I was really hoping to sleep in until 7 am this morning.  I thought to myself as I tucked everyone in last night, "They look exhausted from their first week of school, there is no way they will be awake before 7 am."  Boy was I wrong...5:50 am and my oldest daughter, Kaylee, came into our room just to let us know her nose was stuff...REALLY!? Following her early wake up call was her brother tagging right behind her...and so the shutting of bedroom doors began.  In one room, BANG, back to the other room, BANG, bang, bang bang....all.morning.long. I still love them though. :)  We did have a morning discussion that this wouldn't happen tomorrow.  I showed them how to not shut their door all the way in the mornings...hopefully they remember. 

I have been really into canning and freezing produce this summer. We weren't able to plant a garden this year, so I have been really thankful for family and friends who have passed along their extras to me. So far I've made about 15 jars of strawberry jam, 6 quarts of tomato sauce,  and froze 5 quart size ziplocks bags of fresh green beans.  Yesterday I was given about a dozen sweet corn, so this morning I shucked the corn, cut the kernals off, blanched it, let it cool, and then separated it into ziplock baggies to put into the freezer.  Corn is one our favorite vegetables and we go through a ton of it during the year, so we are sooo excited to be able to pull a bag out during the winter and have fresh sweet corn.  I am supposed to be getting about 5 dozen more, and I can't wait!  Here is a picture of it cooling in my colander.

I also wanted to post on an amazing website/blog I found recently.  I am always looking for new crafts, projects, and learning worksheets to do with my kids.  I came across www.homeschoolcreations.com and found these amazing preschool packs on her site, for free!  I have created 2 of them for my son so far, and he absolutely loves them!  He has completed the Toy Story preschool pack and today he started on the Circus preschool pack.  Here is a picture of him practicing his tracing skills:

There are a bunch of different themes to choose from on the site and many more printables too! My son loves playing the games with me and doing all the different writing excersizes. It makes me so happy so see him writing his name so clearly too, so I had to take a picture to share with you.

A great tip that I have is to just print off the worksheets and instead of paying alot of money to have them laminated, I just put them in sheet protects and then organize everything in a binder.  That way, my son can use dry erase markers and the worksheets can be used over and over.  I paid around $3.50 for 50 sheet protectors at Walmart.