Matt's 12th Birthday!

This year, Matthew had a sleepover with a bunch of friends (Noah, Chase, Nick and Christopher) for his main birthday celebration, so we were not sure what to do for his family celebration. I don't usually ever deviate from any established holiday traditions, but I guess I am learning to be more flexible...he asked if we could have a birthday breakfast with cinnamon rolls instead of cake. He even humored me by pretending to blow out candles on his "cake":

I thought this year was especially fun because his younger sisters were old enough to pick out and even help pay for the gifts that they picked for him!

I must say, the birthday breakfast was a lot more fun (for me) than the sleepover!

Fourth of July

We went to the Fourth of July celebration at the Conyers Horse Park this year, along with Nuna and Papa Hollinhead. All of the kids swiped Papa's "country hat" (that's what Irene & Abbie call it) at least once. We found a nice spot under the trees to park our chairs,

and then wandered around to see what there was to see. We watched a dog agility contest (here we are, trying to see over the crowd),

looked some cars that I think Michael would have liked looking at, but I had little to no appreciation for their beauty :

Nuna and Abbie shared a funnel cake, while I hogged one all to myself,

and then settled in to wait (what seemed like forever...) for the fireworks to start.

We all got a little bit bored, and a lot silly....
see exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:


and, Exhibit E:

All in all, it was a fun Independence Day, but it did make me long for the simple days of watching fireworks from Cazenovia Lake in my dad's beat up old Starcraft.
But then again, we didn't get any funnel cakes...

My Bookshelf: When You Rise Up, by RC Sproul, Jr

I decided that I will start posting books that I have finished reading, mostly just because I love to talk about books. I don't have any great literary analysis skills, that's for sure, but maybe it will be useful information to someone looking for something to read. It also helps me remember what I have read because, believe it or not, sometimes I forget I have already read a book! I don't seem to find a whole lot of time to read these days, but what books my measly, puny reading list does include I will make a quick note of. A final reason for posting it is to let anyone who may want to borrow it from me that they are welcome to it, I have too many books on my shelf already!
Now that I am done explaining why I am telling you what I am reading or have read, I will say that I really liked this book. There was nothing really earth-shattering or ground-breaking about it, but it was a great reminder of the "why" of homeschooling. In a nutshell, it helped me to renew my resolve and to take a minute to stop and commit this school year to the Lord, to whom it belongs already. For someone still on the fence about deciding whether to homeschool or not, I will just say that Sproul comes on very strong in making his case. I personally agree with almost all of what he says here (at least in theory), but not everyone will. It is a fairly short book, and it is not a "how-to" book. If you are looking for that, it will come up short. Basically, the book is based on applying Deuteronomy 6 to the education of our children, and most all of the text flows within that theme. The one aspect of the book that I might say was a bit of a negative is that it is not very grace-filled toward those who see things differently, but in my case there was no problem there for me. All in all, it all boils down to...I liked this book!

My little seamstress

Irene really loves to sew. I, however, am really not very good at sewing so I always groan a little when she asks if she can sew. To her, up until now, sewing has just meant making designs with yarn on those plastic embroidery fabric thingies, but when she saw me getting out a needle and fabric because I needed to make a couple of bean bags for an activity at VBS, she was right there. I ended up showing her a basic stitch and letting her go to town on it, her very first "real" sewing project.

So, South Point kids, your beanbag activities this year came courtesy of my little seamstress! Voila!

Uncle Joe & Brad come to town!

My brother Joe and (his son) Brad came to visit us, late in June, too. Actually it was the same day that Hannah & Grant were here, so they met some of my family! They probably wondered what in the world was going on, the Moore family gatherings are always a little on the boisterous side, but they seemed pretty fine with it. Makes me wonder if their family has a boisterous crowd, too?



Joe has always had a way with my kids. Even as babies, they have all just always loved Uncle Joe. (Matthew has always looked up to Brad...and he couldn't have picked a better guy!) Abbie took this picture of Uncle Joe.



And then they started taking pictures of each other. If you wonder how long this went on, it was quite a while.... We had a great time with them, they had to go too soon!

Good friends, good times...

I am woefully, pitifully behind on getting anything put on my blog. These pictures were taken in late June, when Irene and Abbie had their friends Hannah & Grant over to swim, play and eat a pb & j. Seriously, good times!
(It was so hot & humid out the lens kept fogging up, that's why everyone has that angelic glow!)

Powertime Camp

Rachel & Matthew were so excited to be able to go to Powertime summer camp in South Carolina this year. They had a blast! I would like to think that they missed us and were ready to come home by the time we picked them up, because I know their little sisters were ready for them to come home!

Matthew's primary focus as he retold the events of the week were the recurring theme of hanging out with his awesome counselor, fun times on the "Blob", and the fact that he was the only camper not afraid of the driver of the boat that pulled the tube for the non-stop tubing action ("Dr. Death", aka Tom). Sorry for that horrible run-on sentence.


This was Rachel's last year to be able to go, and it was very important to her to be able to go and say goodbye to some friends. Truthfully, this was the biggest reason for making the decision to send them. As it turned out, none of Rachel's old friends were able to come, so it turned into a growing and s t r e t c h i n g experience for her. I believe that she still had a great time, and God helped her work through some things that had been weighing her down. It was definitely time well spent for her.

I love moments like the one in the picture below...taken before the bickering ensued over which one of them was going to listen to stories first on *my* iPod shuffle, and who should get the back seat, and everyone started moaning "I'm hot...", or "I'm hungry"... It is one of those rare moments when you know that your kids are truly, genuinely thrilled to see and hug each other. But all good things on earth must end (5 seconds later), so we get in the car to finish the road trip...