I was a homeschooler...here's proof! *As was previously posted on facebook*

[ x] Own/have owned a denim jumper
[x ] You were at least 13 when you got your first "trendy" haircut
[x] Everything in your closet at some time was referred to as modest
[x] You do/have tucked things in that shouldn't be tucked in
[ ] You have been a member of at least 3 co-ops
[x] You were a true 16 and never been kissed
[x] Your mom drives a van of some sort.
[ ] You have at least one childhood picture where you, your mom, and all you siblings matched
[ ] You are/were/will be a PSEO Student
[x] At some point in your life you were more comfortable with adults than kids your own age
[x] Have studied ways to defend your beliefs, debate, and/or create laws
[x] Used uber conservative ABecka curriculum

TOTAL SO FAR- 9

[x] You use big words that most adults could not use in conversation
[ x] You can use the words sublime, epiphany, and cognizant correctly
[ ] You have a favorite word. AMAZING!!!
[ ] You have an understanding of Latin root words and how to use them (huh?)
[x] People from the outside world are referred to as "public schoolers"
[x] You or one of your siblings knits.well? maybe not
[x ] You laugh at the decline in literacy in America
[x] You score constantly higher than "public schoolers" on standardized tests.
[x] You have no concept of cafeteria food
[ ] Family vacations are/ can be referred to as "Field Trips"
[ x] Traveling on said vacations have included stopping at historical site markers along the way
[x] You have never been in a public elementary school, middle school, or high school during regular school hours
[ ] You have gone to or been involved in a homeschool convention... more then should be allowed.

TOTAL SO FAR- 18

[x] You read books on a regular basis
[ ] You have taken part in a political protest
[ ] You were a Pride and Prejudice fan before the movie
[ x] You were a Lord of the Rings fan prior to the movie
[x] You were a Chronicles of Narnia fan before the movie
[x] You speak a language other than English (if you count sign language...I can't speak Spanish to save my life!)
[x ] You dream of dating characters from books instead of celebrities. (I have fallen in love with book characters...I hate celebrities!)

TOTAL SO FAR- 23

It has been assumed that you:....
[ ] Have won many spelling bees
[x] Have no social life
[x ] Have no friends of the opposite gender
[ ] Are extremely inept
[x] Only listen to classical music
[ x] Play piano or the violin (and it's true I might add!)
[x] Do not own a pair of trendy jeans.
[x] Have no knowledge of drugs or alcohol
[x] Don't date, only court.
[x] Have never been to a "party"
[x] Know no other beliefs other than what your family believes



TOTAL SO FAR- 32

You have been asked more than 10 times in your life:
[] If you wear pajamas to school
[ ] If you get perfect grades because your mom grades you
[x ] If your mom teaches you or if somebody else's mom does
[x] How do you meet people
[x] Why you aren't in school
[x ] If you get days off whenever you want
[] If you're going to be home schooled through college
[] If you have a big family
[x ] What your parents are protecting you from
[ ] To quote something famous
[ ] For the answer, because supposedly homeschoolers always have all the answers


TOTAL SO FAR- 37


You have "rebelled" by:
[x ] Listening to "worldly music"
[ ] Wearing black fingernail polish
[ ] Wearing tight clothes or letting your midriff show or showing off what color of boxers you are wearing
[ x] Watching a *gasp* PG-13 movie
[ ] Breaking dress code
[ ] Listening to music with a beat
[ ] Dancing. Especially dances that involve contact for longer than 2 seconds. With somebody of the opposite gender. Scandalous!!!


TOTAL : 39

1-10 You're not really a homeschooler...you just do school at home
11-21 You're a homeschooler, but not what the world expects
22-32 You're a homeschooler(I knew it!)
33-? You probably wouldn't have facebook to begin with...but congrats you're the stereotypical homeschooler

Tag your homeschool friends and see what they are!

Tea for Two

When you're really sick, sometimes something hot to drink and yummy to eat (even if you can't taste it) helps to make your day brighter. While I was sick I was really bored. All I did was watch TV all day and sleep. After I passed my sickness to Holly I decided that instead of letting her be as bored as I was, I was going to throw a tea party for us. Complete with tea, cookies, tuna on crackers, a quesadilla and applesauce. Not entirely conventional for an afternoon tea I'm sure, but we enjoyed it. Or at least I did. :)I think it's the least you can do when you got someone sick to begin with. Whoever it was who got me sick at Radiate owes me a tea party!

List of things to do before I expire...

