Website and Stuff

Tim and I have worked and worked this week on making a new website! You can click the picture and check it out :)

A few years ago we started this really great history program in homeschool. Part of the program is creating a Timeline to chronologically display the people and events studied. I made a long strip of craft paper and started taping little drawings to it week by week. I loved it!



One Hundred and Fifty little pictures later, we have our website started to share the pictures with other homeschoolers. I hope that at some point it can become profitable through advertising or selling products, but right now it's just there to be used for free.

It's been so fun working with Tim on the website. One day we set up a little photo shoot to get some pictures for the site...



Thanks, Honey, for all your encouragement, support, and hard work!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, life kept trucking along.

William learned how to crochet!



Trevor harvested his indian corn...


Aren't they beautiful?


Grandpa had a birthday which we helped celebrate by making cards...




Here's Zack looking at his card with Grandpa on Face Time...


Also, Zack had a little life lesson about fire ants. And then he had a nice foot soak in some baking soda water where he got to play with his shaving toys...


He's such a good sport. I counted 30 bites!



And Samuel...well...I have no pictures :(

Baby is doing good...I'm 8 months now! Just 4 weeks till my due date. Wow.

More Lake and Summer Life

We went to the lake 3 weekends in a row! I wonder if that is our fix for the whole summer? This last time was for the 4th of July. It was lots of fun. We stopped and bought some firecrackers on the way down--per William's irresistible urging. And we made all kinds of yummy food to take with us. We had a great time. The boys (especially Trevor) spent hours and hours capturing wildlife: Dragonflies, moths, minnows, frogs... We swam and boated and spent lots of time just sitting watching the kids play.







Now we are back to normal life.



We decided to do school through the summer again. It works really well for our family. Tim has started doing a bible study with the kids first thing in the morning, and they seem to love it. This was the second week, and they wanted to to do it even on their day off school. They are going through a little Navigator study that covers the basics of the Christian faith, including scripture memory. It is such a blessing to my heart to hear their sweet voices (some sounding a bit deeper these days) saying their verses. They make memory cards, and I've noticed what hard work they put into making them look really nice. I snuck this picture from the doorway, not wanting to disturb them:



Somehow Zack has gotten into enjoying "playing" wii. He has his own remote (usually battery-less) that he punches buttons on and waves around. So Friday night we had family wii time before Zack went to bed. He loved it.



Saturday we worked on putting up food. The boys helped make salsa... (for hearts...)




It was really fun to work all together! Tim also brought in a LOAD of basil, so I made 2 batches of pesto. It is so much tastier than what we get from the store, and it doesn't have any cheese in it, so that's nice for Trevor.



I am almost 34 weeks along with Baby, and will go back to see the Midwife in Florida this week. Soon I'll start getting about baby things bit by bit to get Zack ready. We have already moved Zack into bed with Samuel, so the crib is just sitting vacant.

Time to go make smoothies...

Lake and Blueberries!

We are headed to the lake for the third weekend in a row! That is quite unusual for us :) It has been so fun. The boys all LOVE it there. The water is perfect for little boys...we have a muddy beach where they like to watch, and catch, minnows. The water used to be clear but I think the all the runoff from the rain the last year has turned it brown. They couldn't care less. Zack LOVES it out there. He would wade around all day.



We also have access to a boat and water trampoline that we like to go to. We take the boat for a 5 minute ride along the lake to a little bay. Before playing in the water we drive the boat all along the shore to scare away potential alligators (I put that in there for you, Mom). Zack wears his life jacket and likes to swim around in the water. It is pretty deep...maybe 15+ feet? The top foot or so is warm--like pee-warm. Under that the water is chilly, so we neither get too cold, nor too hot. I have no pictures of any of that because I am always in the water!! It feels so good on my big belly :)

This last trip we cruised around the lake, just our little family, while we ate a snack. It was delightful. William looks pretty sunburned here, and he was, but if I could just strip that towel off Trevor you would see his is way worse. He somehow made it a whole day without putting on sunscreen, and has been paying for it all week.


While we were cruising, Samuel said, "If I had a lifetime supply of fuel, I would do this forever!"

Today we head down again for the 4th. I made lots of goodies--Mom's cakey brownies, chocolate chip zucchini cake, rice crispy bars, and red white and blue jello. The kids helped. :)

We have been putting up all kinds of produce lately. Last week we went blueberry picking! The pictures aren't great--we went at dusk after Wednesday night church. I though you'd like to see anyway :) It was absolutely delightful. Not too hot, not really buggy at all, and all the kids had a blast. I could hear them running up and down the rows, finding the best berries, racing to see who could get the most, or the biggest, or the sweetest. Zack flitted from one brother to another, eating and picking. Everyone was happy. Especially me.







We bought 20+ pounds!! Everyone had an almost-full bucket (except Zack) and some of us may have had tummy aches from too many blueberries! Boy, warm blueberries straight off the bush may be the best thing ever. We froze bags and bags of them for smoothies. Last year we picked froze enough to last us almost all year long!

This week I also made another batch of pickles. We are experimenting with our recipe...trying to get the spices just right. I still have enough cucs in the fridge to do probably 3 more batches!! We also did 2 small batches of salsa. Can't seem to get the flavor we really want. I may just freeze the rest of the 20+ tomatoes sitting on my counter. The day I did salsa, I got rid of most of what was on the counter, and when I was done, Tim brought in as many more tomatoes fresh from the garden.

I found mangos on sale at Wal-mart. The sign said they were 88 cents, so I bought a couple. My receipt said they were 28 cents!!! So I went back and got more and cut them up and froze them for smoothies, too. I've also noticed it's peach season, so hopefully I'll get in on that after we get back from the lake.

Life is going well. A couple weeks ago Samuel had a raging case of hives from something he ate (?) He practically lived in the bathtub for 2 days, soaking in baking soda. He was covered in whelps. It got scary a couple times, but God brought us through. And then, sure enough, just like the hospital-phone-nurse said, after 3 days he was all better. And now Zack's head is almost completely healed from where he caught a frisky with it.

School is going good. Tim has started doing biblestudy with the boys in the morning, and I'm so glad. I know it is good for them to be taught by him, and good for him to have that focused time investing in them. It also takes one subject off my teaching plate. I love doing bible with them, and and glad Tim gets to, too.

Our heart-chart is still working pretty well. It works especially well the closer Saturday gets, when they see that they don't have as many hearts as they want. All day long it's, "What can I do for a heart?" They turn into real big helpers. However, sometimes I feel like if I hear them ask about hearts one more time I will scream. :) I'm sure the heart chart will come in handy as we are packing and loading up today!

Baby is doing good, I guess. Moving and hiccuping, and growing. I am almost 32 weeks, so just a couple more months to go. I'm not much of a plan-ahead person, even when it comes to babies, but I did buy a pack of itty bitty diapers the other day that I had a coupon for :)

I've got packing to do, so:

Happy 4th of July!