Go Fish Christmas with a capital C - 2007 Light-O-Rama

Jeremy's 10th Birthday !

Today was a special day for my little guy, it's his birthday. It is his golden birthday! He turned 10 today. I keep saying this but it doesn't seem that it has been ten years already. I still remember today ten years ago so vividly...where did all those years go? Well, my baby isn't a baby anymore, he is on his way to becoming a young man. Today we celebrated his special day with a special birthday present. Jeremy wished for the "Millenium Falcon" from Lego for a very long time. Today his wish came true. Jeremy's daddy bought it for him and now he is in "lego heaven". Though most of it was put together by his sister, because this is not really a toy and once put together one would not take it apart again! It took Jamie all day to put half of it together and she is pretty good with assembling things. It would have taken Jeremy a few days to do this. Now big sister is frustrated because some things don't seem to work as they should and she is taking a break for today. Jeremy is trying to fix it now....
He also got a webkinz dinosaur and a microscope, which he really likes and he inspected the mold which has grown on his pumpkin ;-) though we don't have pictures of that.

He can finally open the box!

they both like webinz...and lego

This morning Jamie started to build the Falcon...

about two hours later, after it broke and she had to do it all over again

Jeremy helps a little

progress....

later afternoon....

Jamie is frustrated and her fingers hurt.....

in the evening she is done for the day.....

Gluten free birthday cake!

Mother - Son - Weekend :)

This weekend my girls are at a church retreat. I suspect that they have a great time. Since they were not allowed to bring any electronics, I don't know for sure but why wouldn't they have a great time. They have many opportunities to worship and pray, they get to spend time with their friends and they get to serve the community and the weather is just wonderful. Though I must admit that I am a little surprised how much I am used to the fact that I can, usually, reach them any time on their cells. My mom used to make sure that I have enough coins to make a phone call from the public phone booth ;-)
Well, since the girls have a good time, I thought it is the perfect opportunity for some mom and son time!
Yesterday we went to the movies, a rare treat. I usually don't spend so much money so frivolous but since it was just the two of us and we caught a movie at a time when it is half price, we enjoyed ourselves. Though we did not get the overpriced popcorn and soda. We went to watch "Dolphin Tales". It is a wonderful movie, based on a true story. It is very engaging and Jeremy sat at the edge of his seat at time in suspense. It is really family friendly and clean. It is the kind of movie that sort of stays with you. We even looked up the "Winter" website. After the movie we went to Subway and got a sub and a cookie, that was as much as the popcorn was supposed to cost, but it filled us much more and I think it was a little more nutritious.  When we got home we cleaned the house a little and my "little" guy fell asleep on the couch :)
While he was sleeping, I was booking our boat tour at Taylors Falls today. When we got up, we had a nice breakfast and Jeremy was very eager to help with chores and got them done very fast. I packed out picnic basket and made sandwiches and we left for the Harvest Fest in Stillwater. I didn't think that it would be as popular as it turned out to be. We got stuck in traffic for much, much longer than I had anticipated and so we could only drive through Stillwater downtown, but we are thinking that we will return soon, when there is not so much going on. It is such a lovely town, I am really looking forward to walking through it soon. Here are some pictures from the drive to Stillwater and some pictures from the downtown Stillwater......

He is watching a movie and listening over the headphones, so I could listen to a cd .....

I took this picture from the car, while stuck in traffic. Aren't those colors just beautiful?

Downtown Stillwater.....

It took us a good 45 minutes to make through Stillwater and vicinity, so we ran out of time to go to the Harvest Fest. I don't even know where we would have found a parking space anyway.....

However, this is the scenic route and it was a wonderful one hour drive to Taylors Falls. There were so many beautiful houses and farms on the way, I was looking forward to taking the same way back.
When we arrived at Taylors Falls, I wasn't sure exactly where to park, so I took the first available spot I found, which was right in front of the oldest existing public school house in Minnesota - at least thats what the sign said. Kind of ironic, right?

This in at the community center, where they had a ceremony that had something to do with mural behind Jeremy

Here now, is the said public school house............

Jeremy took this picture, because he thought it was cool that is says "Old Jail Bed and Breakfast", there were many ideas he told me of how the name could have come about  :)

 After that we got back into the car and drove up a rather steep hill. I can't walk so much these days, I guess I should see a doctor about the pain in the heel, I am guessing it is the Achilles tendon. Since it is hurting again I figured I better don't walk too much...  Anyway, just up the hill we found the Folsom House. I just really, really like old houses and if I could I would want to live in one of the really old houses. They have so much character. Don't you wonder sometimes what you would hear if the walls could talk? I didn't take any pictures from the inside of the house, since I wasn't sure that that was allowed. For members of the Minnesota Historical Society, the admission is free :)  We learned about Mr. Folsom and his wife, Mary and their children. We also learned about Minnesota history and saw pictures of logs blocking the rivers. At that point Jeremy remembered that we read "Paddle to the Sea" last year. Paddle get stuck in a logging camp on a river for a few days, though I think that was closer to Duluth.... anyway, he remembered the book. Living books are the way to go......

a not so good picture of the Folsom House. It looks much prettier if you really see it ....

