I got a new "toy"!! My new Bosch Kitchen Center

Well as many may know I'm determined to stop buying store bought bread and start making my own at home. My kitchenaid just wasn't up to the task so I used the Christmas money my inlaws gave me to buy myself a new kitchen center. It arrived yesterday and I had my first 2 attempts at making bread today.

Here I am shaping the loaves before putting them in the pan

The first attempt went well, the mixer did just as promised. It mixed and kneaded enough dough for 4 loaves of bread (I didn't think we needed to make the 6 2lb loaves the machine is capable of) without much effort at all. I got it all shaped and put in the pans it was rising like nobody's buisness when I realized I forgot to add the salt. Well because of that it turned into godzilla bread, with no taste. Here's the pictures of the godzilla bread

That's the new Bosch Kitchen ceter behind the loaves. We tried the blender attachment last night and made the smoothest, creamiest milkshakes ever!

The loaves just wouldn't stop growing!

So when that was not edible we tried again and this was the final result and slightly sweet (we used honey instead of sugar) wonderfully light bread.

Cookies for Santa

Hi all,

I know it's been a while since I updated things. We've been busy enjoying school and the unusually warm weather here in Chesapeake. I thought I'd share some pictures

Here's the kids enjoying some time outside in the warm weather. Anna was busy on the swing and I couldn't get a clear picture of her.

Later on we enjoyed some Watermelon and Strawberry Kabobs

One night our crazy pug Festis decided to find a new place to call his own.

Here's the latest "craft" we've been up to. We've been off of school for a while for the holidays and took the opportunity to make some cookies for santa.
Here's a few pictures of the kids decorating them.

We are settled in our new home

Hi all,

We are finally settled in our new home. Things are going great. Mamo (kel's mom) has been here the last week and helped us to put the finishing touches on the house. We had Thanksgiving early so we could celebrate it with her and we also celebrated Annika's birthday. She was very excited to receive a gold Tinkerbell necklace from her Papa as well as her American Girl doll and accessories.

We also found a friend in our attic. The people we rent from say they didn't have a problem with them but if we find anymore they'll have someone come out and check things out. The visitor was a very small snake. He was the thickness of a pencil and about 1.5 feet long when fully stretched out. Matt found him on the pull down stairs while going up to put some boxes away. He thought it was one of the kids rubber toys until it flicked it's tongue at him. He carefully put him in a clear plastic tub until we could safely release him out in the yard.

Here's a pic of the visitor.

We'll be back at school again next week and I'll get some pictures of our new school room up soon.

Kel

School is back in session

Hi all,

I'm healthy again and the kids won't let me slack on school anymore. In the past 2 days they've managed to catch up on almost a weeks worth of work. I rewarded them with a new book. They responded with "Cool a new book! Thanks mom" They ran off to read it right away.

Here's a pic of them enjoying their reward.

Our trip to Virginia to look for a new rental house was a success!

Hi All,

We had an excellent trip to Virginia. The trip up was nice, the kids were wonderful in the car. It took us about 1hr to find a house. We had a list of about 15 of them to look at and the first one we looked at was a hit. It was in the right spot, a great neighborhood, had a perfect layout and just the right amount of space. It's in Chesapeake VA which means the drive to Norfolk for Matt won't be nearly as bad as it was the last time we lived in VA. The people that are renting it to us are also in the Navy and were happy a Navy family was interested. They even left behind a Rainbow playset for the kids to enjoy. .

A view from the Street.

We're back from Disney

Hi all,

We had a fun time at Disneyworld last week. Things were very slow there so we were able to take our time and enjoy the parks. We will be back at school this week so look for updates on that and when we'll be moving coming soon.

Week 5 in review

Hi all,

This was another good week for us. We even did school on Labor Day, the kids wouldn't let me have the day off. We did the usual lessons but also had something interesting for science come up. It appears that all of the Geckos in our backyard are having babies by the dozen. You can't go out our backdoor without at least 10 of them scattering in all directions. The kids decided that would be our science topic for the week while we're waiting for our new Sonlight Science curriculum to arrive. After reading what we could in our books about Geckos and checking so captive ones out as well as chasing them in the yard they decided to make some of their own Geckos. Here's a few pictures of their creations.

Their geckos

Anna's Gecko

Everett's Gecko

The Sonlight Science arrived today and we'll be starting that next week. The following week we will be taking a week off as we are using a 6 week on 1 week off school rotation this year. We're going to be spending 3 days of our week off at Disneyworld. We thought it would be nice to take advantage of it before we move in November and also it's one of our favorite places to go.

I should have photos from the trip in my next weekly update.

Starting our 4th week of school this year

Hi all,

The last 3 weeks of school have been wonderful. The kids are loving the curriculum we're using this year. I managed to snap a few pictures of Annika and Lucas finishing a history assignment. Lucas just colors and Annika was finishing her picture of Beowulf fighting Grendal. So see history doesn't have to be boring, in fact they say it's one of their favorites.