Tyler Braveheart

Little Bear Wheeler is an incredible man. He's got an incredible story and he is an incredible person in real life.  We are going back for more this morning, so I'll add more to this later. 

It's later.

And I shouldn't have said that. 

I am overwhelmed with all the wonderful stuff I saw and learned on Friday and Saturday. I've been homeschooling forever  and you'd think maybe I would have gotten  beyond the dumb as an oyster stage. 

Evidently not. 

 These speakers are so gifted of God and speak wonderful encouraging words of wisdom. 

I'm *so* excited to listen to the CD's I got. I'm *so* excited to start putting things into practice.

  

I'm *so* exhausted.  Good night.

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The Great Smoky Mountains. Of California

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Scrap the Menu, Boys--We're Having Fish Tonight!

  Jaime--the family's best fisherperson!

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Evidence of Things in a "Before" State

Here is the quilt mess.  There are squares already cut out, the strips of handkerchief material partly cut out, the batting, the backings preshrunk and waiting for whatever is going to happen to it, and jeans ready to cut more squares if I need them.  It is a huge project and I think I'll go to the library and pretend I don't have this mess on my floor.  Making a mess is enough for one day.  Well, that and the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing here.  That in itself is nothing new, but sometimes it makes me queasier than others.

                            The double rainbow that preceeded the storm that caused all the fires.

                                                        The Front Entrance.  (Of Shame)

This is my embarrassingly weedy and unkempt bed. One of many. But it's the first one I'm tackling and I'm making some headway. I need to transplant some daylilies to balance things out and I want to mulch to keep from having to weed so much. 

I don't have a real good idea of how to make the quilt top and bottom match up in size yet, but I think that means I need to mess with the jeans top first.  And don't you just know that God planned it that way!  Sort of an "eat your vegetables before you get dessert" type thing. Not that the back is going to be a piece of cake, but well, putting off the jeans top for 10 years definitely feels like scooting the peas around on the plate hoping they disappear.  

Anyway, there are the projects and now it is up to me to find a way to continue to avoid doing them while still pretending to myself I'm making progress. No! I meant something completely different and totally responsible and full of Legacy and whatnot.  Really. It's going to happen.

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Things Don't Always Go As Planned

The wonderful lady who gives my children riding lessons called this morning at 8:30. Her ranch has been threatened by some of the fires burning in the area  and she needed some help. We love nothing more than to help, so we packed up and spent the day hauling brush from under trees, moving anything flammable to a safe place, etc. We worked hard for a couple of hours and then she served us all the most delicious soup ever and we had a lovely break and some watermelon, then we headed back out and worked until 4:30.  It's impossible to tell where each fire is when you can't even see the mountains due to the thick smoke-it's so amazing.  The last news she got was that the fire was 3-5 miles away but slowing because of firefighters giving it some attention. If it gets closer she'll move her horses, but for now things look good.  We are so blessed to have the time to be available when we were needed!  

I need to pitch a few baseballs to Jason and he plans to sleep out on the trampoline tonight. I'll try and get those pictures posted later tonight. 

Also:

Andrea is home from her road trip.  Welcome back, Sweetie Pie!

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Throttled, Choked and Shut Down

We are throttled here at the ranch.  Using too much satellite gets us choked down for 24 hours and #1 Son just got an iPod and has been downloading things to the tune of whatever it is that is over our limit. 

I'll be back to post pictures tomorrow after 5p when we will try to pretend we run with the big dogs.

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Before and After is Getting Serious!

I've gone down and gotten the backing and batting for the quilt. I thought piecing the front together was the hard work. Choosing fabric with a 15 year old boy made the sewing part seem like a vacation. Er, will make the sewing part seem like a vacation. I might be getting ahead of myself. Nevertheless, the point was that choosing the material with another person not of your same kind, was difficult.

Anyway, I kept choosing the most gorgeous materials and he kept vetoing said gorgeous choices. We finally ended up with bears and forests. 

And now the work begins in earnest. Or, we'll just talk about it some more. That's always easier and you don't have to worry about the tension. 

Pictures will be posted soon. 

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