A New Direction (Possibly)

It is looking less and less like we will be able to get our new drama program off the ground. Road blocks keep getting thrown in our path. We are now considering that maybe God doesn't want us to start a new program at this time. It will be heartbreaking for some of the kids, but not all the kids would have been coming back due to scheduling difficulties, etc. I know that Grace will be very disappointed so I haven't told her yet until we know for sure. Grace has mentioned over the past couple of weeks that she would really like to concentrate on her singing in public. She is even talking about going to an open mic night at a nearby art gallery to sing. As many of my readers know this doesn't completely come out of left field because she has been singing in musicals for the past three years with some solos. Today I contacted a local teacher that provides voice lessons and she has her students perform various times during the year at different venues. So this may be a new path for Grace to take, but we will still keep our eyes open for any audition possibilities at the local community theatre. I also hope to sign her up for some more art classes once she meets her anime camp teacher on Monday. I think she has visions of being a "singing star". Time will tell.

Fourth Day Back At It

School that is. The first couple of days were a little rough getting back in to the groove. We still aren't getting up early enough to finish by lunch. We usually take a break for lunch then finish around 2:00. The first two days of math were not fun but the third day was much better and I anticipate today being good. I scheduled Fridays up with everything that I couldn't fit in to the schedule on Monday - Thursday. So today we will have picture study, nature study, drawing illustrations for her children's book that we have been working on all summer, personal development, math, spelling, and story starters. Looking forward to a different pace today with the school work. Normally our schedule involves math, science, history, literature, English, math, reading, etc. Next week Grace is going to a Anime Camp for two hours each day so I will schedule very lightly in the afternoon when she gets back to round out a 4 1/2 hour school day. Starting this early will give us the option to take a whole week off for Thanksgiving and two for Christmas without any worries. Also some extra days during the year when we really don't feel like getting up and doing school. The flexibility schooling at home is just awesome.

Harvesting

Scott harvested over 50 roma and beefsteak tomatoes today. So that of course warranted a trip over to my sisters tonight for us to make 4 containers of spaghetti sauce and 5 of salsa. I went on to the Mrs. Wages website and they also carry packets to make ketchup and pizza sauce. None of the stores in town carry these and it is probably to late to order online. I might start looking around the internet for a recipe for the pizza sauce. We make home made pizza at least once a week. Scott also brought up from the garden today bell peppers, banana peppers, cucumbers, and cantaloupe. So today was all about making sauces and tomorrow will be all about baking. If anyone would have asked me a couple of years ago if I would be doing all of this with the garden, chickens, etc. I would have told them no way. But I do enjoy it and feel ties to days of old.

Absent

Sorry I haven't been around in the past 4-5 days. Usually I try to post something each day but quite frankly nothing really is post worthy. All the potatoes are out of the ground and either stored or dehydrate and three batches of salsa have been prepared and frozen. The weekend was pretty quiet. Watched alot of TV on youtube and netflix. Last week Grace had gotten pretty bored and we decided to start school this week. Of course when today got here she kind of wanted to change her tune. We started anyway. I think we are really going to like Teaching Textbooks for math. It will be good for her to hear someone else explaining math to her instead of just me. Today hubby is down out the garden getting the remaining carrots out of the garden and depending on how many tomatoes are harvested I may try my hand at making some pasta sauce to freeze. Lots of smoothies being made for snacks with all the strawberries, blueberries and bananas that I have on hand. Delicious! I have had alot of trouble with joint and muscle pain over the past month and we think it might be a side effect from my newer acid reflux medication. Because of this I switched back to nexium a few days ago and am going to the drug store today to purchase some vitamin d (advised to take 2000 units a day) and I may pick up a multi vitamin too. My mom goes this week for all her testing she receives every three months for her cancer numbers. Please pray no growth and we can continue to do no treatment for another three months.

Some "Drama" with our Drama

As many of my readers know we are heavily involved with a drama group that performs throughout the school year. The drama department that me and another person head up is actually attached to a non-traditional Christian private school that is housed at my church. We have run this drama program for three years with rave reviews from the school, parents, etc. About one month ago we were told that they were moving the drama program to a five day a week class during the school day as opposed to an after school activity and another teacher would be in charge of the program. Wow, kind of a slap in the face. We were not included in any of the conversations about this. Just bam here you go. The school did inform us that we could still do our own drama program after school - same hours, equipment, stage, facility, etc. Which is very nice of them, but in all honesty we built the stage and financed all of our endeavors on our own without their help. So today was the big meeting to reinvent our drama program. New name, etc. We do have the opportunity to perform some of our productions at the bigger theater in town that is in place for our community theater. That is kind of exciting. Some of the board of the community theater came to see our last production of Alice in Wonderland and was thrilled with our youth's performances. They actually wanted us to come and perform it this summer at the community theater but we just couldn't work it out logistically. So, it is kind of like starting from scratch rebuilding our drama program, but of course this time we only answer to ourselves and don't have to please anyone else. Some of the production we are considering for the year is The Jungle Book Musical for the elementary kids and high school will be a choice between Fiddler on the Roof, Into the Woods, or Aladdin.

The Garden Has Taken Over Our Lives

For those readers that come to read about homeschooling, chickens, or other items - maybe you should come back in a week or so. This garden has really taken over our lives. But it is sooooo worth it. Last night hubby went down to the garden to dig the remaining potatoes up and today he will get all the remaining carrots. We were so over run with produce that we donated a bunch to our church's food pantry to hand out today. I think the finally tally was 47 cukes, 60 pounds of potatoes and 20 pounds of carrots. For home we harvested another 10 cukes, 30 tomatoes (roma and best boy), two small squash, 6 small onions, and another 17 bell peppers. The amount of bell peppers that we harvested off of 4-5 plants is just crazy. Probably overall all about 80 - 100 peppers. My sister came over last night and we made another pot of salsa to freeze. I also dried a bunch of tomatoes and still have about 20 small tomatoes lingering around the house. Today I need to cut up the bell peppers and freeze them. Today the garden and us will get a rest. Scott has to go to the gallery to do some work and I am babysitting my nephew. Later I plan on taking Grace and my nephew to the library and out to lunch to get us out of the house today. Not much we can do outside with temp in the mid to high 90s with a heat index of even higher. Speaking of heat my poor chickens. I tried putting fans on them yesterday but they just ran and weren't interested in the breeze. I then tried spritzing them with water and they didn't really like that either. Once we get through today I think the rain will be coming and the temps will go down about 10 degrees.

Picking Blueberries

Yesterday was all about blackberries and today is all about blueberries. Last year we picked at a friend's house. This year that same friend called a few days ago to say she has a bumper crop this year and needed people to come pick or they would go bad. The basket photo is just in the beginning. Between myself and hubby we picked almost three gallons of blueberries and there was so much more to pick. Will return at the end of the week or first of next week to pick again. The heat was awful. We started picking at 9:45 and it was already 90 degrees. Once home we froze most of them. Scott is really in to juicing right now and will use alot that way. I like to put them in smoothies. This afternoon I created my own concoction of yogurt, blueberries, 1/2 a banana, a splash of milk and a tablespoon of ice cream. Yummy!