7 Quick Takes -Vacation brain edition

~1~

Sky and I haven't been away, just the two of us, in over 5 years...So, I decided it was time we took a little trip.  It was a late anniversary celebration (19 years in June!) We rented a house with friends,  this was the view on the property....

~2~

The destination? San Juan Island.  Funny, disjointed way that we ended up there, but then again, it's totally a Jen thing... Someone online mentioned what a great time her family had on San Juan Island.  I love the thought of anything with the word "Island" on it, so I googled it, wondering where it was.  It is actually close to Seattle Washington, which is actually doable for us.  I clicked on a website for the Island, and the photo that popped up was of people kayaking with Orca Whales.

If I had a bucket list, kayaking with Orca whales would be on it, top of the list!

~3~

And yes, we did kayak and whale-watch.  Sadly, we didn't see any Orcas, but we did see two harbor seals "displaying" in the water, some heron cranes, a bald eagle, a deer resting, and some beautiful jelly fish.  We went on a tour with San Juan Outfitters- I highly recommend them.  [here's a side-story, we went across to the island by ferry and it was really late because of fog, and San Juan Outfitters waited for us, we were like 45 minutes late for our tour because of the ferry]  Click here* to see my Wordless Wednesday post with a lovely photo of our kayak trip...

~4~

Another bucket-list item?

Yes, San Juan has a zip-line.  I've wanted to zip-line ever since I visited Graceful Mom in Singapore and found out that Asia's most extreme zip-line was at Sentosa Island (where we stayed) and I didn't know it.  It's been on my wish list every since.  Some day I will go back to Singapore and do it, but this scratched an itch.  My friend Jennifer, who lives in Seattle, did the zip-line with me and took photos.  :)

~5~

We had such a lovely get-away.  We have great heart-friends in Seattle, they picked us up from the airport, hosted us for a night, and then rented a house with us on San Juan.  We stayed for two nights, 3 days.  we really loved the island, and we really want to go back.  We visited a lavender farm there, I keep joking it was on Sky's bucket list :)  We tried to brainstorm ways to open up our own lavender farm and move to the island.  Someday....we'll keep dreaming.....  San Juan island is in the rain-shadow of Mount Olympus, and gets less rain then Seattle.  I'm totally sold on it.  :)

~6~

Sky and me in front of the rental house.  It was a lovely house.

Did I mention I'd like to move to this island?

~7~

The kids ran feral and not much homeschooling happened.  It's amazing to have an almost 18 year old who can drive...my life has truly changed!  It was amazing, the girls took themselves off to their Biola classes- boy, my life looks very different from when I had 4 kids ages 7 and under!   So that is my wrap-up of my vacation.  It was truly magical and adventurous and relaxing.  And I ate whatever I wanted.

Amen.

7 Quick Takes Friday happens every week at Conversion Diary, click over to join in!

Wordless Wednesday - reflection

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

fun at C Wonder Store, now at Fashion Island

C Wonder opened its first West Coast store at Fashion Island this Summer.  Christopher Burch's colorful store has a little bit of everything, a shopper's dream, really.

Affordable luxury, bright, bold, patterns...fun...all these words describe this store.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a pre Grand-opening party.  Bloggers and shoppers had the chance to tour the store, mingle and watch the crowds lining up- all before the big reveal.  Did I say fun?

I had such a nice time talking to Kristina of Nook & Sea,  [on the left] and Susan & Jennifer from Tiny Oranges [on the right].  The shoes? Yeah, I'm going to have to go back, there is a pair of flats with my name on them....

Kristine at Nook & Sea described C Wonder "like an explosion between Kate Spade, Victoria’s Secret and J. Crew – could it really get much better than that?"  I think she hit it.

I loved all the gift items with initials on them- specially the plates, I have a thing for plates.  There were so many beautiful initialed items that would make lovely gifts.  The monogram store? -Inspired.  You can purchase a gift and have it monogrammed right in the store.  C Wonder had clothing, shoes, hand bags, fun eye-wear.   Oh, and the pet items!  Fun! Lots of fun, chunky and bright jewelry and a section with ipod and ipad accessories.  Again, the gift-giving possibilities are pretty endless here.

