Thursday, June 30, 2011

Oh hey... look at me...actually posting photos...

I know. Weird. So here are a few shots from our vacation this year. Why only a few? Cause between the 4 cameras we had clicking all the time, we have thousands of photos. Thousands. Well ok...maybe not thousands. But still. A lot. :)

Our vaca group this year. Loved it! This was our one touristy-like photo op. Glad we got this shot of everyone...
Hard to see, but that's the Endeavor on the launch pad behind them. Pretty damn cool, yeah? ;)
Touching a moon rock...
We love our underwater camera! I thought I had a shot of all 4 of the boys under the water, but that may have been from last year...
Yep. She really *is* that cute!
Ready for a beach day...
Really, really ready... :)
Not so much ocean time for the wee one (at least...not intentional ocean time, lol...there were a couple of  "oops, fall down" moments), but she enjoyed her little water/sand hole. :D
Nope, that's not the 6yo, lol... Bailey loved being at the ocean's mercy... ;)
Love this shot...this was Braeden every time he was near the water!
Future boyfriends beware. She *will* have an armed guard. Seriously. ;)
I will try to have more posts, even though they will be sporadic, with more pictures here and there. But this was a good start for me! :^)

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Trying to get better at blogging...

When I first thought about starting a blog, I thought I could totally do this. How hard can it be?

Lemme tell you...it's harder than I thought it would be. The writing isn't hard. Stuff happens in life, you document it, it's a blog. Kinda. Where I suck is in the picture taking. Not only do I have a hard time with remembering to even grab a camera (never mind that my phone has a camera), I have a hard time getting photos off of said camera if I do get a chance to snap a photo or two.

Sigh.

I will try harder. We have a lot of things that have happened lately and I need to play catch up. Vacation, summer camp, day camp...all of these things have accompanying photos (thanks to Tracy, lol!), I just have to find time to go through them and post some up.

I'm hoping to do that this week. Or at least start on it this week. Now that all of our trips and camps are done for the summer, and our homeschooling is in "we will homeschool, but we will do it less cause it's summer" mode, I might actually have a moment or two to work on something like that.

In the mean time, here is a photo of one of our afternoons after camp last week. The boys had a good time relaxing in the pool after a long day...


Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Birthday dinner...

Today is my grandmother's 77th birthday! The boys and I came back from camp for the evening so we could all take her out to dinner to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Nanny!!! :)


Saturday, June 18, 2011

Losing a week...

Does anyone ever have those moments where they look at a calendar and realize they have lost a day (or in my case, a week)? I had so much planned for this week, in preparation for my day camp next week, and I can't seem to recall what happened on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. No, that's not true. Thursday I got a swanky new phone. Yes, that sticks out in my head over anything else. I'm sure I've mentioned the whole gadget junkie thing before, so this shouldn't surprise anyone.

So now I have this weekend to get all of the final stuff ready. Fortunately, this is the 6th year I've ran this day camp, so I'm pretty comfortable with what is expected of me and what I have to do. I just wish my time management skills were better. :)

The boys stayed pretty occupied this week. More accurately, Bailey stayed occupied by trying to keep Braeden occupied. It's so nice to have my 11 yo trained to parent, and educate, my 6 yo. What? Isn't that why you have more than one child...so the older one can take care of the younger one? ;)

Even though we all seem to live on our computers, I really wanted the boys to try and actually do something non computery in their educational play this week. No, everything they play is not educational. But I do want them to have a designated time set aside for learning games. These can be online, or offline.  Generally, I don't have a preference as to whether they are on the computer or not. However, since they have spent so much time on the computer lately, I wanted them to get away from their desks and simply hang out with one another. Actually interact with each other, and us..which is something us computer geeks have a hard time doing, lol.

So, what did they play this week that I deemed educational?

Bananagrams is a new favorite in our house. I don't know why I seem to prefer this so much more than Scrabble...other than it's just quicker. We have a normal set, but you can pick up double sets and even a spanish set. This helps them not only work with spelling, but also with vocabulary. All of us learn new words, lol. My new word? Qat. Yep, it's a word. AND it gets rid of those darn Q's. :D

They also played Monopoly, and even got my grandmother (she lives next door to us) involved in that one. I really think Monopoly falls in line with social studies games. It teaches geography (ok, well the game itself doesn't, but they always want to know about the places on the cards, like Illinois Avenue and Park Place) and it teaches economics...kinda, lol. Since I convinced them to play the normal version instead of the Spongebob Bikini Bottom edition, it ultimately satisfied my desire for learnin'.

We are getting ready to head out to the Drive-In. It's part of our Father's Day plans. Dads get in free tonight (Hey! I'm not "cheap!" I'm just "budget-savvy.") and on Fridays and Saturdays, they have a double feature - two movies for the price of one. Tonight, it's The Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class. Yay!

Hope all the Dads out there have a fantastic weekend with their loved ones.

"It's only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own career and your own home - it's only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it. Pride reinforces love." ~ Margaret Truman

Sunday, June 12, 2011

We Survived Camp...

