Our Life

We've been busy with life in general. Probably since about the early spring time, I've been trying to simplify our life and house. I will fill you in on what we've been up to since I last wrote. Let's see, where to begin....Maybe I'll just start from this week and back my way up!

Oh, this week started with real excitement! Anthony and I were drinking our hot coco (him) & coffee (me) on our deck, like we do most mornings, weather permitting. Well, little did we realize (even our giant Great Dane, Tasha) there was something slithering afoot. Literally, right underneath our feet. The 3 of us passed several times over it before even noticing it, but once I did, tears and fear immediately took over. Yes, tears.

In the track of our sliding back door, was a young snake! S-N-A-K-E. I didn't know what to do at first, slide the door back over it or get a shovel and obliterate it in the track of our door? Well, I went to close the door and the snake began to slither! I stopped and prayed that it would stop moving. Then I got the phone and called my husband to come home from work. Thankfully, he works very close to home and was home in record time. My hero, came in with Anthony's bug net and a shovel. Mark, my husband, was able to coax the little bugger into the net and then he took it outside, dumped him out of the net and then.....well, you know. Sorry, if you like snakes. I guess I like them too when they aren't trying to get into my house! We know we have snakes in our backyard. We just never see them. Actually, we have lived in our house for 9 years and we saw one black snake the first year we lived here who enjoyed sunning himself on our driveway. But then we never saw him again.

Our first concern, was it poisonous? As you can tell, we like to shoot first, and ask questions later. So, once he was dead, we turned him over to check out his markings and we (actually Mark and Anthony) took a much closer look at his eyes to see if they were round (non-poisonous) or "cat's" eyes (poisonous). Thankfully, they were round. The markings on this little guy looked like a copperhead, which wouldn't of been good news. Thankfully, he was a milksnake. Whew! I was still freaked out by it for the remainder of the day. We figured out he must of gotten in the previous evening when we used our screen door. Mark is pretty sure, he pushed his way underneath the screen at the one end and then slithered on over into the track of the sliding door. We didn't even notice him when we close up for the night. I am soooo thankful that he didn't cross on over into the house. Being in the track was basically in the house to me anyhow!

Let me add, my "original" lessons for school that day were put to the wayside and we studied snakes online. Do you know what cobra's eat? Eachother! I had no idea. We learned some very interesting facts about snakes that day. Anthony LOVED looking at pictures of different snakes online and is still talking about what the difference between a milksnake and a copperhead is.



Our home invader

Last week, Mark and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Sometimes we feel like it's been a decade and other days, we both agree, it doesn't seem like that long. Actually, Mark and I've been "together" for 14 years. We dated for 3 years and were engaged for 1 year, prior to our marriage. We were married the week of September 11th. So, with each passing wedding anniversary, we are reminded of September 11th and what a crazy and scary time it was. We celebrated this year with a quiet dinner at the Bavarian Inn. We also watched our wedding video, on VHS. Mark had to dig out the ole VCR. Anthony really enjoyed seeing everyone. Some, he didn't even recognize!



We've had so much rain here of late. A few weeks ago there was major flooding in the area. It was sad to see some of our favorite places, like Hershey Park, under water. After the rains stopped, we put on our rain boots and went outside to see what we could find. Anthony really enjoys bugs, lizards, slugs and such! We found dozens of slugs and a handful of snails, 2 salamanders and lots of spiders (yuck, on the last find!).

With each roll over of a log, there was something to discover. God's creation is amazing! The real joy is, it's in our backyard. It's a boy's paradise! Anthony was armed with his bug bucket and magnifying glass and away he went.

Before the rains came, we had some beautiful weather. Anthony and had some "natural" art classes outside. I have no artistic abilities what so ever, but we tried our hand at painting.

Another day, we practiced our shapes and drawing them out in the fresh air while on our beloved deck.

Anthony helped Daddy this summer work on our big project, our shed, or as Anthony likes to refer to it, "barn".

