Fun With Homeschool Friends

This morning we met up with some friends from our homeschool group to enjoy time together and a scavenger hunt.  How fun is that!  Thankfully the rain held off until this evening and we enjoyed a great time together.

Tyler had a great time catching up with the kids he hasn't seen in awhile.  Here he is chasing Andrew.  He was a little hard to photograph because he was on the move a lot!

Here he is swinging with Danny.

Here he is playing soccer with Angel, Danny, and Mr. John. 

Look at that!  He actually stood still to get his picture taken.

Christian had a great time too.  Partly because one of his favorite people came with.

His partner in crime (Daddy) had off work today and was able to join us.

These two are always up to something! :)

And sometimes he even enjoys hanging out with mom. :)

The last picture I have is of two people we really enjoyed visiting with.

This is John and Ginger .  They are super people and parents of three beautiful adopted children. 

  I know I missed taking pictures of some people but it was very nice to see everyone!  It is a blessing to have this small group of special families!

Happy Birthday Ginger!

Happy Birthday to my friend Ginger!

Today is my friend Ginger's birthday.  She is a great friend, loving wife, and a mother to three beautiful adopted children.  She is a gal with a big heart that is constantly loving on others.  I hope you will stop on over at her blog today and join me in wishing her a blessed birthday!

Refreshed

This summer has been such a blur so far.  Moving and trying to get ready to start school again have consumed so much of my energy.  I truly needed a little time away from all that this weekend.  On Friday night I went to go have coffee with some ladies from our homeschool group.  I was able to leave a little early because my wonderful husband was watching our boys.    I wandered through Michaels for awhile by myself before heading over to Booksamillion for coffee.  Just wandering through a store by yourself sometimes can be an amazing thing!  It ended up being just myself and another lady for coffee.  We stayed there for about three hours and talked.   I had a lovely time.  Today we wanted to get out and do something as a family but were unsure of what exactly we wanted to do.  It has been very hot here so our choices were a bit limited by that.  Our boys don't do long car rides either.  We decided to head to Swansboro.  It is a nice little town that has a cute little downtown with  quaint little shops and  restaurants.  It is also right on the water which is very pretty.  We got started over there after lunch and shortly after we left it started  to pour outside and it didn't look like we were going to be able to enjoy walking from shop to shop outside.  We started to discuss other options but as we got closer the rain cleared up.    We put Christian in his special needs stroller and my awesome husband pushed him up and down the street while Tyler and I went in the shops as we couldn't fit the stroller into the shops.  I would love to show you tons of pictures of all the beautiful things we saw but I forgot the camera at home.  I did take one picture of Tyler on my phone.  There is an adorable little 50's shop and restaurant there called Yanamamas.  It has a ton of 50's memorabilia and even a jukebox that was playing Elvis songs while we were in there.  It is too cute.  Tyler loves Elvis and outside there was a lifesize statue of him so I had to get a picture of Tyler and Elvis together.

We really need to take Tyler back there sometime to eat because I think he would love it.  The website is http://www.yanamamas.com/ if you are interested.  We also visited some of the other shops along the street.  I loved another shop called the Quilt Cottage.  They had so many gorgeous quilts and were reasonably priced.  I ended up getting some charming new quilted placemats there.  We also sat and watched the boats out on the water for a short time too.  It was so nice to get out and was just what I needed.  I feel a little refreshed now and ready to press on with the rest of our work around here and plung into the new school year.  Hope everyone else is finding a little time to refresh and renew also.  It is so important!  Bye for now!

Morning at the Park

This morning we got up early and got ready to go to the park to meet with some other moms and children from our special needs homeschool group.  Well, it ended up just being myself and another mom.  We had a very nice time though. She has two boys and one of her boys and Tyler did very well together.  The other boy was also autistic and somehow they found a way to be in their own little worlds and be together at the same time.  It was good for Tyler to have someone to hang out with for awhile that wasn't looking to judge what he can and can't do at every opportunity. 

Tyler and his new friend sitting and talking (how funny is it that they both had on exactly the same color shirts and glasses)

Christian also had a good time.  He enjoyed the playground when there weren't many kids playing and enjoyed sitting with mom at the picnic table when there was.

Hello Tyler from the top of the slide!

Not so sure about going down.

Did I mention it was very sunny out!

We look forward to seeing our new friends and everyone else next month at the beach.  What a blessing to have such a nice little group!

