Labor Day Fun

When we homeschool, I don't usually take off school for a lot of the normal one-day holidays. We end up skipping enough random days that it all balances out and the girls don't keep up with that sort of thing. So, this past Monday was looking to be a regular Monday. Get up, do school, clean the house, cook supper, go to bed. But then Jason's brother, Tommy, texted and asked if it would be a good time for him and his family to come visit. We had a lovely weekend.  They arrived late Saturday night and we visited for a few minutes and then went to bed. The next day we went to church, had a very relaxed and calm afternoon, and then went back to church for Elaina's baptism. I'm really glad it worked out for them to be able to be here for that. We came back home afterwards and put together a hodgepodge type of supper that was surprisingly pretty good, and then we put the kids to bed and visited a little more. Monday, we decided to go to downtown Fort Smith and ride the trolley and look at Judge Parker's courthouse.  We walked around the courthouse grounds until the trolley arrived and then took quite a long, hot, fun ride on the trolley. It was a nice, enjoyable day and a fun way to spend the holiday.

Valentine's Day

I've decided to make Valentine's Day pretty special. It won't look special from the pictures but I promise it was well received. After the girls had gone to bed, I decorated the dining room and set the balloons and cards beside their plates. Then I woke up early and cooked pink pancakes. We also had pink milk, strawberries and the name of some chocolate wafer type things that I can't think of the name of right now. But trust me, they are so good. Pirouettes, maybe?
For some reason I thought I took a lot of pictures but when I went back to look there were only two, very red-casted pictures.

Back in the saddle again

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day. Mom! I just realized we never put the flag on the porch. Man. I hate that we forgot that. That's the best part.

Anyway, we went to Mom and Dad's house and the girls swam and the puppies played and the whole group ate. Then we left and two chillins went to sleep on the ride home and the other went down as soon as her special bed was put together. (She had acquired a fever during the festivities.) It was a simple night. It was lovely.

A few weeks ago, Mom and I went around to a lot of stores in the area and priced the lumber for the privacy fence that we are hoping to have built. The lowest priced store had an estimate of $1000 and that was with an over-estimate of how many feet of yard we are going to cover.  When we got home last night there was a job estimate from our neighbor (that we have been waiting 2 weeks to get. grrrrr). He wanted to give us a bid for the fence and we told him that was fine but we were going to go with the lowest priced bidder. Do you know what his quote was?!!! $2650!!!!! Excuse me, mister, but I happen to know that the lumber is less than $1000 and that is a lot of moolah for labor. Especially when we are only working with $3333 and have a long list that we want to be able to check off.   Do you think that was reasonable? Am I way off on what to expect when it comes to paying for labor?  I have another man coming today and I really hope that his quote is much lower.

Jason built us a raised vegetable garden a couple of nights ago. I'm very excited about it but once we got the frame we realized that we don't have any dirt. It seems like dirt would be an easy thing to get but apparently not. By the time we get all of this figured out it will probably be fall.

What should I cook for supper?

We are home and digging out from under all the traveling baggage. Hope you had a wonderful week!

It smells like spring outside.

What a beautiful day!

The girls are getting a chance to play outside with Bella before we hit the road. I am braving the weather (since it is lovely) and cleaning out the van and........

I completed my ironing. ALL of it. That is a big, big deal for me.

I doubt that I will be posting much during this holiday week but you never know. I might just find the time while vegging out at the in-laws. Maybe I'll take a break between my canasta games and get you all caught up on our holiday going-on's.

Pioneer Woman is having contests every day through the 25th on her blog .  She's also having them on her Tasty Kitchen blog. Go enter and buy me a professional carpet cleaning with your prize.

Happy Holidays!
Rebekah

Back to normal

What is normal in our home? I'm not sure. But I'm going to be thinking about that and contemplating and analyzing until I come up with what I think the answer should be.  I'll get back to you on that one.

We had a great Thanksgiving and as soon as I get the cord back from Grandma's house I will upload pictures and give you all a splendiferous post to read.  How was your Thanksgiving? What did you do? Where did you go? What was your favorite food item from the Main Meal? Did you give your closet a makeover? I did and it was wonderful. Cleansing. This is what I got rid of and will no longer be taking up room in my closet.

Isn't that amazing?  Tomorrow I am going to price it all and pack it away until yard sale weather comes 'round again. I bet I make a pretty penny. (Which in yard sale terms is about $100.)



Could someone please tell me where spell check is in Beta?

Boo Humbug!

Some days are so long. And it's not that they are bad, they are just taking forever to end. Today is one of those days. I need to go get supper on and get ready for the trick-or-treaters that are going to be showing up before long. We are going to let the girls put on their princess dresses to hand out the candy. That's about the closest I can comfortably get to celebrating this demonic holiday. If we didn't live in a housing addition that had 1,098,570 children in it we wouldn't even be doing that. I just hate Halloween. Why are people drawn to something that tries to glorify ghosts, witches, death, and all sorts of spooky and nasty creatures? I don't get it. I'll just take me some Thanksgiving, thank you very much.

Rain, Rain, Go Away! Come again July 5th.

Jason had such a great 4th planned for out little family. This was the first time that he had planned a fun filled day just for us and I was really excited and encouraged about it. We were to go to church that morning and then for lunch we were going to grill shiskabobs and then he had bought a small pool so we were all going to swim together and then as it was getting dark he was going to build a small campfire and we were going to roast hot dogs and marshmallows and the do our fireworks. It was a great plan. Full of fun and activities that even the littlest one would enjoy.
























And then it rained.















































The girls did get to swim for a few minutes and we got to shoot 3 roman candles and do a few sparklers. The girls came up with the fun idea of putting a marshmallow on either end of a bamboo skewer. That seemed to be a big hit. I felt really bad for Jason. He was pretty disappointed that we didn't get to do everything. He had even gone and bought all the groceries all by himself.











































But we made the best of it and just enjoyed each other's company and ate snacks and yummies all day long.








































Loving that man of mine,
Ceridwen