Painting in progress

The family room hasn't been painted in ten years and tonight is the night to begin painting. I shall be busy for a few days.
Benjamin has already asked me if I am finished. I told him it would take many days to finish painting

My first faux pas of the 2013-2014 school year

Yep, already Mom has failed to plan ahead. I ordered preprinted notebook journals for school this year and planned on getting them spiral bound at the printer place. Well, slacker Mom took them in on Sunday for binding. These pages have been sitting at my house since mid July and not bound yet. The first day of school was a light day because of the mess up.
The blessing is that I forgot to ask for right side binding for the ease of my lefty, Elisabeth. I called this morning and was able to ask for that before the binding work had been done. Despite my not planning ahead we had a great first day of school and tomorrow we begin at full course load.

2013-2014 School Year Begins

Today was the first day of school. I am usually an after Labor Day school starter but there were some conflicts that caused the need for an earlier start date, but more about that later.

Prepared

School is supposed to start for our crew on Monday, August 26 and this is my kitchen tonight. Frost arrived and left me picking furiously Saturday night and covering what is still out there. The geese are heading south and that means fall is in the air. So, tonight I am canning green beans and chopping celery for the freezer. Thankful for food to preserve and that children expect no bells and whistles for the first day of school.

Piles they are a dwindling

I just seem to always have too much stuff about me. I am trying to mend my ways and sort and get rid of books. Oh, the books. We have a curriculum swap with our homeschool group next week and boxes are a goin'.

The school storage closet has been cleaned and items returned for use or storage. I am still working on a few piles and of course more piles accumulate while working on others.

Science class

The girls are taking a science class with a friend and I am over the top thrilled. Science isn't my strong suite. They are going through the new Apologia chemistry and physics book and I keep two four year olds alive. Win, win!
I wasn't allowed to take pics of the teacher but she blogs and like Brussel's sprouts.

Today

I enjoy days when I see accomplishments, today was one of those days.
We emptied and sorted and reshelved items from the school closet. Benjamin was my #1 helper today. Much of the school closet was preschool activities so he had a blast. I sorted books and curriculum and we are close to formal lesson beginning day. August 26 is the projected start date. Piano and a science class begin next week so we will be getting our feet wet with these two classes.
Levi brought in this nice sized carrot today. Can't wait to pick and preserve the carrots for winter eating.
This evening we went to pick the abundance of a generous couple's garden. They harvest what they need and get others to pick the rest. Such a blessing to this green bean eating family. The girls broke a big bowl full while I worked on printing for school. I will be putting the first batch in the canner in a few minutes.
Love all this food preserving!

Where I am at this point in life

Life is full, busy with daily jobs of laundry and meals and cleaning with added late summer jobs of preserving garden goodness for winter days.  Cause I am not much on cooking this summer. Food has been simple and whatever is quick and handy. Garden goodies have inspired renewed interest in the kitchen but the time to preserve is now.
Today I canned seven quarts of green beans. There are more beans out there still growing for picking on another day with much prayer of growth to maturity for many as we would love to have many jars of green beans lining the cabinets.

We are growing more than garden vegetables around here though. We are attempting to grow hearts and that is challenging work requiring much cultivation. All of us are learning and growing. We are learning to love God and love our neighbor.
Lately, I keep coming back to the writings of Sally Clarkson. What a blessing her books and blog are for this Mom's heart. Tonight I am reading from The Mission of Motherhood about eternal treasures. I am reminded to set the heart choices on eternal results.  Set the heart that struck a cord with me. An action is required, set the heart.

Homer, Alaska

I have taken a week after returning home from vacation to upload the pictures and get to posting. We came home to beautiful, hot, sunny days so we enjoyed the days as the laundry hung in the sun.

 

Back to the trip. Homer, Alaska is a looooonnnng way from where we live in the interior of Alaska.

Here’s a map. We live just outside of Fairbanks and we traveled all the way down to Homer, Alaska which is about 600+miles. We actually stayed about 15 miles north of Homer in a little town called Anchor Point. But we went to Homer just about every day.

The ocean on the way into Homer.

This is a  neat little bowl like area that fills with water at high tide. Mountain in the background.

They tried to catch a fish or two but nothing was biting. But we had fun.