No, I Didn't Fall off the Blogging Planet... Was Just Busy Talking

The B children planned a surprise anniversary party for their parents, a pretty tricky thing to do... their parents never caught on! It was a very nice time; just a mini version of the picnic they put on.... singing, preaching (my dad got to do a homily), eating (for the people that weren't too busy talking), talking, soccer, and a nice time where people congratulated them on their thirty years and told them to keep on keeping on. We made the cake... it was really cool if do say so myself. One kid stared at it for a long time and then asked Paul "How did you guys do that?" (Meaning the basket weave) "Did you like use a little knife or something?"
And, yes, I'm terrible at soccer; don't even contact the ball most of the time..... But I've spent the last four years of my life (before moving up here) getting good at Capture the Flag! One boy said kind of tactfully, "So what's your favorite sport? I noticed you weren't playing much out there." So I'm going "Umm.... how do I answer that? Capture the flag, and foosball????" LOL
Anyway it was really nice, their parents were very, very surprised, and Perry got to advertise her book. Speaking of her book, if you want to read about or purchase one of them just go to: http://www.heavensdeclare.info/!

It's Here!!!

July 3rd

We had the opportunity to go to a picnic hosted by a family we know.  It was great fun with excellent historical readings and recitations of famous speeches and quotes of the founding fathers.  There were also performances by several different families, including ours.  We sang "America the Beautiful" in 3-part harmony.  (Yes, we still need a bass.  If Paul doesn't grow up to be a bass, one of us girls will have to marry one, I guess.)  There was a brother and sister who played together: the brother played piano and the girl played violin.  Then she sat on the piano bench and held her violin, handing the bow to her brother.  He reached over her shoulder with the bow in his right hand and played the piano with his left hand.  She fingered the violin with her left hand and played the piano with her right hand.  In this way, they played "Bile 'em Cabbage Down" also known as "Boil the Cabbage."  It was hilarious!

 

There was a fabulous game of soccer, in which, even completely inexperienced players like Aimee, Paul, and I had moments of glory.  See pictures: Aimee and Paul were on one team, and I was on the other team... my team lost.  (The score was 5 to 1!)  But it was great fun nonetheless. ;)  There was also tug-of-war; a men's game and a ladies' game.  Almost all the girls and several of the younger mothers participated.  The little kids had a flag relay race... it was so cute!  The 'coolest' game was either the water-balloon toss, or the bombardment of Fort McHenry (or Fort Sumpter... there was some confusion about which fort it was.)  Using a pair of three-man-slingshots, a huge crowd of kids (and adults, actually) launched water balloons at the cardboard forts, trying to get the defenders wet.  Then the defenders would return fire (water, actually), and the attackers would have to finally run forward and storm the place.

 

We shared a potluck dinner and delicious grilled hotdogs and hamburgers.  When a police officer and the fire marshal showed up, some of the little girls wondered who was in trouble, but they were really just there to inspect the fireworks permit before the show. ;)  At dark, everyone set up chairs at one edge of the field and watched the excellent fireworks this family had choreographed.  They played a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and it was really moving the way the fireworks lined up with the music.  (And just a side note: gotta' love these groups of 'weird' homeschoolers; they're a gentlemanly bunch.  A boy gave me his chair and stood during the fireworks so I wouldn't have to!)

 

One of the day's highlights was re-meeting a family we had previously met in AZ!  When we arrived, a little after the picnic had already started, Mr. D was up front sharing something and thought to myself, "Wow!  He looks really familiar... I feel like I've seen him somewhere before!"  Then I told myself I was crazy, but as it turns out, I wasn't because we actually had met them about 5 years ago in AZ!  It's a small world, I guess.  The other highlight, for me, was meeting Rachael, a young mother.  She's a second-generation homeschooler, and seems to be pretty like-minded.  She was so sweet and was very happy to share her courtship story with us girls, also giving good advice.  That was a real blessing!

 

I didn't get to bed that night until about 1 am, but that was a wonderful picnic... rather reminiscent of times at HBC.

 

Book Cover

Enjoy the sneak peek of my book cover!  www.heavensdeclare.info.

 

Cute Baby

Kate speaking:
Has anyone seen the movie “Up”? Aimee’s favorite line in the whole movie is... “Do not speak of Dug to me at this time—Squirrel!” So she says it all around the house. Well, this morning Dad was explaining something during family devotions and Elizabeth was being distracting. It reminded Mom of how distracted the dogs get when they—“Squirrel!” So she said, “Don’t say, ‘squirrel!’” Elizabeth said, “Wow! What’s a squirrel?” Quite clearly. We all burst into laughter and gave up trying to ignore her cuteness and concentrate.
Elizabeth has learned to say, “Dada”, “Mama”, “Mayme” (that’s Aimee), “Dayde” (that’s Katie), “Baul” (Paul), “Anna” and “Emma”. She may have said Pearl once or twice, but she doesn’t often. Perry, she addresses as “Mama” or “Dada”. :)
One day in the car, Perry had been feeding her cookies. Well, Perry was busy doing something, so the baby got her attention: “Eees! Mookie!” (Translated as ‘Please! Cookie!’) That was pretty funny. :)
The other day, the baby was playing kid kitchen and she served Dad tea. She carefully put her hand into the play hot mitt and reached for the handle of the tea pot. In the other hand she held a tin tea cup, which she carefully filled with delicious tea.
She always knows when she is being cute, for instance, one day she was concentrating really hard to keep a French fry on her fork. “Oh, look at that! She’s so cute!” we all said, in one way or another. She looked up and grinned, which made us talk about her even more. :)
One thing she is nuts about is her pink blanket. She used to walk around with it, but now her time with it is limited and she doesn’t get it that much. But when she does... she sucks her thumb and cuddles it to death. It’s not just her blanket that she is nuts about, other things pink and soft work too... you get the point. :)
She doesn’t eat that much baby food anymore, but whenever we do go to town we buy about 8 boxes of baby food green beans ‘cuz she eats about two in one sitting.
So that’s a synopsis of how cute my baby sister (okay she’s 18 mos. old) is. I’ll post pictures sometime. And now I must close my disappearance on the blog and do my grammar lesson. :) So long. Farewell. Goodbye. God be with you... the end.

Scary Quote!

Tonight we watched a video of Voddie Baucham's first keynote at the 2009 WA homeschool convention.  It was an excellent talk entitled, "Homeschooling for the Right Reasons: Home Based Discipleship vs. Government Education," and he shared this extremely scary quote...

 

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already... What are you?  You will pass on.  Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp.  In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'"

 

Guess who?  Adolf Hitler.

 

Obamacare

We love this bumper sticker; it expresses exactly what other socialized-healthcare nations experience.

~P & A