Saturday!!

I meant to try and post yesterday when I realized I hadn't posted since Monday, but I still didn't get round to it. Here we are Saturday afternoon and I'm getting a few minutes on the computer while Jason is watching some tv with Kristen and puppies are sleeping.

I don't really have anything to post about this week, or pictures to share. Hang on a minute . . . .

I just took these pictures which is the view I see as I type this.They aren't very clear because of the screen on the window, but you can see the Fall colors out there, and yes, it's raining a little today too.

I'll try to post pictures next week, perhaps of the master bedroom, it's looking sort of completed, still need pictures on the wall though! Have a wonderful weekend.We were going to go over to our friends and have S'mores with them out in the back (they have 8 acres of land!!) but it's raining, so I think they may come over here for a glass of wine. They haven't been to our house yet.

Something about Columbus Day????

Those are the words Jason said to me this morning as he walked back through the front door at 7am!!!! We had gotten up as usual at 5am for him to go out to work at 5.30. Neither of us had any clue it was a holiday today... me, mainly because it wasn't a holiday on our school calendar. I don't know what Jason's reason was ;-) He would have stayed at work seeing as he was already there, but the office is closed so he can't get credit for working when the office is actually closed down for the day!!   

Well, anyway, it means we might get a bit more done around the house today. We still have school but I'm going to make it a short day. Cathy asked me about K12(cyber school) and mentioned that it seemed to be taking much more effort on my  part. I wanted to share a little more about it. First of all I will say, this IS taking more effort on my part than I had originally thought it would, but I don't mind that in the slightest. I never wanted to 'homeschool' Kristen, the way I thought homeschooling was (ie. I gather all the material for the curriculum and literally teach her myself) When Kristen mentioned she wanted to be homeschooled if we moved to Denver I immediately thought of the K12 virtual school that I'd been told about a few summers ago from a mom at the neighborhood pool. I thought it was an online school where Kristen did most of her work online and had a specific teacher that did 'virtual classrooms' so to speak. Well, it is all that, AND some. The some is the time I put in to it. 

The program is a public school program and all the material and lessons online are free. We were sent all the books for the year early in August. The way the program works is you log in to your personal page and it has your lessons all set out for the day. It's pretty flexible in that we can move ahead with lessons if we need to, or spend more time on lessons if we need to. We do however have to have so many school days in the year and a total of so many hours! As you open up a lesson online you will start reading the lesson and what it's about etc. It has samples on the screen and even a video sometimes of a teacher explaining, say a math problem. It will then tell you to turn to your text book and do some of the lesson from there. Then when you have gone through the lesson (in the book and reading it online) you go back on line and take an assessment. This is just a few questions about the lesson to test if you've retained the info and feel confident to move on to the next lesson.

From day one, I've sat with Kristen for all of her lessons, because I WANT To :-) To be honest I never really knew what she was learning in her elementary school. It is taking up many hours in my day but I love knowing what she's learning, and I often read the stories to her and then discuss them (Eng. Lit for instance) or she reads them to me. To be honest I find a lot of it interesting, especially American History which I was never taught at school!Needless to say I'm learning a lot too. There will come a time when Kristen can just open her text books, log on, and do the lessons herself. She can probably do that now, but I enjoy sitting with her. 

Then I can probably get on with an hour or two of housework, but for now I like doing it this way. We are usually finished school by 2.30. Then I can do other stuff like housework, only I don't get too much of that done what with having to keep an eye on Bindi. It's all very slow going at the minute, because of unpacking boxes too. But we'll get there in the end. I'm not sure if she'll want to do this next year, but I'm kinda hoping she does. I like having her home with me all day, knowing she's safe, and not having to worry about 'lock downs' because some crazy kid took a gun to school!!!. She has already made friends in the neighborhood, and we go on field trips with the school, so to me it's an ideal situation. She's learning at her own pace, (which is often much quicker than the other kids she was in class with). So for now, it works for us. There's also daily 'class connect' sessions where the teachers are online going through one of the lessons with the kids. They have live chat with her and can write on the 'white board' to answer questions, or talk on the mic. It's really an awesome program. I'd highly recommend it if you're considering homeschooling.

 

And because I can't have a post without a picture, I took this on Saturday as I was driving in to the neighborhood :-)  It looked more colorful than that, but it is taken through the glass window of the car, so not as bright as it would be. 