Well, we mostly survived. I whined a lot (that's not surprising, now is it?). Bailey really struggled with being homesick. He stayed the week, which I am super proud of him for. He stayed under duress. And I had to bribe him. But whatevah. He stayed. ;)

He enjoyed his classes that he took, he just didn't like the evenings and the nights. I guess that's understandable. He's never been away for that long. Ultimately, he was glad he went, but even more glad to be home.

Up next for us is Braeden's day camp, which starts a week from tomorrow. That is always a lot of fun and he's really looking forward to that again this year. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm really looking forward to camps of all sorts being done for the summer. We could use all of these weekends to hang out together, with family and friends. I could use a little time to play Rockband and a few more scrapbooking weekends.  :D

Speaking of scrapbooking, I think I am going to look at something different for this upcoming school year. I know I've said in the past that I don't really need to change a lot, and I don't feel like I need to change anything. But I'm interested in seeing what the boys think of lapbooking. Lapbooking is kinda like scrapbooking, but your lapbooks focus on what you are learning about, one concept/topic at a time. They aren't super big, or super lengthy. It just provides the boys with an opportunity to spend a little more time on what they are learning about, outside of a traditional book report, poster project, etc. They both seem to enjoy the artsy stuff, Bailey A LOT, and they have shown interest in helping me scrap. I'm interested to see what becomes of this. They may work on one and never want to do another, but that's what tying new things is all about, right?

Right now, I'm listening to Bailey trying to help Braeden play a spelling game called Unscramble. No, not of his own free will. It's Sunday. You would have thought that I asked him to go outside and lick the mud off of the car. I'm glad that me begging and then threatening asking him, worked out so well. We are waiting for the hubs to emerge from his office so we can go see a movie. I thought it wouldn't hurt for them to work on that together for just a little while....but I could have been wrong, lol.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Friday, June 3, 2011

HE'S HOOOOOME!!!!!

Yep, picked up the hubs today from the airport! Can you tell I'm supahappy about that? ;)

We got to the airport about 20 minutes before his flight was scheduled to come in. The Greenville airport is SOOOO different than Hartsfield, lol. There is a cute little courtyard outside at the gates. We sat there and while watching the really cool real time flight map on my iPhone (and you wonder why I'm a technogadgetjunkie), we waited for daddy to land. Once the plane landed, we ran inside and waited for him to ... what's the correct term? ... de-board (?). The boys just about knocked him over when they saw him. I got one look at his face and promptly burst into tears. What? I'm a girl. There are allowances made for hormonal emotion.

These last two weeks were really loooooooong. Neither of us does well away from the other. I guess I should be ashamed that I'm so co-dependant, but I'm not. And it pleases me that he's just as bas as I am. Heh.

Tomorrow we are going to take the boys to see Kung Fu Panda 2, which they have been desperately wanting to see since it came out last week.

Then on Sunday, Walter is dropping Bailey off at summer camp.

Gulp.

I'm trying to be alright with this, lol. I know, I know...he'll be fine. He's extremely excited about it. It's just...that's my child. And I'm clingy. :D

My anxiety is so bad though, that I'm not even taking him to the campground. I'm afraid I'll be "that mom." The one that a couple of big burly guys have to drag away from the camp, crying for my baby. The one that would cause so much emotional trauma for my son, that it would take years of therapy for him to deal with what I did to him, that one time at camp.

So Tracy (who is also having a son dropped off at camp) and I are going scrapping. Yep. I'm going to try and bury my extreme emotional duress at Archiver's.

Sigh.

Ooohkaay, moving on...

With Bailey gone this week, Braeden and I are going to have some good one-on-one time with school. He's not going to be as happy about that as I am, but I'm looking forward to really working with him on his reading. While I wouldn't think, at least not yet, that he needs any sort of remedial reading programs, he did get off to a slow start with reading. He is making some terrific progress, but it will be nice to focus on some things that are giving him trouble. Like sight words.

My child... oh man, I love his logic:

Me: "Braeden, what's this word?"
Braeden: "SAYed"
Me: "No honey, that word is said."
Braeden: "If the word is pronounced SED, then why isn't is spelled S-E-D?"
Me:" I don't know Braeden, it just is."
Braeden:" That's crazy. How am I supposed to read, if words aren't spelled the way they sound?!"
Me: deep sigh

This is his way of dealing with the world. It's like writing something. To him, there's really no need. I mean, he can speak afterall. And he can type. Quite proficiently. ;)

We will also work on his reading comprehension. That's a tough one, I know it can be hard to actually remember what it is you are reading, if you're having to stop and sound out more than half the words. But, we will plug away. He loves reading kids books on the nook color, since some of them can be interactive (basically that just means that he can touch the touchscreen I usually tell him not to touch), so that helps...

Well, I hope everyone one has a great week next week. Remember to pray for me on Sunday. If you've got a prayer to spare, you can send one up that Bailey has a great, but SAFE time. Oh, and that he can find it in himself to shower, at least once, that week. ;)