The Lake

We had not planned on our family taking an official spring break this year.

I think I've changed my mind. I think we might just head to the lake for a week to relax and play. The water most likely will still be too cold to be playing in, but there is plenty more we can enjoy.

We bought our lake house five years ago in the November after my father passed away in September. It was definitely an impulse purchase. One that we've kicked ourselves at making time after time. Whenever we aren't there.

When we are there, we wonder why in the world we would ever not want it.

The house is nestled into a cove down a long, winding driveway. When you enter the driveway, you really feel like you've escaped. From whatever you feel like you need to have escaped from or to wherever you were looking to escape to.

We love to do our schoolwork on the back deck and have a nature study as we explore around on the property. In the afternoons, a family of mallards visits out of habit and curiosity. I'm not sure who is more curious of the other. 

The lake noises are calming and energizing at the same time. I am relaxed by the sound of the water washing up against the dock as boats rush down the lake. And I am tickled by distant laughter of people as they are skiing and playing on the water when it is warm.  At night the rhythm of the frogs talking to one another soothes me to sleep.

Yes, I think we might just have to take a trip to the lake for spring break. The mallards have probably been missing us.

Do you have a special place you enjoy visiting? Are you headed there soon?

This post is part of Tidy Mom's I'm Lovin' It.

Grammar Games

I love to reinforce our lessons with fun games. Little Buddy loves it when they are on the computer.

Kelly Tenkely of iLearnTechnology always provides great resources to meet my goals while satisfying Little Buddy's need for electronics. Regardless if you homeschool or not, Kelly provides excellent resources to help your child's education. Best part, they have fun while doing it. And that my friends, helps them to really learn.

The latest discovery that we found thanks to Kelly was Grammaropolis.  Grammaropolis provides a fun, online experience for reinforcing those grammar lessons. And, who doesn't need reinforcement in grammar. 

Another excellent site for games in our homeschool is Game Classroom. I especially enjoy their games on plurals and contractions for reinforcement. And their math games, those are quiet excellent as well. But for today's electronic lesson reinforcement, we're concentrating on our grammar.

Do you have any grammar games you use that you would like to share with us?

External Hard Drive

I'll never forget how disappointed I was when my laptop decided it just did not want me to access any of my information any more.

I guess it thought I had seen it enough or wanted to be stingy with showing me the information on it. Regardless, getting to the information was a headache. Not so much for me as it was for my husband who had to figure out how to recover it.

Now, had my husband not have been technically brilliant (hi, honey), it would have cost us quiet a bit of money to have had the information recovered, or recovery attempted. Thankfully, he was able to recover it. My important information was not lost.

Yes, I should have been better about performing a backup. But I wasn't.

I am now.

Now, I have an external hard drive that I use to backup my information. It's a 1 terabyte desktop external that automatically syncs with my laptop. I plug it into my laptop each night and let it do it's thing.

I also store all of my photographs on the external. When I need to access them, I simply plug it in and browse to find which one I need. It saves a ton of space on my laptop and keeps things nice and manageable.

A big daddy 2 tb external has recently hit the market and it looks super sweet. I don't quiet think I am up to it yet, but you just never know.

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday. Head on over to We Are THAT Family to check out the other great ideas.

St. Patrick's Day Lesson

Enjoy this lesson with your children on St. Patrick's Day by Veggie Tales.




I just love Veggie Tales. I hope we never outgrow them.

I Thought of Her Today

I thought of her today. 

It's the time of year when she would pull all the furniture out into the middle of the room and all of the pictures off of the walls. She would play her favorite record on her record player, usually The Statler Brothers or Oak Ridge Boys and hum along as she went. Or if she tired of her records, she would sing hymns. It would take most of a day to clean a room and then the next day, she'd move on to another until her whole house smelled fresh and clean. Not that it didn't before.

Her house was my favorite place to go after school. She'd greet me at the screen door with a hug and a kiss on top of my head. Her house would greet me with the smells of dinner cooking. We'd enjoy a snack and a talk about my day. She'd help me with my homework and then we'd cook together, or at least she let me think I was cooking. Looking back on it, she did most of the work and let me think I was so much help.

When I married, she gave me a notebook with her favorite recipes written in it. With her arthritis, she'd still taken the time to write over 200 recipes for me. It's one of my most prized possessions.  It's the one I use most often. It holds so many memories of afternoons cooking and learning and most of all  - of her.

When I don't feel well, I want her. I want her to pass her hand across my forehead and hum those songs. I want her to wrap me in her grandmother's quilt. I want her to make her chicken casserole and sweet tea. I just want to talk with her.

I made her chicken casserole tonight. I think I'll start spring cleaning this week.

I thought of her today.

Glimpses of Home

Being with my family is definitely being home. 

We've lived in four different houses since my husband and I married. Honestly, they've all been wonderful, but none was quiet home until Little Buddy joined the world.

Now, laughter and giggles, matchbox cars and Legos, dirty faces and big grins are what I call home.

But when we've been out of town for a long period of time, this cheers my soul.

Come on over to Chatting at the Sky to get a glimpse of other homes.

Wanted:: The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Little Buddy loves chocolate chip cookies. 

We've been making them over the past few weeks to try and find the "perfect" recipe. You wouldn't imagine there being that many different recipes, but there are quiet a few.

 

We're trying to find the one that Little Buddy likes the best. He's quiet the connoisseur.

Here are his requirements of a great chocolate chip cookie (I asked him so I could include):

1. Soft

2. Chewy, but not too chewy

3. Sweet

So, do you have a chocolate chip cookie recipe that fits the bill that you could share with us? I'm still in search of the "perfect" recipe.