A Wednesday

I thought doing some of the homeschooling outside would be nice.

More accurately, I just corrected their daily work outside today.

It is a very nice day out!!

No mosquitoes yet.

I finished two more little outfits today.

This little top and diaper cover is my favorite of my creations.

Did you notice the neat old chalkboard as my photo prop? Here is the story behind that little gem. This afternoon Josiah had an appointment in town. Lily and I walked him to his appointment. After the Josiah's appointment he ran on home but Lily and I made a visit to the coffee shop in town. The antique store close to the coffee shop is going out of business so Lily and I took a peek around to see what they had left. I got the chalkboard for $10.00! A reasonable price in my mind. I had seen the chalkboard there before and really wanted to buy it but at that time it was way too expensive. I bought it and Lily and I carried it home. I am VERY pleased!! Jeff bought Lily some chalk so she could draw on it. Pretty cool!!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Another Normal Day In Pictures!

It has been pretty nice out this week.

I thought I would just wander around the house today snapping pictures of 'my day'.

Today is a normal day.

Nothing special, just run-of-the-mill stuff.

Here is what run-of-the-mill looks like over here.

You know...

Just in case you woke up this morning with the though, "I wonder what run-of-the-mill looks like over at the Frye house?".

Ha! Here you go!!

Our typical daily dining room table.

FYI: Not much in the way of dining goes on at the table.

The school books, bags, balls, and other kid generated items are usually gone by the end of the school day, but if I would just move my sewing, I think dining could actually happen at the table.

An abandoned butterfly net/dance scarf baton-ish thing.

Evidence of our daily family Bible time

Our usual Thursday night meal.

Crock pot beans with chips, cheese, and salsa. I split the chips up this time to hide the evidence that I ate half the bag of the Frito's.

Darn you Frito's for being so tasty!!!

An abandoned sweatshirt by the driveway

Bikes

More bikes

and one lonely bike that was not put away.

Josiah, Joyce, and a friend taking a walk.

Yes, I might be labeled by some as that creepy, picture taking, stalker mom. Now, I will argue that it is actually not creepy and stalker-ish if I take the picture from our yard and do not switch to my long range camera lens. Wink.

Finally, our lone tulip shows it's pretty face.

Loki guarding the front porch.

There you have it.

An average run-of-the-mill day at the Frye house!

P.S. Not pictured:

A track meet that I could not attend.I heard Cyrus and Odell did great, though!

One bleeding bike wound

The unclogging of a bathroom sink

A few unhappy bedroom door slams

The washing and drying of about six loads of laundry

Water flooding the laundry room floor

One sibling helping the other sibling put self tanning lotion on

A pretty big Pill Bug

The release of a pet turtle

The capture of snails

Yes, very run-of-the-mill over here.

Hoping for another one tomorrow!!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Patchwork Primers

I was looking around on Ebay for nothing in particular and I came across these two home school unit study type books.

I was pretty curious.

I had never heard of these books and I have been around the homeschooling block about a zillion times.

I bid $15 dollars and came out the winner.

Yah!

The more I look through them the more excited I get.

Too bad the author only wrote these two volumes.

Don't they look pretty intriguing?

I might or might not get around to incorporate them into our schooling this summer.

It all depends on how organized I am, but I really want to try.

I will let you know what I think of them if I do!!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Now, This Is Awkward

Feeling somewhat antsy at the table this evening correcting the kids school.

Even more antsy looking at the stack still waiting for me.

~Sigh~

I feel the stress building.

Then I got snippy at my eldest for something I can not even remember now.

Sent her to her room.

Called her back down.

We did not need to be separated but together with some mom-daughter bonding time.

Over plates of homemade donut holes

As well as homemade French fries.

My youngest, who is never one to accept being excluded from anything that resembles a tea party, joined in despite her lack of being in the possession of a formal invitation.

She also wanted to demonstrate the proper way to drink from a tea cup.

As the three of us sit down to enjoy our special treats, my oldest realizes she is sitting in the middle.

The tea party place of honor.

This mom smiles.

