Birthday for the best Dad!

 We celebrated my Dad's 70th birthday on Saturday.  He just wanted his truck cleaned out for his birthday present.  Well that was too easy for us.  We pulled his truck up to the garage and shampooed the carpets and cleaned every nook and crannie.  The boys worked hard to get all the stains out of the carpets.  We took my dad out to eat at a Garcia's a Mexican food restaurant near our home.  He loves going out to eat and I haven't allowed my parents to eat out much since they moved here two and a half years ago.  Then Stephen baked a German chocolate cake, so we came home and played games while eating cake.  I sure do love and appreciate my dad.  He does so much for me.  

Happy Birthday, dad!  

I thought I had more Time

 I have often thought that time was infinite.  That I had more time than I could ever use.  Such an untrue thought.  Our time is short.  Time is funny.  It moves fast and slow all at the the same time.  Today, I try to capture time in photos. 

Craig and Blair came for a weekend visit.  We took a little hike down to the river near my house and played some games.  Oh how I wish they would live close to us.  I love spending time with them. 

The boys and I took our last trip of the summer to the wibit in Santa Rosa, NM.  We had a fun morning and stayed just long enough to laugh with friends then headed back just after lunch. 

 Our first week of home school was a success.  We had friends over and went right out to the river to swim and get muddy.  A perfect way to spend a day.

Edward has started mountain bike club with the Goatheads team here in Albuquerque.  It is so fun!  I have started ridding with them on Thursday's and have learned a lot already.  I do not have a lot of confidence in my riding. 

Nolen has started cross country with Cougar Track Club again.  This is our fifth cross country season.  I am really hoping to see Nolen grow as an athlete and find some new friends to connect with while running. 

After a lot of searching, I found the perfect cabinets to put in our living room!  We ordered them from Lowes for nearly half the price of many other places.  The cabinets came two weeks later and we got to work, putting them in and adding a wood countertop.  I think they turned out better than I could have imagined.  I still have two things left to do in order to finish the project, but I am so happy with how they turned out.  They are 12 inches deep and 42 inches high.  I decided to put them wall to wall in order to maximize the unused space in the house.  

I am so grateful my dad and Stephen were willing to help out and get this project out of the boxes and on to the walls. 

The First Day of School!

 That's right world, it's the first day of school for us!

We took three full months off from school.  We needed a huge break.  We were burnt out and tired of struggling through math.  So, I am trying online math for my kids.  Maybe they can learn easily from an online tutor.  We are still doing The Good and the Beautiful language arts curriculum.  

Nolen is starting 5th grade and Edward is starting 7th grade.  

Here's to an amazing year at home.

Twelve and a half

 Six more months and Edward will be an official teenager.  

Time.

You are a cruel thief. 

Edward is becoming more and more independent.  He is acting more and more like a typical teenager.  We mostly have smooth days, but I know there are some hard days in our future.  Edward loves minecraft.  He is an expert in all things minecraft.  He has started attending a mountain biking club and loves it.  He broke his pinkie finger on the first day.  He got to the parking lot and crashed after a long ride with his group.  Edward is kind.  He is responsible.  I trust him.  I love him.

This boy is amazing. 

The last Hurrah!

 This last week, I decided we needed to do a last hurrah before everyone goes back to school.  This summer just flew by.  We did a lot of fun things; however, it was all over in the blink of an eye.  

We started our week at Top Golf with the entire family.  Everyone really loved it and we all did pretty good. Of course, Stephen was the real winner.  He is literally good at everything he tries.  He is naturally talented at all sports.  And yes, I am extremely jealous.  

Wednesday, I had arranged for my parents to take the boys to Cliff's Amusement Park here in town.  Nolen missed it so much from last year.  He begged all summer to go.  I looked at the calendar and saw that the only day they could go was Wednesday.  Yikes!  So I bought my parents and my boys tickets for the day.  Their best friends, Titus and Dylan joined them for the day.  Dylan was too scared to ride the rides so Nolen and Dylan spent the day at the water park while Edward, Titus, and Elsa rode all the rides.  They barely spent any time at the water park.  My parents were completely beat by the time they got home.  I am so glad they could take them.  So much fun!

On Thursday, we met up with some of our friends and went to play in the river.  We had so much fun.  The water was smelly and really high so that made for a fun day in the sun.  Both boys were so tired from our fun all week, that by 2:00 they were ready to go home.  We went home and loaded up Edward's bike for Mountain Bike Club.  He had a BLAST!  But as soon as he got to the parking lot, he crashed and broke his pinkie!  AH!  I have him all signed up and he will see if he can ride for the rest of the season.  He wants to do all the races and he loves biking.  OH I really hope this works out for the best.  

My dear old Dad is always looking for ways to help the community.  The road near our house is filled with weeds.  He decided to take the boys down to chop the weeds near the road.  It was tough work but we got it done.  He even drove all the weeds to the dump.  Talk about an amazing human!  I sure hope my boys see how hard my dad works to make this world a better place. 

Sharla drove through and dropped her dogs off with us.  OH how Nolen just LOVES dogs!!  He wants to be by them all the time.  And the dogs are FINALLY allowing him to play with them.  He has done all the work from taking them out in the morning, to feeding them, to picking up their dog poop.  We did witness the dogs cornering a baby rabbit, capturing it, then eating it.  Gross, but such is the circle of life.  Poor baby rabbit. 

Lastly, I have been working on putting our house together for the last two months.  I could no longer handle the echo so I ordered some sound panels and forced Stephen to help me put them up.  We need a few large carpets and to put some things on the walls, but so far the sound panels seem to have helped!