After this visit we got hungry and wanted to sit down somewhere to eat lunch. Since the parking lot was not so inviting, we decided to find a better place. So we got into the car and started to drive. I thought it might be a good idea to look where we had to go to catch our boat ride, so I programmed the gps and off we went. Thank you God for prompting me to do that. I didn't know that it would take me 30 min to get stuck in traffic and waiting for a parking spot. Finally we found one, we had only 15 min. left. That was not quite how I envisioned our picnic, but at least we were not late for the boat tour. So we just opened the trunk and sat down and ate and drank, took some snacks and water and walked to the boat. Lo and behold, what do you think we encountered there? Yep, another line to stand in and wait..... While Jeremy held our spot in the line, I went to get our tickets, which I had bought the night before online. When I came back to the line, Jeremy was almost already on the boat. Unfortunately we too far in the back to get a seat on the boat. That wasn't so bad though, we were standing at the back of the boat outside and could still enjoy the beautiful view. I would like to share it with you....

We are leaving the dock

the tree trunk wedged into the little cave was just kind of cool :)

St Croix River, though we didn't see the cross.....

On the way back. The rays coming through the clouds was really neat.....

Even though the captain explained all the faces and such, we failed to recognize them in the rock formations. Maybe we just need a little more imagination .....

this was by the parking lot, isn't that just a beautiful color? As much as I dread the winter, the fall is a most beautiful time!

We drove the scenic route home again. This time with much less traffic. We ate our left over sandwiches and snacks, watched Mythbusters and now my little guy is asleep. The fan is running, so it will be cooler tonight, which means I can sleep better than last night. I hope you enjoyed our little trip and maybe it encouraged you to do something fun and blog about it as well :)

Oh my....

I don't know what happened ..... just yesterday summer started and now it is almost over! We had a busy summer and I thought I just write a few lines, just to make sure that I still know how to spell ;-)  

We had to buy a new car, my beloved Gus is dead now. It was so sad. That awesome truck brought us all the way to Kentucky and back before the motor made the most horrible noise and I couldn't drive it anymore. Speaking of Kentucky, I still owe you guys pictures from our visit of Creation Museum, but that will have to wait a little while now. I found a nice van, an Oldsmobile Silhouette, which I liked and hubby thought it was a good deal. Now we are driving that, this newer van uses much less gas. It is a nicer ride all around and even sports a dvd player, which the kids really like. I thought it would be worse having yet another possibility to watch tv or something like it. Fortunately it is being used very rarely! This new to us van is really fancy in comparison to Gus, but I did have tears in my eyes when they came to pick up Gus. It was such a good and reliable truck.....

I also finally finished planning our co-op with some other ladies. At first it looked like we wouldn't have many families at all and we thought that at least we have ample space. During the summer we have had quite a few families joining Anchor co-op and the space is getting smaller, it will be rather cosy this year :)  I am looking forward to starting the school year with many new families, some of them for their first year! I am very excited! I am sure it will be a good year, with Science, Art, Literature for young kids and Current News for the older kids and gym for everyone. Though it looks like we have reached the limit for this year and now have to open the waiting list.

What else did we do? Well, there is the Library, Christian Resource Center Library. We had to close the library for a month in the summer because for building maintenance. Now we are open again and the work starts. We had move 126 boxes of books from one location to another. Thank you First Baptist Youth Group! They have done a marvelous job moving the boxes! Now we are getting ready to sell all the books because the library doesn't have so much room anymore. So stay tuned for news about the mega sale!

I finally got my Mac updated, well at least as updated as it will get. Now it talks again with the itunes on my iphone. This was a lot of work, actually more time consuming than work. I ended up going to the genius bar and the guys there were really nice and helped me very quickly. I then spend a very good portion of the day to try to install the airport express so that I can print wireless, but it didn't work - much to my dismay.....genius bar again? 

I just want to have it all in place and updated and running for school. I have spend so much time planning and doing so many other projects, that our school planning to a back seat - really far back, something like the 4th row or so....

