Happiness is......

the kids finishing some of their school books!

Dancer finished one of her language arts studies. The first one she did was Julie and the Wolves and used the study guide from Total Language Plus. She, and I, both enjoyed this study. There were a lot of good discussion questions, things that we probably wouldn't have talked about if not for the questions coming up in the study. The vocabulary words were words that could be added to our everyday speech. Often times vocabulary studies have words that are not usable in everyday conversation. We have also perked up our ears when listening to or reading other books. One of the words I didn't notice so often was carrion, which is rotting flesh, and now it seems I am hearing that word everywhere. Another word was Quonset hut and now it seems there is a Quonset hut around every turn in the road. The other part that was good about the study were the dictation exercises. This is something that Dancer has never done before and she really excelled at it. By the end of this first study she had much improvement. This is will be good practice for her if she goes to college and has to take notes in a lecture. I would have never thought to have her work on this skill if it hadn't been introduced in this study.

Spark is also moving right along. He finished his book about dictionary skills. He so didn't like this book when he started it but by the end he looked forward to working in it. It covered alphabetizing, nouns, adjectives and verbs, and of course, looking up words.

He is also coming right along on his inferencing book. This book is just plain fun. The stories and activities are short, and often funny, so it makes a nice transition activity from one of his other subjects to another.

The birds of the field

This was on our way home from town. A farmer was plowing his field and all these seagulls were following him around the field eating something, probably worms since the ground is so wet, from where he had just tilled. It was an awsome sight to see.

A time to weep and a time to laugh

Today brought both of those things. We headed down to the cities for the burial of Great Grandma Pat and Aunt Rosemary. These are both on Dad's side of the family.

We weren't sure where we were going so we left early in the morning be sure that if there was any traffic, or we had trouble finding the place, we would be there on time. That plan actually made us an hour early. Since we had the dog with we stopped at a park for her to get a bit of exercise. This park had the longest slide we had ever seen that wasn't a water slide. Spark and Dancer had so much fun sliding down this long slide.

Soon it was time to switch gears and head over to the cemetery. Aunt Rosemary died a couple of years ago and one of her sisters had been keeping her but now the family decided to bury her. Great Grandma Pat passed away in July but because of the cremation the family waited until this fall to bury her. We were unable to attend the funeral so we were thankful there were two different dates.

On the way home we stopped and did a little shopping at stores that we don't have near us and went out for lunch.

It was a bittersweet day.

This is normal

Spark has been wearing this outfit for the last couple of days. He has never said anything about it, just been wearing it around conducting business as usual.

"We sure had a lot of company today"

This is what Spark said tonight and he was right. This morning, before the butt crack of dawn, a couple men came over to put in a new bathroom window and sliding door in our dining room. This is what the door old door looked like. It has never opened since we have lived here. It was so drafty that we caulked and taped the two sides of the door together a few winters ago because the blinds would blow back and forth when it was windy out. In the winter I am sure the heat just poured out of it. The glass so dirty between the panes that we never had a clear look into the backyard from that vantage point. But now all that has changed and we have a beautiful new sliding door! The other sliding door in the dining room had been replaced before we moved into the house. I said to the Dad, "How bad do you think that one was that they choose to replace it over this one?" I shutter to think.

Later in the morning a man came to buy some ducks. Before he could buy them we had to catch them. Last night we went out to try and catch them in the dark. The hope was that we could just walk up to them and pick them up like you can a chicken in the dark. We quickly learned that this isn't true for ducks, they are just as hard to catch in the dark as they are in the light. He brought a net with and we chased them into a building where we were able to "net" ten of them for him. We put on quite the show for the men putting in the new door and window!

This afternoon a family came to look at the goats we have for sale. They didn't buy any but it was fun to meet them and show off our "girls".

So yes, we had a lot of company for us. We can go weeks without anyone stopping by so to have so many in one day is probably a record.

Back to square one

Our family is scheduled to serve snack at church on Sunday. To get a head start on the snacks, Dancer and I made a loaf of lemon poppy seed bread. It baked up beautifully and I took it out of the pan and had it cooling on the board ready to put the glaze on. I guess I should have been more clear about the bread being for church because when I came back to glaze it this is all that was left. Since I didn't want to test that Jesus would feed the masses with this partial loaf, I revised my plan and made some no bake and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Swiming at the pool

Any time we weren't out and about the kids were in the pool. When it was time to go we had a hard time getting them out. Here is what they did:

Floated on the water

Swam under the water

Jumped in ....

over and .....

over and ....

over.

What to do, what to do

It is Tuesday and we have two more days in Branson. It's great we have two more days left, but we are in a country music capital and we are not country music fans. This was made very clear to us when we watched the GAC show at Silver Dollar City. The singers would come out and sing a song and it seemed that every other person was clapping and singing along to songs we had never heard before. If a country music star knocked on my door I would probably think they were there to buy eggs unless it was Kenny Rogers. I do know who he is. Oh, or Randy Travis, I just love Randy Travis' singing voice and songs.

