My Photos Got Hijacked.

Well, I finally sit down to do a big update, and I find that all my pictures are on the other computer.  And quite frankly, I'm too lazy to get up out of my comfy chair and go sit at the desk.
And I know for a fact there were other pictures on the camera, but apparently a certain almost-8-year-old who is also apparently really into selfies just pushes buttons when he doesn't understand what the screen says.
So of all the pictures previously on the camera, here are the ones from the last month that survived, and weren't selfie videos.

He wasn't in time out, but he looked like it.

Bible clubs had a good turnout. I loved working with these kids!

Magic Erasers, who knew?  Revived these 30-year-old My Little Ponies for my little daughter.  I was World's Awesomest Mommy.....for a day.

 (oops.  but you get the idea)

We have two of these window wells.  There is a never ending supply of critters that are available for viewing (from inside) and catching.  Those I can think of have been:  frogs and toads, spiders, crickets, mice, moles, and a salamander.  

 The frogs and toads get caught and released several times a week.  They range in size from thumbnail-sized to hand-sized.  This one is somewhere in the middle.

We adopted four of these mongrels.  Then three of them disappeared.  (We think they hitched a ride under Paul's truck.)  I found one in a tree about 1/4 mile up the road and brought him back.

We also have a bit of a mouse problem.  The cheeky bastard(s) don't even scamper, it's more of a saunter across the living room, while we're sitting right there!  So the mongrels have been invited inside for nighttime patrol.  One caught a mouse the first night in!  Tonight's the second night.  If we have more than one mouse, hopefully they will be eradicated by morning.

So it's a pathetic update.  And no pictures of the kids!  But maybe later.

Summer Craziness

I'm going to just quit making plans to do school over the summer.  The last two summers, I have had plans to do something at least, and failed completely.
We started summer with no plans, so no reason to NOT do some sort of reading plan/school every day.
June hit like a whirlwind, every week having an all-consuming project.  We ground and stained my parent's concrete back porch floor, we painted the boys' new bedroom downstairs, we painted the basement stairway and the boys' very battered bunkbeds.  By the end of the month, they were ready to move in, and I was sick from all the fumes. 
July came.  We knew we were going to a neighborhood VBS, but we also ended up helping with two other week-long outreaches, so it felt like we weren't home for a month.  (The house somehow kept managing to get dirtier, though....)
I'm not sure what's happened to August.  I think we've done a whole lot of the nothing we missed the first two months of summer.  I'm getting the schoolroom cleaned and organized, getting curriculum ordered, planning daily schedules, and getting ready to start school next week.  Awana starts the following week, so I've been contacting parents, getting supplies ready, and looking at lessons.
September will hit with it's own craziness, but somehow I'm looking forward to it - ordered craziness, where every day and every week is basically the same.
So that's our summer in a nutshell.  I'll try to post pictures of some of our projects soon.  And we can look forward to more time to blog when there's not so much to do outside!