Loving Life

It's that time of year again!  The time when I look at the calendar and think, "School will be starting soon, I'd better get myself in gear and ready for this year!"  I spent some time yesterday thinking, planning, dreaming for this school year.  This is a new step for me as Abby will be starting Kindergarten this year.  I will have to learn how to teach three kids at very different academic levels.  There have been many before me and going along with me who have successfully taught three and MORE children at the same time.  I decided to take this opportunity of a new adventure and change how I do school.  In previous years, I had us doing our "core" curriculum first and then doing the "fun, elective" type stuff after we completed the core stuff.  What usually ended up happening is after a month or so of sticking to the schedule, I would lose energy and end up dropping the fun stuff so we could just get done.  I always felt so ...

I planted a peach tree a couple of years ago and this year we have peaches! It is quite exciting to me. This helps make a tiny dent into our summer peach consumption. I think the five of us consumed at least three half bushel boxes in two months. We had our first taste of our own peaches at lunchtime. Yum! Unfortunately, I see that squirrels like them too as I saw one run away with a peach as I came out to pick them. I also have some sort of weird thing going on with some of them too.  Almost like a fungus/mold - doesn't look like bugs are causing some of them to go prematurely bad.  Anyone out there with peach experience?  Part of it could be the extremes in weather we have been having.  Super wet, to super dry, to super hot.  I planted some apple trees at the same time as my peach tree.  Unfortunately, I will only have one apple off those two trees this year.  The last year that I had one apple, I picked it prematurely.  I was sad.  This...

We're ready for day three of our glorious vacation!  Aren't you excited?  While it was still very hot this day, it didn't feel quite as oppressive as the two previous days.  We started our day off right by cooling down in a cave - Spook Cave.  This cave is toured completely by boat with cheesy monologue from the guide.  The kids still thought it was pretty cool though.  And we remembered how to feel cold and goosebumpy again in the cool 47 degree air.  Here is David pretending to be thoroughly impressed by all he hears. They had more cheesy cutouts to pose in saying how much you loved Spook Cave.  Ana loved it.  :) David too! We had a picnic lunch at the campsite near the cave and went on to visit the Effigy Mounds.  David, Ana, and I had been there last year on a school field trip.  We enjoyed the hike and learning a little more about some history.  Abby unfortunately declared herself VERY tired and VERY thirsty about thr...

Day two started off sort of groggy due to the nasty night of "sleep" the night before.  However, the kids were delighted to get up and enjoy special camping breakfast.  I indulge them for breakfast when we camp by buying things I never buy on normal days - poptarts and small individual boxes of sugar cereal.  Mmmm.  They were so excited to wake up and have their breakfast.  Once we cleaned up from that, we went on a morning exploratory trip around the park.  There are some good hiking trails that we all enjoyed.  David and Ana especially enjoyed exploring all the little side trails that veered a little too close to the edge of the bluffs for my comfort.  We happily hiked along, with David and Ana running on ahead of us.  Abby was content to stay with us.  We kept exploring the park and found a cave.  It felt so gloriously cool after our very hot and sticky morning hike.  Here the fog in the bottom of the picture is the...

So I had meant to let you know that I wouldn't be posting for a week or so since we would be on vacation.  Obviously, I failed to do that.  So I'll let you know in retrospect that we were gone on vacation.  Unfortunately, we picked the hottest week of the summer to be gone.  At this point in our lives, our vacations mean camping and doing lots of outdoor activities since they are all either free or very low cost.  You will be happy to know that not only did I take our camera along on our trip, but I also took pictures!   So in order to not overwhelm you with the volume of pictures, I will break our vacation down into chunks so you can enjoy our vacation in installments. Day One:  We left Monday morning once we got the van quickly packed.  Our goal was to be out the door by 9:00.  We were in the van and ready to go by 8:48.  Woohoo!  We had an uneventful drive to Dubuque that included a coffee and donut stop along the way.  We ...

Ana found this cool little caterpillar in the garden this morning. So she brought it inside so that she could draw it.  She was quite pleased with the results of her drawing.  The caterpillar was then released back to the wild. It's green bean season!  This huge pile is just from my little garden here at home.  I have a bigger patch at my mom's that I will go and pick tomorrow. We went wild raspberry picking again last night after realizing that batch #1 of my jam was not going to last more than a month or two.  So I needed another batch to make.  Yum! The girls love to fill up this little basket with things from the garden and have a picnic together outside. I received this invitation a little while later.  It was in an envelope that said "Do not open unless you are hungry."  I was hungry so I opened it up.  This is what I got. "You are invited to a pikneke.  Tell David to come too.  Midel squere of the driveway." I found Davi...

Both Aaron and I learned some valuable lessons this past week.  We went picking for wild black raspberries last week and so I figured I would wear my old work pants and an old t-shirt.  Unfortunately, my work pants have holes in the knees (which is why they are work pants).  Normally this isn't a problem.  It does become a problem, however, when one is traipsing through poison ivy in order to pick raspberries.  I now have poison ivy on my knee (thankfully just one) and on spots on my forearm.  We went berry picking the following week.  I wore my "good" jeans that do not have holes in the knees and a long sleeved shirt.  There have been no more fresh outbreaks of poison ivy.  Lesson learned. Aaron's lesson regarded running.  He's been interested in trying out running barefoot as he's heard it greatly helps with injury prevention and he's tired of dealing with some nagging injuries.  He's run some on grass, but around h...

Once again, I failed to post over the weekend due to busyness, so you'll have to be satisfied with a small glimpse into what kept us busy this weekend. I picked David up on Friday from his week at camp.  He had a great time, but it sure was nice to have my favorite son back at home with us.  He got home just in time to rejoin his baseball team in their tournament quest for gold.  They ended up 3rd place overall.  David was thrilled to get his first ever trophy. I had a big case of "summer stomach"  this weekend.  Here is what our supper ended up being on Saturday: salad, green beans, snap peas, kohlrabis, beets, lemon-buttered turnips, and a hard boiled egg.  All of this was fresh from the garden, with the exception of the eggs, but they came from my friend Kim's chickens so it went with the theme.  I apologized to Aaron for him not realizing that he married a mostly vegetarian before it was too late.  Don't worry though, we made up for ...