Pictures...finally

My husband heard my technological cries and set up a computer for me in our bedroom.  Yeah!   The best part is that all of his pictures are uploaded on it, and since most of the pictures I have been using lately come from his phone, I am pretty excited to see what I can use.

I think for tonight I will show you our property.

 One of the best things with our property is that the county came through some time ago and put in a brand new, concrete bridge over the Chumstick Creek.  This bridge will be around for a long, long time.

 A road cuts through the middle of the property.  Once we get everything cleaned up, we will most likely sow grass seed and cover the road up.  We won't need it to extend the whole length of the property.  We are buying my mother in law's two parcels.  The first parcel is 3.71 acres.  Most of that acreage extends up a mountain side, what isn't vertical is this road, and then there is a portion that contains a flat area and fruit trees.

 This flat are is where we are going to put our garden.  A friend came over with his tractor and tilled up the soil.    I have measured the garden out and it will be a nice size, not too big and not too small.

Besides piles of tires, metal, and garbage, there is a lot of old wood piled up left over from years and years of cutting firewood on the property and leaving all of the leftovers.  This particular burn pile is positioned at the foot of the hill where we plan to build our house.  Tomorrow Todd and the boys will work on the property gathering some more firewood for a friend in our church.  I hope to head over there and see what everything looks like.

Ahh......it feels nice to blog again.

PS..if you want to see Bonnie's play go to YouTube and search Sure Thing 11 09 13 Cascade High School and Soap Opera 11 09 13 Cascade High School.  Those are the two sketches Bonnie was in.  You might also watch Arabian Nights, Murder at M...(I forget the name), Philadelphia, and Leon Trostky.

Pathetic

This blog is pretty pathetic. I just read my friend's,Sue, blog, and now I have blog envy. Seriously! She is so faithful at posting everyday and including pictures too. I think my problem is technology. Brian has taken over the net book and our main computer is on the fritz so I am left with my iPad which is great for reading everyone's blogs but not so fun to type on. I also haven't figured out how to post pictures that I have stored on my iPad to my blog.  Sigh....

Bonnie's play, Absurdities, is this week.  Tonight the boys and I man the ticket and concessions tables.  Bryce made snicker doodles and oatmeal cookies for concessions and I am baking them.  Thankfully a few other moms are helping me make goodies. Bonnie also registered for her winter quarter. She is going to take pre-calculus, study skills, and Pilates and yoga for P.E.  She still has her AP History class at the high school.

Todd has been busy burning all of the brush on the property.  It is really looking great out there.  He took a truck load of scrap metal off the property and got a hundred dollars for it!  We still have another truck load to take. Yeah, more money.

Sorry for my pathetic blog.  It is all I have got.

Veterans Day

It is so nice to have a break. I can't tell you how nice today has been. It has literally been months since I have had a relaxing day. Usually, if I get a free morning my time is spent in the kitchen baking, filling up my pantry or bread basket. Today, I spent my free time cleaning, grinding wheat with my new food mill, vacuuming and laundry. I know it doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but I can look at my house and feel like I have accomplished something. Todd and the boys went out to the property to work on the fire wood some more, while Bonnie worked on her college papers. She is preparing for her finals which are in four weeks. Right now, Bonnie is performing in the high school play, Absurdities. Absurdities is a series of six hilarious sketches that her director put together. The humor of the sketches reminds me of Monty Python. The kids are doing an excellent job and Bonnie is having a lot of fun. Sadly, Bonnie decided that she will not be participating in the spring musical, Oklahoma. It is more important for her to keep her GPA up and the college course load is more than what she expected. In addition, we need her to take driver's ed this winter/spring so that she can drive herself to the community college. Our Monday night Bible study will be starting in a couple of hours so I need to focus on getting ready for that. Fortunately, I have the snack all ready prepared- frosted apple squares...yum!

Distinguished Young Women

Bonnie stayed home from college today to attend an informational meeting on trying out for Leavenworth's Distinguished Young Woman.  I have to give that girl kudos.  She is not afraid to try anything, and she has high aspirations.  I don't know if she will get very far with DYW.  Having not lived here all of her life and having only been a full time student at the high school for one year gives her a big disadvantage.  On the plus side she is a honor student and active in the drama club.  Everyone knows her, and she is well respected and liked by her teachers, so who knows.  We won't deny her the opportunity to have her shot at the title.

Frustrations with wava

They are hanging up Christmas lights in Leavenworth.  Guess that means the holidays are around the corner.  Some of my fb friends in Tn. Said they were on fall break.  This school year I could really use a break.  I'm fried!