Last, but not least, we spent some time last month at the beach visiting Anthony's Grandparents and Great Grandparents. Unfortunately, Great Grandma Lucas passed away several days before we arrived. We did lots of visiting that week and lots of activities, all while remembering Grandma Lucas' life.

Here is Anthony with Great Grandpa Lucas and Grammy in the background.
Anthony LOVED pushing the wheel chair.

Anthony with Great Grandma Helen. Again, he loved wheeling her around.

Anthony with Grammy at the aquarium.

Grandpa playing with the horseshoe crab.

Anthony heading out to the waves.

So, this is what we've been up to over the past month or so. I am so thankful for family and all the special friends that God has blessed us with!

P.S. Speaking of wedding anniversaries, today is my parents 46th wedding anniversary! Happy wedding anniversary Dad and Mom and thanks for staying together and never giving up on eachother! What a great example you are to us!

Rails To Trails Bike Path

Anthony and I sporting our rockin bike helmets!

On Saturday we spent the morning on a bike trail together. Rails to trails is a non-profit organization that turns old train tracks into paved trails for walking, biking, etc. They are wonderful trails. We have several near our house. We packed ALOT of water, a snack and set off for the bike trail!

There were quiet a bit of people there, but everyone you cross paths with are so friendly. Also, they were mindful of Anthony, being so young with his training wheels. That's one reason I like the Rails to Trails paths, they are completely paved, which is great for training wheels.

C&O Canal  (Hancock, MD)

We stopped frequently to drink our water and enjoy the shade of the trees with the hopes we'd see some type of wildlife, other than your typical gray squirrel. The air smelled so fresh and clean! Thankfully, there was a little breeze to help cool us off. When stopped to have our snack, we had the privilege of spotting 2 white tailed deer. We watched them walk up the side of the small mountain and disappear into trees as other riders approached. We were so excited. You would of thought we had never seen deer before!

Anthony checking out the canal.

You can check out this link to find a Rails to Trails path near you! http://www.railstotrails.org/aboutUs/index.html

Anthony with Daddy taking a break on the bridge.

Retro Game (Sharky's Diner)

Does anyone remember this game? I think it's from the late 60's or early 70's. My brother Tim and I used to play it at our Grandmother's house. Grandma still has it, even though most of the pieces are missing. We found a pretty good replica at a Cracker Barrel in Pennsylvania. We just had to buy one. Although, I don't know if this was the name of the original game. The title seems sort of hokey to me.

It seems identical to the one I used to play with when I was little. This one is actually better in one way.
The shark's rows of teeth are glued in, rather than you having to pop it's plastic teeth into holes in the mouth, which inevitably would pop out while playing the game. Oh, it has one other little, tiny, difference. One you won't be shocked to know. Instead of, Made in America, it's stamped on it's belly, Made in China. Shocker, right? Yeah, I know. Anywho.....



Anthony fishing out of Sharky's mouth.
How many can Anthony fish out before Sharky shuts his mouth?
Oh, the anticipation!

 Anthony and I took turns fishing items out of his mouth, trying to get them all out before Sharky's mouth would close. There is a little rubber band (2 bands are included. Thank you China.) that you hook to the inside of the jaw, that stretches to the inside of the fin. The weight of the "junk" that he has ate weighs it down until items begin to be removed. It's quite riveting for a 5 year old. We played it so much that we began to make up stories of whom the items belonged too. Anthony especially enjoyed the one where I said the stinky boot belonged to his PawPaw. Anything stinky, smelly, or gross is sooooooooooo boy. It was more fun for me to watch Anthony laugh over the made up stories, than the game itself. Totally worth $10.

(Side note: My brother Tim said it doesn't look as "menacing" as the one we played with at Grandma's house.)


Anthony talking to Sharky, telling him he shouldn't eat all that junk.



Fog: It Happens

This morning we woke up to fog. Anthony was very interested in what fog was and why it was foggy this morning. This gave me a great idea to talk about fog today and even do a small science project. The project was somewhat over his head, but none the less, he enjoyed it. I tried to explain what fog is and why it happens.