Happy Columbus Day!

 

The start of many . . . .

Ok, so here they are, the first of many (I am sure) pictures of the inside of the house!! I worked non stop this weekend, not just unpacking boxes but also trying to get some of the rooms in to some sort of order. It's driving me crazy that I still don't have a picture on the wall and the kitchen is an utter mess... boxes and stuff everyone where, counter tops littered with ornaments and accessories that I just don't know where to put yet!  

So the first room that is somewhat finished, is the living room. The room still looks rather bare, but I have ordered curtains from Pottery Barn today, and hope they come next week. Need to get curtain rods too but I can get those at Target or BBandB. These are for you Nenna ;-) the living room, taken from many angles!!

Snow!!!!

Well, that was a quick week! Actually I would have posted on here if I'd had a computer to work on! Jason moved the computers around last weekend. He put the one that he was using downstairs in what will be his office, put mine on the desk in the upstairs office next to the one Kristen has been using for her school work. BUT..... turns out he can't get internet connection on his computer downstairs, and mine needs an adaptor or something because it hasn't got wireless network on it? Or something like that. Anyway, we've only had one computer all week, so I haven't been able to do a post in the mornings like I was doing while Kristen did school work. I'm really hoping Jason can get something sorted this weekend.

 Look! we got snow!!!!!! This was our deck on Friday morning :-) It was just a dusting and mainly on the rooftops, you couldn't see much of it on the ground, but it was fun to see, and boy has it turned cold. Hard to believe our friends in Texas still have such high temps. But it's October, and to me it should always be a bit colder by October. For the past 8 years we have ususally been in flipflops and t-shirts still at Halloween, I don't think that will be the case this year, and I'm fine with that, I've been looking forward to our first winter here.

Anyhoo, not much going on here other than trying to get boxes unpacked and the house in order ready for our housewarming/halloween party at the end of the month! It's slow going what with doing school with Kristen and also having to watch the puppy every minute of the day!!

I still wanted to post and show some pictures I took this week (mainly for my sis) ;-) I thought she might like to see more of the views we have.

 I walked up the driveway to the mail box last Saturday and because I had my phone with me, I snapped these pics. Above, is our house without any zoom (it's a long driveway), you can see the mountains in the background, and below, I zoomed in. We were just getting ready to go out, so Jason's car doors are open. And no Nenna, that's not his Corvette. He bought a four wheel drive Mitsubishi a few weeks ago ready for the snow. He won't be able to drive his vet in snow and ice!

 At the top of the drive, as  you look left, this is what you see (above)

 When I get right to the end, this is a view of the street as you turn left out of the driveway, and below is a view to the right.

You can just see our mailbox on the right,  it's not at the very end of our driveway, but a little further along sitting next to next doors mailbox. I guess that's so it's easier for the mailman to deliver things, he doesn't have to stop as many times if two mail boxes are right next to each other. Most of the mail boxes are set out like this.  But I love that we have our own mailbox again and not just a little slot with a key that you usually have to drive to!

More pics, these ones below were taken at the beginning of the week when it was still in the 70's. Kristen and I took the dogs for a little walk. I should have snapped their pictures too. I will try to do that next time we go out.

 Ok, I'll wrap it up here. It's 7.30am on a Saturday. I used to love being up early on the weekends and have a quiet hour to myself having coffee, but these days if I get up, I have to 'sneak' downstairs so Bindi doesn't hear me. As soon as she knows I'm up she'll start whining and want to be out. I snook straight in to the office so I could post this. If I want coffee I will wake her up, so it's never a nice quiet coffee I have. But that's ok, she won't be a puppy forever. Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope I can post more next week.


 

You know you're not in Texas when.....

. . . . you're putting the heating on in the house in September!! :-) The weather has really started cooling down here in Denver. Most of this week has been in the low 70's, which means a lot of the day is in the 60's. The lows at night are in the 40's and in the morning I've been putting the heating on for an hour to take the chill off the house, which is at about 65 when I wake up!! 

