Happy Birthday to Haley!

Today my baby girl turns 10. Never will she be a single digit again. She's super excited, but me, not so much. Its sad in a way. They grow up whether you're ready for it or not. Its just so hard to believe that its been 10 years since I first looked into her precious baby face. She was a dream come true for me. I prayed and prayed for a baby girl and God gave me Haley. Yes, maybe she's a bit spoiled, sometimes a bit difficult, but she's still my baby girl and I love her without question. She is a gift from God and I treasure her as such. So, as I sit here with tears in my eyes thinking about what used to be, remembering that sweet little bundle you were, I also think ahead (with some serious trepidation) to the bright future ahead of you. Happy 10th birthday baby girl!!

Letters to Juliet Movie Review

Several of my friends and I went to see this movie over the weekend. My mother saw it just after it came out and absolutely LOVED it. She hates just about all movies, so I just had to go. I have to say though that I'm somewhat biased because I love sappy romance stories, and I'm a big Amanda Seyfried fan. But, regardless of all that, we all loved the movie. Who doesn't love happy endings, right? My mother said that it did make her cry at all, but sappy me cried quite a bit. Be prepared and bring tissues. This is one of those movies that I will most likely add to my movie collection when it comes out on DVD.

If you haven't seen the trailer yet, you can check it out here.

Week in Review

Not too much going on here as we're enjoying a nice Summer break. Its nice to be able to refresh and revive before jumping back in to school again. We will be starting back on a light schedule in another week. In the past we've always taken a normal Summer break, but is so hard to get back in "school mode" after 2 months off that I'm going to try doing a more year round schedule this year.

We did some birthday shopping for the kids on Monday with my step mother in law, followed by lunch at Dairy Queen. This was the first time that I had ever eaten there. Sad, seeing that I'm 40.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent being lazy at home. Sleeping late, getting caught up on house work, swimming, watching it rain...I'm starting to feel like we've been transplanted to Florida or something. These afternoon thunderstorms are getting old! My garden is enjoying the water though.

Thursday we went on a walking tour of our town. It was super hot and humid, but we learned lots of interesting history. For instance, I just discovered that Dolly Parton was married here in 1966. Who knew? After the tour we had lunch with a fellow homeschooler and the author of one of my all time favorite blogs. You can check her out here.

Friday I had a nice relaxing mom's day out with some of my other homeschooling friends. We went shopping and had lunch at Olive Garden. YUM! It was so nice to be able to go into shops with lots of breakable things and not have to be saying "don't touch that", "put that down" and "no" every five seconds. My kids had a great day too, playing with their friends.

Lastly, I'll share a picture of our newest resident. She came home yesterday. We've been waiting for her to be old enough since the day she was born! My neighbor's cat had 4 kittens on the day they left town for several days. I was on kitty duty at the time. So, we had the honor of meeting the new arrivals on the day they were born, and kitten sitting until their owners returned. We've also been able to watch them grow each week and to kitten sit on several weekends recently. Anyway, she came home yesterday and we're all in love with her! We've named her Anabel which is a form of Amabel which according to my baby book means loveable in Latin. I think its fitting.

Making Pocket Books

We just love making pocket books whenever possible. Evan Moore produces these books and you can find them for just about every subject. I tend to get mine from one of my favorite sites, Teacher File Box. You can also find them on Currclick. In the past we've made them while studying whales, and again while studying animal migration. At the moment we're using them while studying Africa. We started out by making the outside covers.



Then, we started making the pockets. Each pocket concentrates on a different topic, with the first being about African Animals. When you complete all of the pockets, you end up with a wonderful permanent keepsake of what you learned.

Nature Studies

We've spent several wonderful afternoons studying nature at the pond near our house. We were able to see so many interesting things! A couple of months ago we noticed these strange looking creatures in the water of the pond. They looked similar to a cricket, but lived in the water. I thought they were probably dragon fly nymphs, and this proved to be true. When we were at the pond recently, we found the exoskeletons of those same nymphs. They were literally everywhere on the grass surrounding the pond.



My kids are particularly interested in dragon flies after our recent trip to their grandparent's house in Florida. There were dragon flies everywhere demonstrating their incredible flying ability over the lake there. They were even able to get up close and personal with one particular dragon fly for quite some time.



While at the pond, we came across a large dragon fly that only had 3 wings instead of the normal 4. He let me hold him and the kids were able to study him. Very cool!



In addition to the dragon flies, we also saw lots of "interesting" spiders, and more tiny frogs than we could count. It was really neat considering that we have tadpoles from this very same pond at home. Ours are just starting to develop their legs, whereas these were already frogs. They were so tiny! Each one was about the size of my pinky finger nail.



We also found one tiny frog that had obviously just crawled out of the water. He was darker, smaller and still had quite a bit of his tail. It was really cool for the kids to be able to see all of the stages of the frogs, from the eggs we collected, to tiny tadpoles with gills, large tadpoles with emerging legs, tiny frogs with a partial tail still attached, to finally a fully developed tiny frog. Better yet, we have pictures of each and every stage!

Birthday parties...what fun!

Yes, its that time again. My daughter's 10th birthday is fast approaching and we've barely begun to plan it. Why is it that I always procrastinate until the very last minute before finally getting around to planning? Maybe its not a bad thing since she tends to change her mind about the theme of the party frequently. I think we've finally settled on a puppy/dog theme. She wanted to do a Hannah Montana theme, but seeing as I'm not 100% behind the whole Hannah Montana craze, I talked her out of it. I don't mind if she wants to have a few of her songs (with my prior review and approval) on her ipod, but I certainly don't want her making Hannah her role model for her life or anything.

So today we're hopefully making a trek to the party supply store and purchasing invitations, plates, cups, napkins, etc. I suppose we also need to order a cake topper of some sort. I'm making her cake this year and it will indeed be a labor intensive, multi day event. Its something I'm really interested in though, so I enjoy it. Besides, I think my kids enjoy me making something special just for them. Her party will mainly be a glorified play date with cake and ice cream. What does your family do for birthdays?