Soooo...here I am thinking and writing and thinking and writing...and watching The Golden Girls...I love the Golden Girls!

It has been a very busy week around here and I have a lot to chat about! :) Aren't you excited!

The boys have been enjoying VBS again this week. Making memories...they love it!

Bug got to go to two this last week. In the mornings h

e went to the

Bible Church for Pandamania - he had so much fun and made some new friends. He loved the music - we got him a CD ~ so it will be Pandamania for years to come! LOL

In the evenings the boys went to FBC in Midlothian for Summer Blast. Here's a pic of the kids singing their little hearts out. They had so much fun! I have to

say that the music was awesome! Bug asked me for a CD of the music so he could play it in the car! :) Red kept asking me if it was time to go to that "fun VBS". LOL - I love it!

I have so many good memories of VBS as a kid...I am so glad my boys get to make good memories as well...summer time fun!

I have also been doing some canning this week as well. I got a great deal on peaches with an ad match last week and have really wanted to try my hand at making peach pie filling. So I took the plunge late one evening and started the peach peeling, pitting, slicing process. It was a bit of work, but I really liked seeing the finished jars on my counter! Here is my pre

tty peaches simmering in their yummy smelling broth! Oh how wonderful my kitchen did smell!

I am so thankful for the big stockpot that we found in the shed at Uncle Doug's

. It's the right size for quart jars! Yeah! It doesn't have a lid so I had to come up with my own cover...pretty "genius" huh? LOL

Here I am filling my jars...with my BRAND NEW FUNNEL! Woo-Hoo! Love it! I have to say that this was the best $1.23 that I've spent in a long time! LOL - it is soooo much easier to fill jars with a funnel! Love it!

Here is my finished jars...so pretty! I can't wait for it to get a little cooler so I can make some peach pie...or perhaps some peach tarts...hmmm...what else can I come up with???

Have I mentioned Bug's pumpkin? He planted an entire pumpkin of seeds...(from the Halloween pumpkins that sat on the back porch for months). He was quite the caretaker and diligently watered them and pulled the weeds. He was so proud when his pumpkins began to sprout and when this little one started out, he was soooooo excited! Unfortunately the heat just killed out the garden way before it's time and the pumpkins just didn't survive either. We decided to go ahead and pick his one surviving pumpkin before it literally dried up on the vine.

I figured it was the perfect pie pumpkin size anyway. Although it is WAY to hot these days for pumpkin pie...so we decided to put it up, parboil it and freeze it until the weather cools. Of course I had to dry the seeds for pumpkin planting next year. LOL

Another good ad match deal - pears. Red loves pears and I wanted to try out canning some! So here 'tis! I peeled, cored and cut them in to small cubes. Then I packed them with a light syrup and wa-lah beautiful pretty jars of fresh canned pears! I can't wait to try these out!

Hubby and I woke up today and thought...hmmm...we need to get those jalapenos and salsa canned.

I picked up jalapenos with an ad match ~ 3lbs for $1. So Hubby got busy slicing jalapenos while I worked on getting the kitchen cleaned up and ready for canning!

We decided to make some Cowboy Candy with the jalapenos!

Here is two of the finished jars. We ended up with four quarts in all. Of course that was after we "maced" ourselves with one quart that broke in the water bath. What a surprise ~ I took off the pot lid and !whew! Got an eye-full of pepper with that one! LOL - Hubby's comment. Just what I wanted to do on my day off...make home made "mace". LOL

Now onto the salsa. I picked up tomatoes 3 lbs for $1 too - woo-hoo! I was really excited about this deal because Hubby and I have been wanting to make some salsa.

Got the tomatoes in hot water for an easy peel!

Got the cold water all ready to dunk the hot maters! There are the jalapenos - no we didn't put all of those in. LOL

Here is hubby chopping the cilantro and the onions for the salsa.

He was also in charge of peeling the tomatoes and chopping them up a bit.

Bug decided to come in and help with this part...he got some lessons on knife handling and chopping without taking off a finger. ;)

Ready for the blender...

Ready for the jars!

And here is our finished jars! It was quite tasty! We are excited to see how the flavor developed after it sits for the next few weeks. So pretty!