We decided to go to the Titanic museum. This picture is of the outside of the museum. It was raining, as it did just about everyday we were there, so that is the white dots on the photo. The tour is self paced and is suppose to take 90 minutes. It took us over two and a half hours. There is just so much to see and learn in there. When you first go in, through an iceberg, you are handed a passport. In the passport is a bio of one one of the people who were on the Titanic. As you go through the museum you can look for clues about if your person survived or not. Dancer and I survived and Dad and Spark perished.

Ride the Ducks was another activity we did. This is beyond fun. They drive you around town in this military DUKW vehicle that goes on land and in the water. The driver we had couldn't have been better at his job. He took us up this mountain and showed us all these military vehicles, drove down to the dam and fish hatchery and the main event is going out on Table Rock Lake. When we were out on the lake he let all the kids drive. So, so cool! We also got these duck bills to quack at other Duck vehicles that passed us on the road.

The last thing we did was the Dixie Stampede. The opening show in the carriage room was a juggler. He was so entertaining that he would have been almost worth the cost of the tickets. After the opening show you move into the arena area where you have dinner and they put on the show with the horses. The meal is a four course dinner which they serve you with no silverware. The food was fabulous. The only bad part about the whole thing is that the show is so good that it is hard to eat and watch at the same time!

There are a lot of other things to do there that are not country music related but we were out of time and money so it was time to make the long trek back home.

Eureka Springs peril

Last year when we were at Eureka Springs we bought some scrumptious candy and ate it in a mall in the center of the downtown. Spark loved that day so much that he wanted to go back again this year since we were going to be so close.

To get to Eureka Springs from Grandma Pat's house in Bella Vista we come in from the west where the road snakes through the mountains and we feel like we are going to fly off the road and tumble down the mountain at every curve because Dad is such a crazy driver. From Branson we came in from the east. The two sides couldn't be more different. The east side is flat with a safe four lane road. Coming from this way was unfamiliar to us and so we had to stop at a gas station and ask for directions. It was simple, go left at the first Y in the road and then at every stop sign or light take a right.

Mondays in Eureka Springs is not tourist day as there are very few people inhabiting the streets. Spark got his desired candy and we ate it in the square, again on the same bench as last year. The kids each got a new Webkinz to commemorate the trip, we walked the whole historic district and then got in the car to head back.

The trip would be easy because we would take a left now at every stop sign and light and at the Y we would go right. All was well, we got to a Y and took a right. About ten minutes went by and Dad and I both commented that none of the sights along the road looked one iota familiar to us. At this point, we realized that we had taken a wrong Y but this road had to lead to somewhere. Since we are quite a ways along, lets just follow this road until we come to the next town and then head north to Branson. Great plan, except that about 15 more minutes went by and we never came to a town. The Dad, who has a good sense of direction where as I have none, says that we have been heading south not east. It was getting dusky so Dad turned the car around and headed back because we were a bit nervous. No offense if you happen to live in that part of the country, but having gates across your driveways and guard dogs laying in your drive if you don't have a gate really doesn't make a traveler feel safe to stop and ask for directions. When we got back to where we made the wrong turn we were but half a block from the right Y in the road. I had never been so happy in my life to see street lights at the next town. To celebrate our victorious return to civilization we ate greasy burgers loaded high with all the extras at Fudruckers.

Silver Dollar City

Silver Dollar City was the main thing that we wanted to do while in Branson. The tickets were worth every cent we spent on them including the crazy, high pressure time share presentation we sat through to get them at half price. It was Harvest Festival and they had a lot of great demonstrations of barrel making, broom making, blacksmithing, glass blowing, sorghum making, and others but these are the ones I can remember right off the top of my head. There was a big homestead barnyard set up and of course, the kids first thing, ran over to the goats to pet them. We have goats 50 feet out our back door but yet we drive over 700 miles and they have to pet the goats. They also checked out all the chickens and ducks.

Dancer tried her hand at milking the cow. Not quite the same as a goat, the cow has double the equipment down there! This was fun. They sat in this big old rocking chair. It reminded me of when they were little and they would want to share the same chair.

The spot we ate lunch at looked out at this waterfall. It is so perfect I think it almost looks fake in this picture.

The kids went to this attraction where there was a building that had water guns positioned along it facing a ship which also had water guns on it so that people on each of the structures could shoot water at each other. The sign said:

And they did! They met some other kids there (I think the only other kids in the park who's parents would let them get wet) and had a water fight. All of them were drenched to the skin. This was the end of the first day when it was still warm out. They spent the rest of the day wet, which they didn't seem to mind, and were still damp when we got back to where we were staying.

