Life with our little family of 3...

For most of the 11+ years we've lived in our house we have wanted the tree next to our house gone. It drops sap on our vehicles half the year and pine needles that end up in the house the other half! So finally after all those years we decided to take the tree down. While there was some sadness of removing a tree which is a part of God's nature, there was happiness at the thought of no more sap or pine needles!  It was quite the operation since it was such a huge tree! But the guys who took it down were amazing and made it look easy!  Above is a picture of how they brought the big limbs down.  We have our very own palm tree!  The interesting thing was the tree was 38 years old which means it began to grow after the house was built.   I thought these are great pictures of how the fibers of a tree grow.  The crew did a great job cleaning up and leaving us lots of work to do.... A least we'll have a few y...

Sammy April 15, 1998 - February 20, 2014 Sammy was quite the cat. He was the king of the house for sure. Mac the 67 lb Boxer was afraid of him. He knew how to get what he wanted. He was a butter eating crazy cat. He lived a good life with lots of changes. From a cross country move to the arrival of a new man (Robert) to the birth of a child (Emma) to the adoption of a four legged brother (Mac). Yet through it all he knew he was king. I miss him lots but am happy for the time we had together. 

We made our annual visit to our favorite pumpkin patch again this year. It was our 10th year visiting since Emma was almost 1 the first time we went. Schilter's was the first pumpkin patch we knew of when we moved to the area and have returned every year since. Of course we had to take Emma's annual "How Tall Are You" picture. This is incredible.... This year                                                                                                              Last Year No wonder she struggles with being tired all the time! Look at how much she's grown! Every year they have kitties which is one of the highlights for Emma. They are great kittens that love to be cuddled. Over the years ...

We have really enjoyed camping this summer, especially with our little home on wheels. We went to Family Camp again this year for Labor Day and had a great time! There was so much fun to do we had to almost schedule some downtime! Our amazing view from our campsite! I never get tired of seeing this and am in awe every time I do of God's amazing power and beauty.  Em and Dad chillin... We were so excited we got to go on two trail rides! It was probably our favorite thing to do.     Beauty again.. this time on a trail ride   Mac's form of camping... We've determined he likes camping probably because of this!  This never seems to get old for Em... This time though she beat her record!  There was so much more but I enjoyed relaxing so much that I forgot to take pictures! We're all looking forward to going again next year...

I don't normally post things like this on my blog but I am so disappointed that I feel the need to. For several years I've used Home Educating Family's planners for scheduling our schooling. A few years ago I switched to a computer software for planning since it worked better for me. It wasn't from Home Educating Family but another Christian company. A year or so ago I noticed Home Educating Family had an online planning software called My Well Planned Day. Now that Emma has her own laptop to use, I thought maybe it would work for us. It claimed to have the capability to have multiple users so kids could log into to see what their assignments, chores, events, etc. were. I decided to look into it since I've always liked Home Educating Family. Big mistake... big big mistake that wasted many hours and money. I purchased it yet for 48 hours I couldn't even log into the site. It would log me in then freeze up. I tried everything. I emailed their "tech supp...

Emma returned from Cascades Camp after another awesome year of camp! Though this year she got to do their horse camp and loved it! She spent most of her time learning about and riding horses.  Unfortunately her friend who she went with came home sick after a few days. Another girl in the cabin also went home sick. Fortunately Emma didn't get sick until after coming home!  Needless to say her favorite part was the horses. The girls did a show for their parents before pick up. Emma did an awesome job controlling her horse even when he wanted to do his own thing!  Emma in front of her cabin the day we dropped her off The girls walked their horse through a course with cones then trotted back.  In this event they rode one handed while carrying a cup of water in the other hand. They rode their horse down and tried to throw the water on a counselor. Emma's horse didn't want to cooperate but she did awesome guiding him around. She was able to t...