Recently...

Long time no see. I have been scarce for a good reason. Lately, I have been having to share my computer with an almost 9 year old. Summer has taken up a pass time of hanging out in the the online virtual worlds. Since her discovery of virtual worlds and an e-mail address her written communication skills have improved significantly...much more than it ever would have if "mommy" were sitting down playing "teacher" and force feeding her junk knowledge.

Since I don't run a homeschool blog, I'll spare you the details of her progressive learning experiences through unschooling and move on with what's been going on in our life since my last post.

Hmmm....it's hard to remember what goes on from day to day looking behind you.

Lets see, a couple of weeks ago Summer and I planted potatoes and went on a hike in new territory with a new friend, Robin. Robin is a part of our 4-H group. Although we have just recently started to develop a friendship I have known her "face" since the first year we moved here. Robin is also one of those many people I have met in Austin that I feel like I have known before. If there is a such thing as reincarnation I'm sure that I must have lived a life in Texas before...

Last week, Toby and I met up with Ginny. Anybody that keeps up with my blog knows who Ginny is. The words I would use to describe Ginny are fun and caregiving. She is the one person in Austin I can say for sure would be there for us in an emergency no matter what was going on in her life.

We met up with Ginny at our usual meeting place catching up on gossip and basking in the sun over lunch. After we had our lunch and our signature alcoholic beverages we tagged along with her to Cosco. Toby and I are not warehouse type folks but we figured it wouldn't hurt to check the place out.

It's a good thing we did because we picked up a really cool "toy" It's called a Relaxation Station. So you can get the general idea here it is. We weren't ready for a big boat, but we wanted something we could launch into the lake that felt "boatish". It was exactly what we were looking for so we snagged it up. Keep your eye out for our first adventure on the floating device.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful this week so we have tried to take advantage of every outdoor activity. On Wednesday we ventured to Granger Lake. We have still been searching for camping spots. We like to have a few favorites.

We had actually planned on camping this week, but luckily rain had been fore casted (it never did rain)so we postponed it until next week. We had forgotten that spring break was in session for this week and next week. The campgrounds were booked solid. We would have been SOL if we had packed up everything and headed to the campgrounds like we had planned. Thank goodness for bad forecasts. :-)

Here are a couple of pics of us on the "beach" at Granger. Summer has an obsession with rocks..here she couldn't stop herself from rolling and laying in them...



I guess they must be inspecting a rock....



Taking advantage again of the weather, we had our weekly playdate on Friday. We decided to meet at Walnut Creek Park because we wanted to hike the trail along the creek. Mind you, when you have 4 kids tagging along it's more like creeping than hiking but we still had a good time stopping to look for fossils and inspect flowers and trees.

I haven't been using my camera as much as I would like to lately, but I did manage to get some pretty good pics of the kids while we were on the trails....




Speaking of pics, I have been uploading some of my favorite pics in deviantART. If your interested in checking them out click here. I am slowly adding new ones so check back periodically for additions.

Well, I guess that's about all the latest gossip...