What a busy weekend we had around here! LOL

Thursday afternoon the boys and I were outside braving the sweltering 110 degree (at 7pm) heat. Sadie decided to show off her rocking climbing technique. What a nut. Red and I were poop scooping over by the fort (boy are those pups pooping machines!) and I hear a loud clatter behind me. When I turn there is Ms. Sadie Girl on the rock wall pretty as can be. It was funny. So Bug runs for the camera. After a quick photo opp I lift her down to the ground. Well apparently that just didn't work for her because she scrambled right back up and proceeded to slip and fall right back down. Crazy Nut!

Look at me Mom!

This is where she slips and tumbles down. Apparently those short little legs are not meant for plastic rock walls.

Friday we had our weekly coupon play date at Angela Perry's house. What a gracious host to open her home to all of us crazy coupon/canning ladies plus several hubbies and tons of kids! I mean it seems the kids multiplied as they walked in the door cause gosh there was a lot of them! LOL Thank goodness for the pool - I know Bug had an absolute ball playing with friends in the water. I think the Dad's had a good time yakking as well.

I know us ladies had a ball in the kitchen with our Master Organizer Kellie! She had us scheduled and planned to beat the boot and we were like a well oiled machine in there! Loved it!

Here's our green beans and potatoes waiting to go into the pressure canner!

Here's the master planner Kellie - this was her favorite spot I think...we had to chase her away a couple of times. hehe!

Beth and Ouida worked hard at the prep station (yes we had stations - we were that good!) putting together the ingredients for each batch of jam, salsa, etc.

Angela at the sink...boy did it get a work out!

Brenda is waiting for the jam to come off the stove!

Wendy was the designated Wal-Mart gal and the Pizza pick-up person...let me tell ya she was a fav that day! LOL

Kellie stir stir stirring!

Angela and Dena yakking during our "lunch break"...which basically meant the canners were going and the jam was cooking.

Ouida and Wendy and Kellie checking to see if the jam is ready! Yum!

Oh my goodness, Tom had to get his own pizza! LOL - I think he got tired of waiting around!

Kimberly braved the job of chopping and de-ribbing and seeding six pounds of jalapenos for the jalapeno jelly! Oh don't breathe!

Sarah and Ouida cleaning the jars and putting on lids and rings - Apple Jelly ready for the canner! Woo-Hoo!

Beth getting the blueberry jelly ready to cook! Yum!

Dena watching Brenda and Kimberly with the jalapenos!

Dena is a hoot! She just cracked me up! She praised us and all of our efforts the entire time we were canning...she was our encourager for sure!

Here's the apple Jelly and some of the potatoes/green beans just out of the canner...soooo pretty!

Kellie and Angela stirring the pot!

This is one of those fun little break times when the next few batches were ready...the jam was cooking, the canners were going and we just chatted for a few minutes. This is what it's all about...great fellowship with good friends...I am so very blessed!

Shiny Clean Hot Jars ready for the bounty!

Here you can see the jalapeno jelly on the left (ready for the canner) and the strawberry jam on the right (just out of the canner).

Here you can see the pressure canner and the water bath canner both going and the pot of (most coveted) raspberry jam cooking on the stove!

Another one of those chatter moments between duties!

Here is a pic of the canning ladies (minus Dena who was taking the pic and Wendy H. who had to leave a bit early).

Left to Right:

Sarah, Brenda, Kellie, Beth, Kimberly, Ouida, Wendy (me) and Angela

Here we are filling jars, cleaning rims, lidding and ringing!

Angela making Watermelon jelly! Yum!!!!

Brenda and Sara are cracking up about something...I don't remember what, there was so much laughter!

Here is another picture of our bounty...and boy this doesn't do it justice. This is a very small amount of what we actually completed! 10 recipes and over 150 jars! Woo-Hoo! What a blessing! I am so very blessed by our home school co-op and this precious group of ladies (and dad's and kids) that I am able to call my friends.

Saturday Hubby decided to stain and hang the screen door (you know the one we bought last summer and never got up) hahaha! Anyway, I love that I can laugh at our antics! We do not claim to be proficient or well structured, we just love and learn! LOL Anyway, this is what it's like to caulk the door frame with Tornado Scamp in the back yard. Crazy nut ended up with caulk on his ear! What a hound...I love this guy!

Here's a funny, although I don't have a picture for you...you will just have to visualize. While Hubby was dealing with the screen door I decided to tackle the mess in the school room. Little did I know when I decided we would take a month of vacation to organize, prep and ready our lives, rooms and selves for the new school year that it would take us less than one week to total pile up the school room. Oh my the junk I found in there! But I got it all sorted and piled and chunked as needed. LOL It's a long way from done, but I did get a good start and you can actually see the floor now. LOL. Anyway back to the funny...while in there Red came to me and wanted to watch tv...I said No, I think you need to find something else to do for a bit. (I mean granted it's 1000 degrees outside, and there is only so much to do inside before you go stir crazy, but still sitting in front of the tube all day doesn't sound worthy). So after a bit of debate I said "If you don't find something to do I will find something for you and you won't like it." (I know I know...My Mom coming out 101!) LOL So I turn back to my piles and get back to work. Well I am oblivious to the fact that my Red had plopped his booty on the floor in the hallway...guess he thought he'd just wait me out! Well about 20 minutes later Bug comes to the door and peers over the mountain of "stuff that belongs elsewhere" and says Mom did you tell Red he had to sit in the hallway. Hurumphing to myself and rolling my eyes I said No, I told him to find something to do. At this point Bug is snickering and says Okay, well you gotta see this. So I pick my way precariously out of the room to find a baby Red, on his side nose to the wall, thumb in mouth, knees tucked close, snoring...lol. I suppose he showed me! LOL What a kid!

Okay that is all for now...I suppose I should go rustle up some dinner before the boys come in starving! Until next time....love one another as Jesus has loved on you!

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!