Patio

This weekend we decided to finish our patio. This is not a true before picture, but it's when I got the idea to take a few pictures. We had to take out part of the old patio, lay down rock, level it out, and lay sand.
My hard workin' man.

Vic let me lay most of the bricks, which I thought was pretty cool. I asked him if he wanted to do that part, and he said, "no, that's the fun part, you should get to do it".

The almost finished product, it still needs the border and some clean up. Now the patio extends to both ends of the house.

Company Car

After waiting 5 months for what the company said would take 2, Vic finally got his truck today. It's nice! Compared to his old crappy truck, it's small, comfortable, shiny, NEW!

More on first day

I just wanted to add to the post in response to everyone's comments. First of all, she is beautiful, and I never tire of hearing it. It amazes me almost every time I look at her. Also, it really wasn't hard to let her go. We've had a tough year and I was glad for the break. And I was glad that she took her life into her own hands to make a change when I couldn't do it for her. It was necessary and timely, so I was glad. She is brave. Even when she was scared and crying she never said she didn't want to go. She's very unlike me in that way. Her side swept bangs came from being friends with a 13 year old who helps her keep up with trends. She also picked out her own clothes. She and I have such different tastes that I never dare buy anything for her. I took her to Goodwill and she picked out a few new things for school. She is her own person and I'm proud of her and happy I get to be a witness of her life.

First Day

So today was Taryn's first day of full time school. She had thought about it all summer and decided that this was what she wanted to do this year. It's obviously not what I would have chosen for her, but I felt like she was old enough that she knew what she was getting into. I told her that the reason we homeschool is so that she can be in charge of her own education and if this is what she chooses, she's still in charge. The more excited she became, the more I became excited for her. I started looking forward to not policing fighting kids all day and allowing her to have a new challenge. She's been a little bored since our unschooling experiment, and I think she wanted something more. We agreed that she would commit to going until Christmas break, and then we'd re-evaluate.

She is in the 5th grade this year. She's in a class with 2 teachers who split the day between them. Taryn has always responded better to male teachers, so I was glad that one of her teachers is a man. Taryn says he's old and she expected him to have more hair.

Last night she was so nervous about going. She says, "all the other kids know what it's like, I've never done this before." All I could say was that's true, and it's ok to be scared. This morning she woke up earlier than she needed to and was so excited to go she left for the bus 15 minutes early.

She didn't want me to pick her up at the bus stop like the other mom's do, so I waited at the front door. She met me with big smiles and said "that was so fun!".

I loved hearing about her day. She is so much more independent. She's brave and excited about life. I'm excited for her this year and I hope it continues to be fun for her.

Fun with Nature

A little over a week ago the kids found a small green caterpillar on Vic's broken bird house. We looked it up in our new handy dandy Fun with Nature book and discovered it is a cabbage butterfly caterpillar. It sooned formed a crysalis and then we thought it had died. Today they caught another frog and went to put it in the habitat and found the "hatched" cabbage butterfly!
It was really a spontaneous fun event.
These pictures are blury but you get the idea.

You can see the crysalis on this piece of wood. It's that little tiny splotch on the right side.

It's not great visual documentation but it was such a surprise that I wanted to share!

Kids camping trip

Northwest Trek

Yesterday we went to Northwest Trek with our neighbors. I've been there 3 times, and this was by far the most interesting. We were able to see so many animals, and also some new baby animals too.
On the tram the cariboo and deer were so close to the cars! It was really incredible.

We saw three sets of deer with baby fawns.

I didn't get a great picture, but my favorite thing we saw were these baby racoons! You can't even believe how cute they were.

It was a really fun day!