When we were made of dreams....

Allow me to take you on a photo journey around my grandparents' home in Mississippi. I spent many a hot summer day here in my childhood. My grandmother, Sunny, died of ALS about 4 years ago. We visited this week, and I was able to share some of these sights with my own children.

Fire Ants

Let the smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood......

Eastern Box Turtle spotted moments before our family was caught in torrential rains during a 2.5 mile hike at a state park (I didn't take more pictures because I was WET!)

Nature sightings from this past week....

Sits with Utopian hermit monks....

So, I just canceled plans with wonderful friend.
For no reason. Wellll, it was for a reason. A very simple one. Overbooking.
We run our tails off as homeschoolers, and every once in a while we have to stop and take a few deep breaths. When planning our week, I generally separate our time into blocks of AM/ Afternoon/ and PM. Generally every evening Monday - Thursday is full of soccer or Spanish classes. Morning activities range from co-ops and field trips to play dates, volunteering, or lessons. ALL of our activities are valuable and fun. All of them bring us great pleasure and help us learn. I don't put them on the books if they don't. So it is both painful and with regret that I strike one of them from the books. Not to mention that I realize that our friends also maintain a delicate balance with their schedules and likewise make a point to include us in their daily routine. So canceling is not something I take lightly. I know what you give up, when you say you are going to meet us out. Just this week, another mom friend and I had to go back and forth about four times before finally squeezing in an hour and 1/2 nature hike together. Well worth the effort and time, but crazy that we have so much going on...I say this because I love all of our friends and obligations so much. They are a blessing and we would feel isolated and devastated with out each person in our lives, but we do have to cancel sometimes for our own sanity. Sometimes, once every week or so, we have to stay in our pjs, be home to air the laundry and bake, and lounge around and read. And truth be told, we LOVE our family time and our home. We yearn to be together when we are away. Our home is a haven for us, and on the weekends we cling to one another. My favorite moments are spent on a quilt in the backyard with all four of us engrossed in a novel. And, my favorite friends are those that understand and respect that, the ones that are still there when it it time to have others around us, the ones that take no offense to our hermit-like tendencies. Thank you for understanding.

passion rules the arrow that flies...

For awhile, a long time ago, we had magnetic poetry on the fridge.
I imagine this was probably long enough ago that we actually had time to linger around the fridge coming up with haikus and witty word play. I have kept them in a junk drawer all these years, and have just pulled them out to use in our reading lessons. I divided them into parts of speech, and Ollie is making sentences with them, exploring reading and nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This sounded like a quaint little homeschool activity until I realized that we also had an adult version of magnetic poetry. I'll spare you the most explicit words, and just let you know that I had to sift through a few things that I didn't want them sounding out..I did however leave the pile of unmentionables sitting on a book in the living room. My bad, because inevitably I found words like bra, pubic, tremble, and nude spread across the living room floor and also stuck to the bottom of my feet. I will be passing these along, if any of you need them. Maybe this could be my version of a giveaway. What would you do with a magnetic version of passion and luscious? On second thought, I don't need to know what you would do them..

Little red bike

Attention world, Ollie can now ride a bike! We are working on starting and stopping, but hard work and patience has prevailed!

It's gonna be the meanest flood....

After the rain, there is life.

And giant slugs.

When the roses fade....

My roses bloomed

Handy Dandy, he got a stick

Watch out world, Evan gave Ollie a pocket knife and he is now aiming to become a world class widdler.

Camping power!

My mother was a tailor, she sowed these new blue jeans

Please go here:

http://www.penniesandprayersparade.blogspot.com/

In awe of my Mamas and mothers and women and my mom and all....

With a Phish head an’ a harpoon...

PHISH 3D - IN THEATERS APRIL 30TH from Phish on Vimeo.

We believe in showing our children how to have fun and enjoy life. This is one way to do it. Last weekend we drug them to the movie theater not to see some new redundancy from Disney, but to jam out. Its all about education! The best part wast that we had been there! We went to California last October to enjoy the show. The kids saw part of it, too. Remember?

Mama wants you t’ come back in the house and bring them clothes.....

Solar Power.
My husband finally broke down, and helped me upgrade my clothes line situation
(see tye- dye post from earlier wherein the wires are not in the sun..)
I post this reluctantly because my friends, neighbors, and family are prohibited from even washing clothes this week due to flood induced water shortages in Nashville. My thoughts and prayers are with you Music City.

All the tired horses in the sun ....

Class today took place at a friend's home learning about horses!

How to care for them and..

How to ride them!

Ollie's favorite part was a sugar free homemade lemonade being sold by a nine year old, on sight. He bought four glasses with his own money.

High water everywhere.....

For our once a week co-op this Thursday (and at show-and-tell--- thanks for the idea girls!) we read a story about Diego Rivera, on of my favorite Mexican Artists.

I then took a copy of this full mural, Water, the origin of life, and cut it into a grid shape of 8 equal parts. Each of us painted a portion of it and then put it back together to form our own "mural."

I accidentally cut off the bottom two portions, but believe me, they were awesome.
Look closely at the top right to see a tiny girl foot print :)
Our water theme is appropriate giving our historical Spring showers today.