Brain Declutter...

 Jake is doing science right now with Papa G. so I thought I would take a minute to declutter my brain a little.  Papa G. is a pilot so he is the perfect person to teach Jake all the fun weather related stuff you are supposed to learn in the 5th grade.   And it gives me a few minutes to do something productive...or blog!  Blogging is productive right?

*We did a quick Science experiment yesterday with salt, water, and eggs.  It was pretty cool to see the egg float in the salt water.  Picture Jake right here doing the science project because yes I did take a picture of it...but my blog won't let me upload any more pictures.  I have really been wanting to blog, but I really don't want to have to figure out this whole "no room for any more pictures need to fix it" thing...So,  I am avoiding blogging...But my brain needs a declutter so here I am.
*We got a new car!  New to us at least-it is a 1998 Chevy Malibu.  Jake wants to name it Kirby but my brother-in-laws, brother (did you follow that?  He is the one we just picked it up from.  It was my brother-in-laws car, he gave it to his brother, who then gave it to us) calls it the Malibomber and I am kind of LOVING that name.  I spent a couple of hours cleaning it the other day and it looks like a brand new used car!  It talks to you while you drive.  The blinker dings off and on a lot. Even if you aren't turning and it is off.  I guess it should be annoying but I am just assuming it is talking to me.  How can you be annoyed by a free car!? Thank you Tina and Allen!
*I hadn't received the follow up email saying we were in fact approved to homeschool so I called them and they resent it to me.  Just to let you know, if you emailed me between June 30th and July 20th I didn't get it...Not sure what happened but I have no emails (including spam) between those dates and that just doesn't happen...The point of this ramble was really to tell you that I saw our homeschool name (you have to have a name in NC for your school), Harmon's Learning Academy, on the list of homeschools and was AMAZED at the number of schools in just the county we live in!  I will have to go back and count them when I get a chance.  I had to keep scrolling down just to get to the H's!  Now if I could just find a homeschooling group that has kiddos around Jake's age.  I was looking on line and there was a lady starting a "homeschool group" for her 18 month old...Isn't that just a play group?  Is it really called homeschooling when your child is 18 months old?
*Aaron is on his last semester of school!!!!  HORRRRRAAAAY!!!! He graduates in December and we are just a little bit excited to not be living the crazy schedule we have been living the past 18 mos.  Say a prayer that he finds a teaching position starting in Jan.!!!
*Have you ever heard of a "Common Place Book"?  (I mentioned it a long time ago.)  Thomas Jefferson's mentor had all his students write what they had learned in a "Common Place Book" so they could share the knowledge they were gaining with each other.  I really wanted Jake's blog to be called "Jake's Common Place Blog"...Get it?  He wasn't feeling it, but that's okay it's his blog...But anyway we made our own "Common Place Book" so we can all write down what we are learning.  You will never believe what we just missed!  I was on line looking up cheap or free places to take Jake on field trips and there is a plantation museum that actually had a class for homeschoolers on September 2 in which they made "Common Place Books"!!!!  We are so going to check this place out!  It also has this class that he can take for $5 called "Plantation Children's Life".  They get to see what children that lived on plantations here in the South would have done during a normal day.  FOR $5!!!  I am so excited to check it out.  I want to do it too!!!  I love homeschooling!..Even though I wanted to ring Jake's neck yesterday because he wouldn't stay on task and it was driving me CRAZY!  He just doesn't seem to get that he could be done with whatever it is he needs to do a whole lot faster if he would just do it-instead of spending 10 minutes trying to get out of it!!!!  Love that kid even when he is driving me insane. :) Is it wrong for me to threaten to send him back to public school if he is being disobedient? :)....
 *Our first field trip (or what we are calling it any way) is tomorrow and we are going to the homeschool store that is about 15 minutes away.  How cool is that?  There is a homeschooling school in the next town over! 
*I also found out while looking for cheap or free things to do in our area that there is a park that is fenced in that is a leash free park!  Sadie will love it.  After running free for a month in Vermont she is not loving having to be back on her leash AT ALL.  I don't blame her.

Well that is all I have time for. Jake and Papa just finished up and Jake is getting ready to do his "Wednesday's Wonderful Words" post over at his blog.  He is also doing an online book club that you or your kiddos can be a part of.  He is reading (we listened to all the Chronicles of Narnia on our car rides to and from Vermont and he loved them all!)  "A Horse and His Boy" by C.S. Lewis and his book club is going to be on Friday September 30th.  I am trying to make writing bearable  fun for him.  It is like pulling teeth to get him to want to write anything...These math and science guys are really hard for me to figure out. :)

Picture a day in May, Day 6: Guess what I got...

Let's see which book am I going to read today?...I think I will read a little Anne of Green Gables.

Wait a second this isn't a book (anymore at least!)...It is the AWESOME book safe I won from Cocoa!!!

(I love how they left a few pages to cover the secret spot to hold your treasures... )  

I know that is totally cheesy, but I couldn't help it...It came in the mail yesterday and I was so excited.
I thanked Cocoa again and she let me know that my earrings would be coming next week.  She told me the lady that made them moved the beginning of the week so she didn't get to send them out yet...


I am sure you can imagine how surprised I was when I got home today and there was another package with these in it:

Aren't they amazing?!!  I love my beautiful prizes!!!  For some reason my camera didn't want to pick up the exact color of the earrings-they have the sweetest hint of blue...You can see how gorgeous they are even with out the full color affect, so imagine them even prettier!!!!  I am a lucky girl. :)

It is really hard to take a picture of earrings in your ear...

Thank you Cocoa!!!  This is a great start to what I am sure will be a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. :)
Thank you Ella Belle Boutique and HollowBound for my amazing new treasures-you guys totally rock!
(Pick whichever picture you like the best and we will call it my picture of the day...I couldn't pick just one-I had to show off my new bits of happiness!!!)

