Jo's Boys

A Day At the Sea...

Now I know that most everyone has strong desires to live by the ocean. 

I don't.

But my parents live there and it's quite nice because they have:

1.)  An ocean, and

2.)  A pool.

My oldest son takes advantage of the OTHER item they own (3.  A laptop computer complete with games) but my youngest is enraptured with items one and two, and so when we visit we can be found getting sandy and wet. 

The first thing we all do is dash down the long pier kind of thing toward the sandy parts.  Mom makes us stop and pose for a picture, but we don't like that idea AT ALL

Alas.   Like many other things in our life, Mom wins.

And therefore we pose and look cute.

Then we hurry down, over the shells that TOTALLY hurt my feet, with our Daddy that we love so much we even named our favorite stuffed animal after him...

And I don't even have to ask them to pose together adoringly by the water's edge... they do it all quite on their own...

But then we're all sandy and our legs sting because salt water is NOXIOUS man!

So we hit the pool. 

Two of us absolutely must wear a mask or we get water up our noses.  And neither of them is me.  And one of us refuses to allow ourselves to be photographed wearing said mask.

And the other one is younger and therefore less crafty and more easily photographed in our natural swimming habitat, wearing our natural swimming accoutraments (if that's how accoutraments is spelled)...

But when masks are removed, we are both totally and completely HANDSOME. 

 

The End.  :)

Beautiful Jen and Kate

Are, right now, on planes flying back to their loving families.

I am SO overwhelmed with thankfulness that I got to participate in convention activities with them.  They are such beautiful, funny, loving women and I am blessed to know them.

I will post more when I can but right now I am rushing out the door to a family function.  I just wanted to thank Gena and Jen and Kate and Kris and The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and God (etc. etc. etc.) for this most fabulous convention weekend.

Aren't Kate and Jen beautiful?  Here's a picture from when we got to eat lunch together:

They are just as beautiful on the inside as they are on the oustide... (Jen is in the middle, Kate is on the right and I am on the left)  :)

The Convention Rocks!

Okay, everyone!  I *think* that I am the first person to post pictures of the magazine's booth at the convention.  I've checked Kris' Blog and I've checked Kate's Blog and I've checked Jen's Blog and since they're all staying on-site and their computers at the host hotel are totally the slowest computers *ever* and since I'm going home after the festivities I think I'm the first one to post pictures! 

But here's our booth:

Jen and Kate are in the middle under the magazine's sign and Kris and her husband are on either side of them, so from left to right you have Kris, Kate, Jen and Kris' husband. 

Can I just say that I'm exhausted and that my throat is already sore from talking a ton last night?  There are so many people here - more people than I have ever seen before at this time during the convention- it is just amazing.  If the number of people at the convention has any correlation with the number of new folks entering homeschooling -well - homeschooling is popular, folks! 

Here's a better picture of the the lovely folks, once again:

What great people!

Ohmygosh

Look what a complete and total sweetheart Kate is! 

She blogged last night (from the hotel, after the Non-Stolen Car At The Airport Thing) and she didn't even make fun of my complete moronic self!  (See below post). 

Duh...

I am the Absolute Biggest Moron EVER. 

So I went to the airport to pick up The Goddesses (there should be two links there, by the way, in alphabetical order by first name) and all went swimmingly well until it was time for me to get them into my car. 

Which wasn't there.

Huh.

Because I had left it there, in the parking garage, on level 2, row P.  And it wasn't there.  And I was SURE of my place (level 2, row P, with pickup truck thing in the space on the right of my space) and there was level 2, row P and a pickup truck on the right and NO CAR. 

Huh.

So, of course, I have forced them to totally hoof it through the parking garage with their luggage in the 100 degree evening heat and There's.  No. Car. 

So I tell them that my car has been STOLEN and that I'm sorry, they'll have to take a cab and I have to go deal with my STOLEN CAR.

Until the parking people took all of 2 seconds to tell me the obvious:

I was looking in the wrong parking garage!  Yes, I was.  And when I looked in the correct parking garage, I found my car on level 2, in row P with a pickup truck next to it. 

