At the Beach

Taking the girls to the beach is quite a challenge. It seems like we spent more time dragging their stuff from the van to the beach and then back to the van. We didn't really stay very long at the beach. One reason is that Winter has thyroid issues so we have to be very careful not to let her overheat. We have to keep her pretty much out of the sun. So she always had an umbrella over her or the top of her floaty. And we didn't stay more than an hour.

River decided to bring the umbrella I bought her at the zoo last year. I actually used it to keep the sun off of Winter.

The blue thing by her foot is part of the tent which never got set up. Jessica wasn't sure how it went up.

She may be a swimmer.

We probably have another month of beach weather at least. Hope to get their this weekend with the kids.

Quick Tips Reference List

On my parenting blog, I have what I call Quick Tips. These are 200 word practical articles written by experts in their subject. Or authors who have written on the subject. Tomorrow I will be featuring an author who lost her sight at age 31, and if that wasn't enough, her youngest son was murdered when he was only 19. Other authors have shared about fitness, budget, children, reading and so on. They are short and very quick to read as they are written in bullet points. The kind of thing you might clip and stick on your refrigerator if we were back in magazine days.


Sister Day
Make a Difference in the Life of a Child

Budget-Friendly Summer Ideas

Preparing a Child's Heart for Easter
Showing Kindness Every Day
Fresh Starts

Embrace the Season

Keeping Your Mind Strong

Getting Your Preteen to Read

Help for Clutterbugs
Keeping Christmas Simple But Meaningful
Healthy Heart Tips for Football Couch Potatoes
Having a Personal Quiet Time with God
Beating the Winter Blues
Friendships That Cross Boundaries
Five Fresh Starts for Living
Positive Parent Teacher Relationships
How to Make Your Words Matter
Gluten Free Eating
Picture Book Month
The Healing Power of Forgiveness

What Color are Your Eyes

I'm doing a test to see who is really reading. So I am repeating a post from 2014, but updating it for my family. If you are reading this, please comment.

I have two blue eyed children. And I have blue eyes. Mine are a bit grayish so I'd guess toward gunmetal blue. But I'm not sure. None of us exactly match any of them.

Rick's eyes are hazel.

I have five brown eyed children. They are pretty much between chocolate and nut brown.

Green eyes are pretty rare, so it's funny that almost all the romance books have a green eyed protagonist in them.

Since writing this, I have two blue eyed grand daughters. In fact, they have very noticeably blue eyes. Winter's were more grayish when she was born but have turned blue. Both of their parents are blue eyed.

So what color are your eyes?

Not Posting Much

I haven't been posting much. Several reasons why:

People don't comment so I don't know if anyone is reading or not or if people have all died of boredom.

There are things we are going through that I don't really want to blog about in detail. Right now we are going through an investigation that started with Kayla's interview at teen court. We were referred to the Empowerment Parenting Program (it is voluntary and we agreed. Always good to learn new strategies etc). They came out and were supposed to do 90 days with us, but they say we are a model family and they go back and brag about us. They say we will probably be dismissed from the program because they can't find anything we need to work on. But the investigation stopped our home study and adoption, so we are waiting to see what will happen. 

Life is sometimes boring.

Life is getting crazy with fall activities starting. I will post about our schedule later.

I  don't always have pictures, and posts without pictures are pretty boring. But unless you want to see some mowing and weedwacking, some days I don't have any pictures.

I did go to the beach with Jessica and the babies this week and have a few photos from that I will post soon.

Anyway, that's why there are some time periods were I'm not posting much.

At the Bay

It is really hot in our shop, so I decided I wanted to swim once we closed the shop Sunday evening. But there are no pools, so we decided to swim in the bay. This is not usually done. I think only our family actually swims there. And Kaleb and I were the only ones who swam. We swam over to where you see the trees and back.

 He did great, so I asked him why he'd said he hated swim team when he is a very capable (although very unfocused) swimmer. He decided to try it for another year.

We took two of the dogs to the bay with us to cook out.

The top three pictures were actually taken after the ones below as you can tell by the setting sun.

 Jasmine is trying out a camera we got a second hand store for 50 cents. It works!

Now that school has started, schedules are already crazy, so we carve out time together when and where we can.

Back to School!

Two in 7th and one junior. Three children, three schools.

Jasmine has a much better schedule than we expected this year. She has anatomy and physiology instead of chemistry, and she has behind the scenes theater class and drama class. She is not in band this year, and for some reason they didn't put her in Spanish 2. I guess she'll take that next year. Geometry will probably be a challenge for her. English 3 and American history will be okay if she stays up to date on her work. We had expected her to repeat English 2 as she had falled it, but she was also part of a credit recovery class, so perhaps that took care of it. And I'm thinking that although she failed Alg 1 twice, she did pass the first semester both times, so perhaps that counted that as a full credit.

We don't have her schedule yet, but there is a possible school change in her future. 

Kaleb has to talk to his guidance counselor because he got dropped out of band. We don't know if it's because he didn't indicate he wanted band or his teacher truly was not willing to put  up with the same drama this year. He will have to find out. He has a standard 7th grade curriculum that includes exploring careers.

I have given up the trying to make everyone smile game. I am tired of attitude, so if a child wants to flaunt the attitude, bring it on.

Fully loaded, ready to go.

Hanging Out at the Beach

Trying to get a little sun before we have to go back to school on Thursday.

Jasmine looks upset, but really she is just concentrating.

 If the weather holds, we are driving to the springs a couple of hours away tomorrow. We, however, are involved in a family empowerment program now due to a child venting, so we have to work around that. The program was optional, but new strategies never hurt. Funny because one lady wrote down a couple things we do that she wants to try with her kids. And a couple of time the two ladies looked at each other and whispered, "Why are we here again?" 

I think we are going to have a good time with them, and hopefully the struggling child will find her way. But it all goes back to the choices she made which landed her in teen court which meant she couldn't play Saturday soccer this season as planned. And that was so awful she didn't think she could cope with life. If that is the worst thing that ever happens in her, then she will be blessed.

How many days until school starts? Thursday for us.

Jasmine at the Park

Here are the last of the park pictures.

Here is why we don't have many pictures of all three together.

 Here is the one of all three that was successful--sort of:

Kaleb at the Park

Kaleb at the park. Which do you like best?

Kayla

Lots going on I can't post about, so I'll post some photos I took of Kayla in the park recently. Which is your favorite?