Okay so besides canning and VBS I have been busy working on our school stuff for the upcoming year. I had seen a link on facebook for a "free" planner and I was really excited when I started looking at it. Over the past several years I haven't had much luck in finding a planner that I really liked. I usually just adapt to something I find and end up doing a lot of changing or just abandon it somewhere during the year. I am pretty old school in my planning ~ I like the whole pencil and paper kind of planner. I have tried the online stuff and it just didn't work for me. But I was able to download the pages and calendars from the New Beginning's website (http://new-bintexas.webs.com/freecurriculumplanner.htm) and put together something that I think it is going to work. I am excited about it anyway. LOL

I have been slowly working on my curriculum and plans over the last month or so and had already come up with a little something on my own. A three ring binder with the subjects divided ~ this allows me to put any worksheets in the binder as well as my own lesson plans for that particular subject. Here you can see the binder with some of the various tabs.

Here is an example of my "pencil and paper" lesson planning strategy. This particular set if for Red's science next year. I went through and planned out my lessons and my ideas for each lesson.

I also have a section for supplies.

Here you can see the actual lesson plan pages. I printed these from the web site. I like this layout because it allows me to put the boys names on the side and then their assignments in the columns. I think this will be a lot easier for me to read, than what I have using int he past. As you can see I haven't started this part yet...I just printed these today. I only printed three weeks so far...figured that would give me a good base to see if I like it or not.

I also printed the monthly calendars for the rest of 2011 and 2012 from the website. They have their own section as well.

I have a year at a glance calendar, attendance chart, cute cover page, long term planning and curriculum resources pages to include in my binder as well, but they aren't in there yet.

Hubby and I chatted this afternoon about some of the upcoming plans and things we need to do/want to do, etc. and decided to make a few changes in our "plans". LOL ~ what's new right?

Hubby and I are excited about the upcoming THSC conference. We are planning to attend a whole host of workshops. I think my favorite on the list is Teaching boys and other kids who'd rather build forts all day! What a hoot! I love it! I think it will be good for us to go. We've never attended a conference before and are quite excited about the possibilities. I am excited to attend the book fair as well. I can't wait to see all the great stuff the vendors have to offer.

We have also decided to take a month off of school. The boys are finally getting their "summer". LOL - well not completely, but I think they will love it. We are going to continue our reading program. Bug is doing so well...he is such a great reader and has been reading up a storm for the summer reading program at the library. I do hope the day of the reading club carnival is not 1000 degrees (like it's been lately) b/c we will probably have no less than 1 million tickets to get rid of. LOL ~ okay that's a bit of a stretch, but he has been reading a LOT!!! So we will continue to read during the next month, but the plan is to put aside the rest of the work and take a break for a few weeks.

I have started myself a goal list ~ things that I want to accomplish in the next month (while we are on "summer break"), not necessarily in this order.

1) Stain & hang the back screen door

2) Complete and place at least two crosses @ MP

3) Finish printing and organizing school planner

4) Finish power of a praying parent bible study

5) Finish listing books on PBS & put on shelf

6) Get shelves put up in the school room

7) Redo chore chart

8) Set up continuing reading program for school year

9) Set up work box system

10) Clean up remaining canning jars

11) Finish planning GA's curriculum

12) Plan Campcraft class for ECCHO

Oh my goodness! I had better get busy!!! LOL

I know that I will probably find more things that I want to add to my list, but it's a start. ;)

Well I had better sign off for now...it's getting late. ;) Until next time ~ love on your babies and be thankful for the little things!

Okay so I know that my Granny would be so proud of me! I have really gotten into this canning thing - it's so rewarding! And funny because I really dislike cooking...but I don't think of this as cooking - but as helping my family.

So, Wednesday the boys and I got home from VBS and I had a bucket of tomatoes staring at me (that my sweet hubby had picked from the garden). It's funny because our garden hasn't

yielded nearly as much as it usually does, I think the super hot weather has just taken a

toll on it. But we have still gotten quite a few and put up several jars of sauce as well as salsa. And we've been getting several squash - which gets turned into fried squash (Yum-O!) and a few cantelopes - sweet!

But anyway, back to the this last week. The boys went to two VBS's - Whoa~! But I have to say they had an absolute blast. It's funny because we started going to both of these particular VBS's about 4 years ago. We were invited by

a friend and I have to tell you that Bug had such a good time we got involved in other things and it just went from there. LOL - here it is four years later and we still attend each summer. They just happened to be on the same week this year - at least one was morning and one was evening so they could attend both. The FUMC in Wax. was in the morning. This is the church where Bug attends choir so he has several friends there already and was VERY excited to attend. They had a fun time learning all about God's recipe for them and singing fun songs like "Shake It Up"! Then in the evenings they went to FUMC in Midlothian for A visit to Nazareth. This is another one that we've gone to for the past 4 years...they are one of the best around. I love how every aspect of what the kids do

involves them learning about Jesus and how much he loves the m. They have so much fun! They got to make all sorts of crafts and visit the various shops that Jesus would have seen as a boy. They also collected money for to help get rif of Malaria and had a contest between the boys and the girls. The girls won by about $40 so Ms. Keeley got to put a "pie" in Mr. Matt's face. The kids of course LOVED that part. LOL I loved watching them sing and do all the motions to the songs at the end of the night. What a blessing!