I found this simple project online this morning. The materials that you need are the following:

Gallon jar
Black paper
Tape
Matches
Warm water
Food coloring
Ice
Gallon bag

Tape the black paper to the back side of your jar. Next, fill the jar one third full with warm colored water. Light the match over the top of your jar, hold for a few seconds, then drop it into your jar. Screw your lid on, put the bag of ice on top and watch your fog or cloud form! The best part was when we took the lid off and watched the fog rise. Anthony ended up asking to do this 3 times just so we could take the lid off and watch the fog rise. It was neat to create fog in the house. He thought it was pretty awesome. (Awesome is his new word for anything that he really likes.)

Anthony helped by taping on the black paper and pouring in the colored water.

Anthony pointing to our fog!

Can you see it?

Our fog rising, Anthony's favorite part.

Canning - A Dying Art

I think canning is a dying art now a days. I think I only have 2 friends who actually know how to can. Recently, I spent a whole morning in my mom's kitchen. She taught me how to can tomatoes. I canned pepper jelly and grape jelly about 3 years ago and it was wonderful! Time consuming, but what a sense of accomplishment. I had to keep calling my Grandmother and Mom during the process, but I got it done and the jellies were delicious.

I had never canned tomatoes before. I never had an interest when I was younger and still lived at home. That stuff seemed so boring then. My how things change as you grow, mature and have a family of your own.

Thankfully, my parents had a good yield of tomatoes this year and had plenty to share. Our tomatoes didn't fare so well. Apparently, they got some type of rot. No tomatoes for us! We started the morning out by blanching the tomatoes in boiling hot water just for a few seconds so the skin would easily come off the tomatoes. Then we plopped the tomatoes into ice water to cool for a few seconds. Next we cored the tomatoes, peeled off the skins and cut the tomatoes up a bit and dumped them into the giant pot. Once we filled the pot almost to the rim, we brought the tomatoes to a boil and let them boil for about 20 minutes. After boiling, we filled our jars with the tomatoes, wiped the rim clean and then gently placed a lid on top and screwed on the ring. After a while, my mom's dinning room table begin to fill with jars of pretty, red tomatoes. We ended up canning 15 quarts. They still had tomatoes left over! We ended our morning with a delicious BLTs for lunch. My mom had picked up some really good bacon from their local meat locker for the occasion.

Canning tomatoes is pretty easy. Easier and less messy than making jelly. I'm looking forward to canning again next summer with my Mom. When I was little, she canned everything. And what she couldn't can, she froze. Our shelves in the basement were chock full of all types of home canned goods. Green beans, homemade pickles, applesauce and a variety of jellies. I think the homemade applesauce, made from our apple tree in the front yard was my favorite growing up! It was a great way to swallow giant pills when you were sick too. Mom would hide the pill in a spoonful of that applesauce. It was thick applesauce too. Not like the stuff we buy in the grocery store today, which to me is very watery. Just talking about this makes me want to can some applesauce next year! Hey, Mom.......;)

Homemade Playdough

We took a break from the "books" today and spent the morning making homemade playdough. It's so simple and they smell good too; well, with the exception of our first batch. Our first batch was supposed to be "Red Vanilla". Well, I decided it would be a good idea to add a bit of cinnamon too. NOTE TO SELF: vanilla extract and cinnamon do not go well together when making playdough. I coined this batch, "Raunchy Red". It smelled soooo gross. The rest of our dough turned out very well. Probably because we used jello as our coloring and scent. The recipe is as follows....

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tbs of cream of tarter
2 tbs of vegetable oil
1 cup warm water
1 box of jello

Mix ingredients together and cook on stove top for about 5 minutes on low heat or until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of  your pan. Then knead on counter top (warning, it will be very warm for little hands) and place in an air tight container or plastic bag.

