Fun on the farm

Uncle Jerry bought a go-cart last year. Kids were all too small last summer, but they are growing into it nicely. Now, if I could just chill out and let them enjoy it!!
This is the snuggliest cat EVER!!
Andrew's first fish! What could be more exciting???
The pond - great place to hang out for the afternoon!
Everybody caught one - and Alex even caught two! Although, he's pretty sure he just caught the same one twice, but it still counts!!


These are pictures from a recent trip to my folks' farm near Pawnee City. The kids LOVE to go there, mostly to hang out with Grandma, Pa, and Uncle Jerry, but for all this fun stuff, too!

Back to school

Amanda's locker after about the first hour of planning and decorating....I'll have to get an updated picture now that it's finished!
Elementary kids gathering on the first day to sing praises and pray together. Last year I bawled my eyes out through the whole thing...this year I was singing along and snapping pictures.
Jr Sr High Chapel on the first day....Amanda is towards the back in the center.
Andrew and his best buddy Jeremy. For the first few days they get to sit together, but I'll bet Mrs. Garcia will have to split them up soon! :-)

We are off to a great start for our 2nd year of "real school". It is going SO MUCH better than last year!! The kids have been doing a great job of getting up in the morning and all head out with smiles on their faces....and they still have smiles when I pick them up in the afternoon. No tears, no hiding in the bathroom to cry (for kids OR for Mom!), no long battles in the hallway, no visits to the counselor or the nurse....it's fabulous! Alex is a just a whole new kid - he has grown up SO much. Andrew has the same teacher as he had last year and is delighted (not sure if she's say the same thing!), and Amanda is adjusting nicely to the independent world of Junior High. She says she loves all of her classes and all of her teachers. Pretty good, huh?

We are thankful to be living so close now - our schedule is a little crazy! Amanda starts class at 8:00, the boys start at 8:15 and I start at 9:45. I have a break from 11:30 to 1:00 and then finish again at 2:00. Alex gets done at 3:20, Andrew gets done at 4:05 (staying for after school Spanish) and Amanda gets done with Volleyball at 5:30. If I went back and forth for each of those, I would be making 7 trips a day.....SO, I am thankful we live SO close!!! (and so is Molly!)

Backyard Wildlife

Molly and the kitty sitting on the back deck...


Momma and baby turkey....


A turkey that had flown over the fence into our backyard....and then struggled to figure out how to get back out! They really aren't all that smart!!


3 beautiful deer!!



Here are some of the critters we've managed to get pictures of in our backyard. The turkeys are regulars - we see them nearly every day. It has been fun to see the babies now, too! The deer are our favorites, but they only come around about once a week...mostly to snack off of our apple tree! We've got some really cool birds, plus I even saw a fox one day. Our dog and cat love it here the most, though - especially the cat. She is declawed, but spends HOURS outside and just loves it!!

Timber!!!

I got up early on Saturday morning and went to the grocery store....no problem. Was gone just about 30 minutes and came home to find THIS across our driveway! Thankfully, it fell while I was gone and not while I was UNDER it. And, thankfully it fell after I had already left so we didn't have BOTH vehicles trapped in our driveway. And, thankfully we have a very kind neighbor who owns a chain saw and a tractor!!

Bruce's Legion Baseball team

Bruce has been busy this summer coaching Legion Baseball. This is the "Teckmeyer Financial" team that is mostly Lincoln Christian students, plus a few homeschoolers. They are a SUPER bunch of guys and had a good season. It was fun to watch them improve throughout the season and so cool for me to hear from their parents about how much they appreciate Bruce's patience, encouragement, and influence. I always tell them that if he gets to " talk Bible and baseball at the same time", that's just his thing!

Eat, Spit, Be Happy

Eat, Spit, Be Happy....that's what it says on the front of the sunflower seeds package....and that's what we did last night! It's a baseball summer at our house for sure - Andrew is on the LCS 2nd grade team, Alex is on the 4th grade LCS team, and Bruce is coaching the LCS Legion Team...so we're spending plenty of time at ball games! (Amanda is on the LCS Jr High Volleball team, too, but I think we'd probably get in trouble if we started spitting seeds on the gym floor!!)

So, we are going through plenty of seeds....in fact, Bruce bought a huge box of them at Sam's Club to see us through. Well, last night, we were at Andrew's game and Alex said "Mom, did you know that some people can put a whole bunch of seeds in their mouth and then just open them and spit out the shells...all without using their hands?" So...guess what Mr. Alex learned last night! By the end of the game, we were having contests to see who could spit their shell the farthest! Gotta love summer!!

