Starting School

Friday was our first day of school!! It is hard getting back into the routine! We are in a new town, new house, new curriculum, new planning tools, new everything... Things went good though!! We had a few bumps, but nothing serious. The new planner we are using was a little difficult to figure out at first, but now it is soooo easy to use! It is easy for both me and the kids to see what we have completed and what we still need to work on. It has a button for the kids to click when they have completed an assignment and another button for me to click once it has been graded!! It makes report cards, tracks progress, and so much more!! It took me several days to watch all of the instructional videos and read the manual, but now I have got it up and running. I love that I can reschedule anything with just a click of a mouse!! Yippy!!

We are excited about our school year and all of the fun field trips we are going to go on this year!

Monday we are going to the Orlando Science Center. I thought the field trip was on Friday, but then I checked the website and the kids were bummed that I mixed up the days!! Oh Well!! We went swimming as our field trip for the first day of school!! I have a feeling that swimming will be a regular "Field Trip" for us!! It was fun though!!

I have share a great discovery that I just made.... the kids will do ANYTHING for computer time. Even chores!! I made a new rule that they only get 30 minutes per day on the computer, well let's just say that went over like a load of bricks!! They kept asking how they can get more time... then it hit me....

CHORES!! For every chore they do "with out being asked" they get an extra 10 minutes on the computer!! My house is spotless!! They cleaned the bathrooms (and since we have 4 bathrooms now that was a blessing), they vacuumed downstairs, upstairs, and THE Stairs, they did laundry & dishes. It was AMAZING!! It was like "cleaning Elves" moved into my house!! I would turn around and they were cleaning something else. Stephen even vacuumed the sliding glass door track!! He was on his hands and knees vacuuming under the table, baseboards (which gets them bonus minutes!!) I was amazed!

I picked the jobs I hate to do, like dusting and baseboards, and gave them double bonus minutes for doing those jobs!! At this rate I wont ever have to dust my house again!! This was definitely shown to me by God himself!! I am so thankful!!

It has been great!! Things have been going really good in the new digs!! We love the neighborhood. The kids have made lots of new friends. There are TONS of kids on our street and there are even several "homeschool" families in the subdivision!! We met a really nice homeschool family with 4 kids... the boys are Stephens age and they play baseball!! Not only do they play, their dad is a coach, and Stephen is going to be on his team. We signed up for baseball and softball yesterday and found out that Stephen was on his team!! Isn't that great?

The kids are siked about playing ball!! The ball field is about 5 minutes from our house. This will be really good for me since I will probably be at the ball field several nights a week, with both of the kids playing this fall! I am not looking forward to Detto missing the ENTIRE season, but I will take lots of pictures and video for him!!

End of Summer

Well... its time to start school back up, but... We aren't ready yet! We are getting settled in the new house, but I'm not ready to start school. My kids are ready, they have asked if we can start school on Monday like Public School kids, but .... UGH!!

I haven't found all of their curriculum yet! I am thinking about starting some subjects just to make them happy. We'll see!! I still need to get Stephen's math from a friend of mine. Then I think we'll be ready!

My sister-in-law just had a baby on Monday. He is soooo cute!! We went to the hospital to visit him, but we weren't able to hold him. He was in an oxygen tent thingy for a few days, but now they are home and all is well!! I just got my computer set back up today... I had 409 new email messages. Wow!! I cant believe it!! I wasn't able to download picture onto my hubby's computer so I didn't bother posting till now!!

I love our new home and our new community. The community has a beautiful pool and playground. Today I took the kids swimming and guess what.... We me another homeschool family that lives here!! Yippy! There are 2 boys and 2 girls! The boys are 11yrs old and 9 yrs old. We are really excited about having other homeschoolers in our community!!

The kids are going to start baseball & tennis soon!! We are going to play for the city of Mount Dora this year. The field is aprox. 5 minutes from our house!! That make practices much easier for me!! I cant wait to get everything rolling!!

My Round Robin Blocks!!

I have been working on a round robin with CafeMom!!

It is so much fun. 4 different women make 4 different center blocks and then you send them to each other to add borders. I have really enjoyed this. I wonder what mine will turn out to look like?!?

Here are two of the one's I have worked on so far... I can't find the pic's for the other one!

I'm so excited!! This is a picture that Alyssa took of me while we were bowling!! She told me make the "excited face"!! Did I do that?

Alyssa's Birthday Parties!

Alyssa had a great birthday! She was so cute.

We had a party at our house, Nana's, and Noni & Popi's! 3 Parties!! WOW!!

It was loads of fun. Check out all of the fun picks!!

After she got her guitar she made Stephen sit down and teach her some chords right away. It was so cute to watch my kids sit and play guitars together!! She also had Detto print out chord charts and worked with her for awhile!! She is like a sponge!!

She loved all of the princess stuff that she got at Noni's and one of her favorite gifts is a card making set that she got from Uncle John and Aunt Samantha!! And... her crystal carriage!!

Her big birthday plans included: eating cake, hanging out with the family, opening presents, and PLAYING BADMINTON!!! She loves to play badminton, it is her favorite game!! It was a lot of fun!!

Alyssa's Birthday Pancakes!

Well, Today is Alyssa's 9th Birthday.

Wow, They grow up so fast! She is the "BABY" and she's already 9! Wow!

Well, this morning she announced that she wanted "Birthday Strawberry Pancakes"! I was not ready for this! We are in the process of moving still and EVERYTHING is packed!! I didn't have any strawberries either!! I was very nervous. Then I remembered the Freezer... I had some strawberries stored from the last time we went picking!! So I whipped up some pancakes and added strawberries. They turned out better than I thought they would. She loves banana's so I topped her stack with banana's and added the syrup and TA DA!!

She made a Really LONG Wish and then gobbled them up!!

It was really quite cute watching her!

My secret is adding 1 1/2 cups of cut up strawberries to a pancake mix!! What a difference!