This is a fun store, a great mix of luxury items and affordable-luxury items.  You can shop C Wonder online or in person at Fashion Island.

*this is not a sponsored post and I was not compensated.  I just partied :)

P90X by the numbers with photo evidence

Alternate title...ouch...

But first, I guess I should get real and "out" myself a bit.  Okay, deep breath...here goes...

Here is a photo taken Spring of 2012 that changed everything.  I actually didn't realize it was me for a second.  I saw this photo and decided that something needed to be done, and-how.  I vowed to myself that this photo would be buried and deleted from memory, hidden away even from family...um, but here I am sharing it on the blawg.   I really, really love you, bloggy-friends!   (Actually, I did some soul-searching and realized I really appreciate inspirational weight loss blogs that show before and after pics)  crossing my fingers that the "no-pin" code will actually work.  Can you imagine the screams echoing if i signed onto pinterest one day and saw this photo being pinned all-over??

I read good things about p90x on a forum I hang out on, and decided to go for it.  In the past when I've needed to lose weight, I've done the Jenny Craig route. But frankly, it is expensive- even though I know how to streamline it to bring the cost down (and I am a lifetime member) and I just couldn't face eating the packaged food again.

P90x is advertised as an extreme fitness program- which did scare me a bit, so I decided to take a few weeks to shape up a bit with the 30Day Shred.  I am so glad I did this.  I have done the Shred before, but never stuck with it past 2 weeks- this time around, I didn't see any significant change in my fitness level until week 3- at this point the workout became easy for me and I was able to go to a higher level.  By the end of the month, I was alternating between level 2 and 3 and some days doing two workouts.

By May 20th I had lost 4lbs and I could see a difference (129lbs).  I was already pleased at how smaller I was looking, though I was still pretty bottom-heavy.  A few weeks later,  I hit the 8lb mark and could fit (barely) into my "skinny jeans".  I was really happy, but still had to wear a loose shirt to hide the muffin top being poured into my skinny jeans caused... Hey, I admit, I am a slave to fashion sometimes...

Here are my beginning stats:  This was when I began counting calories with My Fitness Pal and I began working out with the 30Day Shred video

May 7, 2012

Weight 133.5

waist: 30″ hips: 37″

June 11, 2012 my first day with p90x

Weight 125 lbs

You can read my first post on getting serious with fitness here * Homeschool mom gets busy

Homeschool, the week that was

Well, hello bloggy friends!  Sooo, this little thing called homeschool...we had our first week last week, right after labor day.  I wouldn't be the Bridget Jones Homeschool mom if it all went swimmingly and as planned, right?  Hold on, I won't disappoint you....

I did manage to get my new My Father's World Curriculum books set up in the homeschool bookcase.  The idea is that the kids each have their own section and can put away/ find their books themselves. (they never actually ever put their books away, so we will see how this goes)  There is also a section for books on tape, which my two youngest will be assigned daily (more on that later).  The top part of the bookshelf is not so cleaned-up, nor is the homeschool closet.  }it's how I roll.....

I bet you are all wondering how it went?  How do I like My Father's World?  I love it.  I want to marry it.  I wish I had tried it years ago.  [le sigh]

...that was a sigh of deep regret for my years wasted in nomad curriculum-land....

I love the schedules.  I love that they are bound in handy/manageable book form, not in honking big binders I can't lift.  I love that everything is on one page, and that after the schedule grid-page, there are pages listed by day that have extra notes, instructions, etc.

