Friday, December 4, 2009

thanksgiving camping/hunting trip and update lol

my husband and a friend of his set up a hunting camp and spent thanksgiving day thru that sat up on top hunting. the weekend before thanksgiving all three girls helped my hubby take some stuff up on the mountain. i didnt go this time..... maybe next year (tho i have been to the top three times this fall)! cheyenne, my youngest girl, did go and hunt/camp with them.

my husband was carrying a TON of stuff. it is a 3 hour hike without carrying anything. the girls were loaded down too.

this is on the way up and at the top. the views are awesome!


camp! its not set up they are just storing the stuff til the weekend.
cheyenne (in orange) and boo

tori sitting on the rock. and boo


tori (left) and boo (right)

boo




s0, we are now in port arthur. i actually grew up in this area and have lots of family down here. not sure how long we will be here. could be a couple of weeks and could be a couple of months. but right now thats better than being in wisconsin :)

our first week here we are pretty much settling in. had our anniversary and lukes bday. been with family alot catching up. now we have snow! very unusual for this area.

today we decided, since we cant play outside (too cold), to build a ginger bread house.
my kids love doing this..... ok and i do too :)



complete! he wanted to eat it sooo bad. but i wanted his dad to see it. as soon as hubby got in luke yelled hey dad see my ginger bread house! hubby barely got out yea, and luke said can i eat it now? lol was too funny.

even the older ones enjoyed it!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

we had lukes 6th birthday party last week. since i knew we were going to be on the next job before his actual birthday, i decided to have it early. he made so many little friends in this rv park! so we had a scavenger hunt birthday party! it was so much fun. unfortunately i couldnt actually take pics of the scavenger hunt (in retrospect i should have at least took some pics of the components) but did get some of the cake making and eating lol.

he is helping me mix the cake and insisted that he crack the eggs. lol luckily i was smart enough to only have the water and oil in the bowl so i didnt lose my mix. notice the shell in the bowl! he let me do the eggs after that.


mixing

and of course tasting! boo had a birthday last week, she turned 16 woot!



cake didnt come out of the pan so well. we had to do some creative icing!

final results. we forgot to light the candles and let him blow them out. but he didnt mind.


one of the older kids holding him so he could get his birthday licks. lol

final stop on the scavenger hunt. the manager of the rv park. we made them sing, or do a dance, or something before they got their next clue. the manager made them do hop scotch.


we were able to use the rec room at the rv park to have the party in. (14 of us total, would not have been comfy in the rv lol) so this is our set up.


snacks

and cake! i had also bought a choc cake from wal mart to make sure i had enough.



thats all! he had a great time and so did we.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Nature center today

We went to the nature center today. it was a fun little place. they had leaves and stuff were imprinted in the path. luke had fun trying to find them.

they had a big spider web out where they could play on. this was really neat.

there were several little water pavilions. those are geese behind luke.



the fall colors are just beautiful!


lol he was talking to me and has such a funny expression!


that was a big snake!



Saturday, October 10, 2009

Are we ready for this adventure?

YES!

we still dont have the final word that we are going but it is very likely.... we should know in the next couple of weeks. 

we are SERIOUSLY considering renting a furnished house or apartment. so we dont have to pull the rv thru bad roads and dont have to worry about winterizing as i am just not sure we wouldnt freeze to death one night even after winterizing it. we dont want to tear up the rv.

if we do that we are gonna pull the goose neck and load the jeep, motorcycle, and two four wheelers on it. that way i dont have to drive my truck wich is a very lite two wheel drive, and i will have something to drive when we get there. the jeep is four wheel drive and i will be much more comfortable driving that. 

even if we rent an unfurnished place will be better than the rv i think. we even thought about staying home and just hubby going and staying in motel but the motel is just as expensive as anything so we might as well go too. 

i am actually looking forward to the time in wis. i think we will find lots to do and the experience will be awesome. the only draw back is that tori is now officially staying home... and we will NOT be able to come home for the holidays. we will most likely be there from just before thanksgiving til sometime in spring (april or may). so it will be hard to not be able to at least see her on the weekends when we would normally come home. i do feel better about leaving her if we take the jeep and leave my truck, just in case her truck doesnt start. she can spend the holiday with friends/church family they will love to have her as they consider her one of their kids. i dunno its a big adventure for sure, our family is changing..... and while i am not one to be mushy i really hate the thought of not sprnding Christmas with allll the family together (immediate family nt extended)

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

This is all new to me.