I thought you might like my choice of words up there...lol.

I was reading a blog the other night (so what else is new?) and the author was saying that she was going 'grape stomping.' She was going to go to a vineyard and stomp grapes because that was on her list of 30 Things to Do Before I Die.

It got me to start thinking...what are the things I want to do before I die. Then I thought, what are the things I want most to do in life? So I decided to make my own list.

Stomping grapes sounds fun, but if I never stomp on grapes I won't feel like I missed out on life. In face, there are so many things that would be fun to do, but if I never did them I wouldn't feel like I missed out. If I never went to NYC or Hollywood I wouldn't feel like I missed out on anything. But I would like to visit each of the 50 states. I would just choose someplace different to go to in NY and CA.

So then I kind of changed my perspective and began to think of what I really wanted out of life. This is pretty much what I came up with.

The Things I Want For My Life:

1. Be involved in ministry. It doesn't always have to be as organized as Campus Crusade (although I am super excited to be part of that), but I think my whole life should constantly be a ministry to others. Family, friends, unbelievers, etc. We are God's workmanship created for his work! I want to live for Him.

2. It would be great to finish college if that is something God wants
to have happen.

3. I want to fall in love and get married....

4. ...and have a family...a big family! Like at least 5 kids or more. It would be cool to adopt too.

5. I want to home school my kids.

6. I want to visit each of the 50 states. Specific places would include Portland, Seattle, and the Grand Canyon. It would be cool to go Yellowstone or Yosemite too. Hug a redwood or something (just kidding...I'm all for taking care of the planet, but I'm not a fanatic and it's not like I could actually get my arms around one anyway, lol). I'd like to see places in the mid-west too. I'd like to live further west and/or maybe near water (not the beach unless I lived somewhere like Maine [which would take a miracle to get me to move someplace that gets SO cold], but some body of water). I suppose I could move a few times if I had to. :)

7. I want to plant a garden.

8. I want an herb garden in that garden and I want to learn to work with herbs.

9. I want to be healthy and thinner. I want to be a healthy cook!

10. I want to be creative and be able to make things I can use in my own home someday.
I want to be 'domestic.' I think it would be totally cool to be able to earn an income doing the crafty things that I love, but I'm not really good enough at any of those things to make a living off of them. But it would be fun anyway. :)









11. Before I get married (if that ever happens) I'd kind of like to live on my own a little bit. Just to know I can handle it!





12. I'd like to travel to another country (not necessarily Italy although it would be cool to go there, that was just the only picture I could find that I liked online.).




13. Go hang gliding. And ride a roller coaster (see, I'm a little bit adventurous...only a little bit though! And yes, I'm admitting that I've never ridden a roller coaster before.). And I saw this show about a family who traveled all over the Atlantic ocean in a boat and I thought that looked kinda cool. Until a bad storm comes up and then I'd probably be a useless, hyperventilating heap on the floor until it was over.








14. I would love to dance again. Lately I've really been missing it a lot and I'd love to take some kind of dance class again. It doesn't have to be ballet even though I loved how fluid and graceful ballet is.

15. I'd like to be able to do this.






16. And this.




There...that's a few of the things I'd like to do. But you know what's funny? I don't really have to do most of those things in order to feel like I've lead a full life. When I first started this list it was kind of empty because I knew that most of these things (riding roller coasters, traveling all over the world, doing pottery, dancing, standing on my head, etc) are just nice fun things that don't really mean a whole lot of anything. I really think that there is only one thing I can do that will fulfill me and that is to live my life as a servant of Jesus Christ. That's what I was created for and if I don't do anything else with my life, I hope to accomplish that one thing to the best of my ability whether it's by fulfilling my dream of being a wife and mom and helping my husband serve Christ as best as he can and raising children to love and serve Jesus, or by doing something totally different that I can't even begin to imagine.

If anyone else feels like making a list like this, send me a comment so I can look at your list too. It would be cool to see what you love to do or dream of doing.

Dinner with the Tyners :)

Last night we went to the Tyner's house for dinner. It was Courteney's last night at home so I'm glad we got to go visit before she left for school.Mr. and Mrs. Tyner are very good cooks! And Mrs. Tyner always has beautiful table preparations. I feel very lazy because I am all about using paper plates/cups/ forks, etc., but Mrs. Tyner goes above and beyond the call of duty. Another fun thing is all the girls get to eat in the kitchen while the "adults" (okay, technically Courteney and I are adults) and the boys eat in the dining room. So we can talk and be silly all we want without scaring our parents. Not that we would scare our parents, but that way they don't have to listen to us talking about school and work and people's toes falling off or how/why a person would get their stomach pumped....maybe we would scare our parents. I don't know. I've known Courteney's family since we were in 7th grade and I've been having dinner in their kitchen for 8 years now. I wonder how much our conversations have changed? Rebecca and Jacqueline are now married and aren't at that table with us anymore. Holly and Caitlin are there with us now....poor things!

