We Love Disney!

This past week-end Stephanie, Tanek and I went to Disney for our annual birthday trip. We love Disney and we love spending time together. Several years ago Stephanie and I started having some "mother-daughter" time and have taken several trips. Now we have "mother-daughter-son-grandson" time and it is so much fun. We stayed at Port Orleans/French Quarters. We have not stayed there before and Tanek wanted to stay there because he saw the big dragon slide in the pool and thought it would be fun....and it was A LOT of fun. I love water slides and this was a nice long one and we had a great time on it. I also loved the decor of the resort. All Disney resorts are very nice. We have tried to stay at as many different ones as we can (afford) to. We love staying at the resorts as much as we love going into Disney. During the summer we choose ones that have a good pool with fun things in the pool to do. We do Disney on a very relaxed schedule. Having season passes we don't ever feel like we have to do it all in one visit. We usually take in a park for half the day then spend time at the resort, swim, eat, take a nap and then go back to one of the parks in the evening. Even when we have a "rained out" night that is ok. We just relax in the room and start out again the next day. Disney can be very stressful or you can make it relaxing. We choose to make it relaxing and it is so much fun.

This fountain was in the lobby of the hotel. They had a doorman standing at the door giving out coins to throw into the fountain.

The Landscaping is beautiful as all of Disney has beautiful landscape and it is one of my favorite parts of the trip just looking at all the beautiful flowers and plants and how they design it.

This is the back of the building heading towards the pool and rooms.

The pool

A toddler pool

The slide. Loved the slide

The streets leading to the rooms on each side.

Stephanie, Tanek and a little friend

This is just the highlight of our Disney trip. You can see why it is so easy to relax and have fun.

I love Disney and we love going into the parks. Staying at a resort gives you extra hours that you get over the general public and it really helps lighten the crowd. This week-end the crowds were light anyway and we never had to wait in long lines. We just had a nice time. Tanek is so easy to take to Disney because he likes doing whatever. (well there were a few rides he didn't particularly enjoy) but he did go on them once. We got to go on a lot of different rides this time because he finally made the height to go on them. We went on Thunder Mountain, which I love, Splash Mountain, which totally got us soaking wet, Soaring at Epcot which was so cool and a few others that were a first time for him. Tomorrow I will post some of the pictures of what we did. I just wanted to share the resort this time.

Reading Time

We are in the second week of homeschooling and it is going very well. Tanek is a easy learner. He likes to learn and he catches on quickly. He has many interests and so he doesn't mind doing all the subjects. I don't know of anything he really doesn't like. He has some very strong points and reading and spelling are two of them. He has a great imagination too. Lately he is really back into "cars". He has seen the movie so much he pretty much can act out any part of it. Today he is reading along with the story and enjoying it all over again. He keeps asking me about "Cars 2" and what do I think will be in it. We are anxiously awaiting for it to be released.
This past week has been pretty rainy and so we haven't been swimming and we have spent lots of time reading. I think reading is the key to easy learning. If you like to read and comprehend what you read it seems like things just come easy. My 2 kids were avid readers. So is their dad. I am not. I read things with lots of pictures. I am not a big reader. I do like it that my kids and grand -kids like to read though.

You can see the box of cars by him

He is big on cars, big machinery like bulldozers and tools. He wanted to put this shirt on today after his shower because his daddy was picking him up and he wanted to wear this shirt because it says "Dad's little helper" on it and has all sorts of tools on it. He does like to help.

These read along books are really nice. You listen to the CD and follow along in the book.

We have had 2 good weeks of home school and I hope it will last. He is enjoying it and so am I. Tomorrow is mommy's day and he was looking forward to that.

One of the things we are enjoying is memorization. We are working on the 23rd Psalm as well as some other verses. It is so sweet to hear his little 4 year old voice repeating the 23rd Psalm. He has learned a good bit of it already. I love the special time we are sharing during our home school time and the memories we are making together.

Puzzle time

In between swimming, dinner and waiting for his daddy to get off work to take him swimming again, Tanek and his mom were putting together a puzzle of Europe. I love how their shirts matched the puzzle so well. It was cute hearing him saying all the names of some of those little countries .
She was telling him all the names of the countries as they were putting them together. He was looking at the pieces and finding the countries.

And the finished puzzle. So many fun things to learn. I love the bright colors in this puzzle. Just makes it look fun.

Homeschool Day 2

Today we worked a little longer than usual catching up on what we didn't do on my birthday. One of the fun lessons was on The World God Created. ( I think that is the title) Anyway it was talking about how God created the world in 6 days just by speaking the word. Then one of the assignments was to go out and look at the different kind of trees and see how they were differrent and see if we could find any trees that had their arms held up praising God. And, there are lots of trees that really do look like their arms are upstretched in praise to their creator. It also ask what his favorite thing to do with a tree was. At first he said climbing them.
(He does love to climb) and then when we went out back and looked at the big oak tree with his swing in it, he decided that was the most fun thing to do. So we took some time to swing and let him enjoy the tree that God created to hold his swing. Then he came back in and drew a picture of the tree with his swing on it. The other day he wanted to get this birdhouse to paint. So we got it for one of his craft projects and he had so much fun painting it. He kept asking me if I thought the birds would like their new house. I assured him they would. He and my middle granddaughter share my love of birds and we have a great time watching them and talking about them. He especially likes the Cardinal since that was his t-ball teams name. But right now yellow is his favorite color and so he wanted to paint it yellow. We got it all painted and next time we will decorate it pretty.

He was seriously into painting this little birdhouse and it had to be just right for the birds.

We had a great 2nd day. We went to Larado's for lunch, we spent an hour swimming and then we painted . We had a very full day and he enjoyed it. He is easy to teach because he will let you know when he is "done" and when he is done , he IS done. We do a lot of fun things in between his lessons and that keeps it fun. So far he is loving it and I am too.