I love that the High School schedule is written to the student.  Josie checks off as she goes and I check in with her.  <3

The first Day went swimmingly, it was more work than my two youngers are used to.  Because I was homeschooling my bonus student, I had really pulled the punches in regards to out-put of work.  Writing was really difficult for Teddy, Demi dragged his feet about it, too...so I really went light with them all. ( I never wanted Teddy to fill dumb or like he was lagging behind).  A full day with MFW's Exploration to 1850  plus our normal 3 R's  was really a stretch for Demi and Amie.  I felt bad that I haven't made this level of work normal for them.  I am glad that it will become normal for them.  We read about Leif Erickson on Day 1 and the kids had to write a a few sentences about him. People, it was a stretch to get two good sentences out of them.  Demi is starting 7th grade, his writing output needs to seriously jump up several notches.  I thought about my 7th grade History class and all the notes we took.  My teacher's teaching style was to fill up 3 large blackboards up with the lesson, which we copied into a notebook.  Not the greatest teaching style, maybe- though I am a visual learner and do really well memorizing information I hand write...it worked well for me that year- but my point was that I quickly and very neatly copied pages of notes several days a week.  My 7th grader?  I can't even imagine him pulling that off.  I've decided my solution will be to narrate together about each historical person, and then to cursive write several sentences onto a whiteboard that they will need to copy neatly.  I will increase the length of these narrations as I go, so that eventually soon their output will be where it should be.

Day 1 went off perfectly, though we were very stretched (which was Tuesday because of Labor Day) Day 2 was Wednesday and it all began to unravel on this day, in typical Jenn-fashion.  We had plans for a long-awaited beach day with our cousins.  We got a tiny bit of MFW work done, our 3 R's and then hit the beach.  Our hen Dapples injured her foot, I was able to get her in to see the vet after we got back from the beach...and there ended any further school work.  Day 3-Thursday we got the 3r's done, but no MFW for the littles, I had to attend a long orientation day with Meg and Josie for their Biola Star classes.  Friday...eh.... I'm not even sure I want to tell you what happened with Friday....you can leave that one to your imagination, but it might have involved, or not- my teens out in the wee hours tp-ing their cousins' house and my littles staying up with them to ungodly hours because I was sick and went to bed at 8, Sky goes to bed at 10 and then chaos apparently reined without mom at the helm.  I had to drag everyone out of bed around 11 on Friday  <Maybe>

Let's jump ahead and just say that on Monday (tomorrow) we will pick up with MFW and stretch out the rest of week 1.  which actually, I like the thought of, because the work load is such a stretch for the kids, this will be a nice pace.  So yeah, I like stretching it out, but I don't like that I am stretching out because I am such a loser at finishing an actual week.

Josie finished her week 1- and then some, actually.  She had to start reading Julius Caesar, and then just finished it.  Again, I love that the schedule is self-directed to the student!

So there you have it.  I love MFW, but then again, I haven't actually finished a whole week with the littles...so I will have to do a later report on our progress. But, so far, I really like what I see.  That I could follow and finish a complete day on the schedule- as written- is actually huge for me.  With other programs, I began jumping ship mid day and started skipping books, jumping days....typical mayham.

Our lives degenerated last year and this Summer into so much unproductive directionless meandering that I had to sit down and make up daily to-do lists for my kids.  Josie's and Meg's are a weekly check-list and list MFW work, basic classes, prep for their Biola classes and music practice, exercise.  They are actually really good about doing what needs to be done, but it helps them to see it listed instead of having to ask me.  Demi and Amie's are more detailed and they have two separate lists- one for daily stuff they need to take care of like 'brush teeth' and 'make bed' (sad to say, but yeah, I have to list that) and then daily lists of school work so they can see what we have to do before their school day is over.

I hate schedules, and I hate having to type these up...but I can also see that they are going to help us get so much more done.

So lovelies, it is now late o'clock on Sunday night.  My homeschool closet is not clean, but my house is and we hosted the Bible College boys over for dinner. Summer is very quiet without them.  I do have check lists for my kids all typed out and printed up.  The daily-human-living lists for Amie and Demi go into plastic sheets and then onto a clipboard so they can check them off.  My goal for my son is no longer Latin, but just to make him human.

