Music,music,music

We had a lovely day with friends at a kids music concert on
Tuesday.Here
and this band,Star Fish, rocked..we bought the new cd and have been listening to it
over and over.
After the show we all went for pizza and then back home.
Princess and I spent the afternoon, reading and hanging out
talking about the possibility of her taking voice lessons in the fall.
It was not something I would have considered, but my friend suggested it after
hearing her singing in the restaurant and naturally Princess heard her
and thought it was an awesome idea. ;-)
I still thinking about it.
Friends of ours called and invited Farmer Dad and Princess for a dinner/swim play date,
and the took off not long after he got home, so I had the evening to myself.
I got some reading done, hit the library, ate a salad. Princess was pretty tired when they returned
home, so it was an early night for us all. I have no pictures, because I forgot my camera!

Tuesday Book Post

Here we go, a few more of the library books we are reading right now...

First we have a few books by Jim Arnosky,




Crinkleroot's 25 More Animals
This book was too young for Princess, she expected
to get real information about each animal, it really just shows what they look like and
their name. It is a very nice book for younger children



Field Trips
Bug Hunting,Animal Tracking,Bird Watching,Shore Walking
Princess likes this one much better.The animal tracks really excited her.




Hook,Line & Seeker
Princess has been wanting to fish for as long as I can remember.
This book may have to go on our "purchase list"
It has a great deal of information on the different ways to fish and what to
fish, how to fish,where..it covers it all and we love his sketches.


A Strange Day
Jack is waiting restlessly for a letter to come with the results of
a drawing contest he has entered, while the wind howls around his house on the hill.
With tears in his eyes, he wanders around town mumbling to himself about the rejection
and hurt he feels at not only not winning, but not being contacted in any way. During his walk he
stops a baby carriage from falling into the river,blocks a soccer ball,catches a bird egg,catches a dog,
all without noticing. He arrives home as all the people he helped arrive at his house, along with the mailman who has been chasing the letter flying away with the wind just ahead of Jack all day.
Will Jack's mood turns to jubilant as he discovers he did won? Who are all the people waiting with flowers and gifts at his house. Do they know about the contest?You'll have to read it yourselves to find out.
What a strange day!



Hot Air
This is the (mostly) true story of the first hot air balloon ride which took place on September 19,1783.
Princess really enjoyed the illustrations..very bright and happy!Many important people have gathered to watch the experiment of amateur inventors, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, but pay no attention
to all of them. Look,instead,inside the basket at the balloons first brave passengers...
a duck,a rooster, and a sheep.This is their story.The illustrations paint a hillarious story of what happened
that day.You may find yourself wondering if it really happened...well yes, sort of.
The above mentioned men were real people who were considered the inventors of the hot air balloon and their
flight with barnyard animals is a matter of historical record, but the details portrayed here may or may not be true.
The author apparently heard this part of the story from a duck, who heard it from a sheep, who heard it from a rooster a long,long,time ago. We will be taking this back out in September!! And so should you. ;-)

I end this book post with an old favorite of ours...
July
The authors watercolor memories of a simpler, slower summer time 50 years ago.
When July meant being dropped off at his Grandparent's beach house (we say Shore House here)
We always enjoy this book.
Hard to believe this is the last week of July already, and the last book post of July.
I hope you have enjoyed them so far. Now turn off your computer, and go read with your kids!

I am having techie difficulties getting pics and links to work...I'll try to fix later :-(

Sunday Storms and other happenings

Sunday started out looking like a lovely day here in the Garden State.
Farmer Dad and I headed outside to do some weeding while Princess
was still sleeping. We stopped and went inside when the thunder started.
I showered and took a nap after feeding the Princess breakfast.
Then it was nice enough for Princess and Farmer Dad to get out on the swings.It got darker and darker, but didn't actually storm until the afternoon.
Wow, the thunder and lightening and wind was crazy!
Princess and I played Uno and then Farmer Dad joined us for a bit
of Trouble. We had dinner and played some more .

Did I mention our "Basketball" crab switched his shell last night?
I actually caught him "in the act" so to speak.


then he goes back into his "Man Cave" (we don't actually know he is a "he", but we all assume he is).


