Spring has Sprung!

The crocus are in full bloom reaching up towards the sun.

A bee rests his pollen covered body for a moment.

Another bee dives in to gather some of the yellow pollen dust.

Hi there Mr. Bee. I know you are as happy to see the sun and flowers as I am.

A boy tests his brother's water gun out to see if it's ready for action. It is.

Priorities.

What is it about this time of year that I start to ponder things that I want to do? I chalk it up to Spring Fever. We are still in full swing of home schooling. We have our struggles. We are a bit behind schedule right now (as we seem to be every year at this time). I sit here looking at the kids' schedulers and figure out how to catch up with classes. At the same time I long to do the things I want to do too.

Tim and I have already started to map out our year and trips that we want to take. We have a growing list of weekend trips we want to take the boys on. We want to take them up to Syracuse to the zoo. We haven't been there since Connor was a baby (he'll be 10 in two months), we want to go down to Philadelphia and take the boys through some historical sites. We want to venture over to Portland, OR and see if that is someplace we will want to live in the future. We want to go to Baltimore and take the boys to see the National aquarium. There will be trips to NY to visit grandparents. There will be trips to GA for more grandparents. We have to get this stuff on the calendar or we will end up doing none of it. That is what happened last year. We had all kinds of trips that we wanted to take but never did. Mind you, we still went away a lot (more than Tim would like) but we never seemed to get anything done that we wanted to. Our family trips have to be scheduled out so that they will happen.

Photography. Oh, how I long to get out there with my camera and go take pictures. There is a problem with that though. I am bored with my lenses. I want a couple of new lenses. Why, oh why do they have to be so bloody expensive? Also, I'm kind of tired of taking pictures of our dingy little city. That ties in with taking new trips. I suppose my thirst for better pictures will be quenched with some planned trips. I just need to figure out how to afford a couple of new gadgets for my camera.

Exercise. This is one thing that I think I might be getting a handle on. I don't want to say I've got it figure out because I know once I do, I'll falter and quit. We spent some of our tax refund on a new treadmill. I love it. It's so nice and easy to use. It lets me plug my iPod into it and blast whatever music I want. We've had it for two weeks now and I think I've walked on it almost every day. I ramped up from 20 minute walks to over an hour now. I struggle with the time it takes because I know there are piles of laundry that need to get done. I know that there is a good chance that there are dishes that need to be stacked. I am trying to look at my hour of walking as "me time". It's my one hour to go downstairs, get away from the kids, get away from the everyday crap that needs to be done and I can blast my music and slowly (much too slowly for my liking) get in shape.

Our home. There are a lot of projects in the house that I would like to get done. When? Who knows? Which one do we start on? Again, who knows? I suppose this should get penciled onto our calendar as well. We need to pick one thing and do it well and finish it. I know I would like to get our basement cleaned out. We started cleaning it out a month ago when we had a potential move pending. I don't want to move crap that we don't have to move. Tim and I spent a day down there going through bins. Needless to say, the basement is now a bigger mess than it started out as. We have a giant pile of garbage that needs to out. So, yes, I think the basement will be the first thing we should tackle. Then we can move on to other projects in the house.

Gardening. This is a gardening blog, no? It used to be. I started it two years ago when I tried my hand at gardening. I can now say "been there, done that". I haven't even started seeds this year. Why? I don't know. I guess part of it is because I can't think about planting a garden when we get 15 inches of snow. I'm sitting here at the desk watching the snow melt and seeing the birds flit all over the place. Spring will be here soon. I just won't have my seedlings ready. I think I've kind of decided just to hit one of the many local nurseries and buy my veggie plants. I'm also really wanted to plant more flower gardens this year. I would like to figure out how to get a nice flower garden in the back yard. Maybe back by the rhododendron.

Well, Connor's 15 minute break from Social Studies has turned into a 30 minute break as I try to get this mish mash out of my head. He's not complaining. It's just going to push back our day a bit.

Priorities. I need to figure them out.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Ain't that the truth?! You've missed me, right? It has been a long time since I've been here little blog. For that I do apologize. I have a laundry list of excuses that I may or may not hit you with. I have not decided. I'll see where my late night tapping of fingers on the keyboard takes me.

Why do I blog tonight? Why now instead of say, five months ago when I stopped. Short answer, I can' sleep. You see, my dear sweet hubby is out of town on a business trip. Man, that makes us sound so grown up now. He's in Atlanta meeting up with his new team. He flew out Sunday and will be home on Friday. We've been married 11 years in August and I think we've only been apart for three times. It sucks. I miss him. The boys and I are fine. We are doing our daily routine of school, reading, playing, etc. It's just different when Tim isn't around.

