Just too cute!

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Little angels


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In the interest of truthful blogging.....

People who know me irl know that I'm forever going on about how very photogenic I am. Mostly this is very true. However I have discovered the one place where I just can't seem to take a decent picture- atop a mechanical bull at a country western bar. I went last Sunday night to The Colorado Cafe with my friends Pam and Rachel. We took line dancing lessons, drooled over cowboys (this was mostly Pam), rode the bull and sang a God-awful karaoke rendition of Paradise by the Dashboard light (so sorry Meatloaf, really I'm a fan and it was an homage).

Homeschooling update- field trips

Right now G and R are watching a documentary about when the Irish first came to America. This is part of a unit study about immigration. Next month we are planning a field trip to Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty with some fellow homeschoolers.

Last week we went to the Brick Township Historical Society meeting. They had a speaker come talk about Native Americans, specifically the time she spent on a Lakota reservation.

Yesterday's field trip (photo's above)-I had read in the local paper that the Greenpeace Rolling Sunlight truck was going to be at a school in Beachwood and open to the public.

Last weekend

Boy, did I need a break this weekend. Last week was a very difficult adjustment week. Tim returned from a long business trip- which is good, I know, but still an adjustment, we started trying to be better about bedtimes- Griffin, Riley and I have been in a bad habit of staying up way too late and then sleeping until late morning , not being careful with our food choices- way too many carbs and sugar and not enough protein, being worried for a friend who, like G and R, was homeschooled and loved it and now has to go to high school. :0(
Now add to all that- the end of summer, the start of homeschool lessons and worst of all- the death of another X-box! Their second X-box 360 fell victim to the RED RING OF DEATH. And only weeks after the warranty expired. So basically everyone was in a really bad mood all last week. I really needed some time to chill. My sister JoAnne and I went to hang out at our Mom's house for an overnight. Our Mom is still in Colorado visiting and helping my little sister with her brand new twin girls. We had the whole house to ourselves. We met on Sat afternoon, crafted and listened to Doris Day cds! After dinner we took a nice walk to the beach, sat on the boardwalk and watched the harvest moon and the seagulls over the ocean. Walked back, crafted some more, watched some Saturday Night Live, slept, woke up the next day and crafted some more. My idea of perfect and just what I needed!

Harvest Moon

Magazine collage fall postcards.
Inspired by the ones that Lia did
and posted on her blog ArtJunkGirl.
If you would like a postcard, send your
address to roxanneandtim@hotmail.com
and I'll gladly send you one!

Decoupaged train case- with pictures and
phrases cut from magazines.

An e-mail

I just spent an hour writing this for an unschooling yahoo group I just joined. I figure if I spent that long on it, it should be a blog post also-



Hello again all-
Sorry to have posted about teen night and disappeared. I had a busy weekend but I am back now to respond to Robin and some others who have inquired here or sent me direct e-mails.
Of course 11 and 12 year olds are welcome to join us.
Taishauna and Aimee will be there and I think Jillian knows them from a clay class.
Also I think there might be some confusion about my SON Riley. That's right- Riley's a boy! Don't let the long pink hair fool you. I've received a couple of e-mails from Moms with daughters that make me want to clarify that. Not that he particularly minds being called a girl- He's sort of used to it. It happened just today at the ShopRite when the free sample lady asked me" Is she this quiet at home?" So being a smart aleck, I said "No at home she just talk, talk, talks all day". But my favorite one was 5 years ago when we were in Vegas and an Elvis impersonator serenaded him, called him "little mama" and kissed his hand. Loved that!

