On the way there

Its neat how you can start to see the water at the end of the road!

and now a closer shot!

These little guys must have been having a meeting of some sort!

coming off the bridge going into the town of Appalachicola! I like I would like to live there!

coming into town

walking on the path, very beautiful nature walk!

Faith was so intently watching the fish, I loved it when she point her little finger at one of them!

The girls really enjoyed the touch tanks! I didn’t try it!    I love reading about the history of places.

Then we looked at some more outside where they had exibits and a few more touch tanks set up.

and then there were games and activities

FAITH enjoyed walking around after being restrained in the stroller!

As you can see, she really doesn’t like being held down! Thats the way she does when she doesn’t want picked up, she stiffens up and its all you can do to hold her! A Strong little girl she is!

The fishing games were cute

and the skunk!

don’t worry he had been de-skunked! ha! ha!

this is where we ate on the way home, on the little back porch looking at the water!

We just couldn’t get over the beautiful sky and the clouds on the way home!  We really had a beautiful day together as a family!

And this DH had to show me….its a huge Dollar General! I can’t wait to check it out!

That was our day, I hope you enjoyed the pics!  ~Jill~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were our table centerpieces

our welcome table

 

our sound girl

this was my gift to my secret sister, there’s a small package under the candy that has a bracelet in it!

this is her! I really enjoyed being her secret sister! She’s such a sweet gal!

This is the younger set of secret sisters, they had thier own draw this time! Such fun! They are just little women in training!

And this was who was “my” S.S. !!!! She got me the nicest sweetest gifts, alot of books, and I know she prayed for me this past year!

Another table pic with little Hope in the background.

This was DD Leah’s secret sister! They had each other’s name! How neat!

Unfortunately Rach’s   S.Sister must have quit coming, but hopefully that won’t happen this time. She entered the young girls draw this time.

Last but not Least! This was our special speaker!!!! You can just guess what the message was on, I think something about us women wearing masks….

Hope you enjoyed the party!   ~Jill~

 

 

Just two more days till Friday!  I think I can handle that!  

Outside it is….very pleasant, supposed to be sunny today in the low 80′s! The Mosquito’s are still out though!  They are not my friends!

Inside it is…comfortable, and messy LOL where I’ve started a computer desk clean out along with a few other clean out projects!  Other projects include…magazine basket, school stuff that goes back to the book shelves, I started on cleaning out the little girls and the baby’s drawers and closets. I want Need to have a time to do it all at once but that is NOT happening so, its a little here, a little there until I get it all done!

I am wearing…ha! ha! its not happening today either! I have on a teal old navy t-shirt with black exercise shorts! It’s a bloated day, so this is what feels best! Didn’t think I was going to have to get out yet either until a young mother ran out of gas in front of my house, on her way to take her 1st grader to school! She also had her 3 year old (only in her panties) LOL and her 2 WEEK old baby girl!    I had decided last night that I was going to step it up and instead of having my morning coffee in my Pj’s that I would take a shower first thing, get dressed, then have my coffee. So good thing I did, because any other day I would have still been in my Pj’s and not able to take that little first grader to school! Glad I was able to help. The Lord knew!!!

We have….finially have another male in the house…it a CAT! Some of you probably have seen pics of him on @southern_bygrace ‘s blog. He’s very cuddly and somewhat hyper! I think even DH likes him!!!

SCHOOL…is going well for the most part, we are still trying to work out the glitches here and there, but the girls, ALL the girls are doing good, and I am so THANKFUL for it. Some days certain student seems to crawl like a turtle about getting it done, but we are working on , and having family meetings on TiME management!

 

These pics are of comfy cozy day, which was in Homeschool spirit week.   The alphabet cookie cutters we got from our library resource room, and you see how my little student was giving my littlest student flashcards! Baby Faith is so used to hearing thier vidio come on that she comes running to dance and she always starts saying Ah, ah, ah, ! because she has heard Hope practicing her letters n sounds so much! It’s really too cute!!!  Oh and that nasty looking bug….well call me a HOMESCHOOL mom, but I had to pick it up outside at the thrift store one day to bring it to Hannah Grace who is my nature lover!  DD teenager Rachel was with me and was mortified when I asked the clerk for a plastic baggie to pick up  the bug to take home!   

 I think he’s a grasshopper!

Upcoming blogs…..I’ve got lots of pics to post on Estuary Day , Zoo world, and ourSecret Sister Reveal party we had at church, so stay tuned for those!

Upcoming events….Thurday is library/park day, Friday is get ready for my friends yard sale, Homecoming parade and game, Then Sat is Yard sale, DH works that morning,Sunday is homecoming at our church, and I “think” DH and I are going over night that night for a late anniversary get away! I hope it works out!

Have a great weekend!!!!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, nope, a quiet day in my house to clean and declutter!!!!   You know you can’t shovel snow off the walk completely while its still snowing right? Well you can’t “clean” when there are many in the house!!!  Most stores and businesses do their cleaning after hours when there’s no customers right? I just LONG to go thru my house and put things where they belong, catch up on hot spots and laundry all the while planning in my mind new things I want to do! So any Ideas on where or what the whole family could do about once a month for me to have that kind of day??? We live away from family, so visiting is out of the question.

As for today and the last few… Mother Nature has not been kind to me lately, My hormones must be so out of whack, I fought with DH this Sat and last, this Sat being the worst, lasting into Sunday with the result of everyone going to Sunday morning church but me . Mind you, I have a yeast infection, I’m getting ready to start the monthly (Thanks EVE!!!) it just has felt like I cannot get caught up on rest. I have things I want to do, but can’t get to them, so then that frustrates me, and if I do get a minute, then I want to sleep! Enough of that I’m going to make  myself cry if I don’t stop, but I would appriciate your prayers! Hopefully theres some of you who may know what I’m going thru!