I told the boys we would have a sleep over tonight. They have been dying to sleep in the "big bed" with me while daddy is gone. I've been able to hold them off for two nights because I had some back issues but relented today and told them tonight was the night. I was in there sleeping with them but was awoken because both of them are snoring. Not cute little boy snores, but head cold snores. Maybe they are trying to make up for daddy not being here. Were they missing his snores? Who knows? I am now wondering if I'm going to get any sleep tonight at all.

So, what's new, you might ask? Where do I even begin? Does anyone really care? Huh...I just paused because I'm not even really sure. I guess nothing major is new. We are still living in the same home that we have lived in for three years. I think that is the longest we have stayed in one place in our marriage. That being said, we are itching to move. We are trying to figure out where to move on to. We came very close to picking up everything and heading to the opposite side of the states. Tim had a very good job offer in Oregon and we were soooo close to taking it but fear set in. Now, Tim's team is wanting us to relocate to Atlanta. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I did my time in the south. I'm in no real hurry to end up back down there again. The only plus to it would be that we would be 2 hours from my family.

School is still going well. We have our days when we just don't feel like doing much. On the other hand, we have days that the boys impress the hell out of me. We are sailing through our second semester now and we have our eye on the end of May, first of June to be done with another year.

It seems like I have worn myself out with this little post. Maybe I can go back and snuggle between my boys and try to get some sleep now. We have errands to run tomorrow and I'm hoping we can get them done. Aidan ran a fever all day. It broke around dinner time but it appears it is back now. If he's still running it tomorrow, the errands will have to get pushed back another day.

I'll try to get back into the groove of blogging again. I'll post some pictures soon. All of my pictures are on Flickr now and I feel like it's redundant to post them everywhere. I can sneak one in here and there though.

Night all.

Week (end) recap.

I could not have asked for a more perfect week last week. Both boys blew me away with their getting right back into the school routine. They were both so grown up about everything, from earlier bedtimes to going back to classes. I keep kind of pinching myself because it was perfect. It led up to a fabulous weekend.

Saturday ran smoothly. The plan right now is to have Saturday be our cleaning/laundry/errand day. That way we can save Sundays for a nice big breakfast and then football. I would say by 12:30 on Saturday we had the house cleaned. Tim did all of the floors and I did everything else (four loads of laundry included). Then I worked on menus and shopping list for next week. Then we took our weekly trip out to the dairy to get our milk and farm fresh eggs. The kids look forward to that trip because they get ice cream cones. Saturday night the boys got a surprise too. I had a party to go to so Tim surprised them with Pizza Hut. Now, we don't normally do chain pizza places because we have a really good pizza place down the street from us, but they saw a commercial for this pizza that the crust is wrapped in cheese and they've been longing for it since they saw it. They haven't had "real" pizza for a couple of months now since we've gone gluten free. Tim ordered the pizza without their knowledge and then piled them in the car without them knowing what was going on. They were extremely happy to find out they were having pizza for dinner. I had a great night with all of my friends from the Obama campaign. We had lots of margarita's and some amazing food. I didn't get home until 11 and I was tired.

Sunday I was up early with the boys and let Tim sleep in, although I could have used the sleep. It was a nice cool morning and I was missing cinnamon rolls so I looked up online to see if I could find a gluten free recipe. I did, and they were easy to make and the dough was so unbelievably easy to work with. The other GF doughs I've made have been crazy sticky and hard to work with, not these. They whipped up really fast and baked up nicely. It was so nice to smell cinnamon and coffee through the house. Like a Sunday morning should be. We then lazed around a bit and then took the kids to the park. The park was nice except for the inordinate amount of little bugs that kept flying into my eyes. The kids were annoyed with them after a while and they were ready to come home when we did.

Our day started with GF Cinnamon buns. Oh so tasty.

Partly cloudy skies, but on the cooler side.

Connor balancing his way across. He used to hate these things.

Aidan doing what he does best, climbing.

Patchy watching them to make sure they were safe.

A couple of races up the giant berm.

And a couple of chases down. Although the boys loved rolling down the hill the first time.

Today was another lazy day. Aidan and I did our shopping since we didn't do that on Saturday. Tim burned another pot of rice making the whole house get smokey and it still stinks in here. It's making my throat hurt. I say again, because this is like the third time he's done this. He's not allowed to make rice anymore. Thankfully, we were able to get out of the house for a couple of hours because we took the kids to see G-Force. I had hoped we could wait and see this once it was on DVD, but they were begging to see it. They loved it...me, not so much. They were happy though and that is all that matters.

Now we are two hours away from bed time. I've got our lesson plans all ready for tomorrow and we are good to go for another fantastic week. I'm tired tonight and plan on going to bed probably when the kids do because the alarm will be going off at 6:30 for Patchy's walk and then our week is rolling again.

Vindicated.

I am smiling from ear to ear today. I can't wipe the grin off of my face. I am so very happy. I am so proud of Connor. Why? Well, let me explain.