 Looks like Texas is having about mid 80's weather right now, which I bet after that long hot summer feels pretty cool to our friends there! I don't miss the heat at all, and I don't really miss the fact that I would normally still be in flip flops and capris/tshirt at this time of year. To me, September should be pretty cool and it should definitely be feeling cold come October (my birthday month). For the past 8 years though, it's probably still been in the high 70's or low 80's for my birthday, mid October! 

I'm excited about this year, I already feel like Fall is here, and of course it is. First day of Fall was last Saturday. 

 

I took this picture yesterday, of the oak tree that is in our back yard. You can see it from our living room window and as you sit on the deck outside. I would imagine in the next few days the whole tree will look red. This week we've had some rain and heavy thunderstorms, but this morning is bright and sunny again, and dry :-)  The picture below was taken yesterday afternoon after the rain. This is the view from our 'other' deck!

Another couple of pictures I took last week but haven't shared yet are these. . . . 

 Not very clear, but you can make out that they are deer! About 6 of them were grazing outside our deck early one evening. I never tire of seeing deer. I took a little video of them too, hopefully you can click on it below and watch it. It's about a minute long, so you may only want to watch the first few seconds!!

Today, is Boo's birthday!!! He's 7 years old. I haven't taken a picture of him in a while, so here's a picture of him with Kristen taken back in August, her first day of homeschool. 

and here is little Bindi baby looking all grown up! Boo still does not like her and won't even tolerate her being near him, unless there's food around. Then she can get right in his face and he doesn't care, just keeps on eating!! As soon as the food is gone though, he growls and walks off!!

Hope you all have a great weekend. See you on Monday ;-)

How was your weekend?

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, I know we did :-)  

 Friday found us sitting out on the deck watching the sunset, again :-) And we didn't have to sit on camping chairs - we have our patio furniture now!  

Jason was working on Saturday from home so I tried to unpack a few boxes but I need him to help me with bookshelves and office furniture stuff before I can get a lot of the boxes of books unpacked, and I am constantly having to watch where Bindi is because she still isn't fully potty trained!!

Sunday was the best day - we went out shopping, Kristen wanted to check in Justice for some new clothes (but didn't end up buying any!!). We went to Southlands Mall in Aurora. It's not an indoor mall, but a pretty street full of shops. During the winter they freeze the center of it where the fountains are and make an outdoor ice rink!! 

We shopped around a little (I actually bought two tops in New York & Co) then we stopped for lunch. We went to McCabe's, an Irish pub and restaurant. We actually ate here when we came to visit back in May. The first time I had fish and chips there, but this time I had the prime rib sunday lunch AND a mimosa :) I couldn't pass up their $3 Sunday cocktails. They had Bloody Mary's too, but I don't really like those. Jason had a screwdriver!

 

Cheers 'me dears'. . . . here's wishing you all a great week :-)

Friday already!!

Urghhh, looks like blogger has changed over my layout! I was using the old blogger page cos I didn't like the new one, but I knew they would be changing it over eventually whether you liked it or not. Guess I'll have to just get used to this new screen for posting!

I can't believe it's Friday already and I only posted once on Monday. This week has really gone fast. I just wanted to do a quick update to let you all know the furniture is all here :-) FINALLY! Some of you asked what was in the first pod that arrived last Friday, well it was garage stuff (as I expected it might be, Christmas decor etc) but it also had some house boxes in for the kitchen and other rooms, so I got to unload some kitchen stuff. I didn't unpack other stuff because things were for shelves or dressers and I didn't have those yet to put the stuff away in. 

This was just some of the first pod we were unloading on Friday. All 3 garages are now completely full of boxes and garage stuff, and I can't imagine how long it's going to take us to get it all sorted. There are a lot of boxes down in the basement too that came off the last pod with the furniture! But I don't care, we're in now and we'll just have to take it one day at a time. I have very little time now during the day to do anything because I'm doing school with Kristen. I'm hoping once we can get the office desks a bit more organized she can sit and do a lesson or two on her own while I unpack, and even later when the unpacking is done, I would like to do housework while she does some school. Otherwise I'll have it all to do at the weekends!!

OK, we're about to start school with a Class Connect (that is a live online chat with the teacher and other students. It's a math class this morning, then another class connect at 10am for the homeroom. It's really good how all of this is set up. And we are both still really enjoying it. Have a great weekend all, I'll be back next week, and hopefully will show some pictures of the 'mess' inside the house ;-)