Our Week In Photos

Honestly, I didn't take many photos this week so this post will be more "what we did and a few photos" HA!


Labor Day weekend was a quiet even around this town.  Saturday was rainy so we actually just all hung out at home together until my mom came over to watch the boys so Darryl and I could go out to dinner.  We went to our favorite Mexican Place, Cancun, and enjoy a quite dinner.   On Sunday, the boys and I swam (I think HA!) and then we went to some friends house for dinner.  It was such an enjoyable night - the kids all played and the adults all laughed and laughed.  Darryl worked on Monday but the boys and I swam at the campground and then my mom came over for dinner - Chicken on the grill, lots of veggies and my mom's famous homemade Cheesecake for dessert (hahaha - it's so famous that Walmart sells it!!)  It was actually a very relaxing weekend even though "poor" Darryl only took Saturday off from work. 

And then, school started!  Tuesday brought the start of lessons and our annual "First Day Photos".  I've already shared many of them in another post but figured I'd post a few here too.  My biggest disappointment this year is the Etsy shop that I've gotten their awesome grade shirts from in the past is no longer in business and I did not find any other shirt I liked enough to order.  Nate even asked me where their shirts were at this year :-(

 I love these two guys.  I feel like they have grown so much in the past year and it is just crazy! 

And of course, we also went to the pool because it was HOT!  

Wednesday we did school, our friends got dismissed from their school after a 1/2 day due to the heat so then we got to spend the afternoon swimming! 

Thursday it cooled off!  Darryl was home but we also did school.  Darryl and the boys got a rousing game of "play where it lands" for PE class ;-) and we still got all of our lessons done!  

Friday we were off to a "Meet and Greet" for our homeschool co-op which was a lot of fun.  Sadly, for the second day in a row, we couldn't swim because the temps didn't get out of the 60's!!!  My mom came over for dinner and that's a wrap!  

So despite the lack of photos, we actually had a great week.  

Weekly Menu

I didn't post a weekly menu last week because I really didn't have one planned.  I finally went to the store on Saturday and put together a plan through Wednesday just before I walked out the door.  I just  haven't been enjoying planning meals or cooking much.  But, after a couple really not good meals due to lack of ingredients I figured I had better get back on that meal planning horse and just cook.  So, here's the plan for the coming week

Friday - Baked Ziti, Green Beans and Garlic Bread

Saturday - Dinner Out - even something as simple as Taco Bell.  When we can do it, I find that being able to eat out one meal gives me a much needed break from cooking

Sunday - Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken with potatoes, carrots and green beans.  This is a new recipe that I hope is as good as it looks.

Monday - Creamy Italian Sausage Pasta and Garlic Biscuits

Tuesday - Darryl has a concert tonight and my mom and I are going to a book signing (the boys are going with us!) so we will eat out in town before the book signing.

Wednesday - Crockpot Hawaiian Meatballs and Bacon Wrapped Cabbage.

Thursday - Crockpot Chicken and Stuffing and Broccoli.

These recipes actually make me want to cook ;-)

First Day of School 2018

We started school on Tuesday.  We've been pretty quiet about school mostly because neither the boys nor I were ready for summer to "end".  Getting back into a schedule and being tied in to getting school done each day is always a big change to our freedom of the summer but we also know it has to get done and that's ok!  I've spent some time over the past month planning out our schedule, figuring out what days to do what subjects to ensure that no one is overwhelmed since we do a 4 day week (which means we have to double up on a few subjects each week), and also figuring out a better way to do seatwork.  I also wanted extra practice for both boys this year in cursive handwriting, spelling, and just daily review so I found supplemental material for those areas too. 

We had fun with our "First Day" photos!!

 We started with some photos in our yard - Nate had some ideas he wanted to do.  

 Joshua! 

 Nate loves to swing so he wanted a swing photo. 

 Josh is a 9 going on 16 so he gave me a little bit of "this is dumb mom" attitude HA! 

 My two sweet boys - hard to believe that this is year 5 of homeschooling.  

 Josh wanted a swing picture too. 

 A little fun on the trampoline too! 

We then had fun at the pool!  So, of course, we took photos there too! Yes, we finished all of our school work before lunch and then headed to the pool on the super hot first day of school.  We had the pool mostly to ourselves which is just fabulous! 

We've had a pretty easy start to our year.  The lessons start out easy (all intro stuff) and there aren't any live lessons which frees up quite a bit of time in our day.  We have about 2 weeks without live lessons so we are going to enjoy the extra time we have right now. 

Summer Fun 14

That's a wrap folks!  Who knew 14 weeks of summer could go by so fast!! I did not make a list at the start of this week but instead just figured I go with the flow and that worked out just perfectly.

So, here's a quick recap of our past week.

