Part of our homeschooling...

Today, Todd found this little girl (the boys think she's a girl) in the bathroom. They had a lot of fun playing with her, putting her on me, dropping her, catching her. Poor thing was probably so tired!

Little baby girl, Lizzy...

I think part of the appeal was getting out of writing their spelling words and practicing cursive writing. ;-) They played with Lizzy for  hours. I told them they could keep her until lunch unless they could figure out what she eats. They caught a bunch of ants and put them in MY FREEZER!!! They figured they'd go into hibernation and be fresh meat for Lizzy when thawed. Franklin looked up how to care for an anole after he finished his school work and let her go. :( He figured she was a little much to take care of. We didn't have much of what we needed to care for her. Starting with a 85 to 95 degree environment... She was fun while she was here though. They let her go out front. Maybe we'll see her again?

Investment house status

We started painting this weekend! Still have a bit to do but we're making progress. We're painting it almost the exactly same color and it's sort of hard to tell where we've stopped or started. The main difference is that it's CLEAN!

This wall is half painted, can you tell which half?

Did I mention that it looks like they liked to play darts in the upstairs rooms? Without a dart board! We filled in most of those holes. :)

Franklin LOVED helping out. Patch stayed home w/ Jan who we couldn't have done without. She was awesome the way she fed us every time we came home. Thank you Jan!!

Todd and Pat worked awful hard too. Thank you guys for doing all this work! It looks sooooo much better already!

Before..............                                                           After...

It's a little later in the day but the  first picture is honestly YUCKY! The second pic looks so clean. :)

Let's hope my muscles will help me get out of bed in the morning!

Week One!

We have our first week of homeschooling behind us this year! :)

The boys didn't seem to object too much but they're counting down the hours until they can get on the computer at 3. Patch got a B on his first spelling test and Franklin got all of his right! WooHOO! I'm impressed with both of them. Patch was a little sad about the B - maybe that just means he'll try harder next week? I still forgot to get back to school pics of the boys. I will do that soon though!

This weekend is painting at the rental house. I hope we can get this ready to go soon!

Happy Friday everyone!

Camping

We really need to go camping more often. Even though we ran into some rain, it's really great to be out enjoying Mother Nature.

We were fortunate enough to join our friends Pat & Jan at their camp so we didn't have to supply or set much up. We brought food & chairs - and bug spray!! (I just got done itching from flea bites, I didn't want to add any mosquito bites!) Of course, the first (and about only) thing the boys wanted to do was go swimming. I think they got their fill of it for a little while. It was great that neither of them needs floaties to swim anymore! (Thank you cousin, Danny!)

It was  a little overcast which means I didn't get sunburned this time. YAY!

Food always seems to taste better when it's cooked (and eaten) outdoors! So, I hope you all get to enjoy some time outside soon. Tomorrow we hit the books!

School starts Monday!

This year our studies will include:

The Late Renaissance through the Early Modern time period
Chemistry
and the appropriate Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic for 3rd & 6th grades :)

Franklin really wants to learn how to draw. He has ambitions of doing Anime. And Patch is looking forward to learning how to cook - eggs are the first thing on his agenda :) We've already signed up to do some field trips and classes. I hope they enjoy school this year, I plan on it!

I guess I'll have to capture a first day of school picture on Monday. I hope they wear their good pj's. LOL

For all the *not* morning people out there.

I love boxers!!

Dad Life

I saw this video originally from one of the members of one of my debate boards. Now I'm seeing it on FB but it's worth sharing here too :)

Work, work, work

Yesterday, I wrote:

Tomorrow I need to:


vacuum & dust downstairs
clean the bathrooms
mop the floors
start cleaning the carpets

So, I started mopping the floors... I found a couple more fleas :( I have to find out if I can bomb the house again so soon or if there isn't really a point to it yet since eggs will be hatching in a couple days and I should just wait or what. I'd like to get over there this week and work on cleaning the carpets. Then I'll probably put borax down because I know that's a GREAT flea killer :)
 

Todd has a paper he needs to write by next Sunday but he got a great start on getting the floor up in the laundry room that is rotting away. I still don't know how people can live like they were. How do you shower or anything else in bathrooms like they were???

Mopped the dining room floor :)

Does anybody know if these truly are blueberries? They look like blueberries. The bush just seems awful large!

