally updated the photo of how I came up with our boys blog names over on the right side of the screen.  The picture explains itself.  Here it is again, so you don't have to scroll down any!

In 2004, for Halloween, they went as Thing One and Thing Two.  I was really into making costumes with sweats as the base so that they could be used again.  The shirts for 2012 were just because.  Kevin and I have "Parent 1" and "Parent 2".

Parent 2

P.S. this is my 500th post since I started blogging! Some months I wrote a lot; some months were sparce. I am finding that I enjoying writing more, the more I do it! Wonder when I will hit 1,000?

Fall

We are getting hints of fall around here!  The weather the last few days has been incredibly cool!  Almost time to pull on a sweat shirt weather.

Yesterday, a few things happened that helped make Fall feel closer and more real.  First, when we start having cooler nights, the air pressure changes and the tire pressure light comes on in my van (Yee Haw, that happened).  Second, while at therapy with our oldest, went to use my phone, and it was totally dead.  Not enough power to say it was dying (I'd mistakenly left the screen saver thing to permanently on by mistake).  Anyway, went out to the van to charge it for a bit and walked through a few crunch leaves that we'd missed on the way in.  That was kind of nice!  Third, when Thing One and I got home, Kevin said it had gotten "to cold" with whole house fan on so it was shut off.

This morning it was nice to wake up feeling a bit chilled as we'd left our windows open all night.  A pair of socks and our winter comforter would have been nice.  Knowing our area, we are due for an Indian Summer sometime soon, then followed by "the real Fall".

In the mean time, I'm switching back to hot coffee and just need to find a good fall creamer now.  Any suggestions?

Fall Sunday's

First weekend of the school year.   Everyone I know around here is back in school; public school, private school, home school, college, masters, you get the picture?

Although not all things have been added to the "school year" calendar, most has.  We've had Tae Kwon Doe, baseball, shopping, cleaning, organizing, grilling!  Still coming up is church and Sunday school followed by lesson prep and an extend family dinner.  Doesn't get much better.

Well, that isn't entirely true.  We had a big rain store that dropped the temperature over 20 degrees yesterday.  That was NICE and this morning it is still quite nice.  I hope to get to a few fun Fall type things this afternoon.  What's on my mental list, here's a peek:

• make a "BOO" sign; something like this but my own take on it.
• make Candy Corn Pretzels; however mine will have yellow and orange "chocolate" and white sprinkles
• bring out a few fall swags (berries and leaves)
• put out some fake pumpkins (we still need to shop for real ones)
 

If you'd like more fall ideas, here is a link to my Fall pinterest page.

Happy Fall Sunday folks,

Jennifer

~ Momentary Thoughts ~

This evening was another divide and conquer evening.  It's baseball season for Thing Two.  By the way, Washington Nationals team is doing REALLY well this season.  Thing Two's team name is The Nationals!  :)

Thing One was home from TKD, we'd had our English Muffin Pizza's, and he was off playing on his IPod.  I took the quiet opportunity to just sit on the deck (with a glass of wine of course).  Was interesting to hear the different birds talking to one another.

There was the angry hummingbird, who I evidently disturbed by coming out onto the deck.  Some will go into the trees and watch to see what is going on, then come back to the feeder when they realize someone is just sitting down.  Not this one!  He hoovered, flew away a bit, came back, circled, hovered, and flew away for the time I was on the deck.  I'm thinking, "Bird, you're crazy!  We both want quiet.  I don't plan to bug you!"  It was a loose for the bird.


Somewhere uphill, it sounded like a momma bird was getting after her brood.  If you could putting words to the tweets, it would have sounded like a teenager coming in late, after school, with a bad grade.  Could just hear the "Really?  First week of school and you already have a bad grade!"  Made me snicker.


Downhill somewhere, and again putting human sounds to animals, it sounded like two teenage girls, unwinding from the week of school (can you tell school just started?).  It was just tweet, tweet, twEeT, tweet in a happy chirpy sound.

