Hurricane Shoals

We love going to Hurricane Shoals! We were more then willing to go when Landon requested we spend his birthday there. Since we homeschool we had the whole park pretty much to ourselves. The tubing is great! The shoals are so slippery and the water so strong that only the older boys and Tim could take the younger guys tubing. Braden was so cool to take Carlisle tubing. You can see that Carlisle loved it!

Braden also took Johnston down. They got dumped in a bad spot, but Johnston was tall enough to stay above the water. The kids spent at least 4 hours tubing the shoals.

I love seeing them having such a great time.

Mendell taking a break. She was so adventurous this trip. She has become a water bug!

Skylar getting ready to tube the shoals.

Jameson just being a goof!

Because of all the rain this year the water was running nice and high. Last summer due to the lack of rain the water was so muddy and low we only went once.

Karsten and Johnston taking a few minutes to sun themselves!

Tim and the some of the kids decided to cross the shoals up stream. They were very slippery. Tim was the only one to make it across dry. He went back for Skylar and helped her cross.

Tim is such an awesome man. He has so much confidence and such an adventurous spirit.

I love this picture of Skylar trying to keep her balance!

Tim helping Bailey cross over the shoals.

Carlisle enjoyed the water so much. He spent every second he could in it.

I love this picture of Landon and PJ.

Kendrick with his always smiling face! I am so proud of him for how far he has come these past few months. When he first came to live with us he was deathly afraid of water, but we can't keep him out of it now.

Shadow

Shadow is one weird puppy. He loves to lay in the kiddie pool that was put in his kennel. This poor pool only lasted one day with Shadow, but he loved it! I guess we will have to buy him a hard plastic pool that he can't destroy. I have never seen a dog that loves to just lounge in the water as much as he does. He is so cute!

We're going green!

NOT!!!! Kendrick was kind enough to be our model today so we could show how we do our daily spelling practice. We used notebooks at one time, but one day Johnston asked if he could do it this way. It was awesome!

All you need is dry erase marker, wet rag and tile....bam....you can be green too! Think of all the trees we are saving!

When the kiddos are ready to be tested I give them a test on paper "gasp" and then I file that for our school records. The kids have a blast doing their spelling now. I love finding new ways to do schooling in an unusual way. Now this is not for parents who have children that might go off and draw on every surface of the house. Our kids know that writing on anything other then paper without permission is worthy of banishment to the dog house so we are safe.

Feel free to leave any ideas for schooling in unusual ways!

Our pool is up!

Each summer we put a pool up. It saves us from having to load up and drive someplace else to swim. This saves gas and my sanity of having to count 11 heads every few minutes to make sure we still have all our kids.

Each day after school and chores are done the kids are free to swim to their hearts delight. It has been a wonderful incentive for them to not only get stuff done on their own, but to accomplish this with wonderful attitudes!

I love summer!