691.5 Hours

OUR NEW BLOG IS:

https://dearlittlegirlofmine.com  

Bethany had another air clearance machine go bad and had to get a new one. This one didn't seem to last long at all - only 691.5 hours. But, they were fast to ship and she had a new machine in a day. That really helps as we have to do hand PT until a new one arrives. 

It has, again, been so long since I posted that it is hard to get back into it. It isn't that we haven't been doing anything this summer - we have actually been fairly busy. With a lot going on I didn't take the time to sit and blog and then I felt like I had nothing to say. But, as I always say - I wasn't ready to give it up entirely. So, I am trying again to be a little more frequent. 

A few of the girls worked a little on the outdoor kitchen this summer - though not as much as they usually do. They asked Bethany if she would make them a tablecloth for it and she did along with a few dish clothes. We then bought a clothesline for it and I noticed today that the girls had put it up. 

We have spent time with family again. That has been so nice after a year of hardly seeing each other at all. Today I was blessed by three of my older girls coming to visit and bringing their children. All the kids played together and the adults had a little time to talk. It was nice. 

We have been working on a new blog - the same blog but a different host. We had several reasons for doing this. We felt it was time, though I have a hard time changing. The hardest thing for me is if we can actually get all the emails to transfer over and get the notice out that I have posted. It may be a little tricky for me at first. You can go to the new blog and sign up to follow and receive emails when I post by going to https://dearlittlegirlofmine.com 

I am posting this on my old blog and I probably will be posting from the new one next time. I am just hoping it all goes smoothly and everyone gets the notification that I have posted. 

I feel like summer is almost over and I did have so many things I planned that we haven't done yet. Hopefully we can still fit in a few more things. 

Strawberry/Banana Popsicles

We started our new book a couple of days ago - Alice's Farm by Maryrose Wood. We all like it a lot so far. Since we have only read about 5 chapters I can't really say much about it yet, but so far it's great. It is about rabbits and a family that has moved from the city to the country to farm - and that's about all we know at this point. 

We made strawberry/banana popsicles yesterday and they turned out pretty good. Most of the kids liked them a lot - Bethany didn't think they were as good as the rest did, but she said they were still pretty good. I think she likes hers really sweet and we only added a teaspoon of honey. It was easy to mix up everything in the blender and freeze. I think we are going to make some different ones tomorrow. Bethany was thinking blackberries sounded good, but not sure what other fruit would be good with them. Tess is thinking peach with another fruit.

They days go by as we do so little - though I had so much planned. We are still enjoying the summer weather and the kids are playing outside a lot and we have been reading each day. Tess is always looking for something to cook and Bethany spends hours and hours sitting in the bushes watching the birds at the bird feeder and the squirrels. She even has a little chipmunk that will come right up to her now and eat out of a spoon she holds. She spent days and days just sitting and waiting for him to do this. It definitely took a lot of patience for this to happen. She is really loving the birds and small animals in our yard this summer and also starting to take some pictures of them. I sometimes sit on the porch and just watch her waiting and waiting to get a picture of some bird.

Bella

Bella has finally gotten the hang of using the jingle-jump thing that we have. She has actually gotten pretty good. This evening I got a little video of her and it reminded me that it was only a few years ago I was getting Bethany outside doing this one summer evening. 

 

It's Been Awhile

It has been so long since I wrote here that it is kind of hard to get started again - it's always like that for me when it's been a long time. It is hard for me to get back into the rhythm of writing and posting pictures. We have been fairly busy finishing school and then everyone getting tested. We had two days of testing and now we are breaking for a little summer vacation time. 

We have had birthday parties, ice cream trucks, and many family get togethers in the past month and it is so good to get together again. We have made a bucket list for summer and have done one thing on it already and that was making a peach pie with the peaches we got from the Georgia Peach Truck. We picked up two boxes of peaches a week ago and they are all gone now. We made peach pie and peach cobbler and ate peaches every single day. They were great while they lasted. We have another two boxes to pick up in July, but they are not from the Georgia Peach Truck. Hopefully, they will be good, though. 

We are reading Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones now and will probably finish it tomorrow. This is a book we have read before and I have probably written about here already. But, when my kids love a book they want to hear it several times and I don't mind. 

We are buying new bookcases for our library and so have been getting rid of the old bookcases and putting new ones in and then getting all the books back on shelves. I truly hate to alphabetize books, but I sure have done a lot of it lately. But, going through all the old books has been very relaxing. I love seeing books I have almost forgotten and realizing they would be great books to read to the kids. I have four more bookcases to fill with books and I will be done. We did this because once we moved our baby grand piano into the library it was just too crowded. I found some bookcases that were not so deep and it has actually made a big difference in the library. It feels bigger and now we can walk around the piano easily. I will just be glad when I'm finally done, but I do love books and love being in the library sorting through all of them. 

We are ready for a little summer fun and relaxation. 

Bella absolutely loves this swing. She is on it all the time and I mean all the time. It is not unusual for her to be on it for hours at a time. It is so sweet to look out the window all day long and see Bella swinging. 

Another Birdfeeder

We got our second birdfeeder up yesterday. Tess said she's the official birdfeeder filler upper. We are enjoying our feeders, but the squirrels are definitely getting more seeds than the birds. We are talking about a third one going up in the backyard. Oh, and we have baby birds in one of our birdhouses that Tess built last year - right on our deck. 

This Week

We have been studying the Great Depression for the past few weeks, but doing a little more hands on as we studied it last year and they seem to have remembered a lot. But, since our history book covered it again this year we read a lot of historical fiction and articles and even looked at a lot of photography from the depression this time around. We have been making some depression era recipes this week and it was interesting. The first thing they made was a potato recipe - diced potatoes and onions cooked in a skillet and then when they are soft you add a sliced up hotdog. All the kids said they liked it a lot. I even asked them if I made it for dinner would they be happy and they all said yes - except Sarah. 

They then made dandelion salad. We watched a video of a 94 year old woman telling how her family ate dandelions during the depression and how they fixed it to make it rather tasty. The kids went out and picked the dandelions and then washed them well, then soaked them for a little while. Then they added lemon juice, oil and salt and ate it as their salad. This one was not as much a hit as the potato recipe but several of the kids ate quite a lot. Bethany said it was a disappointment to her, but it was not terrible. 

Today they made biscuit bread. This was a favorite. You basically mix up a biscuit recipe, then mold it into a mound,  put it in a hot cast iron skillet and cook it then flip it over and cook the other side. They really liked this and it was so easy to make. Tess made it alone in just a few minutes. I don't have pictures of it, but it looked really good. They ate every bite of it and said they would like to make it again. I think we will try a few more recipes before we end this study as they are really having fun doing it. 

Yesterday we hung our new bird feeder and we already have birds and squirrels eating at it. It is kind of fun to look out and watch them. I think we will put up a few more this next week. 

It has been a nice week with beautiful weather and we are starting to feel like warm weather is here to stay. We are going to plant our garden either this weekend or the beginning of next week. Our only problem right now is how do we keep all the deer out of our garden. Last year they literally ate everything we planted. So, we have to come up with a solution or there is not much point in planting at all. 

The Ice Cream Truck

The kids had a really fun surprise on Tuesday. My daughter, Megan, rented an ice cream truck to come to our house and the kids could get anything they wanted. They were so excited. They definitely think big sisters are great! Megan does tend to do a lot of stuff like this for her siblings, and it is so nice for them. They had a great time and it was really a lot of fun - especially since we never ever have an ice cream truck in our neighborhood.  I think it is obvious from the pictures the kids had a blast.