Things to get done...

Today I:

vacuumed the upstairs
dusted the upstairs
vacuumed & dusted the stairwell
swept 4 rooms & the bathrooms & hallways
put lightbulbs in every single light fixture in the house
removed screws, nails or anchors from every single wall in the house

Tomorrow I need to:

vacuum & dust downstairs
clean the bathrooms
mop the floors
start cleaning the carpets

Todd fixed the leaky the faucets, spackled and checked into the flooring that needs to be repaired. We'll have to bomb for fleas for a third time this week but we didn't get bit up today. YAY!

Lots of work ahead but we're thankful that it's not as bad as when we bought the place :)

Investment house

It's time to work on the investment house so we can get it rented or sold soon. For those who don't know, we've had the house with a guy who leases it from us and then rent to owns it with someone who doesn't have great credit and tries to help them get back on their feet. His contract is up so we're done with him and going to try to get this sold or rented on our own.

These last people were pretty strange. They seemed to be great tenants, always paying on time, supposedly fixing things up and I think they're the people that built a very cheapy (but LARGE) shed in the back yard. Last weekend, Todd and our good friend Pat worked hard at getting rid of stuff in the back yard - a lot of scrap metal, a lot of junk they took to the dump, some things for us and them (Pat & Jan) to keep. I wish I had taken a picture of the monkey wrench they found - it was about 4 ft long!

Anyhow, the tenant got into a car accident and the rent started getting delayed and then who knows what happened. The place is FILTHY! I know they had a baby there - child locks on cupboards & drawers, infamil left behind and they might have had an elderly person to care for - special handles were added to the tub and it looks like a chair lift in the stairwell. For some unknown reason, they took almost every light bulb out of the house. What I can't figure out is how they put the covers for the light fixtures back up with all the dust and bugs in tact.

One thing I do know about these people is that every picture they had hanging in the place was straight, there are pencil marks near almost every nail hole to show where level was...

I'm not sure anybody vacuumed there in the last four years or wiped off the splatters on the back of the stove. I guess they just didn't have a MIL to keep them in check.

Did I mention that I think they played darts? Too bad they didn't have a dart board to go with them.

So, anyhow... I'll leave you with some pictures and if you know anybody who wants to move to NE Columbia, let me know!

Do you ever feel....

like you just shouldn't get out of bed some mornings?

A little update...

I'm feeling like I can breath a little these days. Let me try to upload a few pictures and let you know what we're done doing and why I'm breathing a little easier these days. For those who don't already know this, I just feel a little overwhelmed when I have three or more things hanging out there waiting to be done. Not that I don't enjoy doing lots and lots of things with my family and friends, I just need to figure out how to focus on the one or two things coming up and not let the rest bother me. ;-)  

In June, the boys and I headed south to my mother's house for a visit with her, my sister, her family and got to meet her new baby dog too. :) We went to the Central Florida Zoo and tried their zip lines. It was a great time! If you get the chance to go on something like this, take it!!

My sister's oldest son, Danny has been a lifeguard for the last 5 years and we took a day to visit with him and get the boys a swimming lesson. They're both pretty happy that they can swim across the pool now. :)

Shortly after that, my friend and her daughter came up from FL and helped us have a garage sale. We've had the garage full of stuff for way too many years and the garage still needs some work but it's SOOOO much better than it was! Thank you Lorelei and Leah for that!! This picture was taken after a fair amount of the 'stuff' was already sold!

We've also been fortunate enough to be able to visit with our friends near Aiken which is close to a lake. It's been a great way to keep cool this summer. (If you can get past the rocks and muck you're walking on in the lake - thankfully, I have my crocs to wear there now :) )

 And, yes! We got to visit the Pirate exhibit at the State Museum. It was pretty cool! After spending most of the morning listening to Patch complaining that he didn't want to go to the museum, I got a sad face when we started to leave and a question as to why we were leaving. When I told him that the museum was closing for the day, he promptly smiled and asked, 'Can we come back tomorrow?' Hopefully, we'll find something Franklin really likes the next time we go. ;-)

New beginning...

My last blog was a little too public for me and I'm hoping that I have this one fairly secure.

I'll update about us soon but today, I'll leave you with one of my new favorite songs :)