When Life Gives you Lemons... (Part 1)

Make lemonade! This week has been very trying to say the least. So it just made my day when Karen at Educating Crumpet honored me with the Lemonade Stand Award!

As with any award, there are a few ‘rules’ that should be followed:
The Lemonade Stand Award is awarded for being a blogger who shows great attitude and gratitude. The rules for accepting this award:

- Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post.
- Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
- Link the nominees within your post.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

So, I've given this some thought and since my blog seems to have become a mixture of stories about our life on the road interspersed with tidbits about homeschooling, I decided I’d select five bloggers from each category to honor with the Lemonade Stand Award. So, here goes…

If you’ve noticed the Families on the Road button on the side of my page, you know there are other people crazy enough to embark on this lifestyle, though of course we don’t see ourselves this way! I've found many blogs this way and think you'll enjoy these too.

You may remember Show Us the World when I distributed my last blog award, well, they now have a spin off; their teenage son Austin has recently started his own blog The Teenage Traveler. Since I have been unsuccessful in my own attempts to coerce, I mean encourage, my children to blog about our adventures, I am awarding Austin an award because I love his attitude and he seems to be really sweet!

Fairly new to the full-time lifestyle, Discovering US is a blog that I keep my eye on. I’m still impressed that they cooked their entire Thanksgiving meal over an open fire. I can’t wait to read about all the discoveries they make on the road.

Another blog I’ve enjoyed is The Ticknor Tribe,the chronicles of a little family of 13 that are flourishing on the road while living in their travel trailer. Well, actually, they just upgraded to a huge 5th Wheel- I’m so jealous I may have to stop reading. OK, just kidding! I really can’t wait until they post the inside tour…I love reading how this lifestyle works for other families.

Last week I found Smitty’s Info and after reading Sherri’s post I’ve Never Been so Hairy ,I decided she deserved an award!

This week I found a new blog, The Stafford’s on the Road. They’ve been on the road for a bit now and have traveled to some pretty cool places and have lots of neat pictures to prove it. The post to Sylvan Lake II caught my eye when they mentioned the movie National Treasure II, we loved both the National Treasure movies! Anyway, remember the Eagle Rock, where the treasure was found? They went in search of it...cool stuff.

I know that’s five, but I really have another one that I want to mention, Where Are We Now. They have a neat goal to visit every baseball stadium in America. I just began reading their blog when they got to Florida, because I dream of visiting the Everglades and they beat me to it. Be sure to read about their visit to Everglades National Park.

Well, that concludes this part of the Blog Awards… I hope you take the time to stop by and check out each of these blogs and enjoy reading about these families as much as I do!

And don't forget to stop back next week when I’ll be posting my favorite, Top Five Homeschooling blogs…according to me that is….until then…Blessings from the Road!

Well, Ex-CUZE me!

I'm sure many of you have received your share of goofy, tacky and just plain weird gifts at Christmastime, but the family gift we received this year from my mother-in-law, no less, really shocked me.

I wanted to post a picture sooner, but a picture just really wouldn't do this gift justice. No, you really need to HEAR this. But though I've been trying to post a video for the past week, something just isn't working as it should. However, I'm sure you're all creative, I'm sure when you look at the picture you're able to conjure up in your mind the kind of sounds that emerge from this bank as each coin is dropped in the crack. If my kids were younger, I would have been appalled... But rest assured, now that the kids are older, it brought many laughs...even if it is a bit rude, crude and ooohhh sooooo tacky!

Imagine one child standing outside the bathroom door insisting they need to GO (the bank 'making noises' of course), while another child is laughing hysterically in the bathtub! Thus...our Christmas Eve...

Hmmm....let's have an informal survey....do you think this lovely invention was the brain child of a man or woman?

Life on the Road: Another Teen's Perspective

An Interview with a Homeschooled, Roadschooled Teen

You seemed to enjoy the first post in this series about our life on the road from a kids' perspective so I thought I'd continue. This week I sat down with my youngest child, my daughter and asked her some questions that she was only too eager to answer too honestly, but hey, you come here to hear what really goes on in our camper, right?! Enjoy!

