The first week of Soccer

Last week was the first week of soccer for us, man I do not know what we were thinking!!  Two playing soccer is going to make for a busy couple of weeks!  When we got their schedules I was surprised at the amount of games that will be over lapping!  Thankfully they are all in the same park and we are not going to be across town or something.

This is Little N's first year playing and it was so funny to watch those little 4 year olds "play" a game.  Not too many of them on Little N's team have played before, so when the ball comes to them they don't know what to do!

For Big E this is his third year playing (he missed last year because Baby had just been born!).  He is really catching on this year and going after the ball.

We didn't get too many shots of their games but here are a few we did get:

Little N in the blue sweatshirt.

Yeah not sure what to do with the ball!  

Baby Z being so patient playing in the stroller.

Now I think he had had enough

Yup not getting any more patient!

Big E, not sure what he was doing, obviously not going after the ball!

Isn't this a cool picture of the moon!??  

My Baby is ONE!!!

Yesterday was a big day at our house, we had a birthday!!  My little Baby Z turned one!  I can not believe its been a year, the time has gone so fast!  His birthday theme was Monkeys, because, well he is our little monkey!  Here is a little flash back of where he started:

The Baby Z was born

A few weeks old

Also a few weeks old

 And now a look at Party Central for this little guy!

The Highchair all decked out

His Monkey themed cup cake cake

The only picture we could get of him in his birthday hat

With all of his loot before opening them

In the middle of opening

At the end of opening, yeah look at his face, a little overwhelmed I would say!  

Digging into his cake!!

Yummy, yummy....

Look at that messy little boy!!

I think he had a great time, and he loved his cake!!  

Happy Birthday Baby Z!!!

Summer Fun Part 2

JULY....  July here was H.O.T.!!!!  That made me very unnerved, I was running out of ideas for my kiddos!  We have pools set up in the back yard but by lunch time it was just dangerously hot for them to even be in the pools!  So that led to LOTS of TV for us,  I am sad to say, but that is what we did for most of the afternoons in July.  Anyway I was able to connect with my inner artist and found some great art projects for my kids.  We painted rocks and made our own water color paints.   We also did some baking, and some cleaning and organizing too.  I know so fun right?!!

Little N painting one of his rocks

Working so hard to get that yellow paint on there!  

Big E working on painting one of his rocks green.  

I think he was making a turtle.

We made homemade water colors, this is Little N testing them out.

Big E trying to not smile for the camera, but I caught him!

In the middle of July we took a little day trip to Legoland, it was Star Wars Weekend!  My boys were in heaven!  Note to self about future trips...ALWAYS make sure you bring extra batteries for the camera!  YUP, they died before we got any pictures of the Star Wars characters!  Here are the pictures we did get:  

Since the boys got to go to Legoland they took mommy to IKEA!  AHHHH heaven!  Unfortunately no pictures to prove that I actually got to go!  :)

July also brought Nana and Papa to town (finally!), my boys had not seen them since Thanksgiving.  They were super excited to have them here for a few weeks.  

Our Homeschool Name Announced

Our homeschool finally has a name!! After months of brainstorming, we finally narrowed it down to two yesterday on a 3 hours road trip for a family reunion.  We are so happy and proud to announce our homeschool name:


Freedom Knights Academy!!  :)

If you saw a few days ago I had the tab "Adventures in Homeschooling" at the top of my blog.  It didn't occur to me to search and see if that was already taken, so today I did that search.  As it turns out someone else already has that as a title for their blog, so I decided to change that tab to our homeschool name.  So if you are interested in finding out more about our first year in homeschooling, you can click that tab and it will take you to my new blog.

This blog I will keep as a family blog and try to keep the homeschooling stuff on the Freedom Knights page.

Summer Fun Part 1

This has been a crazy busy summer!!  Not really sure what we have been doing, but its been busy!  We started off June with really nice weather.  So that allowed us to get outside into our pools!!  We did make it to a few parks in our area.

We made our own little water slide!  

Baby Z's first pool experience!

Big brothers were so excited for Baby to be in the pool with them!

We worked on a Ten Commandment Study this summer this is one of the crafts.

Big E with his craft.

Baby Z learned to pull himself and stand!  He was so proud!

Learning to protect his toys with the Light Saber

He really loves his swing!

Unfortunately June turned into BLAZING HOT temps and this momma had to get very creative!  There has been lots of indoor activities and homemade products.  We have made homemade water colors, painted rocks, and got our home organized for homeschooling!  :)  

My next post will cover our July Summer Fun!

The Beginning...

Well its that time!  Time to start our homeschooling adventure!  I will be documenting the trials and triumphs of our first year homeschooling!  You can see that through the Adventures In Homeschooling tab.

Ready, Set, Here We Go!!!!

Purging time!!!

In an effort to scale down our home to just the basics, and also with the prospect of a garage sale coming up we have been going through every corner of our house.  A while ago I saw someone had bought these really cool DVD cases and I thought they would be awesome.  So we went to Target and found them and decided to think on it a bit.  Well just a few weeks ago we went back and got them.  I can not tell you how amazing they are!!  We had a ton of DVD's and were in desperate need to get rid of the cabinet they were held in.  So in doing this were were able to put all of our DCVD's (with the exception of our series, like Friends and Star Wars) into these cases.  They take up very little space now and can be stored in  a drawer in the cabinet that our TV sits on.  AMAZING!!

A few of what we started with.

Almost all of the videos fit into this box.

These are what we used.  Each case holds 2 DVD's.  I actually had to go back and get a third one but didn't use all of that one.

Its almost the start of summer.  Big E has just 2 days left of school and Little N finished his school last week.  I am so excited to start a vacation!!  Here a just a few pictures of my little sweeties!

Baby Z and his big smile!

They thought it would be fun to dress alike