Endings and New Beginnings

Some Endings:

The 2009/2010 school year at the Dogwood Academy is coming to a close! Tomorrow is the last day of school! WooHoo!!! The pool opens on Saturday and we have at least 2 1/2 months to enjoy the summer vacation!

The school year went well this year. We stayed on track better than any other year so far! It was a very encouraging year as a teacher, and I believe the kids felt good about it, too. It was a very difficult year for Beth...her first year of high school; however, she did an outstanding job and I'm very proud of her hard work!

Ben finished 6th grade and is now moving on to "middle school." I can't believe my youngest child is going to be a teenager this year! Time sure does fly by! Ben finished Awana last night. Awana is a program at our church for ages preschool-6th grade. Ben received the Timothy Award last night, which is the highest award a 6th grader can receive for completing all of the Bible memory books. I'm so proud of him!

Some New Beginnings:

My best friend's daughter, Heather, is getting married next weekend (June 5th). She asked me to make her wedding cake and she picked out a beautiful cherry blossom cake. I haven't made a wedding cake in about 13 years, so I hope I can do a good job. I practiced a bit and here is my practice cake:

The real cake will be 4 tiers and the icing will be much smoother! I was really practicing on the "tree" part of the design. I'm so glad I practiced because it taught me a lot of things not to do! For example, I will use a smaller tip for the border, and I will use a bigger cake pan for the 2nd cake. I'll be using 6", 10", 12" and 14" cake pans.

New Beginning #2: Chickens!

This is our chicken coop! It was a tree house that belonged to Neal's sister (she's 24 now) and we had it taken down and placed on blocks in our yard. This was before we did anything to it. (by the way, do you see my "Amish Man" in the pic?!!)

This is what it looks like right now. We still have to put another coat of paint on it and paint the trim an Eggplant color.

The chicks arrived on Thursday, May 20th in this box! 21 chicks were inside (we ordered six for some friends and we kept 15)

This is their new home for a couple of weeks.

The chicks started drinking the water right away.

Two of the cutest chicks! We bought 5 Delaware chicks, 5 Welsummer's, and 5 Blue Andallusion's.

Our dog, Suzi, is very protective of the chicks. She growls anytime the cat gets near them!

This picture was taken yesterday. One of the Blue Andallusion's flew up on top of the water dish. We had to put some chicken wire over the crate so they wouldn't fly out!

Also, taken yesterday...this is one of the Delaware chicks. You can see the wings growing and the feather's coming in!

Last weekend, both of Neal's sisters came in for a visit. We had a big dinner on Saturday night, talked and played games. It was great spending time with Neal's family!

We played Pit!

The color is off on some of these pictures, but this is Neal and his mom, Betty.

Neal and his grandfather, Randolph.

Some of us sitting outside on a nice, cool evening!

A couple of weeks ago, Neal and I went out with some friends for supper. On the way we stopped by this pretty field and took some pictures. This is down the road from our house, and that is red clover growing in the field!

We had our end of year homeschool banquet last week. This is Ben receiving his certificate. Each year we choose something in particular we want to honor our children for. This year Ben's certificate was for "New Endeavors -- Construction and Child Care." He's been helping his daddy with the chicken coop and he's been helping me with childcare and he'll be working with kids this summer at church.

Beth received her award for "New Horizons -- Guitar, Dissections, Counseling and College Courses". She started learning the guitar this year, she did four dissections (worm, frog, fish and crayfish) in Biology, she'll be working as a camp counselor this summer, and she is taking three Bible classes (I'm taking them too, at a local Bible institute) for college credit.

This was Beth's photography project at the end of year banquet. She is very good with a camera and would like to start doing more with her photography. Right now she is taking pictures of some of our friends for practice, and they are getting very nice pictures out of the deal!

Well, that's the latest for us here in Virginia! More later...