Strike a Pose

Two notes at the outset.

1- Yes it's been forever since I've posted. It appears that for me Homeschooling and posting don't mix. I'll try to work on this.

2- Photo heavy post alert. For our Christmas present to the Grandparents we had our family picture taken. It had been about four years since our last family photo, and seeing as Little Miss is two (the same age Princess was in our last family photo) it was about time.

How cute are these kids? I love this photo!

Yep, that's my boys for you. Stick = sword.

I wanted to get a photo of them "sword fighting"

because this is what they are always doing.

How sweet are these two?

Ya just gotta love her smile!

I really love this pose. Check out the two bookends. Silly geese!

Together Forever!

Uhmm, yah, I'm still blogging

Well of course things have been crazy busy around here as usual. So I guess I'm a little behind in posting anything. And of course for a little bit it's not going to get any better.

Our friends will be moving out of their house this weekend. As of Monday we will be renting their house. We are happy that they will be able to be closer to work for the dad and that they will get to spend more time together as a family, but will be sad that they are about 2 hours away from us.

We are only going to be using the laptop for Internet once we move, because we won't have access to DSL and would have to use Cable which is way too expensive. So I'll have to figure out how to post photos. (Sounds like a job for NASA Guy!)

Anyway, just wanted to say we are still alive, just busy!

More Pictures with Grandparents

Remember my brilliant plan at Christmas time to get the kidlets pictures made with their Grandparents? Well, here are the ones we had made with NASA Guy's parents.

Notice any family resemblances?

And So the End (of Another Year) Has Come

Here we are at New Year's Eve and it's time to review another year. We've faced some really big changes in 2008. Nasa Man finished up with his part of the Ohio project and moved on to Tennessee. This meant that he lived in Tennessee during the week and Ohio on the weekend from late April to about August.


In July the kidlets and I officially moved to Tennessee and we got our current apartment. We did spend some time back in Ohio for Cub Scout and Webelos camps, and getting our house ready to be put on the market.


We have really enjoyed being here in the South. We are in a really great Ward and have made lots of friends. Daddy has been able to come home for lunch most days, which is a real treat. We love only being 5 minutes away from his work instead of an hour and a half like we were in Ohio.


The boys enjoyed having the Princess join them in being Home Educated. They all have really grown and blossomed. It has been especially exciting for me to have Princess start reading.


December has been busy for us. We have had the usual Holiday bustle. Visits from Uncle Dan and Aunt Kay, and Grandma and Grandpa Van Hoose added to our fun. We also saw Game Boy make the big transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. (Post about that to follow)


We look forward to a bright and exciting New Year, and hope that the blessed peace and joy of this holy season is your's throughout 2009.

N 36° 08.604 W 086° 46.525

One our favorite things to do as a family is to go geocaching. “Geocaching?” Click the link for a great article about it on Wikapedia.

Last Friday we went to what is now our favorite cache ever, Tour Of Historic Fort Negley. This cache rocked. Lots of fun and adventure, plus Mommy could take lots of pictures. “Because you’re going to blog this, aren’t you Momma,” said Princess.

This cache was extra fun because it was a multicache. We had multiple locations we needed to find and collect information from in order to find the cache at the end of our search. NASA Guy and the kids getting started.

The boys loved jumping around on these concrete pointers. I wish I had a better camera so I could have caught them in flight. Make sure you check out the visitor's center in the background. They have a really neat film about Nashville's place in the Civil War and some cool interactive displays.

The signage for this historical site was really fun. Both for peeking through and for learning more about the Civil War. Great for some hands on Home school education.

And while we're at it we might as well get some more P.E. time in, so ya'll just run on ahead.

Gameboy, true to his name, found that a stick and a hedge apple can be quite entertaining .

NASA Guy gets some help from Cowboy and Princess to locate the next piece of information we need. Little Miss was happy to supervise everyone from her chariot.

Fort Negley is often used by Civil War reenactors, and we were lucky enough to be there while a group was setting up. The kids were fascinated by all the attention to detail. We really wish that we could have come back to see them the next day. Maybe another time.

Being major history buffs we loved reading all the signs. Who ever put all the information together did a really great job. And the site is really well maintained, no graffiti, etc.

Looking in to downtown Nashville - then and now.

The Union soldiers who manned this fort would be glad to see that Old Glory is still waving here.

Just the Saturday before this NASA Guy and the kidlets had gone geocaching with out Little Miss or myself. NASA Guy had wanted to check out another Civil War battle site. Peach Orchard Hill was the site of some of the bloodiest fighting during the Battle of Nashville. We thought it was really cool to find information on their last cache while searching for this cache.

Yes, I labeled that picture wrong. Oh,well, you still get the idea.

And look, there in the background, could that be the Adventure Science Center?

Here are a few shots of the reenactors as it was getting dark. The soldier to the left of the tent is stuffing his mattress with hay. Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.

The ladies with the group were really sweet. She cracked me up because she really has down that vintage picture expression. She said that the reason so many people didn't smile in pictures back then was because they had bad teeth. Who knew?

It was a great day. I'm glad that we decided to find this cache. Wonder what will find next?

I So Smart

Check out our cast of characters at the bottom of my blog. Just keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling to the very bottom. Traveling Longhorns had posted her cute family at her site. Unfortunately our family was to big to fit in a regular post, so I put our gadget at the bottom. Maybe some day I'll play around more and try some other arrangements.

Lost in Space

The best part of our trip to Adventure Science Center was the SpaceChase exhibit. All of the big kids had to try the Moonwalker to see what it would be like to walk on the Moon in 1/6 gravity.

Here are our intrepid Moonwalkers!

What? This isn't the Tinkerbell ride? -Princess

I am Ninja Spaceman! -Gameboy

Hey, that was a pretty good rodeo! -Cowboy

Wow, this Nasa training is fun! -Spaceman

There were lots of other fun things. One that the kidlets really liked was an interactive globe. It's called a Tilt a World. "Using a specially designed navigation table, visitors can tilt and twist the surface to explore the Earth. A robust database of satellite imagery allows the visitor to zoom in to find their favorite location or zoom out to get the big picture".

Little Miss liked trying to catch the swirling stars on the floor.

Adventures in Science

It's been a busy couple of weeks for us. We had a trip to Ohio and a busy week here in Music City. So we decided to take some time out in order to have some fun this weekend. We went to visit the Adventure Science Center. The kidlets had earned free admissions for themselves through the library summer reading program, pretty cool huh?

Here are some of our favorite highlights!

This won't hurt a bit! Isn't she a cute doctor?

Gameboy's got his work cut out for him with
this giant pinball trip through the intestines.

Cowboy helps a buddy pull himself together.

Watch out Spaceman! He's right behind you!

We had a great time!

I'll have Mom post more tomarrow!

Let's just say, it was a "ball"!