A young man in our homeschool group was studying about the origin of the Olympics and decided he would like to Host a Homeschool Olympics! His talented mom went about planning and making it happen! So yesterday we met at a local park for the 1st Annual RHE (Riverbend Home Educators) Olympic Games! 

Welcome....

Dylan, the one who planned the day's events, along with his mother!

This was the "Red Team".

And the "Green Team"

We had a total of 32 kids participating!

The first event of the day was the Javelin Throw. 

 Charlie had the best throw of the day!  But, we didn't go by individual people. Each team's measurements were added together to figure out which team won. 

Next was the Standing Jump.

Matthew and Caleb....

Danny and Timothy...

The Discus Throw (ball in sock, in this case )

Tamara lets it fly...

Danny's turn...

3 Legged Race...

Victoria & Bailee

This group was going to try a 5 legged race, but someone got a knot and till they got it straightened out (with Ms. Amy's help), the next group was waiting. 

Tamara and Tabitha....

Baton Relay....Each team had players on either side of the field....they had to run the baton across the field to the next teammate who ran it back to the next teammate on the other side and so on, till their team was done!

Bailee just handed the baton to Danny....

Lunch consisted of Hungry Howie's pizza (Provided by Kay), salads, snacks, desserts (provided by the other Mom's) and a Birthday cake for Dylan who's 12th birthday was the day before.

Happy Birthday Dylan!!

Then the kids spent a couple more hours just playing....

Tamara and Anna playing in the shady sand. It was a beautiful, warm day!!

Cute lil Joshua~

What a fun day! We all agreed this needs to be a yearly event....  Oh, by the way, the Green Team won the Gold Medal and the Red Team won the Silver! 

 The sun was so bright and this smart Mom didn't put any sunscreen on, so I am dealing with my first sunburn of the year. We were out there for a good 6 hours! But at least it's only my arms, neck and face....not my back! I think this will def. be a highlight of the year!

 We are having a week of Revivals at church. Denny Eicher from OH is here along with his wife Marie. We had just come away from a week of having overnight guests and I was ready for things to slow down a bit, so the thought of getting ready for church every night was not a welcome idea. I was thinking I might just skip a few nights so life wouldn't be so busy. In fact, the first night (Friday) I didn't think Dan was going because he was trying to finish up school work for the week. So I was figuring on staying home. Well, when he got home from work, he said he was planning to go to church, so I wasn't going to stay home and have him go by himself for no good reason!  *sigh*

 So we went.....and I was so blessed!! And we went again on Saturday, Sunday, Sunday night and Monday night......and each time I was encouraged, convicted, and strengthened! Now why would I want to miss that?? I really am looking forward to going the next two nights even though I'll be gone most of the day today! I think the older I'm getting, the more I am realizing how much we do to please our flesh....and how little we do to please God! And I want to change that in me...and in my family!

 Sunday we had Denny & Marie and Eric & Desirae Martin here for lunch. I am really starting to enjoy having company...we can learn so much from each other and be encouraged! And I think I am starting to enjoy "the Mennonite game" as it's called....it's amazing who knows who!!  And the more people I learn to know, the more everyone fits together!  Heehee!!

 But maybe now I need to learn how to set an attractive table!!  How dull is this??

Meatball Sub casserole, corn and coleslaw salad were the main course...we had Double Fudge cake and raspberry cool whip jello for dessert. Mmmmm!!

Today is our homeschool groups Valentine party followed by the 3rd week of American Sign Language. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures to share!

 Have a blessed day!!

Last Friday, January 28, our friends Trulan & Darlene Martin from PA arrived! They had been in Alabama at the We Care crusade and came to spend a few days with us before heading up to SC for the Gospel Express crusade. 

 We had some lovely warm weather while they were here. So much, that we decided to go to St. George Island on Saturday and take a picnic supper and watch the sunset.  This warm was a welcome reprieve for all of us. North FL has had a very cold winter this year and we were not seeing many warm days for almost 2 months!

 We all rode in Trulan's motorhome, so we could all go together and this way we had a place to change sandy clothes and eat supper inside if it got too cold.

 Crossing the bridge to St. George Island......

Tamara, Callie and Emily playing in the back bed while we traveled....

 A pretty kite flying on the beach....

Darlene and Laurie testing the water. It was COLD!!

Sara~

Callie building a sand castle...

Dan & Trulan chatting...

 The children got brave enough to get in the water a little. I think it was too cold!! But they had fun! 

Darlene keeping Laurie warm.... 

