Throwing Marshmallows

Whew. When it rains it pours! We have actually been having quite a nice spring, but today we were completely deluged with over 4 inches. A couple of weekends ago we got 5.5 inches in one day. Our new rain guage is getting quite a workout. I love the design…as the gage fills up, the blue plastic section floats up, so you can tell how much rain has fallen by how much of the blue section is extended. Which actually makes it much easier for me to get a general feel for how much rain we have gotten by looking out the window (of course it is more fun to send the boys outside to read it!)

Of course it could be worse (Fredricksburg is only 1 hour south of us…luckily it appears that most of the homeschoolers I know from the area have come through with minimal damage).

The boys really like rainy days. There is something exceptionally fun about running around outside in the pouring rain.

Or scootering outside in the pouring rain.

Especially when there is a huge puddle at the bottom of the driveway!

It does not get much better than this. And on a school day no less! Ahhhh…the simple joys of homeschooling. Letting your children splash around in the puddles during school hours….

- Stephanie

Brotherly Tolerance Cooperation

While I was catching up on my blog reading, this post over at Child’s Play reminded me that I have wanted to try to get back into doing more “Wordless Wednesday” posts. While it is not Wednesday, this challenge by Mama Podkayne seemed like a great place to start.

I was able to find two pictures…each taken by the boys (which seems appropriate).

First, one by Kyle, taken two Christmases ago…right after I had gotten my new camera. Kyle had my point and shoot and we were taking turns taking shots.

The second taken by Jason in December 2001. Hmmm…the story of my life?

 Here is hoping that I can get back in the Wordless Wednesday habit (and maybe actually post it on a Wednesday!)

Not June recently had a post, Should Boys Be Homeschooled and then followed it up today with additional comments on Girls Rule? I loved her pictures of her boys learning “in boy fashion” so I thought that I would add our own pics to the mix. Needless to say, I love homeschooling boys!

My surfer boy

Can you tell I am finally getting around to editing my pictures?

I have been chilled to the bone lately, so I figured that I could use a reminder of when I was warm! This was taken the day before we left the beach for home. It is one of my favorites from the summer. Ahhhhh….I can feel the warmth once again…

Don’t worry. I won’t complain too loudly as I don’t want my Canadian friends to get a cramp from laughing so hard. Yes, cold is relative and yes, I do consider the 30s and 40s to be cold, and yes, I am a wimp when it comes to cold.

I will say that I am really enjoying my down comforter lately. Now if I only I had a wood burning fireplace, I would be set. And I will say despite my complaining, I do love this time of year. Even with the shortened days. There is something very cozy about it. Not to mention hot chocolate tastes really good!

Don’t you just love those trees? So old and stately. There were several buildings on the property…not sure what this one was…a chicken coop maybe?

Quick Back Update: Doing better today…still have to move fairly slowly and it can be painful if I move the wrong way, but definitely better. I can actually stand upright and hope to sleep on my back tonight.

I love photographing old houses. The boys and I are in Ocean City this weekend (they are spending the night at Jack’s for his birthday) and I finally got a chance to stop and take pictures of an old house that had caught my eye all summer.

Old house have great texture and natural beauty. I got some great shots today and have been having fun editing them.

I almost did not take them because I was worried that someone might say something about me being on the property (which was right off Route 50). And believe it or not, someone did stop and ask me what I was doing! Turns out that she was the great-granddaughter of the man who built the house and happened to be driving by. She was wondering what I was doing, but was OK with me taking the pictures once I told her they were for my own personal use and I was not planning on selling them.

Her uncle was the last family member to live there and it had fallen into disrepair when his family moved out. While the property is still in their family, if they ever decided to fix it up, they would have a lot of county regulations to deal with about the land (a lot of development has since gone up around it) and it is just too expensive. She was really nice and we talked a bit about how so many of these old houses and farms are disappearing (this house is just down the road from the Walmart). One of the reasons that I really wanted to take a picture of it was because another old farm on Rt. 50 had just been knocked down this summer to make room for commercial or restaurant space. I had taken some great pictures of it a couple of years ago and had hoped to go back with my good camera and get more. Sigh.

She asked if I would be willing to send her copies of the pictures which I gladly told her that I would. So it actually turned out to be a good thing to be caught…so neat to learn a little bit about the history of the house.

The scenery in Luray was just gorgeous. Although I know that folks out west probably laugh at our “mountains”, I love our Appalachians. Beautiful. Rolling. Created when North America collided with Africa way back when. The boys got a kick out of that fact.

The Luray Singing Tower

According to the Luray Caverns website the Luray Singing Tower officially known as the Belle Brown Northcott Memorial, was erected in 1937 opposite Luray Caverns in memory of Colonel T.C. Northcott’s wife. At 117 feet in height, the Luray Singing Tower contains a carillon of 47 bells. The largest bell weighs 7,640 pounds and is six feet in diameter. The smallest weighs a mere 12 ½ pounds.

We took Skyline Drive to get home and stopped off at a glassblowers studio we happen to pass by. Unfortunately no demonstration, but there was a beautiful creek running in front of the studio.

Or maybe barely running is a better description. We have had very little rain here lately. But the rocks were still beautiful. I love their texture.

I took this picture at Hain’s Point back in April. The statue is called The Awakening and I really loved this shot of Kyle.

But what makes this picture really cool is the fact that it originally looked like:

See those annoying kids in the yellow in the background? I took them out using Photoshop Elements! How cool is that? They really ruined the picture, so I decided to try my hand with the clone tool for the first time. Basically it lets you pick a portion of the photo to copy over another…so I copied the mulch and the background buildings and tree to cover up the annoying people.

This really saved the picture, because cropping the people out would have thrown the balance completely off.

Yes, I am easily thrilled. Especially when it comes to cool things that save my photographs…

~Stephanie

When I took pictures last year at Kyle’s soccer games, they mostly turned out like this:

Hard to even see Kyle (he is in the green shorts).

Flash forward to this year and check these out:

Amazing what a good zoom will do. And the camera has a neat “action” setting that allows you to take multiple shots with one press of the button. I must have taken about 100 pictures of the game easily.

I do love my camera…

~Stephanie

January 18th

January 21st

January 22

~Stephanie

January 15th

Saw this idea on another blog and thought that it was kinda cool. What can you tell about a person from their keys?

January 17th - Gotta love that face!

~Stephanie

January 11th - Making Lava for Jason’s birthday cake

January 13th - Sammie

~Stephanie

Yesterday, I joined in on Wisteria’s fun blue challenge and promised you an answer today.

Drumroll please…..

Yes, a chair. Exciting isn’t it.

And actually the chair has a bit of history…it was my mother’s as a child and mine as a child. it has seen many, many coats of paint. We actually have two of them along with a small child’s size square table. We have them in the kitchen and the boys often have breakfast or lunch there or do crafts or it collects lots of papers and other miscellaneous stuff that we have floating around. And the chairs work as excellent step stools as well.

Thanks for playing!

~Stephanie

Over at Twice Bloomed Wisteria, she had a fun idea to combat midwinter boredom:

 Take a close up picture of some ordinary blue household object. Post it and let people guess what it is.

I’m game!

I’ll post what it is tomorrow…

Thanks to JoVe for the heads up!

~Stephanie

January 9th

Taken with my old camera…Kyle and Kaiya playing Go Fish

January 10th

~Stephanie

January 8th

Display samples of different bricks by different companies at the National Building Museum. Just thought that it was visually appealing.

 ~Stephanie

January 7th - Not much going on other trying to reorganize the boys play room! Moved the guinea pig cage so we have more room.

~Stephanie