 After seeing the weather report (90's and humid) on Sunday, Darryl suggested we make a trip to our favorite beach in Muskegon to enjoy the water.  It was a little crazy because there was a heavy layer of fog.  Also, from Saturday to Sunday the water temps dropped about 25 degrees so, yes, the water was cold BUT we are die hard Lake Michigan fans so we swam!!!! 

 I knew the pool would be pretty empty on Monday since the public schools are back in session around here so I took my camera and got some photos of the boys in our "summer home" - the pool at the campground. 

 On Wednesday, my mom took us out to dinner in the next town over where there is a Dairy Queen (Best onion rings ever!).  There is also a little lake there that people enjoy swimming in - we wanted to see it.  It really is a nice beach with a great swim area - which the boys had to try out!!  They love to swim! 

A cold front moved through and Thursday there were temps in the 60's.  Instead of swimming, we met some of our homeschool friends at a local park for a few hours of park fun.  

We ended our week on Friday back in the pool.  Our two little friends who are with us each day didn't have school so they got one "for sure" day in the pool.  The weather was perfect, the pool was perfect, and we met some new friends which is always great. 

Saturday was a quiet day - some nice size storms rolled in mid-morning and the rain hung around all day so we didn't go swimming.  Darryl and I got to go out to dinner together while my mom hung out with the boys.  It was a super relaxing day! 

So, this brings an end to my weekly Summer Fun posts and I'll return to my "Our Week in Photos" posts.  

Here's to a great fall! 

It's Labor Day Weekend

It's so hard to believe that it is the "unofficial" end of summer.  We've had an awesome summer (which I'll do a wrap up post about in the coming days). 

This weekend, though, we are just trying to soak up the last few days without school and enjoy some family time and time with friends.

We enjoyed an amazing afternoon at the pool on Friday with our friends since they didn't have school.  The weather was perfect, the pool was perfect, and we met some new people who were super nice.

Darryl and I are leaving my mom in charge the kids so we can take off for a few hours and enjoy dinner out.  It's a rainy, stormy day today (Saturday) and we've all enjoyed being home together.  Darryl treated us to coffee (and the boys to big Bigby Cookies), I put my fall scent scensty bars in my burners (even though the AC is still running since it is humid and is supposed to be HOT HOT HOT the next few days.)  The boys and my mom will enjoy some pizza and McDonald's for dinner so they are well taken care of too!

The rest of the weekend includes some planned swimming on Sunday and Monday, weather permitting, a cookout with long time friends on Sunday evening, and just soaking up the last of the quiet before school starts on Tuesday.  Don't get me wrong, the rumor is that we are supposed to have temps pushing 90's (with heat index's of 95-100) so we will do school as fast as we can in the morning and then head to the pool but the "freedom" of no school is coming to an end.  I'll be spending some time this weekend getting our lessons ready for the week but otherwise I try not to think about School until Tuesday morning!

So - enjoy the weekend!  I know we are!!

Camping Trip One - August 2018

It feels odd to write about our first camping trip of the season in August but, that's the truth!  We had planned to do to other trips earlier in the summer but it just didn't happen.  We tried some new ideas on this trip and learned some things about what we really like and don't like. 

As we started to finalize plans for this trip, we decided to try and take one vehicle.  So, with this in mind, I decided to pack as light as possible including not grocery shopping until we arrived so we didn't have to carry bins of food.  Well, then Darryl ended up without practice on Wednesday night and we now had to bring all of his guitar stuff with us to his concert (which we were attending first) so plans changed and we had to take two vehicles.  I still decided to wait on the shopping in order to keep things more simple . . .or so I thought! 

Day 1 - Sunday
The vehicles were loaded so all we had to do is get up, get ready and hit the road which is exactly what we did.  We stopped for breakfast on the go from McDonald's and then headed down the road to Darryl's concert.  Arrival and set-up at the concert went just as planned.  The benefit for the boys is that their bikes were in the van so I could easily pull them out and they enjoyed riding their bikes all over before the concert started. 

When the concert finished, we loaded up and headed out on our great adventure.  As we arrived into South Haven, we wanted to stop for lunch.  So, we stopped at a Taco Bell.  As we walked inside, someone stopped us and said, "We waited for 35 minutes for our food so you might want to go elsewhere."  We did not want to wait - we wanted to camp!  Instead we headed to the McDonald's which was located in Walmart.  (We thought that it would save us time to eat and shop "really quickly" before heading to camp!)  Well, McDonald's was slow . .and expensive (like $2.00 more a meal than normal).  Our food was messed up (we got it fixed) and it just took forever.  Now, we had to shop.  Well, I never shop in Walmart so when I made my list I based it off of what I know Meijer has and I was so turned around that I struggled to get what we needed.  After wandering the whole store and leaving with half of what was on our list - we headed to the campground.  So, lesson learned - I will never wait to shop again.  I will always buy our food before we leave AND meal prep before we leave!!!  Set up at the campground when fabulous - for real.   Fastest we have ever set up before so that was a HUGE bonus. We had chicken and salads for dinner and then We could finally sit down, relax, and enjoy our campfire after a very long day. 

