5 weeks and counting….

prom ‘08 pic

I’m finally getting around to posting a picture of Patrick and Ariel from this year’s prom:

I’m still amazed that Patrick wore a white tux with a purple tie and purple vest, but it looked good on him!

time to relax

Now that graduation and all of the parties are done, we have some time to relax. We, as a family, plan on doing absolutely nothing for the next two days, except maybe watching a few movies and gorging ourselves on left-over brisket and other goodies. We’re all exhausted, but we’re happy. And we’ve had a great time just sitting around relaxing since our open house ended.

they did it!

Yesterday Patrick and Ariel graduated from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts ~ hip, hip, hooray!! It has been a long, hard 2 years for them at ASMSA, but they have done exceedingly well.

Patrick already has over 40 college credits, so he will be entering college technically as a sophomore who is half way through the school year. He will be a freshman, of course, but since he has lived in a dorm for the past 2 years and has already experienced what it’s like to live away from home, he is way ahead of the game.

The graduation ceremony was nice. It was held in the convention center in Hot Springs ~ no outdoor graduations here (it’s too stinkin’ hot!). Governor Mike Beebe was the key note speaker. I enjoyed his speech much better than I did President Bill Clinton’s speech last year. At least Governor Beebe addressed the graduates in his speech ~ he reminded them that no matter where they go for college, Arkansas is their home. He encouraged them to return to Arkansas, or stay here, whatever the case may be, and help to improve their home state. It was a fairly political speech, but like I said, at least Governor Beebe addressed the graduates and didn’t just talk about himself and his career/life like Clinton did.

After the graduation ceremony, we had a barbecue/party at our house.

Ariel, her parents, and 2 of her friends joined us. The Arkanbloggers were able to come too ~ Kathryn made an amazing from-scratch cake with whipped cream icing.

It was probably the best cake I have ever had. (I had originally ordered a cake from Kroger, but when Kathryn heard I had done that, she scolded me and told me to cancel that order, because SHE was going to make the cake for Patrick. LOL )

Today we had a brief open house for friends and neighbors. Of course we had WAY too much food, so we’ll be snacking on fresh chocolate-dipped strawberries, sweet Hawaiian bread and spinach dip, and left-over brisket and cake for a day or two. That’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned!

subway and scholastic discriminate against home schoolers

I’m not really sure what Subway and Scholastic were thinking when they decided that home schoolers should not be allowed to participate in their latest essay contest. See here for details. Using their form, I kindly let them know I will no longer be supporting their companies. If you have an opinion about this, why not let them know?

graduation day

Well, today’s the big day. Patrick will graduate from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts this afternoon at 2:00pm. The guest speaker will be Arkasnas Governor Mike Beebe.

Ariel and a few of her family members, as well as our “framily” the Arkanbloggers, will join us for barbecued brisket sandwichs and a cook-out at our house after graduation. Roger’s mom and step-dad are in town, and of course Jacob and Ashley are here as well. It should be a fun evening.

Tomorrow we’ll all head to church in the morning, then come home and prepare for a graduation Open House. I have no idea how many people will come for that ~ I usually get responses like, “Oh, that’s right, you live all the way out in ……….” Really, we only live about 20 minutes from where we go to church, but for some reason people seem to have it stuck in their heads that where we live is out in the boonies. But we’ll see. Even if no one else shows up, I know the Arkanbloggers will be here ~ they’re enough to make it a party! LOL

Patrick bought Ariel a bike helmet as her graduation present. Isn’t that a funny gift? His thought process was, “Well, she’s going to be riding her bike to work all summer. I want her to be safe.” So, it’s a rather thoughtful gift.

He also bought her a little promise ring. It’s very pretty ~ white gold with a small diamond. He took a picture of it:

They have been wearing sterling silver bands that have “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved it mine ” written in Hebrew on them. Patrick gave it to her for Christmas in 2006 right when they first started dating. It was his way of telling her that their relationship was based on God’s principles of courtship, and that they would be waiting, remaining pure, until they get married.

