A Fresh Week

After recital it is kinda hard to come down off the "high".
So we downloaded recital music, since it was Christian music, and began the week. Monday was stormy but we headed to the Southwest Dairy museum for a great tour, and free ice cream. Also went to the library, grocery store and topped it off with Monday Night for the Master singing at a retirement center. That is always a blessing! Tuesday was just normal, as was Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. Nothing unusual, no dance classes to rush to, just time to play and read and enjoy life.
So the weekend arrived and it is Memorial Day weekend. We cook out at home and are camping in the backyard, mowing, taking care of the garden, doing some shopping, worshipping the Lord and just taking life easy.

June will have 4 different dance camps for the kids, one church camp, one week of VBS and several birthday parties (3 in this house). But when July comes we can chill, and swim, bowl, skate, sew, read, and just CHILL! Except that it will be daily over 100 degrees by then.....so we won't chill a lot, we'll do more sweating in reality...LOL! Have a great day for Jesus, ya'll!

Electricity in the air!

This was the week of our spring recital. All we ever did was Nutcracker, so this was new territory, but MAN! it really got us pumped for dance. I was blown away by the talent. The moves and outfits and music were all so geared toward glorification of our Creator. I was beyond impressed with the school and the participants. Many of these we know personally and have grown to love dearly. We will be taking summer camps and hopefully signing up for more classes in fall. This place is a blessing! Above is finale from recital. All kids signed the final verse of I Know That You Are For Me.
Here is the owner and most talented woman with a vision of Christian dance...Mrs. Beth Wood. She performed in many of the numbers. She is superwoman. Just wish she had time to join co-op again...but that is ok. We see her and her kids very often at the studio!
Liz and Bianca are dressed and ready for the younger group hip hop number to Bring the Party to Life (Group 1 Crew). They were awesome! But also sad that their teacher Susanna had graduated and would be leaving. Tears were shed.
Jacob with his great friends Daniel and David. All share love of dance and filmmaking and art. Now Jacob may take more than theater. He is interested in Irish. Wonderful!
Primary ballerinas waiting to go onstage. So cute! Kimberly did great to Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus). Miss Kayla was wonderful with them, but we will dearly miss Laura! Why do they have to graduate????
And this is the kind of weather we have had this May. Very stormy, lots of tornadic activity. But it didn't keep us down. We have schooled, played, visited, danced, studied, gone to worship and bible study, evangelism, and other stuff. Praying for what the future holds as we try to do all to glorify our Lord. May your week be blessed!

Photo Catch Up

This is our little ballerina getting ready to perform at the community walk-a-thon. She did great and never flinched!
Our girls enjoying the surf on vacation....lovely place!
The pool is a favorite place to be. Can't wait until it is warm and the pool is ready here at home!
Gorgeous sunsets with my favorite 7 year old boy!
Beautiful lake bridge at watercolor.
Pensacola NAS Museum. Fabulous place to go see! Actually this is the Florida visitors center...oops!
Another great sunset with the family building a trench for the surf to come into overnight! Fun times!
Panama City Beach shopping....during biker week! By the way, it costs $2 per person to go out on the pier...we skipped it.
My boys reading together. Love the memories and the closeness.
My youngest ones helping daddy make a sitting area in the yard.
Well, that is all for now---more photos to come as this is recital week!
Sorry this came out weird. For some reason i couldn't make the captions go with the pictures...frustrating, but I will fix it if possible.

Weekly Journal Time

This week, homeschooling was fabulous. We were back on schedule for the first time in a few weeks. I love weeks when we accomplish much. Of course, there are always a few things that get left out. We skipped art and one spanish lesson, and didn't finish our read aloud, but all in all, it was a great week. We will be working through June and starting back up in August. July will be a time for supplemental things, long term planning, and the things we spent less time on during the year. Really I don't have much to say. This coming week will be busy with recital rehearsals. We are all looking forward to that, strangely. It is just so much fun and the music is wonderful. So that is all. I am going to write more next week because there will be much more today, but this week has been blissfully uneventful.

Waves

Ever feel like life comes at you in waves?? Like you just know when you are supposed to build a family because it is on your heart. Or you know it is a time when you are going to make quilts because you have geometric patterns and ideas all in your head. or you know it is time to try natural and homemade because you have access and interest where there was none before. Well, call me crazy but i think God puts things on our hearts when we pray for Him to lead us to what we should accomplish, and lately i have been feeling the need to sew for myself and daughters. I know it costs more, but modesty is at stake in the stores. And though i love to sew, my semester has been filled with the leading to be grounded in my kids and family and homeschooling. So that is where I have planted myself, but lately my leaDING IS NOT AWAY FROM THOSE THINGS BUT WITH AN ADDITION OF THE SEWING i USED TO DO SO OFTEN. Ok, had a caps lock incident and i am not going to correct it, but rest assured i was not yelling at you. Anyway... i got several emails lately from my fave pattern site and decided to order a few. Then it will be time to search for fabric. I think it is also time to do more sewing instruction with my eldest girl. She loves to sew. Maybe that is why it is on my heart to march forward. Summer is coming and maybe we just need to focus on lightweight fabric that covers rather than the worldly skimp. I am glad this is on my heart, though. I have wanted to get back into it, but had no idea how to work it in. God leads us well, when we seek Him, even if it just a leading to sew.

Two Weeks

Well, it has been 2 weeks since I posted. Largely because we were on vacation. Then we had to catch up on first of the month grocery shopping and dance lessons, and our youngest performed downtown at a community event, and of course it was Mother's Day.
So much happened! Vacation was FAB! I love the beach house and the windy waves and the pool and the walking trails. So peaceful. BUT I would never want to be there in the summer due to the heat and crowds. i love it in spring. And we likely will not go next year so I am sad, and will miss it. But as long as we are together it will be grand. We had so much fun together and got tons of beautiful pictures. it is always great to see the kids loving their siblings. We also enjoyed greatly the Pensacola NAS museum, which is free! If we were early risers we could have seen the Blue Angels fly, but still, the museum was great!
When we came home, we finally stayed at a hotel that was quiet. I think that may be a first! I dislike staying at hotels, almost as much as camping, but not quite. For groceries I visited 2 places near Dallas called Natural Grocers and Sprouts. That was AWESOME! The stuff you can get to bake with and the fresh produce was out of sight!.
Then to get to see K perform her ballet downtown in front of a city of strangers was getting me all teary eyed. K didn't even flinch on stage. She was a natural! Plus seeing our dance school's hip hop kids perform to positive music based on the book of Romans made me so proud. They were non seductive, modest, and clean. How rare!
Mother's Day was nice. Clay took the kids shopping and they each picked out something so i got new househoes, aloe infused socks, new kitchen towel set, scentsy brick, a candle, candy and bathroom soap dispenser and matching toothbrush holder. We also had a youth devo with all the families and ate pizza and then played soccer (parents vs kids). It was really fun!
Now back to the business of homeschooling. Such a life of blessings!
Hope you have a great week!