The Month of May

Well, I'm determined not to let another six months go by before a blog post!  Here's what's been going on in the past few weeks at our house.

On Saturday, April 28, we headed to UCF to help Landon move most of his stuff home for the summer.  He wouldn't have to do this except that he's changing rooms.  So, he has a two-week period where everything has to be out of the old room and can't be in the new room.  Ugh!  It's been wonderful having him home, though.

The next Saturday, May 5, we celebrated Chase's 14th birthday.  Doesn't seem possible!  It was very weird not having her friend Sarah with us that day as usual, but Chase is blessed to have made a couple of new friends at Cross Point.  So, she invited Faith over for the day!

We went out to eat at Pepe's as we always have Mexican food on Chase's birthday.  We convinced her that this was a necessity when she was about three or four!

The next weekend was Mother's Day.  Landon took us all to see the Avengers on Saturday night while Carys played at a friend's house.  We picked her up, then he took us to Five Guys for supper.  Landon and Chase really made an attempt to spoil me with gifts the next day, and they did a pretty good job.  I got a scented candle for the kitchen and new couch pillows.  Greg took us out to eat at Stumpknockers.  Yum!

We finished the majority of our school on the Friday before Mother's Day.  Chase is finishing her math.  Gerren actually started next year's math - Thinkwell Calculus (which is two semesters of College Calculus) so that he can finish by early April and study to take the AP Calculus BC test in May.  Carys finishes math today, but she will continue her phonics at a slower pace over the summer as we don't want to lose any ground.  I plan for us to watch a lot of the streaming Netflix documentaries, etc. I have in my queue this summer.  We never seem to get time for them during the school year.

This past weekend, Gerren and Chase went to the beach with the youth from church.  We recently did a small group study called 40 Days in the Word.  Any youth that completed the entire workbook and came to all the sessions (I think they could miss one), got a free overnight trip to Daytona.  They had a good time but didn't use enough sunscreen.  Sigh!

In less than three weeks, we're leaving for a family reunion in Illinois.  I can't wait!

A Long Time

I knew it had been a long time since I posted on my blog, but when I came to look today I was shocked to see it was in January!  I really want to do a better job of writing here in the light of this weekend.  On Friday night, a mom I originally met at church and kept in touch with through homeschooling (even though she no longer goes to our church) passed away suddenly while doing laundry Friday evening.  She was 41.  What I've always known - that we're not guaranteed even one more breath - really hit me.

So, I'm going to try to quickly catch up and to do a better job of posting at least a weekly update! :)

February 28 was Landon's 19th birthday.  Where has the time gone?  The girls and I drove down to Orlando to take him out to dinner.  We ate at Buca di Beppo for the very first time and it was incredible!  I took along a homemade angel food cake and strawberries for dessert.

 I had my camera in the car, but didn't take it in, so this blurry picture from Chase's itouch is all I have.  Sigh!

On March 10, Gerren turned 17.  We ate out the evening before at Piesano's in Gainesville.  Greg took the day off and the boys went with him to the Gator Nationals.  So, we met them up there for dinner.  We loved the pizza we ate there this summer and were anxious to return.

 

The boys' college spring break weeks didn't line up so we took a day off one week and a day off the other week.  Ugh!

We all had dental check-ups in March as well.  On March 12, I posted the following on Facebook:

Overwhelming day. Took Gerren to sign up to take the ASVAB; took much longer than I thought. Then we had dentist appts. I need two fillings replaced and crowned (which I was expecting). My poor girls! Chase has two teeth (top either side of the very front two) whose roots were damaged by her orthodontic work. When her braces came off, one had 1/2 the root it should, one had 3/4. Well, the one with 1/2 the root, basically has no root now. She will lose this perfectly good tooth. UGH! Carys has a bunch of cavities!!!! This is totally foreign to me as none of the big kids ever had a single one. Off to the pediatric dentist she goes to see which need to be filled. (They are all baby teeth, but a couple look pretty big). SIGH!

Then on March 14, this:

Carys saw the pediatric dentist today, and it was worse than we thought.
1) She has 10 teeth with cavities! (How do you have no cavities and then 6 months later have 10?)
2) Two of them (the ones that were visible to me) were abcessed and had to be extracted.
3) Four of them need "baby" root canals and crowns.
4) The other four need fillings; two of those need crowns. 5) The two spaces left from the extractions need space maintainers.
Cost out of our pockets: $3245. (We do have dental insurance but it has a $1000/year cap which is reached after the extractions and root canals.)

April brought Easter.  Chase wanted to finish the skirt she and Erin cut over Thanksgiving.  I whipped that together in one day with her help.

 Carys loved her Rapunzel doll.  Skylar, one of her friends from church, calls her Rapunzel!