We are feeling what Fall is to us here in North Florida! Its cooling down a bit with nice cool mornings and evenings, cotton fields are beautiful and boiled peanuts are all the rage right now! Today inspite of everything that ails me, It is absolutely a georgoes day outside! I’m inside with the screen store letting in the sounds of birds chirping and dogs barking, my children playing, and a nice breeze! Even the air is starting to smell different! 

Our day got re-directed since I didn’t feel well, we haven’t begin our classes today, only baking alphabet cookies, playing webkinz, and painting the acorns I had them collect outside is what has been going on.  i just didn’t have the heart to make them not enjoy the pretty day for a while. We fully intend on doing our school work here in a bit!

Now for a few new things…. DH painted DD Rach’s room this weekend, its a very pretty blue! She’s been waiting for months! There was some kind of cardboard like covering over the old tongue n grove boards that he had to rip off the walls and the ceiling! It was no easy job, it stirred up a lot of dust and dirt, and she had to sleep on the couch for a long time till he got it all cleared out.

For the little girls room, they were needing a mattress, a good one, and I just happened to find one on a local flea market site on facebook. It is one of those soft side water beds with the tubes inside the mattress. We had one we bought when we first got married but eventually got rid of. Our girls always wanted one.

And…I got my kitchen Island that our friend from church made, delivered this weekend!

It was really nice for the girls making cookies today, because I have very little counter space!

SCHOOL is going fine, it is still taking some time to work the bugs out of this new to us school on DvD from Abeka. The girls are learning so much, but so far it is still taking alot of my attention for both of them especially kindergarten. Kindergarten doesn’t last long but 4th grade does! That has been an adjustment for us! Also 4th grade Math, we found ourselves not ready for, so we’ve had to stop, get out the flash-cards to practice, and now we are on a different day with Math than the rest of it. Spelling too has been harder, we are a few days behind on it too.  I do love the program though, it gives me confidence they are learning so much. The teachers are GREAT!  The kindergarten teacher Mrs. Bere reminds me of @Bethelou!  Hope says some of the funniest things during school time, like the other day she said “MOM, do those kids really not know their letters?” I said “some kindergartners “don’t” know their letters yet” Hope says” This is “learning” school, I want to know STUFF”! Like it was just too babyish for her and she needed to know so much more! LOL!

I will close for now, please keep us in your prayers, we are just going thru alot of STUFF right now. Also I forgot to mention, I got  news yesterday that my Dad had another one of his memory loss spells , accompanied with high blood pressure. The dr’s don’t have any explanation for what ‘s going on.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ~Jill~

But its going to have to wait,

until after we have this grand tea party!

Just a reminder to myself to keep my priorities straight!  ~Jill~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love this….Books used as little shelves! I’m soooo going to do this!   I think my DD @southernbygrace shoud do this suit case idea, the shell frame idea is for me!

I like this Candle idea!

Thats all for now, I’m just up having my Saturday nite insomia!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Moment…..

So yesterday was our 19th Anniversary! We wern’t planning on doing anything much “on the day of” but Dave called on his way home from work to see if I wanted to go out for dinner! So yes! I hurried and washed my hair and tried to find something pretty to wear.

We kept it simple and went to Ruby Tuesdays and then to Walmart, then to a new place we have learned to LOVE called Milk n Honey, it serves frozen yogurt and an huge buffet of toppings!

Thinking about diving into that Spinache Alfredo dip there! LOL

It was also our first day of Abeka Video school, our 9th year of homeschooling!

here’s my precious students!

notice the teens aren’t so eager all the time!

 This is one eager, and challenging student of mine, She LOVES her teacher so far, but oh what a time I have to convince her that school lasts as long as it does and that her play is not more important! Yesterday she waited ALL day for Hannah Grace to play barbies with her, but Hannah’s Day is much longer than Hope’s, so Hope finially said in a whinny sort of voice ” I’ve been waiting all day to play barbies!”  She said that when it was bedtime!

one student stayed in her jammies!

I think its going to be a challenging year for the 4th grader, it seems alot harder and I can see where with the crazy year we had last year with a new born baby in the house I failed to teach her as much Math as she needed, but we will see if we can keep the pace.  Which I have to say I do battle with guilt over the last two years of child birth and and all that goes with it. Alot of things simply slide because of fitigue, and busy-ness, it just makes me feel bad still. Every one of the girls, I see where I could have done this or wanted to anyway for their education. The highschool years just really slipped up on me, and I’m still trying to get it together. I am ever learning!

We had a nice Labor day weekend, Dave took all the girls and a few of our friends to a FSU game, while I and my friend Shannan stayed behind with the babies. I truly didn’t mind, I welcome the quiet when I can get it! Shannan’s Parents (who is also our Pastor) took us out to eat. Then we went local shopping n browsing around in a couple of stores, came back to her house and put on a movie that WE talked all the way thru until the babies were needing thier beds! LOL

some game pics and the girls and thier friends

It was a great Daddy and Daughters Day!  Only thing bad about the whole thing was thier red faces! It was HOT HOT HOT that day!

Guess what Faith is trying to eat with a fork now!

Hope has been climbing in the crip with Faith in the mornings. I think Faith loves it!

Well my bed is calling me now, morning will come all too soon and I will be running around trying to get my students in order for the day! I have to take Faith to her 15 month appt. in the morning also. She is supposed to get shots, but I doubt we will, she has started running a fever today. She doesn;t have any symptoms of anything, so I guess its good she already has to see the Dr.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your week!  ~Jill~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My niece Sarah’s Graduation, standing with my girls Leah and Rachel

I will be excited but sad when I see my girls wear this outfit