Tell me about yourself.
My name is Chelsea, I’m 13 years old. I enjoy reading, writing, playing on the computer, beating my brothers on Xbox, texting my friends, listening to music and duct taping things. Oh, I’d also like to play the guitar if I knew how.

Everything is pretty self explanatory, but what’s with the duct tape?
It’s fun, it’s not your average gray duct tape, this is tie-dyed and I use it to make rings, bracelets, purses. Whatever I feel like. I want to decorate the computer I share with my brothers, but they won’t agree to it.

Describe your life on the road.
It’s boring. It’s not the funnest thing in the world to be this close to your brothers with no privacy.

Okay, now that you’ve just painted a picture of gloom, is there anything positive that you can think of to this lifestyle?
(Chuckle) Ummm…not right at the moment…no.

Anything?
(Stares at me with that deer caught in the headlights look…obviously trying to think).
It’s kind of fun to live in a home that you can drive?

Let’s try a different approach…where have you enjoyed visiting?
That's easy. Disney World. Virginia Beach. Washington D.C. was fun. Colonial Williamsburg was one of my favorites. Everywhere we went to in Virginia was fun. Virginia has the ocean, the beach and it’s funner than Alabama. Alabama just has grass, lots of grass and rocket ships. Virginia had dolphins, beach glass, sand, shells, and cool hotels with good breakfast food.

So are you saying that you prefer to stay in hotels vs. the camper?
No. I only liked the hotels on the beach. In the camper I have my own bed and I also have my own closet. I decorate my closet with autographs signed by all the band members that I’ve met at concerts. I’ve met Skillet, Decyfer Down and Remedy Drive. I also met Kimber Rising and Anthony Evans but I didn’t get their autograph…tear….I did get my picture taken with them though.

When did you go to these concerts?
This year. Since we started traveling.

So could it be that there REALLY are perks to traveling?
I guess so...there could be some. Meeting interesting people. Other homeschoolers, but I don’t meet very many girls my age. Actually I don’t meet any.

How do you stay in touch with friends and family?
I text my friends, call them, email them and keep in touch through Face book. I probably talk to them once every day.

How has your current on the road lifestyle affected your schooling?
We do less book work, but learn more because we learn a lot from the places that we go. If we are near something interesting we normally go there and afterwards we’ll look it up in books and read about it. I didn’t know anything about Civil Rights or Martin Luther King, Jr. but when we were in Atlanta we went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic site and mom made us learn about it. I didn’t even want to go and thought it would be really boring. Afterwards we watched movies,read books about that time period and talked to my Grandpa and Great Grandma about what it was like to live then. It turned out to be really interesting.

What do you do for school when you aren’t visiting interesting places?
I read a lot. I’ll read basically anything. Right now I’m reading the Redwall series. In the past few weeks I’ve also read Sense and Sensibilities and then I watched some Jane Austin movies. I enjoyed reading the Left Behind series for kids and read all 40 of them in 2 weeks. They were good and they are also small books. I’ve enjoyed the Anne of Green Gables books. My mom was reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok and let me read it when she was finished. That’s one of my favorite books. It was really good. I learned a lot from that book. I had no idea there were different types of Jews. I also learned about some of the Jewish customs.

I also do the Connect the Thoughts curriculum and The Life of Fred for math. I read the Bible. I also write, creative writing.

I’m also interning for an author, Judith Allee. She wrote Homeschooling on a Shoestring and Educational Travel on a Shoestring. I have a list of assignments to work on. That’s pretty cool that I can work for an author. It counts as some of my schooling.

I also crochet and knit. Not very often but sometimes I get in the mood and make things. A couple weeks ago I made a baby afghan for our neighbors that moved. It was a going away present and because they just found out they were having a baby.

If you read what my mom wrote the other day, you'll know why I'm teaching myself French!