#winning

How is back to school going for you?  Any new curriculum loves? 

**this post is linked to Homeschool Highlights in MFW at Discover Their Gifts or 2 ladybugs and a lizard "  Homeschooling with MFW or want to see what a real day is like with MFW?  Click over and read other Homeschool Highlights!

Bumps in the night

Urban farming doesn't seem to be our thing... This year, Sky has concentrated so much on his woodworking that he let the garden go to pots.  And then, there are the hens... who I love, but I don't love getting up really early in the morning to let them out of the coop.  And, even when I am up really early, I don't like having to tromp through the muddy patch in our backyard (yeah, hindsight, we put the coop in the most shady/wet area of the yard...) to let them out, and my kids don't like to do it either.  If we don't let them out, the girls holler.  Did you know that hens can holler?  Well, yes, they can!

So, since I am a farmer-failure and don't like to tromp all of 50 feet out through a muddy patch to let the hens out...we started the bad practice of not locking the hens in at night.  Hens can be pretty cool pets, in that they will put themselves to bed every night.  I figured we hadn't seen any predators around at night in the past few years, the occasional opossum seemed more interested in the fruit on trees and the garbage cans...so, I happily let them put themselves to bed each night, and let themselves out bright and early in the morning to forage like very happy/busy hens.  Win/win.

But oh, bloggy friends, I knew I might gamble and one night be very, very sorry.

I was awakened, at 3 a.m. one morning to the stuff of nightmares; chicken screams in the night.  Yeah, they can scream, too.

I bolted upright, went running, flung open the backdoor and prepared to defend my hens...and expecting to see chicken carnage.

What I found...3 hens huddle against the back screen-door, climbing on-top of  each other.  I could imagine them yelling, "let me in, let me in!"  I saw some feathers, but surprisingly no carnage.  All 3 hens were there and all were unhurt.

We checked the hen house, saw nothing- and then I spied the rather large raccoon up a tree in front of the coop.  [I think he was after the corn-feed and the hens scared him] After the hens calmed down, we picked them up and put them in the coop...no way- no how were they going to go back on their own.  They kept rushing the door, gibbering- I imagine "let me out, let me out, death stalks here!"  I felt pity on them, thought for a moment of putting them in the bathroom for the night-but then Sky suggested the garage.

I left the light on, so they wouldn't be afraid of bumps in the night.

It's what the mom in me said to do...

This story happened months and months ago and for months and months now, the hens refuse to go to bed in the coop.  They roost next to the back door on our bench, and we have to carry them, every night, to bed.

And thus ends my tale.  The moral: lock up your hens at night, trying to avoid work will bring you more work.

And

hens are big babies.

The end.

Hard Candy Summer

I hate for this place to be downer, but I could use some good thoughts and prayers.  I am going today to the hospital to say goodbye to a dear friend.  She is the mother of Meg's boyfriend.  Saturday, she was snorkeling off Catalina with Meg and boyfriend and she had some kind of event and had a heart attack.  She is about my age.  I am beyond sad, shocked, surprised.... I was convinced she would recover since she got help pretty fast.  My heart is broken for two teenaged boys who are losing their mother.  I always thought we had time to become closer friends, that the possibility was there that we might someday be inlaws. Please pray for Isaac, Luke, their father and for my friend Jennie - that she would fly away home in peace.

Here is the reference for the title of this post, a song by Dolly Parton...

Hey, maybe I’ll dye my hair *Maybe I’ll move somewhere Maybe I’ll get a car  *Maybe I’ll drive so far They’ll all lose track  *Me, I’ll bounce right back

Maybe I’ll sleep real late  *Maybe I’ll lose some weight Maybe I’ll clear my junk   *Maybe I’ll just get drunk on apple wine Me, I’ll be just

Fine and dandy Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas I’m barely getting through tomorrow But still I won’t let Sorrow bring me way down...