This is where we lived when.....

We closed on our old house and were there for one last time on Monday. Sitting in our empty living room, the kids and I played "This is where we lived when..." and each person took turns filling in the blanks. It was just short of 5 years that we lived there, but SO much happened during that time, and it was really neat to reflect back with them. Here are a few of the things we came up with :

....when we got Molly
...when Amanda fell off of the rock climbing wall
...when Amanda broke her arm
...when we started the Homeschool Band
....when we started going to "real school"
...when we met Alayna (a neighbor girl)
....when we met ALL of our new Lincoln friends!
...when we got our first hamsters (also when they died!)
...when we got our aquarium

Ouch!

You're gonna love this.....

OK, last night Amanda, Andrew, and I are all up in my room about 8:00. It's the Season Premier of Jon and Kate Plus 8 (we have free cable in our new house for awhile, so we're all in awe of the shows we NEVER get to see!). Anyway, I've been watching it off and on for a couple of weeks and am have lately been reading about their marriage troubles and am anxious to see how they handle things tonight.

So, I'm in the shower and miss the first couple of minutes while Jon is talking, but I walk into the room to hear Kate admit that she "has been pretty rough on Jon". I pipe in and add my own "yeah, she's a real rip sometimes". Andrew, as usual, is in his own little world not paying attention and messing with some toy. But Amanda asks "Mom, what is a rip?" I begin to explain that she is often very harsh with him and that she is pretty controlling. Then, without a hesitation and completely out of the blue Andrew pops in with his take on the whole thing and says: "Yeah Mom, not at ALL like you!"

Ouch.

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Oh, my baby is getting SO big!! Seriously, I can barely even pick him up anymore! Mr. Andrew turns 8 years old today. Can't believe it. He is an amazing little man....for all the gray hairs he's given me, there are a hundred more laughs and smiles....and even more hugs and kisses!

If you haven't heard me admit this before, I totally wanted him to be a girl....thought it would just be neat to have a girl, then a boy, and then another girl...had it ALL planned out. :-) But, God had other plans! ( and now that Amanda has hit the "wonderful world of pre-teen-age-dom" MAN am I glad that God doesn't answer to me.)

My Andrew is all-boy in so many ways, yet is still the first one to hop up onto my lap and give me a BIG hug for no reason at all. He still loves to curl and read books with me and always wants someone to play a game with him. He's also the one who can count by 9's further than ANYONE should be able to and has his piano assignment memorized one or two days after he gets it. I can not wait to see what God has planned for this kid!!

Andrew is one-of-a-kind in SO many ways and as I tell him often, "I'm SO thankful that God chose ME to be his Mommy."

Settling in

We got most of our stuff moved into the new house this weekend and are settling in. We still have lots of boxes to get unpacked, and we even still have plenty of stuff over at the other house. We don't close on that house until June 5th, so we have a whole month to finish clearing it out, so Bruce is just taking a vanload each day when he comes home from work.

This place is wonderful - so peaceful and relaxing. We have seen the wild turkeys out back several times already, and yesterday we had 4 deer walking through our backyard. One stopped to eat blossoms off of a tree, and the rest just strolled along taking their own sweet time on their way down to the creek. The kids(and Molly!!) have really enjoyed exploring through the trees and tonight they found part of a rabbit skeleton....cool stuff for little kids!

We're really enjoying being so close to school, too. I let the kids sleep all the way to 7am today and we were home by 3:35. I used to wake them at 6:15 and we'd get home a little after 4:00. I was able to spend the afternoon at home, too.....so now my part- time job is officially more part-time! Fun changes!

SOLD!

We put a for sale sign in our yard last Monday afternoon. This morning, only 7 days later, we signed papers to sell it.

Our realtor had told us that average time to sell is 25-45 days, so we were mentally prepared for several weeks of keeping it "showable". And, after taking about 3 years to sell our house when we left Beatrice, I suppose we were mentally ready for even more. But, not this time!! One tiny little week....only 2 showings and an open house and we got an offer, sent a counter-offer, and signed. We still have a 12 day inspection period, but otherwise it is a "done deal"....amazing!

We move into our new house on May 1st and are looking forward to it for SO many reasons! It is a cute old house on a beautiful 3 acres of trees and critters. But, mostly it will be nice to be SO close to school! About 2 1/2 minutes!! Today Alex was sick, and I couldn't justify the hour-long trip to bring him home (only to go BACK and get the other 2 kids), so we made him a bed in the van and he and I hung out in the parking lot for 2 1/2 hours. Plus, we're going to have an extra half-hour in the morning and an extra half-hour in the afternoon, too. And, my part-time job will now be more "Part-time". I will be able to go home when I am finished teaching which I really haven't done all year long. Bruce will have a drive, of course, but he is already planning to work from home one day a week. Exciting changes for us all!

