there was a mother of five that got up early every morning, prepared three nutritious meals for her family, cleaned her entire house, educated her children, attended college herself and mastered sewing in her spare time.

WAKE UP!!!

I have just realized that it is July and I somehow overlooked reporting our homeschool grades in to our umbrella school. For both semesters.  My garage is still full of stuff that I have not gone through since we moved into our new house last December. My garden was never planted.

BUT….

I have conquered a lot of spring cleaning.

And I have done some serious steps so I can start college for Fall semester which starts Aug 19th. I am very excited about that. Twenty two years later…..but better late than never, right?

And I am slowly but surely learning to sew. I have done pretty well with mastering one pattern and need to make two more skirts in the new week using that pattern.

And that’s pretty good considering I have had NO spare time. Summer has been full with kids at camp and company coming. I have not had any time to take any pictures or read even. Well, except that I am reading test prep books so I can enter college. I am not too worried about it but hope I am not being overly confident. I took some entrance exams at another college this past Feb and did well. I remember all the English reading/writing stuff, it’s just some of the math.

Hopefully, I will one day live that fairy tale, but it’s not going to be today. And as they say, tomorrow doesn’t look too good either.

I am going on week 3 of being sick. Uck. Actually I am feeling MUCH, MUCH better than before. I have a head cold left and so much sinus pressure that I expect my face to crack open soon. Also, there is still that hacking cough.

On the good side, I lost 5.5 pounds while being sick so I figured that is a good excuse to kick start a diet a life style change of better eating and exercise. So I have decided to do Weight Watchers on my own for awhile and see what happens. It cannot be that hard to lose weight at least while I cannot taste anything. As far as exercising goes, that has pretty much been limited to walking and bike riding but I will have to wait until this sickness is over. I am out of breath just walking around the house now with less than full lung capacity.

Kid number 4 went to camp this week. I’ve been going up there because my other kids are helping out. He is doing okay but last night wanted to come home because he is not getting enough sleep. This is the kid that can easily sleep 12-13 hrs straight. He will probably sleep for two days straight when he does get to come home on Friday.

I have decided to lose weight, clutter and books. I just posted a bunch more books on Paperback Swap and will be listing a bunch of homeschool stuff sometime in the near future. I just want to get rid of all the extra stuff.

There’s been a lot of death lately. Family members of mine and family members of friends of mine. Puts you in a somber mood. People are dying and I am still trying to decide what I want to do with my life.

Speaking of that, colleges keep calling me. And I keep ignoring the calls. I still don’t know what to do. Read that interest rates are going to an all new low for student loans in July. I am equally right and left brained so I have two very different career interests that are pulling at me.

It’s a little after 8 in the morning and I have been up for almost 4 hours. I think I will try to get some more sleep before the rest of the family get up. Don’t know if it perimenopause or from being sick or whatever, but I sleep about 3 to 4 hrs if I am lucky, then I’m wide awake again. Unfortunately, that does make me need naps during the day which is sometimes very hard to get!

My two year old woke me up yelling “wet, wet”.  I got up to get him out and went into one of my recent coughing fits and headed to the bathroom. When I returned, I expected him to be standing up with arms outstretched. Instead he is sitting down quietly and just smiling real sweet at me. Strange, but sweet. Because if he is awake, he does not want to be in his crib.

So I walk over and we play awhile peeking between the railings. He not once stands up or even asks to get out. Thats when I notice that his cute little chubby hands are under his pillow, not moving.

“Do you have something?” I ask him.

“Yes.”

“What do you have?”

Silence.

“Show mommy what you have in your hands.”

Still nothing.

“Jeremiah, are you hiding something under your pillow that you are not supposed to have?” (this time in my mommy-stern voice).

“Yes.” Then he quickly realizes what he has just admitted to and quickly retracks. “No, no, no.”

Somehow he had rocked his crib close enough to the changing table dresser and gotten the nail clipping scissors. He knew they were a no-no so he immediately hid them.

Where did he learn to lie to cover it up? Broke my heart.

This weeks theme is Happy Birthday which is perfect because we just celebrated a birthday last week!! I now have a 10 year old son

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1) a souvenir - a hat that my daughter’s friend got her while on a cruise to Mexico

2) a fish - these are the cute bathrooms at a nearby lake

3) a religious building - the church that my husband and I got married in burned down. Here is the reconstruction.

4) a fire department

5) a manhole cover - a sign of progress…a new shopping center being built

6) a postcard - my daughter has strategically place four postcards on the frig to hint that she wants me to buy a subscription to a magazine. shhh, don’t let her know that I’ve noticed.