Patrick and Ariel will be attending different colleges, so I think Patrick wanted to reassure Ariel that their relationship is important to him, no matter how far apart their schools are. And honestly, they’re not that far apart. Ariel will be about 45 minutes away from where we live; Patrick will be about 4 hours from our house. He will be able to come home on long weekends. And Ariel’s dad is going to move to Fayetteville, where Patrick will be going to school, so I imagine Ariel will be going there fairly often as well. There will be plenty of opportunities for them to see each other. And they talk on the phone, e.v.e.r.y. s.i.n.g.l.e. e.v.e.n.i.n.g as it is ~ I’m pretty sure that’s not going to change.

While the house is still quiet this morning, I’m going to go enjoy some blueberry coffee cake with my chai tea, and try to just enjoy and relax in the quiet. It won’t be that way for very long, with people getting up and making preparations for today and tomorrow!

personalized diapers

Oh gracious ~ take a look at this:

Is that the most precious thing you’ve ever seen or what?! That, my friends, is a personalized cloth diaper. My sweet friend Tamara, who is making the cloth diapers for Attison, decided she wanted to learn to use the embroidery function on her sewing machine. This is what she “came up with.”

Much, much, much too precious!

the end of another school year

As we near the end of another school year, I’m already thinking about next school year and what curricula we will use. I have to admit, I am a curricula junkie ~ so is Mama Archer, so at least I know I’m not alone!

This year we tried a new curriculum ~ new to us anyway. We used Beautiful Feet Books’ Ancient History Senior High package. To be honest, Sawyer hated it. It was just too boring. Sawyer loves to read, so the number of books involved in this package wasn’t the problem ~ the books themselves were the problem.

In the past we have had great success with Sonlight Curriculum. We started using Sonlight when Patrick (who is now a senior in high school and will officially graduate May 24th) was in 3rd grade. We really loved all of the books ~ readers, read-alouds ~ how can you go wrong with lots of great, rich, enriching books?

I’ve been looking at the high school levels Sonlight offers. I’m considering using their civics course for next year. Sawyer will be in 10th grade, and it could very well be his last year at home. He wants to follow in his brother’s footsteps and attend the math and science residential high school Patrick has attended the past 2 school years.

We will most likely stick with Teaching Textbooks as Sawyer’s math program. He seems to do well with TT. Our homeschool co-op will be offering high school Spanish and a leadership class, as well as a science class. This year Sawyer tackled 2 science classes ~ biology and chemistry ~ so I’m not really sure what we’ll do for science next year. Assuming Sawyer will attend the math and science high school, we’re not planning to move on to physics because the school requires the students take physics there.

Sawyer has done well this year, especially considering he really disliked the history program we were using. After the first semester we scrapped it and just sort of made up our own history program. I have absolutely no intention of ever writing my own curriculum ~ that’s just not my cup of tea. I much prefer letting someone else figure out all of the details for the curriculum and then taking what they’ve put together and tailoring it to suit our needs, likes, dislikes and schedule.

I’m looking forward to having a little break for the summer, especially considering the upcoming arrival of our first grandchild, and the fact that Patrick will be home from school. He has a summer job lined up, but at least he’ll actually be living at home for the summer. I’m not looking forward to moving him to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for college, but that’s still a few months away so I try not to think too much about it. Fayetteville is about 4 hours from where we live. That’s more than twice as far as where he goes to school now.

Sawyer will continue to do math over the summer, with a two week break in July while he goes to Colorado with our church youth choir on “tour.” They’ll be singing at a Colorado Rockies game and the Air Force Academy cadet chapel, as well as doing some mission work and singing at churches all over the state. He’s really looking forward to it.

This summer will be filled with all kinds of exciting events, but I know next school year will be on us sooner than we think. It will be wonderful to have the whole family home for the summer (including welcoming our family’s newest member). Roger, Sawyer and I have some big decisions to make concerning our curricula for next school year. It’s time to start digging through all of the new curricula catalogs and figuring out what our options are!

mother’s day recap

For Mother’s Day, my family took me shopping and out for lunch, then gave me the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted to do. I spent most of the day in my craft room playing with my new sewing machine and all of the sewing tools I received as gifts. I started making burp cloths and cloth wipes for Attison. I’m still learning how to sew a straight line, but I’m having fun learning.

A picture of some of my Mother’s Day loot:

By far my favorite tools are the Gingher rotary cutter, self-healing cutting mat, and the Omni Edge ruler/cutting guide.

