Throwing Marshmallows

Well, Andrea assures me that adding video is as simple as clicking on the button marked V (duh!) so let’s give it a shot…again!

Update: Well, what do you know, it is that simple! I guess that I need to figure out what all those other little buttons do too…

So now you get to see a really short clip of the boys in the waves. Be sure to look out for Jason being clobbered but not missing a beat and coming up yelling back at the wave! The boy is fearless and a complete water rat.

Hmmm…this opens up a whole new world…I will have to think about what else I can tape…

I will admit up front, I am not a video person. I hate carrying a video camera around and much prefer still photos. However, I have this worry that I will regret not taking more video when the boys are grown and gone. I have lots of video from when they were younger, but probably have not taken video in the past 2 years or so (mainly because I lost the video camera for about a year and a half, but it is back now, so that is not an excuse).

I think that I may have found my solution…my old Canon point and shoot camera also allows me to take video. I tend to carry it around with me anyways and it is not as big and bulky as the video camera. It seems to record very decently. So I think that I will try playing around with it a bit.

Here is some test video that I shot of the boys in the ocean…nothing too exciting, but I’ll give it a shot…

Keep your fingers crossed that it works!

Update: Well, obviously it did not work! I cut and pasted the embed code from YouTube, but each time I save the post the code disappears. Hmmm…help anyone?

A while back I promised Not June that I would post pictures of the boys annual henna tattoos. Not wanting to be someone who goes back on her word, here they are!

Can you tell that Kyle is in that wonderful 7 year old phase where he loves to make goofy faces at the camera and Jason is in that 10 year old phase where he just tries to be so nonchalant about the whole thing.

And in case you would like a better view (so you can actually tell they are dragons):

I just realized that I forgot to take a picture of mine…a flower on my ankle. Mine never seem to last as long at the boys’ tattoos do for some reason.

Good news on the weather front! Summer has returned. Spent a glorious day at the beach today. The waves were really rough and were the tallest I have seen them all summer. The life guards pulled everyone out of the water a couple of times to warn us about rip currents. Made for very good boogie boarding and I managed not to get bent over backwards this time. The boys had fun playing with Grandpa Elms in the waves.

I got some video on my point and shoot camera. Now I just need to figure out how to upload it. I guess that means that I will actually have to make the move into figuring out YouTube.

As promised, here is a picture of Kyle sans 3 teeth (missing 2 on the top, one on the bottom right).

Still a cutie though!

Weather seems to be finally coming around today…yesterday was actually cold and overcast. We did get down to the beach though, because after being home for a couple of days, the boys really needed a place to run off a little energy. I packed my book and a sweatshirt and we met Joanna and Jack. The boys had fun playing in the sand and I had a nice afternoon actually being able to read a book (something that I don’t usually do when they are in the water). Until it got too cold.

Jack spent the night last night and the boys had a good time. I am a bit tired as they kept me up a bit later than I would have preferred. But all in good fun. Trying to clean a bit as my in-laws are coming down today. Let’s hope that it is a nice weekend for them, and for us!

It has finally gotten above 70 and tomorrow it is supposed to be in the high 80s, so hopefully we can get a bit more summer weather in before we go home.

For those of you who think that all other homeschoolers have their act together all the time and no one but you worries, check out Jackie’s post, Overwhelmed, on Life Without School.

I know here is where I’m supposed to pull out the surprise “life is great” happy ending. This is where I tell you that Gabriel did pass his test and gee, what a lesson I learned, and isn’t testing really wonderful. This is where I tell you that I bought Sequential Spelling and Clorox Colorado mix-ups are a thing of the past.

Not.

Jackie does an incredible job at capturing the worry and the struggle that goes along with this job we have undertaken. Trying to meet the needs of our children, while constantly second guessing ourselves as to whether we are doing the right thing (especially when our child’s needs may not mesh with society’s expectations). There are so many conflicting pressures out there, it can most definitely be overwhelming.