Connor's teacher called today to introduce herself and set up a day for her check in calls. She then asked if I wanted to hear the results to Connor's PSSA results from last years testing. I paused for a minute and said yes. We've been waiting to hear the results. A lot is riding on these results. There was a lot of drama last year concerning my ability to teach. So, when Miss Wagner told me the results I almost burst into tears. I did cry when I called Tim and told him. He scored "off the charts", he scored "advanced in both Reading and Math". Not too shabby for a third grader taking a big state test for the first time. I remember he was done two hours early on one of the days of his test. So, not only did he fly through the test, he ACED it. I could not be prouder of anyone right now. I'm so proud of Connor and I'm proud of myself. Never again will I doubt my ability. We have a good thing going and now there is no need to make any changes. He is taking two gifted classes (Reading and Science), he's taking the Junior Great books class, which reads above level stories and then they pick the stories apart. After they pick the stories apart on their live lessons, they have to do a project to go along with the story. I never felt he was behind...lazy sometimes, but never behind. So, today is a happy day.

I am also very happy to report that we have had a perfect week so far. Everything has stayed on schedule. Everyone is having fun and liking school so far. Yesterday was a really long day. I think I'm going to leave the schedule the same though. Monday and Tuesday are easy days and today was a good day. We were done with school by 2:30. Friday looks like it's going to be a longer day but I think it will work out. The easy beginning of the week helps us ease back into school, Wednesday is long, but it's half way through the week and Friday may be a longer day, but it's Friday. A weekend of fun will follow. I might have to tweak the schedule around the kid's live lessons a little bit but I'm happy with how everything is working so far. Live lessons are like conference calls. I suppose I should explain how exactly we do school.

Both boys are enrolled in Connections Academy. It's a "virtual" school. It's still considered part of the public school system, hence the need to take the PSSA tests. Instead of going to school, we do it at home. They supply all of the books. They supply the "learning coach" (me) materials. If needed, they supply the computers. Each child has a teacher that checks on them every two weeks. They have assignments that they have to submit to them and they get graded on. Like I said, the live lessons are like little conference calls for the kids. The teacher will have a virtual room that all of the classmates meet in and the teacher talks with them and they can chat amongst themselves. It's really cute to see them at the computer with their little headsets on chatting with their friends. We can make our own schedules up and take days off as needed. The kids love it. I love it.

Ok, enough about school. It's funny because for the longest time this little blog sat around getting dusty and now that school has started back up and we have a set routine, I have more time than I thought I would. I also have a theory about why I am feeling better and more in control of things. I am wondering if it's because I've taken the gluten out of my diet. I don't have the terrible mood swings anymore. I have my energy back. Heck, I've been able to get out of bed every day this week at 6:30 and taken Patchy out for a 30 minute walk. I've even been waking up before 6:30. I had thought that I would be exhausted and needing to be in bed by 8. I actually tried to get to bed early the other night and I was awake until 1. Long story short. I feel great and in control. That is a nice feeling after not having a handle on things for a while.

Speaking of morning walks, here are a couple of pictures from this mornings stroll. A nice foggy start to the day. It's been starting to feel like fall around here and I'm loving it.

Kind of creepy looking, but oh so awesome to be in.

Dew on the grass around 10 am.

The kids get a fifteen minute break between each hour class. They like to spend that 15 minutes running around outside. I noticed the dew yesterday and it was there again today. I thought it looked so pretty.

Well, Tim will be home from work soon. Then it will be dinner, Chicken Taco Chili tonight and then Tim is heading out to his Aikido class. I'm not sure what I'm going to do tonight. Probably curl up with a book or work on next weeks menus.

I hope everyone is having a great week too!! If not, tomorrow is Friday and then it's a three day weekend!

A good day.

No, let me change that...a GREAT day. I am writing about this so when (and I know we will) we have a bad day, I can remember that today ran perfectly.

I was actually able to drag my butt out of bed at 6:25 and was walking Patchy at 6:30. It wasn't easy. I had a crappy night of sleep, the second one in a row and it was cold out this morning. I had to dig out a sweatshirt before I head out the door. I had prepped the coffee last night so I flipped the switch as we were walking out and I had a nice big pot of coffee waiting for me when I got home. By 8:30 I had dinner in the crockpot, everyone had been fed and the kitchen was clean. I had 30 minutes before school and I was at a loss at what to do. I didn't really plan on having free time.

9 o'clock rolled around and I sat both boys down in the classroom. First thing we did was discuss the code of conduct for the classroom. Then we discussed our fun fact for today. I also told them how the schedule was going to work. One hour of lessons, 15 minutes break, one hour of lessons, 15 min break, etc... Then we jumped into the books. Aidan and I worked on one computer (Aidan had headphones to listen to his course online) and Connor was on the other computer. The lessons taught them their concepts and then each of them hit the books. They both loved their little dividers on the desk. The two of them worked side by side and if they needed help with something, they would let me know they needed help. The rest of the day ran along so smoothly. I was able to work with both of them (which I was not able to do last year very well). There was no arguing. There was no whining about having to write or do work. Connor even admitted that his hand didn't hurt with all the writing this year.