And, as promised to Lynette (Jacob’s mom), a picture of Ashley and Jacob from lunch that day:

(I believe I mentioned earlier that my camera was acting wonky that weekend. I hope I can figure out what the problem is before Patrick’s graduation!)

birthday slideshow

For some reason my camera was acting up today, so a lot of the pictures I took at Patrick’s surprise birthday party are blurry. I managed to snap a few decent ones though ~ we had a really good time. He truly was surprised! He wrote a post about it here.

Ariel and Patrick’s friend Justin were in on the secret. Ariel set it up so we could use a room at the school, and Justin agreed to keep Patrick busy until we were ready to surprise him. We invited Patrick friends ~ unfortunately most of them went home this weekend because of Mother’s Day, but we had so much fun it didn’t matter how many people were there. We had the family and several friends, and it was enough.

The theme was “cheesy” ~ we did it up like a little kid’s birthday party on purpose. We had Transformer party hats, Spiderman blowouts (they didn’t have kazoos in them, though ), sparklers on the cake, 2 big jugs of punch, matching plates, napkins and tablecloth, bubbles, and goofy gifts. Roger and I got Patrick several things he needed ~ they were all grooming-types of gifts! LOL I’m not saying his personal hygiene is lacking ~ because it isn’t ~ we just decided to get him his own shaving/overnight kit, fingernail clippers, beard trimmer and such because a young man going off to college really should have all of those things, but Patrick didn’t. At long last Roger will finally be able to get both of his shaving kits back from Patrick!

Anyway, here’s a slideshow of a few of the pictures that weren’t too blurry. You can see by the look on Patrick’s face he was surprised, and he loved it!

surprise party

We had a surprise party for Patrick at his school today. He’s a little stressed about finals and AP tests, so he decided to stay at school and study all weekend rather than come home for his birthday.

This morning we woke up to find an email from Patrick saying he had started blogging again. You can click here to read the post he wrote about his birthday. Basically, he was feeling a bit sorry for himself because he pretty much thought we weren’t going to do anything for his birthday until after his graduation (2 weeks from now). He had no idea we had already arranged to have a surprise party for him!

I have pictures to post, but the weather is getting nasty here right now, so I’ll have to post them later. With the way things have been going around here, I’m concerned that if I stay on the computer it will get struck by lightning! LOL

18th birthday

Today is Patrick’s 18th birthday! Gracious, where has the time gone?

Patrick’s birth was difficult ~ the cord was wrapped around his neck three times. He tried to push his little nose out first, which really just won’t work very well! Poor little thing. See the bruise in the middle of his forehead? That’s where he would push against my pelvic bone every time I had a contraction!

That sweet little boy, with downy-soft blond hair and a nasty bruise between his eyes has grown into this handsome young man:

This fall Patrick will be heading off to the University of Arkansas as an Honors College Fellow.

Happy birthday, son ~ we love you!

18th birthday

Today is Patrick’s 18th birthday! Gracious, where has the time gone?

Patrick’s birth was difficult ~ the cord was wrapped around his neck three times. He tried to push his little nose out first, which really just won’t work very well! Poor little thing. See the bruise in the middle of his forehead? That’s where he would push against my pelvic bone every time I had a contraction!

That sweet little boy, with downy-soft blond hair and a nasty bruise between his eyes has grown into this handsome young man:

This fall Patrick will be heading off to the University of Arkansas as an Honors College Fellow.

Happy birthday, son ~ we love you!

cloth diapers

I know, I know ~ I can hear the groans and picture all of the rolling eyes. The response to Ashley’s decision to use cloth diapers has been less than well received. Everyone seems to have the opinion that cloth diapers are just “too” something ~ too messy, too smelly, too much work, too inconvenient…….they’re just too much.

But have you actually seen cloth diapers lately? They’re incredible! They’re so much like disposable diapers it’s amazing. They have an absorbent inside and a waterproof outside. And they can velcro on! No more nasty soggy prefolds, diaper pins or plastic pants. The new cloth diapers are seriously fantastic. A friend of mine has graciously offered to make a dozen newborn cloth diapers for us at a wonderfully discounted price. Since most people don’t believe me when I tell them cloth diapers are akin to disposables these days, I thought I’d show you a few pictures:

These images are used with permission from Hope Chest Creations (meaning they’re the property of Hope Chest Creations, so please don’t steal them!).

