Visit from my Sister

This week I got to enjoy a visit from my oldest sister. She is both my physical sister and my spiritual sister and I am so greatly blessed to have her. This week we shopped, talked, laughed and just enjoyed each other. I also got to spend time with my neice which is always a joy.
Today we had to say good-bye. So we met at Cafe Brazil for breakfast with my sister's family -1. It was a great breakfast and lots of fun. Here we are all after we filled our tummies!

I realized that I do not have a picture with my sister so after the group photo we had our picture taken together.

I cherish the times we have together. I wish I could see my other sisters more too. There is nothing better than having a sister in family and in Christ.

Blogging Marathon

I realize I have not blogged in awhile, but that does not mean that nothing has been happening. So, here is a blogging marathon. Just keep scrolling down until you get caught up on all our doings!!! Sorry for the delay. I really will try to get better!! LOL

Funday Friday

Today is the last day of our Spring Break. We decided to spend it at the park. It was a beautiful, warm, cloudy day that threatened rain most of the morning. However, it held off and the kids got to enjoy the outdoors. They explored, hiked, played on the playground, captured a fish at the creek and enjoyed time with friends. We spent the day with friends from co-op and it was a relaxing time. The weather determined when we were finished. The winds blew up and the clouds darkened and then it began a light rain. It was light until we were in the car and then the skies opened up. It was a good day. We then came home and the kids watched "Alvin and the Chipmunks" while I blogged. We will have to get back to school on Monday with a goal of finishing up this year by the end of June. If we are diligent and barring any more complications we should be able to accomplish this with a few days off here and there.

Happy Birthday, Sweet 16!

Can you believe it? My baby girl is 16! Time goes by so fast. My sister is in town and we had planned to celebrate A’s birthday while she was here. However my sister could not be here on A’s actual BD so we scrambled to get everything together the day before! What fun we had shopping, planning and surprising!
We locked A in her room while we got everything together.

Come on down!

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you!

She has the most beautiful smile!


She asked for an ice cream cake. Thank you DeEtta for your wonderful recipe!!!

BLOW!!!!

She is always so appreciative of her gifts. She loved every one.



For her 16th birthday we bought her a purity ring. This ring shows her commitment to remain pure until the Lord binds her to her husband someday. Dad presented her with the ring....




It was really hard on Dad. His “little” girl is growing up.




These are truly bittersweet moments.
Happy Birthday baby girl. We are so proud of you.

MIDNIGHT!!!!!!
As you may recall we surprised her sister on her birthday with an early morning run to IHOP. Since her sister is NOT a morning person this worked out well for her. However, A IS a morning person so we had to really think to catch her by surprise. Leave it to her Tia Let to come up with the perfect plan! What if we wake her up at midnight and take her then?!?!?!? GOTCHA!!!!


Happy Birthday to you! Wake up!!!!! Happy Birthday to you!!!!

Happy Birthday dear A!!!!! Happy Birthday to you!!!!!

Off to IHOP we went!!!! Her cousin Erin joined us for the late night festivities too!

This was a great idea when we planned it at 11:00 that morning.....


Needless to say, we all slept late the next day!!!!!

Mom’s BD

Since my birthday is between A and J’s BD’s and Easter is usually in there, it is not uncommon for me to forget. However, the kid’s always come up with something. Here is the banner they put up for me that I totally missed for awhile.

It really was a busy weekend and day and so we were too busy to celebrate and truth be told, I was too tired. It was a good day....

However, Phil cannot stand letting things go by like that. He loves to make my BD very special and so a few weeks later I walked into the house to a huge surprise!!!!!
I was given a surprise party with a princess crown included!

Lemon meringue pie for my birthday cake! I love pie.

It was lots of fun with family and friends!

Building the Garden

Remember all our gardening books and our decision to build a garden? Well, here we are getting it set up. We are doing “Square Foot Gardening” and so we needed to build some boxes for a raised garden. Here are some scenes from our endeavor!
Measure twice, Cut once. Measure twice, Cut once.

B sawing our boards. This was hard work! J was her counterbalance! The rest were really good onlookers! LOL!


A really worked hard at preparing our fenced in area where our boxes would go.



J helping stack the cut boards.

Almost done!

Now for the nails,

Putting the boxes together is a family affair.

I love the way J and R help. LOL!

While waiting for the boxes to be finished the boys decided to come up with a game. They laid out the boards with the rule that you had to be on the boards at all times during the dual. They even had a hula hoop laid out that was reserved as the “healing area”. What do you mean “healing area”????? I can’t watch.



We have the boxes put together, the newspaper down, the seedlings are sprouting and now I just need to get soil and we are ready to plant! More later

2008 REACH CO-OP Spring Banquet

We celebrated our end of the year banquet on the 112th of April. We had display tables with the kid’s projects and science experiments on them before we began the performances. Here is C’s project. He had to build some thing out of K’nex that included wheels, pulleys and levers. He built a crane. He made sure it was weighted to keep it’s balance when objects were lifted and was able to use both wheels and pulley’s in his project.

Great Job CJ!

Here are “scenes” from some of the performances.
Here J and C participated in a pantomime. C read the script as J and others performed.
They had fun but could be very serious with the nature of the script.


C did a great job as the narrator.

A and J performed in our choir. A takes after her daddy and has been blessed with a really beautiful voice.

J did a great job and they both really impressed us! Great job girls!

The whole choir did a really good job.

The Drama class also did a black light pantomime to “Who Am I” by Casting Crowns.
Here you can see the black light “yours”,

Here is what it looked like with the lights on.



We did get this on video but I will need help getting that uploaded. I will see what I can do!

Here is another pantomime J was in. God has blessed her with the ability to act.


Grandmommy and PawPaw were able to join us. What a blessing to have them close by. We enjoyed our evening with them and the kids loved it that they could be there.
Wish you were closer Mom and Dad!!!! Love you!