This will be my first blog. I am not really sure where to begin. So I will just kinda give an introduction of myself and family and an over view of our lives. 

My name is Dawn, I am a 36 year old SAHM&W. I am married to an awesome man and my bff for almost 11 years. I have 4 kids that I homeschool. ooops I keep forgetting that Tori is "graduated" she took her GED in feb and passed so she is done, til she decides if she wants to go to college or what ever. The other two girls are 15 and 14 The 15 year old is close to 16 and should be taking her GED sometime this spring. And luke who is 5.5. 

our family is crazy ...... really we are. Its hard to keep track of us because while we "live" in the oushita mountains of southeast oklahoma (beautiful http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/ac12/lovemygirlskdj/smilies/themo-EMOHA2laughing019HL.gif) we travel most of the time with hubby's job. Our home away from home is a 40 ft 2 bedroom, 4 slide fifth wheel rv. 

We LOVE traveling. There are some minus' to it but for the most part we have so much fun. We do A LOT of the local stuff when we are at a diff place. 

The first thing on our agenda when we get to a new place is to find a church to attend while we are there. This is really a lot harder than one would think lol. We try finding one that is our denomination, but there isnt always one in that area. So sometimes we end up trying several in the area and settling on the one that is most like what we are looking for. So we get into a church and they tell us the things we should see in the area that are less touristy and more true to their culture. 

We have been in New Orleans a few times and just out of Baton Rouge. We had an awesome church pastor and his wife who were true cajuns. And man could that lady cook! They invited us to several crawfish boils etc... they were good friends still are. She told us some stories about when she was young and in the swamps getting crawfish. We went on a bayou tour and fed the aligators. The kids made friends at church who invited them to their house and they had a blast on the bayou. we also seen all the devastation of hurricane rita/ike ? we have been to this area several times so was interesting to see before and after. Kids learned a lot.

We were in Midland TX just before Luke was born and went over to the Carls Bad Caverns. And seen a crater from a mereorite (i think...the kids member better than i do lol). and our first true horn toads and caught a few. 

In St Louis we went  to the arch and we visited as many museums as we could. (they have lots!)

Chicago we rode the metro train to down town and went up the sears tower and stuff. The kids and I were only in Chicago for two weeks so we didnt get to do as much as usual.

El Paso we couldnt go home for Christmas so we took a trip into New Mexico and seen the Gila cliff dwelings where you actually could walk in the old dwellings it was awesome. then went up to Lincoln ? and seen the jail that Billy the Kid was kept in and escaped from, there was a lot of history in that area that we all enjoyed. Then we seen the lava fields and some military forts, and went into Roswell wich was a big let down lol. we visited Ruidoso and Cloud Croft and seen the White Sands where the kids got to sled down the sand dunes some of them were 50-80 ft high! It was awesome! we had so much fun.

Then we were still in El Paso come the Fourth of July so we went to Tuscon arizona to watch the fireworks, and the next day  over into .... oh what is that town ...... Tombstone where all the history with Wyatt Earp etc... and some mines/caves.

While in Houston we went to the beach (yeah i know woot they arent great beaches lol) and drove around and seen all the devastation from the hurricane (that was just this summer) 

This is just some of the highlights. We do a lot of sight seeing and try to take in all we can while in any given area. And we really try to get into the history and culture of an area.

I am kinda funny bout curriculum. I am definately not an unschool mom but I cannot get a curriculum that i am completely happy with and find that I change it up when I get it. I have tried the hands on homeschool, calculadders, switched on school house, several others. so i have a hodge podge mix of things that i do. I did real good with luke while he was younger in my creativity we had a blast doing school. Just recently its getting more school like and I am tryig to get back away from that. but there are just so many ways to teach reading and math lol. 

I have been homeschooling for about 8 years now. Its not hard to do while traveling that just HELPS things cuz its so interesting. The hard part about traveling is the room. Many a time I have sent the kids to the pool or playground at the RV park just to get them out from underfoot so I could cook or clean or whatever I needed to do lol.



We are actually pretty close to home right now and spend most nights at home with maybe one or two nights a week at the rv. That should last til the end of Oct. after that..... I dunno where we are going. We never know til the last min. and it will be kinda hard leaving this time as our oldest dd (tori) is gonna start staying home. In a way I am glad to be emptying the nest a bit lol. But its harder when you know you wont be here if she needs anything.

Well thats it for now. Thanks for reading all this lol.