The small sand castle I attempted to build....

Loved the way the sand was rippled from the water flowing through....

Tamara and Emily digging trenches for the water to flow in...

Danny sitting IN that cold water...what he didn't know is that Mom didn't pack dry undershorts, just dry pants!!  Oops!!

Taking a stroll....

The new lighthouse!

My thanks to Dan for taking these next 3 pics as the sun was setting!

 

Playing Apples to Aplpes Jr. with the kids Sunday night. One of Danny's green cards read Slim and he chose Sparklers.....

That reminded me that I still had a few boxes left over from July, so we got them out after the game...

 Sara was brave enough to try some....

Emily, too!

Sweet lil Laurie...the girls spent a lot of time playing in Tamara's room!

Trulan's left Tuesday morning. Monday afternoon, Trulan's Dad Cleason showed up. He taught a "God's Original Design" (put together by himself) seminar at Gulf CI Tuesday and Wednesday. He left this morning and headed up to SC, too.

We really enjoyed all our company the last 3 weeks!!

 The week before Trulan's came, we hosted John & Jane Sullivan, from Gone Fishing ministry and Dan Utz from Clearwater Ministries as well as Sam Byler for a few days while they did some seminars at Gulf CI as well!! All our company was easy to have and lots of fun!! But I am kind of glad for things to slow down a bit...I hope!

 

Last night I made baked potatoes for supper and Danny found this one in the bottom of the bag. So he gave it a face! 

And then ate it for supper!! 

 So today we are doing the normal....school! The exterminator came this morning, so now I can put stuff back in place. I like to clear away everything from the walls, so he can just walk right through and not have to move anything....of course I don't move the BIG furniture! But now, I'm thinking I should do some good cleaning while I am putting stuff back! I hope to get some stuff posted on Ebay while they are offering a Free listing fee!

 Tomorrow night revivals start...and go till next Wed. I don't even know who the speaker is!?? Not like that makes a difference, though!

 

Well, there's my post...maybe I can keep after a little better in the future!??  I can't believe it's been a month! January flew by!

 My life has been so busy the past month and I haven't taken ANY time to blog AT ALL!!  I haven't been on the computer much over the last week since we had company, but now most of our company left and I am getting caught up with laundry, etc. so I hope to do a post this afternoon.

 Life has been good and I am feeling blessed!! Be back soon!

No school for us today....both kids have fever now. Tamara is for sure going to the Dr. The nurse I talked to said it sounds like strep! She thinks if I can't get in to our family Dr. I need to take her to the ER. I can tell she feels worse today than yesterday! She feels dizzy and her heart rate was 120! 

Today 10 years ago I held my very own baby girl in my arms. Never imagined she would be my last baby!! But what a joy she has been in our family! I'm so glad God allowed me to have at least 1 daughter!! 

 We brought 2 kittens home from the Lewis' on New Years Eve...Tamara is loving them!! I think that would have been a sufficient birthday gift for her!

We hadn't bought Tamara a birthday gift. I knew what I wanted to get her [more doll house furniture], but decided to wait till after Christmas and see if it went on sale. I didn't have a chance all week to go shopping, so yesterday we took her to Tallahassee and let her pick out what she wanted. This year we also decided to take them out to eat at the restaurant of their choice for their b-day. She chose IHop.  

After supper, we went to see Secretariat at the dollar theater. It was a very good movie, based on a true story...and it's about horses!! Definitely recommend it!!

 Tamara had a very low grade fever since Friday night and a sore throat, but when she woke up this morning she was feeling pretty rotten and still had a slight fever, so we knew we needed to call off her planned party! She really handled the disappointment well. The rest today was good for her! At one point her temp was 101.9, but meds seemed to being it down again. It didn't keep her from having a little fun any way!

These were the 2 things she picked at ToysR Us last night....you can't see it but the LPS was two sets for the price of one. The second box is hiding!

For lunch we had baked potatoes per her request.
 These were the party favors I made for her party. I think we will still give them to her friends next Sunday.

LPS  cake...

Gifts from friends and family....

More Loving Family gifts.....

From Aunt Esther....

She also got a book and gift card for Borders from her friend Lina, a calendar from Grandma Henry and a nice card made by her brother!

 I thought we would start school tomorrow, but we'll see how the kids are feeling. Danny was all stuffed up today too and both of them were ready for bed early tonight! Hoping they are feeling better soon!!

 

Happy 2011 to y'all!! Be a blessing and be blessed! 

