Sonlight Garden

a little break for a day

The good Lord knew I needed a break yesterday. After days and days of cold and no sun we had perfect weather. It was Florida winter weather. The sky was so blue and the temp was in the 60's. The kids did math and english and we packed up and headed to the park for a couple of hours. It was balm to my soul. It healed my winter blues at least for a day. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if the end of that tunnel is a moth and a half away. My day was full of "Thank You"s to my Heavenly Father. God is good!!

Of course I brought my camera. I shot in manual mode. My ISO is way to high in a lot these pictures until I could figure it out. I am not going to edit because if I do I will never get this posted. 

Henry had a blast being able to run around and climb on something other than the chairs in our house. He also enjoyed not being taken down from his climbing spot. :0)

recovering

So, the nasty stomach bug roared through our house this weekend. Yuck. Nine out of Eleven of us came down with it as of Monday, and then Last night Terry came home from work and collapsed into bed. Poor guy took such good care of all us all weekend. He even made homemade chicken and rice soup. Maybe he collapsed into bed because of exhaustion over all of the care taking he had done over the weekend. We ran him ragged. 

Catherine is left. When she found out Daddy came home not feeling well she exclaimed, "I win!"

Her birthday was Sunday. The poor thing deserves a do over because none of us felt like celebrating much. Terry did run out and get her a cake and we did sing Happy Birthday and she did blow out candles. She told me she was very lonely all weekend with all of us laid up. :0(

Today, I am going to finish up the laundry and disinfecting and pray that my Catherine slides by this stomach thing. I also need to get to the grocery store and get the ingredients for Thanksgiving Day. I am so looking forward to going to Mass and then coming home and cooking and then just relaxing and hanging out with the people I love the most in this world. We have so MUCH to be thankful for!

 

Christmas Picture Out Takes

Last Sunday after Mass we took the kids to the park for a photo shoot. It was sooo windy. I think the gusts were around 35 mph. Out of the 372 pictures that I took I think I have one, maybe two where the kids are all looking at the camera with their eyes open. We did get some great pictures though. I thought I would share a few with you all. 

I recently purchased Lightroom 4 I have been having so much fun playing around with it. It is a lot of trial and error because I have absolutely no clue what I am doing and every time it is different. Maybe in a couple of years I will be a lightroom master ;0) Does anyone know of a good Lightroom tutorial? 

 

My book end boys:

Apparently Patrick did something hysterical at the other end of this picture. I'm not quite sure what, but being that he is a nine year old boy I can only imagine:

Love this picture:

 

Amelia!! Julia and her are two peas in a pod. She is so full of life as you will see in the next couple of pictures:

Again, that darn wind blowing dresses and hair:

John Paul was not interested in picture taking. He just wanted to find sticks and bugs and leaves. Just as any three year old boy would be. So sweet:

 

Wordless Wednesday

School Year Wrap Up

 

Totally unrelated pictures, but I like a post with pictures. These two little boys...so sweet.  And this baby...oh my, how I love this baby!!!

We wrapped up our school year a couple of weeks ago. Yippee! Joe graduated from eighth grade. I have pictures that eventually I will post, with all of those thoughts and emotions. Julia finished the seventh grade strong. She has blossomed so much as a writer. One of the things I do like about her being in school is having a teacher to critique her work. She also enjoys this. I am very pleased with everyone's progress here at home. Despite it being a "new baby" "worbooky" kind of a year we accomplished a lot. Maybe not as much as I would have liked. But enough. We will work on math this summer to keep up our skills. I am also going to get a typing program for Patrick on up. Typing skills are going to be a necessity for Joe next year. All incoming freshman at the high school that he is going to next year get an iPad. Some of their textbooks will be on the iPad. They will submit papers, take notes, all on the iPad. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me is thinking "pretty cool" the other part wonders how distracting this is going to be for him. We will see.

I know what we are going to be using next year for our homeschool. We signed up with a Classical Conversations community that we will attend once a week. We visited a community just this past year and the kids really enjoyed it. I was extremely impressed with their essentials program for 4-6 grade. It is a grammar and math program. These kids were dissecting sentences like nothing I have ever seen. Very impressive. I attended a three day parent practicum hosted by Classical Conversations and I really enjoyed it. I am excited about it. We are also going to use "Exploring Countries and Cultures" by My Fathers World. I do realize this may be overkill, but we are going to go with it and see how we do. I still need to work on book lists for ecc. I want to find stories about all of the great saints from all of the different countries we will be studying. I am excited about infusing our Catholic faith in this beautiful little program. I am also excited that everything is planned out for me.

So, what are your plans for next year?

 

I heart faces ~ Beautiful Eyes

Our John Paul has awesome eyes with the l-o-n-g-e-s-t eyelashes. Out of the bazillion pictures I have taken of my children, this is my favorite one of Jonh Paul's eyes. You can really appreciate just how long his eyelashes are! 

To see more beautiful eyes go to I Heart Faces

 

At the Park

These are just some random pictures at the park. The weather was just so beautiful. And we had just returned from our trip a few days earlier. It was great to get out and run after being cooped up in the van for two days. We brought a blanket, lunch, my knitting, fishing poles, some books, and of course the camera. Pictures taken by me, Catherine, Mary Jane, and Patrick.

Patrick was having a great time fishing and then THREE of these snakes started swimming around. They were not afraid of us at all. We weren't able to identify them and were not sure if they were venomous, so we decided that we really didn't want to fish anymore :0)

Happy Wednesday!

 

John Paul

my little man~6 weeks.

He is smiling now. It is a real smile, not the smile that you have to really work at getting. It is the "Oh, there is my mommy" smile. And it is instant and beautiful!

 

 

photos

The weather is warmer and the sun sets later so it has been perfect for enjoying the evenings outside. The downfall has been late dinners and later bed times, but it's all good. I have had my camera out the last couple of nights with us. These are just some random shots.

 

 

 

I was trying to catch a nice moment with the children in the garden planting seeds and I caught Patrick stealing Catherine's seeds and her reaction. I had my zoom lens so I caught him in the act!! Don't worry, we worked it all out. Every one is happy now :0)