First Day of Summer!

It's the first day of summer tomorrow and of course it's not nearly warm enough for me. At least it's not raining! Things are growing, the things we've got planted. Still need to do quite a bit of planting for the veggies we want. Reminding the kids every day to stay out of the berries until they're ready!

Tom has been able to be home a little bit during some of the clearer days and cleaned up the landscape. Between hosting road maintenance meetings at our house to try to fix our 3/4 of a mile of dirt road we live on ( you could lose whole families in the potholes ) and the paying job, not much else is getting done.

However, with the loss of a very dear friend this week, visiting her at her hospital bedside and having HER cheer us up with funny stories just days before going to her home with the Lord, somehow, the everyday - not - getting - things - done blues don't seem to matter and instead I've been enjoying something much greater. Time sharing thoughts and words with friends and family. Less sleeping, less eating, but more living and smiling and laughing. I'm ready to just enjoy this summer no matter what it brings.

Fair Games

There are always lots of games to join in on at the fair. My kids are so shy that I usually have to do quite a bit of coaxing to get them to participate but this year MN was big enough to handle herself in the penny / candy scramble.

Look at all that candy just waiting to be grabbed. MN came out of it with a load of candy to bring home and Little J got into this one too and was happy with his several pieces.

This is the first line up for the three legged race. There was a huge turnout at the community fair this year! I thought with everyone's gardens not doing so well and the economy and all that the numbers might not be too high for entries and the general public attending but Wow! Both days seemed to be crowded with people. There were 3 line ups like this in the horse arena for the three legged race.

Here CT stands waiting with his friend Aidan for their turn to race. Their ribbon that tied their legs together ended up breaking half way down the arena so they had to leave the race. Oh well, all in good fun.

KN and her friend Abby are ready to go and they made it there and back in a timely manner.

Abby is my good friend's daughter. Abby and KN are the same age and Abby's mom and I are the same age. I met her mom when we were 10 years old. Both of us were showing rabbits at our county fair. We've been "fair friends" ever since and see each other every year at the fair. It's fun now to have kids the same age who enjoy seeing and playing with each other at the fair!

I've been coming to this little fair since I was 11 years old and whether I was showing my animals, volunteering to work or judge there or bringing my kids to participate, I have only missed one year - 2008, when I had our 4th baby and just couldn't get over there. It's like a neighborhood block party for country folk. All of the people helping out, setting up, having fun, taking down and working hard here are our neighbors or live very close by. ( many live on our little dirt road. ) I'm happy my kids and husband enjoy taking part in something I grew up enjoying and coming up at the end of this month my oldest son will do something else I grew up doing - working / helping at the state fair with my mom! Oooooooh, I can smell those scones and the smoking barbecue pit now! Lucky kid.

Beautiful Wedding

After stopping by the Lavender farm we went to a wedding. The bride is a friend who I met when her parents hired me to babysit her and her sister almost 20 years ago. It was a lovely wedding and wonderful to be there to see her get married.

Our kids really enjoyed this wedding. Mostly because they were entertained by Kai who they love spending time with. Here all the kids are making their "Happy for Cake" faces.

Little J liked the food and cake too. Nice weather, nice wedding and neat because the reception was held at the same community college where I met my husband in 1995 so our kids got to see where we met.

Common Misconception #1

We had a wonderful visit with my cousin Jenny and her husband and their daughter yesterday. They were here for dinner. ( My husband barbecued. ) Their little girl and our 3 oldest went and played non stop together, outside and back in the bedrooms! The kids really enjoyed playing with their little cousin!

Above is a photo of Jenny and her daughter during a visit over a year ago. We are very fortunate to have quite a lot of family on both my side and my husband's side that we can also call 'friends'. ( Jenny married a great friend for my husband - both being Pacific Islanders, very family oriented and great at barbecuing! ) People we truly enjoy not only being blood related to but also enjoy getting together with on a regular basis. This got me thinking about a common misconception people have about homeschoolers. Something I got asked quite often growing up and still get asked today. Both my brothers and I were homeschooled and my husband and I now homeschool our children. When other people find this out the #1 question they always ask is " How do you get friends?" All of my homeschooling friends can also tell you this is a question they were asked.

I look around me now as I'm in my 30's and take a look at who my friends are and I urge you ( anyone reading this ) to do the same ... how many of your current friends did you meet in school and if you do have many of them for friends today - how many of those relationships are/were ones that were beneficial in learning attributes God would like you to have learned?

My point in saying that is - there's nothing wrong with having friends in school but if your goal is to meet people there and acquire friends - what kind of relationship and knowledge are you trying to gain by having them as friends?

As a homeschooler - yes, I had friends and yes, my kids have friends. I count both of my brothers as my best friends and when they and cousins got married we gained even more friends! When I got married my pool of friends doubled or maybe even tripled with all of my husband's family members. Besides the enormous amount of blood related friends we have, we also became friends with children in church, our local 4-H club, all of the fairs we spent so much time at showing our animals, the children in our neighborhood and we were part of a small homeschool group. My cousins Jenny and Brad... ( Brad shown here with his wife who is pregnant with their first son! ) grew up next door to us and are probably more like siblings than cousins. They are still our friends today. This handsome couple here - the Wilsons - are very close friends. We met Adam and his brother in church as young children and then were in the same homeschool group - getting together once a month to work on science experiments!

