Charleston {Part Deux}

For part one, click here.

The adults and I (minus Kurt) went out to eat at Poogan’s Porch. I’m not sure what I was thinking not taking a picture of the outside. It’s a historic house turned restaurant. They named it Poogan’s Porch because the dog that lived there was named Poogan. His grave is in the front yard. Anyway, this is my grandma oohing and ahhing over her hummingbird cake with a fried plantain slice on top.

We walked around downtown after the dinner. This is Second Presbyterian Church (not the first!) at night.

We went on a carriage tour of downtown. Ryan loved the horses, Carter and Cash.

This is Charleston Harbor. The middle island is Ft. Sumter and one of the other two is Ft. Moultrie.

Yeah, guess I wasn’t really paying attention at that point!

Norma and my Grandma had matching shoes and my mom and I had matching shoes.

We ate dinner at Fleet Landing and the view was beautiful!

Sunday morning the boys sat through a three hour brunch at a five-star restaurant. Boy was I proud!

Grandma enjoyed her special banana ice cream dessert.

After a long weekend we headed home and rested!

Linking up at

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli
Sarah:)

Sara’s Funeral

Sara’s funeral will be live on UStream at 1:30 CST today (Tuesday). If you are interested, please go to Sara’s blog for the link. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here.

Sarah:)

Charleston, SC – Part One

My grandmother from South Dakota turned 90 back in April. She and best friend Norma came here for a visit and we spent the weekend in Charleston. Here is a photostory of their time here in South Carolina with us.

Stanley wanted to hang out with the boys while Grandma and Norma took the inside tour of my mom’s house. Seriously, Stanley! You are so stinkin’ cute!

 

The beautiful lady in blue is my like-grandma Norma. The smiling lady in black is my 90-year-old grandmother.

 

Since  we were in my mom’s beautiful backyard I had to take advantage of that opportunity and shoot lots of pretty flowers.

 

We started our trip towards Charleston with a trip to the capital in Columbia.

In an effort to not overload you with photos, I’ll continue our trip in my next post.

Linking up with The Paper Mama, Naptime Photog, And then she snapped, Live and Love Outloud and Five Minutes for Mom

Sarah:)

Scavenger Hunt Sunday – I’m Baaaaaack!

 

I’ve missed participating in Scavenger Hunt Sunday.

Hope I can get back in the swing of things and start participating more since I really do enjoy photography!

 

Street Photography

You’ll surely count this as a street right? It’s a street for bicycles!

 

From a Distance

I needed to keep my distance from this huge, hairy guy.

I don’t know what kind of spider he is, but I certainly didn’t want to get close enough to find out.

 

Sunday

Doesn’t this look like the perfect place to sit and read the Sunday paper and enjoy the peacefulness of your surroundings?

 

Liquid

This was our last time at the pool for the season. I’ll miss the pool. It is such an integral part of our summers.

 

Behind

By the time I got this shot of this little dude he’d already noshed on a dead moth.

Now, he’s clearly interested in the fly on the leaf above him.

Sarah:)

Weekly Wrap-up

I’m happy to report that this week has gone wonderfully! I could not imagine this good of a week at this time last year. I’m so thankful for the changes that have occurred in my family!

This is how I schedule our week. When I was a classroom teacher I used this same format. Both Charlie and I have a copy in our binder so we both know exactly what we’re doing everyday. He is responsible for completing everything on the lesson plan. Any extension activities or extras are added on later.

 

This is how we keep all of our supplies together and handy. It’s an old Pampered Chef kitchen tool caddy but works wonderfully well for keeping all of the supplies in one space and easy accessible.

 

Charlie is doing an experiment to see how important calcium is to the health of our bones.

 

My Father’s Dragon has been the perfect high interest/lower reading level choice for Charlie to give him some confidence in his reading and comprehension abilities. He’s doing this “novel study” all on his own and I think he’s feeling pretty good about it!

 

This has been my favorite meal of the week. Can’t you almost smell it?!

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Sarah:)

Sara

I am feeling my mortality more than ever at this moment, yet I feel I can’t talk about it with anyone since it’s a tough subject and it hits too close to home.

Sara, from Gitzen Girl, is dying. Her body is shutting down. Her ankylosing spondylitis is killing her, not so slowly anymore. Sara and I share names. We share a love of reading blogs and blogging. Sara and I share a love of dogs. Sara and I both have an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis and she’s dying, but I’m not.

I have a hollow pit in my stomach. Sara’s reality could be my reality.

Last week coming home from the gastroenterologist (for my elevated liver function tests) I had a real, head-on epiphany. If I died, my family would be ok. God would be with them. It was a very odd sensation…like God was actually talking to me. The clarity was crystal clear.

Even though I am a Christian and know that an earthly death means the most amazing Heavenly reward, death is still a very tough subject for me. I have a hard time facing my own mortality and the mortality of my dear friends and family.

Please join me in prayer for Sara’s Heaven-bound journey and for peace for her friends and family.

Sarah:)

20 Days Out of 180 Days Equals 1/9!

Would you even believe it if I told you we are 1/9 of the way done with our school year?! I just can’t even believe it at all!

I do think it’s pretty funny that we have to keep attendance for homeschool!

Sarah:)

Wordless Wednesday–Saluda Shoals Shots

 

 

 

Linking up at Naptime Momtog and The Paper Mama.

Sarah:)

9/11/11

Ten years ago today I was laying in bed around 8:30 AM with Charlie who was two months old. We were living in Seattle. Kurt was in Wisconsin in an interview with Apple-J. My dad from Minnesota was at our house. He came into my room and said, “Sarah, get up and come see this. The Twin Towers have been hit.” In the usual newborn, sleep-deprived stupor of the time, I was hesitant to believe what he was telling me was true.

