I've been dreaming of a....camera like this!!

Ok so I am extremely happy because....yep I have a camera!!!!  I finally just went online and bought it since no stores had one in.  The camera is a canon powershot sx30 woot.  It's big but it works great!

So I have been taking a lot of pictures thought I would share some with you here.

Pumpkin is playing one of the file folder games.  This one has cards that have either a fruit or a vegetable and they have to sort them into the right buckets.  He of course is not that good at it but he has fun sliding them in and out of the buckets and with time he will figure it out.  All of these games I found online at different sites I saved the list and will give credit later since it's on my other computer.

Monkey loves this game.  This file folder game is actually two in one.  Since they had the same animal pictures I just put them together.  For the younger children they have the magnifying glass to look at the tiny pictures and match them with the larger ones.  For Mr A there are cards with the names of the animals and he has to match them up (he also loves to do the magnifying) I really need to get a set of small flat magnifiers they would fit in the folder and be easier to carry around with us.

Mr A playing the Dino Bones file folder game.  In this one the bones have addition and subtraction problems on them.  After he figures out the answer he has to count the dots on the dinosaurs to find the match.

Here is Mr. A practicing with the Tag reader.  We love our Tag reader!

These are the bird houses I have been talking about but unable to take pictures of.  They are so cute.  I need to put new sticks in them but otherwise they are holding up well.  I did take them down off the tree while we where having the crazy weather but they are now back out there.  We've had a few friends visit us already.

This is a cloud that came by one day me and the boys thought it looked like a gingerbread girl :)

I was tired of the toys being in a laundry basket so I bought this to corral them all better.  You wouldn't believe how many toys are in this thing!  Of course I have them all organized by type lol.  I bought two more drawers (I had grabbed single cream bags instead of the double like with the brown ones) to make the pattern look right and fill the empty spaces.  I also got a short cream basket to go on top to hold random toys like the large cars.  I am so happy that I did this and so are the kids when they go to find one of their toys it's not so hard to find them.  (oh and the birthday bag is gone to lol)

Mr. A and Monkey at Pizza Hut.  Mr. A has been doing Book-It the reading program put on by Pizza Hut so we took him in for his reward...A personal pizza just for him!  We had a lot of fun and the pizza we got was delicious.

Aww brotherly love!

This is one of the square foot gardens...again the measurements are wrong lol but they work.  We still have not built the lids but the cage is working for now.

Some or our veggies I can't wait to eat them!

Here is our herbs and pepper one.

This is a tree in the far out backyard I think it looks so cool.

Two little birdy friends that our making nests in our carport.  They only look innocent right now lol.

This is our plum tree in the front yard you can also see the area we run the horses in to the right and the chicken coop in the left but just a little.

We don't really know what the red berries are that grow on this tree...at least I don't remember.

My sisters pet bunny.

Mr. A dumping his compost into the bin.  Like his cowboy boots?  He also dressed himself lol.

Here he is stirring it with a stick.

We rehung the bird houses since the storm seems to be behind us now.

This is the boys swing they got for their birthday. The basketball hoop is laying down because again the storm was knocking it down too,

A picture of the sky it looked pretty cool.

This is a close up of the same picture above.

Here I am finally a new picture :)

Well I hope you enjoyed the updates and there are more coming :)

Character and Other Thoughts

Brennen's eye is still crossed what did we expect?  Nothing honestly although there are moments where I wish that bopping him in the head again would make his eye go back to normal.  Tomorrow the doctors will be back and we will go in for a check up and see what can be done about it.  I hope they don't tell me to wait until he's older.  I really believe that the sooner things are done the quicker and better they are fixed.  After all his body is still forming if he needs to do therapy or have the surgery now would be better before he gets it more set.  If they tell me to wait I think I might research some more and see what other doctors say and see if there's anything we can do at home to help it.  They say that it can cause blindness in that eye that is the thing I am most concerned about!

The other boys are doing fine we are all still getting over our colds but I am feeling a lot better today.  I think just a couple more days and I will be out there doing my walks again.  Today my mother wants me to help in the rose garden.  The roses are already blooming and need to be taken care of before they get out of hand.  There are a lot of roses here!  I can't wait for the plums to start growing again I want to make some plum jams and preservatives.  I would like to learn how to can.  I also want to plant a vegetable garden but  I don't know how.  A book I want to get on how to is called 'The Square Foot Garden'.  I'll keep you posted on that.

I can't wait for summer which is a new thing for me I hate to be hot!  I am excited because of all the things I want to do this year.  The gardening, the horses, the chickens might be old enough to start hatching, the roses, the plums, and so much more I really am excited!

I don't know if I mentioned the book Character Matters by Thomas Lickona.  I started reading it a few days ago and I am loving it.  One of the main reasons I am homeschooling is to build my sons character.  I believe that it is the most important part of any person.  What do you have without good character?  I am raising adults not children.  Yes they are children and they play and do childhood things but I am not saying 'oh boys will be boys' or 'oh that's just something kids do' no when they do something wrong or mean I let them know.  We talk about why it was wrong and what I expect of them.  They know what the difference between right and wrong are.  I am reading this book to give me ideas on how to build their character even more and by extension and maybe even more important is how to build my own character.  We are all works in progress and everything I do with my kids I am hoping to learn and implement myself so that I can be a better person.  This book says that the Greeks believed the most important virtue is wisdom because without wisdom how would you know how to use the other virtues?  How would you know what to do when the virtues sometimes contradict each other which does happen?  So I agree.  Wisdom, Lord I pray that I develop more wisdom!  I am a flawed woman.

Well the roses are calling my name!  I need to get busy I have lots to do today!  I hope you have a great day :)

This is the carrot cake my hubby made us last night.  Why?  He felt like it :)  I was so yummy.  He googled best carrot cakes and this one came out on top.  I have to agree it was very yummy!  Probably fattening too but once in awhile is fine.  http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/best-carrot-cake-ever/Detail.aspx This is the where he got the recipe.  We use allrecipes.com often.  I like it better than searching through a bunch of cookbooks.  I even have the app on my ipod. 

 This is Bren with his new crossed eye.  as you can tell it's pretty bad.  It is not all the time though it comes and goes today he doesn't seem to be having as much of a problem with it as he did the past few days.  I hope he can get it fixed an honest bad mommy confession: it freaks me out and is hard to look at.  No I don't love him any less it's just hard to see him struggle and how weirded out he is and on top of everything else it's just something else hard to deal with.  On the scale of what can be wrong with your children we are very lucky and I'm grateful it's not anything worse!  P.S. He is trying to potty train himself so he was in rubber underwear with regular underwear underneath.  He thinks the toilet is the most awesome thing in the world.  I don't think he is developmentally ready because he can't hold it but I don't mind letting him try it out.  His T-shirt says 'I still live with my parents' :)