How Does Your Garden Grow?

Emma, Hannah, Kristen and Kelson how does your garden grow? With worms and snails, and girls with pony tails, and a little wild man running to and fro.

This year we planted three colored beans, carrots, onions, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries and squash. A lot of our garden did not survive after the rainy season but some of it did. Here are some pictures of the kids with their crops. Kristen's squash at our house did not make it but she had one that grew in Nannie's compost pile that did great! The week we are eating summer squash for dinner.

Flooding in Florida

You should take advantage of the disadvantage. Or, when God gives you rain...play. The end of May it rained for seven days straight. Although we did not pay for lake front property when we bought our house we found out we had it. Our yard was so flooded. There was an area where we piled up some dirt to even out the land beside our house but never flattened the mound out. So the kids got on their rain boots and rain jackets and set out to sea. They pretended the little patch of land was an island and they caught buckets of slugs out at sea. Yummy! Emma's best friend Elyse staysed with us for the weekend while her mom and I went to the homeschool convention.

The Aborigines

The last couple weeks of school we finished up with studying Italy one week and Australia the next. Now that we are taking a couple weeks off from school I have been cleaning the house (deep cleaning as in organizing and getting rid of the extra stuff in the house). Today as my friend Stacey and I were finishing up my bed room the girls were painting in the class room while Kelson was napping. Kristen came in with hand prints all over her paint shirt. I told her she might as well strip down to her underwear and the girls could paint each other. Well, they took me up on the offer. It was great because they actually go along together and laughed the whole time. When they came to show Stacey and I what they looked like I had to take a picture of them. Little Aborigines from Australia, except for the blonde curly hair.

Celebrating Birthdays

Hannah and Kristen celebrated their birthdays this year on different days. Partly because they each wanted a different party and different friends. Hannah had a Beach Barbie Birthday. Her best friends Anna and Caity-Beth came, plus her sisters. She wanted to have a simple birthday, play in a little pool and have sand beside it for the Barbie's beach area. We had snacks, beach cake and ice cream. It was a hot day but we had a cool breeze and consumed lots of lemonade. She loved it!

Kristen on the other hand had a Spy Kids birthday party. We watched Spy Kids movie, played spy games, wrote spy notes on paper and ate the paper (special paper we ordered from the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.). Most of the things we got were from the Spy Museum. They had big gumballs like the kids on Spy Kids movie and sprayed each other with Silly String until it started to rain and used their glow stick necklaces to see outside. We ate pizza and had cake and ice cream. She wished she could have played spies outside more and have her Daddy chase them but it was raining. Maybe next year.

Emma had a Littlest Pet Shop pool party. She loves to play with Littlest Pet Shops! They kids swam in the pool for an hour. Then we ate pizza, opened gifts, and had cake and ice cream. It was VERY hot outside, but the kids didn't mind. Since Emma got a bunch of Littlest Pet Shops for her birthday the girls played with them near the end of the party. Kelson was sick so my friend Kristi offered to come over and help since it was on a Friday in the middle of the day and Pete wasn't here. She was a saint taking care of Kelson and helping were she could.