****Note (added later) ~ I forgot to mention, these cloth diapers are called All-in-Ones, meaning they have a soft, absorbent material inside and a waterproof material on the outside. No wraps or rubber pants needed ~ they’re so much like disposable diapers it’s amazing, and yet they’re so much better for the baby and the environment. Yep, I’m one of those ~ when my boys were babies, if I had known exactly what I was putting on their precious little bottoms, we would’ve been an exclusively cloth diapering family, even though those were the dark ages as far as cloth diapers go. I did use cloth diapers with Sawyer, but only about half the time. I’ve had plenty of experience with Chinese prefolds, diaper pins and rubber/plastic pants! They weren’t really that bad, although I will admit that it was much easier to use disposable when we were away from home. Nowadays that’s just not the case ~ the all-in-ones have revolutionized cloth diapering!

nana blanket

I like to make baby blankets for my friends. I’ve done about a jillion of them ~ for friends who are having babies themselves and friends who are being blessed with grandchildren. I made a “Nana blanket” for myself ~ and since there’s so much baby pink in my house (see post below), I thought I might as well go ahead and stick with the color scheme.

pooh, in nana pink

The other day Ashley and I were out shopping, and we found a terrific deal on a crib bumper set. It included the bumper, comforter, and diaper stacker. It’s a Winnie the Pooh theme set. You know, I have never seen a bumper set that was as high a quality as this one. There’s nothing flimsy about any of it, not even the diaper stacker. Ashley snagged it up; I think she managed to get it for half price or less.

I told her I didn’t think she really liked the Winnie the Pooh theme. Especially when the set contains so much pink. But she loves it. I told her I might just get too attached to it that I won’t want to let her have it when they move into a place of their own. She said that was fine ~ she knows I’m a Winnie the Pooh fan.

I’m also the one who’s going to have a Pepto-Bismol pink baby room. Not the walls ~ they’re going to remain a lovely beige ~ but until we have a grandson, the baby room will be littered with pink, pink and more pink. I’m not really a huge pink fan necessarily ~ it’s just turning out that we have more pink than we know what to do with!

Here are a few pictures of the bumper set:

Ashley received a pink Classic Pooh blanket at the baby shower, which will fit right in with the Pooh-bear theme:

Do you see the little Classic Pooh and Piglet that has been embroidered onto the blanket? This blanket is so soft ~ it has fleece on one side and satin on the other.

We found a good deal on Pack ‘N Plays while we were looking through Sunday’s ads and coupons. Yesterday we picked up the Pack ‘N Play ~ it’s Classic Pooh as well!

blog make-over complete

Well, so, what do you think? It’s totally different from anything else I’ve ever done, with any of my blogs. And to be honest, I really, really like it!

Thanks goes out to Michelle @ Shabby Creations for her amazingly quick work and efforts. I love the girly flourishes, the signature she made for me is absolutely lovely, and the divider is perfect. I probably made things a little easier for her by choosing one of her stock template designs, but she was very gracious in changing the header just a bit for me, and making all of the sidebar buttons. Plus, she installed most everything, which was really a big help.

I also need to lift a shout out to Amy @ Split Decisionz for her tutorials on blogging hacks (tricks). She has a search bar in the left hand sidebar ~ if you’re confounded on how to place a signature in your posts, or how people get those really cool scrolling texts on their blogs, just search on Split Decisionz. And if Amy doesn’t already have a post on how to do whatever it is you’re wanting to do, send her an email. She’ll help you figure it out!

I’m very pleased with the way the make-over has turned out. I worked on another template for well over a week, and just couldn’t get it quite right. It’s totally different from this one, so perhaps you’ll see it here someday. But Roger was so tired of me being on the computer trying to figure out that template that he readily agreed to allow me to ask Michelle for this template. Thanks hon!

please excuse the mess…..

There’s a lot of work involved in changing my blog template ~ I apologize for the confusion here right now. I’ll get it cleaned up as quickly as possible!

tornadoes and lightning and fire…oh my!

Yesterday Arkansas was hit with another bad weather system. Tornadoes all over the state, tragically killing people and destroying homes and other properties.

Ashley, Sawyer and I were out running errands when the nasty weather started. I’ve lived in the south long enough to know when a storm system is most likely just going to produce thunderstorms or when it’s likely to produce more, like hail or tornadoes. I wasn’t too worried about our house being in a tornado’s path ~ the tornado-producing winds and activity were going to move away from us. I figured we’d just get a big downpour of rain.