The next morning we arrived bright and early because we knew we would need the whole day to cover everything we wanted to do. The kids rode all the rides, some of them a couple of times. The temps were in the 50's, which everyone there thought was cold, but to us it was business as usual. There wasn't hardly anyone at the rides when we were there so for most part there was no waiting and they got ride on them several times.

Even I tried out a ride, which is a big deal for me since I can't read for a minute in the car without feeling woozy. The only ride I would even come close to getting on was this huge ship that lazily rocked back and forth. It didn't seem to terrifying but most of the ride I had my eyes closed and by the time it was over I was more than ready to get off. I was fine going backward but coming forward made me oh so sick. Plus I made sure I sat right in the middle of it, I can't imagine how it would have been at the ends!

We saw several wonderful shows, Cajun Connection, Bradford Trio, Pure Heart, Headin' West, GAC Nights and Wings Over Missouri. The Wings Over Missouri show featured 11 birds, that were native to Missouri, in an outdoor theatre where the birds flew just inches over our heads. It was amazing!

The kids sitting in a huge Horn of Plenty

We also enjoyed lots of great food, a fudge covered funnel cake was probably the best thing we ate. The kids toured the cave, we rode the train twice, tasted sorghum, played in this gigantic ball pit/climbing structure, checked out a lot of the shops and numerous other things. We could have easily spent another day there, but sadly, we only had a two day pass. It will give them something to look forward to if we ever go again. Grandma only lives an hour and half from here in the winter so it is possible that we could.

Branson or bust

Friday morning we got up early and left for Branson, Missouri for a week of fun and relaxation. The Dad's mom and dad were generous to let us use a week of their time share time. There was a very heavy frost on the ground so we were happy to be leaving for warmer weather. The trip, according to map quest, is suppose to be 11 hours.
As we were going down the freeway we realized there are some rather unusual ways that companies advertise and some interesting sights to be seen so out came the camera. These three life size planes are for an airport.

This the most unusual welcome center we saw. It is a two story barn complete with a silo. Really neat inside too, it has a huge stair case to the second floor which has a gift shop.

This wind farm is such an incredible sight with all the windmills going around at the same time. These windmills can be seen for miles on each side of the freeway.

Stopped for a little lunch in Iowa.

We were well acquainted with the back of this trailer. Why? Because we followed it for mile, after mile, after mile, after mile, after mile of single lane 50 mph construction areas on the freeway where we should have been zipping along at 70 mph.

We saw this guy who had to be at least eight stories tall.

There were Indians on the prairie. Which in Missouri they actually use the word Indians. In our state that is very politically incorrect, we say Native American or people gasp. All schools and businesses that had anything to with Indians had to change their names and/or mascots.

To complement the Indian was a charging buffalo.

In our state fireworks are illegal so it seemed out of place to see huge firework stores. And the store were mega huge and they all had cars in front of them. When do you shoot off fireworks besides the 4th of July? Another odd thing about Missouri is that you can smoke in public. Again, in our state that is illegal, even in bars.

We saw this horse standing in the grass by a freeway off ramp while it's owner was on the other side of the road selling baskets. The horse never moved the whole time we were getting gas even with cars zooming by it. Not sure why they tied it there instead of by them but we figured they knew more about what makes a good hitching post for a horse than we did.

By the time we were two hours over schedule, and there was no end in sight to the road, it turned to just plain silliness in the car. Finally, 15 1/2 hours after we left home, we got the place we are staying. Whew, what a day!

We have been here a year!

Our little blog is one year old! The purpose of our blog is to create a sort of diary to remember things that we have done, document some of the kids homeschool projects, keep track of some of our recipes, freeze in time images of our house, yard and community and record little everyday snippets we don't want to forget about. Before the blog, since Dancer was a wee babe, everyday I would write on the calendar, or in the date book, what we did each day, if they said something cute, milestones and other memories I wanted to save for them. Or perhaps it was more for me. I love to look back over those notes and I can actually remember most of the days or when they said something. With the blog we can just make it so much more complete and with pictures, lots of pictures. I am one of those people that have about three pictures of me from when I was a kid. I swore that was not going to happen to my kids. Tonight I looked back to our first post and wow, the kids have already changed so much from last year. Time in our families is like a glacier, day to day it seems like nothing changes but when you can look back a year, or two, or even more, there has been so many changes in our life. I am looking forward at looking back at our "glacier" next year. May God bless us and keep us healthy and happy.

Oh say can you see

my eyes, if you can then my hairs too short!

Spark got his bi-annual hair cut this afternoon. A couple of months ago I did cut the bangs, sides and back off. No layering or anything, just made it shorter. He was starting to look Amish. Not that Amish isn't a good look, if you are Amish, which we are not.

He hates to have his hair cut and I don't usually fight with him about it. I try to pick my battles with him and for as crazy as he is, I am assuming in the years to come that there are going to be a lot bigger battles we will be having.

