We will always giggle at how funny you were!

This morning Buttercup passed away. He will be dearly missed! He was a funny little fellow and brought much love for Kayla. Kayla held him all the time and he slept in her arms frequently while on the couch watching TV.

Pictured above is left: Buttercup - right: Cotton

This was Kayla's birthday and Buttercup gave her a book. :0)

SLEDDING FUN!!

Who could stand to stay at home in the house with such good snow that we had this past weekend. One great thing about homeschooling is that we get LOTS of family fun time! Yes, we did our school work ... but did we really have to? Not really, as the teacher .. ME wouldn't mind at all if we skipped. But I am pretty anal when it comes to school work and getting things done. We drove around the corner (up the cool Halloween trick or treating street) and did some sledding with our good friends.

Here is Shae in action! She can never have to much fun and never gets tired!

Kayla and her friend jamm'n down the hill.

Best Buddies! These two just crack me up! They are two peas in a pod.

That's what friends are for .... right? She tells Kayla, " You owe me!"

Back to school work tomorrow but we'll be going back maybe on Wednesday. tee,hee,hee!

2010 has been ALL FUN so far!!!!!

Shae got her first "real" guitar. She got a Fender student nylon string acoustic. It fits her perfect and she is AMAZING! I actually can't believe how easy she has learned her first chords. She has only been playing for 3 weeks and already can finger G, Am, A, C, Em, D and D7. She just LOVES her own guitar and I often find her practicing and just today she was playing and singing to her dog Tuesday.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, what a perfect picture for a Christmas card! Ha! We woke up to this and it was a blast to play in with the girls! Shae couldn't believe her eyes when she woke up! As a matter of fact I couldn't either and at 3am I woke up and peeked out the curtain and I must of told Tom 5 times that there was a lot of snow outside.

The girls made a snow fort and played outside for 3 hours! More snow to come tonight so we may add to the snow fort.

I caught this cute rabbit hopping around the yard until it found a nice spot against one of our landscape walls to block the wind. I tossed him a carrot ... but not sure if he ate it or not. :0)

Both Kayla and Shae are "master" snowball rollers. They even had 2 snow ball fights with our neighbor. When he would come out they would be ready to fire snowballs at him. They even made a stash of snowballs and made a snow hiding fort for them. It was funny! He would come out to shovel snow and they would run to their stash and fire away at Joe the neighbor. :0)

Shae wanted me to post a picture of her and her new hamster "Cotton". He is a funny guy and had a little attitude when we first got him but then he chilled out. He loves to stuff his cheeks and chew on the cage.

Who needs lots of snow to have fun?

The day after Christmas Tom's family came up and we had a great time! Here are the brothers and notice Mike in the middle and the darling handle bars of Kayla's bike.
Okay, so isn't my nephew the cutest thing EVER!! He actually hates me! For real! He is now 2 years old and cries every time he sees me. I can't even get a hug from this little guy. Well, I take that back ... I did bribe him with a snow cone that he wanted and I told him that he could have it for a hug. And I got one too!

So, after our first snow fall this year we managed to pile up some snow in the backyard to try to save it for when my nephew came up from Phoenix. And who would of thought that little patch of snow would have been so much fun.

Pictured here is my nephew catching air!

Kaden was great fun giving the girls rides around the grass.

I just love family time!

End of Year 2009

We always try to do self portraits and so here goes our end of the year portrait. :0)
The girls are loving their new keyboard and I will most likely be signing them up for piano lessons later in the year. First, Kayla is back to taking guitar and is ROCK'N. More on that later and I will try to take a short clip of video to post for you all.

Merry Christmas to Nala and Tuesday from Kayla and Shae. The girls picked out their dogs a sweater for Christmas and they keep them nice and toasty.

After my December art class the kids picked and opened up their homemade ornaments that they made for each other.

Kayla and her first snow angel of the year!

This year I hope to post more as Kayla loves reading them. I also plan on posting more on our homeschooling.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WOW! I am back to blogging for the New Year!

I have been having a hard time updating my blog lately as Google was giving me log in problems but I think I have that under control.

Let's see! I don't make New Year resolutions as I never keep them or I forget what my plan was.

But here are some things I plan on focusing on more this year.

Start my garden on time and keep it going for a wonderful crop that I plan on growing this season.

Learning more guitar thru ( guitar in a nutshell ) Love that site!

Kayla is continuing her guitar lessons at Volante as she doesn't like me telling her how to play guitar. Shae got her first "real" guitar at POPS Music earlier this month and she is loving it and learning her chords.

Both girls want to do another PFAA play (they are awesome and work well with kids). It will be a tough audition though as they will be very selective for the upcoming show "Schoolhouse Rock Live! JR."

I am making sure we keep up on our schooling and am currently trying out an online supplemental curriculum ( time4learning.com ) with Shae and Kayla and it is going well. We still have our text and book work but we can do less of that now and this gives them a break and a different teaching approach. I feel it is nice to mix things up.

It tests them on all the subjects and every category and I can check their daily progress report and see their % on everything. It tells me what they need to work on and what they are doing wonderful on.

I am still teaching the art class to my 8 students that I just enjoy to death. They are GREAT students and are very creative!

I want to focus on supporting our local smaller businesses and that is easier to do in our town than a bigger city.

I plan on eating less beef and substitute it with turkey. :0) We will see how that goes.

And this winter I plan on taking the kids down to Phoenix once a month to enjoy the warm weather and visit a museum or do something fun like visit a roller rink and Amazing Jake's.

Well, I will be online daily so keep in touch!