I am now working over time - yeah, right ;-)    I did buy a Kindle for this year and hope that this will help with reading for at least one child, as it has the Text-to-Speech feature. That should be good. We can also take it with us while we are waiting for this and that like music lessons....oh, I still have to find a violin teacher, oh dear.  We should also be getting the Apologia books and dvd soon. This year we will try the lecture dvd and see how that works, maybe it is a good option. We are going to do Tapestry of Grace, year 4 - 20th Century - with some added things like Shakespeare, Plutarch, Composer and Art Study. It will be a full year but I think it will be fun.

I am going to write another post soon with our plans for the new school year and which books we will be using :D

IAHE Conference, Vacation part 3

It was wonderful to spend time with Lynette and Fritz. I even got to meet some of their friends. I had the opportunity to enjoy a Sunday service at a home church and met some people who prayed for us and supported us. If any of you happen to read this, I would like to thank you again! It was such a pleasure to finally meet you. You have all be so kind and welcoming. On the 3rd and 4th of June we went to the Indiana Association of Homeschool Educators (IAHE) Conference. It was about as big as the MACHE one here in Minnesota. Oh, it was so nice to once again look at all the books and materials! I didn't make it to the Mache conference in Duluth this year, so the one in Indiana made up for that. It was such a great time to be able to look at curriculum, books and other cool things. I went to workshops and listen to Mike Farris from HSLDA and other keynote speakers. I went to Joyce Herzogs workshop and listen to some others. Fritz and Lynette held several workshops, I got the cd and listened to them on our way home.
Lynette and I held a workshop as well. I thought it was really good and people seemed to like it. We had good questions at the end, that was really fun. People showed quite a bit of interest and seemed encouraged. The lady who organized it was very pleased and stated that she felt greatly encouraged. I am very happy that God can use our story for His glory. It was so good to be able to show how God is still working miracles today. Our workshop was also recorded on cd.

Pastor Fritz, B., Nina, Jamie, Jeremy, me, Lynette

Lynette and me with two very lovely friends of Lynette.

Vacation part 2

After enjoying two days at a very nice campground, it was time to continue our travels to Indiana. After driving for about six hours we arrived :>

It got a pretty warm in the car without a/c

though some of us are too cool to be hot  - lol

We were at our friends house early afternoon. It was so good to see them again! They are missionaries in Germany and they planted the church we went to in Berlin. We missed them and were really happy to see them again. The kids had a good time together as well. It seemed like we had just seen each other. It was such a wonderful time together.

Two sweet, lovely, cheeky girls  ;-)

Well this one can be quite cheeky as well....

Aahh, vacation.....

Well, we are back from our vacation. It was a great time! We were gone for almost two weeks, well, actually it was 13 days. We had a fun time and once again were able to see God at work. Let me start by saying that we decided to go camping in a tent. As I mentioned before, we are used to taking our camper out, so this was going to be a new adventure for us. We started on our trip with a car that was, well, very fully packed.

Luckily we have three rows of benches in the car and did take one out. So we did have enough room ;-)  I don't know what we would have done with a smaller car - lol.
We left much later than we wanted to because it was raining pretty hard and we didn't feel like loading the car in the rain. When it finally stopped we got everything in the car, including the dog. We dropped her of at a friends house, where she was eagerly awaited by her doggy friend. Thank you again Family P. ! Leaving two hours later than planned we were finally on our way. It was a pretty nice trip and sometime in the afternoon we stopped for about 40 min. to eat and stretch our legs for a few minutes.

It was already pretty warm, but still bearable. We finally made to our first campground in Illinois just before they closed. I had booked it before so the registration was quick, unfortunately we had to set up camp in the dark. We didn't know if we should be happy about that since it was only our second time setting up the tent. On one hand it was dark and would be a little harder to find all the pieces, on the other hand we could hide our beginners attempts in the dark :)  We got to meet our new camping neighbors and found out that they were from Spain, they are traveling through the US until the end of June. They were very nice and offered their help, if we needed it.   We were better than we thought and had the tent set up within 10 min! Yeah!  While two of us set up the tent the other two blew up the mattresses and got the sleeping bags out of the car. Everything was set up and done and put away again within 30 min. We were pretty desperate for a cool shower unfortunately it turned out to be a fairly warm shower. We were finally done and ready to turn in for our first night in our new tent.  We woke up early but refreshed. The mattresses held the air, it hadn't rained and tent was still standing! We had a wonderful day and the kids even got to go to the pool.

This is actually our school table  :>

We are working hard on our lunch......

while some are being funny.....

and others -well- are not so busy.....

playtime at the playground right next to us.

fun at the pool

I better get going and will continue with our vacation story tomorrow  :D