How does YOUR garden grow??!

The Timms family is beginning a new adventure-- a home garden! I've dabbled the past two years with containers of tomatoes and peppers and have decided to make the (small) plunge into a bona fide garden this year with my two assistants!

Bringing the water (please ignore the weeds!)

I decided to do a "Square Foot Garden" for several reasons: #1 it requires no tilling up of the hard Georgia clay and pulling out of Bermuda grass, #2 it requires no tilling up of the hard Georgia clay and pulling out of Bermuda grass, #3 it is supposed to be fairly maintenance free (other than watering), and #4 did I mention there was no tilling involved??!

Measuring the 'squares'.

In all seriousness, Square foot's claims of easy & practical gardening make a lot of sense and have a great appeal for someone who would rather do just about anything than pull weeds (or Bermuda grass)! My father-in-law graciously agreed to make the garden box for us and I chose a 4 ft x 4 ft square for our first try at real gardening.

16 squares ready for plants!

We planted several tomatoes, a few peppers (sweet & hot), some marigolds (to keep the bugs away from the tomatoes), a few phlox (from Emma's co-op class), carrots, herbs, sweet onions, one strawberry plant and one zucchini!

Our finished garden-- some seeds, some already started plants.

The girls are super excited about this so I hope that it goes well! I'm a little bit apprehensive about it but am willing to give it a try. Hopefully by mid summer we will be rolling in tomatoes and peppers and onions and will have all the salsa & spaghetti sauce we can manage! Perhaps then I'll have to learn the fine art of canning...

Dog protection! !!

(Although so far, he has surprisingly left it alone! Maybe I should plant veggies on my porch cushions and he won't chew them??!!)

If homeschooling doesn't work out.... she can always join the circus?

The girls received tickets to the "Big Apple Circus" for Valentine's Day and today was the day of the show. They were eagerly anticipating this event as neither of them had ever attended a circus.

We arrived early at Stone Mountain Park and had time to look around a bit and check out their seasonal 'Snow Mountain' attraction (which was proclaimed super cool by both girls!)

We wanted to be in line early so we could choose good seats. We entered the tent and settled in with our popcorn, cracker jacks and cotton candy. Not long before the show started, one of the attendants asked if we'd like to move down to closer seats since the show was only about half full. The girls were excited to be sitting on the second row-- right near all the action!

It was a great show-- with enough clowns, musicians, horses, acrobats, dogs and jugglers to keep us thoroughly entertained. About midway through the first half of the show, however, things got really exciting!

One of the clowns picked Abbie out of the audience to come into the ring with him! He was doing a spoof about pretending to conduct the orchestra. He had Abbie take a turn and she did a great job!

Then he chose one of our Co-Op friends' dad to take a turn at 'conducting' and he... well... didn't do quite as good as Abbie. So the clown had to have her come back to 'help' him. It was so funny and what a memorable experience for her first circus visit!!! They even had them both take a bow at the end of their 'performance'.

Both girls and I thoroughly enjoyed this outing! If you ever have a chance to attend a performance of the Big Apple Circus, we highly recommend it! And who knows-- you may even see a performance by one of my daughters!?!?!

A new addition to the 'family'

Well... not technically our immediate family but to our extended family!

Here's to more road trips for the Timms Family!!

A visit to Saudi Arabia

We are so enjoying our "trip around the world" this year in school. So far, we have visited 4 continents and have just entered the 5th (and largest)-- Asia. It has been fun to have other friends using the same curriculum as we've had opportunities to share school adventures with them.

Yesterday, we had some of these friends visit and we learned more about Saudi Arabia together. The kids all wore some type of headcovering-- and we all decided that it pretty much would stink to be a woman there and have to cover everything but your eyes! It's hard to breathe through a scarf!!

We also spent a good bit of time talking about camels and learning some interesting things about how God created them to be uniquely adapted to their environment-- right down to their wide, flat feet that don't sink into the sandy desert.

(experimenting with mock 'camel feet')

We wrapped up our time tasting hummus and flatbread-- all agreed that flatbread was great but there was not such a consensus on the hummus! We were 3 for and 3 against!!

We are blessed to have such great friends that we are able to work AND play with!

A belated trip report

the flower gardens in Canada

playing native African instruments

It has taken a week for us (well, specifically Mommy!) to recover from "Girls Week" at Disney. We had a fantastic time but it completely wore us out! Our typical vacation plan when we visit Disney is to have 2-3 park days scattered in among 'rest days' at the resort. On this trip, we visited the parks FIVE DAYS in a row... and quickly came to the conclusion that that is not our favorite 'Disney Vacation Strategy'!! Next time we will go back to our more leisurely exploration of the parks...

Even though we have visited Disney many times, there are still many things that we (or the girls) have not experienced. Some of our 'firsts' on this trip included:

Staying in a 'value' resort (smaller rooms but just as 'magical' as a moderate or deluxe!)...

Learning to draw Goofy at the Animation Studio...

Having breakfast with Pooh & Friends at the Crystal Palace (the last time I ate here it was a cafeteria-- does anyone remember that??!)...

Getting faces painted (Tinkerbelle & a butterfly/flower fairy)...

Riding Astro Orbiter (the girls' first time)...

Participating in a 'Velcro game show' at Innoventions in Epcot (Abbie)...

'Driving' the boat on the Jungle Cruise (Emma)...

Driving an 'electric scooter' because of her hurt knee (grandma Anna!)...

We had also never visited the parks in January and went with the expectations of very low crowds and comfortable weather... which mostly happened. The beginning of the week was very pleasant (see previous post for swimming pictures!) but it got pretty chilly by Friday. The crowds started out extremely heavy at Hollywood Studios on Monday (not sure why except maybe leftover marathon crowds??), cleared out to nothing mid-week (we rode Buzz 5 times without a wait) but then picked up again on Friday (MLK holiday??). One advantage/disadvantage (depending on your point of view) of travelling in 'off season' is that sometimes rides are down for maintenance... can you guess which ride is NOT Abbie's favorite??

The girls chose two very different but special souvenirs of their trip. Abbie picked an oyster in Japan and had the enclosed pearl made into a necklace.

Emma chose to have a parasol custom painted in France.

All in all, it was a great trip. Michael managed well without us (although I think his buddy Jake the Labrador was sad to see us return as he was downgraded from 'house dog' to 'basement/outside dog'!!) We enjoyed visiting with our Florida family and having my mom along for part of the trip. Disney's "Homeschool Days" is a great option for travelling in off season and seems to be a pretty well-kept secret (the group at the special speaking event on Monday was fairly small-- only a few hundred people). We definitely plan to participate again... but will not be quite as ambitious in our touring schedule!!!

Live from Disney

Abbie here. One of mine and Emma's Christmas gifts was a trip to Disney. Anna (our grandma) and Mom, Emma and I, got to go. We are staying at Pop Century. Did I not say we are there now? I guess not. We got here on Sunday and are staying for a week. Yesterday we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Sunday we hung around and went swimming and went to Ohana for dinner. Today we are at Anna and Pacca's house and later going to the front part of Epcot.

The main reason we came was for Disney's Homeschool Days (which was at Disney's Hollywood Studios) .

Another fun thing we got to do was meet Prince Caspian from Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

One of my favorite rides is the new Toy Story Midway Mania. You get in the ride vechicle and then use your cannon to shoot different objects at different targets. There how was that for explaining? If I did it right you should be getting that picture in your head, right?

Less than 24 hours...

Homeschooling and Disney... how much better does it get??!!