A bright green cast

Yep, a bright green cast....that's what Amanda chose for her broken arm. Her first cast....after she was JUST telling Grandma the night before that she's never had surgery and never broken a bone.

The Lincoln Christian Parent Teacher Fellowship sponsors a few roller skating nights throughout the school year and Bruce took our kids on Thursday night. ( He is SUCH a FABULOUS Dad!!!) Anyway, partway through the night she fell and tried to "catch herself" with her right hand....then she skated around the rest of the night holding on to it because it hurt. Then, about 1:00 in the morning, she woke up just screaming in pain. We got her Tyelnol and ice and she got through the night, but took her to the doctor the next morning. Sure enough, 6 weeks in a cast for her. And, of course, it is her right hand....so we'll see how much "normal stuff" she can do....school, trumpet, piano, basketball.

A.W.O.L. Blogger

Wow, I have been AWOL for a LONG time, huh? Sorry. It really seems ironic to me that all the time that I was posting entries every few days, there really wasn't much going on. And, now that we have TONS going on, there is little time to post pictures or write about it. I have a ton of pictures on my phone that I could post....if only I could figure out how to get them off of there!

Most of our goings-on these days revolve around school. Alex's class continues to go on lots of field trips and have tons of fun. They went to Ag Awareness day last week and are going to the capitol building this coming week. I think they have 3 or 4 more scheduled before school gets out. Amanda is doing lots of extra chores and saving $$ big-time. She thinks she wants to buy a bass guitar, but has also talked about a laptop or now I'm hearing talk about a horse! She is in an Extended Learning program at school and has enjoyed running the "Crusader Corner" Store. They applied for a bank loan, posted collateral, ordered inventory, priced items, and run their own little store after school a couple of days a week. Mr. Andrew is a busy, busy little guy. He (and Alex, too) are taking piano lessons from a super cool 16 year old guy and they are both LOVING it! We have the electric keyboard in the living room, so often there is one boy practicing on it while the other one is practicing on the piano at the same time. It's chaos, but is literally "music to my ears" that they are practicing just for FUN!

The biggest news at our house is the contract we signed last night to sell our house. We have decided to continue at Lincoln Christian in the fall and are wanting to move closer. There will be a sign in our yard on Monday morning and we are hoping for it to sell quickly. We found a house only 3 minutes from the school that we just love....and MAYBE I can post some pictures of it soon!

The BIG day!

Andrew got up early Saturday morning and came into the living room with his eyes half open and still snuggled up with his stuffed dog. He curled up with me and said, "Mom, this is THEE BIG DAY, isn't it?" He was barely awake, but he knew what day it was and he was SO excited! The 2nd graders had a basketball clinic that afternoon - and it was the biggest day in his little 7 year old life! Such simple pleasures!!

Defining JOY

We have had a VERY rough week at our house. Each day of school is still a struggle for us, and after having been home together for 2 full weeks, it was incredibly difficult to go back and face the next semester - especially for me. I just enjoyed being home with the kids SO much and realized how good we had it "all those years." I have been praying for God to help me not take things for granted and he has certainly answered that one! (Another lesson in "be careful what you pray for!)

I have to admit that I didn't feel very joyful this week at all. I felt like I was on survival mode to just get through each day. I worked hard to keep my focus right and to look for truth past my emotions and hormones. I asked God to show me what He was doing and I hid under the umbrella of my amazing husband. Then, one day, for some reason, I looked up JOY in the dictionary. I found this:

JOY –noun

1.	the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation: She felt the joy of seeing her son's success.

2.	a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated: Her prose style is a pure joy.

3.	the expression or display of glad feeling; festive gaiety.

4.	a state of happiness or felicity.

Well, I didn't have delight, or happiness, I didn't feel satisfied, pleasured, elation, my son was NOT succeeding, I didn't feel appreciated, glad, gay, or felicity...whatever that is! But, because I looked it up on dictionary.com there were lots of ads on the page, too....including this one:

How to be happy
Watch this short video on the key To happiness and joy in knowing God
www.HappinessAndGod.com

Well, I didn't even click on it to check out their video....just seeing those words was all that I needed. Through all of my crazy hormones and emotions, I still know that God sent us to school this year, that He has a wonderful plan for us, and that He will go before us and see us through. And THAT gives me satisfaction, gaiety, elation, pleasure...and JOY. And peace. And strength for the next day.