A Weekend Off

We have had quite a few things going on in our life recently that has made our minds a bit preoccupied with things other than family fun. We decided to take a weekend off last weekend and spend the day out in the boat. We all lathered up in our SPF 50 sunscreen and headed to the lake!

We had a blast!

We ran around the lake for a bit.

We went swimming near the island. Even Mr. TD got in the water and easily got out for the first time since his back injury 3 1/2 years ago. He thoroughly enjoyed being in the water again!

We had a picnic lunch near the dam.

After lunch, we let the kids go tubing! They had a blast! They spent a good 2 hours in the tube telling us to go faster and faster. We didn't always do it, because most of the lake shore is bulkhead, which after a few hours of boat traffic makes the lake pretty choppy.

I did my best to snap a few pictures...it's kind of hard to hold the camera still on digital zoom when you are riding in a boat at 20+ mph on a choppy lake. Many of the pictures were of the top of the kids head with a good view of the boat wake!

Personalize a free picture collage

We can't wait to go again! We'll see what the schedule allows in the next few weeks!

Creativity and TV

In our normal day-to-day life, we don't watch much TV.

We might watch a few age appropriate shows in the morning as we get moving, but for the majority of the day we leave the TV off. There just isn't much on that I am interested in watching for my kids or myself. We have a lot more fun with playtime and it makes starting the school day much easier.

However, when I am finishing up dinner when after Mr. TD gets home, he typically turns it on and watches either a home improvement show or something on Food Network. It usually turns out that we start watching the Food Network Challenge show. We are truly amazed at what these artists can create out of sugar and cake! We have become quite the family of armchair judges and love to try to pick who the big winner will be.

I can remember when I was growing up hearing the adults around me talking about how watching too much TV would stifle our creativity and dull our minds. I am just not sure that is true!

Here's why:

My sweet little ones have wanted to play with the Play Doh for a couple of weeks now. Because of our schedule, we haven't had the uninterrupted time for them to make the mess and clean it up before we were on the run again. Finally, we had a few hours, so I let them go at it!

Within minutes, they were designing and building cakes. Little TD said, "Wait!" and ran to his room and came back a few minutes later. I was in the process of doing laundry, so I missed a bit of the complete conversation, but when I returned to the kitchen, this is what I heard:

Princess TD: " Okay, now move your designs to the table."

Little TD: "Wow! I made it!"

Princess TD: "Time to face the judges."

(Some conversation I didn't quite catch...)

Princess TD: "And the winner of the Food Network Play Doh Challenge is.....Little TD!"

(Cheers from both)

Little TD: "I can't believe it!" (Said as Princess TD puts a play medal around his neck which was won by Little TD at a friends birthday party almost 3 years ago!)

Little TD: "Okay Sissy, now it's your turn to win!"


They then proceeded to demolish their creations and start all over again with Princess TD winning the second time.

Pretty creative if you ask me!

No pictures this time...just a funny story. Next time I will have the SD card IN my camera instead of attached to my computer!

Princess TD has a Birthday!

Princess TD is 7 years old! I can hardly believe my baby is 7! It is truly amazing how fast she has grown. I am incredibly blessed that I can be at home to watch her grow and mature into such a sweet young lady. There are always hard days, but overall this adventure has been wonderful. An adventure made even more sweet by her learning at home. I continue to be amazed at the wonder of the light bulb moments when she figures out something she has struggled to understand. I am one blessed momma!

She has expressed an interest in dance off and on since she was young, but she never wanted to take a class. We weren't going to force her to go if it was only going to be a fight for us. She finally decided that she wanted to take a ballet class. She is thoroughly enjoying it and wants to continue. We will have to see if it will continue to be feasible to continue long term, both with schedule and financial considerations. Here she is on her first day.

Traditionally for her birthday, we have purchased a July 4th themed outfit for her to wear. Most of the time the shirt or dress would have something embroidered that would be along the lines of "Independence Girl," "Firecracker" or the like, which is VERY appropriate for her and not just because her birthday is July 4th. She has grown to be so tall, that clothing manufacturers don't make cute clothes like that anymore in her size. Therefore, this momma is forced to make her the outfits that she wants. {Oh, and I am no where near as talented as her Grammie (my mom) when it comes to sewing...this outfit was HUGE when I first fitted it to her!} It just so happened that I had just enough fabric left over to make her doll, Katherine, a similar matching outfit.

This year for her cake, she wanted one with a Strawberry Shortcake theme. I had grand plans for how the cake would look, but the actual cake was no where near what I wanted it to be. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was rushing a bit to get things moving, and my top layer fell apart. I had to use an entire batch of icing just to "glue" it back together. Needless to say, it wasn't even close to level. Overall, it came out pretty good though, and I think it was one of my tastiest cakes to date!

On the evening of her birthday, we ventured over to our former neighbor's new home and did some kid fireworks with their daughter. We had a blast...literally! Our neighbors new home is gorgeous and we will sure miss them, especially the crazy things KT with her friend CJ. They are great kids and a lot of fun to be around. Hopefully CJ will still come around when he gets bored...Little TD loves learning scooter tricks from him!