I hear her say, "Now,this is awkward."

Sorry if I am still smiling.

She will be 20 in a few months and I think she still secretly enjoys sitting in the tea party place of honor.

I will stop smiling...

in a little while.

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Blood Moon 2014

Early this morning a few of the kids dug out this

so we could get a close-up look at this

It was very neat.

Warmly,

A Dragonfrye Mommy

Looking Back: The Dragonfrye News August 2005

Was life ever easier?

I can not remember.

Wait!

Let's dig out our first ever issue of our homeschool newspaper

The Dragonfrye News!

Before my blog.

When the family was less than half the size it is now.

When I still had my marbles...at least more of them than I seem to have now.

I do not think I ever yelled or got hyper back then...

Ok, I just choose to have a selective memory.

I did yell and did get very hyper.

But do not make me take off those rose colored glasses I am wearing.

~Sigh~

Life was good.

Life is good.

Good looks different at different times.

Ok and I am NOT listening to Alice Cooper as I write this blog post.

No. Not.

It is not a reflection of my mood right now.

All is good.

For the record I would be SO upset if the kids listened to Alice Cooper.

Kids, do as I say not as I am doing right now.

Some of the kids (Elena, Grant, Alan, Josh, and Joel) and I had a good time reading all of our old issues of The Dragonfrye News tonight.

They are so fun.

We Fryes are just a family of goofs...

And proud of it.

Wasn't that sweet!

Yes, we did hand The Dragonfrye News out to our family and friends.

At the time this was written Elena was 11, Grant was 10, Alan was 8, Nolan was 5, Josh was 4, Anya was 2, and Joel was not quite a year old.

We had just hit our 12 year wedding anniversary.

We had been living in Waseca 2 years.

We had just made the transition from Evergreen Community church in the cities,which had been our church home for over 19 years, to Christ Community church here in Waseca.

And the thought of adoption was just in it's infancy.

Wow!

How things have changed in these past nine years!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Another Little House Day

First we made some owls on a tree maybe like Laura and her family might have seen in the Big Woods.

why not add a few extra decorations of the Halloween kind while we are at it.

Then we made some beans with salt pork and yeast rolls

and for dessert we made vinegar pies.

Another tasty and fun day!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Some Little House Activity

I thought we would go through the Little House on the Prairie books this winter.

YouTube has the books on audio! Ya!! I do not do well reading out loud. I get distracted, antsy, out of breath, crabby. claustrophobic... so the audio books on YouTube, that is an awesome thing. I can spend more time on the fun things like...

Teaching the kids how to make jam from scratch like Ma might have.

Odell's strawberry jam

Josh's cranberry jam

The butter making crew.

Ekie, Grace, Naomi, and Anya

Joel test tasting the cranberries

Our Little House spread.

Tasty treats to eat as they listen to the first few Little House in the Big Woods chapters.

The biscuts are not like Ma would make. I took the easy way out and used the biscuts in the cans.

The butter was amazing

and so was the jam

Fun,fun day!

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy

Back to Illinois

Monday morning we had a send off pancake breakfast for Jeff's parents, Jeff's sister Sandy,and two of her boys (Noah and Bram) before they headed back home.

It actually turned out to be more of a late lunch because of our electric griddle malfunctioning.

You know how there are three laws of motion? For example law number one... "An object will stay at rest unless some force is applied to it"...

Well, there has to be some sort of the laws of daughter-in-laws list out there in which one law would be "when trying to impress the in-laws everything will go wrong."

~SIGH~

I am glad I have understanding and patient in-laws.

All the goof-ups aside, it was a very fun morning!

And great pictures to prove it!!

Ok. this is an impressive group!!

a second take...

let's see if I can name everyone

Left to right:

Grandpa Bob, Joel, Lily, Odell, Cousin Noah, Grandma Wanda, Josh, Anya, Grace, Naomi, Josiah, Elena, Jeff, Cousin Bram, Nolan, Joyce, Ekie, and Grant.

Missing: me, Aunt Sandy, Cyrus, and Alan

Warmly, A Dragonfrye Mommy