This is a photo of myself and my VERY dear friend who I met when she was 2 and I was 5. We were neighbors, then attended the same church, then the same 4-H club and the same homeschool group. 28 years later and we are still the best of friends! I find I have so many friends that I barely have time to keep in touch with all of them as do my own children.

I also find that during the few highschool years that I spent in public school - I made some friends, nice people who were fun but they were very shallow friendships and I no longer see or hear from any of them. Hopefully, my children will grow to learn that quality of friendship is greater than quantity of friends and that they can have a 'friendship' bond with their own siblings and family members that can last a lifetime.

3 - 2 - 1 - Happy New Year!

The last day of 2008 was spent at my parents house where they invited a few friends over to enjoy a wine tasting game hosted by my dad. We got to sample some very nice wines along with food to snack on.

Here is Little J trying his first tiny bite of Lefse. 'Grandma' gave him just a few teeny little bits and he seemed to like it! MN and Little J are visiting with one of their favorite people ~ Anna!

Anna makes their faces happy!

Practicing on Grandma's new smaller spinning wheel makes KN's face happy. Grandma is going to give KN spinning lessons in the new year! KN is very happy about this! As the clock neared 12 we gathered in front of the tv to watch the seconds count down, the fireworks go off and all the crazy people with crazy 2009 glasses and silly hats on standing around in the freezing cold just to see if their face might make it on television.

3 ~ 2 ~ 1 ~ Happy New Year!!! 2009 ! We all clinked glasses. KN and CT were wide awake with the adults. CT snaps a picture of Mommy with KN as the clock strikes twelve.

Little J's face is all squished on Grandma's arm as he snoozes his way into 2009. MN put herself to sleep on the floor in Papa's study. Twelve o'clock ! And ALLLLL's Well!

Happy New Year!

Moving a Blue Hydrangea

You know the scene from Rocky Balboa where he's training by running up the stairs? Yeah, the one with the theme song playing ... da da daaaaa .... da da daaaaa ..... yeah that one.

That was me on Saturday. Well, okay, my sweatshirt was black, not gray. Okay, and I look nothing like Sylvester Stallone. But the stairs - that was me - running the stairs.

We were helping our friends move out of their apartment, way up on the third floor. Everything had to come down to the Uhaul parked below and be carefully arranged and stacked by these two guys - my dad and Mr. Gooseshooter.

Notice the hands in the pockets? The relaxed 'lean' against the Uhaul? They were busy. No, really, they were but they weren't running stairs!

All of our friends belongings had to be carried or hand trucked down this flight of outdoor, concrete stairs ...

.... and this flight ....and this flight ...My legs are still aching. I'm not complaining though! I'd still have helped out even if they'd had four more flights of those stairs! I'm just making note of how out of shape I am! I don't remember my legs aching after helping these friends move into this apartment last year. Maybe it's being a year older , maybe it's because I just had a baby 5 months ago? Yeah, we'll blame it on the baby. Still, that sounds wimpy, especially when joining us to help with this move were our friends 'Wilsonclan.' The female Wilsonclan member is 20 weeks pregnant and she too was hauling things down the stairs and I bet her legs aren't aching! Tiny little thing. I'm glad I'm not pregnant the same time she is. I'd just look pathetic. She and Mr. Wilsonclan hummed the Rocky theme song for us as we went up the flights of stairs - back and forth, back and forth.

Moving our friends is actually more like fun than work - this has become an almost annual tradition, gathered together with Mr. and Mrs. Gooseshooter, Mr. and Mrs. Wilsonclan and Wilsonclan's mother, even James was back from space ( or Korea ) to join in! We get a lot of visiting in as we pass each other on the stairs to grab another load. Our friends got safely moved into their newly purchased house which you can see at the Blue Hydrangea. ( We even moved the blue hydrangea - it was heavy - it will look great in it's new yard! ) and Mr Wooley, although he did not look too happy confined in his kitty crate, I'm sure will adjust very well to his new home. We noticed the little yapping dog next door looks to be slightly smaller than Mr. Wooley so shouldn't be a problem and maybe they'll strike up a friendship?

At any rate, these friends, we know, would drop everything to come help us out and have before in the past. ( They were there for us, bringing us hot food and coffee when the huge storm December of '06, took down the tent we lived in for 6 months and we had no power.) These are good friends, friends for over 25 years, and any chance to get together is a chance we grab, even if it means aching legs for a few days after. We can actually say, we'll miss the annual moving party and maybe we'll just have a party each year to celebrate not moving? Congratulations on your new house and can't wait to see how you make it into your new HOME!

(To view the blogs of our friends and family just click on their highlighted names. )