Okay, I just thought of one more thing...is there anything that could make life on the road more pleasant for you?
Getting along with my brother, Josh better. We are both stubborn and we annoy each other and it really bothers me. Other than Josh annoying me, life on the road is pretty good. I enjoy going places, but I don't like staying in one place- it's better when we are moving around more. Unless we were stuck near the beach, I wouldn't mind that. I like spending time with my family, hiking, watching movies and playing games.

Well, there you have it...Life on the Road from a slightly different perspective. Did I miss something? No problem, I'll have another interview coming up with another Homeschooled, Roadschooled teen in another week or so.

Do you have a question you'd like to ask? Why not leave it in the comments below? Of course if you have a Homeschooled, Roadschooled Kid that would like to participate, let me know that too! Why should it be all about us? We're nosy and love to hear how this lifestyle works for others!

For the love of Paris...

My daughter loves Paris. In fact, a visit to Paris has one of the coveted top spots on her Bucket List. And dreaming ahead, she's already planning a Parisian wedding. The source of her affection isn't really because she wants to visit all of France. No, just one amazing structure known globally...the Eiffel Tower. She's spent hours researching it, drawing it and recently painting it.



Here's a peak at the finished project:


So, what's on your Bucket List?

A Sewer Story or What was He Thinking?

Well the temperatures have dipped a bit lower here in Northern Alabama than we had anticipated. Either I had failed to keep as close an eye on the weather forecast as I thought I was or the forecast had changed because I don't remember reading anywhere that we were going to experience below freezing temperatures. To be honest, after spending the past week in Ohio, I was rejoicing to be further south and what had initially felt like a heat wave.

So, imagine my surprise when last night I discovered that our water had frozen! Not one to keep a secret, I couldn't wait until morning to share the news with my husband. As if not being able to flush the toilet was a concern of his at 3:00 A.M.! He simply grunted, rolled over and went back to sleep while I envisioned horrible thoughts of broken pipes flooding our camper and ruining our newly installed floor, finely drifting off about the time my husband was getting up for work and did want to survey the damage.

Luckily, other than not having running water momentarily, there was no damage, and not anything a couple electric heaters couldn't remedy. Within a couple hours the heaters had done their job and we had water once more. But here's where the story gets interesting...

By the time my husband had returned from work and we had eaten dinner, the temperatures had already fallen into the low 20's and our holding tank (sewer) had frozen. My husband decided to have a look while my boys jokingly asked if he'd need the hose spreader- ever watched RV? If you have, you'll understand the comment and the incredibly horrible scene I envision in my mind each time the holding tanks seem to need attention.

Well, this time my imaginings weren't too far off base. In an effort to thaw out the line, my husband grabbed the electric heater and decided to remove the hose from the tank so the hot air could go into the tank and the yucky stuff could be thawed and drained.

Now, let me explain that the tank is still designed with a pull lever that needs to be released to allow the waste to exit the tank. So, it's not likely that we would experience seepage...however...after allowing the heater to heat things up a bit, my husband decided to have a glance at the progress, not expecting much of a change. But, you guessed it, when he pulled the lever...surprise... urine (because we don't do the poo in our loo) gushed (according to me), spewed forth (according to the kids),trickled (according to my husband) from the camper. But since my husband was the only one to actually witness this event, we'll just have to take his word for it that it was indeed a trickle...as exciting as spewed forth may be.

But my story is not yet finished...remember the heater that was heating up this mess so it could be properly dumped? Of course it would happen to remain directly in the line of fire. So my husband simply wiped down the heater, sprayed it with Windex with ammonia and returned it to its normal spot in front of our bedroom door.

Now this story never would have been written if that heater had not been plugged in and turned on, but it was! The intense, overwhelming smell of urine sent us all clamoring for the door and fresh air. Judging from the smell of the heater, that is NEVER permitted inside the camper again, may be it was a bit more than a trickle.

What was he thinking?