7) water -this was a fountain where we went on vacation last year.

8.) a communication device - my baby is obsessed with talking on cell phones. We gave him an old discarded one.

9) a Life event  - our church hosts a special event for girls and when they turn fifteen, they are coronated in a special ceremony. This was the centerpiece for our table.

10) a foreign stamp - a girl from our church grew up on the mission field. Her mother recently sent her granddaughter a birthday card and she shared the stamp with me.

11) a tree - this was one of the many trees in the backyard where we used to live

12) the living space of a non-human - Florida is home to these huge spiders called Banana Spiders. They are about the size of your palm. No kidding.

13) a street mirror - ok, so I’ve never actually seen a street mirror but figured reflective window would work as well.

14) a decoration fixed on a house- these are new sconces that I bought, I love them.

15) a foreign flag - it has been raining almost non-stop and I haven’t been able to get out much. But as a homeschool mom, we have tons of books and this is taken from one of our favorite Geography books.

16) a fire - I have a son that just celebrated his tenth birthday

17) an antenna - these are the really big antenna radio towers at the military base

18) a phone booth - I was really wanting one of those enclosed ones but guess they don’t make them anymore. It’s hard enough to find those, guess everyone has cell phones now.

19) a “verboten” sign -I especially like the oak tree hanging overhead

20) a beach- the baby’s first beach trip

21) a cityscape - this is the sun setting on the main road in the small town where I grew up

22) something goofy - reenacting City Slickers

23) something carved - I saw these bowls at an art festival

24) an eye - my daughter’s friend, can’t remember the event

25) something rural - and old water pump

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This week’s theme is books. HELLO….that’s my most favorite thing ever. Seriously, when we moved to Florida I was thrilled because there was a library actually in my neighborhood. I could drive there in two minutes. And then I walked in. And all but cried. The entire library is about the size of my living room/dining/kitchen. And I probably own more books than they do. And I am not exaggerating. I homeschool and have a way of accumulating books. Lot of them. Anyway, this week I would like to share some of my favorite collection. I keep them behind the glass doors of my entertainment center which is also lighted and looks very cool.

Here’s the top two shelves:

And some of the first shelf, close-up. These are Arthur Bedtime Stories that were my husbands’ mothers when she was a little girl and I believe might’ve been her mom’s too. The others are by Lois Lenski who I adore. This is part of her regional series and I highly recommend them if your kids are learning about regions of the United States.

Then is my Value Tales. Biographies of great people showcasing a great character trait. Need I say more?Also a few by Joy Wilt/Joy Berry.

** Didn’t realize until after I posted, looks like I also captured my neighbors mail that I gathered while they were on vacation. Had to put it somewhere off limits to the kids. Oh well.**

I was so looking forward to this weeks pic theme. But here in Florida we have been plagued with rain. And you can’t get a silouette with a dark rainy sky so I had to think out of box for this assignment. This is what rainy days mean in our house:

lazy days inside playing video games. Click on the banner above to see more entries.

When I was visiting Shutter Sisters, I saw where she had a wonderful post. The post was about a trinket that held a special memory.

My husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary two weeks ago. We dated three years before getting married. While we were dating my husband bought this cute little sticker and on the back he simply wrote “I Love You”. When I got off work, the sticker was under my windshield wiper. It made me smile knowing that he had thought about me and left it for me to find after a particularly bad day at work. The next week, I snuck the sticker back for him to find. This started a tradition. Sometimes it will be months before we find it and get the cycle going again. But it still has the same effect. I think it is even more important after you are married to do the little things to let the other one know that the romance is still there.

I thought it was only appropriate to display it in front of our wedding album.

I know they say June is the number one month that people get married but I got to believe the trend has switched to May. I got married in May (twenty-one years ago) and we went to two weddings this month already.

I was very impressed with one wedding in particular. It was outdoors and during the day. The bridesmaid dresses were knee length and casual. Not like anything I had every seen before and not your typical bridesmaid dress. But they fit in the theme perfectly and the girls would be able to wear them again and again.

Make your wedding say you. Make it unique and express yourself. And make sure that not only the bride gown is perfect but you have decent bridesmaid dresses. The girls  will thank you.

Remembering to give thanks to all of those that have served or are currently serving to keep America great. Memorial Day should not lose its meaning amongst the cookouts, vacations or whatever else is planned. Celebrate our freedom that we have today and honor those that made it possible.

Since I am home sick, we did not go anywhere but I did drag myself out of bed to make watermelon balls. Food just tastes better when it’s pretty, don’t you agree?