Friend

"The most beautiful discovery that true friends can make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." - anonymous

We had a wonderful time today visiting with my friend Renata and her daughter Avery.  The weather cooperated long enough to be able to enjoy some nice time at the park together.  Have you ever noticed that when you are with a good friend time goes by way too quickly?  That's how I felt today.  It is nice to see they are both doing so well though and I know they are excited about reuniting with their husband/father tomorrow morning.  Tyler and Avery had a lot of fun going down the slides at the park together and Christian enjoyed just standing on the top of the playground equipment and feeling the breeze.  I forgot to take my camera with to the park and I am very sad I did.  I did snap a picture of each of them here.  Avery is not very fond of getting her picture taken right now so she looks unhappy but I think she had fun overall.

This is Renata and she is as sweet as her smile!

This Avery with her mom.  She is not very happy but still adorable.  She is excited to see her daddy tomorrow.

We did have one big surprise today.  We found out that we will be moving sometime between June and August.  Yuck!  I really do not enjoy moving.  We weren't supposed to have to move until the beginning of next year so this news came as quite a shock.  They are renovating military housing and apperently things are going faster than they thought they would.  We will only be moving a couple of minutes away but it will still be a big deal.   Christan in particular has a very hard time adjusting to a new house.  We have also been very fortunate to be in a very quiet area of housing where we are and I am concerned that our new house may be in a higher traffic area.  Tyler has a hard time concentrating on anything if there is a lot of noise and Christian just goes to tears.  God knows my children better than I though so I am put my trust in him on this one. 

Tomorrow we will be doing school.  It feels a little odd after taking off today.  I am not quite sure what we are planning to do this weekend.  I think it supposed to rain but maybe we can find somewhere to go.  I am going to go do my menu planning now so that I can go grocery shopping tomorrow.  Have a good night!

Wednesday looking forward to Thursday

Tomorrow brings a lot of excitement for us.  We are expecting special company.  My friend Renata and her beautiful little girl Avery will be here.  They used to be our next door neighbors but since September when her husband deployed to Iraq they have been staying with family in Texas.  Friday is her husbands homecoming and so they flew up today and we are going to get to spend some time with them tomorrow.  We can't wait to see them again.  When they left Avery had just learned to walk and was only talking a little bit but now she is two and her mom says she is constant chatter.  Tyler absolutely adores her.  He likes babies in general.  They were so wonderful to us when my husband was deployed last year and we got to spend so much time with them that it was hard to let them go.  I am excited for them to be a complete family again as I now they were for us.  They will be here for five days and then they will be returning to Texas so it will be sad to say goodbye again.  She had hoped to move back again but her husband has orders to somewhere else.  It is so hard to keep lasting relationships in the military especially for the kids.

Today was not a day of any great accomplishments.  My lack of sleep finally caught up with me! I spent a large part of the day in a state of half sleep.  We did try to straighten the house a little for our company tomorrow.  It really could use a good spring cleaning.  I started reading the book From Clutter to Clarity by Nancy Twigg and I am in awe of how she seems to be writing directly to me.  I feel like I have made progress in certain areas but in others I know I need a lot of work yet.  I am only two chapters into the book but I am just loving it.  I also started reading The Shack the other day.  I have been wanting to read it for awhile now but haven't had a bunch of time to read.  I need to find more time to read as it is tremendously relaxing for me.

Tomorrow we will not be doing any school so we can enjoy our company.  We are hoping to go to the park with them if the weather cooperates.  I think I am going to fill workboxes for Friday tonight so I don't have to worry about it tomorrow.  We have been studying about nutrition in science.  We use the God's Design for Life curriculum from Answers in Genesis this year and right now we are on the Humany Body book.  I love this book but I know Tyler needs a lot more interaction with each topic then is given in the book so I use other resources also.  We had just read the section on vitamins and minerals the other day and had looked at and compared a bunch of nutrition labels but I know that is not enough for him to remember what he has learned and so I was browsing for something more to do and came upon a really cool activity where you make different action hero flash cards for the different vitamins and minerals.  You draw a picture and then you fill in different sections like secret idenity (the full name of the vitamin or mineral), misson (the role in the body), hideout (what foods you find it in), and secret code (how much you need daily).  We are going to do this on friday and I know he is going to love it and remember them all.  The link is:  http://www.texasheart.org/HIC/ProjH/upload/Activity_5_C.pdf if you want to try it also.  They also have some other neat activities for vitamins and minerals at: http://www.texasheart.org/HIC/ProjH/g5masters.cfm if you want to check those out too. 

I have been lamenting that I haven't been able to put a lot of pictures of Christian doing his work on my blog.  The reason for this is that I am the one helping him and therefore can't take pictures at the same time but... I am going to try to take some pictures this weekend of what activities I have him do so that you can see what he is up to also.

I should get going now so I hope you all have a terrific night!