Saturday, December 31, 2011

Christmas Fun and New Years in San Francisco

Okay, so the Christmas bit is over by a week and in a few hours it will be 2012!!!  Whoo-hooo!  I'm quite looking forward to some exciting months ahead.
But I thought I should backtrack and share a bit of our recent excitements:
The kids help put up the Christmas tree


The kids do a Christmas craft

Here's a YouTube video I made on how to create the craft above:


We enjoy our first Christmas in California


Fast forward a few days and we spend some time in San Francisco this weekend.  Can we say FIELDTRIP??
It's been a fun weekend.  Here are a few places we saw...











You can see the rest of my SF pics at my Pinterest account- it's all uploaded there.

Wow...it's been quite a year. I cannot believe for the life of me that in exactly two hours it will be a brand new year.  I am ready.
Happy New Year everyone!!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A Wonderful Christmas!

Christmas was boatloads of fun. We got new family pics made by a wonderful neighbor and friend- a budding photographer, sent out our Christmas cards, purchased a few gifts (limit 3 per child), and enjoyed a cozy Christmas Eve with new friends and Christmas morning caroling service.
Then back at home we passed out presents, drank hot cocoa with marshmallows and peppermint sticks, and lit our first ever fireplace in our first ever California home.
It was beautiful.  Cozy.  Warm.



Later in the evening we called my parents back home in Alabama and Skyped with them for a while.  It was so very cool to see them on the living room flat screen- it felt like they were really a part of our home and we were a part of theirs.  The grandkids got to show their presents and see grandma and grandpa.
I had intended to cook a huge Christmas meal like I did for Thanksgiving, but hubby told me to take a break.  We did the unusual for a Christmas night- ate at IHop.  That was fun, and different to say the least.

Where are pictures when I need them?  I'll get them off my other camera soon and show our Christmas pics.

<--*Update-January 4, 2012-- here is one of the pics our friend and neighbor took for us this Christmas.

Friday, December 16, 2011

A second wind to continue...

Okay, okay, okay.  Maybe I jumped the gun a bit too fast in a recent post about not doing as much homeschool blogging any longer.
Yeah...homeschooling does feel a bit private- cuz it is!!  It's my family.

But thinking about it all, I realize that the reason I began blogging about this stuff to begin with is because I wanted to be transparent in the first place, and open up my home to you guys- invite you in my living room, school room, kitchen...my home...and see what our homeschool looks like.
It's easy to become discouraged and think "well, nobody's reading my blog anyhow and who am I really helping?"
Sometimes as we rediscover ourselves in a different ways (i.e.- find new interests), we like to ditch the old.
But I think that may be one of my old self-sabotaging habits that I need to learn to kick.
I also feel that I need to realize that no matter who responds (or not) to my blog, that somehow in some way I am helping some one.  The only way I can really feel good about continuing something is to know that at least one person is being encouraged or helped in some way by what I've written.  I want to be an encouragement, a support system, a buddy along the journey and homeschooling path.  Though I'm no expert, perhaps someone out there can take from my experiences and feel helped.

So I've decided that I'm going to hang in there for the longer haul and keep posting here at this blog as well as my newest blog about health.  And that means...(drum roll)....

My  homeschool YouTube channel has been resurrected!  I can't believe I'm finally  back up and fully functional on this web 2.0 stuff again :-)  You have no idea how excited I feel about this.  It has been so long since I've given myself permission to do the videos, or to create info sites and blog about everything under the sun that I love.
Holding myself back is part of a really bad habit I've adopted over the months (years even)...and it's probably a topic I might like to address at my health blog. 
Just thought I'd share about my second wind of energy and fresh ammunition to continue.

And yes...I do realize that I have some major missing pics and images throughout this side.  Many of my pictures were uploaded to an old server that is down now.  *sad*  But it's ok.  More work for me to get the pics back up to a new server and replace all the broken links, but little by little I will fix this issue.

So I'll be kinda busy at both blogs and YouTube channels (I have a health channel too, which I'll post a little later).
This is a season of my life of  experimenting, trying new things and learning to find my comfort zone.  Hope you'll join me on this journey in some way or fashion.

Fun and Fieldtrips wrapup- Fall 2011

A wrap up of some of our fun this school year:

Z does art.  She loves finger painting.

Homeschool fieldtrip to the Apple Store.



 Lunchbreaks with my darling hubby and kids at the beach. Chilly, but beautiful.




 Trips to the Aquarium


Z's 4th birthday!



Donating our home-made turkey sandwiches to the food pantry over Thanksgiving.

Catching awesome sunsets on Thanksgiving

 Preparing our family presentation on Africa- the Congo- for Classical Conversations.

Another trip to the Aquarium











Z enjoys "Joyful Noise"- a sweet program for preschoolers at our local church.  I love to see her worshipping!



More fun at the beach.




 (Ny draws Fetch from "Fetch with Ruff Ruffman)

A trip to the Natural History Museum, Pacific Grove




Me- enjoying downtown Monterey before church service.

A trip to the My Museum. The girls are enjoying the "Imagination Station"

 (Enjoying theatrical productions.  Fun!)
 (my sweet little giraffe)

Wow, I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner.  We've had a full semester of field trips and outings.  It's been a blast.  
Can't wait to see what else is in store... :-)
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