A Few Pictures

We have been crazy busy since we started full swing back to school. All the sports and extra curricular activities started back up and it's go, go, go.

Nico is continuing his tumbling and hip hop. He is in an advanced hip hop class at a new studio. It is my sweet 9 year old and about 10 teen age girls. It is so adorably cute. He doesn't have all the hip swinging, chest wagging moves, but he has the floor moves such as the worm and head spins. The recital should be quite spectacular! He is also playing soccer this fall. We really like his coach this year. Hopefully it is a team he can stick with.

Luca started hip hop bitty bop this semester. For two weeks all we heard was, 'hip hop, hip hop'. We get to class and all he does is stand there. I was so disappointed, but we will try again next week. He was paying attention because he heard the song the other day and immediately said, 'hip hop'. I told him yes, now show me the peanut butter smash, and he did. Thus, he was totally paying attention!

As for me, it's work, create lesson plans, teach, work with the now 30 chickens we have, finish the school house, make a small chicken coop, and driving the kids around. I love my life!!!



We took a one day trip to Springfield, IL. Mike had training to do there, so we made a family trip out of it. We visited Abraham Lincoln's Home and the Museum. It was a great museum and trip. He we are at the corner with the house behind us.


Here we are posing with Lincoln and his family.

I couldn't pass up this picture of Luca walking down the sidewalk with the picket fence. Nothing like running your hand across the fence as you walk.

Luca and I sitting by the lake at the Air Evac base in Springfield, IL.

Here we are in our MOGUATE t-shirts on our trip to Tan-Tar-A for the MOGUATE get together. It was a beautiful weekend and a lot of fun.

My handsome, charming Nico on our trip to Daniel Boone's home right here in Defiance, MO.

Sweet, baby Luca. This has become his official PreK - 3 year picture.

Big, Bad Brian. This is him post 2nd surgery on his jaw. He can now bite with his front teeth. But still refuses to smile for a posed picture.

Time Gets Away

Wow, where does the time go? I can't believe kids are starting back to school already. For us, as homeschoolers, we attend school all year long. We take off when we go on vacation and cut back to a few classes during the summer instead of the full load. This summer just seemed so short for the 'regular' school kids. Nico gets a week off next week because he is attending a pottery class for 4 days for 3 hours a day. After that, it is full steam ahead for us too. I am looking forward to new text books and new topics. I am also starting Luca's year 1 preschool. I looked back at Nico's book and realized I started everything with him when he was 32 months. Luca is now 38 months. He is doing great, but I really need to start focusing on one-on-one time with him. I am also going to have his hearing checked as there are many words he has a hard time saying (I can't even begin to understand them). Often though, he speaks very well with 5-8 word sentences. Today he told me, "No, I stay here with dad." when I told him we had to leave.

Since our big vacation to the east coast we have also gone to Santa Claus, Indiana which has a super fun water and amusement park. There is a campground (Lake Rudolph) right next door where we camped. This is our second time there as it is only a 4 hour drive and a lot of fun. We attended MOGUATE at Tan-Tar-A on the Lake of the Ozarks. It is an annual get together of families with children adopted from Guatemala. It started out 4 years ago focusing around families from Missouri. It has now turned into much more with families from Ohio, Minnesota, and Louisiana. It was great fun. I hardly took any pictures. (We spent a lot of time in the pool). The kids all grow so much.

We have a mini trip to Springfield, IL coming up as Mike has some training to do there. We also have a family camping trip planned. Well, my cousins planned it (an annual trip for them) and we are joining in this year. It is at a campground within 25 minutes of our house. Super fun times coming there. My cousins have LOTS of boys near my boys ages.

Phew, that wore me out just thinking about all the fun we have had this summer. We have been truly blessed being able to spend this time together.

(I will post photos hopefully next week. I want to fix some up before I post them).

Post Vacation

Our vacation this year was one of the best. We saw and did so much in just 2.5 weeks, even with a minor delay (the breakdown). It was quite fun even spending the night in the Autozone parking lot. A wonderful couple stopped and helped us on Sunday morning. They were on their way home from church and saw the kids running around outside (and saw us the night before) so figured we were broke down. They drove Mike to every automotive store in town and no one had the parts we needed. Mike ended up bleeding the brakes thinking maybe something just got stuck in the master cylinder. Well, that seemed to do the trick. I was so worried about getting the RV back home and the cost of towing it from PA. Mike decided we were only 3 hours from Hershey, PA so we would try it. Someone was watching over us...we made it and continued each day on our trip. The ride home took us 23 hours (well, more with the traffic in CT, that was crazy!). We made it with no problems.

We learned so much on our journey. It was great to be able to add the hours of educational stuff to our homeschooling hours. I can tell Nico did retain a lot of information as he still talks about some of the things and is now able to picture the things in his mind as we started back up on our lessons this week.