I came out into the living room and my dad and I watched it all unfold. While watching it, and every single time I think about it, I’m covered with goose bumps. So much good came out of such terror and evil. So many precious lives lost. So many brave men and woman came forward to serve their country.

God’s blessing to those how served, to those who lost their loved ones and to the best place to live in the world, the United States of America!

This shot was taken at our Lexington 9/11 memorial.

Sarah:)

Nine Things I Hate About Football Games {and Three Things I Love}

 

A little background info about me might help you read these nine things about the football game last night with a little more clarity.

 

*I am about as introverted as a person can get, meaning I totally draw my strength and energy from being by myself.

*I am a little on the sensitive side when it comes to any type of stimulation (auditory, visual, touch). Okay, I on the “very” sensitive side.

*I realize I am partly to mostly crazy!

 

The Nine Things I Hate About Football

1. Being nudged repeatedly on your sides, back and knees because everyone is squished in like sardines in the bleachers is not very amusing to me. Actually, I find it quite aggravating, to the point of putting my annoyed face on and shooting someone the evil eye.

2. It’s funny how everyone around me thought they were a ref. It’s also funny how everyone around me disagreed with the reffing if it was not in our favor.

3. Don’t get me wrong, I like cowbell and all, but how much cowbell can a person stand before their brain explodes? Well, feather-lady took it upon herself to grab a cowbell and walk back and forth on the bleachers for what seemed like 1.5 hours and it made me want a lot less cowbell.

4. Music and I are tight. I dig all kinds of music…but how appropriate is a song at a school function that talks about rubbing genitals together? The song was played more than once too! Black Eyed Peas, you just ain’t coo’ no mo’.

5. Booers. What’s with the booers? Why must we boo the other team and the refs. I just don’t get it.

6. I don’t consider myself to have clinical claustrophobia, but I do not like to be surrounded by anything (ok, maybe chocolate covered peanut butter, but that’s it). Being surrounded 360degrees by people is out of my comfort zone. Did I handle it like a champ? Yes. Did I enjoy that component? No.

7. There’s one in every group. Mr. Loud and Obnoxious. Last night he would shout at the top of his beast-like lungs, “GO DEFENSE!” The poor lady sitting next to him had her ears plugged and she was still visibly very uncomfortable about sitting next to this dude.

8. Cheerleaders are no longer good enough to get the crown going. Other people (like the photographers, coaches, players, fans, the milk man, your hair dresser, etc.) all feel the nagging need to stand up, turn around, wave their hands around and tell everyone to get up and cheer.

9. People act like they’re just going to fall out and DIE if their team makes a mistake. It’s nuts. Come on people, it’s JUST football!

 

The Three Things I Love About Football

1. I LOVE watching the actual football game. I love the intensity of it. The actual game is worth going to despite all the faults I find with the rest of the game atmosphere.

2. The band! Goooooooo band! Yes, I am a band nerd at heart. I played the tenor saxophone from 4th grade until college. I was in marching band, pep band, concert band, jazz band, rock band and just loved band, so seeing and hearing the band makes me smile!

3. My boys really do like to watch football too. Even though they are part of the nudgers group, I’m happy to have them nudge me if they’re having such a great time with their friends and family.

This shot is from last year. I forgot to take my camera to the game last night. That’s ok that I forgot, because there would’ve been no room for it to sit anyway!

Sarah:)

Roller Coaster {of Love}

Wowza! What a whirlwind of a week. Some of you know that my son has some “special needs” that can make day to day life feel like a roller coaster. This week was a wild ride; I merely held on and prayed to not fall off of it. So, we had some good school days and some not good school days.

This week we learned about the skeletal system. Charlie did a great job in memorizing the bones of the body. We have played several games of “Name That Bone” and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard to get it all right!

We really slacked in ancient history this week. We read about cities on ancient India. We didn’t do any extension activities or anything. Not what I’d call a real productive week in history.

Math with Teaching Textbooks is going well. He really likes his time on the computer with the math dude.

We are using Sequential Spelling and it rocks! Charlie has gained confidence in his ability to spell and that’s priceless!

We had fun finding similes in “The Whipping Boy” and reading “Stubborn as a Mule”.

And, we took a fun little trip to Saluda Shoals. I used it as an excuse to marvel in some of God’s beauty. His colors are marvelous!

I’m linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Have a great weekend!

Sarah:)

Our Third Friday

The one constant I have in my life is that inconsistencies will always be present. This week wasn’t near as great as last week. Last week Charlie seemed much more on task and motivated to learn. Most of this week he’s been completely off task when I’m not reminding him and he’s been less than eager to learn. Because I know to expect inconsistencies in this thoughts, moods and energy levels, this week did not come as surprise to me. I was a little bummed that our “awesome” streak came to a halt, but that’s ok. We’ll get back to awesome, I know we will!

Here are some shots of some fun activities we did this week.

This is your brain…

This is your brain on drugs. (Not really! This is what would happen if you didn’t have cerebrospinal fluid to keep your brain from rattling around in your skull.)

Here is the brain protected by the cerebrospinal fluid.

We “did school” at the park on Thursday for a change of pace. It was a beautifully cool morning. Cool means like 89 degrees!

Charlie’s a little “bugged out” by all of the critters we saw at the park.

On Friday we went to our first homeschool field trip to an “old” mansion in Columbia.

The kids got to play games similar to the children in the late 1800s.

For family who reads this blog, I’ll post more shots of Ryan sometime, I promise! Ryan is loving third grade so far! There have been no complaints and things are going well for him!

Sarah:)

*Sharing at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.