Wordless Wednesday - Mother's Day Bouquet

Go here and here for more WW photos.

Meeting Sallie

After over a year and a half of blogging, I finally got to meet a blog friend IN REAL LIFE!! Sweet!


Really - she is very sweet. I met Sallie from Everyday Me, Seaside Tales at Starbucks this morning. The hour and a half of visiting went WAY too fast. I think we could've spent the rest of the day there, and not realized that time had flown right by us. We mostly chatted about homeschooling, which comes as no surprise. I'm sure we'd have hit other topics, but her husband was calling, cause it was time to go pick up Grandma for lunch. And as much as I'd love to have held her captive at Starbucks, it's really not polite to keep Grandma waiting. So I had to let her leave. Besides, if word got out about me detaining blog friends at Starbucks, I might not get to meet anyone else IRL.

I must apologize for yet another BLUE photo! Sometimes I just forget to return all my settings back to normal (normal for ME anyway). You'd think after my last foray into blue photos, I'd have remembered. Guess I was too delirious from lemon bonk cake and my very own, personalized Starbucks card! LOL!!

Sallie's phone blogging while they move across the country to their new home in North Carolina, so you may see a similar shot at her place. But hers probably won't be blue. It will, however, be equally windy! I thought it was pretty awesome that Starbucks just happens to be about five minutes from each of us - right in between our place and her in-laws. I'm thinking God set it up that way, on purpose. Very nice. :D

A Bonk Cake and a Camera Bag

For those of you who've seen My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding, you'll totally get the story behind this photo:

That was my birthday cake - a lemon bonk cake. It was yummmmmo! We had a delicious Itlaian dinner at Zio's, and then came home for cake and presents. I was blessed with some pretty awesome birthday loot! Here are a few highlights:

Look closely - it's a personalized Starbucks card. That's me, complete with curly hair, sunglasses, camera in one hand, and a seven-pump, light-ice chai in the other! Does my sister know me, or what?


And then there's the killer camera bag from my parents. LOVE it!!

Dark chocolate - nothing more needs to be said.

Not a present, but definitely good for a laugh. It's one of those silly inside jokes, that will likely live on for quite some time. It was written on the table at Zio's.

All in all, it was a great evening.

Wordless Wednesday - Bird Banding

American Kestrel


Ditto


Western Tanager (thank you, Pi Guy!)


Virginia's Warbler


Wilson's Warbler

No worries - this bird is being released, it's not dead.



Now, when the bird banding guy gets excited, you know it must be a big deal. He said he only sees the Blackpoll Warbler about once every ten years. And he's been doing this for a very long time.

You can see more WW photos here, here, and here.

Sack Lunches, Lighter Plate, the House Hunt

We're heading to a local ranch to see bird banding tomorrow with another homeschool family. It's about an hour out of town and we're to bring sack lunches. I picked up some sack lunch food supplies while at the store this evening, came home, and began preparing lunches for the boys and me.

What I really wanted to do was watch last week's episode of Lost online. We're behind, after all, and need to be up to date before Thursday night. Priorities, peeps.

But that was when I realized how grateful I am to NOT have to prepare school lunches on a regular basis. I see this as just one of many, many, many benefits of homeschool. Granted, this isn't some huge, earth-shattering issue. But sometimes you just have to be happy about the little things in life.

I didn't get our lunches completely done, but the majority of it's taken care of. Since we have to be out the door earlier than my boys normally get out of bed, every little bit helps. Of course, if it rains or we have high winds, the trip will be cancelled anyway. I guess if that happens, lunch is already planned. Bonus.

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For the past six months, I've been the treasurer for our Boy Scout troop. It wasn't exactly a position I jumped up to accept, but someone had to do it, and apparently, I'm a someone. Who knew? Anywho, the boys are really not interested in continuing with Scouts at this point. As much as we really want them to stay involved, we are letting them take a break for now. We'll probably try and get them going again, but with a different unit. Since they won't be in the troop any longer, it was time for me to move along from my position as treasurer. So my replacement came over today and I happily handed off the files, the checkbook, the petty cash, and all the other treasurer paraphernalia. Woo hoo! One less responsibility on my full plate!

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The house hunt has been moving along rather slowly. We finally had a couple of houses to look at last Friday, though. We looked at one that was nice, but not quite "the one." The next is in a neighborhood where we'd really like to live, AND it's across the street from one of my best friends (Whose kids are great friends with my kids - they have been nearly their entire lives. She's also a homeschool mom. And we've been friends for YEARS!).

We made an offer on Saturday for the second house. It's owned by a bank and they have three offers (including ours), so we're waiting to hear what direction that goes. Hopefully we hear something soon. It would be sooooooooooo awesome to live across the street from our friends!

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I guess that's the big stuff going on. Certainly there's more, but at least there's somewhat of an update. I kind of noticed that I only post photos and very little words of late. Hmm . . . lazy . . . busy . . . habit . . . don't know. It is what it is, I suppose.