It's My Birthday!

In our family August is a big birthday month. My son's birthday is August 8, my daughters is August 22 and mine is in the middle August 17. Gary also has a brother who's birthday is August 8, and Heather, our daughter in law's brother's birthday is also August 8 and her grandmothers's is Aug. 6. Gary's dad''s birthday and his sister Leslie's birthday is August 17. So many of our friends have August birthday's. For many years now I have also celebrated my August birthday with Don Osteen and Austin Moody. We have also celebrated Charles Blalock's birthday on August 2, for the past 36 years I think. I have cooked him Mexican dinner every year which is easy. For my birthday they cook me all sorts of yummy dinners but he gets the same one every year. August has always been a big birthday month and it just seems to keep growing. I guess it is a popular month to be born. Anyway, today we celebrated mine. Tanek my grandson was definitely in the celebrating mood. He really brought a lot of joy because he just kept talking about my birthday. Of course he did tell me I was "really getting old". I guess to a 4 year old 66 is really old. Actually even to a 66 year old it is kinda getting up there. But....
I am so thankful for every year. It doesn't matter to me that I have grey hair and wrinkles. I would prefer not to have some of the aches and pains, but I probably have earned them all justly. Being a cancer survivor for 17 years, I don't take any days for granted anymore. Every day is special even the hard days. In the past 17 years I have been so blessed with 4 special grandchildren and the best family. It is great to be friends with your grown up children and to be proud of who they have become, who they married and who their wonderful children are. I love them all, and thank God everyday for them and for life. Today we went to Orange Park and had lunch at Applebee's which is my very favorite eating out place. We did some shopping and came home and had birthday cake. Tanek wanted to be sure we had birthday cake and he could help me blow out (3) candles. We didn't want to start a fire. And he sang a very Happy Birthday to his Nana. He wanted to add the sprinkles to the cake to make it even more special.

And a very big birthday kiss. So sweet.

The cake with the added sprinkles on it. It was very good. We all enjoyed it.

This morning first thing I had a phone call with a singing family singing Happy Birthday. That was very special. Even though they couldn't be here in person they were with me in my heart.

Love my Maryland family. Thank you everyone for all the birthday wishes. Today was a very special birthday. Didn't do anything spectacular but what we did was very special. Just being together. Got special wishes from the hubs and Stephanie and Tanek too. Thanks for all the phone calls and special wishes from friends. I feel very loved today. In just 5 days we get to celebrate Stephanie's birthday. Our big celebration will be the next week end when we make our birthday trip to Disney. Yippee!

First Day of Homeschool

Today we started our first official day of homeschooling for this year. We did lots of reading and stuff last year but this year Stephanie has chosen a whole year of curriculum that we started. Today we worked in "Skill Sharpeners Reading" Grade K. It involved phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, visual discrimination & fine motor skills. He was enjoying it so much we did more lessons than we probably should have in one day, but he was enjoying it.

We also did a lot of reading and some handwriting. And for PE we spent about an hour in the pool swimming.

It was a very good day and I felt like we had accomplished quite a bit for one day. Hope everyday will be as good. He was eager and interested in it all today. Some days it is not quite this interesting to him. It will be a challenge to keep it interesting and not boring to him.

In all these pictures he is using his left hand. Mostly he switches from hand to hand and it doesn't seem like one is any stronger than the other. He may end up using both hands. It depends on what he is doing as to what hand he favors.

The boys playing in the pool!

With the end of summer near we try to take advantage of every opportunity to swim. After church and lunch today we brought Tanek home and he and his papa went swimming. Even though we have at least another month before the temps are not "hot". a tropical storm could come along and drop a LOT of water that would make swimming not as much fun. So they went in today. Tanek was on the raft and papa was throwing him around in the water. He loves it. He doesn't care if you throw him up, in or whatever. He loves the water.

He loves to jump in too. Today it is quite hot and very humid, but the water temps have gone down about 4 or 5 degrees because of all the rain. After they got through swimming they went out to the garden to see how their peas are growing. Tanek does love to go out to the garden with his papa and check it out. He likes to help him plant and tomorrow they are going to plant some more.

Tanek & Papa playing

Play Doh

One of the things Tanek likes to do is play with Play Doh. We were trying to be a little creative today so we made lots of worms that he could write his name with.

He has a lot of different shapes and he cuts them out and we pretend they are cookies. (We do love to bake cookies) Of course these cookies we don't get to eat.

He loves to have his picture taken and likes to make different face for me.

He is at serious work here.

Play Doh will usually hold his attention for about an hour. That is pretty good for a 4 year old.

Cookie Baking Time!

Around our house we like cookies. Fresh baked cookies. Today Tanek and I made some more cookies. He loves sprinkle cookies. He loves everything about sprinkles. We had 2 different kind of sprinkles and we used them both. Getting them in the bowl is a lot of fun.

First you have to open the jar.

Then you shake them out

You dip the cookies in

And put them on the cookie sheet

And of course you are probably going to have lots of sprinkles left over and you can't use them again. So.....

You have to eat all the left overs.

Umm Umm good.

And the final project is finished. And that is a good thing. Yummy!

We had a good time baking the cookies. After they were finished we ate some while we watched the movie Cars. I think we had cookies for lunch becasue we forgot to eat lunch. After the movie we went swimming. We were able to swim in the rain for a few minutes,because that was all the rain we got. It was fun swimming in the rain though. We also did some educational things like he read to me, he worked on his "mighty mind", played with his gears. And as always he played with his cars and bulldozers. He is all boy and that is a must thing to do everyday. It was a fun summer day.