Anthony had a blast with it. He liked "trying" the different playdoughs. They smell good, but they do not taste good. Looks can be deceiving! It's nice that they are completely edible, especially if you have very young ones or curious 5 year olds. We made, Raunchy Red, Berry Blue, Island Pineapple and Melon Fusion. I can't believe I haven't made homemade playdough until now!



Anthony kneading the Raunchy Red



Freeze Dance

This morning we kicked off school with some freeze dancing. We may not dance well, but we love to dance! Anthony's been on a "freeze" kick lately. Which I actually use for a life lesson regarding him listening to us the first time.

I popped on the tv and found the music channels. I chose Subterranean music (don't ask me what kind of music that is, I have no clue! lol)  for the simple fact that it had a constant fast paced beat and clean lyrics. I used the mute button to "freeze" the music for us. Anthony was very perplexed how I was "freezing" the music. It was so funny. It was even more funny, when I looked down at him to find him doing his best "robot" dance! I wished you could of seen it!!! It was so darn cute. Rather disconnected, but none the less, he was pretending to be a robot and dancing. I loved his creativity. I'm not sure who had more fun, me or him.

We also ended our morning lessons with one more round of freeze dancing before heading out for a bike ride and some fresh air. What an awesome day!

Movie Night

"Tickets, please." Last night we had movie night in our house. Anthony and I made tickets for all of us. I checked out a few reviews on http://www.pluggedin.com/ . This is a wonderful site by Focus on The Family. It reviews all movies once they hit the theaters. I check out the review on Plugged In and find out if the movie contains any curse words, crude humor, any sexual content, etc. This way, we know for sure before we expose our little one to anything that isn't necessary. Remember, once they see it or hear it, it's filed away in their precious little brains FOREVER.

We ended up going with Tangled. We have Netflix and Tangled was on there, so we didn't even have to leave the comfort of our own house to rent the movie. Anthony was our movie attendant. Mark and I "stood in line", while the movie attendant punched our tickets for the movie with a hole punch. He loved it! (He has already asked to do it again tonight.) We settled in on the couch together and watched the movie. I have to say, it was a decent movie. One scene brought tears to my eyes, then again, I'm a whimp. Anthony had us fast foward through a couple of parts he thought was scary or was going to be scary, which was fine by us. (We were looking foward to a good nights sleep later that evening anyhow!) Of course, our movie experience wouldn't of been complete without popcorn. It was a great evening spent together in the comfort of our living room. Without cell phones going off, kids crying, people talking or people coming in late to the movie and blocking our view. It was great! Mark joked with Anthony while we watched the credits, that now we had to get in the car and drive home. That was actually a nice thought that we didn't have to go anywhere. :)


The movie attendant



Our 1st Official Day of Homeschool

Anthony's first day of kindergarten.

 Today was our official start of homeschool. We've been doing "school" for over a year, but nothing official. I wasn't tracking our time, etc. However, today we started for real and I started to track our time and began what will be our portfolio for our reviews with the state. Since we have been doing school work for some time now, I tried to make this morning special. We purchased new crayons and a special box for his school supplies to go in. Crayons, pencil, scissors, glue stick, tape and pencil sharpener. We also have a special play date planned for this afternoon. We are meeting a bunch of friends at the pool. Water is probably going to be cold, considering how chilly it's been lately. It will definately be fun for the kids though! Water is water to them.

He was so excited to start this morning, that after breakfast he wanted
 to make sure his pencil was sharp enough for school.

We started our morning off with bible study first. I'm trying to start a habit of bible first before anything else, to stress the importance of God's word in our life.  I read a story to him from our bible study book about the bible being true and the bible being from God. After I read it aloud, I asked him questions, which he answered correctly. (Whew, he was listening. Mr. Wiggle worm listened!) Then he colored a picture that correlated to the story and then we did something really fun.....we made our very own scroll! We even burned the edges of the scroll to make it look more "authentic".  Anthony was in amazement! I lit the paper and he blew the flame out. He exclaimed, "This is awesome!". Of course, that made me feel that I had accomplished the task of making our first day "fun". Now, I understand that not all days are going to be "fun". Learning isn't always fun, I realize this. I guess what I was really going for was perhaps "special". I can't remember my first day of school, with the exception of my Donald Duck school bag, being scared to death about riding the bus and leaving my mom ALL day; ALL alone. There were no tears or fears here this morning!

