Thank You...

To all of the men and women who have served our country and who are currently serving our country! May you know that your service is appreciated!

Cool Catholic Toolbar!

This is so cool! I was just notified that my blog is one of the Catholic blogs featured on this really neat tool bar for Catholic homeschooling families.

I downloaded the toolbar here and was checking it out. There are tons of resources right at the click of a button. I am impressed by the resources listed and quite honored to be a part of it. Thanks, Angie, for letting me know about this!

I recommend clicking on the link on my sidebar and consider downloading it yourself. It looks like it will be a handy addition to my computer!

Post Vacation Post

I haven't been around for awhile. I'm sure you can tell that based on the date of my last post :) Lest you think I've fallen off the blogging wagon, we had a chance to take a bit of a respite last week and had a nice time just relaxing. It was nice (the weather was good and no one got sick), but it is always hard to jump head first back into the rat race. I just kept thinking all the way home that I'm so tired of multi-tasking! Is multi-tasking a necessary part of our lives? Were we created to multi-task? I think not, but it seems that it is a necessary evil if we want to get everything done.

This past week also taught me that the "almost" end of the school year is not a good time to go on vacation! Everyone seems to think that the school year has magically ended. Alas, it has not. The two soon-to-be graduates are almost done, but sadly the others must forge ahead for a bit longer. Once we find the house again (you know, the one buried under the laundry and long grass), we will hit those books and hopefully finish up soon.

Speaking of school, the kids kept insisting that they didn't have to learn anything while we were on vacation, but that didn't stop them from getting excited when we had lunch on Saturday in Georgia and visited the "Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History". Prior to our visit, I didn't know anything about the Civil War's great locomotive chase. We got to learn all about it and see the "General" him (her?) self. We are such suckers for a Civil War site!

Well, once I get caught up on everything, I hope to have a few classic photos to share. Right now they are all still on the camera and I haven't gotten around to getting them off yet. In the meantime, I hope your school year is wrapping up the way you would like it to!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

It's time for "Kids Say the Darndest Things" again! This week I've got some good ones from some of the other kids. I thought I'd give Mr 5 yo the week off.

All three of these have to do with misinterpreting things that were read. The first one was from Ms 14 yo who was reading something a friend wrote. Her friend wrote that she had just visited the Naval Academy. "Eeewww," thought Ms 14 yo, "I wonder what kind of place that is?" She had an ah-ha moment when she realized it said Naval academy and not Navel academy!

The next one is also courtesy of Ms 14 yo. At Wal-Mart the other day she saw a rack of baked goods with a sign that read "OOPS...we over-baked". "Hmm," she thought, "these don't look over baked." Another ah-ha moment...

Then, not to make her sister feel bad, Ms 11 yo, on the way home from Wal-Mart saw a sign in a parking lot that said, "No Semi Parking". She vocalized her thoughts to us: "How do you semi-park?"

Maybe it was something we ate?

Happy Mother's Day!

A foretaste of Heaven!

Have a blessed and happy day!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Here with another entry for "Kids Say the Darndest Things", which, of course, is coming from Mr 5 yo. It isn't that no one else is funny around here, it's just that...well...I guess he's just the funniest...and he's cute, too! (Of course, not that no one else around here is cute...)

Setting: Sitting together in our den preparing for our nightly rosary. Everyone is taking a turn saying their intentions...

Mr 5 yo: "I want to pray for mommy and daddy and 17 special intentions."

I guess we need to define what "special" means...

Math...ugh!

As the traditional end of the school year fast approaches, we stopped to take a look at where we are at. Fortunately the two who will be graduating in June are right on track. I think they were motivated :)

The rest of us are a bit behind in everybody's favorite subject...Math. Unfortunately we've just had one of those years, what with packing, moving and unpacking right before the holidays then getting more involved in "The Seven Last Words of Christ"...Math is just one subject that you can't read about or learn about effectively in little snippets. It has to be done on a regular, consistent basis in order to get through it.

So, needless to say, we have four students who are behind in their math books. With Mr 9 yo and Ms 11 yo I decided to put the brakes on and go back and spend some time reviewing. I've been in the situation before with math where I press ahead so we can stay on track and finish the book, but I've realized now that it doesn't get us anywhere if the student is having issues with some of the basics.

To help them out, I found this great website that has all kinds of math review problems on it. I finally decided to just go back to the beginning and see where the holes are. Boy was I surprised. The extra practice that they've been getting has really made a difference. Of course they moan and complain through it all, but they'd do that no matter what math we were doing.

I'm glad I decided to do this, even though it means they might be "off-track" for awhile. As much as I'm not a summer homeschooler, we will have to press on through the summer with this so that they don't lose the ground they've been working so hard to gain. Hopefully we can stick with it and catch up for the fall, but even if we don't I know that going back and working on the basics was definitely the right thing to do.

May Wanderings and Musings...

Welcome to May, the month dedicated to Our Blessed Mother. Here she is standing in her new spot in front of one of our big evergreen trees. It is so nice to have trees again! At our old house we had about four trees on five acres. Here we have a nice smattering of trees.

We have a bunch of fruit trees: some apples, pears and a cherry tree. We, of course, know nothing about fruit trees and haven't had time to really research them, so unfortunately this year will have to be a "let's see what we're lucky enough to get" year. We were told that once the apples grow, we can watch the neighborhood deer stand on their hind legs and eat them. Too bad they don't do it during hunting season!

I also found some grape vines growing.
Again, I know nothing about growing grapes. Maybe a little holy water on all of these will insure some good growth :) I guess I figure that anything we get will be a blessing. I just wish someone in this house had a passion for growing things :)

Our entire house is surrounded by those lovely round, white rocks. Not necessarily conducive to growing pretty flowers or anything like that. Today, however, I found this sprouting up in the midst of the sea of rocks:

I do believe that it is a rose bush. Don't know much about growing roses (can you tell that I don't have thumbs that even approach a shade of green?) so I'll just pray for a pretty rose or two.

Now these I added today to help spruce the place up.
I love hydrangeas and hope to be able to keep these alive for a long time to come. At least they don't seem too hard to grow.

And now for something completely different:Of the three items shown here, which one do you think I like to drive the most. I'll give you a clue - it isn't the big blue boat, nor is it the too-low green one. Yes...it's the bright orange, zero turn lawn mower. I've been waiting a long time to get back on the lawn mower. I'm so glad that we found a house with a lot of grass to cut (although there are other members of my household that definitely disagree with me :) I enjoy being out in the sunshine, soaking up my vitamin D for the day, just thinking and praying and pondering...can't hear a thing and no one can bother me. I get the part of the property around the house, so it's kind of like an obstacle course...much more challenging than the open parts of the yard!

So, welcome to May and my post of random thoughts and pictures. I love this time of year. I love being able to look around at all that is blooming and growing and appreciate the beauty of God's creation.
Hope you are enjoying your May, too.