The rain was very heavy as we made our way home after completing our errands. As we were nearing the exit off the highway going towards our home, we saw a huge flash of lightning and a few seconds later heard and felt the thunder from that lightning bolt. All three of us commented on what a large crack of lightning and thunder that was.

As we rounded the corner in our neighborhood, Sawyer looked out his window then said, “Something’s on fire back there” meaning back behind the houses in our neighborhood on our side of the street. There are fields and lots of trees back there ~ I figured something in the field must have caught fire, and we’d check it out once we got home.

I pulled up to our mailbox, and as I was reaching for the mail, I saw a huge plume of black smoke rising from what seemed to be our backyard. I quickly pulled into our driveway to investigate, and sure enough, the plume of smoke WAS from our backyard. Our shed was on fire!

By the time we got out of the car and called 9-1-1, we were able to see not only huge plumes of black smoke flowing from the shed, but we were also able to see the fire threatening to engulf the shed. The shed held all of our lawn care equipment; Roger’s John Deere riding lawn mower, the push mower, gas weed trimmer, edger, hedge clippers, gasoline jugs, an assortment of yard and gardening tools, and a plethora of yard necessities like fertilizer, grass seed, and even potting soil.

The worst part was that sitting on the front area of the shed (sort of a little porch/potting area) was our old 100lb. propane tank. It was still mostly full of propane. I had visions in my head of that propane tank catching fire, exploding, then taking off like a missile and crashing through my house.

The fire department finally arrived, but they were too late. The fire, fueled by the gasoline inside the shed and inside the gas tanks in the riding mower and trimmer, had completely consumed the shed and its contents. The propane tank sitting outside the shed finally got hot enough to start venting ~ every so often there would be a woosh noise, and flames would shoot into the air.

Once the fire department was (finally) able to get the fire put out, all we had left was a huge charred mess. Anything and everything within the shed was completely gone. The firemen were able to deal with the propane tank and get it under control so it wouldn’t blow up. One of the firemen located 2 gas containers sitting outside the shed and moved them away ~ and managed to catch the leg of his fire suit on fire! Roger said the guy calmly turned around and said, “Uh, guys, could you give me a little help here?” LOL They put the fire out quickly and no one was hurt. The fireman whose suit had caught on fire continued to work next to his buddies!

Once the fire was out, we figured out how it started. A tree standing right next to the shed was struck by lightning, and the lightning then arced through the tree and jumped over to the shed. Ashley, Sawyer and I are convinced that the huge bolt of lightning we saw while exiting the highway is the very same one that hit the tree.

While the fire was going, several neighbors came over to see if we were ok and if they could do anything. Basically what we all did was stand around getting soaked in a heavy downpour and watch as our shed burned to the ground. I’m thankful that at the time there was such heavy rainfall ~ otherwise that fire might have burned quickly enough to have taken over the yard and make its way to the house before the firemen arrived.

So ~ we’re all ok. No one was hurt, and the fire did not touch our house. I’m sorry to have lost the shed, riding lawn mower, push mower, edger, trimmer, and everything else that was stored in the shed. But I am so thankful that, if we were going to lose something to a lightning strike, it was only the shed and 2 trees. The tree the lightning struck is going to have to be removed, as well as a tree that was damaged by the fire.

Here are a few pictures of what remains of our shed and its contents:

In the last picture you can see the tree that was struck by lightning, and how close it was to the shed.

So, that’s my doosey of an experience God gave me to keep me from getting too cocky about how everything is SO fine in my life that it’s a bit boring and I have nothing to blog about. He cured my blogger’s block!

it’s been a while since I blogged because…

well, honestly, because I’ve had a serious bout of blogger’s block. And I have a family. And a pregnant daughter. Who now lives with us.

BUT, just when I’m starting to think my life is truly boring and I have nothing worthwhile to blog about, God gives me a doosey. He does have a sense of humor, that’s for sure.

I have a sense of humor too ~ warped as it may be. I now have something to blog about……..but it’s late and I’m too tired to blog about it right now.

SO, what you get is a bit of a tease: here’s a taste of the “doosey” I now have to blog about…….another day…..