Who are these two boys and what have they done with the snarly ones?

Now, I know not to think that this whole year is going to run as smoothly. I do know that I am going to make a concerted effort to ease up on them. I do know that we will not end up in yelling matches over assignments. I do know that we are going to have more fun this year. I think they are up for it. I do know that I am loving being able to see my boys grow and get more mature every year. I love to see them love learning again. Last year, not so much. This year, they both seem ready to take it on. Here's to a seriously kick butt year. I feel like it's going to be great!

Aidan working on his handwriting pre test that we drop boxed to his teacher.

Connor working on his Skills for Success (PSSA prep class). He was taking his reading beginning of the year benchmark test. He scored 100 percent (advanced). I'm not surprised.

I hope everyone else is having a great day and week!

We are ready for lift off.

Today was our final day before school officially starts tomorrow. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day either. Dare I say there was a chill in the air today. We finally turned off the air conditioner and I opened all the windows up. I dried three loads of laundry on the line and I worked on this weeks lesson plans and schedules while the kids played.

Nothing but blue skies and cool breezes today. My clematis has climbed all the way up the side of the garage and I'm training it on a string across the patio to our carport.

Aidan's racetrack he drew on Nancy's driveway. It has crocodile pits that you have to take a ramp over, and walls that you have to jump over, and walls with rocket launchers on them that you have to punch down...or you can take the short cut on the right side and miss all the fun stuff.

Connor and Aidan trying out the race track.

Patchy keeping an eye on everyone...and happy to do so.

My favorite little piggies enjoying the cool grass.

It's now just after 8:30 pm and both boys are tucked in and headed to dreamland. They have actually been really good about adjusting back into a nighttime routine. The rule is lights off at 8:30. Well we were letting them brush teeth and all that jazz at 8:25 and then they went to bed. Connor has decided that he likes to read for a half hour before he sleeps. We have readjusted and now they start their bedtime routine at 7:45 with their butts in bed at 8 pm. Connor reads and Aidan either flips through a book or plays on his nintendo. He was just playing Big Brain Academy. I guess he's prepping for school tomorrow. I can hear them in there chatting to themselves right now but I suspect they will both be sleeping in about 5 minutes.

I am feeling pretty good about school this year. We are going to try to get some pretty strict routines down that will hopefully make it easier on everyone. One thing is that I'm not going to even think about laundry until Saturdays. That will be official laundry day. Another thing we are trying is Crockpot dinners. We've done it two days in a row now and it is working great. I get up and throw everything in the pot and then I don't have to do anything until I dish it out at dinner. It really helped today because while Tim took Connor to his karate class tonight I did another huge batch of tomatoes. I'm also happy because the first two weeks of school are four day weeks and I think that will help ease us ease back into hitting the books.

The rules are up...let's see if they follow them.

The apples are hanging. Sept is the month Johnny Appleseed was born. There will be a lot of apple activities.

The kid's workspace is ready to go. Oh, how I hope it always looks this picked up.

The dividers are mostly done. I had this idea for splitting up the big desk so that Connor and Aidan can focus on their own work. Connor's has his monthly schedule and a fun facts calendar and a list of the classroom rules. I would like to put more in there, but I don't want it to be distracting. Aidan's I'm going to have him write his "words he knows" as he learns them. He decorated his a little bit with some glitter.

And last, but not least, my new best friend. I had to go out and get a bigger crockpot. I had a 3.5 qt one and it always boiled over so now I have a 6 qt one and it works beautifully. I am so happy/excited that I found another blogger who blogged for a whole year with her crockpot. The best part?! Well, two best parts...One...all of her recipes are gluten free! and Two: she has a book coming out in October. I already have one pre-ordered. Check her out if you want. I've made two of her recipes so far and they have been really good.

Tomatoes. Ugh. I don't care to see another tomato for a while. Unfortunately there are bunch more out there on the plants. I don't think we are going to plant as many plants next year. Although they are really good. We picked a whole bunch of them on Saturday along with a lot of peppers and a couple of cucumbers. I'm not sure what I'm doing with the peppers yet and I'm scared for when Tim's haberneros are all ripe. I counted about 20 of them on one bush and he has four bushes out there. Yikes.

Saturday's harvest. Not too shabby!

Well, the clock just chimed 9. As I guessed, both kids are sleeping and I'm about to curl up with my new Country Living magazine. I have to get up early tomorrow to walk Patchy before the kiddies get up and then we start our first day. I'm pretty optimistic about how it will go. I hope I'm not singing another tune tomorrow night.