How to Do an Astrid Braid From How To Train Your Dragon

Here is a video tutorial for Astrid's Braid in the movie How To Train Your Dragon.It is a little shaky and hard to see what I am doing because it was my younger brother filming, and he doesn't have much experience. To learn this kind of braid, first watch this video .

I'm going to do this!

I am going to stick to this blogging thing, I am not going to give up! The other day, the children had such a good time looking over the old blogs that I had printed up and it convinced me that it is something I want to continue. In order to do that, I will give up my obsession of making sure every picture is perfect and just posting what I get. I am doing better at capturing their every day lives, instead of setting up moments. I have a couple of years that I spent being so busy with the business that to pick up the camera felt like work. I am going to need to back track quite a bit, but it will be our year here, even out of order. So here it goes, I will be posting new as well as old pictures and almost all will be SOOC(straight out of the camera, no editing).

To start out with though is one of the children out by the field


And now to finally post pictures of our trip to FlA. This year was "eventful". The night before we left Mark jr started throwing up, a lot. I begged Mark to please let us stay home as I was not looking forward to passing this along to all of the children in the van, but it was decided that we would go ahead and take the chance. Just in case, I was prepared with a bucket(or so I thought) for what was inevitable and sure enough later that evening it was Augustine's turn. The bucket was not what I had thought and had a large crack in it and well, you can imagine what followed, we ended up filling up sand buckets. At that point I looked at the children and said, "well, you can all expect to get this and so you may as well decide right now, who you are going to offer it up for." That is the only answer right? Make something good out of something, well, not so good. Sure enough, everyone took turns getting sick during the week. The weather was also the coldest we have had in FLa, but overall it ended up being a wonderful vacation.

By the end of the week, everyone was feeling better and the weather was warm enough to wear suits and go swimming. We had a GREAT time at Busch Gardens (the pictures are on Mark's camera)and ended up staying the whole day there, it was a beautiful 78 degrees that day. On the way home, we stopped in to see Aunt Laura and while we were there we saw Abe Lincoln's home. I LOVED that, it was so interesting. To topp it off Laura took us in the back and let us dress up in period clothing, the pictures will be coming as soon as I get them off of Mark's camera... Onto our memories..






























our condo is the bottom right one, perfect for watching the children on the beach!










and one more when Gemma was 10 months, she was playing under this blanket:

Pictures of the new home!

View out the front window

Living room, can't wait to decorate/finish it off

Nice big kitchen, Yay! We can all fit around the table for dinner!

The view from where I sit at the kitchen table

Front foyer into "piano room", office/study

staircase to the upstairs. I love this strategic carpet, it hides all of the dirt!

This is the "bonus room", it is such a blessing to have! This will be half homeschool room while the other has a play area for the young ones

I finally have my front porch!

the barn has those fun doors that open half way on top

It needs a lot of work, and we need to learn a lot, but this is the future chicken coop

In the barn

inside of barn

Backyard is woods

View of barn (small) and pasture

Front yard with willow trees

The view out my window when I sit in the comfy chair




Here are a few I took around the house last week, our second day of being in the home. Here they are in reverse order, I was too lazy to switch them out!

It has been forever...

I have not posted in such a long time because of our craziness with trying to sell our home. We are finally in our new home and ready to begin our new life "in the shadow of the shrine". We are so excited and feel so very blessed by our Lord because of every aspect of this move.

I do want to catch up on this blog and there are pictures that I have taken over the past months that I do want to document and so there will be quite a bit of backtracking, however I will start up again with pictures of our new home and life!

Our prayers were answered with a buyer for our home on the ninth day of our novena to St. Joseph! Praised be God, He is so GOOD! It has been 9 months of a lot of hard work, but we are so excited to be here.

First are some pictures I took of Philomena next to our field. I love the angle that the sun sets here and the scenery, I can't wait until I can get all of the children out for a picture.








some pictures of the house will be coming tomorrow, I am too tired to keep on going!

A couple of the youngest who is growing fast

Today she took 3 steps and no, I don't have a picture of that, that would have been too on top of things for me. I do however have a number of back-up pictures of her, she is growing so fast!

Look at what J can do!

Life has changed around here a bit now that we have some older helpers. This is a picture of J, but M and B also mow the lawn, it is such a great help!

Another thing keeping us busy...

PEACHES!!! We have the most beautiful peaches this year. Have you ever had a peach right from the tree? They are deelicious!! They are nothing like the ones you find in the store. Anyways, it is a bit of a chore picking them, cutting them and keeping the rotten ones off of the ground, but it is well worth it!





The neighbor children love them just as much as our own children do!