My Friday Night and Saturday's homecoming

Aaron headed to Scout Camp on Friday night which meant I had the evening to myself.  I missed my guys but an evening to myself doesn't happen very often so I took advantage of it and did a couple of projects.

I started in the dining room.  At first it looked like this:

I needed one more plate to replace the white one. But after finding the perfect plate (the one on top) to tie all the colors together, rearranging them a little, and rearranging the buffet, I love the finished product!

I also decided to update my daisy picture.  Here is the before (when I hadn't hung it in the living room yet.  I painted this back in 2011):

During:

And after:

It ties the navy blue in better and...Sadie seems to like it...

But she liked it even better when Jake got home from Scout Camp the next day...

 Jake was happy to see The Lego Movie waiting for him after he was all showered and in clean clothes.

 They guys were pooped and this is pretty much what the rest of the day looked like.

 And a little playing of the 3DS while eating his favorite home cooked meal-creamy crockpot chicken

 Sadie wasn't the only one happy her boys were home. :)

First cookies for Bookworm....

...in the new house. :)

Not even cookies will stop my bookworm from reading. He read 5 books the first week we declared 7th grade done.  Part of that is because we put a temporary ban on TV, the other part is because he is a bookworm.  I called him Bookworm and he said he liked it so I will officially add that to the list of nicknames (Bug, Booger, the Jakester, Stinky Face...etc..).

First time's and favorite things

First time grilling at the new house.  (Don't be fooled by the kiddie playground in the picture-there is no one small enough at our house to play on it.  The former homeowner's left it under the house and we pulled it out to play when Jaxson was visiting the other day.)

 One of my favorite things to eat in the whole, wide, world is grilled chicken.  And I marinated it in one of my very favorite marinades: Yoshida sauce. 

 First time making fruit pizza!  I can't wait to eat it.  We are having a Memorial Day celebration at Ranee's house and we are bringing the fruit pizza and more marinated chicken to grill. 

 I LOVE, Love, love berries.  I have never met a berry I didn't like.  I picked patriotic colored berries for this fruit pizza.

 Check out this bad boy!  How huge is that blackberry?!?  And it was delicious...

More on the Memorial Day celebration later...

Another good day...

We had a field trip which really was 3 in 1. We went to the Mineral & Lapidary Museum, Team ECCO Center for Ocean Awareness, and Skytop Apple Farm. It was a blast! 

It was exciting to head up the mountain back to our old stomping grounds...I miss the mountains...

In Hendersonville, NC there little downtown has lots of painted bear statues.  We parked near this one and Jake and his friend Gabe who rode with us laughed at the back...

A loud, but not to loud group of adults and kids at 9:15 on a school day standing together on the sidewalk?..Gotta be a homeschooling group! We love our homeschooling Co-op and we love Classical Conversations.

We broke up into 2 groups because there were too many of us to fit in the little museums together.  We started off in the Mineral museum.

The free stone everyone got as we were leaving.  Almost everyone got the grab bags that had 5 different minerals in is for $1.  After we went to ECCO Jake's buddies wanted to ride with us so we had a car load of boys auctioning and trading their mineral. :)

Next stop: ECCO.  Who knew there was an ocean awareness classroom in the mountains of NC?

They did a fish Scavenger hunt and had a blast. 

This little guy had some issues.  He would look at you and open his mouth really wide.  I think he was cussing us out in fish language.  I say that because after he looked you with a wide mouth he would turn around, suck up some sand and...

...spit it at us.  He wasn't a friendly guy.

His neighbors were quite friendly though.  A little creepy...but friendly!

On to Skytop!

The 3 Musketeer's  getting ready for the hay ride.

Or maybe the 3 Stooges would be a better name for them!

They had a bamboo maze that was pretty cool.

Jake picked his first apple.  It was pretty slim pickings this late in the year but it was still fun!

I really wanted to stay up in the mountains and go to the Romney rally that was in Asheville (mere minutes away) but Gabe had to get back for football practice and Jake had to get back to pack for his first Boy Scout camp out the next day.  Life is good!