And their coleslaw was amazing! Courteney made a coleslaw and both Mom and I loved it. That's a big deal because we are both coleslaw haters. I think I ate a third of the whole dish that was on the table for us. Good thing it's mostly all vegetable. :) We are actually making it for dinner tonight!

In addition to a lovely dinner and desert, Kenny entertained us with his clay-mation videos. He makes his own. He is very good at it too. He writes his scripts and makes his own characters and makes his movies. He just finished a production of David and Goliath for the church's vacation Bible school this year (kids in the church star as the voices of some of the characters which was really cool!). He has also made a movie in which he used a poem written by his grandfather for his dialogue which was very good too. I was very impressed!
We were on the front porch talking and Holly took our picture! This was right before I got stung by a bee. :( Thank goodness for baking soda!

I'm not sure if you guys know this, but if you are stung by a bee you can make a paste out of baking soda and water and rub it on the area of the bee sting and it helps to take the pain away. It's really great!

And so was our visit!

Now I can't wait for everyone to come back from school so we can hang out again! I'm going to miss everyone.

Friends.

I got to meet up with Janice, Rachel, and Sarah tonight at the Daily Grind. Everyone is getting ready to go back to school. I'll be at the same school as Janice and Rachel, but Sarah will be out of state. I will be sad when our friends who are leaving for school are finally gone. I wish I got to hang out with them more this summer. I am grateful for them!I hope they have a great semester! And I hope they keep in touch!

Strawberry Pickin'

We (Holly and I) went with Jacqueline and Sharon to pick strawberries at a farm nearby. It was hard to find good berries because most of them were picked over, but we managed to find some good ones.

Holly and I teamed up and worked together. :)

And played together.

A lot! :)

And worked a little more.

We had smaller buckets so we finished quicker, so we just sat around and took pictures for awhile.

Holly tried to teach me how to make a whistle by placing a piece of grass between your hands a certain way and blowing through the gaps. I couldn't figure it out.

Jacqueline got in on the picture fun. :) She put my little Sony camera to shame with her fancy Nikon D80.

Here is proof that we actually did pick some strawberries.
It was such a nice day!

What I've been up to lately...

Today we had the Hunter family over. Jamie Marrs was staying with them and she came too. It was great to visit with them. They are special gals. :)Here's what I've been working on...

Pot holders...and baby blankets.

I will post these on my other blog and write about them there. I set up an Etsy account! My other blog is named after it and once I set up my "shop" I will start blogging about all the sewing stuff there. It's been fun working on these projects. :)

Mostly a picture post...

I met my friend Becca today for tea. It was very pretty outside and everything is starting to bloom around here. It was a good chance to take a few photos.













We went to a tea house called Shaharazade's. It's supposed to be pretty authentic. It was very cool.











The tea was really good, as were scones I stuffed my face with. :P Becca was laughing cause I had to photograph everything. I didn't photograph the scones though. I restrained myself.


Things I'm thankful for today:
1. good weather
2. good friends
3. good tea (and scones)
4. getting my haircut
5. staying safe on the road
6. laid back day
7. seeing the chiropractor. It's really helped my back.
8. my job...I really do like it and my bosses.




Speaking of my job, one of our dentists is leaving the practice. It was quite a shock. We are excited for her since she is opening her own practice, but we will miss her being at the office. Change is so weird. I used to hate it. Now I feel that I go with it alright. I have learned to expect it really. As soon as things get quiet, expect change. It just seems to be the way of my life. Change and waiting for change...it's a vicious cycle. Life really is a crazy journey. We've been a little stressed at my house lately. This anticipation of the move is starting to get to certain members of our family and it's making them anxious. I know I'm one of those members of the family. But I'm enjoying the time I have here still. Hopefully I'll be here when everyone gets out of school so I can see them a little this summer before we pack up and go. It was a nice laid back day. I think I needed it. Now hopefully I'll do something productive tomorrow. Like homework! LoL~

I hope everyone has a happy weekend. :)