Friday: Egg hunt and Spring Break Kick off!

...Hold on! One picture before I get to Friday! Jake was player of the day 2 days in a row for "First in Math" (an online way to practice math skills. It counts as 2 grades a period). They get to wear a fancy necklace...I of course had to take a picture of it...Wait this may actually be a picture from Friday...Yep, same Star Wars shirt from the other pictures. That was the day he had to bring it back to school...AWESOME JOB DUDE!
On Friday, I slipped out of work early so I could hide Easter eggs and help with Jake's class Spring treat. The kids searched for 3 eggs: one with their name on it and 2 with the answers to questions they had to answer before the hunt. I loved this idea, but I can't give credit to Jake's teacher. She got the idea, questions, and answers from another 4th grade teacher. I am not even going to go into being there in Jake's class...It is the same it always is..Okay I will go into it a little. I was getting to the school in enough time to spend the last 15 minutes of lunch with Jake before hiding the eggs. On my way to the cafeteria I happened to see one of Jake's class mates who told me they were eating lunch in their class room...?...They were all rushing to finish some work their teacher had to have them finish before Spring Break so they did it while eating lunch. As I walked into the room Jake looked so stressed out and just about on the verge of tears. I sat at his teachers desk while they finished and Mrs. P complained to me about how none of them had finished the in class project...Hmmm...None of them did? She either has a class full of slackers or didn't give them enough time to finish...*Sigh*. Enough venting...There is much more but it isn't worth stressing over any more. It is what it is...I whispered to Jake not to worry about it (he didn't get his finished the way he wanted to...they had to rush through it and he was worried about his grade), and just have fun at the egg hunt. I am not going to worry about it that is for sure! Just 6 more weeks and this will be over!!!...I spent Thursday night (after the Primary Presidency meeting at my house) stuffing the eggs and writing the names and answers on them.
This is a picture of Jake searching...Can you see he is still stresses out? I told him not to worry about it. He did his best and now he just needed to have fun...So, he did. So much that I never even got another shot of him hunting because he was running all over the place! :)


Jake and his new best bud, Connor. (Ken hasn't shown the reform he promised Jake after the last "incident", so they are just kind of friends. Ken keeps calling everyone names, so Jake is being nice to him, but not hanging out with him as much. We think that is a good decision. He hangs out and plays with Connor and Kayla the most now.) That is the smile I like to see-not the stressed out face!
At home we kicked off Spring Break by having a slumber party in Jake's room on Friday night. (The mattresses are still on the floor, from when his cousins slept in his room 2 weeks ago...I have vacuumed the part of the floor unoccupied by them...) Aaron had to leave for work at 9:00 pm, so he missed the slumber part of the party. We didn't go to bed until 11:00...I was ready at about 9:30 but Jake wanted to make Lego people and play, so we did! The sleeping arrangements (I was supposed to sleep on Jake's bed...):
Jake created this spaceship/robot/...a lot of other things that was pretty cool.
This is a before of Jake's very unorganized shelves...We will have a follow up of how it looks after we reorganize it this week. This is how Jake wanted to pose for the picture. :)
Sadie even brought in her rope toy to chew on while we played. The pillow was a divider so she couldn't (in theory) eat any Lego's...Some how she ended up underneath it...
Meet "Jake", Jake's Lego guy who is an inventor/bounty hunter.
Last year I did a post about our first Lego girl we named "Rachel" (after Rachel Ray, one of Jake's crushes from his younger years) and I said how I would love her hair. Well, move over Rachel! I am all about Hermione Granger's hair now. (Hermione from Harry Potter...if you live under a rock and don't know who she is).
This is "Jane". She is a Warrior-Ninja-Princess. (The head and hair are Hermione...I think the body/outfit is Prince of Persia...maybe. We haven't seen the movie but the Lego set was on sale at Christmas time and was very cool. I thought it made a pretty great warrior-ninja-princess outfit.) How awesome is her hair?...and she never has to do anything to it.
This was a ball all in one piece when we started playing...Puppy teeth are lethal, I am telling you.
Sadie ended up working her way over to see what we were doing...She moved on to her teddy bear at this point (it is hard to see in the picture, but she is chewing on it on my lap...It is dark blue and she is black, so it all kind of blends together...)
Jake moved to another area...so Sadie did too. At about this time I gave up and said I was going to bed. I started out in Jake's bed and he was on the floor with Sadie...That lasted about 5 minutes and we switched. Sadie slept the whole night...lucky girl. She is used to sleeping in her crate so I was afraid she might get up and wonder (and maybe pee...) but she didn't...I know this because I think I woke up every 20 minutes to make sure. I woke up at one point to her over on my mattress curled up next to me. :) We had a great slumber party and are looking forward to our camp out in the back yard on Monday night!...Oh man that is tomorrow night isn't it...I better get to sleep...I love this picture. Sadie is so intrigued by Jake. :)

Jake is awesome...

We discussed Jake playing soccer this Spring and of course he was all for it...Then we talked more about the cost: $90...it is worth it. Upward is a great program...but we are poor college students (again) after all! :) On the way home from school today I asked Jake if he really wanted to play. He enthusiastically said "YEAH!". So, we started discussing maybe taking the season off so that we could have Saturdays together as a family and with the price of gas going up we have to save money for Daddy to get to and from school. To this, Jake said: "Mommy, if you feel like we shouldn't do it than that is fine with me. We need to do what Heavenly Father wants us to do." End of discussion. No grumbling about it not being fair. Just understanding. Jake is awesome. It is so nice to be reminded that it really is just that easy to do what is right. Thanks for the reminder Jake. You rock dude. :)