Homeschool 2012- 2013

Here are the picks for the 2012- 2013 school year for our homeschool, known around here as Cliffs of Insanity Day Academy and St. Jenn's School for Exceptional Teens  :)

Here is our line-up

Demi-Sky and Amie grades 7 and 5

(my bonus student has moved on to public school this year)

Studies Together:

History/ Geography/Literature/Science/Music:  My Father's World Exploration to 1850 (American History)  our 1st year with MFW!   

Oak Meadow 5 Social Studies and English (U.S. History)  as much as I love MFW I have to face the reality that I am not using it...will Oak Meadow be {the one}?  I'm thinking yes.  For A.D.D. mom, having a basic text that I can plow through and add to at will seems to be key.  We have switched over mid-year, I will report back

Bible:

Boy, Have I Got Problems!: James (Discover 4 Yourself® Inductive Bible Studies for Kids)

Science: Exploring Creation with Botany & The World of Animals with MFW

Oak Meadow 5 Science

Geography: Geography work/ States with MFW

The Complete Book of Maps and Geography, Grades 3 - 6

Geography is written into Oak Meadow

English: Shirley English 4,

Daily Warm-Ups: Language Skills Grade 4

Music:  Introduction to Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Chopin (six CD set) -scheduled with  MFW and Private piano lessons

Art: private art lessons and unit studies with Harmony Fine Arts/Sister Wendy's History of Painting-following listed artists in MFW

P.E.: daily exercise at home and weekly homeschool p.e. class (rotating sports)  (enjoyed this for 2 months, did soccer and flag-football but couldn't continue because of Demi's Lacrosse practice times)

Demi- his studies:                                                            Amie- her studies:

Math: Math-U-See Delta, then Epsilon, Horizons Math                  Math: Math-U-See Gamma, then Delta, Horizons Math

Assigned reading                  Rosetta Stone Chinese                              Assigned reading       Swim lessons twice a week

two books w/ literature guides from progeny press

lacrosse team/practice

Josie- 10th grade

Algebra II - Math-U-See                   Daily Grammar Review

History/Geography: High School World History and Literature by My Father's World

Oak Meadow World History High School course  (loved MFW but realizing this A.D.D. mom needs a program with less parts, less books to get out/coordinate.) *we have jumped in OM at 2nd semester.

Literature and Composition with Biola Star Program  (outside class twice a week)

*Jensen’s Format Writing     *Brief Wadsworth Handbook 7^th edition    *Vocabulary From Classical Roots A

*Fundamentals of Literature 2^nd Edition ~ Bob Jones University Press   *The Scarlet Pimpernel –Baroness Orczy

*The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn     *The Hobbit      *The Christmas Carol –Charles Dickens

*Little Women       *Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis

Science: High School Biology with Biola Star Program

*High School Biology Student text, Lab Manual, Test book, Quiz book  ~ Abeka books

Music: private piano lessons and Introduction to Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Chopin (six CD set) -scheduled with  MFW

P.E.: private fencing lessons       Private Art lessons for 1 semester.

Meg - 12th grade

British Literature with Biola Star Program

*British Literature 2^nd Edition  ~Bob Jones University Press          *Brief Wadsworth Handbook, 6^th Ed.

*Vocabulary From Classical Roots D             *Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

  *The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan    *Animal Farm  -George Orwell      *Northanger Abbey  -Jane Austin

High school Chemistry with Biola Star Program

*Exploring Creation with Chemistry 2^nd Edition  ~Apologia   *Exploring Creation w/ Chemistry solutions & tests book

Government-Semester1: A Noble Experiment DVD set and workbook by Zeezok Publishers

switched to Oak Meadow  high school U.S. Government

Economics-Semester2: With Biola Star Program  ( Prentice Hall Economics textbook)              

Math: Geometry by Math-U-See

Russisan  Russian level 2 -Rosetta Stone. The Everything Learning Russian Book with CD: Speak, write, and understand Russian in no time! (Everything: Language and Literature) (second half of book)

P.E. equestrian cattle sorting/riding/exercising         Music: private violin studies