The Easter baskets were filled with great stuff!

 

Last week, Carys had an appointment with the Pediatric Dental Department of Shands Hospital (affiliated with the University of Florida in Gainesville).  This was just with the undergrads who referred to the residents (duh? - not sure why we weren't sent there first unless it's just procedure to do one before the other).  The dentist/supervisor told me he didn't think she'd need all the crowns the original dentist wanted.  But they'll have to see once they get in there.  She goes back June 4 unless they have a cancellation before that.  I'm dreading it.

My Baby Is 6!

I can't believe my baby turned 6 last week! Sigh! She is definitely more of a baby than my other three were at this age and I DON'T CARE!

Her big gift was a new bike. Now, I know many six-year-olds are riding a two-wheeler at this age, but Carys is SHORT! A tricycle has been just fine up until now.


Greg and I also gave her the Cars 2 DVD and the newest Veggie Tales, The Princess and The Pop Star.

Chase gave her a bunch of candy, wrapped individually of course!


Landon gave her a Twilight Sparkle pony set, and Gerren gave her this Rarity pony set, both of which were big hits!

December

We had a lot of fun while Landon was home. We did school for 2 of the 4 weeks, one at the beginning and one at the end.

The children "led" in worship on Sunday, December 18. It was basically mass chaos, but they were cute.


"Go Tell It On the Mountain" had a lot of motions! :)


On Christmas Eve we went to candlelight service on the square in Ocala and then out to eat Chinese afterwards.

Christmas Day was rather disappointing this year. Let's just say that it's tough when your love language is gift giving and no one else in your family has the same love language. I put a lot of effort in to getting the exactly perfect gifts for everyone else, but it is not reciprocated. I also do NOT like being away from home on Christmas Day. However, now that we live in a different town than Greg's mom, it take too much time to go get her and bring her here for lunch (which is what we used to do) then take her back home and come home ourselves. That would be 3 hours of driving alone. So we went to Greg's brother's house. We had a good time, but I still don't like being out of my own house on Christmas Day. We did go to our usual movie that evening. We saw the Adventures of Tintin, which was awesome!

Traditional Christmas morning photo


Carys got some art supplies, a Pinkie Pie RC Car, Wikisticks, and some kid headphones (with volume control).


Landon got a couple new shirts, some new socks (he asked for all of these clothing items), and a refrigerator for his dorm room (from Craigslist!).


Gerren got some new headphones, a watch, and a new sweat jacket.


Chase got tips for her arrows (which she got last Christmas - sigh!), a new bedding set, 2 guitar hooks, and a bale of hay (to shoot her arrows into).


I LOVE this picture of Chase.


Another disappointing thing about this December was the weather. It was so warm I wanted to weep! You can see by the clothes Carys is wearing in early December exactly how warm it was!

The day after Christmas Gerren left for a little over a week for Winter Encampment. It actually got a little cooler after Christmas, thankfully.

Carys fell asleep on our bed one night.


Who knows why she pulled the covers over her face like this?



Landon voted by absentee ballot while he was home. This was his very first time to vote, so he wanted me to take a picture.


He was proud to be voting for Ron Paul!


Landon treated Chase and I to Five Guys and the new Sherlock Holmes movie one afternoon. The Lacognatas were so gracious to watch Carys for us. Sarah took this awesome picture!


That pretty much sums up December (except for my 49th birthday which I'm ignoring!). :)

Fall 2011

Well, I'm so far behind on this blog because I wanted to start with Thanksgiving. I didn't take any pictures, though, and kept waiting to get some from my friend Kim (who is always so good at taking lots of pictures). She's really busy, though, and hasn't even gotten them off her camera yet. So, I'm going to stop waiting and try to catch up.

Thanksgiving was here this year with our friends from North Carolina. That meant no long drive or expensive gas for us. Instead I spent a lot of time in the kitchen and money on food! :) It was a fabulous weekend as always, though. The kids (which really includes 4 adults now) spent a lot of time playing Settlers of Catan, a game that was new to my kids.

Landon went back to college Sunday evening for a short 2 weeks. On December 8, we went to Orlando to help with the Burnett Honors College Parents' Society Finals Fling. We serve many college students lunch that day during our noon to 3pm shift. Afterwards we did a little window shopping and had dinner at CPK. Yum!

Landon came home the next day for a 4-week Christmas break! We were all so glad to have him home for awhile. Missed that kid like crazy!

DeLonghi Stainless Steel Fryer Giveaway

CHEFS Catalog is giving away a DeLonghi Stainless Steel Fryer via the Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms blog. I have been dying to upgrade my old fry daddy with one of these enclosed fryers. My kids LOVE my homemade french fries!


Click here to see all the ways you can enter this giveaway!