eat sleep and farm

Summer has been delightful. I want to blame it all on the fact that we've stayed local and have already soaked up so much relaxing family time, but who knows. We have a pool and hot tub, so we swim a lot. That's kind of an understatement. We swim all the time. And the other night, my husband got home from work and I thought it would be romantic to surprise him by pulling him in the pool with me. Thankfully due to the 95 degree weather, he thought it was funny and refreshing. I'm not feeling as wordy these days so I'm going to do more of a run-down of our life the past month. *We've enjoyed using our fire pit and making all kinds of sugary deliciousness. *kids have lost teeth and the tooth fairy is going broke. Rachel likes to pull her own teeth out and this impresses her Dad, so she tends to get quite a hefty amount of moola ;-) *If anyone's wondering... mosquitos still adore me. Burts Bees and Honest Company make amazing bug sprays THAT WORK! (yes,...

Some months seem to take forever to go by and some fly by so fast I have to remind myself they were here! May was that way for us. Lots of wrapping up the school year, end of the year field trips, testing, filing paperwork, holidays and Spring cleaning in our yards. So, June arrived and I had hoped it would go by slower, but here we are, June 12th and I'm feeling like June 1st was literally yesterday. This year we chose to stay local for Jason's vacation. We've always gone to CA to see our families and while we love our families, we've really felt like we needed to have a STAY-cation. So that's what we did. And it was amazing! We decided we'd do at least 90% of things we've never done since moving here. Things we've always said, "oh, that would be fun to do that!" So we made a list and picked what was on the top of that list. We did things that included Ride the Ducks tour in Seattle (a must do!), we walked most of the city, including Kerr...

Easter 2015 will be a day we won't ever forget. Our daughter, Rachel, was baptized and gave a public profession of her faith in Jesus! It was a day filled with so much joy and thankfulness to God for all he's done and is doing in her life. Here are the video clips alone with amazing photos our good friend Jason took. Her words in the video are 100% hers. She wrote out what she wanted to say and memorized it so she could speak boldly in front of everyone and she asked us if she could do it on her own :) Also, she has been corrected and knows that her favorite verse is in Romans chapter SIX and not chapter three  ;-)  {this link will take you to the video where she spoke- this video comes before the actual baptism just FYI}  https://www.dropbox.com/s/ ozun95sus5j2wex/rachel- baptism.mov?dl=0 Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son o...

I have the urge to write these days, but very little motivation. I'm not sure if that's an oxy moron but it makes total sense in my head. {also, side note: spell check just suggested I wanted to say "oxy Mormon" -- bahahaha!}  This year in school we've been doing more reading and writing than we've ever done. I suppose its normal when there's a 4th grader around. Ethan has shocked us with his writing abilities. He reads A LOT so I should've known he'd be a good writer, but I guess because getting the words ON paper takes him f o r e v e r -and-a-day, I just figured he didn't have much to say. We use the Excellence in Writing program at home and for his Essentials class at Classical Conversations. Its a program I can't recommend enough . I love it. And I love the way Andrew Pudewa teaches parents/teachers how to guide children. Its totally changed the way I view homeschooling, for the better, I hope ;-) So we ordered the books for Rachel ...

Here it is, the 3rd of March and I'm still trying to figure out what happened to February! This month is full of good stuff so I'm excited its here. This post is random and is going to be filled with pictures that don't really "go" with it, but are ones we took in February.  I wanted to spend some alone time with Rachel and she chose a  day in Seattle. We had an amazing time eating, talking, walking, shopping,  going to places like the top of the Space Needle, her first visit up!  Here we are at an all-you-can-eat waffle joint above Pike Place Market.   Here she is reading at a table atop the Space Needle. She told me "its the most ideal place to read." :)  Its our last month of Classical Conversations and while I love   that program, I'm anxious to be done and to have one less thing we do weekly. Plus, I'm glad it ends on April 1st this year because it gives the kids and me 2 whole months to go over all the grammar we lear...

Pornography is a topic I wish would get out there more and quit being such a taboo word/concept. I wish parents with older kids would talk more openly about their struggles with their teens and young adult children in this area. Maybe if some adults would talk more openly about their own problems with it we could begin to help the youth in America.  Why are we so quiet? Why do we pretend its not out there? We haven't had many open discussions about it with our kids because they're still super young and don't use the Internet, but we've had "dumbed" down versions of the talk with them. We've explained why we don't allow them to be on the Internet and why we are always careful what our eyes see when we're out and about... and what to do when we do see something we ought not give any attention to. I've had people tell me to be careful because my kids will be so sheltered they'll just stumble into something and not know. I have to laugh eve...

Best part of January was closing the sale of our home!  Is it really the middle of February? Already?! Time is going faster, right? And not just for me... my kids say they feel it too. 2015 arrived with a flurry of lots of things happening. We had just gotten back from our Christmas trip to California and I hit the floor running. School started back up a week earlier than usual and since I homeschool my kids and tutor for Classical Conversations, there was lots of prep work to be done. I hosted two baby showers within a week of each other and just had the every day (constant) chores, errands, emails, etc... to get to. I hosted a shower for my good friend Sarah and a few weeks later  she gave birth to this beautiful baby boy, Isaac David.  David and Sarah lost their baby girl, Ava Grace at 18 weeks  and walking through that with them and being able to experience the joy  of Isaac's birth has been nothing short of awesome.  So happy f...