Just when we thought we had Brian's school all figured out the teachers, ahem,...one teacher,screwed everything up.  Ugh!  I really don't like my sons English teacher.  My first beef is how she labels her lessons.  Every teacher has a calendar on their class web page with the daily assignments listed.  You find out what your assignment is for that day on the class calendar, find it on the sidebar, click on it, and do the assignment.  This teacher labels the assignments one way on her calendar, I.e. lesson 5 direct objects, but labels them differently on the side bar, I.e. day 33.  I never know what day we are on so we have to go hunting and searching through the days until we can match up the right lesson.  Valuable time is wasted.  I finally got smart and staring tracking our school days on the calendar.  Another beef is she gave out a writing  assignment and told the students that they could not write their rough drafts until she returned their planning papers, but then she couldn't return their planning papers on time due to some conflict and delayed the assignment for a week, then after the week told everyone that whether or not they got their planning papers returned to go ahead and write their rough draft since the rough draft and final draft was late.  Brian went ahead and wrote his paper and submitted it as a rough draft and final draft.  The bad part is it messed up his schedule and he had to do a lot of doubling up in English.  The latest frustration has been this week.  Every teacher conducts a live class that the students are required to attend.  The English class was scheduled for Friday noon but there have been a lot of conflicts so she rescheduled to have the class on Mondays at noon.  That means Brian has a 10, 12, & 2 o'clock class on Monday.  Somehow though the new scheduled erased the link to his 10 o'clock class which means he had to listen to a recording and make up the class later this week.  The teacher also told her class not to take their test that was scheduled for Monday until after they had sat through her class.  Too late....Brian had already taken the test.  Ugh!  To make a 12 o'clock class we have to close the church early so we can rush home and log onto the computer to sign into the class on time.  Fifteen minutes after class started she informed the students that the lesson for the day was test review and if you had taken the test to sign out.  Ugh!  She also informed the students that she was going to have another live class on Tuesday.  Again, that means Brian would have three classes back to back.  Ugh.  Ugh!
Despite all the live class sessions the teachers are still requiring daily work to be done.  We have had some long drawn out days this week and I am tired.

On the positive side Brian is doing much better at doing the work.

Things

It is hard to believe that October is halfway over.   This weekend the boys and I are helping the Boy Scouts sell pretzels at Leavenworth's Oktoberfest.  This is one festival I could do without.  My Baptist, legalist, Christian background wants nothing to do with a drunken party.  You won't ever find me in a bar nor working in one, so placing myself and my kids in the midst of a giant, beer-centered festival has been something of a moral dilemma for me.  The festival is advertised as a family-fun event.  Granted we are not in the beer tent but in the vendor area outside of it.  However, 99% of the people coming to our booth are carrying their stein and sloshing their beer around.  The one positive is that both of my boys have stated that they want nothing to do with that lifestyle.  (Just a side note- drinking alcohol is not a sin.  Drunkenness is.  Being controlled by any substance is wrong.  I understand that. So having a beer or drinking a glass of wine is ok.  On the other hand, festivals like Oktoberfest seem to promote drinking to excess and letting all of your inhibitions down, making you vulnerable.)

On the positive side, we are getting the property cleaned up.  My mother-in-law and I have been thinning out our perennials and re-planting them at the property.  Todd mowed down our garden patch and a neighbor has agreed to come out on Monday to till up the soil so that the soil will be that much closer to being ready for next year's garden.  Todd has removed two more truckloads of junk and has had multiple bonfires to get rid of the wood debris.  My dehydrator is full of apples that Todd picked off one of the apple trees.  I hope to pick some more this afternoon.

Also, school is going much better.  We only had one blow-up session this week.  Ask Brian to evaluate and write about the how and why's of a topic and you might as well ask him to fly to the moon.  However, he is getting better at it.  For the most part, he is finishing up his school work by noon and his grades are improving.  BTW according to the Washington state grade school, you have to have a 60% to pass a class.  That is a C in their grade book.  In my school, that was a failing grade.  You had to have a 75% to pass.

It's missions conference here.  We have a great group of missionaries here this year.  We have Chuck Befus staying with us.  He is up at our property chopping firewood right now because he wanted to something to do.  Gotta love that.  I am sure I would get pretty stir crazy if I was traveling all over the  states and couldn't do something physical.

Last night our missionary couples went out to eat in town on a date.  The MKs stayed with us and then we took them to town to get frozen yogurt.  The Kilgos have four children ages 15, 13, 10 and 7.  The kids are all in to playing minecraft on their iPods and iPads.  Everyone was squished on the couches playing each other.  Good times!

Today, Todd took everyone on a hike up near Lake Wenatchee.  The fall colors are spectacular right now.  I wish I could have gone but someone had to pick Bonnie up from college.