The contrast between the last two sets of birds just made me snicker.

 

Birthdays

Kevin's birthday is today! Nothing to special had been planned.  School, dentist, life still needed to happen.

No surprises on presents either!  :(  Here's a look at his presents this year:

Although he was with us when these were bought,

it made for an easy, good breakfast that we don't buy

all that often.

A box from each boy.  Again, not a surprise!

We had catfish for dinner and for dessert - ghirardelli brownies; home made vanilla ice cream; and home made, hot fudge sauce.

 Now it's time to unwind from a long day of life and start all over again tomorrow!
 

What does homeschooling look like?

For every family that educates their kids at home, school will look a lot different, from one day to the next and from one family to the next.

At our house (and a few other home schooling families I know), the first day of public school is WAY different than a "normal" day of school, just because we want to emphasize the flexibility of home educating.

Ours looks something like this, for today anyway:

• up to early in the morning, as I had to much going on my mind.  Mostly I wanted to make sure that I had time to make t-shirts for the family.  An idea I had awhile back to make new Thing One and Thing Two outfits for the boys.  The last was done in 2004 around Halloween.  It was time to update the picture on my sidebar!

 October 2004

 September 2012

• Got the shirts finished, washed, dried.  Got myself ready for the day and Thing One and I were out the door for what we thought was 2 & 1/2 hours of therapy.  Due to illness and other unknown reasons, it was only an hour!  Woo Hoo, we got to come home early.
• Oldest was eager to get to NEW math and wanted to watch the related video.  Lucky me!  I misplaced the DVD, but found it after a brief frantic search.  He breezed through math and grammar and almost forgot spelling.  Thing Two did his while we were at therapy.
•  While Thing One was plugging away at his work, life kept moving on.  I spread out at the dining room table to pay bills and such.  Charlotte was in her spot like today was the same as any other day.

• Took some time to go out to lunch and run a few errands.  We decided to go by Cafe Rio as they have $1.50 tacos on Tuesday.  Awesome, inexpensive food and par for the coarse we saw folks we know from church.

Men in my life!  Kevin has "Parent 1", I have

"Parent 2".

• We came home very full and still had Mystery of History, Five in a Row (Roxaboxen), and Beyond Five in a Row (Cricket in Times Square) to read through.  This is how the boys entertain themselves while I read, a Klutz Lego set.  Definitely worth the money.  This set is only brought out during school

• Now we are transitioning to afternoon events and divide and conquer.  Errands for Co-op on Thursday and baseball practice for Thing Two and TKD and Scouts for Thing One.  I may go crash and burn for a few minutes.

This, like I mentioned, is a rough sketch of a day in the life.  Hope your day has been wonderful.

Crock Pot Meals

Our days seem to be crazy! School, therapy, sports, church, youth group, worship rehearsal, scouts, co-op, mom's meetings!

I'm in the process of trying to find good crock pot meals for those days where I can find time to fix dinner, in the morning, but not in the afternoon.  I do have the "Fix it and Forget it" books, but there seems to be a lot of recipes that use a can of "Cream of ______" soup.  Will give it another reading, on another day.  For now, here are a few that seem promising.

Beef Stew
Easy Slow Cooker Pot Roast
Fiesta Chicken with Rice and Beans
Slow Cooked BBQ Ribs
Lasagna
Texas Pulled Pork
Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Okay, spent some times looking for recipes; this is a good start.  If you come back on another day, look for "crock pot" under Labels!

The 1st of September

Have been back up and running for a couple weeks or so. Turns out there were loose cables within the works.  When Apple took it apart to diagnosis the problem, they fixed it by putting it back snuggly.

So now that I am back up and running, I've been updating various lists and such (boys summer reading) and need to get to my 1,000 gifts list (I found some from awhile back I want to add).

Now to working on adding audio books to computer, then phone for our car rides to Gainesville once a week!