4/15/13 written Saturday 4.6.13 tent..

We got a tent. It should sleep four. We bought it from Craig's List. The girls went with me to buy it.  The tent was never used outside. The family had put it together in their living room and then moved and left it with relatives. We brought it home and started to put it together. The directions said to put it together at home before trying to put it together at a campsite. It is a four person, summer tent. We put it up in the living room. The directions were in the carrying bag, and we took turns reading them. There were four poles, each one held together by a bungee cord inside the poles. There were also some extra pole pieces. The first two poles went in easily. We could figure out where they should be placed, the last two poles took more time put on the tent. The tent has a tent and a rain cover. It took a long time to figure which way the cover went. We kept flipping it over and turning it around. The confusion is that the tent has two doors and the cover has one door. When we got it together, the door on the cover was not matched with either door on the tent. It is OK. We can still get into the tent, it just made it confusing putting it together. We had the cat in the tent for a while. She is not sure if she likes the tent. We will need a bigger tent. A four person tent will hold four people, but there is no room for any gear. We can look for a six or eight person tent. We had diner in the tent and set up the VCR outside of the tent to watch movies. We want to go camping as soon as it is warmer at night. The kids are excited about camping. We have the tent still set up in the living room. We will need to take it down on Sunday... since we have school the next day. We are not sure which campsite to try first.

4/14/13 written Thursday 4.4.13 tents...

I called on tents from Craig's list today. We are going to see one tent on Friday. I am very excited. I also called two camp sites to get some information. When we go to look at the tent, am going to ask that it be set up for us so that we can see that all of the pieces are there. We are really excited about camping. We have started to talk about what activities we want to do while we are there, what food we should take...everyone is excited and is adding into the conversation. This has been a good way to pull us all together as a family. Hopefully the tent that we see on Friday will be a good choice for us. We want to wait until it is a little warmer before we go tenting, but we are having fun making plans.

4-13-13 written Tuesday 4.2.13 Easter...

We had a fun Easter. The kids wanted to decorate eggs. I am never sure which holidays that they will want to be a part of, since they are older. We got some Easter egg die and all four of us colored eggs. William did one egg and said that he was done. The girls and I did the rest of them. The kids decorated the eggs, then with the left over paint, the girls decorated the newspaper on the table, then they said that they were going to decorate their hands...so I took the paint away.

Easter is my favorite holiday. It is when Jesus took all of our sins and washed us clean. I know that we are forgiven any time that we ask, but there is something special about someone coming forward for us. It is like the eggs being all cleaned and ready to take their new designs. Happy late Easter everyone.

4/12/13 written Saturday 3.23.13 tents...

We tried to put up the tent today. We would like to go tenting this year. We started to set it up in the living room. We are missing some of the support poles. We have been storing it in the garage. Some of the poles must have fallen out of the box. We used it a few years ago at a relatives house. It was a disappointment.

3/27/13 written Thursday 3.14.13 school project...

Maggie did a cool project at school yesterday. They are studying addictions. The kids had to write a different good trait of theirs on three sheets of paper. On three more sheets of paper they wrote the names of three friends. They wrote three activities that they are in and three of their favorite possessions. The teacher said to pretend that they had made a bad choice of starting to drink. One of their friends finds out and won't be their friend any more. So the kids had to pick one of their friends listed on their papers and get rid of it. They lost one of their good traits to the drinking, so they had to pick a trait to get rid of. Then they were drinking and driving and got picked up by the police. Since they were in jail they couldn't do two of their activities, so the kids needed to throw two papers with school activities away. Then they needed to pay court costs so they had to sell two possessions, the kids chose two possessions to throw away. One more of their friends left because of all of the trouble that they were now in. Then because of all of the problems, their life and their decisions were not their own, so the kids had to go to someone else in the class and that person got to choose two of their remaining papers to get rid of. Margaret was so sad when she got telling about this activity. She said that only one bad decision was made, but she lost everything because of it. It was a really good visual assignment, I think that the memory of these pretend losses will stay with Maggie for a long time.

3/26/13 written Sunday 3/10/13 grills and learning...

We are going to get a grill and some charcole. The kids need to learn a new skill. They are in college and high school, so they are old enough.
Two summers ago we got a drill and we all learned to use it. The safety talk took a while...we had to talk about how permanent damage would be if there was an injury, and we all had to use safety glasses and ear plugs. Everyone did really well.
The year before William started using the hedge trimmers to cut the front bushes. I was really glad that he could take over that responsibility. When I cut the hedges, they always end up looking like two eye brows. William can get a neat, straight, cut.

3/25/13 written Sunday 3.10.13

We need to sign William up for school for this summer. He never says how things are going, but he smiles a lot, so things must be OK. Maggie had spring break last week. Her dream for break was to go to the library and get a lot of movies and books.  She went to grandmas each day. They took Beth to school each day. Maggie had a great time.

The kids helped me clean out some of the basement. We combined boxes and sorted out things for Goodwill. The basement looks a lot better. We still have a long way to go, but this is an improvement. When I am not cleaning out the basement, I think, we should be able to get rid of a lot of things, but then when we are actually sorting, it is more difficult to do.