Popping By to Say Hello!

Thought I'd drop in and share a little with you today.

The Pine continues to be a crazy place--even with Bex gone! Last week I had a substitute-daughter for the week. It really helped since I'm missing Bex so much. I'll post more about that later.

Bex is in the middle of her 3rd week out of 4, working at Camp Charis in Pelham, GA (the world's best kept secret (www.Campcharis.org)). She is having a blast! Last week she was the counselor for the 5-6 grade girls and her wagon won top honors for the week. This week she is in charge of the Cadet squad. These are 7-8 graders who are kind of 1/2 campers-1/2 workers. They serve the meals, help in the kitchen, clean the bath houses, etc. My "secret contact" is cooking at camp this week, she tells me Bex's wagon is ahead in points this week too! (I taught her everything she knows! Hah!)

I didn't even get to SEE Bex last weekend because we had to go to Chiefland for my brother and sister-in-law's 25th Anniversary party. So Bex just spent the 1 extra night at camp. You can imagine that I'm having HUGE Mom-spasms this week. I keep telling my "secret contact" to give her hugs for me...I can live vicariously through her! At least I will get to see her THIS weekend...3 more days! Wahoo! She'll be home and AWAKE for a few hours Friday night while washing clothes...then will be leaving again Saturday afternoon for her last week.

So.... me and Mr. Fix-It are hanging around actually having to talk to each other (LOL!), taking care of all HER animals and watching old "Have Gun Will Travel" shows from NetFlix. If you could hear: Dun-dun Dun-dun Dun-dunnnnnnnnn-dun over and over and over and over and over....you would understand how exciting this is. But Mr. Fix-It enjoys the show and it makes me happy when he is happy. At least its a clean show and we don't have to listen to all the homosexual innuendo and language you see on the sit-coms these days...just people shooting each other. Soooo much better!

Here are a couple of pictures of a strange bird that showed up on our bird feeder last week. I've checked out the Audubon book, but can't find it... Maybe you can help!



His eyes and beak don't match any of the pictures in the book!













His feathers seem to be pretty slick too...kind of...green.








Stay tuned!

Treasure Found!!!

I bet you thought since I haven't posted in a few days that I had disappeared again!!!

Nope!

Just haven't made time to visit BloggyWorld this week.

I've been de-cluttering, running around with Bex and playing on FaceBook this week. I delivered six boxes of homeschool books and other materials to a friend. It was nice taking my "stuff" to clutter someone else's home. But if I know my friend, she will go through it, take what she can use, and have it on its way to somebody else very soon.

During the de-cluttering process, I've come upon quite a few treasures, too! Being a pack-rat isn't allll bad! Part of de-cluttering has been going through 12 years of homeschool...which includes books, papers, notebooks, supplies and all manner of "stuff." I've thrown away workbooks, assignment sheets, math papers, science papers, spelling papers, and just plain old paper-papers. I don't even remember her doing half the stuff I threw away. Looking through this stuff I'm much more confident that we did what we needed to do. That's a relief!

Through the process of throwing out, I've also come across things I treasure. Certificates from activities, math papers with mean drawings because she hated math; math papers with huge scribbles because she hated math (not such great memories of those particular days...but I smile when I remember them now!); art papers with beautiful pictures; and wonderful, creative, fully illustrated stories I will never part with. You wouldn't believe how many "I'm sorry Mommy for my attitude" notes I found! LOL!!

But one little note I found has made me laugh, smile and cry at the same time. (I wish I had a scanner so you could see it...that is so much more dramatic!) So far, this is my favorite treasure...

A letter from my sweet daughter (age 9 or 10--spelling NOT corrected):

++++++++++++++++
Dear Mommy,

Thankyou for making me a tuna sandwhich today, it was very very good!

This is a poem for you that I wrote.

I love my mom
She is so great!
She made me a sandwhich,
That I ate.

I love my mom,
She loves me too!
She cares for me
when I have the flu.

I love my mom,
she is so cool!
She takes me to Lindseys house,
to go swimming in their swimming pool!

I love you!

++++++++++++++++++++

These kind of things make everything worthwhile.



Stay Tuned!