I cannot pick one favorite thing as it was all great. Each place had something special about it. The most special though, was visiting these places with my children and fiance. It brought back so many memories of when I was a kid and we went RVing for two weeks. There is no way we could have done all we did by flying at the amount we spent.

Luca absorbed so many new words (and no not curse words :-) by being with us all day and NO TV!!! (only DVD's while we were driving). He is speaking with 4-5 words sentences and clearly gets his point across now. We will begin weaning off the TV viewing at home while I am working with Nico and getting Luca to sit in the classroom and work on things as well. Yesterday he spent 1/2 hour doing puzzles and another 20 minutes stringing beads. He really doesn't watch that much TV and is home with me all day, but the time closer together made a big difference. It was hard to leave them again and go back to work.

I wish Brian could have traveled with us. He was recovering from his second jaw surgery (which went very well.) Here we are on Pennsylvania Ave. with the Capitol building behind us.

I took over 900 photos! I will be busy scrapbooking soon I hope! Here are only 4 of the photos. By camera or camera lens needs a serious cleaning. Every photo needs to be edited. I will pick 4 of my favorites and use them to decorate the house with. We like to use our own photos instead of spending a fortune on some beach scene we have never been to.

Nico took this one of Mike and me at Plymouth Bay.

These two photos are of us at the Gettysburg Battle Field. It gave me goose bumps as we drove through here. We took a guided tour. It was very informational and taught me more than I ever learned in school.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer. We are off to Santa Clause, Indiana for three fun filled days of amusement park!!!

Vacation Fun

Well, we are on day 6 of our vacation. We have made it to DC and are looking forward to 5 days of visiting with family and sightseeing. We are here for a wedding reception for Mike's cousin and his family is coming from Oregon. We haven't seen them in about 5 years. I am excited to see them and get all the kids together.

We have already been to Hershey, PA and Gettysburg, PA. We enjoyed it all, especially the chocolate.

We ran into a little difficulties early in the trip with the brakes. Mike seems to think the problem is solved since we have not had any issues since. I believe we were not suppose to be where we wanted to be so our guardian angel, Grandpa Sequeira, who owned the RV before us stopped us from going. For whatever reason, all is good now. We will plan on continuing up the east coast.

One downfall is the death of two of our chickens at home. We have friends who are 'farm-camping' at our house and are dealing with the issues. I feel bad for them as we have not had any predators get our chickens in the last year until we have left. I feel not having our dog around may have brought other critters to the house. Poor Petey was put to sleep about 3 weeks ago. Now I have an excuse to get a new puppy!!!! Although I miss Petey deeply.

Well, off for now as we are relaxing to cold beers and the boys playing.

Dance Recital Video

Here are a couple links Nico's dance recital. I am so proud of him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A34dUZpWzso this link is the actual recital. It is not very clear, but it is the actual with all the crowd cheering...sorry for my loud voice ;-) (I have a professional video on order).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHOhaHiUNVc this link is the dress rehearsal. It is much clearer, but he doesn't do his head spin on this one.

We like this studio, but are checking out a new one in town next week. They perform in nursing homes, street shows, parades, and have an end of the year performance. I really want Nico to get comfortable with all kinds of performances.

Enjoy!

Pay It Forward

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner has a McLinky up on Random Acts of Kindness. http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/2010/06/show-us-your-life-random-acts-of.html

I wanted to link my Pay it Forward expereince to this.

Saturday we had a wonderful 'Pay it Forward' experience. I had just donated some money that morning to the relief funds for Guatemala. They were hit hard with a volcano eruption then a tropical storm with mudslides and flooding. Families lost what very little they had many including their whole home.

A few hours later we went to an auction in town. We were browsing the items on the trailers when Nico spotted a tackle box. He kept admiring it and all its contents asking us, "Can we bid on it?" We told him we would when they got down to it. About 45 minutes they got to that trailer. The whole time Nico had be 'guarding' and admiring the tackle box. The bidding started and we capped out at $20. The bidding for this tackle box kept going. When the final bid was done, the man who won it said, "Pass that box over to that little boy." (meaning Nico). He must have been watching Nico admiring that tackle box the whole time. We have no idea who this man is but Nico went over to him and gave him a hug and a thank you. Never would I have expected someone I have never met to give something like that to my son.

The rest of the week Nico has been trying to think of a way to Pay it Forward. He donated his $1 he earned for getting an A on a test to the kidney foundation outside the grocery store instead of buying a toy.

Spring Recital

Nico had his dress rehearsal and pictures for the spring recital tonight. He looked soooo good. He remembered his routine and did great. The real show is Sunday. Here are some photos of my handsome young man. I am so proud of him.