This is going to be a quick post. I loaded the pics a couple days ago and there they sat. Now I have more to post, so these are going up quick!

 

Our neighbors, Jonas & Emma B. were going to Ill. for Christmas and were going to be gone about 6 days. They asked our kids to do the chores for them while they were gone. I went with them the first day....

Walking through the woods to their house...

Getting feed mixed up...

This day, the goats were not around so they were able to fill their troughs with no interruptions. If the goats were nearby, they would be very eager to get the food and about knock them over!! 

Calling the goats and here they come....single file! 

Mmm, yum!

Collecting chicken eggs...

Feeding the catfish...

Put feed out for the turkey's and deer too.

Christmas Eve we opened the gifts that were sent down from the Henry family...

Aunt Esther gave this to Tamara. She was thrilled!!

She also gave each of us a souvenir from her mission trip to Alaska this past year. Tamara got a little trinket box, the guys got knives and I got a purse holder. 

Christmas Eve supper....we had pizza! 

On of the perks for the kids doing Jonas' chores, was he allowed them to use his Gator to run back and forth. Christmas morning we all went over and took the long way over to look for deer. 

~CHRISTmas Day~

Tamara chose her BIG gift first. She was sure it was a scooter....

But it was luggage!!  She was still happy!!

A headlamp for Danny for upcoming camping trips!

Gifts from Dan's mom...hand soap for me, a calendar for Dan.

Jonathan Park CD's...

Books....

A remote control flying saucer....most of these gifts I bought at the Homeschool convention in May. Was nice to have stuff on hand!

Danny's "file cabinet" that he wanted to organize the papers in his room....and he did great at cleaning it all up!! **Happy Me**

Littlest Pet Shop set...

Lego's 

Dan bought me a new deep fryer on Black Friday since we think the other one's thermostat went bad. The oil kept wanting to boil over....NOT good!!

Yup, that's us! Christmas Day~

Danny didn't waste any time putting his new Lego set together!! 

And we had to try out the deep fryer....made french fries and also fried the turkey for lunch!! 

They were SO good!! My new deep fryer is much nicer than my old one...which I got about 10 years ago! 

A little electrical kit we gave Danny. You can do different experiments with it...

Tamara with her pillow pet....

On Monday Danny and I did the chores by ourselves. It was a COLD day and windy!!

Yup, I trusted him to drive! He did a great job! 

December was an unusually COLD month for North Florida!  We had many nights in the low 20's and teens and a few days that didn't make it out of the 30's. Many mornings we had heavy frost, which I hear puts the fire weather watch extremely high because the frost kills everything making it more susceptible to catching fire because it is so dry! 

This particular morning there was even frost in the trees and on all the bushes!  It didn't show up real well on this picture. I was too cold to go out and get one closer up! 

Dan's Dad came and stayed one night. He was picking up his brother, Lemuel, to take him to spend Christmas with their family. Anyway, he brought his guitar along to give to Danny. He also brought a "teach yourself to play" manual. Danny is enjoying it! I hope he can stick at it and learn. I guess I need to help motivate and encourage him...

Did ya see that cover on the back of the sofa in the above pic??  Here is a better picture of it. My sister Gina made that for me for my birthday! I LOVE it!! She does so many neat things and I don't know how she finds the time....probably not having internet is a factor there! 

Last Tuesday [a week ago] my friend Yolie invited us over for the day just to hang out. The kids had so much fun playing outside in the Pine woods and we had some good heart-to-heart encouraging-each-other type of discussions.  I really needed that!

 We also helped the kids make Gingerbread houses!! They kind of flopped, but it was fun anyway! 

Carmen

Danny [looks like someone was snitching icing]

Tamara

Oh what a mess, but what fun they had!!

 I LOVE homemade bread. Soon after we were married I tried to make some and it flopped horribly. I guess I have issues with perfectionism [in some ares] and since it didn't turn out, I never tried again. Well, maybe once! So a few weeks ago I spent a day with my sister Chris and she was making bread. I watched her very closely and decided that I needed to try again.....this was the result!  It turned out good and my family loved it!! I also learned that poking holes in the top with a fork is not necessary...just one of those things that "Mom did".  (I forgot to punch holes and it still turned out wonderful....then found out a lot of people don't do that!)

A few more cookies I made after I had 2 batches that flopped. These turned out perfect!! Used dark chocolate, milk chocolate, candy corn and pumpkin spice kisses...using up leftovers from Thanksgiving! 

Ready to make plates of cookies and stock the freezer....