Because who knew that Orlando International Airport literally (and I am not making this up) has two identical parking garages with the identical same numbering system?  How totally screwed up is THAT? 

All I can say is that's the LAST time they'll be calling the Jo's Boys Limo Service to pick them up from the airport, I'm sure! :)   Because at any random point in time, the Jo's Boys Limo Service might just randomly think that its car has been stolen right out of the secure parking garage!!

DUH. 

ParTAY!

This time tomorrow, Kate will be on an airplane heading my way!

And this time tomorrow, Jen Ig will be on a plane heading my way! 

And this time tomorrow,  Kris and her DH will be in their loaded-down large vehicle of some sort and will be on the road, heading my way!!

Which makes me just about the luckiest girl in the whole wide world, don'tcha think?   Homeschool conventions are totally fun and all, but it's the neatso people that just make the whole thing dreamy. 

I'm trying to figure out how best to greet my dear friends.  Since Jen Ig loves snakes so very, very much I could always bring Chloe our Ball Python (modeled here by cute Teddy) along to meet & greet with me:

For what visit to Florida would be complete without some sort of interaction with a reptile?  :)

Gators -n- Taters?

I often tease My dear friend Kate, who is wonderful in all ways and never, ever an evil taskmaster like I have joked previously that I have pet gators in my backyard.  Which is true.  Because I live on a lake and the lake has gators.   Lots of 'em.  And some of them are getting pretty big. 

So then I heard that trappers had been called and the gators were being removed.  Well, okay, that's nice.  At least they won't be eating our dogs or kids or us or anything.  But I thought that when the gators were trapped that they were relocated to an area in Orlando affectionately known as "Gator Lake"  (Lake Jessup). 

I guess not. A photographer in our neighborhood has been covering the trapping and removal of the gators from our lake.  The pictures and explanations are very, VERY interesting but not for the faint of heart.  So WARNING!  If you do not want to see gator trapping pictures, do not click the above link!  It turns out that the trappers are marketers of gator products (meat/skin) and the gators are basically trapped from our lake and sold to processors.  Wow.  Talk about things you didn't know.  Or didn't want to know.  Or something. 

But even though this week has been a very bad week for the gators in my lake, I saw this morning that one baby gator has, thus far, escaped the carnage.  He is laying on my property and so that makes him mine and I have decided that sweet Mariel and her mouseling sisters need to name him. 

Can't see him very well?  This shot is blurry but makes him look more like the studly baby gator that he, of course, is:

And I also own a pretty like grouse-looking duck kind of thing:

That I could try to figure out more about if I really felt like it. 

Last Entry for Today...

... I have successfully kept away from painting all day long.  Which makes me a Very Bad and Lazy Person. 

But Donna's Verb Meme is just way cool and I have to complete it.  Tomorrow is a busy day and so I don't know if I'll be able to be on the computer much at all. 

_________________________________

I AM:  Lazy

I SAID:   That I would paint today and I didn't.

I WANT: Someone else to come and paint for me!  And while they're here, can they please clean, do the laundry and finish packing?

I WISH: We had heard back yet about the paperwork for dh's new job in Portland

I HATE: Waiting.  (There.  I just left what Donna said alone.)

I MISS:  My dishwasher.  It broke and it's sitting in the garage and there's a big hole in the kitchen where it used to live but no longer does.  They're replacing it for us but we have to figure out which model we want and we haven't figured that out yet because it depends upon whether we're moving to Portland or not so in the meantime I have no dishwasher and I'm washing each and every dish BY HAND which I'm sure many of you do and it's not like it's going to kill me or anything but...

I FEAR:  That we will NEVER get the house cleaned up and on the market.  Or that we will and the house won't sell.

I HEAR: My husband playing Yugioh with the boys upstairs.  So at least I'm not the only one slacking off.

I WONDER:  What my boys will grow up to be like.

I REGRET:  That I worked at a big-time career while Teddy was little and missed basically all of his life from when he was six weeks to when he was four.

I DANCE: (d) in high school at formal dances with my high school sweetheart who is now my handsome husband!

I SING: Christian music at the top of my lungs if I know the song

I CRY: All the time.

