Thank you all for your kind birthday wishes for Princess. Her birthday party was so much fun for everyone. I realized how much I rely on the Lizard King. There were so many things that he would have thought of that I forgot. I miss him so very much.

I know I have been very absent from posting here and reading the blogs I regularly read and for that I am sorry. I am dealing with a lot of overwhelming emotions. I hope you can understand.

Looking at my Google reader I have 68 posts to catch up on. The thought is overwhelming, but I hate to miss any posts. I may have to this time. We'll see.

I know that today won't be the day and we leave for Jamaica on Tuesday. I may come back to a couple hundred posts.

Thank you all for hanging in there with me. I will be back to my old self one of these days.

6

At 10:53am today, Princess turned 6! I can hardly believe that 6 years have gone by and that this very grown up little girl is sitting right in front of me. She is such a beautiful combination of the Lizard King and me. We are truly blessed to have such a special person as our daughter. We learn more and more from her each and every day. She has changed our lives more than we could ever imagine.

This is the first (and only) birthday that LK has missed. This is a hard time for all of us. He and I were just emailing about Princess' birth day and LK said that it was a great day. I responded that it was life changing. (Well, duh!) LK then said, "I sometimes wonder where we would be had she not come along. Not just physically, but emotionally. She definitely did complete the family." I responded, "She certainly did... Life would be so very different without her. I truly believe that we would still be together and happy and in love, but we would not have grown into the people we are now had she not come into our lives."

Happy Birthday, Princess! Daddy and I love you more than we could even begin to say.

Did I mention Jamaica & Afghanistan?

On September 22nd we are joining our friends as they renew their wedding vows in Jamaica. The Lizard King was just home for a visit about 2 and a half weeks ago. The plan was that he would meet us in Atlanta and we would fly together to Jamaica. We were all looking forward to spending a whole week together.

The Lizard King emailed me on Monday with bad news, ugly news and good news.

The bad news: he was leaving for Afghanistan in a week. Yes, my bloggy friends. They need LK's expertise in Afghanistan. They asked him to go over. It will be a shorter trip and he assures me that he will be safe.

The ugly news: he will not be able to go to Jamaica with us.

The good news: he is spending a long weekend with us.

He arrived yesterday evening.

Right now I am trying to focus on the "I get to spend time with my husband" part. I'll think about the Jamaica vacation without him later.

Wardrobe Wednesday

Oregon rain is on it's way. I love this time of year.

We live about six blocks from Village Home (our homeschool school) and we don't have activities that we have to drive to after we're done classes. Won't it be great to walk there and back?!

Of course we'll need some good rain wear if we're going to stay dry and there is no way we're carrying an umbrella. As if!

So I had this brilliant idea. Princess and I should get matching rain wear. Of course this was easier said than done. Can you believe they don't make Hello Kitty rain coats for adults?! They don't even make pink rain coats for adults. Sheesh!

I settled on matching (sort of) rain boots. And yes, they are both Hello Kitty!! I had to order mine because they didn't have them in the store, but they should be here soon. Yippee!!

My boots:

Princess' boots:

How cute will we be?! I love it!!

Perhaps by next week I can post a WW photo of the two of us all decked out in our new gear.

Want to join in on the Wardrobe Wednesday fun? Just click the Wardrobe Wednesday badge on the side bar to get the low down.

Monday Gardening Club

It's been a while since I posted for the Monday Gardening Club. I have learned a few things this year about gardening. My yard has a lot of shade trees and although the things I planted grew like crazy, they didn't produce like crazy.

I have four huge tomato plants. This is my first harvest. There are a few more that will be ready today.

I have 8 squash plants and have harvested...hmmm, maybe a dozen or so squash. I have 4 jalapenos and may have harvested 10 so far, but there are more growing. I've got a few peppers growing, but I'm still waiting for them to finish and ripen. Lettuce did well, but it's done now. Chard did well and it's still growing strong.

Next year, if we're still in this house, I need to rethink what we plant. This has been a great first garden and learning experience. If the Lizard King was here, I would probably try a winter garden. Perhaps another winter.

Telling Time

I am a total book addict. A few times each year Scholastic Books has a warehouse sale. I am sure to go to each and every one. The most recent sale was last week. Princess and I had just been to the last warehouse sale only in mid-June, but yes, we simply had to go to the August sale.

We left with a box full of books. Almost all of them are for Princess to read to me. They are all books she selected herself and she is so excited to read them to me.

One bonus find was the Talking Clever Clock, a fun way to learn to tell time. I had no idea what it sold for. We paid the bargain price of $17.50, half the price marked on the box and less than half the price on Amazon! What a deal!

Spider Lapbook

Our spider studies have come to a close. As has become our new custom with studies like this, we finish with a lapbook.

I found a lot of the mini books here, just page down the list to spiders. Enchanted Learning has some of the pieces we used, too. SpiderRoom.info has a wealth of information and great pictures. Be sure to turn your sound down. The animated spiders talk.

I have to say that finding resources for this lapbook was the hardest so far. We did have lots of spiders around the house and yard we observed which is always a great bonus in a lesson.

Princess decided on a colorful spider for the cover.

Since she is just learning to write, Princess isn't comfortable writing long answers. Here we found the definition and pasted the answers with the vocabulary words.

For shorter answers she is happy to write.

She really likes to make the number 8!

Princess enjoyed answering the questions at the end of this mini book.

Here she wrote the short words and I wrote the long ones.

These are spider defenses and offenses.

Here Princess labeled the parts of a spider.

Who doesn't love a little poetry?

Sorry for the sideways photo. Blogger is acting funky.

Anyway, here we have spider life cycle cards.

These were my biggest challenge by far.

I finally took the life cycle from SpiderRoom.info and

made them into sorting cards.

Sorry for the funky photos. I think maybe I need to wipe my lens. ;P

One Man, Trying to Make a Difference

Facebook is a pretty cool tool. It has connected me with friends from 3000 miles away in my home state. I'm a Philadelphia girl, well, suburbs anyway. I lived there most of my life, but I haven't been back in a long time.

Today a friend who I have known since I was about 4, friended me. His name to me is Danny, even if he goes by Dan now. I went to check out his profile and see what was happening in his world. What I found was a big surprise.

You see, I find it so bizarre to find that my childhood friends have become grown-ups. Of course they were adults when I left at age 30, but somehow now they/we have become grown-ups. Weird!

This one friend, in particular, is really stepping up. His home town of Yardley had been repeatedly hit with floods. Within an 18 month period the town was hit 3 times.

His personal experience has been the inspiration for Each One for US All, a non-profit corporation in the making. The logo and website are being designed. The paper work to form the non-profit are in the works. From what I understand, this is a daunting task.

I encourage you to go and read Danny's blog. I will post a link to the website when it is complete. It is certainly a worthy cause.