Day 2: We. slept. in.  We never sleep well the first night but we were all tired and it was cool enough to sleep.  We enjoyed donuts for breakfast and leftovers for lunch.  The boys played a couple of games of ladder ball.

Josh wanted to do some blueberry picking too.  Considering it was South Haven and the Blueberry festival had just ended the day before, it made perfect sense to pick blueberries!

From there, we headed to the beach at the state park. 

To be honest, this is not our favorite beach but the boys enjoy it.  There are tons of rocks making it hard to walk out to the sand bar BUT I found that if you walked a bit down the beach, there was a sandy part to use to walk out into deeper water.  We hung out at the bean for a good 3 hours.  Now, remember that when we went to Walmart we wandered everywhere?  I didn't get anything for dinner HA!  So, we went back to the campground, took showers, cleaned and went to find something for dinner at 8:00 pm.  We found Pizza Hut and it was perfect.  We were starving and all that good pizza filled us up!!  Our night ended with another great fire!

Day 3- We enjoyed blueberries and cereal for breakfast.  We hung out at the campground for awhile before loading up and heading into town to eat at our favorite Italian place (we debated it since had pizza the night before but couldn't resist!).  Lunch was fabulous!  From there we headed to the city beach, which is by far one of our favorites.  We were blessed when we arrived because someone saw us looking for a parking spot (that you pay for) and they stopped us, told us they were leaving, and gave us their parking pass (which is good all day).  It was something unexpected and really appreciated!  We then spent hours upon hours at the beach once again.

 The boys love playing in the sand and we love watching them play in the sand!  The water was perfect on a pretty hot and humid day! 

Darryl and the boys took a walk on the pier.  I enjoyed sitting on the beach relaxing in the sand.  

We were starving when we left so we swung through McDonald's.  (Not our favorite HA).  From there we had to go to Meijer to pick up a few things.  On the way back to the campground we stropped at this ice cream shop we had seen every day as we drove out to do things except . ... it wasn't an ice cream shop !!  It was a little store!  Geesh!  It did have things like ice cream sandwiches and Popsicles but not really ice cream. 

Back at the campground we enjoyed our last campfire and just hanging out at night. 

Day 4 - Our last morning we slept in, ate a simple breakfast of muffins and fruit and then started loading up.  Just like set up, this was the fastest we ever tore down.  Checkout is at 1:00 and normally we are still wrapping up at 1:30 (which is fine as long as they see you loading up).  Well, we were pulling out of the campground at 12:30!  We stopped for lunch and then headed for home. 

It was really a great vacation/get away.  A lot of times we are all ready to head for home by day 4 but this time, amazingly, we all said, "Man, I wish we had a few more days!".  

We are hoping to fit in one more camping trip in September.  It's penciled in on the calendar so hopefully it will all work out!  

Recipe - Blueberry Lemon Hand Pies

Blueberry Lemon Hand Pies
adapted from Shugary Sweets

As you know from my weekly menu posts, I haven't been cooking a whole lot and, even when I do, it tends to be whatever I find in the house. So, cooking new recipes has not been high on my list BUT this recipe came across my newsfeed on Facebook and sounded like a simple dessert for dinner one night and . . it was simple.  Even better, it was good.  I would make these to take to a gathering or just to have at home for a fun treat.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 boxes (14.1 oz each) refrigerated pie crust
• 1 can (21 oz) blueberry pie filling
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

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1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Remove pie crusts from package and allow to come to room temperature while you prepare filling.
2. Dump pie filling in a shallow bowl and add lemon zest. Mix until blended. Set aside.
3. Unroll pie crusts and cut 6 circles from each crust using a 4-inch biscuit cutter. You may have to re-roll the scraps to get the 6th circle.
4. Using a 1 tbsp cookie scoop, drop blueberry pie filling into center of each pie crust circle. Fold in half and pinch edges completely. Fold pinched edges over and press with the tines of a fork to seal. Poke hand pie with fork once, to prevent bursting.
5. Beat egg white in a small bowl until frothy. Brush over the tops of each hand pie. Bake on a parchment paper lined baking sheet (1 inch apart) for about 15 minutes, until browned.
6. While pies are baking, whisk together the powdered sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Remove cooked pies from baking sheet and drop (while warm) into glaze, coating it completely. I use two forks to flip it in the glaze and remove carefully. Return to parchment paper and allow to set (about 5 minutes). ENJOY!