March 23rd

First of all, today is March 23rd!  Happy anniversary of my first date to us!  We celebrate this every year instead of our wedding anniversary since that's in November and everything is crazy with the holidays.

Let me catch you up on the days I didn't post.  Monday I counted the tithe at church and brought it to the bank.  That took all day.  Then I came home to check Kara's school work, cook and clean up.

Tuesday the other church woman canceled with me, so I had a free day.  I did school with Kara - well, I sat with her for her three tests (she needs me to yell at her and say "do your test!" when she gets side tracked, lol) - then left her to do more school on her own and went to the grocery store.  Aldi has the best prices.  Then I made lunch to eat in the car so we could see our friends who have been sick for forever.  We missed them so much!  After that I made dinner and cleaned it up and worked on Kara's school/homework with her.  This year I'm finding I want to do her science and history with her.  (I remember her math and english from when I was in school.  Although I'm reading her english novels with her.)

Wednesday started with horse lessons:

Kara rode this new horse, Pedro.  He is absolutely gorgeous!  This is my favorite coloring on a horse. He is a little tougher to ride - his trot is exceptionally bumpy, his canter is slow but extremely bumpy (mostly because he's so big), and he is hard to steer because he doesn't like walking along the edge of the fence like he is supposed to.  Kara has graduated up to him.  She did really well!  She noticed a big difference with him, but knew what to do to get him under control.

Then the strangest thing ever happened.  At the end of the lesson, during the cool down, the horse gets to stretch his neck and walk slowly.  All of a sudden, he lowered his head really slowly.  Then lowered his legs slowly.  He was laying down with Kara on his back!  We yelled for Kara to jump off so her leg (or worse) didn't get crushed, so she was completely safe.  Then he rolled on his back.  He was exhausted!  The instructor was mortified!  She said she was so sorry and had never seen a horse do that ever!  The horse did it very slowly and it wasn't violent and Kara was okay, so I wasn't mad at all.  But it was the weirdest thing!

Then we picked Emma up for a cooking lesson.  Today's main objective:  learn the food processor:

Here they are making pudding.  We made an oreo dessert
with pudding.  The oreos were crushed in the food processor.

We also made salad and salsa.  Emma
loved it!  We just kept trying more and
more things.  It was great!

After I took Emma home, we ate dinner with the salad we made, then I worked on laundry.

Today is Thursday.  I'm pretty sure I will be doing school with Kara, and that's it!  No cooking dinner since it's our anniversary.  I'm sure we will go to our favorite BBQ restaurant, even though we just had it Saturday.  :-)

Here are some other fun things:

Great verses in two different versions.  We all know the first two verses, but keep reading.  Good stuff.

Nourishing my bones.  I love that.

I love these from Lamentations.  I haven't read Lamentations very much, but during a lesson on God's faithfulness, these verses came up.  I just think they are amazing.

It has been very warm here, just like everywhere.  So, Kara and I set up shop in the woods for about an hour.  This is her favorite log.  She texts from there, reads there, and gets lost in thought there.  You can see the house from there, but you can't see there from the house.  (I set up a chair to sit in.  I'm too old for a log for an hour.)

The kitties came with us.  They normally do go with her.

Some greenery is coming back in the woods:

But our big oaks don't have leaves yet.  Other trees around do, but not the oaks.  The tree pollen is incredibly high right now, so I'm thinking it won't be much longer.

Winters are so lovely here.  There are a few days here and there that are cold enough for us to cozy up with a blanket and read by the fire.  Most days are comfortably 50-65 - light jacket and closed toe shoes.  As many cold, fireplace days as we have, we have the same amount of days over 70 when we are in shorts.  So lovely.  It makes up for the crazy long summer!

Well, time to get started with school with Kara!  Have a great Thursday.