On to the intro-
I'm Mom to three SONS-
John, 22 and in his senior year in college (TCNJ). John didn't go to full day school until he was 7 but then he went and chose to stay in public school throughout. (despite some pleading from me)
Griffin, 15 1/2 and Riley 14- except for a year of Montessori pre-school they have always been homeschooled. For a long time we were completely unschooling. A couple years ago my husband made the case for doing some lessons each weekday and we try but it's usually the first thing to go out the window when the day gets busy (second thing- housecleaning).
We live in Brick but seem to do a lot of things in Monmouth County. We are involved with the Ocean Grown Life Learners 4H club in Bradley Beach. We're planning to be in the stage crew at Patchwork Theater in Bayhead.
Griffin's interests include- music, going to concerts, skateboarding, surfing, playing the drums, watching tv, making youtube videos (his user name is joandpo). And his favorite way to spend time- Runescape and other computer games and video games.
Riley's interests include - music and concerts (he crowd surfed at the Bamboozle last summer!!!) playing guitar- he has four!, dying his hair, dreadlocking his hair, adding to his project playlist, surfing youtube for Fred and Smosh videos. And he also spends a lot of his time playing Runescape on the computer or other video games.
And I'm Roxanne, married to Tim. Tim is a computer security analyst who sometimes travels for his work. We miss him when he's gone but since he comes home bearing bags of foreign junk food, it's all good! In the past five months we've enjoyed junk food from England, Egypt, Italy (my favorite), Japan and Bahrain. Tim also volunteers at the local hospital one day a week, is involved with the SCA, loves the Giants football team and writes fiction novels.
And last but not least- Me! Despite having a VERY hard week last week- I love staying home with my kids. I enjoy- doing crafts of all kinds,scrapbooking, making collages from magazines, photography, making ATC cards, reading (mostly fiction), watching tv, Sudoku puzzles, keeping a blog ( http://owlmoon.blogspot.com ),and getting together with other Moms for a Mom's Night Out!
I'm excited to be part of this e-mail group. It seems like a fun, down to earth and busy list! Thanks to Megan for recommending it to me.

Roxanne

More Japanese junk food

Cheese Puffs and Spicy crackers.

Happy Bolo
Refreshing nature to you.
I love this bag- not the cookies.
They tasted like powdery too sweet
animal crackers.

On the left- Tim thought he was buying candy bars-
He said he saw this walrus like cartoon guy everywhere.
Turns out inside was a giant cheeto type cheese puff.
They were 10 yen each and Riley has already put
an order in for $10 worth on Tim's next trip (about 100) .
He's probably not going back until November but we
talked about how cool it would be to give
these out for Halloween!

The Pucca fish crackers- yellow box
on right- G and R loved.
Pretzel like shell with chocolate inside.
On right, white box- white chocolate covered
malted milk balls.
Middle- Ginger Citrus hard candies-
very good!
Far left- a box of Strawberry gels with
an extremely odd texture and filled with
very fake tasting chocolate syrup. Very disappointing,
he bought them special for me because
I love chocolate covered strawberries
but these were nothing like.

The one on the left was my favorite-
Tasted like phyllo dough rolled and fried
and covered in milk chocolate.
The right- odd but delicious rolls
of cookie? and white chocolate with a
almond citrus flavor.

Treats from The Giant Buddha- a soft cookie filled
with almond paste not particularly
sweet and not a big hit.

Crunky- sounds so rap and gangster!
Tastes like a Nestle Crunch bar.
Loved it.

Do you C a pattern here?

Tim came home late last night from a business trip to Japan. His flight was delayed about 6 hours due to the tropical storm Hanna. While he was away something happened with our computer and I had problems with uploading my pictures but now that our resident computer genius is home we're back on track. So here is a post that catches up with some of what we've been doing for the last couple of weeks.......

Tim came home with bags of gifts- Candy, Buddha Cookies
and giant individually wrapped Cheese Puffs.
Also Chips and Crackers.

I received two Buddhas to add to my collection and a
hand carved wooden owl that I love.

While Tim was gone I Cleaned and de-Cluttered my studio.

I also did some Crafting.
The Jonas Brothers frames were
birthday gifts for two good friends.

And of course, we Celebrated Riley's 14th Birthday!
We had a Bonfire party with Hot Dogs, S'mores
Chocolate Cupcakes and Carrot Cake Cupcakes.
The party was attended by many friends and Cousins.
They played Manhunt and watched a fireworks display.

We went to Rita's for frozen Custard Cones.
Riley had the Cappuccino flavor.
Griffin and I had the Chocolate- Vanilla twist.
They were so good we went back the very
next night and had them again!

I cooked!
Well I melted the Chocolate anyway.





And last but Certainly not least-
We fell Completely and totally in love
with these two little Cuties-

Last Saturday my sister Suzanne gave birth
to her twins. Welcome to the World little
Ava and Zoe! I can't wait to hold you!
Great Job Suzy and Conrad!

Yellow

Random Thursday

I love that our silverware doesn't match.
I could get a matching set- I have, in fact.
I just sent it off for John and his roommates
to use. But I just love having a hodge-podge
set. I've collected it bit by bit over the years
from garage sales, rummage sales, family
cast-offs and the like.



That's not to say that I don't have my favorites-

The Merck spoon is from a box of things my Dad
gave me from my Nana's apt. after he cleaned it out.
My Poppy K worked at Merck for many years.And
the monogrammed G spoon is from a rummage sale.