 Dan finished up a semester of school on Dec. 17 and has a month break. He had till that Friday night to finish his assignments but actually got done by Wed. night. He finished out the class with a 99.8% grade!!   He makes school look like a breeze!!

 So, that Friday night through Sunday morning, he went on a solitary camping trip, just to spend some alone time with God, unwind from the busyness of life and get refreshed. After he got his campsite all set up, he realized he forgot a few things, so he called and asked if we would like to come see his site and bring the items he needed. We were happy to, since we knew we wouldn't see him again till Sunday morning.

Standing by his campfire....

The best shot I could get, in the dark, of his site. He strung up that tarp since rain was in the forecast all weekend. I know he was thankful for it since it did end up raining a lot of the time! He set the tarp up in a way that the rain water would run off into a bucket and he used that water to wash his dishes!! Smart man! 

Saturday was the children's final Christmas Play practice. I dropped them off at church and ran some errands. When I got back, they were almost done. We stuck around and helped Carol Yoder clean the church, along with the Lewis family and then Carol and I decorated a little.

Sunday night was the play....welcome! 

Elijah Lewis and Sean Miller welcomed folks and handed out the program guides.

All the little "animals" ready to perform their part!! 

The Program was titled, "The gifts we give Emmanuel".

 The older children started out by singing "The Friendly Beasts" while the little one's walked in on their verse.

Weston Yoder was the donkey, shaggy and brown.

Silas Weaver was the cow all white and red.

Isaac Lewis was the sheep with the curly horns.

Ian Miller and Joey Lewis were the doves from the rafters high.

Sean Miller was the camel, but the picture I took of him got blurry!  (He is on the left in the pic below)

 All of the animals along with Mary and Joseph and the Babe.

After that, the children performed a few skits.

 "Letters of Encouragement" 

Tamara was the mom to Judah and Jake and she was telling them how they should send letters of encouragement to missionaries in other countries to let them know we care over the Holidays when they might be homesick for family!

Judah making a card for Mike & Jo Martin in Haiti. 

"Babysitting for a Tired Mom"

This one had to be my favorite but you had to see it, to get the hilarity of it....Carmen was telling her "Mom", Mary Vance, how she was so frustrated being in another young Mom's house.....the kids were naughty and loud and the house was a MESS! She didn't understand why the Mom couldn't keep up with everything. Then Mary Vance suggested she babysit to give the Mom a break to get caught up on sleep or just take some "me time".

"Filling the Wood Box for an Older Couple"

Luke Lewis (right), the Dad, was encouraging his children, Austin, Maria, and Elijah, to be willing to help an older couple with some outside chores, namely filling their wood box for the winter.

"Shoes for Romania"

Carmen served sundaes to Danny and Luke Weaver, in an ice cream shop, while they talked about the importance of sending nice, new gifts to children in other countries, not sending old clothes or shoes with holes, that we wouldn't wear ourselves. 

They closed by singing "Ill Do it All for Jesus" and a few more Christmas songs.

Thanks to Mrs. Dana and Mrs. Carol for all the hard work they put into practices and planning the whole thing! The children did a great job!!

  More to come....got to "run" to town!! 

I am so far behind on posting pics. I have Christmas pictures and some of the kids doing the neighbors chores and other odds and ends. Maybe I'll try to catch up later today!??

 

 We enjoyed having my nephew Kendon and his wife and baby girl from Ontario come spend a day and 2 nights with us!! They were in Sarasota for the Volleyball tournaments and stopped in on their way to be with her family in GA! It was nice to visit with them. It's crazy to see your little [speaking in relative terms here....he is far from little!!] nephew get married and become a dad!!

Brianna is SUCH a CUTIE!! She just started walking and would say "What's that?" about anything! And she says "hi" and waves her little hand....so cute! I could have kept her!!   She is such a good little girl!

 The children loved playing with her, too! And she seemed to really like them! 

It got sunny and warmer yesterday, so we all took a walk...

Kendon and the kids had fun poking around in the big ant hills  

They left this morning around 6 AM. 

A better one of Brianna....but not of her parents, so I faded them into the background! 

I'm already missing them! 

 Today is going to be a day of relaxing...maybe find something fun to do! We only have 2 more week days of no school before it's time to start back again. I do have to take care of some insurance stuff for the kids...hope it's not too much of a hassle! 

 Tomorrow night is our yearly New Years Eve party with our church family, then Saturday we will spend a part of the day celebrating Tamara's birthday. Sunday, which is her actual birthday, she wants to have a few friends over. So it will be a fun, but full weekend.