Mayahna's Birthday

Well, I must say, other than the fact that the living room still has no furniture, we are starting to feel a bit more settled. It's still not feeling entirely like home, but having celebrated two birthdays here now, it at least feels like this place is a part of us now. School is off an rolling, that feels good. Things are going well, even with both boys home. We usually get through the main block of material by about 11, (depending on whether we got started at 8 or not - yesterday Sarah made us yummy apple enchiladas and they were not ready to eat till around 9, so that set the whole day back by an hour) That includes a nice walk mid-morning to get our blood moving again, and a snack when we get back from the walk. The girls often still have stuff to finish up in the aftenoon, but they don't usually need my help with that, so maybe I will get some time to start sorting out the mess that is some day going to be my craftroom. Annie and Emma are both in piano lessons, and doing well. In fact Annie is taking from two different teachers, one for hymns and contemporary Christian music, and learning to improvise, and one (a student at Oakwood) who focuses more on classical music. Today in Mayahna's birthday and we opened her presents this morning at breakfast. Lon was home, because his car-pool guy is not able to take him right now, so he's driving to work for a few days, so he gets to call his schedule a bit more. She got a bunch of stuff for setting up a little play house in one corner of the play room. A kitchen set, a doll bed and a doll highchair. Later today we will get that all set up for her up there. I gave the kids a light day of homeschool today, so that we would have time to go up there and play with her. Thankfully the weather is nice, (cooler) and so it is not too hot up there since the AC STILL is not fixed.

Things that are weird in the south

In the northwest it's Best Foods and in the south it's Hellmann's. In the north it's Dryers ice cream and in the south it's Eddy's. In the north you can by 10 to 15 pounds of four at once but you can't in the south because it would become infested with bugs. In the south they start school in early August.

a little creative writing using 'order words; by Emma

First we went to Yellowstone, we drove around and we didn't see any moose but after we left Yellostone we saw two moose, a male and a female, so that was rather weird. While we were in Yellowstone we did see a bison and alot of Elk too. Second we went to the Crazy Horse monument. It was big and rather interesting - especially the Native American history that was there. After that we went to Mt Rushmore. They had this one thing there that you could choose a piece of the mountain on a little screen and you could push a button and see part of the mountain get blown off. Next we drove for a very long while. But after a while we got to Wall Drug. It is a big tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere. Then we went to the Corn Palace, after driving more. It is a big building that is decorated in corn, it was pretty cool. After we left there we saw lots and lost and lots and lots of corn growing. It was rather boring. But we listened to a really cool Adventures in Odyssey tape, though. Before we stopped for the night, we saw a farmer selling corn from his truck so we bought some and had corn on the cob for dinner. Soon after that we got to OshKosh. Around that time, about a day later, most of our friends got there. During that time was the most fun by far, because there wasn't very much sitting in cars. Last we went to Alabama. We are now there.

Around town (by Annie)

A few weeks ago I saw an article in the paper about a study that was done to find the best place in the nation to raise kids. Madison was number two on that list! We haven't been able to do much sight seeing because we have been busy unpacking. I have been to both of the malls though and I was happy to find that they have a lot of the same stores as the malls out there do. The closest mall is also only about 15 minutes away.

The Neighborhood (by Sarah)

Our neighborhood is on the Placid Drive loop. It's pretty and green and I really like it here. Ther are about 10 to 15 houses in our neighborhood and they are all pritty big. The lawns are fairly large and well taken care of. Our house is on the back of the loop and is one of the smaller houses in the neighborhood. Our back yard is fenced which is unusual in our neighborhood. We have a small pond and fountain in the front. There is a pathway that stretches across the house and many plants and bushes.