Whew we they tired at the end of each night. LOL But they would get to bed so that they could get up and go again. They woke up raring to go each morning - it was great to see them having such a good time.

I spent my "kid free" time - "Cemetery Hunting" - walking at the cemetery taking pictures for findagrave.com. I love the peacefulness of a cemetery and the history that can be found there. I have been taking pictures for find-a-grave for a year or so, but I took advantage of having a few

hours each day to walk the cemetery and take a lot of pics. People use the site for genealogy research and often want pictures of the headstones of their relatives. There are a lot of memorials that don't have pictures, so I like to hunt for the headstones and get pictures to upload for them. I find it very relaxing to just walk and read the stones so it was a great time of peacefulness for me. I can tell you after four hours of walking each day I was a tad tired!

On Wednesday afternoon I got in and thought, I really gotta put up that Salsa. So I began working on a Garden Salsa recipe. I ended up using more peppers and jalapenos than tomatoes I

think, but it turned out pretty good. It sure was pretty!

Here's my pretty salsa all jarred and waiting to "pop"!

I also canned the jalapenos I got on sale for $.25 a pound! Can't beat that! They were HOT though and I was about to burn my eyes out so sweet Bug helped me out with his goggles! It was quite look let me tell you, but it sure did work!

!Caution! HOT peppers!

I guess Bug thought I was doing a good job - cause he took a pic of my spectacular cutting as well. LOL

Stuffing the jars and filling with brine!

Here's my pretty peppers. When I began taking them out of the water bath I realized I forgot to put in the carrots. Oops! Oh well - I won't tell if you don't!

I have a feeling that my canning days have just begun....what an adventure...wish my Granny was here to see me now...

VBS @ The Cowboy Church of Ellis County -Son Country Harvest

The boys attended VBS at our church a couple of weeks back. They had so much fun! Bug was so excited about the water games and play that they did each night. It was a blast. I got to help out with Bug's class which was a lot of fun.

The boys attended VBS at The Avenue church last week and had a lot of fun with friends. Bug was excited to see his friends Garrett and David again. Red made a new friend named Seth and just had a ball playing on the playground with him.

I love that they have the opportunity to go have some fun with old friends and new during the summer. It also helps pass the crazy hot days we've been having lately.

Here's our latest project! LOL

Canning!

We dabbed at it last year with Memaw and made some tomato sauce.

We have a garden going, but it's been so crazy hot already that our poor garden is just not producing like it usually does. :(

But I found jalapeno's on sale 3 pounds for a dollar so we thought - heck we need to try

this canning thing again! So we did - and honestly it was so easy! Hubby did most of the work on the jalapeno's and came out with 6 beautiful jars! I am excited!

So I caught the canning bug!

I

picked up peaches 3 pounds for $1 and decided I could can them! I got 5 beautiful jars out of the batch and boy oh boy are they pretty! I was very excited. It was a lot of work to peel, pit and dice all those peaches, but oh so worth it to see the end product!

The coupon chat group from ECCHO meets up every Thursday for a play date and we decided that this Thursday we want to have a canning play date.

I came home this afternoon after a super fun time at Mattie and JoJo's birthday party and put up a pineapple I got for $.99! Woo-Hoo! I have been debating putting up some tidbits and did a little research on the best way to do it. I didn't want to make it really syrupy - so I decided to sweeten the pineapple with a touch of sugar and just use water as the liquid. I tasted it before I jarred it and it was very yummy! I only had one jar left in my box so I figured it was a good "trial" jar. It went smooth as butter and I am very excited. It turned out sooo pretty! Love it! I can't wait to try some other things. I have to get myself so more jars. We got some tomatoes and peppers from the garden yesterday so I am thinking Monday I might try a garden salsa.

Oh the fun I am having!

Here is Bug's newest friend...he was outside with Daddy this evening and found this little guy hopping around. He was quite excited to play with him for a while. LOL I think we'll call him Fred...