I had beans and rice on the stove cooking as I was transforming him into a handsome little man with my trusty little hair scissors. He looked at the oven and asked what was blue in it.

"That is the Smurf we are having for dinner."

"Then what is on the stove?"

"Smurf side dish."

After we ate supper Spark asked about the Smurf since we had chicken. "Oh that's right, it was chicken" and I did the wink, wink like I was fooling him it was chicken.

"Well, if was Smurf then why wasn't it blue" he asked.

Without missing a beat Dancer says, "Because Mom skinned it of course!"

Easy Peasy Stuffed Green Peppers

Take the tops off and clean out the seeds of green peppers. Plan on one pepper per person. Make a box of Rice-a-roni, the San Francisco treat. I had to add that last part in there for Spark. Add a can of chopped tomatoes or about three fresh chopped tomatoes. Add browned meat and onion, hamburger or turkey work equally as well. Spoon mixture into the peppers and set them up in an oven proof pan. Pour a jar of spaghetti sauce over the tops. Pop it into a 350 degree oven until the peppers are baked and serve. These also work great for reheating as leftovers so make a lot for two meals and the next day you don't have to cook or clean up!

Giant Spider

We all worked on this giant spider so he is a group effort. We rediscovered old Family Fun magazine in the basement from October 2005 and the directions for this spider was in it. We kinda followed their directions. He is made from a gallon milk jug, black foam pipe insulation tubes, a ping pong ball and lots of electrical tape.

First thing is to cut the spout off the milk jug.

Then cover it with the electrical tape until it is completely black.

Tape the tube onto the milk jug. Do whatever it takes to get those tubes to stay on the body. We resorted to hot glue and lots and lots of tape.

To make the legs bend whatever direction you want them to bend cut about a 1 inch notch from the side of the leg on the side you want it to bend to. Then keep in place with more tape.

For the eyes, cut a the ping pong ball in half using a utility knife. Be careful not to slip with the knife and jab it into your thumb thus having to stop the project to deal with your bleeding thumb. Color the now half balls yellow and put a black diamond in the center for an extra spooky effect. Hot glue these on the front of the spider.

It is hard to tell from our spider, because we took the picture from an angle where the eyes would show, but the legs do fan out on the sides and he looks more spider "normal". If he is propped up just so he will also stand. I am not sure what we are going to with him now but he was fun to make.

"You can't stand on one leg"

When I was a kid my parents had a lot of company. People would just stop in or they often invited people over. It was customary for my dad to offer them a drink or a beer. After they had finished their first beverage he would always say "you can't stand on one leg," meaning have another drink and another round would be passed.

Well, obviously our ducks can stand on one leg. Here they are in the driveway enjoying a puddle that has formed there during our very rainy days this last week. They are not only standing on one leg but they are sleeping on one leg!

Vegetables Attack!!!

"Friends, Peppers, Countrymen,"

"Lend me your ears!!!"

I thought it was zucchini that took over the garden?

Dehydrated watermelon

The low lying area of our swamp, where we grow our squash, melons and gourds, had frost the other night. Since all the plants were dead, we picked what was ripe and salvageable. Two things that were still okay were two watermelons. On a whim, since we had the dehydrator going, Dad sliced up a watermelon, picked out the seeds and put them in to dry. Although they don't look the greatest they sure are tasty.

Spark's Dehydrated Green Peppers

For a 4-H project Spark made dehydrated green peppers. First he picked the peppers.

This was just a small percentage of the peppers we grew this year. Pretty impressive since the ducks ate each and every plant off earlier in the summer and the had to grow twice.

To get the peppers ready for the dehydrator, he cut off the tops and plucked out the seeds.

Sliced the peppers into strips as close to the same size as possible.

Laid the slices out on the dehydrator trays.

And the finished product! These didn't take long to dry, about a day and half. We don't run our dehydrator at night so if you did it would take even less time. They are real crispy and I think would work well as a substitute for potato chips with a sandwich. Dip would make them even better!

Slurping worms

We were coming home from town tonight in the rain being extra vigilant to watch the road after the deer incident last night. We got almost to our house where the road is paved but it is a not very often traveled road. From a ways away we could see that there were eyes in the road. As we got closer they moved across the road in unison and then when we got even closer we could see that they were three raccoons. They acted like they were dragging something across the road but we couldn't see anything. They weren't scared of the car even though we weren't more than 15 feet from them. They kept doing this odd dance type thing and once in awhile sitting up on their hind legs to look at us. We finally figured out the road was covered with worms and the raccoons were picking them up and slurping them in their mouths like spaghetti. They seemed grateful for the light to see the worms better and then after a few minutes one of them ran into the ditch and the others followed. I have never seen anything like it in my whole life, it was just the coolest thing!