Tonight, he came out to see "where he had been",
then he had some fresh lettuce from the garden
a bit of fresh water, and then into his salt water bath

Here's Princess singing to the bunny...

How we spent our Saturday...

One of Farmer Dad's older brothers came over
to give him a hand finishing off our soffits in the morning.
We are almost ready for new gutters!! There is some patching
to be done where they attach to the side of the house, hopefully
that will get done soon. While the "boys" were busy, Princess
and I did some girlie stuff.
Did fake mani pedis online...
We made these...
watched this as it came in the mail today.


We won it from a magazine contest.I tried to link, but it won't (WT?)
We did not watch the whole thing, Princess grew bored with the movie
(what is the big deal..she's not THAT ugly) and the puzzle (too much blue!)
as soon as the snacks were gone.
So we went out to the porch to put the new shells we boiled for our 2 remaining
Hermit Crabs inside the crabitat. Farmer Dad and I were a bit upset that it was dead,
Princess merely said.."yeah, it smelled dead".I'm paraphrasing now..but that was the gist
of her comment.
Then we played with these..
We all watched a bit of the Yankee game and then we had burritos for dinner.
Farmer Dad also fixed the skee ball machine which has wonky hind legs from
water damage in the previous location, so they went down to enjoy that for a while
while I checked e-mails, and up-dated my blogs.You can check out what we've been harvesting here.
Oh, and Princess took these cute pics herself...

Can you feel the love?

Green Up Saturday

GREEN UP SATURDAYS

Wondering how to green up?
I am going to give you a Green Up tip every Saturday,
just because I like you. OK, and because I don't want to
have to try and find another planet to live on just because
we don't know where to start. ;-)
Are you ready?
Here is my Green Up tip of the week.

Stop the junk mail!

Check this out Do Not Mail

Let's all give it a try, and come back next week for another green tip.

Friday Wrap Up

This week just flew by...it was HOT and then the storms came, and then it cooled off a bit,
now it feels a bit muggy again to me. I spent a lot of time in my basement today,
going through boxes I did not remember packing up.Tossing, recycling, freecycling,
boxing up for the yard sale still to come and getting ready to list on Craig's List.
Then I took a ride to drop off a movie and some books that were due at the library.
Came back to make dinner, and give Princess a bath.
Now I am tired.
I did pick up a couple of light reads for myself, and I think I'll pour myself a glass
of water, and start one of them.
I also have a stack of stuff to go through for this coming school year, but it will keep.
At least for tonight.We did get some school type stuff in this week, as well as a couple of play dates
and a lot of house and yard work, although it has rained so much, and been so warm, everything
needs weeding again.Maybe I'll get my science book post done sometime soon as well.

Fruit Meme

One of the most creative homeschoolers I know,
Wendy over at Zoom Times
tagged me for this garden themed Fruit Meme.....

1 How much space do you have?
maybe a quarter acre (?)

2 What fruit do you grow?
grapes
golden and red raspberries
figs
gooseberries
cranberries
blackberries
strawberries
2 plums
3 pears
black and red cherries
red currants
In the annual garden:
cantaloupe
watermelon
In the house...
pineapple although I have never been able to get fruit

3 Which is your favorite?
FIGS!

4 What do you most want to grow, but can't?
blueberries
We are going to try it up at the community garden plot next year.

I am going to tag Kari and anyone else who wants to play!
If you want to see more of our garden, click here

Our Crabitat...

Princess and I spent a great deal of time today,
discussing and worrying about one of our little crabs.It's the one closest to us in the above picture.
I think it's dead, she thinks it's molting.
My friend, Amy Sue
gave us a bit of helpful advice to figure it out.
We are still not sure, but since the crab did not fall out
of the shell when moved, we're going with molting,
and giving it more time. We did move them into a bigger crabitat,
which makes it so much easier for me to change their food and water
every day. Princess usually does food, I do water. She tried..it spills too easy.
Here are a few pictures of the other two checking out their space..they were very cute
running around checking everything out and then greeting each other with a lot of antennae
action and then they curled up next to each other under the driftwood and went back to sleep.
We were actually under a tornado warning here in our little corner of the Garden State
last night, but although the storms were violent, we survived with no sign of damage or flooding.
Pumpkin and Alley (from left to right) waiting for the crabs to be left unattended?

