Getting Ready For School...

I am not ready for school to start. Not ready in the sense that I have not purchased one school supply. Not ready in the sense that not one article of school clothing has been purchased (other than tennies). Not ready in the sense that I am not looking forward to early mornings and not ready in the sense that I love having my kids home.

When I say that to my friends, they reply, "homeschool." And I can assure you that would not be a good idea for anyone involved. I love our school. I just wish summer was a month longer.

Anyway, we have been addressing the most important part of going back to school - lunch! We have a new hot lunch program this year and if it's anything like what we've had in the past, my kids will eat hot lunch about 10% of the time. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

So, we've been discussing what would be good to take in our lunches. Maggie loves vegetable beef soup with barley, so we made a boatload of that on Sunday and froze 36 baggies with enough in each baggie to fill her thermos in the morning. Jake loves chicken noodle soup, so we tried out a new recipe for that today (even made our own noodles) and it was delicious!! We will be making a boatload of that tomorrow and freezing bags for him.

And I will also get school supplies and clothes sometime this week. Jake has grown by leaps and bounds this summer; I think the spurts happen in a matter of minutes sometimes - I had to rip a button off a pair of shorts he was wearing, because they were too tight to get off. I have no idea how he got them on!

They are both excited about their teachers and ready to see their friends. Just not ready for the homework and the sitting still. And I totally understand!

Nice Hair, No Fair

Scott took his clippers to Jake's head recently. He had a mohawk for about two minutes. (Long enough for Maggie to get behind him and give him rabbit ears while Scott was snapping this picture.)

It was gone a few seconds later. I kind of liked it...

The Horse and His Boy

Last summer, Scott did some landscaping and added a huge sandbox to our yard. It has become our kids' favorite spot.

One of Jake's latest creations...the horse...

...and his boy!

The Art of Making Pie & Other Things

My kids are still at the age where they like me, they want to do stuff with me, and they like to do stuff in the kitchen. So I am taking full advantage.

We had a bunch of fruit that needed to be used recently, so we whipped up some chocolate chip banana bread (Grandma Schoon's recipe, minus the nuts and cherries). Jake and Maggie are pros at mashing bananas and running the mixer.
Then it was on to pie. I had some peaches that someone gave me that were just screaming to be put into a pie crust and heaped with sugar. So that's what we did. And of course, what do you do with leftover pie crust?

Mmmmmm.

After the peach pie was in the oven, we moved on to mini raspberry pies. Jake learned how to cut in the shortening. (Sorry Schoon girls, I used Crisco, not lard. Didn't have any on hand.)

We rolled it out and put the bottom crust into our pans.
Lovely.
And then we filled them with raspberries, fresh off the bushes in our garden.
Top crust goes on...
Ready to pop in the oven!
Yum, yum, yum.


I'd invite you over to have some, but it's long gone. I'd like to think that someday their spouses will thank me for teaching them to make pie...

Just Like an Old-Fashioned Slide Show...

Remember the good ol' days, when you would go to someone's house and they would break out the slide projector and show slides of their vacation? This is sort of like that. Only you're not at my house and you don't have to sit through this if you don't want to.

Anyway, this was our epic trip. Just a few shots from each place. 3650 miles, 14 days and a whole bunch of fun. We even had a family theme song, which we'd play each time we'd get into the vehicle. "Oh, Happiness" by the David Crowder band.

Here goes - we started in Medora, North Dakota at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Beautiful badlands of North Dakota. We all enjoyed it.


From there we drove to Big Sky, Montana (which you will see in a bit), but we took a day trip to Yellowstone in Wyoming.
We saw hot pools and mud pots and smelled more sulphur than we cared to.

Geysers...

Wildlife...

And a very pretty waterfall.

Mineral deposits ended out our trip to Yellowstone.

In Big Sky, the three bravest members of the family prepared to do the 3 zip-lines.

Jake.

Mags.

Scott.

Our resort was beautiful.

And another waterfall. Then it was time to drive north to Glacier National Park in Montana.

Another waterfall. We fjorded this river and walked over to the waterfall. That water is about 40 degrees. I really thought my legs were going to fall off and a few tears squeezed out of my eyes while I was being brave. It HURT.

We took a boat across Two Medicine Lake to do some hiking....

Fjorded another river....

And saw some more waterfalls.

Drove by a bear.

And ran into a mountain goat,

and some big horn sheep in a parking lot.

Saw more beautiful mountain lakes.

And went sledding on garbage bags, of course.

Jake got a little road rash on his behind, because what you don't see just below him, is pavement. And of course, he didn't just stop at the end of the snow, he kept going. Laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. And then we packed up and headed north yet again, to Banff, Alberta, Canada.

This was my favorite spot - Lake Louise. The color of the lake is the most amazing thing I've seen. It was beautiful.

We also took a gondola ride to the top of some mountains there. And did some other things, hiking, shopping, swimming.

And then we got back in the car, played "Oh, Happiness..." and drove away. For hours and hours.

We had a blast - the kids did great and we got to listen to "Where the Red Fern Grows," "Anne of Green Gables," and several of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. That made the time in the car fly.

We're already talking about what to do next year. (But we may fly.)

Girls' Weekend

Scott and Jake took off on a Father-Son fishing trip recently, so Mags and I decided to have Aunt Sara & Ava come for a girls' weekend! Yay!

I'm a little light on pictures, but we had a great time...and indulged in manis & pedis. (I didn't take any pictures of the grown-ups' feet, no one needs to see that.) But Maggie & Ava had their first manicures and even got some flowers painted on.



And after all the excitement, everyone slept really well!