I used a brown grocery bag, copied our bible verse (John 17:17) from the big bible, and giant knitting needles. I traced the lines for Anthony to cut and he pasted the bible verse onto the bag, whiche he also cut himself. Then we rolled our "scroll" up. Keep in mind, God layed this idea on my mind this morning right after I got up. Gathering the supplies, took like 10 minutes if that. Awesome! Last night I read over what we would work on and I didn't have a craft in mind. Anthony's not much of a craft kid. But, I guess when you mix a boy with fire, well, it's a recipe for awesomeness.

Anthony blowing the flames out.



Anthony's finished scroll. Guess you could also used chop sticks if you don't have knitting needles.


I typed up our bible verse and printed it off (for free!) from WorksheetWorks.com, so he could trace the letters. Then we started to discuss what kind of books we use, like the bible, storybooks, cookbooks, etc. We also discussed how to treat books and how we read. We read from left to right and from top to bottom. We also talked about things that are alike. He traced different lines in his workbook and did some coloring work. We also practiced counting with M&Ms. Once he counted as high as he could, he got to eat those M&Ms. Then before we knew it, we were done. He then got to pick out a sticker and place it on our school calendar. It will be neat to watch our progression on our school calendar in the weeks to come.

I just asked Anthony what he thought of his first day of school. His reponse was, "It was GOOD!". (Mama is smiling from ear to ear, but realizes all days aren't going to be so GOOD.) :)

The Cicada Choir

While drinking my coffee on the deck this morning, I was soothed by the chatter of the cicada. That's right, I said soothed. They were so loud, but something about it was harmounious to me. It brought to mind the fact that all God's creation sings praise; man, beast and even the oceans and forests. This made me think that perhaps the noisey ole cicadas are singing praise to our creator. Just a thought to ponder. I also thought,
why did God even create this little insect,? I have that question alot about certain things He created; like spiders! I guess I'll get my answer one day when I'm face to face with Him. Then again, will I even care at that point as to why He created the ole cicada?

Later in the morning, we stumbled across a cicada shell in the yard. Anthony was enthralled by it,  but not completely understanding that it was only the shell.  Which, brought me to a conversation about death and how are bodies are like a "shell" too. When we die, if we have accepted Christ as our Savior, our spirit that lives in this "shell" of a body, goes to heaven to be with Jesus. Still a hard concept for a 5 year old, but worth a shot at the analogy!

Sing cicada sing. Sing your pretty song!

Great Summer Read

If you are looking for a great summer read, you should check out The Intrusion, by Kristin Detrow. You can pick up a hard copy or Kindle version on Amazon.com.  (Ahem, you're welcome Amazon.) Or, if you know me personally, you can always borrow my copy.

I'm telling you, you will not be able to put this book down. Have you ever heard of a Christian thriller? Yeah, me neither. It sort of sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Even if you are not a believer, I think you will still enjoy the story. I would of finished the book in one day, but I couldn't allow myself to read it at night. It was way too suspenseful and had me on the edge of my seat.

The book is about a couple who have fertility issues, but do conceive through IVF and that's when the "fun" begins. Kris's book makes you think about life and how there truly is a spiritual battle going on amongst us that we cannot see (nor would we want to!), but you can bet your boots it's going on. The book also expresses the true forgiveness and protection we can only receive through knowing Jesus Christ.
 
The way Kris writes is witty and funny, to say the least. She is an amazing, creative and talented writer and she wrote the book all for the glory of God. I laughed, cried and was scared at times througout the book. I was sad when it finally ended. I even got my husband to read it, who isn't a reader at all. He too enjoyed the book. Kris does a wonderful job of leaving you wanting more. I've heard that she is currently writing a sequel and I cannot wait to read it!