Journey to Excellence

1. It was 95 degrees today and I bought winter gloves. You just have to grab a good deal when you find one, and I found a good deal! I am a firm believer in the power of The North Face winter wear. Hibbett Sports had boys' The North Face Denali gloves (with Etip) for $9.99. I bought every pair that would fit someone in our family. 2. My granddoggy, Chloe, had surgery today to remove bladder stones. They are hoping with a new food regime that future stones will be avoided. This is her second bladder surgery in 7 years. 3. Even though I went to the store to get groceries today, I couldn't come up with anything that sounded good for dinner. So everybody got to choose what they wanted to eat from our restaurant choices of Subway, Sonic, DQ and take-out Chinese. By the time I drove around and got everybody's food I could have fixed a meal. Who am I kidding ... it was worth it. 4. I sat down this evening and planned out our school days and breaks for the 2015/2016 scho

I recently read about four secrets to happiness from around the world. They were: Overcome your fears by facing them head on; Allow yourself to relax and reset; Work to live versus living to work; and, Find the good in life. Not sure if these are the actual secret to happiness, but which of the four do you struggle with the most? Which one comes most easily to you? Years ago allowing myself to relax and reset would have been the thing of which I most struggled, but now it is the easiest to achieve. Maybe it's age, I don't know. But life is too short not to take some time for myself. I guess the hardest one for me to achieve would be always finding the good in life. I mean, I have cocooned myself into a life where what I allow around me is good. But the world as a whole is just so yuck and life of the masses is something that just doesn't look too good to me anymore. But I would agree, finding joy and good in all of life would be beneficial to personal happiness. If

For today ...  Tuesday, July 28, 2015 Outside my window ...  it is stinking hot! I am thinking ...  about my mother-in-law and the not positive news she received about her bladder cancer. Looks like she has surgery and more treatment in her future. I am thankful ...  that all of Dawson's financial aid red tape appears to be finally completed and his A+ scholarship is now in the works to pay for his tuition and fees for the year. I am wearing ...  my pjs. It's going to be hard to get out of them today. I didn't sleep good last night and I am tired! I am creating ...  well, more like planning , Brynne's birthday celebrations coming up. We are having a fish fry at our house for her actual birthday on the 8th. Then on the 14th she is having a pool party with friends and family. I am going ...  to go nowhere today. We went to the lake this weekend and I had to be out of town yesterday and will be again tomorrow for awhile. I covet my home time and today is a

On Saturday the little kids and I decided to go to my parents' lake house for the rest of the weekend. It was a laid back time and very hot! We took a couple of boat rides, did a tad bit of swimming, checked the jugs for big catches, went out to dinner, and watched the Royal's game. It was a good time for Grandma and Papa to spend with Eli and Brynne without all the other grands.

We got back to a somewhat regular routine this week, and it was amazing! Tuesday through Thursday we did some actual schoolwork. We realized pretty quickly that our brains were a little dusty, especially in math. We had to brush up on some basics in adding fractions and then moved on to adding those with unlike denominators. By the end of the week we were back on track. Additionally, we did a grammar page each day and some personal reading.  We read more out of Farmer Boy this week and finished a great book by Chris Grabenstein called Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library . We have an extra copy of this book so we are going to give it away!  All you have to do is leave a comment below letting us know what you are most excited about studying this year in your schooling. I will choose a winner next Saturday, August 1st (my birthday). This giveaway is restricted to U.S. residents only.

1. Last weekend I ran my second 5K. Out of 509 women participants, I finished 159th. Out of the 15 women who were my age, I finished 4th. I was pretty happy with that! My only goal going into a race is just to run the entire thing without needing to take walking breaks, so my time doesn't really matter that much to me. But it is pretty cool to know that at my age and with inexperience I could finish in the top third and almost the top quarter. 2. What do you do when you have a barking dog next door who keeps you up all night? Turn on your white noise app and keep your phone right by your head. So far it's working like a charm. 3. I detest having garage sales and every year that I have one I swear that I am not doing it again. They are just no fun. But then my mom has one and I figure I might as well participate. This year I made every single item of mine 50 cents and didn't mark anything. And I made $100. Pretty good for just showing up. It's still my least favo

I could spend hours looking at all of the schoolrooms posted in this linkup . They are all so pretty and organized! I get so inspired by the ideas. But a dedicated schoolroom is SO not us. Our first year of homeschooling we had a schoolroom. Yuck. We hated being confined to that space. It's taken us a few years but we know what works for us. We do school where we do everything else. We start out here, at the dining room table. It's bright and sunshiney and we have enough room for our coffee and tea. Here we will do our Bible time, McGuffey's recitations and copywork. We also do our science topics at the table so that we have access to the whiteboard and enough space to do our experiments and to write in our science notebooks. The living room is where most of the magic happens. This is where we watch CNN Student News, do all of our read alouds, and study history. It gives us access to warm blankets and the television for videos. We can sit in a comfortable

Is your home air-conditioned? If it's not air-conditioned, is that by choice? Did you grow up with air-conditioning? If not, how did you cope with the heat? Share about a time or place you remember as being too hot ... the temperature kind of hot, lest anyone be confused. We do have air-conditioning ... four window units. Our house was built in 1918 and the central air-conditioning unit was a dinosaur. It went caput a couple of summers ago. As if replacing the unit wouldn't be pricey enough, the duct work that would have to be reworked would do us in financially. That's when we decided to get window units. And they work great. We have a high-efficiency unit in our dining room that cools the entire main living areas of our house. Then each of the bedrooms has a small 5,000 BTU unit that we can each control individually. It's kind of like sleeping in a hotel room. It's perfect. Growing up we had a window unit in the far end of our house, in the family room. T

Since Leslie at Time Out for Mom is taking her summer break from Tuesday Coffee Chat , I thought I would start doing the Daybook on Tuesdays instead. For today ...  Tuesday, July 21, 2015 Outside my window ...  it's gonna be a slightly cooler day today with a high of 80 and some rain. I keep thinking I will get sick of all of the rain, but I don't. In fact I wish it would even get cold and rainy! I am thinking ...  about Brynne's new volleyball team and how I hope the new organization all works out to the girls' favor and that they have a great upcoming season! I am thankful ...  for air conditioning. Although this has been an unseasonably mild summer, the humidity has been high with all of the rain. It sure is amazing to sleep peacefully with nice cold air instead of feeling sticky all night. I am wearing ...  workout shirt and tank and tennis shoes. I'm going to be working out after while. Kyndal and I are starting a brand new round of 21 Day Fix

The Summer of the Wedding concluded with the wedding reception on July 11th. It was held in the Community Center in the town where Kyndal and Collin graduated from high school. There is a tradition to how wedding receptions are handled there, and we followed the norm for the most part. The only exception was that we did not serve a sit-down dinner. Instead we opted for a couple of snack bars. It was a fun night full of dancing and celebrating!