Another Book Post

Here we go. It is Tuesday, so here are some of the books we are reading right now...




Benito's Dream Bottle
Benito becomes disturbed after hearing his Grandmother no longer has dreams, he begins a quest to
help her dream again.He begins by asking everyone he knows where dreams come from...then he takes her back through her memories, into a land of questions and imaginings to find the ability to dream again. Lovely illustrations and a lovely book.Princess is very into discussing her dreams, and has been since she could talk. We start every day with "would you like to hear my dream?" and often end with "help me find a dream Momma.." so this book had to come home with us.





Roar of a Snore
Reminded me of a childhood night or two in my family.The entire family was fast asleep,
except for poor Jack. He heard a noise that shook the door. Jack heard a ...snore!
Unable to sleep through the racket, Jack and his dog go searching to find who is snoring so loudly.
We love a fun-loving rhyming tale around here, this caused many a giggle, because everyone snores.
(Yes, even you!)





The Frog Prince

This Brothers Grimm tale of a spoiled princess finding her handsome prince by breaking a witch's spell has enchanted readers since it was written in the 1800s. The luscious illustrations in this version
will enchant you as well.I have only read it a time or two, because my Princess will not give it up
for me to read, she has been lost in the beautiful artwork for days.
Of course she loves that this princess has long golden curls.




Go TRACK a YAK!
Baby hasn't anything to eat, the parents don't know what to do.
A witch appears, she knows, but won't tell.The parents must promise
her her hearts desire (Princess loves this expression..uses it all the time).
The witch sends Papa on a quest..for Yak juice.
Funny book!


Charlie Cook's Favorite Book
The first illustration looks right out of our living room..with the exception of the dog.
All of the illustrations are bright and colorful and we liked them a lot.
We enjoyed this book about books very much...
now we have to go read the stories they
talked about enjoying.....

Next week I will have more and soon I will be posting some great science themed picture books.

Monday,Monday

Sometimes it just turns out that way.
Princess and I were planning on taking part in the Unplug Your Kids
Group Project today, but we forgot.Not about Mom Unplugged,
about Monday. She woke up on her bedroom floor (actually I woke her up),
and came out to the living room where she fell asleep again mid sentence.
I let her sleep a bit more. Poor little Princess.
Check out what the other participants did in honor of this week's theme
"glass". Here are some gratuitous pictures of Princess looking at books
about Milk Glass and Depression Glass with Farmer Dad.
We hope to jump back in next week when the theme will be FLAT.
See you all tomorrow for our weekly book post.

Friday play dates

Princess had a lovely time playing on her Prince's
huge pirate ship water slide while I got to enjoy
hanging out with his Mom (my friend) on Friday.
We watched a woodpecker feed it's baby in the tree
in their yard, although the parent flew off when I tried to photograph it.You will need to enlarge the picture to see the face.
I didn't even have to carry her out crying and screaming
when it was time to leave, she got her shoes on at the two minute warning
and said "OK, Momma..I'm ready now."It was not because she wasn't having
fun either, it was because she had big plans for an evening out with Farmer Dad.
I went to a "spa party" at an old friend's house and didn't even leave there until
after 11:00 pm! It was great to catch up a bit with her and her family and meet
some of her newer friends.Saturday found us staying inside while Farmer Dad worked
outside in the heat. I did get a lot of my canning jars better organized, and the laundry is done.
Princess made brownies from a box, she read all the directions herself!
We then went to a favorite antiquing spot, and spent a little bit of cash on a new (to us) lamp-
OK, the lamp was $8.00..and we really like it. We have needed more like in our living room for a while,
but just have not done anything about it.(Here it is with it's super duper energy efficient bulb in place.)
and some milk glass. The lady gave Princess a beautiful music box and a jewelry box for her vanity table.
She was delighted. She was so patient while we shopped, that we took her for a treat of fast food
for dinner! I swear it was not because I did not feel like cooking after being out in the heat.
I will have to post some pictures of some of our favorite picks..maybe tomorrow.
Farmer Dad just returned from hunting and gathering (food shopping) and I need to help (tell him
where to put everything) him put it all away.