I AM NOT ALWAYS: Productive.  Okay, I am hardly ever productive.

I MADE: Oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert tonight from scratch.

I WRITE:  For this total slavedriving taskmaster who is never, ever satisfied with even my hardest work and who never, ever gives me a moment's peace... Geesh....

I CONFUSE:  My ideals with what can actually be accomplished by one human in a day without losing her mind.

I NEED:  A lobotomy.  Some Xanax?  A maid?  A professional painter!!!

I SHOULD:  Be painting right now...

I START:  Gung ho and then halfway through I just walk away from a project, never to return...

I FINISH: When Frederick steps in and keeps me going. 

I BELIEVE:  That all of my efforts to raise these children, though seeming to be accomplishing nothing at present, will actually bear fruit later on in life.  Right?

I KNOW:  How to kill pretty much every plant I've ever owned.  It's a gift, what can I say.

I CAN:  Read to my children for hours and hours and hours...

I CAN'T:  Keep my house clean.

I SEE: The phone.  Maybe if I call someone and chat, I'll STILL not have to paint.

I BLOG: very negative things, so I'm told

I READ:  The blogs on my sidebars CONSTANTLY and hang on all of y'all's lives.  And I think about you guys during the day, if one of you has trouble going on or something funny you've shared.  This is actually one other big reason why I started blogging again... because if my favorite bloggers stopped blogging, it would really, truly be like there was a hole from that. 

I FIND:  That the older my children get, the more they bicker with each other.

I LIKE:  it when my husband calls from work just to check on us during the day.  AWWwwww....

I LOVE:  Knowing that I am doing my best to raise my boys in a home filled with love and grace.   (whether my best is good enough remains to be seen!)   :)

Still not painting...

.... but I am, happily, catching up on blogreading.  Which is delightful, since I came across

this beautiful set of thoughts from Kim at Upward Call.

I would excerpt them but I would end up cutting and pasting the whole entire thing and that would just be wrong.  But I'll do a tiny bit of what she did, for she had taken it from another blog also.

Five Things I Wish People Knew:

1.)    I wish people knew how much it hurts to watch my children be ostracized just because they don't attend the local public schools like the other neighborhood children.   Just because my children are homeschooled doesn't mean that I/we don't wish that they could fit right in and have deep friendships nearby.  (Another plus to moving.  Hopefully things will be better in Portland!)

2.)   I wish people knew how evil their children were to each other and their friends.  Following number 1, above, today we had an incident where a Junior High student was basically beating up on my first grader.  Every other parent in my neighborhood walks away from stuff like that and says, "Oh, kids just need to work it out."  But that's just a way of turning your head so you don't see how awful your child acts toward other children!

3.)   I wish people knew how to have healthy marriages.  Most marriages that I see are in shambles, and it's so sad.

4.)   I wish people knew that buying everything your credit card allows for your children will not benefit them in the long run.  In our neighborhood, children literally have laptops, GameCubes, CameBoys, XBoxes and phone lines in their bedrooms.  Insane.

5.)   I wish people knew that if they turned off the TV and read to their children instead that they would reap the benefits for a lifetime!  The other day I had a sixth grade boy over to spend the night, and I read aloud at bedtime just as I always do.  It was the very first time anyone had ever read aloud to him.  And this is an upper-class family!  Yet he's watched every single episode of Lost and American Idol, etc., etc., etc. 

Have I mentioned

That I'm supposed to be painting?  Like, this WHOLE TIME I should have been painting. 

But then I took the dog and youngest for an evening walk, which is the only time of day that you just sweat but don't sweat so much you go into immediate heat stroke.  And I decided to take the digital camera along, because we're (hopefully) not going to be here much longer and if I don't take pictures of normal life activities then they'll be lost forever, right?

So here's Teddy and our dog, Grace (our only dog- at this point we're down to ONE dog, ONE snake and TWO cats!), getting ready for our evening walk...

And do you know what came in the mail yesterday?  Oh drool.... 

My brand new Veritas Press Catalog for 2006-2007!!!!

I just LOVE looking through those books lists.  Has anyone seen the new Latin program they have in this catalog?  Latin for Children?  Anyone know if it's any good?