Rite of Passage

My oldest daughter will turn 13 in December and I have been thinking about a "rite of passage" for her. Things got a little mixed up when we moved to Georgia 2 months ago but here is what I came up with.

Since we are training our girls to be self-sufficient I figured the best rite of passage would be for her to use the home-making skills she has learned. So, for the next month she will be doing things like meal planning and shopping, cooking (breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week), laundry (sorting, washing, drying, folding), cleaning her bathroom, sewing, knitting, changing the batteries in the smoke detectors, and other household duties. We feel that it will be good for her to know that at the age of thirteen she is completely capable of running a household. So far she has been pretty excited and feels good about her accomplishments in the home.

Tennessee Flood

I heard yesterday that 11,000 "parcels", I am assuming that means homes, restaurants, businesses, etc., in and around Nashville were negatively affected by the flooding two weeks ago. Please continue to pray for all of those who lost so much over the course of one weekend. Most of them were not in flood plains so they did not have flood insurance.

High School

As I have recently reconnected with friends from elementary school, junior high , and high school on Facebook, it really got me thinking. I am SO glad that God helps us grow and mature after high school. I don't know about you , but I am not even remotely the same person I was was when I graduated!

My "old" friends have a hard time believing that I homeschool because I was not a big fan of school back in the day! That is actually part of the reason I do homeschool. I want my kids to enjoy learning! I also want to be able to spend extra time, if needed, to be sure they really "get" the information and I want them to be able to fly through material that they have a good grasp on.

It is so cool to reconnect because I get to see the kinds of people my friends have grown up to be. It helps me realize how much I have changed and that God keeps forgiving me as I mess up and then He lets me start again with a clean slate!

So, thanks to all of my Facebook friends who were my friends back then and still wanted to be my friends now!

Garden Again

We have started up the garden again. I am using our raised bed from last year for my early spring & late summer gardens. In these we have: sugar snap peas, Alaska peas, winter squash, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and spinach.
My dear husband has made 2 more raised beds, which we spent an entire day filling with dirt, that measure 6 feet by 16 feet each. Needless to say, we will have TONS of veggies this year!
We also are experimenting with strawberries, blackberries and grapes this year. I will keep you posted on those!
For those of you wanting to plant this year you still have plenty of time. Feel free to search my site for other postings under the label "garden".

Flashback

Random thoughts from my childhood:

• Camping with my parents - the primitive type, not the camper type
• Getting carsick - a LOT
• My bologna has a first name...
• Riding my bike with the banana seat
• Playing hide and seek with my brother
• Going to Pensacola Beach with my family and friends
• Skiing - snow
• Racing crawfish with my cousins then throwing them in the pot (the crawfish, not my cousins)
• Playing in my treehouse
• Hanging out at our neighborhood pool
• Getting chased and stung by a swarm of bees