my blessed life

While we wrapped up our homeschool year lesson-wise on May 30th, our year with our homeschool group didn't officially wrap up until this past Friday at our annual Field Day and Yearbook Release Party.  We had been looking forward to this day for quite a while and it did not disappoint!   Well over 50 kiddos from our group and their families turned out for some good ol' outdoor fun--you know, the relay race-type-of-fun!   It was a great way to finish up our year and get to hang out with friends--some of whom are moving away this summer.   At the end of the games  one team was awarded a Good Sportsmanship Award.  We were grouped by PreK/K5, 1st-3rd, 4th-6th, and 7th-12th.  Each age group competed amongst itself.  And each team was awarded with a very nice participation medal.  My kids were so proud of their medals!  They had a total blast! And before everyone headed home we rounded out Field Day with picnic lunches and the distribution of our new yea

I have aspirations of having a freezer full of yummy food to pull out at random for my family's eating pleasure.  I have yet to make this happen .  However, occasionally I do whip up an extra casserole or something to pop in the freezer so that it isn't completely bare in there. This past week I decided that having something easy for breakfast would be nice to have around.  Something besides Eggos, you know.   So I thought why not make up a batch of muffin-sized quiches and freeze those!  I have a great Quick Quiche recipe that works great (no crust needed!) and it turned out well in muffin form.  I also used my handy silicone muffin cups which made the whole process unbelievably easy.  I highly recommend these!  My mom gave me this set so I'm not exactly sure where they came from, but I know you can find them online. Just one batch of the following recipe made 15 of these muffins!   Quick Quiche 3 eggs 1/2 cup Bisquick mix 1/2 cup butter, mel

Even though we have officially wrapped up our school year, the learning doesn't end there.  It just looks different for the summertime. One of the most fun things we do to continue learning through the summer is to READ!!   In years past we have participated in lots of reading programs (you can find a great list of those here ) from stores to libraries.  And they have been varying degrees of fun.   Sometimes we live too far from a particular store to really reap the benefits of the program.  Sometimes the program is too complicated.  And sometimes it's just not fun.  And I think reading should be fun! {reading 'in a favorite chair'} So this year I decided to come up with our own reading program with great incentives.   I found some great free printables online and pretty-much cherry-picked what I wanted from them.   I am using the awesome reading bingo cards and prize coupons from HowDoesShe?'s Summer Reading Star program  a