Recently someone on one of my email lists posted about how it seemed as if everyone else out there knew what they were doing all the time whereas she was scared to death that she was screwing things up. But in reality, we all are just winging it and we all have our doubts. And that is ok.

So thanks Jackie for sharing your worries with us. And you are right. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

that it is too early to leave? I still have a few weeks left and it is not time for summer to be over. The weather here has been gorgeous…crisp, clear, cool…mid-70s. My favorite kind of weather…if it is fall! But not if it is still mid-August and if I am not ready for summer to be over. This is still beach time and I need beach weather, not football weather!
I keep reading on homeschool lists how folks are starting to think about the next year. Some local schools are getting ready to start in the next week. I keep getting Land’s End and LL Bean emails that have fall clothes and all the stores seem to be full into “Back-to-School” mode.

But summer is not over! I won’t let it be. We still have not decided when to come home (we usually come home sometime in early September). I guess it depends on if summer decides to show her face again. Which I hope that she will. I am not ready to come home. I don’t want to get into our “fall schedule”.

So please, if you happen to see summer, let her know that she does not have to leave. And, yeah, I hear ya. People who get to spend the summer at the beach have no right to complain…

Thanks for letting me whine…

Andrea just loaded a bunch of new themes, so I thought that I would check some out. In general, I liked the last theme, but there were a few quirks that I did not like. Like how all the pictures were right justified and had the text wrap around them (which meant that putting in multiple pics was tricky). And how all images had a green border around them which meant that my signature was put in a box. The old theme also did not include the Throwing Marshmallows quote in the header.

Not sure if I am 100% happy with the fonts on this theme, but I will play around with some of the options and see how it works. I also really like how I can edit each post directly if I am reading it. Makes clean-up work much easier.

Hope that you like it! And thanks Andrea!

Kyle lost two teeth today! My Dad (who also has a place in Ocean City) had taken the boys to do a special Pirate Ship cruise this afternoon (which, according to them was loads of fun and included finding lost treasure, pirate grog and having water canon fights) and then headed over to his pool for a quick dip. Somehow one of Kyle’s loose teeth finally fell out (it had been getting really loose for awhile now). While he was chewing on a paper towel, the second tooth fell out!

He is very excited. I am a bit sad, as one of the teeth that fell out was his fused tooth…this was one of his first teeth to come in and it is actually 2 baby teeth fused together. I remember as it was coming in when he was around 6 months old, I thought that it was 2 teeth coming in at the same time. It looks like just one tooth has come in to take its place.

This was his second and third tooth lost naturally. The new bottom tooth has already mostly come in. He is now missing both his top front teeth. Really, really cute. No picture yet, but I will post one soon.

Kyle was wondering if because his fused tooth was actually two teeth if the tooth fairy would bring him $2 for it instead of $1…he doesn’t miss an angle does he?

Today was still hot and humid, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. The wind shifted again and, instead of being hot like yesterday, was a bit more cooling. We went kayaking in the late morning. The boys got to try out their new paddles (which worked much better). I was good and let Jason deal with his frustration in the beginning (instead of trying to help him fix it which makes him even more frustrated!) and by the end he was doing really well. Kyle likes being able to help me paddle.

We then went to the beach a bit later in the afternoon (around 2:30 or so) and stayed until after 5pm. The waves were a bit rough. Now that the water is warm enough for me to go in, I have started boogie boarding with the boys which is a lot of fun. Unfortunately I got bent over backwards by a wave in a way that a nearly 40 year old body should never be bent and had to take a breather. I thought for sure that I would be paying for it this evening, but luckily my back seems fine.

A front seems to be coming through and we are getting some much needed rain. It has cooled off nicely…in the mid 70s as opposed to the upper 80s it was last night around this time.

Ah well, I know that I can’t complain…there are much worse things than being hot and humid while at the beach!

