Hello? Is this thing on?

Where to begin....Have a seat, you may be here a while.....

We've been pushed head first into our  wildly busy summer. It's been a while since I've written anything, of course I know you're all frantically desperate to know what we've been up to. I'm taking a stab at that humor thing again, working? Ha!

Last week was our final week of the school year. We had our final meeting with our ES and were declared DONE with 7th grade. Whew! We have one more lesson in Social Studies/History to finish, but I am holding off until right before school starts. In 8th grade we will be doing Early US History,  our final 7th grade lesson leads us into that. I'd rather it be fresh in their minds. We will continue with math over the summer, math skills seem to be easily forgotten and I don't want to spend the beginning of the year playing catch-up. We have received some of our 8th grade curriculum already, mostly math and the manipulatives for Pre-Algebra and all of our Advanced Physical Science experiments. I am going to scour over the internet this summer to find an acceptable History curriculum. The California Standard text books are boring not very detailed. They try to sum up a range of hundreds of years in just a couple of paragraphs. It'd be nice to find something a little more detailed. I did find an awesome book on the Constitution at my favorite thrift store last week. Score! Oh, and I got a full Strong's Concordance for just $1.00. I was stoked. Anyhoo, I ordered Emily and Julia's unit study curriculum. They will be starting Kindergarten. I will write a blog post on our curriculum once we get closer to the school year. I don't even want to think about most of it for the remainder of the summer vacation.

Last weekend, Adam went on a “roughing it” camping trip with some of his friends. The four of them went to  Indian Valley Reservoir. This is not your Mama's camp ground. They had to 4-wheel in, sleep with huge fanged spiders, and dig latrine holes. There aren't showers or bathrooms. Each day they would pack up the trucks and go on a 4-wheel excursion and camp where ever they ended up.  One of the guys nearly lost his truck in the river. He hit a deep spot and it started to float away, luckily the passenger hopped out and tied it to a tree. They were able to get it out of the water but there was some flooding that killed the stereo and power seats. I'm sure that was scary. They fished, and shot their guns, lassoed lizards and did "man" stuff. It sounded like quite a weekend. I was happy that Adam as able to get away and relax. He works very hard and it’s nice to have a break.

The wives of the men who were camping, and I all went to our girlfriend’s daughter’s 1st birthday party. It was a Hawaiian Luau, with a roasted pig and everything. She had a ton of activities for kids to do; the kids had a great time. I made a wooden initial bow holder for the sweet little girl. She always has the most darling bows in her hair. Here are the pictures:

(click pictures to enlarge)

Our 4H year ended this week. It was quite the feat to finish the girls' record books and get them turned in for judging. They took 12 different projects (classes) this year. Each project has to have a report turned in detailing what they’ve learned at each different  meeting. Most of the projects only have 4 or 5 meetings, others have 7 or more. In addition to the project report pages, they also had to make a Personal Development Report and list all of the other activities and community service acts they participated in. They have to include pictures of activities of their choice and work samples, it all goes into a 4H report folder and has to have 5 divided sections, their picture, a table of contents and a cover page. It's a big deal, they get judged on it. We only submitted ours to be judged at club level this year, next year we may submit it to compete at a county level. The record books were due Wednesday. It was so much work the girls vowed to stay on top of it throughout the year next year so it's not as overwhelming. Kiley and August have several different 4H things they are entering in the County Fair this year. Each has 3 different art projects, and August is also submitting a quilting project and a table setting. I really am enjoying the 4H program, as are the girls. Our particular club has a daytime 4H group; this is the one we belong to. It's all homeschooled kids and their parents. The girls and I have developed some wonderful new friendships. I am grateful we found this group. 4H offers such a wide variety of learning opportunities(our club doesn't do animals). This year the girls' projects were, Healthy Living, Quilting, Physical Science, Educational Games, Mini Mall, Softball, Musical Presentation, Cake Decorating, Fine Arts, Arts and Crafts, Table setting, and Drama. We meet twice a month on Monday's for an entire day. Our club has some wonderfully fantastic kids. There seems to be a different type of maturity in homeschooled kids, I've come to discover. They also participate in various community service projects and competitive areas. Kiley and August both signed up to work at the 4H cake booth at the fair this year and August has signed up to be an official 4H photographer next year. This is all in addition to their regular school subjects. And people think that homeschooled kids have no socialization and stay home all day. *humph*  Actually, our ES Charter School supervisor said my girls do more than any kids she's supervised.

We signed up both sets of twins for city league soccer this year. It will be August and Kiley's 6th season playing, and Emily and Julia's 1st. Kiley and August are fantastic soccer players. Kiley is one of the best goalies I've ever seen. I played soccer for 15 or so years, and loved it. I'm glad my girls share my love. Emily and Julia are thrilled to be playing this year. Haley will be continuing her basketball career, which coincides with the soccer season. Are you starting to see what I mean by our wildly busy summer?

I have no idea when I'll get back on here to write more so I'm just going to put as much as I can now. Aren't you fortunate?

I came across this charming little organic herb box at Trader Joe's. It has Basil, Oregano, and Parsley. Isn't it cute?

Yesterday I baked some snacks up. I have been making my own granola bars for a couple of months. They are so much better than the store bought ones and my family gobbles them up. It's hard to keep them in stock.  I made 36 yesterday, I'm sure they will all be gone by Sunday. I turned my very ripe bananas into two loaves of banana bread for our breakfast this morning. I am NOT a breakfast person. I really am bad at making/eating  breakfast. My poor, poor kids usually fix cereal or eggs. I'd much rather cook lunch and dinner than breakfast.  Oh well, can't be perfect in every area *snort*. 

And I'm about ready to wrap this up. Emily and Julia are going to spend the weekend with my Dad and Step-Mom. They are overly anxious to go. Weekends at Grandma and Grandpa's are ALWAYS great fun. 

Father’s Day is fast approaching June 19^th. I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing for my Husband/Dad/Father-in-law… I have a feeling, with as busy as we are, it’s not going to be as exciting as it could be. I think I may just take the kids to the store to pick out gifts for their Daddy.

Have a fantastic weekend everyone. God bless.

*ETA, I can't figure out why my post is in two different colors. I can't fix it either, oh well.*