…it is the humidity. Or so they say. Well, today it was both! We have been having a relatively mild summer so far. It was actually chilly to where I was still bringing a light sweatshirt to the beach if we were staying later even as late as the end of July. Last week it was down right gorgeous. Beautifully clear, mid-80s. Perfect.

Now this week it has been incredibly hot…yet when I check the temps, it is still mid-80s. But the humidity! Yikes! And then today it did hit the 90s and was like a sauna outside. The wind was hot. The boys had spent the night at their friend Jack’s house and they were having so much fun playing, that Joanna kept them over there for the day. Inside. Which was a good thing, I think.

We will have to see what we do tomorrow. Probably will head out the the beach. I know that the boys will want to try out their new kayak paddles. We got inflatable kayaks this past weekend (a double for me and Kyle and a single for Jason) but they only had adult sized paddles. I ordered kid sized paddles online and they came in yesterday. The boys wanted to try them out when they got home this afternoon, but it really was too hot (yes, I am a wimp). The kayaks are a blast though and perfect for the use on the canals (which you can see in the picture in the header of this blog). I think that I may be enjoying them more than the boys. Jason loves it, although he gets frustrated sometimes at not being able to go as fast as he wants, but with practice he will get it.

Hope to get around to posting more pictures soon!

Can anyone tell me how/where I can get book cover images to upload onto my blog? Is it as a simple as right clicking on the image on Amazon and then uploading it here? Or is that not allowed? Is there another way to find the images I need?

You would think that I would have figured it out by now…

Thanks!

My how the time has flown. I honestly had not planned on taking quite that long of a break. Between the VaHomeschoolers Conference, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and company joining us here at the beach I have not had a spare moment until now.

The Conference was an absolute blast and loads of fun. All the hard work really paid off this year (of course the fact that I did not have the stomach flu this time around helped too!) Our keynote speaker, Thomas Armstrong (author of In Their Own Way and many other books on learning styles) was incredible. He pulled no punches and definitely shared his views on many things. Of course it helps that I agree with about 95% of what he said! His keynote, Awakening the Genius in Every Child, was very thought-provoking and I am very glad to have gotten to hear him in person.

I presented several sessions this year, starting with an hour-long Beginning Homeschool session on Friday afternoon. It went really well and was a wonderful warm-up for the next day. On Saturday, fellow board member Celeste and I talked about the legal issues related to homeschooling in Virginia in our Navigating the Legal Waters session. I followed up with So What Do I Do On Monday? which covered the more practical aspects of homeschooling…how to decide what and how to teach, how to find support groups, how to find activities and classes, how to deal with common new homeschooler worries (including the dreaded “S” word!). This was the first time that we had split the beginning homeschool information into two sessions and I think that it helped to have the extra time. I finished up with a session on Blogging and Homeschooling, which talks about how blogs can add a new dimension to homeschooling.

I personally find talking with new homeschoolers to be such an uplifting experience! It really helps keep me in touch with the reasons that I started homeschooling in the first place. It is also rewarding to see the excitement that many new folks get when they start to realize that maybe they are not quite as crazy as they thought the might be for considering homeschooling and that they might actually be able to pull this thing off.

Often I get questions from people whose child was struggling in school and this may be the first time that anyone has not questioned their decision to homeschool their child. Or validated that it is ok for their child to have needs that could not be met by the school. That it is not necessarily that their child has the problem, but that schools are often just not set up to be able to handle the individual needs of some children…especially if they fall outside the norm. The relief on their faces is wonderful to see.

I also got to hang out with my friend and right brained learner guru Cindy which was a treat as always. And I am sure that she was glad that I did not spend the whole weekend nauseous again. We had loads of fun gabbing well into the evening and most of Sunday morning/afternoon as well!

Well, I have promised myself that I would not stay up too late, so I need to sign off. It is good to be back and I hope to get back into a more regular posting schedule. And many thanks to those who made it out to Richmond to the Conference…it was great to meet so many people that I had previously only known online!